Are Sharks Immune to Disease and Cancer?
The Question: I recently read that sharks are immune to all disease. Is this true?
Submitted by: Marion F., Somerville, MA
The Short Answer: No, it's not true. Sharks get bacterial infections, viral infections [see comments], and they suffer from parasites, in short, the entiShark_Silhouette - wikimedia.jpgre suite of infectious diseases from which all animals and plants must protect themselves. Sharks also get cancer, contrary to another widely disseminated myth.
More Info:
The claim that sharks don't get disease or suffer from cancer is mostly spread by advertisements for shark cartilage as a dietary supplement. These supplements claim to prevent disease or cure cancer, but none has ever been shown in rigorous medical tests to protect people from disease. Tumors rarely infiltrate into cartilage, in any vertebrate whether a shark or a person, and cartilage seems to have some ability to inhibit the growth of blood vessels. Since a growing tumor needs blood vessels to continue to expand, there have been attempts to develop "antiangiogenic" drugs that fight cancer by limiting growth of new capillaries. Ground cartilage, whether from sharks or cows, shows some antiangiogenic effect in the laboratory, but has not shown any benefit in actual people. But shark cartilage sellers have connected the fact that the skeleton of a shark is entirely made of cartilage with the antiangiogenic properties of cartilage to claim that this protects sharks from cancer. It just isn't true. The truth is that while we do know for certain that sharks get diseases and cancer, we don't know at what rate. Sick sharks probably get eaten or fall to the bottom of the ocean to decompose. They would rarely be available to be counted. Sharks that are harvested by fisherman do occasionally show infectious disease or cancers. No one has done a comprehensive survey of sharks to know whether they have high or low rates of illness. Even if sharks are particularly free from disease, that wouldn't necessarily mean shark cartilage has any value as a treatment for human disease. And the tests that have been done have not shown any value over a placebo. shark snout - wikimedia.jpg
The Interesting Science: The immune system of sharks is very much like ours. We have what's called the "innate immune system" which is somewhat hardwired to fight generalized intruder microorganisms and parasites. The innate immune system can respond over long periods of time through the mechanism of natural selection to adapt to new diseases. We also have an "adaptive immune system" (also called the "acquired immune system") that adapts in real time to new intruders. This is the familiar system of antibodies and white blood cells that gets the most discussion in terms of diseases such as flu, the common cold, and AIDS. It was once thought that vertebrates like sharks, bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals were the only animals that had an adaptive immune system. But recent discoveries have shown that lampreys and hagfish, fish that split off onto their own evolutionary branch early in the history of vertebrates, have a different system of generating antibodies and adapting to fight new viral and bacterial threats. And it appears that Mustelus_asterias - wikimedia.jpgother animals from snails to fruit flies may also have adaptive immune systems that work differently from ours, but accomplish the same goal of recognizing and attacking new microbes and viruses.
The Environmental Message: Shark populations are plummeting around the globe, in large part due to fishing for shark fin for shark fin soup, and for cartilage for shark cartilage supplements. As top of the food chain predators, shark numbers have never been as high as a fish like cod. Sharks also reproduce slowly. Unlike a cod, which can lay millions of eggs, many sharks lay only a few hundred in the average lifetime. What this means is that harvesting sharks is generally not sustainable. There aren't enough of them to start with, and they can't rebuild their populations rapidly.
Shark Cartilage, Cancer and the Growing Threat of Pseudoscience. Ostrander GK, Cheng KC, Wolf JC and Wolfe MJ. Cancer Research, 64, 8485-8491, 2004.
Evaluation of shark cartilage in patients with advanced cancer: a North Central Cancer Treatment Group trial. Cancer, Jul 1;104(1):176-82. 2005.
Added in Dec. 2013: First reports of proliferative lesions in the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias L., and bronze whaler shark, Carcharhinus brachyurus Günther. R. Robbins, B. Bruce, A. Fox, Nov. 2013, Journal of Fish Diseases.
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5 Responses
 1. Michael Zasloff Says:
 I am curious to know the source that permits you to conclude that sharks are subject to viral infections
 2. Tom Says:
 Hi, sorry it took so long to respond to this comment.
 I'm having trouble finding confirmation that sharks get viral infections. I may have extrapolated that. However, there is a great deal of research going on about the substance squalamine isolated from sharks, which has anti-viral properties. The very fact that sharks produce a powerful anti-viral compound is strong evidence that they fight against viral infection. The ocean is swimming with viruses and there's no reason to suspect that sharks would be the one type of organism on earth that is immune to viruses.
 There have been very few studies of the health status of wild sharks. Most likely, if we did such a study, we'd find that most sharks don't have viral infections and a few do … just like every other animal in the world. It may be that sharks have developed a neat anti-viral trick and are therefore less susceptible to viral infection than other organisms. But viruses are so adaptable, I would be very surprised if viruses haven't found ways around squalamine and probably the sharks are in a constant arms race with their viruses just as we are.
 If you picked out five people randomly out of a crowd, probably none of them will be exhibiting signs of viral infection. We wouldn't conclude from that that people are immune to viruses, but that's what people seem to do with sharks.
 3. sharks don't get cancer? | BioBlog Says:
 […] for the bit about "no contagious diseases" – again, completely untrue. Sharks are subject to a range of bacterial & viral infections, plus parasites, & in fact […]
 4. tompelletier Says:
 Just noticed a new report on cancer in wild great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) and bronze whaler sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus).
 5. Vadim Shapoval Says:
 The claim that sharks don't get disease or suffer from cancer is mostly spread by advertisements for shark cartilage as a dietary supplement? See: Sharks, Dinosaurs, Ferromagnetic Cancer Theory and Father of Oncology. Dinosaurs and other reptiles roamed the Earth in the past. Many dinosaurs had cancer, researchers have discovered. Ancient humans could have contracted cancer just as much as people do today. Humans kill about 100 million sharks per year. Researchers have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. There is no scientific evidence that shark cartilage is useful in treating or preventing cancer. Cancers have been found in everything from coral to budgerigars. The interaction of many factors together produces cancer. Modern humans know that primary tumors develop at body sites of excessive iron deposits. There are no exceptions: body sites affected by primary tumors are iron-rich body sites. When tumor cells metastasize, the new tumor is called a secondary or metastatic tumor, and its cells are similar to those in the primary tumor. If breast cancer metastasizes to the lungs, the secondary tumor is made up of abnormal breast cells, not of abnormal lung cells. Misplaced iron created primary tumors in dinosaurs and ancient humans; misplaced iron creates primary tumors in corals, sharks, budgerigars and modern humans. The Father of Oncology (Vadim Shapoval) says that a cell needs to have iron overload (when excess iron accumulates within cellular organelles) before it becomes cancerous. In inherited forms of cancer, parents give their sons and daughters abnormal iron metabolism within various organs. Iron disorders are inherited and can be confirmed with genetic testing. Genes that maintain iron homeostasis may facilitate iron uptake, storage or egress, or the regulation of any of these processes. The spectrum of known disorders of iron metabolism has expanded dramatically over the past years. Any cancer is caused by iron-related genes (numerous genes directly/indirectly involved in iron metabolism / hereditary cancers) and iron-related events (when excess iron accumulates within the cells, tissues, and organs due to various carcinogenic lifestyle events / sporadic cancers). Genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger. The structure and physical properties of any cell must ultimately be described by the known laws of chemistry and physics. According to the Ferromagnetic Cancer Theory (Theory from the Old Testament; Iron Conception), any human cell should be interpreted: 1) as a society of atoms and molecules; 2) as a society of organelles; 3) as a society of dia-, para-, superpara-, ferriand ferromagnetic nanoparticles that have certain local magnetic contacts. Cancer occurs through excessive accumulation of


Important: Please read the Qt Code of Conduct -
Get signal on activate a certain cell in a tableview
 - Is there a way to get a signal when a certain cell (or column) in a qtableview loses the focus or get activated (a QAbstractItemView witch is inherid by a qtableview holds the signal "activated").
 Is it possible with a connect statement similar to this:
 connect(ui->myTableview->"here I don't know how to point to cell 0, 1",SIGNAL(activated), this, SLOT(myFunction))
 If it is possible like in the connect statement above, how do I write the sender (e.g. cell 0,1 in the tableview) correct
 Or is there an other way??
 Thank you in advance!
 - Lifetime Qt Champion
 What about using
 You get new QModelIndex which has
 So when u get this signal, u can check if the "watched" col and do your thing.
 You also get last QModelIndex, so you can check if a cell is "left" that way.
 Meaning its the last ModelIndex.
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text:
Meaning of RD
What Does RD Mean? (Using RD Online)RD means "Real Deal".
Summary of Key Points
Definition for RDRD means "Real Deal". This is the most common definition for RD on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. Here is some more information about RD:
Adults and Teenagers
A Text with RD
Using RD on a Cell Phone (SMS Texts, Whatsapp, and Yubl)

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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I use stata to get an eps graph, then use pdfLaTeX to get a pdf file.
When I zoom in the graph, we can see an ugly diamond.enter image description here How to solve it?
share|improve this question
closed as off topic by yo', egreg, Torbjørn T., Qrrbrbirlbel, lockstep Nov 5 '12 at 17:09
How does the diamond look like in the eps file? – Marco Nov 5 '12 at 10:34
It is the same as the above figure. I insert the eps file into word, then use the pdf-maker to generate pdf file, thus the figure looks good. – Pig Cry Nov 5 '12 at 11:20
What do you expect pdftex to do? It does not change your figure. This is expected behaviour. If you want a "proper" diamond, correct it with the application you used to generate the file. If you just want to convert EPS to PDF I would suggest to use ghostscript. The processing is faster and it's easier to use, especially if you use one of the wrappers like ps2pdf. – Marco Nov 5 '12 at 12:01
1 Answer 1
This is more a question about Stata than it is about LaTeX. You use Stata to generate the graph and pdfLaTeX does not change it. If you open the graph in a viewer that is capable of displaying EPS files (e.g. Ghostview) you will find that the missing edges are already in the EPS.
In Stata there is not much you can do about it, except for explicitly choosing a different marker symbol with the msymbol option, e.g.
sysuse auto
scatter mpg weight if foreign, msymbol(O)
graph export filename, as(eps) preview(off) replace
See help symbolstyle and help scatter##marker_options in Stata for more information about marker symbols.
From what I saw, the triangle, square and diamond marker symbols all have a missing edge as do bars/boxes on bar charts, box plots, histograms.
If you are not familiar with Ghostview: Ghostview is a command-line only programme, but you can use GSView for instance as a GUI on Windows. Some programs like SumatraPDF can also display EPS files, but they also use Ghostview as a backend AFAIK.
It is sometimes helpful to also post on which platform (Windows, I presume) and with which software versions (Stata 11, 12?, Word, Acrobat/PDFMaker) and tex distributions (MiKTeX 2.9?) you are working. In this case it does not make much of a difference, I guess, except that Stata 12 on Windows is now capable of exporting PDF directly (on Mac you could do that at least with v11 already and on Linux I don't know). When exporting to PDF with Stata 12 on Windows, the diamonds are missing an edge as well, but strangely the squares don't (while they do when exporting to EPS - at least that's what I saw when testing it ad hoc).
It could be worthwhile to post this as a bug to Stata Corp. by the way.
share|improve this answer
I use Stata 12.1 on Windows, yes, maybe it's a bug. Anyway, thank you for your following with interest. – Pig Cry Nov 18 '12 at 9:23


text:
The city of Coos Bay has drafted an ordinance to allow wind turbines in town.
The World of Coos Bay reports that turbines have been under a moratorium, but the city plans to take public comment in early 2013.
The draft ordinance would allow turbines no higher than 70 feet - industrial wind turbines are more than 250 feet.
For large turbines, residents would have to show that noise would be minimal, viewsheds would not be disturbed and that the device would meet tough safety standards. Restrictions would be reduced for smaller devices.
An Oregon State University expert tells the paper that urban settings aren't generally favorable for turbines: Both wind speed and elevation are low.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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In this section of my Guides you will find current information on Amber. Topics will include:
What is Amber, Identifying Fakes and the Biggest Amber Scam No One Talks About, How was Amber Formed, Amber History, Inclusions, Powers, Testing Amber, & much more.
Please rate my review when your finished!!!
What is Amber
Amber, also know as "Liquid Gold Frozen in Time" is fossilized resin from ancient conifer trees from millions of years ago. Kings and Queens prized Amber to be more valuable than gold. Amber was formed from tree resin and not tree sap. When the tree resins dripped down the trees and to the ground trapping debris such as insects, flowers, mosses, leaves, seeds and all other like materials that were in its path and preserved them forever. There are even scorpions and small lizards that have been entrapped. Many extinct Species of flowers and insects have been discovered, that have been preserved in Amber. Amber also has inclusions called sun spots, which are small round or oblong disc shapes. The small sun spots, which are usually clustered together have a shiny & glittery appearance. The Gemstone Amber is one of the birthstones listed for the sun sign of Taurus, please do not confuse this with traditionally known Zodiac Birthstones. The resins became fossilized through a natural polymerization of the original organic compounds during the course of many millions of years. A Specific time period has not been established. Scientifically known to have been formed 30 to 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, even the Jurassic peroid. I have been fascinated with everything Amber since I was in school many years ago. Over the last 30 years, I have Acquired a very extensive collection from around the world.
Identifing Fakes & The Biggest Amber Scam No One Talks About
Ok, this is probably what most of you reading this want to know, right?! I am not going to talk about refractive indexes, density, gravity etc, because that will do you absolutely no good when trying to identify "Real Amber" when buying on Ebay or even after you have it at home. I will give easy ways and precautions to identify the real deal from the fraudsters and I will give some pictures to help. First and foremost, look at where the seller is located. China and India sell the most fake Amber on Ebay and in the big cities around the world I have ever seen and they will advertise it as "Real" "Authentic" "Genuine" "Grade A" "Natural" "Baltic Amber". What they do not say is that the item is an "Authentically Real & Natural Genuine Grade A piece of plastic!!!! For someone who knows what real Amber looks like, a picture is worth a thousand words, but for those who dont, it can and is very deceiving. The most common and easiest way to identify fakes are the ones with bugs and sun spots in them.
First, the Amber with bugs. When bugs/insects got caught up in the real Resin/Amber, their legs, antenna, and wings are caught in distressing character. The fake Amber bugs/insects look as if they were paid big bucks for their frozen pose in time, every part of there body is displayed perfectly. The same principle should be taken into concideration with flowers and scorpions.
Second, Amber with Sun Spots, also referred to as Sun Burst. Not all Genuine Amber have them, please keep that in mind. In real Amber, these inclusions are very small, too small in size and are irregular. In the fake Amber, this is hard to achieve. The fake Amber will have large disc shapes that are very uniform and perfect looking.
Third, This is the biggest worldwide Amber scam and no one talks about it!!!. Pendants, earrings, bracelets and rings that are stated to be red/cherry, blue, green and cognac. This is a more clever technique using real Amber. The real Amber used in this technique is usually lemon/yellow or light honey in colour. What is done to produce the fake red/cherry, blue green and cognac is: the back side of each piece is burned and/or has a jewellers colour paste that reflects through the light coloured Amber to give these colour effects and is used almost in all Amber jewellery that have a silver, gold or some other type setting. There are several ways to identify this. Look at the back of the piece, and you will see it is very different from the front side. You will see if it was burned or has a smooth dark coloured finish and that is what is giving the colour that is not real. The second way is, turn the piece sideways and view the Amber stones from side to side and you will see that the real Amber colour is lemon/yellow or light honey. This technique is widely used to reduce the cost of maufacturing the jewellery an is past on to the consumer as real red/cherry blue green and cognac, at higher prices and making it appear as if you are getting a great deal. Using these genuine colours would be very very expensive. If you already own Amber jewelry or are buying it in person, check using the method I just described and if you are purchasing this kind of jewellery online, on Ebay or any other aution/website, ask if it is "colour enhanced", because that is never stated. These pieces are still gorgeous, but your not getting what is advertised and you are being duped with real Amber with fake colours!!! The majority of this jewellery is manufactured in Poland and other New England states and Thailand. Sorry sellers, someone had to blow lid about this. I will be writing another review, dedicated specifically to this, to help consumers know what they are buying.
How Amber Was Formed
Amber is one of the few precious substances on earth we consider a gem which is not of mineral origin. There are a couple of scientific theories as to how Amber came to be. I will share the most popular and widely discussed theory here. When a tree is injured or is subjected to a radical climate change, it will produce resin. The radical climate change that took place millions of years ago, during different periods in time, produced large amounts of resin. Amber deposits and its availablity, scarcity and protection will be discussed later and that is some amazing information in itself. Many large Amber deposit are sea born, meaning that rivers and stream carried the Amber to seas and oceans. The most famous and sought after is Baltic Amber from the Baltic Sea and is considered the finest Amber in the world. There are Amber deposits worldwide that run in large veins underground similiar to that of minerals. It is widely known that Amber was produced from conifer trees, mainly the Pinus Succinifera because of its large secretions of resin, conifers are needle bearing trees. However it is known by certain colors that deciduous trees are included such as cherry and plum trees. Deciduous are leaf bearing trees. Sub tropical Amber came from a wide variety of conifer and deciduous trees.
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text: To determine whether the parietal lobes contribute to the selection of nonspatial features known to be processed in the ventral stream, the current study examined the effect of chronic unilateral parietal lobe lesions in humans on color and location priming. Patients and normal controls performed a go/no-go color discrimination task in which either the same color and different color pairs of stimuli (prime and probe) were projected sequentially either in the same hemifield or in opposite hemifields. Control subjects and patients both showed independent effects of color and location priming. In the patients, primes in either field produced color priming for target probes in the ipsilesional field but not for probes in the contralesional field. This observation implicates the parietal cortex in processing activated codes of stimulus attributes not only for spatial information but also for visual features processed in the ventral visual pathways.


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Did you know that many of our interactive animations are available to embed or download from the CORE-Materials repository of Open Educational Resources?
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Property Charts: Thermal Conductivity I
Manufacturing advantages and improved recyclability are clearly benefits of using all-aluminium for heat exchangers, but what about material properties and the choice of alloys, and the competition with copper alloys?
Good thermal conductivity is the first consideration, so we will use charts displaying this property. Strength, density and price are all important, so we compare alloys on charts showing these properties.
Heat exchanger design must also take account of less easily quantified material characteristics - in particular the corrosion response.
Aluminium alloys vs. copper alloys
The material property chart below shows thermal conductivity vs. yield stress, with a number of common heat exchanger alloys included.
Al heat exchanger alloys
1000 series alloys (e.g. 1050 and 1197) have the highest thermal conductivity, which is not influenced by strengthening by cold working. Higher alloy content non-heat-treatable alloys (e.g. 3102, 5000 series) show lower conductivity but potentially higher strength. Heat-treatable (age hardening) alloys have the highest strengths, with a greater spread in conductivity (depending on the exact composition and heat treatment).
Al alloys vs. Cu alloys
Pure Cu offers thermal conductivity up to 1.5 times higher than aluminium, with comparable strength. On these properties, some Cu alloys overlap with the Al alloys. Standard Cu alloys (e.g. brass) have similar strengths but their thermal conductivities are typically 1.5-2 times lower than 1000 or 3000 series Al alloys (due to the high Zn content of brass). All other metals (except silver!) have much lower thermal conductivity.
The dominance of 1000 and 3000 series alloys suggests that strength is not
an over-riding concern after thermal conductivity, so what else is important?


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EDIT: In the interest of increasing the complexity, i've added more to the challenge.
In mathematics, a vampire number (or true vampire number) is a composite natural number v, with an even number of digits n, that can be factored into two integers x and y each with n/2 digits and not both with trailing zeroes, where v contains precisely all the digits from x and from y, in any order, counting multiplicity. x and y are called the fangs.
More about Vampire Number
Pseudovampire numbers are similar to vampire numbers, except that the fangs of an n-digit pseudovampire number need not be of length n/2 digits. Pseudovampire numbers can have an odd number of digits, for example 126 = 6×21.
Accept Numbers from command line or stdin
- "1260 = 21 * 60" (smaller fang first if the number is a Vampire.)
- "1261 is not a Vampire Number." (if the number is not a Vampire number)
- "126 = 6 * 21". (if the number is a Pseudovampire number)
EDIT: If the number has multiple fangs, display it so.
x = fang1a * fang1b = fang2a * fang2b


Main Content
In the grip of a climate crisis, demand for video calls is soaring
Video conferencing at work are often cringeworthy recipe for disaster – but their popularity is soaring. What gives?
27 Jan 2020
Getty Images
Have video calls suddenly become cool? Walking around the average office used to reveal people tapping on keyboards and speaking into phones. Today, you're more likely to see colleagues talking to screens filled with smiling faces in rooms booked out specifically for a video call.
Even meeting invites have changed. Where there was once a list of telephone numbers for every imaginable country with a passcode to get in, there is now just a single button to press to join a video call.
For years, video conference systems have lurked in the background, largely ignored as a worse version of a conference call. But after years of being the target of frustration and Cisco has predicted that video traffic, fuelled by conferencing and streaming services, will grow ninefold between 2017 to 2022 to a point where it will account for four fifths of all internet traffic.
The demand for video calls is so high that one in every two companies are making around 2,000 video calls per month, according to data from Forrester.
So what is driving this massive increase in video calls? Perhaps it's because all human beings prefer to see people's faces when they conduct business with them if they can. But ask those observing the rise of faces on screens and it seems three major influencers are at play: people have become comfortable with using video calls socially, they want to show off to everyone that they're working hard, and perhaps most importantly, people want to cut down on their carbon footprint.
Fred Mazzella, founder of car-pooling service BlaBlaCar, is using video conferences to reduce his personal carbon footprint from something approaching 100 flights per year to up to five. Even any speaking engagements are now fulfilled through live streaming rather than flying to the destination.
He believes more company bosses want to take action on the environment, but also that nobody gets much out of flying around the world to see the inside of another office if they don't have to.
Younger workers who have grown up making video calls via social apps on their smartphones are the ones driving the change, Mazzella says.
"Nobody likes getting up at 4am to get to an airport to spend a couple of days in meetings without ever seeing a place. It's not travelling, it's just moving where you work," he explains. "It's good for the environment and everyone's work-life balance."
Not everyone has bought into the hype that the resurgence of video calls has created. Rob Campbell, strategy director at advertising agency R/GA, believes the environmentally friendly argument tells only half the story.
It hides what he calls a "dirty little secret". Executives seeing one another on the computer screen is an opportunity to show each other they care about the environment – even if they don't – and demonstrate how busy they really are.
"I think a lot of people will say they're cutting down on carbon footprint – and they probably are – but it's also down to people wanting to show people that they're in the office. They want to be seen to be busy," he says.
Whatever the reason, the rise of video calls is probably going to make our working lives easier – and more accountable. Unlike an informal face-to-face meeting, a video call can easily be recorded and used to mine minutes and meeting notes.
Chintan Patel, chief technologist at Cisco, claims this additional recording function will make video calls far more useful than a normal phone conversation or a traditional meeting.
"Videos are a record of what was agreed and can be shared with colleagues. But because they've been recorded, that means they can be transcribed and even translated," he says.
As companies obsess over productivity, video communication is only going to gain more traction. Expect to see more links to 'join' and far fewer safe-cracking pass codes and instructions on how to dial in from Uzbekistan.
More great stories from WIRED
🍅 Why do modern tomatoes taste so bad?
🚙 How Tesla became the world's most overvalued car company
📽 Marvel at the incredible real-life Iron Man
📢 How Slack ruined work
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text:
|Geographical Range||Northern South America|
|Habitat||Forests, woodlands, plains, savannahs|
|Scientific Name||Epicrates cenchria cenchria|
The Brazilian rainbow boa is the largest of the rainbow boas, reaching six or more feet in length. Rainbow boas get their name from the multicolored sheen of their skin, caused by light reflecting off tiny ridges on their scales.
Rainbow boas prowl for food at night and sleep during the day. Although they usually rest in a tree or bush, they spend most of their waking time on the ground. They feed on birds, their eggs, small mammals, lizards, and frogs. Like all boa constrictors, rainbow boas kill their prey by suffocating it as they squeeze the victim's body with their muscular coils.


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Showcasing Early Career Scientists Awards are presented annually by the Cooperative Research Centres Association. The winners at the 2008 conference in Sydney were:
Winner – 10-minute presentation
Mr David Nisbet, New stem cell strategies for nerve regeneration
David Nisbet a Monash PhD student from the CRC for Polymers has developed a technique which has the potential to revolutionise nerve regeneration using stem cells and "smart" nanomaterials. This major advance in stem cell research also provides a boost to the search for treatments for crippling conditions, particularly in the areas of Parkinson's Disease and spinal cord injury.
Nerves lost due to degenerative diseases or spinal cord injury are not regenerated and the consequences for the patient are severe. Engineering principles and stem cells will be used to regenerate damaged nerves restoring function to the patient. This will be achieved by engineering next generation polymer materials that assist stem cells in replacing damaged nerves.
A scaffold has been constructed that supports neural stem cells and provides important signals to assist nerves to regrow. The scaffold is generated from plant seeds and provides a three-dimensional platform and anchor point for the cells. It functions in a similar way as the temporary scaffolding in building construction – after the scaffold has served its purpose it degrades away leaving the cells to exist on their own natural matrix. These scaffolds are also capable of guiding nerves within the body to specific locations.
Ms Emily Piper, Early Career Scientist from the CRC for Beef Genetic Technologies, the winner of the 3 minute presentation with Ms Bernie Hobbs, MC and Dr Geoff Garrett, CSIRO Chief Executive and Board Member
Winner – 3-minute presentation
Ms Emily Piper, Australian cattle producers are ticked off!
Emily Piper, a PhD student from the Beef CRC is aiming to find a clean, green way of controlling cattle ticks. Currently, synthetic insecticides are used to control the cattle tick (Rhipicephalus microplus) but they are costly to producers and their use could possibly leave residues in food products and the environment.
Found in tropical and subtropical environments worldwide, the blood-sucking cattle tick costs Australian cattle producers more than $175 million per year in control costs and lost production. Heavy tick infestation can also kill animals if they are left untreated.
Emily's work focuses on identifying the mechanisms responsible for "natural" host resistance against cattle ticks.
Some breeds of cattle such as the Brahman are naturally more resistant to the cattle tick and ticks will die rather than feed on them. However European breeds such as the Holstein-Friesian and Hereford become heavily infested when there are many ticks in the field. Controlling ticks by using resistant breeds is not new; however, it is difficult to identify highly resistant animals, especially in cross breed animals.
Emily has show that Brahman animals have a different profile of immune cells to that of the susceptible Holstein-Friesian animals. The Brahman cattle had more B cells and helper-T cells in their blood, while the Holstein-Friesian cattle had more macrophage type cells.


text:
- 77% of participating schools noted an improvement in brain function and learning in pupils after exercise
- Exercise improved mood of all children in the study
- Brain speed improved by up to 19% after exercise
- Improved mood led to improved brain speed after exercise – most notable for boys
- Not having breakfast resulted in poor memory
Researchers from Loughborough University looked at the impact of physical activity on behaviour and classroom achievement among primary youngsters from 17 schools across the UK.
All of the children, aged between 10 and 11 years old, were taking part in a joint BBC and Premier League exercise and education programme, called Super Movers.
They found that 77% of the schools that took part in the scheme reported an improvement in brain function and learning in their pupils after exercise.
The mood of the children also improved after physical activity.
Professor Eef Hogervorst, of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University, said: "We tested the Super Movers exercise programme and compared it against normal classroom activities in 17 schools.
"The study showed that the Super Movers programme improved brain speed – up to an average of 19% – and mood, from okay to feeling very good, significantly in children.
"This has a big impact on their learning and other activities in the classroom.
"What is good for the heart is good for the brain.
"However, one other thing we found is that not having breakfast resulted in poor memory."
The school children were split into two groups - a group that exercised and a group that did not.
The exercise group completed 50 minutes of physical activity - including circuit-style training and choreography copied from Super Movers active classroom resources - and then performed a series of cognitive tasks to establish if the exercise helped boost their attention span and improve their learning, compared to their classmates who did no physical activity.
Findings from the study indicated that brain speed, the ability to process information and apply it to tasks, increased by up to 19% after exercise.
Physical activity also significantly improved mood in all the children who exercised, with twice as many boys in the exercise group showing a clear link between improved mood and increased brain speed compared to the non-exercise control group.
Prof Eef Hogervorst said: "The nationwide experiment has yielded some really encouraging results and shows that with less than an hour of enjoyable physical exercise in a day, we can see some real improvements to children's learning.
"It has long been established that exercise can boost brain function, but to see such significant results across the board confirms that fun exercise, like the Super Movers resources, can make a real difference."
Super Movers is a BBC and Premier League initiative which helps teachers inspire primary school children to get more active and boost their learning throughout their school day.
The schools that took part were:
- Fairfield Road Primary School and Button Lane Primary School, Manchester
- Eastfield Primary School, Hull
- Green Lane Primary and Nursery School, Kingston
- Tweedmouth Community Middle School, Berwick-upon-Tweed
- St John's CE (VA) J & I School, Huddersfield
- Bantock Primary School, Wolverhampton
- St Peters C of E Primary School, Bristol
- Balfour Primary School, Brighton
- St. James' Church of England Primary Academy, Bournemouth
- Linn Primary School, Larne
- St Patrick's Catholic Primary School, Southampton
- Forest Lodge Academy, Leicester
- Plantation Primary School and Nursery, Liverpool
- Mount Florida Primary School and Nursery Class, Glasgow
- Radnor Primary School and Herbert Thompson Primary School, Cardiff


I'm trying to extract a section of a raster file that overlaps with a polygon shapefile in QGIS 2.18.3. When I run extract, I'm left with a large null value area as part of the extent of the output raster.
I have the polygon (.shp):
vector mask
And the raster (.tif) which had this large null value area since the first time I clipped one of two DEMs that were merged together to create this layer:
I used Raster -> Extraction -> Clipper tool with the.tif input and.shp mask layer shown above, and it produced this output:
Using clipping option "Crop the extent of the target dataset to the extent of the cutline" didn't do much better:
clipped to extent ws dem
Here are the settings I'm using in QGIS' clipping tool:
clipping config
How do I get the DEM clipped exactly to the boundaries of the shapefile of interest in QGIS? Open to recommendations of other open source GIS tools as well but would prefer using this since I'm already up and running and learning my way around it.
The raster is clipped exactly to the shapefile boundaries.
But remember, a raster is a kind of matrix. It's composed by n rows and m columns, so the extent of it is rectangular.
The black area are pixels without values, so you only have valid pixels in the extent of the shapefile.
If you want to hide null pixels, check this answer How to display NoData of a raster in QGIS.
What have you done is clip out some values. The result is the desired but the meaning is different:
What have you done:
enter image description here
In this case, NULL pixels are defined by a value equals to 255. You can clip out those pixels setting a max of 254 and clipping out the remains values:
enter image description here
Sure work, even you can set two boundaries to remove some values of the render (min and max). But QGIS has a dedicated section to remove NULL or No Data values. Gives you more control about how to handle these values:
enter image description here
 - Aha! That linked question is the opposite of what I wanted to do but led me to the answer: on the raster layer in question, go to properties, style, load min/max values, then check "clip extent to canvas". I applied that and got a raster with the extent only displaying as the vector's boundary. – cr0 Jul 31 '17 at 1:29
 - I think your answer is pretty complete if you add that last part. You could take my text and add it, then I'll check yours off. Thanks – cr0 Jul 31 '17 at 1:29
 - _USER_ ok, I updated my answer – aldo_tapia Jul 31 '17 at 14:03
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text:
Touch, Sexuality, and Hands in British Literature, 1740–1901
From Robert Lovelace's uninvited hand-grasps in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa to to Basil Hallward's first encounter with Dorian Gray, literary depictions of touching hands in British literature from the 1740s to the 1890s communicate emotional dimensions of sexual experience that reflect shifting cultural norms associated with gender roles, sexuality, and sexual expression. But what is the relationship between hands, tactility, and sexuality in Victorian literature? And how might scholars best interpret what those touches communicate between characters? This volume addresses these questions by asserting a connection between the prevalence of violent, sexually charged touches in eighteenth-century novels such as those by Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, and Frances Burney and growing public concern over handshake etiquette in the nineteenth century evident in works by Jane Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Flora Annie Steel. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary analysis with close analyses of paintings, musical compositions, and nonfictional texts, such as etiquette books and scientific treatises, to make a case for the significance of tactility to eighteenthand nineteenth-century perceptions of selfhood and sexuality. In doing so, it draws attention to the communicative nature of skin-to-skin contact as represented in literature and traces a trajectory of meaning from the forceful grips that violate female characters in eighteenth-century novels to the consensual embraces common in Victorian and neo-Victorian literature.
Table of contents:
- Introduction: Touching the Victorians: A Theoretical Context
- Chapter 1: Rape: Hand-Grabbing in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa
- Chapter 2: Attraction: Reciprocal Touch in the Conduct Fiction of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen
- Chapter 3: Desire: Transgressing Handshake Etiquette in Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Chapter 4: Sexuality: The Tactile Erotics of Gloved and Ungloved Touch
- Chapter 5: Orientation: Queer Touch, Proximity, and Erotic Potential
- Epilogue: Touching Ourselves: A Neo-Victorian Case Study
About the Author:
Kimberly Cox is Assistant Professor of English at Chadron State College, where she teaches courses in British literature, gender and sexuality, multiethnic literature, literary theory, and composition. She received her PhD in Victorian literature and her graduate certificate in women's and gender studies from Stony Brook University. She served as managing editor of Victorian Literature and Culture from 2016 to 2018. Her work on hands, haptics, and sexuality has appeared in Victorian Network, Victorians: Journal of Culture and Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies,the journal for which she recently coedited the special issue "'Teaching to Transgress' in the Emergency Remote Classroom."


(Shutterstock) (Shutterstock)
In this Contemporary Jewish Issues webinar, Rabbi Ari Enkin discusses the concept of names in Judaism.
Some of the topics covered in this webinar include:
-Does one's name have an affect on one's personality?
-Why are boys only named at their Bris and not before?
-Can parents name a child after someone who died young?
-What is the Jewish view on nicknames?
…and much, much more!


Consider the following line from the Aeneid, Book VI:
nec credere quivi hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem.
Context: Aeneas has traveled into the underworld, and bumps into Dido, who he infers has committed suicide because of his departure.
My best literal translation is: "I couldn't believe this, my leaving, to bring unto you such pain," because I think that me discessu (for me to leave) stands in apposition with hunc. But I'm not sure whether supine verbs can have a subject argument.
So, generally, can an ablative clause formed from a supine verb have nouns corresponding to the base verb's subject or object?
 - 1
 I would discessu interpret here as a participle, and part of an ablativus absolutus with me -> because I left. Your question is still valid though. – piscator Nov 19 '16 at 19:30
Looking at it, I don't think me is ablative; it's more likely an accusative as the subject of an indirect statement with credere. Discessu here is not a supine, but a fourth-declension noun, discessus.
The translated line should actually be:
Nor did I believe that I in my departure would ever have caused you so much pain.
(Apologies for the tenses.)
All the grammars are clear that the ablative supine does not take an object of any kind. The hunc then probably goes with tantum dolorem in a way that can't be literally translated into English without extra words.
I checked two nineteenth-century interlinears to see if they could shed light on it. Hart/Osborn's is very nearly the same as mine, while Dewey's differs only in the translation of hunc.
 - Great to share interpretations here, thanks! me as an accusative in an indirect statement is possible from a grammatical perspective, but the positioning of the words (me discessu) as a group are in favor of an ablativus absolutus. You translate me discessu as my departure. How is this possessive aspect shown in the Latin? If me is an accusative, I would translate discessu as "by going away". But it would seem farfetched to me. – piscator Nov 19 '16 at 20:15
 - _USER_ No, I translate discessu as "in my departure" with me being "I". That part has to be the case, otherwise there is no subject of ferre. me as an ablative also cannot be apposite to hunc, as they're different cases. – cmw Nov 19 '16 at 20:20
 - 1
 _USER_ Ah, sorry, I misunderstood your post then. The problem becomes another, then, as discessu (with a -u) cannot be a regular perfect participle. This is going off your comment that "me discessu is an ablative clause." Were that the case, you would have seen me discesso along with a very different (sc. passive) meaning! – cmw Nov 19 '16 at 20:49
 - 1
 You are right, it can not be an ablative absoute, "by going away" is correct. Thanks! – piscator Nov 19 '16 at 20:59
 - 1
 _USER_: It may help to keep in mind that the supine is (from) a kind of substantive noun: it's not an adjective and it cannot agree with a noun. It is its case that conexes it with other nouns or adjectives, not agreement. (I agree with Weimer.) – Cerberus Nov 20 '16 at 17:48
The second supine (ending with -u) can only be combined with adjectives, or with fas and nefas. Examples:
 - iucundum cognitu atque auditu
 - nefas est dictu
A second supine verb never has an object, but it can have a subject, for example pleraque faciliora sunt dictu quam factu.
Your Answer


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Insert points along date line to pole
[latf,lonf] = flatearthpoly(lat,lon)
[latf,lonf] = flatearthpoly(lat,lon,longitudeOrigin)
[latf,lonf] = flatearthpoly(lat,lon) trims NaN-separated polygons specified by the latitude and longitude vectors lat and lon to the limits [-180 180] in longitude and [-90 90] in latitude, inserting straight segments along the +/- 180-degree meridians and at the poles. Inputs and outputs are in degrees.
[latf,lonf] = flatearthpoly(lat,lon,longitudeOrigin) centers the longitude limits on the longitude specified by the scalar longitude longitudeOrigin.
Vector data for geographic objects that encompass a pole will inevitably encounter or cross the date line. While the toolbox properly displays such polygons, they can cause problems for functions like the polygon intersection and Boolean operations that work with Cartesian coordinates. When these polygons are treated as Cartesian coordinates, the date line crossing results in a spurious line segment, and the polygon displayed as a patch does not have the interior filled correctly.
antarctica = shaperead('landareas', 'UseGeoCoords', true,...
 'Selector', {@(name) strcmp(name,'Antarctica'), 'Name'});
figure; plot(antarctica.Lon, antarctica.Lat); ylim([-100 -60])
The polygons can be reformatted more appropriately for Cartesian coordinates using the flatearthpoly function. The result resembles a map display on a cylindrical projection. The polygon meets the date line, drops down to the pole, sweeps across the longitudes at the pole, and follows the date line up to the other side of the date line crossing.
[latf, lonf] = flatearthpoly(antarctica.Lat', antarctica.Lon');
figure; mapshow(lonf, latf, 'DisplayType', 'polygon')
ylim([-100 -60])
xlim([-200 200])
axis square
More About
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The polygon topology for the input vectors must be valid. This means that vertices for outer rings (main polygon or "island" polygons) must be in clockwise order, and any inner rings ("lakes") must run in counterclockwise order for the function to work properly. You can use the ispolycw function to check whether or not your lat, lon vectors meet this criterion, and the poly2cw and poly2ccw functions to correct any that run in the wrong direction.
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text:
By Frances Clark, Louise Goss, and Sam Holland
Piano - Frances Clark Music Tree
Time to Begin Activities is colorful, cheerful and a delight for students to complete either at the lesson or at home. Activities reinforce reading, rhythm and theory introduced in Time to Begin. Each unit includes at least one game-like activity. As students near the grand staff, note names direction and intervals become an integrated activity.


text:
Train dispatching is a task that requires the absolute coordination of various elements for the safe and efficient movement of railroad traffic. Train dispatchers manage the entire process of the use of railroad tracks. On the surface, train dispatching seems a simple task that includes routing scheduled trains that arrive on time to predefined tracks, but things are not as simple as they seem.
There are hundreds of unprecedented scenarios that require train dispatchers in the USA to make dynamic decisions. In this post, we will look at the common challenges professional train dispatchers face in train dispatching.
Delays in train arrival
The art of anticipation is key to efficient railroad traffic management. Train dispatchers take various factors into account, such as the characteristics of the train, the conditions of the track, the weather and the time of day, which can influence the movement of a train on the track. But still, delays are inevitable. Delays in the arrival of one train has the potential to disrupt the entire predefined schedule and routing. This requires dynamic decision-making to ensure that delays do not affect the schedule of other trains. Even if they do, the impact should be minimized.
This is the most common challenge faced by train dispatchers. Scheduled maintenance is easy to manage but track outages, sudden track repairs and maintenance, and unnoticed changes in the physical characteristics of tracks can disturb an existing operating plan. Train dispatchers need to re-route trains and ensure that priority trains containing hazardous materials or restricted shipments pass on time. In the case of scheduled maintenance, the focus of the train dispatcher is to facilitate maintenance when tracks are least busy.
High demand on track usage
Considering railroad is the cheapest way to haul freight overland, you can assume that track usage is always in high demand. According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the U.S. freight train system leads the world in volume of traffic, revenue, the amount of freight hauled, affordability, miles of track and other measures. It is the highly-skilled train dispatchers of professional freight dispatch services that monitor train movement beyond their territory, maintain familiarity with scheduled trains, destinations, times of arrivals and departures, balance multiple demands placed on-track usage, anticipate delays and make rapid decisions to ensure high demand is served in the best possible manner.
Every now and then, unexpected events occur, sometimes due to weather conditions, sometimes due to mechanical failures, sometimes due to natural obstructions and sometimes due to alleged violations of operating rules. Train dispatchers don't just coordinate the traffic movement but are also responsible for incident reporting. Managing such unprecedented scenarios requires dynamic decision-making, good communication and cooperation.
These are the common challenges faced by train dispatchers.
If you are looking for a good train dispatcher to manage train dispatching, you can hire our RailRCS professional GCOR and NORAC-qualified train dispatchers.
Our dispatchers are fully-trained on physical characteristics, GCOR/NORAC operating rules, hazardous materials, security awareness, Federal Hours of Service laws and various other important operational materials.


text:
Underground drip irrigation serves two purposes
Dispose of wastewater and irrigate trees.
Water is plentiful in the fruit-growing area along Lake Michigan's eastern shore, so it's not scarcity that's an issue. The problem is with some water that's been made slightly dirty but is perfectly useful if handled right.
That's led some fruit growers and fruit processors to make double use of wastewater through subsurface trickle irrigation systems installed in fruit orchards. The system uses water that would otherwise be wasted, to irrigate.
As Beau Shacklette tells it, a fruit-processing company approached the company he works for, Trickl-Eez Company in St. Joseph, Michigan, wanting an onsite system for disposal of wastewater from their processing plant. Trickl-Eez, working with an environmental engineering company, developed the Agricultural Wastewater Dispersal System that Trickl-Eez now sells and installs.
Shacklette, the regional sales manager for Trickl-Eez in Traverse City, Michigan, has installed systems at four fruit-processing companies and for a few growers since getting state Department of Natural Resources approval for the system four years ago.
The fruit-processing companies need to get rid of wastewater they have used to cool, wash, or handle fruit or vegetables, Shacklette said. The water contains low levels of soluble solids and nutrients. The companies are located away from municipal sewage disposal systems and needed either to install their own waste treatment plants or come up with methods acceptable to the state.
On-land disposal of such water through irrigation is legal, but in northwest Michigan there is a long winter season when the land is frozen and won't accept surface-applied water. Putting the water into the ground below the frost layer solves that problem.
The orchardists, mostly growers of tart cherries, use cold well water to cool fruit during harvest in July. While this water is not considered a waste requiring treatment, there is a lot of it leaving cooling pads and trying to find its way somewhere. "Growers know it's just a matter of time until they have to contain and dispose of the water that runs off their cooling pads," Shacklette said.
Trickle irrigation is growing as a practice, especially in young cherry orchards, so the water has a use.
The system Trickl-Eez developed is a grid of underground drip irrigation tubing that runs down the rows and alleys of fruit orchards. Some of the processing companies are growers themselves, so they have their own orchards, or there are orchards close by they can access. In some cases, they've installed the systems in open fields devoted to production of hay.
"One important requirement was that the disposal system be able to operate year round," Shacklette said. "A subsurface drip irrigation system was chosen as the best delivery system to move lagoon discharge water to adjacent fruit orchards where the trees can benefit from the nutrients in the water as well as receiving beneficial irrigation water."
Allen Steimel, the plant general manager for Leelanau Fruit Company near Suttons Bay, about 20 miles north of Traverse City, said his company installed a four-acre system a year ago as an expansion for their on-land sprinkler irrigation disposal system.
"We process brined cherries for maraschinos," he said, "so we work year around using stored cherries. We needed a way to dispose of water during the winter time."
The water is only marginally dirty since it's used to move cherries that contain some residual brine solution. The actual spent brine is disposed of by injection into deep wells.
In the summer, water used in the pitting operation contains more nutrients, and that is spray irrigated since frozen ground is not an issue.
The company needs to dispose of about 22 million gallons of water a year, and most of that is sprinkler irrigated onto land that grows hay for horses, Steimel said.
Other systems Shacklette has installed vary in size from 5 to 16 acres. When installed in existing orchards, he said, usually three lines are run down each alley. Lines run on both sides of a tree row, about 30 inches from the trees, and one down the center of the alley.
In the fruit area in northwest Michigan, soil is often sandy to gravelly, and trees, especially young trees, benefit greatly from irrigation, and many growers use trickle irrigation in young orchards.
To make the drip irrigation disposal system work, water has to be relatively free from solids or the emitters will clog. In the processing plant systems he designs, Shacklette likes to have two lagoons, linked in series, that serve as settling ponds that remove much of the organic matter. Then the water is pumped through filters before getting into the drip lines. Water from cooling pads does not contain enough solids to require filtration.
Shacklette, who originally came to Michigan from Colorado and is experienced in irrigation systems, thinks this system will work well for food processing plants in any environment anywhere.
"The Agricultural Wastewater Dispersal System can be expanded to many other sites," he said. "It provides a very practical, affordable, and common-sense solution to the previously very difficult problem of how to manage agricultural wastewater and put it to a beneficial use rather than create an environmental problem."
There is also a food safety aspect to drip irrigation. Since no effluent water is sprayed onto foliage or fruit, there are no contamination issues, Shacklette said.
Unlike sprinkler application, where water slams the ground, compacting it and causing surface runoff, subsurface irrigation lets the soil act as a huge absorption system and biofilter, he said. Growing plants and trees can benefit from the water and the nutrients it contains.
The loading rate needs to be designed to fit the soil type, and the system is computer controlled to dispense the correct amount of water, Shacklette said. Trees must be able to absorb the nutrients in the water or they can leach down below the root zone.
The dispersal system includes several components.
First are the pretreatment lagoons, where oxygen is added to provide aerobic, odor-free conditions for breakdown of solids in the wastewater.
Next are the computer controls and pumps that move the water in a controlled dosing cycle.
Filters are very important, Shacklette said, to keep the drip tubes from plugging.
The drip system in the field or orchards is divided into zones, to which water entry is controlled by valves.
The final part is the underground drip lines that are buried from one to two feet deep. The lines contain pressure-compensating emitters.
"One of the biggest advantages to the subsurface drip system is the ability to provide the dose and rest cycles that facilitate wastewater infiltration into the soil," Shacklette said. "Timed doses allow for the even distribution of the liquid waste throughout the day or night."


text:
Don't Sweat It?
"Don't sweat it!" has long been a method of telling someone not to worry or be upset. Often called perspiration, sweat is a clear, salty liquid produced by glands in your skin. As sweat evaporates, it enables your body to cool itself and prevent it from overheating. But wait, there is much more about sweat.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed flexible sensors which can be attached to the skin as shown above and track your level of vitamin C. The first question is why is it important to track vitamin C? The second question is what does sweat have to do with this and how does the new technology work? I will do my best to explain answers to both questions.
Vitamin C, also known as L-ascorbic acid, is a water-soluble vitamin naturally present in some foods, and available as a dietary supplement. Unlike most animals, humans are unable to synthesize vitamin C on their own, so we have to get it through our diet or supplements. Vitamin C is helpful for patients recovering from an infection. As an antioxidant, the vitamin may have potential in treating heart disease and cancer.
A timely aspect of vitamin C is the essential role it plays in helping us maintain a healthy immune system. Researchers believe vitamin C may have potential as a therapeutic for Covid-19. High doses of vitamin C have been linked to reduced death rates in sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome, both of which can be present in patients with COVID-19.
For patients who need close monitoring of vitamin C, there are numerous methods. The most reliable is a blood test following 10-12 hours of fasting. In cases where regular monitoring is needed, a better method is needed and mHealth (mobile health) will be coming to the rescue. As in many other aspects of healthcare, the trend is toward remote monitoring with various biosensors. Initially it was counting steps and miles. Now it includes blood pressure, 1-lead ECG, heart rate, and numerous other health-related measurements. mHealth will enhance Telehealth and connected care consultations.
Based on work by the researchers at the University of California San Diego, monitoring of vitamin C levels may join the mHealth portfolio. The new devices, which could be useful in helping wearers to maintain optimal levels of vitamin C, consist of an adhesive patch a user can wear on their skin. When the body stimulates sweating in the underlying skin, the sensors in the patch capture enough sweat to analyze for vitamin C levels. The flexible patch contains an enzyme, ascorbate oxidase, which converts vitamin C to dehydroascorbic acid, (DHA), an oxidized form of ascorbic acid, the vitamin C. The interaction with oxygen in the process generates an electrical current which flexible electrodes within the patch can sense. The result is data which is proportional to the level of vitamin C present in the sweat.
The biosensor is still in the early stage, but the researchers have tested the sensors in human volunteers. They found they could track changes in the level of vitamin C over a span of a couple of hours. The sensors successfully detected changes in vitamin C levels when the volunteers drank orange juice or took a vitamin C supplement.
The potential of this new vitamin C detection technology could be significant over time. It may even be useful in the treatment of Covid-19. Day to day management of dietary and nutritional guidance may emerge as another mHealth app. Don't sweat it? Yes, sweat it because the rapid development of biosensors many unlock many other secrets beyond vitamin C.
This article is related to health. These articles are my way of sharing what I have learned through basic research. My doctorate is in health administration. I am not a clinical doctor. Please don't rely on any of my articles for any form of diagnosis or treatment. If you have any health issues, please contact your doctor.


text:
How to Create a Custom Template with Microsoft Word
This guide will explain the basics of creating your own custom label template using Microsoft Word. Included in this guide:
- Adjusting the size of your template
- Adding/positioning text boxes and images
- Adding barcodes
- Printing the final design
This guide is mainly written for Microsoft Word 2007 or newer, but most of the instructions apply to older versions of Word as well. If you'd like to use pre-made label templates, a variety of templates are available on your LabelTac® CD. If you don't have your CD, visit _URL_
Customizing Your Paper Size:
The first step to creating a custom label is adjusting the template size to match the vinyl you will print on. To do this:
- Select Page Layout from the top bar.
- Select Custom Margins from the bottom of the drop-down menu.
- The Page Setup menu will now appear. Change all of the fields under margins to 0.
- Set the Orientation to Landscape.
- Select the Paper tab from the top of the Page Setup menu.
- Change the Height field to the size of the vinyl supply you will be printing on and the Width field to the length you would like your label to be. Then select OK. (If you receive a Margins Warning message, select Ignore.)
Inserting Text Boxes:
You can add text to your label using a text box. Text boxes allow you to adjust your text's position much more precisely.
- From the top menu bar, select Insert.
- Select Text Box from the menu.
- Select Draw Text Box from the bottom of the drop-down menu (or press D on your keyboard).
- To create a text box, click and drag your cursor to the desired size you would like within the template.
- To remove the thick black outline and white back filler, select Format from the top menu.
- Select Shape Outline or Shape Fill.
- From the drop-down menu, select No Outline/No Fill.
- To position the text box, move your cursor along the dotted line until you see a symbol. Then click and drag the box to the desired position.
- To resize the text box, click on one of the the small clear boxes along the dotted line and drag your cursor to the desired size.
Adding/Editing Text for Your Label Template:
- To choose a specific font, click within the text box. Then hit ctrl+shift+f and choose your preferred font/style/size (or select the Home tab from the top menu and change the values in the font section).
- To change the direction your text faces, select Format from the top menu bar. Then select Text Direction from the top right and choose the desired direction.
Adding Images to Your Label Template:
- Select Insert from the top menu bar. Place your cursor over Photo and then select Picture from File from the drop-down menu.
- Navigate to and highlight the desired image file and then select Open to add the image to your template.
3. Click and drag the image to reposition it. To change its size, click a corner of the image and drag to make the image larger/smaller.
- If you don't already have barcode fonts installed on your computer, download our font pack at: _URL_
- To apply barcode fonts to labels, enter the text string you would like to make a barcode.
- Highlight the text and select Font. Scroll through the list of fonts until you find the desired barcode. Select the font and click OK.
- To test the barcode, create a sample barcode label and print it with your LabelTac® printer. Use your barcode or RF scanner to scan the sample label to verify it reads correctly. Depending on your system, you may need to try different barcode fonts until you find one that functions with your scanner. Some RF scanners may require that you add an asterisk (*) before and after your barcode to make it scannable.
Printing Your Label:
- From the top menu bar, select File and then Print (or you can use the hotkey ctrl+p).
- Select your Creative LabelTac® printer from the drop-down menu.
- Enter the number of copies you would like to print and click the Print button to print your label(s).
For additional help creating and printing labels with Microsoft Word, please contact our Support Department at _PHONE_ or _EMAIL_.


text:
| American Economic Review
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic Census. We then relate coagglomeration levels to the degree to which industry pairs share goods, labor, or ideas. To reduce reverse causality, where collocation drives input-output linkages or hiring patterns, we use data from UK industries and from US areas where the two industries are not collocated. All three of Marshall's theories of agglomeration are supported, with input-output linkages particularly important.
Data and Data Sets;
Goods and Commodities;


text:
An entrance and a barrier; welcoming but protective. These are some of the dualities that exist in considering a very specific type of project—land port of entries (LPOE), commonly known as border-crossing stations. The security issues in this post-9/11 world pose new challenges. How does the United States construct an infrastructure of arrival points, where "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" are still invited to enter, but that also serve as a line of protection? LPOE facilities are organized into a complex set of spatial geometries that are coordinated with a highly choreographed set of procedures. These procedures are in place, first and foremost, to protect customs and border agents who often have to make split-second decisions in determining if there is a potential threat.
Light plays a particularly key role here, not just in the experience of these places, but in facilitating an agent's ability to do his or her job. The demands placed on the lighting are somewhat contradictory: Deliver a great amount of light and minimize brightness and glare—all while meeting significant security criteria, energy-code requirements, and sustainable building practices as mandated by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). But it is not an impossible task. The GSA's Design Excellence Program, which oversees the construction of LPOEs, recognizes the need for design to be integral to a project's development and enables even high-security environments to receive thoughtful architecture and lighting. In the process, particularly with some of the most recent LPOEs, lighting criteria have been revisited and new guidelines have been created that meet the priority of security, but do so in a way that creates a better overall environment, one that is securely illuminated.
The land port of entry at Massena, N.Y., is situated along the U.S.-Canada border amid complex site conditions that include the St. Lawrence River, Cornwall Island (home to the Akwesasne Reservation), and a series of wetlands. Site, movement, and light, along with security requirements, contributed to Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects' (SMH) winning design scheme, the result of an invitation-only GSA design competition in 2000. After 9/11, the project was put on hold and did not start up again until 2005. In the interim, with new security concerns on the table, the project requirements were reevaluated.
The main building, which houses offices and anchors the passenger-inspection areas, is the first structure visible on the approach from Canada. Because this façade is north-facing and always in shadow, SMH wanted to integrate architectural details and light so that the building would emerge as a welcoming beacon on the horizon. Originally, supergraphic letters in a reflective-yellow highway paint spelled out the words "United States." The signage, seen in the photo at the right, has since been removed, due in part to some security concerns, and SMH is now working on another solution. But SMH's original yellow wayfinding system is carried on throughout the site in other signage elements.
To meet energy-code requirements yet still provide the 100-plus footcandle light level required for security purposes, SMH relied on architectural forms and natural light for an indirect lighting solution at the passenger vehicle-inspection areas' canopies.
Extremely thin and devoid of any equipment so as not to interrupt the white planar surfaces, the underside of the canopy serves as a light reflector. During non-daylight hours, 250W metal halide uplights, recessed on top of the inspection booths, are aimed at the canopy underside and supplement the even wash of light across the inspection bays, preventing harsh shadowing. In the secondary inspection area, pole-mounted metal halide uplights allow the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to perform their inspection duties. "It's a significant design challenge," says architect Sean Gallagher. "Architecture can participate with the operations that are happening at the borders in a way that will make the port run more smoothly and the experience a little bit more sane."Details
Project: U.S. land port of entry, Massena, N.Y.
Completion Date: Fall 2009 (completed ahead of schedule)
Client: U.S. General Services Administration
Architect: Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, New York
Structural, MEP, Civil, and Security Engineers: Arup, New York
Landscape Architect: Quennell Rothschild & Partners, New York
Environmental Consultants: Barton & Loguidice, Syracuse, N.Y.
Curtainwall Design Consultants: R.A. Heintges Associates, New York
Lighting Designer: Claude R. Engle, Washington, D.C.
Environmental Graphic Design Consultants: Pentagram, New York
Project Cost: $54 million (bid $4 million under budget)
Project Size: 57 acres (campus); 24,500 square feet (inspection plazas—booths and canopies); 37,200 square feet (M-Bldg, administration facility); 6,700 square feet (S-Bldg, secondary inspection facility); 7,900 square feet (G-Bldg, broker offices); 7,700 square feet (N-Bldg, non-intrusive inspection facility)
Photography: Michael Moran
Situated along a thin slice of land overlooking Semiahmoo Bay and the international Peace Arch Park, the Peace Arch U.S. Land Port of Entry (LPOE) is one of the busiest northern border crossing stations serving private vehicle traffic between Washington state and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The design is all about blending the new facility into the landscape. "The architectural challenge was to figure out how to incorporate this much-larger new facility in this very constrained spot," explains Sergei Bischak, project architect at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.
Because of the busy nature of this location and its 24/7 operation, the station could not be shut down for construction, so a phased approach was applied to demolishing the existing 1970s structure and erecting a new one in its place. Although there are now 10 lanes of traffic—two more than the previous facility had, according to Bischak—the project wasn't about "places for more cars." It was about "facilities to support the processing."
One of the most substantial developments resulting from this project was the creation of a new set of exterior lighting guidelines. As the team, which included Seattle lighting design firm Candela, began to work, it was clear that the existing GSA lighting guidelines were outdated and called for calculation methods that were not useful. Lighting designer Mary Claire Frazier, then a principal at Candela (she has since retired), spearheaded a request to the GSA to revisit the document. She proposed a tour of several LPOEs along the northern and southern U.S. borders so that Candela could analyze lighting conditions, interview U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, and then make recommendations for new lighting guidelines.
After extensive review, the GSA accepted the new findings, which better address vertical illuminance, uniformity, transition and adaptation zones, and glare control. Also of note in the new standard is the stipulation to include an independent lighting designer on all design teams. "The guidelines are written from a lighting designer's perspective," says Randy Fisher, who assumed project responsibilities from Frazier. "Security issues are met, but with an appropriate gradiance of light."Details
Project: Peace Arch U.S. Land Port of Entry, Blaine, Wash.
Completion Date: January 2011
Owner: U.S. General Services Administration
Architect: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Seattle office
Structural and Civil Engineers: Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Seattle
Mechanical Engineers: CDi Engineers, Seattle
Electrical Engineers: Sparling, Seattle
Landscape Architect: Swift Company, Seattle
Lighting Designer: Candela, Seattle
Project Size: 15 acres (campus); 35,750 square feet (building); 55,000 square feet (site work)
Energy Code Compliance: ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Based on Candela's U.S. LPOE Design Guide Exterior Lighting Study, 289 fewer luminaires were used than the existing 2006 guidelines would have prescribed. The project also uses 16,773 fewer watts, a 22 percent reduction in total lighting load.
Rendering: Courtesy Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
Lighting was a major element from the very start for the redesign of the San Ysidro U.S. Land Port of Entry (LPOE), just outside San Diego. When the Miller Hull Partnership (MHP) was called in for its interview with the GSA after making the short list of architecture firms, it was suggested to them that one of the five team members to include be the lighting designer. "We knew immediately how important lighting design was to the project," says Craig Curtis, design partner at MHP. "Fortunately, we had already decided to team with Candela who we've worked with for years. And coincidentally they had just done a study of LPOEs' lighting design."
As one of the busiest LPOEs in the U.S., there are a tremendous number of demands placed on this facility, and even more since it is a border station along the nation's southern border. An extraordinary number of people—102,000—go through this location every day, 25,000 merely on foot. "The design first of all had to respond to the demand for increasing throughput," Curtis explains. "In addition to that, every architectural move we were making, we were trying to see what we could do in terms of sustainability as part of that same solution."
Striving to be a net-zero energy building


text:
$25.99 - $21.66
(as of Apr 30,2021 02:42:33 UTC – Details)
Rated power: 5w
Power voltage: ac 90 to 220v
Inaudible ultrasonic frequency: 25 to 65khz
Effective coverage area: 800 to 1200 square meters
Package included: 6 packs
Epa establishment number: 95565-CHN-1
Quiet and effective
The ultrasonic pest repeller working with low frequency ultrasound waves, no noise in the room can influence you and your pets. most customers can see the results within 3 to 4 weeks. then we can say goodbye to pests and mice.
The ultrasonic pest repellent is effective up to an area of 1600 sq. it's widely used in homes, warehouses, offices, gardens, hotels, etc. since ultrasound can not penetrate through walls and solid objects, it is recommended to put one in each room. as for large storage areas, we suggest installing 2 or more devices.
A continuous process to repel pest
Week 1: quick impact and run away from shelter
Week 2: non-immune and nervous system damaged
Week 3 to 4: intolerable and flee from home forever
Why choose us
1. No any noise for driving pest.
2. Repelling many kinds of pests continuously and powerfully.
3. Easy to use: just plug in.
4. Pack of 6: one package solve all rooms
1. Keep distance from carpet, curtain and any sound absorption material that may reduce the effect.
2. The number of rodents and insects may increase in the first few days. the pest repellent will drive them
away completely for good about four weeks later.
3. It's normal that the mouse and vermin will increase at the beginning of the using days because they are
getting away from the living place after the attack of the ultrasonic. reduction in pest activity should occur
within 2 to 3 Weeks.
4. Ultrasonic sound can't penetrate furniture, cabinets or walls, keep ample space around the area where it's
plugged in. to increase the effect, you should use several devices at the warehouse or several rooms.
Quiet and less power consumption
It can cover an area of 800 to 1200 square meters
Put one in one room as ultrasonic wave can not penetrate through walls and solid objects
Repelling many kinds of pests continuously and powerfully


text:
The graph below shows the consumption of fish and some different kinds of meat in a European country between 1979 and 2004. Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparison where relevant.
The presented information obtained from the line graph is about the consumption of fish and some various sorts of meat in a European country for 25 years from 1979 to 2004. In general, there are some upward and downward trends unveiled throughout the figure noticed.
On the basis of the provided figure, it can be illustrated that the consumption of fish was evident almost 65 grams per person per week at the very first year of the picture. Then there was a slight decrease of that falling from about 65 grams in 1979 to nearly 50 grams in 1982 which consequently went down nominally 50 grams to nearby 45 grams.
On the other hand, chicken increasing slowly from almost 140 grams to about 170 grams and beef decreasing slightly from nearly 220 grams to approximately 175 grams in 1985 were legible around 140 grams and 220 grams in 1979. Then chicken rose with some fluctuations rising from 170 grams in 1981 to 250 grams in 2004 whereas beef went down with some oscillation falling from 175 grams to 110 grams between 1981 and 2004.
Interestingly, the similar trend was found regarding lamb as like as beef. In comparison with beef, which constituted approximately twice as much as Lamb in 1983.
To recapitulate, it can be said that while the European's people kept almost unchanged the use of fish, they increased too much in terms of chicken over time.


Take the 2-minute tour ×
In the article Levenshtein distance Wikipedia says about the proof of invariant that:
This proof fails to validate that the number placed in d[i,j] is in fact minimal; this is more difficult to show, and involves an argument by contradiction in which we assume d[i,j] is smaller than the minimum of the three, and use this to show one of the three is not minimal.
So how can I show that d[i,j] is actually minimal? (informal proof is ok)
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
There is an optimal edit sequence in which the edit operations occur in order from left to right. There are only three options for the last edit operation: insert the last character of the target string, delete the last character of the source string, or replace the last character. Everything before the last edit operation must be optimal.
See section 5.5 of these notes.
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Your Answer


Allowing parallel iOS UI tests runs in CI
If you have your CI machine set up to run multiple jobs in parallel you might have encountered a problem. You cannot run multiple iOS UI tests in the same simulator at the same time. They will fail.
The problem
Imagine this scenario. You have one CI machine that allows two or more jobs to run in parallel. You have a UI tests job set up. Two of your developers push changes to their branches at (almost) the same time. The CI machine then tries to run two UI tests at the same time in the same simulator and at least one of them fails and has to be retried.
You can of course solve this problem by not allowing parallel jobs on the CI machine, but that slows down the CI process. There is a better way.
The solution
You can create a brand new iOS simulator instance for every job, run the UI tests in this new simulator instance and then delete it when you are done. This way no matter how many iOS UI tests jobs you run in parallel they will all use a separate iOS simulator instance and not affect each other.
Creating a new iOS simulator instance
The first step is to choose a unique simulator name for each job. You can generate some random guid for example. In Gitlab CI I just use the ID of the Gitlab CI job that is stored in the ${CI_PIPELINE_ID} environment variable
First you need to create the new iOS simulator instance at the start of the CI job
xcrun simctl create ${CI_PIPELINE_ID} 'xcrun simctl list runtimes | grep iOS | awk '{print $NF}''
This command creates a new iOS simulator instance with the given name using the iPhone 11 device and the latest simulator runtime. Using the latest simulator runtime makes sure that when you update Xcode on the CI machine you do not have to do any changes to you CI scripts.
Using the new iOS simulator instance
Now that you have a new iOS simulator instance created you can use it to run your iOS UI tests. You can simply pass the name to the xcodebuild command if you use it directly or use it instead of the device type when using Fastlane
[Read More]
CI Xcode iOS
Reading environment variables from iOS and macOS unit tests
In some environments like the CI/CD you might need to read environments variables from your iOS or macOS unit tests.
A typical example might be reading secrets or configuration that is CI/CD specific and you do not want to store it in source control.
In Swift you can read environment variables using the ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment dictionary, for example
let host = ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["apiHost"]?? "default fallback host"
The problem is this code does not just work, there is one other step you need to do first.
You need to edit your Test scheme and add every environment variable you want to read to the Environment Variables section.
You can rename the variables but for simplicity and readability you should probably keep the same names.
Swift Xcode
Graying out images in Cocoa
I have been working on a macOS application recently where I encountered an interesting task to grey out flags for countries that are disabled.
I first tried overlaying a semi-transparent gray view (fun fact, you cannot directly set a background for a view in Cocoa, you need to use the layer) over the flag image but it did not look very good.
Luckily there is a way to convert a NSImage to grayscale directly in Cocoa.
You first need to create a bitmap representation your NSImage
let bitmap = NSBitmapImageRep(cgImage: cgImage)
convert it to grayscale
let grayscale = bitmap.converting(to:.genericGray, renderingIntent:.default)
and then construct an NSImage from the result.
let grayImage = NSImage(size: grayscale.size)
Putting it all together as an NSImage extension might look like this
[Read More]
Swift Xcode Cocoa
Web scraping with Swift
In a few projects in the past I needed to do web scraping to get some data from websites that did not offer access via an API. I was using C# at the time and scraping web with Html Agility Pack was quite easy.
I now spend most of my time in macOS because of work projects so when I needed to do some web scraping again I did not want to install and set up Mono to do it again in C#. I decided to go with Swift, as I am now quite comfortable with the language after 4 years of using it daily.
The first thing I need to do was to found some library to parse HTML, some Swift equivalent to Html Agility Pack. I found SwiftSoup.
SwiftSoup allows you to access DOM in HTML documents and also HTML fragments. The usage is quite simple, you just need to know a thing or two about HTML.
Let's say you want to parse the Hacker News main page and scrap posts containing some specific keywords.
This is quite an artificial example but the idea is simple. You use the developer tools in your browser of choice to see the HTML of the parts of a website that you are interested in and try to get to them descending and filtering the DOM using SwiftSoup.
You first need to read the website and parse it
let content = try String(contentsOf: URL(string: "")!)
let doc: Document = try SwiftSoup.parse(content)
Looking at the HTML you can see it uses a table layout and all the posts are in a rows of a table with a class called itemlist.
[Read More]
Swift Xcode
Generating boilerplate Swift code with GYB
How many times how you copied and pasted some code in your current codebase because there was no good way to abstract it? Maybe because it was some repeating code required by a framework or mapping of some data transfer structures.
Writing such boilerplate code is an error-prone waste of time, especially when there is a much better way: generating that code.
There are a few tools to help you do that, one of the most flexible of them being GYB.
What is GYB?
GYB is a lightweight templating system that allows you to use Python to generate text files. Those text files can be Swift source code files or anything else you need.
GYB is used in the Swift standard library codebase so it works well for generating Swift source code and it is a proven technology that works.
You can download GYB to your project from the Swift repository on Github
chmod +x gyb
I put it directly to the project directory and include it in the source control for simpler build and CI/CD setup.
Creating GYB templates
GYB templates for generating Swift source file look like Swift source files with some Python snippets for code generation.
This is probably best shown on an actual example. Let's say you have a list of permissions that the app needs to support. Those permissions are then a part of a protocol and of a few structs.
[Read More]
iOS Xcode


text:
We present a microlens array consisting of multiple liquid-based tunable-focus microlenses
omnidirectionally fabricated on a hemisphere, resulting in large field of view. Polymer bridge
structure is formed between microlenses to reduce the stress and deformation in each lens structure.
Each microlens in the array is formed via a water-oil interface at its lens aperture. Photopatterned
thermo-responsive hydrogel actuators are used to regulate the curvature of the water-oil interface,
thus tuning the focal length, ranging from millimeters to infinity.


Sydney Padua. Pantheon, $28.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-307-90827-8
This print edition of Padua's webcomic is a must-have for anyone who enjoys getting lost in a story as brilliant in execution as conception. Padua's debut graphic novel transforms the collaboration between Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron) and Charles Babbage (a noted polymath) into an inspired, "What If?" story. Lovelace was a talented mathematician and helped translate a paper on Babbage's ideas for an Analytical Engine, the world's first computer. The notes she added to the translation were so cleverly detailed that experts today recognize them as the first example of computer programming. Although Lovelace died a few years later and Babbage was left to tinker with his Analytical Engine until his death, Padua imagines an alternate reality where they build the engine and use it to "have thrilling adventures and fight crime!" The immensity of Padua's research and the wit and allusions of her prose are striking, saying as much about what drove her to explore the possibilities of her protagonists' relationship as about the protagonists themselves. Permeated by delightful illustrations, obsessive footand endnotes, and a spirit of genuine inventiveness, it's an early candidate for the year's best. (Apr.)
Reviewed on: 01/26/2015
Release date: 04/21/2015
Genre: Comics
Discover what to read next


Flash of unstyled content
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
FOUC when loading Wikipedia's main page.
A flash of unstyled content (FOUC) is an instance where a web page appears briefly with the browser's default styles prior to loading an external CSS stylesheet, due to the web browser engine rendering the page before all information is retrieved. The page corrects itself as soon as the style rules are loaded and applied; however, the shift is quite visible and distracting.
Technical information[edit]
The issue was documented in an article named Flash of Unstyled Content.[1] At first, FOUC appeared to be a browser problem unique to Internet Explorer. FOUC behavior has also been documented "as a Safari epidemic..."[2]
FOUC is indifferent to changes in CSS or HTML versions. The problem appears to originate from a set of priorities programmed into the browser. As the browser collects HTML and all the ancillary files referenced in the markup, the browser builds the DOM (Document Object Model) on-the-fly. The browser may choose to first display what it can parse the quickest, namely the text.
FOUC is more prevalent, or more frequently observed, now that HTML pages are more apt to reference multiple style sheets. Web pages often include style references to media other than the browser screen, such as CSS rules for printers and mobile devices. Web pages may _USER_ layers of style files, and reference alternate style sheets. Online advertisements and other inserted offsite content, like videos and search engines, often dictate their own style rules within their code block. The cascading nature of CSS rules encourages some browsers to wait until all the style data is collected before applying it.
With the advent of JavaScript libraries (such as jQuery) that can be employed to further define and apply the styling of a web page, FOUC has also become more prominent. In an attempt to avoid unstyled content, front-end developers may choose to hide all content until it is fully loaded, a load event handler is triggered and the content appears.
To emulate a FOUC, developers can use browser add-ons that are capable of disabling a web page's CSS on-the-fly. Firebug is one such add-on.
 1. ^ "Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC)". Blue Robot. 2001. Retrieved 12 October 2012.
 2. ^ Dave Hyatt (1 September 2006). "The FOUC Problem". Surfin' Safari. The WebKit Open Source Project. Retrieved 16 October 2012. The FOUC problem would normally be a minor occurrence. However with the advent of Google AdSense, FOUC has become a Safari epidemic. Because these Google ads not only execute inline script but access layout information that they often don't even end up using in the page, the problem of FOUC is much more severe than it should be.


text:
New pest control methods help to protect maize crops.
A collaborative Army Worm Novel Control Project funded by DFID's Crop Post-Harvest Programme has helped farmers stop monstrous columns of marching black caterpillars (known as army worms) from devouring their maize crop during the rainy season.
The project has demonstrated that community forecasting packs can give farmers the advance warning they need to take speedy and effective action against an invasion of army worms. The forecasting packs include a rain gauge, guidance notes and potent traps baited with a pheromone secreted by female army worms. The number of males caught provides an indication of worm populations. If the populations are rising and rainclouds loom, local farmers begin intense monitoring and undertake environmentally-friendly control measures as soon as they see army worm larvae on their maize leaves.
A relatively low-cost, environmentally-friendly way to control army worms was developed by project scientists. They found that NPV, or Nucleopolyhedrovirus, is a disease that kills up to 98% of army worms but affects no other plant or animal. NPV naturally occurs only after the worms have consumed the crops, but project scientists found that the diseased worms are highly infectious even after their death. This means that the diseased worms can be ground into powder, stored, and then sprayed on crops (with any new casualties turned into powder in their turn). At $1 per hectare, the NPV method is much cheaper than chemical insecticides.
"By shaking the maize leaves we find the very young larvae" says local maize farmer Rogati Kiwale. "And if we see the larvae then we take control measures immediately."