Thursday, August 31, 2006
Performance: Block Variables Breakdown
In response to my previous blog, Chris Nokleberg noted that if we're using String#equals a lot, interning will have an additional benefit...namely because String#equals short-circuits if both String objects are ==. I had forgotten about that benefit, so I thought I'd poke around for places it might have an effect.
In digging a little, I was reminded that DynamicVariableSet, which holds block-local variables, does a linear search for retrievals and mutations. Compare that to method-local variables in Scope, for which all clients must pass an index to get or set a value. I'm not sure if there's a reason why DynVars must be retrieved by name and Scope vars can be directly's probably historical from the C code or a limitation of the current parser. In any case, a linear search could theoretically represent a performance issue accessing or modifying block-local variables. So I thought I'd run some numbers to see how frequently we have to search past the 0 value in the DynVarSet. Here's the breakdown while gem installing rake:
Count of block var retrieves from indicies 0 through 6:
So a total of 787121 block variable lookups, with percentages below:
index 0: 65.6%
index 1: 28.7%
index 2: 5.4%
...with the remainder filling out the last 0.3% of accesses
What can we learn from this? Well DynVarSet currently allocates initial space for up to 8 variables, based on someone's long-past examination of code that showed a maximum of 6 was a good estimate. The numbers above show that, for RubyGems + RDoc at least, a maximum of 3 would cover 99.7% of all cases without requiring expansion of the array, and that with a subsequent expansion to 6 slots we would cover all but 0._PHONE_% of cases. So using 6 as a maximum and always allocating 8 slots is perhaps a bit generous. More profiling on more code is warranted here, but it might be safe to drop the initial size to 3 and leave in the doubling when expanding.
It also shows us that we pay the cost of two String#equals calls for 28.7% of lookups, and pay for three in 5.4% of lookups, with higher counts statistically insignificant. So although it might seem like we're unlikely to suffer much of a performance hit because most block var lookups are at index 0, our cost to lookup or modify block variables is doubled in over a quarter of cases and tripled in a twentieth of cases. If we normalize all lookups to the same cost (X * 99.7 versus X * 139.2), that translates to a 28% performance boost for block variable lookup cost. Note that I'm not measuring block variable modifications here either, which would conceivably see a similar boost.
And of course what it doesn't show (but which we know to be true) is that if we were able to eliminate both the linear search and the call to String#equals, we'd save a very large percentage of block var lookup time, since we'd reduce it to a simple array indexing. I think it's worth exploring how we could do that--especially since we already do it for Scope in all the same places.
Isn't optimizing legacy code fun?
Performance: Inlining Strings
A while ago, we decided to inline all appropriate symbolic strings as they entered the AST. This appeared to help performance a measurable amount, presumably for two reasons:
 1. The AST would take up less space in the long term
 2. Since Strings cache their hashcodes, having each identical string in the AST be the same object would reduce the number of hash calculations.
And the numbers seem to bear it out. Here's a local rake install:
Without interning AST strings:
real 1m19.894s
user 1m18.649s
sys 0m0.920s
With interning AST strings:
real 1m15.021s
user 1m13.785s
sys 0m0.948s
So it's very this case 4-5 seconds out of 80 seconds, or about a 6% gain with interning.
However this week I realized the fallacy of the second point above. In order to intern each incoming string, Java must hash them. This causes all strings entering the AST to be hashed once anyway in order to get the interned version. In fact, it could reduce performance, since we're now forced to hash strings we might never encounter during execution.
I can't confirm that this is 100% true, but it's a reasonable theory. String.intern() is native code, but logic dictates that the fastest way to intern strings would be to use an internal hash/symbol table. So I proceeded this evening to try removing interning to see how it affected performance. I hoped to get a small gain during execution due to a large gain during parsing. The numbers above show that I lose a measurable amount overall by interning. However, I do see substantial parse performance gains:
With interning AST strings ( - t method of measuring 100 parses):
Without interning AST strings:
About 1.7 seconds out of 11, or a whopping 15% gain in parse speed without interning. AARGH.
At this point I'm leaning toward removing interning and swallowing the 6% performance hit temporarily until we can figure out where it's coming from. Logically, interning everything should only add overhead, or so my brain tells me. Where's the flaw in my logic?
My London Schedule
So here's the times and places. I want to get together JRubyists to just chat a bit at some point, and it seems like Thursday or Friday would work best. The only concrete suggestion so far is the Fitzroy Tavern on the 15th, around 6:30PM-7:00PM (thanks Damian). This works for me, and it's after the conference. Here's a goofy Google Map to Fitzroy from the conference center.
I'm also planning to attend the "Pizza on Rails" event on the 13th, so folks can find me there.
I'll keep this entry updated as things come in, so it can be used for reference.
13 September, 6:00AM: Arrival in London (Heathrow)
Other than getting checked into the hotel, I have that whole day free. I don't plan to cram for my presentation or anything, since it's not until Friday (and I don't really work that way). To avoid the lag I'll probably sleep as much as I can on the plane. Getting out and about once I get there ought to get the circadians whipped into shape.
13 September, 6:00PM: Pizza on Rails
Pizza on Rails is around 6PM, with pizza at 7PM.
14 September, 9:00AM: RailsConf Day One
The "Welcome" is at 9, and it goes straight through until 8:30PM with a lunch break from 12:30PM to 2:00PM and a dinner break from 5:50PM to 7:30PM. I'll probably try to grab meals with folks from the conf.
15 September, 9:30AM: RailsConf Day Two
Lunch break is the same as Day One, and the conf is scheduled to go through until 6PM, with "Closing Remarks" coming after that. Probably be out by 6:30, and the Fitzroy is pretty close. Maybe someone not going to the conf can get there early to scope it out.
15 September, 3:00PM: JRuby on Rails
I'm in the last set of speakers, before the final plenary session with James Duncan Davidson and Dave Thomas. I'm up against cleaning up rails, adding unicode to rails, and project management for rails. I wish I could attend the unicode session, but I'll try to grab Dominic offline.
15 September, 6:30PM: JRuby Meetup
So far I think we'll just be at Fitzroy Tavern, as mentioned at the top of this post. All are welcome...I don't fly out until 1:25PM the next day, so I can stick around for a while.
16 September 10:00AM: Departure
Given the recent TERROR scare, I'm going to be extra careful and head to the airport nice and early. I'm not particularly worried about TERROR, but I am over-cautious about giving security enough time to scour my person for soda pop and lip balm.
Thus ends my first trip to London. It's too bad it will be so short, but I have business to attend to stateside immediately after the conference. Hopefully I'll stop back in when I'm in the EU for JavaPolis.
I hope to see plenty of JRubyists in London!


text:
. 34–41). For imagine that the benevolent demon Jerry Garcia wants Frank to play the banjo at the relevant time. Jerry would much prefer that Frank play the banjo on his own. But worried that Frank might elect not to play the banjo, Jerry covertly arranges things so as to manipulate Frank if the need arises. If Frank should show any indication that he will not play the banjo, Jerry will manipulate Frank so that Frank will play the banjo. Hence, when Frank does play the banjo uninfluenced by Jerry's possible intervention, he does so of his own free will. But he has neither regulative control, nor does he seem to be reasons-responsive, with respect to his banjo playing. Due to Jerry's presence, he cannot but play the banjo even if Jimi Hendrix were to ask Frank to play his guitar.
To alleviate the tension between a reasons-responsive theory and Frankfurt examples, Fischer argued that reasons-responsive compatibilism can be cast in such a way that it involves only guidance control. Consider the example with Frank, Jimi, and Jerry. Frank did not have regulative control over his playing the banjo since Jerry's presence ensured that Frank play the banjo even if Jimi were to ask Frank to play his guitar. The scenario in which Jimi asks Frank not to play his banjo is one that Frank normally would find to be a compelling reason to refrain from his banjo playing. Hence, by his own lights, Frank would find Jimi's request compelling. Yet, due to Jerry's presence, Frank is not responsive to such a weighty reason. What would be required to illustrate responsiveness would be to subtract Jerry from the scenario. This would do the trick. So suppose that Frank plays the banjo of his own free will, even with Jerry passively standing by. How can it be shown that Frank's conduct was, in some manner, reasons-responsive? How can it be shown that what he actually did was in response to a reason? Well, if Jimi Hendrix had asked Frank not to play the banjo but the guitar instead, and if Jerry's presence were to be subtracted from the situation, then Frank would respond to Jimi's request and play the guitar and not the banjo. This shows that Frank does play the banjo of his own free will even in the actual situation in which Jerry is passively standing by.
5.5.3 A Mechanism-Based Reasons-Responsive Theory
Illustrating reasons-responsiveness in a Frankfurt example does require recognizing counterfactual conditions in which an agent acts otherwise in response to reasons. But in a Frankfurt example, one has to subtract from those conditions the presence of the ensuring conditions (the counterfactual intervener) designed to guarantee that the agent not act otherwise. How can this move be legitimate? How is it not just an arbitrary addendum to cram together two compatibilist themes that otherwise appear to be at odds (reasons-responsiveness and Frankfurt examples)? It is not arbitrary, and here is why. Think about what happens in the actual scenario of a Frankfurt example. As things unfold, the demon is inactive. The agent acts for her own reasons. But now, focusing solely on what the agent does in this actual scenario, and the reasons that give her a basis for doing what she does, consider what deliberative features of her agency played the casual role in the actual sequence of events bringing about her action. To capture what features of deliberative agency do play a role in the actual causal sequence of an agent's action, not every element of the agent seems to be involved in the process. For instance, in the example above, in playing the banjo of his own free will, Frank might have a large range of beliefs and desires that is entirely irrelevant to the range that did play a causal role in his action. Frank might have believed that chickens are both feathered and not toasters, and he might have desired that his toenails be painted purple. But neither of those elements of his psychological state needed to play a role in the sorts of factors that did lead him to play the banjo. So, just fix upon whatever constitutes that narrower range of agential characteristics within the wider spectrum of all of the features that made up Frank Zappa, the agent. Since it is only that narrow spectrum that we shall now identify with the causal production of Frank's conduct, just call it the mechanism of his action.
Once we have located the mechanism of action that is at work in the actual causal sequence of a Frankfurt example, we can turn our attention to understanding the dispositional features of it as a casual mechanism. If other reasons bear upon it, then it would be sensitive to some of those reasons. It would produce different conduct in some reasonable range of cases. If it would, then that very mechanism is responsive to reasons. Confirming that that very mechanism is responsive to reasons would not merely illustrate that, in scenarios other than the actual, the agent acts upon a mechanism sensitive to reasons. It would also illustrate that in the Frankfurt scenario in which the agent really does act, what does play a role in the actual causal sequence of her action is some feature of her agency (a mechanism) that itself is in fact a response to a reason.
Fischer offers an actual-sequence, mechanism-based, reasons-responsive analysis of guidance control. He maintains that his analysis of guidance control is compatible with determinism. According to Fischer, an agent, and the mechanism of her action, can be entirely determined in the actual sequence of events in which she acts. Yet the actual manner in which her mechanism responds to reasons could be appropriately sensitive to reasons such that, if different reasons were to bear upon it, it would respond differently, and the agent whose mechanism it is would act differently than she does act.
5.5.4 Assessing Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism
How might a reasons-responsive approach compare with a view like Frankfurt's hierarchical model? To demarcate the relevant wants issuing in freely willed conduct, Frankfurt needed to postulate a higher order of willing into which effective desires meshed. Only then could Frankfurt help compatibilists distinguish freedom-undermining wants (such as those involved in compulsive conduct) from freedom-conferring wants. Reasons-responsiveness attempts to fix this sort of problem by different means. Instead of postulating a hierarchical relation between different sorts of wants or desires, it instead gives a dispositional analysis of the wants' or desires' (the reasons') sensitivity to rational considerations. The differences might well yield different ways of treating some cases. For example, a willing addict would not be reasons-responsive and so would not take the drug of her own free will according to a reasons-responsive compatibilist. But according to Frankfurt, a willing addict does take the drug of her own free will.
How might a mechanism-based reasons-responsive theory satisfy a source model of control? A view such as Fischer's might be at a disadvantage. It is possible that a reasons-responsive mechanism could be unhitched from the agent whom it affects. So it is an open question whether or not Fischer's compatibilist position offers as rich an account of the source of an agent's action as does a real self view such as Frankfurt's. Of course, if Fischer is able to advance an ownership condition that does anchor an agent's reasons-responsive mechanism to the agent's self, then Fischer's view will not only do the work that Frankfurt's does in accommodating a source model of control (linking a freely willed action to a real self), it will also do the sort of work Wolf's does. That is, Fischer's view will then show how, as a source of her conduct, a morally responsible agent can be tightly linked to reasons (reasons Wolf identifies under the heading, "the True and the Good").
How does Fischer's view stack up against the Source Incompatibilist Argument? The challenge Fischer faces here is the same as that faced by Frankfurt and Wolf. The source incompatibilist maintains that it is a necessary condition of free will that one be an ultimate source of her action, and determinism is incompatible with one's being an ultimate source of her action (see section 2.2). The compatibilist's task is to show that her treatment of the source of an agent's conduct is sufficient for free will. But the source incompatibilist will point to manipulation cases that suggest that some causal histories giving rise to compatibilist-friendly psychological structures, such as reasons-responsive mechanisms, are freedom and responsibility undermining. If so, then why is determinism any different from a manipulation case? The burden, it seems, is on the compatibilist to show how it is that manipulation cases differ from a normal deterministic history. The compatibilist's only other strategy is simply to deny that the pertinent manipulated agents are not free and morally responsible.
For further treatment of the reasons-responsive approach, see sections B and C of supplement
It would simply be misleading not to mention Strawsonian compatibilism amongst the views characterizing contemporary compatibilism. The secondary literature devoted to it proves that it is still alive and well in contemporary debate.
Several contemporary philosophers have advanced Strawsonian themes. For instance, John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza hold that an account of guidance control aids in providing the conditions of application for the concept of moral responsibility, a concept that they maintain is Strawsonian (1998, pp.1–27). Fischer and Ravizza intend their Strawsonian theory as an amendment to Strawson's suggestion that moral responsibility is to be associated with the reactions of those within the moral community to members of the community. Fischer and Ravizza advise that moral responsibility be developed by thinking in terms of the propriety conditions for the morally reactive attitudes. This amendment would have it that a moral community could respond to a

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Ukrainian Plane Crash – level 2
A Ukrainian plane with 167 people on board crashed in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The plane disappeared from radar shortly after it took off.
Experts from Iran and Ukraine met in Tehran to investigate why the plane crashed. They consider many reasons, such as engine problems, collision with a flying object, a rocket strike, or a terrorist attack.
The first report said that the plane tried to return to the airport when it fell. The investigators also said that there was fire on the plane when it crashed. They found the black boxes; however, it is not clear if they managed to analyze them.
Difficult words: disappear from radar (to no longer be visible on radar which is a special system that can see things that move far away), collision (an accident when two vehicles of objects hit each other), strike (an attack).
You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.
What do you think about this news?
LEARN 3000 WORDS with NEWS IN LEVELS
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How to improve your English with News in Levels:
- Do the test at Test Languages.
- Go to your level. Go to Level 1 if you know 1-1000 words. Go to Level 2 if you know _PHONE_ words. Go to Level 3 if you know 2000-3000 words.
- Read two news articles every day.
- Read the news articles from the day before and check if you remember all new words.
- Listen to the news from today and read the text at the same time.
- Listen to the news from today without reading the text.
- Answer the question under today's news and write the answer in the comments.
- Choose one person from the Skype section.
- Talk with this person. You can answer questions from Speak in Levels.
Stock images by Depositphotos

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Take the 2-minute tour ×
Consider a cube with faces we'll call "left", "right", "front", "back", "top" and "bottom".
The cube can be described by $0 \le x,y,z \le 1$.
To name the faces, we'll say $x$ extends to the right, $y$ to the top and $z$ forward:
Given a face/plane (for example, $x=1$ or $y=0$), I want to generate an ordered list of vertices of that face, such that they proceed counter-clockwise around the face of the cube if you were to look at the cube -- that is from some point outside $(0,1)$.
For example, one such ordering for the right face ($x=1$) would be:
while one such ordering for the left face($x=0$) would be:
Note that in the first ordering, we go from $(y,z) = (0,0)$ to $(1,0)$.
While in the second we go from $(y,z) = (0,0)$ to $(0,1)$.
This is because of the counter-clockwise restriction.
I'm fairly certain I can somehow use the normal of the face (in the above case <1,0,0>) to compute these, and I'm thinking it has something to do with a cross product somewhere, but after that I'm lost.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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1 Answer 1
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Cross-product is, indeed, the key. I'll assume that the cube is $[-1,1]^3$ rather than $[0,1]^3$ (replacing $-1$'s by $0$'s in the final answer shouldn't be an insurmountable programming challenge) If $e$ is the unit vector in the direction of your face (say $(0,-1,0)$) and $v$ is any vertex on that face (say, $(-1,-1,1$), then the next vertex in the counterclockwise order is given by $e+e\times v$.
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text: Book Description: The amazing tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-19th-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan. In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great. Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King', but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region. Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan's long-lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan's footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game. If you enjoyed William Dalrymple's 'Return of a King', 'Josiah the Great' should be on your reading list.


Rules: Jail
Thieves land in jail when they are caught by one or more detectives at the castle. However, the previously stolen collection cards are not returned to the original owners.
The thief card is laid in cell number 1. When more than one thief is caught those with lower numbers are placed in jail first. Whenever a new thief arrives in jail, any other thieves already in jail are moved up one cell.
The thieves are released from jail when they move out of the last jail cell (the number of jail cells equals the number of players in the game). Released thief cards are returned to the thief's owner and can again be played.


text:
How to do just that particularly in the Virgin Islands was on display Tuesday at Good Hope School as the St. Croix Environmental Association sponsored its second Environmental Science Career Expo in partnership with the V.I. Network of Environmental Educators.
The goal of the event was to enable middle school and high school students to learn about the career path choices, work experience and skills required to attain jobs in science and technological fields with representatives from private enterprises, government and nonprofit agencies participated.
"We want to get kids excited about science. We live on a small piece of land and are surrounded by the ocean and we have to take care of it," said St. Croix Environmental Association spokeswoman Lynnea Roberts.
"Beyond that, we want kids to be excited about college and going to study science," she said. "There is a lot of science going on around the island that is sort of undercover and a lot of people don't know about it."
Roberts said she hopes to put on two more of these career fairs later this year at both Central and Complex High Schools.
Marcia Taylor of the University of the Virgin Islands' Center for Marine and Environmental Studies said she was there to recruit the future.
"We want more young people going into careers related to the marine environment," Taylor said. "We want to get more local students trained so they can take the jobs here in their home."
"There are a lot of opportunities down here and it would be great if people that lived here could benefit from that," Taylor said.
She said graduates of the program, if they've wanted to stay and work in the territory, have had success in finding careers here.
She also noted the same marine issues Roberts mentioned — overfishing and ocean acidification. She said future job prospects in these fields would be plentiful for those interested in learning how to manage those problems and mitigate the effects of them, especially as they pertain to the V.I. coral reef systems.
"There are more federal dollars being spent down here because we realize we're on the brink of losing an incredible resource. There's more grants related to that, more people studying it and that's an area where there's more money being pumped in all the time."
As students wandered from booth to booth learning about the work of those participating organizations, some teachers were even collaborating with agency representatives in the hopes of doing hands on work inside the classroom at a later date.
Leila Muller of the V.I. Energy Office and teacher Sarah Christiansen of AZ Academy were just one example as they were planning renewable energy demonstrations for Christiansen's fifthand eighth-grade science students.
"This is the future, right here," Christiansen said, pointing at some solar energy demonstrations. "Kids need to know what the future is going to be like and need to prepare for the future and what types of jobs and careers will be available."
Muller said, "We're also going to be doing more sustainable buildings and green buildings," adding that's where the future is. "And we want the young minds to know what opportunities there are in the field of energy."
AZ Academy sophomores Conrad Yanez and Rick Beggs said they came away from the event with more environmental knowledge of how to protect St. Croix and with a possible goal to attain in the future.
"I might be interested in the science part of it," Beggs said. "Maybe one day I'll come up with a new way to protect corals."
"I think I might be a marine biologist, maybe mangroves or something like that," Yanez added. "I like working in places like Salt River. It's pretty interesting."


Croatian and Khasi Alphabets
Add ⊕
1 Alphabets
1.1 Alphabets in
1.2 Alphabets
Tamil Alphabets
Rank: 12 (Overall)
Rank: 5 (Overall)
Irish Alphabets
1.3 Phonology
1.3.1 How Many Vowels
Thai Alphabets
Rank: 2 (Overall)
Rank: 3 (Overall)
Hebrew Alphabets
1.3.2 How Many Consonants
Hmong Alphabets
Rank: 15 (Overall)
Rank: 4 (Overall)
German Alphabets
1.4 Scripts
Bengali, Latin
1.5 Writing Direction
Left-To-Right, Horizontal
Not Available
1.6 Hard to Learn
1.6.1 Language Levels
Armenian Alphab..
Rank: 2 (Overall)
Not Available
Rank: N/A (Overall)
Bengali Alphabets
1.6.2 Time Taken to Learn
Chinese Alphabe..
44 weeks
Rank: 11 (Overall)
Not Available
Rank: N/A (Overall)
Cebuano Alphabets
Croatian vs Khasi Alphabets
Wondering about the number of letters in Croatian and Khasi alphabets? When you compare Croatian vs Khasi alphabets you will understand the number of alphabets in both the languages. Because lesser the number of alphabets, faster the language to learn, find all the Easiest Languages to Learn. Croatian and Khasi Alphabets are collection of symbols or letters used for writing. Croatian alphabets contain 30 letters and Khasi Alphabets contain 23 letters. The writing direction of Croatian is Left-To-Right, Horizontal whereas the writing direction of Khasi is Not Available. Croatian and Khasi Alphabets are the basics of Croatian and Khasi languages. Check the detailed comparison of Croatian and Khasi.
Croatian and Khasi Scripts
Compare Croatian and Khasi alphabets and find out scripts used by Croatian and Khasi language. Croatian and Khasi scripts are the methodology and rules for writing. Scripts used by Croatian and Khasi languages are Latin and Bengali, Latin respectively. After learning alphabets in Croatian and Khasi you can also learn useful Croatian greetings vs Khasi greetings.
Croatian Vowels vs Khasi Vowels
If you are comparing Croatian and Khasi alphabets then you need to find out Croatian vowels vs Khasi vowels too. The number of vowels and consonants in Croatian are 5 and 25 and number of vowels and consonants in Khasi are 6 and 14. Language codes are unique and are two or three letter codes assigned to each language. Check out all the language codes of Croatian and Khasi language codes.
Is Croatian Harder than Khasi?
Is Croatian harder than Khasi? No language is hard or easy to learn as it depends on individual interest and efforts for learning that language. When you decide to learn any language, you need to find out time required to learn that language and levels in that language. As mentioned above, while comparing Croatian and Khasi Alphabets the number of alphabets in any language decides hardness in learning that language.
It's important to know Croatian and Khasi alphabets because for learning these languages, alphabets are the starting point. The levels in Croatian language are 3. And time taken to learn Croatian language is 44 weeks. While there are no levels in Khasi language And time taken to learn Khasi language is Not Available.
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text:
The Bigfoot Evidence blog recently posted an entry entitled "Yes, Bigfoot Can Swim: Scientists Prove That Apes Can Swim and Dive." The entry highlights a recent Science Daily article about a chimpanzee and an orangutan with the ability to swim and dive underwater, the first such behavior described for apes. I'm amazed that this is being offered up as evidence that Bigfoot can swim. This is wrong for at least three reasons. First, there is no way to verify reports of swimming Bigfoots. Other than unreliable eyewitness accounts–often passed on in the form of hearsay by those who did not see the creature–there is no video or photographic evidence of any kind to support the stories. Some people may believe they are telling the truth, but errors, such as misidentifying a known animal (e.g. bears), cannot be ruled out (nor can hoaxing). The folklorist Kathrine Briggs makes a distinction between fairy tales, which are believed to be fictional, and folk tales, which are believed to be true. And since the latter contains uncorroborated elements, reports of swimming Bigfoots are no more credible than legends of giants, fairies, ghosts, and witches that were once commonly circulated–essentially making them modern folklore. They would never be accepted as evidence in a court of law, nor could they pass for scientific evidence.
Second, the swimming of the aforementioned apes is human-induced behavior. The original study, "Brief communication: Swimming and diving behavior in apes (Pan troglodytes and Pongo pygmaeus): First documented report," mentions how the chimp Cooper and the orangutan Suryia were both raised by humans in a home and in a private zoo, respectively. Both were exposed to water from a young age: first through baths and later during supervised playtime in the shallow end of pools. Although this study invalidates the long held idea that apes can't swim due to their dense anatomy, there is clearly an environmental factor at play that keeps these creatures from swimming in the wild (see below). Cooper and Suryia would not have developed these skills without the encouragement of their human parents/keepers. Therefore, it should be stressed that their abilities are unique among apes the world over. This means the study is nothing more than a scientific anecdote. As the primatologist William C. McGrew points out: "All that an anecdote can do is alert us to a possibility, so that we will look for it again." In addition, he warns that "citing specific events as evidence for something broader [can lead] to overgeneralization." This leads me to my last point.
A video of Suryia the Orangutan swimming.
Third and most importantly, wild and captive apes typically shun large bodies of water. The aforementioned study mentions that the scientific literature "indicate[s] that apes' behavior towards water bodies in the wild might be adaptive—they avoid deep water bodies and are extremely cautious when entering even shallow water." The authors suggest this hydrophobia is a survival strategy since apes probably lost the instinctual swimming ability that most terrestrial mammals have because they spend most of their lives in or near trees. This explains why apes have never been observed drowning in the wild. Captive apes, on the other hand, often drown in the moats that zoos use to keep them confined to their outdoor habitats. This is because they have more exposure to bodies of water than they do in the wild. Dr. Roger Fouts somberly describes a captive drowning in his wonderful book Next of Kin: My Conversation With Chimpanzees (1997):
One morning I couldn't find Candy and I became worried that she had attempted to jump the moat and had drowned. My students and I waded into the water up to our chests and began dredging the muddy bottom with poles. After an hour or so, I felt her small body under my feet, and went down to retrieve it. As I emerged from the moat, cradling Candy's lifeless body in my arms, the other chimps kept their distance…I had never seen, much less held, a dead chimpanzee before. It was heartbreaking. Chimpanzees, like human children, are so animated in every expression, so vibrant in every leap, that their spirit seems like the very essence of life itself. Drained of Candy's spirit, the stiff body I held was just an empty vessel.
So, in the end, this attempt to support modern folklore with an unrelated scientific anecdote further relegates Bigfootology to the realm of pseudoscience. Proponents of cryptozoology are often accused of not being objective enough, and this serves as a prime example of this. They focus on all the evidence that they feel supports their views–even going so far as to twist data to fit like above–while ignoring all that invalidates them.
 See the section on "Misidentification Errors" in Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 56-59. A 2009 study found Bigfoot and Black Bears (Ursus americanus) (un)coincidentally share the same territory. See ibid, 57.
 Katharine M. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part B : Folk Legends : Vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1971), vii-viii.
 William Clement McGrew, The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology (Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 79.
 Ibid, 175-176.
 Roger Fouts, Next of Kin: My Conversations With Chimpanzees (New York: Bard Books Inc, 1997), 179.
 See for example Loxton and Prothero, 65-66.
Briggs, Katharine M. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part B : Folk Legends : Vol. 1. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1971.
Fouts, Roger. Next of Kin: My Conversations With Chimpanzees. New York: Bard Books Inc, 1997.
Loxton, Daniel, and Donald R. Prothero. Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
McGrew, William Clement. The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge University Press, 2004.


How to Convert WAV to GSM With Sox
While both GSM and WAV are audio formats, they are designed for different purposes. WAV files are typically 16-bits in resolution and are usually sampled at very high bit rates. They can be excellent ways to transmit lossless copies of CD-quality audio. GSM files, on the other hand, come from Europe where they were designed to work with wireless voice communication systems. They typically have 8-bit resolution and are very compact, using very small bit rates. GSM files are typically used in telephony.
Download and install SoX from the SourceForge website.
Click the Start button and type "cmd" in the search box, then press "Enter."
Use the "cd" command to navigate to the folder where you installed SoX. For example, if you installed it in the sox-14-4-0 subfolder of the "Program Files (x86)" folder on your C: drive, you would type "c:" then press "Enter," then type "cd \Program Files (x86)," then press "Enter," then type "cd sox-14-4-0" and press "Enter." Please note that the commas and quotation marks in the previous section are not part of the command and should be omitted.
Enter the following command on the command line and press the "Enter" key:
sox input.wav -r 8000 -c1 output.gsm lowpass 4000 compand 0.02,0.05 -60,-60,-30,-10,-20,-8,-5,-8,-2,-8 -8 -7 0.05
You can replace "input.wav" with the path and filename of your file, and "output.gsm" with the name you want your GSM file to have. Note that if any component of the filename or its path has a space, you should encompass the whole path and filename in quotation marks.
Type "exit" and press "Enter" to exit the command prompt.


text:
Date Thesis Awarded
Bachelors of Science (BS)
Charles R. Johnson
Our ultimate goal is to find the possible eigenvalue multiplicity lists which can occur among Hermitian matrices whose graph is a given tree (no restriction is placed on diagonal entries). We expand the implicit construction method pioneered by Johnson et al. to find all multiplicity lists for binary, diametric, depth-one trees, as well as provide an upper bound for the minimum number of 1's among multiplicity lists for a given tree.
Nuckols, Jonathan, "Trees and the Implicit Construction of Eigenvalue Multiplicities" (2008). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 827.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.


text:
We report that the oxidation of graphene-based highly transparent conductive layers to AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN ultra-violet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was suppressed by the use of SiN X passivation layers. Although graphene is considered to be an ideal candidate as the transparent conductive layer to UV-LEDs, oxidation of these layers at high operating temperatures has been an issue. The oxidation is initiated at the un-saturated carbon atoms at the edges of the graphene and reduces the UV light intensity and degrades the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. The oxidation also can occur at defects, including vacancies. However, GaN-based UV-LEDs deposited with SiN X by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition showed minimal degradation of light output intensity and I-V characteristics because the graphene-based UV transparent conductive layers were shielded from the oxygen molecules. This is a simple and effective approach for maintaining the advantages of graphene conducting layers as electrodes on UV-LEDs.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)


Nebraska DHHS Emergency Preparedness
Strategic National Stockpile
The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is a national resource of medical supplies ready and waiting to help states handle public health emergencies. It includes pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and medical equipment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has these "stockpiles" located around the country so states can have access to the supplies they need within 12 hours of requesting them.
DHHS' Role Warehouse
Receiving, shipping and storing the stockpile is a complex operation involving a lot of people from DHHS, other state agencies and the federal government as well. At DHHS we've recruited approximately 40 people to help with the process and are always looking for more volunteers. Among other duties, our employees are responsible for unloading the shipment, managing inventory, maintaining quality control, and repackaging supplies for further distribution.
The SNS Program is an essential response component of CDC's larger Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Initiative. For more information, see the CDC Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Website.


Dutch Stadholders
Groningen Rennenberg 1580
In 1580 Stadtholder Rennenberg of
Groningen, Friesland and Overijssel
switched back to the Spanish side.
In 1700:
Main branchWilliam III
In the northJohan Willem Friso
1 The Stadtholders of the United Provinces
1.1 Etymology of the word Stadtholder
Stadtholder, the Dutch word'stadhouder' literally translates as 'lieutenant'. The originally French word lieutenant is a concatenation of 'lieu' (place) and 'tenant' (he who holds). It's as simple as that. Compare this to lieutenant-general: the person who holds the office of the general (i.e. the king). Or the rare captain-lieutenant: the person who excercises the office of captain.
1.2 Origins in the conglomerate Burgundian empire
The need for stadtholders was brought about by the conglomerate character of the Burgundian empire. The Dukes of Burgundy were no kings, but only: 'duke', 'count' or 'lord' of their individual territories. They could handle most of their responsibilities from their central seat of government, but that was neither efficient nor effective. They therefore appointed stadtholders / lieutenants. The stadtholders could keep a good eye on developments in a territory and handle daily affairs.
There were therefore multiple stadtholders in the Burgundian empire. In the United Provinces there were also several. In 1580 The Count of Rennenberg (c 1540 - Groningen, 23 juli 1581) was Stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe and Overijssel. Meanwhile John VI of Nassau-Dillenburg was stadtholder of Gelderland. William the Silent was Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht.
1.3 The Stadtholder in French
Writing in French, the Dutch would not refer to their stadtholder as lieutenant. After all, after the Dutch revolt started, the stadholder was no longer a lieutenant of the King of Spain. Governor was the title by which they sometimes referred to their Stadholder. Governor is however a very strange name for a dignitary that had noone above him. It's therefore understandable that the Dutch term 'Goeverneur' is never used for a stadhouder.
2 The 'Orange' Stadtholder of the United Provinces
2.1 The 'Orange' Stadtholder
Soon after 1580 the Stadtholder 'branche' in Gelderland came to the Prince of Orange and the branch in the north came to William Louis of Nassau-Dillenburg. The result was that from that moment forward all stadtholders in the United Provinces were of the House of Nassau. The most prominent branch of this house was headed by William the Silent, prince of Orange.
The Orange stadtholder was captain-general and admiral-general of the union, which the one in Friesland never was. The territories of the Frisian Stadtholder were also rather marginal compared to those of the Orange Stadholder. Therefore it was quite obvious who was meant if there was talk about the Stadholder, or the Stadholder of the United Provinces (which did not exist).
2.2 The Frisian Stadtholder
The Stadtholder of Friesland and Groningen had much less prestige. While the the first Frisian Stadtholder Willem Lodewijk (_PHONE_) played a leading role in the Eigthy Years war, his descendant Henry Casimir II (_PHONE_) had to do with an appointment as 'third' field marshall. There were high hopes for a prominent role for Johan Willem Friso, but this was only due to him succeeding the Orange Stadtholder.
3 Stadtholder vs States
Most of the Dutch provincial states considered themselves to be above the stadholder and him only to be the first servant of the state. However, this could have very little meaning when the stadtholder had to appoint them to their offices, as was the case in Gelderland and Overijssel. The Stadholder's power varied from province to province and in some of them had a solid foundation in feudal rights. Add to this the fact that the Orange stadholder was a prince in his own right and inherited the function, and one has a recipee for confusion.


20 Deep Questions to Ask Your Boyfriend
It would be difficult to decipher what exactly is running through the mind of your boyfriend or anybody. How is it possible to find out what is the inner layer of current running through his mind? The best way to dig out something from the deep inner thought of a person is asking some intelligent questions. For people who are in a deep relationship and confused to know about the hidden trait, it is better to ask these 20 deep questions.
deep questions to ask your boyfriend
 1. What is the most disturbing thing in your life that you regret always?
The question has an emotional attachment when you ask this question to your boyfriend he will feel secured to open his mind. He may tell you those top guarded secret in his life and share those feeling with you. If he opens his mind and tells you all about his life, it is a good indication to make you understand, why he regrets that incident. You can relate those events with any of the current incidents and plan your relationship with your boyfriend.
 1. How do you define about yourself?
This is an open question allowing him to explain about himself. So people have a good assessment about their positive and negative drawbacks. This will also give you a chance to understand whether he want to hide something deliberately from you.
 1. Have been into a relationship before?
You may feel it is an embarrassing question. It is better to know about his past relationship or relationships. If he had many relationships and you are also one among them, then it will give you a good understanding of the person.
 1. Do you believe in marriage?
There is no ill feeling asking a direct question straight to point if you are thinking of a wedding life with your boyfriend and he is not yet proposed to you. As the common adage say, ladies always first. So take the chance and force him to open his mind.
 1. What is the good thing about me that attract you the most?
This question let you focus on what is the best thing that attracted him to you. It could be your eyes, hair, lips, your skin, your body posture, your talking style, your manners or anything. This will let you more refine in those areas and make him very comfortable.
 1. Tell me what do you think about beauty?
Are you serious in asking this question? You can certainly find out from him what he is thinking about beauty. If he is the person with exceptional qualities, he will let you know the difference between the inner beauty and physical beauty. Beauty is always in the beholders eyes.
 1. What do you do if you lose somebody in a terrible accident?
If you want to know your boyfriend, how deep is he emotionally attached to his close friends and relatives. People with strong emotional attachments are trustworthy guys. It is a good question. Listen to him carefully.
 1. What is your future plan?
When having a relationship for a long time and yet you are unsure about the future plans, it is time for you to ask this question to your boyfriend. This will, or it will force him to open his mind and discuss about his future plans. Who knows, maybe the answer what you are looking for all these days, you can hear from his mouth.
 1. Do you like to be loved or respected?
If you are confused about the character of your boyfriend and you cannot identify whether he want to be respected or loved, you can certainly through this question. People who are very much serious in character would say that want to get respected rather than loved. It is good, let whatever be the answer. You can take the cues to nourish the relationship.
 1. What is your favorite color?
Is there anything special in the color sense? Yes, people who life soft colors will be soft in thoughts than people who opt for violent colors.
 1. What is your best food?
Food habits and food choices are always imperative in any relationship. It is better to have common food habits to have a sustainable long-standing relationship. If your boyfriend is a non-veg and you are a veggie, then it will always be a conflicting situation when you select the menu, whether at a restaurant or be at home.
 1. What is your professional ambition?
Organized people will have professional goals. They have precise calculations about their life. They will have better plans to achieve their career objectives. It is better to maintain a relationship with somebody who is better organized in their life.
 1. Do you like gambling?
This is a simple question to know the gambling tendency of the person. Gambling for fun is good, but gambling for life is very dangerous.
 1. Do you like to hang around?
In the early stages of your courtship, it will be a delightful experience to hang around with your boyfriend. If he is shy in nature, you can take the initiative by asking this question. He will certainly like to hang around with you.
 1. If your house was on fire, what would be your first thoughts?
It is an easy question to know his priorities when engulfed in an emergency situation. If he is only interested save his personal effects, he is indeed a selfish person. Instead if he gives priority to save human life, pet animals then it shows the right side of his personality.
 1. If you win a lottery what you would do with the money?
An easy going person will find ways to spend all the money for luxury. A serious person with good objectives in life will have calculated movements on how to spend the cash. This is a hypothec question but good one to know him clearly.
 1. Do you love doing charity activities?
People with a kind heart will love to do charity services. If you boyfriend is socially committed, he will love this question.
 1. Do you like traveling?
Most of the people like to travel around the world. But there are different type of travel plans. Some with adventure, some are only interested in visiting historically important places and yet others interested in visiting countries with beautiful beaches. It is a good question indeed to know if his interest is matching with yours.
 1. What do you hate something about yourself?
It is a valuable question to evaluate his personality and confirm that he is also aware of his negative elements in his character. He may regret with you his inability to manage the situation. But it is better to know from your boyfriend so that you can vouch for the situation.
 1. In life if you get a second chance, what would be your preference?
Almost everybody at some stages of their life would have sincerely wished to have a second chance in their life, if they failed to take a right decision at a crucial moment that had just slipped away between cup and lips. It can let you understand how well prepared to grab the next opportunity in life.
These 20 questions may seem to be silly, but each of these questions can help you to analyze the person. His personal plus and negative traits can be easily extracted they way how is responding to these questions. However, make sure to ask these questions very carefully without letting him know that you are asking something very deliberately to evaluate his personality. You can take calculated intervals to put these questions over a period of time and consolidate your opinion about your boyfriend. You may also put a conscious effort by putting you also in the same situation and ask these questions to yourself and get an unbiased answer. You don't have to leave everything to the fate. Calculated movements can bring you long lasting healthy friendship. So make a bold effort to find out the best boyfriend with whom you can have a successful long lasting life.
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Knock-knock joke
related topics
{film, series, show}
{god, call, give}
{language, word, form}
{_USER_@, make, design}
{law, state, case}
{food, make, wine}
{black, white, people}
{line, north, south}
{game, team, player}
The knock-knock joke is a type of joke, probably the best-known format of the pun, and is a time-honoured "call and answer" exercise.
It is a roleplay exercise, with a punster and a recipient of wit.
The standard format has five lines:
The joke refers to the situation where someone knocks on a door and identifies to get somebody who is already inside to open the door, even though there are usually no doors involved when this joke is told. The punster and recipient can also usually see each other during the joke, so there is no actual need for identification.
Distribution and history
Knock-knock jokes are well entrenched in the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Australia, the U.S.A., Canada, South Africa, Philippines and India. In nations such as Brazil and Germany they are practically unknown. In French they begin "Toc-Toc" in Afrikaans and Dutch "Klop-klop", and in Japanese and Korean "Kon-kon". In Spanish, it may be enough for the punchline to rhyme with the response. Knock-knock jokes were in common usage amongst South African school children in the early 1950s but the exact origin of the format remains uncertain.
The following was in circulation in Cape Town in about 1953:[citation needed]
Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Delores who?
Delores my shepherd... (a play on "the Lord is my shepherd")
In France, the punchline is almost always a pun on the title of a popular song, allowing the last answer to be sung :
Toc Toc! (Knock knock!)
Qui est là? (Who's there?)
Sheila qui? (Sheila who?)
Sheila lutte finale.... (a pun on "c'est la lutte finale" (It's the final struggle), the opening line of The Internationale)
A popular German riddle precludes the usual trend of including a pun in the answer, instead offering a more literal line: "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Boo!" "Boo who?" "I do not know anyone by that name. Unless you wish to startle me with the word "Boo", in which case you are quite unfruitful. I see no reason to open the door in either case".
In Shakespeare's play Macbeth a comic relief character delivers a 20 line monologue and satire that makes reference to events of that time. It follows the pattern of "knock knock who's there?" but it is done entirely by the character and knocks from off stage. The character is a hung over porter (in most performances drunk, but in the original he was hung over) who pretends he is the porter to the gates of hell welcoming sinners of different professions:
(Macbeth ActII, sciii)
Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' th' name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty. Come in time, have napkins enough about you, here you'll sweat for 't.
(this is a joke referring to a price drop in crops, as well as a joke about the heat in hell)
(this passage is believed to be a reference to a trial of the Jesuits who were charged with equivocation speaking unclearly or speaking with double meaning)
Knock, knock, knock! Who's there? Faith, here's an English tailor come hither for stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor. Here you may roast your goose.
(the tailor is accused of stealing cloth while making breeches, this is a joke about a fashion trend in Shakespearian times, also a pun for roasting the tailor's iron with the heat of hell)
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text:
Onion Smart Plant Monitor Soil Moisture, Light, Nutrient Meter
Smart Bluetooth Onion Monitor/Analyzer - Moisture, Temperature, Light and Soil Nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potash Levels) - for the perfect plant!
Not ensuring ideal soil fertility levels, light, temperature and moisture could be affecting the optimal growth of your Onion plant affecting your yield and taste. This powerful bluetooth Onion monitor allows you to easily and conveniently measure temperature, sunlight, soil moisture and soil fertility.
The device pairs to our app on your cellular phone (iphone or Android) which is set for optimal Onion Plant growing conditions and will let you know what your readings are and where you are in relation to optimal moisture, fertility, sunlight and temperature for your Onion plant. This way you can take action to get to optimal growing conditions.
The Onion Bluetooth monitor has the following critical features:
- Easily pairs to your iPhone or Android device with our App
- Set app to monitor for Onion Plants
- Soil Fertility: Determines soil nutrient content and analyzes for optimal levels
- Sunlight Sensor: Read and analyze sunlight intensity, measurable up to 100,000 Lux
- Soil moisture Detector: Accurately detect water content of soil to know whether watering is necessary
- Temperature Sensor: Accurate temperature sensor helps you to monitor and analyze temperature
- App database contains all the information for your Onion plant to ensure you can accurately benchmark and analyze your data readings and know what action to take
- 1 x Onion Plant Monitor
- 1 x Instruction Manual
- 1 x Access code for App
Just click add to cart above to order your Bluetooth Smart Onion Plant Monitor.
We ship free to U.S. Customers.


The 'Sea Wasp' will be a potent threat to terrorists and their underwater bombs | Fox News
The sea wasp, a kind of jellyfish, can kill people in as little as three minutes by wrapping them in ten-foot-long tentacles and inflicting stings all over the body, injecting them with a potent and extremely painful venom.
Saab has developed technology named after this terrifying creature in the form of a robot that will be able to discover and tackle bombs hidden underwater off U.S. shores and near American vessels.
To test its Sea Wasp technology, Saab has partnered with the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office. The U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Divers Group 2, the FBI Counter-IED Section, and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Divisions Counter-Terrorist Operations Maritime Response Unit will all be testing the Sea Wasp over the next 10 to 12 months.
Related: Polaris Defense launches new ATV for Special Operations missions
The threat of improvised explosive devices underwater continues to grow. This is a threat not just to U.S. Navy vessels, but also to commercial and civilian ships.
There has been plenty of media coverage about IEDS (improvised explosive devices) used by terrorists and other adversaries on land, but they are also frequently used at sea. Just as there are minefields on land, so are their minefields in the seas, both underwater and on the surface.
By locating and defeating bombs hidden underwater, the Sea Wasp can increase safety for military, commercial and civilian vessels.
Related: Hidden high-tech ocean pods will unleash Naval drones
Currently, Explosive Ordnance Divers (EOD) bravely put themselves at risk to manually dispose of underwater IED threats.
What does it do?
Sea Wasp is what Saab calls a Waterborne Anti-IED Security Platform. Basically, it is a robot that can travel underwater to identify and defeat bombs. And it has been specifically designed to handle the challenging conditions human EOD divers routinely face.
Sea Wasp can help protect civilians near marinas, jetties, harbors and docks as well those out in open water. Harbors and ports are attractive bomb-planting targets. This means a bomb, or bombs, might be placed in confined areas that can be tough for humans and robots to work in.
The tech is designed to tackle the tough conditions in these places, which might be shallow or have tidal currents. It has six thrusters powerful enough to resist 2.5 knot currents and still hover in place to evaluate and then take care of the bomb.
Related: 5 top tactical gifts for Mother's Day
Sea Wasp can also attach itself to structures, like a ships hull, and operate as deep as about 200 feet underwater.
Lightweight, at less than 200 pounds, and small, at about five and a half feet long, the Sea Wasp is easily transportable and can be rapidly deployed from harbor walls, the beach and a range of boats.
IEDs are not one-size-fits-all. By definition, they are improvised and therefore can wildly vary. To handle this, the Sea Wasp comes prepared with all sorts of tools it would need to handle the range of IED form and design.
How does it work?
It only takes two humans from an EOD team to operate Sea Wasp and pilot it from the surface.
The pilots use a control console that can either be onboard the support vessel or in a vehicle on shore. The control is connected by fiber optic tether to the Sea Wasp, which is also how the robot gets its power.
To do its job, Sea Wasp is equipped with state-of-the-art sensors, including wideband sonar, LED lights and video cameras. All of these help provide Sea Wasp, and its operators, the data necessary to defuse bombs. The sensor suite also enables them to work effectively in areas underwater where there is limited visibility.
Related: Australia's $39 billion submarine deal heralds new era of super-subs
To navigate while underwater, Sea Wasp uses high-precision tech, like its onboard Doppler Velocity Log and Internal Measurement.
Using the sensor and navigation suite, Sea Wasp and its pilots find the threat that could be hidden anywhere.
Next, the Sea Wasp leverages its tools and the pilots techniques to evaluate the threat and decide on the best way to dispose of it.
The pilot then uses the Sea Wasps thrusters to lock into position on a ships hull or wherever it needs to be to get the work done.
While this Sea Wasp does not have tentacles like its real-world namesake, it does have a very handy five-function manipulator arm. The arm has a camera attached to it that helps with examining and processing the IED. The arm also carries tools, just like a human would, to neutralize and remove the bomb.
The operator can use the manipulator arm to place a disruptor next to the explosive device.
When its job is done, the Sea Wasp is brought back to the surface where it is recovered by the team. The disruptor is then fired from the surface. It detonates, and the threat is destroyed.
To read more copy this link into a new tab:
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User Interface
So how does this thing work? You'll definitely want to read Todd's guide on how the interface works. There's several commands and settings you can adjust by tapping on multiple pads. Change the tempo, pitch, velocity or even MIDI channel. Click the green button below to automatically teleport to Todd's guide.
Connecting BLE MIDI Devices
OK, so how do we connect BLE MIDI devices to our computer (or mobile device)? On a mac, you can use the Audio MIDI Setup utility. Open the MIDI studio window. Then, double click on the Bluetooth icon to open the Bluetooth Configuration window. From here, you'll see the MIDI device, "Adafruit Bluefruit LE". Click on the connect button to connect your computer to the device. Then, you should be able to use audio software like Ableton, Logic, GarageBand, etc. This guide won't cover how to connect MIDI devices to a particular piece of software. There's tons of other great resources for that!
This guide was first published on Feb 15, 2017. It was last updated on Feb 15, 2017.
This page (Usage ) was last updated on May 13, 2021.
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5 Ways to Prepare Your Home for Winter in Maine
Winter season is upon us. Temperatures are steadily dropping, days are shortening and nights are growing longer. Winter is a remarkable time in Maine. However, without proper preparations, it can be cruel. From winter storms to freezing rain to snow to sleet and so much more…
Here are 5 ways to adequately prepare your home for winter in Maine.
 1. Prevent frozen pipes
All pipes in your home are highly susceptible to freezing in extremely cold weather. Therefore, insulate your water lines with insulation specifically designed for plumbing, to protect your water pipes from getting frozen overnight. Similarly, disconnect any outdoor hoses and drains and completely close all outdoor faucets.
Although, if your pipes get frozen, make sure there is someone who knows how to completely stop water flow to prevent further damage to your home. Contact your plumber or insurance immediately for further information on how to proceed. Be cautious of potential electric shocks in and around standing water.
 1. Thoroughly clean drains and gutters
Blocked drains and gutters are harmful to your home's roofing system due to the possible leaks. As such, it is always helpful to sweep away all the leaves, dirt and twigs from your drainage system as well as your roof. Likewise, pour water through the downspouts to ascertain they are in good working conditions.
 1. Weather-strip your windows and doors
A lot of heat in your home is lost through the cracks and gaps around your doors and windows. Check your home for drafts by holding a lit candle along your doors and windows. If the flame flickers, then you have a draft. Add weather stripping to such doors and windows to seal air leaks in your home.
 1. Ensure your heating system is up and running
Before the winter season begins, it is always best to ensure your heating system is working in optimum conditions. Similarly, schedule a mid-season check-up with your licensed plumber to ensure it continues to work efficiently, minimizes the risk of it emitting deadly carbon monoxide fumes, and saves you money in the long run.
 1. Prepare your lawn
Most lawns are often neglected during winter. For a healthy lawn, ensure your grass is regularly mowed until when it cannot grow anymore. Rake the leaves in your compound as well as the grass clippings to provide the maximum sun exposure of the grass. Also, remember to mulch around your plants and trees to guard them against freezing and exposure to harsh weather.
'Prevention is better than cure.' Take the time to implement these five steps and protect your home from the winter storms, cold rain, snow, sleet, and many other dangerous weather conditions. You will be saving yourself a whole lot of trouble as well as hard-earned money.


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Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Key Facts
Important Quotations Explained
Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics
full title · Jurassic Park
author · Michael Crichton
type of work · Novel
genre · Science fiction, thriller
language · English
time and place written · Late 1980s, United States
date of first publication · 1990
publisher · Alfred A. Knopf
narrator · The narrator is always a single, detached third person voice; generally, the perspective changes several times within a chapter, switching from character to character; the narrator describes everything from the actions and feelings of the individual characters to pertinent background information and personal histories
point of view · The point of view is third person omniscient.
tone · The narrator delivers the story in a dry, almost clinical tone, relating the events that transpire almost as if they are evidence being presented in a trial.
tense · Past tense
setting (time) · 1990
setting (place) · Primarily Costa Rica and Isla Nublar, a small island off of Costa Rica; several scenes take place in various locations across the United States
protagonist · Primarily Grant, though certain scenes focus on the events that befall Tim
major conflict · Though Malcolm and others repeatedly warn Hammond that the park is unsafe, his combination of greed and obsessive vision cause him to refuse to close the park; when the power shuts down, the dinosaur run loose and try to hunt down their creators and former captors
rising action · Nedry jams the computer system, which shuts down the security system, deactivates the electric fences, and stalls the automated touring cars
climax · The tyrannosaurus, the largest dinosaur in the park, attacks the Land Rover in which Hammond's grandchildren are riding
falling action · Regis and Malcolm run from their cars; Grant and the kids are forced to flee into the park; Arnold restores the computer network
themes · The potential dangers of technology
motifs · Similarities between birds and dinosaurs; chaos theory
symbols · The hupia
foreshadowing · The three-toed lizard that attacks Tina at the novel's opening has all of the descriptive features of a young velociraptor, the same species seen sneaking onto the supply ship
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Physical Adjustments in Yoga Class
Some of us have been in a yoga class and received physical adjustment and felt good. Some of us have been in the same situation and it felt bad. It seems like the same adjustment can bring different results. Why does the touch feel different? Is there different kind of touch?
Photo by Mark Stephens
Before going into the various types of touch, let's remember that the purpose of any adjustment, is to bring students into awareness of their own alignment, to come into the pose that suits their body, not into a "perfect posture". The moment that physical adjustment is conducted, the teacher's energy comes together with the student's energy. This is an intimate moment, so make sure you agree for it.
It is important to express your feeling during the class. A yoga class is a safe space where your needs are respected. Please say it to your teacher if you don't want to receive adjustments. Saying no to physical adjustment does not mean that you are a worse student or that you don't go deeper into your poses.
In the context of an asana class, the touch can be divided in nine different categories:
1. Investigative Touch
This is a touch to check your muscle activation. For example a pat on your quadriceps to make sure you engage it during Tadasana (Mountain Pose).
2. Directive Touch
This touch guides the particular part of a body to move to a direction. For example is guiding the shoulders to be open, and to open the chest during Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose)
3. Adjusting Touch
This is a touch that is firm and a complete contact to student's body to to adjust the pose. For example, rotating student's upper arm externally in Extended Side Angle
4. Alerting Touch
This touch is to alert student of a particular part of their body. For example touching the fingers in High Mountain to engage the finger tips.
5. Loving Touch
This is for example a pat on the back, which is supportive to give encouragement to student after a challenge.
6. Stabilizing Touch
This touch aims to stabilize student's body in poses that need balance. For example a firm hand on top of the upper hip in Three Legged Dog. This touch would need to use the whole hand and typically is a firm touch.
7. Invasive Touch
This is improper and unethical touch that purposely touch sexual part of the body, or other sensitive parts such the groins, belly, buttocks, throat, or face.
8. Random Touch
This is a random touch to random part of the body with no intention of adjusting. This touch is unnecessary and can create confusion.
9. Sensual Touch
This is a touch that meant to be sensual with no intention to improve the posture. Very improper, unnecessary and inappropriate.
We are all different creatures. Some of us have no problems in touching and being touched, and some of us really feel discomfort in being touched or to touch. Make sure you communicate your feelings in your yoga class, and you can get more benefits of the class, feeling safe and secured.
Shades of Yoga Yoga Teacher Training School
Shades of Yoga is a RYT 200 and 300 internationally recognised (Yoga Alliance) yoga teacher training company running year-round yoga teacher training courses in Bali and Costa Rica.


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How do modern fires differ from traditional fires?
While the physics of fire development has not changed over time, the fire environment, or more specifically the single-family home, has evolved. Several factors — including home size, geometry, contents and construction materials — have changed significantly over the past 50 or more years. The average home is significantly larger, contains much more open space, is furnished with synthetic contents, and is constructed out of newer materials that are more energy efficient and value engineered. While many of these changes have produced desirable results, the modern home fire is able to propagate faster, result in an unsurvivable condition sooner, reduce the time to escape and reduce the time to structural failure.
How have the hazards of home fires changed over the past 30 years?
Home fires are much more hazardous to occupants and firefighters. Our research shows that home occupants would have significantly less time to escape today than 50 years ago. The number of residential fires has decreased significantly, by more than half, but that does not reduce the hazard should a fire occur.
The conditions that firefighters are going to be faced with today and into the future have been significantly impacted by the ever-changing fire environment. As society continues to make changes to building materials as a result of the desire to be environmentally conscious and to increase profit, the fire environment is going to continue to change. And if the current trends in the fire environment continue, it will not be in favor of firefighter safety. Therefore, it is important that firefighters study this new fire environment and its impact on their safety and tactics. The first component of this is understanding that the conditions they are arriving to are very different than they were several generations ago. The fire environment can change rapidly due to under-ventilated fire conditions, and floor systems can collapse quickly and with little warning. Additionally, operating conditions need to be constantly monitored to understand the impact of the tactics used and the potential need to change them. Ultimately, if the fire environment has changed, tactics need to change or be reevaluated to have the greatest opportunity to be most effective on today's fires.VIEW THIS EXPERT'S LINKEDIN PROFILE


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Objectives: Complex diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), present dilemmas over choice of outcome measures. Using a battery of instruments to capture the impact of different impairments or activity limitations experienced does not provide assessment of the wider impact on quality of life (QoL). This paper describes the development and testing of a new instrument to measure QoL in systemic lupus erythematosus (L-QoL).
Methods: The development combines theoretical strengths of the needs-based QoL model with statistical and diagnostic powers of the Rasch model. Content was derived from in-depth interviews with relevant patients. Cognitive debriefing interviews assessed face and content validity. Rasch analysis was applied to data from an initial postal survey to remove misfitting items. A second postal survey assessed scaling properties, reliability, internal consistency and validity.
Results: A 55-item questionnaire was derived from interview transcripts. Cognitive debriefing confirmed acceptability. Rasch analysis of postal survey data (n = 95) removed misfitting items. A second postal survey (n = 93), produced a 25-item version with good item fit and stability, excellent test–retest reliability (0.92), internal consistency (0.92) and strict unidimensionality.
Conclusions: It is concluded that the L-QoL should prove a valuable instrument for assessing patient-based outcome in clinical trials and practice.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Competing interests: None.
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center's RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.


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Energy in Agriculture Resources
Energy in Agriculture Program - Food and Fiber Processing Technologies
Read about California food and fiber processing facilities participating in research, development, and demonstration projects to advance the adoption of energy and resource efficient technologies.
PROCESS ENERGY VIDEOS
Food Processing Video:Steam System Best Practices are used to optimize system performance. Basic management principles and maintenance proceedures are described that will enhance steam system efficiencies.
- California's Food Processing Industry Energy Efficiency Initiative: Adoption of Industrial Best Practices, January 2008, CEC Publication _TAG_-_PHONE_, posted: January 31, 2008. (PDF file, 35 pgs., 2.3 MB
RESEARCH AND DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS
- Fetzer Case Study # 1 - Heat Exchange System Improvement Saves Energy and Improves Production at a Winery.
- Fetzer Case Study # 2 - Controls Upgrade at a Winery Saves Energy and Increases Equipment Life.
Electricity Peak Load Reduction
- Pacific Coast Producers - tomato-processing company moves facility location to upgrade equipment, increase production, improve efficiency, and be closer to where the tomatoes are grown.
Pacific Coast Producers - Measurement and Verification Report, Energy Commission publication # CEC-_PHONE_, March 2003. (PDF file, 19 pages, 702 kilobytes)
- Campbell Soup Company - Waste Heat Driven Turbines
- Valley Fig Growers - Variable Speed Controlled Refrigeration System
Benchmarking, Power Quality & Market Studies
- Technology Roadmap: Energy Efficiency in California's Food Industry - The California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research formed a Food Industry Advisory Council of industry and technology experts. This group prioritized research that would help the industry meet their objectives, and developed a vision and plan for the future. Their findings, bolstered by input from public forums, are presented in this Roadmap, along with recommendations for the future.
- Dynamic Characterization of Process Power Quality for the California Food Processing Industry - In-line-monitoring systems were installed to collect real time performance data from plant equipment while the food production was in process. Using this monitoring data, plant process equipment schematics and historical plant process performance data, overall process sensitivities to different power quality disturbances were defined.
- California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research Survey on Energy Management in the Food Industry


What will happen? If the astronaut shoots at his companion in space.
Space has its secrets. We all know that there is no gravity in space. The question is what will happen if there is a dispute between the astronauts and if an astronaut fires a revolver at his companion standing nearby. Will the revolver's bullet reach the nearest target. Will blood come out of the astronaut's body after being shot. Will the astronaut die. Let's try to find answers to all the questions.
astronaut in space
Can a gun be fired in space like the ground?
Graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and Mukul Kant, who is researching the mysteries of nature, says that to fire any bullet or bullet, gunpowder or propellant has to be set on fire, due to which with the help of a blast The bullet comes out of the gun very fast. And to the fire we need oxygen, but there is no oxygen in the space. In such a situation, fire cannot happen. If someone presses the trigger of the gun, the miss will be fired.
Is there an option to fire with a gun in space?
But it is not that space cannot be fired. Mukul Kant explains that with the help of artificial oxidizers, the gunpowder can be set on fire and the bullet can be shot. Now if someone shoots a bullet with a gun in space, then because of this, it will know what the effects will be.
What will sound if shot in space?
If we shoot with a gun on earth, as soon as the bullet comes out of the gun then a heavy sound is produced. But due to the vacuum present in the space, there will be no sound on gunshot because the sound waves need some medium to travel and the sound waves in the vacuum cannot travel and due to this without any sound. The bullet will exit the gun.
What will happen if a shotgun blows in space?
When a gun is fired, it causes a shock to the back, which is called the recoiling of the gun. According to physics, due to newton's action-reaction rules and conservation of linear momentum, a backward force is applied when the bullet comes out of the gun. Due to momentum and mass, that backward force is very low, so that we do not have to push far and if we talk about space, then these rules also apply there but due to lack of gravity, we will start swimming backward and our displacement too. It could be a little more. According to a calculation, if the bullet comes out of the gun at a speed of 1000 m / s, the speed of the rear shock due to the backward force will be only a few centimeters/second.
How far will the bullet fired in space go?
Now a very interesting thing. When we shoot at the earth, due to gravity and air friction, it gets some external forces due to which its speed decreases after some time and it stops after traveling a fixed distance.
But if we talk about space, then there is neither gravity nor air which can put external force on the bullet and stop it. Also, due to the expansion of the universe, that is, due to the expansion of the universe, it will take several million light-years time for the bullet to go from one place to another. To make it simple and simple, the bullet will travel for infinite time and will not stop until an asteroid or a planet comes in its way.


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Alexander Spotswood (_PHONE_) was the lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722. The nominal governor, George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, never visited the colony, leaving Spotswood in control as one of the longest acting governors of the colonial period. Under his direction, the Tobacco Act of 1713 was passed, requiring the inspection of all tobacco intended for export and the destruction of tobacco not meeting government standards.
Like the other Crown-appointed governors to Virginia, Spotswood spent his term in office wrestling with the wealthy planters that dominated the House of Burgesses for political control of the colony. He attempted to court small farmers by proposing measures that would have forced large planters to put portions of their uncultivated land onto the market. But his proposal was defeated. He then took the opposite course and attempted to raise the property requirement for voting. Members of the House of Burgesses used this to portray him as an enemy of representative government. Spotswood was forced to resign in 1722.


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- Special Sections
- Public Notices
This summer Elizabethtown Community and Technical College is offering a unique opportunity for kids 9-14 to learn about latitude/longitude, data collection, and buried treasure. Using a handheld GPS system, students will go to various sites and pinpoint the location of a hidden "cache." Additionally, they will learn how to use a compass, hide a cache, place/track travel bugs (these are not bees or flies!) and how to log onto a computer to find geospatial data about their area. The camp instruction will come from ECTC Professor Jim Vail, Lisa Deavers, Recreation supervisor for Barren River State Park, and Torey Earle, 4-H Agent at Large for Science, Engineering and Technology, University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service College of Engineering, Extended Campus Programs. This course introduces students to absolute location, mapmaking, marking and finding GPS waypoints, data collection, and computer-based GIS data search. It is based, in part, on curriculum developed by 4H titled Exploring Spaces, Going Places. The five-day camp will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., July 28-Aug. 1, at ECTC in the Regional Postsecondary Education Center. Field trips are included in the camp. For information or to enroll in the camp, call the Community and Economic Development Center at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College at _PHONE_.


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Dr. Merryweather and Dr. Mortensen recently teamed up to present a webinar entitled "OpenSim as a Platform for Improving Quantitative Ergonomic Assessments". This was presented as part of the NIOSH ERC Ergonomics Webinar Series.
The webinar provided a brief overview of OpenSim as a modeling platform to improve ergonomic risk assessment. Dr. Merryweather and Dr. Mortensen demonstrated how OpenSim agrees with other analytical methods, specifically RULA, and present scenarios where OpenSim can be used to evaluate task level risk, including how to account for worker specific risk factors (i.e. previous injury, muscle weakness and fatigue) in conjunction with other physical risk factors (i.e. posture, force, repetition, duration). Finally, a summary of some limitations and future work using OpenSim for ergonomic risk assessment was provided.


One Action Collection Rule
Adams Stirling PLC
California has a "One-Action Rule" (sometimes referred to as "Single-Action Rule") which requires that the holder of a claim secured by real property proceed against the property first before pursuing the debtor personally. (Code Civ. Proc. §726(a).) When an association records a lien it becomes the holder of a claim secured by real property but there is an express waiver of the "one-action rule" (also known as "the security first rule) in the Davis-Stirling Act. (Civ. Code §5700(b).) Accordingly, an association can pursue the debtor (homeowner) personally even if it has recorded an assessment lien.
Selecting a Remedy. There are three legal remedies for collecting a debt:
 1. foreclose nonjudicially (a trustee's sale),
 2. foreclose judicially, or
 3. sue the homeowner for a money judgment
Because of the exception described above, associations can start more than one collection effort. Even so, the board must ultimately select one remedy. For example, associations can lien a unit and initiate foreclosure and simultaneously file a lawsuit to recover unpaid assessments. (Civ. Code §5720(b).) However, at some point the association must select its remedy. If the foreclosure results in a sale, the association must dismiss its lawsuit. Alternatively, if the lawsuit results in a judgment, the association must stop the foreclosure.
Judicial Foreclosure. If the association wants to foreclose but also wants a deficiency judgment, it must pursue judicial foreclosure rather than nonjudicial foreclosure. However, a deficiency judgment may have no value if it is uncollectable. Boards should consult with legal counsel on the best course to follow.
Adams Stirling PLC


Handcrafted One of a Kind Ammonite Fossil pendant including an Aquamarine, and Moonstone crystal. The Ammonite fossil carries ancient knowledge and symbolizes the cosmos with its natural Fibonacci spiral shape.
-Comes with leather cord.
-Size: 3in x 2in
*Fractal Fossilz are encased in quality resin leaving a glossy shine. Do not expose to extreme heat to ensure longevity.
**Free re-lacquer upon request.
Fractal Fossil Pendant~ Aquamarine/Moonstone
$130.00 Regular Price
$100.00Sale Price
 - Ammonites are ancient Cephalopods who became extinct along with the dinosaurs at the close of the Cretaceous period some 65 million years ago. Their existence on Earth lasted around 330 million years and their hard shells are now found as fossils throughout the Earth. Noted by humankind since Biblical times, they were first called "Ammon's Stones" due to their resemblance to the ram's horns of Ammon, the ancient Egyptian God of Life and Procreation.
 A very powerful earth healing fossil, the Ammonite clears negative energies. Think of the Ammonite spirals as a filter, drawing in these dense energies which are no longer needed, moving them through the spirals and releasing them as fresh, positive, loving life force energies. Ammonites have absorbed cosmic energy over eons of time and help to stimulate the life force energy within. Its spiral shape symbolizing continual change and evolution.
 This Fractal Fossil includes an Aquamarine and Moonstone gemstone. Aquamarine resonates to the energy of the ocean, helping the holder to connect with the nature spirits of the sea. It is a stone of Courage and Protection. Used often with the Throat Chakra, Aquamarine can be used to promote verbal self-expression. It is often used to enhance spiritual communication and clear communication blocks.
 Moonstone is associated with the Moon and a helpful stone for those who seek to embrace the Goddess within. A stone of intuition and insight, Moonstone helps to connect to all of the different cycles one experiences in life. Many people find Moonstone to be very soothing and use it to help relieve stress and balance the emotional body.


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I am a newbie to AX, and have some questions regarding to AX4.0 data decimal places storage.
As I know my company has the following AX4.0 decimal places setting:
- Amount: 2 decimal places
- Quantity: 4 decimal places
Here are my questions:
1) How many decimal places are exactly stored in AX4.0 DB in our case?
2) Why >2 decimal places values found in Excel (ver 2003) sum up ledger amount (expect to be "$0"), which exported from General Ledger Module, Ledger Transaction List" text report"? Total details as follow:
- Foreign Ledger Amount -$0.0000000314298063130
- Local Ledger Amount -$0.00000001198613517814
AX2012 R2 Newbie,Arqxlep
1) u can provide no of decimals in EDT property > NoOfDecimals, same is stored in DB too.
2) Question nt clear.... U r having 18decimal places in AX? Excel?
1) Will let u know tmr
2) We export a text file from AX40 transaction ledger list, and found 2 decimal places only in each ledger. But when opening the file in excel and sum up all the ledgers amount, the sum amount have > 2 decimal place come out.
That is what we not understand... Our setting of AX & Excel are as follow:
- AX: 2 dec places in Amount
- Excel: General


In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Deadlock", the USS Voyager is duplicated by an anomaly. Which one of the Voyagers is the original and which one is the duplicate? Or are they both duplicates? Or are they both originals?
Both ships are identical. In the script, it's made explictly clear that a "spatial scission" has caused the ships to diverge by identically duplicating each particle of matter. Since both occupy the same space (albeit separated by a spacial rift), it follows that there is no practical way to identify which is the original.
I've edited for brevity and clarity:
TORRES 2: So I ran a multispectral analysis on the subspace turbulence. It was more than just turbulence. It was some kind of divergence field. And the moment we passed through it, all of our sensor readings doubled. Mass, energy output, bio-signatures, everything. Every particle of matter on this ship seems to have been duplicated in that instant.
JANEWAY 2: Quantum theorists at Kent State University ran an experiment in which a single particle of matter was duplicated using a divergence of subspace fields, a spatial scission.
CHAKOTAY 2: If the same forces were at work inside the plasma cloud, they may have duplicated every particle of matter on Voyager.
 - 2
 I'd rather say that neither of them are the original. The original particles were replaced by their two duplicates. – Lightness Races in Orbit Aug 9 '14 at 22:54
 - _USER_ - It's not made clear in the script whether the particles are both duplicated (e.g. and the original destroyed) or whether one is overlayed onto the other. I'd contend that since they both occupy the same phase space, it's a distinction without a difference. – Valorum Aug 10 '14 at 20:09
 - I would have to agree. – Lightness Races in Orbit Aug 10 '14 at 23:27
I have a different take....
When Janeway describes the ships separation and explains the experiment at Kent State, she states that the matter was duplicated but not the anti-matter. So the original ship would have the anti-matter.
*JANEWAY 2: Matter. But not antimatter.
KIM 2: Captain?
JANEWAY 2: In that Kent State experiment, they were able to duplicate normal matter, but when they tried to duplicate antimatter particles, the experiment failed.
TORRES 2: So the antimatter on the ships wasn't duplicated. Both engines have been trying to draw power from a single source of antimatter.*
And if you recall in the episode the ship that was torn apart was having problems because it appears it didn't have anti-matter flowing in the warp drive while the original ship was bombarding the it's warp drive with the anti-protons. The "healthy" ship for lack of a better term even offered to split it's anti-matter with the other ship, begging the question how could healthy Janeway offer something she was splitting? So one might think the healthy ship was the original one and the one that was torn apart was the duplicate.
Janeway also said the experiment didn't work for long and the two ships couldn't survive in the same space.
*JANEWAY 2: By my estimates, our antimatter supply will run out in less than half an hour.
JANEWAY: The attempt to merge our ships is throwing us further out of phase. The quantum cohesion on both Voyagers is breaking down.
JANEWAY 2: Just like original Kent State experiment. The duplicate atoms couldn't occupy the same point in space time for very long before*
The cohesion issue does does not direct us as to which would survive but just that they couldn't survive in the same space. But why wouldn't they move one of the particles in the experiment into a different space so they could both survive? Why would healthy Janeway know about the anti-matter status but not unhealthy Janeway? This leads us to believe that again the original healthy Janeway has to be original. And one would think that moving the ships further out of phase would help them occupy the same space better.
*JANEWAY 2: We've been boarded. The Vidiians are on the verge of taking over our ship. Are they on yours?
JANEWAY [on viewscreen]: No. We don't think they can detect our ship. Captain, we can have a security detachment cross the spatial rift and board your ship within five minutes.*
The Vidiians could not see the unhealthy one but could see the healthy one. So therefore it would seem that the original ship is the healthy one since they are in phase and more easily discernable and the unhealthy voyager ship is invisible to the Vidiians. This is further evidence of the healthy ship being the original one.
I would argue that the original ship was the healthy one. It acted faster, had access to the anti-matter, the vidiians could see it, and wasn't losing cohesion in the same way the unhealthy one was. What I don't understand is how the unhealthy one was able to fly off unscathed. Hmmm...
I am going to open a new question(s) about this episode any as I have several that aren't really related to this one.
I think it's a plot hole that allows the unhealthy ship to leave so easily and freely at the end.
 - 1
 The unhealthy one probably flew off on impulse. Not that it's going to get far. – Joshua Nov 2 '18 at 16:09
Technically both are the same ship. "Every particle of matter was duplicated", according to Memory Alpha. The event sounds similar to what a transporter does, more specifically, what happened to William and Thomas Riker.
"This isn't really my ship and you're not really my captain and yet you are and there's no difference. But I know there's a difference. Or is there? It's all a little weird." "Mr. Kim, we're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job."
 - Kim and Janeway
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and disagree. The Voyager at the beginning of the ep is being bombarded with the proton bursts--the unhealthy ship. "Unhealthy" Kes accidentally crosses the rift to the healthy Voyager. At the end of the ep, the healthy ship is destroyed so we're "following" the same ship we started with. To me this suggests that the unhealthy ship is the original.
Now...in a later season we get a twist on this. Voyager encounters "the silver blood " which duplicates the crew. In a later episode, we witness the crew's bodies breaking down--because they're the duplicates that left the demon planet. The original Voyager wanders by after the duplicate ship "reliquifies."
I know this question is old, but I was so engrossed I feel compelled to give my opinion on the matter for any who google this in the future.
Both are Voyager.
It is explained what had occurred was the duplication of all matter within contact to Voyager. This is not the case of a cell splitting that leaves the original behind and a 'new' clone of itself next to it. This is a case of the molecules diverting from a singular space. Both Voyagers are the Original, by all accounts.
Take for example the Parallel Universe Theory.
It states that every action or inaction creates from itself an entirely new universe that diverts from another. Whether you chose A or B or C, all three occur and are valid extensions of the timeline originating from before a decision was enacted. The Individual you might meet by crossing to a Parallel Universe is you. Both gain separate consciousnesses when their universes split, but both are exact continuations of the singular entity all three once were.
You and your counterpart are both duplicates and yet, the Originals.
While both Voyagers held different power reserves - The Undamaged Voyager notably retaining a far superior power reserve - this is simply due to the 'Pristine' Voyager's use of Proton Bursts. The act of doing so began to damage the Second Voyager seemingly out of nowhere, catching them by surprise and halting their advances towards doing the same. The system and structural damage occurring forced them to attempt to compensate, using up much more power while systems began to fail and break down under the stress.
Both Voyagers were siphoning off a singular reserve of Anti-Matter, the Pristine Voyager simply had larger power reserves left to keep it operational.
In the end you could say the Original Voyager was both destroyed and saved. Both occupied the same space, it's just one overlapped the other. The one on the top layer was the one that was invaded.
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