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r.mask - Creates a MASK for limiting raster operation.
raster, mask, null data, no-data
r.mask --help
r.mask [-ir] [raster=name] [maskcats=string] [vector=name] [layer=string] [cats=range] [where=sql_query] [--overwrite] [--help] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--ui]
Create inverse mask
Remove existing mask (overrides other options)
Allow output files to overwrite existing files
Print usage summary
Verbose module output
Quiet module output
Force launching GUI dialog
Name of raster map to use as mask
Raster values to use for mask
Format: 1 2 3 thru 7 *
Default: *
Name of vector map to use as mask
Or data source for direct OGR access
Layer number or name (vector)
Default: 1
Category values (vector)
Example: 1,3,7-9,13
WHERE conditions of SQL statement without 'where' keyword (vector)
Example: income < 1000 and population >= 10000
Table of contents
r.mask - Facilitates creation of a raster "MASK" map to control raster operations.
The MASK is only applied when reading an existing GRASS raster map, for example when used in a module as an input map. The MASK will block out certain areas of a raster map from analysis and/or display, by "hiding" them from sight of other GRASS modules. Data falling within the boundaries of the MASK can be modified and operated upon by other GRASS raster modules; data falling outside the MASK is treated as if it were NULL.
Because the MASK is actually only a reclass map named "MASK", it can be copied, renamed, removed, and used in analyses, just like other GRASS raster map layers. The user should be aware that a MASK remains in place until a user renames it to something other than "MASK", or removes it using "r.mask -r" or g.remove.
Grid cells in the MASK map containing 0 or NULL will replace data with NULL, while cells containing other values will allow data to pass through unaltered.
To restore raster operations to normal (i.e., all cells of the current region), remove the MASK file by setting the -r remove MASK flag. In this case, a dummy value must also be given for the input parameter. A MASK also can be removed by using g.remove or by renaming it to any other name with g.rename.
The above method for specifying a "mask" may seem counterintuitive. Areas inside the MASK are not hidden; areas outside the MASK will be ignored until the MASK file is removed.
The MASK is read as an integer map. If MASK is actually a floating-point map, the values will be converted to integers using the map's quantisation rules (this defaults to round-to-nearest, but can be changed with r.quant).
r.mask uses r.reclass to create a reclassification of an existing raster map and name it MASK. A reclass map takes up less space, but is affected by any changes to the underlying map from which it was created. The user can select category values from the input raster to use in the MASK with the maskcats parameter; if r.mask is run from the command line, the category values listed in maskcats must be quoted (see example below).
Somewhat similar program functions to those performed by r.mask can be done using r.mapcalc, g.region, and other commands.
The examples are based on the North Carolina sample dataset.
Create a raster mask, for contraining the calculation of univariate statistics of the elevation values for "lakes":
# set computation region to lakes raster map
g.region raster=lakes -p
# use lakes as MASK
r.mask raster=lakes
# get statistics for elevation pixels of lakes:
r.univar elevation
Remove the raster mask ("MASK" map) with the -r flag:
r.mask -r
Creating a mask from selected categories in the North Carolina 'geology_30m' raster map:
g.region raster=geology_30m -p
r.category geology_30m
d.mon wx0
d.rast geology_30m
r.mask raster=geology_30m maskcats="217 thru 720"
d.mon wx0
d.rast geology_30m
g.region, r.mapcalc, r.reclass, g.remove, g.rename
Michael Barton, Arizona State University
Available at: r.mask source code (history)
© 2003-2021 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS Reference Manual


text:
The Cult of the Chronogram in 18th Century Bohemia
Tamara Ayrapetova and Ksenia Larionova
Villamarin M. Alejandro
The present paper proposes the application of Semiotic Engineering theory to Content Management Systems (CMS) focusing on the analysis of how the use of different ontologies can affect the user's efficiency when performing tasks in a CMS. The analysis is performed using the theoretical semiotic model Web-Semiotic Interface Design Evaluation (W-SIDE model).
The Ontology Translation concept is proposed as a practical enhancement for the W-SIDE model. The enhanced model is validated by using a proof of concept based on test cases of a fictitious scenario. The validation process is carried out modifying an open source CMS. The testing of the modified CMS if performed by a volunteer tester that fits both the Ontology Translation concept and the fictitious scenario. Finally, the results of the experiment are critically evaluated establishing limitations, conclusions, and recommendations for future studies.
The project follows the development of a Java Software Tool that extracts data from Flat File (Fixed Length Record Type), CSV (Comma Separated Values), and XLS (Microsoft Excel 97-2003 Worksheet file), apply transformation to those sources, and finally load the data into the end target RDBMS. The software refers to a process known as ETL (Extract Transform and Load). Those kinds of systems are called ETL systems.
The analysis involved research on the theory behind the ETL process as well as the theory behind the various phases of the applied methodology. Also an in-depth look at the design and architecture of the software has been made. To create a complete design needed to be used for the implementation, different techniques and diagrams where used to visualise and refine ideas: UML class diagrams, System Architecture Diagrams, Physical Data Model, and Project Timeline.
The implementation of the project involved the translation of the system architecture into working software using the Extreme Programming Methodology and the Java programming language. A mapping algorithm module and design patterns have been used in the implementation phase. A transformation syntax has been defined to achieve data transformation.
The testing of the software was done in the form of a unit test. A formal test plan was prepared to ensure that the main features of the system worked as defined. An error handling code implementation has been developed to avoid an unexpected crash of the system and to communicate to the user problems or errors.
This study focuses on the differences in power consumption between beam-forming and relaying data transmission methods in a sparse wireless ad-hoc network. These two methods are observed for the same parameters using an identical network topology in a simulation programme that was developed as a part of this study.
This paper introduces the reader the background of sensor networks and exposes the aims of this study and methods used to simulate these networks. Finally, the results of a simulation are analysed and the two methods are compared, followed by the conclusion of the study and the project itself.
Tran Van Ngoc
Barter is the direct exchange of goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Barter faced a number of limitations, and according to Smith (1776), these limitations led to the emergence of money. However, trading with money also exposes traders to the problems of monetary economy such as inflation, deflation, currency de-valuation, and currency exchange fluctuation. According to Statista.com (2015), in 2016, global Business to Customer (B2C) e-commerce sales will reach 1.92 trillion US dollars. On the other hand, online barter solutions are rare on the market. The only attempts to tackle online barter are mobile applications, carried out by small businesses. The market gap is caused by the unsolved inefficiencies of barter. The aim of this thesis is to identify the problems of barter, propose an IT solution for the problems of barter, and finally, produce an artefact, which is the realisation of the proposed IT solution by utilising computer systems and computer algorithms.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Ring of integers
Let $K$ be a finite algebraic field extension of $\mathbb{Q}$. Then the integral closure of ${\mathbb{Z}}$ in $K$, which we denote by $\mathfrak{o}_K$, is called the ring of integers of $K$. Rings of integers are always Dedekind domains with finite class numbers.
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1. When you're locked out of your vehicle, workplace, or home, you find yourself in an unwanted situation. If this incident happens during the daytime, then you would actually pay too much heed to the result. During these hours, one can depend on their associates and relatives for assistance.
2. Whenever you misplace your keys, it indicates 2 things; either your keys are lost or that they were stolen. In both situations, you're at great risk. If the keys are stolen, then the most likely purpose behind the act was a robbery. Likewise, if the lost keys fall into the wrong hands, robbery is an apparent event. Replacement of the lock is the only way to avoid these unwanted events. Failure to do so would result in a great deal of financial and emotional distress. Failure to do so will invite loads of financial and emotional distress. Calling the dc locksmith company will make sure that your locks are replaced within a short time duration.


text:
- Name: ScriptVOX Studio 2.0.22
- File Size: 5.3MB
- Date: 22 Sep 2017
- License: Commercial Software
- Price: $34.95
- Eval: 20 days (fully functional)
- Operating System: Win 7/8/10 Microsoft
- Hardware Requirements:
- Other Requirements:.NET Framework 2.0, SAPI 5.0
ScriptVOX Studio is easy to use text-to-speech software for writers that can open up a new window on your creativity. Writers can import a screenplay, movie script, documentary or even a children's story. ScriptVOX will allow you to quickly add voices and images to your text. You can even save your multimedia presentation and share it with others.
- Hear your story: Rapidly assign a unique voice to all your characters. With the advanced built-in text editor, you can assign parts to various actors and choose how your characters sound. As your script is played back, each actor will automatically speak in the voice you have chosen.
- Unlimited number of voices: Writers can create a custom setting for each actor from a single text-to-speech voice using the powerful TTS-Morphing engine. The software includes a number of basic voice-mods free, or you can tweak the existing ones to create a unique sound for your actors.
- See your story: Writers can add pictures to words or whole blocks of text and create a storyboard for the script. In short time, you can see a story, screenplay or movie script visually come to life.
- Review your story by saving it as an audio file or as a full multimedia video file. Create an presentation or demo of your project.
More info-Screaming Bee, LLC
- Name: Text Speaker 3.24
- File Size: 17.7MB
- Date: 22 Sep 2016
- License: Shareware
- Price: $29.95($39.95 with AT&T Professional Voices Mike & Crystal)
- Eval: 30 days
- Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10, Servers 2003/2012
- Hardware Requirements: 256MB RAM, 200MB Hard Drive Space
- Other Requirements: None.
Text Speaker reads any document aloud in a human voice. Listen to ebooks, reports, email, and web pages on your PC, or turn your documents into MP3 files for your Apple iPod or other audio player. It's the perfect way to proofread. Hearing your documents makes it easy to spot mistakes. You can also create your own audio books. Why strain your eyes reading a book on a screen, when you can relax and have it read to you in a clear, pleasant voice? Don't rent a studio or hire announcers. Turn your script directly into audio files to narrate tutorials and marketing videos. Text Speaker is easy to learn and easy to use. You can open, edit, and save Word, PDF, RTF, and text files directly with Text Speaker. Or, work in any program and hear the selected text by pressing a hotkey. Create Talking Reminders to keep you on schedule. Never miss a loved one's birthday, a meeting, or an appointment again! Text Speaker's interface can be displayed in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian. When you switch interface languages, all menus, button labels, and messages are displayed in your selected language. With the purchase of additional Professional Voices, it can read aloud in any of these languages. The voice is so close to human, you can learn to pronounce foreign speech. Choose between the exciting and amazingly realistic AT&T Natural Voices available at DeskShare. Purchase Text Speaker today for only $39.95 with the professional AT&T Mike and Crystal voices. Or purchase Text Speaker for $29.95 and choose your professional voices. More info-DeskShare


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Wiki Section Extraction
We added a handy way to take a section of a wiki page, create a new task from it, and include this task where the section was. This is helpful to quickly decompose a requirements document stored in a wiki page or a task wiki into a series of tasks.
When you mouseover a section header "Extract" link appears on the right.
Click this link to open section extraction dialog very similar to task creation dialog.
Section header will automatically become task description and section contents will go into the task wiki field.
After you click save new task will be created and section will become task inclusion.


What is ubd.exe?
The genuine ubd.exe file is a software component of iCloud by Apple.
Ubd.exe is an executable file that belongs to Apple iCloud for Windows, a program that enables users to upload data from their Windows-based PCs to Apple servers. This is an essential process for Apple iCloud and should not be disabled. iCloud is a cloud storage service that offers users online storage space to for data such as documents, photos, and music. The data is kept on remote servers and can be accessed by any authorized iOS, Macintosh or Windows device, with the ability to share and send data to other users, and to old data if the Apple device is lost or stolen. Apple Inc. is an American company that develops consumer electronics, computer software, as well as online services. The company is known for its smartphones, tablet computers, personal computers, media players and smartwatches. Apple develops the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, as well as several dozen productivity suites. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in 1976, to develop and sell personal computers. The company is currently based in Cupertino, California, USA.
UBD stands for Universal Bridge for Desktops
The.exe extension on a filename indicates an executable file. Executable files may, in some cases, harm your computer. Therefore, please read below to decide for yourself whether the ubd.exe on your computer is a Trojan that you should remove, or whether it is a file belonging to the Windows operating system or to a trusted application.
Click to Run a Free Scan for ubd.exe related errors
Ubd.exe file information
Windows Task Manager with ubd
Ubd.exe process in Windows Task Manager
The process belongs to software iCloud or Apple by Apple (
Description: Ubd.exe is not essential for Windows and will often cause problems. Ubd.exe is located in a subfolder of "C:\Program Files\Common Files". The file size on Windows 10/8/7/XP is 59,240 bytes.
There is no information about the author of the file. It is certified by a trustworthy company. The application starts when Windows starts (see Registry key: Run, MACHINE\Run). The ubd.exe file is not a Windows system file. The ubd.exe file is a Verisign signed file. The program is not visible. The process can be removed using the Control Panel's Add\Remove programs applet. Ubd.exe is able to monitor applications. Therefore the technical security rating is 22% dangerous, however you should also read the user reviews.
Uninstalling this variant: If you have any problems with ubd.exe, you can also visit the [1][2] website or uninstall the program using the Control Panel ⇒ Uninstall a ProgramApple or iCloud.
Recommended: Identify ubd.exe related errors
Important: Some malware camouflages itself as ubd.exe. Therefore, you should check the ubd.exe process on your PC to see if it is a threat. We recommend Security Task Manager for verifying your computer's security. This was one of the Top Download Picks of The Washington Post and PC World.
User Comments
Ein ungefährliches iTunes-Prozesschen. Beenden hilft bei Problemen mit Software von Apple.
Summary: Average user rating of ubd.exe: based on 1 vote with 1 user comment. One user thinks it's neither essential nor dangerous.
Do you have additional information? Help other users!
What do you know about ubd.exe:
How would you rate it:
Link for more info:
Your Name:
Best practices for resolving ubd issues
A clean and tidy computer is the key requirement for avoiding problems with ubd. This means running a scan for malware, cleaning your hard drive using cleanmgr and sfc /scannow, uninstalling programs that you no longer need, checking for Autostart programs (using msconfig) and enabling Windows' Automatic Update. Always remember to perform periodic backups, or at least to set restore points.
Other processes
ubd.exe [all]


text:
This book provides an introduction to classical soil mechanics and foundation engineering, and applies these principles to agricultural engineering situations. Theoretical design formulae are given, plus tables and graphs dealing with bearing capacity factors, wall pressure factors, soil cutting numbers and soil mechanical properties. Many example problems of design and analysis are solved in the text, and there are unsolved problems given for each chapter.
The text begins with descriptions of soil origins and classification systems, including agricultural classification schemes, and then introduces classical concepts of soil strength and strength measurement techniques in the laboratory and in the field. Soil mechanics is applied to the design of shallow foundations, and the design formulae as well as tables of bearing capacity factors for design use are provided. New research and design findings in the specialized area of tall and heavy farm silos are also given, in addition to deep pile foundation design for heavy structures on very soft soils. Water flow in soils is treated, together with stability of ditch bank slopes and small earth dams, design of retaining walls and pressure pressures in bins and silos, soil erosion and protection methods, soil cutting and tillage design methods, soil compaction analysis, the use of geotextiles and problems of soil freezing.
The book is directed primarily at professional university students in Agricultural Engineering, but will also be of interest to scientists working in other engineering branches, landscape architecture, soil physics and the like.
- © Elsevier Science 1989
- 1st September 1989
- Elsevier Science
- eBook ISBN:
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Macdonald College of McGill University, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada


text:
The demand for food in the UK
The changing demand for food in the UK
Seasonal food refers to the times of the year when the harvest or the flavour of a given type of food is at its peak. This is usually the time when the item is harvested. Before supermarkets, most food eaten in the UK was sourced in the UK and seasonal. Fruit and vegetables were available according to the season. For example, during the summer months, lettuce and strawberries were widely available, whereas, during the winter, parsnips and cabbage were sold. Food was also preserved by being bottled, frozen and pickled.
Today, we are used to enjoying seasonal fruit and vegetables throughout the year. However, because some food cannot be grown throughout the year in the UK, it has to be imported from other countries, along with food that is not native to the UK, such as avocado and mango. Therefore, there has been an increase in food being imported into the UK.
Even seasonal fruits and vegetables are imported from other countries. It can be cheaper for food to be grown in low-income countries and transported to the UK, despite the increased food miles. Forty-five per cent of the UK's food was imported in 2019.
Demand for non-seasonal products has brought challenges and benefits for low-income countries (LICs) such as Kenya and the Caribbean.
The main benefits are:
The challenges associated with the growth in demand for out-of-season fruit and vegetables include:
There has been an increasing demand for organic food in the UK. Organic food is produced without chemicals such as fertilisers and pesticides. Organic produce includes meat, fruit and vegetables.
Organic farmers operate without chemical pesticides by using natural predators to consume pests such as ladybirds eating blackflies. Crops are rotated to maintain nutrients. Also, natural fertilisers are used. To combat weeds, mechanical weeders are used instead of chemicals. Animals are reared without drugs, such as hormones, to promote growth.
Organic food has grown in popularity since the 1990s for several reasons. These include:
Demand for organic food declined between 2009-11 due to the global recession leading to households having reduced incomes. Organic food is more expensive because yields (crops) are lower than farms that use chemicals. However, people are prepared to pay the extra as they believe organic produce tastes better. Supermarkets now sell 75% of organic food in the UK. The remaining 25% is sold at farmers' markets and vegetable box schemes (where organic vegetables are delivered to the customer's door). The most popular organic products are dairy products, including milk, cheese and yoghurt.
Carbon footprints, 'food miles' and moves towards local sourcing of food
Use the images below to explore related GeoTopics.


Mac Basics: Dictation lets you speak text instead of typing
Getting started with Dictation
Use these steps to turn Dictation on or off:
 1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
 2. From the View menu, choose Dictation & Speech to view Dictation preferences.
 3. Click On to enable Dication, or Off to disable it.
You can also choose a shortcut key, change your language, and select a microphone from Dictation preferences. If your computer or display doesn't have a built-in microphone, you can connect an external microphone to use Dictation.
Using Dictation in an app
You can speak the text you want to enter in a text field, like a TextEdit or Pages document.
Use these steps to start dictating:
 1. Click a text field or document window where you want to start typing.
 2. Press the fn (Function) key twice, or choose Edit > Start Dictation.
 3. Dictate (speak) what you want your Mac to type.
 4. When finished, click Done or press the fn key again. Your spoken words then appear in the text field.
The input meter indicates how loud your voice is. If it's too quiet, try moving closer to your microphone or speaking louder.
 - If the input meter does not fill when you speak, check that your microphone and sound input are set up correctly.
 - If the input meter fills more than half of the microphone icon, there might be too much background noise, and Dictation might be less accurate.
 - If the input meter barely fills when you speak, try moving closer to the microphone or speaking louder.
Your computer listens for up to 30 seconds at a time. If you need to dictate longer sentences, enable the option for Enhanced Dictation.
Enhanced Dictation
With Enhanced Dictation, text appears as you speak. This allows you to dictate continuously. Enhanced Dictation automatically stops listening when you switch to another window, press the Fn key again, or click Done.
Enhanced Dictation in OS X Mavericks and Yosemite also let you dictate without an active Internet connection. To use Dictation when you're offline, enable Enhanced Dictation in the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences while you are still connected to the Internet.
The first time you turn on Enhanced Dictation, your Mac downloads content that allows Dictation to work offline. The amount of free disk space required to download this content varies depending on the language you're using. After the additional software downloads, you can use Dictation even when an Internet connection isn't available.
Dictation requires an Internet connection in Mountain Lion
If you're using OS X Mountain Lion, you need to be connected to the Internet in order to use Dictation. If your Internet connection is slow, it could cause delays between when you speak a word and when the word appears in a text field. If you're at a business or school and you have a proxy server on your network, Dictation might not be able to connect to the Internet. Have your network administrator refer to "Well known TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products" to learn which network ports Dictation uses.
Dictating commands
Dictation understands basic text-related commands such as "all caps," "new paragraph," and "new line."
When you say "period," "comma," "question mark," or "exclamation point," Dictation adds that punctuation in the current text field. When speaking a calendar date (like "January 30, 1983") you do not have to say "comma". The comma is automatically detected and entered for you. Insert emoticons into a text field by saying "smiley face" or "frowny face".
You can also enable additional Dictation commands in OS X Yosemite.
Accents, dialects and languages
The more you use Dictation, the better it understands you. Dictation learns the characteristics of your voice and adapts to your accent. For best results, select your dialect from the Language menu in the Dictation pane of System Preferences. Note that some languages (such as English) have multiple options available to choose from.
You can select which language to use for Dictation in the Dictation and Speech pane of System Preferences. If you don't see your language listed, you can add it. Make sure you are connected to the Internet, then follow these steps to add or remove a language for Dictation.
 1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
 2. Click the Dictation & Speech icon.
 3. Choose Add Language. from the Language pop-up menu.
 4. Select any languages you want to add. Deselect languages you no longer want to use.
The software needed for each language you select downloads from Apple. In OS X Yosemite, you can recover the disk space used by an installed language when you remove it. If you need to use the language again, the software downloads the next time you select the language.
Dictation in OS X Mountain Lion and later supports English (U.S., UK, and Australia), French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English, Canadian French, and Italian. Enhanced Dictation supports even more languages. To see a complete list, enable Enhanced Dictation and select Add Language from the Language menu.
Learn more
You can also speak to your Mac to make it perform certain actions, like selecting text, or moving to the top of a document. Search for Dictation Commands in Mac Help for more information about how you can tell your Mac what you want it to do.
About Dictation and privacy
When you use Dictation, you can choose to have either your Mac or Apple's servers perform the speech recognition for you. If you use Mac-based Dictation (Enhanced Dictation), your computer will convert what you say into text without sending your dictated speech to Apple.
Information collected by Apple is treated in accordance with Apple's Privacy Policy, which can be found at
You can choose to turn off or change your preferences for Dictation at any time by going to the Dictation & Speech pane within System Preferences. If you turn off Dictation, or switch from using server-based Dictation to Mac-based Dictation (Enhanced Dictation), Apple will delete your User Data, as well as your recent voice input data, from Apple's servers. Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time to generally improve Dictation and Siri functionality in Apple products and services. This voice input data may include audio files and transcripts of what you said and related diagnostic data, such as hardware and operating system specifications and performance statistics.
Last Modified:


as the growing cycle of the vines and, to a certain extent, the quality of the up-and-coming vintage as early as early spring.
He just had to look at the sky, observe the environment of the vines, the flora and fauna surrounding them (trees, plants, flowers, herbs, insects, mammals, birds, etc… ) and also refer to the cycle of the moon and the sun, to anticipate what will happen. Basically, like most people of the older generations, he still had the instinct (senses and behaviours), as well as the knowledge and the experience to comprehend Mother Nature's signs. The reading of these natural things, that my generation has nearly already forgotten, was his daily routine. And it always amazed me to see him in action.
Eyes doubtfully scrutinizing either at the blue or the clouds in the sky, depending on the weather of the day, grasping Mother Nature's signs, I remember him well saying some classic French old timer's vine and wine-related proverbs and quotes (***), such as:
The auspicious ones:
 - "Lendemain de Saint-Vincent ensoleillé, rend le vigneron joyeux dans son cellier." (meaning "Sunny the day after Saint-Vincent day, makes the winemaker happy in his cellar" - Saint-vincent is usually celebrated January 22nd)
 - "Soleil à la Saint-Vincent, - Le vigneron s'en va en chantant." (meaning "Sun at St. Vincent, - the winemaker goes away singing.")
And the inauspicious ones:
 - "Pluie à la Saint-Bernardin, - Vigneron pleure ton vin." (meaning "Rain at Saint-Bernardin, - winegrower cries your wine." - Saint-Bernardin is usually celebrated May 20th)
 - "Gelée de Saint-Fructueux - Rend le vigneron malheureux." (meaning "Frost of Saint-Fructueux - Makes the winemaker unhappy." - Saint-Fructueux is usually celebrated April 16th)
He knew so much about the various natural cycles and signs of Mother Nature, that he could almost anticipate the results and consequences the weather will generate on the vine's life cycle, like if it was snowing, frosting, hailing or raining prior or after this day or this day (meaning prior or after this date or that date), then this or that will happen.
He was like an encyclopedia of knowledge. The vineyard was his life, but he also knew a lot about all sort of food and animals, and also had amazing recipes that I wished I could have written in a book as they were so good, yet well guarded in his mind as he rarely wrote them down. It was all about using your brain and memory and pay attention to all things in general in life, being open-minded and curious and willing to learn more. Savvy? Things that my generation X and the following one, Y, the Millenials, are not doing anymore...
The Evolution of Education over the last 30 years Mathematics by ©LeDomduVin 2019
(Inspired by and translated from a picture found on and courtesy of
3. The rise of the Machines or How Humans became stupid and brainless
Memory is (or "was" should I say) a thing of the old and wise from previous generations. My generation "X" (_PHONE_) and the generation "Y" (Millenial - _PHONE_), (and don't even get me started on my kids generations, "Z" (_PHONE_ or 2012) for my boy and "Alpha" (roughly 2010-2025) for my girl), don't have any memory anymore, as we rely too much on computers, tablets, smartphones, and other gadgets to remember things for us. Consequently, and sadly, we barely use our neurones and our brain's potential anymore.... (sigh).
Therefore, Baby-boomers and Generation "X" (understand Pre-Millenial for those who might not know or understand the concept...), I have a few questions for you.....
 - Do you remember the time when we had to memorize first and last names, birth dates, home and/or work addresses, phone numbers, and other things about people in our immediate surroundings, family and friends, but also colleagues and coworkers, etc... Remember? We used to know these things by heart... But who does that nowadays? No one... Your phone does it for you...
 - Do you remember these long opinionated discussions and debates after a movie or even about a book or an exhibition or an event or god knows whatever else you used to be excited and passionate about?... Remember?... Who does that nowadays? Barely no one... Now instead, you only talk about it for less than a few minutes and the interest has already shifted to the next thing... No more long conversation around a drink or two or not even dinner after the movie or the show to talk about it... You just go back to your social networks and posts with selfies and pictures of yourself in weird situations on which you struck a pose that has nothing to do with you or your everyday natural self... giving yourself and more especially others the illusion of a supposedly exiting life that in reality is far from reaching any kind of excitement.... rings the bell?
 - Do you remember the quality time and special moments spent with your family and friends, or even with your kids, walking around, on a stroll somewhere, riding bikes or playing ball games, being outside, breathing the air, having a BBQ, smiling, laughing, sharing, enjoying these precious moments and the scenery (fixed in your brain as an unforgettable memory) without the distraction of your phone coming to life at each notification of all your social network accounts?... Remember?... I bet you don't.... as you are already too used to the bad habits you took with your smartphone over the last 15 years... too bad, these were precious personal moments that you forgot and probably won't relive ever... (if you don't let go at your phone and other gadgets).
 - Do you remember taking the time just to take the time?... to do something that pleased you... whatever that was... read a book, listen to some music, write, draw, paint, repair small things in the house, fix the old bike or the car in the garage, go for a jog, walk on the beach or in the forest, play with your kids, look at the cloud's shapes, gardening.... feel free.... not being rushed by always having something to do for someone else or being reachable everywhere... Do you remember? Personally, I do, and I loved it...
We do not know anymore how to listen, watch and learn from what surrounds us and more especially from Mother Nature. The trend is to rely on the machines and artificial intelligence (AI) to do things faster and supposedly more efficiently, to obtain sterile results often lacking in depth and/or details and often excluding the needed and unavoidable natural and human factors.
Everything nowadays goes way too fast to satisfy the need for immediate results and instant gratification creating an ephemeral moment of personal satisfaction, which is nothing more than an illusion, usually evaporating seconds later, as the interest as already shifted to something else supposedly even more interesting.... (sigh)...
I see it already with my kids (they are great kids and I love them both), but despite my wife and I efforts to teach them and provide them with good morals, values, manners, social behaviours, and overall a good education at all levels (at home and at school), we can only and desperately witness how fast things go, interact and influence them in their daily behaviours: lack of focus, lack of attention, change of moods, impatience, attitudes, answering back, believing they have rights for everything, and so on, and so on.... (you know what I'm trying to say... yet I still and will love them no matter what..... and, to be honest, I believe that we might have been the same with our own parents back then... but, I don't remember being to such extent....)
It seems that communication and entertainment technologies in general, TV and computers then, but more particularly smartphones, tablets and video game consoles (over the last decade), have intensified and accelerated certain bad behavioural processes in our kids and in ourselves too, (let's not deny it), which became bad habits that are more and more difficult to get rid of, as we are becoming too dependent on them, and, unconsciously, even use them as a substitute for our brain.
So, I'm asking you, in general, where is the time when people still took the time to observe, comprehend and learn from what surrounds them? And in terms of agriculture and viticulture, where is the time when people had the instinct, skill and/or knowledge on how to pay attention to the natural cycles (the seasons, the tides, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc...) and recognize the signs of Mother Nature?
In fact, where is the time when people still had open-mind, curiosity, patience, interest, passion, desire, will, instinct, knowledge, skill and craftsmanship? Is it gone? Will it ever come back? Or would people, from now on, just be satisfied by mediocre results achieved too hastily due to too many screen distractions, as well as lack of interest, attention and/or willingness to do better?
Smartphone Zombies Meme by ©LeDomduVin 2019
Nowadays,


text:
Santander is the largest Spanish bank and is the bank with the highest market value in the Eurozone. Part of their vision is to win customer's trust. Unhappy customers are known to switch loyalty, the bank wants to identify customers who are thinking of leaving so they can take necessary initiatives to retain them. In this paper, with the given data (from Kaggle) of hundreds of anonymized features we predicted the customers, the bank might be in danger of losing. We used the classification models Random Forest, R-part, Gradient Boosting Model and Extreme Gradient boosting model to predict the unhappy customers.
Satisfaction classification: X-g boost, GBM, R-Part and Random forest,Banking industry,Data mining.
The Kaggle competition we have chosen for our project is 'Santander Customer Satisfaction'. Santander wants to identify dissatisfied customers at early stages of the banking life cycle which will help them to take proactive measures to improve customer satisfaction and prevent the customers from leaving.
The Evaluation for the competition is based on, 'area under the ROC curve', between the predicted probability and the observed target. We have built three models using the algorithms, Random Forest, R-part and XGBoost.We have made a prediction of probability for the TARGET variable for each ID in the test data set using the models and uploaded the results as a submission file on Kaggle. This is a currently active competition and our best submission has us currently placed 964 out of 3600 entries, which is roughly the top 26th percentile.
In this section we have given a brief summary of the models we have used.
2.1 Random Forest: A random forest starts as a simple machine learning algorithm known as a "decision tree". The decision tree works by dividing the data set into smaller and smaller data sets which helps to identify patterns, which in turn helps with the prediction. Random forest uses ensemble techniques where by several weak learners come together as a strong learner. In other words several trees are combined giving better predictive results
2.2 Recursive partitioning algorithm (r-part): R-part tree was developed from the ideas of CART (Classification and Regression Trees).Rpart is used to build classification or regression models in a two stage process and the resulting output can be represented as binary trees. In this step-by-step process a decision tree is constructed by either splitting or not splitting each node on the tree into two daughter nodes. The splitting of the nodes is carried on until no improvement to the results can be made.
2.3 Gradient Boosting Model (GBM): GBM is a predictive modeling algorithm that can be used for problems related to both classification and regression. We have used the classification aspect of GBM which uses decision trees as a foundation. Every successive tree is based on the prediction residuals of the previous tree. Using Boosted algorithms are efficient when dealing with large data sets, the model algorithmically combines several weak models and it is 'gradient boosted' for better accuracy. The Adaboost exponential loss function for 0's and 1's has been used for the GBM in our study.
2.4. Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost): XGBoost is a very powerful boosting algorithm. It is known for its speed and accurate predictive power. XGBoost manages only numeric vectors which is characteristic of the Santander dataset. The algorithm works by creating a large number of trees which combines to form a highly predictive model. The key to the performance of the model lies in choosing the right parameters.
3. Related Work
There are many machine learning algorithms in data mining. To get an understanding of which algorithms will work best for this Kaggle problem, we looked at research papers that could give us a direction.
In project of Sales Forecasting for Retail Chains (Jain, A., Menon, M.N. and Chandra, S, n.d.), they performed prediction using Random Forest Regression, Linear Regression and XGBoost. The analysis has been done to identify patterns and outliers which would increase the ranking of the prediction algorithm. Our focus is also to get good prediction. We use Random Forest and XGBoost to identify the patterns and remove the variables which does not add value to the prediction.
Another work that we found with relevant information was, 'Handling Class Imbalance in customer churn prediction (J Burez, D van den Poel, 2009)'. Even the title is about churn prediction; we get the idea of the using of gradient boosting and weighted random forest. They analyzed using ROC graph to assess the accuracy of classifier and evaluated using evaluation metrics (AUC) which was helping to increase in performance over standard techniques without sampling. This is what we need in our project. But we have not used Lift as they did in their project because it helped them to analyze the accuracy in marketing practice.
4. Methods and Tools
The purpose of this competition is to identify the unhappy customers in the bank. The prediction of unhappy customers can be approached by using classification models in data mining. For this work, we used the R programming language for data analysis, understanding and preparation of models to build the decision trees. For some of the data visualization, Python generates good quality of plots and submitted the predicted values in Kaggle. An analysis was carried out comparing the following algorithms: Random Forest, R Part, Gradient Boost and XGBoost. From these techniques, the one that suited better is XGBoost
4.1 Business Understanding and Data Understanding:
The main goal of this competition is to predict the unhappy customers as early as possible and convincing them to stay in business with Bank. The Bank provided a train dataset of 371 anonymized variables in 76020 observations and test data set of 370 variables in 75818 observations. The training dataset provided an indicator of customer satisfaction called TARGET. The model has to be tuned to predict the customer satisfaction from a test dataset where the satisfaction indicator is not provided. The dataset contains 370 anonymized variables with numeric values.
There is no information on the variables provided by the bank and it is in Spanish. We are not sure which variables are categorical and which are continuous. From the first look of the dataset, there are many columns with the same constant values for all the observations. Some of the variable names are similar to other variables names and it does not add value to prediction process. The data in Target variable denotes "0" for happy customers and "1" for unhappy customer and it is highly imbalanced by group. There are 73,012 satisfied customers and 3008 unsatisfied customers. The class distribution between two groups are 0.96 for '0' and 0.4 for '1'.
4.2 Data Preparation:
The train data contains unique ID and TARGET variable. The test data contains only unique ID. The ID and TARGET variable is assigned to a buffer variable and is taken off from the train and test data as part of the data cleaning process. The number of counts in a row with value 0 on it and append it to the train and test data-frame. The value of each row is same in one column, then remove it. It will not give enough information about the data. A new vector would be created that have identical column names and values of train and test data as elements. Set difference function would be used to discard the elements of new vector from train and test data. All the data clean-up process is finished and append the TARGET variable to train data from buffer variables.
5. Principal Component Analysis
A Principal Components Analysis of the train data set was done. Figure 1 shows the number of principal components. The first 2 components when plotted for the target variable gave a split of the happy and unhappy customers represented by 0 and 1 respectively, shown in Figure 2. A plot for the same in Python is shown in Figure 3 for comparison.
The implementation phase is focused on getting the models to translate business goals through the application of data mining techniques. The modelling was done in R- Studio 3.2.4. R – Studio is an integrated environment for data mining, machine learning, predictive and business analysis. In this prediction, we employed four different models in classification and compare the performance between them.
6.1 Random Forest Model
First we have taken the simple regression model using random forest. We were able to run this model by including the R caret package, random forest package to build the model and plyr package for extracting the tools for splitting, applying and combining data. The e-1071 package for applying the statistics, probability theory group to get the confusion matrix. In this model, we have combined the train and test data with rbind function. The combined datasets may have variables with no predictive values can be removed by checking with nearZeroVar function. Then we split the train and test data to predict the TARGET. We build an unbalanced random forest model of 100 tree samples and mtry = 10. It took a bit long to finish off the process to build the model. We could not get effective results from this model.
6.2 Recursive Partitioning (RPart) Tree:
To build this model, we checked the imbalance of data available in TARGET variable in train data by using table (dataframe$TARGET) function in R. The frequency of class distribution is checked by using prop.table (table (dataframe$TARGET). The results show 96% of satisfied customer and only 4% of unsatisfied customer. As we have an imbalanced data, some of our studies gave us an input of using the Recursive Partitioning tree. This algorithm can be used to model classification and regression tree. The R-part tree can be run by including the rpart package in R. The There is no further data clean up required to build this model. We build the model after data preparation. The process to build the


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Posted by Bob on August 12, 2000
In Reply to: Re: Origin of 'Sent to Coventry': more origins posted by James Briggs on August 11, 2000
: : What was special about this city, and what is its association with one's being ignored?
: : The link below will take you to a rather lengthy explanation of the whole Coventry phrase.
: : In a nutshell, Charles I in 1642 was suspected of being a Catholic in secret. As a result he and parliament often had run-ins and eventually the king left London and built an army as did parliament, thus were sown the seeds of the English Civil War. See link for more info.
: Sent to Coventry; if someone is "sent to Coventry" then they are shunned by their fellow citizens and friends. There are three possible explanations for this phrase. The first comes from the English Civil War. Birmingham was strongly Parliamentarian; the citizens were aware of a small group of Royalists in their midst. Some of these they killed and others they "exiled" to nearby Royalist Coventry. I don't like this explanation since, by being sent to Coventry, these people were rescued. In truth they had good fortune - their colleagues were killed.
: The second possibility rings a little truer. In this case the citizens of Coventry were in a phase of hating the military, possibly also as a result of the Civil War. Such was this hate that the young women of the town were forbidden to speak to the soldiers garrisoned there. Naturally no soldier welcomed such a posting.
: The third possibility is the one that I like best. It is suggested that the name Coventry is derived from Covin-tree, an oak which is supposed to have stood in front of the castle in feudal times. The tree was used as the gallows and those to be executed were sent to the covin-tree.
We ought to add that the phrase has been perpetuated into this century by British labo(u)r unions, which uses shunning as a punishment for strikebreakers and "scabs." No one speaks to or interacts with the person sent to Coventry, until they (eventually) resign. It's a powerful tool for social pressure.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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You'll need some basic information about the law if you're a homeschooling family. That may sound intimidating, but don't let it bother you. The law is not very complicated, and we've created some forms that make it even easier to understand. Thousands of other homeschooling families have sorted this out, and you will too!
In the simplest terms, Minnesota requires homeschoolers to do three main things:
- Report yearly their intent to begin or continue homeschooling
- Submit immunization information once when starting homeschooling and again at the start of seventh grade
- Administer and maintain records of instruction and yearly testing of their children
- When people talk about "reporting" to your school district that you will be homeschooling, they are referring to the process of filling out a form and then sending it into the district superintendent's office.
- There are two different forms, depending on if you are just starting your first year of homeschooling (Initial Report to the Superintendent) or beginning subsequent years (Letter of Intent to Continue Homeschooling.)
- Parents do not need to declare their intent to homeschool or file any forms until their child reaches the school year after they turn seven years old.
- Once your child is seven or older, you must submit your forms either within 15 days of removing your child from school (if you begin during the school year) or by October 1st (if you are starting homeschool in the fall and not sending your child back to school.)
Please see our Reporting page for more specifics
about reporting and to access the MHA reporting forms.
Immunization Reporting Basics
- Homeschoolers must submit an immunization report with their other paperwork once when they first declare their intent to homeschool and again at the beginning of each student's seventh-grade year.
- Parents who have chosen to decline immunizations for medical reasons or due to conscientiously held beliefs must also report on that same schedule, but are instead required to submit a notarized statement about their child's immunization status.
Please see our Immunizations page for more specifics,
including forms and a "conscientiously held beliefs" template.
Annual Testing Requirement Basics
- Homeschooled children ages 7-17 are required to be given a standardized exam yearly. Children who are younger or older are exempt from compulsory instruction and are exempt from the requirement.
- Not every standardized test meets Minnesota's requirements, but there are tests that do that are easily obtained and administered.
- The exam to be used during the year must be listed on the annual reporting form and must be agreed to by the superintendent. You can change your mind or your plan for testing during the year and just update the superintendent with any new details.
- The results of these exams are NOT reported to the state.
- There are several options for what style of test you'd like to use, including the standard fill-in-the-bubble test, a few interview-style verbal options and even an online option.
Please see our Yearly Testing page for more specifics, including
resources for where to research and order testing materials.
For additional help with navigating Minnesota law as it applies to homeschoolers, see our FAQs page, refer back to the applicable statues, or read through this plain-language document created by the Minnesota Department of Education.


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Wounded military servicemen are carried to a waiting ambulance bus from a U.S. Air Force C-17 medical evacuation aircraft at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. / By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
Military doctors are fighting to defeat a fungal infection that has killed a handful of direly wounded troops in Afghanistan and infected scores of others, often requiring that more of their limbs be cut away to get above diseased areas.
Out of about 100 troops diagnosed with the organism in the past three years, six have died either from the fungus or other causes, says Navy Cmdr. Carlos Rodriguez, who has led investigations into the infection. The victims are mostly soldiers or Marines who suffer the worst wounds of the war, multiple amputations from roadside bombs.
The fungi exist in the soil, and appear to be prevalent in two hard-fought southern Afghanistan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. For the typical patient, the organism is blown deep into blast wounds from buried explosives - known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs - during foot patrols in those regions, Rodriguez says.
"All the stuff that lives in the dirt is getting jammed in there," says Army Lt. Col. John Oh, director of trauma at the Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
New guidelines were published Nov. 1 urging combat doctors to soak wounds with a diluted bleach called Dakins consisting of sodium hypochlorite - a product once used on World War I combat casualties - as a precaution to kill the fungus before it takes hold.
The fungus is nearly undetectable at first because infected tissue initially appears healthy. Surgeons cutting away dead bone and flesh from blast wounds will stop short of areas that appear healthy to preserve as much of a limb as possible.
"Even for somebody that's very experienced, it's hard to tell exactly what's dead and what's alive," Oh says.
Within days or even hours after the operation, infected tissue begins to die and more of a limb must be cut away, doctors say. Making matters worse, the two of the most common fungal organisms infecting troops - Mucor and Aspergillus terreus - can take days or weeks to positively identify.
One medical theory is that troops who suffer massive blast damage are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are weakened from receiving large amounts of donated blood to stay alive.
Rodriguez said doctors have gotten better at identifying the fungus, but the answer lies in killing or cutting out spores before they infect.
As a result, the new guidelines urge military doctors in Afghanistan to begin using the diluted bleach and anti-fungal medications on those wounded troops who are most at risk for the infection: those suffering multiple amputations and lower torso damage from blasts, and who have received massive transfusions of blood.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Military doctors fight to defeat fungal infections


text:
In 2002, teenaged William Kamkwamba had a vision in the very poor African nation of Malawi: A little bicycle generator that powers a light, if connected to a windmill, could allow him to read his schoolbooks at night. As he went further with his plans, he began to see how such a windmill might actually bring the 20th century to his own village. Out this week is "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," a book that tells Kamkwamba's story. We talked with William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, the book's co-authors.
"He didn't have washers, so he would go collect bottle caps, beer bottle caps, in front of the bar and flatten them out and put a hole through the middle. He didn't have a drill, so he would use a nail and heat it over his mom's cooking fire, that he would bore holes through this plastic... His cousin found a car battery so he was able to hook the windmill up to a car battery, charge it and then power four more bulbs which he ran through a circuit breaker system that he made out of nails and wire and a magnet that he busted out of a stereo speaker. And it worked."
—Bryan Mealer, co-author of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," on how William made the windmill


text:
This summary, written under the aegis of the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), presents the preliminary results of the first pan-India survey on sex workers. These preliminary findings have been developed for an event in Mumbai on 30 April 2011. The authors appreciate the opportunity to discuss their research with an audience of critical stakeholders. A report which provides their final analysis and data relating to male, trans sex workers, sexuality, stigma and discrimination as well as the 0.5% of 15-17 year olds in this sample will be published later in the year. For the final report please contact _EMAIL_.
Over two years a sample of 3000 female and 1355 male and trans persons in sex work was drawn from fourteen states.
In the wake of HIV, there has been a renewed engagement with sex workers as subjects of research. However this research has been carried out to fulfil a range of purposes beyond those of interest to sex workers and findings have not always reflected the lives of sex workers, about which there are many assumptions. Studies of sex workers often reduce complex lives into simplistic binaries, most commonly: an understanding of female sex workers as freely engaging in, or forced into sex work. This is both inaccurate and insufficient. Much relevant information is ignored such as family and social-economic background, caste and religious segregations, sexual identities, marital status, not to mention work identities other than and in addition to sex work. This survey uses multiple variables to understand how their lives get constructed prior to and in sex work.
You can download this 14 page PDF resource above. This resource is in English.


text:
transform property Null safety
The transformation used to transform this event from the global coordinate space into the coordinate space of the event receiver.
Unlike a paint transform, this transform usually does not contain any "perspective" components, meaning that the third row and the third column of the matrix should be equal to "0, 0, 1, 0". This ensures that localPosition describes the point in the local coordinate system of the event receiver at which the user is actually touching the screen.
- transformed, which transforms this event into a different coordinate space.
final Matrix4? transform;


From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
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Whoops! Maybe you were looking for Lindsay Lohan?
La Dance MacabreHolbein
Skeletons love dancing.
There are two types of skeletons. The first is the useless pile of bones that make up a vertebrate. The second is the more useful animated skeleton which are commonly found in computer games which are the weakest monster that have other types based off them.
Skeletons having sex.
Skeletons in the Halloween.
edit Do skeletons actually exist?
The simple answer to this question is no, scientists have been researching for hundreds of years into the existence of the 'Skeletal system' and have recently discovered that it is a hoax. The scientist Paul Chuckle that said he had originally discovered the skeletal structure was a raging drunked homosexual who made it up one night in the pub to impress a local queer. 'Real' scientists have actually discovered that the human body is made up of genetically modified vegetables that float around in nineteen pints of gravy.
edit Physical attributes
Skeletons can have almost any number of hit points, from 1 to several thousand, depending on what game you're playing. Their damage is usually between 0.1 and 0.5 times their hit points, but this can also change in different games. Skeletons are also known for being undead, which means certain weapons and spells have different effects on them. In general, though, the basic skeleton is pretty easy to kill, although there are tougher versions, often recognizable by either wielding overlarge weapons, being a different color or having their bones on fire. Skeletons usually drop weapons, gold pieces or ammunition clips when killed. The two most dangerous kind of skeleton would be the Warcraft variety or the Dungeon Keeper variety.
Skeleton AI is also pretty bad. Because of their weakness, they tend to swarm players in large groups, with little respect for their own safety. They are, however, faster than many monsters, and for weak players are best dealt with at long range (longbows, grenades, fireballs and plasma cannons, depending on your game, all do fairly well). PSSome Skeletons may actually be dead, making them much harder to kill.
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Class Mortis
Order Primates
Family Automata
Genus Homo
Species Os
Binomial Name Homo Os
Primary Armament varies, though scimitars are popular
Secondary Armament Typically none. Some have shields though
HP: Between 1 to 5000
Mana Points: Little ot none
Strength: Weak
Intelligence: AI very low
Weight Typically below 30kg
Length Typically up to 2 metres
Special Attack None
Conservation Status None
edit Habitat
The natural habitat of skeletons is in tombs, mausoleums, crypts and pyramids, although they can also be found in caves and occasionally out in the open (but only when it's either dark or foggy). Beware; they often inhabit the same kind of areas as grues, which are much faster and more deadly.
edit Types of Skeleton
Skeletons can also be found in old people's homes and retirement facilities. These are different type of skeleton, these skeletons actually eat, and sleep and drink like normal human beings. These skeletons are no work of witchcraft or are they the work of Harry Potter, they are created through age. Any person over the age of fifty-nine automatically becomes one of these skeletons; they are often referred too as 'old people', 'coffin dodgers' or 'the walking dead'. You can recognise one of these 'old people' by the stench of stale piss that follows them around, and by the bland clothing that they insist on wearing.
edit Use
Skeletons are cheap. They are so cheap that they can be used to fill out an army. Typically they are in the ranks of evil, I don't know why, they just are. They are also in the service of necromancers, who need a cost effective soldier.
Because they are already dead they are annoying in battle, continuing to fight even when their heads are chopped off. The closest living equivalent is the Black Knight, although he would die when his head is chopped off.
Pudgy Hippies can be used to distract skeletons.
edit What to do if you see them
There are a couple of ways to deal with a skeleton, fight or run.
Remember that you should only fight a skeleton if you know you can win.
Skeletons are more dangerous as their numbers increase, so you should only consider fighting them if you have the right equipment.
If you decide to run, it is probably best that you knock its head off. That way you will buy yourself a few minutes while it looks for its head.
Let your dog off the lead.
Ask if it is a member of the Skull and Bones.
Have some common sense and call the police.
Ask if it has a boner and run while the skeleton is looking down.
edit Ones to watch out for
The Warcraft variety commonly carry ranged weapons and can kill from afar.
If you see a DK variety then look for the 'flower thingy'. If there is any number apart from a 2 then it is probably best to run like hell because they don't stop for anything.
The Final Fantasy variety of skeleton can be destroyed by throwing any common house hold medicine at it.
edit Weaknesses of Skeletons
 - Some breeds, like the Zelda variety are weak to light although the Ikana subspecie is also weak to rank, so if you can pull any rank on them they will willingly bugger off. The larger ones like to race.
 - If you are a magician and are facing the Warcraft variety then dispelling them is the easiest way to go.
 - Ones that live near grues don't need dealing with because they are never there.
 - In battle, look out for a necromancer. The easiest way to deal with battle skeletons is to kill that guy.
 - Note this does not work with the Warcraft variety.
edit See Also
Personal tools


text:
This is a baptism sermon idea with the message that there are lots of roles in the Family of God and we all have a part to play in this child's Christian life. It went down very well and I felt many people engaged with it as everyone has a favourite Jelly Baby. I used a set of toy Jelly Babies and made a giant bag so folk could choose their favourite one when I spoke about them.
Bible Reference: Baptism of Jesus: Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3
Give brief history of Jelly Babies (see Wikipedia etc)
All jelly babies used to be the same shape then in 1989, six of the 'babies' were given a name, an identity and features to distinguish them from one another.
Get out of the bag
It takes many people to make up a bag of Jelly Babies/a family/involved in bringing up/influencing a child – many people were and are involved in nurturing:
Jesus, and this child


text:
Use of Biomedical Engineering and Music for K-12 Math/Science Education
The study proposes the use of Biomedical Engineering (BME) Ph.D. track graduate students to assist middle and high school teachers to teach math/science skills, by providing additional tools and training to optimize their use. The emphasis is on the use of disciplinary knowledge to enhance how people learn with the aid of computer technology; showing the students the importance of this knowledge to solve real world problems.
Three school districts have committed to participate in a cross-disciplinary education program (Shelby County, Shades Mountain Independent, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts). Students from UAB's Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) departments will develop, implement, and evaluate the four interventions used to enhance math/science skills.
- Music education
- Math/Science kits and six-week projects
- Science Fair project development
- A technology of Fine Arts class
When the cost-effectiveness of each intervention has been determined, decisions whether to expand the intervention, within each school system will be made. Information about successful programs would be made available, on the internet or other media, to interested groups. Trained personnel from this project would serve as facilitators for these groups.
- Investigators: A. Eberhardt, R. Thompson, M. Froning, D. Kilpadi


text:
National Physical Therapy Month comes every October, but this one is particularly meaningful to Helius Medical Technologies. This year, the company has trained a large and growing community of physical therapists to use its Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator (PoNS) device to help improve the gait of people with multiple sclerosis (MS). And given the critical role physical therapists play in PoNS Therapy, Helius is making its free, online training available to even more of them nationwide.
This effort – which gives physical therapists the opportunity to sign up for training by visiting the Helius booth at the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Conference in November and the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Combined Sections Meeting in February 2023 – has a single goal: to give more individuals with MS the opportunity to better live the promise of APTA's theme for NPTM's 30th anniversary: "Choose to Move."
The theme spotlights physical therapists' unique value as movement experts – a role that makes them vital to the success of PoNS Therapy. PoNS is an innovative device that helps individuals with MS improve their gait by stimulating the surface of the tongue to activate new pathways to the brain. During the first two weeks of therapy, trained physical therapists work in-person with users, guiding them through therapeutic exercises designed to maximize the effectiveness of the device; for the following 12 weeks users continue the therapy at home, under their PT's weekly guidance.
In a clinical trial, PoNS plus targeted physical therapy helped all the participants enrolled in the active treatment group achieve at least a 4-point improvement in their Dynamic Gait Index (DGI) scores.1 A second study suggests this combination can enhance motor performance and showed a statistically significant improvement in balance.2 Real-world treatment outcomes found that 58.3% of individuals with MS and gait deficit achieved at least a 4-point improvement in their functional gait assessment (FGA).3
"How well we can walk has a huge impact on how well we live our lives. And for people with MS, who often have to deal with so many other complications, it's particularly top-of-mind," said Antonella Favit-Van Pelt, M.D., Ph.D., Helius' Chief Medical Officer. "When talking to their doctor, about 85% of them name gait deficit as their primary concern. Within 15 years of an MS diagnosis up to 50% of them will require a walking aid, and 10% will be wheelchair-dependent."
The PoNS device is worn around the neck, with a mouthpiece that rests lightly on the front of the tongue. It works by delivering electrical impulses through nerve fibers on the tongue, stimulating the flow of millions of neural impulses to the brain structures that control gait. This creates a cascade of activity in the brain that, when combined with physical activity, provides a neuromodulatory effect, resulting in neuroplastic changes – essentially "rewiring" parts of the brain to improve gait. This video illustrates how PoNS works: _URL_
Physical therapists who complete Helius's training learn how to complement use of the PoNS device with physical activity in order to elicit gait improvement. And while a significant number of them across multiple states already have been trained, they're only the first wave. Additional physical therapists currently are going through training, and new ones are signing up. In doing so they're exemplifying the spirit of both National Physical Therapy Month and "Choose to Move."
[Source(s): Helius Medical Technologies Inc, GlobeNewswire]


text:
Welcome to Anagrammer Crossword Genius! Keep reading below to see if spinose is an answer to any crossword puzzle or word game (Scrabble, Words With Friends etc). Scroll down to see all the info we have compiled on spinose.
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The answer SPINOSE has 4 possible clue(s) in existing crosswords.
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The word SPINOSE is VALID in some board games. Check SPINOSE in word games in Scrabble, Words With Friends, see scores, anagrams etc.
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Definitions of spinose in various dictionaries:
adj - having spines
Bearing spines; spiny: a spinose plant.
adj - bearing or covered with thorns
Word Research / Anagrams and more...
Keep reading for additional results and analysis below.
|Possible Crossword Clues|
|One sip's disastrous -- it's spiked!|
|Thorny column containing bone|
|Circle deadheaded rose, thorny|
|Having spikes or thorns|
|Last Seen in these Crosswords & Puzzles|
|Jan 3 2017 The Telegraph - Toughie|
|Aug 18 2013 The Telegraph - General Knowledge|
|May 18 2010 The Telegraph - Toughie|
|May 23 2007 The Telegraph - Cryptic|
|Spinose might refer to|
In plant morphology, Thorns, spines, and prickles, and in general spinose structures (sometimes called spinose teeth or spinose apical processes), are hard, rigid extensions or modifications of leaves, roots, stems or buds with sharp, stiff ends, and generally serve the same function: physically deterring animals from eating the plant material.|
* In common language the terms are used more or less interchangeably, but in botanical terms, thorns are derived from shoots (so that they may or may not be branched, they may or may not have leaves, and they may or may not arise from a bud), spines are derived from leaves (either the entire leaf or some part of the leaf that has vascular bundles inside, like the petiole or a stipule), and prickles are derived from epidermis tissue (so that they can be found anywhere on the plant and do not have vascular bundles inside).Leaf margins may also have teeth, and if those teeth are sharp, they are called spinose teeth on a spinose leaf margin (some authors consider them a kind of spine). On a leaf apex, if there is an apical process (generally an extension of the midvein), and if it is especially sharp, stiff, and spine-like, it may be referred to as spinose or as a pungent apical process (again, some authors call them a kind of spine). When the leaf epidermis is covered with very long, stiff trichomes (more correctly called bristles in this case; for some authors a kind of prickle), it may be referred to as a hispid vestiture; if the trichomes are stinging trichomes, it may be called a urent vestiture.There can be found also spines or spinose structures derived from roots.


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Perentie (Varanus giganteus)
|Also known as:||parenthie, perente, perenty|
|Size||Length: up to 2.5 m (2)|
|Weight||up to 6 kg (3)|
- The perentie is the world's second largest lizard.
- Reaching speeds of up to 40 kilometres per hour, the perentie runs at about the same speed as an Olympic sprinter.
- As well as running fast on all fours, the perentie is also able to run on just its two hind legs.
- The skin pattern of the perentie is said to be the inspiration for a particular style of Aboriginal woodcarving.
The perentie has not yet been assessed by the IUCN, but is listed on Appendix II of CITES (4).
Also known as a monitor or a goanna (5), the perentie (Varanus giganteus) is Australia's largest lizard (3). It has creamy colouration, becoming browner on the upperparts with age, occasionally with a reddish tinge (6). The body and tail are darkly speckled and have transverse bands of pale, dark-edged spots (7), occurring from the neck to two-thirds of the way down the tail (6). The perentie has black lines on the throat (7), and its long neck has unique spot patterns that can be used to identify individuals (3).
The perentie's snout is long and is flattened at the end (8), and this species has a forked tongue and sharp, slightly curved teeth. Its powerful legs are dark brown (6) and end in five clawed toes (5), while the tail is laterally compressed (7) and extremely strong (5).
The perentie occurs in the arid landscapes of central, southern, and western Australia, as well as in the Northern Territory (7). It is also common on Barrow Island, off the coast of Western Australia, where it is an ecologically significant top predator (3).
Preferring arid habitats (7), the perentie digs its burrows in sandy ground (9). It also inhabits rocky ranges, flat-topped elevated land, semi-arid savanna, caves and rock crevices (7).
The perentie is a carnivorous lizard, eating a wide variety of animals such as small mammals, birds, other lizards, turtle eggs and insects (5). Like all monitors of the Varanus genus, it is able to effectively track its prey using its long tongue, which picks up chemical signals in the air. Mates may also be located in this way (10). Like other varanids, the perentie learns to recognise good locations for food and other resources, returning regularly to these sites when foraging (11). When prey is caught, it is shaken violently until dead, and then swallowed whole (5).
Monitor species are unique in their ability to run extremely fast over great distances (12). The perentie holds its legs underneath its body, walking erect like a mammal (13), and it is also able to run solely on its hind legs (6). It can reach speeds of up to 40 kilometres per hour, enabling it to catch fast-moving mammals such as rabbits. The perentie is able to do this due to its ability to expand and contract the sides of its neck, effectively making the throat behave like bellows, pumping air from the nostrils down to the lungs while it is running (12). In addition to this athletic ability, monitor lizards also have extremely good eyesight (2).
Perentie courtship resembles that of other monitors. The male perentie licks and nuzzles the female, and several copulations will take place over a few days (10). Breeding in spring to early summer, the female perentie lays one clutch of 8 to 11 eggs per year (3). Reptile eggs are vulnerable to damage due to their thin casing, and are not fully impervious to water, allowing them to be laid in the absence of open water. To protect its eggs and keep them at constant optimum temperature and humidity, the perentie lays its eggs inside a termite nest. Termites maintain the temperature and humidity of their nests with the utmost vigilance, and the conditions are ideal for perentie eggs (12).
In general, male monitor lizards are territorial and will fight other males for access to a female. During combat, males grasp each other with their forelegs while standing on their hind legs, trying to push their rival to the ground. Defensive behaviour includes lashing the tail, clawing, and hissing (10). When threatened, the perentie will often rise on its hind legs, swell its throat and hiss (5).
There are no known threats to the perentie at present.
No specific conservation measures are currently known to be in place for the perentie. However, in some parts of its range, such as Barrow Island, all reptiles are under protection (3). This species is also listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meaning that any international trade in the perentie should be carefully controlled and monitored (4).
More on the perentie:
Perth Zoo - Perentie:
Find out more about reptiles:
The Reptile Database:
Find out more about conservation in Australia:
Australian Wildlife Conservancy:
Australian Conservation Foundation:
This information is awaiting authentication by a species expert, and will be updated as soon as possible. If you are able to help please contact:
- Carnivorous: feeding on flesh.
- Genus: a category used in taxonomy, which is below 'family' and above 'species'. A genus tends to contain species that have characteristics in common. The genus forms the first part of a 'binomial' Latin species name; the second part is the specific name.
- Territorial: describes an animal, a pair of animals or a group that occupies and defends an area.
The Reptile Database (November, 2012)
- Watharow, S. (2011) Living with Snakes and Other Reptiles. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.
Moro, D. and MacAulay, I. (2010) A Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Barrow Island. Chevron Australia, Perth. Available at:
CITES (November, 2012)
Perth Zoo - Perentie Species Profile (November, 2012)
- Pianka, E., King, D. and King, R. (2004) Varanoid Lizards of the World. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.
- Wilson, S. (2005) A Field Guide to Reptiles of Queensland. Reed New Holland, Sydney.
- Boulenger, G. (1885) Catalogue of the Lizards in the British Museum (Natural History). Volume 2: Iguanidae, Xenosauridae, Zonuridae, Anguidae, Anniellidae, Helodermatidae, Varanidae, Xantusiidae, Teiidae, Amphisbaenidae. British Museum, London.
- Joyce, E. and McCann, D. (2011) Burk and Wills: The Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.
- Halliday, T. and Adler, K. (2002) The New Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- King, D. and Green, B. (1999) Goannas: The Biology of Varanid Lizards. NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, Australia.
- Attenborough, D. (2008) Life in Cold Blood. Random House, London.
- Pianka, E. (1994) The Lizard Man Speaks. University of Texas Press, Texas.


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Click any word in a definition or example to find the entry for that word
Those girls are always arguing!
Don't argue with me – you know I'm right.
We used to argue over who should drive.
Successful economies, she argues, are those with the lowest taxes.
Woolf's report argued for (=supported) an improvement in prison conditions.
Reuben opposed the new road, arguing that it wasn't worth spending $25 million to cut seven minutes off drivers' journey times.
Several people stood up to argue against (=say they do not support) moving the students to the new school.
This is the British English definition of argue. View American English definition of argue.
a substance that scientists think exists out in space, but for which they have no direct proof


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The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, founded on October 11, 1890, and headquartered in Washington, DC, is a service organization whose motto is "God, Home, and Country."
The Society is dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving American history and securing America's future through better education for children. DAR members volunteer millions of service hours annually in their local communities including supporting active-duty military personnel and assisting veteran patients, awarding thousands of dollars in scholarships and financial aid each year to students, and supporting schools for underserved children with annual donations exceeding one million dollars. The members of Jane Douglas Chapter are the conservators of The Continental DAR House, which was built in 1936 by the Continental Oil Company and is open to visitors every day during the State Fair of Texas. The Jane Douglas Chapter, established in 1895, is the second oldest chapter in Texas.


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Finding a suitable apartment and successfully securing it can be an exciting yet time-consuming process. One important aspect of this process is the approval of your rental application by the landlord or property management company. The time it takes to get approved for an apartment can vary depending on several factors. Let's take a closer look at these factors to understand how long the approval process may take.
1. Completing the Application: The first step towards getting approved for an apartment is filling out the rental application accurately and thoroughly. This includes providing personal information, rental history, employment details, and references. The time it takes to complete the application can vary depending on how organized and prepared you are. It is advisable to have all the necessary information and documents ready in advance to expedite the process.
2. Background and Credit Check: After submitting your application, the landlord or property management company will typically conduct a background and credit check. This step is crucial for them to assess your financial stability and ensure you have a clean criminal record. Background and credit checks can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the efficiency of the screening process.
3. Verifying References and Employment: Landlords often contact references and employers provided in the application to verify the information provided. This may involve reaching out to previous landlords, supervisors, or colleagues to gather insights about your character, punctuality, and ability to pay rent on time. The time it takes to complete this step largely depends on the responsiveness of your references and employers.
4. Waiting for Approval: Once all the necessary checks and verifications have been completed, the landlord or property management company will review your application in its entirety. They will consider factors such as your credit history, income, rental history, and references to make an informed decision. The duration of this review process can vary depending on the volume of applications received and the diligence of the landlord.
5. Negotiating Lease Terms: After approval, you may need to negotiate lease terms with the landlord. This can involve discussing rent, security deposit, lease duration, and any additional clauses. The negotiation process can take a few days or longer, depending on the landlord's availability and willingness to accommodate your requests.
In conclusion, the time it takes to get approved for an apartment can range from a few days to a few weeks. To expedite the process, it is essential to be proactive, organized, and responsive. Being prepared with all necessary documents, having good references, and a stable financial history can increase your chances of a quick approval. Keep in mind that each landlord or property management company may have their own unique timeline and procedures, so it is always a good idea to inquire about their specific process upfront.


How To Handle Thanksgiving If You Are Divorced
bird nesting during a divorce child custody attorneys st louis mo
The holidays can present particular problems for parents going through a divorce or who have already divorced. Each parent wants family time with the children, and if not handled right, everyone can feel hurt or depressed. Fortunately, with some forethought, every family can identify the right Thanksgiving approach that should make everyone as happy as possible given the reality of two separate households.
The easiest situation would be if historically only one parent and his or her family traditionally celebrated Thanksgiving. In that situation, that parent would have the children for the holiday (from the end of school until the return to school) and the other parent would have the first choice on another big holiday. This solution works well if one family happens to be large and tends to gather out of town for the holiday.
What happens if both parents have extended families and tend to travel out of town to celebrate? In this situation, it is impossible to accommodate both parents on the same holiday. So, the parents can agree to alternate this holiday week every other year so that each parent gets the chance to travel. Or, both parents could agree that instead of traveling they would each host their extended families, which would allow both parents time with the children and their extended families.
When both parents live in town and have significant family in town, it becomes much easier to make everyone happy. Rather than alternate an entire week, the parents can agree to divide Thanksgiving as a mini-holiday, with half of it starting on Wednesday morning and extending until mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving, and the second half beginning mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving and extending until Friday until the parents' normal weekend exchange time. Parents can agree to alternate who has the early and late shift but otherwise maintain the regular weekend schedule, which has the additional advantage of not needing to make up any lost weekend time. Using this strategy gives each parent time on Thanksgiving with family, so no one loses out.
If one parent lives out of town, usually that parent will have the week of Thanksgiving given the difficulty of having regular custody periods during the school year. However, if the distance between the parents is not too great, it would still be possible to split the holiday, depending upon how the parents have divided other holiday and break periods.
As you can see, the options range from sharing the actual holiday time with minimal disruption to the regular custody schedule, to extending the holiday to a Wednesday to Sunday chunk of time that alternates every other year, to treating the entire week of Thanksgiving as a vacation period that is either allocated to one parent every year or alternates every year (with the caveat that the children may miss a day or two of school).
Deciding which option best fits your family depends on your Thanksgiving traditions, the degree to which you must travel to be with family, and the willingness each parent has to share Thanksgiving every year as opposed to just alternating the entire holiday every other year.
If you have questions about Thanksgiving and divorce, contact us – we can help.


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Recently, I was lucky enough to be present when the Lion Saltworks acquired a 'salt ship' for their collection. These are quite rare objects. At Christmas time and other festive occasions, the saltworkers would make wooden objects like ships, dip them in the concentrated brine in the saltworks, and put them to dry in the warm stove rooms (where lump salt was dried out.) As the brine evaporated out, a beautiful coating of salt crystals appeared, as on the ship (see image, left.) Sometimes the workers would dip tree boughs in the brine and dry them out to make Christmas decorations for their houses. A pretty effect, isn't it?
Image © Sue Wilkes.


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The "fall" of a sewer pipe is defined as the vertical distance by which one end (or one end of a section) of the pipe drops relative to the other. It can be expressed as a percentage when divided by the length of the pipe. This is the pipe's slope, or gradient. The two terms are typically used interchangeably on construction sites, which can cause some confusion. Working out this percentage is quite easy mathematically, but requires a bit of work to get the numbers necessary.
Dig down to the sewer pipe at either end of the section whose percentage fall you wish to measure.
Establish a baseline height to measure from. The easiest way to do this is to hammer wooden stakes into the ground at either end of the pipe, then tie a string, and make it taut, between them. Set a string level on the string, then hammer the stakes in until the level's bubble shows that the string is perfectly level.
Measure the distance from the top of each end of the pipe to the string above it. Subtract the smaller distance from the larger one. This is the vertical fall of the pipe.
Measure the length of the pipe.
Divide the pipe's vertical fall by the length of the pipe, then multiply the result by 100 to find the percentage. The fall and length need to be in the same units (feet or inches) for this to work. For example, if the pipe fell by 30 cm (1 foot) and was 15 m (50 feet) long, you divide 30 by 1500 to get 0.02. Multiplied by 100, that becomes 2 per cent, which is your slope or gradient.


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Counters are numeric data variables that can be added to a document.
Use a Counter to count anything that needs counting, such as:
- Products sales
- Voting results
- Any event related to the document
Create and manage Counters using API methods or through the Studio.
In this page:
Viewing Counters Data
To view counters data, open the document they belong to.
1. Choose a database from the databases list:
2. The Counters Flag indicates which documents currently have counters.
3. Open a document.
4. Counters' details are located in the Counters Tab.
This flag in the document's metadata, is automatically set or removed by the server,
indicating whether a document has Counters.
- Counters-Tab Header
Click the header to open the Counters tab.
The current number of Counters is stated on the header.
- Counter Name
You can use whatever characters you choose, including Unicode symbols.
- Counter Value
Add, Modify or Remove Counters from the Counters Tab.
1. Click "Add Counter" to create a new Counter.
2. Click the Edit icon to modify a Counter's value.
A. Counter's name - Note: Once set, the name cannot be modified.
B. Current value - The accumulated value from all nodes.
C. Enter a new value here. This value is the acculated value, see note below.
D. Confirm to carry out the update or Cancel.
E. The Counter's value per cluster node.
F. The node's e-tag.
Modifying a Counter's value sets its accumulated value.
For example, in the above image, the Counter's value is 348 in Node A, 310 in node B, and (-25) in node C,
making its accumulated value 633.
Setting the new value to 700 from node A, will change its accumulated value to 700 by setting its value in node A to 415.
A Counter value can be negative.
3. Click the Delete icon to remove a counter.
Counters Export and Import
You can Export selected components, including Counters, into a file, and Import them into your database when required.
Export Database with Counters.
1. Click the Settings gear.
2. Click Export Database.
3. Use the default name or enter your own.
4. Select the components you wish to export. Make sure Counters are included.
5. Click to export the database.
Import Database with Counters.
1. Click the Settings gear.
2. Click Import Data.
3. Select a file you wish to import from, or another source.
4. Select the components you wish to import. Make sure Counters are included.
5. Click to import the database.
Remember that Counters are not independent entities. You can import a Counter with its document, or into an existing document.
E.g. to import the Counters of a document named "products/1-C":
- Check "Include Documents" and "Include Counters".
This will import documents along with their Counters.
- Check "Include Counters" but not "Include Documents".
Verify that a document named products/1-C already exists in your database.
The Counters will be imported into products/1-C.


U.S. flag
Criminal Offending-Self-Esteem Nexus: Which Version of the Self-Esteem Theory Is Supported?
NCJ Number
Prison Journal Volume: 86 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2006 Pages: 344-363
Carrie B. Oser
Date Published
September 2006
20 pages
This study examined the link between criminal behavior and levels of self-esteem by determining the impact of demographic characteristics, criminal history, personality traits, and participation in prison programming on self-esteem levels of 134 inmates in 2 medium-security prisons.
The findings support previous research that has found a link between low self-esteem and criminal offending. Inmates incarcerated for violent offenses or drug offenses and those with extensive criminal histories were found to have significantly lower self-esteem. Findings give partial support to the hypothesis that inmates who score higher on the personality dimensions of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (neuroticism), and openness to experience will have higher levels of self-esteem. The hypothesis that suggests a positive relationship between participation in prison programming and self-esteem was also partially supported. Greater participation in psychological counseling and educational programs was associated with higher levels of self-esteem during incarceration. These findings should assist in assessing the level of inmates' self-esteem during incarceration by showing how criminal history, personality traits, and prison programming are linked to level of self-esteem. Between 1997 and 1998, the inmate sample completed a self-administered survey that assessed various social-psychological concepts and other demographic characteristics during incarceration. The dependent variable was the social-psychological characteristics of self-esteem. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure each inmate's perceived self-worth. The independent variables measured were demographic characteristics, criminal history, personality traits, and participation in prison programming. Chi-square and independent sample t tests were used to identify significant differences between male (n=76) and female inmates (n=58) across the study variables. 2 tables and 49 references


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ELKHART -- In about 90 percent of all births, the baby smoothly
transitions from the womb to the world. About 10 percent of the time,
an infant requires special assistance after delivery.
Some babies need stimulation or a little bit of oxygen when they are
born. And every now and then a baby requires intubation, medication,
or other extensive resuscitation measures.
Area hospitals such as Elkhart General Hospital are constantly working
to provide their medical personnel with the best training possible for
situations like this. And now, a new tool will assist them in
accomplishing that task.
The Elkhart General Hospital Foundation recently donated a
computerized infant simulator, or high-tech sim baby, to the
hospital's neonatal unit to provide greater life-like training for
nursing staff who may need to resuscitate a newborn.
The training tool cost about $25,000.
"When things go wrong, it can happen in an instant," said Michaela
Nufer, an Elkhart General neonatal nurse practitioner. "That's why
it's so important we make training scenarios as realistic as


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The Tale of Bausis & Philemon
A Tale from Greece
Zeus, the king of Mount. Olympus, came down to visit the country folk disguised as a beggar. People turned him away until he came to the house of a poor elderly couple, Bausis and Philemon. Bausis and Philemon shared their simple meal of bread and wine with their guest. Oddly enough, the wine jug never emptied and there was more bread after each slice was cut. It was then that Bausis and Philemon realized that this was no ordinary visitor, but a god from Mount Olympus.
They bowed low and apologized for the simple food they had to offer. Zeus replied, "When you have shared your best, there is never a need to apologize."
In return for their generosity, Zeus granted them their only wish: to remain together always. and so when Bausis and Philemon died, an oak and a linden tree grew with their trunks entwined around each other, on the spot where the couple was buried.
Storytelling in the Classroom | Lesson Plans & Activities
Copyright © 2000 Story Arts


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tagline: From openSUSE
 Linux security
 Root / regular Linux user
In Linux there is a "root" user (which is the administrator) and there are regular "users" (often called "user"). Linux users should always log in as a regular user, and type "su -" or "sudo" to obtain root permissions only on an as-required-basis. Keeping root permissions, or indeed logging in as root user as a routine matter, creates a major security risk for the beginner (if their PC is connected to the Internet). It also creates a significant operating risk, in that it is relatively easy for experts and newbies alike, to trash their system when operating with root permissions.
Some super user definitions are: