What is the difference between probation and parole?
Probation and parole are both alternatives to incarceration. However, probation occurs prior to and often instead of jail or prison time, while parole is an early release from prison. In both probation and parole, the party is supervised and expected to follow certain rules and guidelines. These guidelines are called conditions of parole, or probation conditions, and in both circumstances, the party is expected to submit to warrantless searches, without probable cause.
Probation refers to a period of time before a person is actually sent to prison or jail. When defendants receive probation, instead of pronouncing the sentence and sending them straight to prison or jail, the judge gives them an opportunity to show that they want to rehabilitate themselves. In this case, either the party is given probation without a pre-determined sentence, or the judge will find the defendant guilty, and temporarily suspend the sentence while the defendant is on probation. If defendants do everything the judge instructs them to do, then they will not be sent to prison to finish their sentence or given a new sentence based on the probation violation and initial crime.
Conditions of Probation
Even though the person is not in jail, they may be subject to many of the same conditions of serving time in jail including curfew rules, requirements to participate in rehab programs, and monthly or more frequent drug testing by urinalysis. While on probation, a defendant can be ordered to pay a fine, court costs, restitution, and any court appointed attorney fees.
The length of time that a person is on probation can range from one year to up to ten years. Many states will cap the length of time that a person can remain on probation.
Probation is managed by a probation officer. The probation officer monitors a defendant's progress and file reports with the judge, advising them of any failure to abide by probation terms or conditions. If the judge is not happy with a defendant's performance, the judge can order a capias to be issued and require a defendant to be returned to his court for final sentencing. After sentencing, a defendant is ordered to serve actual time in prison. If the defendant had a suspended prison term, he is usually sent straight to prison to serve his time.
Parole refers to the period of time after a defendant is released from prison. A defendant on parole will face many of the same controls or safeguards as probation. Conditions of parole may include requiring a defendant to stay in a halfway house and continuing with payments on fines and other financial obligations.
Instead of a probation officer, a defendant on parole usually reports to a parole officer. The parole officer explains the rules of parole and expectations of a party on parole to the defendant and monitors his progress. As with a regular probation, if a defendant fails to comply with his parole conditions, then the parole officer could file a report with the parole board. The parole board may, based on the defendant's behavior while on parole, order the defendant returned to prison to finish the balance of his sentence.
Probation and Parole Differences
Parole has the additional function of trying to reintegrate a defendant into society. Depending on the nature of a defendant's offense, a defendant's conditions of probation or parole can be amended or changed. For example, if a defendant is convicted of molesting a child, a defendant may be ordered to stay away from parks and playgrounds where children frequent.
Parole changes are not usually the result of a court order. Instead, parole conditions are usually set by the parole board, and they are for all defendants. For example, all defendants are banned from committing new offenses. Changes in conditions or procedures related to those conditions do not come from the original judge, but instead come from the parole officer or parole board. Instead of criminal proceeding, these changes are referred to as administrative proceedings. This is an important distinction, because a defendant is afforded more state and constitutional protections in a criminal case than an administrative hearing.
Consequences of a Parole Violation
Departments that Handle Parole and Probation
A defendant on probation or parole should maintain a good relationship with his probation or parole officer. Some states will divide their functions into separate divisions including the Parole Department and the Probation Department. Other states will combine the functions into one office. In Louisiana, for example, a defendant could be on probation, get revoked, go to prison, get released and potentially have the same person who managed his probation managing his parole. On the other hand, in the state of Texas, the agencies are split and a defendant will have one officer while on probation, and report to a completely different officer for parole.
Protecting Your Rights
Most people are very concerned about having good representation when they are first facing a criminal charge. This is a valid concern. However, most states provide several state and constitutional protections to ensure that a defendant receives due process. Defendants should use as much diligence in procuring good counsel to assist with parole issues as they did with the initial crime. Part of the reason for this is that the constitutional procedures and protections tend to be much lower in parole revocation situations because they are more administrative in nature. When there are less built in protections, a defendant needs external protections the most.


Elementary school student uses his own allowance to pay off lunch debt for his third-grade class
Nine-year-old Ryan Kirkpatrick had an issue with the fact that some of his fellow classmates couldn't afford to pay for their school lunches, so he decided to do something about it.
Ryan had seen a story in the news about a kindergartner who was shamed for not having money to pay for her lunch and brought it to his mom's attention.
"My son saw that story on the news and came to me while I was getting ready for work and he was in tears and didn't understand why that happened," said Kylie Kirkpatrick, Ryan's mom.
She said they talked about how students are required to pay for lunch and that some people don't have the money to pay for it, "and that didn't agree with him."
They contacted the food service department for their school district and found that the total debt accumulated by every kid at Ryan's school added up to almost $800. The school explained to Kirkpatrick that the students accrue a debt no matter their age, which she found upsetting.
Kirkpatrick asked how much the third graders owed and it was about $75.
Ryan's mom told him about the $75 tab and asked what he wanted to do about it. Ryan simply said, "I'm going to pay the bill."
They went to the business office of the school district and wrote a check. "They were really taken aback at how serious he was about this," said Kirkpatrick.
They presented their school secretary with the receipt and Ryan said, "Please tell my classmates' families that they don't owe any more money."
According to Kirkpatrick, the meals have a sliding scale depending on families' income and can range anywhere from 25 cents to $3, which she says can add up by the end of the school year, causing unnecessary stress to parents already struggling financially.
Kirkpatrick explained how upsetting it was that children were being burdened with the financial guilt of their lunches going unpaid.
"You don't know where your lunch is coming from, you can't afford to pay for lunch that day, all of your other friends have these amazing meals, regardless of the situation, that is not something that a little kid should be worrying about," Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick hopes that her son's story will bring more awareness to this issue so that there are better plans in place for free meals for all elementary school students.
"What we talked about during this process was about how one person, regardless of age, can start a movement, and that at least in our family we believe community happens over a meal," she said.


text:
|Maldives Table of Contents
Formerly, Maldives shipped 90 percent of its fishing catch of tuna in dried form to Sri Lanka. However, because Sri Lanka cut back its imports of such fish, in 1979 Maldives joined with the Japanese Marubeni Corporation to form the Maldives Nippon Corporation that canned and processed fresh fish. Also in 1979 the Maldivian government created the Maldives Fisheries Corporation to exploit fisheries resources generally.
Maldives has an extensive fishing fleet of boats built domestically of coconut wood, each of which can carry about twelve persons. In 1991 there were 1,258 such pole and line fishing boats and 352 trawlers. Based on a US$3.2 million loan from the International Development Association (IDA), most of the boats have been mechanized in the course of the 1980s. Although the addition of motors has increased fuel costs, it has resulted in doubling the fishing catch between 1982 and 1985. Moreover, the 1992 catch of 82,000 tons set a record-- for example, in 1987 the catch was 56,900 tons.
Progress has also been made as a result of fisheries development projects undertaken by the World Bank. Harbor and refrigeration facilities have been improved, leading to a fourfold increase in earnings from canned fish between 1983 and 1985. Further construction of fisheries refrigeration installations and related facilities such as collector vessels were underway in 1994, with funding both from Japan and the World Bank.
More about the Economy of Maldives.
Source: U.S. Library of Congress

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
In this Adobe Photoshop CS3 tutorial, learn how to create an outline text effect.
Tags:how to create an outline text effect,how to use photoshop,Photoshop CS3,photoshop help,photoshop text,photoshop Tips,photoshop tutorials,software help,software tips,tech help,techtutortv
Grab video code:
How to Create an Outline Text Effect in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial, I'm going to show you a quick way how to create an outline text effect. So you will need a new blank canvas, any size you want. If you'd like to have a background color, that's fine. I got just a basic canvas here.
So first thing I'm going to do is create my text. I'm going to select my text tool from the toolbox, and you could choose any font that you'd like and any size that you like. You could do any other, you could change the color, you could change the alignment, anything else you want and click in your document and then go ahead and type your text and then you can move it you'd like.
Okay, so we have our text now. We're going to make it an outline. So go ahead and double click in your layers palate on the layer with the text and that will open up your layer style dialog box. In these general blending options, we want to go down towards this fill opacity and you're going to change that to zero and that's basically going to get rid of all the color inside of your lines.
Then we're going to make sure that we have a stroke, click on stroke and you can make this stroke any size that you want, make it at least two to three so you have an outline. I'm going to go ahead and make it a little bit thicker and do four and you can leave all these settings the same. You can change them if you'd like to get a different look. Make sure that the field type says color for your stroke and then click on the color well and choose a color that you'd like to have as your outline. Click on OK, click on OK again and then you would be taken back to your canvas and now you have an outline text effect.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Subjective Discrimination of Pitch and Amplitude Fluctuations in Recording Systems
This paper is concerned with the measurement of subjective thresholds of the unwanted pitch and amplitude fluctuations which occur in the reproduced output of all types of sound recording systems. The pitch fluctuations are commonly known as -wowand -flutter,- and new equipment is described for generating controlled fluctuations of this type in musical or other programme signals. The threshold measurements thus made possible are more realistic than those hitherto available, which have been related only to frequency fluctuations in test tones. The generation and threshold measurement of controlled amplitude fluctuations are also described, since amplitude and frequency fluctuation commonly occur together. The results obtained enable frequency weighting characteristics to be defined which can be incorporated into instruments measuring the magnitude of the unwanted amplitude and frequency fluctuations in practical systems. It is shown that such instruments may then approximate to an ideal, subjectively weighted measuring device which, when threshold value is reached, will give the same indication irrespective of the type and frequency of the fluctuation measured.
Click to purchase paper or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!
This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers.


text:
Karnataka Revised Pay Fixation Methodology as per GO No.FD 6 SRP 2018
FIXATION OF PAY IN THE REVISED SCALES OF PAY: The initial pay of a Government servant shall be fixed in the corresponding revised scale of pay in the following manner:-
(i) An amount representing 30 percent of the basic pay shall be added to the 'existing emoluments' ;
(ii) After the 'existing emoluments' have been so added and increased, the pay shall be fixed in the corresponding revised scale as hereunder:-
(a) Where the amount computed as above is less than the minimum of the revised scale, it shall be fixed at the minimum;
(b) Where the amount computed as above is not less than the minimum but less than the maximum of the revised scale, the pay shall be fixed in the revised scale at the stage next above that amount; and
(c) Where the amount computed as above is equal to or more than the maximum of the revised scale, the pay shall be fixed at the maximum and the amount equal to the difference between the maximum and the stage of pay in the master scale (mentioned in paragraph 2.3) next above the amount shall be allowed as 'personal pay'.
Note: For this purpose, 'existing emoluments' shall include-
(a) the basic pay as defined in clause (c) of rule 3 of the Karnataka Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2018;
(b) dearness allowance of 45.25% of basic pay admissible as on 01.07.2017.


text:
Definition of rebuttal in English:
1A refutation or contradiction.
- This order does not include costs relating to any rebuttal experiment the claimant may have performed which was not the subject of Dr Jones's evidence.
- It was not sufficient, by way of rebuttal of the perjury charge, to identify some other possible explanation for Mr Sage's evidence.
- The ease of publishing on the Net is such that if someone posts something obviously erroneous, someone else can easily post a rebuttal, refutation, or correction.
1.1 another term for rebutter.
- Judge Soedarto adjourned the next hearing to next Monday, when Antashari will reply to the rebuttals by the defendant's team of lawyers.
- After the defence rests, prosecutors will begin a rebuttal and Jackson's attorneys will then be given an opportunity to respond.
- The jury was expected to get the case sometime later the day, after the end of the plaintiff's argument and a rebuttal by the senior deputy district attorney.
Words that rhyme with rebuttalbuttle, cuttle, scuttle, shuttle, subtle, surrebuttal
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.


text:
Definition : shedding or exfoliation of deciduous teeth
is a term given to describe the physiologic process that
ultimately leads to replacement of the deciduous teeth
by their corresponding permanent successors.
1) the small deciduous teeth cannot grow in size to
accommodate the growing jaw, thus, another
generation of teeth is needed to fulfill this requisity.
1) Growth of muscle of mastication from infant to
adult leading to increase the masticatory force so
the periodontal ligament of deciduous teeth can not
withstand the masticatory force.
Pattern of shedding :
a. Shedding of deciduous anterior teeth :
the permanent incisors and canines tooth germs
initially develop in apicolingual position to their
deciduous predecessors, so, the permanent anterior
tooth germs move into an incisolabial direction and, in
latter stages, they are frequently located apical to their
deciduous predecessors. Thus, the resorptive process is
initiated on apico-lingual root surface, and then
proceeds in a transverse plane apically. This secures
the replacement of the primary teeth by their permanent
successors in the exact position
b. Shedding of deciduous molars :
the premolars begin their development lingual to
their corresponding primary molars.
In later stage, however, they are frequently found
between the divergent roots of the primary molars
.Therefore resorption of the roots of deciduous
molars first begins on their inner surfaces because
The early developing bicuspids are found between
them, then Come to lie apical to deciduous molars.
At this time, the developing premolars become away
and pressure is relieved from deciduous root so the
areas of early resorption are repaired by
deposition of new-cementum like tissue.
Later when the bicuspids begin to erupt
resorption of the deciduous molars is again
initiated and continuous until the roots are
completely lost and the tooth is shed.
Histology of shedding
exfoliation of the primary teeth takes place by a
continuous resorption of their roots by cells having
identical histology to osteoclasts (osteoclasts are
bone resorbing cells ).
Since these cells are concerned in the resorption of
the dental tissues,so they are referred to as
odontoclasts. These cells are capable to resorb all
dental hard tissues even the enamel.
Odontoclasts resorb hard tissue by separating
mineral from the collagen matrix through the action
of hydrolytic enzymes
Origin of Odontoclast :
It is presume that, they have the same origin of
osteoclasts, that is monocytes. An alternative origin
of odontoclasts is the undifferentiated mesenchymal
The odontoclasts are easily recognized, with light
microscope, in clusters rather than singly and appear
occupying hollowed-out shallow depressions known
Howship's lacunae.
By scanning electron microscope: these lacunae seem
not as small focal bays but rather long shallow troughs
. This indicates that during the resorptive process, the
odontoclasts continuously move inside the resorbing
An odontoclast is a large cell that is characterized by
multiple nuclei and a cytoplasm with a homogeneous,
"foamy" appearance. This appearance is due to a high
concentration of vesicles and vacuoles. At a site of
active dentin resorption, the odontoclast forms a
specialized cell membrane, the "ruffled border" ( brush
border ), which faces the surface of the dentin tissue.
The ruffled border facilitates removal of the dentin
matrix. The ruffled border increases surface area
interface for dentin resorption. The mineral portion of
the matrix (called hydroxyapatite) includes calcium and
phosphate ions. These ions are absorbed into small
vesicles which move across the cell and eventually are
released into the extracellular fluid, thus increasing
levels of the ions in the blood.
By transmission electron microscope :
The portion of cell membrane facing the resorbing
bone is thrown into numerous folds that may invaginate
the cytoplasm up to 2-3 micrometer deep. The regional
cytoplasm adjacent to the brush border appear devoid of
cell organelles but rich in actin and myosin (the
attachment zone ) which are presumed to provide an
attaching system for odontoclast to the dentin surface.
The remainder of the odontoclasts is heavily laden
with mitochondria and vesicles especially concentrated
beside the ruffled border. Also the cytoplasm contains a
large number of nuclei, well developed, tightly packed
Golgi saccules while several small vesicles (presumed
to be primary lysosomes) are located peripheral to these
Distribution : the odontoblasts occupy variable positions
and this depends on the different pattern of resorption
occurring in the different teeth. They are located on
the root surface, to resorb both cementum and dentin
in relation to the site of pressure exerted by the
erupting permanent successor. The odontoclasts have
occasionally found in the root canals or pulp chamber
lying against the predentin surface.
The pattern of resorption of single rooted teeth
ultimately leads to shedding of the primary teeth before
their roots are completely resorbed and the erupting
permanent tooth compresses on the outer root surface
therefore, the odontoclasts are not found in the pulp
chamber but on the root surface. However, in
multirooted teeth, odontoclasts are seen in the pulp
Histological features of teeth undergoing
Root surfaces exhibit resorption lacunae and
odontoclast cells are often associated with these
concavities. It is significant that periodontal fibroblasts
in the area show signs of impaired function. The fact
that programmed cell death is seen during shedding
that occurs at specific ages is consistent with the
concept that shedding is a genetically determined
It should be emphasized that the pulp tissue in teeth
undergoing shedding appears histologically normal
except that neural elements seem to be missing. Thus
the pulp does not contribute to the process of
shedding and plays a passive role in this process.
Mechanism of action during resorption of
odontoclasts act by isolating an area of hard tissue
(bone, cementum, dentin or even enamel) using clear
cytoplasmic areas (no organelles) and through plasma
membrane associated enzymes that act as proton
pumps, the isolated area's pH is lowered making it
acidic. This acidity breaks down the hydroxyapatite
crystals of the inorganic content and also denature the
collagenous organic matrix. Essentially denaturing
makes the tightly assembled collagen fibrils looser. The
proteolytic enzymes both secreted and within
lysosomes in the odontoclasts cells are then able to
break down this collagenous organic matrix.
The histochemical study have evidenced that the
odontoclasts characteristically contain a high level
of acid phosphatase activity.
Mechanism of shedding :
I) Initiation of shedding
Two factors are presumed to initiate shedding of
the primary teeth :
a. pressure factor which leads into the
differentiation of the odontoclasts
* pressure of the erupting permanent tooth.
* augmentation of the masticatory forces
b. genetic factor is probably responsible for the
initiation of root resorption and an ultimate
shedding of primary teeth.
II) Process of shedding :
The scanning and transmission electronmicrographs
demonstrate the presence of mineral crystallites in the
depth of the brush border enfolding.This denotes that,
during resorption, the minerals of the dental hard
tissues are primarily removed.
It is presumed that the intracellular vesicles are thought
to be primary lysosomes, which discharge their content
extracellularly among the brush border, thus creating an
acidic medium. Such medium causes minerals
dissolution. However the removal of the dissolved
minerals could be mechanically facilitated by the
folding of the brush border.
The disintegration of the organic matrix occurs by
secretion of the proteolytic enzymes by odontoclast
into smaller molecular components and then degraded
intracellularly by the vesicle containing-acid
phosphatase enzyme found beside the brush border.
Tissue and cellular changes:
Shedding is an intermittent process with periods of
resorption involving alveolar bone, cementum and root
dentin resorption by clast cells, osteoclasts and
odontoclasts, respectively and recovery periods when
osteoblasts and cementoblasts replace part of the
resorbed tissues. Eventually more resorption takes place
and when the tooth loses its supporting periodontal
tissues, it is shed. During this process the primary teeth
become loose during the periods of resorption and
tighten during the brief periods of apposition.
During root resorption,
periods of resorption
are alternated by
periods of cementum
deposit cementum in
areas of resorption
forming a reversal
become embedded in
the cementum and
are then called
A, Reversal line; B, Cement


text:
Some word confusions are interesting but not quite common enough to qualify for an entry on my Common Errors in English Usage Web site. Some seem nevertheless worth discussing here.
"Berth" originally referred to the room required by a ship to maneuver freely, later to the space within which a ship could anchor itself near the shore. Hence the expression "to give a wide berth," meaning to stay well away from someone or something.
Then it was sailors rather than ships who were berthed: a place for a sailor to sleep was a berth. And to have a berth was more broadly to have a place—a job—on a ship.
Finally, the term came to be applied to athletics, where a contestant is assigned a berth: a spot in a contest. A basketball team is assigned a berth in the Final Four.
The stacked beds in railroad sleeper cars and bunks are also referred to as berths.
Since most people now encounter the term in connection with sports, they sometimes misspell it as "birth." You will also occasionally see people saying they give something "a wide birth."
Punning journalists love to play with mistakes like this. The headline on an article about Caesarean section in the New York Post was "Given a Wide Birth."


text: Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have allowed us to deploy seamless and high capacity wireless systems easily and inexpensively. However, recently, channel interference between different services has become a serious problem because access points (APs) of WLANs are located too densely. In the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance used in WLANs, the hidden terminal (HT) problems occur depending on the distance between stations and the carrier sensing range. In the higher dense deployment mentioned above, the HT problems occur complicatedly. In this paper, we propose an AP cooperation system that detects the HT problems between stations (STAs). In our system, APs obtain the information of connected STAs from received frames and the HT problems are identified from the integration of the information obtained at different APs. The effectiveness is verified by simulations.


text:
When an employee is underpaid, the method used to get them the rest of their net pay depends largely upon the urgency. Here are some common methods:
- Run a correction payroll to issue a corrected deposit (next business day)
- Write the employee a check on site for the difference (same day)
- Include the additional amount on the employee's next paycheck (next payroll check date)
If you are going to pursue an direct deposit correction, please contact DP Customer Service for assistance. If you would prefer to handle the correction in one of the other two ways, read on!
The first step in correcting the underpayment is accurately determining how much the employee was underpaid, which can get complicated because of the tax rate adjustments. The most accurate way to calculate the difference and record the correction in payroll is to void the original transaction entirely and add a new check reflecting what should have happened.
Here's a step by step:
- In Payroll Processing > Payroll Entry > Individual Time Entry, then select the employee you wish to correct.
- To void the original check, click "Add New" in the horizontal blue bar that runs across the middle of the screen, then choose Check Type: "Void", select the original check you wish to void, uncheck "Include Direct Deposit Reversals", and Save.
- To calculate the amount the employee would have received on a correct version of the check, click "Add New" again.
- Choose "Additional Check" from the drop-down menu, and Save.
- Enter the employee's earnings and hours as they should have been, then click "Preview Check" in the horizontal blue bar.
- Once you're satisfied that the information is correct, hit "Post as Manual" to save the calculation as an adjustment.
Once you have calculated the corrected check, you can subtract the original net pay from the corrected net pay the employee received. That amount is what the employee still needs to be paid.
At this point, you can either write the employee a check on site or add the difference in pay to the next scheduled payroll. If you are going to add it to the next payroll, the simplest thing to do is add earnings in a non-taxable earnings code (such as reimbursement). Contact DP Customer Service if you need assistance or a recommendation!


text:
World Environment Day Celebrated at Ekal - Tezpur, Assam
The Balipara Sanch and other Sanch centres in Assam celebrated the World Environment Day. The event was marked by planting trees and organizing programs to educate people on rain water harvesting methods at home and hazards of using plastic bags to the environment. Saplings of Neem and other trees were distributed to the participants. Several dignitaries graced their presence on the occasion.


A Relation Taxonomy Creation Module
C.R. Kothari and D.J. Russomanno (USA)
Semantic Web, Ontologies, Relations, Taxonomies
This paper describes the functionality and architecture of the Relation Taxonomy Module (RTM). RTM taxonomically arranges ontology specific relations using relation element values, which describe their intrinsic nature. RTM works in collaboration with the Relation Semantics Prototype (RSEP), which interactively elicits values for relation elements from knowledge providers to describe relations defined within ontologies. RTM generates the relation taxonomies using a technique that is analogous in some ways to using attributes of objects to arrange them taxonomically via the attribute exploration method. Ontology specific relation taxonomies may facilitate knowledge reuse and interoperability on a distributed environment such as the Semantic Web. The functionality and design of the RTM and the results from testing this prototype with a few ontologies are presented and analyzed in this paper.
Important Links:
Go Back


Reviewing Code for Race Conditions
Revision as of 11:10, 13 August 2007 by EoinKeary (Talk | contribs)
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OWASP Code Review Guide Table of Contents
Race conditions: Race Conditions occur when a piece of code does not work as it is supposed to (like many security issues). They are the result of an unexpected ordering of events which can result in the finite state machine of the code to transition to a undefined state and also give rise to contention of more than one thread of execution over the same resource. Multiple threads of execution acting or manipulating the same area in memory or persisted data which gives rise to integrity issues.
How they work:
With competing tasks manipulating the same resource we can easly get a race condition as the resource is not in step-lock or utilises a token based multi-use system such as semaphores.
Say we have two processes (Thread 1, T1) and (Thread 2, T2). The code in question adds 10 to an integer X. The initial valus of X is 5.
X = X + 10
So with no controls surrounding this code in a multithreaded environment we get the following problem:
T1 places X into a register in thread 1
T2 places X into a register in thread 2
T1 adds 10 to the value in T1's register resutling in 15
T2 adds 10 to the value in T2's register resulting in 15
T1 saves the register value (15) into X.
T1 saves the register value (15) into X.
The value shoild actually be 25 as each Thread added 10 to the initial value of 5. But the actual value is 15 due to T2 not letting T1 save into X before it takes a value of X for its addition.
How to locate the potentially vulnerable code
Look for code which used multithreaded environments:
Keywords such as:
Vulnerable Patterns for Race Conditions
Static methods (One per class, not one per object) are an issue perticularly if there is a shared state among multiple threads. For example in Apache struts static members should not be used to store information relating to a particular request. The same instance of a class can be used by multiple threads and the value of the static member can not be guarenteed.
Instances of classes do not need to be thread safe as one is made per operation/request. Static states must be thread safe.
 1. References to static variables, these much be thread locked.
 2. Releasing a lock in places other then finally{} may cause issues
 3. Static methods that alter static state
Good Patterns & procedures to prevent Race Conditions
Related Articles


Milestone-Proposal:Mercury Spacecraft MA-6
From GHN
Revision as of 16:04, 12 November 2009 by Administrator4 (Talk | contribs)
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Docket #:2009-12
This Proposal has been approved, and is now a Milestone Nomination
Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old?
Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity?
Was it of at least regional importance?
Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony?
Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:
February 20, 1962
Title of the proposed milestone:
Mercury Spacecraft MA-6
Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance:
In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?
St. Louis Section
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:
IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):
Milestone proposer(s):
Boeing Bldg 100, St. louis, MO
The milestone plaque will be mounted at or near the entrance of the James S. McDonnell Prologue Room: An Air and Space History Exhibit. The Prologue Room is located in The Boeing Company Building 100, headquarters for Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems business. This will provide public access to view the plaque. Inside the Prologue Room, there is an exact replica (mock-up engineering design fixture) of the Mercury Spacecraft MA-6 that Col. John Glenn piloted thru 3 earth orbits. The Mercury Spacecraft were designed, developed, and tested in nearby buildings less than 200 yards from where the plaque will reside.
Are the original buildings extant?
Details of the plaque mounting:
The Prologue room is open to the public during the summer months and is visited by more than 5,000 non-Boeing people every year. In addition, the Prologue Room is used by The Boeing Company to explain the vast history of the company to domestic and foreign dignitaries. In addition, middle school students are given tours of the Prologue Room. They learn the mechanics of flight and they are encouraged to consider careers in math, science, and engineering. There is a visitor's parking lot next to Bldg 100 where the public may park and walk to the site of the milestone plaque. The Prologue is a secure area and Boeing provides daily security patrols of the area. The Prologue Room (site of Mercury Capsule MA-6 ) is inside the secure area of Bldg 100
Who is the present owner of the site(s)?
Mercury Spacecraft MA-6, with Col John Glenn as pilot, was the first United States manned orbital flight. It occurred on February 20, 1962. He named his spaceship Friendship 7. This established the United States foundation for future spaceflight, eventually resulting in the landing on the moon of humans.
When the request for proposals was issued by NASA, there had not been a manned spaceflight by the United States. Amazingly, James S. McDonnell, founder of the McDonnell Aircraft Company, dedicated resources and personnel to design a spacecraft capable of putting humans into space and returning them safely to earth at least two years before the signing of the Project Mercury contract. Because space flight was different than conventional air flight electrical systems had new challenges. The electrical and electronics systems had to be able to operate in a new environment including but not limited to the vacuum of space, the weightlessness of orbital flight, and the rigors of launch and recovery. MAC electrical and electronics engineers took extra precautions because the spacecraft had to be
What features set this work apart from similar achievements?
Col Glenn's flight was the second manned orbital spaceflight. The first was USSR Yuri Gargarin's orbital spaceflight. However, Glenn's space flight was set apart by the electrical and electronic systems invented by the MAC engineers, some being members of IRE and then subsequently IEEE. Its systems epitomize the field of interest of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society. Project Mercury's electronics included Navigation and control instruments; auto pilot; rate stabilization and control, manual proportional control system and Fly-By-Wire (FBW)manual-electrical system. The FBW manual-electrical systems proved critical to Friendship 7's mission success because a yaw attitude control jet apparently clogged at the end of the first orbit, forcing astronaut Glenn to abandon the automatic control system for the manual-electrical fly-by-wire system. (ref


「備えとアオサギ」 (Sonae to Aosagi)
"Preparations and Herons"
On this very special episode of Houkago Teibou Nisshi we learn about the safety precautions of both staying safe if you fall into the water and making sure to properly dispose of the waste you might produce while fishing. But the anime still manages to make it all easy-to-digest without it feeling too much like an infodump as it gives the girls more to work with by giving us better glimpses of their mindsets, especially from Sayaka, Ohno, and Hina's perspectives.
It was impressive to see that Sayaka is still a formidable instructor in spite of being shown as a boozehound for the majority of her screen time in past episodes. She actually gives good advice as far as keeping yourself afloat and safe in the water goes considering that she was a lifeguard and uses her experience to teach the girls about ways to float up through posture and floatation devices. Indeed, it's been ages since we've seen her eyes.
This section of the episode also gives Ohno some development as she has to brave jumping into the water to take part in Sayaka's lesson. Although she was worried for the entire time, she had a moment of clarity where she went for the dive as soon as she realized it would provide a larger problem if she never learned to float and drowned while the club was fishing. It gave her a moment of reflection that was refreshing because of how rare it is to get as much development from SOL characters beyond learning a new trade.
At the same time, we get some commentary on littering and water pollution as Hina's unfortunate run-in with a hungry heron causes her to notice that the seabird has fishing line wrapped around its leg. In a unique twist, she actually looks up informative articles on the damage that pollution causes to seabirds with the bodily harm she witnesses causing her to make it her goal to find the same bird and get the line off of its feet.
Again, it's not in your everyday SOL that you get scenes that involve directly addressing issues in the outside world beyond a sport or hobby that the creator enjoys. It's pretty neat that, in the process of teaching viewers how to fish in murky rainwater or how to fend off your catch from seabirds, they are able to address the hazardous effects of ocean dumpage.
 1. Informative slice of life anime succeed because they strike that balance between the comfy piece and giving viewers something useful to walk away with. Winter's Koisuru Asteroid did something very similar. The fact that it's set in the real world also really helps, too. Another blogger out there managed to find the location that inspired Natsumi's house in episode seven. It turns out it's not in Sashiki, and instead, is about 15 miles away.
 Radiant Arrow
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Elsewhere on DAFF
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) leads the Australian Government in minimising the impact of pests, diseases and contaminants on Australian agriculture, fisheries, forestry and the environment. These outcomes are achieved by working with stakeholders in peace time to develop and test emergency response plans. In actual, real-life pest and disease outbreaks, DAFF has a lead role in the response by coordinating resources, operational and technical support as well as public information.
DAFF coordinates national activities to ensure a comprehensive, consistent and informed approach to preparedness and response activities for agricultural critical incidents and participates in a number of high-level committees and taskforces.
Emergency Response Plans
DAFF assists in the development of sector specific response plans such as:
Information during a biosecurity incident
Communication plays a large part in the response to, and recovery from, a biosecurity incident. Read more about the national arrangements that are place to make sure industry and the public is kept informed during a biosecurity incident.
BioSIRT (Biosecurity Surveillance Incident Response and Tracing) is a spatial and textual, web based software application that has been developed to enable better management of information and resources in emergency responses across animal or plant diseases, pests and incursions.
DAFF also conducts and participates in training activities and simulation exercises which have included:
Also see the information on the Rapid Response Team (RRT).
DAFF works closely with many government agencies and industry groups to ensure a unified approach to animal, plant or food safety emergencies.
Some of our partners include:
- Australian Government agencies
- State and Territory agricultural departments
- Animal Health Australia
- Plant Health Australia
- Meat & Livestock Australia
- Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority
- Fisheries Research & Development Corporation
If you would like to know more about DAFF's role or our approach to pest and disease emergencies, email the Biosecurity Emergency Management Unit in DAFF.
21 Nov 2012


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This question already has an answer here:
- How does accepting an answer work? 1 answer
When viewing a question where the accepted answer has the same score as non-accepted answers, the accepted answer does not appear first in the list.
Viewing this question on the Gaming SE and refreshing it will result in the accepted answer migrating up and down the list. Note that the sort order is by votes. Reproducable on Stack Overflow as well.


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- For Teachers
Consider the two sentences:
a) Make a habit of not to think of her.
b) Make a habit of not thinking of her.
Which one is the correct sentence? Please explain.
Got it. Thank you both of you.
Other contexts require a different response, but for the same reason.
For example 'It's important to think of her' -> 'It's important not to think of her' (not 'It's important not thinking of her.')
And other words can take either: 'It's silly not to think of her' and 'It's silly not thinking of her'.' (To my ear, the second version sounds slightly more informal - especially in the positive version: 'It's silly thinking of her.'
Last edited by BobK; 16-May-2010 at 12:08. Reason: Added second para


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Exercise your brain to improve your balance. Multiple sensory systems contribute to your ability to maintain balance and move safely. Age-related changes affect these systems. Learn exercises that target and challenge the brain and body to improve motor skills, agility, coordination, posture, balance and reduce your risk of falling.
Brain and Balance Training - 6 Week Series
Cost (includes tax):
$45.00 (Meets 1x/week)
Please call Hawaii Pacific Health Contact Center at _PHONE_:
- To check on other dates if class is full.
- To reschedule or cancel your class.
- To request a refund. Minimum 3 day notice for cancellations (prior to the start of a class) is required for refunds.


professional lean, agile & change coach
The Ringi System at Toyota
The ringi system is a more formal decision-making process used for handling significant decisions. In the ringi process, a small team of people with the necessary expertise is assigned to analyze some specific issues or challenge and recommend a solution. At the conclusion of the analysis process, the team creates a decision document called a Ringi-sho, which outlines the challenges, the countermeasure, and the potential implications, both positive and negative, of adopting the proposal. The team then meets with all managers who will be affected by the proposal and requests their approval. Sign off on the proposal is traditionally done with a manager's hanko, a personal stamp used only by managers at a certain level.
In product development, ringi typically takes place early in the process during the kentou or study phase. Small cross-functional teams are given a limited time period (approximately 30 to 90 days) in which to analyze a challenge, meet with managers, and diffuse the document throughout any effected product development organization.
Using ringi in product development has several advantages. It gathers input from all effected parties and aligns effected groups, reducing decision making to single step during the product development process. In addition, it provides a constructive outlet for nonstandard approaches while simultaneously providing organizational support for standardized designs and processes. The underlying message is to follow standards unless there is a very good reason not to – good enough to go through the ringi process and prove it.


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First name origin & meaning:
First name variations: Karney
Last name origins & meanings:
- Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh
'descendant of Catharnach', a byname meaning 'warlike'.
- Irish: reduced form of McCarney.
- Irish: variant of
- Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó
Cearnaigh 'descendant of Cearnach'. Compare Kearney.
Comments for Carney


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They mostly contain various junk items such as clipboards, bottles, and shot glasses. They often contain around 4-9 caps, and can even rarely contain Nuka-Colas, cartons of cigarettes, and sometimes various ammunition types.
- They can be found basically anywhere throughout the Wasteland both on the surface and underground.
- The majority of them are in stores, buildings, and alleys.
- Getting the Scrounger and Fortune Finder perks can increase the amount of caps and ammunition found in garbage cans.
- Garbage cans may respawn random items every 72 hours, and for this reason they are not safe for player to use as storage.


text: The resolution of ambiguous pronouns is influenced by the preceding linguistic discourse. This raises the question whether the processing of an object pronoun is also influenced by the preceding sentential subject. In an experiment with Dutch adults, we recorded pupil dilation as a measure of the cognitive effort involved in resolving pronominal versus full noun phrase (NP) subjects and pronominal versus reflexive objects. Our results indicate that more effort is needed to resolve a pronominal subject or object compared to a less ambiguous full NP subject or reflexive object. These results support the hypothesis that the ambiguity of a referring expression influences processing. Contrary to our expectations, no evidence was found that the form of the subject influences the processing of a subsequent pronominal object. We conclude that pupillary responses reflect ambiguity resolution in pronoun processing, and that the process to resolve pronouns commences as soon as the pronoun is encountered.


Shipper Information Tab in the Shipper Editor Window
The Shipper Information tab allows you to add the address information for a new shipper or modify some fields for an existing shipper.
Using the Shipper Information tab:
 1. To add shipper information for a new shipper, provide the information in the appropriate boxes. See Address Guidelines.
 2. To modify shipper information for an existing shipper:
 3. View the following read-only fields: Address 1, Address 2, Country/Territory, Postal Code, City or Town, State/Province/County, UPS Account Number, and PTN.
 4. Verify and update the following fields as needed: Shipper Name, Contact, Address 3, Telephone, Fax, Tax ID Number, Tax ID Type, and E-mail Address (see Validate E-mail Addresses).
 1. Click the OK button. The Shipper Editor window appears.
 2. Click the Close button. The Shipping window appears.


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The Heritage of Sophia Street
When we think of Fredericksburg history as it relates to Sophia Street, we immediately bring to mind a few specific remaining structures and sites as we see them today: The Toll House at the foot of Rocky Lane; the present Half Way house at Wolfe and Sophia Streets, once an early tavern. The Center for the Creative Arts, referred to as the Silversmith's House; and the Sandstone Warehouse at the bridge at Sophia and William Streets.
If any other structure of eighteenth century vintage stood on Sophia Street, it no longer stands today. For that matter, did any eighteenth century structure ever face Sophia Street?
The Toll House in its relationship to the ferry served a special purpose and may have faced the river, but it was remote from primary areas of warehouse activity.
The present Half Way House, which could be Fredericksburg's earliest standing structure, obviously faced up river and for good reason. A visit to its basement level reveals huge sandstone fireplaces at either end of the building. The riverside fireplace is filled in while the Sophia Street or west end has been converted to an entrance necessitating the removal of the chimney. This magnificent eighteenth century tavern no doubt once resounded with the then nearby activity of the wharf and the warehouses that packed in merchants, sailors and warehousemen. Perhaps someday it may be restored to its original splendor and play an informative role in Sophia Street and waterfront history.
The Center for the Creative Arts, or Silversmith's House, obviously faced George Street for practical access to the commercial activity of the river and the more negotiable George Street. Assuming that the tunnel beneath George Street was there during the late eighteenth century, ships must have anchored at the river entrance to the tunnel in order to load and unload merchandise or slaves.
The gable end of the Center for Creative Arts now fronts on Sophia Street as does the Half Way House. With the nineteenth century development of Sophia Street, new structures naturally fronted on this growing area of activity and those of the eighteenth century converted their front entrances to the now more practical approach to the town--Sophia Street.
The Center, a very important historical attraction, has many fine historical features. Its sandstone basement floor and walls, its ghost story, its silversmith relationship -- all contributed to its historic value. As time went by, the sandstone warehouse at William and Sophia Streets no longer used its riverfront loading areas at the lower and earlier levels of the building. Instead, the William and Sophia Street entrances served the upper levels as these were constructed later.
It appears that Caroline Street was the more heavily urbanized area of eighteenth century Fredericksburg as commerce and development bypassed Sophia Street until it was sufficiently filled and broadened to serve as a negotiable street. The precipitous Sophia Street banks resulted from incessant fill which covered up much early riverfront history.
The transition of commerce from riverfront to Caroline Street and then, to a degree, back to Sophia Street, presents an intriguing picture of early Fredericksburg history. Other structures that may have paralleled those still standing are lost beneath fill and time. The sandstone structure beneath the Briar Patch Antiques* on Sophia Street, supporting the frame building above, is a unique example of early riverfront warehouse activity. Its recent exposure while remodeling was taking place revealed large riverfront entrances with huge sandstone lintels, characteristic of such riverfront warehouses. The building erected on it actually saved it from total oblivion and its brief appearance presented a fascinating glimpse into early waterfront history.
We must remember that even though Sophia Street was mapped in the early eighteenth century, structures at that time faced the river which was the practical and negotiable route of commerce.
This article originally appeared in the Fredericksburg Times magazine and was later reprinted in Fredericksburg Underground: Archaeological History, with Roy G. Butler, pp. 118-121.
*The Briar Patch Antiques was a few doors down from the Old Stone Warehouse. Today, it also houses an antique shop.


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This site uses different types of cookies, including analytics and functional cookies (its own and from other sites). To change your cookie settings or find out more, click here. If you continue browsing our website, you accept these cookies.
Sometimes formulas get pretty long. There are cases of deeply nested conditionals, concatenation of long strings, cases where multiple casts and parses are used, etc. where formulas get pretty large and unwieldy. The current system of wrapping lines and managing the size of the properties pane can be a hassle, especially if you are trying to use any sort of whitespace formatting to make the formulas more readable.
My solution is this is pretty simple, add a pop-out window for formulas. It could be a context menu option from right-clicking the formula box itself, a button on the bar at the top of each formula, or any number of other things.
A really good example of this is MS Access. You can right-click any text box that takes an expression and open it in the expression editor pop-up window. The current system is more like excel where you're stuck with whatever box size you're given.


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Closing in on the Planck constant
Sep 25, 1998
Physicists in the US have made the most accurate measurements ever of the Planck constant, h. Edwin Williams and colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, measured h by comparing the voltage needed to control the velocity of a coil moving vertically in an magnetic field, with the current that has to be passed through the coil to balance gravity in the same magnetic field. The measurement could lead to a new reference stand for the kilogram (Phys. Rev. Lett. 81 2404).
The kilogram is currently defined by a platinum-iridium alloy maintained at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) in Paris and six official copies. However, the official mass of the standard kilogram has been known to vary with time, hence the interest in defining the kilogram is terms of fundamental constants like h.
The highly stable magnetic field needed for the experiment is generated by a superconducting magnet that has been cooled to 4 Kelvin. The experiment also uses two induction coils: the lower coil is fixed to the support structure of the experiment, while the upper coil can move. This upper coil is also attached to a wheel balance above the experiment. In the first stage of the measurement, the mass balance is empty and a small force is applied to the upper coil, forcing it to move at 2mm/s. The researchers found that this generated a voltage of 1.018 ± 0.001 V across the moving coil. In the second stage of the experiment, a 500 g countermass is balanced by a - 10.18 mA current in the induction coil. Both stages were repeated over many months to obtain a value of 6.62606891(58) x 10-34 Joule seconds for the Planck constant.
This result - which corresponds to an accuracy of 9 parts in 108 - is a factor of 15 better than previous measurements. The team hope to improve on this result by another factor of 10 by modifying their experiment.


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Since 2010, Frasca's advanced helicopter full flight simulators have helped Bristow Group develop a true company‐wide learning and safety culture.
Next Generation Requirements
In the mid‐2000s, the Bristow Group began operating a new generation of twin‐engine IFR helicopters to support offshore oil and gas (O&G) exploration and production – the Airbus EC225, Sikorsky S‐ 76C++, and Sikorsky S‐92. To support flight training in these new aircraft, Bristow chose Frasca to design, certify, manufacture, and install three new type‐specific state-of‐art full flight simulators for Bristow's North Sea helicopter training center in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Bristow Mission Profile
Founded in 1955, Bristow today operates 345 aircraft supporting offshore O&G in Europe, Russia, and North, Central, and South America. Specifically, in the often unforgiving North Sea, Bristow provides O&G support in addition to 24‐hour, all‐weather day/night search and rescue (SAR) for the UK government and the Norwegian O&G industry.
Notorious for rough and changing weather conditions, the North Sea is an exceptionally challenging environment with high winds, rough seas, poor visibility, fog, thunderstorms, icing conditions, and turbulence. The company sought superior simulator technology to ensure pilots received realistic, multi‐sensory training preparing them to maintain safe flight operations no matter what the North Sea throws at them.
Frasca developed three custom simulators featuring the Frasca TruVision Global visual system with a 200‐degree horizontal by 70‐degree vertical dome visual system, six‐axis electric motion base, vibration platform, exact cockpit replication, electric control loading, blade element modelling, multi‐channel sound simulation, night vision goggle (NVG) compatibility, and a touch screen instructor operator station (IOS).
The visual database installed for Bristow includes several high‐detail UK airports, coastlines, and North Sea offshore oil field installations, and allows for a range of sea states, weather, and light conditions to accurately simulate the operating environment.
The Frasca simulators are also equipped with an auto‐test utility employing sensors and software to automatically fly the FFS through the required CAA maneuvers, record the performance, and compare the results to flight test data obtained from an actual helicopter. Auto‐test also includes a real‐time graphical feedback on the visual display, greatly simplifing performing control sweep tests.
Bristow required an FFS that permitted the company to get as close to the FFS Level D training credit as possible, but used an alternate certification level allowing more flexibility in technology to better meet its training objectives.
Frasca designed and certified Bristow's simulators from the ground up to meet the company's specific training and certification requirements. Each FFS is dual qualified as FFS Level B by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and a FTD Level 3 under the EASA system. As such, pilots receive credit for 90% of initial type conversions and 100% for recurrent training and check requirements in the simulators.
Simulator Training at Bristow
Bristow provides initial and recurrent training in its advanced FFSs. Bristow's initial training program includes aircraft‐type rating and operator conversion, the majority of which is conducted in the simulators and supplemented by actual aircraft training. All semiannual recurrent training and checks (apart from line checks) are conducted in the simulators.
Training Benefits Realized
The new FFSs greatly enhance Bristow's training efforts, allowing instructors to effectively teach and monitor pilot performance, multi‐crew procedures, and crew resource management (CRM).
The Frasca simulators also feature recording facilities, including video, audio, instrument readouts, and flight path data. This allows the flight to be played back for debrief, analysis and learning opportunities, further enhancing training.
In the end, the three high fidelity flight simulators not only meet Bristow's certification and training objectives, but proved to be extremely reliable and easy to maintain, with reliability exceeding 98 percent.
"These aspects can only be trained and assessed effectively when instructors/examiners are not part of the crew (as they would have to be during training in the actual aircraft)," says Bristow's Training Standards Manager Paul Quick.
"The simulator is ideal, allowing the instructor/examiner to observe and test from the instructor station."


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What we do
Mary's Meals serves nutritious school meals to children living in some of the world's poorest countries. The promise of a good meal attracts these hungry children into the classroom, giving them the energy to learn and hope for a better future.
We are already feeding more than two million children every school day – and, together, we can reach the next hungry child waiting for Mary's Meals.
Where we work
We serve our life-changing meals to children living in 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean.
We're now feeding 2,279,941 children every school day.
But more than 64 million primary school-age children are out of school around the world. In order to survive, they have to work or beg. Even if they do make it into the classroom, hunger affects their ability to learn.


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Non-Negative Principal Component Analysis for Face Recognition
Principle component analysis is often combined with the state-of-art classification algorithms to recognize human faces. However, principle component analysis can only capture these features contributing to the global characteristics of data because it is a global feature selection algorithm. It misses those features contributing to the local characteristics of data because each principal component only contains some levels of global characteristics of data. In this paper, the authors present a novel face recognition approach using non-negative principal component analysis which is added with the constraint of non-negative to improve data locality and contribute to elucidating latent data structures. Experiments are performed on the Cambridge ORL face database. They demonstrate the strong performances of the algorithm in recognizing human faces in comparison with PCA and NREMF approaches.


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now, so you can ignore the second set of holes.
9. Attach the camera mount to the back of the monitor (top, centered) using some double sided foam tape.
10. Repeat steps 7-9 for the second webcam.
11. Run all the wires along the side and back of the inside of the main box and out the back hole, taping things down as needed to make it look nicer and cleaner.
Step 5: Making Poppets
1. Using one of the scrap acrylic pieces from the light box, laser cut the poppet base squares (poppet_base.ai). Using the other scrap acrylic, laser cut the poppet character outlines (poppet_chars.ai).
2. Print out the characters (02_stickers_sm.jpg) on the clear sticker sheet.
3. Roughly cut out the characters (so there's plenty of excess sticky) and attach them to the appropriate acrylic characters, trying your best to line up the edges of the drawing with the edges of the acrylic.
4. Flip it over and use an x-acto knife to trim off the excess sticker sheet on the edges.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the back side of the characters as well.
6. Print out the fiducial markers (01_markers_sm.jpg) on the clear sticker paper. (These are the same markers included with reactivision, just scaled down to poppet size and arranged to be printed on the stickers)
7. Roughly cut out the fiducial markers and align them to the square bases. I included the small text on the bottom so I would know what the ID of each marker was. Trim off the excess after its attached.
8. Attach the characters to their bases using some acrylic cement.
Step 6: Setting Up The Software
1. Turn on the lightbox lights and calibrate reactivision to account for the camera distortion by using the rectangular calibration pdf included in reactivision. I scaled it down so it was about 8 inches wide when printed. Follow the directions on the reactivision site.
2. Calibrate the camera in reactivision by pressing O. Place a fiducial marker on the surface and adjust the brightness, contrast, etc until reactivision is able to detect the ID of the marker. (It will display the number it thinks it is in blue). After everything is set up in reactivision I turn off the image by pressing N to save some CPU power. (Pressing T brings it back).
3. Open my poppet Osculator file (0327_markers). When a marker is detected in reactivision the corresponding line in Osculator will have a green box next to it. I recommend paying for Osculator because the unregistered version pops up a message occasionally that cuts off the communication temporarily, which is annoying.
4. Install the NETLab Toolkit and HUB according to the directions on the NETLab Toolkit site.
5. Launch the HUB app first (making sure you checked the Run in 32 bit mode as mentioned in the install instructions!), and minimize it. It just needs to run in the background for the Flash app to communicate to Osculator.
6. Open the Flash file (0327_poppet.fla) and run the app. If everything is working properly you should see an animation appear when a fiducial marker is detected. Move this window to the top side of your screen.
7. Do the same thing on the second computer.
8. Open up iChat and start a video chat with the second computer. Make sure the right camera is selected (should be logitech, not unibrain). Hide the local video and move the window to the other side of the screen (not overlapping with the flash window).
Step 7: Setting up CamTwist
1. Open up CamTwist. Go to Preferences > General. Change the video size to 640 x 480 and check "Disable QuickTime Component." Disabling Quicktime Component really helps keep CamTwist from eating too much CPU and freezing up. Restart CamTwist for the changes to take effect.
2. Double click "Slide Show" to set a still image as the base layer. Drag the bg image (background.jpg) into the settings box.
3. Go to Tools > Full Screen > Acer to select the second monitor and see what you're doing.
4. In the video source list single click Webcam and press the PIP button at the bottom.
5. In Webcam Settings, make sure it's selected the Logitech cam.
6. In PIP Settings drag the Scale slider all the way to the right. so the image fills the screen. Check the Chroma Key box. Drag Threshold slider all the way to the right.
7. Click on the colored (most likely white at first) bar between Chroma Key and Threshold to bring up the color picker. Use the magnifying glass tool to select the greyish background in the webcam view. You'll have to play around with the slider on the right to get the right shade of grey for a clean chroma key. It helps if you have something in the box while doing this.
8. Go back to Video Source and click Desktop and click PIP again. In Desktop Settings uncheck "Full screen" but make sure "Resizable selection" is still checked.
9. Press "Select Capture Area" and a rectangle with square handles will appear. Drag it to the running flash app and press "Done Selecting"
10. In PIP Settings, check the "Clear Background" box. Drag the Scale Slider all the way to the right. Check Chroma Key. Drag Threshold all the way to the right. And with the Chroma Key color picker select the blue background. The webcam image should now be overlaid with the animation from the flash app.
11. Repeat steps 8-10 for the webcam feed, except when you select your capture area drag it to the video chat window. And when you do the chroma key color selection you'll have to select the background of the video chat.
12. Obviously, do the same for the other computer as well.
13. If everything is working properly, congrats, you're Teleportaling!


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WUBS (Web User Booking System) has been developed at Loughborough University Library to allow online booking of resources (rooms, PCs, etc) directly by end users. It has been in production use at Loughborough since October 2004.
Allows resources to be of arbitrary, admin defined types. For example you might have types of "Group Study Room", "Bookable PC", "Staff Loan Laptop", with multiple resources of each type
Individual resources can have different booking periods defined, with gaps allowed between booking slots (allowing, for example, one group to a room and then another group takes up residence outside of the booked slot)
Resources and/or types can have periods defined when they aren't available for bookings (eg during holidays or building refurbishments)
"Librarian" and admin staff can act as other users to allow them to book resources on behalf of students (handy if sitting at a help desk or on the end of a support line)
Different classes of user can have different limits to the number of resources they can book, with different rules for different types of resource as well
User information picked out of the Active Directory


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Nitesh Chawla, David Cieslak
Decision trees, a popular choice for classification, have their limitation in providing good quality probability estimates. Typically, smoothing methods such as Laplace or m-estimate are applied at the decision tree leaves to overcome the systematic bias introduced by the frequency-based estimates. An ensemble of decision trees has also been shown to help in reducing the bias and variance in the leaf estimates, resulting in better calibrated probabilistic predictions. In this work, we evaluate the calibration or quality of these estimates using various loss measures. We also examine the relationship between the quality of such estimates and resulting rank-ordering of test instances. Our results quantify the impact of smoothing in terms of the loss measures, and the coupled relationship with the AUC measure.
Subjects: 12. Machine Learning and Discovery; 15.6 Decision Trees
Submitted: May 25, 2006


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Optimal Virtual Topologies for One-to-Many Communication in WDM Paths and Rings
Computer Science (HMC)
In this paper we examine the problem of constructing optimal virtual topologies for one-to-many communication in optical networks employing wavelength-division multiplexing. A virtual topology is a collection of optical lightpaths embedded in a physical topology. A packet sent from the source node travels over one or more lightpaths en route to its destination. Within a lightpath, transmission is entirely optical. At the terminus of a lightpath the data is converted into the electronic domain where it may be retransmitted on another lightpath toward its destination. Since the conversion of the packet from the optical to the electronic domain introduces delays and uses limited physical resources, one important objective is to find virtual topologies which minimize either the maximum or average number of lightpaths used from the source to all destination nodes. Although this problem is NP-complete in general, we show that minimizing the maximum or average number of lightpaths in path and ring topologies can be solved optimally by efficient algorithms.
© 2004 Association for Computing Machinery
J. R. Hartline, R. Libeskind-Hadas, K. Dresner, E. Drucker, and K. Ray, "Optimal Virtual Topologies for One-To-Many Communication in WDM Paths and Rings," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2004, pp. 375-383. DOI: 10.1109/TNET.2004.826283


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Periodontal disease could decrease kidney function in African-Americans
from Dental Tribune
New research has shown that African-Americans who suffer from the severe form of periodontal disease have a more than fourfold risk of developing chronic kidney disease than those without severe periodontal disease. In the U.S. alone, 1 in 2 adults aged 30 and over have periodontal disease, with African-Americans being disproportionally affected.
7701 Las Colinas Blvd., Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063


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This crossword clue is for the definition: Land of the banshee.
it's A 19 letters crossword puzzle definition.
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Possible Answers: EIRE.
Last seen on: LA Times Crossword 23 Nov 18, Friday
Random information on the term "EIRE":
The Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the reconstructed ancestor language of all the known Celtic languages. Its lexis can be confidently reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method of historical linguistics. As Celtic is a branch of the Indo-European language family, Proto-Celtic is a descendant of the Proto-Indo-European language. According to one theory, Celtic may be closest to the Italic languages, which together form an Italo-Celtic branch. The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered as Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe from the last quarter of the second millennium BC. By the Iron Age Hallstatt culture of around 800 BC, these people had become fully Celtic.


Explanation of Boat Excise Tax
Pursuant to Chapter 60B of the Massachusetts General Laws, every watercraft, including documented boats and ships, used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on water is subject to an excise tax unless expressly exempted. Excise is assessed for the "privilege of using the waterways."
The amount of excise due on a vessel in any registration year is calculated by multiplying the value of the vessel by the boats, ships and vessels excise rate. The rate is currently $10.00 per thousand dollars of value. The value of a vessel for the purpose of excise includes all equipment, including the mode of power and furnishings that are normally required aboard the vessel. The value is determined by the length and year of the vessel.
Excise tax will be assessed in the City or Town where the owner has the vessel habitually moored or docked for the summer season.
Excise for vessels are assessed on a fiscal year (July through June). If, during any fiscal year, the ownership of a vessel is transferred by sale or otherwise, the excise bill may be reduced by filing an abatement application (PDF).
The due date for boat excise tax is within 60 days of issue.


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National Poetry Slam champions Sekou Andrews (also known as Sekou tha misfit) and Steve Connell performed a free show for students today at 1 p.m. in Rugby Auditorium.
Andrews and Connell performed spoken word – which is different than a poetry reading.
"Spoken word is poetry written from the ground up to be performed," Andrews said, "The stage is part of the process."
The poets performed four poems – each performed a poem on his own, and the show began and concluded with a poem featuring both Andrews and Connell.
The performance was active – although there were two microphones situated at the front of the stage – the poets didn't use them at all after the end of their first poem in order to move around the stage. During his solo poem, "The Awesome Anthem," Andrews got down on his knees.
In the final poem of the show, "Felt That Spit," the first poem they wrote together, Connell stalked Andrews from the middle of the stage to the side.
"Just yesterday I was shot 41 times," Andrews said, recoiling repeatedly as Connell mined shooting a gun at his chest, "filled with 41 bloody holes, and all I was doing officer was reaching for a poem that would reach your soul."
A main theme of the show was encouraging confidence – the focal point of Andrews' poem "The Awesome Anthem," which Andrews described as "an anthem to get you through whatever you're going through."
"The census bureau just released a report that two out of every three people are awesome," Andrews said, "If that is true, then out of you and you and me, the question we must now ask ourselves is "which one of you two is the one that sucks?" because I am awesome."
"Greatness is for everyone brave enough to get there," Connell said in his poem, "The Newborn Laws of Motion"
The other poem they performed is called "Music."
The poets also spoke about how they got their start in poetry. Both began writing poetry in high school – Connell would write a poem every year on Martin Luther King Day in honor of King.
Andrews on the other hand only began seriously writing poetry after trying to make a career as a rapper, citing the attitude of people in spoken word as a reason for his becoming a poet. He said that spoken word was all about the word, while with hip-hop he had to worry about whether or not it sounded like what the record companies wanted.
Andrews said that he and Connell want to try to create a commercially viable industry out of spoken word poetry. However, they perform poetry because of their love of it.
"Poetry is proof there is one spirit broke in seven billion plus parts," Connell said, "Poetry is proof we are all connected."


At 7:01 PM +0430 4/3/03, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
Can't a registry just have a complicated script that after one asks for a
label to register tells: Sorry, you can't register this label, because it
"contains the word sex" or "uses FINAL KAF in a non-final position"?
This is an important point. Registries do not have to blindly follow any rules, such as the ones in this document or the JET document. They can look at the output bundle and make local policy decisions.
For characters that are position-dependent in words, a registry will have to have non-automatic rules. For example, assume that the letter "z" could not be at the end of an English word. "baz.us" should be not allowed, but the.us registry couldn't just check for "is 'z' at the end of the word" because that would allow someone to register "baz123.us". Or assume that "y" can only be at the end of a word. The registry should not have a rule that disallows any name that has "y" in the middle because someone might correctly want to register "floycorp.us".
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium


A confidence band is the lines on a probability plot or fitted line plot that depict the upper and lower confidence bounds for all points on a fitted line within the range of data. On a fitted line plot, the confidence interval for the mean response of a specified predictor value are the points on the confidence bands directly above and below the predictor value.
For example, a materials engineer at a furniture manufacturing site wants to assess the strength of the particle board that they use. They collect stiffness data from particle board pieces with various densities. The engineer uses linear regression to create a fitted line plot of the relationship between stiffness and density. The confidence bands above and below the fitted line represent confidence intervals for the mean response of a specified predictor value. For example, the model indicates with 95% confidence that a density of 15 will generate a mean stiffness between approximately 28 and 35, which are the y-values of the lower and upper confidence bands at X = 15.
Density vs. Stiffness
You verify the validity of this regression model by assessing the residuals for normality.
Probability plot of residuals
All the points fall close to the fitted line, so the assumption that the residuals are normal is reasonable. The Anderson-Darling statistic (0.395) and p-value (0.35) confirm this conclusion.
For a fitted line plot, the confidence intervals that form the confidence bands are calculated separately for each point on the fitted line, without controlling for family error. Therefore, if you use 95% confidence bands to estimate more than one parameter per sample, your actual confidence level for the group of estimates will be less than 95%.


Poetry of emily dickinson
What is Emily Dickinson's style of poetry?
Emily Dickinson's writing style is most certainly unique. She used extensive dashes, dots, and unconventional capitalization, in addition to vivid imagery and idiosyncratic vocabulary. Instead of using pentameter, she was more inclined to use trimester, tetrameter, and even dimeter at times.
What are the main themes in Emily Dickinson poetry?
What type of poetic meter Did Emily Dickinson frequently employ?
Emily Dickinson wrote in what is known as "common meter". Common meter includes alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Dickinson probably chose this meter because it was commonly used in… (The entire section contains 112 words.)
Why is Emily Dickinson a great poet?
Emily Dickinson, regarded as one of America's greatest poets, is also well known for her unusual life of self-imposed social seclusion. Living a life of simplicity and seclusion, she yet wrote poetry of great power; questioning the nature of immortality and death, with at times an almost mantric quality.
What is unique about Emily Dickinson's poems?
You might be interested: Anne sexton poetry
Is Emily Dickinson a feminist?
Her honest and uninhibited writing made her an early feminist voice, even as she maintained an outward appearance of submissiveness. Nearly two centuries after Dickinson's birth, her witty and frequently subversive poems are widely read, taught, and studied.
Why does Emily Dickinson use capitalization?
Emily Dickinson capitalized certain words to highlight and intensify the meaning. The capitalization is used to set apart the words so she can present them in a symbolic way. Some critics say that Dickinson wrote her poetry to celebrate the exact and perfection of a word.
What made Emily Dickinson different from other poets?
Emily Dickinson has a very unique style of writing that many people do not understand. Two characteristics of her writing that set her apart from other writers are the use of capitalization, and the use of dashes throughout her poems.
How happy is the little stone by Emily Dickinson analysis?
Summary of How Happy Is The Little Stone
'How Happy Is The Little Stone' by Emily Dickinson is a short, charming poem that depicts happiness through the image of a rambling stone. The poem dives into the simple life and nature of a single stone that rambles along the road by itself.
Which type of meter is used most often?
iambic pentameter
Does Emily Dickinson use free verse?
Emily Dickinson is famous as the mother of American English free verse. This poem does not have consistent metrical patterns, musical patterns, or rhyme. Rather, following the rhythm of natural speech, it gives an artistic expression to the ideas it contains.
You might be interested: Rupert brooks poetry
What do you call a poem with 8 syllables per line?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Trochaic octameter is a poetic meter that has eight trochaic metrical feet per line. Each foot has one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Trochaic octameter is a rarely used meter.
Is Emily Dickinson blind?
James Jackson, until her symptoms apparently subsided. The key medical concern of Dickinson's adult life was an eye affliction suffered in her mid-thirties, during her most prolific period of writing poems. … For Dickinson, who feared blindness, prolongation of this illness was agonizing in ways beyond the physical.
Did Emily Dickinson kill herself?
May 15, 1886
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Our favorite mare delivered her first foal, and he seems to be happy and growing well. He nurses from the mare, sneaks grain from her feed bin, and picks at the pasture, yet we've never seen him drink from the water trough. Do foals drink water? Should I be worried?
No need to worry! Most foals will start eating solid feed and nibbling pasture in the first few days of life, but few drink water because their water requirements are being met by mare's milk.
A research study of mares and foals on pasture reported that the youngest age a foal was observed to drink water was three weeks old, with some foals never observed to drink water until weaning.
With that said, you should always allow the mare and foal to have free access to fresh water. If a nursing foal drinks a lot of water or visits the water trough frequently (more than twice daily if the environmental temperature is less than 10° C [50° F] or more than every two to four hours if the temperature is 10-35° C [50°-95° F]), the foal probably isn't receiving enough milk. Inadequate milk consumption is also indicated by prolonged or excessive periods of nursing or by below-average weight gain.
During the first month of life, the foal should nurse three to seven times per hour, with each nursing bout lasting one or two minutes. Thoroughbred foals should gain 0.8 to 1.5 kg (2 to 3 lb) per day. We recommend regular weighing of growing horses, which will help you pick up on any issues, such as low milk production in the mare.
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|Watery or Lathered: Differences in Horse Sweat|
|Gastrointestinal Motility Key to Horse Digestive Health|
|Electrolytes for Horses with HYPP|
|Grass Sickness in Horses: Degree of Weight Loss and Survival|


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Babies + Fairness =?
Posted by Adam Benforado on February 21, 2012
Here at The Situationist, we love babies (see here) and we love fairness (see here), and when you put the two together it's like an apple pie baked inside a cake (see here)... or, well, this new article by Stephanie Sloane, Renée Baillargeon, and David Premack:
Two experiments examined infants' expectations about how an experimenter should distribute resources and rewards to other individuals. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds expected an experimenter to divide two items equally, as opposed to unequally, between two individuals. The infants held no particular expectation when the individuals were replaced with inanimate objects, or when the experimenter simply removed covers in front of the individuals to reveal the items (instead of distributing them). In Experiment 2, 21-month-olds expected an experimenter to give a reward to each of two individuals when both had worked to complete an assigned chore, but not when one of the individuals had done all the work while the other played. The infants held this expectation only when the experimenter could determine through visual inspection who had worked and who had not. Together, these results provide converging evidence that infants in the 2nd year of life already possess context-sensitive expectations relevant to fairness.
As Sloane explained to ScienceDaily, "We think children are born with a skeleton of general expectations about fairness, and these principles and concepts get shaped in different ways depending on the culture and the environment they're brought up in.... [H]elping children behave more morally may not be as hard as it would be if they didn't have that skeleton of expectations."
Related Situationist posts:


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Study evaluates lunchroom plate waste in Bryan, Dallas elementary schools
Writer: Blair Fannin, _PHONE_, _EMAIL_
COLLEGE STATION – Even though school children are served a healthy lunch, researchers are wanting to know how much of their entrees are actually being eaten or pushed aside, and the cost associated with serving daily meals in a study conducted by Texas A&M University System researchers.
A team led by Texas A&M AgriLife Research and the Institute for Obesity at Texas A&M University has been measuring food waste in elementary schools in Bryan and Dallas. The project, funded by the Alliance for Potato Research and Education, follows guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Food and Nutrition Service National School Breakfast and School Lunch Programs.
"We hope this will expand into a regional and national project," said Dr. Oral Capps, an AgriLife Research economist in College Station. "When you talk about changes in school lunch programs, you are talking about nutrition and economics. Our goal is to make 30 visits to each school on days when they have potatoes served with either green beans, veggie dippers, or corn and peas. This gives us a good overall view of what types of entrees the children are consuming and the ones they are not."
Dr. Peter Murano, director of the Institute for Obesity Research and Program Evaluation at Texas A&M and an AgriLife Research scientist, said the team is using standard methodologies to measure plate waste to determine whether "consumption differs for meals that include potatoes versus alternative vegetable sources."
"Importantly, we plan to quantify consumption/plate waste of not only potatoes, other starchy vegetables and non-starchy vegetables, but also for the entire lunch meal on 'potato days' versus 'non-potato days.'"
Murano said with this information they plan to determine if the presence of potatoes and other starchy vegetables enhances consumption and minimizes plate waste of the entire meal.
Nutritional and cost implications of the Food and Nutrition Service regulations are also part of the research.
The research team consists of "plate waste warriors." The warriors are Texas A&M students who are paid by the hour. Each wears a different colored apron that is associated with the assigned waste bin the entrée is discarded. A minimum of seven workers is needed at each school during the lunch periods (typically 10:45 a.m. through 1 p.m.) The A&M students gather trays containing leftover portions.
Leftovers are separated into different waste bags and each bag is weighed on a scale for plate-waste measurement. When the student goes through the lunch line, a sticker is placed on the food tray to identify the vegetable entrée. Students on the free lunch program are also evaluated for plate waste.
Capps said approximately five to 10 lunches are purchased and each food tray with entrees is weighed prior to serving.
"After they have finished eating, they are guided to where they are to take their leftover tray of food," Capps said.
The student hands their tray to the waste warrior who then dumps each individual leftover entrée into the appropriate trash bin. After each group has eaten, each bag is weighed.
Murano said he has noted many observations during the lunch visits.
"A percentage of students will return food trays after lunch with very little eaten – milk carton unopened, fruit and vegetables untouched, a lot of food is wasted," he said. "Anecdotally comparing fruit and vegetable consumption (not a focus of our project), it appears fruit is much more popular than vegetables. Also, students seem much more likely to choose two fruits as sides rather than two vegetables. And when potato products are served (mashed potatoes, potato wedges, tater tots, etc), just about every student chooses the vegetable."
Capps said another component of the study is "to compare calories, sodium dietary fiber to see if there is a significant difference in nutritional value, comparing waste on that."
"There is potential difference in cost of starchy versus non-starchy foods and plate waste," Capps said. "Overall, it's a well-organized study and joint collaboration with the Institute for Obesity."
Plate waste studies have been done before, Capps said, "but not to this extent."
"We think we have an excellent design for this plate waste study," he said. "We said 'let's take a look at potato meals and non-potato meals and see what the waste is versus nutritional value.'"
Murano said when the analysis of the data is completed, regardless of what they find in terms of vegetable consumption, comparing kindergarten through fifth graders' consumption of potato products to other starchy vegetables (e.g., corn, green peas, beans) to non-starchy vegetables (e.g., green beans, carrots, salads, broccoli) will provide valuable information about the vegetables consumed and plate waste.
He said such information would be valuable to school food service managers, school administration, and even parents.
Murano said schools understand the importance of taste that drives adult and children's food choices, "and the importance of regularly introducing less popular, but healthy, vegetables to students to increase the likelihood of trying and liking them."
"Schools can attempt to increase consumption of specific foods through conducting taste tests with the school children," he said. "In addition, some schools invite local farmers to discuss how they plant and cultivate specific fruits and vegetables and how these nutrient-dense foods are a key part of a healthy diet."
Murano said the school district dietitians spend a lot of time planning meals that offer a variety of foods popular with students as well as meeting the new 2012 Nutrition Standards for School Meals – the new federal guidelines for school breakfast and lunch.
"These new guidelines are in line with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Schools are required to offer at least minimum quantities of all vegetable subgroups (dark green, red/orange, beans/peas (legumes), and starches. This change is intended to encourage student consumption from all subgroups and is consistent with the DGAs' recommendation to increase the variety of vegetables consumed."
Murano said the schools know what food items the students are choosing, but they don't necessarily know the specific consumption and waste behaviors.
"This information is central to our research project, and underlines the importance of plate-waste data collection, he said. "Our research will tell us not only the vegetables that are wasted the most, but also the nutrients the students are not receiving by choosing not to eat particular vegetables, and of course the economic cost. In any research scenario where it is found that healthy food items are being wasted, strategies must be developed and implemented to increase consumption. These may include conducting taste tests, providing nutrition education and implementing successful health promotion interventions."
Final results of the study will be available in March.


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Read the original article in Global Envision here.
International aid organizations are finding out if and how people are using their products, thanks to tiny sensors developed by Portland State University's SWEETLab.
A lack of reliable data makes it hard for aid organizations to know whether technologies actually improve the lives, health and prosperity of people in communities around the world. But SWEETLab (Sustainable Water, Energy and Environmental Technologies Laboratory) is looking to change that.
The lab has developed remote sensing technology to monitor the use of development infrastructure, such as latrines, cook stoves and water filters. The sensors send information about the frequency of use and behavior patterns back to partner organizations, such as Mercy Corps, The Gates Foundation, DelAgua and Vestergaard Frandsen, said lab director Evan Thomas.
The goal, Thomas says, is to "have better information about what's going on in the field, because monitoring projects is usually based on somewhat unreliable [paper] surveys." And, according to Thomas, "the sensors help us answer two questions: Does the product work, and do people use it?"
Thomas, a professor of engineering and faculty fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University, is also the Program Director for DelAgua Health and Development Programs, a partner organization using the sensors on a large program in Rwanda. He sees the sensors as a way to better evaluate the effectiveness of aid projects and, by extension, donor dollars.
The project in Rwanda "demonstrates the potential to deploy and monitor international health programs like this on a very large scale," Thomas predicts.
The $50 million Rwanda project will distribute water filters and cook stoves to 600,000 homes throughout the country's western province over the next year to improve clean water access and reduce the demand for wood fuel for cooking, according to Thomas. SWEETLab's sensors will be installed on about 500 of the stoves and filters to monitor their use and tell DelAgua whether the products are being embraced by local residents.
The efforts in Rwanda are also unique because they use an innovative carbon credit financing scheme to generate revenue and fund the scaling-up of future projects. Information about the use of the technologies can now be accurately recorded and sent back to DelAgua.
SWEETLab's sensors are being used well beyond Rwanda, too. In Indonesia, SWEETLab's first partner, Mercy Corps, had been using spot surveys to determine whether people were using new latrines and hand-washing stations, Thomas told SmartPlanet. But only with remote data collection did Mercy Corps find that fewer people were using the hand-washing stations at night, and some people were just using them before prayer time.
"When the sensors are transmitting data, we're getting what we hoped for: frequent data on the use of water and sanitation infrastructure in our target communities," Laura Bruno, Mercy Corps' senior program officer for Southeast Asia, told Fast Company. Mercy Corps can use this information to adjust sanitation education programs.
Other SWEETLab partnerships include a project with the Gates Foundation that installed 60 sensors on sanitation stations in India, designed to assist in a study evaluating behavior change around open defecation, according to Thomas. Another partnership with Mercy Corps will put sensors on cookstoves in Haiti.
Data collected by the sensors is compiled by partner organizations, which use the information to understand behavior patterns of people they serve and to assess and improve the effectiveness of their projects.
Each sensor is powered by five AA batteries, and "cell phone networks send data to a web-based platform, where the results directly inform any adjustments to the technology or educational efforts on the ground," according to Portland State.
That's much faster and more reliable than relying on costly surveys and spot-checks, which can provide valuable qualitative information, but often fail to fully identify challenges to the success of projects.
Thomas is hopeful that outcomes of current projects will allow SWEETLab to continue to expand its partnerships and monitor the effectiveness of more aid project through remote access data.
And more accurate information about how well aid projects are working will let organizations tweak their approach to better meet local needs.