5 Steps to Deal with the Torrent of Data Requests in Regulated Industries
Steps to Deal with the Torrent of Data Requests in Regulated Industries
The Covid-19 pandemic has given a huge blow to economies worldwide. Quick responses from regulated industries, including the public sector and healthcare have been vital in suppressing the death toll, but have created a gateway for data privacy infringements.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, we can expect a surge in the number of eDiscovery requests and litigation cases.
Most people affected by the coronavirus will want to know whether their privacy has been compromised and in what ways. And this goes beyond the healthcare sector.
These will include people who lost their jobs, as well as parents whose kids used unsafe communication tools to attend classes. And they will also want to know how healthcare institutions, regulatory bodies, and school districts handled their data.
Time to Prepare for Data Requests is Now
Whatever could be said of the preparedness of healthcare institutions and government agencies, we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they did their best to preserve as many lives as possible. Still, this won't abolish them from individual cases of data retrieval.
People will want to get access to their medical files, whether to get a better understanding of their symptoms or to seek evidence of data mistreatment.
And that's not all: individual requests are only one part of the issue. On the other hand, regulatory bodies will check for compliance with regulations on business records preservation. This affects a broad range of sectors, including K12 schools and higher education institutions, legal companies, financial organizations and firms, as well as construction companies.
So what can organizations do to prepare for the inevitable rise in the amount of data requests? We've compiled a list of steps that can help companies prepare.
Step 1: Assign a responsible person
While this is something that might sound trivial, companies often fail at this step. But it's essential: unless there is someone in your firm specifically tasked with the responsibility to ensure data compliance, chances are no one will pick up that responsibility.
This could potentially lead to some use cases/files slipping through the cracks, which could expose the entire company to non-compliance. There are hundreds of regulations on information archiving in the US, so you should really prioritize your compliance, no matter how large your organization is.
So first get your compliance officer, who will interpret the rules alongside your legal team. They should then work on creating and implementing comprehensive policies that will define the data that needs to be archived, as well as how this information will be captured.
They should also perform in-house random checks to ensure all data is backed up securely and that all personnel know how to handle sensitive data and which communication tools to use.
Step 2: Identify which data needs archiving
This step requires thorough research but pays off in the long run. The key outcome here is to make a list of all channels of communications used among your employees and then decide on the ones acceptable for your businesses.
You need to understand where your business records are discussed. Is it WhatsApp or Slack? Do you use Zoom or Skype? Can you capture all this information? In a worst-case scenario, will you have concrete evidence to prove you didn't disclose your clients' data?
Once you know the range of business communication channels you use, you will be much better at tracking, capturing, and retaining all this data.
Step 3: Automate information capturing
The number of communication channels has been expanding vastly, and large organizations often find it difficult to keep track of all places and information exchanged. But once you know where to look for business records, you still need to make sure no piece of information gets lost in the way.
To this end, you need to rely on robust technology that can do this process for you automatically, without disrupting the work of your core departments.
You need to find an information archiving solution that can capture and search through not just email messages, but also video calls, voice calls, instant messaging, zipped files, attachments, and all other places where often vital business information lies.
Step 4: Keep all data unaltered
To face the rising number of data retrieval requests, you need to keep all communication intact. The reason for this is that your organization will need to present proof of the authenticity and integrity of information in case this information is used in a legal proceeding.
With a tamper-proof archiver, you can preserve the original content and metadata for all messages pertaining to a particular case.
So, in cases where you expect an audit or investigation, you should implement a technology that will allow you to apply the legal hold. That way, you will be able to preserve business communication for an indefinite period of time, even after the expiry of its retention period.
Step 5: Train your employees on best practices
As a rule, organizations in regulated industries work with sensitive information, such as health records, financial data, education records, and so on. And what we often see in practice is that no technology is good enough to prevent the mishaps that can happen due to employees being unaware of regulations they need to follow.
That's why in the period when the number of these requests is likely to rise, you need to make sure all your employees understand their role in the process.
Thousands of pictures and videos taken in hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic have swarmed social media, showing staff working endless shifts to save lives. In most cases, there was no bad intention: these scenes can help people understand why they need to respect the precautionary measures.
However, all of this information can contain some sensitive data: what if someone's identity is revealed? In that case, the person affected can rightly ask for legal action against the hospital or clinic for disclosing their personal information.
About Author:-
Stefan is a writer at Jatheon Technologies, where he covers information archiving and compliance in regulated industries.
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Lahey/GNU Fortran
How the Driver Works
The driver (LGF.EXE) translates and passes the appropriate options to the GFortran driver, GFortran.exe, which must be found on the path (PATH environment variable). GFortran.exe controls the two main processes - compilation and linking - used to create an executable program. Supplemental processes, like creating static libraries, DLL's, import libraries and processing Windows resources, are sometimes used depending on whether you are creating a DLL or a Windows GUI application, etc. These processes are performed by the following programs:
The The LGF driver uses temporary files for sending information between the driver and processes it controls. These files are automatically created using random names and are deleted when the process is complete.
If the -c (compile only) option is specified, processing will stop after the compiler runs and modules are created (if necessary). Otherwise, processing continues with the appropriate action depending on what sort of output file is requested.


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And here's what my Gparted says about my clone SD (it should be identical to the internal SD, except for the bottom unallocated space):
Which version of gparted are you using? Mine is 0.9.1, ran under Fedore 15. The differences are that it does reports ext4 for 3 partitions (as Kobo's "mount" command), but it agrees with you on /data being ext2, and KOVOBOX being fat32. Why on earth are they using fat32 on the internal SD card? WHat advantage can it have compared to ext* file systems, given that it is Linux?

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Oracle® HTML DB Help
Release 1.6
 Go To Table Of Contents
Go To Index
Understanding URL Syntax
Each application has a number (called an application ID) or alphanumeric alias which uniquely identifies it. Similarly, each page also has a unique number (called a page number) or an alphanumeric alias. When you run an application, the HTML DB engine generates a session number that serves as a key to the user's session state.
The URL that displays for each page indicates the location of Oracle HTML DB and identifies the application ID, page number, and session ID. For example:
This example indicates that:
Using f?p Syntax to Link Pages
You can create links between pages in your application using the following syntax:
Table 6-3 describes the possible arguments you can pass when using f?p syntax.
Table 6-3 f?p Syntax Arguments
Syntax Description
App Indicates an application ID or alphanumeric alias.
Page Indicates a page number or alphanumeric alias.
Session Identifies a session ID. You can reference a session ID to create hypertext links to other pages that maintain the same session state by passing the session number. You can reference the session ID using the syntax:
 - Short substitution string: &SESSION.
 - Bind variable: :APP_SESSION
Request Sets the value of REQUEST. Each application button sets the value of REQUEST to the name of the button. This enables accept processing to reference the name of the button when a user clicks it. You can reference REQUEST using the syntax:
 - Substitution string: &REQUEST.
 - Bind variable: :REQUEST
Debug Displays application processing details. Valid values for the DEBUG flag are YES or NO. Setting this flag to YES displays details about application processing. You can reference the Debug flag using the following syntax:
 - Short substitution string: &DEBUG.
 - PL/SQL: V('DEBUG')
 - Bind variable: :DEBUG
ClearCache Clears cache. Clearing cache for a single item simply sets the value of the list of names to null. To clear cached items, use a comma delimited list of page numbers. Comma delimited lists can also contain collections to be reset or the keyword RP, which resets region pagination on the requested page.
itemNames Comma delimited list of item names used to set session state with a URL.
itemValues List of item values used to set session state within a URL. Item values may not include colons, but may contain commas if enclosed with baskslashes. To pass a comma in an item value, enclose the characters with backslashes. For example:
PrinterFriendly Determines whether the page is being rendered in printer friendly mode. If PrinterFriendly is set to Yes, then the page is rendered in printer friendly mode. The value of PrinterFriendly can be used in rendering conditions to remove elements such as regions from the page to optimize printed output.You can reference the printer friendly preference by using the syntax:
When referenced, the HTML DB engine will not display tabs or navigation bars and all items will be displayed as text and not as form elements.
Although it is important to understand how f?p syntax works, you rarely have to construct this syntax yourself. Oracle HTML DB includes many wizards that automatically create these references for you. The sections that follow describe a number of specific instances that utilize f?p syntax to link pages.
Calling a Page Using an Application and Page Alias
Application and page aliases must consist of valid Oracle identifiers, cannot contain any whitespace, and are not case-sensitive. The following example calls a page using an application and a page alias from within an Oracle HTML DB application. It runs the page home of the application myapp and uses the current session ID.
Application aliases must be unique within a workspace. If applications in different workspaces within the same Oracle HTML DB instance have the same application alias, use the &c argument to specify the workspace name. For example:
Calling a Page from a Button URL
When you create a button, you can specify a URL to redirect to when the user clicks the button. This example runs page 6001 of application 6000 and uses the current session ID.
Note that this is only one approach to using a button in Oracle HTML DB. This method bypasses page submission and acts as a hyperlink on the page. Another method is to submit the page first. In that approach, clicking the button submits the page for processing, allowing forms to be submitted and session state to be saved.


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15 May 2008
UK Wasp and Bee Stings at Record Low in 2008 - A WaspWatch Report
Insect sting monitoring website "WaspWatch" has recorded the lowest level of bee and wasp sting activity during the first four months of 2008. The site has monitored sting activity across the UK for the last six years and whilst it is still early days for 2008, it is alarming to witness the decline in sting activty which is a good indication of the health of wasps and especially bees across the UK.
"The early months of our calendar year are usually dominated by bee stings rather than wasp stings and this year has undoubtedly seen a real drop in activity compared to previous years, " says WaspWatch chief David Glaser. "Whilst there has been some unfriendly weather this year it has been no worse than in previous years," Glaser continues.
The site reports monthly on sting activity and then weekly during the peak season from June to September so it is in a strong position to offer an up to date Sting Risk Index on its website as well as activity levels.
Of course the worry amongst naturalists is that there are various threats to the very survival of bees at the moment - the varroa mite is spreading rapidly. There is also the worry of a parasitic fungus which also threatens bee colonies.
"This is a real threat to our ecology", says Glaser, "and actual evidence such as this together with anecdotal reports of bee nests and hives dying should give us real grounds for concern."

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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The Importance Sampling method is used as an alternative approach to MCMC in repeated Bayesian estimations. In the particular context of numerous data sets, MCMC algorithms have to be called on several times which may become computationally expensive. Since Importance Sampling requires a sample from a posterior distribution, our idea is to use MCMC to generate only a certain number of Markov chains and use them later in the subsequent IS estimations. For each Importance Sampling procedure, the suitable chain is selected by one of three criteria we present here. The first and second criteria are based on the L¹ norm of the difference between two posterior distributions and their Kullback-Leibler divergence respectively. The third criterion results from minimizing the variance of IS estimate. A supplementary automatic selection procedure is also proposed to choose those posterior for which Markov chains will be generated and to avoid arbitrary choice of importance functions. The featured methods are illustrated in simulation studies on three types of Poisson model: simple Poisson model, Poisson regression model and Poisson regression model with extra Poisson variability. Different parameter settings are considered.
Electronic Journal of Statistics Vol. 4, p. 361-383


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Bamfurlong was a farm in the boggy region of the Marish in the eastern Shire. It was the home of Farmer Maggot, who (like the other Hobbits in this inhospitable area) lived above ground rather than in a traditional Hobbit-hole. Maggot's farm was well-known in the area for his mushrooms, which he protected fiercely against trespassers with his three fearsome dogs.
The center of the farm consisted of a large farm house with associated farm-buildings. They were all made of brick with thatched roofs, and enclosed within a high wall with a wooden gate to the outside lane.
When Frodo Baggins was young and lived at Brandy Hall he occasionally sneaked onto the farm to poach some mushrooms. On the last visit Maggot had caught Frodo and gave him a beating for his thievery. Years later Frodo remained in terror of the farmer and his dogs.
On 25 September T.A. 3018, Frodo, Sam, and Pippin came to Bamfurlong in the afternoon. There they met Farmer Maggot and learned that earlier a Black Rider had visited the farm and enquired about Baggins. The traveling hobbits gratefully accepted a hearty supper before the farmer drove them to Bucklebury Ferry in his wagon.
The name Bamfurlong derives from words meaning very roughly 'bean-field'. A furlong is a division of a common field.
Bamfurlong is a real-life English place-name


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This report summarizes basic and essential information on terrestrial vertebrates in British Columbia and is intended for wildlife managers and other workers in resource management. Whereas most wildlife information is organized by species or species group, this report is organized by geographic area. The distribution and abundance of the 560 terrestrial vertebrate, marine mammal, and marine reptile species in British Columbia are summarized. The same treatment is given those subspecies and populations considered at risk. Distribution is described using the biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification with some refinements using the ecoregional classification system.
The province's 94 biogeoclimatic subzones are grouped into 49 subzone groups for wildlife. Seasonal abundance of each wildlife species is noted in the appropriate subzone group, yielding a complete species list for each subzone group by season. The 151 species, subspecies, and populations at risk plus selected species not at risk are correlated with 33 broad habitats within each biogeoclimatic zone. This indicates the broad habitats that species at risk may depend on and where special habitat protection measures may be needed.
Some data analysis is given and graphic comparisons of wildlife use by zone and habitat use within zones are shown. Not surprisingly, the richest zone (451 species) is the Coastal Western Hemlock. This high figure reflects the wide range of habitats represented in this zone. Alpine Tundra is the most depauperate zone with 125 species.
Keywords: Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals.
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Updated October 15, 2009


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Context: Recently, the University Grants Commission (UGC) released draft regulations to allow foreign universities to enter India.
- The draft regulations of the UGC on Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India 2023 pave the way for the entry of foreign universities into the groves of higher education in the country.
- It is charged with coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of higher education.
- It provides recognition to universities in India, and disburses funds to such recognized universities and colleges.
- Previously, UGC was formed in 1946 to oversee the work of the three Central Universities of Aligarh, Banaras and, Delhi.
- In 1947, the Committee was entrusted with the responsibility of dealing with all the then existing Universities.
- After independence, the University Education Commission was set up in 1948 under the Chairmanship of S. Radhakrishnan and it recommended that the UGC be reconstituted on the general model of the University Grants Commission of the United Kingdom.
- The UGC was however, formally established in November 1956, by an Act of Parliament as a statutory body of the Government of India.
Key highlights of the draft regulations:
- The UGC draft regulations-2023 have "top 500 foreign universities" and the ranking will be decided by the UGC "from time to time".
- In NEP-2020, only the top-100 QS ranking universities could establish their branch campuses in India to provide quality higher education to Indian students who aspire to gain foreign degrees.
- The draft regulations-2023 set another criterion for a branch campus to be opened up in India that "the applicant should be a reputed institution in its home jurisdiction".
- The draft regulations-2023 allow foreign higher educational institutions to decide a fee structure that is "transparent and reasonable".
- Foreign higher educational institutions now have the freedom to decide "qualifications, salary structure, and other conditions of service for appointing faculty and staff".
- It states that "The Foreign Higher Educational Institutions should arrange for adequate physical infrastructure".
No Equivalence Requirement:
- All Indian students with foreign degrees are required to get an equivalence certificate from the Association of Indian Universities.
- The draft regulations-2023 waive off equivalence requirement for the degrees granted by the foreign branch campuses in India.
Safeguards for Indian Students:
- The draft states that the UGC will have the right to inspect the campuses at any time.
- Campuses will not be outside the purview of anti-ragging and other criminal laws.
Repatriation of Profits:
- The draft regulations-2023 allow for smooth repatriation of profits earned by the foreign branch campuses under the rules and regulations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999.
- The draft regulations also require the foreign universities to submit audit reports and annual reports to the UGC "certifying that [their] operations…in India are in compliance with FEMA 1999" and other relevant government policies.
- Foreign Higher Educational Institutions shall not offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India.
- The operation of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions shall not be contrary to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, or morality.
- The UGC shall impose a penalty and/ or suspend/ withdraw its approval at any time if the university's "activities or academic programmes are against the interest of India".
National Education Policy view about Foreign universities:
- The National Education Policy [NEP], 2020, has envisioned that top universities in the world will be facilitated to operate in India.
- A legislative framework facilitating such entry should be brought by the Government.
- Foreign universities will be given special dispensation regarding regulatory, governance, and content norms on par with other autonomous institutions of India.
Challenges associated with Draft Regulations:
- Vague Criteria for Reputation: It is not clear how the UGC would determine the reputation of such foreign universities that do not appear in any world rankings but are considered "reputed" in their home country.
- Issue of Accessibility: The draft guidelines gives foreign branch campuses in India an upper hand in deciding different fees for different programmes.
- As a result, programmes with higher market value would be more expensive and not accessible to many students.
- Determining Need for Scholarship: Although there is a provision for "full or partial need-based scholarships" to be provided by the FHEI (foreign higher educational institution) from funds such as endowment funds, alumni donations, tuition revenues, and other sources, determining "need" will be a challenging task.
- Investment on Infrastructure: The provision for physical infrastructure would be problematic for foreign higher education institutions reluctant to go for major infrastructural investment and many would prefer to wait and watch for others to take the initiative.
- Attracting Top Universities: It will ultimately depend on whether top universities find the Indian market attractive enough to invest in a branch campus in the country.
- Surely the top 100 universities were not terribly keen to open their campuses in India.
- Removal of Equivalence Certificate: After waiving off equivalence requirements, it would be difficult to ensure that the degrees offered by the foreign branch campuses would be accepted by the employers in the home countries of the campuses.
- Restrictions on Faculty Members: The foreign faculty members may find it difficult to balance state policies, sensibilities and laissez-faire intellectual standpoint.
- In days to come, this is going to be a major issue in the process of knowledge creation and transaction in India.
India is a young nation with an increasing need for higher education and an ever-increasing demand for foreign degrees. As committed in NEP-2020, India should cater to the needs of a large section of Indian society termed "Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups-SEDGs" that include women, transgenders, SCs, STs, OBCs, EWS, differently abled, migrants and geographically disadvantaged groups.
India should provide physical infrastructure to facilitate its strategy of internationalisation of higher education. The guidelines should not open floodgates for such foreign educational institutions whose sole objective is to only earn profit.
Source: Indian Express


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CSI meets conservation
Scant amounts of DNA reveal conservation clues, Stanford University researchers and their colleagues found
Credit: Prasenjeet Yadav
The key to solving a mystery is finding the right clues. Wildlife detectives aiming to protect endangered species have long been hobbled by the near impossibility of collecting DNA samples from rare and elusive animals. Now, researchers at Stanford and the National Centre for Biological Sciences at India's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research have developed a method for extracting genetic clues quickly and cheaply from degraded and left-behind materials, such as feces, skin or saliva, and from food products suspected of containing endangered animals.
Their proof of concept – outlined April 10 in Methods in Ecology and Evolution – could revolutionize conservation approaches and policies worldwide, the researchers said.
"It's CSI meets conservation biology," said co-author Dmitri Petrov, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
The specter of extinction hangs over more than a quarter of all animal species, according to the best estimate of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains a list of threatened and extinct species. Conservationists have documented extreme declines in animal populations in every region of Earth.
Clues from DNA
Helping species recover often depends on collecting DNA samples, which can reveal valuable information about details ranging from inbreeding and population history to natural selection and large-scale threats such as habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade. However, current approaches tend to require relatively large amounts of DNA, or expensive and often inefficient strategies for extracting the material. Getting meaningful information rapidly from lower-concentration, often degraded and contaminated DNA samples requires expensive and specialized equipment.
A solution may lie in an ongoing collaboration between Stanford's Program for Conservation Genomics, including the labs of Petrov and co-authors Elizabeth Hadly and Stephen Palumbi, with India's National Centre for Biological Sciences, including the lab of co-author Uma Ramakrishnan, a molecular ecologist and former Fulbright faculty fellow at Stanford.
"I have been working on tiger conservation genetics for over a decade, but have been frustrated at how slow and unreliable the process of generating genetic data can be," Ramakrishnan said. "Conservation needs answers fast, and our research was not providing them fast enough."
The researchers looked at endangered wild tigers in India and overfished Caribbean queen conchs, examining tiger feces, shed hair and saliva found on killed prey, as well as fried conch fritters purchased in U.S. restaurants. All of the samples were too impure, mixed or degraded for conventional genetic analysis.
"Our goal was to find extremely different species that had strong conservation needs, and show how this approach could be used generally," said Palumbi, the Jane and Marshall Steele Jr. Professor of Marine Biology. "The King of the Forest – tigers – and Queen of the Caribbean – conch – were ideal targets."
Inexpensive and effective
Together, the team improvised a new approach, using a sequencing method that amplifies and reads small bits of DNA with unique differences in each sample. By doing this simultaneously across many stretches of DNA in the same test tubes, the researchers kept the total amount of DNA needed to a minimum. Making the procedure specific to tiger and conch DNA allowed for the use of samples contaminated with bacteria or DNA from other species.
The technology proved highly effective at identifying and comparing genetic characteristics. For example, the method worked with an amount of tiger DNA equivalent to about one-one-hundred-thousandth the amount of DNA in a typical blood sample. The method had a higher failure rate in conchs because the researchers did not have whole genomes at their disposal.
The approach's effectiveness, speed and affordability – implementation costs could be as low as $5 per sample, according to the researchers – represents a critical advance for wildlife monitoring and forensics, field-ready testing, and the use of science in policy decisions and wildlife trade.
"It is easy to implement and so can be done in labs with access to more or less basic equipment," said co-author Meghana Natesh of the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Sastra University in India. "If a standard procedure is followed, the data generated should be easy to share and compare across labs. So monitoring populations across states or even countries should be easier."
The scientists have made their methods freely available.
Petrov is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute, as well as an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Hadly and Palumbi are also members of Stanford Bio-X and senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ramakrishnan is also a senior fellow at the Wellcome Trust / DBT India Alliance. Other Stanford co-authors include postdoctoral scholars Ryan Taylor and Nathan Truelove. Taylor is currently a consultant at End2End genomics, which is developing the DNA method.
Funding for this research provided by the Wildlife Conservation Trust, the U.S. Department of State, the Wellcome Trust / DBT India Alliance, the Summit Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
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Google Adds Easy Rewind to YouTube
Say what you don't say, but YouTube, which is constantly polished and polished, has its drawbacks. Some people think that he is slowly loading videos, others complain that ads are constantly appearing, and others do not like playlists. As in any other business, there is always someone who will be constantly dissatisfied. To prevent this from happening, the development team is trying to release something new. This time, such a new feature is the ability to rewind videos, which will make viewing them even more convenient. At the same time, not only those who use devices on Android will be able to try the update, but also those who have chosen to view iOS and even the browser.
Google Adds Easy Rewind to YouTube
YouTube rewind has become more convenient.
If you've ever had to flip through a long YouTube video to get to a 'good' place, you'll appreciate the new feature that YouTube has prepared. Now you can view not only the full video, but also chapters from it. This feature uses timestamps that creators apply to their videos, allowing viewers to easily jump to a specific portion of a video or view a portion of a video.
The function of chapters, which was called "Video Chapters", was tested by the service back in April, but now it is available to all users of mobile devices and browsers.
In order for you to be able to navigate the tags, content authors must prepare everything. To do this, they will need to add chapter information to the video description.
The first mark must necessarily coincide at the beginning of the video and be at the time stamp 0:00. The name of this piece of video should be separated by a space from time to time. Then one more mark is put on an arbitrary fragment indicating what is in this place, and so on. When you finish adding chapters, you will save your changes and the video chapters will be listed as you watch the video.
Google Adds Easy Rewind to YouTube
This is how a quick jump to fragments looks like.
Here is an example of how chapters work
There is only one limitation that must be met in order for this feature to work properly. Videos must have at least three timestamps of 10 seconds or more each. This will make them appear normally in the video description before the "more" button.
To make it easier to navigate through chapters of videos, YouTube has built-in tactile feedback on mobile devices, so users will feel the vibration informing them that they are moving into a new chapter. On platforms where tactile feedback is not available, you can simply see a thickening of the timeline and a slight sticking of the slider to its joints. That is, the chapters will be clearly visible. The chapter you're inside will be highlighted on mobile devices as well.
When I tried this service opportunity, I really liked it. This is also the case for YouTube, who said the feature received a lot of positive feedback during testing. However, apparently, the final version is slightly different from what was initially tested.
One of the changes is the ability to adapt the number of chapters displayed on screens of different sizes. This is done for the convenience of users who watch videos either in different orientations, or on different platforms. Even if there are many chapters in the video, everyone should be comfortable.
Google Adds Easy Rewind to YouTube
The chapters are clearly visible.
Despite all the convenience of the function, not all users will be able to use it yet. This is due to the fact that not all authors know how to use it yet, and not everyone has managed to adapt their videos, because this does not happen automatically. Over time, more and more videos with support for this function will appear. Therefore, if you are engaged in content production, pay attention to this and use it in your videos. Most likely, Google will even change the algorithm for evaluating the quality of videos. It used to be considered a good indicator if the video was watched to the end. This meant that the content was good and could be served in recommendations. Now, with such hints, videos will often be watched to the end, but skipping the beginning. Although, YouTube assures that the use of this feature will not affect the recommendations.
The new feature is positioning YouTube as the best resource for long content, as video navigation becomes more convenient. This feature can even boost users' interest in some videos. They won't be frustrated by having to scroll through parts they don't want to watch and poke at random places in the hope that it will be more interesting there. As a result, fewer viewers will simply leave. On the other hand, it can reduce the overall viewing time, as viewers only watch specific sections of the video instead of the entire video.
It's always nice to get new opportunities for familiar products. Especially considering that it doesn't affect old features. The convenience of this function can be compared to trying to find something in a thick book without a table of contents. It's somehow easier with him.
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Sometimes when you are dissatisfied with services rendered or received faulty goods, you have the option to put a stop payment on the check that you used to pay the company or service provider. The stop payment is a perk of this negotiable instrument. For this week's discussion board, read the article(Longo, T. (1995). The risks of paying by check. Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, 49(7), 94.) and answer the following questions:
- Should stop payments be allowed? Why or why not?
- Discuss the length of time that one is allowed to have a verbal stop payment in effect? Is it too long, too short, should it be in writing sooner?
- The article discussed that even with a written request the check can be cashed after six months unless the stop-payment order is renewed. Share your thoughts about the ability to still have your check cashed after six months.
- If a firm offers both preferred stock and common stock, which would you rather own? Explain your reasoning


Saving Data between two Scenes in Unity
Objective: Store the difficulty info(int variable) on the Main Menu and pass it to the Game scene.
Selecting the difficulty on the Main Menu
Requisites: Two scenes and a mechanism to store the difficulty info, in this case pressing a button will make the job. C# fundamentals and Unity PlayerPrefs.
You might be wondering, what is PlayerPrefs? PlayerPrefs is a Unity class that stores Player preferences between game sessions. It can store string, float and integer values into the user's platform registry.
This sounds very complicated but in a practical way, it allows us to carry on some data between the scenes.
In our main menu script on the menu scene, let's say that easy is 0 and hard is 1. We want to store and update the value on the PlayerPrefs when we click on the HARD and EASY button.
We define our int difficulty variable public just for testing purposes
In the Main Menu script, we have one function for each button, let's check the EasyButton PlayerPrefs implementation.
PlayerPrefs implementation on the EasyButton
If we go to the PlayerPrefs definition, we find that every method is static, that will allows us to save the info safely because the stored info will belong to the class and not to the object.
All available static methods from the PlayerPrefs class
What does the PlayerPrefs.SetInt() method we are using says?
Self-explanatory right?
Just in case, we are going to divide it into pieces. This function takes two parameters, a string key and an int value. The string key is the name we are giving to the stored data -> "Difficulty". The int value is the value the difficulty variable is storing depending on what button is pressed.
Now that we know how to store info succesfully in the PlayerPrefs registry, we are done with the Menu scene and we need to retrieve this information like the image above says. PlayerPrefs.GetInt() is the chosen one.
Right into the Game scene, in our GameManager let's define a public difficulty variable that will store the PlayerPrefs info we are going to retrieve.
PlayerPrefs.GetInt() will retrieve the information allocated in the "Difficulty" string and will be stored in the int difficulty variable that can be accessed by any other class.
In our game, we have a SpawnManager class that handles the times between waves, enemies, etc…
Here is a practical use. If difficulty is 0(easy) enemies will have their automatic spawning rate, but if it is 1(hard) it will change drastically the game
And that would be it for this tutorial, instead of retrieving the info once using PlayerPrefs.GetInt() in our GameManager, you can do it directly in any class, that's just how you want to architecture your game.
Passionate Unity developer always looking for new challenges!
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If you use the word
Bubbler a trademarked name that refers to a drinking fountain. The Bubbler was developed in 1888 by the then-small Kohler Company in Kohler, Wisconsin, which was already well-known for its faucet production. While Harlan Huckleby is credited with the actual design, it was Kohler that patented it and trademarked the name.
The Bubbler concept took off and there were many copies. Since the name was trademarked, other companies named their fountains "The Gurgler" and "The Gusher". In the end, the generic term "drinking fountain" became the standard term used in American English for a device that shoots water into the air for purpose of drinking.
The bubbler term is still used in several regional dialects of the United States such as in Wisconsin (mostly in the southeast part of the state, centered on Milwaukee, where it is considered part of the local dialect; residents of southeastern Wisconsin often state that the term is used within a "five county radius," however, the term's use has spread throughout the region, beyond five counties in the area.
Some people only call ones that are outdoors "bubbler" and some vice versa. Some residents of Milwaukee refer to them as "water bubbler". Most residents of southern Wisconsin refer to water fountains, both indoor and outdoor, as "bubbler".
The Bubbler at the Washington County Fairgrounds


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Sample reports are modeled after actual reports. These reports exemplify the approach and depth of information desired in a strong MAP report. They have utilized the report writing guide but tailored them to meet specific museum needs. MAP staff expects all reports to do the same. Please use these as examples only.
If you have questions or concerns about your report, please contact MAP staff. We will be happy to discuss your report, review and critique a draft, help locate resources and provide whatever assistance we can.
Sample Organizational Assessment Reports
Candy Bar Museum
Showcases what the museum does well and gives reasonable recommendations on how to achieve even stronger results. This includes:
- Corresponding characteristics of excellence, at the beginning of each section, highlighting how the museum is connecting to these standards.
- Priority recommendations are given at the beginning, discussed in detail throughout the report and then extended in the end.
- Includes a timetable featuring short‐term, mid‐term and long‐term objectives, to make the timetable more manageable for the museum.
Download the sample Candy Bar Museum report.
- Gives straight-forward advice on the objectives of a smaller institution.
- Carefully considers the limitations of staff, board, and budget
- Gives the museum ways to begin improving their overall functionality
- Prioritizes recommendations at the end
Download the sample Moffett-Weigert Museum report.
The Gotham Museum
- Showcases characteristics of excellence throughout the sections with the entire characteristics listed at the end
- Breaks up section recommendations by short-term, mid-term and long-term goals, making it easier for the museum to develop a work plan. Furthermore, it stresses disaster planning.
- A good representation of how to address the complexities of a city museum and can be applied to many museums with parent organizations.
Download the sample Gotham Museum report.
Sample Collections Stewardship Assessment Reports
- Excellent example of a natural history museum and a good report for museums working with a different private non-profit society as its governing body
- Explanation of the emergency disaster plan is particularly comprehensive
- Prioritizing recommendations at the end by time (e.g., short term, medium range and long term)
Download the sample Geode Museum report.
Port City Social History Museum
- Detailed instructions and recommendations on how to accomplish collections management goals
- Books, website and other materials the museum will find useful in achieving their objectives are interspersed. This can sometimes be more useful than listing bibliographic materials at the end and expecting the museum to connect between the material and a particular bullet point.
- This museum is preparing for reaccreditation and the report targets that aspect in many explanations and suggestions.
Download the sample Port City Social History Museum report.
Sample Community Engagement Assessment Reports
- Showcases how a museum can look for new ways to reinvigorate its current niche audience and search for new ones.
- Focuses on how to work with and cultivate within a small to mid-size community base of support while remaining positive and upbeat.
- Recommendations are clearly outlined, making it easier for the museum to locate, organize and utilize them when seeking financial support.
Download the sample Norse Museum report.
The Arctic Museum
- Focuses on how to improve community engagement through interpretive planning, better resource management and better wayfinding signage and advertising.
- Recommendations are easily understood and while challenging, not overwhelming.
- Top recommendations are prioritized at the end, helping the museum figure out how to start taking advantage of them.
Download the sample Arctic Museum report.
Sample Leadership Assessment Reports
Ornamental Works Museum
- Report focuses on a relatively new organization (only 10 years old) having mixed success with its board and concerns with the economic recession
- Recommendations are well woven into the overall report and then pointed out at the end.
- This report makes clear recommendations and then additional ideas on how they may be achieved.
Download the sample Ornamental Works Museum report.


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Click on the images below to enlarge.
Photos courtesy of Alba Sánchez
These three photos were taken at the Collective Roots workshop, which was held at the East Palo Alto Charter School. The first photo shows instructors Iban Seger, at the far left and Neha Bazaj, in the white shirt, talking with two workshop attendees. In the second photo, the instructors and the students protect growing strawberry plants from the cold. The third photo shows some of the collard greens that are growing in the school's garden.
What kind of plants can grow in the winter? When do you start planting? How do you protect strawberries from the cold? These were some of the questions that were raised in the garden workshop that was held at the East Palo Alto Charter School. The workshop was sponsored by Collective Roots, a nonprofit organization in East Palo Alto, which focuses on "garden-based learning" and "food system change."
In answering the question about the type of plants that grow in the winter, Neha Bazaj responded, "Everything you can use for a winter soup." Bazaj, who was an instructor in the workshop that Collective Roots held, told the attendees that they can grow green leafy plants, such as chard, spinach, cabbage and lettuce, and they can also grow tubers like potatoes, carrots, onions and radishes.
Workshop attendees not only had the chance to ask general questions about gardening, such as how to get rid of pests, but they also shared some of the problems they had in their own gardens.
As they picked up tips and general how to's, the participants were able to stroll through the EPA Charter School's garden, visit the greenhouse and the school's chicken coop. After their tour, they took the tips that they had learned and put them to use: planting beans for later use as a nutrient for the soil and covering the strawberries with straw to protect them from the cold and small pests, such as animals and birds.
At the end of the workshop that was held on Saturday, November 19, the instructors gave each of the attendees a small planter containing a young lettuce, which they could take home or leave to grow a little more in the greenhouse.
The workshop the student gardeners attended was one of two special workshops sponsored by Collective Roots. The next workshop, which will be held on January 21, 2012, will provide tips on how to make a natural fertilizer.
Those interested in finding out more about Collective Roots can check its web site at _URL_.
Updated Monday, November 28 at 8:43 p.m.
To contact the author of this article, Alba Sánchez, send an email to _EMAIL_.


The shrine of knowledge.
Magick >> Qabalah
limitless light, abstract symbols, algebraic symbols, ain soph
The Veils of Negative Existance and the Qliphoth
Author: Ivory Cat
suggests to us to use these ideas of negative existence as counters with no
true value unto themselves but useful in our calculations of the workings of
the Tree. It is comprised of the Ain, (negativity), Ain Soph, (the limitless)
and Ain Soph Aur (the limitless light). It is out of the last veil that
Kether is born. Fortunes calls these "the algebraic symbols that enable us to
think of that which transcends thought, and which at the same time hide that
which they represent; they are the masks of transcendent realities." She goes
on to say that these are not supposed to be understood, being that they are
only "symbols" of the unmanifest, designated only to give the mind
suggestions towards certain ideas. However, since these are the unmanifested,
the mind really cannot comprehend them. Even though Negative existence is
outside our scope of realization, it is important to try to keep in mind that
we can turn our minds in the direction of this absolute of unmanifest area,
even if we can't reach it. That's because all that has been manifested came
out of an area of the unmanifested. These are abstract symbols for the mind
to ingest, digest, and store for later enlightenment. These abstract symbols
are the seeds for thought and new ideas, and she puts it into perspective
well by stating that Realization is concretizing the Abstract. Although we
may not know it's nature, we know it's effects.
The next area is a highly controversial area called the Qliphoth, and
although I really don't know how to pronounced it, I would guess it would be
something like kle-foth. I have discovered that this part of the tree is
rarely discussed in many of the books and completely avoided like the plague
by many practitioners. I had asked one gentleman who has written a few books
on Qabalah about this area and he wouldn't discuss it with me. I had no idea
whatsoever that this was such a taboo subject, especially since Dion Fortune
does such an excellent job of addressing it. I feel as strongly about this as
she did. I believe that working with an intense system as the Kabalah,
esoteric initiates owe it to themselves to be educated about the whole
system, rather than just part of it. That way they can make better decisions
and obtain higher results, through knowing the undesirable aspects as well as
the desirable.
This not only gives us an edge, but as Fortune puts it "It is a sound
magical maxim not to invoke any force unless you are equipped to deal with
its averse aspect". She also writes that whoever uses the Tree as a magical
system really has no option but to deal with the aspects of the Qliphoth. If
one delves into the magical arena long enough, one will inevitably get bit
where the sun doesn't shine if they are not prepared.
Fortune describes the Qliphoth as "aptly termed the evil and averse
Sephiroth and are the unbalanced and destructive aspect of the Holy Stations
(Sephiroth) themselves". She goes on to write that "Whoever attempts to work
with the positive aspect of a Sephirah must remember that it has a negative
aspect" and it's important to maintain the balance of forces. The Qliphoth is
looked at as the place where one finds the Absolute of all averse conditions
as in absolute lust, absolute envy, etc. It could be looked at as a
reflection of the whole Tree glyph emanating from Kether downward. Or picture
yourself standing on a mirror looking down at your reflection extending from
your feet. For each Sephiroth has an archangel associated to it, each averse
side, or it's Qliphoth has its demon. It is viewed as the equivalent of
proverbial hell, where all the nasty traits or "sins" of human
characteristics are concentrated. I neither recommend or condone anyone to
work in this specifically defined area of Qliphoth.
However, after reading this chapter in The Mystical Qabalah several
times, I have come to another understanding of Qliphoth, maybe I would even
refer to it as "The Lighter Side of Qlipoth". Fortune made a very profound
statement that "We all have the faults of our qualities". In other words,
any of our good qualities taken to the extreme can become undesirable. A
person can be the most helpful soul around, but if it is an extreme nature
and they help anybody all the time no matter what, they can be a down right
butt-in-ski and very irritating. I'll go out on a limb with my own personal
analogy. I was blessed with artistic talent (Netzach), I also inherited the
temperament to go with it. I know I am a bit of a perfectionist with my work
and myself; if I go overboard with it I can become unreasonable. My personal
Qlipoth here is temperament and unreasonability. So I must realize that, and
strive to keep these averse characteristics in balance with my good
qualities. Fortune gives an example; if one invoking the fiery energy of Mars
(Geburah) does so without first purifying oneself, it can lead to the
Martian forces going to extremes, becoming destructive and cruel, or vigorous
and energetic can fall into oppression.
Fortune makes a point of distinguishing between what the occultist refers
to as positive and negative evil, saying that this is an important point in
practice because of how this influences our immediate judgment and conduct.
She defines Positive evil as "a force which is moving against the current of
evolution" and negative as "simply the opposition of an inertia which has not
yet been overcome, or momentum that has not been neutralized." Negative is
the strain between opposites and this strain is needed to keep all in check
with each other, keeps one from dominion over the others.
"Negative evil is the practical corollary of the principle of
Equilibrium." The universe is held together and perpetuated because of the
strain of opposing forces. An example of negative evil is how people view
each other......the evangelical fundamentalist views new agers as "evil", the
hippie was viewed as "evil" by the establishment, when in reality, it just
depends on the perception or the prejudice eyes of the other side! Fortunes
says "Never the less, we cannot dispense with either of these opposing
factors if society is to be maintained in a healthy state; between them we
achieve a steady progress that neither disorganizes society nor permits it to
sink into inertia and decay". If either side were left unchecked, it would
lead to harm. To label one contending force as good and the other as evil is
a mistake and can lead to the fundamentalist heresy of dualism. Very
important to grasp this. She says that we "cannot deal with evil by
destroying it, but only by absorbing and harmonizing it."
She writes that positive evil is another animal. This is something
carried too far, as in a single, dominant political party leading into
political corruption. Each side will have its sympathetic followers and it is
this Qliphothic force that gives the zealot his abnormal power.
"Each Qliphah arose primarily as an emanation of unbalanced force in the
course of the evolution of the corresponding Sephirah. The solution of the
problem of evil and its eradication from the world is not achieved through
suppression, or destruction, but through its compensation and consequent
absorption back into the Sephirah from which it came." It's also important to
understand that forces in equilibrium are static, neutralized. Progress can
not take place in perfect equilibrium. It is not until they become out of
balance that the forces are freed for action, and it is only at this point
that change and growth can take place. As we come to realize this and
understand what our adverse traits are, only then can we attempt to absorb
and harmonize them into becoming our virtuous qualities.
Suggested Pdf Resources
Three Negative Veils of Existence which hang behind the Crown, declares itself. may be abie to penetrate the Veils of Negative Existence, as they are called.
There are three qabalistic veils of the negative existence, and in themselves they..
The Kabbalah Unveiled
The Sorcer and His Apprentice: Unknown Hermetic Writings of SL
The Qliphoth of the Qabalah. 23. 4.
The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah
him a few words, but her countenance is still hidden in the thick veil, which his glances.. but the negative side of a positive-negative existence called life.
Suggested Web Resources
The Veils of Negative Existance and the Qliphoth | ®
A Practical Guide to Qabalistic... - Google Books
The Unmanifest and the Veils of Negative Existence. 53. a The Three Primary Rings.
Qabalistic Dictionary - Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn ® - Our
Ain Sofa is the second Veil of Negative Existence above Ether. A


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Nano-sized titania (anatase) and sodium and potassium titanate nanotubes were studied via in situ Raman spectroscopy at hydrostatic pressures up to 6 GPa. Analysis by scanning electron microscopy shows a uniform dispersion of sodium and potassium cations in the nanotubes. The effect of the pressure was observed by significant shifts in the Raman band structure of nano-sized anatase crystals and nanotube titanate. In nano-particulate anatase, the phonon frequencies (143, 395, 517, and 639 cm−1) increase linearly with pressure. In contrast, the upward frequency shifts in the sodium titanate nanotubes (NaTNT) and potassium-modified nanotubes (NaTNT+K) occur in a stepwise fashion. These stepwise changes occur in the nanotube samples between 2 and 4 GPa (ambient pressure phonon bands in NaTNT at 274, 444, 650, and 906 cm−1) and between 4.5 and 5.5 GPa, (phonons 273 cm−1 and 436 cm−1 in NaTNT+K at an ambient pressure). Post-pressure high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis shows evidence of nanotube distortions and a 5% contraction in the interlaminar spacing of both NaTNT and NaTNT+K.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy(all)


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Author ORCID Identifier
This study evaluates the price setting behavior across main cities of Pakistan by employing the micro data from retail price survey. The most contemporary research technique of Duration Analysis is employed where survivor functions are estimated by most illustrious nonparametric Kaplan-Meier and Nelson-Aalen Estimators. Hazard Functions for various product groups are also estimated by employing parametric Weibull Hazard Model. Results confirm that perishable food items have shortest duration of one week for most of the spells, where government regulation caused prices to change more frequently. It is found that on average small cities faced lower hazard and thus comparably lesser price change, whereas, months of March, April and October witnessed relatively high hazard rates. The study classifies nine commodity groups into two categories. First is high frequency group and second is increasing hazard group. These classifications are believed to assist policy makers in assessing inflation dynamics in Pakistan. The study significantly contributes to the existing literature, firstly, by applying more scrupulous nonparametric and parametric techniques of Survival analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this technique is not yet applied in Pakistan for examining the price behavior. Secondly, as the price setting mechanism in Pakistan is not studied before by employing the high frequency micro price data, therefore, panel data estimation contribute significantly to the existing literature.
Prices, Commodities, Duration Analysis, Monetary policy
Journal of Economic Literature Subject Codes
E310, Q020, C410, E520
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Sohail, F., & Fatima, A. (2022). Empirical evidences on pricing mechanism in Pakistan: A duration analysis. Business Review, 17(2), 1-27. Retrieved from 10.54784/_PHONE_.1479


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St. Platonida of Syria
Commemorated on April 6
St. Platonida was at first a deaconess, but afterwards withdrew into the Nisibis Desert, where she organized a women's monastery.
The Rule of her monastery was known for its strictness. The sisters partook of food only once a day. When they were not praying, they spent their time in monastic labors and various obediences.
St. Platonida was for all the sisters a living example of strict monastic asceticism, meekness, and love for neighbor. Having reached a great old age, St. Platonida died peacefully in the year 308.
By permission of the Orthodox Church in America (


Imagine receiving for Christmas—or the holiday of your choice—a gift that you could then use to scan the tree or other holiday items. Thanks to METIS, you could scan your Christmas tree and then reproduce its texture using any of a variety of analog or digital print processes.
One of the fastest-growing applications in wide-format and industrial printing is textures. Particularly in the area of décor, items like laminate flooring can be printed to simulate the feel of wood. While a lot has been written about how these kinds of materials are printed, typically using UV flatbed wide-format printers, not much has been said about the front end of the process. How exactly are these textures created?
Based in Rome, METIS manufactures high-quality, multi configuration scanners specifically designed for the décor industry. They can capture a photorealistic reproduction of an existing surface such as a fine-art painting, wood, or ceramic/stone flooring, a solid panel or a wallcovering.
Step one is to gather those surface attributes, which include RGB color, 3D surface texture, and glossiness, which is what METIS scanners are uniquely designed to do.
The METIS technology was used in the design of this flooring and to generate surface data in this computer-generated room scene displaying the product.
"METIS scanners are considered to have the highest level of color accuracy across the largest area and over the course of time of any commercially available RGB scanner in the world today," said Rob Lawrence, business development manager for Metis scanners at CGS ORIS. "Additionally, METIS is wholly unique in the image acquisition process, and brings an exceptional level of objectivity to the imaging process which is one of the key reasons it was brought into the product offering at CGS ORIS."
CGS ORIS is the official dealer for METIS scanners in the U.S.
High-Res Image Capture
METIS scanners are different from traditional flatbed scanners, because they scan the surface with a 16,300-pixel CMOS sensor and temperature-controlled LEDs up to eight times, each with tightly controlled angle and distance.
The captured data is saved into a proprietary file format. Once captured, METIS's Light Inspector software acts like a virtual photography studio where the operator views, in real time, a virtually unlimited number of lighting combinations to select the view of the surface that best represents the original.
Specialty texture mapping offers various possibilities.
In addition, because of these known lighting angles, distances and temperatures, the METIS software will isolate and calculate the 3D surface depth and surface roughness/ glossiness variance. This data can be then exported as grayscale TIFFs (16-bit, 8-bit, 8-bit layers, 1-bit, and/or 1-bit slices) which can be used for laser and chemical etch engraving of press plates and gravure cylinders or single-pass and/or multi-pass UV inkjet printing and embellishment applications.
Hardware also needs software, and each METIS scanner comes bundled with METIS's ScanDirector, which controls the scanning process with all the controls needed for the most advanced photography requirements. Both applications share the same user interface and work interchangeably. METIS also offers additional licenses of Light Inspector for remote computers, which can be a tremendous benefit to a designer in a different location who wishes to select the lighting angle intensities to capture the nature/essence the surface they chose for a specific design.
Everything—Including the Kitchen Sink
METIS scanners are also unique in the variety of the surfaces they can capture.
"With heavy-duty powder-coated steel scanning tables, the scanners can hold over 500 pounds," Lawrence said. "But with integrated sensors, the scanners can be adjusted to detect the slightest weight change and resistance allowing the most delicate originals to be scanned without danger of being damaged by the scanner."
Some examples of materials scanned at METIS's demo center include a whole kitchen sink, 500-pound granite slabs, barn doors, white glazed tiles, oiled asphalt, oil, acrylic and watercolor paintings, grand-format maps, denim and a host of other kinds of textiles.
And we had to ask: what is the coolest thing anyone has scanned and developed with a METIS scanner?
"A fashion house in Milan scanned the wings of a preserved falcon and used the pattern to emboss the shoulders and sleeves of a leather jacket," Lawrence said. "We had one client lay mud on the table for a textile design."
Got mud? No problem with the METIS DRS 2000 DCS Large Format Scanner.
Given the variety of materials and surfaces the scanners can digitize, they are well-suited for a wide range of markets. The three primary markets that the company specifically serves are décor (flooring, wall panels, wall coverings and ceramic tiles), fine-art reproduction and archival services (libraries and museums). Naturally, each of these markets has different imaging requirements.
"Depending on the market, the desired resolution, and if they plan to reproduce texture and glossiness will determine the kind of output required from the scanner," Lawrence said.
Pattern texture mapping to enhance wallpaper printing.
Market Dynamics
All markets have their own dynamics. "Decor is undergoing a transformation to a digital workflow," Lawrence said. "With digital will come a huge demand for more depth. The METIS scanner is a high throughput scanning technology equipped to deliver all of the needed data and files for the latest digital printing technologies, which include the ability to generate surface texture and glossiness for embellishment or texture builds."
For the fine-art market, some of the benefits that the METIS scanner offer are similar, but there are some unique requirements for this market.
"The ability to capture and reproduce an original work of art with a printing process requires not only an ability to accurately reproduce a painting, but also an adept understanding of the artists they serve," Lawrence said. "The METIS gives the fine-art professional a tool to start off with the most complete and accurate capture, and combines it with a scanning methodology and software tool to work with the artist side-by-side to capture the true essence of the original in real time."
The scanner can also export accurate surface texture and glossiness details in formats unique to each printer's capabilities, such as ink thickness per pass, as well as the ability for the RIP to lay down individual layers to build up the surface height.
For archival services, it's all about capturing detail and consistency.
"The METIS scanners were designed to provide the highest level of light uniformity and detail for the most challenging originals," Lawrence said. "METIS flatbed scanners are among the rare elite scanners capable of achieving a FADGI 4-Star designation, the highest quality standard in the archival industry."
Some specific METIS customers and the kinds of tasks to which they are putting the scanner include:
 - The world's best-known tile manufacturers and retailers use the METIS to generate original designs and to create their marketing imagery for catalog and online content.
 - The décor manufacturers in the U.S. are using the METIS to reduce time, costs, and ultimately product returns by generating more effective sample materials.
 - Fine-art reproduction houses are using the METIS to produce higher-quality images for 2D giclées, as well as 3D-textured fine-art reproductions produced on a flatbed UV printer.
 - Colorimetry for hard-to-color-manage printed media such as ceramics, wood, concrete, and carpeting.
Opportunities for Print Service Providers
METIS scanning technology can also provide opportunities for graphic arts firms and print service providers.
"With advancements in 3D and 3D-like technologies, there is a need for realistic surface data, and the METIS's ability to capture and deliver graphics of the surface attributes of color, texture and glossiness will mean greater realism with these technologies," Lawrence said.
The METIS technology scans materials from a topical level. This approach also benefits colorimetry creation for materials which would be impossible to profile by traditional methods. When accurately reproducing hard-to-replicate detail, proper color management is just as important as the images color data. METIS has partnered with ColorGate Digital Output Solutions, GmbH to prepare colorimetry for accurate color management. What traditionally took hours now takes just minutes.
Multi-use METIS Surf 3D ColorGate Edition creates textured scans and colorimetry.
The benefits go beyond print. The METIS scanner can bring new revenue sources to graphic arts firms by "being able to reproduce 3D texture reproductions with existing UV printing equipment or providing scanning services for CGI/PBR (computer-generated imagery/physical based rendering) applications," Lawrence said.
METIS scanners could help expand offerings for print service providers' clients in that they can provide their clients with extremely color accurate photorealistic and/ or tactile realistic reproductions, and the scanners can deliver image data in whatever format is needed for a given print manufacturing method. And scanning surfaces are required for a host of needs beyond print, such as virtual/augmented reality, CGI, and PBR. Computer-generated room scenes, product displays, video game environments, and movies are increasingly calling for more photorealistic surface textures.
Think Outside the Box—and Then Scan the Box
What advice would Lawrence give creative designers when thinking about doing custom scanning for their production process?
"First of all, think outside the box," he said, "but remember that the scanner's job is to give you an absolutely faithful capture of the original. So, before you send a surface to be scanned, be sure it is as close as possible to how you wish the final output to appear. This includes gloss/sheen levels. But don't just get stuck on one option, the METIS software enables real-time lighting perspective changes post-scan to allow for virtually unlimited perspectives that would take other scanning technologies days to try to create. It is easily adjustable to scan multiple scan mapping options


Modernizing the Weather Underground website with cloud object storage
This is part 2 of the Serverless approach to Weather Underground series, describing our team's steps over the past year to modernize our Weather Underground website.
Previously, I wrote in Part 1: A serverless approach to Weather Underground about the process of creating cloud functions to modernize our Radar Map products in order to move away from legacy backend code and APIs. The next phase of this migration effort is to generate and write all resulting assets to IBM Cloud Object Storage instead of AWS S3.
This article assumes that you have working experience with JavaScript and have some familiarity with cloud terminology. To understand the context, and the serverless architecture that object storage works with, read Part 1 of this series.
Estimated time
Take 20 minutes to read the sections of this article and consider some of the tools and approaches that we used at Weather Underground. Invest more time if you want to try to work with cloud object storage in your own environment.
Using IBM Cloud Object Storage with IBM Cloud Functions
To be able to read and write files to IBM Cloud Object Storage, you need to provision Object Storage as a service at Here are the steps to create the resource:
 1. At, click Create resource.
 2. Click Storage and select Object Storage.
 3. Give service an unique name, and click Create.
Here's an example of the "Weather Labs" service that I created:
screen capture of the object storage service in resource list
Then, after you have Object Storage provisioned, you need to create a bucket. A bucket is where files are stored. In the following example, you can see that I created a bucket for each of our environments (production, development, and staging):
screen capture of buckets for the object storage service
So you have the proper permissions to read and write to the Object Storage service, you need to go to Service credential and click New credential. Here's an example of what I did:
screen capture of credentials for the object storage service
You also need to update your /.aws/ credential file with your newly created access_key_id and secret_access_key like I did in the following example:
screen capture of credential file
Now that your Cloud Object Storage is set up, you can use the ibm-cos-sdk library to refactor Cloud Functions to work with it. This library is a fork of the AWS S3 SDK, and its API is fairly compatible and similar.
Run the following command to install ibm-cos-sdk to your project:
npm install --save ibm-cos-sdk
To initialize the Cloud Object Storage client, you need to provide additional configuration info (the endpoint, the ibmAuthEndpoint, and the serviceInstanceId) like the following example:
object storage configuration
Moving vanilla JavaScript serverless functions to TypeScript
While I was porting the cloud functions code to work with cloud object storage, I found it tedious that each action was a separate project and that I couldn't share code between them. I have been itching to move the existing code to TypeScript, and this issue gives me a very good reason to do so.
I decided to refactor the ES6 code to use TypeScript instead, for better code reuse and smaller bundle file sizes. I was inspired by Van Staub's post: Building IBM Cloud Functions with TypeScript. This section describes my experience learning how to use TypeScript for Cloud Functions and the benefits.
Because node-canvas, one of the dependent libraries, does not have TypeScript support yet, I am in a holding pattern for converting one of the actions to TypeScript until TypeScript support is added for that dependent library. Hopefully, that won't be long – it looks like that PR for node-canvas is about to be merged.
First, consider the reason for moving to TypeScript. Currently, I have each of the cloud functions written in ES6, and they are housed in a separate project, which makes reusing code difficult. To deploy the function, I basically zip up the entire project and push it up to the cloud. I use the following commands:
zip -r * && bx wsk action update ${package}/intellicast-animate-action - kind nodejs:8 - memory 2048 - timeout 280000
The project structure looks something like the following example:
project structure
You can see this is a standard node application structure, and the code and packages are repeated in each project. I want to move to TypeScript for the following reasons:
 - To take advantage of TypeScript features
 - To catch issues early in development and build time
 - To leverage tools and editors (such as autocomplete and intellisense)
 - To write safer, more efficient, and reusable code
Porting cloud functions to TypeScript
By porting the existing cloud functions to TypeScript, I was able to house all of the actions and share the same cos-client.ts library file among all the actions in a single project, as you can see in the following screen capture:
project structure with TypeScript
With the following webpack.config.js file, the number of entries depends on the number actions compiled and bundled:
const path = require('path');
const CopyPlugin = require('copy-webpack-plugin');
const dist = 'dist'; // be aware 'dist' folder is also used for tsconfig output
module.exports = {
 entry: {
 'intellicast-action': './src/intellicast-action.ts',
 'intellicast-purge-action': './src/intellicast-purge-action.ts'
 output: {
 path: path.resolve(__dirname, dist),
 filename: '[name].js',
 module: {
 rules: [{
 test: /\.tsx?$/,
 use: 'ts-loader',
 exclude: /node_modules/
 test: /\.node$/,
 loader: "native-ext-loader"
 plugins: [
 new CopyPlugin([
 from: 'dist/cos-client.js',
 to: '../intellicast-animate-action/cos-client.js',
 toType: 'file',
 from: 'dist/params.js',
 to: '../intellicast-animate-action/params.js',
 toType: 'file',
 from: 'dist/messenger.js',
 to: '../intellicast-animate-action/messenger.js',
 toType: 'file',
 from: 'dist/intellicast-animate-action.js',
 to: '../intellicast-animate-action/index.js',
 toType: 'file',
 resolve: {
 extensions: ['.js', '.ts', '.tsx', '.json']
 mode: 'production',
 target: 'node',
 node: {
 __dirname: true
 externals: [{
 // pre-defined modules computed below
TypeScript not only helps produce a smaller codebase – it also generates a much smaller output bundle as a result of code reuse and tree shaking.
Here is the comparison between the two output file sizes:
output file sizes
Consider the TypeScript version of intellicast-action. After transpiling with tsc and bundling with Webpack magic, the output of intellicast-action.js is about 368k, as opposed to 2.8mb for the ES6 compressed version It's quite a difference in size.
Ease of deployment with manifest.yaml
I also adopted manifest.yaml for deploying the actions rather than using command lines as I have previously employed. Here is an example of my manifest.yaml file:
manifest.yaml file
Within manifest.yaml, there are references to environment variables (denoted by ${...}) for any sensitive data that the development team wants to hide from the public. I created an npm script to set up the necessary environment variables before running the deployment process with manifest.yaml. See the following example of the deploy.js script:
deploy.js script
The package.json scripts section contains the following code:
package.json scripts
If you run the following command, you see a result like the screen capture of weather-stage.
npm deploy
weather-stage actions screen capture
Benefits of typescript
If you're like me, after so many years of coding in JavaScript, sometimes it's hard to move away from it because it just feels so natural. That's why I wrote the cloud functions in JavaScript when I started working on this migration project for our Intellicast Radar Maps. As the code base grows in size, I started to feel the pain, and now I find myself repeating code because JavaScript doesn't naturally come with concept of classes, interfaces, and abstractions.
Of course, I can keep coding my cloud functions in JavaScript, but it requires a certain level of discipline as a developer to keep the code well structured and clean. More importantly, to ensure our code base remains pristine, other team members need to share the same discipline and adhere to the design pattern. Ultimately, someone needs to lay down some rules and be the gatekeeper. Otherwise the code base quickly gets out of control. I'm pretty sure we all have been there more than once throughout our programming careers!
TypeScript is a strictly typed language that serves as a guard rail by providing encapsulation and abstraction to reduce the number of common errors or bugs that get introduced by developers. We all should use unit testing, but it usually falls by the wayside due to our busy schedules. Since TypeScript is strictly typed, tools like editors can help us catch those errors (such as syntax and misspelling) early – either at development time or at build time – to avoid runtime bugs. Editors can also provide autocomplete and intellisense to help us to be more productive and efficient.
Cloud Object Storage APIs are compatible with the AWS SDK. I found that after I made the configuration and code changes that I described in this section, my Cloud Functions were able to read and write to Cloud Object Storage, and they worked as expected.
Overall, the transition from AWS S3 to


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cold shower therapy, you have likely noticed improvements in general vitality, resilience, and well-being. (Check out this podcast and this article for more about cold therapy from Ben.) But did you know that applying ice/cooling the testes can help to trigger greater testosterone production and almost double your sperm count? Well, as crazy as the practice sounds, icing the testes has now become an internet hit, as there are literally thousands of men around the globe who are seeing 'big' (ha) benefits from icing their testes.
So why does icing the testes actually work? The bag of skin that holds and helps to protect the testicles hangs outside the body. Remember that the testicles make sperm. To do this, the temperature of the testicles needs to be cooler than the inside of the body. This is why the scrotum is located outside of the body. The testes are highly sensitive to heat, and even a marginal 2 degrees of elevated temperature in this region can arrest spermatogenesis.
When you apply an ice pack to the underwear where the testes hang—not directly to the skin, please, we don't want to burn the skin!—this causes a major vasoconstrictive (constriction of the blood vessels) effect which then leads to a rebound vasodilatory response, rushing blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients to the Leydig cells of the testes, enhancing their ATP production and subsequent testosterone output.
What are the purported benefits of icing your testes?
- Increased drive
- Increased nocturnal penile tumescence ("morning wood")
- Deeper voice
- More energy
- Increased testicular hang size
Here's how to ice your testicles, in three simple steps:
- Apply the ice pack to underwear where testicles hang (remember, not directly on the skin!).
- Leave the ice pack for 10-15 minutes.
- Repeat 2-3 times daily.
The most ideal time to ice is before the gym and before bed. This is because testosterone secretion peaks during these times.
You can also easily (who knew?) get a pair of testosterone-enhancing, testicle-icing underwear (with insertions for gel ice packs), which make it more convenient to ice.
Check out this video for more information about icing the testicles, and in case you're interested, also cover the practice in my course 30 Days To Higher Testosterone Masterclass (use code BENG10 for 10% off).
2. Choose Testosterone-Boosting Supplements Carefully
There are many supplements out there designed to increase testosterone levels. Unfortunately, many of them contain high doses of zinc and D-Aspartic acid.
If you are deficient in zinc, supplementing will indeed boost testosterone levels, but not if your zinc is already sufficient, and in that case, more can in fact be harmful. A low dose of zinc—15 mg per day—is adequate for most men. After 120 days, rodents on diets containing twice the RDA of zinc develop metabolic syndrome. Therefore, it is paramount that you get your zinc levels checked before blindly taking a zinc supplement in the hopes that it will magically boost your testosterone even higher.
Now I want to delve into why D-Aspartic acid is not a good idea. D-Aspartic Acid (DAA) is a naturally occurring non-essential amino acid. It is found in the protein components of foods and good dietary sources include casein, soy, and corn. It can also be made in the body from L-aspartate.
DAA saturates in neuroendocrine tissue such as the pituitary gland, pineal gland, and gonads (testes) where it works as an excitatory stimulatory compound to trigger the release of hormones. As the levels of DAA build up in these tissues, the production and release of hormones increases, and particularly LH. LH is released from the pituitary gland and it signals the release of testosterone from the testes. Once the testosterone has been released in excess, your body works to maintain homeostasis by balancing the hormonal ratios.
Negative feedback mechanisms in the pituitary gland switch off further testosterone release to drop testosterone levels and your body starts converting testosterone to estrogen via the enzyme aromata (also called estrogen synthetase or estrogen synthase). DAA supports this by increasing the aromatization of testosterone to estrogen, and testosterone levels drop while estrogen increases to normalize the ratios and maintain equilibrium. This is what makes DAA usage unpredictable. There is adequate DAA in the diet to fuel the neuroendocrine system, especially if the diet is protein-adequate. Supplementing with high doses of DAA to saturate the neuroendocrine system and trigger excessive release of hormones will create a temporary spike followed by increased negative feedback and increased conversion to estrogen to maintain hormonal balance.
Another ingredient to watch out for is mucuna pruriens. This particular herb is often added to testosterone boosters since it contains L-dopa, an immediate precursor to dopamine. Dopamine and testosterone do tend to work hand in hand; the higher your dopamine, the higher your testosterone levels. However, when these supplements use mucuna pruriens that is standardized to >15% L-dopa content, you're playing with fire. Why? Because L-dopa, being an immediate precursor to dopamine, can override the brain's dopamine synthesis pathway, and leave you with less dopamine when supplementation stops. This can result in downregulation and a long recovery time to restore dopamine synthesis unless combined with a powerful dopaminergic restorative nootropic called Bromantane. Dopamine is significantly enhanced by Bromantane. It does this through a non-depleting manner, via enhancing the actual enzyme (tyrosine hydroxylase), which converts tyrosine into L-dopa, and subsequently dopamine. It strengthens motivation, mood, and focus, via improving overall dopamine output from the amino acid L-tyrosine found in the food we eat.
One core supplement/herb that has been shown to reliably and dramatically enhance testosterone levels is a ginseng herb called cistanche.
Cistanche targets various aspects of performance enhancement, ranging from cognition to hormones and even longevity. As a powerful tonic, this herb outperforms any other ginseng in terms of its benefits for male performance, for example:
- Cistanche extract shortened the erectile latency and prolonged the erectile duration to minimize the negative effects of castration. Basically, this means that cistanche can prolong human erection time and reduce the time taken to achieve a "full" erection.
- Cistanche increases sperm count (2.3- and 2.7-fold) and sperm motility (1.3- and 1.4-fold) and decreased the abnormal sperm (0.76- and 0.6-fold). The serum level of progesterone and testosterone in rats was also increased.
- Cistanche reverses BPA-induced abnormality in sperm characteristics, testicular structure, and normalized serum testosterone enhanced the testosterone biosynthesis. Remember that BPA is found in plastic bottles. If you've ever drunk from a plastic bottle before, your body is likely swimming in plastic!
Click this link to watch a video about how cistanche works.
A key molecule found within cistanche is called echinacoside. Echinacoside is demonstrated to possess many pharmacological activities, such as anti-aging, neuroprotection, enhancement of learning and memory, improvement of cardiac function, reduction of hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia, and prevention of obesity-induced diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Other ways in which echinacoside benefits you are:
- Echinacoside increases sperm quantity by targeting the hypothalamic androgen receptor. This essentially means that compounds found within the cistanche herb can interact with a region of the brain that can govern total Testosterone levels.
- Echinacoside increases leutenizing hormones levels significantly by 1.1-fold in serum, 1.4-fold in encephalon + pituitary, and 1.2-fold in testes. Remember, luteinizing hormone is the precursor to making testosterone!
- Echinacoside significantly increases mRNA (Genetic) levels of CYP11A1, CYP17A1, HSD3β1/2, and HSD17β, and particularly HSD3β1/2, which are key enzymes responsible for active hormonal conversions.
Ben has covered the importance of testing levels of significant biomarkers in order to establish a starting point for supplementation or other biohacking practices that are intended to alter levels of hormones. When considering taking supplements for increasing testosterone, you should test for zinc levels first to avoid overdoing zinc which could in fact lead to a decrease in testosterone. Supplementing with cistanche is a safe, effective way to support your testosterone levels naturally.
3. Avoid Environmental Testosterone Threats
There are many aspects of your environment that can dramatically affect your testosterone levels.
Below is a summary of these offending factors:
- Radio frequency electromagnetic waves: Clinical studies show that RF-EMFs emitted from Wi-Fi connectivity devices damage sperm and play an important role in decreasing sperm production and motility. RF-EMWs lead to increasing sperm DNA damage.
- Tobacco smoking: A tobacco smoking habit damages the morphology of sperm. But the good news is that harm done by tobacco smoking can be reversed, once a person quits smoking.
- Teas: Since tea is often considered "healthy," it may be surprising to learn that it can have negative effects on testosterone levels. Mint tea, green tea, lemon balm, gotu kola tea, and licorice tea all have some degree of anti-testosterone or anti-fertility effects, and if you're looking to


Intermittent poor performance when the MDB's are getting messages from MQ queues
Technote (troubleshooting)
You have MDB's driven by messages from WebSphere MQ queues. Intermittently the MDB's experience a delay where it may take up to sixteen seconds for the retrieval of each message. There is no gradual degradation. The MDB's are running fine one minute, then they will experience these delays and then resume normal processing. The MDB's will usually only experience these delays for a short time, usually 30 seconds or less, before they start retrieving messages in a matter of a few milliseconds again.
A review of MQ and MQ JMS traces at the time of the delays reveals that the messages were on the queue and available at the time when the MDB's were experiencing a delay. The MDB's are doing a browse of the messages prior to doing a MQGET to remove the message from the queue. The delayed messages have a priority of 5 in the MQ message descriptor (MQMD) while most of the messages being browsed have a priority 0 or 4, which are lower priorities.
The observed delay is that the thread which is doing MQGET is using the MQGMO_BROWSE_NEXT option and it has browsed to a later point in the queue than the point where the priority 5 messages were committed. Each browsing thread from the MDB's has a browse cursor whose position in the queue dictates the next message that thread is able to get. Messages committed to the queue before the browse cursor's current position are not gettable by that thread until it issues a new MQGET call using the MQGMO_BROWSE_FIRST option. The browse cursor is then reset to point at the start of the queue and therefore the higher priority messages are now visible to the browsing thread.
The delayed messages are successfully delivered after the browse thread uses MQGMO_BROWSE_FIRST. The time delay is accounted for by the application making MQGMO_BROWSE_NEXT + MQGMO_WAIT calls at a time when the browse cursor has moved past the priority 5 messages.
Here is an example to illustrate the concept of how a browse cursor works and why these delays are occurring. Suppose that a priority queue contains the following sequence of messages:
Message A priority 4
Message B priority 4
Message C priority 3
Message B was put onto the queue after Message A, hence why it appears second. Messages at the same priority are stored in arrival sequence. Now suppose the queue is opened by a single application which then issues a get with MQGMO_BROWSE_FIRST. The application's browse cursor is pointed at Message A and MQ returns a copy of Message A in the application buffer. Since this was a browse call, Message A remains on the queue.
The queue now looks like this:
Message A priority 4 <-- application browse cursor
Message B priority 4
Message C priority 3
Now suppose that a second application opens the queue for output and puts a new message (D) onto the queue at priority 5. In an MQ priority queue, 5 is a higher priority than 4 so this message is added at the start of the queue.
The queue now looks like this:
Message D priority 5
Message A priority 4 <-- application browse cursor
Message B priority 4
Message C priority 3
When the browsing application issues its next get with MQGMO_BROWSE_NEXT then its browse cursor moves down to the next message on the queue after the current position and the application is given a copy of Message B.
The queue now looks like this:
Message D priority 5
Message A priority 4
Message B priority 4 <-- application browse cursor
Message C priority 3
Even though Message D is earlier in the queue and has not been seen by the application yet, the design of MQGMO_BROWSE_NEXT is to move down to the next message in the queue. The browse continues in this manner until the browsing application reaches the end of the queue. At this point, the application receives reason code 2033 (MQRC_NO_MSG_AVAILABLE) and therefore knows it has reached the end. So it then issues a get with MQGMO_BROWSE_FIRST again, which resets the browse cursor to the top of the queue and so now it will get a copy of Message D.
The performance delay in this case was accounted for by the time it took to browse the remainder of the queue before re-issuing a get with the MQGMO_BROWSE_FIRST option. During that time, the higher priority message sat at the top of the queue without being processed until the browse first call was issued.
Resolving the problem
There are various strategies for handling the situation differently, and so avoiding the symptom.
One simple option is to change the queue to be a First In First Out (FIFO) queue. You can do this using runmqsc to "ALTER QLOCAL(QNAME) MSGDLVSQ(FIFO)". This would cause messages to be delivered in arrival sequence instead of priority.
From an application server perspective, there are a couple of options available to help ensure messages are processed in a more timely manner.
1. Reconfigure the application server to use non-ASF mode. Using non-ASF mode changes the mechanism that the application server uses to get messages so that, rather than performing a browse of the queue, it simply issues MQGET calls. This means that MDB's will always be given the message that is currently at the top of the queue. More details about non-ASF mode, including how to configure the application server to use this mode of operation, can be found in the following developerWorks article titled "When to use ASF and non-ASF modes to process messages in WebSphere Application Server".
2. Change the custom property eoqtimeout. When scanning the queue for a message, once the queue agent reaches the end of the queue, this is the length of time it waits before going back to the top of the queue and beginning a new scan. Information about how to change this timeout value can be found in the technote titled "How to modify the Generic JVM Arguments and Java system properties for a WAS server".
Related information
The browse cursor
MQGMO options
Product Alias/Synonym
WebSphere MQ WMQ MQSeries
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text:
United Nations and European Union sanctions targeting Iran's military and missile programs remain in place until 2020 and 2023, respectively. The sanctions target firms and individuals involved in these programs, including entities connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC). Over 200 entities are listed by the EU and subject to financial restrictions and travel prohibitions (in the case of individuals). A smaller number – less than 100 – remain designated by the United Nations.
See a tally of the entities sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union.


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Grenada, including the islands of Carriacou and Petit or Petite Martinique [about 20 miles away], is one of the small, and most southerly, of independent nations scattered among the Leeward and Windward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean. Part of a chain of islands that start north from mainland South America to the Atlantic coast of Florida, Grenada is the closest to Venezuela, about 90 miles north off its coast. Location: 12 degrees 00' N, 61 degrees 40' W, 21 miles long (35 km), 12 miles wide (20 km). The main island Grenada, of volcanic origin, is about twice the size of Washington, DC.
Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique is populated by approximately ninety thousand people. The total land area of the three islands is only one hundred thirty square miles much of the land non-habitable because of the mountainous terrain. The inhabitants include descendants of French, English and Scottish settlers. The inhabitants also include descendants of Africans who were brought to the island as slaves and East Indians brought to the island as indentured servants. The majority of the population is of African and mixed descent.
Below is a close-up map of Carriacou, Petite Martinique and the many other islands of Grenada.
Because Grenadian maps on the Internet are copyrighted, map images are not available at this site. Below are descriptions and URLs for selected Grenada map sites.
- One comprehensive topographical map of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique is to be found at the University of Texas at Austin. - University of Texas The extension to look for is /Americas/grenada.gif/.
- A listing of conventional maps on this site at Mining Company
- Maps and Colonial History, especially of Fort George - Check out Jim Rudin's aerial photograph of St. George's.
- Inquire at Pennymead for Antique Maps
- Commercial Map site and another Commercial Map site and another The Travellers' Guide Tour Map of Grenada - The services of commercial Websites have not been evaluated.
- A street map of St. George's is a challenge to find on the Internet. The best thing is to get a map when you visit. Start with the Tourist Board. Even these maps are general, tourist-oriented and somewhat dated. There is no street map of the second largest city in Grenada called Grenville or La Baye. A map of Grenville, it is hoped, will be forthcoming.
- Many Grenadian maps are on the Internet. Suggestion: Search on "Grenada Maps" - Put those two words within quotation marks.