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The Eve of St Agnes is a stained glass masterpiece designed and made by the great Irish artist Harry Clarke. A new book Harry Clarke The Eve of St Agnes by Jessica O'Donnell is on sale in the Gallery Bookshop, tel. _PHONE_. This fully illustrated book looks at each magificent panel and relates the window closely to John Keats's poem.
To the right here you can download for free some suggested art activities for children related to the window.
About Harry Clarke (_PHONE_)
Harry Clarke was born in Dublin on 17 March 1889. His father, Joshua Clarke, was a stained glass maker and church decorator. As a young boy, Harry Clarke worked in his father's stained glass studio which was at the back of their house at 33 North Frederick Street. Working for his father instilled in Harry the importance of good craftsmanship. Harry Clarke went to school at Belvedere College, a short distance from their house, but left in 1905, shortly after the death of his beloved mother Brigid. He continued to work as an apprentice in his father's studio while he was a student at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. He was a talented and hard-working student and won scholarships which enabled him to study full-time at the art college. The scholarships also meant he could travel to France and England to see the magnificent stained glass windows in the medieval churches there. He entered competitions at the South Kensington School of Art and Design in London and won gold medals for the stained glass designs he submitted. Following his studies, Harry Clarke worked as a book illustrator for the London publisher Harrap and was highly praised for his drawings for Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination and for Goethe's Faust. Harry Clarke loved reading and going to the theatre and much of his art is inspired by great plays, fairy tales and legends. He especially loved stories that were fantastical, strange and wonderful. Between 1915 and 1917 Harry Clarke made eleven stained glass windows for the Honan Chapel at University College, Cork and from then on he received many important commissions for his stained glass work. He worked constantly, often late into the night. Around 1929 he became very ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB), a disease of the lungs. He went to Switzerland for treatment and rest. However, two years later, on 6 January 1931, on the way home from Switzerland to Ireland, Harry Clarke died from his disease at the young age of forty-one.
The Eve of St Agnes by Harry Clarke
In April 1923 a Mr Harold Jacob asked Harry Clarke to design a stained glass window for the landing of his father's house in Ailesbury Road in Dublin. Harold Jacob was the owner of the famous Jacob's biscuit factory. Stained glass was usually associated with religious art in churches so it was an exciting commission to make a window for someone's house. Harold Jacob suggested that 'night and morning' or 'summer and winter' might be good subjects for the window. While these were nice ideas, Harry Clarke was an artist full of imagination and he loved a challenge. He suggested instead some ideas inspired by fairy tales, plays and poems. These ideas included the story of Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge and the poem The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats. Mr Jacob very much liked the idea of The Eve of St Agnes and three days later a delighted Harry Clarke wrote again saying: 'I shall set to work on The Eve of St Agnes and submit my first coloured draft for discussion'. Harry Clarke made a number of beautiful preparatory studies for the window in pencil, watercolour and gouache, a type of watercolour, and these are now in the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. One year later, on 1 April 1924, Harry Clarke completed The Eve of St Agnes. Mr Jacob paid Harry Clarke £160 7s 6d (160 pounds, 7 shillings and 6 pence) for the window. When The Eve of St Agnes was exhibited at the Irish Art Exhibition in Dublin in 1924 it won the gold medal for Arts and Crafts. In 1978 the window was bought by the Hugh Lane Gallery, where it is on view today.
Inspired by a Poem
The poem The Eve of St Agnes was written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in January 1819. There are forty-two verses, or stanzas, so it is a very long poem. The poem was inspired by an ancient tradition where young maidens would fast and go to bed early on 20 January and hope to dream of their future husbands. To 'fast' means to eat nothing. The feast day of St Agnes takes place on 21 January so the 'eve' means the evening before. In John Keats's poem Madeline had been forbidden by her father, Lord Maurice, to marry Porphyro. (Porphyro is pronounced 'pour – fear- o'). Despite this, on a cold and wintry night Porphyro secretly enters the castle and, with the help of Madeline's nurse Old Angela, goes to find Madeline, who is asleep in her bedchamber. As it is the Eve of St Agnes, Madeline has gone to sleep hoping to dream of her future love. When Porphyro's music wakes her, she is unsure whether she is dreaming or awake. Porphyro reassures her that it is not a dream and they flee from the castle and away across the moors.
John Keats's poem is full of beautiful descriptions and Harry Clarke was inspired by these when choosing which parts of the poem to illustrate. The poem is full of colour, especially purple, blue and red, and this is why you see so much of these colours in Harry Clarke's stained glass window.
How the Story is Told
As well as revealing his superb skill as a stained glass artist, The Eve of St Agnes stained glass window is a magnificent example of Harry Clarke's storytelling ability.
The artist chose to tell the story of The Eve of St. Agnes in fourteen panels. If you look closely you will see that each of the panels is accompanied by a quotation from John Keats's poem. In addition, at the top of these panels are two semi-circles, called lunettes. Running horizontally along the bottom of the panels is a frieze showing characters from the poem. Throughout the window there are borders full of wonderful decoration and ornamentation. In his art Harry Clarke was inspired by many sources, including Old Masters such as Diego Velazquez and Albrecht Dürer, Japanese art, music and literature, and Symbolist art. He combined many different ideas and visual inspirations with his own vivid imagination to create a vision which is very much his own.


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Destructive testing = Investigative Process
Destructive testing is an investigative process that determines where a mold problem originated and helps to define the scope of the remediation plan. There are often cases where a visual inspection does not suffice to properly identify all areas of contamination because most microbial problems are not visible. With the assistance of Forensic consultants and the implementation of the proper engineering controls, layers of the structure are peeled back to pin point the exact source of the problem.
JLS Environmental Construction Science proficiencies in this area include:
- Destructive testing in order to determine hidden causes of damage
- Forensic consulting
- Expert witness work with causation
- Cost of Repair (COR) services
We handle the project from material removal through defect repair and finish with seamless restoration of the affected areas.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
CME Article: Assessment of the Need for Immediate Trauma Team Presence for Infants Presenting in Cardiac Arrest
AbstractObjectives: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is rare in infants, with the cause of arrest often unknown upon presentation. Nonaccidental trauma is a potential etiology of OHCA among infants, but its occult presentation makes this etiology challenging to diagnose. In the absence of apparent injuries, identifying the need for trauma team activation is difficult during the initial resuscitation of infants with OHCA.
Methods: We performed a retrospective chart review of infants younger than 1 year old who presented to Children's National Health System from 2012 to 2016 with cardiopulmonary resuscitation in progress. Medical records and the trauma registry were reviewed for relevant resuscitation information. Autopsy records provided the cause and manner of death, contributing factors to death, and evidence of injury.
Results: Among 592 infants undergoing resuscitation during the study period, 34 infants (5.7%) presented in cardiac arrest. The average age on presentation was 101.2 days (standard deviation 78.7). Most of the patients (n = 32, 94.1%) died in the emergency department, with none surviving to discharge. Among the 32 infants for whom autopsy records were available, the cause of death was nonaccidental trauma in one patient (3.1%).
Conclusions: Infant OHCA had poor outcomes, with trauma as a rare etiology. In the absence of external signs of injury or known injury mechanism, immediate trauma team presence was not beneficial for these infants during the initial resuscitation phase.
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If you have an existing account please login now to access this article or view your purchase options.
Create a free account, then purchase this article to download or access it online for 24 hours.
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source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


I was reading this paper, about the complexity of decision problems for reversal bounded counter machines. I got to Theorem 1 on Page 6. The theorem shows that there's a log-space NTM which can determine if a non deterministic reversal-bounded counter machine is empty or not. (A log-space NTM can be converted into a polynomial time DTM).
The proof shows that, for input machine represented as a string of length $n$, with $m$ counters, that $O(m\log n)$ space is required.
Here's where I get lost. The paper says that, since $m$ is fixed, we can consider the machine to take $O(\log n)$ space.
Does this mean that the algorithm is only uses log-space if $m$ is fixed? Would the corresponding deterministic algorithm then be exponential in terms of $m$?
 - 1
 $\begingroup$ It is not necessarily the case that the best algorithm is to determinize the NDTM, but certainly this approach may be exponential in $m$. $\endgroup$ – András Salamon Jul 6 '13 at 17:36
 - $\begingroup$ The problem given in Theorem 1 is NCM(m,r). So, both $ m $ and $ r $ are fixed. When you design an algorithm for this problem, you can embed the values of $ m $ and $ r $ into the finite state set. Moreover, you can squeeze the work tape to $O(\log n)$ space by using more tape symbols (depending the value of $ m $). $\endgroup$ – Abuzer Yakaryilmaz Jul 8 '13 at 8:22
If the number of counters or the number of reversals (or both) is part of the input, the problem becomes coNP-complete (unless there is exactly one counter):
The upper bound was shown by Hague and Lin, using a reduction to existential Presburger arithmetic: Hague and Lin, "Model Checking Recursive Programs with Numeric Data Types", CAV 2011, _URL_
 - If the number of counters is part of the input and one has exactly one reversal, it is not hard to reduce the knapsack problem: Given binary representations of $x_1,\ldots,x_k,y$, each containing at most $n$ bits, one can easily construct a $(k+1)n$-counter automaton $A$ that can nondeterministically pick a subset $S\subseteq \{1,\ldots,k\}$ and produce $\sum_{i\in S} x_i$ on the first counter and then subtracts $y$ from the first counter. Then the language of $A$ is non-empty if and only if there is a subset $S\subseteq \{1,\ldots,k\}$ with $\sum_{i\in S} x_i=y$.
 - If the number of reversals is part of the input and one has exactly two counters, coNP-hardness was already shown in Gurari and Ibarra, "The complexity of decision problems for finite-turn multicounter machines", _URL_ This seems to be the journal version of the paper linked in the question.
 - If the number of reversals is part of the input and one has exactly one counter, however, then the problem is NL-complete. This is a well-known result on one-counter automata.
Your Answer


text:
From 2D to 3D Bifurcation Structures in Field Oriented Control of a PMSM
- *Corresponding Author:
- Wahid Souhail
Electrical Engineering Department
National Engineering School of Monastir Monestir
Ibn al Jazar 5019, Tunisia
E-mail: [email protected]
Received Date: August 30, 2016; Accepted Date: September 09, 2016; Published Date: September 16, 2016
Citation: Souhail W, Khamari H, Mimouni MF (2016) From 2D to 3D Bifurcation Structures in Field Oriented Control of a PMSM. J Electr Electron Syst 5: 196. doi: 10.4172/2332-0796._PHONE_
Copyright: © 2016 Souhail W, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
This paper presents new aspects of bifurcation structures in a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) in both motor and generator operating modes. It considers the case where the PMSM speed is regulated with a Field-oriented control (FOC). A period doubling bifurcation cascade under the variation of a proportional control parameter leading to chaotic states, was identified. The investigation of parametric singularities allows us to identify a complex bifurcation structure including three generic bifurcations. Such structure is made of the Limit Point (LP), the Hopf (H) and the Bogdanov-Takens (BT) bifurcation sets. Sufficient conditions of the existence of the main bifurcations are given analytically. An overview of the phase space singularities associated to the parametric singularities is presented. Moreover, embedding 2D bifurcation sets in a 3D parametric space, led to identify certain bifurcation surface structures. The bifurcation surfaces established correspond to limit point bifurcation for the motor and generator operating mode, and for period doubling period bifurcation. The 3D bifurcation sets play an important role to study the combined effect of three different parameters on the PMSM dynamics, and permit to control the complex PMSM dynamics to a stable equilibrium dot by an adequate tuning of either control and system parameters.


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Relief from pain is not only a measure of good health for you, but also your doctor.
A new study finds that doctors experience the same euphoria as a patient when they help relieve their pain.
"Doctors feel rewarded when they are responsible for someone's relief," said study author Karin Jensen, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital. "The better they are at taking the perspective of the patient, the more reward and subjective value they will report."
Jensen and a team of researchers at Harvard University examined the brain activity of 18 doctors who were deceived in thinking they were alleviating their patient's pain or letting them suffer.
To make the research more authentic, doctors were given a dose of thermal pain as well as a fake electronic device that was said to relieve the pain. Researchers then monitored their brain activity using a functional resonance imaging machine that monitored each doctor's brain activity.
Doctors were then asked to examine two patients, who were planted for the study in addition to completing a survey on how they empathized with their patients. Each doctor observed their patient during treatment through mirrors inside an fMRI scanner. Doctors then were asked to use either the fake electronic device to ease their patient's pain or choose a control button that would result in no impact.
When the doctors saw patients relax after activating the device, the doctor's brain activity associated with the placebo demonstrated that they felt rewarded.
Researchers found that doctors who empathized more with their patients experienced a more rewarding feeling when their patient was relieved.


text:
Qualitative infrared inspection of electrical components is the inspection to locate anomalies or "hotspots" without regard to electrical load. Although the qualitative approach can yield helpful electrical maintenance information, it does not provide the definition possible with a comprehensive quantitative inspection.
Advantages to qualitative approach:
- Less time required for inspection
- Less application and infrared knowledge required by the operator
- Lower investment in IR equipment because temperature measurement is not required.
Limitations of qualitative approach:
- True severity of the anomaly cannot be determined
- Repair priority cannot be established
- Trending is not possible
- Greater chance of misdiagnosis
- Cannot diagnose certain phase-dependent anomalies
- Equipment may fail before the repair is performed
- Repairs may be made to equipment not requiring it
- Cannot be correlated with other inspection techniques
Don't short-circuit the value of your infrared electrical inspection program by overlooking Ohm's Law.
Article from "Advanced Maintenance Technologies – August 1998 By Ron Newport, President of the Academy of Infrared Thermography in Bellingham Washington
Click here for a.PDF copy of this article
Receive a Free Quote or an On-Site Presentation. Call _PHONE_


text:
A 2-measure melodic pattern is repeated over and over. The only parameter being changed is tempo, which goes from quarter note = 230,000 to quarter note = 68. As tempo decreases our perception will group the tones within the pattern differently. There's competition between our brain's tendency to group by proximity in pitch and its tendency to group by proximity in time.
3 Tones (Headphones required)
Three tones B-C-C# are repeated over and over without change. Notes are individually and progressively moved to the left or right. Even though the melodic pattern never changes, our brain will group by the tones' position in space, creating different groupings.


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dihedral_style table style Ntable
dihedral_style table spline 400 dihedral_style table linear 1000 dihedral_coeff 1 file.table DIH_TABLE1 dihedral_coeff 2 file.table DIH_TABLE2
The table dihedral style creates interpolation tables of length Ntable from dihedral potential and derivative values listed in a file(s) as a function of the dihedral angle "phi". The files are read by the dihedral_coeff command.
The interpolation tables are created by fitting cubic splines to the file values and interpolating energy and derivative values at each of Ntable dihedral angles. During a simulation, these tables are used to interpolate energy and force values on individual atoms as needed. The interpolation is done in one of 2 styles: linear or spline.
For the linear style, the dihedral angle (phi) is used to find 2 surrounding table values from which an energy or its derivative is computed by linear interpolation.
For the spline style, cubic spline coefficients are computed and stored at each of the Ntable evenly-spaced values in the interpolated table. For a given dihedral angle (phi), the appropriate coefficients are chosen from this list, and a cubic polynomial is used to compute the energy and the derivative at this angle.
The following coefficients must be defined for each dihedral type via the dihedral_coeff command as in the example above.
The filename specifies a file containing tabulated energy and derivative values. The keyword specifies a section of the file. The format of this file is described below.
The format of a tabulated file is as follows (without the parenthesized comments). It can begin with one or more comment or blank lines.
# Table of the potential and its negative derivative
DIH_TABLE1 (keyword is the first text on line) N 30 DEGREES (N, NOF, DEGREES, RADIANS, CHECKU/F) (blank line) 1 -168.0 -1.40351172223 -0.0423346818422 2 -156.0 -1.70447981034 -0.00811786522531 3 -144.0 -1.62956100432 0.0184129719987... 30 180.0 -0.707106781187 -0.0719306095245
# Example 2: table of the potential. Forces omitted
DIH_TABLE2 N 30 NOF CHECKU testU.dat CHECKF testF.dat
1 -168.0 -1.40351172223 2 -156.0 -1.70447981034 3 -144.0 -1.62956100432... 30 180.0 -0.707106781187
A section begins with a non-blank line whose 1st character is not a "#"; blank lines or lines starting with "#" can be used as comments between sections. The first line begins with a keyword which identifies the section. The line can contain additional text, but the initial text must match the argument specified in the dihedral_coeff command. The next line lists (in any order) one or more parameters for the table. Each parameter is a keyword followed by one or more numeric values.
Following a blank line, the next N lines list the tabulated values. On each line, the 1st value is the index from 1 to N, the 2nd value is the angle value, the 3rd value is the energy (in energy units), and the 4th is -dE/d(phi) also in energy units). The 3rd term is the energy of the 4-atom configuration for the specified angle. The 4th term (when present) is the negative derivative of the energy with respect to the angle (in degrees, or radians depending on whether the user selected DEGREES or RADIANS). Thus the units of the last term are still energy, not force. The dihedral angle values must increase from one line to the next.
Dihedral table splines are cyclic. There is no discontinuity at 180 degrees (or at any other angle). Although in the examples above, the angles range from -180 to 180 degrees, in general, the first angle in the list can have any value (positive, zero, or negative). However the range of angles represented in the table must be strictly less than 360 degrees (2pi radians) to avoid angle overlap. (You may not supply entries in the table for both 180 and -180, for example.) If the user's table covers only a narrow range of dihedral angles, strange numerical behavior can occur in the large remaining gap.
The parameter "N" is required and its value is the number of table entries that follow. Note that this may be different than the N specified in the dihedral_style table command. Let Ntable is the number of table entries requested dihedral_style command, and let Nfile be the parameter following "N" in the tabulated file ("30" in the sparse example above). What LAMMPS does is a preliminary interpolation by creating splines using the Nfile tabulated values as nodal points. It uses these to interpolate as needed to generate energy and derivative values at Ntable different points (which are evenly spaced over a 360 degree range, even if the angles in the file are not). The resulting tables of length Ntable are then used as described above, when computing energy and force for individual dihedral angles and their atoms. This means that if you want the interpolation tables of length Ntable to match exactly what is in the tabulated file (with effectively nopreliminary interpolation), you should set Ntable = Nfile. To insure the nodal points in the user's file are aligned with the interpolated table entries, the angles in the table should be integer multiples of 360/Ntable degrees, or 2*PI/Ntable radians (depending on your choice of angle units).
The optional "NOF" keyword allows the user to omit the forces (negative energy derivatives) from the table file (normally located in the 4th column). In their place, forces will be calculated automatically by differentiating the potential energy function indicated by the 3rd column of the table (using either linear or spline interpolation).
The optional "DEGREES" keyword allows the user to specify angles in degrees instead of radians (default).
The optional "RADIANS" keyword allows the user to specify angles in radians instead of degrees. (Note: This changes the way the forces are scaled in the 4th column of the data file.)
The optional "CHECKU" keyword is followed by a filename. This allows the user to save all of the the Ntable different entries in the interpolated energy table to a file to make sure that the interpolated function agrees with the user's expectations. (Note: You can temporarily increase the Ntable parameter to a high value for this purpose. "Ntable" is explained above.)
The optional "CHECKF" keyword is analogous to the "CHECKU" keyword. It is followed by a filename, and it allows the user to check the interpolated force table. This option is available even if the user selected the "NOF" option.
Note that one file can contain many sections, each with a tabulated potential. LAMMPS reads the file section by section until it finds one that matches the specified keyword.
Styles with a cuda, gpu, omp, or opt suffix are functionally the same as the corresponding style without the suffix. They have been optimized to run faster, depending on your available hardware, as discussed in Section_accelerate of the manual. The accelerated styles take the same arguments and should produce the same results, except for round-off and precision issues.
These accelerated styles are part of the USER-CUDA, GPU, USER-OMP and OPT packages, respectively. They are only enabled if LAMMPS was built with those packages. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info.
You can specify the accelerated styles explicitly in your input script by including their suffix, or you can use the -suffix command-line switch when you invoke LAMMPS, or you can use the suffix command in your input script.
See Section_accelerate of the manual for more instructions on how to use the accelerated styles effectively.
This dihedral style can only be used if LAMMPS was built with the USER-MISC package. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info on packages.


text:
We present a method for computing ray-based approximations to optical fields that not only offers unprecedented accuracy but is also accompanied by accessible error estimates. The basic elements of propagation through smooth media, refraction and reflection at interfaces, and diffraction by obstacles give the foundations for the new framework, and the first of these is treated here. The key in each case is that the wave field and any relevant derivatives are expressed consistently as a superposition of delocalized ray contributions. In this way, the mysteries surrounding the sometimes perplexing tenaciousness of ray-based estimates are clearly resolved. Further, an essential degree of freedom in this approach offers an attractive resolution of part of the apparent conflict of particle/wave duality.
© 2001 Optical Society of America
(_PHONE_) General : Mathematical methods in physics
(_PHONE_) Geometric optics : Inhomogeneous optical media
(_PHONE_) Geometric optics : Mathematical methods (general)
(_PHONE_) Other areas of optics : Waves
G. W. Forbes and M. A. Alonso, "Using rays better. I. Theory for smoothly varying media," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 18, _PHONE_ (2001)


text: Relational properties, e.g., the connectivity structure of nodes in a distributed system, have many applications in software design and analysis. However, such properties often have to be written manually, which can be costly and error-prone. This paper introduces the MCML approach for empirically studying the learnability of a key class of such properties that can be expressed in the well-known software design language Alloy. A key novelty of MCML is quantification of the performance of and semantic differences among trained machine learning (ML) models, specifically decision trees, with respect to entire input spaces (up to a bound on the input size), and not just for given training and test datasets (as is the common practice). MCML reduces the quantification problems to the classic complexity theory problem of model counting, and employs state-of-the-art approximate and exact model counters for high efficiency. The results show that relatively simple ML models can achieve surprisingly high performance (accuracy and F1 score) at learning relational properties when evaluated in the common setting of using training and test datasets -- even when the training dataset is much smaller than the test dataset -- indicating the seeming simplicity of learning these properties. However, the use of MCML metrics based on model counting shows that the performance can degrade substantially when tested against the whole (bounded) input space, indicating the high complexity of precisely learning these properties, and the usefulness of model counting in quantifying the true accuracy.


text:
To see the files, folders, and libraries that have been shared on your network, open File Explorer.
Open File Explorer by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering File Explorer in the search box, tapping or clicking Apps, and then tapping or clicking File Explorer.
The location where the shared items appear depends on the type of network you have, and which Windows operating system is running on the PC you're using to find the shared files or folders.
|From a PC running||On this type of network||Shared items appear under|
Windows 8 or Windows 7
Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista
Workgroup or domain
My Network Places
If you can't see items on a network that are supposed to be shared with you, ask the person who's sharing them for the path (it should begin with \\computername\). Enter this path in the address bar in File Explorer.
If the items you've shared don't appear under Network, you can customize your view of folders in File Explorer to see which items have been shared and the people you're sharing them with. Open a folder that contains the items that you think are shared. On the View tab, in the Layout group, tap or click Details. Tap or click Add columns, and then choose Choose columns. Select Shared and Shared with, and then tap or click OK.


text:
Picking your teeth with DNA!
Problem(s): Where is DNA found in living organisms? What is DNA made of? What are nucleotides? What are the four nitrogenous bases found in DNA? Which bases pair together in a DNA molecule?
Materials: 30 Toothpicks, 4 different colored markers, construction paper, Glue.
1. You will be given 30 toothpicks. Using the four markers, completely color each toothpick any of colors you want. Make sure to color the toothpick one solid color and try use all the colors.
2. Take the piece of construction paper and cut it in half.
3. Draw the phosphate and sugar backbone on each piece of paper, as your teacher has written on the board. There will need to be 15 phosphate and 15 sugar units on each paper. Take your time!
4. Now on one of pieces of paper attach a tooth pick, with glue, to each sugar group.
5. Did you guess what the color on toothpick was for yet? Each color represents a different nitrogenous base. Look at the board, find out which bases you have made.
6. To complete your DNA molecule, color your the remaining toothpicks the color of the complementary base of your current strand and attach them to the sugar molecules of your other stand of DNA, then attach both strands together by the bases (toothpicks).
1. Where is DNA found in a cell?
2. What are chromosomes?
3. What is the function of DNA?
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© Teachnology, Inc. All rights reserved.


To generate a payment order in currency, you must specify an order template for the bank account that will be used to register vouchers.
 1. Click Accounts payable> Journals> Payments> Payment journal> Linesto open the Journal voucherform.
 2. On the Overviewtab, press CTRL+N to create a new line.
 3. In the Datefield, select the date of the payment.
 4. In the Accountfield, select the vendor account.
 5. In the Transaction textfield, enter text that describes the transaction.
 6. In the Debitfield, enter the sum of the payment.
 7. In the Offset account typefield, select the account type for the selected account.
 8. In the Offset accountfield, select the offset account for the transaction.
 9. In the Currencyfield, select the currency code.
 10. In the Purpose textfield, enter text that must be reflected in the payment order.
 Note Note
 If you click the VAT in payment orderbutton, text with the VAT amount is entered into the Purpose textfield.
 11. In the Method of paymentfield, select the method of payment to the vendor.
 12. On the Generaltab, in the Contracts groupfield, select the contract group.
 13. In the DVRfield, select the registration number of the contract.
 14. In the Sales tax groupand the Item sales tax groupfields, select the tax groups for calculation of VAT.
 15. On the Paymenttab, in the Notefield, enter specific comments on payment.
 16. Enter information in the fields under the Notification to the central bankfield group.
 17. On the Banktab, in the Bank transaction typefield, select the transaction type.
 18. In the Account identificationfield, select the bank account of the recipient.
 19. Click Functions, and then select Generate paymentsto open the Generate paymentsform.
 20. In the Method of paymentfield, select the vendor method of payment.
 21. In the Export formatfield, select Payment order in currency.
 22. In the Bank accountfield, select the bank account from which the payment is to be made.
 23. Select the Show format dialogcheck box. A dialog box will open before a payment order is generated. You can set additional options for a currency order.
 24. Click OK. The Order in currency setupform opens.
 25. In the Employeefield, select the employee code.
 26. In the Commission from accountfield, select the bank account number.
 27. Select the Our commission chargesor Our corr. commission chargescheck box if the expenses are paid by the paying company.
 28. Select the Documentcheck box to print the payment document.
 29. Select the Warrant textcheck box to print the warrant text.
 30. Click OK. A currency payment order is generated. The value in the Payment statuschanges to Sent.
 31. To post a payment journal, click Post. After posting the journal line, a transaction will be generated for the bank account, vendor, and accounting transactions for the outgoing payment.
 Note Note
 You can view the transactions in the Journal voucherform, Bank transactionsform, and Vendorform.
Registry of payment orders
All of the generated payment orders are available in the Registry of payment ordersform.
 1. Click Accounts payable> Inquiries> Payment order registerto open the Registry of payment ordersform.
 2. View the information in all the fields.
 3. On the Essential elementstab, view the attributes of the payer and the recipient.
 4. Close the form.
See Also


text:
People raised in the former mining town of Wittenoom in Western Australia have been hit by a wave of cancers and untimely deaths many decades following the closure of a nearby blue-asbestos mine in 1966.
The Herald Sun reports that a new Australian study examining the long-term impact of the mine on the health of town residents has found that children living in Wittenoom in the forties, fifties and sixties have suffered from far higher rates of a broad range of diseases.
Girls raised in the town were more likely to developer asbestos-related mesothelioma, as well as ovarian and brain cancers, while boys had higher rates of mesothelioma, leukemia, prostate, brain and colorectal cancer.
Childhood residents also suffered from a higher rate of early deaths and circulatory and nervous diseases, with the town's girls 20 – 47% and the town's boys 50 – 83% more likely to die of any cause compared to Western Australia's general population.
Wittenoom was originally situated only 1.6km from the mine, yet was shifted 12km further away in 1947 following local population growth.


The biggest erogenous zone for women is not between her legs but between her ears. Stimulating her body is the easy part. Stimulating her mind shows her what you are really made of. There are many different ways to stimulate a woman's mind so try different techniques. Study, listen and understand your woman and her every need. When your woman grows accustomed to one technique, change things up. Add to your list of things to do to continue stimulating her mind. Each woman has her own unique ways of being stimulated. Be creative and enjoy exploring your options.
Although there are many ways to stimulate a woman's mind, I have compiled a list of 10 ways that will definitely get you started. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments section.
1. Take Charge Women look up to men who are willing to take charge as the leader. Not only wear the title of leader but men who are willing to follow through as the leader and make things happen. Most women embrace having a take charge person that she can trust to lead, direct and follow through.
2.Intelligence Broaden your topics of conversation by studying and researching the things women are interested in. Talk to her outside of bedroom topics. Discuss your life, goals and dreams. Challenge her thinking with new perspectives. Express yourself and articulate your emotions. Instead of groping her and/or being overly sexually explicit about your desires, find other intelligent ways of expressing your desires to her. Express to her she is worth the extra effort and she stands out from the rest.
3.Listening Skills When communicating with a particular woman do your research and find out what her interests are. Listen to her and make mental notes of the certain things she likes or things that make her smile. Listen to what she talks about most often. If she tells you she really likes a certain scent on you, wear it more often. If she tells you she likes a particular food, visit those places for your dates. Take the time to really listen to her and take mental notes. She will tell you exactly what it takes to stimulate her mind. If she doesn't tell you right away, continue striving to earn her trust. Find ways to get her to talking while you patiently listen and take mental notes.
4.Observation Pay attention to the details of her life. What perfume is she wearing? Or has she mentioned a favorite scent? What is her favorite food? Is she a homebody or like large crowds? Pay attention to the small details of her life. Once the details of her life are revealed, do things to show her you are interested in her life. Don't ask her if you should, just do it and do it just because… What are her favorite television shows, designer handbags, shoes, favorite movies, favorite artists, favorite celebrities and/or genre of music. Broaden your knowledge on certain topics. Venture into different places to travel, things to see or people to meet in order to mentally stimulate your woman's mind.
5.Mannerism Show some manners. When you go out on dates with your woman, sit facing the door. Facing the door shows her you have her back. Also when escorting her out, be sure to walk on the traffic side. This shows her you are her protector. When you show her you are a gentleman by opening doors, being respectful and just showing old school charm; this can also stimulate a woman's mind.
6.Pure Emotion When you speak from the heart and are not afraid to share your innermost secrets with her, this shows that you trust her. This stimulates her mind and causes her to trust you with her innermost secrets. Openly express your emotions with her.
7.New Experiences If you frequently visit rhythm and blues venues, try something different. Maybe Jazz/Blues, Country/Western, Caribbean, salsa, piano bars, poetry night or something she hasn't experienced before. Be creative.
8.No Pretending A woman can sense when you are not who you claim to be. Boasting about your six figure salary and all of your exquisite tastes will not stimulate a woman's mind. Maybe a gold digger's mind but not a woman seeking a true partnership. Research diverse topics and share your knowledge with her. If a woman senses you are running game, she will shut down and not trust you. All mental stimulation is lost. Be truthful and honest.
9.Earn Her Trust When a woman has the confidence in her man that he is a problem solver; she begins to let her guard down and trust you more. She opens up her heart to you, knowing you have her best interests in mind. She feels protected and safe. She knows you are safeguarding her heart. She can share things with you that the world doesn't know. She can lean on you for strength when she is weak and you will catch her.
10. Sense of Humor Find ways to make her laugh. Find her unique sense of humor and keep her laughing. Laughter soothes the soul and will stimulate her mind.
Author's Bio:


Ask Your Question
Remove the black line surrounding text in opencv
asked 2019-06-06 09:08:05 -0500
I am trying to remove the black lines surrounding the text if present any. My purpose is to just have enough portion of the image to extract each character in it. The additional black lines are noise when i am trying to extract characters.
I have tried using floodfill in opencv but the image contains some white pixels before the black line starts in the upper left corner. So it hasn't been fruitful. I tried cropping by means of finding contours but even that does not work. This is the original image
Original Image
import cv2
import numpy as np
img = cv2.imread('./Cropped/22.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img,cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
_,thresh = cv2.threshold(gray,1,255,cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
contours,hierarchy = cv2.findContours(thresh,cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnt = contours[0]
crop = img[y:y+h,x:x+w]
cv2.imshow('Cropped Image',crop)
and using floodfill
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
 # threshold the gray image to binarize, and negate it
 gray = cv2.bitwise_not(gray)
 bw = cv2.adaptiveThreshold(gray, 255, cv2.ADAPTIVE_THRESH_MEAN_C, \
 cv2.THRESH_BINARY, 15, -2)
 # find external contours of all shapes
 contours,h = cv2.findContours(bw, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)
 # create a mask for floodfill function, see documentation
 h,w,_ = img.shape
 mask = np.zeros((h+2,w+2), np.uint8)
 # determine which contour belongs to a square or rectangle
 for cnt in contours:
 poly = cv2.approxPolyDP(cnt, 0.02*cv2.arcLength(cnt,True),True)
 if len(poly) == 4:
 # if the contour has 4 vertices then floodfill that contour with black color
 cnt = np.vstack(cnt).squeeze()
 _,binary,_,_ = cv2.floodFill(bw, mask, tuple(cnt[0]), 0)
 # convert image back to original color
 binary = cv2.bitwise_not(binary)
 cv2.imshow('Image', binary)
results in the two cases are as follows
Using Find Contours method
But there appears to be no change. And this using floodfill
Using floodfill. which does not remove any borders.
If any can please help out,it will be really great.
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answered 2019-06-07 15:07:57 -0500
OpenCV's contours will work if you filter the contours by aspect ratio. In the image below the 2nd from the left is thresholded at about 150 using binaryInverse type thresholding. There is a function called boundingRect that will give the upright rect of a contour. Define the contour aspect ratio as rect.width / rect.height and only keep contours with AR < 1 since numbers are tall. This gives the 3rd image from the left. The last is just inverted.
image description
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Asked: 2019-06-06 09:08:05 -0500
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Last updated: Jun 07 '19


text:
Where are the women on the Spanish Wikipedia?
Only 11.6% of its registered editors the Spanish-language version of Wikipedia are women. An interdisciplinary research project carried out by the UOC used a method to quantify more accurately the gender gap on the Spanish-language Wikipedia site
With its more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages, Wikipedia is one of the largest human collaboration efforts in history. One of the main pillars on which this wish to bring together the sum of all knowledge is based is the achievement of a neutral space. However, several studies suggest that the site suffers from a persistent gender bias as regards both content and the composition of its community. An analysis of the gender gap in the Spanish-language version of Wikipedia by an interdisciplinary team at the UOC has revealed that only 11.6% of its registered editors are women.
According to the new study, which has been published in the journal PLOS One, the difference could be partially due to female editors being less persistent. "Women edit less and give up sooner. This is part of the reason the gap is not narrowing," note the authors. In spite of this, the results reveal a small group of veteran female editors, some of whom have edited more than men, a fact that could help design measures to highlight and increase women's participation in this space.
The paper is signed by UOC researchers Julià Minguillón of the Learning Analytics for Innovation and Knowledge Application in Higher Education group (LAIKA), of the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications, Julio Meneses and Sergi Fàbregues of the Gender and IT group (GenTIC), of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, and by Professor Eduard Aibar of the Philosophy for Contemporary Challenges group (MUSSOL) of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Núria Ferran, a researcher at the Faculty of Audiovisual Media of the University of Barcelona, also took part.
A new method for identifying gender
With over 1.58 million pages, the Spanish version of Wikipedia is the ninth largest, as well as the fourth largest by number of registered editors (around 17,000). One of the challenges facing the new study has been identifying these people's gender, as many of them have chosen not to reveal it in their Wikipedia personal profiles. To ascertain this, in addition to collecting the information published by the users themselves, the researchers also created a systematic method to establish their gender based on their names and the use of grammatical gender in the descriptions appearing in their profile. This procedure made it possible to identify the gender of 49% of editors, as compared with only 38.8% who had specified it on their personal page.
According to the results of this innovative process, the number of active female editors in the Spanish-language version of Wikipedia accounts for 7.4% of all existing profiles, a figure that rises to 11.6% if you take into account only those profiles whose genders we know for certain. "These differences mean that the Spanish-language Wikipedia site is a male-dominated territory that may plausibly be considered a misogynistic place by female editors. Additionally, the high percentage of unknown profiles hinders efforts to reduce this perception, as women perceive anonymous editors as more critical of their contributions," the researchers highlight.
Lower retention rates among female editors
In general, the study also found differences in editing practices, as women have lower retention rates. According to the authors, this can be explained "partly by female editors being less persistent and tending to leave Wikipedia much more quickly, particularly in the first few weeks." However, an analysis of the most active people on the site revealed the disappearance or even reversal of gender differences between men and women in some cases: "There is a small group of veteran female editors who have edited more than male editors in terms of editing practices and involvement in different parts of Wikipedia," they highlight.
The types of contributions made are another differentiating factor between men and women. According to the study, female editors edit a higher percentage of non-article pages; in other words, in places whose specific purpose is to interact with other participants, particularly discussion pages, where articles' flaws and possible improvements are discussed. These findings seem to corroborate those of previous studies suggesting that men tend to be contributors while women tend to behave more as collaborators. However, the researchers highlight that "when taking into account only the most active editors, although women have a higher average number of edits in all namespaces, the differences between women and the most active men are not statistically significant."
Greater interest in gender-related matters
The researchers also found differences between the two groups' interests based on an analysis of the categories used by Wikipedia to group articles by subject area. Although the authors describe these categories as "too general," the study suggests that women are "slightly less" interested in editing science and nature pages.
As for content pages, men always outperform women by three to one. In fact, women often do not contribute at all or contribute significantly less, although with one exception: gender gap-related pages and WikiProjects. "We found only two groups of pages in which women seem more active than men: the 'Women' and 'Feminism' WikiProjects and another group of pages relating to gender issues. It therefore appears that women are more interested in making contributions in this field," they stress.
Highlighting the work of the most active female editors
In view of this bias, the researchers suggest a variety of measures to encourage participation by women. Firstly, they propose changes to the way the website works, such as facilitating editing — particularly regarding the management of references — to "avoid incomplete or erroneous edits that are almost certain to be subsequently deleted." They also recommend improving the identification of "abusive behaviours," particularly by veteran editors who may be "less than fully impartial in relation to gender issues, a problem that is not exclusive to women and may also affect other minority groups," they note.
They additionally emphasize the importance of supporting female editors for longer after taking part in Wikipedia welcome activities such as WikiProjects or Wikimarathons, where they get together in one place to edit and improve a subject matter or group of articles. Highlighting the involvement of the group of most active female editors is another recommendation made by the researchers, who assert that "raising awareness of women's successful experiences could provide a good starting point to encourage other women to continue editing and thus promote their long-term commitment to Wikipedia." Finally, the conclusions of the paper also stress the need to research why women stop editing Wikipedia and take a closer look at the role of Wikimarathons to encourage more women to take up and maintain the editing habit over time.


Things To Note:
1. The figures provided above are indicative and were derived from the Medisave contribution schedule made available on the CPF Board website. These supplied figures are also largely relevant to individuals hailing from other self-employed professions (sole-proprietors, hawkers, taxi-drivers etc).
2. The age of the contributing individual is defined as that at 1 January 2016.
3. Medisave contribution schedules are subjected to changes at the discretion of the relevant authorities. It is strongly advised that the individual consult the CPF Board website for the latest updates.
4.Arrangements can be made to fulfil one's Medisave contribution via a GIRO installment payment plan. Say for example, if a 48 year old private tutor is required to contribute 7200 SGD based on a net taxable income of 72,000 SGD, he can set aside 7200/12 =600 SGD per month to meet his minimum contribution requirements.
5.The current Medisave contribution ceiling stands at 49,800 SGD. Whilst filing tax returns next year, ie 2017, tax reliefs can be claimed for current contributions.


text:
Pasco and Pinellas County Health Departments Are Working Together to Vaccinate Residents Against Hepatitis A
August 12, 2019
The Florida Departments of Health (DOH) in Pasco and Pinellas Counties are teaming up to offer free hepatitis A vaccine to adults on Saturday, August 17 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church. The address is 4843 Mile Stretch Dr. in Holiday. The Departments will also be offering free HIV and hepatitis C rapid testing at this outreach event. Results will be available in 20 minutes.
On August 1, 2019, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees declared a Public Health Emergency to address the increase in hepatitis A cases in Florida due to the current national outbreak. DOH has been diligently working with community partners to educate and vaccinate as many residents as possible to prevent further spread of hepatitis A.
The outreach event planned for August 17 has been a collaborative effort, with many participants, including:
- Coalition for the Homeless of Pasco County
- Joining Hands Mission
- Metropolitan Ministries
- Pasco County Emergency Management
- Pasco County Human Services
- Pasco County Media Relations and Communications
- Pasco County Public Transportation
- Pasco County Sheriff's Office
- Salvation Army
- Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church
Vaccination is the best way to prevent hepatitis A. People who should be vaccinated for hepatitis A include:
- All children at age 1 year
- People who are experiencing homelessness
- Users of recreational drugs, whether injected or not
- Men who have sexual encounters with other men
- People with direct contact with others who have hepatitis A
- Travelers to countries where hepatitis A is common
- People with chronic or long-term liver disease, including hepatitis B or hepatitis C
- People with clotting-factor disorders
- Family and caregivers of adoptees from countries where hepatitis A is common
What is Hepatitis A?
Hepatitis A is a highly contagious disease that attacks the liver. People infected with hepatitis A are most contagious from two weeks before onset of symptoms to one week afterwards. Not everyone who is infected will have all the symptoms. Symptoms usually start within 28 days of exposure to the virus with a range of 15-50 days. Symptoms can include:
- Jaundice (yellowing skin and whites of eyes)
- Loss of appetite
- Nausea and vomiting
- Stomach pain
- Dark-colored urine
- Pale or clay colored stool
How is Hepatitis A Infection Prevented or Treated?
- Practicing good hand hygiene – including thoroughly washing hands with soap and water after using the bathroom, changing diapers, and before preparing or eating food – plays an important role in preventing the spread of hepatitis A.
- Hepatitis A vaccine is the best method of preventing infection.
- No medicines can cure the disease once symptoms appear.
- People with hepatitis A symptoms should seek medical care immediately.
- Most people get better over time but may need to be hospitalized.
- Previous infection with hepatitis A provides immunity for the rest of a person's life.
- People that are exposed to hepatitis A may be given vaccine or immune globulin within 14 days of exposure to prevent infection.
DOH has established a hotline for people who may have questions about hepatitis A. The number to call for Pasco County is _PHONE_, and the number to call for Pinellas County is _PHONE_.


Sunrise & Sunset: Beautiful but potentially dangerous
Riding under stunning skies at sunrise or sunset is inspiring and makes for great photos. If you are riding at this time, odds are part of your ride also happens during the time when the sun is low on the horizon. There is an insidious scenario that can turn certain parts of your route into a danger zone. Here's the recipe for danger:
 1. Riding on a road shared with cars, especially when there's no/minimal shoulder space
 2. Sun low on the horizon (and the horizon itself is low, minimal terrain above the drivers line of sight)
 3. Clear day. No clouds to block the direct sunlight
 4. Road lined up with sun such that it's in your eyes (and even worse, in the eyes of drivers behind you)
Combine these elements and your normal commute road becomes much riskier. The blinding sun is probably an annoyance to you personally, but the real problem is behind you. The automobile drivers, who are likely ~90% less "inspired" and attentive than you on the bike, are going to have a hard time seeing you in these conditions no matter how much you might be doing everything right -- blinking tail light, reflective clothes, staying to the right, etc. Direct sunlight is no match for any of that, and often drivers are going to try and avert their gaze to avoid getting blinded, meaning that you are even less likely to be seen.
So what are your options?
 - Switch up your route. For example, I often will roll west on Bay Street at Fort Mason in San Francisco once the right-hand lane and shoulder turns into parking after 6pm. However, depending on the time of year this stretch has all the elements of danger noted above. When all four conditions are present, I bail out and take the slower mixed-used path through the adjacent park.
 - Switch up your timing. Once you get to know the possible danger areas often you can avoid the worst of it by shifting your timing plus or minus 15 minutes.
 - Be extra cautious. If you are caught in this situation and don't have an option, you should consider some extra steps to increase your safety. This could include: waiting for traffic light timing such that there are fewer cars on the stretch of road, or even going deeper into the shoulder even at the increased risk of a flat tire.
For the curious: this paper looks at a few hot spots in Colorado and does a really nice job trying to quantify severity based on sun position relative to drivers viewing angle. There are some pretty stark results suggesting that sun glare is the leading cause of accidents in some of the hot spots they analyzed.
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Object linking/extending
Is it possible to have some information from one object, and the rest from
another. Logically:
uid=foo, o=People, o=general
cn=John Hodrien
uid=foo, o=People, o=LinuxUsers
and link those objects such that the attributes from the first object are
pulled across to the second object on a query? Or can you point me in a
direction that I should look into as an alternative?
Cheers muchly,
 -- Anon.


text:
Recent work includes:
- Acting in disputes between healthcare and social services authorities, and in challenges to NHS decisions to refuse continuing healthcare funding.
- Acting for and advising the MOJ in a range of challenges concerning the provision of prison healthcare, including external mental healthcare provision to prisoners.
- Advising on challenges to commissioning decisions under the NHS (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) Regulations 2013.
- Advising on allegations of abuse of dominance against an NHS primary provider.
- Advising on the preparation of tenders for medical supply contracts, and the lawfulness of price rebates in the NHS.
- Advising in relation to a potential public law dispute arising from the NHS (General Medical Services Contracts) (Wales) Regulations 2004.
We also act in social care and mental health cases, including:
- Adult social care, care home funding, support under the Care Act 2014.
- Children's services, including support under Part III of the Children Act 1989, leaving care services, support for families with no recourse to public funds and age assessment judicial reviews.
- Mental health and aftercare under s.117 of the MHA 1983.


Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Chapter 4: Variant Rules
Feats and Features
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 192
The Core Rulebook presents a character progression carefully designed to offer plenty of options and depth without overwhelming players with too many choices at once. However, you can use the Pathfinder rules to create an infinite number of variant progressions. If your group wants more powerful characters, specific themes for all characters, or the like, you can implement these variants.
Dual-Class PCs
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 192
Sometimes, especially when you have a particularly small play group or want to play incredibly versatile characters, you might want to allow dual-class characters that have the full benefits of two different classes.
Building a Dual-Class Character
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 192
When building a dual-class character, the primary changes to the character creation process are fairly straightforward. Choose and implement your character's ancestry and background as normal. Then, when you get to the step of choosing a class, select two classes and add everything from each class except Hit Points and starting skills: initial proficiencies, class features, class feats, extra skill feats and skill increases for rogues, and so on. As always, use the highest proficiency granted for a given statistic. For instance, if one class gave you expert proficiency in Will saves and the other gave you master proficiency in Will saves, you would be a master in Will saves.
Use only the higher Hit Points per level from the two classes. For starting skills, apply the skills automatically granted by each class, and then apply the larger number of additional skills. For instance, a cleric of Shelyn/ranger would gain Hit Points equal to 10 + their Constitution modifier per level, start with the trained proficiency rank in Nature and Survival from ranger and Religion and either Crafting or Performance from cleric, and then gain a number of additional skills of their choice equal to 4 + their Intelligence modifier, since the ranger provides the trained proficiency rank in more additional skills than the cleric does (this example doesn't include any skills they gained from their background or other sources). This character would also have the deity, divine spellcasting, divine font, and doctrine class features from cleric plus the Hunt Prey, hunter's edge, and ranger feat class features from ranger.
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 192
Dual-class spellcasters get full access to all the spells of any spellcasting classes they have. For instance, a sorcerer/wizard gets five cantrips in their spell repertoire from sorcerer, five prepared cantrips from wizard, three spontaneous 1st-level spell slots from the sorcerer (with three 1st-level spells in their repertoire), and three 1st-level prepared spell slots from wizard (or four, for a specialist). They keep these spells entirely separate and get the full benefits of both spellcasting class features, even if both classes use the same tradition.
Classes with focus pools get all the Focus Points granted by all of them. These share one focus pool as normal, with the standard cap of 3 maximum Focus Points.
Character Advancement
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 193
A dual-class character gains the class feats and class features for both classes at each level as they advance, with the exception of ability boosts, general feats, skill feats, and skill increases—the character gets each of these benefits only once per level, since both classes would provide the same benefit. (A dual-class rogue/ranger still gets the extra skill feat and skill increase at levels where the other class doesn't provide them.)
If a character gains the same proficiency rank in a statistic more than once, they still use only the highest rank. In the example above, when the cleric gets Alertness at 5th level, they wouldn't change their Perception rank, since it was already expert due to the ranger's initial proficiencies.
Playing with Dual-Class Characters
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 193
Playing a dual-class character certainly gives a character more options, and adding additional spellcasting classes can result in a significantly wider variety of powerful spell effects available to each character. Nonetheless, this sort of dual-classing is more likely to increase the party's longevity than it is to drastically adjust the level of opponents a dual-class character should be fighting. The increases to saving throw proficiencies and Hit Points make characters somewhat sturdier and able to take on slightly higher challenges, but not every fight should be harder, nor should encounters exceed extreme-threat difficulty.
Dual-classing in two similar martial classes to double up on their advantages can result in characters who, instead of increasing their flexibility, become drastically more powerful in one focus. For instance, a fighter/ranger with the flurry hunter's edge gains access to incredibly accurate press actions, and a barbarian/fighter has the barbarian's high damage plus the fighter's high accuracy. One way around this is to simply disallow combinations that double down on a narrow ability, and instead encourage dual-class characters that open up narrative options and increase the character's flexibility. The other solution is to raise the challenge from the opposition, treating the party as if the characters were a level higher. However, this is a choice that affects the whole group, even if only one character is built to mow down foes.
Due to the increased number of class feats a dual-class character has, you should limit how much of a benefit a character gets from feats that scale based on the number of feats you have, such as Resiliency feats from multiclass archetypes. Typically, the limit should be half the number of total class feats the character has.
Free Archetype
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
Sometimes the story of your game calls for a group where everyone is a pirate or an apprentice at a magic school. The free archetype variant introduces a shared aspect to every character without taking away any of that character's existing choices. It can also provide a lighter version of dual-class characters by giving everyone a free multiclass archetype.
Building a Character
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
The only difference between a normal character and a free-archetype character is that the character receives an extra class feat at 2nd level and every even level thereafter that they can use only for archetype feats. Depending on the needs of the group and the theme of the game, you might restrict the free feats to those of a single archetype each character in the group has (for a shared backstory), those of archetypes fitting a certain theme (such as only ones from magical archetypes in a game set in a magic school), or entirely unrestricted if you just want a higher-powered game.
If the group all has the same archetype or draws from a limited list, you might want to ignore the free archetype's normal restriction of selecting a certain number of feats before taking a new archetype. That way a character can still pursue another archetype that also fits their character.
Playing with Free Archetypes
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
Free-archetype characters are a bit more versatile and powerful than normal, but usually not so much that they unbalance your game. However, due to the characters' increased access to archetype feats, you should place a limit on the number of feats that scale based on a character's number of archetype feats (mainly multiclass Resiliency feats). Allowing a character to benefit from a number of these feats equal to half their level is appropriate, as this is the maximum number of feats you could use to take archetype feats without this variant.
Ancestry Paragon
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
Most characters have some elements that connect them to their ancestry but identify more strongly with their class or unique personality. Sometimes, though, a character is the embodiment of their ancestry to the point that it's of equal importance to their class. For a game where an ancestral background is a major theme and such characters are the norm, your group might consider using the ancestry paragon variant.
Building an Ancestry Paragon Character
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
When creating an ancestry paragon character, instead of starting with one ancestry feat and gaining another at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th levels, the character starts with two ancestry feats and gains another at every odd level thereafter (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and so on) for a total of 11 ancestry feats.
Playing with Ancestry Paragon Characters
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
Ancestry paragon characters have a bit more versatility and power than other characters, though their extra abilities are usually limited to themes the ancestry already was suited for. It's unlikely to affect the game balance of combat encounters, but it might make exploration and social challenges easier for the heroes.
Simplified Ancestries
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
The variants presented so far have mostly been aimed at groups looking to increase their nuance in exchange for greater character complexity. However, sometimes players are looking for something a little simpler instead, or want to increase the complexity in one area and decrease it elsewhere, keeping a rough balance. In games where a character's ancestry is only incidental and each PC is more defined by their class and individual characteristics, simplified ancestries allows your group to pick an ancestry and go.
Building a Simplified Ancestry Character
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 194
When choosing an ancestry for a simplified ancestry character, you gain the ancestry's normal abilities at 1st level, choose a heritage, and gain the appropriate lore feat (Dwarven Lore for dwarves, for example) as your ancestry feat. Simplified ancestry characters never gain ancestry feats beyond that first lore feat


text:
E.J. Campbell High School; Prior to 1903 African American children in Nacogdoches were taught at two different locations by Will Sanders, Peyton Edwards Walton, Sr., and T. C. Ayers. In 1903, the schools were combined and moved to a building on Shawnee Street to create the Nacogdoches Colored School. This building, which is still standing on Shawnee Street, educated African American children of all grades. In 1937, the school board voted to change the name to E.J. Campbell School in honor of a former principal. The building continued to educate all grade levels until 1954 at which time high school students moved into a new building across the street. The high school became known as E.J. Campbell High School and the old building became Emaline Carpenter Elementary School. From 1965 to 1969, NISD offered a "freedom of choice" plan with schools becoming fully integrated in the 1970-71 school year.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is available for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the East Texas Research Center at _EMAIL_.


text:
Although!$omp offers much performance improvement if suitably used, there are also some basic programming strategies to minimise memory access and improve performance. These become even more significant when using openmp. From the coding example msohail posted on 7th March, I would recommend changing the do loop order to sequentially access memory:
!$omp parallel do collapse(3)
Q(I,J,K)=V(I,J,K) ( update the variable )
!$OMP END PARALLEL DO
You did do this with the other nested loops, but (depending on the values of NI,NJ,NK) you might be surprised how slow your alternative loop is for accessing memory, especially if arrays Q and V are much larger that the cache size of the computer you are using.
I have not used collapse, but I wonder if NK is much larger than the number of available threads, would collapse have any benefit? There is no indication of the relative size of NI,NJ,NK to indicate if collapse is worthwile or which loop order might be most effective.


}, pages = {Article Number: 010202}, abstract = {
By means of numerical simulations, we show that assemblies of frictionless rigid pentagons in slow shear flow possess an internal friction coefficient (equalto0.183\±0.008 with our choice of moderately polydisperse grains) but no macroscopic dilatancy. In other words, despite side-side contacts tending to hinder relative particle rotations, the solidfraction under quasistatic shear coincides with that of isotropic random close packings of pentagonal particles. Properties of polygonal grains are thus similar to those of disks in that respect. We argue that continuous reshuffling of the force-bearing network leads to frequent collapsing events at the microscale, thereby causing the macroscopic dilatancy to vanish. Despite such rearrangements, the shear flow favors an anisotropic structure that is at the origin of the ability of the system to sustain shear stress.
}, issn = {_PHONE_}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.91.010202}, author = {Emilien Az{\'e}ma and Farhang Radja{\"\i} and Jean-Noel~ Roux} } _USER_ {159, title = {Interplay of curvature and temperature in the Casimir{\textendash}Polder interaction}, journal = {Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter}, volume = {27}, year = {2015}, month = {Jun-03-2015}, pages = {214018}, abstract = {
We study the Casimir-Polder interaction at finite temperatures between a polarizable small, anisotropic particle and a non-planar surface using a derivative expansion. We obtain the leading and the next-to-leading curvature corrections to the interaction for low and high temperatures. Explicit results are provided for the retarded limit in the presence of a perfectly conducting surface.
}, issn = {0953-8984}, doi = {10.1088/0953-8984/27/21/214018}, author = {Bimonte, Giuseppe and Emig, Thorsten} } _USER_ {146, title = {Investigating carbon materials nanostructure using image orientation statistics}, journal = {Carbon}, volume = {84}, year = {2015}, month = {Apr-2015}, pages = {160 - 173}, abstract = {
A new characterization method of the lattice fringe images of turbostratic carbons is proposed. This method is based on the computation of their orientation field without explicit detection of fringes. It allows meaningful insights into the material nanostructure and nanotexture at several scales, either qualitatively or quantitatively. The calculation of pairwise spatial statistics of the orientation field at short distance provides measurements of the coherence lengths along any direction, in particular along and orthogonally to the layers. These statistics also allow representing orientation coherence patterns typical of the observed nanostructure. At larger distances, the mean disorientation of the fringes is computed and information about the homogeneity of the sample is obtained. An experimental validation is carried out on various artificial images and an application to the characterization of four bulk turbostratic carbons is provided.
}, issn = {00086223}, doi = {10.1016/j.carbon.2014.11.048}, author = {J. Philippe Da-Costa and Weisbecker, P. and Baptiste Farbos and Jean-Marc Leyssale and G{\'e}rard L. Vignoles and Germain, C.} } _USER_ {184, title = {Ion-specific adsorption and electroosmosis in charged amorphous porous silica}, journal = {Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.}, volume = {17}, year = {2015}, month = {Oct-14-2015}, pages = {24683 - 24695}, abstract = {
Monovalent and divalent aqueous electrolytes confined in negatively charged porous silica are studied by means of molecular simulations including free energy calculations. Owing to the strong cation adsorption at the surface, surface charge overcompensation (overscreening) occurs which leads to an effective positive surface next to the Stern layer, followed by a negatively charged diffuse layer. A simple Poisson-Boltzmann model in which the single-ion potential of mean force is introduced is shown to capture the most prominent features of ion density profiles near an amorphous silica surface. Nevertheless, due to its mean-field nature, which fails to account for correlations, this simple model does not predict overscreening corresponding to charge inversion at the surface. Such an overscreening drastically affects the transport of confined electrolytes as it leads to flow reversal when subjected to an electric field. A simple continuum theory is shown to capture how the electro-osmotic flow is affected by overscreening and by the apparent enhanced viscosity of the confined electrolytes. Comparison with available experimental data is discussed, as well as the implications of these phenomena for \ζ-potential measurements.
}, issn = {_PHONE_}, doi = {10.1039/C5CP03818A}, author = {Hartkamp, Remco and Bertrand Siboulet and Jean-Francois Dufreche and Benoit A. Coasne} } _USER_ {311, title = {An improved technique for characterizing the fracture toughness via scratch test experiments}, journal = {Wear}, volume = {313}, year = {2014}, month = {May-15-2014}, pages = {117 - 124}, abstract = {
The scratch test consists in pushing a tool across the surface of a weaker material at a given penetration depth; and it has several applications in Science and Engineering including strength testing of rocks and ceramics, damage of polymers and metals and quality control of thin films and coatings. Despite numerous attempts in the scientific literature, the application of scratch tests to the characterization of fracture properties remains a challenge and a heavily controversial topic. Therefore, this investigation aims at articulating a rigorous theoretical and experimental framework in order to assess the fracture toughness at both the macroscopic and the microscopic length scales, using scratch tests. First, we apply optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy to investigate the physical evidence of crack initiation, crack propagation and material removal mechanisms during scratch tests. Then, we employ Finite Element simulations of crack growth during macroscopic scratch tests to assess the influence of the blade back-rake angle, the friction coefficient between the blade and the material and the wear flat of the blade on the scratching forces, thus testing the robustness of our Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics scratch model. Finally, at the microscopic scale, a meticulous scratch probe calibration procedure is described to improve the accuracy of the fracture properties determination by addressing important issues such as moisture content, specimen surface cleanliness and choice of reference material. In summary, we bring forward a robust, convenient and accurate method that is applied to polymers, ceramics and metals and can be further applied to the multi-scale study of fracture processes in complex and challenging materials such as gas shale, cement paste and cortical bone.
Fig.1. (color online) (a) Macroscopic scratch tests experiments on paraffin wax with a{\textellipsis}
Fig.2. (color online) Fracture processes in scratch tests at both the macroscopic and{\textellipsis}
Fig.3. (color online) (a) Numerical Scratch Fracture model: 0<=θ<=20{\textdegree} is the blade{\textellipsis}
Fig.4. (color online) (a) Ratio of the stress intensity factor in mode II (in-plane{\textellipsis}
Fig.5. (color online) Wear flat configuration: the interface between the blade and the{\textellipsis}
Fig.6. (color online) Example of damage to the scratch probe as a result of misuse or{\textellipsis}
}, issn = {00431648}, doi = {10.1016/j.wear.2014.02.015}, author = {Ange-Therese Akono and Franz-Josef Ulm} } _USER_ {275, title = {Initiation of immersed granular avalanches}, journal = {Physical Review E}, volume = {89}, year = {2014}, month = {May-09-2014}, pages = {Article Number: 052203}, abstract = {
By means of coupled molecular dynamics-computational fluid dynamics simulations, we analyze the initiation of avalanches in a granular bed of spherical particles immersed in a viscous fluid and inclined above its angle of repose. In quantitative agreement with experiments, we find that the bed is unstable for a packing fraction below 0.59 but is stabilized above this packing fraction by negative excess pore pressure induced by the effect of dilatancy. From detailed numerical data, we explore the time evolution of shear strain, packing fraction, excess pore pressures, and granular microstructure in this creeplike pressure redistribution regime, and we show that they scale excellently with a characteristic time extracted from a model based on the balance of granular stresses in the presence of a negative excess pressure and its interplay with dilatancy. The cumulative shear strain at failure is found to be ≃ 0.2, in close agreement with the experiments, irrespective of the initial packing fraction and inclination angle. Remarkably, the avalanche is triggered when dilatancy vanishes instantly as a result of fluctuations while the average dilatancy is still positive (expanding bed) with a packing fraction that declines with the initial packing fraction. Another nontrivial feature of this creeplike regime is that, in contrast to dry granular materials, the internal friction angle of the bed at failure is independent of dil


Our Approach
A curriculum at every stage to fit your districts unique needs.
Character development & train the teacher program based on cognitive neuroscience.
Leadership training & mentoring every week for student body, student leader groups and alternative schools.
Condensed combination of both programs with home campus follow-up.
A curriculum based on proven science.
Cognitive Neuroscience
Science of Learning
Positive Psychology
Positive Character Traits
Curriculum founded in meta-cognitive neuroscience to help establish positive cognitive learning with students
Self-efficacy development through everyday learning such as service learning with the VA.
Keeps students motivated and able to make positive changes in behavior.
Based on 14 point positive character traits and 11 positive leadership traits.
Not a one size fits all appproach
This isn't a book, it isn't curriculum you buy and HOPE someone uses it. It is a program designed around each district's unique vision and challenges.
It is precisely why we take a customized approach and work with you to tailor our program curriculum to address your desired outcomes.
© 2018 LT Character, LLC. All Rights Reserved


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MLS - Microfluidic Bubble Detector
Elveflow provides a unique microfluidic bubble detector. It can identify if liquid is present in clear tubes. It can be plugged directly onto our OB1 flow controller, or it can be used as a standalone unit with the Sensor Reader and another instrument.
The sensor is able to register the presence of fluids inside clear tubing, trigger a signal to another instrument and act accordingly – like stop, wait a certain amount of time, allow enough flow to clear the tubing, or reset the sensor.
Get Quote or Technical Information
(We will answer within 24 hours)
The microfluidic bubble detector detection is based on the measurement of the optical path and the variation of this path when the medium flowing is changing.
The sensor comes in two different housing suited to the use with 1/16″ or 1/4″ outside diameter tubes.
- Reliable non invasive technique
- Cost effective compared to camera check
- Based on true/false logic
- Large compatibility: wide range of tubing size
- Software average functions
- Use anywhere in your setup
- Prevents damage in cells with bubble bursts
- Setup automation (possibility to use if conditions)
- Bubble detection
- Liquid level sensing
- Blood processing equipment
- Patent connected medical devices
- Perform bilateral recirculation based on air detection
One particular application worth to mention is using the microfluidic liquid sensor as a bubble detector. Bubbles are a big challenge to address in microfluidics, as they can induce flow modifications or interact with the experiment and cause damage. One can monitor the apparition of bubbles (change in the working fluid) at any given point of his setup and automate the experiment accordingly like switching valves to direct the bubble in another fluidic path for instance. For further information check out the example tab on this same page.
A light beam is emitted by a LED at known power. This light beam goes through the capillary and the fluid passing through. It is then collected by an NPN silicon phototransistor. This phototransistor converts the light power into an electrical power.
When a fluid changes, the optical index and the light absorption coefficient change accordingly. It induces a change in the electrical power and allows to detect changes in the fluid.
USB flow sensor software module
Thanks to an intuitive interface, the Elveflow® Smart Interface allows the use of Elveflow® instruments from the simplest commands for beginners to the most complex manipulations for experts… read more
Control your experiments through C, Python, Matlab®, Labview® or the Elveflow® Smart Interface. The Elveflow® Smart Interface is a software application offering all the functionalities that microfluidicists need.
- Apply pressure on line 1.
- When tube 1 is empty bubbles will appear.
- The liquid sensor 1 detects the bubbles and then pressure in line 1 is turned off. Simultaneously a pressure is applied in line 2.
- Then, when the tube 2 is empty, bubbles will appear.
- The liquid sensor 2 detects the bubbles and the pressure in line 2 is turned off. Simultaneously, a pressure is applied in line 1.
- It can be continued as many times as you want.
The microfluidic liquid sensor has many applications. This is one is a smart way to perform bidirectional recirculation without using valves.
Read more about bubble generation
Our applications notes


TY - CONF TI - A simple repair mechanism can alleviate computational demands of pragmatic reasoning: simulations and complexity analysis AU - Arkel, Jacqueline van AU - Woensdregt, Marieke AU - Dingemanse, Mark AU - Blokpoel, Mark AB - How can people communicate successfully while keeping resource costs low in the face of ambiguity? We present a principled theoretical analysis comparing two strategies for disambiguation in communication: (i) pragmatic reasoning, where communicators reason about each other, and (ii) other-initiated repair, where communicators signal and resolve trouble interactively. Using agent-based simulations and computational complexity analyses, we compare the efficiency of these strategies in terms of communicative success, computation cost and interaction cost. We show that agents with a simple repair mechanism can increase efficiency, compared to pragmatic agents, by reducing their computational burden at the cost of longer interactions. We also find that efficiency is highly contingent on the mechanism, highlighting the importance of explicit formalisation and computational rigour. C3 - Proceedings of CoNLL 2020 DA - 2020/// PY - 2020 KW - key ER -


How-To Care for Your Cloth Shower Curtain
Shower curtains made of untreated cotton canvas, hemp or nylon do a great job at stopping water from spraying outside the shower. They work like a wick, channeling water downwards through the cloth into the tub. No liner needed.
A natural fiber or nylon shower curtain will last for years with proper care. Fabric is especially vulnerable to mold and mildew because it can easily retain moisture. When a curtain remains wet and never completely dries, mold/mildew sets in. However, it is possible to control mildew naturally. Here are a few tips for keeping your cloth shower curtain fresh and clean:
1. Allow curtain to dry completely between showers
 2. Wash curtain on a regular basis
 3. Remove mildew build-up and stains
 4. Rotate your curtain


Wine Intro with Lisa Shea Logo
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Tannins, Wine, and Migraine Headaches
What are tannins?
Tannins - plant polyphenols - are an integral part of creating a red wine. The red color and the sharp taste both come from the skins of the grape, which are left on during part of fermentation to seep into the wine itself. That color and taste is the result of tannins. Tannins are not only found in wine - they are found in many foods, such as cheeses and nuts, and even drinks such as tea. Wood aging also adds some tannin to red wines.
Tannins are used by a plant to prevent creatures from eating it. The bitter taste, as well as other effects it causes on the digestion system of the creature, tend to cause the plant to be safe from being eaten.
For humans, tannins are often found to be pleasureable. People who drink tea enjoy its bitter taste, and also the 'buzz' it can give to some. However, as always, various bodies react differently to chemicals. For some people, the tannins found in nature can cause too strong of a 'buzz', leading to mild or severe headaches.
If you think you might be sensitive to tannins, try drinking a strong tea. If you feel your tongue getting "leathery", that is the tannins at work, tanning your tongue. If this gives you a headache or other problem, talk with a doctor.
Cabernet Sauvignon Grapes What are tannins useful for?
Tannins are touted as excellent antioxidants. The tea industry is promoting this aspect of tea, as are all other industries whose foods involve tannin.
Polyphenols in general are found to lower total cholesterol, and also improve the ratio of LDL to HDL cholesterol. They lower blood pressure, lessen risks of cancer, stimulate the immune system, and have anti-bacterial properties.
How might tannins cause headaches?
Tannins tend to bind starches while being digested. These starches are needed by the body to produce serotonin. In some people, who are extremely sensitive to their serotonin levels, it appears the lack of serotonin can lead to a migraine. It sort of "starves" the body for this type of raw material, much as not eating for many hours might lead this person to have the same migraine.
Tannin sensitivity is also now thought to be cumulative - a person who begins life with no tannin sensitivities may yet develop one as he or she ages. People who are sensitive to tannins need to moderate their intake of tannins in all forms, and also be sure to eat a reasonable amount of food while ingesting tannins, so the binding affects of tannins do not cause undue stress.
So in general, tannins are very good for you, as long as you aren't allergic to them. Take the time to determine if you are allergic to them. If you get headaches from wine, it could be the tannins - or it could be something else. If you eliminate tannins as being the culprit, look through the other items below to determine what it could be.
Cogeners and wine - Cheap Wine Headaches
European Wines Cause Fewer Headaches?
Histamines and wine
Sulfites and wine
Wine Glossary Main Listing
T Glossary Words
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Music and Yoga are the rhythm and discipline of life, could say two universals come together on 21st June, a day that celebrates both yoga and music. Bhavan's Public School celebrated the day in their campuses with vivid activities. A much deserved and fullfledged celebration was kicked into gear with special assemblies to highlight the wholesome effects of music and yoga. The assemblies' encompassed euphonious songs, speech and yoga postures. The speeches given by the teachers stressed the importance of both music and yoga in our lives. At Matar Campus the day was marked with yoga techniques in collaboration with Swasthi Academy in which their Yoga Guru Shino Mathew assisted the students to stretch and relax in order to explore the mechanics of life. Principal Mr M.P.Philip and Headmistress Mrs ShailajaKrishnaKumar and Mrs. Asha Shiju propelled the students about the importance of disciplined life through the practice of both Yoga and Music.


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Fast Spatial Scan makes the automatic detection of anomalous spatial clusters very efficient and effective. Given a massive set of spatial or space-time count data (e.g. the number of reported disease cases in each zip code on each day), it searches through the dataset to find spatial regions with higher than expected counts. This process has two steps: first it infers the expected count for each spatial location using time series analysis, then it uses an expectation-based spatial scan statistic approach to find spatial regions where the counts are significantly higher than expected. Randomization testing is performed to compute the statistical significance of each discovered cluster, enabling us to distinguish true clusters from those due to chance.
Spatial scan statistics are a powerful statistical test for detection of significant spatial clusters. Unlike many other cluster detection methods, they can be used both to determine whether any statistically significant clusters exist and to precisely pinpoint the size and location of clusters. Because the statistic scans over a huge number of regions of variable shape and size (and each region can contain between one and many locations), it has high power to detect clusters regardless of whether they affect a small or large spatial area. Our statistical test correctly adjusts for the multiplicity of tests performed, enabling us to ensure a low false positive rate while maintaining high power to detect any significant clusters that do occur.
Our new implementation of spatial scan statistics has several advantages over standard spatial scan approaches (e.g. SaTScan). First, we use novel spatial statistical methods to adjust for spatial and temporal variation in the baseline counts, allowing us to account correctly for day of week, seasonality, and other trends. This improves detection power, allowing more timely detection of emerging clusters with fewer false positives. Second, we have developed a new computational method, the "fast spatial scan." This fast multi-resolution search approach allows us to compute the spatial scan hundreds to thousands of times faster than the standard approach. Thus we can obtain results in minutes rather than hours or days, even for massive datasets containing millions of records.
Speed/Performance Results (click thumbnail below to view big picture):
Spatial Scan can find anomalous spatial clusters in spatial or space-time data sets. In particular, given a large set of spatial locations (e.g. zip codes), where each location has an associated time series of counts, it can detect any spatial regions where the most recent counts are significantly higher than expected, given the historical baseline data. For example, if we are given the number of emergency department visits in each zip code on each day, it can find areas where the recent number of cases is abnormally high, which may be indicative of an emerging outbreak of disease.
In May 2000, an outbreak of gastroenteritis in Walkerton, Ontario resulted from contamination of the water supply with E. coli bacteria. Over 2000 individuals were affected by severe gastrointestinal symptoms, including 65 hospitalizations and 6 deaths. We used the fast spatial scan software to perform a retrospective analysis of emergency department visits in Walkerton and the surrounding Grey-Bruce region of Ontario between 1999 and 2001. At a rate of only two false positives per year, the software was able to detect the outbreak on May 19, 2000, two days before the first public health response and one day before the other surveillance methods tested.
We are currently using the fast spatial scan tool to perform daily monitoring of over-the-counter medication sales from the National Retail Data Monitor (NRDM). Our system receives daily counts of the number of units sold in 18 different product categories (cough remedies, nasal decongestants, etc.) from over 20,000 retail stores and pharmacies nationwide. It then uses our new spatial cluster detection methods to find areas where the sales are significantly higher than expected, and makes these results available to state and local public health officials via a web-based graphical interface.
Interfaces of National Retail Data Monitor(click thumbnail below to view big picture),see also 2005 KDD paper for details.
Methods for detecting spatial and spatio-temporal
clusters. In M. Wagner, A. Moore, and R. Aryel, eds., Handbook of
Efficient scan statistic computations. In A. Lawson and K. Kleinman, eds., Spatial and Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health, 2005
A Bayesian spatial scan statistic (NIPS 2005)
A Bayesian scan statistic for spatial cluster detection. (National Syndromic Surveillance Conference 2005)
Detection of emerging space-time clusters (KDD 2005)
Anomalous spatial cluster detection (KDD 2005)
Detecting anomalous patterns in pharmacy retail data (KDD 2005)
Detecting significant multidimensional spatial clusters (NIPS 2004)
Rapid detection of significant spatial clusters (KDD 2004)