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Interconnectivity: Hate Crimes against Jews and Muslims
This commentary focuses on hate crimes motivated by religion and argues that American Jews and Muslims as the primary targets of religious hatred must cooperate to fight the hate menace. The commentary also argues that the provocateurs of religious hatred and their corporate sponsors should be identified, exposed, and held responsible under both civil and criminal laws.
Since 2001, the animus against American Jews and Muslims has remained steady. After the 9/11 attacks, the hate crimes against American Muslims (554 victims) peaked out. In the same year, however, American Jews also faced the most incidents of hate crimes (1196 victims). In 2015 & 2016, the hate crimes against American Muslims have roughly doubled as compared to those in immediately preceding years; but the hate crimes against Jews have also ascended. As the chart demonstrates, regardless of yearly fluctuations, American Jews and Muslims are the principal victims of hate crimes motivated by religious bias.
Each year, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program operated under the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collects data across the United States involving various offenses, including hate crimes. In 2016, for example, a total of 6, 121 hate crimes were reported, involving more than 7,500 victims. Victims include individuals and businesses.
Hate crimes are ordinary crimes, including murder, rape, assault, and property damage, motivated by the offenders' biases. Bias-motivation rather than the type of offense determines the genealogy of hate crimes. Various biases motivate hate crimes, including those of race/ethnicity/ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and disability.
Each year race-motivated hate crimes top the list. And each year, religion-motivated hate crimes rank the second highest. In 2016, for example, 58.5 percent of hate crimes are motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry while 21.3 percent of hate crimes are motivated by religion. While African Americans are the leading targets of racial hate crimes, Jews and Muslims are the primary targets of religious hate crimes.
American Jews and Muslims
A common misperception exists among some social and political circles that American Jews and Muslims are at odds with each other. Surely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict divides Jews and Muslims. Yet in the United States, if hate statistics are any indication, Jews and Muslims as the foremost targets of religiously-motivated hatred occupy the same boat. Recognizing their common victimhood, Jewish and Muslim organizations need to pool their resources to fight religious hatred against all groups.
The UCR statistics show that over the past sixteen years hate crimes against American Jews constitute more than 50% of the religiously-motivated hate crimes. Muslims are next, sharing about 25% of the hate crimes. These percentages have for the most part remained steady. When religiously-motivated hate crimes rise, as they did the most in 2001, both Jews and Muslims suffer proportionately. When religiously-motivated hate crimes dwindle, as they did the most in 2014, both Jews and Muslims benefit proportionately. Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are interdependent hatreds.
Unfortunately, some prominent provocateurs of Islamophobia are Jews, such as David Horowitz, Pamela Geller, David Yerushalmi, and Shalom Lewis. Some Jewish provocateurs paint Islam as an inherently violent religion; some portray American Muslims as a threat to national security; some lead campaigns for drawing the Prophet Muhammad's cartoons; and some advocate murdering the families of "terrorists." Such incitements poison the minds of ordinary Americans who lack the first-hand contact with Muslims.
It is unclear why Jewish provocateurs breed hatred against Muslims. Presumably, they do know that American Jews are and have been the prime victims of religiously-motivated hatred. Maybe, they foolishly believe that by propagandizing the perils of Islam they can divert the hatred against Jews toward Muslims. Maybe, they don't care about hate crimes against Jews as long as Muslims are also despised. Maybe, they are unaware of the spill-over effect of hatred.
Spill-Over Effect
The UCR statistics demonstrate that when hatred against any religious group is incited, almost all religious groups, including atheists, experience more hate crimes. The spill-over effect is particularly pernicious with respect to historically-targeted religious minorities, such as Mormons and Jews. Even American Catholics, the third most hated religious group, suffer additional hate crimes when Jews and Muslims are targeted.
The intertwining of hate crimes among various religious groups reveals that no religious group is immune when a wave of hatred is released against a specific religion. In America, Jews and Muslims are closely tied as victims of religious hatred, even though anti-Semitism is condemned much more forcefully than Islamophobia. The fact remains that despite social taboos on anti-Semitism, an increase in hate crimes against American Muslims has a corresponding uptick effect on hate crimes against Jews and other religious groups.
Provocateurs and Perpetrators
In a previous commentary, I distinguished between provocateurs and perpetrators of religiously-motivated hatred. A provocateur produces hatred against an identified religious group by speech, oral or written, but rarely commits a hate crime. By contrast, perpetrators commit hate crimes, such as murder, rape, physical assault, or property damage, motivated by bias against the religious identity of victims.
Laws are in place to punish the perpetrators of hate crimes. However, the provocateurs of religious hatred seek refuge under the First Amendment.
I maintain that the provocateurs of hatred are much more dangerous than the perpetrators of hate crimes. The provocateurs furnish intellectual and emotional resources to cultivate and express hatred. By maligning Islam, for example, the provocateurs lay the foundation for violence. Religious hatred, if unleashed against any religious group, observes no denominational boundaries. Unwittingly, the provocateurs generate hatred not only against Muslims but also against Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Sikhs, and Hindus.
A universal consensus is building that free speech is the heart of a thriving democracy. Free speech is indispensable for transparency, creativity, and accountability. Men and women of enormous intellect and integrity have been exiled, tortured, and murdered for saying innocuous things such as "that the earth moves or that it is not flat." The depressing history of intellectual and political oppression cautions us not to dilute free speech protections.
Yet, it is the business of law to make distinctions. Without censoring free speech, the law has the tools to hold the provocateurs of hatred accountable. The whole world, except the United States, punishes the provocateurs of hate speech.
Sean Hannity, Frank Gaffney, David Horowitz, David Yerushalmi, Shalom Lewis, Robert Spencer, Ann Coulter, Pamela Geller, Bill Maher, to name a few, and the corporate media that sponsor them to express religious hatred can be held liable under state and federal laws. The victims of religious hatred should speak to their lawyers to explore the possibility of whether any of these provocateurs and their corporate sponsors can be held responsible for the religiously-motivated provocations that nurture criminal violence.
The legal system cannot sit idly by to passively ponder over the statistics of hate crimes that the UCR generates each year. The perpetrators of hate crimes, if apprehended, are lawfully prosecuted. But the provocateurs that disgorge hatred in their TV shows, speeches, or writings take cover under the First Amendment. The lawyers may begin to experiment with various available legal doctrines, including aiding and abetting, accomplice liability, vicarious liability, contributory liability, principal liability, and corporate negligence to reach the provocateurs of hatred.
***The hate crimes victims' chart is prepared using the data available at https://ucr.fbi.gov/
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On Tuesday 12th June the Science Department welcomed a group of year 5 students from our local primary schools. They took part in a 'Stretch and Challenge day' which involved three sessions with different science teachers focussing on aspects of physics, biology and chemistry.
The Y5s explored the physics of music with Mr Niblett, looked inside their own cells with Mr Rothwell and discovered exothermic and endothermic reactions with Miss Evans. A selection of our own Y8 students did a great job supporting and helping the Y5 pupils.
Feedback from the students was extremely positive with lots of enjoyment and practical science going on. The Y5s also took a lot of scientific knowledge and understanding away with them, not to mention some fantastic goodie bags!


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\section{Introduction}

Entanglement is one of the salient features of quantum physics, from the point of view of both foundations \cite{Einstein:1935, bell:87} and emerging quantum technologies \cite{Nielsen:2001, Horodecki:2009}. The empirical evidence of this intriguing phenomenon has been tested by a violation of Bell-type inequalities in nowadays classical experiments \cite{Freedman:1972, Aspect:81}.

In contrast, the task of designing experimental settings able to achieve also \emph{quantitative} estimations of entanglement is a current challenge, even with the most modern quantum experimental devices available today. The fundamental reason may be related to the fact that entanglement monotones are in general non-linear functions on the convex body of quantum states \cite{Vidal:2000}, rather than ordinary expectation values of `quantum observables' associated with Hermitian operators in a Hilbert space.
A possible approach to this problem could be provided, on the one hand, by a tomographic reconstruction of the quantum state involving a series of measurements associated with a complete set of observables (see, e.g., \cite{Ibort:2009} for a review on quantum tomography). On the other hand, while a quantum state is supposed to contain the complete information about a physical system, a sufficient amount of information about entanglement may be extracted by means of an \emph{incomplete} set of observables. This has been illustrated for the concurrence \cite{Wootters:1997id, Coffman:1999jd}, which may be experimentally recovered from four --- rather than fifteen --- parameters associated with the Bloch representation of a bipartite qubit density matrix \cite{Horodecki:2003}. Moreover, an optimal experimental setting for quantifying pure state entanglement --- based on the purity --- which requires the reconstruction of only three parameters associated with local quantum observables, has been proposed \cite{Sancho:2000}.

A general framework for addressing the problem of optimization of experiments is given by suitable \emph{quantum state estimation methods} \cite{Derka:1998, Paris:2004, Paris:2009} originating in the seminal work of Helstrom \cite{Helstrom:1969}, which dates back to the 1960s.

In contrast, the specialization of quantum estimation methods to entanglement is a relatively young field of research (see \cite{Genoni:2008} and references therein). Recent works have focused on the optimization of quantum information measures, like the Kullback mutual information \cite{Acin:2000}, the fidelity \cite{Bagan:2005} and the quantum Fisher information \cite{Genoni:2008}. The latter case has led to concrete experimental realizations \cite{Brida:2010, Brida:2011}.

In particular, the approach based on Fisher information identifies the optimal set of quantum observables by searching for the optimal estimator of parameters associated with a family of quantum states. This identification is possible whenever the quantum Fisher information in the \emph{quantum Cram\`er-Rao inequality} reduces to its classical counterpart \cite{Paris:2009}. Interestingly, in the simplest non-trivial case of a 1-parameter family of bipartite pure qubit states in the Schmidt decomposition, several standard entanglement measure fail to provide an efficient estimation --- in particular --- for \emph{weakly} entangled states \cite{Genoni:2008}.

In this paper, we propose a more efficient estimation in the regime of weak entanglement by taking into account a family of alternative entanglement monotones. Our approach is based on the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics \cite{Strocchi:1956, Cantoni:1975, Cantoni:1977a,Cantoni:1977b,Cantoni:1980,Cantoni:1985,Cirelli:1983,Cirelli:1984, Abbati:1984, Ashtekar:1997ud, Brody:2001, Clemente:2008, Ercolessi:2010}. Indeed, the geometric point of view seems to be quite natural when taking into account the geometric origin of the quantum Fisher information, as provided by the Bures metric and the Fubini-Study metric for mixed and pure states respectively \cite{Uhlmann:1992, Bengtsson:2006, Gibilisco:2007, Facchi:2010}. As a matter of fact, recent developments of the geometric approach concerning finite-level \emph{bipartite} quantum systems \cite{Aniello:09,Volkert:2010iop,Volkert:2010,Aniello:10, Aniello:2011} have produced a tensorial characterization of entanglement by means of the quantum Fisher information, in terms of the pullback of the Fubini-Study metric on submanifolds on orbits induced by the local unitary symmetry group. In particular, it has provided a new class of entanglement monotones candidates related to generalized Poincar\'e invariants \cite{Aniello:10} --- a notion having its origin in geometric methods used in classical mechanics \cite{Arnold:76}. Complementary to these developments, the estimation of pure state entanglement of two qubits \cite{Genoni:2008} can be seen to be provided by the pullback of the Fubini-Study metric on a submanifold that is \emph{not} invariant under local unitary transformations. More specifically, it is a curve intersecting each local unitary orbit at exactly one point. Hence, a geometric approach seems to be suitable to gain a more complete understanding about entanglement monotones and their estimation.

The paper is organized as follows. In section \ref{2} we review the issue of entanglement estimation of two entangled qubits, as recently discussed in \cite{Genoni:2008}. Next, in section \ref{3}, we focus on the corresponding estimation of the purity. Alternative entanglement and purity monotones are introduced in section \ref{4}, using the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics.
After discussing, in section \ref{5}, the estimation of the resulting entanglement and purity measures, a few conclusions are drawn in section \ref{6}.

\section{Local entanglement estimation of two qubits\label{2}}

Consider a 1-parameter family of entangled state vectors
\begin{equation} \ket{\psi_\lambda} =\sqrt{\lambda}\ket{00}+\sqrt{1-\lambda}\ket{11}, \quad \lambda\in [0,1]\label{ent family} \end{equation}
in a Schmidt decomposition associated with a bipartite quantum system $\mathcal{H} \cong\mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2$ of two pure qubits. We may ask: What is the number $M_{\delta}(\epsilon)$ of measurements required for achieving an optimal estimation of a given entanglement measure
\begin{equation} \epsilon: [0,1] \rightarrow [0,1], \quad \lambda\mapsto \epsilon(\lambda) , \label{epsilon}\end{equation}
in a $99,9\%$ confidence interval with fixed relative error $\delta$?
The answer to this question has been given recently in \cite{Genoni:2008}, in the framework of quantum estimation theory \cite{Paris:2009}, by the formula
\begin{equation} M_{\delta}(\epsilon)= \frac{ \tilde{H}^{-1}(\epsilon)}{\epsilon^2 \delta},\label{Measurements} \end{equation}
where
\begin{equation} \tilde{H}(\epsilon):= H(\lambda(\epsilon)) (\partial_{\epsilon}\lambda(\epsilon))^2\label{trafo}\end{equation}
is related to a parameter transformation of the \emph{quantum Fisher information}
\begin{equation} H(\lambda):= \rho_{\lambda}(L_{\lambda}^2)\end{equation}
with $L_{\lambda}\in$ End$(\mathcal{H})$ an operator solving the equation \begin{equation} \partial_{\lambda}\rho_{\lambda}=[ L_{\lambda},\rho_{\lambda}]_+\end{equation} for a given 1-parameter family of quantum states $\rho_{\lambda}\in D(\mathcal{H})$. For  the special case of pure states, defined by the normalized rank-1 projectors
\begin{equation} \rho_{\lambda}\equiv \ket{\psi_\lambda}\bra{\psi_\lambda},\end{equation}
it is solved by the operator
\begin{equation} L_{\lambda}\equiv  2\partial_{\lambda}\ket{\psi_\lambda}\bra{\psi_\lambda}\end{equation}
yielding the quantum Fisher information
\begin{equation}  H(\lambda)=4\big(\braket{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}+\braket{\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}^2\big).\label{H for pure}\end{equation}
For the entangled state vectors (\ref{ent family}) one finds
\begin{equation} H(\lambda)=\frac{1}{\lambda(1-\lambda)}.\end{equation}
Thus the entanglement estimation becomes inefficient for weakly entangled states due to
\begin{equation} \lim_{\epsilon\rightarrow 0} M_{\delta}(\epsilon)\rightarrow \infty,\end{equation}
for the (normalized) linear entropy
\begin{equation} \epsilon(\lambda):=2(1-\mathrm{Tr}((\rho^{A}_{\lambda})^2)=4\lambda(1-\lambda)\end{equation}
and the negativity entanglement measures $\epsilon_N(\lambda):=\sqrt{\epsilon(\lambda)}$ \cite{Genoni:2008}. One may observe in this regard that the linear entropy is directly related to the quantum Fisher information by
\begin{equation} \epsilon(\lambda)=\big(\braket{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}+\braket{\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}^2\big)^{-1}.\end{equation}
Actually, the quantum Fisher Information (\ref{H for pure}) for pure states may be linked to the the pullback of the Fubini-Study metric
\begin{equation} \braket{d\psi}{d\psi}-\braket{d\psi}{\psi}\braket{\psi}{d\psi}\end{equation}
on the 1-parameter family of pure quantum states (see also \cite{Facchi:2010}) according to
\begin{eqnarray}
&\braket{d\psi_\lambda}{d\psi_\lambda}-\braket{d\psi_\lambda}{\psi_\lambda}\braket{\psi_\lambda}{d\psi_\lambda}\label{-}\\& =
\braket{d\psi_\lambda}{d\psi_\lambda}+\braket{\psi_\lambda}{d\psi_\lambda}^2\label{+}\\& =\braket{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}d\lambda d\lambda+\braket{\psi_\lambda}{\partial_{\lambda}\psi_\lambda}^2 d\lambda d\lambda,\end{eqnarray}
where we used as a consequence of the normalization $d\braket{\psi_\lambda}{\psi_\lambda}=0$, i.e.
\begin{equation} \braket{d\psi_\lambda}{\psi_\lambda}=-\braket{\psi_\lambda}{d\psi_\lambda}.\end{equation}
in the transition from (\ref{-}) to (\ref{+}).
In section \ref{4} we will see how the pull-back on the orbits of the symmetry group of entanglement gives rise to a complementary class of monotonic functions

\section{Local purity estimation of two qubits\label{3}}

The purity
\begin{equation} \mathrm{Tr}((\rho^{A}_{\lambda})^2)\label{pm} \end{equation}
is complementary to the linear entropy $1-\mathrm{Tr}((\rho^{A}_{\lambda})^2)$. Therefore it becomes natural to ask whether it implies an efficient estimation for weakly entangled states as follows.

The purity measure (\ref{pm}) for the reduced density state \begin{equation} \rho^{A}_{\lambda}=\left(
\begin{array}{ll}
 \lambda  & 0 \\
 0 & 1-\lambda
\end{array}
\right)\end{equation} associated with the family of entangled state vectors (\ref{ent family}) reads
\begin{equation} \epsilon(\lambda):=\mathrm{Tr}((\rho^{A}_{\lambda})^2)= 1-2\lambda+2\lambda^2= \lambda^2+(1-\lambda)^2.\label{purity}\end{equation}
To compute the induced parameter transformation on the quantum Fisher information (\ref{trafo}), we need to identify the inverse function solutions of the purity
\begin{equation} \lambda(\epsilon):= \frac{1}{2} \left(1\pm\sqrt{2 \epsilon -1}\right).\end{equation}
Both solutions yield according to (\ref{trafo}) the parameter-transformed quantum Fisher information
\begin{equation} \tilde{H}(\epsilon)=-\frac{1}{4 \epsilon ^2-6 \epsilon +2}.\end{equation}
However, this implies a \emph{negative} number of measurements
\begin{equation} M_{\delta\equiv 1}(\epsilon)=-4+\frac{6}{\epsilon }-\frac{2}{\epsilon ^2}\label{e of p}\end{equation}
within the estimation (\ref{Measurements}), appearing beyond a physical interpretation. Hence, the purity  does not solve the problem of estimating weakly entangled qubits in an efficient way.
An alternative approach may be provided as follows.

\section{Tensorial characterization of entanglement\label{4}}

According to the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics \cite{Strocchi:1956, Cantoni:1975, Cantoni:1977a,Cantoni:1977b,Cantoni:1980,Cantoni:1985,Cirelli:1983,Cirelli:1984, Abbati:1984, Ashtekar:1997ud, Brody:2001, Clemente:2008, Ercolessi:2010}, one may identify a degenerate covariant tensor field
\begin{equation} \kappa_{\mathcal{H}_0}:= \frac{d\bar{z}^{j}\otimes dz^{j}}{\sum_j |z^{j}|^2}-\frac{z^{j}d\bar{z}^{j}\otimes \bar{z}^{k}dz^{k}}{(\sum_j |z^{j}|^2)^2}\label{ProjectiveHT}\end{equation}
on a finite-dimensional punctured Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}_0\cong \mathbb{C}^{n+1}-\{0\}$ which is the pull-back of the Fubini study metric induced by the projection on the associated projective space $\mathbb{C} P^{n}$ (if not differently stated, we shall from now on use the Einstein convention by summing over same indices).
The structure (\ref{ProjectiveHT}) decomposes into a real symmetric and an imaginary anti-symmetric part
\begin{equation} \kappa_{\mathcal{H}_0}:=\eta_{\mathcal{H}_0}+i\omega_{\mathcal{H}_0},\label{deco}\end{equation} relating to a Riemannian and a symplectic structures
on the associated complex projective space respectively.

\subsection{The Pullback on the symmetry group of entanglement}

The pull-back of the Fubini-Study metric on the orbits of the local unitary Lie group
$SU(n)\times SU(n)$
associated with reducible representations on
 $\mathcal{H}\cong \mathbb{C}^n\otimes \mathbb{C}^n$ has been recently discussed in the decomposition (\ref{deco}) for the characterization of entanglement \cite{Aniello:09,Volkert:2010iop,Volkert:2010,Aniello:10, Aniello:2011}.
We will apply this approach for $n=2$ by using the family of state vectors  (\ref{ent family}) as fiducial vectors for two qubits yielding a $\lambda$-parametrized family of degenerate pullback tensor fields $$\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda):= \eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)+i \omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)\label{T3}$$
on the Lie group $SU(2)\times SU(2)$. The pullback depends on the choice of a representation of the Lie algebra generators $\{iX_j\}_{j\in \{1,2,..,6\}}$ of $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ on the composite Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}\cong \mathbb{C}^n\otimes \mathbb{C}^n$. By using the product representation \begin{equation}\{R(X_j)\}_{j\in \{1,2,..,6\}}:=\{\sigma_k\otimes \sigma_0,\sigma_0\otimes \sigma_k\}_{k\in \{1,2,3\}}\end{equation} based on the standard Pauli matrices $\{\sigma_{k}\}_{k\in \{1,2,3\}}$ tensored by the $2\times 2$ identity matrix $\sigma_0$, we shall encounter a decomposition
\begin{equation} \kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda) = \kappa_{jk}(\lambda) \theta^j\otimes \theta^k\label{T1}\end{equation}
into fiducial quantum state dependent (and therefore $\lambda$-dependent) tensor coefficients
\begin{equation} \kappa_{jk}(\lambda)= \rho_{\lambda}(R(X_j)R(X_k))-\rho_{\lambda}(R(X_j))\rho_{\lambda}(R(X_k))\label{T2}\end{equation} and a basis of invariant 1-forms $\{\theta^j\otimes \theta^k\}_{j, k\in \{1,2,3\}}$
on $SU(2)\times SU(2)$. The additional decomposition (\ref{T3}) into a real symmetric and imaginary anti-symmetric part yields following geometric interpretation: The symmetric part $\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)$ with the tensor coefficients
\begin{equation} \rho_{\lambda}([R(X_j),R(X_k)]_+)-\rho_{\lambda}(R(X_j))\rho_{\lambda}(R(X_k)),\end{equation} encounters as pullback  induced by the projection \begin{equation} SU(2)\times SU(2) \rightarrow SU(2)\times SU(2)/\mathcal{G}_{0,\lambda}\end{equation}
on the orbits associated with the isotropy group
\begin{equation}  \mathcal{G}_{0,\lambda}:=\{g\in SU(2)\times SU(2)| U(g)\rho_{\lambda}U(g)^{\dagger}=\rho_{\lambda}\}\end{equation} the complete information of a family of non-degenerate pullback Riemannian tensor fields on \emph{all} orbits  (These orbits are classified according to their dimensions 3, 4 and 5 in dependence of maximal entangled ($\lambda=1/2$), separable ($\lambda\in \{0,1\}$) and intermediate  ($\lambda\in (0,1)$) entangled fiducial states $\rho_{\lambda}$ respectively \cite{Kus:2001, Kus:2002}).

The anti-symmetric part
\begin{equation}\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)=\rho_{\lambda}([R(X_j),R(X_k)]_-)\theta^j\wedge \theta^k\end{equation}  splits --- in  contrast to the symmetric part --- into two families of  tensor fields
\begin{equation}\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)= \omega^A_{SU(2)}(\lambda)\oplus \omega^B_{SU(2)}(\lambda).\end{equation}
Each family is defined on a corresponding $SU(2)$-subgroup of $SU(2)\times SU(2)$  by the reduced density state dependent anti-symmetric structures
\begin{eqnarray}
\omega^A_{SU(2)}(\lambda)  =&\,\rho_{\lambda}([\sigma_j,\sigma_k]_-\otimes \sigma_0)\theta^j\wedge \theta^k\\ =&\rho^A_{\lambda}([\sigma_j,\sigma_k]_-)\theta^j\wedge \theta^k, \end{eqnarray}
and $\omega^B_{SU(2)}(\lambda)=\rho^B_{\lambda}([\sigma_j,\sigma_k]_-)\theta^j\wedge \theta^k$ respectively.
They become maximal degenerate if and only if the fiducial state is maximal entangled $(\lambda=1/2)$ \cite{Volkert:2010, Aniello:10}.

\subsection{Monotones from inner products on tensor fields}

All geometric non-degenerate structures described in the previous subsection --- i.e.\,Riemannian tensor fields on orbits of entangled pure states and symplectic tensor fields on submanifolds of reduced density states ---  are completely specified by the coefficients (\ref{T2}) of the $\lambda$-parametrized families of degenerate Hermitian tensor fields
\begin{equation} \kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda) = \kappa_{jk}(\lambda) \theta^j\otimes \theta^k\end{equation}
on $SU(2)\times SU(2)$. These tensor fields are by construction invariant under the symmetry group of entanglement $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ and may therefore naturally mapped to an entanglement monotonic function of $\lambda\in [0,1]$  by considering an Hermitian inner product \begin{eqnarray}\braket{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda) }{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda) } := \bar{\kappa}_{jk}(\lambda) \kappa_{rl} (\lambda)\braket{\theta^j\otimes \theta^k}{\theta^r\otimes \theta^l} \end{eqnarray}
on the pullback tensor field $\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}(\lambda)$ as recently proposed in \cite{Aniello:10}. To keep the formulas as readable as possible, we shall omit in the following the dependency on the parameter $\lambda$ associated the fiducial state $\rho_{\lambda}$ defined in (\ref{ent family}). With \begin{equation} \braket{\theta^j\otimes \theta^k}{\theta^r\otimes \theta^l}=\braket{\theta^j}{\theta^r}\braket{\theta^k}{ \theta^l}=\delta^{jr}\delta^{kl}\end{equation} one finds then
\begin{equation} \braket{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}
 \bar{\kappa}_{jk} \kappa_{jk}.\label{Trace T2 2}\end{equation}

\subsubsection{Inner products on ordinary tensor products}

In the following we may consider a class of  $SU(2)\times SU(2)$-invariant functions arising from higher order tensor fields
\begin{equation} \kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}:= \bigotimes_{k=1}^n \kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}\end{equation}
by virtue of their corresponding inner product
\begin{eqnarray} &\braket{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}= &\braket{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}{\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}^n.\label{power on traces}\end{eqnarray}
This can be be proved as follows. The inner product $\braket{T}{T}$ on a general covariant tensor \begin{equation}  T := T_{j_1 j_2...j_m}\theta^{j_1}\otimes \theta^{j_2}...\otimes \theta^{j_m}\label{order m tensor}\end{equation}
of order $m$ reads
$$  \bar T_{j_1..j_m} T_{k_1..k_m}\braket{\theta^{j_1}\otimes..\otimes \theta^{j_m}}{\theta^{k_1}\otimes ..\otimes \theta^{k_m}}$$
\begin{equation}  =\bar T_{j_1..j_m} T_{k_1..k_m}\delta_{j_1 k_1}...\delta_{j_m k_m}=\bar T_{j_1..j_m}T_{j_1..j_m}.\label{ip m}\end{equation}
Now, we consider a tensor of even order $m=2n$ constructed from the n-th tensor product of order two tensors
$$  T  \equiv (T_{j_1 j_2}\theta^{j_1}\otimes \theta^{j_2})^{\otimes n}$$ $$= T_{j_1 j_2}T_{j_3 j_4}..T_{j_{m-1} j_m}\theta^{j_1}\otimes \theta^{j_2}\otimes \theta^{j_3}\otimes \theta^{j_4}...\theta^{j_{m-1}}\otimes \theta^{j_m}$$
\begin{equation} = \prod_{r=1}^{n}  T_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}} \bigotimes_{r=1}^{n}  \theta^{j_{2r-1}}\otimes \theta^{j_{2r}}.\end{equation}
The tensor coefficients in (\ref{order m tensor}) factorize in this special case (in each term of the sum over same indices) into tensor coefficients of order two
\begin{equation}  T_{j_1 j_2...j_m}= \prod_{r=1}^{n}  T_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}.\end{equation}
Hence, with the inner product (\ref{ip m}) one concludes
$$ \braket{T}{T}=\bar T_{j_1..j_m}T_{j_1..j_m} =  \prod_{r=1}^{n}  \bar{T}_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}\prod_{r=1}^{n}  T_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}$$\begin{equation} =\prod_{r=1}^{n}  \bar{T}_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}T_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}} =\prod_{r=1}^{n}  \braket{T}{T} = \braket{T}{T}^n. \end{equation}
This proofs the inner product relation (\ref{power on traces}).
As a consequence, we may apply the inner product on the tensor product of the symmetric part and the tensor product of the anti-symmetric part separately and find
\begin{equation}\braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}=\braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}^n,\label{sym power on traces}\end{equation}
\begin{equation} \braket{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}=\braket{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}}^n.\label{a sym power on traces}\end{equation}
The inner products (\ref{sym power on traces}) and (\ref{a sym power on traces}) applied here to the higher order tensor products of pullback tensor fields associated with the family of Schmidt decomposed fiducial states (\ref{ent family}) establish the main result of the present section: We  find \emph{entanglement monotones} for the inner product on the tensor products of the symmetric part and \emph{purity monotones} for the inner product on the tensor products of the anti-symmetric part as illustrated within an appropriate normalization in figure \ref{fig G and O} for the first five tensor power orders.
\begin{figure}[htp]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.80]{G.pdf}}
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=1.2]{O.pdf}}
\vspace*{8pt}
\caption{A class of entanglement and purity monotones constructed from $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ invariant tensor fields $\eta^{\otimes n}_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}$ and $\omega^{\otimes n}_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}$. The monotones arise here by considering an inner product yielding the invariant functions (\ref{monotone 1}) and (\ref{monotone 2}) respectively. The black curve corresponds in each case to $n=1$ and the following colored curves corresponds to higher order tensor field inner products with $n\in \{2,3,4,5\}$. The entanglement monotones admit in contrast to the purity monotones a normalization in dependence of the tensor order $n$. \label{fig G and O}}
\end{figure}
As normalization we use in this regard the factors
\begin{equation} \frac{1}{(2\mbox{Dim}(SU(2)\times SU(2))^n}  = \frac{1}{12^n} ,\end{equation}
for the inner products (\ref{sym power on traces}) and the factors
\begin{equation} \frac{1}{\mbox{Dim}(S^2\times S^2)^n}=\frac{1}{4^n}.\end{equation}
for the inner products (\ref{a sym power on traces}).
The resulting functions are higher order polynomials on the Schmidt coefficient $\lambda$
\begin{equation} \frac{1}{12^n} \braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}^n= \left(\frac{16 \lambda ^4}{3}-\frac{32 \lambda ^3}{3}+4 \lambda
   ^2+\frac{4 \lambda }{3}+\frac{1}{3}\right)^n\label{monotone 1}\end{equation}
\begin{equation} \frac{1}{4^n}\braket{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}^n= \left(4 \lambda ^2-4 \lambda +1\right)^n.\label{monotone 2}\end{equation}
establishing a \emph{quantitative} justification for the identification between \emph{maximal entangled states} and \emph{Lagrangian entangled} states $(\lambda=1/2)$ on the value `1' for the entanglement monotones and the value `0' for the purity monotones respectively.
The purity monotone is normalized for separable states ($\lambda\in\{0,1\}$) to `$1$'. In contrast, we find in the entanglement monotone a normalization
\begin{equation} \frac{1}{12^n} \braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\rho_{\lambda}}}^n|_{\lambda\in\{0,1\}}=\frac{1}{3^n},\end{equation}
being \emph{dependent on the tensor field order} $n$. We may therefore recover for $n \rightarrow \infty$  the `standard normalization' for separable states. This indicates that the inner products on $n$-order tensor products of the symmetric tensor field provide an \emph{approximation} to a `bona fide' entanglement measure with increasing $n$. This approximation will provide an advantage in contrast to standard entanglement measures when testing their quantum estimation efficiency as shown later on in section \ref{5}.

\subsubsection{Inner products on symmetric tensor products}

So far we considered entanglement-invariants arising from inner products on ordinary tensor products on pullback tensor fields associated with $SU(2)\times SU(2)$-orbits.  By considering now \emph{symmetrized} tensor products, we may find a distinguished class of invariants. Such an approach may be seen complementarily related to the notion of Poincar\'e invariants which are constructed from higher order anti-symmetric structures $\omega^{\wedge n}:=\omega \wedge \omega...\wedge \omega $ \cite{Arnold:76}. Starting from the symmetric part of the pullback tensor field
$\kappa = \eta + i \omega$
we define here
\begin{equation} \eta^{\vee  n}:=\eta \vee  \eta...\vee\eta  \end{equation}
and compute
$$ \braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\vee  n}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\vee  n}}=$$
$$\prod_{r=1}^{n}  \eta_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}  \eta_{k_{2r-1} k_{2r}}
\braket{ \bigvee_{r=1}^{n}\theta^{j_{2r-1}}\vee\theta^{ j_{2r}}}{\bigvee_{r=1}^{n}\theta^{k_{2r-1}}\vee\theta^{ k_{2r}}} $$
The inner product on the $2n$-th symmetric product of 1-forms $\theta^{k_i}$ involves the \emph{permanent} of a matrix with Kronecker deltas $\delta^{j_{r}k_{r}}$ according to
\begin{equation} \braket{ \bigvee_{r=1}^{2n}\theta^{j_{r}}}{\bigvee_{r=1}^{2n}\theta^{k_{r}}} = \frac{1}{2n!} \mbox{per}\big(\braket{\theta^{j_{r}}}{\theta^{k_{r}}}\big).\end{equation}
The notion of the \emph{permanent} of a matrix may be familiar from the inner product as used for `bosons' (see e.g.\cite{Grabowski:2011}). Indeed, we shall underline the distinguished physical interpretation in our setting: We are dealing with \emph{distinguishable} particles associated with an ordinary tensor product Hilbert space together with symmetrized `classical' higher order tensor fields as \emph{additional} structure on a Lie group manifold.

The expression of the inner product
$$ \braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\vee  n}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\vee  n}}=
\prod_{r=1}^{n}  \eta_{j_{2r-1} j_{2r}}  \eta_{k_{2r-1} k_{2r}}\frac{1}{2n!} \mbox{per}\big(\delta^{j_{r}k_{r}}\big) $$
becomes cumbersome with increasing tensor product orders. To reduce the computational effort we perform a basis transformation in which the tensor coefficient matrix associated with $\eta$ becomes diagonal. In this way we find up to a normalization,  the following resulting invariants for the first three orders with $n=1$:
\begin{equation} \,\, 16 \lambda ^4-32 \lambda ^3+12 \lambda ^2+4 \lambda +1,\end{equation}
$n=2:$
$$\frac{2}{27} (1536 \lambda ^8-6144 \lambda ^7+8960 \lambda ^6  -5376 \lambda ^5$$
\begin{equation} +880 \lambda ^4+32 \lambda
   ^3+72 \lambda ^2+40 \lambda +3),\end{equation}
and $n=3:$
$$\frac{8}{135}(20480 \lambda ^{12}-122880 \lambda ^{11}+304128 \lambda
   ^{10}$$ $$-394240 \lambda ^9+277632 \lambda ^8-96768 \lambda ^7+11648 \lambda ^6$$
\begin{equation}-384\lambda ^5+136 \lambda ^4+112 \lambda ^3+108 \lambda ^2+28 \lambda +1).\end{equation}
The corresponding graphs are illustrated together with $n=4$ in figure \ref{fig symInv}.
\begin{figure}[htp]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=1.10]{SymInv.pdf}}
\vspace*{8pt}
\caption{A class of entanglement monotones constructed from \emph{symmetric} products of symmetric $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ invariant tensor fields $\eta^{\vee n}_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}$.
The black curve corresponds in each case to $n=1$ and the following colored curves corresponds to higher order symmetric tensor field inner products with $n\in \{2,3,4\}$. \label{fig symInv}}
\end{figure}

\section{Estimation of inner products on tensor fields \label{5}}

In the following we ask: What happens if we estimate the entanglement monotones provided by the inner products
\begin{eqnarray} \epsilon_n :=& \frac{1}{12^n}\braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}  \\ \mu_n :=& \frac{(-1)^n}{4^n}\braket{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}} \end{eqnarray}
on the tensor products of the symmetric and anti-symmetric part of the pullback tensor fields
\begin{equation} \kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}= \eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}+i \omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)} \end{equation}
as constructed in the previous section?

For this purpose we apply the procedure of section \ref{2} by first identifying the inverse functions
$\lambda(\epsilon_n)$ and $\lambda(\mu_n)$ of the monotones (\ref{monotone 1}) and (\ref{monotone 2}),
\begin{equation} \left(\frac{16 \lambda ^4}{3}-\frac{32 \lambda ^3}{3}+4 \lambda
   ^2+\frac{4 \lambda }{3}+\frac{1}{3}\right)^n\end{equation}
\begin{equation}    \left(4 \lambda ^2-4 \lambda +1\right)^n\end{equation}
 as solutions of the equations
\begin{equation} \left(\frac{16 \lambda ^4}{3}-\frac{32 \lambda ^3}{3}+4 \lambda
   ^2+\frac{4 \lambda }{3}+\frac{1}{3}\right)^n -\epsilon_n(\lambda)=0\label{sol monotone 1}\end{equation}
\begin{equation}  \left(4 \lambda ^2-4 \lambda +1\right)^n-\mu_n(\lambda)=0\label{sol monotone 2}\end{equation}
associated with the inner products of the tensor products of the symmetric tensor fields and the tensor product of the antisymmetric tensor fields respectively. As a result we find both real and imaginary valued solutions. To provide a physical interpretation we consider the real-valued solutions and define the parameter transformation  \begin{equation} \kappa_{\epsilon_n}:= \kappa_{\lambda(\epsilon_n)} (\partial_{\epsilon_n}\lambda(\epsilon_n))^2\end{equation}
of the quantum Fisher information on the 1-parameter family of Schmidt coefficient decomposed quantum states
according to formula (\ref{trafo}). In this way we find the minumum
 number $M_{\delta}(\epsilon_n)$ of measurements \begin{equation} M_{\delta}(\epsilon_n)= \frac{1}{\epsilon^{2}_n \delta^{2}} \frac{1}{ \kappa_{\epsilon_n}} \end{equation} as defined in (\ref{Measurements}) for achieving an estimation with fixed relative error $\delta$. The result is illustrated with $\delta \equiv 1$ for the first five powers in figure \ref{fig a}.
\begin{figure}[htp]
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=1.00]{GE.pdf}}
\vspace*{8pt}
\centerline{\includegraphics[scale=1.20]{OE.pdf}}
\vspace*{8pt}
\caption{estimation of entanglement monotones $\epsilon_n$ and purity monotones $\mu_n$ for the first five orders (each order corresponds to the same color as used in the plot in figure \ref{fig G and O}). It shows the number $M_{\delta}$ of measurements in dependence of the value $\epsilon_n$ (and $\mu_n$ respectively) of the monotones  required for achieving an estimation in a $99,9\%$ confidence interval with fixed relative error $\delta\equiv 1$. The dashed curves in the first plot correspond to the estimation of the linear entropy, and in the second plot to the negative-valued estimation of the purity as done in (\ref{e of p}) when `reflected' on the $\mu$-axis. \label{fig a}}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Discussion for monotones from the symmetric part}

Let us begin to analyze the estimation of the entanglement monotones associated with the inner products on the tensor products of the symmetric tensor field in the first plot of figure \ref{fig a}. While the estimation of the linear entropy (dashed curve) diverges for weakly entangled states in the limit $\epsilon_n \rightarrow 0$ (see section \ref{2} and \cite{Genoni:2008}), we find for the tensorial monotones an approximative improvement with a finite number of measurements towards the regime of weak entanglement in dependence of the tensor field order $n$. The inflection point into negative values indicates the boundary of the regime where the approximation looses its validity.  The validity of the approximation into the regime of weekly entanglement may become enlarged by considering inner products on tensor fields of higher order. The green curve in the first plot of figure \ref{fig a} corresponds to the highest order example $n=5$ and clearly illustrates this enlargement when compared to the lower tensor field orders.

\subsection{Discussion for monotones from the anti-symmetric part}

The estimation of the purity monotones associated with inner products on the tensor products of the anti-symmetric tensor fields is illustrated in the second plot of figure \ref{fig a}. All curves clearly show here an efficient estimation for weakly entangled states, i.e.\,for all states close to $\mu_n = 1$.  The dashed curve corresponds here to the estimation of the standard purity (section \ref{3}) when reflected on the $\mu$-axis into positive values. Indeed, only the curves associated with the   inner products on the tensor fields may admit a physical interpretation.

\section{Conclusions and outlook\label{6}}

In the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics one considers the Fubini-Study metric at the first place. Any action of the symmetry group of entanglement on a family of entangled quantum state vectors induces a family of degenerate pull back tensor fields each defined as pull back of the Fubini-Study metric from the Hilbert space to the Lie group $SU(2)\times SU(2)$. Along the decomposition of the Fubini-Study metric into a Riemannian and a symplectic tensor field
one finds a decomposition $$\kappa_{SU(2)\times SU(2)} = \eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)} +i\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)} $$ into degenerate symmetric and anti-symmetric pullback structures. Via an inner product on higher order tensor fields it is possible to identify two  classes of monotonic functions characterizing the entanglement and purity of a bipartite quantum system. These geometrically constructed classes of entanglement and purity monotones provide advantages in the estimation of entangled qubits when compared to standard entanglement and purity monotones. The basic picture emerging here may be subsumed as follows. While the inner product
$$\braket{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\eta_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}$$
yields an \emph{approximative} efficient entanglement estimation for \emph{all} state vectors, one finds for the inner product
$$ \braket{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}{\omega_{SU(2)\times SU(2)}^{\otimes n}}$$ an \emph{exact} efficient purity estimation for \emph{weakly} entangled state vectors.

It would be interesting to investigate whether this approach admits also advantages in the entanglement estimation of more general composite quantum systems involving multi-partite systems, mixed quantum states and infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. As a matter of fact, such a generalization becomes directly testable by the tensor field-valued pairing
\begin{eqnarray} & \{\rho_{\vec{\lambda}}\}_{\vec{\lambda}\in \mathcal{M}}  \times \{U^{-1}(g)dU(g)^{\otimes k}\}_{g \in \mathcal{G}}\\  &\downarrow\\ &  \rho_{\vec{\lambda}}\bigg(U^{-1}(g)dU(g)^{\otimes k}\bigg)  \equiv  \kappa_{\mathcal{G}}(\vec{\lambda}) \end{eqnarray}
as described in \cite{Aniello:10} between general manifolds $\{\rho_{\vec{\lambda}}\}_{\vec{\lambda}\in \mathcal{M}}$ of quantum states and \emph{invariant operator valued tensor fields} $U^{-1}(g)dU(g)^{\otimes k}$ on general Lie groups $\mathcal{G}$ associated with a unitary representation $U:\mathcal{G}\rightarrow \mathcal{U}(\mathcal{H})$.
A generalization in several directions could therefore be tackled by focusing on the corresponding    inner products on tensor fields
$$\braket{\kappa_{\mathcal{G}}^{\otimes n}(\vec{\lambda})}{\kappa_{\mathcal{G}}^{\otimes n}(\vec{\lambda})}.$$
Finally, a deeper understanding of the relation of our results with the quantum Fisher information (see \cite{Gibilisco:2007} and references therein) may be achieved in terms of a suitable geometrization of the $C^*$-algebraic approach to quantum mechanics \cite{Carinena:2007ws, Chruscinski:2008}, including the formalism of star products of quantum tomograms \cite{Ibort:2009}, which may close a circle to the empirical bounds on the precision of quantum measurements in terms of generalized uncertainty relations \cite{Man'ko:2002}.

\section*{Acknowledgments}
This work has been supported by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


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text:
WV's Capito calls for release of information on Veterans Affairs sexual misconduct allegations
WASHINGTON — Two U.S. Senators, including one representing West Virginia, have sent a letter to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs requesting the release of information related to allegations of sexual misconduct.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., was joined by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, in making the request of VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, according to a release from Capito's office.
Two specific incidents form the basis for the senators' request. The VA Office of the Inspector General recently revealed it is investigating reports of multiple alleged incidents of sexual assault at the VA Medical Center located in Beckley, West Virginia.
The letter also cites recent case of a contracting doctor brought on by the VA who has pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of five female victims.
The letter goes on to point out that the Government Accountability Office had in a 2011 report "uncovered deficiencies in the VA's oversight resulting from unclear reporting standards, a lack of risk assessment tools and an inadequate amount of information about a veteran's legal history to generate a comprehensive risk-assessment process."
While recommendations made as a result of that report were implemented, the senators contend the recent incidents "indicate that there may be lingering issues within VA policies, procedure and system that must be resolved."
The senators have asked the secretary to provide answers to a series of questions regarding the VA's general policy and recent handling of allegations of sexual misconduct. They are:
How does the VA assess the credentials of contracting providers? Do standards exist to ensure these providers have no history of sexual assault or sexual harassment? If not, how can the department improve this process?
How many current employees of the VA have been convicted of sexual assault or had a complaint involving sexual assault sustained by an administrative determination? Has the VA increased an employee's rate of basic pay, awarded an employee a bonus, or promoted an employee after said employee was found to have a Title VII sexual assault complaint declared final by administrative or judicial determination?
Does the VA offer counseling and other services to victims who were sexually assaulted while receiving care from the Department? What is the VA's policy on making sure that victims are properly attended to if they do fall victim to this crime?
How is the department working with medical staff, non-medical staff, and patients to raise awareness about sexual assault and sexual harassment at VA facilities?
What are the current VA policies for reporting and responding to instances of sexual assault or sexual harassment? What actions does the department take to hold perpetrators of sexual assault or sexual harassment accountable?
How is the VA working with the Department of Defense to gather information about sexual assault in the military in order to improve programming across the Veterans Health Administration to better understand the needs of veterans who were victims of sexual assault while on active duty?
Last, what is the department doing to accommodate the needs of our growing female veteran population at VA medical facilities?
Capito and Ernst have requested the secretary provide the information by Nov. 14.
Source: State Journal

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I'm giving Steve Frank's nanodrawmo a try this November, but in pottery rather than drawing. Producing 50 interesting works in one month is unlikely given drying, glazing and firing times, but I'll just give it a go and see how far I get. As I've not been in the studio much lately, the goal of practicing more will be met no matter what!
Today I made two leaf-pressed bowls and thought I'd do a writeup of the first one. I doubt I'll document many of the rest of my entries in as much detail, but figured I'd do one for the first day.
The wife and kids came home last night from trick-o-treating with a huge leaf. I have no idea what kind of plant it is from, but it has great veins and looked perfect for imprinting into a pot. The pic below doesn't really indicate the scale well — I estimate that from base to tip, excluding the stem, it was about 12".
The main issue I was worried about besides the size of the pot was that in order to minimize wrinkling of the leaf while I pressed it into the concave space, I would need to make the bowl flair out wide and flat. This is a recipe for having the pot collapse if it gets too thin or wet. To help avoid this, I wedged up about 9lbs of clay. I'm led to believe there is some way to twiddle my (wife's) camera that will increase the depth of field. So far, I've failed to look for it.
Smaller pots can be lifted off the wheel head by hand, but larger pots need time to dry before being handled, so you throw them on a bat. The bats I have don't perfectly fit the pins and wiggle a little under sideways forces while centering (especially with large blobs of clay). The solution to this is to put a thin pad of clay under the bat to provide some friction. Some diagonal lines etched in the pad allow air to enter and make bat removing require only a moderate amount of force.
Attaching the bat, centering, opening and the initial pulling to a cylinder are left to the imagination since I didn't bother to clean my hands off to pick up the camera. The first stopping point was a large cylinder. While you can throw bowls by pulling out diagonally to start, in my experience that tends to be less stable and thus less good for large bowls.
At this point, you can use a flexible rubber rib to flair the cylinder out into a bowl. This removes slip from the walls of the bowl, making it less heavy and stronger, but also compresses the wall, again making it stronger and less likely to fall (using a blowtorch on the outside of the pot also helps remove excess water). Starting from the lip of the pot and working top down (not bottom up), the cylinder is flared in several passes.
A while back I heard of a fun and easy way to apply leaves to a bowl and have them release without pulling up the clay and ruining the pattern: olive oil.
After brushing oil on the veiny side of the leaf, I pressed and smoothed it into the bowl with my trusty rib.
Finally, I gently pealed the leaf out, leaving a nice puddle of oil!
The second bowl, not pictured, is smaller and used maple leaves and seeds around the outside. I tried harder to get edge detail there with some better results. On both of these I'll need to be careful how I glaze them to avoid losing the fine detail.
As far as the risk of failure goes, I'm going to count failure towards my 50 works. Practice is the point, and failure is a great teacher. Besides, those of you drawing don't have to worry about your sketches exploding in the kiln!


Step 1: The recipe is as simple as just putting all the ingredients together in a bowl and bringing them together with oil and water till they just bind.
Step 2: Roll to a flat surface and cut to shapes with a cookie cutter. Place it on baking tray and bake for 10-15 mins till the cookies brown.
Step 3: In case you do not have almond milk powder at hand, use 1/2 cup each of almond flour and 1/4 cup of fine sugar and add in the pistachios and saffron to it.


I'm trying to login in my gmail account.
After entering email and password I have a Google page with enter point.
But when I press the Continue button - nothing happens.
Open Thunderbird and try to login in Gmail account with 2-auth.
Same problem here. Google pushed a new login screen for 2 factor authentication and some apps stopped working, like Epiphany, Gnome Online Accounts and Thunderbird.
I was told that the 52.1 version of Thunderbird fixed this issue, but I'm not using since it's not in the Ubuntu Zesty repositories yet.
If this can be confirmed, maybe just pushing the newer version of Thunderbird to Ubuntu repos is enough.
In Windows 10 with thunderbird 52.0.1 this doesn't happen. I don't use 2 factor authentication.
Also confirming behavior. Not 2FA enabled, but can't click on "continue".
Confirmed. This bug still exists in Ubuntu Artful (17.10) as of now.
Cannot login via OAuth2 (=standard method) because button is unclickable. Major changes to Google account required in order to get basic functionality (sending/recieving E-Mails) with Thunderbird. Lightning (calendar addon) doesn't work either. No workaround for this. Regular people will not be able to get their E-Mail software working.
This needs to be fixed for the upcoming release before the Debian Import Freeze happens in 4 days!
New version of Thunderbird in the Debian repository ("testing" or newer) fixes the bug. Please import, thanks.
Finally found a workaround that works.
2.) Click on "Add to Thunderbird" button. This reinstalls the Provider for Google Calendar.
3.) After restarting Thunderbird, the Lightning calendar addon is usable again.
We still need to import a newer version of Thunderbird into the Ubuntu 17.10 repository to address this bug, as not only Lightning is damaged, but the E-Mail login procedure itself. Debian Import Freeze has already happened. Since this is a serious usability bug, maybe an exception can be made?
This problem still persists on Ubuntu 17.10 updated right now.
Is this still an issue now that Thunderbird 60.4 is the currently supported version?


15. Brass Door Knobs – Is there Anything Special About Them?
Aside from the fact that they look lovely and add good aesthetic value to your door, they also have health benefits. Brass kills bacteria so it makes your door knob – which should actually be a place filled with bacteria considering that everyone touches it – safe and healthy.
There you have it – 15 things you may not have known their full use. Now you know and can now make proper use of them.


text:
Shatter Me, by Lindsey Stirling
I'm a Brony.
For those not in the know, a Brony is defined as a male fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a cartoon series pitched for tween girls that ran for nine seasons until mid-2019.
I came to my Brony status via my wife. She's a lifetime collector of the My Little Pony toy line, first unleashed in the mid-Eighties and still going strong. As a gamer and collector myself, I align with her hobbies. Our house is filled with plastic. Small plastic ponies on her side, little plastic soldiers on mine.
It was a serendipitous beginning. I'm a huge fan of collectible card games (CCGs), so when we discovered a CCG based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, it was as if the stars aligned. Our two hobbies, entwined. I bought the starter set, and we played the game. Then we watched the show, and that was that. Brony 4 lyfe, y0.
Two minor characters in the show are Octavia, a classical-music-loving cellist, and DJ Pon3, a club / dub / WUB DJ. In one landmark episode, the two ponies are forced to collaborate in order to save a wedding between two donkeys. They create a song that's a heady blend of classical gas and dubstep dance, and it rocks the joint to save the day.
Shatter Me, by Lindsey Stirling, sounds exactly like that song. So much so that Sarah, who uses the Pony song as her ringtone, popped her head through her office door because she thought someone was calling.
Across twelve blistering tracks, Lindsay imparts a slew of scorching violin performances against a variety of beating dance electronica. It's an obvious virtuoso performance, full of swagger and sweetness and strength and subtlety. Soaring in places and whispering in others, these majority instrumentals are energetic, full of life, and exquisitely beautiful. Lindsay runs through a plethora of dance styles, from almost straight-up Eurobeat through a club classic sound, and hitting some strong Dubstep throbs with Drum and Bass accents.
It's in the more volatile Dubstep mixes where I feel the music finds its firmest footing. The opening track, Beyond the Veil, is perhaps the best example of this, and it's my choice for standout track in a sea of standout tracks. Others of note include Take Flight and Swag, a track that achieves a more rocky feel through the use of distortion and less dance-focused rhythms.
Strangely for me, I feel that the album's weakest songs are the title track Shatter Me and We Are Giants. These are the only songs that incorporate conventional vocalists, and they come over as diminished because of it.
Shatter Me gets a strong 7/10. Notably, it's also the first album that my wife has asked for further details, to add to playlists of her own. She's absorbing this project through an enforced yet benign osmosis, but it's nice that, like My Little Pony, the work of Lindsey Stirling is something we can share and enjoy together. Such slices of life are what keeps us smiling in these troubling and turbulent times.
7 Classical Dance Lindsey Stirling Noli-Rose Nikitaki


Seeking to become more efficient and effective in the allocation and use of public funds, the government launched Monday a new public financial management and performance monitoring project.
Seeking to become more efficient and effective in the allocation and use of public funds, the government launched Monday a new public financial management and performance monitoring project (PFM/PMR).
The project is being hailed as a tool to help combat cumbersome processes and inconsistent practices in public financial management.
Approved by the board of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in July 2014, the $33 million, five-year project received the green-light from the Bahamian Parliament in February 2016.
It was officially launched at the British Colonial Hilton Hotel yesterday by the Ministry of Finance.
The project's overall objective is to increase efficiency in the use of public resources. It comes at a time when there is lacklustre growth globally and nationally. The PFM/PMR project is expected to result in more open, transparent and effective government institutions.
"I am confident that this project will be one of the defining projects in the Bahamian public sector and public finance history," said Peter Turnquest (pictured), Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
He assured that the new administration would seek to ensure value for money in every dollar spent from the public purse. With economic growth constrained, government says it would exercise fiscal prudence in order to arrest the rate of debt.
"This is not an IDB project. This is an IDB-funded project. This is a Bahamian project. This is yours. We are here to try to help," said IDB country representative Maria Florencia Attademo-Hirt, who emphasized that any IDB intervention has to be led by a country's request for assistance in an area which addresses real needs.
"This can only succeed if everyone is involved and supportive," she said.
The broad-based agenda reform project has four components. The first component is designed to improve the management capacity of the public sector by increasing government's ability to effectively and efficiently monitor the planning and implementation of priority projects. Essentially, special teams within the Office of the Prime Minister will ensure projects meet performance objectives in alignment with the country's National Development Plan. Ultimately, a new, centrally organized management model and upgraded hardware will support efficiency initiatives across all levels of government.
The second component is national statistics. The goal is to increase access to reliable and timely local data by creating a national statistics system. As a result, the Statistics Act is expected to be revamped. Officials say this is key to the nation's decision-making process benefiting those in the public and private sector.
"We intend to be a transparent government and part of that transparency is laying-out the national statistics of this country, good and bad, because it is only in acknowledging our weaknesses that we are able to address them and introduce well thought out strategies to fix them," said Turnquest.
The third (and largest) component, public financial management, will address inefficiencies in budget formulation and execution, with every transaction the government makes undergoing scrutiny and streamlining. This paves the way for an Integrated Financial Management Information System to increase control over the government's budget saving time and money across the public sector.
The final component is public procurement reform to rectify the lack of transparency and efficiency in the government procurement process, promoting competition in the marketplace. According to Attademo-Hirt, the economic analysis carried out before the loan was approved indicated this component would save the government around $13.1 million per annum.
It is expected that government will centralize the procurement of commonly used items in the government service. The process begins with the establishment of an e-tendering and supplier registry system and the procurement department with the Ministry of Finance.
Consequently, new legislation is expected to be brought to Parliament that will take a strong stance on transparency in the tendering process. The reform is expected to level the playing field helping small, local businesses to evolve into national vendors.
Chief executive officer of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Federation, Edison Sumner, commended the government for having the insight and wisdom to initiate such a strategic programme. He also praised the IDB for recognizing the need for such reform and for providing the necessary financial and technical support to ensure the programme's launch and effective management.
Sumner pledged that the chamber will not highlight government inefficiencies without considering and offering solutions to problems.
"The transformation must begin within the public sector itself. We must consider the current state of the public sector and decide if the status quo is currently serving the needs of the country in an efficient and affordable manner," he said.
The chamber, says Sumner, is leading by example in undergoing a review of its own governance structure with a view to improving its operations and efficiencies. "We also intend to improve on our own level of transparency and accountability to our members and other social partners," he said.
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the Commonwealth of The Bahamas Huang Qinguo paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Financial Services, Trade & Industry and Immigration Brent Symonette at the Ministry's offices, July 13, 2017.
Several destinations in The Islands of The Bahamas are ranking high with Travel + Leisure's globetrotting readers. The popular travel magazine revealed its World's Best winners on July 11, with The Bahamas snagging four spots on the region's Top 15 list.


The "Big Barker" is probably nicer than *your* bed, tbh.
This bed may not look like much, but to a dog? It's heaven.
The cozy foam bed is orthopedic, machine-washable, made in the USA, guaranteed to last for at least 10 years, and has over 1,900 positive reviews on Amazon written by the owners of ecstatic pups.
I'm really not joking about the ecstatic review thing.
This pup is lounging on the khaki model.
...and large, extra large, and giant sizes.
They should probably have sprung for the "Giant" sized bed, tbh.
But they also started manufacturing the Mini (for the small dogs of the world).
Think your pooch isn't a fan of headrests? Simply get the ~sleek~ model.
While its $239 price tag isn't exactly cheap, isn't it worth it for happiness like this?
I mean, have you ever seen a pair enjoying a more satisfying slumber?
It even promotes inter-species harmony.
If you want to treat your pooch to some quality shuteye, get one here.


Today's 12 Days Of Holiday Gift Item!
Come into Lather today and receive 25% off today's featured item!
These adorable gloves are perfect for this winter season! The fingertips are also touchscreen compatible, so you can stay connected to friends and family while staying stylish!


We recognize helping families in need is the best way of giving back to the local community that supports us. We have been honored to be able to provide valuable transportation to families in need. We can put cars back safety on the road & into the hands of those who can really use them.
Here is a video of our most recent giveaway!


So some of you may be wondering, what in the world does NOLA stand for. Don't worry, it took me a while to figure out, too. For those of you that figured it out right away, just keep quiet – we don't need to be reminded of how smart you are. : ) For those of you that are still needing help, NOLA stands for New Orleans, LA (Louisiana).
Today is Wednesday, June 26th and it is the 5th day of our mission trip. On behalf of the team, thank you to all the individuals and families that have supported us financially and are lifting us up in prayers. I think we all woke this morning feeling very tired and a bit sore from the physical work of the previous two days. 6:30am breakfast 3 days in a row takes it's toll on those who typically prefer to never see the sun rise.
It seemed today that for some of the team members the excitement of the first couple days is wearing off. The lack of sleep combined with the heat and humidity and weariness of the work makes it more challenging to have a positive attitude. Expectations for what this trip would look like may not have been accurate and are leading to frustration and disappointment. For those of you in ministry, perhaps this sounds all to familiar. We press on and encourage one another to set aside our expectations and to pray for God to work in and through us. Please pray for our team in this regard as we head down the home stretch of this ministry opportunity.
Wednesdays are the day of the week when the volunteers try to connect more with the homeowners we are serving. We had the opportunity to visit with the homeowners this afternoon and then we took them out to dinner along with some of the ReachGlobal staff at a local favorite: Ms. Hyster's Bar-B-Que.
When we connected earlier in the afternoon, I asked our homeowners (Bobby and Belinda) the same question I had previously asked some of the youth: "If you were sent into an area where there was no church and given the task of starting a church from scratch, what would you do and why?" In discussing this question with the youth, a theme was connecting with people and building relationships. So how did Bobby and Belinda respond to the question since that is basically what they are doing – being used by God to start a church from scratch? Three things: Prayer, Presence and People.
Prayer establishes our dependency on God and helps us remember that "we" are not the ones building the Church, God is building His church and He will continue to build His kingdom here on earth. Bobby and Belinda seek to be sensitive to the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit as they come to Him continually in prayer.
Presence is another important component to planting churches. Bobby and Belinda talked about the importance of being physically present with people – loving on them, getting to know them, connecting with their children and demonstrating the love and compassion of Christ consistently to neighbors and their families. For Bobby and Belinda, part of this involves having a home in the community where they can host Bible studies and have a Rec Room for youth to come and hang out at. Bobby explained that they have learned that it is important to invite others into their lives and to be willing to enter into the lives of others as well when God opens doors.
Churches would not exist without People and it is building those relationships with people that God uses to build His Church. Bobby and Belinda have a heart for people, especially people who do not yet know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Pray that God would allow them to get into the home we have been working on in the neighborhood of Broadmoor in New Orleans.


What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did this week — or, rather, what they didn't do — is a shanda.
They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. The three men, the most prominent Jews in President Trump's administration, could have spoken out to say that those who march with neo-Nazis are not "very fine people," as their boss claims. Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Cohn, the chief economic adviser, were actually standing with Trump when he said it. They said nothing.
All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said — Kushner even got out word that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had counseled Trump otherwise — but none is speaking publicly about an outrage that makes millions of Americans feel as though they are living a nightmare.
We have seen such a character before in Jewish history: the shtadlan. The shtadlan , or "court Jew," existed to please the king, to placate the king, to loan money to the king. He would dress like other members of the court, and he would beg the king for leniency toward the Jews, but, ultimately, his loyalty was to the king.
That past is as ancient as the Bible. Abraham argued with God, urging the Almighty not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of the innocent. Moses, seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, struck the offender, buried him in the sand and fled from Pharaoh. The daily Jewish liturgy includes the 146th Psalm, praying to a God who brings justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry, who lifts up those who are bowed down, who upholds the widow and the orphan, and who brings the wicked to ruin.


New documentaries, promoting in eSport and the new champions - eSport-times.com | Major events review, Fresh news from a Cyber World.
Konami has confirmed that Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 will receive a feature that will allow anyplayer who wishes to take part in PES eSports League.
PES eSports League – a competition that will allow to fight for the title of best player of PES 2017. That function will be available after the game's release in mid-September. Representatives of Konami said that they are trying to make the game better and more attractive for gamers and to eSports market – one of the steps to promote the series.
PES 2017 and FIFA 17 both become more and more interesting.
Riot Games recently released a new documentary Live / Play movies about ordinary players of League of Legends, and now it is the turn of competitive players.
A series of documentary films Legends Rising began last year and will return traditionally before the "Worlds" championship, in which the best teams in the world will compete for the title of world champions in League of Legends. Starting from September 7 will be released six series of such well-known players like Rekkles, Wildturtle, Clearlove, Chawy, Revolta and Smeb. Watch for the release of documentaries on the official channel LoL eSports.
Without much struggle in the final of ESL One Cologne 2016 Brazilian part of SK Gaming became the world champion in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The victory was won with a score of 2: 0 in Bo3, so we can safely say that they win this championship quite easy. The winning team received 500 thousand dollars, thanks to a new prize pool championships, approved in February of this year.
It is worth mentioning that the opponents of SK Gaming, Team Liquid, for the first time participated in the final competition of this level, so they are getting here is already an achievement for the team.
The International 2017 | Results and new Valve game - eSport-times.com | Major events review, Fresh news from a Cyber World.


Growing up, both Ed and I regularly attended Arts and Culture events; ballets, operas, plays, orchestral events (remember that time I played the toy drum). Since meeting, we've attended several operas* such as Les Contes D'Hoffmann at L'Opéra Bastille in Paris and Il Trovatore** the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Now that we're parents, we want to introduce The Kids to similar unique and educational experiences and there is a lot to see and do in the Ottawa area. The bonus is that not all of them cost money.
In September 2014, we attend the National Arts Centre's Annual Culture Day. At this FREE all-day event, The Kids had a chance to make musical instruments, listen to the Ottawa Orchestra string section practice, investigate what goes on behind the scenes of productions and even learn a hip hop routine that they still perform regularly amongst other things. Since coming back from Mexico, I've been in search of our next adventure and was pleased to take a look at the National Arts Centre Upcoming Schedule.
I was drawn to their "Latin Beats, Heroic Feats!" performance because of The Kids Latin heritage as well as their love of music. And to put a further twist on things, while they've been to plays, they've never attended an orchestral performance let alone one geared towards kids!
e audience, tries to reunite the people through music with a Latin beat.
In addition to the orchestra show (which includes one live actor), for 45 minutes before the event, Tunetown will be providing a free learn-and-play activities in the lobbies organized by the Friends of the NAC Orchestra.
The surprize is that not only will we be attending the event but one of you will as well! Be sure to check back on this post in a weeks time for pictures and an update on the show.
* Attending an Opera is one of Ed's favourite events. I'm more of a musical gal myself.
** We attended this show on April 28, 2001. The tickets made it into my scrapbook.
Prize: Four tickets to "Latin Beats, Heroic Feats!" held at NAC Southam Hall, Ottawa on Saturday, June 6 at 3:30pm. Approximate prize value is $92CDN.
Duration: The contest will run from Friday, May 29 until Wednesday, June 3, 2015, inclusive.
Notes: No changes to ticket numbers, performance or show times.
Besides this amazing giveaway for the "Latin Beats, Heroic Feats," our grandchildren would also love to see The Wizard of Oz, and so would I!!! This was my favorite movie!!!
Wizard of Oz ! 😀 OR Sound of Music… or Beethoven's Ninth…. or… too many choices!
I would love to see the Royal Winnipeg Ballet perform the Nutcracker! I've seen the Nutcracker performed by a ballet school and it was amazing. I can't imagine what it would be like with the royal ballet!
I would love to see Diana Krall.
Easy answer – I have season tickets to the ballet and it has been "girls night out" for friends and me for years. Looking forward to next year's line up AND for the moment my girls are old enough to appreciate the Christmas showing of the Nutcracker!


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About Axios Seattle
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Jun 24, 2022 - Politics
Pro-impeachment Republicans face major test in primary election
Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler. Photos: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images and Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump last year, two are from Washington state.
Now, U.S. Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Battleground) and Dan Newhouse (R-Sunnyside) face challengers from the right who are angry over how the two lawmakers voted.
Why it matters: Whether Herrera Beutler and Newhouse survive their primary challenges will provide clues about the direction of the state's Republican Party — and whether those who buck Trump's influence still have a place in it.
What's happening: Herrera Beutler, who represents the 3rd Congressional District in Southwest Washington, was particularly outspoken after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, decrying the former president's actions as inappropriate.
Herrera Beutler's opponents now include three pro-Trump Republicans who have publicly disagreed with her impeachment vote: Vicki Kraft, a state representative; Joe Kent, a retired special forces officer; and Heidi St. John, a Christian author who promotes homeschooling.
All have questioned the validity of the 2020 election and suggested without evidence that the vote was fraudulent.
Meanwhile, Newhouse faces six GOP challengers in Washington's 4th Congressional District.
One is Loren Culp, who ran for governor in 2020 and later filed a baseless lawsuit alleging widespread election fraud — a claim he withdrew after the state threatened his lawyer with sanctions.
Another Republican in the race, state Rep. Brad Klippert, has also questioned the 2020 election results.
Both Klippert and Culp have criticized Newhouse's impeachment vote, as has Republican candidate Jarod Sessler, a Prosser businessman and former NASCAR driver.
State of play: In Washington's top-two primary system, voters aren't required to register by party and can vote for whichever candidate they prefer, regardless of affiliation.
Because the two candidates who get the most votes in the primary move on to the general election, a Republican vs. Republican matchup is possible.
What they're saying: Peter Graves, a Republican consultant based in Washington state, told Axios the state's top-two primary system is likely to help Newhouse and Herrera Beutler.
He said the Democrats running in each district aren't mounting particularly strong campaigns, making it more likely that some Democratic and independent voters will choose the two GOP incumbents.
Yes, but: Crystal Fincher, a local political consultant who works with Democrats, said the Republican base has moved further to the right since Herrera Beutler and Newhouse were first elected — plus, recent redistricting slightly changed the boundaries of their districts.
"All of that does create a lot of uncertainty," Fincher said. "Wild things can happen in crowded, low-turnout primaries."
Flashback: Shortly after Newhouse and Herrera Beutler voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, the state Republican Party passed a resolution expressing "particular disappointment" in them.
Both lawmakers later voted for an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
When the commission idea stalled, however, they voted against creating a select House committee to investigate.
That committee has been holding public hearings this month, including on Thursday.
What's next: Ballots for the Aug. 2 primary election will be mailed to registered voters in mid-July.
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Rogers Stroke Center site for test of implant aimed at restoring lost arm function after stroke
(l–r) Staci Shearin, physical therapist, works with Maria Ramirez to improve functional abilities in her right arm after her stroke. New research at UT Southwestern is evaluating stimulation of the vagus nerve as a way to help restore lost arm function.
The Vivistim® System device, developed by Dallas-based MicroTransponder Inc. with a license from UT Dallas, stimulates the neck's vagus nerve, a key nerve stretching from the medulla oblongata in the brain down to the throat, larynx, trachea, lungs, heart, esophagus, and intestinal tract. Implanted under the collarbone, the device, which is about the size of a pacemaker, sends painless, half-second electrical pulses up the vagus nerve, causing chemicals called neuromodulators to be released in various parts of the brain. Alternate forms of vagus nerve stimulation therapy already are approved for use in the U.S. by the Federal Drug Administration for treating other illnesses, including depression and epilepsy.
"These neuromodulators appear to facilitate the creation of new neuron pathways in the brain, which play a key role in restoring muscle movement," said Dr. Ty Shang, Assistant Professor of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern, who is heading the UT Southwestern arm of the trial. UT Southwestern is one of three sites in the nation.
"A stroke deprives brain cells of oxygen," said Dr. Shang, a vascular neurologist who is part of UT Southwestern's stroke team. "Without oxygen, the brain cells die, and can no longer perform the function for which they were intended. There has been no known way to regenerate new brain cells to replace them, but in early tests with this device, the brain appears to 'rewire' other cells to perform the function.
The study is sponsored by MicroTransponder Inc. and partially funded by the Texas Biomedical Device Center at UT Dallas. The Vivistim® system, designed to improve motor function in the more involved arm of a person following stroke, was studied starting in 2013 for efficacy and safety in a small study in Glasgow, Scotland. Individuals in the Glasgow study experienced meaningful functional improvements in their more involved arm. Many were able to resume daily activities like swimming, driving, and caring for grandchildren.
"VNS therapy may be the stimulus for motor relearning with the more involved arm for individuals following stroke. Gaining functional improvement in the impaired arm is an arduous task. VNS therapy might make achieving functional gains easier," Dr. Shang said.
UT Southwestern researchers are seeking persons in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex who had a stroke four months to five years ago to participate in the trial. After having outpatient surgery to implant the device, participants will be scheduled for 18, 90-minute sessions of intensive, task-specific therapy over a six-week period with quarterly follow-up evaluations for the next year. Interested participants can register at www.vnsstroketrial.com or contact the Department of Physical Therapy at 214-648-1533. The therapy interventions are in the Upper Extremity Motor Laboratory under the leadership of Dr. Patricia Smith, Chairman of Physical Therapy.
Stroke occurs when blood supply to the brain is suddenly interrupted, typically when blood vessels supply the brain become blocked or burst. About one in six Americans will experience a stroke after age 65, though it can occur at any age, according to research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). While fatal in 10 to 20 percent of cases, stroke can result in lost mobility such as arm or leg function, impaired speech, and cognitive problems, making it a major cause of disability in the U.S. Stroke is the number one cause of serious adult disability in the United States, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the NIH.
UT Southwestern stroke specialists pioneered the development of some of the most advanced and effective brain aneurysm procedures in use today. In 1989, UT Southwestern researchers refined a fast-acting drug called tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, which can rapidly dissolve blood clots in patients with ischemic stroke, greatly reducing the risk of death or severe disability.
UT Southwestern's Neurology Clinic is one of the nation's top stroke treatment facilities, treating more aneurysm cases than any other facility.
The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association(AHA)/American Stroke Association(ASA) jointly certified UT Southwestern University Hospitals as an Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center in 2014, a distinction for hospitals fostering specialized stroke care and expertise for patients. UT Southwestern's Robert D. Rogers Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center is the first and only AHA/ASA/Joint Commission-certified Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center in North Texas and only the second in Texas.
UT Southwestern's multidisciplinary cerebrovascular program brings together neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons with vascular, endovascular and critical-care expertise to treat all forms of stroke and blood-vessel disease affecting the brain and spinal cord. This includes referrals, both acute and subacute, for complex cases throughout Texas and the surrounding five-state area. The certification requires that the hospital provide ready access to the technology and medications that can limit damage during or after a stroke. A 2010 study in the journal Stroke found that stroke centers following national guidelines recorded fewer fatalities and reduced institutional care a year later compared with general hospitals; had lower mortality rates during a nine-year follow-up; and increased median survival rates.
About UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in 40 specialties to about 92,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.1 million outpatient visits a year.
Media Contact: Gregg Shields
MORE FROM Stroke
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Cholesterol that is too low may boost risk for hemorrhagic stroke
Glowing brain cells illuminate stroke recovery research
Scientists shrink stroke damage in mice by calming immune cells outside brain
Study Shows No Additional Benefit of Direct Oral Anticoagulants for Certain Strokes
Nerve stimulation could provide new treatment option for most common type of stroke
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Lowering blood pressure reduces brain bleeding in strokes
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Guidelines designed to assist both industry and the public.
The Australian Standards (AS) are guidelines designed to assist both industry and the public in selecting quality products and services that meet minimum requirements. Products and Services independently tested and holding Australian Standards Certification can be relied upon to meet minimum industry determined standards, but are not legal standards as such.
When purchasing products and/or services, companies and government may require any product or service they purchase to hold the relevant Australian Standard.
Alcohol – AS 3547 – Breath alcohol testing devices.
Most industry users require alcohol testers to be AS Certified. Australian Police usually tender with AS Certification as a minimum requirement (to eliminate inferior instruments) but then have their own Police Laboratories test tendered instruments to far more stringent accuracy and reliability standards.
Drugs – AS 4760:2006 – Procedures for specimen collection and the detection and quantitation of drugs in oral fluid.
The Australian Standard for Oral Fluid covers procedures for the collection, detection and quantitation of drugs in oral fluid. AS 4760 is currently under review, but remains relevant given the increasing popularity of saliva testing.
The objective of this Standard is to ensure that the detection of drugs in urine meets the expectations for testing of specimens for medico-legal, workplace or court-directed purposes.
For more information regarding Australian Standards contact an account manager by clicking here.


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Biografia

Nacque il 14 dicembre 1885.  Iniziò la sua carriera di aviatore a Brooklands nel 1910, conseguendo il brevetto di pilota n.50 del Royal Aero Club di Gran Bretagna, stringendo qui forte amicizia con Alliott Verdon Roe. Insieme i due avviarono  la Avro School of Flying, e poi egli divenne il primo capo pilota collaudatore per la Avro. In un opuscolo intitolato The Brooklands Story 1910/11, egli scrisse che il 1911 fu un anno ricco di eventi per la Avro, inclusa la vendita di un biplano tipo Curtiss a Edward Wakefield, che prese uno dei migliori allievi della scuola Avro, Herbert Stanley Adams, come pilota sul lago Windermere.

Il 1 aprile 1911 portò in volo per la prima volta a Brooklands il prototipo dello Avro Type D, con cui partecipò il 6 maggio alla gara aerea Brooklands-Brighton. A seguito di un volo dimostrativo, vendette successivamente l'Avro Type D al comandante (in seguito vice maresciallo dell'aria Sir) Oliver Schwann. Schwann decollò con l'Avro D da Cavendish Dock a Barrow-in-Furness il 18 novembre dello stesso anno, ma si schiantò in fase di atterraggio.
Tra i suoi allievi alla Avro School of Flying vi erano Oscar Gnosspelius, nel febbraio 1911 per i voli diritti e livellati, Ronald Kemp, che effettuò il primo volo di prova di in idrovolante a Brooklands, e poi volò con lo sperimentale Gnosspelius n.2 a Windermere nel 1912, e Sydney Sippe (poi major), che fece il primo volo con successo decollando dalla superficie marina in Gran Bretagna a Barrow-in-Furness il 2 aprile 1912 su un Avro Type D. Trasferitosi temporaneamente alla Bristol Aeroplane Company divenne il pilota collaudatore più pagato in Inghilterra, vincendo diverse competizioni aeree in tutto il paese, e effettuare voli dimostrativi con gli aerei della compagnia in Spagna, Germania, Romania e Italia.

Nel 1913 Edward Wakefield fu presente alla cerimonia di presentazione della Coppa Schneider per idrovolanti, voluta da Jacques Schneider. Nel 1914 fu assunto da Thomas Sopwith per partecipare alla seconda edizione della Coppa Schneider, tenutasi a Monaco, che vinse volando su un Sopwith Schneider.

Dopo lo scoppio della prima guerra mondiale venne assegnato al Royal Flying Corps come membro dello Air Investigation Department presso il Royal Aircraft Establishment. Nella sua carriera di pilota, dal giugno 1910 al 1918, ha volato su circa 80 diversi tipi di velivoli e ha registrato circa 3.500 ore di volo.

Nel 1919 entrò nella Avro Transport Company affittando un hangar a Cockshott, sul Windermere. Tra il 21 luglio e l'ottobre 1919, quando la stagione degli idrovolanti terminò, utilizzò due Avro 504L per giri turistici, voli di addestramento, consegna dei giornali a Douglas, sull'isola di Man, e anche  di trasporto di passeggeri al prezzo di 10 ghinee. Stabilitosi a Windermere avviò un'officina meccanica per riparazione motori nei locali dell'hangar, e per i successivi otto anni vendette automobili, motociclette e benzina, fornendo consulenza motoristica, un servizio taxi per la stazione di Windermere, e tour turistici in pullman.

Intorno al 1929 si trasferì nel Devon dove lavorò come ingegnere presso l'aerodromo di Haldon.  Nel corso della seconda guerra mondiale (1939-1945) rientrò in servizio attivo presso l'Air Investigation Department di Farnborough.
Si spense il 7 febbraio 1972, e il suo corpo fu sepolto a Jurby, nell'isola di Man.

Note

Annotazioni

Fonti

Bibliografia

Voci correlate
Charles Rumney Samson
Mustafa Ertuğrul Aker

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Piloti collaudatori
Aviatori britannici della prima guerra mondiale
Militari britannici

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Following My GPS Photography
Photo gallery featuring images in the category of Attractions
Bob Waldmire's Bus
Seen along historic Route 66 in Illinois. The Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac, Illinois located in the former Pontiac City Hall and Fire Station. Now known as the Pontiac Museum Complex. Out back, behind the museum, you can view Bob Waldmire's renovated 1966 school bus, commonly referred to as his Road Yacht he used as a house, art gallery, library and, at times, actual transportation. Robert (Bob) Waldmire was an American artist and cartographer who is well known for his artwork of U.S. Route 66, including whimsical maps of the Mother Road and its human and natural ecology. U.S. Route 66 in Illinois connected St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. The historic Route 66, first known as the Main Street of America and later dubbed the Mother Road by novelist John Steinbeck in 1939, took long distance automobile travelers from Chicago to Southern California. Illinois was the first of the eight states through which the route ran to have its segment of US 66 completed at a time when much of Route 66 was still a gravel-and-dirt road. Route 66 in Illinois has now been largely replaced with Interstate 55. Parts of the original route still carry traffic and six separate portions of the roadbed have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.—Wikipedia—This image was processed as an HDR (High Dynamic Range) composition.
Art Car Tow Truck and Bob Waldmire's Bus
1960s Radio DJ Booth and 1940s What Children Did Display
Seen along historic Route 66 in Illinois. The Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac, Illinois located in the former Pontiac City Hall and Fire Station. Now known as the Pontiac Museum Complex. The Life in the 1940s exhibit is located on the 2nd floor of the Pontiac Museum Complex. The exhibit was curated by Ron Selle and Darlene Agner. The exhibit features four rooms, completely furnished with furniture and knick-knacks from the era. The exhibit also has a display of original newspapers and the most significant headlines of World War II. Be sure to stop into the Stage Door Canteen to enjoy some vintage, 1940s music.— visitpontiac.org U.S. Route 66 in Illinois connected St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. The historic Route 66, first known as the Main Street of America and later dubbed the Mother Road by novelist John Steinbeck in 1939, took long distance automobile travelers from Chicago to Southern California. Illinois was the first of the eight states through which the route ran to have its segment of US 66 completed at a time when much of Route 66 was still a gravel-and-dirt road. Route 66 in Illinois has now been largely replaced with Interstate 55. Parts of the original route still carry traffic and six separate portions of the roadbed have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.—Wikipedia


United States. Bureau of the Census. 2000 Census County Block Map: Montgomery County, Block 31, map, 2000; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth366049/m1/1/: accessed April 21, 2019), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; .