You will Watch Doc McStuffins Season 1 Episode 7 online for free episodes with HQ / high quality. Stream cartoons Doc McStuffins Episode 7 Ben and Anna, Alma's "Huggy Monkeys" need to be separated after one of them suffered a torn Velcro "hug" patch and needed to recover overnight at the clinic. & Doc helps Hermie, her toy crab, after his arm was torn out by Emmie and Alma's new puppy Rudi.


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Rory Feek - Salvation
Salvation by Rory Feek (featuring Sonya Isaacs & Mike Rogers) is a song from the album Gentle Man and was released in 2021.
The official music video for Salvation premiered on YouTube on Friday the 18th of June 2021. Listen to Rory Feek's song below.
Salvation Lyrics
Rory Feek's Salvation lyrics were written by Gary Burr.
Rory Feek Male 2021
© 2021 New Country Songs / Salvation - Rory Feek

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Q: Flutter: ProviderNotFoundException (Error: Could not find the correct Provider I am trying to create a simple To Do list. When I go to save an item to the list I get this error: ProviderNotFoundException (Error: Could not find the correct Provider above this AddTodoDialogWidget Widget. Any help is much appreciated!

my dart file:
class AddTodoDialogWidget extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  _AddTodoDialogWidgetState createState() => _AddTodoDialogWidgetState();
}

class _AddTodoDialogWidgetState extends State<AddTodoDialogWidget> {
  final _formKey = GlobalKey<FormState>();
  String title = '';
  String description = '';

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => AlertDialog(
        content: Form(
          key: _formKey,
          child: Column(
            mainAxisSize: MainAxisSize.min,
            crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
            children: [
              Text(
                'Add Todo',
                style: TextStyle(
                  fontWeight: FontWeight.bold,
                  fontSize: 22,
                ),
              ),
              const SizedBox(height: 8),
              TodoFormWidget(
                onChangedTitle: (title) => setState(() => this.title = title),
                onChangedDescription: (description) =>
                    setState(() => this.description = description),
                onSavedTodo: addTodo,
              ),
            ],
          ),
        ),
      );

  void addTodo() {
    final isValid = _formKey.currentState!.validate();

    if (!isValid) {
      return;
    } else {
      final todo = Todo(
        id: DateTime.now().toString(),
        title: title,
        description: description,
        createdTime: DateTime.now(),
      );

      final provider = Provider.of<TodosProvider>(context, listen: false);
      provider.addTodo(todo);

      Navigator.of(context).pop();
    }
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Amazing, but unfortunately thats the normal schedule in professional racing. It doesn't matter if it's World Challenge or F1, it has to happen yesterday. We've built World Challenge cars from shells in 2.5 months.


Click on either of the following images to see an animation.
The first structure is a regular lattice of breakable links, while next one, which successfully repels the projectile, consists of the same mass of links that are "bistable" meaning that they have a first breaking point followed by a backup link recovery, which allows damage to be better spread through the structure rather than being focused at the impact point. By encouraging damage diffusion, the failure is no longer exclusively at the point of impact, as seen below by the red partially damaged bistable links.
For more information, contact the lead investigator, Dr. Seubpong Leelavanichkul at the University of Utah's Department of Mechanical Engineering.


In his approximately 500 books, writer Isaac Asimov explained the universe to us; where it had been, where it is now and where it might go in the future. One of the towering figures of science fiction, Asimov wrote stories, novels and nonfiction works on a variety of topics—as well as a series of infamous limericks.
Isaac Asimov was born near the town of Smolensk in Russia on January 2, 1920, the oldest of three children. His parents brought him to America at the age of three; he was naturalized as an American citizen five years later. Asimov taught himself to read and graduated from high school at the age of 15.
His father, Judah Asimov, ran a series of candy stories, and Asimov was drawn to the science fiction magazines on the shelves. Eventually, he decided that he could probably do just as well as the authors he was reading. When Asimov was 19, one of his short stories, "Marooned Off Vesta," was published in the March 1939 edition of Amazing Stories. In 1941, he sold "Nightfall" to Astounding Science Fiction. The tale concerns the impending eclipse of a planet's multiple suns and the potential for panic by the population, who have never known darkness; some consider it the greatest science fiction story ever written.
Asimov attended Columbia University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in science, a Masters and a PhD in chemistry by the age of 28. He spent the first half of the 1950s as a biochemistry professor at Boston University's School of Medicine, but realized early on that he really wanted to devote himself to writing.
The science fiction community honored Asimov's contributions to the genre, granting him two of their most prestigious awards several times: the Hugo (five times) and the Nebula (three times). He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1987.
But Asimov's writing was not confined to fiction. Asimov's nonfiction works explored religion, science, history and literature, to mention only a few. He wrote for scholars, laymen and children, all with the same intent to explain and to make one understand.
While his imagination roamed the galaxies, Asimov himself traveled very little; he preferred to remain in New York City and had a notorious fear of flying. He was married twice, and had two children from his first marriage.
In 1983, Isaac Asimov received HIV-infected blood during triple bypass surgery. He died from complications of AIDS on April 6, 1992. His influence in the world of science fiction remains unabated. Several authors have written books set in the universes Asimov created, and the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction is named after him.


Keith Urban is a Grammy Award-winning country music artist who was born in New Zealand and is married to Nicole Kidman.
He performed at Live Earth in New York with Alicia Keys.
Google trends for "Keith Urban"


Do you frequently miss appointments? Do you forget to pay your bills on time because you can't find them in the clutter? Do you fear opening your closets will cause an avalanche? Are you embarrassed to have guests at your house? Do you wish you had a personal assistant to get it all done for you? Our team of professional organizers can help you make a plan and get organized. Livable Solutions professional organizers have organized, homes, offices and small businesses in Connecticut since 2004. Let our love of organizing be your motivation to achieve your goals.
Livable Solutions professional organizers offer home organizing, paperwork and document management, organizing for seniors, move management, vacation home organizing, kitchen organizing, garage organizing, home office organizing, digital organizing, downsizing and small business consultation, bookkeeping and bill paying services. Based in Guilford, Connecticut, serving clients throughout Connecticut, specifically the Connecticut Shoreline, New Haven County, Middlesex County, Fairfield County and Hartford County.
Click Here to Sign Up for our 40 Bags in 40 Days Decluttering Challenge cosponsored by Livable Solutions Professional Organizing and St. George's Church.
The challenge will be from March 6 , 2019 – April 18, 2019. It is free to participate and is designed to coincide with the 40 days of Lent.
Mark your calendars to attend our Kick-off Workshop on Monday, March 4, 2019 at 7 PM, St. George's Church Hall, 33 Whitfield Street, Guilford, CT. Professional Organizer Kristin Vander Wiede of Livable Solutions Professional Organizing will explain the challenge, help you set your goals and offer organization tips and resources to help you complete the decluttering process successfully.
Declutter, organize, and revitalize your living space. Let us get you started – you'll never look back!
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Organization is not a chore – it's a lifestyle. Our services aim to bring you to a starting point for this lifestyle, and we can help you continue to maintain it.


The intent of this project is to provide information and offer a new and innovative intervention to male adolescent bullying. Adolescent bullying continues to be a pervasive problem in Canadian communities. Significant barriers continue to exist in combating the problem of adolescent bullying, and thus, creative solutions are required. This project provides information regarding prevalence, etiology, characteristics, and interventions relating to adolescent bullying. Within this project, a sample counselling group program manual is provided that is based on the literature examined in this project. This sample counselling group manual is designed to support both victims and perpetrators of bullying within the same counselling group by providing an opportunity for educational interaction between these two populations. In providing opportunities for bullies and victims of bullying to interact together and learn from each other within a therapeutic setting, the goal of the proposed group is to support bullies and victims to become more empathetic and respectfully assertive with each other. Exercises from the manual will increase empathy and assertiveness through increasing self-awareness and the awareness of others and can be delivered within a school or community setting.


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Overview A-Z
Observations placeholder
Prolonged psychosis after Amanita muscaria ingestion
Type of Spiritual Experience
Number of hallucinations: 1
A description of the experience
Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2006 May;118(9-10):294-7.
Prolonged psychosis after Amanita muscaria ingestion.
Brvar M1, Mozina M, Bunc M.
Amanita muscaria has a bright red or orange cap covered with small white plaques. It contains the isoxazole derivatives ibotenic acid, muscimol and muscazone and other toxins such as muscarine. The duration of clinical manifestations after A. muscaria ingestion does not usually exceed 24 hours; we report on a 5-day paranoid psychosis after A. muscaria ingestion. A 48-year-old man, with no previous medical history, gathered and ate mushrooms he presumed to be A. caesarea. Half an hour later he started to vomit and fell asleep. He was found comatose having a seizure-like episode. On admission four hours after ingestion he was comatose, but the remaining physical and neurological examinations were unremarkable. Creatine kinase was 8.33 microkat/l. Other laboratory results and brain CT scan were normal. Toxicology analysis did not find any drugs in his blood or urine. The mycologist identified A. muscaria among the remaining mushrooms. The patient was given activated charcoal. Ten hours after ingestion, he awoke and was completely orientated; 18 hours after ingestion his condition deteriorated again and he became confused and uncooperative. Afterwards paranoid psychosis with visual and auditory hallucinations appeared and persisted for five days. On the sixth day all symptoms of psychosis gradually disappeared. One year later he is not undergoing any therapy and has no symptoms of psychiatric disease. We conclude that paranoid psychosis with visual and auditory hallucinations can appear 18 hours after ingestion of A. muscaria and can last for up to five days.
The source of the experience
Concepts, symbols and science items
Activities and commonsteps
Amanita muscaria
Commonsteps


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The Neurotrophic/Neuroprotective Role of Gip in Cellular and Rodent Models of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.( I )
林, 家瑋 (PI)
陳, 瑞明 (CoI)
Graduate Institute of Injury Prevention and Control
TMU Neuroscience Research Center - TBI
Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) represents 70-90% of all treated traumatic brain injuries. The symptoms, including mood disorders and impaired attention and memory, usually resolve without intervention, but sometimes persistent symptoms develop. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) plays major role in the pathogenesis of TBI, resulting in neuronal damage, and loss of cortical excitability and synaptic plasticity. Therefore, the potential of neuroprotection is a novel treatment strategy. Research have demonstrated that pretreatment with the endogenous incretin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) may provide neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects in many acute and chronic neurodegenerative models through GLP-1 receptor activation. Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) is another incretin similar to GLP-1, showing potential for halting or reversing neurodegenerative processes in CNS disorders. This is to further demonstrate the neuroprotective role of GIP in cellular and rodent models of mild traumatic brain injury. In the first year, we will identify the neuroprotective effect of GIP-R expression in PC12 cell model and primary rat cortical neuron by estimating the cell viability, proliferation, and survival. In addition, the (pro3)GIP, a specific GIP-R antagonist, will be utilized to confirm GIP-induced neurotrophic/neuroprotective actions are mediated via GIP-R. Consequently, we will figure out the regulatory mechanisms of GIP on the gene expression of mTBI animal model via using cDNA microarrays. The quantitative real time PCR and Western blotting will be used to further confirm the regulated gene expression. In the last year, the synaptic and cognitive function in mild traumatic brain injury animal model after GIP treatment will be investigated. The cognitive testing will be performed in a Morris water maze (MWM). The hippocampus tissues from mTBI animals, the mRNA expression of ARP2, Nrxn3, Tgm2 and Fcgr3 will be observed by QPCR. The protein expression of synapsin I and CREB will be determined by Western blotting. The BDNF protein in the hippocampus will be further quantified using ELISA. In the near future, we hope to clarify whether GIP may play a role in neuroprotection in mTBI animals. It will provide a novel strategy for mTBI treatment.


text:
RCN Business achieves MEF CE 2.0 certification for Ethernet service suite
Apr 8, 2014 10:52am
RCN Business, a competitive business service provider, added another potential element of differentiation by gaining the Metro Ethernet Forum's Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE 2.0) certification.
The service provider has gained CE 2.0 certification for its E-Line, E-LAN and E-Access services.
Since CE 2.0 was launched last year, only a total of nine service providers, including now RCN Business, have gained CE 2.0 certification. Other service providers that have gained CE 2.0 certification include Alaska Communications Services, Comcast Business (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Lumos Networks and tw telecom.
While a number of larger carriers like Verizon are working on their certification process, Robert Roeder, executive vice president and chief development officer for RCN Business, said that many are not "expected to finalize and achieve certification until 2015."
Gaining CE 2.0 certification does give RCN Business, which serves five markets in the Northeast and one in the Midwest, a near-term differentiator as it looks to win over more small to medium businesses (SMBs) and regional medium-sized businesses that are looking for alternative providers.
Like other business units of cable operators, RCN Business has been finding that its services are catching fire in multi-site regional segments including hospitality, real estate and higher education as seen with its contract with Pace University.
Special report: The 10 hottest wireline technologies in 2013
RCN divvies up business segments and names new management team
RCN officially under new management
Abry partners to acquire RCN for $1.2 billion


The use of Cedar as an important material used historically by Cowichan Tribes. The building can use Cedar for exterior or interior finishes, as well as screens, fences, and trellises. The integration of art from Cowichan Tribes artists to strengthen identity and pride.
Building Orientation: As with traditional buildings it was often important how the building was orientated. For example the main entrance for many First Nations Cultures is from the east. What ideas can we draw from the Pre-contact Coast Salish Long House? For example are there areas in the building we can use heavy timber or Cedar cladding. Salmon is an important food to the Cowichan People. Why not have a place for smoking or preparing salmon on the site? The connection to nature is important. The site around the building is as important as the living space. What elements in the landscape design can reinforce the culture and community of this proposed multi-family building?
What other cultural influences, which could shape the building design, are important to you?
What other types of shared spaces could make a multi-family building feel more like home to you?
Balconies to connect the living space to the outdoors.
A courtyard or sheltered outdoor space that can be an extension of shared space.
The use of shutters or screens made of cedar for privacy.
An outdoor walkway to enter suites from the upper floors to make each unit feel like it has its own exterior entrance.
The use of wood such as Cedar and Douglas Fir which are materials with cultural significance.
Integrated parking or parking close by the units.
Cultural symbolism through the use of art such as house posts.
A front porch or entry for each unit from the outside to give each unit a sense of identity and home.
A roof garden to enliven the top of the building and take advantage of potential views.
What other building elements could make this multi-family building more unique to Cowichan Tribes?
This Feasibility Study seeks to develop a design strategy for a 40 to 50 unit multi-family building that specifically addresses the needs of Cowichan Tribes. We understand there is a large waiting list for housing and, in the interest of the community, we are seeking a solution that will be culturally appropriate, environmentally responsible and economically feasible for Cowichan Tribes. To address the wide demographic needs of the membership, we looked at a mix of unit types within the same complex to address these needs.
In Option A, we looked at the more common double loaded corridor apartment complex and in Option B we looked at the gallery loaded or single loaded complex. In both options we located the larger 3-bedroom family units at the base of the building so there was direct access to a back yard for children. The smaller Bachelor, 1 bedroom and 2 bedroom units will be located on the upper floors. Both options integrate shared spaces on the ground level, and both schemes have an outdoor shared space used for community gardens, playgrounds and other amenity spaces.
Option A is the double loaded corridor scheme. The advantage of this scenario is that it uses one corridor to access units on each side. This is a typical apartment building with the corridor serving units on both sides making construction costs more efficient. However, there is less individuality to each living unit and less natural lighting in this part of the building.
Option B is a gallery loaded or single loaded building. Units on the upper floors have an outside entrance with their own porch. In addition there is the potential to have windows on both sides of each unit maximizing the access to natural light and minimizing lighting costs. There is also cross ventilation advantages similar to a house. The front door and the balcony door can be opened to allow a breeze to blow through the apartment on hotter days. This option seeks to find a solution somewhere in between the typical apartment block and the single family dwelling. It is less cost effective than Option A, however it is more cost effective than town houses.


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Home NRC Library Document Collections Events, Reports Associated with Part 21 Reports 2000
Page Last Reviewed/Updated Friday, April 17, 2020
Part 21 Report - 2000-250
REP ORG: CONSOLIDATED EDISON COMPANY NOTIFICATION DATE: 10/31/2000
LICENSEE: YUASA, INC. NOTIFICATION TIME: 10:30[EST]
CITY: REGION: 1 EVENT DATE: 06/09/2000
COUNTY: STATE: NY EVENT TIME: 12:00[EST]
LICENSE#: AGREEMENT: Y LAST UPDATE DATE: 10/31/2000
DOCKET: PERSON ORGANIZATION
HAROLD GRAY R1
VERN HODGE NRR
NRC NOTIFIED BY: R. LOUIE
HQ OPS OFFICER: DOUG WEAVER
EMERGENCY CLASS: N/A
CCCC 21.21 UNSPECIFIED PARAGRAPH
PART 21 NOTIFICATION -
Pursuant to 10 CFR 21.21(d)(3)(i), Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., the licensee for Indian Point Unit No. 2 hereby provides initial notification of a defect determined to be reportable under 10 CFR Part 21. The reported condition involves a 2GN23 1800 Amp-hour battery produced by YUASA, Inc. These batteries are used in the 125V DC System, and provide a primary source of 125V DC power to safeguards equipment and logic circuitry at Indian Point. On June 9, 2000, during the performance of a battery load test (PT-R76B), 22 Battery failed its two-hour minimum voltage characteristic (110.2VDC). It also failed to satisfy its required amp-hour capacity (greater than 90%). Following initial troubleshooting activities, similar load capacity failures occurred on June 18 and July 18, 2000. Various load tests and destructive examinations of the battery cells were performed over the next several weeks. A visual examination of the plates and separators did not indicate any discrepancies. However, microscopic analysis of samples obtained from two different positive plates revealed cracks within the positive active material, small pores, and small particle size. This would result in higher internal cell resistance when charging and discharging a battery. These cracks appear to have been produced during the manufacturing operation.


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BioData Mining
A fast forward 3D connection algorithm for mitochondria and synapse segmentations from serial EM images
Weifu Li1,2,
Jing Liu2,
Chi Xiao2,
Hao Deng3,
Qiwei Xie4,5 &
Hua Han2,6,7
BioData Mining volume 11, Article number: 24 (2018) Cite this article
It is becoming increasingly clear that the quantification of mitochondria and synapses is of great significance to understand the function of biological nervous systems. Electron microscopy (EM), with the necessary resolution in three directions, is the only available imaging method to look closely into these issues. Therefore, estimating the number of mitochondria and synapses from the serial EM images is coming into prominence. Since previous studies have achieved preferable 2D segmentation performance, it holds great promise to obtain the 3D connection relationship from the 2D segmentation results.
In this paper, we improve upon Matlab's function bwconncomp and propose a fast forward 3D connection algorithm for mitochondria and synapse segmentations from serial EM images. To benchmark the performance of the proposed method, two EM datasets with the annotated ground truth are produced for mitochondria and synapses, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve the preferable connection performance that closely matches the ground truth. Moreover, it greatly reduces the computational burden and alleviates the memory requirements compared with the function bwconncomp.
The proposed method can be deemed as an effective strategy to obtain the 3D connection relationship from serial mitochondria and synapse segmentations. It is helpful to accurately and quickly quantify the statistics of the numbers, volumes, surface areas, and lengths, which will greatly facilitate the data analysis of neurobiology research.
Recently, due to the rapid development of neuroscience, considerable attention has been paid for the statistics of the numbers, volumes, surface areas, and lengths of sub-cellular structures in the brain, allowing neuroscientists to compare these objects in healthy animals and those with degenerative brain diseases [1]. It acts as an important role in studying the sub-cellular structures and their implied behaviors of nervous systems [2]. Among these structures, mitochondria and synapses are of particular interest to neuroscience [3]. Indeed, mitochondria, known as the powerhouse of the cell, have been proven to carry out all types of important cellular functions by producing the overwhelming majority of cellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) [4]. Meanwhile, they also take substantial responsibility for the regulation of cellular life and death, as well as disease states. For example, mitochondrial dysfunction has been directly linked to the aging process, which is the largest single risk factor for Alzheimer Disease [5, 6]. In addition, synapses, known as the information transmitters, permit a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron in the mammalian nervous system. Mounting evidence also indicates that synaptic plasticity has a close link with learning and memory. To be specific, sensory experience, motor learning and aging are found to induce alterations in presynaptic axon boutons and postsynaptic dendritic spines [7, 8]. Consequently, the quantification of mitochondria and synapses is of great significance to the prevention and treatment of brain diseases.
The above researches provide the motivation for looking closely into these issues in a nervous system, and image analysis techniques as an important approach are widely adopted. For image acquisition, electron microscopy (EM), with sufficiently high resolution on the nanoscale, can provide not only the details of intra-cellular structures but also the synapses and gap junctions. In particular, focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) [9] can provide an isotropic resolution up to 5 nm in three directions, and automated tape-collecting ultramicrotome scanning electron microscopy (ATUM-SEM) [10] can offer an anisotropic voxel (4 nm× 4 nm× 30 nm) with a low resolution in the z direction. However, the FIB-SEM technique is limited to a small volume while the ATUM-SEM technique does not suffer from the limitation and can be applied to a large volume for the statistics and analysis [11]. To extract the invaluable structural information (mitochondria and synapses) from the serial EM images, substantial effort has been recently put into developing specialized algorithms for accurate segmentation of mitochondria and synapses. For some representative results, Lucchi et al. [12] clustered groups of similar voxels into regularly spaced supervoxels and incorporated mitochondrial shape features to an automated graph partitioning scheme for segmentation. On this base, they [13] introduced context-based features and modelled mitochondrial membranes for improvement. Staffler et al. [14] presented a method for automated detection of synapses, which focused on classifying borders between neuronal processes as synaptic or non-synaptic. Neila et al. [3] proposed an automated approach for both mitochondria and synapses that involved anisotropy-aware regularization via conditional random field inference and surface smoothing techniques to improve the segmentation and visualization. Moreover, due to the powerful representation capability of deep neural network, Xiao et al. [15] put forward a fusion fully convolutional network for mitochondrial segmentation and a fully connected conditional random field to optimize the segmentation results. Santurkar et al. [16] took a compositional approach to segment synapses by training lighter networks to model the simpler marginal distributions of membranes, clefts and vesicles.
Although above approaches have demonstrated preferable segmentation performance, it seems that the connection mode from serial binary segmentation results has not received enough attention in the anisotropic case. A recent research, Neila et al. [3] adopted an approximate, simple solution under the assumption that each connected component of the segmentation is one structure, and they also pointed out that estimating the number of structures from the segmentation results is still an open problem with plenty of ongoing research. Consequently, our aim in this paper is to develop a fast and effective 3D connection algorithm based on these segmentation results. The main contributions can be roughly grouped in two different directions.
Methods: Since the shapes of mitochondria and synapses have great differences in EM images, we propose a new similarity indicator that takes the shape into consideration. It could accurately measure the probability that the segmentation results belong to the same 3D mitochondrion or 3D synapse. In addition, we propose a forward connection mode that can effectively handle the problems of split and merge. This connection mode can be generalized to serial detection results, but not limited to serial segmentation results.
Data: We benchmark the performance of the proposed method against a previously unreleased corpus of manually annotated data. The corpus consists of two EM datasets acquired by the ATUM-SEM technique and the ground truth of mitochondria and synapses are manually annotated by 2-3 independent labelers, respectively. Both the EM datasets and manual annotations are released to the community providing a valuable tool for benchmarking.
The subsequent sections of this study present the detailed information about the datasets, the proposed connection algorithm, the experimental results, the meaningful discussions and conclusions.
In this paper, the biological specimens were selected from mouse cortex and the ATUM-SEM technique was adopted for image acquisition. The datasets were collected from a water bath using a custom designed tape-collection conveyor belt in the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where several slices with thicknesses of more or less 50 nm were cut automatically. Next, these sections were imaged through SEM (Zeiss Supra55) in the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where the pixel size was set at 2 nm and the dwell time was set at 2 μs. Since the datasets acquired by the ATUM-SEM technique were unregistered, the image registration method applied in [17] was adopted in this paper. After registration, two ATUM-SEM datasets are used to construct the corresponding databases for mitochondria and synapses, respectively.
Mitochondria dataset
The mitochondria dataset consists of 31 slices with a resolution of 2×2×50nm3/voxel, and each slice has a size of 8416×8624 [18]. The ground truth were prepared via the hand segmentation outlining the mitochondrial membrane by two labelers with cross validation. A total of 473 mitochondria including the incomplete ones were annotated with the plugin TrakEm2 in software ImageJ [19]. Figure 1a-b present the acquired images and annotated mitochondria in the adjacent slices, where different mitochondria are represented by different colors. To accelerate the neurobiology research, we share the mitochondria dataset and the annotated ground truth publicly available in the websiteFootnote 1.
a and b: adjacent ATUM-SEM images with the mitochondria annotated by different colors; c and d: adjacent ATUM-SEM images with the annotated synapses
Synapse dataset
Since the synapses are more sparsely distributed than the mitochondria in the biological tissue, we need a larger volume for statistics and analysis. Here, the synapse dataset consists of 178 slices with the resolution 2×2×50nm3/voxel and size 8576×7616 [15]. The ground truth were prepared via the hand segmentation outlining the synaptic junctions by three labelers with cross validation. A total of 1230 synapses were annotated by different colors. Figure 1c-d present the acquired images and annotated synapses in the adjacent slices. Also, the synapse dataset and the annotated ground truth are provided publicly available in the websiteFootnote 2.
It is worthwhile to emphasize that creating such two databases requires a considerable amount of human effort, and it is a considerably time-consuming process which also justifies that previous endeavors on computerized segmentation are of great significance for the neurobiology research.
As mentioned above, the EM images with high resolution will inevitably produce large data even at small neural circuit. From a practical point of view, it is time consuming and memory consuming to directly measure the similarity of segmentations in the adjacent slices. Therefore, we propose a fast coarse-to-fine connection algorithm instead. The main motivation is given by the following axiom.
Axiom 1: Let s1 and s2 be the segmentations, and d1 and d2 be the regions satisfying s1⊂d1 and s2⊂d2. Then if \(d_{1}\bigcap d_{2}=\emptyset \), \(s_{1}\bigcap s_{2}=\emptyset \).
This axiom indicates that we can use the bounding boxes containing the segmentations for screening to reduce the computation cost. The proposed connection algorithm is divided into four steps: coarse screening, validation, fine connection and skip connection. The detailed procedures are summarized in the following subsections.
Coarse screening
On basis of the 2D segmentation results, we first obtain the corresponding bounding boxes by the Matlab's function regionprops. Assume that there are n slices and each slice has ki segmentations i=1,2,⋯,n, and the pth segmentation in the ith slice is denoted by matrix \(s^{i}_{p}\) and its bounding box is denoted by coordinate vector \(X^{i}_{p}\), the coarse similarity \(c_{pq}^{i}\) of segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\) is measured by the Intersection-over-Union (IoU) of bounding boxes \(X^{i}_{p}\) and \(X^{i + 1}_{q}\):
$$ c_{pq}^{i}:=\text{IoU}\left(X^{i}_{p},X^{i+1}_{q}\right)=\frac{A\left({X^{i}_{p}}\cap X^{i+1}_{q}\right)}{A\left({X^{i}_{p}}\cup X^{i + 1}_{q}\right)}. $$
Here, \(A\left ({X^{i}_{p}}\cap X^{i+1}_{q}\right)\) and \(A\left ({X^{i}_{p}}\cup X^{i+1}_{q}\right)\) denote the areas of the intersection and union of \(X^{i}_{p}\) and \(X^{i + 1}_{q}\), respectively. Since the intersection is empty with high probability when \(X^{i}_{p}\) and \(X^{i+1}_{q}\) belong to the different 3D structures, it is clear that \(c_{pq}^{i},~p=1,\cdots,k_{i},~q=1,\cdots,k_{i+1}\) are almost zeros. Therefore, we can use a sparse matrix Ci to denote the coarse connection relation between the ith slice and the i+1th slice as follows:
$$ C^{i} = \left({\begin{array}{cccc} {c_{11}^{i}}&{c_{12}^{i}}& \cdots &{c_{1k_{i+1}}^{i}}\\ {c_{21}^{i}}&{c_{22}^{i}}& \cdots &{c_{2k_{i+1}}^{i}}\\ \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ {c_{k_{i}1}^{i}}&{c_{k_{i}2}^{i}}& \cdots &{c_{k_{i}k_{i+1}}^{i}} \end{array}}\right),~ i=1,2,\cdots,n-1. $$
According to axiom 1, the position information provided by the bounding box is only a necessary condition, it may produce superfluous connections. As illustrated in Fig. 2c, the connection matrix cannot accurately reflect the connection relationship between the segmentations in Fig. 2a-b. Note that a larger similarity \(c_{pq}^{i}\) means a higher probability that the segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\) belong to the same 3D structure. Two thresholds 0≤Tl≤Th≤1 are adopted to judge whether the \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\) are connected. Three cases are listed as below:
If \(c_{pq}^{i}\in [T_{h},1]\), there exists a connection between the \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\);
A schematic diagram of coarse-to-fine similarity measure. a and b present the original images in the adjacent slices, where the segmentation results are outlined by red curves and the corresponding bounding boxes are depicted by green boxes. c and d present the coarse connection matrix and the updated matrix
If \(c_{pq}^{i}\in [0, T_{l})\), there exists no connection between the \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\). Set \(c_{pq}^{i}=0\);
If \(c_{pq}^{i}\in [T_{l}, T_{h})\), there may be a connection between the \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\), which needs to be validated as marked in red in Fig. 2c (Tl=0.01 and Th=0.4 are used).
In this subsection, we utilize the segmentation information to validate the similarities in case (3). According to the coordinate vectors \(X^{i}_{p}\) and \(X^{i + 1}_{q}\), we can find a minimum image domain I that contains the corresponding segmentations, namely, two binary images denoted by \(I^{i}_{p}\) and \(I^{i + 1}_{q}\), respectively. On this base, we update the similarity \(c_{pq}^{i}\) of the segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\) by considering the invariable position term \(P\left (s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\) and the variational shape term \(S\left (s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\):
$$ c_{pq}^{i} = \frac{P^{2}\left(s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)+\lambda\cdot S^{2}\left(s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)} {1+\lambda}. $$
Here, λ≥0 is a regularization parameter for balance. \(P\left (s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\) characterizes the invariance of segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\), and is defined by the IoU of the corresponding binary images \(I^{i}_{p}\) and \(I^{i + 1}_{q}\):
$$ P\left(s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)=\text{IoU}\left(I^{i}_{p},I^{i+1}_{q}\right). $$
In contrast, \(S\left (s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\) characterizes the variability of segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+1}_{q}\). Assume that the essential transformation \(h: s^{i}_{p}\longrightarrow s^{i + 1}_{q}\) has the form h=hαhβ, hα(x)=αx (scaling), and hβ(x′)=x′+β (translation) [20]. Then given a set of H transformations \(\mathcal {H}=\{h_{1}, h_{2}, \cdot \cdot \cdot, h_{H}\}\), \(S\left (s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\) is defined by:
$$\begin{array}{*{20}l} S\left(s^{i}_{p},s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)=\max\left\{\left.P\left(h_{k}\left(s^{i}_{p}\right),s^{i + 1}_{q}\right)\right|k=1,2,\cdots,H\right\}. \end{array} $$
After updating all the similarities in case (3), we can obtain new connection matrices Ci,i=1,2,⋯,n−1. For example, the similarities marked in red in Fig. 2c are validated and the updated matrix is shown in Fig. 2d. It is clear that the updated matrix effectively eliminates the false connections. Then, another threshold Ts∈[0,Th) is adopted to determine the fine connection matrices:
$$ B^{i}=C^{i}>T_{s}, i=1,2,\cdots,n-1. $$
Fine connection
For each binary connection matrices Bi,i=1,2,⋯,n−1, the sum of the pth row \(R_{p}^{i}~(p=1,2,\cdots, k_{i})\) implies that \(s_{p}^{i}\) connects with \(R_{p}^{i}\) segmentations in the i+1th slice, and the sum of the qth column \(N_{q}^{i+1}~\left (q=1,2,\cdots, k_{i+1}\right)\) implies that \(N_{q}^{i+1}\) segmentations in the ith slice connects with \(s_{q}^{i+1}\). Based on this fact, we propose a forward connection mode instead of the iterative bidirectional connection mode in [21]. The details are divided into three steps.
Firstly, we assign several categories to each segmentation according to the \(R_{p}^{i}\) and \(N_{q}^{i+1}\) as illustrated in Fig. 3a. These categories include One-to-one (O), Start (S), End (E), Split1 (S1), Merge1 (M1), Split2 (S2) and Merge2 (M2). For clarity of presentation, we provide a simplified matrix of Bi in Table 1. The five general connection cases are listed as follows: (1) since \(R_{1}^{i}=N_{1}^{i+1}=1\), we assign O to the first segmentation in the ith slice; (2) since \(R_{2}^{i}=0\), we assign E to the second segmentation in the ith slice; (3) since \(N_{4}^{i+1}=0\), we assign S to the fourth segmentation in the i+1th slice; (4) since \(R_{3}^{i}=2\) and \(N_{2}^{i+1}=N_{3}^{i+1}=1\), we assign S1 to the third segmentation in the ith slice and S2 to the second and the third segmentations in the i+1th slice; (5) since \(R_{4}^{i}=R_{5}^{i}=1\) and \(N_{5}^{i+1}=2\), we assign M1 to the fourth and the fifth segmentations in the ith slice and M2 to the fifth segmentation in the i+1th slice. Moreover, S is assigned to each segmentation in the first slice and E is assigned to each segmentation in the final slice. It should be noted that each segmentation may have two or more categories as shown in Fig. 3a.
A schematic diagram of the proposed connection mode. a assigning several categories to each segmentation; b assigning an initial label to each segmentation; c reassigning the same label to the segmentations in case of split and merge
Table 1 A simplified matrix of Bi with five general connection cases
Secondly, we assign an initial label to each segmentation according to the categories as illustrated in Fig. 3b. Specifically, we first denote the segmentation sets with category O, with category S, with category E, with category S1, with category M1, with category S2 and with category M2 in the ith slice as Oi, Si, Ei, \(S_{1}^{i}\), \(M_{1}^{i}\), \(S_{2}^{i}\) and \(M_{2}^{i}\), respectively. Then we begin with each segmentation \(s\in S^{i}\bigcup S_{2}^{i}\bigcup M_{2}^{i}, i=1,2,\cdots n,\) and assign a unique label j to it. If s∈Oi, find the connected segmentation s1 in the i+1 slice by Bi and assign the same label j to s1. Set s=s1,i=i+1, and repeat above steps until s∉Oi.
Thirdly, we reassign the same label to the segmentations in case of split and merge as illustrated in Fig. 3c. Specifically, for each segmentation \(s_{1} \in M_{1}^{i} \bigcup S_{1}^{i}, i=1,2,\cdots n-1\), we first obtain the label j1 of s1 and the label j2 of the connected segmentation \(s_{2}\in M_{2}^{i+1} \bigcup S_{2}^{i+1}\) in the i+1 slice by Bi. Then, we reassign the label min{j1,j2} to these segmentations with labels j1 and j2.
By this connection mode, we assign different labels to these segmentations. When λ=0, \(\phantom {\dot {i}\!}T_{s}=T_{d_{2}}=0\), the coarse-to-fine connection method has the same performance as the Matlab's function bwconncomp, which judges whether the segmentation results are connected by the specified connectivity for the connected components.
Skip connection
The matrices Bi,i=1,2,⋯,n−1, only characterize the connection relationship in the adjacent slices. However, it is usually hard to prevent wrinkle and damage from sample preparation and imaging in practice. Additionally, a minority of objects are difficult to be identified because they sometimes do not exhibit their typical characteristics on a certain slice. Therefore, the connection relationship in the skipped slices should also be considered. Based on the above considerations, we first calculate the coarse connection matrices as:
$$ C^{i2} = \left({\begin{array}{cccc} {c_{11}^{i2}}&{c_{12}^{i2}}& \cdots &{c_{1k_{i+2}}^{i2}}\\ {c_{21}^{i2}}&{c_{22}^{i2}}& \cdots &{c_{2k_{i+2}}^{i2}}\\ \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ {c_{k_{i}1}^{i2}}&{c_{k_{i}2}^{i2}}& \cdots &{c_{k_{i}k_{i+2}}^{i2}} \end{array}} \right), i=1,2,\cdots,n-2, $$
where the \(c_{pq}^{i2}, p=1,2,\cdots,k_{i},~q=1,2,\cdots,k_{i+2}\) is the coarse similarity of \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+2}_{q}\). Then, we focus on each pair of segmentations \(s^{i}_{p}\in E^{i}\) and \(s^{i+2}_{q}\in S^{i+2}\). If \(c_{pq}^{i2}>0\), update the \(c_{pq}^{i2}\) by formula (3) and judge the connectivity by threshold Ts. If \(c_{pq}^{i2}>T_{s}\), reassign a new label min{j1,j2} to the segmentations with labels j1 and j2, where j1 and j2 are the labels of \(s^{i}_{p}\) and \(s^{i+2}_{q}\), respectively.
The proposed method is sketched in the following Algorithm 1. By using the proposed algorithm, we divide the whole segmentations into several disjoint sets, which satisfies that the segmentations in the same set belong to the same 3D object while these in the different sets belong to different 3D objects.
In this section, we conduct several experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm on the above mentioned datasets. The connection capacity is measured by two fundamental performance indicators, split error and merge error [22]. Here, the split error means that a true 3D object is regarded as several 3D objects, which often occurs when large objects sometimes split into two or more connected components. In contrast, the merge error means that several true 3D objects are regarded as a whole 3D object and it will occur when a group of structures close to each other often merge in a single connected component [3].
The parameters in the proposed algorithm have a huge impact on the final connection performance. For example, a larger Tl tends to produce split errors and a smaller Th tends to produce merge errors. To guarantee a better connection performance, a relatively small threshold Tl=0.01 and a relatively large threshold Th=0.4 are chosen for coarse screening although it will take more time for verification. The choice of parameter λ depends on the size of the segmentation results. In the mitochondria experiments, since the diameter of mitochondria is commonly between 0.75 and 3 μm [23], the segmentation results that belong to the same 3D mitochondrion usually have large overlap in the adjacent slices. Then λ is set from 0 to 1 with step size 0.1 to satisfy that the position term in (3) is the dominant contribution for the similarity measure. In the synapse experiments, the mean cleft width of wild-type synapses is 22±0.5 nm between the pre- and postsynaptic neurons [24, 25]. Due to the offsets and differences in the adjacent slices, the segmentation results that belong to the same 3D synapse usually have small or even no overlaps. Then λ is set from 0 to 10 with step size 1 to satisfy that the shape term in (3) is the dominant contribution. Meanwhile, we adjust the threshold Ts from 0 to 0.1 with step size 0.01. The number of split errors, the number of merge errors and the number of total errors of the proposed method at varying thresholds λ and Ts are illustrated in Fig. 4a-b, c-d and e-f, respectively, where the results of the function bwconncomp are also presented as baseline for comparison. Several useful conclusions can be drawn from Fig. 4.
a and b the number of split errors of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method at varying thresholds λ and Ts; c and d the number of merge errors; e and f the number of total errors
Firstly, the step 'skip connection' in the proposed method is capable of reducing the number of split errors. As mentioned in Remark 1, the function bwconncomp is a special case of the proposed method. Specifically, adding the step 'skip connection' to the function bwconncomp has the same performance as the proposed method at λ=0 and Ts=0. As shown in Fig. 4a-b, the step 'skip connection' can greatly reduce the split errors compared with the function bwconncomp. That is because the function bwconncomp only finds the connected components in the adjacent slices and splits a 3D object into two connected components when the information is missing. In contrast, our approach avoids this shortcoming by the step 'skip connection'.
Secondly, the suitable parametersλ andTs play an important role in the final connection performance. The regularization parameter λ is used for controlling the significance of the shape term in (3). Usually, a large λ is prone to produce merge errors while a small λ usually leads to split errors. The suitable choice of λ plays an important role in the balance. As shown in Fig. 4a-b, the choice λ>0 significantly reduces the number of split errors compared with λ=0 (function bwconncomp), especially in the synapse dataset. It demonstrates the superiority of the proposed similarity indicator. In addition, as another threshold Ts for determining the fine connection, a large Ts tends to produce split errors while a small Ts tends to produce merge errors. Similarly, compared with Ts=0 (function bwconncomp) in Fig. 4c-d, the choice Ts>0 greatly reduces the number of merge errors. Taking these factors into consideration, the suggested parameters are λ∈(0.4,0.6),Ts∈(0.02,0.03) for the mitochondria dataset and λ∈(1,3),Ts∈(0.03,0.05) for the synapse dataset, respectively as shown in Fig. 4e-f.
Thirdly, the proposed method achieves the near-human performance in obtaining the 3D connection relationship. Given the suggested parameters, there are only three split errors on the mitochondria dataset, and the optimal case without split error and merge error is achieved on the synapse dataset. Note that the proposed method achieves the optimal performance for a wide range of thresholds in Fig. 4e-f. The robustness is demonstrated.
To have a visual presentation, we provide the specific connection results of the proposed method on the mitochondria dataset and the synapse dataset in Fig. 5, where these segmentations that belong to the same 3D object are described by the same colors. It is clear that the proposed connection algorithm can effectively handle the problems of split and merge (Fig. 5).
a and b the specific connection results of the proposed method
Running time comparison
As mentioned in the previous subsection, the choices of Tl and Th are not only related to the connection performance but also the time consumption. In this subsection, we first preset the optimal parameters Ts=0.03, λ=0.5 for the mitochondria experiments and Ts=0.03, λ=2 for the synapse experiments. Then, the threshold Tl from 0 to 0.1 with step size 0.01 and threshold Th from 0.2 to 0.4 with step size 0.02 are adjusted to estimate the time consumption. Figure 6a-b present the time consumption of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method at varying thresholds for comparison. Meanwhile, the corresponding connection performance is also provided for referencing in Fig. 6c-d. Several useful conclusions can be drawn from Fig. 6.
a and b the time consumption of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method at varying thresholds; c and d the corresponding connection performance
Firstly, the suitable parametersTh andTl reduce the time consumption as well as keep the preferable performance. From Fig. 6, it is obvious that a larger Th and a smaller Tl will take more time for computation on the both datasets. Note that the number of errors does not decrease when Th≥0.34,Tl≤0.01 for the mitochondria dataset, and Th≥0.2,Tl≤0.07 for the synapse dataset, the suggested parameter interval are Th∈(0.34,0.4),Tl∈(0,0.01) and Th∈(0.2,0.3),Tl∈(0,0.07), respectively. For a detailed representation, the time consumption of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method at several suggested parameters are provided in Table 2.
Table 2 The time consumption of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method at several suggested parameters
Secondly, the proposed method is more computationally efficient than the functionbwconncomp. From Table 2, we can see that the proposed method only needs an average of 300s to obtain the connection results while the function bwconncomp needs 398s on the mitochondria dataset and 1815s on the synapse dataset. It is because the size of synapse dataset is 6 times larger than that of mitochondria dataset and the function bwconncomp obtains the connected components by handling with each pixel. However, the proposed method uses the thresholds Tl and Th for coarse screening and only computes the region of interest instead of the whole image, which reduces the computation cost.
Memory comparison
In this subsection, we present the memory requirement of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method in Table 3. It can be seen that the memory requirement of the proposed method is less than 1/6 of the function bwconncomp on the mitochondria dataset and approximately 1/10 of the function bwconncomp on the synapse dataset, respectively. It is mainly because the input of function bwconncomp must be the total serial segmentation results, i.e., the memory requirement is closely related to the data size. In contrast, the proposed method only needs to read two images repeatedly for calculating the connection matrices. The memory requirement is determined by these sparse connection matrices, which is independent of the data size. It indicates that the proposed method does not suffer from the common problem "Out of Memory" caused by large dataset.
Table 3 The memory requirement of the function bwconncomp and the proposed method
All codes are written in Matlab Version R2016b (Math Works, Inc.). The mitochondria experiments are performed on a personal computer with an i7-4790 MQ 3.60 GHz Intel processor, 32 GB RAM and Windows operating system. Since the error "Out of Memory" happens when the function bwconncomp is tested on the synapse dataset, the synapse experiments are performed on a public server with an i7-4820 MQ 2.00 GHz Intel processor, 512 GB RAM and Windows operating system. The codes are available onlineFootnote 3.
This present research is primarily motivated by the need to accurately obtain the statistics of mitochondria and synapses from serial EM images, which helps the neuroscientists to quickly quantify these objects in healthy and diseased animals. Since previous researches have achieved preferable performance on 2D segmentations [3, 15, 16, 18, 26], this paper has proposed a fast and effective method to obtain the 3D connection relation. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we produce two ATUM-SEM datasets with the annotated ground truth for mitochondria and synapses, respectively. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed method on the connection performance, running time and memory requirement over the function bwconncomp.
Because the proposed method only depends on the shapes and distribution of the objects, it indicates that the proposed method can also achieve a robust 3D connection performance for other subcellular structures, such as the endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, and microtubules. Because all these structures are sparsely distributed in the EM images, relatively smaller parameters Tl=0.01,Th=0.2 can be adopted for reducing the time consumption. Meanwhile, the shapes of endoplasmic reticulum and microtubules are narrow as the synapses, and the shapes of Golgi apparatus are elliptical as the mitochondria. The suggested parameters can be λ=2,Ts=0.03 for the endoplasmic reticulum and microtubules, and λ=0.5,Ts=0.02 for the Golgi apparatus.
Despite the promising results of the proposed method, several problems still deserve further research. The most important concern is that the connection performance usually relies heavily on the segmentation results. However, previous segmentation algorithms [3, 15, 16, 18, 26] almost focus on the lower pixel-wise prediction error (pixel error). Unfortunately, pixel error considers only whether or not a given pixel is correctly classified as the object, without concern for the ultimate effect on the connection performance. For example, expanding, shrinking or translating the object between two slices would not cause splits or mergers, but incur a large pixel error. Further, while a gap of even a single pixel in the object between two slices would cause a merge error, it might only incur a very small pixel error [27]. Thus, further research on segmentation algorithms should take other indicators such as the rand error [28], warping error [29] into consideration. In addition, a good connection method is expected to be more robust to different segmentation results. The generalization performance of the proposed method should be further validated on the results obtained by state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms. Future research will focus on using the 3D connection relation for optimizing the local misleading segmentation. As another concern, the effectiveness of the proposed method may owe to the characteristic that both the mitochondria and synapses are sparsely distributed in EM images. More future investigations along the present line will validate the generalization performance of the proposed method on the dense neuron segmentations. In addition, since it will yield more split errors and merge errors when the number of segments is large, some normalized benchmarks like "rand index" will be added for the split-merge error analysis.
To obtain the 3D connection relationship from serial mitochondria and synapse segmentations, this paper proposes a fast forward 3D connection algorithm, which can be deemed as a generalization of existing Matlab's function bwconncomp. The proposed method can achieve the connection performance that matches the ground truth closely. Meanwhile, it can significantly reduce the computational burden and alleviate the memory requirements compared with the function bwconncomp. It means that our approach can help neuroscientists to accurately and quickly obtain the meaningful statistics of mitochondria and synapses, which will greatly facilitate the data analysis of neurobiology research. To our knowledge, such method is the first work in this topic.
http://95.163.198.142/MiRA/mitochondria31/
http://95.163.198.142/MiRA/synapse178/
https://github.com/WeifuLi/A-Fast-Forward-Connection-Algorithm
ATP:
Adenosine triphosphate
ATUM-SEM:
Automated tape-collecting ultramicrotome scanning electron microscopy
FIB-SEM:
Focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy
IoU:
Intersection-over-Union
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The authors would like to thank Dr. Yu Kong, Yang Yang and Danqian Liu (Institute of Neuroscience, CAS) for their assistance with preparation and sectioning of the sample. Also, we would like to thank Mr. Lixin Wei and his colleagues (Institute of Automation, CAS) for the Zeiss Supra55 SEM and technical support.
The financial support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 61673381, NO. 11771130, NO. 61871177, NO. 41501392, NO. 61701497), Science and Technology Development Fund of Macau (044/2015/A2), Scientific Instrument Developing Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NO. YZ201671), Bureau of International Cooperation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NO. 153D31KYSB20170059), and Special Program of Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (NO. Z161100000216146) is appreciated.
The data and source code in this paper are available online.
Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics, Hubei University, 368 Youyi Road, Wuhan, 430062, China
Weifu Li
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 95 Zhongguancun East Road, Beijing, 100190, China
Weifu Li, Jing Liu, Chi Xiao & Hua Han
Faculty of Information Technology, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long,Taipa, Macau, China
Hao Deng
Data Mining Lab, Beijing University of Technology, 100 Ping Le Yuan, Beijing, 100124, China
Qiwei Xie
Research Base of Beijing Modern Manufacturing Development, 100 Ping Le Yuan, Beijing, 100124, China
Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue Yang Road, Shanghai, 200031, China
Hua Han
School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100190, China
Chi Xiao
Correspondence to Qiwei Xie or Hua Han.
Conceived and designed the experiments: WL, JL, Performed the experiments: WL, CX, HD, Analyzed the data: WL, QX, HH, Contributed materials: QX, HH.
Li, W., Liu, J., Xiao, C. et al. A fast forward 3D connection algorithm for mitochondria and synapse segmentations from serial EM images. BioData Mining 11, 24 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13040-018-0183-7
3D connection
EM images
Bwconncomp


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Biomet Inc, Biomet Manufacturing, LLC, Biomet U.S. Reconstruction, LLC and Biomet Orthopedics, L.L.C.
March 4, 2019 Filing 85 Case transferred in from Indiana Northern. Case Number 3:16-cv-00451; received electronically.
January 10, 2019 Filing 82 STATUS CONFERENCE held on 1/9/2019 before Judge Robert L Miller, Jr. Pla appeared by atty Navan Ward. Dft appeared by atty Erin Hanig, John Winter. Summary of topics discussed and action taken. Next status conference set for March 4, 2019 at 01:30 PM (EST) in US District Court - South Bend before Judge Robert L Miller Jr. (Court Reporter D. Bonk.) Associated Cases: 3:12-md-02391-RLM-MGG et al.(jld) Modified on 1/11/2019 to correct date hearing held (jld). Modified on 2/1/2019 to correct date hearing held (dk).
November 19, 2018 Filing 80 STATUS CONFERENCE held on 11/15/2018 before Judge Robert L Miller, Jr. Pla appeared by atty Brenda Fulmer. Dft appeared by atty John Winter, Erin Hanig. Topics discussed included status of discovery in Groups 6 and 7 and pending motions. Next status conference set for Wednesday, January 9, 2019 at 1:15 p.m. (EST) in US District Court - South Bend before Judge Robert L Miller Jr. (Court Reporter D. Bonk.) Associated Cases: 3:12-md-02391-RLM-MGG et al.(jld) Modified on 12/13/2018 to correct date of hearing (jld).


Sony is a mobile device producer well known for the production of high quality Smartphones and Tablets especially their Xperia series. I will like to inform you that Sony has released another amazing Tablet recently – The Sony Xperia Tablet Z (Kitchen Edition).
The Sony Xperia Tablet Z (Kitchen Edition) is a water-resistant tablet which is built suitably for the kitchen environment; it is different from the Sony Xperia Tablet Z regular edition because it comes with a stand that holds the tablet upright in the kitchen while reading the cooking process and recipes from the screen. Also in the box is a Bluetooth-enabled iGrill meat thermometer which lets you know the temperature of the meat you are cooking.
Apart from the hardware mentioned above, this tablet comes with lots of pre-loaded kitchen Apps like iGrill Pro, BigOven, Evernote Food, Juicing Recipes and Out of Milk Shopping List etc.
Now, I know you are already falling in love with this tablet and you will like to know its price; that is if you are also the kitchen type just like me... LoL. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z Kitchen Edition (32GB storage, Wi-Fi only) cost $650 while the regular edition costs $580. It is not yet available in Nigeria but it is presently available on Amazon.com, We will let you know where to buy it and the price tag once it is here in Nigeria. What do you think about this amazing kitchen tablet? Don't you think it's a presentable gift for mum? Let's hear from you, use the comment box below and kindly share this interesting post with your friends.


Everyone wants to be appreciated, even if only on occasion. So being asked to do this picture for money was an added bonus!
I love doing anything that requires me drawing the human (or inhuman) body. The way light catches all of its surfaces and how it all combines to show motion and emotion fascinates me.
I spent a lot of time creating superheroes as a kid, learning anatomy the Marvel way, lol. When bodybuilding and wrestling came into my world, I studied the human frame, male and female and committed it to memory.
Honestly, I rarely saw He-Man growing up. So this was really fun to tackle; putting my own spin on Skeletor.
So if you can find a way to do exactly what you want and still be paid, that's Nirvana, right?..
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged art, art style, commission based work, He-Man, illustration, masters of the universe, playtime, prismacolor markers, Skeletor on September 12, 2016 by thumper71.


text:
Q: Multidimensional Monte Carlo Method I am trying to evaluate the following multidimensional integral:
Integral

with the answer being 155/6. However the Python code I've used:
Attempted Code

doesn't work. How do I correct or what code should I do instead?

A: You have couple of bugs in your code.
Most important one is when you square point first and sum later, not as shown in formula. Then you divide by 'n' which is undefuned.
Here is correct code
import numpy as np

rng = np.random.default_rng()

D = 10
N = 1000000

I = 0.0

for k in range(0, N):
    pt = rng.random(D)
    I += np.sum(pt)**2

print(I/N*6.0/155.0)

On Python 3.8.5 x64, windows 10, it prints
0.9996726183447514


text:
class RemoveWishedProductsForDeletedVariants < SpreeExtension::Migration[4.2]
  def up
    Spree::WishedProduct.includes(:variant).find_each do |wished_product|
      wished_product.destroy unless wished_product.variant
    end
  end

  def down
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
A Case of the Mondays on the Market
Let's compare last Monday with this one, and spot a difference -- a difference that could speak to a correction to come.
By HELENE MEISLER
Was Monday's decline similar to last Monday's decline? After all, both times we saw a total lack of selling once the initial drop happened.
We can make the case that last Monday and this Monday, the selling was in the big-cap index movers and not in the rest of the market. Breadth was in line with the decline, but for the New York Stock Exchange, 54% of the volume was on the upside this week, while the S&P was down 25 points.
Over on Nasdaq, where last Monday saw a decline of 190 points and up volume chime in at 65%, this week saw a decline of 165 points and up volume at 65%. So, yes, it is similar.
What is different? What is different, at least to me, is that last week we were not yet overbought. Last week we were still decently oversold, as we were working off that oversold reading form just before Christmas.
Another difference is that the McClellan Summation Index has not budged in a week. Please look at that surge in the Russell 2000 (brown line) and then look at the Summation Index (blue). That is highly unusual for the two to diverge so much, but that's what we've got.
But let's talk about the pattern that has developed in the S&P over the last few months. Overall it has been upward since that late October low, but let's focus on how each month has developed. In November, we had that big Pfizer (PFE:NYSE) vaccination news that was given back pretty quickly. So, we had a rally the first two weeks of the month, and then we went sideways for a few weeks. That arrow on the chart is the last time-just prior to Thanksgiving-that my weekly Saturday poll on the S&P showed the majority looked for the following week to be down.
So we rallied in the last week of November and the first week of December. And then we went sideways for the next few weeks. Again, we got oversold just prior to Christmas and we rallied for two weeks. Will the pattern of the last few months hold? Will we get some sort of sideways or a correction in the middle of the month? I think so.
Overall, there was not much selling in the market on Monday, which is similar to last week, but I think it was easier for us to renew the rally last week, because we were not yet overbought as we are right now.
At the time of publication, Meisler had no position in any security mentioned.
TAGS: Investing | Stocks | Technical Analysis |


Lately, while waiting for my melatonin to kick in, I have been watching old Friends re-runs.
Go ahead and sing with me…."I'll be there for you" clap, clap, clap, clap.
Every night I think…man I love that kitchen.
This kitchen has taken a lot of heat for being "too busy" and "too cluttered" and "not functional at all".
But the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants teal base cabinets.
Not to mention the cute ceramic Pickles tub that they filled with utensils…..and the pink mixer. Oh and the would-be-cute-with-different-fabric sink ruffle.
I just love this kitchen, and all the color and chaos.
Isn't it kind of amazing that this show…and kitchen…were filmed in the nineties. Especially considering some of the trends of today you can find, like the open shelving.
While looking at photos of the apartment and reading debates on whether they could really afford it or not….I stumbled on this at Bien Living.
Interesting to see the layouts of our Friends homes, eh?
I love that Monica's messy closet has a question mark on it. Not sure if they are being funny since it's a mass of junk, or if they aren't true Friends fans.
Speaking of true fans….Tim says this post won't be complete unless I say the following word. PIVOT.
Ross there is no left LEFT!
Oh wow…you found a Friends apartment floor plan! That's awesome, I've always imagined what those two apartments look like all together.
Also wanted to let you know…I highlighted you as one of my favorite Small & Good blogs in a recent roundup.
I know, isn't it crazy to actually see the floorplan!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I will be sure to check it out and share the love 🙂 Hope you are having a great day!!!
Omigosh! Stumbling upon this post makes me love you guys even more… I am a HUGE Friends fanatic, and I always have lusted over that apartment, hoping my fist apartment would be as cool. 🙂 (Unfortunately, my fist apartment was actually smaller than the bedroom I had in my parents' house). And finding that floorplan… amazing.
Anyways, I just thought I would stick my two cents in and say on behalf of the old "could they afford it" argument, in the episode titled "The One With the Flashback", when Monica meets Joey she tells him that when her grandmother moved to Florida she gave her the apartment, and admits that she'd never be able to afford it any other way.
Hahah I noticed that when I visited your page! I feel like we are meant to be e-friends!!!!


text:
Q: generating animation in tkinter I wrote a small program using tkinter to generate a figure based on parameters I'm giving the program (through gui interface). I am drawing the figure directly with tkinter using Canvas. Now I want to generate a series of figures and put them in animated loop. I can generate a gif animation and load it into the figure but the question is if I can do this directly in tkinter. I can put everything in loop, but then I'll lose the event handler. Any other option?

Edit
Here is a simple script:
#!/usr/bin/python
from Tkinter import *
import ttk
import numpy as np

colors = {1:'#F00',
          2:'#0F0',
          3:'#00F',
          4:'#FF0',
          5:'#0FF'}

root = Tk()
canvas = Canvas(root,width=400,height=400)
label = Label(root,text='seed')
values = StringVar()
combo =  ttk.Combobox(root)

def painter(event):
    seed = int(combo.get())
    np.random.seed(seed)
    nrows =  10
    ncols =  10
    Y = 0
    dx = 400/nrows
    dy = 400/ncols
    for i in range(nrows):
        X = 0
        for j in range(ncols):
            n =  np.random.randint(1,5)
            col =  colors[n]
            canvas.create_rectangle(X,Y,X+dx,Y+dy,width=1,fill=col)
            X += dx
        Y += dy

canvas.grid(column=0,row=0,rowspan=2)
combo.grid(row=1,column=1)
label.grid(row=0,column=1)
combo['values'] =  [1,2,3,4]
combo.bind('<<ComboboxSelected>>',painter)
combo.current(0)

painter(None)

root.mainloop()

I could change the painter function to include an infinite loop but this way I never reach the mainloop(), so I need to call this only after the main loop is created, but how?

A: a simple example of some animation using tkinter canvas:
import tkinter as tk

class App(tk.Tk):
    def __init__(self):
        tk.Tk.__init__(self)
        self.title("Canvas animation example")

        self.c = tk.Canvas(self, width=400, height=400)
        self.c.pack()

        self.f_index = 0 # index so we know which frame to draw next
        # array to hold our frame data,
        # you'll probably need this to hold more than
        # just a set of coordinates to draw a line...
        self.f_data = []

        for num in range(0, 400, 5): # make up a set of fake data
            self.f_data.append([num, num, num+10, num+10])

    def next_frame(self):
        data = self.f_data[self.f_index] # fetch frame data
        self.c.delete('all') # clear canvas
        self.c.create_line(*data) # draw new frame data
        self.f_index += 1 # increment frame index
        if (self.f_index >= len(self.f_data)): # check and wrap if at end of sequence
            self.f_index = 0
        self.c.after(50, self.next_frame) # call again after 50ms

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = App()
    app.next_frame() # called manually once to start animation
    # could be started with 'after' instead if desired
    app.mainloop()

note that the more items you want to delete and redraw the slower this code will perform. you need to have realistic expectations, drawing a few 10's of items will be fine, a few 100's might be ok on a decent pc, but 1000's of items would be very poorly performing.


The Creative Momentum is a web design agency based in Roswell, Georgia. It specializes in providing custom websites for clients who want to increase and solidify their online presence, thus attracting more web traffic and potentially increased profitability. Supporting services that The Creative Momentum provides include brand or corporate identity, search engine optimization (SEO), and inbound marketing. The agency has worked with clients that include Globaledit, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Sticker Shark. For its work, The Creative Momentum has been profiled by media companies such as Yahoo! Finance, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Reuters, and USA Today.


text:
Following Jesus into Hell
Posted on August 2, 2020 AuthorJoel Horst5 Comments
"If only you had followed the Savior, you would not have ended up in Hell," said Arlon, looking sympathetically at his friend.
"But we were following the Savior!" Milan retorted.
"Yes, my friend, I know that you—"
"Nay, you do not know!" Milan said, standing to his feet. He turned to look straight into Arlon's eyes. "I have heard this enough. For once, I am going to set things straight."
He began to pace, the lamplight casting eerie shadows on the stone walls as he moved. His face contorted as painful memories ran through his mind.
"Have you not read 1 Corinthians 11:1?" he asked Arlon.
"Of course I have," said Arlon. "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ."
"And that is a very common practice among Christians," said Milan. "Does not your pastor teach you various doctrines that you follow, even though you know that other Christians believe and practice differently?"
"Well, yes, I suppose."
"But you follow him because you believe that he is teaching you the ways of the Savior, correct?"
"Well, I have inquired of the Scriptures myself, and I have seen the truth of what he says."
Milan stopped his pacing and turned toward Arlon. The lamplight illuminated a strange, blotchy scar on his ruddy cheek. "And that was exactly what we said of the one who led us into Hell."
"Well, but…"
Milan held up his hand. "I have not yet decided whether I was born in Hell," he said. "It was a place with some light and some darkness. Many others of my tradition have been burned badly, even in the place where I was born. But be that as it may, I can say with certainty that the traditions of my fathers made my family very vulnerable to being led into Hell."
The scars on his arm itched, as they always did when he thought of the flames that had caused them. He rubbed his arm as he continued. "When I was five years old, we went to a leader named Gotheus. My parents had met him before, and he had guided them towards light. They now had a family, and they believed that Gotheus was a trustworthy guide who could guide them in the path of the Savior.
"Gotheus was well known. He had led many people, and he promised my parents that he would guide our family to a place where few went. He told them that the path of the Savior held many wonderful benefits for those who followed it closely, and he convinced them that he had many hard-won secrets for finding that true path."
"That seems rather suspicious," Arlon said. "How had he found a secret way that others had not?"
"For one thing, he had many stories of how those who had followed him had found new victories, more light, and greater peace. But he also used many passages of Scripture to guide his followers. Indeed, he taught us that our lives should be centered around the Scriptures, and that we should always follow their guidance.
"Now, my father is an intelligent and careful man. He knew all too well the dangers of guides who lead us into wrong paths. So he did not follow Gotheus alone. He already had the traditions of his fathers to guide him, and he would carefully search the Scriptures to determine whether Gotheus was truly showing us the path of the Savior. There were some paths that Gotheus recommended, but from which my father led us away, believing that Gotheus had misunderstood the Savior and the Scriptures.
"However, Gotheus had shifted my father's compass so that it no longer pointed true north. This was his practice with all his followers. Some, of course, only had their compass shifted slightly, while other followers' compasses were completely turned around. I am not certain how much my father's was shifted, but this I do know: if the Scriptures said to go to the northwest, we would travel towards the northwest. If the Scriptures said to travel toward the south, we would travel south. Yet, somehow, we ended up in the regions of Hell."
"How is that possible?" asked Arlon.
"Because, as I said, the compass was shifted. For some inexplicable reason, it was shifted in the direction that Gotheus was leading. The light was getting brighter as we followed him. We met wonderful people along the same path who were also following Gotheus's leading, and we enjoyed sweet fellowship with them as we traveled. They loved the Savior also, and they earnestly sought to follow Him, just as we did. We thought that we must have, indeed, found the true path to life."
"Didn't you notice that you were getting burned?" Arlon said.
"Have you ever been outside in the early spring and shed your cloak on a warm day, only to discover several hours later that the sun has painfully burned you?"
"Yes, I have."
"That was how this burning was for me," said Milan. "Some followers of Gotheus realized very early that they were being burned. Some families turned away from Gotheus because of the flames or shifted their path so that it didn't lead them so directly into Hell. But for me, it was as that sunburn that only becomes apparent when one has already been in the sun for far too long. I rejoiced in the light of the flames of Hell. It was bright, and it showed me the way to walk. I had many wonderful companions traveling with me, and Gotheus constantly reminded us that we were special—that we would one day change the world.
"There came a day when the cries of those who had been burned became too great. Gotheus had been hearing them for some time, and he had gradually led us away from the flames. Make no mistake, we were still in the regions of Hell. But the new path was easier to follow, and those who traveled it were not so quickly burned."
Milan sighed. "This fact makes it very difficult to explain my story to some of Gotheus's followers," he said. "They have only seen the newer paths, and they have not experienced the horrors of his earlier followers. They believe that I know nothing of that which I am speaking, or that it was merely because of the traditions of my fathers. But hear me, Arlon. You spoke of following the Scriptures and the Savior. I can truly tell you that it was because my father strove to follow the Savior that we were not affected like some of those who blindly followed Gotheus.
"Yet, there is a dark side to this. Because my father strove to follow the Savior, when Gotheus led us away from the flames, my father didn't follow."
"What?" Arlon exclaimed.
"As you remember, my father's compass had been shifted by Gotheus," Milan said. "He would read the Scriptures, and they would tell him to go to the east. He would strive to walk as nearly due east as he could, even as he saw Gotheus leading people in a more northern direction. What he did not know, then, was that he was actually traveling southeast, not directly due east, because his compass guided him incorrectly."
"I think I begin to understand," Arlon said, thoughtfully stroking his beard. "Your father thought that Gotheus was actually guiding him away from the true leading of the Scriptures."
"That is it exactly," Milan said. "So eventually, we parted ways with Gotheus. I still held him in high esteem, even though I believed he was misguided. However, with time, my estimation of him decreased. By now, I had my own compass, and just as my father had taught me, I too sought to follow the directions of the Scriptures. But my compass had also been shifted, just like my father's."
"You seem to forget something here," Arlon said. "Don't you know that the Savior said that his followers hear His voice? Did not the Comforter speak to your heart about these things and seek to lead you away from the flames?"
Milan reached into a pouch at his waist and withdrew a small object. "This is my compass," he said. "You and I know that, if the correct path is north-northwest and someone tells us to follow them straight north, we will disregard them. Is that not so?"
"We have a saying," Milan said. "'The Comforter will not lead us away from the path of the Scriptures.' Have you not said that yourself?"
"I have," said Arlon.
"Therefore," Milan said, "when the Comforter spoke to me and told me that the path was to the north—according to my compass—and I had seen the Scriptures pointing me to the northwest, I disregarded the voice of the Comforter. Nay, I regarded it as the voice of Abaddon."
He gestured with the compass. "But when Abaddon told me that I needed to travel northwest, I looked at the Scriptures and they agreed."
Arlon shook his head, the light slowing dawning in his countenance. "If I understand you correctly, then, you are saying that your corrupted compass guided you to follow the voice of our enemy, Abaddon, rather than the voice of the Savior."
"Many times. To be sure, I still believe that I followed the Savior in many ways. But, as you said, my compass, being corrupted, guided me towards the cunning traps of Abaddon far too often."
Arlon shook his head again. "I am sorry, my friend."
Milan slid the compass back into its pouch and returned to his seat. The two men sat silently for some time.
"By what means did you determine that you were not on the Savior's path?" Arlon asked.
Milan dropped his head into his hands. "It was a long time of wandering in the regions of Hell," he said. "I was being burned. I knew that it should not be this way, and I strove to change my course. The burns, I thought, were my doing, the consequences of not following the Savior, for I knew that following the Savior would lead me away from Hell. But the more I tried to follow the Savior, the more I found myself in the depths of Hell. There was much smoke and darkness, and many burns."
He paused and removed his boot. Arlon gasped as he saw the skin on Milan's leg–shriveled, red, and scarred, the result of having been badly burned. Without a word, Milan put his boot back on and continued.
"Then one day, I began hearing reports about Gotheus. Some were reporting that Gotheus had personally harmed them, and had led them on paths quite opposite of the way he had said we should walk. Indeed, they were claiming that Gotheus was leading them not in the ways of the Savior, but in the ways of Abaddon!"
"But I thought that you no longer followed Gotheus," Arlon said.
"You are right. However, I still followed the compass that he had shifted, and therefore, I was still following in his ways, even though I no longer followed him."
"As long as you had that corrupted compass, you would always walk in his ways."
Milan paused as the memories flooded through his mind. "Eventually, I came to realize that Gotheus was not a guide from the Savior, but a crafty agent of Abaddon. And then I began to question the guidance of my compass.
"I saw some who had completely abandoned the Scriptures and the Savior. They had realized that the Scriptures guided them in the wrong direction, so they began going in entirely opposite directions, toward paths that I believed would harm and destroy them. I had no desire to follow their ways, but yet I truly desired to recalibrate my compass to true north.
"And this is where the blessed Comforter began to show me the true way. The path has been long and difficult, but He slowly shifted my compass towards true north again and led me out of the regions of Hell."
"Praise be to the Savior," said Arlon.
"Indeed. As I left the regions of Hell, I began to meet others who were also following the Savior. As I observed them, I realized that they were living out the path that the Savior had described, and I allowed them to guide me back to the true path."
"So has your compass been corrected?" Arlon asked.
"I cannot say for certain," Milan said. "I am quite certain that it is much closer to true north than it was, but I have found that recalibrating the compass is very difficult. Have you not observed that there are many people who claim to follow the Savior, yet walk in very different paths?"
"I have."
"To choose one person and follow them is foolhardy, as you yourself indicated earlier. Yet, when I search the Scriptures, I am never quite certain, when they instruct me to travel north, whether I am actually traveling north or whether I am slightly off course. It is supremely frustrating at times."
"That it must be," Arlon said, nodding.
"Through it all, however," said Milan, "I hear the voice of the Savior, calling me towards His path. The more I follow Him, the more I come to understand His voice and His path, and when my compass directs me in the wrong direction, I see the error and am able to shift the compass.
"And, indeed, I have come to realize that, if I walk toward the voice of the Savior, He will guide me into His path. Arlon, He is most gracious and abundantly kind, and even when my compass guides me wrong, or when, in a cloud of uncertainty, I take the wrong path, the Savior and the Comforter are always there to guide me back."
He arose from his seat and walked towards the lamp. "The night shadows are growing deep, my friend. It is time that we repose and rest ourselves for tomorrow's battles."
"Yes, Arlon?"
"I thank you for explaining these things to me. Indeed, it causes me to question whether my compass, too, may need calibrating."
Milan turned and, walking over to his friend, placed a hand on his shoulder. "My friend, I would be more than happy to assist you in calibration. But I have a word of hope for you. Do not fear your compass, but rather look to the Savior and His light. Seek to know Him first, not to recalibrate your compass. For as you hear His voice and see His path, your compass will calibrate itself to the right way."
"Thank you, Milan."
Milan picked up the lamp, and the two soldiers silently marched up the stairs to rest for a night, that they might have strength the next day as they battled, once again, to rescue precious souls from Hell.
Please note: this post is based upon thoughts from my previous post, "Thoughts from a Survivor of Hell".
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CategoriesSpiritual AbuseTagsAbuse, Pain, Sexual Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, Stories
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5 Replies to "Following Jesus into Hell"
living says:
Very creative! How are you doing? Miss your writing.
Regarding purity culture, I would like to comment: I had never bought into this when my children were growing up. I passed your website on to my 24 yr. old son, who appreciated reading your writings on it, when he mentioned about it coming up as a discussion topic at this time in his life with his new circle of church friends.
Perhaps you would like to edit and place this at the corresponding post; it is my first time ever commenting on a blog after discovering them a few years ago.
Joel Horst says:
Thanks for commenting and visiting! My creative juices have t been flowing as well lately, but hopefully I will have more time for blogging this next year.
I randomly happened upon this blog and after reading most of the posts, I just wanted to comment that I really enjoyed consuming the articles.
What I have really appreciated about this blog is that you offer a middle ground faith filled voice of reason. So many times when I have read things by people with backgrounds of spiritual abuse, they reject Christianity altogether. And most of the people I know who have stayed Christians, have yet to even become cognizant of the harmful effects of their upbringing. Sometimes this seems to hinder acceptance and understanding of what the Gospel really means. Very rarely do I see people who have done objective analysis of their situation and background, and retained their faith. That is admirable and a great testimony in a world that does its best to drag us down and keep us in cynicism and skepticism. Keep standing strong! =)
Thank you! It's been a rough journey, and I can really only say that it's been by the grace of God that I've managed to keep my faith. I've come close to being an atheist, and I still struggle with lots of doubts and questions.
But somehow, along the way, I have glimpsed enough of who God really is that I don't want to let go.
But the question is, am I the one who's really holding on, or is it Him? 😃
Great question, rhetorical as it is. I'm certain God is holding on to you! 🙂 I can relate to a lot of that questioning, even though I do not share much of the same upbringing. Just wanted to share song lyrics that came to mind. We cannot be certain of much, and our feelings and thoughts pull us in every direction, but God is still with us "somewhere beyond all this". Thanks again for sharing your thoughts in these posts!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qAZUXOeFSEQ
Somewhere (Rich Mullins)
Between the lost and the found
We're all hanging empty
Empty and upside down
But I'm hanging on
Though the fall may tempt me
And I believe in the dawn
Though I tremble in the night
Amidst these ins and these outs
There's a fine line of purpose
I follow even now
Through the haze of despair
That confuses and hurts us
I look to see that You're there
And I run toward Your light
Beyond these reasons and feelings
Beyond the passion and fatigue
I know You're there
And that Your Spirit is leading me
Beyond all this
Now I don't know when
But I know that You're coming
You're coming back again
And the earth will burn away
And the sky fill with thundering
As it announces the day
That has finally arrived
While the time is still now
While we're hanging empty
With all that is in me
And I'll sing my songs
And I'll laugh until I fly
Take me away somewhere
Bear me away somewhere
I gotta go somewhere


Halloween is growing in Japan year by year (we are seeing the same here in Sweden). It seems with more and more influences from America and other counties, Halloween is becoming more and more popular.
With the presence of places like Disneyland in Tokyo and Universal Studios in Osaka having up to a month of celebrations for Halloween, and with companies understanding that Halloween is a good way to sell stuff, Halloween is everywhere.
Lots of companies have limited edition products for sale under the lead up to Halloween. McDondals have a burger with a black bun to make them seem more spooky, KitKat have released pumpkin flavored KitKats and some companies just rebrand the packages to suit Halloween.
People in Tokyo love to dress up for Halloween and with Halloween costumes on sale in big discounts stores like Don Quijote, it can be quite hectic to look around the shops around Halloween, with loads of people out to buy their costumes before Halloween.
There are lots of Halloween events on in Japan, like festivals for the family and nightclubs for the older crowd. One of the events in Shibuya was the Street Party Costume, where you could find thousands of people all dressed up for Halloween walking around and taking photos of each other. People were genuinely having a fun time! How often can you say that you saw a whole gang of minions crossing the world famous crossing in Shibuya? Group of friends like to dress up all as the same character, like a group of minions, or charachters that go together, like Super Mario and Luigi. From the pictures I've seen online (sites like tokyofashion.com) people spend a lot of time on their costumes, and in some cases also lots of money, to get their costume just right. No surprise, since the whole cosplay culture comes from Japan.
Even though Halloween is a very commercial holiday of sorts, it is still a lot of fun. Have a look at the video above to see just how much fun it can be!