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Shahid Refuses To Attend "Padmaavat" Success Bash Due To Ranveer
Fri 9 Feb 2018
The recently released Historical Epic, "Padmaavat", has stirred up quite a few controversies ever since it was announced. It survived the storm and, with some changes made, managed to make it to cinema screens around India. Padmaavat is a re-imagining of Malik Muhammad Jayasi's epic poem "Padmavat", written in the 16th century. It tells the tale of the beautiful Rani Padmini of Chittorgarh, played by Deepika Padukone, who committed jauhar to avoid being captured by the Turkish invader, Alauddin Khilji. It has since been declared a smash-hit and has become one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time.
All the drama surrounding the movie probably rubbed off on the cast as well, with reports suggesting that all is not well between the two leading men. When Shahid Kapoor stated that he would have played Alauddin Khilji differently than Singh's portrayal of the historical figure, it was pretty evident that something was off between the two.
According to tabloids, Ranveer left with endless praises for his portrayal of the character and Shahids Maharawal Ratan Singh paled next to Ranveers powerful on-screen presence. Now, if latest reports are to be believed, Shahid has refused to attend the success bash for the movie due to Ranveers presence in the party.
However, CEO of Bhansali Productions, Shobha Sant has denied these rumours on Twitter. She tweeted, "This is #fiction too. The producers, both @Viacom18Movies and #BhansaliProductions are busy trying to release #Padmaavat in the 3 states. No time to discuss #successparty... as yet."
-Rubaina Bilgrami
Picture Courtesy – Ranveer Singh Instagram, Shahid Kapoor Instagram


LAS VEGAS – The sport of rugby and city of Las Vegas are proving to be a perfect match after the 2012 USA Sevens international rugby tournament broke all previous attendance records in its third year at Sam Boyd Stadium.
The three-day tally of 64,551 rugby fans was a significant increase in attendance from the 2011 USA Sevens. A crowd of 30,323 on Saturday, Feb. 11 was the largest crowd to ever attend a live rugby match in the United States. Attendance was 10,611 on Friday, Feb. 10 and 23,617 for the semifinals and finals matches on Sunday, Feb. 12.
Those who made the trip to Sam Boyd Stadium for USA Sevens were given the chance to enjoy 45 rugby matches during the three-day competition as 16 international teams battled for points in the HSBC Sevens World Series. After a thrilling championship match, which came down to the final play, the team from Samoa emerged as the champions with a 26-19 victory over New Zealand.
Additional activities for attendees at Sam Boyd Stadium included the three-day fan festival outside of the stadium, the USA Sevens women's series matches and the Las Vegas Invitational amateur tournament presented by Station Casinos.
In between the days of rugby action at Sam Boyd Stadium, fans were able to check out a multitude of events throughout Las Vegas at Caesars Entertainment and Station Casinos properties. Events included an international beer festival, reggae bash, autograph signings with the competing nations and the official wrap party on Sunday night.
For those fans unable to attend the tournament, they were able to watch live action on Saturday and Sunday on NBC, NBC Sports Network and Universal Sports Network.
The USA Sevens international rugby tournament in Las Vegas was the fifth of nine stops on the 2011-12 HSBC Sevens World Series. The three-day tournament was the only North American stop for the Sevens World Series. The premier rugby tournament in North America, fans saw 16 national teams play 45 matches during the three-day competition in an attempt to gain points in the Sevens World Series standings.
Played on the same size field as traditional 15-player rugby, sevens rugby is played with just seven players per team. Matches have seven minute halves with two minute intervals for pool and knock-out matches. The fast pace and short duration of matches makes every moment of the action thrilling for spectators.


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Ducula perspicillata é uma espécie de ave da família Columbidae.

É endémica da Indonésia.

Os seus habitats naturais são: florestas subtropicais ou tropicais húmidas de baixa altitude e florestas de mangal tropicais ou subtropicais.

Referências

Ducula
Aves da Indonésia
Aves descritas em 1824

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Konkani people (Koṅkaṇī lok also Koṅkaṇe, Koṅkaṇstha) are a linguistic community found mainly in the Konkan Coast of south western India whose mother-tongue is the Konkani language. They originate from coastal Karnataka and Goa.
Koṇ meaning top of the mountain.
Name of aboriginal mother goddess, which is sometimes sanskritised to mean goddess Renuka.
Thus the name Konkane, comes from the word Konkaṇ, which means the people of Konkan.
The Konkani people speak different dialects of Konkani, their native tongue; although a very high percentage are bilingual.
In general, in Konkani the masculine form used to address a fellow Konkani speaker is Koṅkaṇo and the feminine form is Koṅkaṇe. The plural form is Konkane or Konkani. In Goa Konkano now refers only to Hindus, and Catholic Goans do not address themselves as Konkanos as they were banned by the Portuguese from referring to themselves this way. Saraswat Brahmins of Canara refer to the Konkanis as Āmcigelo /Āmcigelī. This literally means our tongue or people speaking our tongue. Though this is not common amongst the Goans, they normally refer to Konkani as Āmgelī bhās or our language. Sometimes Āmgele can be used in the Goan context to mean people from my community.


Hillary Clinton raised more than $27 million for her primary campaign in May and pulled in another $13.5 million for the Democratic National Committee and state parties, her campaign announced Wednesday.
Her aides said Clinton entered June with more than $42 million in available cash as she faces rival Bernie Sanders in the last round of presidential primaries Tuesday.
In all, Clinton has collected more than $240 million for the nomination battle and has raised more than $62 million for party committees.
Sanders has not yet released his fundraising totals for May, but the Vermont senator started last month running short of cash. According to its Federal Election Commission filing, the Sanders campaign entered May with $5.8 million available in the bank.


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Q: Fast sieve for sum of Euler totient values (phi) values from 1 to 'n' I wanted to optimize the sieve method for computing Euler's Totient (Phi) values from 1 to n. Basically, i came across this Quora comment :https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-fastest-function-to-calculate-phi-I-for-1-I-n (2nd solution that avoids division), but I am unable to wrap my head around the algorithm mentioned by the person. Any help appreciated.

A: Let's do it for $n=10.$ Start with $m=2$ and compute $\phi(m^k)$ for as high as you need. We get $\phi(2)=(2-1)=1,$ $\phi(4)= 2(2-1) = 2$ and similarly, $\phi(8) = 4.$ Then we need to multiply the entry of every multiple of $8$ by $\phi(8)=4.$ That's just $8.$ Then, we multiply the entry of every multiple of $4$ that is not a multiple of $8$ by $\phi(4)=2.$ Then we multiply every multiple of $2$ that is not a multiple of $4$ by $\phi(2)=1.$ So we have $$ \begin{pmatrix}2 & 3 & 4 & 5 &6 &7 &8 &9 & 10\\ 1&1&2&1&1&1&4&1&1\end{pmatrix}.$$ (where we invisibly multiplied entries $2,$ $6,$ and $10$ by $1$.) Now we go to the next entry that is still a one... that's $m=3.$ We have $\phi(3)=2$ and $\phi(9)=6.$ So we multiply the $9$ entry by $6$ (since it's the only multiple of $9$ on the list). And we multiply $3$ and $6$ (the multiples of $3$ that aren't multiples of $9$) by $2,$ giving
$$ \begin{pmatrix}2 & 3 & 4 & 5 &6 &7 &8 &9 & 10\\ 1&2&2&1&2&1&4&6&1\end{pmatrix}.$$ Now on to $m=5.$ We have $\phi(5)=4,$ and we multiply the $5$ and $10$ by $4,$ giving
$$ \begin{pmatrix}2 & 3 & 4 & 5 &6 &7 &8 &9 & 10\\ 1&2&2&4&2&1&4&6&4\end{pmatrix}.$$ Finally for $m=7,$ we have $\phi(7)=6$ and so we get
$$ \begin{pmatrix}2 & 3 & 4 & 5 &6 &7 &8 &9 & 10\\ 1&2&2&4&2&6&4&6&4\end{pmatrix}.$$
This is my interpretation of what they're saying but I actually don't really like it cause the whole 'skipping the multiples of the higher power' thing seems like a headache to code up. Instead, I'd simply multiply all multiples of $2$ on the list by $1,$ then all the multiples of $4$ by $2,$ then all the multiples of $8$ by $2,$ then all the multiples of $16$ by $2,$ etc. Then I'd multiply all the multiples of $3$ by $2,$ then all the multiples of $9$ by $3,$ then all the multiples of $27$ by $3,$ etc. I think that's much more straightforward and also only uses multiplication.
(EDIT Actually, perhaps I've missed the point of the way they do it: their way does do fewer multiplications since they pre-multiply, say $\phi(27)$ together once, where as I do it once for every multiple of $27$ on the list.)
Here is a (hastily done) implementation of my way in python
def totients(n):
    result = [1] * (n+1)
    for m in range(2,n+1):
        # if not a prime, skip
        if result[m] != 1:
            continue

        # multiply all multiples of m by m-1
        thing = m-1
        i = m
        while i <= n:
            result[i] *= thing
            i += m

        # multiply all multiples of higher powers by m
        v=m
        thing = m
        while True:
            v *= m
            if v > n:
                break
            i = v
            while i <= n:
                result[i] *= thing
                i += v
    return result

print(totients(40))

>python totients.py
[1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 2, 6, 4, 6, 4, 10, 4, 12, 6, 8, 8, 16, 6, 18, 8, 12, 10, 22, 8, 20, 12, 18, 12, 28, 8, 30, 16, 20, 16, 24, 12, 36, 18, 24, 16]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Wildlife and wild fish
Other aquatic animals
SPHERTOX
SPHERTOX was financed in 2021 by the Norwegian Research Council under their scheme for Researcher Projects for Young Talents. 55 of the 540 applications (10%) were granted funding. The full title of the project is:
Hepatic 3D spheroids: the next generation of testing in toxicology (SPHERTOX)
It is led by Research Scientist Dr. Maria T. Hultman at the Section for Ecotoxicology and Risk Assessment, Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA).
The primary objective of SPHERTOX is to assess the performance of hepatic 3D spheroids from rainbow trout as an alternative chronic toxicity- and bioconcentration system, alone or in co-culture with other cell types, as an alternative and advanced in vitro model with increased comparability towards in vivo test systems.
The long-term goal of SPHERTOX is to develop a method applicable for regulatory purposes and international validation, which will significantly improve the hazard assessment of chemicals in regulatory programmes such as REACH.
To fulfil this objective, SPHERTOX will generate in silico and experimental data to develop and evaluate novel and alternative ecotoxicological test methods for fish, with the following main aims:
Characterisation of the spheroid model's morphological and physiological properties during chemical exposure
Establishment of 3D spheroids as a chronic low-dose and repeated exposure in vitro model
Application of spheroids to measure low biotransformation rates of chemicals in bioconcentration assessment
Generation of a multi-compartment co-culturing system using hepatic spheroids and primary gill cells for acute and chronic toxicity testing, mimicking an in vivo-like chemical flux scenario
Improvement of in vitro to in vivo extrapolations by using 3D spheroids alone and/or in co-culture
Development and implementation of a causal inference model to identify mechanistic interactions and confounding factors within in vitro and in vivo toxicity testing.
Development is underway for more physiologically relevant in vitro test systems that are more complex than single-cell models, and more alike the organ of interest (e.g. the liver). One such bioassay is the 3D organelle model, which consist of primary hepatic cells, or continuous cell lines, allowed to aggregate into 3D spheroids over a period of a few days. A viable 3D spheroid is 100-400 μm in diameter, consists of approx. 500-5000 cells per spheroid, and forms during 5-10 days of incubation.
Characterisation and evaluation of the 3D spheroids is necessary to unravel the assay's applicability as a novel in vitro model. Although 3D spheroids using hepatic primary cells have been developed, there is limited information on their characterisation and use in bioconcentration assessments, in particular for industrially relevant and slowly biotransformed hydrophobic chemicals, and there is no information on their use for chronic toxicity testing.
Co-cultures are highly relevant for toxicity testing and this will be investigated in combination with liver spheroids. Development and application of such systems will play a central role in research within synthetic biology and ecotoxicology, since they better reflect the gill-plasma-liver model in fish.
This project aims to develop a scientifically novel test paradigm that can replace, refine and reduce the use of fish in regulatory chemical hazard assessment.
SPHERTOX is a collaboration between NIVA, the University of Oslo, the University of Suffolk, University of Plymouth, Kings College London, and Givaudan.
Norecopa's Secretary is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) for the project. The SAC will facilitate expansion of the project's network within academia, industry and regulatory authorities, for dissemination, communication and exploitation of the data generated from the project. Members of the SAC include Dr. Adam Lillicrap, who was awarded Norecopa's 3R Prize in 2017 for his work in developing alternatives to animal tests in connection with monitoring of environmental hazards.
The project runs from the Autumn of 2021 until the summer of 2025.
Image by Maria T. Hultman
The website of the SPHERTOX project at NIVA
This page was updated on 14 September 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Albania's PM lauds IDF soldiers helping country after of deadly earthquake
The Israeli engineers are among the foreign volunteers who are working to determine whether buildings not felled by the earthquake are habitable.
By JTA	December 15, 2019, 10:12 am Edit
Israeli officials make plans to help victims of the earthquake
Albania's prime minister publicly praised Israeli military engineers who have been in the country since an earthquake struck late last month.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, visiting the western port city of Durres on Monday, told a resident who was afraid to enter his apartment building that he could have confidence in the go-ahead from the Israeli engineers.
"They are from Israel and they are No. 1," Rama said, The Times of Israel reported. "The engineer says that after the catastrophe you should kiss your home because it has resisted [the earthquake] and has protected you."
Bulldozers help clear the rubble following the earthquake
Later Monday, Rama in a video message sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Israel for its support while surrounded by the 10 Israeli active duty and reserve soldiers.
"Bibi, shalom from Durres. We're here with your fantastic guys. They are doing a great job in calming the people and telling them how to be resilient," Rama said. Bibi is Netanyahu's nickname.
Delegation of Israeli soldiers in Albania helps with earthquake relief.
The 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck on Nov. 26 killed 51 people and injured more than 3,000. More than 11,000 buildings were damaged, leaving about 13,000 people homeless.
From The Depths, founded by British-Israeli activist Jonny Daniels led a delegation of international journalists out to Albania where they visited the sites connected to the earthquake and met with leadership as well as Albanian Righteous Among The Nations who were affected by the earthquake.
Daniel (third from left) with elderly Albanians affected by the earthquake
"The least we can do as Jews is stand besides and help those who helped us during their most difficult times"
"Albania was the only country under occupation, where there were more Jews after than before the Holocaust, with over 2,000 Jews saved and efforts from the then King, King Zog I, In issuing over 700 false visa to help Jews escape Europe" said Daniels
תודה רבה על המילים החמות ידידי, ראש ממשלת אלבניה אדי רמה.
ישראל גאה לעמוד לצידה של אלבניה בשעה קשה זו. ????????????????
Thank you for your warm words my friend, Prime Minister of Albania @ediramaal.
Israel stands with Albania in this difficult hour. ???????????????? pic.twitter.com/pEIPFdogGJ
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 9, 2019
Prime Minister Edi Rama


Community Landscape Services is the premier commercial landscape management firm in the D.C. metro region. In 1993, Bill DeWitt founded Community Landscape Services to fill the service gap between the large national firms and local "mow, blow and go" firms. Community Landscape Services provides professional, personal, pro-active services and a comprehensive depth of resources to commercial and residential properties. For over two decades, our depth of resources has allowed us to provide unparalleled service for our valuable clients. We combine the elements of experience and passion with sustainable and regenerative techniques to create inviting, well maintained common spaces. We take pride in our work and knowing that your project is in excellent caring hands.
Because we care! Your landscape is a large, living investment. Properly managed, it contributes to the value, beauty, and usefulness of your property. By truly understanding your needs, desires, and the role your landscape plays in meeting your business objectives, we're uniquely positioned to provide the specific kind of property maintenance that is appropriate for your situation.
We have adopted a "Team CLS" philosophy not only with our employees but with our clients. It is our goal to provide the best service to our clients through value, professionalism, dependability, depth of resources, and sustainability. We view client relations as a partnership and are pro-active in providing the best solution for your needs.
Value – With over 30 years of industry experience, our executive staff guides "Team CLS" in providing effective and cost-efficient solutions for your property. We use only the best products and techniques in providing a dedicated solution and approach that fits your property needs.
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Genesis Tiles Pty Ltd is a limited by shares, Australian proprietary company. This corporation was registered on 1980-06-24 and was issued with the 005686439 ACN. Its Australian Business Number is 96005686439. Since 2000-02-08, the company is headquartered in VIC, post code 3003. Genesis Tiles Pty Ltd was registered for the GST on 2000-07-01. In total the company used 0 trading names. The above data comes from the ABN database which was updated on 2000-07-01. Aubiz.net found 0 trademarks that mention this company.


text:
Mueller, Commissioners Agree On Schools
Government Meetings Return In Full Force
County Goals Include Resuming Paving, Health Department Fix
Public Health, Street Paving Among Hassler's 2021 Goals
County License Office Reopens After More Than Nine Months
Year 2020 Saw Many Positives, Negatives
Niche Ranks R-II Among Missouri's Top 20
Library Launches Homebound Program
County Commissioners, Schmeider Brace For Winter Weather
Planning & Zoning Will Meet Thursday
St. Mary Passes Ordinances For Police
By Editor | November 18, 2020
By MARK EVANS
STE. GENEVIEVE HERALD
During a meeting that lasted about 20 minutes last Thursday, the St. Mary Board of Aldermen passed three ordinances pertaining to the police department and future municipal elections. The board also awarded a contract for a flow meter at the sewage plant.
The bids for the flow meter were Ressler at $1,890, USA Blue Book at $2,780 and Equipment Pro at $2,813.
The Ressler bid was unanimously accepted.
The first ordinance passed with the police department and put the city back in line with state statutes.
It removed the phrase "The position of Police Chief is an appointed position for a two year term or regular mayoral election unless sooner removed for cause," from the description of the police department. It therefore reverted back to previous wording.
"We've been in violation ever since we got rid of Mark Bequette," Wyatt said. "Everybody we've had since then, we've been in violation of state statutes. We're gonna rectify that tonight. We're not going to lay it over a month."
City manager David Woods explained the procedure.
"What we just repealed was an ordinance that made the police chief a two-year term," he said, "which is not due by state statute. State statute say once you're the police chief, you're police chief until you either resign or commit fraud or felony or something. We shouldn't have done that in the first place,"
"You can't just do away with the police department," Wyatt said. "That's not how it's done."
One ordinance sets the next municipal election on April 6. Another one allows the city to skip municipal elections if there are no more candidates for each position than there are open seats.
"It passed on a state level, to where, we can have an election to where," Woods said. "If there's no office challenged, if just one person signs up for each office, then we don't have to have an election. There's no point and we don't have to pay for an election, so it saves us money."
Alderman Zen Duda wanted to clarify that this would only be if just one person sought each position. Woods said that was correct.
This spring the election will include city collector for a two-year term, Alderman Ward I for a two -year term, Alderman Ward I for a one-year term and Alderman Ward 2 for a two-year term.
It also passed unanimously.
Kreitler Reports To Commission On Successful License Office Launch
Gettinger, Bahr Honored At Final Commission Meeting
COVID-19 Dominated Headlines During Year
Many Long-Awaited Projects Are Completed In 2020
Foundation Gives Blunt Big Honor
What should we say about the founding of Ste. Genevieve?
We grew up saying 1735. Let's stick to that. (48%, 15 Votes)
Let's be historically accurate and say about 1750. (39%, 12 Votes)
What does this have to do with Ste. Gen. today anyway? (13%, 4 Votes)
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Weaver - Mentor - Centaur - Stuck - Stringed Instruments - Healing Humor - Shame - Left and Right Brain - Abandonment - Evolution: just a few of the keywords Joyce Mason uses to unlock the doorway to deep, deep wisdom contained within the archetype of the mythical being known as Chiron: half man, half horse – best known in Western popular culture as the Wounded healer.
As the reader will discover from Other Astrology Books by Joyce Mason on pp 279-281, Joyce has written extensively on Chiron in the past, both in published books and on her blog The Radical Virgo. This book, however, is somewhat different in that Joyce's focus is on the Chiron archetype itself and an exploration of 50 branches arising therefrom.
Chiron symbolises the deep wound present to a greater or lesser degree in all of us, fallible imperfect creatures, uneasy blends of body and spirit; endlessly curious, forever seeking answers to why we are here and what we are supposed to do with our brief time on Earth. Chiron also symbolises the depth and wisdom we can gain by addressing and seeking to heal that wound, both in ourselves and others. Ultimately, facing and accepting our vulnerability, together with realization of our inter-connectedness with the whole of life, and the healing power of love: these are our salves and our saviours.
Joyce's Keywords to Unlock Chiron is surely a 'wisdom book'. It is a wonderful distillation of her knowledge, personal and professional experience drawn from a deep and wide range of sources: science, myth, symbol systems including astrology and Tarot, astronomy, and culture both contemporary and ancient.
She writes so well, with wit, reverence, irreverence and above all compassion both for her own frailty and ours. Open sharing of core aspects of her personal story demonstrates that she is not trying to tell us how we should live from her somewhat higher plane of existence. She makes it clear that, in the struggle to come to terms with the wounding which hopefully in the end makes us a bit wiser and more skilled in the fraught business of living, we are all in it together.
There are many examples which I could quote of deeply helpful wisdom offered in this book. In Chapter 24, Disowned, there is a very challenging question posed: 'What would you rather die than do?' Joyce's answer to this is 'I'd rather die than move (house)' which leads into a discussion of how we all to a greater or lesser extent, disown parts of ourselves, to our detriment.
In Appendix 3, p273, Joyce provides information for people with little or no knowledge of astrology who wish to obtain a copy of their own horoscope and find out where Chiron is placed in their case. The whole book is also filled with useful web and other references to a wonderful range of resources – arising from the core Chironic keyword of Wholeness.
The book is of value also to students and practitioners of astrology. From that perspective, this reviewer certainly felt as though she had been comprehensively re-acquainted with the depth and practical value of understanding Chiron's natal position as well as Chiron transits.
Joyce, thank you for this wonderful compendium. It truly deserves to be widely read.
Cover Art for Keywords by Karen Phillips. For more on the contents of Keywords to Unlock Chiron, now available in PDF, please visit the launch post.
My intrigue and delight intensified as I read Scorpio Rising. Not only is it a page-turner; it's full of information about astrology, palmistry, Ayurveda and other assorted esoteric arts. These ingredients become a powerful potion when stirred with the pointed intuition of protagonist Axel Crowe. He has access to clues as a symbol-wielding private eye way beyond law enforcement's linked databases. Axel is uncanny, a Sherlock Holmes without the attitude. He's a near-saintly character whose walk on the straight and narrow has been influenced by his guru of many years who has recently set him free to fly solo. Before we think Axel's too virtuous, we find he's got an only- too-human bent for playing the ponies, a vulnerability that makes him believable any time he veers too close to the edge of almost too good to be true. And in the clinch, he will fight crime in a more literal sense.
There are two things I enjoyed most about the book. First, there are three places and subplots that are alternated throughout the chapters. Initially, I thought this would be confusing, but instead, Alan Annand braids them into one intriguing, tension-increasing story line. As the suspense mounted, I kept sensing and even getting inklings about how the three scenarios would all come together, yet I was still pleasantly surprised with the denouement.
Second, Annand's sense of humor, especially in naming his characters and in the occasional wordplay thrown over Axel's shoulder, kept me smiling and enjoying, page after page. This intelligent, versatile author's eclectic experience on numerous subjects is presented in the most casual and effective way. I felt like saying, "I knew that!" even when I did only because the author gave me a course in a nutshell in a few preceding sentences.
I can barely wait to read #2, the next installment in the Axel Crowe series, called Felonious Monk. Axel Crowe has won a place in my detective hall of fame on the first try. Author Alan Annand is one of my favorite new finds. Highly recommended!
For more fiction and humor by Alan Annand, visit his website, sextile.com.
It's just around the corner! The Cardinal Grand Cross reaches its peak on April 22-23. Astrologer Anne Beversdorf, trained in both Western and Vedic astrology, has a metaphor about the Grand Cross and how we can expect to experience it in her latest newsletter that's the best I've heard yet. It's free to subscribe to Anne's Stariel Astrology Newsletter, and since this is just one of her brilliant observations and interpretations, I encourage you to consider it.
I had never encountered anything like it when I first began writing my novel, The Crystal Ball, in 1989. I was still learning a lot about writing, and my book and I suffered from genre confusion. I didn't know if The Crystal Ball (then called something else) was a romance, a mystery or some kind of yet-to-be-defined metaphysical and literary variety show. Looking back on the original manuscript, it was a cross between a Janet Evanovich/Stephanie Plum novel and a Harry Potter book for grown-ups—grown-ups who wished they could live forever in a Fantasyland called San Francisco. Mostly, it still is, throw in a lot of basic 101 presentations on metaphysical topics. I should add; it's way more grounded than it might first sound.
In the intervening years, however, composite genre novels that feature astrology and other metaphysical tools have started to crop up more often. When I began The Crystal Ball, I had just fallen in love with Chiron, a composite planetary object, part asteroid and part comet. Chiron taught me the value of hybrids. Composites often beat putting things into tidy boxes, a principle that applies to book categories, too. Now that brick-and-mortar bookstores are dwindling in favor of virtual shopping experiences, a book's single genre label is less important. In a store with shelves, it's important to know which shelf to put it on. (Mystery? Romance? New Age?) In the virtual environment where key words are the stuff of searches, the more words or genres that describe a book, the more it will be found by diverse readers interested in its multi-topics or themes.
After feeling like the Lone Ranger and ahead of my time, wondering if I could really sell an astrologer protagonist: The next time I heard about an astrology-themed novel was when Donna Cunningham was writing her eBook published in 2004, Hotline to Heaven followed by Angel in Peril. (More on this pair below.) Donna has been a friend and mentor for over 30 years, so I had the fun of hearing about these works in progress. Of course, I loved her idea.
Meeting author Sunny Frazier circa 2005 at one of my local Sisters in Crime writers' meetings introduced me to my next astrological mystery, her first novel in the Christy Bristol series, Fools Rush In. Come to think of it, I just got the pun about how Sunny's and Donna's titles combined described my feelings in the late '80s—like a fool rushing into where angels dared not tread, thinking I could come out of the closet about astrology in a novel anyone, "New Age" or not, could read. Back then, I still often encountered conservative people who thought my belief in astrology was insane or as one man bluntly put it, "out of touch with reality." No wonder it took me two-and-a-half decades to work up the courage to make the leap.
Thanks heavens we've come such a long way in the quarter century since then. More recently, astrologer Armand Diaz coined a new term for mysteries that feature astrologers. In his article The Astrologer Did It: A New Kind of Mystery, he calls this emerging genre Astro-detective fiction. In addition to The Crystal Ball, he mentions Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand and Stalking Anubis by Steven Forrest.
Being part of a new trend that "Chironizes" books by creating fascinating hybrids would, of course, turn me on.
Thanks to a number of synchronicities, I also heard about an increasing number of other Astro-detective and Astro-metaphysical type novels recently. I thought it would be fun to share the titles, a bit about them, and to give my readers the joy of discovering fiction that appeals to your love of astrology.
You know how Virgos love research. I knew there had to be others. Here's what I dug up, so far. The author links have blurbs or author interviews with details about the books. Most can be purchased at the usual online stores, such as Amazon or B&N.
No surprise with her Aries Moon, Astrologer Donna Cunningham wrote Hotline to Heaven over a decade ago, a book she offers as a free PDF through her Sky Writer blog site. Learn more and download a copy here. (See Introducing Donna's Two Mysteries about mid-page.) Donna also sells the sequel, Angel in Peril, on the same page for $6.
Please share in the Comments! I'd like to update the list periodically on The Radical Virgo. And if you've got a book review on any Astro-fiction title, contact me about possibly sharing it here.


Hi, I'm Shannon (my crafting name is Lilly-Belle) and I like to make things. I use the internet to find inspiration - my Pinterest is kind of like a snapshot of my craft brain. I will use this blog as a way to share items that I have made (good & bad) from things I have found on the internet via crafty tutorials, recipes, or just general inspiration.
Hi Shannon - welcome to the blog world!!!


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1MATCH URL: https://assets.rappler.com/A47D61DF66EB40CB9983AAAEBDDDB1C6/img/BA4814C57AB241C091AAE0861FAD4C01/afp-20170507-nigeria-buhari-chibok-girls-001.jpg
Nigeria president vows support for freed Chibok girls
President Buhari: 'I cannot express in a few words how happy I am to welcome our dear girls back to freedom'
Published 11:04 AM, May 08, 2017
Updated 11:04 AM, May 08, 2017
WITH THE PRESIDENT. An handout picture released by the PGDBA&HND Mass Communication shows Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari (L) addressing the 82 rescued Chibok girls during a reception ceremony at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, on May 7, 2017. PGDBA&HND Mass Communication/Sunday Aghaeze/Handout/AFP
ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, May 7, vowed to help to 82 schoolgirls who have been freed from more than 3 years of Boko Haram captivity after a prisoner swap.
The girls – who were among more than 200 kidnapped in 2014 from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria – travelled to the capital Abuja a day after their release to meet Buhari.
"I cannot express in a few words how happy I am to welcome our dear girls back to freedom," Buhari said in a statement, pledging that the presidency would "personally supervise" authorities charged with ensuring the girls' "health, education, security and general well-being".
Presidential aide Bashir Ahmad tweeted a photograph of the girls, most of whom were sitting on the floor of Buhari's official residence, as the president sat in an armchair dressed in white traditional robes.
The meeting came shortly before Buhari was whisked out of the country on Sunday evening after weeks of concern over his health, heading to London for "follow-up medical consultation", according to his spokesman Femi Adesina.
The teenagers, who had been taken to a medical facility for checks after arriving in Abuja by military helicopter, met with the president for about 45 minutes, said an Agence France-Presse reporter at the scene.
Adesina said they had now been "handed over to those who will supervise their rehabilitation".
He did not comment on how many imprisoned members of Boko Haram – whose fight to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has left at least 20,000 dead since 2009 – had been released in the swap.
But Agence France-Presse understands at least 3 suspected senior commanders, all of them Chadian nationals, were handed over.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed said he could not confirm claims that as many 5 militants were released.
'Joyous moment'
The girls arrived from the northeastern town of Banki, on the border with Cameroon, and were met at the airport by Buhari's chief of staff Abba Kyari.
"Welcome our girls, welcome our sisters, we are glad to have you back," Kyari told them, describing it as "a very joyous moment".
A military source said one of the girls was "carrying a baby with her, a boy of less than two years".
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it "facilitated the safe return" of the girls as a "neutral intermediary" and tweeted photographs of girls boarding a military helicopter.
Many of the students wore colorful akara print dresses, visibly tired from their ordeal.
The presidency had announced late Saturday, May 6, that months of talks with the jihadists had "yielded results" some 6 months after 21 other Chibok girls were freed with the help of the ICRC and the Swiss government.
Symbol of conflict
Boko Haram fighters stormed the girls' school on the evening of April 14, 2014, and kidnapped 276 teenaged girls who were preparing to sit high school exams.
57 managed to escape in the hours that followed but the remaining 219 were held by the group.
Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau claimed in a video message that they had converted to Islam.
The audacious kidnapping brought the insurgency to world attention, triggering global outrage that galvanized support from the former US first lady Michelle Obama and Hollywood stars.
The girls have become a symbol of Nigeria's brutal conflict. Last month, parents and supporters marked the 3-year anniversary of the abduction, describing the situation as an unending "nightmare".
Enoch Mark, a Christian pastor whose two daughters were among those kidnapped, said of the latest releases: "This is good news to us. We have been waiting for this day.
"We hope the remaining girls will soon be released."
Accounting for three other girls who have since been found, a total of 113 Chibok girls are now missing, although Shekau claimed last August that some had been killed in military air strikes.
Boko Haram has used kidnapping as a weapon of war, seizing thousands of women and children, and forcibly recruiting young men and boys into their ranks.
In a less publicized attack in November 2014, some 300 children were among about 500 people kidnapped from the town of Damasak, on the border with Niger, in the far north of Borno state.
Most are still missing. – Rappler.com
Filed under:#BringBackOurGirls•Boko Haram•Chibok•Muhammadu Buhari•kidnappings•security•Nigeria


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Breaking down 3A, 2A, 1A football playoff games with predictions
Richard Obert
The Republic | azcentral.com
We almost ready for the second round of the 3A and 2A state football playoffs and the 1A championship game this weekend.
Previous conference previews: 6A | 5A | 4A. You can see the full schedule of games and Richard Obert's picks here.
3A quarterfinals
No. 9 Queen Creek Benjamin Franklin (7-4) at No. 1 Phoenix Northwest Christian (10-1), Friday, 7 p.m.
All it takes is one or two key players and it is either none-or-won in small schools. Benjamin Franklin began to dominate late in the season because two players injured early in the season returned -- QB Danner Bowen and RB Zach Jefferies. Chandler Miles played anywhere from QB to RB to WR while those guys were out. Now Franklin is fully loaded to make up for the 21-13 loss to Northwest Christian earlier in the year.
Prediction: Benjamin Franklin 35, Northwest Christian 21
No. 5 Chandler Valley Christian (8-3) at No. 4 Page (10-1), Friday, 7 p.m.
Valley Christian lost at Page 22-15 in mid-September when the Sand Devils had two 100-yard rushers -- Kele Meredith and Robert Smith. The Trojans have since won six in a row, but this long road trip will be on their minds as they seek redemption.
Prediction: Valley Christian 28, Page 21
No. 6 Tucson Sabino (9-2) at No. 3 Snowflake (9-1), Friday, 7 p.m.
Sabino sophomore QB A.J. Skaggs proved last week in a win over Lakeside Blue Ridge that he can lead with a broken thumb, throwing a 65-yard TD pass to Diego Armijo and a 75-yarder to Jimmy Hamilton. The offense will try to move out Snowflake's solid defense behind tackle Caden Wechsler (6-5, 280) and get middle linebacker Richie Pina to show why he was voted the 3A South Region Player of the Year.
Prediction: Sabino 21, Snowflake 14
No. 10 Safford (7-4) at No. 2 Yuma Catholic (9-2), Friday, 7 p.m.
Safford is hoping its tough schedule pays off here, because Yuma Catholic has maybe the most dynamic passing game in 3A with QB Gage Reese (3,875 yards, 54 TDs) and WR J.R. Henderson (71 catches, 1,691 yards, 23 TDs receiving).
Prediction: Yuma Catholic 35, Safford 20
See the 3A tournament bracket
2A quarterfinials
No. 9 Benson (7-4) at No. 1 Thatcher (11-0), Friday, 7 p.m.
Thatcher has outscored its opponents 494-75 and dominated Benson 48-6 on Sept. 14. There is no slowing down the big green Thatcher machine in its march to a third straight state title.
Prediction: Thatcher 55, Benson 0
No. 5 Phoenix Christian (9-2) at No. 4 Morenci (9-2), Friday, 7 p.m.
This is a difficult road trip for Phoenix Christian, which will find the toughest defense it has seen since the 28-21 overtime loss to Eagar Round Valley on Sept. 21. But RB Malik Taylor has been on a mission, rushing for 828 yards and 11 TDs in his last two games, both against Scottsdale Christian.
Prediction: Phoenix Christian 27, Morenci 21
No. 6 Phoenix Arizona Lutheran (9-2) at No. 3 Round Valley (9-2), Friday, 7 p.m.
The high altitude is one thing for ALA to overcome. Then there is the Elks' rock-solid defense and an offense that is now jump-started with key players healthy to deal with.
Prediction: Round Valley 48, Arizona Lutheran 6
No. 7 St. Johns (8-3) at No. 2 Goodyear Trivium Prep (10-0), Friday, 7 p.m.
Coach Mike Spencer has done a magnificent job in transition from 8-man to 11-man football at Trivium. But now he faces the master, St. Johns coach Mike Morgan, who knows how to win big games. He has more than 300 in his career.
Prediction: St. Johns 27, Trivium Prep 20
1A championship
Saturday, 6 p.m., at Maricopa High School
No. 5 Winkelman Hayden (8-3) at No. 2 Superior (10-0)
Hayden took advantage of a banged-up Williams team in the semifinals, winning 30-6. But that's what good teams do, seize opportunities. Now it faces a healthy Superior team with running QB Steven Ybarra rolling. The last time they met, Superior won 46-6 and Ybarra had 201 yards and four TDs passing and 126 yards and three TDs rushing.
Prediction: Superior 42, Hayden 12
To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him at twitter.com/azc_obert.


2017 continued in the brisk pace set by earlier years. Several initiatives to elevate water in our minds and on political agendas were set in motion and others kept running. SIWI contributed to the High-Level Panel on Water's work on valuing water (released 2018) and to the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23), notably, co-hosting the Water Action Day.
Internally, we have worked hard to strengthen our processes and systems to build a stronger, better and faster SIWI to be able to keep up with demands and responding to the increasing pressures on our global water resources.
SIWI's external work has included contributions to policy development on a global scale through our source-to-sea initiative, at the regional scale through our work on water and climate in Europe, and locally by bringing human rights into tariff setting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and supporting governments in the assessment and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
We have also improved business practices in textile, food, forest, and pharmaceutical industries. SIWI has built up significant competence and networks around the interface between private and public sectors with regards to infrastructure investments, especially in Africa, that we see as crucial for wise water management in the future.
While we broaden our engagement with water and water actors, we have also gone deeper to understand new facets of how intricate our human interactions are with water. By showing how societies' gendered roles make women and men engage with water in different ways, we can begin to address glaring inequalities in access and voice. We instituted the Gold Standard of World Water Week to do our part in promoting and empowering younger and female voices in the global water debate.
We are more convinced than ever that an open and fact-based discussion between countries, sectors and actors on how our water is governed is the only way we can achieve a water wise world.


There are some basic truths in the world of law and legal issues. First, the wheels of justice turn slow, but they do turn. Second, is that DHR and similar agencies around the country have a hard job. I for one am not a fan for DHR. This case is a perfect example of an overzealous agency taking children.
Recently in San Franciso, a family won a verdict for more than $3 million. The police had seized a couple's children without a warrant. The City of San Jose asked the court for a new trial because the city believed the jury did not receive correct jury instructions in the decision process. The court agreed and at the conclusion of the second trial, the jury awarded the family $210,000.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that the court was correct in granting a second trial and the lower verdict.The case initiated and centered on a school teacher calling the Santa Clara County Department of Family and Children's Services in May, 2005, about an 8-year-old student in her class. The teacher believing that the student, described in the court record only as O, may have been sexually abused at home.
The city social workers did not make contact with the student's parents, Tracy Watson and Renee Stalker, or visit the family's home. In defense of the teacher, I understand that educators have mandatory reporting requirements and they have a duty to report any allegation. What is the most disturbing is that it took a month for anyone to contact the parents.
One June 29, 2005, seven police officers with the San Jose Police Department arrived at the family's home without a warrant. The child or her parents were home. A grandparent watched the other two minor children. A police officer spoke with one of the parents on the phone about where police could interview the student, but Watson did not bring the student to the house.
The officers removed the other two minor children without a warrant. The police interviewed the student the next day. She denied any allegations that she was being abused by her father or anyone else, but the officers took her into custody as well.
Later a judge ruled that the children should not be returned to their home. The children were not returned to their parents until November 2006.
The family sued the city, police, county, school district and several officials in 2007. By the time the case went to trial in 2011, only the city, Blank and Detective William Hoyt remained as defendants.
A federal jury found that Hoyt and Blank were unjustified in entering the home and taking the kids, and had violated the family's right against unreasonable search and seizure and the right to due process. The jury awarded the family a total of $1.25 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages of $2 million.
As a lawyer, I receive calls monthly where someone has made an allegation against a parent. The frustrating issue in this case is that the parents had not committed any crimes and the family unit was disrupted for a year and a half. The mental and emotional scars that the children endured living in a foster home can never be repaired in this case.
If you are a parent and DHR or the police want to question you about allegations of your children. You have a right to ask for counsel before you make any statements. Please feel free to contact me if you are find yourself in this situation.


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Search results for: priority map
650 Repair Workshop Queue System Modification Using Priority Scheme
Authors: C. Okonkwo Ugochukwu, E. Sinebe Jude, N. Odoh Blessing, E. Okafor Christian
In this paper, a modification on repair workshop queuing system using multi priority scheme was carried out. Chi square goodness of fit test was used to determine the random distribution of the inter arrival time and service time of crankshafts that come for maintenance in the workshop. The chi square values obtained for all the prioritized classes show that the distribution conforms to Poisson distribution. The mean waiting time in queue results of non-preemptive priority for 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes show 0.066, 0.09, and 0.224 day respectively, while preemptive priority show 0.007, 0.036 and 0.258 day. However, when non priority is used, which obviously has no class distinction it amounts to 0.17 days. From the results, one can observe that the preemptive priority system provides a very dramatic improvement over the non preemptive priority as it concerns arrivals that are of higher priority. However, the improvement has a detrimental effect on the low priority class. The trend of the results is similar to the mean waiting time in the system as a result of addition of the actual service time. Even though the mean waiting time for the queue and that of the system for no priority takes the least time when compared with the least priority, urgent and semi-urgent jobs will terribly suffer which will most likely result in reneging or balking of many urgent jobs. Hence, the adoption of priority scheme in this type of scenario will result in huge profit to the Company and more customer satisfaction.
Keywords: queue, priority class, preemptive, non-preemptive, mean waiting time
649 Relaxing Convergence Constraints in Local Priority Hysteresis Switching Logic
Authors: Mubarak Alhajri
This paper addresses certain inherent limitations of local priority hysteresis switching logic. Our main result establishes that under persistent excitation assumption, it is possible to relax constraints requiring strict positivity of local priority and hysteresis switching constants. Relaxing these constraints allows the adaptive system to reach optimality which implies the performance improvement. The unconstrained local priority hysteresis switching logic is examined and conditions for global convergence are derived.
Keywords: adaptive control, convergence, hysteresis constant, hysteresis switching
648 Contaminated Sites Prioritization Process Promoting and Redevelopment Planning
Authors: Che-An Lin, Wan-Ying Tsai, Ying-Shin Chen, Yu-Jen Chung
With the number and area of contaminated sites continued to increase in Taiwan, the Government have to make a priority list of screening contaminated sites under the limited funds and information. This study investigated the announcement of Taiwan EPA land 261 contaminated sites (except the agricultural lands), after preliminary screening 211 valid data to propose a screening system, removed contaminated sites were used to check the accuracy. This system including two dimensions which can create the sequence and use the XY axis to construct four quadrants. One dimension included environmental and social priority and the other related economic. All of the evaluated items included population density, land values, traffic hub, pollutant compound, pollutant concentrations, pollutant transport pathways, land usage sites, site areas, and water conductivity. The classification results of this screening are 1. Prioritization promoting sites (10%). 2. Environmental and social priority of the sites (17%), 3. Economic priority of the sites (30%), 4. Non-priority sites (43 %). Finally, this study used three of the removed contaminated sites to check screening system verification. As the surmise each of them are in line with the priority site and Economic priority of the site.
Keywords: contaminated sites, redevelopment, environmental, economics
647 Analytic Hierarchy Process
Authors: Hadia Rafi
To make any decision in any work/task/project it involves many factors that needed to be looked. The analytic Hierarchy process (AHP) is based on the judgments of experts to derive the required results this technique measures the intangibles and then by the help of judgment and software analysis the comparisons are made which shows how much a certain element/unit leads another. AHP includes how an inconsistent judgment should be made consistent and how the judgment should be improved when possible. The Priority scales are obtained by multiplying them with the priority of their parent node and after that they are added.
Keywords: AHP, priority scales, parent node, software analysis
646 An Online Priority-Configuration Algorithm for Obstacle Avoidance of the Unmanned Air Vehicles Swarm
Authors: Lihua Zhu, Jianfeng Du, Yu Wang, Zhiqiang Wu
Collision avoidance problems of a swarm of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) flying in an obstacle-laden environment are investigated in this paper. Given that the UAV swarm needs to adapt to the obstacle distribution in dynamic operation, a priority configuration is designed to guide the UAVs to pass through the obstacles in turn. Based on the collision cone approach and the prediction of the collision time, a collision evaluation model is established to judge the urgency of the imminent collision of each UAV, and the evaluation result is used to assign the priority of each UAV to further instruct them going through the obstacles in descending order. At last, the simulation results provide the promising validation in terms of the efficiency and scalability of the proposed approach.
Keywords: UAV swarm, collision avoidance, complex environment, online priority design
645 An Algorithm for the Map Labeling Problem with Two Kinds of Priorities
Authors: Noboru Abe, Yoshinori Amai, Toshinori Nakatake, Sumio Masuda, Kazuaki Yamaguchi
We consider the problem of placing labels of the points on a plane. For each point, its position, the size of its label and a priority are given. Moreover, several candidates of its label positions are prespecified, and each of such label positions is assigned a priority. The objective of our problem is to maximize the total sum of priorities of placed labels and their points. By refining a labeling algorithm that can use these priorities, we propose a new heuristic algorithm which is more suitable for treating the assigned priorities.
Keywords: map labeling, greedy algorithm, heuristic algorithm, priority
644 Defining Priority Areas for Biodiversity Conservation to Support for Zoning Protected Areas: A Case Study from Vietnam
Authors: Xuan Dinh Vu, Elmar Csaplovics
There has been an increasing need for methods to define priority areas for biodiversity conservation since the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation in protected areas largely depends on the availability of material resources. The identification of priority areas requires the integration of biodiversity data together with social data on human pressures and responses. However, the deficit of comprehensive data and reliable methods becomes a key challenge in zoning where the demand for conservation is most urgent and where the outcomes of conservation strategies can be maximized. In order to fill this gap, the study applied an environmental model Condition–Pressure–Response to suggest a set of criteria to identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation. Our empirical data has been compiled from 185 respondents, categorizing into three main groups: governmental administration, research institutions, and protected areas in Vietnam by using a well - designed questionnaire. Then, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) theory was used to identify the weight of all criteria. Our results have shown that priority level for biodiversity conservation could be identified by three main indicators: condition, pressure, and response with the value of the weight of 26%, 41%, and 33%, respectively. Based on the three indicators, 7 criteria and 15 sub-criteria were developed to support for defining priority areas for biodiversity conservation and zoning protected areas. In addition, our study also revealed that the groups of governmental administration and protected areas put a focus on the 'Pressure' indicator while the group of Research Institutions emphasized the importance of 'Response' indicator in the evaluation process. Our results provided recommendations to apply the developed criteria for identifying priority areas for biodiversity conservation in Vietnam.
Keywords: biodiversity conservation, condition–pressure–response model, criteria, priority areas, protected areas
643 Decision Tree Based Scheduling for Flexible Job Shops with Multiple Process Plans
Authors: H.-H. Doh, J.-M. Yu, Y.-J. Kwon, J.-H. Shin, H.-W. Kim, S.-H. Nam, D.-H. Lee
This paper suggests a decision tree based approach for flexible job shop scheduling with multiple process plans, i. e. each job can be processed through alternative operations, each of which can be processed on alternative machines. The main decision variables are: (a) selecting operation/machine pair; and (b) sequencing the jobs assigned to each machine. As an extension of the priority scheduling approach that selects the best priority rule combination after many simulation runs, this study suggests a decision tree based approach in which a decision tree is used to select a priority rule combination adequate for a specific system state and hence the burdens required for developing simulation models and carrying out simulation runs can be eliminated. The decision tree based scheduling approach consists of construction and scheduling modules. In the construction module, a decision tree is constructed using a four-stage algorithm, and in the scheduling module, a priority rule combination is selected using the decision tree. To show the performance of the decision tree based approach suggested in this study, a case study was done on a flexible job shop with reconfigurable manufacturing cells and a conventional job shop, and the results are reported by comparing it with individual priority rule combinations for the objectives of minimizing total flow time and total tardiness.
Keywords: flexible job shop scheduling, decision tree, priority rules, case study
642 Prioritization in a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) System Based on Fuzzy Logic at Iran Khodro (IKCO)
Authors: Izadi Banafsheh, Sedaghat Reza
Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) of machinery are a key recent issue concerning the automotive industry. It has always been a debated question what order or priority should be adopted for the MRO of machinery. This study attempts to examine several criteria including process sensitivity, average time between machine failures, average duration of repair, availability of parts, availability of maintenance personnel and workload through a literature review and experts survey so as to determine the condition of the machine. According to the mentioned criteria, the machinery were ranked in four modes below: A) Need for inspection, B) Need for minor repair, C) Need for part replacement, and D) Need for major repair. The Fuzzy AHP was employed to determine the weighting of criteria. At the end, the obtained weights were ranked through the AHP for each criterion, three groups were specified: shaving machines, assembly and painting in four modes. The statistical population comprises the elite in the Iranian automotive industry at IKCO covering operation managers, CEOs and maintenance professionals who are highly specialized in MRO and perfectly knowledgeable in how the machinery function. The information required for this study were collected from both desk research and field review, which eventually led to construction of a questionnaire handed out to the sample respondents in order to collect information on the subject matter. The results of the AHP for weighting the criteria revealed that the availability of maintenance personnel was the top priority at coefficient of 0.206, while the process sensitivity took the last priority at coefficient of 0.066. Furthermore, the results of TOPSIS for prioritizing the IKCO machinery suggested that at the mode where there is need for inspection, the assembly machines took the top priority while paining machines took the third priority. As for the mode where there is need for minor repairs, the assembly machines took the top priority while the third priority belonged to the shaving machines. As for the mode where there is need for parts replacement, the assembly machines took the top priority while the third belonged to the paining machinery. Finally, as for the mode where there is need for major repair, the assembly machines took the top priority while the third belonged to the paining machinery.
Keywords: maintenance, repair, overhaul, MRO, prioritization of machinery, fuzzy logic, AHP, TOPSIS
641 Multi-Level Priority Based Task Scheduling Algorithm for Workflows in Cloud Environment
Authors: Anju Bala, Inderveer Chana
Task scheduling is the key concern for the execution of performance-driven workflow applications. As efficient scheduling can have major impact on the performance of the system, task scheduling is often chosen for assigning the request to resources in an efficient way based on cloud resource characteristics. In this paper, priority based task scheduling algorithm has been proposed that prioritizes the tasks based on the length of the instructions. The proposed scheduling approach prioritize the tasks of Cloud applications according to the limits set by six sigma control charts based on dynamic threshold values. Further, the proposed algorithm has been validated through the CloudSim toolkit. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective for handling multiple task lists from workflows and in considerably reducing Makespan and Execution time.
Keywords: cloud computing, priority based scheduling, task scheduling, VM allocation
640 A Priority Based Imbalanced Time Minimization Assignment Problem: An Iterative Approach
Authors: Ekta Jain, Kalpana Dahiya, Vanita Verma
This paper discusses a priority based imbalanced time minimization assignment problem dealing with the allocation of n jobs to m < n persons in which the project is carried out in two stages, viz. Stage-I and Stage-II. Stage-I consists of n1 ( < m) primary jobs and Stage-II consists of remaining (n-n1) secondary jobs which are commenced only after primary jobs are finished. Each job is to be allocated to exactly one person, and each person has to do at least one job. It is assumed that nature of the Stage-I jobs is such that one person can do exactly one primary job whereas a person can do more than one secondary job in Stage-II. In a particular stage, all persons start doing the jobs simultaneously, but if a person is doing more than one job, he does them one after the other in any order. The aim of the proposed study is to find the feasible assignment which minimizes the total time for the two stage execution of the project. For this, an iterative algorithm is proposed, which at each iteration, solves a constrained imbalanced time minimization assignment problem to generate a pair of Stage-I and Stage-II times. For solving this constrained problem, an algorithm is developed in the current paper. Later, alternate combinations based method to solve the priority based imbalanced problem is also discussed and a comparative study is carried out. Numerical illustrations are provided in support of the theory.
Keywords: assignment, imbalanced, priority, time minimization
639 A Situational Awareness Map for Allocating Relief Resources after Earthquake Occurrence
Authors: Hamid Reza Ranjbar, Ali Reza Azmoude Ardalan, Hamid Dehghani, Mohammad Reza Sarajian
Natural disasters are unexpected events which predicting them is difficult. Earthquake is one of the most devastating disasters among natural hazards with high rate of mortality and wide extent of damages. After the earthquake occurrence, managing the critical condition and allocating limited relief sources requiring a complete awareness of damaged area. The information for allocating relief teams should be precise and reliable as much as possible, and be presented in the appropriate time after the earthquake occurrence. This type of information was previously presented in the form of a damage map; conducting relief teams by using damage map mostly lead to waste of time for finding alive occupants under the rubble. In this research, a proposed standard for prioritizing damaged buildings in terms of requiring rescue and relief was presented. This standard prioritizes damaged buildings into four levels of priority including very high, high, moderate and low by considering key parameters such as type of land use, activity time, and inactivity time of each land use, time of earthquake occurrence and distinct index. The priority map by using the proposed standard could be a basis for guiding relief teams towards the areas with high relief priority.
Keywords: Damage map, GIS, priority map, USAR
638 Using Priority Order of Basic Features for Circumscribed Masses Detection in Mammograms
Authors: Minh Dong Le, Viet Dung Nguyen, Do Huu Viet, Nguyen Huu Tu
In this paper, we present a new method for circumscribed masses detection in mammograms. Our method is evaluated on 23 mammographic images of circumscribed masses and 20 normal mammograms from public Mini-MIAS database. The method is quite sanguine with sensitivity (SE) of 95% with only about 1 false positive per image (FPpI). To achieve above results we carry out a progression following: Firstly, the input images are preprocessed with the aim to enhance key information of circumscribed masses; Next, we calculate and evaluate statistically basic features of abnormal regions on training database; Then, mammograms on testing database are divided into equal blocks which calculated corresponding features. Finally, using priority order of basic features to classify blocks as an abnormal or normal regions.
Keywords: mammograms, circumscribed masses, evaluated statistically, priority order of basic features
637 Prioritized Processor-Sharing with a Maximum Permissible Sojourn Time
Authors: Yoshiaki Shikata
A prioritized processor-sharing (PS) system with a maximum permissible sojourn time (MPST) is proposed. In this PS system, a higher-priority request is allocated a larger service ratio than a lower-priority request. Moreover, each request receiving service is guaranteed the maximum permissible sojourn time determined by each priority class, regardless of its service time. Arriving requests that cannot receive service due to this guarantee are rejected. We further propose a guarantee method for implementing such a system, and discuss performance evaluation procedures for the resulting system. Practical performance measures, such as the relationships between the loss probability or mean sojourn time of each class request and the maximum permissible sojourn time are evaluated via simulation. At the arrival of each class request, its acceptance or rejection is judged using extended sojourn times of all requests receiving service in the server. As the MPST increases, the mean sojourn time increases almost linearly. However, the logarithm of the loss probability decreases almost linearly. Moreover with an MPST, the difference in the mean sojourn time for different MPSTs increases with the traffic rate. Conversely, the difference in the loss probability for different MPSTs decreases as the traffic rate increases.
Keywords: prioritized processor sharing, priority ratio, permissible sojourn time, loss probability, mean sojourn time, simulation
636 Priority Sites for Deforested and Degraded Mountain Restoration Projects in North Korea
Authors: Koo Ja-Choon, Seok Hyun-Deok, Park So-Hee
Even though developed countries have supported aid projects for restoring degraded and deforested mountain, recent North Korean authorities announced that North Korean forest is still very serious. Last 12 years, more than 16 thousand ha of forest were destroyed. Most of previous researches concluded that food and fuel problems should be solved for preventing people from deforesting and degrading forest in North Korea. It means that mountain restoration projects such as A/R(afforestation/reforestation) and REDD(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) project should be implemented with the agroforestry and the forest tending project. Because agroforestry and the forest tending can provide people in the project area with foods and fuels, respectively. Especially, Agroforestry has been operated well with the support of Swiss agency of Development and cooperation since 2003. This paper aims to find the priority sites for mountain restoration project where all types of projects including agroforesty can be implemented simultaneously. We tried to find the primary counties where the areas of these activities were distributed widely and evenly. Recent spatial data of 186 counties representing altitude, gradient and crown density were collected from World Forest Watch. These 3 attributes were used to determine the type of activities; A/R, REDD, Agroforestry and forest tending project. Finally, we calculated the size of 4 activities in 186 counties by using GIS technique. Result shows that Chongjin in Hamgyeongbuk-do, Hoeryong in Hamgyeongbuk-do and Tongchang in Pyeonganbuk-do are on the highest priority of counties. Most of feasible counties whose value of richness and uniformity were greater than the average were located near the eastern coast of North Korea. South Korean government has not supported any aid projects in North Korea since 2010. Recently, South Korea is trying to continue the aid projects for North Korea. Forest project which is not affected by the political situation between North- and South- Korea can be considered as a priority activities. This result can be used when South Korean government determine the priority sites for North Korean mountain restoration project in near future.
Keywords: agroforestry, forest restoration project, GIS, North Korea, priority
635 Revised Risk Priority Number in Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Model from the Perspective of Healthcare System
Authors: Fatemeh Rezaei, Mohammad H. Yarmohammadian, Masoud Ferdosi, Abbas Haghshnas
Background: Failure Modes and Effect Analysis is now having known as the main methods of risk assessment and the accreditation requirements for many organizations. The Risk Priority Number (RPN) approach is generally preferred, especially for its easiness of use. Indeed it does not require statistical data, but it is based on subjective evaluations given by the experts about the Occurrence (O i), the Severity (Si) and the Detectability (D i) of each cause of failure. Methods: This study is a quantitative – qualitative research. In terms of qualitative dimension, method of focus groups with inductive approach is used. To evaluate the results of the qualitative study, quantitative assessment was conducted to calculate RPN score. Results; We have studied patient's journey process in surgery ward and the most important phase of the process determined Transport of the patient from the holding area to the operating room. Failures of the phase with the highest priority determined by defining inclusion criteria included severity (clinical effect, claim consequence, waste of time and financial loss), occurrence (time- unit occurrence and degree of exposure to risk) and preventability (degree of preventability and defensive barriers) and quantifying risks priority criteria in the context of RPN index. Ability of improved RPN reassess by root cause (RCA) analysis showed some variations. Conclusions: Finally, It could be concluded that understandable criteria should have been developed according to personnel specialized language and communication field. Therefore, participation of both technical and clinical groups is necessary to modify and apply these models.
Keywords: failure mode, effects analysis, risk priority number(RPN), health system, risk assessment
634 Comparative Study of Non-Identical Firearms with Priority to Repair Subject to Inspection
Authors: A. S. Grewal, R. S. Sangwan, Dharambir, Vikas Dhanda
The purpose of this paper is to develop and analyze two reliability models for a system of non-identical firearms – one is standard firearm (called as original unit) and the other is a country-made firearm (called as duplicate /substandard unit). There is a single server who comes immediately to do inspection and repair whenever needed. On the failure of standard firearm, the server inspects the operative country-made firearm to see whether the unit is capable of performing the desired function well or not. If country-made firearm is not capable to do so, the operation of the system is stopped and server starts repair of the standard firearms immediately. However, no inspection is done at the failure of the country-made firearm as the country-made firearm alone is capable of performing the given task well. In model I, priority to repair the standard firearm is given in case system fails completely and country-made firearm is already under repair, whereas in model II there is no such priority. The failure and repair times of each unit are assumed to be independent and uncorrelated random variables. The distributions of failure time of the units are taken as negative exponential while that of repair and inspection times are general. By using semi-Markov process and regenerative point technique some econo-reliability measures are obtained. Graphs are plotted to compare the MTSF (mean time to system failure), availability and profit of the models for a particular case.
Keywords: non-identical firearms, inspection, priority to repair, semi-Markov process, regenerative point
633 Design an Development of an Agorithm for Prioritizing the Test Cases Using Neural Network as Classifier
Authors: Amit Verma, Simranjeet Kaur, Sandeep Kaur
Test Case Prioritization (TCP) has gained wide spread acceptance as it often results in good quality software free from defects. Due to the increase in rate of faults in software traditional techniques for prioritization results in increased cost and time. Main challenge in TCP is difficulty in manually validate the priorities of different test cases due to large size of test suites and no more emphasis are made to make the TCP process automate. The objective of this paper is to detect the priorities of different test cases using an artificial neural network which helps to predict the correct priorities with the help of back propagation algorithm. In our proposed work one such method is implemented in which priorities are assigned to different test cases based on their frequency. After assigning the priorities ANN predicts whether correct priority is assigned to every test case or not otherwise it generates the interrupt when wrong priority is assigned. In order to classify the different priority test cases classifiers are used. Proposed algorithm is very effective as it reduces the complexity with robust efficiency and makes the process automated to prioritize the test cases.
Keywords: test case prioritization, classification, artificial neural networks, TF-IDF
632 Quantifying the Impact of Intermittent Signal Priority given to BRT on Ridership and Climate-A Case Study of Ahmadabad
Authors: Smita Chaudhary
Traffic in India are observed uncontrolled, and are characterized by chaotic (not follows the lane discipline) traffic situation. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has emerged as a viable option to enhance transportation capacity and provide increased levels of mobility and accessibility. At present in Ahmadabad there are as many intersections which face the congestion and delay at signalized intersection due to transit (BRT) lanes. Most of the intersection in spite of being signalized is operated manually due to the conflict between BRT buses and heterogeneous traffic. Though BRTS in Ahmadabad has an exclusive lane of its own but with this comes certain limitations which Ahmadabad is facing right now. At many intersections in Ahmadabad due to these conflicts, interference, and congestion both heterogeneous traffic as well as transit buses suffer traffic delays of remarkable 3-4 minutes at each intersection which has a become an issue of great concern. There is no provision of BRT bus priority due to which existing signals have their least role to play in managing the traffic that ultimately call for manual operation. There is an immense decrement in the daily ridership of BRTS because people are finding this transit mode no more time saving in their routine, there is an immense fall in ridership ultimately leading to increased number of private vehicles, idling of vehicles at intersection cause air and noise pollution. In order to bring back these commuters' transit facilities need to be improvised. Classified volume count survey, travel time delay survey was conducted and revised signal design was done for whole study stretch having three intersections and one roundabout, later one intersection was simulated in order to see the effect of giving priority to BRT on side street queue length and travel time for heterogeneous traffic. This paper aims at suggesting the recommendations in signal cycle, introduction of intermittent priority for transit buses, simulation of intersection in study stretch with proposed signal cycle using VISSIM in order to make this transit amenity feasible and attracting for commuters in Ahmadabad.
Keywords: BRT, priority, Ridership, Signal, VISSIM
631 Assessment of Healthy Lifestyle Behavior Needs for Older Adults Living with Hypertension
Authors: P. Sutipan, U. Intarakamhang
The purpose of this study was to assess and prioritize the order of needs with regard to the healthy lifestyle behaviors for older adults living with hypertension. The participants involved 400 hypertensive elderly individuals in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The research instrument was a 26-item needs-assessment questionnaire in a dual response format on a four-level rating scale. The data was analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics and the needs were ranked using the Modified Priority Needs Index (PNIModified). The results indicated that the three priorities of healthy lifestyle behavior were healthy eating (PNImodified = 0.36), exercise (PNImodified = 0.35), and social contribution (PNImodified = 0.34), respectively. The implications of the findings for planning the intervention phase of the project are of particular interest.
Keywords: needs assessment, the modified priority needs index (PNIModified), healthy lifestyle behavior, older adults
630 Multi-Level Clustering Based Congestion Control Protocol for Cyber Physical Systems
Authors: Manpreet Kaur, Amita Rani, Sanjay Kumar
The Internet of Things (IoT), a cyber-physical paradigm, allows a large number of devices to connect and send the sensory data in the network simultaneously. This tremendous amount of data generated leads to very high network load consequently resulting in network congestion. It further amounts to frequent loss of useful information and depletion of significant amount of nodes' energy. Therefore, there is a need to control congestion in IoT so as to prolong network lifetime and improve the quality of service (QoS). Hence, we propose a two-level clustering based routing algorithm considering congestion score and packet priority metrics that focus on minimizing the network congestion. In the proposed Priority based Congestion Control (PBCC) protocol the sensor nodes in IoT network form clusters that reduces the amount of traffic and the nodes are prioritized to emphasize important data. Simultaneously, a congestion score determines the occurrence of congestion at a particular node. The proposed protocol outperforms the existing Packet Discard Network Clustering (PDNC) protocol in terms of buffer size, packet transmission range, network region and number of nodes, under various simulation scenarios.
Keywords: internet of things, cyber-physical systems, congestion control, priority, transmission rate
629 Investigating the Relative Priority of the Factors Affecting Customer Satisfaction in Gaining the Competitive Advantage in Pars-Khazar Company
Authors: Samaneh Pouyanfar, Michael Oliff
The industry of home appliances may beone of theindustries which has the highest competition, and actually what can guarantee the survival of this industry is discovering the superior services. A trend to provide quality products and services plays an important role in this industry because discovering the services is counted as a vital affair for Manufacturing Organizations' survival and profitability. Given the importance of the topic, this paper attempts to investigate the relative priority of the factors influencing the customer satisfaction in gaining the competitive advantage in Pars-Khazar Company. In sum, 96 executives of Pars-Khazar Company where investigated in a census. For this purpose, after reviewing the research literature and performing deep interviews between pundits and experts active in the industry, the research questionnaire was made based on variables affecting customer satisfaction and components determining business competitive advantage. Determining the content validity took place by judgement of the experts. The reliability of each structure was measured based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Since the value of Cronbach's alpha was higher than 0.7 for each structure, internal consistency of statements was high and the reliability of the questionnaire was acceptable. The data analysis was also done with Kulmgrf-asmyrnf test and Friedman test using SPSS software. The results showed that in dimension of factors affecting customer satisfaction, the History of trade name (brand), Familiarity with the product brand, Brand reputation and Safety have the highest value of priority respectively, and the variable of firm growth has the highest value of priority among the components determining the performance of competitive advantage.
Keywords: customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, brand history, safety, growth
628 Performance Evaluation of a Prioritized, Limited Multi-Server Processor-Sharing System that Includes Servers with Various Capacities
Authors: Yoshiaki Shikata, Nobutane Hanayama
We present a prioritized, limited multi-server processor sharing (PS) system where each server has various capacities, and N (≥2) priority classes are allowed in each PS server. In each prioritized, limited server, different service ratio is assigned to each class request, and the number of requests to be processed is limited to less than a certain number. Routing strategies of such prioritized, limited multi-server PS systems that take into account the capacity of each server are also presented, and a performance evaluation procedure for these strategies is discussed. Practical performance measures of these strategies, such as loss probability, mean waiting time, and mean sojourn time, are evaluated via simulation. In the PS server, at the arrival (or departure) of a request, the extension (shortening) of the remaining sojourn time of each request receiving service can be calculated by using the number of requests of each class and the priority ratio. Utilising a simulation program which executes these events and calculations, the performance of the proposed prioritized, limited multi-server PS rule can be analyzed. From the evaluation results, most suitable routing strategy for the loss or waiting system is clarified.
Keywords: processor sharing, multi-server, various capacity, N-priority classes, routing strategy, loss probability, mean sojourn time, mean waiting time, simulation
627 The Evaluation of Signal Timing Optimization and Implement of Transit Signal Priority in Intersections and Their Effect on Delay Reduction
Authors: Mohammad Reza Ramezani, Shahriyar Afandizadeh
Since the intersections play a crucial role in traffic delay, it is significant to evaluate them precisely. In this paper, three critical intersections in Tehran (Capital of Iran) had been simulated. The main purpose of this paper was to optimize the public transit delay. The simulation had three different phase in three intersections of Tehran. The first phase was about the current condition of intersection; the second phase was about optimized signal timing and the last phase was about prioritized public transit access. The Aimsun software was used to simulate all phases, and the Synchro software was used to optimization of signals as well. The result showed that the implement of optimization and prioritizing system would reduce about 50% of delay for public transit.
Keywords: transit signal priority, intersection optimization, public transit, simulation
626 The Analysis of Priority Flood Control Management Using Analysis Hierarchy Process
Authors: Pravira Rizki Suwarno, Fanny Aliza Savitri, Priseyola Ayunda Prima, Pipin Surahman, Mahelga Levina Amran, Khoirunisa Ulya Nur Utari, Nora Permatasari
The Bogowonto River or commonly called the Bhagawanta River, is one of the rivers on Java Island. It is located in Central Java, Indonesia. Its watershed area is 35 km² with 57 km long. This river covers three regencies, namely Wonosobo Regency and Magelang Regency in the upstream and Purworejo Regency in the south and downstream. The Bogowonto River experiences channel narrowing and silting. It is caused by garbage along the river that comes from livestock and household waste. The narrowing channel and siltation cause a capacity reduction of the river to drain flood discharge. Comprehensive and sustainable actions are needed in dealing with current and future floods. Based on these current conditions, a priority scale is required. Therefore, this study aims to determine the priority scale of flood management in Purworejo Regency using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. This method will determine the appropriate actions based on the rating. In addition, there will be field observations through distributing questionnaires to several parties, including the stakeholders and the community. The results of this study will be in 2 (two) forms of actions, both structurally covering water structures and non-structural, including social, environmental, and law enforcement.
Keywords: analytical hierarchy process, bogowonto, flood control, management
625 Arithmetic Operations in Deterministic P Systems Based on the Weak Rule Priority
Authors: Chinedu Peter, Dashrath Singh
Membrane computing is a computability model which abstracts its structures and functions from the biological cell. The main ingredient of membrane computing is the notion of a membrane structure, which consists of several cell-like membranes recurrently placed inside a unique skin membrane. The emergence of several variants of membrane computing gives rise to the notion of a P system. The paper presents a variant of P systems for arithmetic operations on non-negative integers based on the weak priorities for rule application. Consequently, we obtain deterministic P systems. Two membranes suffice. There are at most four objects for multiplication and five objects for division throughout the computation processes. The model is simple and has a potential for possible extension to non-negative integers and real numbers in general.
Keywords: P system, binary operation, determinism, weak rule priority
624 Resource Allocation Scheme For IEEE802.16 Networks
Authors: Elmabruk Laias
IEEE Standard 802.16 provides QoS (Quality of Service) for the applications such as Voice over IP, video streaming and high bandwidth file transfer. With the ability of broadband wireless access of an IEEE 802.16 system, a WiMAX TDD frame contains one downlink subframe and one uplink subframe. The capacity allocated to each subframe is a system parameter that should be determined based on the expected traffic conditions. a proper resource allocation scheme for packet transmissions is imperatively needed. In this paper, we present a new resource allocation scheme, called additional bandwidth yielding (ABY), to improve transmission efficiency of an IEEE 802.16-based network. Our proposed scheme can be adopted along with the existing scheduling algorithms and the multi-priority scheme without any change. The experimental results show that by using our ABY, the packet queuing delay could be significantly improved, especially for the service flows of higher-priority classes.
Keywords: IEEE 802.16, WiMAX, OFDMA, resource allocation, uplink-downlink mapping
623 The Comparative Study of the Characteristics of Chinese and Foreign Excellent Woman's Single Players' Serve, Receive Tactic Author
Authors: Zhai Yuan, Wu Xueqing
This article statistics the technology which used by Chinese and foreign excellent players in the game, including types and serves areas,receive technology and effect and utilization ratio receiving and losing points. The sample is che videos which is world's top matches of excellent badminton athletes of che single, including Chinese players' 43 games and foreign players' 38 games. Conclusion: For the serving, Chinese and foreign single players are to give priority to forehand short-low serve and the long-high serve. And Chinese and foreign players in using forehand short-low serve and drive server exist significant differences; For the serves areas, Chinese and foreign players serve area is concentrated in area 1,5,6. Area 6 has the highest rate of all the district areas, following by the area 1and area 5. Among the 2ed serve area Sino-foreign player, there exist significant differences; In the receiver, when returning the frontcourt shutter, players is given priority to net lift and push. When returning the backcourt shutter, receiver's the best ball is smash, followed by clear and drop shot. Foreign players have higher utilization rate in smash than Chinese players in the backcourt; In the receiver result, Chinese players give priority to actively and equally situation than foreign players, but in negatively receiving is just opposite.
Keywords: badminton, woman's singles, technique and tactics, comparative analysis
622 Multishape Task Scheduling Algorithms for Real Time Micro-Controller Based Application
Authors: Ankur Jain, W. Wilfred Godfrey
Embedded systems are usually microcontroller-based systems that represent a class of reliable and dependable dedicated computer systems designed for specific purposes. Micro-controllers are used in most electronic devices in an endless variety of ways. Some micro-controller-based embedded systems are required to respond to external events in the shortest possible time and such systems are known as real-time embedded systems. So in multitasking system there is a need of task Scheduling,there are various scheduling algorithms like Fixed priority Scheduling(FPS),Earliest deadline first(EDF), Rate Monotonic(RM), Deadline Monotonic(DM),etc have been researched. In this Report various conventional algorithms have been reviewed and analyzed, these algorithms consists of single shape task, A new Multishape scheduling algorithms has been proposed and implemented and analyzed.
Keywords: dm, edf, embedded systems, fixed priority, microcontroller, rtos, rm, scheduling algorithms
621 The Development of User Behavior in Urban Regeneration Areas by Utilizing the Floating Population Data
Authors: Jung-Hun Cho, Tae-Heon Moon, Sun-Young Heo
A lot of urban problems, caused by urbanization and industrialization, have occurred around the world. In particular, the creation of satellite towns, which was attributed to the explicit expansion of the city, has led to the traffic problems and the hollowization of old towns, raising the necessity of urban regeneration in old towns along with the aging of existing urban infrastructure. To select urban regeneration priority regions for the strategic execution of urban regeneration in Korea, the number of population, the number of businesses, and deterioration degree were chosen as standards. Existing standards had a limit in coping with solving urban problems fundamentally and rapidly changing reality. Therefore, it was necessary to add new indicators that can reflect the decline in relevant cities and conditions. In this regard, this study selected Busan Metropolitan City, Korea as the target area as a leading city, where urban regeneration such as an international port city has been activated like Yokohama, Japan. Prior to setting the urban regeneration priority region, the conditions of reality should be reflected because uniform and uncharacterized projects have been implemented without a quantitative analysis about population behavior within the region. For this reason, this study conducted a characterization analysis and type classification, based on the user behaviors by using representative floating population of the big data, which is a hot issue all over the society in recent days. The target areas were analyzed in this study. While 23 regions were classified as three types in existing Busan Metropolitan City urban regeneration priority region, 23 regions were classified as four types in existing Busan Metropolitan City urban regeneration priority region in terms of the type classification on the basis of user behaviors. Four types were classified as follows; type (Ⅰ) of young people - morning type, Type (Ⅱ) of the old and middle-aged- general type with sharp floating population, type (Ⅲ) of the old and middle aged-24hour-type, and type (Ⅳ) of the old and middle aged with less floating population. Characteristics were shown in each region of four types, and the study results of user behaviors were different from those of existing urban regeneration priority region. According to the results, in type (Ⅰ) young people were the majority around the existing old built-up area, where floating population at dawn is four times more than in other areas. In Type (Ⅱ), there were many old and middle-aged people around the existing built-up area and general neighborhoods, where the average floating population was more than in other areas due to commuting, while in type (Ⅲ), there was no change in the floating population throughout 24 hours, although there were many old and middle aged people in population around the existing general neighborhoods. Type (Ⅳ) includes existing economy-based type, central built-up area type, and general neighborhood type, where old and middle aged people were the majority as a general type of commuting with less floating population. Unlike existing urban regeneration priority region, these types were sub-divided according to types, and in this study, approach methods and basic orientations of urban regeneration were set to reflect the reality to a certain degree including the indicators of effective floating population to identify the dynamic activity of urban areas and existing regeneration priority areas in connection with urban regeneration projects by regions. Therefore, it is possible to make effective urban plans through offering the substantial ground by utilizing scientific and quantitative data. To induce more realistic and effective regeneration projects, the regeneration projects tailored to the present local conditions should be developed by reflecting the present conditions on the formulation of urban regeneration strategic plans.
Keywords: floating population, big data, urban regeneration, urban regeneration priority region, type classification


text:
Pernell Hines, No. 7: Suspect turns himself in after shooting man in argument
Jef Otte June 16, 2010 4:03PM
The homicide that took place yesterday afternoon two blocks east of Monaco on 39th Avenue, near Martin Luther King Park, is turning into a pretty open-and-shut case.
Police responding to a call about two men in a loud argument arrived at the scene only to find one of the men shot -- he was pronounced dead shortly after -- and quickly launched an investigation. But they didn't have to look far; a suspect showed up on the scene and turned himself in. Keep reading for the Denver Police Department account:
On June 15, 2010 at approximately 6:00 p.m. Denver 911 received a disturbance report of parties yelling. Officers arrived on scene and found a male who appeared to be suffering from a gunshot wound. The male victim was transported to University Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Homicide Detectives were conducting the scene investigation when the suspect turned himself in to them. Through the investigation it was learned the two men were involved in an argument when one shot the other. The suspect identification is being with held pending positive identification.
The victim's identification is pending positive identification and notification of next of kin by the Office of the Medical Examiner.
The suspect, now identified as Pernell Hines, 37, is being held in custody on suspicion of homicide but has not yet been formally charged.
Jef Otte
Contact: Jef Otte
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