text:
SAO Race Foxx by Shane Tolentino
Should Protesters be Prosecuted? Foxx and O'Brien Differ
Kim Foxx is dismissing certain misdemeanor charges against protesters and prosecuting those charged with felonies. Her opponent says Foxx is allowing crime to "intermix" with peaceful protesters.
Published on October 14, 2020 November 15, 2020
By Kiran Misra and Jim Daley
In December 2016, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx was tasked with leading the second-largest prosecutor's office in the country. The first African-American woman to hold the office, she promised to be a progressive prosecutor, one of a wave of similar district attorneys (DAs) and state's attorneys across the country. These prosecutors have prioritized reducing mass incarceration and the disproportionate impacts policing has on communities of color by adopting strategies such as reducing sentences, ending the prosecution of certain low-level offenses, and working to end cash bail. Though these moves have now gained mainstream acceptance thanks to years of dedicated work by criminal justice activists, at the time, Foxx's departure from the traditional hard-on-crime stances and promises of severe punishment was a radical one.
When protests against racial injustice and police violence swept the city this summer, Foxx was one of few prosecutors in the country who issued a department-wide policy to decriminalize protesting. Her office's policy position drew a distinction between peaceful protesters and "individuals who intentionally cause harm or damage." For charges including disorderly conduct, public demonstration, unlawful gathering, and curfew violation, Foxx instructed her office to adopt a "presumption of dismissal." For other misdemeanor charges including resisting or obstructing arrest, assault, battery, aggravated battery to a police officer, mob action, and obstructing identification, there would be a "presumption against proceeding unless body-worn camera footage is available and/or where a police officer is the complainant."
The effects of this order on approval and dismissal rates in the State's Attorney's office are not yet entirely clear. As Foxx explained in an interview with the Weekly, her office is still waiting to receive data from the Cook County Clerk's office, which would show what proportion of misdemeanor charges Foxx's office approved and rejected during the protests. Data from the Cook County State's Attorney's Open Data Portal on the few felony charges mentioned by name in the State's Attorney's order shows that in the three months since the policy was issued, 4.3 percent of charges for aggravated battery to a police officer were dismissed and 81.5 percent were approved. During that same period, 17.9 percent of aggravated assault to a police officer charges were dismissed and 60.7 percent were approved. It is unclear what percentage of these were accompanied by body-worn camera footage.
After handily defeating primary challenger Bill Conway, Foxx now faces Republican Pat O'Brien, a former chief deputy state's attorney, in the general election. The contrast between the two candidates is stark and the race has some of the highest stakes on the ballot. O'Brien, who was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, has criticized Foxx's progressive approach and labeled her a "pawn" of the "corrupt Chicago Machine." In a statement emailed to the Weekly, O'Brien said any protest-related dismissals "should be made on a case by case basis, not in a blanket fashion as Kim Foxx has done. By allowing crime and looting to intermix with peaceful protests Kim Foxx is actively undermining the First Amendment rights of the vast majority of protesters who are peaceful."
O'Brien is "not part of the movement for criminal justice reform," Foxx said. "This is someone who blasted my effort to not prosecute peaceful protesters, this is someone who has conflated looters with those who were engaged in peaceful protests. This is someone who's tried to stoke fear in communities by saying that bail reform makes people less safe. This is someone who has personally wrongfully convicted four Black teenagers…for a murder they did not commit." In 1986, O'Brien—then a supervisor in the Cook County SA's felony review unit—successfully prosecuted four Black teenagers for rape and murder. DNA tests cleared all four of the men, who were pardoned in 2002. "And this is someone who is appealing, really, to racist dog whistles to stoke fear," Foxx continued. "It is reassuring that the public is saying that they want justice reform, but it does not come without a fight. It does not come without the vestiges of the old way, struggling to maintain power and control, and that's what we're up against."
✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
Activists are pushing Foxx to dismiss all charges that are still pending against protesters, including felony charges leveled against people such as Jeremey "Mohawk" Johnson, who was arrested for aggravated battery of a police officer for allegedly striking one with a skateboard at an August 15 protest. Foxx has thus far declined to do so. "The same way people on the right claim that everybody who protests is a looter, the same way we have to be cautious that when we talk about dropping charges against protesters, we're talking about people who were peacefully engaged in protest," she said. "For example, there's an instance where someone hit a police officer with a skateboard. That's not acceptable. Even in the frenzy of what's happening as people are exercising their rights, there is a line."
"I wish there was a line with police beating unarmed, retreating civilians," Johnson said in an email to the Weekly. "To me, that's unacceptable. Yet I am being pursued and dragged through the legal system with more ferocity than the vast majority of police are pursued for murdering unarmed people, all for allegedly hitting an armed and armored riot cop who sustained no major injuries."
Frank Chapman is the executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR), which recently called for prosecutors across the country to drop all charges against activists and protesters. Chapman, who lives in Chicago, said Foxx is a prosecutor whose rhetoric has been "on the side of those who have been torture victims and subjected to violence" by the police. "They're the ones shooting the guns [and] spraying people with chemicals," Chapman said. "If there's any charges to be placed, they should be placed against the police for violating people's constitutional rights" to protest.
Still, the mere existence of a policy stating the presumption of dismissal for nonviolent misdemeanor cases puts Foxx ahead of most prosecutors in the nation—the majority of whom haven't instituted any specific provisions to ensure that protesters do not face unnecessary punishment from the criminal justice system for demonstrating in the streets. "Of the thousands of prosecutors' offices across the country, I can tell you that there are probably less than ten percent of us who instituted such a policy," Foxx said. At the opposite end of the spectrum, other prosecutors have adopted a "tough-on-everybody stance," she explained. "We want people to be able to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights and the government should not come in to thwart that…Particularly [given] the rhetoric that people have used around the protests over the summer conflating protesting and looting."
In Minneapolis, where the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police sparked the summer's nationwide protests, St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson announced in June that her office would be dismissing charges against nonviolent protesters on a case-by-case basis and look into restorative justice techniques for other charges. A spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney, whose jurisdiction includes Minneapolis and whose office only prosecutes felonies, juvenile cases, and serious misdemeanors, said in an email to the Weekly that none of the charges their office brought "resulting from civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd" have been dismissed.
When the protests began, attorneys at the Minneapolis Legal Rights Center and the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild set up a hotline for protesters to report arrests. Between Memorial Day and the first week of July, the hotline received more than 270 calls. Andrew Gordon, the deputy director for community legal services at the Legal Rights Center, said that, as of October, none of the felony cases have been dismissed. "On the misdemeanor side of things, where we're talking about someone being charged with a curfew violation, trespass, or unlawful assembly, of the seventy-one [misdemeanor] cases we were able to identify and where we spoke to individuals who were charged, all but ten of them were dismissed."
In New York City, DAs in four of the five boroughs similarly announced they would not prosecute protesters charged with offenses they deemed nonviolent—primarily unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct, and curfew violations. But the DAs haven't clarified their stances on the hundreds of cases where protesters weren't arrested, but instead were issued a summons—which are typically handled independently of the DAs, said Jennvine Wong, a Cop Accountability Project attorney with the New York Legal Aid Society. COVID-19 shutdowns resulted in a backlog of many of the cases where protesters were arrested for nonviolent offenses, leaving many still awaiting a hearing months later. "[District attorneys] are continuing to review cases on an individual basis, while remaining silent with respect to the hundreds of summonses that are scheduled [to be heard] in the coming months," Wong said. "For the most part, if someone was only charged with unlawful assembly, those cases are getting…dismissed." In July, the Legal Aid Society and other legal defense organizations in New York demanded DAs dismiss or decline to prosecute all criminal cases stemming from the summer protests.
"We should not be looking at prosecutors as saviors," said Josh Tepfer, who works as an attorney with the Exoneration Project in Chicago. "When we seek prosecution of police as the answer, we're seeking to utilize the same flawed system that has created systemic racism to solve [it]…But Kim Foxx has spoken powerfully about these systemic injustices and she's taken some steps to back up these powerful words."
Sarah Staudt, a senior policy analyst and staff attorney at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, agreed. "State's Attorney Foxx has been a public voice advocating for evidence-based practices and against fear-mongering and racism. That's a welcome change from previous administrations, and has been particularly crucial this summer during the frequent protests and the uptick in the homicide rate," Staudt said. "[Additionally], even among prosecutors who identify themselves as 'progressives,' SA Foxx stands alone in providing this much publicly accessible data… It takes a genuine understanding of the importance of accountability and transparency, as well as political courage, to keep and continually add to this data and expand the categories available—even when it means that she may give critics from both the right and left ammunition."
But that doesn't mean that advocates are anywhere near finished pushing for continued changes in the State's Attorney's Office, especially now that the jail population is growing once again, more people than ever are being placed on electronic home monitoring, and cases continue to be resolved slowly during the pandemic.
Tepfer said he hopes that Foxx will make a bigger priority of addressing the continued impacts of the police misconduct of decades past if elected to a second term, particularly in the backlog of cases based on the testimony of corrupt Chicago Police officers like Ronald Watts, Jon Burge, and Reynaldo Guevara. "There are 150 or so pending cases that me and other people have asked for her to vacate, that we should have no trust in any of those convictions. Many of those have been sitting on the State's Attorney's desk for years now," Tepfer said. "There have only been thirteen convictions vacated on the Watts cases in the last twenty months or so…. So, there's a lot of work still to be done. We were off to a good start for a while, but things have really, really slowed down."
"Ultimately, prosecutors have the power to reduce the harm caused by the over-prosecution, over-criminalization, and systemic racism in our justice system," Staudt said. "This harm reduction is crucial as a matter of basic human rights. It also helps demonstrate in concrete terms how unnecessary and harmful [certain] policies are. It's much harder for opponents of abolition to argue that the criminal legal system, as it stands, is necessary when we have prosecutors who are demonstrating that reducing its footprint has positive results, not negative ones."
As cities across the country contend with their dual and entangled histories of racial injustice and policing, many at the ballot box are questioning the potential and the limits of any prosecutor's ability—even a progressive one—to truly challenge an unjust and unequal system they are complicit in endorsing and maintaining. Four years into her term, Foxx has accomplished much of what she promised to do when she was elected: she has made more transparent the way her office deals with police misconduct, made progress in dealing with wrongful convictions, reduced the prosecution of some shoplifting cases, worked to reform Chicago's bail system, and leaned more on diversion programs as an alternative to incarceration.
Because prosecutors decide what to charge and what not to charge, "the purview of a prosecutor is rather significant," Foxx said. "We're a very powerful actor within the system, but we are but one of the actors."
Kiran Misra is a writer for the Weekly who primarily covers criminal justice and policing in Chicago. She last wrote about Cook County Jail and COVID-19. Jim Daley is the Weekly's politics editor. He last fact-checked CPD's version of events at an August protest.
Freedom Ride for Mohawk
Activists and friends of Jeremey "Mohawk" Johnson show up to lend support
By Raven Geary
Report: Cook County Jail Is Filling Up Again
During the pandemic, white prisoners were released more often than Black or Latinx ones—and now the number of detainees is on the rise
By Lucia Geng
Who Are the Organizers?
"When I see police, I see 100 other jobs smashed into one thing with a gun."
By Kia Smith
Kiran Misra
Sitting Ducks: 'Leaving People in the Jail Is Leaving People to Die'
The Contradictions of a Progressive Police Chief
Incarcerated at Home
Previous Story Previous post: The Show Must Flow On
Next Story Next post: The Road There Is A Battlefield
Latest from Activism
Southsider Designs Grocery-delivery App to Mitigate Food Deserts
Sweet Potato Patch functions similarly to other meal delivery apps, but it distinguishes itself with a decidedly local and community-oriented focus
By James Garrison
Local School Council Elections Were Faced with Challenges That Undermine the Legitimacy of the Process
Close to 500 Local School Councils in Chicago Public Schools held their elections this past November
By Kelly Garcia
The People Rose Up: A Black Summer 2020 Timeline
A selection of uprisings that took place in Chicago following the police killing of George Floyd
By The Triibe and South Side Weekly


Eight photoshoots, countless potoroos, wavy turbos, grannies, New Zealand screw shells, banksia cones, exquisite cheese and wine, grandpas, yellow-tailed black cockatoos, forests that smell like expensive aromatherapy and the biggest exhibition of Eyes as Big as Plates in the world to date – here are our hot picks from our adventures in Tasmania!
We are also proud to share a link to our appearance on the Australian national radio and the details for a panel discussion this Saturday 23rd of March starting at 2.15 pm in the Founders Room at Salamanca Arts Centre, and the artist talk in the Long Gallery on the same date at 4 pm.
Sinsa also introduced us to Uncle Allan, an artist and a Tasmanian Aborigine. His parents were amongst the last nomads in Tasmania. He was nine years old when he was taken away from his family, making him part of Australia's stolen generation. After many years living as a hermit in the bush, he developed a spiritual connection with the land and learned to channel his activism and creativity through art.
Many of Uncle Allan's works feature eucalyptus leaves, a major identity marker for the aboriginal community.
Uncle Allan and his gum tree armour faced the sunrise at Coal Point.
The official thank yous also to Australia Council for the Arts, Regional Arts Australia, Ten Days on the Island, One Care in Burnie and Kingston and Luke Wagner.


text:
THE BEST Scottsdale CODING BOOTCAMPS OF 2021
Get Matched to Scottsdale Bootcamps
Our comprehensive guide to Scottsdale coding bootcamps, including the best Scottsdale code schools, reviews, scholarships, and more!
Other Featured Schools
UW Boot Camps
UCLA Extension Boot Camps
Atlanta, Austin, Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, London, New York City, Online, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Washington
Coding Temple
Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Online, Schaumburg, Washington
Butler University Executive Education Boot Camps
Tecnológico de Monterrey Boot Camps
Mexico City, Monterrey
UC Irvine Boot Camps
UMass Amherst Coding Boot Camp
University of Richmond Boot Camps
KU Boot Camps
Software Guild
Akron, Atlanta, Louisville, Minneapolis, Online
Chicago, New York City, Online, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington
University of Arizona Boot Camps
Coding Boot Camp at Harvard Extension School
Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Boulder, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Madison, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York City, Oakland, Online, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington
UNC Charlotte Boot Camps
LearningFuze
Irvine, Online, Orange County
Austin, Boulder, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Online, Phoenix, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle
GW Boot Camps
Arlington, Washington
University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Boot Camps
Rice University Boot Camps
Tech Elevator
Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Online, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
Codesmith
Los Angeles, New York City, Online
Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose
USC Viterbi Data Analytics Boot Camp
Austin, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Online, Phoenix, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle
UC Davis Boot Camps
Northwestern Boot Camps
Los Angeles, Oakland, Online, Orange County, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle
Rutgers Bootcamps
Jersey City, New Brunswick, Somerset
University of Miami Boot Camps
ESMT Berlin Coding Boot Camp
Washington University Boot Camps
University of Wisconsin Extended Campus Coding Boot Camp
Penn Boot Camps
University of Denver Boot Camps
University of Minnesota Boot Camps
Eleven Fifty Academy
Hybrid (Online & In-person), Indianapolis, Online
Devmountain
Atlanta, Dallas, Lehi, Online, Phoenix, Provo, Salt Lake City
Case Western Reserve University Boot Camps
NexGenT
Austin, Online, San Jose
UC San Diego Extension Boot Camps
Boston, Chicago, New York City, Online, Ottawa, San Jose, Toronto, Vancouver
Calgary, Halifax, London, Montreal, Okanagan, Online, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria
University of Oregon Boot Camps
Georgia Tech Boot Camps
Atlanta, Savannah
UCF Boot Camps
Fort Lauderdale, Orlando
UT Austin Boot Camps
Austin, Houston
UCR Extension Boot Camps
UTSA Boot Camps
Code Fellows
Online, Portland, Seattle
Berkeley Boot Camps
University of Utah Professional Education Boot Camps
Vanderbilt University Boot Camps
SMU Boot Camps
Akron, Dallas
Columbia Engineering Boot Camps
Adelaide, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Brisbane, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Melbourne, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York City, Online, Orlando, Paris, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, Stamford, St. Louis, Sydney, Tampa, Toronto, Washington
devCodeCamp
Madison, Milwaukee
DigitalCrafts
Atlanta, Augusta, Austin, Baton Rouge, Billings, Brooklyn, Charleston, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbia, Columbus, Dallas, Durham, Fort Worth, Greensboro, Houston, Jersey City, Kansas City, Kennesaw, Manchester, Missoula, Nashville, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Online, Phoenix, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, Savannah, Seattle, Shreveport, St. Louis, Tampa
CodeBoxx
Brooklyn, Miami, Montreal, New York City, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Quebec City, Tampa, Toronto
UNC-Chapel Hill Boot Camps
Chapel Hill, Raleigh
Carleton University Coding Boot Camp
UNH Coding Boot Camp
1 Best Coding Bootcamps in Scottsdale
Scottsdale Community College Coding Bootcamp
Overall Rating: (0.0) (0 reviews)
Scottsdale Community College offers an 18-week Back End Software Developer bootcamp in Scottsdale, Arizona.
LOCATIONS: Scottsdale
Scottsdale coding bootcamps received an average 5.0 of 5 based on 1 reviews

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The windmills of the Bodrum Peninsula is one of the greatest sights overlooking the Bodrum & Gumbet Bay and the Aegean.
The windmills date back to 18th century and they were used till the 70s. Seven of the windmills are located on the hill top between Gumbet and Bodrum. This location is really mesmerizing that the visitors are able to see the Gumbet Bay on one side, and the Bodrum bay on the other side.
In addition there are ruins of three windmills near the other resort of Yalikavak on the northwest of the Bodrum peninsula.
A visit to the windmills and enjoy the landscape would be a nice nature activity for the holidaymakers on their Gumbet holidays. There is also a restaurant at the region for refreshing.


text:
Home/OAP
OAP
'I'll never allow my sons to sleep over at their friend's house' – OAP Toolz
Media Personality, OAP Toolz, has revealed that she will never allow her children to go sleepover at their friend's house…
Popular OAP, Fada Kane discovers he's not the biological father of his two children after 20 years
Popular Calabar On Air Personality, Kanedrick Kingsley Agwu a.k.a Fada Kane, has shared Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) test results which revealed…
I slept with a groom before and after his wedding as a bridesmaid – Female journalist spills
Yaa Nicky, self-proclaimed relationship guru and presenter at the Kumasi's 'ABN Radio One' has left people dumbfounded after her shocking…
OAP Toolz advises Mercy Johnson to sue lady who dragged her and her daughter, Purity
Nigerian media personality, Toolz had advised Mercy Johnson to press charges against the lady who defamed her and her daughter.…
Ozo fulfills his dream of becoming an OAP as he joins Brila FM (Video)
BBNaija season 5 housemate, Ozo has fulfilled his dream of becoming an On-Air Personality (OAP) as he joins Brila FM…


This summer, the EU decides on net neutrality. If we lose, European ISPs win the power to give some sites & apps special treatment—while slowing others to a crawl. On June 28, the EU Slowdown begins. Sites will protest with a slow loading icon based on Europe's flag, to drive millions of comments to EU regulators. Can you join?


text:
Next Article in Trends
Outsourcing Performance Tied to Facility Lifecycle
By Anthony Mitchell
September 21, 2004 6:00 AM PT
The best guarantee of success in outsourcing call center programs offshore is to match the work to be outsourced to the appropriate stage of a facility's lifecycle. Herein is a description of management and technical issues involved in running programs at offshore call centers that have gone beyond the awkward first stage of their facility lifecycle.
We begin with business-to-business (B2B) programs, which serve as a mezzanine for facilities moving up from entry-level business-to-consumer (B2C) programs.
South Asian call centers generally follow a predictable lifecycle of facility development:
1. Business-to-consumer (B2C) outbound telemarketing programs, which are usually paid on a pure pay-for-performance basis.
2. Business-to-business (B2B) outbound telemarketing programs.
3. Simple hourly rate work such as outbound marketing surveys, soft collections or inbound directory support.
4. Complex inbound work that is often billed on a per-minute basis, and for which U.S. centers would charge the equivalent of US$75 dollars per hour or more.
The most crucial time for an IT outsourcing facility is at the beginning of its lifecycle, when its corporate culture is first being defined. If the facility's managers fail to establish a good corporate culture right from the start, then it becomes progressively harder to repair that corporate culture later on.
Some new call centers have skipped the first stage or two of their lifecycle by recruiting experienced managers who quickly pull together teams on the basis of merit, and who can immediately begin performing complex inbound work. The best examples of this are the call centers that have been run by B.R. Chandra Shekar in India and the Persian Gulf.
Sometimes a facility in a later stage of its lifecycle will have a manager who belongs somewhere else. At InternationalStaff.net's IT partner firms, we address this by contract provisions that allow us to exclude anyone at a facility from dealing with our programs or our clients' programs.
Here is a guide to the top three stages of offshore facility lifecycle. It describes the characteristics of the programs that typify each lifecycle.
Business-to-Business Programs
B2B work has the following characteristics:
1. Metrics and consistency within teams are often emphasized. In our programs, InternationalStaff.net drops agents who are not performing up to par. A lot of B2B work is technology oriented, which makes it easier for agents with South Asian accents to perform well.
2. South Asian agents can do well at B2B outbound work, but, due to the nature of the outbound environment, are not good at collecting financial information on sales programs (bank account and credit card information). South Asian agents have the politeness and diplomacy that enables them to become consistently high performers with outbound market research and business survey work. North American clients who need financial information for sales purposes would do best to prequalify leads or bill separately from the closing call, for example, through the mail.
3. More complex metrics systems are used with B2B than with B2C programs. B2B programs often require three to five calls to close a sale. Agents who try too hard to close on the first call will often produce failed sales. Callback rates are important, as is the need to maintain customer satisfaction during each callback. More than 20 percent of calls should be callbacks, or a center might be burning through lists. Rather than grouping callbacks together and assigning them all to one individual on a team, InternationalStaff.net has the agent who made the initial customer contact do his or her own callbacks, thereby continuing the customer relationship. This is more effective in the short term and provides good training for maintaining customer satisfaction in inbound customer-service work. Mornings can be used for making new contacts, with callbacks receiving a priority in the afternoons in each U.S. time zone.
4. Commission rates for B2B sales are usually higher than for B2C programs, but the monthly payment cycles with a one-month lag are a huge disincentive for centers to run these programs. U.S. firms that need B2B outbound program capacity have been slow to shift to payment systems that use flat hourly rates plus bonuses, as many B2C clients have done since mid-2003.
5. Management competence and low turnover among supervisors is crucial for the success of B2B programs. About 60 percent of the B2C centers that try to run our B2B programs fail with them during the first month. An additional 20 percent fail by the end of the third month. The 20 percent that survive have shown that they are ready for inbound work. Vetting facilities through gradually more challenging projects is the best way to build outsourcing relationships that are less costly and more reliable than just going for big outsourcing chains where prices are higher and first-time or small clients are liable to be ignored and poorly served.
6. The skill sets and corporate cultures at facilities with good B2B track records translate well to running inbound and flat-rate programs. InternationalStaff.net never places an inbound program with a facility unless we have established a good track record with it (or its managers) on a B2B program. Sometimes the facilities that initially appear to have confused managers (rather than overtly incompetent ones) turn out to be the best performers if ramped up slowly and important communications repeated to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The major risk to this approach is scalability, which not all good facilities can provide.
7. Since B2B programs are not covered by B2C rules in the United States, they can be run alongside mission-critical inbound work without causing collateral risks to adjacent clients' programs.
Simple Hourly Work
Simple hourly work has the following characteristics:
1. Survey or soft collections work can be done by facilities with unreliable voice lines and no inbound number.
2. Inbound work that needs high uptime rates should only be placed at facilities that have established reliable uptimes with other programs. If they do not have inbound experience to evaluate, it is good to look at their uptime rates for outbound work.
3. Even if line reliability is not an issue, there might be problems with dropped calls at facilities that are new to inbound work, such as calls that reach the U.S. hub but are not handed off successfully to an agent or go all the way through an interactive voice response (IVR) unit. In South Asia, it often takes three to five attempts to complete a local call, and callers are expected to keep trying until they complete a call.
4. Local managers with only domestic South Asian experience might be somewhat unsympathetic to dropped call metrics. In Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), there are now 33 domestic call centers and four international ones. Staff from the domestic centers who pursue career advancement by shifting over to international centers might bring laissez-faire attitudes about dropped calls with them. Attention to dropped call rates has improved markedly in India since 2002. Even at experienced inbound facilities, InternationalStaff.net tests for dropped call rates before the go-live date.
5. A good facility will help minimize talk times through the use of IVR units and possibly automatic call distributors (ACDs), where appropriate. Most Indian facilities that InternationalStaff.net works with keep their IVRs in India if they have one. An offshore IVR for U.S. calls lowers system reliability and stacks up waiting calls on international private leased connections (IPLCs). Stacking calls on IPLCs decreases system capacity and raises costs.
6. Under typical Indian facility arrangements, if IPLCs go down, then there might be no way to notify callers that there are technical problems and to ask them to try again later. For example, monsoon rains caused large-scale disruptions in an IPLC backbone from Bangalore on September 13. I found this out when a call center's operations manager walked down the street and called from a commercial phone booth.
Complex Inbound Work
Complex inbound work has the following characteristics:
1. It is often billed on a per-minute basis.
2. Specialized programs, such as remote server administration, should be placed alongside similar programs to take advantage of existing training and support resources.
3. Clients with small programs or highly variable volumes might benefit from going into a shared environment. Shared environments enable similar programs from multiple clients to be run with the same agents, allowing flexibility to meet service spikes while controlling costs.
4. Dedicated rooms might be set up for individual programs or clients that need to maintain high levels of data security. In India, InternationalStaff.net uses former Indian military officers to provide independent auditing and monitoring.
5. Linked facilities with access to more than one backbone will become increasingly popular for mission-critical work. For example, there are two facilities in separate parts of South India, connected together with a dedicated fiber line. One facility is on two telecom backbones and the other facility is on a third backbone. One of the backbones takes a Pacific route, the other an Atlantic route. Some Indian facilities use satellite uplinks as a backup, but this has limited capacity and, in my experience, does not always provide good voice quality.
6. When system reliability and adherence to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are critical, then provisions for financial penalties should be written into outsourcing contracts to penalize unacceptable levels of performance.
7. Although the first international merchant call center facilities only began in India in 1999, there are now enough experienced personnel and competent managers who can meet or exceed the performance metrics at the best competing North American facilities.
High-End Work
InternationalStaff.net has found with technical support work that the more complex the subject matter is, the higher the savings that can be achieved by going offshore. Savings from sending complex technical support work offshore can exceed 75 percent, whereas with some low-end work the savings are only 20 percent.
Competition for high-end work is so intense that offshore facility managers will often personally lead the sales process and process-migration work, traveling to potential clients' offices on short notice and demonstrating great flexibility in setting up outsourcing programs.
This was not seen in the early years of the offshore outsourcing process, when offshore centers thought that the mere prospect of achieving cost savings would motivate U.S. clients to accept anything offered.
Anthony Mitchell, an E-Commerce Times columnist, has beeninvolved with the Indian IT industry since 1987, specializing through InternationalStaff.net inoffshore process migration, call center program management, turnkeysoftware development and help desk management.
More by Anthony Mitchell
Recognize Corporate Cultures at Outsourcing Facilities
Outsourcing: The Costs of Compliance
Social Media Revolution Will Be .Tel-evised
Acquiring Outsourcing Companies: Not for the Squeamish
Sustainability Lessons From India: Q&A With Environmental Consultant Trudy Heller
Pakistan's Software Industry Celebrates Achievements
What Does the Future Hold for the Call Center?
How to Offshore
The Hidden Wealth in Domain Names
Search Advertising Campaign Management
More in Trends
China's Woes Could Take a Bite Out of Apple's Bottom Line


text:
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain. Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in History for this well-researched and well-written book, Chatelain offers a post‑1960s history of the interrelationship of black communities with McDonald's and the mixed blessings for Black capitalism.
ANTHROPOLOGY/SOCIOLOGY
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb. In this true-crime thriller, a Jack the Ripper-style murderer and trusted physician poisons his lady victims without remorse until newer methods of detection catch up with him. "Effortlessly readable."
Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich. Selected pieces by the political activist and author of Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America. The winner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, this book will attract readers interested in social justice and in good writing.
BIOGRAPHY COLLECTIONS
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les and Tamara Payne. This definitive biography delivers fresh insights into the many facets of Malcolm's life. "Highest recommendation" (Amazon); winner, 2021 Pulitzer Prize in biography; 2020 National Book Award for non-fiction.
Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang. Yang has collected the stories of some of the many refugees who have landed in the Twin Cities, telling of their struggles to find new lives in a new land.
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. National Book Award finalist Villavicencio offers memory-infused essays on undocumented immigrants' lives in the U.S., fleshing out for readers the complex narratives of their lived experiences and the impact on their psychological and physical well-being.
Skiing into the Bright Open: My Solo Journey to the South Pole by Liv Arnesen. In 1994, Arnesen made international headlines as the first woman to ski solo and unsupported to the South Pole. This travel/adventure/memoir explores the author's outer and inner odyssey.
The Smallest Lights in the Universe by Sara Seager. This "bewitching" memoir reveals the deeply human side of a renowned MIT astrophysicist—from her deprived childhood, when her fascination with the stars began, through the solace she found in a widow's group after her husband's death.
The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo. This medieval tale, by a favorite local author, magically blends love, betrayal, hope, faith and kindness into a heartwarming novel for children (grades 3–6) and for the adults who read to them. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
Bee Love (Can Be Hard) by Alan Page and Kamie Page. When Grandpa was young, he was afraid of bees, that is until he learned about them. Bees are amazing, pollinating powerhouses. This picture book was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Bestselling seven-novel series follows Harry Potter in a struggle against an evil wizard who killed Harry's parents years ago. Popular with children, teens and adults. DONATIONS FROM AUDREY ESTEBO, EILEEN SMITH AND VICTORIA TIRREL COMPLETE THE LIBRARY'S SET.
When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller. When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger steps out of Korean folklore, prompting Lily to unravel a family history. Winner of the 2021 Newberry Fiction Award. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
FICTION, CLASSIC
Persuasion by Jane Austen. Anne Elliot is brought together with her former fiancé, Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth, seven years after she was persuaded to break the engagement. The scene is set for a second chance at love and marriage. (Published 1817, six months posthumously.)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. This collection of Papa Hemingway's short fiction contains classic stories like "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," along with seven previously unpublished stories.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. Published in 1986, this novel depicts PTSD and cultural marginalization on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, and shows how colonization can break the spirit. Native storytelling and ceremony help heal the spirit. Silko is an acclaimed Native American writer.
FICTION, NEW
Aviary by Deirdre McNamer. The author's newest novel (Milkweed Editions, 2021) is being called a literary thriller that is both funny and serious, exploring in great depth her cast of characters—seniors living in a retirement community. McNamer is a professor of creative writing at the University of Montana. DONATED BY VEENA DEO.
The Dictionary of Lost Words: A Novel by Pip Williams. Esme is the daughter of one of the lexicographers working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. When she learns that many of the discarded words are related to women's experiences, she sets out to write her very own "dictionary of lost words." Set at the height of the women's suffrage movement, with WW I looming. Finalist for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Award.
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. When family tragedy strikes, 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine postpones her dreams of college to look after her fragile mother. She goes undercover for the FBI, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine, to track down the source of drugs that have come into the community. She must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) even if it tears apart her world.
Friend: A Novel from North Korea by Paek Nam-nyong. A tale of marital intrigue, abuse and divorce that unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage as it delves into its protagonists' past, describing how the couple fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers, alongside the story of the divorce judge's own marital troubles.
Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. Vincent is a bartender whose relationship with a white‑collar criminal thrusts her into a charmed existence. When her boyfriend's Ponzi scheme collapses, she signs up to be a cook on a cargo ship. Mandel focuses on the ease with which a person can slip out of one life and into another.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. In the 1700s, Addie makes a deal with the devil—she will live forever, although her immortality comes with the curse of being forgotten by everyone. Addie moves through time and across continents; learning to survive and even leave her mark on the world. Then one day she meets a man in a bookstore who remembers her name, and suddenly everything changes. Rivals The Time Traveler's Wife in concept and scope.
Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War by Michael Shaara. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara writes a historically accurate account of the pivotal three-day battle at Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863). The epitome of the historical fiction genre, Shaara includes his own interpretation of the private conversations and thoughts of his four principal characters: Generals Lee and Longstreet (Confederate) and General Buford and Colonel Chamberlain (Union), plus a cast of supporting characters. Shaara's mix of fact and relevant fiction is insightful and riveting. DONATED BY KATIE WEIBLEN.
The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton. A member of the Dutch resistance risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss, when countries across Europe close their borders to the growing number of refugees.
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. A spellbinding tale of psychological suspense about a charismatic professor of Greek tragedy at Cambridge University who's accused of murdering one of his students.
Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel by Kawai Strong Washburn. Folds the legends of Hawaiian gods into an engrossing modern family saga about the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage and the cost of survival. Winner of the 2020 Pen/Hemingway Award.
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris. Depicts Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction; the tale of two freedmen brothers and the white farmer who hires them.
Telephone: A Novel by Percival Everett. From Graywolf Press comes "part campus novel, part Western adventure," featuring a protagonist who is a "perpetually dissatisfied geologist/paleobiologist"; his daughter develops mysterious symptoms that he is powerless to resolve. In a quest to deal with loss and grief, he travels to New Mexico to try to find and help whoever has put notes reading "Ayúdame (Help me)" in clothing he buys on eBay. Finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen. The story of a Vietnamese mother and her two sons who escape by boat to a refugee camp and, eventually, to New Orleans; takes place from 1978 to 2005, ending at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Explores dislocation and resettlement.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. A novel of two sisters, inseparable since birth, who choose to live in two different worlds—one as Black and the other White. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
Foods That Fight Cancer by Richard Beliveau, Ph.D. and Dr. Denis Gingras. This book is not only a feast for the eyes but also food for thought. It's chock-full of practical approaches for harnessing the power of foods to reduce the risk of cancer. The authors have the credentials and have backed up their data with ample references to peer-reviewed journals. SUGGESTED BY A RESIDENT.
The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do about It by Jason Karlawish. Using case studies, Karlawish treats Alzheimer's disease with a "big picture" approach, from its history, to the politics involved, to hopeful ways the lives of patients can be made better.
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell. One critic describes this book as "controversial and provocative revisionist history." Here Gladwell narrates how technological progress and good intentions cause terrible consequences in a war, bringing moral challenges to American military history.
Bull Mountain, Like Lions and Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich. These three sprawling, gritty, tribal, hillbilly noir crime novels are set in a locale awash in moonshine, weed and meth. The characters are rude, crude and socially unacceptable, but totally real. A series as hard to lay down as flypaper. DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN.
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey. A woman moves to a remote rural community to be closer to her artist son, who is jailed for homicidal negligence. She comes to know her neighbors when she embarks on building a stone labyrinth in an attempt to make sense of the loss and isolation in her life, a plan that will require her to trust and to reckon with her past. The Labyrinth is a story of guilt and denial, of the fraught relationship between parents and children. It is also an examination of how art can be ruthlessly destructive and restorative. Winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Award for Australian Literature. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel by Laura Dave. A gripping mystery about a woman who thinks she has found the love of her life until he disappears. With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists and evocative family drama, this riveting mystery is certain to shock you with its final, heartbreaking turn. DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN.
Lightning Strike: A Novel by William Kent Krueger. This St. Paul mystery writer returns with the latest entry in his Cork O'Connor series. Even better, it's a welcome prequel to this immensely popular series. Not only the expected page-turner, it's a look at the Ojibwe people and the historic oppression endured at the hands of Whites. The book is sure to inspire fans to re-read the entire series with a new perspective. DONATED BY A RESIDENT.
The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny. Readers of Penny's Gamache mysteries will enjoy the latest series installment's return to the fictional Quebec village of Three Pines, not far from the Vermont border. The Times of London hails it as "an exploration of cowardice and courage in the service of Peace." DONATED BY VEENA DEO (#17 in the series).
Murder Past Due by Miranda James. Everyone in Athena, Mississippi, knows librarian Charlie Harris and his rescued Maine Coon cat. He's returned to his hometown, and soon he's entangled in a real-life murder mystery of a former classmate. Now he must explore the town's past to find a killer. (#1 in the Cat in the Stacks series) DONATED BY EILEEN SMITH.
The 7-1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. A whodunit with a surreal twist! Every day our narrator wakes up in a different body belonging to someone at an ill-fated party where Evelyn Hardcastle gets murdered every night until the mystery of her death is solved. If you ever wanted the Netflix series Russian Doll to have a baby with the film Gosford Park, this is for you. DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN.
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cody. Two men—one Black, one White and both ex-cons—are the fathers of two men who were married to each other and were just murdered; the fathers join together to find the killers. Gritty; getting great reviews. DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN.
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty. The author is a 16-year-old nature writer and climate activist from County Down, Ireland. This 2021 work published by Milkweed Editions is being received as a transformative memoir beautifully written. Winner of the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing. DONATED BY VEENA DEO.
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard. This revolutionary and controversial memoir convincingly portrays the lives of trees, from their evolution to understanding them as part of an intelligent community.
POETRY COLLECTIONS
The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. The youngest inaugural poet for President Biden's swearing-in ceremony, Gorman now has a special-edition book of her inspired poem. The poet implores for unity amid enormous divisions in this country.
Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs. This debut volume by a St. Paul poet offers clear‑eyed yet warmhearted poems that reflect the difficult truths Black families live through. He shows that community can be created if we treat each other with dignity and care.
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick. "I sometimes think I was born reading." In this appealing essay/memoir, Gornick explores the evolving relationship between book and reader, combining original interpretations with self-exploration. A must for the chronic readers and re-readers among us.


The sea anemone is a group of tiny vessels, each swallowing their own mouthful of the ocean. Coral forms are hand-carved in wax and then cast in precious metal. The shape creates a contemporary version of the classic string of pearls when strung together. The rhythmic circular patterns polish to a fine luster reflecting light and allowing the reflections alone to take center stage, creating a depth and intrigue only a sea creature can.


20%96°80°Thunderstorms with a high of 95 °F (35.0 °C). Winds from S to SSE at 5 to 9 mph (8.0 to 14.5 kph).Night - Thunderstorms. Winds variable at 1 to 7 mph (1.6 to 11.3 kph). The overnight low will be 79 °F (26.1 °C).
65%96°79°Thunderstorms today with a high of 96 °F (35.6 °C) and a low of 79 °F (26.1 °C). There is a 65% chance of precipitation.
Today - Thunderstorms with a high of 95 °F (35.0 °C). Winds from S to SSE at 5 to 9 mph (8.0 to 14.5 kph).
Tonight - Thunderstorms. Winds variable at 1 to 7 mph (1.6 to 11.3 kph). The overnight low will be 79 °F (26.1 °C).


text:
Stock-market jitters have rocked network spending, Cisco says
Some enterprises waited to buy new campus gear when they saw things get shaky in January
By Stephen Lawson
Senior U.S. Correspondent, IDG News Service | PT
Stephen Lawson
The world's financial markets got off to such a rough start this year that some enterprises froze plans to upgrade their campus networks.
After oil prices and stock markets around the globe plunged during the first trading days of the year, there was a slowdown in spending that hurt Cisco Systems results and colored its forecast for the current quarter, CEO Chuck Robbins said Wednesday.
"You see customers say, 'I want to just wait, see what's going on,'" Robbins said on a conference call about Cisco's fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 23.
The report was a reminder that what happens in financial markets can echo in IT departments if business management fears shrinking sales or a falling stock price ahead. Cisco has a different financial calendar than most other IT companies and is one of the first to report on a quarter that spilled over into this calendar year. It's the world's dominant supplier of networks.
The quarter was going according to the company's expectations until its final three weeks, Robbins said. The "pause" most affected spending on campus networks, the systems that connect servers and data centers to desktops and, increasingly, mobile devices.
"Where they had the option to wait, they chose to wait a bit," he told financial analysts. Robbins didn't estimate how long the pause would last.
Fortunately for Cisco, spending on other key products didn't seem to be hit by the market jitters, the company said. While its switching revenue fell 4 percent from a year earlier, security rose 11 percent. Cisco is working to expand its portfolio from its traditional business of switches and routers to things like software, services and security.
Overall, the company's revenue rose just 2 percent from a year earlier, to $11.9 billion. Its profit was $3.1 billion, or $0.62 per share. Adjusting for things like the fact that Cisco sold its set-top box business late last year, the company reported results that were roughly in line with what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected.
For the current quarter, which goes until late April, Cisco forecast revenue growth from a year earlier of between 1 percent and 4 percent. That's a wider range than the company usually gives because of the economic volatility it's seen so far this year, CFO Kelly Kramer said.
Stephen Lawson is a senior U.S. correspondent for the IDG News Service based in San Francisco.


text:
\section{Incentive: improvement of QCD sum rules \cite{LMS:PRD76,
LMS:QCD@Work07,LMS:YaF,LMS:PLB657,LMS:Hadron07,LMS:PLB671,DM:PLB671,
LMS:C8p,LMS:C8t,LMS:PRD79,LMS:JPG37,LMS:PRD80,LMS:PLB687,LMS:YaF2010}}
Within the method of QCD sum rules, \`a la
Shifman--Vainshtein--Zakharov, the concept of quark--hadron
duality is usually implemented by {\em assuming\/} that above
specific continuum thresholds the contributions to suitably
defined correlators of interpolating currents at the level of the
QCD degrees of freedom equal those at the level of the hadronic
bound states. Our approach \cite{LMS:PRD76,
LMS:QCD@Work07,LMS:YaF,LMS:PLB657,LMS:Hadron07,LMS:PLB671,DM:PLB671,
LMS:C8p,LMS:C8t,LMS:PRD79,LMS:JPG37,LMS:PRD80,LMS:PLB687,LMS:YaF2010}
seeks to quantify the uncertainty induced by such an {\em
approximation\/} and to improve the accuracy of all predictions by
allowing our threshold to depend on the involved momenta and
parameters introduced upon application of Borel transformations.
The Borel transformation to a new variable, the Borel parameter
(called $T$ or $\tau$ hereafter), serves to {\em remove\/}
subtraction terms and {\em suppress\/} excitation and continuum
contributions.

Any such idea is best tested first in a situation in which the
outcome for all bound-state characteristics one is interested in
is known exactly. So let's study a quantum-mechanical model
defined by a nonrelativistic Hamiltonian $H$ with a
harmonic-oscillator interaction:
$$H=\frac{\mathbf{p}^2}{2\,m}+\frac{m\,\omega^2\,r^2}{2}\ ,\qquad
r\equiv|\mathbf{x}|\ .$$This model is {\em exactly\/} solvable:
ground-state energy, decay constant, and form factor
read$$E_\mathrm{g}=\frac{3}{2}\,\omega\ ,\qquad
R_\mathrm{g}\equiv|\psi_\mathrm{g}(\mathbf{x}=\mathbf{0})|^2
=\left(\frac{m\,\omega}{\pi}\right)^{3/2}\ ,\qquad
F_\mathrm{g}(q)=\exp\left(\frac{-q^2}{4\,m\,\omega}\right).$$We
inspect the analogues of a few $N$-point correlation functions of
interpolating currents. The Borelized polarization function or
2-point vacuum--vacuum correlator \cite{LMS:PRD76,LMS:QCD@Work07,
LMS:YaF,LMS:PLB657,LMS:Hadron07,LMS:C8p} reads
$$\Pi(T)\equiv\langle\mathbf{x}_\mathrm{f}=\mathbf{0}|\exp(-H\,T)
|\mathbf{x}_\mathrm{i}=\mathbf{0}\rangle\stackrel{\mathrm{HO}}{=}
\left[\frac{m\,\omega}{2\,\pi\sinh(\omega\,T)}\right]^{3/2}\ .$$
The double-Borelized 3-point correlator of some current operators
$J(\mathbf{q})$ \cite{LMS:PLB671,LMS:C8t} is
given~by\begin{align*}\Gamma(T_2,T_1,q)&\equiv
\langle\mathbf{x}_\mathrm{f}=\mathbf{0}|\exp(-H\,T_2)\,J(\mathbf{q})
\exp(-H\,T_1)|\mathbf{x}_\mathrm{i}=\mathbf{0}\rangle\\[-.09266ex]&
\hspace{-1.845ex}\stackrel{T_{1,2}\to\infty}{\longrightarrow}\quad
R_\mathrm{g}\exp[-E_\mathrm{g}\,(T_1+T_2)]\,F_\mathrm{g}(q)\
;\end{align*}for equal Borel parameters (or Euclidean times)
$T_1=T_2=\frac{T}{2}$ this expression simplifies~to$$\Gamma(T,q)
\stackrel{\mathrm{HO}}{=}\Pi(T)\exp\left[\frac{-q^2}{4\,m\,\omega}
\tanh\left(\frac{\omega\,T}{2}\right)\right]
\quad\stackrel{T\to\infty}{\longrightarrow}\quad
R_\mathrm{g}\exp(-E_\mathrm{g}\,T)\,F_\mathrm{g}(q)
\equiv\Gamma_\mathrm{g}(T,q)\ .$$The Borelized vacuum--hadron
amplitude of the T-product of 2 `quark' currents is
\cite{DM:PLB671,LMS:PRD80}$$A(T,q)\equiv\langle\mathbf{x}=\mathbf{0}|
\exp(-H\,T)\,J(\mathbf{q})|\psi_\mathrm{g}\rangle
\quad\stackrel{T\to\infty}{\longrightarrow}\quad\sqrt{R_\mathrm{g}}
\exp(-E_\mathrm{g}\,T)\,F_\mathrm{g}(q)\equiv A_\mathrm{g}(T,q)\
.$$The admissible working ranges of Borel parameter values, or
`Borel windows', are found by requiring that the ground state
contributes sizeably to the {\em average energies\/} (see
Fig.~\ref{Fig:1})
\begin{align*}E_\Gamma(T,q)&\equiv-\frac{\partial}{\partial
T}\log\Gamma(T,q)=\frac{3}{2}\,\omega\coth(\omega\,T)
+\frac{q^2}{4\,m\left[1+\cosh(\omega\,T)\right]}\ ,\\
E_A(T,q)&\equiv-\frac{\partial}{\partial T}\log
A(T,q)=\frac{3}{2}\,\omega+\frac{q^2}{2\,m}\exp(-2\,\omega\,T)\ ,
\end{align*}and that in the sum rules higher-order nonperturbative
effects are sufficiently suppressed.

\begin{figure}[ht]\begin{tabular}{cc}
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_1a.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_1b.eps}\\
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_2a.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_2b.eps}
\end{tabular}\caption{Relative ground-state contributions to
$E_\Gamma(T,q)$ and $\Gamma(T,q)$ (first row), respectively
$E_A(T,q)$ and $A(T,q)$ (second row), for several dimensionless
$\hat q\equiv q/\sqrt{m\,\omega};$ vertical lines delimit the
Borel windows.}\label{Fig:1}\end{figure}

\section{Duality $\Longleftrightarrow$ effective continuum
thresholds}The derivation of any QCD sum rule proceeds along
several more or less canonical steps:\begin{itemize}\item Perform
the operator product expansion (OPE) of the T-product of involved
fields in terms of local operators yielding so-called vacuum
condensates. In quantum theory, an OPE corresponds to a series
expansion in powers of the Borel parameter
\cite{LMS:PRD76,LMS:QCD@Work07,LMS:YaF, LMS:C8p}.\item Represent
the (perturbative) correlator as dispersion integral over a
spectral density.\item Invoke quark--hadron duality, by cancelling
the contributions to the correlator above its effective continuum
threshold against its hadronic `continuum': we argue that all
thresholds {\em must\/} depend on the Borel parameter and, where
applicable, on momenta.\end{itemize}Even after application of the
quark--hadron duality approximation the resulting sum rules can be
rendered rigorous by introducing the notion of {\em dual
correlators\/}. These QCD-level correlators are defined to be {\em
exactly\/} dual to the relevant lowest, or ground-state, hadronic
contributions. This becomes feasible if allowing the {\em exact
effective continuum thresholds\/} $z_\mathrm{eff}(T,q)$ to depend
on the Borel parameter (and, if relevant, on the
involved~momentum):
\begin{flalign*}&\Pi_\mathrm{dual}(T,z^\Pi_\mathrm{eff}(T))
\equiv\hspace{-1.8ex}\int\limits_0^{z^\Pi_\mathrm{eff}(T)}
\hspace{-1.7ex}\mathrm{d}z\exp(-z\,T)\,\rho_0(z)
+\Pi_\mathrm{power}(T)\stackrel{\mathrm{SR}}{=}
\Pi_\mathrm{g}(T)\equiv R_\mathrm{g}\exp(-E_\mathrm{g}\,T)\
,&\\&\Gamma_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))
\equiv\hspace{-2.4ex}\int\limits_0^{z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q)}
\hspace{-2.25ex}\mathrm{d}z_1\hspace{-.7ex}
\int\limits_0^{z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q)}
\hspace{-2.25ex}\mathrm{d}z_2\exp\left(-\frac{z_1+z_2}{2}\,T\right)
\Delta_0(z_1,z_2,q)+\Gamma_\mathrm{power}(T,q)&\\[-.7376ex]&
\hspace{17.87ex}\stackrel{\mathrm{SR}}{=}\Gamma_\mathrm{g}(T,q)
\equiv R_\mathrm{g}\exp(-E_\mathrm{g}\,T)\,F_\mathrm{g}(q)\
,&\\&A_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^A_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))
\equiv\hspace{-2.4ex}\int\limits_0^{z^A_\mathrm{eff}(T,q)}
\hspace{-2.25ex}\mathrm{d}z\exp(-z\,T)\,\rho_A(z,T,q)
\stackrel{\mathrm{SR}}{=}A_\mathrm{g}(T,q)\equiv\sqrt{R_\mathrm{g}}
\exp(-E_\mathrm{g}\,T)\,F_\mathrm{g}(q)\ .&\end{flalign*}Our exact
knowledge of the quantum-mechanical ground-state mass, decay
constant {\em and\/} form factor renders possible to determine the
exact effective continuum thresholds for all dual correlators:
Fig.~\ref{Fig:2} shows that these thresholds are definitely far
from being constant. However, in order to {\em extract\/} from
$\Gamma_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))$ or
$A_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^A_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))$ the elastic form
factor $F_\mathrm{g}(q)$ by exploiting only the knowledge of
$E_\mathrm{g}$ and $R_\mathrm{g}$ we simultaneously have to pin
down the actual behaviour of the effective continuum thresholds.
We thus adopt for our thresholds the simple polynomial ansatz
\cite{LMS:PRD79,LMS:JPG37,LMS:PRD80}
$z^{(n)}_\mathrm{eff}(T,q)=\sum_{j=0}^nz_j^{(n)}(q)\,(\omega\,T)^j$
and obtain any set of coefficients $z_j^{(n)}(q)$ by evaluating
the {\em dual energies\/}, defined according~to\begin{align*}
E^\Gamma_\mathrm{dual}(T,q)&\equiv-\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}T}
\log\Gamma_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))\
,\\E^A_\mathrm{dual}(T,q)&\equiv-\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}T}\log
A_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^A_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))\ ,\end{align*}
\noindent at several Borel-parameter points $T_i,$ $1\le i\le N,$
within the Borel window and minimizing then the squared difference
$\chi^2\equiv\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^N
\left[E^{\Gamma,A}_\mathrm{dual}(T_i,q)-E_\mathrm{g}\right]^2$
between $E^{\Gamma,A}_\mathrm{dual}(T_i,q)$ and $E_\mathrm{g}.$

\newpage\begin{figure}[ht]\begin{tabular}{cc}
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_3a.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_3b.eps}\\
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_3c.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_3d.eps}
\end{tabular}\caption{Exact effective continuum thresholds
$z^\Gamma_\mathrm{exact}(T,q)$ (first row) and
$z^A_\mathrm{exact}(T,q)$ (second row) for
$\Gamma_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^\Gamma_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))$ and
$A_\mathrm{dual}(T,q,z^A_\mathrm{eff}(T,q))$:
$\Gamma(T_2,T_1,0)=\Pi(T_1+T_2)$ yields
$z^\Gamma_\mathrm{exact}(T,q=0)=z^\Pi_\mathrm{exact}(T).$}
\label{Fig:2}\end{figure}

\noindent Figure~\ref{Fig:4} depicts the Borel behaviour of our
resulting dual energies and {\em dual form factors\/}.

\begin{figure}[ht]\begin{tabular}{cc}
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_5a.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_5b.eps}\\
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_6a.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_6b.eps}
\end{tabular}\caption{Fitted dual energy $E_\mathrm{dual}(T,q)$
(left) and dual elastic form factor $F_\mathrm{dual}(T,q)$ (right)
for $\Gamma(T,q)$ (upper row) and $A(T,q)$ (lower row) at
dimensionless $\hat q\equiv q/\!\sqrt{m\,\omega}=2.$ These plots
reveal that the intrinsic uncertainties of the sum-rule method
cannot be reliably estimated if assuming a constant threshold
($n=0$).}\label{Fig:4}\end{figure}

\section{Bridging the gap: QCD \cite{LMS:PLB687}
$\stackrel{\sim}{\longleftrightarrow}$ potential models
\cite{LMS:YaF2010}}Beyond doubt, our ultimate target must be to
apply our insights on the sum-rule approach gained in the course
of the above quantum-theoretical exercise to QCD in order to
extract characteristics of actual hadrons such as decay constants
and form factors. Let us start by studying the Borelized
correlator of 2 pseudoscalar quark currents
$j_5\equiv(m_\mathrm{b}+m_\mathrm{u})\,\bar
u\,\mathrm{i}\,\gamma_5\,b$:\begin{align*}\Pi(\tau)&=
\hspace{-3.14ex}\int\limits_{(m_\mathrm{b}+m_\mathrm{u})^2}^\infty
\hspace{-3.02ex}\mathrm{d}s\exp(-s\,\tau)\,\rho_\mathrm{pert}(s,\mu)
+\Pi_\mathrm{power}(\tau,\mu)\\&\hspace{-.155ex}
\stackrel{\mathrm{SR}}{=}f_\mathrm{B}^2\,M_\mathrm{B}^4
\exp(-M_\mathrm{B}^2\,\tau)+\cdots
\quad\stackrel{\tau\to\infty}{\longrightarrow}\quad
f_\mathrm{B}^2\,M_\mathrm{B}^4\exp(-M_\mathrm{B}^2\,\tau)
\equiv\Pi_\mathrm{g}(\tau)\ .\end{align*}The perturbative spectral
density $\rho_\mathrm{pert}(s,\mu)$ may be derived from QCD in
form of a~series expansion in powers of the strong coupling
$\alpha_\mathrm{s},$ at an appropriate renormalization
scale~$\mu$:$$\rho_\mathrm{pert}(s,\mu)=\rho_0(s,\mu)+
\frac{\alpha_\mathrm{s}(\mu)}{\pi}\,\rho_1(s,\mu)+
\frac{\alpha_\mathrm{s}^2(\mu)}{\pi^2}\,\rho_2(s,\mu)+\cdots\ .$$

\begin{figure}[h]\begin{tabular}{cc}
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_7b.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_7a.eps}\\
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_7d.eps}&
\includegraphics[height=.204\textheight,scale=1]{Plot_7c.eps}
\end{tabular}\caption{Dual masses and decay constants extracted
from QCD (left) and our potential model
(right).}\label{Fig:5}\end{figure}

\noindent Duality permits dual correlators exactly
counterbalancing all ground-state contributions:\begin{align*}
\Pi_\mathrm{dual}(\tau,s_\mathrm{eff}(\tau))&\equiv\hspace{-3.14ex}
\int\limits_{(m_\mathrm{b}+m_\mathrm{u})^2}^{s_\mathrm{eff}(\tau)}
\hspace{-3.2ex}\mathrm{d}s\exp(-s\,\tau)\,\rho_\mathrm{pert}(s,\mu)
+\Pi_\mathrm{power}(\tau,\mu)\\&\hspace{-.155ex}
\stackrel{\mathrm{SR}}{=}\Pi_\mathrm{g}(\tau)\equiv
f_\mathrm{B}^2\,M_\mathrm{B}^4\exp(-M_\mathrm{B}^2\,\tau)\
.\end{align*}The decay constant $f_\mathrm{B}$ of the charged B
meson is defined by $(m_\mathrm{b}+m_\mathrm{u})\,
\langle0|j_5|\mathrm{B}\rangle=f_\mathrm{B}\,M_\mathrm{B}^2.$ To
parallel the quantum-theoretical case we introduce {\em dual\/} B
mass and decay constant~by
$$M_\mathrm{dual}^2(\tau)\equiv-\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\tau}
\log\Pi_\mathrm{dual}(\tau,s_\mathrm{eff}(\tau))\ ,\qquad
f_\mathrm{dual}^2(\tau)\equiv
M_\mathrm{B}^{-4}\exp(M_\mathrm{B}^2\,\tau)\,
\Pi_\mathrm{dual}(\tau,s_\mathrm{eff}(\tau))\ .$$We make a
polynomial ansatz for the {\em effective continuum threshold\/}
$s^{(n)}_\mathrm{eff}(\tau)=\sum_{j=0}^ns_j^{(n)}\,\tau^j$ and get
the coefficients $s_j^{(n)}$ by minimizing
$\chi^2\equiv\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^N
\left[M^2_\mathrm{dual}(\tau_i)-M_\mathrm{B}^2\right]^2$ for
$\tau_{i\le N}$ in the Borel window \cite{LMS:PLB687}. Figure
\ref{Fig:5} confronts the QCD answer for the B meson with that
from a quantum-theoretical model with harmonic-oscillator plus
Coulomb interaction~potential.

\section{Observations, results, findings, and conclusions}
\begin{enumerate}\item Our exact effective continuum thresholds
{\em do\/} depend on the Borel parameter and any relevant
momentum, and they are {\em not\/} universal but vary with the
studied correlators.\item The algorithm proposed here both
improves significantly the {\em accuracy\/} of traditional
sum-rule predictions and provides reliable estimates of their {\em
intrinsic uncertainties\/}.\item The striking (and surprisingly
even quantitative) {\em similarity\/} of our hadron-parameter
extraction {\em procedures\/} in potential models and in QCD {\em
calls for application in QCD\/}.\end{enumerate}

\begin{theacknowledgments}D.~M.\ has been supported by the Austrian
Science Fund FWF under Project No.~P20573.\end{theacknowledgments}

\bibliographystyle{aipproc}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


U.S. government plans to integrate Radio Frequency Identification chips in passport cards to enable close and easy surveillance across the nation.
(PressZoom) - Fire has been drawn from some quarters as the US govt. plans to use RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in the proposed program of passport cards for U.S. citizens. These ID cards will be mandatory for residents who're not having passports for their identification anywhere in the country or overseas.
This program has been proposed so that security can be shored up throughout the nation. Passengers who travel by air among different countries may be asked to show this kind of an ID proof anytime from 1st January 2007 onwards, whereas for those who travel by land or sea this rule is going to be applicable from January 2008.
The State Department said, instead of using contact less smart card technology "proximity read" it will use the RFID technology "vicinity read" in cards in these new e-Passports. The objective is to have passport cards of credit card size. Therefore, customs & border security officials can read these cards even when they are 20-30 feet away.
This research report on "Global Smart Card Industry - Future Outlook (2007)", also addresses some interesting issues for today's Global business environment.
- The situation of smart card industry in world.
- Pinpoint sectors of growth and identify the driving factors.
- Key Challenges and Strategies.
- Identify market, brand leaders and understand the competitive environment.
- Major driving forces for smart card Industry.
This news item was released on 2007-01-04. Please make sure to visit the official company or organization web site to learn more about the original release date. See our disclaimer for more information.


Cute personalised kids giraffe height chart wall sticker.
All children love to keep a track of height changes throughout their childhood, it shows that they are becoming a big boy or girl ! This sweet kids height chart design is available in a numerous choice of colours, who says you can't have a pink giraffe !! (all black parts will stay black). Personalise this sticker by simply adding a name in the box provided and add that perfect personal touch !
nb. measurements are cut out of sticker and therefore will be the wall colour behind.


LUFKIN FEDERAL CREDIT UNION is a community credit union that has 1 branch with approximately 6746 members serving the greater Angelina county area. The credit union first opened 55 years ago in 1964. Now with more than $27 million in assets, LUFKIN FEDERAL CREDIT UNION employs about 10 people offering various banking and financial related services to its members.


We all want to start the new year healthy, happy, and hopeful. But what if your own body is playing against you? If you are not sure about your health? There are many factors that can negatively affect female health, such as exhaustion, stress, and lack of sleep, among many other things.
It goes without saying that once health issues occur, you must consult a doctor and address them immediately. But often women postpone routine examinations "until later, when there is more time". A few tips below will help you keep a healthy balance every day between scheduled doctors' appointments to keep you in top shape in the new year.
I promise to follow a healthy diet, avoid preservatives, high-fat and high-sugar foods to keep my body in a good shape.
I promise to maintain a healthy weight.
I promise to eat more vegetables and fruits.
I promise to drink enough water.
I promise to visit my OB/GYN at least once a year, no matter how busy my schedule gets.
I promise to exercise regularly, even when I have no time to go to the gym (hint: at home workout tutorials on YouTube are amazing!).
I promise to visit my dentist twice a year to keep my teeth strong and healthy.
I promise to cut down/give up alcohol/smoking.
I promise to spend more time outside, even if it's just 15-minutes during lunch breaks.
I promise to pay attention to my emotional state and control anxiety and stress in my life.
I promise to sleep at least 7-8 hours every night.
I promise to love myself and take care of my health.
Another item that every woman should put on the New Year's health resolutions list is awareness. When it comes to female health, understanding all your treatment options is crucial. In case of uterine fibroids and adenomyosis, surgery is not the only solution. Today, there is a less invasive nonsurgical treatment called uterine fibroid embolization/uterine artery embolization that can help women keep their uterus and avoid many health risks associated with surgery.
Promise yourself to always ask for a second opinion and be your own health advocate!
To learn more about UFE and its benefits for female health call Atlanta Fibroid Center at 770-953-2600 or make an appointment with Dr. John Lipman online.


text:
Playboy's hand-drawn doodle-illustration cover
By Creative Bloq Staff 2012-12-17T13:00:10.351Z Illustration
We chat to Sarah Coleman, aka Inkymole, about her commission to create Playboy's first illustrated cover.
An unusual cover for Playboy, and an unusual commission for Sarah Coleman - who was delighted to take part
Pen-and-ink illustrator Sarah Coleman, aka Inkymole, is the artist behind Playboy magazine's first illustrated cover for 23 years, mixing hand-drawn coverlines with her trademark doodles and flourishes.
Coleman, whose images have featured in numerous editorial, advertising and fashion projects, was perhaps an unusual choice for Playboy - and she was as surprised as anyone to find an email from Playboy's new art director Mac Lewis.
"I thought that it was spam at first," she explains. "It was about 2am and I was thinking I should call it a day. So I ignored it for a bit. When I checked, I was excited and rang the art director straight away. With a very tight turnaround, I had to start drawing the next day. I've worked for lots of high-profile clients but I think because this one is so iconic, with its own colourful owner in the form of the famous Hugh Hefner, and the stories of Playboy mansions and parties, it's a bit legendary."
Position of the month
Coverlines aside, Coleman largely had free rein when it came to creating the illustration - with the one snag that the cover image itself could be any one of nine possibilities. "The art director wouldn't know which one until right at the last minute, when 'The Hef' made his choice," adds Coleman. "So I had to create type that would, firstly, fit around nine different poses and, secondly, be capable of easy, fast tweaks in the final stages."
So what's it like knowing that hers is the first illustrated cover for 23 years? "I'm really very pleased," she beams. "If I never do another one again - even though that would be fabulous - I'll always be proud of this one."
This interview was originally published in Computer Arts issue 208.
Also read!
The art of magazine covers - 20 incredible examples
Fold the front page! New iPad papercraft app - click here
10 awesome examples of brochure design
See more Illustration articles
20 sketching tips to help you make your first marks


"Samagra" a Mobile Governance initiative of Local Self Government Department, Govt. of Kerala. It focuses delivering the services of Local Governments through Mobile application. Initially the application is available for smartphones having android platform.
There are more than 25 service are listed. Now the following services are available in Samagra. Remaining services will be available soon. The services covers 5 Municipal Corporations, 60 Municipalities, 14 District Panchayats, 152 Block Panchayats and 978 Grama Panchayats.
Tender notifications and many more..
Dr M K Muneer, Minister for Panchayats and Social Justice launched the application on 31 March 2015. The application is developed by Information Kerala Mission.


The most significant change to our house view over the last quarter has been around our expectations for further monetary policy normalisation from the Fed.
While we expect the Fed to remain data-dependent, disappointing growth data and subsequent market reaction means Fed normalisation is now largely complete.
US GDP continues to expand above potential, increasing wage growth and spurring capex spending. Yet inflation remains quiescent. Whereas we spent most of 2018 positioned for rate hikes and inflation, we don't think that dynamic will repeat; in addition to signalling a long pause in raising rates, the Fed has said it will cease shrinking its balance sheet in September.
On the other hand, the ECB is nowhere near this point, having recently signalled it has no plans to raise rates this year. Meanwhile the BoJ is conducting QE-infinity.
This has resulted in a shift to our duration view: even though we think the Fed may have one hike left in this cycle after the current pause, we currently prefer to have a neutral allocation to bonds. This is because we see a US slowdown continuing beyond 2019, with growth having peaked in mid2018, and Europe and Asia are experiencing a more entrenched deceleration.
At this point in the cycle, with 2-year USD swap rates moving from 0.5 per cent to over 3 per cent before the recent move back to 2.5 per cent, the big move up in rates is over (for now), and US Treasuries have revived their role as an important defensive diversification tool.
China stimulus and its subsequent success in stabilising Chinese growth at around six per cent remains critical to supporting risk assets more broadly, but is not yet enough to spark global reflation as it did in 2017; we expect trade tensions to ease but some permanent damage to growth has been done, and risks remain.
With developed market central banks taking a more dovish tone, the risk that restrictive monetary policy impedes growth and pushes economies towards recession is significantly diminished (Figure 1). We believe this creates a window of opportunity in which risk assets can deliver attractive returns. Indeed, risk assets such as emerging market equities and currencies have performed well in Q1 19 for this reason.
For this constructive environment to remain intact, it is important that the growth slowdown in major countries stabilise, particularly in China. Several stimulus measures from China and some tentative positive turns in the data support our view that global growth will remain above potential and extend the cycle.
To take advantage of this period of relative calm, we prefer high yielding emerging markets where there is potential for both rates and currency to outperform, and therefore we increased our allocation to EM credit in both hard and local currency.
While the USD has weakened versus emerging market currencies since the start of the year, the extent that this trend continues will likely depend on whether the slowdown in US growth bottoms. Historically EM currencies offer an attractive return profile verses the US dollar when the American economy is expanding (Figure 2).
That said, political risks remain high, with many emerging market economies due to have elections in 2019. While volatility will surely be lower as central banks support markets and growth stabilises, changes to the regulatory environment and market structure mean we are likely to see more shocks within what otherwise appears to be a lower volatility environment. With the stability of volatility falling, factors such as liquidity and sensitivity to global "risk-off" moves will remain important when selecting which emerging markets to invest in.
The extent that growth stabilises and remains above potential will also be important in driving return expectations for developed market currencies.
We maintain our preference to be short the Australian dollar given further downside risks to growth driven by weaker household consumption and the outlook for wages. As markets price in an increased probability of a more dovish Australian central bank, the 2-year rate differential to the US suggests that the Australian currency has room to weaken further (Figure 3).
The Q4 earnings season showed that corporations (particularly in the US) are still able to generate plentiful revenues and profits, even as margins are no longer expanding as they could early in the recovery. In addition, earnings per share (EPS) are growing, albeit at a slower pace than in early 2018 (Figure 4). Debt has risen but interest coverage is ample and will remain so, absent a sharper economic decline.
The rapid fall and subsequent rebound in markets leaves valuations fairly valued in the US, but this remains our preferred region as Europe and much of Asia have weaker fundamentals. Despite our base case of above-trend growth and reduced risk from restrictive monetary policy, there is not much scope for a strong positive bounce in growth or earnings, and low inflation is partly a reflection of a lack of pricing power (Figure 5).
We therefore remain moderately positive on equities, expecting gains in line with this slower, but resilient, earnings growth, helped by dividends and buybacks.
The divergence between US growth and the rest of the world, with emerging markets underperforming, was one of the main drivers of EM equity and currency underperformance. However, that gap began to close late in the year as the US "caught down", and we expect EM to perform positively going forward. In Europe forward multiples are lower than in Japan and the US but risks are higher, growth is lower, and catalysts to change that are missing. Japan has more upside potential, with a calendar stacked with stimulus from royal and sporting events, and firms that stand to benefit from a rebound in global trade.
Credit spreads have performed very well so far this year in both Europe and the US, recovering most of the widening of Q4 2018 across both investment grade (IG) and high yield (HY). However, the levels remain above their average of the past two years.
As with other asset classes, the current environment seems supportive to unlock some of that value and deliver positive carry and rolldown even in a stable situation. The main risk is credit deterioration, with leverage very high, driven by capex, M&A, and shareholder-friendly buybacks; this is reflected in lower interest-coverage ratios even with overall yields still quite low.
However, the downdraft in inflation and economic growth has not been too severe, even though it has been enough to put central banks on the sidelines: this is being reflected in rates and FX volatility being subdued. This usually pushes credit spreads lower too, and we have upgraded our views on the asset class; we expect BBB-rated companies to utilize this window of calm to shore up their finances, but our constructive view is contingent on recession risk remaining low in the US and euro zone.
Utilities and Retail have well-telegraphed debt and revenue problems, but elsewhere EBITDA remains healthy (+9.2 per cent y/y; +4.3 per cent y/y excluding commodities, according to JPMorgan) and profit margins stellar (Figure 6). These healthy fundamentals are unlikely to remain intact in a severe downturn and we expect them to be adversely impacted if Chinese growth fails to stabilize. The build-up of debt in the non-financial corporate sector is, of course, itself a contributor to two of our risk scenarios: debt-service strains and bouts of compromised liquidity.


text:
Q: For each item in a loop, how would you iterate through and return an item in a different array? I have a an array of objects like so:
arrOfObjs =
[{type: "flower", egg: "something"},
{type: "flower", egg: "something2"},
{type: "notFlower", egg: "something3"},
{type: "flower", egg: "something4"}]

Each object in the array has a 'type'. Whenever a user clicks on an item on the page, then another object is added to the array with type either "flower" or "notFlower"
I have another array like so:
allProperties =
["flower_style_1",
"flower_style_2",
"flower_style_3",
"flower_style_4",
"flower_style_5",
"flower_style_6",
"flower_style_7",
"flower_style_8"]

As you can tell it's essentially flower_style_ then a number up to 8.
For each item in arrOfObjs with type = flower, and any new item added, then there should be a return statement where the subject returned is something from the allProperties array.
For example, in arrOfObjs above:

*

*For {type: "flower", egg: "something"} => return "flower_style_1".

*For {type: "flower", egg: "something2"} => return "flower_style_2".

*Don't return anything for {type: "notFlower", egg: "something3"}
because it's not of "type": flower.

*For {type: "flower", egg: "something4"} => return "flower_style_3".

*etc.

Once all items in allProperties have been returned, then start from the beginning flower_style_1 and return that for each new item in arrOfObjs.
So far, I have the following written which is a foreach loop going through arrOfObjs.
    this.arrOfObjs?.forEach(arrItem => {
        if (arrItem.type === 'flower') {
            this.allProperties.forEach(element => {
                return element;
            }
        }
    });

However it doesn't work and I think there would be a more efficient way of achieving this. Especially without having an array of flower_style_.......
Would anyone have an idea of how to achieve the above?

A:

      arrOfObjs =
[{type: "flower", egg: "something"},
{type: "flower", egg: "something2"},
{type: "notFlower", egg: "something3"},
{type: "flower", egg: "something4"}]

allProperties =
["flower_style_1",
"flower_style_2",
"flower_style_3",
"flower_style_4",
"flower_style_5",
"flower_style_6",
"flower_style_7",
"flower_style_8"];

let getArray=[];
arrOfObjs?.forEach((arrItem,i) => {
        if (arrItem.type === 'flower') {
            getArray.push(allProperties[getArray.length]);
        }
    });
    console.log(getArray);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Art Exhibition: A Healing Journey – Last Day to View
September 1, 2018 @ 8:00 am - September 30, 2018 @ 5:00 pm
Lubec Memorial Library 55 Water Street
Lubec, ME 04652 United States + Google Map
Fran Corriveau's art exhibit, "Healing Journey" showing of 36 oil paintings is at the Lubec Memorial Library through the month of September. These paintings are chronologically displayed to portray her adventure as she learned to paint.
"Piece By Piece 2018" Quilt Show
An event every day that begins at 9:00 am, repeating until September 29, 2018
First Congregational Church of Calais 21 Calais Avenue
Calais, ME 04619 United States + Google Map
Enjoy viewing 200 quilts and quilted projects on display with a special exhibit of quilts by our youth, curated by member Patty Hagenaars. The Quilter's Corner interactive room will have hourly demonstrations allowing visitors to ask questions and to learn about several piecing techniques. A number of activities for children is also planned. A new aspect to the show is "Meet the Quilter" where one of our members and her works are highlighted. Piece by Piece 2018's Quilter will be Bonnie Brown Hunter of Pembroke Maine. At the close of the show, the winning ticket for raffle quilt "Scraps of the Past" will be drawn. Proceeds from this raffle support Ronald McDonald Charities in Maine and New Brunswick. Raffle Alley proceeds support our Hospice Lap Quilt Program. Admission by $5.00 US donation meets show expenses and supports future shows.
Opening Reception: The Work Before- Suzanne Hill
Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre 139 Water Street
The Work Before is an exhibition of a series of works by prominent New Brunswick visual artist Suzanne Hill. Through observing the work and rehearsal of the Atlantic Ballet, Hill photographed, watched, and sketched dancers – their clothing, preparation for class, exercises and movements. the stretching and warming of bodies. The dancers rehearsed, worked and repeated, worked and repeated until their actions were "right".
Book Series: "Maine Mountain Guide"
Grand Lake Stream School Building 15 Water Street
Grand Lake Stream, ME 04668 United States + Google Map
On Friday, September 28th, Downeast Lakes Land Trust is pleased to welcome author Carey Kish, as he presents his latest, updated version of the Maine Mountain Guide. The presentation will begin at 6 pm in the Grand Lake Stream School Building. The Maine Mountain Guide, published by the Appalachian Mountain Club, is the only comprehensive hiking guide to the mountain trails of Maine, an essential companion for outdoor enthusiasts since 1961. This newest edition was two years in the making and has been painstakingly revised, updated and expanded by author/editor Carey Kish, who will lead us on a journey of discovery from Acadia National Park to Aroostook County, Maine's White Mountains to Washington County.


A colorfully written and informative post by Toro at Seeking Alpha on the overheated state of the commercial real estate market. We've commented before that it has somehow gone unnoticed that lending standards in the commercial real estate sector have become as permissive (one might say non-existent) as in the residential sector before the subprime implosion. Lax lending leads to overheated buying as night follows day (apologies to the Bard).
[I]nsanity reigns in commercial real estate these days. Prices of commercial real estate are as ridiculous as residential real estate was a year or so ago, and as silly as big cap growth stocks were during The Bubble. It is no different, and the end will also be no different.
But, because of the reckless monetary policies of Easy Al as well as his successor Helicopter Ben – who may differ in style and approach towards inflation targeting but does not differ in attitude towards the asset-driven economy – an ocean of liquidity which has flooded the world has to go somewhere. With the copy-cat pension and endowment funds looking wistfully at the funds which had the foresight to invest in alternative assets such as private equity and real estate a decade ago, money is pouring out of stocks and into alternative asset classes. A decade from now, those piling into alternatives will discover that they were duped. And they will wonder what happened to the asset economy of Easy Al and Helicopter Ben, both of whom should be long gone before the proverbial you-know-what, hits the fan.
Indeed, much of private equity is merely leveraged equity that is not marked to market. Pensions and endowments could get the same effect investing in index funds by either borrowing 5x the amount of equity and investing in an index then turning off its TVs for five years, or investing in futures at 5x the rate to synthetically create an index return, and again turning off the TV for five years. It would then hire a private valuation to firm to tell it what the market should be valued at, all the while not paying the 2 & 20 gravy-train that has the all the ambitious Ivy League MBAs scrambling to jump on to. But we will leave private equity for another time.
Commercial real estate's cousin, residential real estate is dead. Home prices will, at best, move sideways for a decade or, at worst, fall 20-30%. But the Greenspan Bernanke Put is alive and well, as vividly demonstrated by Helicopter Ben when he was madly pumping liquidity into the financial system as the over-leveraged subprime market (a market which we are now assured by the best and brightest was but an afterthought in the mortgage market), was collapsing. Thus, housing prices will not be allowed to fall by those controlling the printing presses of this once mighty currency. But homebuilders stocks have, and will.
Alas, commercial real estate is dead as well, and the REITs will face a similar fate as the homebuilder stocks. It's just that the patient is not yet aware that he is dead.
This entry was posted in Economic fundamentals, Investment outlook, Real estate on June 1, 2007 by Yves Smith.


text:
myscience.org › news › science wire › This is a Neuron on Nicotine
This is a Neuron on Nicotine
Life Sciences | Pharmacology
In this image, a biosensor is targeted to a cell's endoplasmic reticulum and glows green in the presence of nicotine Credit: Lester Group - A neuron containing a biosensor developed by the Lester laboratory glows in the presence of varying concentrations of nicotine.
When a person takes a puff on a cigarette, nicotine floods into the brain, latching onto receptors on the surface of neurons and producing feelings of happiness. But nicotine does not simply stay on the surface of cells-the drug actually permeates into neural cells and alters them from the inside out. Now, a team of scientists has developed a protein sensor that glows in the presence of nicotine, allowing the researchers to observe nicotine's movements in cells and reveal more about the nature of nicotine addiction.
The work was led by Henry Lester , professor of biology at Caltech and previously a visiting scientist at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). A paper describing the research appears online on February 4 in the Journal of General Physiology . Lester is also an affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.
The endoplasmic reticulum is the equivalent of a cell's factory and warehouse-the place where proteins are synthesized and packaged in order to be shipped to various other locations both inside and outside of the cell. Nicotinic receptors (nAChRs) are among these proteins; after being manufactured in the endoplasmic reticulum, they then travel to the cell's surface. When nicotine molecules enter the body, they travel through the bloodstream and reach brain cells, where they meet the nAChRs on the surface of these cells. This triggers the cells' processes of releasing chemicals of reward and happiness.
What happens once nicotine has moved into the cells, however, has not been well understood. Lester and others previously found that some nAChRs remain in the "warehouse"--the endoplasmic reticulum-where they, too, can bind to nicotine. Hoping to gain insights into nicotine's effects within cells, Lester and his team developed a tool called a biosensor to visualize where the drug collects inside of cells. The biosensor is composed of a special protein that can open and close, like a Venus flytrap, and an inactivated fluorescent protein. The sensor is designed to close around nicotine, and this then activates the fluorescent protein to glow brightly, indicating where the nicotine molecules are located and how many are present.
Scientists can put the biosensors into particular parts of a cell-in this work, they placed them in the endoplasmic reticulum and on cells' surfaces-and watch them light up as nicotine floods in.
By making movies of cells containing biosensors in a lab dish, the team has discovered that nicotine enters into the endoplasmic reticulum within a few seconds of appearing outside a cell. Furthermore, the nicotine levels are more than enough to affect nAChRs during their assembly and to chaperone additional nAChRs on their journey to the cell surface. As a result, the neurons are more sensitive to the nicotine, which enhances the rewarding feelings after a puff on a tobacco cigarette or an e-cigarette. In other words, the more a person smokes, the more quickly and easily the smoker gets a nicotine buzz. This is part of nicotine addiction.
While the movies now focus on isolated neurons in the lab, the scientists want to determine whether nicotine's intracellular movements are similar in the neurons of live mice. Additionally, they are developing biosensors for other drugs, such as opioids and antidepressants, to observe how these compounds interact inside and outside of cells.
The paper is titled, " Determining the Pharmacokinetics of Nicotinic Drugs in the Endoplasmic Reticulum Using Biosensors. " Co-first authors are Amol Shivange, formerly a Caltech postdoctoral scholar and now at Novozymes in Bangalore; Philip Borden of Janelia; and Caltech graduate student Anand Muthusamy. In addition to Lester, other authors are Caltech postdoctoral scholars Aaron Nichols, Kallol Bera, Matthew Mulcahy, and Saidhbhe O'Riordan; Huan Bao and Edwin Chapman of the University of Wisconsin; Ishak Bishara, a former intern in the Lester lab; former Caltech undergraduate Janice Jeon (BS '18); Bruce Cohen, a senior scientist in the Lester lab; Charlene Kim, research technician assistant in the Lester lab; Dennis Dougherty , the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and director of the Beckman Institute; Jonathan Marvin of Janelia; and Loren Looger of Janelia. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, HHMI, the Della Martin Foundation, Louis and Janet Fletcher, and Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship donors.
California Institute of Technology - Caltech
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) May Prevent Cognitive Decline - 15.07
3-D imaging, AI reveal stories hidden in shells - 12.07
Speed controllers for protein production - 12.07
The way a single neuron processes information is never the same - 12.07
Neural sleep patterns emerged at least 450 million years ago - 11.07
Science of microdosing psychedelics 'remains patchy and anecdotal', says review - 15.07
Novartis, Amgen and Banner Alzheimer's Institute discontinue clinical program with BACE inhibitor CNP520 for Alzheimer's prevention - 11.07
Reducing antibiotic use - 11.07
Finger-prick blood test could help reduce antibiotic use for some patients - 11.07