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Ali Vaseghi Ardekani
Physical and Electrical Characterization of ZnO Thin Films Prepared by Sol-Gel Method
Mohammad Reza Tabatabaei, Ali Vaseghi Ardekani
In this paper, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films are deposited on glass substrate by sol-gel method. The ZnO thin films with well defined orientation were acquired by spin coating of zinc acetate dehydrate monoethanolamine (MEA), de-ionized water and isopropanol alcohol. These films were pre-heated at 275°C for 10 min and then annealed at 350°C, 450°C and 550°C for 80 min. The effect of annealing temperature and different thickness on structure and surface morphology of the thin films were verified by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). It was found that there was a significant effect of annealing temperature on the structural parameters of the films such as roughness exponent, fractal dimension and interface width. Thin films also were characterizied by X-ray Diffractometery (XRD) method. XRD analysis revealed that the annealed ZnO thin films consist of single phase ZnO with wurtzite structure and show the c-axis grain orientation. Increasing annealing temperature increased the crystallite size and the c-axis orientation of the film after 450°C. Also In this study, ZnO thin films in different thickness have been prepared by sol-gel method on the glass substrate at room temperature. The thicknesses of films are 100, 150 and 250 nm. Using fractal analysis, morphological characteristics of surface films thickness in amorphous state were investigated. The results show that with increasing thickness, surface roughness (RMS) and lateral correlation length (ξ) are decreased. Also, the roughness exponent (α) and growth exponent (β) were determined to be 0.74±0.02 and 0.11±0.02, respectively.
ZnO, Thin film, Fractal analysis, Morphology, AFM, annealing temperature, different thickness, XRD.
An Intelligent Approach for Management of Hybrid DG System
Ali Vaseghi Ardekani, Hamid Reza Forutan, Amir Habibi, Ali Reza Rajabi, Hasan Adloo
Distributed generation units (DGs) are grid-connected or stand-alone electric generation units located within the electric distribution system at or near the end user. It is generally accepted that centralized electric power plants will remain the major source of the electric power supply for the near future. DGs, however, can complement central power by providing incremental capacity to the utility grid or to an end user. This paper presents an efficient power dispatching model for hybrid wind-Solar power generation system, to satisfy some essential requirements, such as dispersed electric power demand, electric power quality and reducing generation cost and so on. In this paper, presented some elements of the main parts in the hybrid system; and then made fundamental dispatching strategies according to different situations; then pointed out four improving measures to improve genetic algorithm, such as: modify the producing way of selection probability, improve the way of crossover, protect excellent chromosomes, and change mutation range and so on. Finally, propose a technique for solving the unit's commitment for dispatching problem based on an improved genetic algorithm.
Power Quality, Wind-Solar System, Genetic Algorithm, Hybrid System.
Optimal Placement of Capacitors for Achieve the Best Total Generation Cost by Genetic Algorithm
Mohammad Reza Tabatabaei, Mohammad Bagher Haddadi, Mojtaba Saeedimoghadam, Ali Vaseghi Ardekani
Economic Dispatch (ED) is one of the most challenging problems of power system since it is difficult to determine the optimum generation scheduling to meet the particular load demand with the minimum fuel costs while all constraints are satisfied. The objective of the Economic Dispatch Problems (EDPs) of electric power generation is to schedule the committed generating units outputs so as to meet the required load demand at minimum operating cost while satisfying all units and system equality and inequality constraints. In this paper, an efficient and practical steady-state genetic algorithm (SSGAs) has been proposed for solving the economic dispatch problem. The objective is to minimize the total generation fuel cost and keep the power flows within the security limits. To achieve that, the present work is developed to determine the optimal location and size of capacitors in transmission power system where, the Participation Factor Algorithm and the Steady State Genetic Algorithm are proposed to select the best locations for the capacitors and determine the optimal size for them.
Economic Dispatch, Lagrange, Capacitors Placement, Losses Reduction, Genetic Algorithm.


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A lighthearted look at news of the day
Bernie Sanders laid off hundreds of campaign workers last week. The good news is now he can focus his campaign on complaining about rising unemployment rates.
Experts say Sanders' decision to shrink his staff indicates he is coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's inevitable nomination. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz showed he is coming to terms with the inevitable by announcing his running mate.
Cruz's running mate, Carly Fiorina, appeared excited with the prospect of being only a heartbeat away from returning to Hewlett-Packard. Together, they plan to sweep all the delegates in the state of denial.
Word has it Cruz originally wanted Ben Carson, but no one was able to wake him up.
Cruz has no mathematical way to gain enough delegates before the convention to assure the nomination. This may be the first time someone in such a position has announced a running mate. The good news for Cruz is that, in a little while, he'll have lots of spare time to interview people for his cabinet.
In a speech at Stanford, former House Speaker John Boehner referred to Ted Cruz as "Lucifer in the flesh." This violates a cardinal rule of politics, which is to always couch your insults so that you can go even lower if you have to. Now, if Cruz were to somehow be nominated in a contested convention, the only attack Boehner has left against Hillary is, "Let's go with the devil we know."
In Rochester, N.Y., a 12-year-old girl entered a 5K race and accidentally ended up running a half marathon. I think we can all agree it's frustrating whenever this happens.
Last week, my iPhone started talking to itself. A news app featured a commentator talking about the fighting in Syria. Siri thought he was talking about her and said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by 'Attacking terrorist forces.'" Apple may be losing money, but Siri has a future in politics. Her kind of honesty is rare.
On Second Thought for April 25, 2016
You may have seen police or firefighters taking a donut break at a 7-Eleven during the day. Apparently, Donald Trump witnessed some sort of disaster at one 15 years ago. Perhaps the out-of-order lights were flashing on the Slurpee machine.
Trump told a New York crowd, "… I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11…" Actually, he was referring to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. A lot of people took a big gulp that day, but it had nothing to do with a convenience store.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said Trump misspoke. This apparently was not as bad as a few weeks earlier when Trump said women who receive abortions ought to be punished. At the time, Pierson said that was a "complete misspeak." Apparently, there are gradations of slipups in the campaign. "Complete misspeak" is somewhere above "misspoke," and probably a bit worse than a total flub up. It would be easier if they would switch to a color-coded system, like the old terror alerts. "Mr. Trump didn't mean to say that. We're raising the factual meter to a yellow today."
Some Trump supporters said he actually was referring to the fire station on 711 Central Park Ave., in Scarsdale. But the fire district responded by saying it is never "under any circumstance" referred to as 711. They don't even keep their stale pizzas under a heat lamp.
The U.S. Treasury Department has decided to put the picture of a woman, former slave and renowned abolitionist Harriet Tubman, on the $20 bill. The value of the bill immediately fell to 79 percent of what it was with a man on the front.
The Treasury originally wanted to put Tubman on the $10 bill. But if history teaches anything, it is that true immortality comes through being the subject of a hit Broadway musical.
"Hamilton" is a big hit on Broadway right now. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, is well known for having an affair. He was an immigrant, and he pioneered the national debt. In other words, he couldn't survive a presidential primary today, let alone a Senate confirmation hearing, but, man, could he inspire some songs.
Last week, Utahns participated in the "Great Shakeout." This is where everyone crawls underneath a desk and holds on, in preparation for how we should react come Election Day in November.
Today, April 18, is tax day. It used to be on April 15. Apparently, inflation is rampant everywhere.
Actually, the date was moved this year so as not to conflict with Emancipation Day. Emancipation, by the way, is a term that has absolutely no relevance to retiring your tax obligation.
If this keeps up, tax day eventually could coincide with National Procrastination Day. That's on June 1, although no one ever gets around to celebrating it.
The Utah Jazz played Kobe Bryant and his merry band of passers last week in perhaps the most meaningful meaningless game in NBA history. It was Bryant's last game, and he managed to score 60 points. This was kind of a metaphor for Bernie Sanders' campaign. Yes, the old guy can still draw large crowds and put on a great show, but that doesn't mean his team will qualify for the title.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who inherited millions and has become a household name through real estate deals and television shows, apparently is trying to convince America that "the man" is trying to keep him from being nominated. I'm not sure who "the man" is, but we ought to elect him.
Trump says the rules of how he has to win the Republican nomination are against him, such as that you have to have an organized campaign capable of collecting a certain number of delegates. Who knew?
You also have to be registered to vote, which is something Trump's children sure wish was common knowledge.
Your Dad is running for president and you don't register to vote? That's sort of like Henry Ford's kids not knowing how to start a car, or Roseanne Barr's kids actually being able to sing the national anthem.
Bernie Sanders joined a Verizon picket line last week. People misinterpreted this. He actually thought it was the line for the service counter, where he wanted to complain that his phone won't flip open any more.
Meanwhile, in Utah, word has it the state Republican Party is close to declaring itself an independent nation.
On Second Thought for April 4, 2016
Microsoft came up with the great idea of creating an artificial intelligence bot on Twitter, in the image of a teenage girl named Tay, and making her capable of learning through interactions with real people online. Within a few hours, she was a racist, a sexist and a Holocaust denier, and she was spewing all this with gusto, humor and abandon. Microsoft had to take her down before she started winning delegates for the presidential nomination.
Microsoft tried to make some adjustments to Tay and put her back online, but she quickly started boasting about smoking drugs in front of the police. It could get worse. Tay reportedly now wants to hang out with Siri.
A new matchmaking service aims to help couples find love through body odor. People who sign up are asked to wear the same T-shirt for three days, without bathing, and then mail it in. The shirts are cut into swaths and sent out to potential mates, who choose the one they find least offensive. The one drawback is that anyone eager to participate in this project probably isn't someone you'd like to spend your life with.
A warning to women: If a dirty T-shirt is the foundation for your marriage, don't be surprised when your husband puts tokens of affection on the bedroom floor, rather than in the clothes hamper.
Really, though, if foul odors made people fall in love, Americans would be much more excited about the upcoming election.
A voter initiative in California would require all state lawmakers to wear the names of their top 10 political donors whenever conducting official business. This is because the nation apparently is better off with super-wealthy politicians who can finance their own campaigns.
A better idea would be to have them wear the top 10 insults they have thrown at their political opponents.
Two astronomers At Columbia University want to point laser beams into space to trick distant aliens into thinking there is no planet here, thus avoiding an eventual attack from armies looking to subjugate humans and exploit earth's natural resources. This sounds expensive. A better idea would be to build a wall in space and make the aliens pay for it.
Of course, we sent Voyager 1 rocketing into space 40 years ago in hopes of inviting people here. That's the bad news. The good news is the ship includes a recording of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." Once they get hooked on rock 'n roll, the aliens themselves will be doomed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Madhur Bandarkar admits being apprehensive about his next- Cinema express
Madhur Bandarkar apprehensive about his next
The filmmaker's upcoming film Indu Sarkar is set to release next month
Published: 28th June 2017
Madhur Bhandarkar's upcoming film Indu Sarkar is set to release next month. The director has been promoting the film with actress Kirti Kulhari for a couple of weeks now. During one such video interaction on social media, when Madhur was asked whether he was unsure about doing a movie on Emergency, he had this to say, "I was a little apprehensive in the beginning, but this movie is not only about the emergency; it is only a backdrop that we have used. I wanted to show the young generation the events that actually happened during the emergency, and that is why I chose this subject."
There have been many rumours that Madhur's film has been supported by a political party. Responding to this allegation, the filmmaker says, "It is not true; if I wanted to get support from any party, I would have made this film two years back!"
Indu Sarkar stars Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Supriya Vinod, Tota Roy Chowdhury among others.
Indu Sarkar Madhur Bhandarkar Kirti Kulhari


The elected RC will replace outgoing Africa Regional Coordinator, Ms. Beza Tesfaye, in June 2018 and will work closely with our current RC, Mr. Oniosun Temidayo Isaiah.
Time Commitment: The amount of time spent on this role is dependent on the level of activity of RCs. We expect a minimum commitment of 5 hours per week on average.
Complete applications must be submitted to the attention of the SGAC Chair, Mr. Alexander Gibson, at elections@spacegeneration.org with the subject line "[LAST NAME, 2017 RC AF Elections]" no later than the deadline.


Downing's initial £65m West Village scheme has revitalised the site of a former railway station to create a luxury student accommodation development in one of the UK's premier university cities. The 220,000sq ft. development is set within generous landscaped gardens on the banks of the River Kelvin and provides accommodation for 701 students. The scheme sits alongside a future £35m 350 bed development in the heart of Glasgow's vibrant and cosmopolitan West End on Byres Road, a short walk away from the city's best bars, restaurants and shops. It features two ten storey buildings, one of which is curved to create a landmark at a key junction. The development ties in with a new riverside walk, which will be created over the coming years as the rest of the site is developed.


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package com.ivan.dourachok.engine.runtime.listener;

import com.ivan.dourachok.engine.runtime.listener.event.MatchEvent;

/**
 * @author Christophe Dame
 */
public interface RuleListener extends DourachokListener {

	void listenEvent(MatchEvent e);

	void matchCompleted(MatchEvent e);

	void matchCreated(MatchEvent e);

	void matchCanceled(MatchEvent e);

	void matchExecuted(MatchEvent e);

	void matchDroped(MatchEvent e);

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Added by Anonymous about 4 years ago. Updated over 2 years ago.
It is not possible to set block's title in different languages if included external file.
Partially done. Titles for HTML blocks can be changed for each language when editing/creating block.


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Home / World View / What Is the Weight of a Basketball?
What Is the Weight of a Basketball?
Mike McGinnis/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images
The weight of a standard basketball is 20-22 ounces when fully inflated. However, the size and weight of a basketball typically depends on the age, gender or skill level of the player.
Basketballs are measured by inflation pressure, circumference or weight. The standards size for a ball in the NBA is 29.5-29.875 inches in circumference, at 22 ounces. This slightly varies from the WNBA standard, which is set at 29 inches in diameter, at 17.5-20 ounces. For juniors, the size is set at 27.17 inches, at 16-17.5 ounces. The basketballs used in FIBA for men's play have a 30.7-inch circumference while the women's ball is set at 29 inches.


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Reviews: Long-Delayed Netflix Sequels
Pee-wee's Big Holiday
What a wonderful world we live in that Pee-wee Herman is returned to it for the long-delayed second-coming he, and his audience, deserves. If the delay was closer to three decades than the canonical three days the clergy proposed when it foresaw Pee-wee's eventual arrival into the world centuries beforehand, the sabbatical he took is mostly worth it. It's true that the screenplay for Pee-wee's Big Holiday feels a touch too hipster-speckled for its own good, but the writing – and Paul Reuben's not-a-beat-missed (or a year for that matter) performance – is refreshingly jejune, absent even a whiff of cloying post-modernism or stultifying irony.
Pee-wee's Big Holiday feels a little like the second Pee-wee film Tim Burton might have gotten around to had he not been lured down the money-making rabbit hole of superhero entertainment. Pee-wee, in his own way, is a much more robust role model for the modern age than Batman ever was, precisely because Reubens' hothouse of insouciant charm is not entwined in the plastic neoliberalism so constantly reified by each and every superhero film that nominally proposes a critique of said modern political individualism. Pee-wee, after all, is a rebel, and his rebellious first feature film was certainly a more bonafide hero's journey tale than Burton's sacrosanct first Batman picture (Burton, admittedly, got it right with Edward Scissorhands, the depressive downside to Pee-wee's manic overdrive, and again with Batman Returns, a German expressionist carnival ride masquerading as a superhero film to accrue an audience and nothing more).
Then again, part of Pee-wee's appeal is his relative mystique, his plasticity, the fact that he exists more as a vaguely nebulous conglomerate of unfettered ticks and closeted traits rather than as a dogmatic scripture to be held to. Someone like Batman is too engulfed in decades of mythology to even emerge from his own innards, but Pee-wee feels like a cosmic force of nature beholden to no one but his own whims. He's an instantly malleable confection, and the film understands that by casting him as a short order cook with a heart of gold, a beacon of forever youth in a time when the world seems to be getting older by the minute. The moral of the film, wonderfully architecturalized in its go-for-broke fleeing from scene-to-scene structure, is to remain on our toes, to exist in the moment, and to find off-kilter beauty wherever life takes you. A somnambulism-prone figure like the Dark Knight could never pull that off, especially when encased in Zack Snyder's funereal gloom.
This Pee-wee is closer to his television incarnation than the more brashly anarchistic, even destructive harbinger of Looney Tunes insanity essayed by Reubens in Burton's feature film debut. But his revelry here is still pinched by the neatly supple undercurrent of renegade road rage bubbling underneath his heavily-manicured veneer of innocence. Director John Lee understands the barely-sane energy necessary to cultivate Pee-wee into more than a one-joke pony, and he and his production team cascade the screen with nicely trimmed, pastel-ornamented, screen-real-estate-occupying beauty that shines brightest in the amusingly Reagenesque, Sunnyvale, CA town of Fairville Pee-wee calls home. Until, of course, he's confronted with his diametric opposite in hulking adventurer Joe Manganiello, who takes a liking to Pee-wee and beckons that he cross-country venture to his birthday party in New York City.
Along the way, Pee-wee meets a motley crew of temperamental types, most salaciously a trio of vamps out of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (the Pee-wee crypto-'50s spirit alive and well). The journey isn't perfect, nor is the film; as with any episodic journey, the whole is necessarily less than the sum of the best parts. But the episodism itself is an apt, playful expression of living life for the moment. The un-complicated, uninhibited homoeroticism between the two male leads ain't half bad either. It's certainly a step up from the neutered, disfigured Big Top Pee-wee. And in the age of sequelitis, it's nice to find a follow-up that is lithe and light-on-its-feet, rather than one that doubles and triples down on the calories until its corpulent form can barely stand at all.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny
Yuen Woo-ping's sixteen-years-later sequel to Ang Lee's magisterial Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – still the highest grossing foreign language production in the US box office, perhaps inspiring the English language treatment of this sequel – wears the venerable spirit of its predecessor less like a soul and more like a diaphanous cloak. Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) returns, and Woo-ping, who choreographed the original feature's martial arts, isn't flairless in the director's chair. But this feature feels less like a riposte or paean to that production and more like dry run through everything Woo-ping's US efforts (The Matrix, most notably) have done to stop action filmmaking dead in its tracks over the ensuing decade and a half.
That's not an assault on Woo-ping, mind you, but a critique of how US production-house wolves have handled him more like a blunt tool than a pen capable of dynamic flourish and artistic resplendence. Ang Lee, a director known by now for his meddling in B-genres with wishes to transform them into soul-fire beauties and ballets of psychology and geometry, was a bosom buddy of Woo-ping, a fellow traveler who brandished his choreographer like an incisive calligrapher's utensil. Alone, in this sequel, Woo-ping reduces himself to the tendencies he expects American producers to pine for – or perhaps the ones those producers slobbered upon him. The results are a back-to-basics, bare-bones action flick calibrated for maximum efficiency and zero poetry.
Which isn't inherently a flaw; after all, in recent years, works like The Raid and John Wick have discovered the harmony between tangible efficiency and fluid, if not florid, ballet, but the key for both was the art-house grotto veneer that descended into their skeletal beings. Their guiding lights were the lean-and-mean Melville, Peckinpah, Fuller and the like, not the Tarkovskys or Malicks wedded to Lee's aesthetic. The potential appeal of Woo-ping's more flash-bang aesthetic is slashing away extraneous material to render a beautiful bloody pulp of a film.
The potential is especially promising in light of Lee's predilection as a director for cloying symbolism. Even at his best, he is too wedded to narrative and character, too assured in the composure of his images, to indulge the sublimity of those Tarkovskys or Malicks at their most wandering-camera best – where images go beyond calibrated meaning and into the exalted realm of exploratory transcendence. If Sword of Destiny has any value at all, it is exploring its own more carnal, corporeal, physical impulses stripped of the more intangible, feather-light flight of Lee's admittedly pretentious, self-consciously airy but radiant imagery.
Yet Woo-ping's film arrives encased in a digital halitosis of soft-focus beauty less resplendent, as in Lee's film, than noxious, weirdly indulgently reveling in its New Zealand photography – much like an ugly stepchild of The Lord of the Rings dressing up in its parent's clothing. The plastic sheen draped over Sword of Destiny is an incriminating act of self-sabotage, denying the piece its passable pleasure as a throwback Shaw Brothers style flick bred in the grotto or the gutter.
Instead, we're watching a film perilously pining for both art-house beauty and fleet-fingered pummeling, impulses that aren't wedded – in this film, at least – at all. With the exception of a shimmering pas de deux atop a starlight frozen pond, a sequence that achieves a lovely incorporeality, we're watching a simulacrum of Lee's elegance clashing with a screenplay that foregrounds cartoon characters more notable for their choice of weapon than their psychology. The true quarrelers in Sword of Destiny are not any human players on the screen, but the clashing tones in a film vying for homage to its eminently poised predecessor and appealing to the baser, more cutthroat impulses of a chop socky film. In trying to have it both ways, the film not only isn't playing fair, but it ends up succeeding at neither.
This entry was posted in Review on March 28, 2016 by jakewalters98.
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Johnny Perez had been out of prison for nine months when he sat in an overly air-conditioned room for nearly seven hours to talk about his experiences in solitary confinement.
Johnny Perez had been out of prison for nine months when he sat in an overly air-conditioned room for nearly seven hours to talk about his experiences in solitary confinement. He was one of the last people to testify at an all-day briefing about the solitary confinement of juveniles held by the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The panelists before him included Anthony J. Annucci, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, New York City councilmember Daniel Dromm, former judges, attorneys, advocates and even a librarian who worked with teens in a Nassau County jail.
They testified about the conditions of solitary, known as "the bing" at Rikers, with people of all ages being held for 23 or 24 hours a day in their cell with no human contact. Food is slid through slots in the door to each cell. The one hour of recreation time allotted each day is usually held at 4 a.m. and is spent in a chain-link cage. Most don't bother to go. And some may not even be given the opportunity to decline. Johnny Perez later spoke with me in more detail about spending 60 days in the bing at age 16. "I don't remember going to rec — or even being asked to go to rec," he told me.
But solitary confinement wasn't the only horror that advocates have condemned. Bryanne Hamill, a retired family court judge and current member of the New York City Board of Correction, which monitors conditions in city's jails, noted that mental health services are not available to people in general population, which are those who are not restricted to solitary confinement or to the mental health unit. The U.S. Attorney found that approximately 51 percent of adolescents at Rikers were diagnosed with some form of mental illness. Those who demonstrate a dire need for mental health services are placed in the mental health observation unit or the restrictive housing unit. Furthermore, Hamill noted, Rikers currently has no adolescent psychiatrist. Teenagers with mental illnesses are more likely to not follow rules or engage in behavior that leads to solitary confinement. According to Hamill, approximately 60 percent of adolescents in the bing have mental health diagnoses, in contrast to 40 percent of the adults.
Investigators found what they called "alarming rates of force used by staff," including "headshots" — or blows to a persons' head or face. Between 2011 and 2012, jail staff used physical force approximately 1,200 times against boys ages 16 to 18. These 1,200 times included many times when force was used as a response to a teenager arguing with staff or as punishment or retaliation. The 79 pages detail a litany of horrors faced by teenage boys at Rikers Island. And it's important to keep in mind that most of them have been arrested and are held awaiting trial. They have not been convicted.
Any person aged 16 or over in New York state is automatically charged as an adult. If that person is unable to afford bail, he or she is sent to Rikers Island until the case is resolved. Most teenage boys are placed in the Robert N. Davorens Center, known as C-74. Teen girls are housed at the Rose M. Singer unit, which is the only building for women of all ages on the island. The average length of incarceration for teens at Rikers is 74.6 days.
Attorney General Eric Holder has called the high rates of violence and solitary confinement "inappropriate and unacceptable" and has vowed that the Department of Justice will "work with the City of New York to make good on our commitment to reform practices that are unfair and unjust." The U.S. Attorney recommended that all adolescents be removed from Rikers Island. But without constant attention, pressure and organizing by advocates, including formerly incarcerated people, teens will probably continue to be housed at Rikers Island while awaiting trial and under the same conditions that both the U.S. Attorney and advocates have condemned.
The unlikely alliance of former judges, elected officials, advocates, attorneys and formerly incarcerated people who testified at the State Advisory Committee hearing have been pushing for deep-rooted changes at Rikers. Others, however, remain resistant. Norman Seabrook, president of the union of New York City correctional officers, had been scheduled to testify at the briefing. He did not appear. However, in an interview with the Center for Investigative Reporting, he defended using solitary confinement as punishment as well as the use of force. "Sometimes you have to use force," he said. "And when you use force, I instruct my officers, use whatever force is necessary to terminate that threat." The U.S. Attorney criticized that use of force as "excessive and unnecessary." Seabrook also stated that the union fought for the use of punitive segregation for those who broke the rules.