text:
High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy
Richard S. Matulewicz*, Brendan T. Frainey, Daniel T. Oberlin, Joshua J. Meeks
Background: Radical cystectomy (RC) is used to treat select patients with T1 high-grade (T1HG) bladder cancer. However, population-level utilization trends and outcomes for these patients are not well-known. We sought to evaluate treatment patterns and clinicopathologic outcomes of RC for T1HG bladder cancer. Patients and Methods: Using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) for 1998-2012, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer. The prevalence of RC used to treat T1HG bladder cancer from 1998-2012 was determined. For years 2010-2012, demographic and cancer-related factors were described and regression analysis was used to examine associations with RC. Oncologic outcomes of RC were described and related to mortality using Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: Treatment of T1HG bladder cancer with RC nearly doubled, from 5.5% during 1998-2000 to 9.9%, during 2010-2012. For 2010-2012, 18,277 patients with T1HG bladder cancer were analyzed. Patients who underwent RC were younger, had fewer comorbidities, and were more often treated at an academic center than those who did not undergo RC. At the time of RC, 41% of patients with T1HG bladder cancer were upstaged (pT2 or greater) and 12.7% had lymph node metastases. The 1- and 3-year survival rates were 0.89 and 0.68, respectively. Extravesical (T3+) disease at RC had the strongest independent hazard (hazard ratio [HR], 2.32; 95% CI, 1.72-3.11) of death other than age of 82 years or older (HR, 3.40; 95% CI, 2.28-5.07). Conclusions: The use of RC for T1HG bladder cancer has increased in prevalence in recent years but is still not widely used. There are concerning pathologic outcomes in patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer treated with RC, including high rates of pathologic upstaging and nodal metastases. Future studies are necessary to better risk-stratify patients with T1HG bladder cancer to best select those who will benefit from aggressive therapy with RC.
JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network
https://doi.org/10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Cystectomy Medicine & Life Sciences
Urinary Bladder Neoplasms Medicine & Life Sciences
Survival Rate Medicine & Life Sciences
Matulewicz, R. S., Frainey, B. T., Oberlin, D. T., & Meeks, J. J. (2016). High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy. JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, 14(11), 1403-1411. https://doi.org/10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
Matulewicz, Richard S. ; Frainey, Brendan T. ; Oberlin, Daniel T. ; Meeks, Joshua J. / High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy. In: JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. 2016 ; Vol. 14, No. 11. pp. 1403-1411.
@article{a4b7970ac4be4dae8cffa5562c31eb90,
title = "High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy",
abstract = "Background: Radical cystectomy (RC) is used to treat select patients with T1 high-grade (T1HG) bladder cancer. However, population-level utilization trends and outcomes for these patients are not well-known. We sought to evaluate treatment patterns and clinicopathologic outcomes of RC for T1HG bladder cancer. Patients and Methods: Using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) for 1998-2012, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer. The prevalence of RC used to treat T1HG bladder cancer from 1998-2012 was determined. For years 2010-2012, demographic and cancer-related factors were described and regression analysis was used to examine associations with RC. Oncologic outcomes of RC were described and related to mortality using Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: Treatment of T1HG bladder cancer with RC nearly doubled, from 5.5% during 1998-2000 to 9.9%, during 2010-2012. For 2010-2012, 18,277 patients with T1HG bladder cancer were analyzed. Patients who underwent RC were younger, had fewer comorbidities, and were more often treated at an academic center than those who did not undergo RC. At the time of RC, 41% of patients with T1HG bladder cancer were upstaged (pT2 or greater) and 12.7% had lymph node metastases. The 1- and 3-year survival rates were 0.89 and 0.68, respectively. Extravesical (T3+) disease at RC had the strongest independent hazard (hazard ratio [HR], 2.32; 95% CI, 1.72-3.11) of death other than age of 82 years or older (HR, 3.40; 95% CI, 2.28-5.07). Conclusions: The use of RC for T1HG bladder cancer has increased in prevalence in recent years but is still not widely used. There are concerning pathologic outcomes in patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer treated with RC, including high rates of pathologic upstaging and nodal metastases. Future studies are necessary to better risk-stratify patients with T1HG bladder cancer to best select those who will benefit from aggressive therapy with RC.",
author = "Matulewicz, {Richard S.} and Frainey, {Brendan T.} and Oberlin, {Daniel T.} and Meeks, {Joshua J.}",
doi = "10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150",
journal = "Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network : JNCCN",
publisher = "Cold Spring Publishing LLC",
Matulewicz, RS, Frainey, BT, Oberlin, DT & Meeks, JJ 2016, 'High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy', JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, vol. 14, no. 11, pp. 1403-1411. https://doi.org/10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy. / Matulewicz, Richard S.; Frainey, Brendan T.; Oberlin, Daniel T.; Meeks, Joshua J.
In: JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Vol. 14, No. 11, 01.11.2016, p. 1403-1411.
T1 - High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy
AU - Matulewicz, Richard S.
AU - Frainey, Brendan T.
AU - Oberlin, Daniel T.
AU - Meeks, Joshua J.
N2 - Background: Radical cystectomy (RC) is used to treat select patients with T1 high-grade (T1HG) bladder cancer. However, population-level utilization trends and outcomes for these patients are not well-known. We sought to evaluate treatment patterns and clinicopathologic outcomes of RC for T1HG bladder cancer. Patients and Methods: Using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) for 1998-2012, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer. The prevalence of RC used to treat T1HG bladder cancer from 1998-2012 was determined. For years 2010-2012, demographic and cancer-related factors were described and regression analysis was used to examine associations with RC. Oncologic outcomes of RC were described and related to mortality using Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: Treatment of T1HG bladder cancer with RC nearly doubled, from 5.5% during 1998-2000 to 9.9%, during 2010-2012. For 2010-2012, 18,277 patients with T1HG bladder cancer were analyzed. Patients who underwent RC were younger, had fewer comorbidities, and were more often treated at an academic center than those who did not undergo RC. At the time of RC, 41% of patients with T1HG bladder cancer were upstaged (pT2 or greater) and 12.7% had lymph node metastases. The 1- and 3-year survival rates were 0.89 and 0.68, respectively. Extravesical (T3+) disease at RC had the strongest independent hazard (hazard ratio [HR], 2.32; 95% CI, 1.72-3.11) of death other than age of 82 years or older (HR, 3.40; 95% CI, 2.28-5.07). Conclusions: The use of RC for T1HG bladder cancer has increased in prevalence in recent years but is still not widely used. There are concerning pathologic outcomes in patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer treated with RC, including high rates of pathologic upstaging and nodal metastases. Future studies are necessary to better risk-stratify patients with T1HG bladder cancer to best select those who will benefit from aggressive therapy with RC.
AB - Background: Radical cystectomy (RC) is used to treat select patients with T1 high-grade (T1HG) bladder cancer. However, population-level utilization trends and outcomes for these patients are not well-known. We sought to evaluate treatment patterns and clinicopathologic outcomes of RC for T1HG bladder cancer. Patients and Methods: Using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) for 1998-2012, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer. The prevalence of RC used to treat T1HG bladder cancer from 1998-2012 was determined. For years 2010-2012, demographic and cancer-related factors were described and regression analysis was used to examine associations with RC. Oncologic outcomes of RC were described and related to mortality using Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: Treatment of T1HG bladder cancer with RC nearly doubled, from 5.5% during 1998-2000 to 9.9%, during 2010-2012. For 2010-2012, 18,277 patients with T1HG bladder cancer were analyzed. Patients who underwent RC were younger, had fewer comorbidities, and were more often treated at an academic center than those who did not undergo RC. At the time of RC, 41% of patients with T1HG bladder cancer were upstaged (pT2 or greater) and 12.7% had lymph node metastases. The 1- and 3-year survival rates were 0.89 and 0.68, respectively. Extravesical (T3+) disease at RC had the strongest independent hazard (hazard ratio [HR], 2.32; 95% CI, 1.72-3.11) of death other than age of 82 years or older (HR, 3.40; 95% CI, 2.28-5.07). Conclusions: The use of RC for T1HG bladder cancer has increased in prevalence in recent years but is still not widely used. There are concerning pathologic outcomes in patients with clinical T1HG bladder cancer treated with RC, including high rates of pathologic upstaging and nodal metastases. Future studies are necessary to better risk-stratify patients with T1HG bladder cancer to best select those who will benefit from aggressive therapy with RC.
U2 - 10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
DO - 10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150
JO - Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network : JNCCN
JF - Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network : JNCCN
Matulewicz RS, Frainey BT, Oberlin DT, Meeks JJ. High-risk of adverse pathologic features in patients with clinical T1 high-grade bladder cancer undergoing radical cystectomy. JNCCN Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. 2016 Nov 1;14(11):1403-1411. https://doi.org/10.6004/jnccn.2016.0150


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text:
\section{Introduction}

Precipitation is a critical variable in the water cycle, as it provides moisture for processes such as runoff, evapotranspiration, and groundwater recharge. Knowledge of the precipitation characteristics and patterns is therefore crucial for understanding land-climate interactions, for extreme event monitoring, and for water resource management. However, accurate precipitation information at fine space and time scales is difficult to obtain, as precipitation estimates from rain gauges, ground-based radars, satellite sensors, and numerical models are all affected by significant uncertainties, which can even be amplified when exposed to non-linear land surface model physics \cite{gottschalck,hazra}.

Rain gauge (or pluviometer) networks are the only direct method to measure precipitation and provide observations with high temporal resolution. As such, they are widely accepted as the benchmark for validating remotely-sensed precipitation products (e.g.,\cite{maggioni16},\cite{ana09}). However, obtaining a spatially representative precipitation field from rain gauges may require collecting a large number of observations at several locations to include different terrain, micro-climate, and vegetation variability. This translates into placing numerous gauges, which is costly in terms of maintenance and often not feasible because of location inaccessibility. Since rain gauges cannot offer spatially continuous information of precipitation \cite{kidd}, it is desirable to place them in a strategic way, accounting for changes in spatio-temporal patterns and having a methodology that is able to adapt to climate instabilities as suggested in \cite{chapter}. This work proposes an automated method to identify the optimal locations of rain gauges in order to capture the spatial variability of precipitation systems in the region and therefore provide a spatially representative rain field.

Voronoi tessellations appear in many contexts and serve a variety of purposes. They are referred to as quantizations in the electrical engineering community \cite{agrell98}, as polygons of influence or Thiessen regions in geostatistics \cite{thiessen}, as geodesic, icosahedral or hexagonal grids in climate system modeling \cite{ringler00}. The corresponding energy functional can be thought of as variation in statistical terminology, or as a cost functional in economic terms. The basic idea of this construction is to represent a large set of data by means of few representative points (generators).

While this general concept has been widely used in a variety of contexts, the special case of a centroidal Voronoi tessellations (CVTs), which is used to denote Voronoi diagrams with the choice of generators that minimizes the energy functional, is less known due to the difficulties associated with its construction. This concept has been gaining popularity in the recent decades in many applications areas, ranging from biology and physics to finance, economics, social science, as well as hydrology (see \cite{DGJ00},\cite{Chen04} and references therein). It is particularly well studied in the context of mesh generation, clustering, quantization, imaging, reduced order modeling and partial differential equations (PDE) applications, where a number of theoretical results has been obtained attesting for its superior qualities comparing to other competing methodologies.

The goal of this work is two-fold. First, we want to introduce the concept of CVTs for precipitation pattern analysis and point out several recently developed numerical algorithms that help constructing CVTs in continuous and discrete settings. Second, we are applying the idea of CVTs in the context of optimal placement of rain gauges, similarly to how it was previously applied in finding optimal placement of schools, post offices, and other resources \cite{DFG}. The practical aim of this study is to develop an automated strategy that would work for an arbitrary data in any geographical location. We draw attention to several modeling assumptions that are part of the algorithm presented herein and the implications of these assumptions on the algorithm performance based on several selected datasets.

We utilize the truncated-Newton (TN) method \cite{nash2000survey}, which is a large-scale nonlinear optimization algorithm, to construct all CVT solutions. The method, described briefly in Appendix (Section \ref{app:tn}), allows to considerably speed up the calculation comparing to techniques such as Lloyd method widely used in the engineering community \cite{Lloyd}, and has advantages over previously introduced modified Lloyd formulations \cite{di2012truncated}.

As in any CVT problem aimed at finding optimal placement of resources, one needs to have a local density estimator. When trying to optimize rain gauge placement, this density should be naturally related to the measure of local precipitation variability. In this work, we have used a variability estimator based on local covariance matrix computed at the decorrelation distance. Our aim is to develop an automated strategy that could be employed in any geographical location in the future on a need basis. This method could be applied to any precipitation dataset, whether in situ, remotely, or based on model simulations.

The article is organized as follows. Section \ref{sec: methods} provides information on the CVT methodology and formulates the problem of optimal gauge placement, comparing to previously used approaches. Section~\ref{sec: datasets} gives information on the data we used in this work. The proposed algorithm is presented in Section~\ref{sec: alg}.
We also compare predictions given by this model with existing gauge locations in Section~\ref{sec: results}.

\section{Methods}
\label{sec: methods}

\subsection{Voronoi and centroidal Voronoi tessellations}
\label{sec:cvt}
The idea of tessellating the region, i.e. decomposing the region into sub-regions, based on the locations of rain gauges has appeared in the early works of Thiessen \cite{thiessen}.

The construction is simple. Consider a certain geographic region $ W\subset \mathbb{R}^2$. Voronoi (Thiessen) regions $\{V_i\}^k_{i=1}$ are generated by a set of points $\{\bx_i\}^k_{i=1}\in \mathbb{R}^2$  and are defined as follows:
\[
V_i(\bx_i)=\{\bx\in W: ||\bx-\bx_i||\le ||\bx-\bx_j||, j=1,\ldots, k; j\ne i\},
\]
where $\|\cdot\|$ is any distance metric. In this work, we choose it to be the standard Euclidean norm. These regions cover the entire domain $W$ and can be formed by drawing perpendicular bisectors to the segments joining consecutive generating points.

Given a certain desired ``density'' function $\rho(\bx)$, one can compute the tessellation error, i.e.
\begin{equation}
\displaystyle \cE \left(\{\bx_i\}^k_{i=1}\right)=\min_{\{\bx_i\}_{i=1}^k}\sum^k_{i=1}\int_{V_i}{\rho(\bx)||\bx-\bx_i||^2 \, d\bx}.
\label{CVT_energy}
\end{equation}
It can be shown \cite{burkardt} that this happens precisely when $\bx_i=\bx^*_i$, where $\bx^*_i$ is the mass centroid of the corresponding Voronoi region $V_i$.
A tessellation satisfying this property is called a ``centroidal Voronoi tessellation'', or CVT for short.
Notice that the above formulation may be extended to other more general cases, i.e. by considering other distance metrics $f(\|\cdot\|)$, other geometric constraints and periodic extensions \cite{DFG, ZED}.

The density function may be used to represent a variety of physical characteristics, such as local characteristic length-scale \cite{Ju08}, signal intensity \cite{E10}, desired grid resolution \cite{burkardt}. In this work we propose to use it for representing spatial rainfall variability, as described in Section~\ref{sec: alg}.

The classical method for constructing CVTs is the algorithm developed by Lloyd in the 1980s \cite{Lloyd} which represents a fixed-point type iterative mechanism. More efficient methods for calculating CVTs have been developed in the past decades \cite{DE06,DE08,di2012truncated}.  For an overview of CVT related numerical techniques we refer interested reader to \cite{DFG, Chen11}. For the purposes of this work, we will use one of the recently developed and well tested CVT solvers based on truncated Newton (TN) methodology \cite{di2012truncated} (see the preudocode given in Appendix B).

\subsection{Problem formulation}
\label{formulation}

There are several possible ways to formulate the problem of optimal placement of rain gauges in a certain region.

One method has been proposed in \cite{Okabe} and later used in \cite{DFG}. If $k$ rain gauges locations in region $W\in \mathbb{R}^2$ are given by $\bx_1,\ldots, \bx_k$ and $V_i\in W$ are the Voronoi (Thiessen) region associated with the $i$-th gauge, one can minimize the expected squared approximation error for the amount of rainfall $z(\bx)$ treated as a random variable $z(\bx)=m(\bx)+\epsilon(\bx)$ with mean $m(\bx)$ and deviation $\epsilon(\bx)$. If the change in the average trend $m(\bx)$ is small compared with the variance $Var(\bx)=E(\epsilon(\bx)^2)=\varepsilon$, which is assumed to be constant, the expected squared approximation error can be approximated as
\begin{equation}
\label{opt}
\displaystyle \cE\left(\{\bx_i\}^k_{i=1}\right) \approx \min_{\{\bx_i\}^k_{i=1}}\sum^n_{i=1}\int_{V_i} {2 \varepsilon^2 \left[1-Corr(\bx,\bx_i)\right]\, d\bx} ,
\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}
\displaystyle Corr(\bx,\bx_i)=E[\epsilon(\bx)\epsilon(\bx_i)]/[Var(\bx)Var(\bx_i)]
\label{corr}
\end{equation}
is the (Pearson) linear correlation coefficient of the time series at locations $\bx$ and $\bx_i$. Details on this derivation are given in Appendix A. Evaluation of \eqref{opt} is computationally intensive, requiring calculation of pairwise correlations for all points inside the domain.

Notice that under the additional assumption that $Corr(\bx,\bx_i)$ only depends on the differences $||\bx-\bx_i||$, $F(\{\bx_i,V_i\}^k_{i=1})$ can be thought of as a generalization of the CVT energy \eqref{CVT_energy} given by:
\begin{equation}
\cE(\{\bx_i\}^k_{i=1})=\sum^k_{i=1}\int_{V_i}{\rho(\bx)f(||\bx-\bx_i||) \, d\bx}
\label{CVT_energy1}
\end{equation}
with distance metric $f(||\bx-\bx_i||)=2\varepsilon^2 (1-Corr(\bx,\bx_i))$ and $\rho(\bx)=1$. The combination of conditions of constant mean and variance together with $Corr(\bx,\bx_i)=Corr(\bx-\bx_i)$ is normally referred to as the {\it weak stationarity} assumption that might or might not hold in practice, as discussed for instance in \cite{chapter}. Effectively, in this formulation the distance plays the most important role, placing a small weight on highly correlated points and magnifying weakly correlated regions. The maximum value of the variance can be rather small depending on the data, which may possibly lead to slow convergence for commonly used numerical algorithms \cite{DEJ06}.

In contrast with the above approach, standard CVT formulation \eqref{CVT_energy} applied to the same problem allows to achieve a similar effect by fixing Euclidean density and instead selecting appropriate density function $\rho$. This method is grounded on the observation that for the solutions to \eqref{CVT_energy}, the sizes of 2-dimensional Voronoi regions defined as $\displaystyle h_{V_i}=2\max_{{\bf y}\in V_i}{||\bx_i-{\bf y}||}$ satisfy \cite{DFG}:
\begin{equation}
\displaystyle
\frac{h_{V_i}}{h_{V_j}}=\left( \frac{\rho(\bx_i)}{\rho(\bx_j)}\right)^{1/3}.
\label{ratio}
\end{equation}
This is the approach advocated for in this work. One may rescale the density $\rho$ to achieve any desired ratio of cell sizes based on a certain spatial distribution of interest, for instance, in \cite{Ju08}, CVT mesh was generated using a velocity field. In this work we choose our density so that it satisfies the following conditions: \sloppy $\displaystyle \sup_{\bx \in W}{\rho(\bx)}= \lim_{Corr(\bx)\rightarrow C_{min}} \rho(\bx) = R$ and $\displaystyle \inf_{\bx \in W}{\rho(\bx)}= \lim_{Corr(\bx)\rightarrow C_{max}} \rho(\bx) = r$.
Here $R$ and $r$ are scale parameters and $Corr(\bx)$ denotes effective (average) correlation
at spatial location $\bx$, with $-1 \le C_{min}\le Corr(\bx) \le C_{max}\le 1, \forall \bx\in W$. The method for computing this quantity based on averaging correlations at a ``decorrelation'' distance is discussed in \ref{sec: eff}. There are many functional forms such a relation can take. One choice is to consider power law relation of the type
\begin{equation}
\rho(\bx)=r+R\Bigl(\frac{C_{max}-Corr(\bx)}{C_{max}-C_{min}}\Bigr)^\alpha,
\label{rho}
\end{equation}
where $\alpha>0$ denotes the power exponent.

This approach results in the following alternative formulation of the optimal rain gauge placement problem:

\begin{equation}
\displaystyle
\min_{\{\bx_i\}_{i=1}^k}\sum^k_{i=1}\int_{V_i}\Big[ r+ R\Big( \frac{C_{max}-Corr(\bx)}{C_{max}-C_{min}}\Big)^\alpha\Big]\|\bx-\bx_i\|_2^2 d\bx.
\label{opt-fin}
\end{equation}

\begin{figure}[t]
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/R1_CVT.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/R100_CVT.pdf}
\caption{Illustration of the effect of the ratio of $R/r$ on the sizes of Voronoi regions. $r=1$ is fixed for both figures. }
\label{fig: ratio}
\end{figure}

The choice of parameters $r,R,\alpha$ is ultimately dependent on the data, the choice of the numerical optimization algorithm and particular application. Due to possible convergence issues, one needs to constrain density away from zero, so that $r>0$. The scale parameter $R$ magnifies the range of density values. Based on \eqref{ratio}, the ratio $R/r$ can be interpreted as an approximation for the ratio of largest and smallest Voronoi regions: $\displaystyle\frac{R}{r}\approx \frac{h_{max}}{h_{min}}$. We illustrate the role of this ratio in Figure~\ref{fig: ratio} by fixing $r=1$ and varying $R$ values. We defer to the values of $r=10^{-6}$ and $R=1$ in this work to provide the proof of concept. This choice gives a ratio of $R/r=10^6$ and was optimized for the use of TN CVT construction algorithm.

Given desired region size ratio, parameter $\alpha$ allows to enhance the contrast between peaks and valleys of the function. It is expected that higher values of $\alpha$ will essentially penalize low correlation areas compared to high correlation (low density) areas, exaggerating density differences inside the given domain. The choice of the enhancement parameter $\alpha$ is described in details in Section~\ref{sec: alg}.

\section {Study Regions and Dataset}
\label{sec: datasets}

This work focused on two very different regions: Oklahoma in the United States and Alto-Adige in Northern Italy. The reason we chose these two domains is twofold. First, they are both covered by dense rain gauge networks that can be used as reference to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Second, they are characterized by different topography and therefore different precipitation processes.

Oklahoma is characterized by relatively uniform terrain, with gentle topography that rises from the southeastern corner to the tip of the panhandle. The continental climate of the region presents cold winters and hot summer seasons and a rainfall spatial pattern that exhibits a west-to-east (dry-to-wet) gradient. The study domain is covered by a dense network of meteorological stations, the Oklahoma Mesoscale Network (hereinafter Mesonet; \cite{brock95}), as seen in Figure~\ref{fig: gauges}~(top). Although data collected at these stations were not used in this study, their locations were compared to the output from our proposed algorithm that optimizes gauge placement to fully capture the precipitation variability in the region.

A similar analysis was performed in Alto-Adige, located in the eastern Italian Alps. Unlike Oklahoma, this area is characterized by complex topography, with elevation ranging from 65 to almost 4000 m a.s.l.

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/OK_new.png}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/AA_new.png}
\caption{Topographic maps with existing gauge locations: (top) Oklahoma region; (bottom) Adige region.}
\label{fig: gauges}
\end{wrapfigure}

Precipitation climatology in the area exhibits strong spatial gradients, with mean annual precipitation varying from $\sim$500 mm in the Northwestern region to $\sim$1700 mm in the Southeastern part (\cite{maggioni}, \cite{niko}). A network of 192 rain gauges is available in the region. The rain gauges are distributed quite uniformly over the area (Fig.~\ref{fig: gauges}~(bottom)), providing a very dense gauge density ($\sim$1/70 rain gauge/km$^2$) for a mountainous area. For the regional studies across Oklahoma and Alto-Adige, we adopted a high resolution (1hour/0.04$^{\circ}$) satellite precipitation product, the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Imagery using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN; \cite{hsu97},\cite{sorooshian},\cite{hsu08}), produced by the University of California, Irvine. PERSIANN uses an adaptive algorithm to extract information from Infra-Red (IR) brightness temperature images, classify the extracted feature, and apply multivariate mapping of the classified texture to the rain rate. Specifically, in this study we used the PERSIANN-Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS), which only applies information from IR observations from geostationary satellites with high sampling frequency (\cite{hsu10}). In the numerical examples below, we used a crude conversion of $0.04^{\circ} = 5$[km] when presenting the results for both regions of interest. Improving this approximation or changing it for other geographic locations will bear no significant consequences in terms of the results.

\section{Proposed algorithm}
\label{sec: alg}

The main steps of the algorithm we are proposing are the following:
\begin{enumerate}
\item[Step 1] Build CVT density function based on the information on spatio-temporal correlations in a certain region using \eqref{rho},
\item[Step 2] Solve the CVT minimization problem \eqref{opt-fin} to obtain optimal rain gauge locations for this region.
\end{enumerate}

We are now going to discuss the details of Step 1, while an example of a TN-based CVT solver is provided in Appendix B. Note that other methods may be used in place of the TN method and might be equally effective depending on the properties of the data.

\begin{figure}[h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.51\textwidth]{figures/Adige_decorr_final.pdf}
    \includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/OK_decorr_final.pdf}
    \caption{Calculation of the decorrelation distance using $1/e$-rule: (left) for the mountainous region in Northern Italy, with $d=45$ [km]; (right) for the Oklahoma region, with $d=80$ [km].}
    \label{fig:decor}
\end{figure}

 \subsection{Effective correlation computation}
\label{sec: eff}

 Effective local correlation $Corr(\bx)$ is a key ingredient of the CVT density estimator used in our method. The approach we take is based on the calculation of local correlation of the time series at each grid point. The number of neighbors one should be taking into account in this computation is related to the {\it decorrelation distance (radius)}, which is estimated using the the exponential model with the so-called nugget effect \cite{ciach99,ciach06}:
\begin{equation}
\rho_g(d)=c_0 \exp{\big[ -\big( \frac{d}{d_0}\big)^{s_0}\big]},
\label{rhog}
\end{equation}
where $d$ is the separation distance between two points, $c_0$ is the nugget parameter (which corresponds to the correlation value for the near-zero distances; \cite{cressie}), $d_0$ is the scale parameter (which corresponds to the spatial decorrelation distance), and $s_0$ is the correlogram shape parameter, which controls the behavior of the model near the origin for small separation distances. Note that $(1-c_0)$ is the instant decorrelation due to random errors in the rainfall observations \cite{ciach03}.

 We estimate $Corr(\bx)$ as the average of correlation coefficients between given point $\bx$ and locations on the circle $S(\bx,d)=\{{\bf y}\in W : ||{\bf y}-\bx||_2 = d \}$ of radius $d$:

\begin{equation}
Corr(\bx) = Corr_d(\bx)=\frac{1}{| S(\bx,d)|}\sum_{{\bf y}\in S(\bx,d)}{Corr(\bx,{\bf y})},
\end{equation}
where $Corr(\bx,{\bf y})$ is the Pearson correlation coefficient given in \eqref{corr}.

Monte Carlo integration over the circle of radius $d$ may be used to speed up the calculation of this quantity. Using uniform sampling ${\bf y}_1,\ldots, {\bf y}_N$ over the region $\tilde S(\bx,d)=\{{\bf y}\in W : d-1\le ||{\bf y}-\bx||_2\le d+1 \}$, we define

\begin{equation}
Corr_N(\bx) \approx \frac{1}{N}\sum^N_{i=1}{Corr(\bx,{\bf y}_i)}
\label{corr_N}
\end{equation}

This method gives an error of the order of $O(1/\sqrt{N})$ \cite{caflisch_1998}. The value of $N=100$ was used in the numerical experiments described in Section~\ref{sec: results}. Importance sampling may be used to improve the accuracy of the Monte Carlo approximation of the local correlation map, but it was not explored in current work.

We define the separating distance $d_0$ at which the correlation is $1/e$ the correlation length for the (assumed) exponential variogram model:
\begin{equation}
d_0 = \min\{d: Corr_d(\bx)<\frac{1}{e} \}
\label{decorr}
\end{equation}

\begin{figure}[h]
\centering

    \includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{Adige_4plots_new.pdf}

    \caption{Density computation for the Italy region: (top left) Effective correlation map based on the original data; (top right) interpolated map; (bottom left) density map constructed using \eqref{rho} with $\alpha=1$; (bottom right) density map for $\alpha=2$.}
    \label{fig: Adige-dens}
\end{figure}

 Figure~\ref{fig:decor} (left) demonstrates the calculation of the decorrelation distance for the case of the data collected over the Adige mountainous region in Northern Italy. We expect to have relatively small decorrelation distance over mountains, which is indeed true based on this data, from which a value of $9$ grid points may be estimated, which corresponds to 45 [km]. Similar calculation performed over the flat region of Oklahoma shows decorrelation at $16$ grid points, corresponding to 80 [km], as seen in Figure~\ref{fig:decor} (right).

Now that the correlation component of the density is defined, we are ready to discuss a possible strategy for picking optimal value for $\alpha$ given expected number of rain gauges and a correlation threshold.

The choice of the density can be motivated by several factors, including availability of resources and desired accuracy.

Figures~\ref{fig: Adige-dens}
shows CVT densities for Adige region, computed using formula \eqref{rho} with $Corr(\bx)$ computed at the decorrelation distance as discussed above. Two different values of parameter $\alpha$ have been tested, resulting in clear differences in densities.

\subsection{Optimal $\alpha$ and main algorithm}

One may want to optimize the choice of parameter $\alpha$ based, for instance, on the desired number of rain gauges $k_g$ to be placed in the regions with relative correlation below certain threshold $C_{tol}$. Namely, we can pick density in such a way that we get approximately $k_g$ locations with relative correlation below $C_{tol}$.  We may choose optimal value $\alpha^*$ as the smallest $\alpha$ satisfying

\begin{equation}
k=\Big|\{\bx\,|\,C^\alpha_{rel}=\Big(\frac{Corr(\bx)-C_{min}}{C_{max}-C_{min}}\Big)^\alpha < C_{tol}\} \Big| \le k_g\label{alpha_opt}
\end{equation}
where $|\cdot|$ denotes the number of grid points in the set.

If $\alpha=1$ immediately satisfies condition \eqref{alpha_opt}, we stop. Otherwise we keep increasing $\alpha$ until desired resolution is obtained.

For instance, if the desired relative tolerance is $C_{tol}=0.1$, meaning that locations with correlation below 10\% are targeted, and if we are planning to place $k_g=100$ gauges in a certain area, we will need to pick $\alpha$ to satisfy
$$
k=\Big|\{\bx\,|\,C^\alpha_{rel} < 0.1\Big| \le 100
$$

\begin{figure}[t]
    \includegraphics[height=3cm, trim={0.5cm 0.5cm  0.5cm 0.5cm},clip]{figures/Adige_3plots_h.pdf}
    \caption{Comparing density computation for different $\alpha$ values: Adige region data. Points satisfying condition \eqref{alpha_opt} are marked and their number is denoted as $k$ in the title to each subfigure.}
    \label{fig: Adige3figs}
    \end{figure}

Figure~\ref{fig: Adige3figs} gives a visualization of the optimal $\alpha$ selection procedure in the case of Adige data based on the above strategy, with the choice of $k_g=60, C_{tol}=0.1$ and default values $r=1,R=1$.

While the locations satisfying condition \eqref{alpha_opt} are good candidates for initial gauge placement, this choice is not optimal in terms of the overall approximation of the precipitation in the region of interest. As discussed above, optimal placement is attained by computing CVT that minimizes the approximation error \eqref{CVT_energy}.

Finally, in Algorithm \ref{alg} we describe the main iterative algorithm for determining optimal placement for rain gauges for a given region.

\begin{algorithm}[h]
\caption{Automatic selection of optimal gauge locations.}
\label{alg}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\Procedure{GaugeOptim}{}
\State Define correlation threshold $C_{tol}$ (default value $C_{tol}=0.1$), desired number of gauges $k_{g}$.
\State
Form the $N\times n$ observation matrix $Y$, where $N$ and $n$ denote the discrete spatial and temporal resolution, respectively.

\State Compute $Corr({\bf y}_j)$ at each location ${\bf y}_j$, $j=1,\ldots N$ using \eqref{corr_N}.
\State Compute decorrelation distance $d$ using \eqref{decorr}.
\State Interpolate the correlation map. Set $\alpha=0$.
\State \emph{loop}: Let $\alpha=\alpha+1$.
\State Build the density map for the interpolated grid using \eqref{rho}.
\If {\eqref{alpha_opt} is not satisfied}
\State \textbf{goto} \emph{loop}.
\Else
\State Return optimal $\alpha$.
\EndIf

\State  Starting with $k_g$ random points, find CVT-optimal generators $\bx_i, i=1,\ldots,k_{g}$ using TN method given in Appendix B or any alternative method with the density \eqref{rho}.
\State Calculate CVT energy \eqref{CVT_energy}.
\EndProcedure
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}

Apart from the precipitation time series data,
the only input parameters needed to run the code are the correlation threshold $C_{tol}$ and the number of gauges to be placed $k_{g}$. The default value for $C_{tol}$ is 0.1, while the number of gauges can be arbitrary. If desired, the user may choose to construct the CVT tessellation for any given number of generators $k_g$ starting immediately at line 13 of Algorithm~\ref{alg}.

\section{Numerical results and discussion}
\label{sec: results}

Figures~\ref{fig:real1} and \ref{fig:real2} provide the results of applying Algorithm~\ref{alg} to both regions and compare the optimal locations of rain gauges with existing rain gauge locations. The default values of $r=10^{-6},R=1$ were chosen in all calculations.

\begin{figure*}[h]
\includegraphics[trim={0 0.1cm  0 0},clip]{alpha_Adige3.pdf}
\caption{Optimized rain gauge locations compared with real gauge data for the Adige dataset. }
\label{fig:real1}
\end{figure*}

\begin{figure*}[h]
\includegraphics[trim={0.2cm 1.6cm  0.2cm 0.4cm},clip]{alpha_Oklahoma3.pdf}
\caption{Optimized rain gauge locations compared with real gauge data for the Oklahoma dataset. }
\label{fig:real2}
\end{figure*}

As shown in Figure ~\ref{fig:real1}, more gauges would be required where topography is the most complex, i.e., the northwestern region of Alto Adige, characterized by altitudes close to 4000 m a.s.l. On the other hand, in the valleys in the southeastern region, less gauges would be needed to fully capture the variability of precipitation. Similarly, in Oklahoma, where topography is more uniform than in Alto Adige, the gauge placement is also more homogeneous, with limited areas characterized by high density. This confirms that the proposed algorithm is able to optimize gauge placement based on observed precipitation patterns, which are linked to the geography of the region (e.g., orographic rainfall systems). In fact, elevation was shown in past literature to explain most of the variance in rainfall in mountainous regions (e.g., \cite{sanchez, johnson}).

In order to investigate how far the actual gauges are from their optimal locations, we look at Euclidean distance between a certain gauge and the closest optimal location. We pick a measure of closeness as a circle of a certain radius and count the number of gauges that fall within that distance from any optimal location. Tables \ref{tab1} and \ref{tab2} give direct counts of the gauges that are close and far from optimal locations, and Figures~\ref{fig:compare_OK} and \ref{fig:compare_Adige} provide the visual representation of the these results.

Obviously, some locations may be inaccessible (especially in complex terrain) although optimal. The methodology introduced in this work can be modified to account for physical constraints and other resource allocation problems, but this is beyond the scope of this article and recommended for future work.

\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
 \hline
 Radius (km)     &  gauges within radius $r$ &  gauges not within radius $d$ \\
 \hline
 $r=2$  & 8 & 130 \\
 $r=5$  & 60 & 78 \\
 $r=10$ & 132 & 6 \\
 \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\caption{Adige region: number of gauges close to optimal locations for different closeness measures.}
\label{tab2}
\end{table}

\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
 \hline
 Radius (km)     & gauges within radius $r$ &  gauges not within radius $d$ \\
 \hline
 $r=5$  & 7 & 111 \\
 $r=10$ & 18 & 100 \\
  $r=15$ & 49 & 69 \\
  $r=15$ & 86 & 32 \\
 \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\caption{Oklahoma region: number of gauges close to optimal locations for different closeness measures}
\label{tab1}
\end{table}

\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/OK_5km.png}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/OK_10km.png}
\caption{Comparing existing locations with optimal placement for the Oklahoma region. }
\label{fig:compare_OK}
\end{figure*}

\begin{figure*}[ht]
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/AA_5km.png}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/AA_10km.png}
\caption{Comparing existing locations with optimal placement for Adige region.}
\label{fig:compare_Adige}
\end{figure*}

As a measure of how well selected locations approximate the precipitation data in a given region, we can compute the error functional given by \eqref{CVT_energy}. As shown in Figure~\ref{fig: tn}, the approximation error is significantly decreased by running the optimization routine. More specifically, the error decreases from $259.56$ to $15.02$ for Adige data and from $8.61\cdot 10^4$ to $4.67\cdot 10^4$ for Oklahoma. Iteration was terminated once local minimum was achieved according to the chosen stopping criterion.

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{tnOklahoma.pdf}
\hfill
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{tnAdige.pdf}
\caption{Decay of the approximation error $\mathcal{E}$ \eqref{CVT_energy} during TN iteration for Oklahoma region (left) and Adige (right). CVT-based location denoted as a red asterisk gives a smaller error value comparing to the error computed for the real-gauge locations (shown as a blue asterisk).}
\label{fig: tn}
\end{figure}

\section{Summary}
We developed an automated strategy that allows to find optimal precipitation gauge locations in any given region based on the variability pattern in the precipitation over the region. The proposed algorithm could potentially be applied to any precipitation dataset (including re-analysis products) that is long enough to capture the temporal variability of precipitation, regardless of any seasonality. We chose satellite-based observations because of their global (or quasi-global) coverage, making this method applicable anywhere else in the world. This is particularly useful when planning a field campaign to select sampling sites or when installing a new gauge network to pick the optimal number of gauges and their locations.

\section{Acknowledgements}
The authors are grateful to Ufficio Idrografico di Bolzano for providing Alto-Adige data. ME acknowledges support provided by the US National Science Foundation CAREER grant DMS-1056821 that funded Mason Modeling Days workshop where initial conceptualization of this work occurred.

\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


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One of the greatest factors to have affected competitive athletics has been the incorporation of organized strength & conditioning programs into high school, collegiate, and professional athletic programs across the country. Strength & Conditioning programs have made competitive athletics more explosive and more exciting, as athletes have made great improvements in strength, power, speed, speed endurance, and body control. During the early 1970's, several intuitive universities, realizing the importance of the role of strength & conditioning, created a new full-time position--the strength & conditioning coach. Since that time, strength and conditioning programs have become an integral part of athletic programs across the country. Many universities today have large conditioning staffs to meet the increased demands placed on the strength and conditioning coach.
Although there were professional organizations which developed during this time of which many strength and conditioning coaches were a part, there was no organization solely dedicated to meeting the unique needs and challenges of the collegiate strength and conditioning coach. This situation changed, however, in May 2000, when a group of full-time strength and conditioning coaches from across the country met in Las Vegas and voted unanimously to organize a new professional organization. This new organization was named the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches association (CSCCa) and was designed to represent and promote the collegiate strength and conditioning coach. The following is a brief overview of the association's goals:
Regaining our identity as professionals as collegiate strength & conditioning coaches and having a full-time strength & conditioning coach at every university/college and eventually at every high school with a competitive athletic program. We strongly discourage dual job responsibilities, i.e., strength & conditioning coach and, for example, sport coach, athletic trainer, physical therapist, personal trainer, teacher/researcher, etc., because each of these areas in and of itself is extremely broad and vast in scope, making it impossible to stay current on applicable research, skills, techniques, etc., while performing duties in more than one area. In addition, dual certification in more than one of these areas potentially decreases the quality and quantity of jobs available to the full-time, collegiate strength & conditioning coach.
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Improving the respect, salaries, status, and job security of the collegiate strength and conditioning coach through making athletic administrators aware of the value of the strength and conditioning coach, as well as the level of education, experience, and expertise necessary to become a full-time strength and conditioning coach.
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The right membership for anyone.
Whether you're a new, weekly or daily yoga enthusiast, we have simple solutions to experiencing YOUR LIGHT!
For beginners and students who visit us now and again.
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Prices listed here apply to all regularly scheduled classes. Workshop prices are listed separately under the Workshops page. Class passes & cards are payable by cash only and must be paid before class begins. Ongoing Monthly Memberships require a completed membership agreement to be submitted and fees are withdrawn directly via direct debit. All passes, cards and monthly memberships are non-refundable and non-transferable after purchase.
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On March 24, the Shickley FFA held its annual banquet in the new gym.
To begin the program, the nine officers performed opening ceremonies and then Derek Swartzendruber gave the invocation. The meal consisted of roast beef, potatoes, green beans, cake, and soda, water or coffee.
Following the meal, Tyler Lauenstein gave the welcome and Makaleigh Yantzie gave the FFA Creed. Marissa Hochstestler introduced the special guests and Amy Hendrickson presented the eighth graders with their Certificates of Achievement. These eighth graders were Dillon Deepe, Matyson Kleinschimdt, Jennifer Mick, Jacey Shipley and Christy Swartzendruber. Jeremy Row then announced the star eighth grader, Jennifer Mick.
Next, Wade announced the Greenhand Degree winners. The ninth graders receiving the award were Hannah Coy, Taylor Houck, Alex Kluna, Dylan Lauenstein, Tyler Peppie, Taylor Reinsch and Makaleigh Yantzie. He then announced the New Chapter FFA Degree winners, Marissa Hockstetler, Amy Hendrickson, Anna Lichti, Cynthia Mick, Taylor Peppie, Austin Oswald and Whitney Walters.
Scott Schlegel awarded Dylan Lauenstein with the star Greenhand Award. Mr. Johnson awarded the Star Chapter Farmer to Wade Walters. Tim Sherbeck awarded Tyler Lauenstein the Star Chapter Leader award. Mike Tyrrel was awarded in his memory the Honorary Chapter Degree from our chapter.
Stacy O'Neil presented the Proficiency award: Wade Walters received Proficiency in Placement and Ag Production.


text:
KUJ slams PTI workers over manhandling of female journalists
Freedom of Expression, Front Page, Media Safety
Karachi: The Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) has strongly condemned the mistreatment and harassment of the female journalists during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's 23rd Foundation Day rally on Sunday.
In a joint statement, the president KUJ Hassan Abbas, general secretary Aajiz Jamali and members of executive council said some miscreants tried to snatch the cameras and shoved and pushed the female journalists, besides forcibly removing the journalists and cameramen covering the PTI rally and the brawl between its two groups.
Expressing concern and strongly criticising the behaviour of the ruling party's workers against the working journalists, especially the female counterparts, the KUJ demanded stern action against the members of the PTI for the shameful action. They also demanded the PTI leadership to tender apology for their workers rude behaviour and must ensure that such incidents are not repeated in future or the journalist organisations would be forced to adopt a unified course of action.


text:
from os.path import join

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib import admin

from views import home, contact
from legacy.urls import legacy_urls

admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^$', home),
    (r'^contact/', contact),

    (r'^blog/', include('ablog.urls')),
    (r'^tech/', include('tech.urls')),
    (r'^legacy/', include('legacy.urls')),
    (r'^docs/', include('docs.urls')),
    (r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')),
    (r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

urlpatterns = legacy_urls + urlpatterns

## In DEBUG mode, serve media files through Django.
if settings.DEBUG:
    # Remove leading and trailing slashes so the regex matches.
    media_url = settings.MEDIA_URL.lstrip('/').rstrip('/')
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^%s/(?P<path>.*)$' % media_url, 'django.views.static.serve',
         {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
    )

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


What If Everyone on Earth Lived in One City?
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Western Sahara is home to a fortified wall 16 times longer than what used to divide Berlin. It's also dropped millions of landmines into the mix.
The Moroccan Wall, or the "Berm" to Western Sahara locals where this sand and stone structure is located, has the dubious bragging rights of being the longest militarized wall in the world right now.
If length is something that matters to you, the seven million landmines scattered across its perimeter also help rank it as the world's longest minefield. At nearly 1,700 miles, it doesn't quite match the enormity of the Great Wall of China, but the Great Wall of today doesn't have explosives surrounding it and soldiers on patrol.
When Morocco took region of Western Sahara over from Spain in 1976, it inherited a long-standing territorial issue with guerrilla forces from the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
In 1981 Morocco began construction on the wall, completing it in 1987. Hostilities between the opposing sides officially came to a truce in 1991, but the Berm may yet play a role in future developments as new tensions mount and the possibility of armed conflict increases.
Where is the safest seat on an airplane?
What If We Stopped Vaccinations?
How bad would things get if everyone stopped vaccinating their kids?
What would it take to survive on Pangea?
How do you know that you're not living in a computer simulation?
Your life would be VEƦɎ different if Earth was a moon of Jupiter.
How to live through one of nature's most powerful events.
Where would you travel to if you had a spaceship capable of going into warp drive?
What If We Built A Ring World In Space?
What If All Humans Were Asexual?
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text:
HANDARA GIVES BACK
As part of our commitment to support the local community especially the poor, the needy and the orphan community, we would like to share with you Handara Golf & Resort's CSR programs that have been conducted in 2015.
We will continue our commitment to spread love and care to the wider community through our CSR program. Should you wish to join this good cause, please do not hesitate to contact us at gm@handaragolfresort.com.
"We will do the best we can with this life… to be of use.."
Handara was built in 1974 by Mr. Ibnus Sutowo for two main missions: to spread his passion for golf to people in Indonesia and to support the local communities. He succeeded in doing both – he was recognized as the Father of Golf in Indonesia and he was able to give employment to the residents in the surrounding villages.
In 2015, the brand new management team is committed to continue his Legacy. The staff at Handara is mostly made up of local residents who have been working working for years, if not decades. Aside from supporting our staff internally, we're committed to help the wider community by implementing quarterly CSR program
CSR No. 1 – Pioneer Program
The pioneer program was implemented on May 6, 2015. Packages of daily necessities (i.e. Rice, sugar and washing detergent) bought with proceeds from the first quarter were distributed to more than 200 people from 8 villages around the resort. The success of the first program made us more determined to continue the legacy to support the local community.
CSR No. 2 – Back to School Support
The second CSR program was on 27 July 2015. We shifted our focus to supporting students going back to
school. We went to 5 different schools and kindergartens in the area to distribute notebooks and stationery to the children. Seeing the timid but joyful smiles of the kids was the most encouraging thing for us to continue this worthy cause.
CSR No. 3 – Happy Babies & Toddlers
On the third program, we were very grateful that our loyal patrons the Darwin Group contributed some funding for our CSR efforts. Combined with charity proceeds from the Hackers & Slackers Fun Golf Carnival, the donation was used to deliver baby goods to more than 400 babies and toddlers in the area on September 15, 2015. We're humbled that other entities have started to trust and support us doing this worthy cause.
CSR No. 4 – Caring for the Caddy
Our last program of the year was held with the support from The Yak Inaugural Golf Invitation on November 30, 2015. With our own CSR funds and donation from the tournament's participants, we wanted to show our appreciation to our loyal caddies who have been supporting Handara's guests by delivering daily goods to families of the 130 caddies.
CSR No. 5 – SPREAD Kindness
EXTREME POVERTY IN KARANGASEM BALI. We are all here on Earth on a mission, and one of them is to help others. No matter our differences in background or religion, we are obliged to encourage each other to spread love and kindness. We, the Management of Handara Golf & Resort Bali, 'will do the best we can with this life to be of use' especially to the poor and the orphan community. We are committed to help the wider community by implementing CSR Program.
On June 15, 2016, the Management of Handara Golf & Resort Bali visited Nawa Kerti Village in Karangasem, East Bali where thousands of Bali residents live in extreme poverty. The soil is dry and infertile and most of the village residents are very poor and have restricted access to clan water and electricity. Package of daily necessities (i.e rice, oil, sugar, washing detergent and soap) was supported by our loyal patrons the Jester Groups and Handara's family and friends.
We presented the daily goods package to 402 families living under the poverty line. We hope to continue supporting them in the future.
We thanks to our golfers, friends and family for making this happen
CSR No. 6 – HAPPINESS IS CONTAGIOUS
The sun shines bright, the fogs cover the hills and the smell of wet grass chills our bones every morning. During this Emotional Intelligence Awareness month, happiness is shared with a lot of people, especially Handara golfers, underprivileged orphan children and special needs children. With a lot of fun prizes, Golfers are gathered in our Handara Golf & Resort to attend our yearly Hackers & Slackers Fun Golf Carnivale as part of our commitment to continue the legacy of giving back to the community in our CSR Program. We were raising funds as well as reaching out to children in need and were supported by a lot of partners such as Nurul Quran Bali, Larondendari Bali, Mom's and I, Bali Adventure Tours and many more. We're humbled that other entities have started to trust and support us doing this worthy cause.
Our 2nd Hackers & Slackers Fun Golf Carnivale at Handara Golf & Resort was a great success. With the objection to share happiness with children, especially underprivileged and those with special needs, we invited a total of 50 orphan kids to join us at this year's Carnivale on the 24th of September 2016. Young and old enjoyed a day full of sunshine, lots of laughters and fun together. To make this happen we were supported by our partners Bali Adventure Tours and Mom's & I. Handara Golf & Resort is proud to receive their support as well as their trust in us organizing the Hackers & Slackers Fun Golf Carnivale tournament for the second time already. All the funds that have been raised that day will be used for the Handara CSR Program in order to give back to the community and to put a smile on many other children's faces.
The main mission of the second Hackers & Slackers Fun Golf Carnivale at Handara Golf & Resort was to support a worthy cause and make children smile and happy. In order to make this happen we were coordinating the efforts not only with our supporting partners Bali Adventure Tours and Mom's & I, but also with Nurul Quran Bali, an orphan care program, and Larondedari Bali. The children's boutique Larondedari participated by giving one of its gorgeous looking princess dresses to be auctioned during the award ceremony, where 100% of its proceeds go to the Handara Golf & Resort Corporate Social Responsibility Program (CSR).
With Nurul Quran's orphan care program, the proceeds have been well received by following orphanage houses and organization:
1. Rumah Singgah Yatim dan Dhuafa Pelangi Anak Negeri Denpasar
2. Yapenatim Gianyar
3. Yayasan Panti Asuhan Tunas Bangsa Denpasar
4. ZIS Miftahul Falah Sanur Denpasar
5. Panti Asuhan Yayasan Yatim Piatu Singaraja
6. Panti Asuhan Yappenatim (yayasan Penolong Pendidikan Anak Yatim dan Miskin) Denpasar
And together with Larondedari Bali, the proceeds go to Yayasan Widya Guna WINS Foundation, a home and learning center for underprivileged and special needs children.
We're planning to have the next CSR program at the end of the year. Should you wish to join this good cause, please don't hesitate to contact us at gm@handaragolfresort.com. We look forward to your continued support to spread love and care to the wider community.
CSR No. 7 – Partnering A Non-profit Organization that Helps Children with Cancer in Bali
As giving back to the community is part of our mission, this time we wanted to share our happiness with children in need. We were fortunate to have Yayasan Peduli Anak Kanker Bali as our partner. Handara Golf & Resort Bali conducted our CSR Program which was joined by golfers from Sutowo Amateur Charity Golf Tournament, as well as our extended family and friends.
Yayasan Peduli Anak Kanker Bali is a non-profit organization in Bali that helps a lot of children with cancer mentally and financially. Through Handara Golf & Resort's 7th CSR program, our extended family and friends, as well as golfers from Sutowo Amateur Charity Golf Tournament, gathered to raise donation for the Yayasan. With this program, we helped 14 kids with cancer between the age of 3 to 11 year's old who are diagnosed with leukemia, skin and kidney cancer. We were really blessed and happy to see the smiles on the children's faces and to be able to lessen a little of their burden. We hope we can continue sending our support to these 14 kids in any way possible. If you wish to pass more happiness to those in need or to join this good cause, please feel free to contact us at (0361) 288944. Let's make the world brighter through the face of the kids.
CSR No. 8 – Supporting Safety Riding Program
Handara Golf & Resort Bali was honored to be supported by Mr. Hawk Dunlap and to be able to partner up with Mr. Chris Sperduto, aka The Helmet Man, in our CSR – Safety Riding Program on March 4th, 2017. We started the day by educating kids in TK Candimas Pancasari (Candimas Kindergarten) on the importance of wearing helmets when they are riding motorcycles. A total of 85 helmets were donated by Rottary Club under the name of Mr. Hawk Dunlap and distributed to these kids and their 5 teachers.
We can't thank our donator and partner enough for the time and resources that they allocated to raise awareness on this matter. We hope that we can decrease the number of fatal accidents caused by lack of information on safety riding.
Let's spread love to those in need and "ingat pakai helm & penting ingat klip!"
CSR No. 9 – Teaming up with Mrs. Elisabeth to help elderly women
On 8th of March 2017, Handara Golf & Resort Bali was really happy to be able to team up with Mrs. Elisabeth for our CSR program. We were able to have 16 elderly women who desperately need our attention. One of them is abandoned by the family, some of them don't have the capabilities to walk anymore, and the rest of these women don't have any family. We were touched by Mrs. Elisabeth's beautiful heart in helping those in need and we would like to encourage you to do the same. Thanks to our Jester Golfing Group for their cash donation and continues support towards our CSR program.Let's spread love to those in need and "ingat pakai helm & penting ingat klip!"
CSR No. 10 – Smile with Confidence
Yayasan Senyum Bali is a local, non-profit, independent organization that works hard to bring health care for to people with craniofacial disabilities. They are a transparent organization that strives to repair patient's disabilities that include cleft lip and palate and a wide variety of other conditions like Goldenhar Syndrome, Apert Syndrome, and facial tumors.
With Yayasan Senyum Bali, smiles are restored, hearts are warmed.
CSR No. 11 – Help is on the way!
Yayasan Sayangi Bali is a foundation that provides disabled and abandoned children a safe and healthy home around Bali. Our organization is fully responsible for daily and medicinal needs to raise them in optimum health conditions. Yayasan Sayangi Bali strives to reignite hope for abandoned children in hopes of finding new ones.
CSR No. 12 – Nurul Qur'an Foundation
Built as an educational foundation, Nurul Qur'an also stands for orphaned children and helps them thrive in real time. They have created a measurable, repeatable and systematic method to ensure that orphans are educated, fed, loved and safe. Handara CSR Program donated groceries and stationeries for those children in need to help them have a better quality of life and feel loved. There are incredible children out there hoping for someone to believe in and help them. They want your brilliant smile and helping hands to help create a child's hope for love and belonging. You will connect with children that will change your life and you will find deeper meaning as you work and play with them. Start to lend your hands, adventure awaits!
CSR No. 13 – Helping Mount Agung Refugees
News of Mount Agung's "imminent eruption" has spread quickly around the world, whilst those on the island wait with calm but fearful anticipation. However, with evacuations at their highest level in the area, refugees are the immediate focus for communities in Bali. Whilst the mountain rumbles indecisively, people on the island have turned their focus on caring for the evacuees who are left with dwindling supplies in their new shelters. Luckily for them, many, many groups, communities and volunteers are lending a hand. Handara CSR Program also there to give some support to several evacuation tents. One of them is in Klungkung, at the Swecapura Sports Centre.
Boxes of instant noodles and water were stacked outside Swecapura sports center, where more than 3800 evacuees sweltered inside the building and surrounding tent city. Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, was slated to visit the camp on September 26th, 2017 in the afternoon.
CSR No. 14 – Teaming Up with Nurul Qur'an Foundation to Help the Orphans
Nothing warms the heart than a good deed done without expecting anything in return. To continue the legacy and spread the donation to those in need, Handara CSR Program teaming up with Nurul Qur'an Foundation has helped some orphanages in Lombok & Bali. Some of them are Panti Asuhan Pondok Tahfiz Yatim Piatu Hidayahtulla, Panti Asuhan Assalam Nusantara, Panti Asuhan Miftahul Ulum, and Yayasan AL-IKHLAS Ampenan, Lombok.
These orphanages offer new homes to orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children who have lost their parents or who cannot live with them for various reasons. Regardless of race, culture or religion, children admitted finding a family in which they are given the love and security that every child needs for sound development.
CSR No. 15 – Fighting Malnutrition in Indonesia
Despite economic growth, 87 million Indonesians remain vulnerable to food insecurity. Indonesia has the fifth-highest number of stunted children in the world. More than one out of every three children, or 37 percent, in Indonesia are stunted. That means 9.5 million children under five are malnourished. Generally are those who are in the suburbs, rural, and remote. In this early 2018, Handara CSR Program helped the Baitul Maal Hidayatullah Foundation for their Nutrition Care Healthy Program.
The National Nutrition Day event will be held simultaneously in 42 regions on Thursday, January 25, 2018 in 28 provinces. We hope this National Nutrition Day becomes the trigger and spur of all parties to be able to answer the problem of malnutrition that still hit the country.
CSR No. 16 – The Recyclers at Sidakarya
March 2018. Handara CSR Team visited the recyclers who live at the refuse areas at Sidakarya, Denpasar and saw how they live and undertake their daily activities there. Unfortunately the recyclers many children also live there. HGR CSR provided 40 families at Sidakarya with Cooking Oil, Rice, Noodles and Sugar to help ease the burden of their daily lives.
April 2018, Handara CSR Program teamed up with Nurul Qur'an Foundation to help orphans in both the Denpasar and Jembrana areas. These orphanages offer the new home to the abandoned children and those without parents. They strive to give hope, shelter, and love to orphans who need it. We help them by giving groceries. Orphanages receiving support include Yayasan Al Itihad Rasyid Wa Habib, Pondok Pesantren Tahfidzal-Quran Hidayatullah Denpasar, Yayasan Pelangi Anak Negeri Denpasar, Yayasan Assalam Nusantara Jembrana, Yayasan Nurul Iklas Jembrana, Yayasan Al Karomah Jembrana, Yayasan Pondok Pesantren Miftahul Ulum, Panti Abdillah Sayuthi (Al-Manshur), and Panti Asuhan Nurul Jadid Singaraja.
CSR No. 18 – Bali Role Foundation
Also in April the Handara CSR Program joined Bali Role Foundation's silent auction program, the Kartini Day designed to honour the efforts of R.A. Kartini to fight for equal opportunities for women, especially in the field of education. This celebration not only empowers women but also continuously advocates for gender justice throughout society. Bali WISE provides a Skills Education Program for marginalized women throughout Indonesia. The aim of the program is to prepare young women for an independent life regardless of their gender or origin. Through a six-month intensive course with free education in English, IT, hospitality, and business skills, Bali WISE helps these young women find employment and achieve a sustainable income. Handara donated room vouchers that were used in the Auction.
CSR No. 19 – Yayasan Sayangi Bali
In early May, Handara CSR Program returned to Yayasan Sayangi Bali and donated baby groceries including powdered milk.
CSR No. 20 – Donated in Karangasem Area
Also in May the CSR team visited a struggling village in the Karangasem Area and donated groceries to about 25 poor people there. The situation was so tragic that more help was needed. Kidney disease was rife, water in short supply and some of the babies had malnutrition. One week later the team returned with more donations especially for the children. Materials included clothes, toys, vitamins, medicines, fans and kids mattress's.
CSR No. 21 – Donated in Pancasari Village
In June of this year, Handara CSR Team made a donation went to the poor people in Pancasari Village around the Handara Golf Course. Rice, Cooking Oil and Sugar were supplied to over 90 families from Banjar Dinas Peken (16 families), Banjar Dinas Karma (18 families), Banjar Dinas Dasong (21 families), Banjar Dinas Buyan (19 families), Banjar Dinas Lalang Linggah (18 families).
CSR No. 22 – Lombok Earthquakes
As readers will know, our neighbors in Lombok have been shaken by two strong earthquakes that have killed many. The biggest quake – of 6.9 magnitude- killed more than 460 people on 5 August. It leveled homes, mosques and businesses, displacing hundreds of thousands or people, including many tourists. Lombok has suffered more than 5 trillion rupiah (US$342 million) in damages following that earthquake. Handara CSR Program donated money to help the victims.
CSR No. 23 – Yayasan of Kasih Anak Kanker Bali
On 14 September 2018, Handara CSR Program visited the Yayasan of Kasih Anak Kanker Bali. They help kids with cancer that cannot afford their medication and believe that every Indonesian child that has cancer still has the right to medication, education and to be able to play. Help was provided by a cash donation.
CSR No. 24 – Palu and Donggala
As has been widely reported, the powerful, shallow earthquake that rattled the northern coast of Sulawesi Island on September 28, 2018, caused tremendous damage. Many homes throughout Palu and Donggala, Indonesia, were flattened when a series of tsunami waves decimated the coastline. Destructive flows of mud and soil destroyed several inland areas leaving over 1,700 dead and over 2,000 injured and many thousands still missing. With help from SSMS Medic, HCSR channeled its donations to the stricken areas. SSMS Medic started with a simple dream of saving lives, SSMS was set up in 1986 by Dr. Sri Hartati Sutowo, in tribute to the late Prof. Dr. Ibnu Sutowo. SSMS brought multi-specialist medical doctors and paramedics there and their services delivered includes medical diagnostic, medical procedures and medicines. SSMS team have treated more than 650 patients and visited many shelters.
CSR No. 25 – Adopt a Tree Program
Starting in April 2019, you can participate in Handara Green Project by "Adopting a Tree" at Handara. We can all help save and give thanks to Mother Earth by simply planting a seedling to help combat climate change, support agriculture and help protect our children's future. For only IDR 200.000 you will receive a certificate of adoption and a name plate adjacent to your seedling to celebrate your legacy. With your donation, you provide a sustainable contribution to our green efforts. All profits will be donated to the Handara CSR Program. This program is still running and everyone are welcome to join. So far we have adopted more than 250 trees until October 2019.
CSR No. 26 – Orphanages around Denpasar & Jembrana
May 2019, Handara CSR Program teamed up again with Nurul Qur'an Foundation to help orphans in the Denpasar, Gianyar and Jembrana areas. Orphanages receiving support include Yayasan Assalam Nusantara Jembrana, Yayasan At Taqwim, Yayasan Al Karomah Jembrana, Yayasan Pondok Pesantren Miftahul Ulum, and Pondok Tahfis Hidayatulah.
CSR No. 27 – Ramadan Zakat to Pancasari Village
Zakat is an integral part of the Muslim faith and, like fasting, is one of the five pillars of Islam. In celebration of Ramadan, on 24 May 2019, Handara CSR Program helped 119 poor families and orphans around Pancasari Village. We donated food and groceries to help them and make them feel loved.
CSR No. 28 – Metta Mama & Maggha Foundation
Our love for abandoned children has continued our journey to this lovely foundation, Metta, Mama & Maggha Foundation, who share their kindness and caring for 17 little children and babies. This foundation was built by Maggha when she was 15 years old. Since then, the percentage of abandoned babies in Bali has risen every year, encouraging her to create a sanctuary for them from birth until they find a new family for adoption. Handara CSR Team came on 24 May 2019 to share some love and donated cash for these cute babies.
CSR No. 29 – Special Kids Expo (SPEKIX)
On 24-25 August 2019, Handara Team representatives went to Jakarta to volunteer in a Special Kids Expo at Jakarta Convention Center. This event was held for special need kids such as Autism, ADHD, ADD and other learning difficulties. The aim is to help them and their families maximize these kids potential and solving their learning problems, helping them with their diet etc. There are a lot different seminars that parents can join, also booths of food, snacks, schools, and activities the kids can have. Handara Team offered a free mini golf activity and we were delighted that over 60 kids were excited to try.
CSR No. 30 – JESTER-Handara Junior Golf Program
In Mid September 2019, Handara CSR Program received help from the Jester Group, our most loyal repeating group who have returned twice a year for the last 35 years. Each year they come, they have always helped the Handara CSR Program through a donation. This time, together we created "The Jesters Handara Junior Golf Program". 108 kids from age 5 to 12 years old from Pancasari Village enroll in this program which runs for 6 weeks. People and sponsors behind this program are: Handara Golf & Resort Bali, Jagorawi Jesters, and the Buyan 88 Restaurant. We undertake a Golf Program such as the basic golf swing, putting, chipping and pitching. We also teaching some basic English in a fun environment.
CSR No. 31 – Senyum Bali Foundation
We believe every child suffering from a cleft lip or cleft palate deserves exceptional surgical care. Without surgery, as many as 9 in 10 children born with cleft conditions can die as well as suffering social stigma. For the second time, Handara CSR Program donated to Senyum Bali Foundation. In September 2019, we funded 2 of their child patients for Cleft Lip and Palate surgery. They are Nur Assyfa and Wilipus Rikardo Sanchez. The mission were all successful and it was beautiful to see their new smiles.
CSR No. 32 – Orphanages around Bali
At the end of October 2019, the Handara CSR Program teamed up again with Nurul Qur'an Foundation to help orphans in the Denpasar and Negara areas. Orphanages receiving support include Yayasan Assalam Nusantara Negara, Yayasan Al Karomah Melaya, Yayasan Miftahul Ulum, and Yayasan Al Islam Hidayatulah Denpasar.
CSR No. 33 – The Eldery in Tabanan
In October 2019, Handara CSR Team visited the elderly in the Kerambitan area of Tabanan. 4 old people, aged over 70 live all by themselves without family or children. Some of them suffered glaucoma and are blind, others are sick and they all live in very poor conditions. For daily survival they depend on their neighbors since no one takes care of them. We visited and shared our company and donated groceries, food, towels and bedding. We hope to improve their lives a little with our donation.
We are thanking you for supporting the noble cause. Join us to make a better living condition to those in need by donating to our Mandiri bank account at 175-00-0043364-8 (under the name of PT.Sarana Buana Handara)


In the US, the average cost of education for each student to the priesthood amounts to $40,000.00. The same amount would be enough for 5 students in the Missions. Below is a list of expenditure - in average amounts incurred.
Desktop PC & Printer - $1,000.00, bundled software included.
BURSE - $10,000.00 In the form of a CD. Deposit is made in behalf of the Benefactor and the capital remains intact. Only the accruing interest is utilized for the education and other expenses of the "adopted" student. (Due to low APY, the CD amount needed may be higher in the US than elsewhere).
Mass Intentions - Donations may vary, but whatever it is — every penny will be sent to our priests in mission you specify: India, Myanmar, New Zealand, Samoa, The Philippines & VietNam.
Gregorian Mass - $300.00 - Mass for the Deceased is celebrated once a day for 30 consecutive and uninterrupted days for the intentions of the Donor.
Other forms of Donations are welcome. We accept donations in kind to be sent to our missions; or cash donation to buy things that we get at very low bulk cost in the US.
The Missionaries of Faith is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by Law. Click on this PayPal link to donate.


Chappie tells the story of a robot who gains consciousness after being reprogrammed by Deon who is a computer engineer. Deon was asked to quit his research by his head but he steals a damaged robot who was sent to get crushed and reprograms it. But then sudden plot twists happen and the robot gets kidnapped by a gangster mob and the mob names the robot "Chappie". Chappie slowly learns life lessons and grow intellectually to make serious decisions he has to make along his journey.
Dr. Will Caster is one of the best researchers in the field of artificial intelligence. He gets poisoned by his rivals and gets near to his death. But then his wife and colleagues upload his emotions and consciousness into the computer system. When the rivals destroy their research facility, Wil's wife uploaded his consciousness into the internet. With all the knowledge of the world, wills activity gains threatening suspicion.
This movie is actually a sequel to the original Blade Runner(1982) movie. And a young blade runner "K" finds out a long-buried secret that has the potential to cause destruction and chaos. In order to find the solution, he needs to find an old blade runner Rick Deckard who has been missing for last 30 years.
A young programmer named Caleb who works at the world's largest internet company wins a competition to spend a week with the CEO of his company at a private mountain retreat. But then Caleb finds out that he has to participate in a strange but fascinating experiment where he is supposed to interact and evaluate the world's first true artificially intelligent robot which was designed as a beautiful woman.
Theodore, a professional letter writer, is a lonely man who is on the verge of his divorce. He then buys a new operating system called OS1, advertised as the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, and installs it. He names his OS Samantha. Having consciousness, Samantha and Theodore interact with each other like normal human beings. Soon they develop feelings for each other which leads to strange complications.


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text:
National Geographic Announces Keegan-Michael Key as Host of Brain Games
dmnnewswire May 14, 2019
Hit Series Brain Games Gets Hollywood Reboot as World-Famous
Mentalist Lior Surchard Joins Key to Challenge Celebrities With
Interactive Mind Games
Produced by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz's Alfred Street Industries
and Magical Elves, the New Iteration of Brain Games Premieres
Dec. 1, 2019, on National Geographic
NEW YORK & WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–National Geographic announced today that it has tapped Keegan-Michael
Key ("Friends From College," "Toy Story 4," "Lion King") as host of its
rebooted hit series Brain Games. The eight-episode season,
produced by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz's Alfred Street Industries and
Magical Elves, adds a Hollywood twist to its classic mind-bending format
by challenging some of the world's biggest celebrities to realize their
special brain power through fun and highly entertaining interactive
games, illusions and social experiments.
The first five celebrities confirmed are: Kristin Bell ("The Good
Place"), Dax Shepherd ("Bless This Mess"), Drew Brees (QB, New Orleans
Saints), Rebel Wilson ("The Hustle"), and Anthony Anderson ("Blackish").
Brain Games premieres Dec. 1, 2019, on National Geographic and
will air globally in 172 countries and 43 languages. For more
information visit our press site www.natgeotvpressroom.com,
or follow us on Twitter using @NatGeoPR.
In Brain Games, host Key will investigate mind-bending
questions with the help of Hollywood's biggest stars. Joining Key on
stage in front of the live studio audience, world-famous mentalist Lior
Surchard will assist with brain games and challenges for the celebrity
guests. Meanwhile, field correspondent and science communicator Cara
Santa Maria will take the cerebral challenges on the road and put
everyday people across America to the test. With insight from some of
the world's leading neuroscientists, engineers and brain experts, we'll
explore the "why" behind the "wow" of questions like the following: Are
women better communicators? How do our brains control what we love to
eat? Can brain science help us with our dating lives? What is the magic
ingredient to gaining, having and keeping power? And much more!
"I've always loved science, and when National Geographic called, I
jumped at the chance to be part of this really amazing series," said
Key. "I'm going to be bringing some friends along, and together we are
going to explore some really fascinating aspects of the human brain. I
can't wait to get started!"
"As we looked to revive this much-adored series with a colorful
superstar twist, it's a no-brainer to introduce Keegan-Michael Key as
host of Brain Games," said Courteney Monroe, president, National
Geographic Global Networks. "He uniquely possesses the combination of
charm, quick wit, intelligence and humor that's ideal for in-studio
scenarios, but beyond that, he's a fan of the series and has a sheer
passion for the science behind how our brains tick."
Said Cutforth and Lipsitz, "'Brain Games' is such an important
part of National Geographic's screen heritage. It is an honor to have
the opportunity to produce the show and to be working with a giant
talent like Keegan-Michael Key whose humor, magnetism and intellectual
curiosity will elevate the series in an exciting new way."
"A show like Brain Games belongs on stage in front of a live
audience, where celebrity guests, audience members, and viewers can
experience science in a fun and interactive way. With Keegan-Michael Key
as our host, this high-energy, reimagined version of the original Brain
Games will definitely appeal to both the left and right sides of
viewers' brains," said Toby Gorman, Executive Producer and Interim CEO
of Magical Elves.
While some episode games — including "Battle of the Sexes," "Kids vs.
Grownups," "Laws of Attraction" and "Movie Magic" — are tailored to the
headlining celebrities, others — including "Laws of Attraction,"
"Deception" and "Power of Persuasion" — draw from the most successful
themes across the previous five seasons. The new season includes
a mixture of in-studio and in-the-field game components, physical and
mental games, and the introduction of "The Gauntlet," a fifth-act
combination of previous episode games to pit celebrity against celebrity.
About Keegan-Michael Key
Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning actor, writer and creator Keegan-Michael
Key is one of Hollywood's most in-demand forces. With his
extraordinarily diverse skill set and wide-ranging talent in both comedy
and drama, Key redefines what it means to be a chameleon and
multi-hyphenate in the worlds of film, television and theater. He will
next appear in two of 2019's most highly anticipated films,
Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 4" and Disney's live action/CGI remake
of "The Lion King." In addition, he recently wrapped production
in Vancouver on Paramount's "Playing With Fire," starring alongside John
Cena, Judy Greer and John Leguizamo. He will soon star opposite Eddie
Murphy in Netflix's "My Name is Dolemite!".
Key is represented by UTA and attorney Dave Feldman.
Brain Games is produced for National Geographic by Alfred Street
Industries and Magical Elves. Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz are
executive producers for Alfred Street Industries. For Magical Elves,
executive producers are Toby Gorman, Casey Kriley, James Rowley and
Lauren Williams. Elisa Key is also an executive producer. For National
Geographic, Matt Renner is executive producer and vice president,
original programming and production; and Geoff Daniels is executive vice
president of global unscripted entertainment.
About Magical Elves:
Magical Elves is the veteran production company behind Emmy
award-winning hits "Top Chef" (Bravo) and "Last Chance Kitchen" (Bravo),
Peabody Award-winning "Project Runway" (Bravo), IDA Award winner "Time
of Death" (Showtime) and the recent streaming successes "Nailed It!"
(Netflix) and "Sugar Rush" (Netflix). Other credits include "Project
Greenlight" (HBO), "Cleveland Hustles" (CNBC), "There Goes the
Motherhood" (Bravo), "Braxton Family Values" (WETV), "Tamar & Vince"
(WETV), "Shine On" (DirectTV), "All in With Cam Newton" (Nickelodeon),
"Last Comic Standing" (NBC), "Cold Justice" (Oxygen), "Top Chef Junior"
(Universal Kids) and the 2017 music documentary "Tim & Faith: Soul2Soul"
(Showtime). Magical Elves is a part of The Tinopolis Group's portfolio
of production companies.
About National Geographic Partners LLC
National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between the
National Geographic Society and Disney, is committed to bringing the
world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an
unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National
Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo
WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographic's media
and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines;
National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms;
books; maps; children's media; and ancillary activities that include
travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and
e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our
world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 131 years,
and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going
further for our consumers … and reaching millions of people around the
world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP
returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic
Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation
and education. For more information, visit natgeotv.com
or nationalgeographic.com,
or find us on Facebook,
and Pinterest.
Molly Mulrain, 202-912-6745, molly.mulrain@natgeo.com
Jennifer DeGuzman, 212-656-0713, jennifer.deguzman@natgeo.com
Author: dmnnewswire
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