In this episode, I speak with British physician and licensed acupuncturist, Dr. Daniel Keown. Dan's new book The Uncharted Body is a groundbreaking new text integrating the divergent modalities of Chinese and Western Medicine.
Dan's book, The Uncharted Body: A New Textbook of Medicine.
On the checkout page, apply the Discount Code FREEJOSH to get 15% off.
In the next episode, we'll get deeper into channels – and the Channel system – and what it has to do with jellyfish (!). We'll also discuss how embryos self-organize, and do more exploration of Qi.
As I mentioned in the episode, I plan to invite Dan back to the podcast later this year as well. If you have any questions that you'd like me to ask of him, please email me at josh at joshsummers dot net.
Lastly, I would love to have you train with me at www.yinyogaschool.com. We have an entire module devoted to Chinese Medicine.
Brilliant. Of course if more docs did a 'look see' in the channel system and had a look at the other organs instead of their own field of speciality then maybe fuller diagnoses would be discovered sooner….


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David Jeffrey Long (1950) is een Amerikaans componist en muziekpedagoog.

Levensloop
Long studeerde muziek aan de Arizona State University in Phoenix en behaalde zijn Bachelor of Music. Verder studeerde hij aan de North Texas State University en behaalde aldaar zowel zijn Master of Music (1975) als zijn Ph.D. (Philosophiæ Doctor).

Hij is werkzaam als docent voor muziektheorie, compositie, orkestratie, geschiedenis van de jazz en als huiscomponist aan de University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. Hij is eveneens bezig als freelance-componist. Zijn werken worden meestal door (harmonie-)orkesten van universiteiten en conservatoria in de Verenigde Staten, Canada, Frankrijk, Zwitserland en Duitsland uitgevoerd.

Composities

Werken voor orkest
 1975 Nyiragongo, voor orkest
 1991 Concert Piece, voor marimba en orkest (of piano)
 1997 Concert, voor marimba en orkest (of piano)

Werken voor harmonieorkest
 1997 Concert, voor marimba en harmonieorkest
 1997 Homage to Normandy, voor harmonieorkest - gecomponeerd ter hulde aan de gesneuvelde soldaten tijdens de Operatie Overlord
 Elegy: For All of the Fallen
 In Resolution: Toward the Final Victory
 1997 Scenes of the Rappahannock
 2000 Tangents
 2002 A Festive Prelude
 2003 Teatime Tango
 2004 Procession
 2006 From the Sands of Kittyhawk
 2006 Medieval Holiday
 2009 Their Finest Hour
 At the Onset
 In the Shadows
 Arrival

Vocale muziek

Werken voor koor
 2003 2 Dickinson Settings, voor gemengd (of: vrouwen-)koor, piano en 2 slagwerkers - tekst: Emily Dickinson
 Heart! We will forget him!
 Will there really be morning?

Kamermuziek
 2002 Practus Interruptus, voor altsaxofoon en 2 slagwerkers
 2010 Diabolic Meditations, voor marimba en piano
 Five Sketches, voor altviool, marimba en piano
 Frustra, voor 8 koperblazers en 5 slagwerkers
 Three Vignettes, voor viool, cello en piano

Werken voor slagwerk
 1990 Impetus, voor slagwerkkwintet
 1990 Birth of a King, voor toetseninstrument en slagwerkensemble
 1990 Mixtures, voor slagwerkkwintet
 1990 The Wait, voor slagwerkseptet
 1991 Three Movements, voor toetseninstrument en slagwerkkwintet
 1992 Synopsis, Sinfonia voor slagwerkensemble
 1995 Essences of the Four Signs, voor slagwerkensemble
 1998 The Crystals, voor slagwerkensemble (vibrafoon, buisklokken (2); chimes, crotales, xylofoon (2); marimba 1; marimba 2; marimba 3; marimba 4; bass marimba; pauken)
 2001 Jubilee, voor slagwerkensemble
 2001 Mystic Prelude, voor slagwerkensemble
 2002 Spirits, voor piano en slagwerkseptet
 2004 Mixtures 2, voor slagwerkoctet
 2004 Reverie, voor marimba
 2005 Impulsion, voor slagwerkkwintet
 2007 A swingin' bossa - a little night music no. 1, voor slagwerkensemble
 2008 Il Difetto Tragico, voor 4 marimba
 Aria from "Three Scenes", voor toetseninstrument en slagwerkensemble
 Elite Syncopations, voor slagwerkensemble
 For Elise, voor slagwerkensemble
 Mixed Motives, voor slagwerkseptet
 Three Scenes, voor marimba
 Winged Victory, voor slagwerkoctet

Externe links
  Biografie op de internetpagina van de University of Mary Washington (gearchiveerd)
  Biografie op de internetpagina van de muziekuitgeverij C. Alan Publication (gearchiveerd)

Amerikaans componist
Amerikaans muziekpedagoog
20e-eeuws componist
21e-eeuws componist

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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THE BIOBRICKS FOUNDATION TECHNICAL & LEGAL STANDARDS WORKSHOP 2
On March 1, 2008 on the Mission Bay campus of UCSF, the BioBricks Foundation will host creators, users, and enablers of BioBrick™ standard biological parts in its 2nd Technical & Legal Standards Workshop. The goals of these series of Workshops are:
develop technical standards for the operation, characterization, and use of BioBrick™ parts and
develop legal strategies that enable the BioBrick™ parts collection to grow and remain freely available
UCSF Mission Bay Campus
Rock Hall/Rock Hall Auditorium
Online Map of Rock Hall
 Download PDF Map of Mission Bay Campus
 Public Parking Facilities around Mission Bay

SCHEDULE: SATURDAY, MARCH 1
BioBricks Technical Standards Session
12:30pm - 1:00pm Registration, coffee, snack [Rock Hall Foyer, Rock Hall]
1:00pm - 1:15pm Orientation & Guiding Remarks: Drew Endy (MIT)
1:15pm - 3:15pm Working Session
3:15pm - 3:30pm Break
BioBricks Legal Standards Session
3:45pm - 4:15pm Presentation: BBF Interns Igor and Hilliary (UC Berkeley Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic)
5:30pm - 6:00pm Summary, next steps
6:00pm Adjourn
6:00pm - 7:00pm Beer and Cheese Hour
REGISTER HERE
This workshop is supported by the Somekh Family Foundation, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), and donations from individuals like you!
Live Notes from the workshop

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Tag Archives: KAMFEST
French Ambassador rejects the conditions of KS Censorship board for lifting ban on music festival, Punch Reports
Today's Punch carries an update on the recent cancellation by the Kano State Censorship Board of KAMFEST, the annual music festival hosted at the Alliance Francaise. [It took my browser a long time to open the Punch link. If you can't get it to open, you can also find the article by Oluwole Josiah at Online Nigeria, unfortunately not credited…]:
The French Embassy has said it would not accept the conditions given by the Kano State Film Censor Board for lifting the ban on the annual music festival known as KANIFEST.
It also said it was unsure of staging the annual festival this year or next year, as the position of the Kano State Government would determine the fate of the festival.
French Ambassador to Nigeria, Jean-Michel Dumond, told our correspondent in an exclusive chat on Monday that discussions with the officials of the censorship board revealed that they were targeting one of the participating singers who was said to have criticised the board for banning music within the state.
He said the board wanted the singer to be withdrawn from the concert, but that condition was not acceptable to the embassy.
"We don't want to be involved in that kind of situation where it has to do with this person or that person. Ours is to ensure that we promote culture and get the festival to benefit the people.
"If it is reduced to an individual or dealing with one person or the other, we are not interested in that. We have been discussing with the officials of the government, and we do not really have anything to do with the censorship board," Dumond said.
He noted that the Kano State Governor was not aware of the decision of the censorship board and would be seriously disappointed at the turn of events.
To keep reading the Punch article, follow this link.
When I heard about the closure of the event on Saturday, I was told by filmmakers the rumour that the reason the event had been shut down was because popular Hausa singer Maryam Fantimoti, called the "the box of songs" by Hausa comedian Ari Baba (as cited in FIM Magazine, July 2009, p.41) was slated to perform. (Maryam was also one of the finalists in Partners in Transforming Health in Nigeria in 2009). In a July 2009 interview with Fim Magazine, Fantimoti responded to a question about registering with the Kano State censorship board (my translation in italics):
Ana ta zuwa ana rijista da Hukumar Tace Finafinai ta Jihar Kano. Ke kin je kin yi kuwa?
People are going to be registered with the Kano State Film Censor's Board. Have you gone?
Ban je ba, kuma ban yi ba, domin ni dai ba kamfani ne da ni ba, koyaushe ina gidan mu; in ka ga na fita an bugo waya ne ana nema na sannan in fita.
I haven't gone, and I haven't registered, because I am not with a company. I'm always at home. If you see me go out, it's because I have been called [to work], that's when I go out.
Ai ba kamfani ba, wai a matsayin ki na mawakiya tunda mawaka ma duk su na zuwa suna yi.
Not that you are a company, supposedly it's supposed to be done because you are a musician, since all the other musicians are going to do it.
Ni ban sani ba, domin ban ga takarda a rubuce ba, kuma ni komai nawa cikin tsari na ke yi. Kai, ni tun da na ke jin mawak'a, na ke jin labarin su, ban tab'a jin an ce Shata ko Garba Supa ko D'ank'wairo ko Hassan Wayam da Barbani Choge sun yi ko suna da rijista ba. Shi kenan kuma don mu aka raina sai a ce sai mun yi wata rijista?
Me, I don't know, because I haven't seen anything written on it; everything I do is done properly and in order [NOTE: the translation of this last sentence could be off.] Kai, ever since I have listened to singers and heard news about them, I've never heard that [a list of older "traditional" Hausa musicians] Shata or Garba Supa or D'ank'wairo or Hassan Wayam or Barbani Choge were registered. So, now we are held in contempt unless we go and do some registration?
[Note, that on the question of individual registrations for musicians, writers, or filmmakers, Director of the Kano State History and Culture Bureau (a Kano state government agency which helped plan the music festival), Ali Bature opined, when I asked him, a few days ago, that there was no such specification in the Kano State censorship law. The entire censorship law can be found in the library of the Kano State History and Culture Bureau for those interested in looking through it. If this interpretation of the law is correct, Maryam's understanding that it was only companies that were supposed to register with the censorship board would be correct.)
Although Maryam Fantimoti was not able to perform at the music festival that was shut down by the Kano State Censorship Board, you can hear her singing along with DJ Yaks on his song "Rukky," one of the songs featured (timecode 12:09) during the recent 26 February interview VOA did with DJ Yaks. " (The link to the sound file is here–the written interview here.) "Rukky" can also be found on DJ Yak's myspace page. (Please note that DJ Yak's music is not for sale in Kano.) I will link to any other of Maryam Fantimoti's music I can find online, as I find it.
She is also the female voice in the songs featured in the Hausa film Zo Mu Zauna
Posted in Hausa film, Kannywood, Kano State Censorship Board, Law in Northern Nigeria
Tagged Alliance Francaise, censorship, DJ Yaks, Hausa music, KAMFEST, Kano, Kano Music Festival, Kano State Censorship Board, Maryam Fantimoti, Nigerian music
Update: 3-day international music festival cancelled by Kano State Censor's Board
Daily Trust, 1 March 2010, p. 7
In an update to my last post, I spoke briefly today with Alain Service, the director of the Alliance Francaise in Kano, and he confirmed that the Kano State Censor's Board sent a letter to the Alliance Francaise about two hours before the three-day KAMFEST music festival, an annual event that has taken place at the Alliance Francaise for the last 6 years, was to begin. Service said the letter told them to stop the festival. He claimed that the letter gave no other reason for cancelling the event other than saying that they had no right to hold the event without informing the Censor's Board.
There were also brief articles in the Daily Trust and by AFP about the cancellation of the three-day event, which was to feature artists from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and France.
The AFP news report says:
Sharia police ordered the closure of an annual music festival funded and organised by the French embassy in northern Nigeria at the weekend, local officials and diplomats said on Monday.
"We have banned the music festival for the reason that we were not notified and our permission was not sought," Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, head of the film censorship board in the northern Kanoregion, told AFP.
The French embassy said they had been told they could not stage the event at the local French cultural centre as they did not have prior authorisation.
"Following a notification by the Kano state censorship board, the Kano festival of music is cancelled" the French embassy said in a statement emailed to AFP.
The embassy has organised the three-night KANFEST music festival for the past six years through its cultural centre in Kano, featuring performances from Nigeria and other African countries as well as French musicians.
It seems strange to me that the Kano State Censor's Board had the power to halt the event, when another Kano State agency, the History and Culture Bureau had helped in planning the event. One person I spoke to at the Alliance Francaise said that she thought the Censor's board was limited to censoring films, but that since the event was cancelled at the Alliance Francaise she had heard that the censor's board is saying that even performances at weddings have to gain permission from the censorship board ahead of time. When I asked the director of the History and Culture Bureau, Ali Bature about the relationship between the two state agencies, he said that the History and Culture Bureau had a "cordial relationship" with the Kano State Censor's Board and had in fact been instrumental in helping to found the board in 2000 as a way to protect filmmakers and allow them to continue making films after the establishment of shari'a law in Kano State. He did, however, note, when I asked him, that there was no legal basis in the Kano state censorship law, for the individual registration of artists. He said the expectation was that guilds would be registered with the censor's board but that individual artists were the guild's responsibility. A copy of the entire Kano State Censorship law can be found in the Kano State History and Culture Bureau, for anyone who would like to peruse it. According to film industry practitioners I have spoken to, censor's board workers on multiple occasions(one such occasion is described in one of my March blog posts) have visited locations of films being made in Kano to check whether each member of the cast and crew is individually registered with the board. Although I was not able to confirm this with Mr. Service, the rumour I have heard from multiple sources is that part of the reason the Censor's Board shut down the event was because Maryam Fantimoti, who is not registered with the Censor's Board, was slated to perform at the event.
[[UPDATE 3 March 2009. In an article in today's Punch, "France Rejects condition for lifting ban on Music Festival," [If you have trouble getting the link to open, you can also find the article copied here] Oluwole Josiah reports:
Josiah also reports that:
It also said it was unsure of staging the annual festival this year or next year, as the position of the Kano State Government would determine the fate of the festival.]]]
Today, I passed by a roundabout near the government house several times, and the banner advertising KAMFEST was still there, flapping abandoned in the breeze.
Posted in Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Hausa film, Kannywood, Kano State Censorship Board, Law in Northern Nigeria
Tagged censorship, Hausa music, KAMFEST, Kano, Kano State Censorship Board, Law in Northern Nigeria, Nigerian music
Kano State Censorship Board shuts down Kano Music Festival hosted at Alliance Francaise, Kano
Posted on February 28, 2010 | 5 comments
I was told the following information by several people I will not name. I cannot, at this moment, verify the details of this report, only that it is oral testimony (over the phone) from several people who were involved in the event. I hope to talk to someone in the administration of the Alliance Francaise tomorrow to get more concrete details.
Apparently, yesterday, 26 February 2010, the three day Kano Music Festival, being hosted at the Alliance Francaise in Kano was shut down on the first day of the event by representatives of the Kano State Censorship Board and not allowed to continue with the rest of it's scheduled events. According to one person I talked to, the festival was closed down because Hausa musician Maryam Fantimoti was to perform and she was not registered with the Kano State Censorship Board.
The organizers of the event had brought musicians from other parts of Africa and Europe to perform at the music festival. According to one press release on the Guide 2 Nigeria website:
There will be performances from several musical groups from across the globe including the famous Soubyana Music from Chad, the Dangana group from Niger, the Nassiru Garba group from Nigeria and the Trio Belhumeur from Upper Brittain.
Another source told me that over 20,000 euros had been spent on the cultural event, which did not end up holding, as it was closed by representatives of the Kano state government.
The Alliance Francaise has hosted the Kano Music Festival (Kamfest) for six years in a row. The event had the support of the Kano State History and Culture Bureau.
Readers may recall that this is coming on the heels of a recent closure of 15 shops by the Kano State Censorship Board for selling films on the history of Islam. The Kano State Censorship Board has also been responsible for multiple arrests and business closures of those working in entertainment related fields. In a related closure of a cultural event, the hisbah closed down a fashion show organized in honour of designer Zainab Hamza in May 2009.
Posted in Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Kannywood, Kano State Censorship Board, Law in Northern Nigeria
Tagged Alliance Francaise, Hausa music, KAMFEST, Kano, Kano Music Festival, Kano State Censorship Board, Maryam Fantimoti


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Auckland Council
Mayor Goff hits million tree mark
Mayor Goff and volunteers at the planting event
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff has this morning fulfilled his pledge of planting a million trees in this term of council.
The Mayor planted the millionth tree – a Puriri – at a public planting event at Totara Park in Manukau alongside more than 250 volunteers, mana whenua representatives and partners including the Department of Corrections and Te Uru Rakau - Forestry NZ.
Phil Goff made the pledge to plant a million mainly native trees and shrubs across the region during the 2016 election campaign. Today's planting not only fulfils that promise but puts the project on track to exceed it by around 100,000.
Phil Goff said he's proud of the work done by people and organisations from across the city to deliver the project.
"Putting a million trees in the ground was always going to be an ambitious undertaking but Aucklanders stepped up to the challenge. I have been blown away by the level of support thrown behind this project.
"Thousands of people have come together to plant trees and make our city a better, greener place to live. It's exemplified people power and the love Aucklanders have for their environment.
"Together we've made our city more beautiful, created carbon sinks to help reduce emissions, and reduced siltation into our harbours and waterways through riparian planting."
The first tree was planted by Mayor Phil Goff in the Oakley Creek catchment in June 2017, alongside school children from Wesley Intermediate. He said their generation would benefit most from the success of the project.
"It's about leaving a green legacy for our kids and grandchildren, teaching them the value of environmental stewardship and empowering them to play a part in protecting and enhancing our environment.
"In light of Tuesday's climate declaration, today's achievement is a positive example of just one council action to address the climate emergency – but there is much more to do," said Phil Goff.
He also emphasised the project's social benefits.
"This project has been fantastic for Auckland. It has improved our environment and strengthened our communities by bringing people together around a shared goal.
"I am especially proud of our partnership with the Department of Corrections which has seen offenders grow over 360,000 seedlings over the past three years, enabling them to contribute to the community, give back for the offence they have committed and learn and earn new skills and qualifications to help them reintegrate back into the community.
"Thank you to everyone who has rallied so strongly behind the million trees goal. Auckland is a better place because of your efforts," said Phil Goff.
Read more: Environment Mayor Plans & projects
Wairoa River volunteers make progress
Supported by Franklin Local Board, Friends of Te Wairoa Catchment continues to attract people to efforts to improve the Wairoa River.
Under the Stars at Auckland Zoo
Celebrate Matariki during the school holidays at Auckland Zoo.
Targeted rates protecting our natural environment
The two targeted rates introduced last year have helped us to increase our protection of Auckland's natural environment and waterways.
About OurAuckland
OurAuckland magazine
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Sign up to E-news
© Auckland Council 2019All rights reserved


How to convert some text into another text?
Is there any program which will convert/transform some word/sentence into another word/sentence?
It would be the same as Notepad's replace option, but i can't do that step by step. It's irritating, 'cause i have to do that for 5 words in 10 documents at least. It would be like Google translate too.
If you are certain that there will be no repercussions when using the "replace all" function, then the search and replace tool is the best option. I would still say though that each change should be checked manually before committing. Nothing worse than going back and sorting out something that someone else discovered to be wrong....!


text:
3 Citations Views Downloads
Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
Vivek Philip Cyriac, Ullasa Kodandaramaiah
IISER-TVM Centre for Research and Education in Ecology and Evolution and School of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India
10.7717/peerj.7508
Academic Editor
Joseph Gillespie
Animal Behavior, Ecology, Evolutionary Studies
Conspicuous colourations, Uropeltidae, Handling time, Fossorial, Antipredatory strategies
© 2019 Cyriac and Kodandaramaiah
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cyriac VP, Kodandaramaiah U. 2019. Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes. PeerJ 7:e7508 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7508
The authors have chosen to make the review history of this article public.
Uropeltid snakes (Family Uropeltidae) are non-venomous, fossorial snakes that are found above ground occasionally, during which time they are exposed to predation. Many species are brightly coloured, mostly on the ventral surface, but these colours are expected to have no function below the ground. Observations have shown that the cephalic resemblance (resemblance to heads) of uropeltid tails may direct attacks of predators towards the hardened tails, thereby potentially increasing handling times for predators. Experiments have also shown that predators learn to avoid prey that are non-toxic and palatable but are difficult to capture, hard to process or require long handling time when such prey advertise their unprofitability through conspicuous colours. We here postulate that uropeltid snakes use their bright colours to signal long handling times associated with attack deflection to the tails, thereby securing reduced predation from predators that can learn to associate colour with handling time. Captive chicken experiments with dough models mimicking uropeltids indicate that attacks were more common on the tail than on the head. Field experiments with uropeltid clay models show that the conspicuous colours of these snakes decrease predation rates compared to cryptic models, but a novel conspicuous colour did not confer such a benefit. Overall, our experiments provide support for our hypothesis that the conspicuous colours of these snakes reduce predation, possibly because these colours advertise unprofitability due to long handling times.
Conspicuous colourations (colours that contrast with the background) are prevalent in the animal kingdom and have fascinated biologists for a very long time, prompting them to seek a functional explanation for such colours (Poulton, 1890; Cott, 1940; Edmunds, 1974; Cuthill et al., 2017). Such colours may be part of mate-choice or other intra-specific signals, or may be involved in predator avoidance, e.g. aposematism and mimicry (Caro & Allen, 2017). Over the last few decades, these theories have been widely tested, leading to a good understanding of bright conspicuous colours in animals (Gamberale-Stille & Tullberg, 1999; Speed, 2001; Pfennig, Harcombe & Pfennig, 2001; Tullberg, Merilaita & Wiklund, 2005; Stevens, Stubbins & Hardman, 2008).
However, the presence of conspicuous colours in many animals still remains unexplained (e.g. contrasting colours in mammals (Caro, 2009), colourations in many frogs (Bordignon et al., 2018) and caecilians (Wollenberg & Measey, 2009)) with research on new systems revealing novel insights onto the role of such colourations (Rößler et al., 2019). Subterranean organisms which live in conditions devoid of light tend to have reduced vision and lose pigmentations (Culver & Pipan, 2009). Yet, several species of fossorial snakes that spend most of their time underground exhibit bright colourations (e.g. members of the genus Cylindrophis, Anomochilus, Atractus. etc.) (Greene, 1988). Colours, especially those produced via pigments, are generally used as visual stimuli for intra-specific or inter-specific interactions and thought to be costly to produce, therefore, the presence of bright colours in subterranean animals is thought to be adaptive (Wollenberg & Measey, 2009). However, the role of conspicuous colouration in fossorial reptiles remains unexplored.
Uropeltid snakes are a family of fossorial snakes comprising ca. 55 species from South Asia (Cyriac & Kodandaramaiah, 2017). Most uropeltid species are ornamented on the ventral surface with bright conspicuous colouration, with the majority possessing varying degrees of yellow while a few species (ca. 5) possess red (Fig. 1). Although these snakes spend most of their time underground, they occasionally come to the surface during the monsoons (Rajendran, 1985). Uropeltids are mostly nocturnal but can be found actively moving close to the surface during early mornings and late evenings (Rajendran, 1985) during which times they are exposed to above ground predators (Rajendran, 1985; Gans, 1986; Kumara & Chaitra, 2001). Uropeltid snakes have characteristic morphologies adapted for burrowing into soil: a narrow head and a short distinctive tail which is tapering or rounded (Smith, 1943). The tails of many species appear obliquely cut, with hard carinate scales (Fig. S1). When attacked by predators, these snakes conceal their heads between their body coils and display their tails along with the conspicuously coloured ventral surface (Gans, 1986) (Fig. 2). The tail in uropeltid snakes, being short and rounded, resembles the head. This cephalic resemblance was found to deflect attacks of avian predators to the reinforced tail, thus allowing the snake to escape unharmed in most cases after multiple attacks oriented towards the tail (Gans, 1986). Such defenses would also potentially increase the handling time needed for predators to capture, kill and consume the prey.
Figure 1: Ventral colouration in different species of uropeltid snakes.
(A) Melanophidium punctatum. (B) Teretrurus cf. sanguineus from BBTC tea plantations. (C) Plectrurus guentheri. (D) Uropeltis liura from BBTC tea plantations. (E) Uropeltis maculata. (F) Uropeltis sp. (G) Uropeltis sp. from BBTC tea plantations. (H) Uropeltis sp. from BBTC tea plantations. Photo credit: (A), (G), (H) Umesh P.K. and (B)–(F) Vivek Philip Cyriac.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.7508/fig-1
Figure 2: Tail display in uropeltid snakes.
(A) Uropeltis cf. ellioti coiled with only the tail visible. (B) U. cf. ellioti displaying the tail which is laterally lined by a thick yellow band. (C) U. cf. arcticeps displaying the tail and hiding the head under its coils. Photo credit: Vivek Philip Cyriac.
Optimal foraging theory predicts that predators should avoid prey with increased handling times, especially when prey with lower handling times are abundant alternatives (Charnov, 1976; Krebs et al., 1977). Studies suggest that predators can learn to avoid unprofitable prey that are difficult to capture (Hancox & Allen, 1991; Pinheiro, 1996; Pinheiro et al., 2016), hard to process (Wang et al., 2018) or require long handling time (Cyriac & Kodandaramaiah, 2019) when such prey possess conspicuous colours, even if the prey are non-toxic and palatable (Mappes, Marples & Endler, 2005). We here postulate that bright colours in uropeltid snakes reduce predation, possibly by signalling long handling times associated with attack deflection to the tails. We first show that the yellow and red ventral colourations in uropeltid snakes are conspicuous to birds, the main predators of these snakes. In experiments involving captive chickens attacking dough models resembling uropeltid snakes, we show that attacks are directed more often towards the tail than the head. In field experiments with clay models that resemble uropeltid snakes, we show that the bright yellow and red colours of wild uropeltids decrease predation by native birds. We conclude that the bright colours of these snakes reduce avian predation, and that these colours possibly play a role in advertising long handling time.
Study system and area
We conducted our field experiment in the tea plantations of the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation (BBTC) (8.52°N, 77.40°E and 8.56°N, 77.25°E) in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, India. The BBTC tea plantations cover an area of ca. 34 km2 with fragments of natural forest vegetation left as windbreaks between patches of plantations. The area harbours at least five species of uropeltid snakes (Rajendran, 1985) that vary in their colourations—Melanophidiumn punctatum which has a bluish iridescent colour, Teretrurus cf. sanguineus which is black dorsally and red ventrally, and three species of Uropeltis which are usually black dorsally with variable amounts of yellow colouration ventrally. Within this community, we focused on two species, Uropeltis liura and Teretrurus cf. sanguineus, that co-occur and are found in high abundance in the BBTC tea plantations.
Avian visual modelling and conspicuousness against leaf litter background
We laid out four transects, each spanning 200 m in length, in four windbreak forest patches (Kakachi-1, Kakachi-2, Cullinia forest and Manjolai). Each transect was subdivided into 25 sub-transects perpendicular to the main transect at every eight meters, alternating in direction. From each sub-transect, we collected leaf litter samples representing the background in which the snakes are usually found. Leaf litter was obtained by randomly throwing a 30 × 30 cm cardboard frame thrice onto the forest floor, each time collecting 10–15 leaf samples. We measured the spectral reflectance measurements from five to six leaves representing the different visibly identifiable shades of all species from each sub-transect. We also measured the spectral reflectance of the ventral colourations of one individual each of U. liura and Teretrurus cf. sanguineus using a reflectance probe connected to a xenon light source (PX-2; Ocean Optics, Florida, USA) and a spectrophotometer (Maya 2000; Ocean Optics, Largo, FL, USA). We took three readings each on the dorsal and ventral surface of every leaf and ten readings from different locations on the ventral surface of both snake species. We calculated the mean reflectance of the leaf litter for the four transects and the two species of snakes after interpolating the raw reflectance values into one nanometer bins between 300 and 700 nanometer.
We modelled the ability of birds to distinguish the colouration of the two snake species against the leaf litter background using the receptor noise limited (RNL) model (Vorobyev & Osorio, 1998) in the R package Pavo v. 2.1.0 (Maia et al., 2019). The RNL model assumes that colour vision is based on opponent interaction and models the ability to discriminate colours in relation to the noise in the opponent channel. The primary predators of uropeltid snakes are terrestrial birds such as junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii), spurfowl (Galloperdix spadicea and Galloperdix lunulata) and peafowl (Pavo cristatus) (Rajendran, 1985). Thus, we used the relative proportion of cone types of 1:2:4:4 for domestic chickens (Gallus gallus) (Kram, Mantey & Corbo, 2010) and 0.92:1:0.81:0.54 for peafowl (Hart, 2002) representing the Violet-sensitive (VS) visual system of birds to model the colour contrasts. We also modelled the colour contrasts using the relative proportion of cone types of 1:0.99:0.71:0.37 for blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) (Hart et al., 2000), which represent the UV-sensitive (UVS) visual system. The relative proportion of cone types representing the short wavelength sensitive, medium wavelength sensitive, long wavelength sensitive and UVS cone type, respectively, were used with a Weber fraction of 0.06 (Olsson, Lind & Kelber, 2015) modelled under forest shade illumination. The results of the RNL model are summarised as ∆S. When ∆S = 1 the two stimuli are just noticeable, or 1 'just noticeable difference'. Following Siddiqi et al. (2004), we considered a ∆S values above 3.00 to be easily distinguishable from the background, values between 1.00 and 3.00 to be indistinguishable except under optimal light conditions and values below 1.00 as a threshold for the colour to be indistinguishable from the background.
Predation rates on snake models in field
To test if avian predators avoid ventral colourations of uropeltids, we prepared 500 snake models using non-toxic brown pre-coloured clay (Play clay; Uday Industries™, Goregaon, India) of five treatments varying in their colourations and resembling uropeltid snakes in size and shape. We placed these models in the four transects (Kakachi-1, Kakachi-2, Cullinia forest and Manjolai) and recorded predation rates. There were 100 models each of five treatments: (1) black dorsal with red ventral colouration representing Teretrurus. cf. sanguineus, (2) black dorsal with yellow ventral colouration representing U. liura, (3) black dorsal with orange ventral colouration representing a conspicuous novel colour not found in uropeltid snakes of the region (4) completely black models and (5) completely brown models representing many of the more cryptic snakes in the region. We used acrylic paints (Camel Fabrica™, Mumbai, India) for the five treatments. We replicated the yellow and red colours by mixing several combinations of paints, measuring their reflectance spectra and modelling them according to the RNL model using avian visual systems (Supplementary Material S1). We chose the paint combinations that produced the lowest ∆S values when compared with the spectral reflectance of the two snakes (see model design in Supplementary Methods for more details). The five treatments were placed in random order in each sub-transect at two meter intervals. Models were collected after 84–86 h and avian predation experienced by the clay replicas was scored based on predation marks on the clay models (Fig. S2). Avian predation was identified by the characteristic V-shaped, U-shaped or conical peck marks (Willink et al., 2014). We further confirmed these marks on the snake models by comparing them to images of confirmed avian attacks that we previously obtained by direct observation of jungle babblers (Turdoides striata) and indigenous domestic chickens attacking clay snake models. We conducted two predation trials, one in June 2017 and another in July 2017 with 500 models in each set (thus a total of 1,000 models) during the monsoons, when uropeltid snakes are known to be active above ground.
Captive bird experiment
To test if the cephalic resemblance of the tail of uropeltid snakes deflects attacks of birds to the tail, we analysed data from another experiment that was designed to test whether birds could learn handling times (Cyriac & Kodandaramaiah, 2019). In this experiment, we used 26 chickens as predators, each uniquely identifiable, maintained in a small enclosure by a chicken farmer in Vithura (Kerala, India). The prey consisted of models that resemble uropeltid snakes (a tapering head and a rounded tail) made of wheat dough and brown food colour, presented on 'S' shaped yellow or brown coloured paper. Chickens were first trained to enter a 100 cm cubical arena and feed on small dough pieces scattered randomly in the experimental arena (acclimatization phase). Once they were acclimatised to the arena, in the next phase, we randomly divided the chickens into two groups and introduced a single dough model, fixed on yellow or brown paper, placed in the centre of the arena. Half of the dough models were baked, which increased the handling time of the chickens, while the remaining half were left unbaked. One group of chickens received the baked models on yellow paper and the unbaked models on brown paper, while the other group of chickens received both models on brown paper. Thus, we expected that chicken in the colour-associated group, where baked and unbaked models were provided on different colours, would learn the associated handling time and avoid baked models while the colour-unassociated group would show no preference. All chickens underwent 10 trials, during which they received a total of five baked and five unbaked models in random order (Cyriac & Kodandaramaiah, 2019). During this experiment, we also recorded the position of the first attacks by the chickens on the models as being on the head, mid-body or the tail.
Ethical note
All applicable international, national and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. The experimental protocol was approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram. The field experiments were done with the permission of Bombay Burma Trading Corporation, Limited, which owns the lands. This experiment does not require clearance from any Ethics committee.
All analyses were carried out in R 3.3.2 (R Core Team, 2016). To test for the effect of colour and random factors on the frequency of attacks on the snake models in the field experiment, we built generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) with the five treatments as fixed factors and transect, sub-transect, model sequence and batch (Table S2) as random factors using a binomial logit link function using the package lme4 v. 1.1–12 (Bates et al., 2015). We compared the fit of this model with that of a null model using a likelihood ratio test. We followed the GLMM analysis by performing a post hoc test with Tukey contrasts to test for homogeneity across groups using the package multcomp v. 1.4–8 (Hothorn, Bretz & Westfall, 2008). Further, we used the G-test using the package RVAideMemoire v. 0.9–69 (Hervé, 2014) to check for differences in the position of first attacks by captive chickens on the dough model. We first performed a G-test on the frequency of first attacks on different positions of the dough models by captive chickens against the null expectation. We then carried out a pairwise comparison between the frequency of first attacks on the head, mid-body and the tail.
Conspicuousness against leaf litter background
Modelling the conspicuousness of U. liura and Teretrurus cf. sanguineus according to avian visual systems indicate that the ventral colourations of both species are highly conspicuous against leaf litter background (∆S > 3.00) (Table 1). The results were consistent when accounting for the cone densities of VS (domestic chicken and peafowl) and UVS (blue tit) visual system of birds and against the average leaf litter of all transects (Table 1).
Modelling the conspicuousness (ΔS) of ventral colouration in Uropeltis liura and Teretrurus cf. sanguineus against leaf background from the four transects in BBTC tea plantation for different avian predators.
Transect
Avian predator
Kakachi-1
Cullinia
Manjolai
Mean ± SD
Uropeltis liura Domestic chicken 8.8676 9.1886 7.3817 6.8744 7.95 ± 1.25
Peafowl 10.9248 11.6484 9.0312 8.6232 10.06 ± 1.46
Blue tit 31.6323 37.6373 31.7853 28.9963 32.51 ± 3.65
Teretrurus cf. sanguineus Domestic chicken 6.5345 7.4539 5.3492 5.5873 6.23 ± 0.96
Peafowl 9.1048 10.3385 7.4867 7.7093 8.66 ± 1.33
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.7508/table-1
∆S values >3.00 are considered as easily distinguishable, values between 1.00 and 3.00 are distinguishable only under optimal light conditions and values <1.00 are indistinguishable from the background.
All models were recovered after 86 h. However, many models (N = 39) were destroyed due to trampling by large mammals such as Gaur (Bos gaurus), Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), and were, therefore, excluded from the analyses. A total of 50 models (i.e. 5% of all models) across both predation trials were found to have potential avian attacks. The GLMM analysis indicated that the number of attacks varied significantly among the treatments (Fig. 3) and that the model where predation rate was affected by phenotype (i.e. model colour) was significantly better than the null model where phenotype did not affect the predation rate (ΔAIC = 16.4, X2 = 24.402, P < 0.0001). The post hoc tests indicated that the number of attacks on the red (Estimate = −2.4349, z = −3.371, P < 0.01) and yellow (Estimate = −1.7275, z = −3.198, P < 0.05) models were significantly lower compared to that on the brown models. Attacks on the brown models did not differ significantly from that on either black (Estimate = 0.4834, z = 1.328, P = 0.65683) or novel coloured (Estimate = 0.6652, z = 1.745, P = 0.38739) models. Although the models with uropeltid colouration (red and yellow) experienced less predation compared to the novel models (orange), the difference was not statistically significant (red models: Estimate = −1.7697, 95% CI [−3.7821–0.2426], z = −2.369, P = 0.11423; yellow models: Estimate = −1.0623, 95% CI [−2.6060–0.4814], z = −1.854, P = 0.3248).
Figure 3: Predation rates on snake models from field trials.
Number of attacks by avian predators on different snake models placed in the four transects in the BBTC tea plantations. Representative photographs of models of the five treatments (completely brown, completely black, black and yellow, black and red, and black and novel coloured) are shown above the respective bars. Numbers of asterisks indicate significance levels (*≤ 0.05, **< 0.01) between treatments based on Tukey post hoc tests.
Captive bird experiments
A G-test on the attack position by the captive chickens on the dough models indicate that there was a significant difference in the position of first attacks (G-test: G2 = 17.102, P = 0.00019). There were significantly higher number of attacks on the mid-body (P = 0.00034) and on the tail (P = 0.0087) compared to that on the head (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: Position of first attacks by captive chickens on edible dough models.
(A) Frequency of first attacks oriented towards different positions of the prey by captive chickens. (B) Dough model indicating the head, mid-body and tail region where the attacks were oriented. Numbers of asterisks indicate significance levels (**< 0.01, ***< 0.001) between treatments based on pairwise G-tests.
Our avian visual modelling indicates that the yellow and red ventral colourations of uropeltid snakes are highly conspicuous against the leaf litter background of all four transects and that uropeltid colours are readily visible to birds with both the VS and UVS visual systems. The field experiments indicate that clay models with the yellow and red colouration of local uropeltid snakes experience reduced avian predation compared to the brown models. However, the novel coloured models (orange) did not differ from the brown or black ones. Thus, the results indicate that avoidance is not towards all conspicuous colours but specifically towards uropeltid colours, suggesting that colouration in uropeltid snakes may have evolved as an antipredatory defense mechanism against avian predators.
Colouration in uropeltid snakes has sometimes been attributed to coral snake mimicry (although not experimentally tested) (Rajendran, 1985). South Asian coral snakes (genus Calliophis) are venomous, semi fossorial elapids, which share similar habitats with uropeltid snakes. However, all known species of coral snakes found in India and Sri Lanka have red ventral surfaces while most species of uropeltids have varying patterns of yellow. Further, coral snakes in India are uncommon across their range (Srinivasulu, Srinivasulu & Molur, 2014). Several theoretical models and experimental studies have suggested that Batesian mimicry generally becomes more perfect when the model is rare (Sherratt, 2002; Harper & Pfennig, 2007; Akcali & Pfennig, 2014). Since coral snakes are uncommon, it is expected that selection would favour high precision of coral snake mimicry, which does not seem to be the case for uropeltids. Furthermore, some uropeltids with bright colouration are found outside the range of coral snakes, making Batesian mimicry unlikely (Pfennig & Mullen, 2010). Therefore, although coral snake mimicry cannot be completely ruled out in some species of uropeltid snakes with red ventral colourations, the Batesian mimicry hypothesis does not explain the evolution of yellow colouration present in most uropeltid snakes because would-be models are red.
Overall, our experiments suggest that the conspicuous ventral colouration in uropeltid snakes could have evolved as a warning signal towards avian predators. Given that these snakes are endemic to India and Sri Lanka, where they are protected under stringent laws, laboratory experiments with live animals were not feasible. Our experiment with captive chickens and dough models resembling uropeltid snakes show that attacks were more frequent on the tail than on the head (Fig. 4). This suggests that chickens can be deceived by the cephalic resemblance of the tail and direct their attacks towards the posterior regions, rather than towards the head as many predatory birds are known to do (Smith, 1973; Curio, 1976). Such a strategy that deflects attacks to the tail would also increase the handling time required to capture, kill and consume these snakes, making them unprofitable (Humphreys & Ruxton, 2018). Although we have not specifically tested whether deflection of attacks towards the tail increases handling time in uropeltid snakes, detailed observations on the sequence of events during predation of uropeltid snakes by junglefowls and peafowls indicate long handling time associated with deflected attacks towards the tail (Gans, 1986). Gans (1986) reported that ca. 95% of the attacks by fowls were oriented towards the rounded tail of uropeltid snakes. He noted that the birds took between 22 and 40 min to consume uropeltid snakes after multiple attacks to the tail. He also reports anecdotal evidence that junglefowls and spurfowls were more hesitant to attack the brightly coloured Rhinophips drummondhayi, than the cryptic unicoloured R. philippinus. These observations provide further support for the hypothesis that diverted attacks from the vulnerable head to the tail could potentially increase handling time needed to kill and consume uropeltid snakes, which birds could learn to associate with their ventral colourations.
Startle or deimatic displays involve behaviours wherein conspicuous colours are suddenly displayed, providing prey a survival advantage (Umbers, Lehtonen & Mappes, 2015; Umbers & Mappes, 2015). Although there has been disagreement regarding what constitutes a deimatic display and how it differs from aposematism (Ruxton, Sherratt & Speed, 2004; Umbers, Lehtonen & Mappes, 2015; Umbers & Mappes, 2015, 2016; Skelhorn, Holmes & Rowe, 2016), there is general agreement that deimatism involves a momentary transient display of conspicuous signal (Ruxton, Sherratt & Speed, 2004; Olofsson et al., 2012; Umbers & Mappes, 2016) that triggers an unlearnt avoidance response in predators (Umbers et al., 2017, 2019). While uropeltid colours could also have a deimatic function, our experiments show that birds avoided uropeltid snake models that were static (pinned to the ground) and did not show any momentary display of conspicuous colourations. The snake models in our field experiment were painted such that the conspicuous colours were visible on the lateral side and thus were displayed and visible to small predators throughout the experimental duration (Fig. S2). Further, the preferential avoidance of only uropeltid colours and not all conspicuous colours suggests that this avoidance is learnt. However, as we did not design our experiments to test for a deimatic function of uropeltid colourations, we cannot preclude the possibility that uropeltid colours could also function as a startle display.
Advertising increased handling time due to deflection of attacks would, however, be advantageous only when alternative prey are abundant and when predators do not learn to recognise the deception. Repeated exposure to deflective structures and behaviours would reduce the effectiveness of deceiving predators. However, although birds regularly feed on venomous and non-venomous snakes (Guthrie, 1932), there is a risk associated with attacking snakes since many snakes are venomous. Hence, birds tend to orient their attacks towards the portion of the body with a bilateral indentation (neck) or towards the region with eye-like markings (Smith, 1973; Curio, 1976). The costs associated with attacking venomous snakes may prevent birds from learning the cephalic resemblance of the tail in uropeltid snakes. Further, it has been shown that the speed of a predator's learning varies for different traits (Chittka & Osorio, 2007; Balogh et al., 2010), especially when other prey are available in the community (Kikuchi et al., 2019). For instance, animals show higher rates of learning towards colour signals than towards patterns or shapes (Bain et al., 2007; Aronsson & Gamberale-Stille, 2008, 2012a; Kazemi et al., 2014; Sherratt et al., 2015). Given that colours are more salient than other cues, birds may be able to associate colour with increased handling time in uropeltid snakes faster than learning the cephalic resemblance of the tail. Also, deflective traits are thought to be associated with life histories that reduce exposure to predators, thereby reducing the potential of learning such deceptive traits (Humphreys & Ruxton, 2018). Uropeltid snakes are highly seasonal and are active above ground or near the surface during the monsoons (Rajendran, 1985) when the species richness and abundance of leaf litter arthropods are high (Janzen & Schoener, 1968; Frith & Frith, 1990; Develey & Peres, 2000). High densities of arthropods during the wet seasons in tropical regions could serve as an alternative prey base for avian predators. The short activity period of uropeltid snakes would also reduce the ability of avian predators to learn to ignore deflective traits.
Although we cannot completely rule out the possibility of Batesian mimicry in some species of uropeltids, our experiments together support the hypothesis that the conspicuous colourations in these snakes act as warning signals against avian predators. Our results are also consistent with the novel hypothesis that conspicuous colourations in uropeltid snakes have an antipredatory function based on advertising long handling time associated with diverted attacks to the tail. Nonetheless, given that we have not explicitly tested whether misdirected attacks to the tail increases the handling time of these snakes, we acknowledge that a functional relationship between the colouration and tail shape and its role in reducing predation cannot be ruled out. For instance, many species of uropeltid snakes possess yellow or red blotches or stripes on the lateral sides of the tail (Fig. 2B; Figs. S1D and S1F) that could divert the attention of predators and deflect attacks towards the tail. However, further experiments would be required to determine whether colouration and tail shape interact to divert attacks and how this would influence handling time and learning in predators.
Antipredatory defenses involving both deflection of attacks and warning colourations may not be restricted to Uropeltidae. Fossorial reptiles, especially snakes, tend to have long trunks and short rounded tails (Wiens & Slingluff, 2001; Wiens, Brandley & Reeder, 2006), the latter of which many species display to divert attacks from the head to the tail (Greene, 1973, 1979, 1988; Han & Young, 2018). Several fossorial snakes (e.g. Cylindrophidae, Anomochilidae, Anillidae, Atractaspinae, Aparallactinae) exhibit conspicuous colourations potentially having a similar function as in uropeltid snakes. However, how widespread such strategies are across animals needs to be evaluated.
Our study highlights how combinations of defensive strategies such as deflection, which increases handling time, and warning signals, could function synergistically against predation. Different antipredatory strategies need not be mutually exclusive and can interact depending on the predators' visual perception (Stevens, 2007). For instance, it has been shown that patterns with strong internal contrast can increase conspicuousness (Aronsson & Gamberale-Stille, 2012b) but can also generate a disruptive effect (Stevens & Cuthill, 2006; Schaefer & Stobbe, 2006). Warning colourations can also be distance dependent, providing camouflage at greater distances while being conspicuous at close proximity (Tullberg, Merilaita & Wiklund, 2005; Barnett, Cuthill & Scott-Samuel, 2018). For instance, the contrasting bands of coral snake mimics and the zig-zag pattern of many vipers act as warning signals to predators (Pfennig, Harcombe & Pfennig, 2001; Wüster et al., 2004; Niskanen & Mappes, 2005) but these bands can also function in camouflage during motion through the flicker-fusion effect (Lindell & Forsman, 1996; Titcomb, Kikuchi & Pfennig, 2014). Despite considerable advances in our understanding of animal defenses, we are yet to completely understand how different strategies interact with each other and further experiments are necessary to understand under what conditions such interactions are advantageous against predation.
Protocol for the clay snake model design.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.7508/supp-1
Modelling the conspicuousness of the five snake models in the field experiment against the ventral colouration of the two species of snakes and the leaf litter background from BBTC.
ΔS Values >3.00 are considered as easily distinguishable, values between 1.00 and 3.00 are distinguishable only under optimal light conditions and values <1.00 are indistinguishable from the background.
Summary and comparison of different models from the GLMM analyses for the field and the captive bird experiments.
Tail morphology in uropeltid snakes.
(A) Lateral view of the tail of Melanophidium punctatum. (B) Lateral view of the tail of Uropeltis liura. (C) and (D) Dorsal and ventral view of the tail of Uropeltis sp. from BBTC tea plantations. (E) and (F) Dorsal and ventral view of the tail of U. cf. ellioti. Photo credit: (A), (C), (D) Umesh P. K. and (B), (E), (F) Vivek Philip Cyriac.
Predation marks by avian predators on the clay models.
(A) 'V' shaped beak mark of a bird on the clay model. (B) 'U' shaped beak mark of a bird on the brown clay model. (C) Multiple peck marks by birds on the black clack model. (D) Peck mark on the tail of a novel coloured model. (E) Snake model (yellow) placed on leaf litter background. Photo credit: Vivek Philip Cyriac.
We thank Umesh P.K. and BBTC tea estates, Manjolai for allowing us to carry out our field experiments in their tea plantations. We thank John Endler for his comments on an early draft of the manuscript. We thank David Gower for his discussions on uropeltid snakes. We thank Almut Kelber and Balamurali G.S. for the discussions on avian visual models; Udita Bansal, Harshad Mayekar, Sairandhri Lapalikar, Ashish Nerlekar, Rishiddh Javery, Alex Johny, Sreejit Allipra, Gopal Murali, Gayatri Kartha, Amal Reji, Divya P.S., Midhun Krishna, Meenakshi Jyothis, Maria Babu, Varun Kher, Jewel Johnson and Reshnu Raj for assisting with preparations of the snake models; Umesh P.K., John, Alex Johny, Udita Bansal, Sreejit Allipra, Varun Kher and Jayasooryan C.S. for assisting during fieldwork in BBTC. We also thank Nawaf Abdul Majeed and Rohit Anand for their help with preparing the dough models and conducting the captive chicken experiments. We thank Umesh P.K. for images of the ventral colouration of uropeltid snakes.
Additional Information and Declarations
Vivek Philip Cyriac conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analysed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Ullasa Kodandaramaiah contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e. approving body and any reference numbers):
All applicable international, national and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. The experimental protocol was approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram.
Field Study Permissions
The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e. approving body and any reference numbers):
The field experiments were done with the permission of Bombay Burma Trading Corporation, Limited, which owns the lands.
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The raw data is available at Figshare: Cyriac, Vivek; Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa (2019): Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7957223.v1.
This work was supported by an INSPIRE Faculty Award to UK (DST/INSPIRE/04/2013/000476) and intra-mural funding from IISER Thiruvananthapuram. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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text:
package mahjong

class InvalidCommandException extends Exception("Invalid command given")

class CommandFactory {

    def create(player: Player, line: String): Option[Command] = {
        cleanInput(line) match {
            case Array("pung", tileA, tileB, tileC) => {
                Some(CallPung(player, findTiles(player, tileA, tileB, tileC)))
            }
            case Array("kong", tileA, tileB, tileC, tileD) => {
                Some(CallKong(player, findTiles(player, tileA, tileB, tileC, tileD)))
            }
            case Array("chow", tileA, tileB, tileC) => {
                Some(CallChow(player, findTiles(player, tileA, tileB, tileC)))
            }
            case Array("show") => {
                Some(ShowTiles(player, player.tiles, false))
            }
            case Array("show", "groups") => {
                Some(ShowTiles(player, player.groupedTiles().flatMap(x => x), true))
            }
            case Array("show", "score") => {
                Some(ShowScore(player))
            }
            case Array("last") => {
                Some(LastDiscardedTile(player))
            }
            case Array("discard", index) => {
                Some(DiscardTile(player, index.toInt))
            }
            case Array("skip") => Some(SkipCommand())
            case Array("exit") => Some(ExitGame())
            case _ => None
        }
    }

    private def cleanInput(line: String): Array[String] = line.toLowerCase.trim.split(" ")

    private def findTiles(player: Player, indices: String*): Seq[Tile] = {
        indices.map(x => player.tiles(x.toInt))
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Joker Movie Facts (19 pics)
Category: Pics |
The role of Arthur Fleck was specifically conceived with Joaquin Phoenix in mind to play him.
Phoenix based Joker's laugh on videos of real people suffering from pathological laughter – involuntary laughing and crying due to a nervous system disorder.
He went on an extreme diet for 'Joker' and lost 52 pounds (with the supervision of a doctor).
The film's plot of following a failed stand-up comedian came from the Batman: The Killing Joke graphic novel, often considered to be the definitive Batman vs. Joker story and one of the most popular graphic novels ever made.
Pronhub revealed that there have been 741,000 searches for "Joker" since the movie's release in October. I'm not one to judge kinks, but c'mon guys…
When preparing for the role, Joaquin Phoenix studied the movements of iconic silent film stars like Buster Keaton and Ray Bolger.
However, Phoenix said he did not refer to any past iterations of the character when developing his role – "It was just something that felt like our creation, and that's what was really important for me."
In real life, Arkman State Hospital is the Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex Building.
The movie was deliberately based in 1981 to keep the movie away from the current events in the DC Extended Universe.
Arthur Fleck performs stand up at 'Pogo's Comedy Club' in Gotham. Pogo the Clown was the stage name of real life professional clown and serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
'Joker' is the first R rated movie in history to make $1 billion dollars.
Correlations between 'Joker' and 'Taxi Driver' can be spotted throughout the movie.
The 'Joker Stairs' became so popular that they're now a place on Google Maps. Fans even put it into the "religious destination" category.
Phoenix said that perfecting Joker's laugh was the toughest part of the role.
All clocks in the movie show the time as 11:11. Fans went crazy with bible verse theories and such, but when asked about it, director Todd Phillips said "It's a coincidence. …No, I mean, I don't know. I think it's a coincidence."
Joaquin Phoenix improvised the bathroom dance scene on the spot. In the script, Arthur simply runs into the bathroom, hides the gun, and washes his face.
Director Todd Phillips said he wants comic book movie fans to know that there is no chance of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker and Robert Pattinson's Batman ever crossing over on the big screen. He added that doesn't mean Pattinson won't ever possibly face off against Joker, it just won't be his version.
There are at least three different laughs the Joker does: the "affliction" laugh, the "one of the guys" laugh, and then the "authentic joy" laugh at the end.
Although past actors went to dark places in real life to play the role of the Joker, Phoenix says he didn't have that experience, "I didn't struggle, it was enjoyable, it was fulfilling."
Did It Ever Happen to You When... Part 107 (16 gifs)
Hilarious Robert Pattinson Memes (43 pics)


text:
Oregon daily emerald.
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition
Eugene, Or. (1920-2012)
About Oregon daily emerald.
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Image 1
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Two, Image 2
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Three, Image 3
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Four, Image 4
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Five, Image 5
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Six, Image 6
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Seven, Image 7
May 11, 1940, Men's Edition, Page Eight, Image 8


text:
Malaysia's Future Will Be Stolen By The Corrupt, Cronies And Those That Supports GST, If BN Succeeds In A Victory Without Honour Based On Lies, Bribes, Fear, Hate And Threats.
Malaysia's future will be stolen by the corrupt, the cronies and those that supports GST, if BN succeeds in a victory without honour based on lies, bribes, fear, hate and threats. To win the coming general elections, UMNO leaders have continued to incite hatred based on religion and race with racist epithets such as "DAP Chinese".
This is the first time that UMNO is attacking DAP by attaching the words Chinese, an ugly racialisation of politics that also indirectly attacks the Chinese community. DAP has never attacked UMNO as UMNO Malays or PAS as PAS Muslims. Why pin the blame on an entire community just to score political points?
The ferocity of these attacks hide the desperation of BN of a real possibility of losing the next general elections. What is worrying is that the Prime Minister is personally issuing such threats with this extremist war-cry filled with hate and fear,
"If the opposition wins…the special rights of Malays, as the original forebearers of this land, from a noble and free race, will have their pride stepped on and their (position) in the centre sold. Worse yet, they will be vagabonds, cursed and despised, until they 'terbangsat' (become bastards) in their own homeland,"
This is a blatant lie by the Prime Minister. No Malaysian, much less Malays, will be "terbangsat" or bastards if Pakatan Harapan wins. In fact Malaysians will have a brighter future free from corruption, cronyism and the GST. Pakatan's position is that GST should be abolished because of the hardships imposed on the rakyat. The Federal government is expected to collect RM40 billion which is RM40 billion less for people to spend.
Penang had paid RM5,561.2 million since 2015.If the BN Federal government stubbornly refuses to abolish the GST, then the alternative is to change the government. But in the meantime, the Federal government should return some money collected from GST back to the respective states because of the huge financial burden imposed when so much money is sucked out from ordinary rakyat's pockets.
Penang paying RM5,561.2 million means the ordinary rakyat had RM5,561.2 million less to spend. What is wrong in asking that the Federal government to return 50% of the amount paid by Penang back to Penangites to help lessen the people's burden there, when in Australia fully 100% of GST paid by the states are fully refunded?
Similarly, it is untrue and baseless for the Prime Minister to claim that I had opposed the expansion of the Penang International Airport(PIA), from the present capacity of 6.5 million passengers to 12 million passengers, as announced by him in the 2018 Budget. I had thanked the Prime Minister for the much needed expansion as the PIA recorded 6.7 million passengers in 2016 and is expected to exceed 7.1 million passengers this year.
Can the Prime Minister prove that I had opposed or voted in Parliament against any proposal to expand Penang's International Airport? In the last parliamentary session, I had voted against the Domestic Trade and Industry in opposition to the hike in fuel prices, but nothing against anything related to the expansion of the Penang International Airport.
Finally the Prime Minister and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishamudin Tun Hussein Onn mocked me for asking the Federal government for help during the worst rainstorm and floods in Penang's history. I had gone live on Facebook at 3.30 am in the morning of 5 November, after calling Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, to let the flood victims know that help is on its way, not to despair and lose hope.
For Hishamuddin to claim otherwise is not true because the army only moved in full force, after my urgent call to the Deputy Prime Minister. The armed forces does not take instructions from the state government, only the Federal government. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for taking my call at 3.30 in the morning and sending in the Army to assist.
The state government was doing everything we can and we are not ashamed to seek the assistance from the Federal government and the Deputy Prime Minister to send in the army to help with flood rescue and relief work. I hope that both the Prime Minister and Hishamudin would take my call at 3.30 am in the morning if the need arises. If by doing so is wrong and shameful, then I am willing to be punished and be humiliated, because I am willing to do the same again when the need arises to help and save the rakyat.
Whilst every political parties wants to win elections, victory with honour matters for our country's future. Victory must not be achieved at any price, sacrificing not only principles and honour, but also the truth and the moral foundation of our nation. Otherwise, how different are we from US President Donald Trump, a master of the politics of division and untruth, and a leader that our Prime Minister once boasts of having a close personal relationship but now condemns.


Trained and certified Project Managers will probably have specific training in the tools they use to manage projects. As well as the skills to manage the team, communicate to all stakeholders. While juggling tasks and timelines. Complex projects may require complex tools, but so much of what we do can technically be classed as a project without being complex. Collaborating on a project requires a specific set of skills and can be effectively done using standard apps in Office 365.
Projects generally have a start and an end date, which is different to working together on our core business which is ongoing. For example, implementing a new content management system is a project. Filling it with content and updating and maintaining the content is ongoing. For the simplest projects you could choose a simple Excel Spreadsheet to manage tasks, use Tasks in Outlook or even ToDo. But we recommend using Teams.
These are some basic principles to consider when planning your Team.
• Will you need to keep all conversations and artefacts from the project, or can they be deleted once the project is completed (the team owners can delete channels or an entire team).
• You now have a complete digital workplace for all project collaboration.
• Events or meetings can be planned in Teams by clicking on the Meetings tab in the navigation bar along the left side of your screen. Then select Schedule a meeting. (Make sure you select a channel to meet in so that the right people are automatically invited and everyone knows where to find the documentation relating to the meeting).
So yes, a large amount of collaboration will actually take place in Planner. But as this is added to the Team, your team members will be able to do everything in one app by simply opening the different tabs.
And yes, you will still receive emails – but these should only be notifications that can easily be deleted once you have seen them. The greatest benefits are having everything in one place, only one version of any document, spreadsheet or presentation for everyone to work on together, all the tasks easy to prioritise, assign and track. To us, the perfect project management tool, simple, intuitive and great fun to use.


The delicate Zia necklace features a cut-out detail of the sun.
As 'Zia' means brilliance and brightness in Hindi, this necklace set with a White Zircon stone, shines with a graceful light.
The necklace features an extension giving the option to wear at two different lengths and to layer with other necklaces.


text:
Day trading aesthetics: playing with Murdoch
Ned Rossiter
catchafallingknife.com
photo Michael Goldberg
We are yet to see what capital can become. So goes the 'new economy' mantra as its proponents lay claim to the future, which is synonymous with the 'free market.' Mastery of the latter supposedly determines the former. Bubble economies—exemplified most spectacularly with dotcom mania and the tech wreck in April 2000, which saw the crash of the NASDAQ—are perhaps one index of the future-present where the accumulation of profit precedes by capturing what is otherwise a continuous flow of information. Information flows are shaped by myriad forces that in themselves are immaterial and invisible, as they do not register in the flow of information itself. The condition of motion nevertheless indelibly inscribes information with a speculative potential, enabling it to be momentarily captured in the form of trading indices.
Michael Goldberg's recent installation at Sydney's Artspace—catchafallingknife.com—combines software interfaces peculiar to the information exchanges of day traders gathered around electronic cash flows afforded by the buying and selling of shares in Murdoch's News Corporation. With $50,000 backing from an anonymous consortium of stock market speculators cobbled together from an online discussion list of day traders, Goldberg bought and sold News Corp shares during 3 weeks in October-November last year (for background to the installation see RT51).
Information flows are at once inside and outside the logic of commodification. The software design of market charts constitutes an interface between informational nodes and flows. The interface captures and contains—and indeed makes intelligible—what are otherwise quite out of control finance flows. But not totally out of control: finance flows, when understood as a self-organised system, occupy a tense space between absolute stability and total randomness. Too much emphasis upon either condition leaves the actor-network system open to collapse. Evolution or multiplication of the system depends on a constant movement or feedback loops between actors and networks, nodes and flows.
Referring to the early work of political installation artist Hans Haacke, Goldberg explains this process in terms of a "real time system": "the artwork comprises a number of components and active agents combining to form a volatile yet stable system. Well, that may also serve as a concise description of the stock market...Whether or not the company's books are in the black or in the red is of no concern—the trader plays a stock as it works its way up to its highs and plays it as the lows are plumbed as well. All that's important is liquidity and movement. 'Chance' and 'probability' become the real adversaries and allies." (Interview with Geert Lovink, www.catchafallingknife.com)
Trading or charting software can be understood as stabilising technical actors that gather information flows, codifying these in the form of "moving average histograms, stochastics, and momentum and volatility markers" (Goldberg). Such market indicators are then rearticulated or translated in the form of online chatrooms, financial news media and mobile phone links to stockbrokers, eventually culminating in the trade. In capturing and modelling finance flows, trading software expresses various regimes of quantification that enable a value-adding process through the exchange of information within the immediacy of an interactive real time system. Such a process is distinct from "ideal time," in which "the aesthetic contemplation of beauty occurs in theoretical isolation from the temporal contingencies of value" (Ed Shanken, "Art in the Information Age", www.duke.edu/~giftwrap/ InfoAge.html).
An affective dimension of aesthetics is registered in the excitement and rush of the trade; biochemical sensations in the body modulate the flow of information, and are expressed in the form of a trade. As Goldberg puts it in a report to the consortium halfway through the project after a series of poor trades based on a combination of 'technical' and 'fundamental' analysis: "It's becoming clearer to me that in trading this stock one often has to defy logic and instead give in, coining a well-worn phrase, to irrational exuberance." Here, the indeterminacy of affect subsists within the realm of the processual, where a continuum of relations defines the event of the trade. Yet paradoxically, such an affective dimension is coupled with an intensity of presence where each moment counts; the art of day trading is an economy of precision within a partially enclosed universe.
However, the borders of a processual system are also open to the needs and interests of external institutional realities. The node of the gallery presents what is otherwise a routine operation of a day trader as a minor event, one that registers the growing similarities between art and commerce. Interestingly, the event-space of the gallery expresses the regularity of day trading with a difference that submits to the spatio-temporal dependency news media has on the categories of 'news worthiness.'
A finance reporter for Murdoch's The Australian newspaper reports on Goldberg's installation. Despite the press package, which details otherwise, the journalist attempts to associate Goldberg's trading capital with an Australia Council grant (which financed the installation costs) as further evidence of the moral and political corruption among the 'chattering classes.' In this instance of populist rhetoric, the distinction between quality and tabloid newspapers is brought into question. The self-referentiality that defines organisation and production within the mediasphere prompts a journalist from Murdoch's local Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, to submit copy on the event. Unlike the dismissive account in The Australian and the general absence of attention to the project by arts commentators, Goldberg notes how the Daily Telegraph report made front page of the Business section (rather than the News or Entertainment pages), in full colour, with his picture beside the banner headline "Profit rise lifts News." The headline for Goldberg's installation was smaller: "Murdoch media the latest canvas for artist trader."
Here, the system of relations between art and commerce also indicates the importance that storytelling has in an age of information economies. Whether the price of stocks goes up or down, profit value is not shaped by the kind of political critique art might offer, but rather by the kind of spin a particular stock can generate. Goldberg's installation discloses various operations peculiar to the aesthetics of day trading, clearly establishing a link between narrative, economy, time and risk, performance or routine practice and the mediating role of design and software aesthetics. catchafallingknife.com demonstrates that it is the latter—a theory of software—that still requires much critical attention. And unlike most players in the new economy, Goldberg's installation was a model of accountability and transparency.
catchafallingknife.com, Michael Goldberg, Artspace, Sydney, Oct 17-Nov 19, 2002. www.catchafallingknife.com
RealTime issue #53 Feb-March 2003 pg. 25
© Ned Rossiter; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]


text:
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OSHA Cites Five Businesses After Employee Dies
Articles, New Jersey, Personal Injury
Temporary workers can be placed in a variety of jobs, including dangerous ones. It is every employer's job to make sure that temporary workers are properly trained on all equipment and in proper safety procedures.
A temporary worker was caught in a conveyor and crushed at an Amazon fulfillment center in Avenel, NJ. When the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted a follow-up investigation, they cited the managing company, as well as four staffing companies that had provided workers for the facility.
When a temporary worker is assigned, both the staffing company and the business hosting him are responsible for his safety. If he is injured or killed, neither company can avoid liability.
Four staffing companies were cited after the incident for failing to assess the workplace for hazards before placing temporary workers there. As the agency placing them, the companies had a responsibility to make sure the facility was safe.
Amazon had contracted Genco, a third-party logistics provider, to run the facility and supervise the temporary workers. After their investigation, OSHA cited the managing company for failing to make sure the staffing companies performed a hazard assessment.
Spevack Law Firm– Middlesex County Personal Injury Lawyers
July 26, 2014 /On Behalf of AskTheLawyers™
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Louisiana Middle School Facing Budgetary Concerns Due to Asbestos Removal Testosterone Exposure in Women and Children