text:
CMS Officials and Da Vinci Leaders Present a Community Roundtable on the Proposed Federal Rules and How Da Vinci Implementation Guides Meet Them
[fa icon="calendar'] Jan 20, 2023 1:45:01 PM / by Leslie Amorós posted in FHIR, health IT policy, interoperability, CMS, Da Vinci, prior authorization, FHIR Accelerator, attachments
The Da Vinci Project's January Community Roundtable to be held January 25 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET
With the issuance of the new federal prior authorization and attachments rule proposals last month, the innovative interoperability work advanced by the HL7 Da Vinci Project is once again being recognized as a path forward for game-changing industry transformation that will reduce burden, increase automation and improve care.
The Intersection of Federal Regulation and The HL7 Da Vinci Project, January's Community Roundtable, features an overview and frequently asked questions about the rules and their accompanying RFIs from CMS officials. Da Vinci leaders then will share an overview of the implementation guides that are suggested in the proposed rules and how they meet the rules' objectives.
At the January 25 session, which is scheduled from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET, attendees will learn how to access the resources, participate in community feedback and start getting involved.
HL7 Gravity Project: Opportunity to Help Launch First National Digital Access and Digital Literacy Data Standards Development
[fa icon="calendar'] Jan 4, 2023 9:42:10 AM / by Gravity Project PMO posted in interoperability, health IT, Gravity, Social Determinants of Health, SDOH
Opportunity in partnership with Kaiser Permanente, HL7 and others!
As grounding, the Gravity Project is a national consensus project that develops and tests data standards to represent and exchange social risk data in electronic systems. Together, with a broad collective of stakeholders, Gravity Project defines the language needed to comprehensively address social risks in clinical and community-based settings. To date, the terminology team has completed 17 social risk domains. This has included building critical screening, diagnosis, goal, and intervention concepts for food insecurity, housing instability and homelessness, transportation insecurity, and beyond. In addition, Gravity data standards are included in the United States Core for Data for Interoperability (USCDI), and their value sets serve as a reference for emerging social risk quality measures. (relevant press releases and publications)
HL7 Gravity Project: An Ongoing Evolution
[fa icon="calendar'] Nov 28, 2022 5:08:40 PM / by Gravity Project PMO posted in FHIR, interoperability, health IT, implementation guide, Gravity, Social Determinants of Health, SDOH
Highlighted here is a preview of what's on the horizon as the Gravity Project matures and
recent examples of Gravity standards integration.
The Gravity Project®, an HL7® FHIR Accelerator, is evolving the way it advances social care data integration as a strategy to promote health equity while maintaining continuity with the mission and consensus-based processes that are core to the project. The project is a national public-private collaborative developing, testing, and implementing consensus-based social determinants of health (SDOH) data standards for use across the health, social services, public health, and research sectors. The Gravity community embodies a truly inclusive representation of over 2,500 stakeholder members of its public work groups and governance committees across the healthcare, health IT, community-based, federal and state agency, payer, academic, and patient/ consumer advocacy sectors.
In 2021, HL7 was awarded a cooperative agreement with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to prioritize and expedite the development of standards specific to five gap areas including SDOH. Under this collaborative agreement, the Gravity Pilots Affinity Group was launched in September 2022 as a peer-to-peer learning forum for real-world testing of Gravity terminology and technical standards. Pilot sites are invited to demonstrate the use of social care coded terminologies (e.g., LOINC®, SNOMED-CT®, ICD-10®) and/or the HL7 SDOH Clinical Care FHIR Implementation Guide (SDOH CC IG), share implementation lessons learned with other pilot participants, seek/find partnerships for testing, and gain real-world experience.
November Community Roundtable Highlights Da Vinci Implementation Progress and 2023 Plans
[fa icon="calendar'] Nov 21, 2022 4:57:19 PM / by Leslie Amorós posted in FHIR, interoperability, Da Vinci, value based care, FHIR Accelerator
The Da Vinci Project's November Community Roundtable to be held November 30 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET
During November's Community Roundtable, HL7 Da Vinci Project leaders representing providers, payers and EHR vendors will offer an insightful program discussing real-world implementations of Da Vinci's Implementation Guides.
"Significant Progress: HL7 Da Vinci Project Year-end Review and 2023 Plans," begins with a review of this year's program accomplishments and continues with a panel of industry and HL7 Da Vinci Project leaders sharing the impact of corresponding regulations and the proven guides that reduce burden and enable efficient value-based care workflows.
In particular, they will discuss the reality and progress of Da Vinci implementations in a world where HL7 FHIR APIs are becoming the de facto norm for data sharing for clinical data exchange and prior authorization. The session concludes with a preview of the project goals and activities planned for 2023.
Next Community Roundtable to Feature Updates on HL7 Da Vinci Implementation Guides
[fa icon="calendar'] Oct 19, 2022 3:57:24 PM / by Howard Anderson posted in FHIR, interoperability, Da Vinci, value based care, FHIR Accelerator
The Da Vinci Project's September Community Roundtable to be held October 26 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. ET
The next Da Vinci Community Roundtable, to be held Oct. 26, will offer timely updates on changes recently made in the Da Vinci Implementation Guides and offer an outlook for next year.
The event, "Current State: HL7 Da Vinci Implementation Guide Progress in 2022," will be held online from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET.
The Da Vinci Project is a private-sector initiative that accelerates the adoption of HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7® FHIR®) as the standard to support and integrate value-based care (VBC) data exchange across communities. The goal of the project is to help payers and providers positively impact clinical, quality, cost and care management outcomes, enabling providers to see the right data at the right time for patient-centered care.
Status Update for October 18 | Association Management System Replacement
[fa icon="calendar'] Oct 19, 2022 8:31:36 AM / by Health Level Seven posted in HL7, HL7 community, health IT, website, announcements
Learn about HL7's Fonteva Implementation
In Appreciation | World Standards Week
[fa icon="calendar'] Oct 10, 2022 1:07:17 PM / by Health Level Seven posted in HL7, HL7 community, health IT, annoucements, world standards week
Status Update | Association Management System Replacement
[fa icon="calendar'] Oct 5, 2022 11:00:16 AM / by Health Level Seven posted in HL7, HL7 community, health IT, website, announcements, annoucements
Dear HL7 Members and Community,
As announced last month, we are transitioning to a new Association Management System (AMS), Fonteva, enabling us to better serve the HL7 community.
As progress continues, we want to share details with you on what to expect in the coming weeks.
What to Expect During the Transition
On October 10, 2022: All updates and changes to the current system will be frozen in order to extract the data load for the new system.
More details will be shared on how to submit updates/change requests during the freeze
October 10th through October 31: The following functions will not be available.
Membership: applications, renewals and reactivations
Please contact MemberInfo@HL7.org to renew/reactivate memberships prior to October 10
Member updates: demographics and profiles (i.e. email and address changes, etc.)
Organization accounts: changes including key member and/or voting members
HL7 website accounts: creation of new accounts
Note that other types of HL7 service accounts such as Atlassian can still be created
Purchase of OIDS
Please contact MemberInfo@HL7.org prior to October 10 to purchase or wait until October 31
Registration: events and education offerings
Alternative registration steps will be announced
Questions can be directed to Sadhana Alangar, PhD, Director of Education
Still accessible: HL7.org website, Ballot Desktop, Confluence and Jira.
HL7 Announces New Board, International Council and TSC Members
[fa icon="calendar'] Sep 30, 2022 9:49:11 AM / by Health Level Seven posted in HL7, HL7 community, health IT, annoucements, elections
HL7® International, the global authority on interoperability of health information technology with members in 55 countries, announced election results for its board of directors, international council and technical steering committee during its annual business meeting at the virtual 36th Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting last week in Baltimore.
Julia Skapik, M.D. M.P.H, chief medical information officer, National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), was selected by the membership to serve as the chair-elect in 2023 and as the board chair, 2024-2025.
Sync for Social Needs
[fa icon="calendar'] Sep 28, 2022 11:06:00 AM / by Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD posted in FHIR, health IT policy, interoperability, CMS, ONC
The Biden-Harris Administration will host the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health on September 28, 2022. In addition to announcing a national strategy to address the intersections between food, hunger, nutrition and health, the Administration has issued a call for stakeholder commitments along five pillars, including the "integration of nutrition and health."
We seek to better integrate nutrition information within a patient's electronic health record (EHR) by accelerating a standards-based approach to implementing universal social needs screening. With the final CMS IPPS rule requiring hospitals to report on social determinants of health (SDOH) screening quality measures in 2024, along with similar requirements of MA SNPs and ACO REACH model participants in 2023, we believe a multi-stakeholder effort, which should also include Medicaid agencies and managed care plans, to advance an HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources ("FHIR")-based approach to meet these "functional" requirements will significantly enhance the ability of providers to meet these CMS requirements.
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have been working as a technical writer for three years now. I have worked in various industries including telecommunications and environmental, but my focus and area of expertise remains with scientific, medical and health care information technology.
There appears to be a "technical writer personality" – talks a lot, full of ideas, somewhat extroverted.
Tech writers usually come from a wide variety of different work experience and educational backgrounds (i.e. no two technical writers are alike!).
People's usual first response when they hear that I am a technical writer, is that it must be a boring job, which it most certainly is not!
Half the job involves project management and people skills.
If you can't work with all sorts of people with varying backgrounds then this isn't the job for you!
Old adage: Q. Who is a technical writer's worst enemy? A. Another technical writer working in your same department / office / company.
No one likes the stuffy, always right tech writer who lives to correct your grammar.
A tech writer does a whole lot more than just writing, in fact even edging on web development, training, layout, graphic design, and interactive learning.
Rule of thumb: simple and clear works best (i.e. if the tech writer can understand how a program works, then you can too!).


text:
package org.springframework.cloud.config.server.support;

import static org.springframework.util.StringUtils.hasText;

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.URL;
import java.security.MessageDigest;
import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;

import javax.crypto.Mac;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.eclipse.jgit.errors.UnsupportedCredentialItem;
import org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialItem;
import org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialsProvider;
import org.eclipse.jgit.transport.URIish;

import com.amazonaws.auth.AWSCredentials;
import com.amazonaws.auth.AWSCredentialsProvider;
import com.amazonaws.auth.AWSSessionCredentials;
import com.amazonaws.auth.BasicAWSCredentials;
import com.amazonaws.auth.DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain;
import com.amazonaws.util.ValidationUtils;

/**
 * Provides a jgit {@link CredentialsProvider} implementation that can provide
 * the appropriate credentials to connect to an AWS CodeCommit repository.
 * <p>
 * From the command line, you can configure git to use AWS code commit with a
 * credential helper. However, jgit does not support credential helper commands,
 * but it does provider a CredentialsProvider abstract class we can extend.
 * </p>
 * Connecting to an AWS CodeCommit (codecommit) repository requires an AWS access key
 * and secret key. These are used to calculate a signature for the git request. The
 * AWS access key is used as the codecommit username, and the calculated signature
 * is used as the password. The process for calculating this signature is documented
 * very well at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature-version-4.html.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Don Laidlaw
 *
 */
public class AwsCodeCommitCredentialProvider extends CredentialsProvider {

	private static final String SHA_256 = "SHA-256"; //$NON-NLS-1$
	private static final String UTF8 = "UTF8"; //$NON-NLS-1$
	private static final String HMAC_SHA256 = "HmacSHA256"; //$NON-NLS-1$
	private static final char[] hexArray = "0123456789abcdef".toCharArray(); //$NON-NLS-1$

	protected Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(getClass());

	/**
	 * The AWSCredentialsProvider will be used to provide the access key and
	 * secret key if they are not specified.
	 */
	private AWSCredentialsProvider awsCredentialProvider;

	/**
	 * If the access and secret keys are provided, then the
	 * AWSCredentialsProvider will not be used. The username is the
	 * awsAccessKeyId.
	 */
	private String username;

	/**
	 * If the access and secret keys are provided, then the AWSCredentialsProvider will
	 * not be used. The password is the awsSecretKey.
	 */
	private String password;

	/**
	 * This credentials provider cannot run interactively.
	 * @return false
	 * @see org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialsProvider#isInteractive()
	 */
	@Override
	public boolean isInteractive() {
		return false;
	}

	/**
	 * We support username and password credential items only.
	 * @see org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialsProvider#supports(org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialItem[])
	 */
	@Override
	public boolean supports(CredentialItem... items) {
		for (CredentialItem i : items) {
			if (i instanceof CredentialItem.Username) {
				continue;
			}
			else if (i instanceof CredentialItem.Password) {
				continue;
			}
			else {
				return false;
			}
		}
		return true;
	}

	/**
	 * Get the AWSCredentials. If an AWSCredentialProvider was specified, use that, otherwise,
	 * create a new AWSCredentialsProvider. If the username and password are provided, then
	 * use those directly as AWSCredentials. Otherwise us the {@link DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain}
	 * as is standard with AWS applications.
	 * @return the AWS credentials.
	 */
	private AWSCredentials retrieveAwsCredentials() {
		if (awsCredentialProvider == null) {
			if (username != null && password != null) {
				logger.debug("Creating a static AWSCredentialsProvider");
				awsCredentialProvider = new AWSStaticCredentialsProvider(new BasicAWSCredentials(username, password));
			} else {
				logger.debug("Creating a default AWSCredentialsProvider");
				awsCredentialProvider = new DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain();
			}
		}
		return awsCredentialProvider.getCredentials();
	}

	/**
	 * Get the username and password to use for the given uri.
	 * @see org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialsProvider#get(org.eclipse.jgit.transport.URIish, org.eclipse.jgit.transport.CredentialItem[])
	 */
	@Override
	public boolean get(URIish uri, CredentialItem... items) throws UnsupportedCredentialItem {
		String codeCommitPassword;
		String awsAccessKey;
		String awsSecretKey;
		try {
			AWSCredentials awsCredentials = retrieveAwsCredentials();
			StringBuilder awsKey = new StringBuilder();
			awsKey.append(awsCredentials.getAWSAccessKeyId());
			awsSecretKey = awsCredentials.getAWSSecretKey();
			if (awsCredentials instanceof AWSSessionCredentials) {
				AWSSessionCredentials sessionCreds = (AWSSessionCredentials) awsCredentials;
				if (sessionCreds.getSessionToken() != null) {
					awsKey.append('%')
						.append(sessionCreds.getSessionToken());
				}
			}
			awsAccessKey = awsKey.toString();
		} catch (Throwable t) {
			logger.warn("Unable to retrieve AWS Credentials", t);
			return false;
		}
		try {
			codeCommitPassword = calculateCodeCommitPassword(uri, awsSecretKey);
		} catch (Throwable t) {
			logger.warn("Error calculating the AWS CodeCommit password", t);
			return false;
		}

		for (CredentialItem i : items) {
			if (i instanceof CredentialItem.Username) {
				((CredentialItem.Username) i).setValue(awsAccessKey);
				logger.trace("Returning username " + awsAccessKey);
				continue;
			}
			if (i instanceof CredentialItem.Password) {
				((CredentialItem.Password) i).setValue(codeCommitPassword.toCharArray());
				logger.trace("Returning password " + codeCommitPassword);
				continue;
			}
			if (i instanceof CredentialItem.StringType && i.getPromptText().equals("Password: ")) { //$NON-NLS-1$
				((CredentialItem.StringType) i).setValue(codeCommitPassword);
				logger.trace("Returning password string " + codeCommitPassword);
				continue;
			}
			throw new UnsupportedCredentialItem(uri, i.getClass().getName() + ":" + i.getPromptText()); //$NON-NLS-1$
		}

		return true;
	}

	/**
	 * Calculate the AWS CodeCommit password for the provided URI and AWS secret key.
	 * This uses the algorithm published by AWS at
	 * http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature-version-4.html
	 * @param uri the codecommit repository uri
	 * @param awsSecretKey the aws secret key
	 * @return the password to use in the git request
	 */
	protected static String calculateCodeCommitPassword(URIish uri, String awsSecretKey) {
		String[] split = uri.getHost().split("\\.");
		if (split.length < 4) {
			throw new CredentialException("Cannot detect AWS region from URI", null);
		}
		String region = split[1];

		Date now = new Date();
		SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd'T'HHmmss");
		dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

		String dateStamp = dateFormat.format(now);
		String shortDateStamp = dateStamp.substring(0, 8);

		String codeCommitPassword;
		try {
			StringBuilder stringToSign = new StringBuilder();
			stringToSign.append("AWS4-HMAC-SHA256\n")
				.append(dateStamp).append("\n")
				.append(shortDateStamp)
				.append("/").append(region)
				.append("/codecommit/aws4_request\n")
				.append(bytesToHexString(canonicalRequestDigest(uri)));

			byte[] signedRequest = sign(awsSecretKey, shortDateStamp, region, stringToSign.toString());
			codeCommitPassword = dateStamp + "Z" + bytesToHexString(signedRequest);
		} catch (Exception e) {
			throw new CredentialException("Error calculating AWS CodeCommit password", e);
		}

		return codeCommitPassword;
	}

	/**
	 * Throw out cached data and force retrieval of AWS credentials.
	 * @param uri This parameter is not used in this implementation.
	 */
	@Override
	public void reset(URIish uri) {
		// Should throw out cached info.
		// Note that even though the credentials (password) we calculate here is
		// valid for 15 minutes, we do not cache it. Instead we just re-calculate
		// it each time we need it. However, the AWSCredentialProvider will cache
		// its AWSCredentials object.
	}

	private static byte[] hmacSha256(String data, byte[] key) throws Exception {
		String algorithm = HMAC_SHA256;
		Mac mac = Mac.getInstance(algorithm);
		mac.init(new SecretKeySpec(key, algorithm));
		return mac.doFinal(data.getBytes(UTF8));
	}

	private static byte[] sign(String secret, String shortDateStamp, String region, String toSign) throws Exception {
		byte[] kSecret = ("AWS4" + secret).getBytes(UTF8);
		byte[] kDate = hmacSha256(shortDateStamp, kSecret);
		byte[] kRegion = hmacSha256(region, kDate);
		byte[] kService = hmacSha256("codecommit", kRegion);
		byte[] kSigning = hmacSha256("aws4_request", kService);
		return hmacSha256(toSign, kSigning);
	}

	/**
	 * Creates a message digest
	 * @param uri
	 * @return
	 * @throws NoSuchAlgorithmException
	 */
	private static byte[] canonicalRequestDigest(URIish uri) throws NoSuchAlgorithmException {
		StringBuilder canonicalRequest = new StringBuilder();
		canonicalRequest.append("GIT\n")		// codecommit uses GIT as the request method
			.append(uri.getPath()).append("\n")	// URI request path
			.append("\n")						// Query string, always empty for codecommit
						// Next is canonical headers, codecommit only requires the host header
			.append("host:").append(uri.getHost()).append("\n")
			.append("\n")						// canonical headers are always terminated by newline
			.append("host\n");					// The list of canonical headers, only one for codecommit

		MessageDigest digest = MessageDigest.getInstance(SHA_256);

		return digest.digest(canonicalRequest.toString().getBytes());
	}

	/**
	 * Convert bytes to a hex string
	 * @param bytes the bytes
	 * @return a string of hex characters encoding the bytes.
	 */
	private static String bytesToHexString(byte[] bytes) {
		char[] hexChars = new char[bytes.length * 2];
		for (int j = 0; j < bytes.length; j++) {
			int v = bytes[j] & 0xFF;
			hexChars[j * 2] = hexArray[v >>> 4];
			hexChars[j * 2 + 1] = hexArray[v & 0x0F];
		}
		return new String(hexChars);
	}

	/**
	 * @return the awsCredentialProvider
	 */
	public AWSCredentialsProvider getAwsCredentialProvider() {
		return awsCredentialProvider;
	}

	/**
	 * @param awsCredentialProvider the awsCredentialProvider to set
	 */
	public void setAwsCredentialProvider(AWSCredentialsProvider awsCredentialProvider) {
		this.awsCredentialProvider = awsCredentialProvider;
	}

	/**
	 * This provider can handle uris like https://git-codecommit.$AWS_REGION.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/$REPO
	 * @see org.springframework.cloud.config.server.credentials.GitCredentialsProvider#canHandleUri(java.lang.String)
	 */
	public static boolean canHandle(String uri) {
		if (!hasText(uri)) {
			return false;
		}

		try {
		  	URL url = new URL(uri);
      			URI u = new URI(url.getProtocol(), url.getUserInfo(), url.getHost(), url.getPort(), url.getPath(), url.getQuery(), url.getRef());
			if (u.getScheme().equals("https")) {
				String host = u.getHost();
				if (host.endsWith(".amazonaws.com") && host.startsWith("git-codecommit.")) {
					return true;
				}
			}
		} catch (Throwable t) {
			// ignore all, we can't handle it
		}

		return false;
	}

	/**
	 * @return the username
	 */
	public String getUsername() {
		return username;
	}

	/**
	 * @param username the username to set
	 */
	public void setUsername(String username) {
		this.username = username;
	}

	/**
	 * @return the password
	 */
	public String getPassword() {
		return password;
	}

	/**
	 * @param password the password to set
	 */
	public void setPassword(String password) {
		this.password = password;
	}

	/**
	 * Simple implementation of AWSCredentialsProvider that just wraps static AWSCredentials.
	 * AWS Actually provides this class in newer versions of the AWS API.
	 */
	public class AWSStaticCredentialsProvider implements AWSCredentialsProvider {

		private final AWSCredentials credentials;

		public AWSStaticCredentialsProvider(AWSCredentials credentials) {
			this.credentials = ValidationUtils.assertNotNull(credentials, "credentials");
		}

		public AWSCredentials getCredentials() {
			return credentials;
		}

		public void refresh() {
			// Nothing to do for static credentials.
		}

	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Landowner faces penalties for damaging Alaskan wetlands, streams
David R. Sweezey is facing penalties from the U.S. EPA for illegally filling wetlands and streams on his Anchorage, Alaska, property. By filing its Clean Water Act complaint against Sweezey, EPA can now seek penalties of up to $32,500 per day of violation and administrative penalties of up to $11,000 per day for each violation. In July 2003, Sweezey used heavy equipment to clear, grade, and fill wetlands and streams to create a pond on his property without first obtaining a required permit...
ANCHORAGE, AK, Aug. 5, 2008 -- David R. Sweezey is facing penalties from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for illegally filling wetlands and streams on his Anchorage, Alaska property. By filing its Clean Water Act complaint against Sweezey, EPA can now seek penalties of up to $32,500 per day of violation and administrative penalties of up to $11,000 per day for each violation.
In July 2003, Sweezey used heavy equipment to clear, grade, and fill wetlands and streams to create a pond on his property without first obtaining a required Clean Water Act Section 404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Sweezey's actions seriously damaged 300 linear feet of nearby stream channels and 0.5 acres of wetlands on his property. This Site is adjacent to Craig Creek which drains into Cook Inlet.
In May 2005, EPA issued a Compliance Order to Sweezey requiring him to restore the streams and wetlands on site. Since 2005, Sweezey has refused to restore the streams and wetlands, even after multiple attempts by EPA to comply and repair the damage.
According to Greg Kellogg, EPA Alaska Operations Office Deputy Director, because Sweezey has failed to cooperate and restore the damaged wetlands and streams, EPA has decided to pursue penalties in this case.
"Alaska's wetlands aren't just valuable habitat for fish and wildlife, they contribute substantially to Alaska's economy," said Kellogg. "Wetland construction should only be undertaken with great care after securing the necessary permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," said Kellogg. "If you work in wetlands, you must obey the law or you will face fines."
For more information about the Clean Water Act Section 404 wetland regulatory authority, visit: http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/reg_authority_pr.pdf
Sewage flowing from Mexico prompts California beach closures
Great Lakes Protection Fund announces leadership awards for water technology innovation

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Crocheting is not limited to scarves, booties, mats and mittens. Sweaters too can be made from crocheting. Using a number of tried and tested patterns that fit crochet sweaters; you can be able to make one for yourself or to gift someone with. Simple stitches such as the seed stitch can be used, with a combination of the cable stitch to bring out more intricate detail to the sweater. Other great patterns to try out are shared in this article.
The cross stitch is basically what is used to make this criss cross crochet pattern for the crochet sweater. It is not a difficult stitch to learn. The double crochet skill will however be required to be able to work this pattern. The sweaters made are perfect for little girls. For adults, the criss cross stitch pattern can be used on areas such as the bust together with other stitches for the body of the sweater.
The eyelet patter is commonly used for girl skirts and dresses, but it has also found use in sweaters. The eyelets are small holes that are made when crocheting using the lace stitch method. The end result is a beautiful sweater that is best worn during the warmer seasons, due to the open spaces left on the sweater.
There are many other great crochet sweater patterns to try out, including the intricate Aran patterns that are popular today.


By Lauren Riley, from BBC's Apprentice and member of Resolution.
This year I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of Lord Sugar's 20 possible apprentices. However, the stress of sitting in his board room week-after-week, fearing that the jabbing finger and the stern gaze will settle on you, is nothing compared to the stress that many people deal with in the work-place every day. That stress multiplies for those people going through relationship break-ups.
The Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan-Smith, said earlier this month that companies should help employees going through marital break-ups to prevent them 'crashing out' of work. New data published today supports this, shining a light on just how much needs to be done to support the almost a quarter of a million people who divorce each year and the many more who separate from long-term relationships.
The new research by Resolution, the organisation representing family lawyers, finds that 15% of workers have had to take sick leave due to the stress of a break-up, or have seen a colleague do so. The same number say that productivity at their workplace has suffered because of a colleague's separation. Relationship break-up can be the most stressful thing many people will ever go through, so it's hardly surprising that it will impact the workplace –where most spend the majority of their days. The onus is on both the legal profession and employers to do more to support separating couples.
As a family lawyer by trade, I witness the impact of family breakdown on people who are trying to manage stressful separations whilst also trying to hold down a stressful job. Stress at work is one of the leading causes of people taking sick leave. According to the Health and Safety Executive over 105 million days are lost to stress each year, costing UK employers £1.24 billion. Think of the benefits to UK plc if we could mitigate just some of this stress: helping employees' mental health and improving workplace productivity. In fact I have developed an app designed to improve productivity in the workplace and keep stress levels to a minimum. So what can be done?
For one thing, separating couples need better signposting to the options available to them, designed to take the adversarial sting out of the break-up. The general public still holds a dim view of these methods, like mediation and family arbitration, believing wrongly that they don't fully resolve disputes. As a lawyer I can tell you they do.
Employers on the other hand need to improve the support they offer staff. Resolution's survey found that just 10% of people think employers offer adequate support for those going through separation. HR departments need to start treating separation as a trauma and get better at understanding how to help employees through it. As the Pensions Secretary said, companies must get better at identifying these problems and offering help before they get worse.
Lengthy, stressful separations are bad for couples, bad for employers and inevitably bad for the economy. With a quarter of a million people divorcing each year, it's a problem that's not going away.


The Supply Chain Academy and the Institute of Directors Essex Branch would like to invite you to our 'Global Trade Opportunities' Thought Leadership Dinner on Thursday 5th October 2017.
Allie Renison, Head of Europe & Trade Policy for the IoD and Gary Cobbing, Commercial Director for the Uniserve Group (the UK's Leading Independent Logistics and Global Trade Management Provider), will be speaking on 'Global Trade Opportunities'.
In addition, Allie and Gary will be taking your specific questions about what you and your company should be doing now to prepare for Brexit, which is almost certain to affect your business.
Please arrive for 17:30hrs for networking and drinks. Dinner and speeches will begin from 18:00hrs, and we anticipate the event to end at around 20:30hrs.
A paid bar will be open after the event until 23:00hrs.


text:
Anosia philene är en fjärilsart som beskrevs av Stoll 1782. Anosia philene ingår i släktet Anosia och familjen praktfjärilar. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Praktfjärilar
philene

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
9th Circuit Denies En Banc Review of Mt. Soledad Case, Over Dissents
Last January, the 9th Circuit held that the now federally-owned Mt. Soledad Memorial featuring a 43-foot high cross conveys a government message of endorsement of religion that violates the Establishment Clause. (See prior posting.) On Friday, the 9th Circuit refused to rehear the case and also refused an en banc rehearing. However 5 judges, in an opinion written by Judge Bey, dissented from the denial of an en banc rehearing. In Jewish War Veterans v. City of San Diego, (9th Cir., Oct. 14, 2011), Judge Bey wrote in part:
History is important, in part because things change over time. The Spanish government of the day endorsed the Inquisition until the early years of the 19th Century. Would a reasonable observer therefore consider the edicts of King Ferdinand VII in determining whether today's Socialist government endorses the Inquisition? Of course not.
The panel concentrated its analysis on the history of the Cross as a religious symbol. Not on how this Cross at Mt. Soledad has been used by this government, but on the cross in general....
The principal defect of the panel's decision is its concentration on facts which occurred between 1913 and 2006. The City of San Diego is no longer the owner of the property. The federal government now owns the property. Thus, the use to which the City of San Diego put the Mt. Soledad Cross from 1954 to 2006, just as the use to which the private group put the Cross from 1913 to 1954, is not relevant as to whether the present use by the government—the precise use which plaintiffs seek to enjoin—constitutes an endorsement of religion.
Posted by Howard Friedman --PermaLink: 12:13 PM
The Religion Clause
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.... -- 1st Amendment
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1973 House Bill 5628. An Act Providing For The Election Of The Members Of The State Board Of Education.
Title 1973 House Bill 5628. An Act Providing For The Election Of The Members Of The State Board Of Education.


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Our next announcement for speaker is that of an MVP who is more like one among us! It's none other than Joshua Hoskins! He's not only a speaker but is also going to be a co dreamer for the event. Guess who is going to be MC for the App Demo Jam? It's Joshua again! Yes, he will be playing too many cool roles for the event!
A globetrotter and Salesforce evangelist, Joshua founded the Orlando and Singapore Salesforce Users Groups and launched MVP Office Hours, a live forum where users can meet with Salesforce MVPs virtually for line Q&A. Over the past years, Joshua has implemented Salesforce for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises with complex governance and requirements. He has also served multiple recruitment organizations including a publicly traded provider of career websites.
We proudly welcome Joshua to India Dreamin and look forward to experience a great time with him! Are you?


text:
Doubt Replaces the Shuttle
On April 14, 1981, after landing the first Space Shuttle, Astronaut John Young spoke to the cheering crowd at Edwards AFB. In his speech he said "I saw a newspaper headline that expressed it way better than I could. It showed a Space Shuttle orbiter and it said The Dream Is Alive Again. Let's keep it that way." Just over 30 years later the Space Shuttle program and that dream ended as the orbiter Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center in what the media repeatedly called a "bitter-sweet moment." My question is- where's the sweet?
The date of the Atlantis' landing was July 21, 2011, exactly one half of a century after Gus Grissom flew a Mercury Redstone from Cape Canaveral on a sub-orbital flight. He flew that sub-orbital mission because in 1961 the United States did not yet have the capability to actually orbit a manned spacecraft. Fifty years later to-the-day, with the wheels of the Atlantis coming to a stop, the United States once again did not have the capability to orbit a manned spacecraft. There is no man-rated launch vehicle in production, no man-rated spacecraft in ready to fly anytime soon and NASA has not produced a complete plan for any such hardware in the future. Instead all that we have are vaporous circle speeches about undefined "path breaking" and "game changing" technologies and assurances from NASA's politically appointed administrators that the future is bright and this is far from the end for NASA's human spaceflight program. We're told that we will visit an asteroid… sometime, about a decade and a half from now and that we're going to Mars in a little more than quarter of a century from now. Oh boy… that's real inspirational.
What is really represented by the end of the Space Shuttle program is not a pinnacle of technical success, but rather a failure of political leadership. It is a demonstration that our so-called "leaders" in the 21st Century have taken their lessons not from John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, but from Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Rather than leading us to a challenging bright future of national excellence, they are concerned only with leading us toward the ballot box and their own re-election.
NASA's politically appointed "leadership" has joined in taking this sandwich made of excrement and are calling it peanut butter. The man who likely will go down in history as being the worst NASA administrator in history, Charlie Bolden, repeatedly appears in front of Congress and in the media and assures that "This is not the end of Americans flying in space." and "We still have a manned space program." Indeed- Americans will be flying to the International Space Station, by way of rented seats on Russian rockets and there is no date ever mentioned as to when that rental space program will end.
It is time to tell the truth- such spaceflight is NOT an American manned space program. To settle that point, simply ask yourself this question: Is space tourist Dennis Tito a country with a manned space program? He may have enough money to qualify as a small country- but otherwise, the answer is "No." Is space tourist (although she prefers the term "participant") Anousheh Ansari a country with her own human spaceflight program? No? Well, both of these people went to the ISS on a rented seat aboard a Russian Soyuz. That's exactly what the United States will now be forced to do- except for the fact that the space tourists paid about $40 million less for their seat than the United States will have to pay for each of its. If we cannot call Mr. Tito and Ms. Ansari a nation with a human spaceflight program, than we cannot call the United States a nation with a human spaceflight program.
Additionally, Administrator Bolden has continually overseen and perhaps directed the foot-dragging by NASA that is obstructing the development of the Shuttle replacement vehicle- the Space Launch System, or SLS. Directed by law to immediately begin and expedite the SLS back in 2010, NASA's Administrators delayed progress for nearly a full year. That forced to Congress to go as far as to threaten to open an investigation into the administrator's foot-dragging. Charlie Bolden was finally subpoenaed by the Congress, and still continued to delay. No other NASA administrator has been openly threatened by Congress with such an investigation nor has one ever been subpoenaed by the Congress. Of course Charlie probably does not care much about such issues- he was often away on overseas junkets as his agency fell into ruin.
Charlie Bolden, it should be noted, serves "At the pleasure of the President." And Bolden himself recently testified in front of Congress that his president is one of the most engaged and interested presidents in history when it comes to spaceflight. Then he cited President Obama's visit to KSC for the STS-134 launch when he toured the space center with his family. Indeed, the only President who spent a similar amount of time appearing in front of space hardware was Richard Nixon- who, by the way, at the same time was working hard behind the scenes to cancel the ENTIRE manned space program. History alone will tell us what this president is doing behind the scenes while at the same time posing in front of space hardware. Currently, as evidenced by his last three budget proposals, President Obama appears to be working very hard to gut NASA's human spaceflight program. Each proposal sought to funnel most of the human spaceflight dollars to "commercial" operators and his 2011 proposal defunded the vehicles that were to replace the shuttle which also canceled our return to the moon.
Yet we are told that there is always "commercial" spaceflight to bail us out… right? Well, that is where Obama proposes that we spend our funds. Although I am all for SpaceX, and the other "commercial" space start-ups, it is about time we knock down to political facade of "commercial" that is being used to prop-up a few companies that are Obama approved to do spaceflight. The best filter here is to look through is Project Gemini. The Titan II booster was built by Martin, a "commercial" company. The Gemini spacecraft was built by McDonnell Aircraft Corp., a "commercial" company. Many other components were made by other private "commercial" contractors and the entire program was run by NASA. Government funds along with investments by those companies made Gemini happen. This is the same basic formula that is being applied to the Obama approved "commercial" operators such as SpaceX and Orbital. Yet, the SLS is not considered as "commercial" by Obama even though the Orion spacecraft is being made by Lockheed-Martin, the booster core tank is being made by Boeing and the SRBs are made by ATK- all being private "commercial" companies. The difference? These companies are apparently not Obama approved for taking us into the future of spaceflight. So the production of the SLS is being delayed and stalled by, not only NASA's politically appointed upper administrators, but by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which operates exclusively at the direction of the office of the President.
There is no real need to end the Shuttle program at all. In fact, the "retirement" and replacement of the Shuttle architecture was a recommendation made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in the wake of the STS-107 accident. For the Bush administration it became a handy, politically acceptable knee-jerk reaction to the accident. Additionally, it was supported in the public eye by some commonly held myths about the Shuttle. First, the Shuttle is too dangerous to continue to fly because in the event of a catastrophic failure on takeoff- because it has no escape system. Indeed- that is correct, it has no escape system to can be used in such a catastrophic failure… neither does ANY modern jet airliner or corporate jet- yet we do not see them as too dangerous to fly. Next- the Shuttle system as a whole is simply dangerous. Yes- IT'S A ROCKET that flies into space! Of course it's dangerous overall. Additionally, the SRBs are dangerous to operate. The SRBs have made 270 flight cycles with only one failure, which was caused when management elected to fly the unit outside of its operational flight envelope. Also, we are told that the Shuttle has an unacceptable loss rate. In fact, when the Shuttle was originally proposed the Loss Of Crew (LOC) rate was calculated at 2%. With the end of the 135th flight, there have been two LOCs- that is a rate under the original prediction of 2%. Finally, Charlie Bolden himself said, in front of Congress, that every time NASA launched a Shuttle it was playing Russian roulette. This was a slap in the face to all of the hundreds of people who worked meticulously to ensure that every time the Shuttle played that game that Charlie called Russian roulette- there were no bullets in the gun. Now, however, the Shuttles will be totally safe forever… as museum pieces.
So here we are, left with no human rated flying space hardware, with the standing army of spaceflight professionals devastated by lay-offs as the shuttle replacement architecture is being slow-walked by political brats and we have no choice other than paying whatever price the Russians wish to charge us in order to get to the space station that we paid ~$80 billion to build. Meanwhile our best hope depends on so-called "commercial" operators who have yet to fly a single human-rated vehicle. Plus our so-called "leaders" seem to believe that simply talking about doing fantastic things is just as good as actually accomplishing them. As of the wheels-stop of the Atlantis and the end of the STS-135 mission, we are left with nothing more to do other than to look back at exciting videos of what we once accomplished in space and say "The dream WAS alive."
Posted by Wes Oleszewski at 10:53 PM
Cecil Rose August 16, 2012 at 10:36 AM
Preach it loud, long, and often!


Jaquira Díaz is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and an NEA Fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts. She has been awarded fellowships or scholarships from The MacDowell Colony, the "Tin House" Summer Writers' Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work is noted in "The Best American Essays" and appears in Ploughshares, the Sun, Southern Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her story "Ghosts," which appeared in the Kenyon Review's Winter 2014 issue, was a Notable Story in "The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014" and received a special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology.
Margaree Little's first book, "Rest," is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, New England Review, Missouri Review and Southern Review.


Watching Black Jesus, one is struck by how rarely we see stories from Africa on our Sydney stages – and how few of even them are written by African writers.
The people of the West (us) know very well that the Africans will fail in transforming their societies. We respond to this awareness in one of two ways. We either move toward a hard right perspective; clamping down on our borders, quoting scriptures the poor you will always have with you, protecting our way of life and letting Africans solve their own problems. The other side, play at being the distressed soul, calling for a free opening of our borders we know will never happen, lamenting the dead on the shores of Europe and crying in our coffee as a response to guilt. Both these arguments are smoke screens, neither are at cause. The real reason Africans will not succeed in transforming their societies is because North Americans, Western Europeans and their affiliates of which we are one, won't let them. We are preventing them. We know it was the European intervention in Libya which threw that country into chaos we know it was the U.S. attack on Iraq which created the situation of ISIS. The ongoing civil war in Central African Republic is not just an explosion of ethnic hatred to which we can cluck our tongues and shake our heads; France and China are fighting for the control of oil resources through their proxies.
But the worst current example of what the West do to Africa is happening in The Congo. In 2001 a UN investigation into the illegal exploitation of its natural resources found that its internal conflicts are mainly about access to, control of, and trade in five key mineral resources: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold. So beneath the façade of ethnic warfare we see the workings of global capitalism. The Congo can't unite itself. It exists as a multitude of territories ruled by warlords controlling their patch of land with vicious armies. Each of these warlords has business links to a foreign company exploiting the mineral wealth in the region. Many of these minerals are used in high-tech products such as laptops and cell phones. The warlords maintain control by attacks that include the drugging and exploitation of children.
Zimbabwe is one of the many examples of a country using extreme measures to separate itself from white greed's endless dominance. However, human rights abuses can never be tolerated – at least not when perpetuated by non-whites. When Anders Lustgarten puts words in the mouths of his Zimbabwean characters, he seeks recognition from his predominately white audience that Africans can autonomize; That they can be creative and responsive about government, and that much of their troubles spring from the West; That this perpetual negative sampling of African woes does them harm. All this is true, and Lustgarten's heart is definitely in the right place, but the error here is that we already know these things. This is why Africa above all continents, endures such tight control exerted by the West. We are all sitting comfortable with the fruits of the spoils of Africa. We all know our consumerist life style is at cause here, and the image of the hungry, desperate, struggling black man is a mask behind which we hide, not a misunderstanding we exploit. This is also why voices from Africa are all but absent from our stages.
Here lies the magic of Black Jesus currently playing at The Kings Cross Theatre. It is not so much the words of Anders Lustgarten that astound us, but the performances of the mostly African cast. It is an all too rare thrill to bear witness to the steely gaze of Eunice Ncube (Belinda Jombwe-Cotterill), the frustrated anguish of Gabriel Chibamu (Elijah Williams) and the wily political manoeuvres of Endurance Moyo (Dorian Nkono) book ended by the drums of Alex Jalloh (riveting to watch) and the white faced betrayal of liberal values in Rob Palmer (Jarrod Crellin – who is a wonderfully displaced white). The importance of witnessing this cast in all their dramatic glory can't be overestimated. Black Jesus itself means well, even if it smacks of the white liberal, but the glory is in the performances and in Suzanne Millar's direction. Fight, flight and fear scenes are performed with vibrant movement, and the dramatic tension is kept high due to the power of Williams and Jombwe-Cotterill's stage chemistry. Watching the intensity between the two is thrilling as Williams embodies his externally and Jombwe-Cotterill holds hers inside, like her nerve endings are smouldering. We see performances like this far too rarely on Australian stages and much credit goes to bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company for bringing this exciting drama to our city.
But perhaps most chilling of all is the clever Endurance Moyo, brought to hair-raising life by Dorian Nkono. Nkono throbs with the power we white folk tremble in our beds over – the clever African, the wily African, the political African, the mobilised motivated African. Nkono in many ways is the villain of the piece, despite his behaviours being remarkably similar to any white politician you can point to. He has many favours in his gift, but nothing is for free. Nkono gives a striking performance, discombobulating, and worldly wise. If the West keep rewarding the Gabriel Chibamu's of Africa, it is because they fear the rising of the Endurance Moyo's. Zimbabwe is the perfect African nation to mirror white fear back at itself. And it is this fear, above all else, that is brought to chilling life in Black Jesus.
Black Jesus is an important play that is well performed, short and to the point. Housed in the Kings Cross Theatre it is an electrifying night at the theatre that will remain with you for many nights after.


Please let us know how you found this site, how you are finding it useful, and suggestions for improvement. See the About page for more on what is available here and how it is organized.
This website is part of a larger project to help people with little or no background in Aramaic or Hebrew learn to read the Zohar in the original.
Aramaic is an ancient Near Eastern language, closely related to Hebrew and Arabic. It is used in parts of the Bible and was the spoken language of Jesus of Nazareth. Some well-known Jewish prayers such as the Kaddish are in Aramaic. And, it is the major language of Kabbalah, especially of the Zohar, the fascinating book at the heart of this mystical tradition.
The site is a work in progress and we welcome all questions and suggestions.
Tags: Aramaic, Kabbalah, Zohar | Permalink.


Snacking is the latest trend driving visits and sales to convenience stores every day. Today, most consumers say they snack between meals at least once per day, sometimes even more. This provides a great opportunity for convenience stores to take over the snacking experience and boost this foodservice segment to be a main source of traffic to stores for the foreseeable future.


sendfile() is more efficient than the combination of read(2) and write(2).
So, I wrote a function to copy a file using sendfile().
Is really my code more efficient than the combination of read(2) and write(2)?
So, sendfile is quite efficient.
However, your loop may use sendfile incorrectly because you always try to transfer max_size and this could return an error (EOVERFLOW) on the last chunk of the file (i.e. you try to read more than remains in the input file).
This may work just fine if you handle the error case properly.
It also depends upon what max_size and leftsize actually are [which you didn't specify].
It's not clear whether the code is supposed to be in main() (next time, please post a complete function, and preferably a full, compilable program); if so, it's conventional to use small positive numbers for exit status. Negative numbers can get truncated - on my system, a return of -1 ends up as 255 when run from a shell. If you return +1 instead, that is received unscathed.
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Are these memory-allocation wrapper functions kosher with all C compilers?


text:
Some thoughts on reasoning and monads
Just a short note about some half-formed thoughts on the subject of monads and reasoning.
Haskell types and total functions, at least for a suitable subset of Haskell, form a category, with types and functions as the objects and arrows. Haskell code is usually full of expressions whose types don't correspond to arrows (e.g.. 1::Int). But in category theory we can only really talk of objects and arrows, not elements of objects. Many categories are made up of objects that have no reasonable notion of an element. By writing code in pointfree style we can eliminate reference to individual elements and talk only about arrows.
For example, suppose f :: A -> B and g :: B -> C. Then we can define h :: A -> C in a couple of different ways. Pointfree:
h = g . f
or pointful:
h x = let y = f x
z = g y
in z
For examples as simple as this it's not hard to write code that will translate between one style and the other. But the former definition has an advantage, it works in any category. We'll consider a very simple example. Let R be the category of real numbers, where there is an arrow from x to y if x≤y. We can think of f and g as arrows in this category. If we know A≤B and B≤C then the first definition above tells us how to construct an arrow from A to C and hence it proves that A≤C. The second definition makes no sense because it relies on the notion of x as an element of A and uses the functions f and g to construct elements of B and C. These words hold no meaning in the category R where the arrows aren't functions and the objects aren't containers of elements.
Except that's not quite true.
Because there is a scheme for translating the second pointful definition to pointfree form, the second definition does in fact provide a proof that A≤C. We just have to bear in mind that the proof needs to be translated into pointfree form first. In fact, we can happily spend our day using pointful style to generate proofs about R, as long as at the end of the day we translate our proofs to pointfree notation. In fact, Haskell programmers know that it's often much easier to write programs in pointful style so it seems reasonable to guess that there are many proofs that are easier to write in pointful style even though they can't be interpreted literally. Philosophically this is a bit weird. As long as we restrict ourselves to chains of reasoning that can be translated, we can use intuitions about elements of objects to make valid deductions about domains where these notions make no sense.
Part I of Lambek and Scott is about the correct pointful language to use when talking about cartesian closed categories (CCCs). They use a form of typed lambda calculus. Every arrow in a cartesian category can be written as a pointful lambda expression. Even though there isn't a meaningful way to assign meaning to the 'points' individually, every lambda abstraction gives an arrow in a cartesian closed category that can be built using the standard parts that come with a CCC, and vice versa. The pointful definition of h above is an example. Here's a (very) slightly less trivial example. Given f :: A -> C and g :: B -> D we can define h :: (A,C) -> Either B D as
f x = let y = fst x
z = Left y
Again, that code can be translated into pointfree form using only the standard parts available in a cartesian closed category. Actually, we only need a category with products and coproducts for this example. So consider a lattice. The above code can be translated into a proof that A∩C≤B∪D. (I'm using cap and cup for join and meet.) Again, it makes no sense to talk of elements of a general lattice as containers of elements, and yet after translation to pointfree notation we have a valid proof. If you can restrict yourself to a suitable subset of set theory then your proofs involving elements of objects can carry over to many other categories.
Part II of Lambek and Scott is about taking this idea to extremes. It's about categories known as toposes. A topos is a category that is even more like the category of sets than a CCC. It's still general enough that there are many kinds of toposes, but you can use a sizable portion of first order logic and ZF to make deductions about them. Again, the literal notion of membership of the objects of a topos might make no sense, but the proofs have a translation to pointfree notation. In fact, it's possible to write entire papers in what looks like conventional set theory language, and have them be valid for other toposes. Anders Kock, for example, writes such papers. Chris Isham has been arguing that topos theory is the correct framework for physics. If you interpret your propositions as being in the category Set then you get classical physics. But those same propositions can be interpreted in other categories, such as one for quantum mechanics, giving a way to use and extend classical language to reason about quantum systems. This set theory-like language is known as the "internal language" of a topos.
Anyway, I'm interested in the notion that Haskell do-notation provides another kind of pointful language that can be used to reason about situations where points don't seem at first to make sense. Consider the lattice of subsets of a topological space, ordered by inclusion. Let Cl(U) be the closure of U. Cl satisfies these properties:
X⊂Y implies Cl(X)⊂Cl(Y)
X⊂Cl(X)
Cl(CL(X))⊂Cl(X)
Look familiar? If we make this lattice into a category, with arrows being inclusions, then the first property states that Cl is a functor and the next two say that Cl is a monad. In fact, monads are a kind of generalised closure. So now suppose we're given A⊂Cl(B) and B⊂Cl(C) and wish to prove that A⊂Cl(C). We can rephrase this by saying that if f :: A -> Cl B and g :: B -> Cl C we need an arrow h :: A -> Cl C. We can write one like this:
h x = do
y <- f x
z <- g y
Now it's tempting to interpret the inclusions as functions with y <- f x saying that y is the image of x under the inclusion. (I don't know about you, but when I write x <- getChar I think to myself "x is the return value from calling getChar".) But that doesn't really work because the type of f x is Cl B but y is of type B. On the other hand, we can radically reinterpret the above as something like this: when arguing about chains of inclusions of subsets of a topological space, as long as at the end of the chain of inclusions you always end up in the closure of some subset, you're allowed to cheat and nudge a generic point in the closure of a subset back into the original subset. This is exactly parallel to the way do-notation seems to allow us to extract elements out of monadic objects as long as at the end of the do-block we always return an element of monadic type. I'm sure that with a bit of work we could produce a rigorous metatheorem from this. I also expect we can also produce something similar for comonads.
Anyway, the moral is that when working with categories with monads there are may be some interesting and unusual ways to reason. The example of the lattice of subsets is fairly trivial but I'm sure there are other interesting examples. I also expect there's a nice connection with modal logic. I now think of Haskell do-notation as the "internal language" of a category with monads.
Update: I left out the crucial sentences I meant to write. It's easy to see do-notation as a kind of Haskell specific trick for making things like IO heavy code look like traditional procedural code. But comparison with the theory in Lambek and Scott, and Topos Theory in general, makes it clear that do-notation is a member of a family of related languages.
posted by sigfpe at Saturday, November 15, 2008
In response to your last paragraph. do-notation is a notational variant of (one of*) Moggi's monadic metalanguage(s) which is indeed, precisely the internal language of a category with monads. And monads are related to lax logic. See A Judgemental Reconstruction of Modal Logic which also refers to (a fuller version of) Moggi's monadic metalanguage.
* The "Simple Metalanguage" in Notions of computation and monads.
One case where a pointful notation is really more useful is when dealing with maps to and from tensor products. If you have a map D from V to V tensor V, would you rather write
(D tensor Id) (D (v))
let (x,y) = D v; (a,b) = D x in (a,b,y)
(Actually, what I really find most helpful is neither of these two, but rather a graphical notation with graphs.)
Dylan, that's exactly why I like to use the vector space monad! I guess "Sweedler notation" is an example of what I'm talking about too. But what motivated me to write this post were the examples where the arrows aren't functions.
Derek,
Should have known you'd know a relevant paper! I'll check it out when I get a chance.
Dan, I just wanted to mention that arrows in any (small enough) category can be seen as actual functions, or families of functions. The Grothendieck construction embeds (non-fully) any small category into Sets, which turns morphisms into functions, while (the more reasonable) Yoneda embedding embeds (fully) any small category into presheaves, which turns morphisms into families of functions (natural transformations). I am sure you could write a nice Haskell post about this, if you haven't yet :-)
Andrej,
Even without any category theory it's easy to assign sets and functions for the example of posets. But of course the elements you get aren't necessarily the ones you're imagining as you write x :: a.
What would a category with commutative monads look like? I don't know how to introduce this particular commutativity into the lattice of subsets of a topological space.
The meet-join example doesn't make sense as written. Did you mean something like the following? "Given f :: A -> B and g :: C -> D we can define h :: (A,C) -> Either B D as
h w = let x = fst w
i.e., h = Left . f . fst
or alternately h = Right . g . snd.
When I learned category theory, a subobject of d was defined as an equivalence class of monics with codomain d. This definition via equivalence classes is independent of the choice of representative - is this what's going on with your 'abuse of notation'?
From Monoids to Monads
Operads and their Monads
What's the use of a transfinite ordinal?
On writing Python one-liners.


Viking Technology's DDR1 modules showcase Viking's commitment to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). As a partner, Viking Technology prides itself on supporting legacy technology to meet the demands of specific market segments. Not only does Viking support it's OEMs with legacy DDR solutions but continues to maintain the highest quality levels, locked Bill of Materials (BOMs), extended temperature testing, whilst also delivering the highest density modules in the market today.
Viking Technology's DDR Memory modules are available in both commercial temperature and industrial temperature. Viking Technology's proprietary DRAM stacking capabilities enable the highest capacity DDR modules in multiple form-factors, this stacking technology allows Viking to deliver the most cost effective solutions to our OEM customers.


Oh. No. We are out of tea.
Yes, horrifyingly enough I ran out of tea this morning. Now dear blog readers, if you have not figured out thus far that this whole "business" thing is merely what happens when I consume tea, let me assure you now: nothing happens without caffeinated tea in this house. Nothing at all.
So, since I needed one or two other things I quickly hopped in the car and drove to Fred Meyers which is only about 5 minutes away and my normal shopping place. I do our local co-op sometimes, but mainly I do Fred Meyer since they stay open until like 10 or 11pm, the time I normally get it together enough to go grocery shopping.
We needed new towels since ours are kinda gross and having just moved we are in the "asses what we need get rid of what we don't" stage still. I wandered the towel aisles, and ended up with a couple nice organic cotton bath towels. I was happy to find Fred Meyers had organic cotton bath towels and since I do try my part to help the environment, I went with them.
As I was checking out the cashier seemed perplexed by my choice of bath ware and I explained to her what my towels were and how much they should be. She joked around about them being "hemp or something", but sure enough when she rung them up they were the right price and right item. Then, as she was tossing them in the bag (not a reusable one, I am halfway there….) she said, "I was going to say if they are made out of hemp you could always smoke them if you get tired of them!" Yes. I will smoke my towels. Smoke my towels because I am tired of them and want to get high. Wow.
No wonder I am such a shut in. I mean, I have been playing this scene over and over in my mind since I went to the store some three and a half hours ago I was so utterly amazed at it. I think I will be sticking to the late night shopping trips in the future where no one has ever suggested I smoke anything.
Hey - I just want you to know whenever I read your posts I can tell you are really feeling invigorated by all the excitement of your business. It's really inspiring!


Staying in touch with the fast moving world of technology can be a little harder than usual at weekends, but thankfully you have friends like us.
So, if you were out having fun (or painting the spare room) rather than glued to your screen, here's a handy little list of some of the things you missed from the last two days. Make a coffee, leave your inbox unattended for just a few minutes longer and play catch up on everything you missed now.
Should You Make Your Salaries Public?


One of the missions of the San Diego Air & Space Museum is to highlight San Diego's contribution to aviation. The aircraft in our Theodore Gildred Flight Rotunda exemplify this.
Flying high in the rotunda is a reproduction of an early hydroplane, the Curtiss A-1 Triad. Capable of operating from land or sea, the A-1 was the U.S. Navy's first airplane, and it too made its first flights in San Diego.
Exactly 73 years after Curtiss' first recorded flight of a practical hydroplane, the Museum's reproduction Curtiss A-1 made a total of 7 flights off the water of San Diego Bay: Two flights on January 12th, three flights on January 21st and two flights on January 26th, 1984. The FAA restricted the flights to a relative straight line less than 100' high near Harbor Island. The first two flights on January 12th were about 1/2 mile long less than 100' high. The next five flights, Jan 21st & 26th were all over a mile long and less than 100' high. The seven flights were made without the wheels installed and with an original Curtiss OX5 engine. It was then installed in its place of honor in the Rotunda.
Inspired by Charles Lindbergh's epic 1927 flight, San Diegan Theodore Gildred, Sr. took off from San Diego on March 13, 1931, in a Ryan B-5 Brougham, beginning a 19-day, 4200 mile goodwill flight to South America. Exactly 50 years later, Gildred's son, Theodore Gildred, Jr., recreated his father's famous flight, using a 1943 Stinson Reliant from the collection of the Air & Space Museum. After the successful completion of the 1981 commemorative goodwill flight, the Air & Space Museum donated the aircraft to the people of Ecuador to help them establish their own museum.


Highlander, 4Runner and Tacoma help push sales to record highs.
Consumers continue to flock to Toyota trucks and SUVs as nearly every model enjoys a best-ever month and first half.
While other automakers struggle to break even, Toyota is killing it. And trucks are leading the way.
In a tough sales year, Toyota continues to reach new heights on the back of its trucks and SUVs.


The Feszty Árpád Elementary School and Kindergarten Ógyalla invites its partner schools and teachers of the surrounding primary schools with Hungarian teaching language to the workshop called One year`s experiences in Feszty Árpád Elementary School and Kindergarten. Its central theme is the theory and practice of the complex instructional program. This method allows teachers to organize high level group work. The program is suitable for educating a heterogeneous group of students.
During the methodological day, we will try to acquaint you with the positive aspects of the method. After the theoretical introduction, you will see three lessons, maths, Hungarian language and Hungarian reading lessons. We will point out how to tackle classroom status problems by using a variety of different learning materials, and developing the underlying capabilities. Open-ended, multi-faceted tasks provide students with independent creative thinking and development of their problem-solving skills. Special work organization allows teachers to teach children the collaborative standards within the group to successfully complete the tasks. In Slovakia we are among the first to try to help disadvantaged pupils with this method.


Please join the EDPA Las Vegas Chapter, working in conjunction with the EDPA Foundation, as we hold the 15th Annual Las Vegas Scholarship Golf Classic on Thursday, June 22nd, 2017. We will have a great day of golf at the beautiful Bear's Best Golf Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event will include golf, goody bags, door prizes, breakfast prior to the 7:30am shotgun start and an awards luncheon immediately following the tournament. A host of exciting prizes will be raffled off throughout the event.
Non-golfers are welcome to attend the luncheon and participate in the festivities. We are also offering a 90-minute session with one of the Bear's Best golf pros. Learn the basics while networking and enjoying the feeling of the game without committing to 18 holes. Clinic registration opens at 10am.
Click HERE (https://www.123signup.com/register?id=nnncj) to register.


GitHub - DropsOfSerenity/react-avatar-cropper: Aiming to be a complete solution for avatar cropping in react.
Want to be notified of new releases in DropsOfSerenity/react-avatar-cropper?
React Avatar Cropper aims to be an out of the box solution to solve the avatar cropping problem for 99% of common use cases. Most of the time you want a modal to pop up, allow the user to crop their uploaded image, and then you want to receive that base64 data to display and send to the server. React Avatar Cropper takes care of this use case.
Taking heavy inspiration from slack's and facebook's user photo cropper, react-avatar-cropper is here to make it easy.
react-avatar-cropper also depends on react obviously :) and react-bootstrap for modal functionality. To install run the following.
Usage is fairly simple, you can check the /example folder on github for a slightly more complex use case (the use case you see above in the demo). AvatarCropper simple takes a width and a height to determine what size avatar you would like. AvatarCropper then takes an image property where you can pass an external image, a user uploaded data URI or whatever you would like. An onRequestHide function is passed to the underlying modal so you can decide how to dismiss the modal. Lastly onCrop callback function is required, and gives you back the cropped Image, for you to do with as you wish.
There is an example of this common use case on the page for this plugin. Most importantly we pass the cropped DataURI back through your provided onCrop function.
Check out http://dropsofserenity.github.io/react-avatar-cropper/ for more examples and info.
Feel free to place issues on the issue tracker or place a pull request regarding any functionality. I would like to keep this package limited to providing a great solution for the wide 99% use case that people have for avatar croppers.


text:
Citigroup Venture Capital may refer to:

 Citigroup Venture Capital Equity Partners, a US based private equity firm renamed Court Square Capital Partners and spun out of Citigroup in 2006
 CVC Capital Partners, a European private equity firm


White-collar crimes typically refer to a type of crime committed by professionals using deception, as opposed to violent crimes that involve force. The attorneys of Blumenthal Law Offices have a long history of success defending clients in complicated state and federal white collar criminal cases.
Attorney Jeff G. Moore leads our white collar crime defense team. During his eight years as a Deputy District Attorney for Riverside County, he was assigned to the special prosecutions unit and focused on white collar crime. Our team also includes private investigator Dan Goldsmith, a certified fraud investigation specialist, and former police officer.
Our Riverside criminal defense lawyers argue and negotiate with the federal authorities about white collar crime charges on a daily basis, all over California. We routinely deal with the FBI, Criminal Division of the IRS (CID), Secret Service, DEA, Postal Service, ATF, and Customs. We also know how to interpret and apply the federal sentencing guidelines, and advise our clients of all of their options.
We have your best interests at heart. Contact us today at (951) 682-5110.


Download our ID Me brochure.
Our ID and Verification (ID&V) solution uses sophisticated techniques to quickly and automatically identify and verify customers – in as little as five seconds.
It has been designed to work with a wide range of CRM applications, from legacy on-premise systems to the latest cloud solutions, and can present each agent with all the relevant customer details. As a result, the agent can start helping the customer immediately, reducing average handling time and increasing customer satisfaction.
IPI's ID&V solution also ensures that every caller is put through the correct authentication process, which is important in all industries and crucial in those that are regulated. There is no chance of a question being missed or an incorrect reply being allowed through. Protecting your agents, as they don't have to handle customer verification information.
Quick automation – approximately 5 seconds to fully automate ID&V. You are able to validate callers with a short passphrase which eliminates the need for account number requests, policy numbers or other personal information which customers easily forget.
Time saver – Eliminate time not spent on dealing with the caller's request and generating a negative experience for both the caller and the agent.
Easy verification – verification becomes easy for the customer, allowing calls to your contact centre to start with a virtually invisible ID&V processes, lowering customer effort and providing and fantastic service experience.
Automate over 95% of all verifications – powered by industry leading speech recognition and tuned by the UK's most experienced team of speech recognition specialists, IP Integrations voice biometrics can automate over 95% of all caller verifications, virtually eliminating agent handled ID&V and increasing IVR call containment.
Utmost security – state-of-the-art security measures which build the foundation for your next generation customer contact strategy.
Traditionally, this has been the only option available to contact centres for identification and verification. However, with the new advances we've made in speech recognition and voice biometrics, IPI now offers the highest levels of security by allowing you to identify and verify callers based on a unique characteristic, their voice print.
The IPI voice biometrics solution makes identification and validation almost invisible.
Can be used in conjunction with information the customer knows, to provide an extra level of security in sensitive situations.
Current ID&V strategies can create a frustrating customer experience and are costly for businesses. The average ID&V process can take between 23-40 seconds and this means the bigger the contact centre the more staff needed to handle this extra handling time per call. This all boils down to a dull, monotonous opening to every call for both customer and agent not to mention the cost impact.
Voice biometrics can be used alone to provide a convenient method of authentication or as part of a multi-factor authentication process, combined with something the customer "knows" (like a password or PIN) or "has" (like a caller ID) to provide an extra layer of security for sensitive information and financial transactions.


Crockett Hospital will be hosting its annual health fair on Saturday, April 5 form 8:00 am until 10:30 am at the hospital.
For a number of years the staff at Crockett Hospital has offered the health fair to those in Lawrence County and the surrounding area. Hospital officials say it is an excellent opportunity to learn more about your health and also about the services provided at the hospital.
There will be free blood pressure screenings offered with health information pertaining to the risks involved with high blood pressure and what one can do to lower their blood pressure. There is no charge to attend the fair but for those wanting to have a blood chemistry profile done there is a nominal fee of $25 and those men wishing to have prostate cancer blood work there is a $5 charge. Other free screenings include hearing consultation and testing provided by Hearing Care Center, glaucoma screenings provided by Remke Eye Clinic, and skin cancer screenings by Skin Solutions.
Crockett Hospital staff members will be available to share information about their Sleep Center, Women's Services Center, the pulmonary rehabilitation facility, physical rehabilitation services, medical imaging services, surgical capabilities, the medical specialties offered from local physicians, and more. Those women who are forty years of age will even be able to schedule their annual mammogram during the same time.
This past year a number of physicians have joined the medical staff at the hospital and many of them will be at the fair in order to introduce themselves and answer any questions the participants may have about their new practices.
There are no appointments necessary to participate in the health fair. Registration will be on a first come, first served basis. Those attending need to enter through the main entrance of the hospital. Individuals wanted to have the optional blood work done should be aware that fasting eight hours before the health fair will yield the best results.


There isn't much out there in the museum world quite like The Clark Art Institute. Incredible art holdings? Check. World class art research library and teaching programs which churn out the best and brightest into the museum/curatorial world? Check. Conservation studio which both teaches and restores at the highest level? Check. Sterling and Francine Clark's vision and generosity have expanded to beyond what they might have imagined, while remaining true to a core mission which remains firmly intact.
Dia Beacon – Overdue Bucket List Item…Checked!
An Artist, A Teacher, A Museum – And a Great Cause.
Every so often our days as gallery owners are extra exciting. Such as when we become the exclusive representatives of an artist's estate, which is owned by a museum, and is being sold to benefit the museum's art acquisition fund. On September 12, 2015 we will hold a gala opening for the exhibition "Easton Pribble (1917-2003) – A Retrospective". The works in the exhibition represent a lifetime of creative striving by a beloved artist and teacher for more than four decades at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute's school of art. Upon his death in 2003, the MWPAI received the artist's estate with instructions to sell the work to benefit the Museum of Art's Art Acquisition Fund. And now, for the first time ever, that material is being offered for sale…by Caldwell Gallery Hudson.
Usually, the shortest distance between two points is also the fastest. Unless a special place like MASS MoCA stands in the way. And that was the case yesterday, when I woke up in the North Central Vermont mountains needing to find my way to Hudson, NY so I could open our gallery for our usual Thursday to Sunday hours. I would be traveling with my just turned 15 years old son, and I had told him our "purposeful detour" to North Adams, MA would be a worthy detour. By the time we were driving away after nearly 3 hours of "MASS MoCArifique" immersion, having feasted our eyes in both the vast as well as intimate spaces of one of America's superb museum experiences, he heartily agreed. And for this blog post, I'm going to leave it at that, allowing the captioned visuals below to tell the rest of the story. I'm not too big on dispensing advice, but if you've never been to MASS MoCA might I suggest you create your own detour soon. You won't be disappointed!
We arrive. Greeted by blue sky, bricks, and shiny letters.
Sitting at my desk in our gallery in Hudson, NY on a sunny Friday, another in a string of lovely late Spring days ticks away outside. Recently, the numbers 42, 30, and 1 come to mind as they represent respectively, the number of years since our firm was founded by my parents (1973), since I joined the gallery (1985), and since the opening of our first retail gallery here in historic Hudson a year ago. Reflecting on the passage of time for me can either result in feelings of "Boy, that seems so long ago" or "Wow, that went by in the blink of an eye." Today's reflections provide a bit of both.
Mid-Point Classic – Kitsch Lives!


Creating an adoption story about your child is a great way to help him or her learn about their history and how they came to be part of your family. When you have a book to look at, it's so much easier to start an adoption conversation with your child and help them understand the adoption process as a whole. Through a story you create, you can teach your child and also motivate him or her to ask questions. Here are some tips on how to create your baby's adoption story!
The first step is to choose how you want to do it, which is a lot of fun since there are so many interesting and creative ways of creating an adoption story. You can go simple and buy a three-ring binder so that individual pages can be updated from time to time. You can use a photo album as well and write short stories underneath each picture to describe that moment you've decided to include in an adoption story book. You can also go all out and create a scrapbook where each page is totally custom-made. These books can be handwritten or typed, but whatever you choose make sure it's something your child will love since an adoption story is a great story to read before the bedtime!
Before you start to prepare an actual book, select photos, stories, colors, and stickers you want to use just to see if everything is there before you get started. Organize it so it has some chronological order and that way you're going to create an actual story your child is going to love. Ask your partner or a friend to help you if you need some creative inspiration.
Look up some ideas from other parents who've already created and shared their adoption stories. You can maybe find just the perfect inspiration for your story.
Consider what you want to include in your story and create a rough outline. Also think about a personal name for the story. You can talk about what led you to adoption, the communication process with your child's birthmother, your journey to the hospital to pick him or her up, your first few days and weeks together, etc. When it comes to a domestic adoption, you can also consider including pictures with the birthmother at the hospital as well as a special note or an object from the birth family. If you feel like it's too difficult or overwhelming to start writing your child's adoption story, take as much time as you need for contemplation and preparation. It's better to relax and find the right words than to rush this special project.
The idea is to read this to your child as he or she grows up, so keep your language and explanations kid-friendly. Try to create a story and make your adoption book interactive since kids love to participate in stories and games. A fun approach is to write the story as if you were talking to your child, maybe even ask a question or solicit his or her thoughts every so often. This will make the story a lot more fun and and engaging for your child.
Adoption doesn't end when you leave the hospital — it's a lifelong journey. Consider leaving extra space on each page or at the end of your story. As your child grows, you can continue to add special thoughts and memories to the storybook you've created.