text:
Wis. hikers rescued amid 'Into the Wild' pilgrimage
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — Authorities rescued three men making a pilgrimage to an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness made famous by the book and film "Into the Wild."
Three hikers, two from Wisconsin and third with no known address, needed help last week after one of them tripped and hurt himself with an ax, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported (http://is.gd/zqsxG0 ).
They ran into trouble Aug. 6 on the Stampede Trail just north of the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve, about 180 miles north of Anchorage. The Tri-Valley Volunteer Fire Department responded and gave the three hikers a ride on all-terrain vehicles, the Alaska State Troopers announced Wednesday on their website.
Matthew Peot, 29, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Thomas Young, 45, of Horicon, Wisconsin; and Kenneth Young, whose age and hometown wasn't listed, were trying to get to the dilapidated bus, but the Teklanika River was too high, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said in an email to The Associated Press.
They camped for a few days, waiting to see if the river would get low enough to cross, but the ax injury ended the quest, Peters wrote. Thomas Young suffered minor injuries in the accident.
Authorities often are called to help people heading to the dilapidated bus made famous by the book and movie "Into the Wild," which chronicle the life and death of Chris McCandless. He hiked into the Alaska wilderness in April 1992 with little food and equipment and spent the summer living in the bus. McCandless was found dead in the bus almost four months later after starving to death.
Four years ago, a Swiss woman drowned in the river on the trail to the bus, but it was unclear whether she was hiking to the vehicle or just hiking in the area.


text:
Els Sumidors és una obra de Sant Pere de Ribes (Garraf) protegida com a Bé Cultural d'Interès Local.

Descripció
Masia situada a ponent del Puig dels Sumidors. És un edifici aïllat de planta rectangular entorn el qual hi ha adossats diversos cossos. Consta de planta baixa i pis i té la coberta a dues vessants amb el carener paral·lel a la façana. S'hi accedeix per un portal d'arc pla arrebossat que es troba descentrat en el frontis, al voltant del qual s'hi distribueixen diverses finestres d'arc pla arrebossat. En un costat del frontis hi ha adossat un petit pou quadrangular. A les façanes laterals hi ha adossats cossos d'un sol nivell d'alçat, mentre que a la posterior hi ha un corral en estat ruïnós que queda tancat per un baluard. L'acabat exterior és arrebossat de color terrós.

Història
Segons algunes fonts, els Sumidors està documentat des de l'any 1482 i apareix anomenat en un capbreu d'Olivella de l'any 1681. Al cadastre de l'any 1717 hi consta la casa de Sumidors, de la qual n'era propietari Francisco Mestre del Racó i masover Josep Massó. L'any 1827 s'esmenta un tal Josep Carreras, dit "Sumidor".

Referències

Patrimoni monumental de Sant Pere de Ribes
Sumidors

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This is a poem I'm thinking of submitting to the Writer's Digest competition this year. Let me know what you think.
And, yeah, I know you'll all be wondering, so I'll just tell you now to keep you from having to ask. It's Chris O'Donnell.
Not just surviving, simply pressing on….
I am become the lightning strike.
Explosive and blinding and impossible to ignore.
and the wind's a whisper, nothing more….
The piercing cry of a predator, so mighty in his element.
I'm the rain, cold as ice on burning skin.
I'm a fire, pop and crackle and warmth that almost hurts.
I'm the moment that wakes you screaming, or smiling, or panting for breath.
The pang of hunger, want, or need.
And beauty, sweetly whispered or crashing down in waves.
that make a man alive.


text:
An Easy Way To Reduce Stress And Pain
Recent research has supported a link between laughter, coping with stress, and psychological and physical well-being. According to this work, people who spontaneously use humor to cope with stress have especially healthy immune systems, are 40 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, experience less pain during dental surgery, and live 4.5 years longer than most.
Participants were shown scenes from films that were likely either to make them feel anxious (such as the opening thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan) or to make them laugh (such as the "orgasm" scene from When Harry Met Sally). Overall, participants' blood flow dropped by around 35 percent after watching the stress-inducing films, but rose by 22 percent after seeing the more humorous material. On the basis of the results, the researchers recommend that people laugh for at least fifteen minutes each day.
In a similar vein, James Rotton examined the effects that watching different kinds of videos had on hospital patients recovering from orthopedic surgery. Patients in one group were asked to select funny films from a list that included Bananas, Naked Gun, and The Producers; those in another group were denied access to any material that might induce a smile, and they were instead asked to select movies from a "serious" list, including titles such as Die Hard II, Casablanca, and The Hunt for Red October. The experimenters secretly monitored the quantity of major pain relievers that the patients consumed via a self-controlled pump. Those watching funny films used about 60 percent fewer pain-relieving drugs than those looking at the serious movies. In an interesting twist to the experiment, the researchers also included another group of patients who were not allowed to select which comedy films to watch but instead were given the movies selected by others. This group administered significantly more drugs than either of the other groups, scientifically proving that there is nothing more painful than watching a comedy that doesn't make you laugh.
This is from Richard Wiseman's very interesting book Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things. If you liked Freakonomics, you'll enjoy it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


It was a day of birthdays today, as every day is when you think about it. We just don't notice many of them.
I watched a woman with a careful bob and focused steps cross the car park, a posy of daffodils in a milk bottle held out steadily before her. A late, accidental bridesmaid, she carried her offering to an even later bride who stood waiting, hunched over a thick stick, her jaw quivering under a small smile. She didn't take the flowers or reply to the singsong wishes, merely smiled a little wider and bobbed at them like a maid before turning slowly to walk further into the centre. The posy-bearer was left to follow haltingly behind her in gentle procession and I watched them go, the birthday girl and her acolyte, trying to hide my own smile. Her birthday must be eight decades deep today, at least, and it was like every birthday candle ever set alight in her name had remained lit inside her because as she passed me, light poured out of her, her tiny eyes aglow.
She was birthday through and through, that one. I hope I get to collect all mine in me like that. I hope it was a good one.
Few words today. It's been a particularly low-functioning day for my nervous system and I need to rest. I spent a little time outside as the light faded so the whole day wouldn't be lost to me and was in time to see the dusk take its ladder and careful black pen to the sky. The silhouettes were like the air - cold and sharp and perfect - and I breathed all in.
I struggle to relate to a lot of common human thoughts and habits. I know I am wired a little differently, in more ways than one, and that has often meant loneliness and doubt and a strange kind of freedom, all at once.
I keep watching people's preoccupation with being best at things. Not in patiently honing a skill out of sight, not in practice, but in wearing something about you like a prefect's badge. Everyone seems to want to be an authority on something or other these days. As soon as they get a sniff of something they might be good at or an opportunity they could take, they're off, racing eagerly towards acclaim and recognition. They want for the world to look at something they do or something they are and consider them top drawer. They want to be memorable, significant. They want to arrive, and the sooner, the better.
It sounds about the least fun that I can imagine.
I spent the day at my sewing machine today, attempting to make my very first item of clothing - a pair of drawstring pyjama bottoms - and thought about what it means to be a beginner, an apprentice. It such a gift to know that you don't really know what you're doing. Harmless mistakes only trigger panic and horror if, deep down, you already think you should be better than you are, when you secretly think you belong on another level entirely. When you know that you know nothing much, it is easier to shrug and grin it off or to find the whole business a marvellous curiosity. When you decide you're still a beginner, errors become fascinating books to pour over, puzzles to turn, not something to be hidden away or frantically overcome. You're not supposed to be the best yet, you're not even supposed to be getting it all right: you're just supposed to be having a go and seeing what happens next.
I'm amazed how willingly and how quickly we throw away that beginner's identity because I can't think of anything better.
I think I choose to stay a beginner in everything I do. There is so much more space here, so much more room for play and for laughing and learning. More and more, I feel that if my skills are going to grow and refine anywhere, it is in this quiet place of no-big-deal. Here I can really see what it's all about, and that's all that really matters to me in any case.
I feel a strange kind of reassuring joy sometimes, watching people hurry past me, heads down, faces grim, determined to get somewhere.
I've realised I can let them go right on ahead, because where I am now is just right.
I used to love to paint. I imagine I still do, it's just that I don't paint anymore. The squeeze of colour from the tube and the mix and daub of it, it makes my heart beat a little faster just thinking about it.
Painting is alchemy with colour. To get to play with colour like that, to play with pure light, it felt like flying. It made me feel like light. And all the names, too: rose madder, cadmium, Prussian blue, viridian and burnt umber. I'd say them aloud as I picked through them; collect tubes of them like jewellery. I liked it thick and tactile, watercolour always making me recoil a little because it felt too distant. Pastels did when paint was too hard or impractical; just something I could get all over my fingers. I liked to paint small things big and bold, full of gentle detail, or try to capture light and shadow in some way. I liked missed things, single objects, nature, people. I poured over work by Georgia O'Keefe, Van Gogh, Monet, hoping it might find its way into me and out again. I was never all that good, my skewed eyesight making my drawing oddly stretched and flat. It didn't matter.
Painting is not an easy hobby to sustain in a very small, shared house. You need space to play like that, time to practice, and good light and energy, and money too, and I didn't have any of those things. I tried for a good long while, but it became a choice between an easel and somewhere to eat; time painting or time earning, and after a while, the more pressing priorities of life elbowed it all the way out. My diminishing energy and growing physical need for adapted spaces and extra support didn't help massively either. Good painting comes from your whole body.
That's ok. Not everything has to be always or forever, and one day maybe I will go back to it and it will be all the sweeter for the break. Time spent dreaming of an accessible studio, the right easel and chair, trays of paints under my fingers, everything white and full of slanting light, and time tracing the shape of things with my eyes, blending the perfect shade in my head and smearing it on the air: that's almost as good as painting for real anyway.
I've realised something lately though - that I'm using a camera to do my old brushes' job. These days, I take photos to make my paintings. I photograph what I would like to paint, and I only need to hold myself and use my body for a moment and there, it is done. It's not the same, but oh it's something, full of all the same light and noticing, full of the same energy and intent.
There are so many ways to do the same thing, aren't there.
Today I ran an early morning bath, a bath I'm not really safe to take but love to anyway. I slipped down into it in the dark and let myself sink low until my hair was a black halo. I pressed puckered fingers to the bottom and imagined I was something green and vital, soft seaweed, sinewy and graceful, round and light with oxygen, and that was a good way to start the day.
Today I heard the bright hello of a friend - the three-year-old brother of one of my son's classmates who has taken a shine to me. He appeared at my elbow like a wish in the playground, all grin and snot, and we talked about traffic lights, of the red and orange and green of them. I let him press the horn on my scooter and make the lights come on, front and back, as I do every day, and his face stretched into wide delight.
Today I took a slow wander down my garden path to check on my winter-flowering clematis. It is delicate but evergreen - an impossible, gorgeous thing from Nepal. Its closed flowers have hung like baubles for a month or more now and I have tried to be patient. Today, at last, I got to see the peeled back reveal of them, pink and shameless, and it was worth the wait.
Today I drank coffee in breathless gulps and let myself cry in front of someone who loves me, laughing in the next breath because that comes easier to us both.
There is more to say, of course, and today was a hard, hard day, but those were the best things, and I would rather have flowers fall out of my mouth than frogs.
The best present I ever received came with a tag that swung from the small square box. It said "TIP ME UP" and so I did. A mass of chocolate coins tumbled out, gold and silver, and, dotted amongst them, miniature totems of my life. A pair of wellington boots that I could wear on two fingers. A cup and saucer I could balance on my thumbnail. A dollhouse umbrella, wrapped tight and darkest green. Buttons and marbles and the smallest set of keys you've ever seen, for I collect them too, if you remember - they line my staircase. A copper bird with a long, curved beak. A tiny bottle with a bound note.
Other small things have found their way to me at other times, from friends and readers who know my propensities and from my own magpie nature. My house holds them all in its pockets, in dishes and boxes and tins. Occasionally, I'll lay them out and make a curation of them.
I have been dreaming today of a matchbox museum. Maybe I will start one. I could fill a matchbox a week, a month, with the smallest things I can find, label them and stack them high, drawing each one out from time to time, to arrange and photograph as if priceless.
A record of life in diminutive, overlooked, broken things - I'd like that.
Eyes to the ground then. I wonder what will find me.
18.1.18 Pied wagtail, community centre.
There is a John Clare poem that begins, "Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain" and I love it because if you say it when you see one, the beat beatbeat beat of the little bird's tail will keep your rhythm.
One came to the community centre window today and all work was lost for a while. Scuttle and bob bob, scuttle and bob. They are special birds of my heart: the pied wagtails of Great Britain. It is, I think partly, because they are birds I get to see often enough to know them well, but not often enough to have inadvertently tuned them out. They're a stop and look down sort of bird. An always-surprise. A pay-attention stutter in your sightline.
It is their run that does it. Oh, that run. Low and furtive, always just under your gaze at first. The hop hop hop of trying to pull up too-tight trousers and move at the same time - late, late, late, I hope no one notices - and then the short-legged, many-footed dash that comes with them still only halfway up your thighs. You cannot help but stop and watch because you are sure they will fall on their face at any moment, and yet the scuttle holds straight and tight as an arrow. Until, wait. A missed beat. They pull up short as if they suddenly realise they meant to go in another direction entirely. About face and go again. And all the while, the pat patpat pat of that long black tail. Black-bibbed, sharp-beaked, their legs as delicate as fine handwriting. Their call, when you catch it, is the wet squeak of a window cleaner's squeegee on glass, and they save it for when they fly, rhythmic, nervous, gurgling pips marking the peaks of their undulating flight, as if every wingbeat is taking them somewhere they don't want to go: oh oh ohno.
Precise and flustered Polly Washdish, wide-eyed Willy Wagtail; the old names follow them along the ground as they peck insects from low cracks, leaving sudden wakes in puddles. You will find them everywhere, in almost every place on this island, darting across playgrounds and car parks and riverbanks and estuaries, and yet I rarely hear anyone refer to them at all. They seem to be a missed bird. A gleeful sort of secret.
The best secrets are shared. Here, let these words be a whisper in your ear. Look, down there. Look look.
So, little Master Wagtail, I'll bid you a good-bye.
I bought myself a pair of noise-canceling headphones for Christmas and increasingly have to persuade myself to take them off. I struggle with urban background noise and chatter and the escape that headphones offer to give you a day accompanied instead by piano, cello, harp is one I find hard to resist. Take away the sounds of your environment and it becomes ever easier to observe. Put music in your ears and every movement in your sightline becomes part of some grand dance. My new favourite pastime is to play music loud through my headphones until I can hear no other sound and then just watch. I watch for alignment.
Today I play songs from Max Richter's recomposition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which I will never tire of for as long as I live. I listen and I watch and I watch and, there: the footsteps of a woman walking her dog past the window of the community centre begin to match the repetitive andante pull of strings and for a moment or two, her dog's wagging tail joins the beat. A pause and a considered, swelling note coincides with a man bracing to leave his armchair, veins thick on his hands, and a nose-scratch behind him catches the staccato that follows. I watch a coat shrugged off in perfect 3/4 time and smile. If only they knew.
The music builds. A woman with large, hoop earrings types on a laptop, animato, and the quickening in my ears chases her fingers, faster and faster. I hold my breath. There is nothing but this, nothing but this perfect orchestration of everything and I let it swell in my heart and my ears, until, until, until it ends with a flourish.
As the music stops, in perfect synchronicity, the room is suddenly, imperceptibly still, just for a moment before moving to life again, and I have to sit on my hands to stop from bursting into impulsive, rapturous applause.
I cannot stop thinking about clothes lately. Making them, embellishing them, wearing them. About what they really are, when you think about it. I have long ago left behind the idea that I will look good to anyone but myself but I'm ok with that. Instead, all I can think about is this potential clothes give us for a second skin.
It is a weird kind of waking up to realise that I can, if I choose, buy or make new coverings for this body and I can make them anything I want to. It suddenly feels like the most incredible kind of magic trick. I can turn any colour I choose - think of that! The kinds you'd find in a faded, unkempt garden, or on a nuthatch's belly. I can make this new skin both wild and practical, unexpected and loud, or like the quiet subtle shift of a grey day that nobody wants to notice. I can be a changing season or sea foam or become nothing but shadow. I can cover myself with pictures and change them according to the day and the weather - daily tattoos to match my more permanent kind that hide underneath. I can have dragonflies alight in every place on me on Tuesday, be the tree birds choose to perch in on Friday and the sky they take flight in on Sunday. I can wear images like totems, like dreams, have a troupe of tumblers turn around the hem of my dress just because I can, and with every new choice and story feel a little more free.
Think of it. With just clothes, I can take on new shapes, make new lines, throw off the soft curves of me to become something unnaturally precise or add softness till every hard edge of me disappears. It suddenly seems extraordinary. I can become boldly uneven, asymmetric, and glory in that. I can turn as tough and lined as tree bark or let every inch of me shiver under silk as if I were underwater. I can add MORE of me to any place I chose until I am hardly seen at all, lengths sprouting to cover wrists and knees, to layer me against everything outside that wants to throw me off balance. I can make all my clothes end neatly at the knee or sweep the floor. I can hide every bit of me I'd rather was not seen or reveal the careful parts of me that want to feel the sun.
Even better, I can, if I want to, hide secrets in everything I wear. I can create folds and pockets to hold my world in - pebbles and smoothed glass and folded notes and slim books. I can make places for tools that I've always wished I could carry like extra limbs, pens and a camera I'd never be apart from. I can carry my whole profession and inspiration about myself and be comfortable and free and wholly myself. And this is why I want to learn to make clothes, to harness this power, and why I'm astounded I haven't up until now. I want control over this sorcery. What's more, these new eyes are making me look at everything differently, to gape at the clothes other people wear and wonder at them.
A man sits across me doing a crossword as I write this and every swell of the jumper he wears is suddenly more meaningful. It is the colour of old acorns and just-stirred gravy and he wears the collar up. Something about it must have created a silent click of rightness in his head when he bought it, or perhaps it was once wrapped carefully by a son who worried about his chest. Either way, he picked it out when he dressed this morning, tugged the collar high and has settled into it in front of me like a new day, tapping the point of his biro against the newspaper as he tries to fit words to squares before committing. I love it and him: the pucker of it as it meets his comfortable belly and the slight shake of his hands under blue cuffs. Elbow patches hold him gently by the arm and I want to do the same and whisper, "You are magic in your second skin, you are, and you are loved, you are loved, you are loved."


In the spirit of Mental Health Awareness Month, and as a senior lifestyle estate that truly cares about our residents, we'd like to share with you a few surprising facts about mental health and wellness in older adults.
For example, did you know that mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, dementia and Alzheimer's Disease are not normal parts of ageing? And that researchers now believe that many of the supposed age-related changes that affect the mind are actually lifestyle related?
While it's true increasing age is a risk factor for many mental health issues, and an estimated 15% of adults aged 60+ suffer from a mental disorder*, getting older doesn't have to mean deteriorating mental health.
At Eastlands, we know this. In fact, our brand new Lifestyle Centre that opens next month is geared towards promoting active ageing, a concept that has been shown to help decrease your risk of developing a mental health issue, and improve overall mental health and wellbeing.
We're delighted to say that Eastlands Mature Lifestyle Estate offers exactly that – a supportive space that nurtures body and mind through world-class facilities. These include our new Lifestyle Centre, beautifully-appointed homes (including pet-friendly units) for quality independent living, and park-like indigenous gardens that rejuvenate the soul!
Three pools, a gym and wellness centre, lawn bowls, jukskei, metal and carpentry workshops, restaurant and coffee shop, boardroom and business centre, vegetable allotments and even boutique hotel-style rooms for overnighting friends and family all form part of our extensive Lifestyle Centre complex.
Our onsite medical facilities like doctors' rooms, pharmacy, assisted living service and 24-hour frail care centre complete the picture.
More than just wanting our residents to be happy, we want them to be healthy. Because at Eastlands, active, healthy living really is a state of mind.


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text:
Fakoly embraces West African roots through music
By Jack Swartzentruber
Arts Contributor
Tiken Jah Fakoly, born Doumbia Moussa, is an internationally renowned Ivorian reggae singer from Odienné, a town in the northwestern region of the Ivory Coast. Heavily inspired by Alpha Blondy, another Ivorian reggae star from the 1980s, Fakoly began his musical career at the age of 18, secretly composing songs that he hid from his strict Muslim family. By the late '90s, he released a string of albums and was touring regularly around his home country. However, it wasn't until his first internationally distributed album, "Françafrique," that he gained a wide following throughout Africa and the rest of the world. Merely one year after the album's release, he was exiled from the Ivory Coast for his controversial political music and he currently lives in Bamako, Mali. Today, he performs around the world and has become one of the most popular and respected modern musicians to come from the Ivory Coast.
"Françafrique," released in 2002, is a masterpiece of musical fusion. Sung primarily in French and Dioula, his native language, the album effortlessly blends Jamaican roots reggae with traditional styles from West Africa. In addition, Fakoly incorporates a number of traditional instruments into his music, such as the ngoni, a stringed instrument from Mali, as well as the balafon, a gourd-resonated xylophone closely associated with Guinean Mandinka culture. These influences combine to create a sound that is highly international, while simultaneously emphasizing Fakoly's roots in West African music.
The name of this album refers to France's sphere of influence over its former colonies, as well as the policies of French control in Africa that have had a great impact on the continent in the years since decolonization. It is social subjects like these that Fakoly addresses in his songs. In the title track, he opens with the call to "réveillez-vous," commanding the world to wake up to the atrocities committed in West Africa. He sings of how France and the United States "sell us weapons" and "plunder our wealth," while these countries still "say they are surprised to see Africa still at war." Fakoly does not mince words when it comes to France's policies in Africa, proclaiming later in the song that "they burned the Congo, inflamed Angola and ruined Gabon." The song's catchy melody and punchy brass riffs make "Françafrique" a rousing anti-imperialist anthem, a song that is not afraid to tell the honest story about an often neglected side of global history.
Fakoly continues his political critique on another highlight of the album, "Y'en a marre," featuring Martinican reggae singer Yaniss Odua. This song addresses topics including the assassination of journalists in the Ivory Coast and continued military rule. It is important to note that Fakoly was born into the griot caste, an age-old hereditary tradition of musicians responsible for passing down oral history through music. Through this album, Fakoly channels reggae's tendency to speak out against social injustice while also telling the history of his country in the griot tradition. Indeed, "Y'en a marre" delves into the historical context for the contemporary issues facing West Africa. He sings how "after the abolition of slavery, they created colonization," going on to tell how Africa is currently exploited through globalization that is ultimately rooted in this same colonial system.
Although much of Fakoly's music addresses incredibly painful subjects, he maintains that his music tells a story of hope. He shared in a 2016 interview in Afropop Worldwide that his "principal message is to tell everyone that Africa is the continent of the future, and that us Africans should be proud because the future is ours." His music examines the past while looking towards the future and shows how beautiful styles of music from across the world can organically come together to form something brilliant and unique. It shows how reggae music can transcend national borders and become a global medium for expressing the social condition of our modern world, while envisioning a brighter and more equitable tomorrow. I believe we can all learn more from exploring this type of music.
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Smartphone companies love to create devices without anyone knowing about them. The reason they are doing this is that they can use the element of surprise when creating a marketing campaign and this has been proven to be successful. Just take how secretive Apple can be when it comes to upcoming iPhone models for example.
On the bright side of things, keeping the valuable information a secret is nearly impossible in the smartphone industry. There are hundreds of people who do their best to get their hands on smartphone dummy prototypes and information about their features ahead of official launch dates and these people are called leaksters. With that being said, today we are going to check out the latest rumors and leaks surrounding Samsung, Google, Motorola and Sony's upcoming smartphones.
Google used to team up with other tech manufacturers and create Nexus smartphones. However, a couple of years ago Google decided that it wants to create "pure" Android smartphones and started the Pixel brand. Pixel 3 XL is the company's upcoming flagship and it is expected to launch in October. Moreover, a recent picture of Pixel 3 XL surfaced on the web and it unveiled that it will feature a display top-notch.
Samsung is the world's biggest smartphone manufacturer and there's a good reason behind that. Samsung launches lots of smartphones every year and Galaxy S10 is next in line. A recent leak revealed that Galaxy S10 will be equipped with a special 3D face-scanning module which will act like Apple's Face ID.
As Google and Samsung keep releasing new high-end flagship smartphones, people are starting to forget about Motorola. Fortunately, Motorola doesn't want to be left behind and it is currently adding the finishing touches to Motorola One Power. This smartphone is going to hold the title of being the company's flagship and it will ship with a display top-notch that will make it similar to iPhone X when it comes to design. In addition, One Power will feature a dual rear-mounted camera setup.
Sony is another company that's struggling to keep up with Samsung and Google, but the company's upcoming Xperia XZ2 Premium will change that. Sony confirmed that Xperia XZ2 Premium will launch this summer in Canada and that it will ship with a full-screen display that's going to put it in the same category as iPhone X.


text:
All Property Types Commercial Property (6) Equine Property (4) Desert Property (7) Home in Town (3) Military (4) Recreational Property (2) Businesses for Sale (4) RV Parks & Mobile Homes (2) Country Homes (5) Owner Financing (1) Land for Sale (8) Mountain Property (2) Farms for Sale (8) Ranches (5) Investment & Income (2) Industrial (4) Restaurant & Bar (1) Alternative Energy (1)
Mesilla was the leading settlement in the area in 1860, but it was Las Cruces not Mesilla that donated land for a depot to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The population growth in the late 1880s is credited to New Mexico State University, government jobs and retirees. Las Cruces was incorporated as a town in 1907. The exact origin of the city's name is unknown, but it's believed to be named after three crosses on a hillside marking the graves of bandits.
With White Sands Test Facility and White Sands Missile Range nearby the government is a major economic sector. Las Cruces, New Mexico area is headquarters for Virgin Galactic, while education and healthcare employ large numbers of the workforce as well.
Elephant Butte Lake is located approximately 80 miles north of Las Cruces, NM. Visitors enjoy fishing, camping, and water sports.
Ruidoso, NM is located approximately 116 miles east of Las Cruces. Visitor enjoy hunting, fishing, snowboarding, snow skiing, camping, vacationing and shopping in local mountain shops.
Memorial Medical Center, MountainView Regional Medical Center and Addus HealthCare are among the regional healthcare providers.
NMSU is the oldest public institution of higher education in the state. The research university operates campuses in Alamogordo, Carlsbad, Doña Ana County and Grants as well as extension/research centers across the state. Las Cruces Public Schools is the second largest school district in the state with 3,600 employees and approximately 25,000 students.
Less than 10 inches of precipitation, falling predominantly in the form of rain, is typical of the arid climate in Las Cruces. Humidity levels are well below the national average and sunshine occurs on nearly 300 days of the year. Summer highs exceed 90 degrees with temperatures dropping below 30 in the coldest months.
The heart of Southern New Mexico is ideal for adventure and exploration of heritage, history and a fascinating landscape. Las Cruces contains more than 100 parks covering approximately 700 acres. Veterans Memorial Park hosts the Bataan Death March Memorial as well as a memorial walking trail. Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument contains 500,000 acres of protected desert trails and archeological sites. Fort Selden State Monument features the original home of the Buffalo Soldiers. White Sands Missile Range Museum displays a variety of tested missiles and rockets. White Sands National Monument consists of 275 square miles of gypsum known as the white sands of New Mexico.
Cowboy Days, La Viña Spring Festival, Hatch Chile Festival, Frontier Days and Renaissance ArtsFaire are just a few of the annual celebrations in Las Cruces.
United Country – Revolution provides lifestyle property expertise throughout the Mesilla Valley and beyond. Contact our team in Las Cruces, NM today; our real estate professionals are eager to serve your lifestyle needs.
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Revolution. LLC
1750 Calle De Mercado, Suite 5
Las Cruces , New Mexico , 88005
Broker: Melissa Roybal
Email : melissa@nmlandandhome.com
Hours of operation : Monday-Friday 9:00 am-6:00 pm Saturday: 9:00 am-1:00 pm Sunday: By Apt Mailing Address: PO Box Fairacres, NM 88007
Copyright © 2021 Revolution. LLC ~ Las Cruces New Mexico Country Real Estate


Image Title: Gray Wingback Chair A Wing Back In Anthracite Grey Inside Decor 19. Filename: gray-wingback-chair-a-wing-back-in-anthracite-grey-inside-decor-19.jpg. Image Dimension: 965 x 500 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: Travon Moen. Uploaded Date: Thursday - May 10th. 2018 09:09:36 AM. Category: Architecture. Image Source: homedecor.com.
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text:
Caroline Freese Designs
ANIMAL BOARDS
CONTACT / CUSTOM ORDER
"Iowa Raised"
Caroline Freese was born and raised on a small farm in Indianola, IA. Always involved in her parents' farm and 4-H, she has a soft spot for animals and nature. Graduating cum laude from Iowa State University in the spring of 2016, Caroline earned a BFA in Integrated Studio Arts.
Caroline is an emerging multimedia artist focusing in acrylic painting, digital designs, and ceramics. Her art is all connected through her animal designs, which form the base of her brand. She creates unique, folk, animal paintings on wood. These images are then applied to her handmade pottery using black iron oxide printed decals. Caroline uses B-mix clay and a potter's wheel to create modern, functional pottery. Her forms are unique to her brand, and are fired in an electric kiln to cone 6. She performs every step in the process by hand.
Caroline joined the Creative Artists' Studios of Ames in January 2018, where she worked in the shared clay area. As of 2022, she moved to Indianola, IA where she set up her own private pottery studio. You can find her work for sale in person at the Octagon Center for the Arts Shop in Ames, IA, The Knittery Nook and Fiber Co in Ames, IA and Mary Rose Collection in Perry, IA, or online at Etsy. If you would like a tour of the studio please contact Caroline to set up an appointment.
First Animal Board painted in 2015
2022, Outstanding Young Professional Award, Iowa State University College of Design, Nominated
2022, First Place Ceramics, Iowa State Fair Fine Arts Show, Juried
2022, Merit Award, Omaha Summer Arts Festival, Juried
2021, Honorable Mention Mixed Media, Iowa State Fair Fine Arts Show, Juried
2021, Hazel Hammer Cherished Volunteer, Ames Community Arts Council, Nominated
September 8, 2022, Voyage Minnesota: Daily Inspiration: Meet Caroline Freese
June 23, 2022, Little Village Mag Des Moines: An Indianola farm girl finds her way with animal pottery
April 5, 2022, Indianola Advocate: Caroline Freese Design's Open House is Saturday
August 1, 2015, Ames Tribune: ISU student turns Skittles into art
© 2022 Caroline Freese Designs I Indianola, Iowa


text:
Sometimes Heartbreak is A Necessary Thing...
We all feel it. You know we do. It's that low grade melancholy that is humming in the background of our days... like a radio accidentally left on behind the scenes... droning on for so long that we don't notice it's still there... we don't even hear it anymore.
We have become acclimatized to the murmur of looming extinction. On our present trajectory, if something isn't done, isn't changed, it's not a question of "if" anymore, but "when." We are so deeply gripped by the stages of grief, we can't recognize them for what they are. Denial... anger... fear... bargaining,.. depression... resignation... helplessness... acceptance.
Yes, denial is one simple way to deal with the unthinkable. Ignore it and it will go away. But something that spiritually demands attention and cannot be ignored... well, it haunts.
When humans are faced with overwhelming danger they default to 3 defenses: fight / flee / freeze. This film "How Do Humans Heal a World?" is designed to move grief that is frozen in place and inspire you to move through the grief to the place where we began and belong-- a place that's familiar, that feels like home. A place called "love." And there is where you make a difference. Love is where you heal the world.
Barbara is the Founder and Director of Walking Moon Studios, an international studio of artists dedicated to storytelling with art that moves-- metaphorically and literally. Walking Moon films represent art with a message.
Sometimes Compassion Must Be Fierce: Revolution, R...


AIPNO is a non-profit organization founded in 1983 to bring together the physicians of Indian origin practicing in Northern Ohio. The Association has more than 300 physician members.Since 1992, AIPNO has organized an Annual Endowment Fundraiser "Chiraag" and has targeted this fundraising event to local charities that are in need of funding and who will benefit greatly from the contributions. This event is made possible through the support of the AIPNO members, and continuous generous contributions of the leaders and members of the business community.
AIPNO hosts two Category I CME programs each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, for its members and other area physicians. Local presenters and experts from across the nation present lectures on topics of current interest to our community of physicians.
AIPNO, in collaboration with BAPS Medical Services, Inc., organizes a one-day Health-Fair each year at the BAPS Temple in Brunswick, Ohio. About 100 physician and non-physician volunteers provide services free of charge to over 600 individuals. A second Health-Fair, held each year at the Shiva Vishnu Temple in Parma, provides medical advice, education and selected health testing to over 750 participants with the help of 50 physicians.
At the Annual Dinner we recognize a physician by awarding a 'Distinguished Physician Award ' for his/her contributions to the medical profession, service to humanity, and achievements in research. A medical student who embodies these same qualities is also selected and awarded a scholarship. At the Annual Dinner we invite Congressmen, Senators, Indian community leaders, hospital executives and local representatives from corporate Cleveland.
AIPNO joined the Asian Indian community of Northeast Ohio for a fundraising event for the victims of the September 11, 2001 'Attack on America'. The funds collected provided help to the families affected by the attack. AIPNO has also raised funds for victims of the Orissa cyclone in 1999, the Gujarat earthquake in January 2001, the December 2004 Asian tsunami and hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
AIPNO supports and sponsors various medical camps in India each year, for example the Medical & Surgical Camp of Bidada Sarvodaya Trust in Kachchh, India. They give medical and surgical treatments to patients from over 1200 villages.
AIPNO also conducts educational programs for the member physicians, residents and medical students. AIPNO also provides articles on health education in AIPNO Pulse, and to a community publication, Lotus.


text:
<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace ApiPlatform\Tests\Metadata\Resource;

use ApiPlatform\Metadata\CollectionOperationInterface;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Delete;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Get;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\GetCollection;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\GraphQl\Mutation;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\GraphQl\Query;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\GraphQl\QueryCollection;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\GraphQl\Subscription;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\HttpOperation;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Operation;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Patch;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Post;
use ApiPlatform\Metadata\Put;
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;

final class OperationTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testWithResourceTrait()
    {
        $operation = (new GetCollection())->withOperation((new HttpOperation())->withShortName('test')->withRead(false));

        $this->assertEquals($operation->getShortName(), 'test');
        $this->assertEquals($operation->canRead(), false);
        $this->assertEquals($operation instanceof CollectionOperationInterface, true);
    }

    /**
     * @dataProvider operationProvider
     */
    public function testOperationConstructor(Operation $operation)
    {
        $this->assertInstanceOf(Operation::class, $operation);
    }

    public function operationProvider()
    {
        $args = [];

        yield [new Get(...$args)];
        yield [new GetCollection(...$args)];
        yield [new Post(...$args)];
        yield [new Put(...$args)];
        yield [new Patch(...$args)];
        yield [new Delete(...$args)];
        yield [new Query(...$args)];
        yield [new QueryCollection(...$args)];
        yield [new Mutation(...$args)];
        yield [new Subscription(...$args)];
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


You didn't, they did and they did. It was a masterpiece for Gus Malzahn, who's orchestrated several as a coordinator already. Auburn's coach plays sleight-of-hand games with the ball — and with defenders' fragile minds. You think the fullback has it, then the tailback, and it turns out the quarterback was the one holding it the entire time.
Malzahn's troupe is the anti-Bama, the anti-LSU, the Oregon of the Waffle House Belt. It wasn't that Mizzou couldn't move the ball when it had to. It was that it always had to. The SEC East champions had the lead on four different occasions. For a grand total of exactly 8:59. By the time the smoke cleared, Auburn had collected 677 yards, a staggering 545 via the ground.
This Mizzou team was built differently than Pinkel's previous Big 12 contenders, leading with the defense first. The Tigers came in to Saturday night surrendering just 119 rushing yards a contest, second-best in the SEC, thanks largely to that aforementioned pass rush of Ealy and Sam, constantly pushing opponents backwards.
Pinkel will dance again. Someday. You just hope, when that moment comes, he's finally got the right horses. Or a good set of brakes.


text:
Q: Proper way to try-catch a semaphore What is the proper way to wrap semaphore actions in a try-catch block?  What happens if the acquire action is interrupted after it has acquired some number, but not all, of the permits requested?  How do you know how many to release again?  Should the release go in a "finally" block, but then aren't you possibly releasing permits you didn't get if the action was interrupted?
try {
    lock.acquire(permits);

    //Do some things that require synchronization

    //Make sure to release all of the permits again!
    lock.release(permits);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
    log.error("Interrupted!");
}

A: The Semaphore.acquire(int) method is an all or nothing operation, either you get all the permits requested or you block. You can use a double try around your code, or let the (possible) interrupted exception from acquiring bubble up your call stack.
Double try block:
try {
    lock.acquire(permits);

    try {
        // do some stuff here
    } finally {
        lock.release(permits);
    }
} catch(final InterruptedException ie) {
    // handle acquire failure here
}

Bubble 'acquisition' exception:
lock.acquire(permits);

try {
    // do some stuff here
} finally {
    lock.release(permits);
}

On a tangent, do keep in mind that semaphores must be kept balanced by strict programming convention, so you should always release as many permits as you acquired.

A: Take add method in BoundedHashSet for example,
    public boolean add(T o) throws InterruptedException {
        sem.acquire();
        boolean wasAdded = false;
        try {
            wasAdded = set.add(o);
            return wasAdded;
        } finally {
            if (!wasAdded)
                sem.release();
        }
    }

If sem.acquire(); throws InterruptedException, try block and finally block are skipped.
Otherwise, we acquire the semaphore successfully, try block and finally block will be executed altogether. That is, we will release the same number of permits we have acquired.

A: To add on @Perception's answer, you can optionally separate out the nested double try-catch and add retries on the acquire block, which fits my use case.
int retry_limit = 10;
boolean acquired = lock.tryAcquire(permits);
for (int i=0; i < retry_limit && !acquired; ++i) {
    try {
        Thread.sleep(1000);
    }
    acquired = lock.tryAcquire(permits);
}
if (!acquired) {
    throw new IllegalStateException("Unable to acquire permits");
}
try {
    // do some stuff here
} catch(InterruptedException ie) {
    // handle acquire failure here
} catch(Exception ex) {
    // handle other exceptions here
} finally {
    lock.release(permits);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


We believe in our products. If you are not satisfied with your purchase within 30 days after receiving your order, MedCara will refund your order in the form that it was received. We do not accept returns so we ask that you discard accordingly.
For a refund, please contact us.


Yolanda was disappointed. Once again, she had summoned up the courage to put forth an idea at a board meeting, yet nobody picked up on it. She wondered why her ideas were frequently pushed aside, both at home and at work. This happens much too often, thought Yolanda. I must be doing something wrong.
Nothing was wrong with Yolanda's ideas but a great deal was wrong with her presentation. How we express ourselves is significant. Using certain words and phrases make you, and your ideas, sound insignificant.
Don't weaken your statement from the get-go. Nix the naysayer words. Be your own best advocate by putting forth your idea without qualifiers.
Tag questions suggest uncertainty. If you want to check in on what others think, ask them directly for feedback after your presentation.
Use these words and you'll sound more like a kid than an adult with valuable ideas that are worth listening to.
Don't downplay the significance of your statement before you even put your idea out there. Begin with strength and solidity, not with flaws and failings.
Hey, wait a minute. Have you been lying to me all the time? Is this your one truthful statement? Use these phrases and don't be surprised if people question your veracity.
It's difficult to change our speech patterns for we're rarely conscious of how we are expressing ourselves. But difficult does not mean impossible. A nip and tuck, here and there, will result in your being perceived as a more effective, eloquent, compelling communicator.


I dived into Java Swing, Core Java, Spring MVC, JPA, Spring Data, Hibernate, Spring Security, REST Web Service, JSON, Thymeleaf.
I got my foot wet on NodeJS, Express, Python, Angularjs,Angular 5, 6 and Spring boot, Maven, Linux OS Ubuntu.
I analyze about OOPs concept myself.
I am swimming in Java 8.
6 How to set iframe src in Angular 2 without causing `unsafe value` exception?


text:
3P Reviews: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Season Two, Episode Seven (Episode Twenty-One)
June 17, 2019 June 15, 2019 angryhappyhat
Episode Seven: Advance of the Fool – **
Part One: Please. Please Stop.
Hhhnngh. Okay, so I should open by saying this isn't the worst episode in the series — not by a long shot. But it's episodes like this that make me cringe when people compare Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to Avatar: The Last Airbender, specifically. The episode plot has nothing to do with Avatar and few similarities, and I won't pretend that Avatar is flawless or that FMA:B doesn't have its own appeal. I understand why people compare these two series — both are character-focused fantasies with an interesting magic system and a gradually expanding plot that brings a host of characters at odds with a larger-than-life antagonist. They also have a similar feel in their summation, with the spirit world in Avatar mirroring parts of the Truth in FMA.
But those are just the broad strokes; at their cores, these are two very different series, and the experience of watching one rarely compares well to the other. Your takeaway may vary, but generally speaking, I see Avatar as an endeavor to present a simple story about several characters' internal journeys through their interactions with a vast fantasy world. In the moment-to-moment, it tries to capture childish whimsy and blend that with a gradual recognition of the darker parts of reality. It doesn't always succeed in this, but it wears its intent on its sleeve.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a squirrellier beast. I've honestly had a bit of a time trying to figure out what this series is and wants to be, but taking into account its more significant moments, I'd say it aims to capture the strong relationship of two characters to one another in their effort to make sense of a harsh world that has been particularly cruel to them. The characters encounter others on their travels as they walk their frequently diverging paths, but the story is ultimately intent on bringing them together and having them show their support for one another.
That's not a bad focus, but here's the problem: the internal arcs of Ed and Alphonse rarely have anything to do with the plot at hand. There are moments later on that put the brothers in conflict or test their bond, but an episode like this highlights the more frequent plot development that serves mainly as an excuse to advance the unrelated action plot. The A plot (the action) has almost nothing to do with the B plot (the brothers' love for one another). So much of this series could be split into two completely different stories without breaking their internal cohesion.
The result is that a lot of the main plot comes across as padding or even kind of commercial. Most long-running series, especially animated ones, feel like this sooner or later by virtue of their release schedule. In this one, though, the storytellers have tried to string the irrelevant plot beats into the makeup of the core of the series, but without connecting it to that core directly, what they've done is ensure that it's difficult to untangle. From a distance, the plot looks cohesive; this episode feeds directly into the next few, and those eventually lead to important points for the core of the series. You can't take this episode out of the mix. However, the padding is still there, and it continues to weaken the series every step of the way.
Part Two: That Doctor Will Get the Best Char Award for this Series. Just You Wait.
I know I'm being a bit of a downer. I recognize that this isn't really my sort of series, certainly not since I was about sixteen. But dammit, I wrote all of these things way back when and I'm going to suffer through it to get to the good stuff!
This episode is a transition from the events at the start of the previous one into a long action sequence in the next few. Now that Ed and Al are set on their way, they track down a probable location for where Mustang's underground fight with Lust occurred. Through a bit of abductive reasoning, they realize that the Fuhrer might be involved. While the boys continue the investigation, Mustang learns that one of his men, Havoc, was paralyzed in the fight.
I actually really like the first half of this episode. It focuses on the characters, as it should, and presents many moments of pure atmosphere. I love seeing the figures walking through empty streets with only their thoughts for company, and when they leave a bit up to audience interpretation, I can see some surprising depth come through. Mustang's conversation with one of his doctor pals from the Ishval Massacre is especially poignant, with the doctor essentially berating him for thinking he can be a better person. Mustang's desperation to find a way to heal Havoc is also a decent point in his character development, not in the least because it ends in failure. Mustang has to accept that he can't always have his way.
I'll bring this up again, but it's worth taking a quick look at how the episode treats Havoc's disability. Fantasy series have a poor track record in this area, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood fumbles on more than a few occasions, but I'm kind of okay with how the show treats Havoc. Becoming paralyzed through traumatic means is different than being born without working legs, so Havoc's depression is understandable, and he takes it much better than his friends. While Mustang is running around trying to figure out magical cures for him, Havoc is figuring out what he's going to do now that his life is changed, and while he's not especially happy about it, he seems to recognize the reality of his situation. I wish the series had done this with a more important character earlier on, because Havoc is already a minor player so the audience isn't going to experience any change to the structure of the story. However, it also manages to bring Havoc back in a valuable way later on, and I kind of like that. You can get a lot more out of a story when it doesn't rely on cheap fixes to real issues, like magicking a disabled person into an able-bodied one.
Part Three: Flawless Plan, Guys
Of course, the good parts can't last forever, and the last part of this episode is a slog. Admittedly, part of that is due to the cliffhanger ending, which leads into the next episode as more of an action piece.
Scar has returned, and now that the boys have a fresh new plan to confront the homunculi — put themselves in danger! I think the idea is that, as important sacrifices to the homunculi, they can't be killed before the homunculi's plan comes to fruition, so they're hoping to lure the homunculi out into the open. I have to imagine that there's an easier way to do this that doesn't involve placing themselves between two sets of antagonists, but the heroes see nothing wrong with this plan and initiate it as soon as they can. With the help of Lan Fan and Ling, who can apparently detect the homunculi's chi, Ed and Al go about attracting Scar by loudly performing good deeds. It's a silly sequence.
This gets Mustang invested, now that he's suddenly over his man being paralyzed on his watch. Mustang getting really into misdirecting the other officers over the radio is quite fun, though I struggle to fully understand its purpose. Who cares! Scar comes and attacks Ed, who realizes that he must be the one who killed Winry's parents on the basis that he has a tattooed arm. Because I suppose arm tattoos are a one-in-a-million thing in this world. Ed figures out how to cancel out Scar's alchemy somehow (with, I might note, no explanation or moment in which he figures out he can do this), and eventually Bradley shows up along with Gluttony. That sets us up for the next episode, in which Ed will be fighting Scar and Ling and Lan Fan will be fighting two of the remaining homunculi.
Like I said, it's not a godawful episode, just a weak and occasionally incoherent one. Fingers crossed that the next one will be better.
Tagged Animation, Anime, Characters, Criticism, Drama, Fantasy, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, nerd stuff, Recap, review, Sci-fi, Television
Previous post3P Reviews: The Umbrella Academy, Season One, Episode Nine
Next post3P Reviews: The Umbrella Academy, Season One, Episode Ten


text:
Who Should Attend Techonomy 2022?
Who should attend Techonomy? Anybody grappling with the impact of technology on their business and the wider world.
(Paul Sakuma Photography)
Techonomy is not a tech conference. It's not a policy conference. It's not a futurists conference. It's an immersive retreat where leaders exchange ideas, build collaborations, and forge the future.
Techonomy is focused on technology and business, which we see as the twin drivers of the future, for good or for bad. The three-day retreat in the Sonoma Valley wine region in California brings together influential voices from a variety of worlds for a no-holds-barred conversation about how Innovation and technology have the power to save us – if we act rapidly in multiple realms. We face daunting dilemmas – the climate crisis, war, a continuing global pandemic, refugees, and gyrating economies. But there is hope. Luckily, tech and science are advancing rapidly. Yet tech also contributes to societal divisions, and skeptics dare techno-optimists to prove them wrong. Techonomy 2022 takes that challenge. It will forefront progress and collaboration more urgently than ever.
(Photo: Paul Sakuma)
Anybody responsible for their company's strategy
Anybody leading a company challenging the status quo
Anybody who thinks business should have a positive impact on the big issues of our day
Anybody who cares about the future of work
Anybody who is concerned about the impact of emerging technologies
Anybody leading a digital transformation team
Anybody who cares about regulation, pro or con
Anybody who thinks "purpose" is good for business
In other words, the people determining what the immediate future will hold in their business, in their community, and in society.
The event is purposely kept small so attendees, speakers, and media can all get to know one another. The conversation is not simply from the stage, but between everybody who attends. As a result, it's a unique opportunity to get an array of perspectives, build your brand, and to do business.
But don't take our word for it. Listen to John Chambers, the former CEO and Chairman of Cisco: "I've gotten more benefit from attending Techonomy than from any other conference in recent years."
Business technology Techonomy 2022 Techonomy Events
How to Fortify Your Cyber Strategy in the Wake of the T-Mobile Hack
By John Chambers
Fossils Should Pay Trillions to Store Carbon through 2050, Ex-Industry Execs Say
By Mitchell Beer


Each piece grew to a size that normally took a few years in just a few weeks.
Furthermore, the method works on every single species of coral found in the Florida Reef.
He notes that land plants produce only about a third of the oxygen we breathe. The rest comes from the ocean.
Vaughan's team now plans on teaching his method to conservationists around the world so they can collectively plant one million corals within the next few years.
Dr Dave, the best is yet to come when all countries get on board with this. I am a very passionate marine aquarist and many aquarists in the hobby frag coral constantly to share between each other and have for years including myself. Honestly this replanting the reef is not hard and I personally would love to be doing this as a job but in Australia our government makes it hard with quarantine laws and protection of the reef rubbish that they know nothing about. If only we could do this on a large scale here the Great Barrier Reef would be as good as ever in 10years or less! I hope your ideas and work goes through the roof as this is the only way to save nature and the destruction of the world with ideas and people like yourself, good luck Dr Dave!!
Can you not microfragment your own corals?
They should not be subject to quarantine laws, should they?
I think your government is a bit on the greedy side to not allow this, although it actually might increase revenue from tourism if they did.
I would like to seek permission to reprint/republish this article in our Maritime Review Magazine.
This is truly amazing absolutely groundbreaking, this is going to restore so much of the lost Coral.
Wow this is amazing and such brilliant news.
Fragging corals has been done for decades. The entire reef keeping hobby is based around fragging corals. You can actually search on YouTube and find hundreds of videos with instructions on how to frag various corals.
Has to be a know it all jerk in every bunch.
Thank you for this very interesting article. We can use some happy accidents. Go science and dedicated people who are trying to save us.
Thank you, Dr. Dave Vaughn, for discovering this! I am sure that it was your attention to detail that allowed you to find this amazing solution to a very prominent problem in our oceans. I am thrilled, because it means so much for the worlds population of not only people, but all the species of wildlife that have relied directly on the coral reefs for survival.
This is so exciting, thank you!
Congratulations sir ..I am curious to know the exact reason behind this amazing phenomena .
But one has to smash up a live coral to create each batch of new ones; that's a loss in itself.
Surely it's much more important to stop mankind destroying coral by carelessly abusing of our oceans than to report on a possible means of covering for the abuse by growing replacements.
Fantastic, but the conditions that kill coral still exist and are getting worse, so I suspect it will continue to decrease until the root cause (climate change) is addressed, which is not happening.
An article about a Florida scientist making a discovery with Atlantic basin corals. WHY a picture of PACIFIC reef??? Atlantic and Caribbean reefs are gorgeous. Why not use an image of the affected reef system????
Wait… aren't corals animals? What do they have to do with oxygen production?
They have algae inside their tissues which metabolize carbon dioxide and give out oxygen like plants do. In return the coral gets most of its food from this process.
I am currently researching how to set up a microfragmenting operation for the White River fish sanctuary in Ocho Rios Jamaica. I studied marine ecology and spent my professional life in scuba operations along the North coast. I had to retire from scuba for medical reasons and have since been involved in aquaculture. I tried raising ornamental fish but now want to start rehabilitating coral.
That's an AMAZING discovery. I hope he gets to the one million plantings of corals.
I would speculate that having coral that matures faster can reproduce faster, can reproduce more often is a holding action. It doesn't stop die-off, but it would vastly speed up recovery. A band-aid until something can be done to stop/adapt to the conditions causing bleaching and other forms of coral death.
Hello, This is such fantastic news. I live in Sri Lanka, where there have been some works done to the coral but it is very slow progress. It would be so fantastic if we could do this project here too, There was a lot of damage to the coral due to the tsunami in 2004.
Please can you put Hikkaduwa, in Sri Lanka on your list of places to restore.
I will volunteer to Helio and can find other likeminded people who will be able to help too.
This is wonderful! Can we help in any way?
Except Corals are animals and eat oxygen, not produce it.
This is such exciting news! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Why would you "plant" coral?
Coral is not a plant; coral belongs to the animal kingdom.
Plant has a quite a few different meanings. One if them is to introduce or place an animal in a certain place.
Jim… you are joking, right? Healthy oceans = food & oxygen. Are you a robot?
It has a symbiotic relationship with algae. That algae is responsible for the color of corals, as most corals have white skeletons and transparent flesh.
Sometimes, to get extra balance, I plant my feet. They must be plants!
Same way you might 'plant' your feet Jim. It's just language!
Does it really matter? Plus coral does need to be "planted" so that can grow. It won't grown floating around!
If someone plants a fist in your face, you might still have bloody nose. However you likely will not have a moss covering in the shape of a fist attached to your face. Try opening a dictionary and look up a word, like plant and notice there are multiple meanings.
You can plant a flag in the ground, you can plant your seat on a chair, it is not just a verb used to plant a plant but rather to set an object somewhere.
Don't be obtuse. There's more than one meaning for the word "plant". In this instance, they are placing the coral onto a reef – planting it – because coral can't get from the lab to the reef themselves.
How do I learn about your project and help restore the world corals. Please send me links to your company or scientific project.
It looks like he works for https://mote.org/ specifically, though.
Hire me! I'll plant too.
I'd love to learn more about this project as well and help in any way I can. Please reach out!
It's not the same as planting a tree but you are still setting it into place where it will grow and flourish.
Your feet aren't plants either but we use the reference.
Is this similar to osteogenesis?????
If only we could stop poisoning the oceans, then corals might stand a chance of redeveloping the reefs.
With all the negative news out there, I love reading a story that brings a smile to your face. Kudos to Dr. Vaughn for trying to improve our planet.
I'm on Maui and would like to know if training in this process is available here? If not here, is training available at all.
If humans would understand that only half of their respiratory system resides inside their chest, they wouldn't need to be told that saving the oceans and trees is crucial.
My question is how are you going to grow them in the ocean if the ones there are already dying from the environment?
But what caused the reef to die in the first place? Won't replanting in the same location yield the same result? The cause of reef decimation needs to be corrected for this to work. Our oceans are polluted with garbage and radioactive material and traffic and now the temperatures are fluctuating as a result of climate change. This is a remarkable discovery to be sure I just hope it grows successfully in the oceans.


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SUPPORT CWP
Manhattan Times: Latino construction workers deserve a say in their future
Home/Latest News, News/Manhattan Times: Latino construction workers deserve a say in their future
By Clark Peña of Construction Workforce Project, published in Manhattan Times:
For decades, unions have erected barriers for minorities in New York seeking access to jobs in the construction trade. Earlier this year, a union boss wrote a letter in Crain's dismissing the merits of open shop projects and calling the value of these workers into question. Faced with this opposition, many of these residents have joined open shop construction projects.
Instead of forcing them to make these decisions, public officials and union bosses should do more to recognize the impact that these workers have on the construction industry and grant them the opportunities they deserve to provide for their families.
As Director of Advocacy for the Construction Workforce Project (CWP), I hear the grievances of black and Latino construction workers every day. Our organization was created with the mission of providing a voice for these individuals so that their input can be heard and lead to meaningful reform.
Amongst the most common complaints of minority workers' is their lack of recognition by influential union leaders. Rather than welcome these hard-working individuals, they have made it unreasonably challenging for them to have access to safe, good paying jobs. Through a series of policies and practices ranging from non-bilingual training programs to discriminatory superintendents, minority workers face an excess of obstacles when trying to break into this workforce.
Not surprisingly, more and more minority workers are turning to open shop jobs.
Per the latest figures, three out of four of these workers are of a minority background, while most live in one of the city's five boroughs. This is critical because by attracting local recruits the open shop better reflects the diversity of New York City's communities and directly injects economic capital into local communities.
Considering these impacts, the rapid growth of the open shop is no coincidence. Studies have shown that approximately 70% of the private construction work currently being completed in the city is now being done by these workers. More importantly, merit-based hiring practices offer opportunities these individuals wouldn't have access to otherwise. Their hourly wage averages $20/per hour and most have access to generous health care packages and 401(k) programs. These benefits extend to their communities and families as well, which typically come from local, urban neighborhoods and not from far-flung suburbs.
These men and woman are tired of the systemic disrespect they face in their industry.
While they toil tirelessly and do the same job as their union counterparts, they rarely feel they are being treated equally.
Construction unions should do more to recognize this double standard and stop ignoring the realities of their changing workforce. Open shop workers now make up a majority of the private labor force and deserve to have their rights respected. The establishment of the Construction Workforce Project is just the first step in what will hopefully turn out to be a long-lasting reform of a historically insulated industry.
Clark Peña is Director of Advocacy for the Construction Workforce Project, a nonprofit advocating on behalf of open-shop and merit-based hiring in New York City's construction industry.
Read more from Manhattan Times…
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By cwpny|2019-05-16T13:27:27-04:00May 16th, 2019|Latest News, News|0 Comments
Construction Workforce Project Sponsors Harlem Back to School Backpack Program
CWP is Proud to Break Bread with HCCI and Support Harlem Communities
Reminder: legislation to expand prevailing wage would harm workers of color and MWBE contractors
El Diario: Carta abierta al gobernador Cuomo
Crains: Wage bill would keep health care facilities out of date
Copyright 2019 Construction Workforce Project | All Rights Reserved


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NextASX Launches Crowdfunding Campaign on SeedInvest
Faradair Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Aims to Fly by 2022
12 May 2019 || 3 min read
For the last five years, Faradair has been designing an 18-seat hybrid-electric aircraft at its headquarters in the UK.
Just earlier this year at the Revolution.Aero Europe show, Faradair revealed its prototype and plans for the Bio Electric Hybrid Aircraft (BEHA). The company announced its intention to fly by 2022 and be to certified and ready for commercial operations by 2025. The aircraft is being designed for both passenger and cargo transport, and is capable of being transformed between the two arrangements in as short as 15 minutes. This is an important feature of the company's prototype as they attempt to minimize the total time in transit for regional travel – it implies shorter turnaround times and enables passengers to board their flight with shorter average wait times.
The aircraft is also predicted to fill a gap in what current transportation systems are able to offer, as it plans to be a faster alternative to current methods, while being environmentally friendly and cost-effective. For example, London to Manchester could be flown in just 42 minutes at a cruise speed of 230mph – the fastest commercial alternative is a 1 hour and 8 minute transit.
In order to achieve an efficient and sustainable design, the Faradair engineers have employed a unique synthesis of design features. The hallmark is its patented 'Triple Box Wing' for high lift and Very Short Take-Off and Landing (VSTOL). Faradair's BEHA will also feature an all-composite fuselage configuration, contra-rotating propfans with ducting designed for low noise and increased efficiency, and over 1000 nm range depending on the configuration. This will all come at a predicted price tag of $4 million for those looking to invest in the state-of-the-art technology.
For more technical specifications regarding the Faradair BEHA, visit their website.
Why it's important: As the Faradair BEHA is a 'VSTOL' aircraft, it is still certifiable to existing Part23 FAA standards. More importantly, it is both able to operate from existing airfields and integrate within existing air networks. With its low barrier to entry into commercial operation, and its predicted edge on the existing transportation methods with regards to speed, the Faradair BEHA is a practical engineering solution that has a place in the sky.
Sources // Flying Mag; Faradair
Tagged in: Bio Electric, Commercial Operation, FAA certification, Faradair
ASX Launches Crowdfunding Campaign on SeedInvest
Ascent Urban Air Mobility Launches in the Phillipines


Q: I have checked all the wirings several times over, but why my lighting is still not working?
Q: Why only partially functioning; only tail light works, or only left turn/right turn works?
More or likely one of pin of the 4 pin connector (or 7 pin) is compromised. Make sure there is no dirt or rust at the contact. Insure a metal to metal contact between vehicle and the trailer connectors.
Q: How do I determine polarity of LED lights?
Not like incandescent lights, LED lights are polarity sensitive; works only one way and + - is not interchangeable. Normally, ground wire is white but not all manufacturers follow that. If one connection is not working, flip it and it will work.
Q: How do I trouble shoot trailer lights?
1.	Test the lights before installation by applying DC 12V (such as from automotive battery).
Verify all the light works, be sure for a correct polarity for LED lightings.
2.	Verify vehicle side connector (4 pin or 7 pin) is working properly.
One way to test is either using volt meter or test bulb.
i.e.) turn on the tail light and test between Ground and Tail light pin.
LED turn lights require special flasher. The old flasher relies on lots of current to pass through the flasher to work properly. Since LED lights use far less current than incandescent lights, the flasher thinks the bulb is gone bad, so it flashes rapidly.
Q: Do I need a converter? What is a converter?
There are two types of design, independent bulb and common bulb system. If you have separate bulb for the brake light (Stop) and turn lights, then you have an independent system. If you have an independent system, you will need a converter to convert the independent system to a common system in order to use trailer lights.
Q: Do I need to unplug the trailer in the water?
Yes. Even with submersible trailer lights, there are wire connections that are not water proof, such as wire nuts. It is always prudent to unplug the trailer light as being submerged.
TIP: Double check the ground and always clean out the dirt/rust off from the connectors and make sure there is no pinched wire!!
For help with grounding issues, watch this video.
Please click here to ask a question we did not include.


Editor's note: While FSI companies are unlikely, for competitive reasons, to disclose their FPGA strategies, James Reinders offers insights into the case for FPGAs as accelerators for FSI by discussing performance, power, size, latency, jitter and inline processing.
Even before the recent global financial crisis (2007-2008) led to a rapid growth in demand for risk analytics, the computational demands of the financial services industry (FSI) were substantial. FSI computing needs are driven by all forms of trading including High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and algorithmic trading, risk analytics (fraud detection/prevention including real-time fraud detection, and regulatory compliance), and data security and handling (including encrypt/decrypt, compress/decompress). There is a large spectrum of the workloads within FSI because their needs encompass the same growing needs of any enterprise as well as their demanding FSI specific workloads.
FPGAs became a part of HFT years ago because of their combination of reprogrammability, performance, low latency and low jitter. If not for the crisis, FPGAs might primarily live in the world of HFT. But with the crisis, that changed. The art of consuming and making sense out of a new deluge of data may have been pioneered by high-frequency traders, but has been taken to new heights by risk analytics workloads.
Pre-crisis, risk analytics workloads were mostly run offline between trading hours in order to prepare for the next trading day. Those days are long gone; risk analytics workloads now run continuously and include work required for regulatory compliance, such as Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR). These workloads are fed hundreds of millions of pieces of information per second in their quest to track risk factors. This input data is highly unstructured, very high volume and has a wide variation of veracity (how much can we trust such data?). To obtain more data to inject, written publications, video, and voice data have been added into the streams of real time input. Other than available compute power, there is little to prevent attempting to feed these workloads anything and everything that might assist in generating better risk calculations. These new workloads do not necessarily result in frequent output, as would be the case with high-frequency trading, but driving real time tracking and response can be similarly high-stakes in terms of monetary value.
It has been said that FPGAs compute spatially not temporally and that this helps speed things along. They combine parallelism and concurrency in hardware, and their versatility, reconfigurability, parallelism, determinism, high performance and low latency have resulted in FPGAs being called the "Swiss army knife of semiconductors." These advantages are very similar to the case for using ASIC designs, such as the Google TPU, but with the significant additional capability of reconfigurability. A simplistic view is that CPU and GPU designs are instruction oriented and have fixed amounts of hardware arranged in fixed ways and repeated (cores), whereas FPGAs lack the same notion of fixed instructions and have fixed amounts of hardware without fixed arrangement. The implications for flexibility and power efficiency are enormous, and can be difficult to grasp the first time one hears about it. This is illustrated in the conceptual drawings below.
Traditional concerns about FPGAs have been around programmability, in no small part because FPGAs previously catered only to hardware designers with hardware description languages, such as VHDL. Today's newer tools, built around OpenCL, are more mature than you might expect given how recently they have appeared for FPGAs. The reason is that they are more like "OpenCL to VHDL" translators than they are stand-alone new compilers. Since VHDL to FPGA synthesis is very mature and robust after decades of refinement, the OpenCL compilers are actually quite effective. The result is that OpenCL can offer great performance with FPGAs.
One such example out of Boston university, showed OpenCL results beating hard coded IP-blocks for an FPGA, while beating GPUs 1.7X to 11X and CPUs 13X to 63X. Their most recent results were published as a paper titled "FPGA HPC using OpenCL: Case Study in 3D FFT" and presented in June at HEART 2018 (International Symposium on Highly-Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies). Results showing that FPGAs can be faster, with lower power and more consistent, helps explain why FSI companies show strong interest in FPGAs.
When one thinks of programming accelerators, there are two camps: CUDA for Nvidia and OpenCL for everything else. In the end, it matters little to the likes of FSI developers. That is because real deployment success happens through solutions, such as libraries, that accelerate key algorithms. Having a good answer to "how do I do a Monte Carlo (or other target FSI workload algorithm)?" is key, not the choice of programming language to implement the method.
While the performance per watt may look similar, the Intel card only pulls power from the 12V line of the PCIe bus and within the PCIe specification of 5A maximum. There is not supplemental power brought into the card via other power connections. The card is also ½ height and ½ length (full length with optional air ducting) whereas the Tesla V100 is full height and full length. For FSI, this is often more of a factor for adoption than for many supercomputer centers.
FSI companies with racks and racks of 1U servers may feel they are in a better position to add ½ height 66W PCIe accelerator cards than they are for reconfiguring a rack to accommodate 300W full height cards. Of course, the Nvidia GPU cards claim over 5X the DP performance and 10X the SP performance per card. Integer performance of the two solutions is harder to compare, partly because the FPGA is much more flexible about data sizes. As always, when it comes to comparing and validating different platforms, there's no substitute for running your own workloads.
An example of how vendors are positioning the smaller form factor as a benefit to aid in the adoption of FPGAs by FSI was offered by Levyx at the Red Hat summit in May 2018. Levyx highlighted scaling with one or three FPGAs in a single server running on an Intel-built Rack-Scale Design (RSD).
Competition in HFT has been fierce, with market players investing in more powerful solutions that can trade in nanoseconds, hence the emergence of the "race to zero latency." FPGA cards have been called "the final significant step in the evolution of low latency trading technology" and are in virtually every HFT solution.
Much like any supercomputer center, all major exchanges are boosting the performance of their network connections. Rapid delivery of the deluge of data is not enough, processing it quickly and on-time all the time is essential. Dramatic performance improvement for trading means controlling not only latency, but also jitter. FPGAs can offer deterministic latency, which means no jitter and predictable reaction times, even during heavy trading when timing may matter most and placing trades in a timely manner reduces risk exposure.
FPGAs have a deterministic nature because they are, ultimately, just circuits synthesized from a description via VHDL, OpenCL or using an FPGA library. There is no preemption from an operating system, print daemon, checkpointing software, keyboard interrupt, virus checker, etc. There is no branching in the software, or anything inherent in an FPGA that leads to non-determinism. Even though we program in OpenCL or HDL, FPGA applications become circuit designs when we compile (synthesize) our code. Circuits don't jitter like programs do on CPU and GPU based systems, which has many benefits – including that it is common that the peak performance of a given design is the performance. In a not-so-subtle way, this gives FPGAs a performance advantage in real world applications.
Low jitter has high value for traders, which in turn makes it important for real time risk assessments, particularly those designed to place or prevent a trade.
When networking is so tightly connected to compute capabilities, as is the case with Microsoft's FPGA usages, it enables what I call "inline processing." Think "dataflow" or "systolic computing" done at today's speeds, protocols, and bandwidths with low latency, and you'll understand the excitement around FPGAs.
The financial services industry has all the same challenges as any enterprise, in addition to their FSI specific workloads. ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), data warehousing acceleration, and real time relational databases are all important in dealing with large amounts of high-velocity data. Solutions using FPGAs to tackle such data challenges are appearing from companies such as Swarm64 and Bigstream. The enterprise search capabilities highlighted by FPGA usage with Microsoft Bing can help FSI enterprises as well. Real time inferencing with FPGAs can fill roles for FSI-specific needs such as fraud detection and market surveillance, as well as enterprise level security such as cyber security. As the enterprise extends its embrace of accelerators such as FPGAs, FSI – facing a very real computational arms race – will not be left out of this trend.


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Q: send Message to a user by Username in telegram bot I used php-telegram-bot/core to create a shopping bot in telegram.
What I want to do is when a User make an order, bot send a notification that a new Order is come to admin of Channel.
Suppose admin channel username is like @admin_username and stored in a global variable(means that may be change in a period of time). for that I wrote this :
    static public function showOrderToConfirm ($order)
    {

        if ($order) {
            Request::sendMessage([
                'chat_id'    => '@admin_username',
                'text'       => 'New Order registered',
                'parse_mode' => 'HTML'
            ]);
        }

    }

But this does not work and does not anything.

A: Telegram bot API does not support sending messages using username because it's not a stable item and can be changed by the user. On the other hand, bots can only send messages to user that have sent at least one message to the bot before.
You know that when a user sends a message to a bot (for example the users taps on the start button) the bot can get his/her username and ChatID (As you know ChatID is different from username; ChatID is a long number) so I think the best way that you can fix this issue is storing the chat IDs and related usernames in a database and send the message to that chatID of your favorite username.
By the way, try searching online to see whether there is an API which supports sending messages to usernames or not. But as I know it's not possible.

A: This example works very well:
<?php
$token = 'YOUR_TOCKEN_HERE';
$website = 'https://api.telegram.org/bot' . $token;

$input = file_get_contents('php://input');
$update = json_decode($input, true);

$chatId = $update['message']['chat']['id'];
$message = $update['message']['text'];

switch ($message) {
case '/start':
    $response = 'now bot is started';
    sendMessage($chatId, $response);
    break;
case '/info':
    $response = 'Hi, i am  @trecno_bot';
    sendMessage($chatId, $response);
    break;
default:
    $response = 'Sorry, i can not understand you';
    sendMessage($chatId, $response);
    break;
}

function sendMessage($chatId, $response){
    $url = $GLOBALS['website'] . '/sendMessage?chat_id=' . $chatId .
    '&parse_mode=HTML&text=' . urlencode($response);
    file_get_contents($url);
 }

?>