Finance journalist • Interests: crypto, crowdfunding, tech, marketing • Stocks: biotech, healthcare, commodities, IT • Whiskey enthusiast.
For quite some time now, investors raking in profit from cannabis stocks which have been getting richer and richer. One reason for this may be the handful of business players now focused on hemp.
This can be reflected by the increase in the areas where hemp, a cannabis sativa variety, is cultivated. Based on the Marijuana Business Daily, the market year 2016 to 2017 saw a 140 percent increase in licensed areas across all the top 10 states that plant hemp. Meanwhile, the number of hemp producers doubled during that period.
Despite the enthusiasm for hemp, the industrial plant remains pitted against rigid government restrictions on its cultivation and distribution. Under federal law, planting of hemp remains prohibited. States that seek to open their lands to hemp cultivation may do so as long as they present a comprehensive hemp planting program.
One of the latest regulatory worries is when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently expressed intent to rescind a number of Obama-era rules, one of which is the policy that directs non-interference in the marijuana-friendly laws of states where the plant is legal for use.
Amid a worrisome regulatory environment, hemp businesses continue to see a prosperous atmosphere. This is true at least for the established cannabis stocks which are poised to soar further.
Toronto-based Cronos Group has medical marijuana production and distribution operations across many different countries like Israel, Canada, Germany, and Australia.
Recently, the company forged a partnership with MedMen, which is expected to boost their presence in the United States.
"[We've] looked around; it's the best retail experience we've seen," Cronos CEO Mike Gorenstein said in an interview with James West's Midas Letter, tagging MedMen as the most recognizable cannabis brand in the world today.
The partnership will give Cronos Group a leverage in having "dominant presence" in areas such as Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Las Vegas, and even take advantage of it in expanding its consumer base in Canada.
The firm is estimated to have a market cap of $1.061 billion.
Based in New York, HempAmericana Inc. (OTCMKTS:HMPQ) is a leader in the production of rolling papers and hemp-based cannabidiol (CBD) oil through the brand name Rolling Thunders and Weed Got Oil, respectively.
What makes HempAmericana different among its competitors is that it operates one of the largest scale CBD oil extraction machines ever built in the market. At present, the company is utilizing this machine to focus on several cannabis-based businesses.
Among its recent developments is getting a license for a certain property in Augusta, Maine, which will add to HempAmericana's lands for hemp cultivation. Part of the company's future plans is to establish three laboratories for the extraction and research of the oils from the hemp plant.
With this acquisition and expansion programs, the firm is eyeing to dominate the eastern U.S. market where it can roll out its products with 99 percent high-quality CBD products.
With an estimated market cap of $145.119 billion, pharmaceutical company AbbVie offers a cannabis-based drug. The firm's Marinol, which helps alleviate nausea or vomiting for chemotherapy patients, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug also helps AIDS patients who have lost their desire to eat.
Over the past four years, the company has been seeing growing sales thanks to its wide selection of drugs, which include the Marinol. Investopedia sees AbbVie's diversification in other drugs as a way to play safe from exposing itself completely to the risks warranted by the regulatory barriers.
Equity managers may still save themselves from plunging along with other hemp or marijuana stocks that may falter in the face of bad news. To do this, investors should place their money on established and expanding firms like these three.


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Discriminating glaucomatous and compressive optic neuropathy on spectral-domain optical coherence tomography with deep learning classifier
Jinho Lee1,2,
Jin-Soo Kim3,
Haeng Jin Lee1,4,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7944-6990Seong-Joon Kim1,4,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6037-8449Young Kook Kim1,2,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8137-8843Ki Ho Park1,2,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1690-1239Jin Wook Jeoung1,2
1 Department of Ophthalmology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
2 Division of Glaucoma, Department of Ophthalmology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
3 Department of Ophthalmology, Hallym University Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital, Chuncheon, Republic of Korea
4 Division of Neuro-Ophthalmology, Department of Ophthalmology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Correspondence to Professor Jin Wook Jeoung, Department of Ophthalmology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea; neuroprotect{at}gmail.com
Background/aims To assess the performance of a deep learning classifier for differentiation of glaucomatous optic neuropathy (GON) from compressive optic neuropathy (CON) based on ganglion cell–inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) and retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT).
Methods Eighty SD-OCT image sets from 80 eyes of 80 patients with GON along with 81 SD-OCT image sets from 54 eyes of 54 patients with CON were compiled for the study. The bottleneck features extracted from the GCIPL thickness map, GCIPL deviation map, RNFL thickness map and RNFL deviation map were used as predictors for the deep learning classifier. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was calculated to validate the diagnostic performance. The AUC with the deep learning classifier was compared with those for conventional diagnostic parameters including temporal raphe sign, SD-OCT thickness profile and standard automated perimetry.
Results The deep learning system achieved an AUC of 0.990 (95% CI 0.982 to 0.999) with a sensitivity of 97.9% and a specificity of 92.6% in a fivefold cross-validation testing, which was significantly larger than the AUCs with the other parameters: 0.804 (95% CI 0.737 to 0.872) with temporal raphe sign, 0.815 (95% CI 0.734 to 0.896) with superonasal GCIPL and 0.776 (95% CI 0.691 to 0.860) with superior GCIPL thicknesses (all p<0.001).
Conclusion The deep learning classifier can outperform the conventional diagnostic parameters for discrimination of GON and CON on SD-OCT.
optic nerve
Contributors Design and conduct of the study: JL, JWJ. Collection of data: H-JL, S-JK, YKK, KHP, JWJ. Analysis and interpretation of data: JL, J-SK, H-JL, S-JK. Writing the article: JL, JWJ. Critical revision of the article: JL, J-SK, H-JL, S-JK, YKK, KHP. All authors agreed to final approval of the work and account for its integrity.
Ethics approval This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Seoul National University Hospital.
Data availability statement De-identified patient data can be shared on reasonable request.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Dangerous Subversion Of Germany's Democracy (Telegraph) – Wolfgang Schäuble's Lies Exposed
September 29, 2011 by Infinite
'Mr Schäuble has now been forced to give a categorical assurance that the EFSF will not be expanded. He cannot break his word without very serious consequences, or before the financial crisis turns deadly.'
As for the assurances of Mr Schäuble, either he really is lying, in which case there will be all Hell to pay in the Bundestag, and most likely a massive political backlash that will change German politics profoundly.
Or he is not lying, in which case there is no plan to save the eurozone, and we therefore face the mounting risk of a spiral into a banking crash, serial sovereign defaults, and a disorderly break-up of EMU.
Not pretty.
I bet Mr. Schäuble lied (again), but here is why the plan to save the eurozone is doomed to fail:
– The Multi-Trillion Euro Bailout Plan Has Already FAILED
Wolfgang Schäuble's lies exposed:
In December 2009 Schäuble said that the Germans cannot pay for the problems of Greece.
In April 2010 he said that Greece may not need a bailout.
In May 2010 he promised his people the € 110 Billion bailout to be a one-time grant and the absolute upper limit of payments.
In May 2011 he agreed to the € 750 Billion bailout package.
In June 2011 Greece got another € 100 Billion bailout, again with approval from Mr. Schäuble.
Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble is not only a LIAR, but a TRAITOR unto his people.
The elite puppet governments in Europe and in the US do exactly what they are told by their masters.
This is the greatest looting of the people in world history orchestrated by the elitists.
Europe is already burning (and so is the US).
Prepare for currency reform(s) and the greatest financial collapse in world history.
This is the 'Greatest Depression'.
Got physical gold and silver (…and food and water supplies)?
The Dangerous Subversion Of Germany's Democracy
The Bundestag and the German people are being undermined
– The dangerous subversion of Germany's democracy (Telegraph, Sep. 29, 2011):
Optimism over Europe's "grand plan" to shore up EMU was widely said to be the cause of yesterday's torrid rally on global markets, lifting the CAC, DAX, Dow, crude and copper altogether.
This is interesting, since Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has given an iron-clad assurance to the Bundestag that no such plan exists and that Germany will not support any attempt to "leverage" the EU's €440bn bail-out plan to €2 trillion, or any other sum.
"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense."
All of this was out in the open and widely reported. Markets appear to be acting on the firm belief that he is lying to lawmakers, that there is indeed a secret plan, that it will be implemented once the inconvenience of the Bundestag's vote on the EFSF tomorrow is safely out of the way, and that German democracy is being cynically subverted.
The markets may or may not right about this. Mr Schäuble has a habit of promising one thing in Brussels and stating another in Berlin.
But it is surely an unhealthy state of affairs. One of the happiest achievements of the post-War era is the emergence of a free, flourishing, and democratic Germany under the rule of law.
Carsten Schneider, finance spokesman for the Social Democrats, spoke for many last week, denouncing the shabby back-room dealings as a scandal. "A new multi-trillion programme is being cooked up in Washington and Brussels, while the wool is being pulled over the eyes of Bundestag and German public. This is unacceptable."
Mr Schäuble has now been forced to give a categorical assurance that the EFSF will not be expanded. He cannot break his word without very serious consequences, or before the financial crisis turns deadly.
We have reached the point where the unseemly scramble to find ever more inventive and extreme ways to save monetary union – yet without coming clean, and invariably by trying to deceive German citizens about the real implications of each deal – is clashing directly with the integrity of German democracy.
Andreas Vosskuhle, head of the constitutional court or Verfassungsgericht, specifically warned this week that Germany is entering treacherous waters.
He said that the improvisation of far-reaching policies to shore up EMU had become "dangerous", and warned against schemes to circumvent the rule of law with backroom deals. "Germany has a great affinity for the rule of law. People expect the political class to obey the rules."
"There is little leeway left for giving up core powers to the EU. If one wants to go beyond this limit – which might be politically legitimate and desirable – then Germany must give itself a new constitution. A referendum would be necessary. This cannot be done without the people," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Dr Vosskuhle reminded politicians that they do not have the legal authority to sign away German constitutional prerogatives.
"The sovereignty of the German state is inviolate and anchored in perpetuity by basic law. It may not be abandoned by the legislature (even with its powers to amend the constitution)," he said.
He repeated that the Court had set clear boundaries to EU bail-outs in a ruling earlier this month. "Our judgment makes clear that the Bundestag cannot abdicate its fiscal responsibilities to other actors. And no permanent mechanism may be created that entails taking over the liabilities of other states," he said.
Otmar Issing, the ECB's founding guru, has gone even further in recent weeks, warning that the current course must ultimately provoke the "resistance of the people" and perhaps civil wars.
Dr Issing is not a German nationalist. He is open to the idea of an authentic union with a "European government controlled by a European Parliament" on democratic principles.
What he opposes is the deformed halfway house that is now Europe, where supra-national bodies – accountable to no elected body and taking decisions behind closed doors – are usurping legislative primacy over tax and spending. As he reminds us, it was monarchical assault on the power of the purse that led to England's Civil War, and America's Revolution.
Large matters.
Categories Economy, Global News, Politics, Society Tags Bonds, Debt, ECB, Economy, EFSF, EU, Europe, Germany, Global News, Government, Law, Politics, Wolfgang Schäuble Post navigation
Russia's Former Finance Minister Attacks Kremlin Over Fake Democracy, Discloses That He Had Been Asked To Lead A Fake Political Party
Enron-i-sation of Europe; Is the Euro 'Beyond Rescue'?


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Art Event electric bill mary beth national grid Senior Third Thursday
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Two Ohio primaries
Charles Richardson	Elections, Party matters, United States	 9 August 2021
Last week we had a brief look at a Congressional by-election in Texas. Another two by-elections will be held in November in Ohio, in the 11th and 15th districts. Neither is likely to produce much excitement: the 11th, vacated by the appointment of Marcia Fudge as secretary of housing and urban development, is very safe Democrat, while the 15th, whose previous member resigned to become president of the Ohio chamber of commerce, is almost as safe Republican.
But that means the primary elections in each case were the important thing, and they were held last week. With not much else happening on the electoral front, each was being watched as a potential indicator of the balance of power within the parties.
The Democratic primary in the 11th was a straight two-way battle between Shontel Brown, a moderate backed by the party's leading centrists (among them Hillary Clinton), and Nina Turner, a left-winger backed by Bernie Sanders and other self-styled socialists. Turner had much the higher national profile and went into the campaign as the front-runner.
But Brown steadily made up ground, and on the day she prevailed fairly comfortably, with 50.2% to Turner's 44.5%. She will now go up against Republican Laverne Gore, making her second hopeless attempt at the district.
Turner blamed "billionaire-funded Super PACs fighting tooth and nail" for her defeat, but since she raised twice as much money as Brown it doesn't really look as if campaign spending was her problem. It's more a sign that Democrat voters, or at least those in suburban Cleveland, are happy enough with the party's direction and not seeking radical change.
In the 15th, a largely rural district in the southern part of the state, it was the Republican primary that mattered. It was a crowded field, with at least six serious candidates, but again there was an early front-runner: Mike Carey, a coal industry lobbyist who gained the vital endorsement of Donald Trump.
Some had interpreted – wrongly, in my view – the result in Texas's 6th district the previous week as a setback for Trump's influence in the Republican Party. So there was some thought that one of Carey's opponents might be able to reel in his lead. As it happened, none of them even got close.
But although Carey won by more than twenty points, he didn't have a majority. He won with 37.0% of the vote; his nearest rival, state lower house member Jeff LaRe, had 13.3% and another three exceeded ten per cent. Like most of the country, Ohio uses first-past-the-post, so the fact that more than 60% voted against the winner doesn't matter.
Which is, of course, pretty much how Trump won the presidency in the first place. During the 2016 primaries he never had majority support among Republicans, but he was the single most popular candidate in a big field. His rivals were unable to unite against him until it was much too late.
So it may be that each Ohio race was symbolic of where the two parties are. The Democrats are divided in a more or less binary fashion; the moderates have majority support, and will win provided they unite behind a single candidate (as they did last year with Joe Biden). The Republicans, on the other hand, are much messier; the Trumpists are not a majority, but they are the most powerful force because there is nothing to unify their opponents.
If the Democrats' progressives want to do better, they mostly need to work on convincing voters who are currently sceptical, not imagining that they already represent a majority that's being stifled by unfair rules. The anti-Trump Republicans need to do that as well, but more urgently they need to find unity among themselves.
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Q: Suppose that $X$ is an essentially bounded variable, $\mathbb{E}X=0$, prove that $\mathbb{E}e^X\leq\cosh \|X\|_\infty$. Problem:

Suppose that $X$ is an essentially bounded random variable, $\mathbb{E}X=0$, prove that $\mathbb{E}e^X\leq\cosh \|X\|_\infty$.

Here $X$ isn't necessarily a discrete or continuous r.v., but if we prove it for discrete and continuous r.v., can we get that it holds for all r.v.?
I tried to prove it using integral by parts, supposing that $X$ is continuous, but nothing was found...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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'The Operation in Syria – Putin's grandmaster move obliged the world to respect Russia' – This was the title of an interesting article in the Russian language.
One of the most important events of 2016 was the destruction of terrorists in Syria. Russia, at the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad, volunteered to help wend the war, and achieved great results in a short time. But there would not be any positive results, if not for one person – Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation made a complex, and fateful decision, a call on which the future of the Syrian Republic depended. Now, Syria's people and governemnt have a chance to begin again.
Russia has hardly been seen as a serious power since her fall in the 1990's, but she rose from the ashes of Syria like a phoenix, reminding the world that Russia is still a great power, and proving she will be a pillar of the multipolar world for years to come.
Yet two years later, Russia begin the destruction of ISIS which is now effectively complete, beginning her withdraw from Syria, and the whole world from the US, to the EU, to middle eastern countries like NATO-member Turkey understand that Russia is, in fact, a great power.
"Russia is not, as President Obama said, 'a regional power.' This was a big error in assessment," European Commission chief Juncker said.
Russia has shown, that while she does not want to "replace" the US as a superpower, she actually does not believe in a monopolar world where there is one superpower, preferring a multi-polar world similar to the Pre-World War era, where each great power has a sphere of influence that must be respected.
Russia has always been respectful to her western allies, but her actions in Syria have created facts on the ground, requiring those who dismissed her earlier to accept the reality of her position in the world.
The Russian article goes on to talk about how Russia has been given a vital opportunity to test military equipment in Syria, including hundreds of advanced cruise missiles, prior to the use of which, the whole world didn't realize such a capability and tactical employment in the way she did was possible. It is perhaps providential those statements above were made in 2014, because in the years between then and now, not only did Russia save Syria, but Crimea rejoined Russia.
It was like a return to the days of Catherine the Great, when Russia liberated all of what is now Ukraine and Crimea from the last remanent of the Mongol Hordes, the Crimean Tatar Khanate backed by the Ottoman Empire. Check out below the first Russian national anthem to Catherine the Great "Let the Thunder of Victory resound" with english subtitles over footage of Russia's cruise missiles.
The article goes on to discuss how Russia's actions in Syria have begrudgingly earned the respect of local middle eastern leaders like Erdogan, and the Saudi King who made his first official visit to Moscow. Even if they don't personally love Russia, her actions in Syria have created facts on the ground which are impossible to ignore.
ISIS got their behinds handed to them, courtesy of the Russian bear, and the world has noticed.
The US strategy has been…well…not successful, to put it politely. A US General admitted to the Senate that by 2015, and 500 million dollars later, they had only trained "about 4 or 5" "moderate" fighters against ISIS, as the Washington Post reports.
Putin said Russian servicemembers deserve credit, as they have "demonstrated the strength of our army and navy".
Above all, Putin's work has reaffirmed the eternal friendship between Syrians and Russians. It matters not what the world thinks about Syria. The Syrian people are the only ones whose opinon truly matters on events there, and they love Russia.
Perhaps the most significant geopolitical reality that has come out of the Syrian conflict, and the Ukrainian one for that matter, is how in some ways, the Deep State's plans backfired miserably.
If western powers wanted to see a diminished role for Russia in the middle east, by funding terrorists in Syria (Russia's middle east ally), then their plans achieved the reverse. Russian-Syrian resolve and cooperation are now stronger than ever before, not to mention other middle eastern powers have accepted Russia's role as an immovable geopolitical reality.
While the war has been disastrous for Syria, and Russians weep with her people, and help defend them and rebuild, from a purely military perspective, the war has strengthened the Russian military by providing them with crucial field testing of the skills they learned in training. Russia will take that crucial training back home, having proven much of her highly touted military might in real warfare.
If certain powers hated Russia so much, that they cynically plunged her brotherly nations like Syria and Ukraine (regarding the people, not the current state) into war, out of fear for her power, then their actions created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As a result of the western funding of terrorists in Syria, and support for a Nazi coup in Ukraine, Russia effectively gained a more permanent and powerful military presence in Syria (with Damascus's permission) and Crimea returned to Russia.
Russia of course deeply regrets these conflicts, but had the west never started them in the first place, Russia would have largely ignored the idea of an increased military presence in Syria, and certainly, there was no practical thought of Crimea rejoining Russia.
This is perhaps one of the cardinal areas western pundits misunderstand Russia, when they talk about her "behavior" as if the 1156-year-old superpower is a juvenile misbehaving – almost all of Russia's actions have been very moderate, conservative, and most important…reactive!
Russia did not actively seek to fight in Syria, and avoided it for sometime since the war began in 2011, seeing as she believes all states must be left to handle their own affairs without outside interference. Despite the fact that Ukraine and Russia have not merely a shared history, but literally come from the same source, and are intricately a part of each other's civilization to the point where it is not possible to speak of Russian civilization without mention Ukraine, even more so Ukrainian without Russian, Russia did not interfere in Ukraine.
Russia only became involved in the situations in these two states after the Deep State arrayed billions of dollars against the small states with a clear intent to actively harm Russia.
Russia may be an empire, in the sense of it being a powerful super-nation with many different cultures and languages united to one imperial Russian statehood and identity, but she has no interest in "nation building", an arrogant idea that one can create a nation, which takes centuries if not millennia of common cultural development.
Russia does share that common history with Ukraine, as all of their most ancient figures were the same, and they share the same origin myth. They were united as one nation (at times ruled in separate city-states) from 862 to 1362, when they were separated only to be reunited in 1652, and separated again amidst the World Wars of the 20th century, and again in the 1990s.
The Russian Orthodox religion, as well as Christianity, in general, began in Antioch, Syria, where according to the Bible (Acts: 11:26), Christians were first called 'Christians'. Syria was part of the Eastern Roman Empire which introduced Orthodoxy to Rus', when Saint Vladimir was baptized on the shores of Crimea.
Russia shares the most ancient of ties with Syria and Ukraine, dating back to her foundation. She will not interfere in anyone's affairs, but she will not sit by and watch as precious parts of her history are torn asunder. The events in Syria and Ukraine have proven – Russia defends her people.