text:
Q: Axes of Symmetry for a General Ellipse
Given a general ellipse
  $$Ax^2+Bxy+Cy^2+Dx+Ey+F=0$$
  where $B^2<4AC$, what are the major and minor axes of symmetry in the form $ax+by+c=0$?

It is possible of course to first work out the angle of rotation such that $xy,x,y$ terms disappear, in order to get an upright ellipse of the form $x^2/p^2+y^2/q^2=1$ and proceed from there. This may involve some messy trigonometric manipulations.
Could there be another approach perhaps, considering only quadratic/diophantine and linear equations?
Addendum
Here's a graphical implementation based on the answer by Ng Chung Tak.
Addendum 2
Based on the answers by amd and by Ng Chung Tak, the equations for the axes are

$$\color{red}{\left(y-\frac {2AE-BD}{B^2-4AC}\right)=\frac {C-A\pm \sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}B\left(x-\frac {2CD-BE}{B^2-4AC}\right)}$$

Note that
$$\frac{C-A\pm \sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}B\cdot \color{lightgrey}{\frac {C-A\mp\sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}{C-A\mp\sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}}=-\frac B{C-A\mp\sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}$$
i.e. it is equal to the negative of its own reciprocal. Hence the equations for the axes can also be written as

$$\color{red}{\left(x-\frac {2CD-BE}{B^2-4AC}\right)=-\frac {C-A\mp \sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}B\left(y-\frac {2AE-BD}{B^2-4AC}\right)}$$

hence the two symmetrical anti-symmetrical forms for the axes. Here's the graphical implementation.

A: Let $f(x,y)=Ax^2+Bxy+Cy^2+Dx+Ey+F$. This function represents a quadratic surface, specifically an elliptic paraboloid in our case of $B^2<4AC$. The level curves of this surface form a family of concentric ellipses. The center of this family coincides with an extremum of the surface, so we can find it by solving the equation $\nabla F=0$. This yields $$\mathbf p=\left({BE-2CD\over4AC-B^2},{BD-2AE\over4AC-B^2}\right)$$ for the center of the family of ellipses. Alternatively, one can look for a translation that makes the linear terms vanish, which leads to the same equations, but with a bit more work.
Translating the paraboloid clearly doesn't change its orientation, so we need examine only the quadratic part $Q(x,y)=Ax^2+Bxy+Cy^2$, which is unchanged by translations, to determine the directions of the principal axes. A fairly simple way to do this is to compute the eigenvectors of the matrix $\bigl(\begin{smallmatrix}A&B/2\\B/2&C\end{smallmatrix}\bigr)$ of this quadratic form. It's a symmetric real matrix, so its eigenspaces are orthogonal and correspond to the ellipses' axes: the minor axis to the eigenspace of the greater of the two eigenvalues, the major axis to that of the lesser. A bit of work produces the eigenvalues $$\frac12\left(A+C\pm\sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}\right)$$ with corresponding eigenvectors $$\left(A-C\pm\sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2},B\right).$$You can verify that these vectors are indeed orthogonal.
Another way to compute these direction vectors is to find the extrema of $Q$ restricted to the unit circle. As with the eigenvalues, the major axis will lie in the direction of the local minima, the minor axis in the direction of the maxima. This can be solved via Lagrange multipliers (you will find that they are equal to the eigenvalues of $Q$) or by pulling $Q$ back by $\phi:t\mapsto(\cos t,\sin t)$, though this last method might lead to "messy" trigonometric manipulations.
With the center of the ellipse and direction vectors of the axes in hand, it's a simple matter to construct the equations of the axis lines.

A: The principal axes are:
$$\left( y-\frac{2AE-BD}{B^2-4AC} \right)=
\frac{C-A \color{red}{\pm} \sqrt{(A-C)^2+B^2}}{B}
\left( x-\frac{2CD-BE}{B^2-4AC} \right)$$
Also refer to another answer.

A: Idea for solution using multivariable calculus:
(1) Find the max an min of the functions $H(x,y) = x$ , $V(x,y) = y$ with the restriction $Ax^2 + Bxy + Cy^2 + Dx + Ey + F = 0$ (easy with Lagrange multipliers). This gives a "bounding box" for the ellipse. The center of the box will be the center of the ellipse.
(2) Find the max and min distances of $(x,y)$ to the center of the ellipse with the restriction $Ax^2 + Bxy + Cy^2 + Dx + Ey + F = 0$.

A: The trigonometric manipulations are not messy.
After centering, the equation is, in polar coordinates,
$$\rho^2=-\frac{F'}{A\cos^2\theta+B\cos\theta\sin\theta+C\sin^2\theta}.$$
The denominator
$$A\cos^2\theta+B\cos\theta\sin\theta+C\sin^2\theta=\frac12\left((A-C)\cos\frac\theta2+B\sin\frac\theta2\right)$$ achieves its extrema when
$$(A-C)\sin\frac\theta2=B\cos\frac\theta2,$$ which is elementary.

Update:
Read $\color{green}{2\theta}$, not $\color{red}{\dfrac\theta2}$ !
$$A\cos^2\theta+B\cos\theta\sin\theta+C\sin^2\theta=\frac12\left((A-C)\cos2\theta+B\sin2\theta+(A+C)\right)$$
and
$$(A-C)\sin2\theta=B\cos2\theta.$$


text:
this.is.TOMKY's.
Bio Experience Research Publication [Recruit 徵才]
The PI's research philosophy is to conduct research that has theoretic foundation and impact on emerging social networking research and wireless network standards. In recent years, the PI focuses on network simulation platform, game theoretic model for wireless networks, and social learning framework for social networks. The aim of our research is to achieve both academic value and industrial impact.
Novel Learning-based Framework for Rational Sequential Decision Making in Wireless and Social Networks with Practical Applications
Traditionally, the network configuration and management problem are usually treated as optimization problems. The system status and resources are treated as constraints with all configurable parameters and actions of users as decision variables in a snapshot. This approach relies on assumptions that the status of the system is known and remains unchanged, and all decision variables can be controlled by the network managers or operators at the same time. These assumptions are impractical in real world networks where network status and users constantly change, and each user makes their decision on their own willingness, at different timing, with different amount of knowledge. The traditional snapshot approach will lead to poor performance in these networks. In this work, we aim to design general decision making frameworks to properly capture these new characteristics in order to improve the system performance and prediction accuracy.
We present Chinese Restaurant Game, a novel approach to analyze and manage the users in the networks in light of these observations. The users in the network are assumed to be rational and make decisions sequentially with asymmetric information. They learn the information from observed signals or actions, and response to the state changes to maximize their own utilities. We explore this new research direction under a series of game-theoretic frameworks. The frameworks can capture all settings we mentioned above, help us predict the decisions of users in the network, and provide management tools to regulate them to improve the performance. We also provide both in-depth theoretic analysis and share our experience in data-driven experimental results on various applications. This work has been documented in several top-tier journals:
[J1] Chih-Yu Wang, Yan Chen, K.J. Ray Liu, "Game-Theoretic Cross Social Media Analytic: How Yelp Ratings Affect Deal Selection on Groupon?," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, volume 30, number 5, pages 908-921, May 2018.
[J2] Chih-Yu Wang, Yan Chen, K.J. Ray Liu, "Hidden Chinese Restaurant Game: Grand Information Extraction for Stochastic Network Learning," IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks, volume 3, number 2, pages 330 - 345, June 2017.
[J3] Yan Chen, Chunxiao Jiang, Chih-Yu Wang, Yang Gao, K. J. Ray Liu,"Decision Learning: Data Analytic Learning with Strategic Decision Making," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, volume 33, number 1, pages 37-56, Jan. 2016.
[J4] Biling Zhang, Yan Chen, Chih-Yu Wang, K.J. Ray Liu,"A Chinese Restaurant Game for Learning and Decision Making in Cognitive Radio Networks," Computer Networks, volume 91, pages 117-134, Nov. 2015.
Cutting-Edge Research on D2D Communications in Fifth-Generation (5G) for Projected Commercial Launch of 5G in 2020
The development of fifth major generation (5G) mobile communication aims at not only just an improvement from 4G in terms of speed, but also a comprehensive solution for various new applications such as Internet of Thing, Tactile Internet, and other novel applications with very diverse and challenging requirements. Key techniques have been developed to achieve these technical goals. For instance, device-to-device (D2D) communications enables end devices to communicate with each other directly instead of relaying through base stations. This boosts up the transmission speed when the devices are in proximity. Nevertheless, the local transmission scheme also suggested that selfish users may overuse this technique like we have observed in Wi-Fi networks. In this work, we aim to propose Novel solutions to guarantee the overall system performance while prevent users from overuse the new techniques.
We developed several novel game theoretic solutions for D2D communication to achieve optimal system configuration with self-organized manners. Users will switch to D2D communication only if he is willing to pay a payment decided by the service provider. The payment serves as a regulation tool for the service provider to manage the demands of users. We discuss how the payment can be decided in order to achieve optimal system performance while preventing the users from overuse or underuse the D2D communications. The optimal configuration of D2D communications can be achieved with proper pricing strategy. The performance improvement is also verified with simulations. This work has been documented in top-tier journals:
[J5] Yi Zhang, Chih-Yu Wang, Hung-Yu Wei, "Incentive Compatible Overlay D2D System: A Group-Based Framework without CQI Feedback," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, volume 17, number 9, pages 2069-2086, Sep. 2018
[J6] Shih-Tang Su, Bo-Yuan Huang, Chih-Yu Wang, Che-Wei Yeh, Hung-Yu Wei, "Protocol Design and Game Theoretic Solutions for Device-to-Device Radio Resource Allocation," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, volume 66, number 5, pages 4271 - 4286, May 2017.
Cutting-Edge Research on Internet of Things in Fifth-Generation (5G) for Projected Commercial Launch of 5G in 2020
Internet of Things is expected to be the next killing application of 5G networks and the enabler of smart home/city, vehicle/industrial automations, e-health, etc. Nevertheless, most existing or currently developing IoT communication standards, including Narrow-Band IoT in 3GPP LTE-Advanced, are based on the assumption that IoT services only require low data rate transmission and therefore can be supported by limited resources such as narrow-band channels. This assumption rules out those IoT services with burst traffic, critical missions, and low latency requirements. We aim to propose a novel solution to break this limitation while compatible with existing or developing IoT protocols.
We propose to utilize idle devices in IoT networks to boost the transmission data rate for critical tasks through multiple concurrent transmissions. This approach virtually expands the existing narrow-band IoT protocols to break the bandwidth limitation in order to provide low latency services for critical tasks. We theoretically prove that the optimal relay configuration that minimizes the uploading latency in single source scenario can be derived by the proposed algorithms in polynomial time. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can reduce the latency of critical tasks up to 76% comparing with traditional approaches. This work has been documented in top-tier journal and conference:
[J7] Shang-Hong Hsu, Chi-Han Lin, Chih-Yu Wang, Wen-Tsuen Chen, "Breaking Bandwidth Limitation for Mission-Critical IoTs using Semi-Sequential Multiple Relays," IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IF:5.863), accepted (DOI:10.1109/JIOT.2017.2776403)
[C1] Shang-Hong Hsu, Chih-Han Lin, Chih-Yu Wang, W. T. Chen, "Minimizing Upload Latency for Critical Tasks in Cellular-based IoT Networks using Multiple Relays," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Paris, France, May 2017.
Industrial Collaboration with Oath Taiwan on E-commerce Query Forecasting System
Search has been a critical function in e-commerce websites as it serves as one of the main entry points leading to shopping transactions. Nevertheless, performing search function is costly to a large e-commerce website. An unoptimized search function may generate poor results to mislead the customer, and therefore increases the length of the search session or even loses this transaction. Thus, it is important to optimize the search function in order to provide smooth search experience and meaningful results so customers can find the product in the process with minimum cost to the website. Our technical goals in this collaboration are two folds: 1) predicting the subsequent queries and final queries given the current profile of the customer and early queries, and 2) identifying critical queries at the early stage of a search session and redirect the users to these queries as early as possible.
We establish a Query Forecasting System which not only predicts the subsequent queries based on the initial queries and but also provides an adjustment function to estimate the impact of the query results and refine the suggestions according to the goal of the e-commerce vendor. With the collaboration with Oath (Yahoo!) Taiwan, we collect and analyze the e-commerce search history of Yahoo users. The amount of daily search queries is in millions on average, generated by around a million of active users. We also validate our assumptions and perform experiments on real e-commerce search system. The developed techniques in this work have been progressively transferred to Oath Taiwan and are deployed in production.
Chih-Yu Wang @ SNAClab © 2015
cywang@citi.sinica.edu.tw
tomkywang
tomky
tomky_wang
Goal: find things worthy, get things going, keep things working.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Auto Shows/Museums
2014 Toyota Tundra: Spacious new workhorse
Weekly Driver News Service | November 10, 2013 August 14, 2013 | Car Reviews, Featured, Toyota
Redesigned for the first time in seven years, the 2014 Toyota Tundra features an integrated hood, tightened surfaces and new overall lines to further enhance the full-size pick-up's pulling power and wide stance.
The 2014 Tundra will be offered in a new five-grade strategy: the hard-working SR, volume-leading SR5, the well-appointed Limited, and two premium grades: Platinum and "1794 Edition." Three cab styles, two-door Regular Cab, four-door Double Cab and four-door CrewMax, all available in 4×2 and 4×4. Each grade is well-equipped with key standard features.
Showcased at a recent regional media gathering at Cle Elum, Wa., the 2014 Toyota Tundra lineup will range from $25,920 for the SR grade 4×2 Regular Cab, 4.0-liter V6 to $47,320 for the Platinum and 1794 Edition CrewMax 4×4 grades equipped with a 5.7-liter V8.
The newly redesigned 2014 Toyota Tundra. Images © James Raia/2013
Based on comparisons between the new grade strategy for 2014 models and 2013 models with comparable equipment levels, the MSRP's reflect an overall average decrease of $263, or 0.7 percent.
The 2014 Toyota Tundra has been redesigned.
New sleek lines for the 2014 Toyota Tundra.
The newly redesigned 2014 Toyota Tundra.
The Weekly Driver drove the CrewMax 4×4 Limited for a 30-minute test through several small Northwest cities and compiled a brief, quick list of observations:
Superior interior space, particularly the rear seat where's plenty of room for three adults.
Big truck, small turning radius.
Big truck, drives smaller (it's a compliment).
Smooth, carlike ride.
Small navigation screen for a large truck.
The Entune technology system includes the app for Yelp, the small business review. Yelp? It just seems like a bad idea.
The Tundra has a huge amount of power, but it's not that aggressively quick.
The 2014 Tundra is the only full-size pickup with available Blind Spot Monitor with RearCross Traffic Alert (available on Limited CrewMax, Platinum and 1794 Edition only). All Tundra models feature the standard Toyota Star Safety System™ that includes
Vehicle Stability Control (VSC), Traction Control (TRAC), an Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Brake-force Distribution (EBD), Brake Assist (BA), and Smart Stop (SST) brake override technology.
The front lower bumpers are now a three-piece design, allowing for lower replacement costs. In addition, the fenders and wheel wells have been squared-off for a wide and sturdy stance. A new exterior design helps carry the chiseled character lines all the way down the profile, leading to a rugged new bed and tail gate, with an integrated spoiler and "TUNDRA" embossed into the sheet metal, creating a one-piece forged look. Like the front bumper, the rear bumper changes from one piece to three, for lower replacement costs.
A 4.0-liter Dual Overhead Cam (DOHC) V6 is standard on Tundra Regular and Double Cab SR models and produces 270 horsepower at 5,600 rpm and 278 foot-pounds of peak torque at 4,400 rpm. It is paired with a five-speed automatic transmission with uphill/downhill shift logic. The 4.6-liter, DOHC i-Force V8 offers 310 horsepower at 5,600 rpm and 327 foot-pounds of peak torque at 3,400rpm.
Source: Toyota Motor Corporation.
Find Auto Insurance As Low As $63/mo - Search Quotes Now!
Barrett-Jackson Joins the Party at Hot August Nights
Best Used Car Reviews: 2006 Honda Civic Si
Shop with Amazon
Search for auto insurance as low as $63/mo.
Enter your zip code to start.
Next car trend? Michelin, GM, Goodyear making airless tires
#21, West Sacramento dump truck company helps Paradise cleanup (video)
#94, West Sacramento truck company helps Paradise Fire cleanup
2019 Honda Insight comes of age as handsome four-door hybrid
2019 Maserati Levante growls Italian but luxury SUV misfires
2019 Lexus LS 500 commands the open road in style
Bugatti debuts most costly new car; sold for $18.9 million
#76, Alex Guberman, YouTube electric vehicle maverick
#6, The Weekly Driver Podcast (video): All-Electric Rivian examined
© 2019 The Weekly Driver


a. Go into Settings… Brightness and turn down the screen brightness as low as you can stand it – I usually do 35-40% with Auto turned ON (saves a bit more juice). Manually adjust when needed.
b. Go into Settings… General and turn Auto-Lock down to the quickest you can stand. 1-minute is good.
c. Use the lock button! This key is in the upper right corner of the iPhone or iPad – it locks the screen and turns off the screen immediately. Use this every time you're done with the phone, and even during a call if you use a headset – screen off = good. iPads will keep playing music while the screen is off.
a. Turn off BlueTooth when not in use. If you aren't going to pair your iDevice with something over Bluetooth, turn it off! Even if it's periodic, only turn it on when you're using it. Go into Settings… General… Bluetooth and turn it off when not in use. Use a wired headset and you can avoid Bluetooth.
b. Turn off 3G data if speed isn't vital. This is a big one: using 2G mode instead of 3G mode doubles your talk time. Really. Go into Settings… General… Network and turn "Enable 3G" OFF. If you're a light data user, you won't notice much of a difference. 4G models of iDevices (like the New iPad) have a setting to disable 4G and just use 3G, but there's not enough data out yet to justify this.
c. Airplane Mode is your friend. Don't want to get calls/texts while you sleep? Turn on Airplane Mode and it will shut down all radios – it's at the top of Settings. You can still use wi-fi in this mode, if you want. If your device is Jailbroken, you can use "iPhoneTool" from Cydia to do this automatically at preset times.
d. Wi-Fi is better than 3G. This is counter-intuitive, but the wi-fi chip actually uses less power than the 3G chip. Hook into wi-fi wherever you can, and 3G will switch to it automatically. TIP: If you use Siri on an iPhone 4S, it will be faster on wi-fi.
e. Turn off Wi-Fi when not in use. Go into Settings, Wi-Fi and turn it OFF if you're not going to be around a trusted wi-fi source for a while, or if you don't need data for a while. This keeps it from constantly searching for hotspots.
f. Turn off Location Services when not in use. If you don't lose your phone (or yourself) much, you can turn off the GPS radio and save a bit of juice. This is under Settings.
3. Turn off or adjust Background Services. This is the silent killer, so it's vital you change these settings.
Email Push / Fetch: Most of us are not important enough to need absolutely real-time message delivery. If you are – congratulations! But if you're like the rest of us, periodic "fetching" is fine, as opposed to being constantly connected to online services, waiting for it to be "pushed" to you. This uses the radio constantly, and thus your battery. This applies to email, not texts.
Go into Settings… Mail, Contacts, Calendars… Fetch New Data. Turn Push OFF, then set Fetch to the longest interval you can live with. 15 Minutes or 30 minutes means data will activate, fetch your stuff, then turn back off during those intervals. If you only need email to be refreshed when you open Mail, then set this to Manually.
Then go into Advanced from there and set every service to Fetch. This is my recommended setting for everything in iOS 5, because it allows background syncing.
4. What about charging? Your built-in lithium-ion battery will last longer if you charge it properly. Tips from LifeHacker (where the picture above comes from) on this can be found here, but the short answer is: Don't let it discharge to 0% every time, don't keep it plugged in and charging past 100% for long periods (days), and keep it cool.


text:
HYDE + FUTURE FIRES + THE CLINKS + THE RA PROJECT
Location: The Sunflower Lounge
£6adv
Formed in 2018, HYDE are a 4 piece indie rock band comprised of Lewis P, Tom and brothers Lewis M and Joel. Here to give you a catchy tune or two to see you through.
HYDE Links: SoundCloud | Facebook
"Guitars, bags of attitude and dancey undercurrents galore" – Medium Magazine
Future Fires are a four-piece rock band from Birmingham, UK. Inspired by Birmingham indie giants such as Editors and the rough-and-ready rock of Royal Blood and The White Stripes, Future Fires combine signature thumping guitar riffs with singalong choruses.
Forming in 2017 the band shot to early success with a high-profile slot on the main stage at Coventry's Godiva Festival alongside The Amazons and Carl Barat and the Brummie boyshave been going from strength to strength ever since, getting involved with the West Midlands' growing independent music scene playing alongside Ivory Wave, The Clause and Candid.
"Bound to cause scenes at a summer festival" – Counteract
Their debut release, 'Far' garnered local media attention and widespread radio play, including airing on BBC Introducing, and propelled the band on a series of headline and support slots across the country. Performances at venues such as The Sunflower Lounge and Zigfrid Von Underbelly soon led to support slots for The Pale White, Bang Bang Romeo and Oddity Road as part of their tours.
"The kind of band you'd really enjoy live" – BBC Introducing
Comprised of front-man Adam Norman, guitarist John Bidder, bassist Matt Levesley and drummer Alex Cowie, Future Fires are currently gigging across the country in support of their latest releases.
Future Fires Links: Facebook | Twitter | Spotify
The Clinks are a 4-piece pop band formed in the Midlands. From meeting at university in September
2017, the band have been writing songs and performing throughout their time together. They have released three singles along with music videos to accompany these and it has resulted in very positive comments from fans.
The Clinks have gone from strength to strength after winning the Derby Battle of the Bands as well as playing local iconic venues and festivals such as, The Flapper, O2 Academy Birmingham, Lunar Festival and more.
Their latest single, Want You Bad, has had very positive reviews with it reaching over 7,000 streams on Spotify. This has had airplay multiple times on radio stations such as BBC and Hillz FM.
The Clinks Links: Website | Facebook | Spotify
The Ra Project is an experimental group with influences from The Velvet Underground and The Doors.
The Ra Project Links: Facebook | Instagram
https://thesunflowerlounge.seetickets.com/venue/the-sunflower-lounge-birmingham/2739/list
http://thesunflowerlounge.com/events/
Age Limits: 18+


text:
\section{Introduction}\label{sec:introduction}
Topic models \cite{Blei2003} are a popular method for organizing and interpreting large document collections by grouping documents into various thematic subjects (e.g. sports, politics or lifestyle) called topics. Topics are multinomial distributions over a predefined vocabulary whereas documents are represented as probability distributions over topics. Topic models have proven to be an elegant way to build exploratory interfaces (i.e. topic browsers) for visualizing document collections by presenting to the users lists of topics \cite{Chaney2012,Snyder2013,Smith2014} where they select documents of a particular topic of interest.

A topic is traditionally represented by a list of $t$ terms with the highest probability. In recent works, short phrases \cite{Lau2011,Aletras2014a}, images \cite{Aletras2013a} or summaries \cite{summariesACL16} have been used as alternatives. Particularly, images offer a language independent representation of the topic which can also be complementary to textual labels. The visual representation of a topic has been shown to be as effective as the textual labels on retrieving information using a topic browser while it can be understood quickly by the users \cite{Aletras2014b,Aletras2015}. The task of labeling topics consists of two main components: (1) a candidate generation component where candidate labels are obtained for a given topic (usually using information retrieval techniques and knowledge bases \cite{Lau2011,Aletras2013a}), and (2) a ranking (or label selection) component that scores the candidates according to their relevance to the topic. In the case of labeling topics with images the candidate labels consist of images.

The method presented by \cite{Aletras2013a} generates a graph where the candidate images are its nodes. The edges are weighted with a similarity score between the images that connect. Then, an image is selected by re-ranking the candidates using PageRank. The method is iterative and has a runtime complexity of $O(n^2)$ which makes it infeasible to run over large number of images. Hence, for efficiency the candidate images are selected a priori using an information retrieval engine. Thus the scope of this method gets limited to solving a \emph{local problem} of re-ordering a small set of candidate images for a given topic. Furthermore, its accuracy is limited by the recall of the information retrieval engine. Finally, if new candidates appear, they should be added to the graph, the process of computing pairwise similarities and re-ranking of nodes is repeated.

In this work, we present a more generic method that directly estimates the appropriateness of any arbitrary pair of topic and image. We refer to this method as a \emph{global method} to differentiate it from the localized approach described above. We utilize a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to estimate the suitability of an image for labeling a given topic. DNNs have proven to be effective in various IR and NLP tasks \cite{Collobert2008,Socher2011}. They combine multiple layers that perform non-linear transformations to the data allowing the automatic learning of high-level abstractions.
At runtime our method computes dot products between various features and the model weights to obtain the relevance score, that gives it an order complexity of $O(n)$. Hence, it is suitable for using it over large image sources such as Flickr\footnote{\url{http://www.flickr.com}}, Getty\footnote{\url{http://www.gettyimages.co.uk}} or ImageNet \cite{deng2009}. The proposed model obtains state-of-the-art results for labeling completely unseen topics with images compared to previous methods and strong baselines.

\section{Model}\label{sec:model}

For a topic $T$ and an image $I$, we want to compute a real value $s \in \mathbb{R}$ that denotes how good the image $I$ is for representing the topic $T$. $T$ consists of ten terms ($t$) with the highest probability for the topic. We denote the visual information of the image as $V$. The image is also associated with text in its caption, $C$.

For the topic $T = \{t_1, t_2,...,t_{10}\}$ and the image caption $C = \{c_1, c_2,...,c_{n}\}$, each term is transformed into a vector $\mathbf{x} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ where $d$ is the dimensionality of the distributed semantic space. We use pre-computed dependency-based word embeddings \cite{Levy2014} whose $d$ is 300. The resulting representations of $T$ and $C$ are the mean vectors of their constituent words, $\mathbf{x_t}$ and $\mathbf{x_c}$ respectively.

The visual information from the image $V$ is converted into a dense vectorized representation, $\mathbf{x_v}$. That is the output of the publicly available 16-layer VGG-net \cite{simonyan2014} trained over the ImageNet dataset \cite{deng2009}. VGG-net provides a 1000 dimensional vector which is the soft-max classification output of ImageNet classes.

The input to the network is the concatenation of topic, caption and visual vectors. i.e.,
\begin{equation} \label{eq1}
X = [x_t || x_c || x_v]
\end{equation}
This results in a 1600-dimensional input vector.

Then, $X$ is passed through a series of four hidden layers, $H_1,...,H_4$. In this way the network learns a combined representation of topics and images and the non-linear relationships that they share.
\begin{equation} \label{eq2}
h_i = g(W_i^Th_{i-1})
\end{equation}
where $g$ is the rectified linear unit (ReLU) and $h_0 = X$. The output of each hidden layer is regularized using dropout \cite{srivastava2014}. The output size of $H_1, H_2, H_3$ and $H_4$ are set to 256, 128, 64 and 32 nodes respectively.

The output layer of the network maps the input to a real value $s \in \mathbb{R}$ that denotes how good the image $I$ is for the topic $T$. The network is trained by minimizing the mean absolute error:
\begin{equation} \label{eq3}
error = \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\left | W_o^Th_4 - s_g \right |
\end{equation}
where $s_g$ is the ground-truth relevance value. The network is optimized using a standard mini-batch gradient descent method with RMSProp adaptive learning rate algorithm \cite{tieleman2012}.

\section{Experimental Setup}\label{sec:evaluation}

We evaluate our model on the publicly available data set provided by \cite{Aletras2013a}. It consists of 300 topics generated using Wikipedia articles and news articles taken from the New York Times. Each topic is represented by ten terms with the highest probability. They are also associated with 20 candidate image labels and their human ratings between 0 (lowest) and 3 (highest) denoting the appropriateness of these images for the topic. That results into a total of 6K images and their associated textual metadata which are considered as captions. The task is to choose the image with the highest rating from the set of the 20 candidates for a given topic.

The 20 candidate image labels per topic are collected by \cite{Aletras2013a} using an information retrieval engine (Google). Hence most of them are expected to be relevant to the topic. This jeopardizes the training of our supervised model due to the lack of sufficient negative examples. To address this issue we generate extra negative examples. For each topic we sample
another 20 images from random topics in the training set and assign them a relevance score of 0. These extra images are added into the training data.

Our evaluation follows prior work \cite{Lau2011,Aletras2013a} using two metrics.  The \textbf{Top-1 average rating} is the average human rating assigned to the top-ranked label proposed by the topic labeling method. This metric provides an indication of the overall quality of the label selected and takes values from 0 (irrelevant) to 3 (relevant). The normalized discounted cumulative gain (\textbf{nDCG}) compares the label ranking proposed by the labeling method to the gold-standard ranking provided by the human annotators \cite{Jarvelin2002,Croft2009}.

We set the dropout value to 0.2 which randomly sets 20\% of the input units to 0 at each update during the training time. We train the model in a 5-fold cross-validation for 30 epochs and set the batch size for training data to 16. In each fold, data from 240 topics are used for training which results into 9,600 examples (20 original, 20 negative candidates per topic). The rest completely unseen 60 topics are used for testing which results into 1,200 test examples (note that we do not add negative examples in the test data).

\section{Results and Discussion}\label{sec:results}

\begin{table*}[!t]
\footnotesize
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.0}
\begin{center}
    \begin{tabular}{|l|c|c|c|c|}
    \hline
	\textbf{Model}&\textbf{Top-1 aver. rating}&\textbf{nDCG-1}&\textbf{nDCG-3}&\textbf{nDCG-5}   \\
	\hline
    Global PPR \cite{Aletras2013a}	&1.89						&0.71	&0.74	&0.75	\\
    Local PPR \cite{Aletras2013a} 	&2.00						&0.74	&0.75	&0.76  	\\
    WSABIE \cite{Weston2010}		&1.87						&0.65	&0.68	&0.70	\\
    LR (Topic+Caption+VGG) 			&1.91						&0.71	&0.74	&0.75	\\
    SVM (Topic+Caption+VGG) 		&1.94						&0.72	&0.75	&0.76	\\
    \hline
    DNN (Topic+Caption)				&1.94						&0.73	&0.75	&0.76	\\
    DNN (Topic+VGG)					&$2.04^{\ddagger\ast}$		&0.76	&0.79	&0.80	\\
    DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG)		&$\mathbf{2.12}^{\dagger\ddagger\ast}$	&$\mathbf{0.79}$	&$\mathbf{0.80}$	&$\mathbf{0.81}$	\\
    \hline
    Human Perf. \cite{Aletras2013a}			&2.24						&-	&-	&-	\\
    \hline
    \end{tabular}
\caption{Results obtained for the various topic labeling methods. $\dagger$, $\ddagger$ and $\ast$ denote statistically significant difference to Local PPR, Global PRR and WSABIE respectively (paired t-test, $p<0.01$).}\label{table:results}
\end{center}
\end{table*}

We compare our approach to the state-of-the-art method that uses Personalized PageRank \cite{Aletras2013a} to re-rank image candidates ({\bf Local PPR}) and an adapted version that computes the PageRank scores of all the available images in the test set ({\bf Global PPR}). We also test other baselines methods: (1) a relevant approach originally proposed for image annotation that learns a joint model of text and image features ({\bf WSABIE}) \cite{Weston2010}, (2) linear regression and SVM models that use the concatenation of the topic, the caption and the image vectors as input, {\bf LR (Topic+Caption+VGG)} and {\bf SVM (Topic+Caption+VGG)} respectively. Finally, we test two versions of our own DNN using only either the caption ({\bf DNN (Topic+Caption)}) or the visual information of the image ({\bf DNN (Topic+VGG)}).

Table~\ref{table:results} shows the Top-1 average and nDCG scores obtained. First, we observe that the DNN methods perform better for both the evaluation metrics compared to the baseline methods. They achieve a Top-1 average rating between 1.94 and 2.12 better than the Global PPR, Local PPR, WSABIE, LR and SVM baselines. Specifically, the DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG) method significantly outperforms these models (paired t-test, $p<0.01$). This demonstrates that our simple DNN model captures high-level associations between topics and images. We should also highlight that the network has not seen either the topic or the image during training which is important for a generic model. In the WSABIE model, linear mappings are learned between the text and visual features. This restricts their effectiveness to capture non-linear similarities between the two modalities.

The DNN (Topic+Caption) model that uses only textual information, obtains a Top-1 Average performance of 1.94. Incorporating visual information (VGG) improves it to 2.12 (DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG)). An interesting finding is that using only the visual information (DNN (Topic+VGG)) achieves better results (2.04) compared to using only text. This demonstrates that images contain less noisy information compared to their captions for this particular task.

The DNN models also provide a better ranking for the image candidates. The nDCG scores for the majority of the DNN methods are higher than the other methods. DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG) consistently obtains the best nDCG scores, 0.79, 0.80 and 0.81 respectively.
Figure~\ref{fig:qualitative} shows two topics and the top-3 images selected by the DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG) model from the candidate set. The labels selected for the topic \#288 are all very relevant to a \emph{Surgical operation}. On the other hand, the images selected for topic \#99 are irrelevant to \emph{Wedding photography}. For this topic the candidate set of labels do not contain any relevant images.

\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\scriptsize{Topic \#288: surgery, body, medical, medicine, surgical, blood, organ, transplant, health, patient}\\
\subfloat[][\emph{3.0}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{288_7.JPG}} \quad
\subfloat[][\emph{2.8}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{288_2.jpg}} \quad
\subfloat[][\emph{2.9}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{288_0.JPEG}} \\
\scriptsize{Topic \#99: wedding, camera, bride, photographer, rachel, lens, sarah, couple, guest, shot}\\
\subfloat[][\emph{0.4}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{99_18.jpg}} \quad
\subfloat[][\emph{0.8}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{99_14.jpg}} \quad
\subfloat[][\emph{0.8}]
{\includegraphics[width=2cm,height=2cm]{99_1.jpg}} \\
\caption{A good and a bad example of topics and the top-3 images (left-to-right) selected by the DNN (Topic+Caption+VGG) model from the candidate set. Subcaptions denote average human ratings.}
\label{fig:qualitative}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusion}\label{sec:conclusion}
We presented a deep neural network that jointly models textual and visual information for the task of topic labeling with images. Our model is generic and works for any unseen pair of topic and image. Our evaluation results show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art method \cite{Aletras2013a} and a relevant method originally utilized for image annotation \cite{Weston2010}.

\bibliographystyle{splncs03}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


These eight artists and all who entered will be honored at the luncheon and reception on Monday May 21st at 12:30 before the regularly scheduled CVWG meeting. The luncheon is for all members not just those who entered, and is in lieu of the usual social hour.
Please be sure to stop by the Courthouse to see the show and all the beautiful art our members are creating. Also tell all your friends about it!
Congrats to all the winners. As I helped hang the show, I saw many wonderful paintings so I know the judge had a hard time deciding on the winning paintings.
This entry was posted on May 3, 2018 by miatomaine in Shows.


text:
Down by the Riverside (flex)
H. T. Burleigh
Steve Danyew
Traditional, arr. Harry Thacker Burleigh; adapt. Steve Danyew
The work is part of the suite Three Spirituals, arranged by Burleigh and adapted by Danyew.
2 Instrumentation (Flexible)
5 Performance Notes
Year: 1922 / 2020
Difficulty: IV (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Piano and voice
Publisher: Steve Danyew
Cost: Score and Parts (digital) - $29.00
Instrumentation (Flexible)
C Treble Part
C Bass Part
C Alto Clef Part
B-flat Treble Clef Part
B-flat Soprano Clarinet
B-flat Bass Clarinet
B-flat Trumpet
E-flat Treble Clef Part
F Treble Clef Part
Horn in F
Down by the Riverside (also known as Ain't Gonna Study War No More and Gonna lay down my burden) is a Negro spiritual. Its roots date back to before the American Civil War, though it was first published in 1918 in Plantation Melodies: A Collection of Modern, Popular and Old-time Negro-Songs of the Southland, Chicago, the Rodeheaver Company.
The song was first recorded by the Fisk University jubilee quartet in 1920 (published by Columbia in 1922), and there are at least 14 black gospel recordings before World War II.
Because of its pacifistic imagery, Down by the Riverside has also been used as an anti-war protest song, especially during the Vietnam War. The song is also included in collections of socialist and labor songs.
- Program Note from Wikipedia
Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) was a vocalist and composer who among many other things, created stirring arrangements of African-American spirituals. Three of the spirituals he arranged are included in this collection.
Burleigh's spiritual arrangements are scored for voice and piano. I adapted these arrangements for eight-part flexible instrumentation. I tried to retain as much of Burleigh's harmony as possible, as the harmonic choices he made throughout the arrangements are truly rich and captivating. I did alter some of his harmonies and rhythms and added a few new sections, but I tried to be as faithful to Burleigh's arrangements as possible
- Program Note by adapter
Performance Notes
I recommend playing each line in the register notated in the conductor score. (You'll notice that the parts for players have certain lines displaced by 1 or 2 octaves to fit within that part's clef). In other words, bass-clef lines should be played by bass-clef instruments. I understand there may be cases where you need to play a line up or down an octave, and that's fine. Obviously, if you have only cellos or only clarinets and trumpets, you will need to deviate from the recommendations provided. The instrumentation lists will be particularly useful if you have a group of instruments spanning a wide range (bass to treble).
Specific percussion parts are not included. However percussionists could play any of the parts on mallet instruments. Also, percussionists could contribute to the "groove" by improvising parts on instruments such as drum set, tambourine, and others.)
I included a sample written solo that can be played in place of an improvised solo. I find the F major pentatonic scale (F, G, A, C, D) works well in this setting.
Audio: Reference recording. MIDI realization
Rowan University (Glassboro, N.J.) Symphonic Band (Joseph Higgins, conductor) - 4 March 2021
Canon Fanfare (Flex instrumentation) (2021)
The Lost City of Tryon (Flex instrumentation) (2021)
Three Fugues by J.S. Bach (Flex instrumentation) (as arranger) (1722/2020)
Fugue No. 2 (Flex instrumentation) (as arranger) (1722/2020)
Fugue No. 16 (Flex instrumentation) (as arranger) (1722/2020)
Three Spirituals (Flex instrumentation) (as arranger) (1722/2020)
Down by the Riverside (Flex instrumentation) (as adapter; arr. Burleigh) (1922/2020)
Deep River (Flex instrumentation) (as adapter; arr. Burleigh) (1917/2020)
I Want to Be Ready (Flex instrumentation) (as adapter; arr. Burleigh) (1917/2020)
Three Tallis Melodies (Adaptable Band) (as arranger) (2020)
Adagietto (2014)
Alcott Songs (2015)
Amazing Grace (2020)
Distant Moons
Entrata (2019)
Festival Music (2020)
Goodnight, Goodnight (2010)
Green Diamond (2018)
An Hour of Hallowed Peace (2016/2019)
Into the Silent Land (2018)
Lamentation for Euphonium and Wind Ensemble (2019)
Lauda (2009)
Magnolia Star (2012)
Montis Dei. See: Lauda
Mountainscape (2012)
The Star-Spangled Banner (as arranger) (1814/2011)
This World Alive (2013)
Three Scenes from Home (2017)
Third Mode Melody (2020)
Vermont State Fair (2015)
Winter Song (2018)
Creative Repertoire Initiative
Down by the Riverside, Wikipedia. Accessed 18 September 2020
"H.T. Burleigh (1866-1949)." Library of Congress. Web. Accessed 18 September 2020
Steve Danyew website Accessed 18 September 2020
Retrieved from "https://www.windrep.org/index.php?title=Down_by_the_Riverside_(flex)&oldid=274315"
Full Flex


text:
State Education Advocacy Leaders (SEAL)
The SEALs network exists to enhance and perpetuate the advocacy, leadership, and clinical management skills of school-based ASHA members at the state and local levels to influence administrative and public policy decisions that affect the delivery of speech-language pathology and audiology services in school settings.
Miranda McCarthy-Grice, MSP, CCC-SLP
State Advocates for Medicare Policy (StAMPs) Network
ASHA's State Advocates for Medicare Policy (StAMP) network enhances and perpetuates the advocacy, leadership, and communication of ASHA members at the state level to influence administrative and public policy decisions that impact the Medicare coverage, reimbursement, and delivery of speech-language pathology services and audiology services.
Amber Heape, ClinScD, CCC-SLP
State Advocates for Reimbursement (STARs)
The State Advocates for Reimbursement (STARs) are ASHA-member audiologists and speech-language pathologists who advocate locally with legislators, state insurance commissioners, health plans, unions, and employers on matters related to Medicaid and private health plan reimbursement.
Andrea Lary, MS, CCC-SLP
[email protected]m
South Carolina ASHA Advisory Council Member
The Speech-Language Pathology Advisory Council is charged with identifying, discussing and ranking issues of concern to members and advising the Board of Directors on issues for consideration as the Association engages in strategic or forward thinking.
Each Advisory Council comprises 54 members—one from each state, the District of Columbia, International constituency, U.S. Territories and NSSLHA. Members of the Advisory Councils are elected by ASHA members in their state and profession.
Regina Lemmon-Bush, Ph.D, CCC-SLP


Nov. 28, 2018, 5 p.m.
Come celebrate a very successful year for our local Salesforce Wellington Ohana - our #SFWelly community group has gone from strength to strength this year, with frequent well-attended meetings hosted around the CBD. Thank you for your support...it has been a privilege to see this group grow from strength to strength.
For our final get-together for 2018, join us at The Green Man, from 5pm, Wed 28th Nov.
This will be an informal gathering, mostly aimed at networking, so we will keep the speeches short!
As Salesforce is big on Philanthropy and giving back to the community, my request is that you somehow Pay it Forward...I will have a collection box on the night. Any contribution would be welcomed, whether it is a cash or food donation, an Xmas gift for a local child, or even in the form of written thanks for someone in the Salesforce Ohana, or an offer to mentor / support someone starting in the Salesforce world.
Cash, food and gift donations will go to Wellington Women's Refuge.
If you have issues registering please email Anna.Loughnan@trailblazercgl.com to be manually added.


NPL has world-class capability in the accurate production and analysis of gas reference materials to support a wide range of applications. In particular, we provide the underpinning measurement infrastructure, via reference materials and state-of-the-art calibration techniques with unprecedented uncertainties.
Our research has a direct impact on a range of major UK sectors, including: atmospheric monitoring (in particular, greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds); air quality; advanced manufacturing; natural gas trading; hydrocarbon fuel refining; hydrogen fuel quality; vehicle emission monitoring; and breath alcohol legislation.
We use the latest techniques in gas and particle research to accurately inform industry and policy-makers on air quality, so we know exactly what we are exposed to.
We offer a range of accredited services for monitoring gases and particles. We identify impurities in hydrogen for use in cars and also monitor air quality to ensure it is safe to breathe, in both indoor and outdoor environments, including submarines.
Our people are leaders in their fields. Take a look at our gas and particle measurement team.


text:
Q: What would break if there was an option to make undefined not convert to any other type in JavaScript? The biggest issue I run into in JavaScript is silent typos. For example, the other day I had a variable inIframe. Somewhere else I typed isIFrame. 10-15 mins of debugging later I found it and changed it to inIFrame. It was yet another 5+ mins until I figured out it was still wrong. Should have been lowercase f.
That got me wondering. What would happen if there qas the option to make undefined not convert to any other type? So for example
var a;
var b = a + 1;  // currently will become NaN.

What if I could go
"using strict undefined";
var a;
var b = a + 1;  // throws because undefine does not convert to number

Many things would still work
function foo(options) {
  var value = options.value || 27; // the default is 27?

Or maybe that's a conversion to bool and would be disallowed? You'd have to do
function foo(options) {
  var value = options.value !== undefined ? options.value : 27;

I love that JavaScript is free-form but I hate every time I spent 15-30 minutes tracking down typos.
Are there things that would just totally no longer work that I'm missing and that would now be super cumbersome? Of course like shown above it would be opt-in just like "use strict" is now, so using it wouldn't break existing code.
Maybe this particular idea wouldn't solve that many issues. Is there some way to keep most of the flexibility but lower the chances for errors? Maybe something that could be proposed to standards bodies?

To be clearer as an opt in feature the suggestion wouldn't break any existing code. The question is rather would it break the language itself. Would it make some part of the language impossible to use. A quick glance seems like no it wouldn't. Certain things you'd have to do differently. If undefined does not convert then
"use strict undefined";
var obj = {};
console.log(obj.c);  // Throws, can't convert undefined to string

would throw. But you could easily write
console.log(JSON.stringify(obj));

If want to see all of it or
console.log((obj.c === undefined ? "not defined" : obj.c);

or even
function unToStr(a) {
   return a === undefined "**not defined**" : a;
}

console.log(unToStr(obj.c));

I'm not really concerned with that because that's not breaking the language. It's just requiring a little more care (about the same amount of care as say python)
I like JavaScript quite a bit but I hate when I spent 45 minutes tracking down a math bug only to find that a tiny typo has introduced NaN somewhere.
Another way to phrase this question is could this feature be introduced in ES8 or is there something about it that's fundamentally incompatible with JavaScript as a language?

A: There are two possible cases where such typo could be an issue:
Names of variables
Such as in:
var inIframe = ...
...
console.log(isIFrame); // Throws `ReferenceError: isIFrame is not defined`

The fact that you discover the mistake at run time can eventually be disturbing. The case is straightforward if the declaration of a variable and the use of it wrongly typed are close to each other, but could be much more problematic if the typo is buried inside conditional statements, loops and functions.
The fact is that in JavaScript, it's perfectly legal to use variables without declaring them first:
a = 5; // See, no `var` here.
console.log(a);

But the fact that the current JavaScript interpreter doesn't check that a variable was declared before being used really doesn't matter that much: such typos are very easy to avoid by using linters.
JavaScript has a great linter tool jslint written by Douglas Crockford. The following code:
/*jslint browser: true, devel: true*/

var a = function () {
    'use strict';
    var b = 123;
    console.log(b);
};

produces no errors, but if you change:
console.log(b);

to:
console.log(c);

you'll see the following errors:

Unused 'b'.
  Undeclared 'c'.

making it obvious to figure out the typo.
In your case, jslint will immediately figure out that isIFrame is unused and point you out to it. Obviously, it won't be able to understand that you wanted to write inIframe, but at least, you won't waste twenty minutes debugging your code.
See also:

*

*An answer, which, among others, compares jsLint and jsHint and explains why jsHint should be avoided.

*My article explaining why is it crucial to use linters and static checkers.
Names of properties
Such as in:
var something = {
    "inIframe": true
};

...
console.log(something.isIFrame); // Shows `undefined`

The dynamic nature of JavaScript prevents both the interpreter and the linter from determining that something.isIFrame doesn't point to anything. In fact, there could be an isIFrame inside, coming from multiple sources, like prototypes or direct assignment. Also, something can be initialized like this:
var something = JSON.parse('{"inIframe": true}');

where the actual string could be a result of a REST call, meaning that the interpreter (or the linter) couldn't possibly know what's inside. Google Closure Compiler may help here, but at a cost of requiring you to manually describe the structure of something, similarly to what one would do in a static strongly-typed programming language.
The next thing is to determine why is JavaScript actually returning undefined instead of throwing ReferenceError (or a similar exception) at run time when encountering an access to a property which doesn't exist.
Technically, until the apparition of proxy in ECMAScript6, nothing prevents to actually throw an exception, since, I imagine, the JavaScript engine knows that a given property doesn't exist. It should also be a possibility for the engine to make a difference between getting the property and setting it (like it's already done for variables; a = 123; is legal, but console.log(b); throws an exception).
On the other hand, the choice of actually returning undefined makes sense too, for two reasons:

*

*If you expect isIFrame to be either false or true, receiving undefined gives you a good hint that there is something wrong with the name of the property. The same applies to most cases where you expect a value, would it be a number, a string, or an object representing some business entity.
The case which worries me much more is when, expecting a boolean, you write:
if (something.isIFrame) {
    // This will never execute, since `isIFrame` doesn't exist.
} else {
    // This will execute every time.
}

Here, JavaScript doesn't help you much, since it silently swallows the undefined and simply executes the elseblock every time. This being said, it shouldn't take much time to figure out that there is something wrong around theif/else. The next step is to run a debugger and check for the actual values: as soon as you see theundefined` instead of a boolean, you have a hint.

*You may on the other hand expect the situation where the value may simply not be here.
For instance, I'm currently working on a node.js application which receives messages about servers. Sometimes, a message is sent not by the server itself (a virtual machine), but by the host: in this case, the message contains a replacementIP property with the IP address of the concerned virtual machine.
If I want to display the IP address, all I have to do is:
var ipToDisplay = message.replacementIP || context.senderIP;

If JavaScript was throwing exceptions when accessing non-existent property, this would force me to write this instead:
var getActualIP = function (message, context) {
    try {
        return message.replacementIP;
    } catch {
        return context.senderIP;
    }
};

[...]
var ipToDisplay = getActualIP(message, context);

I find it much more difficult to follow.
So you have two cases here: in the first one, the choice of the designers of JavaScript appears problematic in a specific case, and causes you to launch your debugger. Not that nice, indeed. On the other hand, the second case shows that the designers' choice makes it possible to write very compact code in a lot of situations; I find it very nice.
So what about an opt-in "using strict undefined"?
Not sure it's a good idea, for the simple reason that adding features to a language should be taken very, very seriously.
Any additional feature takes literally months, and given the nature of JavaScript, would need to be implemented in every browser. As usual, the one with the name starting by "I" will be late, and so you'll find yourself including "using strict undefined" in your code, while knowing that this browser will plainly ignore it: not fun when it comes to debugging.
Compare this to, for instance, ECMAScript 6th String Interpolation feature. String interpolation brings a huge benefit in terms of code readability and maintainability: most developers who used Python or Java are familiar with this feature, and they will happily use it in JavaScript. It will break existent code, but given its importance, it's worth the risk, and worth the time spent implementing it.
Default parameter values? Same thing: great benefit for everyone, and no risk of breaking existent code.
But "using strict undefined"? I'm not convinced that the edge case illustrated below is not that important, especially since it's easy to find what's happening with the help of a debugger. If you write software for which it is not acceptable to access non-existent properties, Google Closure Compiler is an option. Switching to a different language is another option.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Filipina weaving. It's an art…she's an artist. Beautiful. Photo taken by me in Sagada, Philippines 2011.
Rice Terraces in Banaue, Ifugao Philippines.
A view of Taal Volcano through all the luscious greenery. Tagaytay, Philippines.


If you check celebrity baby blogs, you're sure to find lots of pictures of Suri Cruise. Isn't she cute?
I think she looks more like Mommy Katie. And I think sometimes she actually likes (or is used to) the paparazzi. Maybe it's because they've been staying in New York where the paps are many and watching their every move (and katie seems to bring her everywhere).
Anyway, she's really cute. I hope she wouldn't grow messed up.


text:
Category Archives: Game Design
Students create a new kind of virtual reality
Exploring virtual worlds through the eyes and nose is becoming a reality. For the past six months, a team of students from the Emergent Media Center have been working on creating a multi-sense virtual reality experience with an emphasis on scents. The experience is called "Eden" and is set in an upscale cocktail bar. There […]
This entry was posted in CCM Division, EMC, exhibitions, Game Art & Animation, Game Design, Presentations, Students and tagged Alice & the Magician, Art Hop, Bookstock, Eden, Eden Project, emergent media center, Matt & Eric Design, Virtual reality on October 20, 2017 by cmccalister.
Patent pending for student created game
Traveling through space has never been easier. All that is needed is a cardboard box and a little imagination thanks to a group of students and faculty from the Emergent Media Center. The team created the SpaceBox Game which is a full-body interactive game where players sit in a box and control the on-screen rocketship with their movements. To reach the goal, players have to dodge asteroids and avoid enemy ships.
With the help of an agent, the team applied for a patent to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and it is in the pending process. SpaceBox is currently featured at ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center as part of their Innovation Playground exhibit. It also will be displayed after Sept. 25 at the Chicago Design Museum as part of their "HEY! PLAY! Games in Modern Culture" exhibition.
Alayna Masker-'19
Champlain College Hosts Game Program Alumni Exhibition
How does the world you play in a video game come to life? What is it like to have a career in the video game industry? On Monday, Nov. 14 Champlain College's Communication and Creative Media Division hosted the Game Program Alumni Exhibition. Two alumni, Joshua Terry, a 3D environment artist, and Justin Superty, a senior artist, were invited to speak at the exhibition to current students in the game studio.
The event consisted of portfolio reviews, a presentation and Q&A with Terry and Superty about their careers at Raven Software and more. Donovan Violette, a senior Game Design major at Champlain College, attended the event and noted that, "It was a really worthwhile experience to be exposed to someone who had been in the industry, but was also a real person who I could comfortably go up to and chat about various things relating to the future." – Contributor, Caitlin Ludke, '17
(Joshua Terry) (Justin Superty)
Joe Manley:
Screens Unplugged Plugged
This exhibition by Champlain College game design professor and artist Joe Manley presents artwork with two distinct life cycles, "unplugged" and "plugged."
Featuring clusters of hand-sculpted, organic nodules, these ceramic wall sculptures were created during Manley's Spring 2016 sabbatical as a visiting artist/professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For the first week of the exhibition, the artwork is presented in its original unplugged state. On Friday November 18th, they are then transformed using microprocessor-driven digital projection-mapping into an interactive environment composed of myriad tiny "screens". Through this metamorphosis, Manley examines our increasingly complex interactions and relationships with screens — both on and off.
Leveling Up with Sony Recruiters
You'd be hard–pressed to find a game design student that hasn't credited playing a Sony Playstation as an influence in their career choice. For the first time, Champlain College is welcoming Sony Playstation University Recruiters to campus. The event will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 12:30 p.m. and will continue until 2:00 p.m. Recruiters will be discussing summer internship positions with interested students in the CCM Gallery Lounge.Daphne Walker, career advisor for the game cohort at Champlain, has been in contact with the recruiters for the past few years through the Game Developers Conference. These interactions have led Sony to include Champlain on their traveling schedule. – contributor, Jade Ye, '18
Industry experts showcased at Champlain College Fall 2016 Career Conference
Ben & Jerry's Public Relations Director Sean Greenwood will be the featured keynote speaker during the Champlain College Fall 2016 Career Conference on Monday, Oct. 3.
Following his address will be break-out sessions with panels of industry experts from the fields of communication and creative media, education and human studies, game design, information technology, and business who will speak to students about various career options and industry trends.
As part of the CCM Division's break-out session, panelists include Bill Carter, Partner at Fuse; Bess O'Brien, local filmmaker / Kingdom County Productions; Lloyd Komesar, chair of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival; and Lance Jensen, chief creative officer at Hill Holiday. CCM Dean Paula Willoquet-Maricondi will serve as the moderator.
For the first time, Champlain College's Career Collaborative Office is presenting a new design to the previously formatted career day. "This year we have added a professional development element and panel discussions to the more traditional internship and job fair to reflect our new Champlain Connect partnership program with employers. The organizations that signed up to speak on these panels represent key members of our community, alumni, and parents," explained Tanja Hinterstoisser, director of the Career Collaborative.
Free and open to the public, the Career Conference will kick off at 10:30 a.m. with a welcome by Hinterstoisser in the Champlain Room. Directly following the panel will be the traditional Fall Career Fair in Argosy Gym from 1:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. where attendees can expect to meet local, regional and national employers to talk about internships, jobs and other networking opportunities. – Faith Frith ' 19 and Melinda Lathrop '17
Future Faces of Game Industry Tour Game Studios
The gaming industry has long been a male-dominated field, but a special group of Champlain female students are working against that notion. Twenty-four student supporters and members of the Women and Diversity in Games club visited Vicarious Vision, a subsidiary of Activision, in Albany, New York, and 1st Playable, an independent game studio, in Troy, New York. The visits provided students with invaluable networking connections and an insider look at what it's like to work at a large and small game studio. The trip included students from multiple majors, including Game Art & Animation, Game Design, Game Programming, Game Production, and International Business.


Fiesta makes it easy to meet people in Turkey to chat, have fun, flirt or maybe even go on a date. Turkey has plenty to offer, whether you're looking for fun things to do with friends, or something more romantic. Maybe explore the Ottoman splendour of Istanbul, pick up a bargain in the markets, or enjoy the best of Turkish cuisine while gazing out over the Bosphorous. Perhaps explore the castles of Bodrum and enjoy the clear blue waters and sunshine of Turkey's amazing beaches, or relax with a shisha in a pavement café.
Fiesta is the place to meet people, whether you're from Turkey or are just visiting, to chat, have fun, flirt, and for dating too. With more than 100,000 people joining Fiesta every day, there are always plenty of new Turkish guys and girls to have fun with.
421,131,900 people are here, 1,833,492 online now!


Justin Bieber Releases Two New Songs, "The Feeling" And "Love Your Self"
Justin Bieber continues to make his comeback presence felt. After his unleashing a fury of new singles, "What Do You Mean?" "Sorry," and "I'll Show You," the Biebs is back with new music.
On Beats 1, J.B. gave Zane Lowe the greenlight to release two new records. The first one that Lowe hit us with is the Halsey-assisted "The Feeling," which details a flippant break-up. The second, "Love Your Self," is a feel good hit -- co-written and co-produced by budding superstar Ed Sheeran.
JB's new album, Purpose will hit stores on Nov. 13th and features artists Big Sean, Travi$ Scott, Nas, Ariana Grande, Diplo and Skrillex and Selena Gomez.


The Crews Tremor® safety glasses on this page feature a Steel Frame and Indoor/Outdoor Lens. The Indoor - Outdoor lenses offers protection for indoor as well as outdoor situations. Since the tint does not change when walking in or out of direct daylight, it does offer a lens that is darker than a clear, and lighter than a smoke lens. Great for the person that is "on the go" The most innovative feature from the Tremor product line is the hinge-less temple design.
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Cambs Times > News
GALLERY: Villagers show off Benwick and Parson Drove to Anglia in Bloom judges
Top of the pile: (standing) Tony and Nicki David and their children Matthew and Oscar with Dave Crouch and Jill Hindle and (sitting) Ryan, Emily, Evie and Maisie Hiskey, who helped paint the tyres. - Credit: Archant
A pyramid of brightly painted old tyres filled with flowers is one of the eye-catching displays that villagers in Benwick are hoping will bring them success in this year's Anglia in Bloom competition.
Called the Oscar David Flowering Display, it is the local Neighbourhood Watch group's contribution to the village's entry and is named after a little boy born just two months ago.
The group said: "Oscar was born with health issues and Down's Syndrome during our planning of this project. He is doing very well and we hope that like our flowers he will bloom."
The bright colours are designed to appeal to the younger children of the village.
The group added: "We feel we have achieved this when a mum commented that her autistic son says he loves it."
More tyres, planted with red and white roses, have been used to form a boundary around the site, which is an old haulage yard that has been neglected for years.
The site on Doddington Road was one of those examined by Anglia in Bloom judges Nolan Mills and Margaret Albinson on Monday.
Others included the primary school, where they admired the pupils' gardening efforts, a couple of displays by the village's Scouts and Beavers and the old churchyard.
Benwick won a silver award in the small village category last year.
Last week Mr Mills accompanied a different judge, Nigel Bloxham, to Parson Drove, which last year was the overall winner in Anglia in Bloom's large village category, gaining a silver gilt award.
Among the highlights of their tour were various displays by the children at Alderman Payne primary school commemorating the centenary of the First World War.
They included a re-creation of a trench, complete with sandbags, barbed wire and a helmet.
The judges were shown round by two pupils, Jack Fowler and Emily Braginton. They also visited the village pond.


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Breathtaking views are found at every corner of Las Médulas, a historic Roman gold-mining site in Spain's Léon region.
Marques/Shutterstock
The world is filled with natural wonders, parks, and ancient monuments that make for spectacular views.
Iceland's Reynisfjara black-sand beach is a must-see destination.
Lake Tekapo in New Zealand is known for being a spectacular spot for stargazing.
It's no secret that our planet is pretty incredible.
From ancient archaeological sites to natural features like canyons and cliffs, just about every corner of the world offers special spots to explore. Greece is home to idyllic pink-sand beaches, Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni salt flat offers stunning optical illusion-esque views, and the vibrant blue water of Moraine Lake in Canada is nothing short of picture-perfect.
We've gathered 50 of the most breathtaking views in the world that everyone should enjoy with their own eyes.
ARGENTINA: Los Glaciares National Park
Los Glaciares National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage property.
Serjio74/Shutterstock
Los Glaciares National Park is named for its glaciers that cover nearly half of the property. The striking glaciers reflect onto Lake Argentino, creating a beautiful mirror-like image.
ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL: Iguazu Falls
Iguazu Falls in Iguazu National Park.
Julio Ricco/Shutterstock
This surreal waterfall is located in Iguazu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site situated between Argentina and Brazil.
AUSTRALIA: Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef.
JC Photo/Shutterstock
The Great Barrier Reef is arguably one of the most well-known underwater ecosystems in the world. Its diverse landscape, which is a home for some 1,500 fish species and 400 types of mollusc, is beautiful both from above and below.
AUSTRALIA: Greater Blue Mountains Area
The Greater Blue Mountains Area in Australia.
PhotosByRichard/Shutterstock
With cliffs, waterfalls, and canyons, this UNESCO World Heritage site represents the diverse plant species native to Australia.
BOLIVIA: Salar de Uyuni salt flat
Salar de Uyuni salt flat.
Anna Gibiskys/Shutterstock
Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat, according to National Geographic. The salt-covered ground often creates mind-blowing, mirror-like effects.
CANADA: Moraine Lake in Alberta
Moraine Lake in Alberta, Canada.
Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock
The crisp blue water and mountain-filled landscape of Moraine Lake in Banff National Park are even more stunning in person.
CHINA: China Danxia geological area
China Danxia is a UNESCO World Heritage property.
Due to weathering and erosion, the landscapes known as China Danxia have colored "stripes" of red sedimentary rock, according to UNESCO.
CHINA: The Great Wall
The Great Wall of China.
aphotostory / Shutterstock
The Great Wall was built between the 3rd century BC and the 17th century AD, and it's one of China's most important historical sites that represents its culture and ancient civilization.
COSTA RICA: Area de Conservación Guanacaste
Area de Conservación Guanacaste in Costa Rica.
Inspired By Maps/Shutterstock
The Area de Conservación in Costa Rica is filled with diverse ecosystems, including oak forests, savannahs, wetlands, and beaches — not to mention 500 species of birds and thousands of species of plants and butterflies.
EGYPT: Nubian Monuments
Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae.
Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock
The spectacular ancient monuments are carved out of the sandstone cliff.
Read more: Egypt's Great Pyramid was originally white and not golden yellow as a new documentary shows
FINLAND: The region of Lapland during Aurora Borealis
The northern lights, or Aurora Borealis, as seen over northern Finland.
Sara Winter/Shutterstock
National Geographic named Finland's Lapland region one of the best places to gaze at the sky during Aurora Borealis, or northern lights.
FRANCE: Lavender fields in the Provence region
Lavender fields Provence, France.
StevanZZ/Shutterstock
France's southern region of Provence is home to a number of UNESCO World Heritage cities and sites, and it's also known for its lavender fields that bloom in vibrant shades of purple and magenta.
FRANCE: The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower in Paris dazzles in the night sky.
Kamil Zihnioglu/AP
There's a reason why the Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world. The iron structure is an iconic symbol of Paris, and it makes for an exquisite view when it lights up at night.
FRANCE: Mont-Saint-Michel
Mont-Saint-Michel on the border of Normandy and Brittany, France.
Mont-Saint-Michel is a Gothic-style abbey situated on a rocky islet between Normandy and Brittany, France.
GERMANY: Neuschwanstein Castle
The Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
Shutterstock/ Feel good studio
This breathtaking palace is one of the 7 Wonders of the World, and it is also said to have inspired Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, according to Travel + Leisure.
GREECE: Meteora Monasteries
Meteora, Greece.
Shutterstock/Sergey Novikov
The towering rocks of Meteora, Greece, are home to monasteries that date back to the 15th century, according to the site's UNESCO World Heritage description.
GREECE: Pink-sand beaches in Elafonissi, Crete
A beach in Elafonissi, Crete, Greece.
Patryk Kosmider/Shutterstock
On beaches in Elafonissi, part of a peninsula that connects to Crete, Greece, the sand's pink hue comes from broken shells, according to US News Travel.
GREECE: Oia, Santorini
Oia, Santorini, Greece.
leoks/Shutterstock
The village of Oia on the island of Santorini, Greece, is known for its gorgeous hills of white and blue buildings and vibrant waters.
ICELAND: Reynisfjara black-sand beach
Reynisfjara beach, Iceland.
Christopher Czermak/Shutterstock
Iceland's black-sand beach, called Reynisfjara, has incredible columns made of basalt and rock pillars that stick out of the water.
ICELAND: Vatnajökull National Park
Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland is a volcanic and glacial region.
Guitar photographer/Shutterstock
The unique landscape of Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland makes it one of the most striking views in the world. The area has 10 volcanoes, three of which are below glaciers or sheets of ice, according to UNESCO.
INDIA: The Taj Mahal
The white marble mausoleum and its surrounding garden make the Taj Mahal an incredible destination.
Matt King/Getty Images
The Taj Mahal is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the 7 Wonders of the World. The famous marble palace was built in the 17th century as the tomb of an emperor's wife, according to the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation.
IRELAND: Burren and Cliffs of Moher
The Burren and Cliffs of Moher.
shutterupeire/Shutterstock
The Burren and Cliffs of Moher are not only famous for their natural beauty, but the site is also home to artifacts that show signs of human life dating back 6,000 years, according to UNESCO.
ITALY: Porto Venere coast
The colorful buildings of Cinque Terre.
Inu/Shutterstock
This breathtaking landscape on Italy's eastern coast consists of Porto Venere, three islands called Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto, and Cinque Terre. The coastal area is known for its rainbow-colored buildings settled along steep rocks, which overlook crystal-blue waters.
JAPAN: Bioluminescent beach at Toyama Bay
The bioluminescent waters of Toyama Bay.
tdub_video/Getty Images
Toyama Bay on Japan's west coast is home to glow-in-the-dark sea creatures that make for a spectacular view of the water from above, according to BBC.
JAPAN: Ancient Kyoto
Kyoto, Japan.
Patrick Foto/Shutterstock
Kyoto, which was the country's capital until the middle of the 19th century, is filled with traditional and religious architecture and lush gardens that are significant to Japanese culture, according to UNESCO.
JORDAN: The ancient city of Petra
Petra, Jordan.
The architecture and ancient carvings found in Petra, Jordan, make the ancient city one filled with spectacular and unique views.
MALAYSIA: Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark
Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark in Malaysia.
H-AB Photography/Shutterstock
The vibrant green hills and rainforests found in Malaysia's Langkawi landscape make it a special and beautiful UNESCO site. The geopark is home to beaches, estuaries, coral reefs, caves, and limestone, according to UNESCO.
MONTENEGRO: Region of Kotor
Kotor on the Adriatic coast in Montenegro.
amyrxa/Shutterstock
Kotor is considered a Natural and Culturo-Historical Region by UNESCO World Heritage for its ancient architectural features and breathtaking rocky landscape.
MOROCCO: Jemaa el-Fna Square in Marrakech
Jemaa el-Fna Square in Marrakech.
Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock
As part of the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Jemaa el-Fna Square in Marrakech is recognized as an iconic and meaningful symbol of the city's history and culture.
MYANMAR: Ancient city of Bagan
Hot air balloons over Bagan, Myanmar.
lkunl/Shutterstock
The archaeological remains of the city of Bagan, Myanmar, date back to the 11th to 13th centuries, according to UNESCO. The unique landscape of Bagan is home to sacred Buddhist art, monasteries, and places of religious pilgrimage.
NEW ZEALAND: Lake Tekapo
Lake Tekapo, New Zealand.
Nadly Aizat/Shutterstock
Lake Tekapo in New Zealand's South Canterbury region is a glacial lake with unreal views during the day and equally beautiful, clear skies at night — perfect for stargazing.
NORWAY: The Bryggen wharf in Bergen
The Bryggen wharf in Bergen, Norway.
Grisha Bruev / Shutterstock
Norway's Bryggen wharf is a historic area recognized by UNESCO World Heritage. The harbor town was rebuilt after a fire in 1702, and today, its medieval-style buildings and colorful facades create idyllic reflections onto the water.
PANAMA: Coiba National Park
Panama's Coiba National Park is known for its diverse marine life.
The lush, vibrant ecosystem found at Coiba National Park is filled with incredible views of the vibrant blue water. The park is also a protected UNESCO site, as it is "one of the last major refuges for rare and endangered species of tropical America."
PERU: Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu in Peru is perhaps one of the most well-known views and UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Aleksandra H. Kossowska/Shutterstock
Located between the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Basin, Machu Picchu is an archaeological site of the ancient Inca Empire. Machu Picchu, named one of the 7 Wonders of the World, is filled with monuments that document the Incan people's way of life. Its elevated location makes for second-to-none views.
ST. LUCIA: The Pitons volcanic peaks
The Pitons in St. Lucia.
James R Schultz/Shutterstock
The Pitons are striking volcanic structures on the lush Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
Read more: 18 photos that will make you want to immediately book a trip to Castries, St. Lucia
SINGAPORE: Supertree Grove
Supertree Grove in Singapore.
Kanuman/Shutterstock
Singapore's Supertree Grove is a group of 160-foot-tall structures, according to National Geographic, that offer incredible views of the city and of the Gardens by the Bay, which are lush conservatories with colorful plants.
SPAIN: Windmills of La Mancha
La Mancha, Spain.
myLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Made famous by the novel " Don Quixote" and musical " Man of La Mancha," the windmills that decorate Spain's La Mancha region are both significant to the fictional stories and visually incredible.
SPAIN: The historic city of Toledo
The city of Toledo, Spain, sits on top of a medieval fortress.
LucVi/Shutterstock
The city of Toledo, Spain, represents more than 2,000 years of history, according to UNESCO. Toledo offers incredible views of its many religious and historical monuments, as well as sights taken in from afar that show its staggered buildings and medieval fortress.
VIETNAM: Non nuoc Cao Bang UNESCO Global Geopark
Non nuoc Cao Bang in Vietnam.
Jimmy Tran/Shutterstock
Non nuoc Cao Bang is a UNESCO Global Geopark with magnificent views of its waterfalls, lakes, and diverse plant species.
SPAIN: Las Médulas ancient gold-mining area
Las Médulas in Spain's Léon region.
This UNESCO World Heritage site in Spain's Léon region has stunning clay mountains that have remnants of ancient Roman gold-mining mechanisms and techniques.
SWITZERLAND: The Swiss Alps
A train riding through the Swiss Alps mountain range.
emperorcosar/Shutterstock
The Swiss Alps mountain range, specifically the Jungfrau-Aletsch region of Switzerland, is home to Europe's largest glacier, according to UNESCO. The magnificence of the Swiss Alps has inspired art, music, and literature for centuries.
THAILAND: Historic city of Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya, Thailand.
24Novembers/Shutterstock
The remains of Thailand's historic city of Ayutthaya include ornate monasteries and structures that date back to the 14th century, according to UNESCO. At Thailand's lantern festival, called the Loi Krathong festival, views of Ayutthaya are even more majestic.
TURKEY: Natural minter al springs in Pamukkale
Pamukkale, Turkey.
THANAN/Shutterstock
This stunning landscape in Turkey has mineral forests, petrified waterfalls, and thermal waters. The Turkish name Pamukkale means " cotton castle," which describes the pool's white coating that comes from calcium carbonate deposits, according to UNESCO.
UK: Stonehenge
The monuments of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.
REUTERS/Kieran Doherty
UNESCO calls Stonehenge " the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world." The ancient monuments of Stonehenge, located in Wiltshire, England, make for a historic and picturesque landscape.
UK: View of the River Thames from the London Eye
The popular attraction offers spectacular views of London.
Ale Argentieri/Shutterstock
The London Eye Ferris wheel offers panoramic views of the city, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and the River Thames.
US: Yosemite National Park in California
Yosemite National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Shutterstock/Mikhail Kolesnikov
Known for its lake views, valleys, cliffs, and waterfalls, Yosemite National Park in California is filled with incredible sights to explore.
US: Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona
Grand Canyon National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Anton Foltin/Shutterstock
Grand Canyon National Park represents two billion years of geological history. The canyons have been carved out by the Colorado River, making this one of the most visually spectacular landscapes in the world.
US: Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright in Pennsylvania
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania.
Shutterstock.com / Robert Crow
UNESCO added American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's 20th-century buildings to the World Heritage list in July 2019. One of Wright's many visually incredible works of design is the Fallingwater house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania.
PORTUGAL: Laurisilva of Madeira
The Laurisilva of Madeira is a UNESCO World Heritage property.
Thomas Marchhart/Shutterstock
This breathtaking forest on Portugal's island of Madeira looks like something from a fairy tale.
ZAMBIA AND ZIMBABWE: Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls is the largest curtain of falling water in the world, according to UNESCO.
StanislavBeloglazov/Shutterstock
Named the "largest curtain of falling water in the world" by UNESCO, Victoria Falls also feature numerous basalt gorges, or narrow valleys that have been formed from the falling water over time. This incredible natural wonder in Africa is truly one-of-a-kind.
12 world-famous landmarks that every travel buff should visit
100 trips everyone should take in their lifetime
Stunning photos show the 23 beautiful UNESCO world heritage sites in the US
The most beautiful universities in the world
SEE ALSO: INSIDER is on Facebook.
More: Features Travel Rankings Travel Inspiration
UNESCO site
A NASA official says the explosion of SpaceX's ship during a test 'was a huge gift' for making the vehicle safe to fly


A bill approved by both houses of the New Jersey legislature on Monday restores rules governing public beach access that were struck by a state appellate court last month.
The bill, which is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Chris Christie, specifically grants the state Department of Environmental Protection the power to regulate beach access and require public access as a contingency for development permits. The bill's passage was supported by members of both sides of the political aisle since the court's decision left no rules in place to govern access, placing a planned beach and dune replenishment project in jeopardy. The bill passed unanimously in both the state Senate and General Assembly.
While the bill permits the DEP to promulgate rules – which it technically lacked, according to the opinion of the court – over beach access, it does not explicitly spell out the rules, which have been a bone of contention in recent years. Christie's administration has favored tasking municipal governments with developing public access plans within their towns that comply with a more generalized set of state standards. Environmentalists and public access advocates have said the state should develop public access plans since, historically, some Shore area towns have made it difficult for nonresidents to access beaches by limiting parking and access points.
Under the administration of former Gov. Jon Corzine, however, many members of the marine industry felt the state's plans went too far, specifically requiring public access on private property such as marinas. Marina owners fought the previous rules, citing liability concerns and arguing that placing public access contingencies on building permits would likely lead to many marinas being sold to homebuilders.
Tittel's group is hoping for a return to the Corzine-era rules, primarily due to access requirements at beaches.


The original algorithm was wrong and produces incorrect answers. There are several fixes that could take place.
verified using the KT-I verification algorithm.
Elliptic Curve DSA (ECDSA) based on fields of characteristic greater than three.
If the hash function h generates a bit string that has a bit length greater than the bit length of the elliptic curve group order, ECDSA as specified in P1363 uses a truncation of the hash value to the left-most bits. The KT-I algorithm does not use this truncation but reduces modulo q. Therefore ECDSA and KT-I with SHA-384 on the P-256 curve result in different signature values. Add a corresponding note in 10.4: The output of the hash used in KT signatures should truncated to the left-most bits if its bit-length is longer than the bit-length of the group order.
in which a * b is denoted as a + b, and a^N is denoted as N * a.
in which a * b is denoted as a + b, and a^N is denoted as Na.
"Appendix E elucidates the correspondence between the two notations."
In the Appendix E the notation "Na" is used, whereas the original text uses the notation "N*a".
By convention, a^0 is equal to the identity element for any a in G.
By convention, a^0 is equal to the identity element and a^1 is equal to a itself for any a in G.
Without this convention the explanation on the next page: "... for any integers X and Y: a^(X+Y) = (a^X)*(a^Y) ..." would be incomplete, as being undefined for the integers X=1 and/or Y=1.
Note that a^M is equal to g^(M modulo R) for any non-negative integer M.
Note that a^M is equal to a^(M mod R) for any non-negative integer M.
g is a typo. The result of the modulo operation is always denoted in the text by "mod". The notation "modulo" identifies the operation and not the result.
Note that the conversion fails if y >= 2^(8*k).
Typo corrected. The integer y can not be converted, if the octet string is to short.


When spring comes, nature gets to work making millions of different chemicals. Some are beneficial some are dangerous, some smell nice and some awful, some heal and some harm, some are essential and some are superfluous.
If you appreciate what makes the life healthier, cleaner, longer, colourful and safer then, please read all the series of blogs. You will discover chemistry at home, just what these substances are and what they do for us.
If you worried that they might still present a risk to health, then be reassured that testing is now so through, and approval for use so difficult to obtain, that nothing is included that might pose a risk to anyone except a few rare individuals.
Morden house hold products are safe to use and they create a home that we can take pleasure living in.
So what that ingredients in other things we buy and use? Their names means little or nothing to most people and that's the reason of writing this blog. The ingredients listed in a product label provide information that needs interpreting that we are to understand why they have been included.
Every home should have a medicine cabinet, which needs to be out of the reach of children, these are of everyday problems of headaches, eyes, coughs, colds, aches and pains, spots cuts sore eyes.
Pain relief: there are three popular pain killing chemicals that can be obtained over the counter and these are aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen. ibuprofen is a good anti-inflammatory, paracetamol is good pain killer, but aspirin can do both. The best cure for muscle and joint pain is ibuprofen., which suppresses excess arachidonic acid that is the cause. Aspirin is recommended as immediate treatment for someone who is suffering stroke or heart attack because it restores blood flow by thinning the blood.
Tagged chemicals in everyday, medicine cabinet.


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Q: Lock down a program so it has no access to outside files, like a virus scanner does I would like to launch an untrusted application programmatically, so I want to remove the program's ability to access files, network, etc. Essentially, I want to restrict it so its only interface to the rest of the computer is stdin and stdout.
Can I do that? Preferably in a cross-platform way but I sort of expect to have to do it differently for each OS. I'm using Python, but I'm willing to write this part in a lower level or more platform integrated language if necessary.
The reason I need to do this is to write a distributed computing infrastructure. It needs to download a program, execute it, piping data to stdin, and returning data that it receives on stdout to the central server. But since the program it downloads is untrusted, I want to restrict it to only using stdin and stdout.

A: The short answer is no.
The long answer is not really.  Consider a C program, in which the program opens a log file by grabbing the next available file descriptor.  Your program, in order to stop this, would need to somehow monitor this, and block it.  Depending on the robustness of the untrusted program, this could cause a fatal crash, or inhibit harmless functionality.  There are many other similar issues to this one that make what you are trying to do hard.
I would recommend looking into sandboxing solutions already available.  In particular, a virtual machine can be very useful for testing out untrusted code.  If you can't find anything that meets your needs, your best bet is to probably deal with this at the kernel level, or with something a bit closer to the hardware such as C.

A: Yes, you can do this. You can run an inferior process through ptrace (essentially you act as a debugger) and you hook on system calls and determine whether they should be allowed or not.
codepad.org does this for instance, see: about codepad. It uses the geordi supervisor to execute the untrusted code.

A: You can run untrusted apps in chroot and block them from using network with an iptables rule (for example, owner --uid-owner match)
But really, virtual machine is more reliable and on modern hardware performance impact is negligible.