text:
\section{Introduction}
\vspace{-1mm}

Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have yielded state-of-the-art performance on a wide array of AI tasks, including image classification~\cite{krizhevsky2012imagenet}, speech recognition~\cite{hannun2014deepspeech}, and language understanding~\cite{sutskever2014sequence}.  In addition to algorithmic innovations~\cite{nair2010rectified,srivastava2014dropout,taigman2014deepface}, a key driver behind these successes are advances in computing infrastructure that enable large-scale deep learning---the training and inference of large DNN models on massive datasets~\cite{dean2012large,farabet2013learning}. Indeed, highly efficient GPU implementations of DNNs played a key role in the first breakthrough of deep learning for image classification~\cite{krizhevsky2012imagenet}. Given the ever growing amount of data available for indexing, analysis, and training, and the increasing prevalence of ever-larger DNNs as key building blocks for AI applications, it is critical to design computing platforms to support faster, more resource-efficient DNN computation.

A set of core design decisions are common to the design of these infrastructures.  One such critical choice is the numerical representation and precision used in the implementation of underlying storage and computation.  Several recent works have investigated the numerical representation for DNNs~\cite{cavigelli2015origami,chen2014dadiannao,du2014leveraging,muller2015rounding}.   One recent work found that substantially lower precision can be used for training when the correct numerical rounding method is employed~\cite{gupta2015deep}. Their work resulted in the design of a very energy-efficient DNN platform.

This work and other previous numerical representation studies for DNNs have either limited themselves to a small subset of the customized{} precision design space or drew conclusions using only small neural networks.  For example, the work from Gupta et al.~2015 evaluates 16-bit fixed-point and wider computational precision on LeNet-5~\cite{lecun1998gradient} and CIFARNET~\cite{krizhevsky2009learning}.  The fixed-point representation (\fig{fixedFormat}) is only one of many possible numeric representations.  Exploring a limited customized{} precision design space inevitably results in designs lacking in energy efficiency and computational performance.  Evaluating customized{} precision accuracy based on small neural networks requires the assumption that much larger, production-grade neural networks would operate comparably when subjected to the same customized{} precision.

\begin{figure*}
\centering
\begin{minipage}{.48\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[trim = 0mm 0mm 0mm 0mm, clip, width=0.625\linewidth]{adnn_fixed}
  \caption{A fixed-point representation.  Hardware parameters include the total number of bits and the position of the radix point.}
\label{fig:fixedFormat}
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}{.02\textwidth}
~
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{.48\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[trim = 0mm 0mm 0mm 0mm, clip, width=0.75\linewidth]{adnn_float}
  \caption{A floating-point representation.  Hardware parameters include the number of mantissa and exponent bits, and the bias.}
\label{fig:floatFormat}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{-6mm}
\end{figure*}

In this work, we explore the accuracy-efficiency trade-off made available via specialized custom-precision hardware for inference and present a method to efficiently traverse this large design space to find an optimal design.  Specifically, we evaluate the impact of a wide spectrum of customized{} precision settings for fixed-point and floating-point representations on accuracy and computational performance.
We evaluate these customized{} precision configurations on large, state-of-the-art neural networks.  By evaluating the full computational precision design space on a spectrum of these production-grade DNNs, we find that:
\vspace{-1mm}
\begin{enumerate}[leftmargin=*]
\item Precision requirements do not generalize across all neural networks. This prompts designers of future DNN infrastructures to carefully consider the applications that will be executed on their platforms, contrary to works that design for large networks and evaluate accuracy on small networks~\cite{cavigelli2015origami,chen2014dadiannao}.
\item Many large-scale DNNs require considerably more precision for fixed-point arithmetic than previously found from small-scale evaluations~\cite{cavigelli2015origami, chen2014dadiannao, du2014leveraging}.  For example, we find that GoogLeNet requires on the order of 40 bits when implemented with fixed-point arithmetic, as opposed to less than 16 bits for LeNet-5.
\item Floating-point representations are more efficient than fixed-point representations when selecting optimal precision settings.  For example, a 17-bit floating-point representation is acceptable for GoogLeNet, while over 40 bits are required for the fixed-point representation -- a more expensive computation than the standard single precision floating-point format.  Current platform designers should reconsider the use of the floating-point representations for DNN computations instead of the commonly used fixed-point representations~\cite{cavigelli2015origami, chen2014dadiannao, du2014leveraging,muller2015rounding}.
\end{enumerate}
\vspace{-1mm}

To make these conclusions on large-scale customized{} precision design readily actionable for DNN infrastructure designers, we propose and validate a novel technique to quickly search the large customized{} precision design space.  This technique leverages the activations in the last layer to build a model to predict accuracy based on the insight that these activations effectively capture the propagation of numerical error from computation.  Using this method on deployable DNNs, including GoogLeNet~\cite{szegedy2015going} and VGG~\cite{simonyan2014very}, we find that using these recommendations to introduce customized precision into a DNN accelerator fabric results in an average speedup of 7.6{}$\times{}$ with less than 1\% degradation in inference accuracy.

\vspace{-2mm}
\section{Customized~Precision Hardware}
\vspace{-3mm}

We begin with an overview of the available design choices in the representation of real numbers in binary and discuss how these choices impact hardware performance.

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Design Space}
\vspace{-2mm}
We consider three aspects of customized~precision number representations.  First, we contrast the high-level choice between fixed-point and floating-point representations. Fixed-point binary arithmetic is computationally identical to integer arithmetic, simply changing the interpretation of each bit position.  Floating-point arithmetic, however, represents the sign, mantissa, and exponent of a real number separately.  Floating-point calculations involve several steps absent in integer arithmetic. In particular, addition operations require aligning the mantissas of each operand.  As a result, floating-point computation units are substantially larger, slower, and more complex than integer units.

\vspace{-1mm}

In CPUs and GPUs, available sizes for both integers and floating-point calculations are fixed according to the data types supported by the hardware.  Thus, the second aspect of precision customization we examine is to consider customizing the number of bits used in representing floating-point and fixed-point numbers. Third, we may vary the interpretation of fixed-point numbers and assignment of bits to the mantissa and exponent in a floating-point value.

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Customized~Precision Types}
\vspace{-2mm}

In a fixed-point representation, we select the number of bits as well as the position of the radix point, which separates integer and fractional bits, as illustrated in \fig{fixedFormat}. A bit array, $x$, encoded in fixed point with the radix point at bit $l$ (counting from the right)  represents the value $2^{-l} \sum_{i=0}^{N-1}2^i\cdot x_i$.  In contrast to floating point, fixed-point representations with a particular number of bits have a fixed level of precision. By varying the position of the radix point, we change the representable range.

An example floating-point representation is depicted in \fig{floatFormat}. As shown in the figure, there are three parameters to select when designing a floating-point representation: the bit-width of the mantissa, the bit-width of the exponent, and an exponent bias.  The widths of the mantissa and exponent control precision and dynamic range, respectively.  The exponent bias adjusts the offset of the exponent (which is itself represented as an unsigned integer) relative to zero to facilitate positive and negative exponents. Finally, an additional bit represents the sign.  Thus, a floating-point format with $N_m$ mantissa bits, $N_e$ exponent bits, and a bias of $b$, encodes the value $2^{({\sum_{i=0}^{N_e-1}2^{i}\cdot{e_i}})-b}(1+\sum_{i=1}^{N_m}2^{-i}\cdot m_i)$, where $m$ and $e$ are the segments of a bit array representing the mantissa and exponent, respectively.  Note that the leading bit of the mantissa is assumed to be $1$ and hence is not explicitly stored, eliminating redundant encodings of the same value. A single-precision value in the IEEE-754 standard (i.e. \texttt{float}) comprises 23 mantissa bits, 8 exponent bits, and a sign bit. IEEE-754 standardized floating-point formats include special encodings for specific values, such as zero and infinity.

\vspace{-1mm}

Both fixed-point and floating-point representations have limitations in terms of the precision and the dynamic ranges available given particular representations, manifesting themselves computationally as rounding and saturation errors.  These errors propagate through the deep neural network in a way that is difficult to estimate holistically, prompting experimentation on the DNN itself.

\vspace{-1mm}

\ddia{adnn_mac}{Floating point multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit with various levels of detail:  (a) the high level mathematical operation, (b) the modules that form a floating point MAC, and (c) the signal propagation of the unit.\vspace{-5mm}}

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Hardware Implications}
\vspace{-2mm}

The key hardware building block for implementing DNNs is the multiply-accumulate (MAC) operation. The MAC operation implements the sum-of-products operation that is fundamental to the activation of each neuron. We show a high-level hardware block diagram of a MAC unit in \fig{adnn_mac} (a).  \fig{adnn_mac} (b) adds detail for the addition operation, the more complex of the two operations.  As seen in the figure, floating-point addition operations involve a number of sub-components that compare exponents, align mantissas, perform the addition, and normalize the result.  Nearly all of the sub-components of the MAC unit scale in speed, power, and area with the bit width.

Reducing the floating-point bit width improves hardware performance in two ways.  First, reduced bit width makes a computation unit faster.  Binary arithmetic computations involve chains of logic operations that typically grows at least logarithmically, and sometimes linearly (e.g., the propagation of carries in an addition, see \fig{adnn_mac} (c)), in the number of bits.  Reducing the bit width reduces the length of these chains, allowing the logic to operate at a higher clock frequency.  Second, reduced bit width makes a computation unit smaller and require less energy, typically linearly in the number of bits.  The circuit delay and area is shown in \fig{fig7} when the mantissa bit widths are varied.  As shown in the figure, scaling the length of the mantissa provides substantial opportunity because it defines the size of the internal addition unit.  Similar trends follow for bit-widths in other representations.  When a unit is smaller, more replicas can fit within the same chip area and power budget, all of which can operate in parallel.  Hence, for computations like those in DNNs, where ample parallelism is available, area reductions translate into proportional performance improvement.

This trend of bit width versus speed, power, and area is applicable to every computation unit in hardware DNN implementations. Thus, in designing hardware that uses customized representations there is a trade-off between accuracy on the one hand and power, area, and speed on the other. Our goal is to use precision that delivers sufficient accuracy while attaining large improvements in power, area, and speed over standard floating-point designs.

\begin{figure*}
\begin{minipage}{.48\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[clip, width=1\linewidth]{fig7}
\caption{Delay and area implications of mantissa width, normalized to a 32-bit Single Precision MAC with 23 mantissa bits.}
\label{fig:fig7}

\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{0.02\textwidth}
~
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[clip, width=1\linewidth]{adnn_speedup}
\caption{Speedup calculation with a fixed area budget. The speedup exploits the improved function delay and parallelism.}
\label{fig:adnn_speedup}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{-5mm}
\end{figure*}

\vspace{-3mm}
\section{Methodology}
\vspace{-3mm}
We describe the methodology we use to evaluate the customized~precision design space, using image classification tasks of varying complexity as a proxy for computer vision applications. We evaluate DNN implementations using several metrics, classification accuracy, speedup, and energy savings relative to a baseline custom hardware design that uses single-precision floating-point representations.  Using the results of this analysis, we propose and validate a search technique to efficiently determine the correct customized~precision design point.

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Accuracy}
\vspace{-2mm}
We evaluate accuracy by modifying the Caffe~\cite{jia2014caffe} deep learning framework to perform calculations with arbitrary fixed-point and floating-point formats.  We continue to store values as C \texttt{float}s in Caffe, but truncate the mantissa and exponent to the desired format after each arithmetic operation. Accuracy, using a set of test inputs disjoint from the training input set, is then measured by running the forward pass of a DNN model with the customized format and comparing the outputs with the ground truth. We use the standard accuracy metrics that accompany the dataset for each DNN.  For MNIST (LeNet-5) and CIFAR-10 (CIFARNET) we use top-1 accuracy and for ImageNet (GoogLeNet, VGG, and AlexNet) we use top-5 accuracy. Top-1 accuracy denotes the percent of inputs that the DNN predicts correctly after a single prediction attempt, while top-5 accuracy represents the percent of inputs that DNN predicts correctly after five attempts.

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Efficiency}
\vspace{-2mm}

We quantify the efficiency advantages of customized floating-point representations by designing a floating-point MAC unit in each candidate precision and determining its silicon area and delay characteristics. We then report speedup and energy savings relative to a baseline custom hardware implementation of a DNN that uses standard single-precision floating-point computations.  We design each variant of the MAC unit using Synopsys Design Compiler and Synopsys PrimeTime, industry standard ASIC design tools, targeting a commercial 28nm silicon manufacturing process.  The tools report the power, delay, and area characteristics of each precision variant.  As shown in \fig{adnn_speedup}, we compute speedups and energy savings relative to the standardized IEEE-754 floating-point representation considering both the clock frequency advantage and improved parallelism due to area reduction of the narrower bit-width MAC units.  This allows customized{} precision designs to yield a quadratic improvement in total system throughput.

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Efficient Customized~Precision Search}
\vspace{-2mm}
To exploit the benefits of customized{} precision, a mechanism to select the correct configuration must be introduced. There are hundreds of designs among floating-point and fixed-point formats due to designs varying by the total bit width and the allocation of those bits.  This spectrum of designs strains the ability to select an optimal configuration.  A straightforward approach to select the customized{} precision design point is to exhaustively compute the accuracy of each design with a large number of neural network inputs.  This strategy requires substantial computational resources that are proportional to the size of the network and variety of output classifications.  We describe our technique that significantly reduces the time required to search for the correct configuration in order to facilitate the use of customized~precision.

The key insight behind our search method is that customized~precision impacts the underlying internal computation, which is hidden by evaluating only the NN final accuracy metric.  Thus, instead of comparing the final accuracy generated by networks with different precision configurations, we compare the original NN activations to the customized~precision activations.  This circumvents the need to evaluate the large number of inputs required to produce representative neural network accuracy. Furthermore, instead of examining all of the activations, we only analyze the last layer, since the last layer captures the usable output from the neural network as well as the propagation of lost accuracy.  Our method summarizes the differences between the last layer of two configurations by calculating the linear coefficient of determination between the last layer activations.

A method to translate the coefficient of determination to a more desirable metric, such as end-to-end inference accuracy, is necessary.  We find that a linear model provides such a transformation.  The customized~precision setting with the highest speedup that meets a specified accuracy threshold is then selected.  In order to account for slight inaccuracies in the model, inference accuracy for a subset of configurations is evaluated.  If the configuration provided by the accuracy model results in insufficient accuracy, then an additional bit is added and the process repeats.  Similarly, if the accuracy threshold is met, then a bit is removed from the customized~precision format.

\vspace{-2mm}
\section{Experiments}
\vspace{-3mm}

In this section, we evaluate five common neural networks spanning a range of sizes and depths in the context of customized~precision hardware. We explore the trade-off between accuracy and efficiency when various customized~precision representations are employed.  Next, we address the sources of accuracy degradation when customized~precision is utilized.  Finally, we examine the characteristics of our customized~precision search technique.

\vspace{-2.5mm}
\subsection{Experimental Setup}
\vspace{-2mm}
We evaluate the accuracy of customized{} precision operations on five DNNs: GoogLeNet~\cite{szegedy2015going}, VGG~\cite{simonyan2014very}, AlexNet~\cite{krizhevsky2012imagenet}, CIFARNET~\cite{krizhevsky2009learning}, and LeNet-5~\cite{lecun1998gradient}.  The implementations and pre-trained weights for these DNNs were taken from Caffe~\cite{jia2014caffe}.  The three largest DNNs (GoogLeNet, VGG, and AlexNet) represent real-world workloads, while the two smaller DNNs (CIFARNET and LeNet-5) are the largest DNNs evaluated in prior work on customized precision.  For each DNN, we use the canonical benchmark validation set:  ImageNet for GoogLeNet, VGG, and AlexNet; CIFAR-10 for CIFARNET; MNIST for LeNet-5.  We utilize the entire validation set for all experiments, except for GoogLeNet and VGG experiments involving the entire design space.  In these cases we use a randomly-selected 1\% of the validation set to make the experiments tractable.

\dfig{spd_acc}{The inference accuracy versus speedup design space for each of the neural networks, showing substantial computational performance improvements for minimal accuracy degradation when customized{} precision floating-point formats are used.\vspace{-5mm}}

\vspace{-2.5mm}
\subsection{Accuracy versus Efficiency Trade-offs}
\vspace{-2mm}

To evaluate the benefits of customized~precision hardware, we swept the design space for accuracy and performance characteristics.  This performance-accuracy trade off is shown in \fig{spd_acc}.  This figure shows the DNN inference accuracy across the full input set versus the speedup for each of the five DNN benchmarks.  The black star represents the IEEE 754 single precision representation (i.e. the original accuracy with 1$\times$ speedup), while the red circles and blue triangles represent the complete set of our customized~precision floating-point and fixed-point representations, respectively.

For GoogLeNet, VGG, and AlexNet it is clear that the floating-point format is superior to the fixed-point format.  In fact, the standard single precision floating-point format is faster than all fixed-point configurations that achieve above 40\% accuracy.  Although fixed-point computation is simpler and faster than floating-point computation when the number of bits is fixed, customized~precision floating-point representations are more efficient because less bits are needed for similar accuracy.

By comparing the results across the five different networks in \fig{spd_acc}, it is apparent that the size and structure of the network impacts the customized~precision flexibility of the network. This insight suggests that hardware designers should carefully consider which neural network(s) they expect their device to execute as one of the fundamental steps in the design process. The impact of network size on accuracy is discussed in further detail in the following section.

The specific impact of bit assignments on performance and energy efficiency are illustrated in \fig{exp_man_heat}.  This figure shows the the speedup and energy improvements over the single precision floating-point representation as the number of allocated bits is varied.  For the floating-point representations, the number of bits allocated for the mantissa (x-axis) and exponent (y-axis) are varied.  For the fixed-point representations, the number of bits allocated for the integer (x-axis) and fraction (y-axis) are varied.  We highlight a region in the plot deemed to have acceptable accuracy.  In this case, we define acceptable accuracy to be 99\% normalized AlexNet accuracy (i.e., no less than a 1\% degradation in accuracy from the IEEE 754 single precision accuracy on classification in AlexNet).

The fastest and most energy efficient representation occurs at the bottom-left corner of the region with acceptable accuracy, since a minimal number of bits are used. The configuration with the highest performance that meets this requirement is a floating-point representation with 6 exponent bits and 7 mantissa bits, which yields a 7.2$\times$ speedup and a 3.4$\times$ savings in energy over the single precision IEEE 754 floating-point format.  If a more stringent accuracy requirement is necessary, 0.3\% accuracy degradation, the representation with one additional bit in the mantissa can be used, which achieves a 5.7$\times$ speedup and 3.0$\times$ energy savings.

\dfig{exp_man_heat}{The speedup and energy savings as the two parameters are adjusted for the custom floating point and fixed-point representations.  The marked area denotes configurations where the total loss in AlexNet accuracy is less than 1\%.\vspace{-5mm}}

\begin{figure*}
\centering
\begin{minipage}{.68\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=1\linewidth]{accumulation}
  \caption{The accumulation of weighted neuron inputs for a specific neuron with various customized~precision DNNs as well as the IEEE 754 single precision floating point configuration for reference.  FL and FI are used to abbreviate floating point and fixed-point, respectively.  The format parameters are as follows:  M=mantissa, E=exponent, L=bits left of radix point, R=bits right of radix point.}
\label{fig:accumulation}
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}{.02\textwidth}
~
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{.28\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{adnn_corr}
  \caption{The linear fit from the correlation between normalized accuracy and last layer activations of the exact and customized~precision DNNs.}
\label{fig:adnn_corr}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{-6mm}
\end{figure*}

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Sources of Accumulation Error}
\vspace{-2mm}

In order to understand how customized~precision degrades DNN accuracy among numeric representations, we examine the impact of various reduced precision computations on a neuron.  \fig{accumulation} presents the serialized accumulation of neuron inputs in the third convolution layer of AlexNet.  The x-axis represents the number of inputs that have been accumulated, while the y-axis represents the current value of the running sum.  The black line represents the original DNN computation, a baseline for customized~precision settings to match. We find two causes of error between the customized~precision fixed-point and floating-point representations, saturation and excessive rounding.

In the fixed-point case (green line, representing 16 bits with the radix point in the center), the central cause of error is from saturation at the extreme values.  The running sum exceeds 255, the maximum representable value in this representation, after 60 inputs are accumulated, as seen in the figure.  After reaching saturation, the positive values are discarded and the final output is unpredictable.  Although floating-point representations do not saturate as easily, the floating-point configuration with 10 mantissa bits and 4 exponent bits (orange line) saturates after accumulating 1128 inputs.  Again, the lost information from saturation causes an unpredictable final output.

For the next case, the floating-point configuration with 2 bits and 14 bits for the mantissa and exponent (blue line), respectively, we find that the lack of precision for large values causes excessive rounding errors.  As shown in the figure, after accumulating 120 inputs, this configuration's running sum exceeds 256, which limits the minimum adjustment in magnitude to 64 (the exponent normalizes the mantissa to 256, so the two mantissa bits represent 128 and 64).  Finally, one of the customized~precision types that has high performance and accuracy for AlexNet, 8 mantissa bits and 6 exponent bits (red line), is shown as well.  This configuration almost perfectly matches the IEEE 754 floating-point configuration, as expected based on the final output accuracy.

The other main cause of accuracy loss is from values that are too small to be encoded as a non-zero value in the chosen customized~precision configuration.  These values, although not critical during addition, cause significant problems when multiplied with a large value, since the output should be encoded as a non-zero value in the specific precision setting.  We found that the weighted input is minimally impacted, until the precision is reduced low enough for the weight to become zero.

While it may be intuitive based on these results to apply different customized~precision settings to various stages of the neural network in order to mitigate the sudden loss in accuracy, the realizable gains of multi-precision configurations present significant challenges.  The variability between units will cause certain units to be unused during specific layers of the neural network causing gains to diminish (e.g., 11-bit units are idle when 16-bit units are required for a particular layer).  Also, the application specific hardware design is already an extensive process and multiple customized~precision configurations increases the difficulty of the hardware design and verification process.

\ddia{search_speed}{The speedup achieved by selecting the customized~precision using an exhaustive search (i.e. the ideal design) and prediction using the accuracy model with accuracy evaluated for some number of configurations (model + X samples).  The floating-point (FL) and fixed-point (FI) results are shown in the top and bottom rows, respectively.  The model with two evaluated designs produces the same configurations, but requires \textless{}0.6\% of the search time.\vspace{-5mm}}

\vspace{-2mm}
\subsection{Customized~Precision Search}
\vspace{-2mm}
Now we evaluate our proposed customized~precision search method.  The goal of this method is to significantly reduce the required time to navigate the customized~precision design space and still provide an optimal design choice in terms of speedup, limited by an accuracy constraint.

\boldhdr{Correlation model}First, we present the linear correlation-accuracy model in \fig{adnn_corr}, which shows the relationship between the normalized accuracy of each setting in the design space and the correlation between its last layer activations compared to those of the original NN.  This model, although built using all of the customized~precision configurations from AlexNet, CIFARNET, and LeNet-5 neural networks, produces a good fit with a correlation of 0.96.  It is important that the model matches across networks and precision design choices (e.g., floating point versus fixed point), since creating this model for each DNN, individually, requires as much time as exhaustive search.

\boldhdr{Validation}To validate our search technique, \fig{search_speed} presents the accuracy-speedup trade-off curves from our method compared to the ideal design points.  We first obtain optimal results via exhaustive search.  We present our search with a variable number of refinement iterations, where we evaluate the accuracy of the current design point and adjust the precision if necessary.  To verify robustness, the accuracy models were generated using cross-validation where all configurations in the DNN being searched are excluded (e.g., we build the AlexNet model with LeNet and CIFARNET accuracy/correlation pairs).  The prediction is made using only ten randomly selected inputs, a tiny subset compared that needed for classification accuracy, some of which are even incorrectly classified by the original neural network.  Thus, the cost of prediction using the model is negligible.

We observe that, in all cases, the accuracy model combined with the evaluation of just two customized~precision configurations provides the same result as the exhaustive search. Evaluating two designs out of 340 is 170$\times$ faster than exhaustively evaluating all designs.  When only one configuration is evaluated instead of two (i.e. a further 50\% reduction is search time), the selected customized~precision setting never violates the target accuracy, but concedes a small amount of performance.  Finally, we note that our search mechanism, without evaluating inference accuracy for any of the design points, provides a representative prediction of the optimal customized~precision setting.  Although occasionally violating the target accuracy (i.e. the cases where the speedup is higher than the exhaustive search), this prediction can be used to gauge the amenability of the NN to customized~precision without investing any considerable amount of time in experimentation.

\boldhdr{Speedup}We present the final speedup produced by our search method in \fig{bars} when the algorithm is configured for 99\% target accuracy and to use two samples for refinement.  In all cases, the chosen customized{} precision configuration meets the targeted accuracy constraint.  In most cases, we find that the larger networks require more precision (DNNs are sorted from left to right in descending order based on size).  VGG requires less precision than expected, but VGG also uses smaller convolution kernels than all of the other DNNs except LeNet-5.

\sdia{bars}{The speedup resulting from searching for the fastest setting with less than 1\% inference accuracy degradation.  All selected customized{}~precision DNNs meet this accuracy constraint.\vspace{-5mm}}

\vspace{-2mm}
\section{Related Work}
\vspace{-2mm}
To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to examine the impact of numeric representations on the accuracy-efficiency trade-offs on large-scale, deployed DNNs with over half a million neurons (GoogLeNet, VGG, AlexNet), whereas prior work has only reported results on much smaller networks such as CIFARNET and  LeNet-5~\cite{cavigelli2015origami,chen2014dadiannao,DBLP:journals/corr/CourbariauxBD14,du2014leveraging,gupta2015deep,muller2015rounding}.  Many of these works focused on fixed-point computation due to the fixed-point representation working well on small-scale neural networks.  We find very different conclusions when considering production-ready DNNs.

Other recent works have looked at alternative neural network implementations such as spiking neural networks for more efficient hardware implementation~\cite{conti2015ultra, diehl2014efficient}. This is a very different computational model that requires redevelopment of standard DNNs, unlike our proposed methodologies. Other works have proposed several approaches to improve performance and reduce energy consumption of deep neural networks by taking advantage of the fact that DNNs usually contain redundancies~\cite{chen2015compressing, figurnov2015perforatedcnns}.

\vspace{-2mm}
\section{Conclusion}
\vspace{-2mm}
In this work, we introduced the importance of carefully considering customized~precision when realizing neural networks.  We show that using the IEEE 754 single precision floating point representation in hardware results in surrendering substantial performance.  On the other hand, picking a configuration that has lower precision than optimal will result in severe accuracy loss. By reconsidering the representation from the ground up in designing custom precision hardware and using our search technique, we find an average speedup across deployable DNNs, including GoogLeNet and VGG, of 7.6{}$\times{}$ with less than 1\% degradation in inference accuracy.
\clearpage{}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
'Any two believers who forsake each other for more than three days, I disassociate myself from them on the third day.' He was asked, ?O son of the Prophet, this is in regard to the one wronging, but what about the wronged?' He (SAWA) said, 'Well why doesn't the wronged one himself go to the wronger and say, 'I am in the wrong, until they reconcile?!?
Imam Muhammad ibn Ali al-Baqir [as]
Bihar al-Anwar, v. 75, p. 188, no. 10
Sexual Ethics & Morals
# 824 - looking for someone in edda mu
Salaat / Prayers
# 709 - Passing wind from the rear
Business / Investment
# 808 - Masjid or Imam Bargah
# 807 - penetration during period
# 806 - Female masturbation
Divorce / Talaq
# 798 - Divorce
# 797 - Kiss
# 792 - hidden buried treasure
# 781 - Jesus death
Fasting / Sawm / Roza
# 776 - Husbands permissn
Ask Qul - QA
Question : #561 Category: Imam Mahdi
Subject: Imam Mahdi in the Holy Quran
Question: salam brother
in the Holy Quran can you please indicate where the 12th Imam is mentioned ? thank you.
Answer: Salaam Alaykum,
Apologies in advance for the in depth response but I feel this question needs a thorough attempt in order its of use for future references.
Now Allah has introduced the holy personalities of Immate in His book with several titles such as 'Deeply rooted in Knowledge', 'People of Remembrance', and 'The Evident Imam' and the like. Allah has addressed Imam Muhammad ibn Hasan al Mahdi (atf) as 'Inheritor of Quran' by several titles in His book some of which are briefly mentioned hereunder:
1. The Right Path
"Say: Every one (of us) is awaiting, therefore do await: So you will come to know who is the follower of the even path and who goes aright." (Surah Taha (20), Verse 135)
Imam Musa Kazim (a.s.) while interpreting this verse says:
"The Right Path refers to (Hazrat) Qaem (a.s.) and guidance refers to guidance towards his obedience. We can also find its example in the book of Allah:
"And most surely I am most Forgiving to him who repents and believes and does good, then continues to follow the right direction." (Surah Taha (20), Verse 82)
Imam (a.s.) continued,
"He follows the right direction towards our obedience".
(Al Burhaan, Vol. 3, Pg. 50, Al Muhajjah, Pg. 137, Ghaayatul Maraam, Pg. 455)"
In the exegesis of this verse Imam Musa Kazim (a.s.) has explained that
"The Right Path of Guidance" means Hazrat Wali-e-Asr (a.t.f.s.)."
2. Light of Allah.
"They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths but Allah will perfect His light, though the unbelievers may be averse. He it is Who sent His Messenger with the guidance and the true religion, that He may make it overcome the religions, all of them, though the polytheists may be averse." (Surah Saff (61), Verses 8-9)
While explaining the interpretation of this verse to Muhammad Ibn Fuzayl, Hazrat Imam Musa Kazim (a.s.) said:
"They try to extinguish the Mastership of Ameerul Momeneen (a.s.)".
Ibn Fuzayl asked Imam (a.s.): Then what is the meaning of "But Allah will complete His Light".
Imam (a.s.) replied:
"Allah will complete (the light of) Imamat, like he has said Those who believe in Allah and His messenger and the light which we have sent down upon them. In this verse divine light refers to Imam (a.s.)".
Ibn Fuzayl asked further "What is the meaning of "He it is who send His Messenger with guidance and the true religion".
"It means He it is who sent His Messenger with the order regarding the successorship of his successor. That is the true religion."
Ibn Fuzayl inquired further "What is the meaning of "So that He Prevails it over all other religions".
Imam (a.s.) said:
"So that He Prevails it over other religions through the uprising of Qaem (a.s.)".
Imam (a.s.) then said:
Allah says "But He will complete His light". This light refers to the Mastership of (Hazrat) Qaem (a.s.) even if the polytheists were averse to the Mastership of Imam Ali (a.s.)." [Al Kaafi, Vol. 1, Pg. 432]
3. The Spring of Water
"Say: Have you considered if your water should go down, who is it then that will bring you flowing water?" [Surah Mulk (69), Verse 30]
Imam Muhammad Baqir (a.s.) narrates:
"This verse has been revealed about Imam Qaem (a.s.)".
Imam (a.s.) also said:
"If you find that your Imam is occult and dont know where he is, then where will you find him who will inform about the news of the heavens and the earth, and teach you the permissible and prohibited of Allah? By Allah the actualization of this verse has not taken place nor is it possible till that time". [Kamaaluddin, Pg. 335; Al Saafi, Vol. 5, Pg. 206; Isbaatul Hudaat, Vol. 3, Pg 498]
Every living being is in need of water. Water comprises two thirds of this world and life exists because of it. When scientists seek to discover life on other planets they in fact attempt to search water there. The presence of water on any planet means that life exists there because water indicates life. Similarly, disappearance of water from any place leads to its destruction and the end of life therein. Moreover nothing in this world except water has the ability to quench ones thirst. In the same manner when the religion will be about to burn in the flames of oppression and injustice, Allah will bring forth this spring and revive the dead earth (religion) with it.
Thus Imam Mahdi (a.t.f.s.) is rightly called as the "Spring of Water".
4. The Remnant of Allah
"What remains with Allah is better for you if you are believers" [Surah Hud (11), Verse 86]
Ibn Sabbagh-e-Maaliki a renowned scholar of Ahle Sunnat narrates a long tradition in his book "Fusulul Muhimma" from Imam Sadiq (a.s.) about the signs of reappearance of Imam Mahdi (a.t.f.s.). In the end he writes that Imam Sadiq (a.s.) said:
"At that time our Qaem will reappear and he will stand reclining against the wall of the Kaaba and 313 from among sincere believers shall gather around and he shall before anything else recite this verse. He (a.s.) will then say "I am the remnant of Allah, I am the caliph of Allah on this earth and His proof over you". At that moment people shall address him thus "O Remnant of Allah". [Al Fusulul Muhimmah, Pg. 302; Kashful Ghummah, Vol. 3, Pg. 324; Alaamul Waraa, Pg. 433; Tafseer-e-Noorus Saqalain, Vol. 2, Pg. 212; Al Saafi, Vol. 2, Pg. 468]
There is a tradition from Imam Sadiq (a.s.) which says
"If there is no divine proof the earth shall sink with its inhabitants".
It is also clear form several other traditions that this earth owes its existence to the divine proof. i.e. in every era one person from the progeny of Hazrat Muhammad (s.a.w.a.) will be Allahs proof on this earth. After the martyrdom of Imam Hasan al-Askari (a.s.) in 260 A.H till day, the existence of this universe and its inhabitants is clear evidence that a person form the progeny of Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a.) is present and due to his holy presence the earth and its inhabitants still exist. Our eyes always long to see his Holy Visage."
5. The Guardian of the Oppressed (Inheritor)
"And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly, We have indeed given to his heir authority, so let him not exceed the just limits in slaying; surely he is aided." [Surah Isra (17), Verse 33]
Imam Muhammad Baqir (a.s.) while explaining this verse said:
"The Oppressed in this verse refers to Imam Husain ibne Ali (a.s.) who was killed unjustly and we are his Inheritors and the Qaem (a.s.) is from us. When he reappears he shall avenge the blood of Imam Husain (a.s.). In this verse ?Maqtool? refers to Imam Husain (a.s.) and his ?Wali? refers to Hazrat Qaem (a.s.) and ?Israaf? means killing the one who did not participate in killing you". Surely they will be helped means this world will not end unless a person from the progeny of the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a.) is helped so that he fills the earth with justice and equity just as it was filled with oppression and tyranny." [Al Ayaashi, Vol. 2, Pg. 290; Al Muhajjah, Pg. 128; Al Burhaan, Vol. 2, Pg. 419; Tafseer-e-Noorus Saqalain, Vol. 3, Pg. 163]
In Dua-e-Nudbah we call upon the "Inheritor of Imam Husain (a.s.)" thus:
"Where are you, O the one who shall avenge the blood of the one killed in Karbala?"
The Distressed One whose prayers are answered Or, Who answers the distressed one when he calls upon Him and removes the evil, and He will make you successors in the earth. Is there a god with Allah? Little is it that you mind!" [Surah Naml (27), Verse 62]
Imam Sadiq (a.s.) says:
"This verse is revealed about the Qaem(a.s.) from the progeny of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.a.). By Allah he is the distressed one. He will offer two units (rakat) of prayers near Maqame Ibrahim and pray to Allah. Allah will answer his prayers and remove his difficulties and shall make him the Caliph on the earth." [Al Saafi, Vol. 4, Pg. 81; Isbatul Hudaat, Vol. 3, Pg. 553; Tafseer Al Burhaan, Vol. 3, Pg. 208; Tafseer-e-Noorus Saqalain, Vol. 4, Pg. 94]
In the end we pray that Allah hastens the reappearance of his proof so that he avenges the blood of martyrs of Karbala, accords respect to his friends and disgraces his enemies especially those who distorted the interpretation of Holy Quran. Aameen
Question: What doth it profit, my brehertn, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?a0James 2:14, 17, 18, 21a0In these verses we talked about how we can say we have faith, but our actions don't necessarily show it. For example, I can say I trust God with my life but when it comes to putting my life in His hands I keep it in mine. I learned how important it truly is to actually back up our faith with works. If God tells me to go live in Japan and be a missionary. Even though I'd be terrified of the dangers there, and getting caught, I'd go, because not only did God lay it upon my heart to do so, but because I honestly trust Him with my life. He knows what comes of the next coming days I don't. I was reminded how important this really is and I've really been applying it to my life, and let me tell you, I see a change!a0I've learned so much throughout this book of the bible and it's helped me keep my fire for God and to rekindle each day my love for Him. I'm so glad we did this, and excited to continue studying the bible everyday! a0
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Wondershare Coupon code on Spring deals, January 2023
StrategyQuant Coupon code on New Year offering sales, January 2023
The Young Witness [Add Comment]
Submitted by: I_love_Diana
The boy, who was a witness in court, was asked by a lawyer: "Did anyone tell you what to say in court?" "Yes, sir." "I thought so! Who was it?" "My father, sir." "And what did he tell you?" "He said the lawyers would try to get me all tangled up, but if I stuck to the truth, I would be all right."
He can be believed, man! (by billyoung, Jul 18th, 2007)
Don't worry. Just tell what you see :)). lose face;)) (by fairylands, Jul 16th, 2007)
:D, the lawyer must lose his face!!! ;))
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The national trend in housing starts increased in June, reflecting a jump in the SAAR of multi-unit dwellings in urban centres in June to a historical high. Notably, the national inventory of newly completed and unabsorbed multi-unit dwellings has remained below its 10-year historical average so far in 2018, indicating that demand for this type of unit has absorbed increased supply.
The trend in housing starts was 222,041 units in June 2018, compared to 216,701 units in May 2018. This trend measure is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.


If you suffered a painful breakup then you need to give yourself plenty of time to heal before you even consider starting over again. If you jump into another relationship you can pretty much guarantee you will repeat the same mistakes that brought you to the end of your last relationship.
That's because the Universe will continue providing you with experiences to learn each life lesson until you finally "get it." So give yourself time to process the lessons from your past relationships before looking for another partner. Doing so will put you in the best possible place for recognizing a new love.
I use the term 'recognize' because the person you are supposed to be with is already out there. He or she is waiting to meet you, just like you are waiting to meet them. It's not until you are both putting out the same receiving energy that you will connect. At that point you will recognize who you are meant to be with and why. In fact, it is often when you are matched with your true soulmate that you will realize why you had to go through the pain that came first.
Tosha Silver is the author of Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead, a book about abundance. Instead of the common belief of abundance that says we create what we wish for, Tosha takes it another step further.
Tosha believes that the Divine – the Universe – already knows what we need, what is best for us. She guides her readers to open up to the Divine, asking to be changed into the person who can receive the gifts they are already destined to have. She calls these requests Change Me prayers. Saying a prayer each day to whoever you consider your Divine to be is a way to prepare yourself for the arrival of your soul mate and connection.
Katherine Woodward Thomas is a life coach and author of Calling in the One: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life. Katherine also teaches a course of the same name. She takes readers through 49 days of activities to prepare themselves for receiving the love they deserve. She bases her book on the Law of the Attraction and so emphasizes the importance of being open to love.
For years I made my desire to meet "The One" the central drama of my life. Now, I finally understand the difference between wanting something and being ready to have it. As I began to take responsibility at a whole new level for my covert attitudes and hidden agendas, I found myself releasing the resistance I had to being open to love. For the first time in my adult life, I became truly available to create a loving, committed romantic union.
A different way of approaching a search for a romantic love is discussed by Amy Webb in her book Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match. Amy was an inexperienced online dater who wanted to meet the man of her dreams. She created an awkward online dating profile that was simply her resume with an unflattering picture of herself. After discovering that the profile was a bad idea, she got more creative.
Amy studied 'successful profiles' for the code to dating success. She looked at profiles belonging to women who received tons of responses and devised a spreadsheet based on what she saw as an easily proven formula. It doesn't ruin the ending to tell you she found her prince charming. In fact, she starts out the book by telling you she found her true love by using her online dating strategy.
I want to tell you from the outset that my story has a happy ending. I eventually met the man of my dreams, and we had a storybook wedding. We started a family, brought a great house, and are in the process of living happily ever after. But the events that led up to me finding him and settling down were sometimes harrowing, were often depressing, and at one point involved me taking a trip with a color-coded set of spreadsheets to a therapist…We're complex beings. If you want true love and a long-lasting marriage then you need to start by figuring out what makes you happy.
Most likely it is a combination of all of these things that set you up for being in the right place at the right time to greet your soulmate. You need to know what drives your happiness, trust that the Divine already knows, and then clear the clutter from your heart so that you can receive. That's when you will meet the person you were destined to be with.
What do you think is the best way to find that special someone? Have you been successful before? Do you know of a friend that has? We would love to hear your thoughts below!


Bangladesh lost Mominul Haque early, but the steadiness and sublime skills of two champions from Bangladesh, Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim stitched a partnership of 359 runs for the fifth wicket to bat out New Zealand on day 2 at Wellington.
Deep Dasgupta gives his opinion about the actions from day 2 in Wellington at Cricketsoccer.
What a classic day it was for Bangladesh! Shakib and Mushfiq proved why Bangladesh are a team to be afraid off!


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AXPONA 2012 Show Report -- Audio Expo North America
Warm winter brings cool sounds to the South
Show Coverage By A. Colin Flood
The show held two special treats this year. I listened and talked with both the audio industry legend, Bob Carver, he of Phase Linear and Sunfire fame, and Prudence (Farrow) Bruns, she of the Beatles' "white" album fame.
The Legend Speaks
In a seminar with about four dozen people, Bob Carver talked about his new tube amplifiers and line driver arrays. A man much smaller and balder than his towering legend would have you image, this giant of industry made a lot of common sense, although his reasons might not seem so practical at first. He started by saying that a small tweeter can't reproduce the power of a oompapa band. One small tweeter per loudspeaker can't accurately reproduce overall rich sonic presentation (fast attacks in a broad spectrum of sound) of an oompapa band. Turns out, oompapa is a word in the musical vernacular. It means the rhythmical sound of a deep brass instrument in a band, a form of background ostinato. An ostinato (derived Italian "stubborn") is a persistently repeated motif or phrase. The oom-pah sound is usually made by the tuba, the pah is played on the off-beats by higher-pitched instruments such as the clarinet, accordion or trombone. Oompah is often associated with polka and waltz.
Sexy, Thin and Tall
Anyway, a small tweeter, he said, can't produce more than about one acoustic watt without distortion. His new 7' 4" arrays have eleven 4" high-excursion cones facing out each side and a line of 13 ribbon tweeters down the front, for a total of 35 transducers! Carver wants the loudspeakers to be extra tall in order to create an infinite height sound stage. Imagine, he told the audience, if each tweeter was a candle in a line candle array. Now imagine that array between polished mirrors on the floor and the ceiling above it. The reflections would be as bright as the original candles. Ideally, his thin towers would be located in a room with typical eight or nine-foot ceilings so the array and the reflections create the largest possible image.
Carver said he always liked ribbons since the famous Apogee loudspeakers impress him so much. His loudspeakers should be about 40 Hz to 40 kHz and cross over at high 800 Hz. The crossover will function like a first order one. Carver expects about 96dB/W/m efficiency. A frequency response greater than 20 kHz helps that lock images into place.
The demo room included a flat Sunfire Subrosa sub along the front wall. It had dual 10" hi-back EMF drivers powered by a 2700-watt tracking down converter amplifier made famous by Carver while he was at Sunfire. A sub-woofer adds impact and majesty, which he designed to be as flat as possible. He "loves lots of power." The bass amplifier provides 2000-watts and the arrays can handle 2600-watts per side. Using multiple drivers increases not only sound pressure levels, but also efficiency. The current prototype at the show was bi-amped with had four amplifiers, with 600 1200-watts per side. Using multiple drivers increases not only sound pressure levels, but also efficiency. The current prototype at the show had four amplifiers, with 1200-watts per side.
Why Tubes?
Why did the man famous for making one of the most powerful solid-state amplifiers in the '70s (350-watts), want to make tube amplifiers during his comeback? First, Carver said he had a love affair with tubes ever since he was little. He saw his own voice on an oscilloscope and was hooked! Second, music sounds nicer. Third, he said, Harry Pearson' articles, taught audiophiles how to appreciate products that provide realistic and deep acoustic space. Well, tube amplifiers can listen to the environment; the speakers are in much better than solid-state amplifiers. The loudspeaker acts like a microphone to provide feedback to the amplifier. Bob's amplifier uses all the information associated with the acoustics of the room. In his system, the signature of the room is fed into the amplifier which incorporates both current and voltage feedback loops.
Next, the output impedance of a tube amplifier is not zero. It follows the impedance characteristics of the driver. Music doesn't have to be flat to sound good. "A flat curtain of sound," Carver said, "means the beautiful space collapses." The facsimile reproduction, because a real one is not possible, only makes "something that could have existed in time and place." This is deep stuff here � when you think about it. According to Carver, the facsimile reproduction is more enjoyable than the flat curtain of sound that many amplifiers provide.
Confirming what Peter van Willenswaard reported in "Tubes Do Something Special," Carver said tubes watts are indeed more powerful than solid-state ones. The man in the audience said he heard twice as much, but Willenswaard found that tubes provide about five times more power than their rated watts. Carver's new amplifiers will use KT-88s and the new KT-120 tubes, which he said are KT-88s at twice the power. The new Black Beauty monoblock model sports three sets of KT-120 tubes for 305-watts into 8 Ohms and 290 into two. The Cherry red model uses KT-88 tubes for 200-watts into 8 Ohms and 215 into two. Both have a feedback control switch for classical (vintage tube) or contemporary (more modern) sonic signatures and output tube tester. The renown Dick Olsher is right now reviewing the new Cherry 180 models for Enjoy the Music.com. So check back for his review coming soon!
Also planned for his new loudspeaker system is an active crossover utilizing tubes. In the demo system was a Purity Audio tube pre-amplifier. The slaphappy room had no acoustic treatments other than a few orchids. Carver did however, deploy four graphic equalizers tailored to the driver set. On Patricia Barber's "Caf� Blue," the huge soundstage easily recreated a facsimile of her bar scene "that could have existed in time and place."
After listening first to Carver about audio engineering and then to Prudence about her life engineering experiences with the Beatles, meditation and yoga, it would have been appropriate to spend the rest of AXPONA listening to the Beatle's "white" album on Carver's new system. Alas, I did not. Perhaps I will save that for my own comeback. Already looking forward to AXPONA 2013!
This year, the show was exceptional for several reasons! Of course, it is thrilling to see such incredible looking, sounding and expensive systems. I also enjoyed the company of tweaking audiophiles on the drive there, at a room party, in a question and answer session with other writers and at dinner. Members of my audiophile club (Tampa) gathered in the hallways, at breakfast and dinner to compare notes; nothing like having a bunch of mostly middle-age techno geeks to share one's love of movies, music and home reproduction systems.
Audiowood
My friend Joel Scilley did not have a vendor room at AXPONA this year. He crafts quality components into award winning wood designs. His popular Barky turntable features a round slab of wood, Rega arm and cartridge. Magazines like Metropolitan Home and California Home and Design love his work. Scilley showed off a prototype solid wood loudspeaker. He also hosted a room party for my Meetup.com group.
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Salon Audio Montr�al Audiofest 2022
All contents copyright� 1995 - 2023 HighEndAudio.com and Enjoy the Music.com�


The Dalian Vase is a truly resplendent piece of glassware, with an eye-catching curvaceous shape and translucent glass finish.
Ideal for gifting, or simply as a striking centrepiece for your own home, this sleek vase combines unique shape and a neutral colour palette to great effect. Add some colourful blooms for contrast or keep simply as a standout piece in its own right. Either way, you can be sure to enhance any space with this design.


The design of manufacturable Si/Si1-xGex waveguide WDM components involves several unique materials and fabrication issues which must be confronted and resolved. Accurate data for the refractive indices of the waveguide materials are essential. Furthermore, the waveguide design is tightly constrained by the requirement that Si/Si1-xGex layer thickness is within the pseudomorphic growth limit. By combining refractive indices determined from mode profile measurements of MBE and CVD grown waveguides, and epilayer thickness constraints set by the pseudomorphic growth limits, we have determined a set of design criteria for Si/Si1-xGex waveguides for WDM and optical signal routing applications. Optically smooth and vertical Si/Si1-xGex waveguide facets are critical in permitting highly efficient coupling between the fiber and the Si chip. Since Si has an equal probability of cleaving alone either the <110> or <111> planes, producing such high quality facets consistently is extremely challenging. We have demonstrated that high quality facets can be obtained consistently by cleaving, with and without a dielectric layer on Si substrates.


Enables nimble communication with our brand's promoters and pushes out product information.
We can speed up the time to get feedback on product features and/or request beta testers, case studies, etc.
Pricing and licensing was held one level above my role within our organization. I'm not familiar enough to respond accurately here.
This was our first and only advocacy program we have used.
I have found the challenges, discussions and referral features most valuable. It gives our customers a variety of ways to share their passion for our product.
It's a long-term initiative. You need to be fully committed to the strategy and value of customer/advocate marketing.
Find out what your peers are saying about Influitive AdvocateHub vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2019.
Creating challenges and a system of gamification for our users is very valuable.
Helps us keep track of our goal setting, metrics, and engagement.
Reporting all-in-one rather than using Excel! Simplification is KEY!
We did not have a previous solution. We only used Excel sheets.
It has streamlined our reference and advocacy efforts.
I couldn't narrow it down to one specific feature. I would say it is the whole package. It is a great way to connect with your customers!
There are a couple of bugs every now and then, and that slows down the system or process. But other than that, there is really nothing major at all for improvement.
I would recommend this to anyone in customer marketing. I don't see a better solution out there!
I really enjoy how we are able to use gamification to drive engagement from our advocates.
Our social shares and reviews on our product and reviews on our company have dramatically increased because of Influitive.
It's a great product that is really fun to manage. I recommend it to anyone!
It helps us to engage customers in a meaningful way and has helped us to generate testimonials, a pool of customer references, online reviews & referral leads.
If you're looking to engage customers in a meaningful way, I would highly recommend Influitive's Advocate Hub!
I just love the interaction we have with our customers. It's a great way to build relationships with customers that would not exist.
Influitive helps B2B companies drive revenue and increase customer engagement through the voice of their most passionate advocates. Influitive's AdvocateHub is an Advocate Marketing Platform that builds trust, transparency, and cultivates goodwill by giving customers personalized and human relationships with the brands they love. To do so, we elevate and bridge fragmented initiatives like word-of-mouth, branded communities, social sharing, product reviews, referrals, references, NPS, and feedback, while fulfilling your advocates' desire for social status, access, belonging, and shared sense of purpose through a best-in-class advocate marketing experience.


A hackthon for those who love to build!
Augmenting and improving the human experience. From improving the lives of those with impaired vision, hearing, memory and movement to expanding the forefront of what the human body is capable of achieving.
Come and join other passionate developer, engineers, computer scientists and designers for a weekend of building and learning, as we try to develop tech to augment and improve the human experience, enhancing the body and mind.
Our team is made up of 2 engineers and CTO's of social tech companies from an impact accelerator called ZincVC. We love to build great products, and love to share our passion and energy with like minded individuals.
We are building for greater good. All IP and code from the hackathon will be open source on the hackathon repo.
It's free! Apply through the eventbrite and we will send you an email once we select the individuals who are invited. We pick based on passion mainly but you will need some experience coding and any ML experience is even better!
There won't be any cash prizes, but teams will get great exposure, and learn new libraries and tech from our amazing mentors.
Quinn Koike: Research interests in conversation analysis, conversation repair and machine learning techniques for language models. He is the co-founder and CTO of Leika, previous founder of EthicalBox and a lover of open source.


text:
Coombe Bissett Nature Reserve Wins Heritage Lottery Fund Support
Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has received initial support* from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for their plans to expand their existing Coombe Bissett Nature Reserve, it was announced today.
The Trust hopes to purchase just over 85 acres of land next to their existing nature reserve at Coombe Bissett, just outside Salisbury. Part of the land is currently arable and the project aims to revert this back to chalk downland. Development funding of £35,900 has also been awarded to help Wiltshire Wildlife Trust progress their plans to apply for a full grant of £848,200 in June 2017.
This rare and exciting opportunity will enable the Trust to build on their success in restoring chalk grassland in the south of Wiltshire, providing additional habitat for orchids, as well as blue butterflies and birds such as yellowhammers. The location of the new land means that the Trust will be able to offer greater opportunities for public access and the restored grassland will also give considerably enhanced access to children attending the local primary school.
Dr Gary Mantle, Chief Executive of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust said: "We are thrilled that HLF have decided to support our plans to expand Coombe Bissett Nature Reserve. Opportunities to re-create chalk grassland on this scale for the benefit of wildlife and people do not come round very often and this project would be of great strategic and conservation value."
The Trust has already raised £164,000 from their members, supporters and the general public towards their £185,000 match-funding target and, now that HLF has decided to support their plans, they hope to reach this total in the next few months. Donations for the project can be made through the Trust website at wiltshirewildlife.org
The UK is a stronghold for chalk grassland and Wiltshire contains 40% of the world total. However, over 80% of the UK's chalk downland has been destroyed over the past 70 years. The proposed new reserve would cover an area of 215 acres, provide ecological connectivity and further protect, maintain and enhance this internationally important habitat.
Nerys Watts, Head of HLF South West, said: "The conservation of our natural heritage, particularly habitats which are at risk, is an incredibly important investment of money raised by National Lottery players. Not only does our wildlife benefit, but people gain better access and a greater appreciation of the natural world and the part it plays in our lives. We're pleased to support Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's plans and wish them luck in reaching their fundraising goal."
Updated: 6th March, 2018
New funding awarded to improve Landford Bog
The New Forest National Park Authority and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust have been awarded £28,000 to improve Landford Bog for rare plants, invertebrates and reptiles.
New report "shows scale of effort needed to restore nature in Wiltshire"
The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has described a new national report on the declining state of nature as "a serious wake-up call" for action to restore the county's wildlife.
Coombe Bissett Down: UPDATE
Coombe Bissett Down Update
River Avon restoration project wins UK River Prize
River Avon restoration project wins UK river prize.
Membership Raffle Winners 2016
Membership raffle winners 2016.
Green Lane Wood Tesco Bags of Help Award
Green Lane Wood in Trowbridge has been awarded £12,000 through the Tesco Bags of Help initiative. The money will be spent on improving access to this popular community woodland.
John Lewis Advert
The Wildlife Trusts are delighted to be John Lewis's Christmas campaign charity partner This year's John Lewis Christmas advert which launches today
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Join Christian Aid and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust on 13 October in Salisbury for a Stand-Up Speak-Up! lunch and rally.
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A personal notebook-diary written by Richard Sewell, has been donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library by Sewell's partner Grant Allen, who inherited the diary.
Richard Sewell was a diplomat at the New Zealand Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The diary documents how he and Ambassador Chris Beeby tried to help the six American hostages who had managed to escape after Iranian militants had breached the US Embassy. The role played by the New Zealanders was not well known outside of diplomatic circles.
It is only recently that Sewell's partner reliased the importance of the diary, which contradicts the events in the 2012 Oscar-winning Hollywood movie 'Argo'. In the movie, the New Zealand diplomats refuse to help the hostages escape Iran, which the diary reveals does not reflect what actually happened.


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Worth Co. superintendent, students respond to high school principal's resignation
Harley Calhoun's resignation effective June 28
Worth Co. School Board Meeting
By WALB News Team and Marilyn Parker | March 21, 2019 at 1:29 PM EDT - Updated March 21 at 11:56 PM
SYLVESTER, GA (WALB) - Worth County High School (WCHS) principal Harley Calhoun sent a resignation email to faculty and staff Thursday morning.
Calhoun did not want to comment on why he is leaving the high school.
Melvin Jefferson, Worth County Board of Education member, told WALB that Calhoun will not be working for the school system next year.
Jefferson said board members would take Superintendent Bill Settle's recommendation to not renew Calhoun's contract seriously if and when board members bring it to a vote.
Calhoun said he will finish out the school year and will officially leave WCHS in June.
In an email sent to faculty and staff at Worth County High School, Calhoun said:
I want to begin by saying thank you to everyone for the support and prayers my family has received during these last few weeks. I can honesty say that your support has really helped us stay positive. There are no words I can use to describe how we feel about everyone here at WCHS. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond my control, I have decided to resign as principal at the end of my contract.
Harley Calhoun, worth County High School Principal
The email continued: "I want you all to know that I have enjoyed every minute being your principal here at WCHS. I made up my mind when I got into administration that I would not forget where I came from and the struggles I had/saw as a teacher. I firmly believe that the role of a school administrator is to be the support that the staff needs to be successful and do their jobs effectively. It is my hope that I have provided that leadership to each and everyone of you. Thank you all for the privilege of serving as your principal. I have been truly blessed to have gotten to be part of your professional lives and be part of the success you have made happen here. If you all ever need anything from me, please let me know. Thank you!"
Calhoun also released a statement in response of the support for him from the community:
My family and I are very appreciative of all the support from the Worth County citizens, students, faculty and staff and those that I've had the pleasure to be a part of their lives over my 21 years of education."
Harley Calhoun
Calhoun will have been at Worth County High School a total of three years at the end of June.
BREAKING: Harley Calhoun has resigned as WCHS principal. He will finish out his contract ending on June 30th. I sat...
Posted by Bobby Poitevint WALB on Thursday, March 21, 2019
Settle responded to Calhoun's resignation in a Thursday statement.
The Worth County school board accepted Worth County High School Principal Harley Calhoun's letter of resignation Thursday. (Source: WALB)
The Worth County school board accepted Calhoun's resignation, which is effective June 28, according to Settle.
Official statement from Superintendent Bill Settle on Worth County High Principal Harley Calhoun's resignation.
Posted by Marilyn Parker WALB on Thursday, March 21, 2019
In the statement, Settle said the school district is "committed to providing the best learning environment for all students, which includes ensuring the district employs highly effective employees."
"As superintendent, I remain committed to recommending highly effective personnel for employment in all areas to make Worth County Schools the best school district in South Georgia," Settle said.
Unfortunately, in this situation, there has been a surplus of misinformation and conjecture that has not left our district in the best of light, however, I am confident we will move forward with positive results. Worth County Schools is greater than any one individual or individuals and our strength is in the many dedicated professionals who are dedicated to teaching our kids every day.
Bill Settle, Worth County Schools superintendent
Settle continued: "We have a great community that supports education like no other community I have lived in over the years, therefore, I am confident we will move forward together and continue to make Worth County Schools great. Myself and the Worth County Board of Education remain committed to ensuring all our schools have the most effective leadership in place to increase student achievement and the district's graduation rate."
STUDENTS REACT
What seems like a long fought battle between the school board, teachers and students, finally came to an end Thursday night, after the board accepted Calhoun's resignation letter.
[ Worth Co. High School students march to keep their principal ]
[ Parents discuss Worth County High principal ]
Five teachers have submitted their resignations as a result of the board's decision, a teacher who didn't want to be interviewed on camera told WALB.
The decision left students in shock.
"I feel like all this came out of no where," said Kendall Evans, a senior who, like many others, has only good things to say about Calhoun.
It's the actions of his superintendent, Evans said, that causes disarray.
"It really makes people confused and upset because what people don't understand is these school board decisions are affecting the students," Evans said.
Kendal Evans. (Source: WALB)
Hannah Holton agreed with Evans, her classmate.
"I don't know, like why is this happening to my school," Holton said. "It's just very emotional for everyone involved."
Hannah Holton. (Source: WALB)
Evans said: "We have highly effective personnel in the school system right now and he's driving them away. He is kicking them out the door."
Evans also addressed the teachers that have given resignation letters.
"Five solid teachers, I mean possible head of departments," he added.
Holton said there are several people "who are just heartbroken" that Calhoun and the teachers are leaving.
The two students told WALB the fight isn't over and that they only wish Calhoun the very best.
Tommy Coleman, Worth County school board attorney, said that a list of the non-renewals, renewals and resignations can be provided by the superintendents office on Friday.
A new principal has not been hired, but officials said the interview process will begin soon.


First it was Shell who underestimated Greenpeace and Lucy Lawless and now it's the Russians. The following is from Alaska Dispatch 22 August 2013.
Russians say Greenpeace too thin-skinned for Arctic operations: Russia to Greenpeace: "Go home, and take your Warrior Princess with you." The nation you can actually see from parts of western Alaska has turned back a Greenpeace ship trying to get into Russian Arctic waters, where oil and natural gas drilling is set to take place next year. The Russians said the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise does not have a strong enough hull to operate in the Kara Sea, north of western Siberia. Greenpeace claims its ship is tougher than many of the vessels Russia has allowed to sail into its Arctic waters.
The crew of the Arctic Sunrise wanted to shadow Russian oil giant Rosnet and Exxon Mobil's joint drilling operation in the Arctic. Greenpeace members, including actress Lucy Lawless – who played the title role in the 1990s mini-series, "Xena the Warrior Princess", have repeatedly scaled drill rigs off Greenland and Northern Russia, to protest Arctic drilling.


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All booksLiterary fictionThe Sympathizer
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A clever account of a Viet Cong spy, who escapes Saigon for a complicated double life in the United States.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.


Police are appealing for witnesses to a fatal accident in which a 46-year-old man died and which closed one of Doncaster's main roads for most of yesterday.
Officers are appealing for information and witnesses to the fatal incident yesterday afternoon on Wheatley Hall Road.
Wheatley Hall Road was closed for several hours following the incident.
At around 2pm, a Renault recovery vehicle and a pedestrian were involved in a collision on the town bound side of the carriageway, between the junctions with Worcester Avenue and Liverpool Avenue, opposite the Parklands Social Club.
The 46-year-old pedestrian suffered head injuries and was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.
A police spokesman said: "Were you travelling on the A630 Wheatley Hall Road on Sunday afternoon?
Please call 101 quoting incident number 506 of 4 November 2018.
Motorists were advised to use alternative routes and the road was closed for more than five hours while investigations were carried out.


William Best Hesseltine (February 21, 1902 in Brucetown, Virginia - 1963) was an American historian known for his work on the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American South, and mid-19th century United States history. He was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Originally from Virginia, Hesseltine studied at the Ohio State University. He was for a time an active member of the Socialist Party of the United States, accepting its nomination for U.S. vice president in 1948. He opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy in the years before the United States entered World War II.
A number of his doctoral students at Madison went on to be influential historians in their own right, including Kenneth M. Stampp, Frank Freidel, Richard N. Current, Stephen E. Ambrose, and T. Harry Williams. In addition, Hesseltine influenced the development of the field of rhetoric through his mentoring of Robert G. Gunderson.
In 1945 Hesseltine wrote ""Writing intellectual history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."
Civil War Prisons (1930) Read online.
Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (1935) Read online.
A History of the South : 1607-1936 (1936) Read online.
Lincoln and the War Governors (1948) Read online.
The Rise and Fall of Third Parties from Anti-Masonry to Wallace (1948) Read online.
Confederate Leaders in the New South (1950) Read online.
Pioneer's Mission: The Story of Lyman Copeland Draper (1954) Read online.
The South in American History (1960) Read online.
Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (1960) Read online.
The Blue and the Gray on the Nile (1961) with Hazel Catherine Wolf Read online.
Third-Party Movements in the United States (1962) Read online.
The Tragic Conflict: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1962) Read online.
^ Novick, p. 245, 247.
^ Robert G. Gunderson, "William Best Hesseltine and the Profession of History: A Retrospective--Dutch Uncle to a Profession". The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 66, no. 2 (Winter 1982-1983): 106-110.
This page was last edited on 13 August 2018, at 05:15 (UTC).


Cross-Roads Coffeehouse Yo you won't find a better third place.
Our Facebook feed below is current and if we do say so, it's pretty great. See below and click if you really need proof. We're pretty great.
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text:
Westminster Blue Jays: The Official Site of Westminster College Athletics
NCAA Compliance
Intramural Handbook
Blue Diamond Dancers
Championship Seasons
Chi Alpha Sigma
Student-Athlete Awards
Athletic Support Brochure
Westminster College
Why NCAA Division III at Westminster?
Explore Westminster College
Related Bios Todd Creal Floyd Davis
Title: Head Men's Basketball Coach
Email: Matt.Mitchell@westminster-mo.edu
Matt Mitchell joined the Westminster College athletic staff as men's head basketball coach and golf coach in 1998. In 2005, Mitchell relinquished his golf coaching duties to assume additional responsibilities as director of athletics, and in 2016, he assumed the role of senior director of athletic advancement.
Mitchell holds a 281-262 record during his 21 years as the head men's basketball coach. Mitchell earned the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year honors in 2008-09 and split the honors in 2009-10 with MacMurray's coach and in 2012-13 with Spalding's coach.
Mitchell has led the Blue Jays to three NCAA Division III Tournaments (2010, 2012, 2016), ten SLIAC Tournaments, three SLIAC Tournament titles, and three SLIAC regular season titles.
Prior to his appointment at Westminster, Mitchell held assistant coaching positions at Millsaps College, Western Illinois, Rhodes College and Belmont Abbey College.
Mitchell is a Missourian, having grown up in Lexington, Missouri. He played collegiate basketball at Valparaiso University before transferring to the University of Arkansas. He played for Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson at Arkansas. He received his undergraduate degree in education from Arkansas in 1987 and then completed a graduate degree in recreation and park administration from Western Illinois University in 1990.
Mitchell and his wife, Venita, live in Fulton with their two children, Bailey and Kalin.
Milestone Wins At Westminster
1st Career Win: nt. U. of the Ozarks, W 77-75, Nov. 20, 1998.
25th Career Win: at Messenger, W 92-60, Jan. 25, 2001.
50th Career Win: at MacMurray, W 96-76, Feb. 5, 2003.
100th Career Win: vs. Maryville, W 82-61, Dec. 5, 2007.
150th Career Win: at Greenville, W 81-75 (ot), Feb. 6, 2010.
200th Career Win: vs. Blackburn, W 82-54, Jan. 19, 2013.
250th Career Win: vs. Principia, W 67-51, Jan. 17, 2017.
Westminster College Athletics501 Westminster Avenue
Fulton, MO 65251
Westminster College (Mo.)
Tue, 01/18 | Men's Basketball vs. Principia L, 60-57 (Final) RC | BX | V
Tue, 01/18 | Women's Basketball vs. Principia W, 80-45 (Final) RC | BX | V
Sun, 01/16 | Men's Basketball at Webster L, 59-44 (Final) RC | BX | V
Sun, 01/16 | Women's Basketball at Webster L, 76-64 (Final) RC | BX | V
Wed, 01/12 | Women's Basketball vs. Fontbonne W, 83-56 (Final) RC | BX | V
Forecast | Fulton, Mo.
8 °f Clear


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Former Art Van employees sue company after losing healthcare in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic
Posted at 12:42 PM, Mar 27, 2020
(WXYZ) — Former Art Van employees have filed a federal lawsuit after they losing their healthcare in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Todd Stewart, a former manager at the Lakeside location, and Jennifer Sawle, filed the lawsuit on behalf of themselves and all others who are affected.
They alleged that Art Van violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) which requires companies to provide at least 60 calendar days advance written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff that affects 50 or more people.
On March 20, thousands of Art Van employees learned they were out of jobs and had their benefits cut in letters that were handed out the day before.
"When they terminated everybody, they rescinded everybody's health care," Stewart told 7 Action News. "Quite honestly, in a pandemic, that strikes me as absolutely unconscionable."
Those workers were set to be paid and have benefits until May 5, but a spokesperson said last week that the COVID-19 outbreak created a situation where the WARN Act no longer applies.
On Friday, a spokesperson said they couldn't comment on legal matters.
According to Stewart, many husband-and-wife combos worked for Art Van, and he knows of people who have cancer, are pregnant, need heart tests or knee replacements, and all are without healthcare now.
"It's just absolutely unconscionable what they've done," he added.
Art Van shut down stores on March 19, just two weeks after the company announced it was closing all stores. In Warren, where they headquarters are located, more than 260 people were employed. In all, more than 3,000 employees worked for the company across the Midwest.
Read the entire lawsuit below.
Former Art Van employees sue company after losing healthcare in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic by WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Detroit on Scribd


We know that cannabis has been used as a natural remedy for thousands of years. Today, scientific research corroborates this knowledge, which is continuously extending.
Cannabis as a medicine is considered as a palliative for symptoms of diseases such as fibromyalgia, neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, effects of cancer treatments, to treat certain types of chronic pain and for some autoimmune diseases, etc..
Cesamet, name which recieves the Nabilone on the market, is a synthetic analogue of THC, which is not the same as synthetic cannabis, i.e.
it presents the same structure to be identified by the recipients but with some changes in its composition.
Nabilone was introduced in the mid-80's in the United States and was then removed at the end of that decade. It was used as an antiemetic, to alleviate symptoms such as nausea and the consequent vomits from anti-cancer treatments.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, based in California, bought the patent in 2004 and brought it on to the market under the name Cesamet ® during the middle of the last decade. It was also sold in Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and Ireland, extending then to other countries, but not as a drug of first choice. Cesamet ® is available in a bottle of 20 capsules with 1 mg or 1.5mg of nabilone.
There is another synthetic equivalent of THC called dronabinol; it has the appearance of a brown oil and is administered in glycerine capsules of 2.5, 5 and 10mg.
It is marketed under the name Marinol ® in the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It has the same particulars as Cesamet ® and is also used to alleviate the symptoms of anorexia / cachexia syndrome in patients with HIV or terminal cancer.
We must say that synthetic cannabinoids have shown side effects when not used with their THC antagonists, such as CBD and others – which serves to counteract some effects – so they decided to make extractions directly from plant being in order to mantain the range of cannabinoids as much as possible.
number of known, standardised and homogeneous cannaboid, which basically contains delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC ) and cannabidiol (CBD).
A dose of 0.1 ml contains 2.7 mg of THC, 2.6 mg of CBD and 5% of other cannabis derivates. It is administered sublingually by spray-application, and it is sold in bottles of 5, 5 ml with 51 applications. It is aimed, for the moment, at patients with multiple sclerosis and to treat pain in cancer patients. It was patented by the British laboratory GW Pharmaceuticals at the beginning of the last decade and marketed by Bayer and Laboratorios Almirall; this last laboratory is carrying out a pilot-test in Catalonia.
We can see that this kind of treatments with synthetic cannabis derivates have a limited use within the medical cannabis scene. Many therapeutic consumers maintain a firm stance on using only the marijuana plant.
For them, cannabis remains as the best way to treat their ailments. Their attitude is the spearhead against the greedy interests of the big pharmaceuticals in taking advantage of the emerging world of medical cannabis and its great economic potential.
Due to my orthopaedic and neurological illness, I have been looking for Medical Marihuana. Some might say, why don't you grow your own? Well problem is, that my gardening skills are Zero and nothing grows. I don't have a "Green Thumb", so to speak.
Medical Marihuana does ease my health problems much better than common medicine from the doctors.
I am glad to see, that sites, as yours, gives a lot of information for people same as me. thank you all and stay healthy at all times.
I have to encourage you to keep trying to grow your own marihuana, yourself or with someone that could help you with the crop. When you smoke your own weed it gets better, believe me 😉 Thank you!
I just wanted to know what the difference in pain relief when it comes to marinol and sativex? I am know takeing Marinol for extreme back spasms but I have just herd about Sativex and want to have some info for my Dr.
Marinol (dronabinol) is a synthetic form of cannabis, commonly used to treat nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite and weight loss. On the other hand, Sativex is derived from cannabis plants and is usually prescribed to treat spasms and pains. Perhaps you could try Sativex, it seems to be suitable for your symptoms. Either way, we will always recommend speaking with your doctor about it.
Where can I purchase these pills? Can anyone help me?
Starting in 1999 my fifteen year old son was diagnosed with cancer. At that time Marinol was used extensively at the hospital where he was treated. The synthetic Marinol had no effect on pain, nausea, or weight gain. Had I known the benefits of Marijuana at that time I certainly would have seen that he had access to it. Brad passed away in 2004 after five years of suffering with extensive pain and having to be fed through a tube. After Brad passed I was given access to the real deal, Marijuana. The benefits of this 'humble little plant' that was given to us by a higher power has been a life saver. The physiological benefits of Cannabis is another benefit that is not yet covered. Canada is now allowing a spray into the nose which is made from Cannabis and not a synthetic. America is controlled by the pharmaceutical companies and it is this dominance of the market that is preventing the curing of disease. People have the right to receive a natural substance to help them and not a 'synthetic made-in-the -laboratory' drug that can never deliver the benefits of Cannabis.
I could not agree more with your remarks. People not being allowed to use a substance that would heal them is unfair and perverse. Economic interests should never be placed before individuals. Hope one day we'll finally have the right to choose our medicines and won't be forced to buy other medicines anymore.
Those of you that speek about pharmacical companys don't realize how correct you are. By their standards I don't qualify for dronabinol. However I am a kidney transplant patient in rejection being told I'm malnutrition, have been hospitalized 4 times in the last 2 months for nausea, vomiting & dehydratedtion. They can place as feed tube ( which still doesn't work for me) but can't get dronabinol approved because I don't have cancer or HIV. How do they know for sure I don't have some form of cancer my immune system is so suppressed.
I myself have experienced daily nausea and vomiting for more than 3 years. Cannabis helped me in a way that any medicine could do, it was perfect to relax my stomach and neck muscles after vomiting 5-6 times. I really can't understand why only cancer or HIV patients can have access to cannabis, it is as ridiculous as unfair. MANY people could be taking profit from cannabis to heal their medical conditions, it is time that we realize that it is forbidding a substance that heals people what perhaps should be considered a crime.
I really hope you can improve your health status.
I have severe chronic intractable pain, due to toxins from some jaw joint implants, goqing back 32 years.
I have found that CBD helps, but that THC exacerbates the pain. Is Sativex too THC-heavy for my needs?
Also, my state has no access to medical marihuana, yet.
Can you recommend the best option for me?
If you found that CBD helps but THC donesn't (it happens the same to me with my migraines sometimes, some strains work but others just seem to increase the pain) then I would try CBD extracts rather than Sativex. We don't know your laws there, but all these products are 100% legal in Spain since they don not contain sufficient amounts of THC to be considered a drug.
Unfortunately, we still don't ship our products to the USA, we hope that will change soon.
Each 100 microlitre spray of Sativex contains 2,7mg THC and 2,5mg CBD, plus 0,04% alcohol (ethanol).
From our side, we'll keep on fighting so people like you can have the treatment you want for your medical conditions. Hope you can find a solution.
Good luck with our fight; thanks for your work.
The last information we had was that Marinol is legal in Australia, although you'll probably need medical prescription.
Hi ?The Dr. Gave me cesamet for pain. How would I go about getting approved for medical marijuana? Can u get it prescribed on line, or do I physically have to find, go to a Dr to make a prescription? I live in Ontario Canada. I really don't want to get back on opiates (took me 11yrs). If someone knows, ID really appreciate it!
Hi, is it possible for my Doctor, Neurologist or the Royal Adelaide Pain Clinic to get Sativex for me in South Australia and would it be expensive or on the PBS if available please. I have Multiple Sclerosis. Thank you.
I hav fibromyalgia & epilepsy also pcos opiates & opioids do not work. It is very hard 2 try & get any type of cannaboids in newzealand so thinking I may hav 2 grow my own even tho illegal. The pain relief is so much better from cannabis I think it's wrong that sumthing so natural is so illegal.
It is a shame that thousands of patients around the world are not allowed not only to treat their conditions as they want, but also to grow their medicines at home. Perhaps is because of that, because if you grow your medicine at home you're not buying medicines from big pharma companies. As I said, it's absolutely shameful. Hope you won't have problems for trying to treat your disease…all our best thoughts!
I have been given nabilone (cesamet) for prevention of migraines and I have to say after years and so many different meds it is working so well. I used to have daily pretty much I've only had a couple in the few months I've been taking it. I have smoked in the past to relieve a migraine but I like that this prevents and doesn't make me feel high or go to sleep when I don't want to. I however have terrible insomnia that is exacerbated it seems by the last two meds they had me on. Thoughts on combining smoking g with the nabilone? I am thinking to talk to doc about mm because I know that MJ will put me to sleep and I don't want them to switch me off the nabilone for the above reasons..
There is one important factor that you should be aware of: during the combustion process when you smoke, lots of compounds are released. These compounds decrease the anti-migraine properties of cannabis notably, something that doesn't happen when you vaporize the plant material instead of smoking it. Thus, the first advice for anyone using marijuana to treat migraines is "do not smoke it but vape it!!".
About combining Nabilone and marijuana: I assume there won't be any problem, Nabilone is composed of a synthetic cannabinoid which mimics THC. Also, notice that there are hundreds of cannabis strains with different effects, so while some Sativas are extremely stimulant, most Indicas will put you to sleep almost instantly. If you're using cannabis you must be aware of that and know what you're smoking. A little bit of trial and error will surely let you to know what strains work best for you. Of course, you should ask your doctor about it.
I have had ongoing chronic insomnia for over forty years (I am Seventy five) and take strong sleeping pills which only now help if I have at least three glasses of wine. THis gives me a decent sleep, but don't always feel marvellous the next day but certainly preferable to lack of sleep. I would like to cut down on the intake of alcohol as of course this is too much on a daily basis, and an was wondering if medicinal marijuana or cannabis would be a miraculous aid to my sleeping problems?
Hi Valerie, thanks for your question.
Your hunch is correct, cannabis can indeed be a godsend to sufferers of insomnia, with indica-dominant Kush varieties being consistently recommended for this purpose, although I'd recommend you to try a few different things for yourself to see what works best for your situation.
Users have reported great success using cannabis tinctures or edibles of some kind before bed, which can be a healthier alternative to smoking cannabis.
I hope that helps you to reduce the alcohol and sleeping consumption somewhat, best of luck.
Hi Rose, you'll really need to talk to your doctor about that, I've searched but I can't find Cesamet available anywhere online. I have read that it is banned in Ireland, but I can't find any clear information. However, according to wikipedia, Sativex has been approved for prescription in Ireland since 2014, although I've read that it hasn't yet been prescribed to anyone.
Hi there – I was diagnosed with occipital neuralgia some time back and have started weening myself off the medication as a result of the symptoms still being present. We are in the process of trying to grow our own plant and are currently trying recipes to 'cook' bought product with coconut oil to strain out the active ingredient. While this project is something different and fun for us, what is availble in South Africa in terms of a store bought 'medication' that we can use in the interim? Thanks very much.
No, we can't sell these medicines, we can only sell CBD products.
Hi Linda, I'm afraid it's not possible to order Dronabinol here, you'll need to be prescribed it by a cannabis-friendly doctor to be able to buy it in Europe. The best advice I can currently give you is to search online for a Medical Cannabis Consultation near you. Best of luck.