text:
Q: Why does @output event produce error "TypeError: _co.XXXXX is not a function' Writing an Angular child component, and can't convince the parent to capture a value emitted through @Output.  It throws an error that the receiver _co.pinEvent is undefined.  During initialization, though, the debugger shows it successfully making the call.  So it's not a simple typo.
Followed every guide and question I could find, cut it down to minimal example, and still can't get it to work.  The component reference _co seems to be pointing at something other than the home component.
home.module.ts
...
import { KeypadComponent } from '../keypad/keypad.component';

@NgModule({
...
  declarations: [HomePage, KeypadComponent]
})
export class HomePageModule {
    digits: number;
    title: string;
    change: any;

    constructor() {
    }

    pinEvent($event) {
         console.log(JSON.stringify($event));
    }

}

home.page.html
<ion-content>
    <ble-lock-keypad (pinValue)="pinEvent($event)"></ble-lock-keypad>

  Once the component is visible, any event emitted
  from child causes this pinEvent() call to fail on
  an undefined reference.
</ion-content>

keypad.component.ts
@Component({
  selector: 'ble-lock-keypad',
  templateUrl: './keypad.component.html'
})
export class KeypadComponent {
    @Output() pinValue: EventEmitter<string> = new EventEmitter<string>();

    constructor() {
     }

    handleInput(key: string) {
        this.pinValue.emit(key);
    }

}

keypad.component.html
<ion-button (click)="handleInput('1')">1</ion-button>

Getting really tired of seeing this error:
TypeError: _co.pinEvent is not a function. (In '_co.pinEvent($event)', '_co.pinEvent' is undefined)
Can anyone point out what's going wrong?


Gomes, who sits on the Parliament's security and defence subcommittee, thinks a British exit from the EU will make it easier for countries to push for increased spending on joint research and equipment.
"I hate to see Brexit – I campaigned against it – but as the Chinese say, every crisis is an opportunity," she said. Although the UK is one of Europe's biggest defence spenders, the country is long ambivalent to EU-led defence plans.
"They participated in some EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions when their national interests were in line. But it was à la carte. The European Defence Agency will tell you, the British were the ones blocking new proposals," said Gomes.
With the UK heading for the door, and a newly-assertive Russia, many feel the time is right for the EU to play a more active role on the global defence stage.
Voices in Brussels have been heard calling for a push to broaden European defense and security cooperation. Industry Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska, who announced plans to increase defence R&D spending in Parliament last month, foresees "a fully fledge defence research programme in the future, and a complete change of mindset at European level."
This sentiment will be well received in the US, where pressure on Europe to spend more on defence has been steadily rising. Both Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, and President Barack Obama, have said European countries are failing to invest enough.
"The role of Germany, which is taking a lead, is pretty important – they were always very reluctant in the past," said Gomes. The country has tread softly in military affairs since World War II.
Europe as a whole cut military spending with the end of the Cold War, feeling the threat from Russia was declining.
Compounding this, austerity programmes have drastically cut defence budgets since 2008. "When countries are dramatically constrained, the first things to go are capacities in security and defence," Gomes noted.
EU national spending on defence research is currently less than €8 billion per year, with almost all of this carried out in France, the UK and Germany.
European spending on R&D in defence is a fraction of the US R&D investment, which is projected to reach €67 billion next year.
Gomes did not suggest a figure for how much should be spent on defence R&D. However, a recent study argues that, "European defence research is coming close to an agonising point of no return" and recommends that the EU should spend between €500 million and €3.3 billion per year on defence R&D.
If current trends are not reversed soon, in 15 years Europe, "Will be no more than a mere customer of the US defence industry," the report says.
It has not been confirmed whether the EU's new defence programme will be self-standing or run under Horizon 2020's successor, as Gomes would prefer.


For The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare's first Robust Process Improvement (RPI) project, eight leading US hospitals used The Center's Targeted Solutions Tool (TST) to improve hand hygiene compliance rates to more than 80 percent over a 28-month period.
Clinical pathways have the potential to improve patient outcomes, enhance efficiency, reduce lengths of stay, and decrease costs. But do they really?
The Pareto Principle (80-20 Rule, Law of the Vital Few) is a valuable quality management tool because its application encourages a focus on the most crucial issues.
Alcohol-based hand rubs represent a major advance in infection prevention and control because, compared with traditional handwashing with soap and water, their application requires less time, acts faster, irritates hands less often, and may improve hand hygiene compliance and healthcare-associated infection rates.


text:
Q: How do I log parameters and metrices in MLflow using Ariflow? I am trying to log the parameters, metrices and artifacts of my model in MLflow using Airflow . I am able to log these things when I execute the python file through the terminal, however it is not logged when I run the same file through Airflow.
Is there a way I can log these things when I execute the file through Airflow?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: How to count numbers and characters of a string? I have to do this excercise and I'm really trying to do my best, but I can't figure out how to solve it.
It says I need to code a program to analyze a string. And it needs to give the numbers of words and numbers.
Note that a number is also a word.
123 is a word and a number, but for example 4HIMATE is not a number, only a word.
I'll let my code of what I got so far
int main()

{
int size= 256;

char s[256]= "Hi 123 Peter 8hi hi8";
char space[]= " ";

int wordCount= 0;
int numberCount= 0;

strcat(s, space);

strlwr(s);

for(int i= 0; s[i]!='\0'; i++)
{
    if(s[i+1]== ' ' && s[i]>96 && s[i]<123)
    {
        wordCount++;
    }

    if(s[i+1]== ' ' && s[i]>47 && s[i]<58)
    {
        wordCount++;
    }

}

for (int j=0; j<size; j++)
{

    if(s[j+1]== ' ' && s[j]>47 && s[j]<58)
    {
        numberCount++;
    }
}

printf("Words= %d\n", wordCount);
printf("Numbers= %d", numberCount);

return 0;
}

My output needs to be=
Words= 5
Numbers= 1
But the mistake is on numbers, the output is 2.
I don't really know how to solve that, so I need some help.
Corrected some mistakes (edit):
 for(int i= 0; s[i]!='\0'; i++)
{
    if(s[i+1]== ' ' && s[i]>'a' && s[i]<'z')
    {
        wordCount++;
    }

    if(s[i+1]== ' ' && s[i]>'0' && s[i]<'9')
    {
        wordCount++;
    }

}

for (int j=0; s[j]!='\0'; j++)
{

    if(s[j+1]== ' ' && s[j]>'0' && s[j]<'9')
    {
        numberCount++;
    }
}

A: Your logic is flawed, as you won't be counting the last "word" (hi8) as a word. Similarly you won't count "numbers" if they are last in the string. This could be found out through some debugging.
One possible solution is to use states. One state that tells if you are in a word or not, and another state that tells if the current word is all digits or not.
Using states, when looping over the string you check if the current character is an alpha-numeric character. If it is, and the is-a-word state is not set then set that state. When changing the state, then also check if the current character is a digit and if it is then set the is-number state. Continuing the loop, if is-a-word state is set, and the current character is not a digit, then you clear the is-number state. When reaching something that is a space then you check your states: If is-a-word is set, then clear it and increase the word counter; If is-number state is set, then increase the number counter and clear the state.
In pseudo code it could be something like this:
is-a-word-state = false
is-a-number-state = false

for each character in string
{
    if (current-character is alphanumeric and is-a-word-state == false)
    {
        // Started a new word
        is-a-word-state = true

        if (current-character is digit)
        {
            // Could be a number
            is-a-number-state = true
        }
    }

    if (current-character is not digit)
    {
        // Current word (if any) is not a number
        is-a-number-state = false
    }

    if (current-character is space)
    {
        if (is-a-word-state == true)
        {
            // End of the current word
            word-counter++

            if (is-a-number-state == true)
            {
                // Word is a number
                number-counter++
            }
        }

        is-a-word-state = false
        is-a-number-state = false
    }
}


Recently I have been looking at some PHP security testing issues and I needed a fuzzer. I found a PHP fuzzer called PFF available via the Digital Dwarf Society. The original author's webpage doesn't seem to be up anymore, but the Digital Dwarf folks had a cached version of the actual code available.
Progress! After a bit of searching, I found out that, apparently, Mac OS X doesn't support the "strndup" function as it is a GNU-specific extension to the standard library (reference is here). Who would have thought?
Now the build runs properly. Success! Also, the pff binary runs as it should so I can start fuzzing away on PHP functions.
I am about to mail this along to the Digital Dwarf (info@digitaldwarf.de) and SETEC/calcite (calcite@setec.org) folks but I also wanted to post the info publicly as well. Happy PHP fuzzing!
More info on strdup, strndup and associated functions can be found here.
PS – Photo is of my dog, Cody. He's a good boy. (c) Dan Cornell 2008.
I know this website provides quality based content and other material, is there any other web site which gives these information in quality?


If you open this dialog via the Exchange account, you will see which Exchange folders have been released to the user.
Access to Exchange folders can be activated here, if these folders have been released on the Exchange server. The activation will not take effect if the folders have not been released.


PARIS (AA) – Protesters have disrupted supply lines from oil distribution depots in Normandy over proposed new labor reforms, causing fuel shortages in western France, local media reported Saturday.
Petrol stations in the country's western regions were heavily affected after protesters blocked main roads through which oil products get shipped Friday.
Some regional governors began limiting petrol sales by banning its sale through fuel cans at stations to prohibit stocking, French media outlet BFM TV reported.
The news channel said one-fifth of the stations in the country's western regions made no fuel sales due to the shortage.
It is also estimated that the fuel shortage would swell further after workers of TOTAL's Normandy refinery reportedly shut down production for 72 hours.
A wave of strikes in the country, which started last year over controversial proposed labor reforms, is continuing with huge protests this week.
Government critics have lambasted the labor bill, prepared by France's Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri to bring down unemployment. Trade unions consider the law, which would extend working hours and restrict overtime, as taking away vested rights.
According to French Interior Ministry, over 2,000 people have been detained since March during protests of the law.
Some demonstrators were injured in April due to heavy police intervention with tear gas and plastic bullets to disperse protesters.
On April 29, 500,000 people took to the streets, according to unions, versus 170,000 according to police estimates.
Also, police say 55,000 people protested the law on May 12, while unions say the number of protesters was 80,000.


text:
Keith Whitley exhibit coming to Country Music Hall of Fame
History, News
March 2, 2019 by Jessica Blankenship
Keith Whitley has been added as a special exhibit with the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville beginning May 3, 2019. The Sandy Hook, Kentucky, native has influenced so many over multiple generations of music in bluegrass and country genres.
The exhibit encompasses Whitley's entire career, from his bluegrass roots to his success as a singer in a traditional style of country music with #1 hits "Don't Close Your Eyes," "When You Say Nothing at All," "I'm No Stranger to the Rain," "I Wonder Do You Think of Me" and "I'm Over You." The installation will also look at Whitley's influence on the country singers who followed him.
"I cannot express what an honor it is for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to recognize the late, great Keith Whitley as such an important part of country music history. He was not only instrumental in giving me the confidence I needed as an artist, but through the years he has given many other up-and- coming stars the confidence and true grit they have acquired by loving and listening to the music of Keith Whitley," said Lorrie Morgan. "This exhibit is not just Keith's life in music, but it also depicts his love for country and bluegrass music. Keith always felt inadequate of the recognition he deserved. Keith was the most humble, generous, and truly the most talented man I have ever known. Before Keith's death, he was three weeks away from his life-long dream of being made a member of The Grand Ole Opry, a surprise that he never knew about. Speaking for myself, his daughter Morgan, son-in-law Justin, his son Jesse Keith, daughter-in-law Kristen, his grandchildren Preston, Parker, Tuff, his unborn granddaughter, all of the Whitleys and all of the Morgans, this is an honor we have longed to show the world. This exhibit is the life and times of Keith Whitley."
Keith Whitley's legacy continues to this day and truly deserves to be a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Hopefully this exhibit will help encourage the secret board of decision makers of inductees to include his name as one of the three in the 2019 class.
Here in Kentucky, Keith Whitley's musical heritage continues to be celebrated. Many items of his are on display at the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in Renfro Valley, where he became a member in 2011. His statue also stands firm and tall in his hometown of Sandy Hook. Each year, a motorcycle ride in his memory happens in May. Organizers have discussed plans for the 2019 event via their Facebook page (click here). It expands every year and has recently included concert of those influenced by Keith Whitley.
For more information on the Country Music Hall of Fame, be sure to check out www.countrymusichalloffame.org. Don't forget to visit the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum at www.kentuckymusichalloffame.com.
Laurel Cove Music Festival coming to Pine Mountain State Park
Dale Ann Bradley discusses her journey and new album
One thought on "Keith Whitley exhibit coming to Country Music Hall of Fame"
Pingback: Jesse Keith Whitley discusses his musical heritage and upcoming projects

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text:
What's Worth Watching: Previewing the Main Event
Rob Moynihan April 29, 2015
Robert Hanashiro/USA TODAY Sports
Mayweather and Pacquiao
Inside Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, "Episode 3" (Wednesday, April 29, 10/9c, Showtime)
It's been billed as "The Fight of the Century." On Saturday, May 2, world champions Floyd "Money" Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will enter the ring at the MGM Arena in Las Vegas for the most anticipated boxing match of all time.
But before the fists fly, tonight the gloves come off in the third hour of the Showtime docuseries Inside Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, which gives viewers unprecedented access into the moments leading up to the throw down. The fighters share intimate details about their workout regimens, the inner circles tasked with caring for the champions, and their predictions about the main event, which is guaranteed to provide both men with a historic payday upwards of $150 million and attempt to revitalize the sport of boxing in the United States. No matter the result, this fight is guaranteed to be a knockout.


VIDEO: Frenchie Davis Performs "I Am Changing", "Love's Got a Hold"
The 25th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change wrapped in Atlanta on Saturday. The four day conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force convened the nation's premier and emerging LGBT leaders in activism, politics, policy, strategy, media, labor and technology.
This was a busy day for the American Idol alum. After closing Creating Change, Ms. Davis was the featured performer at the second annual Gentleman's Ball. The event benefited AID Atlanta's Evolution Project, was hosted by Eva Marcille and produced by G Spot Productions. Very nice.


text:
David Charles (23 July 1812 – 13 December 1878) was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist cleric and educator, who was one of the men behind the foundation of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Life
Charles was the son of a linen draper and grandson of the prominent Methodist Thomas Charles. He was born in Bala, Merionethshire, Wales, and educated by a local Anglican rector (the Reverend J. Lloyd), which led to his continuing his education at Jesus College, Oxford, matriculating in 1831 and graduating in 1835. During his time at Oxford, he lived in the same rooms in Jesus College as his grandfather had when he studied there. Charles remained uninfluenced by the Tractarians, and instead rediscovered his family Methodist affiliations in preference to the Anglicanism he had acquired from Lloyd. He returned to Bala and opened a preparatory school for Calvinistic ministers with his brother-in-law, Lewis Edwards, in 1837. In 1842, he became principal of Trevecca College, Brecknock and remained in position for 20 years, encouraging his students to obtain degrees from the University of London before returning to Wales to preach. Students however disliked his overbearing attitude. He left in 1863 after a dispute, causing the college to close for three years, and was appointed as the pastor of the church in Abercarn, Monmouthshire through the influence of Lord Llanover and his wife Lady Llanover.

Hugh Owen appointed Charles as secretary of the University for Wales movement in 1868, in succession to Thomas Nicholas. He attracted support and donations from lower-class subscribers, in comparison to the approach taken by Nicholas, but this raised little and the efforts of others were needed to keep the scheme going.  Charles was annoyed not to be appointed as the first principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth—the position going to his nephew, Thomas Charles Edwards, in 1872—and he resigned, settling in Aberdyfi.  He died there on 13 December 1878, and was buried at Llanidloes.

References

1812 births
1878 deaths
Welsh educators
Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford
People associated with Aberystwyth University
Welsh Methodist ministers
19th-century Welsh clergy
19th-century Methodist ministers

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


New here from Ohio. I am a retired Deputy Sheriff with 35 years service. Served in Jail, Court Services, Statewide Prisoner Convey, Detective Bureau and Criminal Investigations. I have no long guns, but a fairly comprehensive collection of handguns and custom knives, as well as being a student of the Cane as a Martial Arts Weapon. I am a CCW Permit holder, as well as a strong advocate of our Second Amendment rights. I think that all CCW Permit holders have an obligation to get adequate training with their weapons, but equally importantly, to have a responsible mindset of CCW obligations. It is not enough to be just trained and competent. We must also realize what a tremendous responsibility we are taking upon ourselves. We must also understand the aftermath, both legally and mentally that any action we take will most certainly impose on both us and our families, as well as others involved in any action we take. While we have an obligation to protect ourselves, our families, and those who cannot protect themselves, we must always be cognizant of what will happen afterwards.


text:
Technology Internet
Bitcoin A Terrorist Threat? Counterterrorism Program Names Virtual Currencies As Area Of Interest
By Ryan W. Neal @ryanWneal
Bitcoins Reuters
After attracting attention from law enforcement, financial regulators and old-school Wall Street investors, bitcoin is now on the U.S. military's radar as a possible terrorist threat.
Friday was the deadline for submissions to a counterterrorism program seeking vendors to help the military understand state-of-the-art technologies that may pose threats to national security, and "bitcoin" and "virtual currencies" are listed among them.
The program is being conducted by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, a division of the Department of Defense that identifies and develops counterterrorism abilities and investigates irregular warfare and evolving threats.
An unclassified memo from January unearthed by Bitcoin Magazine detailed solicitations for CTTSO projects. The memo states that one of the mission requirements is for "innovative...solutions to develop and/or enhance new concepts and constructs for understanding the role of virtual currencies" in financing threats against the United States.
The memo said the blurring of national lines is facilitating the transfer of virtual currencies: "The introduction of virtual currency will likely shape threat finance by increasing the opaqueness, transactional velocity, and overall efficiencies of terrorist attacks," it stated.
At the heart of the concern is the anonymity built into the bitcoin architecture. While every bitcoin transaction is public, the parties involved are kept anonymous. With bitcoins, illegal operations can be made with the speed and ease of the Internet and with the secrecy of cash.
Several recent high-profile cases have put bitcoin under greater scrutiny.
In October, the FBI closed down the Silk Road, a digital black market that allowed users to buy drugs, guns and even professional assassins. Silk Road accepted only bitcoin for payments, and the man arrested for running Silk Road was charged with narcotics trafficking and money
laundering, among other charges.
Charlie Shrem, chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and the head of BitInstant, a defunct bitcoin exchange, was arrested in January on charges of money laundering with bitcoins.
In February, Mt. Gox, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, filed for bankruptcy protection after hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of bitcoins were stolen. No criminal charges have been filed yet, but many former Mt. Gox customers suspect that it was a scam.
A Treasury Department investigation said in March that it found no evidence of "widespread" use of virtual currencies like bitcoin to finance terrorism. Still, it's clear that nefarious individuals have recognized the potential to use bitcoin for harm.
The anonymity seems to be what concerns the CTTSO the most. The agency also called for research on "anonymizing software" and "Dark Web," and views anonymous networks like TOR as a way to traffic drugs, weapons, humans and even nuclear technologies undetected. The CTTSO's mission against irregular warfare and evolving threats also has a requirement for "methods and means to systematically discern and display 'precursors of instability' in the Dark Web."
The Navy was one of the original developers of the Dark Web, as onion routing, which creates anonymous messaging by using several routers to give Internet data multiple layers of encryption, was developed in the United States Naval Research Laboratory to protect government communications.
Also on the CTTSO's list of terrorism research topics were Android, Motorola, social media and virtual reality. Google and Facebook may want to take note.
New-Age Currency Gets Old-School Approval
MIT Students Give $500,000 Worth Of Bitcoin To Fall Semester Undergraduates
MOST READ IN Technology
US Prosecutors' Efforts To Seize SBF's Assets Gain Steam
Does Musk Have GodMode Access? Twitter Whistleblower Makes Shocking Claims
Sam Bankman-Fried Short Of Funds? Capitol Hill House Now Up For Sale
Pro-XRP Lawyer Alleges SEC Threatened To Bankrupt A Crypto Business
'Shiba Eternity' Receives New Update That Addresses Deck Editing Issue


You may return most new, unopened items sold and fulfilled by WOW Warehouse, within 30 days of delivery for a full refund either by store or by mail. Please call WOW Warehouse at 432/272-0596 for instructions and an emailed label.
We strongly recommend you keep your packaging for at least the first 30 days after purchase.
During the holidays, items shipped by WOW Warehouse between November 1st and December 31st can be returned until January 31st.


text:
Sir Anthony Seldon and Mike Finn launch The Coalition Effect 2010 - 2015 to a full crowd at the LSE
The Coalition Effect 2010 - 2015 was launched at the London School of Economics on Wednesday 25 March amid a flurry of media interest. Described by Guardian columnist Matthew d'Anconna as 'a collection of superb insights by first-class writers' the book asks if the coalition has delivered on its promises and considers the effects of coalition government on politics.
Gathered at the LSE to discuss key themes of the book were volume editor Sir Anthony Seldon, a leading political commentator and historian, and his co-editor Mike Finn, a former political speechwriter to the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Joining them on stage were Dr Rosie Campbell from Birkbeck College, University of London, political scientist Dr Philip Cowley, and chairing the discussion was Tony Travers, Professor in the Department of Government at LSE. A capacity audience listened to the speakers explore a range of issues from economics and foreign policy to what the coalition did for women before joining the discussion in a lively Q&A session. The book has sparked huge media interest from national newspapers, TV and radio and is out now.
For more information, please visit http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/03/20150325t1830vCLM402.aspx
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I would love to have the Zebra Rolling Suitcase for my grand daughter.
i would like to have the Hippo Rolling Suitcase for either my daughter or son.
i would like to have the Hippo Rolling Suitcase for both of my kids to share. they are small enough to share a suitcase.


text:
Q: How to install Android apk from code in unity I found snippet for Java. How can I write such a code in C# Unity?
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
intent.setDataAndType(Uri.fromFile(new File("link to downloaded file")),"application/vnd.android.package-archive");
startActivity(intent);

A: I just wanted to add an update to the fantastic answer given by @Programmer, to reflect changes to the Android SDK and Unity. I hope it can be useful to someone else. I am working with SDK version 26 and Unity 2017.3.1. I am new to almost all of this so please do correct me if I've missed or misunderstood anything!

*

*The android-support-v4.jar (used to get the FileProvider class) is no longer available. For versions up to 24.1.1 it is located at Android\sdk\extras\android\m2repository\com\android\support\support-v4\24.1.1 but for versions after that you must instead use support-core-utils at Android\sdk\extras\android\m2repository\com\android\support\support-core-utils. Instead of a jar file use the relevant .aar file and drag that into a Plugins folder in your Unity project.

*You need to add android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES to your AndroidManifest.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="com.company.productsomethingelse" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:installLocation="preferExternal" android:versionName="1.0" android:versionCode="1">
  <supports-screens android:smallScreens="true" android:normalScreens="true" android:largeScreens="true" android:xlargeScreens="true" android:anyDensity="true" />
  <application android:theme="@style/UnityThemeSelector" android:icon="@drawable/app_icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:debuggable="true">
    <activity android:name="com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayerActivity" android:label="@string/app_name">
      <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
      </intent-filter>
      <meta-data android:name="unityplayer.UnityActivity" android:value="true" />
    </activity>

    <provider
          android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
          android:authorities="com.company.product.fileprovider"
          android:exported="false"
          android:grantUriPermissions="true">
      <meta-data
          android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
          android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
    </provider>

  </application>
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />
  <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="24" android:targetSdkVersion="26" />
</manifest>

Note that I've also changed the first instance of com.company.product to com.company.productsomethingelse

*That should now build ok and work, although during the build process
Unity is giving the warning OBSOLETE - Providing Android resources
in Assets/Plugins/Android/res is deprecated, please move your
resources to an AAR or an Android Library.. To get round this
create a new zip file and put your AndroidManifest.xml at the top
level of the zip. Then add the provider_paths.xml detailed by
@Programmer into the zip in the folder structure
res/xml/provider_paths.xml. Rename the zip to give it a .aar file extension and then drag it into your Unity project
Assets/Plugins folder. The reason I changed the AndroidManifest.xml entry to com.company.productsomethingelse is that when I used com.company.product the Unity build process was throwing up a naming conflict. I think because the manifest is now in a separate aar it needs to have a distinct package name.

A: With later versions of Unity, it gets a bit more complicated. Assets/Plugins/Android/res got deprecated. And with Android 9.0 android.support.v4 got merged into androidx.core and everything got renamed and moved around. Fortunately Unity is a bit better about supporting Android plugins now, so with this solution you no longer have to add any jar or aar to your project.
Note that Android has a bunch of nag screens associated with this install process. There's a one-time accept screen for untrusted builds per app, and if you have google play on the device, play protect adds a bunch of screens that make your app look like malware. (Which is a good thing, as you should only be doing this stuff on kiosk-mode style devices you own, where you can turn off Play Protect.)
Adding to Programmer's answer. In Unity 2019 and 2020, you can compile a plugin directly in Unity, and you no longer need the jar file. In 2019, it needs to be in Assets/Plugins/Android and have a couple extra files. In 2020, the folder just needs the suffix .androidlib and can be located anywhere in Assets/.
package.androidlib
  src
    main
      res
        xml
          provider_paths.xml
      AndroidManifest.xml
  build.gradle
  AndroidManifest.xml  (only for 2019)
  project.properties  (only for 2019)

provider_paths.xml: As explained by Programmer.
AndroidManifest.xml: is mainly there to give this new library a bundle ID. This should not match any other IDs; it can be anything and usually it's com.companyname.packagename. Note that it's within the main/ folder
We can also do the rest of the AndroidManifest.xml stuff here, because all AndroidManifest.xml files will get merged in the final APK nowadays. The FileProvider package has changed to androidx.core.content.FileProvider.
I've noticed you need android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES; but I'm not sure whether you need READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE/WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE like Kaushix suggests. (Maybe on certain devices? I think this is covered by Project Settings->Write Permission.)
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="com.anything.anythingelse">
    <application>
        <provider
            android:name="androidx.core.content.FileProvider"
            android:authorities="${applicationId}.provider"
            android:exported="false"
            android:grantUriPermissions="true">
            <meta-data
                android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
                android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
        </provider>
    </application>
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />
</manifest>

build.gradle: This should probably match your project target and min SDK version. It's OK if it's less, but target needs to be at least 28 to use androidx.
apply plugin: 'com.android.library'

android {
    compileSdkVersion 28

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 16
        targetSdkVersion 28
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.1.0'
}

For 2019, the extra AndroidManifest.xml and project.properties files purely exist to tell Unity to build this folder. In 2020, Unity's smart enough to not need them.
AndroidManifest.xml:
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <!-- This extra manifest, as well as project.properties in this folder shouldn't be necessary with the newer gradle project format. Can remove if you upgrade to 2020.1. -->
</manifest>

project.properties:
android.library=true

AndroidPostProcess.cs:
We also need an editor script to enable AndroidX support in the main gradle file, and turn on Jetifier, which should fix any other plugins compiled against the old android.support libraries.
using UnityEditor.Android;

public class AndroidPostProcess : IPostGenerateGradleAndroidProject
{
    public int callbackOrder => 0;
    public void OnPostGenerateGradleAndroidProject(string path)
    {
        string gradlePropertiesPath = path + "/gradle.properties";
        string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(gradlePropertiesPath);

        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (string line in lines)
        {
            if (line.Contains("android.useAndroidX"))
            {
                continue;
            }
            if (line.Contains("android.enableJetifier"))
            {
                continue;
            }
            builder.AppendLine(line);
        }
        builder.AppendLine("android.useAndroidX=true");
        builder.AppendLine("android.enableJetifier=true");
        File.WriteAllText(gradlePropertiesPath, builder.ToString());
    }
}

A: You can build a jar/aar plugin and call it from C#. That's more easier to do.
Another solution is to use AndroidJavaObject and AndroidJavaClass  to do this directly without a plugin. Doing it with AndroidJavaObject and AndroidJavaClass requires lots of testing to get it right. Below is what I use to do that. It downloads an APK then installs it.
First of all create a UI text called "TextDebug" so it you will see what's going on during the download/install. If you don't do this you must comment out or remove all the GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text... line of code.
void Start()
{
    StartCoroutine(downLoadFromServer());
}

IEnumerator downLoadFromServer()
{
    string url = "http://apkdl.androidapp.baidu.com/public/uploads/store_2/f/f/a/ffaca37aaaa481003d74725273c98122.apk?xcode=854e44a4b7e568a02e713d7b0af430a9136d9c32afca4339&filename=unity-remote-4.apk";

    string savePath = Path.Combine(Application.persistentDataPath, "data");
    savePath = Path.Combine(savePath, "AntiOvr.apk");

    Dictionary<string, string> header = new Dictionary<string, string>();
    string userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.87 Safari/537.36";
    header.Add("User-Agent", userAgent);
    WWW www = new WWW(url, null, header);

    while (!www.isDone)
    {
        //Must yield below/wait for a frame
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Stat: " + www.progress;
        yield return null;
    }

    byte[] yourBytes = www.bytes;

    GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Done downloading. Size: " + yourBytes.Length;

    //Create Directory if it does not exist
    if (!Directory.Exists(Path.GetDirectoryName(savePath)))
    {
        Directory.CreateDirectory(Path.GetDirectoryName(savePath));
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Created Dir";
    }

    try
    {
        //Now Save it
        System.IO.File.WriteAllBytes(savePath, yourBytes);
        Debug.Log("Saved Data to: " + savePath.Replace("/", "\\"));
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Saved Data";
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        Debug.LogWarning("Failed To Save Data to: " + savePath.Replace("/", "\\"));
        Debug.LogWarning("Error: " + e.Message);
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Error Saving Data";
    }

    //Install APK
    installApp(savePath);
}

public bool installApp(string apkPath)
{
    try
    {
        AndroidJavaClass intentObj = new AndroidJavaClass("android.content.Intent");
        string ACTION_VIEW = intentObj.GetStatic<string>("ACTION_VIEW");
        int FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK = intentObj.GetStatic<int>("FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK");
        AndroidJavaObject intent = new AndroidJavaObject("android.content.Intent", ACTION_VIEW);

        AndroidJavaObject fileObj = new AndroidJavaObject("java.io.File", apkPath);
        AndroidJavaClass uriObj = new AndroidJavaClass("android.net.Uri");
        AndroidJavaObject uri = uriObj.CallStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("fromFile", fileObj);

        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setDataAndType", uri, "application/vnd.android.package-archive");
        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("addFlags", FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setClassName", "com.android.packageinstaller", "com.android.packageinstaller.PackageInstallerActivity");

        AndroidJavaClass unityPlayer = new AndroidJavaClass("com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayer");
        AndroidJavaObject currentActivity = unityPlayer.GetStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("currentActivity");
        currentActivity.Call("startActivity", intent);

        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Success";
        return true;
    }
    catch (System.Exception e)
    {
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Error: " + e.Message;
        return false;
    }
}

For Android API 24 and above, this requires a different code since the API changed. The C# code below is based on the this Java answer.
//For API 24 and above
private bool installApp(string apkPath)
{
    bool success = true;
    GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Installing App";

    try
    {
        //Get Activity then Context
        AndroidJavaClass unityPlayer = new AndroidJavaClass("com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayer");
        AndroidJavaObject currentActivity = unityPlayer.GetStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("currentActivity");
        AndroidJavaObject unityContext = currentActivity.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("getApplicationContext");

        //Get the package Name
        string packageName = unityContext.Call<string>("getPackageName");
        string authority = packageName + ".fileprovider";

        AndroidJavaClass intentObj = new AndroidJavaClass("android.content.Intent");
        string ACTION_VIEW = intentObj.GetStatic<string>("ACTION_VIEW");
        AndroidJavaObject intent = new AndroidJavaObject("android.content.Intent", ACTION_VIEW);

        int FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK = intentObj.GetStatic<int>("FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK");
        int FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION = intentObj.GetStatic<int>("FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION");

        //File fileObj = new File(String pathname);
        AndroidJavaObject fileObj = new AndroidJavaObject("java.io.File", apkPath);
        //FileProvider object that will be used to call it static function
        AndroidJavaClass fileProvider = new AndroidJavaClass("android.support.v4.content.FileProvider");
        //getUriForFile(Context context, String authority, File file)
        AndroidJavaObject uri = fileProvider.CallStatic<AndroidJavaObject>("getUriForFile", unityContext, authority, fileObj);

        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("setDataAndType", uri, "application/vnd.android.package-archive");
        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("addFlags", FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
        intent.Call<AndroidJavaObject>("addFlags", FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION);
        currentActivity.Call("startActivity", intent);

        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Success";
    }
    catch (System.Exception e)
    {
        GameObject.Find("TextDebug").GetComponent<Text>().text = "Error: " + e.Message;
        success = false;
    }

    return success;
}

EDIT:
If you get the Exception:

Attempt to invoke virtual method
  'android.content.res.XmlResourceParser
  android.content.pm.packageItemInfo.loadXmlMetaData(android.content.pm.PackageManager.java.lang.String)'

You have to do few things.
1.Copy "android-support-v4.jar" from your "AndroidSDK/extras/android/support/v4/android-support-v4.jar"
 directory to your "UnityProject/Assets/Plugins/Android" directory.
2.Create a file called "AndroidManifest.xml" in your UnityProject/Assets/Plugins/Android directory and put the code below into it.
Make sure to replace "com.company.product" with your own package name. There are 2 instances where this appeared. You must replace both of them:
These are found in package="com.company.product" and android:authorities="com.company.product.fileprovider". Don't change or remove the "fileprovider" and don't change anything else.
Here is the "AndroidManifest.xml" file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="com.company.product" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:installLocation="preferExternal" android:versionName="1.0" android:versionCode="1">
  <supports-screens android:smallScreens="true" android:normalScreens="true" android:largeScreens="true" android:xlargeScreens="true" android:anyDensity="true" />
  <application android:theme="@style/UnityThemeSelector" android:icon="@drawable/app_icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:debuggable="true">
    <activity android:name="com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayerActivity" android:label="@string/app_name">
      <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
      </intent-filter>
      <meta-data android:name="unityplayer.UnityActivity" android:value="true" />
    </activity>

    <provider
          android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
          android:authorities="com.company.product.fileprovider"
          android:exported="false"
          android:grantUriPermissions="true">
      <meta-data
          android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
          android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
    </provider>

  </application>
  <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="16" android:targetSdkVersion="23" />
</manifest>

3.Create a new file called "provider_paths.xml" in your "UnityProject/Assets/Plugins/Android/res/xml" directory and put the code below in it. As you can see, you have to create a res and then an xml folder.
Make sure to replace "com.company.product" with your own package name.
It only appeared once.
Here is what you should put into this "provider_paths.xml" file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<paths xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <!--<external-path name="external_files" path="."/>-->
  <external-path path="Android/data/com.company.product" name="files_root" />
  <external-path path="." name="external_storage_root" />
</paths>

A: Here we have to change your manifest file. We have to give Read & Write permissions.
after change this we can easily install downloaded application file.
Without these permissions we can't access Android External Files.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="com.company.product" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:installLocation="preferExternal" android:versionName="1.0" android:versionCode="1">
      <supports-screens android:smallScreens="true" android:normalScreens="true" android:largeScreens="true" android:xlargeScreens="true" android:anyDensity="true" />
      <application android:theme="@style/UnityThemeSelector" android:icon="@drawable/app_icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:debuggable="true">
        <activity android:name="com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayerActivity" android:label="@string/app_name">
          <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
          </intent-filter>
          <meta-data android:name="unityplayer.UnityActivity" android:value="true" />
        </activity>

        <provider
              android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
              android:authorities="com.company.product.fileprovider"
              android:exported="false"
              android:grantUriPermissions="true">
          <meta-data
              android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
              android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
        </provider>

      </application>
      <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />
      <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
      <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
      <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="16"   android:maxSdkVersion="29"  />
    </manifest>

A: After all these great answers I still had an issue: App immidiatly closes on start.
In my case adding the Fileprovider code to the manifest causes this issue.
Fix:
I manually added the androidx.core library to the Unity Project.

*

*Download the library (https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/androidx.core/core/1.0.1)

*Copy the aar-file into the folder "Assets\Plugins\Android\libs"

*In Unity click on the aar- file and check the "Android" Checkmark

I'm still finding some other issues, but at least the app starts now.
Maybe i could help someone else with this Information

A: I've successfully implemented this recently. @Programmer's answer helped me a lot. but there is some more step required in order to work this perfectly.
Firstly:
REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES is required so add this in the AndroidManifest.xml:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />

Then replace this line:
AndroidJavaClass fileProvider = new AndroidJavaClass("android.support.v4.content.FileProvider");

With:
AndroidJavaClass fileProvider = new AndroidJavaClass("androidx.core.content.FileProvider");

Here we don't need to download/move any jar file.
Lastly replace the provider code in AndroidManifest.xml with:
<provider
  android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
  android:authorities="com.company.product.fileprovider"
  android:exported="false"
  android:grantUriPermissions="true">
  <meta-data
    android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
    android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
</provider>

If everything works right, there will be default popup asking for the permission to install the app.


The Boori Actipro Pocket Sprung Mattress is a perfect fit for your Boori cot bed. This new mattress has a lovely soft, breathable quilted cover made from a blend of kaneceron yarn and wool. The Actipro treatment ia completely composed of natural ingredients which are attached to the mattress layer using clay technology. Using a probiotic ensures the bad bacteria doesn't get the chance to grow and allergens are neutralized.
Actipro treatment - completely composed of natural ingredients which are attached to the mattress layer using clay technology.
The use of probiotic means bad bacteria don't have a chance to grow and common allergens and neutralized.
Nursery grade foam layers are free from nasty chemicals and provide comfort for baby.


Earlier this year Acquisio uncovered new information about how marketers can make use of #voicesearch in our Digital Predictions Webinar and follow up eBook…we even discussed it briefly in a blog post. The voice search predictions and followup discussion were interesting; however, an overarching theme was that despite the increase in voice search popularity from users, marketers have no clear road map on how to advertise through this channel.
Since I absolutely couldn't resist another piece of the voice search puzzle, I followed up with Voiceter Pro and asked if we could feature a short interview with them on our blog. Miguel Berger, the CEO of Voiceter Pro, was kind enough to share his insights about how they are using voice search for advertising in the real estate industry and beyond.
Voiceter Pro, LLC. is a conversational search company that will bring companies and consumers together through meaningful conversations with Amazon's Alexa-powered devices, Google Home as well as other emerging AI platforms.
How is Voiceter Pro offering advertisements to businesses hoping to target voice searchers?
The Voiceter Pro team has a deep understanding of the real estate industry and is using their contacts to educate brokers, agents and multiple listing executives about the future of real estate voice search. Since our launch in December, we have partnered with several real estate companies across the country and with more in the pipeline.
I enjoy having conversations with my peers and watching their excitement grow when they start thinking about how voice search can help their business.
As we continue to make inroads in the real estate industry, we expect to expand to other vertical markets where consumers could have a conversation with Alexa or Google that guides them to the product or service that best meets their needs.
Is Voiceter Pro limited to the real estate market?
This sale and lead generation tool has applicability in any business model that requires consumers to filter through product choices to arrive at the product or service they want.
How does Alexa give voice searchers who are looking to buy a home results for your clients over organic search results?
In order to give consumers optimal results and to ensure that we are following the multiple listing service rules that our clients must abide by, we do not weigh results to favor client's listings. The benefit to our clients is that the voice search includes their brand in the messaging. For example: "This search was brought to you by Better Homes and Gardens Tech Valley." Also, the results email is branded to our clients. The built in brand advertising opportunities cast our clients as leading edge, technologically savvy real estate professionals – something that is desired by many of today's buyers and sellers.
When a consumer is looking to buy a home and they use our Real Estate (Amazon and soon Cortana) and Real Estate Search (Google Home) apps, the brand messaging will create an opportunity for them to engage with our clients. Our clients serve both buyers and sellers. They work the market and sell properties they've listed, but also frequently represent buyers of other brokers' listings. Voiceter Pro provides a marketing tool to benefit sellers and an engagement opportunity with potential buyers.
Are there any limitations to Voiceter Pro that marketers should be aware of?
Our conversational search applications work on the two leading, in-home platforms and we intend to expand to additional platforms as they come online. So, marketers would not be limited to a single platform.
How does Voiceter Pro get around complications with accents or words used across languages, like brands (ie. Yves Saint Laurent)?
I think most of us would agree that voice recognition continues to evolve and improve. Accents can sometimes be difficult whether you're speaking to Alexa, Google Home, Cortana or Siri. We do have some error correction built into our applications to help with these situations.
How do you think voice search will evolve in the next 5 years?
Voice search will become ubiquitous as microphones and language processing become more advanced and a commonplace tool in our lives. I think voice search is just a small piece of the pie – a starting point. Voice interaction and adding personality to these assistants will be an important part of the evolution. AI-assistants will do more than just accept commands; they will intelligently respond to statements and questions. They will keep the conversation going, which will be an important part of the advanced apps of the future.
It is interesting to see that voice search advertising is already available in the real estate market, a place where presumably images would be essential. If voice search advertising is working in this market, then applications for other product-driven sectors are likely to takeoff as well, as Miguel points out.
Business Insider released a story this week discussing how "Users of Amazon's Echo smart speaker will soon hear advertisements in Alexa skills like music streaming and news updates, thanks to a new platform called Sponsored Messages." While Voiceter Pro takes more of a native-ad approach for their clients, Sponsored Messages seem more intrusive. More voice search advertising formats are likely to emerge as voice search technology evolves as well.
Despite the fact that voice search poses a unique opportunity for marketers because of the context a voice can provide, as Matt Van Wagner explains, it still has some missing elements for advertisers. How will Google or Bing decide which advertisements to play for voice searchers in which order. Will the future of voice search rely on visuals like the new Echo Show or will it remain a purely audible experience? How will an audio-based technology evolve to help people make visual decisions? The answers to these questions are just starting to take shape.


The Long Barn at Warborne Farm was converted in 2010 by PAD Studio into a more contemporary modern barn than the Brick Barn. The barn style house was also made slightly bigger, even managing to use some rusty corrugated iron that was found at the dung heap for the back wall of the dining table. The barn style house has a sense of space that has been retained by keeping the living area in the house at its full height, and the upstairs is presented as a mezzanine. Downstairs in the Long Barn, it has as is traditional in these type of barns, a soft brick floor, with underfloor heating. Upstairs the flooring is laid with recycled oak floorboards from a 180-year-old Amish barn, also with under the floor heating. This barn style house feels the biggest of all the other barns on the property, so it is no surprise that this is where they used to store the straw which needed to have a big, open, well ventilated yet weather-proof barn space. The Long Barn was the threshing barn, where the big noisy threshing machine, powered by steam-powered traction engine would knock out the grains from the ears of corn.
towels and hairdryer, cooking equipment and tableware, dishwasher tablets, washing liquid, hand soap, tea bags, coffee plunger, salt and pepper.
The Long Barn is located at Warborne Farm, a 100-acre mixed family farm. Though the farm is no longer certified organic, it has been run along organic principles for three generations. That is to say, they have a high health status for all of their livestock and crops and build fertility more than they exploit.
This barn style house project is by PAD Studio who believe that successful architectural design is achieved through the discussions between client, the architect and builder. They offer a complete design package from concept to completion as they care about the detail and they like to ensure that your building project is great as it can be. Their process is linked to the new RIBA plan of work. The wonderful thing about their approach is that every building site, client and project is unique and as such their services are flexible and tailored to best suit each building project needs. Some of the building projects may not require all of the services, while others may require additional services, it's all part of the conversation, and that is where they begin.


BACKGROUND: Male breast cancers (MBC) account for 1% of all breast cancers. Neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiation (CTRT) is not the standard of care for treating breast cancer. However, in our center, it has been routinely used in patients with locally advanced breast cancer to downsize the tumor and make it amenable to surgery.
AIM: This study was conducted to examine the clinical and pathological profile and outcomes of patients with MBC treated at our institute with neoadjuvant CTRT.
SETTINGS AND DESIGN: The study was conducted at a tertiary cancer center and was retrospective in nature.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: All MBC patients treated with neoadjuvant CTRT at our center between 2001 and 2016 were enrolled in the study. Data were retrospectively extracted from the patients' case records.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Kaplan–Meier method was used for survival analysis and the outcome variables were compared using the log-rank test.
RESULTS: Thirty-one MBC patients who received neoadjuvant CTRT were analyzed in this study.
The median age of the patients was 53 years. Stage IIB disease was observed in 8/31 (26%) patients, stage III in 20/31 (64%), and stage IV in 3/31 (10%) patients. There was no grade 3 or 4 toxicity due to CTRT. Surgery was performed in 29/31 (94%) patients and none of the patients had a pathological complete response. The median duration of follow-up was 95.3 months. The 8-year event-free survival and overall survival for stage IIB, III, and IV were 75%, 50%, and 0% and 87.5%, 69%, and 0%, respectively.
CONCLUSION: This is the first study to report on the use of neoadjuvant CTRT in MBC. Prospective evidence from phase-3 randomized controlled trials on the safety and efficacy of CTRT in breast cancer is required before its routine use can be recommended.
Neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiation (CTRT) has been practiced at our center for the last five decades for treating patients (males and females) presenting with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC). This is because many patients present with inoperable bulky disease that does not respond to NACT alone, and in our experience, we have observed that neoadjuvant CTRT increases the chances of operability and thereby cure. Our center has published the largest retrospective case series on neoadjuvant CTRT in female breast cancer; the study included 1,117 patients and reported a pathological complete response (pCR) in 45% of the patients and 10-year overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in 64% and 53%, respectively. Chemotherapy given concurrently with radiotherapy acts as a radiosensitizer and improves the clinical response and pCR rate compared with NACT alone. Neoadjuvant CTRT also helps in the sterilization of the skin prior to surgery in patients with skin involvement. There is a no published literature on the use of neoadjuvant CTRT in MBC. This study was conducted to analyze the clinical features, pathological features, and outcome of patients with MBC who were treated with neoadjuvant CTRT at our center.
We retrospectively analyzed all consecutive MBC patients who were treated with CTRT at our center between 2001 and 2016. Patient details were obtained from the hospital records. Hospital ethics committee clearance was not required as the study involved only a retrospective review of patients' case records. Diagnosis of breast cancer was established with core needle biopsy. Prognostic markers, such as estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor type 2 (Her2neu) were analyzed on the biopsy specimens using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Data regarding patients' ER, PR, and Her2neu status were analyzed as entered in the case records. Staging workup done for all patients included chest X-ray, ultrasound of the abdomen, and pelvis and bone scan. Additional imaging such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was done if there was suspicion of organ involvement by metastasis. The stage of MBC was as per the appropriate TNM classification at the time of the diagnosis (American Joint Committee on Cancer, 6th and 7th editions).
Treatment decisions for patients were taken by the hospital's multidisciplinary breast cancer tumor board. Till 2006, all LABCs at our center were treated with neoadjuvant CTRT. After 2006, patients with inoperable LABC were treated with CTRT and patients with operable LABC were treated with NACT or upfront surgery.
Few patients with early breast cancer (Stage IIB) disease also received neoadjuvant CTRT as they were clinically node-positive or had a T3 or T4-sized tumor and would have otherwise received postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy. The chemotherapy regimen consisted of 5-fluorouracil: 600 mg/m2, cyclophosphamide: 600 mg/m2, and epirubicin: 60 mg/m2 (FEC-60) given every 3 weeks or cyclophosphamide: 600 mg/m2, methotrexate: 50 mg/m2, and 5-fluorouracil: 600 mg/m2 (CMF) given every 3 weeks. All chemotherapy drugs were given intravenously. A total of six cycles of chemotherapy were given. Radiotherapy with FEC-60 or CMF was incorporated during the second or third cycle of chemotherapy. The study included patients treated over a 16-year period; there has been an evolution in the practice over the years. The availability of new chemotherapy drugs and the institutional practice of using specific chemotherapy drugs for treating breast cancer during this period influenced the choice of chemotherapy regimen for CTRT. CMF was the preferred chemotherapy regimen for CTRT till 2004, when it was replaced by FEC, and since 2016, we have been using paclitaxel.
The dose of external beam radiation was 40 Gy given at 200 cGy per fraction per day for 5 days a week. Radiation was given to the involved breast, axilla, supraclavicular, and internal mammary nodal regions in patients with LABC. Patients with stage IV disease with oligometastatic bone lesion were treated with curative intent similar to LABC patients. The radiation technique used was either a conventional two-dimensional radiation technique using the simulator or three-dimensional conformal radiation using a CT planning system. The decision to operate a patient after completion of CTRT was made by the treating surgeon based on the clinical response to the treatment. Patients who were operated soon after completion of CTRT were given the remaining cycles of chemotherapy postoperatively. The patients in the study were enrolled over a 16-year period, which had an impact on their management as the staging system, ER/PR/Her2neu receptor assay, chemotherapy protocols, and radiotherapy techniques have changed or evolved during this period. None of the Her2neu receptor-positive (IHC 3+ or FISH-positive) patients received anti-Her2neu directed therapy as they could not afford the high cost of the treatment. Patients who were ER-positive received 5 years of adjuvant Tamoxifen.
Event-free survival (EFS) was calculated from the date of registration to the date of relapse or progression or death. OS was calculated from the date of registration to the date of death or last follow-up. All patients were censored for survival analysis at the last follow-up or death whichever was earlier. EFS and OS were estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method and variables were compared using the log-rank test. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS software (IBM, SPSS Statistics, version 16.0).
MBC was diagnosed in 80 of the 12,000 (0.6%) patients diagnosed to have breast cancer during the study period. In total, 31 patients were treated with neoadjuvant CTRT during this period. The median age of the patients was 53 years (range: 33–65 years). All patients were married. Stage IIB disease was observed in 8/31 (26%) patients, stage III in 20/31 (64%) patients, and stage IV in 3/31 (10%) patients (all had oligometastatic bone involvement). Among the 20 patients with stage III disease, 4 patients had stage IIIA disease, 15 had stage IIIB, and 1 had stage IIIC. Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) was the pathology seen in all the patients. ER positivity was seen in 20/31 patients (64%), PR positivity in 22/31 (71%) patients, and Her2neu positivity in 4/31 (13%) patients. Triple-negative breast cancer was seen only in one patient. One-third of the patients had comorbidities in the form of hypertension and/or diabetes. One-third of the patients analyzed had a history of smoking and alcohol intake.
CTRT was tolerated well and there were no major treatment-related morbidities in the form of grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, and no grade 3 or 4 skin reactions were seen with CTRT. All patients had grade 2 skin toxicity. There was no interruption of chemotherapy in patients receiving CTRT due to toxicity.
CMF regimen was used in 13/31 (42%) patients, and the remaining 18 patients received FEC-60. Modified radical mastectomy (MRM) was performed in 29/31 (94%) patients, 1 patient with stage IIIB disease was not willing to undergo surgery and another patient with stage IV disease was not considered for surgery due to disease progression. Among the patients who underwent MRM, none showed a pCR.
The median duration of follow-up in this study was 95.3 months (range 8.8–186 months). There were no treatment-related deaths. The 8-year EFS and OS for all stages were 51.7% and 69.7% [Figure 1], respectively. The 8-year EFS and OS for stage IIB, III, and IV were 75%, 50%, and 0% and 87.5%, 69%, and 0%, respectively [Figure 2].
Diabetes, hypertension, smoking, and alcohol intake were not significantly associated with OS. None of the study patients were detected to have pulmonary morbidities or cardiac morbidities or second cancers due to CTRT on follow-up physical examination. However, specific laboratory tests or imaging were not performed on follow-up for screening long-term toxicities due to CTRT.
Usually, MBCs present in advanced stages and in our study also 64% were stage III cancers. The reason for the advanced stage at presentation is mainly minimal breast tissue in males. Usually, skin infiltration or muscle and chest-wall fixity are common at presentation, which makes such cancers inoperable.
It was very interesting to note that almost all the patients in our study were hormone receptor positive and only one patient had a triple-negative tumor. According to the literature review, MBCs are usually hormone receptor positive but triple-negative tumors are also seen in around 10%–15% of the cases. In our study, we did not observe pCR in any of the patients post-neoadjuvant CTRT, which is in contrast to the pCR rates of 17%–45% reported in female breast cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant CTRT. Patients with triple-negative breast cancer and those with Her2neu-positive disease receiving trastuzumab have higher pCR rates than those with ER/PR-positive breast cancer. None of the patients with Her2neu-positive disease in our study received trastuzumab and only 1/31 patients had triple-negative disease; this could be one of the reasons why none of the patients achieved pCR in our study.
We used a lower dose of 40 Gy while delivering CTRT instead of the conventional external beam radiotherapy dose of 50 Gy used in the adjuvant post-MRM setting due to the anticipated increase in toxicity with CTRT.
The chemotherapy regimens used in CTRT studies in the literature have been 5-fluorouracil, capecitabine, or paclitaxel.,,,, Use of adriamycin chemotherapy concurrent with radiation has been reported in the study by Shantha et al.
Woodward et al. reported outcomes on the use of CTRT in 32 female patients with inoperable breast cancer after chemotherapy, residual nodal disease after definitive surgical resection, unresectable chest wall, or nodal recurrence after a prior mastectomy. They used capecitabine (825 mg/m2/once or twice a day) concurrent with radiation given at a dose of 45 Gy and observed nonskin grade 3 toxicity in 54% of the patients.
Brackstone et al. reported outcomes in 32 female patients with LABC treated with neoadjuvant CTRT. They used FEC-100 (100 mg/m2 epirubicin) followed by docetaxel 35 mg/m2 weekly concurrent with radiation given at a dose of 50 Gy. They observed a pCR rate of 22% in comparison to 14% with matched controls who received NACT. Grade 3 pneumonitis and grade 3 skin toxicities were observed in 25% of the patients.
Three patients in the study had an oligometastatic disease (solitary bone metastasis) at diagnosis who were treated with curative intent as some patients with oligometastatic disease can have long-term survival when treated with curative intent addressing both the locoregional disease and systemic disease.
The major advantages of CTRT over sequential chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy are as follows: shortening of the total duration of treatment, higher pCR, and making large tumors that do not respond to chemotherapy alone amenable to surgery.
Neoadjuvant CTRT in breast cancer is practiced by very few centers in the world; it is not evidence-based and is not the standard of care for treating breast cancer. To address the lack of prospective data with CTRT in breast cancer, we are currently recruiting patients for a phase-3 randomized controlled trial comparing neoadjuvant CTRT with FEC versus NACT with FEC in females with LABC (CTRI/2014/12/005239). The trial was initiated in 2014 and should complete recruitment in the next 5 years. We are also conducting a prospective observational study on neoadjuvant CTRT with paclitaxel in female LABC patients not eligible for the phase 3 trial. The studies have been approved by the Institute's ethics committee.
The major limitation of our study is its retrospective nature, the small number of patients, use of nonevidence-based treatment, arbitrary treatment decisions, patients with Her2neu-positive disease not receiving anti-Her2neu-directed therapy, and heterogeneous treatment of patients due to inclusion over a 16-year period. Important information like treatment toxicities may not have been captured adequately. CTRT as a modality of treatment is rarely used in breast cancer and is considered experimental by most oncologists. Prospective studies with larger number of patients are required to establish the role of neoadjuvant CTRT in breast cancer. Hopefully, the phase 3 randomized controlled trial from our center should provide a definitive answer to whether CTRT in LABC is effective. All patients receiving CTRT in breast cancer should be treated only in an approved clinical trial.
This is the first study to report on the use of neoadjuvant CTRT in MBC. Prospective evidence from phase 3 randomized controlled trials on the safety and efficacy of CTRT in breast cancer is required before its routine use can be recommended.
Fentiman IS, Fourquet A, Hortobagyi GN. Male breast cancer. Lancet 2006;367:595-604.
Giordano SH, Cohen DS, Buzdar AU, Perkins G, Hortobagyi GN. Breast carcinoma in men: A population-based study. Cancer 2004;101:51-7.
Speirs V, Shaaban AM. The rising incidence of male breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2009;115:429-30.
Hill TD, Khamis HJ, Tyczynski JE, Berkel HJ. Comparison of male and female breast cancer incidence trends, tumor characteristics, and survival. Ann Epidemiol 2005;15:773-80.
Cutuli B, Le-Nir CC, Serin D, Kirova Y, Gaci Z, Lemanski C, et al. Male breast cancer. Evolution of treatment and prognostic factors. Analysis of 489 cases. Crit Rev Oncol Hematol 2010;73:246-54.
Ouriel K, Lotze MT, Hinshaw JR. Prognostic factors of carcinoma of the male breast. Surg Gynecol Obstet 1984;159:373-6.
Chikaraddi SB, Krishnappa R, Deshmane V. Male breast cancer in Indian patients: Is it the same? Indian J Cancer 2012;49:272-6.
Shanta V, Swaminathan R, Rama R, Radhika R. Retrospective analysis of locally advanced noninflammatory breast cancer from Chennai, South India, 1990–1999. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2008;70:51-8.
Mandilaras V, Bouganim N, Spayne J, Dent R, Arnaout A, Boileau JF, et al. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced breast cancer-time for a new paradigm?. Curr Oncol. 2015;22:25-32.
Kaidar-Person O, Kuten A, Belkacemi Y; AROME. Primary systemic therapy and whole breast irradiation for locally advanced breast cancer: A systematic review. Crit Rev Oncol Hematol 2014;92:143-52.
Skinner KA, Dunnington G, Silberman H, Florentine B, Spicer D, For-Menti SC. Preoperative 5-fluorouracil and radiation therapy for locally advanced breast cancer. Am J Surg 1997;174:705-8.
Skinner KA, Silberman H, Florentine B, Lomis TJ, Corso F, Spicer D, et al. Preoperative paclitaxel and radiotherapy for locally advanced breast cancer: Surgical aspects. Ann Surg Oncol 2000;7:145-9.
Formenti SC, Symmans WF, Volm M, Skinner K, Cohen D, Spicer D, et al. Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation therapy for breast cancer. Semin Radiat Oncol 1999;9:34-42.
Adams S, Chakravarthy AB, Donach M, Spicer D, Lymberis S, Singh B, et al. Preoperative concurrent paclitaxel-radiation in locally advanced breast cancer: Pathologic response correlates with five-year overall survival. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2010;124:723-32.
Woodward WA, Fang P, Arriaga L, Gao H, Cohen EN, Reuben JM, et al. A phase II study of preoperative capecitabine and concomitant radiation in women with advanced breast cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2017;99:777-83.
Brackstone M, Palma D, Tuck AB, Scott L, Potvin K, Vandenberg T, et al. Concurrent neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy in locally advanced breast cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2017;99:769-76.
Cardoso F, Senkus E, Costa A, Papadopoulos E, Aapro M, André F, et al. 4th ESO-ESMO international consensus guidelines for advanced breast cancer (ABC 4). Ann Oncol 2018;29:1634-57.


Posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2017 at 4:04 pm.
It has been a thrilling ride. In a few short years, Hadoop has seen astronomical rise, but recently, interest in Hadoop has peaked. Analysts like Gartner and Datanami are reporting that the hype in Hadoop is waning, with some hope that use cases for Hadoop will find their place in the enterprise. So, just what happened to the Hadoop ecosystem, and what will the future hold?
The solutions in the Hadoop ecosystem show promise on their own, but to really "do" enterprise big data analytics, you need a list of features and technologies that support both descriptive and predictive analytics, mixed workloads, the capability to perform data prep and data loading, metadata management, and more. In an enterprise deployment, these are really important features. In Hadoop, you need to pull them together from the reaches of the Hadoop ecosystem and gain expertise in all of them to move big data analytics from science experiment to production. One of the biggest challenges of Hadoop has always been about the stack.
Consider that you may have to engage five or six solutions to achieve production-ready big data analytics. For example, if you want to provision your cluster and use it for multiple applications, you need HDFS and YARN skills. When you want to access data and understand the metadata, you may need HIVE, Pig and/or Sqoop, but the analysis itself is better done with Scala, Drill and/or Tez. For real-time data publishing and subscribing, bring in Kafka and experts who master it. If you want to do machine learning, you'll need to prep the data with something like Talend and HBase, but then you must move the data out to Spark for predictive analytics. All of these operations take a special form of expertise, understanding how the solutions work, and more importantly, how they work together.
By comparison, a big data analytics platform like Vertica has features like this that work together as a package. You can deploy storage and manage resources with the management console or directly in SQL for some operations. Resource pools can be configured and tuned for workload management. You won't have to move data out of Vertica if you want to do machine learning – it runs right within SQL database you're already running.
• Data Science – Now you can use the Vertica engine to explore data and uncover the goal without having to move the data to the database.
• JOINing External Data – You can gain additional insight by creating JOINs between your Vertica data warehouse and data that is sitting untapped in Hadoop. For example, users can leveraging Web logs to gain additional customer insight, use sensor and IOT data that is sitting externally for pre-emptive service, or track the success of marketing programs by joining data with your data warehouse.
• Training Machine Learning Models – A common practice is to move data, or subsets of data, from the data warehouse into Apache Spark to train your machine learning models. However, using Vertica's External Tables feature and built-in machine learning capabilities, you can train your models with huge amounts of data and get more precision on your models.
• Information Lifecycle Management – After your hot data cools off, a common practice is to move your data off to lower-cost storage in support of information lifecycle management. Now, with our Parquet WRITE capabilities, you can move cooler data out of Vertica into Hadoop or the Clouds and still analyze it with Vertica using External Tables.
External tables are offered a highly discounted price per/TB, thus making it extremely attractive. The per/TB list price on a perpetual license for externally stored data is now 25% of data stored in native Vertica format. This discount applies to data stored in Parquet or ORC format when stored in Hadoop or S3.
Hadoop was marketed as a potential replacement for the data warehouse. Hadoop and HDFS have their place in data management and the information lifecycle, but at least today, right now, it's not about replacing the data warehouse. The place for HDFS and Apache Hadoop is the data lake. HDFS is a power place to tier data, keep a copy of it without losing access to it for analytics.
You can use your Vertica installation to leverage external tables in both Hadoop and the clouds to perform data science, boost the insight of your normal business intelligence and train your machine learning models. Further, if your Vertica data starts to age out, you can tier it off to HDFS or the cloud for cost savings and efficiency, but maintain access to it for analytics.
Right now you can take advantage of the time-limited Vertica External Data promotional pricing. If you need to use external tables and analyze your data in Parquet or ORC formats with Vertica, it can be very cost effective to do so! Check out https://www.vertica.com/externaldata/ for more information.


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UMPI in the News
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Reed Art Gallery presents Carolyn Wadman exhibit
Posted on March 18, 2018 in Featured, Press Releases
The University of Maine at Presque Isle's Reed Art Gallery will present Artist as Teacher from Paintings and Prints to Puppets by Carolyn Wadman, from April 2 through May 11, 2018. The public is invited to view the exhibition throughout the show's run and attend the Gallery Reception on Friday, April 6, from 5-7 p.m., which includes a talk with the artist at 5:30 p.m.; light refreshments will be served. This reception is being held in conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk. The Reed Gallery is located on the second floor of the University's Center for Innovative Learning.
Wadman is a lifelong educator in arts, having taught art classes in the U.S. Army and for many years in the Limestone Community School. She believes that diversity of knowledge in various areas of visual arts is important to the understanding of student differences and helping to inspire each to his or her potential, as, for most, visual expression is the first form of communication.
"I consider this exhibition to be a celebration of diversity…" Wadman stated. "Respecting diversity is more important than ever in our present lives where we 'waste and throw it away,' 'divide ourselves into uncompromising positions,' 'lack empathy and respect for others'… As educators, we can help to turn this around, respecting our differences as we celebrate the diversity in our lives."
Wadman earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has studied a wide range of art mediums, including printmaking and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in New York, jewelry design at the University of New Hampshire, and ceramics at the Herron School of Art in Indiana.
She has participated in exhibitions at the Farnsworth Museum, the Blaine House, and the New York City Crafts Gallery, among many others. By invitation, she created an angel ornament for the Blue Room White House Christmas tree during the first year of President Clinton's administration.
"I am excited to have the Reed Gallery present this show by Carolyn," Hyrum Benson, Reed Art Gallery Director, said. "She has been an inspiration for many students and current artists. Her work showcases a wealth of knowledge and will provide viewers with a unique opportunity to experience a lifetime of art through the lens of her career in teaching."
All are invited to view the show between April and May and to come out to the First Friday Art Walk on April 6 and take part in the free reception and artist's talk at 5:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. In addition, this show will be open during the First Friday Art Walk on May 4 from 5-7 p.m. Please follow gallery happenings on the Reed Gallery Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ReedArtGallery.
The Reed Fine Art Gallery is located on the second floor of UMPI's Center for Innovative Learning and is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The gallery is closed Saturdays, Sundays, and University holidays. For more information about this event, please contact Reed Gallery Director Hyrum Benson at (207) 768-9441 or hyrum.benson@maine.edu.


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Кратер Кисс (), не путать с кратером Кис () — останки большого древнего ударного кратера в юго-западной части Моря Смита на видимой стороне Луны. Название присвоено в честь американского астронома Карла Кисса (1887—1967) и утверждено Международным астрономическим союзом в 1973 г. Образование кратера относится к донектарскому периоду.

Описание кратера

Ближайшими соседями кратера Кисс являются кратер Кестнер на западе; кратер Каррильо на северо-западе; кратер Холдейн на севере; кратер Уорнер на северо-востоке; кратер Видманштеттен на востоке; кратер Хоутерманс на юго-востоке; кратер Крейкен на юге и кратер Блек на юго-западе. Селенографические координаты центра кратера , диаметр 67,8 км, глубина 800 м.

Останки кратера Кисс имеют полигональную форму, восточная часть кратера частично перекрывает кратер Видманштеттен. Кратер Кисс полностью затоплен базальтовой лавой, над поверхностью Моря Смита выступает лишь вал кратера имеющий широкий разрыв в восточной части в месте соединения с кратером Видманштеттен. Наибольшей высоты вал кратера достигает в юго-западной части, объем кратера составляет приблизительно 3 400 км3.  В западной части чаши имеются хребты концентричные по отношению к валу. Альбедо чаши кратера низкое, соответствует альбедо Моря Смита.

Сателлитные кратеры
Отсутствуют.

Галерея

См.также
 Список кратеров на Луне
 Лунный кратер
 Морфологический каталог кратеров Луны
 Планетная номенклатура
 Селенография
 Минералогия Луны
 Геология Луны
 Поздняя тяжёлая бомбардировка

Примечания

Ссылки
Цифровой фотографический атлас Луны
Снимки кратера с борта Аполлона-10, Аполлона-12
Топографическая карта окрестностей кратера
Deep, Young and Ashy.
A Young, Deep Mare.

Andersson, L.E., and E.A. Whitaker, NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature, NASA Reference Publication 1097, October 1982.

Кратеры Луны


The Visual Art Corner provides you with exclusive access to the myriad of options for private, corporate, and public events including art and wine learning and tasting, private VIP receptions, dinners and holiday parties. We will work with your management team to increase your tenant retention, participation, and overall work environment satisfaction.
We offer unique programs including corporate brand differentiation, improved marketability, and sustainability initiatives that add value to the PMRG's properties.
The Visual Art Corner supports non for profits such as the Houston Bicycle Museum via Charity Events such as Corporate Annual Dinners.


Home » Browse » Magazines » Religion Magazines » National Catholic Reporter » Article details, "The Church Is a Communion of Local Churches"
The late Cardinal John Dearden, archbishop of Detroit, noted at the University of Notre Dame some years ago that many of the bishops appointed after the Second Vatican Council never had the opportunity of experiencing the transforming effect of Vatican II.
For the bishops, like himself, who directly participated in the council, it was as if they had gone on a four-year retreat, a retreat that changed and enriched their understanding of the church.
Most of these bishops emerged from the council as new men, ready to serve their dioceses with deeper dedication than before.
What was true of the pre-Vatican II bishops was also true of the pre-Vatican II laity. A layperson today would _ have to be over 60 years old to have any meaningful memory of the pre-Vatican II church. Without that memory, one would find it very difficult--not impossible, to be sure--to appreciate what the council did for the church.
That is why mainly older Catholics are drawn to lay organizations such as Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful. It is not that younger Catholics have no interest in church renewal and reform, but they have never personally experienced the pre-Vatican II church nor the achievements wrought by the council itself.
Older Catholics--in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and some few in their 90s--know what the pre-Vatican II church was like and how much better it became because of Pope John XXIII and the council he convened. That is why many of them have been disheartened by what they regard as a kind of retrenchment under Pope John Paul II and now Benedict XVI, and many of the bishops they appointed.
Many younger Catholics--at least those who care enough to remain more or less active in the church--do not appreciate why many older Catholics are so unhappy with the state of the church today.
My recent columns have been underscoring some of the most important ecclesiological principles espoused by the council. The emphasis here is on the council's teaching that the church is a communion--a communion between God and ourselves (the vertical dimension) and a communion of ourselves with one another in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit (the horizontal dimension).


The focus is on money management advice. The interactions are digital and around financial goals such as retirement, saving, tax planning and regular investment. You have access to investment management and financial planning. Figure out what you need—just some financial transactions or more in-depth, goal-linked planning. Most robo-advisors at present primarily offer mutual funds as the solution for financial objectives. This might seem restrictive, but in terms of transparency, returns and accessibility, mutual funds are found to be most appropriate to address goal-based asset allocation needs for retail investors. Some offer other products like insurance, deposits and direct stocks.
Broadly, the robo-advisory platform can be categorised into four—automated investments, direct plans, goal-based advisory and full service advisory.
Auto-pilot: In this mode, you select among the offered 'packages'. You select what you need, and then stay invested. One such platform is Scripbox, an online MF investment service firm that offers three 'boxes'—equity, fixed income and tax-saving. Sanjiv Singhal, its founder and head of product strategy, said, "The objective is to reach out to the young earners and first-time investors. We want to bridge the gap between awareness about mutual funds and the execution. While linking a goal is important, sometimes it's hard to even think of a goal. So the idea is to get started and build investment discipline." Scripbox recommends a total of eight funds—four equity funds, two fixed income funds and two tax-saving funds, split into the three different boxes you can pick.
Direct plan-based: Companies such as Bharosaclub.com, Orowealth.com and Invezta.com offer a low-cost direct plan option. You can even switch your existing mfs into the direct plan. there could be a nominal advisory or convenience fee attached to transactions. Prasad Janardhanan, product manager, Invezta (Valuefy Solutions Pvt. Ltd.), said, "We have been pained with biased advice, hidden fees, commissions and profits-over-people approach. We are democratising healthy investing with a zero commission platform and institutional quality robo-advice." These platforms offer both do it yourself option and the choice to invest based on goals.
Goal-based advisory: Such a robo-advisory is structured on asset allocation, which means fund selection is a result of the information you provide. While these websites offer basic advisory on how to approach your long-term investments, the option to only transact, which allows you to simply login and buy the funds you want. FundsIndia.com, for example, helps you invest based on goals. One of the first firms to get started with an online distribution model, it also allows transactions in shares, company deposits and corporate bonds, and now has an advisory service as well. BigDecisions.com, another robo advisory platform, answers your initial questions, but doesn't offer products.
Full-service: If you need in-depth advice, look towards a full service robo-advisory, which will ask you to answer a detailed questionnaire to assess your risk appetite, financial goals, saving and spending pattern and current asset liability position. The information is analysed to assess how you are managing your monthly liquidity, whether spending is more than earning, what your net worth is, do you have enough surplus, taxation and so on. "We are not just a platform to sell mutual funds. We use precise tools to provide personal financial advice, which we customise. For us risk management is as important and a part of personal finance as wealth creation is. moreover, portfolios are entirely customised to every individual's risk profile thanks to millions of simulation done of various scenarios to suit each client," said Nitin Vyakaranam, chief executive officer and founder, ArthaYantra, a full service robo-advisor. The firm, which has been around for six years, helps you connect with partners that can assist with buying insurance or taking a loan as per its recommendations.
Another newly launched full-service robo-advisor is Aditya Birla MyUniverse. This site allows you to link almost all your financial details directly into the account you create here. You can link your bank accounts, credit cards, investments and loans. Based on this information, it gives you analytical reports about your financial health, expense management and net worth, among other things. You can also choose to simply transact. "We provide two types of services—personal finance management and product specific mutual fund investment," said Rahul Parikh, chief executive officer, My Universe.com.
5nance.com is another platform that allows you access to analytics and also offers execution capability. Dinesh Rohira, founder and chief executive officer, 5nance.com, said, "The analysis of spends and asset details helps in focusing on specific issues. For example, you might find that eating out less often can help you save better to fulfil the long-term goal of child's education." The site offers other products as well, including equity shares, gold, credit cards and loans.
To get started on a robo-advisory platform, you will have to create an account. Some platforms, especially if they allow transactions, will ask you to add bank details, Permanent Account Number (PAN) and know-your-client (KYC) details. If buying a mutual fund, you can choose a systematic investment plan or invest a lump sum.
While not every platform is a full-service robo-advisor, all offer automated investment advice.
This essentially means that a selection of mutual fund schemes is recommended as per algorithms designed by each platform. Each service provider may recommend a different set of funds for the same goal. Some recommend four, some eight and some just one. The main aim is to get the long-term asset allocation right.
Vijay Kuppa, co-founder ORO Wealth, an online mutual fund investment platform that promotes direct investments, said, "We run an algorithm based on quantitative and qualitative criteria and which recommends the fund. Consistency of performance is important and that is built into the algorithm. The outcome is one recommendation for a large-cap fund, one for a multi-cap fund and one for a mid-cap fund."
Recommended portfolios are reviewed periodically. Let's say, you have recently started with the service and a month later the chosen funds are reviewed and a new one added. Should you sell one of the older funds and buy a new one?
Not necessarily. The robo-advisor will provide relevant reasons for making a change, but it will be your decision to change or not. As a thumb rule, churning schemes often is not efficient. And no one fund can be a top performer year after year. Aim to bring consistency in returns and adhere to your initial allocation, at least for three years (if it is a long-term investment).
Remember that these are automated portals—mostly recommendations are made; handholding is done (in some cases) only in extraordinary situations. Most of the advice is structured around long-term investments.
But what happens during short-term market volatility, or in case of a personal emergency? The automated advisory platform will send reminders stating that you are moving away from the long-term goal, but the exact cash flow and behaviour management suggestions may not come through from those that are not full-service platforms.
Sadique Neelgund, founder, Network FP, a professional membership organisation for financial planners, said, "An investor who wants to start with a systematic investment plan of a small amount can look towards robo-advisory platforms as they are easy to access and offer elementary planning for free, whereas human financial advisors may not find it commercially viable. It works well till markets are positive. However, support is required when events go sour. As of now, there is no way to know whether these portals will be able to help investors hold on in rough times. Behaviour plays a bigger role when it comes to delivering good returns."
This is where human intervention helps. Comprehensive robo-advisory service providers say many people want some interaction, even if the advice generated is automated. Srikanth Meenakshi, co-founder, FundsIndia.com, said, "It's not enough to be reactive on portfolio queries. There is an expectation of proactive interaction as well."
Keeping this demand in mind, Vyakaranam said they have qualified certified financial planners to help with the explanation of the plan recommendations. The solutions, however, remain automated and don't originate from the human adviser.
If you are well-versed with investment products, robo-advisors can help you make quick, easy and cost-effective transactions. If you don't understand the nuances of investing and need to be shown a target to move ahead, there are robo-advisory platforms that give you the required push in choosing goals and making regular investments. The full-service platforms, in fact, hand hold you through the entire financial journey of understanding your spending habits, cash flows, net worth, helping with the taxation and then building a kitty towards financial goals. ArthaYantra is one such platform which doesn't have the option to just invest yourself; they believe investments have to part of a financial plan so until the appropriate analysis is done products don't get recommended.
If you are starting out with investments, these platforms work well in their ease to use. The analysis is mostly free, but in some cases, if you want to go further with the recommendations, there could be an annual fee. Typically, the fee depends on the adviser and service. For example, ArthaYantra charges 1,000 annually for its premium investment advisory service; Invezta charges 109 per month for its premium service.
As the sector evolves, more innovation beyond simple selling is expected. For do-it-yourself investors, it will ultimately be about costs. Platforms with access to direct plans and recommended portfolios (which means funds have already been selected) are likely to have an edge. Tackling one goal at a time may work with small or first-time investors, but eventually as the portfolio grows and financial needs expand, more in-depth financial planning may be needed, which can come through an offline adviser or through a more comprehensive robo-advisory platform. At present, there are 39 robo- advisory companies in India, according to Tracxn, a data analytics company. Of these, so far 10 have got funding. An early entrant is FundsIndia.com has received $15.41 million so far from Foundation Capital, Inventus Capital Partners and Faering Capital. Other robo-advisory companies who have received funding include MyUniverse ($9.7 million) and Scripbox ($3.22 million).
Ultimately, its portfolio performance that will matter. So, the algorithm has to be accurate and better than others in selecting and reviewing recommendations. It's too early to judge or analyse the existing platforms, but as these firms go through more market cycles and recommendations change, the winners will come through.