text:
CVA Statement on Paul/Udall Afghanistan Legislation
Grassroots veterans group applauds Senator Rand Paul and Senator Tom Udall for highlighting the need to end America's longest war
ARLINGTON, Va.—Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) Executive Director Dan Caldwell issued the following statement following Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) and Sen. Tom Udall's (D-N.M.) introduction of the bipartisan American Forces Going Home After Noble Service Act (AFGHAN) Service Act, a bill that would plot the course for an American military withdrawal from Afghanistan and repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF):
"The United States was justified in engaging in military action in Afghanistan in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Since then, the United States has largely accomplished its original military objectives, yet our men and women in uniform remain engaged in the country with an ambiguous mission and no clear definition of victory. With the AFGHAN Service Act, Sens. Paul and Udall highlight a growing sense across the country that American military involvement in Afghanistan has run its course and potentially become counterproductive to our interests. Moreover, they recognize Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibilities by allowing the continued use of the 2001 AUMF to justify what has become open-ended American military engagements in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Repealing the authorization would force Congress to have the difficult but necessary discussions about where we send our men and women in uniform and, more importantly, why. We commend Sens. Paul and Udall for their leadership and courage in addressing these critical issues and stressing the need for Congressional action."
The 2001 AUMF authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001," in order to prevent future attacks on the US by those actors.
As of 2013, however, the 2001 AUMF had been invoked more than 30 times to authorize military action and deployments of US forces to Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, and Somalia.
In recent polling by RealClearPolitics and the Charles Koch Institute, 49 percent of veterans said the U.S. should be less militarily engaged around the world while only 17 percent said we should be more engaged. Sixty-one percent do not believe it is our responsibility to ensure that Afghanistan has a liberal democratic system of government, while 69 percent of veterans would support the president if he withdrew all troops from Afghanistan.
Caldwell recently penned an op-ed with Will Ruger, Vice President of Research at the Charles Koch Institute, charting a path forward for better foreign policy. You can read it here.
CVA Statement on POTUS, VA Budget Requests
ARLINGTON, Va.—Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) Executive Director Dan Caldwell issued the following statement in response to the release of…


The Association of Bridal Consultants Orange County Chapter Trendsetter Awards were held on December 15, 2015 at the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort in Orange County, California. The Trendsetter Awards is considered the favorite night of the year among members of the Orange County Chapter. AOO Events and AOO Floral worked with planner Kerrie Underhill and all the team members from the ABC to create a night of black, white and gold elegance for the audience of 300 South Coast wedding professionals. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the industry together. The room was an exciting blend of black, white and gold. See event sponsors at the end of this post to learn more about the team that made this happen.
These winners all know that a great event is in the details!


Racing NSW Stewards have permitted James McDonald to be declared as the rider of both No. 2 Tswalu (David Pfieffer) & No. 16 (2nd Emergency) Empress Matilda (Team Hawkes), which have accepted in Race 8 at Monday's Kensington race meeting.
Should Empress Matilda gain a start, David Pfieffer will be required to find a suitable rider for Tswalu.


text:
Aeropelican Airport är en flygplats i Australien. Den ligger i kommunen Lake Macquarie Shire och delstaten New South Wales, i den sydöstra delen av landet, omkring 97 kilometer nordost om delstatshuvudstaden Sydney. Aeropelican Airport ligger  meter över havet.

Trakten är tätbefolkad. Närmaste större samhälle är Newcastle, omkring 18 kilometer nordost om Aeropelican Airport.

I omgivningarna runt Aeropelican Airport växer i huvudsak städsegrön lövskog. Genomsnittlig årsnederbörd är  millimeter. Den regnigaste månaden är februari, med i genomsnitt  mm nederbörd, och den torraste är juli, med  mm nederbörd.

Kommentarer

Källor

Flygplatser i New South Wales

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Analysis: Perception matters more than ever if Notre Dame is going to have a playoff reality
Once you get past that there's no Navy game on the Notre Dame football schedule for the first time in 94 years …
And that there IS a Friday night road matchup, and a Dec. 5 home game with no students on campus, and a potential trap game against Boston College and former ND QB Phil Jurkovec on the road the week after a big home showdown with Clemson …
Reality sets in.
And Notre Dame's reality in 2020, provided that the season leaps from its perpetual hypothetical phase to actual games on the field, comes down to perception.
More than ever.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Power 5 conferences' stab at dancing with it, meaningful non-conference games are pretty much non-existent. Truth be told, non-conference games period among the Power 5 aren't all that plentiful.
Only the ACC and Big 12, in their reshuffled schedules, are playing plus-1 games. The Pac-12, SEC and Big Ten are conference-only setups in 2020.
Comparing relative strengths between conferences becomes even more of an inexact science than usual, if not an outright guessing game. And that's not a bragging-rights thing. It's a playoff thing.
It's conceivable the ACC, with Notre Dame as a full-time football member for 2020 only, could produce two playoff contenders. That likely would require a season split of Clemson's regular-season meeting at Notre Dame Stadium on Nov. 7 and a potential rematch in the ACC Championship Game, Dec. 12 or Dec. 19 at Charlotte, N.C.
Even if there's only one playoff-worthy squad from the 15 ACC teams, there's no guarantee the league champion will make the four-team playoff. What if all five Power 5 leagues each produce an unbeaten team?
The ACC doesn't have recent history on which to lean.
In 2018, the ACC had only two ranked teams in the final AP Top 25 — national champ Clemson and No. 15 Syracuse. Independent Notre Dame finished fifth in that poll.
Last season only No. 2 Clemson from the ACC was ranked at season's end.
In part because of Notre Dame's inclusion and in part because of a talent infusion/maturation, the ACC could be surging in 2020.
In Pro Football Focus' list of the top 50 players in college football for 2020, 34 percent (17) were from the ACC, including five of the top 12. Three of the 17 were from Clemson and one — offensive tackle Liam Eichenberg — was from ND.
The next-closest conference representation came from the Big Ten, with 12 players. The SEC had 11, followed by the Pac-12 with five, the Big 12 with four and FCS power North Dakota State with one.
In last season's PFF preseason top 50, the ACC landed only seven players, and six of those were from Clemson.
North Carolina has been a trendy top 25 preseason pick, so it's not just an influx of individual talent, but perhaps teams as well.
The Irish, incidentally, have one of their two bye weeks, prior to the Nov. 27 matchup with the Tar Heels. The other precedes the Oct. 10 home clash with Florida State.
Clemson, meanwhile, will top many preseason top 25s, including the coaches poll that was released today. If the Tigers are still No. 1 when they come to visit, it will be the 26th time in Notre Dame's football history that it has faced the nation's top-ranked team and first time since 2005 in the Bush Push Game (a 34-31 USC victory).
The Irish are 8-16-1 in those games, losing the last three and four of the past five.
Clemson also figures to be only the second top 10 team (at the time the game was played) to visit Notre Dame Stadium in the Brian Kelly Era.
Kelly's 11th season kicks off with a home game against Duke on Sept. 12. Western Michigan ended up as ND's plus-one game, and the Mid-American Conference team visits Notre Dame Stadium on its original date, Sept. 19.
Though details to keep Navy on the schedule couldn't be worked out — and the Mids replaced the Irish with a Sept. 7 opener with BYU — the two schools on Thursday announced an extension of the Irish-Navy series through 2032.
The Sept. 26 Wake Forest game also kept its date and venue, Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.
Still to come, if and how many fans will be allowed to attend the game and how college football will respond to virus outbreaks. For now, it's more fun to dream about what's possible on the field.
Last March, before 14 of the 15 spring practices were canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, Kelly admitted his 2020 squad had the potential to be his best.
The ACC handed them a schedule that will allow them to prove it.
(Home Games in CAPS)
Sept. 12: DUKE
Sept. 19: WESTERN MICHIGAN
Sept. 26: vs. Wake Forest at Charlotte, N.C.
Oct. 3: Open
Oct. 10: FLORIDA STATE
Oct. 17: LOUISVILLE
Oct. 24: at Pittsburgh
Oct. 31: at Georgia Tech
Nov. 7: CLEMSON
Nov. 14: at Boston College
Nov. 21: Open
Nov. 27: at North Carolina
Dec. 5: SYRACUSE
Dec. 12 or 19: ACC Championship Game at Charlotte, N.C.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This high quality ceramic black mug is perfect for letting everyone know you have a previous engagement a furry friend. This mug also has a premium hard coat that provides crisp and vibrant color reproduction sure to last for years. Perfect for all hot and cold beverages.


SAINI offers rehabilitation services for Eddy Current Brakes (Baylor ElmagcoTM) that are used worldwide on both land based and offshore drilling rigs. The firm has the proficiency to handle ECBs available in any sizes, toque rating and Coil Design (2 Coil/4Coil) for drilling depths ranging from 7000 feet up to 50,000 feet and more. The ECBs are analyzed, repaired and tested both electrically and mechanically offering high durability and reliability.


Precious metals are extremely rare natural occurring elements. As an illustration, all the gold that has ever been mined would fit into just two Olympic-size swimming pools.
Precious metals such as gold and silver have been used as currencies for thousands of years. They are very suitable as money due to their rarity and durability.
Today's paper money is continuously being debased. Central banks do not restrain from printing all the money they need. Inflation is today's preferred policy.
Gold is scarce. Its supply cannot be increased by a central bank or government, contrary to paper currencies. Physical gold has no third-party risk.
Stocks and bonds tend to move up and down together. As an illustration, stock prices moved little since 2000, while gold prices have quadrupled.
Precious metals behave contrary to traditional asset classes. An investment portfolio with gold is therefore less volatile than without gold.
The financial crisis of '08 has proven that banks can become insolvent overnight. Bank depositors might lose most of their savings. Bail-in laws give government the right to confiscate (part of) your bank deposits.
Gold is one of the few assets without counterparty risk. Whenever there is a "flight to quality" in a market panic, hard assets like gold profit. Precious metals offer protection against a financial or banking crisis.
When you place an order, it is directly transmitted to the refiner. The refiner supplies a newly minted bar. You are the sole owner of a bar if you reserve it, or else co-owner of one or more bars.
The bullion is transported to the vault in a highly secure armored truck and is always fully insured.
How Affordable Are Precious Metals?


Welcome to Shaun Hutson's monthly column. He has written over thirty novels since his debut Slugs back in 1982 – this was later made into a film.
Each month This Is Horror, or a guest, asks Shaun a question that forms the basis of his column.
August 2011: Do plots or characters come first when writing a novel?
January 2012: Has traditional horror lost its identity?
March 2012: Does an author need an agent?


Well, this has been a looong while, but we are finally back! Hang on to your trousers and enjoy the ride!
Mo: ...and I want to tell her I don't like her idea, but I don't want to seem rude. I don't know what to do.
Me: You know, you have to be like a rock in this situation.
Mo: You mean I should be tough?
Me: No. I mean you should throw yourself into the river and drown.


text:
Watermark Lodging Trust
Carey Watermark Investors 2 Acquires the Charlotte Marriott City Center
Home » CWI2 Press Releases » Carey Watermark Investors 2 Acquires…
For Release June 2, 2017 – Carey Watermark Investors 2 Incorporated (CWI 2), a non-traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on investing in lodging and lodging-related properties, announced that it has acquired the Charlotte Marriott City Center, located in Uptown, Charlotte's central business district (CBD).
Newly renovated, high-quality asset: Over $40 million of capital improvements to the property were completed in 2016 to reposition it as the most technologically advanced full-service property within the Marriott Hotels system. Now dubbed the "Beta Hotel" for its cutting-edge concepts, the recent renovations have transformed the upscale property into an ultra-modern hotel, featuring innovative guest rooms, public space, event space and programming. The property functions as a real-time platform for guest feedback and ideas to enhance all aspects of the hotel experience. The comprehensive renovation added eight guest rooms, five unique food and beverage outlets, a state-of-the-art fitness center, a newly programmed M Club Lounge and lobby core.
Strong lodging market: Charlotte's Uptown market has been one of the fastest growing lodging markets in the US, achieving a 5.8% RevPAR compound average growth rate (CAGR) since 1990 versus the US average of 3.1%. The 2016 RevPAR for the Charlotte CBD increased 5.5% year-over-year, further illustrating the strong demand in the Charlotte marketplace.
Central location: The Charlotte Marriott City Center sits at one of the busiest intersections in Charlotte's CBD, surrounded by 16 million square feet of office space. Several Fortune 500 companies, including Bank of America, Duke Energy and the East Coast operations of Wells Fargo, are located in the CBD. The area is also home to major sports teams with stadiums within one mile of the hotel. Other nearby demand generators include the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the 280,000-square foot Charlotte Convention Center and EpiCentre, Charlotte's primary mixed-use entertainment and dining attraction. Over two million square feet of office space, 600,000 square feet of retail space and 3,400 residential units are currently under construction or are in planning in the immediate area.
Strong brand affiliation and management: CWI 2 has entered into a long-term management agreement with Marriott International and the hotel will continue to benefit from its Marriott brand affiliation and management.
Property and amenities:
19-story institutional quality building
446 guest rooms including 4 suites, 23 stay/well rooms with full access to the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Programs and 3 concierge levels
20,000 square feet of meeting space and 13 breakout areas, including a 9,100-square foot ballroom
Five unique food and beverage outlets, including Stoke Restaurant, an immersive kitchen concept featuring locally sourced ingredients, and the M Club Lounge
24-hour, state-of-the-art fitness center
Management Commentary
Michael Medzigian, Chief Executive Officer of CWI 2, said: "We are extremely pleased to continue to expand on our already important relationship with Marriott International and to support them as they continue to embrace hotel innovation and shape the future of travel. With the transformative renovation of the property incorporating Marriott's latest design and technology concepts, the Charlotte Marriott City Center is now recognized as one of the flagship Marriott properties throughout the country. With the strength of its location in the heart of the CBD of one of the highest growth lodging markets in the US, we believe the property is not only well positioned to deliver attractive current cash flow but also to benefit from the ongoing strength of the local economy. Given our own focus on continuing to develop product and service concepts to enhance the guest experience, the property's designation as M Beta made it a strategic acquisition for the CWI 2 portfolio."
Carey Watermark Investors 2
Carey Watermark Investors 2 (CWI 2) is a publicly registered REIT that was formed to make investments primarily in the lodging and lodging-related sectors. Affiliates of W. P. Carey Inc. and Watermark Capital Partners advise CWI 2 and manage its overall portfolio. www.careywatermark2.com
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal securities laws. The statements of Mr. Medzigian are examples of forward-looking statements. A number of factors could cause CWI 2's actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially from those anticipated. Among those risks, trends and uncertainties are the general economic climate; the supply of and demand for hotels; interest rate levels; the availability of financing; other risks associated with the acquisition and ownership of hotels; and risks related to CWI 2's offering of shares. For further information on factors that could impact CWI 2, reference is made to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements about past performance (including RevPAR growth) are presented for informational purposes only and are not a guarantee of future results.
Carey Watermark Investors 2 Acquires Seattle Marriott Bellevue
For Release January 25, 2016 Carey Watermark Investors 2 Incorporated (CWI 2), a non-traded real…
Carey Watermark Investors 2 Acquires Le Méridien Arlington
For Release June 29, 2016 – Carey Watermark Investors 2, Incorporated (CWI 2), a non-traded…
CWI1 Press Releases (41)
Industry Publications (25)
WCP Press Release (6)
Carey Watermark Investors 1 and Carey Watermark Investors 2 Stockholders Approve Merger April 16, 2020
Carey Watermark Investors 1 and Carey Watermark Investors 2 Announce Proposed Merger October 25, 2019
Carey Watermark Investors Honored for Deal of the Year January 24, 2018
Hotel News Now – Carey Watermark targets unique buying opportunities November 27, 2017
Bacara Resort & Spa Acquired by Carey Watermark Investors & Carey Watermark Investors 2 September 29, 2017
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150 North Riverside Plaza, Suite 4200, Chicago, IL 60606
© 2017 Watermark Capital Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.


Beautiful light Pink/Peach Rose Filigree Lace Wrappers for your mini size cupcake liner or truffles.
This is a brand new 12 piece lace collar or wrapper for mini size cupcake liners.
The lace wrapper measurements: 4 3/4" X 1 3/8" (flat) but will be folded around a min size cupcake liner.
If you need custom colors or a version in a standard size, please contact us.


text:
Home Photoshop Tutorials
Mastering Podcast Cover Art Design with Adobe Photoshop 2023
in Photoshop Tutorials, Free Course, Tutorials
Download Mastering Podcast Cover Art Design with Adobe Photoshop 2023 in one single click, On our website, you will find free many premium assets like Free Courses, Photoshop Mockups, Lightroom Preset, Photoshop Actions, Brushes & Gradient, Videohive After Effect Templates, Fonts, Luts, Sounds, 3d models, Plugins, and much more. Psdly.com is a free graphics content provider website that helps beginner graphic designers as well as freelancers who can't afford high-cost courses and other things.
File Name: Mastering Podcast Cover Art Design with Adobe Photoshop 2023
Content Source: https://www.udemy.com/course/mastering-podcast-cover-art-design-with-adobe-photoshop-2023/
Genre / Category: Photoshop Tutorials
Unleash the Power of Adobe Photoshop and Create Stunning Podcast Cover Art that Will Skyrocket Your Listeners in 2023
In this comprehensive course, you will learn the skills and techniques to create professional-looking cover art for your podcast using Adobe Photoshop. Whether you're a podcast host, producer, or creator, this course will teach you how to design eye-catching and engaging artwork that effectively represents the content of your podcast.
You'll dive into Adobe Photoshop and learn how to use its various tools and features, such as layers, filters, and effects, to create stunning and unique cover art.
Throughout the course, you'll have access to a variety of resources, including videos and tutorials, and you'll have the opportunity to put your newfound skills into practice by completing assignments and creating your own podcast cover art.
By the end of the course, you'll have a solid understanding of how to use Adobe Photoshop to create and edit podcast cover art, and you'll be able to create a cohesive look and feel for your podcast that will help you stand out and attract more listeners.
This course is designed for anyone who wants to learn how to design podcast cover art, from those who are completely new to the software, to those who have some experience with it and want to improve their skills. So don't wait any longer, take this course and create stunning cover art that will boost your podcast visibility today!
DOWNLOAD LINK: Mastering Podcast Cover Art Design with Adobe Photoshop 2023
Tags: free coursePhotoshop TutorialsTutorials
Create A Quilt With 2 Color Pattern Brushes In Procreate
Fake Security - App Sec Myths People Believe
ChatGPT Complete Guide: for Developers, Students and Workers


Enjoy Sydney and snap a photo of the world's most famous iconic destinations with Sydney Opera House, Darling harbour, Sydney Tower Eye and Sydney Harbour Bridge. Wander through the Royal Botanical Gardens and then enjoy an evening of al fresco dining at The Rocks where you can appreciate fine cuisine, Aussie style. There is no shortage of exciting things to see and do in Sydney, as well as the historic Rocks area and observe Hyde Park, St. Mary's Cathedral, The Art Gallery and Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, as well as the famous Bondi and Manly Beaches. Travel with a small group limited to 16 people accompanied by a knowledgeable guide, who ensures a more customized experience with our Sydeny City Tour.
Enjoy a day of wine tastings and locally crafted treats in the Hunter Valley on a small-group tour from Sydney. Explore the oldest wine-producing region in Australia. Visit boutique wineries for tastings, nibble artisanal cheeses and chocolates, and have the option to include lunch at a vineyard restaurant. You even get to meet some of Australia's most captivating native animals during a stop at a wildlife park. Travel with a small group limited to 16 people accompanied by a knowledgeable guide, who ensures a more customized experience of the Hunter Valley.
Enjoy a fun-filled trip to the North Coast, traveling to Port Stephens and the Stockton Bight Sand Dunes on a full-dayguided tour from Sydney. Check out the wildlife at Australian Reptile Park, take a dolphin-watching cruise from Nelson Bay, experience 4-wheeling and sandboarding at the sand dunes, and take in gorgeous scenery all along the route. Accompanied by a knowledgeable guide, enjoy up-close encounters with kangaroos,koalas and Tasmanian devils, bottlenose dolphins and other marine life — a memorable outdoors experience on Sydney's doorstep. Travel with a small group limited to 16 people accompanied by a knowledgeable guide, who ensures a more customized experience our Port Stephens.
Explore the Blue Mountains on a full-day tour that features one of the most famous World Heritage-listed region's natural beauty, including landmarks like Three Sisters, Jamison Valley, Leura and Scenic World. On the return trip to Sydney, meet native Australian wildlife at Featherdale Wildlife Park, then cruise into the city on a scenic Parramatta River boat cruise. Travel with a small group limited to 16 people accompanied by a knowledgeable guide, who ensures a more customized experience with the Blue Mountains.
Pick & Drop at your door step of your home or hotel.


text:
package com.google.gwt.sample.dynatablerf.domain;

import java.io.Serializable;

import javax.persistence.Embeddable;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.Id;

/**
 * Hold relevant data for a time slot.
 */
@Entity
@Embeddable
public class TimeSlot implements Comparable<TimeSlot>,Serializable {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 794887227959115674L;

private static final transient String[] DAYS = new String[] {
      "Sun", "Mon", "Tues", "Wed", "Thurs", "Fri", "Sat"};

  @Id
  private Integer endMinutes;

  @Id
  private Integer startMinutes;

  @Id
  private Integer zeroBasedDayOfWeek;

  public TimeSlot() {
  }

  public TimeSlot(int zeroBasedDayOfWeek, int startMinutes, int endMinutes) {
    this.zeroBasedDayOfWeek = zeroBasedDayOfWeek;
    this.startMinutes = startMinutes;
    this.endMinutes = endMinutes;
  }

  public int compareTo(TimeSlot o) {
    if (zeroBasedDayOfWeek < o.zeroBasedDayOfWeek) {
      return -1;
    } else if (zeroBasedDayOfWeek > o.zeroBasedDayOfWeek) {
      return 1;
    } else {
      if (startMinutes < o.startMinutes) {
        return -1;
      } else if (startMinutes > o.startMinutes) {
        return 1;
      } else if (endMinutes < o.endMinutes) {
        return -1;
      } else if (endMinutes > o.endMinutes) {
        return 1;
      }
    }

    return 0;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(Object obj) {
    if (!(obj instanceof TimeSlot)) {
      return false;
    }
    return compareTo((TimeSlot) obj) == 0;
  }

  public int getDayOfWeek() {
    return zeroBasedDayOfWeek;
  }

  public String getDescription() {
    return DAYS[zeroBasedDayOfWeek] + " " + getHrsMins(startMinutes) + "-"
        + getHrsMins(endMinutes);
  }

  public int getEndMinutes() {
    return endMinutes;
  }

  public int getStartMinutes() {
    return startMinutes;
  }

  @Override
  public int hashCode() {
    return endMinutes + 7 * startMinutes + 31 * zeroBasedDayOfWeek;
  }

  public void setDayOfWeek(int zeroBasedDayOfWeek) {
    if (0 <= zeroBasedDayOfWeek && zeroBasedDayOfWeek < 7) {
      this.zeroBasedDayOfWeek = zeroBasedDayOfWeek;
    } else {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("day must be in the range 0-6");
    }
  }

  public void setEndMinutes(int endMinutes) {
    this.endMinutes = endMinutes;
  }

  public void setStartMinutes(int startMinutes) {
    this.startMinutes = startMinutes;
  }

  private String getHrsMins(int mins) {
    int hrs = mins / 60;
    if (hrs > 12) {
      hrs -= 12;
    }

    int remainder = mins % 60;

    return hrs + ":"
        + (remainder < 10 ? "0" + remainder : String.valueOf(remainder));
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Kurt Østervig (1912–1986) was a Danish furniture designer.

Trained as a shipbuilder in Odense on the Danish island of Funen, Østervig's attachment to wood rather than steel led to his being employed as a furniture designer in E. Knudsen's Studio, among the largest of the times. In 1947, Østervig established his own studio, from where he worked with several of Scandinavia's largest furniture manufacturers. Particularly fond of working with oak, often combined with leather, he designed many special sets of furniture for ships, hotels, cinemas and nursing homes. His distinctive designs aroused widespread international interest, resulting in his work being exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Among his more notable pieces from the 1950s are an elegant but simply styled daybed and a free-standing set of shelves with a bar.

See also
Danish modern
Danish design

References

Danish furniture designers
1912 births
1986 deaths
People from Odense
Danish modern


text:
Needless Season 1 Episode 1
Cruz Schild, the last survivor of the resistance against Simeon is attacked by a Testament only to be saved by a very unusual priest named Adam Blade. After taking Cruz back to his church Cruz is unofficially taken in by Adam and his friends Eve Neuschwanstein and Gido
Serie: Needless
Episode Title: Adam Blade
When boys suddenly get into places where they've never been allowed before, some girls tend to get upset. So when the decision is made to merge the elite Yuihime Girls'…
Kanamemo
The story centers on Kana Nakamichi, a middle-school girl who had already lost her parents and just recently lost her only remaining relative, her grandmother. As a result, she ends…
Beat Bugs
Jay, Kumi, Crick, Buzz, and Walter are best friends who band together to explore and learn in an overgrown suburban backyard, which to them is their entire universe. Each episode…
Freak Show is an animated television series on Comedy Central created by H. Jon Benjamin and David Cross. The show chronicles a freak show, called the Freak Squad, which reluctantly…
Five years later, 15-year-old Ben Tennyson chooses to once again put on the OMNITRIX and discovers that it has reconfigured his DNA and can now transform him into 10 brand…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Family
A richly romantic action-adventure fantasy, set in a world where retro-futuristic vehicles permeate the skies. Against this lavish background are the lives of young and heroic van ship sky porters…
Wolverine and the X-Men was an American cartoon series by Marvel Animation. It is the fourth animated adaptation of the X-Men characters, the other three being Pryde of the X-Men,…
WordWorld
WordWorld is an Emmy Award-winning children's television series partially funded by the United States Department of Education as part of the Ready to Learn literacy initiative targeted to 3- to…
Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee
Apparently abandoned by his mother, orphan Lag Seeing is taken as a "letter" by "Letter Bee" Gauche Suede to a town where his aunt raises him. His affection and admiration…
Marvel's Avengers Assemble
The further adventures of the Marvel Universe's mightiest general membership superhero team. With an all-star roster consisting of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Falcon and, occasionally–when she feels…
Status: In Production
Keiichi Morisato is looking forward to university life. But in reality, he has no luck in anything, and he has trouble with clubs, love, etc. The truth is that he…
For Brandon Heat, death doesn't matter. Driven by his need for revenge, he returns from beyond the grave to cripple Milleneon, the huge mafia organization which uses undead monsters as…
Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Crime, Drama


Thanks to those who helped out with the decking of the trestle last Sunday morning. This is always a difficult chore which was made even more difficult this year due to six inches of snow already on the ground and cold drizzly weather. We have not used this trail in a few years but have to reroute ITS 89 back to the railroad tracks due to some logging and construction on other route. A reroute map will be posted shortly.
The next meeting for the Standish Sno-Seeker Snowmobile club is Tuesday, November 13, 6:30pm at the Standish Town Hall. Pot Luck Supper will begin at 6:30 with the meeting to follow. Please plan on attending the meeting if you ride in Standish. We have a lot of new information regarding the club and could really use your support. Thanks!
The Standish Sno-Seekers snowmobile club is looking for members. We have been in existence for over 25 years. Our current membership has dwindled, leaving the necessary work to only a few people and putting the club in jeopardy of folding. This would cause the many miles of recreational trails in Standish to no longer be maintained. All grooming, trail maintenance, signage would no longer be there. It would also cause the loss of some trails due to no more landowner permission. If you ride the trails, please fill out a membership form. The club needs membership dues to help purchase grooming equipment, fuel, bridge building supplies, etc.


We have been in an intimate part of the Simi Valley community for over 40 years. In that time we have been taking care of the vehicle needs of the community's families and businesses in Simi Valley. We have been serving the needs of our car owners with premier auto repair and service. We have been recognized for our unsurpassed customer service since 1976. All our C&M auto mechanics are ASE technicians, highly trained with continuous training ongoing in the latest technology. We pride ourselves on using the latest in tools, equipment and computer technology. We repair both domestic and foreign cars and are known for our outstanding service ability for BMW Repair, Lexus Repair and Infiniti Repair to name just a few. C&M has built a reputation for truck repair as well, with the ability to troubleshoot problems for Dodge, GMC and Ford Repair.


We're a unique, rustic winery and event center located in the beautiful lakes area featuring hand crafted award winning wines. We offer tastings and wine by the glass or bottle. Enjoy our wines as you listen to music on Thursdays in the Summer, or Fridays in the Winter. We host many events along with weddings, graduations, birthdays, etc. Walk our orchard or browse our specialty gift shop. Glacial Ridge Winery is relaxed, comfortable and enjoyable!
Serving both quality interpretations of classic dishes and daring new ventures into the uncharted territories of food. O'neil's continues to be the areas #1 choice for outstanding eats, events and entertainment.
Saturday and Sunday 9am to 1am and open for breakfast!


Skytec Basalt R PU Palm Safety Glove, Seamless Nylon Liner with P U Palm Coating . Ideal for precision tasks requiring dexterity and flexibility. Available in sizes 6 - 11. Typical Handling Applications - Construction, Automotive, Light Engineering , General Assembly , Component Handling Electronics . Conforms to EN388:2003: 4 131 . See Technical Specification Tab for more details.
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Natural gas may trade with a sideways bias as it can source its support from near Rs 186 with a likely hurdle near Rs 192.
Nnatural gas may move with sideways bias, said SMC Global Securities in its daily commodity report.
NEW DELHI: Bullion counter is seen to buzz big on Monday and natural gas may move with sideways bias, said SMC Global Securities in its daily commodity report.
Here's a look at the likely trends of the key commodities for Monday.
Copper can witness lower level buying as it can take support near Rs 417 while its upside will be capped near Rs 423. London copper eased on Monday, but held above a one-year low hit last week on mounting concerns that escalating trade tariff spats could dent demand. A weaker dollar cushioned losses.
Zinc stares at resistance near Rs 182 and support near Rs 178. Lead can have some relief near Rs 144 and faces a hurdle near Rs 149.
Nickel's support comes up near Rs 920 and its upside will be capped near Rs 945.
The corresponding figures for aluminium are Rs 142 and Rs 139 on MCX.
Crude oil may witness lower level buying further as it can find some cushion near Rs 4,650, with a likely resistance near Rs 4,750 on MCX.
Turmeric futures (August) are likely to trade with an upside bias in Rs 7,280-7,400.
Similarly, Jeera futures may trade both ways in the range of Rs 18,600-19,000 levels. Coriander futures are expected to trade with an upside bias taking support near Rs 4,695 levels.
Soybean futures for October are expected to stay in Rs 3,360-3,420.
Chana futures (August) may have an upside bias, with price range at Rs 4,200-4,400.
Guar seed futures (October) are seen to trade with an upside pressure towards Rs 4,400-4,450 levels.


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We have outstanding monthly programs featuring dynamic, nationally-renown speakers on a variety of topics including creative case studies to great sales techniques.
The American Advertising Awards (ADDY® Awards) are the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition for creative excellence. AAF members enjoy a reduced entry fee. Local winners are forwarded into regional competition.
Meet the community's most talented and influential professionals, build relationships with clients, find gifted employees and discover rewarding employment opportunities. Our members showcase their talents and get to know their fellow professionals by volunteering to help on one of our many planning committees.
We offer an online "who's who" of other local AAF members — truly a great resource!
The AAF has established a charitable scholarship foundation, This organization financially supports talented students in advertising-related fields at four-year universities in Iowa.
The AAF of Des Moines offers a night of fun, competition and trivia in the yearly AdMania contest to test knowledge of local and national advertising.
AAF of Des Moines members are automatically members of the American Advertising Federation, the only organization that represents all segments of the advertising industry through a network of advertising clubs. This membership provides reduced rates on: FedEx service, communication liability insurance, automobile rentals from Hertz, personal insurance packages through Mutual of Omaha, Adverguard subscriptions to Advertising Age, Ad Week, Brand Week, Business Wire, Media Week and the AAF Film Library. The AAF also hosts one of the largest industry specific job banks available to you as a member.


Happy Halloween!! I hope everybody is having a great Monday! I'm enjoying a couple of days off and hopefully I can finish up some projects before the weekend. I have a pallet entryway table I'm trying to finish. I'm loving how it is turning out and can't wait to share it with you. Today, I'm going to show you how you can make a table runner with a $10 drop cloth. You can actually make three of them out of one drop cloth. The great thing about a drop cloth is you can paint it to match anything. You could also make one for the holidays. The ideas are endless.. especially since you can make three for $10.
The first thing is to cut the drop cloth into three even pieces. I cut mine so it would be 9 ft long. My husband and I made our table using the Anna White plans, so the table is long. You can always adjust the cuts to fit your needs. After cutting the drop cloth, hem it. I sew a lot so I used the hemming foot on my sewing machine to sewing my edges. If you don't sew, you can use iron-on hemming tape and follow the manufacturer's instructions to get your hem.
After hemming , paint the drop cloth with whatever your heart desires. I just took some painter's tape and taped some lines off.
After painting it, I took the tape off and and now I have a new table runner. I still have two more I can paint. Maybe I will use it for the holidays. We love some Christmas decor at our house!


It may happen that you want to return an order. Perhaps because the product does not like it or maybe there is another reason why you would not want the order. Whatever the reason, you have the right to cancel your order up to 30 days after receipt without giving any reason.
After cancellation, you have another 14 days to return your product. You will then be credited with the full order amount including shipping costs. Only the costs for returning from your home to the webshop are for your own account. These costs are approximately 6.95 per package, for the exact rates consult the website of your carrier. If you use your right of withdrawal, the product with all accessories and - if reasonably possible - in the original condition and packaging will be returned to the entrepreneur. To use this right you can contact us via info@colourpencils.eu We will then refund the order amount due within 14 days after registration of your return, provided that the product has already been returned in good order.
If the product is damaged or the packaging is damaged more than is necessary to try the product, we can pass on this depreciation of the product to you. So treat the product with care and make sure that it is well packaged during a return.
Do you want to exchange your product? That is no problem at all. You can contact info@colourpencils.eu You do bear the costs for returning the product.
I have given a wrong delivery address!
Accidentally passed a wrong delivery address? Please contact us as soon as possible. We will then try to change the order for you.
1: Log in to your account in the webshop.
2: You now come to a page with an overview of the orders.
3: Select the order from which you want to return items. And click "Return items" at the bottom of the page.
4: You will be redirected to a page where you can set which items you want to return.
5: You will then be asked to indicate the reason for the return.
7: We will immediately start processing the return order.


Magic Mandalas, is a real eye-opener! These appealing geometric designs resemble flowers, circular patterns and more. This is a very relaxing coloring book great for any car ride or activity time.
These fun books are 8.5" x 8.5" with a high quality full color card stock cover. Each inside page is a high-bright, white paper that anyone can use crayons, colored pencils, magic markers and even water colors on!
*Don't forget to pick up some crayons or colored pencils click here.
Crayola Half Size Colored Pencil features a soft lead texture that allows convenient blending of colors. Pre-sharpened point stays sharp for longer while offering break free drawing. Pencil has a thick 3.3mm lead that lays down smooth non scratch color.
School Smart 7 in Colored Pencil features an attractive hexagonal shaped body that is easy to handle while being made of quality wood for easy sharpening. Pencil lays down smooth, Non-Toxic color in bright, vibrant hues with its 3.3 mm lead.
Crayola Colored Pencil Set in assorted colors feature smooth colors that are ideal for practicing more detailed techniques while allowing smooth color mixing and blending. Pencil features thick yet soft lead of 3.3 in that comes pre-sharpened.


Russian designer Joanna Karaseva designs these wonderfully charming miniaturized paper houses, lighthouses in particular, that feel as if they are plucked from the secret world of fairies. At first glance you may think that these houses are made using the Papier-mâché technique, however she uses a special, and secret, technique specific to this type of modeling. Each fairy house is carefully handcrafted with the use of only French Canson paper, PVA glue, LEDs, batteries and wires. The rigidity and strength of the paper architecture is achieved from a unique technology of combining ribs and textures. The act of bending and folding the curvature into the paper allows for deeper texturing and a relief effect. The individual elements, such as windows and lanterns are made of colored transparent tracing paper. Even finer details placed in the paper cobblestones and mosaic tiled footpath are absolutely breathtaking.


An Indian Head Massage dispels stress, relieves tension in the neck, head and shoulders and promotes healthy hair. Indian Head Massage involves working with a firm and gentle rhythm to help unknot blockages and to relieve any uncomfortable tension. The effect is not only physical, it works on your emotions too, calming the spirit and aiding relaxation. The head and hair are very sensitive as they are full of nerve endings. This makes them very receptive to touch. Massaging the head and hair is deeply soothing and relaxing. An exotic treatment which is seriously relaxing as well as offering a conditioning hair mask at the same time! WOW.


Carinthia is probably Austria's best kept secret, with hundreds of splendid lakes that speckle a landscape marked by high peaks and gouged valleys.
The rugged beauty of Carinthia is widely overlooked. Hundreds of splendid lakes speckle a landscape marked by high peaks and gouged valleys, most notably the Grossglockner, Austria's largest mountain. The nearby Pasterze Glacier can be reached by funicular railway.
Carinthia is a great destination to visit in the summer - many villages host summer festivals, complete with folk music and performers from nearby Italy and Slovenia. The walled villages of Friesach and Gmund are a treat, as is the impressive hilltop fortress in Hochosterwitz.
Klagenfurt, Carinthia's capital, is ideally located near Lake Wörthersee, one of Europe's largest and warmest Alpine lakes.
To overcome boundaries is always a great feeling, especially in scenery as impressive as the Alpe-Adria Trail.
Renowned for their precision, rifles made in Ferlach make the heart of every collector beat faster and are coveted by hunters all worldwide.
A highly attractive combination of culture and nature is offered by the Carintian Summer music festival in the area surrounding Carinthia's Lake Ossiach each year.


Attending a funeral is always a difficult time. If you are attending a funeral for the first time, there may be many questions that you have about funeral etiquette - what happens at a funeral, what to wear, even whether you should attend.
We hope the following information will help to answer some of your questions. Funeral customs and traditions do differ, so our information can only be a guide - if you need more detailed information, the Funeral Director or Celebrant will be in a position to help.


text:
| Browse the Best of RHF: "'True' Stories" |
The Marshmallow of the 23rd Century
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(true, smirk)
I'm not making this up. This is almost as good as the "Nintendo Cereal System." Everything after this sentence is quoted from a coupon offer in the San Francisco Chronicle of Sunday June 25, 1989 from Kraft foods and referencing a copyright of Paramount Pictures Corporation.
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The official marshmallow of the Starship U.S.S. Enterprise.(TM)
Best of Jokes | Current Jokes | RHF Home | Search


An incident can happen on private or public property, up in the air, on the road at work or even in the sea. In order to make a claim a failure to take reasonable care for a person's safety must generally be proven.
If you have suffered because of someone else's negligence then you will be able to gain compensation for your loss of earnings and medical and related expenses – both future and past. It may also be possible to claim for the care that others have provided to you, or you have been unable to provide to others.
If you can also show that your claim is of sufficient seriousness you will be able to gain compensation for your suffering.
As soon as possible after any incident occurs it is important for you to begin to collect evidence for your claim. Witness details and, if possible, photographs of where the incident occurred are vital.
As your lawyers, we also gather evidence on your behalf – including medical material and details of any earnings lost, engage experts and assess your future needs. We communicate and negotiate with the other party and will look after all aspect of your claim to ensure you receive the best possible result.
There are strict time limits in place within which you must bring a claim. It is important that you seek independent legal advice at the earliest opportunity so that we can advise you about these limitation periods, the assessment process for claims in your state and to make sure your interests and rights are protected.
For advice or assistance please call 13 43 63 or fill out our online contact form.


text:
\section{Introduction}

Light scalar mesons are an object of great interest in hadron and nuclear
physics. They are largely responsible for the attractive
part~\cite{Johnson:1955zz} of the
nucleon--nucleon interaction; some have the quantum numbers of the
lightest glueball, which is interesting for the non--abelian nature of
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD); also, some have the quantum numbers of the vacuum, so they
should play a relevant role in the spontaneous Chiral Symmetry breaking of QCD.
However, the precise properties of the light scalar mesons, as their nature,
spectroscopic classification, and even their existence ---as in the case of the
$K^*_0(800)$--- are still the subject of an intense debate.
Regarding their spectroscopic nature, several
models~\cite{Jaffe:1976ig} suggest that they might not be of
ordinary $\bar qq$ nature, but of other kind of spectroscopic classification,
such as tetraquarks, meson--meson molecules, glueballs, or a complicated mixture of all these.

A powerful tool to study the spectroscopic nature of mesons is the
QCD $1/N_c$ expansion~\cite{Witten:1980sp}. It is valid in
the entire energy range
and gives a clear definition of different spectroscopic components
in terms of their mass  and width
$1/N_c$ scaling,
which is well known for $\bar qq$ and glueball states.
By combining the $1/N_c$ expansion with Chiral Perturbation Theory
(ChPT)~\cite{chpt} unitarized with the Inverse Amplitude Method~\cite{IAM},
some of us studied~\cite{Pelaez:2003dy,Pelaez:2006nj}
the $1/N_c$ behavior of light
resonances. It was found that whereas the $\rho(770)$ and $K^*(892)$
vectors behave predominantly as expected for $\bar qq$ states,
the scalars $f_0(600)$ and $K^*_0(800)$ do not~\cite{Pelaez:2003dy}.
However, the two--loop analysis~\cite{Pelaez:2006nj}
showed that a possible subdominant $\bar qq$ component for the $f_0(600)$ may
exist, but with a mass around 1 GeV or more.

In~\cite{Pelaez:2003dy,Pelaez:2006nj} unitarized ChPT was used to
change $N_c$ and study the $1/N_c$ scaling of the mass and width of the
light resonances generated.
However, the $1/N_c$ leading
$\bar qq$ scaling, $M=O(1)$, $\Gamma=O(1/N_c)$ receives subleading corrections
suppressed by $1/N_c$,
and for physical $N_c=3$ this may not seem a large suppression.
Thus, we report here our
results~\cite{Nebreda:2011cp} using
adimensional observables with corrections suppressed further than $1/N_c$,
that allow us to obtain conclusions directly from real data at $N_c=3$,
without the need to extrapolate to larger $N_c$ using unitarized ChPT.

The observables mentioned above are related to the three different
criteria commonly used to identify resonances in elastic two--body scattering,
which are equivalent for large $N_c$. One of these criteria is the position of the
pole associated to the resonance in the unphysical sheet, $s_R$, which gives a
definition of the resonance mass and width, $s_R=m_R^2-im_R\Gamma_R$.
A second possibility is to define the mass as the energy at which the phase shift
reaches $\pi/2$, which for both $\pi\pi$ and $\pi K$ scalar scattering phase shifts occur
relatively far from the pole position. Third, the resonance mass can also be
identified with the point where the phase derivative is maximum.
The relation between the first two criteria, which are equivalent up to
$O(1/N_c^2)$ corrections for $\bar qq$ states~\cite{Nieves:2009kh},
was studied in~\cite{Nieves:2009kh}
for the $f_0(600)$ with a relatively inconclusive result about its assumed
$\bar qq$ nature. A more reliable parametrization and better data were called for
and we will use it here with more conclusive results.

Thus in section~\ref{observables} we define and obtain the $1/N_c$ scaling
of the observables used to test
the $1/N_c$ predictions suppressed by more than one power of $1/N_c$.
These are related to the phase shift and its derivative evaluated at the
resonance ``pole'' mass $m_R^2={\rm Re\,}(s_R)$. In section~\ref{results}
we discuss the results obtained, where we see that the coefficients needed
for considering the $f_0(600)$ and $K^*_0(800)$ as $\bar qq$ or glueball states are
unnaturally large by two orders of magnitude.

\section{Highly suppressed $1/N_c$ observables}
\label{observables}

Consider the elastic scattering of two mesons with a resonance
associated to a pair of conjugate poles on
the unphysical sheet of the scattering amplitude,
located at $s_R=m_R^2\pm im_R\Gamma_R$, where $m_R$ and $\Gamma_R$ are the
resonance mass and width. It was found in~\cite{Nieves:2009kh} that if
the resonance behaves as a $\bar qq$ state, i. e., $m_R=O(1)$, $\Gamma_R=O(1/N_c)$,
then the phase shift satisfies
\begin{equation}
  \label{delta}
  \delta(m_R^2)=\frac{\pi}{2}-
  \underbrace{\frac{{\rm Re\,} t^{-1}}{\sigma}\bigg|_{m_R^2}}_{O(N_c^{-1})}+O(N_c^{-3}),
  \qquad
  \delta'(m_R^2)=-\underbrace{\frac{({\rm Re\,} t^{-1})'}{\sigma}\bigg|_{m_R^2}}_{O(N_c)}
  +O(N_c^{-2}),
\end{equation}
where $t(s)$ is the scattering partial wave, $\sigma=2k/\sqrt{s}$, $k$ is the
center of mass momentum of one of the mesons and $s$ is the usual Mandelstam variable.
The prime denotes derivatives with respect to $s$. Note that the
subleading $1/N_c$ corrections are suppressed by two powers of $1/N_c$.
This particular $1/N_c$ counting, as shown in~\cite{Nieves:2009kh},
comes from the expansion of the real and imaginary parts of the pole equation,
as we detail next.

The inverse of the partial wave,
which generically scales as $N_c$, can be written as $t^{-1}=R+iI$,
where $R$ and $I$ are
analytic functions that coincide with the real and imaginary parts of $t^{-1}$
over the right cut, i. e., $R(s)={\rm Re\,} t^{-1}(s)$ and $I(s)={\rm Im\,} t^{-1}(s)=-\sigma(s)$
for $s>s_{th}$. Then, the inverse partial wave on the second sheet
is given by $t^{-1}_{II}=R-iI$, and the equation for the resonance
pole position, $t^{-1}_{II}(s_R)=0$, can be written as $R(s_R)=iI(s_R)$.
If the resonance is a $\bar qq$ state, $m_R=O(1)$
and $\Gamma_R=O(N_c^{-1})$, and we take the real and
imaginary parts of the expansion of the pole equation
around $m_R^2$, we arrive at
\begin{equation}
  \begin{aligned}
    {\rm Re\,} t^{-1}(m_R^2)&=\underbrace{m_R\Gamma_R\left[\frac{m_R\Gamma_R}{2}
        ({\rm Re\,} t^{-1})''_{s=m_R^2}
        -\sigma'(m_R^2)\right]}_{O(N_c^{-1})}+O(N_c^{-3}), \quad \label{retinvexpansion}\\
    ({\rm Re\,} t^{-1})'_{s=m_R^2}&=
    \underbrace{\frac{\sigma(m_R^2)}{m_R\Gamma_R}}_{O(N_c)}+O(N_c^{-1}).
  \end{aligned}
\end{equation}
Since the
expansion parameter $im_R\Gamma_R\sim 1/N_c$ is purely imaginary,
the different orders in the expansion, which are suppressed by the
corresponding $1/N_c$ factors, are
real or purely imaginary alternatively. Then,
when taking the real and imaginary parts of the equation, the
different orders are suppressed by two powers of $1/N_c$, as
shown in Eqs.~\eqref{retinvexpansion}, from where we also see
that the inverse amplitude scales as $1/N_c$ instead of as the generic $N_c$
when evaluated at $m_R^2$. Then,
Eqs.~\eqref{delta} are obtained noting that
the phase shift $\delta(s)$ satisfies $\delta-\pi/2=-\arctan({\rm Re\,} t^{-1}/\sigma)$,
and using Eqs.~\eqref{retinvexpansion} to expand the
$\arctan$ function in $1/N_c$ powers.

We can now define from Eqs.~\eqref{delta}
the following adimensional observables,
\begin{equation}
  \label{adef}
  \frac{\frac{\pi}{2}- {\rm Re\,} t^{-1}/\sigma}{\delta}\Big\vert_{m_R^2}
  \equiv\Delta_1=1+\frac{a}{N_c^3},
  \qquad
  -\frac{[{\rm Re\,} t^{-1}]'}{\delta'\sigma}\Big\vert_{m_R^2}\equiv\Delta_2=1
  +\frac{b}{N_c^2},
\end{equation}
whose value should be one
for predominantly $\bar qq$ resonances up to $O(1/N_c^3)$ and
$O(1/N_c^2)$ corrections, respectively. We have written explicitly the
corresponding $1/N_c$ powers in the subleading terms, so the
coefficients $a$ and $b$ should naturally be $O(1)$ or less.
Note that it is relatively simple to make $a$ and $b$ much smaller
than one by taking into account higher order contributions of
natural size, but very unnatural to make them much larger.
In the case of a glueball nature of the resonance, whose mass and
width scale as $m_R=O(1)$ and $\Gamma_R=O(1/N_c^2)$, the above
derivations can be repeated, but now the subleading corrections are
even more suppressed since the width scales as $1/N_c^2$ instead of only
$1/N_c$. Then, for a glueball resonance, the observables $\Delta_1$ and
$\Delta_2$ satisfy
\begin{equation}
  \label{a_b_glueball}
  \Delta_1=1+\frac{a'}{N_c^6},\qquad \Delta_2=1+\frac{b'}{N_c^4},
\end{equation}
where $a'$ and $b'$ should of natural $O(1)$ size.

In the following section we will calculate these
observables to see how well
the above predictions for $\Delta_1$ and $\Delta_2$ are fulfilled
assuming a $\bar qq$ nature (or also glueball for the $f_0(600)$) for the
resonances found in elastic of $\pi\pi$ and $\pi K$ scattering.

\section{Results}
\label{results}

In Table~\ref{tab:Nc3results} we show the values of the
$a$ and $b$ parameters for the lightest resonances found in $\pi\pi$ and
$\pi K$ scattering, which have been calculated from the
data analyses that we detail below. Let us first note that
{\it for the $\rho(770)$ and $K^*(892)$ vector resonances all parameters
are of order one or less, as expected for $\bar qq$ states}.
In contrast, {\it for the $f_0(600)$ and $K^*_0(800)$ scalar resonances we
find that all parameters are larger, by two orders of magnitude,
than expected for $\bar qq$ states}.
This is one of our main results and make
the $\bar qq$ interpretation of both scalars extremely unnatural.
\begin{table}[b]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{crrrr}
    & $\rho(770)$ & $K^*(892)$ & $f_0(600)$ & $K^*_0(800)$ \\\hline
\rule[-1mm]{0mm}{5mm}$a$    &    $-0.06\pm0.01$  &  0.02  &  $-252^{+119}_{-156}$ & -2527 \\
\rule[-1mm]{0mm}{5mm}$b$    &  $0.37 ^{+0.04}_{-0.05}$    & 0.16 &$77^{+28}_{-24}$ & 162 \\
\hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Normalized coefficients of the $1/N_c$ expansion for different resonances.
For $\bar qq$ resonances, all them are expected to be of order one or less.}
  \label{tab:Nc3results}
\end{table}

The data analyses that we have used in each case are the following.
For the $\pi\pi$ scattering phase shifts we use the very precise
and reliable output of the data analysis in \cite{GarciaMartin:2011cn}
constrained to satisfy Roy equations, once subtracted
Roy--like equations (GKPY equations) and forward dispersion relations, which is
therefore model independent and specially suited to obtain the $f_0(600)$ pole
\cite{nosotros}. This analysis is also in good agreement with previous
dispersive result based on Roy equations~\cite{CGL}.
For the case of isospin $1/2$ scalar channel of $\pi K$ scattering,
where we find the $K^*_0(800)$,
we have also used the rigorous
dispersive calculation in~\cite{DescotesGenon:2006uk} that uses
Roy-Steiner equations, although in this case we can only provide a central value.
For the isospin $1/2$ vector channel of $\pi K$ scattering, where
we find the $K^*(892)$, there are
no very precise purely dispersive descriptions of data, so we use unitarized
ChPT in the form of the elastic IAM~\cite{IAM}.
We have checked that using the IAM for the $\rho(770)$ we obtain results
within 50\% of the results using the GKPY dispersive representation.
Since the $K^*(892)$ is narrower than the $\rho(770)$, the IAM is likely
to provide a better approximation than in the $\rho(770)$ case, but even with
that 50\% uncertainty we can check that the $a$ and $b$ parameters are smaller
than one.

One might argue that, since the first of Eqs.~\eqref{delta} comes from the
expansion of $\arctan(x)=x-x^3/3+...$, the correction $a/N_c^3$ to $\Delta_1=1$
is really the cube of a $O(N_c^{-1})$ quantity, $(\tilde a/N_c)^3$, where now
the coefficient that should be natural is $\tilde a$ instead of $a$.
That explains the very small values obtained for the $\rho(770)$ and the
$K^*(892)$, that come from $a=\tilde a^3/3$, with $\tilde a=0.56\pm0.03$ and
$\tilde a=-0.4$ for the $\rho(770)$ and $K^*(892)$ respectively, which are quite
natural values. For the $f_0(600)$ and the $K^*_0(800)$ we obtain
$\tilde a=9.1^{+1.3}_{-2.5}$ and $-19.6$, still rather unnatural values.
In the case of $\Delta_2$, where the corrections are only suppressed
by $1/N_c^2$ instead of $1/N_c^3$, we do not find this issue, because
the $b/N_c^2$ term is not the square of a natural $1/N_c$ quantity,
\begin{equation}
\frac{b}{N_c^2}=\frac{{\rm Re\,} t^{-1}}{\sigma}
\Big[\frac{\sigma'}{({\rm Re\,} t^{-1})'}-\frac{{\rm Re\,} t^{-1}}{\sigma}\Big]+O(N_c^{-4}).
\end{equation}
Despite containing a cancellation between two $1/N_c$ terms, its value for the
$\rho(770)$ and $K^*(892)$ is rather natural. However, the value for the scalars
is almost two orders of magnitude larger than expected for predominantly $\bar qq$
states.

In the case of a glueball interpretation of the $f_0(600)$, the coefficients
$a'$ and $b'$ from Eqs.~\eqref{a_b_glueball} are even more unnatural,
this time too large by three or four orders of magnitude,
$a'=-6800^{+3200}_{-4200}$ and $b'=2080^{+760}_{-650}$. In other words,
a very dominant or pure glueball nature for the $f_0(600)$ is
very disfavored by the $1/N_c$ expansion.
Of course, as in the $\bar qq$ case we could worry about the fact that, due to
the $\arctan(x)=x-x^3/3+...$ expansion, the $a'$ should be interpreted as
$a'=\tilde a'/3$. However, even with that interpretation we would still
find $\tilde a'=27^{+5}_{-7}$, again rather unnatural.
Once more, in the case of $b'$, its value is genuinely unnatural,
disfavoring the glueball interpretation.

Finally, in~\cite{Nebreda:2011cp} we also showed that what really happens for
the scalars is that they do not even follow the $1/N_c$ expansion of $\bar qq$
or glueball states given in Eqs.~\eqref{adef} and \eqref{a_b_glueball}.
This was done by calculating the $1/N_c$ scaling of the quantities $\Delta_i-1$ for the
different resonances using the Inverse Amplitude Method,
where the $1/N_c$ expansion can be implemented through
the ChPT low energy constants. We refer however the reader to
our original work~\cite{Nebreda:2011cp} for further details.

\section{Summary}

We have reviewed our results in~\cite{Nebreda:2011cp} where we study the
$1/N_c$ expansion of elastic meson--meson scattering phase shifts around
the pole mass of a $\bar qq$ or glueball resonance. In particular, we
have defined the observables~\eqref{adef} and \eqref{a_b_glueball},
whose value is fixed to one up to corrections suppressed by more than
one power of $1/N_c$ for $\bar qq$ or glueball states. Using
very precise dispersive analyses of
$\pi\pi$ and $\pi K$ scattering data we have shown that a $\bar qq$
or glueball interpretation for the $f_0(600)$ or $K^*_0(800)$
needs unnaturally large coefficients in the expansion.
Thus, a predominant $\bar qq$ or glueball nature for these resonances
is heavily disfavored by the $1/N_c$ expansion, and
this has been shown without extrapolating beyond $N_c=3$.
However, when extrapolating to larger $N_c$ using the IAM, we checked
in~\cite{Nebreda:2011cp} that the scalars do not follow the pattern
of the $1/N_c$ expansion expected for $\bar qq$ or glueball states.

This work is partially supported by the FPA2011-27853-C02-02 Spanish grant.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


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text:
Brad Pitt Really Wants You to Think He's Winning This Breakup
But is he really?
by Brooke Marine
Brad Pitt has made plenty of headlines out of his dating life since separating from Angelina Jolie in September 2016—he's been flirting with regular, nonfamous women in coffee shops under his real name and building furniture, all while slowly but surely making his way back into the spotlight by showing up at parties as though nothing ever happened.
People reports that the actor stopped by a party ahead of the Oscars on March 1, with a source telling the publication that "the separation was very dark for him, but lately he looks healthier and happier. He seems excited about life."
That's because Brad Pitt wants you to believe that he is the one who is winning the breakup. Who is really winning, though? It depends on how you look at the way both halves of the former power couple have handled their separation over the past 18 months.
Between crying onstage with Frank Ocean, signing on to star in a Quentin Tarantino film, and flirting with America's sweetheart Tiffany Haddish in an elevator, Pitt's apparently elevated mood would cause one to believe that maybe he really is out here thriving after the public dissolution of a 12-year relationship.
Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie has made ways on the philanthropy front, by bringing her kids to Jordan to meet with Syrian refugees, publicly encouraging her children to live a "life of service," and accepting accolades from the United Nations for her humanitarian work, all while continuing to co-run her wine label with Pitt.
The couple is reportedly still working to finalize the divorce and custody terms for their six children, but as of right now, People reports that Pitt "seems to be in a better place," noting that his ruggedly handsome beard is the number one indicator that the actor is now living his single life to its max.
Related: Tiffany Haddish Says Brad Pitt Asked Her Out at the Oscars, with One Major Stipulation


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text:
E. BOULDER CTY
Bellingham >
Bellingham Coaches
Summer/Fall Training
Online/Remote Training
Personalized Training
Coach Application
REGULAR MEETING SPOTS
Mid week: Erie Middle School, Erie Community Center, Centennial Bank/Colliers Hill, Thomas reservoir, Lehigh Park, Flagg Park, Country Fields Park, Coal Creek Trail in Lafayette.
Saturday Long Run: Long runs are currently combined with the Boulder group at locations including: Tom Watson Park, Niwot Market, Flatirons Running, Runners Roost in Louisville, Founders Park in Superior, Stazio Ball Fields, Avery Brewery
GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE
E. BOULDER CTY GROUP COACHES
Jen Voigt
Jen has had a passion for running since high school, running recreational races of varying distances throughout her adult life. Some of her most challenging races include Boston, Pikes Peak Marathon and Pikes Peak Ascent.
After marrying her husband and 3 children later, Jen developed an interest in Triathlon to compliment her running and add a new challenge to her sport. Triathlons of many different distances and challenges led Jen to her biggest accomplishment, completing Ironman Coeur D'Alene in 2014.
Jen has coached runners, previously through Fast Forward Sports in Boulder, off and on for the past 8 years. Some of her training includes Personal Trainer Certification, ACSM, Certified Triathlon Coach, USAT and various ongoing trainings related to health and fitness.
Brian St'Onge
Brian started his coaching career at his alma mater, University of North Carolina-Greensboro in 2000. He volunteer coached there for 2 and a half years and helped guide the Cross Country and Track team to a top 5 finish in the Southern Conference.
In 2004, while living in California, he was the head middle and distance coach at Fremont High School in Fremont, CA. During the Track season he coached two athletes to the CCS(Coastal California Sectionals) and helped lead the distance team to numerous PR's in their respective distances.
In 2005, Brian moved to Tampa,FL to become the Grad Assistant/Asst Coach at the University of South Florida. While there he became the Mens Cross Country and Track coach in 2006 and coached the Men to a 12th place finish in the Big East Cross Country Championships. While at the University he also acquired his Level I Coaching Certification from the USATF.
Brian also still trains and runs marathon races and triathlons. He has run 8 marathons and NYC marathon is by far his favorite. Brian recently got married in October to his sweetheart Mandi. They both enjoy running together, hiking, cooking, watching movies and TV shows. They try to get out to ride their bikes when they both arent getting flat tires. They moved to the Boulder area in June 2013.
Mandi St'Onge
Mandi has been running since middle school, venturing onto high school where she developed her passion for XC. She went onto a private university but continued to train with the universities club team.
During her first career she continued to run and train under the Ann Arbor Track Club. Completing several marathons, halfs, and trail relays. During her mid 20 something life crisis she went back to school pursuing a teaching career. During this time she worked at a running store where she began coaching beginning runners, a coach for the sub 8 group for Running Fit 501 group, and found here true art and passion for Ultra Marathons. She also developed a running group and training program for the kids at the Elementary School she taught at. Inspiring others to find joy in running and healthy lifestyles helped her to pursue her own running joy. She became a member of the RUT/Ultra Marathon Racing team for Ann Arbor and set 3 course records.
2 time Windy City Sports athlete of the year encouraged her to inspire others to stay fit and healthy. She became ASAM and RRCA certified.
Mandi then turned her passion for the sport into a change of career. Working for PUMA NA she was immersed deeper into the running world. Taping into yet again her strengths she was coached by PUMA elite athlete Jaque Salesburg. She is a 5 time Boston qualifier and finisher, 2 time NY marathon qualifier, 2 time Western States qualifier, and 2nd place Umstead 100 miler finisher.
Her love for the trail and passion for the distance carries her through her day to day. "My feet take me to many places I have never been or dreamt to be." "I am grateful what they allow me to experience and hope to inspire the same joy for others."
She continues to work in the Outdoor industry and is a Montrail Racing Team Athlete. If you don't find Mandi on the trail (possible when she's running all day) you will find her hiking with her husband Brian and son Gavin. The two joys of her life and number one cheerleaders.


text:
China and ASEAN push for timely RCEP start as Jan. 1 looms
Nikkei Asia - 15 September 2021
By Satsuki Kaneko, Takashi Nakano and Iori Kawate
Countries that have signed on to the East Asia-spanning RCEP trade deal are going full speed ahead with plans to implement it on Jan. 1, 2022, despite foot-dragging by a majority, with China and ASEAN especially keen, for their own reasons, on seeing the pact come into force soon.
China, Japan, South Korea, and all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were among the 15 countries that signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership this past November to form the world's largest free trade bloc.
The pact takes effect 60 days after six ASEAN signatories and three non-ASEAN signatories complete ratification or equivalent procedures. Japan, Singapore and China have done so, but many others have not.
Economic ministers from most of the signatories held a virtual meeting Monday and "welcomed efforts by signatory states to complete their internal process to have the RCEP agreement enter into force by early January 2022 as targeted," participants said in a joint statement afterward.
But time is running out. "Implementation at the start of next year will be tricky," a Japanese government insider said, echoing a widely held view.
ASEAN and China have their own motives for pushing RCEP forward. ASEAN views itself as the pact's champion, and to implement an agreement that advances the cause of free trade even under the shadow of the coronavirus would have great significance for the Southeast Asian club.
In a show of commitment, ASEAN economic ministers reaffirmed the New Year's Day target in a virtual meeting that ended last Thursday. Members hope that a new round of trade liberalization will revitalize their economies.
China, meanwhile, anticipates that RCEP will deepen its ties to ASEAN. In fact, Beijing was the one that announced the Jan. 1 target this past March.
RCEP would cover about 30% of the world's population and gross national product. It would eliminate tariffs on 91% of goods, mainly industrial items.
Compared with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example, RCEP falls short in trade and rule liberalization. But RCEP is the only large free trade agreement that China has signed on to.
There are no signs that trade frictions between China and the U.S. will improve. And the European Union has reportedly suspended debate on an investment agreement with China in the European Parliament over human rights issues concerning the Uyghurs.
China is therefore placing much of its hopes in RCEP for boosting overseas demand.
Beijing is "steadily growing more impatient" with the lack of progress by ASEAN nations in implementing RCEP measures, according to an official connected to trade policy. Vice Commerce Minister Ren Hongbin called for faster ratification work on a visit Friday to a China-ASEAN event in the southern Chinese city of Nanning.
The U.S., which currently shows no desire to join the CPTPP or form any new free trade agreements, is pushing for supply chains not dependent on China. Japan and other partners are also cooperating with the U.S. in developing a China-free supply chain for semiconductors.
So it is in Beijing's interest to take a leading role in trade with ASEAN through RCEP before a China-free trade structure takes root.
source: Nikkei Asia
ASEAN China RCEP


text:
Why? / Dress Whites / Josiah Wolf Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto ON July 15
By Stephen Carlick
When Why? drummer/solo artist Josiah Wolf took the stage, the nearly empty Horseshoe Tavern seemed to spring to life, as patrons from all corners of the bar suddenly swarmed around the stage for his short set. The crowd loved him, and he happily reciprocated, both for the crowd and the city itself: "We judge a city on its sushi," he quipped. "You guys pass." Second openers and Toronto natives the Dress Whites were similarly well-liked by the crowd, and managed to sound better on a bar stage than they do on record.
Of course, neither act moved the crowd like Why? and lead singer Yoni Wolf, who strode animatedly around the stage, cool as a cucumber in his thick-rimmed eyeglasses, cut-off denim shorts and hightop kicks. The band kicked off with "The Fall of Mr. Fifths," but the show began in earnest when drummer Josiah and Wurlitzer maestro Doug McDiarmid launched into "January Twenty Something," their hands flying madly over a xylophone and keyboard, respectively.
Show highlight "The Vowel's Pt. 2" was a perfect demonstration of the band's rhythmic strength, the musicians hammering out the song's loping beat in forceful unison while Yoni dramatically deadpanned the song's chorus before springing to life for his rhyme-showcasing verses. The show pulled heavily from Alopecia — still the avant-hip-hop outfits best album — but last year's Eskimo Snow was also well-represented, making for a concert that tempered the band's playful energy with moments of lyrical sincerity and emotional warmth.
The show was tantalizingly brief, and when Yoni stated after less than ten songs that they had four left, he prompted a "more than four!" chant from an enraptured audience, which hung on his every word. They got their wish: Yoni and co. piled back onto the stage for an encore not two minutes after finishing "The Hollows," claiming, "Normally, we'd be halfway to Rio by now," but since the Horseshoe patrons were the "awesomest audience," the group would perform two more songs. Wolf's ear-to-ear smile belied his "reluctant" encore, and the two songs, "Good Friday" and "Simeon's Dilemma," left the audience satisfied enough not to chant, making it the perfect way to end Why's outstanding hour onstage.
More Why?
Deerhoof, YACHT, Girlpool, Devon Welsh Rally Against Amazon for ICE Ties
Following the announcement of an Amazon-sponsored Las Vegas event Intersect Music Festival, dozens of artists and musicians have signed an o...
WHY? Share Visual Album 'AOKOHIO'
WHY? have shared a visual album for their latest musical feat titled AOKOHIO, which arrives today via Joyful Noise. The album is divided int...
Bill Callahan Releases 'Live at Third Man Records' Album
Following a recent North American tour, the man previously known as Smog, Bill Callahan, has revealed a new live effort captured at Jack Whi...
Why? Moh Lhean
Yoni Wolf's journey from his left-field hip hop beginnings in cLOUDDEAD some 15 years ago to today has been fascinating — and troubling to t...
Why? Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto ON, June 14
Headlining a full-capacity Horseshoe Tavern, Yoni Wolf and Why? proved as intriguing and frustrating live as on record. Possessed of a vast,...


Today's candidate for the User Interface Hall of Fame is tabbed browsing, a feature found in almost all web browsers. With tabbed browsing, multiple browser windows are grouped into a single toplevel window and accessed by a row of tabs. You can open a hyperlink in a new tab by choosing that option from the right-click menu.
Tabbed browsing neatly solves a scaling problem in the Windows taskbar. If you accumulate several top-level windows, they cease to be separately clickable buttons in the taskbar and merge together into a single button with a popup menu. So your browser windows become less visible and less efficient to reach.
Tabbed browsing solves that by creating effectively a separate task bar specialized to the web browser. But it's even better than that: you can open multiple top-level browser windows, each with its own set of tabs. Each browser window can then be dedicated to a particular task, e.g. apartment hunting, airfare searching, programming documentation, web surfing. It's an easy and natural way for you to create task-specific groupings of your browser windows. That's what the Windows task bar tries to do when it groups windows from the same application together into a single popup menu, but that simplistic approach doesn't work at all because the Web is such a general-purpose platform. Another neat feature of tabbed browsing is that you can bookmark a set of tabs so you can recover them again later – a nice shortcut for task-oriented users.
What are the downsides of tabbed browsing? For one thing, you can't compare the contents of one tab with another. External windows let you do this by resizing and repositioning the windows.
Another problem is that tabs don't really scale up either – you can't have more than 5-10 without shrinking their labels so much that they're unreadable. Some designers have tried using multiple rows of tabs, but if you stick slavishly to the tabbing metaphor, this turns out to be a horrible idea. Here's the Microsoft Word 6 option dialog. Clicking on a tab in a back row (like Spelling) has to move the whole row forward in order to maintain the tabbing metaphor. This is disorienting for two reasons: first, because the tab you clicked on has leaped out from under the mouse; and second, because other tabs you might have visited before are now in totally different places. Some plausible solutions to these problems were proposed in class – e.g., color-coding each row of tabs, or moving the front rows of tabs below the page. Animation might help too. All these ideas might reduce disorientation, but they involve tradeoffs like added visual complexity, greater demands on screen real estate, or having to move the page contents in addition to the tabs. And none of them prevent the tabs from jumping around, which is a basic problem with the approach.
As a rule of thumb, only one row of tabs really works if you want the tabs to tie directly to the panel, and the number of tabs you can fit in one row is constrained by the screen width and the tab label width. Most tabbing controls can scroll the tabs left to right, but scrolling tabs is definitely slower than picking from a popup menu.
In fact, the Windows task bar actually scales better than tabbing does, because it doesn't have to struggle to maintain a metaphor. The Windows task bar is just a row of buttons. Expanding the task bar to show two rows of buttons puts no strain on its usability, since the buttons don't have to jump around.
Here's how Eclipse tries to address the tab scaling problem: it shows a few tabs, and the rest are found in a pulldown menu on the right end of the tab bar.
This menu has a couple of interesting features. First, it offers incremental search: typing into the first line of the menu will narrow the menu to tabs with matching titles. If you have a very large number of tabs, this could be a great shortcut. But it doesn't communicate its presence very well. Experienced Eclipse users may not even know of this feature.
Second, the menu tries to distinguish between the visible tabs and the hidden tabs using boldface. Quick, before studying the names of the tabs carefully -- which do you think is which? Was that a good decision?
Picking an item from the menu will make it appear as a tab – replacing one of the tabs that's currently showing. Which tab will get replaced? It's not immediately clear.
The key problem with this pulldown menu is that it completely disregards the natural, spatial mapping that tabs provide. The menu's order is unrelated to the order of the visible tabs; instead, the menu is alphabetical, but the tabs themselves are listed in order of recent use. If you choose a hidden tab, it replaces the least recently used visible tab. Least-recently used (LRU) is a great policy for caches. Is it appropriate for frequently-accessed menus? Probably not, because it interferes with users' spatial memory.
In this lesson we'll look at UI design from a very high-level, considering the shape of the process that we should use to build user interfaces. Iterative design is the current best-practice process for developing user interfaces. It's a specialization of the spiral model described by Boehm for general software engineering.
We will also look at a specific kind of iterative design called the user-centered design process, which is a widely-accepted way to build user interfaces with good usability properties. Your semester project is structured as a user-centered design process.
We've said that user interfaces are hard to build, and usability is a hard property to guarantee. So how do we engineer usability into our systems? By means of a process, with careful attention to detail. One goal of this course is to give you experience with this usability engineering process.
Many of the techniques we'll learn in this course are optimizations for the iterative design process: design guidelines reduce the number of iterations by helping us make better designs; cheap prototypes and discount evaluation techniques reduce the cost of each iteration. But even more important than these techniques is the basic realization that in general, you won't get it right the first time. If you learn nothing else about user interfaces from this class, I hope you learn this.
Let's contrast the iterative design process against another way. The waterfall model was one of the earliest carefully-articulated design processes for software development. It models the design process as a sequence of stages. Each stage results in a concrete product – a requirements document (also known as the analysis stage), a design, a set of coded modules – that feeds into the next stage. Each stage also includes its own validation: the design is validated against the requirements, the code is validated (unit-tested) against the design, etc.
The biggest improvement of the waterfall model over previous (chaotic) approaches to software development is the discipline it puts on developers to think first, and code second. Requirements and designs generally precede the first line of code.
Validation is not always sufficient; sometimes problems are missed until the next stage. Trying to code the design may reveal flaws in the design – e.g., that it can't be implemented in a way that meets the performance requirements. Trying to integrate may reveal bugs in the code that weren't exposed by unit tests. So the waterfall model implicitly needs feedback between stages.
The danger arises when a mistake in an early stage – such as a missing requirement – isn't discovered until a very late stage – like acceptance testing. Mistakes like this can force costly rework of the intervening stages.
Although the waterfall model is useful for some kinds of software development, it's very poorly suited to user interface development.
First, UI development is inherently risky. UI design is hard for all the reasons we discussed in the previous lecture. (You are not the user; the user is always right, except when the user isn't; users aren't designers either.) We don't (yet) have an easy way to predict how or whether a UI design will succeed.
Second, in the usual way that the waterfall model is applied, users appear in the process in only two places: requirements analysis and acceptance testing. Hopefully we asked the users what they needed at the beginning (requirements analysis), but then we code happily away and don't check back with the users until we're ready to present them with a finished system. So if we screwed up the design, the waterfall process won't tell us until the end.
Third, when UI problems arise, they often require dramatic fixes: new requirements or new design. We saw in the first lesson that slapping on patches doesn't fix serious usability problems.
Iterative design offers a way to manage the inherent risk in user interface design. In iterative design, the software is refined by repeated trips around a design cycle: first imagining it (design), then realizing it physically (implementation), then testing it (evaluation).
OK – but this just looks like the worst-case waterfall model, where we made it all the way from design to acceptance testing before discovering a design flaw that forced us to repeat the process! What's the trick here?
Unfortunately, many commercial UI projects have followed this model. They do a standard waterfall design, produce a bad UI, and release it. Evaluation then takes place in the marketplace, as hapless customers buy their product and complain about it. Then they iterate the design process on version 2.
The spiral model offers a way out of the dilemma. We build room for several iterations into our design process, and we do it by making the early iterations as cheap as possible.
The radial dimension of the spiral model corresponds to the cost of the iteration step – or, equivalently, its fidelity or accuracy. For example, an early implementation might be a paper sketch or mockup. It's low-fidelity, only a pale shadow of what it would look and behave like as interactive software. But it's incredibly cheap to make, and we can evaluate it by showing it to users and asking them questions about it.
Remember this Hall of Shame candidate from the first lesson? This dialog's design problems would have been easy to catch if it were only tested as a simple paper sketch, in an early iteration of a spiral design. At that point, changing the design would have cost only another sketch, instead of a day's code.
Why is the spiral model a good idea? Risk is greatest in the early iterations, when we know the least. So we put our least commitment into the early implementations. Early prototypes are made to be thrown away. If we find ourselves with several design alternatives, we can build multiple prototypes (parallel design) and evaluate them, without much expense.
After we have evaluated and redesigned several times, we have (hopefully) learned enough to avoid making a major UI design error. Then we actually implement the UI – which is to say, we build a prototype that we intend to keep. Then we evaluate it again, and refine it further.
The more iterations we can make, the more refinements in the design are possible. We're hillclimbing here, not exploring the design space randomly. We keep the parts of the design that work, and redesign the parts that don't. So we should get a better design if we can do more iterations.
The Olympic Message System is a classic demonstration of the effectiveness of user-centered design. The OMS designers used a variety of cheap prototypes: scenarios (stories envisioning a user interacting with the system), manuals, and simulation (in which the experimenter read the system's prompts aloud, and the user typed responses into a terminal). All of these prototypes could be (and were) shown to users to solicit reactions and feedback.
Iteration was pursued aggressively. The user guide went through 200 iterations!
The OMS also has some interesting cases reinforcing the point that the designers cannot rely entirely on themselves for evaluating usability. Most prompts requested numeric input ("press 1, 2, or 3"), but some prompts needed alphabetic entry ("enter your three-letter country code"). Non-English speakers – particularly from countries with non-Latin languages – found this confusing, because, as one athlete reported in an early field test, "you have to read the keys differently." The designers didn't remove the alphabetic prompts, but they did change the user guide's examples to use only uppercase letters, just like the telephone keys.
A video about OMS can be found on YouTube. Check it out – it includes a mime demonstrating the system.
This course will cover many aspects of user-centered design, both in lessons and in the semester project.
The first step of user-centered design is knowing who your users are and understanding their needs. Who are they? What do they already know? What is their environment like? What are their goals? What information do they need, what steps are involved in achieving those goals? These are the ingredients of a task analysis. Often, a task analysis needs to be performed in the field – interviewing real users and watching them do real tasks.
Design guidelines are an important part of the process too. We've covered these already. Design guidelines help you get started, and help avoid the most boneheaded mistakes like the ones we see in the UI Hall of Shame. But guidelines are heuristics, not hard-and-fast rules. An interface cannot be made usable merely by slavish adherence to design guidelines, because guidelines may be vague or contradictory. The user should be in control, says one guideline, but at the same time we have to prevent errors. Another dictates visibility, but making everything visible fights with simplicity.
Design guidelines help us discuss design alternatives sensibly, but they don't give all the answers.
Since we can't predict usability in advance, we build prototypes – the cheaper, the better. We want to throw them away. We'll see that paper is a great prototyping tool, although its fidelity is low -- it can't capture everything that we might want to try. But there are richer kinds of prototyping techniques too.
Eventually, however, the prototypes must give way to an actual, interactive computer system. A range of techniques for structuring graphical user interfaces have been developed. We'll look at how they work, how to use them, and how UI toolkits themselves are implemented.
Then we evaluate our prototypes – sometimes using usability experts applying heuristics, but more often against real users. Putting an implementation to the test is the only real way to measure usability.
Task and User Analysis (1 week): collecting the requirements for the UI, which we'll discuss in the next lesson.
Design Sketches (1 week): paper sketches of various UI designs.
Paper Prototype (1 week): an interactive prototype made of paper and other cheap physical materials.
User Testing (1 week): during the paper prototype assignment, you'll test your prototype on your classmates.
Computer Prototype (2 weeks): an incomplete but interactive software prototype.
Heuristic Evaluation (1 week): we'll exchange implementation prototypes and evaluate them as usability experts would.
Full Implementation (3 weeks): you'll build a real implementation that you plan to keep.
User Testing (1 week): you'll test your implementation against users and refine it.
Notice that the part you probably did in AP Computer Science is step 7 – which is only one milestone in this class!


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Can I use a Swiss Travel Pass to get a reservation on a Eurocity train from Munich to Zurich?
Zurich to Salzburg with Swiss Travel Pass???
Sick of those American boys!
How much does it cost to travel through Austria (from Italy to Germany) if Austria is not on my Eurail Pass?
Seat Reservation with an Interrail Pass ?
Does Eurail Pass cover Barcelona, Lyon, Mulhouse, Luxembourg, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp?
33 minutes enough time from a flight landing to board a train in Brussels airport?