Our client was a private sector food manufacturer that provided high performance products and value added ingredients for the baking and retail industry across North America. With a history of over 80 years of experience in the industry, the organization wanted to continue to remain competitive. After a business great turnaround, the company was looking at ongoing opportunities with respect to their management team.
Conducted a diagnostic analysis – one-on-one confidential interviews with each of the six people on the management team were conducted using a structured interview format.
Analyzed interview results – information collected through the interviews was analyzed and the "red thread themes" and root causes around management engagement and the introduction of a performance-based culture were identified.
Gathered the management team in a workshop setting – met as a group with the management team to review and validate the findings, with a view to obtaining a consensus around the table around the root cause of some of the issues and challenges.
Identified action steps moving forward – strategic and operational steps were examined and a specific set of go forward action steps were developed that the collective management team could move forward with to realize its strategic and operational improvement objectives.
At the conclusion of the project all the objectives had been achieved, and the client was highly satisfied with the deliverables and the value added by Schroeder & Schroeder Inc.


The meeting dates are April 2-5, Tuesday through Friday, but you may wonder why some people arrive earlier or stay longer (what happens in Vegas……no just kidding). Monday, April 1, is committee meeting day and Advanced Burn Life Support (ABLS) Provider Course day. There are also two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that meet on Monday night: the Canadian SIG and Federation of Burn Foundations SIG. If you are interested, plan accordingly; otherwise, all other SIGs meet Tuesday.
The Fundamentals of Burn Care course is also held on Tuesday afternoon and is a "must see," especially for first timers. The Opening Reception is on Tuesday in the exhibit hall and is a great place to wander, meet the exhibitors, visit the ABA resource center and take in the sights and sounds of the collaboration in the hall.
Wednesday begins the formal programming, highlighting the Opening Ceremony and Presidential Address, "Contribution in Context," presented by Steven E. Wolf, MD, FACS, ABA President. This meeting is also a "must see" and will leave you very excited and proud to be starting your journey within the burn care community.
Get a head start at 6:30 am with the Sunrise Symposia. There is a new format this year for getting into the Symposia, offering first come-first served attendance at the door. You could also opt to wake up with a Pilates or Zumba class; however, the recommendation for first time attendees would be to visit the New Member Breakfast. This breakfast is designed especially for you, to gather information, network with other new attendees, meet members of the MAC (Membership Advisory Committee) and the ABA Presidents. Over 200 new attendees visited the breakfast last year, so join us! Plan to participate in a scavenger hunt for prizes that will help you begin to engage fully in the conference.
The Correlative Sessions, Wed-Fri, 10-12, offer burn centers the opportunity to share what they are working on or have learned to help support patient care. We encourage you to look at all options ahead of time as you may want to "room hop" to see various papers presented. On Wednesday, the Rehabilitation Workshop is presented during a correlative session time, and is worth attending for current concepts and treatment techniques.
Poster Rounds are Wednesday and Thursday during lunch, in the exhibit hall. Each author presents their work and takes questions. Be sure to check out over 300 posters, during the rounds or on your own. The Best in Category Poster session, highlighting the top posters in each category will take place on Friday.
Additional educational forums are presented Wed-Fri, 2-4, and there are one and two day courses. ABA members are encouraged to attend the business meeting on Friday afternoon at 4:15. This meeting provides an update on all ABA activities and the future direction of the ABA.
This is a fun way to close out the conference and give your brain the night off from all of the new information you are going to take back and share with your burn center colleagues.
The ABA meeting APP is a great source of information and will help you to navigate the conference with ease. Be sure to visit http://psav.mobi/aba/ and download the APP to your phone, iPad or laptop before arriving in Las Vegas.
Remember to visit the ABA Resource Center, in the exhibit hall, and meet some of the MAC members and ABA staff. The booth will highlight the Burn Prevention posters, National Burn Awareness Week, Research, Quality Care, Education (relaunch of ABLS NOW, Ameriburn E-learn), Burn Therapist Certification and Membership. This is the place to get your questions answered!
Reserve the 2020 Meeting Dates: March 17-20, Orlando, FL!


India Tour of New Zealand 2019 Live Streaming IND Vs NZ Live Score today's 3rd T20i Series Match to watch live cricket scores from here. India Vs New Zealand 3rd T20i live match will play at Seddon Park, Hamilton, New Zealand. Watch India Vs New Zealand live cricket streaming of the today's India Tour of New Zealand 2018-19 match starts on 10th February 2019, Sunday at 12:30 PM IST.
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Today's IND Vs NZ Live Streaming Cricket T20i Series Match will be wondrous to watch and more guess the winning team as a prediction for NZ Vs IND live that who would like to win this 3rd T20i match. Keep watching today's India Tour of New Zealand 2018-19 match between India vs New Zealand here.
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Results: Tied by 1-1 in T20i Series between New Zealand Vs India 2018-19 Tour.
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The United Nations Foundation and the Better World Campaign recently released the results of a poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates.
U.S. to pay its dues to the U.N. in full and on time.
The issue of U.N. funding is vitally important if the global institution is to continue performing its critical work around the world. However, a number of members on Capitol Hill seem to be ignoring their constituents' wishes.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations recently passed the fiscal year 2013 State and Foreign Appropriations bill. Regrettably, the measure does not provide full funding to the U.N.; therefore, the U.S. cannot meet its commitment to the global body.
89% feel the U.S. should support the programs of the world body in the areas of health care, education, livelihood, and rights for women and girls.
75% support continued funding for U.N. peacekeeping.
What is interesting to note from these polling numbers is that three-quarters of the survey participants favor U.S. funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations; however, a review of the Foreign Appropriations bill sees significantly less monies allocated than what the Better World Campaign recommended.
Furthermore, the bill eliminates all funding for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N. Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Each of these U.N. agencies does admirable work in their particular areas of expertise. The decision by the House committee to eliminate their funding shows a clear lack of respect for their accomplishments and, furthermore, a limited understanding of the vital roles they play around the world.
The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) handles important matters relating to the health and safety of women and girls. According to the polling data, 89% believe the U.S. should support U.N. programs that assist with these issues. The House measure that would strip this agency of its funding does not align itself with the views of voters.
In addition, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) serves to advance American interests abroad by promoting democratic values. A significant percentage of poll respondents, 89%, feel that the work of UNESCO is extremely important.
U.S. contributions to UNESCO account for 22% of its budget, so defunding would be devastating to the agency.
In the case of the U.N. Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), it is especially crucial to fund this initiative with Rio+20-the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development- taking place on June 20th.
With the House Committee on Appropriations bill falling far short of fully funding the U.N., and keeping with our commitment to the global body, American credibility is on the line.
The U.S. voters and taxpayers recognize this fact and they have let their opinions known based on their responses to this poll. Why do they not see this on Capitol Hill?
The time has come for elected Representatives to hear directly from their constituents on issues relating to U.N. funding and its relation to national security.


text:
Judson Independent School District Increases Time Students Spend Learning by 33 percent with Pure Storage
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – August 5, 2015 — Pure Storage, the market's leading independent solid-state array vendor, announced today that Judson Independent School District (ISD), an educational organization serving more than 23,000 students in Bexar County, Texas, implemented Pure Storage to dramatically reduce login time for its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment so students can spend more time learning. One of Judson ISD's largest schools immediately saw a 95 percent improvement in response time, reducing login time from 15 minutes down to an average of 36 seconds.
Judson ISD's mission is to provide a quality education to students, empowering them to be successful in a global society, which makes technology an increasingly vital tool to its educational experience. As the school district continues to add more students and applications, demands on the infrastructure increase, resulting in very slow response times. Before implementing Pure Storage, students wasted up to one third of a 45-minute class period waiting to login to a lesson application.
After Judson ISD deployed Pure Storage in one of their largest schools in the district in February 2014, the success of this initial deployment prompted the district to install Pure Storage in all of its data centers and expand the use beyond its origin with Citrix XenDesktop for VDI to back office financial systems, network monitoring and Microsoft SQL Server.
"Nearly everything we do is dependent upon access to technology. Installation of Pure Storage reduced our costs and increased efficiency by slashing login times to quickly enhance the end-user experience for students and staff," said Steve Young, Chief Technology Officer at Judson ISD. "Due to the simplicity of the Pure solution, our IT department did not have to add any additional staff and we now save time previously spent managing storage so the team can focus on other core tasks that improve the learning experience. The best way we can describe Pure Storage is simple, reliable and fast."
As a result of deploying Pure Storage all-flash arrays, Judson ISD experienced:
Reduction in Application Login Time: time reduced by up to 95 percent, from 15 minutes to 36 seconds on average;
Expand Application Footprint: simplicity of Pure Storage has allowed the district to add arrays and applications without any additional staff needed;
Significant Savings on CAPEX and OPEX: 10:1 average data reduction optimizing efficiency of storage resources, decreased power and cooling costs in the data center; no downtime during software upgrades.
"We don't want storage to a be a burden for our customers, so we provide them with simple and reliable technology that allows them to focus on more important priorities, in this case helping students learn," said Matt Kixmoeller, Vice President of Products at Pure Storage. "Technology should improve the educational experience not hinder it. Pure Storage changes the way organizations manage applications to deliver reliable and fast response times under increasing demands that ultimately results in a positive impact on the end user."
Learn more about how Judson ISD is leveraging all-flash storage to simplify storage management and improve the learning experience.
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage, the market's leading independent solid-state array vendor, enables the broad deployment of flash in the data center. The company's all-flash enterprise arrays offer significant performance and efficiency gains over mechanical disk, at a lower price point per gigabyte stored. Pure Storage FlashArrays are ideal for performance-intensive applications, including server virtualization and consolidation, VDI, OLTP database, real-time analytics and cloud computing. To learn more, visit:www.purestorage.com.
Connect with Pure Storage:
Read the blog: https://www.purestorage.com/blog
Follow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PureStorage
Visit us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/pure-storage
The Pure Storage and "P" logo marks, Purity Operating Environment, and RAID-3D are trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. All other trademarks or names referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Sabrina Johnson
sabrina.johnson@purestorage.com

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


As the title states.. BitCoin and LiteCoin payment processors - the ones that convert bitcoin/litecoin into USD or whatever currency and deposit it in my bank account.
After reading the news about Overstock accepting bitcoin payments and earning over 100k USD revenue in a day through bitcoin, along with Zynga accepting it and other companies, I think having more paypal alternatives can only result in more potential sales. Not everyone has paypal, nor do people like it too much... like me.
So far I have only found gocoin.com and bitpay.com to accept Bitcoin payments... The difference between the two being that Gocoin also accepts Litecoin payments on top of Bitcoin.
Does anyone have any experience accepting bitcoin or using Gocoin or Bitpay as payment processors? How well do they work out for you?
Thanks for any responses and help!
Even i read about bitcoin & litecoin payment processors. I got a good reviews online but dint have an experience on it.
Ah, my friend -- you are treading into as-yet-untreaded water! There's a lot of information out there, and BitCoin has been in the news a whole bunch lately, but online sellers are very apprehensive when it comes to whether or not they want to accept crypto-currency.
This is also part of the reason I think you might have a bit of trouble finding other online sellers who are willing or even able to help you out with advice/experience/reviews. Overstock and TigerDirect are the first two major retailers that are accepting BitCoin, and I think you'll find that smaller sellers aren't really trying out crypto-currency yet.
Which isn't to say it's not a good idea - there's a lot that can be gained from trying out a new thing before your competitors. But the very new status of BitCoin and LiteCoin mean that you might have trouble finding a lot of social proof that helps back up the decision that you ultimately make for your own online store.
I also found this article on VentureBeat, which unpacks the general state of crypto-currency and its relationship with online sellers. Hope these help!
And if you want to exchange Bitcoin fast and secure, I recommend this site: http://bitby.co . I do use them and it's very comfortable, because all I need to transfer money into Bitcoin is my cellphone.
These include supply chain and logistics document automation, enterprise content management, group or collective buying, domestic and international payment systems, instant messaging, newsgroups and automated online assistants.
Guys there are many ICO programs that are held recently there are promising and some are less promising I choose to participate in the https://icoschedulers.com/ I think this will be successful and gain great benefits for investor. Is this the right choice?
What are your experiences with accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in your store so far? Did you made good exp, bad exp? What percentage of your customers used bitcoin for checkout.


text:
Plans to vaccinate children against Covid-19 will be announced today
Vaccines minister Nadim Zahawi will make a statement in Parliament today, where he is expected to confirm plans to jab 17-year-olds and vulnerable
Simon Meechan
An update on plans to vaccinate under 18s against coronavirus will be given in Parliament today.
Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested that 17-year-olds will be first in the queue for jabs, along with children who have health conditions or living situations that make them more vulnerable to Covid-19, but it looks unlikely that all children will be offered the vaccine at first.
Mr Zahawi told Sky News: "The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have just delivered their advice, we'll consider it.
"In fact, after my morning round, we have the Covid O (committee) and then I'll deliver a statement to Parliament.
"But suffice to say they have looked very closely, especially at children who are more vulnerable to serious infection from Covid, children who live with adults who are more vulnerable to serious infection from Covid and, of course, 17-year-olds who are close to becoming 18 – so three months from their 18th birthday – and we will take that advice before I make a statement to Parliament later today."
Mr Zahawi was also asked why the Government is not planning to jab all under 18s. He said that is under review, but the Government will wait for reports from the USA once children there have had both their shots.
Mr Zahawi said: "The JCVI are continuing to review that. There is new emerging data of children vaccinated in America and elsewhere with a first dose, not yet enough data with a second dose, so they want to look at all the data."
The minister said there had been cases of inflammation of the heart in some children who had received the vaccine, adding: "On balance, I think the JCVI are coming down on the side of continuing to review all children, healthy children, but wanting to protect the vulnerable children first."
Mr Zahawi spoke of his confidence that the Government is "doing the right thing" by lifting coronavirus restrictions in England today, including removing the legal requirement to wear masks in enclosed public spaces like trains, buses, shops and pubs.
He told Sky News: "We have to be careful, we have to remain vigilant.
"Our border controls remain in place, our expectation and recommendation that people in crowded places continue to wear masks and take both personal and corporate responsibility, and it is great to see TfL and others doing that.
"It is a step forward, an important step forward – there is no perfect time to take this step, this is as good a time as any as (Professor) Chris Whitty has said, with the summer holidays and schools being out, which will hopefully bear down on the R number, the transition rate.
"So, I'm confident that we are doing the right thing.
"I think the vaccination programme has allowed us to take this step, to take it cautiously with this wall of protection among adults in the United Kingdom."
People living with cancer say England's 'Freedom Day' is meaningless and frightening
Bulgaria ban on UK visitors begins despite destination's green list status
'Supercar' caught speeding on M5 at 140mph as police slam 'selfish' driver
CourtsMan could have survived citizen's arrest if he had been rolled over, court toldMr Wiltshire died in hospital two weeks after the incident
Harrods announces opening date of new Bristol shop at Cribbs Causeway
Shopping in BristolThe store will be an "emporium of beauty"
Former Bristol chef fulfils his dream by opening new café and deli in south Bristol
Primark fans divided over floral knitted sweaters
PrimarkIs it your nan's jumper or the next in trend?
Pupils at Bristol school asked to stay home due to staff shortage
EducationThe school has reportedly struggled to find supply teachers
Bristol City manager Nigel Pearson blasts Tyreeq Bakinson's attitude as he nears Ipswich move


text:
package org.drip.sample.fundinghistorical;

import java.util.Map;

import org.drip.analytics.date.JulianDate;
import org.drip.feed.loader.*;
import org.drip.historical.state.FundingCurveMetrics;
import org.drip.quant.common.FormatUtil;
import org.drip.service.env.EnvManager;
import org.drip.service.state.FundingCurveAPI;
import org.drip.service.template.LatentMarketStateBuilder;

/*
 * -*- mode: java; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4 -*-
 */

/*!
 * Copyright (C) 2017 Lakshmi Krishnamurthy
 * Copyright (C) 2016 Lakshmi Krishnamurthy
 *
 *  This file is part of DRIP, a free-software/open-source library for buy/side financial/trading model
 *  	libraries targeting analysts and developers
 *  	https://lakshmidrip.github.io/DRIP/
 *
 *  DRIP is composed of four main libraries:
 *
 *  - DRIP Fixed Income - https://lakshmidrip.github.io/DRIP-Fixed-Income/
 *  - DRIP Asset Allocation - https://lakshmidrip.github.io/DRIP-Asset-Allocation/
 *  - DRIP Numerical Optimizer - https://lakshmidrip.github.io/DRIP-Numerical-Optimizer/
 *  - DRIP Statistical Learning - https://lakshmidrip.github.io/DRIP-Statistical-Learning/
 *
 *  - DRIP Fixed Income: Library for Instrument/Trading Conventions, Treasury Futures/Options,
 *  	Funding/Forward/Overnight Curves, Multi-Curve Construction/Valuation, Collateral Valuation and XVA
 *  	Metric Generation, Calibration and Hedge Attributions, Statistical Curve Construction, Bond RV
 *  	Metrics, Stochastic Evolution and Option Pricing, Interest Rate Dynamics and Option Pricing, LMM
 *  	Extensions/Calibrations/Greeks, Algorithmic Differentiation, and Asset Backed Models and Analytics.
 *
 *  - DRIP Asset Allocation: Library for model libraries for MPT framework, Black Litterman Strategy
 *  	Incorporator, Holdings Constraint, and Transaction Costs.
 *
 *  - DRIP Numerical Optimizer: Library for Numerical Optimization and Spline Functionality.
 *
 *  - DRIP Statistical Learning: Library for Statistical Evaluation and Machine Learning.
 *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 *   	you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 *
 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *  	http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  	distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  	WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  	limitations under the License.
 */

/**
 * SGDShapePreserving1YStart Generates the Historical SGD Shape Preserving Funding Curve Native Compounded
 *  Forward Rate starting at 1Y Tenor.
 *
 * @author Lakshmi Krishnamurthy
 */

public class SGDShapePreserving1YStart {

	public static final void main (
		final String[] astrArgs)
		throws Exception
	{
		EnvManager.InitEnv ("");

		String strCurrency = "SGD";
		String strClosesLocation = "C:\\DRIP\\CreditAnalytics\\Daemons\\Transforms\\FundingStateMarks\\" + strCurrency + "ShapePreservingReconstitutor.csv";
		String[] astrInTenor = new String[] {
			"1Y"
		};
		String[] astrForTenor = new String[] {
			"1Y",
			"2Y",
			"3Y",
			"4Y",
			"5Y",
			"6Y",
			"7Y",
			"8Y",
			"9Y",
			"10Y",
			"11Y",
			"12Y",
			"15Y",
			"20Y",
			"25Y",
		};
		String[] astrFixFloatMaturityTenor = new String[] {
			"1Y",
			"2Y",
			"3Y",
			"4Y",
			"5Y",
			"6Y",
			"7Y",
			"8Y",
			"9Y",
			"10Y",
			"11Y",
			"12Y",
			"15Y",
			"20Y",
			"25Y",
			"30Y",
			"40Y",
			"50Y"
		};

		CSVGrid csvGrid = CSVParser.StringGrid (
			strClosesLocation,
			true
		);

		JulianDate[] adtClose = csvGrid.dateArrayAtColumn (0);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote1Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (1);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote2Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (2);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote3Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (3);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote4Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (4);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote5Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (5);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote6Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (6);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote7Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (7);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote8Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (8);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote9Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (9);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote10Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (10);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote11Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (11);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote12Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (12);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote15Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (13);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote20Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (14);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote25Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (15);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote30Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (16);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote40Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (17);

		double[] adblFixFloatQuote50Y = csvGrid.doubleArrayAtColumn (18);

		int iNumClose = adtClose.length;
		JulianDate[] adtSpot = new JulianDate[iNumClose];
		double[][] aadblFixFloatQuote = new double[iNumClose][18];

		for (int i = 0; i < iNumClose; ++i) {
			adtSpot[i] = adtClose[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][0] = adblFixFloatQuote1Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][1] = adblFixFloatQuote2Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][2] = adblFixFloatQuote3Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][3] = adblFixFloatQuote4Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][4] = adblFixFloatQuote5Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][5] = adblFixFloatQuote6Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][6] = adblFixFloatQuote7Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][7] = adblFixFloatQuote8Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][8] = adblFixFloatQuote9Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][9] = adblFixFloatQuote10Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][10] = adblFixFloatQuote11Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][11] = adblFixFloatQuote12Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][12] = adblFixFloatQuote15Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][13] = adblFixFloatQuote20Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][14] = adblFixFloatQuote25Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][15] = adblFixFloatQuote30Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][16] = adblFixFloatQuote40Y[i];
			aadblFixFloatQuote[i][17] = adblFixFloatQuote50Y[i];
		}

		String strDump = "Date";

		for (String strInTenor : astrInTenor) {
			for (String strForTenor : astrForTenor)
				strDump += "," + strInTenor + strForTenor;
		}

		System.out.println (strDump);

		Map<JulianDate, FundingCurveMetrics> mapFCM = FundingCurveAPI.HorizonMetrics (
			adtSpot,
			astrFixFloatMaturityTenor,
			aadblFixFloatQuote,
			astrInTenor,
			astrForTenor,
			strCurrency,
			LatentMarketStateBuilder.SHAPE_PRESERVING
		);

		for (int i = 0; i < iNumClose; ++i) {
			FundingCurveMetrics fcm = mapFCM.get (adtSpot[i]);

			if (null == fcm) continue;

			strDump = adtSpot[i].toString();

			for (String strInTenor : astrInTenor) {
				for (String strForTenor : astrForTenor)
					strDump += "," + FormatUtil.FormatDouble (
						fcm.nativeForwardRate (
							strInTenor,
							strForTenor
						), 1, 5, 100.
					);
			}

			System.out.println (strDump);
		}
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Rising International is a US Based distributor of Women's Apparel and Accessories. We are dedicated to provide highest quality of product and services. We carry range of women's apparel. Find Jackets, Dresses, Tops, Skirts, Trousers, and all sorts of Accessories.
955 people like Rising International.


text:
Champions League - Football: Matchday three storylines to follow
bet365 News Team Oct 03 2022
European meetings between English and Scottish clubs are always eagerly anticipated and Liverpool's clash with Rangers on Tuesday could be a cracker.
The Group A game on matchday three of the 2022/23 Champions League is the first competitive fixture between the Reds, champions of England on 19 occasions, and the Gers, who have won a record 55 Scottish league titles.
Liverpool have the superior European pedigree, having been crowned continental champions six times, most recently in 2019, but they have made a patchy start to the Premier League campaign.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst led Rangers to last season's Europa League final, which they lost on penalties to Eintracht Frankfurt, and his side will be desperate to put in a good performance at Anfield after chastening defeats to Ajax and Napoli in their first two group games.
Rangers aiming to rock out-of-form Reds
What Liverpool v Rangers
Where Anfield, Liverpool, England
When Tuesday 4th October, 2022, 20:00
How to watch BT Sport 2
Odds Liverpool 1/7, Draw 15/2, Rangers 14/1
Liverpool were thumped 4-1 by Napoli on matchday one of the 2022/23 Champions League and needed an 89th-minute goal from centre-back Joel Matip to see off Ajax 2-1 at Anfield last time out.
Manager Jurgen Klopp will be targeting six points from their next two games against Group A outsiders Rangers, who were beaten 4-0 at Ajax and 3-0 at home to Napoli on their return to the Champions League.
The Gers are 14/1 to silence Anfield with a victory on matchday three but scoring a goal will be their first objective as they failed to find the net in any of their last four Champions League meetings with English opponents.
All four of those matches were against Manchester United, who beat the Glasgow giants 1-0 and 3-0 in the 2003/04 group stage before a goalless draw at Old Trafford and a 1-0 United win at Ibrox in 2010/11.
Liverpool are 1/7 for victory on Tuesday and 10/11 to inflict Rangers' third straight defeat to nil in Group A but they have been struggling defensively and were held to a 3-3 draw by Brighton at Anfield on Saturday.
The Reds have scored the first goal in only two of their last 16 matches in all competitions. It is 4/1 that Rangers break the deadlock on Tuesday.
Barcelona expected to silence San Siro
What Inter Milan v Barcelona
Where San Siro, Milan, Italy
Odds Inter Milan 7/2, Draw 14/5, Barcelona 4/5
Bayern Munich are just 1/22 to rack up a third win out of three in Group C when they host Viktoria Plzen so Inter Milan's clash with Barcelona is a crucial fixture in the battle for qualification.
Both clubs have suffered 2-0 defeats to Bayern and beaten Czech outsiders Viktoria Plzen but Barca are 4/5 to claim a vital victory over 7/2 Inter at San Siro.
Related Champions League News
Champions League - Football: Steve Davies' group stage tips
Champions League - Football: James Milton's outright tips
The Champions League draw - Football: Verdict
Champions League - Football: Top 10 finals
The Catalans are certainly in better form than their hosts as Saturday's 1-0 win at Mallorca was their sixth straight victory in Spain's Primera Liga. Robert Lewandowski scored the winner at the weekend - his ninth goal in those six league wins - and the Poland ace also claimed a hat-trick against Viktoria Plzen on matchday one.
Lewandowski is 3/1 to be first goalscorer against an Inter side that have lost four of their last six Serie A matches, against Lazio, AC Milan, Udinese and Roma.
The Nerazzurri have scored in all four of those defeats and backing Barcelona to win and both teams to score is worth considering at 9/4.
They were 2-1 winners in both group meetings with Inter in the 2019/20 Champions League and should be confident of troubling an unconvincing home defence on Tuesday.
Blues wary of evergreen old boy Giroud
What Chelsea v AC Milan
Where Stamford Bridge, London, England
When Wednesday 5th October, 2022, 20:00
Odds Chelsea 7/10, Draw 14/5, AC Milan 4/1
Graham Potter earned his first win as Chelsea manager on Saturday as a late strike from youngster Conor Gallagher gave the Blues a nervy 2-1 Premier League victory at Crystal Palace.
The pressure is on Potter's men to pick up another three points in the Champions League on Wednesday, having started their campaign with a 1-0 loss at Dinamo Zagreb and a 1-1 draw at home to FC Salzburg.
Chelsea's 22-year-old midfielder Gallagher will be hoping for another chance to impress when the 7/10 hosts face Italian champions and group leaders AC Milan, who are 4/1 to inflict a damaging defeat on the Londoners.
And Potter will be wary of a player at the other end of his career to Gallagher - former Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud, who celebrated his 36th birthday last week but remains a key man for Milan.
Giroud helped the Rossoneri win Serie A last season and has scored six times in his last ten appearances for club and country, bagging his 49th international goal in France's Nations League win over Austria last month.
The evergreen forward scored the opening goal for Chelsea against Arsenal, another of his former clubs, in the 2018/19 Europa League final and is 7/1 to break the deadlock on his return to Stamford Bridge.
Real Madrid hope to avoid another Shakhtar shock
What Real Madrid v Shakhtar Donetsk
Where Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Madrid, Spain
Odds Real Madrid 2/11, Draw 7/1, Shakhtar Donetsk 11/1
European champions Real Madrid suffered their first setback of the season on Sunday as Karim Benzema missed a penalty in a 1-1 home draw with Osasuna in the Primera Liga.
Before that, Carlo Ancelotti's men had won nine games out of nine in all competitions but Real will not be taking Wednesday's Group F visitors Shakhtar Donetsk lightly.
The clubs have been drawn against each other in the Champions League group stage for the third season running and 11/1 Shakhtar have proved they can mix it with the top teams in Europe.
They claimed a thrilling 3-2 win against Real in Madrid in October 2020, after leading 3-0 at half-time, and also competed well in last season's 2-1 loss at the Bernabeu.
The Ukrainians have already pulled off a massive shock this season, thumping RB Leipzig 4-1 in Germany on matchday one when 21-year-old winger Mykhaylo Mudryk was among their goalscorers.
The highly-rated youngster also notched in the 1-1 draw with Celtic on matchday two and Mudryk is 11/1 to score at anytime as Shakhtar target another memorable visit to Madrid.
Latest sports betting and odds
Head to the bet365 YouTube channel for exclusive football content


text:
Q: Apache Flink limit data being processed I am looking for an option wherein I can limit the amount of data that is being currently processed.
Use case: I am reading from a Kafka data stream and processing that data, and I want to limit the number of messages that are in-flight. The reason for doing this is the throughput of the third-party application.
Generally it's not an issue, but in the scenarios of backpressure, there are frequent failures and application restarts because of these failures.

A: Some tools available for this are:

*

*Limit the parallelism.

*Use Flink's async i/o operator to handle the connection to the 3rd party API, and set its capacity (number of in-flight requests) accordingly. This will ultimately backpressure the sources.

*Apply rate-limiting to the sources. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/65232295/2000823 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/59027848/2000823 for more on that topic.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Forge Blow off valve for R55, R56, R57, R58, R59, R60 MINI Cooper S turbo. The Forge valve is not really a blow off valve, but this is what it is commonly referred to as it is actually a recirculation valve. It does NOT vent the boost to the atmosphere like a blow off valve, but actually recirculates it like the design of the MINI originally has just that this valve does it faster, and can hold more boost.
This Forge valve alternative is a fully engineered solution offering both significantly improved reliability as well as valve related boost response. The Forge valve and installation kit replaces the original unit with a pressure/vacuum operated piston valve that still also retains the desirable OEM ECU control over valve actuation. This product has been thoroughly designed and tested with the expressed intent of offering improved valve response and maintaining ECU control while resulting in absolutely NO fault codes, NO check engine lights, and no adverse effects of any kind. All of the necessary components and detailed instructions are included and everything is designed to make installation as simple as possible.
Simply put this valve will improve throttle responce and boost control to enhance the drivability and performance of your MINI.
This kit is supplied with an additional upgraded spring (colored Yellow) that may be required if the vehicle has had a significant boost increase.
This D/v is vastly superior to the stock D/V and works great with stock tune or aftermarket tune. I have a Cobb A/P stage 3 92 octante Map on my factory JCW and the forge D/V made a huge difference. All the products that I have purchased and the customer service that I have received from Way has been outstanding.
Is this worth it? In a word, yes. Stock or tuned, S or JCW, you\'re going to see an improvement. I\'m getting better boost response then the both the stock DV and the WMW alternative. I also can\'t see this failing. Installation is pretty simple too. Easily done with simple hand tools. Is it more expensive then a $25 spring? Yes. But you aren\'t going to find a better DV out there.
Agree with MaverickGun. Installed on the 09 Factory JCW, and it makes a night and day difference. The improvement in throttle response and overall turbo performance is easily noticeable throughout the power band. A must if you own a tuned or JCW Mini.
I have the stock tune and a Borla S-Type exhaust system. This recirculation valve performs much faster than the stock valve, it does exactly what they claim it does! For me the feeling for the first time driving with the Forge R-valve is it's hyperactive to throttle inputs, almost as it no loss of boost between shifts. I can't recommend it enough and is the best bang for your buck mod available for turbocharged Mini's!


PV001LTD - LIMITED EDITION RED VINYL. By the time of their performance at the Bizarre Festival on 17th August 1996, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds were enjoying their most successful era to date. Their latest album Murder Ballads, released in February that year, was their best-selling record yet, having topped the charts in three countries and reached the Top 10 in a further five. This was aided in no small part by Nick Cave's duet with Kylie Minogue on 'Where the Wild Roses Grow', which was a worldwide hit and earned the band two ARIA awards. The video received repeated airplay on MTV, who would later nominate Nick Cave for Best Male Artist at the MTV Awards. Nick and the Seeds toured Europe, Asia and South America in support of the album, and it is their entire performance at the Bizarre Festival that is included here. Recorded and broadcast on FM radio throughout the United States, who had curiously been left off the tour's itinerary, the group captured the dark, brooding nature of Murder Ballads perfectly in their set, which included too classics from their back catalogue such as 'The Weeping Song' and 'The Mercy Seat'. As a grand finale, the band were joined by PJ Harvey - with whom Cave was romantically linked at the time - for a rendition of 'Henry Lee'.


text:
EUROCONTROL issues the first "Propagation of air transport delays in Europe" study
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 12:00 AM
Between 40% and 50% of delays in Europe are actually reactionary or knock-on delays, according to a new study published today by EUROCONTROL
The study, Propagation of Air Transport Delays in Europe is the first pan-European study on reactionary delays based on actual data provided by more than 120 airlines. The study focuses on three types of airline operation: traditional scheduled operating in a hub-and-spoke operation, low-cost carriers and point-to-point operations. It has four key findings: In general, hub-and-spoke flights have less reactionary delay than point-to-point and low-cost flights because they have a higher ability to absorb delay during the turn-around time. On the other hand, low-cost operations absorb notably more delay in the block to block phase than the other operations. short delays tend to propagate longer through the network, in some cases an initial short delay can cause three times as much delay to later flights. major hub airports affect dozens of other airports through reactionary delays but affect their own operations most with up to 56% of delay returned to an airport after a first delayed flight. 50% of primary delays are recovered during the next flight. This is a ground-breaking study which has the potential to make a major contribution to how airports and airlines view and manage delays, said David Marsh (Head of Forecasting and Traffic Analysis unit at EUROCONTROL). It clearly shows that with more detailed reporting and analysis, it is possible to quantify the impact of propagated delays which form nearly half of all the delay minutes in Europe The study was carried out by RWTH Aachen University and EUROCONTROL and covers delays across Europe in 2008. 2008 figures were used as air traffic in that year was more representative of traffic as a whole over the past five years than traffic in 2009. The study is available here: www.eurocontrol.int/ecoda
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Here is a list of Features that had games reviewed or had a comment. Some games were scored as well.
How to be a Teachers Pet!
It's the Zzap! 64 Top 64!
Looking For a Flight, Mate?
You Lookin' For a Fight, Mate?


Having a Progressive Award Funded through Skill, Strategy, or Risk Dependent Gaming Event", has been refused on the basis that it does not meet the requirements for patentability.
"a) Properly construe the claim.
c) Ask whether it falls solely within the excluded subject matter.
Step four is only necessary if the invention which is the subject of the application passes the first three steps.


Back on the market as of October 12th at 8:57am, this Spanish home was originally listed on October 11th in 2018. The property is being listed at a price of $675,000 , the same as its original list price. This 1 bedroom, 1 full bath residence is located on SYCAMORE Avenue, one of the nicer areas of .
With a total floorspace of 848 square feet, this spacious home comes in at $795.99 per square foot. That's 11.84% higher than the neighborhood average.
Originally built in 1928, this home sits on a 16,120 square foot lot.
Listing provided courtesy of Alex Brunkhorst at The Agency.


text:
Jan 03 31 2003
I am greatly enjoying Ernest May's Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. May argues that -- contrary to what you learned in school -- the allies should have defeated the Germans handily. The French expected to win, the German military expected to lose, and both were right. I'm reading this after seeing a review by Josiah Micah Marshall, who is by far the best political blogger I've seen.
Why everything goes wrong
Joel Spolsky offers an insightful sermon that explains why everything goes wrong at once. At the beginning, his hard disk is out of space. He's got money for a big hard disk, plenty of technical expertise, wonderful hard disk backups. What could go wrong?
The first responsibility of an academic Web journal, it seems to me, is to get it right -- to avoid misstating facts and distorting theories. What else is academe for? And what other job does an editor have, if not to discourage writers from making embarrassing blunders?
I'm not an architect, but surely someone wasn't paying attention when the Electronic Book Review published Nick Spencer's "The Politics of Postmodern Architecture". I'm not certain, to be frank, precisely what Spencer is trying to argue here, but the core of his argument is that the attack on the World Trade Center was an attack on postmodernism:
Built at the height of American postmodernism in the early 1970s, the World Trade Center, like much architecture, presents the issue of postmodernism's radicalism in a particularly stark fashion. . . . Along with its corporate function, the abstractness of the World Trade Center suggests that it deserves to be recognized as an unqualified expression of recuperated postmodernism."
The World Trade Center cannot present the issue of postmodernism's radicalism, because it was not postmodern. The tall twin towers with their myriad columns reaching unbroken to the sky are surely Late Modern. Louis Sullivan, in "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" (1896), famously wrote that
"It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.
Can we doubt that WTC architect Minoru Yamasaki had this passage in mind when he first drew those twin towers?
This isn't an obscure detail. When Charles Jencks begins his 1977 The Language Of Postmodern Architecture, he starts with the end of Modern Architecture. "Modern Architecture," he writes, "died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972.... when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite." The architect of that failed housing project, built between 1952-1955, was Minoru Yamasaki. Jencks' influential Architectural Design essay (1978) distinguishing "Late-Modern and Post-Modern Architecture" unambiguously situates Yamasaki in late modernism. Vincent Scully Jr.'s Modern Architecture regards Yamasaki as Modern.
Tellingly, Arthur Drexler's Transformations in Modern Architecture cites other Yamasaki buildings --especially the 1956 Wayne State College of Education, as examples of conscious Persian historicizing. There's a ton of historicized neo-Persian Modern throughout the Arab world, all of it much more convenient to explode than Manhattan office towers. Yes, the arches at the base of the WTC curtain wall suggest Moorish or Gothic precedents, and yes, quotation is important to postmodern architecture, but if every allusion makes a building pomo, then what do we make of Corbusier's romanesque arches, or Frank Lloyd Wright's japonisme? What about Sullivan's cast-iron flowers? Playing this game, we can quickly make Modernism disappear entirely, leaving only a machine-age smile floating in the sky.
This leaves an essay about the Islamic attack on postmodernism in a sorry state, because the buildings actually attacked weren't postmodern. I suppose I can see why an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska might want to view Al Quaeda as the sworn enemy of postmodern critical theory, casting John Silber and bin Laden together as a new axis of evil and making the 1990's Culture Wars and the struggle for tenure into an extension of diplomacy by other means. But the cost is confusion: muddying definitions, muddling students, and doubtless leading many to wonder, along with Casey Stengel, if anyone here knows how to play this game.
Could I be wrong, and could Yamasaki really turn out to be postmodern? Perhaps a case could be cobbled together. But, with evidence like this piled on the other side, you've got to make the case. Spencer doesn't. Did editors didn't warn him that he was about to walk off the cliff? Did someone think this over? Did Sokal cross anyone's mind?
Folks, this is literally embarrassing, not just for the author or for EBR's editors, but for everyone who publishes research in the arts and humanities. It's easy enough to make mistakes; the last thing we need is to publish stuff that looks obviously wrong and blithely to assume that being wrong doesn't matter. Being wrong matters a lot. It happens to us all at times. It might be happening to me, here and now. But checking the facts and presenting the evidence is the core of scholarship, and we should expect as much from our Web journals as we do from print. If we don't, nobody will take research seriously, and we justify the contempt in which the brokers and know-nothing politicians hold us.
I'm very critical here of sloppy scholarship, but Torill points out that, for students of the software arts, even the simplest citation can be a major headache.
I've long argued that, when writing about software, scholars should accord the creator the same dignity they accord to people who write books and articles. The work should be properly cited, and the chief authors should be named. That's a problem in the software world, where companies -- even small companies -- don't always want to tell you who their developers are, lest you barrage them with support questions or try to hire them away. I've been trying to reach Cornered Rat Software with an editorial query for Tekka, but despite (or perhaps because of) their successful MMPORG, their email bounces.
Writing in the New York Review of Science Fiction, TOR editor David Hartwell observes that the many maladies of modern reviewing are at their worst when it comes to year-end Best Books lists. Since no reviewers today read a majority of the year's books, even in a limited field like "science fiction" or "horror", heavily marketed books outscore good books. Many books receive one or two reviews; some receive none.
The situation for hypertexts is even worse, and things aren't much better for people who want to review hypertexts. That's one reason we need Tekka.
But one of the advantages of a weblog is that I know what I read this year. There are 59 books in the list (a few didn't make it into the weblog for one reason or another). Here is my 2002 Best Books list.
American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
The Boston Marriage (David Mamet)
Justice Hall (Laurie King)
The Wild Party (Joseph Moncure March)
The Yellow Admiral (Patrick O'Brian)
Get Shorty (Elmore Leonard)
Bill James Historical Baseball Absract (Bill James)
Buddha's Money (Martin Limon)
My Name Is Captain, Captain. (Judd Morrissey and Lori Talley)
Mystic River (Dennis Lehane)
Game designer and pundit Greg Costikyan has started a new weblog on games and game design. He starts with a thoughtful note about the least well known of the five greatest computer game designers of all time. (Back in the day, Costikyan wrote Paranoia, a hilarious role playing game)
Scott Rosenberg, Salon's managing editor, blogs Salon's newly-revised subscription plan. "For Salon, or any other standalone independent that needs to pay not only for content but for bandwidth and software and health plans for employees and so forth, some variation on the subscription plan is the only way to go. "
Once in every generation, Boston Harbor freezes. In his wonderful (and amazingly engaging) Maritime History of Massachusetts, Samuel Eliot Morison explains this is one of the main reasons that Boston is where it is, and not in Nova Scotia or "thousand-harbored Maine".
Boston Harbor is frozen today.
Ben Poole suggests that Tinderbox could be important to Mac users who are losing some Lotus Notes functionality,
Well, if we Mac users aren't going to get the full functionality of Lotus Notes back (i.e. no Designer client), I guess we'll just have to have our own collaborative / loose data store system eh? Enter Tinderbox .
Recently, I found myself looking for the old Scrapbook accessory from MacOS 9. I used the Scrapbook for years to hold various oft-used clippings, things like our logo, Eastgate's bank transfer numbers, and the Storyspace educational price discount schedule -- snippets I need to use from time to time. MacOS X doesn't have a scrapbook. I actually sent notes out to Mac journalists to ask, "what do people use instead?" Tinderbox seems to make a great scrapbook, too.
Even I didn't think of that.
Crankbunny
Flash artist Crankbunny (Norma Toraya) premieres a new 5-minute Quicktime movie, Harboring Wells. Huge download (40M, oh brave new world!) but haunting.
Writing in the Tinderbox Forum, Andreas Klostermaier suggests that Tinderbox leads a paradigm shift in computing.
Tangentially, this raises a question that's been much discussed in the Mac development world during the past two weeks: are Apple applications a good thing, or a bad thing? Safari, for example, seems poised to clobber Chimera; is this a return to the bad old days when Apple blithely competed with its own developers? Is Apple going to come after us next?
What everyone seems to miss is that Apple is attacking dead markets. Extinct markets. Fossil markets -- markets that Microsoft slaughtered years ago, leaving only a free Microsoft placeholder standing to deter anyone from ever setting foot in those markets again. That's got to be a signal; I wish the press would pick up on it.
For those who liked my first bumper sticker:
Your choice: support the Democrats in 2004 or the Resistance in 2006."
Here's an offering I think we'll see more of in the coming year, as the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft administration tries to cut taxes on the rich, rolls back choice, guts environmental laws, and imprisons people indefinitely without charges, trial, or counsel:
At long last, have you no shame?
If you're writing a study of the McCarthy era, you may be sitting on a gold mine.
No Grey
Anja Rau looks at The Two Towers and finds it too black and white.
Back in the 1950's, Edmund Wilson and W. H. Auden squared off on The Lord Of The Rings. Auden thought it a vast and brilliant epic, a modern fairy tale. Wilson, in an essay titled "Ooh Those Awful Orcs!" found it simplistically black and white.
Tolkien asserts that there are not two sides to every question, that in some times and places, good and evil do exist and the question you face is not sorting out the nuance but, which side are you on. But Lord Of The Rings also asserts that such times are exceptional. It's the end of an age.
Adaptation is strange, curious, improbable little film. It belongs in the all-time hypertext film festival. Interesting double-feature with Wonder Boys. Fascinating double-feature with Mullholland Drive. Ebert, like everyone else, loved it.
This American Life spends a week exploring the secret government that is doing some amazing things. Like imprisoning a US citizen, without trial or counsel, for the duration of a "war" that doesn't exist and will never end, (Thanks, Aaron)
I've been browsing quite a bit with Apple's new Safari. So have you; my web server reports that, among Mac users, it's nudging ahead of MSIE and zooming past the other browsers. (RSS aggregators still are in the lead, since they check the site so often)
I found I was enjoying Safari's speed so much that I had to add Safari support to Tinderbox. You could do this too, if you're a thrill seeker; inside the Tinderbox package there's a config folder with a file called html_helpers.xml. Add a line for Safari (signature 'sfri'), and Tinderbox will know all about Safari.
Don't try this at home; the next version of Tinderbox will do it for you and is coming in a few days. But isn't it nice to know you could do this, if you had to?
Derrick Story writes a superb discussion of how to use a light, low-end digital camera effectively to capture an event like MacWorld Expo.
What the computer press often omits is the point of the exercise: what do we want to accomplish, and how do we think about the task? It's easy to learn to push the buttons; Story tells us what shots we want to get, and how to get them. For example, you need an exterior shot of the venue, right? "The image was captured at 5:34 pm, a great time for "night shots" in the winter. You can add more color to your images if you shoot your night shots before the sky goes completely dark. "
Tekka store: tools
One of the interesting things about planning Tekka, our new magazine about enjoying new media and beautiful software, is asking ourselves, what do Web people need?
One thing we need today, more than ever, is access to tools -- the old rubric of the Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. This means knowing what tool fits what job: do I want my office network today to be wired or wireless? This means knowing about new tools -- including new theories and new technologies.
And it means a willingness to roll up your sleeves and do the work.
We're going to hunt down some of the best tools, sort them out, and help you get them into your own work. Sometimes, these will be software tools. Sometimes, the tools will be methodologies, or design styles, or events. Sometimes, the tools will be books.
It's time to wake up from the childish dream of the One True Tool. Fine work requires a varied set of tools, in software as well as carpentry.
The echoes of the Bauhaus manifesto ("The ultimate aim of all creative activity is the Web site!") struck a chord. I snuck it as a summary of my IA Summit talk into yesterday's RSS feed, and lots of people picked it up on weblogs here and there.
And why should it not? "Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful than Man. The foaming windswept sea is our conquest: our ships cleave through engulfing waves. We have conquered the earth with ploughs that never rest from year to year. We have science beyond our dreams, which we use for good or ill. We have built the Web." -- Antigone said this 2500 years ago.
We can focus so tightly on our failures and inadequacies that we don't appreciate the accomplishment. The Web, on the whole, is superb. It is replete with reliable information, well organized and elegantly presented. It is filled with services we can use and stuff we can buy. When things are wrong, we are surprised. When things go wrong, we are annoyed.
If the Web was as bad as people say it is, we would expect things to be wrong, and we wouldn't be annoyed when things turned out badly.
IA Summit
My (rather impertinent) proposal to this year's Information Architecture Summit has been accepted. I'll be talking about hypertext gardens and patterns of hypertext, and about the difficult relationship between architecture and Information Architecture (IA). Often, IA has chosen to engage concerns of clarity, consistency, and usability; these are find things indeed, but they are not the architectural virtues of commodity, firmness, and delight.
I'm going to need lots of pictures.
"The ultimate aim of all creative activity is the Web site!" -- paraphrase of the Bauhaus manifesto
Premature Commitment
Michael Rose blogs an interesting discussion ongoing at the Tinderbox forum, in which a question about map views led to a broader inquiry into knowledge representation. "Among the interesting things about Tinderbox," he observes, "is how often simple feature requests lead directly to much more fundamental questions about how people visualize concepts and information."
Hypertext and Buffy
Scott Johnson is surprised to find that I'm a Buffy watcher. The vampire slayer has a terrific following in the hypertext community. The best explanation for this is probably to be found in David Durand's pair of Web essays, "Why I Watch Buffy" and "Why You Should, Too". (Durand is an authority on hypertext versioning and XML, XLINK and their kin.) George P. Landow (Hypertext 2.0) is a big enough fan that he had fresh Buffy episodes taped and shipped to him in Singapore to supplement watching the Mandarin-subtitled local broadcasts.
The battle's done, and we kinda' won
So let's sound our victory cheer.
Wireless Gaps
A question to wireless networking experts: can I use 802.11b (Airport) wireless links to connect two ethernet LANs, or two wireless subnets?
For example, suppose we want to provide wireless connectivity to a business like Eastgate, which has offices on three separate floors. Running wire between floors is difficult. Is there some way to use multiple base stations to span long gaps? What would we need?
Jan 03 9 2003
Children of Herakles
I saw the opening of Peter Sellars' Children of Herakles at the ART last night. It's the first American production of this Euripides play. There's got to be a story behind that, doesn't there?
It's a moving and thoughtful production, featuring talk show host Chris Lydon as the Attic Chorus (played as a talk show commentator) and a slew of high school kids -- all refugees with asylum -- from Cambridge schools as Herakles' exiled orphans. Jan Triska is simply brilliant as Iolaus, the kids' protector, an aged and wheelchair-bound survivor of the last war; his is probably the best performance I've ever seen in an ancient play, although Hepburn was awfully good in The Trojan Women.
Reading Apple
Since nobody else seems to be talking about it, let me suggest that this year's new Apple announcements are misunderstood. Why is Apple (a) launching a PowerPoint competitor, (b) launching a new Web browser, and (c) relaunching the iApps as a separate product? What does this mean?
I suggest that these launches are strategic, and they are about Microsoft Office, the dagger that Microsoft holds at Apple's throat. For the last five years, Apple has lived with the threat that Microsoft, by killing Office, it could eliminate that Macintosh completely. Without Office, nobody -- not even the Apple faithful -- could depend on using anything but Windows for work.
The Clinton administration wouldn't permit Microsoft to obliterate Apple this completely -- they were moderate Republicans, and Apple provides the appearance of a free market. Protected from assassination, Apple invested in infrastructure: iMac, iApps, Airport. This era ended in 2002, when the Bush DOJ conceded its case against Microsoft, thereby indicating that they might not be willing or able to protect anyone any longer.
What Keynote and Safari mean is that Apple is prepared to deliver a capable office suite if it must. Note the skillful way these two products are positioned. Keynote competes on features by leveraging Apple's new graphic technology: it's better than PowerPoint. Safari, the new Web browser, can't beat Internet Explorer everywhere; instead, it's smaller, faster, and good enough. They demonstrate two ways to attack Office.
Apple is telling everyone that, if they have to, they'll build a word processor that will replace Word and a spreadsheet that will replace Excel. They don't want to do this; if they did, they'd just launch the products. Keynote and Safari don't gore Microsoft's ox; they attack dead markets where there's no money to be made. They demonstrate capability without starting a war.
Apple is also making sure they can pull it off. If they can't -- if this is Cyberdog all over again -- it's just a footnote like the Cube. Management wants to be sure that, if total war breaks out, their weapons go boom. If they do, fine: Apple has deterrence. If they don't -- if Keynote and Safari turn out badly -- then management knows to avoid war at any cost.
Redemption and Grace
If Fundies were interested in ideas, they'd be fascinated by Buffy. Unless I'm mistaken, this year turns out to be an extended inquiry into the nature of grace and the limitations of redemption, questions that would have fascinated the theology fans of the 17th century.
It's interesting to see how Joss Whedon and (especially) Marti Noxon actually explore these issues instead of merely asserting them. I love Spirited Away, for example, but Miyazaki's masterpiece has a tacked-on moral (always remember who you are) that's hardly more organic than the notoriously-subverted lesson of the Wizard Of Oz (there's no place like home). This weakness comes with the territory; all of these are Parsifals -- bar mitzvah tales -- in which our hero sees the hidden world of grownups and, for the first time, does what adults do. The last line of Spirited Away, "I think I can handle it," is an idiomatic translation of "Today, I am a man."
But Buffy isn't doing that any more. Spike's done the unforgivable, and he desperately needs to be forgiven. We've established that enduring terrible trials is necessary, but it wasn't sufficient: he has a soul again, against all odds and in defiance of natural order, but that doesn't really change things. How can Buffy love him? Faith (in Buffy) and prayer are unavailing. Good works don't do it; join the Scoobies, save them, save the world: been there, bored now. Nor is Love enough, clearly, for at this point Spike is once more love's bitch.
We know that against this opponent we cannot win, nobody can, we can only hope to save something good in the coming darkness.
And this year is not a Parsifal, whatever it is. Again and again, we're being reminded of what Angel told Buffy in that cemetery so many years ago (and what Joss, I suspect, is telling his heroine): "This isn't about you. It was never about you. And you fall for it every time!"
Apple announces a bunch of stuff at this year's MacWorld SF, including a web browser (!), new laptops, 802.11g (a faster wireless network), and a presentation tool that seems to compete with PowerPoint.
The latter, called Keynote, seems a quixotic attempt to revive a market that Microsoft killed and buried almost a decade ago. Gutsy.
Ping Ping
I've discovered some interesting things about the little $400 laser printer in the basement. It has its own web server! You can telnet to it! And, if you ping it, you lose about 1/4 of the packets.
The Ping problem, I expect, may explain why the printer has become very, very slow. But why would I lose 1/4 of the packets (and not ALL the packets) on a very quiet, lazy LAN? Got a hint? Email me!
Scott Johnson points out that, when you put recipes in your weblog, it's good to put each recipe on its own page. This helps search engines: a common search strategy is to look for (say) "spicy noodle recipe", and this is going to fall apart if you talk about "spicy pictures", "bland noodles", and "software recipes" on the same page.
This is an interesting point, because it suggests an emergent application. Nobody planned to construct a Web-wide recipe service, and nobody planned to participate in one. It simply happened.
Airport Freedom
Penn, of Penn and Teller, had a rude encounter at the airport. An inspector grabbed his crotch, and he insisted that, while he is usually happy to have his crotch grabbed, he does rather prefer to be asked. Of course, while most of us would probably be interrogated for complaining, Penn got the VIP treatment.
He didn't care. "Well, it's not really the right word," he tells the airport flack, "but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it."
Moral 1: it helps, when you're trying to be firm, angry, and funny in the midst of a legal confrontation, to be a professional. Don't try this at home, kids, unless you can afford to miss your flight.
Moral 2: support the Democrats in 2004, or you'll find yourself supporting the Resistance sometime soon. (Thanks, Scott Johnson )
New Tilt is just a Flash portfolio for a user experience design firm, but its pacing is beautifully done. 95% of Flash is not Bad, but 95% of Flash is too slow.
There's a new issue of Born Magazine.
I confess that I've not found Born as compelling as its reputation would suggest. Perhaps I'm approaching this at the wrong end, or reading the wrong works. My impression is that it looks better than it reads. If you think I've got the wrong end of the stick, let me know.
It's time (probably past time) that I take a look at massively multiplayer role games, since so many new media critics see so much promise in them. For my first foray, I chose World War II Online, chiefly because it's new (and so the technology should be up to date), runs on both platforms (which will make it easier for me to play occasionally), and because a copy was handy.
I'm uneasy about the subject matter (pdf) but that's not a bad sign; art isn't always supposed to be easy.
Installation lacked a few key elements of good user experience, as getting started required five separate download and patch sequences. None of the automatic downloads explained themselves very well, so I had little idea whether I was making progress or futilely downloading the same patch over and over again.
My first afternoon in 1940 Belgium, on the other hand, was not without promise. That is to say, it was a compound of interesting sightseeing and boredom, punctuated by terror and disaster. People were trying to shoot me. I had no idea why. Or where they were. Other people were running around, and I had no idea why -- or if they knew what they were doing. This is probably true -- a lot truer, anyway, than Rambo fantasies.
Book Pile
One of yesterday's chores was to make Tekka its own bedside table -- the list of books our new magazine on new media and beautiful software needs to review. We need to spark some serious discussion; too many good books are neglected.
My impression is that the field needs a lot more books. But Tekka's reading list is already formidable. And, while we want to revisit some of the classics, almost all those books are recent. There's much to do.
It's New Years Day, and I suspect that weblogs feature in more resolutions than ever before. Whether the most common resolution is to blog more often, or more efficiently, or to read more widely, we can't yet know. It will be interesting to see.


Now and then, you come across a place that embodies a sentiment so well, that you wonder if it was that feeling itself that gave birth to the physical beauty. I walked into Jyran, a tandoor restaurant and lounge at Sofitel, Mumbai and I was enveloped by poetry.
Villas in Goa: Giving the hotels a run for their money!
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Send an overseas surprise with the Zaldee app!
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A couple weeks ago, one of my friend, called me up and told me that he is aware of an app named Zaldee that allowed people to make money while they travelled. How exactly did they do that? I asked. He said, that Zaldee allowed people to sell and buy excess luggage space while traveling by any mode of transport (Air, Car, Train or Bus). So if I'm travelling to Singapore next week, all I have to do is list my trip and rate per kg of goods on Zaldee and wait for someone to approach me with a request.
Here are the top free things to do in Sentosa Island, a top destination in Singapore known for its expensive attractions. Offbeat things to do in Sentosa Island include watching a robotic crane dance and exploring the caves.
Come here, and you will be introduced to clusters of Eucalyptus fossils, arranged in familiar shapes like hearts and circles. We even saw the fossil of a dinosaur egg, reminding me of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park series. A rusty gate creaked open when the friendly old caretaker opened it for us. He turned out to be a treasure trove of information on the plants that he tended to so lovingly. He told us that the fossilised plants in the quiet park were 65 million years old! What was the world like that many eons ago?


For centuries, humans have marvelled at lizards' ability to regrow lost tails. Our fragile bodies just don't have this same natural capacity for regrowth, but other species' tricks of regeneration do present a tantalising prospect: if we can understand them, can we harness similar mechanisms ourselves? Zebrafish, for example, can recover from heart injuries in a way humans cannot. The zebrafish heart pictured is well on the way to recovery one week after an injury (bottom), as new cardiomyocytes – heart muscle cells – are generated by nearby cells to replace lost ones. Most of our heart cells don't have that same instinct to kick into action and produce new material when needed, but recent research suggests that if we can pinpoint the mechanism that prompts it in zebrafish cells, there's a chance the human equivalents could be encouraged to do the same, meaning broken hearts could heal themselves.


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How Economists Tally Unemployment--and Its Affect on the Black Jobless Rate
Shani O. Hilton, Hatty Lee Feb 23, 2012 9:55AM EST
When the black unemployment numbers dropped so steeply in January–from 15.7 to 12.7 percent–a lot of analysts were scratching their heads to figure out why. One told us that it was "quite surprising," but there would be no way to know what the numbers meant or whether they were accurate until we saw if the trend continued in later months. But why is that? Aren't these numbers hard and fast facts? We dug a little deeper into the process of tracking joblessness to find out. Put on your data nerd hat and follow along.
We learned two important things. First, it's confusing. Second, it's difficult to know each month if the latest numbers bandied about on newscasts are as accurate as we think they are. When unemployment numbers fall, like they did so dramatically with black workers last month, any one of three factors could be driving that change–and it's difficult to know which one is really making the difference. Colorlines.com graphic designer Hatty Lee has mapped out the three factors visually below, but here's the detailed explanation of each option.
1) An actual reduction in unemployment. This is the ideal, but since it's unlikely that unemployment would fall by three points for the black population in a single month, real employment is not likely the only thing that it explains it.
2) Month-to-month variability for smaller populations. Unemployment for blacks has hovered around double the rate of whites for decades. But the numbers tend to fluctuate a bit more for black workers, because of the way joblessness is tallied. To get the nation's unemployment data, researchers select 60,000 households representing 350 million people. Of that 60,000, the proportional sample of black households is about 7,500. That's a fairly small number within the larger sample, and the smaller the sample, the more likely it is to fluctuate dramatically.
2) The impact of new weights. This is where it gets complicated. Each household is sampled for four months, then ignored for eight months, then sampled for four more months, and then released from the sample. And each household is given a different formula weight, depending on a wide range of factors, including the identity of the household and the larger socio-economic picture.
So, think of each household like a car. These weights stay the same for a year, and then at the end of the year, the households are reweighted to reflect the more current economic climate. If each household is like a car, then over the course of a year, every month the numbers get slightly further out of alignment–because the weights stay the same from January to December even as the broader economic picture changes. By the end of the year, the car needs a tune-up, which is when the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-weights the household.
This means that the decline in unemployment from January 2011 to December 2011 is most likely to be a misreading, because the households sampled in December are using the same weights as the January households–even though the weights in December are now far out of alignment with the larger economic picture.
Secondarily, at the end of each 10 year Census, the BLS does another re-weighting. If the January numbers were calculated under new weights, and the December numbers were calculated under the old weights, then calculating the December numbers under the new weights could show a less steep drop in unemployment.
Most importantly, however, what we've learned is that there's really no way to tell what's going on until a few more months have passed.
June Jobs Numbers: Nightmare on Main Street, Part 2
Graduates, Go Forth and...Join the Unemployment Line
A Timeline of the (Paltry) Job Creation Initiatives D.C. Has Mustered
How To Create Crisis: Build An Economy on the Greed of the Rich
Adding Up the Jobs Data: Washington Is Making Things Worse!


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The overall aim of this study was to bring together research that looked at working time patterns in the UK and made comparisons with the EU and other developed countries, with a view to explaining why the UK workforce had some of the longest working hours in Europe.
Interest in this topic was stimulated by the debate within government, industry and other organisations about the effectiveness of long hours working, particularly with respect to organisational performance and increasing productivity. It was commissioned against the background of increasing demands for better work-life balance and new government measures to tackle long hours working; most notably the Working Time Regulations (WTR) that came into force on 1 October 1998.
This report was based on a review of the research literature and secondary analysis of established social survey series: 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98); the Labour Force Survey (LFS) including the European Community Labour Force Survey (ECLFS); and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). It also provided case studies of UK firms that were 'matched' with similar EU firms (from France, Germany and Sweden) to 'test-out' and 'contextualise' survey evidence.
The review of the research literature showed that what constituted 'long hours working' was very much subject to debate. People's own assessments seemed to be based upon their own direct experience, such that long hours working was perceived as a significant departure from their normal working week. However, for the purpose of this report, it was defined as more than 48 hours a week, in line with the WTR.
Most of the research literature and survey data reviewed pre-dated the introduction of the WTR. These findings should not, therefore, be used to draw conclusions either about employers' or employees' compliance with, or the impact of, the Working Time Regulations 1998.
Who is working long hours?
Eleven per cent of employees in the UK were working long hours (over 48 hours a week).
There were clear gender differences. Men were significantly more likely to work long hours than women.
Men with children were slightly more likely to work longer hours than those without, while women with children were less likely to work long hours than those without.
There were also clear life-cycle differences, with people aged between 30 and 49 being the most likely to work long hours.
Managers, professionals and operative and assembly workers were those occupations most likely to work long hours. Amongst women who worked long hours, two-thirds were in managerial and professional occupations (23 per cent and 40 per cent respectively).
Some research suggested that there were significant differences in the incidence of long hours working across the managerial grades, with top managers the most likely to be working over sixty hours a week.
Over two-thirds of managerial and professional long hours workers were neither paid nor given time-off in lieu. This contrasts sharply with craft and skilled, services, operative and assembly workers, where well over half were compensated in some way for working extra hours (WERS98).
The sectors with a particularly high incidence of long hours working were construction, transport, communication and agriculture, forestry and fishing. The incidence of long hours working was higher in the private sector than the public sector.
The proportion of UK employees working long hours had increased over the previous decade, notwithstanding that between 1988 and 1998 the basic average weekly standard hours fell for both men and women (from 40.2 to 39.3 and 37.4 to 36.8, respectively).
The increase in long hours working was primarily due to the increased use of overtime both paid and unpaid. The large rise in unpaid overtime among women was likely to reflect the increase in the numbers of women employed in managerial and professional occupations.
Over one-third of men with children in the household worked more than 50 hours per week in 1998, which was a six per cent rise over the previous decade (Harkness, LFS).
The incidence of long working hours increased over the decade 1988 to 1998 following a period of long-term decline. Uniquely, in the UK this had been accompanied by a growing polarisation in working hours, with some groups working longer and others working shorter hours.
Manual and non-manual workers gave significantly different reasons for long hours working. The reasons given for long hours working depended greatly on whether overtime was paid or not paid (WERS98).
Paid overtime was most commonly found amongst manual occupations. Where overtime was paid, the main reason given for overtime working was to 'increase pay', while the second most important reason was related to the need to meet the requirements of the job (WERS98).
Unpaid overtime was most common amongst manual and professional workers. Where overtime was unpaid, the main reasons given for overtime working were related to the requirements of the job (WERS98).
Amongst managerial and professional workers, there was a clear association between the amount of overtime worked and current levels of pay. This lends support to the view that managers and professional staff work long hours in anticipation/expectation of higher earnings in the future (BHPS). (However, more detailed statistical analysis suggests that the link between hours worked and earnings may be more complex).
The review of the research literature, backed up by the findings from the case studies, suggested that a major reason for long hours working, particularly when it was unpaid, was the volume of work. Factors perceived to be associated with increasing volumes of work relate to new organisational initiatives (including flattening organisational structures due to de-layering, increases in project based working, a greater emphasis on customer focus, meetings culture), staff shortages (including demands upon specialist staff), IT/email overload, and increasing need for some employees to travel for their work.
The review of the research literature suggested that the attitudes and expectations of managers and, in some cases, workgroup members could be critical in engendering a long hours culture where 'being present' was valued as a sign of commitment to work. The case studies suggested that cultural pressures were likely to be particularly prevalent amongst employers of non-manual workers, where the behaviour and attitudes of managers and work colleagues combinde to push up the level of unpaid overtime.
Other reasons given for long hours working included job insecurity, employee preference, occupational commitment and career enhancement.
Overall, the research findings showed that many people working long hours did so for a combination of reasons, which could be difficult to disentangle, especially in an organisation or part of an organisation where a long hours culture wass perceived or was known to prevail.
Average working hours in the UK were mid-range across all EU member states when all employees (full-time and part-time employees) were included.
However, simple international comparisons can be misleading. In particular, the UK position (mid-range) was distorted by the fact that, compared with most other EU states, the UK employed a high proportion of part-time women workers (working fewer than 30 hours a week).
Amongst full-time employees, the UK showed high levels of long hours working (over 48 hours a week), especially amongst men, where the UK had the highest level of long hours working in the EU. Just over one-fifth (22 per cent) of UK men working full-time worked long hours, compared with an average of one-tenth (11 per cent) across the other EU member states.
Full-time male managers worked the longest hours in the UK and across the EU member states as a whole. However, (on average) UK managers did not work longer hours than their EU counterparts.
In the craft, trade, operative and elementary occupations a significantly higher proportion of full-time male employees worked over 48 hours, than in any other EU member state.
Professional women in the UK worked a higher proportion of long hours than their EU counterparts, though EU women managers were more likely to work long hours than women managers in the UK.
The UK had comparatively high concentrations of long hours working in the production sectors, in contrast to other EU states, where it was more concentrated in the service sector, particularly hotels and catering.
Overall, between 1992 and 1999 (on average) there had been very little change in the proportions of long hours working both in the UK and the rest of the EU.
In the USA, a quarter of men and a tenth of women were working more than 48 hours a week. These proportions had risen over recent decades. In common with EU member states, managers were the most likely to work long hours.
In Australia, around one-third of men were working long hours, which represented a significant increase from one-fifth in 1984. Also, 15 per cent of women worked more than 48 hours a week. As with the USA and EU member states, long hours work in Australia was concentrated amongst managers. However, it was also to be found amongst trades, sales and operative workers.
In Japan, 36 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women worked over 48 hours per week in 1994. For men this represented a significant cutback in long hours working over the previous decade, when over half of men worked over 48 hours per week in 1984.
statutory and contractual regulation: in particular the existence of working hours legislation pre-dating the European Working Time Directive (Luxembourg, France, Netherlands and Spain) and collective contractual agreements (Germany and Sweden) that reduced working hours.
Cultural factors were also cited. However, the research evidence was limited mainly to Japan.
Women were less likely to be satisfied with their job overall, the more hours they worked. The reverse was true for men. However, satisfaction with promotion prospects increased the more hours that were worked, particularly for women.
Women, particularly those working long hours, were more likely to want to reduce their working hours.
The UK case studies suggested that manual workers working long hours, who were able significantly to boost their pay through overtime working, were not only satisfied with their (long) hours but also were resistant to attempts to reduce working hours.
There were considerable theoretical and methodological difficulties in measuring the impact of long hours working on organisational performance. Overall, however, on the basis of the evidence, it was not possible to establish conclusively whether long hours working had beneficial, detrimental or neutral overall effects. There was some recent evidence suggesting that reductions in long hours might be a factor associated with increases in employment or productivity. However, it was difficult to isolate the impact of reducing working hours per se, since reductions in long hours working were typically accompanied by other developments, such as changes in work organisation, new capital investment, etc.
The review of the research literature showed that long hours working, especially when coupled with sleep disruption, caused deterioration of task performance, because it had detrimental effects on such things as rates of error, pace of work and social behaviour. However, there was no conclusive evidence that long hours working led to lower levels of overall work or organisational performance. Moreover, if it did, it was difficult to establish the working time duration thresholds at which any such effects set in, especially as this was likely to vary significantly according to individual characteristics. The UK case study research suggested that some employers had serious concerns about the adverse impact of long working hours on productivity and quality of output.
The review of the research literature showed clear grounds for concern about the adverse effect of long hours working and (the frequency of) health and safety incidents. However, most of this research focused upon specific occupations (eg long distance lorry drivers, the medical professions), which precluded more general conclusions being drawn.
The review of the research literature showed that there was little robust statistical evidence on the effects of long hours working on employee motivation, absence and turnover. However, self-reporting and organisational case studies suggested that long working hours had a negative effect on motivation, absence and turnover. The analysis of WERS98 revealed a significant association between long hours working and higher staff turnover. However, it was not clear whether long hours working was leading to higher staff turnover or whether high rates of staff turnover made it necessary for remaining employees to work longer hours. The UK case study research showed that some employers were particularly concerned that working long hours might lead to higher levels of sickness absence and staff turnover.
The review of the literature showed that there was a considerable body of research looking at the influence of work patterns on employee health, although most of this focused on employees working unsocial hours or shift patterns, rather than long working hours per se. Here the cumulative research evidence showed that there were associations between long hours working and health outcomes, such as mental health and cardio-vascular problems. The UK case study research suggested a link between long hours working and minor ill-health problems, particularly for non-manual workers.
The review of the research literature and the UK case studies suggested that many, but by no means all, long hours workers were unhappy with their work-life balance and that their working patterns had a negative impact on their domestic relationships. However, there was no robust statistical evidence that long hours workers were significantly more likely than employees with standard or alternative working hours (eg shift and rotating shift workers, flexible workers, etc.) to perceive that their working arrangements had a detrimental effect on their work-life balance.
Were women more likely to be disadvantaged by long hours working?
Partnered women who worked long hours still carried the burden for the main household tasks of cleaning and cooking. This was rare for partnered men working long hours. This might have been part of the explanation why women were more likely than men to be dissatisfied with long hours working.
Women working long hours were much more likely than those who did not work long hours to report poor health. For women, there was also an association between long hours working and higher levels of mental stress, especially if it was over a sustained period (over a year) and they had a partner. In contrast, men who worked long hours reported being healthier than men who worked shorter hours. However, this might have been the result of healthier people being able to work longer hours and those with ill health having to work fewer hours, rather than long hours working leading to better health.
Working people's satisfaction with various aspects of their lives, for example, health, social life and leisure pursuits, tended to decrease with the number of hours worked. Again, this negative effect was much more marked amongst women than men.
Overall, the findings suggested that long hours working put women under greater amounts of pressure and had a greater negative impact on their health, well-being and satisfaction with life than it did for men.
Little conclusive evidence was available on the benefits of long hours working. However, the review of the research literature and the case studies suggested that, in at least some UK workplaces, manual workers saw positive benefits from long hours working, in that it provided opportunities to increase their earnings, at least in the short term. Also, managers and professional staff saw the benefits of long hours working in improved promotion prospects and/or in providing for greater job security.
Long hours working was associated with (but was not proved to cause) various negative effects, such as decreased productivity, poor performance, health problems, and lower employee motivation.
More men than women worked long hours.
Women were more likely than men to suffer health related problems, if they worked long hours.
The most common reasons for working long hours were to increase pay (where overtime was paid) or to meet the needs of the job (where it was not paid).


As the construction industry introduces new materials and methods for constructing buildings quicker and cheaper - while deadlines become increasingly reduced - attention to detail inevitably suffers. This leaves building owners with expensive building envelope issues rearing their ugly heads just as occupancy should be getting underway.
Fixing these issues after the building is "complete" is a difficult task due to the components being hidden behind expensive finishes. Time is money, and finding these trouble areas after the fact takes a lot of time. In some cases I have seen projects resort to designing supplemental systems to "hide" the building envelope issues due to the impossible task of locating these trouble areas in the envelope.
ASHRAE provides guidance on the building enclosure commissioning process from design, installation, and through final operation/maintenance in Guideline 0-2013. Also, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) has recently incorporated building enclosure commissioning as a requirement in the new version of LEED v4.
Finally, doing the research to ensure that your engineer has experience with both design and commissioning can save immeasurable time, cost, and anguish down the line.
ENGVT is experienced with both building design and commissioning. We are often asked to diagnose issues that present as mechanical system deficiencies but are actually building envelope issues that have, in effect, changed the design basis of the HVAC systems.
Having experience as both the design engineer and commissioning agent is instrumental in bridging the gap between architectural and mechanical criteria during the commissioning process.


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Construction work on Morland Mixité Capitale in central Paris is now well underway. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo visited the site on 14 February to attend the inauguration of the Maison du Projet, a public information pavilion about the project.
The building forms part of the Réinventer Paris project, an initiative which aimed to find innovative urban proposals on several sites across the city. The project, won in 2016 together with the French developer Emerige, is the conversion of a former municipal building on the banks of the River Seine. When it opens in 2021, the building will house, among other things, apartments, offices and a hotel, with a market hall on the ground floor. A bar and restaurant on the top two floors with an inhabitable art installation by Ólafur Elíasson and Sebastian Behmann from Studio Other Spaces will be publicly accessible, offering views across the city.
Image © Caspar Muschalek for BRS