Khaled Meshaal is the political leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, which earlier this year came to power with a large majority in the free and democratic election in Palestine. In summer 2006 the Israeli Minister of Justice Haim Ramon publicly confirmed his government's order to kill Khaled Meshaal. In 1997 in the Jordanian capital Amman Meshaal survived a assassination attempt by Israel's secret service Mossad by a narrow margin. Currently the leading Hamas politician lives in Syrian asylum in Damascus under strong security.
R.R. Mr. Khaled Meshaal, as a leading politician of Hamas you are on the assassination list of the Israeli intelligence service. How did you become a member of the Islamic resistance movement against Israeli occupation?
Actually, I am one of the founders of the Hamas movement. Inside Hamas the most prominent figure was the late Sheik Ahmed Yassim. When the Hamas movement was established in the year 1987 I was 31 years old. I was among the people who had built up branches inside and outside Palestine. But the very idea of Hamas started already at the end of the seventies. The internal dialogue and deliberation lasted for more than ten years in order to establish a movement against Israeli occupation. But the very project of the movement had already been in my heart and in my mind when I was still at Kuwait-University. At the age of 21 I represented the Islamic movement in the students General Union at university.
R.R.For many years there has been the suggestion in the Western media that Israeli intelligence was instrumental in the creation of Hamas. I suppose you know about this story?
Unfortunately this tale is told by some Arabs, Palestinian Arabs. It is an attempt to distort the image of our movement. We consider this charge as something so ridiculous, that we don't even bother to deny it. It is so illogical. How come, that Israel should establish an organisation that will combat Israel, how is that possible?
R.R.The argument is, the Israelis helped to create Hamas in order to divide the Palestinian resistance and weaken the Fatah movement.
Indeed, during the seventies the main Palestinian force that was combatting Israel was the Fatah-movement. Consequently Israel concentrated its fighting against Fatah und the other, smaller groups of Palestinian resistance, which existed in this period. At that time, however, Hamas was not yet properly established. We were only starting to build our social base in Palestinian society, by focussing entirely on social affairs, organizing help, building hospitals and schools, looking after the sick and deprived. In that era we were only involved in peaceful actions. This is why Israel did not do anything against us.
Because they did not know at the time, what was going on in our minds. But, while we were focussing outwardly only on social and educational work, at the same time we were secretly already training and preparing for our future resistance projects. Because the Israelis did not see this danger they concentrated their actions against other brigades, not against us. And it is this Israeli inaction against us, which some Palestinian Arab elements unfriendly towards Hamas present as "proof", that Israel was supporting the creation of Hamas.
R.R.Recently Hamas' relations with the Fatah movement have been very strained. Is there still a chance for a national unity government?
There is a positive atmosphere between the movement of Hamas und Fatah to create a unity government. Since one month we have agreed in principle on the creation of such a unity government. Recently, however, some obstacles have started to appear. The first obstacle was that there were efforts to bring us back to a "government of technocrats", not forward to the national unity government. This is how they want to remove Hamas from the government. And the second obstacle is that the guarantees for lifting the blockade are still not sufficient.
R.R.Guarantees? Guarantees from the West?
We made an agreement, that once we have formed a government of national unity, the siege shall be lifted. Hamas is very serious about this. We are keen to end the suffering of the Palestinian people. But as our movement got the majority of votes and has most seats in parliament we also have the right to have the major influence in this government. The main dilemma now is that there are forces, which deny us this right.
R.R.One of the key issues is the so-called recognition of "Israel's right to exist". Is Hamas prepared to change its position on this matter? Especially as the West has made this issue a condition sine-qua-non for the lifting of the blockade against a Hamas-led Palestinian government.
I think the Western world has understood by now that Hamas will never recognise Israel. How can I recognise the one who occupies my land? It is illogical that it is demanded of Hamas to recognise Israel. I am the victim. I am the man who is not free. I am the man living in the Diaspora away from my land. Israel has got a kind of a nation that was imposed as a "fait accompli" by the United Nations. We don't have a nation. More than half of the Palestinian people are living in the Diaspora, mostly in camps and they can't go home. Because of Israel they can't go home and we should recognise Israel? Who is actually in the wrong, us or Israel?
R.R. But the 2-state theory which the Americans are promoting – envisages a Palestinian state next to an Israeli state. Is this also absolutely unacceptable for Hamas?
No. No. Let me say that the Hamas movement will only establish a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, that includes the West of Jerusalem and the Westbank. Up till now Israel does not recognise this right for us. All the Palestinians are demanding is this right. But Israel keeps violating Palestinian rights and the West is unwilling to force Israel to recognise the Palestinian rights.
Even when President Bush talked about a Palestinian state, it was not clear cut. And Ariel Sharon and recently Ehud Olmert have made a lot of reservations about Bush's proposal. They are rejecting the idea of an Israeli state within its 1967 borders. They want an Israeli state, which includes parts of the Westbank. Actually President Bush had even agreed to Sharon's proposal for Israel to keep all of Jerusalem. And he agreed with Sharon to choose the right Palestinian leader who would accept all this.
R.R.Have I understood you correctly that you would be prepared to negotiate with Israel and accept it within its borders of 1967, before it started its wars of aggression, stealing Palestinian land?
Good, that has been made clear.
R.R.In the West Hamas is generally depicted as being absolutely against talks with Israel and that Hamas only wants to drive the Israeli jews into the sea.
This is not correct. Killing Jews is not our aim. For centuries we have lived in Palestine peacefully with Jews and Christians of all kind. We are fighting Israel because it occupies our land and oppresses our people. We are fighting Israel to finish this occupation. We want to live freely on our land just as other nations. We want to have our own country just like other people. But the Zionist movement came from all over the world to occupy our land. And the real owner of the land has been kicked out. This is the root of the problem.
Because of many factors, we now accept to build a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967. But that doesn't mean that we recognise Israel. But we are prepared to make a long term truce with Israel. Accepting the status of Israel without recognising it.
R.R. But, no recognition? Doesn't that mean continued tensions and war?
No. There are plenty of examples where no recognition does not mean war. China and Taiwan for example have not recognized each other but they trade and cooperate with each other. – By withholding a formal recognition we just don't want to give Israel the legitimacy for having taken our land in the first place.
R.R.It is no secret, that for many years under the Fatah-government the Palestine security services have been trained and equipped by the Americans, namely the CIA. Is it therefore not reasonable to assume, that a whole lot of people in the movement of the Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas are secretly working for the Americans and Israelis, some possibly in top positions? How far could you trust Fatah if you were to build a national unity government together?
This problem is well known for us and for the rest of the Palestinians. But not all of the people of Fatah are of this kind. There is a huge motivation within Fatah which is "nationality". They are our partners in the resistance. But there are others, the people you spoke about. That is a fact. We know the problem quite well and we are dealing with it. Moreover, the relationship is not, by necessity, always based upon trust.
R.R.Do you think that this problem is also at the root of the difficulties you are having right now with Fatah in creating a unity government?
Yes, that's right. This is one of the problems. Unfortunately, there are these factors and pressures which are following foreign agendas that influence negatively the Palestinian arena. But the patriotic forces are the ones that are going to win. The Palestinian people have confirmed this in the latest democratic elections.
R.R.Is Hamas the movement of religious fanatics, as it is portrayed in the West? A movement with which one cannot deal? Yet, Hamas has been accepted and invited to Moscow by the Russian government and here (in Syria) you are guests of a secular state. Is this all a disguise? Which is the true Hamas.
R.R.Are you actually working together with the Christians in Palestine?
Yes, with some of them.
This image of religious fanaticism has been fabricated by Israel and the American administration. It is an image that does not reflect the facts. You know that the American administration gives itself the right to classify people just the way they like. But how can respectable states in Europe, like Britain, Germany or France, be influenced by this propaganda. Should they not search for the truth themselves? Should they not form their views on the basis of reason instead of rumours and hearsay.
But how should the West discover the truth about Palestine and Hamas? First the Western journalists should come here to meet the people and see the facts with their own eyes. Go to Palestine and see how the people live. Listen to what the people have to say. Listen to leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian movements. You should learn the truth through direct contacts and not through others. And if you want to know about Hamas then go and meet the people from Hamas. We are ready for dialogue.
If you are looking for reasons, why Hamas won the election, then it is because the Palestinian people trust us and because Hamas reflects the feelings and the aspirations of the Palestinian people. And if you scrutinize Hamas closely then you will not find any corruption whatsoever. But you will find, that Hamas is very close to the people, that it is really serving the needs of the people. And if the people of Palestine elected Hamas, then the will of the people should be respected, also by the West.
R.R.But what about the reproach of religious fanaticism?
That is easy to refute. If Hamas was a movement of religious fanatics, it wouldn't have been elected by the Palestinian people, because in Palestine there are many groups. And there are also Christians, who work together with us. For instance one of the Members of Parliament in Gaza who was elected on the Hamas list is a Christian doctor. And the majority of Muslims and Christians gave him their vote. The fact is, that the ideas of Hamas are moderate. We practice tolerance with everybody. And we deal with Muslims and Christians at the same level. And on this level we deal with everybody, either religious, liberal or secular, either inside or outside of Palestine. And we have relations within the Middle East but also in Europe and Africa. Hamas is an open movement. We do not combat Israel because they are Jews but because they are occupying our land.
R.R.The West is reproaching you, that in this fight against Israel you are committing acts of terrorism.
No. There is a major difference between terrorism and resistance. We are against terrorism. Resistance is not terrorism. What Israel is doing is terrorism. What we are doing is resistance. Because it is a reaction against the Israeli aggression and a reaction against the Israeli occupation of our land. The resistance is the legal right to defend ourselves.


text:
\section{Introduction \label{sec:Intro}}

Understanding the complex physical and chemical phenomena occurring in reacting systems is crucial because of the urgent need for a reduction of the environmental impact of the next generation combustion systems.
However, performing detailed experimental and/or numerical investigations of combustion systems (especially when large-scale systems are taken into account) is not always straightforward because of the associated high computational cost  \cite{cant2002high}.

Thus, the adoption of reduced order models (ROMs) represents a viable option in this context, as the latter are capable of describing complex reacting systems with low errors and minimal computational costs \cite{parente2011investigation, bellemans2018feature, Coussement2013}.

One of the most employed algorithms to construct ROMs for reacting flows is represented by the principal component analysis (PCA) \cite{Jolliffe2011}, also known as proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) \cite{berkooz1993proper}.
The latter is a dimensionality reduction algorithm based on the projection of the original system onto a lower-dimensional manifold whose directions (the principal components, PCs) are orthogonal and obtained as linear combination of the original variables.
In literature, it is possible to find many applications exploiting PCA to speed-up computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of reacting systems by reducing the number of the differential equations to be solved for combustion or atmospheric re-entry applications \cite{isaac2014reduced, malik2021combustion,bellemans2017reduced,d2022automated}.
In addition, the algorithm and its local formulation were recently validated for clustering in chemical kinetics applications \cite{d2020adaptive, d2020impact}, for data analysis of Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of reacting jets \cite{d2020analysis,d2020unsupervised}, and for feature extraction and selection to enhance the classification and regression accuracy of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) \cite{tipler2022predicting,d2021feature}.

Recently, dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) \cite{Schmid10} was proposed for the analysis and the development of ROMs of unsteady systems.
The main advantage for this algorithm over alternative modal decomposition techniques, such as PCA, is represented by the possibility to retrieve the frequency associated to the modes to analyze the system.
In addition, DMD finds patterns that can be related to flow instabilities \cite{Souvick2013,Quinlan2014,Huang2016,Motheau2014}, and it can also be used for dimensionality reduction, as fewer DMD modes are usually capable of reproducing the main flow dynamics with a reduced computational cost.
Nevertheless, its applicability is usually limited to specific conditions \cite{LeClaincheVegaComplexity18}.
Thus, higher order dynamic mode decomposition (HODMD) \cite{LeClaincheVega17} was found to be a more robust alternative to standard DMD for non-reactive complex flows and noisy experimental data, and it has been widely used in the analysis of several complex flows in industrial applications, either to create ROMs or to study flow patterns \cite{Corrochano,Lazpita2022,LeClaincheetalJAircraft18,LeClaincheetalJFM2020}.
Recently, HODMD was also proposed and validated for the development of reduced order models for reacting flows \cite{Corrochano22}.

In the current work, a modified formulation for HODMD is proposed to accomplish feature selection and clustering of variables when high-dimensional reacting systems are considered. More specifically, the hierarchical HODMD (hereinafter referred to as h-HODMD), iteratively identifies the best reconstructed variables and associates them with the corresponding DMD modes and frequencies.
The performance of the proposed algorithm are assessed using three databases obtained from CFD simulations of a laminar co-flow flame taking into account different kinetic mechanisms, as well as different boundary conditions.
The two kinetic mechanisms used to describe methane oxidation consist of 84 and 53 chemical species, respectively.
A wide range of chemical time scales is also considered since the nitrogen oxides' chemistry is also included in one of the two mechanisms.
The considered flame, despite being laminar, exhibits complex physics because of local extinction phenomena.
Finally, the results are compared with the ones obtained by using a standard HODMD in terms of the achievable degree of reduction as well as in terms of reconstruction error.

The current work is organized as follows.
In Section \ref{sec:Meth}, the original HODMD is explained and the modifications to obtain the h-HODMD are discussed.
In Section \ref{Num}, the numerical setup for the CFD simulations that were considered for the training datasets is shown and discussed.
Finally, the main results and conclusions are presented in Sections \ref{Results} and \ref{sec:conclusions}, respectively.

\section{Higher Order Dynamic Mode Decomposition \label{sec:Meth}}

Higher Order Dynamic Mode Decomposition (HODMD) \cite{LeClaincheVega17} is a data driven method used in fluid dynamics to identify flow patterns.
The latter represents an extension of Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) \cite{Schmid10} used for the analysis of complex flow \cite{LeClainche19}, noisy experiments \cite{Mendez21} or turbulent flows \cite{LeClaincheHanFerrer19}.
HODMD decomposes data equispaced in time as an expansion of Fourier-like DMD modes as

\begin{equation}
	\bv(x,y,t_{k})\simeq  \sum_{m=1}^M a_{m}\bu_m(x,y)e^{(\delta_m+i \omega_m)t_k},\quad
	k=1,\ldots,K,\label{ab00}
\end{equation}
where $\bu_m$ are the DMD modes and $a_{m}$, $\omega_m$, $\delta_m$ are their associated amplitudes, frequencies and growth rates.
The number of DMD modes ($M$) is referred to as {\it spectral complexity}, whereas $K$ in Eq. \ref{ab00} represents the number of snapshots available for the analyzed data, which is referred to as the {\it temporal dimension}.
A thorough description of the algorithm can be found in Ref. \cite{LeClaincheVega17}, while the associated code is available in Ref. \cite{HODMDbook}.

\subsection{Main algorithm \label{sec:Main}}

Firstly, equidistant snapshots in time for the considered dynamical system (with time interval $\Delta t$) are organized as the following snapshot matrix
\begin{equation}
	\bV_1^K = [\bv_{1},\bv_{2},\ldots,\bv_{k},\bv_{k+1},\ldots,\bv_{K-1},\bv_{K}].\label{ab0}
\end{equation}
From the definition in Eq. \ref{ab0}, it follows that the dimensions of the input matrix are thus $J \times K$, where $K$ is the number of snapshots analyzed and $J = N_x \times N_y$ is the number of grid points considered for the CFD simulations.
The HODMD algorithm can be summarized into two main steps: first, a spatial reduction via singular value decomposition (SVD) is accomplished, then the DMD-d algorithm is applied.

Within the first step, SVD is applied to the snapshot matrix to reduce noise and spatial redundancies to only retain the large scales:

\begin{equation}
	\bV_1^K = \bU \bSigma \bT^T = \bU \hat{\bV}_1^K,
\end{equation}

where $\hat{\bV}_1^K$ is the {\it reduced snapshot matrix} whose dimensions are $N \times K$.
The number of SVD modes to be retained ($N$) can be determined setting a tolerance $\varepsilon_1$ as
\begin{equation}
	\dfrac{\sigma_{N+1}}{\sigma_1}\leq \varepsilon_1.\label{e26}
\end{equation}
By means of the operations discussed above, the spatial complexity can be reduced from $J$ grid points to $N$ linearly independent vectors.
When high-dimensional data are analyzed, such as the ones obtained from complex reacting systems, SVD is replaced with Higher Order Singular Value Decomposition (HOSVD) \cite{HOSVD}.
To perform this decomposition, the snapshot matrix $\bV_1^K$ is organized in tensor form $\bV_{ijlk}$ having dimensions $N_v \times N_x \times N_y \times K$.
HOSVD can then be used to reduce the dimensionality in an efficient way.
The algorithm applies standard SVD to the four matrices whose columns are formed by each one of the four dimensions of the tensor.
In particular, if a four-dimensional tensor is considered, HOSVD is applied as follows

\begin{equation}
	\bV_{ijlk}\simeq\sum_{p_1=1}^{N_v}\sum_{p_2=1}^{N_x}\sum_{p_3=1}^{N_y}\sum_{n=1}^{K} \bS_{p_1p_2p_3n}
	\bW^{(v)}_{ip_1}\bW^{(x)}_{jp_2} \bW^{(y)}_{lp_3} \bT_{kn},    \label{c10}
\end{equation}

where $S_{p_1p_2p_3n}$ is the core tensor and $\bW^{(v)}$, $\bW^{(x)}$, $\bW^{(y)}$ and $\bT$ are the modes of the decomposition in each dimension. As well as in SVD, it is possible to retain a number of modes en each direction, in order to remove the noise and retain the large scales.
The temporal modes matrix $\bT$ is used as the reduced snapshot matrix.

In the second step, i.e., the application of the {\it DMD-d algorithm}, the high order Koopman assumption is applied to the reduced snapshot matrix as follows

\begin{equation}
	\hat\bV_{d+1}^K\simeq \hat\bR_1 \hat\bV_1^{K-d}+ \hat\bR_2 \hat\bV_2^{K-d+1} + \ldots + \hat\bR_d \hat\bV_d^{K-1}.\label{ab6}
\end{equation}

The Koopman operators $\hat\bR_1$, $\hat\bR_2$, $\cdots$, $\hat\bR_d$ are encompassed into a single matrix, which contains the dynamics of the system.
When $d=1$ is considered, the algorithm provides the same results to the standard DMD.

The eigenvalues provide the frequencies $\omega_m$ and the growth rates $\delta_m$ of the eigenvectors, which are used to construct the DMD modes $\bu_m$.
Finally, the amplitude of the DMD modes $a_m$ are obtained via least squares fitting of the expansion which was previously expressed in Eq. \ref{ab00}.
Using a second tunable tolerance $\varepsilon_2$, it is possible to then select $M$ DMD modes that are representative for the main dynamics of the system as follows

\begin{equation}
	a_{M+1}/a_1\leq \varepsilon_2. \label{b66}
\end{equation}

When the considered database is related to the transient state of a numerical simulation, it is necessary to perform another step to identify the leading modes driving the flow dynamics. This step consists in computing the contribution to the transient state $I_m$ defined as
\begin{equation}
	I_m = \sum_{k = 1}^{K} \lvert a_m e^{(\delta_m + i\omega_m)t_k}\rvert \;\|u_m\|_{F}^{2} \times \Delta t, \label{e42}
\end{equation}
where $\| \bullet \|_{F}^2 $ is the square of the Frobenius norm.
This index $I_m$ takes into account also the damping or growth of the modes in time, which is reflected in $\delta_m$.
A much more detailed description about this criterion can be found in \cite{Kou}.

Finally, the accuracy of the algorithm is measured in terms of the relative root mean square error (RRMSE) as

\begin{equation}
	\text{RRMSE}=\sqrt{\frac{\|\bV^\text{DMD}-\bV\|_F}{\|\bV\|_F}}.\label{error}
\end{equation}

\subsection{Pre-processing techniques for applying HODMD to combustion databases \label{sec:scaling}}

When HODMD is applied to combustion databases, a pre-processing step of the data in terms of centering and scaling must be applied because of their multivariate nature \cite{PCA, Corrochano22}.
Centering is accomplished by subtracting the temporal mean of the considered variable to each statistical observation of the dataset, so that each sample can be seen as a fluctuation from the mean.
Scaling the variables, instead, is motivated by the need of having them lying in the same order of magnitude.
The centered and scaled $i$-th statistical observation for the $j$-th variable is finally obtained as
\begin{equation}
	\tilde{x}_{i,j} = \dfrac{x_{i,j}-\bar{x}_{i,j}}{c_j}\label{e24},
\end{equation}
\noindent where $\bar{x}_{i,j}$ represents the temporal mean of the $i$-th point considering the variable's vector $x_j$ and $c_j$ is the associated scaling factor.
Four scaling techniques were considered for the current analysis:

\begin{enumerate}
	\item \textit{Range} scaling: The difference between the maximum and minimum value of each variable is used as scaling factor.
	\item \textit{Auto} scaling: the standard deviation of the $j$-th variable ($\sigma_{j}$) is used as scaling factor.
	\item \textit{Pareto} scaling: the square root of the standard deviation of the $j$-th variable ($\sqrt{\sigma_{j}}$) is used as scaling factor.
	\item \textit{Vast} scaling: the product of the standard deviation $\sigma_{j}$ and the coefficient of variation $\sigma_{j} / \bar{x}_{j}$ is used as scaling factor.
\end{enumerate}

The effects of the different scaling factors on modal decomposition techniques such as PCA and HODMD have been throughly analyzed for combustion applications in literature \cite{PCA,d2020analysis,Corrochano22}.

\subsection{Hierarchical Higher Order Dynamic Mode Decomposition\label{sec:HHODMD}}

The hierarchical higher order dynamic mode decomposition (h-HODMD) is a new algorithm which aims at iteratively identifying the main dynamics of the considered system, creating clusters of variables having the same dynamic behavior.

After applying the chosen pre-processing technique to the considered database, HODMD is applied to the scaled tensor.
Once the model's order is reduced, each variable can be reconstructed back to the original space by multiplying by the scaling factor and adding the mean value, as

\begin{equation}
	\bx_j^{DMD} = \tilde{\bx}_j^{DMD}*c_j+\bar{\bx}_j, \label{e25}
\end{equation}

The accuracy of the reconstruction of each variable is measured afterwards by using the relative root mean square error.
A tolerance $\varepsilon_v$ is selected by the user to retain the variables verifying  the criterion

\begin{equation}
	\sqrt{\frac{\|\bx_j^\text{DMD}-\bx_j\|_F}{\|\bx_j\|_F}}<\varepsilon_v.\label{errorV}
\end{equation}

Afterwards, HODMD is applied again to the remaining variables so they can be grouped according to their reconstruction error. The variables of the considered system are progressively better reconstructed as HODMD is applied at each iteration, and new modes and frequencies are obtained.
A summary of the iterative process is shown in Figure \ref{fig:HHODMD}: a group of variables (cluster) is retained at each iteration and it is removed from the dataset for the next iteration of HODMD.
In this work, the number of clusters created in each analysis (i.e., the number of iterations for the algorithm) is set to $4$.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./HHODMD.pdf}
	\caption{Sketch for the h-HODMD algorithm: the variables of the considered dynamical system are progressively grouped together according to their reconstruction error, and clusters are obtained in an unsupervised fashion. \label{fig:HHODMD}}
\end{figure}

\section{Numerical simulations \label{Num}}

The CFD simulations carried out to obtain the databases analyzed by h-HODMD in the following sections are representative for the oxidation of a nitrogen-diluted methane jet ($65\%$ of methane and $35\%$ nitrogen on a molar basis) in air.
The oxidizer is injected into the domain with a constant velocity of 35 $cm/s$, while the fuel is injected according to the following sinusoidal velocity profile:

\begin{equation}
	v(r,t) = v_{max} \left( 1 - \frac{r^2}{R^2} \right) [1 + A \ sin(2 \pi f \ t)],
\end{equation}

where $v_{max}$ is the maximum velocity ($v_{max} = 70 cm/s$), $r$ is the radial coordinate, $R$ represents the internal radius of the nozzle and $A$ is the amplitude of the perturbation ($A = 0.25$).
\par
Three numerical simulations were carried out changing the frequency of the perturbation $f$ and/or the kinetic mechanism, as summarized in Table \ref{tab:Freq}.
The two detailed kinetic mechanisms employed for the CFD simulations were the \texttt{POLIMI\_C1\_C3\_HT\_1412} \cite{POLI}, which takes into account 84 species and 1698 reactions, and the \texttt{GRI-Mech\ 3.0} \cite{smith1999gri}, which instead consists of 53 species and 325 reactions.
The simulations carried out using the \texttt{GRI-Mech\ 3.0} represent a particularly interesting test case for the proposed algorithm.
In fact, the kinetic mechanism takes into account the chemistry associated to the formation and the consumption of nitrogen oxides (NO$_{x}$), and both phenomena are well-known to take place on completely different timescales with respect to other chemical species and radicals.
Thus, this represents an additional degree of complexity for the formulation of an accurate reduced-order model for the dynamical systems being considered in this work.

The CFD simulations were carried out by using \texttt{LaminarSMOKE}, an \texttt{OpenFOAM}-based operator-splitting solver proposed by Cuoci \emph{et al.} \cite{cuoci2013numerical}.
Additional information regarding the numerical settings for the simulations can be found in Refs. \cite{d2020adaptive,d2020impact}.

\begin{table}
	\centering
	\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
		\hline
		& frequency [Hz] & Number of species & Number of reactions  \\\hline
		Simulation 1 & 10	& 84 & 1698\\
		\hline
		Simulation 2 & 10	&  53 & 325\\
		\hline
		Simulation 3 & 20	& 53 & 325\\
		\hline
	\end{tabular}
	\caption{Frequency of the perturbation (in Hertz) and number of species and reactions being used for the CFD simulations.\label{tab:Freq}}
\end{table}

For each simulation reported in Table \ref{tab:Freq}, a database is extracted in the form of a fourth-order tensor having dimensions $n_v \times n_x \times n_y \times n_t$, where
\begin{itemize}
	\setlength\itemsep{0.01em}
	\item $n_v$ is the number of considered variables (temperature and $n_v-1$ chemical species, respectively);
	\item $n_x$ is the number of grid points along the streamwise direction;
	\item $n_y$ is the number of grid points along the spanwise direction;
	\item $n_t$ is the number of snapshots equispaced in time, considering $\Delta t = 10^{-3}$.
\end{itemize}

For all considered simulations it was imposed $n_x = n_y = 150$, while $n_v$ was changing depending on the number of species originally taken into account by the kinetic mechanism, and $n_t$ was also different for each database.
The selected values for $n_v$ and $n_t$ for the three simulations are reported in Table \ref{tab:nt} with the associated number of completed periods (a period is defined as: $T = 2\pi/f$).
The influence of this parameter on the performance of h-HODMD will also be assessed later in Sec. \ref{Results}.

\begin{table}
	\centering
	\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
		\hline
		& $n_v$ & $n_t$ & Completed periods \\\hline
		Database 1 & 83	& 250 & 1\\
		\hline
		Database 2 & 53	& 250 & 3\\
		\hline
		Database 3 & 53	& 250 & 5\\
		\hline
	\end{tabular}
	\caption{Number of variables, snapshots, and completed periods for each database considered for the h-HODMD analysis. \label{tab:nt}}
\end{table}

\section{Results\label{Results}}

The algorithm discussed in Sec. \ref{sec:Meth} was finally applied to the data obtained from the simulations summarized in Tab. \ref{tab:Freq}.
In particular, the databases were firstly preprocessed by means of the centering and scaling operations reported in Sec. \ref{sec:scaling}; afterwards, the algorithm discussed in Sec. \ref{sec:Main} was applied to extract different groups of variables according to their reconstruction error.
Finally, the dynamics for each group was analyzed.

To quantitatively evaluate the performance of the algorithm proposed in this work, three different metrics to compute the reconstruction error were employed at each iteration:

\begin{enumerate}
	\item The relative root mean square error (RRMSE) just after the application of HODMD:
	\begin{equation}
		RRMSE_{sc}=\sqrt{\frac{\|\tilde{\bV}^\text{DMD}-\tilde{\bV}\|_F}{\|\tilde{\bV}\|_F}},
	\end{equation}
	where $\tilde{\bV}$ is the centered and scaled snapshot matrix and $\tilde{\bV}^\text{DMD}$ is the reconstruction of this snapshot matrix after the application of HODMD.
	\item The RRMSE with the original tensor:
	\begin{equation}
		RRMSE_{or}=\sqrt{\frac{\|\bV^\text{DMD}-\bV\|_F}{\|\bV\|_F}}.
	\end{equation}
	In this metric, each variable of the reconstructed tensor is multiplied by its scaling factor and the mean value is added, as in eq. \ref{e25}.
	\item The average RRMSE value for the variables:
	\begin{equation}
		RRMSE_{mean}=\dfrac{\sum_{j=1}^{n_v}RRMSE_{or}(x_j)}{n_v}
	\end{equation}
\end{enumerate}

The algorithm was calibrated with the aim to ensure its robustness as well as to obtain the lowest reconstruction error, according to the procedure presented in \cite{HODMDbook,Corrochano22}.
The values for $d$ and $\varepsilon=\varepsilon_1 = \varepsilon_2$ adopted for the current work are reported in Tab. \ref{tab:dVal}.

\begin{table}
	\centering
	\begin{tabular}{|c||c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
		\hline
		&\multicolumn{8}{ |c| }{Scaling Method} \\ \hline \hline
		& \multicolumn{2}{ |c| }{Auto}&\multicolumn{2}{ |c| }{Range}& \multicolumn{2}{ |c| }{Pareto} &\multicolumn{2}{ |c| }{Vast} \\  \hline
		&$d$&$\varepsilon$&$d$&$\varepsilon$&$d$&$\varepsilon$&$d$&$\varepsilon$ \\ \hline
		Database 1 & $6$ & $4 \times 10^{-2}$ & $6$& $6 \times 10^{-4}$ & $6$ & $6 \times 10^{-4}$ & $6$ & $5 \times 10^{-3}$ \\
		\hline
		Database 2 & $15$ & $4 \times 10^{-2}$ & $12$& $6 \times 10^{-4}$ & $12$ & $1 \times 10^{-3}$ & $12$ & $4 \times 10^{-3}$ \\
		\hline
		Database 3 & $12$ & $4 \times 10^{-2}$ & $10$& $6 \times 10^{-4}$ & $12$ & $2 \times 10^{-3}$ & $12$ & $4 \times 10^{-3}$ \\
		\hline
	\end{tabular}
	\caption{Values for $d$ and $\varepsilon$ obtained in the HODMD calibration process for the cases considered in the analysis. \label{tab:dVal}}
\end{table}

For the iterative process in h-HODMD, the tolerance $\varepsilon_v$ (eq. \ref{errorV}) was set equal to $\varepsilon_{v,iter} = 0.02 \times iter$, where $iter$ is the number of iterations accomplished by the algorithm.
Thus, the tolerance becomes progressively higher with the number of iterations.
The number of variables in each cluster $n_{iter}$ is not kept constant, as this parameter is only controlled by the tolerance $\varepsilon_v$.
Other tolerances, i.e. $\varepsilon_{v,iter} = 0.01 \times iter$ and $\varepsilon_{v,iter} = 0.05 \times iter$, have been used for the calibration. However, a high tolerance means that each iteration retains a high number of variables which can have different dynamics among them. On the other hand, a small tolerance may not include all the variables with the same dynamics in a single cluster.

The first database, analyzed in Figure \ref{fig:Results1}, only considers $\sim$ 1 cycle, so the simulation can be considered fully transient.
Auto scaling appears to provide similar main dynamics at each iteration, and this is in agreement with what is expected from theory (as this scaling method gives the same importance to all the variables).
Range scaling leads instead to different dynamics for each iteration, while Pareto and Vast scaling initially emphasize temperature and most stable species, respectively, to then give to the rest of variables the same importance as the number of iterations increases. Because of that, after removing the best reconstructed variables, the algorithm give back similar dynamics between two consecutive iterations.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./ResultsDatabase1.pdf}
	\caption{From left to right: Three main frequencies calculated as in Equation \ref{e42}, $RRMSE_{sc}$, $RRMSE_{or}$ and $RRMSE_{mean}$. From top to bottom: auto scaling, range scaling, pareto scaling and vast scaling. The analysis corresponds to Database 1, i.e., to the simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 10$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 82 species. \label{fig:Results1}}
\end{figure}

The reconstruction error for the scaled ($RRMSE_{sc}$) and original tensor ($RRMSE_{or}$) increases with the number of iterations, as the algorithm progressively removes the variables which are better reconstructed. The first iteration has a low $RRMSE_{sc}$ for all the scaling methods except auto scaling, as it does not give more relevance to main variables and/or temperature. After the first iteration, the $RRMSE_{sc}$ increases for Pareto and Vast scaling, while it reaches a plateau for Range scaling.
The qualitative behavior for $RRMSE_{or}$ is similar to the one observed for $RRMSE_{sc}$, with Range scaling providing the best reconstruction error.
Finally, the mean RRMSE ($RRMSE_{mean}$) is stable for auto scaling, and this appears to be justified for it gives to all variables the same importance.
In range scaling, instead, the $RRMSE_{mean}$ decreases as the number of iterations increases.
When Pareto scaling is applied, $RRMSE_{mean}$ on the first iteration is much higher than the rest of the iterations.
This happens because the latter initially emphasizes temperature, thus ignoring the reconstruction of the rest of the variables.
After the first iteration, the rest of the variables become more important, and $RRMSE_{mean}$ decreases. The $RRMSE_{mean}$ when using vast scaling remains almost constant with the iterations.
Usually, Vast scaling focuses on extremely stable variables but this effect is mitigated as the transient behavior of the considered database for the analysis increases.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./ResultsDatabase2.pdf}
	\caption{From left to right: Three main frequencies calculated as in Equation \ref{e42}, $RRMSE_{sc}$, $RRMSE_{or}$ and $RRMSE_{mean}$. From top to bottom: auto scaling, range scaling, pareto scaling and vast scaling. The analysis corresponds to Database 2, i.e., to the simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 10$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species. \label{fig:Results2}}
\end{figure}

When databases 2 and 3 are analyzed (Figures \ref{fig:Results2} and \ref{fig:Results3}, respectively), similar results are obtained.
For the main dynamics, Auto scaling provides similar frequencies for all the iterations, Pareto and Vast scaling have different dynamics for the first iteration and find same frequencies for the rest; while Range finds different frequencies for each iteration.
With regard to the different reconstruction error metrics, the behavior of each scaling method follows the same behavior observed for the first database.
The only metric that changes is the  $RRMSE_{mean}$ for Vast scaling, which behaves similarly to Pareto scaling.
This is mainly due to the fact transient behavior for the numerical simulations 2 and 3 does not dominate as more cycles are taken into account.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./ResultsDatabase3.pdf}
	\caption{From left to right: Three main frequencies calculated as in Equation \ref{e42}, $RRMSE_{sc}$, $RRMSE_{or}$ and $RRMSE_{mean}$. From top to bottom: auto scaling, range scaling, pareto scaling and vast scaling. The analysis corresponds to Database 3, i.e., to the simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 20$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species. \label{fig:Results3}}
\end{figure}

Summarizing the results for the three databases, Auto scaling provides the worst reconstruction error, although the clusters have similar dynamics.
Range scaling gives the lowest $RRMSE_{mean}$ on the last iteration, while each cluster of variables on this scaling method have different main dynamics.
Pareto behaves similarly to Auto scaling from the second iteration onward, although it allows for a better reconstruction of the first cluster.
When Vast scaling is adopted, the first cluster appears to find different dynamics with respect to the rest of iterations and a great improvement for $RRMSE_{mean}$ is observed from second iteration onwards.

After assessing the contribution for the different scaling methods, the new iterative formulation of the algorithm was compared with the standard HODMD.
To accomplish this task, the reconstruction error relative improvement ($\eta$) between the two different algorithms is analyzed, which is defined as follows

\begin{equation}
	\eta = \dfrac{RRMSE_{HODMD}-RRMSE_{h-HODMD}}{RRMSE_{HODMD}},\label{eq:Imp}
\end{equation}

Equation \ref{eq:Imp} indicates that if a given variable is better reconstructed by h-HODMD than by the standard HODMD, a positive value for the improvement is obtained, wherease the opposite occurs when the aforementioned quantity is negative.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./Improvement.pdf}
	\caption{Reconstruction error improvement for all the variables of the chemical system computed as reported in Equation \ref{eq:Imp} for Database 1 (simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 10$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 82 species), Database 2 (simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 10$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species), Database 3 (simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 20$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species), and considering different scaling criteria (from top to bottom: Auto, Range, Pareto, Vast). \label{fig:Improvement}}
\end{figure}

The improvement factor is shown in Figure \ref{fig:Improvement} for all the databases and scaling methods.
By adopting Auto scaling, the worst results are achieved as the reconstruction error gets worse for most of the species.
The use of Range scaling improves instead the reconstruction error for most of the variables, and the same happens for Pareto scaling.
Thus, these two scaling methods appear to be a better choice when h-HODMD is adopted. Lastly, Vast scaling appears to favor the iterative algorithm as the transient behavior decreases (e.g., as when moving from database 2 to database 3).

\subsection{HODMD feature selection \label{sec:selection}}

As already discussed in Section \ref{sec:Meth}, the new iterative formulation for the HODMD is capable of achieving a lower reconstruction error by grouping different variables at each iteration, i.e., by applying a model reduction considering clusters of variables instead of the full input tensor.
\par
\begin{table}
	\centering
	\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
		\hline
		Iteration 1 & Iteration 2 & Iteration 3 & Iteration 5 & Iteration 7\\
		\hline
		$CH_4$ & $CO$ & $HO_2$ & $CH_3$ & $H_2O_2$ \\
		\hline
		$CO_2$ & $N_2O$ & $O$ & &\\
		\hline
		$H_2O$ & $NO$ & $OH$  &  &  \\
		\hline
		$N_2$ & $NO_2$& &  &\\
		\hline
		$O_2$ &  &  &   &\\
		\hline
		$T$ & &  &    &\\
		\hline
	\end{tabular}
	\caption{Clusters of variables obtained using h-HODMD for Database 3 (i.e., for the simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 20$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species) and using range scaling for the preprocessing step. \label{tab:third_range}}
\end{table}

The groups of variables that are found by the iterative algorithm for the third database considering Range scaling are listed in Table \ref{tab:third_range}, while all the other cases (in terms of databases and scaling criteria) are made available to the reader in the supplemental material.
In this work, only the most relevant species from a physical point of view were taken into account to perform the variables' clusters analysis, therefore in Table \ref{tab:third_range} only temperature, fuel, oxidizer, main oxidation products, main initiation and propagation radicals, and main nitrogen oxides are reported.
The tolerance $\epsilon_{v}$ was set equal to  $\epsilon_{v} = \textit{tol} \times iter$, where the value for \textit{tol} was set to be equal to the RRMSE of the sixth best reconstructed variable, so as the first cluster should always contain the main variables for the reacting system (i.e., temperature, fuel, oxidizer, and main oxidation products such as water and carbon dioxide).
If an iteration of the algorithm does not report any variable is then removed and the algorithm runs the next iteration until there are no variables left, so in this analysis the number of iterations is not fixed.
\par
Pareto scaling always fails at identifying groups of variables which are coherent from a chemical point of view, as seen in Table \ref{tab:third_range} and in Tables S{\MakeUppercase{\romannumeral 1}} to S{\MakeUppercase{\romannumeral 7}} of supplemental material.
In fact, O and OH are placed in different clusters, and they are grouped instead with nitrogen oxides which have a much slower dynamics.
In addition, it also requires the maximum number of iterations to identify and to cluster all the selected variables.
On the other hand, the application of Vast, and Range scaling yields to better results not only from a reconstruction error point of view, but also because of the possibility to have physics-based clusters consisting of species whose kinetic behavior is similar.
In fact, the aforementioned scaling criteria result in two different clusters separating the species having slow dynamics (such as the nitrogen oxides) from fast dynamics (radicals responsible for propagation and branching reactions such as the oxygen radicals, as well as the ones involved in initiation reactions such as the methane radical).
As shown in Table \ref{tab:third_range}, the three main nitrogen oxides (NO, NO$_{2}$, and N$_{2}$O) are grouped together when Range scaling is utilized, while another cluster is identified for oxy- and peroxy radicals (O, OH, and HO$_{2}$).
Also, this scaling only needs seven iterations to get this result, while nine iterations are needed when Vast scaling is employed.
\par
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = \linewidth]{./Improvement_relevant.pdf}
	\caption{Reconstruction error improvement for the main variables of the chemical system computed as reported in Equation \ref{eq:Imp} for Database 2 (simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 10$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species), and Database 3 (simulation obtained by imposing a sinusoidal perturbation having frequency $f = 20$ Hz and amplitude A = 0.25, and carried out with a detailed kinetic mechanism accounting for 53 species), considering different scaling criteria (from top to bottom: Auto, Range, Pareto, Vast). \label{fig:Improvement_relevant}}
\end{figure}

As can be observed from Figure \ref{fig:Improvement_relevant}, Range scaling allows for a significant improvement ($\sim$40\%) in the reduced model's accuracy for the description of radicals that are fundamental for the reacting layer dynamics and liftoff height prediction such as OH, O, H$_{2}$O$_{2}$, and CH$_{3}$.
Also from a qualitative comparison, such as the one reported in Figure \ref{fig:Rec} where the original (left side of each figure) and the reconstructed (right side of each figure) variables' profiles are compared, it is clear that the error observed when the proposed algorithm is adopted is negligible.

Finally, the two most relevant modes for temperature and nitrogen oxides are reported in Figure \ref{fig:Modes}.
In particular, the left side of each figure is representative for $\omega_1 \sim 126$, which is the frequency of perturbation of the simulation ($f_1 = \omega_1/2\pi \simeq 20$). This mode has, for all the species, a dominant component along the streamwise direction due to the effects of the sinusoidal velocity perturbation.
Also, the modes for the nitrogen oxides are non-negative in the regions where these chemical species are formed and have the maximum concentration (i.e., in the regions where the reaction terms are stronger) while negative values are observed where the transport term is dominant and no reaction is occurring.
On the right side of each contour in Figure \ref{fig:Modes}, the frequency with highest energy $\omega_2 = 25$ is shown. This particular frequency was selected as it is one sub-harmonic of the main frequency ($\omega_2= \omega_1/5$) thus it is expected to have larger structures.
For all the considered variables, it is possible to observe that the mode is focused on the large flow structures upstream and downstream, and it also has a peak in the liftoff and the flame border regions which are due to the strong gradients (both in the streamwise and in the spanwise directions) they undergo.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./T.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./NO.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./NO2.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./N2O.pdf}
	\caption{Reconstruction of a representative snapshot of the flame for different variables using h-HODMD (Range scaling). The right side of each contour represents the original snapshot, while the left side of each contour represents the reconstruction with h-HODMD. Figures from left to right: contours of temperature, contours of NO, contours of NO$_{2}$, contours of N$_{2}$O.\label{fig:Rec}}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./DMD_T.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./DMD_NO.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./DMD_NO2.pdf}
	\includegraphics[width = 0.22\linewidth]{./DMD_N2O.pdf}
	\caption{Real part of the two most important DMD modes (\textbf{left:} $\omega \sim 126$,\textbf{right:} $\omega \sim 25$) for some of the most relevant species using h-HODMD with range scaling criteria. The modes have been normalised between $-1$ and $1$.\label{fig:Modes}}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusions \label{sec:conclusions}}

The article introduces a new iterative algorithm based on HODMD, the hierarchical HODMD (h-HODMD), to formulate reduced order models for reacting flows.
The novelty in the proposed algorithm is represented by the possibility to perform model reduction by selecting groups of variables (clusters) thus achieving a reduction in the error observed for the reduced model.
In addition, for each cluster it is possible to identify a main dynamics which is characteristic for the considered group of variables.
This technique results to be particularly effective for the analysis of reacting flows, as a high number of variables is usually considered in the corresponding CFD simulations.
As the algorithm relies on modes with their frequencies, it can be adapted to decouple  diff dynamics in combustion systems. The h-HODMD iteratively identifies and isolates the best reconstructed variables by computing the RRMSE of each variable and by imposing a new tolerance settled by the user.
Consequently, in addition to reduced order modeling, it can also be used for feature selection and variables' clustering tasks.

The new algorithm has been successfully applied in all the simulations and scaling methods analysed, obtaining a cluster at each iteration with an associated main dynamics.
Auto scaling makes all the clusters to have the same dynamics, while it is not able to improve the reconstruction with standard HODMD.
The first cluster using Pareto scaling has different frequencies with respect to the rest, while greatly improving the reconstruction error, compared with HODMD.
Vast scaling has similar behavior on main dynamics as Pareto, while only making good improvements on the second and third database.
Finally, Range scaling makes all the clusters have different dynamics and makes improvement for most of the variables.

When analysing the clusters obtained with the algorithm, Pareto shows poor results and it is not able to identify groups of variables which are coherent from a chemical point of view. On the other hand, both Vast and Range scaling provide good results for both clustering and reconstructing the solution, while Range scaling gives better results overall.

This new iterative algorithm for higher order dynamic mode decomposition has been proved to be promising to study high-dimensional data such as the ones obtained from reacting flow simulation carried out with detailed kinetic mechanisms. In particular, the proposed method for feature selection and clustering of variables can be useful for the development of new reduced order models based on the physics knowledge. This allows new strategies to face increasingly large databases, reducing their associated computational cost.

\begin{acknowledgments}
A.C. and S.L.C. acknowledge the grant PID2020-114173RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. S.L.C. and A.C. acknowledge the support of Comunidad de Madrid through the call Research Grants for Young Investigators from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. A.C. also acknowledges the support of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, under the programme 'Programa Propio'.
G.D.A. has received funding from the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS) through a FRIA fellowship.
A.P. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 714605.
\end{acknowledgments}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Our vision for a one stop green shop, came about in early 2006 over drinks in a pub down the road which served delicious local food. I remarked that it was a shame that there wasn't a directory which listed all the places that serve local food in town; little did I know of then of the path we'd travel in the next few months or seven to set up our very own ethical enterprise following that chance comment. From that simple remark made over a few drinks we have evolved into what is now GreenFinder.co.uk.
We didn't realise when we first started on the project just how many other 'Green' sites out there purport to provide a similar service. Some are great, some not so, but none (we believe) offer the diversity of information we hope to provide you. We're certainly not going to shout about being any better than the "competition," if that term even exists in the Green marketplace, but we do believe we are unique and different in our approach. As well as the serious stuff we also try to keep a sense of humour here at GF towers so why not look in My Alter-Eco for an alternative perspective on "Green living". You can also keep up to date with local events by signing up for our monthly newsletter.
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Delsea Regional High School's Crusaders of the Month for February are: Tom Schofield, senior; Emily Sorey, junior; Luke Carione, sophomore; and Rishi Patel, freshman.
Army Capt. Kyle D. Pernelli has deployed overseas in support of Atlantic Resolve, a demonstration of continued U.S. commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America's dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine.
Pernelli is the son of David R. Pernelli of Millville, N.J.
He is a 2017 graduate of St. Augustine College Preparatory School in Richland. He earned a bachelor's degree in 2010 from U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.
Megan Maloney of Bridgeton, a member of the Class of 2020, earned the fall 2016 Dean's Award for Academic Excellence at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.
She is a graduate of Cumberland Regional High School.
Madison Hayes of Bridgeton has enrolled at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., as part of the Class of 2021 which will arrive on campus for the Fall 2017 semester.
Hayes, who attends Cumberland Regional High School, plans to major in neuroscience.
Alyssa Simpkins, a 2016 graduate of Millville High School, was named to the fall 2016 Middle Atlantic Conference academic honor roll for women's soccer.
Bridgeton: Demoia Dairsow, Maribel Bermejo and Janae Gonzalez.
Millville: Courtney Carola, Chad Losaw and Aglee Burke.
Vineland: Raquel Mercado, Melissa Perez, Sheri Franchetta, Sydney Irion, Abiha Kazmi, Jason Hegeman, Gabriella Horvath, Luz Gonzalez, Cicelia Colon, and Melissa Goff.
Millville: Ashli Weems and Brandi Williams.
Vineland: Anthony Irion and Miranda Silva.
Vineland: Sarah Bennett, Eugene Mainiero and Sabreen Sehgal.
Bridgeton: Sean Smith and Jaylene Hernandez.
Millville: Daymar Brown and Ali Sinone.
Kindergarten: Nathen Feliciano, Ever Salas Mazariegos, Angela Perez Alavez, Lizbeth Perez Chavez and Brandon Gamboa Cruz.
First grade: Jesus Gomez, Alexa Molina Ramirez, Angela Rodriguez King, Alexander Beteta Perez, Aymar Toledo Quiroz and Montserrat Leonides Ruiz.
Second grade: Nayeli Alavez Hernandez, Iban Toledo, Icis Harmon, Ruben Lopez, Alisha Rosario and Emili Granado Gurrola.
Third grade: Yaquelin Vail Lopez, Tyrone Loatman, Kevin Leonides, Yarely Salinas Cruz, William Roblero Perez and Perla Chavez.
Fourth grade: Joselyn Garcia Gonzalez, Baudencio Lopez, Bryan Mauricio, Wilbert Morales Angel and Yenifer Diaz Velasquez.
Fifth grade: Reginald Bonner Jr., Xitlalic Flores, Jennifer Gonzalez Morales, Manuel Morales and Roberto Barreda.
Sixth grade: Yoali Velasquez Roblero, Ka'Mel Sears, Ana Liliana Ortiz Merino, Adam Hernandez, Ashley N. Perez and Fernando Lopez Anzurez.
Seventh grade: Darius Bonner, Kelly Castillo, Jenifer Sanchez, Jasmine Luster and Oliver Lopez.
Eighth grade: Jair Vasquez Lopez, Atavius McGriff, Miguel Toledo and Artistea Santis Velazquez.
Broad Street Bulldogs of the Month: Tyrone Loatman and Jasmine Luster.
Happy birthday to Judy Zatzariny, who celebrates March 15.


text:
Laudato Si' Action Platform to integrate encyclical into church life
Pope Francis calls the world to join a new global grassroots movement to create a more sustainable world
A carcass of an elephant succumbed to drought in the Hwange National Park, in Zimbabwe, on Nov. 12, 2019. Over 200 elephants have died due to lack of water and food in the park currently carrying upwards of 45 000 pachyderms. (Photo: AFP)
By By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service
Published: November 13, 2021 05:27 AM GMT
Updated: November 13, 2021 05:41 AM GMT
The Vatican's seven-year plan to widen the reach of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical on the environment is just what the church needs in a time of global climate change in the mind of Father Emmet Farrell, a retired priest living in San Diego.
"The church is very serious about what we need to do to address climate change," Father Farrell, volunteer director of the Creation Care Ministry of the Diocese of San Diego, said of the Laudato Si' Action Platform that launches Nov. 14.
The pope introduced the initiative in a video May 25, asking the world to join a new global grassroots movement to create a more inclusive, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world.
Coordinated through the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, the platform is "a seven-year journey that will see our communities committed in different ways to becoming totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology," the pope said.
"We need a new ecological approach that can transform our way of dwelling in the world, our lifestyles, our relationship with the resources of the earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life," he said.
Father Farrell is working on the effort with a team of lay leaders. The diocesan ministry has developed a "Creation Care Action Plan" that includes numerous actions -- from the simple to more complex -- that individuals, parishes and wider society can take to promote sustainability.
The ambitious San Diego plan falls in line with the dicastery's aspiration of building an integrated global effort to protect creation for future generations. The Vatican platform is meant to help those who want to increase their commitment to bringing the encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," to life by promising to carry out a set of actions for seven years.
Father Farrell told Catholic News Service Nov. 11 his diocese joined the pope's initiative because failing to act to protect Earth is not an option.
"Laudato Si' is a spiritual and moral document. It's not political. It's spiritual and very moral, so the church has to be active," he said.
The priest described the initiative as "a church-based model for community organizing."
"The Vatican really is a leader in the world. In my more than 50 years as a priest, I have never seen the church doing what it's doing with this platform. They're saying it's not good enough to read it (the encyclical), but to say something has to be done and here is the plan," he said.
The platform calls for integrating actions across different sectors, such as universities, parishes, dioceses, religious orders, community organizations, neighborhoods, businesses and health care institutions.
The launch originally was to occur Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. However, dicastery officials decided to delay it for six weeks to allow for a period of prayer and for more time for church entities to determine whether to commit to a seven-year mission.
The initiative has seven goals rooted in the encyclical: responding to the cry of the Earth and environmental degradation; responding to the cry of poor and vulnerable people; creating an ecological-sustainable economy; adopting simple lifestyles; supporting ecological education; promoting ecological spirituality; and building community awareness, participation and action.
Salesian Father Joshtrom Kureethadam, coordinator of ecology and creation at the dicastery, said when the initiative was introduced that choosing the biblical time frame of seven years "enables us to work slowly but surely without being obsessed with immediate results."
The first year will be dedicated to building community, sharing resources and developing action plans for each Laudato Si' goal. Implementing the plans will follow for the next five years, followed by a year of sabbatical "to praise and thank God," Father Kureethadam said.
The Catholic Climate Covenant is coordinating the U.S. involvement with the global platform.
Executive director Jose Aguto said dozens of Catholic entities have committed to work toward achieving the initiative's goals. Its own initiative, called "We're All Part of God's Plan(et)," provides resources, ideas and a gathering place for those seeking to integrate Laudato Si' into daily life.
"The covenant wants to make available to interested institutions and individuals access to the people who are working in the respective communities and sectors to implement integral ecology in prayer, word and deed," he told CNS. "We seek to offer to U.S. faithful and institutions not just a website with resources to implement Laudato Si' but also hands-on expertise to help accompany them in doing so."
He said that in addition to San Diego, 16 other U.S. dioceses have developed plans before the platform launch. He expects others to follow.
The covenant also has distributed dozens of small grants to institutions to help them implement the platform. Funds were made available through a $50,000 gift from Our Lady of Victory Mission Sisters of Huntington, Indiana, and a matching amount from donors.
Additional funding is being sought to continue supporting local efforts, Aguto said.
The university and college sector has 80 institutions worldwide onboard, said Michael Schuck, a professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago who is co-director of the International Jesuit Ecology Project.
Each school has committed to developing its own action plan, he said. Institutions are located in 25 countries including Australia, Benin, Columbia, India, France, Madagascar, Mexico, Nicaragua and the United States.
After the launch, the schools will be assembled into small groups from widely dispersed geographic areas. Schuck said they will then regularly meet online, allowing for the exchange of ideas with the chance to learn from each other.
"The journey," he said, "is about pushing and changing and incentivizing and moving ahead."
Archdiocese of Gandhinagar
Gandhinagar is the capital of Gujarat state and one of the greenest cities in the world. The Church in Gandhinagar is
Diocese of Xiwanzi-Chongli
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Xiwanzi/Chongli is a diocese located in the city
Diocese of Galle
The diocese covers a land area of 5,605.6 square kilometers and includes the districts of Galle, Matara and
Sri Lanka's St. Anthony cathedral promotes religious harmony, cultural diversity
St. Anthony Cathedral at Wahakotte in Kandy is a melting of cultures and religions in Sri Lanka....
Malaysian Church pays tribute to miraculous Saint Anthony
The Church of St. Anthony of Padua at Teluk Intan in Malaysia is a wonderful tribute to the wonder...
Pakistan's Sacred Heart Church is a witness of the historic evolution
Sacred Heart Church in Keamari is a British colonial-era Catholic Church in Pakistan's Karachi...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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@spectre307 asked: If you could travel to any country other than your native country to play Airsoft, where would you go?
@hideadpool asked: You ever gonna come play Airsoft in Hawaii?
I haven't any plans to play Airsoft in Hawaii as of yet but there's always time!
@kazzraa asked: If you had to choose one stock Airsoft rifle to use for a whole year, which make and model would you pick and why?
If I had to choose one stock Airsoft rifle to use for a whole year, I would probably say my new Krytac Arms PDW - she's full metal, the internals are sound and so far I'm really impressed with her! My first impressions are great!
@phantom_airsoft asked: What is your favourite type of Airsoft gun?
My favourite type of Airsoft gun is the M4 rifle - for the simple fact is, I think they look good, there is plenty of options to customise it and really make it your own! And of course you can upgrade them to be more than that - such as a DMR, hell you could even shove a box mag on it and increase the rate of fire and you have a support gun. They have loads of potential.
@rennle asked: Milsim or regular skirmish...And why?
@jaygsds asked: The age old question in skirmish,,,attack or defend?
Although I'm a fan of attack and will get stuck in, my strengths lie in aggressive defence and because of that I'd definitely choose defence over attack.
@_ryanknox_ asked: What is your favourite Airsoft gun?
My favourite Airsoft gun is my old faithful G&G Armament GR4 G26 Black Rose AEG with Pneumatic Blowback, I've ran this gun for almost a year and I love her. She's been a reliable primary and now she's had some TLC with the team at JD Airsoft she's good as new!
@bkn_96 asked: What got you into Airsoft?
What originally got me into Airsoft was an ex boyfriend. My first ever Airsoft game was in 2011 for one of my best girl mates birthdays and I borrowed all of his kit - which was bulky and did not fit me at all! I enjoyed the day but being a newb in my boyfriends poorly fitting gear put me off. I played again in August of 2014 for the same boyfriends private birthday skirmish and had a fab time. He brought me my first gun - the G&G Armament FF26 AEG. The relationship didn't work out but I'm glad he introduced me to this amazing sport.
@alpine_furry asked: What is your worst Airsoft related injury?
My worst Airsoft related injury was when I did a powerslide to cover at one of my favourite sites, I slid and hit a piece of cover - my trousers became twisted in the slide and my knee hit the cover without the protection of my built in knee pad. During the slide I cut my leg on something and ended up with a very painful purple knee and a bloody leg! I'd say though, that this is almost joint with the time my lower face mask fell down and I got shot in the cheek, that definitely made my eyes water!
@cam_airsoft_98 asked: Dream Airsoft build?
@devg_ asked: Can you put together a starter Airsoft kit?
If you mean the absolute minimum to play, I would say all you really need are your own eye and face protection as site face pro can smell from a combination of people breathing onto it all day, a good pair of boots that support the ankle and the enthusiasm to go out and have a great day as you can rent vests and guns from most sites. You don't need all the gear to play and an awesome time!
@oskarengstromen asked: If you could team up with any Airsoft crew, which crew would it be? Or if you could build an Airsoft crew from scratch, which players would you recruit?
@milsimmanuk asked: Now that Airsoft is becoming more and more popular, where do you see yourself in 5 years time in the sport? Are you still going to be writing for a magazine and continuing your blog or what else is on your horizon?
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text:
July 24, 2019 July 28, 2019 / Octavia Nouzen
Epistemic Status: Speculative. Experiences and conjectures based on them.
Content Warning: Neuropsychological Infohazard, De-Biasing Infohazard
Recommended Prior Reading: Falses Faces, Building up to an IFS Model, Highly Advanced Tulpamancy 201
I said I'd return to my continued exploration of self "soon" when I wrote The Silence Hidden in the Sound in September. Well, sometimes soon has a way of becoming a nearly year-long ordeal during which large chunks of your life and many things you took for granted are ripped up, burned down, violently restructured, and shaken vigorously until it feels like years have passed since you've successfully written anything.
This pressure cooker environment had one useful effect in that it forced a lot of interesting system things to the surface in a form that made them really obvious and easily poked at, which brings us to our topic today.
There are many conflicting recent models of the self, and here I'll be talking about my attempts to syncretize some of these models into something coherent and then apply them to my own experiences.
The Neurons As Agents Model
The first model is the Neurons Gone Wild model discussed in earlier tulpamancy essays. In very brief, the Neurons gone wild model of cognition advocated by Dennett, Simler, etc is that the concept of a central self-agent, an optimizing force that could be referred to as "I" is an illusion that breaks down on analysis into a mess of conflicting, competing, and cooperating subagents, which then themselves break down into more competing subagents, and so on, and so forth, all the way down to the level of individual neurons competing for resources in the brain. There is no master coordinator, no central organizer, no source of willpower from all these agents derive, the power of a particular subagent or cluster of subagents is determined by its ability to negotiate with the agents around it, to form alliances, gang up on conflicting subagents, and distort cognitive power and neurotransmitters in the direction of its cluster of cells.
This is the most strongly no-self of the various theories I'll be looking at. It says that the illusion of unity is just that, an illusion, the self-agent exists after the fact at the narrative layer, and is used to rationalize the decisions of lower level subagents. This does a good job of explaining things like addiction, parts of the addict's mind don't want to do heroin, but other parts of his mind do want to do heroin, and those parts are in competition with each other.
The Core and Structure Model
The second model is The Core and Structure model. I first encountered this concept on this blog and I'm unsure if it's an original creation of the author or if it's sourced from somewhere else, but according to Ziz:
"Core is something in the mind that has infinite energy. Contains terminal values you would sacrifice all else for, and then do it again infinity times with no regret. Seems approximately unchanging across lifespan. Figuratively, the deepest frame in the call stack of the mind, capable of aborting any train of thought, everything the mind does is because it decided for it to happen. It operates by choosing a "narrative frame", "module", "algorithm", or something like that to run, and is responsible for deciding the strength of subagents. There are actually two of them. In order to use some of my mental tech, they must agree."
Conversely:
"Structure is anything the mind learns and unlearns. Habits, judgement extrapolations, narrative, identity, skills, style, conceptions of value, etc. Everything but actual values. It lacks life on its own, is like a tool for core to pick up and put down at will."
Under the core/structure model, everything from tulpamancy to self-help is related is relegated to the narrative and structural layers, as a set of strategies for building and using and manipulating structure. This is the most self-centric of the models, and basically proposes that everything in the mind is under the control of something and fundamentally everything we do, we're doing because we think it will be a good strategy to achieve our values, and the values are the thing that exists at the bottom of the stack.
The Internal Family Systems Model
The last model we'll be comparing is the IFS model I first described in the Silence Hidden in the Sound post. IFS Goes a bit more into the gears of structure, saying that we have managers trying to keep your life in order and micromanage to prevent bad things, firefighters trying to deal with bad things when they happen and shield you from harm, and exiles which you have kicked out of your sense of self which the rest of your mental system tries to manage and keep buried and under control. IFS also has a self which acts as a central coordinator for all the parts and embodies, ahem, curiosity, connectedness, compassion, and calmness.
The IFS model comes off as fluffy and idealistic to me in its description of self, but it's model of how subagents interact especially under suboptimal circumstances, seems rather useful, and it's a useful model for things like PTSD, which could be modeled in some sense as a Guardian pattern matching a situation to one which generated the PTSD exile and responding accordingly. The building up to an Internal Family Systems Model post which I also linked in the recommended reading gives a good overview of this.
Three Models Collide
I think these three models lie somewhere orthogonal to each other. They don't actually conflict except in a few places, they simply delineate different parts of the territory, and amalgamating them will yield interesting results.
First, there's the layers thing. All three models do things with layering. I think this roughly shakes out to something like the narrative layer, the structural layer, the core value layer, and the neurophysical layer.
So tulpamancy, the naive sense of self, your life story, and most conscious attempts to manipulate the inside of your mind, exist in the narrative layer at the top. You're telling stories, inserting what essentially amounts to operating systems into the working memory environment. This self-storytelling factor is what lets us connect the past to the present to the future, remembering (in the form of a story) the past, and extrapolating (in the form of a story) into the future.
The neurons as agents model says that everything below the narrative layer breaks down into subagents doing various things, we can syncretize that decently with the IFS model of various component types, but that leaves us with the IFS self, and the core model would say that all these subagents and components, trigger, action, response, all of that, would be part of the built-up structural layer, with the values lying beneath it.
IFS probably has the most gearsy of any of the models of the structural layer, but IFS thinks that the values in the core value layer are pretty much always the same and always good. That seems naive and wildly optimistic, conversely, Ziz thinks most people's core values are evil (by her own standards admittedly).
Without putting moral valence to it the way Ziz does, I think she's probably more correct on core nature then the IFS model is. Core values could be described as primitive values, the systems that we evolved with, our most rudimentary desires encoded at the deepest levels.
So according to the Core/Structure model, all the structures we build, from studiousness to morality to learned trauma response patterns, could be thought of almost like electrical transformers, stepping down the current of willpower through successive layers of justifying things to ourselves, rationalizing, and self-deception, we reign in our values using structures to make them socially acceptable and legible, and to signal our value to the group, and thus make ourselves subservient to the group.
The core structure model pushes a particular angle really hard, which is the idea that every action and behavior is purposeful, everything that a mind is executing, it is executing for some reason. I don't disagree with this, but the idea that this cooks out into any coherent set of values that could be ascribed to something like an agent, that's where I think the first disagreement I have with it comes from.
The core/structure model also seems to posit that core is something relatively static, your values are your values, you come preinstalled with them and they don't really change. I don't really agree with this either, and I think what things someone values at the bottom-most layer will in fact change and transform over time as they are subject to outside environmental forces, and I don't think you can really get 'under' that environmental optimizing pressure because there's nothing there to get under, at that point you're talking about things that act directly on the neurophysical layer.
So I think my main point of contention with the core/structure layer is the way that the author conceives of core. This is really the same objection I have to IFS but in the other direction. Ziz says the core of most people is evil, IFS says the core of everyone is good. So, without ascribing morality, what exactly is the core? What's going on here?
The no-self model, that is the neurons-gone-wild model and the buddhist model, is that there is no core, or nothing that could be described as a core distinct from the subagent layers above it. Core vs no core is a pretty fundamental difference to try and cut across, but even more so, Ziz's model specifies that people have specifically two cores.
I find this interesting if for no other reason then that it seems like the most direct intellectual successor to the bicameral mind concept proposed by Julian Jaynes.
However, Ziz's cores as clusters of values and traits seem kind of arbitrarily complex to me. I could understand although perhaps still not agree with, a model of the duel cores that specified values along lines that could be differentiated into the traditional left brain/right brain dichotomies. Instead, however, the way Ziz seems to generate clusters appears more tied to her moral ideas than anything else. Without the heavy-handed morality to differentiate what values go into which core, there doesn't seem to me to be a lot which would delineate why particular values end up clustered how they are, or why there are two cores at all. Why not three, four, or even more?
For my own part, three narrativized, active agents which consciously communicate seems to work the best inside my own head. Does this somehow cook down into two cores, or do I have three cores? Hard to say. If someone's mind is best organized as a singlet, are they single-core?
This is where I think the "number of cores" idea kind of comes apart. I think I'm a bit more comfortable saying "there are core values, they sit underneath the mental structure" without specifying what the core values are, how many of them there are, which of them wins when there's a conflict, or how they interact at all, then to try and specify a model that declares how any of that stuff plays out.
I am comfortable saying that the higher layer structures are how it plays out though, and since high layer structures can vary drastically from person to person, so too can the shape that their core values take. Everything is connected to everything else, and signal can flow both ways down those connections.
Where does this all leave us would be cognitive architects? If this is so then there's no ground to stand upon, only clusters of values, mental alliances of convenience, and balanced power structures. If you push, something pushes back, your body auto-balances itself. Given that, what method is there to really change something in your head, and is that even possible?
I think there is an answer here, but I want to let people ponder it and percolate before giving my own answer. We'll return to this topic after hopefully not nearly as long of a pause as the last one.
Metamancy, Plurality
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On Communities →
5 thoughts on "The Nature of the Soul"
The dual cores thing is a post-hoc explanation of the fact that if you try to learn Ziz's tech, "do whatever I want regardless of social consequences etc, because doing so will give me hella determination and willpower", it can fail.
In particular the observation is that you can flip back and forth from getting a 0 to a 100% willpower boost from doing what you want. The theory is that this happens because your cores want different things, so if you're doing what one wants, the other can want something else, and thus sap your willpower.
alisonair
It actually makes a lot of sense for there to be zero, one or two cores. I'm not sure if I agree fully with Ziz's stuff, but I think the idea that there can be three or four cores is nonsense. Basically either the whole core theory is bunk (zero cores), cores are a thing and there's only one, the deepest value (one), or it's a black and white thing and everything you do is on a spectrum between A and B (two cores). To have three or more cores would be to mean that you have colors beyond black and white which doesn't make sense when you're talking about deep values because deep values are inherently extreme.
Anyway it doesn't seem impossible to me that different beings can run on different models of the self. Like it's pretty clear to me that some people run on the neurons gone wild thing, and others have cores. There's a reason I sperate people and hollow shells.
Kaj Sotala
Interesting post, thanks.
I'm not sure that the IFS conception of the mind is quite as disgustingly do-goody as you imply.
It's true that IFS claims that there are no fundamentally _evil_ parts. But in the IFS model, people have lots of selfish parts as well; ones which don't really care about other people, but only care about the person's own well-being. (Not actively evil, but not really good either – neutral, shall we say.) And the IFS Self is also compassionate, caring, etc. towards _those_ parts.
They say in IFS that "the Self does not have an agenda". At most, it has an agenda for healing and internal harmony. That means that the Self also does not have an agenda for the do-gooder parts to prevail over the selfish parts. It just wants all the parts to be in harmony with each other – which in practice also means satisfying the selfish parts.
In fact, someone who acts in an all super-self-sacrificing way, is probably not being Self-led, but rather is being dominated by a part which is terrified of the possible consequences of _not_ being self-sacrificing.
IFS _does_ talk about developing "Self-leadership", so that the Self is always in charge – but this can only happen if the Self is willing to take the concerns of _all_ the parts into account. The system learns to increasingly give the Self leadership, not because they would agree that the Self's values would be better than theirs, but because they come to trust the Self as a leader which does its best to fulfill the values of all the parts. And this trust is only possible because the Self is the only part of the system which doesn't have its own agenda, except for making sure that every part gets what it wants.
In this sense, IFS seems similar to the core values idea. In some presentations of the model, it's claimed that all humans are born with the same parts. If we assume that each part cares about the satisfaction of one value, then all humans would have the same values.
But when you say that
IFS thinks that the values in the core value layer are pretty much always the same and always good.
then I feel that the core values of IFS are _not_ the values of the Self. The core values of IFS are the values of the Self, _and_ the parts – meaning that core contains both "good" and "neutral" values. If we want to fit that together with the core and structure model, we'd say that there are the actual core values, and then the Self and all the parts are narrative structures which get generated in an attempt to further those values. This would fit neatly together with the way that IFS parts transform when healing work is done on them; the core realizes that a new way of organizing the structure would be more beneficial for furthering its goals, so it rearranges the structure ( = part) responsible for furthering some particular goal. But it doesn't mean that the core would be entirely fundamentally good – after all, it is perfectly willing to generate "evil" structure if that gets it what it wants.
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text:
Eagle Media • January 16, 2017 • https://eaglenews.org/18431/news/gene-cernan-last-man-walk-moon-dead-82/
Gene Cernan, last man to walk on the moon, dead at 82
Gene Cernan, an early NASA astronaut who was the last man to set foot on the moon, died Monday, Jan. 16. He was 82.
The cause of death was not immediately known.
Cernan was the commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972 – the last lunar mission and one of the final Apollo flights. When he walked out from lunar module "Challenger" he became the 11th person to walk on the moon.
But as commander, Cernan was the last to re-enter the lunar module, thus giving him the title of being the last person to walk the moon.
Cernan had also previously served as the lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 and was a pilot on the Gemini IX mission.
On the Apollo 10 flight, Cernan and commander Tom Stafford flew to within eight miles of the surface of the moon. This served as a dress rehearsal for the historic Apollo 11 mission.
He also became the second American to walk in space on the Gemini IX mission in 1966.
Cernan logged a total of 566 hours and 15 minutes in space, of which 73 hours were spent on the surface of the moon, according to NASA.
Born in Chicago in 1934, Cernan received an electrical engineering degree from Purdue and a Masters of Science in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Cernan was selected in NASA's third group of astronauts in 1963 while being a captain in the Navy.
Cernan retired from NASA and the Navy in 1976.
Cernan's death leaves six astronauts remaining who have walked on the moon.
He leaves behind his wife and one daughter.


From lil babe to big kid, the Sprout Twin Bed brings all the style of one of our favorite cribs into your mini-me's new room.
From lil babe to big kid, the Sprout Twin Bed brings all the style of one of our favorite cribs into your mini-me's new room. Made with eco-friendly, non-toxic materials, the Sprout's tapered spindles and triangular feet bring nostalgic craftsman charm to this bed's modern shape.
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text:
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   [string]$VmName = $(if ($env:VmName -eq $null) {$( Read-Host "Input Azure VM Name" )} else {$env:VmName})
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Stop-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $VmName

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


After fits and starts for the past 13 years, deregulation of Central Ohio's electricity supply is taking hold. Customers have choice. At least seven electric supply companies now compete for business in what was once a region served almost exclusively by American Electric Power. Consumers are keeping close watch on the changes and weighing their options.
"Everybody can speculate about how how it's going to work. But until it happens and gets put into effect, we don't really know." Says Zack Glick.
Glick is a third shift cook at Fitzy's 24 hour diner on Schrock road. Like many consumers he's saddled with high electric bills.
Glick is looking for some relief from high electric bills. But, whether a deregulated electricity market helps Glick remains a question. Amy Kurt at the Ohio Consumers'Counsel says Ohio is de-regulating only the power supply, not the poles and electric lines strung through the neighborhood.
Kurt says that makes for a complicated electric bill. A bill generally identifies five separate charges but only the generation charge, the price per kilowatt hour, is now set by a competitive market.
"If you lose money or if you save money that is part of the risk of energy choice or energy competition." Says Kurt.
The Consumers'Counsel lists seven electric suppliers now offering eleven different rate plans in central and southern Ohio. Its up to consumers to ferret out the best offer. Glen Patterson of Columbus lives in an all-electric home on the north side. He says it takes a little time and attention to detail to find the best rate. But, he recently decided to change electric suppliers to escape what he called an "outrageous" electric bill.
"At the time I was paying something like anywhere from 180 to 200 dollars a month for electric. I went to both of them then it didn't drop much because I was paying AEP so much and I was paying Direct Energy so much. But I will know something after the first of the year when they break off." Says Patterson.
Patterson anticipates less fluctuation in his monthly electric bill under his new plan. And, he says he chose a plan that allows him to change again at anytime with no cancellation fee. Such fees are also part of deregulation. Like cable and phone plans, electric plans can come with termination fees. Public Utilities Commission Chair, Todd Snitchler, urges consumers read the fine print in electric contract offers to know of possible risks.
"What the offer is, what the terms are. Do you have a cancellation charge? What's the rate going to be? Is it an introductory offer. Is it for the entire term of the contract?
Snitchler says the PUCO still must approve electric suppliers to Ohio and monitor their conduct. Back at Fitzy's Diner, Zack Glick says he's taking a wait and see approach on de-regulated electricity markets.
"Eventually, it could be a good thing right off or it could be like OPEC again in the 70s where everyone conglomerates together and says you're going to pay this price or tough." Adds Glick.