Lucy was thoroughly sick and tired of shaving her hairy legs, as this had to be done every day in the summer. She had tried waxing but her skin was sensitive to the wax and reacted badly with a rash. So Permanent removal was her last hope. She admitted to feeling unsure that "it would work". However, she is over the moon with the results so far. She will probably only need a couple more treatments to be completely hair free!


text:
Effective Dates: 1/06/2020 - Present
Originating Office: ORDP ODP
Title: General - Medical Evaluation
Chapter 245 – Medical Evaluation
Subchapter 01 – General - Medical Evaluation
OCO-OEIO: CR, ERE, FDE, RECONE;
OCO-ODO: DE, DEC, DS, RECONE;
OCO: ODD;
DI 24501.001 The Disability Determination Services Disability Examiner, Medical Consultant, and Psychological Consultant Team, and the Role of the Medical Advisor
We removed the reference to archived DI 23007.009 and corrected the references in DI 24501.001B.2. for consistency with the revised FTC policy.
A. Introduction to the roles and responsibilities of the disability examiner (DE), medical consultant (MC), psychological consultant (PC), and medical advisor (MA)
A disability determination requires the DE, MC, and PC to collaborate as the adjudicative team. Not all team members participate in the development and evaluation of all claims, as outlined in DI 24501.001B in this section.
All team members have training in the disability process. MAs are not part of the adjudicative team but can provide analysis of medical issues.
B. Adjudicative roles and responsibilities of the DE, MC, PC, and MA
1. General role of the DE
The role of the DE in the disability determination process includes, but is not limited to the responsibility to:
a. Develop the case
Obtain evidence from the claimant, medical sources, entities that maintain medical sources' evidence, and nonmedical sources;
Contact claimants, applicants, appointed representatives, and other appropriate parties for additional information;
Consult with MCs, PCs, and other staff members to resolve problems in getting evidence from medical sources, entities that maintain medical sources' evidence, and nonmedical sources;
Initiate requests for consultative examinations (CE) when medical evidence of record (MER) is not sufficient to make a determination of disability and all available medical information has been obtained; and
Follow up to obtain CE reports when necessary.
b. Prepare the case for MC, PC, or MA review
Prepare cases for MC, PC, and MA review, including highlighting the relevant period to consider such as the date last insured, prescribed periods, or prior adjudicated periods; and
Assist MCs and PCs with the completion of any applicable residual functional capacity (RFC) assessments as appropriate.
c. Evaluate the vocational aspects of the case
Determine whether a claimant can perform past relevant work given his or her RFC at step 4 of the sequential evaluation process; and
Determine whether a claimant can adjust to other work given the applicant's RFC, age, education, and work experience at step 5 of the sequential evaluation process.
d. Prepare the determination
Prepare rationales and determinations, including Forms SSA-831 (Disability Determination and Transmittal) or Title XVI SSA-832 and Title II SSA-833 (Cessation or Continuance of Disability or Blindness Determination and Transmittal);
Prepare disability determination notices; and
Make every reasonable effort to ensure that the following sources completed the medical portion of the case review and completed all applicable RFC assessment:
A qualified physician (where a physical impairment is alleged);
A psychiatrist or psychologist (where a mental impairment is alleged); or
Both (where both a physical impairment and mental impairment are alleged).
2. Signature responsibilities of the DE
The DE alone may make the disability determination without an MC or PC signature in the following situations:
The current file or any prior file contains no medical evidence and despite making every reasonable effort, the Disability Determination Services (DDS) is unable to obtain medical evidence that exists and one or more of the following situations exists:
The claimant refuses or fails to attend a CE without good reason as defined in DI 23007.001B;
The DDS curtails CE development after establishing the claimant's failure or refusal to cooperate as explained in DI 22505.014; or
The date last insured or other technical factor is in the past, and there is no possibility of setting an onset prior to the end of the entitlement period.
NOTE::
Effective December 28, 2018, SDM, QDD, and CAL authority ends.
3. General role of the MC and PC
This section provides information about the MC or PC role in the disability process. The MC or PC role in the determination process includes, but is not limited to the responsibility to:
a. Evaluate the sufficiency of the evidence and need for further testing
Evaluate the evidence in the case to determine its adequacy to complete the medical portion of the case review;
Review requests for CEs in specific claims to ensure they are necessary, are not contraindicated based on the evidence in file, and resolve the issues as intended; and
Provide alternatives to the purchase of a CE.
b. Act as a liaison between the DDS and the medical community
Resolve problems in obtaining MER through discussions with DEs and other staff members;
Review CE reports for deficiencies in content and recommend ways to avoid deficient reports;
Evaluate and respond to medical questions;
Improve relations with the medical community, enlarging consultative examiner panels, and minimizing CE processing time by working closely with staff members and CE providers; and
Improve DE understanding and use of medical evidence by working with training staff.
c. Determine severity, whether the claimant meets or equals a listing, or for a Title XVI child whether the claimant's impairment functionally equals the listings
Assess the existence and severity of impairments at step 2 of the sequential evaluation process;
Determine whether an impairment meets or equals the requirements of a listing in the Listing of Impairments (Listings) at step 3 of the sequential evaluation process; and
Determining whether a claimant's impairment(s) functionally equals the Listings at step 3 of the sequential evaluation process in childhood disability claims.
d. Assess RFC and other specific medical issues
Assess and determine RFC in adult disability determinations;
Participate in other specific medical determinations in a claim (such as whether drug addiction or alcoholism is material to the determination), as appropriate; and
Review determinations to ensure their integrity.
4. Signature responsibilities of the MC and PC
The MC and PC:
Sign assessments and determinations; and
Indicate that his or her signature completes the medical portion of the disability determination.
An MC who is a physician takes responsibility for the medical portion of the determination, except in cases where a PC may perform this function.
A PC may perform this function when:
a mental impairment is the only impairment in the claim; or
there is a combination of a mental impairment with a physical impairment, but the mental impairment alone justifies a finding of disability.
The MC or PC who is taking responsibility for the medical portion of the determination signs the disability determination forms and all supporting documents relevant to the determination that require a signature.
In cases where there is evidence of mental and physical impairment(s), and a PC reviews the case, the PC evaluates only the mental impairment(s) and the MC evaluates the physical impairment(s).
In cases where the combination of physical and mental impairments may be equivalent to a medical listing, the MC and PC confer, both complete and sign an SSA-416 (Medical Evaluation), and one of the consultants takes overall responsibility to sign the rationale supporting the equivalence. For additional information on the SSA-416, see DI 24501.006.
5. Handle adjudicative team conflicts of interest
If a DDS MC or PC furnishes any of the MER, he or she does not participate in the disability determination of that claim.
For instructions on when a DDS Adjudicative Team Member Furnishes Evidence, see DI 22505.027.
For additional instructions on Conflict of Interest, see DI 39569.100.
6. The general role of the MA
The MA's role in the determination process includes:
Help DEs, MCs, and PCs understand specialized issues or evidence in claims; and
Provide analysis about medical issues related to impairments for which they are qualified to evaluate using the "Medical Advisor (416)", as described in DI 22505.003A.
Because an MA is an independent medical source that provides evidence in a claim, an MA may provide analyses of the same case at both the initial and reconsideration level of adjudication. The adjudicative team must consider the MA analysis as evidence from an acceptable medical source.
A speech-language pathologist (SLP) provides advice in a claim about an issue or evidence related to a speech or language impairment.
For specific business process instructions on the role of the MA, see DDSAL 960 "Medical Advisors—Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) Section 832—INFORMATION."
7. Signature requirements for MA
The statute prohibits MAs from signing or otherwise taking responsibility for the medical portion of the disability determination. For additional information on MA adding their analysis to a claim, see DI 24501.006.
C. Qualifications for MC, PC, and MA
An MC is a licensed physician (medical or osteopathic doctor) who is a member of a DDS or SSA team that makes disability determinations.
A PC is a licensed psychiatrist or a psychologist who is a member of a DDS or SSA team that makes disability determinations.
A psychiatrist PC must be licensed in the State in which he or she practices.
A psychologist PC must:
be licensed or certified as a psychologist at the independent practice level of psychology by the State in which he or she practices; AND EITHER
possess a doctorate degree in psychology from a program in clinical psychology of an educational institution accredited by an organization recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, formerly the Council on Post-Secondary Accreditation; OR
be listed in a national register of health service providers in psychology which the Commissioner Of Social Security deems appropriate; AND
possesses two years of supervised clinical experience as a psychologist in health service, at least one year of which is post master's degree
The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is the only national register of health service providers in psychology that the Commissioner of Social Security deems appropriate for agency use to ensure a psychologist is properly credentialed.
3. MA
An MA is an acceptable medical source who is not an MC or PC.
For claims filed before March 27, 2017, this includes:
Licensed optometrists, for impairments of visual disorders only (except, in the United States Virgin Islands, licensed optometrists, for the measurement of visual acuity and visual fields only).
Licensed podiatrists, for impairments of the foot, or the foot and ankle only, depending on whether the State in which the podiatrist practices permits the practice of podiatry on the foot only, or the foot and ankle.
Qualified speech-language pathologists, for impairments of speech or language only.
For claims with a filing date on or after March 27, 2017, this additionally includes:
Licensed physician assistants for impairments within the licensed scope of practice only.
Licensed audiologists for impairments of hearing loss, auditory processing disorders, and balance disorders within the licensed scope of practice only.
Audiologists' scope of practice generally includes evaluation, examination, and treatment of certain balance impairments that result from the audio-vestibular system. However, some balance impairments involve several body systems that are outside the scope of practice for audiologists, such as those involving muscles, bones, joints, vision, nerves, heart, and blood vessels.
Licensed Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN), also known in some States as Advanced Practice Nurse (APN), and Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) for impairments within his or her licensed scope of practice.
For more information about acceptable medical sources, see Evidence from an Acceptable Medical Source (AMS), DI 22505.003.
DI 24501 TN 16 - General - Medical Evaluation - 1/06/2020

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Precious Pepala: "My Eyes Only," TikTok, & Passion for Music
Interview by: Aniya
Precious Pepala who is from Sheffield, the United Kingdom not too long ago released her first ever single( My Eyes Only). This is really personal to her, so dropping it was hesitant but releasing it now has 371,585 streams on Spotify other people loving it never thought of hesitation on their end. Being in the choir at church, singing covers on TikTok and reaching millions of views across all videos, and now releasing her own song. Having help from her manager Jordan which in most cases is rare but being already her former music teacher at school, he had faith in her already. Precious also mentioned Harry Styles in this interview. See what she had to say about the talented singer/songwriter.
A: Hi, Precious How are you? It's such a pleasure finally interviewing you! Your new song (My Eyes Only" is out. I want to ask how and what it was like to record, Write, and engineer the song?
P: Hi, I'm really good thank you, and thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me! The whole process of creating "My Eyes Only" was such a new and exciting experience for me. This was my first time being 100% involved in the entire process from writing the song to producing it. I had so much fun in the studio creating a song that is so true to me and allows people to see a side of me that I don't usually like to show!
A: This is your first song ever. How does it feel? Because you usually sing covers on TikTok and it blows up on there. What was the reason you wanted to write "My Eyes Only"?
P: It honestly feels a little surreal! I've wanted to release this song for a while now but I was kinda scared because of how personal the lyrics are to me. Doing covers is completely different... it's not such a big deal if someone doesn't like it because it's not MY song. I'm so happy that it's finally out in the world, it's like a weight off my shoulders!
A: When you were younger you used to sing in church? And your dad is a pastor, what was it like singing in church, and how did you get to sing in church? Did you ask your dad if you could?
P: I've been singing in church for as long as I can remember, I find it very relaxing and freeing! I'll forever be grateful to my Dad, who always encouraged me to sing in the church choir because it really helped grow my love and passion for music from a really early age.
A: Your manager (Jordan) also had a part in the song's production? Tell us how that went, and is it normal for managers to pitch in?
P: It's definitely a unique setup with Jordan being my manager and also my co-writer and producer. We work really well together and I think we have a great musical connection! We wrote and recorded "My Eyes Only" in Jordan's studio in our hometown (Sheffield) and it came to us so naturally and easily!
A: Speaking of Jordan, he was your school teacher? And covid got into the way of everything. How did you guys reconnect?
P: Jordan was my guitar teacher and he also managed a band I was in with my two best friends from school. We reconnected during lockdown after the band split up and he encouraged me to start my own TikTok which ultimately led me to where I am now!
A: Tiktok has become a huge outlet for Artists now when you posted your first cover did you expect it to get a few views? What were you thinking when it hit top views? Did you also feel since doing that cover that you can probably build a fan base there?
P: I really didn't expect much when I started posting on TikTok. I remember posting a cover of 'Stand Up' by Cynthia Erivo one night and then waking up the next morning with a bunch of notifications on my phone and thousands of views. It was so unexpected but seeing such a positive response to a video of me singing really motivated me to do more!
A: Since "My Eyes Only'' is your first song, are you planning to make an album or more singles soon?
P: I'm planning to release more singles for sure, definitely one more this year! Right now I'm just enjoying writing music which I'll hopefully share with the world very very soon!
A: Besides singing in the church, where did your music for passion come from?
P: My passion for music came from watching musicals when I was younger. I particularly loved the Disney channel and was obsessed with High School Musical and Hannah Montana! I'd sit for hours listening to the soundtracks over and over and learning the lyrics!
A: What artist would you work with on a song, and why?
P: My dream collaboration would be with Harry Styles. I've loved him as an artist and a person since I was very young! I've always admired his songwriting so working with him would be such an incredible experience!
A: Have you ever thought about going on tour? Do you think that is coming soon or later?
P: As an artist, touring is one of the things I'm looking forward to doing the most! It'll come a little later down the line but when it does I can't wait to play my music to people and interact with people from different cultures and backgrounds, it's very exciting to think about!
A: Thank you so much for letting me interview you. It's such a pleasure!
You can now listen to precious single on all platforms down below.
Spotify: My Eyes Only • Precious Pepala
Tiktok: (@preciouspepala)
Instagram: Precious ❀ (@preciouspepala)
Soundcloud: Stream Precious Pepala music


MONDAY, Jan. 22, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who are glued to their smartphones and other devices are unhappier than those who spend less time on digital media, new research finds.
The study can't prove cause-and-effect, so it's not clear if teens are made unhappy by spending a long time on their devices, or whether less happy teens are simply drawn to using them more.
But whatever the relationship, "the key to digital media use and happiness is limited use," believes study author Jean Twenge.
"Aim to spend no more than two hours a day on digital media, and try to increase the amount of time you spend seeing friends face-to-face and exercising -- two activities reliably linked to greater happiness," said Twenge. She's professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
One psychologist agreed that links between teen smartphone use and unhappiness are getting stronger.
"Although the findings from this study need to be replicated by other researchers, it's concerning that teens in recent years seem to be less well psychologically adjusted, and that smartphones may in part be responsible," said Dr. Andrew Adesman. He directs developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y.
In the new research, Twenge's team surveyed more than a million 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders across the United States. The study asked kids how much time they spent on their phones, tablets and computers; the amount of time they spent in face-to-face socializing; and their happiness levels.
On average, teens with higher levels of screen time were less happy than those who spent more time doing "non-screen" activities -- things such as sports, face-to-face time with others, and reading newspapers and magazines.
"Although this study can't show causation, several other [prior] studies have shown that more social media use leads to unhappiness, but unhappiness does not lead to more social media use," Twenge said in a university news release.
Just how much screen time is "healthy"? According to the research, the happiest teens in the study spent a little less than an hour a day scanning their smartphones, tablets or other devices. After that, levels of unhappiness tended to steadily increase with the amount of screen time.
The researchers also found that since the 1990s, increasing availability of screen devices was associated with an overall decline in U.S. teens' happiness.
Levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem and happiness among young people plummeted after 2012 -- the year that the percentage of Americans who owned a smartphone rose above 50 percent, Twenge noted.
"By far the largest change in teens' lives between 2012 and 2016 was the increase in the amount of time they spent on digital media, and the subsequent decline in in-person social activities and sleep," she said. "The advent of the smartphone is the most plausible explanation for the sudden decrease in teens' psychological well-being."
According to Adesman, the "take-home lesson for parents is that they should monitor and limit the screen time and online communication of their children, and encourage their children to socialize directly with peers and stay active with sports and exercise."
Dr. Matthew Lorber, a psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed.
"Although this study does not prove causation, it does further raise alarms about too much screen time, and should serve as a reminder to parents to limit their children's time in front of technology, and encourage socialization and exercise," Lorber said.
The study was published Jan. 22 in the journal Emotion.


Composing an essay generally appears to be a very convoluted task among students. For a fact, whether the paper is for a class, a scholarship or perhaps for a writing contest, a lot of students usually find this assignment quite overwhelming. Who will work on my essay? We will at Myessaygeek.com with pleasure.In addition, while a written discourse is a huge project to work on, there are some critical steps that students can take which could help break down the project into manageable parts.
At times, students are assigned a specific topic to write on but there are also times when you are given the freedom to pick any topic of your choice. Indeed, if you're assigned with a topic, carefully mull over the type of essay which you really hope to produce. It is crucial to narrow your focus if needed.
After you have already chosen the topic you'll write and have sorted out your thoughts into germane categories, you can now come up with your thesis statement. It is worth noting that the thesis statement is the one that tells the target reader the main idea of your paper. Check your diagram or outline and think through the main ideas. The thesis statement must have two primary components –the first one should state the topic clearly while the second one must indicate the main point of the written discourse.
Always prepare a diagram or an outline of your thoughts or ideas. It is imperative to organize your thoughts in order to construct an effective paper. Through taking notes of the ideas you have in mind; it makes it a lot easier to see the connections between ideas more transparently. What is more, this structure shall serve as a solid foundation for your written discourse. It helps to use a diagram or an outline when taking down your ideas to arrange them carefully.
Write the body of the paper.
This is the part that explains, argues and describes the subject you are writing about. Furthermore, each principal idea that you compose in the outline or diagram shall become a separate section within the body of the paper. Keep in mind that each body paragraph shall contain the same fundamental structure.
When writing your introduction, start with an attention grabber statement, dialogue, simple summary of the subject, shocking information, a quote or a story. Always ensure that whatever angle you select, it must link closely with your thesis statement and this shall be included as the final sentence of your introduction. This section shows the focus of the paper and must be capable of capturing the attention of your target audience.
This is the section that brings closure to the subject and summarizes the overall ideas of your paper. It is also a must to indicate the final perspective on the subject you write about. This must contain at least three by up to five strong sentences. Make sure to go over your primary points as well as provide reinforcement of your thesis.
The conclusion isn't the final thing in your paper. You need to carefully review the entire essay and pay attention to all small details to ensure that it is worth-submitting.
It is substantial to write a well-organized paper as this is very important in school admissions, projects and even for scholarship decisions. Due to this, following the useful suggestions provided above can help make you draft the best paper whatever your purpose may be without much difficulty.


GBI Researchs new report, Emerging Pharmaceutical Market in China - Forecast to Become The Worlds Third-Largest Pharmaceutical Market By 2013, provides in-depth analysis of trends, issues and challenges in this industry. The report analyzes the effective strategies that shape the industry dynamics. Further, the report provides competitive benchmarking for the leading companies and analyzes the M&A and strategic partnerships that shape the Chinese pharmaceutical market. This report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research and in-house analysis by GBI Researchs team of industry experts.
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text:
Bill Clinton calls John Calipari to talk basketball
By Scott PhillipsDec 2, 2013, 6:35 PM EST
Before Kentucky and head coach John Calipari took the floor at the Barclays Center on Sunday to defeat Providence, Coach Cal got some phone time in with the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
Clinton is a noted college basketball fan and has been seen everywhere from watching his home state Arkansas Razorbacks make NCAA Tournament runs during his presidency to crashing Louisville's locker room celebration after the Big East Tournament championship last season.
Calipari broke down his conversation with Clinton in a series of tweets:
I got a great call at 3 o'clock on game day yesterday from @billclinton. We spoke for about 20 minutes.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) December 2, 2013
He knows our team, he knows our ups and downs, and he knows where we've got to go. He really tried hard to make our game, which I appreciate
. @billclinton also told me he wants to come to a game in Lexington. I hope he does so he can talk to my young team.
It's always good hearing @billclinton's voice. I appreciate him reaching out to say hello.
Follow @phillipshoops


text:
BALL OF STEEL: Parasitic worm infection caused Indian man's swollen, calcified testicle
Search the The Londoner
Eddie Chau
More from Eddie Chau
Published on: January 14, 2020 | Last Updated: January 14, 2020 12:42 PM EST
An 80-year-old Indian man's testicle was swollen and calcified thanks to patarasitic worms. (British Medical Journal)
An Indian man whose testicle was swollen and calcified thought the condition was caused by a urinary tract infection.
But when the 80-year-old man sought medical attention on his enlarged manhood, he learned that he suffered from a rare infection caused by parasitic worms.
In a case report logged in the British Medical Journal, doctors diagnosed the unnamed man with lymphatic filariasis, a condition that caused a fluid-filled sac to swell up and form around his testicle. The swollen member then began to calcify, according to LiveScience.
The swelling — known as a hydrocele — is typically formed after an infection or injury. In this scenario, it was caused by parasitic worms.
According to the British Medical Journal, people can be infected with filarial worms via an infected mosquito bite. The parasite then grows into adult worms once in a person's lymphatic vessels, which can cause swelling and severe damage.
The medical case reported noted filarial worms are endemic in India. The study's authors noted cases of calcification in the man's scrotum are rare, stating there was only one other published case in 1935.
It's unknown how doctors treated the man's swollen and calcified injury, but the BMJ study noted patients with parasitic infections may be given anti-filarial drugs or have surgery to rid the infection.
© 2020 The Londoner. All rights reserved.


text:
Dungeons & Dragons Online Forums > Focused Discussions & Feedback > DDO Store Feedback > Advised: Do Not Buy From Store...
View Full Version : Advised: Do Not Buy From Store...
Froglodyte
UNLESS YOU KNOW EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE ITEM YOU ARE PURCHASING.
Bit of history. I screwed up the other day--I accidentally deleted a toon that had a store-bought item (huge collectibles bag) on it because my client had crashed while I was on the way to the bank to put the item back in my account bank.
I reported and was told that toons cannot be recovered and items from deleted toons cannot be recovered. Although this is *not* true, it's obvious that Turbine has a "no replacement" policy. So fine, I can tolerate the company lying to me in order to provide cover for their policy.
This bag, which I bought just a few weeks ago from the store, was a "bound to account" item. Today, after seriously considering whether I wanted to waste points on something that the company provided no warranty for, I took the plunge and bought another "huge collectibles bag." Things have changed, however--this "new" bag was not bound to account, but bound to CHARACTER.
Which makes it worthless for my purposes, which was simply to store items from several of my toons.
After discovering the change to the bag, I requested a refund as it CERTAINLY was not something I would have purchased.
Again, I was told that Turbine provides no refunds or returns from store items.
Be VERY CAREFUL when dealing with "real money" transactions w/Turbine. They are clearly willing to take advantage of the lack of clear legislation in the "online gaming" industry.
This company would PREFER to anger a customer who has given them a year's worth of subscription fees as well as some money to buy "turbine points" than to simply replace an item that they KNOW I had purchased legitimately.
After this experience, I believe it would be foolish and potentially buy anything from the store except character slots. If anyone else has similar experiences, feel free to append them. Let's fill others in BEFORE THEY GET BURNED.
Gorby
Sorry to hear your trouble with the store. It's unfortunate that the first bag got deleted as they are now unacquirable. Turbine announced they had intended the bags to be bound to character, but bags purchased previous to patch 1 were bound to account. Previous to patch 1, the description in the store did say they were bound to character as intended as they still do.
As far as recovering items from deleted characters, I've heard in the past that they were not able to do that even when it didn't involve RL $ so this is not a new scam policy. It's likely a technical limitation.
Again, sorry to hear this but the bag is still useful as it is and you can buy medium bags real easily in game to mail collectibles around.
Gorby--there's no way to know the characteristics of the items from the store.
It is ILLEGAL for a "real" store not to accept returns, yet that it what Turbine has chosen to do with the "points store."
This is for the benefit of anyone else (who doesn't spend much time here on the boards and know all about whatever policy they're changing) BEFORE THEY GET SCREWED.
And I certainly didn't mean to suggest that this was a "scam" in any sense other than that selling products which don't exist is an activity that begs for appropriate consumer protections. They can do WHATEVER THEY WANT--it's part of the TOS.
Hopefully someone who sees my warning will be able to avoid the kind of treatment I received.
Lithic
The bag description clearly says it binds to character. It has been like that since the store began. For the first week or so however, the bags were bugged and only bound to account. During the sale on bags, such bind to account bags had their price raised to about 695pts (from 595) to compensate for their increased usefullness. Soon after, they were fixed to be bind to character as their description says.
Falco_Easts
There is no legal obligation to provide a refund unless the item is broken.
Item is working as described - no refund required.
Just so I can clarify something, your server crashed while on way to bank. When it came back up you didn't bother checking the character you were about to delete?
How is the new bag worthless? You can still mail the collectibles to the character with the bag.
Hey, I know I screwed up.
And I know that because of the nature of this business, they can do anything. It's the nature of the beast. The only thing we get for our dollar is access to the game, bugs or not, etc etc. It's software.
I just found the situation to be frustrating and unsatisfactory, and I say this as someone who had no gripe with Turbine for 11 months. The company is charging money for the store items, and they could do something pretty simple to make for more options for players who are dissatisfied (as I am) or made mistakes (as I did), or they can continue to tell folks they're out of luck.
From a customer service perspective, one approach might be better.
Interestingly--selling in-game items for money is something that Turbine doesn't want anyone else doing, but given the size of the market, they had to get into it. And based on my experience so far, they don't even do as good a job as the plat-farmers!
Umm having worked in retail I can tell you that you are wrong if you have a no returns and all sales are final policy posted its legal at least in every state I have lived in.
Hokiewa
No. You knew the toon had a "huge bag bound to account". Client crashes. K, so what? You still deleted the toon. You typed the name in the delete box. I'm sorry you feel so unsatisfied. Many, if not all, long time players have accidentally deleted toons that had great stuff on them. Long time players and new players make permanent mistakes all the time.
I'm not sure why it's so interesting that Turbine wants to corner the market on ITs intellectual property. I mean really, you don't get that? You don't get that a business would want to earn a profit, and eliminate those that sell in game items for REAL money with no investment? No development? Ridiculous
Why would you delete a toon that had the bag? The crash is a ridiculous excuse, you know it, I know it, everyone here knows it. Just own it. There are plenty of things to chastise Turbine for, player error is not one of them. So really, just get over it.
Does it suck? Sure, you'll never be able to get that bag again, in its previous account bound form. It's certainly not the company's fault though.
Wow. Folks really would argue with anything here.
Look, everyone: this is a question of policy. I'm not satisfied with their policy, and I'm complaining about it.
If ANYONE ELSE is unhappy with this policy, perhaps they too will complain and someone at Turbine will think about changing it. There are so many options...
1) Offer a toon restoral service. Charge a fee, since the customer screwed up. (It's not a technical limitation--these are computers, folks.)
2) Offer some kind of item linking or registration for items which customers are sooooo attached to that they'd like some kind of assurance that it won't be poofed by whatever vagary of idiocy or technical issue may occur.
3) Offer any kind of warranty or return policy for items purchased in the in-game store.
I contacted Turbine about this issue and received the exact same reply each time: We can't do it, we don't do it, we won't do it.
That is a policy decision. It will apply to anyone in any situation, whether similar to mine or different. It will apply to you if you are unhappy with something you buy at the store, it will apply to your friend who deleted the wrong toon, etc etc.
It is not something that can't be changed, and it's not something that everyone will prefer. If it's what you prefer, good for you.
Personally, I'm now apprehensive about buying items from the store. I don't think I'll do it again, and that's not really a problem for me.
Holy cow! Good to see you, man!
Nope. Take responsibilty for what you did. You are just making excuses now. The bag issue was WELL known in game and on the forums. There were a dozen threads about. Regardless, you deleted the toon with the irreplaceable bag. You bought a new bag, which is clearly tagged Bound to Character.
You've made terrible analogies, misrepresented individual state law, and clearly don't understand why the "policy" is simply........the policy. It won't change. Nor should it.
Rhun_of_Rhenged
It's not an advantage to keep customers ignorant. Thank you for the heads up on this specific issue.
I really have no idea, yet, what you mean by it...newb...but let me grapple with my own learning curve for the moment. I have finally found an e-mail address for their customer service.
Yeah...
...oops, I mean Yay!!!!
Hmph, I get exasperated too, however, if you read these electronic end user agreements carefully, it's usually WYIWYG. So yea, you are right in a certain sense. I do agree, it would help Turbine develop and thus improve quality, especially when reasonable customers like yourself, calmly suggest solutions, to what may seem like maddening problems to them. But you're SOL in the end. Suck it up, or call the credit card company.
I don't work retail, nor answer phones for a living. Never been much of a people person, unless say...I take a job that was something similar to that character Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. (Funny how I look him in real life.)
In this day and age, when all I hear most days are news stories about loss of identity, it should be understood from the perspective of the retailer, there really ARE legal rights for us customers, yes?
So is this Uska impressionable with calls from my lawyer, to describe my state's applicable laws? Probably. Let's hope so, because I'm not a lawyer either.
That's why I have the Yellow pages. Sometimes real live businesses don't get listed in those either. I shudder at the thought, Turbine rep-lying to this e-mail/board message sent to me. Catch my meaning public domain? I'm daft. I just needed to scroll down and take the time to read. (It's not like it was buried seven links away in fine HTML print or anything.)
Anyway I have no reason to do the job of any lawyer, nor iron out the IT difficulties your data loss could cause their code, Froglodyte.
I'm not a Dilbert either. I probably look more like Dogbert (w/o glasses), in any case, who ironically...may be more inclined to read the end user agreement twice for exploitable loopholes. (That's probably closer to my anal-retentive personality anyway.)
Uh, ok. I need to dungeon crawl now...
They could make it a bit more obvious that the store sales are final, irrevocable, whatever. Going through the purchase process certainly doesn't tell the ignorant customer what the policy is--you have to read the TOS, which is a few thousand words of lawyer's boilerplate.
Suggestion to players: be careful.
Suggestions to Turbine: see above.
Hokiewa--you sure are some kind of sourpuss. Personal issues, I think--you tell me to "take responsibility" for some reason, but it's not as if I haven't done so. I screwed up and lost an irreplaceable and very valuable item. Does that make you happy somehow? It's informative to learn that my error and loss pleases you so.
State law here is that stores have to accept returns/exchanges, whether for refund or replacement, unless, as Uska mentioned, there's a clearly posted "all sales final" policy. That's really not the case with the store, and again this would be easy enough to fix by adding some simple warnings, given all the ad real-estate they're currently using to try to sell you +1 chain shirts. :)
I don't think I'd bother with emailing customer service again. I did, and received no reply. To submit a ticket IN GAME (which got me a response, although it was "too bad for you"), use the "help" menu and look around.
Apparently the in-game tickets are more diligently monitored than the support e-mailboxes.
Neofolis
I kind of have an issue too. I bought the Drow class, because I wanted a 32 point build and saw lots of forum posts about how a Drow is just as good or better because, although they only get 28 points, they only use 1 point for stat increases as 15-16 and two points for 17-18. Anyway, I got my Drow and was disappointed to see CON - 6, but thought it should still work out OK with the lower cost high level stats. Now I have a Drow I realise that this only effects the DEX, INT and CHA that start at 10, which is great for me wanting to build a Fighter, Cleric. Whilst I appreciate that I could have investigated further and found this information, it should be available in the store. I shouldn't have to look elsewhere to find out what I am buying. When I looked at the stats tab in store it just said STR - 0, DEX - 0, etc., really helpful.
My contention now, never using anything other than dumb, bashing classes and healers is that I have an item that I will never use. It may well be my fault, even though with sufficient product information in store I wouldn't have bought it, but why won't Turbine refund the points, it's not like I want my money back. Surely players are going to be less likely to spend money on points in future, if they think that Turbine won't help out when they have got an item they don't want.
On a similar topic, at the same time I bought a Tome, which is bound to account, but I don't see any way to transfer it to the server I want it on.
cardmj1
Let me answer this one for you. Bound to account means that you can transfer items to any same server characters on a single account. As a work around, in order to transfer said tome to another server character, you would have to transfer the character with the tome in their inventory to the other server for the cost of a fee.
Remember, Turbine is doing it's best to learn the knowledge base of all the new customers coming in with the F2P model. There was alot they did not have to explain before F2P, because the average DDO player already had existing knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper games. Therefore, there was alot of information that Turbine assumed (rightfully so) their playerbase would know from that previous knowledge. This is, of course, no longer the case. Please give them time and feedback on things you are unsure about or ask the veteran players.
Visty
you cant transfer items from server to server, whats on a server stays there
bound to account just means you can mail it around your chars with the shared bank
for the first point: you bought drow and arent satisfied with it and now you want the points back? thats what i read there, is that true?
Visty,
I don't think the player has ever played drow in game or in pnp. He probably did not know there were "natural" abilities unique to the drow race nor "natural" drawbacks (ie con stats). I also believe the player did not research the race on the compendium, wiki, or ask on the forums before purchase. Many F2P persons do not research before purchasing. It's not a bad thing, just unwise.
"It may well be my fault, even though with sufficient product information in store I wouldn't have bought it, but why won't Turbine refund the points, it's not like I want my money back. Surely players are going to be less likely to spend money on points in future, if they think that Turbine won't help out when they have got an item they don't want."
This is about my take on it, too. And I think the legal claim that points have no value and thus will never be refunded is weakened a bit by the fact that the company sells 'em for cash.
Another thought that occurred to me on the "no toon restoral" policy: Something another poster mentioned was that virtually every veteran player has irrevocably lost stuff because of an accidentally deleted toon.
If that's at all accurate, personally, I'd say that's a strong reason to consider providing restoral services. It would please some players, could provide some revenue to pay for the administration of the service, and could save a lot of people the grief from the potential unrecoverable loss in the future.
THAC0
..... at the risk of being blasted by either side... :) I have a question. I totally missed the 'bag fix' threads or 'bag bug' threads... I scan new posts for specific topics and read. Anyhow, my question to the group here is, I did purchase those Big bags from the DDO Store the day it opened. Likely shortly after the server was up... so are the bags I bought for my 1 character (that I am using)... bound to the account, or bond to that specific character. Specifically, from what I gather is possible here, am I able to put those bags in my shared bank box and move them to my other characters?
Sorry for the question.. but now I'm curious.
Also, sorry to hear you deleted a character only to find out what you thought wasn't at all.
Orratti
I once deleted a character with 700k plat on it, was ****ed but didn't even think of making a ticket or any complaint in order to recover it because I already knew it wouldn't do any good. I'm sorry you lost your RL money and who knows you might get a refund from writing this thread. I guess my avoiding the ddo store entirely along with plat farmers has been a worthwhile investment for me. I never understood the urge to buy plat with RL money, ok maybe I understood a little but really money actually has value and plat can be played for and if you pull a good enough item like I did you can sell it for fake money that someone else payed real money for and even if you delete your character and the money all you have really done is remove plat from the general population. Hmm maybe if I keep pulling awesome loot and selling it on the ah for plat that I drop onto a character I continuosly reroll just to delete with loads of plat I could not only break all the plat sellers but possibly bankrupt the entire server eventually leading to a deflation of ah prices. Hmmm.
So if you're lucky, the bag is "bound to account." I guess the only way to know for certain is to go grab it and look at it. It should say "bound to account" if it is, which would mean you CAN put it in your "shared account locker."
The policy is a good one. Once a character is deleted the info is gone. Everything you said could in fact be a lie and an attempt to get something free. With no way to verify your claim how can you expect them to just hand you another bag? I know you are telling the truth, but the rules cannot be changed just because you may be honest.
"The policy is a good one. Once a character is deleted the info is gone. Everything you said could in fact be a lie and an attempt to get something free. With no way to verify your claim how can you expect them to just hand you another bag? I know you are telling the truth, but the rules cannot be changed just because you may be honest."
Well, it happens that my career is in IT, and this is so unlikely to be correct I ought to respond.
MMOs are first and foremost databases. *Everything* that happens in the game is logged, tracked, noted, updated, etc etc etc.
What you asserted above is virtually *never* done with databases. If you have an "external user" accessing the database, in this case a player, you don't PERMIT them to delete records directly from the database in real-time. It's too risky to leave that kind of power open directly to everyone who connects to the server. For the most part, even if an administrator performs a record deletion or update, it is reversible until some purge period has elapsed.
Is it not 100% impossible that Turbine does in fact grant player-accounts an "irreversible and instant" deletion of data from their game, but if they do employ such lax security on the game DB, they're incompetent. And that's not any kind of exaggeration.
Sure, it's easy to assume that there's a technical limitation based on the Turbine response, "We can't restore toons," and in fact they may want you make that assumption, but the chances that it's true are vanishingly small.
Letrii
Do you work for Turbine? Do you know they don't have program coded to delete character data when you delete a toon?
As I said, if the user is deleting stuff directly without any data protection, they're incompetent. I don't believe they're incompetent.
As analogy, I'd also say that a bank was incompetent if they didn't lock safe-deposit boxes so that anyone who was looking in their own box could just go open and poke around in someone else's.
I think if you read the post again that you replied to, you'll see that I acknowledged that it's not 100% IMPOSSIBLE that customers can do it. Just incredibly unlikely.
You confuse "external user access" to a particular record subset to access to the entire database. You don't know nearly as much as you think you do, on several subjects, as your posts in this thread attest.
Tell me, do you think that the user's deletion of a character is instant and irrevocable?
Just asking for your speculation there.
Impaqt
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3453/bagq.jpg
Seems pretty clear tome that itis Bound to Character now.
Yeah, I think it said the same thing when I bought the first bag, too, but you are right to point out that the description is currently correct.
I made a mistake to buy it, and now I'm out the points and have a bound item that I don't really care for and can't sell or recover any of my investment on.
Good point to raise. I made a mistake. Oops.
Kistilan
At least that's what their "cover-up" story was. Most agree they should have removed the bags & refunded instead of raising the price w/out telling the population. Furthermore, removing the bag's bind to account code and uncerimoniously announcing it later (along with a reduced price), was rather deceptive.
I hope that Turbine learns their lesson on that one.
I also hope they realize that selling bound to character bags and quivers is much less desired by the populace.
Instead of buying 1 BtA bag prior to change and stopping there, I'd likely buy 6 more Huge bags across 3 Servers and at least 10 of their quivers. As they're bound to character, I'm not buying any -- Deneith quivers and in-game bags are better.
Kylani
I thought someone from Turbine once stated that all store items would be bind to account? This game is so geared to making you reroll, at least early on, I have a problem with bind to character items sold in the store.
I know they're adding items to allow you to reroll, but they cost money. So if you decide to delete your character to reroll because you'd like to try a different race, you're stuck losing an item you paid money for. Or you can keep what you paid for IF you buy a reroll item.
I understand they can do what they like and people shouldn't buy bound to character stuff unless they think they'll keep the character, but this just seems wrong to me. I'm willing to pay money for bound to account items, but not bound to character. Having bound to character items like this leaves a bad taste in my mouth over the store. I'd like the bags and quivers, but they scream rip-off.
As far as deleting a character with items you've paid for, I do think it's pretty much your own fault. You should be careful before you delete. I don't think it's the game makers responsibility. They give you a prompt asking you are you sure. You need to be sure.
Hafeal
I feel for you OP, I triple check the inventory of every character, including the bank before I delete. Dead is Dead as they say.
Although Turbine came out with a plausible explanation regarding the bags, it came out about a week after it was first noticed and complained about because they had not announced either the price change nor the feature change (account --> character). [Kist beat me to the punch!]
I believe Huge bags, especially at their price point, should be bound to account as that is what made them useful. You only really need a large for a character otherwise. I am willing to bet they will change it again at some point when they need to boost some revenue - we know, after all, that they can do it now.
Cedwin
How do you accidentally delete a toon? Or did you mean that you just forgot that the bag was still on him after you deleted him? Either way it was your fault. Now you're mad because they won't recover your character, and won't give you a refund, so you're basically trying to start a boycott against the DDO Store... I'd watch out man, that is probably grounds enough to ban your account.
If each user has an individual row in a "users" table, with multiple tables storing various other info about the user, once the user is removed from the users table it would delete all associations between it and other tables (which are probably cleaned up during deletion anyways). The only way to restore a "single" row in a table would be to restore the database to a previous point, which is a "roll-back", so recovering your character would also roll everyone else (on your server) back to just before you did.
@ cedrin
It's MY fault. And while I was exasperated and emotional in those first posts, I stand by the initial warning, which is that you should be VERY CAREFUL buying stuff there, because it's all caveat emptor.
I'm not trying to "organize a boycott." I'm complaining about the various policies that got me here.
I'd be surprised if they wanted to ban my account for that. I AM paying them, after all.
(RE: database stuff--there are many theoretical ways in which the game could be set up that would permit a user/customer to delete stuff right from the database. I don't think the game is set up that up that way. I doubt Turbine will tell us, but it would very poor data security indeed if the lowest-privileged users, players, could directly delete their characters. No joke.)
arminius
You should have been here before all the vendor and broker changes, with the added abilities to lock items, to buyback from vendors, and the vastly different behavior of the sell and repair actions.
Everyone who back in the olden days unrecoverably sold a 3d of their inventory thinking they were repairing it raise their hands. <Raises Hand.> I sold Retribution and the Giant Stalker Knife that way back when they were among the most desirable items in the game. There was some anger involved.
Anhunedd
Seems to me there's room for two revenue streams - sell BOTH bound to character and bound to account bags + quivers.
Drop the current price a bit for the current, character bound items and create a new price point a bit higher for account bound items.
What's a huge collectable bag at the moment? 595? So make the character bound one 395 and the account bound one 795. And then a large bag, bound to character might only be 195. So you see what might happen? One huge bound to account bag for the shared bank slot, or to pass around your current "favourite", and then large bags bound to each character for current use. Net result? More points spent, more money earnt.
I got lucky. I got a large bag before the change. There's no way I'll ever upgrade that to a Huge now, and even looking at the comparatively cheap quivers, I find myself thinking "yeah, but if I ever re-roll...", and so I don't spend.
Another thought - only allow bound to account items to be bought by Premium or higher members. Another way to ensure the points being spent are from real cash.
Ahhzz
Is it just me? That didn't answer the question.... "Do you personally think...?" Looks to me like he just wants to argue and have someone say "Yes, you're right."
The whole point here seems to be a policy issue, and a lack of clarity. Are they capable of setting the system up so they could restore items, or even characters? Absolutely. Does it make any sense for them not to have in place a system that could recover, at least very closely to current, the characters and inventory on a server in case of database corruption or other unknown or specified error? Of course not. Are they required to? Nah.... Would it make good sense to at least have a well laid out, and easily found, policy on restoring items/characters? You'd think so, wouldn't you?
Is it just me, or are you replying to something that I said to someone else just so people can say "Yes, you're right." I don't recall answering a question "Do you personally think?.." in the first place, could you quote that? Did I go over your head? Is that why you are lashing out at me?
I also love how you think you are the one person in this thread that can sum everything up for the laymen to understand. Good Jorb.
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=2486401&postcount=35
actually, I was quoting you responding to OP asking a question to someone else. Also still noting you seem to want to point out that there are ways that Turbine can set things up to make it impossible to retrieve items/char. Noone disagrees with that. We just all seem to think it would be idiotic to run the database that way.
It would be idiotic to permanently delete a character from their database after they type in their name to permanently delete their character? I'm not saying that it just connects directly to the database and deletes the rows, but I'm sure through the business logic it connects to a stored procedure and deletes the data for that character.
They probably have some sort of transactional backup going, but restoring it would be in a higher support tier than what a standard GM can do.
I also find it unlikely that anything is deleted directly from the server, that said, if someone's account was hacked by a person or software, would there be any way to undo changes that were made. If not, then everyone is at risk. It doesn't take great software engineering skills to create a program that generates and enters random user/password combinations until one works.
Going back to my previous post. I am not an experiences D&D'er compared with many people. I have played most, if not all of the computer variants of the game since Balder's Gate. My wife, on the other hand has played D&D since childhood, pen & paper and didn't realize that the benefits of the Drow race were not what I was expecting. I totally agree that with more research, I could have found out the information that I now know without buying the race, but given that it is fairly basic information, it should be available in the shop. I appreciate that the F2P version will open up the game to a wider audience, but I don't believe Turbine only aimed for the game to be played by experienced D&D'ers at any point. Why would they deliberately limit their market?
As far as my tome, which is bound to account, is concerned, this strikes me as a blatant falsehood, it is bound to server, not account. Unless I can transfer the item between servers or freely transfer the character between servers, then the item should be classed as bound to server. I don't understand why the item doesn't appear in the inventory of each character on the account and then disappear from all characters when one character uses it. I realize the software and servers are not setup to work that way, but it would seem like a better way to have things setup.
That's just silly, not only would they need to know your account name, but they would also need to guess your password, which if you put in a strong password it could take years to brute force it. But I digress, that's what the transactional backups would be for, a just in case measure that would allow a person to get their characters back if hijacked. Even then, I'm not sure that Turbine would restore them for you... it may fall under their "tough luck you should have chosen a better password" policy.
"It would be idiotic to permanently delete a character from their database after they type in their name to permanently delete their character?"
Yes, I realize that any cracker with any experience would not just create software that randomly enters alphanumerics until there is a match, they would be trying to access the username/password combinations directly from the database, but no-one has unhackable security, which is why any sensitive or valuable data is backed up. It is therefore safe to assume that Turbine could restore deleted characters, if they chose to do so.
Actually, you'd setup a separate, empty, database and do a point-in-time restore to just prior to the time of character deletion using the base and transactional backups from the production database. Then extract the records for the deleted toon from that and re-insert them into production, possibly after correcting for primary key values that have been reused (if they are reused).
Technically pretty straightforward, but the cost of doing this would make the fee for the service prohibitive, and would likely just generate rants ($2000 to restore a deleted character??!!??) and result in bad PR rather than revenue.
/I've been talking customers through this kind of restore following severe ID-10T errors for years.
//And just last week I carefully vaulted or sold all the equipment from a toon before a re-roll and then deleted it before mailing the cash. D'oh! Fortunately was only 1k plat from a level 2.
///Be careful out there!
I'm unhappy right now.
This is only my fifth post in this forum and probably my last.
My other thread...no-one responds to the posts I make, so whatever.
Anyway Frog, here's what I mentioned earlier in the month, about that problem of proclivity with Online services. Take note of this last sentence. Sound familiar?
Quote from wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live
Pricing and subscriptions
Xbox Live comes with two levels of subscriptions. One being the basic Silver level which is free but with limited features, while the Gold premium level requires a paid subscription. Every new Xbox 360 includes a one month subscription to Xbox Live Gold if the player is new to Xbox Live (new account). To continue the Gold membership level the user either pays with a credit card, for $50 a year, through the Xbox 360 or may purchase one of the pre-paid Gold subscription cards available at retail stores.
If users associate a credit card with their Xbox Live account, when the current subscription ends, it is renewed automatically by default. When this occurs, a notification e-mail is sent to the e-mail address registered for the account. In order to cancel or change automatic renewal, users are required to phone a customer service number or by visiting https://billing.microsoft.com, as cancellations cannot be made directly from the console. This procedure has been criticized by some users, particularly with respects to requests made by customer service operators concerning the reasons for cancellation
Kapyong
Gday,
Your analogy is false.
People CANNOT delete someone ELSE's character.
They can only delete their own.
Can you explain why you think allowing people to delete something THEY created is 'incompetent. ?
Sure, it's good advice to be careful and avoid making mistakes.
But you seem to be BOTH :
* admitting YOU made an error
* blaming them for it !
I like the mechanism that is employed by eve-online. If you want to delete a character in that game you choose to do so, then that character sits in a queue for ( at least ) 24 hours. After that 24 hour time period elapses you can then choose to click once again to delete the character. At any time while the character is still in the queue you can choose to cancel your actions, retrieve the character, and continue playing like nothing ever happened.
Saves them a lot of complaints I would bet.
westerndragon207
Well lets just say this...
I played an MMO for over 4 years paid membership (i wont say the name because i dont know if i can and its not WOW)
their game server crashed in the middle of my combat then when the server came back up i had died and been sent back to respawn NAKED.
I fought with the company for over a month about returning YEARS worth of acquired weapons and armor.
Finally after several conversations with game moderators I logged into my account to find that most of my items had been returned and I was given several million GP for my character (to replace what they couldn't recover)
Bottom line is. You mess up, you pay.
now i dont know exactly what you did during the crash so i cant say for certain if you deserve your stuff back.
but i will say that if a technical difficulty on the side of the game provider causes loss of character or items it would be a very very good practice to see that those players are "repaired"
I work as a computer repair tech and I know that if i accidently remove or corrupt someones data i need to do my best to make sure that customer is satisfied.
I'm still frustrated about my Tome. Having paid the equivalent of $30 for a +2 tome (all stats), that is described as "bound to account", to actually get it on the character I want I have to pay:
$9.99 to change the name of the character (or delete a character with the same name on a different server.
$24.99 to transfer the character to the different server.
>$15.00 for enough points to buy a shared account on the necessary server.
Not only that, but I have to wait up to two weeks for the name change, then wait up to another two weeks for the character transfer.
There is no mention anywhere in the store that, if you buy something that is bound to account, you may potentially have to spend another $50 and wait up to a month to get the item onto the character you want it on. There isn't even any mention that you need a shared account to transfer the item on the same server.
Are people expected to trawl through forums to get any information before making what should be a simple purchase, because there is no mention anywhere that you should do that either.


text:
asciinema is composed of multiple commands, similar to `git`, `apt-get` or
`brew`.

When you run `asciinema` with no arguments help message is displayed, listing
all available commands with their options.

## `rec [filename]`

__Record terminal session.__

By running `asciinema rec [filename]` you start a new recording session. The
command (process) that is recorded can be specified with `-c` option (see
below), and defaults to `$SHELL` which is what you want in most cases.

Recording finishes when you exit the shell (hit Ctrl+D or type
`exit`). If the recorded process is not a shell then recording finishes when
the process exits.

If the `filename` argument is omitted then (after asking for confirmation) the
resulting asciicast is uploaded to
[asciinema-server](https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-server) (by default to
asciinema.org), where it can be watched and shared.

If the `filename` argument is given then the resulting recording (called
[asciicast](https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema/blob/master/doc/asciicast-v2.md))
is saved to a local file. It can later be replayed with `asciinema play
<filename>` and/or uploaded to asciinema server with `asciinema upload
<filename>`.

`ASCIINEMA_REC=1` is added to recorded process environment variables. This
can be used by your shell's config file (`.bashrc`, `.zshrc`) to alter the
prompt or play a sound when the shell is being recorded.

Available options:

* `--stdin` - Enable stdin (keyboard) recording (see below)
* `--append` - Append to existing recording
* `--raw` - Save raw STDOUT output, without timing information or other metadata
* `--overwrite` - Overwrite the recording if it already exists
* `-c, --command=<command>` - Specify command to record, defaults to $SHELL
* `-e, --env=<var-names>` - List of environment variables to capture, defaults
  to `SHELL,TERM`
* `-t, --title=<title>` - Specify the title of the asciicast
* `-i, --idle-time-limit=<sec>` - Limit recorded terminal inactivity to max `<sec>` seconds
* `-y, --yes` - Answer "yes" to all prompts (e.g. upload confirmation)
* `-q, --quiet` - Be quiet, suppress all notices/warnings (implies -y)

Stdin recording allows for capturing of all characters typed in by the user in
the currently recorded shell. This may be used by a player (e.g.
[asciinema-player](https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-player)) to display
pressed keys. Because it's basically a key-logging (scoped to a single shell
instance), it's disabled by default, and has to be explicitly enabled via
`--stdin` option.

## `play <filename>`

__Replay recorded asciicast in a terminal.__

This command replays given asciicast (as recorded by `rec` command) directly in
your terminal.

Following keyboard shortcuts are available:

- Space - toggle pause,
- . - step through a recording a frame at a time (when paused),
- Ctrl+C - exit.

Playing from a local file:

    asciinema play /path/to/asciicast.cast

Playing from HTTP(S) URL:

    asciinema play https://asciinema.org/a/22124.cast
    asciinema play http://example.com/demo.cast

Playing from asciicast page URL (requires `<link rel="alternate"
type="application/x-asciicast" href="/my/ascii.cast">` in page's HTML):

    asciinema play https://asciinema.org/a/22124
    asciinema play http://example.com/blog/post.html

Playing from stdin:

    cat /path/to/asciicast.cast | asciinema play -
    ssh user@host cat asciicast.cast | asciinema play -

Playing from IPFS:

    asciinema play dweb:/ipfs/QmNe7FsYaHc9SaDEAEXbaagAzNw9cH7YbzN4xV7jV1MCzK/ascii.cast

Available options:

* `-i, --idle-time-limit=<sec>` - Limit replayed terminal inactivity to max `<sec>` seconds
* `-s, --speed=<factor>` - Playback speed (can be fractional)

> For the best playback experience it is recommended to run `asciinema play` in
> a terminal of dimensions not smaller than the one used for recording, as
> there's no "transcoding" of control sequences for new terminal size.

## `cat <filename>`

__Print full output of recorded asciicast to a terminal.__

While `asciinema play <filename>` replays the recorded session using timing
information saved in the asciicast, `asciinema cat <filename>` dumps the full
output (including all escape sequences) to a terminal immediately.

`asciinema cat existing.cast >output.txt` gives the same result as recording via
`asciinema rec --raw output.txt`.

## `upload <filename>`

__Upload recorded asciicast to asciinema.org site.__

This command uploads given asciicast (recorded by `rec` command) to
asciinema.org, where it can be watched and shared.

`asciinema rec demo.cast` + `asciinema play demo.cast` + `asciinema upload
demo.cast` is a nice combo if you want to review an asciicast before
publishing it on asciinema.org.

## `auth`

__Link your install ID with your asciinema.org user account.__

If you want to manage your recordings (change title/theme, delete) at
asciinema.org you need to link your "install ID" with asciinema.org user
account.

This command displays the URL to open in a web browser to do that. You may be
asked to log in first.

Install ID is a random ID ([UUID
v4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier)) generated
locally when you run asciinema for the first time, and saved at
`$HOME/.config/asciinema/install-id`. It's purpose is to connect local machine
with uploaded recordings, so they can later be associated with asciinema.org
account. This way we decouple uploading from account creation, allowing them to
happen in any order.

> A new install ID is generated on each machine and system user account you use
> asciinema on, so in order to keep all recordings under a single asciinema.org
> account you need to run `asciinema auth` on all of those machines.

> asciinema versions prior to 2.0 confusingly referred to install ID as "API
> token".

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Most of us know where our next meal will come from but many receiving assistance from Jewish Family Service (JFS) do not live with the same sense of security.
Thank you so much to everyone who has donated food for the JFS food closet. This food program supports Peninsula Jewish families who come to Jewish Family Service for financial assistance. They all struggle with monthly expenses and these items are always a welcome help to them.


text:
St. Peter questions three women
St. Peter questions three women at Heaven's Gate
Three women met untimely deaths and arrived at the gates of heaven.
At the entrance to the hallowed gates, they were halted by St. Peter and his obedient angel for their rights to be accepted for an eternity in heaven.
St. Peter asked each of the three women, "Before entering you must answer a simple question."
They replied together, "Which is…?"
He asked the first of the three women, "Have you lead a virtuous life?"
"Oh yes!" she quickly answered.
"I was a virgin before I got married and still had my virginity after I got married."
"Excellent," exclaimed St. Peter.
"My dear angel, give this woman the golden key."
"Have you been a good person?", he asked the second of the three women.
"Oh, quite good indeed," she said.
"I was a virgin before I got married, but not after I consummated my marriage."
"Very good," said St. Peter.
"Angel, give this women a silver key to heaven."
St. Peter asked the last of the three women, "Have you been a virtuous woman?"
"Oh no, not at all," she quietly admitted to him.
"I practically have sex with every man I met before, and even after marriage. Anywhere, anytime."
"Sad to hear that," retorted St. Peter.
"Angel, please present this woman with my room key."
Tags religious, women
← Jamaican Tourist In Australia → Giant Cockroach Visits Joe


Incorporating cost-effectiveness data in the priority-setting decisions is a distinguishing feature in the Swedish national guidelines. This differentiates the Swedish guidelines from its European and American counterparts. The broader perspective is aimed at facilitating explicit resource allocations and priority-setting in healthcare, all in accordance with the three guiding ethical principles stated in the Health and Medical Services Act.1 The guidelines consist of recommendations in the form of a priority-setting decisions produced by a Priority-Setting Group (PSG) and the work process involves appraising the evidence used as decision support (including cost-effectiveness).
In our article "Use of cost-effectiveness data in priority-setting decisions: experiences from the national guidelines for heart diseases in Sweden" we expressed that "economic evidence should be viewed as part of the evidence-based knowledge "package." It is not our intention to argue that healthcare priority-setting should be based solely on cost-effectiveness data. The use of cost-effectiveness data represents one of many factors that play a role in health policy decision-making."2 Despite the "success" of using cost-effectiveness data in decision-making as commented by Williams and Bryan3 and also being "a wonderful exception to this rule" as commented by Erntoft,4 it was well-observed that cost-effectiveness data was lacking as decision support in the majority of cases. The study design did not use quantitative approach, to explore the use of cost-effectiveness data in decision-making. Instead, we have given examples of situations when cost-effectiveness arguments impacted decisions taken and was used in the PSG deliberations.
Our case study of the national guidelines constitute nationallevel policy decision-making. We are aware of the fact that, empirical research has shown that healthcare decisionmakers at the local level have not yet accepted the use of costeffectiveness evidence in their decision-making to the same extent as at the national level concerning pharmaceuticals.7 One reason for this is that affordability is often a pressing issue at local level decision-making and outcomes are seldom viewed in relation to cost. At a national policy level in Sweden, a societal perspective including both costs and effects is often applied. Though, the commentary by Erntoft concludes that certain conditions need to be fulfilled to enable the use of costeffectiveness data in real life.4 These include lack of budget restriction, strategies to handle uncertainty, transparency, legitimising health economics through a health economist attending the PSG deliberations, and clear instructions (use of templates) and nicely fits the results of our study.
Cost-effectiveness data played an important role in cases of greater uncertainty and ambiguity. Economic arguments clearly became a part of the PSG deliberation when the group members had difficulty in reaching agreement. As observed by Youngkong,8 setting healthcare priorities is not likely to succeed without considering deliberative processes among concerned stakeholders, justifying their reasons to maintain authority in decision-making. The use of cost-effectiveness data may therefore be regarded as a format for moving the work process forward, avoiding blocks in discussion, and viewed as a "solution" to solve the task of making prioritysetting decisions. Using cost-effectiveness arguments was also used to structure the discussions and interestingly was not challenged to the same extent as clinical evidence. Economic arguments was used as a fine-tuning instrument and a counterweight for dichotomization.
Health and Medical Service Act, SFS 1982:763 (1982).


text:
Abolfazl Doostparast Torshizi
Mentoring Experience
My name is Abolfazl. I am a senior research scientist at Wang Genomics Lab at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also a proud member of Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Prior to moving to Philadelphia, we were a part of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University. I did my postdoc in Computer Science and Systems Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I earned my PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering (minor in System biology) from Amirkabir University of Technology (former Tehran Polytechnic), Iran, in 2015. I am broadly interested in Computational Systems Biology of complex diseases such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders, Machine Learning, Network and Cell-Type Deconvolution, Single-Cell Genomics, and Bioinformatics.
Here I have shortlisted my recent publications in chronological order. Full list is available on Google Scholar.
A. Doostparast Torshizi, et al., Deconvolution of Transcriptional Networks Identifies TCF4 as a Master Regulator in Schizophrenia. Tissue-specific reverse engineering of transcriptional networks has uncovered master regulators (MRs) of cellular networks in various cancers, yet the application of this method to neuropsychiatric disorders is largely unexplored. Here, using RNA-Seq data on postmortem dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) from schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and control subjects, we deconvolved the transcriptional network to identify MRs that mediate expression of a large body of target genes. Together with an independent RNA-Seq data on cultured cells derived from olfactory neuroepithelium, we identified TCF4, a leading SCZ risk locus implicated by genome-wide association studies, as one of the top candidate MRs that may be potentially dysregulated in SCZ. We validated the dysregulated TCF4-related transcriptional network through examining the transcription factor binding footprints inferred from human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived neuronal ATAC-Seq data (Paper URL).
K.E. Borgmann-Winter, K. Wang, S. Bandyopadhyay, A. Doostparast Torshizi, I. Blair, C.G. Hahn, The proteome and its dynamics: A missing piece for integrative multi-omics in schizophrenia. The complex and heterogeneous pathophysiology of schizophrenia can be deconstructed by integration of large-scale datasets encompassing genes through behavioral phenotypes. Genome-wide datasets are now available for genetic, epigenetic and transcriptomic variations in schizophrenia, which are then analyzed by newly devised systems biology algorithms. A missing piece, however, is the inclusion of information on the proteome and its dynamics in schizophrenia. Proteomics has lagged behind omics of the genome, transcriptome and epigenome since analytic platforms of proteins were previously not as robust as those for nucleic acids. In recent years, however, there has been an unprecedented progress in the instrumentation (liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS)), experimental paradigms, and bioinformatics of the proteome. Large-scale analyses of the schizophrenia proteome are now possible and ought to be pursued vigorously and integrated with other omics results. With that in our view, we review proteomics studies that have been conducted in schizophrenia to date, present a summary of methodological innovations of recent years in MS based proteomics and the power of new generation proteomics, and propose how such data can be analyzed and integrated with other omics results (Publication URL.)
A. Doostparast Torshizi, K. Wang, Next-generation sequencing in drug development: target identification and genetically stratified clinical trials. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) enabled high-throughput analysis of genotype-phenotype relationships on human populations, ushering in a new era of genetics-informed drug development. The year 2017 was remarkable, with the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved gene therapy for cancer (Kymriah™) and for inherited diseases (LUXTURNA™), the first multiplex NGS panel for companion diagnostics (MSK-IMPACT), and the first drug targeting a genetic signature rather than a disease (Keytruda®). We envision that population-scale NGS with paired electronic health records (EHRs) will become a routine measure in the drug development process for the identification of novel drug targets, and that genetically stratified clinical trials may be widely adopted to improve power in precision medicine-guided drug development. More can be found here.
A. Doostparast Torshizi, L. Petzold, Graph-based semi-supervised learning with genomic data integration using condition-responsive genes applied to phenotype classification, (Featured Article & Editor's Choice). Data integration methods that combine data from different molecular levels such as genome, epigenome, transcriptome, etc., have received a great deal of interest in the past few years. It has been demonstrated that the synergistic effects of different biological data types can boost learning capabilities and lead to a better understanding of the underlying interactions among molecular levels. In this paper we present a graph-based semi-supervised classification algorithm that incorporates latent biological knowledge in the form of biological pathways with gene expression and DNA methylation data. The process of graph construction from biological pathways is based on detecting condition-responsive genes, where 3 sets of genes are finally extracted: all condition responsive genes, high-frequency condition-responsive genes, and P-value–filtered genes. More can be found here.
A. Doostparast Torshizi, L. Petzold, Sparse Pathway-Induced Dynamic Network Biomarker Discovery for Early Warning Signal Detection in Complex Diseases. In many complex diseases, the transition process from the healthy stage to the catastrophic stage does not occur gradually. Recent studies indicate that the initiation and progression of such diseases are comprised of three steps including healthy stage, pre-disease stage, and disease stage. It has been demonstrated that a certain set of trajectories can be observed in the genetic signatures at the molecular level, which might be used to detect the pre-disease stage and to take necessary medical interventions. In this paper, we propose two optimization-based algorithms for extracting the dynamic network biomarkers responsible for catastrophic transition into the disease stage, and to open new horizons to reverse the disease progression at an early stage through pinpointing molecular signatures provided by high-throughput microarray data. The first algorithm relies on meta-heuristic intelligent search to characterize dynamic network biomarkers represented as a complete graph. The second algorithm induces sparsity on the adjacency matrix of the genes by taking into account the biological signaling and metabolic pathways, since not all the genes in the ineractome are biologically linked. Comprehensive numerical and meta-analytical experiments verify the effectiveness of the results of the proposed approaches in terms of network size, biological meaningfulness, and verifiability. More can be found here.
A. Doostparast Torshizi, L. Petzold, M. Cohen, Multivariate soft repulsive system identification for constructing rule-based classification systems: Application to trauma clinical data. Rule-based classification systems constructed upon linguistic terms in the antecedent and consequent of the rules lack sufficient generalization capabilities. This paper proposes a new multivariate fuzzy system identification algorithm to design binary rule-based classification structures through making use of the repulsive forces between the cluster prototypes of different class labels. This approach is coupled with the potential discrimination power of each dimension in the feature space to increase the generalization potential. To address this issue, first the multivariate variant of a newly proposed soft clustering algorithm along with its mathematical foundations is proposed. Next, the discriminatory power of each individual feature is computed, using the multivariate membership values in the proposed clustering algorithm to achieve the most accurate firing degree in each rule. The main advantage of this method is to handle unbalanced datasets yielding superior true positive measure while keeping the false positive rate low enough to avoid the natural bias toward class labels containing larger number of training samples. To validate the proposed approaches, a series of numerical experiments on publicly available datasets and a real clinical dataset collected by our team were conducted. Simulation results demonstrated achievement of the primary goals of this research. More can be found here.
A. Doostparast Torshizi, M.H. Fazel Zarandi, A new cluster validity measure based on general type-2 fuzzy sets: Application in gene expression data clustering. As a widespread pattern recognition technique, clustering has been widely used in various disciplines including: science, engineering, medicine, etc. One the latest progresses in this field is introduction of general type-2 fuzzy sets and the new clustering method represented on its basis called general type-2 fuzzy c-means. In this paper, the aim is to develop a robust and accurate similarity measure between general type-2 fuzzy sets. Utilizing philosophy behind this developed similarity measure, the first exclusively developed general type-2 fuzzy cluster validity index will be proposed to be used for finding the optimal number of clusters through using general type-2 fuzzy c-means. To verify quality of the proposed approaches, several heavy computations have been conducted on artificial datasets and also real gene expression datasets. Numerical comparisons reveal robustness and quality of the proposed approach compared to several similar approaches in the literature. More can be found here.
I usually share my career-related news here.
Oct. 2019: I am honored to be selected as the Featured Research Trainee at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Sep. 2019: Press coverage of our work (in Farsi) ISNA, YJC, IRINN, ANA, Etemad News, Tasnim News, Mehr News, Nabaa Press, Fanavar Magazine, Soraya News, Khabari.org, Hamrahane Khabar.
Sep. 2019: My poster on a new muti-omics data integration method is accepted in 2019 MidAtlantic Bioinformatics Conference.
Sep. 2019: Coverage of our findings on EurekAlert AAAS.
Sep. 2019: Our findings on schizophrenia is covered by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
Sep. 2019: Coverage of our findings on Genome Web.
Sep. 2019: Coverage of our findings on ScienceDaily.
Sep. 2019: CHOP Researchers ID Schizophrenia Master Regulator Gene.
Sep. 2019: Coverage on New Atlas.
Sep. 2019: Scientists discover major regulator of schizophrenia that is active during early development.
Sep. 2019: Our findings on schizophrenia is covered by Medical XPress.
Sep. 2019: Coverage of our findings on Notizie Scientifiche (Italian news outlet).
Sep. 2019: Schizophrenia: Master Regulator Discovered on Med India (Indian news outlet).
Sep. 2019: A short video on our latest paper appeared in Science Advances:
August 2019: My paper published in The Journal of American Medical Informatics Association is selected as the best paper in IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2019 in the section 'Bioinformatics and Translational Informatics'.
July 2019: My abstract is accepted for presentation at ASHG 2019 in Houston in October.
July 2019: Our review paper on proteomics and its dynamics for integrative multi-omics in schizophrenia will appear in Schizophrenia Research.
June 2019: Excited to announce that our paper has been accepted for publication in Science Advances.
June 2019: Presented my findings at the 2019 Symposium on Advances in Genomics, Epidemiology, and Statistics (SAGES) at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
May 2019: Presented a poster at the 2019 Informatics Day at Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics.
May 2019: Presented a poster of my findings on transcriptional curcuitry of schizophrenia at the 2019 CHOP Research Institute Scientific Symposium.
May 2019: Honored to be awarded the 2019 Alavi-Dabiri Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Intellectual and Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) at Penn/CHOP.
Mar. 2019: Our proposal "Genome-wide structural variation detection in acute lymphocytic leukemia using long-read sequencing technology" got funded through Roberts Rapid Grants at CHOP/Penn.
Feb. 2019: Our collaborative research investigating the functional impact of SHANK3 deletions on autism spectrum disorders using human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived neurons is out in frontiers in Neuroanatomy.
Dec. 2018: My findings on network regulators of autism spectrum disorders are published in BMC Research Notes.
Jun. 2018: I am honored to serve as the Organizing Committee Member and Chair of the International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2018) held in Los Angeles, USA.
Apr. 2018: I am excited to have my review on the applications of next generation sequencing technologies in drug development and design of stratified clinical trials published in Drug Discovery Today.
Aug. 2017: I successfully hold the first International Workshop on Translational Bioinformatics in Precision Medicine (TBPM), in conjunction with the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE BIBM 2017) held at Kansas City, MO, USA.
Aug. 2017: I am excited to have my research on decovolution of transcriptional networks aimed at uncovering the master regulators of PTSD published in Nature Scientific Reports.
Apr. 2017: Excited to announce that I will be holding a workshop in conjunction with the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE BIBM 2017) to be held in Kansas City, MO, USA.
Feb. 2017: My research on developing a multivariate soft repulsive systems identification for patient stratification applied to trauma clinical data is published in Neurocomputing .
Dec. 2016: Excited to have my paper on sparse pathway-induced dynamic network biomarker discovery in complex diseases published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics .
Oct. 2016: Honored to have my paper published as the Editor's Choice in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association .
Oct. 2016: I presented my work on PTSD at the University of California, San Francisco .
Sep. 2016: I gave a seminar at Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) , Seattle, USA.
Jan. 2016: I gave a talk at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences .
Dec. 2015: I gave a seminar at Fredrick National Lab , Washington DC, USA.
Nov. 2015: I presented my paper at 2015 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE BIBM 2015) , Fredrick, MD, USA.
Apr. 2015: I successfully defended my PhD suma cum laude.
Feb. 2015: My comprehensive literature review on type-reduction of type-2 fuzzy sets is published in Soft Computing.
Sep. 2014: My research on developing Hierarchical Collapsing Method for direct defuzzification of general type-2 fuzzy sets is out in Information Sciences.
Jul. 2014: My novel cluster validity measure for gene expression segmentation is published in Knowledge-Based Systems.
Jul. 2014: I received the best paper award at 2014 IEEE Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century (21CW), in conjunction with NAFIPS 2014, held in Boston, USA.
Jan. 2014: My work on developing an intelligent system for treatment recommendation in individuals with bening prostatic hyperplasia is published in Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine.
May. 2013: My research on developing an indirect data-driven approach for system identification is published in Information Sciences.
Aug. 2012: I presented my paper at North American Information Processing Society Conference (IEEE-NAFIPS) at UC Berkeley.
Apr. 2012: My papers got accepted for oral presentation at 8th International Symposium on Intelligent and Manufacturing Systems (IMS 2012) to be held in Antalya, Turkey.
Apr. 2012: My paper got accepted for oral presentation at 2012 International Conference on Electrical and Computer Systems (ICECS'12) to be held in Ottawa, Canada.
Nov. 2011: I joined Computational Intelligence Lab led by Professor Mohammad Hossein Fazel Zarandi as a graduate research assistant.
Jun. 2011: I am proud t announce that I have been admitted to the PhD program at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic).
April. 2011: I received the Isfahan University of Technology (IUT) Presidential Award.
Jan. 2011: I successfully defended my Master's thesis with the highest honors.
Dec. 2010: My paper just got published in the Journal of Industrial Engineering.
Nov. 2010: My paper just got published in Advances in Fuzzy Systems.
Nov. 2010: My paper just got published in Expert Systems with Applications.
Sep. 2010: I presented at Iranian Fuzzy Systems annual conference.
Oct. 2009: I received a two year fellowship as the top MS student.
Sep. 2009: Honored to be among the recipients of a fully funded 3-week summer school by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Mar. 2019: Roberts Rapid Grant for the project "Genome-wide structural variation detection in acute lymphocytic leukemia using long-read sequencing technology" ($10,000, Role: Senior/Key Personnel).
Oct. 2019: Featured Research Trainee, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
May 2019: Alavi-Dabiri Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dec. 2018: Distinguished Research Trainee Award Nominee, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Apr. 2015: Excellent PhD Dissertation Award, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Iran.
Nov. 2014: Recognized Reviewer Award, Elsevier Publishers.
Aug. 2014: Best Student Paper Award, IEEE-North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society Conference (NAFIPS), Boston, USA.
Sep. 2011: Admission with Honor as an Exceptional Graduate Student to Doctoral Program, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Iran.
Jan. 2011: Top-ranked MS Student Award, Isfahan University of Technology.
Sep. 2009: Fellowship and Summer School Grant, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Jun. 2009 - Jun. 2011: Isfahan University of Technology Fellowship, Ranked First among all of the graduate students, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran.
Organizing Committee Member and Chair, International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2018), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Workshop Organizer and Chair, International Workshop on Translational Bioinformatics in Precision Medicine (TBPM 2017), In Conjunction with 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE-BIBM 2017), Kansas City, MO, USA.
ad hoc Reviewer:
Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group
Frontiers in Genetics
Applied Soft Computing
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine
International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems
Reliability Engineering and System Safety
Hydrological Sciences Journal
Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems
British Journal of Applied Science & Technology
International Journal of Engineering
Ain Shams Engineering Journal
North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society (IEEE-NAFIPS)
IEEE Microwave and Radio Electronics Week 2017 (IEEE MAREW 2017)
Instructor: 'Multiple Criteria Decision Making course', Graduate Course, Amirkabir University of Technology (International Campus), October 2012.
Instructor: 'Foundations of Information Technology', Undergrad Course, Ershad University, Tehran, Iran.
Instructor: 'Applied Optimization', Undergrad Course, Ershad University, Tehran, Iran, 2012.
Research Assistant: Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Amirkabir University of Technology, 2011-2015.
Teaching Assistant: 'Management of Information Systems' course of undergraduate level, Amirkabir University of Technology, 2013-2015.
Research Assistant: 'Data Management', Amirkabir University of Technology, 2014-2015 .
John Gregg, PhD Student of Genomics and Computational Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 2018 (co-mentored).
Karen Xu, MS Student of Biostatistics, Columbia University, 2017 (co-mentored).
Eshan Agarwal, BS Student of Computer Science, Columbia University, 2017.
Richard Jiang, PhD Student of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), 2016.
Destinee Cheng, PhD Student of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), 2016.
My professional accounts. I use my Twitter primarily for science. My Github and Linkedin profiles project my other scientific achievements. Finally, I have recently linked my Instagram to my website.
Abolfazl Doostparast Torshizi (✉)
3501 Civic Center Boulevard, 5th Floor CTRB, Philadelphia, PA 19104