text:
AMAZON'S BLACK BOX IS LIKE A LOST BLACK MIRROR EPISODE. Blumhouse's new sci-fi thriller is goofy, soapy fun.
FOR ITS FIRST hour, the new sci-fi horror flick Black Box appears to have collaged its story together using the plotlines of other, better films. A Black man is hypnotized and sucked into his own subconscious by an older lady, à la Get Out; when he isn't being hypnotized, he's struggling to piece together what happened on the night of his wife's death. To function in his amnesiac state, he must follow instructive notes reminding him how to behave, just like in Memento. Yet, just when it seems director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr.'s debut feature will never leave the land of prestige-thriller imitation, it shifts. Soon Black Box is a bonkers, delightfully campy Friday-night-popcorn-on-the-couch affair. It's a mess, but in a way that resembles a lost episode of Black Mirror, one full of heavy-handed technophobia and big twists.
Black Box opens with handsome, skittish widower Nolan (Mamoudou Athie) dealing with memory loss six months after a car crash kills his wife and leaves him with a severe brain injury. A former photographer, his work has suffered after the accident, and bills pile up in his spacious home. His adorable daughter Ava (Amanda Christine) tries to keep the household running, holding out hope that her dad will return to normal and ignoring his bouts of rage. She's frustrated by the way his personality has changed after the crash—he smokes cigarettes, even though he never did before, and the formerly gentle artist is now prone to punching walls. After his forgetfulness gets him in trouble with Ava's school, Nolan decides to undergo an experimental neurological treatment with a device known as the "Black Box" in order to recover his memories. The treatment, which uses hypnosis to delve into the subconscious, reveals surprises lurking in the deepest recesses of his mind. Sinister! Then, we learn, his suspiciously eager doctor, played by Phylicia Rashad, has a big secret of her own. Extra-sinister! …
Black Box is part of Welcome to the Blumhouse, an anthology of films Amazon is releasing this October from the powerhouse horror production company Blumhouse, and the roster should provide horror lovers with plenty of options for spooky autumn evenings at home. Black Box is the kind of movie, though, that would benefit immensely from a midnight screening for a rowdy crowd ready to appreciate its campy charms.
Black Box premiered last week on Amazon Prime. PHOTOGRAPH: ALFONSO BRESCIANI/AMAZON STUDIOS


text:
@interface CustomTabBarController : UITabBarController

@end

@interface CustomTabBarItem : UIControl

@property (nonatomic,strong) UITabBarItem *item;

@end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
S'pore American School wins ST contest
Sheryl Quek
SINGAPORE - First-time entrant Singapore American School (SAS) has won The Straits Times National Youth Media Competition.
At the prize-giving ceremony at OCBC Centre, the team, comprising Taylor Julia Haas, Christina Yoh, Daniel Bieker, Varun Singh Bindra, Park Jihoo - all 17 - and Lindsey Mei Cosgrove, 16, walked away with $3,000, Canon Pixma printers and a three-week internship with the broadsheet's newsroom.
The competition, held on Nov 19 last year, is a revamp of the former Straits Times National Schools Newspaper Competition, which got teams to produce a four-page tabloid within 24 hours.
In the new format, 10 finalist teams had to produce a news video featuring professional cyclist Lemuel Lee, who is a member of the OCBC Pro Cycling team, post online news updates and design the front page of The Straits Times.
SAS' team of four girls and two boys, who produce their school's online newsletter, The Eye, beat other schools with a package that demonstrated a well integrated print and online strategy.
Team member Taylor said: "After seeing everyone's work, I thought we would at least be in the top four, but I didn't expect we would win."
Ms Serene Goh, editor of ST's publications for schools, IN and Little Red Dot, said that their approach to delivering the news was "unique".
"SAS showed a high ability in storytelling, and the way they cast the news was very creative. They were unafraid to experiment with the way they played their stories too."
Hwa Chong Institution took the silver award and $2,000, while 2012 winners School of the Arts (Sota) took the bronze award and $1,000.
Hwa Chong Institution also took the subsidiary awards for Best Video and Best Print, while NPS International School took the award for Best Integration.
Merit winners NPS International School, Raffles Institution and Victoria School won $500 each. The consolation prizes of $200 each went to Bukit View Secondary, Nanyang Girls' High School, Seng Kang Secondary and Xinmin Secondary.
Offering her congratulations to the winning team, Ms Koh Ching Ching, the head of group corporate communications at OCBC Bank, the first-time presenting sponsor, said she was impressed with the quality of the work produced by the participants.
"It doesn't matter if any of these students become journalists one day; the training and exposure for these students were very good. I am glad OCBC can support this worthy project, giving the students the unique experience of competitive journalism."
Separately, Canon Singapore was the media contest's official imaging and technology partner, sponsoring equipment and prizes. Adobe sponsored a three-month subscription to its online suite of software, Adobe Creative Cloud, which included the InDesign software that the students used in the competition. Samsung sponsored two Galaxy Note 8.0 tablets as prizes.
sherquek@sph.com.sg
#The Straits Times

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


It was touch and go whether Chloe Ancill would make her Blue Chip championship debut in her final pony year, but against the odds she made it to the show and walked away with a win and a second place.
Chloe, 15, had qualified for the Pikeur pony winter novice final at Bury Farm in November, but just a month later on Christmas Eve her nine-year-old pony Priceless B was kicked near her stifle and needed 13 staples, box rest then rehabilitation.
"She had a week of box rest and then just hand-walking. It took another eight weeks of careful riding to rehabilitate her and as she had lost muscle and condition, we didn't know if we could get her back to fitness in time for this show," said Chloe, 15.
After consulting with the vet, Chloe used arnica and medical grade manuka honey to help with the healing. And it worked. The pair were back out jumping in mid-February and this was their first major show. They excelled, taking second in the Pikeur 85cm and winning the PRB Horseboxes 85cm.
"We took an early lead and were winning by three seconds for a long time, although in the end it was quite close," said Chloe.
It didn't go to plan in the Pikeur novice pony championship but Chloe was pleased just to get round.
"I think she got a bit excited after we'd finished second in the previous class but it is a bonus to be going home with £150 in my pocket," she said.
'Phoebe' was only bought in September to give Chloe a good final pony year.
"Although we've missed getting our double clears for discovery and newcomers, we're just glad to have our pony back. She's gone from strength-to-strength," said Chloe, who is aiming for the pony British novice final at the British Showjumping National Championships in the summer.


If four chapters of Insidious are any indication, out-of-body experiences are a phenomenon from which many of us cannot turn away — and why would we when it's like a game of roulette for the mind? Personally, the last time I conducted a lucid dream meditation before bed, I met YouTuber Contrapoints and asked if she wanted to go shopping at TJ Maxx together (name a better way to spend an afternoon). However, if you are interested in exploring a more existential separation between soul and skeleton, you're in luck: Austria's Ellende is dropping a new full-length titled Lebensnehmer. Cultivated by the hands of all-instrumentalist L.G. but brought to life through a dedicated team of session artists, Lebensnehmer is an atmospheric experience equal parts contemplative and adventurous.
The word "ellende," adapted from Middle High German, essentially means "exile." These semantics have come to take subtle form in the artwork of Ellende's most recent records (all designed by L.G.) — with a soul long since banished, a bare and vulnerable skeleton remains to make music, or perhaps tend to a fallen friend. The former scenario set the tone for 2016's full-length Todbringer (chances are you have stumbled across it at least once in the atmospheric black metal realm of YouTube). Racking up critical acclaim and tens of thousands of views, Todbringer demonstrates that Ellende is bringing a unique perspective to the table that is worth watching. Despite an identity seemingly tied to black metal, long strides are made from any tired tropes, keeping the bones of traditional principles, but spinning them into gold through a post-rock edge.
Check out an exclusive full stream of Lebensnehmer below.
Lebensnehmer releases on March 29 via AOP. Follow Ellende on Facebook.


text:
\section{Introduction}

The bosonic atoms with Feshbach resonances have been one of the
exciting ultrocold systems studied so far. On the side with a
negative scattering length, the controlled collapsing and
exploding dynamics has been observed\cite{exp1}. On the other side
where the scattering length becomes positive, molecules can be
produced and this system becomes a mixture of atoms and molecules.
Despite the reduced lifetime of molecules in the unitary regime
due to the enhanced three-body recombination\cite{FKSW}, quite
remarkable progress has been made and the properties of the
strongly repulsive ultracold bosonic atoms have also been studied
experimentally\cite{exp2}.

A mean-field phase diagram for the Bose gas with an $s$-wave
Feshbach resonance has been proposed\cite{RPW}. At zero
temperature, there are two phases: the atomic superfluid (ASF) in
which both atoms and molecules condense and the molecular
superfluid (MSF) in which only the molecules condense. Hence,
there is a quantum phase transition between the ASF and MSF
phases\cite{RPW,LL}. The stability of these phases at $T=0$ was
examined within the mean-field level\cite{BM}. Recently, a
Nozi\`eres-Schmitt-Rink formalism was developed to study the
finite temperature properties of this system\cite{KMDS}. The
ground state of the cold Bose gas with a large positive scattering
length has also been studied by the variational wavefunction
approach\cite{wf,SZ}. Near the Feshbach resonance, various
physical quantities were found to exhibit universal scaling
forms\cite{SZ}.

Although the idea of the Feshbach resonance has its root in the
few-body physics, it was shown that, for a dilute quantum gas, it
is possible to cast the low-energy physics near the Feshbach
resonance and the associated universal properties into the
framework of the renormalization group (RG) due to the presence of
a nontrivial zero-density fixed point\cite{NS}. Bearing this
picture in mind, the low-energy properties of a dilute Fermi gas
with a wide Feshbach resonance in the unitary regime can be
computed either by an $\epsilon$ expansion\cite{NS1} ($\epsilon
=4-d$) or a large N expansion\cite{NS,VSR}. Here we will extend
the idea in Ref. \onlinecite{NS} to the dilute Bose gas with a
wide Feshbach resonance. In contrast to the case of fermionic
atoms, the self-interactions between atoms and molecules must be
included in order to guarantee the stability of the uniform phases
although these operators are irrelevant in the sense of RG. This
point was also emphasized in Ref. \onlinecite{BM}. The resulting
stability conditions impose a lower bound on the value of the
chemical potential for atoms. Hence, we conclude that a
Feshbach-resonant (FR) Bose gas will always collapse in the dilute
limit. Moreover, in the dilute limit, the ASF state can appear in
the guise of an unstable local minimum for the free energy
density, while the MSF state cannot exist. The ASF state will
eventually collapse. However, within its lifetime, the properties
of this system may be captured by the ASF state when we approach
the unitary limit from the side with a positive scattering length.
Then, we use the $\epsilon$ expansion to calculate various
properties of the ASF state at $T=0$, including the relation
between the chemical potential and detuning, the equation of
state, and the sound velocity. We show that the thermodynamical
properties at $T=0$ exhibit universal scaling forms near the
Feshbach resonance due to the presence of a nontrivial
zero-temperature, zero-density fixed point. Surprisingly, we find
that the $T=0$ thermodynamics of the ASF state in the unitary
limit is exactly identical to the one for an ideal Fermi gas. This
correspondence was also noticed in Refs. \onlinecite{wf} and
\onlinecite{SZ} from a different approach. Our main results are
summarized in Figs. \ref{bfp3}, \ref{asfmu3}, \ref{asfp3}, and
\ref{asfv3}.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In Sec. \ref{RG},
we present the RG theory to fix the notation. We discuss the
stability of the dilute Bose gas with a wide Feshbach resonance
and its phase diagram at $T=0$ in Sec. \ref{phase}. The
equilibrium properties of the ASF state at $T=0$ are calculated in
Sec. \ref{asf}. The last section is devoted to a conclusive
discussion and comparison with previous works.

\section{The renormalization-group theory}
\label{RG}

We start with the action for the atom-molecule model in the
grand-canonical ensemble \cite{RPW}:
\begin{eqnarray}
 S &=& \! \int^{\beta}_0 \! \! d\tau \int \! \! d^dx\Psi_a^{\dagger} \!
 \left(\partial_{\tau}-\frac{\nabla^2}{2m}-\mu\right) \! \Psi_a
 \nonumber \\
 & & + \! \int^{\beta}_0 \! \! d\tau \int \! \! d^dx\Psi_m^{\dagger} \!
 \left(\partial_{\tau}-\frac{\nabla^2}{2M}-2\mu+\delta_0\right) \! \Psi_m
 \nonumber \\
 & & + \! \int^{\beta}_0 \! \! d\tau \int \! \! d^dx~U \ ,
 \label{feshbact1}
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray*}
 U &=& g_0\left(\Psi^{\dagger}_m\Psi_a\Psi_a+{\mathrm H.c.}\right)+u_3
 |\Psi_a|^2|\Psi_m|^2 \\
 & & +\frac{u_1}{2}|\Psi_a|^4+\frac{u_2}{2}|\Psi_m|^4 \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
Here $\Psi_a$ and $\Psi_m$ are the annihilation operators of atoms
and molecules, respectively. $m$ and $M$ are the masses of the
atom and the molecule, respectively. Galilean invariance requires
that $M=2m$. We will see later that $\delta_0=0$ does not
correspond to the unitary limit ($a_s^{-1}\rightarrow 0$ where
$a_s$ is the scattering length between atoms) due to
renormalization. Hence, we define
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \delta =\delta_0-\delta_c \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
where $\delta_c$ is a counterterm which is chosen such that
$\delta =0$ just corresponds to the unitary limit. We further
define $\mu_m=2\mu -\delta$.

We see that the action $S$ [Eq. (\ref{feshbact1})] has a quantum
critical point (QCP) at $\mu =0=\delta$ and $T=1/\beta =0$, which
will be dubbed as the Gaussian fixed point. That is, $S$ is
invariant against the scaling transformation
\begin{equation}
 \bm{x}\rightarrow\bm{x}e^{-l} \ , ~~\tau\rightarrow\tau e^{-2l} \ ,
 ~~\Psi_{a,m}\rightarrow\Psi_{a,m}e^{dl/2} \ , \label{bfrrg1}
\end{equation}
at this point when we take $g_0=0=u_{\alpha}$ with $\alpha
=1,2,3$. We will employ this Gaussian fixed point as a point of
departure to study the low-energy physics of $S$ in the dilute
limit and in the unitary regime. That is, we will work under the
assumption
\begin{equation}
 |\mu|, |\delta|\ll \frac{1}{ma_0^2} \ , \label{feshdilute1}
\end{equation}
where $a_0$ is the background scattering length for atoms. We will
take $a_0$ as the short-distance cutoff for the RG flow.

Now we would like to calculate the RG equations at $T=0$. Under
the scaling transformation (\ref{bfrrg1}), $\mu$, $\mu_m$, $g_0$,
and $u_{\alpha}$ transform like
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \mu^{\prime}=\mu e^{2l} \ , ~~\mu_m^{\prime}=\mu_me^{2l} \ ,
 ~~g_0^{\prime}=g_0e^{\epsilon l/2} \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
and
\begin{eqnarray*}
 u_{\alpha}^{\prime}=u_{\alpha}e^{(\epsilon -2)l} \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
where $\epsilon =4-d$. ($\delta_c=0$ at the tree level.) Hence,
the coupling constants $u_{\alpha}$'s are irrelevant as long as
$d>2$. However, to guarantee that the Hamiltonian of this system
is bounded from below, we cannot simply set $u_{\alpha}=0$. To
stabilize this system, it suffices to keep the $u_1$ and $u_2$
terms. In the following, we will ignore the $u_3$
term\cite{foot1}.

To proceed, we have to calculate the one-loop RG equations for
$\mu$, $\mu_m$, and $g_0$. Within the $\epsilon$ expansion, we
find
\begin{eqnarray}
 \frac{dr_1}{dl} &=& 2r_1 \ , \label{feshbrg1} \\
 \frac{dr_2}{dl} &=& 2r_2+2\lambda^2r_1-\frac{\lambda^2r_2}{(1-r_1)^2}
 \ , \label{feshbrg11} \\
 \frac{d\lambda}{dl} &=& \frac{\epsilon}{2}\lambda -\frac{\lambda^3}
 {2(1-r_1)^2} \ , \label{feshbrg12}
\end{eqnarray}
with the initial values
\begin{eqnarray*}
 & & r_1(0)=2m\mu a_0^2 \ , ~~r_2(0)=2m\mu_ma_0^2 \ , \\
 & & \lambda (0)=\sqrt{2K_d}mg_0a_0^{\epsilon/2} ,
\end{eqnarray*}
where $K_d=2/[(4\pi)^{d/2}\Gamma (d/2)]$. At this order,
$\delta_c$ is
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \delta_c=2mg_0^2 \! \int^{\Lambda}_{\Lambda e^{-l}} \! \! \frac{d^dp}{(2\pi)^d}
 \frac{1}{p^2} \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
Scaling stops when $l=l_*$ where $l_*$ is defined by
$|r_1(l_*)|=1$. From the solution of Eq. (\ref{feshbrg1}), we get
\begin{equation}
 e^{l_*}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2m|\mu|a_0^2}} \ . \label{feshbrg2}
\end{equation}
The diluteness condition (the first inequality in Eq.
(\ref{feshdilute1})) leads to $e^{l_*}\gg 1$. Since before scaling
stops $|r_1(l)|\ll 1$, Eqs. (\ref{feshbrg11}) and
(\ref{feshbrg12}) can be approximated as
\begin{eqnarray}
 \frac{dr_2}{dl} &=& (2-\lambda^2)r_2+2\lambda^2r_1 \ , \label{feshbrg21}
 \\
 \frac{d\lambda}{dl} &=& \frac{\epsilon}{2}\lambda -\frac{\lambda^3}
 {2} \ . \label{feshbrg22}
\end{eqnarray}
We want to emphasize that his approximation does not change the fixed-point
structure of Eqs. (\ref{feshbrg1}) -- (\ref{feshbrg12}). In the following,
we will work with Eqs. (\ref{feshbrg1}), (\ref{feshbrg21}), and (\ref{feshbrg22}).

For $d<4$, Eqs. (\ref{feshbrg1}), (\ref{feshbrg21}), and
(\ref{feshbrg22}) have two fixed points: the Gaussian fixed point
$(r_{\alpha},\lambda)=(0,0)$ and the interacting zero-density
fixed point $(r_{\alpha},\lambda)=(0,\lambda_*)$ with
$\lambda_*=\sqrt{\epsilon}$. The Gaussian fixed point is IR
unstable, while the interacting zero-density fixed point is IR
stable. Hence, the latter controls the low-energy physics of the
dilute FR Bose gas in the unitary regime.

To relate $\delta$ to the physical detuning $\nu =-1/a_s$, we will
calculate the $T$-matrix at zero density, and the result is
\begin{eqnarray*}
 T^{-1}(k) &=& \frac{k^2-2m (\delta +\delta_c)}{4mg_0^2} \\
 & & +K_dm \! \int^{\Lambda}_0 \! \! dq\frac{q^{d-1}}{q^2-k^2-i0^+} \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
Using $T(0)=4\pi a_s/m$ and the one-loop result for $\delta_c$, we
get
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \frac{m}{4\pi a_s}=-\frac{m\nu}{4\pi}=-\frac{\delta}{2g_0^2} \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
By definition, the low-energy physics of the system with a wide
Feshbach resonance at zero density is parametrized by only one
parameter $a_s$. Hence, for wide Feshbach resonances, we may
simply take $\lambda (0)=\lambda_*$ if we are only interested in
the physics in the unitary regime\cite{foot2}, and thus we obtain
\begin{equation}
 \delta =\frac{\nu}{bma_0} \ , \label{bfras2}
\end{equation}
in $d=3$ ($\epsilon =1$) where $b=4\pi
K_3/\lambda_*^2=2/(\pi\lambda_*^2)$. Since $\lambda (l)=\lambda_*$
for wide Feshbach resonances, Eq. (\ref{feshbrg21}) can now be
solved easily. Using Eq. (\ref{feshbrg2}) to eliminate $l_*$, we
get
\begin{equation}
 r_2(l_*)=2\mbox{sgn}(\mu)-(2ma_0^2)^{\epsilon/2}\delta |\mu|^{1-d/2}
 \ , \label{bfrrg2}
\end{equation}
where $\mbox{sgn}(x)=1,-1$ for $x>0$ and $x<0$, respectively.

\section{The phase diagram at zero temperature}
\label{phase}

The free energy density $f$ is given by
\begin{equation}
 f=\frac{e^{-(d+2)l_*}}{2ma_0^{d+2}}\tilde{f}(l_*) \ ,
 \label{feshbrgf1}
\end{equation}
where $\tilde{f}(l_*)$ is the free energy density for the
renormalized Hamiltonian at $l=l_*$. Since $\lambda
(l_*)=O(\epsilon)$ and $u_{\alpha}(l_*)\approx 0$, we may
calculate $\tilde{f}(l_*)$ in terms of the perturbation theory in
the coupling constants. The leading order results will be given by
the mean-field theory of the renormalized Hamiltonian. Moreover,
the prefactor in front of $\tilde{f}(l_*)$ in Eq.
(\ref{feshbrgf1}) is always positive, the phases of this system
can be determined directly from $\tilde{f}(l_*)$.

\subsection{Stability conditions}

To proceed, we make a change of variables:
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \bm{x}=a_0\tilde{\bm{x}} \ , ~~\tau =2ma_0^2\tilde{\tau} \ , ~~
 \Psi_{a,m}=a_0^{-d/2}\tilde{\Psi}_{a,m} \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
the action $S$ [Eq. (\ref{feshbact1})] can be written as
\begin{eqnarray*}
 S &=& \! \int^{\tilde{\beta}}_0 \! \! d\tilde{\tau} \! \int \! \!
 d^d\tilde{x}\tilde{\Psi}_a^{\dagger}(\partial_{\tilde{\tau}}-\nabla^2
 -r_1)\tilde{\Psi}_a \\
 & & + \! \int^{\tilde{\beta}}_0 \! \! d\tilde{\tau} \! \int \! \!
 d^d\tilde{x}\tilde{\Psi}_m^{\dagger} \! \left(\partial_{\tilde{\tau}}
 -\frac{\nabla^2}{2}-r_2\right) \! \tilde{\Psi}_m \\
 & & + \! \int^{\tilde{\beta}}_0 \! \! d\tilde{\tau} \int \! \!
 d^d\tilde{x}~U \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
where $\tilde{\beta}=\beta/(2ma_0^2)$, $s_{1,2}(0)=\frac{K_d}{16}m
u_{1,2}a_0^{2-d}$, and
\begin{eqnarray*}
 U=\sqrt{\frac{2}{K_d}}\lambda \! \left(\tilde{\Psi}^{\dagger}_m
 \tilde{\Psi}_a^2 \! + \! {\mathrm H.c.}\right) \! \! + \! \frac{16s_1}{K_d}
 |\tilde{\Psi}_a|^4 \! + \! \frac{16s_2}{K_d}|\tilde{\Psi}_m|^4 \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
At large values of $|\tilde{\Psi}_{a,m}|$, the renormalized
potential $U$ at $l=l_*$ is of the form
\begin{eqnarray*}
 \frac{16s^*_1}{K_d}|\tilde{\Psi}_a|^4+\frac{16s^*_2}{K_d}|\tilde{\Psi}_m|^4
 \ ,
\end{eqnarray*}
where $s_{\alpha}^*=s_{\alpha}(l_*)$. In order that the
renormalized Hamiltonian is bounded from below, we must require
that $s_{1,2}^*>0$.

The one-loop RG equations for $s_{1,2}$ are given by
\begin{eqnarray}
 \frac{ds_1}{dl} &=& (2-d)s_1 \ , \label{feshbrg3} \\
 \frac{ds_2}{dl} &=& (2-d)s_2-\lambda^4 \ . \label{feshbrg31}
\end{eqnarray}
In Eq. (\ref{feshbrg31}), we have neglected the $r_1$ and $r_2$
dependence, and thus they are valid only in the dilute limit and
in the unitary regime. Moreover, we do not consider the loop
corrections due to the $u_{1,2}$ terms because they are irrelevant
operators. For the wide Feshbach resonances, we may simply set
$\lambda =\lambda_*$, and thus we get
\begin{eqnarray}
 s_1^* &=& \frac{K_dmu_1}{16a_0^{d-2}}~e^{(2-d)l_*} \ , \nonumber \\
 s_2^* &\approx& \frac{K_dmu_2}{16a_0^{d-2}}~e^{(2-d)l_*}
 -\frac{\epsilon^2}{d-2} \ , \label{bfrrg4}
\end{eqnarray}
in the dilute limit.

The stability conditions require that $u_1>0$ and $u_2>U_c$ where
\begin{eqnarray*}
 U_c &=& \frac{16\epsilon^2}{(d-2)K_dm}~(2m|\mu|)^{1-d/2} \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
In other words, $u_2$ must be strong enough to guarantee the
global stability of this system in the thermodynamical limit. For
given $u_2>0$, the constraint $u_2>U_c$ can also be expressed as a
lower bound for $|\mu|$, i.e.
\begin{equation}
 2m|\mu|a_0^2> \! \left[\frac{16\epsilon^2a_0^{d-2}}{(d-2)K_dmu_2}
 \right]^{2/(d-2)} . \label{bfrrg3}
\end{equation}
Equation (\ref{bfrrg3}) suggests that the FR Bose gas is stable
either at moderate density or with strong dimer-dimer repulsions.

The point that the molecule-molecule repulsion is crucial to
stabilize this system was also emphasized by the previous
mean-field stability analysis\cite{BM}. In the $\mu,\delta <0$
region, the mean-field theory predicts that the ASF state is
stable for $u_2>0$\cite{BM}. Our RG analysis, however, indicates
that in this region this system is thermodynamically unstable as
$|\mu|$ smaller than some critical value. We notice that this
conclusion is consistent with an earlier RPA calculation\cite{Y}.
Within our approach, the reason behind this instability is that
the molecule-molecule interaction becomes attractive at low energy
even when the bare value of $u_2$ is positive.

\subsection{The mean-field theory at $l=l_*$}

To calculate $\tilde{f}(l_*)$, we perform a mean-field theory on
the action $S$ at $l=l_*$. By inserting the mean-field ansatz
$\tilde{\Psi}_{a,m}(\tilde{\tau},\tilde{\bm{x}})=\Phi_{a,m}$ into
$S$ and then taking the variations with respect to
$\Phi_{a,m}^{\dagger}$, we obtain the mean-field equations
\begin{eqnarray}
 -r_1^*\Phi_a+2\sqrt{\frac{2}{K_d}}\lambda_*\Phi_a^{\dagger}\Phi_m
 +\frac{32s_1^*}{K_d}|\Phi_a|^2\Phi_a &=& 0 \ , \nonumber \\
 -r_2^*\Phi_m+\sqrt{\frac{2}{K_d}}\lambda_*\Phi_a^2+\frac{32s_2^*}{K_d}
 |\Phi_m|^2\Phi_m &=& 0 \ , \label{bfrmfe1}
\end{eqnarray}
where $r_{1,2}^*=r_{1,2}(l_*)$. We will solve Eq. (\ref{bfrmfe1})
within the $\epsilon$ expansion. From Eq. (\ref{bfrrg4}), we may
neglect the $s_1^*$ term and the $s_2^*$ term is necessary only
for the existence of the MSF state. Hence, there are three types
of solutions for Eq. (\ref{bfrmfe1}): the ASF state characterized
by $|\Phi_a|=\sqrt{K_dr_1^*r_2^*}/(2\lambda_*)$ and
$|\Phi_m|=\sqrt{K_d/8}r_1^*/\lambda_*$, the MSF state
characterized by $\Phi_a=0$ and
$|\Phi_m|=\sqrt{K_dr_2^*/(32s_2^*)}$, and the vacuum state
(denoted by N) characterized by $\Phi_a=0=\Phi_m$. The solution
for the ASF state can exist only for $r_{1,2}^*>0$, while the
solution for the MSF state can exist only for $r_2^*>0$. In terms
of these solutions, we find that $\tilde{f}_N(l_*)=0$ and
\begin{equation}
 \tilde{f}_{ASF}(l_*)=-\frac{K_dr^*_2}{8\epsilon} \ , ~~
 \tilde{f}_{MSF}(l_*)=-\frac{K_d(r_2^*)^2}{64s_2^*} \ . \label{bfrmfe2}
\end{equation}

The phase diagram can be determined by comparing $\tilde{f}(l_*)$
for the ASF, MSF, and N states. A straightforward calculation
gives rise to the following results: (i) The ASF state occupies
the region with $r_1^*>0$ and $0<r_2^*<8s_2^*/\epsilon$; (ii) the
MSF state occupies the region with  $r_2^*>8s_2^*/\epsilon>0$; and
(iii) the rest in the $r_1^*$-$r_2^*$ plane is the N state.
Substituting the expressions for $r_2^*$ and $s_2^*$ [Eqs.
(\ref{bfrrg2}) and (\ref{bfrrg4})] into result (i), (ii), and (iii),
and taking into account the stability condition [Eq.
(\ref{bfrrg3})], we obtain the phase diagram at $T=0$. The ASF phase
exists in the region with
\begin{equation}
 2m\mu a_0^2> \! \left[\frac{16\epsilon^2}{(d-2)K_dmu_2a_0^{2-d}}
 \right]^{\frac{2}{d-2}} , \label{asfst1}
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}
 [2-c_d(2m\mu a_0^2)](2m\mu a_0^2)^{\frac{d}{2}-1}<2m\delta a_0^2<2(2m\mu a_0^2)^{\frac{d}{2}-1}
 \ . \label{asfst11}
\end{equation}
The MSF phase exists in the region with
\begin{equation}
 2m\delta a_0^2<[2-c_d(2m\mu a_0^2)](2m\mu a_0^2)^{d/2-1} \ ,
 \label{msfst1}
\end{equation}
for $2m\mu a_0^2> \!
\left[\frac{16\epsilon^2}{(d-2)K_dmu_2a_0^{2-d}}\right]^{\frac{2}{d-2}}$
and
\begin{equation}
 2m\delta a_0^2<-2(2m|\mu|a_0^2)^{d/2-1} \ , \label{msfst11}
\end{equation}
for $2m\mu a_0^2<- \!
\left[\frac{16\epsilon^2}{(d-2)K_dmu_2a_0^{2-d}}\right]^{\frac{2}{d-2}}$.
Here
\begin{eqnarray*}
 c_d(x)=\frac{K_dmu_2a_0^{2-d}}{2\epsilon}|x|^{d/2-1}-\frac{8\epsilon}{d-2}
 \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
The rest of the phase diagram is occupied by the vacuum state.

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
 \includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{3dfrp1.eps}
 \caption{(color online) The schematic phase diagram of a dilute FR Bose
 gas in $d=3$. The unstable region lies between the two dashed lines. In
 the shaded region, the ASF state is an unstable local minimum of the
 free energy density.}
 \label{bfp3}
\end{center}
\end{figure}

A schematic phase diagram is shown in Fig. \ref{bfp3}. The MSF
phase can exist only at finite density of atoms. Furthermore, its
thermodynamical properties do not exhibit universal scaling forms
even in the unitary limit ($\delta =0$) due to the presence of a
dangerously irrelevant operator $u_2$. This can be seen from
$\tilde{f}_{MSF}(l_*)$ [Eq. (\ref{bfrmfe2})]. Although the
thermodynamical instability in the region with $\mu >0$ and
$2m\delta a_0^2<2(2m\mu a_0^2)^{d/2-1}$ (the shaded region in Fig.
\ref{bfp3}) implies that the ASF state will eventually decay, the
time scale, which is governed by the kinetics and dissipation, may
be long enough that the ASF state appears stable. The detailed
mechanism for the decay of the ASF state, however, is beyond the
present study. It is hoped that the ASF state can survive for a
finite lifetime if we prepare the system on the side with a
positive scattering length. (After all, the experiments on
ultracold atoms involve states which are thermodynamically
unstable because the ground state of alkali atoms at nano-Kelvin
temperatures is in fact a solid.) Finally, we must emphasize that
the exact location of the unstable region (the region between the
dashed lines in Fig. \ref{bfp3}) is sensitive to the
short-distance physics, and the determination of it is beyond the
scope of the present approach.

\section{The equilibrium properties at zero temperature}
\label{asf}

From the above analysis, the dilute FR Bose gas may be described
by the ASF state on the side with a positive scattering length
though the ASF state will eventually collapse. Hence, we will
explore the thermodynamics of the ASF at $T=0$.

Inserting $\tilde{f}_{ASF}(l_*)$ [Eq. (\ref{bfrmfe2})] into Eq.
(\ref{feshbrgf1}) and using Eq. (\ref{bfrrg2}), we get the free
energy density for the ASF state
\begin{equation}
 f_{ASF}=-\frac{K_d}{4\epsilon}(2m)^{2-\frac{\epsilon}{2}}
 \mu^{3-\frac{\epsilon}{2}}+\frac{K_d}{8\epsilon}a_0^{\epsilon}
 \delta (2m\mu)^2 \ . \label{bff2}
\end{equation}
From the thermodynamical relation $n=-(\partial f/\partial\mu)$,
we find that
\begin{equation}
 n={\mathcal C}_d(2m\mu)^{\frac{d}{2}} \! \! \left\{1-\frac{1}
 {3-\epsilon/2} \! \left[\frac{2m\delta a_0^{\epsilon}}
 {(2m\mu)^{\frac{d}{2}-1}}\right] \! \right\} , \label{asfmu1}
\end{equation}
where $n$ is the density of (bare) atoms and
\begin{eqnarray*}
 {\mathcal C}_d=\frac{K_d(3-\epsilon/2)}{4\epsilon} \ .
\end{eqnarray*}
Using Euler's relation $f=-P$, we get the equation of state at
$T=0$ for the ASF phase
\begin{equation}
 P=\frac{K_d}{4\epsilon}(2m)^{d/2}\mu^{1+d/2} \! \! \left[1
 -\frac{m\delta a_0^{\epsilon}}{(2m\mu)^{d/2-1}}\right] ,
 \label{asfp1}
\end{equation}
with $\mu$ as a function of $n$ and $\delta$ given by Eq.
(\ref{asfmu1}). Finally, we may calculate the sound velocity $v_s$
through the relation $v_s^2=(n/m)\partial\mu/\partial n$, and
obtain
\begin{equation}
 v_s^2=\frac{2\mu}{dm} \! \left[\frac{(3-\epsilon/2)(2m\mu)^{d/2-1}
 -2m\delta a_0^{\epsilon}}{(3-\epsilon/2)(2m\mu)^{d/2-1}
 -4m\delta a_0^{\epsilon}/d}\right] , \label{bfv1}
\end{equation}
with $\mu$ as a function of $n$ and $\delta$ given by Eq.
(\ref{asfmu1}).

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
 \includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{asfmu.eps}
 \caption{(color online) The chemical potential $\mu$ (in units of
 $n^{2/3}/(2m)$) as a function of $\nu =-1/a_s$ (in units of $n^{1/3}$)
 for given atom density $n$.}
 \label{asfmu3}
\end{center}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
 \includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{asfp.eps}
 \caption{(color online) The pressure $P$ (in units of $n^{5/3}/(2m)$) as
 a function of $\nu =-1/a_s$ (in units of $n^{1/3}$) for given atom density
 $n$.}
 \label{asfp3}
\end{center}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
 \includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{asfvs.eps}
 \caption{(color online) The sound velocity $v_s$ (in units of $n^{1/3}/(2m)$)
 as a function of $\nu =-1/a_s$ (in units of $n^{1/3}$) for given atom
 density $n$.}
 \label{asfv3}
\end{center}
\end{figure}

The atom density $n$ gives rise to a characteristic length scale
$n^{-1/d}$ and a characteristic energy scale $n^{2/d}/(2m)$. By
measuring the lengths and energies in units of these
characteristic scales, setting $d=3$, and using Eq. (\ref{bfras2})
to replace $\delta$ by $\nu$, Eqs. (\ref{asfmu1}), (\ref{asfp1}),
and (\ref{bfv1}) can be written as
\begin{equation}
 \frac{16\pi^2}{5}=y^{3/2}-\frac{2\pi}{5}xy \ , \label{asfmu4}
\end{equation}
where $x=bm\delta a_0n^{-1/3}=n^{-1/3}\nu$ with $\nu =-1/a_s$,
$b=2/\pi$ and $y=2m\mu n^{-2/3}$, and
\begin{eqnarray}
 \tilde{P} &=& \frac{1}{8\pi^2} \! \left(y^{5/2}-\frac{\pi}{2}xy^2\right)
 , \label{asfp4} \\
 \tilde{v}_s^2 &=& 4y \! \left(\frac{5\sqrt{y}-2\pi x}{15\sqrt{y}-4\pi x}
 \right) , \label{asfv4}
\end{eqnarray}
where $\tilde{P}=2mn^{-5/3}P$ and $\tilde{v}_s=2mv_sn^{-1/3}$.
Equations (\ref{asfmu4}) --- (\ref{asfv4}) exhibit the universal
scaling forms for $\mu$, $P$ and $v_s$. These universal scaling
forms are due to the presence of a nontrivial zero-density fixed
point. The results are shown in Figs. \ref{asfmu3}, \ref{asfp3},
and \ref{asfv3}.

In the unitary limit $\delta =0$ Eqs. (\ref{asfmu1}) and
(\ref{asfp1}) reduce to
\begin{eqnarray}
 \mu &=& \frac{1}{2m} \! \left(\frac{n}{{\mathcal C_d}}\right)^{2/d}
 , \label{asfmu2} \\
 P &=& \frac{n^{1+2/d}}{2m(d/2+1){\mathcal C}_d^{2/d}} \ . \label{asfp2}
\end{eqnarray}
We notice that Eqs. (\ref{asfmu2}) and (\ref{asfp2}) are identical
to the Fermi energy and the equation of state at $T=0$ for a free
Fermi gas with mass $m^*=(d{\mathcal C}_d/K_d)^{2/d}m$. That is,
within the $\epsilon$ expansion, we have shown that the
thermodynamics at $T=0$ for a unitary dilute Bose gas is identical
to the one for a free Fermi gas. This correspondence between the
thermodynamics at $T=0$ for the dilute FR Bose gas and the free
Fermi gas was also noticed in Refs. \onlinecite{wf} and
\onlinecite{SZ} from an entirely different approach. Therefore,
such a ``fermionization" phenomenon should not be an artifact of
either approach, and deserves further investigations.

\section{Conclusions and discussions}

We study the ground-state properties of a dilute FR Bose gas from
the point of view that this system can be described by a
nontrivial zero-density fixed point. From a RG analysis, we first
show that the FR Bose gas will always collapse in the dilute
limit. Following from this consequence, the MSF state cannot exist
in the dilute limit while the ASF state can survive with a finite
lifetime if we prepare this system from the side with a positive
scattering length. Hence, the low-energy properties of a dilute FR
Base gas in the unitary regime are supposed to be described by the
ASF state. Based on this observation, we show that the equilibrium
properties of a dilute FR Bose gas at $T=0$ exhibit universal
scaling forms near the Feshbach resonance.

Most of previous works were concentrated on the mean-field phase
diagram. In the present paper, we focus on the possible universal
properties of this system near the unitary limit. This point was
less studied before, and our RG analysis based on the $\epsilon$
expansion may shed light on this aspect. In particular, unlike
some of previous works\cite{SZ,HO}, the present approach does not
rely on the scaling hypothesis. In stead, the universality in the
unitary regime naturally arises from the presence of a nontrivial
zero-density fixed point. Moreover, the roles of dangerously
irrelevant operators, like the $u_{\alpha}$ terms in the action,
are more easily captured within the RG framework.

A striking result following from our RG analysis is that the $T=0$
thermodynamics of this system in the unitary limit is identical to
that for a free Fermi gas (with a different mass). This point was
also pointed out in Refs. \onlinecite{wf} and \onlinecite{SZ} from
the variational wavefunction approach. Especially, the chemical
potential at zero temperature is of the form $\mu =\alpha
n^{2/3}/m$ in the unitary limit, where $\alpha$ takes a universal
value. The values of $\alpha$ given by Refs. \onlinecite{wf} and
\onlinecite{SZ} are $22.22$ and $6.077$, respectively. Since the
latter is much smaller than the former, the authors of Ref.
\onlinecite{SZ} claimed that the trial wavefunction adopted by
them should be an energetically better candidate for the ground
state. By setting $d=3$ in Eq. (\ref{asfmu2}), we obtain $\alpha
=4.996$. The fact that the obtained numerical value is close to
the one in Ref. \onlinecite{SZ} provides an evidence which further
supports our approximate solutions based on the $\epsilon$ expansion.
However, to determine the exact value of $\alpha$, a more comprehensive
numerical calculation is warranted. Moreover, it deserves further
study whether or not such a correspondence between the dilute FR
Bose gas in the unitary limit and the free Fermi gas can be extended
to finite temperature and non-equilibrium processes.

The quantum phase transition between the ASF and MSF phases
predicted by the mean-field theory\cite{RPW} can be observed only
when these phases are thermodynamically stable. According to the
present analysis (Fig. \ref{bfp3}), the ASF and MSF states can be
stabilized either by strong dimer-dimer repulsions or by
increasing the density of atoms to a moderate value. Therefore, to
observe such a quantum phase transition, we must go beyond the
dilute limit.

Our results are obtained by neglecting the higher-order
correlations such as the three-body effects\cite{3body}.
Therefore, they are applicable before the Efimov physics fully
sets in\cite{Efimov,grimm}. It is interesting to see how the
three-body effects affect the present predictions.

\acknowledgments

The work of Y.-W. Lee is supported by the National Science Council
of Taiwan under grant NSC 96-2112-M-029-006-MY3. The work of Y.L.
Lee is supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan under
grant NSC 98-2112-M-018-003-MY3.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Did you know Prince actually invented this crazy custom keytar?
Prince held a patent on the design of a custom keytar, known as the Purpleaxxe.
Prince, who died suddenly on Thursday, was an unparalleled musical artist, known for his uncanny ability to play many different instruments like an expert. But his talents didn't end at performing — he actually went so far as to design gear.
Prince is listed as the sole inventor on a U.S. patent for a particular custom keytar, a variant of the keyboard-guitar hybrid that resembles a scimitar. Dubbed the Purpleaxxe, the instrument looks partly inspired by the glyph that served as Prince's name for a good chunk of the '90s.
The design drawings of the keytar, filed with the patent.
After filing with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Prince got the official patent in 1994. It's unclear how many often the Purpleaxxe made appearances at Prince's shows, but a Google image search shows it wasn't just a flight of fancy — the keytar made appearances on stage more than once.
It's unclear if Prince himself every played the Purpleaxxe — he apparently created the Purpleaxxe for his keyboardist, Tommy Barbarella, according to The Atlantic.
As a design patent, Prince's rights to the Purpleaxxe expired after 14 years, or in 2008. If you'd care to make your own version, the USPTO has detailed drawings for Prince's invention.


They are making a connection between what you look like and anyone else in their life who looks the same. If you are speaking to high school students and you are dressed in a standard suit and tie, they are probably connecting you to their principal or teachers. If you are dressed in a fancy suit and tie, they might be connecting you with a famous person. If you are dressed in a nice shirt, jeans and cool shoes, they might be seeing the person sitting in their chair when they look at you.
The effectiveness of your presentation's first moments is directly influenced by who you remind them of before you start talking. The question you need to ask is, "Is what they are thinking a good thing or not?" Of course, the answer to this question is complicated and it all depends on which part of your personality and style you need to emphasize to best get your point across that day for that audience. Do you need to come across as serious, entirely credible, cool, common, extraordinary, etc.? Ultimately you want to be a little of all of these, but you are leaving a strong impression of only one or two.
If you don't know which direction to take, a good benchmark to shoot for is to dress one step above the norm of your audience's attire. If I am speaking to high school students, I am wearing jeans, nice shoes and either a sport coat or a nice polo. If I am speaking to a group of executives in business casual, I am wearing the nicest business casual I have. If I am speaking at a suit and tie event, I am shooting for being the nicest dressed suit and tie guy in the room.
Regarding my body language, my method is to mirror their body language, but add just a tough of energy to it. This "touch" could manifest itself by walking a little faster, talking a little faster, smiling a little stronger, meeting a few more people, etc.
The trick with both areas is not to go too far. Now, I do know certain speakers who have the way they dress as part of their act. They either dress way down or way up and that is their "signature" thing. Of course, if everyone started doing what they did, they would pick a new thing.
Remember, your presentation starts before you start speaking. Make those few precious moments as strategic as possible. You can never get them back.


text:
The Fast of Gedaliah
The Fast of Gedaliah is observed to commemorate the murder of Gedaliah the son of Achikam, which is described in the last chapter of the Second Book of Kings. This murder resulted in the exile of the Jews who remained in Judea after the Babylonian conquest.
After the first Holy Temple was destroyed (586 BCE) and the Babylonians had exiled the majority of the Jewish people, a small minority were permitted to remain in the Land of Israel. Also, Jews who had fled during the war returned and began to work the land.
Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King, appointed Gedaliah to be the Jewish governor over the remaining population. The King of the neighboring country Ammon, who was vying with the Babylonians for control of the Land of Israel, commissioned Yishmael the son of Netanyah to remove Gedaliah.
Yishmael, who was a descendant of King David, came to the town of Mitzpeh and murdered Gedaliah and all those who were with him. Fearing retribution for the murder of the appointed governor, the remaining Jews fled the Land of Israel, thus completing the exile.
The Fast of Gedaliah is observed on the third day of Tishrei, the day after Rosh Hashana. If the third of Tishrei is Shabbat, the fast is observed on Sunday. The fast begins at dawn and ends at nightfall.*
*Some people rise before dawn to have an early morning breakfast (but this is only permitted if a decision to do so was verbally expressed the night before).
This Treat is reposted annually.
Copyright © 2016 NJOP. All rights reserved.
Labels: Fast of Gedaliah, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, ReTreat, srhewitt, tzom gedaliah
A Candy Treat
For Candy Lovers
A Document Against Anti-Semitism
Portion Number One
Here Kitty, Kitty
Animal Kind
Forward Relationship
What Is Isru Chag?
Beating The Willows
Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah
Joyful Celebration
Vanity of Vanities
The Great Hoshana (Hoshana Rabbah)
Sukkot Shabbat Nap
Everyone Does The Wave
More Than A Harvest Festival
Invite Them
The Sukkot Hoshanot Service
Water, Water Everywhere
Someone's Sukkah
Ushpeezin (Oo'shpee'zin)
Decorating Time
Build Your Own Sukkah
The Perfect Species
Roof Maker
The Four Species
Four For You
But Wait...There's More
Neilah: The Final Service
Memorial Prayer
For The Sins We Committed
All Vows
Personal List
The Five Prohibitions of Yom Kippur
The Food of Yom Kippur
Water and Coffee
Whosoever Is Wise
The Book of Jonah
Post Labor Day Whites
Will I Forgive You For What
From Holy God to Holy King
Two Days As One
Avinu Malkeinu
To The New Year


text:
A portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, made in 1820
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer who lived most of his life in Vienna. He was a major musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras.
"I want to seize fate by the throat."[1]
Simple: I do not believe in fate.
"There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman."[2]
Simple: There should be only one big art warehouse in the world, where the artist could take his works, and from which he can take what he needed. As it is, he should be partly a tradesman.
↑ Letter to F.G. Wegeler (1801-11-16)
↑ Conversations (January 1801)
Ludwig van Beethoven on Wikipedia
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Ludwig_van_Beethoven&oldid=31420"


After my presentation of Excel macros at BarCamp Kuwait a friend sent me this link (http://imgclean.com/?p=2149) on Twitter and said that this was much better than my excel macro. I told him challenge accepted and spent a week and a half trying to figure out how I'm going to to what I had in mind. The Excel macro I had in mind would let you choose an image, it will import it, read pixels and use the colours to colour excel cells & make an image out of them.
Open a UserForm to enable user to import an image.
Image Control in the UserForm will zoom the image so it all shows inside the Image Control.
Handle the UserForm and use GetPixel function to get the pixel colours as "Long" integers.
A function will extract individual RGB colours.
A new WorkBook is opened, rows/cols will be re-sized and Sheet is zoomed out.
Cells will be coloured with the previously extracted RGB values.
You cannot draw an image twice in one Excel sheet. It seems that Excel runs in an issue with large number of formatted cells. That's why I'm using a new Work Book each time, it's actually good too so you can save it for the image only.
VB has a Picture Box Control which is not available in VBA, Excel has only an Image Control which doesn't have all the functions of a Picture Box. I'm not an expert on this since it's the first time I use Forms and Controls so I cannot tell the difference. All what I can say is after hundreds of searches online many people were looking for Picture Box Control in Excel but it's simply not there. I had to use Image Control and create a handle for the UserForm, declare GetPixel function, import libraries and then use the GetPixel to get all the pixel colours for the image.
RGB colour conversion used to over-flow so the negative numbers were set to 0 and numbers above 255 are set to 255. Now one might say when it goes negative it should be set to 255 because it over-flows. I'm not sure I just got bored of all the searches I've done so I don't really care how they work. Yes not ALL pixels are going to be perfect but hey its giving great results!
When using the GetPixel function with loop I used to get part of the image while all other pixels give "-1" value. After long debugging I discovered that when Excel goes into a loop and for long time it gives a "Not Responding" message then starts being responsive after it finishes. This causes the GetPixel to get bad pixels from handle of the UserForm. A work around would be a small 10 ms delay in the loop or a progress bar box which was done using UserForm.
This program is not written to be perfect it has bugs and it definitely could be better.
You are currently browsing the Ahmad Hadeed's Blog blog archives for March, 2012.


The purpose of the Concrete Streets Rehabilitation Program is to extend the life of some concrete city streets. This program is similar to the Asphalt Pavement Resurfacing Program with the objective to improve and maintain the roadway infrastructure. The goal is to target concrete streets that with proper concrete repair will extend the street's life to improve ride quality and support neighborhood livability.
Concrete streets generally deteriorate over time as water and salt enter joints and cracks. Poor drainage, underlying soil condition, and higher traffic volumes can accelerate the deterioration. The repair of concrete primarily consists of saw cutting, removing and replacing concrete joints that have deteriorated and other pavement distresses. Other repair techniques include removal and replacement of concrete panels if it is determined the condition of the concrete does not warrant salvaging the panel pavement. Other improvements within the project limits include upgrades to select pedestrian ramps, replacement of select curb and gutter, and a diamond grind resurfacing of the street pavement.
The proposed project is part of the Concrete Streets Rehabilitation Program. Penn-Oliver Ave S was constructed in 1970 and is a good candidate for concrete repair and resurfacing. Concurrent with the street work, utility improvements will be completed associated with gas, and sewer.
See this video for a deeper look into what concrete rehabilitation involves.
See this FAQ Sheet on concrete rehabilitation for more information.


text:
DynaFlex, SUSS MicroTec to expand investment in Taiwan
CORONAVIRUS/Local governments release places visited by COVID-19 cases
Kaohsiung City government workers on Tuesday disinfect around a shopping mall visited by a family from Taoyuan after the mother and a child were confirmed to have COVID-19. Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung City Environmental Protection Bureau
Taipei, Jan. 11 (CNA) Local governments in Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Kaohsiung have released places recently visited by individuals confirmed to have COVID-19 to alert others who may have been at those locations at the same time to get checked if they develop symptoms of the disease.
Nine of the 12 domestic cases reported Tuesday involved residents in Taoyuan, and the city government released a list of places visited by three of them.
The three locations and times visited were Huaxun Market in Zhongli District on Jan. 8, a vegetarian self-service restaurant at No. 136 on Guangfu Road in Bade District at around 7 p.m. that day, and an all-day breakfast shop at No. 191 Nanping Road in Taoyuan District at 4:40 a.m. on Jan. 9.
Those who visited those locations at around those times should monitor their health for 14 days from the date they were there and call the 1922 hotline to arrange a COVID-19 test if they experience symptoms, the city government said.
In Taipei, a text message was sent on Tuesday to 150 customers of the Ichiran ramen restaurant chain's main store on Songren Road in Xinyi District who were there at the same time as a customer after he was confirmed, along with his nurse girlfriend and her colleague, to have COVID-19.
The ramen restaurant was notified around noon Tuesday to close for 24 hours after being disinfected, while the restaurant where the customer works as a chef was also asked to do the same, according to Taipei authorities.
Meanwhile, the two nurses who were confirmed to have COVID-19 and work at Taipei City Hospital's Zhongxing Branch went to several shops and restaurants in New Taipei's Sanchong District in the past few days, according to the New Taipei Department of Health.
One of them went to Kung Food Hot Pot restaurant on Section 3 of Chongxin Road in Sanchong for lunch on Jan. 4 and to a 7-Eleven store on Wenhua South Road at around 7:30 p.m. that evening, the health department said.
She also visited a "What The Flower" breakfast shop on Section 2 of Zhongxiao Road at around 10 a.m. on Jan. 5 and then went to the 101 hair salon on Section 3 of Chongxin Road and was there until nearly 3 p.m. On Jan. 6, she was in a PX Mart supermarket on Jimei Street at around 8 a.m.
Her colleague went to a Louisa Coffee shop on Section 2 of Chongxin Road before noon on Jan. 5, and a Chingshin tea shop at 10:30 a.m. and a duck restaurant between 5-8 p.m. on Section 1 of Chongyang Road on Jan. 8, according to New Taipei's health department.
The Kaohsiung City Department of Health released a list of places visited by a child and her mother, who were confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
The family of four took the high speed rail from Taoyuan to Kaohsiung on New Year's Eve and checked into the Kaohsiung Marriott Hotel before going to the E Sky Land shopping mall near the hotel later that day.
On New Year's Day, they dined at the Tan Zuo restaurant near the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts that afternoon, before visiting Hanshin Arena Shopping Plaza.
They checked out the following day, went to E Sky Land shopping mall, and then took the high speed rail service No. 0825 back to Taoyuan, according to Kaohsiung's health department.
Of the 51 people in Kaohsiung listed as their contacts, 29 have tested negative, the health department added.
(By Kuan Jui-ping, Chen Yu-ting, Tsai Meng-yu and Kay Liu)
Enditem/ls
Taoyuan factory closed, semester cut short due to COVID-19 casesNo plan for schools nationwide to start winter break earlier: MOE
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text:
Q: How to sort values by letters, numbers, characters in SQL? I have a 'name' column in table that contains for example:
name:
ab.xy
ab2g
ab
when I order the table by name column, I get as result:
name:
ab
ab.xy
ab2g
but I want the result to be:
name:
ab
ab2g
ab.xy
how can I do that?

A: There is probably no easy way to do what you want.
sql sorts by (simply said) ascii-value. And the "." has a lower Ascii-Value than all the letters. Also keep in mind that all uppercase letters are sorted in before lowercase letters.
If you need to sort like this, I'd advise to create a redundant column with the values normalized (i.e. all lowercase, certain chars removed) that helsps with your sorting. This way you can index that helper column and don't lose a lot of performance with bigger queries.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The Sandy Beach Resort in Wisconsin Dells offers a cozy, secluded getaway right on gorgeous Lake Delton. Minutes away from the excitement of all of the famous attractions of Wisconsin Dells, Sandy Beach Resort has lovely north woods-style cottages where you and your family can enjoy a wide variety of activities including boating, fishing, swimming and lounging on Lake Delton's idyllic beaches.
Sandy Beach Resort also has plenty of outdoor fun with paddleboats, canoes, shuffleboard, ping pong and children's play area—all you could want in a home-style, vacation destination.
Great place to stay room are super clean and friendly staff.
Great place. I had lots of fun. It's close to all the fun Wisconsin Dells attractions, like: The Ducks.


The ACG Materials Valu-Fil® 650 Calcium Sulfate Dihydrate, is a very fine, free-flowing, odorless, tasteless white powder produced by fine-grinding and air separating a select grade of high-purity white gypsum. Water soluble, solution grade fertilizer.
Controlling soil salinity with appropriate water management is especially important because soils with high sodium content do not perform as well as calcium rich soils. Many irrigation sources contain excess salt, which in turn increase the salinity of soils. Soil performance can be improved by including water soluble gypsum with irrigation water because the calcium found in gypsum competes with other cations for binding sites in the soil.
ACG Materials brand of aolution grade Calcium Sulfate, is a high purity, fine, soft white dihydrate form of gypsum with a specific gravity of 2.32, a typical pH of 7.5. Typical average particle diameter of ACG Valu-Fil is 18 microns. Maximum solubility in water is 2 grams per liter or 7.7 grams per gallon.


text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<document>

  <properties>
    <title>The lightweight ESB</title>
  </properties>

      Apache Synapse is a lightweight and high-performance Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Powered
      by a small and asynchronous mediation engine, Apache Synapse provides exceptional support
      for XML, Web Services and REST. In addition to XML and SOAP, Apache Synapse supports
      several other content interchange formats, such as plain text, binary, Hessian and JSON. The
      wide range of transport adapters available for Synapse, enables it to communicate over many
      application and transport layer protocols. As of now, Apache Synapse has support for protocols
      like HTTP/S, Mail (POP3, IMAP, SMTP), JMS, TCP, UDP, VFS and FIX.

      Apache Synapse is designed to be lightweight and fast. The non-blocking HTTP transport,
      the multi-threaded mediation engine and the streaming XML infoset combine to ensure that
      Synapse can mediate very high volumes of messages through the service bus with minimum
      delay and resource usage. Synapse also comes with comprehensive logging capabilities,
      statistics collection and JMX monitoring support which are crucial in production deployments.

      Synapse uses Apache Axis2 as the underlying Web Services engine. Therefore it has outstanding
      support for Web Services and related standards such as SOAP and WSDL. Tried and tested
      Axis2 modules like Apache Rampart and Apache Sandesha2 can be used with Synapse with no
      configuration overhead. Using such external modules, Apache Synapse supports a range of
      Web Services standards including WS-Security, WS-Reliable Messaging and WS-Eventing. Synapse
      also makes use of the Axis2 clustering framework and the deployment framework to provide
      enteprise grade clustering support and development time hot deployment support.

      The Synapse mediation engine is configured using a simple, XML-based configuration language.
      The configuration language and the related functional components are designed with SOA
      best practices in mind. As a result one could easily store configuration fragments in an
      external registry and import them to the mediation engine on demand.
      Synapse ships with a large collection of useful mediators that can be used to develop even the
      most complex enterprise integration scenarios. If necessary, the mediation engine can be
      easily extended by developing custom mediators using Java or your favorite scripting
      language.

      Apache Synapse is free and open source software distributed under the
      Apache Software License 2.0.

Want to get started? Please refer one of these comprehensive manuals:

Quick Start Guide

The Synapse Configuration Language

Synapse Samples Catalog

Extending Synapse

Need some assistance with a problem? Feel free to get in touch with the community over these
      mailing lists:

The Developer mailing list:  Subscribe

The User mailing list:  Subscribe

The latest release of Synapse is 2.0. Its key features are

Proxy services - facilitating transport, interface (WSDL/Schema/Policy), message format (SOAP 1.1/1.2, POX/REST, Text, Binary), QoS (WS-Addressing/WS-Security/WS-RM) and optimization switching (MTOM/SwA)

Non-blocking HTTP/S transports based on Apache HttpCore for ultrafast execution and support for thousands of connections at high concurreny with constant memory usage

Built in Registry/Repository, facilitating dynamic updating and reloading of the configuration and associated resources (e.g. XSLTs, XSD, JS, ..)

Easily extended via custom Java class (mediator and command)/Spring mediators, or BSF Scripting languages (Javascript, Ruby, Groovy, etc.)

Built in support for scheduling tasks using the Quartz scheduler

Load-balancing (with or without sticky sessions) /Fail-over, and clustered Throttling and Caching support

WS-Security, WS-Reliable Messaging & Throttling configurable via (message/operation/service level) WS-Policies

JMS (v1.x upwards) message support for binary, plain text and XML and SOAP payloads

Support for Hessian binary web service protocol

Industry driven Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol

Enhanced support for Apache VFS transports (s/ftp, file, zip/tar/gz, webdav, cifs..)

Support for message splitting & aggregation using the EIP

Database lookup & store support with DBMediators with reusable database connection pools

Enhanced Mail transport with POP3/SMTP/IMAP protocols

GZip encoding over the HTTP/S transport

Dual-Channel message exchange with WS-Addressing

Ability to pin a proxy service or a task to server instances on a cluster

Mandatory sequence if required before mediation

Lightweight, XML and Web services centric messaging model

Configurations serialized into a file system for versioning/backup & restoration with built-in Registry support

Support for Error handling and timeouts, recovery with http/s maintainance mode & gracefull shutdown

JMX monitoring support

Many samples and a built-in Axis2 server to try out and experiment with samples (Samples includes WS-Security, JMS POX/Text messages, Script mediation and many more samples which can be run out of the box)

Enhanced documentation for samples and getting started

</document>


NOOR & iMPACT DOC are pleased to announce a two day workshop in Amsterdam with Kadir van Lohuizen, on May 11th & 12th 2019.
Participants will discuss, share & learn about the development of a long-term photographic project. Together with the participants, Kadir van Lohuizen will work on the (re)conceptualizing, sequencing, and narrowing down the series and projects. Activities will include presentations on related projects by Kadir, group reviews and editing sessions, and receiving critical and constructive feedback from Kadir.
Application Deadline: Sunday April 14th, 23.59 CET.
We are pleased to invite you to the De Donkere Kamer for "Arctic: New Frontier," on April 4th, in Antwerp, Belgium, where Kadir van Lohuizen will present this pioneering double polar expedition . Photojournalists Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen documented the irreversible impact climate change has had on the entire Arctic territory.
This project has been awarded the 9th Prix Carmignac for Photojournalism, supported by the Carmignac Foundation.
Arctic: New Frontier by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen is currently on show at the Saatchi Gallery! Read about it now in artnet.
Arctic: New Frontier by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen is in The British Journal of Photography.
Arctic: New Frontier by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen is in The British Journal of Photography. Make sure to check out the exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, opening up tomorrow until May, in London, UK.
Kadir Van Lohuizen recently tested the performance of the latest Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera, in the Norwegian Arctic!
Opening Friday in London at Saatchi Gallery, Arctic: New Frontier by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen! This project was the 9th laureate of the Prix Carmignac du photojournalisme, graciously supported by the Fondation Carmignac.
Arctic: New Frontier, a pioneering double expedition by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen that explores the effects of climate change on the entire Arctic territory, is now currently available as a documentary on ARTE Reportages, and will be screened by the Dutch broadcaster VPRO Backlight on NPO 2, on March 3rd at 9:05pm.
The 9th Edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award supports an investigative photojournalism report that will shed light on the challenges facing the Arctic and that will highlight the consequences climate change might have on the planet.
In 2009, while media and photojournalism faced an unprecedented crisis, Edouard Carmignac created the Carmignac Photojournalism Award to support photographers in the field. It funds annually the production of an investigative photo reportage on human rights violations, geostrategic and environmental issues in the world.
Arctic: New Frontier, exhibited at Saatchi Gallery, from March 15th onwards!
We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition "Arctic: New Frontier," by 9th edition laureates Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen (NOOR), at Saatchi Gallery in London on March 15th!
Open to the public until May 5th, this pioneering double polar expedition chronicles the journey of photojournalists Yuri and Kadir as they document the irreversible impact climate change has had on the entire Arctic territory. The exhibition of over 50 photographs and 6 videos "provides a masterful and salutary insight into one of the major challenges of the coming years" (L'Express, November 15th, 2018).
Displayed at London's Saatchi Gallery, which has been hosting the Carmignac Photojournalism Award for the fifth consecutive year, "Arctic: New Frontier" is accompanied by a bilingual French-English catalogue co-published by Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Editions. It will be available at the Saatchi Gallery bookstore and throughout the network of bookstores in the UK and Europe.
Admission for "Arctic: New Frontier" is free.
In 2009, while media and photojournalism faced an unprecedented crisis, Edouard Carmignac created the Carmignac Photojournalism Award to sup- port photographers in the field.
Directed by Emeric Glayse, it funds annually the production of an investigative photo reportage on human rights violations, geostrategic and environmental issues in the world. Selected by an international jury, the laureate receives a grant, enabling them to carry out in-depth research on the ground, with logistical support from Fondation Carmignac. The latter presents a travelling exhibition and the publication of a monograph upon their return. At the end of each edition, four photographs bequeathed by the laureates are included in the Carmignac collection.
Created in 2000 under the initiative of Édouard Carmignac, Fondation Carmignac is a corporate foundation with two main strands: an art collection of close to 300 works, and the annual Carmignac Photojournalism Award. Villa Carmignac, an exhibition space on Porquerolles Island in Southern France, showcases the collection and hosts a programme of cultural and artistic activities.
"Arctic: New Frontier" exhibited at Saatchi Gallery, London.
Yuri Kozyrev's & Kadir van Lohuizen's latest project "Arctic: New Frontier" will be exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, from March 15th onwards!
This project was the laureate of the 9th Prix Carmignac du Photojournalisme, graciously supported by the Fondation Carmignac.
Kadir van Lohuizen's observation of the immigration in America was published in the Photoworld Magazine.


This will be third meeting all-time between Maryland and Iowa; each team has won on its home field (games were in 2014 and 2015). These teams' one common opponent this season so far is Minnesota -- the Terps won that game 42-13, while the Hawkeyes won 48-31.
Maryland's defense held Rutgers to 2-for-17 passing last week (11.8 percent). In the last 15 years, the only team to hold a Power 5 opponent to a lower completion percentage (minimum 15 attempts) was Michigan, which held Rutgers to 11.1 percent (2-for-18) on October 8, 2016.
Kasim Hill threw three touchdowns vs. Rutgers last week with just 76 passing yards. The last time a Power 5 quarterback threw for that few yards and at least three touchdowns was when NC State's Jacoby Brissett threw three touchdowns and had just 66 passing yards in 2014 (vs. UNC).
Iowa's defense is allowing 81.5 yards per game on the ground, fourth fewest in the FBS. They have allowed just three rushing touchdowns -- no team in the FBS has allowed fewer (three other teams tied with three).
Nate Stanley set a career high with six touchdown passes at Indiana last week. He is one of six FBS players to throw six TD in a game this season. He has 15 touchdown passes through six games -- he, Will Grier and McKenzie Milton are the only QBs in the FBS to have done this in each of the last two seasons.
Back in late September, Iowa was disappointed but not demoralized after losing its Big Ten opener at home to Wisconsin.
The Hawkeyes knew there was plenty of football left to play.
Since then, the Hawkeyes won back-to-back games on the road the past two weeks that put them right back in the Big Ten West Division mix and into the Top 25 for the first time this season at No. 19.
On Saturday, Iowa plays (5-1, 2-1) host to Maryland (4-2, 2-1) in a homecoming game at Kinnick Stadium. The Hawkeyes are one of four teams with one loss in the division and now have a chance to be a contender.
"The best thing that our team has done going forward is one week at a time," Iowa center Keegan Render said. "The only way it's going to happen is us winning. It doesn't matter what other things happen outside of us. As long as we win, we know there's going to be a chance at the end, no matter what else happens in our division."
Iowa's offense appears to have found a groove. Iowa quarterback Nate Stanley threw six touchdown passes last week in a 42-16 win at Indiana. He has exceeded 300 yards passing in each of the past two games.
Tight ends Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson have combined with 45 receptions, 692 yards and nine touchdowns this season. Each had more than 100 yards receiving last week.
The Iowa offensive line has given up a conference-low six sacks.
"We knew it was just a matter of time and us going out there and doing it," Render said. "Obviously, we've done it for a couple of weeks. Now it's keep doing it. We can't go back. Keep pushing.
"We know things are going to get stickier and stickier as the games go on. It's going out the and recognizing that every game is going to be a close game. It's just going out there on that first drive and realizing to take every drive like that. We've been here before."
Iowa's level of performance on defense is right there with the offense. The Hawkeyes are ranked No. 3 nationally in rushing defense (81.5 yards per game), fifth in total defense (282.0 ypg) and 13th in points allowed (16.5 per game).
"We're going to get tested the next six weeks," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "We're only halfway through the season. There are going to be more bumps in the road, more adversity to face, those types of things. We'll find out more about the team."
Maryland has won two of its last three games, with the loss coming at Michgian on Oct. 6. The Terrapins opened the season with an upset of Texas.
"We can take away that we played hard and I have to coach better," Maryland interim coach Matt Canada said. "You have to go play and beat those teams. The Michigan game, we didn't do that."
No one quite knew what to expect from Maryland this season. Coach D.J. Durkin was placed on administrative leave in August after offensive lineman Jordan McNair died of heatstroke following a summer workout.
"I don't know all the details of what's going on there," Ferentz said. "I just know it had to be a really challenging time for everybody there, their entire staff and football team. The way they're playing, you have to give everybody credit.
"It starts with (Canada). He's certainly been the one that pulled them all together, kept everybody going in the right direction. When you watch film, you would never know there was any turbulence there. That's impressive."
Under Canada, who was beginning his first year as offensive coordinator when he was thrust into the job as interim head coach, Maryland has already matched last season's win total with six games remaining.
"We are very proud of our players for the way they are doing it, and the way they're playing hard," Canada said. "It's never going to be whatever we all want it to be, but it is going to be the best we can make it today. Do the best you can with what you've got and where you are."
Two of the key factors to Maryland's success can be traced to turnovers and its running game.
The Terrapins lead the Big Ten in turnover margin at at plus-9 and they also have the most interceptions in the conference with 12. Five of those interceptions came last week in a 34-7 win over Rutgers.
"We're trying to be around the ball," Canada said. "We're trying to get takeaways. We're trying to strip the ball. We're trying to be ballhawks when the ball is in the air and act like it's our ball and not theirs."
Maryland ranks third in the conference in rushing offense at 245.2 yards per game. Running back Ty Johnson is 19th nationally in all-purpose yards (132.33 per game) and has rushed for 435 yards and three touchdowns on 54 carries.
"They're run heavy, under center," Iowa defensive end Parker Hesse said. "They try to do a lot of stuff pre-snap to get you out of position. It still comes down to each guy doing his job."


uncommon matters goes pop – turning boldly playful. Squared and circular forms bisect and morph into bracelets and collars, while energetic spiral-inspired shapes coil and curve from fingers and ears. Powder-coated duotone and tritone pieces hark back to Constructivist drawings. Ultramarine Blue, Canary Yellow, True Red and Hot Pink – primaries with a jolt – give a vibrant kick to the graceful torque of the polished metal. The result is reminiscent of vintage feminine glamour — refined through a modern minimalist lens.


My business is a large residential painting company in the Northeast. Last year, our 200K piece DM campaign was the worst ever. We're now getting only a few hundred leads a year from the direct mail. We have a nice flow of word of mouth referrals, but need to figure out how to replace the leads we no longer see through the direct mail. Does anyone have good success stories of other ways to get leads?
FCPainter, I found that know matter what type of business you own or what hobby you have. The basic "public" want to revert to a website for references. (Easy to bookmark) Such as; a homepage for general or contact info, and some blog of updated info about your daily activities and company progress. This could also include graphs of statistics ...etc... With that stated; websites are easy and dirt cheap to construct anymore. Just my input?
"We Install. We Administer. We're the Headless Remote to your Foundation."
If I can't find the company on it's website, to me, it don't exsist.
And, you only have to reply to customers. Costumers mailing you, are already interested in your service, if not now then later on.
Try to put an html email address on your web page. It is very simle and easy to get result. If you dont know about that check the following link http://www.corelangs.com/html/links/mailto.html It will help you to chieve the result.
I think a good direct mail piece is still effective -- provided it gets delivered! I was seeing a similar trend to what you're reporting a year ago -- so in the last campaign I injected the list with 200 valid test addresses where receipt/delivery would be logged and verified. 44 of those 200 pieces (22 percent) never arrived. Whether the DM firm never mailed them or the USPS "lost" them is still uncertain, but after adjusting the total campaign downward by that percentage, the response rate was actually slightly better than the "old days." I'm not sure that knowing that makes it any less frustrating, however!
Painter, I agree with you and Lighthouse great answer. Direct mail is getting more expense and less effective.
I can tell you about my success story and at the same time give you another idea.
A phone call campaign (almost like telemarketing but a little less).
You have a nice flow of word of mouth referrals. Now expand that by phone calls.
than do Accounting. Eventually I sold me accounting practice and still talk to people.
Seeing as you have such a beautiful website, how about an opt-in form for your website.
A visitor signs up, and are added to you email list.
You then send emails, and can track the results of your campaign.
You will know when they opened up the email, when they clicked on a link in the email, and if they purchased a product through the email.
You can integrate you company logo, offer tips and support, or just a company newsletter!
Emails can be custom designed, or you can use templates.
You do not have to be a designer to offer professional quality emails!
FC, you have gotten some great advice. Have you tried radio along with interactive? You could do an email campaign that could either be a newsletter or a flyer like email. You could use radio to position yourself as the authority on residential painting with tips and helpful advice. These have worked for my clients in the past.
I would be interested in knowing what your direct mail piece looked like. I think there could be problems with your list and delivery as previously mentioned.
Painter, Sounds like a good move. Let me know if now need help with running a telemarketing test.
I also have a large-scale Direct Mail Firm as a client that may be able to assist you.
They can review your current campaign and help you come up with ideas for better results.
I have many clients that have had a lot of success with them.
be done cheaper than direct mail because of the rising postage rates.
you do with the junk you receive in the mail?
potential customer will have no choice but to at least give it a read.
Door Hangers rather than Direct Mail.
I agree that the public wants a good website to look at. When I am looking into something i always go to the internet first. There are many different places where you can get a free or inexpensive web site going! They are very easy to do as well. Also, you can try posting ads in local community papers. We have one in my community that is about $20 per month. Not to mention flyers, handing out business cards to everyone you meet. Hope that helps!
I recently came out of Broadcast TV Sales Mgt to start my own gig consulting small businesses on advertising and marketing. One of the biggest issues with Direct Mail is the generally poor response rate, generally less than 3%, some research shows as low as 1/10th of 1%! I'd agree with some of the others that the web is important, but the web is a resource and not a substitute for true mass market advertising. Television and radio remain the two strongest forms to convey a message, TV the hands down most effective. I didn't catch what city you live in, however, I can assure you that redirecting that $200k into a TV campaign in virtually any market (less Top 10) will get you visibility that DM can't possibly achieve. If you are in a Top 10 market, local cable, while still expensive, is very targeted and can still accomplish more than any mail drop. Lastly, I suggest you integrate a call-to-action in whatever you do. Mobile Marketing (my specialty) is an excellent means to take the call-to-action incentive of DM and combine it with branding of TV/Radio.
Customers can make call then or later, phone number is on the text. Those who respond BRUSH are placed in a data base for access at a later point for a future incentive.
Beauty of Mobile Marketing is that you can assign a keyword (PAINT1, PAINT2, etc) for every medium you are advertsing in, thus allowing you to track the effectiveness of each ad, as well as making everything a call to action with an incentive. The database extends your media value for continuing client relations, could even use it to send out referral incentives...$50 gift certificate for each referral, pls fwd this message to a friend.
Bottom line: stop the Direct Mail, no President ever got elected using it. Look to TV & Radio and integrate text messaging to make sure you can measure the ROI.
and our consumers are busy too.
and you know how the record were generated!!
to imeediatly follow up with prospective consumer discuss their needs.
You just need to keep an eye on your ROI - always!
And another great thing about it - you will collect all this reacord and later can remarket or upsell them!
It works and definetly worth to try. Let me know if you have any questions.
Direct mail is almost dead as a cost effective lead generation vehicle. The best way to use direct mail is to contact current customers and ask for referrals _or_keep your name in front "top of mind awareness" to people in your data base that didn't buy yet.
My suggestion? I have 83+ million permission based SMS text numbers and 150,000 million permission based email addresses. I can demo and geo target with over 700 data selects and by comparison to the cost of direct mail, it's much more cost effective. Plus with every SMS campaign we'll send out a matching HTML email for free. Two forms of media for the price of one. We are the aggreegator of our data, we don't buy list. We generate them.
Rosen Hotels, PGA Resorts, Disney, Dell, Navy, National Guard, United Way, Apple Bee's and Wegman's just to name a few.
If you'd like to learn more call or email.
I tend to agree with Lighthouse. But also think some of this is a reflection of the ecomony overall. Not as many people are spending money right now, and average household savings is up to 7%. Plus with the drop off in home sales and lousy equity markets, it's just a tough time.
I think you have to keep doing direct mail to stay in front of your audience. You should be sure to scrub the list of any bad contacts before re-using. You could consider doing it less frequently in order to free up cash to pursue other options, such as investing in a good SEO (search engine optimization) campaign.
I'm a big believer in press releases to trumpet both your accomplishments and marketing message. If done right, it gets the attention of the press, increases SEO, drives traffic to your website, and ultimately helps grow your business.
Become a content guru on house painting as well. When the economy thaws a little more, they will undoubtedly need your services to spruce up their homes or to stage a sale. Offer loads of helpful tips and free downloads from your website to keep them coming back, and keep the search engines impressed.
Direct mail definitely isn't dead but it's harder and harder and can be pretty costly too. If you have a website, I'd focus more on making it easier for potential customers to find YOU and have a great story to tell once they get there. I'd focus my time/effort/money on search engine optimization, list building (as mentioned earlier in the thread) and maybe even look at pay per click advertising.
May be you can reduce the direct mail campaign by focussing on a targetted list and use the remainder of your budget in google ppc.
The internet has changed all the rules when it comes to marketing and advertising. Tips are plentiful, but even if the advice was text book it still might take a lot of trial and error which leads to lost time and money.
I found an online tool that is a system for lead generation. The system walks you through step by step. The company uses tools that are commonly found in network marketing and multi-level. In these types of businesses those who have an understanding of the internet and how to automate lead generation will definately dominate the market.
If you're willing to invest some time on my site I can likely provide you excellent search engine results in your geographical area.
Well, gone are the days when mails used to be a good avenue for marketing. Now, the customers are quiet intelligent and you need to customize your product as per their needs and try building upon a long lasting relationships with them. Promotional campaigns and also promotional products are good avenues in this aspect and they help in generating a brand name to your business. They are well customizable and inculcate a sense of attachment in the minds of customers. The studies have also shown that 76% of customers remembered the name of there business vendors who offered promotional products. So they are quiet promising in terms of marketing and promotion.
Lots of great advice and information happening here. Thanks for sharing everyone! Lets keep it coming.
We have done lots of direct mail for our customers and will be glad to say it is not dead. Changing but not dead. The advice to use direct mail to current and past customers was good and we always start there in building programs. But your question was generating leads.
Lets go through a couple of numbers that will help you. 45% of all leads generate will not close for at least 12 months after they become leads. So, the number one program to adjust your mail program is to direct some of the money at staying in contact with leads that did not close. If you have 100 leads per month and 45 will close in 12 months or longer, after one year you will have more that 500 good prospects in your data base. Not suspects, prospects. Now for the 55 others, let's say the your a great closer and you can get 20% to agree to purcahse your product. That is 20, so 35 either buy from someone else, or have delayed the decesion. Either way they are still prospects for your service in the future. So again, keep mailing to them. Over a 5 year period using this model you will have over 5000 names in your database that have a relationship with you. Once a lead, stay in touch and they will be use best future customers. You can move the number up or down depending on lead counts per month. Second best use of direct mail is to your lead file.
Now on to direct mail to suspects, people who don't know you and you want to build relationships with them. Number one thing to remember about direct mail is that only about 15% or less of the list mailed to will have interest in the product at the time the direct mail piece is delivered. So for 100 peices deliver only 15 will have any likely hood of calling to start a purchasing converstion. The rest will not. What makes direct mail work is expanding the offer to attract more people than the 15%. Do you offer a painting standards guide? Do you offer a painting eatimating guide? Do you offer do it yourself painting workshops on the web? Do you offer a guide on how to select the right paint for your project? Consumers want information and they can get it easily. Become their source for easy information. To get your information they need to register at your site. We have now done two things: one got them to your site where they see lots of testimonals and more information. Second, we there name, email and most importanly when are they considering a painting project.
This process we call segementing. You now move these people to relationship mail designed for prospects and not the mail peices designed to suspects.
We also use QR codes to make it easier for people to ge to the web sites and landing pages to make the experience more relevant.
Just some thoughts on why we don't believe direct mail is dead.
I've found that what you send has everything to do with what you get back in response. If your piece is run-of-the-mill, no one will pay attention. I have been using personalized cartoons for more than 30 years and have been achieving stellar results, both for large direct marketers (just set a new record for Easter Seals last week) and countless SMBs. Don't laugh -- cartoons are almost always the best read and remembered part of magazines and newspapers, and we have discovered that recipients react very differently to our pieces as well. Our postcards almost always end up on refrigerator doors, and stay there for years. In B2B settings, they achieve far superior penetration because assistants don't throw away cartoons about their bosses. The take-away is that when mailings are "sticky," the results can be dramatic.
Direct mail has another big advantage today in that it has become almost "alternative" marketing, as everyone else focuses on online sources. That means there is greater and greater value to having something tangible show up in someone's mailbox, simply because there are fewer marketers doing it, allowing you all the more opportunity to stand out.
So, how does stickiness translate into results? Consider the test we did for Standard Parking. We mailed postcards to 6,000 lapsed customers of their off-airport parking facility near LAX. The postcard included the offer of a free 24-hour stay at the facility and, of course, our personalized cartoon device. After just 30 days' worth of coupon redemptions, the client reported that the campaign set their all-time record -- it produced more response than anything they'd done before in print, radio, television or direct mail. The amazing part was, because recipients kept the postcards on display in their homes and offices, they continued to be reminded of the free-stay offer. As a result, redemptions continued to pour in for a year and a half.
My advice is to test aggressively and strive for a combination of stickiness and winning offer.
WOW! Sounds like you've had amazing results for your clients. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with the community. I would say you have certainly found your niche.
Direct mails dont work too well these days. What you can do is adopt a new marketing strategy. Analyze what your competitors do. Study what works for your kind of business. To start with you can tweet, use FB and other social media sites for marketing.
As everybody knows that internet has now become the usual helper for people . If your website doesn't exist in this you are nothing.
Go online, do email marketing, mobile marketing via sms & mms. People are most likely to search a service on internet. Nowadays mobile search is really rapidly growing so you should have this in mind too.
Our company ProTexting provide mobile marketing solutions and more and businesses are using it. There isn't a faster way your message to be read by the customers.
I'm a small sign owner that is growing rapidly and lately vehicle wraps or mobile marketing is getting results more than direct marketing. Also the proper company apparel supporting your company helps as well if going business to business. We've landed some great fleet accounts wrapping all there vehicles and it's proving success for them as long the graphics are visually acceptable. It helps with the proper design of the wraps that promote your company. Direct marketing is slowly evaporating.
Great suggestions for marketing. Congratulations on your growing business. I agree, visually pleasing advertising causes people to remember the name and/or logo of a business. When they remember, that results in business for the company.
Thanks for sharing and welcome to the community.
PPC is the way to go in order to drive Phone calls, emails, and form submittals! It allows you to get in front of consumers who are already looking for you! Other Online marketing options you could compare to Direct Mail (Creative Marketing) is Search Retargeting, Site Retargeting and of course Social Media combined with a content development strategy!
Make sure your website is ready to convert the traffic though. These marketing mediums are great and they work but if your website is not ready to convert them you will not get the lowest Cost-Per-lead. Feel free to reach out to me I would be willing to take a look at your site and make recommendations at no charge.
It seems like the discussion has taken a left turn. The original quandary was whether direct mail is or is not working anymore (it is), not whether we should all have websites. Certainly, it is important to have an online presence, in the same way it's important to have a business card. I think the opportunity presented by direct mail is that it allows a marketer to stand out in an increasingly uncrowded channel and put something tangible and memorable in recipients' hands. Today, the tactical approach says, "Make sure you can be found on the Web." The strategic approach says, "Make sure your customers and prospects never have to resort to a search." The search results are, after all, where prospects see most of your competitors, too.
A case in point from my own experience might help. We've been producing a monthly touch postcard campaign for a prominent commercial roofer in Florida for several years. My specialty happens to be using personalized cartoons as an engagement device, so each of the postcards includes a relevant, carefully-crafted cartoon about each recipient. As a result, they found many of their list members have been collecting the entire series of postcards on their office walls; last year, the campaign brought in a million dollars worth of direct business. Prior to the '08 crash, the postcards actually helped them more than double their business, from $8 million to $20 million, over a three-year period. Direct mail, and then later, e-mail has been instrumental in cementing these relationships on a broad scale, such that most of the commercial property owners and managers in their territory never do a Google search for commercial roofing services, they just reach for one of the cards.
This is not meant as a plug, but if anyone is interested, I wrote a book called Drawing Attention, which explains how the cartoon approach works. It's the product of 30 years and millions of dollars worth of test experience and countless record-breaking campaigns for many of the world's biggest direct marketers.
I hope all of this is helpful. In my experience, direct mail is working quite well. But what you send and the strategy behind it are critical factors in your overall success. Smart marketers know their biggest gains come from uncrowded channels, something Guerrilla Marketing author Jay Conrad Levinson taught us years ago.


In this episode of Intel Chip Chat, Anand Kashyap, CTO and Co-Founder of Fortanix, joins us to talk about their mission to solve for security and privacy in the cloud. Anand talks about how Fortanix believes the best security for applications and data in the cloud can't be built just using software, it has to be enforced with hardware security. Anand talks about the start of Fortanix and how they built around Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) and now offer an array of products from their Runtime Encryption Platform to their recently launched Enclave Development Program (EDP). Fortanix will be at RSA this year to showcase their new platform EDP, and demo how they are making Intel SGX available to more developers across the world with broader support for languages like Java and Python.
Stop by booth #N6173 at RSA 2019.


text:
Die Kolomak ( und ) ist ein linker Nebenfluss der Worskla in der Ukraine. Der Fluss hat eine Länge von 102 km, sein Einzugsgebiet beträgt 1650 km².

Das Tal ist trapezförmig, im unteren Verlauf weniger formiert. Die Breite des Tals ist 2,5–5 km, in manchen Abschnitten bis zu 8 km breit. Die Flussaue sind beidseitig mit einer Breite von 0,6–0,9 km, an der größte Stelle hat die Aue eine Breite von 2,5 km, mit einer mittleren Strömung. Der Fluss ist mäßig gewunden, seine Breite, bei den Bergen, liegt bei 20–50 m und wächst bis auf 100 m an. Seine Tiefe bis ist im Durchschnitt 6 m. Das Gefälle des Flusses beträgt 0,62 m/km. In trockenen Jahren trocknet der Oberlauf aus. Im Bereich wurden mehrere künstliche Teiche angelegt.

Verlauf
Die Kolomak entspringt am östlichen Rand des Dorfes Wyssokopillja. Sie fließt vorwiegend Richtung Südwesten und mündet nahe dem südöstlichen Teil der Stadt von Poltawa in die Worskla.

Einzelnachweise

Fluss in der Oblast Charkiw
Fluss in der Oblast Poltawa

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Want Personalized PD? Become a National Board Certified Teacher.
Hey, that's me (circa 2006) when I first embarked on the National Board journey.
I learned a lot about myself, my students, and my teaching in the rigorous process of certification. You see, National Board Certification holds an honest and unflinching mirror up to your practice. Once you deeply understand the standards and the expectations of the process, it becomes pretty clear where you have room for growth.
So, with all the discussion about how we personalize professional development, becoming an NBCT should certainly be part of the discussion.
When we think about how to personalize professional learning, we often think about offering choices or personal goal setting. Or we sometimes think about assessing the practice of educators and giving them specific trainings or goals. Although all of these are good options, I feel National Board does a little of both.
Investigating the standards objectively helps us see where we are successful — without rose-tinted glasses. Videos, student work, and independent assessments provide evidence of what's working and what's not. Feelings are not facts, and this evidence shows us where the real work is – not just where we think it is. Obviously, feelings and facts don't always correlate.
So for each of us, the National Board process reveals something different about our practice, and that's why it is a great form of personalized professional development.
Where were my weaknesses in 2006? I couldn't effectively use groups in my classroom. I didn't know how to support English Language Learners. I didn't know how to formatively assess and personalize writing instruction.
So, I went to work learning about these areas. I asked my fellow colleagues for ideas and strategies. I read professional books. I tried out hunches in my classroom and made tweaks — just as any action researcher might do.
My students showed me with their progress, engagement, and feedback.
I would not have made the progress as an educator that I have without holding up a mirror to my practice, so I could objectively see my strengths and weaknesses.
National Board Certification was that mirror.


Low Tea Books is a new adventure born of an older one. As a duo of book lovers banded together, Low Tea Books is the brain child of Bree Reeves and Jacob Torres. Initially created as breereadsbooks.org, Low Tea Books is a friendly and accessible website for all your science fiction and fantasy needs!
Bree is an animal loving, herb growing, book lover from the upper Midwest (She can see Canada from her house!). She has two lovely kitties, Soren and Wollstonecraft, a snake, and three chickens. She spends a not insignificant amount of time being overly enthused with all things science-y and bouncing around the house doing "experiments." Bree has been blogging since 2013 and has a youtube channel where she reviews books and talks the publishing topics of the day.
Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jacob Torres now lives in Kansas with his cat Felicia and, he's told, with entirely too many books. By day, Jacob Torres works at a plant science company, by night you can mostly find him reading and drinking too much tea. Jacob loves the SciFi/Fantasy genre, everything from comics, games, movies, TV, and most importantly books. Though, honestly, Jacob will read from practically any genre. He's new to blogging, so be gentle. Or what passes for gentle on the internet. But Jacob is very excited to have a forum to share some of his many opinions.
Hey Bree, nice reviewing. If you haven't already checked them out, I highly recommend reading Peter V Brett and Jim Butcher, specifically the Demon Cycle and Furies series' (respectively). Not necessarily to review, just to enjoy.