text:
Ditch Your Backpack and Explore the Luxurious Side of India
While it may have a reputation as a backpacker's paradise, India's expanding offering of extravagant properties, from palatial city hotels to magnificent mountain retreats, is quickly making it one of the world's most popular luxury holiday destinations.
25% of all bookings to Indian hotels in the past year were for five star, soaring above the global average (only 6% of all bookings to global hotels were for five star).*
Undoubtedly, India is the destination of the moment if you're a fan of luxury travel. To help you narrow down the bountiful options, our data analysts at Booking.com have compiled a list of some of the most highly reviewed luxury stays in India, according to Indian travellers.
Suryagarh Jaisalmer
Suryagarh, Jaisalmer
In the heart of the Rajasthani desert, not far from Jaisalmer city, lies the majestic Suryagarh. This traditional sandstone fortress has been converted into a luxury boutique hotel with a sophisticated and distinctly Rajasthani feel. All thanks to its local staff, design, cuisine and the tribal music that often echoes through its grand courtyards. While you really ought to explore a bit of Rajasthan during your stay, resting within the comfort of Suryagarh is rather tempting. While away your time with a visit to the spa or take part in some yoga, chanting or meditation. In truth, it's hard to believe you're in the middle of the desert.
La Villa Pondicherry
La Villa, Pondicherry
Founded by a man born and raised in Pondicherry, La Villa has a strong authentic claim. Its aesthetic is irresistibly chic, having perfected a look that's simultaneously rustic and modern. Sharp lines and minimalism are artfully combined with wooden shutters and a distressed colonial façade. Lap up the genteel French feel by reclining in a bamboo chair in dappled shade on the verandah or terrace.
Wildflower Hall Shimla
Wildflower Hall, Shimla
In the foothills of the Himalaya, Wildflower Hall is a dreamy mountain retreat. Offering a serenity that's hard to match elsewhere in India and views that are out of this world; the infinity pool with an unblemished panorama is a real highlight. Found in the town of Shimla, which used to be the summer capital of the British Raj, the hotel retains its British décor with mahogany furniture, ornate carpets and fireplaces with grand mantelpieces.
The Imperial New Delhi
The Imperial, New Delhi
Despite having a well-established reputation as one of New Delhi's finest hotels, The Imperial does not rest on its laurels. Immaculate lawns fringed with palm trees, a garden pool and a colonnaded veranda create a feeling of a haven amidst this frantic city. Inside, high ceilings and marble floors add to this tranquility by creating a pretty awe-inspiring impression. Guests can dine in a number of world-class restaurants and even shop in the in-house Chanel boutique, the first and only one in Delhi.
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel Mumbai
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Mumbai
The Taj Mahal Palace Mumbai is an eternal favourite for good reason. The staff exude all the warmth of Indian hospitality and execute everything to perfection. Even a cup of tea in the Sea Lounge is served with an hour-glass so that you get just the right length of brew. The palace is brimming with history, charm and character, having opened in 1903 after pioneer industrialist Jamsetjee Tata commissioned it out of love for Mumbai. The building itself is a symbol of the city and was the first harbour landmark, predating even the adjacent Gateway of India. There's a rumour that the hotel was constructed back-to-front because the architect signed off plans while on holiday without noticing the direction it was facing. Then jumped to his death from the fifth floor when he returned and realized his mistake. But in reality this harbour-facing design, unprecedented in India, was intended for guests to enjoy breath-taking views of the Arabian Sea.
The Oberoi Grand Kolkata
In the colourful and chaotic city of Kolkata, the Oberoi Grand is a sumptuous sanctuary that tends to surpass expectations. The staff here have got service down to a fine art and the inside of the hotel certainly lives up to its name. Gleaming chandeliers and gorgeous fabrics lend the place an aura of grace and splendor and the garden pool framed by palm trees and lit up at night is simply magical.
*According to Booking.com internal data.


My results from Blogrush have been lackluster. Derek over at Widgets Lab was pretty close two days ago when he guessed 5 hits from the Blogrush widget. The correct answer was in fact 4 hits since I put the widget up (16 days ago). Has anybody out there had any noticeable gains from Blogrush?
It is bad! Here are the numbers I have seen from BlogRush.
For the entire month of November (excluding a few hours today) WidgetsLab has received 20(twenty) hits total.
In contrast, Entrecard has delivered 103 visitors in half the time. 15 (fifteen) days the Entrecard widget/ad has been on WidgetsLab.
after looking closer at my Entrecard stats I ahve discovered that I was in error.
I have had 289 visitors from Entrecard. Not the 103 that I mentioned above.
I think both Entrecard and BlogRush stink, but I must say, even though BlogRush returns a pitiful number of hits, the hits are of much higher quality than EntreCard. Entrecard visists last an average of a few seconds, long enough for the viewer to find my widget and move on, wheras BlogRush visitors seems to stay for a minute or two, likely because they actually wanted to read the article whos headline they clicked on, not just drive up their credits as with entrecard.


text:
Buffalo Blizzard of 1977
By Timothy W. Kneeland
The Blizzard of 1977 is still remembered in Western New York, especially in Buffalo, which received the brunt of the storm. The blizzard occurred during the most extreme cold the area had ever seen, accompanied by some of the largest winter snowfalls on record. The blizzard struck with little warning on Friday morning, January 28, 1977, and the blowing snow and extreme cold paralyzed the Buffalo area until the first week of February. The storm made travel impossible and stranded thousands of people across the region, while snowdrifts buried houses up to the second story. This is a story not only of survival, but also of community. Neighbors helped neighbors, radio stations relayed messages and provided crucial information, and countless individuals donated their time and equipment to bring needed medicine or food to shut-ins across the region.
Timothy W. Kneeland is the director for the Center for Public History at Nazareth College and works with a cross section of local historians, archivists, and museum personnel. Images in this book come from a variety of archives, historical societies, public libraries, and newspapers and provide a regional perspective on a crisis that spread from Buffalo to Batavia and from Niagara Falls to Watertown.
The New York City Triangle Factory Fire
Historic Fires of New York City
The 1972 Flood in New York's Southern Tier
The New York State Capitol and the Great Fire of 1911
Hurricane in the Hamptons, 1938
Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959
Tragedy at the Triangle: Friendship in the Tenements and the Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Hulett Hotel Fire on Lake George
Lake George Shipwrecks and Sunken History
Lockport: Historic Jewel of the Erie Canal
Newfane and Olcott

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
PHOTOS: This Old Elevator: December 2018
December 31, 2018 Country Crossroads
Tips for safe cannabis consumption
Displaying trailing plants indoors
What does Agriculture 3.0 look like?
The Manitoba Historical Society wants to gather information about all the grain elevators in Manitoba
By Manitoba Co-operator Staff
Country Crossroads
In 1910, 38-year-old Grover H. Olmstead of Chicago bought nine quarter sections of land in southwestern Manitoba. He and his wife Florence arrived at Pierson in 1911 and hired locals to build a large barn, two-storey farmhouse, and this small elevator. Unlike most elevators, it did not move grain using a leg. Grain dumped into a pit on its south (right) side flowed into a concrete basement beneath the elevator. From there, a motor-driven blower pushed it up a metal pipe to the top then into one of the interior bins. Grain was removed when it flowed by gravity through wooden spouts into a wagon parked in the basement. Olmstead sold the property in 1920 and it passed through several hands over the next 98 years.
Photo: Gordon Goldsborough
The Paterson Grain elevator and annex at Dacotah, on the CNR Gladstone Subdivision in the RM of Cartier, was comprised of two elevators sitting side by side. The one in the rear of this photo was built in 1957 while the nearer one was constructed in 1917 and moved here in 1971 from Cabot, a siding on the CNR Cabot Subdivision a few kilometres away. The entire facility was demolished in August 2003.
Photo: Mike Lisowski
An elevator at Beaver, on the CNR line northeast of MacGregor, was built by United Grain Growers in 1935 to replace a predecessor from 1915. Initially rated at 30,000 bushels, its capacity was increased by two balloon annexes intended as a temporary measure during the Second World War. One of them survived until a decade after this photo was taken in 1961. The crib annex on the other side of the elevator was built in June 1958. Closed suddenly in mid-September 1988, the elevator was removed from the site.
Photo: University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
In the 1950s, there were over 700 grain elevators in Manitoba. Today, there are fewer than 200. You can help to preserve the legacy of these disappearing "Prairie sentinels."
The Manitoba Historical Society (MHS) is gathering information about all elevators that ever stood in Manitoba, regardless of their present status. Collaborating with the Manitoba Co-operator it is supplying these images of a grain elevator each week in hopes readers will be able to tell the society more about it, or any other elevator they know of.
MHS Gordon Goldsborough webmaster and Journal editor has developed a website to post your replies to a series of questions about elevators. The MHS is interested in all grain elevators that have served the farm community.
Your contributions will help gather historical information such as present status of elevators, names of companies, owners and agents, rail lines, year elevators were built — and dates when they were torn down (if applicable).
There is room on the website to post personal recollections and stories related to grain elevators. The MHS presently also has only a partial list of all elevators that have been demolished. You can help by updating that list if you know of one not included on that list.
Your contributions are greatly appreciated and will help the MHS develop a comprehensive, searchable database to preserve the farm community's collective knowledge of what was once a vast network of grain elevators across Manitoba.
Please contribute to This Old Grain Elevator website here.
You will receive a response, by email or phone call, confirming that your submission was received.
Goldsborough is interested in hearing all sorts of experiences about the elevators — funny, sad, or anything in between. Readers willing to share their stories can leave messages at 204-474-7469.
Manitoba Co-operator Staff's recent articles
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guide life
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Young farmer finds unique education


Boracay, Bohol, and Malapascua, Philippines – some of the best sunsets from my trip were in the Philippines – here's three from the beach at three different popular islands in the Philippines. Vote for your favorite paradise in the Philippines!
Malapascua – brilliant purple sky!
Malapascua was a surprising gem on my trip.
Which sunset (or sunrise) from the Philippines did you like best?


text:
Q: Resolve NetBIOS name in C# on linux There is a code in C# using NetAPI32.dll to get MAC Address, computer name and computer domain name. Is there some code with the same functions under linux?

A: Solved!
I have not found any ready solutions, saw only this code and uderstood that to do.
I wrote a class for constructing and parsing packets. I send a complete package on 137 (UDP) port, and get an answer. This class is not for all cases, but it suitable for me. I receive hostname, domain and MAC address.
Used

*

*Wireshark

*nslookup (Windows)

*mnblookup (Linux)

*SMBLibrary

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The polka[1] is a dance for couples which originated in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). It was a "craze" in Europe for a time in the mid to late 19th century.[2][3] and in the United States.[4][5] The craze spread in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which the Czechs were part.
The dance is done with a one-two-three-hop style:[6] The dance soon spread to London and was introduced to America in 1844. It remained a popular ballroom dance until the late 19th century.
↑ 1844 according to Shorter OED, vol 2, p1537.
↑ Franks A.H. Social dance in the nineteenth century: a short history, p133 et seq.
↑ Richardson P.J.S. 1960. The social dances of the 19th century, chapter 8, p81, and noted in later chapters.
↑ Aldrich, Elizabeth 1991. From the ballroom to hell: grace and folly in nineteenth-century dance. Northeastern University Press. Evanston, Illinois. p190: directions for performing the polka.
↑ Blatter, Alfred 2007. Revisiting music theory: a guide to the practice, p28. ISBN 0-415-97440-2.
↑ "Polkamania ... has raged very fiercely amongst us, indeed all over London this year". Letter by E.J.Knox, 14 August 1844: quoted in A.E. Blake London 1909. Memoirs of a Vanished Generation ..., London 1909 viii, 217.
Other websites[change | change source]
The Worlds Polka Network The world's first 24/7 Polka Streamer.
Polka Jammer Network Internet radio station featuring many LIVE & taped shows.
National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame.
International Polka Association and Hall of Fame.
Wisconsin Polka Music.
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polka&oldid=7823008"
Ballroom dances
This page was last changed on 13 October 2021, at 07:50.


text:
A young patient receives the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 in Vienna, Austria on Monday, Nov. 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Lisa Leutner
'Significant milestone:' COVID vaccine plans for children roll out across the country
One-third of new COVID-19 cases in Ontario are in school-aged children.
Parents were learning Monday how soon their younger children could get an appointment for a COVID-19 shot as shipments of the pediatric Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made their way across the country.
Ontario parents heard they could start making appointments for eligible kids ages five to 11 starting Tuesday. Doses are expected to be administered as early as Thursday, the province said.
"Offering the protection of the vaccine to children aged five to 11 is a significant milestone in Ontario's fight against COVID-19 in advance of the holiday season," Health Minister Christine Elliott said.
The province said about one million children will be eligible.
It expects to get 1,076,000 doses from the federal government. Just over 400,000 were to arrive Monday.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said earlier this month that children under 12 account for the highest rate of new COVID-19 infections.
Parents in the Prairie provinces were eager to book vaccinations for their children after months of increasing infections and extreme pressure on health care earlier this fall.
More than 15,000 appointments were made in Manitoba by Monday afternoon, only a few hours after they became available. There are about 125,000 children who are eligible and doses were expected to start going into arms by the end of the week.
"These vaccines can't come soon enough," said Dr. Marcia Anderson, medical lead for the Manitoba First Nations pandemic response team. She said enough vaccines for about 15,000 children were to be shipped to First Nations later this week.
Saskatchewan was expecting about 112,000 doses to be delivered Tuesday — nearly enough for the 115,000 children in the province who are eligible. Vaccinations, expected to start the next day, are to be available at community clinics, schools and pharmacies.
The province was hit hard by the pandemic's fourth wave with surging cases and hospitalizations. Some COVID-19 patients were transferred out of province for treatment as intensive-care units became overwhelmed.
Infections have begun to stabilize, but Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman said the arrival of vaccines for younger children will provide more protection.
"The immunization of this age cohort will also help to reduce transmission of the virus and ensure that children can continue to enjoy their friends and activities," Merriman said in a statement.
Alberta officials have said vaccines were to start arriving Monday and kids were expected to get a jab later in the week. That province opened online pre-registration of children for vaccines in October. More than 390,000 youngsters will be eligible for shots.
The Pfizer vaccine was previously authorized for anyone 16 years and older and, in May, it was approved for those 12 and up. The pediatric version for children between five and 11 is a smaller dose, which officials say is common in all types of vaccines for children.
Many provinces have said they are ensuring their vaccine rollout plan is kid-friendly, with more time to give doses in quieter spaces and cubicles or family pods, so parents can give support.
Most have said they expect to be administering doses to children by the end of the week.
Quebec Premier François Legault said his government would provide plans Tuesday. Officials previously said the goal was to administer one dose to the roughly 700,000 eligible children by Christmas.
The fourth wave is having a greater effect on children because they've been unable to get vaccinated, said the Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health.
Kids have also felt the significant impact of school closures and activity cancellations forced by the pandemic, the group said in a statement.
"With pediatric vaccination, we now have an option for added protection for school-aged children from COVID-19," it said.
"Along with continuing to practice individual public-health measures, this option can help them to safely participate in the activities that matter most."
—Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press
RELATED: Household and family clusters blamed for surge in North Island COVID-19 cases
RELATED: Canada has thrown away at least one million COVID-19 vaccine doses: survey
Coronavirusvaccines
UPDATE: Police look at criminal charges after protesters block highway for hours
'Atmospheric rivers' are the new hurricanes, rating system coming


text:
NLight launches 8...
Thanks for visiting Laser Systems Europe.
You're trying to access an editorial feature that is only available to logged in, registered users of Laser Systems Europe. Registering is completely free, so why not sign up with us?
By registering, as well as being able to browse all content on the site without further interruption, you'll also have the option to receive our magazine (multiple times a year) and our email newsletters.
NLight launches 8kW Corona fibre laser
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NLight has introducted the Corona CFX-8000, the latest high-power fiber laser in the Corona product family. Corona fiber lasers incorporate programmable beam characteristics to bring together the speed and cost advantages of traditional fiber lasers with the superior thick metal cutting of CO2 lasers.
"The 6kW and 8kW power nodes are the most popular in the industry for the cost and efficiency they provide. With the introduction of Corona fiber lasers at these powers, we enable customers with even greater productivity, and the capability to take on more challenging jobs," said Jake Bell, NLight general manager for industrial lasers. "Customer adoption of Corona fiber lasers at the 3kW to 5kW power nodes has exceeded our expectations and we have received initial orders for the new 6kW and 8kW solutions."
NLight Corona lasers allow end users to tune the size and shape of the output beam, all within the fiber. Users can choose from small diameter top-hat beams to large diameter donut-shaped beams, optimizing the beam to the needs of the specific application. Real-time beam tuning translates to the laser operating at full power without the cost, complexity, or reliability risks inherent to free-space optics or fiber combination solutions.
NLight has introduced the CFX-8000 and CFX-6000 to its Corona product family, which includes the CFX-5000, CFX-4000, and CFX-3000.
nLight
Related site link:


text:
Q: how to find telegram embed html-code contains video or image in PHP? how to use telegram core API in other environment like browsers

A: When you try to load "http://t.me/barrtartest1/3" you will get a telegram placeholder page without any content. Afterwards the page loads content by JS.
You should use the link with "?embed=1" get param, for example https://t.me/barrtartest1/3?embed=1
By following the link you will be able to see html with video tag.


Explore top rated health and wellness websites for tips, tools & resources!
Healthy cooking How-to's!Learn how to cook health at home by top experts!
Focuses on your overall well-being and giving you tools to help improve your life- mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and environmentally.
Tips for getting (and staying) motivated to eat healthy. Offers many resources and health coaching packages.


text:
\section*{Appendix:  Effects of deuteron wave function}

We use parameters of an S-wave Hulth\'en wave function quoted in
Ref.\ \cite{dwf}:
\begin{equation}
\psi(\vec{r}) = (c/r) [e^{-\alpha r} - e^{-\beta r}] ,
\end{equation}
where $\alpha = 0.232$ fm$^{-1}$, $\beta = 1.202$ fm$^{-1}$, and
$c = 0.2601$ ensures the normalization of the wave function.  This form
is easily Fourier-transformed, with the result (leaving only the dependence
on the magnitude of momentum)
\begin{equation}
\psi(k) = 4 \pi c \left[ \frac{\beta^2 - \alpha^2}{(\alpha^2+k^2)
(\beta^2+k^2)} \right]~,
\label{eq:psi_of_k}
\end{equation}
as shown in Fig.\ \ref{fig:wfk} (left).  The normalization of $|\psi(k)|^2$
when integrated over $4 \pi k^2 dk/(2\pi)^3$ is 1.  Equivalently, in
cylindrical coordinates,
\begin{equation} \label{eqn:cyl}
2 \pi \int k_\perp d k_\perp dk_z |\psi(k)|^2/(2\pi)^3 = 1~,
\end{equation}
where $k^2 = k_\perp^2 + k_z^2$.  In order to calculate the smearing in
incident photon energy needed to excite a state at fixed CM energy, we need
the distribution in {\it longitudinal} momentum $k_z$.  Performing just the
$k_\perp$ integral in (\ref{eqn:cyl}), we find
\begin{equation}
\frac{dN}{dk_z} = 2c^2 \left[ \frac{1}{\alpha^2 + k_z^2} + \frac{1}
{\beta^2 + k_z^2} + \frac{2}{(\beta^2-\alpha^2)} \log \frac{\alpha^2 + k_z^2}
{\beta^2 + k_z^2} \right]
\label{eq:dN_dkz}
\end{equation}
as shown in Fig.\ \ref{fig:wfk} (right).

The relation between incident photon energy and $k_z$ may be written in
simplified form as
\begin{equation}
 E_\gamma \simeq \frac{E_{CM}^2 - m_N^2}{2(m_N - k_z)}~,
\end{equation}
where we have neglected a small correction due to the recoil nucleon's
kinetic energy.  This allows one to transform the distribution in Fig.\
\ref{fig:wfk} (left) into that shown in Fig.\ \ref{fig:egam}.
\newpage

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.49\textwidth]{fnorm}
\includegraphics[width=0.49\textwidth]{fmev}
\end{center}
\vskip-0.5cm
\caption{Left: Momentum-space distribution of nucleons inside a deuteron as
given by Eq.~\eqref{eq:psi_of_k}.  The normalization is such that the
integral over $k$ is 1.  The peak at $k \simeq 0.22$ fm$^{-1}$ corresponds to
a momentum of 43 MeV/$c$.  Right:  Longitudinal momentum distribution of a
nucleon in a deuteron, as given by Eq.~\eqref{eq:dN_dkz}.  The normalization
is such that the integral over $k_z$ is 1.
\label{fig:wfk}}
\end{figure}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


I really, really, really like Gravity Falls. It's so quirky and cute, and I love all of the mystery in it! :) Enjoy!
Wow your art is really adorable! Really, I skimmed through your blog and it's fantastic.
Have you ever considered getting a tumblr account? It's very similar to a blog site, but I think your art would get way more attention through an account there. It's a great way to share things.
Aww :D Thank you! I actually do have a tumblr where I also post my art, but it also has a lot of fandom-related and animation content.


a heart surrendered: The gift of HOPE.
I so enjoy the privilege of worshipping the Lord with the body of Christ in different churches. It is refreshing to observe their music style, how the members interact with one another, and with guests, and listen to the Word of God preached by a pastor who protects his pulpit because he loves the Lord and respects the sanctity of Scripture.
This morning I attended church with my brother and CC, and it was a delightful time of worship.
The pastor preached from a familiar Christmas passage, Luke 2. "Hope Revealed in Humility."
Not only was Jesus born in the most humble of circumstances - poverty, a barn filled with animals, a filthy manger in which to lay His head - the first people to hear of the birth of the long-awaited Messiah were lowly shepherds. Everything about Jesus' entry into the world was wrapped in humility. And with that humility came HOPE.
I cannot possibly write out the details of the sermon, so I will insert the main points into the text and let the Holy Spirit do the rest!
I pray someone will be encouraged as they read the details of this amazing night.
The night a Savior was born.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
- The gift of unceasing JOY.
- The gift of an unwavering SAVIOR.
- The gift of unbelievable SIGHT.
- The gift of unceasing PEACE.
- The gift of unapologetic PASSION.
And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
- The gift of unashamed ADORATION.
- The gift of unceasing WORSHIP.
Thank You, Lord, for the beauty of worshipping with the body of Christ. Though we may shake hands and introduce ourselves for the first time, we are not strangers, but family. Your children, saved by grace because the cradle crashed into the Cross, Jesus claimed victory over death, and we worship together - at the feet of the Savior. All because YOU first loved US.


We describe a method used to analyze zero-day attacks from data obtained on 11 million hosts. We identify 18 such vulnerabilities of which 11 were not previously known to be zero-day attacks. We show that a typical zero-day attack lasts 312 days on average and that, once disclosed, the volume of attacks exploiting them increases dramatically. Lessons learned from this exercise are discussed.
This document was retrieved from http://www.rsaconference.com/events/ap13/agenda/sessions/34/lessons-learned-from-a-rigorous-analysis-of-two	on Sun, 21 Apr 2019 20:42:11 -0400.


text:
Home/Commodity Prices/Blackstone, DiDi, Netgear and more
Blackstone, DiDi, Netgear and more
Natalee Broderick Commodity Prices Leave a comment 24 Views
Office of the Blackstone group in Luxembourg.
Geert Vanden Wijngaert | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Find out which companies are making the midday headlines.
DiDi – Shares of the Chinese rideshare giant fell more than 9% after Bloomberg News reported that Beijing is considering tough penalties ranging from a massive fine to even forced delisting after its IPO last month. DiDi shares have fallen around 25% since its IPO in late June under regulatory pressure. China is conducting a cybersecurity review on the company after alleging that Didi illegally collected user data.
Blackstone Group – The investment firm's shares jumped more than 4% after Blackstone beat second quarter earnings estimates. The company reported earnings per share of 82 cents on revenue of $ 2.12 billion, with total assets under management increasing 21% year-over-year. Analysts polled by Refinitiv were looking for 78 cents in earnings per share and $ 1.84 billion in revenue.
Southwest Airlines – The airline's shares fell more than 4% despite profiting in the second quarter after receiving federal aid. Excluding exceptional items, the airline recorded a larger loss than expected by analysts. Sales of the Dallas-based airline rose nearly 300% from the previous year to $ 4 billion. It was still down 32% from $ 5.9 billion in the same period in 2019. Second-quarter net income totaled $ 348 million, compared to a loss of $ 915 million a year earlier . The airline also warned of rising fuel prices and costs associated with returning employees from voluntary leave in the current quarter.
Netgear – Shares of the computer hardware maker fell more than 10% after the company reported lower than expected sales and earnings for its most recent quarter. Netgear said supply chain constraints and factory closures due to the pandemic weighed on its performance. The company also gave indications below analysts' forecasts.
Crocs – Crocs shares jumped more than 5% after the shoemaker reported exploding second-quarter profits. The company posted adjusted quarterly earnings of $ 2.23 per share versus expected $ 1.60, according to Refinitiv. Crocs also reported record revenue of $ 640.8 million. The shoemaker raised his forecasts for the whole year in a context of strong demand.
Las Vegas Sands – The casino giant's share price fell more than 3% after the company failed analysts' expectations in the second quarter. Las Vegas Sands reported a loss of 26 cents per share excluding items on revenue of $ 1.17 billion. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected a loss of 16 cents a share on $ 1.41 billion in revenue.
Whirlpool – Whirlpool shares fell around 1.5% despite the company beating earnings estimates in the second quarter. Whirlpool earned $ 6.64 per share on an adjusted basis, which was above the expected $ 5.90, according to Refinitiv estimates. Revenue also exceeded expectations and the company raised its forecast for the full year.
Unilever – Unilever shares fell about 5% despite a better than expected second quarter earnings report. The consumer products giant said an increase in commodity costs would hurt its full-year profit margins.
MDH Acquisition Corp. – Shares of the black-check company rose 1.7% at midday following news that Olive.com and PayLink Direct had merged with MDH to form a new publicly traded company. Olive.com – an online vehicle protection and payment platform – will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "OLV".
DR Horton – The homebuilder's shares fell 2.3% despite both better and worse results in its quarterly results. DR Horton earned $ 3.06 per share on sales of $ 7.28 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of $ 2.81 per share on revenue of $ 7.19 billion, according to Refinitiv.
Union Pacific – Railways stock jumped 1.4% after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly profits. Union Pacific posted second-quarter EPS of $ 2.72, ahead of a FactSet estimate of $ 2.55 per share. Income also exceeded expectations.
– with reporting from CNBC's Yun Li, Jesse Pound, Pippa Stevens and Hannah Miao.
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Why They Hate Us
What's more obnoxious than a person who constantly whines about the injustices committed against him while ignoring his own injustices against others?
A country that does the same thing.
The rest of this week's op-ed, "Why They Hate Us," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Labels: blowback, imperialism, the state, war, war on terror
Last Taxpayer Standing
The popular American folklore that taxpaying citizens are the masters and government the servant might lead one to expect that taxpayers can sue the government when they think it has spent their money in a way that violates their rights. But that's not how the courts see the matter. By and large, taxpayers as such have no standing whatever to sue the government. Maybe the master is the servant and the servant the master.
The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Last Taxpayer Standing," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Labels: taxation, the state
Mind Your Brain
Of these two statements:
The mind is the product of the brain; and
The brain is the product of the mind
I should think that the second is closer to the truth.
Labels: free will, materialism
America's Engineer
No president is more despised by opponents of big government than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His New Deal is singularly blamed for introducing large-scale national economic intervention to the United States. But FDR did not drop from the sky. He emerged in a particular context that was shaped by his predecessors, without whom we might have never heard his name. His immediate predecessor of course was Herbert Hoover, the one-term Republican elected in 1928 who had the misfortune to be in office only several months when the stock market crashed. History has treated Hoover curiously. His enemies see him as the heartless leader who stood by as the population was ravaged by the Great Depression. His admirers see him as the last lion of laissez-faire individualism, valiantly resisting the tide of statism that washed over America in the 1930s.
Both pictures are grotesque distortions of reality driven by political interest.
The rest of last week's TGIF column, "America's Engineer," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Labels: economic freedom, property rights, protectionism, the state
Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now
The news media seemed too preoccupied with Paris Hilton's detention to notice, but a U.S. appeals court last week struck a major blow for liberty. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration may not declare a U.S. resident, whether a citizen or not, an "enemy combatant," throw him in a military prison, and hold him without charge indefinitely — all without judicial review. Try him in the civilian courts or let him go, the judges said.
This double affirmation of habeas corpus and defendants' rights is a stunning setback for President Bush's attempt to assert autocratic powers under cover of his "war on terror."
The rest of my op-ed "Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now" is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Labels: civil liberties, Constitution, the state, war on terror
Free Trade Imperialism
Here's something left-libertarians need to attend to: Deepak Lal of UCLA is touting a program of unilateral free trade and unabashed U.S. worldwide empire. His book In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order seems to be his most complete statement on this.
Here are some quotes from his article "Empire and Order" in the March/April issue of Historically Speaking (apparently not online):
[T]oday there is again an imperial power that has an economic and military predominance unseen since the fall of Rome. The United States is indubitably an empire. It is more than a hegemon, as it seeks control over not only foreign but also aspects of domestic policy in other countries. But it an informal and indirect empire.... It is an empire that has taken over from the British the burden of maintaining a Pax to allow free trade and commerce to flourish. This Pax brings mutual gains. The U.S., like the British in the 19th century, has borne much of the costs of providing this global public good, not because of altruism but because the mutual gains from a global, liberal economic order benefit America and foster its economic well being....
But the American imperium faces disorder in two broad regions of the world: first, the vast region spanning the Islamic world in the Middle East and Central Asia, and second, the continent of Africa. September 11 showed how failed states can provide a safe haven for terrorists who can directly threaten life and property in the American homeland. The maintenance of international order thus means ensuring that there is also domestic order in states that, if they fail, could become terrorist havens....
The United States has created the military structures to project its power, but it has failed to build the complementary imperial administrative structure required to run an empire....
Equally disturbing is the desire of all the participants in U.S. foreign policy to wrap themselves in the Wilsonian mantle. It seems that Americans find it difficult to give up their moral self-image of the shining city on the hill....
The major problem for the U.S. imperium is to keep its moralists at home.... But for the near future, despite its faults, the American imperium is here to stay. And it remains our best hope to maintain global order, as the British did in the 19th century.
In other words, if we want order, it's time America took off the gloves. No more Mr. Nice Guy, world.
Labels: imperialism, the state, trade, war, war on terror
Good Sense on Immigration
Immigration wisdom from Jeff Jacoby:
For most illegal immigrants, a legal option simply doesn't exist. Under current law, a young Mexican or Salvadoran who wants to improve his life by moving to America and working hard at a useful job generally has just two options: (a) Enter illegally, or (b) stay out forever. Several hundred thousand a year choose option (a).
To Representative [Steve] King and those who think the way he does -- the Pat Buchanans, the Lou Dobbses, the conservative talk-show hosts and their riled listeners -- the illegal entry is all that matters. They don't ask whether it makes sense to bar industrious and productive go-getters who value America as a land of opportunity and who supply labor for which there is a yawning demand. As far as they're concerned, illegal aliens are "immigration criminals," and the only issue on the agenda is how to keep them out....
But something is not wrong -- intrinsically wrong, bad in and of itself -- merely because it is illegal. It is against the law to put anything without postage into someone's mailbox.
If your neighbor prints flyers advertising a yard sale and drops one into each letterbox on the street, he has broken the law, but would anyone say he has done something evil?
Someone who crosses the border without a visa in order to find work doesn't deserve to be branded a "criminal." Doing so only inflames and confuses an issue that is contentious enough as it is. And it cheapens a word that should be reserved for those who purposely harm others through genuinely wrongful behavior: embezzlers, rapists, arsonists, murderers.
The demonizing of illegal aliens keeps us from having a rational discussion about US immigration policy.
Labels: civil liberties, immigration, the state
Why Did They Attack?
Comedian David Cross's take on Ron Paul, Rudolph Giuliani, and bin Laden's reason for the 9/11 attacks.
Hat tip: Ben Richman
Labels: David Cross, imperialism, the state, war, war on terror
Free the New Youth 4!
A new blog has been started with the objective of freeing four young Chinese imprisoned for exercising their natural rights to free speech and assembly. "Free the New Youth 4!" can be found here.
Here's the post explaining the blog:
On May 28, 2003, Jin Haike (靳海科), Xu Wei (徐伟), Yang Zili (杨子立) and Zhang Honghai (张宏海) were sentenced to between eight and ten years for the crime of "subverting state power." Their charges stemmed from a small, informal discussion group they'd formed and dubbed the "New Youth Study Group" in order to debate ways in which China could further progress and prosper.
The New Youth 4 Coalition seeks to end their unjust imprisonment and return freedom to these four individuals who represent the best of Chinese progressivism and forward thinking.
We hope that through the power of dialogue and communication, the Chinese authorities will correct this grave injustice.
Labels: China, civil liberties, democracy
Cory Maye Update
The latest from Radley Balko:
Last word on the Cory Maye case came late last summer, when the trial judge threw out Maye's death sentence due to ineffective assistance of counsel, and ordered a new sentencing trial. I heard from Cory's defense team earlier tonight that the DA's office has now said it will no longer pursue the death penalty.
That means Cory will now start his appeals process with the death penalty off the table. That's good news. But he'll still likely be re-sentenced to life in prison. So it's not great news.
Labels: death penalty, drug war, the state
Dare We Call It Tyranny?
The American people's response to President Bush's "war on terror" should be … terror. The administration, sometimes with Congress's complicity:
is preparing for a 50-year stay in Iraq, complete with 14 military bases and an embassy larger than the Vatican. (Can there be a better recruiting program for al Qaeda?)
has abolished habeas corpus, the principle that for centuries has protected people from arbitrary confinement, for noncitizens declared to be "enemy combatants." (While the federal courts have upheld the abolition of habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere overseas, fortunately an appellate court has just ruled against the administration in the case of a legal U.S. resident, Kahlah al-Marri, arrested in the United States, a ruling the administration is appealing.)
unilaterally claims the power to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" — torture — on suspected terrorists and to turn them over to foreign governments known to torture prisoners. This has been done to persons later cleared of wrongdoing.
runs secret CIA prisons in Europe and elsewhere. Thirty-nine persons seized abroad and believed to have been in U.S. custody have disappeared, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
violates our privacy by secretly accessing foreign phone calls, e-mails, and financial and other records — approved, if at all, only by a rubber-stamp "court."
conducts searches without notice or judicially issued warrants. The administration's assurances that it does not engage in misconduct are worth little, considering what has already come to light.
To hold onto the support of the American people for this dictatorial power, the Bush administration has engaged in its own form of terrorism by exposing domestic "plots" involving small rag-tag groups allegedly bent on, among other things, attacking Fort Dix and blowing up fuel tanks and pipelines near JFK International Airport....
The rest of the op-ed "Dare We Call It Tyranny" is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Labels: Iraq, the state, war, war on terror
Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."
--Magna Carta, this day, 1215
May the government declare a U.S. resident an "enemy combatant," throw him in a military prison indefinitely, and never charge him with a crime -- all without judicial review?
The Bush administration says yes. But in a key ruling (pdf) the other day, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly said no. If it withstands further appeal, the decision will be a timely affirmation of the limits of executive power and the constitutional priority of civilian over military rule. Thanks, judges, we needed that.
The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Labels: civil liberties, the state, war on terror
George II Thwarted (So Far) on Habeas Corpus
George II may not arrest a U.S. resident on U.S. soil -- citizen or not -- and hold him in a military brig without charge indefinitely. So says the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an important 2-1 ruling yesterday. We can only hope it will be sustained on further appeal.
Contrary to the Bush administration's obnoxious autocratic position, Kahlah al-Marri (a married Bradley University student and father in the U.S. but a citizen of Qatar) has the right to file a habeas-corpus petition and the right to have any case against him handled by the civilian criminal justice system. This holds even if, as the administration charges, al-Marri is an al Qaeda "sleeper agent" who has volunteered for a "martyr mission" in the United States.
Money quote:
[T]he Government cannot subject al-Marri to indefinite military detention. For in the United States, the military cannot seize and imprison civilians -- let alone imprison them indefinitely. . . . To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them "enemy combatants," would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country. For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension [habeas corpus] Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.
The opinion his here (pdf).
If you're watching cable TV news, you may not know about this case. The channels are too busy covering Paris Hilton's detention. I await the filing of her habeas corpus petition.
Labels: habeas corpus, the state, war on terror
The U.S.S. Liberty
My excerpt below on the Six-Day War does not discuss the curious Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, an intelligence ship, on June 8, 1967, about which the U.S. government has been far from forthcoming -- to put it mildly. Yes, the Israeli Defense Force attacked an unarmed U.S. ship while engaged in a preventive war against its Arab neighbors. Thirty-four sailors were killed, 174 injured in the attack. For full details, see Jeffrey St. Clair's article about attack in Counterpunch.
Here's a taste:
In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel's attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.
Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.
A few hours later more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.
A few minutes later a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which not only pelted the ship with gunfire but also with napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship's top officers.
...After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.
...Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. "These errors do occur," McNamara concluded.
...The Pentagon lied to the public about the attack on the Liberty from the very beginning. In a decision personally approved by the loathsome McNamara, the Pentagon denied to the press that the Liberty was an intelligence ship, referring to it instead as a Technical Research ship, as if it were little more than a military version of Jacques Cousteau's Calypso.
Tip hat: Mark Brady.
Labels: Middle East, the state, war
Illiberal Means, Illiberal Ends
The years 1914-1918 must have been lonely for Randolph Bourne. Bourne was a popular writer in Progressive circles, prolifically turning out articles for The New Republic and Seven Arts magazines. But soon the former, along with other publications, lost interest in his writing and the latter ceased operations, leaving Bourne out in the cold. What happened? Bourne bucked his fellow intellectuals, including his mentor John Dewey, and opposed U.S. entry into World War I.
The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Illiberal Means, Illiberal Ends," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Labels: the state, war
War Somehow Fastened on Us
Time brings a better adjustment to the war. There had been so many times when, to those who had energetically resisted its coming, it seemed the last intolerable outrage. In one's wilder moments one expected revolt against the impressment of unwilling men and the suppression of unorthodox opinion. One conceived the war as breaking down through a kind of intellectual sabotage diffused through the country. But as one talks to people outside the cities and away from ruling currents of opinion, one finds the prevailing apathy shot everywhere with acquiescence. The war is a bad business, which somehow got fastened on us. They won't want to go, but they've got to go. One decides that nothing generally obstructive is going to happen and that it would make little difference if it did. The kind of war which we are conducting is an enterprise which the American government does not have to carry on with the hearty cooperation of the American people but only with their acquiescence. And that acquiescence seems sufficient to float an indefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehended and unaccepted purposes. Our resources in men and materials are vast enough to organize the war-technique without enlisting more than a fraction of the people's conscious energy. Many men will not like being sucked into the actual fighting organism, but as the war goes on they will be sucked in as individuals and they will yield. There is likely to be no element in the country with the effective will to help them resist. They are not likely to resist of themselves concertedly. They will be licked grudgingly into military shape, and their lack of enthusiasm will in no way unfit them for use in the hecatombs necessary for the military decision upon which Allied political wisdom still apparently insists. It is unlikely that enough men will be taken from the potentially revolting classes seriously to embitter their spirit. Losses in the well-to-do classes will be sustained by a sense of duty and of reputable sacrifice. From the point of view of the worker, it will make little difference whether his work contributes to annihilation overseas or to construction at home. Temporarily, his condition is better if it contributes to the former. We of the middle classes will be progressively poorer than we should otherwise have been. Our lives will be slowly drained by clumsily levied taxes and the robberies of imperfectly controlled private enterprises. But this will not cause us to revolt. There are not likely to be enough hungry stomachs to make a revolution. The materials seem generally absent from the country, and as long as a government wants to use the war-technique in its realization of great ideas, it can count serenely on the human resources of the country, regardless of popular mandate or understanding.
--Randolph Bourne, "A War Diary," September 1917
The Six-Day War
Excerpted from my "'Ancient History':U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," published by the Cato Institute August 16, 1991. (See full paper for references.)
Labels: Middle East, war
The Libertarian Event of the Season
The Future of Freedom Foundation scored big with its long-weekend conference on foreign policy and civil liberties in Reston, Va. I enjoyed every moment of it, and would like to publicly congratulate FFF President Jacob Hornberger for putting together such a magnificent program. Imagine a single gathering with Robert Higgs and Daniel Ellsberg; Ron Paul and Robert Scheer; Andrew Napolitano and Joanne Mariner; and many, many more. It was a shot in the arm for both the libertarian movement and the antiwar movement.
Keith Preston has written a good detailed summary of the speeches here.
Labels: antiwar, imperialism, Iran, Iraq, war, war on terror
A Democracy of Dunces?
When pro-free-market critics of democracy explain why laissez faire is not a winning election issue, they usually say that voters have a no incentive to research economic policy because one vote won't sway the election and the expected payoff to any individual voter is infinitesimal. So they, quite rationally, vote on other bases. This "rational ignorance" leaves space for special interests to have their way, despite the fact that if the voters paid attention to what was going on, they wouldn't put up with it.
That explanation leads to the conclusion that democracy does not work because outcomes diverge from what people really want but are powerless to obtain. On the other hand, fans of democracy think that the rejection of laissez faire shows the system is working just fine. But both sides agree that voters are rational (employing reason) under the circumstances.
Which story is true? Maybe neither.
Bryan Caplan's new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, which is beginning to make a splash (see this New York Times Magazine article), offers another reason why consistent pro-market policies don't do well....
The rest of my latest TGIF column, "A Democracy of Dunces?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
P.S.: I've been delinquent in posting because I spent the last several days near Washington, D.C., at the Future of Freedom Foundation foreign policy and civil liberties conference. It was a huge success and will clearly be the major libertarian -- and antiwar -- event of the year. An account of the conference is on Counterpunch here.
Labels: democracy, economic freedom, Iraq, the state, war, war on terror


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Mode-locking
Mode-locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds (10−12 s) or femtoseconds (10−15 s).
The basis of the technique is to induce a fixed phase relationship between the modes of the laser's resonant cavity. The laser is then said to be phase-locked or mode-locked. Interference between these modes causes the laser light to be produced as a train of pulses. Depending on the properties of the laser, these pulses may be of extremely brief duration, as short as a few femtoseconds.
1 Laser cavity modes
2 Mode-locking theory
3 Mode-locking methods
3.1 Active mode-locking
3.2 Passive mode-locking
3.3 Hybrid Mode-locking
4 Practical mode-locked lasers
9 Further References
Laser cavity modes
Although laser light is perhaps the purest form of light, it is not of a single, pure frequency or wavelength. All lasers produce light over some natural bandwidth or range of frequencies. A laser's bandwidth of operation is determined primarily by the gain medium that the laser is constructed from, and the range of frequencies that a laser may operate over is known as the gain bandwidth. For example, a typical helium-neon (HeNe) gas laser has a gain bandwidth of approximately 1.5 GHz (a wavelength range of about 0.002 nm at a central wavelength of 633 nm), whereas a titanium-doped sapphire (Ti:Sapphire) solid-state laser has a bandwidth of about 128 THz (a 300 nm wavelength range centred around 800 nm).
The second factor that determines a laser's emission frequencies is the optical cavity or resonant cavity of the laser. In the simplest case, this consists of two plane (flat) mirrors facing each other, surrounding the gain medium of the laser (this arrangement is known as a Fabry–Pérot cavity). Since light is a wave, when bouncing between the mirrors of the cavity the light will constructively and destructively interfere with itself, leading to the formation of standing waves or modes between the mirrors.
Laser mode structure.
These standing waves form a discrete set of frequencies, known as the longitudinal modes of the cavity. These modes are the only frequencies of light which are self-regenerating and allowed to oscillate by the resonant cavity; all other frequencies of light are suppressed by destructive interference. For a simple plane-mirror cavity, the allowed modes are those for which the separation distance of the mirrors L is an exact multiple of half the wavelength of the light λ, such that L = qλ/2, where q is an integer known as the mode order.
In practice, the separation distance of the mirrors L is usually much greater than the wavelength of light λ, so the relevant values of q are large (around 105 to 106). Of more interest is the frequency separation between any two adjacent modes q and q+1; this is given (for an empty linear resonator of length L) by Δν:
where c is the speed of light (≈3×108 m·s−1).
Using the above equation, a small laser with a mirror separation of 30 cm has a frequency separation between longitudinal modes of 0.5 GHz. Thus for the two lasers referenced above, with a 30 cm cavity the 1.5 GHz bandwidth of the HeNe laser would support up to 3 longitudinal modes, whereas the 128 THz bandwidth of the Ti:sapphire laser could support approximately 250,000 modes. When more than one longitudinal mode is excited, the laser is said to be in "multi-mode" operation. When only one longitudinal mode is excited, the laser is said to be in "single-mode" operation.
Each individual longitudinal mode has itself some bandwidth or narrow range of frequencies over which it operates, but typically this bandwidth, determined by the Q factor (see Inductor) of the cavity (see Fabry–Pérot interferometer), is much smaller than the inter-mode frequency separation.
Mode-locking theory
In a simple laser, each of these modes will oscillate independently, with no fixed relationship between each other, in essence like a set of independent lasers all emitting light at slightly different frequencies. The individual phase of the light waves in each mode is not fixed, and may vary randomly due to such things as thermal changes in materials of the laser. In lasers with only a few oscillating modes, interference between the modes can cause beating effects in the laser output, leading to random fluctuations in intensity; in lasers with many thousands of modes, these interference effects tend to average to a near-constant output intensity, and the laser operation is known as a c.w. or continuous wave.
If instead of oscillating independently, each mode operates with a fixed phase between it and the other modes, the laser output behaves quite differently. Instead of a random or constant output intensity, the modes of the laser will periodically all constructively interfere with one another, producing an intense burst or pulse of light. Such a laser is said to be mode-locked or phase-locked. These pulses occur separated in time by τ = 2L/c, where τ is the time taken for the light to make exactly one round trip of the laser cavity. This time corresponds to a frequency exactly equal to the mode spacing of the laser, Δν = 1/τ.
The duration of each pulse of light is determined by the number of modes which are oscillating in phase (in a real laser, it is not necessarily true that all of the laser's modes will be phase-locked). If there are N modes locked with a frequency separation Δν, the overall mode-locked bandwidth is NΔν, and the wider this bandwidth, the shorter the pulse duration from the laser. In practice, the actual pulse duration is determined by the shape of each pulse, which is in turn determined by the exact amplitude and phase relationship of each longitudinal mode. For example, for a laser producing pulses with a Gaussian temporal shape, the minimum possible pulse duration Δt is given by
The value 0.441 is known as the time-bandwidth product of the pulse, and varies depending on the pulse shape. For ultrashort pulse lasers, a hyperbolic-secant-squared (sech2) pulse shape is often assumed, giving a time-bandwidth product of 0.315.
Using this equation, we can calculate the minimum pulse duration consistent with the measured laser spectral width. For the HeNe laser with a 1.5 GHz spectral width, the shortest Gaussian pulse consistent with this spectral width would be around 300 picoseconds; for the 128 THz bandwidth Ti:sapphire laser, this spectral width would be only 3.4 femtoseconds. These values represent the shortest possible Gaussian pulses consistent with the laser's linewidth; in a real mode-locked laser, the actual pulse duration depends on many other factors, such as the actual pulse shape, and the overall dispersion of the cavity.
It should be noted that subsequent modulation could in principle shorten the pulse width of such a laser further, however the measured spectral width would then be correspondingly increased.
Mode-locking methods
Methods for producing mode-locking in a laser may be classified as either active or passive. Active methods typically involve using an external signal to induce a modulation of the intra-cavity light. Passive methods do not use an external signal, but rely on placing some element into the laser cavity which causes self-modulation of the light.
Active mode-locking
The most common active mode-locking technique places a standing wave acousto-optic modulator into the laser cavity. When driven with an electrical signal, this produces a sinusoidal amplitude modulation of the light in the cavity. Considering this in the frequency domain, if a mode has optical frequency ν, and is amplitude-modulated at a frequency f, the resulting signal has sidebands at optical frequencies ν − f and ν + f. If the modulator is driven at the same frequency as the cavity-mode spacing Δν, then these sidebands correspond to the two cavity modes adjacent to the original mode. Since the sidebands are driven in-phase, the central mode and the adjacent modes will be phase-locked together. Further operation of the modulator on the sidebands produces phase-locking of the ν − 2f and ν + 2f modes, and so on until all modes in the gain bandwidth are locked. As said above, typical lasers are multi-mode and not seeded by a root mode. So multiple modes need to work out which phase to use. In a passive cavity with this locking applied there is no way to dump the entropy given by the original independent phases. This locking is better described as a coupling, leading to a complicated behavior and not clean pulses. The coupling is only dissipative because of the dissipative nature of the amplitude modulation. Otherwise the phase modulation would not work.
This process can also be considered in the time domain. The amplitude modulator acts as a weak shutter to the light bouncing between the mirrors of the cavity, attenuating the light when it is "closed", and letting it through when it is "open". If the modulation rate f is synchronised to the cavity round-trip time τ, then a single pulse of light will bounce back and forth in the cavity. The actual strength of the modulation does not have to be large; a modulator that attenuates 1% of the light when "closed" will mode-lock a laser, since the same part of the light is repeatedly attenuated as it traverses the cavity.
Related to this amplitude modulation (AM) active mode-locking is frequency modulation (FM) mode-locking, which uses a modulator device based on the electro-optic effect. This device, when placed in a laser cavity and driven with an electrical signal, induces a small, sinusoidally varying frequency shift in the light passing through it. If the frequency of modulation is matched to the round-trip time of the cavity, then some light in the cavity sees repeated up-shifts in frequency, and some repeated down-shifts. After many repetitions, the up-shifted and down-shifted light is swept out of the gain bandwidth of the laser. The only light which is unaffected is that which passes through the modulator when the induced frequency shift is zero, which forms a narrow pulse of light.
The third method of active mode-locking is synchronous mode-locking, or synchronous pumping. In this, the pump source (energy source) for the laser is itself modulated, effectively turning the laser on and off to produce pulses. Typically, the pump source is itself another mode-locked laser. This technique requires accurately matching the cavity lengths of the pump laser and the driven laser.
Passive mode-locking
Passive mode-locking techniques are those that do not require a signal external to the laser (such as the driving signal of a modulator) to produce pulses. Rather, they use the light in the cavity to cause a change in some intracavity element, which will then itself produce a change in the intracavity light. A commonly used device to achieve this is a saturable absorber.
A saturable absorber is an optical device that exhibits an intensity-dependent transmission. What this means is that the device behaves differently depending on the intensity of the light passing through it. For passive mode-locking, ideally a saturable absorber will selectively absorb low-intensity light, and transmit light which is of sufficiently high intensity.
When placed in a laser cavity, a saturable absorber will attenuate low-intensity constant wave light (pulse wings). However, because of the somewhat random intensity fluctuations experienced by an un-mode-locked laser, any random, intense spike will be transmitted preferentially by the saturable absorber. As the light in the cavity oscillates, this process repeats, leading to the selective amplification of the high-intensity spikes, and the absorption of the low-intensity light. After many round trips, this leads to a train of pulses and mode-locking of the laser.
Considering this in the frequency domain, if a mode has optical frequency ν, and is amplitude-modulated at a frequency nf, the resulting signal has sidebands at optical frequencies ν − nf and ν + nf and enables much stronger mode-locking for shorter pulses and more stability than active mode-locking, but has startup problems.
Saturable absorbers are commonly liquid organic dyes, but they can also be made from doped crystals and semiconductors. Semiconductor absorbers tend to exhibit very fast response times (~100 fs), which is one of the factors that determines the final duration of the pulses in a passively mode-locked laser. In a colliding-pulse mode-locked laser the absorber steepens the leading edge while the lasing medium steepens the trailing edge of the pulse.
In particular, graphene can be saturated over the visible to near-infrared region[1][2] and it has a smaller non-saturable loss and higher damage threshold, compared with SWCNTs.[3]
There are also passive mode-locking schemes that do not rely on materials that directly display an intensity dependent absorption. In these methods, nonlinear optical effects in intracavity components are used to provide a method of selectively amplifying high-intensity light in the cavity, and attenuation of low-intensity light. One of the most successful schemes is called Kerr-lens mode-locking (KLM), also sometimes called "self mode-locking". This uses a nonlinear optical process, the optical Kerr effect, which results in high-intensity light being focussed differently than low-intensity light. By careful arrangement of an aperture in the laser cavity, this effect can be exploited to produce the equivalent of an ultra-fast response time saturable absorber.
Hybrid Mode-locking
In some semiconductor lasers a combination of the two above techniques can be used. Using a laser with a saturable absorber, and modulating the electrical injection at the same frequency the laser is locked at, the laser can be stabilized by the electrical injection. This has the advantage of stabilizing the phase noise of the laser, and can reduce the timing jitter of the pulses from the laser.
Practical mode-locked lasers
In practice, a number of design considerations affect the performance of a mode-locked laser. The most important are the overall dispersion of the laser's optical resonator, which can be controlled with a prism compressor or some dispersive mirrors placed in the cavity, and optical nonlinearities. For excessive net group delay dispersion (GDD) of the laser cavity, the phase of the cavity modes can not be locked over a large bandwidth, and it will be difficult to obtain very short pulses. For a suitable combination of negative (anomalous) net GDD with the Kerr nonlinearity, soliton-like interactions may stabilize the mode-locking and help to generate shorter pulses. The shortest possible pulse duration is usually accomplished either for zero dispersion (without nonlinearities) or for some slightly negative (anomalous) dispersion (exploiting the soliton mechanism).
The shortest directly produced optical pulses are generally produced by Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti-sapphire lasers, and are around 5 femtoseconds long. Alternatively, amplified pulses of a similar duration are created through the compression of longer (e.g. 30 fs) pulses via self-phase modulation in a hollow core fibre or during filamentation. However, the minimum pulse duration is limited by the period of the carrier frequency (which is about 2.7 fs for Ti:S systems), therefore shorter pulses require moving to shorter wavelengths. Some advanced techniques (involving high harmonic generation with amplified femtosecond laser pulses) can be used to produce optical features with durations as short as 100 attoseconds in the extreme ultraviolet spectral region (i.e. <30 nm). Other achievements, important particularly for laser applications, concern the development of mode-locked lasers which can be pumped with laser diodes, can generate very high average output powers (tens of watts) in sub-picosecond pulses, or generate pulse trains with extremely high repetition rates of many GHz.
Pulse durations less than approximately 100 fs are too short to be directly measured using optoelectronic techniques (i.e. photodiodes), and so indirect methods such as autocorrelation, Frequency-resolved optical gating, Spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction or Multi-photon Intrapulse Interference Phase Scan are used.
Nuclear fusion. (inertial confinement fusion).
Nonlinear optics, such as second-harmonic generation, parametric down-conversion, optical parametric oscillators, and generation of Terahertz radiation
Optical Data Storage uses lasers, and the emerging technology of 3D optical data storage generally relies on nonlinear photochemistry. For this reason, many examples use mode-locked lasers, since they can offer a very high repetition rate of ultrashort pulses.
Femtosecond laser micromachining – The short pulses can be used to micromachine in many types of materials. The Handbook of Femtosecond Micromachining (link following) gives additional information. [1]
An example of pico- and femtosecond micromachining is drilling the silicon jet surface of ink jet printers
Two-photon microscopy
Corneal Surgery. Femtosecond lasers can create bubbles in the cornea, if multiple bubbles are created in a planar fashion parallel to the corneal surface then the tissue separates at this plane and a flap like the one in LASIK is formed (Intralase: Intralasik or SBK (Sub Bowman Keratomileusis) if the flap thickness is equal or less than 100 micrometres). If done in multiple layers a piece of corneal tissue between these layers can be removed (Visumax: FLEX Femtosecond Lenticle Extraction).
A laser technique has been developed that renders the surface of metals deep black. A femtosecond laser pulse deforms the surface of the metal forming nanostructures. The immensely increased surface area can absorb virtually all the light that falls on it thus rendering it deep black. This is one type of black gold[4]
Photonic Sampling, using the high accuracy of lasers over electronic clocks to decrease the sampling error in electronic ADCs
Andrew M. Weiner (2009). Ultrafast Optics. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-41539-8. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471415391.html.
Disk laser
Laser construction
Vector soliton
Dissipative soliton
Saturable absorption
Solid state laser
Femtotechnology
^ Qiaoliang Bao, Han Zhang, Yu Wang, Zhenhua Ni, Yongli Yan, Ze Xiang Shen, Kian Ping Loh,and Ding Yuan Tang, Advanced Functional Materials,"Atomic layer graphene as saturable absorber for ultrafast pulsed lasers "http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home2006/zhan0174/AFM.pdf
^ H. Zhang, D. Y. Tang, L. M. Zhao, Q. L. Bao, K. P. Loh. "Large energy mode locking of an erbium-doped fiber laser with atomic layer graphene" (free download pdf). Optics Express 17: P17630. http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home2006/zhan0174/OE_graphene.pdf.
^ Han Zhang,Qiaoliang Bao,Dingyuan Tang,Luming Zhao,and Kianping Loh. "Large energy soliton erbium-doped fiber laser with a graphene-polymer composite mode locker". Applied Physics Letters 95: P141103. http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home2006/zhan0174/apl.pdf.
^ "Ultra-Intense Laser Blast Creates True 'Black Metal'". http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2701. Retrieved 2007-11-21.
Further References
H. Zhang et al, "Induced solitons formed by cross polarization coupling in a birefringent cavity fiber laser", Opt. Lett., 33, 2317–2319.(2008).
D.Y. Tang et al, "Observation of high-order polarization-locked vector solitons in a fiber laser", Physical Review Letters, 101, 153904 (2008).
http://www.batop.com/index.html
H. Zhang et al., "Coherent energy exchange between components of a vector soliton in fiber lasers", Optics Express, 16,12618–12623 (2008).
H. Zhang et al, "Multi-wavelength dissipative soliton operation of an erbium-doped fiber laser", Optics Express, Vol. 17, Issue 2, pp. 12692–12697
L.M. Zhao et al, "Polarization rotation locking of vector solitons in a fiber ring laser", Optics Express, 16,10053–10058 (2008).
http://www.natureasia.com/asia-materials/highlight.php?id=594
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=30x.php
Qiaoliang Bao, Han Zhang, Yu Wang, Zhenhua Ni, Yongli Yan, Ze Xiang Shen, Kian Ping Loh,and Ding Yuan Tang, Advanced Functional Materials,"Atomic layer graphene as saturable absorber for ultrafast pulsed lasers "
Zhang, H. et al.,. "Graphene mode locked, wavelength-tunable, dissipative soliton fiber laser". Applied Physics Letters 96: 111112. Bibcode 2010ApPhL..96k1112Z. doi:10.1063/1.3367743. http://www.sciencenet.cn/upload/blog/file/2010/3/20103191224576536.pdf.
Encyclopedia of laser physics and technology on mode locking and mode-locked lasers
Laser science
Mode, Illinois
Mode-setting
mode-locking — modeˈ locking noun (physics) A technique for producing laser pulses of very short duration • • • Main Entry: ↑mode … Useful english dictionary
mode locking — modų sinchronizavimas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. mode locking; mode synchronization vok. Modensynchronisierung, f; Schwingungstypenkopplung, f rus. синхронизация мод, f pranc. synchronisation des modes, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
mode-locking means — modų sinchronizatorius statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. mode synchronizer; mode locking means vok. Modensynchronisationsmittel, n rus. устройство синхронизации мод, n pranc. appareil de la synchronisation des modes, m … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
mode-locking technique — modų sinchronizavimo būdas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. mode locking technique vok. Modensynchronisationsverfahren, n rus. способ синхронизации мод, m pranc. méthode de synchronisation des modes, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
mode-locking laser action — lazerio modų sinchronizavimo veika statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. mode locking laser action vok. Modensynchronisierungslaserbetrieb, m rus. режим синхронизации мод лазера, m pranc. régime de synchronisation des modes de… … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
mode-locking stability — modų sinchronizavimo stabilumas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. mode locking stability vok. Modensynchronismusstabilität, f rus. устойчивость синхронизма мод, f pranc. stabilité de synchronisme des modes, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
laser mode locking — lazerio modų sinchronizavimas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. laser mode locking vok. Lasermodenkopplung, f rus. синхронизация мод лазера, f pranc. synchronisation de modes de laser, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
phase mode locking — fazinis modų sinchronizavimas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. phase mode locking vok. Phasenmodensynchronisation, f rus. фазовая синхронизация мод, f pranc. synchronisation des modes de phase, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
active mode locking — aktyvusis modų sinchronizavimas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. active mode locking vok. aktive Modensynchronisation, f rus. активная синхронизация мод, f pranc. synchronisation active des modes, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas
complete mode locking — visiškasis modų sinchronizavimas statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. complete mode locking vok. vollkommene Modensynchronisation, f rus. полная синхронизация мод, f pranc. synchronisation de modes complète, f … Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas


Laurie T. Breger, M.D., C.C.F.P. – Dr. Breger graduated from McGill University's Medical School in Montreal, Quebec in 1978, and since then has been working on the Island of Montreal. His professional experience includes Clinique Reseau Statcare (walk-in clinic), and private practice. He holds a Faculty Lecturer appointment in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University. Dr. Breger is one of the founding partners of Kells Medical Research Group, and as an active member of the team has been Principal Investigator in many of our clinical research trials.


Lighten the complexion with this gentle face cleanser, enriched with Immortelle floral water and citrus fruit peel. Clinical testing of this product over a 3 week period showed an improvement in the evenness and radiance of skin. Tolerance dermatologically tested.
Use every morning and evening on wet skin, avoiding the eye contour area. Gently massage over face, then rinse off with water. Suitable for all skin types.
делает цвет лица более ровным и сияющим.
AQUA/WATER- GLYCERIN - DISODIUM COCOYL GLUTAMATE - DISODIUM LAURETH SULFOSUCCINATE - DECYL GLUCOSIDE - PEG-6 CAPRYLIC/CAPRIC GLYCERIDES - COCAMIDOPROPYL BETAINE - HELICHRYSUM ITALICUM EXTRACT* - ANTHEMIS NOBILIS FLOWER EXTRACT** - GENTIANA LUTEA ROOT EXTRACT** - RUBUS IDAEUS (RASPBERRY) FRUIT EXTRACT** - FRAGARIA CHILOENSIS (STRAWBERRY) FRUIT JUICE** - CITRUS UNSHIU PEEL EXTRACT** - CARUM PETROSELINUM (PARSLEY) EXTRACT** - CITRUS GRANDIS (GRAPEFRUIT) FRUIT EXTRACT** -SODIUM COCOYL GLUTAMATE - CITRIC ACID - SODIUM BENZOATE - PARFUM/FRAGRANCE - BUTYLENE GLYCOL - LEVULINIC ACID - PPG-26-BUTETH-26 - SODIUM LEVULINATE - PEG-40 HYDROGENATED CASTOR OIL - ETHYLHEXYLGLYCERIN - POTASSIUM SORBATE - PHENOXYETHANOL - TOCOPHEROL - HEXYL CINNAMAL.


text:
Epidendrum pulchrum är en orkidéart som först beskrevs av Rudolf Schlechter, och fick sitt nu gällande namn av Eric Hágsater och Dodson. Epidendrum pulchrum ingår i släktet Epidendrum och familjen orkidéer.

Artens utbredningsområde är Ecuador. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Orkidéer
pulchrum

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Life's Moments
By Virginia Miranda under Micro Fiction
It is inconceivable that a place, a time, an event, a piece of music which fills us with transformational emotions, that lift us to a higher place, that leave us in wonder and awe, does not correspond to some definitive spiritual reality.
These moments in our life that feel more exalted, purer and truer, would be meaningless without the spiritual connection.
A walk on a labyrinth, a piece of art, a stained-glass window, a mountain top, all can leave us breathless, leave us questioning our own fragility, our own existence.
Inconceivable beauty defines spiritual satisfaction.
Virginia Miranda
Virginia has entered a number of competitions including, Raspberry & Vine, Tom Howard and the 'One Book Many Brisbane's' for which her works were highly commended on a number of occasions.
Published works in the Brisbane State High School Year book, Brisbane Courier Mail, 'Me' magazine, Albert & Logan News, Sea Spray, and the Official Journal of the Air Sea Rescue Association of Qld.
In 2016 Virginia published her first book, Flash Fiction Volume 1. Her eagerly awaited second book, Flash Fiction Volume 2, was published in late 2017.
Virginia is currently a member of Northern Rivers Writers' Centre, The Brisbane Writers Centre, The Society of Women Writers, The Fellowship of Australian Writers Qld and a The Alliance of Independent Authors.


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KATARINA WEX PHOTO
The Bingsu brings refreshing Korean desserts to Uptown Waterloo
Adrian Quijano· March 4, 2022
The Bingsu is one of Uptown Waterloo's newest additions to its restaurant roster, offering classic hot and cold Korean desserts and bubble tea. It is Waterloo's first Korean Bingsu speciality dessert cafe, and is family owned and operated. General and social media manager Hanna found the first few months of their opening enjoyable, despite many hardships along the way.
"We opened up just at the end of October last year. There was a lot of rain, snow and, of course, the COVID-19 restrictions," Hanna said.
However, the Bingsu has made a successful debut on the food scene despite the many challenges.
Bingsu is a Korean shaved ice dessert with sweet toppings that sometimes include chopped fruit, condensed milk, fruit syrup and red beans. Historically, natural ice was used as the dessert base, but later artificial ice was produced and high-quality sweeteners became more commonplace.
"We draw from our Korean background, the bingsu itself is a very popular Korean dessert. Surprisingly, there's not a lot of shops in Waterloo that [make] them," Hanna said.
The Bingsu boasts a variety of bingsus, herbal teas, and bubble teas on their menu. The six different varieties offered at the restaurant stray from the traditional flavour of patbingsu, a rendition of the dessert adorned with red beans and condensed milk.
"My favourite one is the injeolmi bingsu. It has a roasted soybean powder, and it has red bean paste on top of it, and it has little pieces of rice cake, and ice cream. It's my go-to bingsu for when I'm away," Hanna said.
The family's goal at The Bingsu is to share their Korean heritage and cuisine with as many folks in Waterloo as possible. Since the first cafe in Korea started serving bingsus in 1946, the dessert has slowly gained popularity in the West.
The popular Korean street dessert called a "croffle," so named because it is a cross between a croissant and a waffle, has started to gain traction at The Bingsu as well. The restaurant's goal is to introduce traditional Korean flavours like red beans, tteok [or rice cakes], and ground nut powders to the region. Dessert conceptualization also takes cues from their diverse staff, who make menu suggestions based on dishes from their cultures as well.
"We are seeing a lot of school clubs wanting to collaborate with us, and so we want to be more engaged with the community, finding better ways to let people know about our store," Hanna said.
Adrian Quijano
Adrian QuijanoBingsuDessertFoodKatarina Wexlocal businessThe Bingsuuptown waterloo
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Jones leads Oregon State women past Utah in Pac-12 opener
AP Jan 4, 2020 at 1:48a ET
CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — Taylor Jones looked quite comfortable in her first Pac-12 game.
Jones scored 11 of her 15 points in the third quarter, and No. 3 Oregon State pounded Utah 77-48 on Friday night.
Oregon State (13-0, 1-0) looked inside to start the second half, and Jones scored nine points in a 13-0 run that extended the lead to 50-24. The 6-foot-4 freshman went 5 for 7 from the field and 5 for 7 at the line in 21 minutes.
"Mentally I think we all had a different mindset," said Jones, who came into the game averaging 14.1 points and 7.8 rebounds.
"I could definitely feel it in the game. The pace was a little bit faster, the crowd was a lot bigger. I'm excited to see how the rest of the Pac-12 goes."
The Beavers outscored the Utes 25-9 in the third. They increased the lead to as much as 31 points in the final period.
Destiny Slocum scored 16 points for Oregon State, and Mikayla Pivec had 15.
Andrea Torres led Utah (7-6, 0-2) with 13 points.
Oregon State scored the game's first nine points and led 24-10 after the first quarter.
Utah picked up its game defensively and pulled within nine.
But reserve Maddie Washington gave Oregon State a lift by hitting three straight inside jumpers late in the second quarter and the Beavers led 37-24 at the break.
"This team is evolving, learning, and they're learning through wins," Oregon State coach Scott Rueck said. "I can point to areas that we're improving every second, really."
Utah: It doesn't get any easier for the Utes, who will be at No. 2 Oregon on Sunday, followed by a Jan. 10 matchup at home against No. 10 UCLA. Utah has lost three of its past four games.
Oregon State: The Beavers, who have beaten three teams currently ranked in the Top 25, are off to their best start in school history. They outrebounded the Utes 44-28.
Utah will be at No. 2 Oregon on Sunday.
Oregon State hosts Colorado on Sunday.


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iPad Teardown - Flash NAND Memory is a Major Profit Source
IHS iSuppli's teardown of the new iPad, equipped with 32 Gigabytes (GB) of NAND flash memory and 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless capability, carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $364.35. When the $10.75 manufacturing costs are added in, the cost to produce the new iPad rises to $375.10. The BOM of the 16GB 4G LTE version amounts to $347.55, and the 64GB version is estimated at $397.95.
(more below)
The $364.35 BOM represents 50 percent of the $729.00 retail price of the 32GB LTE version of the new iPad.
"The NAND flash memory is one of the key profit-generating components for Apple in the new iPad line, as it has been in previous iPads and in the iPhone family," Rassweiler noted. "Apple makes far and away more money in selling consumers NAND flash than NAND flash manufacturers make selling it to Apple. And the more flash in the iPad, the higher the profit margin there is for Apple."
For example, the retail price of the 32GB LTE-enabled new iPad is $100 higher than the 16GB model. However, Apple's BOM for the 32GB version is only $16.80 more compared to the 16GB model.
Ron Maltiel
New iPad 32GB + 4G Carries $364.35 Bill of Materials
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/New-iPad-32-GB-4G-Carries-364-35-Bill-of-Materials.aspx
Andrew Rassweiler, March 16, 2012
The new iPad, equipped with 32 Gigabytes (GB) of NAND flash memory and 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless capability, carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $364.35. When the $10.75 manufacturing costs are added in, the cost to produce the new iPad rises to $375.10. The BOM of the 16GB 4G LTE version amounts to $347.55, and the 64GB version is estimated at $397.95.
The very lowest-end version of the new iPad, with 16GB memory and no LTE, carries a combined BOM and manufacturing cost of $316. The highest-end model, with 64GB memory and integrated LTE, has a total BOM and manufacturing expense of $408.70.
Please note that these teardown assessments are preliminary in nature, account only for hardware and manufacturing costs and do not include additional expenses such as software, licensing, royalties or other expenditures.
The new iPad is more expensive to produce than the iPad 2 at the time of product launch, even though the retail price points are the same. The 32GB LTE model's BOM is nearly 9 percent higher than an iPad 2 equipped with 32GB and 3G wireless, which carried a cost of approximately $335 at the time of product launch. Major factors driving up the BOM include the addition of the high-resolution Retina display, LTE wireless and a larger-capacity battery.
The table below summarizes the major components in the new iPad.
Among all component suppliers, Samsung Electronics continues its reign as the big winner in the individual iPad analyzed by the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service. Samsung supplied both the display and the applications processor. The new iPad's Retina display represents the most expensive single component in the tablet, at $87, while the applications processor costs an estimated $23. Combined, this gives Samsung a 30.2 percent share of the 32GB LTE version of the new iPad's bill of materials, the largest for any supplier.
In the individual new iPad analyzed, the NAND flash was supplied by Toshiba Corp. However, Samsung also is a source of NAND for the new iPad. In a 32GB LTE iPad where Samsung is also the supplier of the NAND, Samsung's share of the BOM rises by $33.60 to a total of $143.60, amounting to 39.4 percent of the total BOM. However, Toshiba, Hynix Semiconductor and others also are all NAND suppliers to Apple, and each will claim a portion of those revenues.
Although we are not certain, IHS believes that the battery cells are supplied by Samsung. If this turns out to be the case, Samsung will account for nearly 50 percent of the new iPad's BOM.
"The Retina display represents the centerpiece of the new iPad and is the most obvious enhancement in features compared to previous-generation models," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst, teardown services, at IHS. "The first two generations of the iPad employed the same type of display—a screen with resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels. For the third-generation new iPad, Apple has taken a significant step up in display capabilities and expense, at four times the resolution and 53 percent more cost."
The new iPad's Retina display has a resolution of 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. It costs $87, compared to $57 for the screen used in the iPad 2. The $87 cost accounts for 24 percent of the BOM of the new iPad with 32GB NAND and LTE, making the Retina display the most expensive single component in the tablet.
As IHS announced in a previous release, we believe Apple likely has qualified three sources for the display in the new iPad: Samsung, LG Display and Sharp Corp. (see Apple Display Spending Expected to Nearly Double in 2012, Helped by Surging iPad Sales). However, it is likely that all the volume shipments of the new iPad display are currently coming from Samsung. In line with this view, the individual new iPad torn down by IHS includes a Samsung-sourced Retina display.
The touch screen for the new iPad costs an estimated $40, or 10.9 percent of the total BOM. As in the iPad 2, the main suppliers in this area are still TPK, Wintek and Chi Mei.
The wireless section costs $41.50 and accounts for 11.4 percent of the BOM. Because this section provides support for the LTE capabilities of the new iPad, it is significantly more expensive than the $25.60 wireless section of the iPad 2, which supported the 3G air standard. The big winner in this section is Qulcomm Inc., whose MDM9600 baseband processor provides the core LTE functionaility. IHS believes that the wireless section is the same for both AT&T and Verizon versions of the new iPad, although that hasn't been confirmed yet.
The A5X applications processor costs $23, and represents 6.3 percent of the total BOM. Samsung manufactures the A5X for Apple. However, for this device, Samsung serves as a foundry partner to Apple, and not as an independent semiconductor supplier. Apple is the designer and owner of the intellectual property of the A5X, and Samsung manufactures the part on a contract basis. This means that Samsung likely commands a lower margin on the device that it would otherwise.
The new iPad camera module design and cost is the same as in the iPhone 4 camera module. The two camera modules cost a combined $12.35, representing 3.4 percent of the BOM.
The battery delivers a major upgrade from the previous model. The lithium polymer battery in the new iPad supports 42.5 watt hours, up about 75 percent from 25 watt hours in the iPad 2. However, because of price decreases during the past year, the new battery costs only 40 percent more than the old one, at $32.00, compared to $22.75 for the one in the iPad 2.
Posted by Ron at 8:14 AM
Labels: Apple, BOM, DDR, DRAM, expert, iPad, NAND, Samsung, tear down, Teardown, testify, witness
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Lunchtime Poll: So The Oscars Were…?
Read More Lunchtime Poll: So The Oscars Were…?
Posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2014 Monday, March 3rd, 2014 Author LuannCategories Lunchtime PollTags Academy Awards, ltp, lunchtime poll, oscars, p diddy13 Comments on Lunchtime Poll: So The Oscars Were…?
Who is watching the Academy Awards this Sunday?