text:
\section{Introduction}
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in incorporating
Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Defence and military systems to complement and augment human intelligence and capabilities. For instance, AI technologies for Intelligent, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) now play a significant role in maintaining situational awareness and assist human partners with decision making. While AI technologies are outstanding at handling the enormous volumes of data, pattern recognition and anomaly detection, humans excel at making decisions on limited data and sense when data has been compromised (as witnessed with adversarial machine learning). A collaboration between machines and humans therefore holds great promise to help increasing adaptability, flexibility and performance across many Defence contexts. However much work still needs to be done toward achieving an effective human-machine partnership, including addressing the bottlenecks of communication, comprehension and trust. In this work, we are focused on the communication aspect which is at the center of human-machine coordination and success.

Traditional methods require humans to interact with a machine using a machine language or controlled natural language (CNL) (e.g., \cite{saulwick2014lexpresso}). However, there is often no time for personnel to translate input to a machine and interpret complex machine outputs in military operations.
In our previous work, we proposed Maritime DeepDive \cite{shiri2021toward}, an automated construction of knowledge graphs from unstructured natural language data sources as part of the RUSH project \cite{nguyen2020fuzzy} for situational awareness. We are interested in endowing our situational awareness system with a capability to assist human decision makers by allowing them to interact with the system using human natural language.

In this work, we investigate the application of state-of-the-art techniques in AI and natural language processing (NLP) for the automated translation of human natural language questions into SQL queries, toward enhancing human-machine partnership.
Specifically, we build a semantic parser in the maritime domain starting with zero manually annotated training examples. Moreover, with the help of paraphrasing techniques, we reduce the gap between synthesized utterances and the natural real-world utterances.
Our  contributions are,
\begin{itemize}
\item An efficient and effective approach for generating large-scale domain specific training dataset for Question Answering (QA) systems. Our training dataset includes synthetic samples and paraphrased samples obtained from state-of-the-art (SOTA) techniques. Therefore, the parser trained on such samples does not suffer from fundamental mismatches between the distributions of the automatically generated examples and the natural ones issued by real users.

\item Evaluation and analyses of various paraphrasing techniques to produce diverse natural language questions.

\item Discussion of lessons learned and recommendations.
\end{itemize}
\section{Background}
\subsection{Semantic Parsing}
Semantic parsing is a task of translating natural language utterances into formal meaning representations, such as SQL and abstract meaning representations (AMR)~\cite{banarescu2013abstract}. Modern neural network approaches usually formulate semantic parsing as a machine translation problem and model the semantic parsing process with variations of Seq2Seq~\cite{sutskever2014sequence} frameworks. The output of the Seq2Seq models are either linearized LF (Logic Form) token sequences~\cite{dong2016language,dong2018coarse,xu2020schema2qa} or action sequences that construct LFs~\cite{chen2018sequence,guo2019irnet,wang2019rat,rabinovich2017abstract,li2021few,li2021total}. Semantic parsing has a wide range of applications including question answering~\cite{chen2018sequence,guo2019irnet,wang2019rat}, programming synthesis~\cite{rabinovich2017abstract}, and natural language understanding (NLU) in dialogue systems~\cite{gupta2018semantic}.

Our work is mainly focused on question answering. The user questions expressed in natural language are converted into SQL queries which are then executed on our Maritime DeepDive Knowledge Graph~\cite{shiri2021toward} to retrieve answers to the questions.
The recent surveys~\cite{Kamath2018semanticParsingSurvey,zhu2019survey,li2020context} cover comprehensive reviews about recent semantic parsing studies. Of particular relevance to this work are \textit{BootStrapping Semantic Parsers}.

\subsection{Bootstrapping Semantic Parsers}
Data scarcity is always a serious problem in semantic parsing since it is difficult for the annotators to acquire expert knowledge about the meaning of the target representations. To solve this problem, one line of research is to bootstrap semantic parsers with semi-automatic data synthesis methods. \cite{wang2015building, xu2020schema2qa} use a set of synchronous context-free grammar (SCFG) rules and canonical templates to generate a large number of \textit{clunky} utterance-SQL pairs, respectively. And then they hire crowd-workers to paraphrase the \textit{clunky} utterances into natural questions. In order to reduce the paraphrase cost, \cite{herzig2019don} applies a paraphrase detection to automatically align the clunky utterances with the user query logs. This method requires access to user query logs, which is infeasible in many scenarios. In addition, it requires human effort to filter out the false alignments. \cite{xu2020autoqa,yin2021ingredients} use automatic paraphrase models (e.g. fine-tuned BART~\cite{lewis2020bart}) to paraphrase clunky utterances and an automatic paraphrase filtering method to filter out low-quality paraphrases. The data synthesis method from \cite{xu2020autoqa,yin2021ingredients} requires the lowest paraphrase cost among all the aforementioned approaches. \cite{oren-etal-2021-finding} generates synthetic data using SCFGs as well. \cite{oren-etal-2021-finding} applies various approaches to down-sample a subset from the synthetic data. With their sampling method, training the parser with 200x less training data can perform comparably with training on the total population.

\section{Our proposed approach}\label{sec:approach}

Our proposed approach, as shown in Figure \ref{fig:pipline}, improves on existing work for bootstrapping semantic parsers by not requiring manually annotated training data. Instead, large-scale training datasets can be generated in an automated manner through the use of existing automatic paraphrasing techniques. Specifically, we design a compact set of \textit{synchronous grammar} rules to generate \textit{seed} examples as pairs of canonical utterances and corresponding logical forms. We then apply a number of paraphrasing and filtering techniques to this initial set to create a much larger set of more diverse alternatives.

\begin{figure}
    \centering
    \resizebox{.48\textwidth}{!}{
    \includegraphics{figures/pipeline.png}}
    \caption{An illustration of our end-to-end framework.}
    \label{fig:pipline}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Semantic Parser}

We adopt two common methods for training semantic parsers: i) the attentional \system{Seq2Seq}\xspace~\cite{luong2015effective} framework which uses LSTMs~\cite{hochreiter1997long} as the encoder and decoder, and ii) \system{BERT-LSTM}\xspace~\cite{xu2020schema2qa}, a Seq2Seq framework with a copy mechanism~\cite{gu2016incorporating} which uses RoBERTa~\cite{liu2019roberta} as the encoder and LSTM as the decoder. The input to the Seq2Seq model is the natural-language question and  output is a sequence of linearized logical form's tokens.

\subsection{Synchronous grammar}
Our constructed Maritime DeepDive Knowledge Graph \cite{shiri2021toward}, containing a set of entities such as {\it{victim}}, {\it{aggressor}} and triples such as {\it{($e_1$, r, $e_2$)}}, where  {\it{$e_1$}} and  {\it{$e_2$}} are entities and {\it{r}} is a relationship (e.g.,  {\it{victim\_aggressor}}). The database can be queried using SQL logical forms.

We propose to design compact grammars with only 31 SCFG rules
that simultaneously generate both logical forms and canonical utterances such that the utterances are understandable by a human. First, we define variables specifying a canonical phrase such as {\it{victim}},  {\it{aggressor}}, {\it{incident\_type}},  {\it{date}}, {\it{position}},  {\it{location}}. Second, we develop grammar rules for different SQL logical form structures (Figure \ref{fig:grammar}). Finally, our framework uses the grammar rules and the list of variables and their possible values ($G$ , $L$) to automatically generate canonical utterances paired with their SQL logical forms ($u$ , $lf$) exhaustively (Figure \ref{fig:grammar}). It yields a large set of canonical examples to train a semantic parser. We assign real values to the domain-specific variables including {\it{victim}} (victimized ships and individuals, e.g. oil tanker),  {\it{aggressor}} (e.g. pirates), {\it{incident\_type}} (e.g. robbery and hijacking). However, we replace all the general {\it{location}} (approximate place, e.g. country), {\it{position}} (place with longitude and latitude) and {\it{date}} with abstract variables  $\$loc$,  $\$pos$ and $\$dat$, which later can be used to capture the actual content using a NER model and parse into SQL queries. The location, position and date variables can have various unlimited content, and we do not restrict the parser to some content.

\begin{figure*}
    \centering
    \resizebox{.9\textwidth}{!}{
    \includegraphics{figures/grammar.png}}
    \caption{Examples of utterances (right) generated from Synchronous grammar rules (left).}
    \label{fig:grammar}
\end{figure*}

\subsection{Paraphrase Generation}
\input{tables/examples}
The paraphrase generation model rewrites the canonical utterance to more diverse alternatives, which later are used to train the semantic parser. Existing work do not fully explore current paraphrasing approaches. Instead, they resort to applying language models (e.g., BART and GPT-3) to paraphrase utterances in datasets and do not tailor to specific domains.

We improve on the existing work and explore other augmentation methods for \textit{paraphrase generation} on domain-specific data, making use of \textbf{back-translation}, \textbf{prompt-based language models}, \textbf{fine-tuned autoregressive language model} and \textbf{commercial paraphrasing model}.

\subsubsection{Paraphrasing using back-translation}
Back Translation is a data augmentation technique that is widely used  in several studies \cite{beddiar2021data,romaissa2021data, prabhumoye2018style}. Given a sentence, we aim to translate it to another language and translate it back, where the back-translated sentence will be slightly different from the original one. We thoroughly compared the performance of Google Translation API, a well-known translation tool for daily use. Google Translate API can translate 109 languages in all. It is supported by powerful neural machine translation methods enhanced with advanced techniques in a well-designed pipeline architecture

To ensure the diversity of paraphrased data, we adopt the procedure as defined in \cite{corbeil2020bet}:
\begin{itemize}
    \item Clustering languages into different family branches via Wikipedia info-boxes.
    \item Selecting the most used languages from each family and translating them using an appropriate translation system.

    \item Keeping the top three languages with the best translation performance.

\end{itemize}

\subsubsection{Paraphrasing using prompt-based language model generation}
Several studies \cite{shin2021few, shin2021constrained, schucher2021power} have investigated few-shot large pre-trained language models such as GPT-3 \cite{brown2020language} for semantic parsing. Unlike the `traditional' approach where a pre-trained language model can be leveraged by adapting its parameters to the task at hand through fine-tuning (\textit{language model as pre-training task}), GPT-3 took a different approach where it can be treated as a ready-to-use multi-task solver (\textit{language modelling as multi-task learning}). This could be achieved by transforming certain tasks we want it to solve into the form of language modelling. Specifically, by designing and constructing an appropriate input sequence of words (called a \textit{prompt}), one is able to induce the model to produce the desired output sequence (i.e., a paraphrased utterance in this context)without changing its parameters through fine-tuning at all. In particular, in the low-data regime, empirical analysis shows that, either for manually picking hand-crafted prompts [21] or automatically building auto-generated prompts [8], [16] taking prompts for tuning models is surprisingly effective for the knowledge stimulation and model adaptation of pre-trained language model. However, none of these methods reports the use of a few-shot pre-trained language model to directly generate few-shot and zero-shot paraphrased utterances. In this work, we supply GPT-3 with an instructive prompt to generate paraphrases in a zero-shot setting.

\subsubsection{Paraphrasing using fine-tuned language model generation}
Previous researches have proposed several pretrained autoregressive language models, such as GPT-2 \cite{radford2019language} and ProphetNet \cite{qi2020prophetnet}. Other studies such as \cite{moghimifar2020cosmo} use these language models to solve various downstream tasks and achieve SOTA performance. In this work, following~\cite{yin2021ingredients}, we fine-tune an autoregressive language model BART~\cite{lewis2020bart} on the dataset from~\cite{krishna2020reformulating}, which is a subset of the PARANMT corpus~\cite{wieting2018paranmt}, to generate syntactically and lexically diversified paraphrases.
\subsubsection{Paraphrasing using a commercial system}
We also experiment with paraphrase generation using Quillbot.\footnote{https://quillbot.com} Quillbot is a commercial tool that provides a scalable and robust paraphraser that can control synonyms and generation styles.
\subsection{Paraphrase Filtering}
\label{sec:para_filter}
Since the automatically generated paraphrases may have varying quality, we further filter out the paraphrases of low quality. In our work, we adopt the filtering method discussed in \cite{xu2020autoqa} in the spirit of self-training. The process consists of the following steps:
\begin{itemize}
    \item Train the parser on the synthesized data generated by the SCFG rules.

    \item Evaluate the parser on the generated paraphrases and keep those for which the corresponding SQL logical forms are correctly generated by the parser.
    \item Add the paraphrase-SQL pairs into the training data and re-train the parser.
    \item Repeat steps 1--3 for several rounds or until no more paraphrases are kept.
\end{itemize}

This method is based on three assumptions~\cite{xu2020autoqa}: i) the parser could generalize well to unseen paraphrases which share the same semantics with the original questions, ii) the synthetic dataset generated by the SCFGs are good enough to train an initial model, and iii) it is very unlikely for a poor parser to generate correct SQL queries by chance. To improve the model's generalization ability, we use \system{BERT-LSTM}\xspace instead of vanilla Seq2Seq as our base parser for filtering.

In the following section, we provide an experimental analysis of the performance of our proposed approach.

\section{Experiments}
\subsection{Maritime DeepDive}
We utilize Maritime DeepDive \cite{shiri2021toward}, a probabilistic knowledge graph for the maritime domain automatically constructed from natural-language data collected from two main sources: (a) the Worldwide Threats To Shipping (WWTTS)\footnote{\url{https://msi.nga.mil/Piracy}} and (b) the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP)\footnote{\url{https://www.recaap.org/}}. We extract the relevant entities and concepts as well as their semantic relations, together with the uncertainty associated with the extracted knowledge. We consider the extracted maritime knowledge graph as our main database for building a QA system. Our training and test corpora include 1,235 and 217 piracy reports in the database, respectively.

\subsection{Maritime Semantic Parsing Dataset}
With 31 grammar rules, the list of variables and the Maritime database, we automatically synthesize 341,381 canonical utterances paired with SQL queries. As discussed above, there are semantic and grammatical mismatches between the synthetic canonical examples and real-world user-issued ones. Paraphrasing the synthesized dataset can potentially generate linguistically more diverse questions. Below, we test the paraphrasing strategies described in Section~\ref{sec:approach} to improve diversity of utterances while ensuring quality which yields the best end-to-end performance.
\subsubsection{Paraphrased Question Collection}
\cite{oren-etal-2021-finding} shows that, with a proper sampling method, we can also achieve decent performance with much less synthetic training data. Following this insight, we only select a subset of synthetic canonical examples (10\%) to reduce our paraphrase and training cost. We use a similar approach to Uniform Abstract Template Sampling (UAT) in~\cite{oren-etal-2021-finding} to get the diversified SQL logical forms structures for paraphrasing.
There are 35,050 canonical examples in our sampled dataset, with 49\% of samples containing abstract variables.
\subsubsection{SQL Query Writing and Validation}
We evaluate our semantic parser with real-world crowdsourced questions. Specifically, we collect 231 simple and complex questions about a set of given piracy reports.
For all collected questions, we write their SQL queries manually and randomly divided them into a validation set with 76 examples and a test with 154 examples.

\subsection{Paraphrase Generation}
We employ and evaluate paraphrasing techniques with the following settings.

\paragraph{Back-translation} We choose three languages in Google Translation: Chinese (medium-resource), Spanish (high-resource) and Telugu (low-resource). The back-translated generation took approximately one day to complete the sampled data.
In the initial paraphrased utterances, we found that Google Translation failed to distinguish the variable names in natural languages, which required the post-processing to correct these variable names. For example, variables like $\$pos$ will be translated to $\$ POS$ or be removed in the paraphrased utterances. Another observation was that the performance of back-translated augmentation highly depends on the language, as shown in Table \ref{tab:filtering}.
\paragraph{Prompt-based language model generation}
We use (GPT-3\_Davinci) which is the most powerful model in the GPT-3 family. For GPT-3, generation quality can be boosted when more detailed and instructive prompts are given. Due to the limited data we have, we instruct GPT-3 to generate paraphrased questions in the zero-shot manner. Specifically, GPT-3 will directly generate relevant context by giving our manually-designed textual prompts. Different prompts will result in different outputs. The prompts and some generated examples can be found in Table \ref{tab:gpt3_prompt}. The GPT-3 API from OpenAI generates paraphrase randomly based on the seed, and thus may have limited control on the generated output.
\input{tables/gpt3_prompt}
\begin{figure*}[t!]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth]{figures/quillbot_interface.png}
    \caption{We set the Quillbot paraphraser to the standard mode and the synonyms to have more changes.}
    \label{fig:quillbot}
\end{figure*}
\paragraph{Fine-tuned autoregressive language model generation}
We employ a pre-trained language model, (BART\_Large) ~\cite{lewis2020bart}, to rewrite a canonical utterance {\it {u}} to a more diverse alternative.
The BART\_Large model\footnote{We use the official implementation in fairseq, https://github.com/pytorch/fairseq.} is fine-tuned on a corpus of high-quality paraphrases sub-sampled from PARANMT \cite{wieting2018paranmt} released by \cite{krishna2020reformulating}.
The model therefore learns to produce paraphrases with a variety of linguistic patterns, which is essential when paraphrasing from canonical utterances.
The generated paraphrases are noisy or potentially vague. We reject paraphrases for which the parser cannot predict their SQL queries (Section~\ref{sec:filtering}).

\paragraph{Commercial paraphrasing model}
As described in the previous section, we employ the commercial paraphrasing tool Quillbot to generate high-quality paraphases.
The setting of the paraphraser interface can be found in Figure \ref{fig:quillbot}.

\input{tables/tab-filtering-round}
\subsection{Paraphrase Filtering}
\label{sec:filtering}
We develop a scheme where we input the paraphrased question into a parser, which in turn generates the SQL queries. If the SQL query matches exactly with the one generated from the original question of the paraphrase, we consider that this question has been correctly paraphrased.

Table \ref{tab:filtering} shows the filtering results of a number of paraphrasing techniques, including back-translation, fine-tuned BART, GPT-3 and Quillbot. In general, we see that the GPT-3 from OpenAI and Quillbot significantly outperform the other approaches. In contrast, the fine-tuned BART achieves only 20.22\% retention. Moreover, we observe that GPT-3 has the highest semantic preserving ability by keeping 44.96\% of the paraphrased sentences in the first round of filtering and Quillbot by keeps 51.91\% and 54.25\% in the second and third rounds of filtering suggesting prompt-based and commercial methods have good potential in paraphrasing.
The Back-Translation method on Chinese performs the worst. We conjecture that Chinese is far from English in terms of linguistic structure; thus, Back-Translation suffers from translation errors. With more rounds of re-training, the generalization ability of the parser is improved, so more examples are kept. However, the improvement becomes marginal after the second round of re-training. Therefore, we only adopt three rounds since re-training is time-consuming.

\subsection{Paraphrase Generation Method Analysis}
\input{tables/practical_comparison}
\input{tables/paraphrase_diversity}
\textbf{Paraphrase diversity} We measure the diversity of each paraphrase method by using the  BLEU metric \cite{papineni-etal-2002-bleu}. BLEU-$N$ was originally proposed for automatic machine translation evaluation, which calculates the similarity score based on $N$-grams. The lower the score is, the more dissimilar the generated context is to the reference. The dissimilarity can imply the diversity of the paraphrased context when used in paraphrase evaluation. GPT-3 paraphrasing method generates the least diversified sentences, while Back-Translation (Chinese) generates the most diversified ones. Quillbot and BART can generate paraphrases with a close diversity level. However, more Quillbot paraphrases are kept, indicating that Quillbot can perform well in terms of both diversity and the preservation of semantics. An interesting finding is that the results in Table \ref{tab:diversity} are relatively consistent with the filtering report in Table \ref{tab:filtering}. We assume it is easier for the parser to generalize on the paraphrases which have more words overlapping with the original questions.

\textbf{Time-efficiency}
Table \ref{tab:practical} shows the required time for paraphrasing 1000 canonical utterances by each technique. The pre-trained BART model is the fastest way of paraphrasing while Quillbot is the slowest one.

\textbf{Controllability.} Among various paraphrasing techniques, Quillbot provides different settings and various paraphrased candidates (Figure \ref{fig:quillbot}). Current neural models still find it more challenging to get all possible replaced words or phrases while maintaining the semantic meaning.

\textbf{Open-source.} The second most promising paraphrasing model right now is provided by Quillbot. No other open-source model, except GPT-3, can achieve excellent quality compared to Quillbot. What techniques are practical for paraphrasing needs further investigation.

\textbf{Compute resource.} Unlike back-translation, where we can adopt translation systems to the paraphrasing tasks, direct paraphrasing needs specific paraphrasing data to train a good model. Designing a good paraphrasing dataset across different domains is challenging.

\textbf{Readability.} The back-translation system requires increasing human readability. Some translated sentences are not human-readable. A method should be proposed to automatically self-reject some invalid results. This will aid the back translation based paraphrasing method by providing more valid data.

\subsection{Semantic Parser Evaluation}
\input{tables/experiment_1}
\textbf{Baseline Models.}
We utilize two common methods of semantic parsers for the evaluation of different data settings: i) the attentional \system{Seq2Seq}\xspace\cite{luong2015effective} framework which uses LSTMs~\cite{hochreiter1997long} as the encoder and decoder, and ii) \system{BERT-LSTM}\xspace\cite{xu2020schema2qa}, a Seq2Seq framework with a copy mechanism~\cite{gu2016incorporating} which uses RoBERTa~\cite{liu2019roberta} as the encoder and LSTM as the decoder. The inputs for these models are the natural-language questions and the outputs are their sequence of linearized SQL queries' tokens. Our evaluation metrics include Exact Matching as in~\cite{dong2018coarse,li2021few}, Exact Matching (no-order), and Component Matching as in~\cite{yu2018spider}

\textbf{Component Matching:} To conduct a detailed
analysis of model performance, we measure the
average exact match we are reporting F1 between the prediction and ground truth on different SQL components. For each of the following components: {\fontfamily{qcr}\selectfont • SELECT • FROM • WHERE • GROUP BY • ORDER BY}.
We decompose each component in the prediction and the ground truth as bags of several sub-components, and check whether or not these two sets of components match exactly. In our evaluation,
we treat each component as a set so that for example, {\fontfamily{qcr}\selectfont WHERE va.aggressor = "pirates" AND va.victim = "container ship"} and {\fontfamily{qcr}\selectfont WHERE va.victim = "container ship" AND va.aggressor = "pirates"} would be treated as the same query.

\textbf{Exact Matching:} We measure whether the predicted query as a whole is equivalent to the ground truth query.

\textbf{Exact Matching (no-order):} We first evaluate the SQL clauses and ignore the order in each component. The predicted query is correct only if all of the components are correct.

Table \ref{tab:experiment_1} shows the performance of parsers on different training datasets. We have merged the filtered data using various paraphrasing techniques with the original training dataset and trained the semantic parsers with the new training dataset. We observe that Back-Translation paraphrase hurts the semantic parsing, indicating the generated sentences are too diversified and considered to be noisy signal during training. Among these Back-Translation methods, the model trained on filtered Back-Translation paraphrases with low-resource Telugu performs the worst. This may result from limited training data when training Google Translation on Telugu. We also find that paraphrasing only 10\% of the original training dataset using GPT-3 and Quillbot can constantly boost the semantic parsing.
We further demonstrate in Table \ref{tab:qb_paraphrasing} that with more Quillbot paraphrase data, the performance of semantic parser keeps increasing. With the findings in Tables \ref{tab:filtering} and \ref{tab:diversity}, we conclude paraphrase filtering and corresponding diversity are not directly related to the semantic parsing performance. A more comprehensive and efficient approach needs to be found to evaluate paraphrase quality in terms of semantic parsing.

\input{tables/qb_pra}

\section{Observations and Discussions}
By conducting several experiments and  using the obtained results on semantic parsers , we now present our observations and insights on the task.

\begin{itemize}
\item With the finding in Table \ref{tab:experiment_1} we observe that paraphrasing is a powerful technique to improve the performance of the final QA system without additional human efforts.

\item Table \ref{tab:qb_paraphrasing} shows that with only 10\% additional paraphrased questions (using Quillbot) we are able to increase the average F1 by 3.32\% and with further 10\% additional paraphrased questions, F1 increases by 4.47\%. We can conclude that a small portion of high quality paraphrased data would be sufficient for training semantic parsers.

\item Among languages we choose for Back-Translation paraphrasing in TABLE \ref{tab:diversity}, Chinese shows the lowest BLEU score and the highest diverse paraphrased questions. Subsequently, the semantic parser (RoBERTa-base) demonstrates a better performance with Chinese compare to the other two languages (i.e. Spanish and Telugu).
Further analyses is required to investigate the impact of amount of filtering data and diversity on parsers' performance.

\item In the last row of TABLE \ref{tab:experiment_1}, we simply combined the all paraphrased data from all paraphrasing techniques. In the future, we will investigate whether combining the data from only more effective paraphrasing techniques, such as Quillbot and GPT-3, can induce more promising results.
\end{itemize}

\section{Conclusion }
This work is aimed at enhancing human-machine communications by automatically tranlating users' questions expressed in natural language into SQL queries. By developing a compact set of synchronous grammar rules enhanced with a set of  multiple automatic paraphrasing and filtering techniques in order to generate large scale training data, we are able to train a semantic parser without the need to use any (manually) annotated training dataset. The experimential results demonstrated  promising results could be achieved at a very low cost, which is important in many real-world situations where data is scarce and annotated data is not available.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Forest bathing: an experience for body and mind
in News, health, Sustainable travel
forest Baden
Anita Ericson 17. September 2021, 9: 49 3.3 k views
Out of the office, into the countryside. Away from the desk, towards the trees. Thoughts still rattle from the job to the household, from the bank account to the evening class. But with every step the sound of crunching gravel on the forest road displaces a bit more of the thoughts, with every breath there is ever deeper calm. Here a bird is chirping, there the leaves rustle, from the side the scent of sun-warm pine needles fills the nose. After a few minutes in the forest, you feel free and light. Esoteric humbug? But not, numerous studies prove the health-promoting effects of the forest.
The power of terpenes
This is where the deep breaths come into play, taking in the air exhaled from the trees. This includes the so-called terpenes, which have been proven to have a positive effect on people many times over. Terpenes are aromatic compounds that we know well, for example as the essential oils of leaves, needles and other parts of plants - that is what we smell as typical forest air when we are out and about in the forest. There are a number of studies that show that terpenes strengthen the body's defenses and reduce stress hormones.
The team led by scientist Qing Li from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo did particularly well in the field of forest research. The Japanese made one of the most groundbreaking findings on the health-promoting effects of forest landscapes in 2004. At that time, test subjects were quartered in a hotel. In one half, the air was enriched with terpenes unnoticed during the night. Every evening and in the morning, blood was taken from the participants and the day after the test subjects with terpene air actually showed a significantly higher number and activity of endogenous killer cells as well as an increased content of anti-cancer proteins. In other words: the immune system had increased significantly. The effect lasted for a few days after the study.
Holistic effect
This was one of the first modern studies on the subject, which was followed by many more by Qing Li and other scientists around the world - all of which came to the conclusion: Going into the forest is healthy. For example, it has been confirmed that the stress hormone cortisol (measured in saliva) is significantly reduced during a stay in the forest and that the effect here also lasts for days. Blood pressure and blood sugar levels are also lowered. However, it is not only the terpenes but also the natural sounds that have a positive effect: The presentation of natural sounds in a virtual forest environment was an essential factor in increasing parasympathetic nerve activity in a further test arrangement and thus contributed significantly to reducing physiological stress reactions (Annerstedt 2013).
A meta study by the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences from 2014 came to the result: Visiting forest landscapes can lead to an increase in positive emotions and reduce the extent of negative emotions. After spending time in the forest, people report that they feel less stressed, more relaxed and more energetic. At the same time, a reduction in negative emotions such as exhaustion, anger and dejection can be observed. In a nutshell: forest has a positive effect on body and mind, strengthens the immune system and takes us off the stress of everyday life.
Waldness from a professional hand
Basically, you can get this burn-out prophylaxis from nature at any time and free of charge by going for a walk in the forest. The concentration of terpenes is highest in summer, but the air is also laden with terpenes in wet and cold weather, after rain and fog. The deeper you go into the forest, the more intense the experience, the terpenes are particularly dense near the ground. Breathing exercises from yoga or Qi Gong are recommended so that you can switch off in your head. In Japan, a term for it, Shinrin Yoku, has even been established, translated: forest bathing.
In a wooded country like Austria, you really don't have to go far to enjoy a forest bath. If you want to be absolutely sure that the health effects really work, you can be instructed to do so. The offer in the Upper Austrian Almtal is the most professional. A few years ago, the forest's tourist potential was recognized here, in line with the "back to nature" trend that was already emerging at the time, and forestness was invented. Andreas Pangerl from the Waldness founding team: "We give our guests instructions on how they can best benefit from the healing power of the forest and thus open themselves spiritually to new perspectives". Head forester and forest guru Fritz Wolf conveys the broader connections in the ecosystem while he and the group collect forest fruits and later cook them. Forest Vyda, which is known as Celtic yoga, is all about body awareness and concentration, while forest bathing in a laybag between the pines is about total relaxation.
Asian combination
Angelika Gierer, on the other hand, takes her guests to the Vienna Woods or the Waldviertel, where she grew up. She is a qualified yoga trainer and calls her offer Shinrin Yoga, where she combines the "healing knowledge of Japanese forest bathing with the Indian tradition of breathing, sensory and consciousness development". On her walks in the forest, however, you wait in vain for classic yoga exercises, but she places great value on breathing as the "key to happiness". An essential element of her forest baths is going barefoot, Angelika: "Going barefoot is incredibly valuable. The foot reflex zones are stimulated and practically all organs of the body are massaged. By constantly wearing shoes, stunted nerve endings are awakened again. You can feel the roots, antioxidants are absorbed through the soles of your feet, you slow down. Yes, our consciousness comes automatically into the here and now when we walk barefoot ".
Just give it a try
In the Styrian Zirbitzkogel-Grebenzen nature park, forest bathing is associated with the regional theme of "reading nature". Claudia Gruber, certified forest health trainer, accompanies the guests on forest bathing tours through the nature park: "We do certain exercises to calm down and to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. In addition, we also do walking meditations on the individual elements, earth, air, water and fire. It's about the inspiration of nature, what does it have to tell and teach us. "There are physical exercises for this, Gruber talks about the essence of each element. "Earth, for example, is food and roots for trees, but it also gives people support. Air is about freedom, water is about rhythm, fire is about life energy ", Claudia tries in a short summary," We also do seated exercises where everyone looks for a nice spot and stays alone for 15 minutes. "
In the Gastein Valley, too, people rely on forest bathing. In cooperation with the "natural thinker" and tourism geomancer Sabine Schulz, a free brochure was developed and three special forest swimming areas with different stations were defined: the Angertal, the waterfall path from Bad Hofgastein and the Böcksteiner Höhenweg with start and finish near the Montan Museum in Bad Gastein . Beginners in forest swimming are recommended to take part in the guided tour, which is offered once a week.
TIPS FOR SWIMMING IN THE FOREST
Forestness (Almtal / Upper Austria): Four days of being in the woods in the Almtal and in the future you will not only see the forest with different eyes, you will also perceive it much more strongly with your other senses - at least promises Waldness inventor Pangerl. On the program: forest bathing and forest school with forester Fritz Wolf, mountain pine bath, forest kneippen, forest walk and forest vyda. traunsee-almtal.salzkammergut.at
Shinrin Yoga (Wienerwald and Waldviertel): There are regular Shinrin Yoga sessions with Angelika Gierer in the Viennese part of the Wienerwald (Tue evenings, Sundays) and in the Yspertal (quarterly), a forest bath can also be booked individually or in pairs. shinrinyoga.at
Forest bathing and nature reading (Zirbitzkogel-Grebenzen Nature Park): During Claudia Gruber's forest bathing tours, the trainer deepens the growing closeness to nature. There is a fixed date every month, the tour lasts four hours; Dates for groups of four people or more on request; Occasionally longer units such as a tour with an overnight stay in the forest.
natura.at
Forest wellness (Gasteinertal): Get (or download) the brochure and set off - or take part in one of the weekly forest bathing tours. gastein.com/aktiv/summer/waldbaden
Mentally immersen: You can delve deeper into the topic of forest bathing in workshops, seminars or training courses lasting several days. Corresponding modules can be found in Austria at Angelika Gierer (Shinrin Yoga), Ulli Feller (waldwelt.at) or at Werner Buchberger in the Innviertel. For him, "forest bathing is an attitude towards life in which we can enjoy life in its originality and freedom again in nature, in the forest, in connection with trees and our surroundings." He differentiates between the first level of forest bathing, which is us is common when we find relaxation in the forest and the second level, where one begins to consciously connect with the forest, the trees, mother earth and the environment (waldbaden-heilenergie.at).
Immerse yourself physically - Take the time pressure out of the forest bathing completely - just stay overnight. You don't have to go out with a bivouac tent, it's much more convenient: book an overnight stay in the tree house! The best offers are in the east of the country.
Tree house lodge in Schrems (Waldviertel): Five tree houses are nestled between granite rocks, calm waters, beeches, oaks, pines and spruces. Chef Franz Steiner has created a place here - based on the New Zealand model - where you can feel the special spirit of the place. baumhaus-lodge.at
Ochys (Weinviertel): The Weinviertel is not exactly the classic destination for forest bathing, but Ochy's climbing park near Niederkreuzstetten is a woody oasis in the vineyard landscape with wonderful old oaks. During the day you can climb here, at night you can look out of the eco hut through the glass roof into the canopy of leaves. ochys.at
ramenai (Bohemian Forest): Without a lot of Chi-Chi, the Hofbauer family built a hotel village in the typical Bohemian Forest shape. Nine huts are firmly anchored to the ground, the real hit is the tenth: a tree bed at dizzying heights, it basically dangles in the treetops. ramenai.at
Baumhotel Buchenberg (Waidhofen / Ybbs): The beech tree in the crown of which the tree hotel was placed is a hundred years old. Since there is only this one hut in the zoo, there are no other overnight guests. tierpark.at
Written by Anita Ericson
Lützerath is everywhere: our livelihoods are being mercilessly dug up
Negotiate with a madman
EU minimum tax: 90 percent of all corporations not affected | attack
Ecological risks: keep new genetic engineering in agriculture regulated! | Global 2000
Fur Free Europe: 1 million votes against fur in record time

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A private residence in the district of Notting Hill, London, Hidden House definitely highlights our company's forte of delivering spectacular-sized wide planks.
Responding to the client's needs and desires, we suggested two types of Oak floor patterns: A 20cm width Continental Oak Select Grade was laid into an oversized Chevron pattern, that just like a Herringbone allows for the geometrical zig-zag pattern — albeit in this case the planks are cut on an angle so the 'zig' meets the 'zag' along a perfectly straight axis. For the reception area, we supplied fixed width 40cm Oak boards, with a prefinished appearance in Faded Silvergrey Ultramatt Poly.


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Q: Sards theorem for polynomial I'm having some struggles with an aspect about something apparently trivial about Sard's theorem, but couldn't find anything online.
Let $f$ be a polynomial.
According to Sard's theorem, the image $f(Z)$ of the set of critical values
$$Z = \{a \in X : f'(a) = 0\}$$
has measure zero.
What if I want to show that the set $Z$ itself has measure zero in the domain of $f$?
I feel like it's so simple but i just can't get behind it.

A: In this case Sard's theorem is not needed. If $p$ is a nonzero polynomial, its set of zeros is finite by induction on its degree. If $f$ is not constant, then the set $Z$ of critical points is therefore also finite (it is the set of zeros of the polynomial $f'$), so it has measure zero!
Edit: @Captain Lama has suggested that you may be dealing with a polynomial in more than one variable. In this case, we cannot deduce that the set of zeros of $f'$ is finite, but we can still show that it has measure zero. You can do this with Fubini's theorem and induction on the number of variables – see here for an algebraic proof. You do need to make sure that $f$ is not constant, of course!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Reviewing The First Week Of The Anthem-Cigna Merger Trial
Meanwhile, news outlets also report on the continuing personality clash between device makers and insurers; how employers reward workers who shop around for health care; and what is happening to coal miners' health benefits.
Politico Pro: What We Learned In Week One Of The Anthem-Cigna Antitrust Trial
An antitrust trial seeking to block Anthem's $54 billion acquisition of Cigna kicked off in Washington last week before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson. If the Anthem-Cigna deal is approved, it would create the largest health insurance company in the country. This is the first of two blockbuster antitrust cases taking place in the coming weeks, with Aetna's proposed $37 billion takeover of Humana headed to court on Dec. 5. The first two weeks of the Anthem-Cigna trial will focus on the health insurance market for large employers with operations in multiple states. Here's a rundown of what we learned — and what's still to come — when the trial resumes Monday morning. (Demko, 11/27)
Modern Healthcare: Why Can't Devicemakers And Insurers Get Along?
After a spinal stroke in 2007 robbed Rick Batty of his ability to use his arms and legs, the then 54-year-old agricultural salesman wasn't sure he'd ever walk again. Then he found ReWalk, a battery-powered exoskeleton that uses small motors at the knees and hips to help paraplegics stand up and walk. Activated by the forward tilt of a user's upper body, ReWalk allows users to move their paralyzed legs in a step-like motion. About half the 260 devices currently in use are located in therapy centers, where the sessions are covered by many insurers as normal rehabilitation or gait training. But to own a ReWalk for use at home and around town, there's less financial support. Only a handful of insurers cover the take-home version of the device, for which Marlborough, Mass.-based ReWalk charges $77,500. (Rubenfire, 11/26)
Boston Globe: Employers Rewarding Workers Who Shop Around For Health Care
State data show that the price of maternity care and other medical services can vary by many thousands of dollars from one hospital to another, and that price differences are not tied to quality. A commission has been assembled to study the issue. But some employers are seeking to exploit the price discrepancies, offering cash and other incentives, such as free diapers, to encourage workers to choose lower-cost health care services and providers. (Dayal McCluskey, 11/28)
St. Louis Post Dispatch: With Health Benefits In Jeopardy, Coal Retirees Turn To Lame-Duck Congress For A Lifeline
In 1946, President Harry S Truman helped orchestrate an agreement between the United States government and the United Mine Workers of America, guaranteeing health and retirement benefits to unionized miners and ending a nationwide strike. ... Starting Jan. 1, funds for the health care coverage of 22,000 nationwide UMWA members covered under its 1993 Benefit Plan will begin to run dry unless Congress passes legislation known as the Miners Protection Act. About 16,000 of those members would immediately lose their medical benefits and another 6,000 would lose theirs over the course of 2017. Pension funds would dwindle, as well, at risk of becoming insolvent in about five years without a new infusion of cash. (Gray, 11/27)
Amid Teen Vaping 'Epidemic,' Juul Taps Addiction Expert As Medical Director


I wrote this song about/for my friends. It was kind of used as a way to get all my fears about the future off of my chest, and dealing with never having the chance to figure myself out or grow older with someone I love the most. It seems ridiculous considering I'm still so young, but worries tend to get the best of all of us, you know?


Need to get to the island? No problem, we've got you covered!
To get the most out of your Kapiti Island experience, we suggest you take our Kapiti Day Tour which include a guided walk and delicious lunch.
But if you'd rather have the bare basics Kapiti visit, you can book a seat on the ferry without the additional guided walk and lunch. We'll still arrange your Department of Conservation permit for you.
Our ferry departs from Kapiti Boating Club at Paraparaumu Beach approximately 9:00am, and returns at approximately 3:00pm.
You can visit either Rangatira in the middle of the island, or Waiorua at the North End. More information about the differences can be found on DOCs website here.
* If your trip is cancelled by the ferry skipper you could transfer your booking to another date (as long as the date is available) or you can contact us to request a full refund.


Now that Amazon has custom cases for Kindles, you're probably on the lookout for something even more special to give yourself. Our pick? Etsy Artist, My Little Buffalo's custom illustration for iPhone cases. We like it because we love illustrations and with this custom order, we can immortalize ourselves as cartoons on our own cases. Win!
It's only $70 USD to get a custom illustration and an additional $30 for the case. There are also options for custom pet portraits as well as gift certificates to spread the joy of illustrations. It's a great gift for the holidays or any day.
You can see additional work from Lisa, the artist behind the shop, at her blog. To purchase, visit Etsy.


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Studying trial communities: anthropological and historical inquiries into ethos, politics and economy of medical research in Africa
P. Wenzel Geissler
In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books (2011)
Abstract This article has no associated abstract. (fix it)
Keywords No keywords specified (fix it)
Medical Ethics in Applied Ethics
This entry has no external links. Add one.
Trial Communities: HIV and Therapeutic Citizenship in West Africa.Vin-Kim Nguyen - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 429.
The Historical Interface Between the State and Medical Science in Africa: Kenya's Case.Kenneth S. Ombongi - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 353--372.
Parasite Lost: Remembering Modern Times with Kenyan Government Medical Scientists.P. Wenzel Geissler - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 297--332.
HIV Vaccine Trial Participation in South Africa - an Ethical Assessment.Keymanthri Moodley - 2002 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 27 (2):197 – 215.
Healers and Scientists: The Epistemological Politics of Research About Medicinal Plants in Tanzania, or 'Moving Away From Traditional Medicine'.Stacey A. Langwick - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books.
Writing Knowledge and Acknowledgement: Possibilities in Medical Research.Susan Reynolds Whyte - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books.
Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa.Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.) - 2011 - Berghahn Books.
When Physicians Meet: Local Medical Knowledge and Global Public Goods.Steven Feierman - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 171.
Protecting Communities in Pharmacogenetic and Pharmacogenomic Research.Charles Weijer & P. B. Miller - unknown
Foetuses, Facts and Frictions: Insights From Ultrasound Research in Tanzania.Babette Müller-Rockstroh - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 245.
The Mosquito Taken at the Beer-Hall': Malaria Research and Control on Zambia's Copperbelt.Lyn Schumaker - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 403.
Can One Rely on Knowledge?Marilyn Strathern - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 57.
Contextualising Ethics in AIDS Research: Or, the Morality of Knowledge Production in Ethnographic Fieldwork on 'the Unspeakable'.Hansjörg Dilger - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 99.
Theory From the South, or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa.Jean Comaroff - 2011 - Paradigm Publishers.
Differences in Medicine, Differences in Ethics: Or, When is It Research and When is It Kidnapping, or is That Even the Right Question?Luise White - 2011 - In Wenzel Geissler & Catherine Molyneux (eds.), Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. Berghahn Books. pp. 445.
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BJ's Restaurant Brings Back Two for $25 Deal This Holiday Season! - EAT WITH HOP!
Home / CA / DEALS / BJ's Restaurant Brings Back Two for $25 Deal This Holiday Season!
THE PARTY FOR TWO DEAL IS BACK!
SHARE TWO SOUPS OR SALADS, A MEDIUM DEEP DISH OR TAVERN-CUT PIZZA AND ONE PIZOOKIE® FOR JUST $25!
*All Party for Two offers available through 12/8/2016. No substitutions, please. Price for food does not include beverage, tax or gratuity. Cannot be combined with any other offers or discounts. Items vary by restaurant.
I used to get this deal when I used to go to BJ's a lot! My favorite part was definitely the pizookie! I love the pizookies here! My faves is probably the s'mores and oreo cookie pizookies!


Need a Realtor in Lubbock? Are you thinking about Buying or Selling a home in Lakeridge South? Call or email me if you want the latest info on homes for sale, average prices, days on market, price reductions, or market trends. Contact Randy your Accredited Buyer's Representative (ABR), Accredited Luxury Home Specialist (ALHS) and Certified New Home Specialist (CNHS).
View the Lakeridge South Homes for Sale in Lubbock TX that are currently listed on the market below.
Lakeridge Estates or more commonly called Lakeridge South because of its location South of Lakeridge Country Club Estates. LakeRidge South is nestled in the midst of the fastest growing area of Lubbock south of 98th Street between Topeka and Quaker Avenues. It is right around the corner from excellent schools, numerous churches, prime shopping and the new Market Street Grocery store. You can get anywhere you want within minutes.
LakeRidge South is built upon the foundation of the original LakeRidge development. Started in December, 1977, LakeRidge now encompasses 625 acres and includes over 1,200 homes, an 18-hole golf course, eight tennis courts and a junior size Olympic swimming pool.
Started in late 2002, LakeRidge South encompasses 125 acres with 246 platted lots, with an additional 80-90 lots still to be developed into residential and garden homes. Over 200 homes have been built to date. Market stats for homes sold in Lakeridge south for 2018 are summarized below. Don't hesitate to email or call me for more up to date information at randymulsow@remaxlubbock.com or 806-773-4248.


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I used to watch Zach's dad play soccer in college. I didn't really know his dad personally at the time, persay...I wasn't necessarily considered "cool" back then :)
(not that I am now either...but that's beside the point!)
The odd thing is, I still "feel" like that kid in college...it doesn't "feel" like more than 25 years have passed since that time...and to be honest, it's almost surreal to be watching classmates' children...my own children...getting ready to graduate and head off into their own independent journeys...
OMg, am I becoming my parents now??
What encourages me though...what absolutely fills me with hope and excitement is to see these young adults with such maturity, respectful souls, eager hearts...it's so, so heartening to see that next generation taking up the torch, if you will...continuing with confidence and humor, sincerity and grace, adventure and hope!!!
Zach is just plain fun to be around...he's engaging and puts you at ease immediately. He doesn't take himself too seriously, and yet he has a vision and expectation to which he won't let go by the wayside.
He never has to doubt the support and love that bolsters him from his family...he has a solid group of individuals that are cheering him on from the sidelines...who've invested in him, who've helped shape him...and he doesn't take that for granted.
Honor and responsibility and compassion have been modeled to him from his family generations and it was evident in the way he interacted with me and even down to the sweet hug & picture request with his mom!
I'm excited to see all God has planned for you Zach! Congrats on an amazing Senior year!


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How Fire Emblem Became a Phenomenon
by Gabriella Ekens, Mar 11th 2016
For the longest time, Fire Emblem stood alongside Earthbound as one of those Nintendo franchises people primarily knew from Super Smash Bros. That all changed in 2013, when Fire Emblem: Awakening came out on the 3DS to instant popularity. Despite some more minor past succcesses on GBA and Gamecube, Awakening's release seemed to singlehandedly create a Fire Emblem fandom that hadn't previously existed with such passion outside of Japan. As a fan of the series since childhood, I was actively following the development of this new game long before it came out, and everything I read about it screamed to me that Awakening was going to satisfy something I had always wanted out of Fire Emblem. You see, they were bringing back one of the franchise 's most beloved, discarded features – the character pairing and child-rearing mechanic. When Awakening actually came out, I was satisfied beyond my wildest dreams. So how did Awakening change the franchise so radically while still appeasing an uber-fan like me? Are the 3DS games really a radical departure for the franchise ? The answers all lie in in the dark past of 1994...
But before we revisit that landmark year for the franchise , you might need a brief overview of how we got all the way to FE: Fates in the first place. Although the first Fire Emblem game debuted in 1990, the series only arrived stateside in 2003 with its seventh entry, Rekka no Ken. The next four games were marginally successful overseas, but sales dwindled over time. The unpopular twelfth installment never even arrived in the West. By 2010, things looked bleak for the series. The thirteenth game, Awakening was intended to cap things off. Wanting to go out with a bang, the team made it a distant sequel to the first few games (the ones actually starring Marth) and implemented all of the features they'd dreamed of putting in, but were never able to execute before. The result was a totally revamped art style, improved combat, and a new mix-and-match support system. Blending the historical aspects of Fire Emblem with modern anime sensibilities seemed like the perfect way to send off the franchise , but fate had one final twist in store for the team. Awakening was a massive success – it sold more than three times as much as the previous globally released Fire Emblem. For the first time in years, Fire Emblem was in demand, and the team that intended Awakening to be their final game was commissioned for a lavish new sequel – Fire Emblem: Fates.
This brings us back to 1994, when the fourth Fire Emblem game was released: GENEALOGY OF THE HOLY WAR. Now considered one of the best, it contained an unusual number of anomalous features for the series, like huge maps and a relatively small number of chapters. It's still a great game that's especially worth taking a look at if you're interested in the franchise 's history, and its defining feature was the "support system." Rather than continuing the trend of fairly limited and unimportant side conversations that constitute supports in other games, pretty much any male and female character in Genealogy can get married and produce a child. This was all just build-up to a climactic event – when all of your units die and you need to beat the rest of the game with their kids! All that matchmaking was intended to breed brats with the necessary stats to take down the evil empire and avenge their parents. Despite being a beloved mechanic, this system was abandoned in the series until Awakening, when it was brought back in a modified form. In the vast majority of Fire Emblem games, supports were just bonds you cultivated between a limited number of characters for stat bonuses. If you were lucky, they unlocked cutscenes.Still, they were a side feature and not all that easy to get – I recall many trips through the Tower of Valni in Sacred Stones to grind characters up to A rank.
Genealogy of the Holy War also introduced a more dubious Fire Emblem tradition: brother/sister incest. It's a motif throughout the series that Fates embraced wholeheartedly. But while that game treats the option to marry your (ADOPTED) siblings as a selling point, Genealogy used it as the centerpiece to a tragedy: a brother and sister with recessive evil genes are tricked into marrying so that their child can be the vessel for a dark dragon god.
It's ironic that modern Fire Emblem games are most indebted to Genealogy – in terms of story, they couldn't be more different. Awakening is poppy, fun, and largely comedic in tone. Genealogy, by contrast, is often somber and disturbing. While there's a tragic backstory hiding behind Awakening's main timeline, you can get through the playable story with everyone alive and happy. The same can't be said for Genealogy, where the entire cast of the first half is inevitably captured and executed by the enemy.Despite his noble intentions, the hero's actions only factored into the villain's plot. His son, Seliph, has to undo his father's mistakes in order to topple the evil dragon emperor. It's not a unique story, but this sort of operatic tragedy was largely scrubbed out of Awakening. It reappears in Fates, but even there, you have the option to avoid loss. Sure, you have to annihilate half of your family in either Birthright or Conquest, but Revelations gives you the option to save EVERYBODY – and then throw a beach party! It looks like we won't get any more Fire Emblems that don't give you the option to save everyone and everything, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
One of my favorite things about Fire Emblem is how the series innovates so consistently while remaining informed by its own history. Much like the Final Fantasy series, the gameplay differs significantly in each installment. Over the years, Fire Emblem has become adept at paying homage to its past while reinventing itself to draw in a changing audience. So Awakening (and now Fates) took a fan-favorite mechanic from the series' darkest entry and repurposed it into something that made it inviting again. Everything changed by making this gimmick empowering (you can pick whichever imaginary husband/wife you want) rather than disempowering (the units you spent dozens of hours cultivating are now dead, now here are their spawn). This change rode the tide of a modern gamer and anime fan culture that favors indulgence, immersion, and customization. Players were already going to come up with theories about which characters should kiss and why, so why not just build that into the game? Thus, both lighthearted jokes and semi-serious matchmaking were blended together to create a system where you can SHIP YOURSELF SILLY.
The support system has been a Fire Emblem staple since near the beginning, but no previous entry has handled it as comprehensively as these new 3DS games. First of all, one character's supports are no longer limited to a handful of arbitrarily selected other characters. Rather, they've been expanded to nearly everyone of the opposite sex, and almost all mixed-sex pairings can be romantic. You could hook up pretty much any guy with any girl, and it would affect gameplay in the form of bonuses and a child's stats. Your carefully-selected couples will have babies that you raise to fight for your army with stats and class options that reflect their parents. In terms of pure mechanics, it's a min-maxer's paradise.
Of course, stats aren't the only thing that matters on the soldier farm. Each couple has unique "support conversations" that allow you to see how they get along with their potential breeding partner. While they all end up falling in love by the end, support convos reveal a couple's dynamic. Players can choose who they want based on their own romantic values, creating an incredibly satisfying, personalized experience. In Awakening, you can give Lord Chrom a childhood friend romance with tomboy knight Sully, or make him fall in love at first sight with the foreign dancer Olivia. You can also claim him yourself, becoming his queen.
It's no coincidence that this game was also one of the first to include a player avatar. Via your customizable self-insert (who is, of course, a mysterious amnesiac chosen one) you can get with any of the characters, even the ones that aren't normally up for marriage. These characters span a vast array of anime fetishes, from your run-of-the-mill tsundere to bunny people to enormous warlord lobster-men.
There's a constant tension between which pairings you might like best and which will produce the best stats. There's an addictive quality to balancing these factors – I've spent a frankly embarrasing amount of time debating who should get with who in my various playthroughs. "Virion and Sully are the cutest together," I would argue, "but archer is a bad reclass option for Kjelle. Gregor/Nowi makes for a strong Nah, but I'm concerned about the age difference there. Henry and Sumia would be cute, but then who am I going to marry off to Lissa…" I have entire excel documents of this nonsense, and I can prove it.
The expanded support system was a ton of work. Fire Emblem games aren't known for their wordcounts – your average unit will be lucky to have more than one joint dialogue and a death quote in the story campaign. Each single game will have dozens of characters, so four skits per male/female pair is a lot to add. This type of development definitely didn't factor into earlier Fire Emblems, where characters often amounted to Guy With Axe, his twin brother, Other Guy with Axe, and Guy Whose Name is Guard Spelled Backwards.
Because of this, Fire Emblem had to substantially improve its characterization per unit. My experience with Fates so far has been punctuated by many entertaining, funny, and even genuinely touching character interactions. My favorite character is Rhajat, Hayato's child with a striking resemblance to Awakening's Tharja. While I found Tharja to be a somewhat cliché stalker chick, her reincarnation in Rhajat has done a lot to redeem the character, making her out as an awkwardly brooding but ultimately well-meaning mall goth. Via their supports, her mother realizes that her daughter's dark proclivities don't make her evil, and the two come to terms regarding her father's extended abscences in her life. Beyond that, every single interaction she's had with another character has left me laughing out loud at least once.
This all culminates in a fairly nuanced portrait of an individual, and I was quite attached to Rhajat by the end, even though she's ultimately a pawn in a giant game of chess. It really hurts to make an enemy of her parents in Conquest.
So Fire Emblem made something that fans would inevitably do – ship characters – into a game mechanic, and your own self-insert has the first choice. It was not only a brilliant move, it was the #1 thing that revitalized interest in the franchise (in my opinion), along with new FE's totally revamped aesthetic. Fire Emblem has gone through a number of art styles thorughout the years, but throughout its "dark period" of waning popularity, it went for a more pseudo-realistic style, with characters that looked like lumpy claymation dolls. While Fire Emblem has always had impressive sprite work, the look of these games is more "Crusader Kings 2" than " Nintendo handheld title." By contrast, Awakening and Fates go in the absolute opposite direction of being anime as all hell. Do you want maids and butlers? Well, Fates has maids and butlers! Do you want your imouto to call you onii-san or onii-chan? Then choose between the PATH OF HOSHIDO and PATH OF NOHR. Ninjas? Check. Kemonomimi? Check. Scenes where the joke is that a woman can't cook? Check-check-checkeroo. The only thing more anime than modern Fire Emblem is the Shin Megami Tensei/Fire Emblem crossover Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, which is like overdosing on the distilled essence of Akihabara.
In many ways, Fire Emblem is the ideal long-running series for me. It's constantly experimental, keeping up with the times while also remaining aware of what people liked in previous games, and Fates is the ideal synthesis of those decades of experimentation. Rather than the minimal differences I've come to expect out of split version games (looking at you, Pokémon ) Birthright, Conquest, and Revelations are all vastly different experiences that represent different versions of the franchise . Birthright is an Awakening-esque newbie-friendly grindfest, while Conquest is a classic limited-resources puzzlebox, and Revelations incorporates some area gimmicks into a fully realized melodramatic fantasy story. I love Fire Emblem games both new and old, and I'm excited to see a new audience discover the series now.
So when did you get into Fire Emblem? Which one is your favorite, and what do you think of the shipping mechanic? And of course, did you go the path of Hoshido or the path of Nohr?
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7 digital health startups you need to watch in 2021
May 21, 2021 By Nancy Crotti
Cognito Therapeutics
(Image courtesy of Cognito Therapeutics)
Cognito Therapeutics (Boston and San Francisco) won FDA breakthrough designation in January for its lead product, a non-invasive neurostimulation device that uses visual and auditory stimulation technology to treat Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
The breakthrough program will give Cognito priority review and greater communication with the FDA about device development and clinical trial protocols, through to commercialization decisions.
MIT brain and cognitive sciences professors Li-Huei Tsai and Ed Boyden launched Cognito Therapeutics in 2016. The company recently reported the results of a pair of small clinical studies.
The Phase 2 Overture study enrolled 76 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, randomized to receive either gamma frequency neuromodulation or a placebo over a six-month period. Investigators evaluated cognitive and functional abilities and brain volumetric changes. Over the 6-month period, patients in the treatment group exhibited an 84% slowing of functional decline in scores on the ADCS-ADL Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study–Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADCS-ADL) as well as an 83% slowing in memory and cognitive decline as measured by Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) scores compared to sham. Overture study investigators found that the treatment resulted in a 61% reduction in whole-brain atrophy and volumetric loss associated with Alzheimer's progression.
The Phase 2 Flicker study assessed the safety and tolerability of the digital therapeutic in 10 patients with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's. The study found that not only was the treatment safe and tolerable, but that the gamma frequency therapeutic intervention evoked the desired synchronous firing of brain cells across the brain, the company reported. That action stimulated changes in signaling molecules within the brain cells that led to changes in the cells' immune profiles. The study also demonstrated improvements in functional connectivity between key brain regions, as shown by fMRI.
Cognito has also been on a hiring spree, just this month adding chief commercial officer Everett Crosland, who most recently served in the same role at Applied VR, and 30-year finance veteran Jonathan Lieber as CFO.
Dr. Allan Levey, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurology at Emory University and Director of the Emory Goizueta Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, said in a news release that he is encouraged by Cognito's approach. "This strategy translating recent advances in non-invasive modulation of brain activity with sensory stimulation with light and sound has the potential to be an urgently needed safe, non-invasive and effective treatment for millions of individuals with Alzheimer's disease."
Cognito declined to release its funding, but a spokesperson said its lead investor is Morningside Ventures.
iRhythm CEO considers costs on the path to profitability
Abbott CEO touts future of biowearables in first-ever healthcare company keynote at CES
How Abbott seeks to improve care, health inequities for people with cardiovascular disease


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Q: Regarding basis vectors of a Lie algebra. From the book "Introduction to Lie Algebras" by Erdmann & Wildon:

If $L$ is a Lie algbra over a field $F$ with basis $(x_1,\cdots, x_n)$, then $[-,-]$ is complete determined by the products $[x_i,x_j]$. We define scalars $a_{ij}^k\in F$ such that $$[x_i,x_j]=\sum_{k=1}^{n}a_{ij}^{k}x_k$$ The $a_{ij}^{k}$ are the structure constants of $L$ with respect to this basis.

What does "completey determined by the products $[x_i,x_j]$" mean? Does it mean that $\forall a,b\in L$ $$[a,b]=\sum_{i,j,t}^{n,n,n^2}c_{t}[x_i,x_j]=\sum_{i,j,t}^{n,n,n^2}c_{t}\Bigl(\sum_{k=1}^{n}a_{ij}^kx_k\Bigr)$$ where $c_t \in F$ ?

A: A typical element of $L$ is $u=\sum_i c_i x_i$, and I suppose another typical element of $L$ is $v=\sum_j d_j x_j$. Then
$$[u,v]=\sum_{i,j}c_id_j[x_i,x_j]
=\sum_k\left(\sum_{i,j}a_{i,j}^kc_id_j\right)x_k.$$
This is nothing more than the bi-linearity of the Lie bracket.

A: It means that there is only one Lie algebra structure $[\cdot,\cdot]$ on $L$ for which it is true that$$(\forall i,j\in\{1,2,\ldots,n\}):[x_i,x_j]=\sum_{k=1}^na_{ij}^kx_k.$$This follows from the fact that $\{x_1,\ldots,x_n\}$ is a basis an that the Lie bracket is bilinear.


Shown above: Pcap of the 2016-05-26 traffic filtered in Wireshark.
Shown above: Pcap of the 2016-05-27 traffic (first run) filtered in Wireshark.
Shown above: Pcap of the 2016-05-27 traffic (second run) filtered in Wireshark.


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[ November 24, 2021 ] Ethiopia on the brink of collapse	Politics
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After Ebola, ban on pregnant pupils sours return to school in Sierra Leone
September 13, 2016 Magazine 0
Salamatu Bangura, 17, Rugiatu Conteh, 17, and Ishata Kaagbo, 15, stand outside of their school in Kambia, Sierra Leone, September 7, 2016. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Kieran Guilbert
"Poverty and sexual violence fuelled teenage pregnancies, but too many people see it from another perspective"
Beaten at home by her parents and unable to go to school due to the Ebola outbreak which devastated Sierra Leone, 15-year-old Rugiatu Conteh had nowhere to go, and no one she could turn to.
Until she met Abdul, a charming man in his early twenties.
"He was kind and helped me to get by, at first," she said.
"But he changed when he learned I'd got belly (become pregnant). Then he disappeared," Conteh, now 17, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the northern district of Kambia.
Struggling to survive without Abdul, or her parents who had died of Ebola, the pregnant teenager took solace in resuming her education when schools reopened in April last year, after nine months of closure in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
But her sense of hope was short-lived. Along with thousands of other expectant girls, Conteh was banned from going to school by the government when classes resumed. Many girls missed entrance exams for universities and colleges as a result.
The education ministry said last year allowing the girls to go to school would undermine their ability to do well in class, expose them to ridicule and encourage others to become pregnant.
"We are angry about the ban – it wasn't our fault we had so many problems during Ebola," said Salamatu Bangura, 17, who gave birth to a boy last year. She had slept with an older boy who paid for school supplies and books her family could not afford.
Bai Turai, 18, addresses other members of the Rokupr Bike Riders Association in Kambia, Sierra Leone, September 7, 2016. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Kieran Guilbert.
The government and United Nations last year launched alternative classes for pregnant students, which will continue to cater for those who fall foul of the ban as Sierra Leone starts its first full academic year since the Ebola outbreak.
Yet countless girls will suffer stigma and discrimination unless the ban is lifted in the West African nation where only six in 10 girls aged 15 to 24 are literate, compared with three-quarters of boys in that age range, human rights activists say.
"Pregnant girls are being denied key chances to move forward with their lives, and to ensure early pregnancy does not become the event that determines the rest of their lives," said Sabrina Mahtani, a researcher at Amnesty International.
"NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING"
Even before Ebola broke out in late 2013, Sierra Leone had one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. One in four girls between the ages of 15 and 19 had children or were pregnant, figures from the 2013 government health survey show.
Rape, abusive relationships, and sex in exchange for money were rife in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, fuelling a spike in teenage pregnancies, several aid agencies said.
Some 18,000 teenage girls became pregnant during the world's worst recorded Ebola outbreak, which killed nearly 4,000 people in Sierra Leone, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).
"Poverty and sexual violence fuelled teenage pregnancies, but too many people see it from another perspective," said Wongani Grace Taulo of the U.N's children's agency (UNICEF).
"They say the girls are going out, looking, begging for sex. It is so frustrating that these girls are seen as in the wrong."
A poster for the Rokupr Bike Riders Association at their headquarters in Kambia, Sierra Leone, September 7, 2016. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Kieran Guilbert
Leaning against the wall outside a crowded classroom, with three or four pupils huddled around each desk, Ishata Kaagbo laid the blame for her pregnancy on men from local biker gangs.
"One of the boys would drive me around, give me money for lunch, and look after me," the 15-year-old mother said, who has just returned to school with her classmates Conteh and Bangura.
At the nearby Rokupr Bike Riders Association, dozens of young men, shouting to be heard, traded insults and teased those who had not been "potent enough" to impregnate a local girl.
"A lot of girls don't get enough support from their parents, so we help them, and they do something confidential for us in return," said 18-year-old Bai Turai. "Nothing is for nothing."
Amid the back-and-forth banter, some of the men said they felt forced to abandon the girls when they became pregnant, as they could not afford to look after them and were afraid of being attacked or taken to the police by the girl's relatives.
Pregnant girls and young mothers in Sierra Leone have traditionally been discouraged from going to school, said Yusuf Kamara, a state representative and head of education for Kambia.
"Girls are not meant to expose their pregnancy," Kamara said. "The government's ban is the will of the people."
Yet across lush and leafy Kambia, a mainly Muslim state along Sierra Leone's border with Guinea, many teachers and parents firmly disagree.
"We want our girls to go to school – to have better lives than us," said 62-year-old Soria Bangura, a father of three.
Teacher Alpha Kamara said he and his colleagues "swept the ban under the carpet" by allowing their pregnant students to finish their exams, and giving them tutoring outside of school.
"We couldn't leave so many young people behind," he said.
Rugiatu Conteh, a 17-year-old mother, poses for a photo outside of her school in Kambia, Sierra Leone, September 7, 2016. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Kieran Guilbert
After the ban, many girls said they were mocked and shunned by their peers, while some were forced to undergo public pregnancy tests, such as having their breasts and stomachs felt by teachers and giving urine samples, Amnesty said.
To combat this, and ensure pregnant girls did not miss a year's schooling, organisations like UNICEF set up after-hours sessions in schools and classes at separate learning centres.
Giggling and exchanging shy smiles, the girls, now back at school, recalled sharing tips and stories about being pregnant. "Most of our babies' fathers ran away," Bangura said. "At least we had each other – we were all going through the same thing."
Some of the girls were frustrated at being forced to repeat the year that they completed in the alternative classes.
"The government want to punish the girls by setting them back a year," Taulo of UNICEF said. "Who knows when the state will stop making a moral example of them and end the ban?"
But nothing could trouble the grin on Conteh's face as she spoke about returning to school, and her hopes for the future.
"I can't wait to go back to class," she said. "After all, I'm going to be Sierra Leone's first female president."
Source: http://news.trust.org
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Chemical Weapons: Nerve Agents. < http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/weap.html > (February 11, 2003).
Material Safety Data Sheet: Lethal Nerve Agent VX. < http://www.ilpi.com/msds/vx.html > (February 11, 2003).
United States Army. Chemical Agent Fact Sheet: VX. < http://www.sbccom.army.mil/services/edu/vx.htm > (February 11, 2003).


One of the main focus of Japanese Words has always been about learning new Japanese words. In the beginning you need to know a certain number of words to communicate in Japanese and as you get to a more advanced level you will need to more words to express more complex ideas and feelings.
Today I stumbled across a site that has a number of common Japanese words such as numbers, colors, common Japanese phrases, animals, and other Japanese vocabulary. They also have sound.
You can check out the Japanese page here. In case you are studying another language as well, you can find other languages here.
Good luck and let me know what you think!
I love japanese hehehe pls….whatch disney channel!!!
i love anime! its the best thing ever!!!


Swedish company Norrlands Trä produces durable wood wall panels and hardwood floors. Since its inception in 1964, Norrland's has deliberately invested in development and now that they renew their brand, they've asked interior designer Lotta Agaton (she designed the new cabinets and kitchen fronts) to help them with the development of their new product catalog, in witch she demonstrates new levels of durable interior design.
During the collaboration Lotta indicated that she is looking forward to the current trend of decorating with natural materials, and that she's happy to use wood, stone and textiles in her work. She wants to inspire everyone to use wood in a new way and that It's fun working with materials that have so many uses. The photorealistic 3D visualizations (made by Illusive images) of this collaboration definitely inspired me… If I ever could find a house with such windows and beautiful space! The created warm minimalist atmosphere looks amazing dont you think so?


text:
Csehország
 Rychnov na Moravě, település a Svitavyi járásban
 Rychnov nad Kněžnou, település a Rychnov nad Kněžnou-i járásban
 Rychnov u Jablonce nad Nisou, település a Jablonec nad Nisou-i járásban
 Dolní Rychnov, település a Sokolovi járásban
 Nový Rychnov, település a Pelhřimovi járásban
 Rychnov, Krouna településrésze a Chrudimi járásban
 Rychnov, Verneřice településrésze a Děčíni járásban
 Rychnov nad Malší, Dolní Dvořiště településrésze a Český Krumlov-i járásban
 Rychnov u Nových Hradů, Horní Stropnice településrésze a České Budějovice-i járásban

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


ECONO is a Creative Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme built using HTML5/CSS3 features and suitable for creative companies, agencies, and freelancers which need a professional way to showcase their projects, services, and sell their products.
The Events Calendar WordPress Plugin Support.
=== Added: New 7 Demo Pages(construction,fashion,lawyer,medical,real estate,restaurant and wedding).
=== Added: New Featured box Style.
=== Added New Retina logo Option in theme options.
=== Update: WordPress 5 compatibility.
=== Update: WP Backery Page Builder, Slider Revolution and Econo Core Plugins.
=== Fix: Theme fonts loading is more faster.
=== Fix: Some minor issues with php 7.
=== Fix: Some minor css issues.
=== Added: The Events Calendar Support.
=== Updated: Revolution Slider, WP Backery Page Builder and Econo Core plugins.
=== Fixed: Social Share counter in single post.
=== Fixed: Some Minor CSS issues.
=== Fix: Post Icon design in blog listing.
=== Fix: Social Icons issue with Firefox.
=== Fix: Portfolio single info issues.
=== Fix: Child theme case sensitive issues with installation.


With decades of experience, intense research and a properly collaborative process, we help businesses nurture sticky, long-term customer relationships.
Every project is different, but the journey looks like this.
Our first job is to understand your business, your customer relationships, and the outcomes you're looking for, alongside your broader business strategy and goals. Next, we'll likely look at how your customer contact tools and processes are helping you reach those goals. We'll suggest a way forward – and our advice won't cost you a penny.
We'll then use what we've learned about you and your customers, as well as your employees' feedback and ideas, together with our broad experience and technical 'know how', to make pragmatic, credible suggestions for improvements. We might recommend something 'off the shelf' (from us or a partner), or perhaps customise something just for you. Whatever we suggest, it will be designed to achieve the best business outcomes whilst keeping existing investments, cost and risk firmly in check.
Your customer relationships are absolutely vital, and changes that affect their experience shouldn't be made lightly. That's why we'll often build a prototype, provide a proof of concept, or run a pilot to enable stakeholders to be comfortable with the eventual solution before full roll out. We'll be careful to minimise your initial outlay and always be upfront about costs as things progress. Wherever appropriate, we'll also provide access to reference clients for even more peace of mind.
Once you're happy with the way forward and the performance of any 'proof of concept' we'll get together to agree objectives, success criteria, key deliverables, costs, and timeframes. Throughout the project we'll do everything we can to make sure you enjoy working with us and together we create something of real value to you and your customers.
The solution's working perfectly and we're all getting on like a house on fire – but this is only the beginning. From here on we will work closely with you to keep testing, iterating and improving your solution – we're agile but we won't change anything without agreement from you. Along with that, we'll keep you up to date with new tech and ways of working, so you're always ahead of the game.
Your customers are your highest priority and your ROI is ours. We spec solutions that pay for themselves fast, and we like to understand the value equation before we bill for anything. We invest our time and expertise in the continual pursuit of your best business outcomes.
The contact in ContactPartners means anything – absolutely anything – that involves crossing the boundary between your business and your customers. From operator support to back-end analytics, and everything in between.
There's plenty of strategic rewards up for grabs with better customer contact.
Creating the right connections with your customers and finding ways in which you can help them usually means the money will follow.
We've seen time and time again how efficient systems save everyone's time, reduce errors, and minimise follow up actions.
Happy customers are loyal customers and that means they'll stay longer, buy more and improve your NPS in the process.
more engaged customers. We think of it as boosting customer love.
All this adds up to the ultimate strategic reward: longer-lasting relationships with happier, more engaged customers. We think of it as boosting customer love.
We've cut our teeth in the most regulated environment on the planet: banking.
We have achieved great things with clients in other sectors, but the financial services sector has always been our bread and butter.


Connecting with Linda taught me that there is always a better way no matter where you at right now in your life. Her personal story is just that, finding a better way of self-healing. Something each one of us, always can do, is to heal ourselves.
My name is Linda Frankson born and raised in Canada, I was the second oldest of 6 siblings of Canadian descent.
My learning curve in alternative holistic venture started way back in the early 1980s. At the time I was living in Costa Rica Central America. I met a Latin American of Costa Rica and moved to San Jose, Costa Rica, in 1973 we were married.
My daughter was born in 1980. She was brought into the world through many hours of labor, then finally she had to be delivered through cesarian birth and because of this, she had suffered from oxygen deficiency that imparted her for the rest of her Life.
My youngest sibling came to Costa Rica in 1975 to finish there his education. In the early 1980's he met a very prominent Acupuncturist and became very interested in the art of Acupuncture.
This professional took him under his wing and he became his prodigy. Throughout his learning period, I became very involved in helping him and also learning about this method.
I learned the art of acupuncture and became, as well, very interested in acupressure, which uses the same meridian points but instead of the use of needles, you use the pressure of your fingers. These were skills that I have learned but, back then, I never have put them into practice. We had many conversations on the art of healing and how the body had its own capacity to heal itself.
I was a beautician by trade and had my own salon and my daughter to bring up including her learning disability. This kept me very occupied by learning to cope with bringing up my daughter so that she would be able to have a proactive life.
Not knowing then that all that I had been given would become a way of life at a future date.
I use the word given because I never had a formal education other than my degree as a beautician, only my ability to understand that there is a greater power than our own.
I divorced my, then husband of 25 years of marriage, and was remarried for a very short time, because I became a widow and moved back to Canada in 2001.
When I returned back to Canada I was introduced to EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), with the use of tapping on the same meridians as in Acupuncture.
Then, later on in life, I found Kinesiology, commonly known as muscle testing. Through understanding the body and the marvelous wonders of how the body has the capacity of healing itself, which goes far beyond that of Western Medicine.
How does all this relate to my family story?
My daughter was left in Costa Rica with her father so as I could get myself situated. That didn't last long because she was abused and became pregnant.
My grandson was born in Canada in 2003, a very healthy, active baby and I have become a mother again. Those were the happiest days of my life until a fatal accident happened, just a few days before he turned four years old.
He took a blow to the head, causing internal bleeding just above his right temple that could have been fatal. But, because of the rapid action of the Paramedics and the Doctors to stabilize him and finding a Neurosurgeon that was on call in a nearby hospital, his life was saved.
However, that wasn't the end, we had to wait and see if there were going to be percussions from the trauma to his head and there was, causing a learning disability. He was put through many tests for a diagnosis but nothing was conclusive. The medical world couldn't give me answers because they didn't know themselves how much damage was done, only time would tell.
The same as with my daughter, only time would tell. From kindergarten to grade 5 he was in an oblivious world and gaining a terrific amount of weight, and by the time he reaches grade five he was wearing a size 38 man's pants. This is where my story begins. "Finding a better way".
There are many trails and tribulations to this story. And I have documented them on my site Always A Better Way (As Mother Nature Intended).
Through all this, my own health deteriorated. The only way I can think of sharing my story is by inviting you to visit my site. There is an incredible event that took place that turned all my work around and it takes me back to the beginning of 1980 with learning the art of Acupuncture and Acupressure and how it all tied into EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and Applied Kinesiology (Muscle testing).
All the work that has gone into my research has not been in vain, it has taught me a lot and gave me a road to follow and sharing our Story in hopes that it will inspire others that there is a better way that our body has the incredible power to heal itself.
I would like to take this opportunity in words of gratitude for posting my story on your site in helping others we are helping ourselves live a better life.
There is always a better way to whatever we do, seek and you shall find, ask and it will be revealed to you. I live by this and it has been my guidelines for finding a better way.
You are very welcome and it is my pleasure to host your personal story and your better ways on self-healing.


The origin of the Château, seat of the de Vogüé family, can be traced back to Raymond I de Vogüé at the end of the 12th Century. In the 14th Century the Château passed into the hands of the Lords of La Gorce, then de Rochemure du Besset. The lattter transformed it into a large quadranguler building flanked by four towers.
Great changes followed after 1603 when the de Vogüé family took back possession of the Château. Adopting the Renaissance style, this brought immense transformations, such as the creation of the hanging garden. Thanks to the de Vogüés, the old fortress became a luxurious dwelling that reached its peak at the beginning of the 18th Century.
In 1739, Charles de Vogüé moved to the Aubenas Chaâeau, so abandoning the family seat, which remained unoccupied for a century. After the Revolution, the Château was sold as state property but was then bought back in 1840 by the Marquis Léonce de Vogüé. He saved it from ruin and leased it to the nuns of St. Joseph in Aubenas who used it as a school until 1960.
The Château was opened to the public in 1971, with the creation of the Association "Vivante Ardèche". The de Vogüé family made the Château available to the Association. Today this collaboration has made the historic site into a cultural high point in the Department of the Ardèche.


You can see a Hydro Tek up close and personal at the following trade shows and expos. Learn about our pressure washers, surface cleaners and water recycle systems. Meet helpful and knowledgeable Hydro Tek staff to learn about the various applications where Hydro Tek equipment is used. Check back as the dates get closer for more details.