text:
p. - 1530
Julia Ann Peck1
b. August 23, 1832, d. October 30, 1907
Reference: 0226eebs
THIS LISTING HAS NOT YET BEEN AUDITED, AND MAY NOT BE ACCURATE; A.
Julia Ann Peck was born on August 23, 1832 in Chateaugay, Franklin County, New York, daughter of Wm. and Mary Ann Peck.1
Julia married Cyrus W. Colby, son of Hezekiah Colby, on October 17, 1850 in Lowell, Massachusetts, by Daniel C. Eddy, Baptist clergyman.1
Julia died on October 30, 1907 in Chateaugay, Franklin County, New York, at age 75.
Last Edited: 19 Jan 2017
Family: Silas W. Colby b. 1826/27, d. before 1880
Augusta Colby+ b. April, 1852, d. December 1, 1926
Emma Colby2 b. 1853
Walter W. Colby+2 b. July, 1854, d. July 30, 1932
Adalaide Colby2 b. 1857
Frank Colby2 b. September, 1859, d. March 31, 1881
Henry Colby+2 b. March 25, 1863
Lucy Colby3 b. 1866/67
Effie Colby4 b. 1870/71
Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1910, , Vol: 46 ; Page: 99.
Ira B. Peck, A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Joseph Peck, , at https://books.google.com/books?id=u1_YBp_mnkMC . Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, (1868) , p. 188.
"United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8X6-G9L : 17 October 2014), Silas Colby, New York, United States; citing p. 18, family 131, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 552,436.
"United States Census, 1880," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MZ8Q-K4S : 15 July 2016), Julia Colby, Chateaugay, Franklin, New York, United States; citing enumeration district ED 78, sheet 510A, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 0833; FHL microfilm 1,254,833.
If you are related to this person, please consider joining the Kin 'o Mine Facebook group, or email me at Steven G. Levine
Rebecca Peck
b. perhaps 1746
Rebecca Peck was born perhaps 1746.
Rebecca married Isaac Trowbridge, son of John Trowbridge and Mary Comstock, on February 17, 1767 in Danbury, Connecticut.
Last Edited: 20 Apr 2010
Family: Isaac Trowbridge b. about 1744, d. October, 1829
Rebecca Trowbridge b. perhaps 1768
Polly Trowbridge b. July 12, 1769, d. January 19, 1770
Stephen Trowbridge b. June 17, 1773
Polly Trowbridge b. August 7, 1775, d. December 3, 1775
Joseph Trowbridge b. May 19, 1780
Sarah Peck1
b. 1658/59, d. May 20, 1696
Sarah Peck was born in 1658/59, daughter of James Peck of New Haven.1
Sarah married Ebenezer Clark, son of James Clark, on May 6, 1678 in Wallingford, Connecticut, as his first wife.2
Sarah died on May 20, 1696.1
Last Edited: 3 Oct 2015
Family: Ebenezer Clark b. November 29, 1651, d. April 30, 1721
Caleb Clark1 b. March 6, 1678/79
Sarah Clark1 b. August 22, 1681
Josiah Clark+1 b. February 6, 1683
Steven Clark1 b. December 18, 1686
Hannah Clark+3 b. August 18, 1689
Sylvanus Clark3 b. February 1, 1691/92
Obadiah Clark3 b. October 17, 1694, d. before April 30, 1721
Charles Henry Stanley Davis, Early Families of Wallingford, Connecticut, , at https://books.google.com/books?id=QjNVJnNF7_MC . Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co, (1979) , p. 669.
WALLINGFORD, NEW HAVEN CO., CT, VITAL RECORDS FROM BARBOUR, 1670-1850 [Transcribed by Coralynn Brown], at http://dunhamwilcox.net/ct/wallingford_ct4.htm
Susan A. Peck1
Susan A. Peck was born perhaps 1829.1
Susan married Nicholas Hinman, son of Simeon Hinman and Phebe Wanzer, on March 14, 1852.1
Last Edited: 9 Jan 2012
Royal Ralph Hinman, A catalogue of the names of the early Puritan settlers of the colony of Connecticut: with the time of their arrival in the country and colony, their standing in society, place of residence, condition in life, where from, business, &c., as far as is found on record, , at https://books.google.com/books?id=KTkBAAAAYAAJ . Hartford: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, (1852) , p. 823.
Silas Peckham1
Silas Peckham was born perhaps 1819.
Silas married Susan Whitcomb, daughter of Samuel Whitcomb and Annis Rand, on August 13, 1848 in Ashby, Massachusetts.2
Last Edited: 28 Dec 2021
"Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NWFN-SBC : 10 December 2014), Susan Whitcomb Peckham, 02 Nov 1903; citing Worcester, Massachusetts, v 60 cn 115, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 2,069,264.
"Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHPF-2P6 : 13 July 2016), Silas Peckham and Susan Whitcomb, 13 Aug 1848; citing Marriage, Ashby, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States, , town clerk offices, Massachusetts; FHL microfilm 868,697.
Eleanor Pedrick1
b. 1786/87, d. September 19, 1825
Eleanor Pedrick was born in 1786/87.2
Eleanor married William Lee, son of Col. William Raymond Lee and Mary Lemmon, on April 23, 1811, as his third wife.1
Eleanor died on September 19, 1825 in Salem, Massachusetts, of dysentery.2
She was buried in Marblehead, Massachusetts.2
Family: William Lee b. November 29, 1770, d. February 2, 1851
Annis Pulling Lee3 b. 1811/12
Elizabeth Lemmon Lee3 b. 1811/12
Isannah Greele Lee3 b. 1812/13
Hannah Dearborn Lee3 b. 1814/15
Eleanor Pedrick Lee3 b. 1815/16
Joseph Lemmon Lee4 b. 1819/20
Caroline Matilda Lee5 b. 1822, d. May 13, 1893
Vital Records of Marblehead, Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849, Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, (1903) , Vol. 2, p. 260.
Vital Records of Salem, Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849, Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, (1916) , Vol. 5, p. 398.
"Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NWQW-9YY : 10 December 2014), Caroline M. Lee Wheeler, 13 May 1893; citing Peabody, Massachusetts, v 436 p 540, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 961,509.
Annes Peerce1
Relationship: 10th great-grandmother of Steven George Levine
Annes Peerce was born perhaps 1567.1
Annes married John Perry on October 5, 1585 in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, England.1
Family: John Perry b. perhaps 1565
Mary Perry+1 b. June 27, 1602, d. October 15, 1659
Sandra Sutphin Olney, Passengers on the "Lion" From England to Boston, 1632, and five generations of their descendants,, , at https://books.google.com/books?id=l-NM0IyRpREC . Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, Inc., (2008) , p. 299.
(?) Peirce1
b. May, 1777, d. May, 1777
Father: Ephraim Peirce1 b. August 12, 1729, d. January 16, 1790
Mother: Lydia White1 b. August 14, 1733, d. May 6, 1777
Relationship: 4th cousin 6 times removed of Steven George Levine
(?) died in May, 1777.1
(?) Peirce was born in May, 1777.1
(?) Peirce was the child of Ephraim Peirce and Lydia White.1
Henry Bond, Genealogies of the Families and Descendants of the Early Settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts, , at https://archive.org/details/genealogiesoffam121bond . Boston: Little,Brown & Company, (1855) , p. 398.
Abner Peirce1
b. September 17, 1766
Abner Peirce was born on September 17, 1766 in Waltham, Massachusetts.1
He was the son of Ephraim Peirce and Lydia White.1
http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Middlesex/Waltham/Images/Waltham_B070.shtml
Amos Peirce1
b. August 9, 1763, d. 1803
Father: Dea. John Peirce1 b. April 4, 1718, d. July 26, 1788
Mother: Hannah Hinman1 b. March 12, 1720/21, d. July 16, 1770
Relationship: 2nd cousin 7 times removed of Steven George Levine
Amos Peirce was born on August 9, 1763.1
He was the son of Dea. John Peirce and Hannah Hinman.1
Amos died in 1803, unmarried.1
Last Edited: 13 Aug 2015
Frederick Clifton Pierce, Peirce Genealogy: Being the Record of the Posterity of John Pers, , at https://books.google.com/books?id=xt0UAAAAYAAJ . Worcester: Press of Chas. Hamilton, (1880) , p. 53.
b. March 27, 1761
Amos Peirce was born on March 27, 1761 in Waltham, Massachusetts.1
Avis Peirce1
b. January 17, 1768
Avis Peirce was born on January 17, 1768 in Waltham, Massachusetts.1
She was the daughter of Ephraim Peirce and Lydia White.1
Benjamin Peirce1
Benjamin Peirce was born in 1649, son of Anthony of Watertown.2
Benjamin Peirce lived at Watertown, Massachusetts.2
Benjamin married Hannah Brooks, daughter of Joshua Brooks and Hannah Mason, on January 15, 1678.1
Family: Hannah Brooks b. perhaps 1659
Hannah Peirce2 b. December 25, 1679
Benjamin Peirce2 b. April 29, 1682
Grace Peirce2 b. June 4, 1685
Sarah Peirce2 b. January 1, 1688
Samuel Peirce2 b. August 22, 1689
Lydia Peirce2 b. October 3, 1692
Hannah Peirce2 b. January 2, 1700
James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary or The first Settlers of New England showing Three Generations or Those who came Before May, 1692 on the Basis of Farmer's Register, (1862) , vol. 1, p. 261.
b. April 29, 1682
Father: Benjamin Peirce1 b. 1649
Mother: Hannah Brooks1 b. perhaps 1659
Benjamin Peirce was born on April 29, 1682.1
He was the son of Benjamin Peirce and Hannah Brooks.1
Easther Peirce1
Father: Joseph Peirce1 b. November 23, 1724
Mother: Ruth White1 b. March 17, 1727/28
Easther Peirce was born on September 17, 1751 in Waltham, Massachusetts.1
She was the daughter of Joseph Peirce and Ruth White.1
Elijah Peirce1
b. January 1, 1765
Elijah Peirce was born on January 1, 1765 in Waltham, Massachusetts.1
Ephraim Peirce1
b. August 12, 1729, d. January 16, 1790
Ephraim Peirce was born on August 12, 1729 in Watertown, Massachusetts, son of Isaac and Susanna (Bemis) Peirce.2
Ephraim married Lydia White, daughter of Andrew White and Jane Dix, on May 8, 1753 in Watertown, Massachusetts, as his first wife.1
Ephraim married on November 5, 1778 in Lexington, Massachusetts, to Lydia Parker, as his second wife.3
Ephraim died on January 16, 1790 in Lexington, Massachusetts, at age 60.4
Family: Lydia White b. August 14, 1733, d. May 6, 1777
Lois Peirce5 b. February 2, 1754
Lucy Peirce5 b. March 29, 1755
Ephraim Peirce5 b. September 27, 1757
Reuben Peirce5 b. March 18, 1760
Amos Peirce6 b. March 27, 1761
Lydia Peirce5 b. April 15, 1763
Elijah Peirce6 b. January 1, 1765
Abner Peirce6 b. September 17, 1766
Avis Peirce6 b. January 17, 1768
Jain Peirce5 b. February 18, 1769
Jonas Peirce5 b. July 24, 1771
Loring Peirce5 b. September 18, 1775
(?) Peirce7 b. May, 1777, d. May, 1777
http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Middlesex/Watertown/Images/WatertownV3_134.shtml
http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Middlesex/Waltham/Images/Waltham_M202.shtml
http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Middlesex/Lexington/Images/Lexington_D194.shtml


text:
Governor vetoes millions proposed for marijuana research
(WJHG)
By Mike Vasilinda
Published: Jun. 5, 2017 at 6:01 PM CDT
Among the $409 million in projects vetoed by Governor Rick Scott are three line items that would have provided just over $3 million to Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of Florida. The budget called for the money to be used to begin studying medical marijuana.
Because marijuana is considered a dangerous drug under federal law, research on how cannabis works and any side effects are few and far between. State Senator Bill Galvano pushed for lawmakers to change the status quo and get answers.
"I want to know the real effects. What are the negative effects? What are the downsides?" asked Senator Galvano in May.
Lawmakers responded with $2 million going to the University of Florida and just over $1 million to Moffitt Cancer Center, but the funding didn't make it past the governor.
In vetoing the marijuana research cash, Governor Scott wrote that UF and Moffitt both had plenty of money to fund the research on their own. Marijuana lobbyist Jeff Sharkey said the vetoes are ill times.
"Research allows doctors and physicians to understand the impact of medical marijuana on these various conditions. This was a start to move this process forward," Sharkey said.
And, while Florida lags, in Canada, a government-sanctioned medical marijuana grower, Tilray, has a full-time medical doctor on staff. We traveled to the grow house as part of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"You can start looking, for example, plants that MLS patients tend to use at a higher majority than other people with different symptoms," said Tilray's Medical Director Dr. Richard Lucas.
Lawmakers will be back in the capitol Wednesday, but medical marijuana isn't on their agenda. It could be added, but it is highly unlikely they will try and revive the research money, which is another way of saying research will have to wait at least another year.
Governor Scott vetoed $370,000 tied to Moffitt because lawmakers didn't pass a bill setting up regulations for medical marijuana. Now, unless lawmakers act, the Department of Health will decide how to regulate medical cannabis.
Update on Viking Cruises set to dock in Panama City
Panama City Mark McQueen still recovering from COVID-19 and city officials still want people to take precautions
Rebekah Jones bonds out of Leon County Jail
More than a pound of meth seized during local traffic stop
Male orangutan steps up to care for 2-year-old daughter after mother dies
Medical Marijuana prescription puts woman's professional license at risk
Local church partners with Feeding the Gulf Coast for food drive
Local Church food Drive
Medical Marijuana Protections
Update: Missing man's body recovered after long search

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I / We know the cvp "Dot head unit" ONLY are the same one across different QSS printer models. NOW my question is that..
Are the WHOLE slide-In BACKPRINTER Assemblies compatible to all QSS models although Assemblies have different part nos. in different QSS printer parts lists ?
Or make my question simple,,,, I want to know if a QSS-3001 BACKPRINTER Assembly can be used on a QSS-3501 plus machine without other issuess?


text:
New support for Vietnamese wives returning from bad marriages in South Korea
Thousands of women have come home in recent years after language and cultural barriers broke their marriages.
Trafficking of Vietnamese women for sex and marriage expands across region: expert
Malaysia rescues 26 Vietnamese women from alleged human trafficking ring
A women's association in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho has started a vocational and financial project to support an increasing number of women returning home from broken marriages in South Korea.
Can Tho Women's Association and the Korea Center for United Nations Human Rights Policy announced the project last week to provide free vocational training and cheap loans to the women to help them rebuild their life in Vietnam.
The project will also open a center providing legal support to make sure the returning children have access to public services, especially education and healthcare.
Nearly 73,000 women from Can Tho, the Mekong Delta's major city, married South Koreans between 2005 and 2015. Many met their suitors via illegal brokerage services
Nearly 15,000 of them have divorced. In most of these cases, the women cited cultural and language differences as the main reasons, some saying they had been abused by the husband and his family.
Vo Kim Thoa, vice chairwoman of Can Tho Women's Association, said a survey of women married to South Korean men has found that more than 70 percent only met their husbands once or twice before marriage.
Statistics from the Korean Institute of Social and Health Affairs showed that 7,636 Vietnamese women married Korean men in 2011, topping the list of foreign brides.
Many women came from poor families in the Mekong Delta, envisioning a better life overseas.
But it's not always happily ever after.
A woman from the delta hanged herself in Gumi, eastern Korea, allegedly because of conflicts with her mother-in-law in 2013.
In November 2012 a delta woman jumped from the 18th floor of a Busan building while holding her son and daughter. The husband had lost all the family money and became violent.
In May 2012 a South Korean farmer beat his Vietnamese wife to death.
In 2010, a 20-year-old woman from Can Tho was beaten to death by her 47-year-old South Korean husband just around a week after their marriage. She did not know about his mental illness.
The Can Tho's support project was funded by a private company with VND11.4 billion ($513,000).
> Trafficking of Vietnamese women for sex and marriage expands across region: expert
> Malaysia rescues 26 Vietnamese women from alleged human trafficking ring
Bad bad for from marriages new returning support vietnamese wives
Coronavirus may never go away: WHO
The new coronavirus may never go away and populations around the world will have to learn to live with it, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday.
British pilot no longer needs lung transplant
A lung transplant considered for Vietnam's most critically ill Covid-19 patient, a British pilot, is no longer necessary following a slow recovery.
Da Nang reports seven more Covid-19 cases
Seven community transmission cases in Da Nang have taken the national Covid-19 tally to 1,029 and the number of active cases to 409 on Tuesday.
One girl under 15 married every seven seconds, says Save the Children
Today, Octorber 11 is also International Day of the Girl Child.
Vietnam Airlines eyes July resumption of international flights
Vietnam Airlines hopes to resume international flights starting July to destinations where the Covid-19 pandemic has been contained.
For towering Saigon youth, daily life's a tall order
2.2m tall, Tran Ngoc Tu can't stand erect or sleep in buses and trains, or shop normally for clothes.
HoSE director expelled from Party in market manipulation probe
General director of the HCMC Stock Exchange (HoSE), Le Hai Tra, has been expelled from the Party, the latest development after investigations into stock market manipulation began in March.
School principal arrested for molesting boy students
The principal of a boarding school in Phu Tho Province was arrested Saturday for alleged sexual abuse of students.
Vietnamese students in US fret as pandemic delays repatriation flight indefinitely
Dozens of Vietnamese students studying in the U.S. are stranded in California after a May 2 repatriation flight got delayed without rescheduling.
First Covid-19 vaccine doses arrive in Vietnam
The first batch of 117,600 doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine arrived in HCMC's Tan Son Nhat Airport on Wednesday morning.


11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
I will be brief today. My question is this: "why isn't anyone cutting in line to serve"? As I read blogs and books their seem to be a bigger emphasis on authority versus servanthood. Why do we constantly have to remind people "who's in charge"? Why do we have a desire to be in charge? To Lead? To be served? On the one side we see pastor's needing armor bearers! These armor bearers are to be "apprentices" as someone once told me. These man carry bibles, chauffeur around pastors, pick up their dry cleaning all in the name of being an apprentice!
On the other side there has been a huge push lately for people to "submit" to their leaders. To sumbit to those who have "authority" over you. I think this is a response to the fact that many Christians are tired of the oke doke! Many Christians are beginning to question the establishment and there is much at stake. The church as we know it is starting to split here in the west. With men like Bell, Doug P, McKnight and McManus gaining popularity among young evangelicals and with books like the Shack, Velvet Elvis, Blue Like Jazz and Pagan Christianity becoming bestsellers we have a serious problem. Not to mention some great brothers like Dave Black who have Anabaptist leanings, leaders today are scrapping to save the machine called "church".
The problem is I think most people feel like the authority that is practiced so well in our churches may have more pagan influence than biblical New Covenant influence. I am sort of in the middle with no real commitments to either side but what I will say, it seems like the Viola's and others are winning the fight "biblically". That may be a radical statement. But we can't ignore the words of Jesus nor the Apostles. It seems that the leaders are the mature among brothers and that authority comes from those willing to follow those they "have selected" and not the position itself.
But not only that. I rarely see those who lead having the heart to serve. It seems that the reversal of what Jesus spoke in Matthew 23 is what is law in our churches today. When men want to be addressed by their positions my immediate response is one of grave concern. You see my leadership should be lived not demanded. What I mean is this. Jesus never once told the disciples to submit to Him! He only served them and others and they became more convinced that what they left behind was worth following their master. Many today are skeptical and rightfully so. When we have hear sermon after sermon about submitting to leaders, that means something is wrong. I don't have to tell my wife to submit. If her heart is aligned with God's and I am serving her as Christ served the church (change love with serve Ephesians 5) then her submission would be that of a bond-servant.
I believe our seminaries, churches and leaders should scream this from the rooftop. The Christian life is one of service and if people refuse to submit serve them more. When the people refused to acknowledge Jesus as the messiah, He didn't stomp down His feet and demand obedience. He went to the cross. And because of His service to us we love Him (at least I hope that is why you are a Christian). God doesn't wave the stick before us. He nails His Son to a cross!
I believe that is why our churches are saturated with those hungry for leadership. Man run to seminary in order to be in charge (this is where they get their authority), Man in less educated church run to the pulpit (this will give them their authority), Man in some of the churches in the WOF movement throw on ridiculous titles such as prophet, master prophet, bishop, apostle, Second Vice President to Jesus, and Assistant to God (well the last two haven't happened yet). You see no one is fighting and arguing to wash feet, to give of themselves, to surrender to the next. Everyone is fighting to be served versus serve.
But Jesus says this "the greatest among you will be a _________________" fill in the blank and that is how you want to live your Christian life!


text:
2021 Applying to Graduate School in International Affairs
THIS GUIDE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE. For the current FP Guide, click here.
Texas A&M University, Bush School of Government & Public Service
Bush School DC Seeks Students with Passion for Public Service
The Bush School of Government & Public Service seeks students who share its vision that public service is a noble calling, for its new Washington, DC, location.
Opened in January and renovated in summer 2021, the Bush School DC is only two blocks from the White House.
The Bush School DC places a strong emphasis on a student's motivation for graduate study in the fields of national security, intelligence, and international policy, says Jacqueline Linde, director of enrollment management, career, and student services.
"We learn a lot from a student's statement of purpose and their demonstrated commitment to public service," Linde says.
Successful applicants also will have an academic background in the social sciences and work experience in international affairs. This experience can be interpreted broadly and ranges from study abroad to professional experience in the field.
"We want students who share our vision that public service is a noble calling. We learn a lot from a student's statement of purpose and their demonstrated commitment to public service." –Jacqueline Linde, Director of Enrollment Management, Career, and Student Services, Bush School DC, Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University
Mid-career professionals are a key market for the Bush School DC, because of its emphasis on public service, affordable tuition, and small class sizes, which lead to meaningful connections between students and faculty. Well-published scholars and seasoned practitioners from federal agencies lead classroom discussions, collaborate on research, and mentor students in and out of the classroom.
Many Bush School students look to a graduate degree as a path to their next position or as a way to switch industries.
The Master of International Policy program targets professionals with at least four years of work experience, and the Master of National Security and Intelligence is designed for early-career professionals or recent college graduates.
Preparing Students for Intelligence Community Careers
The Bush School DC is recruiting students who are interested in careers in national security and intelligence. Bush School alumni work in all sectors of the intelligence community: federal agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Homeland Security, government consulting firms such as Booz Allen and Leidos, think tanks, and nonprofit organizations. When President George H.W. Bush (a former director of the CIA) established the Bush School in 1997, he wanted a concentration in intelligence studies as part of the curriculum.
Graduate Degree Program Options
• Master of International Policy (MIP)
• Master of National Security and Intelligence (MNSI)
Priority Application Deadlines
Spring 2022 (MIP): November 1, 2021
Fall 2022 (MIP and MNSI): February 1, 2022
After the priority deadlines, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the class is filled.
Standardized Exam Scores: The GRE or GMAT are recommended, but not required, for students with an undergraduate GPA lower than 3.0. For the Master of International Policy degree, an applicant's work experience is given strong consideration.
Recommendation Letters: Two recommendations letters are required.
Application Checklist: http://bush.tamu.edu/dc
Previous: University of Notre Dame, Keough School of Global Affairs Next: Princeton University, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
American University, School of International Service
Yale University, Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
University of Notre Dame, Keough School of Global Affairs
Carnegie Mellon University, Institute for Politics and Strategy
University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
Temple University, Klein College of Media and Communication


Pombola is software for parliamentary monitoring, to build sites that allow citizens to keep an eye on the people in power, to find out who represents you, what's being debated, and how members have voted.
TheyWorkForYou makes Parliament easier to understand. TheyWorkForYou takes open data from the Parliament and presents it in a way that's easy to follow – for everyone. So now you can check, with just a few clicks: are They Working For You?


text:
'Top Chef' Tom Colicchio on America's staggering waste of food
May 27, 2016 7:58 PM EST
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/top-chef-tom-colicchio-on-americas-staggering-waste-of-food
Transcript Audio
The United States wastes roughly 70 billion pounds of food every year, an estimated quarter of all food produced in the country. Now, TV "Top Chef" Tom Colicchio aims to bring the issue to the highest levels of government with his "Food Policy Action" group. Political director Lisa Desjardins talks to Colicchio about how he plans to end American food wastage.
But first: Roughly 70 billion pounds of food is wasted annually in the United States.
The "NewsHour"'s Lisa Desjardins is back from maternity leave, and she caught up this week with chef Tom Colicchio of TV's "Top Chef."
He was on Capitol Hill to bring attention to the issue of how much is wasted in American and to represent the group he co-founded, Food Policy Action.
LISA DESJARDINS:
Many folks in the food waste movement say that some 40 percent of our food grown in this country is unused or wasted. That's kind of a hard number to get your head around.
TOM COLICCHIO, Co-Founder, Food Policy Action:
Well, actually, that's the real number, 40 percent.
In fact, when I heard that number about two years ago, that's what really brought me to this issue. I was staggered by the amount of food that's being wasted. When you think about what you purchase at home, you can imagine throwing 40 percent in the garbage, and you think about how hard farmers work, and everything that goes in.
It's not just the food. It's all the resources that go into creating the food. So it's water, it's energy, it's people's work.
You know, last year, NPR and "NewsHour" teamed up; we went to the Salinas Valley in California.
And there, we got these extraordinary pictures of dump trucks full of lettuce and spinach, cartons full of broccoli, that the producers were taking to the landfill, not consumers. We also have a food culture in this country that promotes, and to some degree almost worships, beautiful food.
And, in your restaurants, you serve beautiful food. How do you change that culture to show Americans that your food can be imperfect?
TOM COLICCHIO:
When people think of wasted food, they think of something that is left on the plate. We're not talking about that. We're talking about food that is perfectly good.
But I think, if we're looking at large supermarkets that are throwing food out because it's slightly wilted or there's a little blemish on it or it's slightly bruised, I think the average person looks at that and goes, there's nothing wrong with that. Why are we throwing this away?
But when you see those truckloads, I think you look at that and go, we have to fix this problem.
We saw this week the very first hearing from the House Agriculture Committee on food waste. This is a time when politicians are looking at polls that say the number one concern for voters is the economy. The number two concern is terrorism.
When you have 25 percent of recruits showing up to fight our wars that are washing out because of obesity, when you have health care costs rising because of the way we're — what we're eating in this country that's costing us about $200 billion a year.
So it actually does affect the economy and it does affect mission readiness. So you can actually equate food right back to these issues that are important, these issues, economic issues and issues of national security.
I think a lot of our viewers would be surprised to know there are almost no clear national guidelines for food labeling and date labeling.
Right. Right. And that's part of the reason why we're here in Washington today. We are supporting Congresswoman Pingree's bill, co-sponsored on the Senate side. Richard Blumenthal sponsored it as well.
And it just really focuses on date labeling. Right now, we have sell-by dates. The sell-by date doesn't mean that a gallon of milk is spoiled. It means that that is when the manufacturer wants you to sell it by.
Typically, it's fine for a good many days past that, and yet 80 percent of the people will look at that and throw it out by the sell-by date. And so a ton of food is being wasted because things are improperly labeled. And this bill will address that.
I'm curious. I always look in the back of the "Top Chef" show. You see these beautiful bins of fruits and vegetables and meats. What happens to the food on the show?
We have a very hungry crew that eats well.
We really do.
We — without giving too much away, we just had a challenge where there was a lot of really delicious barbecue pig left over, and every bit of it went to our crew.
What tips do you have for people who want to change this in their own lives?
Yes, so, I think, on the consumer side, try to shop more frequently.
If you're somebody who goes and shops for your family once a week, you typically overbuy. Don't ever shop when you're hungry, because you definitely overpurchase and overbuy food. Also, what I try to do is, on Friday, that's when I clean out my refrigerator.
So, I go in, I look at all the vegetables, all the scraps, I chop it up and it either goes into a soup or it goes into a pasta. I think it's something, when you start focusing on it, and you start looking at it and you start — people are so focused, they are so cost-conscious when they're purchasing food, but yet, when they come home, they don't look at the price when they are throwing foods in the garbage.
And so I think that, if you do that, that clean-up Friday, where I call it cleanup Friday, I clean out the refrigerator and make something with that, I think that's one thing that people could do.
The New York Times called you a citizen chef.
Tom Colicchio, thank you for joining us.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Listen to this Segment
PBS NewsHour from May 27, 2016
More From This Episode
Watch 12:08
Shields and Brooks on Obama's historic Hiroshima visit, 'normalizing' Trump
By PBS NewsHour
In Hiroshima, President Obama renews call to abolish nuclear weapons
News Wrap: G-7 leaders rebuke Beijing on South China Sea dispute
food policy action
tom colicchio


text:
import { firebase } from '../init';

const db = firebase.database();

// eSports Player Queries
export const onceGetAllEsportsPlayers = () => {
  return db
    .ref('/esportsPlayers/')
    .once('value');
};

export const onceGetEsportsPlayers = (gameTitleId) => {
  return db
    .ref(`/esportsPlayers/${gameTitleId}`)
    .once('value');
};

export const onceGetEsportsPlayer = (gameTitleId, playerId) => {
  return db
    .ref(`/esportsPlayers/${gameTitleId}/${playerId}`)
    .once('value');
};

export const onceGetEsportsPlayersOnTeam = (gameId, teamId) => {
  return db
    .ref(`/esportsPlayers/${gameId}`)
    .orderByChild('teamId')
    .equalTo(teamId)
    .once('value');
};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Омику́р () — коммуна во Франции, находится в регионе Шампань — Арденны. Департамент — Арденны. Входит в состав кантона Флиз. Округ коммуны — Шарлевиль-Мезьер.

Код INSEE коммуны — 08334.

Коммуна расположена приблизительно в 200 км к северо-востоку от Парижа, в 85 км северо-восточнее Шалон-ан-Шампани, в 18 км к юго-западу от Шарлевиль-Мезьера.

Население
Население коммуны на 2008 год составляло 51 человек.

Экономика
В 2007 году среди 36 человек в трудоспособном возрасте (15—64 лет) 27 были экономически активными, 9 — неактивными (показатель активности — 75,0 %, в 1999 году было 85,0 %). Из 27 активных работали 25 человек (14 мужчин и 11 женщин), безработных было 2 (1 мужчина и 1 женщина). Среди 9 неактивных 7 человек были учениками или студентами, 0 — пенсионерами, 2 были неактивными по другим причинам.

Достопримечательности
 Церковь XII века
 Арденнский канал

Фотогалерея

Примечания

Ссылки

Коммуны департамента Арденны

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


W&Co Design Solutions Limited and our websites are committed to protecting your privacy. We use the information we collect about you to process orders and to provide a more efficient service. We have been registered as a data user under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and thereafter undertake to comply with General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR).
When you request a quotation from us we need to know your name, email address and business address. This allows us to undertake processes such as: fulfil your quotation request; check your business' credit rating if the order is on a credit account; notify you of the status of your order and process invoices or credit card payments.
We also ask for your business' telephone number which enables us to contact you in circumstances such as: if there are queries on a quotation request, an issue with your order or a delay in payment of an invoice or a credit card payment doesn't go through. In the very unlikely event that our couriers are having problems finding your address, your telephone number may be given to them to obtain more detailed directions.
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We may at times monitor website customer traffic patterns and site usage to help us develop the design, layout and performance of the website.
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We hope that you enjoy every visit to our website now and in the future - thank you.


text:
Netanyahu's party falls behind in opinion polls
February 17, 2014 at 1:50 am | Published in: Middle East, News
The latest opinion poll in Israel suggests that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party will lose five seats to new party "Jewish Home", Haaretz newspaper said on Wednesday. The new party is headed by Naftali Bennett and would be expected to win 14 seats, the poll indicated, making it the third largest party in the Knesset.
Conducted by the Dialogue Institute at Tel-Aviv University, for Haaretz, the poll shows that the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinau coalition could win 34 seats in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. that's five fewer than shown by an identical poll conducted one month ago.
However, if, as expected, Netanyahu forms a broader coalition with other extreme right-wing and religious parties, he can expect to command 67 seats. The centre-left bloc, according to the poll, would win 53 seats, with little change between Tzipi Livni's party and Yair Lapid's. The Labour Party would lose one seat, leaving it with 16, making it the second largest in parliament, although Haaretz noted that given current trends, the Jewish Home party could possibly replace Labour in that position.
Arab parties are predicted by the poll to win a total of 12 seats. According to Haaretz the potential increase in the number of Arab MKs is attributed to the incitement campaigns against them, especially against current Knesset member Haneen Zoabi. "That has increased the number of Arabs who say that they will vote in the general election," the newspaper said.
Arab MKHaneen ZoabiJewish HomeJewish Home PartyLikud partyLikud-Yisrael Beiteinau coalitionNaftali BennettPrime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuTel Aviv University
Middle EastNews


text:
TASCAM Announces V2.0 Firmware Update for the VS-R264 / VS-R265 Video Streamers / Recorders
By MountainCrest Communications
The TASCAM VS-R264 / VS-R265 Video over IP Streamers / Recorders
Santa Fe Springs, CA – September 2021… TASCAM is pleased to announce the arrival of the Version 2.0 upgrade for the VS-R264 / VS-R265 Video over IP Streamers / Recorders. Hot on the heels of the recently announced V1.1.0 update that allows three simultaneous RTMP format streams, the V2.0 upgrade offers a wealth of new capabilities, including upgraded ability to record to internal storage, support for the MP4 recording file format, an expansion in the maximum capacity of files recorded to external storage, and more.
With V2.0, users will appreciate that 17GB of internal storage is now available for recording, with the maximum file size having been increased to 17GB. For many applications, this increased capacity eliminates the need for external storage using an SD Card or USB Drive. Equally noteworthy, the maximum capacity of files recorded to external storage has been expanded from 2GB to 4GB per file. The V2.0 update also has a 'Limit Maximum File Size' setting that enables recordings to be made with more manageable and specified file size limitations to better address the user's requirements. Under such conditions, a new recording is automatically started once the previous file size limitation has been met, and each file is date and time stamped.
The V2.0 update now provides support for continuous recording regardless of storage capacity. This new function, identified by the 'Delete Oldest File when Storage is Full' setting, enables old files to be automatically deleted when storage reaches maximum capacity. This new function ensures that space for new recordings is always made available while also facilitating continuous recording modes. This capability could be especially useful, for example, in situations where a church might record and stream one or two services each day. In this case, no 'housekeeping' of the storage media would be required. Further, as recorded files are completed, they can be automatically uploaded via FTP to storage on a central FTP server while the recording of a new file continues—thus ensuring uninterrupted operation.
VS-R Series users will also appreciate the fact that V2.0 now supports the MP4 file format in addition to TS (Transport Stream). MP4 is a very popular audio/video streaming format, as it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Now, users can choose between TS files, which are playable even if recording is interrupted by a power outage or some other unforeseen situation, or the more versatile MP4 format.
As part of the V2.0 update, several new options for the H.265 codec settings have been added. H.265, also known as HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), is a successor to H.264. It is the newest video compression standard that is said to double the data compression proportion as compared to H.264 with the same video quality. H.265 selections include Quality/Latency: High/Normal/Low/Lowest. Additionally, V2.0 provides support for RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol). RTMP 1/2/3 can now be controlled simultaneously by turning the STREAM button on or off. RTMP is a useful communications protocol intended to carry parallel streams of video, audio, and data messages, with associated timing information, between a pair of communicating peers.
Users will also appreciate the V2.0 streaming dashboard / web GUI, known as the TASCAM Discovery App and Web-GUI. Available for both Mac and Windows, TASCAM Discovery enables multiple VS-R units connected to the network to be managed from a simple Web-browser based GUI. All configuration settings are saved within the VS-R devices, so that in normal operation, no computer is required for streaming or recording thereafter until settings need to be changed. The V2.0 web GUI also provides better visibility of the status of each of the streaming outputs (up to 8 simultaneous streams) and also of the recording function, in one view.
In addition to the primary enhancements made available as part of the V2.0 update, numerous additional 'fine-tunings' have been implemented. These include improved video and audio streaming output using the RTSP protocol, improved AV SYNC performance, stabilized frame information for encoded video data, and improved color space support for encoding. Previously, the disconnecting or connecting of LAN cables when the IP address was set to 'Static' would prevent the IP address from being determined. This has been corrected. Additionally, the adaptive bitrate streaming format HLS is now identified by its more common term HTP PULL and the REST API has been updated to Version 2.
The VS-R Series V2.0 update is available now. To get the update, visit…VS-R264 or VS-R265.
About TASCAM
For decades, TASCAM has been the choice of musicians, engineers, and broadcast professionals worldwide by combining industry leading fidelity with legendary reliability. With solutions designed for a stunning array of audio applications and catering to today' s top professionals, TASCAM continues to define the sound of modern recording. www.tascam.com.
TASCAM Announces V1.1.0 Firmware Update for the VS-R264 / VS-R265 Streamers / Recorders
Sound Devices, LLC Announces Comprehensive Firmware Update for its Full Line of Rack-Mount Recorders
Sound Devices Announces Comprehensive Firmware Update For Its Rack-Mount Recorders
Video Devices Announces PIX-E Series Firmware Update
Sound Devices PIX 260i Production Video Recorders Get in Sync with Latest Firmware Update
Denon Announces Firmware Update for DN-V755 Digital Audio Video Player
TASCAM Announces the TASCAM & Tommy Bolan Recording and Guitar Gear Giveaway Contest
TASCAM Announces Update for DR-10 Series Portable Recorders


text:
Q: How can I SUMIF when two conditions need to be met? Say I have countries, values and status of the value and I want to sum the values when they relate to a particular country and are "Approved", what is the formula I would use?
Column A-C is the data and E-F is the total/summary. "FORMULA" is where I would like the formula to go.
DATA   A          B       C                   D          E
 1   Country    Value   Status              Country    Total Approved
 2   Germany    100     Approved            Germany    FORMULA
 3   France     150     Approved            Portugal   0
 4   UK         130     Not Approved        UK         100
 5   Portugal   200     Not Approved        France     150
 6   Germany    200     Approved
 7   Germany    300     Not Approved
 8   UK         100     Approved

A: You need to use SUMIFS() here:
=SUMIFS(B:B,A:A,D2,C:C,"Approved")

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: How to create local account on NIS clients? We have a NIS server with 4 NIS clients. I would to create local accounts on the NIS client in case the NIS server is offline. Our network is not stable and too many times the NIS server is offline.
Thank you for your help.
/etc/nsswitch.conf
passwd:         compat
group:          compat
shadow:         compat
gshadow:        files
hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
networks:       files
protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files
netgroup:       nis

A: OK, this should work for you (make a backup of /etc/nsswitch.conf). Change the passwd: and group: entries like this:
passwd: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
group:  nis [NOTFOUND=return] files

Add a user that's in the NIS database, then shutdown the NIS client and test. This should force NIS to be the first lookup, then fallback to local  /etc/passwd if it's not found. Gotta admit, though - it's been decades since I've used NIS.


Have you noticed how some organizations are more innovative than others? How they seamlessly adapt to changing market conditions, meet competition head-on, and remain profitable throughout? These companies have leaders who know how to empower employees to take ownership. Every part of the business benefits from people who are engaged with the future vision, and are constantly seeking ways to improve themselves, their team, products and the business.
The question is, how do you get your people excited about the future? How do you empower them in their work, and create the energy and enthusiasm that will help them excel toward their personal goals, and your organization toward its business goals?
In this article, we discuss the communication skills that inspirational leaders use to empower their employees to take ownership – the bedrock of continuing success.
Self-awareness is essential to being a good communicator. It enables you to accept shortcomings and improve them, and helps you to gauge and control your reactions toward different circumstances and people.
Self-awareness and self-control are imperative to being a good communicator. You'll have the ability to take control of disagreements, negotiate positive outcomes, and carefront instead of confront when addressing a difficult breakdown in communication. All these communication abilities are essential when you want to motivate your people to ownership of their daily tasks and align them with organizational strategic vision.
If you don't know what motivates your people, how can you expect to engender ownership?
Learn to listen to what is being said. Poor communicators give false meaning to the words spoken to them. Don't be afraid to ask for confirmation, and always place the emphasis on the other person.
Most managers are awful listeners. Instead of using one-on-one time to get to know an employee, they use it to reinforce instructions. Listen to objections and concerns, and deal with them.
Energy speaks. The difference between verbal and nonverbal communication is important to learn. In stressful situations, it is possible to incorrectly read nonverbal communication signals. Such understanding is predominantly a result of a lack of emotional intelligence.
Developing emotional intelligence will help you control the false nonverbal signals you give when under pressure, too. Various studies have shown that more than half of communication meaning is conveyed by body language. When you fully understand nonverbal communication, you will be able to portray the meaning of your words more effectively, as well as recognize clues to how others are really feeling behind the hidden façade of their words.
Concise communication is key to getting your message across. Leaders with the ability to get their point across quickly and concisely keep their employees focused. The message is delivered without being lost in a fog of unnecessary words. This goes for written communication, too. When communicating, less is definitely more.
People respond to stories to which they can relate. A barrage of facts and figures quickly loses your audience. Find and use effective narratives to accentuate important messages. Stories give meaning to vision. Consider 'what if' scenarios, success stories, and encourage discussion about the effects of doing nothing and retaining the status quo.
People need to know that their views are being listened to, and that action is being taken. Encourage an environment of openness and honesty. Let people know that you welcome their input and their ideas. Show that you trust them. Be willing to discuss business strategy, and help your people see how they fit into business planning.
Allow your people the opportunity to figure out for themselves the best and most appropriate course of action.
No matter how small, recognize improvement when it is made.
Let your employees know how they are performing, and encourage them to do more of what they are doing right.
We all make mistakes. When you need to discuss mistakes, do so gently. Let your people know that mistakes happen by recalling the time something similar happened to you. Be specific about what went wrong, and encourage the employee to do better next time.
Everyone develops at a different pace. People have their own personal (and professional) issues with which they are dealing. Be considerate of this, and get to know your people. Learn what makes them tick. Be honest, and simultaneously be considerate.
Do you want to embed excellence in your communication skills? Contact Forward Focus today to discover how an Emotional Intelligence course will develop and embed effective interpersonal skills in the workplace, for leaders, managers, and employees.


text:
Cell phones: Information, please
By Eric C. Evarts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Sorting through the choices that come with cellular phones and calling plans can seem a bit overwhelming.
You've heard the options:
Analog or digital?
Contract or prepaid?
Free minutes or lower fees?
Unless you're hip to the latest high-tech gadgetry, the shopping experience can be downright frustrating.
Amy Fahmy, president of the Gardener's Edge in Durham, N.C., spent three weeks researching cellular telephones for her three-person business last March.
"I had to keep calling the [service-providers] back, because every time I talked to somebody, I learned something new and thought I should have asked the last company that," she says. "I probably called each company three times.... And in the end, I still didn't understand."
Finally Ms. Fahmy settled on a digital calling plan with Bell South because it advertised free incoming calls. (Only to find out later that the offer only applied to the first 100 minutes of usage each month.)
Yet confusion over cell-phone plans hasn't kept people from signing up.
The FCC estimates about 70 million people in the US use cellular telephones today, up from an estimated 64 million in February this year. That's about 1 million new customers every month.
Subscribers to mobile-telephone service are expected to double over the next four years, according to a study published last month by the Yankee Group, a management consulting company in Boston that focuses on technology.
The rise is a response to a 60 percent drop in service rates in the past four years. In some cases, today's cell-phone service costs no more than old-fashioned land-line service.
When choosing a cellular service plan, "the big issue is lifestyle," says David Berndt, assistant director of the Yankee Group's wireless division. You have to have an idea how much you plan to use the phone and where, to choose between paying more per month and less for use and vice versa.
The most basic choice cellular-phone subscribers face is between analog and digital technology. The advantages of analog are low monthly fees (as little as $9.95) and nearly universal coverage, says Mr. Berndt.
Analog phones can be used almost anywhere. Many analog plans also include the phone. These plans work well for people who use their phone only for emergencies, because the low monthly fees offset higher usage charges. Even if you use the phone occasionally while traveling, you may come out ahead.
Once people buy cellular phones, however, "it's really difficult not to use them at least occasionally," says Mark Snowden, a technology analyst at the Gartner Group. "That's exactly what the network providers are counting on."
Once people begin using the phone more, they may want to go digital.
Digital plans cost $50 a month and up, and include 100 to 1,000 minutes. Additional minutes cost as little as 25 cents apiece. "Digital is much cheaper to provide, so the companies are really pushing new users in that direction," says Mr. Snowden.
Companies like AT&T offer plans like Digital One Rate that offers 600 minutes a month free, with no roaming or long-distance charges ever -for $90 a month.
Such plans are beginning to convert students and other frequent travelers from land lines. "If you're on the go all the time, wireless is the best deal out there," says Berndt.
Digital services advertise clearer signals and can carry data such as e-mail and caller ID; some even allow you to surf the Web from your telephone.
Some digital plans don't charge you for the first minute of incoming calls, so you don't pay when somebody dials a wrong number. The FCC is taking that concept a step further with new "calling party pays" standards. This program has helped mobile phones spread in Europe by encouraging people to leave their phones on to accept incoming calls.
Under the plan, if somebody dials your cellular number, they get a message that they will be charged for your air time.
High-end digital plans that provide lots of free minutes, though, may circumvent the need for this service.
One drawback that comes with digital service, Berndt warns, is that the signal breaks up in many rural areas and even some suburbs. Analog phones can work in 95 percent of the continental US.
Still, the Yankee group estimates that in 2-1/2 years, digital coverage will equal that of analog. Analog service will be around for another 6 to 10 years, the experts predict.
Another confusing step in choosing a calling plan is balancing the monthly fee against the number of free minutes included and time-of-day restrictions.
Plans with no monthly fee, available with prepaid calling cards, offer two advantages: There's no contract, and no early termination fee.
The disadvantages: You typically pay full retail price for a phone, airtime and minutes are expensive (from 50 cents per minute off-peak to $2 peak time), and steep "roaming" charges - those per-minute fees for using your phone on another provider's network when you're far from home.
Digital and analog prepaid plans are popular with students, customers who can't get credit, and those who just want a phone for emergencies. But many no-monthly-fee plans require a minimum usage to keep your phone number -around 30 minutes per month.
Plans with monthly fees require a credit check, and usually a one- or two-year contract - for anywhere from $10 a month to more than $100. Many of these plans offer a basic phone for free, with heavily subsidized prices on more capable equipment (see story, previous page). But the contracts levy big early-termination fees to ensure you pay the provider back for the phone.
Most offer a few minutes of free off-peak airtime each month. Some have specials with free nights and weekends for the duration of the contract.
But watch out for the hours: Most providers don't go down to evening rates until 8 p.m. So it helps to know when you make most of your calls before buying.
Berndt advises against signing a contract of more than two years, because falling rates will leave you paying too much at the end. Thinking of moving? Consider finding nationwide service.
Many digital plans pro-rate the cancellation fee. And roaming charges can add up with these plans. Figure 50 cents to $1 per minute. Or if you're willing to pay big monthly bills, you can get big "buckets" of free minutes, with no roaming, peak-time, or long-distance bothers.
The best advice is to know your calling habits, says John Makulowich, a tech expert in North Potomac, Md., who just switched plans in his own business.
If you don't talk much, pick a plan with low monthly fees and high charges for use. If you have the gift of gab, pay the big bills up front, and talk all you want.
*Comment to evarts@smonitor.com
(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society
Smart phone savings: Avoid long-term contracts
Best July cell phone deals: buy one Galaxy, get one free
Millennials on family phone plans: It's not mooching, it's saving money.


ECHO Asia, in conjunction with the Lisu Baptist Assn., welcomes anyone working in agriculture and community development to attend a seed saving workshop from 25-27 February 2019 in Pyin Oo Lwin, Mandalay Region, Myanmar.
a seed exchange, and many more topics!
Also Please save the date for Conference 2019!


text:
GPS for Graduate School
Students Share Their Stories
Edited by Mark J.T. Smith
This resource book consists of ten chapters written by sixteen graduate student authors and two academic professional staff members. Each chapter is accompanied by a short video that dramatizes the theme along with probing discussion questions. The chapter topics include seeking funding, the challenges of the first year of graduate school, finding a thesis advisor, working with thesis committee members, balancing family and graduate student life, and life after graduate school. Where these subjects have been treated in an academic style many times, this book conveys its message through personal narratives of the challenging circumstances its graduate student authors encountered and solved. It does not give its readers long lists of statistics about graduation rates or most advantageous actions for best outcomes. What it does instead is provide readers with a vivid sense of the types of life experiences one can expect to encounter when undertaking a graduate degree and the opportunity to discuss these real-life issues with others. The book was started and developed as a project under the Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and completed as part of the professional development activities under the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) AGEP.
Foreword, by James C. Wimbush
Preface, by Mark J. T. Smith, Lawrence J. Henschen
Facilitating the Chapter Discussions
1 Locating and Securing Funding, by Delia S. Shelton
2 The First Year of Graduate School: Navigating the Hurdles, by Christy L. Erving, Lauren J. Parker, Jamelle K. P. Williams, and Sean A. Colbert-Kelly
3 Choosing a Thesis Advisor: Surprise and Success, by Kermin Joel Hernández
4 Choosing a Thesis Advisor: Familiar Paths and Unexpected Curves, by Nahyr D. Rovira-Figueroa
5 Working with Committee Members, by Charles M. Rubert Pérez
6 Balancing Graduate School and Family, by Joseph Chaney, Andrew Fiss, Francisco Iacobelli, and Paul E. Carey Jr.
7 Collaborative Research, by Catherine F. Whittington and Kiana R. Johnson
8 Graduate Student Support Programs, by Cyndi Lynch and Kathy Garza Dixon
9 Publishing While Completing the PhD, by G. Leah Davis
10 Life Beyond Graduate School, by E. Shirl Donaldson
MARK J. T. SMITH received his B.S. degree from MIT, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering. He joined the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) faculty at Georgia Tech in 1984, where he remained for the next eighteen years. While working primarily on the Atlanta campus, he spent several terms in 1991-93 on the Institute's European campus in Metz, France. Five years later, he served a four-year term as executive assistant to the president of Georgia Tech. In January 2003, he joined the faculty at Purdue University as head of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he holds the Michael and Katherine Birck endowed chair. Presently, he serves as dean of the Purdue University Graduate School.


text:
Bayer Leverkusen interested in Celtic defender Ajer
Bayer Leverkusen is interested in signing the Celtic defender Kristoffer Ajer this summer. Glasgow Evening Times has reported that Leverkusen is keen on the player and has already made contact with his representatives.
Ajer has been ever-present for the Celtics this season. The Hoops had a horrific campaign, finishing 2nd in the Scottish Premiership, 25 points below their rivals Rangers.
While Celtic would not want to let him leave this summer, they could be forced to sell him. The Norwegian international is contracted with the club till 2022 and thus could leave the club on a free next season. The club currently values the 23-year-old at £16 million.
AJER TO LEVERKUSEN
Leverkusen will go into the next season with a depleted backline. Sven Bender has retired at the end of the season while Aleksandar Dragovic has left on a free transfer. The other option includes Jonathan Tah, Edmond Tapsoba, and returning loanee Tin Jedvaj. With Tapsoba heavily linked with a move to Arsenal, the club is in need of defensive reinforcement.
Ajer hence is an excellent option. The Norwegian with his height is an excellent aerial threat. He also likes to tackle and is good at passing the ball and building the game from the back. At the age of 23, he is also a good long-term solution. Having played 176 games for Celtic including 18 times in the Europa League, Ajer is also well experienced for his age.
Leverkusen also has a good relationship with Celtic. The clubs recently completed the transfer of Jeremie Frimpong. The right-back moved to Leverkusen last January. Hence channels between the clubs are open and talks for Ajer could be smooth.
Arsenal are interested in Edmond Tapsoba [Bild] pic.twitter.com/GOhYm558tZ
— AFTV (@AFTVMedia) May 31, 2021
MOVE TO PREMIER LEAGUE
However, the Germans will need to act fast. Ajer has already caught the eyes of multiple clubs, primarily from the Premier League. Newcastle United is highly interested to secure the service of the Norwegian this summer.
Another team that is showing interest is the newly promoted Norwich City. The Canaries were amazing in the Championship and comfortably got their promotion. Their success was through excellent defensive performance. By bringing in Ajer they are looking to tighten that defence further.
Newcastle United are reportedly pressing ahead with their bid to sign Celtic defender Kristoffer Ajer.
Scottish gossip ⬇ #bbcfootball
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) April 29, 2021
The next destination of Ajer is hence still unclear. The current uncertainty in Celtic regarding their new managerial appointment and the general dip in their performance meant that he will opt for a move away from Glasgow. With multiple options in front of him, Leverkusen needs to act fast if they are to secure his signature.
Related Items:BAYER LEVERKUSEN, NEWCASTLE UNITED
Newcastle United offers 60 million euros for Milinkovic-Savic
Alexander Isak has moved to Newcastle United in a record-breaking deal


text:
How to watch Vikings vs Lions live stream from anywhere
The 2020-21 NFL season was nothing short of a wild ride, but things are coming to a close. Sitting at the bottom of the NFC North we have the Vikings vs Lions, two teams that have each lost the last three games. However, this determines the last place in the division, and potentially draft order, so here's how to watch it live.
Both of these teams have had an up and down season, to say the least, but at times it looked like all hope was lost in Detroit. Honestly, I didn't realize these two teams had such a similar record, which makes for a more exciting game than originally thought.
Minnesota Vikings sit at (6-9) as they take on the (5-10) Detroit Lions. Matt Stafford is a bit beat up and didn't practice for part of the week so that's something we'll have to keep an eye on as the game continues. More importantly, Vikings All-star RB Dalvin Cook will miss the game after the sudden and tragic death of his father.
As a result, expect an even bigger role for rookie WR Jefferson, not to mention Alexander Mattison out of the backfield. Even with Dalvin Cook missing the game the Vikings are still a 7-point favorite, plus they already beat Detroit earlier in the season by two touchdowns. Some call it trash football, we call it the last game of the season and a show worth watching, so keep reading for more information.
Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions: When and where?
The Vikings have to go into a cold Ford Field in Detroit that's expecting snow and rain during the game. Kickoff is at 1pm ET / 10am PT on FOX Sports. If you want to watch from the UK it'll be a late evening game at 6pm.
How to Watch Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions online from outside your country
NFL fans living in the US, UK, Australia, or Canada, you have multiple ways to watch the game, which we'll talk about shortly. Enthusiasts in the U.S. that are geo-locked and can't tune in, we have a few tips to help you out.
In fact, that's where one of the best VPNs can really make or break your day. A VPN service allows you to virtually change the IP address of your laptop, tablet, or smartphone to one back in your home country or to any state so you can watch any game you want, anywhere you want, and avoid blackouts. It's the last game of the season, so you might as well see it.
VPNs are super simple to use, plus provide additional security while you're surfing the web. You have a lot of VPN choices these days, but we recommend ExpressVPN as our #1 choice thanks to the overall ease of use, speed, and security. It's available on most operating systems and devices (e.g. iOS, Android, Smart TVs, Fire TV Stick, Roku, game consoles, etc). Sign up for ExpressVPN now and enjoy a 49% discount and 3 months FREE with an annual subscription. Or give it a quick sample with its 30-day money-back guarantee. Looking for other options? Here are a few VPN alternatives that are on sale right now.
See latest price at ExpressVPN
No matter where you are in the world, a VPN is one of the easiest ways to watch the Vikings game on Sunday.
How to watch Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions online in the U.S.
The Lions vs Vikings game is on FOX this week, which makes it easier to watch. Tune-in with your cable package, or log into the FOX Sports app and stream it from a PC, laptop, or tablet.
Then, over-the-top streaming services like FuboTV offer FOX Sports. We recommend FuboTV because they offer all five channels that show NFL games each week (CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and NFL Network). Pricing for Fubo starts at $64.99 a month, and you can take advantage of a FREE seven-day FuboTV trial. Free football!
Fubo.TV
$54.99 per month at Fubo
Fubo TV offers access to just about every single NFL game each season, plus the playoffs, but at this point, you might just wanna snag the free trial.
How to stream Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions live in the UK
UK fans can use the Sky Sports NFL Channel, which shows about six games each week. Plus, Sky offers the NFL Redzone which shows every single scoring drive on Sunday.
Oddly Sky Sports only has one game listed to end the season here for Week 17, the Steelers game, so this matchup isn't an option. However, you can watch the Vikes game with a NFL Game Pass Pro subscription.
The reason we suggest getting a Game Pass Pro subscription is that it's only £143.99 and gives you access to every single game of the 2020/21 season (subject to some blackouts). Including the playoffs, Super Bowl, and NFL RedZone. Game Pass Pro shows previous seasons on-demand, too.
As a reminder, use our VPN recommendation above if you're not home. That way you can log-in to a UK or US IP address and stream the game just like you would if you were sitting at home.
How to stream Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions live in Canada
Canadian NFL fans can use the streaming service DAZN to watch the Vikings and Lions. Actually, DAZN owns the rights to air all National Football League games in the region. It's priced at CA$20 a month or $150 a year, and a DAZN subscription gets you access to Game Pass and NFL RedZone, not to mention several other live sports including Premier League and Champions League Soccer. You can see each score with NFL RedZone, which is a nice bonus.
How to stream Minnesota Vikings vs Detroit Lions live in Australia
And finally, we can't forget about Australian NFL fans. As long as you have ESPN you'll likely be able to stream a few games. For now, ESPN owns the rights to air NFL games but they only show certain ones each week, so that's about your only option unless you use a VPN. You can access ESPN in Australia with Kayo Sports or check Foxtel, as they have ESPN on several packages.
If you want to watch other sports, Kayo will also let you stream Spain's La Liga and F1 racing, all for only $25 per month for a basic package or $35 a month for a premium pass. And finally, Kayo Sports is contract-free and offers a 14-day FREE TRIAL.
Either way, enjoy the game and hopefully your team has better luck next year.


Att hitta den perfekta högpresterande mountainbike-skon kan vara tufft, men med nya S-Works Recon har Specialized gjort ditt val enkelt. Exceptionell kraftöverföring? Check! Gram-jägare-godkänd? Check! Oemotståndlig design? Självklart! Med S-Works Recon får du en off-road-sko som är klar för alla slags äventyr, vare sig det är på en Gravel-bike, Cyklocross eller XC-racingmaskin.
We took a no-holds-barred approach to transferring every bit of your power to the pedals. The sole utilizes a rubber toe and heel for superior off-the-bike traction, while the pontoons are made of a harder TPU to provide excellent stability and power transfer to the pedal. A completely refined Padlock Heel, meanwhile, packs in more comfort with the same exceptional heel hold that you found in the previous iteration. And finally, the space-grade Dyneema material used in the upper doesnt stretch when pulled on, making sure that your foot stays where its supposed to. With all of these features combined, you can be sure that weve kept in line with the motto every watt is sacred.
In the comfort arena, we kept all of the Body Geometry features you know and love, like the Longitudinal Arch, Varus Wedge, and Metatarsal Button. Each one of these features have been ergonomically designed and scientifically tested to not only boost power, but also to increase efficiency and reduce the risk of injury. We also took luxury into account by designing the S-Works Recon to have form that complements its function, so you'll find seams that are bonded together, rather than sewn, cleaning up the lines and contouring to your foot with slipper-like comfort. The custom CNCd alloy Boa® dials add some panache, but they also feature durable spring clutch internals and precise, one-millimeter micro-adjustments that let you perfectly dial-in your fit.
The S-Works Recon embodies everything we know about footwear, compacted into one shoe with no compromises, no shortcutsjust explosive speed and superior comfort.
PadLock heel construction cradles the heel and is proven to improve acceleration.
SlipNot rubber heel and toe tread for confident traction on all terrain with removable toe studs.


text:
function StartAngelGreaves(keys)
	local caster  = keys.caster
	local health  = keys.ActivateHealth
	local mana    = keys.ActivateMana
	local hp_pct  = keys.ActivateHPPCT / 100
	local mp_pct  = keys.ActivateMPPCT / 100
	local radius  = keys.Radius
	local ability = keys.ability

	caster:EmitSound("Item.GuardianGreaves.Activate")
	caster:Purge(false, true, false, true, false )

	while(caster:HasModifier("modifier_huskar_burning_spear_counter")) do
		caster:RemoveModifierByName("modifier_huskar_burning_spear_counter")
	end
	caster:RemoveModifierByName("modifier_huskar_burning_spear_debuff")
	caster:RemoveModifierByName("modifier_dazzle_weave_armor")
	caster:RemoveModifierByName("modifier_dazzle_weave_armor_debuff")

	ParticleManager:CreateParticle("particles/items3_fx/warmage_burst_halo.vpcf", PATTACH_ABSORIGIN_FOLLOW, caster)

	local nearby_allied_units = FindUnitsInRadius(caster:GetTeam(), caster:GetAbsOrigin(),
			nil, radius,	DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_TEAM_FRIENDLY,
			DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_HERO + DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_BASIC,
			DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_FLAG_NONE + DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_FLAG_OUT_OF_WORLD + DOTA_UNIT_TARGET_FLAG_INVULNERABLE,
			FIND_ANY_ORDER, false)

	local ally_health_restore, ally_mana_restore

	for i, nearby_ally in ipairs(nearby_allied_units) do

		ally_mana_restore = nearby_ally:GetMaxMana()*mp_pct + mana

		if not nearby_ally:HasModifier("modifier_item_angels_greaves_fuckit") then
			ally_health_restore = nearby_ally:GetMaxHealth()*hp_pct + health
			nearby_ally:Heal(ally_health_restore, caster)
			nearby_ally:GiveMana(ally_mana_restore)
			nearby_ally:EmitSound("DOTA_Item.Mekansm.Target")
			ParticleManager:CreateParticle("particles/items3_fx/warmage_recipient.vpcf", PATTACH_ABSORIGIN_FOLLOW, nearby_ally)
			ability:ApplyDataDrivenModifier(caster, nearby_ally, "modifier_item_angels_greaves_fuckit", {duration = 15})
		else
			nearby_ally:GiveMana(ally_mana_restore / 2)
		end
	end
end


Ki for the warehouse to contain the precious thing.
Najeonchilki with its delicacy and mysteriousness has been loved for a long time as our unique handicraft.
Najeon products having the delicate pattern effect of mother-of-pearl which emits the brilliant light like a pearl, is made through repetitive and precise workmanship by using naturally in deep sea, conch, lumber, feldspar and other various materials and is known as valuable practical artcraft with best qualitey due to its splended shape and colorful color.
LIGHTWEIGHT, COMPACT & DURABLE- Highest quality metals have been selected to ensure it lasts without compromising on weight or thickness.
The meaning of this pattern has the meaning of the lofty beauty.
If you have any questions about this product by MOP antique, contact us by completing and submitting the form below. If you are looking for a specif part number, please include it with your message.


This course will equip students with the skills required to engage in their statutory responsibilities under the new legislation relating to the protection and welfare of children. The course offers an immersive, innovative blended learning curriculum facilitating transferable skills including team work, communication, a self-directed flexible approach to learning and problem solving as well as applied research delivered by both face to face and on line learning in a supportive learning environment. Students have a variety of options including the possibility of exiting at the Graduate Diploma level or progressing through the programme in a staged approach by building on their Graduate Diploma and undertaking the final core modules in the MSc programme at a later date.
The Child Welfare and Protection course offers an interdisciplinary perspective and focuses upon areas such as reporting, responding, clinical supervision and practical court skills. Assessments are based on the application of specific child protection and welfare competencies as applied to the students own area of relevant work.
This course provides a comprehensive foundation for practitioners own professional management within their own discipline and as members of a multidisciplinary team.
A flexible modular structure has been designed to suit practitioners, in order that individuals can complete each module independently. Modules are focussed on legal responsibilities, case management and influencing context of the inherent challenges within this field.
The modules are delivered in a stimulating educational forum using innovative practice within a multidisciplinary arena whilst combining research and evidence based practice. The programme is structured to accommodate work requirements of students and is delivered through a mixture of blended learning and face to face delivery. Full support is given by academic staff, educational technologist and administrative staff.
This course is designed for any individual who works with children and families in the health, social work, education, criminal justice, Gardaí and social care and community fields.
It prepares students from health, social care and other services who interact with children to develop skills in relation to child welfare and protection within their organisation.
Students are required to have a level 8 honours degree or above. Students who do not have a level 8 honours degree or above should contact a member of the programme team in advance of applying and may be eligible based on their prior experience.
Students are required to be currently working with children and/or families and ideally have at least one year's experience in this area.
The course offers an interdisciplinary perspective and focuses upon areas such as reporting, responding, clinical supervision and practical court skills. Assessments are based on the application of specific child protection and welfare competencies as applied to the students own area of relevant work.
The Graduate Diploma is made up from the following modules up to a total of 60 ECTS.
The course is delivered using a blended learning approach with a mixture of day attendance and online learning Attendance will depend on the combination of modules taken although is on average 2 days per module. Online content is released at weekly intervals.


text:
\section{Introduction}
Deep Neural Networks have gained significant popularity recently and have been applied to many Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems, such as machine translation, speech recognition, sentiment analysis, document summarization and reading comprehension. Among these applications, question answering, which is used in chatbots and dialogue agents, has attracted many attentions. The goal of question answering system is to provide an accurate answer to a given question based on a given context paragraph. This requires complex model interactive between question and context.

In this paper, I explored a variety of improvements of SQuAD approaches, implement a question answering system using a Bi-direction attention flow layer, connected with a Multi-layer LSTM encoder and decoder for start-index. On top of this, I introduce a new end-index decoder layer, conditioning on start-index output. Experiment shows this has increased model performance by 15.16\%. For prediction, I introduce a new smart-span equation, which rewarding both short answer length and high probability in start and end-index, which further improved the prediction accuracy.

\section{Background}
Stanford Question Answering Dataset(SQuAD)[1] (Rajpurkar et al., 2016) is a reading comprehension dataset, consisting of 100,000+ question-answer pairs on 500+ articles. SQuAD has led to many research papers and significant breakthroughs in building effective reading comprehension systems. One big breakthrough is Bi-Directional Attention Flow[2] (Seo et al., 2016), which enables the system to focus on the ROI in the context paragraph that is most relevant to the question, as well as the ROI in the question that is most relevant to the context. Another trending direction is Conditioning Prediction. "Match-LSTM and Answer Pointer"[3](Wang et al., 2016) proposed a Pointer Network that outputs a probability distribution over locations in the context. DrQA(Chen et al., 2017) explored a test-time smarter span selection approach, based on the fact answer ofter consists less than 15 words.

\section{Approach}
\subsection{Architecture}
For this project, I propose the following 6-layer model architecture, as showed in Figure 1.
\begin{figure}[h]
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Architecture.png}
\caption{Conditioning LSTM Decoder and Bi-directional Attention Based Question Answering System Architecture}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{Embedding Layer}
Embedding layer maps each word in question and context to a vector space. For this project, I uses pre-trained Stanford GloVe [5] embeddings, during training, the embeddings are constants. My experiment shows that, increasing embedding dimension from 100 to 300 doesn't provide much model improvements, but it will make the training 40\% slower and more prone to over-fitting. So I use GloVe 100-dimension embeddings for all following models.
\subsubsection{Encoder Layer}
The context and question embedding sequence are feed into a 2-Layer Bi-directional LSTM to encode to forward and backward hidden states.
\subsubsection{Attention Layer}
To enable the model focus on the part of the question that is relevant to the context as well as part of the context that is relevant to the question, I use Bidirectional Attention Flow Layer described at [2].

\subsubsection{Start Decoder and End-Decoder}
For this project, I introduced two Bi-LSTM decoders to predict start-index and end-index position distribution separately. The end-index decoder will take start-index decoder output combined with post-attention layer hidden states as the input so that the end-index prediction is conditioning on the start-index distribution. Compared with baseline model, this approach adds a Bi-LSTM model layer and the two models are no longer sharing weights due to they are different problems by nature. This changes alone has magically increased the F1 score by 13\% when comparing with baseline model.
\subsubsection{Output Layer}
Output Layer is a fully connected layer followed by a ReLU non-linearity. Finally, we apply softmax function to start-index logits and conditioning end-index logits to generate the probability distribution for both start and end position. Loss function is the sum of the cross-entropy loss of start and end indexes.
\subsubsection{Smart Span}
After analyzing failed session, I noticed that if a shorter answer and a longer answer has similar $p_{start}*p_{end}$ probability, the ground-truth answer is often the shorter answer. To capture this information, I introduced an smart-span equation to measure start-end pair-wise probability. This function is rewarding short answer length as well as high start-end-index probability at the same time.
\textbf{$$p(start, end)=\frac{p_{start}*p_{end}}{log(end-start+1)+1}$$}

\section{Experiments}
\subsection{Training Data}
SQuAD[1] provides word sequences of paragraphs sourced from 500+ Wikipedia articles and word sequence of 100K questions and answers, crowdsourced using Amazon Mechanical Turk. The answer are always taken directly from the paragraph. To minimize the noise in human-curated ground-truth answer, SQuAD provides three human answers for each question, and official evaluation will take the highest score among the three answers. The data is split into 80\% training and 10\% development set and 10\% withhold test set.

\par Based on the analysis on 86,318 training data, \textbf{98.98\%} of answers is less than 20 words. \textbf{98.34\%} of context is less than 300 words.
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{tabular}{cc}
  \includegraphics[width=65mm]{answer_len.png} &   \includegraphics[width=65mm]{context_len.png} \\
(a) Answer Length Distribution & (b) Context Length Distribution  \\[6pt]
\end{tabular}
\caption{Training and Dev Loss Tensorboard}
\end{figure}

\par In this paper, I use pre-trained word embedding GloVe[5]. GloVe is trained on the 6 Billions words of Wikipedia and Gigaword. It has choice of dimensionality 50/100/200/300, each contains 400k lowercase words.

\subsection{Evaluation Metrics}
Model Performance is measured via F1 and Exact Match(EM) score.
\par F1 is a harmonic mean of precision and recall. This is a less strict metrics.
$$F1=\frac{2*Precision*Recall}{Precision+Recall}$$
\par EM is a binary measure of whether the system output matches the ground truth answer exactly. This is a fairly strict metrics.
$$EM=\frac{Exact Match Count}{Total Count}$$

\subsection{Training Details}
The code is implemented using Tensorflow v1.4 [6] framework, and written in python. All the models are trained on GPU of Microsoft Azure NV12 standard VM, which has 2 Nvidia Tesla 60M GPU pre-installed. The most complex model takes 2.5 days to converge.
\par I start the training with a baseline model. After analyzing, I found Dev set converge at F1=42\% and the training F1 is only ~70\%. To make the model complex enough to capture the training information, 2-Layer Bi-direction LSTMs and BiDAF is introduced to improve the F1 score to 53.59\%. After analyzing failed predictions, I noticed some answers are abnormally long. To capture this information, instead of predict end-index position independently, its prediction can be conditioning on start-index output. This final approach achieves 15.16\% increase in F1 score.

\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{tabular}{cc}
  \includegraphics[width=65mm]{baseline.png} &   \includegraphics[width=65mm]{lstm.png} \\
(a) Baseline Model & (b) 2-Layer Bi-LSTMs \\[6pt]
 \includegraphics[width=65mm]{lstm_bidaf.png} &   \includegraphics[width=65mm]{lstm_bidaf_cond.png} \\
(c) 2-Layer Bi-LSTMs with BiDAF & (d) Bi-LSTMs, BiDAF and Conditioning Decoders  \\[6pt]
\end{tabular}
\caption{Training and Dev Loss Tensorboard}
\end{figure}

\begin{table}[h]
\caption{Model Comparison}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{llllll}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Model} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf F1 } &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf EM } &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Parameter Size} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Training Time} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Batch Size}
\\
\hline \\
Baseline        & 44.05 & 34.53  & 521,802 & 1.2s & 100 \\
2-Layer BiLSTMs     &53.59 & 44.63  & 1,283,802 & 2.0s & 100 \\
2-Layer BiLSTMs with BiDAF  & 58.16 & 48.76 & 2,405,103 & 2.7s  & 100 \\
2-Layer BiLSTMs with BiDAF, ConDecoders & 73.82 & 64.54  & 3,048,603 & 2.8s & 40 \\
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

\subsection{Model Parameters Tuning}
On top of the 2-Layer BiLSTMs with BiDAF, Conditioning Decoders model architecture, we start model hyper parameters tuning. Because most of the context are less than 300 words. So I truncate the context words after 300 words, to improve training speed. For this project, the model tuning is mainly focused on hidden size, dropout rate and embedding size.  The converged tuning result after 50,000 iterations is list in Table 3.
\begin{table}[h]
\caption{Model Parameters Tuning}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{llllll}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Model} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf F1 } &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf EM } &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Hidden Size} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Dropout Rate} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Embedding Size}
\\
\hline \\
Model 1        & 73.83 & 64.54  & 150 & 0.20 & 100 \\
Model 2        & 71.68 & 61.97  & 150 & 0.25 & 200 \\
Model 3        & 72.66 & 62.16 & 200 & 0.30  & 100 \\
Model 4        & 73.32 & 63.59  & 250 & 0.20 & 100 \\
Model 5        & 73.73 & 64.51  & 150 & 0.15 & 100 \\
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

\par Table 3 shows that
\begin{itemize}
\item When $HiddenSize = 150$, $Dropout = 0.2$ is a good choice. Increase will lead to high variance model and decrease will lead to over-fitting in early stage
\item Increase $HiddenSize$ from 150 to 250 doesn't improve the performance much.
\item $EmbeddingSize = 100$ has a reasonable good performance. Increase embedding size from 100 to 200 doesn't affect model performance much.
\end{itemize}

\section{Result and Analysis}
\subsection{Category Analysis}
To better understand the result, I did an category analysis on the 10,391 Dev predictions. The result per category analysis in Table 4 shows that questions contain "When" and "Who" are clearly better than average, while questions contain "Why" are performing below average.
\begin{table}[h]
\caption{Evaluation by Question Category}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf Category} &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf F1 } &
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bf EM }
\\
\hline \\
Total        & 73.83 & 64.54    \\
Who        & 76.37 & 70.52  \\
When        & 83.07 & 77.50  \\
Where        & 73.32 & 63.77  \\
Why        & 65.71 & 41.44  \\
What        & 72.14 & 62.00  \\
Which       & 74.36 & 65.66  \\
How       & 74.24 & 65.15  \\
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

\subsection{Error Analysis}
After analyzing the model prediction on tiny-dev dataset, I find there are four common errors in my model prediction.
\subsubsection{Wrong Position of Attention in Inverted Sentence}
\textbf{Context}: A 16-yard reception by Devin Funchess and a 12-yard run by Stewart then set up Gano's 39-yard field goal
\par \textbf{Question}: Who had a 12-yard rush on this drive?
\par \textbf{Answer}: Stewart
\par \textbf{Prediction}: Devin Funchess
\par \textbf{Reason and Proposal}: In this case, the order of subject and verb are reversed. Having part-of-speech tagging feature will help with the inverted sentences.
\subsubsection{Mis-understand Number and Special Characters}
\textbf{Context}: while Jonathan Stewart finished the drive with a 1-yard touchdown run, cutting the score to 10-7 with 11:28 left in the second quarter.
\par \textbf{Question}: How much time was left in the quarter when Stewart got the touchdown?
\par \textbf{Answer}: 11:28
\par \textbf{Prediction}: 10-7
\par \textbf{Reason and Proposal}: Word embedding doesn't capture the meaning of numbers and special characters. We can either introduce a number/special character embedding or introduce number format feature to help improve this case.
\subsubsection{Incorrect Entity Detection}
\textbf{Context}: As opposed to broadcasts of primetime series, CBS broadcast special episodes of its late night talk shows as its lead-out programs for Super Bowl 50, beginning with a special episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert following the game.
\par \textbf{Question}: Which late night comedy host show played immediately after Super Bowl 50 ended?
\par \textbf{Answer}: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
\par \textbf{Prediction}: stephen colbert
\par \textbf{Reason and Proposal}: The model falsely recognize stephen colbert as the name of a show. Include name entity feature will improve this issue.
\subsubsection{Inaccurate boundary}
\textbf{Context}: The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee has vowed to be "the most giving Super Bowl ever", and will dedicate 25 percent of all money it raises for philanthropic causes in the Bay Area.
\par \textbf{Question}: The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee said it would be the most what ever?
\par \textbf{Answer}: the most giving Super Bowl ever
\par \textbf{Prediction}: giving super bowl ever
\par \textbf{Reason and Proposal}: Due to the pre-processing tokenization logic, we loss the double quote information. We can tokenize "the most" into [", the, most, "], then the model will be quote boundary aware.

\section{Conclusion}
In this paper, I implemented a model with Bi-directional attention flow layer, connected with a Multi-layer LSTM encoder, connected with one start-index decoder and one conditioning end-index decoder and achieved great result. The best single model achieves an F1 score of 73.97\% and EM score of 64.95\% on test set. Based on the error analysis, 1) introducing number and special characters format feature  2) introducing part-of-speech tag  3) introducing name entity feature 4) improving tokenization logic will further improve the model performance.

\subsubsection*{References}
\small{
[1] P. Rajpurkar, J. Zhang, K. Lopyrev, and P. Liang, Squad: 100, 000+ questions for machine comprehension of text. CoRR, abs/1606.05250, 2016.

[2] Minjoon Seo, Aniruddha Kembhavi, Ali Farhadi, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi. Bidirectional attention flow for machine comprehension. arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.01603, 2016.

[3] Shuohang Wangand JingJiang. Machine comprehension using match-lstm and answerpointer. arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.07905, 2016.

[4] Danqi Chen, Adam Fisch, Jason Weston, and Antoine Bordes. Reading wikipedia to answer open-domain questions. arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.00051, 2017.

[5] Jeffrey Pennington, Richard Socher, Christopher D. Manning. Glove: Global vectors
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[6] Tensorflow org: https://www.tensorflow.org/
}

\end{document}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv