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Reliable direct measurement of causes of death in low- and middle-income countries
Prabhat Jha1Email author
© Jha; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014
Accepted: 16 October 2013
Published: 4 February 2014
Most of the 48 million annual deaths in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur without medical attention at the time of death so that the causes of death (COD) are largely unknown. A review of low-cost methods of obtaining nationally representative COD data is timely.
Despite clear historic evidence of their usefulness, most LMICs lack reliable nationally representative COD data. Indirect methods to estimate COD for most countries are inadequate, mainly because they currently rely on an average ratio of 1 nationally representative COD to every 850 estimated deaths in order to measure the cause of 25 million deaths across 110 LMICs. Direct measurement of COD is far more reliable and relevant for country priorities. Five feasible methods to expand COD data are: sample registration systems (which form the basis for the ongoing Million Death Study in India; MDS); strengthening the INDEPTH network of 42 demographic surveillance sites; adding retrospective COD surveys to the demographic household and health surveys in 90 countries; post-census retrospective mortality surveys; and for smaller countries, systematic assembly of health records. Lessons learned from the MDS, especially on low-cost, high-quality methods of verbal autopsy, paired with emerging use of electronic data capture and other innovations, can make COD systems low-cost and relevant for a wide range of childhood and adult conditions.
Low-cost systems to obtain and report CODs are possible. If implemented widely, COD systems could identify disease control priorities, help detect emerging epidemics, enable evaluation of disease control programs, advance indirect methods, and improve the accountability for expenditures of disease control programs.
Causes of death
Cause of death statistics
Verbal autopsy
Sample registration system
Reliable, reproducible, and openly available information on age-specific and sex-specific cause of death (COD) is essential to charting pathways to reduce premature child and adult mortality [1–5]. The United Nations (UN) estimates that the 48 million deaths in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including about 7 million child deaths, represent 86% of the 56 million global deaths that occurred in 2010 [6]. Most deaths in LMICs do not have a diagnosis of COD [3, 7]. Given the limitations of indirect methods to estimate COD statistics, the most urgent need is to collect reliable, representative, and robust primary COD data to guide national and global health action and research. There are practical ways for LMICs to develop and expand rapidly the mortality systems that determine the CODs. This paper draws on the lessons from various countries, in particular from the ongoing Indian Million Death Study (MDS) [8, 9].
Mortality and causes of death
There are two components to measuring mortality; the first is capturing the event of death (by at least age and sex, but ideally including geographical residence and education or some measure of social status). The second is ascertaining the underlying COD, which is the disease that contributed most directly to the death (as distinct from immediate cause or co-existing conditions). Death is a concrete, final, and measurable event that households remember well, and it can be captured in household surveys reliably.
Since about 1960, use of population totals from census data and retrospective mortality estimates, paired with indirect demographic methods, has enabled reasonably credible estimates of the age-specific and sex-specific national mortality rates for most countries. These are published and updated regularly by the UN Population Division [6]. Additional methods such as household surveys of birth and death histories of children, their siblings and parents, or similar methods [4, 10, 11], have also improved estimates of age- and sex-specific mortality, or in some cases specific causes (such as maternal deaths).
Even rudimentary data on age- and sex-specific all-cause mortality rates can identify trends for rapidly changing diseases such as those responsible for childhood mortality [12]. A simple analysis of the excess death rates between the 1911 and 1921 censuses in India suggests that the influenza epidemic of 1918/19 might have killed about 20 million of the population [13]. More recently, it has been possible to obtain a crude estimate of the effect of HIV infection on mortality in selected sub-Saharan countries from the observed large increases in all-cause mortality rates in young adults from 1990 to 2000, using simple burial records [14]. In both cases, this was because the 'signal' of influenza-attributable or HIV-attributable mortality (the increase in the number of deaths) exceeded the 'noise' of misclassification by competing mortality from other causes [15].
Why collect cause of death data?
Over the past century, reliable COD data in high-income countries have led to numerous discoveries and health improvements [1, 16–18]. For example, the dramatic increase in lung cancer deaths in British and American men around the period of World War II spurred research that led to the identification of smoking as a cause of lung cancer and, eventually, a wide range of diseases [19]. In the early 1980s, routine mortality data from San Francisco identified an exceptional increase in immune-related deaths in young men, which signaled the beginning of the American HIV epidemic [20]. Downward trends in infectious disease mortality worldwide have reflected the widespread use of immunizations and antimicrobials [17, 18].
Despite these clear benefits, COD data are exceptionally limited in LMICs because of historical neglect and insufficient resources. Of 115 countries that reported mortality data to the World Health Organization (WHO) around 2005, only 64 had good-quality vital registration that also included COD certification [3]. Fully 75 countries (including about 90% of African countries) did not provide data on COD for any year after 1990 (Figure 1). Similarly, the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group estimated that COD information was available for only 3% of global child deaths [7]. There is a major knowledge gap for representative information on COD in adults, such as the proportion of adult deaths due to malaria [21]. China and India have nationally representative COD surveys [9, 22, 23], and China and Latin America have expanded civil registration with medical certification. Thus, the major gap in COD information exists in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and East Asian countries [3].
Quality of the cause of death statistics from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) reported to WHO. Only five countries outside China, India and Latin America have national COD surveys: Afghanistan, Mozambique, Thailand, Vietnam and Zambia. Zambia's survey covers 4 of 10 provinces. The remaining countries are nationally representative. Source: Mathers et al. [3], updated based on data from Murray et al. [27].
Seven limitations of indirect methods to estimate COD
In 1981, the Ghana Health Assessment Team [24] advanced the concept of measuring burden of disease by combining loss of useful life through premature death with the loss of useful life due to disability. This spurred further work, most notably the influential World Development Report 1993 by the World Bank [25]. The WHO Global Health Estimates (GHE) [26] use similar approaches to estimate mortality levels and COD for the major regions of the world, and for most countries. The 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study goes further by claiming it can make reliable estimates for '291 diseases and injuries, 67 risk factors, and 1,160 non-fatal health consequences in 21 regions, 20 age groups and 187 countries' [27]. It is important to understand the strengths and limitations of these indirect methods.
A simplified schema of how GBD estimates are created is shown in Figure 2, with the key inputs of mortality totals (derived from the UN or demographic methods), COD data, estimates of disability weights for specific conditions (based largely on expert opinion), and risk factors (based largely on literature reviews). The GBD uses regression equations (of uncertain error) to predict the level of mortality, or the distribution of several CODs from populations (mostly in high-income countries) for which such data are known. Parameters for independent variables include economic (GDP/capita), educational (literacy rates), and other variables such as generalized HIV epidemic, endemic malaria, and geography, among others. In parallel, simultaneous equations are used to model relations between incidence, prevalence, death rate, duration of disease, and survival, among others, although this does not directly enable estimations of COD distributions.
Simplified schema of death and disability estimates in indirect methods. Modified from World Bank data [25].
The obvious limitation of this indirect method is an insufficient number of nationally representative COD data. The 2010 GBD [27] study had to apply these complex methods to a ratio of 1 nationally representative COD to 850 estimated deaths so as to measure the cause of 25 million deaths, across 110 LMICs outside China, India, and Latin America (Figure 3). National COD surveys of reasonable representativeness used by the GBD were available only from Afghanistan, India, Mozambique, Thailand, Vietnam, and Zambia, totaling about 60,000 surveyed annual deaths [27], of which half were from the MDS in India [9]. Other COD data sources in the GBD are described scantily, but appear to comprise hospital archives on deaths and diseases (a patchwork of generally small, non-representative surveys), death and cancer registries, mortuary statistics, and incomplete records from ministries, census departments, and police reports.
Cause of death (COD) data in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study for selected countries. The GBD measured the major COD types in 110 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) based on data available from national surveys with verbal autopsy (VA) in five countries; final results were based on a ratio of estimated to actual COD data that was less than 0.12% (or about 1 in 850). Most health measurements rely on disability estimates as opposed to mortality, and measurement error often exceeds the desired change in health outcomes following an intervention. For example, in seeking a 10% improvement in health outcomes in children under 5 years of age, it is not possible to accurately assess the outcome of an intervention if the measurement error exceeds 10%. By contrast, as death is a discernible, objective outcome, restricting analyses to mortality significantly reduces measurement error [1, 28].
Aside from this key data limitation, the GBD has six other constraints, as follows:
The core COD data are not open source, and it has not thus far been possible to reproduce GBD results, limiting scientific confidence in its findings [2, 29–32].
Most econometric models have little ability to deal with true underlying uncertainty, as they have few robust COD data sources available, and most importantly, have too few representative COD surveys. This in turn creates large variations in individual diseases from unstable models that are not specific to local country conditions [33]. For instance, the 1996 version of the GBD estimated 0.95 million deaths from tuberculosis in India for the year 2000, whereas the 1999 version estimated 0.42 million deaths for the year 1998 [32]. Similarly, recent estimates of childhood and adult deaths from malaria in Africa [34] have partially modeled the Indian MDS mortality patterns [21] onto the COD distribution in Africa. The net result may be an underestimation of the extent to which malaria in Africa kills children, and an overestimation of the extent to which it kills adults. Similarly, changes in the reporting of maternal deaths mean that the GBD estimates of maternal deaths due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection vary from 18,000 to 56,000 in adjacent years [35]. Finally, the use of economic and educational variables in regression equations might falsely reduce outliers for countries that produce better mortality outcomes at lower spending (or vice versa).
The models do not adequately capture the underlying uncertainty in misclassification of CODs, but rather create somewhat misleading 'uncertainty intervals' based on re-running the econometric simulations. Thus, the GBD has equally narrow estimates for the range of diabetes deaths in Africa as for those in high-income countries, despite the obvious paucity in Africa of COD data or surveys of diabetes prevalence [31].
The GBD often rejects real epidemiological data if they do not fit the models [29, 36]. Among Indian women aged 30 to 69 years, the MDS estimates that 33,000 die from cervical cancer and 20,000 from breast cancer [37], whereas the GBD claims that more Indian women die from breast than from cervical cancer.
The total numbers of deaths in the GBD are uncertain as these too have relied on regression models for estimation of total mortality. The GBD estimates nearly 3 million fewer deaths in LMICs than does the UN Population Division for 2010 [6]. The UN and the South African Medical Research Council estimated a 3% yearly decrease in childhood mortality in South Africa since 2000, mostly based on direct surveys, whereas the GBD estimates projected a 3% yearly increase over the same time period [38]; obviously, both cannot be right.
Such indirect estimates, especially when published by international organizations in major journals, create a false impression that reliable country-level estimates are available, and this may inhibit further work to obtain direct estimates.
Mortality comprises most of the composite of mortality and disability measures, such as disability-adjusted life years [25]. Mortality does not capture all illnesses or specific priorities, such as depression, schizophrenia, or blindness. For most diseases, the GBD estimates of disability are largely expert opinion, and thus there is no easy way to validate the disability estimates or to study the relationship of disability and death. For example, in comparison to the 1993 World Bank report [25] or earlier GBD reports, the 2010 version of the GBD assigns about 2.5 times as many disability adjusted life years to child deaths [39]. However, the correlation between premature mortality (specifically death before the age of 70 years) and morbidity is strong for the majority of other diseases of public health importance, with only some exceptions [27, 28]. This implies that reliable COD data should remain the major priority for most LMICs.
Five options to expand COD reporting at low cost and high impact
For most individual LMICs, the sources of mortality data are too incomplete, too unrepresentative and of too uncertain quality for accurate COD estimation at the national level. Expanding the number of countries with direct COD data is also the best way to improve indirect estimates, and more importantly, to assist national public health action and research [1–5, 28].
The major objective for most LMICs should be to obtain representative data on age-, gender-, and social strata-specific CODs (both total numbers and rates per living population) for the major diseases. Universal civil registration of deaths with medical certification remains the best long-term goal [11], but complete civil registration is achieved over several decades. Even the USA took the better part of a century to increase death certification, and some states did not reach complete coverage until the 1970s [1, 16]. Developing countries have shown little progress in the expansion of civil registration [11], and COD statistics lag even further behind [4]. Slow progress in civil registration in LMICs is mostly a result of limited access to medical care and the fact that most deaths occur at home rather than in hospitals. Incentives for households to register deaths are limited, because pension and insurance schemes or enforceable familial inheritance and property rights are uncommon in LMICs. Strategies to increase civil registration include increasing medical attention at death and training existing healthcare workers to complete death certificates [11]. Requiring burial or cremation grounds to register deaths is practicable in urban settings, but currently less so in rural areas. Efforts to accelerate COD statistics can strengthen civil registration if they work in concert with national census and statistical organizations [4, 9, 11].
There are at least five complementary and practicable approaches to obtain better COD data in the medium term (such as by 2025) [1–5].
The first and most robust option (sometimes called Sample Vital Registration with Verbal Autopsy [8, 9]) is the establishment of a Sample Registration System (SRS). Such a system has worked in representative areas of India since 1971 [9]. China has a similar but less representative system [23]. SRSs are able to continuously and prospectively collect data on the event of death and COD from enrolled households, enabling reliable determination of mortality rates in the population. Mortality rates may require adjustment, as in India, for undercounts that arise from loss to follow-up [40]. SRSs have the disadvantage of requiring more technical capacity to enable continuous enumeration compared with retrospective household surveys.
The second option is to strengthen the ongoing INDEPTH network [41, 42] of about 42 demographic surveillance sites in 19 countries (Figure 4). This would involve efforts to expand the sample size in each country and make the sites representative of the population, and to enable prospective collection of deaths. The Adult Morbidity and Mortality Project in Tanzania was able to strengthen vital statistics and survey capacity, and enabled the use of COD data to monitor and evaluate malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other national programs [42].
Low- and middle-income countries with Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), INDEPTH network Demographic Surveillance Sites, or Sample Registration Systems (China and India). Source: INDEPTH [41] and DHS [43], reproduced with permission [1].
The third option is to carry out retrospective surveys of CODs to supplement the globally standardized Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). These surveys were initiated by the US government about three decades ago, and now cover about 90 countries (Figure 4, [43]). The addition of COD information for children to selected DHS has reduced much of the substantial uncertainty that existed in the 1960s [7]. DHS sample frames could be used to conduct follow-up retrospective COD surveys for children and adults.
The fourth option involves carrying out large, well-planned retrospective surveys of mortality using census sample frames. The marked variation in disease in China became apparent about 3 decades ago, following a complete national survey of the causes of 20 million deaths, carried out in the period 1973 to 1975 [44]. This survey yielded the first assessment of age-specific and cause-specific mortality rates for each province and county, and for China as a whole. The study showed a large variation in disease rates across the country, which in turn brought about health interventions and further research. A similar survey covered about 1 million deaths in 24 urban and 74 rural areas of China during 1986 to 1998 [45]. More recently, Mozambique conducted a national COD survey of over 11,000 deaths, based on deaths identified in the preceding census [46].
Finally, in small countries, health departments may record significantly more deaths and COD data (through hospitals and community health centers) than is recorded through civil vital registration, as has been documented recently for Tonga and Fiji [47–49]. Similarly, a small number of countries which have reasonable levels of civil registration of death but more limited COD data, should consider expanding medically certified COD while concurrently instituting household-based verbal autopsies (VAs) for deaths that occur without medical attention [1, 4].
Lessons learned from the Million Death Study in India
Various countries, notably China and India, have introduced large-scale VA studies [9, 23]. The common lesson from these is the usefulness of even crude COD data that report on the most important diseases of public health importance. The MDS in India is a recent and one of the largest of these VA studies, so lessons from it are particularly relevant for other countries.
In the absence of reliable COD data, nationally representative VA surveys are a viable alternative. VAs involve a structured investigation of the circumstances and symptoms leading to a death, through interviewing an associate of the deceased during a household survey. VAs have inherent limitations, particularly the ability to identify only broad categories of diseases, and a high proportion of undetermined (or 'ill-defined') causes in people aged over 70 years [8, 50]. Even in high-income countries, COD at older ages is difficult to document [51]. However, because the mean age of death in most LMICs is far lower than in developed countries, VA remains very relevant for public health and disease control priorities. With properly standardized training and data collection, double-coding by physicians, and other quality controls, the aggregation of VA data can be extremely powerful at the population level.
Prior to 2004, it was difficult in India to accurately assess local health conditions, explore key risk factors, and evaluate the effects of investments and policies. To address this fundamental gap, the MDS was launched in 2002 [8, 9]. In collaboration with the Registrar General of India, the MDS applied simple, low-cost methods (less than US$2 per household) to record COD data from about 1 million homes throughout the country, which were randomly selected from the preceding census. The MDS focused on a simple process using local field staff who obtained key questions on all deaths, including a half-page narrative in the local language. These were converted into electronic records and coded independently by at least two physicians [8, 9]. Household participation rates have averaged close to 100%. Despite the obvious limitations of VA, the COD information in India today is many times better than the little or no data available previously. Even crude COD data applied widely to various diseases and risk factors across an entire country have yielded unexpected results and influenced disease control priorities. Some selected results from the MDS and their implications for disease control are shown below:
HIV/AIDS resulted in 0.1 million deaths in 2004 (UNAIDS estimated 0.4 million [52]). This result led to adjustments in AIDS funding to better align with the actual demand in India for life-prolonging therapies.
Smoking caused approximately 1 million deaths in 2010 [53]. This finding supported the Indian government efforts to introduce warning labels on cigarette packages and to raise tobacco taxes to help reduce cigarette consumption.
Malaria caused 0.2 million deaths (13 times the WHO estimate) in 2005, primarily in adults [21]. Within 1 week, this finding led to public demand for greater control of malaria in the state of Orissa (and spurred other, currently inconclusive, research on adult malaria deaths in Africa [34]).
The survey identified 2 million child deaths in 2005 resulting from five avoidable causes [54]. This finding spurred the expansion of neonatal/intra-partum care and is presently enabling district-based monitoring of child deaths and up-to-date estimates of neonatal mortality by gender across all districts [55].
Cervical cancer was the leading cause of cancer death in adult middle-aged women in 2010 [37], accounting for 33,000 deaths. If this corresponding rate were to be reduced to that seen in populations with low levels of transmission of the causative human papillomavirus, cervical cancer death rates in Indian women would be about two-thirds lower.
Snakebite kills 50,000 people [56] in India, which equals the WHO estimate for all snakebite deaths worldwide. The distribution of snakebite deaths in specific states suggests that it might be possible to eliminate or substantially reduce deaths in these states.
The MDS has three key methodological implications relevant for other LMICs:
There is a need to avoid the false 'gold standard' of hospital CODs. Hospital-based deaths cannot be used to validate VA, because the age, educational level, pathogen distribution, and etiology of rural medically-unattended deaths differs hugely from hospital deaths [50, 57]. Further studies are needed (and planned) to compare individual- and population-level results from VA collected by non-medical staff, but coded by a doctor, against deaths collected and certified by a doctor in rural areas. At the population level, simple but robust criteria to quantify the performance of VA-based COD systems are proposed and applied to the MDS [58].
The most practicable and robust measure to capture the true uncertainty in COD data is the proportion of ill-defined deaths before old age. It is simply impossible to know the causes for all deaths, especially those based on VA. Countries require a balance akin to St. Augustine's plea 'Oh Lord, let me be chaste, but not quite yet.' Quality controls over fieldwork and coding can reduce ill-defined conditions without artificially eliminating them. Reductions in the proportion of these ill-defined conditions indicate improvements in quality, but no ill-defined conditions indicate fraud or deficiencies in fieldwork [58]. This further suggests a need to re-examine the GBD and WHO practice of re-assigning the less-defined codes in the International Classification of Diseases [59] (sometimes called 'garbage codes'). Re-assignment may well muddy COD data by combining truly ill-defined causes with other, more certain, causes [28].
COD systems can also measure risk factors, in particular for adult CODs. For most infectious conditions, such as meningitis, the COD is directly related to the infective agent. By contrast, chronic diseases such as myocardial infarction may be caused by several factors such as smoking, raised blood pressure, or raised blood lipids. Co-morbidity codes on death certificates [60] have been used in high-income countries, but completion of these codes on death certificates in LMICs remains uncommon. Simply asking about the dead person's risk factors can be useful. A retrospective study of one million deaths in China compared the proportions of smokers and non-smokers who died of tobacco-attributable diseases versus non-tobacco-related diseases (chiefly injuries) to calculate the excess number of deaths in smokers [45]. These methods have been extended recently to South Africa [61] and Bangladesh [62]. Simple questions in the MDS about the deceased's risk factors and that of the respondent enabled household case–control methods to quantify tobacco smoking, tobacco chewing, and alcohol drinking hazards in India [53]. The household interviews required for VA enable the collection at low cost of a wider range of other exposures, and information on use of health and other social services.
Household visits are a unique opportunity to obtain representative information on how people live, and then to link these to deaths. Geocoding these data provides unprecedented capability to use geospatial epidemiology and data-mining approaches to understand disease and its determinants. Examples of information available from rapid, standardized interviews of the household include the following:
Childhood immunization, treatment-seeking, service use, nutrition patterns, and other variables.
Maternal contraception and birth-spacing patterns, and use of maternal services and newer technologies.
Access to and use of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other services, including use of mosquito nets, condoms, and other preventive measures.
Household nutrition, financial protection, access to microcredit, and spending or borrowing for disease treatment.
Connectedness with mobile technology, modern banking, identity schemes, health insurance, and access to markets for agricultural or other goods made locally.
Simple dried blood spots or oral saliva samples to enable 'bio-surveys' or 'sero-surveillance' of various infections, validate coverage rates against major antigens, determine prevalence of diseases such as malaria and dengue, and enable multiplex central testing [63] of various biological correlates of disease.
Faster, cheaper, and better nationally representative COD surveys
Information technology, most notably electronic capture of field data with global positioning satellite tracking and electronic coding by physicians, biological co-sampling of deaths, and use of computer algorithms and geospatial sampling, could substantially improve the validity, reliability, and feasibility of VA, while simultaneously lowering costs. Computer-assisted coding is a promising complement to physician coding, which remains the preferred standard [64]. Future combinations of algorithms might well improve or, less certainly, even replace physician coding.
The large-scale demonstration of the technical and political feasibility of the MDS, paired with the aforementioned innovations in COD surveys, suggests that it is possible for LMICs to adopt at low cost a number of methods to obtain nationally representative COD data by age and gender. A key emerging theme is the need for all such data to be fully and openly available (with protection for individual data and privacy) to ensure that these may be used imaginatively and without restriction [65]. A reasonable goal would be to ensure that all LMICs, but particularly low-income African and Asian countries, have in place large, simple, nationally representative surveys of COD by 2025 [66, 67] in time to monitor the proposed replacement for 2030 of the UN global development goals [39, 68].
Representative and accurate COD information systems have historically been of huge importance to public health. Such low-cost systems are possible, and if implemented widely, can identify disease control priorities, advance GBD, GHE and other indirect methods, help detect emerging epidemics, enable evaluation of disease control programs, and improve the accountability for expenditures of disease control programs [1–5, 28].
GBD:
Global Burden of Disease
GHE:
Global Health Estimates
LMIC:
Low- and middle-income countries
Million Death Study
TB:
VA:
World Health Organization.
This study was supported by grants from the NIH, IDRC, and CIHR. I thank Lukasz Aleksandrowicz, Jordana Leitao, and Michael Palmer for their editorial assistance.
The author declares that he has no competing interests.
Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR), St. Michael's Hospital and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5B 1C5, Canada
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
Medicine for Global Health


text:
Iranian Cleric Blames Women for Earthquakes
Smart Take
Updated Apr. 21, 2017 10:27AM ET / Published May. 03, 2013 2:00PM ET
From Tom Gross's Mideast dispatch, news from Iran of an important new breakthrough in our understanding of seismic phenomena.
WOMEN TO BLAME FOR EARTHQUAKES, SAYS TOP IRANIAN CLERIC
A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.
Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told Iranian media.
"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."
Seismologists have warned that it is likely Tehran will be struck by a major quake in the near future. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Matt Schmit Appointed As IL Office of Broadband Director, Hopes to Connect Rural Parts of the State
By Benjamin Cox on November 12, 2019 at 8:44am
Morgan County and the WLDS/WEAI has been battling with significant broadband and cellular connectivity issues for a number of years. Matt Schmit, the new director of the Illinois Office of Broadband in the state's commerce department says that it's a problem that's not unique to just West Central Illinois. Schmit, who is a former state senator in his native Minnesota, says that he hopes to direct the $420 million diverted to the Connect Illinois project to fix some of the issues the rural parts of the state faces when it comes to connectivity.
Schmit says that discussions between municipalities, local providers, and providers from outside the region need to happen for proposals to receive grant funding for better infrastructure. He says the current discussions about the City of Jacksonville looking at proposal for a municipal broadband option is exactly what the grant funding would be looking for in their applications.
Schmit says that the Office of Broadband will also be technology-neutral in that it will be looking at both wireless and cellular as well as wired technology. He says that the grant funding hopes to be scale-able over time so that the technology is not obsolete within the next few years. Schmit says that all dollars that leave his office will be audited and held accountable for acceptable service.
Schmit will be giving a report to the General Assembly in January with the Broadband Advisory Council on the soon-to-be released first round of grant opportunities. The Connect Illinois project is expected to first work on anchor public institutions like hospitals, schools, and public libraries. The first portion of the funding is expected to be spent on repairing and updating the existing Illinois Century Network, according to the State Journal Register. The network serves various educational institutions around the state. The first round of grants are expected to be matching grants making available over $50 million to applicants from around the state.


A lone student studies in the Main Library on Wednesday January 30, 2019. The UI canceled classes Wednesday, but some students still braved the cold to study as the Library remained.
"I like to study on the second floor of Voxman. There's some comfortable cubby-type places to sit, stretch out, and plug in if you need to charge [an electronic device]."


text:
We Don't Need Affordable Housing, We Need Empowered People
admin January 20, 2015 Views No Comment
In response to the Tennessean's January 19th article, "Nashville needs more affordable housing now, alliance says" and the March 15th article in anticipation of the Mayoral Race in Nashville, "Affordable housing emerges as key issue in mayor's race".
Let me start with my background: I spent 4 years working with under-resourced families in East Nashville. I lived on the lower-income side of 37206 by choice, moving from a posh lakefront lake-view in Hendersonville to 'live as they live, do as they do' when I felt like my life had to be more than just sitting by a lake when there were families out there that were struggling. My presence was based around mentorship of young people, and my home was open to young people, almost 24/7 and featured by the Tennessean.
I also have spent a great deal of time working with the homeless here and in Los Angeles, with a great range of top notch organizations.
"Most know the story by now: The decadelong run that has brought Nashville national accolades as a destination city has upended neighborhoods. It has ushered in a new class of people and pricier homes into Davidson County's inner core, raised property values and rent, and displaced those who can't afford to stay.
We know this pattern as gentrification — a word that's become central to Nashville's identity these days.
But now, a coalition of some of Nashville's most influential voices against poverty is out to slow this cycle"
"Nashville needs more affordable housing now, alliance says", January 19, 2015 Tennessean
My first thought is this: Affordable housing will bring down property values. It's a first world problem but that argument would be made. And then I saw who was heading up the coalition that is voicing these concerns.
An alliance known as A VOICE — founded by Avi Poster, a retired school principal and well-known Nashville community activist, and Marsha Edwards, CEO of the Martha O'Bryan Center — hopes to build a citywide movement around its message — that now is the time for action to ensure more housing options in Nashville. A VOICE, whose mission is to reduce poverty, plans to kick off a series of public forums. Members have already begun soliciting support and endorsements from city leaders
When I saw that Marsha Edwards of the Martha O'Bryan Center was involved, my thought then turns to this: Instead of 'affordable housing' which often imprisons people, which lines the pockets of developers, builders, and corporations – which causes Payday Loan, Pawn Shops, and other slow-income places to sprout almost overnight, why not take all that money and raise a VOICE for mentorship, support for educators in Metro Nashville, our charter schools like KIPP Academy and private schools like Franklin Classical Academy. Empower educators private and public, mentorship programs private, public, and faith based, and many others, to change our community. We can either change a community by changing the people, or change a community by changing the buidlings. Which change do we want?
Why not empower people, to rise from the need for affordable housing? From job training programs, to the excellent mentorship the Martha O'Bryan Center offers (of which I was permitted to participate in via a Young Entrepenurship Training program a few years back), the Nashville Entrepenurship program downtown, adult training programs, and more? Anywhere we can mentor youth, teens, and adults, anywhere we can help them rise above the need for affordable housing, wouldn't that be better then being in the trappings of affordable housing?
I am all for mentorship, now ironically I was rejected from Big Brothers Big Sisters for having too much mentorship going on that they felt I couldn't serve another young person. But for everyone else, why not pour money into organizations like that, and so many others, so we raise a generation that doesn't need affordable housing?
I understand the need for affordable housing now, I get that, but there should be a day when it's a 'triage' not a 'solution' and that society begins to value 'people' enough to pour more resources into them, than into bricks and mortar.
« Un Family Dollar Due West Nashville Tennessee
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text:
Shopify Retail Blog
Merchant Stories
Shopify POS
How Tokyobike Synced Their Storefronts and Doubled Sales
by Roxanne Voidonicolas
With shopping moving online, it's not unusual to see brick-and-mortar retailers moving into the ecommerce space. But not all brands have been able to move online and boast a 100% increase in sales in less than six months.
Meet tokyobike. The independent bicycle company was founded in 2002 in the quiet suburb of Yanaka, Japan, and first made its way to the United States in 2014. The company is now headquartered in Los Angeles, which is where we sat down with Juliana Di Simone, tokyobike's Partner in America, to discuss their journey to selling online.
The ethos behind the in-store experience
The tokyobike brand is inspired by the clean, minimalist aesthetic of Japanese design and pays homage to the "Tokyo Slow" movement—an emphasis on comfort over speed and a nod to simpler times. Their stores are designed to reflect this sentiment. With the open space, subdued colors, and thoughtfully-curated merchandising, customers are invited to explore the store at their leisure.
Buying a bicycle is very personal, explains Juliana. She adds, "[They've] traditionally been purchased in person. You want to see them, touch them, ride them. See if what you're buying will actually fit your needs."
In fact, tokyobike's commitment to their in-store experience is so integral to the brand's ethos that the founders originally had no intention of selling online—they didn't think they'd be able to mirror the experience or the high-touch service.
Up until 2015, tokyobike operated as a brick-and-mortar, exclusively. But when their staff could no longer support the influx of foot traffic in their bustling SoHo shop in New York City, they knew they had to offer an alternative for their customers.
Compounding this shift was a challenge specific to its flagship product: tokyobike's purchase journey was longer than is typical for most direct-to-consumer brands. At $900 apiece, their bicycles aren't an impulse buy. Bikes are a long-term investment and often an expression of one's personal taste, so people take their time exploring their options before making a purchase.
This wasn't a problem for local shoppers, who could return to the store once they'd made up their mind. But out-of-towners and tourists didn't have the same luxury. Instead, they would typically test-ride a few bikes in-store, come across one they loved, only to return home without an easy way to finalize their purchase.
All roads lead to ecommerce
At first, tokyobike's sales associates tried to solve this problem by writing names and emails on the back of business cards for shoppers to take home. This allowed tokybike's staff to then follow up with an invoice and credit card authorization form via email, and gave would-be customers the chance to buy the product. But this manual process was time-consuming, fraught with error, and introduced the joys of paperwork into what should be an exciting purchase.
"When you're a small team, time really matters...If your team is taken away from things that grow the business to do small, laborious things, you need to find tools that make it easier...If you're looking to scale, you really have to find platforms and systems that can help you do those things," Juliana tells us.
Launching an online store was the clear next step for the retailer. But not all platforms are created equal, and in three years, the cracks were beginning to show.
"We knew there were things we wanted to do that we couldn't, and that's mostly because of the way we fulfill our orders and the way we wanted the online experience to be. We thought somewhere in there we were probably losing customers," says Juliana.
They needed something more robust.
Taking Shopify for a test ride
In early 2019, just six months after moving onto Shopify, online sales would surpass tokyobike's brick-and-mortar sales, with the physical locations increasingly being used for test-rides only.
For Juliana, the synergy between their storefronts—and the role tokyobike's physical spaces would come to play in driving online sales—was an unexpected, but welcome shift in the company's business model.
And the relationship is a two-way street. Juliana shares a typical scenario where a customer buys a bike online and opts to pick it up in-store. Once they're in the store, they might realize they need a lock, and a helmet, and maybe a bell. All of a sudden, an online purchase has driven in-store sales, too.
The idea that each channel should complement and influence the other to nurture customers through the sales cycle is the foundation of a unified commerce strategy, and ultimately, the goal for every retailer.
Switching from Lightspeed to Shopify POS
The journey toward a harmonized online and offline experience wasn't without hiccups. "Until recently, we've always had different point-of-sales and a different platform for our online store," admits Juliana.
When they switched to Shopify's ecommerce solution, they decided to switch their Lightspeed point-of-sale (POS) systems to Shopify POS, as well. The separate systems were creating a messy experience—from minor frustrations, like not being able to redeem gift cards across sales channels, to bigger issues, like the inability to see inventory across locations.
Switching to Shopify's POS allowed tokyobike to sync their online store with their physical stores, and manage the entire business from one backend.
"There are very few steps with Shopify. It's a one-click kind of thing."
"We integrated everything, it just made more sense logistically to have everything in the same place. Especially because sometimes, we'll have customers who are interested in things that we only have in-store. So if you need a new set of wheels, we don't have those on the website...but we can easily email a cart to a customer with items that are only in the store and they can complete that purchase as if it was an online sale," explains Juliana.
For multi-location retailers like tokyobike, having an up-to-date inventory that could be moved on demand, with flexible payment and fulfilment options is often a turning point.
When asked about her staff's experience with Shopify's retail technology, Juliana says the platform's ease-of-use was a big selling point. "In terms of our team, I think everyone thought it was way easier. The transition was actually really, really easy for us. There are very few steps with Shopify. It's a one-click kind of thing."
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The team has also benefited from a faster checkout experience since moving to Shopify POS. "Our transaction times are way quicker now. From the moment you decide which bicycle you're going to purchase, to actually inserting your card or tapping your phone, is a much shorter period of time than it used to be before," adds Juliana.
Beyond ease-of-use, Shopify's unified platform allowed tokyobike to provide their customers with a consistently delightful experience across every touchpoint, staying true to the brand's origins, and their commitment to white-glove service.
The future of commerce is unified
It's impossible to think of retail as separate...this idea of unified retail is the future.
Today, customers can begin and complete their journey with tokyobike wherever and whenever they want.
"It's impossible to think of retail as separate. You have to be able to bring the physical into the digital, and the digital into the physical. From an experience perspective, but also in terms of systems. Connecting the two is important...this idea of unified retail is the future," says Juliana.
The company continues to use its brick-and-mortar locations as a showroom for its products—an opportunity to get in front of new customers who are intrigued by their beautiful storefronts, and to give potential customers the option of experiencing their unique products in-person before ordering online.
For the folks who aren't ready to purchase on the spot, tokyobike's sales associates can keep the conversation going by re-engaging these shoppers online with cart reminders and e-gift card offers.
Across the board, this strategy has helped them boost sales and scale across the United States. Since switching over to Shopify, tokyobike doubled their online sales in under six months, and shrunk their sales cycle from 14-30 days, down to a single week. Their brick-and-mortar presence is growing too, with 13 flagship locations around the world, including stores in London, Berlin, Bangkok, and Mexico City.
You could say they're moving at a pretty good clip.
Thinking about switching your POS? Request more info about Shopify POS.
Photography courtesy of tokyobike
Roxanne Voidonicolas
Roxanne Voidonicolas is a content marketer at Shopify where she develops resources for retailers who want to level-up their shopping experiences. Her business articles have been featured in Forbes, Wired, and more.
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This new Project Plan was recently certified through ARS Office of Scientific Quality Review (OSQR). For further details on current work see the 2016 annual report for project 8072-42000-070-00D.
Baranzoni, G., Fratamico, P.M., Gangiredla, J., Patel, I., Bagi, L.K., Delannoy, S., Fach, P., Boccia, F., Anastasio, A., Pepe, T. 2016. Characterization of shiga toxin subtypes and virulence genes in Porcine shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli. Frontiers in Microbiology. 7:574.


You will be hard-pressed to find better performances by young actors this year than Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller in The Spectacular Now. They're simply stunning and reason enough to see the movie. It's practically just a bonus that the actual script they and director James Ponsoldt are bringing to life is a unique, charming and painfully real look at teenage relationships, both with their peers and their parents. It hits theaters on August 2, 2013, but we'd like to invite you to see the film a few days early.
To get into one of these 12 advance screenings around the country, head right here and find the nearest city participating in the event. Sign up and then show up, it's that simple. And it's absolutely worth it, trust us.
The Spectacular Now is not just another teen romance movie. In fact, it's not exactly like its own trailer, which focuses on the happy, fluffy side of the story instead of some of the more complex issues the movie works through. This clip, though, gives you a pretty good sense of the tone, and it only gets better from here.


text:
import createDebugger = require('debug')
import jwt = require('jsonwebtoken')
import { Pool, Client } from 'pg'
import { ExecutionResult } from 'graphql'
import { sql } from '../postgres/utils'
import { $$pgClient } from '../postgres/inventory/pgClientFromContext'

/**
 * Creates a PostGraphQL context object which should be passed into a GraphQL
 * execution. This function will also connect a client from a Postgres pool and
 * setup a transaction in that client.
 *
 * This function is intended to wrap a call to GraphQL-js execution like so:
 *
 * ```js
 * const result = await withPostGraphQLContext({
 *   pgPool,
 *   jwtToken,
 *   jwtSecret,
 *   pgDefaultRole,
 * }, async context => {
 *   return await graphql(
 *     schema,
 *     query,
 *     null,
 *     { ...context },
 *     variables,
 *     operationName,
 *   );
 * });
 * ```
 */
export default async function withPostGraphQLContext(
  {
    pgPool,
    jwtToken,
    jwtSecret,
    jwtAudiences = ['postgraphql'],
    pgDefaultRole,
    pgSettings,
  }: {
    pgPool: Pool,
    jwtToken?: string,
    jwtSecret?: string,
    jwtAudiences?: Array<string>,
    pgDefaultRole?: string,
    pgSettings?: { [key: string]: mixed },
  },
  callback: (context: mixed) => Promise<ExecutionResult>,
): Promise<ExecutionResult> {
  // Connect a new Postgres client and start a transaction.
  const pgClient = await pgPool.connect()

  // Enhance our Postgres client with debugging stuffs.
  debugPgClient(pgClient)

  // Begin our transaction and set it up.
  await pgClient.query('begin')

  // Run the function with a context object that can be passed through
  try {
    const pgRole = await setupPgClientTransaction({
      pgClient,
      jwtToken,
      jwtSecret,
      jwtAudiences,
      pgDefaultRole,
      pgSettings,
    })

    return await callback({
      [$$pgClient]: pgClient,
      pgRole,
    })
  }
  // Cleanup our Postgres client by ending the transaction and releasing
  // the client back to the pool. Always do this even if the query fails.
  finally {
    await pgClient.query('commit')
    pgClient.release()
  }
}

/**
 * Sets up the Postgres client transaction by decoding the JSON web token and
 * doing some other cool things.
 */
// THIS METHOD SHOULD NEVER RETURN EARLY. If this method returns early then it
// may skip the super important step of setting the role on the Postgres
// client. If this happens it's a huge security vulnerability. Never using the
// keyword `return` in this function is a good first step. You can still throw
// errors, however, as this will stop the request execution.
async function setupPgClientTransaction ({
  pgClient,
  jwtToken,
  jwtSecret,
  jwtAudiences,
  pgDefaultRole,
  pgSettings,
}: {
  pgClient: Client,
  jwtToken?: string,
  jwtSecret?: string,
  jwtAudiences?: Array<string>,
  pgDefaultRole?: string,
  pgSettings?: { [key: string]: mixed },
}): Promise<string | undefined> {
  // Setup our default role. Once we decode our token, the role may change.
  let role = pgDefaultRole
  let jwtClaims: { [claimName: string]: mixed } = {}

  // If we were provided a JWT token, let us try to verify it. If verification
  // fails we want to throw an error.
  if (jwtToken) {
    // Try to run `jwt.verify`. If it fails, capture the error and re-throw it
    // as a 403 error because the token is not trustworthy.
    try {
      // If a JWT token was defined, but a secret was not procided to the server
      // throw a 403 error.
      if (typeof jwtSecret !== 'string')
        throw new Error('Not allowed to provide a JWT token.')

      jwtClaims = jwt.verify(jwtToken, jwtSecret, {
        audience: jwtAudiences,
      })

      const roleClaim = jwtClaims['role']

      // If there is a `role` property in the claims, use that instead of our
      // default role.
      if (typeof roleClaim !== 'undefined') {
        if (typeof roleClaim !== 'string')
          throw new Error(`JWT \`role\` claim must be a string. Instead found '${typeof jwtClaims['role']}'.`)

        role = roleClaim
      }
    }
    catch (error) {
      // In case this error is thrown in an HTTP context, we want to add a 403
      // status code.
      error.statusCode = 403
      throw error
    }
  }

  // Instantiate a map of local settings. This map will be transformed into a
  // Sql query.
  const localSettings = new Map<string, mixed>()

  // Set the custom provided settings before jwt claims and role are set
  // this prevents an accidentional overwriting
  if (typeof pgSettings === 'object') {
    for (const key of Object.keys(pgSettings)) {
      localSettings.set(key, String(pgSettings[key]))
    }
  }

  // If there is a rule, we want to set the root `role` setting locally
  // to be our role. The role may only be null if we have no default role.
  if (typeof role === 'string') {
    localSettings.set('role', role)
  }

  // If we have some JWT claims, we want to set those claims as local
  // settings with the namespace `jwt.claims`.
  for (const key of Object.keys(jwtClaims)) {
    localSettings.set(`jwt.claims.${key}`, jwtClaims[key])
  }

  // If there is at least one local setting.
  if (localSettings.size !== 0) {
    // Actually create our query.
    const query = sql.compile(sql.query`select ${sql.join(Array.from(localSettings).map(([key, value]) =>
      // Make sure that the third config is always `true` so that we are only
      // ever setting variables on the transaction.
      sql.query`set_config(${sql.value(key)}, ${sql.value(value)}, true)`,
    ), ', ')}`)

    // Execute the query.
    await pgClient.query(query)
  }

  return role
}

const $$pgClientOrigQuery = Symbol()

const debugPg = createDebugger('postgraphql:postgres')
const debugPgError = createDebugger('postgraphql:postgres:error')

/**
 * Adds debug logging funcionality to a Postgres client.
 *
 * @private
 */
// tslint:disable no-any
function debugPgClient (pgClient: Client): Client {
  // If Postgres debugging is enabled, enhance our query function by adding
  // a debug statement.
  if (debugPg.enabled || debugPgError.enabled) {
    // Set the original query method to a key on our client. If that key is
    // already set, use that.
    pgClient[$$pgClientOrigQuery] = pgClient[$$pgClientOrigQuery] || pgClient.query

    // tslint:disable-next-line only-arrow-functions
    pgClient.query = function (...args: Array<any>): any {
      // Debug just the query text. We don't want to debug variables because
      // there may be passwords in there.
      debugPg(args[0] && args[0].text ? args[0].text : args[0])

      // tslint:disable-next-line no-invalid-this
      const promiseResult = pgClient[$$pgClientOrigQuery].apply(this, args)

      // Report the error with our Postgres debugger.
      promiseResult.catch((error: any) => debugPgError(error))

      return promiseResult
    }
  }

  return pgClient
}
// tslint:enable no-any

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Malavika Mohanan (born 4 August 1993) is an Indian actress who works predominantly in Tamil and Malayalam films. The daughter of cinematographer K. U. Mohanan, she made her acting debut in the Malayalam film Pattam Pole (2013). She gained praise for her starring role in Majid Majidi's Hindi film Beyond the Clouds (2017). She has since played the leading lady in the Malayalam thriller film The Great Father (2017), and the Tamil action films Petta (2019) and Master (2021).

Early life
Malavika Mohanan was born 4 August 1993 and is the daughter of cinematographer K. U. Mohanan. She was born  in the town of Payyanur in Kannur district of Kerala and grew up in Mumbai.

Career

2013–2017: Early work
Malavika completed a degree in Mass Media at Wilson College, Mumbai, hoping to emulate her father as a cinematographer or as a director. Post her graduation, while she was contemplating taking up higher studies, she accompanied her father to a commercial shoot for a fairness cream, starring veteran Malayalam actor Mammootty. The actor subsequently enquired about Malavika's interest in acting, before offering her a role opposite his son, Dulquer Salmaan, in an upcoming Malayalam film.  She took time to consider the proposal before passing an audition and accepting terms to star in Pattam Pole (2013), and gradually learned about the process of acting as the shoot progressed. Owing to the original costume designer's illness, she also worked as her own designer for the project. The romantic drama film, which narrated the relationship between a Tamil Brahmin youth and a Christian girl, received mixed reviews and did not perform well at the box office. A critic from Rediff.com noted that Malavika's "peppy girl act is far from being perfect but shows promise", while the Times of India's reviewers suggested that she did a "decent job". During the period, she continued having an interest in fashion, setting up an Indian ethnic fusion fashion blog called "The Scarlet Window".

In her second film, Nirnayakam (2015), she portrayed as a ballet dancer, won good reviews but also met with a tepid response commercially. Another film during the period, Naale opposite Fahadh Faasil, saw her portray a tribal girl but was later dropped midway through production. In 2016, Mohanan worked on her first Kannada film, Naanu Mattu Varalakshmi (2016) opposite a debutant actor, Prithvi. Despite having a low-key release at the box office, the film won good reviews with Malavika's portrayal of the titular role of Varalakshmi being praised by critics. She then featured in the role of a police officer in the crime thriller The Great Father (2017), where she starred alongside an ensemble cast including Mammootty, Arya and Sneha. The film opened to positive reviews and performed well at the box office.

2017–present: Beyond the Clouds and beyond
Malavika's breakthrough as an actress came through her role as Tara, a poor girl from Mumbai's Dhobi Ghat area, in Majid Majidi's drama film, Beyond the Clouds (2017). Following her successful audition, Majidi selected her ahead of renowned actresses Deepika Padukone and Kangana Ranaut for the role, which saw her portray the older sister of debutant Ishaan Khatter. She expressed her delight at working with Majidi so early in her career, especially considering that she regularly had to study and write essays on his films during her undergraduate course. For the film, she lost eight kilograms in fifteen days to film for a jail sequence, and opted not to wash her hair for several days on end to get the look of the slum dweller correct. The film was screened across several international festivals, before being released worldwide in April 2018. Malavika won positive reviews for her portrayal, with Filmfare's critic stating "Malavika Mohanan is a natural in front of the camera". A reviewer from The Times of India stated she was "captivating in her honest portrayal" and "skilfully walks the fine line between passionate and melodramatic", while The Hollywood Reporter called her "solid".

In mid-2018, she signed on to appear in a role in Karthik Subbaraj's Petta (2019), which would feature her alongside an ensemble cast including Rajinikanth, Vijay Sethupathi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. For the film, which marked her first project in the Tamil language, Malavika hired a Tamil-speaking tutor to help her practice her lines. She then went on to appear in the Tamil action thriller film Master (2021) alongside Vijay, in which she played the role of Charulatha, a college lecturer. The film was a huge commercial success, and became the highest-grossing film in her career.

In 2022, her first release was Maaran, opposite Dhanush. The film opt a theatrical release, with released via directly on  Disney+Hotstar, with received negative reviews from critics and audience. She is currently shootings for her upcoming Hindi film Yudhra opposite Siddhant Chaturvedi. The latter is scheduled to release in Summer 2022.

Filmography

Film

Web series

Music videos

Awards and nominations

References

External links

1993 births
21st-century Indian actresses
Actresses from Kerala
Actresses in Malayalam cinema
Actresses in Kannada cinema
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Actresses in Tamil cinema
Indian film actresses
Living people
People from Kannur district
Actresses from Mumbai

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Pompeo expresses outrage to Sisi over death of U.S. citizen
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed outrage during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over the "pointless and tragic death" of detained U.S. citizen Moustafa Kassem in Egypt, a U.S. official said on Sunday.
The United States on Monday confirmed the death of Egyptian-American Kassem in a prison in Egypt, where he had been in custody since 2013, and vowed to continue to raise concerns over Cairo's human rights record.
Trump again shows 'reluctance' to criticize Russia after suggesting China may have been behind cyberattack
Georgia secretary of state says Trump is being misled by 'dishonest actors'
Beijing furious over Pompeo's Taiwan comments, warns of action
Turkey offended by Pompeo's plan to discuss religious issues
Late night hosts agree it's time to 'Operation Warp Speed President Trump's concession speech'
Was Mike Pompeo joking about 'a 2nd Trump administration'? Trump doesn't seem to think so


This entry was posted in 2S Extra, podcast, Soccer Today! on SPN Radio, SPN Radio, SPN Soccer Feed, The Two Solitudes Soccer Podcast and tagged Colorado Rapids, MLS, MLS Cup Playoffs, Montreal Impact, Seattle Sounders, Toronto FC. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
aumanacmusic
Jul 5, 2019 (updated Jul 7, 2019)
On an intitial listen, this has a lot of the same issues as Top Dawg Entertainment's soundtrack for Black Panther last year — the talent disparity between the best members of Dreamville and the lesser members is so strong that whenever one of them comes on a track, I feel like I really only want to wait until one of the major figures like Cole, J.I.D, Doctur Dot, Johnny Venus, or Bas is on the track.
With that being said, the verses from outside artists are all very good; DaBaby continues his tear of excellent guest appearances on the intro "Under The Sun" and fits in surprisingly well on a beat I would not have placed him on, the second half of "Oh Wow... Swerve" is excellent with a great Maxo Kream feature, REASON is a TDE signee who I'm not all that familiar with but I thought him playing off Cozz on "LamboTruck" was engaging, and Young Nudy's opening verse on "Down Bad" only left me wishing it were longer and not cut off (we're not going to talk about his nasally vocals on "Sunset," perhaps the worst track on the album), Vince Staples is phenomenal as always on "Rembrandt... Run It Back," and I liked what Saba and Smino brought to album closer "Sacrifices."
J.I.D is this album's MVP in my opinion; while I loved pretty much every verse on "Down Bad" besides J. Cole's, and Johnny Venus nearly steals the show at the end, J.I.D's verse is outstanding and really sets the tone for the track. "Costa Rica" is a collab with Florida rappers Ski Mask the Slump God and Smokepurpp that J.I.D is front and center on; and his verses on "1993" and "Remembrant... Run It Back" are quality as well. He handles the majority of the load on "Ladies, Ladies, Ladies," too, albeit there is an enjoyable appearance from T.I. on the back end there that ties things together well.
J. Cole plays a similar role on this album to what Kendrick did on the "Black Panther" soundtrack last year, and while I found his verse to be falling short compared to others on the single "Down Bad," his verses are up to par for the majority of this project. His appearance in the first half of "Oh Wow... Swerve" is perhaps my favorite on this project, as his smooth delivery fits the production, and the in typical Cole fashion, he pukes all over the track with corny lines like "So active on the radio, I'm radioactive." Him teaming up with DaBaby just feels like him having to acknowledge that there's another rapper in Carolina who's doing numbers, but considering Cole's style is more of a laid back delivery whereas DaBaby is at his best with witty bars about violence, the combination is awkward at best. With that being said, Cole fits in well on most of the tracks on the second half of this compilation ("1993," "Rembrandt... Run It Back"), although I have no idea what "MIDDLE CHILD" is doing on this project considering it sticks out like a sore thumb and is a solo track from Cole that doesn't fit into the theme or spirit of cuts that surround it, and his vocals on the latter part of his verse on "Sacrifices" make me cringe just a tad. The bottom line is that if you've loved what Cole brought to his features last year, I think you'll find Revenge of The Dreamers III something to fill your plate until his mixtape "The Off-Season" drops some point later this year.
Bas and Ari Lennox continue to be just "meh" to me and I don't exactly understand their appeal on their own, but the production on ROTD3 maximizes their talents into enjoyable appearances from both of them. Overall, considering the mess that the first two installments in the "Revenge of the Dreamers" series were, this was a mostly enjoyable listener experience.
FAVORITE TRACKS: Under The Sun, Down Bad, LamboTruck, Oh Wow... Swerve, Ladies Ladies Ladies, Costa Rica, 1993, Rembrandt... Run It Back, Got Me
LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Swivel, Sunset, Don't Hit Me Right Now, MIDDLE CHILD
Scre4meh
Least Fav : Middle Child? Yea aight lmao
Jebus
Middle child is pretty overrated.
aumanacmusic's Reviews
KingKRoolisBack commented on KnifeTrick's review of SamuraiBird - Bees EP
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While the legacy boot protocol for GeeXboX OS used to be Live CD, it is now preferred and fairly common to boot from a USB key. More and more laptops do no longer even feature a CD drive and USB has become more convenient than burning a CD(RW).
USB with persistent data storage.
Method #1: Raw USB Writing (non recommended) – Linux ONLY.
This method is fairly simple and allows you directly write the ISO CD image onto a USB stick. Thanks to the ISO image having been prepared with isohybrid support, the USB disk will be formatted in ISO9660 format and recognized as a Live CD.
your system is read-only, preventing any persistent data storage.
it consumes the whole USB stick size, regardless of its capacity.
This is the recommended method for setting up GeeXboX onto a USB key. Unetbootin is a marvelous cross-platform application that is meant to create Live USB sticks, supporting dozens of Linux distributions.
or use the "Diskimage" section and select the previously downloaded GeeXboX ISO image of your choice.
Both sections will do the same except for the first one to automatically download the ISO image for you without the hassle.
You're then prompted to specify (in MB) the "Space used to preserve files across reboots". While being declare as "Ubuntu only", we made GeeXboX support this option, allowing you to reserve some dedicated space on your USB key (will be reserved under a file named casper-rw on your USB disk).
This is what we call persistent data storage, and is a really useful feature that allows all configuration changes, database, saved pictures and such media parts to remain after reboots.
Last thing you then have to do is to specify the USB drive you want to use and hit the "OK" button.
somebody please post a howto on a manual usb install without using unetbootin or reformatting. i'd like a portable usb geexbox , in its own subdir preferred so it doesn't conflict with existing files.
i can post instructions for the older v1.2.4 if anyone is interested.
I've found a way how to boot GeeXboX 2 from a multiboot usb flash disk!
And I wish to say before, that this new GeeXboX is GREAT! I love it!
So, my multiboot flash is made with 'yumi' program from http://www.pendrivelinux.com. This program makes 'multiboot' directory in root directory. So I've created GEEXBOX dir there, in 'multiboot' directory. Then I have unpacked geexbox-2.0-i386.iso into this dir, after that I moved 'rootfs' file into the root directory of my flash disk.
I don't know why but with options "quiet splash loglevel=3" there's no sound on some PC's.
Well, without nice splash it does work!
I hope my example will hellp you.
Long adjusted this program on Flash USB through Grub4dos. Timroll – the good person, has prompted.
I'm not very smart. So it took me a long while to realize that the USB key (same thing as a "jump drive") has to be small. My 128 GB key wouldn't boot. So, I used diskpart (under Windows 7) to delete the partition on that drive, and create a smaller one.
I had to look up diskpart. I did ran the "diskpart" command with administrative privilidges.
Then I used the Windows disk management tool to allocate a 4000 MB FAT32 partition.
Then I ran unetbootin (from unetbootin.org), selected geexbox 2.0 (it doesn't know about later versions), then selected the x86_64 version (because my CPU is a later version atom). I revised this by selecting to load the 3.1 version from a diskimage, which I had previously loaded from geexbox.org.


text:
Daniel Cohan
Daniel Cohan is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. His research specializes in the development of photochemical models and their application to air quality management, uncertainty analysis, energy policy and health impact studies.
Before joining Rice, Cohan worked for the Air Protection Branch of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. He received a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry from Georgia Tech, and served as a Fulbright Scholar to Australia at the Cooperative Research Centre for Southern Hemisphere Meteorology. Cohan is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER young investigator award and was a member of the NASA Air Quality Applied Sciences Team.
Coal is not competitive with cheaper alternatives, and the industry's true costs are even higher
By Daniel Cohan
Power plant emissions kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, scientists estimate.
What Hurricane Harvey says about risk, climate and resilience
By Andrew Dessler and Daniel Cohan
Even these practical steps toward resilience won't be enough. It's time to change the risk equation.
Cities can jumpstart climate progress by plugging in vehicles
A look at the myriad ways municipalities can make a dent in emissions by rethinking transportation.
Know Someone On The Cutting Edge?
Nominate a cleantech visionary for the VERGE Vanguard
The 2018 VERGE Vanguard Awards
Chairman & Executive Editor
Holly Secon
Editor at Large, GreenBiz
Mia Overall
Shannon Houde
Impact and Leadership Coach
Will Sarni


text:
function [line, T] = move(line,displacement)
% line is a 2x2 matrix
% rows equal to points, columns to coordinates
catheti = abs(line(:,1) - line(:,2));
h = hypot(catheti(1),catheti(2));
movex = catheti(1)/h;
movey = catheti(2)/h;
line(1,:) = line(1,:) + displacement/movex;
line(2,:) = line(2,:) + displacement/movey;
T = eye(3);
T(1:2,3) = [displacement/movex displacement/movey];


text:
Colopea és un gènere d'aranyes araneomorfs de la família dels estenoquílids (Stenochilidae). Fou descrit per primera vegada per Eugène Simon, l'any 1893.

Són aranyes que tenen la seva distribució per Àsia (sud i sud-est) i Nova Guinea.

Taxonomia
 Colopea laeta (Thorell, 1895) — Myanmar, Tailàndia
 Colopea lehtineni Zheng, Marusik & Li, 2009 — Xina
 Colopea malayana Lehtinen, 1982 — Tailàndia, Malàisia, Singapur
 Colopea pusilla (Simon, 1893) — Filipines
 Colopea romantica Lehtinen, 1982 — Bali
 Colopea silvestris Lehtinen, 1982 — Nova Guinea
 Colopea tuberculata Platnick & Shadab, 1974 — Fiji
 Colopea unifoveata Lehtinen, 1982 — Borneo
 Colopea virgata Lehtinen, 1982 — Tailàndia, Vietnam
 Colopea xerophila Lehtinen, 1982 — Nova Guinea

Referències

Estenoquílids
Aranyes d'Àsia


text:
Patch Tuesday, September 2018 Edition
Adobe and Microsoft today each released patches to fix serious security holes in their software. Adobe pushed out a new version of its beleaguered Flash Player browser plugin. Redmond issued updates to address at least 61 distinct vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and related programs, including several flaws that were publicly detailed prior to today and one "zero-day" bug in Windows that is already being actively exploited by attackers.
As per usual, the bulk of the fixes from Microsoft tackle security weaknesses in the company's Web browsers, Internet Explorer and Edge. Patches also are available for Windows, Office, Sharepoint, and the .NET Framework, among other components.
Of the 61 bugs fixed in this patch batch, 17 earned Microsoft's "critical" rating, meaning malware or miscreants could use them to break into Windows computers with little or no help from users.
The zero-day flaw, CVE-2018-8440, affects Microsoft operating systems from Windows 7 through Windows 10 and allows a program launched by a restricted Windows user to gain more powerful administrative access on the system. It was first publicized August 27 in a (now deleted) Twitter post that linked users to proof-of-concept code hosted on Github. Since then, security experts have spotted versions of the code being used in active attacks.
According to security firm Ivanti, prior to today bad guys got advance notice about three vulnerabilities in Windows targeted by these patches. The first, CVE-2018-8457, is a critical memory corruption issue that could be exploited through a malicious Web site or Office file. CVE-2018-8475 is a critical bug in most supported versions of Windows that can be used for nasty purposes by getting a user to view a specially crafted image file. The third previously disclosed flaw, CVE-2018-8409, is a somewhat less severe "denial-of-service" vulnerability. Continue reading →


text:
Oarja is a commune in Argeș County, Muntenia, Romania. It is composed of two villages, Ceaușești and Oarja.

External links
Commune's website

References

Communes in Argeș County
Localities in Muntenia