text:
Flooded southeast Texas gets more wet weather
April 21, 2016 / 3:43 PM / CBS/AP
HOUSTON -- Thunderstorms in the Houston area Thursday have worsened flooding in areas of the city that had been drenched earlier in the week.
Houston and surrounding counties have received more than a foot of rain since Sunday night. The flooding has forced thousands of people from their homes. It's been linked to eight deaths.
Rising waters continue to damage southeast Texas
A heavy rainstorm Thursday morning dumped more than an inch of rain in less than an hour in some areas of Harris County, which includes most of Houston.
An official with the Harris County Flood Control District says it's not enough to cause more widespread flooding.
Officials in Wharton, a community of about 8,700 residents about 50 miles southwest of Houston, ordered residents to leave their homes in some low-lying neighborhoods along the rain-swollen Colorado River.
The official with Harris County says two aging reservoirs in west Houston that are considered "extremely high risk" by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are holding record amounts of water -- at 50 percent capacity -- but they remain in good shape.
The dams are classified as high risk only because they're about two decades beyond their life expectancy and in a populated area, said agency spokeswoman Sandra Arnold.
Several killed in Texas floods as rescues continue
However, a Corp report issued on the dams in 2012 offered more worrying criteria for the classification, noting that such structures are "critically near failure or at extremely high risk under normal operations."
In the unlikely event that the dams collapsed, downtown and the highly populated area in sprawling West Houston would likely see deaths as well as $60 billion in property damage, said Richard Long, a project operations managers with the Corp.
But the current conditions are no reason to panic, he added. While the dams still have these critical classifications, improvements done the last few years have shored up the seven-decade-old structures and an ongoing $72 million construction project will greatly strengthen them.
Louis Marquez carries his dog Dallas through floodwaters after rescuing the dog from his flooded apartment Tuesday, April 19, 2016, in Houston. David J. Phillip, AP
"The dams are in good condition," he said. "We have 24-hour surveillance occurring.... Integrity wise, we're in real good shape."
The monitoring of the dams comes as the Houston-area deals with the effects of heavy rain that walloped the area Sunday night and Monday. Creeks and streams getting runoff from the rain have continued to rise above their banks, prompting neighborhood flooding and additional evacuations.
While the dams are not expected to reach 100 percent capacity, part of the reservoirs are located on public property, meaning that additional water that continues to come into the reservoirs from rivers and streams is expected to flow into surrounding public roadways and some subdivisions, possibly flooding a number of homes, Long said.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said officials are considering acquiring sandbags for deployment on "non-governmental land" behind the Addicks and Barker reservoirs due to the potential flooding of homes in the area.
But he said the damage should be limited.
Residents escape their flooded apartment in a refrigerator on April 19, 2016 in Houston, Texas. KHOU
"I know people's nerves are on edge," he said. "There should be very few homes."
The Corps of Engineers' recent improvements on the dams include additional filters to control seepage, additional lighting and emergency power "to have around the clock ability to operate the dams and to ensure their inspections and function when we get pools like we're having right now," Long said.
"From this one flood event... the operations of (the dams)... have prevented over $3 billion in damage downstream of these projects," he said.
Despite reassurances by the Army Corps of Engineers on the integrity of the dams, there still remains a worry the structures might fail in some manner, said Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental attorney who in 2011 filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club related to reducing runoff into the two reservoirs.
New rescues as more Texans impacted by flooding
"If we lose Addicks and Barker, that will be absolutely catastrophic," he said. "And we should be doing as a community everything we can to protect them. They are the best flood control investments we have in this community."
An eighth death was confirmed Wednesday from the flooding, CBS affiliate KHOU reported. Six of the deaths were in Harris County, one in Waller County, and one in Austin County. Almost all those who died were in vehicles, authorities said.
On Wednesday, authorities said four boys were rescued from a nearly submerged boat after a dangerous 11-mile ride along a flooded creek north of Houston.
The Montgomery County Constable's Office says the juveniles were rescued Tuesday night after being reported missing on Caney Creek, near New Caney.
A group of people in an airboat found the boys under the Highway 59 bridge near FM 1485 without life jackets and in a boat with no motor just before 8:30 p.m., CBS affiliate KHOU reported.
Sgt. Jim Slack said Wednesday that the boys were "scared but safe" after being rescued.
Authorities believe the juveniles found a boat and decided to go for a ride even though the boat didn't have life jackets, a working motor or paddles on board.
Slack says the boys went into the water with the boat about 90 minutes before sunset. They were located and rescued several hours later as the nearly submerged boat passed under a highway bridge.
The boys weren't hurt. County constables transported the boys to their families.
First published on April 21, 2016 / 3:43 PM
© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Detection of objects in noisy images and site percolation on square lattices
Langovoy, M., Wittich, O.
(2009-035), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, November 2009 (techreport)
We propose a novel probabilistic method for detection of objects in noisy images. The method uses results from percolation and random graph theories. We present an algorithm that allows to detect objects of unknown shapes in the presence of random noise. Our procedure substantially differs from wavelets-based algorithms. The algorithm has linear complexity and exponential accuracy and is appropriate for real-time systems. We prove results on consistency and algorithmic complexity of our procedure.
Langovoy, M., Wittich, O. Detection of objects in noisy images and site percolation on square lattices (2009-035), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, November 2009 (techreport)
Algebraic polynomials and moments of stochastic integrals
Langovoy, M.
(2009-031), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, October 2009 (techreport)
Langovoy, M. Algebraic polynomials and moments of stochastic integrals (2009-031), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, October 2009 (techreport)
Expectation Propagation on the Maximum of Correlated Normal Variables
Hennig, P.
Cavendish Laboratory: University of Cambridge, July 2009 (techreport)
Many inference problems involving questions of optimality ask for the maximum or the minimum of a finite set of unknown quantities. This technical report derives the first two posterior moments of the maximum of two correlated Gaussian variables and the first two posterior moments of the two generating variables (corresponding to Gaussian approximations minimizing relative entropy). It is shown how this can be used to build a heuristic approximation to the maximum relationship over a finite set of Gaussian variables, allowing approximate inference by Expectation Propagation on such quantities.
Hennig, P. Expectation Propagation on the Maximum of Correlated Normal Variables Cavendish Laboratory: University of Cambridge, July 2009 (techreport)
Consistent Nonparametric Tests of Independence
(172), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2009 (techreport)
Three simple and explicit procedures for testing the independence of two multi-dimensional random variables are described. Two of the associated test statistics (L1, log-likelihood) are defined when the empirical distribution of the variables is restricted to finite partitions. A third test statistic is defined as a kernel-based independence measure. Two kinds of tests are provided. Distribution-free strong consistent tests are derived on the basis of large deviation bounds on the test statistcs: these tests make almost surely no Type I or Type II error after a random sample size. Asymptotically alpha-level tests are obtained from the limiting distribution of the test statistics. For the latter tests, the Type I error converges to a fixed non-zero value alpha, and the Type II error drops to zero, for increasing sample size. All tests reject the null hypothesis of independence if the test statistics become large. The performance of the tests is evaluated experimentally on benchmark data.
Gretton, A., Györfi, L. Consistent Nonparametric Tests of Independence (172), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2009 (techreport)
Semi-supervised subspace analysis of human functional magnetic resonance imaging data
Shelton, J., Blaschko, M., Bartels, A.
(185), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2009 (techreport)
Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis is a very general technique for subspace learning that incorporates PCA and LDA as special cases. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) acquired data is naturally amenable to these techniques as data are well aligned. fMRI data of the human brain is a particularly interesting candidate. In this study we implemented various supervised and semi-supervised versions of KCCA on human fMRI data, with regression to single- and multi-variate labels (corresponding to video content subjects viewed during the image acquisition). In each variate condition, the semi-supervised variants of KCCA performed better than the supervised variants, including a supervised variant with Laplacian regularization. We additionally analyze the weights learned by the regression in order to infer brain regions that are important to different types of visual processing.
Shelton, J., Blaschko, M., Bartels, A. Semi-supervised subspace analysis of human functional magnetic resonance imaging data (185), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2009 (techreport)
Model selection, large deviations and consistency of data-driven tests
(2009-007), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, March 2009 (techreport)
We consider three general classes of data-driven statistical tests. Neyman's smooth tests, data-driven score tests and data-driven score tests for statistical inverse problems serve as important special examples for the classes of tests under consideration. Our tests are additionally incorporated with model selection rules. The rules are based on the penalization idea. Most of the optimal penalties, derived in statistical literature, can be used in our tests. We prove general consistency theorems for the tests from those classes. Our proofs make use of large deviations inequalities for deterministic and random quadratic forms. The paper shows that the tests can be applied for simple and composite parametric, semi- and nonparametric hypotheses. Applications to testing in statistical inverse problems and statistics for stochastic processes are also presented..
Langovoy, M. Model selection, large deviations and consistency of data-driven tests (2009-007), EURANDOM, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, March 2009 (techreport)
Frequent Subgraph Retrieval in Geometric Graph Databases
Nowozin, S., Tsuda, K.
(180), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)
Discovery of knowledge from geometric graph databases is of particular importance in chemistry and biology, because chemical compounds and proteins are represented as graphs with 3D geometric coordinates. In such applications, scientists are not interested in the statistics of the whole database. Instead they need information about a novel drug candidate or protein at hand, represented as a query graph. We propose a polynomial-delay algorithm for geometric frequent subgraph retrieval. It enumerates all subgraphs of a single given query graph which are frequent geometric epsilon-subgraphs under the entire class of rigid geometric transformations in a database. By using geometric epsilon-subgraphs, we achieve tolerance against variations in geometry. We compare the proposed algorithm to gSpan on chemical compound data, and we show that for a given minimum support the total number of frequent patterns is substantially limited by requiring geometric matching. Although the computation time per pattern is larger than for non-geometric graph mining, the total time is within a reasonable level even for small minimum support.
Nowozin, S., Tsuda, K. Frequent Subgraph Retrieval in Geometric Graph Databases (180), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)
Simultaneous Implicit Surface Reconstruction and Meshing
Giesen, J., Maier, M., Schölkopf, B.
We investigate an implicit method to compute a piecewise linear representation of a surface from a set of sample points. As implicit surface functions we use the weighted sum of piecewise linear kernel functions. For such a function we can partition Rd in such a way that these functions are linear on the subsets of the partition. For each subset in the partition we can then compute the zero level set of the function exactly as the intersection of a hyperplane with the subset.
Giesen, J., Maier, M., Schölkopf, B. Simultaneous Implicit Surface Reconstruction and Meshing (179), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)
Taxonomy Inference Using Kernel Dependence Measures
Blaschko, M., Gretton, A.
We introduce a family of unsupervised algorithms, numerical taxonomy clustering, to simultaneously cluster data, and to learn a taxonomy that encodes the relationship between the clusters. The algorithms work by maximizing the dependence between the taxonomy and the original data. The resulting taxonomy is a more informative visualization of complex data than simple clustering; in addition, taking into account the relations between different clusters is shown to substantially improve the quality of the clustering, when compared with state-of-the-art algorithms in the literature (both spectral clustering and a previous dependence maximization approach). We demonstrate our algorithm on image and text data.
Blaschko, M., Gretton, A. Taxonomy Inference Using Kernel Dependence Measures (181), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)
Infinite Kernel Learning
Gehler, P., Nowozin, S.
(178), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2008 (techreport)
In this paper we consider the problem of automatically learning the kernel from general kernel classes. Specifically we build upon the Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) framework and in particular on the work of (Argyriou, Hauser, Micchelli, & Pontil, 2006). We will formulate a Semi-Infinite Program (SIP) to solve the problem and devise a new algorithm to solve it (Infinite Kernel Learning, IKL). The IKL algorithm is applicable to both the finite and infinite case and we find it to be faster and more stable than SimpleMKL (Rakotomamonjy, Bach, Canu, & Grandvalet, 2007) for cases of many kernels. In the second part we present the first large scale comparison of SVMs to MKL on a variety of benchmark datasets, also comparing IKL. The results show two things: a) for many datasets there is no benefit in linearly combining kernels with MKL/IKL instead of the SVM classifier, thus the flexibility of using more than one kernel seems to be of no use, b) on some datasets IKL yields impressive increases in accuracy over SVM/MKL due to the possibility of using a largely increased kernel set. In those cases, IKL remains practical, whereas both cross-validation or standard MKL is infeasible.
Gehler, P., Nowozin, S. Infinite Kernel Learning (178), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2008 (techreport)
Large Scale Variational Inference and Experimental Design for Sparse Generalized Linear Models
Seeger, M., Nickisch, H.
(175), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)
Seeger, M., Nickisch, H. Large Scale Variational Inference and Experimental Design for Sparse Generalized Linear Models (175), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)
Block-Iterative Algorithms for Non-Negative Matrix Approximation
In this report we present new algorithms for non-negative matrix approximation (NMA), commonly known as the NMF problem. Our methods improve upon the well-known methods of Lee & Seung [19] for both the Frobenius norm as well the Kullback-Leibler divergence versions of the problem. For the latter problem, our results are especially interesting because it seems to have witnessed much lesser algorithmic progress as compared to the Frobenius norm NMA problem. Our algorithms are based on a particular block-iterative acceleration technique for EM, which preserves the multiplicative nature of the updates and also ensures monotonicity. Furthermore, our algorithms also naturally apply to the Bregman-divergence NMA algorithms of Dhillon and Sra [8]. Experimentally, we show that our algorithms outperform the traditional Lee/Seung approach most of the time.
Sra, S. Block-Iterative Algorithms for Non-Negative Matrix Approximation (176), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)
Approximation Algorithms for Bregman Clustering Co-clustering and Tensor Clustering
Sra, S., Jegelka, S., Banerjee, A.
The Euclidean K-means problem is fundamental to clustering and over the years it has been intensely investigated. More recently, generalizations such as Bregman k-means [8], co-clustering [10], and tensor (multi-way) clustering [40] have also gained prominence. A well-known computational difficulty encountered by these clustering problems is the NP-Hardness of the associated optimization task, and commonly used methods guarantee at most local optimality. Consequently, approximation algorithms of varying degrees of sophistication have been developed, though largely for the basic Euclidean K-means (or `1-norm K-median) problem. In this paper we present approximation algorithms for several Bregman clustering problems by building upon the recent paper of Arthur and Vassilvitskii [5]. Our algorithms obtain objective values within a factor O(logK) for Bregman k-means, Bregman co-clustering, Bregman tensor clustering, and weighted kernel k-means. To our knowledge, except for some special cases, approximation algorithms have not been considered for these general clustering problems. There are several important implications of our work: (i) under the same assumptions as Ackermann et al. [1] it yields a much faster algorithm (non-exponential in K, unlike [1]) for information-theoretic clustering, (ii) it answers several open problems posed by [4], including generalizations to Bregman co-clustering, and tensor clustering, (iii) it provides practical and easy to implement methods—in contrast to several other common approximation approaches.
Sra, S., Jegelka, S., Banerjee, A. Approximation Algorithms for Bregman Clustering Co-clustering and Tensor Clustering (177), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)
Combining Appearance and Motion for Human Action Classification in Videos
Dhillon, P., Nowozin, S., Lampert, C.
(174), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)
We study the question of activity classification in videos and present a novel approach for recognizing human action categories in videos by combining information from appearance and motion of human body parts. Our approach uses a tracking step which involves Particle Filtering and a local non - parametric clustering step. The motion information is provided by the trajectory of the cluster modes of a local set of particles. The statistical information about the particles of that cluster over a number of frames provides the appearance information. Later we use a "Bag ofWords" model to build one histogram per video sequence from the set of these robust appearance and motion descriptors. These histograms provide us characteristic information which helps us to discriminate among various human actions and thus classify them correctly. We tested our approach on the standard KTH and Weizmann human action datasets and the results were comparable to the state of the art. Additionally our approach is able to distinguish between activities that involve the motion of complete body from those in which only certain body parts move. In other words, our method discriminates well between activities with "gross motion" like running, jogging etc. and "local motion" like waving, boxing etc.
Dhillon, P., Nowozin, S., Lampert, C. Combining Appearance and Motion for Human Action Classification in Videos (174), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)
Example-based Learning for Single-image Super-resolution and JPEG Artifact Removal
Kim, K., Kwon, Y.
This paper proposes a framework for single-image super-resolution and JPEG artifact removal. The underlying idea is to learn a map from input low-quality images (suitably preprocessed low-resolution or JPEG encoded images) to target high-quality images based on example pairs of input and output images. To retain the complexity of the resulting learning problem at a moderate level, a patch-based approach is taken such that kernel ridge regression (KRR) scans the input image with a small window (patch) and produces a patchvalued output for each output pixel location. These constitute a set of candidate images each of which reflects different local information. An image output is then obtained as a convex combination of candidates for each pixel based on estimated confidences of candidates. To reduce the time complexity of training and testing for KRR, a sparse solution is found by combining the ideas of kernel matching pursuit and gradient descent. As a regularized solution, KRR leads to a better generalization than simply storing the examples as it has been done in existing example-based super-resolution algorithms and results in much less noisy images. However, this may introduce blurring and ringing artifacts around major edges as sharp changes are penalized severely. A prior model of a generic image class which takes into account the discontinuity property of images is adopted to resolve this problem. Comparison with existing super-resolution and JPEG artifact removal methods shows the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, the proposed method is generic in that it has the potential to be applied to many other image enhancement applications.
Kim, K., Kwon, Y. Example-based Learning for Single-image Super-resolution and JPEG Artifact Removal (173), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)
Unsupervised Bayesian Time-series Segmentation based on Linear Gaussian State-space Models
Chiappa, S.
(171), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)
Unsupervised time-series segmentation in the general scenario in which the number of segment-types and segment boundaries are a priori unknown is a fundamental problem in many applications and requires an accurate segmentation model as well as a way of determining an appropriate number of segment-types. In most approaches, segmentation and determination of number of segment-types are addressed in two separate steps, since the segmentation model assumes a predefined number of segment-types. The determination of number of segment-types is thus achieved by training and comparing several separate models. In this paper, we take a Bayesian approach to a segmentation model based on linear Gaussian state-space models to achieve structure selection within the model. An appropriate prior distribution on the parameters is used to enforce a sparse parametrization, such that the model automatically selects the smallest number of underlying dynamical systems that explain the data well and a parsimonious structure for each dynamical system. As the resulting model is computationally intractable, we introduce a variational approximation, in which a reformulation of the problem enables to use an efficient inference algorithm.
Chiappa, S. Unsupervised Bayesian Time-series Segmentation based on Linear Gaussian State-space Models (171), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)
A New Non-monotonic Gradient Projection Method for the Non-negative Least Squares Problem
Kim, D., Sra, S., Dhillon, I.
(TR-08-28), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, June 2008 (techreport)
Kim, D., Sra, S., Dhillon, I. A New Non-monotonic Gradient Projection Method for the Non-negative Least Squares Problem (TR-08-28), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, June 2008 (techreport)
Non-monotonic Poisson Likelihood Maximization
Sra, S., Kim, D., Schölkopf, B.
(170), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)
This report summarizes the theory and some main applications of a new non-monotonic algorithm for maximizing a Poisson Likelihood, which for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is equivalent to minimizing the associated Kullback-Leibler Divergence, and for Transmission Tomography is similar to maximizing the dual of a maximum entropy problem. We call our method non-monotonic maximum likelihood (NMML) and show its application to different problems such as tomography and image restoration. We discuss some theoretical properties such as convergence for our algorithm. Our experimental results indicate that speedups obtained via our non-monotonic methods are substantial.
Sra, S., Kim, D., Schölkopf, B. Non-monotonic Poisson Likelihood Maximization (170), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)
A Kernel Method for the Two-sample Problem
(157), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, April 2008 (techreport)
We propose a framework for analyzing and comparing distributions, allowing us to design statistical tests to determine if two samples are drawn from different distributions. Our test statistic is the largest difference in expectations over functions in the unit ball of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We present two tests based on large deviation bounds for the test statistic, while a third is based on the asymptotic distribution of this statistic. The test statistic can be computed in quadratic time, although efficient linear time approximations are available. Several classical metrics on distributions are recovered when the function space used to compute the difference in expectations is allowed to be more general (eg.~a Banach space). We apply our two-sample tests to a variety of problems, including attribute matching for databases using the Hungarian marriage method, where they perform strongly. Excellent performance is also obtained when comparing distributions over graphs, for which these are the first such tests.
Gretton, A., Borgwardt, K., Rasch, M., Schölkopf, B., Smola, A. A Kernel Method for the Two-sample Problem (157), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, April 2008 (techreport)
Energy Functionals for Manifold-valued Mappings and Their Properties
Hein, M., Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B.
(167), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, January 2008 (techreport)
This technical report is merely an extended version of the appendix of Steinke et.al. "Manifold-valued Thin-Plate Splines with Applications in Computer Graphics" (2008) with complete proofs, which had to be omitted due to space restrictions. This technical report requires a basic knowledge of differential geometry. However, apart from that requirement the technical report is self-contained.
Hein, M., Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B. Energy Functionals for Manifold-valued Mappings and Their Properties (167), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, January 2008 (techreport)
A New Projected Quasi-Newton Approach for the Nonnegative Least Squares Problem
(TR-06-54), Univ. of Texas, Austin, December 2006 (techreport)
Kim, D., Sra, S., Dhillon, I. A New Projected Quasi-Newton Approach for the Nonnegative Least Squares Problem (TR-06-54), Univ. of Texas, Austin, December 2006 (techreport)
Probabilistic inference for solving (PO)MDPs
Toussaint, M., Harmeling, S., Storkey, A.
(934), School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, December 2006 (techreport)
Toussaint, M., Harmeling, S., Storkey, A. Probabilistic inference for solving (PO)MDPs (934), School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, December 2006 (techreport)
Minimal Logical Constraint Covering Sets
Sinz, F., Schölkopf, B.
(155), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, December 2006 (techreport)
We propose a general framework for computing minimal set covers under class of certain logical constraints. The underlying idea is to transform the problem into a mathematical programm under linear constraints. In this sense it can be seen as a natural extension of the vector quantization algorithm proposed by Tipping and Schoelkopf. We show which class of logical constraints can be cast and relaxed into linear constraints and give an algorithm for the transformation.
Sinz, F., Schölkopf, B. Minimal Logical Constraint Covering Sets (155), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, December 2006 (techreport)
New Methods for the P300 Visual Speller
Biessmann, F.
(1), (Editors: Hill, J. ), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2006 (techreport)
Biessmann, F. New Methods for the P300 Visual Speller (1), (Editors: Hill, J. ), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2006 (techreport)
Geometric Analysis of Hilbert Schmidt Independence criterion based ICA contrast function
(PA006080), National ICT Australia, Canberra, Australia, October 2006 (techreport)
Shen, H., Jegelka, S., Gretton, A. Geometric Analysis of Hilbert Schmidt Independence criterion based ICA contrast function (PA006080), National ICT Australia, Canberra, Australia, October 2006 (techreport)
A tutorial on spectral clustering
von Luxburg, U.
(149), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)
In recent years, spectral clustering has become one of the most popular modern clustering algorithms. It is simple to implement, can be solved efficiently by standard linear algebra software, and very often outperforms traditional clustering algorithms such as the k-means algorithm. Nevertheless, on the first glance spectral clustering looks a bit mysterious, and it is not obvious to see why it works at all and what it really does. This article is a tutorial introduction to spectral clustering. We describe different graph Laplacians and their basic properties, present the most common spectral clustering algorithms, and derive those algorithms from scratch by several different approaches. Advantages and disadvantages of the different spectral clustering algorithms are discussed.
von Luxburg, U. A tutorial on spectral clustering (149), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)
Towards the Inference of Graphs on Ordered Vertexes
Zien, A., Raetsch, G., Ong, C.
We propose novel methods for machine learning of structured output spaces. Specifically, we consider outputs which are graphs with vertices that have a natural order. We consider the usual adjacency matrix representation of graphs, as well as two other representations for such a graph: (a) decomposing the graph into a set of paths, (b) converting the graph into a single sequence of nodes with labeled edges. For each of the three representations, we propose an encoding and decoding scheme. We also propose an evaluation measure for comparing two graphs.
Zien, A., Raetsch, G., Ong, C. Towards the Inference of Graphs on Ordered Vertexes (150), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)
Nonnegative Matrix Approximation: Algorithms and Applications
Sra, S., Dhillon, I.
Univ. of Texas, Austin, May 2006 (techreport)
Sra, S., Dhillon, I. Nonnegative Matrix Approximation: Algorithms and Applications Univ. of Texas, Austin, May 2006 (techreport)
An Automated Combination of Sequence Motif Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization
Zien, A., Ong, C.
(146), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006 (techreport)
Protein subcellular localization is a crucial ingredient to many important inferences about cellular processes, including prediction of protein function and protein interactions. While many predictive computational tools have been proposed, they tend to have complicated architectures and require many design decisions from the developer. We propose an elegant and fully automated approach to building a prediction system for protein subcellular localization. We propose a new class of protein sequence kernels which considers all motifs including motifs with gaps. This class of kernels allows the inclusion of pairwise amino acid distances into their computation. We further propose a multiclass support vector machine method which directly solves protein subcellular localization without resorting to the common approach of splitting the problem into several binary classification problems. To automatically search over families of possible amino acid motifs, we generalize our method to optimize over multiple kernels at the same time. We compare our automated approach to four other predictors on three different datasets.
Zien, A., Ong, C. An Automated Combination of Sequence Motif Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization (146), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006 (techreport)
Training a Support Vector Machine in the Primal
Chapelle, O.
(147), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006, The version in the "Large Scale Kernel Machines" book is more up to date. (techreport)
Most literature on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) concentrate on the dual optimization problem. In this paper, we would like to point out that the primal problem can also be solved efficiently, both for linear and non-linear SVMs, and there is no reason for ignoring it. Moreover, from the primal point of view, new families of algorithms for large scale SVM training can be investigated.
Chapelle, O. Training a Support Vector Machine in the Primal (147), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006, The version in the "Large Scale Kernel Machines" book is more up to date. (techreport)
Cross-Validation Optimization for Structured Hessian Kernel Methods
Seeger, M., Chapelle, O.
Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2006 (techreport)
We address the problem of learning hyperparameters in kernel methods for which the Hessian of the objective is structured. We propose an approximation to the cross-validation log likelihood whose gradient can be computed analytically, solving the hyperparameter learning problem efficiently through nonlinear optimization. Crucially, our learning method is based entirely on matrix-vector multiplication primitives with the kernel matrices and their derivatives, allowing straightforward specialization to new kernels or to large datasets. When applied to the problem of multi-way classification, our method scales linearly in the number of classes and gives rise to state-of-the-art results on a remote imaging task.
Seeger, M., Chapelle, O. Cross-Validation Optimization for Structured Hessian Kernel Methods Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2006 (techreport)
Implicit Wiener Series, Part II: Regularised estimation
Gehler, P., Franz, M.
(148), Max Planck Institute, 2006 (techreport)
Gehler, P., Franz, M. Implicit Wiener Series, Part II: Regularised estimation (148), Max Planck Institute, 2006 (techreport)
Kernel Dependency Estimation
Weston, J., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V.
(98), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, August 2002 (techreport)
We consider the learning problem of finding a dependency between a general class of objects and another, possibly different, general class of objects. The objects can be for example: vectors, images, strings, trees or graphs. Such a task is made possible by employing similarity measures in both input and output spaces using kernel functions, thus embedding the objects into vector spaces. Output kernels also make it possible to encode prior information and/or invariances in the loss function in an elegant way. We experimentally validate our approach on several tasks: mapping strings to strings, pattern recognition, and reconstruction from partial images.
Weston, J., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V. Kernel Dependency Estimation (98), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, August 2002 (techreport)
Global Geometry of SVM Classifiers
Zhou, D., Xiao, B., Zhou, H., Dai, R.
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2002 (techreport)
We construct an geometry framework for any norm Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. Within this framework, separating hyperplanes, dual descriptions and solutions of SVM classifiers are constructed by a purely geometric fashion. In contrast with the optimization theory used in SVM classifiers, we have no complicated computations any more. Each step in our theory is guided by elegant geometric intuitions.
PDF PostScript [BibTex]
Zhou, D., Xiao, B., Zhou, H., Dai, R. Global Geometry of SVM Classifiers Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2002 (techreport)
Computationally Efficient Face Detection
Romdhani, S., Torr, P., Schölkopf, B., Blake, A.
(MSR-TR-2002-69), Microsoft Research, June 2002 (techreport)
Romdhani, S., Torr, P., Schölkopf, B., Blake, A. Computationally Efficient Face Detection (MSR-TR-2002-69), Microsoft Research, June 2002 (techreport)
Kernel-based nonlinear blind source separation
Harmeling, S., Ziehe, A., Kawanabe, M., Müller, K.
EU-Project BLISS, January 2002 (techreport)
GZIP [BibTex]
Harmeling, S., Ziehe, A., Kawanabe, M., Müller, K. Kernel-based nonlinear blind source separation EU-Project BLISS, January 2002 (techreport)
A compression approach to support vector model selection
von Luxburg, U., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B.
(101), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2002, see more detailed JMLR version (techreport)
In this paper we investigate connections between statistical learning theory and data compression on the basis of support vector machine (SVM) model selection. Inspired by several generalization bounds we construct ``compression coefficients'' for SVMs, which measure the amount by which the training labels can be compressed by some classification hypothesis. The main idea is to relate the coding precision of this hypothesis to the width of the margin of the SVM. The compression coefficients connect well known quantities such as the radius-margin ratio R^2/rho^2, the eigenvalues of the kernel matrix and the number of support vectors. To test whether they are useful in practice we ran model selection experiments on several real world datasets. As a result we found that compression coefficients can fairly accurately predict the parameters for which the test error is minimized.
von Luxburg, U., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B. A compression approach to support vector model selection (101), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2002, see more detailed JMLR version (techreport)
Feature Selection and Transduction for Prediction of Molecular Bioactivity for Drug Design
Weston, J., Perez-Cruz, F., Bousquet, O., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B.
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics / Biowulf Technologies, 2002 (techreport)
Weston, J., Perez-Cruz, F., Bousquet, O., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B. Feature Selection and Transduction for Prediction of Molecular Bioactivity for Drug Design Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics / Biowulf Technologies, 2002 (techreport)
Observations on the Nyström Method for Gaussian Process Prediction
Williams, C., Rasmussen, C., Schwaighofer, A., Tresp, V.
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2002 (techreport)
A number of methods for speeding up Gaussian Process (GP) prediction have been proposed, including the Nystr{\"o}m method of Williams and Seeger (2001). In this paper we focus on two issues (1) the relationship of the Nystr{\"o}m method to the Subset of Regressors method (Poggio and Girosi 1990; Luo and Wahba, 1997) and (2) understanding in what circumstances the Nystr{\"o}m approximation would be expected to provide a good approximation to exact GP regression.
PostScript [BibTex]
Williams, C., Rasmussen, C., Schwaighofer, A., Tresp, V. Observations on the Nyström Method for Gaussian Process Prediction Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2002 (techreport)
The Kernel Trick for Distances
(MSR-TR-2000-51), Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA, 2000 (techreport)
A method is described which, like the kernel trick in support vector machines (SVMs), lets us generalize distance-based algorithms to operate in feature spaces, usually nonlinearly related to the input space. This is done by identifying a class of kernels which can be represented as normbased distances in Hilbert spaces. It turns out that common kernel algorithms, such as SVMs and kernel PCA, are actually really distance based algorithms and can be run with that class of kernels, too. As well as providing a useful new insight into how these algorithms work, the present work can form the basis for conceiving new algorithms.
Schölkopf, B. The Kernel Trick for Distances (MSR-TR-2000-51), Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA, 2000 (techreport)
Kernel method for percentile feature extraction
Schölkopf, B., Platt, J., Smola, A.
(MSR-TR-2000-22), Microsoft Research, 2000 (techreport)
A method is proposed which computes a direction in a dataset such that a speci􏰘ed fraction of a particular class of all examples is separated from the overall mean by a maximal margin􏰤 The pro jector onto that direction can be used for class􏰣speci􏰘c feature extraction􏰤 The algorithm is carried out in a feature space associated with a support vector kernel function􏰢 hence it can be used to construct a large class of nonlinear fea􏰣 ture extractors􏰤 In the particular case where there exists only one class􏰢 the method can be thought of as a robust form of principal component analysis􏰢 where instead of variance we maximize percentile thresholds􏰤 Fi􏰣 nally􏰢 we generalize it to also include the possibility of specifying negative examples􏰤
Schölkopf, B., Platt, J., Smola, A. Kernel method for percentile feature extraction (MSR-TR-2000-22), Microsoft Research, 2000 (techreport)
View-based cognitive mapping and path planning
Schölkopf, B., Mallot, H.
(7), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, November 1994, This technical report has also been published elsewhere (techreport)
We present a scheme for learning a cognitive map of a maze from a sequence of views and movement decisions. The scheme is based on an intermediate representation called the view graph. We show that this representation carries sufficient information to reconstruct the topological and directional structure of the maze. Moreover, we present a neural network that learns the view graph during a random exploration of the maze. We use a unsupervised competitive learning rule which translates temporal sequence (rather than similarity) of views into connectedness in the network. The network uses its knowledge of the topological and directional structure of the maze to generate expectations about which views are likely to be perceived next, improving the view recognition performance. We provide an additional mechanism which uses the map to find paths between arbitrary points of the previously explored environment. The results are compared to findings of behavioural neuroscience.
Schölkopf, B., Mallot, H. View-based cognitive mapping and path planning (7), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, November 1994, This technical report has also been published elsewhere (techreport)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


But first for those who don't know about the series. Scott Pilgrim was originally a series of graphic stories by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
Scott Pilgrim is a series of books spanning from 1-6 volumes from the years 2004 -2010. The graphic stories depict the life of 23 year old Scott Pilgrim, his love life and his band. (I won't go too much into it as I'm sure you all know what happens!) After the 6th and final installment of the books in 2010, it spawned many things- A hollywood movie (2010), A short Animation, A game (2010) and countless merch.
Without sounding TOO hipster (I totally was into the comic books before everyone else) I've loved the comics ever since I was introduced to them, and was kinda dreading the Hollywood movie (Michael Cera playing the lead?! Wasn't something I could picture well).
So any news about something knew to do with the series is a tad bitter sweet to me. I'm now getting the sense its being OVER done. How much longer can you milk this series?
The author Bryan Lee O'Malley announced today via his Twitter and tumblr, that he'll be releasing a Collectors Edition of Volume 1 of the series!...So! Am I excited?!
After borrowing the books off a friend to orginally read it, then buying the boxset which was realised and now ANOTHER variation of it is coming out? How many times can i pay for the SAME THING!? Though you do get a lot of pretty extras in the super limited edition!
Apparently the Evil Edition is going for $40! ooft. and then the Collectors Edition is going for.....$100! Sweet mercy!
So over all...there are 3 versions of the same thing?! There's the plain old Colour Edition (the first volume but fully coloured I'm guessing) then there is the Evil Edition (Which had the first evil ex on the cover) then there is the Collectors Edition?! OH BOY!
This is the Colour and Evil Editions, Okay, they do look pretty sweet.
What do you think? Would you buy into this?


It would have been interesting to have a video of the repairs taking place. Not from inside the car, but one of the mechanics working on the car. Just a suggestion for future videos (although hopefully you won't get the chance to do any at-track repairs). Nice video though!


Business in the Community Northern Ireland (BITCNI) is the largest business-led coalition dedicated to corporate responsibility in Northern Ireland. The organisation wanted to create multiple learning resources relating to environmental sustainability, but in a cost efficient manner.
Provision of Instructional Design Training covering relevant instructional design approaches and curriculum design.
Provision of Authoring Tool Training on the use of Articulate Storyline.
Designed of a BITCNI branded Storyline template consisting of multiple slide types.
BITCNI have gained significant time and cost efficiencies. The team are now able to develop their own attractive and effective new environmental online training modules and update existing modules in-house.


Buy tickets for Tampa Bay Rays at New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Bronx, NY on Jul 17, 2019 at 7:05PM local time. All New York Yankees tickets and schedule are available at TicketCity. Only 5,444 tickets left for this Jul 17 event.


text:
Oscar Education
Alternate English
Optional Subjects
Home » Alternate English , Animal Farm , Fourth Semester , George Orwell , Summary » Animal Farm: Chapter IX - Summary
Animal Farm: Chapter IX - Summary
Boxer's split hoof, an injury from the battle, taxes him; still he will not let it deter him from rebuilding the windmill before he reaches retirement age. When they first formedAnimal Farm, the animals had agreed on fixed retirement ages and pensions. The winter is bitter again. Rations, save the pigs' and dogs', are reduced--"readjusted," as Squealersays. To appease the animals, Squealer reads the animals more statistics to make them believe that their lives are better than in the days of Mr. Jones's rule. The animals are overworked, underfed, and cold, but they are happy to believe Squealer.
Thirty-one young pigs now live on the farm, all of them parented by Napoleon. He makes plans to build them a schoolhouse and discourages them from interacting with other types of animals. He also instates two rules of pig superiority: other animals must stand aside on the path to let pigs pass, and pigs are allowed to wear green ribbons on their tails on Sundays. Napoleon also awards himself the privilege of eating sugar. Still, times are hard on the farm, and the animals struggle to make ends meet. The chickens are forced to lay six hundred eggs per week to sell in town and can barely keep any for hatching. Rations are reduced again, and the animals are not allowed lanterns in their stalls anymore in order to save oil. Meanwhile, the pigs seem to be flourishing.
Towards the end of winter, the animals smell a new scent in the wind, which they discover is from the barley Napoleon has begun to cook. Soon after, the pigs announce that all barley is reserved for them. Each pig gets a pint of beer added to his rations, with Napoleon getting half a gallon. To distract the animals from their hardship, Napoleon increases the amount of propaganda on the farm. This includes songs, speeches, poems, statistics, marches, and his newly created Spontaneous Demonstrations, in which the animals celebrate their victories. The animals enjoy the Spontaneous Demonstrations, which remind them of their freedom and self-sufficiency.
In April, Napoleon declares Animal Farm a Republic, and the animals elect Napoleon unanimously as president. His new propaganda claims Snowball was not a covert human collaborator, but an open one who charged into battle on the human side yelling, "Long Live Humanity!" (119). In mid-summer, Moses returns from a long absence. His stories of Sugarcandy Mountain return with him. The other animals enjoy the stories, with the exception of the pigs. Boxer and the other animals work feverishly to complete their tasks, which now include building the schoolhouse for the young pigs. One day, Boxer overworks himself so much that he collapses, unable to get up. In his sickly state, he expresses a wish to retire early along with Benjamin. The animals fetch Squealer, who relays Napoleon's decision to send Boxer to the veterinary hospital in Willingdon.
Over the next two days, Boxer lies in his stall and takes doses from "a large bottle of pink medicine" that the pigs send from the farmhouse. He expresses his wish to spend his final years learning the rest of the alphabet. One afternoon, a van comes to take Boxer away. It has "lettering on its side and a sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on the driver's seat." The hopeful animals wish Boxer goodbye, but Benjamin breaks their revelry by reading the lettering on the side of the van: "Alfred Simmons, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied" (123). The animals panic and try to get Boxer to escape. He tries to get out of the van, but he has grown too weak to break the door. The animals try to appeal to the horses drawing the van, but they do not understand the situation.
Boxer never returns, but three days later the pigs announce that he died in the hospital despite receiving the best care. Squealer claims to have been present at Boxer's death, a tale he relates emotionally to the other animals. He claims that Boxer's last words were, "Forward, Comrades! … Forward in the name of the Rebellion" and "Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right" (125). Squealer also claims that the van belongs to the veterinarian, who had recently bought it from the horse slaughterer and had not yet managed to paint over the lettering. These stories satisfy the animals. The next Sunday, Napoleon promises to honor Boxer with a special wreath and a memorial banquet. On the day the banquet is to be held, a large crate arrives at Animal Farm. That night, the pigs are rowdy inside the farmhouse and do not wake up until noon the next day. The animals hear a rumor that the pigs had bought a case of whisky.
Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section9/
Labels: Alternate English, Animal Farm, Fourth Semester, George Orwell, Summary
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text:
How VR is Helping Car Lovers to Museum Goers Head Back in Time
When people think of VR (virtual reality) or its offshoot AR (augmented reality) the first things that usually come to mind are computer games and futuristic worlds designed by those whose idea of what the future will look like is a Blade Runner or Matrix film set, making games of the past redundant in the process. While VR and AR have undoubtedly been at the forefront of online gaming advances of late, with many technological improvements being made by games developers, it is becoming clear that VR has many other wide-ranging applications other than just providing gamers with better graphics and immersive experiences.
Muscle Cars and Classic Cruisers All Up Close and Personal
In 2017 the LA-based Peterson Automotive Museum installed a VR exhibition with the help of Microsoft HoloLens. Together they created a virtual space in which museum visitors could explore all aspects of a Ford GT40, from taking it for a spin around Le Mans to experiencing the sounds and smells the car emitted. While being immersed in the aura of this incredible feat of mechanical engineering, visitors were also treated to historical facts and figures, as well as hearing from the experts who originally brought the car to life. The museum was so happy with the results of the exhibition that they've already committed to doing more in the future.
VR Allows People to Paint Like Modigliani for a Day
If art is more your thing then the Tate Modern museum in London was the place to be in 2017/18, as the museum treated visitors to an ingenious VR experience where they were thrust into the artist studio of the famous painter and sculptor, Amedeo Modigliani. From being able to mix their own paint to adjusting their easel, visitors were taken back in time into the world of this legendary artist.
Games Are Also Channeling Historical Influences
Although it must be said that most games designed for use with VR headsets tend to be of futuristic ilk, there are some which allow players to immerse themselves in the historical. Such is the case with Rockstar's L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files that takes players back to 1940s America, PokerStars' VR offering that puts a new spin on the classic card game, as well as Bethesda Softworks's Doom VFR which re-imagines the iconic first-person shooter. As the use of VR in the home becomes more widespread expect game developers to launch more titles that hark their users back to trending bygone eras.
Taking Viewers Back To Where It All Began
Sometimes a standard museum exhibition struggles to get across the immensity and scope of a historical happening, and there's nothing quite as vast as evolution. That's why The National Museum of Natural History in France decided that VR was the way forward. As soon as a visitor dons one of the exhibition's headsets they are whisked off on an interactive journey, along the biological strands that have interlinked species for millennia.
In Virtual Reality You Can Touch History, and the Exhibits
London's Natural History Museum took a different approach to their unique VR experience and with the help of Sky came up with the novel idea of allowing users to explore the museum's archives with non-other than Sir David Attenborough, who talks you through the treasures that are to be found as you are allowed to handle the artifacts without the worry of being told off by a snooty museum attendant.
Museums of the Future May Exclusively Exist Online
While many of the examples above prove that VR is an effective tool in journeying people into the past, there are some downsides to venues installing and adopting the technology. The main one being cost, with headsets and programming all usually relying on a generous sponsor to get off the ground. The solution to this problem may well have shown itself recently, with museums offering online virtual tours of their premises and much more besides, showing that soon enough all you may need to give yourself a one-stop-shop history lesson is a VR headset and the comfort of your own living room.
A visit inside Keanu Reeves motorcycle shop


The company designates a lead director, who is elected by and from the independent board members with clearly delineated and comprehensive duties.
The board is at least two-thirds independent.
The key board committees are fully independent.
The company has disclosed governance guidelines.
The company has not exhibited sustained poor TSR performance (defined as one- and three-year TSR in the bottom half of the company's four digit industry group, unless there has been a change in the CEO position within that time).
ISS proposes to update the "Generally For" policy by adding new governance, board leadership, and performance factors to the analytical framework and to look at all of the factors in a holistic manner. Notably, the policy update would add new factors that are not considered under the current policy including the absence/presence of an executive chair, recent board and executive leadership transitions at the company, director/CEO tenure, and a longer (five-year) TSR performance period.
ISS probably chose this policy for attention because calls for independent board chairs were the most prevalent type of shareholder proposal offered for consideration at U.S. companies' annual meetings in 2014. As of June 30, 2014, 62 of these proposals have come to a shareholder vote, up from 55 resolutions over the same time period in 2013. According to ISS, the number of proposals calling for independent board chairs has more than doubled over the past five years. Under the current policy formulation, ISS says it recommended against 32 of these 62 proposals in 2014. In line with results from recent seasons, independent chair proposals received average support of 31.2 percent of votes cast at 2014 meetings. Only four of these proposals received the support of a majority of votes cast.


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January 30, 2018 January 30, 2018 robotical712
Rian Johnson's Approach to Movies
Written by Robotical712
A common criticism of our analysis is that it reads too much into the dialog and visuals of The Last Jedi. However, a perusal of Rian's commentary on other movies and his own shows he really does approach film from a very abstract level.
From a 2012 Wired interview about Looper:
The hit-man angle came first, but when did the father-son dynamic and the destiny-vs.-free-will stuff start creeping in?
That's the real writing process for me—that's what has to happen for something to seem like it's worth not only spending a few years making, but asking people to sit in that dark theater for two hours watching. For lack of a better word, something really takes off when I find the theme of it. "Theme" just instantly sounds boring—we all have connotations from high school English class. Or it sounds reductive, like it's the message you're trying to jam down the audience's throat. For me, it's more about finding some big question I don't know the answer to. What makes a project take off for me is when that attaches itself in this perfect symbiotic way to a concept, to a plot, to a character, to a world, and suddenly I say, here's this vehicle to talk about this thing that's really on my mind right now.
Time to be reductive, then: What was that question in Looper?
A few years ago I would have jumped at the chance to start talking about it and explaining, but hopefully it's there in the movie and is better presented in the movie than I could present by saying it. Not because it's something secret or incredibly deep or complicated, but divorced from its context in the movie, it's the least interesting thing to plop on the table dry, without any sauce.
Recording of Rian interviewing Denis Villeneuve last year:
Watch from about 3:40 to 5:00. Note Rian's excitement over something he found incredibly meta.
Perhaps the best indication is how Rian lays out his approach to planning in this 2010 interview regarding The Brother's Bloom:
You talk about the narrative, but there's also a really strong visual element in there and these kind of visual puns that you're capturing on camera. Do you visualize that when you're writing, or is that something that develops when you're on set?
No, no, no. I storyboard everything, so after I've written the script I'll go through, I'll take a couple of months, and it really is like visualizing writing the movie. I mean, I can't draw. At all. I'm a horrible artist but I'll just make little chicken scratch drawings that are just enough information to remind me of what I'm thinking about shot-wise, and that's a really important step for me.
Because I know there are really talented directors who can show up on set without any idea and then set up their shots and get everything. For me, it's incredibly important to have a span of time where there's not the pressure of 40 people standing around you, where you can just think out and very specifically visually plan out the film. So, that's where shots like that end up coming together and coming from.
And the nice thing is this film allowed those very referential and theatrical visual touches to exist. Because it very much fit in thematically with the film, and it very much fit in to this idea that this whole thing is a very constructed story that Stephen is making and Bloom feels very trapped in. So, having every frame feel very deliberate, having every composition have almost hidden visual jokes in them, it's fun, but also it wouldn't feel right if it didn't serve the bigger picture of what the movie was about.
And finally I leave you with this:
You've said that Looper isn't really a time travel movie. What's the central issue then?
You have to have something bigger than time travel that's worth asking an audience to sit in the dark for two hours. And the power of a parent's love really was the thing that set everything off. I realized that this weird little sci-fi concept could amplify that theme and be a conduit for it. I worked backwards from the end and planned the entire movie from there.(edited)
That seems pretty close to the mark when it comes to our interpretation…
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The Last Jedi Retrospective – One Year Later – Star Wars Shadow Council says:
[…] found an interview from Rian Johnson that showed that this odd style of storytelling is in fact his MO as a filmmaker. That knowledge proved to us that we were on the right track and we've had a lot of fun trying to […]


Born in India and raised in North America, A. J. Banner received degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Her first novel of psychological suspense, The Good Neighbor, was the #1 Kindle bestseller for thirty-four days and was named by Harper's Bazaar as a book that could be the next Gone Girl. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and five rescued cats.
Get updates about A.J. Banner and recommended reads from Simon & Schuster.


Interlibrary Borrowing assists UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff to obtain books, articles, and other materials not available in Berkeley's library collections. International borrowing is available to faculty and graduate students.
Interlibrary Lending lends UC Berkeley library material to other institutions, organizations, and public libraries. Individuals not affiliated with UC Berkeley may request to borrow Berkeley materials through their own academic or public library's ILL unit.
Duplication Services are available to institutions, organizations, and the general public. For a cost-recovery fee, and copyright laws permitting, a range of materials from the UC Berkeley collections may be duplicated. Publication-quality reproduction is available.
BAKER provides fee-based retrieval and document delivery service for UC Berkeley faculty and graduate students. BAKER also provides service for LBNL and authorized DSP patrons at no cost.
RLCP enables UC Berkeley faculty, graduate students, and academic staff to request items directly from Stanford University. Eligible Berkeley patrons may also visit Stanford (and UT Austin) and check out library material in person.


Mens Large Keen Montford - Dark Earth is a Casual Shoe for Men in sizes 7-13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. This sporty looking shoe is constructed with a full grain leather and suede upper. Designed with a breathable mesh lining, the Montford provides breathability, while cleansport NXT naturally controls odor. The compression molded EVA midsole provides all day comfort. The Keen Monford is surprisingly lightweight, yet extremely durable. If you are looking for a lightweight, comfortable, breathable sporty looking casual shoe, you can't go wrong with the Mens Large Keen Montford in Dark Earth. Add a pair to your shopping cart today.
Fit true to size very comfortable & lightweight shoes are everything they said they would be. Very Pleased!!!! Will definitely be a repeat customer.


Dragging the kids along for another trip to the mall? Tired of them complaining as you meander from store to store?
At Roosevelt Field mall in East Garden City, you can take a break at the new Glowgolf, a glow-in-the-dark miniature golf facility. Located on the concourse level near LensCrafters and the kids play area, you can grab a club and ball and embark on a glowing adventure through 27 holes.
Set amid twisting hallways and rooms, Glowgolf is played completely under black lights. Each hole offers a unique experience, with windmills, motorized components, inclines, blocks and even a gravity-defying loop-the-loop. Pop hits (clean versions!) play as you stroll in and out of rooms and attempt to make your hole-in-one putts. Follow the glow-in-the-dark arrows through this maze of hallways to make your way to the end of the course where—surprise—there is a prize hole. Sink your ball in the Plinko-style hole and win a glowing treat.
Win a prize on the 27th hole. It's not as easy as it looks.
Glow bracelets and other items are available for purchase if you want to be seen under the lights.
You have two options once you've completed 27 holes. You can go through again because the admission price includes two whole rounds. That's 54 holes of mini golf.
Or once you've mastered the course Phil Mickelson-style, try out your spy skills in the laser maze. With three levels of difficulty, your little ninja must go through the maze and back without touching any beams —easier said then done. Enter the dark booth and use your night vision to scale the room while friends and family watch outside on a monitor. An alarm light triggers if you hit any lasers. Hint: Leave loose clothing behind and tie up girls' hair.
Celebrating a birthday or looking for a fun group or Scouting activity? Glowgolf's party room is enormous, equipped with several tables and glow-in-the-dark chairs. There's even a stage on which the birthday guest can be serenaded.
When school is in session, Monday-Friday, 4-9:30pm; Saturdays, 10am-9:30pm; Sundays, 11am-7pm. When school is not in session, Monday-Saturday 10am-9:30pm; Sundays, 11am-7pm.
Mini-golf: Adults $12, children ages 5-12, $10, 4 and younger, $7. Laser maze: single game, $3; two games, $5; five games, $10. Parties: $12 per person (minimum of 10 people), which includes two hours of golf, use of the party area and glow bracelets.
Hours and prices are as of January 2017. Check the website or call 516-747-3682 for updates.
Top photo: Glowgolf offers traditional mini-golf with a twist — it's played under black light. Photos by the author.


text:
Q: Retrieving records from the table with reference i have this code of Pagination, actually it will retrieve all the records in my table student, what i want is to retrieve records with a reference by year level. here is the code:
thanks for your help!
<?php

if (!isset($_POST['level'])) {
    $_POST['level'] = "undefine";
}
$level = $_POST['level'];

mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "") or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db("kp_and_harang") or die(mysql_error());

if (!(isset($_GET['pagenum']))) {
    $pagenum = 1;
} else {
    $pagenum = $_GET['pagenum'];
}
$data = mysql_query("SELECT id,surname,firstname,middlename,level FROM students") or die(mysql_error());

$rows = mysql_num_rows($data);
$page_rows = 2;
$last = ceil($rows / $page_rows);

if ($pagenum < 1) {
    $pagenum = 1;
} elseif ($pagenum > $last) {
    $pagenum = $last;
}

$max = 'limit ' . ($pagenum - 1) * $page_rows . ',' . $page_rows;
$data_p = mysql_query("SELECT *,LPAD(id,4,'0') as id FROM students $max ") or die(mysql_error());

while ($info = mysql_fetch_array($data_p)) {
    echo "
";
    echo "";
    echo "" . $info['id'] . "	";
    echo "" . $info['surname'] . ", " . $info['firstname'] . " " . $info['middlename'] . "	";
    echo "" . $info['level'] . "	";
    echo "";
    echo "
";

    echo "
";
}
echo "
";
echo " --Page $pagenum of $last--
";
if ($pagenum == 1) {

} else {
    echo "  <<-First ";
    echo "----";
    $previous = $pagenum - 1;
    echo "  <-Previous ";
}

echo " ---- ";

if ($pagenum == $last) {

} else {
    $next = $pagenum + 1;
    echo " Next -> ";
    echo "----";
    echo " Last ->> ";
}
?>

A: I have rewrote your code to use mysqli.
As well, you just needed to add a "where" to you sql query.
<?php

if (!isset($_POST['level'])) {
    $_POST['level'] = "undefined";
}

$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "user", "password", "database");

$level = $mysqli->real_escape_string($_POST['level']);

if (!(isset($_GET['pagenum']))) {
    $pagenum = 1;
} else {
    $pagenum = $_GET['pagenum'];
}
$query = "SELECT id,surname,firstname,middlename,level FROM students";
$result = $mysqli->query($query) or die($mysqli->error.__LINE__);

$rows = $result->num_rows;
$page_rows = 2;
$last = ceil($rows / $page_rows);

if ($pagenum < 1) {
    $pagenum = 1;
} elseif ($pagenum > $last) {
    $pagenum = $last;
}

$max = 'limit ' . ($pagenum - 1) * $page_rows . ',' . $page_rows;
if ($level == "undefined"){
$query = "SELECT *,LPAD(id,4,'0') as id FROM students $max" ORDER BY level;}
else{
$query = "SELECT *,LPAD(id,4,'0') as id FROM students $max where level = '$level' ORDER BY level";}
$result = $mysqli->query($query) or die($mysqli->error.__LINE__);
while ($info = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_BOTH)) {
    echo "
";
    echo "";
    echo "" . $info['id'] . "	";
    echo "" . $info['surname'] . ", " . $info['firstname'] . " " . $info['middlename'] . "	";
    echo "" . $info['level'] . "	";
    echo "";
    echo "
";

    echo "
";
}
echo "
";
echo " --Page $pagenum of $last--
";
if ($pagenum == 1) {

} else {
    echo "  <<-First ";
    echo "----";
    $previous = $pagenum - 1;
    echo "  <-Previous ";
}

echo " ---- ";

if ($pagenum == $last) {

} else {
    $next = $pagenum + 1;
    echo " Next -> ";
    echo "----";
    echo " Last ->> ";
}
?>

As well, this code was meant to match your code as close as possible, however... a much better way would be to make level an int value, as well using a case with default being the line $query = "SELECT *,LPAD(id,4,'0') as id FROM students $max";.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Ideal for indoor or outdoor use, this 11.5-inch self-watering planter allows for carefree watering for healthy, beautiful plants. Fill it once and the built in reservoir will draw water for up to two weeks. A built-in ventilation system simulates how plants naturally grow in the ground, promotes aeration and prevents over-watering. This planter comes in a shade of charcoal gray and is UV resistant so it won't fade in the sunlight. The color helps create a beautiful contrast against your flowers, houseplants and other foliage. The Quick view Lip makes it easy to see how much water is left in the planter before it needs a refill. Water from top for the first week only to keep the soil moist then fill the reservoir. This self-watering planter is made from recycled materials.
nothing high tech here. . . the plants water themselves!
I always have issues with overwatering my plants, but this completely got rid of that problem! If you dont have a green thumb, check these out!
This pot is everything I was looking for and more! I really wanted a neutral color to make my flowers pop. This is perfect.
I bought these for potting flowers and they they are quite lightweight and still sturdy. Great buy for the price. Can't complain there. You can't go wrong with a classic flat gray.


The much-publicized case in 2015 of former NGO worker Steve Dennis provides an excellent example. Dennis, a former staff member of the Norwegian Re (NRC) issued the agency, claiming gross negligence and failure in duty of care after he was kidnapped and shot in Dadaab, Kenya. Dennis was traveling in a convoy through the camp when his car came under attack. The driver was killed, Dennis was shot in the leg and he and three other colleagues were taken captive. Interviewed in 2015, Dennis stated that: "Like everyone going into a risky situation for work, I believe there's a minimum level of training and procedures required and when it's not there I believe there should be accountability for it. This case absolutely highlights the need to have deliberate and sensible measures in place for employees traveling abroad – especially in an environment where there is an increased level of risk. Not only is transportation key, but also training employees.


text:
Assorted Links (6/29/2012)
June 29, 2012 Jim Garven	Leave a comment
Here's a list of articles that I have been reading, videos that I have been viewing, and podcasts that I have been listening to lately:
Uncommon Knowledge: John Stossel
www.hoover.org
I listened to Peter Robinson's 45 minute interview with John Stossel this morning on my daily walk around ATX. Stossel is a rarity – a libertarian member of the news media. The interview centered around a discussion of Stossel's new book entitled "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails—but Individuals Succeed." (cf. http://amzn.to/MGGkZo). The interview and the book are organized around a series of initial statements which are framed as "What intuition tempts us to believe: ____", followed by responses which are framed as "What reality taught me: ____". For example,
WHAT INTUITION TEMPTS US TO BELIEVE: When there's a problem, government should act.
WHAT REALITY TAUGHT ME: Individuals should act, not government.
WHAT INTUITION TEMPTS US TO BELIEVE: Someone needs to plan, and the central planners know best.
WHAT REALITY TAUGHT ME: No one knows enough to plan a society (Stossel gives a shout-out to Hayek on this one).
WHAT INTUITION TEMPTS US TO BELIEVE: The important thing is to have heroic leaders.
WHAT REALITY TAUGHT ME: Real heroes don't control other people's lives.
WHAT INTUITION TEMPTS US TO BELIEVE: Big business runs the media, so the media support business. WHAT REALITY TAUGHT ME: The media hate business.
and so forth…
The Wrong Remedy for Health Care
professional.wsj.com
This article provides a coherent explanation of what a market-oriented reform alternative to the so-called "Affordable Care Act" (AKA "Obamacare") would look like…
The Tax Duck
"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck… A sampling of Democratic denials—from President Obama on down—that the individual mandate is a tax, as the Supreme Court ruled it is."
The ObamaCare Election
Quoting from this article, "The Roberts majority didn't just legitimize ObamaCare—it provided Democrats a road map, and the tools, for the party's ambitions to turn us into a European-style entitlement state."
Noonan: Obama Has a Good Day
"But liberty has a bad one, Peggy Noonan writes."
A Triumph and Tragedy for the Law
"In The Wall Street Journal, David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey write that in order to uphold the individual mandate as an exercise of the taxing power, the majority overlooked the natural meaning of the statutory text."
Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis
www.amazon.com
I just added this book to my ever-expanding reading list; here's a synopsis of the book provided by the "Zon" (AKA Amazon.com):
"In the groundbreaking book Priceless, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman reveals how patients, healthcare providers, employers, and employees are all trapped in a dysfunctional, bureaucratic, healthcare system fraught with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. Unless changed, these incentives will only worsen the problems in the coming months and years. He demonstrates how market forces have been driven out from the American healthcare system, making it nearly impossible to solve problems as effectively or efficiently as in virtually every other type of consumer marketplace. Goodman cuts through the politics to think "outside the box" and propose dozens of bold and crucial innovations that, if adopted, would enable caregivers, entrepreneurs, and patients to use their knowledge and creativity to create access to low-cost, high-quality healthcare."
Health care ruling: A strange constitutional win
Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett makes an intriguing case that the SCOTUS decision was a victory of a sort…
The Revolution: A Manifesto
In his book entitled "The Revolution: A Manifesto", Ron Paul describes the health care system which existed in the America of my youth and early adulthood. How times have changed!:
"It is easy to forget that for decades the United States HAD a health care system that was the envy of the world. We had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients received high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of privately funded charities provided health services for the poor. I worked in an emergency room where nobody was turned away for lack of funds. People had insurance policies for serious health problems but paid cash for routine doctor visits."
Obama won ugly and only temporarily
www.washingtonpost.com
Interesting political take on yesterday's SCOTUS decision: "There was never a debate about whether Americans wanted new taxes to support government-required health insurance. The court answered a question that wasn't asked. Now President Obama must celebrate his new tax and defend it between now and the election in November. The ruling will instantly be challenged in Congress, and it puts vulnerable Democrats in the position of having to defend an Obama tax increase, not generous health-care benefits."
Why Roberts did it
"The chief justice had to choose between two imperatives." Excellent essay by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer…
The New Swing Justice
Quoting from this article, "The tax theory had been disclaimed by President Obama, as well as House Democratic Leader and Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In their dissent, the Justices note that while Congress might have framed the mandate as a tax, it didn't do so. "We cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not," they wrote. "In this case, there is simply no way, "without doing violence to the fair meaning of the words used," . . . to escape what Congress enacted: a mandate that individuals maintain minimum essential coverage, enforced by a penalty.""
And Now, Health Care Reform?
Quoting from this article, "Forget SCOTUS. Amazingly, John Kerry laid out its real epitaph in 2004 in a major campaign address. Mr. Kerry delivered the unwelcome message that extending coverage to the uninsured would only lead to a renewed explosion of health-care spending as the uninsured now participated in the same incentives to overspend as the rest of us. Bingo."
The ObamaCare Tax
"The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore says Mr. Obama's team is surely uncorking the champagne bottles, but taxpayers may not be so happy."
Supreme Court Upholds Mandate as Tax
online.wsj.com
"The court upheld the mandate as a tax, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. The justices also found fault with part of the health-care law's expansion of Medicaid."
The President That Time Forgot
"In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that ObamaCare was a legislative monolith, out of sync with an iPad world."
Research On Religion | Robert Woodberry on Missionaries and Democracy
researchonreligion.org
I highly recommend listening to Tony Gill's interview of Bob Woodberry concerning his recently published paper entitled "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy" (available at http://bit.ly/KQHwvw). Dr. Woodberry empirically finds that "the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy."
Previous PostAssorted Links (6/27/2012)Next PostAssorted Links (7/2/2012)


text:
Q: Adding new class member via LINQ query I have a LINQ query and because the variable that stores the result will be used in an "if" statement, I've had to initialize it before the query. This required making a class due to the different data types being stored in the list - however I'm having trouble making class members inside the LINQ query and I'm not sure why.
Class:
public class OtherProgramType
{
    public string State { get; set; }
    public string PrgName { get; set; }
    public short? ProgramTypeID { get; set; }
    public string DisplayText { get; set; }

}

Code:
List<OtherProgramType> otherPrograms;
otherPrograms = (from hm in db.HabitatManagement
                             join svy in db.Survey on hm.SurveyID equals svy.SurveyID
                             join iu in db.InventoryUsers on hm.UserID equals iu.UserID
                             join pt in db.ProgramType on hm.ProgramTypeID equals pt.ProgramTypeID
                             where pt.Program != "State Agency Public Land Programs"
                             && pt.Program != "State Agency Private Land Programs"
                             && svy.ReportingYear == (from svy in db.Survey
                                                      where svy.ReportingYear.HasValue
                                                      select svy.ReportingYear.Value).Max()
                             || pt.Program != "State Agency Public Land Programs"
                             && pt.Program != "State Agency Private Land Programs"
                             && svy.ReportingYear == (from svy in db.Survey
                                                      where svy.ReportingYear.HasValue
                                                      select svy.ReportingYear.Value).Max() - 1
                             select new
                             {
                                 iu.StateID,
                                 hm.ProgramTypeID,
                                 pt.Program
                             })
                             .Distinct()
                             .Select(x => new OtherProgramType { x.StateID, x.Program, x.ProgramTypeID, DisplayText = x.StateID.ToString() + ", " + x.Program.ToString() })
                             .OrderBy(x => x.StateID)
                             .ToList();

This is the line where I want the new class member to be made:
.Select(x => new OtherProgramType { x.StateID, x.Program, x.ProgramTypeID, DisplayText = x.StateID.ToString() + ", " + x.Program.ToString() })
The x.StateID, x.Program, x.ProgramTypeID get underlined in red squiggles and it says "Invalid initializer member declarator."

A: You need to state the field assignments, especially since the fields from x don't match the fields from your type OtherProgramType
.Select(x => new OtherProgramType
{
    State = x.StateID,
    PrgName = x.Program,
    ProgramTypeID = x.ProgramTypeID,
    DisplayText = x.StateID.ToString() + ", " + x.Program.ToString()
})

A: You need to give the names of the properties you want to assign to:
.Select(x => new OtherProgramType {
     State = x.StateID,
     PrgName = x.Program,
     ProgramTypeID = x.ProgramTypeID,
     DisplayText = x.StateID.ToString() + ", " + x.Program.ToString()
})

A: Both the above answers are absolutely correct. Just to add:
If your class had a constructor taking all the parameters your code could have been:
public class OtherProgramType
{
  public OtherProgramType(string s, string pn, short? ptid, string dt)
  {
    this.State = s;
    this.PrgName = pn;
    this.ProgramTypeID = ptid;
    this.DisplayText = dt;
  }

  public string State { get; set; }
  public string PrgName { get; set; }
  public short? ProgramTypeID { get; set; }
  public string DisplayText { get; set; }
}

Now the appropriate line could be:
...
.Select(x => new OtherProgramType ( x.StateID, x.Program, x.ProgramTypeID, x.StateID.ToString() + ", " + x.Program.ToString() ))
...

Notice the () instead of {}.


Chicken Coops For Two Chickens – Small Is Good! - FREE CHICKEN COOP PLANS!
Whether you are wanting a couple chickens for eggs, as pets, or to simply just try your hand at raising a small flock of chickens, you're not alone!
There are thousands of people out there living in both urban and rural settings that have caught the chicken raising bug. Wikipedia states that people in urban settings are now raising chickens in greater numbers – as pets, for eggs, or food. And it's really quite simple to get started – a small coop, a water source, a feeder, and a bit of space for them to roam and you're set!
We'll take a look at what's needed to get started and few ideas for small chicken coops, whether they be homemade or bought at a farm store or ordered online.
What's great about a coop for just two chickens is that they don't take up much space and can be placed just about anywhere in your yard. You can tuck it away in a corner or have it proudly displayed wherever you like!
Size: The estimated square footage per chicken is 2 – 3 square feet (sf) so plan on a minimum of 4 – 6 total sf per chicken. More is always better as they'll enjoy the extra space.
Something to keep in mind is whether you'll be free ranging your dynamic duo – if so, more space is not necessary as they'll be out foraging in the yard all day.
But if you plan to keep them contained, you'll need to add a Run to the coop so they have added space to move. The space needed for an attached outside run is 8 – 10 sf per chicken. This adds a bit more size and bulk to the overall design but you also have a lot more control over where they roam. It also makes it less likely they get killed by a predator.
What's Needed For A Small Coop?
You'll need the same supplies you'd need in a larger coop but scaled down versions.
Roost about 2 feet long (longer if possible). Easy to make or simply buy online. When searching online they also offer a roost/nest box combination which takes care of two coop accessories all at once but costs more.
Nest box (one is sufficient). Easy to make but can be bought online for a reasonable price.
Feeder – again, nothing too huge is fine. A 1 gallon size will work great or there are dozens of great options you can buy online. And if you're feeling adventurous, make a homemade one! We show you how here.
Watering System – These can be as simple as a one gallon waterer you can buy at the farm store or online, or you can make a homemade one like ours which is affordable and completely automatic – we love it! We show you how it's done here.
There are a plethora of ideas that can work great for building small chicken coops. Because they don't need to be as large, little coops can be made out of things that would not be possible in larger coops, like 55 gallon barrels, an old dresser or cabinet etc.
Below are some of the materials available for building small coops. More information on chicken coop designs can be found here.
Wood is always a great option for building chicken coops of any size. You can fashion or design it however you want!
Some combination of Cedar, Pine, and Plywood will work great to build a sturdy coop, as long as it's painted or stained to protect from the elements.
Plywood is a common type of wood for building chicken coops because it comes 4 ft x 8 ft sheets from the store. You can cut out the floor, sides, and roof from one or more of these sheets for your small coop.
Of course the framing will need to be made of either 2×4 or, at a minimum, 2×2 lumber.
For roofing, asphalt shingles work great. Or you can buy a small piece of metal roofing for added durability.
Just when you think you've seen it all…then there's the dresser chicken coop! Who would've thought this could be done. Well apparently it's more popular than we realized. A quick search for dresser coop in your favorite browser will pull up a ton of ideas for you to consider.
It's a remarkably simple design but does take some extra work to cut out some of the drawers in a way that will work to house your chickens. But it may be worth it for the potential cost savings. A used dresser can be bought at a thrift store for just a few dollars. Or, use an existing dresser and get yourself a new one!
Some dressers are up to 5 drawers tall which is great for a larger flock…but for 2 chickens a simple two or three drawer dresser should comfortably house your pair of hens nicely.
One thing to be aware of if considering using a dresser for a coop is that you should really use only real wood, not particle board which can't tolerate the elements very well. Dressers are designed for indoor use so they will need to be properly painted, sealed, and waterproofed for outdoor use.
Believe it or not, an old barrel can function nicely as a small chicken coop. We're talking the 55 gallon drum type, which provides enough space for your two chickens.
Not only are they easy to find, but they are often made of plastic, wood, or metal which are very solid, durable materials that hold up well against all kinds of weather!
Because of it's round shape, however, there are a few modifications that need to be made to make it a user friendly coop for both you and your chickens.
Also – if you plan to re-use a barrel that contained some type of harsh chemical, rinse it out thoroughly before adding your chickens! And like with any coop, make sure it has enough ventilation.
Pallets may take a bit of extra work to make a sweet little coop, but it can be done! The bulk of the work is taking the pallets apart, but you can do it by carefully using a hammer and pry bar.
The big pay off is the amount of money you can save – many pallets can be purchased for free or nearly free from Craigslist.
Above is an example of what can be done with pallets! Of course for just 2 chickens you could make it MUCH smaller, using just a few pallets to accomplish something similar.
A really affordable option that can be assembled rather quickly is a PVC pipe. PVC piping is basically plumbing pipes made from a type of hard plastic. They are also quite cheap to buy at a big box store like Home Depot, Lowes, or your local hardware store.
If long enough, PVC pipes will arch into a half-circle shape and can be made into a Hoop house. The picture below shows one such house made of PVC pipes and a tarp. It's a cheap, easy design and should last quite awhile, although you'll have to change out the tarp every year or two as it'll take a beating from the elements. I'd also recommend staking it in the ground so the wind won't blow it out of your yard!
If you get creative, you can make a pretty sweet looking coop out of PVC. The below picture is a great example, and even includes a free plan on how to make it. It's plenty big for just 2 chickens, though, so plan on scaling it down significantly. The PVC pipe coop below uses nice metal panels which are great but add to the cost. Many people use tarp roof which is completely functional but may need replacing every year or so.
Box Stores – Because a coop for two does not involve a lot of material cost, you can get wood from your local box store (Home Depot, Menards etc.), or check out a few local reused building materials resource stores. It's amazing what you can find there – lumber of all kinds, roofing materials, nail, screws, and sometimes even PVC, used barrels and more.
Used/Repurposed Supply Stores – If you're feeling adventurous (and creative), go to a used building supply stores and simply see what they have in store that day and fashion a coop out of the available materials they had in the store.
Granted, not everyone can pull this off…but if you see an old barrel there, some leftover plywood (or whatever catches your eye), you can find plenty of information on the web on how to make those old supplies into a sweet little coop!
Online – If you aren't into going through the added time and effort it takes to create a coop from scratch, we totally get it! We all have busy lives and it may be worth the investment of simply purchasing a new coop online.
We review many available new coops, big and small, in this article and over here.
We hope you're brain is churning with ideas for building or buying your next chicken coop for two 😊. As you can see, there are a myriad of options to choose from and we have really only scratched the surface here.
If you have other ideas for a small chicken coop, leave a comment below – we'd love to hear about them! Thanks for stopping by.
Next Article Chicken Coop Flooring Materials – Wood Is Great, But There Are More!


text:
Addiction to prescription drugs is UK 'public health disaster'
Health 24 October 2016
By Clare Wilson
Getting addicted to prescription drugs is all too easy
Education Images/UIG via Getty
Addiction to prescribed medicines could be as big a problem in the UK as addiction to illegal drugs like heroin. So say a group of UK doctors and politicians, who have called for urgent action to help people who get hooked on painkillers, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines like Valium.
"We are in the midst of a great public health disaster, which is killing hundreds of people a year and ruining the lives of millions," Harry Shapiro, head of addiction charity DrugWise, said at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence last week.
Doctors at the meeting said addiction clinics focus on helping people abusing illegal drugs or alcohol – so people stuck on prescription meds have nowhere to turn.
People often get hooked on opioid painkillers because they are given them after an injury or operation, said Jane Quinlan at the University of Oxford. "The patients are taking the drugs just as they have been told to."
The number of prescriptions for strong opioids has soared in the UK in recent years, mainly because doctors are increasingly warned not to leave patients suffering. A recent study suggests prescriptions for patients without cancer rose about seven-fold between 2000 and 2010.
Best painkillers
Although opioids are the best analgesics for people with cancer or in short-term severe pain, in the long term the drugs become ineffective and can sensitise pain nerves, meaning that over time non-painful stimuli become painful. As well as disrupting sleep, prolonged use also puts people at risk of infections and accidental overdoses. But they also make you feel good and if people try to cut down they end up with flu-like withdrawal symptoms (see "How I got addicted to painkillers").
Another problem is a group of anti-anxiety medicines called benzodiazepines, such as Valium, which can also lead to addiction and withdrawal symptoms that include panic attacks and insomnia. These are supposed to be used for no more than four weeks at a time, to help people cope with a crisis. But a recent analysis of figures from a UK drug addiction charity called the Bridge Project suggests there are around a quarter of a million people in the UK taking benzodiazepines long-term. Most of those surveyed by the charity have been on the medicines for many years.
Antidepressants are supposed to be non-addictive, but critics say they can also trigger withdrawal symptoms and many people get stuck on them for years.
This week the British Medical Association called for a dedicated NHS helpline and website where people hooked on prescription drugs can get advice. Farrukh Alam, an addiction specialist at Central and Northwest London Mental Health Trust said: "When patients suffering opioid dependence are referred to me they don't like mixing with other drug users and tend to drop out of treatment."
Quinlan said the UK may be following in the footsteps of the opioid addiction epidemic in the US. But Cathy Stannard at Southmead Hospital in Bristol says in the US many people are using prescription painkillers to get high while in the UK most people are using them for medical reasons.
More on these topics:
medical drugs
Magazine issue 3097 , published 29 October 2016
Snowmobile plunge claims life of Antarctica researcher
Benzodiazepine prescriptions reach 'disturbing' levels in the US
The love drug that could draw people away from any addiction
2018 preview: Opioids will kill tens of thousands more people
Your music tastes can be changed by using magnets on your brain