dc.description.abstract This work involves the development and application of high accuracy numerical methods for computational optics. Three main topics form the core of the text. First is an application of finite difference methods to the simulation of a tapered slab coupled to an Erbium /Ytterbium doped fiber. Light pumped into the device is modeled using the paraxial beam propagation equation. The pump efficiency is measured and compared with a simple linear estimate. The results show agreement between the estimated and measured efficiencies over a few centimeters for low absorption rates and random initial conditions. In the second topic, I have applied the Weeks method for the numerical inversion of the Laplace transform to the matrix exponential. This has involved the extension of the scalar theory to matrix functions parameterized by time, a detailed error analysis, and a study of automated selection algorithms for the method's two tuning parameters. By calculating the exponential of both pathological matrices and those from the method-of-lines applied to the nonparaxial beam propagation equation, it has been possible to compare the parameter selection algorithms and demonstrate the method's high accuracy. The third topic is the implementation of a multidomain pseudospectral approach to the derivatives in Schr\"odinger type equations. The method is based on a cellular decomposition of the domain and Legendre pseudospectral differentiation within each cell. A symmetric high-order finite difference stencil for boundary points is found to be stable, accurate, and conservative. The application of this algorithm is the numerical analysis of a procedure for determining the effects of high intensity light on the nonlinear susceptibility coefficients of the hydrogen atom. With this approach, I have been able to resolve the solutions to the underlying equations and accurately compute the ionization probability and polarization. The full susceptibility and one which depends solely on the electronic bound-bound transitions are derived from these quantities. The analysis reveals the accuracy of the numerical solution procedure, that saturation of the susceptibility occurs without including bound-continuum transitions, and that a linear extrapolation of the total susceptibility versus the ionization probability to obtain the instantaneous susceptibility is quantitatively unreliable.
html.description.abstract This work involves the development and application of high accuracy numerical methods for computational optics. Three main topics form the core of the text. First is an application of finite difference methods to the simulation of a tapered slab coupled to an Erbium /Ytterbium doped fiber. Light pumped into the device is modeled using the paraxial beam propagation equation. The pump efficiency is measured and compared with a simple linear estimate. The results show agreement between the estimated and measured efficiencies over a few centimeters for low absorption rates and random initial conditions. In the second topic, I have applied the Weeks method for the numerical inversion of the Laplace transform to the matrix exponential. This has involved the extension of the scalar theory to matrix functions parameterized by time, a detailed error analysis, and a study of automated selection algorithms for the method's two tuning parameters. By calculating the exponential of both pathological matrices and those from the method-of-lines applied to the nonparaxial beam propagation equation, it has been possible to compare the parameter selection algorithms and demonstrate the method's high accuracy. The third topic is the implementation of a multidomain pseudospectral approach to the derivatives in Schr\"odinger type equations. The method is based on a cellular decomposition of the domain and Legendre pseudospectral differentiation within each cell. A symmetric high-order finite difference stencil for boundary points is found to be stable, accurate, and conservative. The application of this algorithm is the numerical analysis of a procedure for determining the effects of high intensity light on the nonlinear susceptibility coefficients of the hydrogen atom. With this approach, I have been able to resolve the solutions to the underlying equations and accurately compute the ionization probability and polarization. The full susceptibility and one which depends solely on the electronic bound-bound transitions are derived from these quantities. The analysis reveals the accuracy of the numerical solution procedure, that saturation of the susceptibility occurs without including bound-continuum transitions, and that a linear extrapolation of the total susceptibility versus the ionization probability to obtain the instantaneous susceptibility is quantitatively unreliable.


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text:
Q: Distribute lottery tickets randomly from pre-gerenated set in PHP I'm looking for an atomic way to pick one ticket from a poll of tickets and give it to someone in PHP. So far I have thought of a few different solutions but I'm not sure how atomic they are (two people must NEVER have the same ticket).
All tickets are pre-generated in the range of 1-N (random numbers as tickets can't be used). The methods I think are viable are:
1) Use a file to store the tickets shuffled and pick the first one and rewrite the file (or pick the last one and only truncate without rewrite). Simplest example:
function NextTicket()
{
  $fh = fopen('tickets.txt', 'rw+');
  flock($fh, LOCK_EX)) //hopefully this should prevent parallel access

  $all = explode("\n", stream_get_contents($arq));
  $return = $all[0]; //ticket to be returned

  unset($all[0]);
  rewind($fh);
  ftruncate($fh,0);
  fwrite($fh, implode("\n", $all);
  fclose($fh);

  return $ticket;
}

2) Use a sqlite file to hold all tickets and extract a row at a time (supposes shuffled rows inserted).
function NextTicket()
{
  $db = new SQLite3('tickets.sqlite');
  $db->exec('BEGIN');
    $res = $db->query('SELECT rowid,TI_NUMBER FROM tickets LIMIT 1');
    $ticket = $res->fetchArray(SQLITE3_ASSOC);
    $db->exec('DELETE FROM tickets WHERE rowid='.$ticket['rowid']);
  $db->exec('COMMIT');

  return $ticket['TI_NUMBER'];
}

3) Use sqlite as a counter with a single row instead of holding each ticket number in a row (I cannot use this method because the delivery should be random).
function NextTicket()
{
  $db = new SQLite3('/tmp/tickets.sqlite');
  $db->exec('BEGIN');
    $res = $db->query('SELECT rowid,TI_NUMBER FROM tickets LIMIT 1');
    $ticket = $res->fetchArray(SQLITE3_ASSOC);
    $res = $db->query('UPDATE tickets SET TI_NUMBER=TI_NUMBER+1 WHERE rowid='.$ticket['rowid']);
  $db->exec('COMMIT');

  return $ticket['TI_NUMBER'];
}

4) Other approaches? Mysql 5.6 database is also available. Auto increment cannot be used as it's sequential and I need random row from the set. Maybe combining 1 and 3 to get a specific position from inside the shuffled file based in the auto increment.
Has anyone faced a similar issue? How was it solved?
Thanks in advance.

A: If you want to give many random tickets, just use mysql table with columns id, number. Set N random numbers to it and get+remove first/last. You can use shuffled array from 1 to N as source.
But what if you just will use counter in DB and will give not random tickets? For result it doesn't matter, because winner's number will get with random generator too. Then all will become more simpler. And to hide from users, that numbers are not random, just use encoding function, that will use auto-increment number as argument.
Code for example of encoding function:
function encryptNumber($number) {

        $ahphaEncodeTable = [
            0  => 'N', 1  => 'E', 2  => 'D', 3  => 'O',
            4  => 'K', 5  => 'Z', 6  => 'M', 7  => 'R',
            8  => 'L', 9  => 'A'
        ];

        $numEncodeTable = [
            0 => 3, 1 => 6,
            2 => 9, 3 => 0,
            4 => 4, 5 => 8,
            6 => 1, 7 => 7,
            8 => 5, 9 => 2
        ];

        $numbersArr        = array_map('intval', str_split($number));
        $numbersFirstIndex = key($numbersArr);
        $numbersArrKeys    = array_keys($numbersArr);
        $numbersLastIndex  = end($numbersArrKeys);

        $resultHash = '';

        foreach ($numbersArr as $index => $number) {
            if($numbersFirstIndex === $index) {
                $resultHash .= $ahphaEncodeTable[$number];

                if($numbersFirstIndex === $numbersLastIndex) {
                    $resultHash .= mt_rand(0, 9);
                }
            }
            elseif($numbersLastIndex === $index) {
                if($numbersFirstIndex !== $numbersLastIndex) {
                    //insert after first letter in string
                    $resultHash = substr_replace($resultHash, $ahphaEncodeTable[$number], 1, 0);
                }

                $resultHash .= mt_rand(0, 9);
            }
            else {
                $resultHash .= $numEncodeTable[$number];
            }
        }

        return $resultHash;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
Q: Dynamic content not rendered when scraping using selenium I am trying to use selenium for scraping (the script used to work in python 3.7).
Last week I had to reset my PC and I installed the latest versions of python and all the packages used in the script.
What I observed was that none of the dynamic values are getting rendered and are displayed with header tags. Please see below some of the outputs:

Close
{{ScripHeaderData.Header.Close}}

WAP
{{StkTrd.WAP}}

Big Value
{{checknullheader(CompData.BigVal)?'-':(CompData.BigVal)}}

I have been using the script for my research purpose and need it back in shape, hence appreciate any guidance.
Here's the snippet for reference:
target_url = q.get(timeout=1)
time.sleep(1)
driver = webdriver.Chrome('./chromedriver',options=opts)
driver.get(target_url)
# this is just to ensure that the page is loaded
time.sleep(5)

html_content = driver.page_source

soup = BeautifulSoup(html_content, features="html.parser")

table_rows = soup.find_all('tr')
for row in table_rows:
    table_cols = row.find_all('td')
    for col in table_cols:
        label_value = col.text

A: I had referred a lot of forums and tried many suggestions (waits, driver options, changing web drivers, switching content etc.) however my issue seems to be more specific and did not get resolved.
Eventually fell back to my old setup (runs python 3.9.6) and then it went back to working state.
Thanks to you Joe Carboni for your time and inputs on this.
It is a bit frustrating that I could not find the root cause of the issue and a workaround to resolve it. But just posting what I did here in case if it helps someone, cheers.

A: While it may be tempting to use time.sleep to wait for the page to load, it's better to use Selenium Waits with conditions to wait for, likely related to the elements you want.
https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/waits/
Here's another thread with a good answer about Waits and conditions vs. time.sleep: How to sleep Selenium WebDriver in Python for milliseconds


text:
package org.cboard.dataprovider.aggregator;

import org.cboard.dataprovider.DataProvider;
import org.cboard.dataprovider.config.AggConfig;
import org.cboard.dataprovider.config.CompositeConfig;
import org.cboard.dataprovider.config.ConfigComponent;
import org.cboard.dataprovider.config.DimensionConfig;
import org.cboard.dataprovider.result.AggregateResult;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

/**
 * Created by yfyuan on 2017/1/13.
 */
public interface Aggregatable {

    /**
     * The data provider that support DataSource side Aggregation must implement this method.
     *
     * @param columnName
     * @return
     */
    String[] queryDimVals(String columnName, AggConfig config) throws Exception;

    /**
     * The data provider that support DataSource side Aggregation must implement this method.
     *
     * @return
     */
    String[] getColumn() throws Exception;

    /**
     * The data provider that support DataSource side Aggregation must implement this method.
     *
     * @param ac aggregate configuration
     * @return
     */
    AggregateResult queryAggData(AggConfig ac) throws Exception;

    default String viewAggDataQuery(AggConfig ac) throws Exception {
        return "Not Support";
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
'Please Stop Saying you Unified Country Because Sri Lanka was Never Divided to be Unified'-Sangaree Writes to Mahinda
Tamil United Liberation Front(TULF) Secretary – General and former Parliamentarian Veerasingham Anandasangaree has in a letter written to President Mahinda Rajapaksa stressed that a solution to the Ethnic problem is needed immediately
Here is the text of the TULF leader's letter:
His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa,
President of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,
Temple Trees,
Colombo – 03
Your Excellency,
Pardon me for this letter which may cause you some embarrassment. I do not feel happy writing this since I feel that you may not take its contents seriously. This is yet another letter coming to you from an aged patriotic responsible citizen, yearning for absolute peace in the country, for whom his country and its people are his first priorities. I was born and bred in Lanka and wish to die in Lanka as a Lankan. The purpose of writing this is to put certain matters on record and to see whether I can convince you and win you over to my thinking on some of these matters. I am duty bound to do so.
First of all I plead with you to stop saying that you have unified the country under one flag, which is far from the truth. In-spite of the LTTE's presence and dominance in parts of certain districts in the North and the East and in the District of Mullaitheevu and Killinochchi, administration of all the districts in the country were and are still in the hands of the District Secretaries and Heads of all the other Departments, in the country. The country was never divided to get unified.
Furthermore the Government did not wage a war with another country but only suppressed a massive rebellion organized for a specific purpose. For a period of more than quarter of a century the country's entire population irrespective of their race or religion, lived in permanent fear and tension and attended to their day to day business, with no certainty of returning home alive. There was loss of life and property all over the country on a large scale.
But Your Excellency will agree that it was the people in the North and the East who had suffered the most, the people of the Districts of Mullaitheevu and Killinochchi in full and of the other districts in parts. The sufferings the people underwent, three to four lakhs squeezed into a small area, where people had hardly a suitable place to cook their meals and to take shelter in the night cannot be describable in words. This situation prevailed for two or three months.
The period from March to May 2009 was the worst. Men, Women and Children, the sick, the old, the expectant mothers with hardly any privacy, many shared a small area. The continuous rain with minor floods and snakes from flooded low lying areas reached places where the humans had taken up residence. All those were in addition to the hardships they underwent for years, without electricity for their homes or even street lights. The children studied with the help of bottle lamps and with limited supply of kerosene, they had to depend on coconut oil or margosa oil. One can imagine what a lot of difficulties these people would have had to get their various requirements. Amidst this, they had to hide their children to prevent conscription. Their fundamental rights, freedom of speech, of association were all denied to them with their human rights highly eroded. Even the most hard hearted person would have wept listening to their stories.
They had no more tears to shed. They lost their dear ones. Some had lost all the others in their families. Their houses razed to the ground. Hardly one house could be seen with the roof. Even two and half years after the people were resettled, they are still not ready to accommodate a visitor or a relation. Most people are living in starvation. They have no income. In many homes women had become breadwinners of their families. Mothers with grown up girls live in fear and tension. There are more than 90,000 widows in the North and the East. There are thousands of orphans too.
The situation has not improved much. Most children who were forcibly recruited by the LTTE are no more. There were tombs built for every one died in combat. There were thousands buried at various places. You don't find even one tomb left. As a father you should feel the pains of the parents who lost a son, whose tomb had been destroyed by the armed forces.
You are handing over newly built houses for the war heroes. I welcome the decision and would have praised you if you had built houses for the innocent families who lost their houses due to the bombing and shelling. The Housing Ministry has completed several thousand houses for houseless, a move I very much welcome. Everyone must have a house of his or her own. But if you had ordered reconstruction or rebuilding of all houses damaged due to the bombing and shelling I would have very much appreciated as a good and right step taken by the Government.
The fighting is now over. The guns had ceased firing. You have successfully suppressed the rebellion. There is absolutely no chance of the revolt reviving. Although the war was won by Sri Lankan soldiers, the assistance needed came from various countries. Credit should also go to the countries that helped Sri Lankan Forces in all respects. Have those countries no right to expect you to heed to their advise as well. If the neighboring country India had not helped us, our Forces would have got eradicated and the rebels would have won. As a country to country, both Russia and China helped Sri Lanka to defeat the rebels. With that they must stop. They have no moral rights to put up army camps and equip them in the North. This may boomerang on your Government one day. China and Russia and all the others who helped Sri Lanka have a moral duty to help you to solve the country's problems. This is their duty. But they should not help the Government to bring an ethnic group, in Sri Lanka, under the subjugation of the Government.
Your immediate task now should be to win over the Tamils. You should not forget that the civilians in Vanni had given enough support to the Government Forces for their liberation, being so fed up with arms. The people of the North and the East want a gun-free atmosphere to live in peace for which all countries that supported the Government to win, should give full cooperation to bring back absolute peace in the Country.
In relation to the ongoing talks with the T.N.A I have some comments to make. Devolution of powers, under the 13th amendment, relating to the police and the land, I wish to point out that this is nothing new and is being debated over and over again. It is surprising that although more than 15 rounds of talks had taken place with the T.N.A, finality had not been reached in these matters. I read your speech in Parliament referring to the difficulty you will have in going to your village, if these two powers are conceded. If there are any special reasons for your reluctance to concede these two matters and the withdrawal of the army from the North and the East I suggest that, you should accept them in principle and work out a solution taking into consideration your reservations.
Furthermore, when the war was at its high pitch, 13th amendment and more was offered as a solution, but if we now go back after the war is over, the country will lose its credibility as a Nation.
The country had lost so much. The Tamils had suffered enough and these two matters along with the withdrawal of the army should be worked out to the satisfaction of both parties. I do not think any right thinking Sinhalese will object to a final solution based on this. I am positively sure that without these powers devolved, no solution to the ethnic problem is possible.
V. Anadasangaree
Tamil United Liberation front
LLRC
Tamil righs

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
November 11, 2004 by minke d'antiminke
"John Howard has supported a parliamentary debate on abortion as conservative MPs push for a public inquiry into the number and timing of terminations." (n.c.a)
"Abortion row 'manufactured'
The Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) has accused Federal Government ministers and Governor-General Michael Jeffery of manufacturing a crisis over abortion.
Spokeswoman Eva Cox said … there was no need for a major inquiry into abortions because statistics showed the number of terminations was stable or slowly falling.
"Ministers, the Governor-General and others are manufacturing a crisis about abortion to promote their own moral views," Ms Cox said.
"The current highly-misogynist dialogue about women who make casual decisions and 'abort for convenience' is an insult to many of the women who have considered this difficult decision."" (n.c.a)
This entry was posted in john howard is a fool.
Dreeny says:
Mia, are you pregnant?
Not last I checked… I just worry about the erosion of reproductive rights. It's going to happen in the US, which means more women will die or be permanently scarred from back-street abortions.
Ok fair enough. But if you do are pregnant, no problem. We can take care of the baby you know?
I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!
We'll call the baby: "Dreeny Jr". if that's ok with you?;-)
ernestito says:
What about Dreemia?
Ernest! You're pretty *and* a genius. Can we call it Dreemia, Dreeny, can we?
Oh, thanks, Mia! You are all knowing (and dreamy).


text:
Corsendonk (ook Korsendonk) is de naam van een voormalig augustijnenklooster in de Belgische gemeente Oud-Turnhout. Het was een priorij die afhing van het kapittel van Windesheim. De priorij van Corsendonk werd in 1395 gesticht door Maria van Gelre, ook bekend als Maria van Brabant (1325-1399), dochter van hertog Jan III van Brabant, hertogin-weduwe van Gelre en vrouwe van Turnhout. Ze werd gesloten door keizer Jozef II in 1785. De sluiting werd definitief tijdens het Franse revolutionaire bewind in 1795.

De gebouwen zijn sindsdien in privé-handen overgegaan. In de 19e eeuw werd de priorij als landgoed gebruikt door industriëlen uit Turnhout. De restauratie begon in 1968 door de nieuwe eigenaar Fernand Nédée. Hij wilde het complex op de juiste manier restaureren en zo Corsendonk opnieuw tot leven brengen. De gebouwen van de priorij zijn sinds 1971 beschermd. Sinds 1975 is er een conferentiecentrum in ondergebracht, later werd er een hotel aan toegevoegd.

Wat nu nog op Corsendonk kan worden aangetroffen is de oorspronkelijke noordvleugel van het klooster. Hoe de priorij eens geweest is, is op te maken uit het grindpad, dat precies de vorm weergeeft van het vroegere klooster. Op de begane grond bevindt zich de vroegere warmzaal (Kapittelzaal), de ruimte waar de kanunniken hun handschriften vervaardigden. Verder bevonden zich op de etages de eetzalen van de broeders. Ook de kelderruimte, met zijn prachtige gewelven, is vrijwel geheel intact gebleven. Verder staat op het terrein naast het Vrouwenhuis en het Lekenhuis nog het Gastenhuis, dat vroeger dienstdeed als verblijfplaats voor reizigers die bij het vallen van de avond nog geen verblijfplaats hadden gevonden.

Na de sluiting vond een aantal kunstwerken hun weg naar de nabijgelegen kerk van Sint-Bavo, waar ze nog altijd te bewonderen zijn, o.a. 'Het Laatste Avondmaal' van Jan Erasmus Quellinus (1696).

Augustijnenconvent in België
Onroerend erfgoed in Oud-Turnhout
Beschermd monument in Vlaanderen
Klooster in Antwerpen (provincie)
Voormalig klooster in Vlaanderen

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
La Cañada Valley Sun
La Cañada Valley Sun Life and Arts
The Valley Line: Tour of the Marciano galleries a bonus for Master Chorale gala guests
By Jane Napier Neely
It was a spectacular evening in every way March 23 when the Los Angeles Master Chorale held its annual fundraising gala at the stunning Marciano Art Foundation in the Hancock Park area.
Annette Ermshar, who grew up in La Cañada Flintridge and now calls Pasadena home, was the chair of the evening. Her efforts to organize the gala paid off: The event raised a record-breaking amount of $741,000 for educational programs the Chorale sponsors.
More than 300 elegantly dressed guests arrived to experience the magnificent building that houses a jaw-dropping collection of contemporary art. This was the first time the Master Chorale had ventured out of its Disney Hall home for a gala and it was also the first time Maurice Marciano, who co-founded the art space with his brother Paul, had offered to open their building for a fundraiser.
The exterior of the building itself is a piece of L.A. history because it was designed by Millard Sheets as a Scottish Rite Masonic Temple and completed in 1961. The Masons had to vacate the property in 1994 due to zoning issues. Masonic symbols remain on the building's facade, giving it a mystical look. Within the building there is a special Relics Room, where many of the items used by the fraternal order to conduct their ceremonies remain on display.
This was of special interest to me since my father was a member of a Masonic lodge and, as his daughter, I became eligible to join our local bethel of the International Order of Job's Daughters when I turned 12.
On this festive night the Master Chorale honored Lillian Pierson Lovelace a philanthropist who is a longtime supporter of the organization. Also honored was Doug Aitken, an extraordinary multimedia artist.
The Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation, established by the founders of Guess Jeans and clothing lines, is a diverse and important private repository of contemporary art.
Gala guests were fortunate to enjoy exclusive after-hours access to the gallery's exhibitions including a fascinating photographic exhibit by Catherine Opie titled "700 Nimes Road" that was taken over six months at Elizabeth Taylor's Bel-Air residence, just before and after the famed actress's hospitalization and death in 2011. The photographs of rooms, closets, shoes, clothing and jewelry create an indirect yet deeply intimate portrait of a woman whose life was defined by wealth and notoriety. This is an exhibit I want to see again.
Interestingly, one of those attending the gala was Kate Burton, daughter of Richard Burton, who was twice married to Elizabeth Taylor. Kate was at the gala with her husband Michael Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theatre Group.
After gallery viewing, guests gathered in the foyer to hear the Chorale's signature Surround Sing, when 80 singers circled the audience from the mezzanine, conducted by Jenny Wong, associate conductor. Shortly after that experience, guests were seated for dinner. Once again, the singers surrounded the diners with another "Surround sing," this time directed by Grant Gershon, artistic director and conductor of the Chorale.
A live auction was led by Classical KUSC host Rich Capparela. It began with the popular radio host auctioning off the opportunity to join him at his beach home to sit in on one of his "KUSC at the Beach" broadcasts.
Mark Beason, a La Cañada resident, was among the singers. Other Foothills and Pasadena area singers were Tamara Brevard, Claire Fedoruk, Elyse Willis, Michele Hemmings, Leslie Inman Sobol and Michael Lichtenauer.
It was a quite a unique and memorable evening for gala-goers.
Jane Napier Neely covers the local social scene. Email her at jnvalleysun@aol.com with news of your special event.


text:
Marathon Adds Data Protection to Windows Portfolio
Scott Ferguson
Marathon Technology, which creates high-availability environments for Microsoft applications, is adding disaster recovery and data protection software to its EverRun product portfolio, the Littleton, Mass., company announced Dec. 3.
EverRun CDP (continuous data protection) software will work with standard server, networking and storage environments, and Marathon will offer specific options for a range of Microsoft products, including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint Services and Windows Server, said Michael Bilancieri, director of products.
While primarily working with Microsoft, Marathon expanded its portfolio earlier this year to include high-availability software for XenSource's enterprise platform. The company has also planned to offer its software for Linux, but Bilancieri said Marathon will begin offering support for Linux later in 2008.
While important to enterprise companies, disaster recovery is one area that seems to be overlooked by a large majority of IT professionals. In May, a study conducted by Brilliant Ideas for Scalent Systems reported that 89 percent of IT administrators test their disaster recovery systems only once a year.
/zimages/1/28571.gifClick here to read more about the changing face of the data loss prevention market.
The EverRun CDP software looks to improve disaster recovery by making a product that integrates with the Windows environment and allows users to set policies for what data needs protection.
/zimages/1/82221.jpg
In general, Marathon's software allows an IT manager to tie together two x86 servers, creating a virtualized Windows server environment at the point where the applications are deployed. By adding disaster recovery software, Bilancieri said Marathon is offering its customers a better way to deal with both planned and unplanned downtime. It will also help to ease the management of an environment when it comes to pushing out patches or routine maintenance.
The software is disk based and is not meant to displace a tape-backup archive of a company's data, Bilancieri said. The disaster recovery software is a WAN-based product that allows users to recover and protect data even if the data has been deleted or corrupted. The software also allows users to recover data from remote locations.
/zimages/1/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.com's Infrastructure Center for the latest news, views and analysis on servers, switches and networking protocols for the enterprise and small businesses.


Dating sites like Match and Ok Cupid have great mobile apps, but as the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life." We're rounding up some lesser-known apps for finding love and planning dates.
Tinder is the hottest up-and-coming app for flirting. It connects to Facebook and uses your location to find a match nearby.
It offers up a selection of possible matches. Swipe right for matches you like or go left to leave 'em in the dust. If someone you like likes you too, the app will notify you and let you send messages to each other. Tinder is free at Apple's App Store and Google Play.
A new app called Sway expands on that idea and adds quirky descriptions to help you find your match. Would you date someone described as a "brogrammer" or an "occupier"? If not, just swipe to rule it out in future matches. The app is free at Apple's App Store.
If all that swiping is too much to handle, an app called Coffee Meets Bagel only gives you one match a day to consider. It also eases the fear of meeting strangers by matching you with friends of your Facebook friends. And if you pass up a match by accident and want a do-over – the app lets you purchase a second chance. The app is free at Apple's App Store.
But picking a person to date is only the beginning – now you've got to plan a great night out. An app called Movie Night Out uses your location to recommend a movie or location for coffee, dinner or a show. If you're at a complete loss, the app has a "Surprise Me" feature that will plan the whole evening for you. The app is free at Apple's App Store and Google Play.
Or if you and your date want to collaborate on the plans, try an app called Better Half. It lets you and your partner sync up your calendars, make reservations and share each other's favorite movies and restaurants. The app costs $.99 at Apple's App Store.


text:
Stapleton chosen to receive inaugural award in honor of Gerald DiBona, MD
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The below is a message from Bradley Dixon, MD, Chief of Medicine, Iowa City VA Health Care System (ICVA).
It is with enormous pleasure that I announce that the Awards Committee has selected Jack T. Stapleton, MD, staff physician at the ICVA and professor of internal medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, as the recipient of the inaugural DiBona Academics in Service of ICVA Veterans Award. Dr. Stapleton truly embodies the tenets upon which this award was predicated, a physician primarily working at the ICVA holding a joint academic appointment with the University of Iowa and demonstrating a sustained, outstanding commitment to clinical care, education, and research in the service of veterans at the ICVA.
Dr. Stapleton grew up in Kansas and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa, his MD from the University of Kansas, and completed both his Residency in Internal Medicine and Fellowship in ID from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before returning to the Department of Internal Medicine and ID Division at the University of Iowa, where he has remained since 1986. He joined the ICVA in 1987, serving at least a 5/8ths appointment there for all his career.
Dr. Stapleton is the Director of the Helen C Levitt Center for Viral Pathogenesis and served for many years as the Director of the ID Division at both the University and the ICVA. Early on in his career, he established the HIV/AIDS clinics at both the ICVA and UIHC. Dr. Stapleton is internationally recognized and has been consistently funded from the NIH and VA for his research into the basic virology and pathogenesis of a range of medically important viruses. He is perhaps best known for his work understanding how GB virus type C (GBV-C) modulates the immune system and the discovery, published in the NEJM, that survival is prolonged in HIV patients co-infected with this virus. In 2011, Dr. Stapleton led a team of scientists in getting GBV-C reclassified as a fourth genus in the family Flaviviridae named Pegavirus (i.e. human pegivirus, HPgV). He is currently applying the knowledge he has gained from work with HIV, HCV, and HPgV to study how SARS-CoV-2 modulates the immune system. His CV lists more than 275 peer reviewed manuscripts, chapters and editorials as well as multiple patents during his career.
Dr. Stapleton serves on numerous NIH and VA Review Boards and is in constant demand nationally and internationally as a lecturer and consultant. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and elected as a member of the prestigious American Clinical and Climatological Association and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Stapleton is a consummate clinician and educator and regularly attends both on the ID consult service and the inpatient General Medicine Teaching service at the VA. He has been recognized for his teaching by four separate nominations as Faculty Teacher of the Year by fourth-year medical students. On a personal note, Dr. Stapleton regularly and passionately reminds me (correctly) of the enormous contributions of the ID Division to the ICVA.
In short, Dr. Stapleton is an outstanding and exemplary awardee of the Inaugural DiBona award. Dr. Stapleton's career truly embodies the highest standards exemplified by Dr. DiBona and sets a very high bar for this award.
We wish to also recognize the many nominations of very distinguished and deserving candidates and we look forward to recognizing the many contributions of other deserving VA-based academic physicians with the DiBona Award in the future.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Stapleton on this well-deserved award!
AchievementsDiBona Award, Gerald DiBona, Jack Stapleton
Donald Baxter
Dr Stapleton has accomplished all these great things and still see's patients (like me). I feel incredibly fortunate to have Dr Stapleton as both my Infectious Disease physician and my primary care physician as well. I am very well care for at UIHC.
Reply	 April 8, 2021 at 3:40 pm
Tami Haught
Well deserved recognition.. Thank you Dr. Stapleton for being an amazing doctor and working so hard to improve the lives of Iowans living with HIV.
Reply	 April 8, 2021 at 11:48 pm
Our commitment to serving our patients and community – Making the Rounds
[…] outstanding commitment to clinical care, education, and research in the service of Veterans. Its inaugural recipient is Dr. Jack Stapleton, who has given as much to the care of our Veterans as he has to Iowans diagnosed as HIV+. Second, […]
Reply	 April 9, 2021 at 10:19 am
← Holm receives national recognition for Veterans care
Transcatheter Valve Implantation in a Severely Regurgitant Apicoaortic Conduit →


Attachment Parenting is enveloped in confusion and opinion. It is often perceived as a fringe or extreme approach to parenting, though parents who practice it are simply following their instincts for attunement with their child. You may be practicing it yourself without even realising it.
Attachment Parenting International (API) was founded 25 years ago by Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker, in Nashville, Tennessee. They were mothers and teachers who noticed a growing need among students for greater family security and caregiver availability. They founded API to bring information and support to parents through a centralised collection of resources.
Encouraging your toddler to listen and cooperate can sometimes be a challenge. So many parents tell me that their little ones have suddenly started saying "no" to everything, have difficulty sharing, have become picky eaters and throw tantrums when they don't get their own way. It can be a tough time for parents, but these behaviours are developmentally normal and healthy. Toddlers begin to independently explore their own identities, separate from their parents. Pushing boundaries is their way of exploring how the world works.
Written by Sally Rowden, Nursery Nurse and Jo Fletcher, Clinical Team Lead, 0-19s Children's Universal Services, Northants.
Getting the correct advice before introducing solid food to your baby will not only help your little one to grow up to be healthy, but it will also help you to enjoy this special time.
The most up-to-date research tells us that babies only need breast or formula milk up to the age of 6 months. During the following few months, you can relax and really enjoy the experience of introducing solids, safe in the knowledge that baby's nutritional needs are still met by their milk intake.
By Lorraine Thomas, Chief Executive of The Parenting Coaching Academy.
Every toddler will eventually get the hang of using the toilet, but be prepared – toilet training is a messy business. Give it a go when you have got the time, patience and energy. The more positive and relaxed you are, the easier it will be.
There is no 'right' age to start toilet training. Every toddler is different. Some will get the hang of it much earlier than others. Boys often take longer than girls. In general, most children are aged between two and three when they start. Don't feel under pressure to start because other parents are doing it. Go with your gut instinct. Look out for the signs; these include showing interest in the toilet, telling you they want a wee or poo or pulling off nappies.
Should it be Illegal to Smack Children?
By Raymond Arthur, Professor of Law at Northumbria University, Newcastle.
With Scotland set to become the first UK country to make it illegal to smack children, the debate has opened up about whether the rest of the UK should follow suit.
What is the Current Law on Smacking?
The current laws in Britain today prohibit adults from smacking, pushing or shoving other adults. They also protect pets from violence. However, parents are allowed to use physical force to punish their children, provided the punishment does not escalate beyond 'reasonable punishment'.
When us as adults apologise, our children see this as us being fair and that we are trying to understand and listen to them.
By Anne Goldsmith, owner of Behaviour First Consultancy.
How many times do we ask our children to say they are sorry? How many times do we 'make' children apologise for something they have said or done? But what about adults?
But it often comes out in an insincere way, doesn't it? They don't really mean it, because they have been told to say it.
As a parent and a teacher, I always 'ask' children to say sorry, although I insist on taking it a step further. I ask children to be specific. Saying sorry is easy and doesn't really mean anything if it's not linked to what you are sorry for.
When children are specific with their apology, they are actually thinking about what they have done and whether it was a good choice.
To celebrate World Book Day on Thursday 1st March 2017, we asked some Toddle About readers to review new releases of children's books to find some amazing, and less well known gems that you might want to discover for yourself. You can read all the book reviews below.
Children bite for different reasons. It can be caused by anything from anger or frustration to boredom, jealousy or sadness.
By Anne Goldsmith – Positive Behaviour Consultant & Parenting Coach.
I first encountered childhood biting when my son was about 2½ years old. We were at a toddler group where the mums were chatting happily and the children playing nicely. Suddenly, the peace was shattered by loud screaming. A child came running to his mum saying that one of the girls had bitten him. He showed us his arm – with definite teeth marks, bright red and already with a bruise forming.
By Stephanie Nimmo, author of Was this in the Plan?
Losing your spouse and your child within the space of 13 months would break most of us. Stephanie Nimmo shares how open conversations about death helped her family to cope and really live life to the full.
We really are not good at talking about death in this country, are we? It's almost a taboo subject, to be whispered about in hushed tones. Yet the only guarantee we have in life is that one day we will die. As soon as we get our heads around that fact we can get on with living and enjoying our lives.
Sadly, I know all too well how precious and unpredictable life really is. In the course of 13 months I lost my husband to cancer and my 12-year-old daughter to the effects of a rare genetic syndrome. It's unimaginable. What my experience has taught me however is that it's really important to have open and honest conversations about death and dying with your close family.


Hi guys. I just got admitted to this program. Can anyone who's been a former student tell me how the program was? Was it worth it? Did you learn a lot? Are Leiden's career services good?
So I'm trying to figure out which the best program is for me. If anyone has any experience with any of the universities or the above program, please let me know. I've been scouring the internet but haven't found a lot of information as to how the programs were - like an actual review from a former student.
Also, I did my LLB from the University of London and have 2 years work experience.
I attended the program during academic year 2016-2017. It was a very interesting program and I did lean a lot. The program focuses on a wide range of topics (conflict of laws, contract law, property law, finance, IP, corporate, insolvency, tort, litigation and arbitration) that are are explored through both common law and civil law lenses. I did learn a lot and I still make use of most of the concepts I gained there. Lecturers are outstanding.
For any further information or curiosity, just drop me a message.
Studying at Leiden is a once a lifetime experience. The city is strategically located between Hague , Rotterdam and Amsterdam- key for internships. Leidens global ranking is also higher. Maastricht is a bit back and beyond and not well connected compared to Leiden. University, faculty and the program are pretty outstanding.
Hi there, I was also a student for the programme in 2016. First thing, you will learn a lot as the study load is quite big, so you will indeed be exposed to different areas. How useful this will be to you depends on your career or expectations. In my case, I did not care much for some classes such as property law since I have never liked property nor financial law, but found the corporate and insolvency readings very interesting as they were more in line with my professional experience as a corporate attorney, and corporate had great guest lecturers. Torts is very interesting, particularly as you get to learn about how different jurisdictions deal with different cases, and the book is particularly interesting (if they are using the same book that is, but chances is they are) and I was sawI had to sell it before I left Leiden for weight issues. I also really liked the Ethics class at the end of the programme. Having had ethics before they were pretty boring classes, but professor Casterman and Van Woensel were great to have as lecturers and the perspective they give to the ethics class is really great for corporate attorneys. The only problem is that you are on thesis duty by then so you'll be stressed out, a lot.
On to the practical side, Leiden has a great reputation. I am on the other side of the pond (Latin America) but my experience in the year since I graduated is that the university is well known and carries prestige with it. I recently had dinner with friends who went to LSE and UCL and they tell me Leiden is held to a very high standard and is better known in law circles than other universities in NL. I still haven't seen the rewards when it comes to employment as I went back to my old firm when I returned but so far it seems Leiden is very well regarded as I said.
Now, living in Leiden. Sore subject for me. Personally, I prefer cities. Leiden is a classic dutch town, 100k population with around 30k being students. Shops are small, carry just the basics and entertainment is limited, bars close early and restaurants are often up to capacity. In this light, I much preferred going to Rotterdam for nightlife and The Hague for shopping needs (although The Hague also has some good bars and restaurants, I recommend the Biergarten, its close to the main shopping street and through the Passage). BUT, overall Leiden is very pretty, itself those pretty pictures of classic dutch houses and canals which are representative of Dutch culture, but without the tourist mobs you find in Amsterdam. Also a student, you will probably have much fun at house parties and small gatherings so you may not need much outing.
Finally, one recommendation is that the LLMs offer a chance to sit in another classes from another LLM. Most people don't take this opportunity but it can be nice to both get to know the other lawyers studying another speciality and also to learn another topic you may be interested in but don't want to commit fully (e.g. exam). I took the arbitration class from the European Business Law because I totally bunked one ICCL class but I enjoyed it fully and it also was my favourite class in the whole year, the professor is fantastic (Brooks Daly), whom you'll meet when you visit The Hague for ICCL's arbitration class, but there are others to choose from.
Anyway, hope you get a good idea of the programme from this, but if you want to discuss further, you can write me a PM.
[quote]Hi there, I was also a student for the programme in 2016. First thing, you will learn a lot as the study load is quite big, so you will indeed be exposed to different areas. How useful this will be to you depends on your career or expectations. In my case, I did not care much for some classes such as property law since I have never liked property nor financial law, but found the corporate and insolvency readings very interesting as they were more in line with my professional experience as a corporate attorney, and corporate had great guest lecturers. Torts is very interesting, particularly as you get to learn about how different jurisdictions deal with different cases, and the book is particularly interesting (if they are using the same book that is, but chances is they are) and I was sawI had to sell it before I left Leiden for weight issues. I also really liked the Ethics class at the end of the programme. Having had ethics before they were pretty boring classes, but professor Casterman and Van Woensel were great to have as lecturers and the perspective they give to the ethics class is really great for corporate attorneys. The only problem is that you are on thesis duty by then so you'll be stressed out, a lot.
I have attended ICCL at Leiden University in the 2017-2018 academic year. It was a great journey for me. I developed several parts of my legal knowledge. The most important feature of this program was, in my opinion, the combination of common law and civil law concepts in a specific field of law. this would enable you to compare different solutions proposed by two major legal systems to similar problems. It ultimately teaches you how to deal with legal problems in the most efficient manner. I am sure you will add a plus to your legal understanding upon the graduation from ICCL.
I should also mention how the professors and staff of the program are friendly and nice. They are all supportive and accountable.
I wish you the best in your choice! GOOD LUCK!
I'm a male lawyer from Latin America that wishes to study, work and live in Europe, especially in The Netherlands, very inclined to International Law, so this LLM and Leiden University seemed like the most natural choice for me. This was the only LLM I applied actually.
I also got accepted to ICCL in late January this year. Last year I got accepted as well, but had to defer my application from 2018, due to some delays with the results from my English certificate and J.D. degree.
I have a strong background and interest in and with International Law in general, and now I have been working in International Civil and Commercial law for almost a year now. For those who have completed the LLM, do you think 1 year of experience is enough to embark on the LLM and the job market in The Netherlands/EU? Besides being fully bilingual in English and Spanish Im also learning french to enhance my prospects. Open to learn Dutch as well. Do you think that being native in Spanish is an advantage?
Lastly, I have read a lot about the fantastic lecturers and class contents, so no questions on that. Leiden is indeed an amazing University. I wanted to ask you about the thesis requirement, how long do you have to submit it and when do you start with the project itself? Do you have proper guidance from professors?
If you have any suggestions, comments or recommendations for me, that would mean a lot.


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Who Stole Television News?
Submitted by PR Watch Admin on September 29, 2014 - 9:54am
-- by Joel Silberman, media training partner at Democracy Partners
BREAKING NEWS - They're selling us another war on television.
As a Washington media strategist, people ask me, "Who's offering alternatives to war on the Sunday morning news shows?" As reported by the New York Times, military analysts dominating the Sunday airwaves, marshaling support for war in the Middle East, have been ex-military employed by defense industry contractors profiting from war. They appear with current administration officials/apologists, former members of the Bush Iraq War team, and politicians scoring points by being for a war on ISIS but against the president.
Dissenting voices are few: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation, Rep. Raul Grijalva and Michael Shank in The Guardian. But their viewpoint is often obliterated by the drumbeat of war. Or... they're simply not booked to appear.
Has television news failed us completely?
In today's 24-hour/7-day/22-minute news cycle, the repeated becomes the truth because everyone's saying it. The golden rule is -- those with the gold rule. In television, those spending the most money, control the media narrative.
But not that much has changed. In the beginning, television was an advertising agency dominated medium. Nothing went on the air that didn't please the sponsors. Sponsors had complete control.
Television stations were required to broadcast a percentage of public service programs to maintain their license to use the public's airwaves. Television news started in radio news and many radio war correspondents became television's first news faces. FDR was the first president to talk intimately to Americans on the radio. Television news was the next step.
Broadcast television quickly grew profitable through the model of advertiser domination. The big question for any program was, and still is -- who is going to pay for it?
In the golden age of television, broadcast news was not revenue justified -- the cost to report and produce the news often exceeded the advertising revenue it generated. It was considered a cost of business to maintain a broadcast license. And, it was correctly called a public service.
Early television became a fast-growing, highly profitable venture. Its business model was like early Las Vegas, where hotel coffee shops didn't need to make money as long as customers went through the casino to get to them.
So, without needing to justify its budget, television journalism thrived. But it wasn't a free ride for its reporters. Edward R. Murrow, the reporter who ended the communist witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarty, interviewed celebrities like Liberace on his very profitable program, Person to Person, to offset the cost of his investigative and editorial journalism.
But in the '60s and '70s as television matured, competition grew, talent costs increased and profit margins narrowed causing the owners to rethink their business model. Syndicated programming became more lucrative than broadcast programming (In the 1970s, when Roger Ailes (now head of FOX) produced the Mike Douglas Show from Philadelphia for Group W (Westinghouse Broadcasting), Mike Douglas earned more money from syndication than Johnny Carson on the network).
And just like Las Vegas changed under Howard Hughes and his bean counters, in television, soon owners demanded that every piece of broadcast real estate become revenue justified. And television news became a monetized commodity to maximize shareholder profit.
In 1978, Roone Arledge, then President of ABC Sports was also made President of ABC News. In an instant television news went from broadcast journalism to "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." This winners and losers mindset became the narrative model. And behind the scenes, TV station owners injected the influence of the yet-not-public Powell Memo into the bloodstream of network and local news.
And as the demand for news profitability grew, news divisions shrank. When Larry Tisch acquired CBS he famously said, "I love CBS News." After taking ownership, he fired 500 people and cut the budget by $50 million.
Flash forward to today. Why do military industrial companies, the Alliance for Natural Gas and their conservative corporate peers spend millions of advertising dollars on Sunday morning where the advertising expenditure is not directly revenue justified by audience size? They do it to create perceptions that control the media narrative and thereby shape public opinion.
Networks may claim that Sunday Shows encourage debate, but when we look at guests actually booked on those shows, they are predictably mostly to the political right and corporate center.
The Sunday show viewers -- yes, they are older, and yes, they are NY/DC insiders -- are reliable voters. Older people vote; insiders make and influence policy. That's why controlling the media narrative is important to Sunday advertisers; Sunday shows set the media narrative.
The remainder of cable news programming monetizes the partisan debate. FOX claimed the older conservative audience. MSNBC, which started as co-venture with Microsoft to bring a younger internet-savvy audience to news, began as a right-leaning, business-friendly channel. It became progressive when Keith Olbermann's rants caught on -- against the wishes of MSNBC's management. When Olbermann got ratings, MSNBC's "The Place for Politics" meme was born -- because it was profitable.
CNN has a partisan identity deficit -- as MSNBC and FOX have occupied the left and the right. So, CNN is the crisis channel. When there is international upheaval or catastrophic disaster, CNN is the go to network. At CNN, Shock and Awe in Iraq turned into dollars and cents in Atlanta. At CNN, war is good business.
So, where do we go from here? Will we ever have "real" news again? I doubt it. We now aggregate our own news; the news we want to see or read. The news today is what's trending on twitter.
But as a society we need impartial journalism now, more than ever. I believe that the more we see Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert/John Oliver taking the mis-information media to task, the better it is for all of us. I believe that young people know that this partisan news system is broken and they will eventually create better news platforms.
The article originally appeared at The Huffington Post.
PR Watch Admin
REVEALED: The Federalist Foundation's Tax Records
CMD Signs Coalition Letter Asking Corporations to Drop Fox News
State Policy Network Partners With RealClear to Promote Its Right-Wing Agenda
Charles Koch's "Uniter" Rebrand Strains Credulity After Funding Congressional Coup Supporters
Who Funds the Federalist? Finally, We Know.
U.S. Government Economy Wisconsin Human Rights Secrecy Ethics Media Environment Corporations Journalism Marketing Health International Politics Democracy War / Peace Iraq Right Wing U.S. Congress Propaganda Climate Change Public Relations Lobbying ALEC Exposed Activism


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White House creates tool for people to report alleged social media bias
The White House on Wednesday launched a tool for people to report instances of perceived social media bias, signaling President Donald Trump's and top Republicans' plan to continue vilifying technology companies, which are currently seen as political villains by many in the conservative base.
"The Trump Administration is fighting for free speech online," the White House tweeted Wednesday afternoon. "No matter your views, if you suspect political bias has caused you to be censored or silenced online, we want to hear about it!"
The White House's tweet directed people to a form which first asked users for personal information, such as their name and whether they are an American citizen.
After users entered the personal information, the form then asked them to describe the alleged bias that occurred, which platform it occurred on, and if they had screenshots of any messages they received from the company that took action.
Toward the end, the form also requested permission to add the user to an email newsletter so it could provide updates "without relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter."
The move by the White House came on the same day it announced that the United States will not be joining the Christchurch Call for Action, an effort that encouraged technology companies to collaborate with governments to stymie the use of social media in acts of terrorism.
It also came just weeks after Facebook banned several high-profile extremists, prompting the President to rage against social media companies in a weekend Twitter tirade.
Trump and top Republicans have for years accused companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter of being biased against conservatives. But those attacks have ramped up in recent months as the social media companies have taken action to reduce toxic content on their platforms.
To support their claims, Trump and top Republicans have cherry-picked examples. Many of those examples have been misleading and not examples of bias or malfeasance by the tech companies.
In the past month, for instance, Trump and Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz have suggested Twitter banned right-wing actor James Woods for his political ideology.
A Twitter spokesperson, however, said Woods was never actually banned. In fact, the spokesperson said, Woods was only suspended after he tweeted the hashtag HangThemAll, which violated the company's terms of service. The Twitter spokesperson said Woods' account would be unlocked after that particular tweet was removed. Woods has not tweeted since mid-April.
Trump himself has accused technology companies of bias against him. In April, he tweeted that Twitter is "very discriminatory" and does not "treat me well as a Republican." Later in the day, during an Oval Office meeting with Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, Trump even raised the issue of the size of his Twitter following.
Claims of social media censorship have also made their way to Congress. Lawmakers have held various hearings over the past year on the so-called practice of "social media filtering."
At the hearings, Republicans such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa have cited articles from far-right media outlets such as the Gateway Pundit to accuse social media companies of bias against conservatives. At one hearing last year, the pro-Trump "Diamond & Silk" duo, who repeatedly spread misinformation about Facebook, was even invited to testify.
The narrative of social media bias is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Republicans and right-wing media outlets understand that the message resonates with and whips up the conservative base.
Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, told CNN last year that he anticipates the issue of alleged social media bias will be a campaign issue Republicans can use to their advantage.
"I think by the time 2020 comes along, this will be a burning issue," Bannon said at the time. "I think this will be one of the biggest domestic issues."


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Amazon's Facial Recognition Supercharging Police Forces
dericiousknitty May 1, 2019 2030 Agenda, Biometrics, Evil Good and Good Evil, New World Order, Surveillance, Total Control
HILLSBORO, Ore. – When workers at an Ace Hardware here reported that a woman had walked out of the store with an $11.99 tank of welding gas that she hadn't paid for in her tote bag, an elaborate high-tech crime-fighting operation sprang into action.
A Washington County sheriff's detective, working with the agency's Special Investigations Unit, ran the store's surveillance footage through an internal facial-recognition program built by Amazon, revealing a possible match.
That woman's license plate was flagged and, three months later, a narcotics officer in an unmarked SUV saw it and radioed other patrol deputies to stop her. A deputy clapped a pair of handcuffs around her wrists, an arrest report states. She said she'd needed the gas to fix her car.
Deputies in this corner of western Oregon outside ultraliberal Portland used to track down criminals the old-fashioned way, faxing caught-on-camera images of a suspect around the office in hope that someone might recognize the face.
Then, in late 2017, the Washington County Sheriff's Office became the first law enforcement agency in the country known to use Amazon's artificial-intelligence tool Rekognition, transforming this thicket of forests and suburbs into a public testing ground for a new wave of experimental police surveillance techniques.
Almost overnight, deputies saw their investigative powers supercharged, allowing them to scan for matches of a suspect's face across more than 300,000 mug shots taken at the county jail since 2001. A grainy picture of someone's face – captured by a security camera, a social media account or a deputy's smartphone – can quickly become a link to their identity, including their name, family and address. More than 1,000 facial-recognition searches were logged last year, said deputies, who sometimes used the results to find a suspect's Facebook page or visit their home.
But Washington County also became ground zero for a high-stakes battle over the unregulated growth of policing by algorithm. Defense attorneys, artificial-intelligence researchers and civil rights experts argue that the technology could lead to the wrongful arrest of innocent people who bear only a resemblance to a video image. Rekognition's accuracy is also hotly disputed, and some experts worry that a case of mistaken identity by armed deputies could have dangerous implications, threatening privacy and people's lives.
Some police agencies have in recent years run facial-recognition searches against state or FBI databases using systems built by contractors such as Cognitec, IDEMIA and NEC. But the rollout by Amazon has marked perhaps the biggest step in making the controversial face-scanning technology mainstream. Rekognition is easy to activate, requires no major technical infrastructure and is offered to virtually anyone at bargain-barrel prices. Washington County spent about $700 to upload its first big haul of photos, and now, for all its searches, it pays about $7 a month.
It's impossible to tell, though, just how accurate or effective the technology has been during its first 18 months of real-world tests. Deputies don't have to note in arrest reports when a facial-recognition search was used, and the exact number of times it has resulted in an arrest is unclear. Sheriff's officials said the software has led to dozens of arrests for theft, violence or other crimes, but a public-records request turned up nine case reports in which facial recognition was mentioned.
"Just like any of our investigative techniques, we don't tell people how we catch them," said Robert Rookhuyzen, a detective on the agency's major crimes team who said he has run "several dozen" searches and found it helpful about 75% of the time. "We want them to keep guessing."
Sheriff's officials say face scans don't always mark the end of the investigation: Deputies must still establish probable cause or find evidence before charging a suspect with a crime. But the Sheriff's Office sets its own rules for facial-recognition use and allows deputies to use the tool to identify bodies, unconscious suspects and people who refused to give their name.
The search tool's imperfect results raise the risk of an innocent person being flagged and arrested, especially in cases of the scanned images being blurred, low-quality or partially concealed. Deputies are also allowed to run artist sketches through the search, an unusual use that AI experts said could more often lead to a false match.
Amazon's guidelines for law enforcement say officials should use Rekognition's results only when the system is 99% confident in a match. But deputies here are not shown that search-confidence measurement when they use the tool. Instead, they are given five possible matches for every search, even if the system's certainty in a match is far lower.
After fielding questions from The Washington Post, Amazon added language to those guidelines, stating that officers should manually review all matches before detaining a suspect and that the search "shouldn't be used as the sole determinant for taking action."
The relationship between Amazon and Oregon's third-largest law enforcement agency is mutually beneficial: The Sheriff's Office is helping to refine the system, which Amazon hopes to sell across the country. But Amazon's push into law-enforcement sales has alarmed some legal advocates who say the system poses too many risks to civil liberties. (Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
"The government is incredibly powerful, and they bring a lot to bear against an individual citizen in a case," said Mary Bruington, the director of the Washington County Public Defender's Office, which represents defendants who can't afford an attorney. "You couple that with Amazon? That's a powerful partnership."
Matt Wood, the general manager of artificial intelligence for the company's cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, said in a statement that Rekognition is just "another input among many other leads for a 100 percent human-driven investigation."
Still, the company faces criticism on many fronts: Top AI researchers, members of Congress and civil rights groups – as well as some of Amazon's own investors and employees – have urged the company to stop providing the technology to law enforcement, pointing to studies that have found that the system is less accurate with dark-skinned faces. Amazon has disputed that research.
Some of Amazon's rivals have spurned similar contracts. Microsoft President Brad Smith said in April that the company had recently declined to provide its facial-recognition software to a California law enforcement agency that wanted to run a face scan anytime its officers pulled someone over, but that it had approved a deal putting the technology in a U.S. prison. Microsoft declined to provide details.
Amazon investors will vote in May on a proposal, backed by a group of activist shareholders, that would prevent the company from selling Rekognition to government agencies unless the company's board determines that it doesn't pose a risk to human rights.
The Sheriff's Office allowed Post journalists to spend two days in March in its squad cars, detective's offices and county jail, observing how deputies have folded the technology into their daily caseload. Most of those interviewed said the software had saved them time, boosted their arrest numbers and helped them process the growing glut of visual evidence. To date, no legal challenge has been made to an arrest on the grounds that the photo match was mistaken, both deputies and public defenders said.
But lawyers in Oregon said the technology should not be, as many see it, an imminent step forward for the future of policing, and they frame the system not as a technical milestone but a moral one: Is it OK to nab more bad guys if more good guys might get arrested, too?
"People love to always say, 'Hey, if it's catching bad people, great, who cares,' " said Joshua Crowther, a chief deputy defender in Oregon, "until they're on the other end."
'Indistinguishable from magic'
When Amazon revealed Rekognition in 2016, the company called it a breakthrough for a potent style of deep-learning artificial intelligence that showed results "indistinguishable from magic." In a blog post illustrated with a photo of an executive's dog, the company offered some general ideas for how people could begin using it, including for security checkpoints or billboards wired to gather data from a viewer's face.
The unveiling caught the eye of Chris Adzima, a former eBay programmer who had been hired at the Washington County Sheriff's Office to work on an iPhone app that deputies use to track inmates' behavior. His agency had hundreds of thousands of facial photos already online and no real way to analyze them. Using Amazon's AI, he got a system up and running in less than three weeks.
"They didn't really have a firm idea of any type of use cases in the real world, but they knew that they had a powerful tool that they created," said Adzima, a senior information systems analyst who works in a small cubicle at the sheriff's headquarters. "So, you know, I just started using it."
Deputies immediately began folding facial searches into their daily beat policing, and Adzima built a bare-bones internal website that let them search from their patrol cars. He dropped the search-confidence percentages and designed the system to return five results, every time: When the system returned zero results, he said, deputies wondered whether they'd messed something up. To spice it up, he also added an unnecessary purple "scanning" animation whenever a deputy uploaded a photo – a touch he said was inspired by cop shows like "CSI."
As he started flooding Amazon's servers with image data, account executives there took notice, he said, and some voiced their surprise and excitement that he was using it for police work. In one 2017 email first revealed last year as part of an American Civil Liberties Union public-records request, an Amazon account executive asked to introduce Adzima to an executive at a police-body-camera company who wanted to understand how he "overcame stakeholder resistance." "You're AWS-famous now," the executive wrote, with an emoji of a smiley face.
Deputies here say the system is a huge hit. Chris Lee, who has used the search in five cases of burglary and theft, said many of his colleagues have become prolific users, eager to find a simple resolution to an otherwise-difficult hunt. "You're always like: Is it going to show us something?" he said.
For training, deputies are emailed only a printout of the office's facial-recognition policy and a short PowerPoint presentation cautioning them to be careful with the results. One slide shows how the system responded to an uploaded mug shot of O.J. Simpson: by returning a photo of a white man with a beard. "As you can see," the slide reads, the system "still requires human interpretation."
The agency's four-page policy requires staffers to use the system only in cases of a "criminal nexus" and prohibits its use in "mass surveillance" or to monitor people based on their religion, political activities or race. But it also offers several exceptions, including allowing facial searches in cases of "significant threat to life" or when deputies believe a felony suspect will be at a certain place at a specific time.
The search has helped deputies devise unconventional techniques. In one case, an inmate was talking to his girlfriend on a jailhouse phone when she said there was a warrant out for her arrest. Deputies went to the inmate's Facebook page, found an old video with her singing and ran a facial-recognition search to get her name; she was arrested within days.
Deputies can also run black-and-white police sketches through the system looking for results; in one test case, they said, it pointed to a man they'd already flagged as their suspect. Amazon said that running sketches through Rekognition does not violate its rules but that it expects human reviewers to "pay close attention to the confidence of any matches produced this way."
Bruington, from the county public defender's office, said Rekognition's low price and ease of use could tempt police agencies into experimenting with a system they may not fully understand. She also worried that the system's dependence on mug shots meant that anyone previously brought in by police would be that much more likely to resurface in a criminal search.
"Innocent people go through the criminal justice system every day," she said.
'Look at the bird'
Facial-recognition technology had for decades been a police agency's dream: a simple, stealthy way to identify anyone from afar, without their knowledge or consent. But only in recent years – thanks to improvements in imaging and computer power, and plunging data-storage costs – has the technology become affordable and widespread, used in tagging Facebook photos and unlocking iPhones.
Today's systems break down people's facial photos into long strands of code, called "feature vectors" or "faceprints," that can be rapidly compared with other portraits across a vast database. But while "computer-vision" algorithms are adept at pattern recognition, they match pixels, not clues, and can miss inconsistencies that would seem staggeringly obvious to the human eye.
Still, the promise of cheap and easy identification has proved too compelling for many companies to ignore. The federal agency that assesses facial-recognition algorithms, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, recently said it had tested 127 systems from 44 companies on their "scalability to large populations" and accuracy in identifying "noncooperative subjects" photographed "in the wild." The top-ranking algorithms, from Microsoft and the Chinese start-up Yitu Technology, could match a face photo across a database of millions of images with 99% accuracy.
Amazon has previously declined to submit Rekognition for this assessment, saying the test, which studies an isolated version of the core search algorithm, wouldn't work on its complicated cloud-based search. But an NIST official said that fact has not impeded other companies with similar searches. An Amazon official said the company had launched a "substantive" effort to "redesign critical components" of the system so it could participate.
The FBI said it ran more than 52,000 facial-recognition searches in the past fiscal year, and in 2016, researchers from the Georgetown University law school found at least 52 state or local agencies that had at some point relied on a facial-search system built by federal contractors or surveillance firms. But Amazon has made it simple for any new police force to get started, charging a cut-rate fee based partially on the number of "faces stored."
No federal laws govern the use of facial recognition. But a bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in March and a proposed bill in Amazon's home state of Washington could impose new rules that would, for instance, require companies to notify passersby that their faces are being scanned. San Francisco leaders are expected to vote next week on a proposal, opposed by police, that would make the tech capital the first city in America to ban local agencies from using facial-recognition software.
Amazon executives say they support national facial-recognition legislation, but they have also argued that "new technology should not be banned or condemned because of its potential misuse." FBI agents and Orlando, Florida, police say they have tested the system, and Amazon has pitched it to government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lawyers in Washington County, Oregon, said they're just starting to see the technique show up in arrest reports, and some are preparing for the day when they may have to litigate the systems' admissibility in court. Marc Brown, a chief deputy defender working with Oregon's Office of Public Defense Services, said he worried the system's hidden decision-making could improperly tilt the balance of power: Human eyewitnesses can be questioned in court, but not this "magic black box," and "we as defense attorneys cannot question, you know, how did this process work."
The system's results, Brown added, could pose a huge confirmation-bias problem by steering how deputies react. "You've already been told that this is the one, so when you investigate, that's going to be in your mind," he said. "The question is no longer who committed the crime, but where's the evidence to support the computer's analysis?"
Amazon's software is rapidly becoming more advanced. The company last month announced a Rekognition update that would, among other things, improve the accuracy of the system's "emotion detection" feature, which automatically speculates on how someone is feeling based on how they look on camera. It includes "7 supported emotions: 'Happy,' 'Sad,' 'Angry,' 'Surprised,' 'Disgusted,' 'Calm' and 'Confused.' "
Amazon also owns Ring, the maker of a popular doorbell camera, which applied last year for a facial-recognition patent that could flag "suspicious" people at a user's doorstep. A Ring spokeswoman said the company's patent applications are intended to "explore the full possibilities of new technology."
The Washington County Sheriff's Office's face database, meanwhile, is always growing, by roughly 19,000 jail bookings a year. When people are arrested, they're brought to a bustling intake room where they get their picture taken by a webcam topped with a red Beanie Babies cardinal. "Look at the bird," they're told.
Those photos become the inmates' identities throughout the county's penal system, and an internal jail website and iPhone app displays the images in a large grid so deputies can quickly track their food intake, behavior and suicide risk.
Rekognition isn't used once an inmate is in lockup, but it has nevertheless left a subtle impact behind bars. Standing in the guardhouse nerve center of Pod 3, the maximum-security wing that inmates call "the hole," deputy Brian van Kleef put it this way: "This is where we gather our database."
The Washington County Sheriff's Office in Oregon is using Amazon Rekognition to help track down criminal suspects. Is it a breakthrough in policing or a dangerous precedent against privacy.
Original Article:https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Amazon-s-facial-recognition-technology-is-13808193.php
Read More:Device Facial Scanning- The Next Normal; Amazon Patents System That Uses Selfies And Blinking For Payment Process
Read More:Facial Recognition Software Now Installed In Police Body Cameras As Artificial Intelligence And The Surveillance State Takes Hold
Read More:Didn't See That Coming: FBI Is Using Amazon's Facial Recognition Program
Read More:Amazon's Fusion With The State Shows Neo-Liberalism's Drift To Neo-Facism
Read More:Big Tech Merges With Big Brother To Make The Beast System
ace hardware, amazon, artificial intelligence in crime fighting, beast system, big brother, big tech, chris adzima, data breach, data sharing, deep learning artificial intelligence, ebay, faceprint, facial recogntion program, FBI, FBI database, machine learning, marc brown, rekognition, robert rookhuyzen, special investigations unit, Surveillance, third party, Total Control, used from facebook and iphones, washington county sheriffs office
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2019-20 Winter Break Camps
Session 1: Dec. 26-27, 2019
Session 2: Jan. 2-3, 2020
Hours and Rates: Early Explorers (pre-K and kindergarten) camps are from 9 a.m. to noon and are $45 per child per session for museum members or $50 for nonmembers. Explorers (Grades 1-3) and Innovators (grades 4-6) camps are from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and are $90 per child per session for museum members or $100 for nonmembers. Rates include both days of camp.
What to Bring: Early Explorers (Pre-K to kindergarten) are required to bring a snack for each day of camp and Explorers and Innovators (Grades 1-6) are required to bring a lunch and a snack for each day of camp.
Available Space: Camps are listed as "Registration Closed - Sold Out" when sold out and "Limited Space Available" when less than five spaces remain. If your preferred camp is sold out, please contact Guest Relations at (405) 602-3760 to be placed on our waiting list.
Parent Packets: A completed Parent Packet is required for each camper. Forms are available for download at the bottom of this page.
The Engineer that Could - Registration Closed, Sold Out
9 a.m. to noon, $45 for members / $50 for nonmembers
Little hands can do so many things! Our littlest hands will try building boats, programing and commanding tiny robots, constructing a marble run, and much more.
To the Core - Limited Space Available
9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $90 for members / $100 for nonmembers
Let's journey to the center of the Earth and find out just what is under our feet! While experimenting with earthquakes, tectonics, and volcanology, we'll get to the groundbreaking core of Earth science.
Escape Room - Limited Space Available
Break out of your normal routine with our most puzzling camp. Live-action, team-based games and creation. Explore the science of puzzles and logic while creating an escape experience of your own.
Arctic Circle - Limited Space Available
It's time to bundle up as we explore the coldest of the cold! With whale blubber, melting snowmen, arctic animal tracks, and a special story time, we'll go in search of a chilly adventure with the science of winter weather.
Tiny Science - Registration Closed, Sold Out
Let's take a journey into the world of microscopy! Create tiny drawings using microscopes, perform cheek swabs, view organic and inorganic specimens, and discover just how tiny we all are with a visit to the Kirkpatrick Planetarium.
Life on Mars - Registration Closed, Sold Out
The red planet and fourth planet from the Sun, we know so much — yet so little. Along with special Kirkpatrick Planetarium experiences, we'll use all our earthly resources to explore Mars and discover its mysteries.


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Next Generation of Business Leaders Present Creative Business Plans to Goldman Sachs Executives
Goldman Sachs Foundation and The National Foundation For Teaching Entrepreneurship Celebrate the 6th Annual Youth Entrepreneurship Expo
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–As world leaders, representatives from academia and government continue to agree that entrepreneurship skills can indeed be taught, it becomes more important than ever to teach and prepare the future workforce to succeed in an ever-changing business environment. The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is dedicated to doing just that, by providing entrepreneurial curriculum to students in low income communities to help build excitement for the years ahead by connecting skills learned in the classroom to real world business scenarios.
On Monday, February 23rd, 2009 student entrepreneurs from across the country will take the stage to present their exciting business plans at the 6th Annual NFTE and Goldman Sachs Foundation Youth Entrepreneurship Expo. Twenty-three aspiring young entrepreneurs, whose businesses range from Caribbean snacks and urban graphic t-shirts to grocery delivery services and organic cosmetics, will compete to receive grants to apply towards launching their business or college expenses. This year's Expo will be held from 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm, at Ricker Auditorium, 180 Maiden Lane, New York, NY.
"There are children all over the world who possess a special talent that has yet to be discovered," said NFTE President and Founder Steve Mariotti. "Our role is to help foster engagement in education, teach students invaluable lessons about business, creativity, drive and hard work, and ultimately increase their chances of success in business and life."
The Youth Entrepreneurship Expo concludes months of hard work and creative planning by high school students from around the country who have competed in business plan competitions at several NFTE summer BizCamps funded by The Goldman Sachs Foundation.
"These students are the future business leaders and entrepreneurs," said Stephanie Bell-Rose, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation. "We at the Goldman Sachs Foundation want to help build the pipeline of the next generation of leaders."
NFTE offers schools nationwide a hands-on entrepreneurship curriculum that exposes students from all backgrounds to invaluable life lessons. By the end of a NFTE course, students have developed a professional, well tested business plan, gained presentation skills and experience interacting in a team and with business professionals.
About The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship
The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, whose mission is to teach entrepreneurship to young people from low-income communities. Since 1987, NFTE has reached over 230,000 young people. Currently, NFTE has more than 1,300 active Certified Entrepreneurship Teachers in 22 states and 13 countries. For more information, visit www.nfte.com.
About The Goldman Sachs Foundation
The Goldman Sachs Foundation was funded in 1999 with a $200 million donation from The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. The Foundation's mission is to promote excellence and innovation in education worldwide. The Foundation is an important extension of the tradition of philanthropy and public leadership at Goldman Sachs. Grants have been awarded in excess of $114 million since its inception, providing opportunities for young people in more than 20 countries.
source: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090223006272&newsLang=en
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Border Bill: Priti Patel's immigration reforms accused of criminalising refugees with 4-year prison sentence
The Home Secretary will outline an overhaul of the refugee system which includes proposed laws to make it illegal for refugees to travel to the UK through unofficial means, such as by crossing the Channel
Migrants seeking to make their way to the UK on small boats, and their people-smuggling enablers, will face heavier prison sentences in a bid to prevent "asylum shopping", the Home Office has announced. (Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)
By Chloe Chaplain
Political Reporter
July 5, 2021 10:30 pm(Updated July 6, 2021 8:35 am)
A new law which could leave asylum seekers who travel to the UK through unofficial means facing up to four years in prison has been labelled a "nasty anti-refugee Bill" which "criminalises" vulnerable people.
Home Secretary Priti Patel will on Tuesday outline an overhaul of the refugee system which includes proposed laws to make it illegal for refugees to travel to the UK through unofficial means, such as by crossing the Channel.
The legislation was accused of "criminalising refugees" by charities who said it would leave thousands fleeing persecution and war no longer able to seek safety in the UK purely due to their method of arrival.
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The Home Office said the rules would "fix" the "broken asylum system" and "prioritise those most in need of protection".
It said the tough punishments were to prevent "asylum shopping", accusing some migrants of "picking the UK as a preferred destination over others".
A former unaccompanied child refugee talks about plans for child migrants in Dover to be 'detained'
Campaigners say there are currently no laws stating refugees should seek asylum in one country over another.
The Government's Nationality and Borders Bill will make it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission.
The maximum sentence for those entering the country unlawfully would increase from six months' imprisonment to four years.
Whether a person enters the UK legally or illegally will have an impact on their asylum claim, officials said, with the intention of discouraging those who turn to people smugglers for help.
The proposed law would also increase the maximum sentence for people smuggling from 14 years to life behind bars.
And it will give the Home Secretary the power to control visa availability for countries "refusing to take back their own citizens".
The Home Office also said the legislation would improve "the safe and legal ways in which people can enter the UK, including through the new UK Resettlement Scheme".
The scheme opened in February but no numerical targets for rehoming refugees have been set.
The legislation would also give the Home Secretary new powers to grant British citizenship to people who would have become British citizens if it wasn't unfairness and exceptional circumstances.
Tim Naor Hilton, Chief Executive of Refugee Action, said the "bill flies in the face of decency and international law" – an accusation rejected by the Home Office.
He said it would be "met with fierce resistance by campaigners, faith groups, lawyers and MPs from all political parties".
"It follows in a long line of Government get-tough-quick schemes that have been expensive disasters for the taxpayer and simply serve to increase demand for people smugglers," Mr Naor Hilton said.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, said: "The Conservatives have finally admitted that their 11-years in power has resulted in a broken asylum system – the responsibility lies on their shoulders.
"Yet despite these failings, the measures being proposed in this Bill do not deal with the chaos they have created.
"They don't deal with the fact that the time taken to process claims has rocketed or desperate people are still falling victim to criminal gangs.
"Instead, they will reduce support for victims of human trafficking, potentially break international law, and there are still no effective, meaningful proposals to deal with the increasing number of people risking their lives crossing the Channel."
The Refugee Council analysed Home Office data and said the figures suggested 9,000 people who would be accepted as refugees under current rules – for example those confirmed to have fled war or persecution – would be criminalised due to their method of arrival under the reforms.
The charity's head Enver Solomon accused the Government of "choosing to not only turn away those in need of safety but also treat them as criminals".
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Man killed and passengers injured as vehicle thrown into river as Lancashire bridge collapses
David Davis showed in PMQs how much Boris Johnson threw away for the sake of a party
Appeal to track down UK's 12 most wanted fugitives believed to be hiding in Spain
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'I feel betrayed': Voters in Bury South react to Tory Christian Wakeford's defection to Labour
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Saturday NCAABB analysis: The Kansas Jayhawks and Oklahoma State Cowboys clash in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, Missouri.
Oklahoma State has been playing some great basketball as of late. Since the return of Marcus Smart, the Cowboys have won 5 of their last 6 games. They certainly do not resemble anything of the team that lost 7 straight mid season. They did lose their regular season finale at Iowa State 85-81 in overtime, yet they have been competitive and are a team that looks to be peaking at the right time. They are led by their talented backcourt in Marcus Smart (17.9 ppg) and Markel Brown (17.3 ppg). The Cowboys average 80.7 ppg and are shooting 46.8% from the field with a 1.30 assist to turnover ratio. They are one of the better teams in the conference on the defensive end limiting opponents to 40.4% shooting and allowing 68.8 ppg.
The Kansas Jayhawks come into the Big 12 tournament with a lot of questions. They will be without the services of Center Joel Embiid, the 7'0″ freshman center that averaged 11.2 ppg and led the team in rebounding. Fortunately, they still have Andrew Wiggins, who went off in the regular season finale for 41 points against West Virginia. They did however lose that contest and will now have to move on for the foreseeable future without their major presence in the middle. The Jayhawks are averaging 79.6 ppg while shooting an impressive 49.7% from the field. They are good on the glass, averaging 38 per game, and have an assist to turnover ratio of 1.16. Defensivelt they are allowing 69.7 ppg while limiting opponents to 41.3% from the field.
I'm taking the points with Oklahoma State on Thursday afternoon. These two teams met less than two weeks ago, with Oklahoma State winning 72-65. Heading into that contest, my concern with the Jayhawks was turnovers as they have a lot of trouble in that department. Well, the Cowboys forced a turnover on 31% of Kansas' possessions (22 total). Oklahoma State got rid of the tournament jitters yesterday disposing of Texas Tech and right now all of the pressure is on Kansas. The Cowboys will not have to worry about the presence of Embiid in the paint, and right now they are just clicking on all cylinders. I'll back the team getting points that's in a groove, instead of laying points with a team that has problems taking care of the basketball and may not be so sure of what kind of team they have right now without their big man.


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