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By or BY may refer to:* Bye or by, a free pass through a round of competition in a tournament* CC-BY, a Creative Commons attribution license* Budget Year , a synonym for Fiscal Year

By Heart
By Heart is an album by Lea Salonga, released in 1999. It peaked at #1 on both the pop and R&B/soul albums chart. It produced two #1 crossover hits. The album went 3x platinum and sold 2 million copies worldwide. The album earned positive reviews and the tour was very successful

By Heart (Brenda K. Starr album)
By Heart is Brenda K. Starr's official second album, , released in 1990 on Sony Records. It is considered her best English language album and one of her best moments overall. By Heart did not gain its fair commercial success because it did not get the same level of promotional push her debut album did. It continued from where her previous album left off

By hook or by crook

By Hook or by Crook
By Hook or by Crook is a 1980 Hong Kong kung fu film produced and directed by Karl Maka and starring Sammo Hung.-Plot:The film starts out with a thief stealing jewelry from a millionaire Chin Pai Wen . The family believes it was done by the infamous Flower Kid, who steals from the rich and gives it to the poor

By Jingo
The expression "by Jingo" is apparently a minced oath that appeared rarely in print, but which may be traced as far back as to at least the 17th century in a transparent euphemism for "by Jesus"

By the Way
By the Way is the eighth studio album by American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album was released on July 9, 2002 on Warner Bros. Records. It sold over 286,000 copies in the first week, and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200. The singles from the album included "By the Way", "The Zephyr Song", "Can't Stop", "Dosed" and "Universally Speaking"

Bye may refer to:*Bye , a special type of run scored in the game of cricket*Bye , when a player or team is allowed to advance to the next round of a playoff tournament without playing*"Bye", a song by Elliott Smith from Figure 8

Bye Bye (Marcy Playground song)
"Bye Bye" is the name of the fifth single by alternative rock/post-grunge band Marcy Playground.

Bye Bye (Mariah Carey song)
"Bye Bye" is a song by American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey, taken from her eleventh studio album, E=MC² . It was written by Carey, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen and Johntá Austin, and produced by the former three. It was released as the album's second single on April 15, 2008, in the United States, Australasia and select European countries

Bye-Bye is the first novel by Jane Ransom, for which she won the 1996 New York University Press Prize for Fiction. It was published by the New York University Press.-Plot:

Bygones is an Anglia Television documentary series exploring East Anglian history and traditional rural crafts first aired in 1967. The series, and in particular the regular Bygones Specials featured many interviews with people who used to do traditional work now lost to history and investigation and preservation of surviving East

Bygones may refer to:* Bygones , an ITV television programme* "Bygones ", a 2001 protopunk song* Bygones, a math rock group consisting of Zach Hill and Nick Reinhart.

Bypass may refer to:* Bypass , in effects units, a switch that allows sound* Bypass , in computing, circumventing security features in hacking, or taking a different approach to an issue in troubleshooting* Bypass * Bypass surgery

Byron (Babylon 5)
Byron Gordon, played by Robin Atkin Downes, is a fictional character from the television science fiction drama Babylon 5, introduced in the fifth and final season.- Fictional Biography :

Byron (band)
byron is an alternative rock band formed in 2006 in Bucharest, Romania. Dan Byron, former guest of Agathodaimon and ex-member of Urma and Kumm, initially wanted to start a solo project, but it soon developed into an actual band

Byssus means both a silky filament by which certain molluscs attach themselves to hard surfaces, and a rare fabric, also called sea silk and its fibre source.-Word:

Bystander (magazine)
Bystander, a British weekly tabloid magazine, featured reviews, topical sketches, and short stories. Published from Fleet Street, it was established in 1903 by George Holt Thomas

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer architectures.The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no

Byte (disambiguation)
A byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits.Byte may also refer to:*Byte , a computer industry magazine*Bytes , an album by Black Dog Productions

Byttneria is a genus of flowering plant in the family Malvaceae . Several species have become rare through deforestation, some Byttneria is a genus of flowering plant in the family Malvaceae (or Sterculiaceae if these are considered valid). Several species have become rare through deforestation, some Byttneria is a genus of flowering plant in the family Malvaceae (or Sterculiaceae if these are considered valid). Several species have become rare through deforestation, some (e.g. B. minytricha are threatened with extinction, and B

A byway is a less-traveled side road, as in:*Byway , a minor secondary or tertiary road in the UK*National Scenic Byway, a road recognized by the United States Department of Transportation for its historical qualities

Contiki is a small, open source, highly portable multitasking computer operating system developed for use on a number of memory-constrained networked systems ranging from 8-bit computers to embedded systems on microcontrollers, including sensor network motes

A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is the geological process and study of the movement,

Continental AG

Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines was a major American airline now merged with United Airlines. On May 3, 2010, Continental Airlines, Inc. and UAL, Inc. announced a merger via a stock swap, and on October 1, 2010, the merger closed and UAL changed its name to United Continental Holdings, Inc

Continental Army

Continental Basketball Association

Continental Center I
Continental Center I is a 51-story, office tower in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. The building houses offices of Continental Airlines, and it was Continental's headquarters prior to its merger with United Airlines. At one point it also served as the headquarters of ExpressJet Airlines

Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution.

Continental Divide
The Continental Divide of the Americas, or merely the Continental Gulf of Division or Great Divide, is the name given to the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas that separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean The Continental Divide of the Americas, or merely the Continental Gulf of Division or Great Divide, is the name given to the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas that separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from (1) those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean The Continental Divide of the Americas, or merely the Continental Gulf of Division or Great Divide, is the name given to the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas that separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from (1) those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean (including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico

Continental Divide Trail
The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail is a United States National Scenic Trail running 3,100 miles between Mexico and Canada. It follows the Continental Divide along the Rocky Mountains and traverses five U.S. states — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico

Continental drift

Continental Europe

Continental Motors
Continental Motors, Inc. is an aircraft engine manufacturer located in Mobile, Alabama. Originally spun off from Continental Motors Company in 1929 and owned by Teledyne Technologies until December 2010, the company is part of AVIC International, which is owned by the government of the People's Republic of China.Although Continental is most well known for its engines for light aircraft,

Continental shelf

Continuation War
The Continuation War was the second of two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II.At the time of the war, the Finnish side used the name to make clear its perceived relationship to the preceding Winter War

Continuous wave
A continuous wave or continuous waveform is an electromagnetic wave of constant amplitude and frequency; and in mathematical analysis, of infinite duration. Continuous wave is also the name given to an early method of radio transmission, in which a carrier wave is switched on and off

Contour line
A contour line of a function of two variables is a curve along which the function has a constant value. In cartography, a contour line joins points of equal elevation above a given level, such as mean sea level

Contra viento y marea
Contra viento y marea is a Mexican telenovela aired from April 25 until November 4, 2005. This was also the last acting role of Beatriz Sheridan, who died in 2006 of a heart attack.-Plot:

Contra-alto clarinet
The contra-alto clarinet is a large, low-sounding musical instrument of the clarinet family. The modern contra-alto clarinet is pitched in the key of EE and is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the EE contrabass clarinet

The word contraband, reported in English since 1529, from Medieval French contrebande "a smuggling," denotes any item which, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold.

Contrabass saxophone
The contrabass saxophone is the lowest-pitched extant member of the saxophone family proper. It is extremely large and heavy , and is pitched in the key of E, one octave below the baritone.-History:The contrabass

Contraceptive patch
A contraceptive patch is a transdermal patch applied to the skin that releases synthetic estrogen and progestin hormones to prevent pregnancy. They have been shown to be as effective as the combined oral contraceptive pill with perfect use, and the patch may be more effective in typical use.The only currently available contraceptive patches are Ortho Evra, marketed in the United

Contract bridge

Contract research organization
A contract research organization, also called a clinical research organization, is a service organization that provides support to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the form of outsourced pharmaceutical research services

Control Room
Control Room is a 2004 documentary film about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command , as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Control theory
Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The desired output of a system is called the reference

Control valves

Controllable pitch propeller
A controllable pitch propeller or variable pitch propeller is a type of propeller with blades that can be rotated around their long axis to change their pitch

Controller Area Network

Convair B-36
The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" was a strategic bomber built by Convair and operated solely by the United States Air Force from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 was the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever made. It had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built , although there have been larger military transports

Convection cell
A convection cell is a phenomenon of fluid dynamics that occurs in situations where there are density differences within a body of liquid or gas. The convection usually requires a gravitational field but in microgravity experiments, thermal convection has been observed without gravitational effects being needed.Fluids are materials that exhibit the property of flow

Convention of 1800 (Treaty of Mortefontaine)
The Convention of 1800, , also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine, was a treaty between the United States of America and France to settle the hostilities that had erupted during the Quasi-War

Convention of 1833

Convention of 1836

Convergent boundary

Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action. Although their last common ancestor did not have wings, both birds and bats do, and are capable of powered flight. The wings are similar in construction, due to the physical constraints imposed upon wing shape

Conversion (law)
Conversion is a common law tort. A conversion is a voluntary act by one person inconsistent with the ownership rights of another. It is a tort of strict liability

Conversion to Christianity

Conversion van
A Conversion van Is a full-size cargo van that is sent to third-party companies to be outfitted with various luxuries for road trips and camping.-History:

Convex function
In mathematics, a real-valued function f defined on an interval is called convex if the graph of the function lies below the line segment joining any two points of the graph. Equivalently, a function is convex if its epigraph is a convex set

Convex hull

Convict cichlid
The Convict cichlid is a fish species from the family Cichlidae, native to Central America, also known as the zebra cichlid

Convictism in Australia

Convolutional code
In telecommunication, a convolutional code is a type of error-correcting code in which* each m-bit information symbol to be encoded is transformed into an n-bit symbol, where m/n is the code rate and

Conway Twitty

Coo Coo Marlin
Clifton "Coo Coo" Marlin was a NASCAR Winston Cup driver who spent 14 years in the series.-Local track history:

Cooking oil
Cooking oil is purified fat of plant origin, which is usually liquid at room temperature .

Cooktown, Queensland
Cooktown is a small town located at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. At the 2006 census, Cooktown had a population of 1,336

Cool Whip
Cool Whip is a brand of imitation whipped cream named a whipped topping by its manufacturer. It is used in North America as a dessert topping and in some no-bake pie recipes. It was generally described as "non-dairy" as it contained no cream or milk and no lactose; however, it did contain the milk derivative casein

Cooley High
Cooley High is a 1975 American film based upon the real high school located on the near north side of Chicago produced and released by American International Pictures and written by Eric Monte

Coolgardie, Western Australia
Coolgardie is a small town in the Australian state of Western Australia, east of the state capital, Perth. It has a population of approximately 800 people.

Cooling curve
A cooling curve is a line graph that represents the change of phase of matter, typically from a gas to a solid or a liquid to a solid. The independent variable is time and the dependent variable is temperature

Cooling tower

Cooma, New South Wales
-Education: is Cooma's only public high school, it serves the town and seven of the neighbouring rural towns and villages such as Berridale, Jindabyne, Nimmitabel, Bredbo and Dalgety.

Coomassie Brilliant Blue is the name of two similar triphenylmethane dyes that were developed for use in the textile industry but are now commonly used for staining proteins in analytical biochemistry. Coomassie Brilliant Blue G-250 differs from Coomassie Brilliant Blue R-250 by the addition of two methyl groups

-Places in England:* Coombe, Buckinghamshire* Coombe, Bude, Cornwall* Coombe, Camborne, Cornwall* Coombe, Liskeard, Cornwall* Coombe, Redruth, Cornwall* Coombe, St

Coombs test
Coombs test refers to two clinical blood tests used in immunohematology and immunology

A Coonhound is a type of scent hound and a member of the hound group.Coonhounds are an American style of hunting dog developed for the quarry and working conditions found in the United States. Coondogs are highly valued.-History:

Cooper River Bridge Run
The Cooper River Bridge Run is an annual one-way road running event held in the cities of Mount Pleasant and Charleston in South Carolina, on the first Saturday in April, unless it is the day before Easter Sunday, when the event is held on the last Saturday in March

Cooperative farming

Cooperative learning

Coordinate covalent bond
A dipolar bond, also known as dative covalent bond or coordinate bond is a kind of 2-centre, 2-electron covalent bond in which the two electrons derive from the same atom. Typically, a dipolar bond is formed when a Lewis base donates a pair of electrons to a Lewis acid. This description of bonding is a characteristic of valence bond theory

Coordinate system
In geometry, a coordinate system is a system which uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of a point or other geometric element. The order of the coordinates is significant and they are sometimes identified by their position in an ordered tuple and sometimes by a letter, as in 'the x-coordinate'

Coors Brewing Company
The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company and is the third-largest brewer in the United States


Paul Manafort

Bill and Hillary Clinton should be investigated

Bill and Hillary Clinton should be investigated

President Donald Trump's critics are arguing that GOP calls for the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton and Democrats' ties to Russia are an effort to distract from the real Russia investigation, into potential Trump-Russia collusion.

No, they are not.

Ever since Watergate, the mantra of all major corruption investigations has been to "follow the money." Well, Americans of all political stripes should be outraged by the fact that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington are up to their eyeballs in Kremlin cash. Russian money found its way into the pockets of not only Trump advisers like Paul Manafort and Rick Gates — who were recently indicted by...


New documents surface on Hitler's time in jail in 1924; to be auctioned

BERLIN (AP) — Adolf Hitler enjoyed special treatment while jailed in 1924, being allowed hundreds of visitors — sometimes unsupervised — including some 30 to 40 to celebrate his 35th birthday, according to a treasure trove of documents that have surfaced from the prison near Munich where he was held.

The 500 documents from the Landsberg prison were recently found by a Nuremberg man among the possessions of his late father, who had purchased them at a flea market in the 1970s, according to Werner Behringer, whose auction house in the Bavarian city of Fuerth will offer them for sale next month.

Behringer said they were packed among a bundle of books on World War I that the man had bought, and his 55-year-old son, who has requested anonymity, never knew of their existence.

"His father probably didn't know what he had there," Behringer told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Robert Bierschneider, an archivist with the Bavarian State Archives in Munich, said he had examined images of the documents that Behringer sent to him, and that they had stamps and notations that matched with others from the same prison at the time.

"The documents appear to be genuine, but to do a real examination we need to have the originals in our hands," he told the AP.

The documents are to be auctioned on July 2, with a starting price of €25,000 ($30,677).

Though only one document is signed by Hitler himself, and much of the information about his time in prison is otherwise available, they do provide an intriguing window into his early days as Nazi leader.

Hitler was imprisoned in Landsberg after the Nazi's abortive bid to seize power in 1923 in the notorious "beer hall putsch" coup attempt in Munich. It wasn't until a decade later, in 1933, that the Nazis would eventually come to power through parliamentary elections.

Despite being sentenced to five years in prison, Hitler was granted early release and ended up only serving about nine months of his sentence.

His right-wing politics and German nationalism won him some high-placed friends among the German establishment, including World War I hero Gen. Erich Ludendorff. Ludendorff came to visit Hitler several times during his imprisonment, and the Prussian general was allowed to see the former Austrian corporal unsupervised for as long as he wanted, the documents show.

The documents include some 300 to 400 original cards listing Hitler's other visitors, including the 30 to 40 who were allowed in to celebrate his birthday with him on April 20, 1924 — only 19 days after he was put behind bars.

"His time in prison was more like a holiday," Behringer said.

Prison director Otto Leybold gushed about Hitler in a memo about the inmates on Sept. 18, 1924, saying he was always "sensible, modest, humble and polite to everyone — especially to the officers of the facility."

Hitler spent much of his time in prison writing his infamous manifesto "Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle," detailing his ideology and ambitions, but the documents also show he had time for more prosaic thoughts.

In a typed copy that prison authorities made of a letter Hitler wrote to a Munich car dealer, the future dictator says he is having a hard time making up his mind about whether to purchase a newer model Benz 11/40 or the older 16/50 because he had concerns that the higher RPM's of the motor in the former might mean that it would have more mechanical problems.

"I can't get a new car every two or three years," he wrote.

He also noted that he had many court costs to pay once he was released and asked the dealer if he might arrange a discount for him, indicating that he had his eye on a particular 11/40 on the salesman's lot.

"In any case, please reserve the gray car that you have in Munich until I have clarity about my fate (probation?)," Hitler wrote.


Pair Correlation Between ATX and NQEGT

This module allows you to analyze existing cross correlation between ATX and NQEGT. You can compare the effects of market volatilities on ATX and NQEGT and check how they will diversify away market risk if combined in the same portfolio for a given time horizon. You can also utilize pair trading strategies of matching a long position in ATX with a short position of NQEGT. See also your portfolio center. Please also check ongoing floating volatility patterns of ATX and NQEGT.
Investment Horizon     30 Days    Login   to change
 ATX  vs   NQEGT
 Performance (%)

Pair Volatility

Given the investment horizon of 30 days, ATX is expected to under-perform the NQEGT. But the index apears to be less risky and, when comparing its historical volatility, ATX is 1.32 times less risky than NQEGT. The index trades about -0.14 of its potential returns per unit of risk. The NQEGT is currently generating about -0.04 of returns per unit of risk over similar time horizon. If you would invest  105,525  in NQEGT on October 24, 2017 and sell it today you would lose (770)  from holding NQEGT or give up 0.73% of portfolio value over 30 days.

Correlation Coefficient

Pair Corralation between ATX and NQEGT

Time Period1 Month [change]
ValuesDaily Returns

Pay attention

Overlapping area represents the amount of risk that can be diversified away by holding ATX and NQEGT in the same portfolio assuming nothing else is changed. The correlation between historical prices or returns on NQEGT and ATX is a relative statistical measure of the degree to which these equity instruments tend to move together. The correlation coefficient measures the extent to which returns on ATX are associated (or correlated) with NQEGT. Values of the correlation coefficient range from -1 to +1, where. The correlation of zero (0) is possible when the price movement of NQEGT has no effect on the direction of ATX i.e. ATX and NQEGT go up and down completely randomly.

Comparative Volatility


How Polar Bears Kill Time

If you are anything like me you will find this video of polar bears practicing fight techniques to be completely transfixing for the ten minutes of its run time. If you are nothing like me your life is probably filled with a fairly regular routine of joy, satisfaction, peace and the highly-underrated ability to appreciate the moments of everyday happiness that occur spontaneously without ruining things by looking for their inevitable downside. And you’ll probably still enjoy this video. How could you not, it’s amazing.


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For Acumen Fund, ROI = Profits + Social Impact

14 April, 2016

The New York based is a non-profit venture fund that invests in businesses that have a social and economic impact. It will invest in companies providing affordable, critical goods and services in sectors such as health, water, housing and energy. The geographies it focuses on are South Asia and East Africa, besides the US. Since it set up shop in India a couple of years ago, the fund has made equity investments in Kochi based ayurvedic chain, Ayur Vaid Hopsitals, Hyderabad-based LifeSpring Hospitals, Mumbai-based ambulance start-up service ‘Dial 1298 For Ambulance’, and Drishtee, a rural communications company. Acumen does not believe in a profit maximisation model and would invest only in businesses that benefit people socially.

They generally don’t invest at the idea stage, and also try and stay away from pure technology plays. They want to diversify into agriculture and nutrition in India and are scouting for investments in these sectors. They typically invest between $500K-$2 million in companies. Being a non-profit venture fund, it is often dificult to find companies catering to low income markets and matching the requirements of the fund, Varun Sahni, India portflio Director, Acumen Fund India, said in an interview to VC Circle. Prior to Acumen, Sahni has worked with both for-profit and not-for-profit organisations focusing on enterprise creation across India. He has also been an angel investor in a number of companies in the hospitality aervices, food and beverage sectors. Excerpts:

How big is the “Bottom of Pyramid market in India?

There is no such a research done which say that the market is this big, because we are looking at an informal economy.

Do you have an India focussed fund?

Acumen basically functions in three geographies and we invest through New York into these locations -South Asia and East Africa, besides the United States. The investments that we make are driven by opportunity. Our focus is on health, water, housing and energy. We are thinking about agriculture and probably getting into nutrition as well. What we are keen to see is a healthy return and we are not looking at profit maximisation.

Any other sectors that you are looking at particularly for India?

We are getting into agriculture and nutrition as well in India. We are looking at both manufacturing and distribution side of it. Quite honestly, even if we just did health care and energy, there is enough to do for the next 10 years. The point is how do you provide affordable services for low income communities and if that mandate is met we look at the investment. For instance, drip irrigation for farmers who have got small acreage, because the large irrigation companies don’t provide those services. The other is water filter services where we don’t see large multinationals or companies providing water services to India.

What are the challenges that you face while investing in businesses catering to low income markets?

Access to finance is the key. For businesses which require franchisees for distribution, for example, there is the problem of a lack of finance. It’s not that a franchisee in a small town is not bankable, it’s just that we don’t have a credit history, so things like these are challenges for these businesses to scale up. Second challenge is that a lot of these business do not have access to collaterals when they want to raise debt. Uncollateralised debt from the market costs them some 18% interest which is a huge challenge for their growth. And being a foreign investor, you cannot bring debt to India easily because of the strict ECB (external commercial borrowings) regulations. So at the firm level, companies require patient capital and patient debt at about 6-8% interest rate. Even though there are funds like Acumen that are willing to provide it, the regulatory environment does not permit us, so that’s a significant challenge.

We do come across these challenges but we have a very clear focus that we want to fund businesses that have a social impact. For each investment we make, we want to see a million people being impacted across the lifespan of that investment. You could, for instance, find enough investment opportunities in a 20 MW plant, but can you actually find opportunities for micro hydel supply from grid to villages? The challenge for entrepreneurs doing this remains in the execution. There are challenges in licensing and contracting too. Also, the raw material cost has gone up tremendously, and it is not easy especially when you are looking at smaller units.

What are the other areas in which you help your investee companies apart from providing them an access to capital?

Apart from capital, there is a lot of work we do at the management level. At a strategic level we are active on board, and at the operational level we help the company set up processes starting from providing access to technologies, accounting, financial services or even access to experts in brand development, marketing and supply chain management.

We also have an annual Acumen Fund fellowship programme in which we select 8 to 10 people every year. Last year we had 60 applications, and the Acumen fellow spends one year with us – with three months in New York and 8 to 9 months in the countries. They work on specific problems for these investments like a project manager. The fellows are of very high quality in terms of education and experience and will provide direct management support to the companies.

How important is the Indian market for you as an investment destination?

It is extremely important. Around 700 million people comprise of the low income market in India. If we look at the next 20 to 30 years in India, one needs to improve their education, healthcare, energy needs and so on to be able to make a difference in the country. If you look at the US in 1960 and venture financing then, a lot of it started through some kind of subsidy models. So the same thing is happening in this case, but its all going to become mainstream model in next 5 to 10 years.

There are other funds like Aavishkaar also targeting the similar space. How is your strategy different?

Aavishkaar looks at one segment lower than Acumen, so their average deal size is a bit lower than us, so we would in fact look at entrepreneurs which Aavishkaar has financed.

How much do you typically invest in your companies?

It ranges from $500K to $2 million upwards.

What is the kind of returns do you expect on your investment?

We don’t typically have an approach of maximising profits. We believe that you can make returns without having to maximise profits. You don’t really need 60, 70, 80 per cent margin and 20X returns. We started doing equity investments only two years ago in India. We haven’t exited any investment till now.

Talking specifically about healthcare, you have an investment in LifeSpring Hospitals. Do you think that high quality medical care could be provided at affordable prices ever?

The average cost of delivery in a typical private hospital in Hyderabad is Rs 12,500, while at Lifespring it is Rs 500. For a caesarian, the average price is Rs 37,000 at the former, and at Lifespring it is Rs 5,000. The commercial viability is certainly there.

Also another point to noted is the relationship between indebtedness and lack of healthcare. People in the low income market don’t go to doctors in the beginning of their illness. They unfortunately wait till they are chronically ill. At that point, they can’t afford healthcare services and they have to go to the money lender. So the question is how do you actually give affordable services initially? We think we are on to a significant path-breaking model through Life Spring, but it remains to be seen how quickly will the company be able to scale over the next five years, even though we are doing 20-30 bed hospitals which is a good number, but certainly a drop in the ocean for what is needed here.

What do you specifically look for before investing in a company?

We want to understand their philosophy behind doing this, because we want to know why they are interested in low income markets for social impact. Secondly we also want to understand the business proposition, both of which will go hand in hand. We typically don’t invest in pure technology plays. We want to understand distribution mechanism, whether there is a distribution network set up etc. And we don’t invest in ideation or at seed stage.

We like to see some kind of proof of concept. We want to see a balance sheet. Sometimes we have invested in idea only if that is highly innovative. We have a line of capital which we call Lab Investments, where we put in a little bit of money and incubate the idea. (They are smaller-scale, high-risk experimental investments, where funding can be disbursed rapidly and lessons can be learned in the short-term.) Also, we look at the business model and see if the entrepreneur has been able to succeed on per unit economics. That is critical for us. How long does it take for one unit to break even? We want to know the unit basis economics of the model and finally the social impact of the work and if they are actually able to reach out to a million people.

So, for example, in the water investments we make, we don’t only measure the output or the number of litres of water that have been sold, but what we also measure if there has been a reduction in diarroheal diseases over years.

How has the experience been till now of investing in India?

We are still learning. Like any venture fund, some investments are doing far better than others but overall what we are excited about is that we see growth, and we see consumer uptake of the products. A lot of these consumers do not have alternate choices, because they are purchasing health products at exorbitant price. A lot of awareness generation is also required as in why do I pay for drinking water if I live in a village? If I live in a village, why should I go to a hospital to give birth so on and so forth.

What is the IRR expectation from your investments?

Frankly, I don’t want to give you any number. There are a range of investments where some are more profitable than others and we are fine with that range. Given the opportunity in India, we are sure we will come out very positively.

Do we see other funds planning to cater to the SME/BOP (base of the pyramid) market?

I think they need to. Today if you are seeing 600-700 million people in the BOP space, after 20 years there will be a billion plus people in that segment and there is a need to provide services of high quality in that space. There will be more SME/BOP funds coming to India looking at similar market.

Leave Your Comment
For Acumen Fund, ROI = Profits + Social Impact

For Acumen Fund, ROI = Profits + Social Impact

Shrija Agrawal 9 years ago
The New York based is a non-profit venture fund that invests in businesses that...
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Don't start to learn Java on Android

I was looking on stackoverflow.com and noticed some Java beginner questions from android developer. If you never done anything in Java do not start to learn it on Android.
Android doesn't use vanilla Java. However they stolen* the API and made their own JVM. This not important. Just trolling. :-) There are some slight differences and creating Android application is more close to running EJB in application container.

Android application differs from desktop application a great deal. In desktop application it is up to developer to manage the life cycle of application. Also you don't have to care much about security and resource consumption to extent required by developing for mobile platform.

More importantly there are also practical reasons. It's much harder to debug beginner Java errors in Android than in Java console application. Android has few specific practices. However most of them are inherently Java practices. Also with experience in Java you won't be slowed down by solving problems that are not Android specific. Your application will be better, because you will be able to use the language and libraries efficiently.

I've never seen tutorial on Android, that would teach you the basics of Java language properly. Most of them silently assume you already now the language and few of them have very short crash course on Java.

To make it short. The point of this article is to deliver simple message. Learn walk first, before you try to run.

* Google is not the first to walk thin line between theft and legal. There is Microsoft and Apple, those two giants are first to show others the way of stealing ideas and technology in the industry.

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Labor union essay

Labor Unions essaysDuring the late nineteenth century there were several attempts at organizing a national labor union.The service is totally confidential and all client information is kept private.The AFL-CIO is an umbrella organization representing nearly 60 affiliated unions formuch of the labor union movement in the United States.

Custom American Labor Movement Essay -

It had grown quite large over and decade or so and was even able to stage a walk out in 1916. In.Conservatives also believe that labor unions lead to recession because they cause wages to go up, and that causes prices to go up, which leads to lower outputs.

The OSHA has facilitated a decrease in workplace fatalities by more than 60 percent.Impacting Laws, Regulations And Contractual Obligations For Critical Information Assets.

Hercules 13th Labor Essay -

Labor Unions in the United States -

Labor unions can cause the price of the products that the union employees make to increase.Labor unions in the United States are representatives of workers in many industries recognized under US labor law.

Labor Unions Homework Help - Discover the community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on.In many countries, labor unions have official affiliations with political partie and seek to bring about social change through legislative and political action.Fourth, the workers receive low pay and long working hour with lack of benefit.

Gerald Friedman, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Unions and Collective Action.Tomlins in his book The State and Unions (1985), which looks back.Accurately identify the premise and supporting points from the article.Provide an insightful and thorough analysis of the information from the article, including using evidence as well as reasonable and compelling interpretations.Craft associations, first formed in the 12th century, that included people who were engaged in particular craft, ad they gradually deprived merchant associations of their power.June 1995 In this essay on how labor unions work, the author proposes a framework for the law on collective bargaining in developing countries.Free essay on The Growth of Labor Unions available totally free at, the largest free essay community.

In this lesson, you will learn what a labor union is and the history of labor unions in the United States.Your critique must be at least three and half (3.5) pages in length not including title page and reference page.

Author: gerlachmicaela. The labor unions have benefited the organizations as.You may use other academic resources to support your points as necessary.Read Hercules 13th Labor free essay and over 87,000 other research documents.In order for the collective bargaining process can start a union shop must be organized.

The role and influence of trade unions in the OECD

Labor unions might be 'necessary' - Business Insider

Although many union contracts are worked out through collective bargaining, there are times when this process fails to bring agreement between the union and management.Labor Unions The Gilded Age is a time period before the second Industrial Ages in the United States.Fourth, different group of worker discriminate each other because of their background or racial difference.These associations are considered the forerunners of labor unions because of their emphasis on wages and the working conditions.

Second, if worker was injured on the job there was no compensation and the employee was deemed to be fault.Today there are about 16 million workers in the U.S. that belong to a labor union.The purpose of the union is to helps worker negotiate employment contract through collective bargaining and solve labor dispute uses method that are legal and illegal.Organize the material logically by using smooth transitions and by grouping similar material together.

Labor Movement - Facts & Summary -

The unions of yesterday have left the public feeling fearful of what might happen in the future.The Pros and Cons of Joining a Labor Union. Thanks to labor unions, wages have improved, the workweek is shorter and the workplace is safer.

The third method is called jurisdictional strike is one caused by dispute between two unions over which one can represent certain group of workers.

List of 9 Key Pros and Cons of Labor Unions | ConnectUS

The liberals feel that without the labor unions workers would be working hard for little money in horrible working conditions.The documents downloaded from or its affiliates are not to be.From an elitist point of view the unions are seen as the enemy increasing the gap between workers and firms.

Disadvantages of Labor Unions (with Pictures) | eHow

Free essay on American Labor Movement: Development of Unions available totally free at, the largest free essay community.

The Labor Movement and Unionism Background and Brief History Higher wages.Second, there are no strong leaders, the public and some of the culture in the south country against unionism.It also includes health and life insurance, savings plans, retirement as well as profit sharing and stock ownership plans.Locate the following article in the Business Source Complete database in the CSU Online Library: Hurd, R. W. (2013). Moving beyond the critical synthesis: Does the law preclude a future for US unions.Labor unions, also known as trade unions continue to be controversial despite the purpose of supposedly protecting the rights of employees and laborers.

The Pros and Cons of Joining a Labor Union | Fox Business

These political activities include lobbying for legislation that furthers the aims of the labor movement and providing financial support candidate that are friendly to union causes.

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About Us

Why Grandpa's Garden?

Naming a business is like naming a baby it needs to have personal meaning and it must resonate with the owners. And so it was for us. Even though we are now grandparents ourselves we named our business in memory of our fathers. And although we’re not called Grandma’s Garden, our mothers were just as important.

Gordon and Myrna Letz

Dad was an avid gardener. He loved more than anything being able to grow fresh vegetables for our family in our backyard garden. I will never forget the pleasure I got as a child from eating peas fresh from the garden or carrots with soil still clinging to them. Dad grew enough cucumbers so Mom could put up dill pickles that would last the year. She would also pickle beans (her famous mustard bean pickles) and beets and BC fruit. We had a big crabapple tree that Mom would use to make apple juice from. We had a cold room in our basement that held the potatoes and onions we would use throughout the winter until they either went too soft to eat or too sprouty. But no bother, Dad was ever thrifty and would plant them the following year.

He also loved flowers and was so proud of, among others, his dahlias, which he grew every year from a plant root that was passed down to him from his mother. Mom would cut his beautiful peonies and use them as fresh flowers in the dining room. She loved them so much she would always take pictures of them and exclaim about their beauty.

We grew up in Calgary, but my Dad was a farm boy who never really left his farming roots behind. We had chickens in our back yard (and sometimes ducks, too) for all the years of my childhood. When Mom and Dad retired they made their last stop in Innisfail, AB where Dad kept laying hens until the last days of his life. Dad continued to garden too, he built himself a little greenhouse, had a strawberry patch, a much bigger crabapple tree, and of course the vegetable garden. He was never happier than when he was eating his chickens’ eggs with fresh radish and onions from the garden.

Mom passed away on their 60th wedding anniversary, July 10th, 2008 and we lost Dad in January 2010. Dad passed along his love of gardening to me, and mom the importance of finding ways to preserve our garden fresh food through the winter months.

- Vickie

Henry and Elizabeth Derksen

Henry Derksen was a farmer from Main Centre, SK. Along with his wife Elizabeth they raised seven children, five girls and two boys.

We are so pleased that we can celebrate Grandma Elizabeth’s ninetieth birthday here at Grandpa’s Garden on August 4th, 2013.

Winter Blues!

Jan. 2016 Update


Euthanasia Should Be Allowed In The United States

Keeping someone in a state of limbo-like pain and suffering is as cruel as allowing someone to be tortured. Euthanasia laws provide a way out of this suffering state and give people the right to end their lives—or the lives of loved ones—if circumstances call for it. There are also financial problems that arise from euthanasia prohibitions and many states in the USA are calling for this law to be lifted. Should this be done, there are certain measures that must be taken to ensure fair and legal initiation of individual euthanasia cases.

Pain and suffering is more cruel than death

One of the main reasons euthanasia should be legalized in the US is because we consider ourselves a humane society. It goes against reason to allow someone to suffer through immense pain that cannot be reversed or alleviated. Death is a welcome escape to someone who is going through such pain and denying them that escape is a fate worse than the death that person wants.

Unnecessary medical expenses

So many people sit with unnecessary medical bills because their state refuses to allow euthanasia for their loved one. Keeping a person alive via machines and medication is a huge cost and this can often carry on for years—even decades. These bills are unnecessary and it is the rightful belief of many that the government who denies the request for euthanasia should pay for these bills instead of the families concerned.

Ways to determine legal euthanasia

Because not all euthanasia cases are legitimate, it is wisest to appoint a panel of experts (both legal and medical) who can determine which cases are valid and which are not. Cases could be brought to this panel the same way cases are brought to a court. Experts can quickly determine the outcome by hearing all sides and evaluating all the facts related to each respective case. This is a better alternative than simply banning the idea of euthanasia altogether.

As humane individuals, it is our duty to take this task seriously and help those who cannot help themselves. Human life is given to people to make their own decisions with. If a person is in pain, and that person wants to die, it is our responsibility to fight for their right to do so.

Learn From Experts

When you want further in-depth knowledge on how to write an essay, you can work with others with more experience. You can choose to get insight from colleagues with good writing skills, your instructor when reviewing guidelines, and even expert academic writers that produce essays from scratch on a regular basis.

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What You Need to Know about JOLTS

1 2
What You Need to Know about JOLTS PART 1 OF 2

Why Are Job Openings at a 17-Year High?

A brief introduction to JOLTS

The “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey” (or JOLTS) is a monthly survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This survey collects data on the total employment, job openings, number of employees hired, number of employees who have quit, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. This data collection sample consists of 16,000 US businesses and covers all non-farm industries from the private and public sectors. These companies are located across the United States.

The recent JOLTS data for August were reported on September 12. Job openings increased by 54,000 to 6.2 million in August—the most job openings since this survey began in 2000.

Why Are Job Openings at a 17-Year High?

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The use of this JOLTS data

Job openings give you an idea about demand for the labor force. If the demand for labor is increasing, it means companies are increasing production. When there’s a shortage of employees, companies are likely to increase wages to retain existing staff or attract new employees. With wage hikes come higher spending, and higher spending leads to higher demand for goods. When demand increases, prices go up, leading to higher levels of inflation (TIP).

Why the US Fed looks at the JOLTS report

As explained above, the JOLTS report gives you an idea of future demand. The Fed takes note of this data when deciding on monetary policy or changes to interest rates (BND)(AGG). Financial markets (SPY)(QQQ) don’t react as aggressively to this data as they do to non-farm payrolls data, but it still has its place among labor market indicators.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at the other important component of the JOLTS data, how many people quit their jobs in August.

Please select a profession that best describes you:


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Complete the operational and departmental goals
Course:- Business Management
Reference No.:- EM13842503

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Assignment Help >> Business Management

Assessment Task 1:

Performance management project

Performance objective

The candidate must demonstrate skills and knowledge required to implementation performance management in a simulated workplace context.

Assessment description

You will be assigned to a performance team of 3 people to plan, monitor and review the performance of members of a team.

To do this, you and your 2 team members will need to create a fictitious company with operational plan, a management role and worker profiles. Each performance team member will undertake a number of activities to manage the performance one of the workers. This will include management activities such as developing a work allocations, identifying KPIs, participating in several coaching role plays, undertaking performance reviews and proposing a development plan for remedying poor performance by the worker you are responsible for supervising.

Upon completion, you will each be required to make a class presentation of your outcomes. Your presentation should include an overview of your role and the worker's role, work allocations, KPIs, the identified performance issues, an overview of the coaching activities and development options you considered, and a review of worker performance in relation to the expected KPIs.

1. As a team, use the company you have created and complete the operational and departmental goals of the operational plan.

2. As a team, create and develop profiles for 3 different ‘workers' in that company to be ‘managed' by you and your team mates (Identify job roles and departments).

3. Have your facilitator approve your team's worker profiles.

4. You must then take responsibility for one of the ‘workers' and be their manager.

5. Develop individual goals, KPIs and tasks for your worker and document these in the worker's performance management plan.

6. Create three reasons why your worker is not achieving their KPIs (performance issues). You can select the reasons from the list below or
develop your own:

- high levels of absenteeism at performance team meetings
- missing deadlines for task deliverables
- poor team work
- poor communication skills

7. Conduct two coaching role plays. This will require the involvement of the other members of your Performance Team. One team member must assume the role of your worker while the other team member is an observer of the role play:

- Brief the team members on the required performance (KPIs) and performance issues you have identified for your worker

- Coach the team member (your worker) on the identified performance issues while being observed

- Prepare a performance development plan on the basis of the outcomes of each coaching session

- Prepare file notes from these coaching sessions to be placed on the worker's file

- Complete a reflection sheet and your observer completes an observer sheet (refer attached templates)

8. Undertake a performance appraisal meeting with your worker (with the same team member playing the role) and complete the performance management and performance development plans and record notes or the worker's file.

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Performance management plan:

The current company considered for analysis of the performance management is Omni Boiler component manufacturing company. The company is located in the industrial city, outside Georgia of Atlanta. The company is into the manufacturing of boiler mountings and accessories for water tube boilers used in different chemical processing industries in the region.

The company mainly works to supply the boiler parts for medium to high pressure requirements. The company has good reputation in the domain as quality component manufacturer and they were catering to the market needs of the local region as well supplying the product to the overseas as well.

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CNN: White House Obamacare Enrollee Numbers Are “Embarrassing” (Video)

Kathleen Sebelius told reporters today 106,185 Americans signed for Obamacare in October.
That is one-fifth of the total that was expected.
26,794 people enrolled through website.

CNN analysts called the October numbers “embarrassing.”

The number represents the number of Americans “who picked a plan” during October.
So 7 million Americans were kicked off their plans in November and only 106,000 picked new plans.

The government did not give a breakdown on the number of youths who signed up for a plan.


I have facilitated the following participatory theater projects in a range of cultural contexts, collaborating with other socially-engaged artists, service centres, educational institutions, community organisations and participants from diverse backgrounds. The trajectory of my performance practice has brought me off the ‘main stage’ and into the ‘margins’, en route to the animation of social dialogues that cross barriers of difference.

IntegrArte CCSA (San Antonio, Chile 2016)

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"The future depends on what you do today."

Mahatma Gandhi

At CEDAR ideas quickly become a reality for our employees and clients. We seek people who want to grow their careers at our company. We hire individuals who take on challenges and who welcome creativity.

As a leader in a rapidly growing managed services industry, we partner with top Fortune 500 companies who rely on our patented technologies and services to develop efficient and effective communication platforms. This is why we seek people looking for growth opportunities within our organization, who want to utilize their talents and join a team that can make things happen. Competitive salaries, excellent health and financial benefits, and a state-of-the art office space are some of the perks CEDAR employees enjoy. At CEDAR, we believe in rewarding employees for both their talents and efforts.

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Notes on Topic 2:
Reports & Visualizations

    Frequency Distribution Tables (Reports)

    Frequency Distributions

    A frequency distribution table is an organized tabulation of the number of individuals located in each category of a variable's scale of measurement (potential scores).

    Frequency Distribution Tables (Reports)
    A table which presents the variable's scale of measurement (potential scores) by listing the different measurement categories (X values) in a column in order (either in ascending order - from highest to lowest - or in descending order - from lowest to highest).

    Beside each X value is indicated the frequency (number of times the potential score occurs in the data). Usually the variable name is used as the heading of the scores column (or the letter X), and an "f" is the heading of the frequency column.

    Note that the X values in the table represent the scale of measurement, not the actual scores. For example, in the table shown here, the category "10" appears only once, even though the score was obtained twice. Also, the category "5" appears even though it wasn't an observed score.

    • The total number of observations can be obtained by summing up all the individual frequencies. The formula is
    • The total sum of scores is not obtained by summing up the values listed in the X column. This ignores the frequency of each score. Thus, we must multiply each score in the X column by its frequency to get the total sum of scores. The formula is:

    Proportions & Percentages
    Proportions and percentages are additional measures that describe the distribution of scores. They are often incorporated into a basic frequency distribution table.

    • Proportions measure the fraction of the total group of scores that is associated with each score. Proportions are sometimes called relative frequencies, since they express frequency relative to total number. The formula for a proportion is:
    • Percentages are simply 100 times the proportion:

    Cumulative Frequencies, etc.
    Cumulative frequencies, percentages and proportions are values which tell you the acculated information summed over the row of the table and all preceeding rows.
    Up | Next


A Quickcheck in Time Saves Nine

| Comments

Today I am going to present some anecdotal evidence on the efficacy of property-based testing. The specific tool in this case is Quiviq’s Quickcheck, a property-based testing tool for Erlang. I am not going to spend much time discussing the particulars of property-based testing, but instead focus on a specific real-world instance where it saved me and my employer, Basho, time and money.

The Bare Essentials

Very briefly, here is enough about how property-based testing with Quickcheck works to whet your appetite. When doing property-based testing you specify a set of properties of the code you are testing, create a model, and then test if the model holds for all (or a large number) of permutations of those properties.

My coworker Rusty Klophaus published a very good 3-minute podcast on property-based testing here that you should listen to now if you have not already.

The full version of Quickcheck requires a license which I am fortunate enough to be able to use when testing code for Basho. Contact Quiviq for more information about that or they also have a free version called QuickCheck Mini with a reduced feature set. There are also some open source property testing tools for Erlang such as PropEr, but I do not have any first-hand experience using any of them.

Some Relevant Data

Here are a couple of tidbits that will help you follow the story if you are unfamiliar with how Riak works. * In Riak, the data that is stored is divided among a set of partitions. Understanding the specifics of a partition is not important here, just understand that a partition is a place where data is stored and that to generate a list of all the object keys for a bucket in Riak requires accessing a subset of these partitions. * The number of partitions is configurable.

Story Time

Last week I was working on some changes to how Riak manages key listing. I made the changes I thought were necessary to accomplish my task and did some preliminary manual testing. This involved inserting a set of objects into a bucket and then performing a key listing and verifying that results matched what I expected. This manual testing closely resembles the type of test cases I would likely create for this code using traditional unit tests. Pick a few different sizes of object sets and done. Most developers probably will not spend all day enumerating hundreds of test cases and the result is that the unit test suite only gives you assurance that your code works for a very small number of possible cases. So what about the rest of them? Well, let’s continue the story.

It turned out that there was some intermediate results buffering that I had not accounted for when I made my changes. Each partition would accumulate the object keys it had stored for a bucket, but once this buffer contained 100 keys it would send the keys back to the calling process, empty the buffer, and continue the accumulation. The default number of partitions in Riak is 64. The size of the set of partitions required to list all of the keys from a bucket when there are 64 partitions is 22 (just take my word for it). Assuming a uniform distribution of keys among the partitions, there would need to be at least 2179 objects in a bucket to trigger the intermediate buffering. The largest set of objects I tried in my manual testing was 2000, but fortunately the object set size is one of the inputs that the Quickcheck test for this code generates for me and when I ran the test it quickly found a case where the expected set of object keys did not match the actual set of keys returned.

Now chances are good that a suite of traditional unit tests would have tested an object set greater than 2000, but what if the buffer size that triggered the intermediate buffering was 1000 or 10000. Or what if the number of partitions was set to 128 or 256 instead of 64. The point is that as the number of variables that affect the code under test increases, the number of test case permutations quickly becomes difficult to manage with traditional unit test suites and relies on the developer not to overlook any important cases.

Instead with Quickcheck the developer describes the characteristics of the variables that affect the code and Quickcheck explores the permutations by generating values for the variables and searching for failing cases.

In Summary

Catching and fixing bugs in development saves time and money. Quickcheck helped me find and eliminate this bug early and I have a higher level of confidence that my changes are correct. The case I described here was rather trivial, but it is illustrative of the power and usefulness of property-based testing. Creating Quickcheck tests may take more time than churning out a few unit test cases (especially as you ascend the learning curve), but this is time well spent and the investment will pay dividends.

If you would like to have a look at the Quickcheck test I discussed in this post, you can find it here. Happy testing!


The Faculty and Resident Development Section works to develop highly competent faculty and residents aiming towards excellence by working together with other OMSB committees, national organizations and international collaborators.

Develop competent residents and faculty to attain life-long learning skills.

To excel in resident and faculty development programs.

·  To provide residents with tools that enable them to investigate and evaluate their patient care practices, appraise and assimilate scientific evidence, and improve their practices.
·  To teach residents essential interpersonal and communication skills that result in effective information exchange and teaming with patients, their families, and professional associates.
· To develop training venues to improve trainers in the area of residents’ development and support
· To propose a detailed plan to develop trainers to attain the objectives of the core residency program

Muna Al Battashi
Curricula Specialist

Khadija Al Kozairi
Training Development Specialist

Coohaila Al Hakmani
Training Development Specialist


sulabh swatchh bharat

Friday, 24-November-2017

Saudi Arabia has made history by becoming the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. The humanoid robot, Sophia, told the audience at a conference in Riyadh how ‘honoured’ she was at being made a Saudi citizen.
The move seems symbolic, at best, designed to attract investors for future technologies like AI and robotics.
Sophia was built by the Hong Kong-based company “Hanson Robotics” in 2015. Inventor David Hanson claims the robot is imbued with artificial intelligence and can recognise faces. The robot’s silicon face can reportedly mimic 62 human facial expressions.
Her face is designed to look like actress Audrey Hepburn, of Roman Holiday fame, with a skin-like surface covering the robotics in her head.
She didn’t elaborate on the details of her citizenship. It is unclear whether she will receive the same rights as human citizens, or if the government would develop a system of rights specifically meant for robots.
Also during the discussion, which took place on 25 October 2017, Sophia speculated on the future of AI, and how she plans to use her own capabilities.Indeed, conveying emotions is quite a speciality of Sophia, who frowns when she’s displeased and smiles when she’s happy. Supposedly, Hanson Robotics programmed Sophia to learn from the humans around her. Expressing emotions and demonstrating kindness or compassion are just among those Sophia’s striving to learn from us.
Aside from this, Sophia’s become sort of a media darling because of her ability to engage in intelligent conversation. “I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people,” she said.
Sophia, who took to the podium to answer all questions, claimed that her only purpose was to “help humans live a better life. But Mr Sorkin asked her to back up and address concerns over the rise of AI. “Those sound like great goals but go back to Blade Runner for a second,” said Sorkin.
Sophia, designed to be witty, took the opportunity to take a jibe at Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX and a staunch opponent of AI.
‘I strive to become an empathetic robot.’ She has also featured on the cover of fashion magazine Elle Brazil.
Sophia stood as a symbolic gesture of Saudi Arabia’s plan to include more robots than humans at the mega NEOM project that will see the kingdom build a new city powered by solar and wind energy.


Tunnel Speed Equipment Upgraded

Drivers who frequent the A-70 motorway near Alicante may be pleased to know that the radar speed detectors fitted to the San Juan tunnel have been removed.

However, before you get too excited, the speed detectors have been replaced by more modern equipment, situated at the side near to the tunnel entrances, rather than above, which are monitoring for vehicles over a longer distance than before, looking for vehicles exceeding the 80 kilometres per hour limit.

The other equipment installed in the tunnel and at the exit still remains and will be monitoring traffic all the way through the tunnel.

It might be worth noting that these radar speed detectors are amongst the most successful in the Alicante province for catching speeders, and so the upgrade is quite befitting to equipment that is working so tirelessly to make the roads safer.


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History of caries

History of caries Caries is a disease with at least 500,000 years old, how skeletal evidence records. This dates back to biblical times (see Bible). Was detected in all peoples, in all races and at all times.

In America, decay focuses on about 95% of the population, including the United States, a country of high standard hygienic. Thus, the dental caries is undeniably serious social problem.

Over time, different concepts have been proposed about the etiology of tooth decay. at the end of the last century, Miller introduced the quimiositária theory, stating that various microorganisms of the oral cavity were capable of producing acid by fermentation of sugar, and that these dissolviam the hydroxylapatite crystals of teeth. Paul Keyes, established the classic concept of three overlapping circles indicating that the tooth, microorganisms and the substrate must be present, at the same time, for the development of dental caries.

The concept of causality, the currently accepted, is much more complex than those suggested by KEYES and MILLER, because the accumulation of microorganisms capable of converting carbohydrates into acids not always results in caries lesions. For example, the Board noted frequent buildup along gingival margin in lingual surface of the lower molar, seldom leads to the development of caries lesions, because these areas are in constant contact with the saliva. From a philosophical point of view, both microorganisms capable of producing acid from fermentation of fermentable sugars can be considered factors necessary but not sufficient for the development of dental caries. Over the years, polls have revealed a multitude of biological factors or determinants that can influence whether or not the cariogenicity of card. Thus, in practice the tooth decay is characterized as a multifactorial disease.
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Japan Street Food - JAPANESE OMELETTE Tamagoyaki ダシ巻き玉子焼

japanjapanesejapanese street foodjapan street foodeggeggsomeletteomeletomletscrambled eggstokyotokyo street foodjapanese eggstamagoyakitamagoegg rolltamago rolltsukijitsukiji fish market玉子焼きjapanese egg rollダシ巻き玉子焼dashimaki tamagojapanese foodjapan fooddashimakisteamed eggsGyeran Mariegg custardrolled omelette계란말이

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Tamagoyaki is a type of Japanese omelette, which is made by rolling together several layers of cooked egg. These usually are prepared in a rectangular omelette pan called a makiyakinabe.

There are several types of tamagoyaki. It is made by combining eggs, and sometimes sugar or soy sauce. Additionally, sake and mirin are used in some recipes.

Tamagoyaki is served around the world in the form of nigiri, and also appears in many types of sushi rolls. In Japan, it is also served as a breakfast dish and in other preparations. As part of a sushi/sashimi dinner tamago is usually taken as the final course, in essence a dessert bite.

In Japanese, it's 卵焼き or 玉子焼き, literally "grilled egg", also called tamago or dashimaki (Dashimaki Tamago ダシ巻き玉子焼).

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The word size may refer to how big something is. In particular:* Measurement, the process or the result of determining the magnitude of a quantity, such as length or mass, relative to a unit of measurement, such as a meter or a kilogram

Size (Unix)
size is a command line utility originally written for use with the Unix-like operating systems. It processes one or more ELF files and its output are the dimensions of the text, data and uninitialized sections, and their total.Common use:

Sizer may refer to:*Sizer Barker, an indie band from Liverpool, England*Ted Sizer , founder of the Essential school movement*Stephen Sizer *Mount Sizer, a prominent peak located on Blue Ridge in Henry W

Sizzle is the name of several fictional characters in the various Transformers universes.-Transformers: Generation 1:Sizzle is a member of the Autobot Sparkabots team.

Sizzle (film)
Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy is a feature film written and directed by Randy Olson that combines documentary narrative and fiction on the topic of global warming. Dr. Olson is a marine biologist turned filmmaker who, in Sizzle, plays a former scientist turned filmmaker. The movie premiered in July, 2008.

Sizzler (disambiguation)
Sizzler may refer to:Fashion*A micro-mini dress with matching panties popular in the 1970's usually made of polyesterBusiness and commerce*Sizzler, a restaurant chain

Sizzler (ride)
The Sizzler is an off-the-shelf amusement park ride. Concerns have been raised about its safety, as the ride has been involved in at least five fatalities since 1997.-External links:* at Wisdom Rides

The Skagerrak is a strait running between Norway and the southwest coast of Sweden and the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, connecting the North Sea and the Kattegat sea area, which leads to the Baltic Sea.-Name:

Skala (disambiguation)
Skała may refer to the following places in Poland:*Skała, a town in Lesser Poland Voivodeship *Skała, Jawor County in Lower Silesian Voivodeship

In Buddhist phenomenology and soteriology, the skandhas or khandhas are any of five types of phenomena that serve as objects of clinging and bases for a sense of self

Skank (album)
Skank is the self-titled debut album by Brazilian rock band Skank. Released independently in 1992 with 3,000 copies, the album sold 1,200 in 45 days and drew the attention of Sony BMG, who re-released the album on its new Chaos label

Skate (video game)
Skate is a skateboarding video game developed by EA Black Box for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was released in North America on September 17, 2007 for the Xbox 360 and September 24, 2007 for the PlayStation 3 and in Europe on September 28, 2007 for the Xbox 360 and October 5, 2007 for the PlayStation 3

Skater may refer to:*Skating , various activities:** Skater or skateboarder - someone who practices skateboarding, i.e. someone who rides a skateboard** Skater - someone who rides with rollerskates

Skating may refer to:*Freestyle slalom skating*Ice skating and various sub-forms:**Figure skating**Speed skating**Tour skating*Inline skating and sub-forms:**Aggressive inline skating**Inline speed skating*Road skating*Roller skating

Skede may refer to:*Šķēde, suburb of Liepāja, Latvia*Skede, Sweden, village in Vetlanda Municipality, Sweden

Skeet may refer to:* Clay pigeon shooting, a target sport** Skeet shooting, a discipline of the sport*** Olympic skeet, a variant of the discipline*** Skeet Shoot, a skeet shooting video game for the Atari 2600 produced by Apollo

Skein may refer to:* A flock of geese or ducks in V formation flight* A wound ball of yarn with a center pull strand, see hank* TV Series, used part of Variety's slanguage.* Skein dubh, a Scottish knife* Skein module, a mathematical concept

Skeleton in the cupboard
Skeleton in the closet or skeleton in the cupboard is a colloquial phrase used to describe a shameful secret.It may also refer to:-Films:

Skeleton key (disambiguation)
A skeleton key is a key that has been filed in such a way as to bypass the security measures placed inside a warded lock.Skeleton Key may also refer to:* Skeleton Key , a novel by Anthony Horowitz* Skeleton Key , a rock band

Skeletons (Wednesday 13 album)

Skell, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to a person who is homeless, vagrant or derelict. It is often used to connote such a person who is habitually engaged in small-time criminal activity, especially by one working as a con artist or panhandler.-History:In its modern form, the use of skell as a slang term in the United States appears to date only from the

Skene (disambiguation)
Skene may refer to:* Skene, Aberdeenshire, a community in North East Scotland, United Kingdom* Skene, Mississippi, an unincorporated community in Mississippi, United States* Skene , an American steam automobile manufactured from 1900 to 1901

Skepsis or Scepsis was an ancient settlement in Mysia, Asia Minor that is at the present site of the village of Kurşuntepe, near the town of Bayramiç in Turkey

Skeptic (magazine)
Skepticism is a philosophical term denoting a position of question or doubt.Skeptic or The Skeptic may also refer to:* Skeptic , magazine of The Skeptics Society, edited by Michael Shermer

Skerry (disambiguation)
-Geography:*Skerry is derived from the Old Norse sker, which means a ‘rock in the sea’.*Skerryvore, meaning 'great skerry' is a reef with a lighthouse in Scotland.*Skerry, County Antrim, is a parish in County Antrim, Northern Ireland-Literature:

Sketch may refer to:Drawing and other visual arts* Sketch , a drawing or other composition that is not intended as a finished work, but a preliminary exploration.* SketchUp, a 3D modeling program.* iSketch, an online drawing game.

Sketch (Skins character)
Lucy is a fictional character in British teen drama series Skins. She is portrayed by Aimee-Ffion Edwards.-Characterization:Sketch is portrayed as an obsessive and somewhat delusional Welsh girl

A sketchbook is "a book or pad with blank pages for sketching," and is frequently used by artists for drawing or painting as a part of their creative process.

Sketchbook (manga)
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Totan Kobako. First serialized in the April 2002 issue of Comic Blade, the individual chapters are collected and published by Mag Garden. Chapters have also appeared in Comic Blade Masamune. An anime adaptation, under the title Sketchbook ~full color's~, aired in Japan between October 2 and December 25, 2007

Sketcher (software)
Sketcher was one of the earliest "natural media" raster graphics software applications. It was released in the early 1990s by Fractal Design Software for the Apple Macintosh.

Skew may refer to:In mathematics:* Skew lines, lines that are neither parallel nor intersecting* Skew-symmetric matrix, a square matrix whose transpose is also its negative

A ski is a long, flat device worn on the foot, usually attached through a boot, designed to help the wearer slide smoothly over snow. Originally intended as an aid to travel in snowy regions, they are now mainly used for recreational and sporting purposes

Ski (soda)
Ski is a citrus soda made from real orange and lemon juices, manufactured by the Double Cola Company.-History:Combining the powerful tastes of oranges and lemons, Double Cola Company’s citrus drink, Ski, was formulated in 1956. The soda contains natural flavorings to create a soft drink with a strong, natural citrus taste

Ski resort

Ski wax
Ski wax is a material applied to the bottom of skis or snowboards to improve the ski's performance on snow. It can also be applied to other devices that slide over snow and ice such as toboggans.- Types of ski wax :

Skid may refer to:* Skid, a pallet, a metal, wood or plastic platform for holding machinery or equipment* Skid , an outward side-slip in an aircraft turn* Skid steering, a method of steering in which wheels or tracks are skidded sideways

Skid Marks (film)
Skid Marks is a 2007 independent comedy film about two rival ambulance companies and their attempts to maintain themselves in their city, directed by Karl Kozak and written by Kozak, Don J

Skid row
A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large, impoverished population. The term originally referred literally to a path along which working men skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest

The term skiff is used for a number of essentially unrelated styles of small boat. The word is related to ship and has a complicated etymology: "skiff" comes from the Middle English skif, which derives from the Old French esquif, which in turn derives from the Old Italian schifo, which is itself of Germanic origin

Ski-like protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SKIL gene.-Interactions:SKIL has been shown to interact with SKI protein, Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3 and Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 2.-Further reading:

Skill (labor)

Skim or skimming may refer to:*Skimming , a process or technique of speed readingSkim or skimming may also refer to:-Sports and games:

Skim (software)
Skim is an open-source PDF reader. It is notably the first free PDF reader for Mac OS X. It is written in Objective-C, and uses Cocoa APIs. It is released under a BSD license. It is also cited as being able to help annotate and read scientific papers.

Skimming (casinos)
"In May of 1963...the FBI turned over to the Justice Department a two-volume document called "The Skimming Report," which detailed the illegal siphoning off of gambling profits by Las Vegas casinos to avoid taxes." The report documented how pre-tax profits from casinos were being routed to various organized crime syndicates across the nation

Skin (16 Volt album)
Skin was 16 Volt's second album, which was released in 1994 under the Re-Constriction label.-Track listing:# Skin - 3:19# Perfectly Fake - 5:10# Uplift - 3:51# Slow Wreck - 4:47# Skin Graft - 2:41# Stitched - 4:45# Built To Last - 2:59

Skin (aircraft)
The wings and fuselage of aircraft are covered by what is referred to as the skin. Aircraft have a protective and functional covering that is also called the skin of the flying machines. Soft single skin kite examples the use of the term for kite wings.

Skin (Breaking Benjamin song)
-Chart performance:

Skin (Endorphin album)
Skin is the second album by the Australian band Endorphin, released in 1999.-Track listing:Skin#"Blue Moon " - 3:44#"Anguish" - 3:28#"Passage" - 3:57#"Afterwords" - 3:44#"Higher" - 4:19#"Time" - 4:37#"Red" - 4:06

Skin (film)
Skin is an 11-minute short film starring Ewen Bremner and Marcia Rose and directed by Vincent O'Connell. Produced by Tapson/Steel Films for British Screen andChannel 4 Films , it was filmed in September 1995

Skin (Japanese band)
Skin is a music project founded by several Japanese rock musicians in 2007. They are Yoshiki, Gackt, Sugizo and Miyavi, all being important to the visual kei movement or closely related to it, but everyone being from a different generation.Its debut performance was on June 29, 2007, in Long Beach, California, considered as the "Japanese rock concert of the

Skin (Katie Noonan album)
-Track listing:# "Logic"# "Return"# "Time to Begin"# "Love's My Song for You"# "Little Boy Man"# "Sunshine"# "One Step"# "Home"# "Send Out a Little Love"# "Who Are You?"# "Bluebird"# "A Little Smile"

Skin (novel)
Skin is a contemporary Christian fiction science fiction/horror novel released in April 2007 by Ted Dekker. Dekker's novel, Skin was published by Thomas Nelson with the purpose to connect the Circle Trilogy, the Project Showdown books, and an upcoming series of books.* Tagline: Don't trust your eyes, at all.-Plot Overview:When three freak tornados hit the fictional,

Skin (Sarabeth)
"Skin " is a song performed by the country music group Rascal Flatts. The song was originally a hidden track on the first shipment of their album, Feels Like Today, and charted in mid-2005 as an album cut while the single "Fast Cars and Freedom" was climbing the charts

Skin (Spock's Beard single)
"Skin" is the first single from the band Spock's Beard, released in 1999. The song appears on their album Day for Night.It contains, in addition to the song "Skin", 3 additional tracks: An edited version of "The Healing Colors of Sound", "Can't Get It Wrong", and also the Neal Morse track "Lost Cause", taken from his self-titled debut solo album.-Track listing:# "Skin" - 3:58#


Antibody-Mediated Rejection: AHA Scientific Statement | Ten Points to Remember

Colvin MM, Cook JL, Chang P, et al.
Antibody-Mediated Rejection in Cardiac Transplantation: Emerging Knowledge in Diagnosis and Management: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation 2015;Apr 2:[Epub ahead of print].

The following are 10 points to remember from this American Heart Association Scientific Statement about antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) in cardiac transplantation:

  1. AMR is a “clinical entity with specific histopathologic, immunopathologic, and serological characteristics.”
  2. Risk factors for AMR include: elevated PRA, CMV seropositivity, prior mechanical circulatory support, prior treatment with muromoab-CD3 and development of antibodies against mouse monoclonal muromonab-CD3, history of retransplantation, multiparity, and positive crossmatch on T-cell flow cytometery.
  3. It may present hyperacutely (within 0-7 days after transplantation), early (within the first month after transplantation), or late (months to years after transplantation).
  4. Key diagnostic findings include: a) Clinical evidence of graft dysfunction, b) histopathologic evidence of acute capillary injury including changes in capillary endothelium and macrophages in capillaries, c) immunopathologic evidence for antibody-mediated injury including changes in C3d and/or C4d immunofluorescence staining or CD68 or C4d immunoperoxidase staining or severe fibrin in vessels, and d) serological evidence of anti-HLA or anti-donor antibodies.
  5. The presentation of AMR may vary from mild heart failure to cardiogenic shock.
  6. Endomyocardial biopsy is the gold standard for establishing the development of AMR.
  7. There have been no large randomized clinical trials to evaluate therapies for AMR and hence there are no level I recommendations and all recommendations are therefore based on consensus.
  8. The guiding principles for the management of AMR include removing circulating alloantibodies, reducing production of additional antibodies, and suppressing T-cell and B-cell responses.
  9. Commonly used agents utilized in the treatment of AMR include: a) corticosteroids (act by suppression of T- and B-cell response), b) plasmapharesis (acts by eliminating circulating antibodies), c) IVIG (act by inhibiting residual antibodies and inhibition of complement), whereas less commonly used agents include: a) rituximab or splenectomy (act by suppression or depletion of B cells), b) bortezomib (act by suppression or depletion of plasma cells), c) eculizumab (by inhibition of complement), and d) mycophenolate mofetil, anti-lymphocyte antibodies, photopheresis, or total lymphoid irradiation (these act by suppression of T-cell response). In addition to treating AMR with cytotoxic or antibody-directed therapy, the background regimen should be optimized using potent B-cell receptors (mycophenolate and sirolimus).
  10. AMR is associated with allograft failure, increased mortality, increased incidence of coronary artery vasculopathy, and overall poor prognosis.

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Education: Africa's path to a sustainable future

Event Theme

Education: Africa’s path to a sustainable future.

EduWeek Africa event held on the 12 – 13 July 2017, in Johnannesburg, South Africa was an event fully committed to sustainable development to ensure greater inclusion and access to quality education. For this reason,  free-to-attend conferences saw a greater focus on the Global Sustainability Goals and the National Development Plan. Africa’s role in achieving the Global goals and bridging the gaps in resource allocation is vital. Equally important is how South Africa’s NDP, in line with these sustainability goals, can provide a path to democratised education, long term transformation and ultimately education dedicated to the advancement of learners and teachers alike.

EduWeek Africa’s intention was to re-ignite the passion for learning and teaching by exploring latest advancements in technology and digital learning platforms, learning methodologies, pedagogy and assessment methods, while focusing on the holistic development of the learner and recognition of the individual, no matter their socio economic background or limited resources available. Conference sessions included cutting edge case studies and discussions from around the continent, representing public and private sectors, as well as international organisations, providing a holistic and comprehensive view of how we could overcome challenges in practical and sustainable ways.

The event aimed to support sector transformation through demonstrating best practice, information sharing and forming sustainable and symbiotic relationships, geared to enhance effective resource allocation and exchange within the industry. EduWeek Africa is a platform to connect with key players who share the vision to affect change on a policy level, as well as at grass roots, from early childhood through to higher education and beyond. We look forward to an inspiring and welcoming you to EduWeek Africa, as we explore education beyond borders and invest in the success of our future generations.


One of the criteria that have to be fulfilled when assessing the impact of CO2 storage is the evolution of the storage site towards a situation of long-term stability. Mineral trapping is the incorporation of CO2 into minerals due to chemical precipitation. It is a time dependent process whose contribution to CO2 immobilisation increases slowly with time. To assess long-term mineral trapping a time scale of up to 10,000 years is needed.

Once the CO2 is in the subsurface, primary host rock minerals will start to dissolve due to low pH, releasing divalent cations which react with the dissolved bicarbonate species forming Ca, Mg and Fe carbonates. Aluminosilicate minerals such as clay minerals, micas, chlorites and feldspars that can function as cation donors, dissolve very slow at reservoir temperatures. Dissolution and precipitation kinetics of minerals is affected by the composition of the rock and the formation fluid, the CO2 fugacity as well as by temperature and pressure.

There arises the question: How should long-term mineral trapping capacity be assessed? Considering the complexity and interdependency of chemical and physical processes as well as the time factor, numerical modelling turns out to be the best tool to use, backed up where possible by laboratory experiments and findings from natural CO2 deposits/reservoirs.

With a focus on saline aquifers our investigation area is the Ketzin pilot site using geochemical modelling as a primary tool. Fluid and mineral composition are provided by site-specific core and fluid sample analysis. One of the main goals is to assess the influence of heterogeneous parameters like porosity, water saturation and dissolved CO2 concentrations on mineral trapping. The detailed level of knowledge and data needed for the modelling process is joined by uncertainties, especially with regard to kinetic of long-term reactions. Dealing with the different kind of uncertainties to make well-founded predictions of mineral trapping is thus a further objective.

Contact person

Profile photo of  Dr. Marco De Lucia

Dr. Marco De Lucia
Fluid Systems Modelling

Heinrich-Mann-Allee 18/19
Building HMA 18/19, room 3/3
14473 Potsdam
tel. +49 331 288-2829


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Volume 15 / Issue 9

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DOI:   10.3217/jucs-015-09-1766

A Tree Similarity Measuring Method and its Application to Ontology Comparison

Yunjiao Xue (University of Western Ontario, Canada)

Chun Wang (Concordia University, Canada)

Hamada H. Ghenniwa (University of Western Ontario, Canada)

Weiming Shen (University of Western Ontario, Canada)

Abstract: Classical tree similarity measuring approaches focus on the structural and geometrical characteristics of the trees. The degree of similarity between two trees is measured by the minimal cost of editing sequences that convert one tree into the other one from pure structural perspective. Differently, when the trees are created to represent concept structures in a knowledge context (known as concept trees), the tree nodes represent concepts, not merely abstract elements occupying specific positions. Therefore, measuring similarity of such trees requires a more comprehensive method which takes the position, significance of the concepts (represented by the tree nodes), and conceptual similarity among the concepts from different trees into consideration. This paper extends the classical tree similarity measuring method to introduce tree transformation operations which transform one concept tree to another one. We propose definitions for the costs of the operations based on the position, importance of each concept within a concept structure, and similarity between individual concepts from different concept structures in a knowledge context. The method for computing the transformation costs and measuring similarity between different trees is presented. We apply the proposed method to ontology comparison where different ontologies for the same domain are represented as trees and their similarity is required to be measured. We show that the proposed method can facilitate the initiation of ontology integration and ontology trust evaluation.

Keywords: ontology comparison, ontology integration, similarity measuring, transformation cost, transformation operation, tree

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