Installed New RAM But No Display: 3 Ways To Fix

One of the very finest aspects of having a home computer is the possibility to construct your very own system from the ground up with only a moderate amount of technical expertise. Not only that, but in the event that a problem arises, it is not always necessary to purchase an entirely new system because it is possible to replace specific components on an as-needed basis.

Not only will your machine have a longer lifespan as a result of this, but you will also have a deeper understanding of it with each cycle, which will boost your confidence in your ability to make necessary repairs. A good number of individuals consider this line of employment to be both enjoyable and gratifying, of course on the condition that everything goes according to plan.

When choosing components for replacement, extreme caution and deliberation are absolutely necessary. Although there are many aspects that are applicable to everyone, there are also situations when this is not the case. Obviously, if you install a component that is not compatible with your system, you will run into further problems, and you may even be unable to get your machine to function properly.

The central processing unit and the motherboard are the two components of your computer that are considered to be the most vital parts. Aside from these, the Random Access Memory is the following most important component (Random Access Memory). The majority of the time, it is utilised to store working data as well as machine code.

In essence, it provides the apps that you use on your computer with a location to temporarily store data and access that data as necessary. Because it was saved in this manner, whenever this information is required, your computer will be able to access it promptly. Because the size of your RAM needs to be proportional to the number of applications you run, increasing your RAM capacity is a decision that a lot of users make.

Unfortunately, due to the significance of this step, if you make a mistake while installing your new or enhanced RAM, you may rapidly discover that your computer is unable to function in any way, and there will be no content displayed on your screen.

Then, one problem that a lot of individuals can run into after installing more RAM is that their system suddenly stops displaying anything on the screen. Fixing this issue is typically very simple. As a result, in this post, we will present you with a few straightforward problem-solving solutions in an effort to assist you in putting this matter to rest.

RAM Upgraded, but There Is Still No Display

The fact that the RAM module wasn’t placed properly is by far the most typical cause of malfunction. When people are creating or replacing anything for the first time and are not completely familiar with the procedure, this mistake frequently occurs. You are free to skip this step if you feel confident that you have correctly installed your device, in which case you do not need to worry about the content of this section.

Disconnecting your device from its power supply and discharging all of the electrical power that is stored within the item is the first thing you should do if you are unsure how to proceed. To accomplish this, locate the power button on the housing and press and hold it down for a period of thirty seconds.

After that, take out your RAM sticks and put them back in. Make sure that one end of the RAM stick is installed into the slot until you hear a light click as it fits into the latch. This is the correct way to install the RAM stick. The next step is to press down on the opposite side of the RAM until you hear that it has also been securely snapped into place.

After reconnecting the power source, give your computer another shot at starting up. It is my sincere hope that things are back to normal for you and that the problem has been resolved. If not, then continue reading.

Concerns Regarding the RAM Slots

If you are certain that you have now correctly installed your RAM and your problem still persists, then there is a possibility that the actual RAM slots within your motherboard are faulty. This is the case if you are convinced that you have now correctly installed your RAM. There is also the possibility that one of your RAM sticks is broken or otherwise malfunctioning.

First, you need to make sure that your device is completely free of any electrical current, and then you need to carefully remove these sticks from the motherboard. After taking it apart, you should clean the metal pins that are located on the bottom of the connection.

The presence of any debris on those can prohibit them from functioning correctly. However, you should be very careful not to apply too much effort to these pins because they are quite sensitive and have a high risk of being damaged.

After that, you can try starting your system while reconnecting each RAM stick individually to check if it will function properly. If it does, then you know for certain that this RAM stick is operational.

After that, you should perform this test on each of your other RAM sticks individually to determine which of them, if any, are functioning properly and which ones are not. If you notice that one of the RAM Sticks does not function, you should try using the same RAM Stick in a different slot to determine whether the slot or the stick is the source of the problem.

This test will be of great use to you in determining where your problem may lie and with which component it is associated. You can also try rearranging the order in which the memory sticks are inserted into the motherboard as a third possible solution. This is because switching the order in which they are inserted might occasionally fix the problem.

Check GPU Check GPU

In the event that neither of the aforementioned solutions is successful in resolving your issue, there is a possibility that either your GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) or your display connections are defective. Therefore, despite the fact that there is no display, you will be able to determine whether or not your system is operational because there will be a single audible beep when it starts up.

Again, it is important to ensure that the graphics card has been properly inserted and positioned within the motherboard. This may be done by performing these checks. You should find a latch that is analogous to this one, and as it clicks into position, you should hear a very faint audible sound. If you are certain that this has been completed, you can move on to the next step of attempting to hook your display cable directly onto your GPU rather than the motherboard.

Check that the wire is secured firmly not only at the end of the graphics card but also at the end of the monitor; if you do this, you should hopefully have a display that is operational on the screen. In the sad event that it does not, you will most likely be need to seek the assistance of a more specialised professional.

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Can Mindfulness Help You Enjoy Work More?

How an app-based intervention at work helps employees, a program that may reduce postpartum depression, and more from the latest mindfulness research.

Adobe Stock/(JLco) Julia Amaral

Mindfulness and Improved Job Satisfaction

An international team of scientists examined weekly data from 221 executives to see if they might benefit from an app-based, workplace mindfulness intervention. The eight-week program included audio-guided individual mindfulness practices and activities such as attending to bodily sensations, breathing, stretching and relaxation exercises, and instruction on mindfulness for workplace challenges. At each week’s end, participants were surveyed on their job satisfaction, work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and mindfulness. Over the course of the program, participants’ self-reported mindfulness increased—and in turn, the boost in mindfulness was generally related to improved work engagement and job satisfaction, and less emotional exhaustion. Additional studies using a control group are needed to better understand these effects.

Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Prenatal Instruction

In a pilot study, researchers at the University of Illinois tested whether a mindfulness-based childbirth preparation program would ease new parent distress better than typical prenatal instruction. They randomly assigned 30 expectant mothers in their third trimester to either two-and-a-half days of a mindfulness program or standard childbirth education. The mindfulness group was taught strategies for coping with labor pain and fear, and for parenting an infant, and were given audio of guided mindfulness practices for optional use. Both groups completed assessments of perceived stress, mood, and mindfulness before and after the program, six weeks post-birth, and one to two years later. The new moms who practiced mindfulness reported less depression over a one-year period than control group members. Those in the mindfulness group with higher anxiety and/or least amount of mindfulness before the intervention had the greatest benefits. Findings suggest that mindfulness-based prenatal instruction may help reduce maternal distress following childbirth.

Can Mindfulness Boost Motivation?

A new reason to keep your meditation distraction-free: It could boost motivation. Researchers at Carleton University in Canada conducted two studies to see if meditation enhances motivation to tackle personal goals. In the first study they randomly assigned 200 university students to either a mindfulness group, or a control group. The mindfulness group listened to 10 minutes of guided meditation instructing them to bring attention to the present moment and the physical sensations of their breath. The control group listened to 10 minutes from a podcast about the history of emojis. Both groups completed a survey assessing their level of mindfulness, motivation to complete a word puzzle, and commitment to fulfilling their personal goals. Ten minutes later they reported on their motivation again, and completed two tasks to check if they’d paid attention to their assigned recording. The mindfulness group’s goal motivation before and after meditation, and10 minutes later, was relatively unchanged. The control group was less motivated than meditators immediately after listening to the podcast, as well as 10 minutes later. Many participants in both groups reported doing something else while listening to their assigned recording, making it unclear whether either meditation or listening to the podcast affected their behaviour.

Meditating while free of digital distractions may help motivate students to pursue their personal goals.

In Study 2, 120 different students were told to turn off their cellphones, then listen to either the meditation instruction from Study 1 or the emoji podcast. This time the mindfulness group reported increased goal motivation compared to the control group, suggesting that meditating while free of digital distractions may help motivate students to pursue their goals.

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5 Types Of Programming Languages You Should Know About

Image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay

By Sally Wu

The world now moves based upon machines communicating with each other through their own coded language. The computer or a phone screen you are reading this article on. The Uber or Lyft app you use to book your taxi.

The suggestions by your Netflix account on what to watch tonight, are all decisions taken in real time by machines who talk to each other in their own language, by observing your habit patterns.

Here are 6 programming languages that you should know about and how they drive the machines around us:

The classic programming language

When you think of programming languages, chances are that C is the first that comes to mind. But one of the most useful and most popular programming languages today is actually Python.

This scripting language is often used to build big data apps and data analysis applications, such as data journalism, or databases.

Python has found wide adoption in the web and data world, but is also used to teach programming to non-technical users. Python is written in C, so it is compiled, rather than interpreted, which means less CPU/memory usage, so it’s often used for embedded systems.

Python is a bit of a temperamental language, but it gets the job done. Plus, it has a very simple syntax.

The scripting language

The vast majority of Python’s users don’t write Python from scratch. Python scripts are very often compiled into Python source code and interpreted.

However, they can be written in any language. For most users, a plain English description or copy-pasted lines of code are adequate.

Image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay

“The benefit of this approach is that it makes the code more readable.” There are many popular Python-based scripting languages like R, SQL, Ruby, and even Turbo Pascal and Turbo C, with support for Python.

The object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is nothing new. It’s simply the process of developing software so that it creates and responds to certain classes of objects.

In other words, it’s all about the design, or class structure of an application. It’s just as much a language as it is a programming paradigm.

Object-oriented programming has found a home in web development, database development, and many other aspects of computer science. Object-oriented languages like Java, C++, and C# still have a strong hold on software development.

The graph-processing language

Graph-processing is all about processing the data coming out of our various digital devices and hardware. It’s about creating a visual representation of information so we can use it to make better decisions or solve problems.

By nature, data is represented as graph data. A graph is a tree, of sorts. Graphs are very useful in analyzing data because you can rearrange them in different ways and find relationships that you wouldn’t be able to find otherwise. And with data, relationships are important.

Google famously uses graph-processing to help organize and understand data, from their famous Knowledge Graph to their infamous search results. It’s a way of computing based on algorithms that are specific to analyzing data, rather than using the most general programming approach.

If you’re looking for an alternative language to Ruby, you can use the Gephi programming language, which is a graph-processing language that supports Python.

The data visualization language

Graph is just a type of data. But it’s a great starting point. If you want to create a graph from some data, the first thing to consider is which data set you want to analyze.

Then you have to determine how you want to represent that data. Depending on the data set, that representation can be one of the most important considerations. For example, how do you represent a given entity (or pixel, as it’s called in the graph-processing world) in a graph? It can be a pretty sophisticated decision.

In the world of visualizations, as it is now, that question depends on the data you have.

Other questions to consider are what style of data representation you want, if any; what the graph should look like; and how long you want the visualization to be.

Graphs are a good way to represent information. But they are not a right fit for every problem.

(The author is a content writer at Startupanz.com. Editorial Feedback: connect@startupanz.com)


Mental Health

Mindfulness Workshops: 3 Reasons To Attend One

If you want to improve your mental health, mindfulness workshops may be an excellent option. Here are three reasons why you should consider attending one:

They can help reduce stress and anxiety.

Mindfulness workshops can provide you with tools and techniques to help you better manage stress and anxiety. In addition, a workshop’s supportive environment can be helpful.

They can help improve your relationships.

Mindfulness workshops can help you learn how to communicate more effectively and become more aware of your needs and feelings. This can lead to improved relationships with both yourself and others.

They can help you find a sense of purpose.

Mindfulness workshops can help you connect with your values and what’s most important to you. This can give you a greater sense of purpose in life, leading to increased satisfaction and enjoyment.

If any of these reasons resonate with you, then mindfulness workshops may be something worth considering. With so many benefits, it’s no wonder that these workshops are becoming increasingly popular. So why not give one a try? You may just find that it’s precisely what you need.


Linking records in Airtable
  • 21 Nov 2022
  • 5 Minutes to read
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Linking records in Airtable

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When you’re managing a workflow, there’s a lot of information to keep track of. Knowing which project connects to which client, or which venue you’re using for which event, is crucial to staying on task—and keeping all those relationships straight can get messy fast!

In Airtable, not only can you store every piece of key information in a record, but you can also easily link those records together to capture the dynamic relationships between them. In this guide, you’ll learn how to link records in Airtable today!

  1. Define the relationships between information that matters for your workflow
  2. Create the right structure to connect and easily reference related information
  3. Keep your information clean and reduce duplicate data entry

Step 1:Define your relationships

Concepts covered: base, table, record

Before you start building relationships between your records, you’ll want to make sure you know what those relationships should look like.

What information you’re tracking, and how it connects together, is completely dependent on your workflow. You might have a list of projects, a list of action items, and a list of clients. Or maybe you have a list of events, a list of attendees, and a list of venues.

In Airtable, it’s a best practice to capture each of these lists in a separate table, where you can store each item and all of its details. But keeping your lists in separate tables doesn’t mean they have to live in isolation—and they shouldn’t! Our projects have related action items, events have attendees, and so on. In the next step, we’ll talk about how to create these connections in your Airtable base.

For now, think about your workflow and map out which information you want to connect together. Make sure you have each piece of information stored in the right table before you move on (if you want more help thinking through the right table setup, check out this guide to structuring your base effectively).

Step 2:Create your relationships

Concepts covered: linked record

Now that you’ve got your lists set up in tables, it’s time to build relationships between your information. Airtable’s linked record field allows you to create connections between different records—and you have two options for how to set yours up.

The first step in creating those valuable relationships in your workflow—projects to action items or attendees to events—is to create a linked record field. Since you’re creating a link between both tables you can create this field in either related table.

Once you have your linked record field created, clicking on the + will bring up the records of the linked table to select from. You can now link individual records together, relating this project to these action items, for example. This will create the relationship between those two specific records.

Anytime you link two records together, you’ll notice that the association is mirrored in the other table. These reciprocal links allow you to see related information in each table so you know which action items are related to which project and which projects are associated with which action items!

→ Go ahead and create your linked records. First, create the linked record field to capture the relationships you had mapped out in the previous step between two related tables. Once you have the linked record field added, link relevant records together from either table.

Option 2: Convert an existing field into a new linked table

It’s normal that as your workflow grows in complexity, you will need to manage additional information. Using linked records, it’s simple to expand any dimension of your table into a separate, linked table so you can add more context.

For example, with only a few clients, it’s easy to keep on top of client–project relationships with a single select or single-line text field. In doing so, you limit client information to their name which is the option captured in the single select.

As your client list grows, you may want to track additional information for each client: their address, logo, preferred payment method, or point of contact.

To expand any dimension of your workflow, you can create a linked record from an existing field. This will create a new table from the values in your existing field, creating one record for each value. The new table will have linked records to the original table maintaining the existing relationship.

Now that the clients are tracked in a separate table, you can add additional information that’s important to the new dimension of your workflow without losing the connection to your projects.

→ Consider which elements of your workflow (venues, clients, products, or anything else!) you would like to expand the information tracked beyond a single field. For any element identified, turn that field into a linked record, and add additional details to the new linked table.

Step 3: Leverage your relationships

Concepts covered: expanded  record, lookup field

Workflows are always evolving and so is the information they contain. With relationships established between your different tables, you can use your linked record fields to see relevant information at a glance and create a single source of truth.

Want to see the status of action items related to a project without leaving your table? Enlarge the linked record field to see additional fields for each linked record. Want to further hone in on a specific action item? Expand any linked record to see all of its details and fields.

With your linked record fields, you can also keep consistent information across your workflow. Using a lookup field, you can dynamically display information stored in linked records. Any updates to the original field will persist in the lookup.

Say you want to keep an eye on the project due date for your action items. To do so, you can create a lookup field in your action items table that will pull in each linked project’s due date. Any changes to the project due date will be automatically reflected across all action items tied to that project. Now you have a single place to update your information which gets rippled across your workflow keeping your information consistent and eliminating any duplicative data entry.

→ Try accessing your connected information across tables by expanding a linked record to view all of its details. Next, create lookup fields so you can see the information where you need it for any fields that could be relevant across linked tables (project due date, client’s email address, assets for a campaign, sprint status or anything else!)

Next steps

You’ve taken three key steps to linking records in Airtable :
✓ You defined how your workflow’s information is related
✓ Then you created the relationships to link related information
✓ Finally, you leveraged your relationships to easily find relevant information and reduce manual data entry

Now that you’ve completed these three steps, you can stay on top of the multiple relationships that power your workflow without duplicating information!

Want to keep learning how to leverage your linked records? Check out our guide to rollups. Want to dive deeper into how to design your base? Check out our guide on relationship types.

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December 4, 2022

What is the Principle of Legality

The principle of legality somehow deals with safeguarding the rights of an accused person. It talks about the fact that even if a person is charged with an offence, his life and liberty cannot be taken away without a proper system of codes and rules defined by a legal statute.

One of the maxims which hold the essence of the rule of the Principle of legality is “nullum crimen sine lege, nullum poena sine lege” which means there will be no punishment for an act that has not been defined in the legal statute of the land. This maxim clearly illustrates that a person cannot or should not be subject to criminal punishment unless the act was defined as unlawful before the person committed it.

If the person has committed an act and it is not defined as punishable in any statute of the state then that person is not liable to any punishment.

The same goes with the ‘crime’, the maxim states that an act will not be considered as a ‘crime‘ if it is not defined in the state law.

Purpose of the Principle

The purpose of the rule was to ensure that punishment must be given only on the breach of law which was predetermined by the state or legal society because the rights and liberty of the accused person are in serious and immediate danger.

Nullum crimen sine lege = “no crime without law”

Nullum crimen sine lege = “no punishment without law”

Essential Rules of the maxim:

The Maxim “Nullum crimen sine lege” covers the following essential Rules.

  1. Penal Laws are not retrospectively applicable
  2. Criminal Statutes cannot be extended by Construction.
  3. The Law should be certain and definite.
  4. Penal laws must be accessible.

No ex-facto Penal Laws

It is a simple rule that penal laws are not applied retrospectively. This rule assumes that it would be unjust to state something that was legal at the time when it was done has now become subsequently illegal in the future through a statute.

It means that if an act was done in the past, a person should not or will not be punished for that act under any law that was passed after the act was committed.

Article 20(1): Indian constitution has also provided reasonable sections for the purpose of this essential rule. Article 20(1) states that ‘No person shall be convicted of any offence except for violation of the law in force at the time of the commission of the act charged as an offence, nor be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have been inflicted under the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence.’

It is clear from the above statement that

  • No Law can make an offence with retrospective operations
  • No Law can subject an accused person to a punishment greater than that which might be inflicted at the time of the offence was committed.

The Supreme Court in Rattan Lal vs State of Punjab AIR 1965 held that: ‘ex-post facto law which is beneficial to the accused is not prohibited by article 20(1) of the Constitution.’

How a Law is considered an ex-post facto Law

  • Criminal Act Done
    • Any law that declares an action unlawful even though it was committed before that law was passed is known as an ex-post facto statute. We can also state that any action that was previously thought to be lawful when it was done is now classified as a criminal act and subject to punishment under new legislation.
  • Harsher Punishment
    • Any law is also deemed ex-post facto if it amends the penalty and imposes a harsher penalty than the one that was attached to the offence when it was committed.
  • Rules of evidence
    • A statute that changes the law’s requirements for admissible evidence and accepts less or different testimony than what was required at the time the offence was committed.
  • Removal of a right or Legal Protection
    • Any law will be considered under the ex-post facto category if it somehow removes or deprives an accused person of any legal right or protection to which they have been entitled.

The Rule of Strict Construct

The rule states that during an accused’s trial, the court must ensure that the act or omission charged as an offence is within the plain meaning of the words used in the provision defining that act or omission as an offence. It must not strain the words used in defining an offence in any way, such as to provide for an omission.

Principle of Casus Omissus: Mean a situation omitted from or not provided for by statute or regulation and therefore governed by the common law.

According to the Strict Construction (interpretation) of penal laws if any substantial element of the statute is omitted in a case then that statute is not applicable to that case. It states clearly that the accused must be given the benefit of the doubt when a statute’s unclear language raises questions regarding its intent and application. This approach is taken because the person accused of the crime faces threat to their life and freedom.

There Should be Certainty in Law

This rule suggests that penal laws should be clear and definite so that people should understand them clearly. This will allow people to better understand their conduct in civilised society must avoid falling into the ambit of these penal laws.

This rule calls for Certainty because it considers legislation to be a prohibition and a prohibition must be clear enough to make people understand that they are not allowed to do certain tasks. It also deals with the generalisation of the terms used in the legislation. It states that legislation should avoid the use of such broad general terms so that the penal law must not bring everybody in the shadow of that law. The terms of the statute should clearly certify the scope of its application.

Penal laws must be accessible.

To allow the application of the principle of natural justice in the legal system penal laws should be made accessible to the public at large. Natural justice demanded that laws be publicised and propagated before they could take effect. It would be against the principle of natural justice if the citizens are penalised by laws of which they had no knowledge.

  1. Rattan Lal vs State of Punjab AIR 1965 SC 444
  2. Hall, Jerome; Principles of the Criminal Law.


Walter William Frederiksen passed away on September 24, 2022, He was 63 years old.

Walt was born in Detroit, MI. He grew up in Inkster before moving to Dryden and graduating Almont High School with the class of 1977. He met the love of his life, Jacqueline, in college. They graduated from Oakland University together.

Even as a young boy, Walt had a passion for acting and music that inspired his early radio career. He began working at WRIF as a college intern. Walt’s massive charisma and talent quickly resulted in him becoming an on-air weekend personality.

Walt’s passion for entertainment led him to achieve an extensive career in advertising. He dedicated almost 30 years to his Little Caesars family, where he was a beloved, valued team member and dear friend. As a Senior Director of Advertising, he became known as “the voice behind Little Caesars.” He was revered as an extraordinary storyteller who loved to make people laugh. He felt incredibly privileged to have worked on many radio, print, and national television ads over his long career, but was especially proud of the meaningful relationships that transcended the work, building friendships that deeply enriched his life.

Those who knew Walt understood his deep knowledge and love of music. His appreciation spanned many genres, as well as collecting and playing guitars. He was a frequent concert attendee and entertainment aficionado. His energetic spirit translated into the love and care he poured into his family. He spent most Sundays golfing with his father and two sons. His selfless nature ensured that being the most loving father, brother, husband and son always remained his most impressive talent of all. He never hesitated to share abundant love and kindness, and he left a lasting impact on everyone he met. Despite many years battling chronic illness, Walt always persevered with unmatched optimism, humor and drive. It never defined him or slowed him down. He will forever be cherished for his deep love and devotion toward his family and friends.

Walt is survived by his beloved wife Jacqui. Dear father of Dane (Sarah) and Austin. Loving son of Walter (the late Lillian). Brother of Susan, and Donna (Andy) David. Uncle of Kelly (Kohl) Bechtel, Maria (Dustin Burch) David, Monica (Danny) Pulver, Ashley (Rodney) Sultini, Clint (Tara Radlick) McDonald, and Kyle McDonald. Walt is also remembered by his brother-in-law Craig (Jackie) McDonald.

A Celebration of Life open house will be held on Sunday, October 23 from 1-5 p.m. The celebration will be held at the VFW Banquet Hall, 35011 23 Mile Road in New Baltimore.


Rising interest rates: why the Bank of England has increased rates again and what to expect next

The Bank of England has increased UK interest rates by 0.75%, the biggest increase in 30 years. A year ago the interest rate was 0.1%, today it is 3%.

While the speed of the increase is certainly surprising by historical standards, the actual level of interest rate is not: before the 2008 global financial crisis, we would need to go all the way back to the 1950s to find interest rates so low. Indeed, the current 3% interest rate figure is only high compared to the past 14 years.

The Bank of England has increased interest rates as quickly as it has this year because of inflation. It has a clear mandate to maintain price stability. This has traditionally meant trying to keep inflation at around 2%, meaning that consumer prices, on average, should increase by 2% every year.

Sometimes inflation deviates from this target, of course. And small, short-lived fluctuations are fine. But inflation has been above target since mid-2021 and is now actually at a 40-year high of around 10%.

When this happens, central banks use interest rate increases to help bring inflation down. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, which means less available income – for people and businesses – and more incentive to save, both of which reduce consumption.

The impact of raising rates

Higher interest rates can also boost a currency because investors are encouraged to bring money into the country to benefit from higher returns. When the pound is strengthened in this way, imports become cheaper for British households.

But these actions require a delicate balance – the same mechanism can also lead to a recession because lower consumption causes firms to produce and hire less. This is what the Bank of England has forecast for the UK for the next two years.

Economists, however, are not particularly good at forecasting the path of the economy. Sometimes we only discover a recession has occurred after the fact. So, while forecasts are important, they are not to be taken as fact.

Read more: Is the UK in a recession? How central banks decide and why it's so hard to call it

The main issue for the Bank in trying to control inflation right now is that it has been partly caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has led to high energy prices. This increases the cost of many other products, as well as raising the average cost of the basket of goods used to calculate inflation. When inflation is caused by outside factors in this way, it is unlikely that changes in consumption in the UK can affect those prices.

So, if some causes of inflation are outside the Bank’s control, why is it hiking rates to address inflation? Well, energy prices are only one of the drivers behind high inflation. Even when inflation is fuelled by external factors, as long as it is sufficiently persistent, it will eventually be driven by internal factors as well.

This is because companies and households change their expectations, adjusting wages and prices to reflect the new situation of higher inflation. As mentioned, it is not only energy prices that are now rising: core goods and services prices, excluding energy and food, show inflation rates of around 6%.

Prices are rising for most goods and services

Chart showing that core goods and services prices, excluding energy and food, show inflation rates of around 6%, as discussed above.

What’s next?

With this in mind, what can we expect from the Bank of England next? While it says the UK is already in what is likely to be a long recession, the Bank does expect inflation to decline sharply next year. This does not mean a lower cost of living, but it does mean that prices will increase at a slower rate than in the past year.

And while financial markets are currently forecasting interest rates of around 4.75% next year, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, has said there might not be a need to increase interest rates that much.

In fact, the Bank presented two different scenarios for its latest forecast: one in which interest rates increase in line with market expectations, and one where they do not increase again. The differences between the two with respect to inflation were minimal and, unfortunately, both indicate a long recession. But the Bank does not usually feature an alternative scenario so prominently in its reports, so it may be trying to signal that it at least hopes to stop raising interest rates soon.

Unfortunately, uncertainty remains very high. While it has been criticised for acting too slowly to stop recent spiralling inflation, the Bank of England has acknowledged the amount of uncertainty it is currently dealing with – the “unknown unknowns”.

Energy prices may keep rising, particularly if the war in Ukraine continues, and supply chain constraints might tighten up again if armed conflicts start in other parts of the world, or if pandemic-related restrictions are further tightened in countries like China.

This means that there can be no promises regarding future interest rates. But it does seem clear that the Bank of England does not expect to raise interest rates by 3% again next year.

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Voice biometrics: the solution for Call Centers

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If you watch the video that precedes these lines, you have identified yourself with this situation. Why? Because it is a natural and everyday situation: we have all suffered, and continue to suffer, this type of eternal process when we call the customer service line of our telephone company, our energy or electricity company, or our insurance company.

Identity verification processes like this one we have just heard can take almost 2 minutes as long as everything goes right the first time. But, beyond the negative experience we have accumulated as customers, which is no small thing, what are the potential business implications for companies that delegate the verification of their users to methods like these?

Risks faced by the insurance industry

Let’s put some facts on the table:

One of the world’s leading market research firms, LexisNexis, recently published a study on identity management in the insurance sector. This study emphasizes the security and customer experience impacts caused by bad practices in terms of identity verification, not only in call centers.

On the one hand, it is estimated that 18% of policyholders were victims of identity fraud in 2020, either through account theft or fraud in contracting. The thought that almost one in five customers in the insurance sector has been subject to identity fraud should alarm us all.

On the other hand, almost 7 out of 10 respondents said that digitalization had led to increased fraud. In other words, a large majority of respondents were reluctant to incorporate digital methods because of what they saw as an open door to fraudsters. What is the point of all of us making efforts towards a bigger and better digital transformation if our customers may perceive it as harmful?

At Veridas, we have always stated that no total and effective digital transformation will be without a real identity. If we cannot implement secure and private processes to corroborate an identity in the digital world, there will always be an uncovered link in the chain.

In summary, we find ourselves in a scenario in which three significant challenges or risks concur:

  1. To begin with, high exposure to fraud. Apart from the data we have just shown, we all have in mind recent news of identity theft in banks, massive leaks of personal data on social networks such as Facebook, false identities on Twitter, or even fraud in e-commerce sites as apparently innocuous as Wallapop.

  2. On the other hand, and what is perhaps most evident to everyone’s eyes, a worsening of our customers’ experience. The need to prevent any digital fraud has meant deploying increasingly complex verification processes based on multifactor authentication strategies. We have nothing against this, as long as a multifactor plan does not involve accumulating unfriendly and not very robust authentication methods, such as question-based methods or digital tokens, like OTPs.

  3. Finally, it seems necessary to highlight how a landscape of inconsistencies in identity fraud prevention measures is emerging. Companies plan the various customer communication channels as separate, watertight silos, applying ad hoc measures. This leads to inconsistencies in anti-fraud effectiveness, with different levels of security depending on the channel. This is, for the most part, due to the impossibility of finding a method or methods applicable to any channel in a robust and convenient way for the end customer.

Because, what authentication methods exist today? Let’s take a brief look.

Identity verification methods and the tradeoff between security and UX

We will use the classification set by the European Union’s eIDAS regulation, which distinguishes between knowledge methods or factors, possession factors or inherence factors. What is each of these groups and what methods does it include?

The first of all, which refers to knowledge factors, includes those methods that seek to corroborate information that one knows or is aware of. Here we include such long-established methods as passwords, PIN codes or the method based on questions we have heard in the contact center recording. We are all aware of how little security they offer in the fight against fraud as they are easy to hack and do not generate the best customer experience. Who wouldn’t give money to be able to forget all the users and passwords we accumulate daily?

If we move along the security line, we find possession factors, aiming to check if the user has an item or object that only he should own. This adds another layer of security over knowledge elements, but it certainly comes at the expense of the customer experience. Who has never been in the middle of a bank transfer when your bank tells you that they are going to send you an OTP code or a push notification to your mobile to confirm the transaction, and at that moment, you do not have your mobile at hand and you have to cancel the process? This is an excellent inconvenience from a customer experience point of view, but let’s look at it from a security point of view: let’s think that our mobile has been stolen and they are trying to make a bizum or transfer to someone else… Won’t the OTP code reach the same mobile that was stolen and, to top it off, the application will automatically copy and paste it so that the fraudster doesn’t even have to make that effort?

Finally, we have what the European standard calls inherency factors. These methods seek to corroborate who you really are: your biological measurements or physical characteristics, either through facial biometrics, voice biometrics, a fingerprint system, iris recognition, or any other biometric method. If we choose the right technology, and conveniently certified, these are considered the most secure methods that exist, and may exist, because it is really difficult to hack them and they are impossible to forget. In addition, they are the most effective in generating good user experiences, which finally breaks the traditional tradeoff between user experience and security. But I insist that we must rely on qualified and adequately certified providers for this. Not everything goes.

We move from a presumed identity to a real one by applying these biometric methods. We speak of assumed because we are not verifying what one really is, but what one knows or possesses with the previous methods. Have you, who are reading this, never accessed a relative’s cell phone, with their consent, because you know their PIN? Or have you never successfully passed a questionnaire, like the one we heard in the call at the beginning, because you know the personal data of a relative or acquaintance? With biometrics, on the other hand, we are checking what makes people unique, so we would be able to talk about real identity. I cannot delegate my voice or my face, and if I think of doing it through a recording or a photograph, Veridas would be able to detect it.

Applying Biometrics to Call Centers

What is the difference between the two situations in the video at the beginning? Why did one take almost 2 minutes just to verify an identity and the other took only 6 seconds to verify the identity and route the call simultaneously? Is this situation a valid use case?

The answer to the last question is YES. Companies as important as BBVA or Deutsche Telekom, among others, are already using our voice biometrics to improve their customer service processes, making them safer and faster. Veridas voice biometrics can verify an identity with only 3 seconds of voice, in any language and with any text.

Are these features unique? No, by themselves they are not, but the combination of the 3 is. No one on the market offers 99%+ accuracy, with a processing time below 150 milliseconds with 3 seconds of audio, regardless of language and text—no one else.

The application of this technology brings three benefits that until now seemed impossible to apply at the same time: fraud prevention, cost optimization and UX improvement. We were forced to choose between one of these three levers of business improvement, but this is no longer the case.

We significantly improve security with solutions like these as we move from inflexible and easy to supplant methods to secure methods. We also reduce the cost significantly, going from processes that last on average 60, 90 or even 120 seconds to 3-second processes. The reduction in TMO is brutal.

And finally, the customer experience. With total honesty, I can tell you that our customers buy from us because of cost reduction, because the business case comes out on its own, and in return they can “sell” it to their customers as an improved experience, which it is.

Discover biometric solutions for contact centers

What customers or use cases do we have in production?

Let’s briefly review two use cases that highlight the solution’s effectiveness. On the one hand, a leading Spanish company in the energy sector has deployed our solution in its contact center in Spain and will soon deploy it in other geographies of its group. In this case, the solution is integrated just as you have heard in the previous example: it is coupled to their previously established process, with no need to modify the flows that were already in place.

Specifically, Veridas can authenticate the identity of this company’s customers when they answer the open-ended question about the reason for the call, leveraging the answer to route the call and identify the caller. Therefore, the customer never has the feeling of being recognized and the reduction in TMO is over a minute. For a call center that receives about 350,000 calls per month, this measure saves about 6,000 hours per month of a telephone conversation or about 35 FTEs. To date, we already have more than 70,000 customers registered in the voiceprint system and more than 230,000 authentications carried out.

On the other hand, we have the use case of pensioners in Mexico. Until the implementation of Veridas technology, Mexican pensioners needed to go in person to their bank branch to give proof of life if they wanted to receive a pension. BBVA understood that this situation required an urgent solution that would allow its pensioners to carry out the operation remotely but without affecting the security needed for a financial institution of the prestige and standards of BBVA. Veridas voice biometrics offered a solution to both problems and, in addition, it was an ideal technology for the variety of ethnicities, languages, cultures or even socioeconomic situations (having or not internet or the last generation cell phone) of its portfolio of pensioners.

Today, there are already more than 90,000 pensioners registered in the biometric life faith system, and we have already managed more than 125,000 life faiths remotely, with a conversion rate of more than 95 percent.

Learn how Veridas' voice solution achieves a 99% success rate

Is this technology secure?

Remember: not everything is the same. That is why it is essential to demand a minimum level of certification and approval from the technology providers we choose to ensure that we obtain the results they promised. At Veridas we have always been committed, and will continue to be committed, to submitting our technology to independent evaluators who examine us all under the same testing conditions. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) undoubtedly stands out among these evaluators.

Another important aspect is our strict compliance with GDPR. So strict that our technology is private by design and by default. This means that we do NOT store customer data. We only process data and return results, automatically deleting all data from our cloud.

We are also SEPBLAC compliant to assist in preventing money laundering. Finally, our voice biometrics product has been confirmed by the prestigious law firm ÉCIJA as a valid solution for the execution of advanced electronic signatures. And what does this mean? It means that we can allow you to sign new products via telephone without using other methods, robustly and securely.

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Is Rent-A-Girlfriend having a Season 2?

Is Rent-A-Girlfriend having a Season 2? Rent-A-Girlfriend is an anime series adapted from the manga series of the same title written by Reiji Miyajima. The second season featured returning staff and casts, with Studio Comet cooperating in the production. The season aired from July 2 to Septem.

What happens in chapter 218 of Rent-A-Girlfriend? The chapter begins with Kazuya crying over Chizuru. Ruka professes her love for Kazuya but is ignored by Kazuya being immersed with his own thoughts. Throughout the chapter Kazuya then fantasizes about Chizuru engaging in various sexual activities with Umi. The chapter then ends with Kazuya crying in the pool.

Is Ruka Kazuya a girlfriend? Nagomi Kinoshita. Ruka bluntly said that she is Kazuya’s girlfriend, causing Kazuya to panic and explain that she was a friend of Chizuru and is a compulsive liar, to Ruka’s dismay. Nevertheless, Nagomi has stated that she is fond of Ruka and to think of her as her Tokyo grandmother, which Ruka appreciates.

Who wins Rent-A-Girlfriend? In an incredibly poignant moment, Kazuya’s words come from the deepest level of his heart as he tells Chizuru she is the only one he wants to be with. She just stands there, stunned — until Kazuya loses his nerve and amends his words by saying he meant that she’s special as a rental girlfriend.

Is Rent-A-Girlfriend having a Season 2? – Related Questions

Is rent a girlfriend over?

Sadly, we are now coming to the end of the 2022 Summer anime slate, with Rent A Girlfriend concluding its second TV broadcast around the world last week.

Why did Mami break up with Kazuya?

She breaks up with Kazuya after a month saying she likes someone else. This is often a strategy people use to break up with each other when they feel uncomfortable in doing something.

Who kisses Kazuya?

YES! Chizuru, who was quiet the whole time just listening to everything, finally moves and kisses Kazuya!

Why did Ruka fall in love with Kazuya?

For a while, all the people she met with had no effect on her, until she met one who was truly genuine during a coincidental meetup, Kazuya Kinoshita. The sincerity of Kazuya made her fall in love with him and slowly led to her decision to quit her rental girlfriend job.

When was Ruka born?

Ruka Norimatsu

Personal information
Date of birthJanuary 30, 1996
Place of birthAgeo, Saitama, Japan
Height1.64 m (5 ft 41⁄2 in)

Who ends up with Kazuya in rent a girlfriend?

Well, it is the dilemma of choosing between who you love and who loves you. Ruka has been there from the start and is ready to start a proper relationship with Kazuya but she has been ignored by him for so long. Kazuya still chose the girl he opted to let go of, Chizuru.

Does Ruka like Okabe?

Complicating this is the fact that Ruka (both male and female versions) are in love with Okabe — but as a boy he feels this is inappropriate and they could never be together. Although tragic, this extra wrinkle does muddy the waters even further and betrays the story’s basic origins as a dating sim.

Who is rengoku’s wife?

Ruka Rengoku ( 煉 れん 獄 ごく 瑠 る 火 か , Rengoku Ruka?) was the wife of Shinjuro Rengoku, and the mother of Kyojuro Rengoku and Senjuro Rengoku.

Who is rengoku girlfriend?

Mitsuri Kanroji. The two of them share a gluttonous side and enjoyed snacking on their breaks. Mitsuri derived her own unique Breathing Style, Love Breathing, from his Flame Breathing. She holds extreme gratitude towards Kyojuro for his guidance and kindness.

Who did rengoku marry?

Shizuka is seen often teasing Sanemi and making him annoyed, nevertheless, the two had still created a strong bond and relationship with each other. Eventually, after knowing each other for a while, Shizuka finally ended up having the courage and confessed, leading to them getting married after awhile.

We will be happy to hear your thoughts

      Leave a reply


Caryn Robbins

Caryn Robbins is a certified strength and conditioning coach and currently works in enterprise software for improving movement health. Her undergraduate and masters degrees in Exercise Science provide the framework for evidence-based practices, married with the practicality of experience-based knowledge to provide specific guidance and strategy for improving performance.

Within her time as a Division I athletics strength and conditioning coach, she’s worked with dozens of athletes that had the opportunity to move on and play professionally.

"One of the most rewarding parts of my career has been to take what works with elite-level athletes, scale it, and apply it to populations who are simply looking to improve their overall movement health."


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Increasing employment for older workers with effective protections against employment discrimination

Editor's Note:

This report was produced in conjunction with the webinar, "Improving economic opportunity for older workers," co-sponsored by Brookings and the Kellogg Public-Private Initiative.

Observers of older workers’ economic conditions in the United States quickly encounter a paradox. On the one hand, the labor force participation rate among workers aged 55 and older (hereafter “older workers”) is roughly half the rate of prime-age workers (aged 25 to 54).[1] Their employment rate is also far lower.[2] On the other hand, many older workers have insufficient savings to continue their preretirement standard of living in retirement.[3] The paradox is that a large portion of older workers, including many without sufficient retirement savings, are not engaged in the principal activity that facilitates more retirement savings: continued employment.

Seth Harris

Visiting Professor - Cornell Institute for Public Affairs

former acting Secretary of Labor

The consequences of this paradox become more ominous when put in the context of a yawning pension gap that has widened over the past 45 years. Social Security benefits, on average, replace only about 40 percent of preretirement income.[4] So, older workers seeking to sustain their preretirement lifestyles need more retirement income. Employer-provided retirement plans are one important source of that income; however, these plans have changed in a way that makes it more difficult for older workers to ensure they will have adequate retirement income. Employers have largely migrated from defined-benefit (or pension) plans, which provide regular, reliable payments to retirees in predictable amounts for the rest of their lives, to defined-contribution plans, like 401(k) plans, which do not. Defined contribution plans merely give participants the opportunity to save amounts of money they choose (influenced by capped tax protection) that may be augmented by an employer match. Participants invest their own savings, either actively or by default, and bear the risks, including the risks of outliving their money or precipitous market declines like those associated with the recent coronavirus pandemic. Most important defined-contribution plans do not guarantee sufficient savings or produce a predictable and protected lifetime income stream, like a pension would.

In 1975 about 32 percent of employees in the United States (about 29 percent of the total U.S. civilian labor force) had pension plans. In 2016 slightly more than 9 percent of active employees (9 percent of the total workforce) had pensions.[5] If American employers had provided pensions to the same percentage of their employees in 2016 as they had in 1975, almost 51 million employees in the United States would have had pensions—roughly 37 million more workers than have pensions today. This is the pension gap.

The need for a reliable lifelong income supplement to Social Security is apparent to anyone planning for retirement. One obvious hedge against the risks created by the lack of protected lifetime retirement income would be for older workers to earn and save more by continuing to work later in life. Yet that has not been their response, at least to scale. Older workers’ labor force participation rate grew from the mid-1990s until the Great Recession,[6] but not enough to fill the pension gap, much less to help the majority of workers who could not have expected to receive pensions even when they were most common.[7] For example, from 1998 to 2018 the number of older workers participating in the labor force grew by only 9.6 million[8]—roughly one-quarter of the number of workers trapped in the pension gap. Intriguingly, the steepest decline in labor force participation among older workers occurs around age 65 when the day-to-day economics of retirement should be apparent.[9]

We are left with the question begged by our paradox: Why have many millions of older workers not continued to work or returned to work so they might earn more and save adequately for retirement?

This paper will argue that older workers act rationally when they exit employment and the labor force because they are escaping employment discrimination that significantly reduces the economic returns from employment and labor market participation. In this paper, “employment discrimination” means any decision by an employer—for example, hiring, discharge, compensation, promotion, training, and discipline—that disadvantages an older worker, whether intentionally or unintentionally, “because of such individual’s age.”[10]

Section I will describe how statutory protections against discrimination for older workers in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), including as interpreted by the Supreme Court, are weaker than protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act against race, sex, and other forms of employment discrimination. It also will discuss how problems with the interactive process for satisfying the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) reasonable accommodation mandate erect a barrier to the employment and labor force participation of older workers with disabilities. Section II will cite evidence that large majorities of older workers perceive that they face employment discrimination (“perceived discrimination”). This section also will describe evidence that these perceptions are often reality—that is, there is widespread actual discrimination against older workers facilitated, in part, by weak age and disability discrimination laws. Perceived discrimination and actual discrimination combine to pressure older workers to abandon their search for employment and exit the labor market.

Section III proposes four solutions: (1) increase the effectiveness of laws protecting older workers from employment discrimination; (2) prohibit employers from mandating their employees engage in pre-dispute arbitration of age and disability discrimination claims rather than litigating them in state and federal courts; (3) require employers to disclose the number and results of their interactive processes with older workers with disabilities regarding workplace accommodations; and (4) enact comprehensive labor law reform so that more older workers will be protected against discrimination by collective bargaining agreements and union representation.

For a complete list of solutions, read the full report here.

  1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate by Age, Sex, Race and Ethnicity, Table 3.3. (Last Modified Sep. 4, 2019),
  2. Mira Toossi & Elka Torpey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Older Workers: Labor Force Trends and Career Options. (Last Modified May 2017),
  3. See James M. Poterba, Retirement Security in an Aging Population, 104 Am. Econ. Rev. 1–30 (2014).
  4. See Alicia H. Munnell, Social Security’s Real Retirement Age Is 70, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, 5 (Oct. 2013),
  5. Author’s calculations based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,, and U.S. Department of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration, (Table E-7).
  6. See Nicole Maestas & Julie Zissimopoulos, How Longer Work Lives Ease the Crunch of Population Aging, 24 J. of Econ. Persp. 139 (2010) (discussing factors that drove this growth).
  7. See Martin Neil Baily & Benjamin H. Harris, Working Longer Policies: Framing the Issues 9–10 Brookings Institution (Jan. 2019),
  8. Authors’ calculations based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Between 2008 and 2018 the labor-force participation rate of workers aged 55 and older remained essentially unchanged, but the population grew by 5.73 million, so more older workers participated. The demographics of older workers puts downward pressure on the group’s labor force participation. This population segment is older today, on average, than it was in the past. Since workers participate less in the labor force as they age, even within the group of older workers, we would expect the aging of older workers to reduce the group’s overall labor force participation rate.
  9. See Baily & Harris, supra note 7, at 12. See Baily & Harris, supra note 7, at 10.
  10. 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1) (1982).
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The most used spices in Spanish Cuisine

By Chef H. Delgado

October 20, 2022

This week I am opening my pantry to show you my favourite spices. I will give you some examples and tips on how to use them to achieve a good balance of flavours in your dishes and make them successful.

Like all styles of food in the world, Spanish food has its spices in many traditional dishes and tapas; The saffron in the famous "Paella", the "pimentón" in the chorizo mix stuffing, the cumin in lentils stew. Villages who once conquered and inhabited the Iberian Peninsula, such as the Romans or Arabs, and the spice fever of the 15th century, in which European countries, including Spain and Portugal, competed to discover the best trade routes in search of spices, are responsible for the variety of the flavours in Spanish food. We can say that Spanish cuisine is full of spices used by other cultures and are now part of our most familiar flavours.

Rosa do vento (Lisboa)

But before we start with the list of spices in Spanish cuisine, I would like to tell you a little bit about these ingredients that are a gift from nature.

What are spices?

It isn't easy to define what spices are, especially considering that there are more than 400 varieties with different origins, uses and formats. However, spices are substances of vegetable origin used in cooking to give flavour, aroma and colour to the food. They are plant parts that are more densely loaded with flavour than most other ingredients used in cooking. Whereas herbs always come from leafy parts, spices derive from seeds, fruits, roots, stems, and flowers and are usually dried. That said, some intensely flavoured leaves, such as bay and curry leaves, can be considered spices because they are used more as a potent background flavouring than as a fresh addition.

How are they classified?

Although they can also be classified by their flavour, the standard organised way is to group them according to their origin from the plant.

The stem of a plant distributes water and sugars to where they are needed. Few spices derive from stems: lemongrass is the stalk of a tropical grass, and little-known mastic is the dried resin collected from lentisk trees; more famously, cinnamon and cassia are dried pieces of inner and outer bark, respectively, of Cinnamomum trees.

Roots and underground stores

Roots are a plant's lifeline to water and nutrients, and rhizomes, corms, and bulbs are storage chambers that can produce new shoots and roots. Liquorice comes from dried roots, and asafoetida is derived from dried root sap. Turmeric, ginger, galangal, and garlic are all examples of underground stores.

The seeds of flowering plants are contained in fruits, and many have evolved to be sugar-rich to make an appealing animal meal, distributing the seeds over a wide area. Numerous spices are derived from fruits, including allspice, sumac, vanilla, and chillies. Several "seed" spices are technically fruits, including dill and ajwain.

Most spices are seeds; think of cumin, cardamom, mustard, and fenugreek, or less obviously, nutmeg, which is a seed kernel. It is little wonder that plants frequently concentrate their strongest-tasting defensive chemicals in seeds since these are the precious packets of new life that will sprout into the next generation of plants.

Many flowers are known for their attractive aromas, which have evolved to entice insects into paying a visit and pollinating the flower as they do so. Only a few have intense enough appealing flavours to be considered a spice, most famously saffron, whose red strands are pollen-receiving female sex parts (stigmas) of a crocus flower. Another unique flower spice, it may be surprising to discover, is clove.

Now, I will open my pantry to show you my favourite spices. You can also learn how I used each spice by going directly to the links recipes. Have a look and enjoy this festival of colours and flavours.

One of the first spices known since ancient times. Its seeds are used in cakes, sweets and liqueurs such as the French Pastis, the Bulgarian "Mastika", or the Spanish aniseed liqueur.

Star anise

The star anise tree comes from Southwest China, Korea and Japan. Its star-shaped fruits are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine and cuisine, spreading to South Asia and Indonesia. In Japan, it was introduced by Buddhists, and many of these trees can be found in Japanese Buddhist temples. In Spanish cuisine, star anise is widely used to prepare sweets by infusing them in milk. It is also ideal for fish and meat stews and vegetable soups.

Possibly the most characteristic spice of Spanish cuisine. Discovered 3,500 years ago that the saffron flower is believed to have originated in Greece and is, therefore, one of the few spices in Europe. To obtain half a kilo of saffron, you will need about 40 kg of flowers, and each of these flowers has three stigmas which, when dried, will produce the most expensive spice in the world.

 In Spain, it was introduced by the Arabs, adapting perfectly to the Spanish climate and evolving to make the national harvest one of the highest quality worldwide, highlighting the plantations in Extremadura, Andalusia, Murcia, and Castilla la Mancha. Its aroma is intense and exotic. It is the aromatic mainstay of many dishes in our cuisine, such as paellas, traditional meatballs, or seafood stews.

This is the sun-dried bark of the cinnamon tree of Indian origin; it can be used in twigs, pieces or powdered form. Although it is mainly used in desserts, it is also used to add flavour to some meat stews, punches, hot drinks or fruits.

I use it a lot in sprigs to infuse the milk and make desserts or mix it in powdered form with 50% sugar and sprinkle it on desserts such as "torrijas", "buñuelos", or rice pudding. It is a way to make your sugar more attractive, even to add to tea or coffee.

Basically, the dried flower buds of the clove tree. Whole or ground is handled sparingly due to its powerful taste. In sweet recipes, it flavours cakes, biscuits and preserves. At the same time, in savoury dishes, it goes well with pork, rabbit and game meats, in seasonings and in the dressing of red cabbage, in the preparation of moussaka, in mulled wines and in winter punches. One of the last times I used cloves in my cooking was to make an aromatic lemon oil which turned out very tasty, and I still have it in my pantry.

Although originally from the East, cumin arrived in the Mediterranean region 2,000 years ago. It was a spice much appreciated by Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Romans and Greeks. It is very present in Arab, Mediterranean and Spanish cuisine.

It is essential to prepare various types of sausages, chickpea stews, meat stews, vegetable creams, and even the Canarian mojo itself. The list is endless. Besides, it is a common and valued condiment in our traditional kitchens that many homemade dishes have received an extra blessing from cumin.

Turmeric is the spice that gives the characteristic yellowish colour to curry mixtures and is also one of the most beneficial spices for health. Turmeric has a mild, slightly smoky flavour, which combines very well with other spices. You can enrich your stews, sauces, marinades and rice dishes with the beautiful colour and flavour it brings.

Fennel seed

Native to southern Europe, the whole plant is used: bulb, leaves, stems, and seeds. It is characterised by its citric and aniseed flavour and aroma. Focusing on their properties as spice (leaves and seeds), they are ideal for seasoning meats, especially pork or fish. They can also be added to salads, bread, sauces, stews, soups and cakes. It is an ingredient that cannot be missing in the preparation of pickles, such as olives or gherkins. Taken in infusion, it is very effective for eliminating gas and favouring digestion due to its different properties.

It is the fruit of the tropical tree Myristica fragrans and is native to the Moluccas (Indonesia), an archipelago known as the Spice Islands. The nutmeg tree not only gives us this fruit for flavouring dishes in the kitchen. Its shell, the mace, is also highly valued for its similar characteristics, although its flavour and aroma are milder. Essential oils are also extracted, and their use is extended to natural medicine. Nutmeg is also used in many dishes, from béchamel to confectionery. It forms part of spice mixtures such as Garam Masala or Curry, of brines, sausages, punches and, in general, in vegetable recipes, soups, meats, fish, bread and recipes for dairy-based sauces.

Pepper corn

This is possibly one of the most internationally used spices and is also considered one of the oldest. The Piperaceae require humid and warm areas to grow and develop, which is why different types of pepper can be found in disparate parts of the world, such as South America, Asia, and Africa.

 Black, white and green peppers come from the same plant, "piper nigrum", and the differences in colour and flavour result from the seed's maturity level and subsequent drying process. Their flavours are different, so depending on the recipe, one type of pepper or the other may be more suitable. The best-known and most commonly used black pepper is harvested halfway through the ripening process, and the seed is boiled briefly before drying. It is used in grain or powder to season meat, poultry and generally high-protein dishes. Its flavour is the strongest of all the berries of the plant. Green pepper is harvested when the seed is still immature and green in colour. During drying, a chemical compound is usually added to preserve the colour. It can also be fresh, preserved in glass jars, or immersed in water or vinegar. White pepper is obtained from the fully ripe seed. It is used to season meat, poultry, fish, sauces and light-coloured dishes.

Cayenne pepper

It is a small red chilli pepper from Cayenne (named after the city in French Guiana), the family of Solanaceae. The process begins by picking the fruits - chilli peppers - from the bush, allowing them to dry and then grinding them. The fruits will turn from yellow to the final characteristic dark red, during this process. It is a very hot spice that is used in tiny quantities. Cayenne pepper goes very well with seafood; it is used to boil seafood and to make a fish fumet or short fish stock. It can also be added to seafood puddings and fish stews. It is also used to make cheese sauces, spicy dishes, flavoured mayonnaise, stews, soups or game dishes.

It is one of the most characteristic spices of Spanish cuisine. Paprika is nothing more than the powder obtained by grinding peppers. The condition to grind it correctly is that it has been previously dehydrated. The simplest natural drying process is prolonged exposure to the sun. In the Extremadura area, owing to the ripening conditions of the fruit and the climate, the method used is smoking over a wood fire, usually oak. When the peppers are dry, with the appropriate humidity, they are ground, first with mallet mills and then finely, using rotary mills of the old stone type, modified to avoid losses due to dust.

It is used to make many preparations, such as chorizo. It is also used for many marinades and "adobos". I love it to add a smoky touch to my dishes. I have used it in sauces such as prawns in pil-pil sauce or rice dishes like Portuguese duck rice. It mustn't be over-roasted because it can add bitter aromas if you pass it.

Bay leaf

Bay leaves come from the bay tree, a legendary evergreen growing throughout the Mediterranean. The good laurel keeps its green and crumbled leaf, giving off a delightful, bitter, and intense aroma. It is used in marinades, potajes, and stews.

Vanilla is one of the most recognised spices in the world. The Aztecs adored it for its digestive and stimulating properties. It has an exquisite aroma and unmistakable flavour, making it a highly prized element in gastronomy and the perfume industry.

It is an indispensable ingredient in pastries, ice crea, and it is present in dishes such as rice pudding, crème brûlée, custard and a whole host of regional cakes and sweets.

The best way to use it if you can get a natural pod is to remove the seeds with a knife and add it to a liquid medium such as cream, milk or egg.

A relative of ginger, it is the third most expensive and widely used spice in the world after saffron and vanilla. It is a green berry from which the seeds are extracted and ground and used to flavour rice, bread, desserts and curries, as well as to flavour coffees and teas. There is a large variety in India, and in Arab countries, it is often chewed to freshen breath. It is also used in perfumes. It has an intense aroma with a lemony to spicy taste.

And so much for this journey of colours and flavours through Spanish cuisine. I have to tell you that there are many spices that I have left out of the list, and also many dried herbs that could be considered spices, such as oregano, thyme, rosemary, garlic powder and some others.

I hope you enjoyed it and I wish you a tasty week!

I'm Chef H. Delgado

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When an enterprise introduces Power BI, it aims to create an environment where business users can conduct their own self-service analysis to create business intelligence. Knowing how to use Power BI is critical for the success of these types of business intelligence projects. But I suppose you already knew that, because you took out time to read this. Beyond knowing the tool (or tools that I explained in an Power BI tool chest Part 1 & Part 2), many other factors are also critical to the success of the BI project, such as the following:

  • A common understanding of business intelligence and a definition of key performance indicators
  • Organization’s readiness for a BI project
  • Self-service BI project best practices knowledge
Self Service Analytics factors

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is the provision of reliable, relevant information to the appropriate decision-makers within the timeframe necessary to facilitate successful decision-making.

Definition of BI

Better decision-making is the aim of a business intelligence project. By better, I mean decisions based on evidence. This could be long term strategic planning. It could be shorter-term tactical decisions. It could be up-to-the-minute scheduling . Perhaps the BI infrastructure of your company can be used for all of the above.

Defining KPIs

Based on this definition of business intelligence, one of the first criteria is to determine what information is going to be of value to the decision-makers. This is achieved by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) for your organization. The KPI represents some critical aspect of the organization’s service. It shows the health of your company in a specific region.
Use the requirements in the following sections to ensure that your KPIs represent the overall health of your company.

Activity, Not Curiosity

As different values are suggested to serve as KPIs for your organisation, it is necessary to ensure that they are not included to just satisfy the interest of the decision-maker. The decision-maker should be able to identify the particular behavior that the company will take in response to variances in the KPI value. If values outside the defined normal range do not cause a response of any kind, this is not a true KPI for your organization.

A wide variety of KPIs should be chosen to cover all facets of the organization. The purpose is to build a holistic image. Financial KPIs are very significant. However, in order to have a full picture of the wellbeing of the company, all aspects of the organization must be reflected. KPIs should be identified for sales, order fulfillment, production, retention of customers, and so on.

Forward Looking

Plan your KPIs to be as forward-looking as possible. This allows you more time to respond when a number is out of the normal range. Last month’s sales figures may provide a key indicator of the health of the company, but it is too late in the process to allow time for any corrective action when that number dips. Instead, the KPI in the sales pipeline can provide a better number to answer to when making decisions.

Easily understood

KPIs should be readily understood by those who are using them. If the KPI is the product of a complicated formula, it can be difficult to understand exactly what the numeric says about the company. Defining what constitutes the standard range of the KPI may be troublesome. When KPI strays from the given normal range, it can be difficult to know what adjustments need to be made to get it back to where it should be. Whenever possible, use simplicity when describing KPIs to make it easier to understand and respond more clearly.
If a more complicated KPI is the only one that will suffice, be sure to provide documentation and training so that decision-makers can appreciate the KPI both now and in the future.


Birds can contaminate buildings and pavements with their droppings and keep us from our sleep with their constant noise. Our houses are contaminated and the carefully built image of your company is destroyed with a couple of well targeted droppings. Few people know that it is possible to resolve bird nuisance, which is why these problems are often simply accepted for years.

However, this is not necessary, because the Plagen Preventie Dienst has the perfect solution for your bird problem.

Birds are beautiful creatures that can bring us great joy under normal circumstances. However, if they live too close to humans, in too great numbers, they can cause a lot of nuisance and contamination and cause a serious health risk. The bewildered feral pigeons in particular are a major problem in many cities with regard to this. They mainly breed in urban areas because they’ll find everything they need there. In places where a lot of people come, there always is plenty of food and, in addition, there are plenty of dry, high places in the city where pigeons can settle without being bothered. In addition to bewildered pigeons, starlings, house sparrows, herring gulls and jackdaws can also cause nuisance. Through their droppings (14 kg per pigeon per year) pigeons and other birds can spread all kinds of diseases (such as Ornithosis and paratyphoid) and they can carry parasites such as mites and ticks. In their nests, all kinds of pests can exist (moths, flies, carpet beetles, dust lice). Plenty of reasons to fend-off and exterminate these pests.

The method to permanently keep pigeons or other birds off buildings and other structures is affixing inhibition systems made especially for this purpose. The most used systems are included in one of the following categories:

Pin systems
Wire systems
Electrical systems
Net systems

These control systems are applied to roofs, roof edges, facades, window frames, signboards, neon signs and other places where birds cause nuisance, to prevent them from being able to land and / or settle. The system used depends on various factors. The bird species is important in the decision on what control system is to be used, as is the purpose for which the birds use the object to be protected; as a lookout, a resting place during the day, a sleeping place or a nesting facility. This is called to so-called load resistance. Your EWS advisor will carry out a thorough inspection and inventory on site to determine what system will be effective.

In addition to applying control systems, the situation on site is important as well. Clean terrains are less interesting to birds and of course the birds should never be fed.

Driving off
When large groups of starlings (mainly in the winter) use buildings, transmission towers etc as a sleeping place it is possible to use audio records of screaming and bangs and light flashes to drive off the birds. When this method is applied a number of consecutive days in a professional manner, it can be extremely effective. You can also turn to EWS for advice about acoustic bird control.

In certain situation, active bird prevention, preferably combined with control measures can be a good solution. In this, the birds are captured with cages or shooting nets or killed off under certain circumstanced.

Cellar fungus

The cellar fungus often grows in areas with moist or wet conditions such as groundwork, rising damp or leaking sewer systems or roofs. The cellar fungus grows rapidly and affects both softwood and hardwood. Wood species of sustainability class I are not affected, class II rarely. Because of the consistently high humidity in crawling spaces, these areas are easily affected, as are roof structures in case of leakage.

The spores of the cellar fungus sprout quickly in favourable conditions, after which the fungal threads, called hyphen, penetrate the wood. These hyphen have a diameter between 0.0005 and 0.005 mm and are not visible to the naked eye. Initially, the hyphen are white. On the wood surface, mycelium, entangled hyphae are rarely formed. In some places, for instance under linoleum and behind plinths, a thin degradation can be visible similar to that of dry rot. If mycelium develops on the surface of wood or stone, this only consists of thin hyphen of 1 to 2 mm that branch out in a fan-shaped manner and that look like roots or vines and have a dark brown to black colour. Fruiting bodies are rarely found in buildings. Initially it consists of an ochre coloured thin plate of about 3 mm, which later turns olive brown, with an irregular shape, covered with small nodules. It may vary in size from several centimetres to over 50 cm in diameter. The edge remains yellowish white. The spores created by the fruiting body, are dark brown, oval and very small, with a length of 0.008 to 0.0013 mm and a diameter of 0.005 to 0.009 mm. They spread through the airflow or insects, which completes the cycle.

The cellar fungus is family of the brown rot inducing fungi. The degradation of cellulose and hermicellulose, destroys the walls of the wood cells. At first, the wood has a dark discolouration that can turn almost black in an advanced stage. Characteristic are the cracks that run in the fibre direction of the wood. This is often visible in smaller wood, such as in windows and frames, whereas in larger wood, such as beams cracks will also be visible, perpendicular to the fibre direction, causing cube-shaped elements similar to the damage caused by dry rot, but less sharply defined.

Internal deposits
Another important characteristic of the cellar fungus is the interior deterioration of the wood, in which a thin layer of 3 to 4 mm of healthy wood remains in tact at the surface. Even in an advanced stage, often just a small deviation and discolouration of the surface is the only signal that the wood has been affected by cellar fungus. For non-experts, the cellar fungus is hard to identify.

Cellar fungus

Not only because of the germination of the spores can wood be affected by cellar fungus, but also by hyphen of previously inflicted damage. Cellar fungus affects wood with a moisture level of 40 to 60% with an optimum of more than 50% In 21 degrees it develops the fastest, and in 35 degrees it still shows minor growth. In 0 degrees the growth stops, but even -30 degrees won’t kill it. For a treatment against cellar fungus or other fungi, please contact the EWS.


Sourcefire’s open source framework for deep threat inspection

Sourcefire announced Razorback, an open source framework designed to deliver deep inspection capabilities for combating today’s most complex threats.

Developed to help coordinate the response against Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), it enables users to easily collect, analyze and store threat data from disparate technologies, so that they can implement customized enterprise- and threat-specific detection and remediation.

Razorback’s goal is to act as an overlay solution and deliver centralized correlation, analysis and action by coordinating Intelligence Driven Response (IDR) processes using custom built and existing security tools (anti-virus, IDS, gateways, email, etc.). IDR goes beyond traditional incident response. It allows users to drive the information learned about specific attackers back into their security infrastructure for a truly customizable response to human adversaries.

Razorback provides deep analysis and reporting by storing, in full, every piece of data identified that could indicate a compromise or attack and specifically highlights the components of that data which cause the system to trigger an alert. Additionally, it enables targeted forensics information on common attack vectors.

The Razorback framework performs detection in near-real time (in terms of seconds), allowing for in-line blocking on “store and forward” services, such as email services or web proxies, and providing timely alerts in the event of an attack. It also provides enterprises with the ability to convert intelligence gathered on attacker methodology into detection capabilities, enabling them to rapidly develop and protect against targeted threats or Zero-Day vulnerabilities.

Sourcefire will continue to develop additional capabilities and publish data collectors, detection engines, analysis software and output handlers to maximize the value of Razorback and encourage innovation from the open source community. Like other open source technologies, Razorback is available at no charge.

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I am fascinated and curious about humans and human development. Kea has provided a fulfilling vehicle for me to do what I am passionate about every day both internally with our team and externally with our clients and candidates. I don’t see the person in front of me as a transactional relationship, I see them as a someone I can learn from and be a longstanding contributing part of their professional journey. What a privilege.

Drive to Improve

The belief that there is always more of the journey to go on for ourselves and our team. How can I be a better leader, mentor, how else can we provide a better service to our clients, are we evolving enough, are we doing enough to train our staff better.

Instead of focusing on the end, we focus on the journey. We care deeply about the work we do and the people we’re doing it with. This can be reflected by the fact that we keep in touch with people whether we place them or not. We focus on how we have added value to the candidates and clients we worked with. That is hugely important and what we feel differentiates us.


Lab Manager | Run Your Lab Like a Business

Peptides That Can Be Taken as a Pill

Researchers have developed a new method that identifies double-bridged peptides that bind a disease target of interest and survive enzymes of the gastrointestinal tract

C. Heinis (EPFL)

Hope to generate more stable peptides came from "cyclic" peptides, whose ends are joined together by chemical bridges making them more stable than linear ones because their backbones are less flexible and thus harder to attack by enzymes. In 2018, the research group of Christian Heinis at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) developed a peptide format termed double-bridged peptides, where peptides are cyclized by two chemical bridges that provide even higher stability. Despite its success, most such peptides were not sufficiently stable to survive the enormous enzymatic pressure found in the gastrointestinal tract.

Related Article: New Pill Can Deliver Insulin

First, billions of genetically encoded random peptide sequences are cyclized by two chemical bridges that impose conformational constraints onto the peptides' backbones so that they are more difficult to attack by enzymes. Second, this library of peptides is exposed to enzymes from cow intestine to eliminate all those peptides that are not stable. In the third and last step, the scientist dip target proteins into the pool of surviving peptides to fish out those that bind to the wanted disease target. "It's a bit like searching a needle in a haystack, and this method makes this easy," says Heinis.

Heinis's group is now applying the new method to develop oral peptides that act directly on gastrointestinal targets, meaning that they don't need to travel into the blood stream. "We are focusing on chronic inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis as well as bacterial infections," says Heinis. "We have already succeeded in generating enzyme-resistant peptides against the interleukin-23 receptor, an important target of these diseases, which affect millions of patients worldwide without any oral drug available."

- This press release was originally published on the EPFL website


Lab Manager | Run Your Lab Like a Business

The Impact of Human-Caused Noise Pollution on Birds

Researchers explore the value of continent-wide analyses

Cornell University

Great Blue HeronGreat Blue HeronCredit: Martin Harrison/courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Anthropogenic noise pollution (ANP) is a globally invasive phenomenon impacting natural systems, but most research has occurred at local scales with few species. Researchers in this study investigated continental-scale breeding season associations with ANP for 322 bird species to test whether local-scale predictions related to breeding habitat, migratory behavior, body mass, and vocal traits are consistent at broad spatial extents for an extensive group of North American bird species in the continental United States.

For each species, researchers calculated the association between the breeding season occurrence and ANP, using spatially-explicit estimates of ANP from the National Park Service and weekly estimates of probabilities of occurrence based on observations from the eBird citizen science database from 2004 to 2011.

Species that breed in human modified habitats were associated with twice the level of ANP as species breeding in forested habitats. Residents and migratory species did not differ in their associations with ANP, but songs were less complex among forest breeding species and increased in complexity with increasing ANP. These findings suggest that local ANP observations do not necessarily scale-up to continental extents. However, the findings do indicate that vocal traits, such as song complexity, could be useful to understand how ANP is affecting birds across spatial scales.


Senate Labor Committee Passes Three Apprenticeship Bills

Trenton – The Senate Labor Committee today approved three bills that would strengthen current apprenticeship programs and allow for the creation of a new job training program for apprentice workers.

The first bill, S-4207, sponsored by Senate President Steve Sweeney, would increase the registration fees assessed under the Public Works Contractor Registration Act, strengthen the provisions of that law regarding the enforcement of the program requirements and require certification with federal requirements of compliance for apprenticeship programs.

“It is imperative that we ensure our apprenticeship programs are properly following requirements,” said Senator Sweeney (D-Gloucester/Salem/Cumberland). “We have recently seen an uptick of programs that are not complying with regulation—and that is unacceptable. By having the Department of Labor ensure that the programs meet all requirements, we will be able to make sure that all public works apprenticeship programs are operating appropriately under the established requirements.”

Under the bill, the apprenticeship program registration fees will rise to $500 for the initial and second annual registration, and after two years the fee would be raised to $750. Additionally, contractors registering their apprenticeship program within the Department of Labor would be required to provide a certification form, provided by the commissioner, which would establish that the program the contractor is participating in meets all of the requirements of the Public Works Contractor Registration Act and the federal requirements for registered apprenticeships.

The second bill, S-1573, sponsored by Senator James Beach, would establish the “New Jersey Works Act.” The bill would permit businesses to create pre-employment training programs in partnership with nonprofit organizations or educational institutions.

“Investments from this bill would be a huge asset for low- to moderate-income families that may not be able to pay for relevant workforce training programs,” said Senator Beach (Camden/Burlington). “We have seen success in other states that have implemented financial incentives to improve job training programs, and it is time for New Jersey to join that list. By implementing this program, we can create equal employment opportunities for all workers.”

Under the bill, institutions of higher education, comprehensive high schools, county vocational schools or nonprofit organizations would be able to partner with a business to establish a pre-employment and work readiness training program. The purpose of the program would be to recruit, prepare, and educate individuals for entry-level jobs with long-term career potential through paid training programs.

Additionally, businesses would be able to receive a credit against their corporation business tax or gross income tax in order to fully cover any financial assistance provided to support a qualified pre-employment and work readiness training program that is approved by the State Employment and Training Commission. A maximum of $12 million in tax credits per State fiscal year would be granted to eligible businesses.

The third bill, S-3585, sponsored by Senator Linda Greenstein, would allow participating partners in a school-to-apprenticeship linkage program to make agreements allowing secondary classroom experience to count as credit towards the classroom training portion of the program.

“School-to-apprenticeship linkage programs combine work-based, on-the-job learning with relevant technical education in the classroom, allowing participants in these programs to develop innovative and creative ideas,” said Senator Greenstein (D-Middlesex/Mercer). “By expanding the requirements of classroom training, we can help those participating in these programs develop exceptional skills as they are able to increase their involvement within fields they find appealing. This bill is critical to help our future workers become well-rounded in the field they enjoy without needing the conventional classroom training that may not work for everyone.”

Under the bill, partners participating in the agreement would be required to consult and gain approval from the United States Department of Labor before making agreements to authorize secondary classroom experience as credit towards the apprenticeship program.