865-769-2611 jeff@preparetolast.com

What should certainly become the focus of company plank meetings? In the event the board is certainly diverse, just how should it communicate? It should certainly not be simply a meeting of folks that are experts in the marketplace, but the time to take action. Board group meetings should give attention to the future tricks of the company, rather than on reviews. If the plank is different, ensure you will discover opportunities to involve different individuals of the business. It should include time for organized discussions without the CEO present.

The a matter of minutes of the achieving should be properly saved. goodbye world dev These types of minutes ought to accurately magnify the decisions made, along with any issues or activities the directors have. It is essential to include all of the relevant facts, including dissents and prolonged arguments. A company’s a few minutes should be given the green light by the chair before getting published. Once approved, the minutes turn into a legally capturing document to get the company. Therefore, it is critical to have an accurate record of every aboard meeting.

The agenda pertaining to company mother board meetings is typically set by simply many shareholder. However , the character of the CEO can also establish the develop. Economic periods and the level of the business can also effect the sound of the events. A young start up may need a different sort of board intention than a grow privately-held company. It is important to note that the period of time for the board conferences may vary depending on the stage the company is in. But the most crucial topics should be on the intention.


This year, the demand for anonymous coins has grown significantly, allowing both the identity of the participants and the transaction amount to be hidden. ZCash is the second most capitalized confidential network with $1.4 billion. On May 11, the developers announced the upcoming update 5.0.0, which caused the coin to grow by 37% from the local minimum in the following days.

ZCash uses the zk-SNARK protocol, where transactions are encrypted, and zero-knowledge proof is responsible for the reliability of operations. It allows one participant to prove the truth of a statement to another without revealing any information beyond the statement itself. Simply put, it is not necessary to have all the information to carry out operations, and at the same time they will be checked to the proper extent.

In the first zero-disclosure protocols, participants had to make several rounds of information exchange to confirm the validity of the statement. Now one message is enough for this, the length of the proof itself is less than a kilobyte, and it takes several milliseconds to verify.

On May 31, NU5 will be updated at block 1 687 104, which includes the Orchard secure payment protocol and the Halo verification system. The update will open up the possibility of conducting confidential and reliable transfers on mobile phones. According to ZCash founder Bryce Wilcox, NU5 is a historic step for all mankind, as it translates zero–knowledge proof into general-purpose technology.

Zcash has a high degree of security and relies on the work of miners, just like Bitcoin.

However, Bitcoin is a public network, which can be used by attackers, tracking wallets with large transactions for subsequent identification of a potential victim. In addition, the sender may compromise himself in the case of transfers to “undesirable” persons. In ZCash, these risks are excluded.

In April of this year, it became known that one of the participants in the ZCash launch ceremony was Edward Snowden. As an ex-employee of the US NSA said: “free trade is impossible without a free currency, and it is ZCash that brings us closer to this ideal.”


Niche partitioning among three snail-eating snakes revealed by dentition asymmetry and prey specialisation

  • Si-Min Lin (Contributor)

1. The level of dentition asymmetry in snail-eating snakes may reflect their prey choice and feeding efficiency on asymmetric land snails. The three species of Pareas snakes (Squamata: Pareidae) in Taiwan, which are partially sympatric distribution on the island, provide a potential case to test the hypothesis of niche partitioning and character displacement with regard to dentition asymmetry and specialisation in feeding behaviour. 2. In this study, behavioural experiments confirmed that P. formosensis feeds exclusively on slugs, whereas P. atayal and P. komaii consumed both. However, P. atayal more efficiently preys on land snails than P. komaii, exhibiting a shorter handling time and fewer mandibular retractions. 3. Micro-CT and ancestral character reconstruction demonstrated the lowest asymmetry in P. formosensis (the slug specialist), the highest dentition asymmetry in P. atayal (the land snail specialist), and flexibility in P. komaii (the niche switcher): increased dentition asymmetry when sympatrically distributed with the slug eater (character displacement), and decreased asymmetry when living alone (ecological niche release). 4. Ecological niche modelling showed that the distribution P. formosensis is associated with the presence of slugs, while that of P. atayal could be explained by the land snails. Combining the results from morphology, phylogeny, behavioural experiments and ecological niche modelling, we showed that competition in the sympatric region might have facilitated character displacement among congeners, while absence of competition in allopatric region has led to ecological niche release.
Date made available2020 Jan 1
PublisherUnknown Publisher

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Blomus FERA Side Table, Black $195.00

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First book chapter of The Swedish story: From extreme experiment to normal nation

This is still a draft so do not qoute. To be published in spring 2013 as a book-on-demand print. Support the book by crowdsharing at Crowdculture or like the book Facebook page.

Table of contents

Chapter 1: Land of extremes
Chapter 2: History of Sweden 1000 – 1930
Chapter 3: Hubris 1930- 1970
Chapter 4: Humiliation 1970 – 2000
Chapter 5: Hope 2000
Chapter 6: Contemporary extremes
Chapter 7: Normal Sweden
Afterword by an extreme Swede

Governments 1876 – 2014
Parties in parliament 2010 – 2014

Chapter 1: Land of extremes

The title The Swedish Story: From extreme experiment to normal nation needs some explanation. There is an abundance of stories and details and many heroes and villains in the follwing pages. Scandals, sex and bodily fluids will occur as well as Soviet submarines, phallic trumpets, film, fiction and welfare art tricksters. Everything has happened as written. No exaggeration is needed in the land of extremes.

The first part of the subtitle, extreme experiment, comes from economist Assar Lindbeck’s 1997 article “The Swedish Experiment” where he wrote:

“Why should foreign observers be interested in economic and social conditions in Sweden? The best answer is probably that institutions and policies in Sweden have been rather experimental, and that some of these experiments may also be relevant for other developed countries. Sweden may therefore be seen not only as a small country on the periphery of Europe, but also as a large (‘full-scale’) economic and social laboratory.”

Note here that professor Lindbeck states in a scientific article that Sweden is an existing social laboratory where planners may try out new utopian and extreme policies with real human beings. The results revealed in this book are as bewildering as the staggering costs.

The second part of the subtitle is from German writer Hans-Magnus Enzensberger’s 1992 collection of essays In defence of the normal . He states that the normal has gotten a bad reputation and surpassed by the abnormal. But by the time, being abnormal becomes the new normal, épater le bourgeois the everyday routine. The Swedish kind of welfare art tricksters will appear with their tiresome provocations that are routine rather than exception in Swedish art and politics. All attitude, no content. Ideology not art. All left.

The two sources of terms in the subtitle, an article on welfare economics and an essay on European decency, cover the areas of intellectual curiosity that make up the arguments in chapters that follow. On the one hand, politics, business, economy and law, on the other ethnology, stories, culture and morals. Together with the strange stories that will surprise most people, the story of Sweden will be told from the outsider, the normal person trying to inhabit an extreme nation. Sweden is not a normal country but may be. Only by reading this book will this fact be understood, appreciated and possibly lead to action. You as non-Swedish reader have an important role to play.

Every country needs to have its self-image criticized now and then. What was normal in apartheid South Africa seemed extreme to the rest of the world after 1960. Today North Koreans live what they believe are normal lives which for all thinking and feeling people seem maddening. During the Balkan crisis, what had been normal divisions between ethnic groups erupted into extremes. Sweden is far from any of these regions but there is a Swedish normality which is extreme by all standards. Some good, some bad. Taken together, Sweden is an extreme country which makes questioning Swedes like me and most visitors question whether it is us that are extreme in trying to uphold sanity and normality or the country? For me there is no question. We are not extreme but Sweden is. We are normal and Sweden is not. The Swedish story will give some clues, but it is not a scholarly work. It is written with a fervor that comes from living and thinking a double life. One life of extremes which is normal in Sweden and another life trying to stay normal by global standards which is extreme in Sweden. Lives that are extreme by any global and sane standards are normal in Sweden and vice versa. National schizophrenia is rampant but not diagnosed until now.

The aim of this book is threefold with two lesser goals and one gigantic:

1. To expose the shortcomings of a large welfare state and high taxation.
2. To show the Swedish conformist and silent national character.
3. To make Sweden into a normal nation, not extreme

The first has been the topic of debate of welfare economics and clientelism since many decades. In some OECD countries, Sweden has been used as a sorry example of those wanting to tax and spend a sclerotic dull welfare state with totalitarian tendencies. Others, including leading economists and newspapers in USA and UK, praise Sweden for what is considered its clever and stable economic policy. Critique of large welfare states from the center-right field of politics will surface in the forthcoming pages, but these conservative or libertarian critical comments will not solely be in focus here. Instead will the steady Swedish support for the welfare state from all political areas including the political parties to the right be discussed. The historical roots for this broad support are much deeper than usually noted when blaming socialist and ambitions welfare state policies. National traits run much deeper than politics and the Swedes like their state to take care of them. They willingly pay high taxes and get something in return, even if they never completely understand how much they pay and what they get back. Still Sweden functions well, even if lower taxes and a smaller government will be needed in coming decades. The current changes of welfare economics go in the right direction, so there is less to worry about, in contrast to the second aim for this book.

The second topic, the dull, conformist and totalitarian streaks in the smooth welfare state, has also been the topic of studies and stories over the years. However, this book gives an updated version of the Swedish conformism and correctness in media, education and policy, among citizens and undemocratic repression of free thought. The last decades of identity politics and dominance from the cultural left play a large role building on earlier traits of rural awkwardness and welfare state social engineering, resulting in self-censorship, learned helplessness and a pathological need for security. While the first aim to change Swedish welfare state foundations are both unwanted and not yet immediate, the aim to stop repression of free thought and open debate is something this book supports strongly. Paying high taxes might do, but silence not. Combination of the two is maddening, to pay and shut up, which is what most Swedes do. The dominance of political conformism and citizens’ fear to speak their mind are becoming worse and going in the wrong direction, especially after the racially and right-wing politically motivated Norwegian massacre of 2011.

The last megalomaniac ambition of writing this book is my conviction that Swedes are unable to change their extreme country into a normal Western democracy. Help must come from immigrants and foreign readers who do not take Swedish extremes for granted. Last chapter will explain how that change may come about.

This chapter is divided into three parts. First, the most common picture of the Swedish, or sometimes called the Scandinavian (or sometimes named Nordic) welfare state Model is presented. Then the strange concept of state individualism is presented, which is an idea of the extreme Swedish identity. Lastly a story from a perceptive Polish writer living in Sweden on his first encounter with the welfare services in the land of extremes.

To the world, Sweden wants to be known for its naturalness, innovation, compassion and openness which can be reduced to being progressive . A slick modern market economy yet caring and equal, the Swedish Model has been described in many ways as coming from strict economy, political ideology or pure nationalism. A common way to analyze the model is to view the successful economic story over a century. Then it is obvious that Sweden has had a successful economic growth from 1870 -1970 based on:

Mixed economy – capitalism and planned economy with strong national control over capital flows, credit and interest rates
Corporativism – good independent relations between employers’ federations and labour unions, organized interest groups and popular movements supported by government
General welfare state policy – universal welfare programs that also benefit the middle class
Rehn – Meidner model – unions support structural change and fair wage policy (wages paid according to agreements, not business ability to pay)

The role of institutions in the economy is crucial to explain the success of poor and isolated 19th century Sweden becoming rich in the 20th century. Due to a homogenous equal population, political mobilization, free trade and emerging un-corrupt government administration after 1850, trust evolved in the emerging popular institutions that became foundations of the welfare state from 1900.

Sweden is split along two sectors, government and private, in ways that are more accentuated than elsewhere. The two make up the capitalist welfare state. Without technologically advanced exporting industries, the welfare state would not obtain enough taxes. But the welfare state also contributes to provide good conditions for innovation, social services and infrastructure. The two sectors work in tandem and understand each other well. Below are the two sectors presented

The modern Swedish welfare state that some view critically, and some with admiration, has some extreme economic and social features:
1. Government spending in 55 % of GDP (EU/OECD average 45 %).
2. Taxes in total more than 50% ( EU/OECD average 45 %).
3. 65 years of last 80 years social democratic labour party has been in power.
4. Almost 20 % of citizens age 20 – 64 wholly supported by welfare benefits
5. More than 20 % of all single mothers need welfare benefits in full or partly
6. 25% public sector employees in work force (OECD average 15%)
7. 9/169 position in UN Human development index

Conclusions from these figures may be that an expansive welfare state is burdensome but gets good UN ratings. But this is not the case when we look at the global market rankings of same country where Sweden is a well-functioning capitalist high-tech country :

1. Position 4/167 Global Democracy Index, The Economist
2. 4/178 Corruption Perception, Transparency International
3. 2/50 Country reputation, Reputation Institute
4. 3/ 142 Global competitiveness, World Economic Forum
5. 2/125 Innovation index, INSEAD
6. 2/134 Knowledge economy, World Bank
7. 1/131 Innovation capacity, European Business School

Sweden is viewed as an ideal for capitalism and innovation, even if indexes of economic freedom are less impressive. Economic freedom of the world 2012 index (Fraser Institute) ranks Sweden at 30 of the 141 countries measured . The Economist looked up to the ‘North star of Sweden’ with ‘The New Model’ as the best student in the tough EU financial class and Stockholm as world number 6 best city to live in. Financial Times followed and selected moderate (former conservative) Anders Borg as best finance minister in EU 2011.

A growing proportion of Swedes have become more faithful to welfare state since neoliberalism appeared in early 1990s. 75 % of polled Swedes by 2010 imagined themselves even willing to pay more taxes if they went to government health services. By 1997, 67 % held that view . Since 2006 when center-right coalition took power, support has risen for government-run welfare services, especially among middle class voters. A paradox since this non-socialist coalition traditionally had stood for smaller government, but won by changing the election campaign to promise better government, not smaller.

Critics of large welfare stateism could argue that the reformed and slimmed welfare state after 1990s has gotten its renewed support because of these changes and liberalizations (school vouchers, health choices, deregulation of government corporations, topping up with private alternatives etc.). Paradoxes emerge. A reformed socialist initiated welfare state works if run by center-right or market oriented socialist governments dedicated to piecemeal social engineering with no red or blue utopias getting in the way. Historical signposts are a kind of low key politics of the European 18th century rational enlightenment, 19th century romantic ideals of equality and 20th century democratic reformism. Capitalism and welfare seem to join hands in beliefs of technology, individualism and secular rationality, resulting in a specifically Swedish modernity. But there is a price to pay even if few Swedes know it.

Regular Swedes contribute to the large welfare state with their daily expenses and monthly wages. Welfare state technocrats are clever in their ways to design new invisible taxes. Of total 46 % taxes of GDP, 25 percentage points come from invisible taxes. The smaller part of 21 percentage points is seen on pay cheques and is often lamented yet tolerated. Few even know about the major invisible part. Suppose an employee costs in total $10/hour by an employer, which means that with the $10, all expenses for this particular employee are included. The table below show disposable income, visible and invisible:

$10 Net salary paid from employer but not seen by employee
-$2,5 Deducted as payroll tax by employer to various governmental social insurance schemes incl. 18 % for pensions but also 9 % to government with no specifications (löneavgift)
$7, 5 Salary seen by employee and agreed to in contract
-$2.5 Municipal income tax for low and medium salaries, but higher for higher
$5.00 Money to spend on services and goods
-$1.00 Value added tax (VAT, 25 %, second highest in EU)
$4.00 Amount to spend out of a total of $10

The $2.5 in payroll tax is absolute minimum. Usually the employer and union have agreed on higher levels, $3 – 3, 5, in voluntary agreements but done under pressure from unions. These agreements are collective and for all, whether union members or not. The payroll taxes for social benefits and agreed minimum salaries are protected by unions who may interfere in industrial disputes outside their union domain. On top of that, 20 % of all citizens pay an extra national tax if the salaries are higher than average. This national tax is progressive so the more you earn the higher tax. With these additions, the sum of disposable income is more often $3 and even less if you use tobacco, petrol, alcohol and other highly taxed goods. Thus Swedes are drawn into collective agreements on salaries and benefits without their knowledge. To volunteer to work for a lower salary or with lesser social benefits than agreed collectively is not possible, not even in theory.

The secret way to tax Swedes to use governmentally administered and mandatory social benefits for pension, sick leave support and other benefits as shown above leaves no option to use that part of salaries for private pension schemes or save or spend at one may wish. With progressively higher taxes on higher wages, incentives for careers and higher education are small. Professionals who chose Sweden for work may come for the welfare services and maybe because their work was relocated, but they seldom come to start a career, work hard and get some money. They might voice their thoughts about how high taxes or how the political system represses any dissent but will be excused. Dissenting Swedes on the contrary face all kinds of repression of thought and silence themselves. Only with more non- Swedes will anything happen as the Swedes themselves are afraid to act, I will argue in the last chapters.

Sweden has been compared to all other nations as being the most self-expressive, rational and secular country in the world according to the cultural map of the world done by World Values Survey in 2008 . Sweden is the absolutely most modern and most lonely country in the world, as there is no country quite like it in its extreme position. Befitting image as it pictures both the extreme and solitary position of the nation and its citizens.

©Inglehart & Welzel.

The diagram should be read as follows : Traditional on the vertical axis values emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook. Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. These societies place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable. Self-expression values on the horizontal axis show the ability and tolerance to stand out from the survival values of the collective, usually family and society. Swedes are then the most self-expressive people in the world. The particular Swedish interpretation of expression is rather independence from family and society, not necessarily expression any certain individual values .

In the upper right corner, Sweden reigns in splendid isolation, way apart from Norway and Denmark. Post-materialist values are more important than careers and material wealth. Organized religion plays little role but government the larger. Developing countries and other industrialized nations in the world go in the direction of Sweden, but there are drawbacks to this position . If other countries could get richer but not develop these disadvantages, the world would see more semi- Swedish, but with better functioning, leaner and more tolerant welfare states. This book is a tale of caution for those countries.

There are correlations between being more rational and self- expressive and economic growth but not all rich countries are as extreme as Sweden, for instance Japan, Australia, USA, Germany and Belgium. Some of these have smaller governments, lower taxes but same or better living standards. The usual defense of a rich welfare state by Swedes does not hold that well as the country has lost its wealth rapidly in the last four decades. Not richest anymore, not getting same welfare, alone and extreme is rather the current Swedish predicament.

Another view of Swedish extremes is the political arena. Policies that are common across developed nations within the OECD and considered normal, mainstream, are usually framed as reactionary, anti-women and ethnic minorities and right-wing by Swedish political standards. If current Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, or any Swedish minister from any party, goes to Washington or London to give a description of some basic and shared policies of his center-right leaning cabinet, he would be depicted as a pinko-liberal or old labour. Why that is so can be seen in this table of political parties from USA and UK:

Letters in italics describe the Swedish Social democrats, Center party and Moderates (formerly the conservative Right party), capitalized the British Labour party and Conservative Tories, and underscored the two American Democratic and Republican parties. This figure is not scientific at all and has no reference, but gives a reasonable view of the global political spectrum that is widely shared by news agencies and newspapers. To read International Herald Tribune or watch BBC news will hopefully be from a political center, mainstream or even slightly left of center standpoint but still sane and normal. The bold and capital headlines on top are supposed to state an imagined political scale with the two established Western news media almost at center.

If these news bureaus and papers would cover some topic which is normal in Sweden, that story would come out extreme, as anything from the political center, mainstream or at best neutral by Swedish standards, is quite on the left in the world. To be politically center in Sweden is left in the world, and to be right or even liberal in Sweden is center in the world. To be right of center in the world, as a Tory or Republican, is considered mad, reactionary and extreme. To state views that are normal in other parts of the world becomes impossible, both in content but also in form as the Swedish establishment and media know what is best for everyone everywhere. The American interpretation of being liberal which means left leaning Democrat in favour of big government is the normal Swedish center-right position. But being liberal in the Swedish interpretation is mostly considered politically right. In this book the Swedish center-right interpretation of liberalism will be used even if it confuses Americans. And of course it is confusing if liberals talk of mandatory preschool for all children from 3 years, which some do and outlaw home schooling which happened. The extreme in the world is normal in Sweden, the normal in the world is extreme in Sweden. Spend an hour or two on the website The Local for news of Sweden in English and read what foreigners think of Swedish news and politics is enough to understand the differences between the land of extremes and normal countries .

If all features mentioned about Sweden are summarized, a new concept is used which sums up all extremes:

1. High taxation and large welfare state
2. Silent conformism and thought repression
3. Extreme secular rationalism and self-expression
4. Left politics
= state individualism

The strange concept of state individualism is used in the book Is the Swede a human being? (Är svensken människa?) from 2006, co-authored by historians Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh. The concept is not well known to regular Swedes, but they recognize it when explained, mostly nodding in affirmative but shyly. State individualism sounds partly egotistic, partly repressive and nothing to be proud of. To be human is to belong to some human community they state, but the modern Swede does not need to nor wants to belong. The welfare state takes care of all needs from the cradle to the grave so the citizens can concentrate of working and pay high taxes. Individualism does not imply voicing individual opinions, but is the same self-expression that the World Values Survey found was common in Sweden. Individuals make decisions on their own and with little regard to community, civil society or public sphere. An example is the proportion of single-households. Sweden has the highest number of men and women preferring to live alone, Stockholm the highest in Sweden and Kungholmen island the highest in Stockholm areas. Yet Stockholm is ranked among the six best cities to live in. How can the extreme also be the best? This book will not answer this question but gives a perspective on how the best and the extreme go together in Sweden with its national features.

Berggren and Trägårdh are quite fond of their vague concept of state individualism that gives room for interpretation and defend this extreme position. With roots in Swedish history before the welfare state of early 20th century, they show that Sweden has fostered independent citizens that lack ability and interest for common purposes outside their small world of friends. The concept of Swedish (and Nordic, where Sweden is the most extreme) state individualism was presented in 2012 by Swedish think tank Global Utmaning at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This positive message of state individualism is what the authors Berggren and Trägårdh stated to the world of international business and governments :

“While much has been written about the institutionalized aspects of the Nordic welfare state, few have paid much attention to its underlying moral logic. Though the path hasn’t always been straight, one can discern over the course of the twentieth century an overarching ambition in the Nordic countries not to socialize the economy but to liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency within the family and in civil society: the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands, children from parents – and vice versa when the parents become elderly / . . . /

Less tied down by legal and moral obligations within the family, yet still protected from extreme risk by a universal safety net, they become more flexible on the labour market, while as individual consumers they have developed far-reaching needs of products and services that
previously were satisfied within the traditional family /. . .

Economic policies that cater both to our desire for individual autonomy and our need of community and security can be remarkably successful”.

Love for instance should not be based on practical needs or family obligations but romance born out of feelings of two independent individuals. Children should not be born out of accident, needs or for parental desires, but be planned and welcomed for who they are as individuals. The utopian dream of a perfect society seems to have been realized in Sweden, these authors maintain but they do not tell the whole story as this book tries to do.

The two authors asked ‘are Swedes really humans’ in their 2006 book title Is the Swede a human being? Do Swedes understand the value of human dignity? What happens when the welfare state is responsible and not the human beings in it? The next story will tell.

In 1969 Maciej Zaremba had to leave communist Catholic Poland and a good Jewish family for secular, safe Sweden and work at Beckomberga hospital in Stockholm . He started working as a hospital orderly with elderly people in need of daily care. He had three duties; clean the rooms, feed the patients, help with toilet visits. Nothing else. Patients were fed 5 minutes each. If there was not enough time, too bad. Many newcomers lost both weight and appetite, but then a nutritious gruel was pressed fast down their throats.

Morning visits to the toilet were done with movable toilet seats where old women sat naked as they were rolled openly through the ward corridor down to the collective bathroom. There they were all splashed with water from a hose, sometimes lukewarm, sometimes not, by a young man. The women sat all in a row like pigeons. Some cried but were quickly silenced with a slap from a towel. Zaremba protested saying that people cannot be treated like this. No one reacted or seemed to understand his reasoning. None of his colleagues, nor did the head nurse or doctors understand what the strange Pole talked about. Human dignity? This is welfare services administered correctly.

Zaremba understood that what happened each morning to the naked women being run through the corridor was not extraordinary but common procedure, sometimes even in the presence of relatives. He had left a totalitarian state where he witnessed protesting pregnant women being kicked in their bellies by the military police. To be in a democracy and witness old people being treated as barn animals was bewildering, as was the lack of dignity, empathy and self-respect. The inability of the old to keep their bodily functions private was made worse by the inhuman treatment and what only primitive oafs and unkind louts do (cham in Polish). Zaremba was led by his family upbringing and sense of duty. For him there was no question of why all hospital staff should spend more time and energy to make the lives better, respectful and easier for the old. It was pure duty to human dignity and to older people. Period. Impractical yes, even undemocratic (which he was called by people when the embarrassing topic was mentioned), but necessary to remain human oneself he thought. The Swedish idea of rationality led the staff to demand rational justifications for Zaremba’s insistence of respect, duty and dignity and he had none.

Later when he became a celebrated writer in Sweden, he held a speech in 2003 called When will Sweden be European ? The ambition of this book is similar in its search for when will Sweden be normal. In early medieval ages, Sweden was probably most normal and European, as will be told in next chapter the history of Sweden from around AD 1000 to 1930.

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CRIM 125. Introduction to Criminology & Justice Studies

Introduction to field of criminology and social justice conceptual framework; theoretical perspectives and methods; contemporary crime policy issues: individual to societal.

What is crime? How do we measure the extent of crime? Is the image of crime we see in the media accurate? Why do some people engage in criminal activities while others do not? Why do crime rates differ between cities, regions, and countries, as well as over time? What is the most effective way to lower the incidence of crime? What is justice? Does it always have to involve punishment? In this course we will address such questions from a sociological perspective. We will focus on the social context of crime and criminals, especially the causes, consequences, and solutions to behavior that has been labeled as “criminal.”

Beirne, Piers and James W Messerschmidt. 2014. Criminology: A Sociological Approach. 6th ed. Abingdon: Oxford University Press.
Stevenson, Bryan. 2015. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
Mauer, Marc. 2006. Race to Incarcerate. Revised Edition ed. New York: The New Press.

Berger, Ronald J., Marvin D. Free, Jr., Melissa Deller, and Patrick K. O’Brien. 2015, Crime, Justice, and Society: An Introduction to Criminology, 4th Edition


Emerging Europe risks missing out on EU’s Digital Decade

Europe as a whole must do more to meet its ambitious Digital Decade goals. The countries of emerging Europe must do much more, particularly in cybersecurity and education.

The largest Europe-wide trade organisation representing digitally transforming industries, DigitalEurope, last month addressed a letter to the European Commission outlining three key areas of digital development that EU member states should prioritise.

DigitalEurope’s director-general, Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, says that, ‘’the EU is keen to make this the Digital Decade. But for that to happen Europe needs a monumental push to digitally upskill its workforce and citizens and address the digital divide.”

According to DigitalEurope’s letter to the European Commission, in order to achieve this goal, the three areas of digital development that EU member states should focus are cybersecurity upskilling, recognition of industry certifications, as well as the introduction of compulsory computer science education that includes coding and computational thinking.

According to Bonefeld-Dahl there is still a notable discrepancy between member states. Regional experts, as well as the European Commission’s annual Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), agree, saying that most countries in emerging Europe have some catching up to do.

“At least one in 15 workers in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands is employed as an ICT specialist. In Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, it is just one in every 30 workers,” Bonefeld-Dahl tells Emerging Europe.

“The difference [between member states] is even more concerning when it comes to cybersecurity,” Bonefeld-Dahl continues.

DigitalEurope’s letter to the Commission details that the EU should better identify the current capabilities of member states, outline gaps, and make education on cyber skills easier to access.

Ion Moldoveanu, lead technology manager at Deutsche Bank Romania and board member of ANIS and VP Romania, which focuses on digital skills, digitalisation in education, and public administration in the country, agrees with the content of the letter.

“Society can only handle technological challenges,…


“You don’t have to do all of the things. If it’s important enough to you make it a priority.”

Are you struggling to create a balance between your job and the rest of your life?

Jen  Anderson, CEO of Moving Forward Solutions shares her best advice for assessing your work-life balance ratio and adjusting to create a peaceful, joyful life. Listen in as she explains the five key areas you should be focusing on, including your mental health, physical well-being, and boundaries.

Listen here and find out the five key areas you should be focusing on to create more joy and less stress


Which is the right direction? A study has found that bees organise number from left to right

Paris (AFP) - Bees order numbers in increasing size from left to right, a study has shown for the first time, supporting the much-debated theory that this direction is inherent in all animals including humans.

Western research has found that even before children learn to count, they start organising growing quantities from left to right in what has been called the “mental number line”.

However the opposite direction has been found in people from cultures that use an Arabic script which reads from right to left.

“The subject is still being debated between those who think the mental number line has an innate character and those who say it is cultural,” said Martin Giurfa, a professor at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.

There has been recent evidence that newborn babies and some vertebrate animals, including primates, organise numbers from left to right.

Giurfa led a study, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), aiming to find out if the same holds true for insects, via an experiment on bees.

“It has already been shown that bees are able to count – at least up to five,” Giurfa told AFP.

They also process information differently in the two hemispheres of their brains, he added. This trait they seem to share with humans, and is thought to be a potential reason for the “the existence of the mental number line,” Giurfa said.

- A numbers game -

For the experiment, the researchers had individual honeybees fly into the first of two compartments of a wooden box.

Sugar-water was then used to entice the bees to select a number affixed to the middle of the back of the second compartment.

The number stayed the same for each individual bee, but varied randomly across the group from between one, three or five, in shapes of circles, squares or triangles.

Once the bees were trained to fly towards their set number, the researchers removed it and put another number on both sides of the second compartment, leaving the middle blank.

They then removed the sugar-water reward and observed which way the bees went.

For example, if the bee was trained to select the number three, and was now faced with two number ones on either side and nothing in the middle, which way did they fly?

Around 80 percent of the time the bees chose the option on the left – the “correct choice” if brains order numbers from left to right, Giurfa said.

But if those same bees were given two number fives to choose from, they went right, again supporting the mental number line.

And bees trained to go for number one went to the right for a number three, while bees targeting a five went left for their three.

So if animals do in fact think of numbers from left to right, why is this not true for all humans?

Giurfa said it was more complicated than directly choosing between nature and nurture.

Even if the mental number line “is innate, culture can still modify it, even reverse it – or on the contrary accentuate it,” he said.

Bees, on the other hand, have to stick to what nature dictates.


Section 8

V. Hunter Adams
In [1]:
from IPython.display import Latex
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline
import numpy
from matplotlib import animation, rc
from IPython.core.display import HTML
from IPython.display import HTML
from ipywidgets import *
from scipy.integrate import odeint
from IPython.display import Image

In the previous lecture, Prof. Hayes introduced the proton-proton chain, the principle chemical reaction taking place in main sequence stars. In this section, we'll review the proton-proton chain, and talk through the life cycle of a star. Some of this goes beyond the scope of the class, but it's fantastically interesting.

We talked in the past about solar system formation. What starts as a large cloud of gas and dust condenses and spins into a protoplanetary disk, with the protostar at the center. As the collapsing gas condenses, its gravitational potential energy is converted to heat (it has to go somewhere). The rotating sphere of superhot gas (that isn't fusing hydrogen) is called a protostar.

The First Crossroads

Less than 0.08 solar masses?

Protostars that don't have enough mass will never reach the temperature required to start nuclear fusion. They will very gradually cool off over hundreds of millions of years, and are known as brown dwarves (basically, they're dead before they were ever born).

Greater than 0.08 solar masses?

Enter: The Main Sequence.

Main Sequence Stars

Eventually, the protostar hits a critical temperature (around 10 million Kelvin) that initiates the proton-proton chain. The temperature needs to be this high because the kinetic energy of the protons (which is what temperature is a measure of) must be large enough to overcome the electrostatic repulsion of the protons. They need to be going fast enough to slam into one another, despite the fact that they're both positively charged.

Proton-Proton Chain

How do you get Helium from Hydrogen?

In [4]:
PATH = "/Users/hunteradams/Documents/PhD Semester 5/Sections/"
Image(filename = PATH + "protonproton.png", width=500, height=500)

Question: How do the two initial protons overcome the Coulomb Barrier?

Answer: Quantum Tunneling

Question: Which line is a Nobel Prize?

Answer: Deuterium

Question: Where does energy come from?

Answer: The four initial protons weigh more (have more mass) than the final 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Energy comes from the equation

\begin{align} E=mc^2 \end{align}

Moving Off the Main Sequence

As the star runs out of Hydrogen, the outward pressure from the fusion reactions starts to lose out against the inward pressure from gravity, and the star starts to collapse. As it does so, the internal temperature and pressure within the star begins to rise.

Relatively Low-Mass Star?

If the star is of relatively low mass, the temperatures will never get high enough for helium fusion to begin. We have never actually observed what happens to a low mass star after it stops burning hydrogen, because it does so for a period of time longer than the age of the universe. Such stars are fully convective, so they will not develop the degenerate helium cores necessary to turn into a red giant. They will eventually become white dwarves - stars that are not hot enough to undergo fusion, and are maintained only by electron degeneracy pressure. They gradually cool off. When they've completely cooled they become Black Dwarves.

What's degeneracy pressure? Consider the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle:

\begin{align} \Delta x \Delta p \geq \frac{\hbar}{2} \end{align}

As the matter compresses, the location of the electrons becomes more and more known (since the matter is occupying a smaller and smaller space). As a result, the momentum of these electrons must increase, creating a pressure. When the pressure due to this "Heisenburg motion" exceeds thermal pressure, the electrons are degenerate.

Slightly More Massive?

Stars that are slightly more massive will have a radiative core, but this core will never get hot enough to start fusing helium. Thus, the star will expand into a red giant as it starts to burn hydrogen in its shell, but it will eventually use up all of its hydrogen and become a white dwarf.

Mid-Sized Star (Sun)

When a star exhausts the hydrogen in its core, it begins burning hydrogen in a shell around the Helium core. As more hydrogen is burned, the helium core becomes more and more massive. The star expands and cools as the hydrogen burning shell moves farther out from the center. These are Red Giants.

Lower Mass?

As more helium is produced, the core becomes supported by degeneracy pressure. In this situation, the only thing fighting against the inward pull of gravity is electrons, as described previously. The core continues to increase in temperature, causing the rate of fusion in the hydrogen shell to increase.

If the core is supported by electron degeneracy pressure, then when the temperature reaches a certain limit a helium flash occurs. This is an event involving runaway nuclear fusion. When the electron pressure can no longer hold the helium atoms apart, they fuse into heavier elements (Carbon). How does this happen?

In degenerate matter, changes in temperature do not cause a change in volume until the thermal pressure becomes so high that it overcomes degeneracy pressure. So, when Helium starts to fuse, the temperature is increased. This increases the fusion rate, which increases the temperature, which increases the fusion rate, etc. It's a runaway reaction that can consume all of the Helium in a star's core in minutes, briefly emitting energy at a rate comparable to the entire Milky Way galaxy.

This is almost undetectable, however, because almost all of that energy goes into returning power to thermal pressure from degeneracy pressure, and the little bit of excess is absorbed into the star's upper laters. The core expands and cools, contracting until it is roughly 2 percent of its former radius and luminosity.

Then we have a similar story. We get a degenerate Carbon-Oxygen core and start burning Helium in the shell (with Hydrogen burning still occuring in a farther-out shell). As this outer Hydrogen is burned into Helium, the Helium drops into the Helium burning shell, causing periodic thermal pulses where energy output from the Helium shell increases dramatically. These are the death-throws of a star.

If the star is not sufficiently massive to start full-scale Carbon burning, they contract again. Much of the outer material becomes a planetary nebula, with the interior becoming a hot central star that cools to a white dwarf.

Higher Mass?

In massive stars, the core is large enough for helium burning to begin before the electrons in the core become degenerate. As the core gains material from fusion of Hydrogen at the base of the outer shell, it grows hotter and denser. For these extremely massive stars, electron degeneracy pressure alone is not enough to halt collapse. As a result, progressively heavier elements will ignite within the interior, leading to an onion-like star with the lightest material (Hydrogen) at the outside, and the heaviest material in the core.

If the core is not too massive, it's possible that the star will simply become a white dwarf. Otherwise, we have a far more dramatic story.

Something very important happens when the star has produced elements all the way up to Iron-56 in the core. Up to this point, combining two lighter elements into a heavier element caused a release of energy (through $E=mc^2$). However, once we get to Iron-56, this is no longer the case. Creating heavier elements actually costs the star energy beyond Iron-56 (the addition of fragments to nuclei releases less energy than required to break them off the parent nuclei). Thus, the star no longer has an energy source for resisting gravity.

If the mass of the core exceeds the Chandrasekhar Limit, electron degeneracy will be unable to support the star's weight against its own gravity. Electron capture occurs, which is the process by which electrons combine with protons in the nucleus to produce a neutron, releasing a neutrino. This is sudden and catastrophic.

Energy is transferred from the collapsing core into a shock wave that accelerates rebounding material out into space, and gives it enough energy to crash into each other forming much heavier elements (like Uranium).

What happens next depends on the mass of the star. It may become a Neutron star, an extremely dense, extremely quickly rotating object (around 10 km in radius, with a rotational period of over 600 revolutions per second). These rapidlly spinning neutron stars are also called pulsars. A teaspoon of neutron star weighs a billion tons.

It's possible, however, that the star is massive enough that neutron degeneracy pressure will not be able to prevent collapse below the Schwarzschild Radius. This stellar remnant becomes a Black Hole.

In [ ]:


Difference between revisions of "Photometry Scaffolding"

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Line 15: Line 15:
*X-ray data tend to have a spatially-dependent PSF, e.g., the point sources on the edges are more elongated, and the point sources in the middle are more circular.
[[image:airy.png]] theoretical Airy function from Wikipedia.
[[image:airy.png|left]] theoretical Airy function from Wikipedia.
PSFs – all of them – start as Airy functions, because physics. Atmosphere may smear them out. Pixels may be so big as to only “see” the highest part of it. Lots of additional effects may matter.  Ex: Struts holding the secondary may cause additional diffraction.

Revision as of 18:31, 31 July 2020

By Dr. Luisa Rebull, version 1, 19 Dec 2019, for Olivia and Tom

Attempting to work through scaffolding (after some preliminaries), going from single, isolated, point source with aperture fitting through clump of sources with PSF fitting.

Many of the hiccups you are having may be coming from the fact that, by eye, you can see the sources *there* so what is the issue, but the gap in understanding has to do with explaining that to the computer in terms it can understand and mathematically reproduce identically each time.

Some web research (and consultations with other NITARP alumni) suggests that photometry resources on the web fall into two categories (1) overly simplified for basic concepts, or (2) throw you to the wolves in the context of masters’ or PhD work; figure it out on your own, buddy. So you’ve fallen in this legitimately present gap (crevasse?). I am not saying this is worth sharing with anyone else, or even maybe that helpful here, but here’s a go at filling that gap.

Key concept #1 – for a given image at a given time from a given telescope, at a given location on the chip, the PSF is the same for all sources, of all brightnesses, in the image. The telescope responds the same way to a point source of light regardless if it is bright or faint. For faint sources, you see just the peak of the function; for bright sources, you see lots more details, but it is the same shape as for faint sources.

  • Ground-based, non-AO data are probably the same over the chip for a given exposure; if you’re lucky, it’s the same shape over the whole night, but if the weather changes, it’s not. Forget it being the same over a whole run.
  • Ground-based, AO data are ~idealized but only over a tiny area on the chip. (one source at a time)
  • Space-based data tend to be very, very stable, unless (and sometimes even though) the satellite heats/cools each orbit (e.g., HST). Usually diffraction-limited (Airy functions apparent).

theoretical Airy function from Wikipedia.

Key concept #2 – There are a LOT of decisions to make. Every astronomer makes different decisions based on their experience, and every data set requires different decisions (e.g., space-based and ground-based data aren’t the same!). But give the same data to two different astronomers and they will get the same number, to within errors. If your two approaches (aperture and PSF) are not yielding the same number for the same source, somewhere your decisions are wrong. If your single approach is not yielding the same number for the same source (within errors) as someone else gets, someone’s decisions somewhere are wrong. But to assert that yours is right in that situation, you have to have a deep understanding of each of your decisions and know for a fact that they are right (and not just “good enough”). Ideally that someone else has written down somewhere exactly what they did so that you can pinpoint where your approaches differed, and why you think they did it wrong. (This is why I used the phrase “mathematically reproduce identically each time” above – it needs to be reproducible.) Two different measurements in the same band of the same target at different times may be legitimately different, because the object has changed. But start from the same data, and you better get the same number (within errors). The “within errors” is also important – if you make a decision early on, say not to center your source, then finer details of PSF structure doesn’t matter, because the errors are dominated by this centering issue. But understanding what the errors really are can save you grief agonizing over small details that don’t matter to within your errors. For our original project, we didn’t need photometry to 0.1% or 1% or even 10%. We were using the fluxes on a log-log SED and the magnitudes (also effectively log) in CMDs. 20% photometry (or even worse) is just fine for that. So the aperture photometry was totally good enough for what we were doing… except possibly for a few of the most crowded sources at the longer bands.

Key concept #3 – I’m not even going to approach flux calibration here. We’ll just assume our idealized cases are already flux-calibrated. For that matter, I’m going to ignore making mosaics too. This might matter (have mattered) for you because of whatever ImageJ did to your images; flux conservation is super important, but hopefully didn’t affect anything but edge pixels for you. Oh, and I’m assuming all basic processing has happened – flatfielding, etc., and that cosmic rays have been removed. (And assuming scattered light doesn’t matter.)

Key concept #4 – You should remember this from working with me – just because the computer says it, does not mean it is right. Do lots of checks at each possible step. Is what you’re doing making sense? Is it giving you weird results? Even if – especially if – you get to the end of what seems to be good decisions and you make a plot like this, you know immediately you have done something wrong. I don’t think I have EVER reduced data just once. Get used to the idea that you may be doing photometry on the same sources in the same image an uncountable number of times before you get it right.

(Look near I2~10 .. why have all of these source suddenly shifted left? Something is wrong.)

But once you get it right, more data from the same band and telescope will fly through. The second band from the same telescope/instrument will be easier than the first. Another instrument from the same telescope will be harder. Trying a new telescope? Go back to the start, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. But you’ll have a better sense of which parameters matter the most. Probably.

Single, isolated, ideal point source, aperture.

There is only one source. There is little or no background contribution. What are the decisions to make? Whereissource.png

  • a. Where is the source?
    • i. You tell it, this source is exactly here.
    • ii. You tell it, this source is here plus or minus a pixel; it finds the center.
    • iii. You let it find the sources and then center them.
    • iv. APT: you can click on it for an initial guess. You let the computer know that that is just a starting guess, and it still has to decide where the actual location is, to a fraction of a pixel.
    • v. If you let it find the source, in this idealized case, it will look for the brightest pixel (largest value) in the array.
    • vi. If you center your aperture a px off of the true center, will it matter? It might, depending on the size of the px and the PSF.
  • b. How big should the aperture be to get “all the flux”?
    • i. Do you want a circular aperture, or a square? If the former, calculate flux over fractional px. How are you going to do that interpolation? If the latter, how does that compare to the actual PSF?
    • ii. For bright sources, you may need to go out a long way.
    • iii. For faint sources, going out far doesn’t make any sense, so you need smaller apertures.
    • iv. What happens if you don’t capture all the flux? Aperture corrections. How will you derive such a correction? (How did the Spitzer and Herschel staff do it?)
  • c. Where should the annulus be (and how wide should it be) to get a good estimate of the background?
    • i. Circle? Or square? Recall fractional pixels above.
    • ii. How many pixels do you need to get a “good enough” estimate?
    • iii. How will you estimate the background? Mean? Median? Mode? A constant you determine via some other method? Something else?
    • iv. You estimated background per px over a number of px. Scale that to work for the px enclosed by your aperture (including fractional px).
  • d. At the location of the source, drop the aperture, count up the flux, subtract off the scaled background estimate. Propagate errors to estimate uncertainties. Poisson statistics for the original electrons detected can propagate through the calibration process, so you should get an image full of errors along with fluxes. Then propagate that through the rest of the calculations.

Single, isolated, ideal point source, PSF.

As above: find the source, center the source. Then need new information about the PSF…

If you have ground-based, non-AO optical data, it may be Gaussian-ish. If you have anything else, it’s likely very complicated. Something has to hold the secondary in place, and light is a wave, so diffraction. Space-based data are often less variable than ground-based, but not necessarily. Rather than trying to guess the mathematical form of the theoretical PSF, use actual data to define your PSF. If you have ground-based data, this will be a function of time. If you have space-based data, it may be a function of time, or it may not be. You need a collection of quite a few bright, isolated stars to use to define your PSF. In-orbit checkout docs for IRAC suggest 300 observations went into their PSF (PRF) determination – go find Hoffman 2005 for gory detail, but results are copied here below.

Note too that for extremely precise IRAC photometry (exoplanets!) you need to know exactly which pixel your object fell on AND exactly where WITHIN THE PIXEL it fell. That whole discussion is super gory but look here if you want the full mess: https://irachpp.spitzer.caltech.edu/ Spitzer is a super-stable space-based magical machine. It was not ever designed for photometry even close to this precise. But it works.

Cryoprf.png Cryo IRAC PRFs. Note Airy ring most prominent in IRAC-4 (lower right) because wavelength the longest (and the telescope is the same over all four bands).

You may recall that PACS and SPIRE have PSFs that change slightly depending on scan speeds and direction. They need many examples of bright, isolated sources to sort that out. Bocchio et al. used asteroids.

Bocciofig2.png PACS PSFs from Bocchio, Bianchi, & Abergel 2016. “20” and “60” are scan speeds in arcsec per sec. “P” means parallel (as opposed to scan) mode. RGB=160, 100, 70 um.

Iraspsf.png IRAS 12 um PSF. IRAS scanned the whole sky but in the same direction every time. So, this is IRAS’s response to a point source (not an oblong source!) at 12 um. It’s a strong function of scan direction (it’s narrower in the scan direction).

Certainly when you go through this much work to get a PSF, you may wish to oversample your PSF so that you know in detail what the shape is. (e.g., use your 100s of sources to figure out the PSF shape at finer scale than the instrument’s native pixels).

Now, you have a well-defined PSF and our idealized data for this example. Scale the PSF to match the data. How are you going to align them? Center location may not (will probably not) be an integer px. Your PSF is probably defined on integer px. How are you going to interpolate that to match scale, location of real data? (This is why you might want an oversampled PSF.) Once you do that, how are you going to match the data? You could just scale the PSF to the data at the peak value of the source. But then that only uses information from one px, and all of the PSFs I’ve shown you here cover >>1 px, and we should take advantage of that. After you’ve aligned the centers and interpolated the PSF to match the data at that location, then you need to scale it so that it fits “all the px.” How many are “all”? Down to what brightness level? Manually define some cutoff above which constitutes “source”? For this idealized example without (much) noise in the background, this seems easy. For all values above that, compare observed values to PSF values at each px, and minimize differences. For that fit, then can calculate observed brightness for that object.

Don't forget to calculate uncertainties on fit and total flux results. If you have a poorly-defined PSF (e.g., defined based on ~10 sources that may or may not be bright enough and may or may not be isolated and may or may not have ISM contributions), you are going to make life hard for yourself, and have larger errors than you would with a better-defined PSF.

How it works for many point sources, each of which are isolated, but with a variety of brightnesses, Aperture.

What are you going to do for all the sources in the image that are at a range of brightnesses?

Need to make a choice of the best aperture on average for most of the stars. Some will be too faint, some will be too bright, but most will be “good enough.” I had a hard time with this concept when I was learning, and tried to use variable apertures over my FOV. Just don’t do this. Pick something that is ‘typical’, use it for all the sources in the frame, and move on with your life. If you really need milli-magnitude precision, you’re probably not working on “all the sources” so go ahead and knock yourself out on your few sources and customize each measurement.

Don’t forget to make a good guess at errors.

You already know (key concept above) that all the PSFs are the same shape. Once you figure out how to do it for one, do it again for each source.

But, this starts to matter much more – how many px out of each source are you fitting? Down to what brightness level? Define a cutoff with respect to the background scatter? Measure the background scatter, care about pixels with excursions significantly above that level. (Define “significantly” -- 3 sigma? 5 sigma? 1 sigma?) For all values above that, compare observed values to PSF values at each px, and minimize differences, for each source. Astronomers usually use “reduced chi squared” to estimate goodness of fit and/or find the best fit.

Don’t forget to make a good guess at errors. Reduced chi square will help with that.

How it works for a single point source with variable background, aperture

So we still have a single source, but now the background variations matter lots more.

Source detection isn’t an issue here, yet, because we still have only one point source centered in our image.

To first order, then, the main impact is that you want an aperture relatively tightly centered on your source, and an aperture snugly into (up against) that. You don’t want too big an aperture that is set too far away, because then you won’t be sampling the background that is likely superimposed on your source at its location in the image. (You don’t want the aperture and annulus to overlap, because then you’l be counting the same photons.) And if the background is variable over scales smaller than your aperture/annulus, then you need to worry about how, exactly, you are calculating the background – mean, median, mode? Something else?

How it works for a single point source with variable background, PSF fitting

You need to tell the computer more specifically where the brightness cutoff level is for the fit. If you have a relatively faint source on a relatively bright background, you don’t want the computer using ISM brightnesses incorporated in its reduced chi squared fit, e.g., trying to fit the PSF wings to the ISM. So you have to be more careful in telling the computer the threshold above which it should fit. And don’t forget errors.

How it works for a collection of isolated point sources with variable background, aperture

Ok, now it starts to get more thorny. Out of the list above for a single isolated source, combined with the multiple source case, here is what now matters more than it did before:

Finding your source. Now that you’ve got a lot more sources to work with, you are not going to want to click on each one, nor do you necessarily have a list of sources already that it needs to do photometry. (Sometimes, actually, it is the case that you have a list of sources, in which case this step doesn’t matter; see far below.)

To find the sources, you need to teach the computer how to find sources. Usually, this means looking at the “typical” variations in the background, and then use the computer to look for brightness excursions beyond that fluctuation. This matters a lot, and there should be a parameter in units of that scatter that you can set to determine how deep you want to attempt source detection.

I1srcs.png Here is an example (MOPEX/APEX on an IRAC image) This source detection is actually doing pretty well, despite the variable background. Most of the sources you can see by eye are identified as such.

In most cases, it's doing pretty well - there is a real source visible within each red circle. BUT it clearly is having problems with the very bright and/or saturated sources, and it's detecting "sources" in the trail of image artifacts around the bright sources. I also see a resolved source in the lower right for which it has decided the central peak is a point source, and there are some legitimate point sources I can see by eye that the computer has not found.

There is definitely a point of diminishing returns -- you have to decide which objects you're interested in, how complete you want to be, and whether you can sustain “false” sources in this source list and/or missing sources in this source list. It could be that this is fine; if you’re going to match to sources from other wavelengths, false sources will fall away as having been detected in only one band, and sources in which you are interested that are missing from the source list can be manually added later. It could be, though, that you need to be more complete in the automatic extraction, in which case you need to get in and fiddle with the parameters. Interactive fiddling can make a big difference.

Here is another example (also MOPEX/APEX on an IRAC image). Why is it having trouble finding the fainter sources near the bright sources here? Can you figure out why it would struggle? (hint: background variations.)

Even though you are running source detection, it will still need you to tell it how much “slop” it has in centering each source, just like with the single sources above. This can be much smaller than when you are clicking on the source to give it an initial guess. But it still needs to be able to center each source properly.

You need to pick an aperture and annulus that works for all (most) of the sources in the image. And propagate errors through…

How it works for a collection of isolated point sources with variable background, PSF fitting

For this case, source detection is usually aided by the fact that it knows what the PSF looks like, so the chances of it, say, finding a “line” of false sources in a diffraction spike are greatly reduced, because it knows enough to figure out, hey, that’s a single pixel that’s bright in one dimension but not the other, so it’s probably not a point source. (For a bright ridge of nebulosity that is unresolved in one direction, you will likely get a line of "sources" along the ridge.) For an initial pass on the source detection, it is doing something very similar to what the aperture source detection is doing – it is looking for excursions above some threshold, and you have to pick the threshold appropriately for your data and your targets and your science goal.

MOPEX then takes the initial source detection and fitting, sorts the list by brightnesses, and then starts from the brightest source on the list. It takes the original image, fits the brightest source (as if it were an isolated source as above), and then subtracts it from the image. Repeat for the second source on the result of the first source’s subtraction. Repeat for each source. THEN go back through and do source detection on the residuals. Repeat.

Psfsub.png MIPS example. Original image on left (lots of ISM because this is the galactic plane) Right is the same image having had all of the identified sources subtracted off. Note that it missed some of the brighter sources, but for the most part, the point sources are gone, and the residual, smooth ISM is left. That’s how you know that you’ve done a good job. If the second image had been filled with donuts, or the same number of point sources just fainter, or ISM with lots of neat (“precise” not “nifty”) holes punched in it (lawdy I have had many of those), then you know you did something wrong; go back and try different parameters or a better PSF or check the px scale of the PSF compared to your image… and propagate errors through …

How it works for a clump of sources very close to each other, aperture

You should (hopefully) remember some of this from our work. In that context, we did not ask APT to determine where the sources were; we clicked on them in APT, or we (I) asked IDL to do photometry precisely at this RA and Dec. That knowledge came from us looking at other bands. We knew there were, say, 2 sources there, both kind of on top of each other given the PSF of the PACS70 data. This image here doesn’t even need information from other bands to tell us there are two sources –they’re a peanut shaped blob. Aperexample.png

Because we were doing photometry for each source carefully, we could set the aperture for both of these centered tightly on the known position, put the annulus outside them both together, use that to get the same background for both of them, and use aperture corrections to bootstrap the tiny apertures to a full flux estimate. Doing this by hand is ok on a handful of sources, but it is rapidly tiresome for more than a few sources.

So, you want to go faster, more automatically (and thus more reproducibly). You can let it run source detection on its own over the image. But will it decide that this peanut above is one source or two? We know it’s two. The computer by itself might not figure that out, especially if the second star is much fainter than the first. The second star might look like an artifact and not show up as distinguishably a second source.. unless you are careful with the input parameters to the source detection.

You can also assemble a list of positions from other information, and give it a list of locations. (Be careful in that if you give it RA and Dec but the routine is expecting pixels, this is a problem. This is the case in my IDL code, so the first thing I do is translate RA and Dec to pixels in the image.)

Because these sources are close together, you have to give it VERY LITTLE slosh for centering. The centering routines often assume there is only one source there. So if you give the computer working with the image above a centering tolerance of 3-4 px, both sources are likely to wander off their designated source position, and maybe even end up measuring exactly the same pixels for both sources… which clearly isn’t right.

So, what we did for the aperture photometry for our project is give it a list of positions that we know very well from other wavelengths, and did aperture photometry on those positions. (We used circular annuli close to the aperture, and used aperture corrections.)

How it works for a clump of sources very close to each other, PSF fitting

Same things apply wrt source detection here. It’s got a little better chance of working properly, because it knows what the PSF should look like, but you will probably have to help it by telling it that you know there are 4 sources at these locations, or whatever.

The reason (I suspect) that you are getting position wandering in what you are doing is that you are letting the computer determine where the sources are (both source detection and centering), and it is struggling with the precise location of the source given the big pixels (and sometimes undoubtedly neighbor proximity).

The way it should work for Ceph-C:

Isolated sources: aper and psf fitting should give the same result within errors, and both of those should match the published HPDP photometry for those cases where it is measured.

Close sources: give it a list of locations and find out what it comes back with – did it come back and tell you that it really thinks there is just one big source there and one faint one, even though you told it to start from a guess that there is 2? If it seems to have done it right, test it. Try image subtraction like MOPEX – is a smooth image what is left? Try adding points to SEDs – do they line up? Try making CMDs – are your nearby sources all in wrong places? If it doesn’t look good in any of these tests, go back and try different parameters.


A Few Home Truths About Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is a human right.
It is the right to express  one’s ideas and opinions verbally or in writing, either publicly or privately.
It is the right to engage in public conversation about personal and public issues and events.
It is the right to communicate meaningfully with other people.

Even so, it has it’s ethical limitations.

All individuals have freedom of speech. It is not just the domain of one person, or one group.
This means that the right is also accompanied by the responsibility of listening to, and responding thoughtfully to, the ideas and opinions of others. Freedom of speech is a two way street.

It is not the right to cause harm or injury to other people.
It is not the right to incite violence.
It is not the right to abuse, slander, or misrepresent situations or other people.
It is not the right to spread dangerous disinformation.
It is not the right to break the law or commonly accepted rules.

The people decrying Twitter and Facebook for banning Trump need to understand these things.

When he opened his social media accounts, he agreed to the terms and conditions. Nobody can have those accounts without agreeing to those rules, which clearly state that one cannot use that social media platform to break the law or encourage anyone else to do so. There is a clearly stated warning that infringement of those rules will result in your account being suspended or cancelled.

There is no doubt that these are the rules invoked when the accounts belonging to a range of criminals and terrorists were cancelled in the past. People and governments actively and rightly demanded that this should be the case in response to the manifesto and live streaming of the actions of the Christchurch mosque terrorist, for example.

It is illegal to use social media to promote illegal activity or post offensive material.

Why, then, should Trump not be banned for inciting a riot or encouraging sedition? Why should his followers not be banned for plotting violence and premeditating murder and insurrection?

The clear answer is that they absolutely should.

Anyone using social media to plan or conduct a criminal act should be banned and then prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have acted rightly.
They have not assaulted anyone’s free speech. It is not censorship. Those on the quiet end of a ban have invited that consequence for themselves.

A Few Home Truths About #FreedomOfSpeech
#Rights2021 #SocialMedia

Love Trumps Hate.

New horizons.

I’m about to embark on an international classroom collaboration with my Year 10 History class and some students who attend the school where my cousin teaches in Detroit, USA.  Our students will discuss world events, their interests, and their perspectives on issues and challenges that they face as young people in an increasingly globalised world.

This has not been done at my school before, so I am very aware of breaking new ground for my students and of my responsibility to  mentor them and protect them while flinging them out of the proverbial comfort zone of our classroom “nest”. The online classroom environment where this collaboration will take place will be monitored and moderated by myself and the American students’ teacher, who I’m sure shares my anxieties and my excitement as we embark on this experimental educational journey together.

I’m excited because while these kids’ lives are worlds apart, they live in the same world and witness the same events from their own unique perspectives.  I’m excited about collaborating with another teacher and having our personal professional horizons broadened, too.

My hope is that they will broaden their horizons and see things from different points of view while becoming more aware of what is happening in the world around them.

Hopefully we will all be inspired as well as informed.


Grocery inflation in Ireland is the highest it has been since October 2013 at 3.7%, according to new statistics released by data analytics company, Kantar.

Cost increases have pressured retailers to push prices up across the board, while the number of products sold on promotional offers has fallen by 5.7%, as retailers try to mitigate supply chain pressures, reports Kantar.

“We’ve seen a marked increase in the average price of staples like bread, butter and toilet paper over the last 12 weeks,” said Emer Healy, senior retail analyst with Kantar.

These price rises have coincided with the end of pandemic-related lockdowns, which is causing overall grocery sales to drop as more people consume a higher volume of their food intake on the go.

In the period between March 7 to April 3, 2022, take-home grocery sales fell by €78.2 million, a decrease that Kantar says can be linked back to the removal of Covid-19 restrictions. Healy commented:

“Not only are people heading back to the office, but they’re also enjoying returning to pubs, cafes and restaurants, and as a result are picking up more food while on the go, rather than from the supermarkets.”

There was also a 7.3% decrease in grocery sales in the 12-week period between December 20, 2021 to March 20, 2022, which all retailers experienced.

However, sales were still higher than in 2020 although only slightly, as the comparison includes a record-high demand for groceries before the national lockdown in March 2020.

Image source: Kantar

Dunnes Stores has retained its position as Ireland’s largest grocer holding a 22.4% market share, it’s followed by SuperValu and then Tesco, with each claiming market shares of 21.6% and 21.3% respectively.

Lidl follows Tesco, with a 13% share of the market, while Aldi holds 12.4%.

“The competition between the grocers is ramping up as people hunt for the best deals. Those grocers with strong messaging on lower average prices and promotional offers are best placed to come out on top,” said Healy.

According to Kantar, grocery inflation is now the main driver behind changes in consumer behaviour, as higher prices and fewer promotional offers push them to seek out cheaper alternatives such as own-brand products.

“Retailers’ own lines now account for 46.3% of total grocery sales. Headlines around shortages of pasta and flour have also seen sales of those products soar, with both categories boosted by 22% and 30% respectively during the month of March,” Healy said.

Kantar outlines that the pandemic has altered consumers’ habits and it is unlikely that people will revert back to their pre-pandemic practices.

A significant growth in demand has led to all retailers in Ireland now offering some form of online shopping.

The proportion of the ‘couples with no children’ demographic that buys their groceries online almost doubled to 26% in March 2022. It is also estimated that by 2024, online shopping will hold a 6.6% share of total grocery sales.


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How to Get Debt Collectors to Stop Calling

How to Get Debt Collectors to Stop Calling
Aly J. Yale
UpdatedNov 28, 2022
Key Takeaways:
  • The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) requires debt collectors to stop calling if you write a cease-and-desist letter.
  • You can control how and when debt collectors contact you at work, on your cell phone, and by email, voice mail, text, and social media.
  • You can file a complaint if debt collectors do not stop calling when you tell them to.

If a creditor turns over or sells your debt to a collection agency, debt collection calls can come thick and fast. However, debt collectors cannot legally contact you any time they want. By sending a cease-and-desist letter, you can control how and when you receive contact from debt collectors.

What Is a Cease-and-Desist Letter?

Debt collectors may choose to contact you via many methods. They may send letters via the U.S. Postal Service, they might call you at home, work, or on your cell phone, or they can even use electronic methods like email and social media.

Fortunately, there are limitations to how and when a debt collector can talk to you. For example, per the latest updates to the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), they cannot call you more than seven times in a seven-day period. They also can't call before 8 a.m. or after 9p p.m., nor can they publicly communicate with you on social media (only via private messages on these platforms). Most importantly, they can't harass or threaten you either.

The FDCPA also allows you to control how debt collectors communicate with you and via which methods. So if you’re looking to get debt collectors to stop calling work, for example, or you simply want them to stop all communication entirely, you have options.

The best method is to send the collector a cease-and-desist letter. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has several examples of these letters, which you can use as guidance. You will need the debt collector’s name and address, the debt it says you owe (plus any added fees or interest you’re being charged), your account number, and when and how the debt accrued. You may also want to include the details of your last encounter with the collector (when they contacted you and by what method).

Here’s an example of what one of these cease-and-desist letters might look like:

From: Sarah Smith

123 First St.

February 2, 2022

To: Debt Collector ABC

456 Second St.

Re: Acct: 0987654

Dear Debt Collector ABC,

I am responding to you regarding a debt you are attempting to collect. You contacted me via phone on January 1, 2022  at 2 p.m. and identified the debt as $12,123 for Credit Card Company XYZ, reportedly originated in 2019.

Per my rights under the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act, I am requesting you stop all communication with me and with this address about this debt.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sarah Smith

An important note here: Always send cease-and-desist letters by Certified Mail. This ensures you’re notified once the letter has been received.

When Does the FDCPA Not Apply?

If you want to get debt collectors to stop calling or contacting you, understanding what type of company is contacting you is a critical first step.

There are typically three types of companies who contact you about debts: The original creditor, a debt collector, and a debt buyer. Creditors — or the company that your debt originated with — are not subject to the FDCPA’s rules and can (within reason) collect on your overdue balance as they wish. Examples of creditors include credit card companies, lenders, and car dealerships.

Debt collectors are a little different. These are third parties hired by the original creditor to collect the debt on their behalf. They are not the company where your debt started, and their main line of business is securing the repayment of overdue debts. As such, they are subject to the FDCPA and must follow its rules when communicating with consumers. They also must cease communication if you request it.

Debt buyers, the third possible source of collection calls, are companies that purchase debts from original creditors. Once they purchase a debt, they own it and can then collect or negotiate on the balance as they see fit. Generally speaking, debt buyers are considered creditors and do not have to adhere to the FDCPA or cease-and-desist letters sent by consumers. The one exception would be if the debt buyer’s main line of business is debt collection (then it’s considered a debt collector, and the FDCPA applies.)

It’s important to note that just because creditors and most debt buyers are not subject to FDCPA, that doesn’t mean they can harass or threaten you. Additionally, there may be state laws regarding these entities or their telemarketing practices. These could uphold a cease-and-desist letter or provide other protections for consumers.

What if a Debt Collector Doesn’t Stop Calling?

If a debt collector violates the FDCPA, you have lots of options. First, you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

You can also report the collector's activities to your state attorney general's office. If enough consumers have reported the collector's actions, the state may choose to investigate the company or possibly even pursue legal action against it.

Another option is to take legal action yourself and sue the debt collector for violations of the FDCPA. If you win, you may be able to collect all kinds of damages, including damages for physical and emotional distress, lost wages, and statutory damages.

You can sue creditors either in state court or in small claims court. In state court, you will need an attorney and can expect the process to take significant time and money (though your costs may be covered if you win the lawsuit). Suing in small claims court can speed up your case, but there are limitations to how much you can win.

If you think you may want to sue a debt collector for violating the FDCPA, you should consult an attorney before taking action. They can advise you on the best path forward, given your exact scenario.

Other ways to stop collection calls

If you’re being called or contacted by a creditor or debt buyer who is not subject to the FDCPA, a cease-and-desist letter won’t work, but you do still have options.

Here are just a few of the strategies you can pursue:

Work with the creditor or debt buyer to settle your debt.

This doesn’t necessarily mean paying your debt off in full. Sometimes, companies are willing to accept a lower payment in order to close out the account and be done with it. This is most common with debt buyers (they purchase debts for pennies on the dollar), though original creditors may be willing to negotiate a settlement in some cases, especially if the debt is particularly old.

If you’re not comfortable trying to negotiate a settlement, you might consider working with a debt relief company or credit counselor. These professionals can reach out to creditors on your behalf.

Enroll in a debt management plan (DMP)

Debt management plans are also an option. A DMP allows you to make one single monthly payment, which is then used to pay off your debts over a set period of time. Often, DMPs include settlements, so they can also help you get out of debt for less. They usually stop collections attempts too.

Consult an attorney

An attorney can advise you on any legal options you may have for stopping the collections attempts. They can also break down any laws that creditors have to adhere to you in your state, and they can even communicate with creditors and write letters on your behalf.

Your best bet is an attorney focusing on financial law or business. Make sure to choose one licensed in your exact state as well.

File for bankruptcy

Filing for bankruptcy is always a last resort, but it will discharge most of your debts and, therefore, stop collections attempts too.

Just remember: Bankruptcy comes with several long-term consequences. Your credit score will drop considerably, and the bankruptcy will become public record. It will also remain on your credit report for up to 10 years, which could impact your ability to get a loan, buy a house, take out a credit card, and more. Some employers and landlords look at credit reports as a part of their evaluations, so it could have other repercussions too.

Debt consolidation

Consolidating your debts may also be able to help. With debt consolidation, you use a loan to pay off your credit cards and other debts, which essentially rolls all your debts into a single one. This makes it easier to repay (there’s just one monthly payment) and, in some cases, could also mean a lower interest rate.

Keep in mind that this may not be an option if your credit score is particularly low. If this is the case, you may not qualify for a loan or, if you do, the loan may come with a very high interest rate.

Talk to a debt relief company

When in doubt, talk to a debt relief professional about your debt issues. They can help you come up with a plan to tackle your debts, minimize your costs, and avoid any further hits to your credit and finances. They can also provide credit counseling and other services that help you in the long run.

Did you know?

The amount of debt and debt in collections vary by state. For example, in Tennessee, 32% have any kind of debt in collections and the median debt in collections is $1892. Medical debt is common and 18% have that in collections. The median medical debt in collections is $888.

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De Jure vs De Facto Governments: What is the Difference?

First published at 20:01 UTC on July 16th, 2021.

In this video, I'll explain some of the differences between the "De Jure" or lawful, legitimate government, and the "De Facto" government, which is the government that, though it exists throughout our nation at every level, …

SensitivityNormal - Content that is suitable for ages 16 and over


To commemorate the second anniversary of the mission's launch, China's Tianwen 1 Mars orbiter has sent back an incredible image of the Martian moon Phobos. Phobos, a famously potato-shaped natural satellite orbiting Mars, served as the celebratory balloon on Saturday to mark the two-year anniversary of China's Tianwen-1 mission's launch.

The image was taken by Tianwen 1's high-resolution camera, the same device that was used to photograph the landing zone for the mission's Zhurong rover. The Mars orbiter was then situated 5,100 kilometers (3,200 miles) from Phobos, the bigger of the two moons that circle the Red Planet.

Tianwen 1 needed to change its angle, or orientation, in order to photograph Phobos, and it also needed to choose a specific time during their individual orbits of Mars that would allow for a relatively close approach and favorable solar lighting.

Some of Phobos's distinctive linear grooves are evident on the surface of the photograph, which has a resolution of 160 feet (50 meters) per pixel.

Pik Crater is also mentioned in the image, which was made public by the Planetary Exploration of China (PEC) and the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The feature bears the name of Ernst Pik, an Estonian astronomer, and astrophysicist who proposed the existence of the Pik-Oort cloud, a collection of comets and other icy objects far beyond Pluto.

On July 23, 2020, Tianwen 1 was launched, and it recently accomplished its principal scientific objectives, including surveying the whole surface of Mars. It has brought back a variety of amazing photographs, including "selfies" taken by tiny, reusable spacecraft that was sent there specifically for the purpose.

In May 2021, the Zhurong rover touched down in Utopia Planitia after traveling to Mars with the orbiter. Considering that it is winter in Mars' northern hemisphere, the solar-powered rover is currently hibernating.

Phobos and the smaller moon Deimos are the two moons of Mars. Impact craters and grooves can be found all over Phobos, which is at its widest point 17 miles (27 kilometers) across. The stresses of orbiting so close to its host planet have sent it on a long, tortuous route to destruction.

However, Phobos will have millions of years before it meets its end, giving it plenty of time to pose for pictures. The "operation team seized the timing when the orbiter was relatively close to Phobos and captured clear images of the satellite in its "full moon" state," according to the state-run China Daily.