Successful Start-up Ideas Which Failed

Tips & Tricks

Constantin Chernishov

March 6, 2018, 11:48 a.m.

Every minute in the world start more than 190 startups but only 1% succeed. Many of them had amazing idea, goal, team and/or a lot of resources, however they failed too. In this article, we’ll analyze the reasons of startups fails.

An early stage in the life cycle of an enterprise where the entrepreneur moves from the idea stage to securing financing, laying down the basic structure of the business, and initiating operations or trading is a Startup.

Here are 3 startups from different spheres that had a good idea, but failed:

Patterbuzz - Changing the misconception that content on the internet is up for free. Enabling people to pay for the single article rather than the whole magazine.

Patterbuzz places itself as an end to end digital content marketplace. Patterbuzz is built on the core philosophy that readers should get the best content providing a rich, interactive and enhanced the reading experience. Patterbuzz believes that digital publishing goes beyond the boundaries of getting PDF's online. Patterbuzz provides a common platform for both the readers and the publishers. Patterbuzz has built an innovative product enabling readers to get their favorite content as they want it. Readers can purchase individual articles instead of purchasing the whole issue or subscribe to a magazine. This will enable readers to make more informed decisions to save a lot of money. Readers can even purchase content independent content publishers which are not easily available in print on in the digital world.

In March 2015 Patterbuzz team succeeded in prototyping and starting the first investment round  but couldn’t succeed enough in funding.

Zirtual - Providing dedicated, virtual executive assistants for entrepreneurs, professionals, and small teams. The U.S. based assistants are thoroughly vetted through the 7-step hiring process and trained to do anything an in-person admin could do, except grab a cup of coffee.

Short cause: burn. Burn is that tricky thing that isn’t discussed much in the startup community because access to capital, in good times, seems so easy. Burn is the amount of money that goes out the door, over and above what comes in, so if you earn $100 in a month but pay out $150, your burn is $50.
Zirtual was not flush with capital — for as many people as they had, they were extremely lean. In total, they raised almost $5 million over the past three years, but when we moved from independent contractors (ICs) to employees, their costs skyrocketed. (Simple math adds 20–30% on to whatever you pay an IC to know what it will cost to have them as an employee).

Lumos - Internet connect electrical switches and wall plugs that come with embedded sensors to detect ambient conditions in a room.

Lumos StartupThe biggest issue of Lumos was incorrect estimation, for example, overestimated machine learning or underestimated efforts in converting a prototype into fully functional hardware product. They were trying to enter the IoT hardware market without knowledge about IoT, its hardware with specific market and risks. Experts were asked only after understanding of their big failure.

There's a lot of excitement when a startup is launched. However there are unhappiness and sorrow when it fails. But in my opinion the startup failure is normal. Remember that this is the way of capitalistic system has been designed, furthermore, it’s their worldwide goal. The rule is “Survival of the fittest” and startups have to compete with each other in order to earn the right to be a winner. There are more than 7 billion people on the Earth and one global information space. That’s normal when different people create similar ideas simultaneously, you should make up mind to the truth: “Your idea is not unique".

Failure causes not only personal and emotional pain but also a negative moment with wasting time and money. Mature entrepreneurs will step up and take responsibility for the failure because the startup died when they were CEO, while others try to find someone else to blame. What were the reasons? Investors failed to support them, the external environment was not favorable, the competition in predatory pricing, too early idea realization and the market conditions were not right.

We need to understand that startup failure is not a bad thing, but it's a big step from an unstable idea to sustainable business that can deliver useful product. Yes, startup failure does cause short-term pain, but instead of mourning their demise, we need to imbibe the lessons the failure teaches us, and move on, so we can do a better job the next time.

In conclusion, due to our experience we saw startups ups and downs. How to move on with technical side? That’s exactly what Roll’n’Code can share with you and tell more about existing tips and tricks to succeed with your idea!


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Trade and connections throughout the Classical Era

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1 Trade and connections throughout the Classical Era
Sub-Saharan Indian Ocean Trade Silk Road Mediterranean

2 Explain sub-Saharan cultural diversity and cultural unity in the period between 300 B.C.E. and 1100 C.E. Sub-Saharan cultural diversity was the result of several factors, including the vastness of the African continent and its many distinct environmental regions. The absence of convenient transportation routes made travel between those regions extremely difficult. Those natural barriers contributed to cultural diversity by helping form distinctive regional economies and modes of subsistence; they also prevented large-scale military conquest. frica’s great size and low population density reduced, but did not eliminate, contact and exchange between African peoples. Sub-Saharan Africans did not share a common language or legal, social, or economic systems. Consequently, African cultural unity was based on “small traditions,” or popular and local culture, rather than on “great traditions”. Cultural unity in Africa was complex because it was shaped by migration and social interaction within Africa and developed in isolation from the outside world.

3 includes travelers’ accounts
includes travelers’ accounts. How are these accounts useful in understanding the nature of society? Although we are examining regions through the perspective of the traveler, their accounts are invaluable as they represent an outsiders perspective. The variety of products, animals, and technology is also revealed by the travelers. As in The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the interconnectedness of the trade routes is described, reveal the concept of networks that provide regional sharing and spreading of ideas, religions, and technologies. The traveler’s account can reveal bias and priorities about how wealth and prosperity are signified and what is valued by both the traveler and the society on which is being examined.

4 Describe the introduction of the camel into the Sahara, including its origins and uses.
The first use of camels in Africa was in Egypt, dating from about the first millennium B.C.E. Camels are not native to Africa and were most likely brought from Arabia. Camel use probably spread south along the Nile into the Sudan, and then west into the central Saharan highlands. A s the remaining grasslands in the Sahara dried up and disappeared, camels became increasingly responsible for the growth of the trans-Saharan trade. Whereas the saddles used on North African camels were designed for trade and transport, the saddles on central and south Saharan camels indicate that they were used by warriors who fought with swords and spears from those saddles. As the long-distance trade across the Sahara became better established, the saddles of those camels evolved into a type more useful for commerce.

5 What were environmental and social conditions in the Sahara before it became a desert?
The current dry period began about 2500 B.C.E. During the transition to the present conditions, the stretches of desert between grassy and better-watered areas broadened. By about 300 B.C.E. the desert was large enough to restrict passage to a few difficult routes known only to desert nomads. The Sahara had formerly been so well watered that its wildlife included elephants and crocodiles. As desiccation progressed, Africans turned from hunting to cattle herding. When the region could no longer support cattle, horse breeders flourished. Finally, camels became the dominant animal form as the desert broadened and permanent settlements could no longer be maintained there. The best evidence historians have is in the vast numbers of Saharan rock paintings and engravings, which depict the various stages in the evolution of desert life.

6 The trade routes integrate trade, religion, and politics.
Describe how the spread of Christianity to Armenia and Ethiopia represents the struggle for control of the region where the Silk Road met the Mediterranean traders. The trade routes integrate trade, religion, and politics. Armenia is located between the Iranian states and the Mediterranean states and therefore become a “battleground” for control between these political and cultural entities. The development of an Armenian alphabet facilitated the spread of Christianity in Armenia. In the case of Ethiopia, students should understand the efforts of the Roman emperors of Constantinople in controlling the region. The Syrian missionary and Aedisius and Frumetius were instrumental in the establishment of Christianity. In addition, the impact of Christian merchants in establishing Christian communities also was important in the spread of Christianity to this East African kingdom.

7 What were some of the technological advances that the Silk Road was responsible for?
Advances were made in areas such as agriculture, husbandry, and warfare were sometimes created but most definitely spread along the Silk Road. The agricultural products exchanged along the Silk Road became important economically as well as helping to diversify people’s diets. Advances in horse and camel breeding were also closely linked to the road. Hybrid camels are one example of an improvement expressly designed to overcome the limitations of the road’s climate and length. hose camels were bred so specifically for travel on the Silk Road that their numbers declined rapidly as the use of the road itself declined. The nature of warfare was dramatically changed by the invention of the stirrup, which gave mounted troops enormous advantages over their opponents.

8 Why can the Silk Road be described as a social system rather than simply as a transportation route?
In addition to transporting goods, the Silk Road was important in the exchange of ideas and cultures. Because of its size and isolated nature, it was not dominated by any one culture or state. As trade became increasingly important to the peoples along the road, there was a trend toward moving from the countryside to the cities and trading centers, thus fundamentally altering people’s lives. Cultural exchange along the road was particularly evident in religion. Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism combined to create a complex culture, which affected both the peoples along the road and those far beyond.

9 How does the Indian Ocean trade compare with the Mediterranean Sea trade? Are they different worlds?
The different environment, technology, and goods shaped each of these worlds differently. In the Mediterranean, sailors used square sails and long banks of oars to sail to the many islands and into small harbors. Indian Ocean vessels used lateen sails and rode the winds rather than using oarsmen. Mediterranean sailors were rarely out of sight of land, whereas the Indian Ocean sailors sailed long distances entirely at sea. Mediterranean traders also often established colonies to galvanize trade contacts, whereas Indian Ocean contacts were less frequent and therefore seldom resulted in political ties. The Mediterranean basin was also smaller and more competitive because of a smaller number of goods—copper, tin, wine, olive oil, and pottery. The competition sparked recurrent warfare and rivalry in the Mediterranean but did not plague the Indian Ocean world, which was primarily concerned with population movements and the exchange of goods and ideas. Although the volume of goods in the Indian Ocean was lower than in the Mediterranean Sea, the trade in the Indian Ocean included a large variety of highly valued goods.

10 In addition, there are new religious ideas evident in the paintings.
Art reveals many things about the world. What can we learn about the Silk Road by examining paintings found in the different societies along this trade route? How do you think this compares to paintings that might appear in our diverse and worldly community? The examination of art provides a creative way for students to realize how historical stories are revealed. There is a diversity of life along the Silk Road, specifically the Iranian-speaking and Turkish-speaking people. The ethnic mix in Silk Road cities and villages, as well as the prosperity that the trade created, is revealed in the paintings. Many of the fabrics and animals from different regions that were traded along the Silk Road are represented in the paintings as evidence of this. In addition, there are new religious ideas evident in the paintings. The historian learns that these villages and trading cities had interest in Buddhism as well as Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam.

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Cooking Tips And Tricks To Help You In Your Kitchen

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TIP! If you are going to make a stir-fry dish, slice the meat on the bias, as thinly as possible. This can take a lot of time and be hard.

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The Sustainability Committee and any volunteers who are participating in collections record the number and the weight of the items present because all items that are sent in to TerraCycle are worth $0.01 a piece. Lycoming College currently participates in the following brigades: Brita, Cigarette Waste, Energy Bar Wrappers, Entenmann's Little Bites Pouch, GoGo Squeez, Malt-O-Meal Cereal Bags, Personal Care and beauty, Solo Cups, and Tom's of Maine Natural Care. These brigades allow us to accumulate items for collection and points that can be
converted into money that can be donated to a desired charity. The Sustainability Committee has chosen to donate all earnings from the TerraCycle program to Charity: Water, an organization that works to bring clean drinking water to people in impoverished, rural areas in as much as twenty-two developing countries; specifically in areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and South Asia. For more information go to https://www.terracycle.com/en-US.


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Navarra Wines

Navarra wines are composed of 5 main regions: Ribera Baja, Ribera Alta, Valdizarbe, Baja Montaña and Tierra Estella. Its particular characteristics due to its location, weather conditions and wine tradition, make Navarra one of the largest wine producing areas in Spain. Among the most characteristic Navarra wines we would have firstly the young rosé wines with an intense and fruity flavor. Navarra is also a popular area for its extraordinary quality red wines, usually aged in oak and in bottle. Muscatel wines can not be absent in this area either.


Help us petition the govt. for your parents, uncles & aunts

0 have signed. Let’s get to 100!

I recently visited an uncle of mine a retired bureaucrat, in his 60’s.What I saw, disturbed me!
An energetic person who used to be full of life always had some pearls of wisdom, looked like a pale shadow of himself. He didn't talk too much and when he did the sadness in his voice got to me. I felt saddened and low and thus was determined to find the cause.
What I learned was that my uncle who always looked forward to life found a sudden void in his life post-retirement. To fill it, he started looking for work opportunities that could help him gainfully spend his time. After months of job hunting, most of the companies turned him down saying that their retirement age was 60.

Part of what also bothered him was that with lifespans expected to go up to 90 years, his 40 years of earnings supposed to support 30 years of retired life.What ensued was that he started ‘imagining’ all sort of ailments.

When I looked hard I found a lot of people who retire at 58-60 still have lots of eagerness, zest and the strength to go on till 70-72 and also that on a lot of jobs we have a huge shortage of trained manpower.

So, I have started this petition to request Shri Narendra Modi Ji to increase the retirement age so that our nation can get a ready pool of experienced talent while taking care of its seniors.

Income insecurity is one of the major causes of vulnerability in old age.
Elderly in India not only work to support themselves but also make economic contributions to their households.
The BKPAI survey data indicates that 26 % of older men and around 58.7% of older women(Table 4.1) do not have any personal income

Income insecurity is a significant source of vulnerability among older women.

More than four out of five women have either no personal income at all or very little income & income insecurity increases with advancing age.

The Elderly India survey shows that amongst the people in the age group of 58-70, 80% men and 55% women (who had worked at some point in their lives) were extremely willing to take on new challenges.

Over 80% of the 55 plus in our country are not covered under any adequate social security schemes. Therefore, most of them are economically insecure and need to depend on their meagre savings or entirely on their children for sustenance. In the absence of any such support, many of them suffer a loss of independence and self-dignity. Our surveys have indicated that most of them are willing to work for the right opportunity.

"Employment besides giving something to look forward to every day ensures that there is a sense of mental well-being and gives a feeling of independence in the seniors which has far-reaching consequences."

I urge anyone reading this petition to join HUM in requesting Shri Narendra Modi Ji to consider raising the retirement age so that we can develop as a nation of financially independent and experienced citizens.

Inspired by “Startup India”,
HUM was started by R K Vij on his 75th Birthday along with K Malhotra, an engineer in his early 20’s. They have a goal of building a social enterprise focusing on the betterment of the lives of senior citizen and retired professionals.
HUM aims to work for the betterment of our parents by getting them jobs as well as dedicated deals from most relevant brands and giving them a collective voice.

Today: HUM Communities is counting on you

HUM Communities needs your help with “Shri Narendra Modi Ji : Increase retirement age, reduce vulnerability among seniors!”. Join HUM Communities and 9 supporters today.


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Creating a community around your purpose (and brand)

  • Impact Workshop 7/60 Brougham Street Geelong, VIC, 3220 Australia (map)
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We all know how important it is for the success of a business or cause to have the support of an engaged community - both online and in the flesh.

For our next 'Geelong Business for Purpose Meetup', let's share ideas and techniques on how to create communities around our projects (whether they're active or still in the works). Building a community even before your project has launched can really help it get off the ground, so it's never too early to start. Plus you'll get a headstart knowing what your community wants and some guides on which directions to take.

Here are a few questions to lead the discussion:
- Why is it so important to build a community?
- What has worked for you? What hasn't? What are some key challenges?
- How can we use content to tell our story?
- How do we leverage social media?
- Why is it important to understand your community?
- How do we do all this with limited resources?

Feel free to add anything else you'd like to cover in the comments.

Please join our Meetup group - Geelong Business For Purpose:

Our aim is to help grow the network of purpose-driven businesses and social enterprises in Geelong. Our community (which we hope you'll be part of) believes in using business as a tool for good and supports the B Corporation movement. This Meetup is space for all (business owners, employees and others) who are interested in sharing their knowledge, testing ideas, growing their business, making an impact, finding support, gathering momentum around the social enterprise and B Corp movement. We've created this group with the intention for its members to drive the shape it takes - so, please let us know how we can help you make a positive impact in the world with your business.


play&co green.jpg

Preparing a Successful E-2 Petition for an Australian Design Duo

CLIENT: Play&co

BUSINESS: Graphic/Product Design

OUTCOME: Approved

E-2 Visa Case Study - Play&co

Play&Co is the brainchild of Australian designers Brendan and Karen Hutchieson. They approached us in early 2015 with grand ideas of leaving their design jobs and pursuing their dream of starting their own firm. After several Skype conversations we nailed down a road map to get them to the U.S. on an E-2 visa. We faced a couple challenges:

CHALLENGE 1. Proving to the Consulate that their investment was sufficient to justify an E-2 visa.

Immigration regulations require that investment in an E-2 business be "substantial in a proportional sense". We'll spare you the drawn-out legal explanation of this language by summarizing: The amount of money invested in the business should be similar to what it would cost to either buy a similar business outright, or to start a similar business from the ground up. We chose to prove "proportionality" by working together on a comprehensive outline of similarly situated design firms. We then approached some of these firms here in Los Angeles and secured letters outlining the minimum costs required to open such a business.

CHALLENGE 2. Quick Turnaround Time.

The nature of the E-2 visa is that much of the investment has to be committed prior to the filing of the application. Understandably, the investor needs to move quickly in order to ensure that their significant investment is not wasted. During this time the investor is usually scrambling to tie up loose ends at home while still managing a new business here in the U.S. In the case of Play&Co, they had already secured client contracts and needed to return to the U.S. ASAP in order to meet deadlines. Thus, we had less than 2 weeks to prepare the application. Executing a complex E-2 application at this speed requires very clear communication between the client and attorneys. Any misstep in document gathering or company formation can cause major delays.

Thankfully, Brendan and Karen were about as prepared and responsible as any clients we have ever encountered. With their help we were able to prepare the application at light-speed and got them back to the U.S. in time to meet their deadlines.

Brendan and Karen are now in the U.S. and Play&Co is growing by the day. We are proud to now call them our friends.

If you want to view some of their brilliant work, you can look them up at:

Now here's Brendan, in his own words:

“I am an Australian citizen and Ashkan and Jessica recently helped me prepare and apply for an E2 Investment Visa. What impressed me about their service was their timeliness and speed, honesty, professionalism and diligence.

Here’s a high-level overview:
Step 01: An open no-obligation consultation over Skype, where they listened intently to my objectives and provided candid and frank feedback about the E2 visa application criteria.

Step 02: I met Ashkan and Jessica face to face. They spent almost 3 hours with me reviewing my business plan with a fine-toothed comb and walking me through the visa checklist.

Step 03: While I was assembling all required documentation for the visa application process, They were available around the clock to answer any questions I had. They even went above and beyond, getting documentation from outside sources that would support my case regarding proportionality of my investment. Additionally, during this time he was talking to the US consulate in Melbourne to ensure that my application was filed in accordance to their particular procedures.

Step 04: Once I’d gathered all the necessary documentation, they compiled the application (almost 600 pages worth) within 3 days for submission to the US consulate. Once submitted, my interview with the consulate happened within 3 weeks. I was approved without hesitation or hick-up and know without any doubt that it was because my case was so thoroughly prepared.

This visa application went extremely smoothly and fast, I’d definitely recommend Ashkan and Jessica without any hesitation for someone who is seeking expert immigration advice.


Does military pay affect SSDI benefits?

Men and women in the United States military put their lives in danger all of the time. Whether at home or on a foreign battle field, military jobs often have high risks of injuries and accidents. These jobs put people in harm’s way, time and time again. While many people are never hurt in the line of duty, others suffer serious injuries that limit their ability to earn income.

When a member of the military is injured, the person may be entitled to compensation from the Social Security Disability program. This program applies to people who become disabled as a result of a medical condition. If the service member was injured while on active duty, that person may be entitled to expedited benefits to help cover some of the income that the person has lost as a result of the disability.

However, sometimes people are still receiving military pay following their disability. In these cases, people may wonder if this pay affects their ability to receive SSDI benefits. According to the Social Security Administration, military pay may or may not affect a person’s application for SSDI benefits. In these cases the SSA will evaluate why the person is receiving military pay. If the service member is receiving pay for while in a therapy program or in a hospital setting, for example, the person may still be eligible for compensation.

In order to determine eligibility the SSA will examine the type of work being performed by the service member. If the person is engaging in substantial work in exchange for pay, then the service member may not meet the definition of disabled. In these cases, the person may not qualify for SSDI benefits.

This blog post should not be construed as specific legal advice. A service member should consult with an attorney in order to determine if the person qualifies for SSDI benefits.


Here’s Where the Fun Begins: Star Wars and ‘In Medias Res’

In addition to amazing effects and thrilling story, A New Hope also featured a key storytelling technique.

Putting aside so many of its other innovative aspects, the original 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope was a new kind of world-building that borrowed from the age-old mythmaking toolkit. Forget the innovative special effects, unique aesthetic, and quick-cutting editing style. So much of what it did right barrels directly at the audience almost immediately and without much warning.

The opening crawl sets the scene, making the audience aware of everything that’s happened previously. Before you see any Rebel spaceships, a hidden base, the evil Galactic Empire, or anything else mentioned in the crawl, you’re given just the bare minimum of context. What the crawl lets you know is that this story isn’t just beginning — it’s been in motion for some time.

Star Wars: A New Hope - Star Destroyer

This idea is hit home by what comes next. After the camera tilts down from the vast galactic expanse, we’re treated to that iconic shot of a Star Destroyer in hot pursuit of Leia’s blockade runner above Tatooine. This is the power of a storytelling technique called in medias res. Translated from Latin, this term means “into the middle of things.”

In medias res has been in use for as long as there have been epic stories to tell, and The Iliad is often cited as a classic example. The term was coined by a Roman poet named Horace around 13 BCE. In medias res exists as the opposite of what Horace terms ab ovo, or “from the egg,” meaning that the story starts from the very beginning of the action. Rather than set up the introduction of a story on-screen, A New Hope throws you into the middle of a dramatic chase, avoiding exposition that is unnecessary to understanding the gist of the plot.

This notion informs much of the way that first Star Wars film is constructed. It boldly refuses to spoonfeed the audience, plunging you into a foreign land with strange sights, sounds, and, most importantly, dialogue. In A New Hope, we are told about (but never see) Tosche Station, Beggar’s Canyon, the Imperial Senate, and the Emperor. The Clone Wars are mentioned, but who are the clones? Why was there a war? All of these tantalizing ideas are sprinkled throughout the film, but it’s always in service of adding texture and depth to the universe. Things have happened off screen, in the past, that have a bearing on the events that we’re watching unfold.

Film professor Will Brooker traces the opening of A New Hope back to Lucas’ earlier works, with which it shares other distinguishing characteristics: “[It] represents the synthesis of Lucas’ film-making at that point in this career: the surveillance culture of the Death Star is inherited from THX, and the teen banter from American Graffiti, but the sound montage, the in medias res immersion in a strange culture, the fascination with machines…the underlying theme of escape, and the documentary approach, with its implications for naturalistic improvisational performance, are common to both — and all these elements can be traced back in turn to aspects of [his] student films.”

By putting the audience into the story and universe abruptly, Lucas aimed to evoke what he and his friends felt when watching Kurosawa movies and other Japanese cinema in the 1960s. Walter Murch, sound designer on THX-1138, says that “the problem that George and I found with science fiction films that we saw is that they had to explain these strange rituals to you, whereas a Japanese film would just have the ritual and you’d have to figure it out for yourself.”

It is important, however, to note that having a prequel does not automatically make a film in medias res. As an act of retroactive continuity, prequels add backstory, but conflating the two is understandable. A New Hope opens in medias res due to the chase occurring when the film opens. The action is not directly due to the narrative strands left from the prequels. We’re not counting the rise of the Empire as told in Revenge of the Sith, but rather the acquisition of the Death Star plans that led to the chase of Leia’s ship by Vader’s Star Destroyer.

It’s also important not to conflate in medias res with a cold open. Cold opens traditionally thrust the viewer into some kind of situation, but perhaps not directly related to the overall story of the film. Crucially, they occur before the opening credits. These sequences often function more as a prologue or a teaser of the events to come than anything. Take 2008’s Guardians of the Galaxy as an example. In Guardians, we see young Peter Quill’s mother pass away from cancer, and we see him abducted by an alien ship, but after the titles, the film cuts to 26 years later. The film ramps up to the main storyline by starting out with character introductions.

That said, plenty of modern films, genre and otherwise, have come to rely upon in medias res as an excellent way of hooking the viewer on the story right out of the gate. By subverting the dominant expectations of what audiences knew of blockbuster storytelling, A New Hope added words to our common cinematic language. It unlocked the usage of in medias res for later generations.

Star Wars (BFI Film Classics)
By Will Brooker

Artifact of the Future: The Making of THX-1138
Dir. Gary Leva
(2004 documentary from THX-1138: The George Lucas Director’s Cut DVD)

Brendan Nystedt was very afraid of Darth Vader hiding under his bed when he was five years old. Now, he writes reviews of consumer electronics for Please follow him on Twitter @bnystedt


Your present location:HOME-NEWS >> Industry news >> Extremely hard and bitter layers of breakthrough in China's nuclear construction writing AP1000 nuclear power construction miracle
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Number of visits: Date:2013-04-12
While China is about to usher in a new round of upsurge of nuclear power construction, the world's first AP1000 nuclear power group of high-profile nuclear power industry also is the land of China quietly rooting, gradually from the drawings into reality. As of March 18th, 4 units in China AP1000 nuclear power project has completed 72, 144 milepost node in which the first reactor, 20 have been completed 36 milepost in the node. The AP1000 project overall progress smoothly, safety, quality, schedule control.AP1000 as the world's third generation of advanced pressurized water reactor, with modular construction, prefabrication, installation of parallel construction, civil construction, director of truncated narrow gap automatic welding construction characteristics.
It is the development of the United States Westing House Electric Corporation design 1250 MW advanced passive type pressurized water reactor. Zhejiang three and Shandong Haiyang nuclear power project is China's AP1000 three generation of nuclear power by relying on independent projects, the main force of China's nuclear power construction by the known as China Nuclear Engineering and Construction Corporation is responsible for building, the members of the unit in five the company responsible for the general construction contractor, in two two, in two four, the Central Plains, nuclear nuclear nuclear concrete company other units of the joint participation.The world's first reactor, means that there is no empirical demonstration reactor and project for reference, China nuclear construction had to "cross the river by feeling the stones", and then to a nuclear power construction technical problems; the world's first reactor, means that the engineering design has not yet reached a perfect situation, but also the drawings lag, equipment manufacturing and untimely supply and so on question, China nuclear construction only "crustily skin of head battle", looking for the best path in the design, manufacturing, edge, edge modification, validation of construction under the state. In addition, because AP1000 is imported from abroad, China nuclear construction must also overcome cultural differences in philosophy, management ways and other obstacles, sometimes "postures when students" learn from the advanced experience, strength.
In the AP1000 world, build the first reactor, China nuclear construction units have experienced from being questioned to gain trust, from passive to active, from rough to smooth, from the difference to the fusion process. After five years of hardships, they finally saw AP1000 first pile up dawn.From difference to fusionAccording to the characteristics of AP1000 project construction, China nuclear construction management innovation, take the nuclear power construction general contracting mode, professional construction, cluster member units of the superior strength, shoulder heavy responsibility on the project of AP1000 construction. Because the AP1000 project is managed by the United States Westinghouse design and organize the scene, the clash of cultures, differences on the idea, management mode, the China nuclear construction aspects in the quality assurance concept, safety culture, project management through a from the difference to the fusion of the road.Unit 1, Zhejiang three nuclear power is the world's first AP1000 nuclear power reactor, undoubtedly has a "demonstration" demonstration of the role, is the Chinese and foreign parties as early as the construction site of the collision sparks. In 2010, the HSE manager for nuclear island all module wall and confined space exit must set up a rescue support and equipment, therefore, in January under the three letter stop work order, bring great impact on the construction site. Construction general contracting parties is that: the confined space field 100, and each will only used in an emergency rescue equipment is in 10 thousand yuan of above, such as the implementation of foreign demand, will only cause unnecessary idle. Rescue equipment only in a fixed location, convenient to take and emergency rescue. After repeated communication with foreign expert consultations, the two sides finally reached consensus, finally only in the first reactor of nuclear island main emergency rescue equipment entrance of each one, sufficient to meet emergency needs, but also saves the cost.In view of the large module hoisting and high welding work frequently in welding dust, foreign experts for each welder with a weight of about 800 kg purification equipment, and the promotion of this equipment on site. This equipment is not effectively collecting surface dust, move the equipment will bring security risks to employees, the scene is not practical. Therefore, China nuclear construction site personnel after repeated with foreign experts in HSE communication, in-depth analysis, formulated and issued the "island" temporary ventilation scheme, only in the room is provided with the common fan and a wind pipe, installed in the reactor building in two high-power axial-flow fan will be unified into the reactor in welding dust workshop, to meet the person and the on-site construction requirements of civilization.
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Lamb watch 2017

Ruby and Lily

Gestation in sheep is between 142-152 days, with the average being 147 days. Pretty boy Sven was introduced to his lady friends Lily and Ruby on 27 September 2016, which would make this coming Saturday the earliest they could lamb. Assuming a whole lot of things, that is!

In expectation of the blessed events, I set up a “maternity pen” for the two ladies next to their current pasture area. This is for everyone’s safety, especially the lambs, because our two livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) have not experienced lambing before. With the excitement of lambing, I want the LGDs to have a good experience and learn that the lambs belong to the mama sheep, not to them. Hence the separate, but right-next-door pen. Everyone can see and smell, but not interfere.

Now there is a non-zero chance that one or both of them aren’t even pregnant. Both ewes have lambed before, and Sven is a daddy, so that’s something in my favor. I’m quite pleased to not have to go through “first lambing” with them!

So now we wait, I hope not too long, but as with all things farm-y, it is what it is.


Open daily, 10am–5pm, Free

419 Great King Street Dunedin, New Zealand

Stories from Mt John: Finding Mars

Now that the eclipse is over, the time has really come for #marsmania!

Mars is so close to Earth and bright in late July (27th-31st) that observations will be the best possible until October 2020. Subsequently, one of the most common questions we get at the museum is “what is that bright thing in the sky?” Currently the answer is always Mars!

Early in the evening you will see Mars to the east and it will stay in our sky all night long. Tonight the simplest way to find Mars is to look for the moon. It is full in our sky for the next few nights and this means the best rule of thumb is:

See the moon? Ok. See that red thing near it? That’s Mars.

It’s just about as simple as that.

However, if you are as interested in constellations as I am, then we can get a bit more accurate in our location. Mars is currently in Capricornus. Capricornus is one of those constellations that unless you know it is there, is virtually invisible. Sorry if your star sign is a Capricorn, but it’s just a bit of a dodgy one. So instead of looking for Capricornus, your best bet is to look for nearby Sagittarius and Scorpius.

For once, Scorpius almost looks like what the name describes. A great Scorpion in the sky, it’s long stinger tail reaching out towards Sagittarius. Sagittarius is also known as the teapot, but here in the Southern Hemisphere it’s really the inverted teapot. Past these two constellations tonight we will find Mars.

Image of constellations & mars

Constellations & Mars

Finally, you could be astronomer-level accurate about it. Tonight (30th July) at midnight Mars will be at right ascension 20h 28m 21.4s and declination -25° 48’ 23”.

Right ascension is expressed as 24hr time, with the globe being split into 24 slices, like an orange. You could imagine right ascension as roughly equivalent to latitude here on Earth. It’s the lines going up and down the celestial sphere from the north pole to south pole and you count the lines around the globe as hours. Declination is therefore equivalent to the longitude – in other words these lines run parallel to the equator. The negative numbers count down towards the south pole while positive numbers go up towards the north.

Using these two numbers together we can pinpoint the location of Mars so precisely we can point a .6m telescope at it and get an image.

Mars through the telescope

Mars through the telescope


Master Theses at Oracle in 2018

As part of an on-going collaboration with Oracle, they are offering master thesis work for CS master students and IT civil engineering students at Uppsala University. These are carried out at the Oracle offices in Stockholm, where the Java VM is built, and supervised by members of the JVM team. I am the academic partner and will serve as the reviewer for these theses. If you are a student at UU and interested in these theses subjects, you should contact me.

Thesis 1: NUMA support for G1

On multi-socket systems memory access time depends on the memory location relative to the processor (locality group): "closer" memory access latency is significantly smaller than memory that is located with a different processor. Currently G1 does not exploit this by improving or at least keeping access locality the same.

Tentative goals:

  1. implement the common heuristics used in literature that keeps objects in the same locality group as long as possible: a) let G1 keep data in the same locality group in the young generation and try to evenly spread data across locality groups in old generation; try to keep locality in both young and old generation
  2. measure the impact of these strategies across a set of industry benchmarks
  3. analyze other areas in e garbage collector that might benefit from NUMA awareness and potentially suggest changes.

See also JEP 157 for more information.

Thesis 2: Throughput barrier

G1 is an incremental, generational garbage collector. It stores the remembered sets that allow incremental evacuation as plain sets of cards for all regions. This is different to other (non-incremental) generational collectors (like Parallel GC) that use a card table. The latter has shown to have clear advantages in throughput at the cost of latency.

A hybrid approach for storing remembered sets in G1, using a card table for the young generation like Parallel GC and the existing set-of-card approach for the old generation areas may exhibit a very good trade-off between throughput and latency.

Tentative goals:

  1. Implement and explore a throughput-optimized mode for the G1 garbage collector to improve throughput on certain workloads that are not very latency sensitive.
  2. Measure the impact in throughput and latency on several industry benchmarks.
  3. Evaluate this trade-off to find out under which circumstances the one or other approach seems favorable.
  4. Thesis 3: Region pinning

    G1 is a region-based incremental garbage collector that can evacuate (move) around objects at will. While this allows you to fight fragmentation, moving around objects does not help with interfacing with non-garbage collected code like C.

    For this reason, while some C code accesses Java memory, the VM prevents the garbage collector to perform its task. This does not work well in situations where memory is already tight. One alternative approach usable with G1 would be to, instead of preventing any garbage collection work, only prevent garbage collection work for heap areas which contain Java objects that are currently in use with native code.

    Tentative goals:

    1. implement pinning of any kind of region in the G1 collector. Consider implementing techniques to mitigate wasting complete regions for a few pinned objects by allowing simple allocation into them.
    2. evaluate the change and compare it to the existing mechanism of providing non-moving memory

Second Batch of Students 2017

A number of student projects are still on-going, but extending into the summer of 2017. These include:

  1. Sebastian Rasimus: extending the Encore compiler with a language server for improved editor support
  2. Jessica Hillert: survey of capability system in modern programming languages
  3. Micael Loberg: extending Encore with support for algebraic data types

First Batch of Bachelor Students in 2017

In 2017, the Uppsala Encore team (led by myself and Dave Clarke) took on a number of bachelor students to do work on Encore. If you are not familiar with Encore, it is a concurrency-oriented programming language built around actors and active objects initially funded by the UPSCALE FP7 grant (Future and Emerging Technologies, Open X-Track) running from February 2014 until end of April 2017.

Encore shares some of its runtime with the Pony programming language, but makes several extensions to deal with active objects (support for e.g., blocking on futures without blocking the underlying thread), garbage collection that handles shared mutable state, etc.

The first batch of students presented on June 13th 2017 and included (in order of final presentations). Links to their final presentations will be added here as soon as they are officially in Diva.

Jonas Olander

Jonas' topic was the addition of separate compilation to Encore. Separate compilation is an important feature of any programming system, but one that is hard to fund on research grants. Jonas looked at several ways in which separate compilation could be added to Encore, given its current design where the Encore compiler spits out a C program that is linked with the run-time system into an executable.

Joel Wallin

Joel has been working on adding two new features to Encore: bestow and atomic, following a paper by Elias Castegren and Tobias Wrigstad. With these features, Encore allows an actor to hand out direct references to its internal state to other actors, but operations on these references are lifted into asynchronous operations, which are delegated to the containing actor, guaranteeing that only a single thread of control ever operates on bestowed objects. A similar concept exists in the E language, where it is the main source of concurrency control. Encore's type system makes operations on bestowed objects syntactically tractable and therefore easier to reason about with respect to performance.

The atomic operation allows pruning interleaving of messages in a message queue. This can be done by grouping messages which are sent as one, but by temporarily establishing a private “mailbox channel” between two actors causing all concurrent messages to be buffered in the public mailbox until the end of the atomic block. This is reminiscent of Pi calculus, but operates in a block-structured fashion.

Sahand Samal Taher

Sahand's work has been extending Encore with exception handling, yet another crucial feature that there were not enough cycles to implement during the UPSCALE project. How to handle exceptions is interesting both from a language design standpoint as inter-actor operations are asynchronous, and is also slightly technically challenging to implement due to the many moving parts in the run-time, PThreads and green threads, etc.

As a first increment, Sahand implemented support for Java-like try/catch/finally blocks, and means of communicating exceptions via futures as is the case for other languages e.g. asynchronous Java Script.

Noa Herngren

Noa's work has been in the realm of optimisation, focusing on the future construct in Encore. Since futures allow actors (and tasks, etc.) to block, they interact heavily with management of user-space “green threads” and because futures can be shared by multiple actors, they involve operations on shared mutable state, which naturally must be handled with care. For pragmatic reasons, the first stable implementation of futures in Encore relied on PThread mutexes to prune unwanted concurrent behaviour with respect to futures (e.g., one actor blocking on a futrue concurrently with another actor fulfilling the future can easily put the blocking actor to sleep indefinitely if not handled with care).

Noa has worked on removing the mutexes from futures and rewriting them in a lock-free fashion. By basing all the concurrency control around a lock-free Treiber stack, the future code became both lock-free and simpler at the same time (because the Treiber stack contains all the tricky bits). As a result of Noa's rewrite, the futures perform better -- both in the single-producer--single-consumer scenario, and when scaling to multiple consumers. Memory foorpra int, branch misprediction and cache misses both in data and instruction-level is significantly lower. In addition, Noa also created a family of futures which optimise for scenarios where only some subset of a future's interface is used.

Erik Fransson

Erik's work was centered around the implementation of asynchronous I/O in Encore. Erik designed and implemented a file system actor as a library which is able to centralise all file I/O ensuring that at most one of the PThreads driving the execution of actors in Encore is blocking waiting on I/O. (Naturally, many file system actors can be created as part of tuning, which may or may not execute in parallel depending on the overall system load and behaviour.)

Josef Hansson Karacoca

Josef's Encore work concerns the interplay between concurrency and parallelism. Josef has been using the building blocks provided by the Encore programming language to construct “locally distributed” data structures where normal passive (aka non-actor) objects acts as front-ends to a collection of actors that allow operations on the data structure to be performaed in parallel, provided that they are sufficiently disjoint. For example, it is possible to implement a large array constructed by a collection of subarrays each owned by one actor, and the passive front-end simply lifts sychronous requests into asynchronous requests delegated to the actor(s) that holds the relevant subarray(s).

Building on these data structures, Josef implemented several map reduce-style algorithms, both serving as evaluation and adding new and relevant building blocks to the Encore libraries.

Student Project Work 2017: Karolina Nikamo, Lowe Fredriksson Eklund, Casper Strömberg

As part of the independent project course, Karolina, Lowe and Casper sought us out to do some work on Encore. In the spirit of independency, they worked almost completely isolated from the core Encore team, and learned on their own, how to hack the Encore compiler, and how to extend the language. They were considering a number of features, and eventually picked default parameters and field initialisation. As a consequence, the following Encore program:

                        class Person
                        val name : String
                        val age : int
                        def init(age : int) : unit
               = "John Doe"
                        this.age = age

can be rewritten as

                        class Person
                        val name : String = "John Doe"
                        val age : int
                        def init(age : int = 42) : unit
                        this.age = age

which allows writing new Person() or new Person(42) instead of new Person(42, "John Doe").

For Uppsala/Prospective Students

My main research interest is design and implementation of programming languages and the connection between programming languages and software engineering.

With respect to programming languages, I am interested in programming abstractions — ways to express and model properties of interest in programs, and how to fortify abstractions and how to capture and enforce programmer intent. Abstraction is an essential task of programming and involves hiding details and emphasising rules and "interfaces". For example, a stack is an abstraction that presents a certain interface: elements are inserted and removed from the same end, and the only way to manipulate the order of elements on a stack are by popping them and pushing them back in a different order. The stack concept abstracts from the concrete implementation and emphasises the rules by which a stack can be manipulated to maintain its "stack-ness". A classic text book-example of a stack implementation is through a set of linked nodes, each holding an element. Unless the implementation of the stack abstraction is properly fortified, it could for example be possible for a user of a stack to gain access to its stack nodes and through direct manipulation of the stack nodes reorder elements or delete elements, or replace them, etc. — clear violations of "stack-ness".

A properly fortified abstraction is possible to replace by another — for example a stack implemented as an array. The ability to swap entire building blocks of a program for others is important because it allows us to alter non-functional aspects of a program (a classic example of a non-functional aspect is performance, another is security). This example also illustrates a connection with software engineering.

Related is the capturing and enforcing of programmer intent — programming languages typically focus on helping programmers perform calculations but do not understand non-functional aspects of the system, and are therefore unable to help programmers write code that correspond to their intentions. Mistakes and misconceptions surface in testing (if the tests are good enough, of course), where they may show up as errors whose root causes are hard to determine. A classic example is thread safety — the ability to use share something between threads that concurrently access it. Determining whether a piece of code is thread-safe can be very hard, and require lots of so-called non-local reasoning, i.e., checking many other places of the code that may somehow interplay with the code of interest.

Going back to the stack example before — whether it is safe to share a stack abstraction across threads either requires knowledge of its concrete implementation (e.g., we know it uses some internal form of synchronisation), or access to documentation. Proper abstraction dictates that we should not rely on one specific implementation (for software engineering reasons, for example so that we can swap one stack implementation for for another). Documentation however can be wrong, for example because the programmer thinks something is thread-safe that really isn't. This can happen for many reasons. For example, imagine the stack relies on some library L in its implementation. When the programmer implemented the stack, she checked the functions in L for thread-safety, but since then, L has changed and some functions are no longer thread-safe. Because most programming languages lack the ability to talk about thread-safety (as it is a non-functional property of the code) the compiler cannot warn us about this important change and consequently, the documentation of the stack incorrectly states it is thread-safe.

Enabling the programmer to state her intent about thread-safety allows the compiler to check that the implementation of the stack is thread-safe, and also captures the error of the changing properties of some functions in library L when the stack is recompiled against the updated L library.

Static checking (i.e., at compile-time) is conservative by nature, meaning that some programs will be incorrectly rejected (or raise warnings) because the compiler is unable to prove that they satisfy the intended properties. This is unfortunate, but I believe that a small number of false positives is a small price to pay for machine-checked proofs of fulfilment of relevant properties of source code. If something is labelled thread-safe, we should be able to rely on it.

This brings me to programming languages implementation. If compilers become powerful enough to guarantee certain properties of interest of a program, it is possible to compile and/or execute these programs more efficiently. For example, if I know that some object O is only visible through this one pointer, I can temporarily copy O into CPU registers and make lots of updates on O without slow and costly updates of main memory so that a possible (however unlikely) concurrent reader of O is guaranteed to see a up-to-date value. Similar arguments can be made for garbage collection, which can be greatly simplified if only some basic properties (that happen to hold for a majority of all objects and pointers, but not all) can be guaranteed. A good illustrating example of this can be found in Java: each method call in Java must start by performing a null-check on the target even though less than 10% of all variables ever contain null. If it was possible to statically exclude null values with a compile-time guarantee, much time (and energy) would be saved every day on a global scale. A similar argument can be made for thread-safety.

Theses Supervision

I have supervised a number of theses at Uppsala University, related to programming languages. I supervise both bachelor and master students.

Recent Topics I have Supervised/Reviewed

  • 1. Implementation of standard library components for the Encore programming language (Bachelor)
  • 2. Prototype implementation of the VAT programming abstraction for Encore (Bachelor)
  • 3. Design and implementation of Pattern Matching Support for Encore (Bachelor)
  • 4. Type System Support for Lock-Free Data Structures (Bachelor)
  • 5. Implementation of Reagents in Encore (Master)

I mostly supervise theses which are related to my research. A somewhat updated list of thesis topic proposals is maintained here.


Egon Schiele Drawings at Auction

Most Expensive Painting by Gustav Klimt

The famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has reportedly set a record for the most expensive painting to be sold. The 1907 iconic work “Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I” has sold for $135 million dollars.
The billionaire cosmetics heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, Ronald S Lauder snapped the painting up to be exhibited in a museum in New York.
The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1938 from the aunt and uncle of Maria Altmann. Maria only recently became the owner of the painting this year after reclaiming it. The work had been hanging in the National Gallery of Austria for the past 60 years.Continue Reading

Self Absorbed Geniuses

There’s an exhibition opening later this month at the National Gallery in London called Rebels and Matyrs. The theme is a common one that artists sometimes use to their own advantage. Promoting themselves as the outsider or the misunderstood genius.

The exhibition includes artists from Romanticism through to the 20th century; Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rodin, Picasso and Schiele.Continue Reading


Ars Technica

Enlarge / Intel Core i9 X-series Skylake X.

Intel's first microcode update, developed late last year, was included in system firmware updates for machines with Broadwell, Haswell, Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake processors. But users subsequently discovered that the update was causing systems to crash and reboot. Initially, only Broadwell and Haswell systems were confirmed to be affected, but further examination determined that Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake systems were rebooting, too.

A new microcode for mainstream Skylake processors was released earlier this month. The latest microcode covers both Skylake variants, such as Skylake X (used in the newest Core X and Xeon-W processors), Skylake D (used in the latest Xeon D chips) and Skylake SP (used in Xeon Scalable Processor), and the post-Skylake mainstream chips, branded as 7th and 8th generation Core, and codenamed Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake.

Older processors using the Broadwell and Haswell cores still do not have a fixed microcode update available. Intel claims that microcode fixes for Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Broadwell, and Haswell processors are in beta. This means that Intel has distributed a microcode update to hardware vendors for testing, protected under NDA. A handful of older chips are described as having their microcode updates in "pre-beta," meaning that Intel is performing internal validation of the fix prior to the "beta" stage external testing.

In general, PC users will have to wait for their system or motherboard vendor to provide an updated firmware that contains the microcode.


Is psoas major involved performing the abdomen exercises?

Michelle Allan,
Jan 03, 2018 4:37 AM

While working out my abdomen, I experienced a bit of a pain and I'm sure that was not the pain that the workout causes. It was completely a different kind of pain which I felt is taking place in the deep muscles of the abdomen. Although I've studied some basic anatomy so I'm aware about the muscles in the abdomen region but I'm totally blank about this one.

It struck my mind that it can be psoas major muscle that can be involved in the process but I can't find any resource taht can clear my doubt. It would be agreat help if someone among you guys can bring this query of mine to an end.

Thank you.

Gabrielle Reid,
Re: Is psoas major involved performing the abdomen exercises?
Jan 05, 2018 1:28 AM

Hey Michelle,

I'm fitness counselor at TriFIT Wellness. Well it is quite difficult to understand the root cause of your pain also to pin point the exact muscle that is causing this pain. Can you please elaborate a bit on the exact location at which you are having the issue during workout?

I would strongly suggest you to look for a good gym counselor or a physician and address this issue, since you clearly mentioned it is not a normal pain.

Just for your knowledge, it is highly unlikely that the psoas major muscle is damaged, as while working on the abdomen the load goes to external oblique, internal oblique and rectus abdominis. Here the anatomy of abdomin is well explained. Kindly look into it if you want to clear your doubts.

However, since this issue is not a normal one I would suggest you to ask a physician about the issue. Hope you get well soon.


Inline training: a technique for continuous, within-task learning

Brian Krisler, Richard Alterman

As software continues to grow in power and complexity, frequent on-the-job training is essential to maintain a proficient and productive skill set. However once a base operational skill set is attained, software users rarely continue to become proficient with the tools they use on a daily basis. This lack of proficiency results in the frequent occurrence of workflow interruptions due to the continued locating and re-locating of the operators required to perform both new and routine tasks. Aids such as reference cards and application help systems exist to make the user aware of efficient methods for task completion; however, these resources are seldom used. This study presents a new and efficient approach to help software users continue to learn about the tools they use to complete their work. This new approach to learning, called inline training, leverages common workflow interruptions to facilitate the discovery of new application knowledge. At issue is fitting the amount of work necessary to use the trainer into the already occurring interruption window. By understanding the amount of within-interruption work tolerated by the user, including an inline trainer within the window, promotes a deeper understanding of the application, resulting in a more efficient workflow.

Published: 11 April 2018

Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2018, 26: 1994 -

training; continuous learning; learning; software training; interruptions

Full Text:

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What's New: English Language Arts Worksheets and Study Guides

Beginning and Ending Sounds Kindergarten English Language Arts
Writing Readiness Kindergarten English Language Arts
Retelling Stories Kindergarten English Language Arts
Word Chains Kindergarten English Language Arts
The Alphabet Kindergarten English Language Arts
Counting Syllables Kindergarten English Language Arts
Word Study Kindergarten English Language Arts

Alaska Standards for Seventh Grade English Language Arts

AK.L.7. Language Standards

Conventions of Standard English

L.7.1.a. Explain the function of phrases and clauses in general and their function in specific sentences in order to apply the conventions of English.
L.7.2.b. Spell correctly.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

L.7.4.a. Determine meaning of unfamiliar words by using knowledge of word structure, (prefixes/suffixes, base words, common roots, or word origins), context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
L.7.4.c. Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning or its part of speech.
L.7.5.a. Interpret the intent or meaning of figures of speech (e.g., literary, religious, and mythological allusions; euphemisms) as used in context.

AK.RI.7. Reading Standards for Informational Text

Craft and Structure

RI.7.6. Determine an author’s purpose (to inform, persuade, entertain, critique, etc.) and point of view in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her point of view from that of others.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Key Ideas and Details

RI.7.2. Determine the central idea and subtopics in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; restate and summarize the central idea or events, in correct sequence when necessary, after reading a text.
RI.7.3. Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas presented in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).

AK.RL.7. Reading Standards for Literature

Craft and Structure

RL.7.5. Analyze the overall structure of a text: how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g. sonnet, soliloquy) contributes to its meaning, including analyzing the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama.

Key Ideas and Details

RL.7.2. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; restate and summarize main ideas or events, in correct sequence, after reading a text.

Range of Reading and Level of Complexity

RL.7.10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend a range of literature from a variety of cultures, within a complexity band appropriate to grade 7 (from upper grade 6 to grade 8), with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

AK.SL.7. Speaking and Listening Standards

Comprehension and Collaboration

SL.7.1.b. Follow rules for collegial discussions (e.g., establishing norms: taking turns, paraphrasing, respecting diverse viewpoints), track progress toward specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed.
SL.7.2. Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively/data-related, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

AK.W.7. Writing Standards

Production and Distribution of Writing

Range of Writing

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Text Types and Purposes

W.7.1.b. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and accurate, relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
W.7.3. Use narrative writing to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.


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4 Steps in Becoming a Survivalist Expert

survivalists must have tools

Not a lot of people can call themselves survival experts, but just about anyone can develop a few useful skills to help them survive in any situation, whether you’re camping, hiking, or even find yourself in the zombie apocalypse.

Regardless of your reasons, it’s good to learn a thing or two about surviving in the wilderness. However, learning survival techniques isn’t the easiest thing to do.  It takes dedication, commitment, and some time to develop certain skills.

Now, if you’re wondering what you can do to become a survivalist, the answer is simple. There are a series of skills and techniques you should master before calling yourself a professional in this field. Still, some basics can help you reach your goal of becoming a better survivalist.

We will go over those strategies that will definitely come in handy in many critical situations such as war, invasion, earthquakes, tornados, etc. Check out my list below and see what you can do today to become a better survivalist in the future.

  • Learn step by step

I suggest you learn the basics first before you move on to learn more advanced skills. Surely, it would be fun to learn everything you need to know right away and master the necessary skills. However, you must learn to “walk before you run,” and can’t learn the complex skills before you learn the basics. Therefore, before you get excited about starting a fire with using only sticks, make sure you know how to start it with matches first. The key is to know the fundamentals, which are the foundation for the more difficult tasks. So, the more experience you have, the better.

  • Learn at all times

Make sure not ever to stop learning. It’s important you’re consistent with your learning and development, and you’re honing your skills at all times. You may find yourself rusty in your survival skills if you take a break. If you never stop learning, you never stop growing. Plus, there are so many possible scenarios that people can find themselves in, that you can never know enough. So take advantage of opportunities and try to learn new things, from books, videos, magazines, and online. For example, there are surviving blogs, podcasts, etc. Also, attend any workshops, public speakings or anything where you could meet people of similar interests. This way, you can interact with surviving enthusiasts, and exchange knowledge and experience.

  • Know what’s most important

Most of the time, fire and water are the most essential elements. Finding drinking water and being able to start a fire can increase your chances of survival exponentially. Also, it’s always useful to know how to build a shelter. Now, making a shelter can be difficult at times if you don’t have any materials at your disposal. In this case, you should search and build a shelter with whatever you think could be useful. In other words, be creative. Also, always be prepared and bring with you the proper equipment. Even if there is a small chance of you using a tool, bring it. You want to be sure that you have a backpack with you at all times. Knowing these crucial skills and keeping yourself informed can drastically improve your chances of survival.

  • Always grow

You can only become an expert if you’re constantly growing. This means it’s not enough to only know how to start a fire and set up a tent. You should know as many things as possible and always look for new skills to learn. If you’re going to be the best survivalist, you should know how to hunt, trap, build shelter, collect and purify water, etc. Also, it’s always good to know how to send S.O.S. signals to call for help. I suggest you keep going until you master many different skills. The key is not in mastering one technique or skill, but learning as many as you can.

Final Thoughts

I suggest you pick and choose some of the skills and strategies you can learn quickly, and then do the rest as you go. Make sure you’re dedicated to every technique and skill because they take time and commitment. Decide which skills you can learn in the shortest period of time and take time to practice and master them, before moving onto the more difficult skills. Try to connect with different people who are also interested in survival skills so you can exchange experiences and opinions as well as make new friends.  Keep learning, growing and practicing until you reach your final goal.


Let’s start with some minor things that bugged me: One of the things I didn’t like about THE LEGO MOVIE (2014) was the fact that despite how hilarious it was, it was also extremely exhausting, and LEGO BATMAN does a good job of balancing it out and slowing things down to take a moment to breathe. Unfortunately, those moments of respite are quite jarring and don’t always hold up and most jokes that transition into those slam-bang action sequences don’t work. But those quieter scenes do a great job of establishing an emotional connection with the Batman/Bruce Wayne character.

This movie essentially argues that the Batman is the real face, while Bruce Wayne is just a mask or persona, but both are symbiotic and fuel each other’s psyches; they also establish a charmingly funny extreme version of the symbiotic relationship between Batman and the Joker from the comics and THE DARK KNIGHT. I didn’t think a movie as silly and filled with childish wonder like this could explore those kinds of themes. And these themes do exist within the comics, this kind of exploration of the Batman character isn’t unique to this film, but the way that the writers and director understand the fundamental base relationships and motivations of the character (as well as the millions of easter eggs) is fascinating in that they put it in a crazy, colorful movie. They manage to fit in great themes of humanity and community working together as well, and also the same constant humor and heart that made THE LEGO MOVIE so great.

This is another huge success for the LEGO movie franchise. It respects the history of Batman, the character of Batman, and (no pun intended) builds a great story with an incredible third act.

(refer to my rating system here)


Top 20 women health concerns - women ailments

Women’s Health Concerns

Next on the calendar is International Women’s Day , which marks the day of celebration and recognition of all women across the globe. The day commemorates the celebrating of the economic, political and social achievements of women from the past, present and also future. In this article, we list the top 20 health concerns of women, and look at how they are caused and how they can be cared for.

Acne can affect people of any age group and sex. Acne in women is typically observed when there is hormonal fluctuation, usually eight to ten days before menstruation, during the first pregnancy trimester or three months after delivery. Good skin and diet care is essential in curbing acne break-outs. Following simple tips like avoiding touching your skin during infection, sun-protection, regular exercising, drinking plenty of water and avoiding a high-sugar/fat diet go a long way in preventing the spread of acne. If the acne break-out worsens, it can be detrimental to one’s self-esteem. Homeopathic acne treatment works well, not just in reducing eruptions and controlling scarring, but also preventing further outbreaks.

Anaemia is a condition in which the blood lacks a sufficient level of haemoglobin or healthy red blood cells (RBC). Inadequate haemoglobin in the blood cells deprives the essential supply of oxygen to the body. Women are more susceptible to the disease because of the loss of blood from menstruation and during pregnancy. Loss of blood, improper RBC production and destruction of RBCs are known causes of anaemia. Although there are many forms of anaemia, the most common type can be treated with iron supplements and dietary changes.

Arthritis affects thrice as more women than men, and the most common of the arthritis’ types seen in women is rheumatoid arthritis. This type causes inflammation of prominently joint tissues, resulting in swelling of the joints, stiffening and pain. If left untreated, the disease can lead to destruction of joints and loss of mobility. Homeopathic treatment to rheumatoid arthritis is not just safe compared to conventional treatment, but also holistic in its approach. Homeopathy relieves pain and strengthens body immunity for a healthy life.

Breast and cervical cancer

The stages of breast cancer vary from early, curable breast cancer to metastatic breast cancer. Symptoms of breast cancer can include a persisting lump in the breast or underarm, swelling in the armpit, pain or tenderness in the breast, flattening of the breast or indentation, a noticeable change in the nipular area or unusual discharge from nipple. Regular and vigorous aerobic exercise can offer some level of prevention against breast cancer. Not only that, exercising can also be helpful in faster recovery from surgery and tolerating treatment side effects. Abnormal cells on the cervix growing uncontrollably leads to cervical cancer. This is the most common form of cancer affecting women worldwide. Most cervical cancer is caused by HPV (human papillomavirus) and is contracted through sexual contact with HPV. Symptoms of cervical cancer can include abnormal vaginal bleeding, pain in the lower belly or pelvis, pain during sex, abnormal vaginal discharge. Risks of contracting cervical cancer can be reduced by treating early cervical changes (dysplasia). Smoking may trigger cervical changes that can lead to cancer; quitting smoking decreases the risk. Women of age 26 or younger can be administered the HPV vaccine, which protects against two types of cervical cancer. Prevention of STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) reduces the risk of the cancer.

Unlike acne, depression is known to affect more women than men. General causes of depression in women can be attributed to several factors, which by nature can be biological or hormonal, psychological, or social. These include changes in hormones during menstruation or pregnancy, postpartum depression from delivering a child, crash dieting, overwhelming stress from managing work at home or office, and marital or relationship problems. Depression in women is also different from men. Unlike men, who become irritable, angry, restless and agitated under depression, women generally tend to feel anxious, nervous, sad, and apathetic. Women find it easy to talk about self-doubt and despair, while men find it egoistic to open themselves up to friends and family. Depression treatment through psychotherapy in conjunction with homeopathy focuses on individualistic diagnosis, and the use of medication that is without any side effects and non habit-forming.

Endometriosis is a condition in which the uterine lining develops not just inside (which is natural) but also outside the uterus. The tissues that form the outside lining undergo the same process of forming up and breaking down, just like the inside lining during menstruation. Some regular symptoms are heavy period discharge, abdominal pain and infertility. The illness can be treated through surgery and hormonal supplementation.

Female sexual dysfunction

Sexual dysfunction is the inability to experience complete satisfaction from a sexual activity. In women, this means arousal problems, lack of sexual desire, absence or delay in sexual climax, sex-related phobia and others. Causes of female sexual dysfunction can be either physical or psychological, or both. Various medical conditions can contribute to impaired sexual activity; these include diabetes, heart diseases, menopause, hormonal imbalances, diseases of vital organs like kidney and liver. Alcoholism and drug abuse also affect the libido adversely. Psychological factors include stress, anxiety, depression, woeful sexual experiences from the past, guilt, etc. Like any other illness, female sexual dysfunction requires a thorough evaluation of the person’s mental and physical health as well as their medical history. A proper treatment should necessarily involve such rigorous evaluation and the use of holistic medication, which is safe and effective in increasing sexual interest.

Another disease related to the uterus, fibroids are benign tumours that grow from the muscle layers of the uterus. Fibroids are muscle and fibrous tissue growths. Growth of fibroids typically show no symptoms; however, if there are, they can show symptoms of anaemia, constipation, backache, uneasiness in the lower abdomen, frequent urination, heavy periodic discharge and pain in the legs. Causes of fibroid formations are unknown, but they tend to increase in size, especially during pregnancy owing to increased estrogen levels. Heredity is also known to play a role. If treatment is necessary, it may be either through medication or surgery.

Hair loss in women: female pattern baldness

Female pattern baldness is the most common hair loss type seen in women. This generally differs from male pattern baldness such that thinning occurs on the top and crown areas of the scalp. The main causes of this problem are ageing, hormonal changes and a family history of pattern baldness. In most cases, hair loss from pattern baldness is moderate, but it is permanent. Diagnosis can involve ruling out every other hair loss cause, observing medical history and detecting hair loss patterns. Treatment includes medication (application of minoxidil to scalp) or hair transplant (where hair from thicker areas are removed and transplanted on to the affected areas).

Heart disease

Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease affecting women. In this condition, blood vessels that carry blood to the heart narrow or get blocked, leading to heart attacks. Making healthy lifestyle choices can prevent heart attacks or threatening heart conditions. Key habits include regular exercising, avoiding smoking, keeping blood pressure and diabetes under control, maintaining a healthy weight, and making healthy food choices.

As compared to men, women are five to seven times more likely to get affected by hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland in the body under-secretes the thyroid hormone (TH). TH, among others, is critical in the metabolic activity of the body, blood pressure maintenance, and regulating tissue growth and development. Some of the common symptoms include fatigue, depression, weight gain, poor memory, muscle aches, hair loss, dry and itchy skin, and many more. Homeopathic treatment to hypothyroidism focuses on bringing thyroid functioning back to normalcy, ensuring that dependency on the external supplementation of hormones is minimal to none.

Metabolic syndrome

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of five health markers, attaining at least three of which classifies the syndrome. These are fasting blood glucose level of 100mg/dL, HDL cholesterol level below 50mg/dL, triglyceride level of 150mg/dL and above, blood pressure level of 130/85mmHg, and waist measurement of 35 inches and above in women. The syndrome detection becomes important as it’s linked with many health conditions, especially heart disease and diabetes. Higher risk of contraction of metabolic syndrome is attributed to bad food choices and minimum or no body exercise.

In women, being overweight or obese leads to the risk of contracting diabetes, coronary heart diseases and cancers of cervix, endometrium, breasts and ovary among others. Obesity in women also renders them to the dangers of lower back pain and knee osteoarthritis. Other pitfalls of obesity are depression, problems in contraception and fertility, or both. Changes in lifestyle and bad habits can help keep obesity at bay. Follow simple rules like not skipping breakfast, incorporating more protein in your diet, staying hydrated, avoiding sugar and bad fats, and last but not the least, exercising. Here’s the complete list of self-care which you can implement!

Majority of the individuals affected by osteoporosis are women, with chances of contracting the disease four times more likely than men. It is a condition in which bones become weak and fragile, leading to sudden fractures. Osteoporosis doesn’t show symptoms until the bones and hips fracture. Women reaching their menopause show a decrease of estrogen levels in the body. Because of this, the natural bone loss resulting from the ageing process is considerably amped up, causing an increase in the rate of bone loss for 8-10 years before returning to premenopausal rates. The disease can be prevented by maintaining a healthy diet and remaining physically active.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

Pregnancy planning is critical in ensuring the safe health of the mother and the child. The mother in general needs to be aware of every aspect of good health keeping for herself and her child, especially during the nine months of pregnancy. These can include knowledge about diseases that can complicate pregnancy (thyroid disease, asthma, diabetes, etc.); awareness of the dangers of smoking and alcohol consumption, safe use of drugs and medication; and finally planning ahead for labour and delivery.

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)

PMS is associated with women of child-bearing age and produces symptoms both physical and psychological in nature, days before menstruation. These symptoms include headaches, backaches, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, mood swings, weight gain, etc. PMS is thought to be related to hormonal fluctuations, including estrogen and progesterone, occurring before menstruation. Self-care in the form of following a healthy diet and exercise regime, getting proper sleep, yoga, and nutritional supplementation can help alleviate PMS and provide respite.

Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)

UTI is known to affect one in two women, with chances of catching the disease repetitively during one’s lifetime. Urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the outlet, because of its close proximity with the anus, is prone to getting infected by harmful organisms. The infection can pass up to the bladder and, in bad cases, up to the kidneys. Common symptoms include frequent urge for urinating, burning sensation during urination, back or lower abdominal pain, fatigue, and fever (when infection has reached the kidneys). Treatment involves the use of antibiotic medication. Preventive measures, such as following good genital hygiene, avoiding the use of unwanted sprays and scented products, and drinking plenty of water can help avoid UTI.

A common term for infection or inflammation of the vagina; vaginitis can be caused by bacteria, viruses or yeasts, or through sexual contact. Some chemicals present in sprays, creams or clothing can cause irritation in the vagina. Some of the common symptoms are abnormal discharge with bad odour, itchiness around the vagina, burning during urination and discomfort during sexual intercourse. Vaginitis has many types (bacterial vaginosis, chlamydia vaginitis, etc.) and, hence, proper diagnosis should precede any treatment.

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e7 Health offers the Shingles Vaccine

Shingles Vaccine

Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a contagious virus that is spread through the air by respiratory secretions and direct contact. Shingles is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. The virus stays within the body and can reemerge later in life as shingles. Shingles is a member of the herpesvirus group, and like other herpesvirus infection it has the ability to stay in the body and reemerge after the initial infection. Clinical trials have shown that receiving the shingles vaccine can reduce the risk of developing shingles by 51%, and can also help reduce the lingering pain that can be left after a shingles outbreak by more than half (67%).

Shingles typically appears as a severe painful skin rash on one side of the body or face that lasts two to four weeks, although lingering pain may continue in some individuals, even after the outbreak clears up. The individual may also experience fever, headache, and body chills and may lead to more serious illness depending on the area of the body affected such as pneumonia, hearing and vision loss, and brain inflammation leading to death.

Each year, at least 1 million people in the United States have an outbreak of shingles. It is most common in individuals above age 50 and those with weakened immune systems. Although shingles is most common in people over age 50, it can occur at any age. Anyone who has had chickenpox is at risk for developing shingles.

Shingles vaccine is currently recommended for all individuals over the age of 60, but is approved to be given as early as 50 years of age. The shingles vaccine should be received whether or not the individual remembers having chickenpox as a child and can also be given to those who have had outbreaks of shingles in the past to reduce future occurrences and to possibly reduce the pain associated with outbreaks.

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Public Release:

Global climate change worsens winter haze in China

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Emissions were not entirely to blame for one of China's worst haze pollution events on record, according to a new study; rather, the heavily polluted air observed over the East China Plains in 2013 was a consequence of decreasing Arctic sea ice and increasing Eurasian snow that together produced stagnant atmospheric conditions in the region. The findings are an example of how large-scale perturbations caused by global climate change can have significant regional impacts. In January 2013, the East China Plains suffered from unprecedented large-scale haze lasting almost an entire month, a so-called "airpocalypse." Researchers have studied short-term weather conditions, such as a weak East Asian winter monsoon, contributing to the event, but the underlying climate effects are still not well understood. Despite years of reduced emissions, severe winter haze has persisted in the region, indicating other factors may also be at play. Yufei Zou and colleagues studied ventilation conditions over the last 35 years in the region, which is made up of interconnected horseshoe-shaped basins where ventilation of air pollutants relies heavily on large-scale weather systems. By looking at wind speed and air temperature data, Zou et al. created their own "Pollution Potential Index" to quantify the effect of ventilation on air pollution. The results connect the 2013 haze event to poor ventilation conditions that have not been seen in the past three decades. The authors also analyzed climate-related patterns that contribute to poor ventilation and extreme haze. The findings suggest that Arctic sea ice loss the autumn before January 2013, as well as extensive boreal snow in the preceding months, drove the haze event. If Arctic sea ice continues to melt, similar poor ventilation conditions in winter may occur more frequently in eastern China. The authors say this finding provides a "strong incentive" for more stringent emission reductions in China and note that haze could affect Beijing's hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics.