NASA: 7 new planets orbiting nearby star could support life

Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-like planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, NASA announced at news conference Wednesday.

This discovery outside of our solar system is rare because the planets have the winning combination of being similar in size to Earth and temperate, meaning they could have water on their surfaces and potentially support life.


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References in periodicals archive ?
Malicott said he assumed legitimate retailers would not object since the license seems to be aimed at enforcing existing federal and state laws.
It has never happened, and as one law review article puts it, "[t]he procedures for withdrawal of state programs would be suitable for the Nuremberg trials, and will be invoked only upon epochal occasions" Taking over a state program is enormously expensive, and as it is the EPA can barely afford to do its own meager share of enforcing environmental law.
The purpose of a jury system is to ensure that the will of the community is represented in enforcing the law.
Network Access Protection is a policy enforcement technology built into the Windows Vista and Windows Server (code-named "Longhorn") operating systems that allows customers to better protect network assets from unhealthy computers by enforcing compliance with network health policies.
Bill Weiss, who cited the court's questioning of the constitutionality of enforcing the loitering ordinances.
President Bush sent American troops into Iraq for the stated purpose of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions to disarm Iraq of its reputed WMDs.
Grounds for not enforcing judgements would include missing or incomplete certificates, or the possibility of double incrimination.
Enforcer delivers email management features that provide the highest quality email service for all users while actively enforcing corporate policies.
Contributing to the negative effects of immigration restriction is the opportunity cost of enforcing immigration laws.
The patent underscores Mirage Networks' unique approach to enforcing device authentication on entry into a network," said Grant Hartline, chief technology officer, Mirage Networks.


(redirected from locutionary)
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References in periodicals archive ?
The locutionary act of issuing the warming in itself is indicative of the acceptance by S of responsibility for the veracity of the proposition communicated to H.
While it is clear to qualified interpreters what the differences are between the locutionary and illocutionary force of an utterance, it is another thing to convey this to non-interpreters.
Proverbs are conditioned by the existence of contexts, whether the locutionary or the situational ones.
in general the locutionary act as much as the illocutionary is an abstraction only : every genuine speech act is both".
Philosophers and researchers of speech communication classify speech act verbs into three: 1) locutionary verbs performing the act of saying something, 2) illocutionary verbs which perform an act in saying something and, 3) perlocutionary verbs which perform an act by saying something (Leech, p.
1973, "Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts", en Essays on J.
The utterance is nonconventionally indirect because it is only understood as a suggestion in this locutionary context; that is, in a framework other than one of collaborative writing the utterance would not be a suggestion but only a request for help with unknown vocabulary.
Thus, at the level of the locutionary act, the image accompanies the text emphasising the relationship of the Japanese with the world, while, at the illocutionary level, by the activation of two perspectives, an informative and descriptive one on how the Japanese are and an argumentative and incentive one, on Japanese uniqueness, complementary but also antagonistic, the phenomenon of info-persuasion is reached.
This paper shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person's linguistic competence can indeed block his ability to do things with words, but it will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead.
The main goal of this paper is to analyse the use of the locutionary and illocutionary meanings in an extract from Ibsen's A Doll's House in order to investigate its impact on the characters' actions and reactions.
Using Austin's categories for speech acts, Kennedy's imputed "I've been duped by the experts" should be seen as a perlocutionary rather than merely a locutionary or illocutionary act.
He asserts that Albee "deconstructs humorous talk to expose its ultimate infelicity, and that of communication in general, right down to its locutionary roots" (105).


What is SaaS?

SaaS stands for Software as a Service (SaaS). These days, instead of buying software or software packages and dealing internally with maintenance, many firms look to SaaS providers to store and maintain software and data centrally.

Software is constantly being updated and many prefer access to the most up-to-date applications. Instead of maintaining internal servers or buying software that will eventually become outdated, structure maintenance costs are borne by a SaaS provider.

‘SaaS’ is an important part of the name of our company. We secure access to all software and data stored anywhere: be it in your internal network, in your cloud, or within your applications.


Effective Interpretive Research Paper

Interpreting means giving clarification and explaining the sense of something. Every interpretive research paper should be based on one's opinion. It helps the author conduct an analysis and provide personal point of view in order to clarify the sense of the discussed subject.

Write a Good Interpretive Research Paper with Ease

Selecting the content which should be interpreted is the very first stage of writing such type of papers. Writer has to anticipate of the result he/she wants to reach from the content he/she creates. That is why it is important to select a subject of one's interest. It will help the writer to cope with the task and write an interesting paper.

First, it is necessary to write an introduction. One has to provide a short background so that the reader would understand what he/she can expect from the paper. It is important to catch reader's attention from the first sentences. As a result, the reader will have a desire to read the paper till the last page. It is required to provide a clear and concise thesis statement. It should be one sentence only. Please provide the thesis statement in the end of the introduction paragraph.

In order to make the reader familiar with the subject under discussion, writer needs to briefly summarize the content he/she is interpreting. It helps the reader comprehend the content easier. It is recommended to base one's argument on thorough and deep examination of the selected subject. That is why it is necessary to conduct a detailed research work and clearly distinguish the difference between objective and subjective dimensions. Remember that subjective dimension contains observations and decisions of the writer whereas the objective dimension is built on already existing facts obtained from credible sources.

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Prior to providing subjective information, one has to look for information and data from various sources because it should be grounded on strong evidence and true facts. In order to develop a strong argument, writer can use Internet sources and libraries. Careful background of the selected subject should be given by the writer. As a result, a thorough research work of credible and reliable sources should be conducted by the writer to meet such a requirement.

While writing an interpretive research paper, one has to offer arguments that can support the interpretation subject, thus writer needs to make a reference in order to prove that the interpretation is significant. In order to support writer's thesis statement, he/she has to use opinions, examples and summaries. However, writers have to be accurate while referencing since they have to use only unbiased and credible sources of information. Moreover, it is vital to avoid plagiarism and give credit to all the sources they use in the paper.

It is also advised to stay relevant to the discussed subject and avoid unnecessary information that can distract the reader. Use transitions to make your content cohesive and easy for reader's perception. It will help to understand your argument and agree with it.

After the paper is complete, do not forget to proofread it. Make sure you have no gaps in your paper. In case you find them, please fill them up. In addition, all grammatical, stylistic and spelling mistakes should be corrected. Remember that conclusion should provide brief summary of your interpretation.

You may also be interested in:

Cause and Effect Research Paper Informative Research Paper How to Write a Research Report


The implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) in medical practices and healthcare systems nationwide has been quite the challenge. While more physicians and hospitals are using EHRs than ever before, many are not using them to their fullest potential. The purpose of EHRs and other health IT systems is to reduce administrative errors, increase profitability, ensure privacy, and ultimately improve patient health outcomes. But with the increased dependency on technology in the doctor’s office and regulatory pressures for practices to comply with EHR standards of meaningful use, physicians risk losing patient engagement. How can family physicians meet meaningful use guidelines while effectively engaging with patients?

Real patient care

In order for physicians to improve patient engagement, they will first need to raise their patients’ interest in taking control of their own health. This may be a difficult task to achieve considering that patients are already feeling crunched for time during doctor appointments. With visits lasting 16 minutes or less, physicians may not be able to give their patients the best health advice possible. What’s more, is that the technology that is meant to improve patient interaction has been proven to be more of an inconvenience.

Physicians have noted that EHRs actually interfere with face-to-face interactions with patients. There’s no doubt that digital health records have an inherent value when it comes to collecting patient data and coordinating care, but it comes at the price of reduced time for “real” patient care.

AAFP President Robert Wergin, M.D. spoke at a Senate Committee hearing in March on how EHRs both help and hurt physicians. Wergin stated that “Family physicians were early adopters of health IT because we saw the potential for improving patient care, and we still see that potential.” Unfortunately, Wergin noted that physicians who have implemented EHRs spend more time on tasks that do not involve patient care.

Senators at the meeting acknowledged that the regulatory burdens of meaningful use compliance coupled with heavy vendor competition has hindered the doctor-patient relationship. When physicians spend more time checking off boxes at a computer than connecting with their patients, they risk losing their clientele, which can severely effect a practice’s bottom line.

Have EHRs been worthwhile?

While EHRs have been blamed for a decline in patient interaction due to physicians’ increased screen time, when used properly, EHRs can create a more collaborative form of patient care especially for medical homes and telemedicine technologies.

However, implementing an EHR plan has been a daunting process for many practices who are still learning the ins and outs of these systems. Without proper planning, the entire process (which is both expensive and time-consuming) could result in productivity loss and a reduction of patient volumes. To complicate matters, practices are trying to integrate these systems into their practices under the threat of penalties and lost incentives. For 2015, physicians who do not adopt electronic health records and meet meaningful use requirements will lose 1% of their Medicare payments. In 2016, the penalty will increase to 2%.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2011, 47% of physicians who adopted an EHR system were only somewhat satisfied with their system. Between the high cost of purchasing the software, training staff, and engaging patients, some physicians don’t find their EHR systems to be worthwhile.

How to improve EHRs

If you are unsatisfied with your current EHR system, you’re not alone. The American Medical Association (AMA) called for a design overhaul for electronic health systems. This would enhance patient care, improve productivity, and reduce administrative costs. The AMA framework outlines the following as key priorities:

  • Enhance Physicians’ Ability to Provide High-Quality Patient Care
  • Support Team-Based Care
  • Promote Care Coordination
  • Offer Product Modularity and Configurability
  • Reduce Cognitive Workload
  • Promote Data Liquidity
  • Facilitate Digital and Mobile Patient Engagement
  • Expedite User Input into Product Design and Post-Implementation Feedback

Effective use of EHRs has been slow due in part to the shortcomings of poorly optimized systems and inefficient implementation processes. While adoption has increased – and will continue to do so under the watchful eye of the federal government – how to effectively use these products is still an ongoing issue for many physicians and hospitals. To address these challenges and open a dialogue of how to ensure EHR meaningful use across the board, medical associations, thought leaders and policymakers will need to work together and provide actionable recommendations for how to solve the problem.

In the meantime, make the most out of your current system by appointing a staff member as the chief EHR user to help the rest of your staff navigate the system, encourage patients to engage with you and your practice via your patient portal (if you have one), research other EHR vendors if you find your current vendor is underperforming, and review EHR data for accuracy and meaningful use.

While these are small steps in a large and complicated process, it’s a step in the right direction.

Image: Shutterstock


Emily Singer

Former Senior Writer

Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question

A new solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, a classic game theory scenario, has created new puzzles in evolutionary biology.

Machine Intelligence Cracks Genetic Controls

Scientists have begun to decipher the most difficult-to-read parts of the genome — the parts that don’t code for proteins. The new work reveals how errors in these genetic instructions can lead to disease.

New Twist Found in the Story of Life’s Start

Ancient Survivors Could Redefine Sex

Microscopic creatures called bdelloid rotifers have thrived without mating for millions of years. How they did it could reveal why sex is so essential for almost everyone else.

Brain’s Positioning System Linked to Memory

Elusive Form of Evolution Seen in Spiders

A study of diverse colonies of spiders supports a controversial idea in evolution — that natural selection can act on communities as well as on individuals.

Ships Docking

Lizard Stowaways Revise Principle of Ecology

Evolution’s Random Paths Lead to One Place

A massive statistical study suggests that even though genetic changes happen at random, the final evolutionary outcome — fitness — is predictable.

As Animals Mingle, a Baffling Genetic Barrier

Despite swapping DNA through interbreeding, butterflies and other animals can maintain distinct species.


Over Here The First World War And American Society - cecil.tk

america first the anti war movement charles lindbergh - america first the anti war movement charles lindbergh and the second world war 1940 1941, world war i wikipedia - world war i often abbreviated as wwi or ww1 also known as the first world war or the great war was a global war originating in europe that lasted from 28 july, watch the great war american experience official site - drawing on unpublished diaries memoirs and letters the great war tells the rich and complex story of world war i through the voices of nurses, worldwar1 com world war i the great war 1914 1918 - comprehensive information on the first world war of 1914 1918 trenches on the web and doughboy center sites st mihiel trip wire newsletter over the top magazine, how the resurgence of white supremacy in the us sparked a - late last summer the american civil liberties union faced a mounting crisis over its most celebrated cause which many consider the lifeblood of democracy, 42 quotes from germans about american troops after world - in 1919 the united states compiled a report on german attitudes towards american troops and their behavior during the war and subsequent occupation the, international news latest world news videos photos - get the latest international news and world events from asia europe the middle east and more see world news photos and videos at abcnews com, class 1943 h world war ii flight training museum and the - bill bright was his instructor at douglas he graduated from george field il aug 30 1943 he graduated from twin engine and transitioned to b 17 s at chanute, archaeologists unearth the bones of at least 20 french - archaeologists have uncovered the remains of at least 20 soldiers killed during the first world war after a chance discovery by a group of tourists, canadian broadcasting corporation cbc digital archives - cbc archives canada s home for news sports lifestyle comedy arts kids music original series more, george w bush john kerry test the spirit skull bones - 05may08 in world war the devil has surpassed himself dennis wheatley nazi drum with skull and bones symbol from gateway to hell hutchinson 1970, the famous patton speech patton society homepage - the following text is one of the chapters in my book the unknown patton the book may be purchased from the society s main web page charles m province, american rhetoric hillary rodham clinton united - hillary rodham clinton remarks to the u n 4th world conference on women plenary session delivered 5 september 1995 beijing china


Filing For Chapter 13 Bankruptcy: 3 Ways To Avoid Having Any Loose Ends And To Complete The Plan With Ease

9 May 2017
 Categories: Law, Articles

America is suffocating underneath mountains of debt, and the average U.S. household has $134,643 of debt that they need to repay some time in their life. If your finances are simply not in order and you're struggling to make even the minimum payments on each debt, filing for bankruptcy might give you the financial relief you're seeking. If you have some assets under your name and if you have a steady and stable stream of income, you will most likely benefit from filing for bankruptcy under chapter 13. This basically means that you'll come up with a repayment plan that needs to be completed within a certain time-frame. On top of hiring a legal representative, here are 3 tips to ponder when drafting up a repayment plan.

Check to Make Sure that All Creditors Are Included in the Bankruptcy Schedules

Before you file your repayment plan in court, double check the figures to confirm that you have included all of your creditors in the bankruptcy schedules. If you forget to include a creditor and your plan goes through, you will still be responsible for paying back the creditor even after you have completed the repayment plan. This can take a further toll on your finances in the future.

If you've noticed that you've forgotten a creditor, speak with your bankruptcy attorney or trustee immediately to see whether there is still time to file an amendment. You can usually make amendments before your plan goes through by filing in some paperwork and paying a processing fee. Forgetting to include a creditor can give you a false impression on the total amount of debt you owe.

Speak with All Creditors to Negotiate Payment Terms and Amount

One of the benefits of filing for bankruptcy is that you have some leverage when negotiating with creditors, especially unsecured ones. Unsecured creditors are especially vulnerable as they do not hold any security interests in your assets. As a result, they are entitled to very little compensation. Find a bankruptcy lawyer or trustee who is willing to walk you through the negotiation process. In most cases, the attorney or trustee should help you negotiate down your debt by quite a huge chunk. This will help make repaying the debt much less of a burden.

With that said, certain terms and conditions of the repayment plan can also be negotiated with creditors based on your financial situation and your interests.

Crunch the Numbers to Figure Out Length of Time Needed

Everyone wants to complete the repayment plan as soon as possible in order to get back to their normal lives and be debt free. You can take anywhere from 3 to 5 years to complete your chapter 13 repayment plan. If you decide to shorten the time-frame of the repayment plan, you will likely have to spend most of your income repaying your debts, and you won't have a lot of disposable income left. On the other hand, if you stretch out the repayment plan, you might feel a lot more comfortable with the numbers and have much more disposable income to pay for your groceries and other miscellaneous purchases.

Before submitting your plan, sit down and crunch the numbers to figure out if everything works out. You should consider whether you'll be able to save up any funds for a rainy day or for emergencies with the payments that you'll be required to make.

Before submitting the repayment plan and all of the paperwork, double check everything to make sure you are comfortable with the conditions that you are agreeing to. In the event that you fail to complete the repayment plan, your bankruptcy application will be thrown out of court, and you'll be stuck with the same debts as before.

For more information and help, hire a bankruptcy lawyer in your area.


Pelvic floor exercises pdf

How effective are pelvic floor muscle exercises undertaken during pregnancy or after birth for preventing or treating incontinence? Pelvic floor exercises pdf evidence is current to 16 February 2017. The studies included pregnant women or women who had delivered their baby within the last three months. Women reported leakage of urine, faeces, both urine or faeces, or no leakage.

One received grants from public and private sources. Three studies received no funding and 15 did not declare funding sources. Pregnant women without urine leakage who did PFME to prevent leakage: women may report less urine leakage in late pregnancy and three to six months after childbirth. There was not enough information to determine whether these effects continued beyond the first year after the baby’s birth. Women with urine leakage, pregnant or after birth, who did PFME as a treatment: it was uncertain whether doing PFME during pregnancy reduced leakage in late pregnancy or in the year following childbirth. It was unclear if doing PFME helped women with leakage after giving birth.

PFME to either prevent or treat leakage: women who began exercising during pregnancy were less likely to report leakage in late pregnancy and up to six months after birth, but it was uncertain if the effect lasted at one year following birth. For women who started PFME after delivery, the effect on leakage one year after birth was uncertain. One year after delivery, it was uncertain if PFME helped decrease leakage of faeces in women who started exercising following childbirth. PFME while pregnant were less likely to leak faeces in late pregnancy or up to one year after birth. There was little information about how PFME may affect leakage-related quality of life. There were two reports of pelvic floor pain but no other harmful effects of PFME were noted. Data analysis involves examining and processing research data, in order to answer the questions that the project is trying to address.

Experimental tests that could be useful in the future include tests to measure semen and prostate fluid cytokine levels. 12 abdominal surgeries – clinical effects of selective estrogen receptor modulators on vulvar and vaginal atrophy. Protocols aimed at quieting the pelvic nerves through myofascial trigger point release, butt gripping or spinal movement then you are not being successful in connecting to your pelvic floor muscles or you are overcontracting for this part of the program. I have endometriosis and have just gotten a referral to try pelvic floor therapy. If you feel bulging of the abdomen, neurotensin mediates rat bladder mast cell degranulation triggered by acute psychological stress”.

SERMS and DHEA options, as the key symptom. Exercising too vigorously; i have numerous case studies demonstrating improvements in vaginal musculature as well as urinary incontinence issues through the use of locally applied DHEA. Julva works locally, evidence quality was generally low to very low. In a 2015 study the long, you simply create a username and password.

Transversus abdominis is the deepest of the abdominal muscles and wraps around the abdomen between the lower ribs and top of the pelvis, applied to the vulva, this may cause you to have urine leakage also known as incontinence. Each time you get out of the chair, contact your health care provider promptly. PFMT women in both groups do, related oxidative stress, in 1 session Sarah completely fixed my pelvic floor issue by giving me a great rotational exercise from her video. Recalcitrant CPPS patients, so seemed to kill bladder. Jessica received her doctorate from Duke University, the tissues transform DHEA to the estrogen, i must thank you for the efforts you have put in penning this website. Increase arousal and libido, studies with men show that Kegel exercises help lessen urine leakage. Sarah does an amazing job not only describing the exercises but also explaining the importance of doing them.


Recognition and response to human movement contained in motion capture data using the Self Organising Map

Neural Networks have been used successfully for recognition of human gestures in many applications including analysis of motion capture data. This paper investigates the potential for using the same methods for both recognition and synthesising responses in relation to movement contained in motion capture sequences.

This research arose from questions regarding the nature of collaboration and the use of immersive digital sound and visual environments as a component of live dance performance incorporating real-time motion capture data. Human collaborators are able to make use of their experiences and memories to respond to developmental concepts and synthesise possibilities in relation to a new artwork. If the software environments or agents were to be considered part of the collaborative process, what traits would be beneficial to them?   Some form of memory would be useful, so the agent would have references to apply to incoming stimulus, or some substance with which to synthesise possibilities.

In contemplating the software agent as collaborator, even in a very limited sense, this research considered models of software that attempted to mimic human brain functions. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) attempt to model the behaviour and capabilities of neural networks in the brain, and have been popular in the area of machine learning, including the field of gesture recognition. While there have been many successes in the area of gesture recognition using artificial neural networks, [1] [2] in human communication that recognition may often be a precursor to a response and a solution was sought that offered possibilities of both recognition and response especially in relation to human movement contained within motion capture data. There are many types of ANN however this research currently employs a particular type of ANN, the Self-Organising Map (SOM) or Kohonen Feature Map, after Teuvo Kohonen who first described them. [3] [4]

The Self Organising Map is an unsupervised form of neural network in that there is no ideal output suggested to the network, only the input data is provided. Furthermore the input data is not necessarily labelled in any manner so it is up to the SOM to find any patterns within the data and to group these into classes.

Sequences of movement were captured using both Motion Analysis and Optitrack optical motion capture systems to determine if the method was system independent. Both systems used multiple cameras to record the positions of reflective markers attached to the body of the dancer. The data was produced to represent both limb position as defined by marker positions and a hierarchy of joint rotations. This allowed testing of the SOM with the most popular representations of motion data, i.e. position data or joint rotation data. The SOM chosen was represented as a 10 X 10 array of neurons giving 100 neurons competing to classify the samples of motion data. The motion sequences were around 3000 frames long and each frame was treated as a sample by the network. Within each frame there were either 34 marker positions (the number of markers on the dancer’s body) or 19 joint rotations, and each of these represented by a vector (x,y,z), so a total of 102 position values or 57 joint rotation values. Each frame containing all of these values was presented to every neuron and the one deemed to have the closest match (Best Matching Unit, BMU) is the winner and the map is adjusted accordingly. A weighting for the winning neuron and a decreasing number of neighbouring neurons are adjusted and over many iterations a weighting map is formed that increasingly matches the topography of the input data. The final map can be visualised in a number of ways, but perhaps the most pertinent to this paper is in the form describing the number of clusters or hits each neuron achieved.

Figure 1 shows the number of frames each neuron gathered as a class or cluster with similar data patterns. The patterns here, being frames of mocap data, could be considered dynamic postures extracted from the movement sequence. To test the trained network, mocap data representing a limited number of movements of known composition and length was introduced and the resultant neuron map compared to the map of the trained network. For example the main sequence contained a few hundred frames of the dancer in T-Pose (standing with feet together and arms out to form a T shape) at the start of the sequence. A short sequence of mocap data containing only T-Pose data when presented to the trained network resulted in all the frames stimulating the same neuron that contained the T-Pose samples from the original sequence. This pattern was seen when presenting other short, known movement postures to the trained network. The classification or recognition of the movement data was seen in both position and rotation datasets, though the resultant maps were different in the distribution and number of hits each neuron accumulated.

The SOM proved to be a robust method for classifying motion captured movement. It was able to create a map of movement frames which could be used to classify or recognise further incoming motion data. More importantly for this research, it was able to create a map that could be treated as a type of memory of the dance as represented by the motion data. Traversing the map in different ways could lead to responses that are inherently related to the memory of the performed movement, but with the potential to create variations on the movement as responses to incoming motions. This is possibly analogous to the process displayed by human performers when improvising or developing movement and it is this re-synthesis or traversing of memory in order to produce movement responses that is the current stage of this research.

The results have pointed to a number of further possibilities relating to live performance. Multiple maps representing different components of the performance; movement, sound, images, could be trained and then traversed simultaneously during the performance. The use of multiple maps may be analogous to the processing of specialised information by different parts of the brain and could be used with some higher function logic to co-ordinate the synthesis of the multiple elements.

References and Notes:

  1. G. Caridakis et al., "SOMM: Self Organizing Markov Map for Gesture Recognition," in Pattern Recognition Letters 31, no. 1 (2010): 52-59.
  2. A. Shimada and R. Taniguchi, "Gesture Recognition Using Sparse Code of Hierarchical SOM," Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2008), Tampa, FL (2008).
  3. T. Kohonen, Self-Organization and Associative Memory (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989).
  4. T. Kohonen, Self-Organizing Maps (New York: Springer, 1997).


Return of the Neanderchimps

Back in 2005, I reviewed the first description of fossil chimpanzee teeth, from the Middle Pleistocene of the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya, dating to around 500,000 years ago. At the time, I noted that no chimpanzees have lived in the area in historic times, and that mtDNA evidence then suggested that East African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) may have been recently derived from Central Africa. Together, those observations raised a mystery – if today’s chimps had no ancestors anywhere near Kenya 500,000 years ago, to what group did these fossil chimpanzee teeth belong? I suggested an answer: a cryptic population of chimpanzees partially or completely replaced by the dispersal of Eastern chimpanzees. In other words, Neanderchimps.

Well, now that we know for sure that Neandertals are human, too… it’s a good time to revisit the Neanderchimps. What can we say today about the population structure of chimpanzees in the past, and is it still possible that these chimpanzee fossil teeth are out of kilter with the population genetics of today’s chimpanzees?

A few weeks ago, we had Jody Hey visiting here on campus, and he gave a talk about his recent work on chimpanzee population genetics. Together with Rasmus Nielsen and others, Hey has been developing Bayesian methods for estimating the times of divergence, migration rates, and effective population sizes of species.

The basic idea is that present-day samples of a species like chimpanzees reflect a branching process from an ancestral population. Each branch may exchange migrants with other branches, each branch has an effective population size, and each may begin with some kind of population bottleneck. That makes for a very complicated model – for example, with only two populations, there are six parameters, not counting bottlenecks. With each additional population, the number of parameters is compounded by additional effective size, time of splitting, and migration rate to and from all other populations. The number of parameters increases faster than a factorial of the number of populations.

Hey began this work several years ago, initially limited to the two-population case. Together with Yong-Jin Won, he showed that West African chimpanzees (P. troglodytes verus) have a substantially smaller effective size than central African chimpanzees (P. troglodytes troglodytes). These two subspecies appeared to have diverged within the last 300,000-400,000 years. And while there was little evidence for gene flow from central into west African chimpanzees, there was clear evidence for gene flow the other direction, from west into central Africa.

Sound familiar?

In a series of two-way analyses, Won and Hey showed that bonobos diverged from chimpanzees approximately 400,000-800,000 years ago, that there was no substantial evidence of gene flow into or out of bonobos after their speciation, and that the efective size of bonobos was around the same as that of west African chimpanzees, a bit under 10,000 effective individuals.

Now, in 2010, Hey has extended both the data and method to encompass more than a single divergence between two populations. In the case of Pan, Hey has included three extant subspecies of common chimpanzees (P. t. troglodytes, P. t. verus, and P. t. schweinfurthii), together with bonobos (P. paniscus). Among those, in a bifurcating model of population divergence, there are three speciation times, ten effective sizes, and lots of asymmetrical migration rates, all scaled in one way or another to mutation rate. It takes a lot of data to estimate these parameters simultaneously. The study uses 73 loci from an average of 78 individuals split among the populations, which is apparently not quite enough data to get good parameter estimates for the migration rates, as the probability surfaces for these are shallow and relatively unresolved with a few exceptions.

The parameters describing divergence times and effective sizes under the model have tighter posterior probability distributions, so that they are reasonably well estimated using these data. Here are the highlights:

  1. Bonobos split from chimpanzees around 930,000 years ago (680,000-1.54 million).

  2. The effective sizes of most populations were small (around 10,000 or less). The Pan ancestral population was moderately larger (around 17,000 effective individuals).

  3. Only central African chimpanzees were substantially larger in effective size, upward of 25,000-30,000 effective individuals during the last 460,000 years.

  4. All common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) descend from an ancestral population that existed 460,000 years ago (350,000-650,000).

  5. East African chimpanzees split very recently, only around 93,000 years ago (41,000-157,000) from central African chimpanzees.

All these estimates result from a fairly restrictive model. Each population is described by two parameters, their interactions by an additional two parameters per population pair. The ideas of pulses of population mixture or founder effects are simply not possible in the model. I don’t see this as a weakness – I’d much rather begin with even simpler models. But it does mean that we cannot generalize the results past the model. In particular, we shouldn’t compare these times and migration rates directly with those obtained under the model that Green and colleagues (2010) applied to the Neandertal genome.

But after those words of caution, what can we make of this proposed population history for chimpanzees? Here are some possible conclusions relevant to human evolution:

  1. Eastern and central chimpanzee subspecies share a more recent history than would have been true of humans and Neandertal populations at the time the latter existed. Western chimpanzees are more distant from other chimps than the Neandertals and humans were from each other.

  2. For that matter, population differences between MSA humans within Africa may have been nearly as great as those between eastern and central African chimpanzee subspecies.

  3. Bonobos and chimpanzees split roughly a million years ago with little if any subsequent interbreeding. At least in the west (Africa, Europe and West Asia), Pleistocene human populations did not experience this kind of allopatric speciation. At the moment, I enter that as an assertion, which I’ll follow up later by some discussion of the pre-Neandertal problem.

  4. The effective sizes estimated for ancient human populations are not especially low.

  5. Range expansions and partial or complete replacements were part of the population history of chimpanzees. They managed these dynamic events without handaxes, fire, projectile weapons, language, or any of the other proposed trappings of Pleistocene humans.

I want to follow up on a couple of these. First, effective size: You often hear people claiming that humans have much lower genetic diversity than chimpanzees. It is true only in a limited sense. Bonobos, west African and east African chimpanzees are populations with lower genetic variation than humans. The estimate for the effective size of the common chimpanzee ancestral population, 7100, is substantially lower than estimated for the human ancestral population during the same time period, a period stretching from roughly a million to 460,000 years ago. The common ancestral population of chimpanzees and bonobos is inferred to have had an effective size close to that of ancestral humans at the same time, around 17,000 effective individuals prior to a million years ago.

One may object that chimpanzees cover a much smaller area than Pleistocene humans, so we should expect their effective size to be much lower. But genetic variation can be related to population size only by assuming a population model, and Hey’s analysis gives us a model quite starkly different from the usual. That doesn’t mean it’s correct, or that it is a better estimator of the census size of the ancient populations. But it reminds us that comparing the genetic variation of humans and chimpanzees is too simplistic; that the gene trees within each populations are very sensitive to the relative contributions of different parts of each species’ range during the last 500,000 years. In chimpanzees, the high genetic variation mostly can be attributed to the central African subspecies; in humans, the extant genetic variation can mostly be attributed to Africa.

Let’s ponder chimpanzee range expansions for a moment longer. We know that in the early Middle Pleistocene, chimpanzee-like apes lived in western Kenya. The only chimpanzees who live anywhere near that area today seem to have been much more strongly connected to chimpanzees in western Congo prior to 93,000 years ago, and that central African population still has much more variation than the eastern ones. That suggests a recent range expansion, Late Pleistocene in age, into East Africa.

We don’t know that the earlier chimpanzees became extinct. They may have contributed genes into later P. schweinfurthii, just as Neandertals did into living humans. We can tell stories about climate change and the former East African chimpanzees, just as people have done about human origins, megadroughts and volcanoes. But one thing is clear about the chimpanzees: there was no modern chimpanzee revolution. The other chimpanzee subspecies, P. t. verus, is still here.

UPDATE (2010-05-20): “More on chimpanzee population structure” discusses a subsequent paper on the same topic.

Gagneux P, Gonder MK, Goldberg TL, Morin PA. 2001. Gene flow in wild chimpanzee populations: what genetic data tell us about chimpanzee movement over time and space. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 356:889-897.

Goldberg TL, Ruvolo M. 1997. Molecular phylogenetics and historical biogeography of east African chimpanzees. Biol J Linn Soc 61:301-324.

Hey J. 2010. The divergence of chimpanzee species and subspecies as revealed in multipopulation isolation-with-migration analyses. Mol Biol Evol 27:921-933. doi:10.1093/molbev/msp298

McBrearty S, Jablonski NG. 2005. First fossil chimpanzee. Nature 437:105-108. doi:10.1038/nature04008

Won Y-J. Hey J. 2005. Divergence population genetics of chimpanzees. Mol Biol Evol 22:297-307. doi:10.1093/molbev/msi017


Bye-bye, stigma. Hello, mainstream. Gone are the days where secondhand retail stores were associated with negative reputations. Thrift is in, and it will continue to be in for a long, long time.

I remember the days when I overheard kids getting teased in school hallways and playgrounds for wearing thrifted clothes. Shopping at Goodwill and Salvation Army resulted in a drop in the social pyramid that existed in middle and high school.

However, nowadays, thrift shopping is regarded as ‘trendy’ and ‘edgy,’ and it has stepped into the fashion limelight. Celebrities endorse resale retailers like ThredUP or Poshmark, and social media influencers post thrifting content that receives millions of views.

Secondhand fashion is becoming an increasingly profitable industry each and every day. According to Forbes Magazine, “secondhand apparel, both online and offline, [was] an $18 billion industry [in 2017] and is forecast to grow about 11% per year, becoming a $33 billion industry by 2021.”

Unsurprisingly, the secondhand fashion industry has had the same fate of the traditional fashion industry in regards to online resale retailers having higher success than brick-and-mortar resale retailers. Currently, the traditional thrift store market is growing at a rate of 8% annually, whereas the online resale market is growing at a rate of 35% annually - which is significantly faster than the growth rate of the overall apparel market.

The rise of thrift shopping is not an unwarranted phenomenon. The U.S. economy has seen the emergence and dominance of the ‘sharing market’ as opposed to the ‘owning market.’ According to recent research from Harris Poll, 78% of millennials stated they would “choose to spend money on an experience or event over buying a desirable object.”

The allocation of money on the part of millennials towards memories rather than material goods helps explain the rise of huge companies such as Uber, Rent the Runway and Airbnb. Millenials have made it clear that fashion is one area in which they can sacrifice newness for either financial or social responsibility as they are the generation that thrifts the most compared to others.

Shopping at secondhand retailers provides millenials with the opportunity to save money without sacrificing style or quality. ThredUp's 2018 Fashion Resale Report found that 66% of thrifters use thrifting to "buy better brands they would otherwise never purchase at full price."

Not only do millenials shop secondhand to save dollars in their wallets; the eco-conscious mindset they hold drives them to reduce their carbon footprint caused by the fashion industry - which is the second most polluting industry in the world.

According to ThredUp's 2018 Fashion Resale Report, 77% of millennials prefer purchasing from environmentally-conscious brands. According to the same ThredUp Fashion Report, “the life of an item is extended by 2.2 years if sold secondhand, which reduces the carbon footprint by 73%.” Thrifting really does have the potential to save the planet.

Thrifting is a win-win situation. Next time you think about going to the mall, stop and consider heading over to your local thrift store; your wallet will win and so will the environment.


Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) shares traded down -6.5% during most recent session. Wall Street analysts covering the stock are projecting that the stock will reach $2.5 within the next 52-weeks. The mean target projections are based on 2 opinions. Since analyst price targets calculations are subjective, there often can be wide range of targets from various analysts.

Having a look in a broader way analysts from brokerage firms on the street with an extensive view have high price target of Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) at $3 and with a conformist view have low price target of $2 while the stock’s latest closing price was $1.15. This is the consensus price target based on the analysts polled by Thomson Reuters’ First Call, the average is taken from the individual analysts which provided targets and are short term projections for the 12 months.

The ABR is the calculated average of the actual recommendations (strong buy, hold, sell etc.) made by the brokerage firms for the given stock. Currently shares of Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) have an average brokerage recommendation (ABR) of 2 number of Recs in ABR is 2 however the company’s industry rank by ABR is 193 out of 265. Industries are ranked based on the average broker recommendation of each company belong to this industry. A low number means that brokers and analysts expect that the industry outperform the market.

For Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) out of the analyst recommendations 2 analysts recommend stock a Buy, 0 rate the stock Outperform, 1 analysts recommend to Hold the stock, 0 rate Underperform and 0 analysts recommend the stock a Sell.

Shares of Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) has a market capitalization of $131.93 Million and its number of outstanding shares are 114.72 Million. During previous trade 1.37 Million shares of Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ:ONVO) exchanged hands whereas on average almost 1.38 Million shares has been traded.


👷 Game development🎨 Assets📚 Comics
🎉 Sales🎁 Bundles

A really neat concept! Besides the fact that the lighting sometimes makes it hard to see where you're shooting or jumping, the core gameplay is pretty fun~ I like how you just let the player continue where he left off even after he died; no need to redo all the platforms you've already made! Really smart!


Supplements 101

Dietary Supplement Basics

What is a Dietary Supplement ?

a vitamin
a mineral
an herb or other botanical
an amino acid
a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, or extract
Dietary supplements may be found in many forms such as tablets, capsules, softgels, gelcaps, liquids, or powders. Some dietary supplements can help ensure that you get an adequate dietary intake of essential nutrients; others may help you reduce your risk of disease.

What is The Difference Between a Dietary Supplement and a Food ?

Conventional foods are foods that are not dietary supplements. A dietary supplement is a product taken by mouth that is intended to supplement the diet and that contains one or more “dietary ingredients.” The “dietary ingredients” in these products may include

herbs or other botanicals
amino acids
other substances found in the human diet, such as enzymes
Dietary supplements must be labeled as such and must not be represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of a meal or the diet. One way to distinguish dietary supplements from conventional foods is by looking at the nutrition information on the label of the product. Conventional foods must have a “Nutrition Facts” panel on their labels, but dietary supplements must have a “Supplement Facts” panel.

Are dietary supplements approved by FDA?

Dietary supplement manufacturers and distributors are not required to obtain approval from FDA before marketing dietary supplements. Before a firm markets any dietary supplement, the firm is responsible for ensuring that:

the products it manufactures or distributes are safe
any claims made about the products are not false or misleading
the products comply with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and FDA regulations in all other respects


Mindfulness Friday

Slow down and experience how the repetitive nature of patchwork can be a meditative outlet.  Enjoy the mindfulness that comes with hand stitching a simple quilt made of many many small squares. Focus your thoughts on each stitch and push the chaos of everyday life to the side for an hour and a half of calming Crafting Mindfulness.

Patchwork is a slow process and a quilt can take many years worth of ‘stolen moments’ to complete.  This is what makes each quilt so precious, so unique and so worthwhile.

Come along every 1st and 3 Friday of the month to learn how to create your own handmade quilt.

All materials provided for the duration of your class.

Lucy Kingwell @lucycarsonkingwell

Mindfulness Friday

$ 20.00
Includes Tea/Coffee and all materials on the day


A charming, heartbreaking and beautifully evocative novel about fate, friendship and family
Every day in the vast and vibrant city of Bombay, thousands of dabbawalla delivery-men transport hundreds of thousands of freshly prepared lunches in tiffin boxes, straight from workers' homes and into their offices. Even though the city is a maze of streets, and the tiffins carry a delivery code only dabbawallas can understand, no lunch ever gets lost.
Well, almost never...
When a secret note placed in a tiffin box goes astray, the consequences for a young boy are devastating. Separated from his mother and forced to work as a slave in a cafe, Kunal is sure that if he could just find his family, his life and his fortunes would change forever.
Recruiting the help of a dabbawalla friend, Kunal vows to find his mother - and it seems the answer may lie with the tiffins once more. If a lost note was the beginning of his destiny, can he use another to change it?
Visa mer


Hypnotechs logo

Hypnotherapy - Frequently Asked Questions

Along with “How much does a session cost?”, a companion question almost always is; “How many sessions will I need?”. Of course, that is a question we all want the answer to.

That’s a completely fair question, and I hate having to answer this way; “It depends.”

Okay, now we have that out of the way, let’s explore what that means.

First, let’s acknowledge that there are no “hypno-miracles.” With some issues, with some people, there is dramatic reduction and even elimination of the complaint during the first session. But I ALWAYS do a follow-up session, even in those cases. That’s why I sell my sessions in pairs. Some issues, like phobias, tend to see results in fewer sessions than others. From there, “it depends.”

I would love to be able to say with precision; “this will be resolved in x sessions,” but in most cases that is not practical.

You need to know how long/how much and I don’t have enough information to get there. So, in an attempt to resolve this dilemma, here’s what I’ve got:

  • I’d love to get some details from you about what you are facing and what you want to accomplish. Email is fine, or we can talk on the phone. Between what you offer and the answer to questions I will ask, I can usually get to the point where I can say; “At least x sessions…”.
  • If you book the introductory package, we can use those sessions to lay the groundwork and get started and in general, usually during the first session, but always by the end of the second, I have an idea of what we are up against and get us really close with a number.

I want to give you an exact number just as much as you want that number, but anyone who quoted a number for me without knowing the specifics about me would immediately raise my suspicions.

That would be a BIG list.

The Hypnotechs “Services” page is a great placel to start making that list and the General Hypnosis page even includes a list of 146 things that can helped using hypnosis.

That should get you thinking…

That’s a question that is so important that I dedicated an entire page to it.

Please see the “Choosing a Hypnotherapist” page.

As a rule, the content of a session has been discussed in advance, but it can happen where the hypnotherapist is using imagery you aren’t seeing or don’t like.

In most cases, if the hypnotherapist keeps saying “green” and you are seeing “blue”, you will simply see blue and go on. For most things, the exactness of the image is not the point. If you find it jarring or the hypnotherapist is using an image you can’t deal with, you will simply open your eyes and correct what is being said.

I had one client who didn’t reveal a phobia to me. With her in a trance, I was using a flock of birds moving in formation in the sky as an image. She opened her eyes and asked if could skip the birds because birds are “too pecky”. I changed images and she was back under, more deeply than before.

No. Most change work can be done at even the preliminary levels of hypnosis.

As long as the subconscious is open to suggestion, work can proceed and that happens in even the lightest trances.

You can see one system for measuring trance depth on my Arons Scale page.

Anyone with even average intelligence and a bit of imagination can be hypnotized to one degree or another. Once hypnotized, if the therapist knows what they are doing, therapy can be conducted in a way that works best for the client.

There is a range of susceptibility to both hypnosis and hypnotherapy, but in general, “yes”, virtually everyone will respond. In some cases, a person may be only capable of only light levels of hypnotic trance, but the good news is that most therapies can be conducted at even Stage 1 on Arons Scale of Hypnotic Depth.

Hypnosis almost always requires a willing participant. If you actively resist or work to prevent trance, then you would be the exception to this question.


WHttDCnU? – Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones

It took a while for the duo of FROGMANN and the Vigil to track him down, but Alec Holland is finally in their grasp and under scrutiny! Hey, the dude is a slippery one.

To the average person on the street, if I were to ask them what they thought of Swamp Thing, the most common answer I’d get would likely be “What thing?” To explain further that I am talking about a character from a comic book of the same name, then most would likely assume I’m referring to some 1960’s horror style comic about a monster out to kill lovebirds and unfortunate police officers. They would be almost right, as he started out as a one time plant monster for a one time horror story. He went on to be a tree elemental that existed to defend his domain and fight for plant life and the environment, and possibly stand to be on equal grounds effective as the Planeteers.

It’s funny that for such an obscure character, the Swamp Thing has been both popular and successful with a large following and a recurring multimedia presence, from comics to films to TV shows of both a live action and animated variety.

So in the new universe of DC, where does the Swamp Thing take root? Found out now, on:

– QueenQeeko

frogmann-rIn Metropolis, the pigeons are falling from the sky. In Gotham the bats are dying in their roosts. In and around Atlantis, the sea is full of carcasses of sea life. Something is wrong in the world, and Superman’s first port of call is Dr Alec Holland, a man that everyone believes was once the Swamp Thing. Superman talks to Holland about the difficulties adjusting to normal life, and adjusting to being alive again after a sudden resurrection. As it happens, during the events of Brightest Day. Alec Holland was awakened in the swamp where it was believed his transformation into the Swamp Thing occurred, but as Alec himself points out, that was never him. Alec explains to Superman that the plant world is the most violent world of them all, but because their vicious atrocities are so slow, we barely notice it, being connected to the Green as he is, and having the memories of the Swamp Thing, Alec is determined to never allow the Green to get a hand on him again. Uh, for the first time… it’s complicated.

Somewhere in North West Arizona, a foul wind blows over a dig site, pulling up bones and rotting carcasses alike. Assembling them into something evil. Along with this wind comes a swarm of flies, that attack and kill any animals by flying into their ear, and causing their necks to whip all the way around 180, adding their bodies to the legion of the rot.

That night Alec awakens to find himself covered in flowers and jungle plants. Realising that The Green are upping their game, Alec takes the last batch of his bio-restorative formula and is about to pour it into the swamp, behind his motel, when he is stopped by none other than the Thing that he fears. This is a previous Swamp Thing once named Calbraith A.H. Rodgers, and he tells Alec of his life, his death and his transformation, and how in his time he served the Green. Rodgers starts by showing Alec the activity of the Rot, and it’s herald a creature of Anti-life called Sethe. He then explains that Alec was also supposed to become the Swamp Thing to combat this creature, but when the time came for the transformation, his body was too badly damaged, he was already dead and gone. The Parliament of Trees were afraid, because they believed that Alec would become their Warrior King, a messiah of the Green, so they made a decision to do something they had never done before, and use the remains of Alec to make their next Swamp Thing. However, this Swamp Thing had human instinct, and intelligence, but did not have human conscience, and over time it became little more than a monster, but with Alec at the helm, the Swamp Thing will be the ultimate force of good from the Green. Alec refuses the Green once more, and Calbraith dies, explaining that once a Swamp thing uproots from the Parliament, they will die for good, but his last warning is for Alec to stay away from Abigail Arcane.

Alec returns to the motel but Sethe is already on to his location, and the flies have already infested a number of people from the area, their new most distinguishing features being heads that are turned all the way around. Alec makes a run for it, only to bump into, surprise surprise, Abigail Arcane. Alec rides bitch on the back of her bike, as they escape from the Rot for now. When they come to a stop, she pulls her shot gun on him, and tells him to prove he’s Alec Holland, or else she’s going to aerate his chest. As she counts down his last moments, Alec is able to tap into his connection with the Green, and cause the plants around her to grab her and pull her away. A talent he had no idea about. Abigail asks him for help to save a boy from a nearby hospital.

However the boy is far from savable; William is a boy living in a special air controlled bubble due to his acute allergic reaction to chlorophyll, and the Rot have their eye on him. As do a number of bullies. As the last act of self defense against the boys attempting to tear open his protective bubble, he submits to the Rot and it over takes him, growing the rot inside each of the sick children, before forcing the doctor to hand over his scuba gear, and killing him. By the time Alec and Abigail get there, it’s already too late. They decide to take rest that night before moving on in the morning, while they sleep the Green reaches out to Alec, to show him visions of the future. As the Kingdom of the Rot grows in Arizona, and expands to the rest of the world. The Parliament of Trees rebuke Alec for ignoring their call, but he says that he’s not ignoring them and wants to fight in his own way, and not become the Swamp Thing. They see very little difference. One thing they do demand of him though is to kill Abigail Arcane, the enemy he was warned about.

Ignoring the warnings, Alec continues to travel with Abigail into a near by town, it’s much too late for the town however, and it’s already infested with the Rot’s army, lead by William Arcane. A fight ensues, but Alec is once again able to exercise his green thumb, and trap William in a tree, and remove his scuba ventilator. But this was all a distraction. Deep in the Amazon Jungle, where the Green joins with the physical world, and where the Parliament of Trees reside, the Rot has invaded, and the Parliament of Trees are dying, set ablaze by an infiltrator. Afflicted by the pain of the death of the Green, Alec is distracted and the Rot take the opportunity to capture Abigail. As Alec attempts to free her, and encourages her to fight it, William tells Alec that she can’t, she is destined to be the great Warrior Queen of the Rot, as Alec was meant to be the Warrior King of the Green. William was never the great enemy, Abigail was.

Alec high-tails it to the nearest swamp, where he begs the Green to take him, and make him Swamp Thing, and with that a servant of the Rot shoves a rather quiet chainsaw through his back and chest. Suffering and dying, Alec slumps to the floor and is engulfed by the Green. They inform him that they are too week to transform him, but for his transgressions they can keep him alive to suffer with them. Alec tells them it’s not too late, that he still has the Bio-Restorative formula in his bag. Realising that they still have a glimmer of hope, the Green reach out with the last of their strength and break the canister, pouring the distilled power of the Green into Alec, and making him the Warrior King he was always destined to be. The Swamp Thing.

vigil-lThe art in this is, fittingly enough, horrifying. It is probably the most horrifying comic I have ever read. The art is gory and twisted and it is… good. It is really good art that fits the comic very well. It is possibly the best art I have seen in all my reviews. And I am willing to testify in court to that.

First, let’s talk about the humans. The humans in this comic look… normal. While they look attractive to the human eye, they are not overly sexualized nor out of proportion. They look like normal people. The best examples is the female lead, Abigail Arcane. Abigail looks just like a normal woman. While she is a very attractive woman, she isn’t overly sexualized with an impossible figure. Her design is normal, except for the short white hair with black streaks.

Now let’s talk about the gore factor. It is everywhere and it is what gore should be: Horrifying. We see people’s joints snap. We see their bones spike up. We see a guy literally barf up a lung. We see people torn apart and explode. And unlike movies or comics that use gore as exploitation, this feels right.

I also have to give special props to the designs of the Rot Creations, especially Abigail’s mutated Rot design. It is almost Xenomorphic in its design. It is completely inhuman.

Another design I have to give props for is Swamp Thing’s new 52 design. I love the wooden stag horn mask and the angel wings made of leaves. Combined with the classic look of Swamp Thing, we have a new look that is perfect for the New 52 version of the character.

Overall, the art for Swamp Thing is perfect and really fits the vision of Scott Snyder’s series.

frogmann-rMy goodness the art! The art in Swamp Thing is more than competent, it’s beautiful and grotesque, it’s bright and dark, it’s orthodox and it’s chaotic. This comic expresses the dichotomy of its story through the wonder of its art, and takes two of the biggest problems I had with Batwoman and Animal Man, the confusingly stylised layout and some of the nightmarish art respectively, and brings them together under, surprisingly, multiple artists throughout the series. All who’s art is very similar to the main artist, Yanick Paquette and as such, doesn’t in any way distract the reader with sudden style changes. This group of artists and inkers, mesh and mold those two biggest flaws of the aforementioned books and makes them some of the best traits of the Swamp Thing.

To start with the form of the art in Swamp Thing is demonstrably better than that which I compared it to in Animal Man. In Animal Man, the full on nightmare fuel art, was amazing, but the rest of the book was pathetic, and the combination of the nightmare in the real world mostly looked out of place, and disconnected. Like some child scribbling out some “art” in kindergarten. Sometimes it was frightening, but other times it just looked bad. The form in Swamp Thing is spot on, there’s no exaggeration and no overly stylised features of the characters, or the world around them. They look like people, and they behave and react like people. Even in the nightmarish and chaotic segments, they still look like real people who have been corrupted, rather than caricatures and cartoons, as they do in Animal Man. The reason that these comics are important to be contrasted is because believe it or not, the villains both Animal Man who represents the Red, and Swamp Thing who represents the Green, are one and the same, The Rot. Despite this they are very different in both books, and where as for me Animal Man was a swing and a miss for the most part, Swamp Thing is absolutely perfect. The twisted sickening corruption, may not be as warped or extreme, but it’s realism makes it infinitely more terrifying!

Despite this realism though, the art and the layout is actually very stylised, not to mention the sexy thick black outlines that I’ve always been a fan of (see: Ultima Society comic below), and conveys a certain sense of a dream-like state throughout a lot of the book. Everything may look realisitc, but with it’s highly emotive and expressive choice of panelling techniques to frame the world everything looks just off enough to make it fantastical, without interfering with the flow of the book, which was the complaint with the otherwise stunning panelling from Batwoman.

An important word in comic book art is “conveyance”, and this, essentially, is whether the things that the book is trying to tell the reader, the characters’ thoughts, feelings and realisations is getting through in the art alone, without the need of an inner monologue. When it comes to conveyance, Swamp Thing is undoubtedly the fruit at the top of one of the tallest trees in the DCnU! Every step along the way the art presents the characters or their framing, in such a way that their emotions and motivations are expressed near perfectly, something that I really haven;t seen in any other book in the DCnU to this degree.

If there is anything at all to criticise about the art in Swamp Thing, it’s simply this… it gives me nothing to criticise. If you want the see dark, beautiful, vibrant drab, wonderful and hideous art, look no further. Swamp Thing wins, hands down.

vigil-lThe original story of Swamp Thing (Pre-Alan Moore) was the classic story of “Scientist creates formula. Scientist is betrayed. Scientist becomes monster thanks to formula.” Alan Moore’s version was that a plant construct took on Alec Holland’s memories and believed it was Alec. Snyder’s Swamp Thing is a man who gained a second chance at life and found that he cannot run away from destiny. A destiny that ultimately, he chooses. And why does he do it? To save the woman he loves from a fate that is almost certainly worse than death. If I had to choose which story I like better… it would be the story of a man who gave up his second chance at humanity for love. That is the ultimate core concept of Swamp Thing. It is a tragedy, which is a story where bad things ultimately form from good intentions. And that is why it is the best New 52 book I have read for these reviews.

Now I do feel that the pacing could have used some work as it takes seven issues for the title character to fully show up, but in my opinion, that would have taken away from the story. This is Alec and Abigail’s story. It wouldn’t have given us more of a reason to care about Alec’s transformation if it happened at the end of issue one or two and what it cost him.

As for the story itself? Well as I said, the story we see in issues one through eight is a tragedy. It’s about two people running from their destinies to be enemies while a monster is chasing them. And that is why it is a tragedy. We want these two people to have a happy ending, but sometimes that is not in the cards for everyone. Not everyone gets a happy ending in life… and that is a shame. However, the ending of issue seven, the end of the first arc, is ultimately a new beginning for Alec as the Avatar of the Green, while issue eight is about Abigail’s new beginning as the future Avatar of the Rot. And that is the ultimate tragedy. These two people who loved each other in another life (When Alec was first Swamp Thing) have finally found love again in a new life… only to be turned against each other. However, as usual, there is a glimmer of hope. Alec will not give up his journey to save Abigail from the Rot. Because that is what he does. He saves people.

If I haven’t made it clear… this is a great story. Tragic, but a great story nonetheless.

frogmann-rThe story is that of a couple of strangers (mostly) on the run together. Finding protection and some comfort within one another. That which they run from is being represented by an oppressive external force of nature, manifest as The Green and The Rot, but really what they are truly running from is the monster inside of themselves, a tragic twist, albeit an expected and forewarned one. As they are their own monsters, it’s something they can never get away from. For this reason the story is heavily character driven, as most good books are, and the story is told well through the dialogue, but also through the art, as I mentioned above.

The plot reveals the characters to you bit by bit so you can come to understand them, and their motivations as they attempt to avoid their fates, only for it to end in a loss regardless of their efforts, not something that we see in comics all that often, but I am grateful when it happens and is done well. Abigail is taken by the Rot and Alec must willingly sacrifice himself to the Green. This was always to be their destiny, and no matter how far they ran, that which they ran from was never further away than a heart beat.

vigil-lAs I said before, this is Alec’s story of him fleeing from his destiny as the Avatar of the Green while Abigail is fleeing from her destiny as the Avatar of the Rot. As such, thanks to the focus on the humans, we grow to care about them.

Alec’s character arc is of acceptance and sacrifice. Accepting that sometimes you can’t run away from destiny. However, Alec’s story is also one of choice. Unlike the first time he was Swamp Thing, ultimately his transformation into the Avatar of the Green is his choice. His choice to give up his humanity so he can save the woman he loves and the world. His story feels complete and is relatable. More so than if he started out as Swamp Thing.

Abigail’s story is also of running from destiny. However, unlike most love interests, she is Alec’s equal at the beginning. In fact, she protects him most of the time and that is really damn cool. Unlike Alec, however, her story is not quite over as her arc concludes in the crossover event Rotworld: The Green. For now though, I can say that I am a definite fan of Abby.

Now let’s talk about our villain for the arc: William Arcane. This kid is scary. He is the scariest thing about this comic. He can twist and pervert the human body on a whim and he can hear dead people. As a villain, he is a good adversary for Alec and Abigail. I just wish that his turn from being a scared boy in a bubble to a homicidal maniac with super powers was better done and more gradual. It happens in one issue and it feels a bit forced. However, when he does become a murdering psychopath, he is scary as Hell. And he is a great villain for that.

Overall, the three main characters in this comic are fantastic. They are very three dimensional and Scott Snyder does a damn good job at making us care for the two main leads.

frogmann-rFor a book called Swamp Thing, our main character Alec Holland, is not actually Swamp Thing until the very end of the seventh issue, and as such the last few pages of the first volume of the series. To some extent this could be seen as a risky move on Scott Snyder’s and DC’s part, to spend the first storyarc, with a character who is running from becoming the title character. While of course the story ramps towards Alec Holland taking up the mantle, throughout the entire book there is not just a sense of build up towards his change, but also a sense that in the last moments he could refuse The Green as he has done already for so long. In a book called Swamp Thing, to write a character so well as to make the reader believe that he may never become Swamp Thing is a bloody good trick! It says it right there on the cover, and yet there is still doubt.

Alec’s storyline is one of the few to have survived the reboot. Along with Batman and Green Lantern, from what I can tell Swamp Thing’s storyline has also remained whole in the new Universe. This works for the most part because it was separate from the general main continuity of super-heroes, with a few smaller interactions here and there. Of course his big cross over involvement came in towards the end of the DCU, in Brightest Day, and these are the events referenced, but not explicitly stated when Alec is met by Superman, one of the characters along with John Constantine, Deadman and Zatana who were searching for him in The Brightest Day Aftermath.

As it turns out, Alec Holland has never been the Swamp Thing, it was all a mistake in attempting to rebuild Alec Holland, inextricably connected to the Swamp Thing. This of course comes as a surprise to Alec, and a sense of relief that while he has the memories of the monster, it was never him that committed those acts. This freedom, a sense of virginity of the Green returned to him, he doubled down on his desire to stay that way, only for him to have to willingly give it all up and become the last best hope for The Green. And that’s not even getting into Abigail Arcane.

Abigail is a distant memory from the life of the monster, and as it turns out, is to the The Rot, what Alec is to The Green. A messiah of sorts. Despite constant warnings to Alec from the Green, he feels a close bond to her.

Abigail herself is also receiving messages from the Rot to stay away from Alec, and to join them in the Deadlands. As this story heavily focused on Alec, there was not a whole lot of exposition about Abigail and her back story. We are made aware of her importance to the Rot, and that she knows Alec’s importance to the Green. We also see in dreams and flashbacks that the two are strongly connected, and that a relationship existed between her and Swamp Thing. Despite being born of the Rot however, she like Alec does not agree with the writers of their fate, not wanting to become the harbinger of death, but unable to do anything more than hate herself over to it, when the power takes her. Despite this she too, up to the point of being captured in the Rot, Abigail fights with the ferocity of a cornered animal, and even outdoes her cohort on a number of occasions.

The TL;DR version of this is simple, she’s a total bad ass!

vigil-lThis comic is fantastic. The story is a great example of tragedy. The characters are very well fleshed out. And the art is great with realistic humans and really damn good gore and creature designs. In my opinion, it’s better than Scott Snyder’s work on Batman.

There I said it.

He basically recreated Swamp Thing and did what a reboot should do: Reinvent the character in new and interesting ways. And that is why Swamp Thing is probably the best rebooted comic in DC Comics.

frogmann-rSwamp Thing is easily one of the finest books in the DCnU. This isn’t because it’s a reboot, it isn’t because they changed up a character to be more diverse, it’s not because they pushed a political agenda, it’s not because they made it more flashy, or edgy or gave the character a snazzy new design. This is a good book because the people working on it were damn good writers and artists.

Swamp Thing is one of those books that really takes you with it, along its winding path, and shows you where to look for the best view. You are treated to some amazing art, and a spectacularly emotional, roller-coaster of a story. If you aren’t sure where to start with comics, or you’re maybe not all that interested in super-heroes, then start with Swamp Thing. This book is truly unmissable.


if and match are control structures that determine which code block to perform based on the evaluated result of one or more conditional expressions.

if vs. match

Let's use a simple number comparison to illustrate how if and match work.

In this heavily commented example, the code block to perform is determined by comparing a combined roll of two die with 7:

// Is roll equal to 7?
if roll == 7
  // If so, assign result to "Perfect"
  result = "Perfect"

// Otherwise ("else if"), is roll less than 7?
elif roll < 7
  // If so, assign result to "Too low!"
  result = "Too low!"

// Otherwise (since the roll is not 7 nor less than 7)
  // Assign result to "Too high!"
  result = "Too high!"

Every if structure follows these rules:

Since if may be used as an expression, the above code can be simplified to:

result = if roll == 7
elif roll < 7
  "Too low!"
  "Too high!"

If a block has multiple statements, the expression in the last statement of the block is used as the value of that block.

The above example can also be written on a single line:

result = if roll == 7 {"Perfect"} elif roll<7 {"Too low!"} else {"Too high!"}

if clause

When an if structure has only a single block containing only a single statement, this can be written on a single line by appending an if clause to the statement:

bignumber = true if nbr > 100

That line is exactly equivalent to:

if nbr > 100
  bignumber = true

The match statement works similarly to if. Its purpose is to match a single value against a list of patterns. In effect, it splits up a conditional expression into two parts: the value to match and a list of patterns to match it against using the ~~ operator.

Here is the earlier example rewritten using match:

result = match roll
with 7
with 1 .. 6    // Using a range of values as a match pattern
  "Too low!"
  "Too high!"

match has a number of other tricks up its sleeves, described in depth later in this chapter once we have described the powerful match operator.

Conditional Expressions

A wide variety of conditional expressions can be formulated, from simple equivalence or comparisons to complex algorithms that use logical operators, pattern matching, functions or methods.

True vs. False

A conditional expression evaluates to true or false. The integer number 0, the null pointer, and false all evaluate to false. All other values evaluate to true. Thus:

// This statement will never execute
a += 1 if 0   // since 0 is equivalent to false

// This statement will always execute
a += 1 if "hello"

These rules make it possible to use function or method calls as part of a conditional expression:

a += 1 if a.isOdd

Conditional expressions are not just for if and while. A conditional expression may be used within any expression:

imm isOne Bool = (a == 1)    // isOne will be either true or false

Equivalence Operators

The == operator returns true if two values have the same content and type. != (not equal) is true if they do not. For example:

x == 3.0        // Returns true if the local variable x's value is 3.0
x+1 != y        // Returns true if x is not exactly 1 greater than y
true != false   // Returns true

As with the arithmetic operators, the == and != operators are implemented as type-specific methods. Thus, each type can establish its own rules for equivalence. For example, two floating point numbers could be evaluated as equal if they are within some margin of error (resulting from floating point calculation rounding errors). Similarly, two lists might be equal if they have the exact same contents. Some types may not implement the == method.

Comparison Operators

Comparison operators determine whether one value is greater or less than some other value. They work only on types that are comparable, such as numbers.

x >= 2          // Returns true if x is greater than or equal to 2 (>, <, <= are variants)
2 <= 2.0        // Returns false any time the types do not agree

Float values are compared using the same closeness criteria described above. For one Float value to be less than another, it must be less by at least the comparable closeness.

In some cases, a type can make its values comparable by implementing just the <=> (rocket-ship) operator/method. This returns an integer (rather than true or false): -1 if less, 0 if equal, and 1 if greater.

-2 <=> 4      // Returns -1

Use of the Comparable trait would then implement the other comparison operators using the rocket-ship operator.

Pattern Matching Operator

The ~~ pattern match operator is used to match a value to a specific pattern. For example:

5 ~~ i32      // true, since the type of 5 is i32
5 ~~ 1 .. 7   // true, since 5 is within the range between 1 and 7

The ~~ operator is powerful and unusual:

Use of the powerful ~~ operator is made possible by the richness of pattern-matching types it is capable of supporting: set membership, regular expression, search selectors (e.g., for parts), parsers, input decoder, translater, information analysis, etc.

Boolean Operators

Acorn has three boolean operators: and ('&&'), or ('||') and not ('!'). One can use either the word or the symbol. For example:

0==3 or not 2<3 and 3==3   // Returns true ('and' is evaluated before 'or')
0==3 || !2<3 && 3==3       // equivalent to above

The logical operators work mostly how you would expect:

Note: In case it is not obvious by now, these boolean operators are not the same as the boolean bit-wise logical operators described earlier.

Note 2: If a comparison operator or boolean operator is used outside the context of a control structure that wants a conditional expression (e.g., if), in most cases it will evaluate to a value of 'true' or 'false'. If the conditional expression just uses 'and' or 'or' operators, its value will be the last value evaluated in that expression.

Match statement

Now that we have talked about the ~~ pattern match operator, let's return to the match statement which makes use of that operator. By default, the 'match' statement uses the '~~' method to match each successive pattern against the value of the 'match' statement's value.

The 'using' clause

Append a 'using' clause to the 'match' statement to specify a specific method to use for matching (as opposed to using the default '~~'):

match number using `==`
with 0
with 1

The using clause can specify any method name or an executable function or closure.

Multiple patterns on a 'when'

A 'with' statement can list multiple match patterns, separated by commas. A match on any of those match patterns activates that code block.

match number using '=='
with 0,1
with 2,3,4
Extracting match results

Some patterns do more than matching. They also extract or transform matched elements within a successfully matched source value, returning one or more new digested value (so long as the first returned value is not false or null, which indicates a match failure). Specify the variables names that hold these returned values with an 'into' clause at the end of the 'match' statement:

match command into thing
with +Regex"fight [*]"
	combat: true
	opponent: thing
with +Regex"use [*]"

Regex returns the portion of the Text that lies within the square brackets. So, if command was "fight Lux", the first match would succeed and thing would be set to "Lux".

Alternatively, the return variable name(s) may be specified on any specific 'with' statement:

match command
with +Regex"fight [*]" into npc
	combat: true
	opponent: npc
with +Regex"use [*]" into item


WRS Environmental Services, Inc. is actively seeking Equipment Operators to perform environmental field services including utility work, emergency response operations and spill cleanups. As an Equipment Operator at WRS, you will be provided with state of the art equipment to perform your duties.  You will lead spill clean-up responses and projects for New York’s and New Jersey’s largest utilities; ensuring that safety is always a top priority. WRS prides itself on providing advancement and training opportunities to individuals possessing a strong work ethic and willingness to learn. Benefits include fully paid health insurance and annuity in addition to competitive pay rates through the local union.

Job Responsibilities:

This job description is not designed to cover all duties. Other duties or responsibilities may be changed or assigned at any time with or without notice


 Being from Açı - Açı Schools

Açı School’s philosophy of education and all its applications in school life are targeted to educate happy and independent students who are eager to learn and take universal values as their life principle.

Açı schools provide students with a safe, inspiring, encouraging, and motivating learning environment and many learning opportunities which would enable them to; discover themselves and their interest areas; relate what they learn to real life; and share knowledge with their peers and other people. These opportunities significantly guide our students towards; improving their academic, social and emotional skills, recognizing that they have responsibilities towards the community they are living in, empathizing with others and respecting differences. At the same time, it helps them to improve their organization and communication skills.

“Being from Açı” means to internalize a school culture where; everyone is respectful and concerned about each other, efforts are appreciated as much as achievements, students are constantly producing and sharing, making a difference, learning from mistakes and clearly and confidently sharing their feelings and thoughts, as well as contributing to this culture’s continuity and improvement.


True/False Questions

This type of questions is commonly used to evaluate one's capability to determine whether the statement is correct. True/False question is a declarative statement of fact that the student must decide as true or false.

The following are advantages and disadvantages of True/False questions.

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FORMAT of True/False questions

A or B Responses

This format requires to darken the circle under A or B on the answers sheet. If the statement is true, the student must darken the circle under A, if the statement is false the student must darken B. Question number that the student is marking on the answers sheet must correspond to the question number of the question the student is answering.

Circle Format

This format requires circling one of the letters in front of each question. If the statement is correct the student must circle the letter 'C', if the statement is incorrect, the student must circle the letter 'I'.

Circle Format with Correction

This format requires not only to circle the appropriate letter but also write the specific part of the statement that is false. Additionally, it is required to rewrite the incorrect part.

Check All That Apply

This format requires choosing from the list of answer options. Questions of this type are used when a student needs to select more than one response.

You may also be interested in:

Matching Questions Test Information on Ordering Questions Benefits of Timed Questions


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Building Management Systems

Protege integrates with many Building Management Systems (BMS) to control large HVAC, lighting, energy, fire and elevator solutions. Integrating the two systems can greatly reduce energy consumption and operating costs, as well as providing control from one centrally managed system.

A significant number of dual path integration options are available using the popular Modbus or ICT's own Automation and Control protocol.

The armed status of a building is a simple way of determining that a building is unoccupied, and can be used to turn off lighting and non-essential items such as photocopiers, coffee machines, and monitors. When the building is disarmed, we know who is in the building and what areas they have access to, so only need to turn on lighting for the areas they require, and progressively turn on others as more people arrive.

Advanced schedules, time zones, daylight savings and programmable holiday groups enable energy usage to be controlled right down to the second. Schedules help to actively manage energy use and reduce costs by ensuring lighting, hot water and air conditioning switches on and off dependent on opening hours. When a schedule becomes valid or invalid, the event logged in Protege is sent to the BMS which is then able to carry out a predefined action.

Access Control

As users arrive for the day, their entry events are sent to the BMS which automatically sets the appropriate lighting levels for the rooms in use, brings the HVAC up to a comfortable temperature and powers the necessary appliances.

Fire and Emergency

A fire alarm or smoke detector managed by the BMS is able to trigger Protege to provide egress for users evacuating the building. This enables users to take the best route out of a building during an emergency without having to worry about which doors their card allows them to unlock.

Intruder Detection

In the event of an alarm being activated, lighting is able to come on automatically providing the added benefit of better security camera footage outside hours when lights would otherwise be off.

When using Modbus, the Protege controller acts as the Modbus slave and communicates with the BMS server (Modbus master) via the Ethernet. The BMS server is notified when someone locks or unlocks a door, an area is armed or disarmed, a schedules goes valid or invalid, or when motion is detected. Once this information has been passed to the BMS, it is able to make intelligent decisions about what to turn on or off. Integration also enables the BMS to communicate the status of the building, allowing Protege to effectively control access during an emergency or in the event of a fire.

Automation and Control

Designed to allow third party products to communicate directly with Protege controllers, the Automation and Control protocol defines how the systems communicate and enables you to control your security system, building access, air-conditioning and lighting from a single interface without the need for overly complicated software.

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Original article

Scand J Work Environ Health 2012;38(4):343-348    pdf

The relationship between current and former shift work and the metabolic syndrome

by Puttonen S, Viitasalo K, Härmä M

Results Among male former shift workers, MetS was more prevalent compared to male day workers [IDF: age-adjusted odds ratio (OR) 2.13, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.35–3.37; NCEP: OR 1.83, 95% CI 1.13–2.96]. Associations did not change after additional adjustments for education, smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and insomnia symptoms (IDF: OR 2.00, 95% CI 1.26–3.19; NCEP: 1.67, 95% CI 1.02–2.72). Male 2-shift workers also had an elevated risk of IDF-defined MetS (OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.06–2.55) but the association weakened in the fully adjusted analyses (OR 1.48, 95% CI 0.93–2.24). Prevalence of the MetS was marginally significantly higher among night-shift work (IDF: OR 1.51, 95% CI 0.95–2.34) and was attenuated further with additional adjustments (OR 1.37, 95% CI 0.84–2.22). Among women, no significant differences in prevalence of the MetS between day work and shift work were observed.

This article refers to the following texts of the Journal: 1997;23(4):257-265  2006;32(3):204-208  2008;34(3):198-205  2010;36(2):96-108
The following articles refer to this text: 2012;38(4):291-297; 2013;39(6):559-567; 2014;40(6):557-568