Friday, July 29, 2011

Project Euler – Problem1

If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.

Here is a straight forward solution to this problem,

The logic is simple. The CONNECT BY clause in the above statement simply acts as row generator to generate natural numbers from 1 to 999.

The DECODEs inside the aggregate function check whether the number is divisible either by 3 or 5 if so the number is added.

This is a simple solution to understand but certainly not the best when it comes to performance. With the help of mathematical formula this problem can be solved little easier.

Multiples of 3 are 3, 6,9,12 … 999. Sum of them is

3+6+9+…999 = 3 ( 1+2 + … + [999/3]) ( [999/3] denotes integer part of 999/3 )

= 3 ([999/3]) ([999/3]+1)/2 ( 1 + 2+ … + n = n(n+1)/2)

Sum of multiples of 5 is

5 + 10 +15 +…[999/5] = 5([999/5]) ([999/5]+1)/2

The tricky part is the numbers 15, 30 …990 are included in both the case. This series should be subtracted once from the solution. So the final solution is

select trunc(999/3)* (trunc(999/3)+1) *3/2

+ trunc(999/5)* (trunc(999/5)+1) *5/2

- trunc(999/15)* (trunc(999/15)+1) *15/2 from dual;

Answer: 233168

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

SQL query to get last and second last payments to employees

Joe Celko is an American relational database expert. He has participated on the ANSI X3H2 Database Standards Committee, and helped write the SQL-89 and SQL-92 standards. The above lines would explain his innumerable contributions to RDBMS world. His “SQL Puzzles and Answers” is another golden feather on his cap. If you are an SQL geek and you’ve never been come across this book then please try this. I promise you will never be disappointed. Here is a puzzle from this book.

Assume that there is salary table with three columns hold employee name, salary date and salary. This table holds salary information paid to employees. The requirement is to write a query that should return employee’s current and previous salary status for each employee.

You can use the following statement and the pl/sql block to create and populate sample data to test the solutions.

CREATE TABLE emp ( NAME VARCHAR2(50), sal_date DATE, salary NUMBER(15,2))

FOR i IN 1 .. 10
VALUES ('James', ADD_MONTHS (TO_DATE(‘01-01-2010’,’DD-MM-YYYY’), i), 5000 * i);

VALUES ('Rajendran', ADD_MONTHS (TO_DATE(‘01-01-2010’,’DD-MM-YYYY’), i), 5100 * i);

VALUES ('Krishna', ADD_MONTHS (TO_DATE(‘01-01-2010’,’DD-MM-YYYY’), i), 5200 * i);

VALUES ('Jagdish', ADD_MONTHS (TO_DATE(‘01-01-2010’,’DD-MM-YYYY’), i), 5300 * i);

Here is my first solution to this problem,

(SELECT SUM (salary)
FROM emp emp_inner1
WHERE emp_inner1.sal_date > emp_outer.second_last
AND emp_inner1.NAME = emp_outer.NAME) last_salary,
(SELECT salary
FROM emp e1
WHERE e1.NAME = emp_outer.NAME
AND e1.sal_date = emp_outer.second_last) second_last_salary
FROM (SELECT NAME, MAX (sal_date) second_last
FROM emp emp1
WHERE sal_date < (SELECT MAX (sal_date)
FROM emp emp2
WHERE emp2.NAME = emp1.NAME)
GROUP BY NAME) emp_outer;

I think this is a little expensive query. The main query fetches the second last salary data for each employee. The sub queries in select clause find the last and second last salary by using second last salary date.

But the above query fails when there is a new employee who has got only one payment. The above query does not report the new employee at all. The following solution which looks better than the above also takes care of employees with only one payment.

(SELECT salary
FROM emp emp_inner1
WHERE emp_inner1.sal_date = emp_outer.latest
AND emp_inner1.NAME = emp_outer.NAME) latest,
(SELECT salary
FROM emp emp_inner2
WHERE emp_inner2.sal_date = emp_outer.second_latest
AND emp_inner2.NAME = emp_outer.NAME) second_latest
FROM (SELECT e1.NAME, MAX (e1.sal_date) latest,
MAX (e2.sal_date) second_latest
FROM emp e1, emp e2
WHERE e1.NAME = e2.NAME(+) AND e1.sal_date > e2.sal_date(+)
GROUP BY e1.NAME) emp_outer;

The main query fetches both last and second last payment date using self-outer join. This outer join makes sure that employees with only one payment are not missed out. I'm hoping that I will be updating this post with an even better query one day

Project Euler - An Ideal place to enhance your analytical skills

Think about this, you are in love with analytical problems and you are a software guy and you always feel comfortable when it comes to mathematics. One day you found a website where you have mathematical analytical puzzles and you are expected to solve them using your favorite software tool. Things cannot be better than this. Is in it? I just had the same feeling the moment I came to know the website “Project Euler” through few “siragu muzhaitha paravaigal” (colleagues who put their papers) having quality time with this website

This site completely swept my attention towards it from the moment I saw it. Being a mathematician by nature and software guy by profession, I could not restrict me from solving the puzzles despite a full packed busy schedule.

The objective is simple. Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical problems. You need to solve them by using any of your favorite programming language in line with the "one-minute rule". This means, your algorithm implementation will allow a solution to be obtained on a modestly powered computer in less than one minute.

The “Project Euler” also comes with usual ingredients such as country level ranking, discussion forums, tips to build best algorithm (of course it’s hidden until you post your solution) and many more.

I have chosen interesting software which is not even in the list maintained by Euler Admin itself. Neither have I had any other choice as I know only s/w language since I started my career as IT professional. It is an interesting choice though…It is Oracle SQL and PL/SQL.

People who want to know more before kick-start this just check this link.


Bank Coaching Institute in Dehradun

Bank Coaching Institute in Dehradun

Best Bank Coaching Institute in Dehradun

If you want Career in banking then its requires to fight competition very hard and regular training .In today scenario  it become really difficult for aspirant students of banking to nurture there talent very well and grasp the right  knowledge to get  their desire goal.Vista Academy shows a way  to aspiring students an train them to strengthen there skill and talent to be successful.

Our course in comprehend plan course and only for aspiring students of banking jobs.

Why bank coaching in Vista Academy.

Vista academy is quality training institute and focusing on  delivering knowledge and skill to students.

What is the criteria for  Bank PO and Bank clerk

Age limit for bank PO Between 20 and 30 yrs (For PO)

Age limit for clerk exam is  Between 20 and 28 yrs (For Clerk)
Education Qualification for both exam  Graduation from any recognised university .
Examination Phases for both are  Written Test and Interview after clearing written test from students.
Examination  pattern General Awareness , English Language , Quantitative Aptitude , General Reasoning and  Computer Awareness.

What are the Role of Bank Clerk

A clerk is mostly front  staff in any bank organisation. Considering well the requirement of  clerks in bank  they  are put at various roles in the banks e.g. deposit, agricultural loans,  term deposit, ,cash receipt, current deposit,savings , cash credit,  credit cards, retail loans, government business, or payment etc. Mostly customer Communicate  in banks occurs at these counters are  managed by these clerical staff in banking.

what is the Process for applying in  Clerical Exam :

Process for appearing  in a clerical examination is that each and every candidates must  pass their Graduation Degree in any field .At the movement the  minimum age for applying for the position of a clerk in any nationalised or private sector banks is 18 and the maximum age limit is 28 years for applying for the position of a clerk in any nationalised or private sector banks . those candidates who fits the eligibility are asked to appear  in a written examination held at different parts in all over india. The written examination is objective in nature consisting of four papers example :

1.  Reasoning ability and numerical aptitude
2.  clerical aptitude test
3. English language test
4. General awareness test

Ultimately the selected candidates can look forward to a prosperous and stable career in the bank, which they join. All public sector banks provide training to new employees before they  equipping them to take up their assignments. Induction training which happens immediately or soon after joining is the first training program me they attend. Subsequently they are offered training in various banking disciplines which make them more skillful.bank coaching classes

What are duties of Bank PO in Banking
To solve the problem of  shortage of officers manpower in officers grade In today’s time  the public sector banks has  requirement of large number of office staff in banking industry. Most of such  jobs are for which recruitment’s are made are in Junior Management Graduate level, which is the initial level position for joining any public sector bank as an officer in banking industry. This starting level job is known as that of probationary officer ( PO) or management trainee. Bank probationary officers can come from any discipline or field of any study its science art or commerce.but A finance or commerce background may help the candidate adjust to the banking environments faster than others background studeents  but banks has recruits talents from diverse backgrounds of science, Humanities etc. With the lapse of time banks have considered  their promotion activities  and now for bright, hardworking and knowledgeable employees it takes less time to move to higher pay scales. In various banks a person who joined as an officer may reach to the position of General Manager in 16 years of time.After that one can be eligible for the position of executive director  (ED )or chairman of a bank. These are very high positions, nomination to which is decided by the Government and not by the individual banks at all depends upon person personality and knowledge.

Why banking Jobs in present situation

Banking jobs in the present situation are secure and protected .Everyone want in his/her work to secure himself and in addition his/her crew. So doing something in bank is the best option. A bank work is a standout amongst the most looked for after employments since regardless the most recent decades. One important purpose behind its noticeable effect  is that it is one of the very few professions that pay a high compensation even to workers at the learner level. An additional excuse for why a bank work is notorious is on the grounds that it permits individuals to equalise their work and particular lives. Bank PO guiding classes are greatly advantageous to those applicants arranging for aggressive examinations in different expert or business places at distinctive scholarly or specialists levels. Government job are very  easy as compare to private jobs.

How to prepare for banking jobs :

Make some point before preparing for banking job:

Select a time Frame :

Have time frame is mind before preparing for job exam as we know preparing for banking exam is tedious process it requires lot of handwork and energy therefore have in mind how to prepare and when to start at till what time .As we know if there is age limit to pass the exam for bank.

Make a goal in mind before you start :

make a goal in mind before you start and goal need to be measurable such goal ” I want to become Bank bank manager is not measurable ” But if you say I will study following subject at 1 hour a day for a period of 3 month is measurable .

Regular practice:

Practice make man perfect as banking requires regular practice as there are logical and mathematical test which can be lean by regular practice.

Upgrade your knowledge of current affairs If your knowledge of current affair is proper it help you to clear interview in banking exam.


mercredi 3 septembre 2014

How Well-Known is Jack Black in Canada?

By Sarah D. Pinsonnault

For a trade-mark to be registrable in Canada, it cannot, inter alia, consist of the name or surname of a living individual or one who has died within the preceding thirty years pursuant to section 12(1)(a) of the Trade-marks Act. In Jack Black L.L.C. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 FC 664, the trade-mark at issue was that of the name JACK BLACK (the “Trade-mark”). For those of you whom the name “Jack Black” does not ring a bell, he is an American actor who has starred in such films as King Kong, Kung Fu Panda, and Tropic Thunder (just to name a few). In light of this, the Registrar of Trade-Marks deemed JACK BLACK non-registrable “since JACK BLACK is an internationally renowned actor, comedian and musician”. This decision therefore consists of the judgment rendered by the Federal Court upon the appeal by the Applicant of the Registrar’s decision.

The Applicant first began using the Trade-mark in Canada in 2002 to sell its line of skin-care and hair-styling products.  It apparently had no knowledge of anyone having the name Jack Black when it initially adopted the Trade-mark.

One of its arguments before the Federal Court was that there was no risk that Canadians would associate its Jack Black trade-mark for grooming products with the actor, Jack Black:

“[19] Switching gears, the applicant submits that the actor Jack Black did not establish a substantial reputation in Canada such that it cannot be said that the Trade-mark is so nearly resembling as to be likely to be mistaken for any matter that may falsely suggest a connection with any living individual.”

The Federal Court noted that a substantial amount of evidence must be presented in order to contest the adoption of a trade-mark pursuant to s. 9(1)(k) of the Trade-marks Act. Essentially, in order for the mark to be non-registrable under s. 12 of the Trade-marks Act, the evidence must prove that the trade-mark falsely suggests a “connection with any living individual”.

In the case at bar, the Federal Court was of the opinion that the information considered by the Registrar, in comparison with the new evidence that was adduced by the Applicant on its appeal, was insufficient to “establish how prominent the living individual [Jack Black] is in this country”:

“[24] When one compares the information used by the Registrar in this case to reach a conclusion to that made available in other cases involving section 9 of the Act, one is struck by how thin the information is in this case. Actually, with much stronger evidence, cases fell short of the standard required in order to meet the test of paragraph 9(1)(k) of the Act and thus prohibit the mark.
[28] There is nothing of the sort before this Court in this case. The un-contradicted evidence in this case is that no connection with the actor Jack Black was ever intended, there has not been any complaint ever since the use of the Trade-mark started in the US in 1999, in Canada since 2002 and elsewhere where the Trade-mark is already registered. Internet printouts constitute the basis for the decision [of the Registrar] in this case, without any evidence commensurate with what was available in Waltrip, Aykroyd, or Carson. To put it simply, it has not been established that there is a Canadian public’s awareness of a person named Jack Black, let alone that that awareness reaches a level of significant public reputation.
[32] Not only is there an absence of such proof but the evidence presented on appeal, which has been tendered by the applicant without objection, would tend to confirm that there is no false suggestion of a connection with a living individual after more than 10 years of use of this Trade-mark in Canada and elsewhere.
[33] The combination of lack of probative evidence of significant public reputation in Canada, to support the Registrar’s conclusion with respect to the application of paragraph 9(1)(k) and new evidence, which tends to show that there is no such connection in Canada, carries that the appeal must succeed. The new evidence would have had a material impact on the Registrar’s decision in showing even more clearly that the Trade-mark may not falsely suggest the connection with an individual that the examiner suspected on the basis of internet printouts.” (emphasis added)
The appeal was therefore granted and the application for the registration of the Trade-mark was approved.

To read this decision in its entirety, click here

1 commentaire:

  1. Je ne sais pas où le juge a trouvé ses informations mais en tant que Canadienne-française, je connais très bien l'acteur JACK BLACK pour l'avoir vu dans plusieurs films - anglophones - bien sûr mais je les ai vu sur les chaînes télévisées de Montréal. Immédiatement, en lisant le nom JACK BLACK, son visage m'est tout de suite apparu et si je voyais ce nom sur quelque produit que ce soit, je l'associerais évidemment à l'acteur. Mauvais jugement.


Thursday, 23 March 2017

Measures of Data Spread in Stats

What do we mean by SPREAD? - The measures which can tell us the variability of a dataset, width, average distribution falls into this category.

Let's see which measures we are taking about-

Input: 45, 67, 23, 12, 9, 43, 12, 17, 91
Sorted: 9, 12, 12, 17, 23, 43, 45, 67, 91

It is the simplest measures of Spread. It is the difference between max and min value of a dataset but this will not give you the idea about the data distribution. It may be given a wrong interpretation if our dataset is having outliers.

Range - Max - Min = 91 - 9 = 82

Interquartile Range (IQR):
IQR is the middle 50 percentile data which is difference between 75 percentile and 25 percentile. It is used in boxplot plotting.

IQR = Q3 - Q1 = 56 - 12 = 44

Variance shows the distance of each element from its mean, If you simply sum this it will be zero and that is why we use squared distance to calculate it.

Standard Deviation (`\sigma` or s):
This measure is square root of Variance, the only difference between Variance and Standard deviation is the output unit as Variance.

`Variance = \sigma^2 or s^2 = \frac{\Sigma_{i=1}^N(x_i-\barx)^2}{N}`

`Standard Deviation = \sigma or s = \root{2}{\sigma^2} = \root{2}{\frac{\Sigma_{i=1}^N(x_i-\barx)^2}{N}}`

Like the below page to get update


Clases > Español Semestre IV >

Grading - SP 300

 10 %
 Oral Participation 10 %
 Compositions (3)
 10 %
 Quizzes (9)
 15 %
 Cultural Presentations (3)
 10 %
 Mid-term exam
 15 %
 Native Speaker Session
 10 %
 Final Exam
 20 %
 TOTAL     100 %

Homework/Preparation/Assignments  (10%) Each student will have read the material and do the homework to be covered in class on the due date.  The student will work diligently on the website and Sakai.  Late assignments will not be accepted.

Oral Participation/Class work (10%) This means that the student will actively contribute to class individually, in pairs, and group work by asking and by answering questions, it also means that the student will willingly engage in class activities using the target language: Spanish.  The level of class participation will be assessed regularly.

Active class participation is a very important component in this class; the following criteria will be used to evaluate class participation:

-A range: very dynamic engagement in all class activities, student is consistently prepared for class sessions, very often begins interaction, participates actively and promotes participation in partnered and group activities, collaborates keenly in the creation of the learning environment. The student speaks with great fluidity and fluency, has excellent range of vocabulary and excellent control of grammatical structures.

-B range: active engagement in all class activities, student is generally prepared for class sessions, often begins interaction, participates actively in partnered and group activities, collaborates in the creation of the learning environment. In general the student speaks with fluidity and fluency, notices mistakes and correct them, good range of vocabulary and good use of grammatical structures.

-C range: moderate engagement in class activities, student is irregularly prepared for class sessions, seldom begins interaction, participates moderately in partnered and group activities, limited fluidity and fluency. Responds usually limited to homework and drill exercises. The student seldom expresses opinion due to limited grammatical control or limited vocabulary.

-D range: little engagement in class activities, student is seldom prepared for class sessions, never begins interaction, participates little; very limited fluidity and fluency. The student has very limited range of vocabulary and only answers if is asked. The student cannot express opinion and offer advice.

-F range: no visible engagement in class activities, student is usually unprepared for class sessions, doesn’t participate in partnered and group activities; interferes with the creation of the learning environment.

Compositions (10%): The student will write three compositions using the appropriate grammatical, cultural and writing skills and taking in consideration the 5C’s of World Language Education.  The professor will provide more information about the assignment in class.

Cultural presentations (10%): The student will make an oral presentation (report style, 4/5 minutes) on an interdisciplinary topic relating to the readings and/or their major with the Hispanic culture. All topics must be approved before submitting. Students cannot read during the presentation. The instructor will provide guidelines and detailed instructions.

Quizzes (15%):  There will be 9 quizzes.  3 quizzes emphasizing the grammar studied, 3 quizzes emphasizing the culture studied and 3 listening comprehension quizzes.   No make-ups!  Your teacher will drop the lowest grade of the 9 quizzes. (Note: if you miss a quiz, that's the quiz grade that will be dropped.)

Mid-term (15%):  The exam is cumulative of the topics covered during the first half of the semester, and includes an oral comprehension section, grammar as well as culture and/or literature.

Native Speakers Sessions (10%):  Regular attendance and active oral participation is mandatory.  Native speaker’s sessions meet once a week.  You are allowed one absence without penalty.  Each absence following will lower your grade; Five absences will earn you a grade of E in Native Speaker (10% of your grade).  SIX ABSENCES WILL EARN YOU A GRADE OF F IN THE COURSE.

Final exam (20%) The final exam is comprehensive and cumulative of all the topics covered in class, and includes an oral and a reading comprehension sections, grammar, culture and/or literature.  The final exam is during final exam week; don’t make travel arrangements before you know the final exams schedule.

Grades will be based on the following scale:

 Excellent work
  A100-94 A- 93-90
 Above Average B+ 89-87 B 86-84 B- 83-80
 Average Work C+ 79-77
 C 76-74 C- 73-70
 Below Average Work D+ 69-67 D 66-64 D- 63-60
 Failure F 59-0


David Es*** Overview

David Es*** OBE Order of the British Empire (born David Albert Cook on 23 July 1947) is an English England actor and singer, who has enjoyed a varied show business career.

Es*** was born in Plaistow Plaistow, Newham , England which, at the time of his birth, was officially part of the county of Es***. His father was an East End dock worker and his mother was a self-taught pianist and the daughter of Irish Travellers. His grandfather was named 'Philimore' which was the anglicised version of 'Philly Mor' - being Irish for 'Big Philly'. Es*** was two years old when his parents moved out of the overcrowded home the family was sharing with relatives, to Canning Town where he grew up. Es*** attended Star Lane Primary School, he loved playing football football (soccer) and didn't answer any of the questions in the Eleven plus exam for entry into a Grammar School, so that he could ensure he attended Shipman County Secondary School where he knew they played the game. He was also a member of West Ham United West Ham United F.C. Juniors for a while and dreamed of one day being a professional player. He then also became interested in music and played drums with a local band, before becoming a singer.

Early career

He made his first record entitled 'And The Tears Came Tumblin' Down' for the Decca Decca Records label in 1963. He then toured with a band called "David Es*** and the Mood Indigo" for two years. His first notable acting role aside from small appearances in the films Assault and All Coppers Are... was the lead in the stage musical musical theatre , Godspell in 1971 at the age of 23. Two years later, he starred in the film That'll Be The Day That'll Be The Day (film) (1973) and recorded his only international hit single, The self penned "Rock On Rock On (David Es*** song) ", in the same year. A second single, "Lamplight", also reached the British Top 10 UK Singles Chart .

In the 1970s, Es*** emerged as a performer of some note. His biggest hit Chart-topper s during this decade included two UK Number One Chart-topper single single (Music) s: "Gonna Make You a Star" (1974), a satirical look at success; and "Hold Me Close" (1975), a cheerful singalong. He also appeared in Stardust Stardust (1974 movie) , a 1974 sequel to That'll Be The Day That'll Be The Day (film) ; the title song was another Top 10 hit. In 1976, Es*** covered the Beatles song, “Yesterday Yesterday (song) ”, for the musical documentary All This and World War II.

Es***'s pop idol looks gave him a strong female fan base and his British tours created scenes of hysteria reminiscent of Beatlemania. According to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles - 16th Edition - ISBN 0-85112-190-X 'he was voted the number one British male vocalist in 1974, and was a teen idol for more than a decade'.

Musical roles

In 1978, he appeared on Jeff Wayne's concept album, a musical version of The War of the Worlds Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds , as the Artilleryman. In the UK the two-record set remains a bestseller.

In the same year, Es*** played the character Che, loosely based on Che Guevara, in the original production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita Evita (musical) , and his recording of the show's "Oh What a Circus" reached Number 3. Two years later, he starred in the film Silver Dream Racer; and the soundtrack song "Silver Dream Machine" was yet another Top 10 hit in the UK singles chart.

In 1985, he co-wrote and starred as Fletcher Christian in the West End West End theatre musical Mutiny!, based on the novel Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty (novel) by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The score produced two more hit singles, including "Tahiti," his tenth Top 10 success.

Es*** has continued to perform in all areas of show business, to varying degrees of success. A 1988 sitcom, "The River The River (TV series) ", achieved good ratings. In 1991, a compilation entitled His Greatest Hits reached Number 13; a 1993 album, Cover Shot, featuring a cover version of the Buzz Cason/Mac***den classic "Everlasting Love", peaked at Number 3. His autobiography, A Charmed Life, was published in 2002, and became a bestseller.

In 1999, Es*** was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He still tours the UK on a yearly basis and releases albums through his website. Despite his long and successful British career, he remains largely unknown in the United States. "Rock On" reached Number 5 in 1974, and was his only Billboard Billboard magazine Top 40 hit single.

The grandson of an Irish Traveller, Es*** portrayed a kind-hearted gypsy in one episode of ITV1's 1960s Yorkshire-based drama Heartbeat Heartbeat (TV series) in 2000. Es*** told Jake Bowers of the BBC's Rokker Radio, a programme for Gypsies and Travellers, on 30 July 2006, that he has always been openly proud of his Traveller roots, but that having moved to the US, Es*** has said he feels it inappropriate for him to continue as Patron of Britain's National Gypsy Council, which works for equal rights, education, and services for Romany Romani people and Irish Travellers. Also that year, he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Documentary film Bring Back...The Christmas Number One.

Es*** was due to join the cast of soap opera EastEnders, in early 2006, as new character Jack Edwards Jack Edwards (EastEnders) . However, the role was expanded beyond the three weeks planned, and Es*** was unable to commit the time. The role instead went to Nicky Henson.

A model and recording of Es*** is featured in the museum of West Ham United Football Club. In the recording, he explains his reasons for supporting West Ham and his love of the team.

Es*** spent six years as an ambassador for Voluntary Service Overseas, which earned him an OBE in 1999. "That was a big day. I took my two eldest kids, and me mum even went out and bought a hat."

Es*** continues to record and release records on his own 'Lamplight' record label. He tours regularly and still treads the boards, recently appearing in 'Boogie Nights 2', 'Footloose' and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Aspects Of Love.

* "Rock On Rock On (David Es*** song) " - 1973 - Number 3
* "Lamplight" - 1973 - Number 7
* "America" - 1974 - Number 32
* "Gonna Make You a Star" - 1974 - Number 1
* "Stardust" - 1975 - Number 7
* "Rolling Stone" - 1975 - Number 5
* "Hold Me Close" - 1975 - Number 1
* "If I Could" - 1975 - Number 13
* "City Lights" - 1976 - Number 24
* "Coming Home" - 1976 - Number 24
* "Cool Out Tonight" - 1977 - Number 23
* "Stay With Me Baby Stay with Me (Lorraine Ellison song) " - 1978 - Number 45
* "Oh What A Circus" - 1978 - Number 3
* "Brave New World" - 1978 - Number 55
* "Imperial Wizard" - 1979 - Number 32
* "Silver Dream Machine (Part 1)" - 1980 - Number 4
* "Hot Love" - 1980 - Number 57
* "Me And My Girl (Night-Clubbing)" - 1982 - Number 13
* "A Winter's Tale" - 1982 - Number 2
* "The Smile" - 1983 - Number 52
* "Tahiti (From 'Mutiny In The Bounty')" - 1983 - Number 8
* "You're In My Heart" - 1983 - Number 59
* "Fishing For The Moon" - 1984 - Number 76
* "Welcome" - 1984 - Number 80
* "Fallen Angels Riding" - 1985 - Number 29
* "Friends" - 1985 - Number 91
* "Myfanwy" - 1987 - Number 41* "The River" - 1988 - Number 97
* "Rock On" (remix) - 1989 - Number 93
* "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" - 1989 - Number 90
* "True Love Ways" - 1994 (with Catherine Zeta Jones) - Number 38

* Rock On Rock On (David Es*** album) - 1973 - Number 7
* David Es*** - 1974 - Number 2
* All The Fun Of The Fair - 1975 - Number 4
* On Tour - 1976 - Number 51
* Out On The Street - 1976 - Number 31
* Gold and Ivory - 1977 - Number 29
* David Es*** Album - 1979 - Number 29
* Imperial Wizard - 1979 - Number 12
* Hot Love - 1980 - Number 75
* Stage-Struck - 1982 - Number 31
* The Very Best Of David Es*** - 1982 - Number 32
* Central Stage - 1987
* Living in England - 1995
* A Night at the Movies - 1997 - Number 14
* I Still Believe - 1999
* Thank You - 2000
* Wonderful - 2001
* Theatre Of Dreams - 2001
* Forever - 2001
* Sunset - 2003
* It's Gonna Be Alright - 2004
* Greatest Hits Greatest Hits (David Es*** album) - 2006
* Beautiful Day - 2006
* Happy Ever After - 2007
* All The Fun Of The Fair - Greatest Hits - 2008 - UK UK Albums Chart #23

David Es***

www.getamap.org nl.getamap.org www.getamap.net da.getamap.org www.viewweather.com#0.0859 sec


THREE tries in the final 13 minutes saw the Roughyeds eventually see off Saddleworth Rangers' brave resistance to make their way into the fourth round of the Powergen Challenge Cup.

With Boundary Park covered in snow and only a crowd of 804 in attendance, it was a case of job done for new coach Steve Deakin who would have been worried at his side's inability to retain the ball.

While the freezing conditions did not help either side, Oldham did their best to gift Saddleworth possession with numerous knock-ons giving the Rangers an equal share of possession.

Perhaps it was a desire to impress Deakin or to show Rangers who was boss, but Oldham raced out of the blocks to establish a 12-0 lead inside the opening quarter of an hour.

Having seen Chris Percival stopped just short in the first minute, the Roughyeds led on nine minutes when Simon Svabic went over, followed six minutes later with a try for Lee Wingfield, Gareth Barber adding two goals.

However, Saddleworth soon overcame any stage fright they might have had and began to assert themselves.

If Oldham thought they were in for an easy ride - as typified by the play which saw Andy Gorey drop Barber's needless pass five metres from his own line - then they were in for a rude awakening as Philip Wood went over from close range.

Adam Kirwan added the goal to make it 12-6 and keep Rangers well in the contest at the break.

With the next try looking like the vital one, Barber had a try ruled out and Wood spilled the ball at the other end before Oldham stretched their lead with Chris Campbell's converted try.

Back came Saddleworth though with Jimmy Rogers going over, but Jonny Horton was unable to land the goal which would have put them within six points of levelling the scores.

However, tiredness soon appeared to take its toll on Saddleworth which allowed Oldham to cross three times and make it a slightly flattering scoreline.

Barber took Svabic's reverse pass to score, Andy Gorey touched down after Rangers were penalised for not being the full 10 metres, while Percival rubbed further salt in Saddleworth's wounds by scoring with two minutes remaining.

Barber added two goals to send Oldham through to the next round, but it was Saddleworth who took the plaudits and left Oldham with some thinking to do.

Deakin said: "The pitch was decent underneath but the ball was a bit of a lottery at times.

"I thought our ball control was pretty poor. The weather didn't seem to handle Saddleworth who I thought showed a fair level of skill.

"I thought Saddleworth were outstanding.

"They were committed, enthusiastic and took part in the game."

OLDHAM: Barber, Campbell, Wingfield, Percival, Gorey, Svabic, Dean, Guest, Hough, Callan, Bailey, Redford, Hodson. Subs (all used): Corcoran, Nanyn, Hayes, Gorton.

SADDLEWORTH: Iberson, Jagger, Newall, Whalley, Attersall, A Kirwan, Collins, Haigh, N Kirwan, Rowe, Kilgannon, Rogers, Jackman. Subs (all used): Whalley, Wood, McCann, Horton.

Attendance: 804.


VENEER HOUSE______________________________

Location:   Betera- Spain

1.200.000 $

Design project: 2011
Work completion: In progress
Built surface:

12.000.00 sf

The project was designed according to the functional requirements of the owners: a family with 4 children. They considered key destinate the most of the plot to be used for children’s games and family and friends meetings.
The owner, dedicated to the wood exporta round the world, requested that the materials used should be the most sheer as possible.
To comply with the first premise,  The house occupies the alignment of façade and an West side, with an “L” shape that leaves the rest of plot free for leisure: swimming pool, games, etc.
The material chosen to meet the second premise where exposed concrete, corten steel, wood and glass.
The result are two volumes of rotund presence at the facade and highly permeable through the glass towards the interior of the plot.


Farah Khatoon
Head of the Department of Gynecologic Oncology at Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, Dr Partha Basu talks about the fatal disease, how it effects the country and measures to combat it.
What is the scenario of cervical cancer in the city?
Our institute receives 600-700 cases a year, out of which 90 per cent are in the advanced stage. India has one-fourth of the total number of cervical cancer patients with nearly 13,2000 women being diagnosed. Nearly 75,000 women in the prime of their lives, who run households and keep the family together succumb to the disease each year.
How can we combat cervical cancer in India?
Infrastructural development is the main way to combat it. The highest percentage of women affected by cervical cancer is found in low resource settings. Countries with efficient systems of screening, detecting and treating pre-cancerous lesions have been able to prevent cervical cancer and reduce mortality rates. Rural women in India are more prone to the disease because of early marriage and lack of awareness.
How far is the government responsible?
We are having ‘preventable deaths’. The rate of death during child birth and cervical cancer is almost the same in India but cervical cancer is never prioritised. Low-cost tests are available which would help in detecting the disease at an early stage. There is no dearth of funds but it remains unutilised. Even a country like Bangladesh can adopt a National Cancer Control Programme but we seem to be lacking in that area.
What is prohibiting the urban educated class from combating this disease?
A survey among the urban educated section revealed that only 25 per cent of the couple surveyed knew about the disease, so an awareness is needed. Though the screening is cheap as it comes for Rs 250 but the vaccine comes for Rs 9000. So it acts as a deterrent. Moreover, women hesitate to address their grievances because it is related to their private parts. However, cost can come down if more private pharmaceutical companies are involved and vaccination programmes can be organised through donations.
How is it an economic burden on India?
The burden of the disease in India is enormous with nearly 1,32,000 women being diagnosed every year. This could be avoided as it is a great economical as well as social burden. These deaths affect the family and the society at large. It is estimated that if a cervical cancer prevention programme is not introduced, these figures will double by 2020, taking a toll on families, society in entirety and of course on women themselves.
Is it a genetically transferable disease?
No. It is a sexually transferable disease. Infections are common but the infections might manifest itself into cervical cancer in the later part of life.
Can it be prevented? How?
It can be prevented in two ways: firstly, by vaccines and secondly by detecting the cancer at the pre-cancer stage.


Lace Festival

Yesterday, Saturday 24th of September, I visited a Lace Festival with my mother. This was 20th annual festival of lace held in Lepoglava in Croatia. It lasts for three days, Friday to Sunday and every year they have different country as their partner, this year it was Belgium. Since it was 20th festival, there were lace displays from 20 countries. The exhibitions were held in 5 locations in this tiny town’s centre. I visited only two since we arrived a bit late and hadn’t had time to see it all. Tickets are cheap and if you don’t use the coupons for all the exhibits, you can use them the next day, of course if you don’t come on Sunday.

Like I already mentioned, this year they displayed lace from 20 countries. To be honest, I didn’t really see much difference between lace from different countries but apparently there are some major differences. Especially in the way the lace is made. First we saw lace made in Poland and there was a little piece of paper next to every design, and no it wasn’t a price, it was amount of hours spent to make it. On the simplest and smallest one, was spent 70 hours of work. The biggest one that was on display, it was spent over 320 hours of work.

Some of the pieces were shaped like crowns of brooches so they can be worn as an accessory.
To me the prettiest lace, however, was on an evening gown. The gown is simple, black, with a lace detail on the cleavage. It’s sophisticated and could easily be worn to the red carpet. On display were also old gowns from the time when women didn’t wear anything but. At that times, the amount and richness of the lace was a sign as to show how much money a certain person has. If there was a lot of lace details on the collar or sleeves of ones gown, then she was of high social standard.

I visited this festival 8 years ago when partner country was Japan. Few very skilled women from Japan and Croatia were making a big tent made only from lace. When I saw it, it was half finished. Since I didn’t visit the festival in a while, I never had a chance to see the finished tent. This year I saw it since it was displayed in an old convent.

8 years ago:

Technique of lace making is very complex and takes years to learn properly. It’s not surprising when you see how many hours are spent in making a small lace detail. The lace displayed here is bobbin lace, as the name suggests it’s made with bobbins and a pillow. The pattern is attached to the pillow and then you have to use a lot of pins and a lot of thread to get the pattern in lace. The thread is on the bobbins and you use pins to set your design. Like I said, it’s very complex and I don’t really get it so I can’t explain it properly, sorry.

The exhibitions close at 8 p.m. and then at the atrium of the convent the “Game of lace and light” begins. They used projectors and different coloured reflectors to project a lace patterns on the building of the old convent. Music that plays in the background reminds of the sound of bobbins clicking together making lace. The light show lasts for two hours, I saw 15 minutes of it due to being really chilly outside. Nevertheless it was something new and innovative. The idea of projecting lace pattern onto an old building and adding different coloured lights to create a show out of it is amazing and clever. Also it’s a nice way to end the viewing of the exhibitions.

The really nice touch was big map of Europe (and small World map in the corner) showing all the countries and towns where lace is made. The pins for the towns are connected to the town of Lepoglava (and this festival) by threads that are used to make lace.

Even though, this year I didn’t see everything, I highly recommend visiting this festival because it shows how much hard work is put into the simplest piece of lace that we often just consider a pretty piece or accessory on our clothes.


Biology and Fertility of Soils

, Volume 25, Issue 3, pp 211–223

Diversity, adaptation and activity of the bacterial flora in saline environments

  • H. H. Zahran

Saline environments have a natural bacterial flora, which may play a significant role in the economy of these habitats. The natural saline environments (usually containing salinity equivalent to 4–30% NaCl) are aquatic (e.g. salt marshes) or terrestrial (e.g. saline lands). Saline environments include an increasing area of salt-affected cultivated soils throughout the world. These environments contain various ions which may interfere with uptake of water and which may be toxic to a large number of organisms. Saline environments harbour taxonomically diverse bacterial groups, which exhibit modified physiological and structural characteristics under the prevailing saline conditions. The majority of these bacteria can osmoregulate by synthesizing specific compatible organic osmolytes such as glutamine, proline and glycine betaine and a few of them accumulate inorganic solutes such as Na+, K+ and Mg2+. The morphology of the bacteria is usually modified, cells are usually elongated, swollen and showing shrinkage, in addition to changes in the cell and cytoplasmic volume. The chemical composition of membranes may also occasionally be modified, and the synthesis pattern of proteins, lipids, fatty acids and polysaccharides may change with a moderate increase in salinity. However, ultrastructural alterations in cells of halophilic bacteria have not been reported, and profound changes in cellular properties of these bacteria only occur at concentrations above 2MNaCl. Evidence has accumulated that the bacteria are essential elements in the saline environment because of their activity such as degradation of plant remains, nitrogen fixation and production of active metabolites.

Key words Bacterial flora Salt-affected soils Salt marshes Osmotic adjustment Microbial activity Nitrogen fixation

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1997

Authors and Affiliations

  • H. H. Zahran
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef, Egypt, Fax: (82)314384EG

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Deleted Tweet from Buddy Roemer, R-Calif.

Deleted Tweet from Gov. Buddy Roemer

258961053 20131119 1968 1hmfxj 0

Gov. Buddy Roemer (R-Calif.)

Politwoops no longer follows this account.

Gingrich: "I'm not running for Entertainer-in-Chief" (Might not want to burn those lobbying bridges with Hollywood just yet, Newt!)

It looks like this tweet was replaced by the next tweet from @BuddyRoemer.


33 terms

AP Psychology Chapter 9 Thinking & Language

a mental image or best example of a category
a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 398)
a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem
Confirmation bias
a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions
the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving
Mental set
Belief perseverance
knowing or sensing something without the use of reason; an insight
Functional fixedness
Representativeness heuristic
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevant information
Availability heuristic
the tendency to be more confident than correct--to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments
Belief bias
the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid
in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)
in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others
The study of meaning in language.
studies of the rules for forming admissible sentences
Babbling stage
beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language
One-word stage
the stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2, during which a childspeaks mostly in single words.
Two-word stage
Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements.
Telegraphic speech
early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--'go car'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words
impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to wernicke's area (impairing understanding)
Broca's area
Wernicke's area
Linguistic relativity
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Artificial Intelligence
the science of designing and programming computer systems to do intelligent things and to simulate human thought processes suchs as reasoning and understanding language
Computer Neural Networks
Computer circuits that mimic the brain's interconnected neural cells, performing tasks such as learning to recognize visual patterns and smells


Week 15: LAST Artist Interview- BFA Illustration/Animation Group Exhibition

For the last artist interview blog in our art 110 class, we had something special in store: A BFA Illustration/Animation Group Exhibition that is basically an annual show to showcase the works of all graduating BFA students. There were many different artists represented as well as many artistic styles/ideas represented. For these BFA students, it is clear that the work being presented today is their pride and joy. There were many pieces that caught my attention and having a detailed explanation about each one would do them justice, but alas, time is limited. There were some artists that came to speak to us, but the works that drew the most of my attention did not have an artist physically present to explain the creation.

One of my favorite pieces evoked strong feelings of curiosity: A colorful motorcycle helmet.

When I initially examined it, I didn’t look INSIDE the helmet. I believe that this is because the helmet was positioned to be facing the wall. Whether or not this was intentional, I do not know- I wish I did, however. Anyways, seeing a skull inside the helmet was a little surprising. Perhaps the skull alludes to some sort of motorcycle culture? Or perhaps a more stark interpretation would imply that the skull represents death, and perhaps this is hinting towards the “dangerous” aspect of motorcycles- the reason why motorcyclists are referred to as “organ donors”. These interpretations could be off, but the motorcycle helmet is eye-catching nonetheless.

The pictures above shows the work that was presented by an artist named Nathan Lewis. This was the first thing I walked to when I initially entered into the Gatov galleries. It is a milestone for me: this is the type of art that I could see myself paying cash in order to transfer ownership of the pieces to ME. The artist is emulating his passion for art and design through his works. They seem to be skateboards with intricate drawings on them. It is very aesthetically pleasing in person with GREAT detail in the drawings.

Here are other images of other works that I felt were interesting:

IMG_0126 IMG_0132 IMG_0131 IMG_0129 IMG_0136

The last artwork (picture above) definitely made me think about Vietnam. I’m fairly certain that the artist was trying to depict Ha Long Bay.

Week 15: Classmate Interview- Edgar Bueno

One of the classmates that I briefly interviewed was Edgar Bueno:

He shares a number of similarities with me. He is currently in his first year of college at CSULB, but lives in Bellflower. Therefore he is able to commute and takes about as long as I do: 15 minutes. He is currently a sociology major but is looking into applying to dental school- seems like there can be a consensus that a good number of people in art 110 is taking an interest towards dentistry. Anyways, Edgar is/was active in soccer and cross country. Cross country was used as conditioning in order to prepare him for the soccer season. This was quite interesting as I did cross country myself during high school, but that was mainly for the social aspects. He decided to take on CSULB due to how convenient it is for him. Like me, he chose this art 110 class initially because he needed to fill up those art G.E requirements.

Week 14 Artist Interview: Liminal Exhibition

The exhibit this week took place in both the gatov west and gatov east galleries. This was indeed a group exhibition, so there was a wide variety of artworks displayed belonging to a number of different artists. Although there was a collection of written artist statements to go through, I only found reasonable interview time with one artist, Yiren Kwak. I felt that she looked familiar and then quickly realized that she had displayed her art in the past, and I had written an interview blog on her.

The exhibition is titled Liminal, and it is a senior painting/drawing BFA show. The title suggests that the artists have navigated through new practices and periods of transition. All the works seem different but are connected because of the atmosphere of support and learning in which they are formed. “All of the artists have developed their own visual language and personal practice”. This explanation for the title and the premise of the exhibition makes sense: the word liminal is typically defined as “Of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process”.

Here are examples of pieces I found to be particularly interesting:

IMG_0112 IMG_0115 IMG_0114 IMG_0121 IMG_0116

Yiren Kwak’s work in particular draws some familiarity to her previous art show. She specializes in detailed oil painting and retains some common themes: landscapes, nature, and the outside environment. The basic premise behind making all of these oil paintings was that “nature reacts accordingly to how humanity treats it”. They hoped to evoke many emotions from their viewers, like peace, joy, confusion, and frustration. Yiren Kwak stated that all/most of her works of art were inspired by where she lived. She also mentioned that she lives on a hilly area, which enables her to have a vast vantage point of the environment around her. If you noticed the painting she is standing in front of (featured image on front page),  that would have been a painting that imitated a gold course that she knows. Yiren Kwak also finds that oil painting (in comparison to acrylic painting) takes much more finesse and skill, which is clearly demonstrated in her works

Week 14 Classmate Interview: Joseph Awadallah

Before I lose the information on this interview: A while ago, I had the great pleasure of having a chat with Joseph Awadallah. Joseph has Palestinian parents as well as family residing in Palestine. His parents are Catholic which is a reminder of the cultural diversity that exists in Palestine. This is Joseph’s first year at CSULB and he is currently an undeclared major. He lives in Cypress, which is not too far from CSULB so he is able to commute to school. Joseph also has a great interest in sports, with soccer and basketball being his favorite hobbies in general. He enjoys spending much of his free time working out at the gym, listening to music, or watching sports such as soccer/basketball/football. When inquired about a favorite food Joseph will quickly answer with something called “Upside Down”. He explained it as a mix of rice and chicken but swore that it was way more appetizing than it seems. I have never heard of the dish before so I actually had to google it…Turns out it is formally called “Maqloobeh” and it is a Palestinian dish…and it definitely is mouth-watering.

He is currently busy with a job at Papa John’s as a pizza delivery guy as well.

I enjoyed talking to Joseph Awadallah and found him to be an extremely cool dude. I wish him the best of luck at CSULB and his future endeavors outside of that.


C-Series - Speaker Cable

Interconnect Cables by Chord Company
C-Series - Speaker Cable

C-Series - Speaker Cable

This product is available in the following variations:

1M - £10.00
2M - £20.00
3M - £30.00
4M - £40.00
5M - £50.00

  • Clearness
  • Lack of Noise

The C-screen speaker cable ia an entry level shielded speaker cable that shares the same performance characteristic of there other shielded cables. with there unmistakable sense of clearness and lack of noise that brings precision and coherence to the system it is used in and it is the most discreet shielded speaker cable yet, capable of unlocking your system's musical potential.


National Athletic Trainers’ Association Recommends Winning Combination to Support High School Sports Safety

As fans around the world celebrated Super Bowl Sunday, winning teams and sports safety always remain top of mind.

What does the Championship Team have in common with the top 25* 2016 high school football programs?

All have one or more athletic trainers to reduce injury and provide medical care.

“Athletic trainers are vital to the success of a championship team,” says Scott Sailor, EdD, ATC, president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. “NATA has had a longstanding commitment to athlete health and wellness and that starts at the high school and youth levels. ATs are critical to a school’s sports medicine program in helping to reduce risk of injury and provide appropriate care and treatment.”

The important role of athletic trainers is also evident by many state practices. For example, for those schools that do not have an athletic trainer, state activity associations often pay for medical coverage during a championship game. “While that offers a temporary solution, the goal is for health care to be provided year-round and during all games and practices,” adds Sailor. According to Safe Kids, 62 percent of organized sports-related injuries occur during practice.**

NATA also recommends athletes at any level properly acclimatize to their sport, have pre-participation exams and should they reach playoffs or championship games, prepare for an extended length of seasons. When the regular season is extended, athletes may experience fatigue and be at even greater risk of overuse injuries. In high school and youth sports leagues, in particular, there’s a very short time gap between the end of one sport’s season and the start of the next. Athletic trainers can help modify the intensity of workouts that could otherwise lead to fatigue or burnout and restrict activity based on specific needs.

While all of the top 25 high school football programs have the benefit of an athletic trainer, some provide additional AT support. One of those schools is DeSoto High School in DeSoto, Texas. The school district’s program has expanded to include seven athletic trainers who provide health care services to the high school as well as the district’s three middle schools year-round. “The athletic trainers who serve the students of DeSoto Independent School District are an integral part of the fabric of our athletic programs,” said Larry Davis, DeSoto ISD athletic director. “We depend on their expertise and guidance to keep our athletes safe and healthy. I cannot imagine having a successful athletic program without the professional services of an athletic trainer.”

“It’s critical that all athletes – not just those on potential championship teams or otherwise – and athletic programs have sports safety best practices in place,” says Sailor.

NATA suggests five questions parents should ask their school regarding its sports safety measures:

  1. Who comprises the school’s sports medicine team?
  2. Does the school have an emergency action plan?
  3. Is the athletic equipment in working order?
  4. Are locker rooms, gyms and shower surfaces cleaned on a regular basis?
  5. Does the school have an AED and is someone trained to use it?

In its continued commitment to student health and safety, NATA and the Youth Sports Safety Alliance, comprising nearly 280 sport and health organizations, will host the eighth Youth Sports Safety Summit at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis on March 6-7, 2017. This year’s theme is “Less Risk, More Reward: Emphasizing Safety and Encouraging Success.”

Additionally, for the third year, NATA has teamed up with the NFL Foundation, Gatorade and the Professional Football Athletic Trainers Society and recently announced the launch of a pilot program to provide funding to public high schools with football programs that have limited or no access to an athletic trainer. The Foundation will award up to 150 grants to high schools in four pilot states. Grants in the amount $35,000 will be awarded over a three-year period to fund an athletic training program.

*According to MaxPreps Freeman high school football rankings.


Loggerhead sea turtle T.J. has been making his way up the east coast since his release back in September. Before he was released on the shores of Jekyll Island, T.J. was fitted with a satellite tag, allowing researchers to track his location to make sure he is acclimating to his new environment. After his release, T.J. made his way off shore, approximately 40 miles, before coming back towards the coast and making his way north, spending time in the waters just off the coast of Savannah and traveling past Charleston.

T.J.’s satellite tag, if it works properly, will last approximately 90-120 days since the date of his release, giving researchers a good idea of his general location and the distance he has traveled. Since his release in September, T.J. has already traveled more than 500 miles total. Tracking his movements allows researchers to better understand the migratory and behavior patterns of loggerhead sea turtles.

Based on T.J.’s satellite tag, he appears to be acclimating to his new environment, even after Hurricane Matthew swept through the area in October. Georgia Aquarium researchers will continue to track T.J.’s movements and patterns until his tag stops transmitting, always hoping and wishing him Best Fishes, T.J.!


Filtering ideas and inspiration

October 27, 2016

I was listening to a conversation (eavesdropping) about inspiration and thought to myself, “Does inspiration happen more frequently when you’re not as experienced at your craft because it’s easy to have lots of bad ideas?” Then, as you grow in experience and craft, inspiration happens less frequently – not because you’re having less ideas, or a decrease in inspiration, but because your brain is less receptive to bad ideas. It filters through the cruft more efficiently and rejects the bad ideas before you’ve had a chance to even register them.

Anyway, just a thought.


Reference > Anatomy of the Human Body > Page 451
Flexor pollicis longus is a flexor of the phalanges of the thumb; when the thumb is fixed, it assists in flexing the wrist. The Pronator quadratus rotates the radius upon the ulna, rendering the hand prone.

FIG. 417– Cross-section through the middle of the forearm. (Eycleshymer and Schoemaker.) (See enlarged image)

2. The Dorsal Antibrachial Muscles—These muscles are divided for convenience of description into two groups, superficial and deep.

The Superficial Group (Fig. 418).
Extensor digitorum communis.
Extensor carpi radialis longus.
Extensor digiti quinti proprius.
Extensor carpi radialis brevis.
Extensor carpi ulnaris.
  The Brachioradialis (Supinator longus) is the most superficial muscle on the radial side of the forearm. It arises from the upper two-thirds of the lateral supracondylar ridge of the humerus, and from the lateral intermuscular septum, being limited above by the groove for the radial nerve. Interposed between it and the Brachialis are the radial nerve and the anastomosis between the anterior branch of the profunda artery and the radial recurrent. The fibers end above the middle of the forearm in a flat tendon, which is inserted into the lateral side of the base of the styloid process of the radius. The tendon is crossed near its insertion by the tendons of the Abductor pollicis longus and Extensor pollicis brevis; on its ulnar side is the radial artery.

Variations.—Fusion with the Brachialis; tendon of insertion may be divided into two or three slips; insertion partial or complete into the middle of the radius, fasciculi to the tendon of the Biceps, the tuberosity or oblique line of the radius; slips to the Extensor carpi radialis longus or Abductor pollicis longus; absence; rarely doubled.

Check out our other writing samples, like our resources on Essay on Nuclear Weapons, Notes From Underground Essay, Nonprofit Organizations Essay.


New Computer Technology

Newest Technology News

Right now we are living in a revolutionary world and within seconds, several bombardments of latest inventions are occurring around the globe, media technology being one in every of them. Media expertise has changed our lives giving us the liberty to carry out actions from the comfort of our properties. For example, it has made communication easier and faster, a document now takes a number of seconds to achieve anywhere on the earth in comparison with common mail which takes a number of days with the involvement of a number of people to achieve its destination. If we look at our every day life, we will see a mirrored image of know-how everywhere in our lives, such as TV, telephones, computer systems, cell telephones, PDA, text messages, electronic mail, web, online banking, reserving a vacation, GPS, online purchasing, online schooling, on-line liberalities, online books, online gaming and far more.

Within the 1870’s, Elisha Grey and Alexander Graham each created the telephone. This was a large technological change that might shape our world at the moment. Earlier than the creation of this invention people have been communicating through telegraph. The dot-and-dash morse code system was a very profitable method of speaking nonetheless change was needed, people needed to talk to folks. This is the place the phone began.

Additionally referred to as Laptop know-how age, data age is generally considered as the period when data is accessible and productive. In pioneering computing ideas, the British Mathematician Allan Turing came up with the idea of the Turing Machine early in 1900s, which was programmable to unravel infinite number of mathematical calculations.

Across the globe, trendy computer programs are linked collectively by way of a wide range of communication infrastructures, including phone and cable connections, trans-Atlantic optical fibre and satellite tv for pc hyperlinks. The knowledge and abilities required to specify requirements, design systems utilizing normal subsystems, and commission and take a look at pc and network applied sciences are paramount in right this moment’s job market.

Secondly in case you have the above setup with the main COMPUTER being ‘System A’ with all external devices being ‘peripheral A1, A2, A3’ etc, then you can begin to ‘pair up’ different peoples gadgets with yours on this personal space network, very similar to seeing people having the ability to pair up their game devices with each other, this know-how, if not already (assume blue-tooth pairing on cell telephones), will spill over first into pill and web ebook tech after which other private computers.


Pembroke woman killed friend in tragic motoring incident

By Observer Reporter in Crime

A 77 year old woman from Angle ran over and killed one of her best friends because she could not get used to driving an automatic, a judge heard this afternoon.

Sally Denman began to get out of her Volkswagen Polo to open the passenger door for Betty Colley, aged 78.

But she had left the car in “drive” and as it crept forwards she panicked and stamped on the accelerator instead of the brake.

The car hit Mrs. Colley, from Freshwater East, and lifted her onto the bonnet, banging her head against the windscreen.

Swansea crown court heard how she rolled off the bonnet but the car kept on going and ran over her, dragging her along underneath.

The vehicle then hit a bank and overturned.

Denman, of Four Winds, Angle Village, Pembroke, admitted causing death by careless driving. She was jailed for four weeks, suspended for six months, and ordered to pay a court surcharge of £115. She was also banned from driving for two years.

Jim Davis, prosecuting, said on August 13 last year Denman and another friend, Lorna Rees, had arranged to visit a flower show at Stackpole with Mrs. Colley.

The plan had been to meet in a lay-by on an unclassified road in Maidenwells, where Mrs Colley would park her car and climb into Denman’s Polo.

Denman was in the habit of getting out of her car to open a door for anyone she was picking up.

Mr. Davis said Denman had had difficulty adjusting to driving an automatic and on at least one other occasion the car had shot forwards out of control.

On other occasions she had reversed instead of going forwards.

On the day of the accident Denman should have placed the gear lever in “park,” put on the handbrake and turn off the engine before starting to climb out.

But she appeared to have done none of those things, he added, and as soon as she lifted her foot of the brake peddle the car began to move forwards.

Tests showed that the handbrake would have prevented the car from moving forwards even if only seven out of nine “clicks” had been engaged.

Denman and Lorna Rees were trapped inside the overturned Polo and were rescued by other motorists.

An air ambulance arrived with a critical care doctor but Mrs. Colley could not be saved.

Mr. Davis said Mrs. Colley’s family had spoken of their devastation. Their overwhelming concern, he added, was that Denman never got behind the wheel of a car again.

Tom Scapens, the barrister representing Denman, said she had voluntarily surrendered her licence shortly after the accident.

“She is truly remorseful and that remorse has broken her. She fully admits her guilt and the burden is a heavy one,” he added.

“She realises she should not drive again.”

Judge Keith Thomas said it had been a dreadful tragedy for all concerned and no penalty would fill the gap left in the lives of Mrs. Colley’s family.

He said Denman’s inability to get used to driving an automatic had led to the accident.

“I have no doubt that in her confusion she pressed the accelerator instead of the brake,” he added.


Where We Work

With a population approaching 700,000, Iganga District is one of the most densely populated of Uganda.  In spite of that fact, Iganga District boasts only one town, Iganga town, which for a long time was the largest in the country without running water or public sewage systems.

Located in the middle of the Busoga region of the Basoga people, Iganga District is one of the more marginalized of the country and as a result it is among the poorest. Lusoga, a Bantu language closely related to the national language, Luganda, is what most people in the region speak. Those who attend formal schooling, particularly secondary school, also learn English as well as formal Luganda.

The rural economy of Iganga depends heavily on maize, potatoes, and sugar cane.


Texture Mapping

The PolyVox library is only concerned with operations on volume data (such as extracting a mesh from from a volume) and deliberately avoids the issue of rendering any resulting polygon meshes. This means PolyVox is not tied to any particular graphics API or rendering engine, and makes it much easier to integrate PolyVox with existing technology, because in general a PolyVox mesh can be treated the same as any other mesh. However, the texturing of a PolyVox mesh is usually handled a little differently, and so the purpose of this document is to provide some ideas about where to start with this process.

This document is aimed at readers in one of two positions:

  1. You are trying to texture ‘Minecraft-style’ terrain with cubic blocks and a number of different materials.
  2. You are trying to texture smooth terrain produced by the Marching Cubes (or similar) algorithm.

These are certainly not the limit of PolyVox, and you can choose much more advanced texturing approaches if you wish. For example, in the past we have texture mapped a voxel Earth from a cube map and used an animated procedural texture (based on Perlin noise) for the magma at the center of the Earth. However, if you are aiming for such advanced techniques then we assume you understand the basics in this document and have enough knowledge to expand the ideas yourself. But do feel free to drop by and ask questions on our forum.

Traditionally meshes are textured by providing a pair of UV texture coordinates for each vertex, and these UV coordinates determine which parts of a texture maps to each vertex. The process of texturing PolyVox meshes is more complex for a couple of reasons:

  1. PolyVox does not provide UV coordinates for each vertex.
  2. Voxel terrain (particularly Minecraft-style) often involves many more textures than the GPU can read at a time.

By reading this document you should learn how to work around the above problems, though you will almost certainly need to follow provided links and do some further reading as we have only summarised the key ideas here.

Mapping textures to mesh geometry

The lack of UV coordinates means some lateral thinking is required in order to apply texture maps to meshes. But before we get to that, we will first try to explain the rational behind PolyVox not providing UV coordinates in the first place. This rational is different for the smooth voxel meshes vs the cubic voxel meshes.

The problem with texturing smooth voxel meshes is that the geometry can get very complex and it is not clear how the mapping between mesh geometry and a texture should be performed. In a traditional heightmap-based terrain this relationship is obvious as the texture map and heightmap simply line up directly. But for more complex shapes some form of ‘UV unwrapping’ is usually performed to define this relationship. This is usually done by an artist with the help of a 3D modeling package and so is a semi-automatic process, but it is time consuming and driven by the artists idea of what looks right for their particular scene. Even though fully automatic UV unwrapping is possible it is usually prohibitively slow.

Even if such an unwrapping were possible in a reasonable time frame, the next problem is that it would be invalidated as soon as the mesh changed. Enabling dynamic manipulation is one of the appealing factors of voxel terrain, and if this use case were discarded then the user may as well just model their terrain in an existing 3D modelling package and texture there. For these reasons we do not attempt to generate UV coordinates for smooth voxel meshes.

The rational in the cubic case is almost the opposite. For Minecraft style terrain you want to simply line up an instance of a texture with each face of a cube, and generating the texture coordinates for this is very easy. In fact it’s so easy that there’s no point in doing it - the logic can instead be implemented in a shader which in turn allows the amount of data in each vertex to be reduced.

Triplanar Texturing

The most common approach to texture mapping smooth voxel terrain is to use triplanar texturing. The basic idea is to project a texture along all three main axes and blend between the three texture samples according to the surface normal. As an example, suppose that we wish to write a fragment shader to apply a single texture to our terrain, and assume that we have access to both the world space position of the fragment and also its normalised surface normal. Also, note that your textures should be set to wrap because the world space position will quickly go outside the bounds of 0.0-1.0. The world space position will need to have been passed through from earlier in the pipeline while the normal can be computed using one of the approaches in the lighting (link) document. The shader code would then look something like this [footnote: code is untested as is simplified compared to real world code. hopefully it compiles, but if not it should still give you an idea of how it works]:

// Take the three texture samples
vec4 sampleX = texture2d(inputTexture, worldSpacePos.yz); // Project along x axis
vec4 sampleY = texture2d(inputTexture, worldSpacePos.xz); // Project along y axis
vec4 sampleZ = texture2d(inputTexture, worldSpacePos.xy); // Project along z axis

// Blend the samples according to the normal
vec4 blendedColour = sampleX * normal.x + sampleY * normal.y + sampleZ * normal.z;

Note that this approach will lead to the texture repeating once every world unit, and so in practice you may wish to scale the world space positions to make the texture appear the desired size. Also this technique can be extended to work with normal mapping though we won’t go into the details here.

This idea of triplanar texturing can be applied to the cubic meshes as well, and in some ways it can be considered to be even simpler. With cubic meshes the normal always points exactly along one of the main axes, and so it is not necessary to sample the texture three times nor to blend the results. Instead you can use conditional branching in the fragment shader to determine which pair of values out of {x,y,z} should be used as the texture coordinates. Something like:

vec4 sample = vec4(0, 0, 0, 0); // We'll fill this in below
// Assume the normal is normalised.
if(normal.x > 0.9) // x must be one while y and z are zero
        //Project onto yz plane
        sample = texture2D(inputTexture, worldSpacePos.yz);
// Now similar logic for the other two axes.

You might also choose to sample a different texture for each of the axes, in order to apply a different texture to each face of your cube. If so, you probably want to pack your different face textures together using an approach similar to those described later in this document for multiple material textures. Another (untested) idea would be to use the normal to select a face on a 1x1x1 cubemap, and have the cubemap face contain an index value for addressing the correct face texture. This could bypass the conditional logic above.

Using the material identifier

So far we have assumed that only a single material is being used for the entire voxel world, but this is seldom the case. It is common to associate a particular material with each voxel so that it can represent rock, wood, sand or any other type of material as required. The usual approach is to store a simple integer identifier with each voxel, and then map this identifier to material properties within your application.

Both the CubicSurfaceExtractor and the MarchingCubesSurfacExtractor understand the concept of a material being associated with a voxel, and they will take this into account when generating a mesh. Specifically, they will both copy the material identifier into the vertex data of the output mesh, so you can pass it through to your shaders and use it to affect the way the surface is rendered.

The following code snippet assumes that you have passed the material identifier to your shaders and that you can access it in the fragment shader. It then chooses which colour to draw the polygon based on this identifier:

vec4 fragmentColour = vec4(1, 1, 1, 1); // Default value
if(materialId < 0.5) //Avoid '==' when working with floats.
        fragmentColour = vec4(1, 0, 0, 1) // Draw material 0 as red.
else if(materialId < 1.5) //Avoid '==' when working with floats.
        fragmentColour = vec4(0, 1, 0, 1) // Draw material 1 as green.
else if(materialId < 2.5) //Avoid '==' when working with floats.
        fragmentColour = vec4(0, 0, 1, 1) // Draw material 2 as blue.

This is a very simple example, and such use of conditional branching within the shader may not be the best approach as it incurs some performance overhead and becomes unwieldy with a large number of materials. Other approaches include encoding a colour directly into the material identifier, or using the identifier as an index into a texture atlas or array.

Note that PolyVox currently stores that material identifier for the vertex as a float, but this will probably change in the future to use the same type as is stored in the volume. It will then be up to you which type you pass to the GPU (older GPUs may not support integer values) but if you do use floats then watch out for precision issues and avoid equality comparisons.

Blending between materials

An additional complication when working with smooth voxel terrain is that it is usually desirable to blend smoothly between adjacent voxels with different materials. This situation does not occur with cubic meshes because the texture is considered to be per-face instead of per-vertex, and PolyVox enforces this by ensuring that all the vertices of a given face have the same material.

With a smooth mesh it is possible for each of the three vertices of any given triangle to have different material identifiers. If this is not explicitly handled then the graphics hardware will interpolate these material values across the face of the triangle. Fundamentally, the concept of interpolating between material identifiers does not make sense, because if we have (for example) 1=’grass’, 2=’rock’ and 3=’sand’ then it does not make sense to say rock is the average of grass and sand.

Correctly handling of this is a surprising difficult problem. For now, the best approach is described in our article ‘Volumetric representation of virtual terrain’ which appeared in Game Engine Gems Volume 1 and which is freely available through the Google Books preview here: http://books.google.com/books?id=WNfD2u8nIlIC&lpg=PR1&dq=game%20engine%20gems&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false

As off October 2012 we are actively researching alternative solutions to this problem though it will be some time before the results become available.

Actual implementation of these material blending approaches is left as an exercise to the reader, though it is possible that in the future we will add some utility functions to PolyVox to assist with tasks such as splitting the mesh or adding the required extra vertex attributes. Our test implementations have performed the mesh processing on the CPU before the mesh is uploaded to the graphics card, but it does seem like there is a lot of potential for implementing these approaches in the geometry shader.

Storage of textures

The other major challenge in texturing voxel based geometry is handling the large number of textures which such environments often require. As an example, a game like Minecraft has hundreds of different material types each with their own texture. The traditional approach to mesh texturing is to bind textures to texture units on the GPU before rendering a batch, but even modern GPUs only allow between 16-64 textures to be bound at a time. In this section we discuss various solutions to overcoming this limitation.

There are various trade offs involved, but if you are targeting hardware with support for texture arrays (available from OpenGL 3 and Direct3D 10 on-wards) then we can save you some time and tell you that they are almost certainly the best solution. Otherwise you have to understand the various pros and cons of the other approaches described below.

Separate texture units

Before we make things unnecessarily complicated, you should consider whether you do actually need the hundreds of textures discussed earlier. If you actually only need a few textures then the simplest solution may indeed be to pass them in via different texture units. You can then select the desired textures using a series of if statements, or a switch statement if the material identifiers are integer values. There is probably some performance overhead here, but you may find it is acceptable for a small number of textures. Keep in mind that you may need to reserve some texture units for additional texture data such as normal maps or shadow maps.

Splitting the mesh

If your required number of textures do indeed exceed the available number of textures units then one option is to break the mesh down into a number of pieces. Let’s say you have a mesh which contains one hundred different materials. As an extreme solution you could break it down into one hundred separate meshes, and for each mesh you could then bind the required single texture before drawing the geometry. Obviously this will dramatically increase the batch count of your scene and so is not recommended.

A more practical approach would be to break the mesh into a smaller number of pieces such that each mesh uses several textures but less than the maximum number of texture units. For example, our mesh with one hundred materials could be split into ten meshes, the first of which contains those triangles using materials 0-9, the seconds contains those triangles using materials 10-19, and so forth. There is a trade off here between the number of batches and the number of textures units used per batch.

Furthermore, you could realise that although your terrain may use hundreds of different textures, any given region is likely to use only a small fraction of those. We have yet to experiment with this, but it seems if you region uses only (for example) materials 12, 47, and 231, then you could conceptually map these materials to the first three textures slots. This means that for each region you draw the mapping between material IDs and texture units would be different. This may require some complex logic in the application but could allow you to do much more with only a few texture units. We will investigate this further in the future.

Texture atlases

Probably the most widely used method is to pack a number of textures together into a single large texture, and to our knowledge this is the approach used by Minecraft. For example, if each of your textures are 256x256 texels, and if the maximum texture size supported by your target hardware is 4096x4096 texels, then you can pack 16 x 16 = 256 small textures into the larger one. If this isn’t enough (or if your input textures are larger than 256x256) then you can also combine this approach with multiple texture units or with the mesh splitting described previously.

However, there are a number of problems with packing textures like this. Most obviously, it limits the size of your textures as they now have to be significantly smaller then the maximum texture size. Whether this is a problem will really depend on your application.

Next, it means you have to adjust your UV coordinates to correctly address a given texture inside the atlas. UV coordinates for a single texture would normally vary between 0.0 and 1.0 in both dimensions, but when packed into a texture atlas each texture uses only a small part of this range. You will need to apply offsets and scaling factors to your UV coordinates to address your texture correctly.

However, the biggest problem with texture atlases is that they causes problems with texture filtering and with mipmaps. The filtering problem occurs because graphics hardware usually samples the surrounding texels and performs linear interpolation to compute the colour of a given sample point, but when multiple textures are packed together these surrounding texels can actually come from a neighbouring packed texture rather than wrapping round to sample on the other side of the same packed texture. The mipmap problem occurs because for the highest mipmap levels (such as 1x1 or 2x2) multiple textures are being are being averaged together.

It is possible to combat these problems but the solutions are non-trivial. You will want to limit the number of miplevels which you use, and probably provide custom shader code to handle the wrapping of texture coordinates, the sampling of MIP maps, and the calculation of interpolated values. You can also try adding a border around all your packed textures, perhaps by duplicating each texture and offsetting by half its size. Even so, it’s not clear to us at this point whether the the various artifacts can be completely removed. Minecraft handles it by completely disabling texture filtering and using the resulting pixelated look as part of its aesthetic.

3D texture slices

The idea here is similar to the texture atlas approach, but rather than packing texture side-by-side in an atlas they are instead packed as slices in a 3D texture. We haven’t actually tested this but in theory it may have a couple of benefits. Firstly, it simplifies the addressing of the texture as there is no need to offset/scale the UV coordinates, and the W coordinate (the slice index) can be more easily computed from the material identifier. Secondly, a single volume texture will usually be able to hold more texels than a single 2D texture (for example, 512x512x512 is bigger than 4096x4096). Lastly, it should simplify the filtering problem as packed textures are no longer tiled and so should wrap correctly.

However, MIP mapping will probably be more complex than the texture atlas case because even the first MIP level will involve combining adjacent slices. Volume textures are also not so widely supported and may be particularly problematic on mobile hardware.

Texture arrays

These provide the perfect solution to the problem of handling a large number of textures... at least if they are supported by your hardware. They were introduced with OpenGL 3 and Direct3D 10 but older versions of OpenGL may still be able to access the functionality via extensions. They allow you to bind an array of textures to the shader, and the advantage compared to a texture atlas is that the hardware understands that the textures are separate and so avoids the filtering and mipmapping issues. Beyond the hardware requirements, the only real limitation is that all the textures must be the same size.

Bindless rendering

We don’t have much to say about this option as it needs significant research, but bindless rendering is one of the new OpenGL extensions to come out of Nvidia. The idea is that it removes the abstraction of needing to ‘bind’ a texture to a particular texture unit, and instead allows more direct access to the texture data on the GPU. This means you can have access to a much larger number of textures from your shader. Sounds useful, but we’ve yet to investigate it.


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The Congo Basin Forests: a solution for both adaptation and mitigation

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in journalism, Uncategorized

The New Paywall Is Completely Incomprehensible

Felix Salmon tries to unravel the mysteries:

This paywall is anything but simple, with dozens of different variables for consumers to try to understand. Start with the price: the website is free, so long as you read fewer than 20 items per month, and so are the apps, so long as you confine yourself to the “Top News” section. You can also read articles for free by going in through a side door. Following links from Twitter or Facebook or should never be a problem, unless and until you try to navigate away from the item that was linked to.


Flinders Street, is one of the main roads in the CBD of the city of Melbourne, Australia. More commonly, 'Flinders Street' is known as Flinders Street Station which is basically the heart of the Melbourne's railway system. It connects all the lines from around Melbourne to one station via the city loop. Flinders Street is often pictured on postcards and has characterized by being a light yellow with several clocks.


x Abu Dhabi, UAEFriday 21 July 2017

Foodies can find heaven in Catalonia

The Catalan region straddling southern France and northern Spain offers diners food that's not only fresh but exquisitely prepared.

Riu Onyar river and buildings, Girona, Catalunya, Spain
Riu Onyar river and buildings, Girona, Catalunya, Spain
Market day in Céret, a medieval town in French Catalonia, and a dizzying array of food has been laid out on stalls and tables around the walls of the old town. Shaded by lofty plane trees and bright red and yellow umbrellas, local producers do brisk trade with plump peaches, creamy goat-milk yoghurt and fresh fish from the nearby Mediterranean. Olives are piled high in wooden buckets alongside pickled garlic and wild mushrooms. An old man sells onions the same colour as his sun-beaten skin, while a woman shucks oysters for passers-by - a mixture of tourists and locals doing their Saturday shopping. Flamenco music from a live band on Place Picasso pirouettes over the rooftops.
At Gaëtan LeBer's honey stall, bees are busy at work inside narrow glass hives. "Try this," the owner says, dipping a spoon into a jar of dark, gelatinous liquid and handing it to me. I've tasted honey from all over the world, from celebrated countries such as Albania, Rwanda and Yemen, but LeBer's miel de bruyère callune might just be the best I've ever tried.
Céret is our first stop on a trip into Catalonia, the rugged, picturesque region of northeast Spain that spills over into southern France. It has many attractions, including a rich artistic heritage, great architecture, beautiful scenery, a glorious climate and world-beating football - but my partner and I have come here primarily to eat. Catalonia is quite simply one of the best places on Earth to be if you love food.
From Céret we headed to the stunning coastal town of Collioure, 25km to the east. With medieval forts rising dramatically from azure waters and whitewashed houses bathed in limpid Mediterranean light, you can appreciate why the impressionist Henri Matisse came here in 1905 to paint. Perhaps he also came, as we did, for the salted anchovies, a specialty of the town. We purchased a jar from Roque, one of the main producers, with a shop on Route d'Argelès, and ate them with crusty baguettes on the seafront - a simple but perfect lunch.
Next, we headed inland and over the border to Figueres, birthplace of Salvador Dalí. Unlike its most famous son, this town is modest and plain-looking - but it has hidden depths. The main draw is the enormous shrine that the surrealist artist built to his work in the 1960s - the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí - but I was just as excited by the bustling Montjoi fish shop on nearby Carrer de Peralada, which we stumbled upon at five in the afternoon as the day's catch was being rushed in. We bought a bag of super-fresh sardines and cooked them that evening, very simply, with potatoes and fennel and a squeeze of lemon. Delicious.
Our next stop, and the culmination of our journey, was Girona. We checked into Bellmirall, a lovely old hotel in the medieval quarter. Getting there involved a high-adrenaline taxi ride through steep and impossibly narrow streets, but once we arrived at Bellmirall everything was tranquil. The only disturbance were the bells ringing from the massive Gothic cathedral at the end of the street.
Girona has seen its fair share of disturbances over the years. The ancient city has been subjected to 25 sieges and captured seven times. The Romans ruled it, as did the Visigoths and the Moors, whose influence can be seen in the elegant Arab Baths on Carrer de Ferrán el Catolic, built in 1194. The most recent siege, lasting seven months, was laid by Napoleon's troops in 1809. Even today, people are dying to get into Girona: in Spain, it is regularly voted the city that people would most like to live in (ahead of its more famous Catalan neighbour, Barcelona).
The battle-scarred walls were demolished at the end of the 19th century, but in recent years sections have been reconstructed. A five-minute night walk from our hotel, through magnificent old university buildings, brought us to the Passeig de la Muralla, as the walk along the walls is known. We wended our way around and climbed onto grand observation towers to survey the city like medieval sentries.
You can eat great food in Girona without breaking the bank. The pintxos at Zanpanzar, the buzzy Basque tapas bar on Calle Cort Reial, were extremely tasty and came in very generous portions. Close by, at the bottom of a dramatic flight of stone steps, an atmospheric art-nouveau hangout called the Bistro served good salads and Catalan pizza at reasonable prices.
One of the joys of Catalan cuisine is its simplicity. The quality of the ingredients is such that even the most uncomplicated dishes here taste extraordinary. In the past 15 years, however, Catalonia has taken a turn towards the experimental, and now the region is revolutionising fine dining with its hi-tech, hyper-inventive cooking.
One of the world's finest restaurants, renowned for pushing Catalan cuisine to new heights, can be found in Girona - if you look hard enough. El Celler de Can Roca is tucked away behind a tall hedge in an unremarkable suburb west of the city centre. Unlike its celebrated Costa Brava neighbour, El Bulli, where there is a one-in-125 chance of securing a place each year, it's much easier to snap up a reservation at El Celler. I called up a mere two months in advance and booked a table for lunch.
Forgetting that Catalans eat late, we arrived at one o'clock and sat alone in the clean-lined modern dining room for nearly an hour before anyone else turned up. But it didn't matter: the table was ours for the afternoon and the upside was that we could experience the drama of each course before anyone else.
The first thing that arrived on our table was a miniature olive tree in a large pot. On closer inspection, we discovered four glazed olives hanging from the branches on tiny hooks, waiting to be plucked. Six more amuses bouches followed, including Bellini bonbons that popped in the mouth and "anchovy bone", a fish-shaped prawn cracker, served on a white net, with the skeleton of an anchovy fossilised into it.
We opted for the seven-course tasting menu, and then it became a blur of wonderful food, each dish more mind-blowing than the last. The oyster with ginger, lemon confit and an "oyster-flavoured leaf", served in a bottle halved down the middle with "solid" cava poured on top, was a highlight. So were the indulgent figs with warm foie gras.
The sole with colour-coded emulsions of five evocative Mediterranean flavours - bergamot, olive, orange, pine nut and fennel - had a Proustian effect, reminding us of some of the tastes and smells we had encountered during our time in Catalonia.
More than just a series of great dishes, the meal was like a holiday in itself, a brilliant voyage of the senses that had been planned and paced to perfection. By the end of the savoury courses, after a particularly intense cod pot-au-feu, I thought I could eat no more. But then a feather-light lemon-distillate sorbet came along and I immediately felt better. Just as well. The second sweet dish, Tahitian vanilla ice cream with caramel, liquorice and caramelised black olives, was the best dessert I've ever eaten.
Four and a half hours after our arrival, we staggered out in a haze of foodie bliss. A taxi driver took us the scenic route home, winding up the Montjuic hill that overlooks the city and pausing at the top to admire Girona in the setting sun. We had crested a great pinnacle of Catalan cuisine - one of the very best restaurants in the world - but already we were looking forward to our next meal. Somewhere down in that labyrinth of cobbled streets, another joyful Catalan dining experience awaited us - less elaborate, yes, but still cause for mouth-watering anticipation. The sun dipped beneath the horizon, the driver released the brakes and we plunged back into the darkening city.
If you go
The flight Return flights to Barcelona, via Brussels, on Etihad Airways ( www.etihadairways.com ) start from Dh3,375 including taxes
The hotel A double room at Bellmirall ( www.bellmirrall.cat ; 00 34 972 204 009), Girona, costs from ?65 (Dh345), including breakfast and taxes
The meal A seven-course tasting menu at El Celler de Can Roca ( www.cellercanroca.com ; 00 34 972 222 157), costs ?115 (Dh610) per person