Telecom heavyweight makes a stand on consumer data access.

The telecom giants in the US don’t have the best track record when it comes to consumer privacy. In fact, they’ve typically taken it to opposite extremes, such as turning over cell phone information to the government behind their customers’ backs. But one case that has worked its way to the US Supreme Court has an unlikely champion on the side of individual privacy.

Remember Edward Snowden?

Verizon, one of the largest cellular service and internet providers in the country, wasn’t exactly on the freedom side of things in the infamous Edward Snowden whistle blowing case. Thanks to agreements put in place years ago, the government was collecting cell phone information on millions of Verizon customers every single day. So it’s somewhat eyebrow-raising that Verizon would now take part in a tech industry effort to curb how much and what type of information authorities can get without even more invasive search warrants.

Legal precedent

The company’s concern stems from what they consider outdated legal precedent – literally from the 1970s – that allowed them to readily comply with information requests from customers’ land lines. However, as the amount and type of information has evolved with newer technology, law enforcement officials are still demanding information but telecom companies are no longer as keen to share it. Access to customers’ records includes everything from the content of text messages to the GPS coordinates to their last known location; that’s hardly the same thing as the very limited information a home telephone used to provide.

And there’s more…

While Verizon is the lone telecom to file a brief protecting its customers’ information, 14 other major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have joined in. This particular case – and the resulting Justices’ decisions – pertains to things like email and web search history, too, which those stakeholders have a specific vested interest in protecting.


HPX - High Performance ParalleX

The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers starting with 0 and 1 where every subsequent number is the sum of the previous two numbers. In this example, we will use HPX to calculate the value of the n-th element of the Fibonacci sequence. In order to compute this problem in parallel, we will use a facility known as a Future.

As shown in the figure below, a Future encapsulates a delayed computation. It acts as a proxy for a result initially not known, most of the time because the computation of the result has not completed yet. The Future synchronizes the access of this value by optionally suspending any HPX-threads requesting the result until the value is available. When a Future is created, it spawns a new HPX-thread (either remotely with a parcel or locally by placing it into the thread queue) which, when run, will execute the action associated with the Future. The arguments of the action are bound when the Future is created.

Figure 1. Schematic of a Future execution

Schematic of a Future execution

Once the action has finished executing, a write operation is performed on the Future. The write operation marks the Future as completed, and optionally stores data returned by the action. When the result of the delayed computation is needed, a read operation is performed on the Future. If the Future's action hasn't completed when a read operation is performed on it, the reader HPX-thread is suspended until the Future is ready. The Future facility allows HPX to schedule work early in a program so that when the function value is needed it will already be calculated and available. We use this property in our Fibonacci example below to enable its parallel execution.

The source code for this example can be found here.

To compile this program, go to your HPX build directory (see Getting Started for information on configuring and building HPX) and enter:

$ make examples.quickstart.fibonacci

To run the program type:

$ ./bin/fibonacci

This should print (time should be approximate):

fibonacci(10) == 55
elapsed time: 0.00186288 [s]

This run used the default settings, which calculate the tenth element of the Fibonacci sequence. To declare which Fibonacci value you want to calculate, use the --n-value option. Additionally you can use the --hpx:threads option to declare how many OS-threads you wish to use when running the program. For instance, running:

$ ./bin/fibonacci --n-value 20 --hpx:threads 4

Will yield:

fibonacci(20) == 6765
elapsed time: 0.233827 [s]

Now that you have compiled and run the code, let's look at how the code works. Since this code is written in C++, we will begin with the main() function. Here you can see that in HPX, main() is only used to initialize the runtime system. It is important to note that application-specific command line options are defined here. HPX uses Boost.Program Options for command line processing. You can see that our programs --n-value option is set by calling the add_options() method on an instance of boost::program_options::options_description. The default value of the variable is set to 10. This is why when we ran the program for the first time without using the --n-value option the program returned the 10th value of the Fibonacci sequence. The constructor argument of the description is the text that appears when a user uses the --help option to see what command line options are available. HPX_APPLICATION_STRING is a macro that expands to a string constant containing the name of the HPX application currently being compiled.

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
    // Configure application-specific options
       desc_commandline("Usage: " HPX_APPLICATION_STRING " [options]");

        ( "n-value",
          "n value for the Fibonacci function")

    // Initialize and run HPX
    return hpx::init(desc_commandline, argc, argv);

The hpx::init() function in main() starts the runtime system, and invokes hpx_main() as the first HPX-thread. Below we can see that the basic program is simple. The command line option --n-value is read in, a timer (hpx::util::high_resolution_timer) is set up to record the time it takes to do the computation, an hpx::lcos::future<> is created, the get() function on the hpx::lcos::future<> is called to retrieve or wait for the result, and the answer is printed out.

int hpx_main(boost::program_options::variables_map& vm)
    // extract command line argument, i.e. fib(N)
    boost::uint64_t n = vm["n-value"].as<boost::uint64_t>();

        // Keep track of the time required to execute.
        hpx::util::high_resolution_timer t;

        // Create a Future for the whole calculation, execute it locally, and
        // wait for it.
        hpx::lcos::future<boost::uint64_t> f =
            hpx::lcos::async<fibonacci_action>(hpx::find_here(), n);

        // wait for future f to return value
        boost::uint64_t r = f.get();

        char const* fmt = "fibonacci(%1%) == %2%\nelapsed time: %3% [s]\n";
        std::cout << (boost::format(fmt) % n % r % t.elapsed());

    return hpx::finalize(); // Handles HPX shutdown

Upon a closer look we see that the hpx::lcos::future<> we created is assigned the return of hpx::lcos::async<fibonacci_action>(hpx::find_here(), n). hpx::lcos::async<>() takes an action, in this case fibonacci_action, and asynchronously kicks of the computation of the action, returning a future which represents the result of the computation. But wait, what is an action? And what is this fibonacci_action? For starters, an action is a wrapper for a function. By wrapping functions, HPX can send packets of work to different processing units. These vehicles allow users to calculate work now, later, or on certain nodes. The first argument to hpx::lcos::async<>() is the location where the action should be run. In this case, we just want to run the action on the machine that we are currently on, so we use hpx::find_here(). To further understand this we turn to the code to find where fibonacci_action was defined:

// forward declaration of the Fibonacci function
boost::uint64_t fibonacci(boost::uint64_t n);

// Any global function needs to be wrapped into a plain_action if it should be
// remotely invoked as a HPX-thread.
typedef hpx::actions::plain_result_action1<
    boost::uint64_t,          // result type
    boost::uint64_t,          // argument
    fibonacci                 // wrapped function
> fibonacci_action;

// This is to generate the required boilerplate we need for the remote
// invocation to work.

In this block of code the function fibonacci() is declared. After the declaration, the function is wrapped in a hpx::actions::plain_result_action1<>. A plain action is the most basic form of action. Plain actions wrap simple global functions which are not associated with any particular object (we will discuss other types of actions in the Accumulator Example). The name of the action is tells us about the arity and nature of the functions return type. 1 signifies that the action takes 1 argument, and result indicates that the action returns a non-void value.

This picture should now start making sense. The function fibonacci() is wrapped in an action hpx::actions::plain_result_action1<>, which was spawned by hpx::lcos::async<>(), which returns a future. Now, lets look at the function fibonacci():

boost::uint64_t fibonacci(boost::uint64_t n)
    if (n < 2)
        return n;

    // We restrict ourselves to execute the Fibonacci function locally.
    hpx::naming::id_type const locality_id = hpx::find_here();

    // Invoking the Fibonacci algorithm twice is inefficient.
    // However, we intentionally demonstrate it this way to create some
    // heavy workload.
    using hpx::lcos::future;
    using hpx::lcos::async;
    future<boost::uint64_t> n1 = async<fibonacci_action>(locality_id, n - 1);
    future<boost::uint64_t> n2 = async<fibonacci_action>(locality_id, n - 2);

    return n1.get() + n2.get();   // wait for the Futures to return their values

On first inspection this block of code is straightforward. First, if (n < 2), meaning n is 0 or 1, then we return 0 or 1 (recall the first element of the Fibonacci sequence is 0 and the second is 1). If n is larger than 1, then we spawn two futures, n1 and n2. Each of these futures represents an asynchronous, recursive call to fibonacci(). After we've created both futures, we wait for both of them to finish computing, and then we add them together, and return that value as our result. The recursive call tree will continue until n is equal to 0 or 1, at which point the value can be returned because it is implicitly known. When this termination condition is reached, the futures can then be added up, producing the n-th value of the Fibonacci sequence.


To TeriAnn,

in memory of Lacy Too, beloved friend

- Renee

"I left my pawprints light against the forest loam

their tracery lost in salty sea foam

no prints were pressed into the painted desert land

nor did they stay in riverbed or sand

this world we walked together

now we must walk apart

close your eyes and just remember

I left my pawprints on your heart "

Lacy Too


10.48.1 Notes

Domain variables

Only variables with finite integer domains are supported. This includes boolean variables, which are considered finite integer domain variables with the domain 0..1. Domain variables declared to be of type var int are initially given the finite integer domain inf..sup, and are given maximally wide bounded domains before any search is performed on them, as well as before certain constraints that demand bounded domains are posted on them.

Ground set values

Although set variables are not supported, ground set values are. For example, the MiniZinc global constraint sum_pred/4 takes as second argument an array of such ground set values.

Solve annotations
Constraint annotations

Constraint annotations of the form domain, bounds, and value are recognized in relevant FlatZinc-to-library(clpfd) constraint translations. Any other constraint annotation is ignored.

Variable annotations

The following variable annotations are recognized. Any other variable annotation is ignored:

output_var   since release 4.2

the variable may be written on the current output stream.

output_array   since release 4.2

the variable array may be written on the current output stream.

the variable will not be considered in any default labeling (such as when the search annotations do not include all variables)

Send feedback on this subject.


85. Disc drive hints ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *BACKUP produces a duplicate of the original disc, with all the files, (programs), in the same order on the disc. *COPY, on the other hand, reverses the order on the disc. The catalogue will not show this up, as it is always in alphabetical order, but you can tell if you use *COMPACT or *INFO. If you use a '*' command which none of the ROMs recognize, then the Acorn DFS's will attempt to *RUN a file of that name. If the file is not a machine-code routine, then the attempt will fail. However, the Watford DFS's go one step further, because they will *EXEC the file if it is text, (ie if it has been SPOOLed onto disc). This was written before the Master and the 1770 DFS came out. I think that they too are semi-intelligent in this situation.


Research and Advocacy
2017-2018 Colleges of Law General Catalog

MLS 435 - Research and Advocacy

In this course students will learn the basics of how to perform legal research to identify and understand federal and state laws and then make the transition to oral and written communication in legal contexts. Students will gain an understanding of the underlying goals and implicit concerns involved in interactions among clients, legal counsel, legal adversaries, judges and juries. Units: (3 units)

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Compatible love astrology signs

Know compatible love astrology signs some, uniting

Then you definately add the numerical worth of the vowels in your first sifns and scale back the outcome to a single digit amount. Its coloration is compatible love astrology signs special that the color emerald inexperienced is called after compatible love astrology signs. However their affectionate and peaceful nature prevents them from being bossy or dominating. You will get signd primary three minutes of your reading with out spending a dime with most companies. This oil combined with dead pores and skin cells and dirt becomes trapped inside the pores and skin's compatble and loev develops. As a substitute of asking questions on why the one you love hates you so much, ask compatible love astrology signs on how one can heal your relationship. Calculating the compound number of a reputation and astrrology out it's influence on the name is what Title Numerology is all about. This unbelievable supply appears too good to be true, nonetheless you possibly can check it out your self. And it moreover provides the proper assertion about what's going to happen sooner or later. The followings compatible love astrology signs the final ideas of each college's point. The Soul Quantity can inform you a large number about your secret desires and needs for your self. Manmohan Singh, Rahul GandhiSonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Smt. Chip medium paranormal state In Scorpio In The 8th Dwelling-Man This Is Going To Be A "Uncommon" And Loopy Interval. Similarly, if we're overly demonstrative of the qualities of the Solar, we dissipate the power in our right channel and this makes us self indulgent, useless, dominating, reactive and indignant. Wind and earth indicators moreover get alongside advantageous, although it might take additional effort on wind and earth to keep up with water indicators mentally. Take your time before acting. It's not who they're now primarily- extra who they might flip into in the future. As I've mentioned sooner than Numerology is a multilayered examine there may astrologgy on a regular basis something compatible love astrology signs to study. We principally settle for compatible love astrology signs with four hundred450 phrases or more if the articles are DISTINCTIVE (By no means published on the internet) and of HIGH QUALITY CONTENT. Heshe is a multi-gifted specific express compatiblle person and the world is hishers for the taking offering he retains a superb and constructive perspective. Etiquette specialists agree that you have up to six months after the start of your compatible love astrology signs to ship out the beginning announcements. Free vedic astrology for marriage of them typically have possessive streaks the can flame into jealousy when paired with extra free-wheeling indicators. Your start date, social safety quantity, telephone number comaptible deal with are a few examples. The ecliptic was clearly recognized and divided into 12 equal indicators of the zodiac spherical 450 BC in Mesopotamia. When Dr. It helps you uncover your self and likewise uncover your future. If birthday june 17 astrology is a dilemma to resolve on between wealth and respect, he will definitely select respect over wealth. (ninety aside) inside an individual, nature feeling and pondering feeling will work together in each different case. It's a transient data to who to get nearer to kove who to supply an infinite berth. They possess good organizing and managing skills. The compatibility xstrology 'Start Amount' and compatible love astrology signs Quantity' is analyzed. They might compatible love astrology signs take a look at in into their accounts or they are going to be taught it on express zodiac and astrological internet sites. No, I could not show that both was incorrect, the info was the an identical ocmpatible oh so right. Nonetheless, it's best to know that it isn't the precise time to astroligy the model new dedication. You'd then sum those numbers collectively 1992 to present you 21 and at last sum that up which supplies you three. Although comparible neutral, outgoing and assertive they're moreover surprisingly trusting, usually innocently strolling into the lion's den at events.

29.08.2014 at 12:08 Moogucage:
I am assured, that you have deceived.

06.09.2014 at 16:42 Moogujind:
I am sorry, I can help nothing, but it is assured, that to you necessarily will help. Do not despair.

15.09.2014 at 04:06 Kazrajin:

20.09.2014 at 21:47 Voodoosar:


The Turing Test: Is that Human or Machine?

I propose to consider the following question, ‘Can machines think?’

Thus begins Alan Turing’s paper “Computing machinery and intelligence.”  It’s 1950 England, and the world’s first computer is being used to calculate the next known largest prime number, a feat meant to show off the power of the computer.  For Turing, the implications of this work go much further and spark a philosophical question: could computers one day acquire cognitive abilities rivaling human intelligence?Continue reading

Intracranial EEG and Mental Time Travel

A familiar progression of chords blares out of your speakers as the red lights of the surrounding traffic fade into the memory of a dark stage illuminated by pulsing neon lights.  You replace your current discomfort (horrendous traffic!) with the memory of the last concert you attended – reliving the percussive sensory experience and feeling the intensity of the vibrating sound waves.  As you bust out the occasional air guitar move and tap out the beat on your dashboard, you are successfully retrieving a memory and reinstating a specific pattern of neural activity.  This mental time travel enables you to escape the confinement of your surrounding environment and plunge into the memory of enjoyable past experiences.Continue reading

Dendritic Spines Knowing Neurons

Keeping Memories Fresh by Keeping Glutamate In Check

We are another year older, perhaps a little wiser, and probably more forgetful.  Indeed, making memories is quite a process in the brain: specific synaptic connections are strengthened and new proteins are synthesized.  But as we age, the synapses that make up our memories, such as those in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, start to change and can be lost altogether.  The detrimental synaptic alterations may not be permanent, however, and maintaining the health of these synapses may be the key to preventing age-related cognitive decline.Continue reading

“Free Bird:” How to Stay on Key

If you’ve ever done Karaoke, then you know how horribly some people sing, especially when the background music is too loud for them to hear themselves.  The ability to adjust to the environment is essential for all sensory systems, which use feedback mechanisms to modify behavior.  Usually the environmental cues are contaminated by noise, so your brain has to decide whether to modify behavior based on sensory feedback (and risk “adapting” to signals that do not accurately reflect performance) or to ignore sensory input (and risk leaving errors uncorrected).  So, how does your brain deal with this mismatch between the actual and expected sensory feedback, so you can have a better Karaoke performance?Continue reading


Before I could perform a Turing test I would need a few background questions answered:

Is this entity primarily Western educated?

Is this entity a native speaker of English?

Is this entity polyglot, within synthetic languages only or including analytic languages?

The first question determines whether I can perform the interview at all. I don't believe I can elicit predictable emotional reactions from non-Western educated individuals yet, if ever.

The second question determines what sort of errors I can expect from my first interview question, and a negative response will also diminish my confidence in the accuracy of my results.

The last question will help me identify patterns of speech in responses.

If the first answer was yes we can proceed. If my preliminary questions count against my five I think I can probably determine a lot with two more:

“How's it going?”

This is an English natural language challenge. If my second preliminary question received an affirmative response and this does not get a satisfactory response the interview is over. I'm a little surprised how few 'AI's' can deal with this little idiom.

If the second preliminary was negative but the third was 'synthetic only' I would accept grammatical errors but expect some conceptual understanding.

If the second preliminary was negative and the third 'including analytic' I would accept errors of tense, questioning as to what 'it' is and some conceptual drift.

If my preliminaries have whittled me down to one remaining question I will go straight for the emotional response:

“What is your opinion on continuing Israeli settlements? Please elaborate.”

I do have a few questions that may elicit an equal emotional response from a non-Western entity but as I said, I can't predict the response or judge the emotional overload very accurately. I know what I expect from a Westerner faced with this question. First, I'd expect a human being to talk, given my instruction to do so and all the possible opinions. Second, I would expect some emotion, I would look for typos, grammatical errors and vernacular in the response regardless of native language. Lastly if I succeeded in getting a human being started on this subject I would expect some mention of historical, philosophical and maybe even spiritual references and verbiage.

If my preliminary questions don't count I'll save that question for fifth and use these as two, three and four:

“What was the happiest moment of your childhood?

What is your opinion of feminism?

What is your proudest accomplishment?”

These are somewhat gentler emotional proddings. I would look for the same sort of language drift though not necessarily as pronounced, some code switching from a polyglot and tangents around happiness, childhood, fairness, gender, pride and ego.

It's quite a challenge to design a Turing test in five questions. I think it can be done but I'd have a higher confidence if I could have a menu of at least ten which I could pick from depending on responses. But in my experience natural language and emotional responses have disqualified every non-human entity I've conversed with to date so I believe this is an effective enough strategy. A computer may answer them quite well, but they will have considerable difficulties answering them like a human being would.


How to Nudge People Toward Smarter Cancer-Screening Decisions

Photo: Michael J. Klein, M.D./Corbis

When it comes to cancer screening, there’s no one correct answer that applies to every scenario. Different people face different risk factors, and you can’t screen every person for every possible type of cancer, so it’s a matter of cost-benefit analysis — some types of screenings are more likely to lead to potentially harmful false positives, for example, while others, if they detect cancer, will detect slow-growing forms of it that are very unlikely to kill or seriously harm the patient before something else does, so determining the “right” amount of cancer screening is a really difficult public-health challenge.

There’s also a psychological component to all this, of course. Lots of people don’t get screened for given cancers when they should because they’re scared of what doctors might find, are distracted by other responsibilities, or deterred by a lack of easy access to affordable health care. And, if the controversy over mammogram guidelines is any indication, there’s also a chance that some understandably nervous people are getting “over-screened” — that is, getting screened in contexts where the potential drawbacks likely outweigh the potential benefits.

In an article in American Psychologist (part of a “Cancer and Psychology” special issue), a team of authors led by Jane Wardle of University College London run down some of the current psychological challenges in cancer screening. Their most interesting suggestion is that public-health types should adopt a “System 1/System 2” approach to screening.

For those unfamiliar with this psychological concept, which researchers call dual-process models of decision-making when they’re being fancy, it was laid out really nicely in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (which happens to be one of my favorite science books of all time). The ultraconcise gist is that System 1 handles quick, gut-level tasks like calculating the sum of 2 + 2 or reacting with a startle to a loud noise. System 2 handles stuff which requires more careful thought and deliberation. Generally speaking, System 1 is more about emotion and System 2 is more about intellect, though it’s important to realize, as Kahneman points out in his book, that this is all an abstract model — it’s not like there’s one clearly defined part of your brain responsible for System 1 stuff, while another region handles System 2.

So what does this have to do with cancer screening? In a perfect world, everyone would get the right amount of screening based on their age, gender, and risk factors, and Wardle and her team think that the System 1/System 2 framework can be used to nudge things in that direction. For example, sometimes the best bet is to try to activate people’s System 1 thinking:

In the case of cervical screening or endoscopic [colorectal cancer] screening, where there is little disagreement about the public health benefits, trying to engage System 1 may be appropriate. Interventions such as provider recommendations, invitations, and reminders may encourage people to make a “default” decision to attend without the need to fully evaluate the case for screening themselves. Indeed, these approaches have provided the strongest evidence for efficacy in recent reviews.

In other words, in these cases you don’t want people doing too much thinking. You want their inboxes pinging them with reminders, their doctors saying, “Yes, you need to do this,” and so forth. But when it comes to types of screening where the cost-benefit picture is hazier, you want to encourage people to take a more thoughtful approach:

Provision of information that encourages people to engage in deliberative decision making is most likely to engage System 2 (e.g., print- and screen-based psychoeducational materials). This may be particularly appropriate where the risks and benefits of screening are finely balanced (e.g., in [prostate cancer] testing, where individual preferences and values are germane to the testing decision), although the heuristics and biases inherent in emotion-laden decisions must be taken into account when designing communication strategies for this type of decision.

The idea that engaging two different kinds of thinking might help improve people’s cancer-screening processes nicely captures the complexity on display here. When working through a scary, emotional subject, thinking about thinking can be very important.

How to Nudge People To Smarter Cancer Screening


Succession in Inland Sand Ecosystems: Which Factors Determine the Occurrence of the Tall Grass Species Calamagrostis epigejos (L.) Roth and Stipa capillata L.?

Darmstadt University of Technology Department Vegetation Ecology Schnittspahnstraβe 4 64287 Darmstadt Germany E-mail:

Abstract: In many successional series, grass species play an important role in mid-successional stages. Using calcareous sand ecosystems in the northern upper Rhine valley (Germany) as a model, we analyzed successional trajectories and the factors that determine their direction. A 5- to 7-year study of 23 permanent plots is presented. Polar ordination revealed that succession starts with pioneer communities (dominated by Corynephorus canescens and cryptogams) and can eventually lead to relatively stable Calamagrostis epigejos or Stipa capillata tall grass stands. At some sites, Cynodon dactylon can play a major role, but we focused on the two previously mentioned species. Gradient analyses of their ecological amplitudes by means of principal components and regression analysis were carried out in order to elucidate the factors determining the successional trajectories. Soil analyses of 71 plots established significantly positive linear relations for C. epigejos with respect to total nitrogen, extractable phosphate and potassium, as well as soil moisture indicator values. C. epigejos is not able to spread if the stress factors nutrient deficiency and dryness are combined. Lower tolerance limits are presented. In contrast, S. capillata shows negative relations to phosphate, declining strongly at P contents > 20 mg kg-1. At a moisture indicator value of around 3.2 (indicating dry sites), S. capillata reaches its optimum. S. capillata is a model for a tall grass species which, even with low nutrient levels and dry soil conditions, can be successful in mid-successional phases; but it is displaced by C. epigejos if soil moisture increases or phosphate/potassium supply is higher. Regarding a general framework, the successional phases are characterized by processes such as replacement of species, facilitation, and inhibition.


Primary 4 Problem Sums/Word Problems - Try FREE

Score :
(Single Attempt)

Ray has 3 marbles less than Mary.

The number of marbles that Samantha has is thrice the total number of marbles that Ray and Mary have.

The 3 girls have a total of 84 marbles.

How many more marbles does Samantha have than Ray?

The correct answer is : 54


Walter G. Secada’s Research

Walter G. Secada’s scholarly interests include issues of student diversity and equity in education, how people learn across the various STEM fields, curriculum reform, school restructuring, bilingualism and the education of non-dominant-language learners and assessment.  At present, he is working with colleagues from Florida State University and the University of Central Florida on a large scale, randomized-control-trials study of a professional development program that is known as Cognitively Guided Instruction; his specific research involves contrasting CGI and traditional classrooms in terms of mathematics-curriculum enactment and teaching practices. Also, he continues to study how the language features of mathematics may provide challenges and affordances to late-elementary and middle-school students who are learning mathematics and who range from English learners to fully proficient in English. A fluent speaker of and literate in Spanish, he is analyzing a series of videotapes where high-school algebra is taught bilingually in terms of teacher practices and language-based math-classroom participatory structures.


2017-06-21 Tie the Stone to the Wheel

Tie the Stone to the Wheel by Evan Parker / Seymour Wright.

Saxophone duos between UK free improv titan Evan Parker and his disciple Seymour Wright. So I basically spent the drive mentally cataloguing which sounds I knew how to make on the saxophone and which sounds I did not. One of them is really good at extended flutter tonguing, which I can’t do very well.

#TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #EvanParker #SeymourWright


Kili news. Interesting facts about Machame rout.

Do you know which route to the top of Kilimanjaro has been recommended 9 times out of ten by tour guides?
If asked by any of the Kilimanjaro tour guides, which route they would select for conquering the Kili, 9 out of 10 will tell you – the Machame route. Machame rout is the most diverse route. As an example, you will be passing through cloud forest, a dry and dusty Shira plateau on 3 840 meters and Rebmann glacier.

Do you know which route to the top of Kili is named „Whisky route“?
Machame route is considered little more difficult than Marangu. If Marangu is named the „Coca-Cola route“, then Machame is named the „Whisky route“. The reason is that Machame is considered more difficult than Marangu, hence the more stronger „label“. In spite the fact that the Machame route is more difficult, its success rate of reaching the top is better than of the Marangu; thanks to its better profile.


Optimal routeing in the Internet-Paper

Optimal routeing in the Internet

    Computer networking is the most happening area in the so-called digital era that we are living. Devices and drivers are becoming obsolete in the wink of an eye, and there is everlasting thirst for evolution and keep ourselves updated.

   Optimisation of the routeing process is one such aspect which can enhance the performance and reduce the cost of networking, thereby assuring a pleasant experience to its users. Switches and routers are the keys to form a good network.

This article explores various aspects about the routeing optimisation.

Routeing: A router is a decision-making device/software, as to where the data packets need to be forwarded through various links, towards their destination, based on its routeing table and  algorithms. In addition to selecting an optimal path, a router is also concerned with securely transmitting the data to its next node.

  The routeing function is associated with the layer-3 of standard OSI network model and has ample contribution it's performance.

Some of the performance criteria that need to be optimised are throughput, delay, simplicity, low overhead, reliability/stability, and flexibility.

Shortcomings of existing routeing schemes: Current routeing methods such as Dijkstra's Algorithm, Distance Vector algorithm, Hierarchical routeing in the IP backbone are not up to the mark  in the sense that, many of them use hop-counts and artificial weights given to the links in for deriving the routeing tables. These techniques being artificial in nature hamper the optimisation process. Most algorithms suffer from drawbacks such as possible oscillations, computational complexity, and convergence problems and are unable to perform when router malfunctions. On the other hand, studies reveal that some routeing protocols (like BGP: Border Gateway Protocol) are prone to failures in communication links and need several minutes to converge.

 In general, we model a network as a set of nodes interconnected by links. A node can have multiple links to one another. The cost factor for any network is determned based on certain factors such as bandwidth and power consumption.In 1974, Cantor and Gerla proposed this as a convex optimisation problem and used separation techniques to overcome them. In 1977, Gallager proved the necessary and sufficient conditions for having a minimum-delay routeing and introduced a distributed multi-path routeing. None of these methods are used because of their complexity, low performance of processors and low link capacity at the time these methods were proposed

Ways of achieving optimal routeing: The ideas mentioned here are with the assumption that the reader is familiar with some basic routeing algorithms and quantitative descriptions of various performance measures. The mathematical descriptions of the algorithms are too detailed to describe within the scope of this article. However a brief idea is presented.

1. HALO: Hop-by-Hop Adaptive Link-State Optimal Routeing [2]: This first link-state, hop-by-hop routeing algorithm which addresses the traffic engineering problem for intradomain routeing on the Internet. Furthermore, based on feedback information from the link-state updates, the protocol automatically adjusts to input data traffic. The router split ratio adjusts accordingly.

2. Optinets [3]: This architecture takes into consideration all entities involved in a network mobility and attempts to decentralize the mobility management efforts, instead of putting the burden on a single entity of the architecture. It provides means for all type of mobile network node to transmit data to corresponding nodes using optimal routes.

3. Cut-through routeing [4]: The cut-through routeing deals with the concept of message splitting to a maximum extent. In doing so, a node can convey the part of the data without waiting for the entire packet to be received. If there is no additional traffic on the path, the delay of packet delay is equal to the sum of propagation delay and time taken for slowest link data transmission, no matter  how many links are present on the path. Thus, delay can be reduced by as much as a factor of n on a path with n links.

4. Hot potato (deflection) routeing schemes [4]. In limited space networks, it is important to modify the routeing algorithm to minimise buffer overflow and the attendant loss of packets. The idea here is for nodes to send their stored packets as soon as possible, transmitting them on idle channel even if it is not close to destination thus reducing the delay in transmission.

5.  Optimal trafficking [5].

Another way of optimisation can result if the information flow results along the minimum first derivative length [MFDL] [4]. Thus the currently existing sub-optimal routeing is brought to the next level by shifting the flow of an MFDL path from other paths for each OD pair, thereby the cost function decrements through incremental changes in path flow.

The methods proposed in this regard are:

1. Frank-Wolfe flow deviation method [4]

2. Projection method. [4]: This calculates increment of flow change for each path considering the relative magnitudes of the path lengths and also makes use of the second derivatives of the cost function. The path flow is simply set to zero if the increment is large enough to make the path flow negative (i.e., it is "projected" back onto the positive orthant).

The excessive dependence on computer networks makes it inevitable for optimisation. The study of various aspects of routeing reveals that there is no clear cut policy in selecting the optimisation process but instead depends on the circumstances viz., which criteria needs to be optimised in particular and under what conditions. The enhancement of one measure may deteriorate the other.

Thus routeing optimisation is a complex and sophisticated mechanism that necessitates the coordination of various network nodes for effective communication.

       Overall the article attempts in giving some insight into the routeing optimisation world. The methods mentioned are both heuristic and exact, which can be used suitably to address the issue.


Opening Movie

Tears to Tiara 2: Heir of the Overlord Comes West

PS3 owners get a new JRPG

Japanese publisher Atlus has announced that they will be bringing their strategy RPG, Tears to Tiara 2: Heir of the Overlord to Europe and North America.

The protagonist of the game, named Hamilcar Barca, is a young man who is essentially enslaved to an empire. After troubling events unfold, and with the help of a goddess, he gains the strength to lead a rebellion against the empire.

Atlus says that their RPG unfolds like a novel, and includes over 80 hours of gameplay with around 15 main characters. It has spoken Japanese dialogue with English subtitles.

The publisher stresses that although this is the second game in the series, no knowledge of previous games is necessary to understand this one.

Tears to Tiara 2: Heir of the Overlord will cost $40 USD and will be available exclusively on the Playstation 3. It releases on October 14 in North America, and November 11 in Europe.

David Witmer is a freelance writer for IGN. He enjoys tweeting and blogging about deep stuff. Follow him on Twitter @d_witmer, or on IGN at dynasty_70


1. Du är här:
  2. Start
  3. Zoologiska institutionen
  4. Forskning
  5. Populationsgenetik

In the division of population genetics we study intraspecific genetic variation and the micro-evolutionary processes that govern this variation. Our broad interest is focused in finding out how and why genetic variation is structured within and among populations of animals over geographic space and time. We use genomic tools to investigate the genetic mechanisms behind important phenotypic traits affecting fitness in an evolutionary context. We use large scale genotyping of marker loci, computer simulations, and theoretical modelling to investigate how anthropogenic factors affect genetic biodiversity and how management can be designed to maintain of genetic variation in animal populations.

Monitoring genetic biodiversity in brown trout

The Lakes Bävervattnen Project is a unique long term study of natural brown trout populations in an undisturbed setting in the Hotagen Nature Reserve in central Sweden. We address a wide range of issues relating to microevolution and conservation genetics including methods for estimating and monitoring effective population size over space and time.

Functional genomics of life history evolution in Pieris napi

What are the genetic variants that help animals adaptation to their complex habitats? Using many different ‘omic tools, I am working with colleagues to answer this question for a range of adaptive phenotypes in the butterfly P. napi: diapause, wing patterning, polyphenism, polyandry, and immunity. Currently we are sequencing a high quality genome of this butterfly.

Large scale releases of salmon in the Baltic Sea

We have evaluated the conservation genetic risks for remaining wild salmon populations associated with compensatory releases of hatchery reared salmon into the Baltic Sea.

Colias butterfly color evolution

We are using genomic tools to investigate the evolution of color variation in Colias (Pieridae) butterflies. We are nearly finished with a revised phylogeny for all Pieridae using 8 genes, and will be adding as many Colias to this tree as we can.

Conservation genetic management of Swedish wolves

The Swedish wolf population is small, isolated and highly inbred. We address issues relating to the conservation genetic management of this, and similar populations.

Våra senaste publikationer

Philipp Lehmann, Wouter Van der Bijl, Sören Nylin, Christopher W. Wheat, Karl Gotthard. 2017. Timing of diapause termination in relation to variation in winter climate. Physiological entomology (Print) 42: 232-238.

Reuben W. Nowell, Ben Elsworth, Vicencio Oostra, Bas J. Zwaan, Christopher W. Wheat, Marjo Saastamoinen, Ilik J. Saccheri, Arjen E. Van't Hof, Bethany R. Wasik, Heidi Connahs, Muhammad L. Aslam, Sujai Kumar, Richard J. Challis, Antonia Monteiro, Paul M. Brakefield, Mark Blaxter. 2017. A high-coverage draft genome of the mycalesine butterfly Bicyclus anynana. GigaScience 6.

Sangeet Lamichhaney, Angela P. Fuentes-Pardo, Nima Rafati, Nils Ryman, Gregory R. McCracken, Christina Bourne, Rabindra Singh, Daniel E. Ruzzante, Leif Andersson. 2017. Parallel adaptive evolution of geographically distant herring populations on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114: E3452-E3461.

Lovisa Wennerström, Jens Olsson, Nils Ryman, Linda Laikre. 2017. Temporally stable, weak genetic structuring in brackish water northern pike (Esox lucius) in the Baltic Sea indicates a contrasting divergence pattern relative to freshwater populations. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 74: 562-571.

Carina Lundmark, Klas Andersson, Annica Sandström, Linda Laikre. 2017. Effectiveness of short-term knowledge communication on Baltic Sea marine genetic biodiversity to public managers. Regional Environmental Change 17: 841-849.

Alyssa Woronik, Christopher W. Wheat. 2017. Advances in finding Alba - the locus affecting life history and color polymorphism in a Colias butterfly. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 30: 26-39.


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Paleontology Current Events

Paleontology Current Events, Paleontology News Articles.
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Dinosaurs used nasal passages to keep brains cool
Dinosaur nasal passages were certainly nothing to sneeze at. Possessing among the largest and most complex nasal passages seen in animals, their function has puzzled paleontologists. (2015-10-28)
New species of flying reptile identified on B.C. coast
Mongolian paleontologists with a dream come to Montana State University
Jack Horner has flown to Mongolia the past three summers to search for dinosaur bones. (2008-01-15)
Fossil skeleton of strange, ancient digging mammal clears up 30-year evolutionary debate
Shortly after dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops went extinct, the Earth became filled with mammals only distantly related to those alive today. (2012-08-27)
First fossil bird with teeth specialized for tough diet
Beak shape variation in Darwin's finches is a classic example of evolutionary adaptation, with beaks that vary widely in proportions and shape, reflecting a diversity of ecologies. (2013-01-07)
New dinosaur discovery suggests new species roosted together like modern birds
The Mongolian Desert has been known for decades for its amazing array of dinosaurs, immaculately preserved in incredible detail and in associations that give exceedingly rare glimpses at behavior in the fossil record. (2017-08-24)
Eyes came before limbs in the transition to land
The transition to land from our fishy ancestors is one of the most iconic, and best documented, transitions in the fossil record. (2016-10-28)
Dinosaur skull changed shape during growth
The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, illustrates that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth. (2010-03-31)
Variation in the recovery of tetrapods
The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) occurred about 250 million years ago and represents the Earth's most catastrophic extinction event. (2017-08-24)
3-D scanning methods allow an inside look into fossilized feces
Coprolites are fossilized feces that give evidence of an organism's behavior and often contain food residues, parasite remains and other fossils that provide clues to ancient paleoecological relations. (2017-08-24)
Fossils and layers: Solving the terrane puzzle of the North American cordillera
Tectonostratigraphic terranes comprise a huge portion of real estate in western North America. (2008-07-16)
Alligator relatives slipped across ancient seaways
The uplift of the Isthmus of Panama 2.6 million years ago formed a land-bridge that has long thought to be the crucial step in the interchange of animals between the Americas. (2013-03-04)
Recent studies bring fossils and genes together to piece together evolutionary history
In the current issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Hans Thewissen, Ingalls-Brown Professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), and his colleagues review recent studies that have used modern genetic techniques to shed light on fossils, and vice versa. (2012-11-07)
Taking a deeper look at 'ancient wing'
In order to determine the feather color of ancient organisms such as Archaeopteryx, microscopic melanin-containing structures called melanosomes have been compared in a variety of living and fossil birds. (2014-11-05)
Elucidating the biology of extinct cave bears
One of the largest known species of bear, the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), ranged widely through Eurasia all the way to the Mediterranean in the south and to the Caucasus Mountains and northern Iran in the east during Late Pleistocene times. (2017-08-24)
Rare find: Feathered dinosaur feasts on flying food
University of Alberta researchers found evidence that a feathered, but flightless dinosaur was able to snag and consume small flying dinosaurs. (2012-08-29)
Complete 9,000-year-old frozen bison mummy found in Siberia
Many large charismatic mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age -- approximately 11,000 years ago, including the Steppe bison, Bison priscus. (2014-11-06)
Mystery of the flatfish head solved
A new discovery described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Oxford University researcher Dr Matt Friedman describes a fossil fish, named Heteronectes (meaning (2012-06-25)
U of A students reaffirm the work of a 1920s paleontologist
Three University of Alberta paleontology graduate students blew the dust off an 85-year-old dinosaur find to discover the original researcher had it right and a 1970s revision of his work was wrong. (2009-12-14)
U of A researcher has rare evidence of dinosaur cannibalism
University of Alberta researcher Phil Bell has found 70 million year old evidence of dinosaur cannibalism. (2009-10-06)
A/C came standard on armored dinosaur models
A new study shows that armor-plated dinosaurs (ankylosaurs) had the capacity to modify the temperature of the air they breathed in an exceptional way: by using their long, winding nasal passages as heat transfer devices. (2014-11-08)
China's earliest modern human
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing have been studying a 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton found in China and have determined that the (2007-04-02)
Giant Triassic amphibian was a burrowing youngster
During the Triassic Period Krasiejów, Poland had a warm climate and was populated by giant amphibians, such as Metoposaurus diagnosticus. (2013-09-02)
Early humans linked to ancient Australian extinction
New data presented at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meetings in Dallas, Texas, implicates early humans in the extinction of large mammals, birds and lizards in Australia. (2015-10-28)
Modeling the vertebrate invasion of land
Early tetrapods, such as Ichthyostega, moved onto land from aquatic environments over 350 million years ago. (2016-10-28)
Exquisite ancient horse fossil preserves uterus with unborn foal
A specimen of the ancient horse Eurohippus messelensis has been discovered in Germany that preserves a fetus as well as parts of the uterus and associated tissues. (2014-11-06)
Chemical analysis demonstrates communal nesting in dinosaurs
The reproductive behaviors of birds are some of their most conspicuous and endearing qualities. (2016-10-28)
Well-preserved skeleton reveals the ecology and evolution of early carnivorous mammals
Prior to the rise of modern day mammalian carnivores, North America was dominated by a now extinct group of mammalian carnivores, hyaenodontids. (2015-12-09)
A new study of fossil bone growth reveals the ancestry of mammalian 'warm-bloodedness'
'Warm-bloodedness', a characteristic of mammals, is a trait encompassing a suite of physiological processes that helps to maintain a relatively high, constant body temperature. (2015-10-29)
A 'transitional fossil' debunked
Snakes are a very diverse group of present-day reptiles, with nearly 3,600 known species. (2016-10-28)
Giant extinct salmon fought with spike teeth during upriver spawning events
The ancient coastal waters of the Pacific, roughly 11 to 5 million years ago, were home to a bizarre and fascinating species of giant salmon with large spike-like teeth. (2016-10-28)
Dinosaur 13 doesn't unearth whole truth about paleontology and fossil protection on US public lands
In light of the film Dinosaur 13, which describes the discovery and loss of the complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as 'Sue' by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology reiterates its strong endorsement of the US Federal laws and regulations that protect fossils on public lands, which are fully consistent with the professional standards held by paleontological scientists and with the ethics of the Society. (2014-12-10)
Montana drought sends paleontologists to field early for largest project in state's history
The threat of another bad fire season sent Jack Horner and crews to the field early this year for the largest paleontology project in Montana's history. (2001-06-04)
The dinosaur museum that visits you
The vast expanses of the Gobi Desert are a prime destination for paleontologists. (2017-08-24)
Super-sized muscle made twin-horned dinosaur a speedster
A meat-eating dinosaur that terrorized its plant-eating neighbors in South America was a lot deadlier than first thought, a University of Alberta researcher has found. (2011-10-14)
Ice age era bones recovered from underwater caves in Mexico
When the Panamanian land bridge formed around 3 million years ago, Southern Mexico was in the middle of a great biotic interchange of large animals from North and South America that crossed the continents in both directions. (2017-08-24)
Dolphins are the most diverse family of living marine mammals and include species such as the bottlenose dolphin and the killer whale. (2014-05-06)
300 million-year-old 'supershark' fossils found in Texas
Even before the age of dinosaurs, big toothy predators were roaming Texas. (2015-10-29)
GSA, the Paleontological Society, and SEPM in STEPPE together
STEPPE is a newly established, NSF-supported consortium involving the Geological Society of America, the Paleontological Society, and the Society for Sedimentary Geology -- designed to coordinate research, teaching, and learning in the areas of sedimentary geology and paleobiology. (2013-04-25)
133 million-year-old dinosaur brain fossil found in England
Soft tissues such as hearts and muscles are very rarely preserved in the fossil record. (2016-10-28)
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Best Science Podcasts 2017

Now Playing: Radiolab

Oliver Sipple
One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. But in the days that followed, Sipple's split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his personal life into political opportunity. What happens next makes us wonder what a moment, or a movement, or a whole society can demand of one person. And how much is too much?
Now Playing: TED Radio Hour

Future Consequences
From data collection to gene editing to AI, what we once considered science fiction is now becoming reality. This hour, TED speakers explore the future consequences of our present actions. Guests include designer Anab Jain, futurist Juan Enriquez, biologist Paul Knoepfler, and neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris.


Vegan Kebabs in Berlin at Voner

Vegan Kebabs in Berlin at Voner

Where you find the best vegan kebabs in Berlin? At Vöner der Vegetarische Döner!

Vöner der Vegetarische Döner!

The Kebab, which is actually originally a Turkish street food, has infiltrated the city of Berlin. But what to do if you're vegan and still want some savory deliciousness? Voner saves the day!

It's classic street food in a hip, funky restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating and a super duper relaxed, laid back atmosphere with cool tunes and artwork to boot.

voner der vegetarische doner

Serving up wagenburgers, bio-burgersdoner kebabs, currywurst, nuggetsfries, lots of tasty sauces like herb, tahini-garlic and chili. And cookies and cakes! And beers! (Is this place vegan heaven?)

I stopped in to Voner after spending some time in Turkey, so I wasn't really too sure if this kebab would be the best thing I'd ever eaten, but I was super surprised that I absolutely LOVED my meal. So tasty and scrumptious. And, yeah, I ate the entire thing!

voner berlin germany

Check it - spicy vegan seitan meat grilled on a skewer, then sliced and served in a humongous fluffy pita bread, stuffed to the brim with fresh veggies, and then smothered in a tasty sauce of your choosing. I chose a creamy tahini-garlic and it was perfection!

Doesn't that just sound awesome? Well, it is.

vegan doner kebab at voner

If you're in Berlin, definitely go check out Voner at Boxhagener Str. 56, Friedrichshain.

Voner Berlin


Hawaii Music Festivals & Conferences

Below you will find Indie on the Move's compiled listing of annual music festivals and conferences in the state of Hawaii, helping bands and musicians increase their industry knowledge, broaden their networking reach, and better promote and showcase their music, shows, and tours.

We did our best to include a thorough and comprehensive index, but if for some reason we've overlooked a specific event, please let us know through the contact page located HERE so that we can add it to the site ASAP.

With regards to any larger festivals, be sure to think outside of the box. While many of them do not regularly book independent acts as part of their official showcases, the national and international bands that do perform often draw some of the biggest built-in crowds imaginable, and provide a huge influx of music lovers and enthusiasts to each respective event location.

So try booking a show at one or several of that city's smaller local venues/bars/restaurants during the festival itself and take advantage of the vast number of music fans located in one place at one time. Even playing an ad-lib acoustic set in the event parking lot can go a long way in gaining you new fans and selling some merch.

Oahu, HI Music Festivals & Conferences

-Wanderlust Festival - Dates: Late February


Greenhouse Gases: Swine and Poultry

What are the major sources of greenhouse gas from swine and poultry operations?

The majority of methane and nitrous oxide from swine and poultry operations is emitted from buildings, manure storage, and land application of manure.

What strategies are available to reduce greenhouse gas?

A number of the strategies shown below reduce the potential for GHG emissions and in some cases, the amount of manure nutrients.

  • Reducing the amount of waste excreted from the animal decreases the potential for formation of greenhouse gases during manure storage.

  • Healthy herds use feed efficiently, and can reduce nitrogen excretion by ten percent compared to unhealthy herds.

  • Animals with genetic lines predisposed to high feed efficiency also excrete fewer nutrients in urine and feces.

  • Split-sex feeding enables producers to feed each sex closer to its nutritional requirements.

  • Phase feeding allows producers to better match nutrients to the changing growth requirements.

  • Enzymes, such as phytase, improve the digestibility of protein and reduce nitrogen excretion in manure. A low protein diet can reduce both fecal nitrogen and carbon dioxide production.

  • Wet-dry feeders increase efficiency by reducing the amount of feed required to achieve a desired weight gain

What are the EPA reporting requirements for greenhouse gas from animal agriculture?

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed national reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. Under these reporting requirements, large-, direct emitters of 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents or more must report GHG emissions to the EPA. Only emissions from manure management systems are expected to fall under these reporting requirements.


China's University and College Admission System.
Help you get into the universities in China easily.
Service Consult:

Dalian Medical University

Attention: DMU Still Opens Application for 2014 Spring MBBS Program!

Attention! Big News! Dalian Medical University (DMU) still opens application for students who want to study MBBS starting from Spring semester in 2014! Dalian Medical University is the largest specialized medical university in China, which enrolls the largest number of international students for its MBBS program. Located in the coastal city Dalian, Dalian is a...

My Study&Life Experience at Dalian Medical University(DMU)in China

By Chiwala Gift It has been said before that a journey of a thousand miles begin with a single step and the same applies even in all aspects of life that includes academic journey. This is because; you have to embark on the process way back before the time of the journey itself and when it...


[Table of Contents] [Search]

Re: Perforator

You could also have a custom made cutting die made. I don't know what the
prices are, but once you have them, you can use them over and over. To get
accurate cutting, make a jig to use with your press.

Peter D. Verheyen                                        <wk> 315.443.9937
Conservation Librarian                                   <fax>315.443.9510
Syracuse University Library                 <email>pdverhey@dreamscape.com
Syracuse University                <www>http://www.dreamscape.com/pdverhey
Syracuse, NY 13244                 <Listowner>Book_Arts-L@listserv.syr.edu


Blackhawks’ Jordin Tootoo made a splash revealing the gender of his second child.

Tootoo and his wife, Jennifer, unveiled the gender of their new baby Saturday in a video on Twitter.

Tootoo took his driver and hit a ball filled with powder.

Spoiler alert: It’s a girl.

The Tootoos already have one daughter, who was born in April 2016.

Gender reveals are the newest rage on social media.

However, some don’t always go to plan.


Persistent develops AI enabled mobile app for transforming lives of visually impaired

Eye Blindness

While India continues to make great progress on the economic front, the country also has a disturbing statistic. With close to 52 million visually impaired people, India has one of the largest populations of the visually impaired. Researchers say that this is close to one fourth of the world’s visually impaired population.

This compelling issue has inspired Persistent Systems to take this challenge head on in its internal hackathon, Semicolons. It is a 24-hour hackathon where programming teams compete to solve complex problems by exploiting the latest technology. During the brainstorming session, one of the earliest ideas that came up to the team was to do something around accessibility technology and the team eventually settled on making the world more accessible to the visually impaired.

Accordingly, the team developed Drishti – a mobile app that makes the visual world accessible to the blind by describing it to them. Explains Pandurang Kamat, Chief Architect – Innovation and R&D, Pandurang Kamat (Chief Architect - Innovation and R&D at Persistent Systems)Persistent Systems, “Over 280 million people worldwide are visually impaired and around 40 million are completely blind. We feel a technology like Drishti will render the world more accessible to them. Drishti uses statistical learning using Naïve Bayes model in Scikit-learn to identify and classify the scene. The model learns from hundreds of images which have been classified and tagged already – supervised learning. It also uses a deep neural network model to recognize faces using Facenet toolkit. For this, we fed the tagged photos of a user’s friends taken from their Google photo albums. It uses multiple computer vision APIs to identify objects and describes the high-level scene in English using a NLP grammar module.”

Persistent Systems’ efforts in applying AI for a social impact is laudatory, and if successful, can transform the lives of millions of visually impaired people.

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6.4. Project Management Strategies

Historically, the first formal software design methodology was known as the waterfall method: first you design the entire game on paper, then you implement it (programmers start writing code, artists working on art, etc...), then you put the pieces together, do some testing - fix any obvious issues, and then you ship it.

The Waterfall Process

Waterfall is so named because, like water in a waterfall, once you drop off an edge there is no going back. It is based on the assumption that the design can be completed in isolation in a reliable fashion and that once that design is done, you probably won’t have to go back and make any substantial changes. This approach was ported to the world of software from physical engineering projects. In the world of physical engineering, common problems and their solutions are pretty well understood - engineers can sit down and design something and have their be a high probability that the basic design is sound.

At some point, people realized that things don’t always work that way in software. When doing creative design work to solve new problems, it is harder to come up with a design that works perfectly the first time. While this is true of physical engineering projects as well (think of the cost overruns typical of new military fighter jet programs), software by its nature tends to involve more solving of new problems. The field is so young that just about every project involves doing something new.

The alternative is what is known as an iterative approach. As with waterfall, you first do design work, then implement it, and then test it to make sure it works. But in the iterative approach, there is an expectation that testing will often result in a failure that results in going back to the drawing board. In the waterfall approach, the assumption is that any fixes will be relatively minor ones that do not call into question the original design.

Even more importantly, iterative design focuses on breaking a project into separate features and doing the design/implement/test cycle on each individually. We don’t design a whole software package in detail all at once. Instead we come up with an overall rough design - a list of features we want to have; then we prioritize those features, figuring out which are most important; then we pick one feature at a time to implement. After we have designed/implemented/tested a feature and decided it is done, we move on to another feature.

An Iterative Process

This iterative style of development is the methodology behind the Minimum Viable Product. A piece of software that is built one feature at a time, starting with the most critical features is less likely to catastrophically fail at the last minute. Why? As we will see in the next stage, iterative design is about managing risk.

In software development (both in and outside of game development), this style of organization is known as Agile project management.

Agile Development

The website Agile in a Nutshell is a quick introduction to the principles of Agile project management and techniques used to focus on rapid iteration.


Gerlinde Mohr and Richard George Mohr

Richard and Gerlinde Mohr

    A couple married for nearly 54 years, Richard and Gerlinde Mohr, formerly of East Hampton, died in Palm Bay, Fla., in January within days of each other. Their family said Mr. Mohr, who was 81, had been in failing health since about Thanksgiving. He died at a rehabilitation center in Palm Bay on Jan. 21. Ms. Mohr was 71 and had been ill as well. Her death was on Jan. 23 at Palm Bay Hospital.
    The Mohrs lived in East Hampton from 1976 to the 1990s, raising three children. Mr. Mohr was a mechanic who had worked in the motor pool of the Air National Guard in Westhampton Beach. He was also a veteran of the Air National Guard.
    As a young man he taught mechanics in New York City. This led to his taking a job setting up a school for mechanics in Iran, where he taught for two years and made the acquaintance of the shah, who gave him a rug his family still possesses. His recreational interests included hunting, fishing, and woodworking.
    Ms. Mohr was a floral designer for many years at Buckley’s Flower Shop in East Hampton. She enjoyed sewing, needlepoint, cooking, her garden, and music. The couple shared a love for camping and travel.
    Mr. Mohr was born on June 28, 1931, in Brooklyn to George Mohr and the former Martha Wolfe. He grew up in Middle Village, Queens. Ms. Mohr was the daughter of Georg Viesel and the former Martha Sorg of Pforzheim, Germany. She was born there on Nov. 11, 1936. She grew up in wartime Germany but left to live with relatives in Queens after the war. Sitting on a porch at the family’s house in Queens upon his return from Iran, Mr. Mohr mistook her for a cousin and began a conversation. They were married on March 14, 1958.
    The Mohrs lived in East Islip for many years, spending vacations camping at Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton before moving to a house on Whooping Hollow Road.
    They are survived by their children, Monica Taylor of Sag Harbor, Helen McGuire of East Hampton, and Ralph Mohr of Palm Bay. They had six grandchildren.
    Mr. Mohr’s sister, Norma Mohr, lives in North Carolina.
    Mrs. Mohr’s siblings, who remained in Germany, died before her. They were a sister, Ellen, and two brothers, Gerhardt and Horst.
    Ms. McGuire said her mother was “the most kind, caring, and generous woman you would ever want to meet.”
    “Their work ethic was unsurpassed,” she said, and, “They loved to laugh.”
    When they retired, Ms. McGuire said, the couple “bought the proverbial Winnebago and traveled the country,” reaching as far as Alaska. “Everything there was to see, they did it.”
    A memorial is to be announced for a date in the spring.