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The importance of level design is well known for first person and third person action and adventure games, yet its importance in role-playing games is not as appreciated. Part of this lies in the way a game world is used in traditional role-playing games: since these types of games are less about player motor skills and more about management of statistics representing player character ability, game worlds are often simple containers for gameplay, without features designed to enhance game systems.
Illustration 1: An overworld from a traditional role- playing game (Final Fantasy VI).
Modern role-playing games, however, often incorporate play in which level design can have a positive role. The Mass Effect series uses the mechanics of a cover based shooting game, in which the player is tested to master the environment's layout for effective protection from attacks, while needing a degree of physical dexterity with a mouse or controller to aim and shoot at enemy combatants. The traditional role-playing game design (management of statistics) is a layer that sits on top of the action oriented gameplay, instead of being the primary focus.
In these situations, level design as understood in the modern sense — a layout that takes into account player and enemy abilities in interesting ways — is pushed into the foreground.
While many role-playing games can be used to illustrate the growing importance of level design in this genre, this article focuses on one of the newest titles from Square Enix: Final Fantasy XV.
Final Fantasy XV (FFXV) gives the player several abilities that potentially play off of the layout of the world: warp strikes, link strikes, magic, and weapon choices. Let's briefly look at each one.
- Warp Strikes. For this ability, the player can throw their sword or other melee weapon and then warp at high speed to the location the thrown weapon stopped. If selected on an enemy, this is an attack. Otherwise, this is an evasive move. Warp strikes can also by used to attach the player to special locations in a scene, such as a rock, tree, or tall structure. Not only does this remove the player from immediate danger (the player isn't completely invulnerable, but is usually safe for a few moments), but also allows the player to regenerate health and ether (in the Final Fantasy series, the amount of ether a player has dictates how much magic they can use).
- Link Strikes. These are attacks in which other members of the player's party make an additional attack as a bonus strike. There are numerous link strike abilities, but the one most applicable to level design is the blindside strike. In this attack, if the player strikes an enemy from the rear position, a party member makes an additional attack.
- Magic. Unlike in most other RPGs, magic is not an intrinsic ability that is controlled by a finite amount of magic ability that is restored via potions. Instead, it is manufactured from elements collected in the world. Since it is manufactured, a magic spell can be given, like a weapon, to other party members to use. Since combat encounters take place in the same space as world traversal, these spells can actually cause harm to party members, not just opponents. Indeed, this is very likely to happen, since many spells have splash damage effects.
- Weapon Choices. Another way FFXV breaks with previous RPG conventions is that the main character may use any weapon type in the game. Weapons include melee weapons of varying lengths and speed, and ranged weapons may also be used. The net effect on level layout is that a designer needn't design spaces with only one weapon type in mind, since players are expected to equip weapons appropriate to the space they are in.
Open Versus Closed World Design
FFXV embraces an open world design for much of the game, in which players freely roam a large outdoor environment. This should not be confused with the earlier method of allowing free movement on a large map, while segregating combat to special dungeons or screens that cut away from the primary game world (a common style of play from early RPG design). FFXV's open world has its gameplay built into the environment, which puts it in a similar space as other open world games such as Skyrim and the Just Cause series.
In such an open world environment, gameplay needs to occur in regular intervals across spaces that are too vast to allow for hand tuned combat encounters. In a linear action game, a level designer can easily create interest by tightly controlling the gameplay experience, but in an open world game, the world is simply too big for that! Games in this genre have to balance the exploration of a huge world with the need to create enough interest to make the exploration fun.
FFXV attempts to balance this by interspersing dungeons, caves, and forts throughout the open world. These areas are made with a finer attention to detail, or, one could say, they are handcrafted. Because of this, these areas more effectively complement the game's design.
For instance, consider the following example from a screenshot of the Japanese version of the game.
Illustration 2: Combat scene from Final Fantasy XV. Note that the combat takes place on a flat road, unadorned with objects or obstacles.
Note how this particular environment is very simple: it's just a flat road. For the above encounter, the player must use their mechanics absent of any help from the level design. This limits tactical options for the player, particularly since the player's ability to warp and heal depends on transiting to locations in the environment that have been set aside for that purpose. The player's enjoyment of this scenario is somewhat limited, then, to the performance of the game systems on a flat plane.
Obviously, a natural environment can provide opportunities for small-scaled level design. Topography and flora both provide some variation and can even provide opportunities for improvised play. And, of course, environment objects can be sprinkled throughout even huge environments.
Illustration 3: The player attached to an object in the environment in Final Fantasy XV.
In the above picture, we see the player character attached to a warp point, allowing them to heal and escape damage from combat. This is still in the open world, but Square Enix's designers have placed various structures, both natural and man-made, to assist the game systems.
However, these are still thinly placed throughout the world, and there is no guarantee that the player is going to be able to use these for any given encounter, since these encounters are probably randomly generated in the open world. Who knows where the player is going to be? This makes it very hard to give a controlled, fun experience to the player.
For this reason, the designers rely upon some handcrafted areas placed throughout the world space. Since the open world must rely on systems rather than level design, the handcrafted areas provide balance. Some great examples are the forts and enemy bases throughout the game. These structures contain many warp points to allow the player to use this ability. The bases allow for a balanced approach where game systems and level layout combine to create fun gameplay.
Illustration 4: Inside an enemy base.
In the above example, note that the environment is still rather large; large enough for the player's warping ability to play a large role, but not so open so as to remove opportunities to use it effectively!
One of the primary roles of world and level design is to support the underlying game systems: great level design makes game systems better. In FFXV, this is best accomplished in the forts and enemy bases, because these environments, simply put, support the game's mechanics very well! However, these environments are only used a few times in the open world portion of the game. This is unfortunate, as while the open world of the game is fun for other reasons (beyond the scope of this article), the actual combat mechanics are best served in the hand made crafted, set piece areas, and surely providing more of them in the open world would make a fun game yet more enjoyable.
This isn't to say the entire game needs to be one endless fort or enemy base. Part of the enjoyment in an open world game is the exploration provided by large environments. However, I would encourage game creators to figure out ways to repeat interesting hand designed environments in small, easily repeatable packages that can be spread throughout a game world. In modern games, creators need to find ways to break large handcrafted areas down into smaller, modular parts, to more easily intersperse them throughout an environment.
In conclusion, the best open world level design involves taking the best parts of linear world level design, and breaking them down into their core parts, and spreading them out throughout the open world.


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Can I Get Social Security Disability Benefits for Diabetes?
How Does the Social Security Administration Decide if I Qualify for Disability Benefits for Diabetes?
If you have diabetes, Social Security disability benefits may be available. To determine whether you are disabled by diabetes, the Social Security Administration first considers whether your diabetes is severe enough to meet or equal a listing at Step 3 of the Sequential Evaluation Process. See Winning Social Security Disability Benefits for Diabetes by Meeting a Listing.
If your diabetes is not severe enough to equal or meet a listing, the Social Security Administration must assess your residual functional capacity (RFC) (the work you can still do, despite your diabetes), to determine whether you qualify for benefits at Step 4 and Step 5 of the Sequential Evaluation Process. See Residual Functional Capacity Assessment for Diabetes.
The complete name for diabetes is diabetes mellitus. Also known as "sugar" diabetes, diabetes mellitus is a hormonal disorder. The cells of the body need a form of sugar called glucose for energy. The body breaks down various carbohydrates in the diet to glucose. Glucose then circulates to the body's tissues through the blood. But glucose cannot get from the blood to the inside of the cells where the cells can use it, unless the hormone insulin is also present. Insulin permits passage of glucose through the cell membrane.
Insulin is secreted by the pancreas. The pancreas is an elongated organ located behind the stomach. Special cells, known as the Islets of Langerhans, are spread throughout it. These cells produce insulin that is released into the blood. Diabetes occurs when the pancreas does not produce any or enough insulin or when the body is unable to use effectively the insulin that is produced. High blood sugar results as glucose accumulates in the blood because it cannot get into the cells of the body.
The Social Security Administration sees many claimants who are afflicted with diabetes. Diabetes mellitus affects the entire body, and may be mild, moderate, or severe. Diabetes is a major cause of illness, disability, and death. The number of cases of diabetes is increasing markedly in the U.S. as a result of obesity, inadequate exercise, and junk food. More and more children are becoming diabetic at younger ages, as are adults.
There are two main types of diabetes mellitus, Type 1 diabetes and Type 2 diabetes.
Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is the most severe form of diabetes. Older names for Type 1 include juvenile diabetes, juvenile onset diabetes, and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). IDDM is misleading because other types of diabetes besides Type 1 may require insulin. Type 1 appears during childhood or early adulthood. It is an autoimmune disorder in which cells in the immune system called T lymphocytes damage the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Then the level of glucose in the blood becomes abnormally high, since glucose cannot get into the cells without enough insulin. Persons with Type 1 diabetes must take injections of insulin to correct the problem.Type 1 diabetes accounts for 5% to 10% of total cases of diabetes.
Medical research continues in an effort to prevent Type 1 diabetes mellitus, but so far it has not been successful. Unfortunately, there is no single "diabetic gene" that could be replaced with gene therapy to cure this disease; the immune system abnormalities are numerous and complex. Type 1 diabetes can result in complete destruction of the pancreatic islet cells over a period as short as 3 years. This means that Type 1 diabetes develops quickly, and a person with Type 1 diabetes needs to inject insulin early in the course of the disease.
Because of the marked fall in insulin, the symptoms and complications of Type 1 diabetes can be severe. Uncontrolled severe Type 1 diabetics typically have excessive urination, thirst, and appetite with weight loss. But they may have no appetite. And they may experience weakness, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting, along with sleepiness, lethargy, or even coma. A person may have these symptoms when first diagnosed. And a person with Type 1 diabetes may have these symptoms anytime he or she stops taking insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes
The most common form (90%) of diabetes mellitus is Type 2. Those with Type 2 diabetes may or may not need to take insulin injections. Often Type 2 diabetes can be controlled with diet, weight loss, exercise, and oral medications. Type 2 diabetes is also known as non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) in those who do not require insulin. Unlike Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 is not an autoimmune disorder, though the immune system and genetics may play a role in its development and progression.
The major problem with Type 2 diabetes is not lack of insulin, but rather insulin resistance. Insulin resistance means the cells of the body are not able to use insulin effectively. The insulin levels in Type 2 diabetics may be decreased, normal, or increased, but they are usually increased. Insulin resistance, and the severity of the diabetes, is markedly increased by obesity and lack of exercise.
The oral medications that many Type 2 diabetics take to control blood glucose work in one of two ways. Either they increase the amount of insulin that the pancreas is able to secrete. Or they improve the ability of the cells to use insulin thereby reducing insulin resistance. Studies have shown that exercise can decrease insulin resistance as much as oral medication.
Historically, Type 2 diabetes developed slowly over a period of years, and a person did not need to take insulin until he or she had the disease for a while. Type 2 diabetes has been known as "adult-onset diabetes mellitus" or "maturity-onset diabetes mellitus," because it usually developed after age 40. Now in the U.S. even children are developing Type 2 diabetes. Onset at earlier ages is occurring because of increasing childhood obesity, lack of exercise, and access to high-fat junk food. The wave of Type 2 diabetes has not yet reached a peak, as the effects of the child obesity epidemic have not had time to fully develop, and the adult population continues to become increasingly obese. Increasing numbers of claims for Social Security disability benefits based on diabetes can be expected.
Other Types of Diabetes
A few cases of diabetes mellitus are not Type 1 or 2. Gestational diabetes appears during pregnancy. The problem arises from a combination of insufficient insulin and the effects of hormonal changes associated with pregnancy. After pregnancy, the diabetes will usually abate, but 5% to 10% of gestational diabetes cases are actually Type 2 diabetics. A person with gestational diabetes has an increased risk for eventual development of diabetes, even if the gestational diabetes resolves. Various medical problems like surgery, malnutrition, infection, pancreatic trauma, and drugs can be enough to push a person over into diabetes and account for about 1% to 5% of all diabetics.
Diabetes is diagnosed when blood sugar (glucose) levels are high. Medical authorities disagree about how high glucose levels must be for the diagnosis. Normal fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels are no higher than 110 mg% (110 mg/dL); some authorities put the upper limit of normal at 115 mg%. It is generally agreed that a FBG of 140 mg/dL or greater on at least two separate days should be considered diagnostic of diabetes mellitus in anyone. This threshold is the "gold standard" for diagnosing diabetes.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has lower plasma glucose thresholds for diagnosing diabetes. The criteria for the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus according to the recommendations of the American Diabetes Association are:
- Random (casual) plasma glucose level over 200 mg/dL in the presence of symptoms of diabetes (the classic symptoms including excessive urination, excessive thirst, and unexplained weight loss);
- A fasting plasma glucose level over 126 mg/dL;
- An oral glucose tolerance test with a two hour post-load plasma glucose level over 200 mg/dL.
To establish the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, according to the ADA, any of the above three tests must be done at least twice and on different days. However, not all endocrinologists subscribe to the ADA diagnostic criteria.
Some individuals are diagnosed as having "pre-diabetes." The diagnosis is based on glucose levels that are higher than normal, but below the thresholds for diagnosing diabetes. Millions of Americans are pre-diabetic and have increased risk of strokes, peripheral vascular disease, heart attacks, and diabetes.
Ketoacidosis is a serious condition that can occur in people with Type 1 diabetes. You may meet the diabetes listing and be eligible for social security disability benefits if you have episodes of ketoacidosis one every two months on average. See Meeting Listing 9.08B for Diabetes.
It results when insulin levels approach zero. It is called ketoacidosis because compounds called ketones are released into the blood and secreted in the urine and breath and the ph of the blood becomes lower than normal making it acidic. Symptoms of ketoacidosis include dehydration, weight loss, mental confusion, nausea and vomiting, rapid and deep breathing, and, if untreated, unconsciousness, coma, and death.
Ketoacidosis develops in the following way. When insulin levels are very low, the cells are starved for glucose, even though glucose is in the blood stream. In an attempt to compensate for the apparent lack of glucose, the pancreas releases the hormone glucagon. Glucagon causes the liver to convert sugar it has stored as glycogen to glucose. This additional glucose increases blood sugar levels even more, leading to a condition known as hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia results because only the brain can use the

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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a programme established by the US government in 1947 to give economic help to Europe after World War II. It was named after George C. Marshall, who was the US Secretary of State. Thousands of millions of dollars were provided for rebuilding cities, roads, industries etc
Definition from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
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Do you know what each of these is called?
Click on any of the pictures above to find out what it is called.


Cranial gunshot wounds
Definition
A cranial gunshot wound is a penetrating wound through the skull caused by a firearm. A wound in which the bullet enters the skull, but does not exit, is referred to as a penetrating wound. A wound in which the bullet enters and exits the skull, is referred to as a perforating wound. As a bullet passes through the brain, the bullet creates a hole 3-4 times larger than the original bullet diameter. The path of the bullet and its pressure wave cause the majority of the damage in the brain.
Treatment
Cranial gunshot wounds are aggressively treated upon arrival to a hospital. 90% of the time, the victim of a cranial gunshot wound will die before arrival to the hospital. For victims that survive the initial encounter, up to 50% may die in the emergency room.
Once the patient's blood pressure and oxygen levels are stabilized, a Computerized Tomography (CT) scan of the brain will provide an image of areas damaged from the gunshot wound. Damage can be caused from the bullet entry, its pathway, bullet fragmentation, and its exit. The caliber of the bullet, the weapon from which it was fired, as well as the distance between the gun and the victim, all play a role in the amount of damage caused in the patient.
If a hematoma (collection of clotted blood) is shown on the CT scan, an emergency craniotomy may be performed, where the skull is opened to remove the clotted blood. It is also common for swelling of the brain to occur, and a craniectomy procedure may be performed in which a portion of the skull is temporarily removed until the swelling decreases. Superificially accessible bullet fragments may be surgically removed, though deep fragments may be left behind, as surgical removal may cause more damage to the brain.
Outcome
If a patient survives the initial gunshot wound, the path of the bullet determines the extent of injury. Outcome is worse for those with damage into the deep midline structures of the brain, or areas of the brainstem.
The patient will be most often be admitted to a critical care unit for several weeks after the trauma. After that, the extent and speed of recovery is dependent on the amount of injuries and the general health of the patient prior to the incident. Rehabilitation is often necessary to help regain some function, and most often, to adapt to permanent injuries. Recovery could take from several months to several years, with many patients never reaching their baseline health prior to the injury.
Jessica Siu and Justin F. Fraser, MD
References
Hollerman JJ, Fackler ML. Chapter e263.1. Wound Ballistics. In: Tintinalli JE, Stapczynski JS, Cline DM, Ma OJ, Cydulka RK, Meckler GD, eds. Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine: A Comprehensive Study Guide. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2011. _URL_ Accessed November 25, 2011.
Wright DW, Merck LH. Chapter 254. Head Trauma in Adults and Children. In: Tintinalli JE, Stapczynski JS, Cline DM, Ma OJ, Cydulka RK, Meckler GD, eds. Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine: A Comprehensive Study Guide. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2011. _URL_ Accessed November 25, 2011.
Gunshot Wound Head Trauma. American Association of Neurological Surgeons. 2011. Available at: _URL_ Accessed November 25, 2011.
Page last updated: 4/13/2015 10:29:23 AM


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The Thirteen in 13 Campaign
In 2013, we are inviting all 13 year olds to write a letter to the Prime Minister to tell him what they think would make a better Britain.
Extracts from the thirteen winning letters will be published in The Times, where David Cameron has also promised to write a response to the 13 winning letters!
We have also developed a pack of curriculum-linked teaching resouces to accompany the campaign.
The pack includes a powerpoint presentation, together with a selection of notes for teachers containing further information, curriculum links and discussion topics.
To access the resources:
- Download the document below and save to your computer.
- When you open the document, you will see a powerpoint presentation to use in your class.
- To view the accompanying teachers notes, please click on 'View' at the top of the screen, and select 'Notes Page'.
Click here to get involved with the Thirteen in 13 campaign.
_PHONE_ 5858
"I can't wait to see what issues and
topics they raise - and how the Prime
Minister reacts. Young people are our
future - let's listen to them!"
"A remarkable diary gave voice
to a girl in hiding. Now the children
of today have a unique opportunity
to have their own voices heard by
the most powerful person in the
"Anne Frank was both extraordinary
and ordinary. I think this is a brilliant
initiative: a chance both to honour
Anne's memory, and for today's teens
to write about their own lives in the
same thoughtful way."


How to Solve Windows Received HTTP Message 403 Forbidden
Message 403 Forbidden: Generally, a user gets this type of message like "403 forbidden" when a web server forbids the access of the page, which a user tries to open. It is observed that many times a user cannot do anything about it. But on the other hand, there are times when the user can end the problem from their side. In this article, we will explain the different types of 403 forbidden errors, their possible causes, and also provide eight methods to fix the 403 forbidden error.
Message 403 forbidden
Reasons for the Windows Received Message 403 Forbidden
The 403 forbidden error occurs when the user tries to open the browser or any other web page and the server blocks it from accessing. This error code generally appears for two major reasons
 1. The owner of the webserver has set access permissions and is not allowing anyone to visit it
 2. Another reason is that the owner of the webserver has set the permissions improperly and denied access to other users
When the 403 error code occurs you could see the messages like Forbidden,403 Forbidden, HTTP 403, Error 403, HTTP Error 403.14 and HTTP Error 403, etc.
 Steps to resolve this 403 Forbidden Error
To resolve this error Message 403 Forbidden you can try the following solutions
 1. Try to refresh the page to resolve the errors. Therefore, you should also try to do it
 2. Recheck the web address, since it is very much possible that you may have entered the wrong web address
 3. Try to clear the browser cookies and cache as it can also resolve the error
In Conclusion,
Finally, If you are still not able to resolve this Message 403 forbidden , we suggest you to chat with our experts. I am sure they will help you resolve this Message 403 forbidden completely. You can also visit our webpage for more details and information regarding resolving techniques.
More details for this method at _URL_
Message 403 Forbidden
Chat with our Experts
Related Error codes
Error 30175
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Error code 30088
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Background Installation
Something went wrong
Unhandled Error codes
Office error code 1719
Error code 30033
Windows Error 800f081f
Update Error 8007045d
0x80070002
0x8024200b
Error 80246008
Windows error code 800b0100
Microsoft


An Army-led research team developed new algorithms and fill in knowledge gaps about how robots contribute to teams and soldires what robots know about their environment and teammates.
The idea of integrating context into AI development is a difficult process. Researchers tend to have very different ideas about what meant by context and the best practices for integrating context into AI development, what robots know.
Many researchers and institutions have looked at a smaller piece of this problem set.
But this team looked at a more holistic approach for how to develop and integrate different types of context related to environmental context, mission context, and social context to advance human autonomy teaming through advanced bidirectional communication capabilities.
This has advanced science in robotics and AI processes in the areas of natural language communication, world model development, multi-modal communication, and human autonomy teaming.
The collaborative team seeks to identify critical scientific advances made by the Army's Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance, or RCTA, on techniques for developing and advancing context-driven artificial intelligence to support future human autonomy teams.
Strategic investments in Army-led foundational research as part of the RCTA resulted in advanced science in four critical areas of ground combat robotics that affect the way U.S. Warfighters see, think, move and team.
This research supports the Army Modernization Priority for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle by advancing science for integrating context-driven artificial intelligence within human autonomy teams.
The integration of context-driven AI is important for future robotic capabilities to support the development of situation awareness, calibrate appropriate trust, and improve team performance in collaborative human robot teams.
Avenues of research discussed include how context enables robots to fill in the gaps to make effective decisions more, supports more robust behaviors, and augments robot communications to suit the needs of the team under a variety of environments and team organizations and across missions.
The article's findings will be used to support the laboratory's continued research in the Human Autonomy Teaming Essential Research Program.
In particular, this research will help to develop effective bidirectional communication methods and interventions for calibrating appropriate team trust and shared situation awareness in high risk, complex operations.


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measure the amount of power used. These probes could be as simple as a plug load power probe between the device and the electrical outlet. They could require more extensive probes placed on the system board monitoring various power rails such as those required to execute the EEMBC Energybench benchmark.
The second category, power state profiling tools, employs an indirect method of measuring power utilization. Instead of directly measuring power, this class of tool measures and reports on the amount of time spent in different power states. The objective when using these tools is to understand what activities are causing the processor to enter C0 and to minimize them.
The goal of power tuning is two-fold:
- Minimize time in active state.
- Maximize time in inactive state.
On the surface it may seem like these goals are redundant; however in practice both are required. Power is expended in transitioning into and out of idle modes. A processor that is repeatedly waking up and then going back to sleep may consume more power than a processor that has longer periods in an active state. In general, the end result is for the system to be in idle mode 90 percent of the time. Of course, this end result depends on the specific workload and application. Techniques to meet this goal follow one of two tuning strategies, which are summarized as follows:
- Race to Idle. The tasks are executed as quickly as possible to enable the system to idle. This approach typically entails aggressive performance optimization using similar techniques as single core and multi-core performance tuning.
- Idle mode optimization. Iteratively add software components executing on the system and analyze power state transitions to ensure these components are as nondisruptive to power utilization as possible.
High power utilization has several causes, including:
- Poor computational efficiency
- Poor memory management
- Bad timer and interrupt behavior
- Poor power awareness
- Bad multithreading behavior


Tuesday, November 21, 2017
"Making Ballet American"
New from Oxford University Press: Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine by Andrea Harris.
About the book, from the publisher:
George Balanchine's arrival in the United States in 1933, it is widely thought, changed the course of ballet history by creating a bold neoclassical style that is celebrated as the first American manifestation of the art form. In Making Ballet American, author Andrea Harris challenges this narrative by revealing the complex social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the construction of American neoclassical ballet. Situating American ballet within a larger context of modernisms, the book examines critical efforts to craft new, modernist ideas about the relevance of classical dancing for American society and democracy. Through cultural and choreographic analysis, it illustrates the evolution of modernist ballet during a turbulent historical period. Ultimately, the book argues that the Americanization of Balanchine's neoclassicism was not the inevitable outcome of his immigration or his creative genius, but rather a far more complicated story that pivots on the question of modern art's relationship to America and the larger world.
--Marshal Zeringue


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Generating Cubemaps from Spherical Maps using 3ds Max
Written by: Pablo Vezzini, KiSP Technical Services
This guide explains how to generate cube maps from spherical maps with 3DS Max®. You can use these cube maps to make a cubemap or to view in virtual reality with Yulio.
Step 1: In 3ds Max, open the "Environments and Effects" dialog. (Rendering > Environment or shortcut 8)
Step 2: Click and add the spherical map you want to convert as the new "Environment Map"
Step 3: Create any object and make sure it's positioned at the origin of the scene [ 0,0,0 ]
Step 4: Create a new Standard Material
Step 5: Add a Reflect/Refract Map to the diffuse channel
Step 6: Set up the following options for the Reflect/Refract Map:
– Source: From File
– Size: 1536 or other
– Use Environment Map: On
– Blur: Off
– Select Save Path
Step 7: Set up "Default Scanline Renderer" as the Production renderer in the Render Setup Dialog
Step 8: Select "Pick Object and Render Maps" and then click the object in the scene
Step 9: Now you have the maps to create the final image: filename_LEFT, filename_RIGHT, filename_TOP, filename_BOTTOM, filename_FRONT, filename_BACK
Step 10: Assemble the cubemaps in Photoshop in the following format to create a cubemap
Step 11: Assemble a cubemap in Photoshop by duplicating this cube map and stitching them together in the format below. You can view this scene in virtual reality by uploading this cubemap to Yulio.
Sign in to your account at _URL_ to create your VR project using this cubemap. Check out our article on creating VR projects for more information!
Check out our YouTube channel for more info & tutorials.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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CLR Integration Code Access Security
The common language runtime (CLR) supports a security model called code access security for managed code. In this model, permissions are granted to assemblies based on the identity of the code. For more information, see the "Code Access Security" section in the .NET Framework software development kit.
The security policy that determines the permissions granted to assemblies is defined in three different places:
 - Machine policy: This is the policy in effect for all managed code running in the machine on which SQL Server is installed.
 - User policy: This is the policy in effect for managed code hosted by a process. For SQL Server, the user policy is specific to the Windows account on which the SQL Server service is running.
 - Host policy: This is the policy set up by the host of the CLR (in this case, SQL Server) that is in effect for managed code running in that host.
The code access security mechanism supported by the CLR is based on the assumption that the runtime can host both fully trusted and partially trusted code. The resources that are protected by CLR code access security are typically wrapped by managed application programming interfaces that requirethe corresponding permission before allowing access to the resource. The demandfor the permission is satisfied only if all the callers (at the assembly level) in the call stack have the corresponding resource permission.
The set of code access security permissions that are granted to managed code when running inside SQL Server is the intersection of the set of permissions granted by the above three policy levels. Even if SQL Server grants a set of permissions to an assembly loaded in SQL Server, the eventual set of permissions given to user code may be restricted further by the user and machine-level policies.
The set of code access security permissions granted to assemblies by the SQL Server host policy level is determined by the permission set specified when creating the assembly. There are three permission sets: SAFE, EXTERNAL_ACCESS and UNSAFE (specified using the PERMISSION_SET option of CREATE ASSEMBLY (Transact-SQL)).
SQL Server supplies a host-level security policy level to the CLR while hosting it; this policy is an additional policy level below the two policy levels that are always in effect. This policy is set for every application domain that is created by SQL Server. This policy is not meant for the default application domain that would be in effect when SQL Server creates an instance of the CLR.
The SQL Server host-level policy is a combination of SQL Server fixed policy for system assemblies and user-specified policy for user assemblies.
The fixed policy for CLR assemblies and SQL Server system assemblies grants them full trust.
The user-specified portion of the SQL Server host policy is based on the assembly owner specifying one of three permission buckets for each assembly. For more information about the security permissions listed below, see the .NET Framework SDK.
SAFE
Only internal computation and local data access are allowed. SAFE is the most restrictive permission set. Code executed by an assembly with SAFE permissions cannot access external system resources such as files, the network, environment variables, or the registry.
SAFE assemblies have the following permissions and values:
Permission
Value(s)/Description
SecurityPermission
Execution: Permission to execute managed code.
SqlClientPermission
Context connection = true, context connection = yes: Only the context-connection can be used and the connection string can only specify a value of "context connection=true" or "context connection=yes".
AllowBlankPassword = false: Blank passwords are not permitted.
EXTERNAL_ACCESS
EXTERNAL_ACCESS assemblies have the same permissions as SAFE assemblies, with the additional ability to access external system resources such as files, networks, environmental variables, and the registry.
EXTERNAL_ACCESS assemblies also have the following permissions and values:
Permission
Value(s)/Description
DistributedTransactionPermission
Unrestricted: Distributed transactions are allowed.
DNSPermission
Unrestricted: Permission to request information from Domain Name Servers.
EnvironmentPermission
Unrestricted: Full access to system and user environment variables is allowed.
EventLogPermission
Administer: The following actions are allowed: creating an event source, reading existing logs, deleting event sources or logs, responding to entries, clearing an event log, listening to events, and accessing a collection of all event logs.
FileIOPermission
Unrestricted: Full access to files and folders is allowed.
KeyContainerPermission
Unrestricted: Full access to key containers is allowed.
NetworkInformationPermission
Access: Pinging is permitted.
RegistryPermission
Allows read rights to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG, and HKEY_USERS.
SecurityPermission
Assertion: Ability to assert that all the callers of this code have the requisite permission for the operation.
ControlPrincipal: Ability to manipulate the principal object.
Execution: Permission to execute managed code.
SerializationFormatter: Ability to provide serialization services.
SmtpPermission
Access: Outbound connections to SMTP host port 25 are allowed.
SocketPermission
Connect: Outbound connections (all ports, all protocols) on a transport address are allowed.
SqlClientPermission
Unrestricted: Full access to the datasource is allowed.
StorePermission
Unrestricted: Full access to X.509 certificate stores is allowed.
WebPermission
Connect: Outbound connections to web resources are allowed.
UNSAFE
UNSAFE allows assemblies unrestricted access to resources, both within and outside SQL Server. Code executing from within an UNSAFE assembly can also call unmanaged code.
UNSAFE assemblies are given FullTrust.
Security noteSecurity Note
SAFE is the recommended permission setting for assemblies that perform computation and data management tasks without accessing resources outside SQL Server. EXTERNAL_ACCESS is recommended for assemblies that access resources outside SQL Server. EXTERNAL_ACCESS assemblies by default execute as the SQL Server service account. It is possible for EXTERNAL_ACCESS code to explicitly impersonate the caller's Windows Authentication security context. Since the default is to execute as the SQL Server service account, permission to execute EXTERNAL_ACCESS should only be given to logins trusted to run as the service account. From a security perspective, EXTERNAL_ACCESS and UNSAFE assemblies are identical. However, EXTERNAL_ACCESS assemblies provide various reliability and robustness protections that are not in UNSAFE assemblies. Specifying UNSAFE allows the code in the assembly to perform illegal operations against the SQL Server process space, and hence can potentially compromise the robustness and scalability of SQL Server. For more information about creating CLR assemblies in SQL Server, see Managing CLR Integration Assemblies.
If a user-defined type (UDT), stored procedure, or other type of construct assembly is registered with the SAFE permission set, then managed code executing in the construct is unable to access external resources. However, if either the EXTERNAL_ACCESS or UNSAFE permission sets are specified, and managed code attempts to access external resources, SQL Server applies the following rules:
If
Then
The execution context corresponds to a SQL Server login.
Attempts to access external resources are denied and a security exception is raised.
The execution context corresponds to a Windows login and the execution context is the original caller.
The external resource is accessed under the security context of the SQL Server service account.
The caller is not the original caller.
Access is denied and a security exception is raised.
The execution context corresponds to a Windows login and is the original caller, and the caller has been impersonated.
Access uses the caller security context rather than the service account.
The following chart summarizes the restrictions and permissions granted to the SAFE, EXTERNAL_ACCESS, and UNSAFE permission sets.
SAFE
EXTERNAL_ACCESS
UNSAFE
Code Access Security Permissions
Execute only
Execute + access to external resources
Unrestricted (including P/Invoke)
Programming model restrictions
Yes
Yes
No restrictions
Verifiability requirement
Yes
Yes
No
Local data access
Yes
Yes
Yes
Ability to call native code
No
No
Yes
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text:
Q: Do turtles burrow in the ground for winter?
Lewis – Lincoln, VT
A: One of the oldest reptile groups on planet earth, cold-blooded turtles are distinguished by a bony shell that acts like a super-powerful shield to protect them from predators. Like birds and reptiles, turtles lay their eggs on land and breathe air—but they can spend long periods of time underwater, surfacing at regular intervals to fill their lungs with oxygen.
These terrapins do a great job taking care of themselves (and have been for the past 200 million years!), but if you have turtles in your pond or lake, you can be a gracious host by understanding some basic facts about them.
They don't use a calendar, but turtles know when it's time to cozy down for the winter. They use the air and water temperature as a gauge, which triggers their instinctual behavioral and physiological hibernation. Typically, this happens when temperatures reach 50 degrees Fahrenheit or so.
Holing Up for the Season
Though they carry a home-sweet-home on their backs, certain types of turtles do hole up for the winter season—literally. Depending on the turtle type, some species, like box turtles, will burrow in the sediment in the bottom of your pond and hibernate for the winter, while others will swim to lower pond levels to escape ice cover. This innate behavior keeps them safe, in most cases, until temperatures warm again.
Slowed Metabolism, No Appetite
Like fishes and other cold-blooded critters, turtles' metabolisms slow when temperatures get cold. This physiological change means that they require very little oxygen and food. In fact, their hearts will slow to just a few beats every few minutes! They are also able to take in miniscule amounts of oxygen through specialized skin cells.
To keep your turtles under cover and safe from predators during the long winter, you can add some pond dye, like Pond Logic® Pond Dye, to your pond. The blue or black coloring not only camouflages the turtles, but it also shades the pond, eliminates cloudy water, and cuts down on excess nutrients and odor.
Pond Talk: What do you do to support the turtle population in your lake or pond?


text:
What you'll learn about
- How to make over a dozen delicious dishes using only a single pot, featuring beef, fish, chicken and vegetarian recipes from around the world
- Two demonstration sessions, showing how dishes are prepared from scratch, with overhead mirrors and two monitors showing close-up handiwork. Teachers share a wealth of knowledge through their expert tips and techniques. Students can ask questions and have the opportunity to taste the dishes prepared at the end of the sessions
Good to know
- Lunch is included; eat alongside fellow students.
- A pack of the recipes will be provided for your ongoing reference
- Our Shop will be open for further inspiration: cookery books, equipment and select ingredients
- There's plenty to do and explore in the area
Terms and Conditions
All bookings for a course or event at Ballymaloe Cookery School are subject to our standard Terms and Conditions.

source: m-a-p/FineFineWeb


Reinforce Candor or Speak Truth to Power?
My Leadership model for building trust has a central element entitled "Reinforce Candor." This is the ability to make people glad they expressed a concern with a leader's inconsistency. Usually, people are punished for expressing a concern with the leader's actions. When high trust and transparency are present, the leader can set aside his or her ego and reinforce the person who challenges an action. Doing so creates a large trust deposit and allows for future trust-building exchanges. When candor is not reinforced, people hide their true feelings and do not challenge the leader, so trust is hard to maintain. Leaders who consistently reinforce candor build a culture where trust grows and deepens.
I was doing a presentation recently and a bright student cornered me on a break and asked why my phrase of reinforcing candor was not just the same thing as speaking truth to power. The question was not easy to answer with everyone buzzing around and the need to take a bathroom break myself, but the question played on my mind.
Later, I went back over the thought process and my notes for how I ended up with the wording of "Reinforce Candor" as the best phrase. I had forgotten how much time and effort I had spent trying to get exactly the right combination of words. The reason I thought "Speak truth to power" was too narrow was that the phrase implies that it is a one way trust building thing. In fact, I believe great leaders try to get everyone in the organization to reinforce candor, so it means not just speaking truth to power but being free to speak truth to everyone without punishment. The boss needs to feel reinforced for being candid with the employee as well as the other way around. We don't often think about the reverse effect because we have such huge problems getting leaders to understand and do the direct effect.
The second aspect I found lacking in "Speak truth to power" is that it leaves out the magic ingredient, which is reinforcement. Lots of leaders will allow people to speak their truth, but not many have the ability to make people glad when they say something in opposition to what the leader thinks is right. That is why it takes a lot of work and energy to get leaders to understand this magic ingredient – it goes against human nature until the leader becomes convinced of the wisdom in it. Once a leader experiences the incredible trust building impact of reinforcing candor, he or she is inclined to do it more often because the small price to pay for suppressing one's ego is completely overshadowed as the organization becomes a more real place where people are not playing games with each other.
While my model is focused on the behaviors of leaders (because it is a leadership model and leaders are where the problem resides 99% of the time) the model really needs to be spread to the whole population once a leader fully understands its power.
2 Responses to Reinforce Candor or Speak Truth to Power?
 1. trustambassador says:
 Thank you for your words of encouragement, Robert. I believe that trust is the missing ingredient in many organizations.
 2. Reblogged this on Gr8fullsoul.
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text: Pure nanobrookite titania (TiO2) thin films were deposited on glass substrates by the spin-coating method using titanium butoxide and acetic acid. The particle sizes of TiO2 films were controlled by heat treatment temperatures. The activation energy for particle growth was calculated as 23.1 kJ/mol. The structural and optical properties of the nanobrookite TiO2 thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy (UV-vis), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


text:
RGB color can be converted into Pantone by using a graphics program such as Photoshop or Illustrator. Pantone color options are approximate and may not exactly match RGB colors.Continue Reading
Color can be converted from RGB to Pantone in Illustrator using the following steps:
Open the document and select the color that needs to be converted.
Go to the "Window" tab and select the "Color Guide."
Select the icon that appears in the bottom left corner of the screen. From there, scroll to "Color Books" and choose "Pantone solid coated."
The color that is to be converted should be indicated with a black arrow. Click on the color to convert it to Pantone.


text:
Can oral submucous fibrosis be cured?
If the disease is detected at a very early stage, cessation of the habit is sufficient. Most patients with oral submucous fibrosis present with moderate-to-severe disease. Moderate-to-severe oral submucous fibrosis is irreversible. Medical treatment is symptomatic and predominantly aimed at improving mouth movements.
Is oral submucous fibrosis reversible?
Most patients with oral submucous fibrosis present with moderate-to-severe disease. Severe oral submucous fibrosis is irreversible. Moderate oral submucous fibrosis is reversible with cessation of habit and mouth opening exercise.
How do you treat oral submucous fibrosis at home?
OSMF treatment in AyurvedaYou can use Triphala Kashayam or Yashtimadhu Kashayam to rinse twice a day. To reduce the burning sensation, drink a glass of aloe vera juice once a day. Take Triphala churna or Avipattikar churna with warm water at bedtime, if you have constipation.
How do you get rid of fibrosis in the mouth?
In case the Fibrosis has progressed then surgical procedures are necessary to combat it. Surgical procedures include submucosal injections and mucosal grafting. Aggressive treatment is essential to defeating OSMF before it becomes irreversible.
How do you know if you have oral submucous fibrosis?
Symptoms of oral submucous fibrosis include the following :
- Progressive inability to open the mouth (trismus) due to oral fibrosis and scarring.
- Oral pain and a burning sensation upon consumption of spicy foodstuffs.
- Increased salivation.
- Change of gustatory sensation.
- Hearing loss due to stenosis of the eustachian tubes.
Can you live with fibrosis?
The average life expectancy of patients with pulmonary fibrosis is three to five years after diagnosis. However, early detection of the disease is key to slowing progression, and conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) can impact disease prognosis.
How is oral submucous fibrosis diagnosed?
Currently, oral biopsy for hematoxylin and eosin provides the most definitive diagnosis and is crucial because of the association of oral submucous fibrosis with oral cancer. Some authorities have reported benefit with immunohistochemical techniques such as Masson trichrome staining when pathology involved muscle.
How can I improve my mouth opening?
Step 1: Put your thumb on your top teeth in the middle of your jaw. Step 2: Put the index finger of your other hand on your bottom teeth in the middle of your jaw. Step 3: Open your mouth as wide as possible, using your fingers to give extra resistance. Hold this stretch for five to 10 seconds.
Does smoking causes OSMF?
We found that tobacco was strongly associated with both OSMF and leukoplakia. This study showed that the risk of OSMF at each exposure level of tobacco was stronger than that of leukoplakia.
Is oral submucous fibrosis painful?
Symptoms of oral submucous fibrosis include the following : Progressive inability to open the mouth (trismus) due to oral fibrosis and scarring. Oral pain and a burning sensation upon consumption of spicy foodstuffs.
Does smoking cause OSMF?
What is the medical treatment for oral submucous fibrosis?
Most patients with oral submucous fibrosis present with moderate-to-severe disease. Moderate-to-severe oral submucous fibrosis is irreversible. Medical treatment is symptomatic and predominantly aimed at improving mouth movements. Treatment strategies are described below. [ 4]
How is IFN gamma used to treat oral submucous fibrosis?
This plays a role in the treatment of patients with oral submucous fibrosis because of its immunoregulatory effect. IFN-gamma is a known antifibrotic cytokine.
How often to take pentoxifylline for oral submucous fibrosis?
In a pilot study, 14 test subjects with advanced oral submucous fibrosis given pentoxifylline at 400 mg 3 times daily were compared to 15 ageand sex-matched diseased control subjects.
What is the interincisal distance of oral submucous fibrosis?
Patients having an interincisal distance above 35 mm are included in this group. It refers to those OSF patients who have an interincisal distance between 26 and 36 mm. It includes moderately advanced cases where the interincisal distance of the patients is from 15 to 26 mm.


text:
Posted on January 22, 2021 by Steph
Mosaic projects encourage creative and practical learning through structured teaching methods, including topical discussions, designing for purpose, constructing to aid visualisation of outcome, all aiding in the process of design.
Practical mosaic techniques are then introduced to bring colour theory, movement and texture to the design inspired by the depth and beauty of the materials supplied.
Demonstrations on the use of tools and techniques of stencil making, bring insight to the process on manufacture.
These projects promote educated problem solving, group working and focused making, to create beautiful glass mosaics that echo the theme or topic of choice to be enjoyed by pupils and their communities.
Example Project which makes a 4ft x4ft mosaic this might not be a regular shape for an exterior or interior space
8 day project which includes -
1 day - in school design workshop
1 day - design and prep by artist
4 days - in school making
1 day - Grouting and preparation for installation
1 day - installation
All materials and substrate board included
Installation is included in fee as long as scaffold in not required.
All projects are designed to suit a school and communities needs and budget.
Many projects are supported by grants from councils and arts councils, also other grants may help to fund your project, or contact your local arts centre for advice and support.
Please contact Stephanie to discuss a project.
I realise times are difficult in the shadow off COVID-19. Lets hope together we can find ways of giving children these fantastic projects.


Sigma Embedded Analytics Methodology Whitepaper
This whitepaper provides a blueprint for you to start your journey with embedding Sigma in your applications. We provide links to relevant features that you will need to hit the ground running and identify the typical roles responsible for each step.
 - Administrative Activities
 These activities are performed by your Sigma administrator.
 1. To start building the assets that will be embedded, connect Sigma to your warehouse to start exploring data.
 2. Create a team for internal data analysts (internal_data_analyst_team) responsible for developing Sigma datasets.
 3. Create a team for internal resources (internal_dashboard_dev_team) responsible for developing dashboards to be embedded.
 4. Create a team (e.g. all_clients_team) that every embed user will be a member of.
 5. Create a team for each customer of yours. Users from each customer will become members of the respective team. You can use Sigma's team creation API to automate the creation of customer team's when you onboard a new customer in your application.
 6. Create account types to map with the embedding license tiers you wish to provide to your customers.
 7. Create user attributes to represent the dimensions that control how data is segregated for each user.
 8. Generate an embed secret that will be used to make embed URLs immutable.
 - Build Secure Datasets
 This activity is performed by your internal data analysts. They need to create a Sigma dataset for each data domain that will be used in embedded dashboards. Each dataset should utilize the user attribute values passed through the embed URL to implement row-level security and only return rows relevant for the user logged-in to your application.
 - Build Sigma Workbooks to Embed
 This activity is performed by your internal dashboard development resources. Simply utilize the secure datasets built by your data analyst team to build dashboards to be embedded. You can decide to embed a single visualization, a page or the entire workbook.
 - Develop Embed API
 This activity is performed by your application's back-end developers. They need to develop a simple back-end API in your language of choice that is responsible for generating a secure URL each time a user accesses an embed through your application. The API needs to use the embed secret generated by your Sigma administrator to secure the URL. The URL includes several parameters that are explained here.
 - Add Embed iFrame to your Application
 This activity is performed by your application's front-end developers. They need to modify your applications's front-end to include iFrames where Sigma embeds will be displayed. They also need to invoke the embed API developed in the previous step to retrieve the embed URL each time an embed iFrame is accessed and to use the URL returned by the embed API as the iFrame's source.
 You are now ready to unleash the power of embedded analytics through your application.
We are Sigma.
Sigma is a cloud analytics platform that uses a familiar spreadsheet interface to give business users instant access to explore and get insights from their cloud data warehouse. It requires no code or special training to explore billions or rows, augment with new data, or perform "what if" analysis on all data in real-time.


text:
Two bronze dōtaku (ritual bells), Yayoi period (about 300 BC-AD 300), Japan.
The origin of the dōtaku is thought to be the Chinese cattle bell. However, the Japanese did not practise cattle farming, so the first bells must have been imported as ritual objects. The fact that they are often found buried on isolated hill-sides and show evidence of having been buried and dug up several times, suggests their use in an agricultural ritual. - britishmuseum.org


DDBC hosts a Symposium on Gender Equality
Why is one born a female? Is it because in previous lives her methods of practice are inferior to that of a male practitioner by more than five hundred years? Can a woman become an ordained priest?
To answer these questions, Dharma Drum Buddhist College (DDBC) hosted the Symposium of Religious Studies and Sexual Equality at the DDM World Center for Buddhist Education on the 17th December 2008 to address these questions and refute any misconceptions in both the religious circles and the general public.
The convener of the event was Venerable Huimin, Principal of DDBC. College Professors and students from academic institutions such as Taiwan Theological College and Fun Jen Catholic University attended the symposium.
In his opening remark Venerable Huimin said that religious doctrines emphasized equality among people, and therefore recent development of gender equality in religious education could be regarded as a milestone.
All participants agreed that a gender-equal society does not go against religious doctrines, but rather they compliment each other. Professor Li Yuzhen of Taiwan Tsing Hua University stated that since religious teachers have the responsibility of interpreting the sacred scriptures and texts, the connection between religious training and leadership roles for the female gender have become more important.
Many scholars acknowledged a phenomenon in societies: that religious congregations are mostly controlled by men. So some people have misconceived notions that women are not given greater importance in religious leadership role because of her inferior practice in previous life times compared to a male practitioner. To comment on the Buddhist's view, Venerable Huimin quoted from instructions within the Buddhist sacred texts on his laptop to provide a Buddhist's perspective on this topic.
Assistant Professor Shi Suyin of Taiwan Theological College and Vice Professor Lai Yuching of Huafan University both presented papers to share their experiences in gender equality regarding religious education. Professor Shi cited the increased number of female priests and female students studying at Taiwan Theological College as a statistic to demonstrate the progress of gender equality on this front.
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ISCA Archive ICSLP 1998
ISCA Archive ICSLP 1998
Noise robust two-stream auditory feature extraction method for speech recognition
Jilei Tian, Ramalingam Hariharan, Kari Laurila
Part of the problems in noise robust speech recognition can be attributed to poor acoustic modeling and use of inappropriate features. It is known that the human auditory system is superior to the best speech recognizer currently available. Hence, in this paper, we propose a new two-stream feature extractor that incorporates some of the key functions of the peripheral auditory subsystem. To enhance noise robustness, the input is divided into low-pass and high-pass channels to form so-called static and dynamic streams. These two streams are independently processed and recombined to produce a single stream, containing 13 feature vector components, with improved linguistic information. Speaker-dependent isolated-word recognition tests, using the proposed front-end, produced an average 39% and 17% error rate reductions, over all noisy environments, as compared to the standard Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) front-ends with 13 (statics only) and 26 (statics and deltas) feature vector components, respectively.
doi: 10.21437/ICSLP.1998-521
Cite as: Tian, J., Hariharan, R., Laurila, K. (1998) Noise robust two-stream auditory feature extraction method for speech recognition. Proc. 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1998), paper 0325, doi: 10.21437/ICSLP.1998-521
@inproceedings{tian98_icslp,
 author={Jilei Tian and Ramalingam Hariharan and Kari Laurila},
 title={{Noise robust two-stream auditory feature extraction method for speech recognition}},
 year=1998,
 booktitle={Proc. 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1998)},
 pages={paper 0325},
 doi={10.21437/ICSLP.1998-521}
}


text:
Integrated Computational Tools for Flow and Progressive Damage Analysis of Discontinuous Long-Fiber Thermoplastic Composite Part
Discontinuous long-fiber (DLF) thermoplastic composites are introduced to provide complexshaped composite parts. DLF parts not only offer up to 50 percent weight savings compared to their metal counterparts, but they also replace complex multi-piece metal assemblies with consolidated net-shape compression molded parts. The structural performance prediction of DLF components is more challenging than the performance prediction for traditional continuous fiber composite or metal parts due to a number of factors, including random fiber orientations, effects of material flow on fiber orientation, limited material data, and nonlinearity in material behavior. Integrated computational tools are, therefore, used to couple the material flow and micromechanics-based multi-scale stress analyses for the fiber orientation, nonlinear, and progressive damage analyses of DLF composite parts. One example of a complex-shaped netmolded DLF application is an aircraft bracket with a molded-in lug hole. The integrated computational tools are applied to two different configurations of the bracket, with and without a molded-in bushing inside the lug hole. Material flow simulations are performed to predict the fiber orientations in both of the configurations. Predicted fiber orientations obtained from the flow analysis tool are transferred to the corresponding finite element models for structural analysis. Nonlinear and progressive damage analyses are performed to predict and compare the structural performances of the different bracket configurations. Use of the integrated computational tools provides good predictive capabilities for the fiber orientations, nonlinear response, and ultimate load of the DLF composite brackets.
Authors: M. Hakan Kilic, Ph.D., Joo H. Han, Ph.D.
Conference: CAMX 2016 – Anaheim


the directory where this file already exist. Some of the systems I know just give you a validation error and ask to rename a file. But it is a good user experience? I don't think so.
So what are our options to tackle this issue?
Option 1. Append some random string to the filename e.g 'a-asdsds.jpg'
But is it a solution? How random are those strings? Does this look appealing?
I think it is a solution, but a pretty ugly one.
Option 2. Append a number to the filename that is incremented with every creation
This solutions is definitely not a new one, it is used by some OS, and I think it might be the easiest and most elegant one. E.g 'picture.png' becomes 'picture-1.png' and then 'picture-2.png'.
Any other options you can think of? Please comment and let me know ;)
Meanwhile we will go with Option 2.
Next question is:
Based on what should we increment this number?
Some of the solutions I have seen before is based on counting number of files, and then incrementing count by one. This makes sense, but unfortunately this won't work. ;)
Lets say I have files 'a-1.jpg', 'a-2.jpg',a-3.jpg'. Count is 3 here. Now Imagine I have deleted file 'a-2.jpg', and I want to add a new file. So current Count is 2 (a-1 and a-3), so my next filename based on logic should be a-3 (we increment count by 1 -> 2+1), but it is already taken.
Here is the strategy that I think might work:
Lets say we again have 3 files – 'a-1.jpg', 'a-2.jpg',a-3.jpg'. We will take the numbers of those files (1,2,3) find the largest and increment it by one. So if we apply to it to previous use-case – we will delete 'a-2', but largest number is still 3, so new filename will be 'a-4'.
What do you think?
I know that most of you are code-maniacs and want to dig into code right away, so I will shut up now and show you some code I have built to do exactly this :)
 # Function generates uniq file name from the String passed to it
 # based on extension and basename
 # _USER_ [String] new_file_name desired file_name
 # _USER_ [String] generated file name
 def self.generate_random_filename(filename)
 ext = File.extname(filename)
 name = File.basename(filename, ext)
 related_file_indexes = [] do |file|
 if File.basename(file).include?(name) && File.extname(file) == ext
 related_file_indexes << file.split("-").last.to_i
 return name + '-' + (related_file_indexes.max + 1).to_s + ext
Short Explanation:
1. I take the file lets say 'a.jpg', and divide it into 'a' as a name and '.jpg' as an extension.
2. I have a _USER_ array that is pre-populated with filenames in the directory lets say _USER_ is ['a-1.jpg','a-3.jpg', 'a.jpg','a-1.png'].
3. I check if filename in _USER_ consist of 'a' and with extension '.jpg', thus I get 3 files ['a-1.jpg','a.jpg','a-3.jpg']
4. I have another array 'related_file_indexes', that splits every element of an array by last '-' and returns the number which gives me ['1′,'3']
5. I built filename with name, max of 1 and 3 which is 3+1=4 and append extension so my output will be 'a-4.jpg
Full version of this code with unit tests can be found here.
Once again, all suggestions and recommendation are more than welcome in the comments to this post ;)
Have a wonderful day!
Posted in Ruby, Useful Functions | Tagged,,,,, | 2 Comments
How to mock file upload with RSpec 3.0? [SOLVED]
One more note on RSpec 3.0, this time one useful function that mocks File Upload, saves file/archive content to memory so after it you can do whatever your soul wants with it. Test file/archive should exist in the file system.
def mock_archive_upload(archive_path, type)
 return => + archive_path , :type => type, :filename => File.basename( + archive_path))))
e.g of use:
_TAG_ archive into memory so it can be manipulated in tests
mock_archive_upload("../fixtues/", "application/zip")
Posted in open-source, Programming Languages, Rails, Rspec, Ruby | Tagged,,,,,, | Leave a comment
How to stub in RSpec 3 [RAILS, TDD]?
Recently, I have been doing whole bunch of spec rewriting from RSpec 2 to Rspec 3. As a result I have found that documentation is not that straightforward, and some cases you need to really spend time and figure out yourself. So I'll be posting some cases that I have not been able to find in docs, just as notes for myself, and hopefully it will be useful for someone else.
Use Case:
I have JSON file that I need to read, and I already have tests that this JSON file opens properly. I also have a Validator that looks for certain patterns keys in this JSON file. Validator leaves separately from the main app, and I don't want to replicate File Upload -> File Save to Cloud -> File Open in my Validator Tests, I just want on every to return certain data, and it does not matter to me what exactly is being read, and if path exists or not.
How would I do it in Rspec?
data = {:name => "test", :description => "test"}.to_json
allow(File).to receive(:read).and_return(data)
What does it give you?
It looks for every in the scope of your spec and instead of actually reading file returns 'data' every time.
Cool, huh?
Posted in Programming Languages, Rails, Rspec | Tagged,,,,, | Leave a comment


text:
Gamelon History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
Gamelon is a name whose history dates far back into the mists of early British times to the days of the Anglo-Saxon tribes. It is a name for a person who was referred to as gamall, which was the Old Norman word for old.
Gameline (d. 1271), was Lord-Chancellor of Scotland and Bishop of St. Andrews, "one of the 'Clerici Regis Alexandri II' and archdeacon of St. Andrews. He was made Lord-Chancellor in 1250, and in 1254 was appointed one of the chaplains of Pope Innocent IV."
Early Origins of the Gamelon family
The surname Gamelon was first found in Somerset, where an Odo filius Gamelin was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. They have also been found in Huntingdonshire and Oxfordshire since early times.
Early History of the Gamelon family
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Gamelon research. Another 99 words (7 lines of text) covering the years 1273, 1086, 1379, 1625, 1666, 1737, 1271, 1255 and 1271 are included under the topic Early Gamelon History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Gamelon Spelling Variations
The English language only became standardized in the last few centuries; therefore,spelling variations are common among early Anglo-Saxon names. As the form of the English language changed, even the spelling of literate people's names evolved. Gamelon has been recorded under many different variations, including Gamelin, Gamelyn, Gamlyn, Gimlin, Gamlin, Gamblin, Gambling, Gambeling and many more.
Early Notables of the Gamelon family (pre 1700)
Another 30 words (2 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Gamelon Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Migration of the Gamelon family
For many English families, the political and religious disarray that shrouded England made the far away New World an attractive prospect. On cramped disease-ridden ships, thousands migrated to those British colonies that would eventually become Canada and the United States. Those hardy settlers that survived the journey often went on to make important contributions to the emerging nations in which they landed. Analysis of immigration records indicates that some of the first North American immigrants bore the name Gamelon or a variant listed above: Elizabeth, Mary and Robert Gamlin, who sailed to Massachusetts in 1632; Josias Gambling to Virginia in 1636; and William Gambling to Philadelphia in 1846..


text:
Dedham is a town in and the county seat of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 24,729 at the 2010 census.
Settled in 1635 by people from Roxbury and Watertown, Dedham was incorporated in 1636. It became the county seat of Norfolk County when the county formed on March 26, 1793. When the Town was originally incorporated, the residents wanted to name it Contentment. The Massachusetts General Court overruled them and named the town after Dedham, Essex in England, where some of the original inhabitants were born.At the first public meeting on August 15, 1636, eighteen men signed the town covenant.The first man-made canal in North America, Mother Brook, was created in Dedham in 1639. It linked the Charles River to the Neponset River. Although both are slow-moving rivers, they are at different elevations. The difference in elevation made the canal's current swift enough to power several local mills.In 1818, though citizens were still taxed for the support of ministers and other "public teachers of religion", Dedham set a precedent toward the separation of church and state. Residents selected a minister different than that chosen by the church selectmen; their right of selection was confirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court. The shift in power to the congregation led to the rise of the Congregational Churches.


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Wonder! How to clean a commercial deep fryer? Don't be worried as the cleaning process is simple and you can do it without a cleaning expert. It is a common commercial kitchen appliance that needs regular cleaning. Because a recent study by NFPA shows that 21% of restaurant fires are caused by dirty fryers.
A dirty fryer can change the taste of your food dramatically. Moreover, Its dirtiness may damage the longevity of the machine. A dirty fryer coil may take a longer time than usual that wastes more energy. Therefore get ready with all the supplies to clean the deep commercial fryer.
What You Will Need to Clean the Deep Commercial Fryer?
Before you start cleaning your commercial deep fryer, you need the following supplies. All of the materials are important and you cannot skip any of them.
- Nitrile Gloves: protects your hands and skin from extreme heat.
- Safety Goggles: protect your eyes from a splash of hot oil or water.
- Vinyl Apron: It is a heavy apron that protects your skin and clothes.
- Drain Valve Extension: easily emptied the oil container.
- Scrub Brush Long Handle: it helps to reach where your hand cannot reach.
- Fryer Rod: a metal tool that cleans the food debris
- Fryer Coil Brush: It helps to reach all over the machine to clean inside.
- Stock Pot: a basin to keep the oil.
How to Clean a Commercial Deep Fryer
There are two parts of the machine, the interior, and the coil. First, we will show you the interior cleaning process then we will focus on the coil of the deep fryer. The best way to clean the fryer is to boil it.
Why Should You Boil the Deep Fryer?
Old food and grime can affect the taste of the food and change the flavor as well. There are proteins, polar contaminants, and other materials that can affect your oil to deteriorate. If you boil the fryer all the contaminating will vanish and keep the oil fresh. To start boiling, drain all of the oil to a container then do the following.
- Use a fryer rod to clean the remaining food debris from the dryer.
- Rinse the fryer with hot water to clean the excess stored fat.
- Fill the oil tank of the fryer 3-4" and add fat fryer cleaner. Before that, read the instructions on how much to use the liquid with a specific amount of water.
- Turn on the machine and put it on the medium temperature level. Boil for 20 minutes.
- Let the water cool for 2 hours, drain the water slowly then use a hand brush to clean the interiors of the machine.
- Never use a metal scraper. The metal scrap can damage the components of the fryer and also might leave behind metal shavings.
- Rinse thoroughly with clean water and wipe the interior to avoid oil and water mixing.
While using the machine, there are extra oil drops around the machine, especially at peak hours. Later oil becomes sticky and greasy. Therefore, for a healthy deep fryer, clean the exterior with the following steps.
- Clean the exterior of the fryer with a cleaning spray. We recommend using nine heavy-duty cleaners to remove the grease and disinfect the sticky surface.
- Rub the stubborn spots with a synthetic pad to remove them.
- Wipe the exterior and let it dry completely before starting to use the machine.
- Clean the floor using a degreaser cleaner to disinfect.
- Rinse and dry the exterior of the fryer completely after cleaning is complete.
How to Clean the Coil of the Deep Commercial Fryer
The coil is the main part of the deep fryer that makes oil hot to fry things. Sometimes the food debris and other liquid materials trap the coil. That's why the fryer takes a longer time to heat the oil. To clean the coil you don't have another cleaning process. When you do the above cleaning the coil is cleaned.
Though if you need to clean the coil and the interior of the fryer separately take the coil out. Place it on a big pan and use the scrub to clean if anything is left after boiling. Then wash and wipe it with a clean dry cloth. Place it back and it is ready to use.
How a Deep Fryer Works
The deep-frying cooking method uses fat or oil to cook food. The process works by submerging the food completely into the oil. When food is submerged, the moisture of the food turns into steam. That allows the formation of crust to begin. The surface of the food dries to create a crispy brownie surface.
Benefits of Deep-Frying
A deep fryer has significant importance in a commercial place, as the restaurant needs to cook faster at peak hours. To cook a lot of food at the same time a deep commercial fryer is most essential. Look at its other benefits below.
- It is a faster way of cooking that saves and maintains time.
- When it reaches 3000 F, it creates Maillard and caramelization flavor.
- When the food is cooked with proper heat, it creates a crispy crust surface by drying all of the moisture from the food.
- Food is less greasy and retains its shape.
- Comparatively, it keeps the kitchen neat and clean, which is easy and safe to use.
You may buy a standard and expensive deep fryer but without proper cleaning, a commercial deep fryer is a hazard. To keep it working faster, regular maintenance is essential. Most importantly the deep fryer coil should be cleaned at least once in two weeks.
You can use the special kit to clean but the method we have explained is both effective and economical. However, you should filter the frying oil and clean the exterior every day as the fryer is used rapidly in the restaurant.


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The latest experimental safety system from the British automaker is called Bike Sense, and it builds upon technologies the company has demonstrated recently, taking them a step further to make the road safer for those riding on two wheels. The system uses a combination of colors, sounds and vibrations to alert the driver of a potential hazard that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Demonstrated on an XJ sedan, the system identifies nearby two-wheeled vehicles as pedal-powered or motorized, and alerts the driver accordingly. If a cycle is passing a the vehicle's blind spot, the top of the seat will vibrate to virtually "tap" the driver on the left or right shoulder, prompting him or her to look over that shoulder for the hazard. LEDs inside the cabin will then illuminate amber to red in the direction that the bike is passing.
The system will even chime a bicycle bell or motorcycle horn as the two-wheeled vehicle approaches, and vibrate or stiffen the accelerator pedal if the driver keeps moving towards the obstacle. And if an occupant of the parked vehicle starts to open the door into the path of moving vehicle, it'll flash a light, sound an alarm and even vibrate the door handle to warn the occupant of the oncoming hazard.
We could imagine the alerts getting a little distracting, but JLR says the system is designed to prioritize potential hazards when their are groups of pedestrians, bicyclists and/or motorcycle riders on a busy urban street.
This is, of course, just the latest in a long string of new systems JLR has under development, following such technologies as the Transparent Bonnet, the Smart Assistant, the Virtual Windscreen for track sessions and the 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen for city driving.
- Jaguar Land Rover reveals its 'Bike Sense' research, which will tap the driver on the shoulder and ring a bicycle bell inside the car to help prevent accidents involving bicycles and motorbikes
- With nearly 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads every year, Jaguar Land Rover researchers are identifying the best warning colours and sounds that will trigger an instinctive response from the driver to prevent accidents
- Door handles will 'buzz' the driver's hand to prevent doors being opened into the path of bikes
- The accelerator pedal will vibrate if moving the car would cause an accident
- 'Bike Sense' is a concept technology that is being developed at Jaguar Land Rover's Advanced Research Centre in the UK
Whitley, UK: Jaguar Land Rover is developing a range of new technologies that would use colours, sounds and touch inside the car to alert drivers to potential hazards and prevent accidents involving bicycles and motorbikes.
Sensors on the car will detect when another road user is approaching and identify it as bicycle or motorbike. Bike Sense will then make the driver aware of the potential hazard before the driver sees it.
But rather than using a generic warning icon or sound, which takes time for the driver's brain to process, Bike Sense uses lights and sounds that the driver will instinctively associate with the potential danger.
To help the driver understand where the bike is in relation to their car, the audio system will make it sound as if a bicycle bell or motorbike horn is coming through the speaker nearest the bike, so the driver immediately understands the direction the cyclist is coming from.
If a bicycle or motorbike is coming up the road behind the car, Bike Sense will detect if it is overtaking or coming past the vehicle on the inside, and the top of the car seat will extend to 'tap' the driver on the left or right shoulder. The idea is that the driver will then instinctively look over that shoulder to identify the potential hazard.
As the cyclist gets closer to the car, a matrix of LED lights on the window sills, dashboard and windscreen pillars will glow amber and then red as the bike approaches. The movement of these red and amber lights across these surfaces will also highlight the direction the bike is taking.
Dr Wolfgang Epple, Director of Research and Technology, Jaguar Land Rover, said: "Human beings have developed an instinctive awareness of danger over thousands of years. Certain colours like red and yellow will trigger an immediate response, while everyone recognises the sound of a bicycle bell.
"Bike Sense takes us beyond the current technologies of hazard indicators and icons in wing mirrors, to optimising the location of light, sound and touch to enhance this intuition. This creates warnings that allow a faster cognitive reaction as they engage the brain's instinctive responses. If you see the dashboard glowing red in your peripheral vision, you will be drawn to it and understand straight away that another road user is approaching that part of your vehicle."
If a group of cyclists, motorbikes or pedestrians were moving around the car on a busy urban street, the system would intelligently prioritise the nearest hazards so the driver would not be overwhelmed or distracted with light or sound.
Bike Sense would also be able to identify hazards that the driver cannot see. If a pedestrian or cyclist is crossing the road, and they are obscured by a stationary vehicle for example, the car's sensors will detect this and draw the driver's attention to the hazard using directional light and sound.
If the driver ignores the warnings and presses the accelerator, Bike Sense will make the accelerator pedal vibrate or feel stiff, so the driver instinctively knows not to move the car forwards until the hazard has been avoided.
Bike Sense will also help prevent vehicle doors being opened into the path of bikes when the vehicle is parked. Bike Sense would warn all passengers of an approaching cyclist, motorbike or car through sound and light inside the vehicle. If any passenger continues to open the door, the door handle will light up, vibrate and buzz to alert them to the danger.
"By engaging the instincts, Bike Sense has the potential to bridge the gap between the safety and hazard detection systems in the car and the driver and their passengers," added Dr Epple. "This could reduce the risk of accidents with all road users by increasing the speed of response and ensuring the correct action is taken to prevent an accident happening."


UserGuide:CallGraph
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wala.core technical overview
Call Graph Basics
The CallGraph class represents potentially context-sensitive call graphs, via a logical cloning of methods. Each call graph node (CGNode) represents a method IMethod in a Context.
So what's a Context? Basically, a Context is just a name for a clone of an IMethod. For context-insensitive call graphs, note the special Context Everywhere.EVERYWHERE. This will be used as a default context in context-insensitive algorithms.
Note that for a given IMethod, a context-sensitive call graph may have many nodes (contexts) representing the method. You can get all these nodes using the method CallGraph.getNodes(MethodReference m)
WALA supports a family of on-the-fly call graph construction algorithms, integrated with flow-insensitive pointer analysis. See UserGuide:PointerAnalysis for more details. WALA also has an implementation of call-graph construction via rapid type analysis (see Util.makeRTABuilder()), but its use is strongly discouraged. The included 0-CFA analysis (see UserGuide:PointerAnalysis) is almost always faster and more precise. Furthermore, RTA operates on bytecodes, some of which may be proved dead during SSA construction and hence not represented in the SSA IR. This can lead to undesirable behaviors like call sites returned by the RTA call graph that do not appear in the SSA IR. Finally, note that models of native methods like Object.clone() in the RTA call graph are "sound enough" to ensure that the call graph includes all reachable code but may be unsound otherwise.
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Kiidk'yaas in 1984
Kiidk'yaas, also known as the Golden Spruce, was a Sitka Spruce tree, Picea sitchensis 'Aurea', that grew on the banks of the Yakoun River in Haida Gwaii archipelago, British Columbia. It had a rare genetic mutation causing its needles to be golden in colour.
On 22 January 1997, a 48-year-old unemployed forest engineer named Grant Hadwin surreptitiously felled the tree as a political statement against industrial logging companies. He was later arrested but disappeared on his way to trial.
According to John Vaillant's book The Golden Spruce, what is believed to be Hadwin's broken kayak and effects were found on a remote island some time after he went missing in a rough sea. Whether he had been murdered for his crime, accidentally drowned, or left his belongings behind on purpose is not known.
In 1977, a group of botanists from the University of British Columbia (UBC) visited Haida Gwaii to take cuttings.[1] These cuttings were grafted onto an ordinary sitka spruce, resulting in golden saplings. The trees were grown in the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.
Upon hearing of the tree's destruction, the arboretum offered one of the young trees to replace the fallen tree. The sapling died in storage before it could be replanted on Haida Gwaii.[2] In addition, attempts were made to propagate approximately 80 parts of the felled tree.
The only wood harvested from the tree was used by Nova Scotia luthier George Rizsanyi and broadcaster Jowi Taylor to make a guitar dedicated to Canadian history. Included in the guitar were pieces of wood from Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle and Paul Henderson's hockey stick and fabric from one of Karen Kain's ballet costumes.
See also[edit]
 1. ^ Bednarz, Sarah. "(Untitled)". Retrieved 2010-02-20.
 2. ^ Vaillant, John, The Golden Spruce, W.W. Norton & Co., 2005, p. 203
External links[edit]
Coordinates: 53°37′12″N 132°12′29″W / 53.62000°N 132.20806°W / 53.62000; -132.20806


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The author uses ecological principles and chaos theory to understand why school changes succeed or fail. The book unifies new research on the nature of knowledge and intelligence, the role of school in society, staff development, classroom teaching practices, the processes of school change, the relationship of education and culture, and authentic assessment.
Charting School Change
SAGE Publications, Incorporated
Improving the Odds for Successful School Reform
Education & Reference /


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The photo by Mark Cole shows a northbound freight train emerging from this short 59-metre tunnel in 1975, close to what is now the boundary between the KCDC and the Porirua City Council.
It's the northernmost of the 5 tunnels in the Pukerua Bay section (originally there were 6 but one was later bypassed).
The tunnels have presented operational problems for decades, mainly because, unlike the rest of the railway between Wellington and Waikanae, they are single track and trains in either direction often have to wait until they can enter this section. If there was double track it would certainly shave at least a couple of minutes off commuter train journey times. But double tracking the tunnels would be expensive.
Another problem before 1967 was that the floors of the tunnels were too high to allow clearance for the diesel locomotives that the railways were steadily putting into service to replace steam. This necessitated all trains (except the units) being hauled by electric locomotives between Paekakariki and Wellington until 1967.
Incidentally, the locomotive is a Dx class diesel from 1972, and their unique orange/yellow livery was nicknamed 'clockwork orange.'


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Irvine Ranch and UC Irvine researchers are undergoing a project that examines the ranch's native plant communities and its potentially threatening, non-native plant species.
The research project is the first launched that's part of a five-year, $1-million grant awarded to UCI in November by the Irvine Co. and its chairman, Donald Bren. The researchers will scientifically investigate the ranch's environmental challenges and come up with solutions.
Some of the ranch's non-native plants were brought over from the Mediterranean rim by California's early Spanish colonialists.Those foreign plants thrived in the Southern California climate, which is similar to sections of the Mediterranean.
But over time, the non-native species have started pushing out the native ones, which are important for sustaining the wildlife whose habitat is the land in and around Irvine Ranch, scientists say.
The agricultural practices that accompanied the cultivation of non-native flora also affected the survival of the native plants. Many of the non-natives thrived in a disturbed environment, continuing to grow even if they were plowed by machines, grazed on by animals or singed by brush fires. The native plants, however, did not grow well under such adverse conditions.
"It's the initial disturbance — whether it's overgrazing, frequent fire or a plow — that takes out the adult native community," said Megan Lulow, the senior field ecologist at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy.
The Irvine Ranch covers 93,000 acres — or one-fifth of the surface area of Orange County — and stretches from Newport Coast to the Cleveland National Forest.
As part of his philanthropy, Bren donated more than half of the ranch land — 50,000 acres — for permanent environmental conservation.
The Newport Beach billionaire also created the conservancy and set aside $50 million for the long-term management, preservation and restoration of the land's natural resources, according to a biography of Bren posted on the Irvine Co.'s website.
The new research project is focusing mostly on coastal sage scrub in the ranch's Loma Ridge area. Lulow said many locals would recognize the plant.
"When you're walking or hiking, it's all the scrub that you see," she said.
Native wildlife — such as the coastal cactus wren, the California gnatcatcher, bobcats, foxes, coyotes and mountain lions — depend on the scrub. But as the native community becomes more threatened, she said, the opportunity for growth and to produce more seedlings becomes difficult.
"The native community is having a hard time colonizing these patches because the non-native has taken hold," she said.
That's where UCI comes in.
Diane Pataki, director of the Center for Environmental Biology at UCI, and her team are studying how to save the coastal sage scrub and other native species by using restorative ecological techniques.
"Oftentimes restorations aren't successful because if you … plant seeds, there is still going to be competition," Lulow said.
Lulow said that weed control and microbial research will come into play while finding the best way to re-establish the indigenous plant communities.
"We're testing different microbes in the soil," Pataki said. "It's really difficult to do. The non-natives come right back. That's part of the research … what makes the (non-native) seeds so invasive?"
Pataki is looking forward to doing valuable research in her campus' backyard.
"People have wanted to work there for a long time," she said. "Coastal sage scrub used to be really prevalent. There is certainly the possibility for certain species to go extinct."


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As SCI continues to explore how design for deconstruction can help promote steel reuse, SCI is coordinating a collaborative EU-Funded project called REDUCE (Reuse and Demountability using Steel Structures and the Circular Economy).
The overall objective of this three-year project is to provide practical tools and steel-based technologies to be able to design steel and composite structures for deconstruction and reuse. The project will investigate applications of the developed systems in commercial and residential buildings and will explore options for greater standardisation. In the context of demountable composite construction systems, the shear connector systems with the greatest potential will be tested and analysed using numerical modelling so that design guidance can be developed following the principles of Eurocode 4.
To understand how greater standardisation could be used to promote future reuse we invite our readers to complete a short survey REDUCE Survey to help as part of our research and conclusions. In addition, REDUCE will review methodologies to quantify the benefits of demountable buildings and reuse including life cycle assessment methodologies, e.g. CEN TC350 standards and developing metrics for quantifying circularity, e.g. those developed by the Ellen MacArthur foundation. The project will also explore how BIM can be used to provide information to enable the building to be easily adapted during use, and/or deconstructed and the components reused at end-of-life.
A full description of the reuse projects can be seen on our website.
For more information on this project contact Michael Sansom.


text:
Mapping the Genome:
Finding the location of genes in any organism's genome is a very
complex task. This section surveys approaches to mapping the
bacterial genome, using E.coli as an example. All three modes of
gene transfer and recombination have been used in mapping.
Hfr conjugation is frequently used to map the relative location of bacterial genes. This technique rests on the observation that during conjugation the linear chromosome moves from donor to recipient at a constant rate. In an interrupted mating experiment the conjugation bridge is broken and Hfr F mating is stopped at various intervals after the start of conjugation by mixing the culture vigorously in a blender. The order and timing of gene transfer can be determined because they are a direct reflection of the order of genes on the bacterial chromosome. For example, extrapolation of the curves in figure back to the x-axis will give the time at which
each gene just began …