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PostgreSQL 9.6.24 Documentation | |||
Prev | Up | Chapter 12. Full Text Search | Next |
Full Text Searching (or just text search) provides the capability to identify natural-language documents that satisfy a query, and optionally to sort them by relevance to the query. The most common type of search is to find all documents containing given query terms and return them in order of their similarity to the query. Notions of query and similarity are very flexible and depend on the specific application. The simplest search considers query as a set of words and similarity as the frequency of query words in the document.
Textual search operators have existed in databases for years. PostgreSQL has ~, ~*, LIKE, and ILIKE operators for textual data types, but they lack many essential properties required by modern information systems:
There is no linguistic support, even for English. Regular expressions are not sufficient because they cannot easily handle derived words, e.g., satisfies and satisfy. You might miss documents that contain satisfies, although you probably would like to find them when searching for satisfy. It is possible to use OR to search for multiple derived forms, but this is tedious and error-prone (some words can have several thousand derivatives).
They provide no ordering (ranking) of search results, which makes them ineffective when thousands of matching documents are found.
They tend to be slow because there is no index support, so they must process all documents for every search.
Full text indexing allows documents to be preprocessed and an index saved for later rapid searching. Preprocessing includes:
Parsing documents into tokens. It is useful to identify various classes of tokens, e.g., numbers, words, complex words, email addresses, so that they can be processed differently. In principle token classes depend on the specific application, but for most purposes it is adequate to use a predefined set of classes. PostgreSQL uses a parser to perform this step. A standard parser is provided, and custom parsers can be created for specific needs.
Converting tokens into lexemes. A lexeme is a string, just like a token, but it has been normalized so that different forms of the same word are made alike. For example, normalization almost always includes folding upper-case letters to lower-case, and often involves removal of suffixes (such as s or es in English). This allows searches to find variant forms of the same word, without tediously entering all the possible variants. Also, this step typically eliminates stop words, which are words that are so common that they are useless for searching. (In short, then, tokens are raw fragments of the document text, while lexemes are words that are believed useful for indexing and searching.) PostgreSQL uses dictionaries to perform this step. Various standard dictionaries are provided, and custom ones can be created for specific needs.
Storing preprocessed documents optimized for searching. For example, each document can be represented as a sorted array of normalized lexemes. Along with the lexemes it is often desirable to store positional information to use for proximity ranking, so that a document that contains a more "dense" region of query words is assigned a higher rank than one with scattered query words.
Dictionaries allow fine-grained control over how tokens are normalized. With appropriate dictionaries, you can:
Define stop words that should not be indexed.
Map synonyms to a single word using Ispell.
Map phrases to a single word using a thesaurus.
Map different variations of a word to a canonical form using an Ispell dictionary.
Map different variations of a word to a canonical form using Snowball stemmer rules.
A data type tsvector is provided for storing preprocessed documents, along with a type tsquery for representing processed queries (Section 8.11). There are many functions and operators available for these data types (Section 9.13), the most important of which is the match operator @@, which we introduce in Section 12.1.2. Full text searches can be accelerated using indexes (Section 12.9).
A document is the unit of searching in a full text search system; for example, a magazine article or email message. The text search engine must be able to parse documents and store associations of lexemes (key words) with their parent document. Later, these associations are used to search for documents that contain query words.
For searches within PostgreSQL, a document is normally a textual field within a row of a database table, or possibly a combination (concatenation) of such fields, perhaps stored in several tables or obtained dynamically. In other words, a document can be constructed from different parts for indexing and it might not be stored anywhere as a whole. For example:
SELECT title || ' ' || author || ' ' || abstract || ' ' || body AS document FROM messages WHERE mid = 12; SELECT m.title || ' ' || m.author || ' ' || m.abstract || ' ' || d.body AS document FROM messages m, docs d WHERE m.mid = d.did AND m.mid = 12;
Note: Actually, in these example queries,
should be used to prevent a single NULL attribute from causing a NULL result for the whole document.
Another possibility is to store the documents as simple text files in the file system. In this case, the database can be used to store the full text index and to execute searches, and some unique identifier can be used to retrieve the document from the file system. However, retrieving files from outside the database requires superuser permissions or special function support, so this is usually less convenient than keeping all the data inside PostgreSQL. Also, keeping everything inside the database allows easy access to document metadata to assist in indexing and display.
For text search purposes, each document must be reduced to the preprocessed tsvector format. Searching and ranking are performed entirely on the tsvector representation of a document — the original text need only be retrieved when the document has been selected for display to a user. We therefore often speak of the tsvector as being the document, but of course it is only a compact representation of the full document.
Full text searching in PostgreSQL is based on the match operator @@, which returns true if a tsvector (document) matches a tsquery (query). It doesn't matter which data type is written first:
SELECT 'a fat cat sat on a mat and ate a fat rat'::tsvector @@ 'cat & rat'::tsquery; ?column? ---------- t SELECT 'fat & cow'::tsquery @@ 'a fat cat sat on a mat and ate a fat rat'::tsvector; ?column? ---------- f
As the above example suggests, a tsquery is not just raw text, any more than a tsvector is. A tsquery contains search terms, which must be already-normalized lexemes, and may combine multiple terms using AND, OR, NOT, and FOLLOWED BY operators. (For syntax details see Section 8.11.2.) There are functions to_tsquery
, plainto_tsquery
, and phraseto_tsquery
that are helpful in converting user-written text into a proper tsquery, primarily by normalizing words appearing in the text. Similarly, to_tsvector
is used to parse and normalize a document string. So in practice a text search match would look more like this:
SELECT to_tsvector('fat cats ate fat rats') @@ to_tsquery('fat & rat'); ?column? ---------- t
Observe that this match would not succeed if written as
SELECT 'fat cats ate fat rats'::tsvector @@ to_tsquery('fat & rat'); ?column? ---------- f
since here no normalization of the word rats will occur. The elements of a tsvector are lexemes, which are assumed already normalized, so rats does not match rat.
The @@ operator also supports text input, allowing explicit conversion of a text string to tsvector or tsquery to be skipped in simple cases. The variants available are:
tsvector @@ tsquery tsquery @@ tsvector text @@ tsquery text @@ text
The first two of these we saw already. The form text @@ tsquery is equivalent to to_tsvector(x) @@ y. The form text @@ text is equivalent to to_tsvector(x) @@ plainto_tsquery(y).
Within a tsquery, the & (AND) operator specifies that both its arguments must appear in the document to have a match. Similarly, the | (OR) operator specifies that at least one of its arguments must appear, while the ! (NOT) operator specifies that its argument must not appear in order to have a match. For example, the query fat & ! rat matches documents that contain fat but not rat.
Searching for phrases is possible with the help of the <-> (FOLLOWED BY) tsquery operator, which matches only if its arguments have matches that are adjacent and in the given order. For example:
SELECT to_tsvector('fatal error') @@ to_tsquery('fatal <-> error'); ?column? ---------- t SELECT to_tsvector('error is not fatal') @@ to_tsquery('fatal <-> error'); ?column? ---------- f
There is a more general version of the FOLLOWED BY operator having the form <N>, where N is an integer standing for the difference between the positions of the matching lexemes. <1> is the same as <->, while <2> allows exactly one other lexeme to appear between the matches, and so on. The phraseto_tsquery function makes use of this operator to construct a tsquery that can match a multi-word phrase when some of the words are stop words. For example:
SELECT phraseto_tsquery('cats ate rats'); phraseto_tsquery ------------------------------- 'cat' <-> 'ate' <-> 'rat' SELECT phraseto_tsquery('the cats ate the rats'); phraseto_tsquery ------------------------------- 'cat' <-> 'ate' <2> 'rat'
A special case that's sometimes useful is that <0> can be used to require that two patterns match the same word.
Parentheses can be used to control nesting of the tsquery operators. Without parentheses, | binds least tightly, then &, then <->, and ! most tightly.
It's worth noticing that the AND/OR/NOT operators mean something subtly different when they are within the arguments of a FOLLOWED BY operator than when they are not, because within FOLLOWED BY the exact position of the match is significant. For example, normally !x matches only documents that do not contain x anywhere. But !x <-> y matches y if it is not immediately after an x; an occurrence of x elsewhere in the document does not prevent a match. Another example is that x & y normally only requires that x and y both appear somewhere in the document, but (x & y) <-> z requires x and y to match at the same place, immediately before a z. Thus this query behaves differently from x <-> z & y <-> z, which will match a document containing two separate sequences x z and y z. (This specific query is useless as written, since x and y could not match at the same place; but with more complex situations such as prefix-match patterns, a query of this form could be useful.)
The above are all simple text search examples. As mentioned before, full text search functionality includes the ability to do many more things: skip indexing certain words (stop words), process synonyms, and use sophisticated parsing, e.g., parse based on more than just white space. This functionality is controlled by text search configurations. PostgreSQL comes with predefined configurations for many languages, and you can easily create your own configurations. (psql's \dF command shows all available configurations.)
During installation an appropriate configuration is selected and default_text_search_config is set accordingly in postgresql.conf. If you are using the same text search configuration for the entire cluster you can use the value in postgresql.conf. To use different configurations throughout the cluster but the same configuration within any one database, use ALTER DATABASE ... SET. Otherwise, you can set default_text_search_config in each session.
Each text search function that depends on a configuration has an optional regconfig argument, so that the configuration to use can be specified explicitly. default_text_search_config is used only when this argument is omitted.
To make it easier to build custom text search configurations, a configuration is built up from simpler database objects. PostgreSQL's text search facility provides four types of configuration-related database objects:
Text search parsers break documents into tokens and classify each token (for example, as words or numbers).
Text search dictionaries convert tokens to normalized form and reject stop words.
Text search templates provide the functions underlying dictionaries. (A dictionary simply specifies a template and a set of parameters for the template.)
Text search configurations select a parser and a set of dictionaries to use to normalize the tokens produced by the parser.
Text search parsers and templates are built from low-level C functions; therefore it requires C programming ability to develop new ones, and superuser privileges to install one into a database. (There are examples of add-on parsers and templates in the contrib/ area of the PostgreSQL distribution.) Since dictionaries and configurations just parameterize and connect together some underlying parsers and templates, no special privilege is needed to create a new dictionary or configuration. Examples of creating custom dictionaries and configurations appear later in this chapter.


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INSTG012 Historical Bibliography Print Techniques Workshop at the UCL Art Museum by Nikki Gregory
By Anne Welsh, on 28 November 2014
Following Simone's post about our class visit to St Bride's Printing Library, I thought I would share our experience learning about different print techniques using materials from the UCL Art Museum.
The practical session on the methods of printing led by Curatorial Assistant and print artist J. Yuen Ling Chiu (@yuenlingchiu) was an hour's worth of hands on experience with printed pictures. Have you ever looked at a print and wondered how it was made? Well wonder no further with this module session.
We started by each choosing a printers tool which was used to make one or more of the printed images displayed around the room. After a few minutes of studying the images, we were asked to guess which tools were used to make each of the prints. Firstly we looked at some woodcut prints, made with a 'u' tool, which is used by scraping lines in the wood. This imprints very defined straight lines which are tapered at the ends where the tool enters and leaves the wood. The ink is then rolled onto the remaining sections of wood to create the print. This is known as relief printing. We also looked at copper engraving and etching (in which acid is used to cut into the metal).
One of the forms of etching I found most interesting was the aquatint, where a cloud of blue dust is thrown into the air and left to settle onto a piece of copper sheet. Wax is then placed on certain sections, before the sheet is dipped into acid which burns through the dust to leave white flecks on the print. The print is then built up with layers of wax and acid to for the picture.
Another interesting technique is mezatint, where the surface starts very black, and layers of white are created on top using a tool which had grooves running along the edge, ending in little teeth. These teeth were used to 'smoosh' (technical word!) the dots together by rocking the tool from side to side.
After this quick induction we were set loose on a new set of prints, discussing which method of printing was used to create each print. On the whole I like to think we got more than half of them right between us.
If this doesn't convince you that Historical Bibliography is a good optional module to choose, then the seminars on collation and quasi-facsimiles will top the balance! I am looking forward to the remaining seminars that this module has to offer.
Editorial Note: UCL Art Museum is closed for refurbishment until April 2015, but its programme of teaching and public engagement is continuing off-site. We are very grateful to J. Yuen Ling Chiu and Dr Andrea Fredericksen (UCL Art Museum Curator) for delivering this regular session for INSTG012 in the Haldane Room this year. You can find details of the Museum's ongoing programme of events on its website. Staff also contribute to @UCLMuseums on twitter, UCL Museums and Collections facebook page, and the Museums & Collections playlist on UCLTV on YouTube. — Anne Welsh, INSTG012 Historical Bibliography Module Coordinator.
Nikki Gregory (@NikkiG434) is a full-time student on the MA Library and Information Studies.
Image: Anne Welsh.
Note: the appearance of the byline on this post is auto-generated, indicating that it was posted by Anne Welsh. Apart from the editorial note, Nikki Gregory is the sole author of this piece.

subset: commoncrawl


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Thursday, April 12, 2018
Press Release: Rick Ector to Train 800 Women How To Shoot on May 20th
For Immediate Release
Detroit, MI, April 12, 2018 -- Legally Armed In Detroit, a gun rights advocacy group, has announced that it will provide a free firearm shooting lesson at a southeast Michigan target range for 800 women interested in learning more about firearms and personal protection.
There will be no charge for the Firearm Instructor's safety briefing, the usage of a firearm, ammunition, and range time. Participation is 100 percent free for all attendees. No prior firearms training or experience is required of the women who desire to take advantage of the lesson. Further, experienced women merely desiring to improve their marksmanship skills are also welcome to attend.
The free shooting lesson offer was the brainchild of Rick Ector, an NRA Approved Firearms Trainer, after seeing a local television newscast of a young woman's body being discovered on an east-side Detroit street seven years ago.
This year's event will be the seventh consecutive year it has been conducted. In the first year only 50 women were trained. However, last year the event grew sufficiently to teach almost 600 how to safely operate a pistol.
This year's goal is 800 trained women over the day-long event. It is only with the cooperation of Ector's fellow Firearm Instructor colleagues and supporters across social media that this event could even be attempted and safely conducted.
Ector believes that there are many women in the state of Michigan who are curious about firearms and their role in self-defense but are reluctant to investigate due to fears. He said, "If giving women a free lesson by a credentialed professional translates into women just trying it, it'll be a productive use of my time."
The ladies FREE shooting event will be held on Sunday, May 20, 2018 at the Top Gun Shooting Sports Gun Range at 22050 Pennsylvania in Taylor, Michigan. FREE Advance Pre-registration is required for participation. Interested ladies should visit the following event page on Facebook for more info: https://www.facebook.com /events/334945773576906/
Rick Ector is a National Rifle Association credentialed Firearms Trainer, who provides Michigan CCW/CPL Class training in metro-Detroit for students at his firearms school - Rick's Firearm Academy of Detroit. Ector is a recognized expert in Firearm Safety and Personal Protection and has been featured extensively in the national and local media: Associated Press, National Public Radio, MSNBC, The Guardian, Townhall Magazine, The Politics Daily, and Aljazeera.
For more info about the free shooting lesson and Detroit Michigan CCW Classes, please contact:
Rick Ector
Email: email@example.com
Phone: 313.733.7404
Subscribe to:
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Throughout Paris Fashion Week, statement trends like metallic fabrics and bold, vibrant colors were all key styles for this upcoming fall season. One that proved to be most versatile throughout the shows was the classic turtleneck. This piece appeared on almost every runway, solidifying its place as a staple once again for the colder months of the year. Designers like Elie Saab, Christian Dior, and Chanel all featured the turtleneck in their collections, each in their own signature aesthetic.
Zuhair Murad drew inspiration for his show from French music and fashion icon Francoise Hardy, showing a simple black turtleneck layered under a cropped jacket. Stella McCartney took a monochromatic approach to the style in her collection, featuring a turtleneck camel-colored jumpsuit under an ankle length coat of the same tone, both in a slightly oversized fit. Channeling a more edgy side was Saint Laurent, which included a white turtleneck sweater paired with a black leather jacket and skirt.
Click through the slideshow above to see our other top picks for for turtlenecks, sure to become a staple item in your fall wardrobes.


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Don't worry. The "stupid" in the title was tongue-in-cheek, as you'll see.
I had originally meant to include this post by Rachel Coleman in a Sunday Surf, but I started writing so much about it, I thought I'd bump it out to its own post.
Here's the link in question:
"I'm Sorry, Your Child Is Stupid,"
at RachelColeman.com
Rachel Coleman is the star and founder of the Signing Time DVD series (one of my reviews is here: "A review of Baby Signing Time DVDs, aka the cocaine of signing babies"). She started Signing Time as a way to reintegrate her love of music and pass on her newfound appreciation of American Sign Language after her first daughter, Leah, was born deaf. (Her second daughter, Lucy, was then born with spina bifida and cerebral palsy, but also learned to sign with her sister and parents, despite the predictions against it by her doctors. Both stories are captivating if you have the time.)
"We asked deaf adults for their advice on raising our deaf child. We asked them because they had lived the life that we wanted Leah to live… a life without limits. We followed their advice. We looked to the Deaf Community as our compass. They told us that Leah's first language should be American Sign Language. They said that once Leah had a solid first language (ASL), we could then teach her English through reading and writing.
"Finally something that made sense!
"We were excited to share this breakthrough with the Early Intervention team, with the School District, with all of those people who could make a difference for every deaf child. We told them what we had learned and what we wanted for our child and why we believed it would work. They looked at us like we were crazy. They told us we needed to pick a program that they offered, they weren't going to make up a new program just for Leah Coleman. It was such a slap in the face to have them simply re-offer their broken system, since that was all they had."
I really liked this post on "Your Child Is Stupid," because it captures the problems with deaf/hard-of-hearing education in U.S. public schools — and, it might be extrapolated, with the education of any student who needs specialized teaching. I thought it was really interesting from a language perspective as well. For Leah to be fluent in her first language, ASL, she needed to have at least two other fluent signers around her so she could watch the conversations (since the peers in her classes all signed by rote at a much lower level), and the schools resisted providing any such thing — both due to budget and due to lowered expectations for deaf children — an anticipation that they would never learn well so why bother. That's the part that really bugged me, of course. I know and know of plenty of highly intelligent, bilingually fluent Deaf people, so it's a shame that the public schools would have a system in place to fail those students who don't have a Rachel Coleman mother fighting in their corner, with all the privileges she has, such as a high level of education herself, white privilege, class privilege, relative wealth, etc. — and none of this is said to diminish Rachel's herculean efforts, just to note that it would be even harder for some other parents or for deaf students without parent advocates to bring about the same changes in their education.
This also made me think, maybe a homeschooling or unschooling situation would be better for deaf students, then, but maybe not, since they need that interaction with other fluent signers. In some ways, I feel an affinity to Rachel since I, too, am trying to raise a child bilingually in a language that's not native to me. But, the huuuuge difference is that if Leah didn't learn ASL, she would have been missing her native language, not the non-native one. ASL allows deaf children to grow up with a language that's as vibrant and expressive as a spoken language is for hearing children, so it's an essential groundwork for later learning, and comes naturally for deaf children born to deaf parents (which is, perhaps unexpectedly, rare — something like 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, as was the case with Rachel and Leah). And this is true for many deaf children even when a device like a cochlear implant is used. (Watch Sound and Fury if you're as interested in these things as I am and want to see one family's wrestling with the topic.)
ASL is not a representation of spoken English but a language all in itself, with its own grammar and culturally specific rules. The best way I can describe this association is to imagine what happens when you're learning a second language. For awhile, when you hear the word Baum, you translate it in your head to the English tree, and only then do you visualize a thing with a trunk and branches and leaves. But as you become more fluent, Baum jumps straight to the visualization, so that when someone says Baum, you see the image rather than its "translation." Beginning signers might memorize that such-and-such a sign "means" the word tree, but what it actually means is that thing with a trunk and branches and leaves. And just as there are phrases and words in German that don't directly translate into English but are just an approximation, there are many ways ASL is unique from spoken English. ASL has the added difference of being visual, so that it truly cannot be directly translated into English (nor other countries' sign language systems into their spoken languages). Depriving deaf and hard-of-hearing children of ASL (as well as children with other cognitive disabilities who benefit from signing) is depriving them of a rich and meaningful language uniquely suited to them. You'll see in the comments on Rachel's post that many special education programs are frustrating parents in their refusal to count signs in their evaluation of children's vocabulary, focusing solely on spoken English ability.
Here are some sobering statistics for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the United States:
- Deaf and hard-of-hearing children are expected to graduate high school with a third- to fourth-grade English reading level.
- Deaf/HH children typically gain only 1.5 years of literacy skill from age 8 to 18.
- Only 55% of deaf/HH students graduate from high school (compared with a national 8% dropout rate — and do you see the race factors at work in those national statistics?), and only 8% of deaf/HH students graduate from college.
- The earning capacity of deaf/HH employees is 40-60% lower than that of hearing employees, and the unemployment rate among deaf adults is 42%.
Keep in mind that some deaf/HH children (as many as 40%) might have learning challenges apart form hearing loss. Even so, it seems like the public school system must be doing something wrong. Please let me assure you that I am not blaming individual teachers (big kudos to you for what you do) but the system's failures.
It seems like the schools repeat the same tired tropes that learning ASL hampers deaf/HH children's ability to learn English, but I would think it's going to be difficult to learn a spoken language if you can't hear regardless of whether you learn ASL or not. At least with a foundation in ASL, a deaf/HH person would have a language to be fluently expressive in, and to fully understand what's being said to that person. Keep in mind that lip reading garners only about one-third of what is said; it's a way to guess and estimate the conversation, not a full comprehension with all the details. (Interestingly, that's about how much spoken German I typically absorb in a conversation!)
There are other arguments that can be made here, too, of course — that educational success is not the be-all-end-all for anyone, and that just because our society values English literacy, bachelor's degrees, and career prestige doesn't mean those are the only criteria of success. Can a Deaf person who is fluent in ASL but holds no degrees or job still be successful by other measures? Naturally.
But the public school system has promised every student, regardless of physical, mental, or learning limitations, a "free and appropriate education." And not everyone is getting even close to that.
What have been your experiences with education for children (your children, yourself, others) with learning challenges?
If you're interested in learning American Sign Language yourself and/or with your children, to increase your communication with a significant portion of our population and the possibility of participation in the vibrant Deaf culture, I recommend (obviously) the Signing Time series and the online (free!) university at Lifeprint.com, or signing up at a local community center for a conversational ASL course and then perhaps continuing on with a college-level course, and, of course, getting out and meeting the Deaf community in your area and being a friend.
are affiliate links,
because I lurve Signing Time.
See my full disclosure policy here.


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In particular she argues that this is not just something involving errant clergy but the whole of Irish society. She writes:
Yet this clerical power in Ireland is often misunderstood by intellectuals, who analyse it as a top-down social structure, as if the clergy kept an iron hold on an unwilling populace. I would suggest that it was what we would call market driven. It came from the peoples' faith, and the peoples' desire to exalt their faith.
Especially after the disappearance of British rule, with all the gorgeous panoply that the Crown displayed, the people wanted the priests to be "a native nobility". Irish politicians in the 1950s tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to kneel before a bishop and refer to an archbishop as "His Grace.
and concludes:
Yet to be fully understood, these scandals must be seen within the context of Irish history. The Catholic church in Ireland wasn't "them", it was "us". It was our fathers and mothers and sisters and cousins and aunts. It was all those families and kin who must have covered up abuse — as families do.


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Advanced Search
Here you'll find articles and resources for STEM+Arts education, also known as STEAM. Topics include science, technology, engineering, math and arts education and range from research reports to feature articles to profiles of makerspaces to news about new STEAM and STEAM initiatives in schools.
Ed tech company Bluum has introduced customizable kits with five new solutions for K–12 and higher education, it announced at its recent Impact 2024 conference.
Digital mathematics platform company Derivita has been chosen as one of 14 providers by the Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education to be part of the state's 2024-25 Iowa STEM Scale-Up Program.
3D vision technology company Orbbec and educational robot manufacturer Hiwonder have partnered to add Orbbec's 3D capabilities to Hiwonder's mobile robot platforms, the companies announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
Panasonic North America, Discovery Education, and Olympic and World Champion Katy Ledecky will team up to take students in middle and high school on a second virtual tour through the educational program STEM Forward.
Global tech education nonprofit Technovation has announced The AI Forward Alliance (TAIFA), backed by partners UNICEF, the Grameen Foundation, Google, and others, to increase support for girls and women to work in the AI industry globally.
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) and streaming educational content company EXPLR have partnered to host the first National STEM Festival in April 2024 in Washington, D.C. The festival will recognize outstanding student innovators in STEM projects.
Game design program and competition organization Games for Change (G4C) has announced its 2023-24 Student Challenge for middle and high school students, focusing on social impact game design. The theme this year is solutions to climate change to promote "greener communities, healthy oceans, and eco-friendly fashion," the organization said.
Phillipe Cousteau Jr.'s nonprofit EarthEco International is inviting submissions from United States teens aged 13-16 to compete in the 2024 OurEcho STEM Challenge. The challenge goal is for proposals to identify local ecological threats to biodiversity and propose solutions to protect or repair them.
Imagine Learning (IL) has announced a course specifically to teach eighth grade students how to code by controlling a browser-based virtual robot, without the need for expensive hardware or software.
K–8 and biology educators across Texas now have access to Spanish and English versions of Discovery Education's Science Techbook for Texas, a core instructional curriculum created from the ground up expressly for Texas students, DE said in a news release.
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text: This digital collection is a resource for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history, providing access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.


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Chinoiserie Dreams Ginger Jars in Serenity | Wholesale
Chinoiserie Dreams Ginger Jars in Serenity | Wholesale
We. Love. Ginger. Jars. And we think your customers will too.
We love them so much in fact, that we decided they need to exist in every color of the rainbow! Elegant and timeless, these functional accessories add gorgeous hand-painted color and texture to dining tables, mantles, coffee tables, end tables, entryways, and kitchens.
Our classic swallow-tail lidded jars are hand-poured in Oklahoma and hand-painted by a Ruby Clay artist before being fired for a beautiful and durable finish which is food and water safe.
Looking for a custom color? Check out our custom color offerings HERE.
Small: 5" W x 5" D x 8" H
Medium: 6.75" W x 6.75" D x 13.5" H
Large: 8.5" W x 8.5" D x 16.5" H
Shipping & Returns
These pieces are custom made just for you and your shop, so please allow approximately 3-4 weeks for production and shipping on any wholesale order. We try our best to accommodate rush orders. Please contact firstname.lastname@example.com to place an expedited order.
These jars are hand-made to order, and their fragile nature is not conducive to return shipping. For these reasons, we do not accept returns nor exchanges, however, we offer color sample tiles (available in size selection menu). If an item arrives damaged or defective, we will be happy to swiftly send you a replacement.
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The Visible Hand is increasingly seen in all corners of domestic commerce. Few object to the presence of the visible hand as a necessary cop on the beat to give all parties a sense both that rules apply and that there is a monitor. Commercial difficulties mount: 1) when the monitor is not responsive, 2) when there is no real oversight of the monitor, making them a czar that is not at risk for its decisions and 3) when the rulemaking becomes so micro and complex that it can neither be thoughtful nor fair. Many of these schemes become so Rube Goldberg in their nature that proposing them outside of government as a plot for a novel would result in rejection by a publisher as not being credible.
In the 1920's Senator Charles Dawes chaired a committee charged with sorting out the financial chaos created by World War I and the Versailles Treaty. Britain and France were deeply in debt to the U.S. for borrowings incurred to fund their war efforts. Germany was deeply in debt due to the reparations they were required, by the Versailles Treaty, to pay Britain and France. The Dawes Plan had the U.S. provide new loans to Germany, so they could pay France and Britain who could use this money to pay the U.S. How could this plan not succeed? Dawes was given a Nobel Peace Prize for the creation of the 7% Dawes Loan bonds. In 1930 they traded at 109. In 1934, 35% of the loans were in default when Germany announced they would no longer pay on Dawes bonds. Dawes Loans was one of the earlier monitor over- reaches in our history.
A brief look across the business landscape reminds one how similar the commercial experience with a regulator is becoming to a trip to any state's motor vehicle department where one has no choice but to comply with arcane, contradictory rules with no explanation or simply be denied the privilege of driving. J.P. Morgan, GE, Citi and UBS paid billions to settle with the Federal Housing Finance Agency for loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet, neither the statements from the bank nor the regulators indicated what the firms had done wrong nor contained an admission of guilt by the firms. This is not to suggest that banks are blameless, but one is left with a feeling that the monitor capriciously could have said, "pay us or lose your banking license." There is no sense justice was done as the only public image is that of a regulator proclaiming a victory. Seeing this settlement, a Chairman of an international bank anonymously told the Economist "it would be suicide to fight them." Bear Stearns was forced into JPM's arms over a weekend by regulators who did not want a failed investment bank on their hands. Subsequently, fining JPM $5.1 Billion for loans sold by Bear Stearns to Fannie Mae (see above), creates a very real public policy question: "to whom will the government turn to buy the next failed bank if a multi-billion dollar fine is the reward for doing the government a favor?"
At a much more pedestrian level the examples of regulatory tripwires are copious. The USDA manual and memos for high school cafeterias run 4700 pages as the monitor attempts to manage school children's diets down to the calorie and salt content levels. This has actually led to students bringing their own salt shakers to school and being disciplined for doing so. Banks have had to hire thousands of workers and to spend billions of dollars on compliance and procedures where simply limiting their leverage and sphere of business would have made the system safer. Approval for such small matters, as small as a change in box labeling on a generic drug, now take years of multiple reviews at the FDA. If a company is in disagreement with or is harmed by an agency's process or investigation their remedy is usually an administrative proceeding where the federal agency serves as prosecutor, judge and jury. In a process reminiscent of the Dawes Plan, the government will subsidize a Tesla purchase with $20,000 of credits, up to $45,000 in California, to encourage use of electric cars as a way of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Yet, the electricity to run a Tesla is largely produced by fossil fuels. Consequently, the monitor is paying a consumer up to $45,000 to consume fossil fuels differently, not less. These burdens do not fall solely on the companies as the costs of review and the delay increases the costs of products to consumers. The simple act of making agencies and their employees accountable for its actions or inaction would be a sizeable stimulant. In reviewing investments the ability of regulators to retard new product development and to influence existing business is a critical due diligence area. An infusion of common sense and agency responsibility into the regulatory process is likely to lead to better economic growth and better regulation.
I'm Rob Morris and I approved this blog.


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Pouty fathead Donald Trump is a tailor-made character for the New York Observer, which purports to monitor Manhattan's smug oligarchy with a gimlet-eyed detachment.
And his semi-coherent presidential grumblings, which count as news just about everywhere else, make ideal grist for the Observer's mill. Too bad he's the owner's father-in-law.
It's all in the family.
Here's a sentence that someone ought to write about Trump: "The Donald's incredible bullshit machine keeps churning up the landscape, spewing forth a plume of chutzpah that might have made even P.T. Barnum a bit queasy."
Actually, that was written about Trump, and published in the Observer, 13 years ago.
It's an attitude that the Observer has taken toward Trump for decades, forged by former editor Graydon Carter, who had, during his days at Spy magazine, helped brand the man a "short-fingered vulgarian."
But lately, especially in the month or so since Trump began loudly and stupidly asserting that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and grunting about a presidential run, the paper has been practically silent on the subject. Incidentally, the Observer is currently owned by Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka.
Since early March, when Trump's latest eruption began in earnest, the Observer has published just two substantive pieces on him: A no-frills account of his Comedy Central roast, and a critical analysis of recent polling showing him leading or tied for the GOP nomination—penned by a freelancer—published this morning. Both were online-only.
Trump was mentioned in several brief blog posts, the most involved ones picking up stories about his habit of mailing defaced printouts of web stories to his critics, his booking appearances in Iowa, and an on-screen tiff with Rep. Anthony Weiner. And one editorial about the absurdities of modern life in New York (you don't say?) mentioned Trump's pseudo-candidacy in an aside.
But the story about how one of New York City's most storied and familiar figures has openly embraced a racist lie? It's AWOL.
As is the one about how Trump is once again expertly manipulating the press with empty boasts—it used to be known as a "bullshit machine"—about running for president in a bid to get attention. As is the one about how Trump's rarefied social circle is reacting to his new xenophobic turn. As is the one detailing the aspects of Trump's lavish lifestyle that his newfound friends in the Tea Party might not identify with. And so on.
When Politico's Ben Smith and I began noting via Twitter this week that the Observer seems to be abdicating a historical duty to weigh in on the intersection of wealthy dimwits, ego, reality TV, a complicit media, and the general dumbfuckification of our political culture, the paper's editor Elizabeth Spiers shot back: "Guys, we are covering it! (Which you'd know if you actually called me—or asked)," apparently establishing a new standard for reported observational Tweeting. Spiers later added, also on Twitter, that a "larger piece is in the hopper." Asked to elaborate on the record, she said only, "We're covering trump the same way we would any other prospective candidate at this stage in the election cycle." Last month, she devoted a detailed, nuanced 2,600-word feature to the prospects of Rudy Giuliani, another New York fixture and prospective candidate whose current support appears to have been eclipsed by Trump's. Asked if his paper would have any trouble covering his father-in-law's political machinations, Kushner referred questions to Spiers.
Spiers is in a spot. There's not an easy answer to the question of how your newspaper should appropriately cover your boss' loathsome father-in-law. She could swear off Trump entirely, publicly acknowledge that there's really no way to fearlessly cover him in that situation, and leave it to others. But that would be untenable if he actually does run and becomes part of the 2012 race. Or she could fire away for as long as Kushner is willing to put up with it. But the current strategy, with Trump sort of loitering around the edge of the Observer's coverage—and frequently without a disclosure of his relationship to Kushner—while he's in the middle of what certainly looks like another swindle, feels awkward for everyone.
And it kind of undermines the point of the New York Observer. Which, we should add, was recently clarified and reinforced by Spiers, who restored its old motto to the front page: "Nothing sacred but the truth."
Disclosure: I've written for the Observer and have friends who work there. And Spiers served as editor of Gawker from 2002-2003.


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By Chris Brummitt
On board the USS George Washington (AP) — A U.S. aircraft carrier group cruised through the disputed South China Sea on Saturday in a show of American power in waters that are fast becoming a focal point of Washington's strategic rivalry with Beijing.
Vietnamese security and government officials were flown onto the nuclear-powered USS George Washington ship, underlining the burgeoning military relationship between the former enemies. A small number of journalists were also invited to witness the display of maritime might in the oil-rich waters, which are home to islands disputed between China and the other smaller Asian nations facing the sea.
The visit will likely reassure Vietnam and the Philippines of American support, but could annoy China, whose growing economic and naval strength is leading to a greater assertiveness in pressing its claims there. The United States is building closer economic and military alliances with Vietnam and other nations in the region as part of a "pivot" away from the Middle East to Asia, a shift in large part meant to counter rising Chinese influence.
The Vietnamese officials took photos of F-18 fighter jets taking off and landing on the ship's 1,000-foot-long flight deck, met the captain, and toured the hulking ship, which has more than 5,000 sailors on board.
The mission came a day after Beijing staged military exercises near islands in the nearby East China Sea it disputes with U.S ally Japan. Those tensions have flared in recent days.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, where the United States says it has a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation in an area crossed by vital shipping lanes. Vietnam, the Philippines, and several other Asian nations also claim parts of the sea. The disputes attracted little international interest until the late 1990s, when surveys indicated possible large oil reserves. American rivalry with China has given the disputes an extra dimension in recent years.
The U.S. Navy regularly patrols the Asia Pacific region, conducting joint exercises with its allies and training in the strategic region. The trip by the George Washington off the coast of Vietnam is its third in as many years. A second aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, has also been conducting operations in the western Pacific region recently, according to the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Capt. Gregory Fenton said the mission was aimed in part at improving relations with Vietnam and ensuring the United States had free passage in the South China Sea.
China's military buildup, including the launch of its own carrier last year and rapid development of ballistic missiles and cyber warfare capabilities, could potentially crimp the U.S. forces' freedom to operate in the waters. The United States doesn't publicly take sides in the territorial disputes among China and its neighbors.
"It is our goal to see the region's nations figure out these tensions … on their own, our role of that to date is to conduct freedom of navigation exercises within international waters," Fenton said in an interview on the bridge.
Although claimant countries have pledged to settle the territorial rifts peacefully, the disputes have erupted in violence in the past, including in 1988 when China and Vietnam clashed in the Spratly Islands in a confrontation that killed 64 Vietnamese soldiers. Many fear the disputes could become Asia's next flash point for armed conflict.
Vietnam is pleased to accept help from its one-time foe America as a hedge against its giant neighbor China, with which it also tries to maintain good relations.
Still, the Hanoi government reacted angrily to recent moves by Beijing to establish a garrison on one of the Paracel islands, which Vietnam claims. The United States also criticized the move by Beijing, earning it a rebuke from the government there.
"China will take this (cruise) as another expression by the United States of its desire to maintain regional domination," said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii. "The U.S also wants to send a message to the region that it is here for the long haul … and that it wants to back up international law."
While most analysts believe military confrontation in the waters is highly unlikely anytime soon, they say tensions are likely to increase as China continues pressing its claims and building its navy. (end)


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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Leylah Attar, comes a standalone, contemporary love story, set against the lush backdrop of the Serengeti, in East Africa. Inspired by true events, Mists of the Serengeti is a compelling, emotionally resonant tale of the unknown ways in which we are all connected.
RELEASE DATE: January 31st, 2017
GENRE: Contemporary Romance/Women's Fiction
COVER: By Hang Le
Once in Africa, I kissed a king...
"And just like that, in an old red barn at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, I discovered the elusive magic I had only ever glimpsed between the pages of great love stories. It fluttered around me like a newly born butterfly and settled in a corner of my heart. I held my breath, afraid to exhale for fear it would slip out, never to be found again."
When a bomb explodes in a mall in East Africa, its aftershocks send two strangers on a collision course that neither one sees coming.
Jack Warden, a divorced coffee farmer in Tanzania, loses his only daughter. An ocean away, in the English countryside, Rodel Emerson loses her only sibling.
Two ordinary people, bound by a tragic afternoon, set out to achieve the extraordinary, as they make three stops to rescue three children across the vast plains of the Serengeti—children who are worth more dead than alive.
But even if they beat the odds, another challenge looms at the end of the line. Can they survive yet another loss—this time of a love that's bound to slip through their fingers, like the mists that dissipate in the light of the sun?
"Sometimes you come across a rainbow story—one that spans your heart. You might not be able to grasp it or hold on to it, but you can never be sorry for the color and magic it brought."
Amazon: will go LIVE on January 31st, 2017
Leylah Attar writes stories about love - shaken, stirred, and served with a twist. She lives in Ontario, Canada, with her husband, son, and all the voices in her head. Sometimes she disappears into the black hole of the internet, but can usually be enticed out with chocolate. Leylah is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, represented by Amy Tannenbaum of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.


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The Internal Revenue Service issued a consumer alert providing taxpayers with additional tips to protect themselves from telephone scam artists calling and pretending to be with the IRS.
These callers may demand money or may say you have a refund due and try to trick you into sharing private information. These con artists can sound convincing when they call. They may know a lot about you, and they usually alter the caller ID to make it look like the IRS is calling. They use fake names and bogus IRS identification badge numbers. If you don't answer, they often leave an "urgent" callback request.
"These telephone scams are being seen in every part of the country, and we urge people not to be deceived by these threatening phone calls," IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. "We have formal processes in place for people with tax issues. The IRS respects taxpayer rights, and these angry, shake-down calls are not how we do business."
The IRS reminds people that they can know pretty easily when a supposed IRS caller is a fake. Here are five things the scammers often do but the IRS will not do. Any one of these five things is a tell-tale sign of a scam.
The IRS will never:
- Call you about taxes you owe without first mailing you an official notice.
- Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.
- Require you to use a specific payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.
- Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.
- Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying.
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS and asking for money, here's what you should do:
- If you know you owe taxes or think you might owe, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS workers can help you with a payment issue.
- If you know you don't owe taxes or have no reason to believe that you do, report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1.800.366.4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
- If you've been targeted by this scam, also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their "FTC Complaint Assistant" at FTC.gov. Please add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint.
Remember, too, the IRS does not use email, text messages or any social media to discuss your personal tax issue. For more information on reporting tax scams, go to www.irs.gov and type "scam" in the search box.


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SOGA 2X 300kg Electronic Digital Platform Scale Computing Shop Postal Weight Blue
SKU: 300kgPlatformScalesBlueX2
- This elegantly designed 300Kg Digital Electronic Computing Platform Scale provides you with accurate and precise weight for all of your professional and industrial needs. Built for the long run, this ergonomically designed digital scale will last you for years. Incorporating highly precise sensors, the scale allows you to store prices of up to 5 units with capacities of 300Kg and increments of 50g. An easy to read digital control panel also comes with a light for even more effortless operation in all conditions. The scale can be run either on AC power or through an In-Built Rechargeable Battery - which means one can use this anywhere! There was never a better solution for your weighing needs at this handsome price!
- Equipped with a high precision strain gauge sensor system
- Accommodates up to 300Kg
- 24 Waterproof and oil-proof keyboard
- Store up to prices of 5 units
- Stainless Steel Scale Pan
- Clear LCD display
- A stylish addition to any bathroom or bedroom
- Auto / Manual switch off
- Auto-zero resetting and power off
- Overload / low battery / error indication
- SAA Plug
- Longer Durability
- Competitive Price Around Australia Market
- Colour: Blue
- Voltage: 200-240V
- Plug: SAA Australian Plug
- Direct current: DC 4V
- Power consumption: 10VA
- Storage temperature: -20C - 55C
- Storage humidity: 40% R.H
- Working temperature: -10C - 0C
- Working humidity: 80% R.H
- Capacity: 300kg w/ 50g increments
- Precision: 1/3000F.S
- Display windows weight: 5 digits
- Unit price: 5 digits
- Total Price: 6 digits
- Size: 30 x 40 x 71cm
- Carton Size: 66 x 31 x 15cm
- Weight Platform Size: 40 x 50cm
- Weight: 7KG
- Commercial
- 2 x SOGA Platform Scale
- 2 x Power Cable and Power Adaptor
- 2 x User Manual
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