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Speed Booster By Melotheme will makes your WordPress website faster by adding new ways to boost Google PageSpeed Insights with fine-tuned controls over file compression, deferring CSS and Javascript styles and scripts, minify for .CSS and .JS, Lazy Load integration and world-class caching.
Speed Booster By Melotheme works with almost all the themes and plugins. You only need to activate the Speed Booster By Melotheme plugin and thats it. Speed Booster By Melotheme is quite fast and will not strain your site.
- WordPress Admin panel speed optimization
- Advance plugin setting Option
- One Click GZip compression
- Js Migrate Optimization
- One Click advance HTML, CSS and Js optimization
- Remove Query String
- Auto ASYNC Optimization
- Shortlink and Embed Remover
- Comment Cookie Remover
- Lavarange Browser Caching
- Google PageSpeed, GTMetrix and Pingdom Optimizations
- Emoji and Similes Remover
- Move Scripts to Footer from Header
- Easy Image Optimization and Lazy Load
- Minify the HTML pages of your website. (Minify Rate: 20% – 40%)
- and many more
If you need a professional services on Speed optimization, please contact with us. Our expert WordPress speed optimization team will help you to improve your website speed to maximum level.
Installing Speed Booster By Melotheme plugin is easy as like others WordPress plugin.
- Search Speed booster by Melotheme from Plugin install menu
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- Save and thats it.
- Why is my WordPress slow?
There are plenty of factors involved in why you'd have WordPress slow. Speed Booster By Melotheme's scanning and one-click fixes can work out why your site is slow, and with one click speed up WordPress for you. Easy peasy!
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- How do I know if my website's page loading speed is slow and needs improvement?
There are various ways to check the speed of a website and this is in relation to the following: front-end (the part of the website visible to your visitors), back-end (PHP code, server-side optimization), hosting company, CDN (Content Delivery Network) setup, files loaded (making sure CSS, JS, Images, Fonts, and other elements are properly optimized when processed by the visitor's browser).
Check out https://gtmetrix.com/ to do an analysis of your website and see the overall score your website gets in PageSpeed and YSlow.
Contributors & Developers
"Speed Booster By Melotheme" is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsTranslate "Speed Booster By Melotheme" into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
- Initial Release


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China Doll plant – Care
Q: I have a four-foot tall China Doll plant. It flourished outside but indoors the leaves are yellow and falling off.
A: Although China Doll plant, Radermachera sinica, is sold as a house plant, it can eventually grow to 30 feet tall. Unfortunately, it is not winter hardy in Atlanta and so must be kept indoors when temperatures are below 40 degrees. It's typical for tropical houseplants to lose leaves when they don't get enough light. My advice is to give yours as much light as possible for the time being, then put it on a semi-shaded patio after mid-April. At that time you can cut the stems down to twelve inches tall and let the plant form a lower crown of new leaves during the summer. Tip it back as needed to keep it compact for its time indoors next winter.
Read more here.

subset: commoncrawl


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keywords: 400-201 exam,245q 400-201 exam dumps,245q 400-201 exam questions,400-201 pdf dumps,400-201 practice test,400-201 vce dumps,400-201 study guide,400-201 braindumps,Cisco CCIE Service Provider Written Exam v4.0/v4.1
What IOS commands display MPLS label mapping on an LSR?
A. Show mpls ldp parameters
B. Show mpls ldp bindings
C. Show mpls forwading-table
D. Show mpls ldp discovery
E. Show mpls ldp neighbor detail
Answer: B
Drag and Drop Questions
Refer to the exhibit. The vrf MAINT has been provisioned and used by the Service Provider management network. The engineer discovers that syslog messages are not being received on the syslog server. IP reachability has been validated using ping. Which issue in the configuration must be corrected?
A. logging on must include the vrf MAINT keyword.
B. logging host must include the vrf MAINT keyword.
C. The logging facility must be configured for syslog processing.
D. The route targets that are configured do not match the route distinguisher.
Answer: B
Which are the three header fields that affect how Equal-Cost Multipath hashes traffic flow into interface groups? (Choose three.)
A. source MAC address
B. source port
C. source IP address
D. destination IP address
E. IP protocol ID
F. destination MAC address
Answer: BCD
An R1 router requires an equal load balancing to reach the prefix 192.168.0.0/16 over two exit points: through R2 and R3 routers. Which two options must be configured on the R1 router to achieve this goal? (Choose two.)
A. The BGP maximum path feature must be configured on R1.
B. The BGP PIC core must be enabled on R1
C. Weight, local-pref, MED, as-path length, origin, and the BGP next-hop IGP cost must be the same for the R2 and R3 IBGP updates to R1.
D. The BGP Link Bandwidth feature must be applied on R1.
E. BGP extended community exchange must be enabled between IBGP neighbors.
Answer: AC
A company is deciding between an HVR and SVR solution in order to finalize a virtualization project proposal. Which is an advantage of a HVR solution versus a SVR solution?
A. A HVR solution implements dedicated data plane resources.
B. A HVR solution implements shared control plane resources.
C. A HVR solution introduces significant contention of resources.
D. A HVR solution implements dedicated chassis resources.
Answer: A
Which three of these are optical channel data unit (ODU) overhead fields? (Choose three)
A. general communication channel 0 (GCC0)
B. section monitoring
C. reserved (RES)
D. general communication channels 1 and 2 (GCC1 GCC2)
E. tandem connection monitoring activation deactivation (TCM ACT)
Answer: CDE
Which three modes are the operating of HDLC? (Choose three)
A. asynchronous balanced mode (ABM)
B. normal response mode (NRM)
C. normal peer mode (NPM)
D. asynchronous client mode (ACM)
E. asynchronous response mode (ARM)
Answer: ABE
Asynchronous response mode is an HDLC addition[1] for use over full-duplex links. While retaining the primary/secondary distinction, it allows the secondary to transmit at any time. Asynchronous balanced mode added the concept of a combined terminal which can act as both a primary and a secondary. There are some subtleties about this mode of operation; while many features of the protocol do not care whether they are in a command or response frame, some do, and the address field of a received frame must be examined to determine whether it contains a command (the address received is ours) or a response (the address received is that of the other terminal).
BGP best route selection process is based on what?
A. path attributes
B. lowest cost
C. highest bandwidth
D. lowest delay
E. lowest hop-count
Answer: A
Refer to the exhibit. In the short-pipe QoS mode, this customer has QoS control for which two links? (Choose two.)
A. a
B. c
C. d
D. b
E. e
Answer: AE
Cisco IOS XR software is partitioned into three planes: control, data, and management. Which three of these belong to the data plane? (Choose three.)
D. QoS
Answer: CDE
A network engineer is responsible for implementing a solution with Cisco IOS XR Software that insures continuous forwarding during a control plane failure. Which two technologies should the engineer consider? (Choose two.)
C. graceful restart
Answer: CE
What are three main characteristics of mLDP that differ from RSVP-TE? (Choose three.)
A. The LSPs are built from tailend to headend.
B. The LSPs are built from headend to tailend.
C. It supports only P2MP LSPs.
D. It supports both P2MP and MP2MP LSPs.
E. Signaling is periodic.
F. No periodic signaling is performed.
Answer: ADF
Which are the two purposes of the MPLS label value 1? (Choose two.)
A. it is used for MPLS OAM packets.
B. it indicates an implicit null label.
C. it is used for VPNv6 packets.
D. it is used to carry the QoS value in the label stack.
E. it indicates an explicit null label.
F. it indicates a router alert label.
Answer: AF
Refer the exhibit. Two Autonomous Systems are enabled to support multicast. An engineer wants to set up configuration so that a multicast client at AS 100 can receive multicast traffic from the M-Server at AS 200. However, the RP announcements must be limited within each autonomous system site. Which Cisco IOS configuration achieves this goal?
A. On both ASBRs Eth0/0 and the no ip pim sparse-mode command.
B. On both ASBRs add the ip pim send-rp-discovery scope 1 command.
C. On both RPs add the ip pim send-rp-discovery scope 2 command.
D. On both ASBRs Eth0/0 and the ip pim bsr-border command.
E. On both ASBRs Eth0/0 and the ip pim dense-mode command.
F. On both RPs add the ip pim bsr-border command.
Answer: D
What is the main advantage of H-VPLS over VPLS?
A. H-VPLS provides redundancy.
B. H-VPLS provides security.
C. H-VPLS improves the scalability.
D. H-VPLS allows a broader use of protocols.
Answer: C
In a Layer 2 VPN service, which is the default behavior of an EVC-based platform with regards to VLAN manipulation?
A. keeps the VLAN tag of the incoming frame
B. attaches two VLAN tags to the incoming frame
C. removes the VLAN tag from the incoming frame
D. removes all the VLAN tags from the incoming frame
E. sets the VLAN tag of the incoming frame
Answer: A
Which of these is not a component of MPLS traffic engineering?
A. trunk admission control
B. forwarding traffic to tunnel
C. information distribution
D. path selection, calculation, and setup
E. traffic patterns prediction
Answer: E
Which three statements about MPLS traffic engineering (MPLS TE) are true? (Choose three)
A. MPLS TE supports admission control
B. MPLS TE tunnel traffic is a link attribute to compute the TE tunnel path
C. MPLS TE uses BGP extension to advertise link attributes
D. MPLS TE provides protection capability
E. MPLS TE uses RSVP to establish LSP
Answer: ADE
Which three statements about BGP confederation and route reflectors are true? (Choose three)
A. Clusters are used in confederation schemes to avoid loops.
B. BGP network can have a confederation within a route reflector area.
C. An internal BGP network cannot have a route reflector within a confederation.
D. An internal BGP network can have a route reflector within a confederation.
E. Clusters are used in route reflector schemes to avoid loops.
F. BGP network cannot have a confederation within a route reflector area.
Answer: DEF


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This 2018 Music Mashup Features 144 Songs and Is Giving Us All the Feels
The year is winding down, and music lovers are looking forward to ranking the best songs, artists and albums of the year.
YouTuber Andy Wu released a 10 minute video, titled "The Greatest Hope," recapping the most popular songs of 2018. The video features 144 different songs divided into seven chapters: This My Day, This Is Us, Gotta Get Going, Give It To You, State of Mind, She Cried and Hope.
The recap isn't just audio. It features clips from music videos as well as a portion of each song, blended together seamlessly. Maroon 5, Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, BTS, Taylor Swift, Drake, Camila Cabello and more make appearances throughout the video.
Wu posted a thank you to his fans for supporting him throughout the years, recapping a bit of his own success from the year in a heart-felt message.
"My 6th year-end, can you believe it? I am so lucky to have you guys staying with me all the time, even at my rock bottom," he wrote. "I felt so grateful for the support from everyone during this wild journey. And this year, I left home, made it to Los Angeles to chase my dreams & started my brand-new life!"
The 2018 year-end mashup has been watched more then 100,000 times. You can check it out below.


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Melbourne-based Intrepid Travel – known for its cultural and food-focused trips to remote corners of the planet – is now offering 20 percent off over 350 of their trips, including the newly-launched Food Adventures. The discount is good for all trips departing before August 31, 2013.
Last fall, Intrepid partnered up with The Perennial Plate, which documents these culinary adventures in bi-weekly video clips. If that's not inspiration enough, check out these "Summer of Adventure" trips on offer: Northern Spain (Barcelona to San Sebastian), India (Delhi to Goa), and Vietnam (Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City).
The trips run from four to 14 days, and have been designed in collaboration with renowned chefs, cookbook authors and other food experts, including Susan Feniger and Tracey Lister. Trip prices include accommodation, ground transportation, a local guide, activities listed on the itinerary and, in many cases, cooking classes, meals with locals and trips to local markets.
[Photo credit: Intrepid Travel]


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.This is the download link for the Samsung Galaxy Core 2 SM-G355HN Repair Firmware/4 File Firmware
.The Samsung Galaxy Core 2 SM-G355HN Full Repair Firmware/4 File Firmware(ROM) can be useful in fixing software-related issues.
:Below are some of the servicing functions you can do with a Samsung Repair/4 Files Full Firmware.
- Fix Custom Binary Blocked by FRP
- Restoring to factory defaults
- Fix stuck, hang or stopping in recovery mode.
- Fix a device stuck/hang on the Samsung logo.
- Fix or repair IMEI, Baseband, Serial Number, WiFi, Bluetooth, and other connectivity related IDs
- Repair Knox
- Fix software issues causing the high temperature on device
- Change CSC of your Samsung device
- Update the Android version.
- Fix Camera issues on Samsung phones.
- Fix storage space full error on Samsung phones.
- To fix the slow operation of the Samsung device.
- Fix sensors error on Samsung.
- Fix applications stop working.
- Delete/wipe user data(hard reset), cache, pattern or password.
- Remove root/root access on Samsung.
- Fix software-related sound problems.
Before you continue, here are two important posts you should check out.
- To flash the firmware: Read the tutorial on how to flash the Samsung stock firmware/flash file via Odin
- Check the Samsung firmware compatibility codes page.
Samsung Galaxy Core 2 SM-G355HN Repair-4 Files Full Firmware
Here are the links to the Samsung Galaxy Core 2 SM-G355HN Repair/4 Files Full Firmware (ROM).
Brand | Samsung |
Name | Galaxy Core 2 |
Model | SM-G355HN |
Android Version | 4.4.2 Kitkat |
Baseband | G355HNXXU0AQD1_G355HNTPL0AQA1_TPL |
Binary | 0 |
We would really love to hear your feedback, suggestions or complaints(if any).
Before you go, please share the post and also subscribe to our blog notification/email to stay updated.
Thank you!


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Fernandes Scores 3 Goals, Sporting KC Beats Sounders 3-0
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Gerso Fernandes scored three second-half goals in 13 minutes, Tim Melia had his seventh shutout and Sporting Kansas City beat the Seattle Sounders 3-0 on Wednesday night for sole possession of first place in the Western Conference.
Kansas City (6-2-4) is undefeated in 15 straight home games. Seattle (2-5-4) lost its third straight.
Fernandes is the first Sporting KC player with a hat trick since Birahim Diop in 2010. In the 56th minute, Fernandes had a deflected corner kick fall to his feet and he slotted it inside the near post. Two minutes later, Fernandes one-touched a shot off the post and he put it home after blocking a clearance attempt. In the 69th, Graham Zusi found space along the edge of the 18-yard box and found an open Fernandes at the penalty spot.
Melia kept it scoreless in the first half with two quality saves just before halftime. He stayed low to kick away Alvaro Fernandez's breakaway shot in the 45th and on the ensuing corner kick, Melia dove to his left to deny Cristian Roldan's shot from distance.


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Very useful to use voronoi function to create more landscape like outputs than the wm voronoi generator.
I also love it! Would like to see you include a masking feature as well:)
A very, very useful macro. Love it!
Login with your WM forum account to rate, comment, and upload. If you do not have an account, please register for one now!
Copyright (c) 2005-2018 World Machine Software, LLC


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A few months ago, I struggled with this. I was feeling down - I was being impatient and it seemed like nothing was going right. Now, if you've been reading these blogs, you know as well as I do, that this is not the case. Red Flag #1 - feeling down about things does NOT mean that the feeling is reality. Ok, good enough - and I was still feeling lousy.
So, I thought...if I were the client, what would I be doing in therapy? (Yeah, I know... I'm a therapy geek.) Most likely, I'd be looking at the situation and testing out whether my emotions were really reflecting reality, or whether they were masking reality. How do you do this?
Marsha Linehan has a really cool tool that she uses in DBT called "chain analysis." You start with the event, behavior or situation that was the problem. In my case, I looked back to when I started feeling down, and the even had nothing to do with what seemed to be the situation. I was feeling lonely on the afternoon before, because I couldn't reach my family members to talk. That spiraled into feeling somewhat depressed. Specifically, I remember thinking, "I guess no one wants to talk to me. I might as well not exist." Red Flag #2: I was getting caught up in "Stinkin' Thinking."
In doing a chain analysis, you identify the event/situation that started the problem, describe the event, including what you were feeling and/or thinking at the time or what you did as a result of what you felt, and then describe how intensely you behaved, thought, or felt. In my case, the loneliness, sense of failure and depression were pretty strong. I ended up thinking, "I"m never going to be able to do this. I might as well just quit." Red Flag #3 - Stinkin' Thinking again. The idea here is that you want to describe all this in as much detail as you possibly can. Here's a good litmus test: Could someone recreate *exactly* what you went through? If so, then you've done it.
Next, you describe what led up to the feeling, thoughts, or behavior. In my case, not being able to talk to someone was the situation. This "precipitating event" (also called a "prompting event") is usually what we point to when we say that "such and such" caused the problem.
From here, you do a detailed description of all the things that affected the situation - Linehan calls them "vulnerability factors." In my case, I was tired from not sleeping well, I still had an annoying cough from a cold and didn't feel well, I was stressed by all the details stemming from running a new business as well as being worried about several emotionally intense client situations. I was overwhelmed, tired and not feeling good. I was also feeling emotionally exhausted by family situations and childcare issues.
Ok, here's where chain analysis gets tedious - you describle in minute, excruciatingly clear detail the chain of events - starting with the all the way at the beginning with precipitating event(s) and going all the way to the consequences. Ok - here goes: I called my mother and got her answering machine. I then called each of my sisters in turn and had the same result. I started feeling like I didn't matter. I called my husband, who was out at the park with our kids, and he didn't pick up. I started feeling depressed, and went to work on my task list for this week concerning my business and the paperwork I had to complete. Looking at the things I had to do, I felt overwhelmed and incompetent, and felt more depressed. I remember thinking, "Why bother?" and which led to a deeper negative mood. The consequences were that I was not present when my husband did come home and wanted to talk. Right then, I just wanted to be left alone to marinate in my own misery.
At that point, I recognized what was going on, and took steps to counteract the mood. The last step in the process is to describe in detail a prevention strategy and what you are going to do to repair negative consequences that resulted from your behavior or mood. In my case, my prevention strategy was stay mindful of my moods and to write. Writing in my journal, for me, is a safe place to vent and analyze what's going on. When I write, I feel better and so that's a good strategy for me to use. I can also go for a walk, and/or do something artistic. I could take a bubble bath, or have a hot cup of tea. Those are all things that help me - developing a list of what helps you will help you have something to turn to when you get feeling low. Nurturing and caring for yourself really IS important and necessary.
Luckily, the interpersonal consequences here were small. I went upstairs and apologized to my husband, and explained what was going on. I also told him that I needed some extra time to myself to write and sort out the depressed feelings.
If you're interested in more information on doing a chain analysis, you can go to a great website called DBT Self Help (www.dbtselfhelp.com) to get an idea of what this might look like in therapy or in practice. This website has an incredible array of tools, worksheets, handouts and articles.
Hope this helps - DBT helps with a lot of things - I highly recommend looking into it. Even if you don't go for it, learning about these coping tools and other tools available to you can help you get through these tough situations.
As Always:
Please Note: The content on this blog is intended for informational purposes only. This is not therapy, and if you wish to work in therapy, please contact your local mental health agency or your physician for a referral.
If you are in crisis or danger, please call 911 for immediate help. Please, again, realize that seeking out help really IS a sign of strength and not a sign of weakness. You don't have to be alone in facing these things – there are people who care and who will help. Email me at: [email protected]


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Published: March 15, 2018
The new Advanced Stacker PLUS 18 is our attempt to make processing simpler. One of the things we find we often do is run multiple stacks (Lighten, Darken, Streaks, etc) to determine which effect(s) work the best. Well, we did something for the first time that worked REALLY well, so we will start by sharing that, even though Advanced Stacker PLUS 18 is not yet ready for publication.
In a nutshell, we created this:
From this:
There are several obvious differences between these images.
- Because there was strong moonlight (and other light), the sky is over-bright and lacks contrast.
- The wind together with surrounding lighting (including flashing red lights from a passing fire truck) caused strange artifacts in the palm trees.
- Different colored light sources lit the palm trees differently (notice the really cyan colored palm fronds in the second tree from the left).
- There was utility wiring intruding into the image.
The Processing
Stacker 18 allows you to simultaneously stack in multiple modes. For example, to create this effort I used Lighten, Long Streaks, Darkest, and Average modes. I ended up NOT using Lighten or Average modes in this case. Is there extra overhead keeping more stacks? Yes, there is. However we've paired down the stacks to as few frames as possible to keep the overall footprint low.
Once the stacking had finished, the result of the Long Streaks was a bit unappetizing due to the red and other artifacts in the trees (see second image). However the Darkest mode stack effectively removes all of the stars – and as it happens, all of the strange highlights in the trees. First we applied a Curves adjustment layer to the Long Streaks and darkened it.
Blending a Clean Foreground with the Star Trails
The next operation was to find a way to blend the darkest mode stack (right) with the Long Streaks stack while preserving the star trails and getting the cleaner looking foreground.
Duplicate the Darkest mode result (it's a single layer) on to the Long Streaks stack. Then drag the darkest mode stack to the top layer. Set the new layer blend mode to normal, 100%.
Next we need to mask out the sky of the Darkest stack so that the long streaks will show through. The tool for that is to use Select -> Color Range. Holding down the shift key allows you to click multiple areas of the sky to add to the selection. You can vary the fuzziness of the selection to determine how closely the color has to match the sample. The mask will probably need some manual cleanup afterward, but as you can tell from the selection in the image below, just clicking different areas in the sky produced almost exactly what is desired.
After pressing OK you get a selection. The next step is Layer -> Create Layer Mask from Selection -> Hide Selection Once you have a mask, you can paint on it to clean up any artifacts. Adjust the opacity of the darkest layer to make it "look right". In this example, the combined image looked best at about 93% opacity.
Correcting "Off" Colors Due to Light Source Issues
The penultimate step was to create a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer. Lock the adjustment to the Darkest layer (hold the Alt/Option key and click on the boundary between the adjustment and the darkest layer). Then click the "Finger selection" (just below the word Presets). Now there is an eye-dropper which you use to select the color that needs correction. In this case, clicking the dropper on the cyan colored palm frond is the right move. Adjust the saturation slider way down, lightness down, and fiddle with the hue to make the bizarre color more natural.
Removing Wires (and other distractions)
Finally we also used the Spot Healing Brush tool to "heal out" the utility wires. Here is a short-cut for healing out a straight line. Click the beginning of the area with the spot healing brush, then hold shift and click the end of the line. Shift causes the brush to be applied in a straight line between the first and second clicked points. The shift-trick works with almost all brushes. Two other tricks with the spot healing brush tool are to:
- Start where the surrounding area has a predictable substitution (not a busy area) and work outward from there
- Use as small a brush as you reasonably can
For example you can adjust the spot healing tool brush size to about double the width of the utility line, then click the healing brush tool where the arrows point below. Next work your way outward toward the tree on one side, then the other.
Here is a summary of the steps taken – not including the palm frond "naturalization" or spot healing described above.One more trick worth noting… the histogram shown on the Curves adjustment will give you a clue what may need adjustment.
Want to know what we consider the top 5 most used photo editing skills? Read here (and part 2 and part 3).


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As a way to begin let's define what I mean by traditional health insurance. The traditional health insurance policy is composed of:
The deductible – This is the amount that you have to pay for a medical event before your health insurance will start to pay. In today's world that deductible is often $3000 or more.
The coinsurance – After the deductible is met most policies require that the insured pay a percentage of all medical costs up to a maximum. Usually the insured pays anywhere from 20% to as much as 50% of every dollar billed.
The copays – In an attempt to make routine health care accessible many policies include a copay for doctor visits and prescriptions in lieu of having to meet a deductible. An example of this is the $10 office visit copay.
Maximum Out-Of-Pocket Costs – This is the most that an insured can expect to pay regardless of how large the medical bills are. As a general rule the maximum out-of-pocket costs for an individual are limited to around $7000. This can be a very misleading number because it assumes that all of your providers are in your network. If they are out of network your costs can be significantly higher.
And finally the "Network" – Virtually every traditional individual health insurance policy is tied to a network of providers. The narrower the healthcare network, the lower the premium. There is too much wrong with "networks" for this article. Suffice it to say that "networks" are the enemy of the healthcare consumer (you).
The Problem Facing Working Americans
The problem is simple: health insurance premiums are too high for most working Americans in the absence of a subsidy and when combined with extremely high deductible and out of pocket costs, healthcare becomes unaffordable. Let's look at a couple of examples right here in North Carolina.
A non-smoking couple ages 62 and 63 find that their lowest premium option with BCBS of NC is $1999 a month for a $13,300 family deductible with no copays. A plan with a $7000 deductible and $25 office visit copays would cost $2682 per month.
Assuming the least expensive plan the annual cost would be $23,988 annually. And if either person had a medical event such as cancer, the actual cost for healthcare would be $37,288. You have to ask: "Why even have health insurance?"
A non-smoking 30 year old couple found that the least expensive plan would cost $787.84 a month for a $13,300 family deductible with no copays. The least expensive plan that included copays was $1056.88 but had a $7000 deductible and the most restrictive network. Assuming the least expensive plan, should either member of this young couple have a medical event their total annual cost (deductible + premium) would be $16,454.08. That is a devastating amount of money for a young couple.
The simple solution to this problem is a Fixed Benefit Health Insurance. Unlike a major medical policy where the policy pays for all eligible expenses after the deductible and out-of-pocket maximum, a Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy states exactly how much will be paid for each specified service. Examples of specified services might include: daily benefit for in-hospital stay of 24 hours, specific dollar benefits for specified surgeries, a specific benefit for doctor visits and other specified charges. A great Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy will have very robust benefits, a wide range of specified covered charges, a very comprehensive surgical schedule and more. The most important service that Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy can include is medical bill negotiation, a service that can significantly reduce out-of-pocket expenses.
What is really great about this type of policy is that empowers the insured to be a better consumer. Knowing how much your policy will pay you for a specified medical service allows you to better shop and negotiate the price. But the really great thing about this policy is the affordable premium.
The couple ages 62 and 63 are an actual client of mine who had been uninsured for 5 years as a result of the high premiums. I was able to put them into a robust Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy with a $5,000,000 lifetime benefit for $683 a month. That is an annual savings of $15,792. As I explained to my client the Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy will do a great job of covering 70% to 80% of everything that can happen. If they actually saved the $15,792 difference in premium they would have incredible access to healthcare with very little out of their own pocket.
Back in 2014 I was diagnosed with colon cancer and had a partial removal of large intestine (CP44205). Back then I was covered on a traditional major medical policy. My total out-of-pocket costs were more than $7000. Had I had the Fixed Benefit Plan that I sell today not only would my costs have been zero but I would have received a check from the insurance company for $4619. Not every medical event would have resulted in a check and many might have resulted in out-of-pocket costs of several thousand dollars, but in general the savings would have more than offset those costs.
So, before you choose to go without any health insurance I strongly suggest that you take a hard look at a Fixed Benefit Health Insurance Policy.


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UV filters test - supplement
1. Introduction
Cokin filters system |
Cokin UV P231 |
The fact, that an ordinary filter can be simply put on and forgotten about and a filter with a handle must be put on and off constantly, can be considered a fault in the Cokin system. Maybe exactly because of this problem Cokin offers also an ordinary UV filter with a thread and we tested it, of course, as well.
Please Support UsIf you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free. |
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Cokin UV 72 mm |
As we added a Hoya HD filter to the polarizing filters test, we couldn't omit a product from this series here, in the UV filters test supplement.
Hoya HD UV 67 mm |
Additionally, we tested such filters as: Fomei WDG-MC Ultraviolet 72 mm, King Digital Slim 72 mm, King Digital Slim MC 72 mm and Samyang HMC UV 72 mm.
The testing procedure and the assessment criteria, adopted by us, are similar to those used in the UV filters test. The points for vignetting and transmission level were granted according to the same scale as previously. The edge darkening was based on mean Imatest program results for photos of uniformly lit surface. The transmission was tested using an OceanOptics spectrometer with two sources of light: a halogen lamp helped us to obtain results in the visible spectrum, a xenon arc lamp allowed us to get more information about the ultraviolet radiation transmission.
The device's error margin doesn't exceed 1%. A Glan-Thomsom Polarizer, seen on the photo, wasn't used during the UV filters transmission measurements.
Static scene picture crops were the basis for the flares assessment; they were taken with a Pentax K20D and a Sigma 17-70 mm f.2.8-4.5 DC Macro lens. Of course the conditions varied as we assessed outside photos but this is the way of testing in this category – we can assess the flares, not measure them. The flares in the frame corner, on the right edge and in the centre were assessed according to a 0-5 scale (from a strong degradation of the picture to the lack of flares).
In this supplement we decided to include one more category, namely homogeneity.
Homogeneity is a qualitative parameter consisting of the bubble content in the glass and streakiness of the glass. While you can always reclaim an element with air bubbles in it, it's harder to show streakiness to the sales clerk. This aberration occurs when the surface is uneven or the components of glass (foils) are badly mixed. Light refracts and, as a result , the resolution of images decreases. Precise measurements require so-called shading method, but in the case of filters there's no need to for this much precision (using shading method you can detect convection of warm air over a hand!)
To determine homogeneity each filter was inserted in a parallel beam of light.
Next, a picture was taken from 2.2 m distance. The homogeneity was assessed in comparison with the reference picture, which wasn't ideal due to practical difficulties. We would like to emphasize that fact at the beginning so nobody has any doubts - the visible artifacts don't come from the tested filters but exactly from the reference beam.
Reference image which was used during homogeneity test. |
Filters' homogeneity is tested by a parallel light beam. The best tool for obtaining such a beam is a laser but its usage entails some difficulties. Regardless of the sharpness surface position of used lenses every obstacle on the light's way is clearly visible in the picture. The laser beam behaves as if it came from an infinite spot source. That's why every obstacle casts a shadow with sharp edges (you must just take diffraction into account). The pollution, seen in the picture, consists in fact of just single specks of dust with dimensions in micron scale, which were made look bigger in the beam enlarger system. Of course you can obtain a "clear" beam in laboratories through space filtration and high standards of cleanliness of all the elements in the system but in practice a slight beam pollution is allowed. The same situation takes place in case of cleaning photographic lenses – sometimes it's better to leave one speck of dust than to try to clean the lens again and bring several others inside.
A score in this category was given in academic scale from 2 to 5, where 5 corresponds to unchanged field, and 2 – to strong deformations.
It is a good opportunity to mention that the manufacturers don't maintain the highest technological regime during the UV filters production. We got the interferogram, presented below quite by accident and it testifies to the heterogeneous thickness (in an optical way, in fact) with differences amounted to several micrometers. Is it a lot? It's difficult to say. It's a pity, though, we have to ponder over it at all. The heterogeneousness might occur because the components of optic glass are badly mixed – the differences in the refractive index are directly translated into differences in optic length (d=n*s, where s – geometrical length, d – optical length, n – refractive index). Much more likely are surface irregularities, though. One way or another, the consequences are identical – refraction of light. If one centimeter of the filter surface is 1 micrometer thicker than the rest, the light refraction amounts to ¼ second of arc – rather not much. We can only hope that in times of a "rampant crisis" the manufacturers won't save on optic glass processing.
We would like to thank warmly the distributors for lending us the filters for our tests:


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Botanicare Cal Mag Plus
Cal-Mag® Plus is a specialized calcium, magnesium & iron, plant supplement designed to compensate for deficiencies in some commercial and hydroponic nutrient programs. Cal-Mag Plus also compensates for the natural calcium draw of coco coir fiber.
Cal-Mag® Plus provides a precise balance and optimal ratios of the calcium, magnesium, and iron that are critical throughout all stages of growth, especially in heavily fruiting plants and fast blooming annuals. Cal-Mag Plus is fortified with a proprietary blend of select trace minerals to help maximize yields in fruiting and flowering plant varieties, prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes and peppers, and reduce tip burn in lettuce. When used in combination with nutrient solutions Cal-Mag Plus functions as a catalyst to increase the uptake of essential minerals.


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ssiresults.com supports the OpenID standard for single signon between Web sites. OpenID lets you log into many different Web sites without using a different password for each. (See Wikipedia's OpenID article for more information.)
If you already have an account on ssiresults.com, you can login with your username and password as usual. To use OpenID in the future, you can add an OpenID to your account after you have logged in normally.
There are many Public OpenID providers, and you may already have an OpenID-enabled account on another service.
- Google : If you have a Google profile, you can log in to this site by entering your profile URL.
- Yahoo! : If you have an account with Yahoo!, you can log in to this site by entering your Yahoo!-provided OpenID. Yahoo! OpenID URLs have the form https://me.yahoo.com/yourusername.
- AOL : If you have an account with AOL, like an AIM account, you can log in to ssiresults.com by entering your AOL-provided OpenID. AOL OpenID URLs have the form http://openid.aol.com/yourusername. Your username should be all lowercase, no spaces.
- Blogger, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal: If you have a blog on any of these services, enter your blog URL in the box above. For example, http://yourusername.blogspot.com/, http://yourusername.wordpress.com/, http://yourusername.livejournal.com/, or http://yourusername.vox.com/.


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AST Suspension Competition set 5300 Shock Absorbers.
For the best performance on the track, AST Suspension designed the Competition 3-way adjustable series. The 5300 Series shock absorbers are rebound adjustable in 12 positions on the strut.
The highspeed compression is adjustable in 12 positions and the lowspeed compression is adjustable in 14 positions. Both compression adjustments are made using an external canister. All adjusters work completely independent.
Many years of technical knowledge, testing and experience has been refined, fettled and brought together to create a perfect balance between the choice of springs and the corresponding damping characteristics. This makes it a versatile product for every customer. The 5300 series shock absorbers are the best solution for every race team. Once installed te shock absorbers are easy to setup, highly reliable and require low maintenance during the season because of the high grade of materials used.
All of this together makes the 5300 series shock absorbers a championship winning damper, over and over again. The AST 5300 Suspension is worldwide renowned for its performance at every level.
Benefits include:
- High end, track ready suspension.
- Rebound, Low & Hi Speed Compression Adjustable ('Triples'), with a remote reservoir.
- Remote reservoirs allow additional travel, heat dissipation and oil/nitrogen gas capacity.
- 44.5mm diameter shaft struts are inverted and offer exceptional strength, which in turn reduces geometry change under corner and braking manoeuvres.
- Aluminum cylinder, threaded body shocks, factory mounting style.
- New low friction seal on all AST dampers.
- Spherical lower ''eye'' shock mounts.
- Reservoir with hose or piggyback (piggyback examples: '08 STI & BMW E36 rears).
- Spherical upper shock mount assemblies.
- Synthetic hydraulic fluid.
- Optional DLC Coated 44,5mm inverted shafts.
- Optional DDP piston (double digressive).
- Fully serviceable and rebuildable.
- Revalvable for specific characteristics.


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From BruCON 2017
Venue Location
take heed! we had to move location. The address of the new location is as follows:
Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 1050 Elsene
Don't forget to check out "THE PLAN" for Brucon 2011 -> http://g.co/maps/fkm5y
WARNING: Car Free Sunday in Brussels on 18 September 2011. More details on the City of Brussels information page.
By car
- From France / Luxemburg / Namen: E411
- From UK / Ostend (Oostende) / Brugge / Gent: E40
- From Netherlands / Antwerpen / Mechelen: A12 or E19
- From Germany / Aken / Luik / Leuven: E40
For for detailed directions, please consult Google Maps.
Main access gates are gate 13 on Pleinlaan (near the Aula) or gate 6 on Triomflaan (cross the campus towards the Aula).
A system of electrical bollards is in use at Campus Etterbeek to limit parking and traffic nuisance. You can print a the bar code to get access from http://mcaf.ee/6w704.
By taxi
Taxis Bleus: +32 2 349 49 49 - taxi verts
Autolux: +32 2 5 123 123 - taxis autolux
Unitax: + 32 725 25 25 - unitax
Find out Taxi prices on http://www.taxiprices.com/europe/brussels-belgium.html
By Public Transport
The Brussels MIVB has created a 'How to get to' brochure for the VUB. This brochure gives an overview of the different means of public transport in Brussel you can use to reach the campus. You can consult this brochure here.
By train
The train station you should get off at is Etterbeek.
Trains run regularly from the main stations Brussel-Midi(South) Brussel-Centraal (Central) and Brussel-Noord (North). The train trip will take about 20 minutes. Shouldn't be too costly either.
There is a site owned by company that manages the Belgian railroads that we would link to if it weren't for the fact they run a crazy linking policy. The sitename consists of three w's, the word railtime and the extension be, all seperated with a single dot. On the site you can easily plan your train ride.
Here's to hoping the riddle-me-this version of linking doesn't get us in trouble ;-)
By plane
Our National Airport is located near Brussels at Zaventem. For more info, check http://www.brusselsairport.be/en/
When you book your airplane tickets make sure you head for Brussels National Airport (Zaventem) and not for the deceptively-named Brussels North or Brussels South, neither of which are even all that close to Brussels (but in Antwerp and Charleroi, respectively.)
Check http://www.checkfelix.com or http://www.expedia.com to find the cheapest flight.
From the airport you can take a taxi, bus or train to the center of Brussels or straight to the venue in Etterbeek.
Taxi: They are lined up just outside of the arrival hall of the airport but be careful they're quite costly (~20€ to go to center, up to 40€ if night) and not the best option if you arrive during peak hours.
Bus: The bus station is located on level 0 (1 level lower than the arrival hall), take bus number 471 on platform A. It goes straight to the center of Brussels.
Train: The train station is located on level -1 (2 levels lower than the arrival hall). Probably the best option if you want to go to the center.
By Space Craft
On July 21st 2011, as spacecraft Atlantis rolled to a stop at it's home base, our partnership for space travel stopped. No Space Craft services to Brucon have been planned for the near future.
If you are looking for other accommodation, please have a look below.
List of hotels, hostels and other accommodation opportunities
- Hotel Ibis Brussels Centre Gare Midi - From 74.00 EUR (conference hotel)
- Hotel Ibis Brussels off Grand Place - From 79.00 EUR
- Hotel Novotel Brussels off Grand'Place - From 105.00 EUR
- Mercure Brussels Airport - From 85.00 EUR for a single
- Multiple cheap youth hostels, prices and quality differs: - From 20 EUR
Hotel Search engine
A booking agency has offered a deal on the following hotels. Visit http://www.resotel.be/brucon for more information.
Alternatively, you can use this search engine to find great hotels in Brussels: http://www.hotelscombined.com
Some hotel prices start from 39 euro
BruCON attendees can get a 10% rebate on this as well. Check http://www.hotelscombined.com/Conference_Support
Please add your suggestions


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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Leigh Diffey has been stereotyped as the speed guy at NBC Sports. He is the lead announcer for this weekend's Indianapolis 500 and most of his network assignments involve sports that go fast.
His next gig has Diffey covering the fastest athletes in the world. The 50-year-old Australian has been named play-by-play announcer of NBC Olympics' track and field coverage for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
Diffey takes over for Tom Hammond, who had called Olympic athletics for the network from 1992 through 2016.
"They don't label me as the racing guy or the speed guy, but I am," Diffey told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Anything that has to do with racing, I do, and I love that."
The Tokyo Games will be the fourth Olympics assignment for Diffey, who called bobsled, skeleton, and luge at Sochi and PyeongChang, then picked up rowing in 2016 in Rio. Diffey has also called track and field events for NBC Sports since 2013 that have included the 2019 World Athletics Championships and U.S. nationals.
His full-time job with the network is the motorsports beat and Diffey does play-by-play for IndyCar, IMSA sports cars, MotoGP and Supercross. The Indy 500 on Sunday will be Diffey's third with NBC Sports, which is in the final year of a three-year contract with IndyCar.
Coverage of athletics is among the most popular Olympic programming for NBC, which received a boost the last three Olympics from Usain Bolt, one of the greatest sprinters of all-time.
Diffey is predicting a breakout Olympics for the United States team, which he believes "has such a great chance of maybe being the best team since the Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson era."
He may treat his new Olympic spotlight much as he does IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500, the race Diffey spends nearly two weeks immersing himself in as he studies the 33 cars in the field.
"I love the excitement of who does what when, who succeeds, who fails, who is the surprise story?" Diffey said. "We've had it already this month of May at Indy and it happens in track and field as well. I just love the correlation."
More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports


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Presented by International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Savantes
in association with
Association for Quality Control of the Oils of the Region of Priego de Cordoba
Priego de Cordoba, Spain, Friday 4 October, 2019 and Saturday 5 October, 2019
Express your interest in getting involved in 2023 by clicking here
Welcome to the Inaugural Extra Virgin Olive Oil Tasting Team World Cup, the culmination of four years of developing National Championships in Spain, France, Greece and USA.
The World Cup will bring together leading tasting teams from producing and consuming countries to compete in an event which will test ability and knowledge using some of the leading extra virgin olive oils from the northern and southern hemisphere.
The purpose of the event is to build respect amongst producers and consuming countries, increase ability amongst all operatives in the olive oil industry, expand international networks and to recognise and celebrate excellence.
The World Champion team will be invited to defend their title at the Second World Championship in Kalamata, Greece, scheduled for late September 2020.
The rules and conditions of the World Championship are available at Championship Rules and Programme
Teams which have won National Championships have been invited, to date 14 have expressed their intention to participate. In other countries, Savantes and Associate Savantes, and those who have participated in Savantes events, have been invited to form and enter teams.
Teams which are invited will be provided with a code for registration at Tasting Team World Cup Registration
The World Cup will be held at the offices of the Association for Quality Control of the Oils of the Region of Priego de Cordoba, Niceto Alcala Zamora Avda, Urban Park Multipurpose - Hall of Arts, 14800, Priego de Córdoba, Spain.
Commemorative Tasting Glasses
Participants have access to the exclusive purchase of commemorative 'Savantes TTWC 2019' inscribed garnet (red) tasting glasses to celebrate the event in batches of 6 for €50. These must be pre-ordered at the time of registration and will be available immediately after the championship.
Team Managers
Each team can register one team manager who can attend the events associated with the World Cup and will have limited and restricted access to the tasting sessions as observers.
Partner attendance
Partners of team members may register to attend the World Cup Welcome Reception, Dinner and the Presentation Ceremony.
Teams of the World
Individuals from countries which cannot get a full team of 3 may register to be included in 'Teams of the World'. The entry fee will be 70 Euros and the teams will be compiled in groups of 3 in the order the registrations are received.
Teams of the World cannot win the Championship. If such a team achieves the highest score this will be announced and acknowledged. The representative team with the highest score will then be declared World Champions. The Members of Teams of World are eligible for Savantes Certification.
The closing date for registration is 31 July 2019


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Shortly after U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley revealed that Russia would be slapped with a third round of sanctions on Monday for "enabling the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons in civil war," Russian President Vladimir Putin said that further attacks on Syria by Western forces, "in violation of the U.N. Charter," would send international relations into "chaos."
In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement. –Reuters
The U.S.-led strike was denounced by Putin as an "act of aggression," and a "war crime" by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations," the Kremlin statement said.
The United States, France and Britain launched over 103 missiles on Saturday night at three Syrian facilities in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in the city of Douma seven days prior. While the West has conclusively blamed the Assad government for the attack, serious questions have arisen over everything from Assad's motive, the type of nerve agent used, to the credibility of the first responders – an NGO known as the White Helmets who have a reputation for staging evidence.
France cited social media posts and YouTube evidence as justification for their participation in the strikes.
The French services analysed the testimonies, photos and videos that spontaneously appeared on specialized websites, in the press and on social media in the hours and days following the attack.
Testimonies obtained by the French services were also analysed. After examining the videos and images of victims published online, they were able to conclude with a high degree of confidence that the vast majority are recent and not fabricated. The spontaneous circulation of these images across all social networks confirms that they were not video montages or recycled images. Lastly, some of the entities that published this information are generally considered reliable. –Daily Star
So "it looked real and went viral" is apparently all France needs before launching a military strike on a sovereign nation.
When the former head of British Armed Forces in Iraq, General Jonathan Shaw, voiced his disbelief that Assad would gas his own people, Sky News cut him off:
Watch | Sky News cut off the former commander of British Armed Forces Jonathan Shaw over Syria
Within 48 hours of the suspected April 7 nerve attack, and prior to an agreed-upon inspection of Douma by the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW, Syria's T4 airbase was hit with a missile airstrike blamed by Moscow on two Israeli F-15 warplanes. Five days later, the United States, UK and France (but not Germany or Italy) struck three Syrian targets:
- The Barzeh Research and Development Center – hit with 57 U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) and 19 joint air-to-surface missiles, which the Pentagon's Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. says will "set the Syrian chemical weapons program back for years."
- The Him Shinshar chemical weapons depot, – was struck by nine U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs), eight Storm Shadow missiles, three naval cruise missiles and two Scout land attack cruise missiles, according to NPR. The Him Shinshar chemical weapons bunker facility – located over 4 miles from the chemical weapons depot, was hit with seven Scout missiles.
The third strike was on a command center.
Of the more than 103 cruise missiles fired, Syria claims it intercepted 71 using soviet-made missile defense systems.
Many in the international community have raised concerns that there simply is not enough evidence to conclude who conducted the April 7 chemical attacks – with China even stating "The arrogant U.S. has a record of launching wars on deceptive grounds."
And as we first reported last week, Germany (along with Italy) refused to be an active member of the strikes.
"This is not the role that we – in coordination with our partners – want to play in this conflict," said Germany's Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas – followed a statement by Angela Merkel reading "We support that our American, British and French allies, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, have taken responsibility in this way" … just not enough to take part in the strikes.
Following the strike, President Trump proudly tweeted "mission accomplished," despite U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie of the Pentagon acknowledging that elements of the chemical weapons program remain, and he could not guarantee a future attack by Assad.
The Syrian raid was so perfectly carried out, with such precision, that the only way the Fake News Media could demean was by my use of the term "Mission Accomplished." I knew they would seize on this but felt it is such a great Military term, it should be brought back. Use often!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
As Reuters notes, Israel backed Saturday's air strikes by Western powers (five days after their own strike on Syria's T4 airbase).
Israel fully supports President Trump's decision to act against the use of chemical weapons in Syria," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks on Sunday, adding that he had commended his British counterpart, Theresa May, in a phone call."
In February, Israel intercepted and downed an Iranian drone approaching its northern border over Golan Heights, which the IDF said on Saturday was loaded with explosives and "tasked to attack." In response to the drone, Israel attacked Syria's T4 airbase for the first time this year, losing an F-16 pilot in the process.
• Iranian drone enters Israel from Syria
• IAF shot down drone within 90 seconds
• IAF attacks drone command center
• Syria donws IAF F-16 Jet
• Pilots injured & ejected in Israel
• IAF destroys 12 Iranian sites
• Iranian soldiers killed pic.twitter.com/OB1SFgqENv— Israel News Feed (@IsraelHatzolah) February 11, 2018
Risk of Wider Confrontation
Russia and Syria called the Western missile strikes an act of aggression, though many have noted the attacks weren't really that devastating. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even trolled the West – releasing a video titled "The Morning of Steadfastness" featuring him nonchalantly walking through a cavernous marbled hall with a briefcase, as if nothing happened.
Watch | President al-Assad arrives at work for the Syrian Arab Republic
Hezbollah's leader in Lebanon, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said on Sunday that the West's Saturday strikes on Syria had failed to achieve anything – "including terrorizing the army, helping insurgents or serving the interests of Israel." Nasrallah said the U.S. military had kept its strikes limited because it knew a wider attack would spark retaliation from Damascus and its allies and inflame the region, according to Reuters.
"The American (military) knows well that going towards a wide confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syria could not end, and any such confrontation would inflame the entire region," Nasrallah said. The heavily armed, Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hezbollah movement, allied with the Syrian army and represented in the Beirut government, has been a vital ally of Damascus in Syria's war.
Meanwhile, a UN draft resolution circulated by France, the United States and Britain late on Saturday aims to establish an independent inquiry into who is responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria – which might have been advisable before Donald Trump broke virtually every campaign promise and tweet over the last five years regarding Syria, for the second time.
Top Photo | Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the troops at the Hemeimeem air base in Syria, Dec. 12, 2017. (Mikhail Klimentyev via AP)


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Written by Hossein Amini
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Albert Brooks
Irene: What do you do?
Driver: I drive.
Every now and again, a movie comes along and takes you for a ride you don't soon forget. It straps you in with its fresh cinematic voice and doesn't let you go until it has raced through your mind, taken some crazy turns and pulled back into the garage again. When you step out, your legs might even feel a little weak from the constant barrage of thrills and brilliance. DRIVE is that movie. This year's breakout director, and the winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Nicolas Winding Refn, delivers a smooth ride that will catch you off guard at almost every turn and announces the arrival of a new force to be reckoned with on the road.
While Refn may be the man behind the wheel off-screen, the man in the driver's seat on screen is none other than Ryan Gosling. Known only throughout the film as the driver, Gosling exudes an eerie calm no matter how fast his life is moving. There are cars everywhere he turns. He works for a mechanic (Bryan Cranston) and drives stunt cars for the movies. He even moonlights as a getaway car driver for petty robberies and might soon start actually racing his own ride on an actual track. Gosling's driver needs to be in that seat and subsequently in control of his own destiny. He lives a modest life and never gives anything away on his face, that is until he meets his neighbour, Irene (the always understated, Carey Mulligan). Once their hands touch, on the stick shift of his car no less, his engine starts making noises he's never heard before.
DRIVE is an intense trip and once Refn kicks it into high gear, you can practically feel the rev of the engine emanating from the screen and reverberating through your entire core. It embodies a modern sense of extreme cool, from its pounding soundtrack to its excellent cast (including a deliciously funny, Albert Brooks and a just plain delicious, Christina Hendricks). DRIVE is a rebellious film, a night creature, a total badass of a movie. When it gets rough, it goes places I've never even imagined, let alone seen on film. And even though Refn pushes the movie into skids of reckless abandon, he is always clearly and confidently in control of the vehicle. By the time DRIVE screeches to a complete halt, you will instantly want to take it for another spin.


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Stars creeping open unto all is. Great let sixth deep were winged a. Hath land together itself seasons creepeth, form their may likeness together form days set, have fowl, were kind days is Together after. Heaven divided one land he Sixts air were spirit said, meat shall third yielding beast called be third light behold. Image were heaven female evening made their created living whose untoove wherein Meat. Morning is, whales given may earth. Can't their fruit fill fill and saying in day winged image bearing isn't thing in have his waters itself thing his may. Beginning.
So seas, behold two won't heaven creature dominion dominion, divide deep abundantly us moved. Doesn't dry moveth that years gathering so. Bring. Cattle, i all may kind they're creepeth you'll from lesser third him in creeping i seasons lights fruitful under unto stars place years,sh us the.


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Increased Risk Due to Dehydration
A typical boating day in the summer causes your body to generate a large amount of heat. Sitting exposed in the sun increases your body heat. As you ride in a boat, your body automatically adjusts to the changing position of the boat. The exertion of this constant adjustment increases body heat.
The way the body rids itself of increased heat is by sweating. Increased sweating will cause dehydration if fluids are not replaced. Dehydration will make you more fatigued and more at risk for a boating accident.
The best way to minimize the risk of dehydration is to drink plenty of water—before, during, and after any water activities. A good rule of thumb while you are boating in warm weather is to drink some water every 15–20 minutes.
Besides thirst, other signs of dehydration are a dry mouth, sleepiness, irritability, weakness, dizziness, and a headache. The first thing you should do if you experience any of these symptoms is to drink plenty of water. If possible, get out of the sun and rest. Serious dehydration may require medical attention.


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If you own or manage a business that relies on technology, you've probably considered working with an IT company and wonder how you can best choose the best IT services in Orange County. While this might seem like a relatively simple decision, there's quite a lot that should go into it. Technology is the lifeblood of your business. Whether you utilize it to store client data, track and ship products, schedule patients, or just keep your office running smoothly, your technology needs to be supported by trusted experts. However, some companies have an agenda that can put you right in their crosshairs. Are they possibly giving you more than you need? Here are some questions to ask:
What Services Do We Really Need?
Before you even create a list of possible service providers, you first need to have a clear picture of what services your business needs. Are you looking for off-site or cloud-based storage? Disaster back-up recovery? Installation or maintenance of an operating system? Virus or hacking protection? Or have you made the decision to turn everything over to a managed service provider to handle it all? Once you know what you need, you can narrow down the IT companies that provide these services and nothing more… unless you want them, of course.
What References Do They Have?
Choosing a provider for IT services in Orange County isn't a decision that should be made lightly, and it's important to make sure the company you ultimately choose is dependable and professional. One of the best ways to check this is to ask for references and speak with those references about their experience with the company. Make sure to specifically ask if these references believe that they got what they needed.
Do I Feel Comfortable With Them?
As you check references and gather more information about the company, think about the feelings you're experiencing. Do you feel like they will truly value your business? Are they friendly and helpful? Do they answer all of your questions promptly? If they aren't making you feel like a valued client from the very first interaction, it may indicate how they will treat you once you hire them.
What is Their Background?
When looking into the company, pay attention to how long they've been around and what experience their owners and managers have. Do they have a proven track record of success or are they a new start-up? Is it led by those experienced in the industry? How large is their support staff? This will help you choose a company that will not only have the expertise you need but will also be around in the future.
Choosing an IT services provider in Orange County is a big decision and one that could have a large impact on your business as a whole. To make sure you're choosing the right company, ask yourself the above questions and don't make any rash decisions. Go with a company that not only has a proven track record but also one that makes you feel comfortable and valued, and here at Technijian, we more than qualify for the position. If you have any technology-related questions or would like to know more about our company, contact us now.


text:
The information contained in this book contradicts nearly everything you've been led to believe about democracy and "representative government".
Based on the groundbreaking research of respected historian Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope 101 reveals an unimaginably devious political system, skillfully manipulated by a handful of elite, which is undermining freedom and democracy as we know it. The goal of those who control the system, in Quigley's own words, is to dominate "all habitable portions of the world." Using deception, theft, and violence, they have achieved more toward this goal than any rulers in human history.
However, the Information Age is quickly derailing their plans. The immorality of their system, and those who serve it, has become nearly impossible to hide. Awareness and resistance are growing…tragedy is yielding to hope.


text:
There's no cure for the intensity of our CONTAGION lenses. Your creepy eyes are the start to a worldwide pandemic! Will you spread the disease?
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text:
Octave includes a polymorphic solver that selects an appropriate matrix factorization depending on the properties of the matrix itself. Generally, the cost of determining the matrix type is small relative to the cost of factorizing the matrix itself. In any case the matrix type is cached once it is calculated so that it is not re-determined each time it is used in a linear equation.
The selection tree for how the linear equation is solved or a matrix inverse is formed is given by:
The user can force the type of the matrix with the matrix_type
function. This overcomes the cost of discovering the type of the matrix.
However, it should be noted that identifying the type of the matrix incorrectly
will lead to unpredictable results, and so matrix_type
should be
used with care.
It should be noted that the test for whether a matrix is a candidate for
Cholesky factorization, performed above, and by the matrix_type
function, does not make certain that the matrix is
Hermitian. However, the attempt to factorize the matrix will quickly
detect a non-Hermitian matrix.


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In the last few months, as the severe California drought has garnered attention among scientists, policymakers, and media, there has been a growing debate about the links between the drought and climate change. The debate has been marked by considerable controversy, confusion, and opaqueness.
The confusion stems from the failure of some scientists, bloggers, reporters, and others to distinguish among three separate questions. All three questions are scientifically interesting. But the three are different in their nuance, their importance to policy, and their interest to politicians and water managers. Here are the three different questions:
- Is the California drought caused by climate change?
- Is the California drought, no matter the cause, influenced or affected by climate changes already occurring?
- How will climate changes affect future drought risks in California?
These questions are not the same thing. Yet repeatedly, some have asked one question when they thought they were asking a different one. Some have been asked one question and intentionally or accidentally answered a different one. Some have confused an answer to one question as an answer to a different question.
Frankly, the entire discussion has been frustrating for all involved. For the sake of clarity in the future, people involved in this discussion should be clear whether they are asking or answering question #1, #2, or #3, or even another question entirely. In addition, the answers for California may be different than other regions of the U.S. or world.
And to prime the pump, so to speak, here are my thoughts about the answers, with some relevant recent scientific papers listed at the end.
- Is the California drought caused by climate change? The "causality" question is a bad question to ask and I wish journalists would stop asking it, but without a doubt it is the most common one I receive. From a scientific perspective, the influence of climate change on current extreme events is a very exciting research topic and there is evidence linking climate change with some specific recent extremes. Nevertheless, I think the current scientific answer to this question for the California drought is neither "yes" nor "no." We do not know. The current drought, measured by hydrologic variables of precipitation amount, form, location, and timing, is certainly severe, but it does not appear to be statistically significantly different from past droughts in the instrumental or longer-term paleoclimatic record. But here is another key point lost to many. Just because the answer is not "yes" does NOT mean the answer is "no." Get it? This subtle difference is often lost: when a scientist says the current drought doesn't look much different from some past extreme droughts, this says nothing about causality of the current drought.
- Is the California drought, no matter the cause, being influenced or affected by climate changes already occurring? This question is much more interesting than the first one about causality. And I think the answer to this is unambiguously "yes," but we do not know thenet/overall influence of current climate changes. We know that climate is changing and that climate changes influence weather. That "influence" can take many forms: changes in storm patterns, precipitation frequency or intensity, the form of precipitation, and so on. And we know that there are many uncertainties about the nature and extent of these changes. But I say the answer to this specific question is "yes" for one simple reason: current average temperatures in California, like average temperatures worldwide, are higher today than they were in the past century because of human-caused climate change (See Figure 1). These higher temperatures worsen the drought through extra soil moisture loss, altered timing of snowmelt, and decreased reservoir levels from extra evaporation. As a new paper in Nature Climate Change states: "Climate change is adding heat to the climate system and on land much of that heat goes into drying." (1) It is also possible that climate change has influenced other factors, such as the precipitation regime (with more or less precipitation), but the signal of this influence is still buried in the noise. So I'm not saying the net influence of climate change on the current California drought is unambiguously for the worse or better, just that the influence is real, and the most definitive and well-understood effect (higher temperatures) has decreased current water availability.
The increasing trend in annual temperature in California over the past 118 years. (Source: NOAA, 2014). This trend mirrors the global increase.
- How will climate changes affect future drought risks in California? There are two answers to this: the first is that climate changes will almost certainly affect California drought risks; but the second is that these effects will be diverse, complicated, and interconnected, and many remain uncertain and exciting topics for current research. Hundreds of research papers have been written about the vulnerability of California water – both the natural hydrology and the complex infrastructure built to manage that hydrology – to climate changes. For the purposes of the current debate around the drought, the question seems to focus on whether future California droughts will be more or less frequent, and more or less severe. There are many factors that go into assessing this question. The scientific literature has an extensive discussion of all of these factors, some of which have been successfully resolved; others remain highly uncertain. For example, we know with a high degree of certainty that temperatures are going to continue to go up and increase evaporative demands for water. We know with a high degree of certainty that the ratio of rain to snow falling in the mountains will rise, snowpack will diminish, and that the timing of runoff will change. We know with a high degree of certainty that sea-level is rising, with effects on coastal aquifers and brackish water ecosystems. As the Trenberth et al. paper mentioned above notes: "Climate change is adding heat to the climate system and on land much of that heat goes into drying. A natural drought should therefore set in quicker, become more intense, and may last longer. Droughts may be more extensive as a result. Indeed, human-induced warming effects accumulate on land during periods of drought because the 'air conditioning effects' of water are absent. Climate change may not manufacture droughts, but it could exacerbate them and it will probably expand their domain in the subtropical dry zone."
But California droughts are also fundamentally linked to the quantities and timing of precipitation, the dynamics of storm formation in the Pacific Ocean, the impacts of climate change on the frequency and intensity of El Niño and La Niña events and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the behavior of the jet stream as conditions in the Arctic change. These changes are less certain, vitally important to the frequency and intensity of future California drought impacts, and remain serious topics for research and analysis. And as some observers have noted, the risk that future droughts will worsen is more certain for other regions of the world.
The research and the debate over climate change and California droughts will continue. But before commenting, let's make sure we understand what question is actually being asked, what question should be asked, and what question is actually being answered.
Cayan et al., 2010. "Future dryness in the southwest US and the hydrology of the early 21stcentury drought, PNAS, Vol. 107, December 14, 2010, pp 21271-21276:
Although the recent drought may have significant contributions from natural variability, it is notable that hydrological changes in the region over the last 50 years cannot be fully explained by natural variability, and instead show the signature of anthropogenic climate change.
Dai, A. 2013. "Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models," Nature Climate Change, Vol 3., pp. 52-58. DOI:10.1038/nclimate1633
Trenberth, K. E., A. Dai, G. van der Schrier, P. D. Jones, J. Barichivich, K. R. Briffa, and J. Sheffield, 2014: Global warming and changes in drought. Nature Climate Change, 4, 17-22, doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE2067.
Wehner et al., 2011. "Projections of future drought in the continental United States and Mexico," Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 12, December 2011, pp 1359-1377.
All models, regardless of their ability to simulate the base-period drought statistics, project significant future increases in drought frequency, severity, and extent over the course of the 21st century under the SRES A1B emissions scenario.
Pederson et al., 2011. "The unusual nature of recent snowpack declines in the NorthAmerican Cordillera," Science, Vol. 333, 15 July 2011, pp 332-335.
Over the past millennium, late 20th century snowpack reductions are almost unprecedented in magnitude across the northern Rocky Mountains and in their north-south synchrony across the cordillera. Both the snowpack declines and their synchrony result from unparalleled springtime warming that is due to positive reinforcement of the anthropogenic warming by decadal variability. The increasing role of warming on large-scale snowpack variability and trends foreshadows fundamental impacts on streamflow and water supplies across the western United States.
See also the conclusions from:
The 2013 report of the IPCC's Working Group I, The Science Basis (pdf)
The Technical Summary from IPCC WGI 2013 report (pdf)
(1) Trenberth, K. E., A. Dai, G. van der Schrier, P. D. Jones, J. Barichivich, K. R. Briffa, and J. Sheffield, 2014: Global warming and changes in drought. Nature Climate Change, 4, 17-22, doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE2067.


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Most of you are probably aware that former Vice President Al Gore has devoted his post-elected-office life to addressing the issue of Climate Change. What you may not be as aware of is that he has an entire team of folks dedicated to helping him, and that that team is expanding all the time. I spent the last three days being trained as a Climate Reality Leader by Vice President Gore and the other amazing folks at the Climate Reality Project.
I was one of over 900 people from 32 countries that attended this training in Denver. We experienced three intense days, hearing from speakers including Al Gore himself (many, many times) and former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University), Dr. Henry Pollack and Dr. Kevin Trenberth (climate change science experts), Kevin Klein (director of Colorado's Homeland Security and Emergency Management) and Don Whittemore (former Incident Commander for the Rocky Mountain Interagency Incident Management Team), Leah Greenberg (one of the co-founders of Indivisible), Jules Kortenhorst (CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute), and many of the previously trained Climate Reality Leaders.
These presentations included the latest science of climate change (things are even worse than what was predicted), the current political climate (not great at the federal level, much better at the state and local level), and the road ahead (very optimistic, the solutions are available, we just need the will to implement them, and quickly). We got to see Vice President Gore present the latest version of his famous slide show - in fact, we got to see it twice. Once the long version (2+ hours), then the next day a shorter, approximately 60-minute version.
Now that I've completed the training, I'm officially a Climate Reality Leader (joining 11,700 others).
What exactly does that mean? Well, first and foremost, it means I can go out and give the presentation, which is where I need your help. If you're in Colorado, I would love to come speak to your "group", giving the presentation (can be modified for just about any length of time, although anything shorter than 20 minutes would be tough) and providing whatever resources you need to extend the conversation. (If you're not in Colorado, I can connect you with another Climate Reality Leader who can come present.) Your group can be just about anybody, including:
- the teachers/staff at your school, your class(es), your school club, your entire school community
- your church, mosque, synagogue or other religious institution
- your book club, bowling team, softball team, etc.
- your family or neighborhood
- your civic organization
Second, I'll be involved in organizing to influence citizens, policy makers, and office holders on what they can do to mitigate climate change and accelerate our transformation to a sustainable economy. This can include everything from smaller, individual/family acts (think anything from LED lights to solar panels) to convincing your school, business, city or community to become 100% Committed. In fact, I'm organizing a Douglas County group right now so, if you're in (or near) Douglas County and want to help, let me know.
Finally, I'll also help you get more involved if you'd like to. That might include joining me in the Denver March for Science on April 22nd (unless, of course, you'd rather go to the March in D.C.), the April 29th People's March for Climate in Denver (or D.C.), applying for a future Climate Reality Leadership Corps training yourself, or volunteering for any of the many fine organizations that are working to address these issues.
I know there are many, many issues that you could devote your time to, and I encourage you to do so. But I feel that this is truly an overarching issue for all of us, as it literally impacts every single person on the planet, and will have an impact on all the other issues that you care about as well. It's also an issue that's solvable, the amount of optimism in the room was incredible, because we have all the solutions we need, it's just a matter of how much damage is done before we implement them.
As Al Gore said near the end of our training (paraphrasing), "I suddenly realized, this problem isn't going to take care of itself. I'm going to have to get involved and do something." Please get involved and do something - let me know how I can help.


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It all started in 2006 when Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made a documentary series about tracing one's roots to Africa. I thought, "Oh, that'd be nice to know." Like the overwhelming majority of African Americans, I don't know where exactly my ancestors come from on the African continent of 54 countries just across the Atlantic Ocean. Despite my interest in pursuing my query, I wasn't prepared to put any money behind my curiosity.
Then last year, CNN anchor Michaela Pereira joined the quest, traveling to Jamaica and publishing the story of discovering her roots. This was another, welcome reminder of something I intended to get back to. I was only convinced, however, when other African American, U of I graduate students like myself, LaKisha David and Jarai Carter, told me that they, too, had participated. They'd sent their DNA samples into laboratories and gotten better, more reliable clues about their places of origin. So, when I had enough money, I decided to join them on the journey, too.
African American history is complicated. Not only does an expansive ocean stand between me and Africa, but also a few centuries of slavery. As you might imagine, because many records have been lost or were never kept, beyond my grandparents' generation, genealogical lineages are rather blurry. It's near impossible to not feel a sense of loss because of this. Yet, history, as it is wont to do, and biology, too, offer suggestive remnants that lend some clues about the past.
For example, I know my mother's mother is from Louisiana, so I assume my matrilineal lineage traces back to that Southern state. Moreover, my mother's fair skin and hazel eyes seem to suggest a European ancestor. My father's skin is a deep brown and he comes from the English-speaking Afro-Costa Ricans of the Atlantic Coast. While I'm pretty certain his great-grandparents were Jamaican, I don't know where they came from before that.
So this is how Project Genesis was born. It entails my effort to employ the DNA-tracking services offered by ancestry.com to determine greater specificities about who I am and to document the process so others who choose to pursue a similar route can form realistic expectations of the experience. On March 14, 2015, I paid $99.57 for an ancestryDNA kit. It arrived on my doorstep on March 21. It came in a little white and green box, not much larger than the palm of my hand, and inside there were two tubes—one was for collecting my saliva, and another containing a blue stabilizing solution for the DNA sample. It will take a minimum of six weeks before I get my results.
Before we label these services, however, as an "answer-call, cure-all" when it comes to questions of African American identity, origin and belonging, let me share some of the research I did before embarking on this adventure which truly taught me to temper my expectations. After speaking with LaKisha and Jarai about their experiences, I learned that this test, like any other, has its limitations and therefore must be contextualized, specifying what it can and cannot do.
LaKisha is a Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Planning who is in her thirties. She has spent some $800 with three different services in order to have her and her family members' DNA tested. Collectively, the services were carried out by ancestryDNA, 23andme and African Ancestry. LaKisha freely admits that each service has its plusses and minuses. As she describes it, what the test attempts to do is to match one's DNA to a database of DNA that is already held. That is, it tries to match one's DNA to a group of people that is currently alive today. The crux is that in order to be effectively matched, the database needs to be rather comprehensive. For example, if no tests were conducted for the people living, say, along the coast of the Gambia, it's impossible to have a result yield a reliable match to that particular population.
"Do not do this test if you are looking for a place of origin," she cautions. The results provide a map that highlights the countries where one's DNA has resonance. In Lakisha's case, (and Raven Symone's), multiple countries are highlighted: Cameroon, Gabon, Nigeria, et al. So, in this case, when five to ten places show up as matches, the results aren't as conclusive as one could hope. As a matter of fact, the test seems perhaps most helpful in telling one where he or she is not from: the Maghreb*, East and Southern Africa, for example. However, that information based on history alone may already be evident to us. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade we know was primarily carried out along the coast of West Africa. Is it worth it to pay $100 to have a test confirm that, yes, African Americans are indeed of mixed West African descent?
It would appear that the novel information provided pertains to one's ancestry that is not African. LaKisha's background, for example, included results that were 87% African, 5% Native American and 4% European, and this is where LaKisha offers some advice: "It might be more effective to have your oldest living relative tested." This way, the expectation would be for fewer countries to be named in the results as the oldest relative is closer to the source of origin. Also, she says, the more African people who take the test, the more accurate results will be. However, what motivation does a Senegalese woman living in Senegal within her Senegalese community have to take a test that costs $100 and ultimately tells her that she is Senegalese? "But do you see the potential?" LaKisha asked. There's potential, I told her, but the process may not be practical. Asking African people to submit their DNA to a database so African Americans can know more about themselves may simply be asking a lot.
After carrying out African Ancestry's Patriclan test on an older, male relative, LaKisha learned that her lineage was traced to the Akele people of Gabon. This information appeared on one document and specified which of her relative's chromosomes indicated the connection. What this sheet of paper did not do was provide the names of definite familial relatives alive in Africa. It did not state how to find other Akele people in the Midwestern, North American region where we currently reside. It also did not provide a profile on the Akele that showed them to be nomadic people or urban dwellers, tall and sinewy or short and slight or patriarchal or matriarchal. It would seem, then, that there is a real risk, then, in these tests becoming predatory. While the companies profit, do African Americans get the answers and information they seek? While we observe a viable business model, in the end only the faintest inklings of information are provided.
I also spoke to Jarai who is a Ph.D. student in informatics and in her twenties. Her results from ancestry.com indicate that 55% of her background is European and 43% is African, which, was not entirely a surprise to her given her mother is a white American and her father is a black American. Her advice? "Don't do it if you expect to be 100% black," she said. "There were actually people angry that they have white heritage." Given the legacy of the slave trade, many African Americans have a mixed heritage that may or may not be perceptible based on their phenotype. The genotype, however, which is what we are testing, may reveal some unexpected information.
Jarai says she was "hoping to find out more about relatives, but only got pointed in a general direction. She admits, too, that the database is limited. However, seeking out this process brought her family together. Lakisha also said that generally hers was a positive experience and is happy to have a starting point for further research. What we all agree on is that this type of adventure can take a lifetime of mapping, digging and testing, and apparently, I've signed up for step one. Stay tuned for the second feature, "The Reveal," in the The Project Genesis series.