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NIH Outlines Plans for Study of Pediatric Seizures
The scenario unfolds almost every day in the United States. A crowd gathers at a playground, or perhaps on a soccer field. A child has fallen to the ground, gripped by a seizure. Usually, the twitching and jerking stop within a few minutes. If they do not, the condition becomes status epilepticus, continuous unrelenting seizures that can lead to brain damage—or even death—if not treated. An ambulance rushes the child to a nearby hospital emergency department. There, doctors do their best to administer life-saving treatment as quickly as possible. Before they can treat the patient, however, they must choose between one of two drugs commonly prescribed to treat the condition.
Yet no reliable information exists to determine which of the two drugs—diazepam and lorazepam—is more effective.
At a briefing at the National Institutes of Health, researchers today outlined plans for a large-scale national study to determine which of the two medications is the safest, most effective treatment for children with status epilepticus. The condition is life-threatening, and even with the best treatment, is fatal in 4 percent of cases. The study is the most comprehensive of its kind and 11 hospitals around the country will participate.
Lorazepam and diazepam are both administered to treat status epilepticus. Although both medications are regarded as standard treatment, no large-scale comparison has been conducted to determine which is the safest, most effective treatment. The Pediatric Seizure Study will compare the safety and effectiveness of the two medications in treating status epilepticus in children admitted to hospital emergency departments.
"Currently, the choice of treatment for status epilepticus depends upon the best judgment of the treating physician," said Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is sponsoring the study. "The Pediatric Seizure Study seeks to provide the most definitive information possible on which medication offers the greater chance for successful treatment."
Status epilepticus affects between 50,000 to 60,000 children and adults in the United States each year, explained the study's principal investigator, James Chamberlain, M.D., Division Chief of Emergency Medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He added that four to eight children per every 1,000 will experience status epilepticus before age 15. Status epilepticus may occur in patients with epilepsy or in patients without epilepsy who experience a seizure due to a high fever, low blood sugar, an infection of the central nervous system, or a head injury. Children who have no apparent risk factors may also develop status epilepticus.
Diazepam, more commonly known as Valium, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in adults and children. Lorazepam, marketed under the name Ativan, is only approved by the FDA to treat seizures in adult patients but is widely prescribed off label for children. Once a drug has been approved by the FDA for a particular use, physicians may use their best judgment to prescribe it for other uses, known as "off label" uses, in other patients whom they believe might benefit.
"We want to hold these two medications to the highest standard and ensure that children are receiving the most appropriate medication for their condition," Dr. Chamberlain said.
To conduct the study, researchers at the 11 participating hospitals will randomly assign children who are in status epilepticus to be treated with either lorazepam or diazepam, explained the study's co-principal investigator, Jill Baren, M.D., of the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA. Usually, the choice of which drug to prescribe would rest with the treating physician. During the study, however, the medication will be assigned randomly by a computer, to eliminate any potential human bias in assigning the medication. A roughly equal number of the children will receive each medication.
Dr. Baren added that status epilepticus must be treated within 5 minutes or less of a child's arrival in an emergency department. Without prompt treatment, brain injury or death could result. This means that it will not be possible to obtain permission from a child's parent or guardian before enrolling the child in the study
Normally, researchers first ask the parent or guardian for permission to enroll a child in a study, explain the details and procedures of the study, its potential risks and benefits, and alternatives, and enroll the child only after the parent or guardian agrees. For this study, however, it is not possible to explain the study details and obtain parental permission in advance because of the urgent need to provide treatment within 5 minutes of the child's arrival in the emergency department. Moreover, status epilepticus may occur when a child is away from his or her parents; a parent may not be present when the child is taken to the emergency department.
Children admitted to participating institutions and who meet study criteria will be automatically enrolled in the study without prior parental consent. Dr. Baren stressed that this sequence of events is little different than what would take place in an emergency department not involved in the study. Under typical circumstances, the admitting physician would decide on whether the patient would receive lorazepam or diazepam. In the study, a computer program will decide which drug the child received. The principle is to assign the drug without any preference, to avoid any potential human bias. At the end of the study, roughly equal numbers of children will have been assigned to receive each drug, and a large enough number of children will have been studied to allow the researchers to draw definitive conclusions about each medication.
After the doctor has made sure that the child has received treatment and has been stabilized, the doctor or a representative from the study team will contact the parent to let them know that his or her child has been enrolled in this study. At this time, the details of the study will be explained to the parent, and the parent can choose to allow the child to continue in the study or can withdraw the child from the study.
If the parent agrees to continue, small blood samples will be taken from the child and the parent will be interviewed by phone 48 hours later and then 30 days after the child is enrolled to ask about the child's condition.
The independent board or research review committee at each hospital will oversee the study and ensure that all procedures comply with ethics and safety standards. Other independent reviewers will look for overall trends in study data. If it becomes clear that one drug is more effective at treating seizures, the study will be ended early.
"We have consulted a wide range of ethicists, experts and government officials about this study to ensure that we protect patients' safety," Dr. Baren said.
The researchers have designed a public information campaign to inform the public about the study in the various communities where it will be performed, Dr. Baren said. They will hold community meetings to provide information about the study to all interested families that might be included in the study. During the meetings they will answer questions and listen to concerns of community members.
Dr. Baren stressed the importance of proper research on all emergency treatments to be sure of their effectiveness. The FDA has emphasized the need to test all drugs used for children so that those used are known to be safe and effective.
The NICHD is funding the study in accordance with the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA), explained Donald Mattison, M.D., Chief of the Obstetric and Pediatric Pharmacology Branch. Under the BPCA, the NIH consults with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine which approved drugs should be prioritized for further testing in children. Dr. Mattison added that roughly two-thirds of drugs prescribed for children have never been specifically tested in children.
In-depth information about the Pediatric Seizure Study is available from the accompanying set of Questions and Answers, available at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/Pages/study_pediatric_seizure_QA_052207.aspx.
The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.


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The Irwin S Chanin
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of The Cooper Union
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Hejduk, John
Utilitarian Object
John Hejduk (1929–2000) was an architect and educator living and working in New York City, and a 1950 graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture. His teaching career at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union began in 1964. The following year he became the Head of the Department of Architecture. In 1975, when the School of Architecture became one of the three autonomous degree-granting divisions of The Cooper Union, he was named Dean and Professor of the School of Architecture. In 2000, he became Dean and Professor Emeritus of Architecture. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and of the Royal Society of Arts. His work has been exhibited around the world, including New York, Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Athens, Milan, Oslo, Berlin, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Helsinki, Zurich, Prague, Rotterdam, Briey-en-Foret and Montreal.
In 1975, he received the Augustus Saint Gaudens award from The Cooper Union Alumni Association; in 1980 he received a Brunner Grant from the New York Chapter/American Institute of Architects; in 1983 he received a Design Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; in 1986 he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; in 1988 he received the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture/American Institute of Architects Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architecture Education and the New York Chapter/American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor for Distinction in the Profession; in 1989 he was awarded the Creative Arts Award Medal in Architecture from Brandeis University and a Fellowship from The Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism; in 1990 he received an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects; in 1993 he received an inaugural Chrysler Innovation in Design Award from Chrysler-Plymouth Division of Chrysler Corporation; in 1995 he received the Honorable Title and Commemorative Medal of the Art Council of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague; in 1998 he received the UAR-Honorary Medal from the Romanian Institute of Architects; also in 1998 he received the inaugural Artists of the City Award from The Cooper Union; in 2000 he posthumously received the American Original award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Rizzoli International Publications published
Mask of Medusa
in 1985,
in 1987,
in 1989,
Aesop's Fables
(illustrations by John Hejduk) in 1991,
in 1993 and
Architectures in Love
in 1995.
Collapse of Time
were published by the Architectural Association in 1986 and 1987 respectively. In 1991, The Limited Editions Club published a folio of his lithographs to accompany the first illustrated edition of Thomas Mann's
The Black Swan
. The
Lancaster/Hanover Masque
was published jointly by the Architectural Association and the Canadian Center for Architecture in 1992. The Monacelli Press published
Adjusting Foundations
(1995) and
Pewter Wings, Golden Horns, Stone Veils
(1997) and
Lines No Fire Could Burn
Such Places as Memory
was published by MIT Press in 1998.
Structures from his projects have been built at the Gropius Bau (Berlin), the Architectural Association (London), the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), The Oslo School of Architecture (Norway), Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta),Prague Castle (Czechoslovakia), the City of Prague, the City of Groningen (Netherlands), near Madison Square Park at the intersection of 5th Avenue/Broadway and 23rd Street (New York City), Slussen Stockholm (Sweden), in the "La Boca" area of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the Universitat Politécnia de Catalunya (Spain) and, in 2017, at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
Buildings from his award-winning projects were constructed in Berlin under the auspices of the Internationale Bauausstellung; in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; and in Groningen, Netherlands. He was also the architect for the award-winning renovation of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art's National Historic Landmark Foundation Building.
Photograph by Jose Pelaez.
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PVC is a thermoplastic made of chlorine (derived from industrial grade salt) and carbon (derived predominantly from oil / gas via ethylene). It is less dependent than other polymers on crude oil or natural gas, which are nonrenewable, and hence can be regarded as a natural resource saving plastic, in contrast to plastics such as PE, PP, PET and PS, which are totally dependent on oil or gas. This chlorine gives to PVC excellent fire resistance: when PVC is set on fire, the flames go out as the fire source is removed due to the material's self-extinguishing properties.
Frequently Asked Questions on PVC
PVC pipe is one of the safest and most tested materials used in North America. For over 60 years, every aspect of its production, use and disposal has been evaluated and approved by government and independent certification and testing agencies.
PVC is approved for use around the world in water distribution and transmission, consumer products and medical applications. It is so safe that it is used for intravenous medical tubing, and it is the pipe of choice for ecologically sensitive environments like salt water aquariums, which must use the most inert and safest pipe materials available.
PVC pipe meets or exceeds all required health and safety standards and regulations governed by the U.S. and Canadian Safe Drinking Water Acts and other international statutes. Its use is monitored by independent agencies like NSF International — and government bodies like the U.S. Environment Protection Agency ensure its safety through mandatory regular testing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission have confirmed that PVC is a safe product.
Claims that it's toxic have been refuted by the scientific community. The evidence shows it neither leaches toxic chemicals like lead, cadmium, BPA or plasticizers; release harmful organotins; pose major hazards in its manufacture, use and disposal; create a dangerous bio-film; nor form dioxins as water passes through, etc.
Moreover, it's impossible for PVC pipe to leach plasticizers, BPA, lead or cadmium, since these aren't even used in its manufacture nor are they part of its compound.
Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association
(Published in Summer 1990 Edition of the Uni-Bell PVC Pipe News)
PVC was discovered as early as 1835, but the first definite report of the polymerization of vinyl chloride did not come until about 35 years later. At that time, the material was reported to be an off-white solid that could be heated to 130 degrees C without degradation.
PVC remained a laboratory curiosity for many years, probably because of its intractable nature. The polymer was inert to most chemicals and very tough (strong). These properties eventually led scientists to consider PVC for applications where durability and toughness were desirable.
In 1912 the first industrial developments were initiated in Germany. Throughout the 1920s, attempts were made to use PVC copolymers that were easier to process than PVC. These early attempts were only marginally successful.
By 1932, the first tubes made from a PVC copolymer were produced. Nearly three years later the first PVC pipes were produced using a roll mill and hydraulic extruder. This two-step process involved melting the PVC powder on a roll mill and rolling the sheet produced up to a billet. The PVC could then be processed in a discontinuously working ram extruder to make pipe. This process was adapted from that used for celluloid and was really ill-fitted for PVC. As a result, the products were often of dubious quality. Nevertheless, these early PVC pipes were deemed suitable for drinking water supply piping and waste water piping because of their chemical resistance, lack of taste or odor and smooth interior surface. From 1936 to 1939 over 400 residences were installed with PVC drinking water and waste pipelines in central Germany. Various test pipelines of PVC were laid in Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Heidelberg and Wiesbaden during the period of 1936 to 1941.
Both the pipelines for chemicals and those for water supply and waste water came up to expectations, as did the test pipelines in the cities mentioned above, apart from damage caused by World War II. The PVC pipes installed in central Germany are still in use today without any major problems.
Although product developers began to use PVC in a variety of ways – in shoe heels, golf balls, and raincoats, to name just a few – its application increased significantly during World War II.
PVC turned out to be an excellent replacement for rubber insulation in wiring and was used extensively on U.S. military ships. After 1945, its peace-time usage exploded.
In the U.S., PVC's materials are natural gas and rock salt.
- Natural gas is heated under pressure to form ethylene. This is called "cracking."
- Common rock salt (sodium chloride) is split by electrolysis to produce chlorine and lye (sodium hydroxide).
- Chlorine and ethylene are combined to form vinyl chloride monomer (VCM).
- VCM molecules are then joined end-to-end (polymerized) to form long chains of Polyvinyl Chloride polymer (plastic).
- The thermoplastic PVC powder is compounded, melted and extruded into pipes.
Municipal Water & Sewer Transmission
Irrigation & Plumbing
Electrical Conduit
Blue: Potable Water|
White: Irrigation and Water
Green: Sewer
Purple: Reclaimed Water
Gray: Electrical Conduit
Yes, studies on PVC pipe made in Europe in the 1930s and been in continuous use suggest a very long useful life for these products of a hundred years or more, which will generally exceed the lifespan of the structures they are installed in.
Furthermore, PVC has an impressive record of long-term durability. When water utility managers and engineering firms were surveyed in a study sponsored by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, they cited corrosion resistance, longevity and durability as their top reasons for choosing PVC. When these same water supply professionals were asked to rank PVC against the other common types of pressure pipes for life expectancy, PVC ranked first. [Source: Moser, A.P., and Kellogg, Kenneth G., "Evaluation of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Pipe Performance," AWWA Research Foundation, Denver, Colorado, 1994.]
Uni-Bell has an extensive collection of technical papers and experience articles that cover the subject of water and sewer pipe longevity in detail. These items are available, free of charge, by contacting Uni-Bell. (http://www.uni-bell.org). They point to the same conclusion that 100 years is an extremely conservative estimate for the service life of a properly designed and installed PVC pipe.
Yes they can. Since PVC pipe products have very long useful lives, not much pipe is currently available for recycling as it is still in use. While current standards do not generally allow for the practice of recycling used pipes into new certified pipes. PVC pipe producers can recycle nearly all production scrap in-house. Since PVC is a thermoplastic PVC pipe can simply be reground, pulverized and returned to the extrusion process to make new pipe.
All PVC pipes are formulated with additives to resist degradation from sunlight. However an aesthetic change in color may develop when exposed outdoors for long periods of time. This shading of color occurs only on the surface of the PVC pipe and is of a very shallow depth; measured usually at less than 0.001 inch. In light of this, any sun-bleached pipe supplied by JM Eagle™ Manufacturing is covered under our standard product warranty.
Pertaining to research on this issue, a study was conducted by the Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association to determine the effects of ultraviolet radiation on PVC pipe, in which pipe was placed in racks throughout the United States for a period of two years. The results revealed that both the tensile strength and the modulus of elasticity remained virtually unchanged, while the impact strength remained well within the governing ASTM requirements.
In conclusion, it has been determined that ultraviolet degradation will not have significant adverse effects on the mechanical properties of underground formulated PVC pipe.
PVC pipe and gaskets can still be used after prolonged storage above ground under normal conditions, and it is not necessary for the gaskets to be replaced unless there are appreciable signs of degradation (such as cracking). Per the above, pipe can be stored up to (but not limited to) two years above ground. Regarding the gasket, our standard gaskets are formulated to withstand UV radiation under common storage practices of PVC pipe.
For more details on UV exposure, read our Technical Bulletin:
The Effects of Sunlight Exposure on PVC Pipe and Conduit
PVC pipe, while combustible, does not continue to burn once a flame source is removed. A main cause of fire fatalities is exposure to carbon monoxide, which is produced from common materials and products like wood, furniture, carpet and fabrics. It is estimated that plastic pipe systems represent less than 1% of the mass of all combustible products in a building.
Rieber gasket: A steel wire or steel strip insert is incorporated in the gasket, which helps "lock-in" the gasket in the bell ring groove. This gasket is non-removable, and higher insertion forces may be encountered compared to the non-locked-in gasket.
Non-Rieber gasket: This non-locked-in gasket is typically pre-installed from our factory. Ensure that the ring groove is clean should this ring be removed and re-installed in the field.
Having indicated the above, both gasket designs conform to the same standards (gasket: ASTM F477, and joint qualification: ASTM D3139) and installation procedures for our Ring-Tite IPS PVC pipe. Joint preparation and assembly considerations include the following:
- Ensure the bell, gasket and spigot are clean prior to and during assembly.
- Ensure the gasket is seated evenly in the ring groove.
- Apply lubricant evenly and only on the spigot end. Applying lubricant on the gasket may introduce lubricant onto the ring groove, making the ring prone to displacement.
- Insert up to the reference mark only. Do not stab or "home" the spigot into the bell.
- Align the spigot during insertion, and be vigilant to undue resistance, which may indicate a dislodged gasket or incomplete lubrication.
Our joint designs have a proven history, and we assure you that our pipe will perform as intended when installed as recommended.
The pressure rating of PVC pipe is established by dividing the maximum long-term pressure capacity of the pipe by the desired factor of safety, which is usually 2.0. The C900 pressure class is derived in a similar manner; however, a safety factor of 2.5 is used. Also note that a surge allowance is included within the safety factor. Although PVC pipe can withstand short-term hydrostatic pressure applications at levels substantially higher than the pressure rating or class, the allowable pressure is properly based on the product's long-term strength. Research and investigations have accumulated vast quantities of data that clearly substantiate the reliability of PVC pipe pressure rating and pressure class values. As specified in AWWA, C900 Pressure Class is defined as the "pipe's designated design capacity (psi) that corresponds with its recommended safe sustained operating pressure". Pressure class designations include an allowance for pressure surges above the maximum sustained operating pressure caused by instantaneous velocity changes of 2 ft/sec. Pressure class designations are based on long-term pressure rating at 73.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
AWWA C900 has a "Pressure Class" design approach based on a 2.5 safety factor. Pressure Class is formed using a 2.5 safety factor versus the 2.0 typically used in design. In addition to the elevated safety factor, a surge allowance equal to surge pressure created by instantaneously stopping a column of water traveling 2 feet per second in the system has been allowed for in each pressure class. The motivation for this design approach is to supply a piping product that is intended for use inside the "looped" perimeter of an urban water system where piping system geometry is complex.
AWWA C905 has a "Pressure Rating" design approach based on the 2.0 safety factor. AWWA C905 is intended for use as water transmission piping where long straight runs are the norm and system geometry is more simplistic. Surge pressures are easily predictable and should be accounted for in design.
ASTM D2241 has a "Pressure Rating" design approach based on the 2.0 safety factor. Once again, surge calculations are the designer's responsibility.
ASTM D1785 schedule pipe (40, 80 & 120) does not conform to the same design approach as the above-mentioned products. The products listed above offer a pressure capacity independent of pipe size, whereas the schedule product pressure ratings vary between different pipe diameters.
All classes of JM Eagle's Blue Brute pressure pipe are UL 1285 listed for water mains as well as being tested and certified to ANSI / NSF Standard 61. The PVC cell classification is defined under ASTM D 1784 as 12454. The bell consists of an integral wall section with a factory installed, solid cross-section elastomeric gasket to allow for expansion and contraction at each joint. Joint design shall meet ASTM D 3139 performance testing requirements, with which the elastomeric gasket is manufactured in compliance with ASTM F 477. Each section of pipe with integral bell has been tested to four times the pressure class for a minimum of 5 seconds as a matter of routine quality control testing. JM Eagle's Blue Brute pipe does not meet AWWA C-111; this standard is for Ductile Iron Pipe.
The recommended maximum test pressure of installed PVC pressure pipe is 1.50 times the anticipated working pressure of the system; however, if the test pressure exceeds the rated pressure, the maximum test pressure should be the rated pressure. In addition, in no case should the test pressure exceed the rating of the valves or fittings, whichever is less. The typical test duration is 2 hours. Ensure that all the air is removed from the pipe prior to testing.
JM Eagle™ does allow testing of the system to 50 psi above the rated pressure for C900 pipe only. For DR 14 C900 pipe, this would be 250 psi. Make sure that the valves, fittings, and thrust blocks will be able to handle the extra pressure. The AWWA C900 standard is conservative compared to all other PVC pipe standards regarding the allowable pressure of the pipe, but that does change the fact that a DR 14 pipe made to this standard is marked with an allowable rated pressure of 200 psi.
Our C900 and C905 PVC pressure pipes must conform to the stringent requirements of the following standards: ASTM F 477 – Standard Specification for Elastomeric Seals (Gaskets) for Joining Plastic Pipe, and ASTM D 3139 – Standard Specification for Joints for Plastic Pressure Pipes Using Flexible Elastomeric Seals.
Per ASTM D 3139, these products must conform to the Internal Pressure Test where the product is subjected to 50% of the rated pressure for 60 minutes and 2.5 times the rated pressure for an additional 60 minutes. A Quick Burst Test is then conducted. Also, per ASTM D 3139, the pipe is subjected to a Vacuum Test in which the joint shall withstand a vacuum of 22 inches of mercury for one hour with no leakage. In addition, each piece of pipe is hydrostatically tested to 4 times the Pressure Class (C900) or 2 times the Pressure Rating (C905) for 5 seconds prior to shipment.
The terms "dimension ratio" and "standard dimension ratio" are widely used in the PVC pipe industry. Both terms refer to the same ratio, which is a dimensionless term that is obtained by dividing the average outside diameter of the pipe by the minimum pipe wall thickness.
Dimension ratios and standard dimension ratios were developed out of convenience rather than out of necessity. They have been established to simplify standardization in the specification of plastic pipe on an international basis. Since these define a constant ratio between outer diameter and wall thickness, they provide a simple means of specifying product dimensions to maintain constant mechanical properties regardless of pipe size. In other words, for a given DR or SDR, pressure capacity and pipe stiffness remain constant regardless of pipe size.
Even though the terms DR and SDR are synonymous, one minor difference between them is that SDR refers only to a particular series of numbers, i.e., 51, 41, 32.5, 26, 21, etc. This series of "preferred numbers" is based on a geometric progression, and was developed by a French engineer named Charles Renard. These numbers are often called "Renard's Numbers."
The term DR became widely used, in 1975, with the publication of AWWA C900, which governs production of small diameter PVC pressure pipe. AWWA allowed the desired pressure capacity to dictate wall thickness. Since the OD/t values generated did not happen to fall on any of Renard's Numbers, AWWA removed the "standard" designation from the SDR term.
It is interesting to note that the most widely used product for small diameter sanitary sewer in the U.S., ASTM D3034, SDR 35, provides an apparent contradiction in terms. While 35 is not a Renard Number, it is still referred to as a standard dimension ratio. In fact, all OD/t ratios in D3034 are listed as SDRs whether they are included in Renard's "preferred numbers" or not. This was probably for convenience's sake. D3034 was written in 1972, prior to the popularization of the DR term. Accordingly, ASTM may have allowed all OD/t ratios to be called SDRs.
The bottom line is simple: the two terms are interchangeable. SDR=DR=OD/t.
JM Eagle's gravity sewer pipe meets the requirements of ASTM D 3034 (46 psi pipe stiffness controlled) for sizes 4" through 15". Likewise, the cell classification of these products is 12454 or 13364 as defined in ASTM D 1784. The joint design meets ASTM D 3212 performance testing requirements, thereby assuring a watertight joint that does not exceed an infiltration / exfiltration allowance of 25 gallons / inch diameter / mile / day. The gasket for this joint assembly is made of an elastomeric gasket in compliance with ASTM F 477. Pipe sizes 4" through 15" contain a factory installed, locked-in gasket. Product should be installed in accordance with JM Eagle's PVC Gravity Sewer Installation Guide.
JM Eagle's gravity sewer PVC pipe can be air tested per ASTM F 1417 – "Standard Test Method for Installation Acceptance of Plastic Gravity Sewer Lines Using Low-Pressure Air". Per this specification, testing pressures are regulated between 3.5 to 4.0 psig with a maximum allowable test pressure of 9 psig. It is not recommended that air-testing pressures exceed this limit due to worker safety issues.
Flexible pipe derives its soil load carrying capacity from its flexibility. Under soil load, the pipe tends to deflect (reduction of pipe diameter in the vertical direction), thereby developing passive soil support at the sides of the pipe. At the same time, the ring deflection relieves the pipe of the major portion of the vertical soil load, which is then carried by the surrounding soil through the mechanism of an arching action over the pipe. Allowable limits of deflection have been set by both ASTM (7.5%) and AWWA (5%).
The Modified Iowa Equation is used for predicting deflection in buried flexible pipe:
DL = Deflection Lag Factor=1.0 (Typical)
K = Bedding Constant=0.1 (Typical)
P = Prism Load=Weight of soil over pipe
W' = Live Load
E = Modulus of Elasticity=400,000 psi minimum for PVC
DR = Dimension Ratio (OD/t)
E' = Modulus of Soil Reaction
This final parameter required to determine predicted pipe deflection is the Modulus of Soil Reaction. Amster Howard, of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, compiled a table of average E' values for various soil types and densities.
JM Eagle's SDR 35 PVC sewer pipe has a minimum pipe stiffness of 46 psi. When installed in accordance with the recommendations in our installation guide, this pipe should have a maximum deflection limit for a non-pressure application of 7.5%. Note: this is for ring deflection of the pipe, not axial deflection at the joint.
JM Eagle™ does not recommend any deflection at the joint for any of our products. Uni-Bell's recommendation is that offset at the joint OR uniformly bending the pipe is allowable; however, Uni-Bell does not recommend both on the same length of pipe. Using our 8" SDR 35 sewer pipe as an example, the pipe can be uniformly curved along the barrel of the pipe. There is a minimum radius of curvature, which for this pipe is 200 feet. Per the following calculation, this allows curving across one 20-foot length piece of 5.73°.
Length of arc = p r = (3.14) x (200 ft.) = 628 ft.
Curve per 20' length / 180° = length of one piece / length of arc
Curve per 20' length / 180° = 20 ft. / 628 ft.
Therefore: Curve per 20' length = 5.73°
*Please refer to the Minimum Radii of Curvature Chart below. Click on image to enlarge
The pipe should be assembled above ground, in a straight line, then curved and laid in the trench. All curvature results from the bending of the pipe lengths. There is no deflection at the joint.
*Please refer to the Minimum Radii of Curvature Chart below. Click on image to enlarge
The appropriate conservative "n" value for minimum slope design of PVC sewer pipe is 0.009, as correctly justified by actual test data. The justification of this value is briefly described below.
For many years it has been popular and convenient to use a single "n" value for all pipe materials. However, no data technically support the single "n" value approach, and the most cost-effective sewer designs are precluded by such an over-simplified design criterion. The recognition of "n" value variations among the commonly used sewer pipe materials is long overdue.
No published technical study has ever reported an "n" value as high as 0.013 for a PVC sewer pipeline either in-service or in the laboratory. No published technical study has ever reported PVC sewer pipe as having the same hydraulic characteristics as clay, concrete or asbestos cement under any conditions. The major engineering textbooks dealing with sewer design have yet to address plastic pipe hydraulics. The ASCE and WPCF Manual for Design and Construction of Sanitary and Storm Sewers lists a range of "n" values for "plastic" pipe, i.e., 0.011-0.015, but the authors have not supplied any evidence supporting their recommendations. There is absolutely no scientific basis or technical justification for requiring the use of a 0.013 "n" value when designing PVC sewer pipelines.
The maximum operating temperature for JM Eagle's PVC pipe is 140 degrees Fahrenheit. For cases where there is a temperature variation, special consideration should be given to the thermal expansion and contraction of the pipe.
PVC pipe is a light weight yet strong material when compared to many alternatives. A length of PVC pipe will weigh one-fifth of an equivalent size section of cast iron pipe, making it easier to install. This product is easily assembled in solvent-welded or gasketed versions that are both intended to be leak-free, once properly assembled.
JM Eagle™ recommends that our pipe be installed such that the assembly line on the spigot is even with the bell. This also provides greater ease of inspection when verifying proper assembly from the top of the trench.
A joint that is assembled per our recommendations will exhibit a gap, in which the beveled end of the spigot is stopped short of being fully bottomed out in the bell. This gap should be in the allowed tolerance of ½" to 2.5". Studies have shown that this gap poses no significant effect in terms of head loss or clogging, and is supported by a proven history of fully functional lines. Although bottoming out the spigot into the neck of the bell may yield a joint that appears more attractive when televised, this joint is also more likely to exhibit leakage or breakage due to loss of flexibility or stress from over assembly. By assembling the joint so that the reference mark (or assembly mark) is even with the bell, typical variations in the field can be accommodated. The variations may result from expansion or contraction of the pipe, or the variations may result from deflection at the joint due to soil movement in the trench.
For pipe deflection during installation, please refer to individual installation guide per respective pipe.
JM Eagle's procedures for installing Rieber and non-Rieber gaskets:
If you have received a combined shipment of JM Eagle™ pipe that contains both Rieber and non-Rieber gaskets, please note the following: non-Rieber and Rieber gaskets adhere to the same standards for the various types of JM Eagle™ pipe. They are both of superior quality and JM Eagle™ will stand behind them with a 100% warranty provided you follow our recommended installation procedures, which are:
- When installing JM Eagle™ pipe with the same type of gaskets, which means Rieber to Rieber pipe or non-Rieber to non-Rieber pipe, you should use the reference marks on the respective type spigot ends.
- When installing two different types of gasketed pipe, JM Eagle™ makes the following recommendations to account for the fact that the Rieber joint has a longer bell and reference mark when compared to the non-Rieber pipe:
- Non-Rieber Spigot to Rieber Gasketed Bell
Follow the non-Rieber pipe reference mark at the spigot end. - Rieber Spigot to Non-Rieber Gasket Bell
Do not insert the pipe all the way to the reference mark on the Rieber pipe spigot end. Instead, use the reference mark that is shown on the non-Rieber pipe. This will require some measurements from JM's non-Rieber reference mark.
By following the above recommendations, Customers will not experience joint problems such as over-assembly, damaged bells, or cracked bells.
Note: The minimum recommended temperature of PVC pipe during installation should exceed 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Allowable depth of bury can be calculated based on the allowable deflection as described above. PVC products have been installed successfully at depths of 50 feet or more. The following tables provided as quick reference.
Calculated Deflections of Buried AWWA C900 PVC Pipe (%)
Measured Long-Term Deflections of SDR 35 (PS 46) PVC Pipe (%)
For more details please see: PVC Pipe Trench Construction
Minimum cover is recommended to be one foot from the top of rigid road surfaces or the bottom of flexible road surfaces. At shallow depths of cover (1' - 3'), Class I or Class II material per ASTM D2321 with a minimum of 95% Proctor density is recommended for pipes ranging from 4"-16". Angular embedment material shall be no larger than 0.75 inches and rounded rock shall be no larger than 1.50 inches. Also, the maximum particle size should be no greater than 10% of the pipe's diameter.
For more details please see:
C900 / C905 PVC Pipe Burial Depth Chart
Burial Depth Charts for PVC Stormdrain Pipe Series 14 and 28
PVC Sewer Pipe Burial Depth Chart
Depth of Burial for PVC Pipe
JM Eagle's pipe bells can be laid either upstream or downstream. There is no significant hydraulic benefit for either direction, and therefore we leave the decision to the discretion of the installer. However, JM Eagle™ recommends that the bell ends point in the direction of work progress to save extra effort. It is easier to insert the spigot into the bell than it is to push the bell over the spigot. This also reduces the risk of rubble being scooped under the gasket. The direction will not adversely affect the performance of the pipe.
For more details please see: Gasketed Pipe Assembly
Lubricate the spigot end of the pipe, using the lubricant supplied. Be sure to cover the entire spigot end circumference WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION PAID TO THE BEVELED END OF THE SPIGOT. Apply the coating with your hand, a cloth, a pad, a sponge or a glove.
CAUTION: Do not lubricate the bell, especially the gaskets. After spigot end is lubricated, do not allow it to touch the bedding material. Small pieces of stone or soil may stick to the lubricant and may become lodged between the spigot and rubber ring during assembly. This may cause the joint to leak.
Just as PVC pipe with Cast Iron OD's can be joined to Mechanical Joints that were originally designed for use with Ductile Iron pipe, C900 PVC pipe can be joined directly to Ductile Iron pipe bells, and Ductile Iron pipe can be joined to C900 PVC pipe bells.
JM Eagle™ has two precautions when joining these materials:
- The bevel of the spigot should be made to look like the bevel of the product to which it is being joined. Make a Ductile Iron pipe bevel longer than that which is normally supplied on a Ductile Iron spigot, and make a PVC pipe bevel shorter than that which is normally supplied on a PVC pipe spigot. Use pipe beveled at the factory as a guide.
- The depth of insertion of the assembly should be adjusted to reflect the assembly mark found at the spigot end of the pipe whose bell you are using. Adjust the assembly mark to be shorter on a PVC spigot; and adjust the assembly mark to be longer on a Ductile Iron spigot.
If the joint is over assembled, in other words, the spigot is jammed into the neck of the bell, the flexibility of the joint is lost. Uneven settlement in the trench may cause an over assembled joint to leak – do not assemble beyond the reference mark. Proper assembly calls for insertion of the spigot end into the bell so that it is in contact with the gasket. Keep the pipe lengths in proper alignment. Brace the bell while the spigot end is pushed under the gasket, so that previously completed joints will not be further inserted. Push the spigot into the bell until the assembly mark on the pipe barrel is flush with the end of the bell. Stabbing is not recommended and should be avoided.
If undue resistance to insertion of the spigot end is encountered or the reference mark does not reach the flush position, disassemble the joint and check the position of the gasket. If it is twisted or pushed out of its seat, clean the gasket, bell and spigot end, reseat the gasket properly (using a factory installed gasket as a guide) and repeat the assembly steps. Be sure both lengths are in proper alignment during assembly. If the gasket was not out of position, measure the distance between the reference mark and the spigot end. If necessary, relocate the reference mark if it is out of position.
Lastly, there should be no axial deflection at the joint. Bending the pipe, rather than deflecting the joints, should serve to accomplish small changes in direction.


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James Gandolfini - Cross Stitch Pattern Chart
$ 5.00
"James Gandolfini" Cross Stitch pattern for immediate download.
- Stitched W: 45 (stitches only, no surrounding buffer)
- Stitches H: 75 (stitches only, no surrounding buffer)
- Inches W: 3.21" - Cm: 8.16
- Inches H: 5.36" - Cm: 13.61
- Stitch Count: 2137
- # Colors: 8
- Aida Size: 14
Fits nicely in a 5x7 frame.
Includes PDF pattern with DMC Floss Color Scheme and simulated completed piece available for immediate download upon payment confirmation. CROSS STITCH PATTERN ONLY.
COPYRIGHT: CrassCross by Pete Seazle© 2014. For personal use only. May not be copied or distributed without express written consent of CrassCross by Pete Seazle.


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Don't forget you still have time to enter into Challenge 31: A Recipe (3 designer papers, 3 buttons, some ribbon + a sentiment) for another chance to win 4 individual digital sentiment sets and a custom watermark/signature from Raindrop Echo Designs.
Here's our random winner of the last challenge:
Congratulations! As mentioned in the last challenge, The prize is four INDIVIDUAL sentiment sets from the Raindrop Echo Designs Digital Collection AND a custom watermark/signature set from the Custom Designs Section. Please email us at email@example.com to get details about your prize :)
And here's our Top Three chosen by the DT members:
#8- Kym Weber
#29 - Anne Marie Hile
Congratulations! Please feel free to grab the blinkie on the sidebar (the code you need is below it) and display it proudly on your blogs! You earned it :)
Congratulations to all our winners!
Make sure to come back on Sunday for a new challenge and freebie :)


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Why does a Southern Drawl Sound Uneducated to Some?
Mark Twain's Classic Huckleberry Finn begins with an explanation to readers:
"In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect ; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect ; the ordinary "Pike-Country" dialect ; and four modified varieties of this last… I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding." (1884)
My article below concerning something we all have–accents– was first published in my blogs for Scientific American and Huffington Post.
Studies have shown that whether you are from the North or South, a Southern twang pegs the speaker as comparatively dimwitted, but also likely to be a nicer person than folks who speak like a Yankee. Stereotypes based on accent are deep rooted and they have profound consequences. Accents influence who we select as friends, who we respect with authority and leadership, where we prefer to live, employment, and to the very real extent our personal aspirations in life as a consequence of self-perception directing ambition in education and other endeavors. Strange, isn't it? From a biological point of view there is no "correct" or "incorrect" accent.
This is not just a smoldering relic from the Civil War; accent-based bias is universal. Even on a tiny island country like the United Kingdom, accents abound and they pigeonhole individuals into strict social strata that have persisted for centuries. I wondered about this when I was swept away by Adele's supreme singing voice but had the bliss shattered rudely when she addressed the audience in her "lowly" Cockney accent. She articulates lyrics beautifully with a perfect American accent, but it was if a different person had sprung out when she started to talk the way everyone does in Tottenham England. I wonder; would Adele have attracted notice outside the walls of a Tottenham pub if that same sterling singing voice resonated with a Cockney accent?
Numerous studies show that we instantly attach cultural stereotypes and subjective judgments about people's knowledge and abilities from hearing their accent in speech. A 2011 study by Rakic and others found that in categorizing people, a person's accent carried more weight than even visual cues to ethnicity. Americans can be taken back when hearing a black person speak with a proper British accent, for example, or be just as perplexed when they discover that a rapper singing with a "black" accent is Caucasian. Interestingly, attributes of character that are attached to different accents are widely shared among the population. In surveys ranking where in the country people speak "correctly" or "incorrectly," the Southern states always get the lowest marks. Italian is judged as sounding beautiful while German sounds ugly. You might presume, viewing human speech like naturalists studying songbird dialects, that people would simply prefer the accent of speech spoken where they grew up, but it's not that simple. Adults from Mississippi rate their own region as relatively low in linguistic "correctness." How can that be?
Katherine Kinzler and Jasmine DeJesus in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago have just published a study of children's attitudes toward accents that provides some surprising answers. Children 5-6 years of age from Chicago and a small town in Tennessee were shown pictures of people accompanied by a brief 3 second audio clip of speech in either a Northern or Southern accent. When asked if they would want to be friends with the person, the Northerners overwhelmingly selected the Northern-accented speakers as friends. Interestingly, the kids from Tennessee had no preference based on accent.
What do you think happened when the young children were asked who was "nicer," "smarter," or "in charge?" The children from Chicago attached these positive attributes to the Northern speakers, but the children from Tennessee were indifferent to how these attributes were associated with people speaking with either accent.
This last result, as I mentioned above, deviates from how Southern adults associate positive attributes to people speaking with a Northern rather than a Southern accent. So the researchers then gave the same test to 10-year-old children. The results after children had aged 4-5 years were quite different. Ten-year-old children from both Chicago and Tennessee thought the Northern-accented individuals were "smarter" and "in charge," and that the Southern-accented individuals were "nicer."
Clearly, children must learn these attitudes from us; that is parents and other adults. This develops in part by the attitudes we subtly convey to our children and by how we adults organize our society and culture. This is where human nature takes a nasty departure from the way songbirds utilize dialect. Our attitudes toward accents are strongly influenced by what we hear in infancy and childhood, but learning and acculturation are imposed on us by subtle indoctrination and experience.
Here's the telling experimental result: When children of either age were asked whether the speaker was "American" or "lives around here," children from Chicago selected Northern rather than Southern speakers as being locals or Americans. The kids from Tennessee did not show any such preference at either age. The authors suggest that Southerners do not categorize speakers of either accent as being alien, because they hear Northern accents at a young age from national news anchors, film and television characters. The kids in Chicago don't have the same opportunity to hear a Southern accent. As they grow up, attend school, and develop social awareness, Southern children begin to associate the Northern accent with people being "in charge and smarter," because these prestigious "celebrities" of high social status and respect speak with a Northern accent. This nurtures a self-perpetuating stereotype which takes root by at least the age of nine.
Preference for the sound of local language is established at birth according to what the fetus hears as its auditory nervous system is developing, but stereotypes based on accents, whether a regional English accent or a foreign accent, are learned in childhood. The subtle attitudes we attach to accents have a profound impact on others, and on ourselves.
Thanks Adele for the music and the insight!
Kinzler, K.D., and DeJames, J.M. (2012) Northern = smart and Southern = nice: The development of accent attitudes in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in advance of print on-line.
2 Comments
Such an interesting read! I really love accents and dialects and the many cultural stereotypes they cause.
So, if the case for Southern children is that they begin to believe they aren't as smart as other people simply because they speak more slowly and/or draw out the syllables in a word, how does a parent fix that silliness? My son is much smarter than an average boy his age & I'll not have him looking down on himself just because of something as backward and judgmental as a drawl in his speech. He's 9.


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Heroes of the Orlando Shooting Show the Good in Humanity
Out of the senseless murder of 49 people in Orlando have sprung stories of everyday people who became heroes.
The former Marine working as a bouncer at Pulse nightclub saved between 60-70 people, but he is one of many who did what they could to help others amidst the chaos.
Josh McGill fled the scene after hearing gunshots, but soon noticed a man, Pulse bartender Rodney Sumter Jr., who had been shot in the back. McGill grabbed Sumter and pulled him to safety behind a car where he took off his shirt and applied to Sumter to curb the blood flow.
Christopher Hansen is another man who came to the aid of others when he carried a woman who was shot to safety.
Ray Rivera, who works as a DJ under name DJ Infinite at Pulse, came to the aid of a woman who had taken cover under his booth along with another man who wound up running away on his own.
Edward Sotomayor Jr., known by the nickname Tophat Eddie, died trying to protect his boyfriend from the gunfire.
Samuel Maldonado, who was hiding under a table with his boyfriend, covered the mouth of a woman so her screams would not be heard and put them at risk of being targets as shooter Omar Mateen came toward them. Mateen wound up turning around and shooting people he'd already hit.
Single mother Brenda Marquez McCool, 49, died while dancing at the club with one of her 11 children. A two-time cancer survivor, she posted a video shortly before the shooting began. After the gunfire broke out, McCool reportedly pushed her son away so he could run to safety. He wound up surviving and another one of her kids said, "She's a hero. She's a mother of 11. [She's] just a superhero." A GoFundMe page has been set up for her.
There are others who've tried to help, as well. There are the comfort dogs who made their way to Orlando to assist the grief-stricken, as well as the scores of people who turned out to donate blood in the aftermath of the shooting.


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Suppose you have a dataset with 2 terafeatures (we only count nonzero entries in a datamatrix), and want to learn a good linear predictor in a reasonable amount of time. How do you do it? As a learning theorist, the first thing you do is pray that this is too much data for the number of parameters—but that's not the case, there are around 16 billion examples, 16 million parameters, and people really care about a high quality predictor, so subsampling is not a good strategy.
Alekh visited us last summer, and we had a breakthrough (see here for details), coming up with the first learning algorithm I've seen that is provably faster than any future single machine learning algorithm. The proof of this is simple: We can output a optimal-up-to-precision linear predictor faster than the data can be streamed through the network interface of any single machine involved in the computation.
It is necessary but not sufficient to have an effective communication infrastructure. It is necessary but not sufficient to have a decent programming language, because parallel programming is hard. It is necessary but not sufficient to have a good optimization approach. The combination says "yikes", because you need to know many things to design an effective new system.
For communication infrastructures, the two most prevalent approaches are MPI and MapReduce, both of which have substantial drawbacks for machine learning with lots of data.
- MPI suffers because it has no fault tolerance by default and because it has a poor understanding of where data is, implying that data must be either manually placed on local nodes, or the first step in every computation is "partition the data across the cluster" which is very undesirable from a communication complexity and programming complexity standpoint. These significantly limit the scale that you can work at to ~100 nodes in practice, because the economics of clusters make sharing unavoidable at larger scales. When the cluster is shared, preshuffling the data is awkward to impossible and you must expect that some nodes will run slower than others because they will be executing other jobs. This limitation on reliability kicks in much sooner than disk read failures or node failures.
- MapReduce suffers because the setup and teardown costs are significant. Measured directly, this is often on the order of a minute, associated with interacting with the scheduler and communicating the program to a large number of nodes. But indirectly, this can be radically worse, as any map-reduce job can be held in limbo while waiting for free nodes to work on. And commonly we need to execute many MapReduce iterations to achieve high quality prediction.
MapReduce has another more subtle flaw: using it requires refactoring your code into a sequence of map and reduce operations. This is significantly annoying, because right good learning algorithms is pretty difficult in the first place. MapReduce has a third flaw: it encourages inefficient optimization paradigm. In particular, while you can phrase many learning algorithms as statistical query learning algorithms, doing so is energy inefficient, up to O(examples) in extreme cases.
Since the drawbacks of MPI and MapReduce differ, we can try to create a solution which eliminates all of drawbacks, which a Hadoop-compatible AllReduce does. Cherry picking from each we get:
- MPI: The Allreduce function. The starting state for AllReduce is n nodes each with a number, and the end state is all nodes having the sum of all numbers.
- MapReduce: Conceptual simplicity. One easy to understand function is enough.
- MPI: No need to refactor code. You just sprinkle allreduce in a few locations in your single machine code.
- MapReduce: Data locality. We just hijack the MapReduce infrastructure to execute a map-only job where each process executes on the node with the data.
- MPI: Ability to use local storage (or RAM). Hadoop itself gobbles large amounts of RAM by default because it uses Java. And, in any case, you don't have an effective large scale learning algorithm if it dies every time the data on a single node exceeds available RAM. Instead, you want to create a temporary file on the local disk and allow it to be cached in RAM by the OS, if that's possible.
- MapReduce: Automatic cleanup of local resources. Temporary files are automatically nuked.
- MPI: Fast optimization approaches remain within the conceptual scope. Allreduce, because it's a function call, does not conceptually limit online learning approaches as discussed below. MapReduce conceptually forces statistical query style algorithms. In practice, this can be walked around, but that's annoying.
- MapReduce: Robustness. We don't captures all the robustness of MapReduce which can succeed even during a gunfight in the datacenter. But we don't generally need that: it's easy to use Hadoop's speculative execution approach to deal with the slow node problem and use delayed initialization to get around all startup failures giving you something with >99% success rate on a running time reliable to within a factor of 2.
One function (all_reduce) is not a programming language. But since it's written in C, it is easily encapsulated and added to any existing programming language giving you a complete language. To test this hypothesis, I visited Clement for a day, where we connected things to make Allreduce work in Lua twice—once with an online approach and once with an LBFGS optimization approach for convolutional neural networks. As a parallel programming paradigm, it's amazingly easier than many other approaches, because you take your existing code and figure out which pieces of state to synchronize. It's superior enough that I've now eliminated the multithreaded and parallel online learning approaches within Vowpal Wabbit. This approach is also great in terms of the amount of incremental learning required—you just need to learn one function to be able to create useful parallel machine learning algorithms. The only thing easier than learning one function is learning none, which you can do for linear prediction by just using VW. Incidentally, we designed the AllReduce code so that Hadoop is not a requirement—you just need to do a bit of extra scripting and lose some of the benefits discussed above when running this on a workstation cluster or a single machine.
You also need to get optimization approaches right. Two canonical but very different optimization algorithms are stochastic gradient descent and LBFGS. Understanding the weaknesses of these algorithm is critical even though often not discussed by their proponents. SGD approaches tend to have two drawbacks: the right choice of various hyperparameters can be annoying. We've mostly eliminated this drawback in VW using a learning rate that is tuned to automatically work in various ways. The other drawback is that they generally aren't great at dealing with noise. This is tricky to deal with in general, because the algorithms only see one example at a time. Leon Bottou is working to eliminate this last drawback, but my impression is that we're not quite there yet. LBFGS on the other hand is great at dealing with noise but suffers significantly in it's early convergence rate where SGD is extremely effective. Again, we can combine these approaches in an obvious way: use online learning at the beginning to warmstart LBFGS to integrate out the noise. In practice, the online learning gets you 95%-99% of the way there and then LBFGS nails the last bit of performance.
For the problem I mentioned at the beginning, we can learn in about an hour using a kilonode, implying an overall throughput of 500 megafeatures/s, which is about a factor of 5 faster than any single network interface (1 gigabit/s). This is substantially greater scaling than any of the other algorithms in the Scaling up Machine Learning book (see here for a comparison).
The general area of parallel learning has grown significantly, as indicated by the Big Learning workshop at NIPS, and there are a number of very different approaches people are taking. From what I understand of all other approaches, this approach is a significant step up within it's scope of applicability. Let's define that scope as learning (= tuning large numbers of parameters to be simultaneously optimal on test data) from a large dataset on a cluster or datacenter. At the borders:
- For counting based learning algorithms such as the NLP folks sometimes use, a MapReduce approach appears superior as MapReduce is straightforwardly excellent for counting.
- For smaller datasets with computationally intense models, GPU approaches seem very compelling.
- For broadly distributed datasets (not all in one cluster), asynchronous approaches become unavoidably necessary. That's scary in practice, because you lose the ability to debug.
- The model needs to fit into memory. If that's not the case, then other approaches are required.
I also expect Hadoop Allreduce is useful across many more tasks than just machine learning. Optimization problems are an easy example, but I suspect there are a number of iterative computation problems where allreduce can be very effective. While it might appear a limited operation, you can easily do average, weighted average, max, etc… And, the scope of allreduce is also easily broadened with an arbitrary reduce function, as per MPI's version. The Allreduce code itself is not yet native in Hadoop, so you'll need to grab it from the VW source code which has a BSD license. I've been encouraged by discussions with Milind suggesting it may become native soon.
Update: CACM Crosspost.


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MINNEAPOLIS, MN (April 20, 2009) – Vaddio, the leading manufacturer and OEM distributor of specialty PTZ cameras and high-end camera control systems, announced today the release of the first single CCD, high quality HD Robotic PTZ camera, the Vaddio ClearVIEW HD-18.
"Vaddio has always built technology around other manufacturer's PTZ cameras, from our Quick-Connect CAT-5 cabling systems that make installation easier, to our ProductionVIEW line of video switchers and joystick camera control systems," explained Rob Sheeley, President and CEO of Vaddio. "We designed ClearVIEW HD-18 to fill a void in the robotic camera market; a single CCD, high-definition PTZ camera with a high power zoom lens."
The groundbreaking ClearVIEW HD-18 is equipped with a 1/3?, 1.3 megapixel CCD imaging sensor, a glass multi-element wide dynamic zoom lens (18x optical), a tally light and a 1.8-lux rating, providing superior images in a wide range of high-definition video applications. The HD-18 is the only multi-format PTZ camera that delivers component HD in 1080p, 1080i or 720p and simultaneous SD video. Control runs via VISCA command protocol or the IR remote that is supplied. High-torque, micro-stepper precision robotics enhance performance with smooth pan/tilt operation for accurate camera movement and control. The HD-18 is compatible with any Polycom or TANDBERG videoconferencing codec.
In addition to the ClearVIEW HD-18, Vaddio is also launching two Quick-Connect CAT-5 cabling systems for the ClearVIEW HD-18 camera – WallVIEW HD-18 and WallVIEW CCU HD-18. WallVIEW HD-18 provides power to the camera, and component HD video back to the Quick-Connect SR up to 100 feet over a single CAT-5 cable. The WallVIEW HD-18 utilizes the EZ-Port on the back of the camera, making installation even easier. WallVIEW CCU HD-18 is a camera control unit that allows the user to adjust red and blue gain, pedestal, gamma, chroma, knee, iris and gain on the camera module and allows up to three scene settings to be stored in the CCU. The Quick-Connect CCU unit provides power, control and video up to 500 feet over CAT-5 cabling to the camera. An EZIM CCU card for power and video, plugs into the back of the camera to make installation easier.
Wide Dynamic Zoom Lens
The glass multi-element Wide Dynamic Zoom Lens captures the wide field-of-view necessary for smaller corporate boardrooms, yet also excels in larger venues where the camera is placed in the far back.
Boasting an impressive 5.2mm – 84.6mm 18x zoom lens with macro zoom capability, the high-performance ClearVIEW HD-18 offers outstanding wide-to-telephoto coverage to capture subjects with remarkable clarity and sharpness. The zoom macro capability zeroes in on subjects as close as 2 inches at the 4.7mm wide-angle setting and 38 inches in the 84.6mm fully extended telephoto range.
"Right Light" Technology
The "Right Light" compensation function in the ClearVIEW HD-18 adjusts image brightness levels 60 times per second to guarantee correct monitoring of native brightness levels in the scene. This results in a brighter image when needed for darker scenes and richer blacks for brighter scenes.
Selectable Camera Resolution
Featuring a built-in FPGA, the ClearVIEW HD-18 is the only camera on the market offering the freedom to choose any resolution. Users no longer have to settle for a camera with only 720p, 1080i or 1080p. The ClearVIEW HD-18 gives them their choice of all three.
An American Revolution
The only Robotic PTZ camera designed and made in the United States, the Vaddio
ClearVIEW HD-18 also sets a standard for the world. It delivers comprehensive HD options, high quality and uncompromising performance at a price everyone can afford.
About Vaddio:
Vaddio is the leading manufacturer and OEM distributor of specialty PTZ cameras and high-end camera control systems used in the broadcasting, audio/visual and videoconferencing industry. Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, Vaddio also has operations throughout the Americas, as well as sales and support partners throughout the world. More information can be found on the Vaddio website, www.vaddio.com or at (800) 572.2011.


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Here is what we created this week. Let us know what you think. We hope by providing these materials to you free of charge, it will make your life easier!
All our printables are in one easy download. Just click the image above to download a single zip file of all the printables. (Can't unzip it. Try Hamster Free Zip Archiver approved by Amber's husband. Remember to download carefully.)
Here are the printables included in this unit:
- Spin & Graph
- Size Sort
- D is for Dinosaur
- Beginning Writing/Cutting Practice
- Shadow Match
- Size Sequencing
- Patterns
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- Number Order Puzzle
- Spelling Page
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- Which is Different?
- Memory Verse
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A Prophet Without Honor Home > Historical Sources Describe Jesus > Early Biographers Depict Jesus > Matthew`s Biography of Jesus > A Prophet Without Honor |
My Workspace
A Prophet Without Honor
It happened that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there. Coming into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom, and these mighty works? Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? Aren't all of his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all of these things?" They were offended by him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and in his own house." He didn't do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Matthew 13:53-58


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Blonde Bombshell Andrea Prince
We're pretty confident you'll be blown away by this new gallery of the incredible Andrea Prince! This blonde bombshell shows off her killer body and amazing curves in some hot lingerie and a sexy ripped shirt.
You can follow the beautiful Andrea on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Enjoy!
All photos by Edwin Villanueva Evolve Photography.
Bullz-Eye.com brings you some of the sexiest Internet Models from around the web, along with producing our own original glamour photography in channels like our Featured Model and Girl Next Door sections. Check everything out starting on our Opposite Sex page. Contact us if you want your photos featured or if you'd like to shoot with us (all models must be at least 18 years old.)
Tags: Andrea Prince, blonde bombshell, Internet babes, Internet hotties, Internet models


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1 prepared graham cracker or chocolate cookie crust
1 brick cream cheese (at room temperature)
1/2 tub of cool whip topping
1 cup of chocolate chips (milk or semi-sweet)
sugar- optional (I did not use any sugar)
2-3 Tbs of milk
First melt your chocolate with the milk. You can do this in the microwave in 30 second intervals. Once the milk and chocolate melt together to make a creamy chocolate sauce set aside. Then cream your cream cheese brick and add your melted chocolate (Note: if you want this very sweet you can cream your sugar with the cream cheese during this step). Blend well with an electric mixer. Finally fold in your cool whip topping. Fill your pie shell with your chocolate cheesecake mixture and for some added texture and garnish top with some extra chocolate chips. Allow to chill in the fridge overnight. Slice and Serve. Enjoy.


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Update at 3:16 p.m. ET. An Attack On All Of NATO:
The tension between Turkey and Syria has heightened this afternoon. First Turkey said that Syria had fired at another one of its planes; this one was involved in a search rescue operation of the war plane shot down by Syria last week.
Then, Haaretz reports, after a long cabinet meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said that Turkey "would protect itself, within the framework of international law, against what it called Syria's 'hostile action.'"
Arinc added that Syria's action would "not go unpunished."
Now, we're getting word from the AP that Turkey will ask NATO to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty during its meeting tomorrow.
Under that article, an attack on any member is considered an attack on all members.
"The announcement came on the eve of a meeting by NATO's governing body to discuss the incident. Despite deep frustration among many NATO countries over the conflict in Syria, where the opposition says President Bashar Assad's crackdown on an increasingly armed popular uprising has killed 14,000 people, it's highly unlikely the military alliance will take armed action against the Arab state."
As we reported earlier, Turkey had already invoked article 4 of the Treaty, which prescribes that "any ally can request consultations whenever, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened."
Our Original Post Continues:
A spokesman for Syria's foreign ministry said his country "holds no hostility towards the Turkish people."
According Syria's state news agency, SANA, Jihad Makdessi said Syria shot at a Turkish war plane because it veered into Syrian airspace.
"The Syrian response was an act of defense of our sovereignty carried out by anti-aircraft machinegun which has a maximum range of 2.5 km," Makdessi said today.
Syria is trying to diffuse the standoff with Turkey, which has called a special meeting with its NATO allies to talk about the incident. As The Washington Post's Liz Sly reports, Turkey's NATO summons is a "move that potentially opens the door to international military intervention in the Syrian crisis for the first time."
The Post adds:
"'It was a hostile act,' Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said in a telephone interview. 'They shot down a plane over international waters, and this is unacceptable.' Turkey sent a diplomatic note to Syria stating that under international law, Turkey 'reserves the right to respond,' he added.
"In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the downing 'a brazen and unacceptable act' and said the United States was consulting with its allies and partners regarding 'next steps' to be taken against Syria, at a time when a U.N. effort to address the spiraling bloodshed inside Syria through diplomacy is faltering."
Turkey is set to make a presentation to NATO on Tuesday.
In other news, Reuters is reporting that a Syrian general and 38 soldiers defected to Turkey overnight.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Ryan is the Global EY Private Leader and passionately serves several of our largest clients. As an advisor to ambitious CEOs, owners and entrepreneurs of leading private and family enterprises, he supports some of our most prominent consumer products and retail clients as well as middle-market clients in unlocking their fullest potential.
A partner with more than 20 years of transaction and client advisory experience across start-ups and multibillion dollar organizations, he has also worked with clients based in China, India, Brazil, Germany and the UK.
He received a BS in Accounting from the University of Oklahoma, where he is a board member of the Price College of Business and Steed School of Accounting. He is passionate about giving back to his alma mater and his home city, Dallas.
How Ryan is building a better working world
"For more than 100 years, EY has supported business leaders in achieving their ambitions. Our experience working with the world's fastest-growing, private businesses continues to yield unrivaled results as a trusted business advisor, enabling long-term growth, industry disruption and the ability for business owners and CEOs to realize their goals, whatever their ambitions may be.


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QUIC Drop-in Virtual Advising for International Students [ONLINE]
Find on Campus Map
QUIC's International Student Advisors (ISAs) understand the unique experiences that international students, and newcomers to Canada, can have as they start their studies and build their lives in a new country. We are here to provide you with advice/guidance/information to assist in your transition to studying at Queen's and living in Kingston. We specialize in supporting international students, new Canadians, Permanent Residents, and their families.
We can assist with the following and more:
– Learning to navigate the local and academic culture of Queen's and Kingston;
– Feelings of homesickness, loneliness and isolation;
– Understanding and accessing health services;
QUIC ISAs are Regulated International Student Immigration Advisors and can provide you with information on immigration regulations as they relate to your studies in Canada, including:
– Study permits;
– Working on or off campus eligibility;
– Visitor Visa;
– Spousal Work Permits.
- If this event listing appears to have errors or inaccuracies, please notify the event's Contact (see above).


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Ready to find out more?
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (SIGs)
EFMD's Special Interest Groups are highly focused problem-driven learning groups that allow members of corporate learning organisations to mobilise the collective intelligence of the Learning & Development community to build solutions to common challenges.
The EFMD SIG design is based on a "problem centric" collaborative approach in which a temporary community tackle a set of agreed shared challenges. EFMD provides high-level experts to facilitate the process and a member of the community (prime peer) is initially identified to raise and highlight current challenges.
A practical approach and methodology is used with a workplan that is agreed with participating organisations at the start of the SIG. The outputs from the SIG are a set of tangible deliverables such as defined strategies and approaches, roadmaps, tools, case studies and output from expert research and advice.
The outcomes of each SIG are shared with the wider network (EFMD members and non-members) through the Corporate Advisory Seminar and also the Future Series Webinars, which are available throughout the year.


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Update: The iPhone 5S has been ousted by the iPhone SE - check out our iPhone SE review.
This is Apple's 2013 flagship device, now much more affordable. The iPhone 5S still has a lot going for it, especially if you're a fan of the compact 4-inch display and are looking to save a bit of cash.
The iPhone 5S was at one point Apple's most powerful phone, though that award has now been handed over to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but it still packs a punch and shouldn't instantly be discounted because it's a little on the old side.
Now firmly in the mid-range, the iPhone 5S has a playground of worthy rivals to battle with like the HTC One Mini 2 and Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini and even low priced devices like the Motorola Moto G (2014), does it still hold its own?
iPhone 5S: Features
Unquestionably, the standout features of the iPhone 5S are its hardware inclusions and upgrades, namely Touch ID, the M7 motion co-processor, 64-bit architecture and the iSight camera.
Now, fingerprint scanning is a pretty boring subject and our only real day-to-day experience of using the technology is with those digit readers built into laptops – a slide-to-unlock affair that worked 60% of the time.
So, when Apple bought AuthenTec, spawning rumours of similar technology being integrated into its devices, we weren't exactly enamoured. However, Apple has done its age-old trick of turning a dull feature into something resembling sexy.
Introduced to replace passcode authentication for unlocking the phone and making iTunes purchases, Touch ID is a joy to use. The sensor is built right into the Home button and registration of a thumb, finger or both – five digits can be registered – takes about a minute using a most-pleasing enrolment system.
Once recorded, Touch ID has 360-degree, readability of registered digits, meaning it'll unlock your phone no matter what way up you're holding the handset. The key selling point, however, is the simplicity and speed of identification.
Check out our iPhone 5s Touch ID demo walkthrough video:
You don't have to use Touch ID, but after a few hours with it, the mere thought of entering a four-digit passcode to unlock the device seemed so passé. And this is so easy.
Apple is keen to point out that it doesn't store fingerprint details in iCloud or any of its remote servers. It's all contained within the hardware, meaning nobody can get at your data. Even the NSA.
With iOS 8 you can also use TouchID to replace the passcode for opening many third-party apps, like password manager 1Password and this is a feature we love.
Like the GPU that bears the graphical strain from a computer's processor, the M7 Coprocessor takes the weight of motion measurements - compass, accelerometer and gyroscope - away from the A7 CPU.
Apple claims this will provide a 6x power saving for (iOS 7 and 8-updated) apps that record motion - Nike+, Strava, Moves, etc - but this dedicated chip can also tell what state of movement you're in and will adjust the iPhone 5S accordingly.
To test this, we used Apple Maps to plot an A to B route that required driving and walking. Upon reaching our destination, and exiting the car, the navigation switched from car to foot, taking us down one-way streets that wouldn't have been possible in a motor.
If the Coprocessor is clever enough to know where you are and what you're doing (to an extent), it could pave the way for the next wave of apps and features. One example we were given was this: if your iPhone 5S is put in a gym locker while you pump iron, it knows that a) you're not using it b) there's no network coverage c) it's stationary.
The iPhone could then power itself right down, switching off 3G/4G, the screen and so forth until the time it's picked up again, where it would come back to life, ready to take that call from your PT asking why you sat in the sauna for two hours rather than making yourself sick doing burpees.
Another improvement over the iPhone 5 is the A7 CPU/64-bit architecture combo. On paper, Apple claims the power couple will deliver speed twice that of the A6 chip and vastly improved OpenGL ES 3.0-compatible graphics.
In the 12 months since the the iPhone 5S was released, a number of apps and games have been released that can really push the 64-bit hardware, though we're expecting a lot more now the iPhone 6 is here packing a faster A8 64-bit chip.
Even with the release of the iPhone 6, the iPhone 5S doesn't feel sluggish, in fact the iOS 8 update speeds up animations and overall performance.
For a while Apple was the only company in the game producing 64-bit mobile devices, but in recent weeks we've seen a few running Android see the light of day. Both the Nexus 9 and Nvidia Shield Tablet use the tech and Android 5.0 Lollipop supports it natively, though we might have to wait until 2015 for a raft of phones using it.
We can report that the A7 chip has definitely made the Camera app a lot zippier on the iPhone 5S. Real-time previews, on-the-fly effects processing, slo-mo, autofocus (see more in iSight, below) are faster and free from lag or judder. For us, this app demonstrates the most noticeable speed improvement in the iPhone 5S's armory.
iPhone 5S: Camera
The other evident area of improvement over the iPhone 5 and differentiation between the 5c lies with the new iSight camera. Rather than upping the megapixel count, to match that of the Sony Xperia Z and Samsung Galaxy S4 and the staggering 41MP on the Nokia Lumia 1020, Apple has opted to increase the 8MP (the same megapixel count as the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus) sensor by 15% and individual pixels to 1.5 microns. The aperture has also had a spec bump to f/2.2, increasing light sensitivity by 33%.
While that's all well and good on paper, it's in the wild where these claims count. Mercifully, in Apple's case, the results are noticeable.
There's a new sense of depth to shots, especially with close-up subjects but It doesn't quite have the low-light performance of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, due to the lack of image stabilisation. It still manages to compete with the top devices on the market though, which you can't say for many phones released over a year ago.
iPhone 5s camera test video:
Other iPhone 5S-specific camera features include; auto image stabilisation (steady), 3x video zoom (bit blurry), 30fps panorama with varying light control (megabyte-y), burst mode at 10 photos per second (cheeky) and, best of all, slo-motion video capture, which is absolutely brilliant. It's the iPhone 5S's Panorama moment and you can expect to see your social feeds filling up with quarter-speed 120fps 720p footage very shortly.
The fact that the iPhone 5S can process it all on the fly is testament to the A7 chip. Video quality is outstanding and, even if capturing your child's meteoric face-plant (we speak from experience), all emotional guilt is washed away as you become Spielberg for a second, seizing every last crunch in superb clarity and detail. Disclaimer: no children were harmed in the testing of this iPhone.
Another vast improvement is with the front-facing FaceTime HD camera. An improved backside illumination sensor improves video calls in lower light and still shots look cleaner than ever. Video records in 720p.
iPhone 5S: Screen
Swanking the same 4-inch, 1136x640 at 326ppi screen as its predecessor, and matching that of the 5C, the iPhone 5S display feels small in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S5 (5.1-inch), the HTC One M8 (5-inch) and even the bargain priced Moto G (2014) (5-inch).
Screen quality is pin-sharp but, after watching films on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which have 4.7 and 5.5-inch Retina HD screens respectively, you really notice the drop in size and resolution. However, the Retina screen really shows off iOS 8's bright UI, with popping colours and inky blacks.
iPhone 5S: Size and build
The iPhone 5S is basically a supercharged iPhone 5, so the weight, size and overall build are pretty much identical – 7.6mm deep, 123.8mm tall and 112g in bulk. That makes it slimmer than the HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5, but not quite as slender as the iPhone 6, which measures in at 6.9mm.
It's still lightweight but feels reassuringly premium with its three colour variants - Gold, Silver and Space Grey – adding to the mix and differentiating it once more from the colour-coordinated 5C.
The Gold finish may be too bling-y for some but if it suffers the same chamfered edge scuffing as its predecessor, a lighter colour will conceal it better than the darker Silver and Space Gray.
Apple is selling its own dyed leather iPhone 5S case in a multitude of shades for £35, which turns it into a 5C-looking device, but if we were splashing out more bunce on the flagship model, we'd rather forgo the jacket and show it off.
iPhone 5S: Performance
Using the iPhone 5S is a joy. Multi-tasking is quick, navigation is innate and it still feels slicker than Windows Phone or Android, though we may have to reassess this once we've had a good play around 5.0 Lollipop.
Phone calls are clear and we didn't experience any call-dropping in our testing. Sound quality is on par with the iPhone 5, but wireless connectivity (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) seems to be a bit more stable than before - Personal Hotspot connected a lot quicker, too.
The iPhone 5S is available in 16GB and 32GB versions, with the 64GB option dropped with the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. (see price below).
iPhone 5S: iOS 8
Within the iPhone 5S and each new device shipping with iOS 8, you get Apple's iWork apps - Pages, Numbers and Keynote – for free.
Swiping down on the homescreen reveals the Search bar, while swiping apps up while in multi-tasking view will close apps.
Swipe up on the homescreen and you'll be presented with a handy shortcut of features ranging from activating Aeroplane mode to adjusting brightness to turning on the torch.
iOS 8 also brings with it plenty of other updates, including handy widgets in the notification tray, apps that can finally talk to each other (editing photos with a third-party app, right from the native Photos app) and plenty of new tools for developers to play around with. Our favourite new addition though is Continuity, which brings iOS and OSX closer together, letting you start a message on your phone and pick it straight up on your Mac. It's clever and actually works like a charm.
iPhone 5S: 4G
The iPhone 5S has a wider range of LTE bands that every UK provider should be able to support. We tested the 5s on EE's 4G network and, like the iPhone 5, experienced blisteringly fast internet connections and downloads.
Of course, your actual speeds will depend on a wide breadth of parameters, but you should hope to achieve uploads and download speeds in excess of 15/20Mbps.
The pace of LTE really proves its worth when using FaceTime HD and streaming content.
iPhone 5S: Battery
Apple quotes ten hours talk time on 3G, 250-hours in standby, ten hours of internet use on 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi, with video playback running to 10 hours and audio stretching to 40 hours.
In our real-world testing, we found the iPhone 5S mimics that of its predecessor – great in standby, draining when using 3G/4G and performing graphically intensive tasks. For example, we started the day (10.20am) with 82% of battery and after a 20-minute TomTom navigation, an hour's worth of on/off slo-motion and regular video and photo capture, and a bit of web surfing, by 12.37am we were down to 4% and in desperate need of a recharge.
In terms of the competition, the iPhone 5S definitely falls behind when put up against devices boasting large batteries, like the LG G3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and can't keep up with the iPhone 6, let alone the 6 Plus.
iPhone 5S: Verdict
Apple is clearly looking to future-proof its handset while offering developers the opportunity to take advantages of its 64-bit architecture, A7 chip and M7 Coprocessor.
But, as ever, you're going to have to pay for the privilege. Off contract and SIM-free, prices range from £459 for the 16GB model to £499 for the 32GB version. While the price has dropped since release, it is far from the best value smartphone around. For example, the upcoming Nexus 6 packs a 6-inch 2K display, Snapdragon 805 processor, 13mp snapper and Android 5.0 Lollipop and costs £499, again with 32GB of internal storage.
The iPhone 5S is still a great phone, with a fantastic camera, TouchID and a 64-bit processor that still isn't common place today.
iPhone 5S release date: Out now
iPhone 5S price: £459 (16GB), £499 (32GB)