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PhasersPhoton TorpedoesOther WeaponsShields & Cloaking Tactics
Phaser beams
There is only one definite fact about phasers, that they release stored energy and need to be recharged at latest after some shots, as opposed to lasers whose energy output is continuous. A phaser beam probably doesn't consist of charged particles (ions) either, because the beam would quickly disperse due to the mutual repulsion of equally charged ions and because it would be rather easy to shield a ship against them with a static electromagnetic field. The shields in Star Trek, however, are always high-frequency fields. And according to the TNGTM they are not electromagnetic, but of gravitational nature.
It is even more nebulous of what exactly the beams of phasers consist since VOY: "Scorpion" when the weapons were suddenly capable of firing macroscopic objects in the form of nanoprobes. No matter how hard I try, I can't imagine how they could survive in there, unless the phaser worked similar to a transporter, meaning that some sort of annular confinement beam can be added or is intrinsically available, just as the transporter beam that keeps macroscopic objects in one piece.
Phasers at warp
We have occasionally seen phasers being fired at warp, like in VOY: "Message in a Bottle" or DS9: "Treachery, Faith and the Great River" and even the purportedly primitive phase cannons in ENT: "Shockwave" and "Future Tense". The concept of firing at warp dates back to the days of TOS when this was done repeatedly, like in TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver", "The Ultimate Computer" or "Elaan of Troyius", although it seems to have been silently revised by the time of TNG since when it seemed possible only occasionally. Certainly we wouldn't assume that the Federation somehow lost or gave up this immense tactical advantage.
If the phaser is anything like a laser in that it releases photons, it has to be restricted to exactly the speed of light. A particle beam consisting of ions, on the other hand, could reach any desired speed well below c. A confinement beam, like already mentioned above, could be the solution to this problem too. If this beam extends the warp bubble around the phaser beam, the beam itself would be able to travel at FTL speed. A similar technology is used for FTL processing in 24th century computer cores, according to the TNGTM, and the warp sustainer engine of a photon torpedo (see further below) may work like this too in that it "grabs" the warp field from a starship. The problem is that this kind of confinement would have to be still another one than the confinement beam that would allow objects like nanoprobes to "ride" on a phaser beam like in VOY: "Scorpion".
Probably in response to previous inconsistencies, the DS9TM explicitly mentions the possibility of firing phasers at warp, thanks to the recent development of an "ACB-jacketed beam device". This certainly doesn't explain the problems of phasers at warp in TOS or even the phase cannons at warp in Enterprise, or would the freshly developed weapon at a previously unachievable speed of Warp 5 already have this obviously advanced feature? Only on a few occasions like TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver", when the target (the alien buoy) was so close to the ship that they may have been in a common warp bubble, we can argue that this would be much like firing phasers at rest.
Mark Temple suggests about phasers at warp: "Warp fields around a ship alter space around the ship. Within the warp field, the local reference frame is still sublight, explaining how the ship and crew can still operate normally. Firing a light speed limited weapon outside of such a field would be pointless. Once it leaves the area of altered space, it would drop back down to normal speeds, and the ship would overtake the energy as it travels along. But within the warp field, it would behave normally.
This means that if two ships were to get close enough to overlap their warp fields, they'd share the same reference frames and thus could fire light speed weapons at one another normally. The visuals of ships fighting at warp usually depict such close quarters combat, with ships closing to within one or two ship lengths of each other, effectively point blank range compared to most depictions of non-warp combat. Overlapping warp fields would be possible as early as ENT, and in the 2200's warp combat appears to occur at even closer distances between ships than in later eras.
The relative rarity of employing phasers at warp in TNG, compared to their use in ENT, TOS, DS9, and VOY could represent a tactical doctrine issue, not a technological limitation. Since closing to overlap your warp field requires you to get so close to the enemy, it places you in a poor tactical position. Any advantage your vessel has as the result of superior targeting ability or superior effective weapons range is lost in such a close range battle. And it places you within weapons range of the opposing vessel. Warp battles in TNG apparently rely more on photon torpedoes more than phasers. Weapons that are capable of sustaining a warp field of their own, giving not only greater effective range, but requiring less precise navigation on the part of the firing vessel. The return to the use of phasers at warp could represent another tactical change, either from a technological advancement (such as the "annular confinement beam") or just a switch to a more aggressive combat doctrine.
In "Star Trek Into Darkness" the Enterprise runs from the Vengeance. Khan says, "If you think you're safe at warp, you're wrong." A bit later Admiral Marcus attacks the Enterprise. This insinuates that weapons are generally considered useless at warp, and that the Vengeance is an exception.
In LOW: "The Stars at Night" the drone ships of the Texas class fire at the Cerritos at warp. We can't tell whether this is considered unusual.
Photon Torpedoes
Glow of photon torpedoes
In The Original Series photon torpedoes only appeared as light pulses, fired from the Enterprise's sensor dome on the ventral side of the saucer. Based only on this visual effect we could presume that photon torpedoes were meant to be just packets of light at the time, without a clear shape and possibly without any kind of a solid projectile involved. The first time we could see a photon torpedo before it was launched was in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". Here the torpedo is a solid object, and one that is completely dark and opaque. It doesn't look like it could emit light when it is fired. Yet, the red light effect of the photon torpedo in space remained essentially consistent with the one of TOS throughout the movies and the three series set in the 24th century, the only real variation being that sometimes there was a trail (a bit as if the light effect were due to air friction) and sometimes not. On the other hand, we could see the dark and solid torpedoes on several occasions. The same applies to quantum torpedoes, only that the light effect is white/blue.
It is obvious that the solid torpedo was introduced in "Star Trek II" in the first place to serve as a coffin for Mr. Spock, and perhaps that purpose was even the reason why torpedoes (with the exception of those from the 22nd century) are still black. Since the torpedoes are accelerated in the launcher, the red glow may hint at excess plasma that surrounds the torpedo after the launch. But we can often see the torpedoes for several seconds, and we would expect such a kind of plasma glow to vanish sooner. Alternatively, we could imagine that the warp sustainer engine in the torpedo (according to the TNGTM) is responsible for the light. The probe in TNG: "The Emissary" that carried K'Ehleyr at warp and that is a design very similar to a photo torpedo (in fact, it's the same prop) does not emit any light though when it comes into sight, still at warp. So it remains somewhat of a mystery why the photon torpedoes are so bright. This is especially odd if we accept that at usual combat distances they need a couple of seconds to impact, and the glow would only make it easier for the enemy to target them.
Speeds of photon torpedoes
The TNGTM suggests that, when the ship is at warp itself, the warp sustainer engine of photon torpedoes may keep the torpedo at warp (as seen, for instance, in TNG: "Best of Both Worlds"). When the ship is not at warp, the torpedoes would be fired at speeds slower than light too. Still, we may assume that the driver coils of the torpedo tube accelerate the projectile to a very high speed, probably a considerable fraction of the speed of light.
Note The TNGTM states that the sustainer engine gives a torpedo another boost after it has been launched, but figures for the acceleration accomplished with the driver coils inside the ship are not given at all. According to the book, the formula vmax = vl+0.75vl/c applies for a torpedo fired at low sublight speeds, where vl is the launch velocity (probably of the torpedo itself and not of the ship!) and vmax the final cruise speed of the torpedo. This formula is wrong because the dimension of the term 0.75vl/c is not a speed, but a speed ratio. It seems as if the sustainer engine could accelerate the torpedo to 1.75vl (I have simply removed the faulty 1/c factor) which is also stated in the text. However, we are not told to what speed vl the launcher may accelerate the torpedo in the first place.
As it looks on screen, most notably in "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country", the photon torpedoes always need several seconds from the launch to the impact. If the target is several kilometers away, their speed would be only a few thousand kilometers per hour, not faster than a present-day missile. Well, we have to take into account the "dramaturgic" close distance of the fighting ships too (see further below). Still, the time of several seconds to the impact remains, enough in my opinion to target the approaching torpedo with the phasers and destroy it. It seems we have to accept both the facts that the target is usually shown closer than it actually is and, in addition, photon torpedoes are slower than they should be.
Torpedo yields
Each standard photon torpedo carries an explosive antimatter charge of at least 1.5kg, according to the TNGTM. The simple formula E = mc2 gives us an explosive energy of as much as 270*1015 joules (that's 270 petajoules for prefix fetishists ;-)) for 1.5kg matter and 1.5kg antimatter. This equals 64.41 megatons TNT, but is only the theoretical maximum energy. Actually, a large amount will be lost because the mutual annihilation is only direct in the case of the electrons and positrons, whose collision produces gamma radiation. The much heavier nucleons undergo a more complicated process, involving a large amount of neutrinos which are lost without contributing to the explosive force. Finally, the torpedo casing, no matter of which material, will be quickly vaporized, and part of the temporary reaction products will be hurled away from the target and not contribute to the explosion either. Thus, a photon torpedo must be a "dirty" weapon with limited efficiency. In a realistic assumption, 16% of the theoretical maximum energy may be achieved. Since the explosion is omnidirectional, at most 8% would act upon the hull or shields of an enemy ship, 21.6 petajoules. This is obviously still a lot. After a development of almost two centuries, we may expect that the yield may have approached this figure, and whenever it is not considered, there would no reason not to charge a torpedo with a few kilograms more.
The usual shields of starships, on the other hand, have a power output of at most several gigawatts. I think it is futile to attempt an exact calculation about what effect a torpedo explosion should have on the shields, a very coarse estimation should do. If we assume that the energy of the photon torpedo takes as long as one second to be completely released, we still have a power impact of a few petawatts, a millionfold compared to the shields. I think that, no matter how exactly the shields work, they wouldn't survive a single nearby torpedo explosion, much less would the ship itself.
Nevertheless, we frequently see shields that can withstand whole volleys of photon torpedoes, and much worse, sometimes the ship even survives photon torpedo explosions with the shields down (such as the Enterprise-A in "Star Trek: The Final Frontier" or the Enterprise-D in "Star Trek: Generations"). Although, as I stated above, there would be no reason to arm the torpedoes with less antimatter if one really wants to destroy the enemy, it seems that the real charges must be a lot lower than shown on screen. In this respect it was good that, since Voyager, the dialogue usually referred to "isotons" instead of real masses - if only isotons had been used consistently and not the figures been increased (like those of the quads too) every few episodes.
Tricobalt torpedoes
Tricobalt torpedoes were first mentioned in TOS: "A Taste of Armageddon", and the appeared as rather crude, maybe old-fashioned weapons. Yet, over 100 years later, in VOY: "The Caretaker", tricobalt torpedoes belonged to Voyager's inventory and were used to destroy the Caretaker Array. We may explain this problem in that tricobalt devices have a high yield and are simple to handle, but only against targets with no or with limited defense.
A more severe problem may be that tricobalt torpedoes, according to VOY: "The Voyager Conspiracy", have a yield of "20,000 teracochranes". Since the cochrane is a unit for subspace distortion, are these torpedoes actually subspace weapons? And wouldn't they be banned under intergalactic laws ("Star Trek: Insurrection")? Maybe the Second Khitomer Accords mentioned in "Insurrection" only apply specifically to the isolytic weapons of the Son'a, but that doesn't seem to make much sense - in particular since a distortion of 20,000 teracochranes would be *a lot*, something like a black hole in subspace, something that would almost definitely destroy its structure. On the other hand, the figure is not only extremely high, but also its dimension is obviously erroneous. The cochrane figure doesn't give anything about the extent of the distortion which may be taken as a measure for the yield.
Other Weapons
Holographic weapons
We see fully operational holographic weapons in VOY: "Night" and "Star Trek: First Contact", for instance. With the safety protocols of the holodeck offline, the holographic beam weapon in "Night" works just like a real phaser (or rather a "Captain Proton ray gun" in this case), and Picard's holographic machine gun behaves like a gun with real bullets which may even be used to kill Borg (see below). This suggests that the holodeck doesn't only reproduce the look, sound, smell and feel of objects, but synthesizes their functions in their entirety - a perfect simulation in every respect, including that a lethal beam or bullet is created that would be indistinguishable from the real thing.
I don't think it is very plausible that the holodeck may create fully functional weapons for entertainment purposes in the first place, and only a safety protocol prevents them from being dangerous or lethal. While we know that there are other fully operational holographic devices too (like the generator in TNG: "A Matter of Perspective" and the interface Barclay built in TNG: "The Nth Degree"), I wouldn't think that the same applies to possibly lethal weapons. I would much rather expect that normally the holodeck only simulates the effect a weapon or any other action has on a holographic target, but not on anyone or anything physical that is taken inside the holodeck. For a battle simulation it would be useful to see these effects without doing any real damage, but no one in Starfleet would ever seriously consider to severely hurt or kill someone in a holodeck. Least of all, I would expect the holodeck to simulate a fictional weapon like the "Captain Proton ray gun" which is supposed to be only a prop in Star Trek, just like Star Trek phasers are in the real world. The same should apply to Picard's machine gun, or did he ever plan to use them against real targets?
If we assume that the sometimes, with the safety protocols off, holographic weapons are fully functional according to some set of parameters though, it basically would not matter if they were perfect simulations or the real thing - a replicated weapon that would work outside the holodeck too. Replicated weapons would face one serious problem though: The holodeck is a lot smaller than the distance between the weapon and the target may appear to be, and maybe it is not even physically directed towards the target. There would have to be some sort of forcefield or transporter involved to carry the bullet or whatever is fired to the location of a real target within the simulation, just like the "treadmill effect" for people inside the holodeck.
Bullets against Borg
The Borg have shields that can adapt to any kind of beam weapon in a matter of a few shots - the drones that are killed before the adaptation are obviously considered expendable. But why is it so easy to fight against the Borg with physical weapons? We may still easily explain how Data can strangle a Borg in "First Contact". After all he is exceptionally strong and the Borg usually shouldn't expect such kind of resistance from their victims. However, it seems a bit strange that neither their shields nor their body armor protect the Borg against Worf's mek'leth in "First Contact", for instance, or the virtual bat'leths in VOY: "Unimatrix Zero".
Picard manages to kill the Borg with a holographic machine gun. Even if we accept that, without the safety protocols, the bullets behave exactly like real ones, shouldn't they simply be reflected by the Borg shields or get stuck in the body armor? It still takes a few volleys until the Borg are finally dead, but wouldn't we expect their thick armor to offer significantly better protection than bullet-proof vests of our days? Again, we may argue that this is not the kind of resistance the Borg would expect to encounter, after all they are after advanced civilizations that don't use projectile weapons any longer. On the other hand, if it is so easy to kill them, why don't the enemies of the Borg, most of all the Federation, always use old-fashioned guns and swords against them? The Enterprise-E should have stored a load of machine guns. At latest when it was clear that the Borg were aboard, the crew should have replicated some guns.
In light of the working principle of Borg shields, as it is conjectured further down, we may explain why they block energy weapons, but not bullets. The shields obviously create a field that is designed to interfere with the weapon's frequency, as opposed to an energy barrier. We can assume that an energy barrier is impervious to anything with less energy, be it solid matter, a matter wave or energy. An adaptive field that is made to cancel out one specific (beam) weapon type could not accomplish that.
Yet, in every encounter so far it took the Borg a couple of dead drones until they could adapt their shields when they were hit with beam weapons of rotating frequencies. Unless we presuppose the phasers were upgraded prior to each Borg attack, the Borg may not be able to access the existing countermeasures immediately. Perhaps the structure of the collective consciousness is sluggish in this respect. If we go with this explanation, we don't really notice differences in their reactions to weapons.
Finally, we don't know for sure whether the Borg really can't withstand an attack with projectile or blade weapons, as opposed to one with phasers. Attacking them with physical force is always just the second option, after using the phasers. Perhaps the Borg can adapt their shields to these physical weapons just as well and we only didn't witness a fight that lasted long enough for this to happen.
Shields & Cloaking
Shapes of shields
Since TNG we are accustomed to the typical "shield bubbles" around a ship. It doesn't seem to be realistic in the first place to have a sharp border between the shields' inside and outside, if shields have anything in common with real forcefields, whose potential always decays with the reciprocal first power (r-1), and its field strength with the reciprocal second power (r-2) of its radius. This applies to electric fields, as well as to gravitational fields, the latter of which are supposed to be the basis of a Federation ship's shields, according to the TNGTM (see also "shields and cloaking" further down). The typical shield bubble since TNG was an ellipsoid, as it would be created by shield emitters sufficiently far away. Such a bubble can be seen in various TNG episodes and very clearly in "First Contact", when the Borg lock on the Enterprise-E. The shape however has changed recently, as we have seen the Enterprise-E with separate shields in "Insurrection" (that lit up only in a particular region when hit), and finally with almost "skin tight" shields in "Nemesis". It doesn't seem like an improvement (well, it looks rather like an improvement of visual effects), if incoming fire is deflected or dispersed as late as it has almost reached the hull. Also, the tight or partial shield would not have the homogeneity of the bubble, therefore exhibiting weak spots, even if crucial areas may be better protected. It is questionable whether the Federation would change its technology so considerably.
One possible reason for tight shields is that this way the shields are not unnecessarily weakened, by shots that would have narrowly missed the hull. I'd figure that the skin-tight shields would need more power to be maintained in the first place than a single bubble around the ship. But who knows if this wouldn't pay after one or two times the elliptical shields would have been hit.
Shields may be generally layered, as visible in TNG: "Datalore" and a few more episodes. Mike Okuda tells us about the visual effect: "Sternbach and I envisioned multiple shield layers, and 'Datalore' reflects this concept. The problem with this is that it required more time to create the visual effect, and in some shots, multiple layers would make it less clear as to what was happening (usually, an enemy energy beam hitting the shield bubble). As a result, in some episodes, the visual effects supervisors elected to go with a single layer. I attribute it to subspace compression." The skin-tight shields may be generated from different generators than the large bubbles of the TNG era. The skin-tight shields may serve as the last line of defense, in a similar fashion as the hull armor of the Defiant. This still doesn't comply with the observations especially from "Nemesis", where the ship seems to have only these tight shields. There would be no reason to have shields so close to the hull that not just the shields but the hull itself could take damage on impact - unless this type of shields only worked in the immediate vicinity of the hull (reactive armor) and for some reason better than the traditional bubbles.
Mark Temple thinks that tight shields may have their advantages: "Since shields are described in the TNG Technical Manual as a reactive system, detecting and blocking incoming attacks, there may be an advantage to a conformal configuration over a bubble configuration. In either configuration the system would detect a beam or torpedo, and if it intersects with the area the system is programmed to protect, block it with a gravity distortion. On a bubble configuration, the area programmed in would be large, with large areas of relatively empty space protected as the result of wrapping an effectively irregular shape with an ovoid. Such a configuration would end up activating to block attacks that would otherwise have passed through those empty areas without hitting the ship. Thus wasting energy and reducing the integrity of the shields. A conformal configuration would represent programming to cover a smaller area, against attacks which would actually have impacted the ship. While this would likely result in more complex programming, there would be an advantage in energy drain and preservation of shield integrity, allowing a ship's shields to stay active longer in battle."
It is still another problem that, in the battles of the Dominion War, many ships of the Federation as well as other factions don't seem to have shields at all. They are completely destroyed with the first volley of torpedoes. But rather than a real inconsistency, this is most of all artistic license. I personally imagine that those ships have taken previous damage.
Shield percentages
What does "shields at 47%" mean? Is the average shield strength down to 47%, or is it rather the angular coverage that is down to 47% of the entire surface? It seems that shields may not be switched on and off instantaneously, they may need to be built up and shut down gradually as seen in "Star Trek II". They may be charged in a similar way as phasers. In this light they are not devices that always operate at 100% (or even more), if only they are provided with enough power. Rather than that, they appear to discharge and thereby to lose their strength upon impact, even if nothing on the ship has taken physical damage. This would corroborate the notion that the whole system of shields, which forms a continuous bubble (see above) loses a certain percentage of its overall strength, no matter where it is hit.
If, on the other hand, the shield percentage were to refer to a coverage, this would imply that the shield emitters in certain areas failed completely, which would make no sense if there were no considerable other physical damage. One of the few arguments in favor of shield coverage is that power may be diverted to the shields. This suggests that, with a part of all shield emitters gone, it may be possible to increase the protection again by powering up the rest to more than 100% (there is always a safety margin in engineering). But this doesn't seem to be the case, as we have always witnessed shields continuously losing their strength. It seems that the additional power would be spent rather to recharge the shields than to gain immediate strength through more power. If a percentage of 50%, for instance, stood for a coverage, it would mean that half of the hull surface were totally unprotected. In other words, the ship would make quite a target and would take disastrous damage with the very next hit, which usually doesn't happen either. Instead of that, the percentage keeps further decreasing, while the ship remains intact (with the exceptions discussed in "damage despite shields" below).
There seem to be better arguments that shields lose overall strength. But the increasingly frequent mentions of particular areas like "aft shields down to..." seem to contradict this theory. In this light, maybe the shield strength should indeed take into account weakened areas as well as its overall strength. It is possible that the percentages are a combination of both the shield strength and coverage, calculated with a rather complicated algorithm. Only in case that there are particularly weakened areas that the captain would need to protect, the tactical officer would refer to something like "aft shields" in addition to the total figure.
Damage despite shields
Ships in Star Trek seem to take considerable damage already when the shields are still up. First of all, the ship rocks every time it is hit, although the shields can't be supposed to form a rigid framework around the ship that would be mechanically coupled to the hull. On the other hand, since the shield around the ship is changing its geometry (or is "pushed aside") when hit by weapon fire while the shield emitter power remains the same, this could indeed result in a force on the hull. Even simpler, the shaking could arise from a smaller amount of weapon power that is able to pass through and reach the hull.
The usual effects of weapons that penetrate the shields are scorches on the hull (most obviously in "Star Trek VI"), but very often even exploding plasma conduits inside the ship (as about every time when the Defiant or Voyager is attacked). It is yet another issue why high-power conduits are unwisely routed through bridge consoles, as there may be all sorts of security concerns, not only in a battle. Moreover, the most exposed location of the whole ship doesn't seem to be the right place for the bridge. Anyway, the question arises why and how exactly this specific kind of damage frequently occurs. Still assuming that "holding" shields keep away most of the weapon's energy, we should assume that, if at all, only the hull would be affected, and that the metal should shield the interior like Faraday's cage. Therefore it is not evident why most of the damage seems to occur inside the ship. Maybe the metallic hull plates actually have no effect in blocking weapon energy which we may explain with some quantum physics and technobabble. At least, it wouldn't matter in such a case where the bridge was located.
In "Star Trek (2009)" the Kelvin takes hull damage from the Narada's weapons while the shields are still in place, in a similar fashion as the Enterprise-A in "Star Trek VI". Likewise, the shields do not protect the Enterprise at Vulcan the way we may expect. This may be attributed in part to the fact that the 24th century weapons of the Narada are superior.
Simultaneous shields and cloaking
There is no generally valid answer to the question if a ship can be cloaked and shielded simultaneously. Romulan and Klingon cloaking devices seem to work similarly, although the ones of the Romulans are generally considered to be more advanced - also because, at the time of TNG, the Federation knows a bit about Klingon technology, but almost nothing about that of the Romulans. In TNG: "Redemption" we saw cloaked Romulan ships being fired on, and the weapons fire was dispersed, which indicates that they did have the shields up. In TNG: "Face of the Enemy", however, the Romulan Warbird couldn't be cloaked and shielded at the same time. The same applies to the Defiant in DS9: "The Search". The Klingon D-12 Bird-of-Prey in "Star Trek: Generations" could not keep the shields and cloaking up simultaneously either, and Worf used exactly this weakness to get the shields down and the cloaking up to be able to destroy the ship. At least the Klingon ship may easily be explained in that it was explicitly called outdated anyway, but the question about the capabilities of Romulan ships remains.
There is a more general problem about cloaking and shields if we take into account their working principles. The shields of Federation starships, according to the TNGTM, are made up of a graviton field and not, as one might have expected, of an electromagnetic field. This way, the shields would be based on the same technology as the cloaking that employs a graviton field to "bend" light rays around the ship, and both fields would possibly obstruct or even cancel out each other. On the other hand, we don't have to believe everything in the TNGTM if not explicitly stated in screen, and even if it is correct for Federation starships, the Romulans or Klingons may easily use a different shield technology that doesn't interfere with their cloaking. Maybe the similarity between shields and cloaking is even the explanation for what we have seen in "Redemption", as the apparent shield bubble could have actually been the bubble of the cloaking device.
Sight from inside a cloaked ship
For all we know a cloaking device, for instance one of Romulan/Klingon flavor, renders a vessel invisible by bending any light around its hull. The effect is that neither active nor passive sensors would receive anything from the direction of the cloaked vessel, except for the star background (which we must assume is not distorted, because otherwise it would readily give away the ship's position, like hinted at in "Star Trek III"). But what about the sight from inside the ship? If it is surrounded by a perfectly opaque cloaking bubble, then the ship would not only be invisible but also blind. This is definitely not the case, as on all occasions without exception we could witness or assumed that the crew was able to observe the space around their cloaked ship.
A cloaked vessel could use specially modulated light to penetrate the cloaking, but then a scan across the spectrum could reveal its location, especially since this light would need to be emitted in all directions. Maybe some light from outside still reaches the hull in spite of the raised cloak, enough to be amplified to half-way clear images. However, such a "light trap" must be assumed to re-emit some radiation (most likely in the infrared range). An alternative and rather effortless explanation is that a tiny probe, which would not be visible on enemy scanners, is kept outside the cloaked region. Maybe this is the true reason for the periscope on the Klingon Bird-of-Prey in "Star Trek V" (although we definitely wouldn't expect a pipe to protrude from the hull of the vessel)?
Beaming with shields up
It is an important concept, also for story-telling, that beaming is only possible when the shields are down. Entering the shield bubble with a shuttle isn't possible either, as we learned in "Star Trek V". In some episodes like TNG: "The Wounded" and TNG: "Relics", however, the transporter is definitely used while the shields are in place. In "The Wounded", O'Brien used a scan "window" in the shields of the USS Phoenix to beam over to the ship. In "Relics" we may assume that Scotty and Geordi, who were on the Jenolan to keep the door to the Dyson sphere open with the ship's shields, transmitted the shield frequency to the Enterprise. On the Enterprise, the frequency of the transporter carrier wave could be matched to that of the Jenolan shields. In a similar fashion the Duras sisters managed to penetrate the shields of the Enterprise-D in "Star Trek: Generations", after they had seen the frequency through Geordi's modified VISOR. It seems that, under normal circumstances without knowledge of the shield parameters, only friendly transporter activities are possible, if any. Otherwise enemies would succeed in beaming over boarding parties more often during a battle. But in DS9: "The Way of the Warrior", for instance, the Klingons can use only a short time during which the shields of the station are explicitly failing in certain areas.
Matching phaser and shield frequencies
In order to obstruct adaptation, the frequencies of ship and hand phasers are rotated in almost all of Starfleet's encounters with the Borg since TNG: "Best of Both Worlds". We may assume that the Borg analyze phaser shots and would be able to adjust their shields to block exactly the phaser frequency if this were not rotated. In other words, a Borg shield of a certain frequency would block or rather cancel out incoming fire of the same frequency through interference. In "Star Trek: Generations", however, quite the opposite happens. Here the Klingons, having found out the Enterprise's shield frequency through Geordi's VISOR, adjust their weapons to exactly this frequency to penetrate the shields. It seems that only Borg shields use the principle of interference, whereas Federation shields are designed rather to deflect, reflect or disperse incoming beams. Moreover, only waves of the same type would be able to interfere with each other. Considering that a phaser or disruptor is a matter wave, while the shields may be an electromagnetic field, a gravitational field (as the TNGTM states) or a subspace field, they should work on a different basis than interference. Maybe the shields are least efficient for some other reason at exactly the weapon's frequency.
There is one more problem. In "Generations" the Klingons match their phaser frequency with the Enterprise-D shields in order to penetrate them. But in order to fire through their own shields they would need to adapt these accordingly. In other words, they would open a window that may have allowed the Enterprise-D weapons to hit them likewise, but returning fire obviously failed while the Klingon disruptors were still firing. Either the different operation principle gives disruptors an advantage in mutual shield penetration, or shields work differently than we thought.
In a comprehensive (and somewhat speculative) concept to explain shield build-up and frequencies, it is possible that the shield bubble that forms just after the command "shields up" is not exactly the protective shield, but just a detection field. As postulated earlier, the shields or rather their storage units have to be "loaded". When the detection field is impinged on or distorted, the batteries are then rapidly drained of enough energy to neutralize the thrust with the exact counter-frequency, canceling it out. This would have the effect of a measurable thrust on the hull (accounting for the characteristic hull rock as the ship takes hits) as the counterthrust leaves the ship in question. Also, it may be possible to distinguish incoming and outgoing fire. This also accounts for why shields can be penetrated if the frequency is known - the detector field will not react to itself, naturally. By the time the surge of power can be detected it is already at the hull - far too late for an effective counterthrust. In "Generations" the permanent shield rotation may have been offline for some unknown reason, and even if this seems to be an idiotic negligence it allowed the Klingons several hits with their accordingly adjusted disruptors.
Protection suits
Why do Starfleet away teams always beam down to dangerous planets with no passive protection at all? Agreed, it is a tradition since TOS, and actors without heavy armors simply look better (and decidedly peaceful) on screen. Anyway, at least in episodes with ground troops like in DS9: "Nor the Battle to the Strong" or "The Siege of AR-558" I would have expected to see much more than standard issue lycra suits. I think that, even if it doesn't sustain a heavy phaser blast (after all even a hand phaser can be used to blow holes into solid rock or solid metal doors), a light armor and helmet would be useful to avoid secondary wounds from explosion fragments, for instance. Since aliens like the Klingons or the Jem'Hadar have protection suits (at least they look as if they are protective), this should considerably increase the chances of Starfleet troops to stay alive.
Battle distances
It is plausible that ships come very close to each other in a peaceful encounter, but the same seems to apply to battles. Although the distances in dialogues are usually hundreds or thousands of kilometers, their distance on screen is usually at most one kilometer. The real-world reason is obvious, as it is possible to shoot two ship miniatures at once if they are close to each other. Also for the drama it may be regarded useful if the enemies see each other almost "face to face" at point-blank range and not only on the viewscreen. It is controversial whether the definite statements or the definite visual evidence should be taken as true. I think that usually it would make no sense to come very close to a (possible) enemy, unless it was a suicide attack. The reaction times are simply too short, and the phaser yields can be considered still higher at short distances. Only for a small ship that is going to fight a large one, the close attack would be a useful tactic, as the large ship could make use only of a part of its weapons at once, and the small ship would be hard to hit at a short distance, like we have seen it in DS9: "Shattered Mirror" or DS9: "Valiant".
Mark Temple mentions a reason why point-blank combat could make sense: "One possible reason why many battles occur at relatively short distances was detailed in the TNG episode: "A Matter of Honor". Riker, having become an officer on a Klingon ship, suggested closing to a very close distance from the Enterprise-D before attacking, "to reduce reaction time". At such shot distance not only would both sides only have a few instants to decide what to do, but their ships would be able to enter and leave the weapons arcs of the enemy much more quickly. At a distance of several hundred thousand kilometers (as we see in TNG: "The Wounded"), it would take some time for a ship to pass through the weapons arcs, since it is a relatively slow moving target at that distance, and the area of the sky the weapons cover is much wider. Targeting such a distant target would be somewhat simpler, and more time could be spent refining the shot before firing without losing the target. At close range, the target would be changing its relative position much more rapidly, and finding a firing solution in the short period of time the target is within the firing arc of the weapon becomes more difficult."
Some screen caps from TrekCore. Thanks to Mark Temple for various suggestions, to Fernando for the hint about the light effect of torpedoes, to Carsten for the suggestion to care about the "Bullets against Borg" issue, to David Blalock for a correction about bullet-proof vests, to DAS for the tricobalt torpedoes and various considerations about shields, to Denaal Sovek for notes about holographic weapons, to Slosh for suggesting that Borg shields are based on interference, to DungeonMaster for pointing out the shields & cloaking problem, to Mimi Billewicz for bringing up "blind cloaked ships", to Rainer Semmelmann for thoughts about mutual shield penetration, to James Burke for more ideas about skin-tight shields, to Gregory Price for the mentions of phasers at warp in TOS and to Erwin Grootes for the quote about the ACB-jacketed beam devices. Special thanks to Chris for the information about yields of matter-antimatter reactions and to johndmes for the theory on shield formation and frequencies.


text:
Most people are familiar with the concept of childproofing a home when a new baby arrives. But what about bringing your aging parents in to live with you when independent living is no longer an option? There are several steps you can take to 'elder-proof' your home and ensure a safe and comfortable environment for your parents in their later years. And when a parent, who is facing an advanced illness is living with you, home safety takes on a new level of importance.
Preventing Falls
A primary safety concern with the elderly is the prevention of falls. Falls are the leading cause of injury or even death among the elderly. Fortunately there are many ways to safeguard your home against potential falls.
- Remove all tripping hazards such as books, shoes, toys, electrical cords, etc., from the floors.
- Remove all throw rugs.
- Remove furniture from high-traffic areas if possible, and pad any sharp edges with plastic bumpers.
- Remove the casters to stabilize movable furniture items.
- Remove unstable tables and stools to avoid tipping, and put fragile or breakable items away.
- If your parent uses a cane, you may also wish to attach a loose wrist loop to the handle. This will prevent your parent from having to bend down to retrieve a dropped cane.
- Polish linoleum and wood flooring using only non-slip floor wax.
- Textured strips can also be placed on linoleum to provide better grip, and all spills should be cleaned up immediately.
- Add grab bars or handrails along staircases and hallways to help prevent falls, and grab bars next to closet doors to support your parent while dressing.
- Place colored, non-slip strips along areas where floor levels change, such as stairs and doorway thresholds, to help clearly identify where your parent will need to step up or down and prevent stumbles.
- Make sure the bed and chairs are easy to get in and out of, and that chairs have solid and supportive arms and backs.
Lighting the Way
Lighting is another important safety consideration in the prevention of falls. It is easier for elderly eyes to adjust if there are consistent lighting levels throughout the house, using low-glare bulbs and shades. Night lights are helpful to guide your parent along stairways as well as from the bedroom to the bathroom and kitchen. Light switches placed at both the top and bottom of stairs will ensure good visibility. Install a light switch that can be reached from the bed to prevent your parent from fumbling in the dark if they awaken in the middle of the night. Illuminated light switches are much easier to locate in the dark, or you may choose a clap-on, clap-off lighting system. Flashlights should be easily accessible in all rooms of the home, especially the bedroom.
Bathroom Safety
The bathroom can be a particularly treacherous room for the elderly, but is easily adapted for safety. Consider taking these safety measures:
- Adding an elevated toilet seat with handgrips on both sides, and toilet tissue within easy reach can ease the strain on an aging parent's back and legs, thus reducing the risk of falling.
- Equip the tub with a bath chair, grab bars, or a handrail placed at both sitting and standing levels.
- Use secure non-slip mats in the tub or shower, along with a wall-mounted liquid soap dispenser to keep your parent from having to bend down to retrieve a dropped bar of soap.
- Consider changing to hand-held shower devices. They are easier to use when mobility is limited.
- If your parent does happen to slip in the tub, a shower curtain securely mounted into the wall will offer more support than a pressure-hung curtain that will pull away easily.
Temperature Concerns
As we age, our sensitivity to hot and cold temperatures may wane. Anti-scald devices can be installed which will automatically shut off the water if it gets too hot. Faucets with a single control for hot and cold water may be easier to adjust for temperature. You should also ensure your parent has sufficient robes, blankets and warm clothing available to maintain their body temperature without the use of dangerous space heaters.
Staying Safe Outdoors
Outside the home, make sure all walkways, paths, steps, decks, porches, and entryways have good lighting, solid traction and handrails for support. Keeping sand or rock salt by the door is a good idea for potentially icy weather. If your parent is wheelchair-bound, ramps can be installed for easier access. Exterior motion sensing floodlights will light your parent's way and avoid the necessity of fumbling with keys in the dark.
When it comes to safety in the home, prevention really is the best medicine. Elder-proofing your home before your aging parent moves in will ease the transition, helping them maintain a sense of independence and affording you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you've provided every safeguard for their well-being.

subset: commoncrawl


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Shelves begin to fill with books
As Ben "Stone" Stomberg prepares to open Stone Alley Books & Collectables, 53 S. Seminary St., he's so excited he can barely sleep at night. That's probably not much of an issue. He said that the other night he and people helping him get the store ready were still working at 1:20 a.m.
An open house Aug. 21 will precede the store's official opening Aug. 22.
Stomberg, a former radio disc jockey, including a stint at WLSR-FM 92.7 (The Laser), said the store will be unique.
"I'd like it to be something people haven't seen in Galesburg before, but I hope they like it," he said.
Stomberg will be the one full-time employee and will be at the store most of the time. There will be one part-time employee "and I'd like to have two, depending on how things go."
Stomberg said friends, family and Knox College students have helped. He took possession of the building July 1. Boxes of used books were everywhere Friday. He busily entered inventory into a computer, as his three helpers put books on shelves.
Used books, used comics and vinyl records are in already. Stomberg is awaiting the first shipment of new books and comics.
Stomberg bought many of the used books from an estate sale that reportedly included 3,000 books.
"If it was actually 3,000, I'd say we have 2,000 of them," he said.
"We have new shelves coming in," Stomberg laughed. "You name it, it's coming in."
He said Sandburg Mall sold him some racks from the old Waldenbooks store.
"Waldenbooks, when they left, they took the books and left everything else," he said.
Stomberg originally expected a mix of 70 percent used and 30 percent new books. Friday he said it's looking like 60-40. The walls, which were white, have been painted green. The ceiling is still white.
"It's kind of got a mint chocolate chip thing going on right now," Stomberg chuckled.
Food is a good analogy, as readers have been hungry for a mainstream bookstore since Waldenbooks closed in late January.
There are now two bookstores downtown, Inner Wisdom, 31 N. Kellogg St., concentrates on New Age titles; Brighter Life Bookshoppe, 292 E. Simmons St., a Christian bookstore, moved downtown from 1055 N. Henderson St. in May. Brighter Life carries some mainstream titles.
Stomberg said the new comics he'll carry will stick to the superhero genre.
"We'll pretty much be running current issues of DC and Marvel comics," he said. "But, we'll also be able to order titles. People can have a subscription, where every month they can pick up their comics."
That will allow customers to order titles other than DC and Marvel.
As for vinyl records, Stomberg said the selection will be "eclectic." He plans to buy a turntable, so people can hear albums before buying.
"Country, rock and blues, most of it's '70s," he said of types of albums. "There's not really anything modern right now. I'm hoping to get more modern records in before we open."
Comics and records will be in a back room, to the side of the long, narrow store.
The City Council voted June 15 to loan Stomberg $15,000 to help launch the store. A motion to provide the loan was tabled at the June 1 City Council meeting when some aldermen wanted more information.
Aldermen wanted to know the identity of two people who agreed to co-sign the low-interest loan, and to be sure that a private $10,000 loan was in place.
Stomberg said the co-signers were his parents and also provided written assurances that the $10,000 loan had come through. He also received a $10,000 Business Innovation grant from the city.
The store will have couches and tables in the front, as well as free Wi-Fi.
"I want to encourage people to come in and hang out," he said. "If I have a tenth of the support we have had by word of mouth, we'll be fine."
Stomberg said other Seminary Street merchants and people throughout the city have been fantastic. He said he's constantly asked when the store will open.
"This really feels like a perfect storm," he said. "I think I'm the right guy at the right time."


text:
On a love seat
in a hotel room,
I sit. A fan blows
to my right while
to my left music plays
I can't make out. A door
opens. Wheels moves.
Feet. God, I'm tired &
weary, but somehow
still present. Today,
I will visit a friend I've
not seen in months,
years & I will wonder
what the wait has done
for my heart. The surrender
fmf: surrender.
Surrender. Very interesting prompt for today. After surrendering to my fear yesterday and being still, waiting, God gave me yet another opportunity to the thing I still struggle with: asking for help. It was weird how after writing this poem, He swoops in with something he only could've planned. As I sit here, realizing how well he knows me (this I'm sure is going to be life long), how he knows I'm scared and wondering when, the littlest thing makes me 😭 or 😮. More 😮 than anything else. And because I'm tired and don't have a whole to say, other than I shouldn't even be afraid of God or worried he's forgotten me at all, I'm going to leave this.
Heal me deep within, God.


text:
No one is happier than Paul Gallagher at the thought of him returning to Deepdale and pulling on the Lilywhite once again.
That was the sentiments of the forward following his emergency loan move to Preston North End.
In an exclusive interview with PNE.Com, Gallagher was delighted to return to the Club that he last played for during the 2007/08 season.
And he admits that it feels like he has never been away.
"I am delighted to be back," stated the new PNE No.12.
"Ever since I knew the interest was there, this is the one and only place I wanted to come really.
"Walking back through that door is like I have never been away.
"I am happy to be back, the time has gone past pretty quick because, as I said, when I came back through the door it was just like the same again.
"I spoke to the manager in the summer and he said that if it was something he could do, he would be interested, so it was about being patient and waiting for the right time and obviously the right time has come along and he has stuck by his work and brought me in and I am happy to be here."
League One is a place that Gallagher is familiar with, having spent a short time on loan at Sheffield United last season and despite having a ton of memories from his first stint at Deepdale, he is eager to create some new ones now that he has returned as a better player in his own eyes.
He continued: "I went to Sheffield United last year and had six games for them and I enjoyed it.
"It is a tough league, people think the lower you go the easier it gets, but it is not like that, I think it is the opposite.
"It is all about working hard and we have got the quality in the squad and if we do the hard work the quality will come through, so if you look through the squad you will see how much quality there is.
"When I came the first time, it was interesting, the manager went out, a new manager came in, we were playing good football, but we just weren't getting the results.
"The Burnley game away, that changed everything, we played really well and won.
"We had some really good times and I wanted to come back and for some reason it didn't happen, but I am happy to be back now and I feel like I owe something because I left.
"I want to come in and do well, the team is doing well and I want to try and get in the team and help the lads stay where they are or even go higher.
"I feel like I have come back as a better player, more experienced, a lot older!
"I have played quite a few games and I have done quite well with goals and assists, so if I can bring that to the Club with hard work, we have got a good squad as it is, so I have got to work hard in training to get in the team first and foremost, but I am looking forward to the challenge."
With Leicester being the home of many a former North End player, Gallagher's return sees him link up with a few familiar faces of his own from his time at Ewood Park, faces that remind him of his youth and his current age in equal measures.
Gallagher added: "I came through the Blackburn ranks with Joe Garner and Joel Byrom,
"They are a little bit younger than me, but we came through the same Academy and seen each other around the training ground and when I came into the Blackburn first team, Alan Kelly was the reserve goalkeeper.
"I'm showing my age now saying that!
"I know a few people in that changing room, so it is going to make it easier coming back."


text:
Save Lincoln Square's Small Businesses
Save Lincoln Square's Small Businesses
The parking lot at 4715 N Western Avenue (Leland and Western) is in danger of not being developed for affordable housing. There are neighbors who need affordable housing and are affected by whether more affordable housing development moves forward in the neighborhood.
The loss of this public parking lot to a new affordable housing development will be beneficial to local businesses in Lincoln Square by creating more local foot traffic, a better environment to shop and live, and keep more money recirculating locally in the economy. With the development of this lot for affordable housing, local draws to the community such as German Day Festival, Applefest, Mayfest, the local Farmer's Market, the DANK Haus German Cultural Center, Old Town School of Folk Music, and the Davis Theater will all have that much more of a local audience to draw from. More ingenious uses of our public space, such as closing down streets through Lincoln Square will attract more people to the neighborhood through the CTA Brown Line station, and three CTA buses, Divvy bike share, as well as people on foot. The parking issue is a misnomer because parking lots do not provide tax revenue that support city services as much as income-producing properties that provide affordable housing and additional ground-floor local business retail, ensuring everyone has a place to live and open a business in Lincoln Square. Those that drive should pay for their parking – there are many options to arrive at this vibrant neighborhood other than driving.
We urge you to sign this petition to let the 47th Ward Alderman, Chicago Department of Housing, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot know that there is an urgent need to maintain and create more affordable housing in Lincoln Square in order to preserve our local businesses and authentic culture.
****Please note that any donations made via change.org are not sent to our organization, but go to support change.org****


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Sridhar and his friend Mandar visited Vidisha and Udaygiri caves . Be prepared to get surprised !
Opportunities in life present itself in several myriad ways. For me, it came in the form of a marriage in Bhopal. Deepak's brother Ravi was getting married and Mandar and I quickly wove a tight schedule on the places to visit around Bhopal. As was our wont, apart from Sanchi, we chose couple off- beat destinations. Soon we landed in Bhopal and are whisked away to a hotel. The marriage went off well amidst lots of pomp and the food was marvelous. I do not have a sweet tooth but I adopted sweets only diet for the first time in my life and I had my fill.
We arranged for a vehicle to take us to Sanchi the next day. Sanchi…..what a place! I would advise you that once you are in Sanchi, you should first visit the Exhibition hosted by the Archaeological Survey of India which is very close to the main entrance to the Stupas. Amongst the several exhibits, the standouts for me were the photographs of the ruins of Sanchi when it was first discovered. Then you would appreciate the amount of time and work that has been invested in restoring the Stupas to the current form.
The Stupas were beautiful and the site itself was very tourist friendly. Information on the Stupas was on hand and there was no requirement for a guide. One can spend an entire day in Sanchi still feel dissatisfied! But this article is not about the Stupas of Sanchi and hence I will have to drag you to the banks of the river Betwa near Vidisha.
Besnagar is blessed with two rivers running parallel – Bes and Betwa and a small tributary of Betwa called Chokrel making it a Tirveni ( joining of three rivers). Besnagar lies 57 km north east of Bhopal. There are references to Besnagar as Wessnagara in olden times and King Ashoka was supposed to have visited Besnagar . Hence, Besnagar would have been very busy and bustling town during Ashoka's times. From Bhopal you travel on NH 86 to Vidisha and clamber on to State Highway 19 to reach Besnagar. Ah! Forgot to add one more piece of information, our driver was a young chap named Sunil. He thought we will be returning back to Bhopal after visiting Sanchi. He seemed surprised when we directed him to Besnagar. All along the way, he was quizzing us as to what were we going to see in Besnagar. Wish we could answer him at that point in time.
To give you a perspective of what you are going to read, Sir Alex Cunningham, the gentleman who set up and established the Archaeological Survey of India had visited Besnagar and had noted in his field trip report between 1874-1877 (report of Bundelkhand and Malwa) that he has never made such novel and curious discovery before.
We entered Besnagar and almost immediately saw it. Near the village square we spotted a lone orphaned stone pillar inside an enclosure. We gingerly made our way through the enclosure and gaped at the pillar. We scratched our heads for more information and spotted an information plaque. I regard this as the most under rated and the most neglected monument of our history. This, my friends, is the Heliodorus Pillar. Sir Alex in his report stated that a young fakir was occupying the base of the pillar and hence the pillar was called "Khamba Baba". The base of the pillar had a very generous smattering of red lead (vermillion??) and hence he could not investigate the pillar further.
Later, his successors visited the site again and discovered inscriptions in Brahmi and Prakrit on the pillar. The inscription talks about Heliodorus, an envoy from the King Antialcidas of Taxila. Heliodorus had visited Vidisha when it was under the rule of King Bhadra. The inscription further talks that he was a Vasudev Bhakt and that the pillar is his contribution to a Vishnu temple. The Vishnu temple has been ravaged by time and is no longer in existence. The lowest part of the pillar is octagonal while the middle part has 16 sides and the upper part is circular. The pillar would have been crowned by something like the three Lions. Unfortunately we could not find the top portion. The icing on the cake was that the plaque said that the pillar is dated 150 BC!!
Personally, I think that this pillar stands as a testimony to the fact that India was a potpourri of culture and faiths even in those times and men were free to adopt whatever faith they wanted which would show them the right path to live. Imagine a person trotting on a horse from Taxila which is in Pakistan and setting foot in Vidisha and then adopting a different faith! Such an important place should be celebrated and not consigned to the footnotes of history. Sunil, our driver, wore a very incredulous look on his face. He could not fathom why we were in this non descript village and why the hell were we making rounds of a pillar.
We wandered around the place and could find remnants of sculptures set in stone. We found a wooden plank embedded with long nails. We pointed this out to Sunil and wondered aloud as to what purpose this wooden seat would be put to. Sunil gave a weak smile and quickly bounded to the safe confines of his car!
Heliodorus Pillar- First Look
Inscription on the pillar
Warrants a closer look I guess!
Heliodorus Pillar- Last look
We then made our way to Udaygiri Caves which lies 3.5 kms to the south west of Besnagar. Udaygiri caves occupies an important place because during the times of Chandragupta Maurya, Udaygiri was the Stanford of that era!! It was regarded as an institute of higher learning and there were Buddhist chaityas and viharas .We hoped we could see paintings like those of Ajanta or the sculptures rivalling to that of Ellora caves. These were caves which were inhabited by Buddhist monks.
In one of the cave niches, we encountered a large Varaha (Boar Avtar of Vishnu) sculpture with intricate details. One can notice Prithvi in the form of a woman is raised on the tusks of Varaha thus saving her from the depths of the ocean. Varaha's foot is planted on a serpent king. The sculpture is imposing and one will be stuck by the sheer authority of the pose. We moved forward and soon encountered Vishnu in a reclining pose on the Serpent King Anantha. Again the sculpture is massive. As we climbed a small hillock we saw several unfinished pieces of sculptures strewn around and some caves were closed for public viewing. We could satisfy ourselves by taking snaps of the Dwarpals (Gatekeepers) of those caves. There was a massive broken pillar on top of the hillock and maybe lying in that state for centuries. We also noticed remains of viharas or dwelling houses. We walked down the hill and saw a beautiful Mahishasuramardini sculpture. The rock surface was showing signs of separation. Sadly, we noticed that in this treasure trove of a place, there were neither information kiosks nor booklets.
Approach to Udaygiri Caves
Vishnu resting on Anantha
The Broken Pillar
Dwarpals- Notice the bushy hair!
Sculpture outside a cave
We made our way back to Besnagar where the Triveni and the temples around were bathed by rays of the setting sun. Beautiful! We came back to Bhopal all famished but satisfied. We later realized we forgot to have lunch in the afternoon!


text:
In numerous corporations, the allocation of research and development (R&D) expenditure is defined through period cost-based budget management. Two methods are considered when controlling R&D expenditures via annual budgets:
Determining and allotting the cap;
Accumulating individual projects.
As shown by Blake (1967) and Naslund et al. (1973), because of restrictions on resources, in practice, these decisions could often be taken by a compromise method. For example, a process such as uniformly reducing a budget proposal and revising it by negotiating additional budget allocations or rendering corrections based on past performances is adopted.
Suggested methods of determining the cap on R&D expenditures are as follows:
Setting it at a constant ratio according to the planned or predicted value of corporate performance or the measured performance value;
To uniformly maintain the R&D expenditures of the corporation, the cap is determined as a fixed value;
Based on R&D expenditures of similar companies, competitive R&D expenditures are estimated;
R&D expenditures are viewed as an investment to estimate the profits that could be earned through R&D, and this is determined as a standard.
As shown in the results of the questionnaires designed by Clive de Paula (1964), the Science and Technology Agency (1966) and Brockhoff (1994), two or more methods of deciding these caps are combined appropriately and finally revised while observing the fund balance.
The question is what type of internal or external factors are considered to define the R&D expenditure of the corporations.
The theoretical research conducted by Cohen & Mowery (1984) is considered to be a pioneering one. They categorized the determinants of R&D expenditures as factors internal to and external to a corporation, with the former referring to management resources and cash flow within the internal structure of a corporation, its research facilities, and corporate strategy. The internal structure of a corporation signifies its scope of authority, incentive system, information flow, and performance measurement. Corporate strategy signifies the selection of a product market and allocation of capital resources. The latter—factors external to a corporation—refers to market demand, growth rate, market concentration rate, technology opportunities of the market, and effectiveness of patents. "Technology opportunities of the market" refers to the varying opportunities for the success of a new product. Industries such as drugs and medicines and computers, for example, are high-opportunity industries, while a low-opportunity industry is iron and steel (Link & Long, 1981, p. 107).
Empirical studies include those based on single fiscal year data of manufacturing industries in the United States, including those by Grabowski (1968), Link & Long (1981), Mansfield (1981), and Link (1982).


text:
Report Incorrect Data
Anglican Church Of Australia Diocese Of Melbourne is located in #218 224 Hull Road, Mooroolbark, Victoria 3138. To communicate or ask something with the place, the Phone number is +61 3 9723 4760. The coordinates that you can use in navigation applications to get to find "Anglican Church Of Australia Diocese Of Melbourne" quickly are -37.788139343262,145.31344604492
|Anglican Church Of Australia Diocese Of Melbourne
|Religion > Places of Worship > Churches
|+61 3 9723 4760
|#218 224 Hull Road, Mooroolbark, Victoria 3138, Australia
|Postal code:
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text:
Install on mac
Follow http://deeplearning.net/tutorial/gettingstarted.html step by step
Getting Started
These tutorials do not attempt to make up for a graduate or undergraduate course in machine learning, but we do make a rapid overview of some important concepts (and notation) to make sure that we're on the same page. You'll also need to download the datasets mentioned in this chapter in order to run the example code of the up-coming tutorials.
On each learning algorithm page, you will be able to download the corresponding files. If you want to download all of them at the same time, you can clone the git repository of the tutorial:
git clone git://github.com/lisa-lab/DeepLearningTutorials.git
MNIST Dataset
The data has to be stored as floats on the GPU ( the right dtype for storing on the GPU is given by theano.config.floatX). To get around this shortcomming for the labels, we store them as float, and then cast it to int.
If you are running your code on the GPU and the dataset you are using is too large to fit in memory the code will crash. In such a case you should store the data in a shared variable. You can however store a sufficiently small chunk of your data (several minibatches) in a shared variable and use that during training. Once you got through the chunk, update the values it stores. This way you minimize the number of data transfers between CPU memory and GPU memory.
Dataset notation
We label data sets as . When the distinction is important, we indicate train, validation, and test sets as: , and . The validation set is used to perform model selection and hyper-parameter selection, whereas the test set is used to evaluate the final generalization error and compare different algorithms in an unbiased way.
The tutorials mostly deal with classification problems, where each data set is an indexed set of pairs . We use superscripts to distinguish training set examples: is thus the i-th training example of dimensionality . Similarly, is the i-th label assigned to input . It is straightforward to extend these examples to ones where has other types (e.g. Gaussian for regression, or groups of multinomials for predicting multiple symbols).
Math Conventions
List of Symbols and acronyms
A Primer on Supervised Optimization for Deep Learning
What's exciting about Deep Learning is largely the use of unsupervised learning of deep networks. But supervised learning also plays an important role. The utility of unsupervised pre-training is often evaluated on the basis of what performance can be achieved after supervised fine-tuning. This chapter reviews the basics of supervised learning for classification models, and covers the minibatch stochastic gradient descent algorithm that is used to fine-tune many of the models in the Deep Learning Tutorials. Have a look at these introductory course notes on gradient-based learning for more basics on the notion of optimizing a training criterion using the gradient.
Learning a Classifier
Loss Function
Zero-One Loss
The models presented in these deep learning tutorials are mostly used for classification. The objective in training a classifier is to minimize the number of errors (zero-one loss) on unseen examples. If is the prediction function, then this loss can be written as:
where either is the training set (during training) or (to avoid biasing the evaluation of validation or test error). is the indicator function defined as:
In this tutorial, is defined as:
In python, using Theano this can be written as :
# zero_one_loss is a Theano variable representing a symbolic expression of the zero one loss zero_one_loss = T.sum(T.neq(T.argmax(p_y_given_x), y)) # neq is used b.c. it is a 'loss' (all y's that do not give max probability
Negative Log-Likelihood Loss
Since the zero-one loss is not differentiable, optimizing it for large models (thousands or millions of parameters) is prohibitively expensive (computationally). We thus maximize the log-likelihood of our classifier given all the labels in a training set.
The likelihood of the correct class is not the same as the number of right predictions, but from the point of view of a randomly initialized classifier they are pretty similar. Remember that likelihood and zero-one loss are different objectives; you should see that they are corralated on the validation set but sometimes one will rise while the other falls, or vice-versa.
Since we usually speak in terms of minimizing a loss function, learning will thus attempt to minimize the Negative Log-Likelihood (NLL), defined as:
The NLL of our classifier is a differentiable surrogate for the zero-one loss, and we use the gradient of this function over our training data as a supervised learning signal for deep learning of a classifier.
This can be computed using the following line of code :
NLL = -T.sum( T.log(p_y_given_x)[T.arange(y.shape[0]), y] ) # NLL is a symbolic variable, to get the actual value of NLL, this symbolic expression has to be compiled into a Theano function
T.arange(y.shape[0]) is a vector of integers [0,1,2,...,len(y)].
Indexing a matrix M by the two vectors [0,1,...,K], [a,b,...,k] returns the elements M[0,a], M[1,b], ..., M[K,k] as a vector.
Here, we use this syntax to retrieve the log-probability of the correct labels, y.
Stochastic Gradient Descent
What is ordinary gradient descent? it is a simple algorithm in which we repeatedly make small steps downward on an error surface defined by a loss function of some parameters. For the purpose of ordinary gradient descent we consider that the training data is rolled into the loss function. Then the pseudocode of this algorithm can be described as :
while True:
loss = f(params)
d_loss_wrt_params = ... # compute gradient
params -= learning_rate * d_loss_wrt_params
if <stopping condition is met>:
return params
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) works according to the same principles as ordinary gradient descent, but proceeds more quickly by estimating the gradient from just a few examples at a time instead of the entire training set. In its purest form, we estimate the gradient from just a single example at a time.
# STOCHASTIC GRADIENT DESCENT for (x_i,y_i) in training_set: # imagine an infinite generator # that may repeat examples (if there is only a finite training set) loss = f(params, x_i, y_i) d_loss_wrt_params = ... # compute gradient params -= learning_rate * d_loss_wrt_params if <stopping condition is met>: return params
The variant that we recommend for deep learning is a further twist on stochastic gradient descent using so-called "minibatches". Minibatch SGD works identically to SGD, except that we use more than one training example to make each estimate of the gradient. This technique reduces variance in the estimate of the gradient, and often makes better use of the hierarchical memory organization in modern computers.
for (x_batch,y_batch) in train_batches: # this is not batch, in batch update takes place after all items of batch have been visited. # imagine an infinite generator # that may repeat examples loss = f(params, x_batch, y_batch) d_loss_wrt_params = ... # compute gradient using theano params -= learning_rate * d_loss_wrt_params if <stopping condition is met>: return params
There is a tradeoff in the choice of the minibatch size . The reduction of variance and use of SIMD instructions helps most when increasing from 1 to 2, but the marginal improvement fades rapidly to nothing. With large , time is wasted in reducing the variance of the gradient estimator, that time would be better spent on additional gradient steps. An optimal is model-, dataset-, and hardware-dependent, and can be anywhere from 1 to maybe several hundreds. In the tutorial we set it to 20, but this choice is almost arbitrary (though harmless).
If you are training for a fixed number of epochs, the minibatch size becomes important because it controls the number of updates done to your parameters. Training the same model for 10 epochs using a batch size of 1 yields completely different results compared to training for the same 10 epochs but with a batchsize of 20. Keep this in mind when switching between batch sizes and be prepared to tweak all the other parameters acording to the batch size used.
All code-blocks above show pseudocode of how the algorithm looks like. Implementing such algorithm in Theano can be done as follows :
# Minibatch Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) # assume loss is a symbolic description of the loss function given the symbolic variables params (shared variable), x_batch, y_batch; # compute gradient of loss with respect to params d_loss_wrt_params = T.grad(loss, params) # compile the MSGD step into a theano function updates = [(params, params - learning_rate * d_loss_wrt_params)] # (b.c. it is a shared variable across function calls) MSGD = theano.function([x_batch,y_batch], loss, updates=updates) for (x_batch, y_batch) in train_batches: # here x_batch and y_batch are elements of train_batches and # therefore numpy arrays; function MSGD also updates the params print('Current loss is ', MSGD(x_batch, y_batch)) if stopping_condition_is_met: return params
There is more to machine learning than optimization. When we train our model from data we are trying to prepare it to do well on new examples, not the ones it has already seen. The training loop above for MSGD does not take this into account, and may overfit the training examples. A way to combat overfitting is through regularization. There are several techniques for regularization; the ones we will explain here are L1/L2 regularization and early-stopping.
L1 and L2 regularization involve adding an extra term to the loss function, which penalizes certain parameter configurations. Formally, if our loss function is:
then the regularized loss will be:
or, in our case
which is the norm of . is a hyper-parameter which controls the relative importance of the regularization parameter. Commonly used values for p are 1 and 2, hence the L1/L2 nomenclature. If p=2, then the regularizer is also called "weight decay".
In principle, adding a regularization term to the loss will encourage smooth network mappings in a neural network (by penalizing large values of the parameters, which decreases the amount of nonlinearity that the network models). More intuitively, the two terms (NLL and ) correspond to modelling the data well (NLL) and having "simple" or "smooth" solutions (). Thus, minimizing the sum of both will, in theory, correspond to finding the right trade-off between the fit to the training data and the "generality" of the solution that is found. To follow Occam's razor principle, this minimization should find us the simplest solution (as measured by our simplicity criterion) that fits the training data.
Note that the fact that a solution is "simple" does not mean that it will generalize well. Empirically, it was found that performing such regularization in the context of neural networks helps with generalization, especially on small datasets. The code block below shows how to compute the loss in python when it contains both a L1 regularization term weighted by and L2 regularization term weighted by
Early-stopping combats overfitting by monitoring the model's performance on a validation set. A validation set is a set of examples that we never use for gradient descent, but which is also not a part of the test set. The validation examples are considered to be representative of future test examples. We can use them during training because they are not part of the test set. If the model's performance ceases to improve sufficiently on the validation set, or even degrades with further optimization, then the heuristic implemented here gives up on much further optimization.
The choice of when to stop is a judgement call and a few heuristics exist, but these tutorials will make use of a strategy based on a geometrically increasing amount of patience.
# early-stopping parameters patience = 5000 # look as this many examples regardless patience_increase = 2 # wait this much longer when a new best is # found improvement_threshold = 0.995 # a relative improvement of this much is # considered significant validation_frequency = min(n_train_batches, patience/2) # go through this many # minibatches before checking the network # on the validation set; in this case we # check every epoch best_params = None best_validation_loss = numpy.inf test_score = 0. start_time = time.clock() done_looping = False epoch = 0 while (epoch < n_epochs) and (not done_looping): # Report "1" for first epoch, "n_epochs" for last epoch epoch = epoch + 1 for minibatch_index in xrange(n_train_batches): d_loss_wrt_params = ... # compute gradient params -= learning_rate * d_loss_wrt_params # gradient descent # iteration number. We want it to start at 0. iter = (epoch - 1) * n_train_batches + minibatch_index # note that if we do `iter % validation_frequency` it will be # true for iter = 0 which we do not want. We want it true for # iter = validation_frequency - 1. if (iter + 1) % validation_frequency == 0: this_validation_loss = ... # compute zero-one loss on validation set if this_validation_loss < best_validation_loss: # improve patience if loss improvement is good enough if this_validation_loss < best_validation_loss * improvement_threshold: patience = max(patience, iter * patience_increase) best_params = copy.deepcopy(params) best_validation_loss = this_validation_loss if patience <= iter: done_looping = True break # POSTCONDITION: # best_params refers to the best out-of-sample parameters observed during the optimization
If we run out of batches of training data before running out of patience, then we just go back to the beginning of the training set and repeat.
The validation_frequency should always be smaller than the patience. The code should check at least two times how it performs before running out of patience. This is the reason we used the formulation validation_frequency = min( value, patience/2.)
This algorithm could possibly be improved by using a test of statistical significance rather than the simple comparison, when deciding whether to increase the patience.
After the loop exits, the best_params variable refers to the best-performing model on the validation set. If we repeat this procedure for another model class, or even another random initialization, we should use the same train/valid/test split of the data, and get other best-performing models. If we have to choose what the best model class or the best initialization was, we compare the best_validation_loss for each model. When we have finally chosen the model we think is the best (on validation data), we report that model's test set performance. That is the performance we expect on unseen examples.
Theano/Python Tips
Loading and Saving Models
When you're doing experiments, it can take hours (sometimes days!) for gradient-descent to find the best parameters. You will want to save those weights once you find them. You may also want to save your current-best estimates as the search progresses.
Pickle the numpy ndarrays from your shared variables
The best way to save/archive your model's parameters is to use pickle or deepcopy the ndarray objects. So for example, if your parameters are in shared variables w, v, u, then your save command should look something like:
Then later, you can load your data back like this:
save_file = open('path')
w.set_value(cPickle.load(save_file), borrow=True)
v.set_value(cPickle.load(save_file), borrow=True)
u.set_value(cPickle.load(save_file), borrow=True)
This technique is a bit verbose, but it is tried and true. You will be able to load your data and render it in matplotlib without trouble, years after saving it.
DO NOT pickle your training or test functions for long-term storage
Theano functions are compatible with Python's deepcopy and pickle mechanisms, but you should not necessarily pickle a Theano function. If you update your Theano folder and one of the internal changes, then you may not be able to un-pickle your model. Theano is still in active development, and the internal APIs are subject to change. So to be on the safe side – do not pickle your entire training or testing functions for long-term storage. The pickle mechanism is aimed at for short-term storage, such as a temp file, or a copy to another machine in a distributed job.
Read more about serialization in Theano, or Python's pickling.
Plotting Intermediate Results
Visualizations can be very powerful tools for understanding what your model or training algorithm is doing. You might be tempted to insert matplotlib plotting commands, or PIL image-rendering commands into your model-training script. However, later you will observe something interesting in one of those pre-rendered images and want to investigate something that isn't clear from the pictures. You'll wished you had saved the original model.
If you have enough disk space, your training script should save intermediate models and a visualization script should process those saved models.
You already have a model-saving function right? Just use it again to save these intermediate models.
Libraries you'll want to know about: Python Image Library (PIL), matplotlib.
Tech in T: depth + breadth > AI > Machine Learning > Neural Networks > Deep Learning > python >
MNIST (Theano)
Subpages (13): 10 LSTM Networks for Sentiment Analysis 11 Modeling and generating sequences of polyphonic music with the RNN-RBM¶ 12 Miscellaneous 13 References 1 Logistic Regression 2 Multi-layer Perceptron 3 Convolutional Neural Network (LeNet) 4 Denoising Autoencoders 5 Stacked Denoising Auto Encoders 6 Restricted Boltzman Machine (RBM) 7 Deep Belief Networks 8 Hybrid Monte-Carlo Sampling 9 Recurrent Neural Networks


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Sure, send me a LinkedIn message and I will create you an ID.
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Yes you may as the license and terms of use are very liberal.
What About Development Notes?
Yes, I've got lots but the effort to rewrite and modernize is not something I have time for right now. I've had a number of requests, so I may put up some overall concepts and practices.
When did you start?
1996 with the Confluence edition started (minus Dev notes) Jan 2010.
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Check the FAQ or Message me via LinkedIn.


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Monthly Archives: March 2016
Watch "How I hacked an ultramarathon by thinking like an entrepreneur | Phil Sanderson | TEDxBeaconStreet" on YouTube
I have been pondering about something like this for a while.
Actually the reverse, Strategies in successful sports training to be applied to entrepreneurship.
I did my half ironman in 2014, and I was thinking the strategies I applied then could be used in success in business.
In terms of sports these were the strategies
1. A goal – I signed up for a race, saw the cut off times, decided to focus to finish on time. I kinda had an accountability buddy, the guy who got me to sign up. We didn't train together much, but we did update each other on our training.
2. A plan – knowing about the target, researched what I need to do to achieve it. Reviewed what I already had, and looked at what I need to improve, swimming and running was okay, I needed to increase my cycling speed and distance, and get used to brick training. I.e. Running after cycling.
Created a training schedule I needed to follow.
3. Execution, monitoring and adaptation. Used an android app endomondo to monitor my performance. To see if I am on track. Seeing the improving results gave a positive feedback to continue. Some people can afford to buy the multisport watches like suunto ambit or the garmin 920xt.
4. Show up to the event. And enjoy the results and rewards of the training.
Now I have been think to apply it to business or making money.
1. Set a goal – an amount of money by when.
2. Research and plan – reflect.on what resources I already have, and find out what business I can do, when I need to do it and how.
3. Execute, monitor and adapt – Do it, track the sales, financials. Change if anything needs to.
4. Results and rewards. Enjoy the fruits of your labour.
For now I am still in phase 2, looking into what I have done, and what I can do.
Post long hard run recovery
Did my 2nd marathon distance this year and realized how important recovery is. Never really looked into it much, but pushing myself this far has forced me to do so. My body aches for almost a week after the first one, I wud like to recover quickly after this one. Here are a few quick tips I got from runners world magazine.
Immediate post recovery tips
– Dont allow body to cool down, change to dry clothes and do stretches
– Do stretches, dynamic stretches seem to work best
-Refuel with 4:1 carb:protein with significant electrolytes
Post recovery tips
-rest, its when your body actually heals and becomes stronger after pushing it. (I guess until my body doesn't hurt anymore, but i did a swim that used more hands then legs, probably ok)
-Rest with leg above heart level. (I have seen a few people do this, mostly I try to keep my leg up while seating down, please don't judge me when you walk into my workplace and see me put my legs on the table).
-Do flat runs to recover from hill runs and vice versa. (I guess after the rest period, also I did a trail hilly run, so I am going to do a flat around the stadium run)
-No pills to treat inflammation, it is part of the healing process. But can eat anti inflammatory foods.
-Water therapy, submerge leg or whole body in water helps with flushing the system. (I do a slow and relax swim, check out total immersion)
Another thing I would like to add is the need for conditioning, or maintaining. I remember when I started off, the delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS often occured, but as I got used to longer and/or faster runs, the shorter and slow runs didnt hurt much if at all. But i have to keep running or cycling, after 4 weeks of not doing anything my body had reset, but thankfully it was quick to recover. Can probably restart within a week. I recommend at the most 2 weeks rest if needed. More if serious injury, but then have to replace with another activity that doesnt hurt the injured body part.


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Monday, January 07, 2008
Beauty Confidential - how to look like a million bucks for less
Nadine is big on developing personal style and doesn't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to beauty even if it's the mantra espoused by her peers.
Although I read beauty mags at the hairdresser, I've never paid much attention to beauty books. Until now that is.
Beauty Confidential is written in a light conversational style and chalk full of valuable tips about every beauty concern under the sun. The format is useful too. Each chapter includes a "product guide" listing each product mentioned in the chapter, along with it's website address and price range. How handy.
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Good haircuts and colour are worth the big bucks but you can follow Nadine's illustrated step-by-step instructions and learn to blow-dry your own hair like a pro. Learn how to groom and trim your eyebrows properly, give your self a professional manicure and lots more. Why throw money away on expensive nail polish when you don't have to when the less-expensive brands will do. Did you know lots of drugstore skincare products are formulated the same way as others costing megabucks?
You'll get lists of all the best beauty products (i.e. shampoo, mascara, skin cream, blush, foundation, sunscreen, etc.) and why those products have earned their stripes. Even some of my personal favourites including Lancôme Definicils mascara, Essie nail polish and Cetaphil were list-worthy. ; )
So, if you're like most women I know and have a stockpile of make-up, skin creams, hair care, body lotions and potions, Beauty Confidential is a smart investment.
4 comments:
Omg! I love reading beauty books! I am definetely adding this to my list. Did you ever read Don't Go to the Cosmestic Counter Without Me? That book was good too, but too reference like. Thanks!ReplyDelete
I was just looking at this yesterday at Indigo. Good timing on the review! Think I might go back to get it.ReplyDelete
I've heard about Don't Go to the Cosmetic Counter Without Me but I haven't read it yet. I've seen Paula Begoun on TV a few times.ReplyDelete
Beauty Confidential uses a different approach. Nadine writes about all the name brands and the colours that work for everyone too. For instance, NARS blush in orgasm and Essie polish in Mademoiselle.
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