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Submitted by: CHASINGPAVEMENT
From Southern Living. Great vegetarian lasagna! Submitted by: PEARLDICKENS
It's a favorite with the kids.Submitted by: LILSTRANGEBREW
Put in turkey instead of beef, use low-fat or fat-free cheeses and add some veggies, and bam! A great tasting lasagna for under 300 calories per serving. This recipe makes a LOT of food. Great for parties. I make this in one 9x18 pan, and one 9-9 pan, then bake both pans at the same time, however you could prepare 2 9x12 pans, and cook one on Monday and one on Tuesday, for example.Submitted by: TERRESTA
Low carbFrom Linda's low carb menues and recipes.Submitted by: LADYJAKE1

subset: commoncrawl


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These documents provide response guidance in the event of tsunamis for small vessels such as recreational sailing and motor vessels, and commercial fishing vessels. The developed documents follow the draft guidance developed by the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program (NTHMP) and are based on anticipated effects of a maximum-considered distant and locally generated tsunami event.
Maritime response guidance documents were generated for the following communities:


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Current Projects
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On Our Own Behalf
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Muuuh - Blog about Photography
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Creatures - Evolution Simulation


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Lisa MorrisOne Heart, One World Pilgrimages with Lisa
After over 20 years with Delta Airlines and raising my family I now feel a call and pull to serve Our Lord and His church through the experience He has blessed me with through extensive world-wide travel. Following my years with Delta Airlines I have been able to go on many pilgrimages with our diocese to places such as Lourdes, Paray-Le-Monial, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Holy Land and more. I have organized and led several mission/pilgrimages to Kenya and Uganda, Africa serving on the US Team for the Apostolate for the Sacred Heart. I am so grateful to be a part of Select International Tours…bringing people together to share in His glory through pilgrimages/travel around the world…Thank you Select International Tours for this opportunity to serve!
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Recent Pilgrimages with Select International
2019 Pilgrimages
- Greece – April 2019
- Poland – May 2019
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2020 Pilgrimages
- Cuba – February 2020


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Dive Brief:
- Novartis Sandoz' unit has secured European approval for a biosimilar copy of Roche's Rituxan (rituximab), marking the growing threat to Roche's trio of top-selling drugs in the coming years.
- Rixathon, as the copycat version will be marketed, is Sandoz's fourth biosimilar licensed in Europe and is OK'd for use in all approved indications of Rituxan, which is also sold under the brand name Mabthera.
- Sandoz plans to submit another five biosimilars for approval in the U.S. and the EU by the end of the year, part of an aggressive push to file 11 of the copycat biologics over the three-year period ending in 2017. The generics unit expects the flurry of regulatory activity to result in five market launches by 2020.
Dive Insight:
Sales of Ritxuan/Mabthera, Avastin (bevacizumab) and Herceptin (trastuzumab) accounted for 53% of Roche's pharmaceuticals revenues last year. All three face looming competition from biosimilars, putting pressure on the Swiss giant to grow revenues from its newer drugs more quickly.
Roche has said it is confident it can find ways to boost growth through the the "biosimilar erosion curve." Even so, faster uptake of the copycat drugs — particularly if costs come down further with new entrants — could leave a hole in Roche's revenues.
Korean drugmaker Celltrion has begun selling a biosimilar of Rituxan following European approval in February, while copies of Herceptin and Avastin are being readied for regulatory review in the U.S.
Roche's sales for its Rituxan franchise grew by 3% in 2016, driven by increasing demand in China, the U.S. and Europe. Worldwide sales totaled 7.3 billion Swiss francs ($7.5 billion), with the U.S. market accounting for the majority.
On the other side of ledger, biosimilars could become big business for Sandoz. The generics subsidiary has already secured approvals in the U.S. for biosimilar copies to Amgen's Neupogen (filgrastim) and Enbrel (etanercept). Planned submissions for this year target AbbVie's blockbuster inflammatory drug Humira (adalimumab) and Amgen's Epogen (epoetin alfa).
The Rituxan copy will be submitted to the FDA later this year as well, threatening Roche in the U.S.
Litigation has tied up most the approved biosimilars in the U.S. to date, however, slowing the impact and delaying any potential savings for the system.


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Issue link: http://publications.catstonepress.com/i/130219
Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (VASCD) Outstanding Curriculum Leader of the Year Award VaASCD is accepting nominations for our CURRICULUM LEADER OF THE YEAR AWARD through September 1, 2013. This award recognizes outstanding instructional leadership, and is presented during the opening of Annual Conference each year, this year on December 5, 2013. The awardee receives a plaque and a complimentary conference registration. We know there are many exceptional and inspiring leaders in the Commonwealth, and we want to ensure that they get the recognition they deserve. If you have questions or need assistance with the nomination process, contact Laurie McCullough at email@example.com. Qualifications: • A nominee shall have served for at least two full years in a school division or other educational agency in Virginia with major job responsibilities in the areas of instruction, curriculum, assessment, and professional development. • A nominee shall have been an active member of VaASCD for two years, and currently be a member. • A nominee must be nominated by an individual or group, including teachers, administrators, or school board members. Self-nominations will be considered. • The nomination may originate within the school division or educational agency where the nominee currently serves or the nomination may come from outside the division or agency. For additional information contact: Laurie McCullough, Executive Director, VASCD Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Integration Solutions
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I Introduction
Positron emission tomography (PET) is an advanced clinical imaging technology in the field of nuclear medicine. As a functional imaging technique, PET has many merits in neurology [1], oncology [2] and cardiology [3]. For a PET scan, a patient needs to be injected with some radioactive tracer; for example, fludeoxyglucose (F-18) which emits positrons that annihilate in the patient body to emit paired photons. Less radioactive tracer means less cost and less risk, making PET scanning safer to patients and staff [4]. In recent years, researchers have tried to reduce the dose of radioactive tracers used in PET scans [5]. PET dose reduction follows the well-known guiding principle of ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) [6]. Due to various physical degradation factors and low coincident-photon counts detected [7], reducing the dose of radioactive tracers affects the final image quality significantly. Therefore, advanced image processing algorithms are desirable to denoise low-dose PET images.
Classical PET image denoising algorithms can be divided into two categories: iterative reconstruction algorithms and image post-processing algorithms. An iterative reconstruction algorithm combines the statistical model of data noise as a regularization term to suppress the noise in a reconstructed image. For instance, Wang et al. [8] proposed a patch-based regularization method for iterative image reconstruction. Ehrhardt et al. [9] proposed randomized optimization for PET reconstruction aided by a large class of non-smooth priors including total variation, total generalized variation, various different physical constraints, and so on. Iterative reconstruction shows an excellent denoising ability but there are limitations as well; for example, iterative reconstruction is computationally intensive and may induce additional artifacts. On the other hand, image post-processing after reconstruction is computationally efficient compared to iterative reconstruction. Over the past years, there are many excellent image post-processing algorithms published, such as block-matching 3D [10] and non-local means [11]. Although denoising through image post-processing may improve the image quality substantially, over-smoothing and residual artifacts are often observed in a denoised image.
Recently, deep learning has achieved extraordinary results in the field of medical imaging, such as for correction [12], segmentation [13], reconstruction [14, 4], diagnosis [15], and so on. The statistical characteristics of noise in medical images are too complex and difficult to model. Deep learning can solve this problem very well due to its powerful learning ability to model image noise driven by big data. Therefore, deep learning based medical image noise reduction has led to state of the art results, clearly outperforming traditional methods. For example, Chen et al. [16]
used a residual convolutional neural network to improve the quality of low-dose CT images greatly. Shanet al. [17] proposed the conveying path-based convolutional encoder-decoder network with 3D convolution (CPCE-3D) for low-dose CT denoising. Xie et al. [18] proposed to use a generative adversarial network (GAN) to produce remarkable denoising effects.
Currently, most denoising methods are in the 2D domain which means to utilize 2D features only. In reality, experienced radiologists look at only a single slice but also adjacent slices for analysis. For denoising, there is more prior information in the 3D domain than that in 2D domain [17]. Therefore, it is advisable to target 3D features for image denoising. However, 3D networks are more memory demanding and more challenging in a training process than 2D networks [19].
In this paper, we propose a 3D parameter-constrained generative adversarial network with Wasserstein distance and perceptual loss (PC-WGAN) for low-dose PET images denoising. The generator of PC-WGAN is designed for noise reduction. It has a encoder-decoder structure as shown in Fig. 1
. Typically, the 3D decoder network consists of 3D up-sampling operators. In this paper, we use 3D deconvolution operators to replace 3D up-sampling operators. Similar to a 3D decoder network, the 2D decoder network consists of 2D deconvolution operators. 2D and 3D encoder networks consist of 2D and 3D convolution operators respectively. In the proposed network, we first use 3D convolution operators and then use 2D convolution operators to combine features in the 3D and 2D domains. It bridges the gap between the 3D and 2D feature spaces. To reduce the training difficulty of WGAN and improve the authenticity of denoised images, we use a transfer learning strategy in the training process. First, we use structural similarity index (SSIM) as the loss function to train the generator of the proposed network separately. In the next training phase, we use the parameter of the trained model to initialize the generator without involving the Xavier initializer[20]
. Our initialization method constrains the parameters of the proposed network to reduce the training difficulty of the proposed network and regularize the denoising process heuristically. The experimental results on clinical images show that the proposed network can suppress more noise while preserving more details than three state-of-the-art methods.
The contributions of this paper are as follows:
i) A network PC-WGAN is designed for low-dose PET image denoising. It maps the distribution of low-dose PET images to that of normal-dose images to reduce noise and keep details as much as feasible. In the proposed network, the use of mixed 2D and 3D convolution and deconvolution operators is effective in synergizing 2D and 3D features and improving the fidelity of denoised images;
ii) A transfer learning strategy is adapted to constrain the parameters of PC-WGAN and improve the quality of denoised images.
Ii Methods
Ii-a Low Dose PET Denoising
Let denote a low-dose PET image and denote the corresponding normal-dose image. Seeking a function which maps the low-dose PET image to the normal-dose image is the task of denoising process.
If we take as a sample from the low-dose PET image distribution and from the normal-dose PET image distribution . The function maps samples from into a certain denoising distribution . We could make close to by varying the function . In other words, we treat the denoising process as the convertor which could move one data distribution to another.
Ii-B Pc-Wgan
As shown in Eq. (1), the main task for low-dose PET images denoising is to construct the function . Motivated by it, we use deep learning with powerful nonlinear fitting ability. Specially, we design a network named PC-WGAN to approximate .
The introduction of PC-WGAN consists of two parts: network structure and objective function.
Ii-B1 Network Structure
The overall structure of the proposed network is shown in Fig. 2. There are three parts in it.
The first part is the generator. Although it has the similar shape to U-Net [21] and V-net [22], the difference is to use mixed 2D and 3D convolution operator instead of pure 2D convolution operators in U-net or pure 3D convolution operators in V-net. Denoising process of the generator is shown in Fig. 1. After stacking, several continuous low-dose PET images processed by 3D convolution, 2D convolution, 2D deconvolution and 3D deconvolution operators in turn to produce denoising images. The architecture of the generator is shown in Fig 4. There are sixteen layers in the generator include four 3D convolutional layers, four 2D convolutional layers, four 2D deconvolutional layers and four 3D deconvolutional layers. Similar to that discarded detail caused by the down-sampling of 2D convolution could be recovered by 2D deconvolution, we used 3D deconvolution to recover the discarded detail caused by 3D convolution. Since there are sixteen layers in the proposed network, we introduced the residual compensation [16] similar to deep residual learning [23, 24]. It can prevent the training difficulty caused by the gradient diffusion.
The outputs between the layers of the generator follow rule of LIFO (Last In First Out). For example, the output of the first layer was superimposed with the output of the last layer to obtain the final result. This shortcut connection was used except the 4th 2D convolution layer. The number of kernels of each layer of the generator is shown in Table I. Following the common practice in the deep learning community [25], small 3
3 kernels were used in each convolutional and deconvolutional layer. The stride of convolution and deconvolution was a constant value of 1. Zero-padding was not used in the network. ReLU was used as the activation function after each layer.
|# Kernel
|# Kernel
The second part is discriminator. There are eight layers in discriminator including six 2D convolution layers and two fully connected layers. Leaky ReLU was chosen as the activation function for the discriminator and it was used for each layer except the last layer. Small 3
3 kernels were used in discriminator too. The convolutional stride of the odd layer was constant 1 and the convolutional stride of the even layer was constant 2. The number of kernels and outputs of each layer is shown in TableII. The WGAN [26] framework consists of the generator and the discriminator described above.
|# Kernel
The third part is perceptual feature extractor. Similar to [27, 28], we use pre-trained VGG-19 network as the perceptual feature extractor. There are sixteen convolutional layers in VGG-19 and we choose the output of the 16th convolutional layer as the extracted perceptual feature. The generated image from the generator and the corresponding normal-dose image are sent into VGG-19 for extracting features in the high-dimensional feature space.
Ii-B2 Objective Function
Shan et al. [17] and Xie et al. [18] proved that the potential denoising ability of GAN is better than CNN. Inspired by their excellent results, we optimize the proposed network in the framework of WGAN. In addition to the adversarial loss, we use additional perceptual loss into the objective function.
Adversarial loss is introduced by the loss function of WGAN. Arjovsky et al. [26]
used Wasserstein distance to estimate the difiference betweenand . The generator of WGAN is the function that we are looking for. Let denote the discriminator. The definition of Wasserstein distance is shown as follows:
where denotes the expectation when variable follows distribution . Gradient penalty [29] was introduced to improve the stability of WGAN. The loss function of WGAN is shown as Eq. 3.
Here, is a constant weighting parameter of gradient penalty, denotes uniformly sampling along straight lines connecting pairs of denoising images and normal-dose images, is an interval of and is a distribution for .
The perceptual similarity measure proposed in [30] and [27]
compares the difference between images using the feature extracted by perceptual extractor in the high-dimensional feature space rather than pixel space. The perceptual loss is then defined as:
where denotes the batch size and denotes the perceptual feature extracting process. Perceptual loss helps to prevent over-smoothing, blurred edges, etc. in the generated images which helps the proposed network to generate the images meeting the visual requirement. In addition, perceptual loss has a similar effect to regularization term. It limits the generation ability of WGAN. This limitation prevents the generation of sham texture to ensure the credibility of the denoising image generated by WGAN.
The objective function of the discriminator is defined as follows:
The objective function of the generator is defined as follows:
where denotes the constant weighting parameter of perceptual loss.
Ii-C Transfer Learning Strategy
Although the use of Wasserstein distance and gradient penalty reduces the training difficulty of GAN, the convergence problem in the training process is still not solved completely. Transfer learning is generally defined as the ability of a system to utilize knowledge learned from one task to another task that shares some common characteristics [31]. Shan et al. [17] proposed to transfer a pre-trained CPCE-2D model to get a CPCE-3D model. It improved the denoising performance and reduced the training difficulty of CPCE-3D. It is obvious that there are many common characteristics between the networks with the same structure and target but training by different loss function. In consideration of the generator of the proposed network is a simple CNN network that is designed to use low-dose PET images to generate denoising images which are as close to the corresponding normal-dose images as possible. Whether it is under the framework of GAN. In addition, the training process of a single CNN network is more simple than that of GAN. Therefore, we trained the generator without the framework of GAN as the pre-trained model. It improves the efficiency of pre-trained process and is also the difference with the work of Shan et al. [17].
Firstly, we tried a number of loss functions, including mean square error (MSE), SSIM, perceptual loss and the mixture of them to train the generator of PC-WGAN separately. Then the parameters of the trained generator were used to initialize the generator in the joint training process of PC-WGAN instead of Xavier initializer [20]. Due to the training difficulty of CNN is low, this kind of initialization is efficient. It provides a good starting point to prevent PC-WGAN to fall into mode collapse. The training stability of the proposed network has been improved by doing so.
On the other hand, GAN was originally designed to produce the image that mimics the real thing. Here comes a problem, if the generator of GAN gets the best performance, it would produce the non-existing texture which can confuse the doctor. It is totally unacceptable for medical image. Similar to the regularization term used in iterative reconstruction, we could use transfer learning strategy to limit PC-WGAN which prevents the generation of non-existing texture. The different pre-trained model we use, the different final network we get.
Iii Experiments
Iii-a Experimental Data
We used 2,920 pairs of 256256 clinical PET images from 8 anonymous patients scaned by Neusoft NeuSight EWN. The images with a scanning time of 75s were used as the low-dose PET images and the images with a scanning of 150s were used as the normal-dose PET images. We selected 2,190 pairs of PET images from 6 patients randomly as training data sets and 730 pairs of PET images of the remaining 2 patients as validation sets. Due to the obtainment of medical big data is difficult, we used the following operations to augment the data set and saved computational resources: randomly crop 43,800 pairs patches of size 6464 from the training data and perform rotation and contrast transformation operations on the input of proposed network.
Iii-B Implementation Details
Just like the training process of other GANs, we trained and separately by fixing one and updating the other. We used Adam algorithm [32] to optimize the proposed network. The hyper parameters of Adam algorithm were set as , and . The weight of the gradient penalty is fixed at 10 as suggested in [29]. The weight of the perceptual loss
is fixed at 10. The number of iterations is 20,000 times. The networks were implemented in Python 3.6 with the TensorFlow 1.4[33]. A NVIDIA QUADRO M5000 GPU was used.
Iii-C Pre-trained Network
We used different loss functions to train the generator of PC-WGAN separately. We designed a total of five loss functions. Except is shown in Eq. (4), the other loss functions are expressed as follows:
where denotes the mean of ,
denotes the variance ofand denotes the covariance of and . and are constant to maintain stablity, where , and .
In order to demonstrate the denoising results intuitively, we present them in the way of 3D reconstruction. Denoising results of networks with different loss function for the test sets are shown in Fig. 5. The zoomed abdomen area of the patient's PET image is shown in Fig. 6 for viewing the texture detail.
First of all, it is clear that the quality of the low-dose PET image is much lower than that of the normal-dose PET image. There is much noise in the low-dose PET image which affects the observation of patient's organs and tissues. Overall, each network achieved different degrees of denoising effect for the low-dose PET image. As shown in Fig. 5(b) the denoising effect of the network with MSE as the loss function (M) is excessive. There is little residual noise in the denoising result by using MSE as the loss function. However, a lot of structural details were discarded. As can be seen from Fig. 6(b) is that the texture of the tissue is loss seriously. The SSIM value between the low-dose image and the normal-dose image is higher than 0.95. Although the optimization space for the network with SSIM as the loss function (S) is small, the denoising result is significant as shown in Fig. 5(c). As shown in Fig. 6(c), the problem of over-smoothing in denoising images has been suppressed by using SSIM as the loss function. There are many texture details preserved after denoising. The denoising result of the network with perceptual loss as the loss function (P) has the best visual effect compared to the denoising result of the other networks. As shown in Fig. 5(d), it looks the closest to the normal-dose PET image. The cost of visual improvement is that there is much residual noise in the denoising image.
In order to combine the advantage of MSE, SSIM and perceptual loss, we combined them to form loss functions. As can be seen in the Fig. 6(e), simultaneous optimization of MSE and SSIM suppressed excessive denoising and relieved the loss of the detail of the denoising image. Compared to the denoising result of the network with mixed MSE and SSIM as the loss function (MS), the visual performance of the network with mixed MSE, SSIM and perceptual loss (MPS) is better. However, residual noise can be observed in the denoising result as shown in Fig. 5(f). It is similar to the result of P.
According to the denoising result of networks with different loss functions, we can summaries the following rules. First, MSE as the loss function guarantees the denoising ability of the network. Second, SSIM as the loss function makes the boundary of the images generated by the network sharpen. Third, perceptual loss improves the visual effect of denoising images. For a pre-trained model, we concern more about the detail protection than noise suppression since it could be adjusted after transferring to the framework of WGAN. Therefore, we chose S as the pre-trained model for transfer learning.
Iii-D Parameter Analysis
Although perceptual loss is beneficial to improve the visual effect of the denoising image. The residual noise is often observed in the denoising image. Therefore, while introducing perceptual loss as the regularization, we introduce as the weight to control it. When is set to 0, it means that perceptual loss is not used in the training process of the proposed network. As increases, the effect of perceptual loss will be more and more obvious. If is set to , there is no use of adversarial loss. We set to 0, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10 and
to train models and then apply them to the test data sets for parameter analysis. Due to the denoising effect of the network with additional perceptual loss, we chose Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), SSIM and MSE as the indicators for evaluating the quality of the generated image instead of evaluating it for image. PSNR is based on error sensitivity to evaluate the image quality. A bigger PSNR relates to the less noise ratio of the image. SSIM is an index that measures the similarity between two images. When it equals to 1, two images are identical. Similarly, when it equals to 0, two images are completely different. MSE calculates the mean square value of image pixel difference between the noisy image and the denoising to determines the distortion degree of the denoising image. Higher MSE value means more seriously distortion of the denoising image. Normalized the indicators of two test sets was calculated and shown in Figs.7 and 8.
It is obvious that the network with different improves the quality of the low-dose PET image. When the value of is small, adversarial loss plays a major role in the training process. It results in the unstable denoising ability of proposed network. Improving the proportion of perceptual loss is not only benefit for making the denoising network stabler but also preventing WGAN to generate non-existing texture. When we use perceptual loss as the loss function to train the generator of the proposed network, it results in much residual noise in the denoising image. It is obvious that the denoising performance of mixed adversarial loss and perceptual loss is better than that of adveresarial loss or perceptual loss alone. As shown in Figs. 7 and 8, the denoising images generated by the network with has the highest PSNR, SSIM and lowest MSE value compared with that of the other network. As discussed above, in the proposed network be assigned to 10.
Iii-E Denoising results
In order to demonstrate the denoising performance of the proposed network, we also trained RED-CNN [16], 200x-CNN [34] and CPCE-3D [17]. In addition, the performance of PC-WGAN without transfer learning (PC-WGAN-D) was compared with PC-WGAN with transfer learning (PC-WGAN-T). The details of the above networks is shown in Table III.
|Number of layers
|Size of input
|Number of input
We show 2 PET images of the patients' head in Figs. 9 and 11. Figs. 10 and 12 are the corresponding regions-of-interest (ROIs). We choose the head PET image to show the denoising effect of the proposed network since there are many structural details in it.
All networks demonstrated significant denoising effect as shown in Figs. 9 and 11. Both of 200x CNN and RED-CNN use a structure of encoder-decoder and residual compensation. The denoising effect of RED-CNN is obvious. Although there is less noise in the denoising image than that in the low-dose PET image, excessive denoising makes many structural details loss in the denoising image as shown in Figs. 10(b) and 12(b). It is caused by using MSE as the loss function. Xu et al. [34] used l1-norm instead of MSE as the loss function of 200x-CNN and added adjacent two slices for denoising. The denoising result of 200x-CNN shows that the over-smoothing phenomenon of the organ is suppressed. As shown in Figs. 10(c) and 11(c), the boundary of the organ in the denoising result of 200x-CNN is clearlier than RED-CNN. The shortcoming of using l1-norm as loss function is that there is a little residual noise in the denoising image. Compared with the normal-dose image, there is some room for improvement of texture preservation of REC-CNN and 200x-CNN. The tissue shown in Figs. 10(g) and 12(g) has fine texture. Texture loss means that minor pathological changes may be difficult to detect.
Compared with RED-CNN and 200x-CNN, CPCE-3D improves the quality of the denoising image by using adversarial loss and 3D convolution. Overall, the visually effect of the organ in the denoising result of CPCE-3D is more close to the normal-dose image than those of RED-CNN and 200x-CNN. As shown in Figs. 9(d) and 11(d), the boundary of organ in the denoising result of CPCE-3D is clearly. It proves that adversarial loss and 3D convolution is helpful to improve denoising ability. However, the tiny distortion of the shape can be seen in Figs. 10(d) and 11(d). Since both RED-CNN and CPCE-3D are networks for CT image denoising, the experimental results show that their denoising effects for clinical PET images are not ideal.
The denoising effect of PC-WGAN-D has a certain improvement compared with the denoising effect of CPCE-3D by introducing 3D deconvolution. As shown in Figs. 10(e) and 12(e), the tiny distortion of the shape in the denoising of CPCE-3D is suppressed. We can easily find that the tissue in the zoomed ROI images generated by PC-WGAN has more texture details and the boundaries are much clearer than that generated by the other networks which confirms that 3D deconvolution can help PET image denoising networks protect the detail of the denoising image. The denoising result of PC-WGAN-D proves that the structure of the proposed network is suitable for low-dose PET image denoising. Compared with 200x-CNN, PC-WGAN-D processes nine images at the same time so the information obtained is much more than three images so the denoising result of PC-WGAN-D is better than 200x-CNN. As can be seen from Figs. 10(e) and 12(e), the texture in the denoising reslut of PC-WGAN-D is more close to the normal-dose PET image than those of RED-CNN, 200x-CNN and CPCE-3D. There is much structural information in the denoising image.
The PC-WGAN model obtained by transfer learning is the best denoising network in this paper. From a visual point of view, the image generated by PC-WGAN-T is the closest to the normal-dose PET image. Thanks to the effect of transfer learning, the denoising result has improved significantly than PC-WGAN-D. More structural information in the denoising image than that of the other networks. As shown in Figs. 10(f) and 12(f), the boundaries and textures of the tissue in the image using the proposed network are excellent. Due to the use of perceptual loss, the denoising image of PC-WGAN-T has nice visual performance. In addition, we don't find that PC-WGAN-T produces the texture which doesn't exist in the low-dose PET image. It is the benefit of the use of transfer learning and perceptual loss.
In addition to the analysis from the visual perspective of the denoising image, we chose PSNR, SSIM, Standard Deviation (SD) and MEAN as the indicators for evaluating the quality of the generated image. We calculated average of PSNR, SSIM, MEAN and SD of the images generated from the test data set.
In terms of the two indicators of PSNR and SSIM, our network achieved the best results as can be seen in Table IV. Although the SSIM between the low-dose image and the normal dose image in this subject is high, but the image generated by the proposed network still improves SSIM based on the low-dose image. The most important point is that the denoising effect of the proposed network is stabler than other networks.
The average of MEAN and SD of denoising images is shown in Table V. Regardless of MEAN or SD, we try to make the generated image as close to the normal dose image as possible. As shown in Table V, the value of MEAN and SD of the image generated by the proposed network is the closest to that of the normal dose image. The best MEAN means that both noise reduction and detail preservation are excellent in the denoising process of PC-WGAN-T. The best SD means that the smoothness of the denoising image is close to the normal-dose image. Over-smoothing phenomenon has been suppressed in the result of PC-WGAN-T.
Iv Discussions and Conclusion
The novel features of the proposed network include the well-designed structure aided by detail-capturing loss terms and constrained parameters through transfer learning.
It is important to decrease the loss of details while denoising low-dose PET images. We have introduced 3D deconvolutional operators to recover the details discarded by 3D convolution. Then, we have adjusted the shortcut connections between the corresponding layers to make the best trade-off between noise suppression and detail preservation. There are not only 3D but also 2D convolutional operators. It is shown practical to use both of 3D contextual and planar information for low-dose PET images denoising.
Generating a normal-dose image from a low-dose image is the ultimate goal. However, achieving it perfectly is impossible, so in practice we only try to generate the image that is as close to the normal-dose image as possible. Denoising results of [17] and [18] give an excellent quality, taking the advantages of GAN. However, the authenticity of the images generated by GAN can be problematic if not well constrained. In addition, the training of GAN is very challenging. To address these issues, we have used a transfer learning strategy coupled with the perceptual loss, and demonstrated a success.
In transfer learning, we use the parameters of a pre-trained CNN model to initialize the parameters of PC-WGAN. The reasonable starting point transferred from the pre-trained model makes the training process of PC-WGAN well informed. Its effect is similar to that of regularization. Such a constraint applied on PC-WGAN can help prevent it from producing non-existing texture, since we can control the performance of PC-WGAN through selecting the pre-trained model. On the other hand, the perceptual loss not only improves the visual performance but also guarantees the authenticity of denoised images.
While the training difficulty of CNN is low, that of GAN is high. The transfer learning strategy overcomes the training difficulty of GANs. Based on common characteristics of underlying images, we transfer a pre-trained CNN model to GAN. It makes the training process of GAN efficient. This kind of transfer learning is efficient and heuristic. The parameters of the pre-trained network proves a good starting point that is close to the optimal point for PC-WGAN and makes the optimization easy. It is worth noting that the performance of the proposed network with knowledge transferred from the pre-trained network is better than that of the proposed network trained directly. The experimental results described above have demonstrated that the use of transfer learning can reduce the training difficulty and improve the performance of the proposed network simultaneously.
We believe that the effect of network-based image denoising is related to the width and depth. How to optimize the the network topology is worthy to further study. With the development of GAN, more and more well-structured GAN networks have emerged. Among them, WGAN is not necessarily the best. Therefore, there is still much room for development of denoising methods for low-dose PET imaging by developing more advanced networks than what has been proposed here. Finally, the performance of supervised PET image denoising via deep learning critically depends on the amount of labeled data, and self-supervised learning can help further. The use of self-supervised learning for PET image denoising will be our next step.
In conclusion, we have proposed a parameter-constrained generative adversarial network with Wasserstein distance and perceptual loss (PC-WGAN) for low-dose PET image denoising. The experimental results on clinical data show that the proposed network can suppress image noise more effectively while preserving better image fidelity than than three selected state-of-the-art methods. Further work is in progress for improvements in the performance of low-dose PET denoising.
V Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61601450, 61871371, 81830056,61671441), Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province of China (20170540321), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2017B020227012, 2018B010109009), the Basic Research Program of Shenzhen (JCYJ20180507182400762) and Youth Innovation Promotion Association Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2019351). The authors wish to express gratitude to the Shenyang Neusoft-medical and the patients who provided data.
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text:
Rob Kardashian and his bestie Blac Chyna took their relationship show on the road this weekend. Yesterday it was announced that Rob and Chyna's hard work has paid off. They're set to earn steady paychecks playing themselves on the upcoming season of Keeping Up With the Kartrashians.
Photos by Prince Williams/ATLPics.net
Rob and Chyna's expenses were paid by Basement Pat, center, of Basement Entertainment. Pat flew the couple to Atlanta and put them up at a first class hotel. The first stop on their tour was Pat's Crazy Horse strip club in Forest Park, GA. on Friday. The next night, they partied at Pat's world famous Onyx strip club in Atlanta. Pat is one of the original sponsors of Sandrarose.com when I first started this blog. Hey, Pat!
Rob's face lit up when a friend surprised him with a delicious birthday cake.
Blac Chyna's body language said everything we wanted to know about her and Rob. The mother-of-one appeared depressed, and my spy remarked on how "lost" she looked. According to my inside source, there was no spark between Chyna and Rob as they watched Onyx strippers dance for the money.
Here Chyna poses with a fan and her auntie in Club Onyx parking lot.
Thanks to Basement Pat from Basement Entertainment and Prince Williams of ATLPics.net for the Exclusive pics!
Photos by Prince Williams/ATLPics.net


text:
Real or artificial, big or small, quirky or traditional, a home, office or shop is not complete at Christmas time unless there is a Christmas tree. Not only do they bring joy, but they bring a festive spirit to the place, with the coloured baubles, beautiful twinkling lights and mysterious presents placed underneath waiting to be opened. The magic of Christmas blooms everywhere. This year our tall, beautiful (albeit artificial) tree is decorated with silver, green, white and wooden baubles and strands of twinkling lights. It stands pride of place in our front window for all to see.
It got me thinking about what happens to this beautiful tree when the Christmas season is over. If it's an artificial tree like ours, it is packed away in storage in the garage until next December. If you have a real tree it is probably going to be dumped in a garbage bin to be taken away. (Hopefully to be recycled!) A once prized possession in the homes and offices of many, is now a forgotten or discarded, unwanted piece of waste, no longer loved or cherished.
So too are people prized possessions to God…not once during the Christmas season and then forgotten, but for all time. I pray that the generous, gracious, joyful spirit we desire at Christmas time will last long after the Christmas tree is dismantled, and that people who cross our paths won't be discarded for another year, but will be loved and cherished.
The following poem conveys what Christians need to do when the Christmas season comes to an end. It captures the real meaning of Christmas and actually reminds us of what our mandate should be throughout the year. It echoes Jesus' words described in Luke 4:18-19.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman. Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights


text:
The next 72 Hour Game Development Competition is coming June 25, 2004. Keep checking the [GDC Board] for updates. Get prepared!
Theme suggestions can be given immediately. On June 11, when I announce it, stage 1 voting will begin. On June 18, stage 2 voting will begin. On June 25, at exactly 12:01 PM EST (that's right after noon), the results of the voting will be announced and the competition will begin. On June 28, at exactly 12:01 PM EST, the competition will be over and no more entries will be accepted.


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How to Take Stethoscope Diaghragm & Non Chill Rim Off & On The MDF 777
Nurse Jenny Youtube Channel Click Here
In this video, I'm gonna show you how to remove the diaphragm and non-chill rim of the MDF 777 stethoscope, and then I'm gonna show you how to put them back on.
Hey hey what's up guys, Nurse Jenny here.
In this video, I'm gonna take you through in detail my experience on how to take off the MDF 777 stethoscope's diaphragm and non-chill rim, and then I'm gonna compare it to the MDF instructional videos that are available online.
If you're into all things nursing like me, consider subscribing, and if you found this video at all helpful, please give it a thumbs up.
Let's get into the video.
So as you can see in this MDF instructional video that I found online, the lady is pushing down on the chest piece and away from the diaphragm, and working her fingers all the way around it so that the plastic slips down and then she is able to pull it off the chest piece quite easily.
So when I had a go at removing the diaphragm, I did it with difficulty.
I found that the plastic was a lot harder than it looks, and I attempted to roll it off like in the video, but it wouldn't budge at all.
And I tried to pry it open with my nails, but ended up nearly breaking all of them, and also I found that I may have given it a little, small scratches there, which is not very good.
Then I also actually tried to pry it open with a sharp object, but then I stopped that because I didn't wanna damage the chest piece.
So then I got some help from stronger hands, and even then it was difficult to try and remove.
The plastic wouldn't budge at all.
So we tried to use a cotton cloth to get a better grip, and even still, it was really hard to remove.
But then finally, with lots of force, we got the diaphragm off.
Putting the diaphragm back on is a different story.
As you can see in this MDF instructional video, the lady is putting the diaphragm on top of a chest piece, and then she works her fingers all the way around and the diaphragm snaps in place.
When I did it, I put the diaphragm on the edge of the chest piece, and then from there I worked my fingers all the way around until it snapped into place.
It was quite easy and pain-free.
Removing the non-chill rim.
As you can see in the video again here, the lady is pushing her fingers down onto the plastic so that it comes off the chest piece completely, and then she pulls it off the chest piece from there.
In my attempt to remove the non-chill rim, I did exactly like she did it in her video.
The plastic seemed pretty soft, and I just pushed it all the way down, all the way around, and then I could pull it off the chest piece.
It was quite easy.
Putting the non-chill rim back onto the stethoscope, as you can see here, you gotta work your way in reverse.
So you push the plastic onto the chest piece all the way down, and then you pull it back up over the edges, and work your fingers all the way around until it fits snugly again.
So here in my attempt to put the non-chill rim back onto this stethoscope, I did pretty much the same thing she did in that video.
I pushed the plastic down, and then all the way around the chest piece, and then I pulled it back up to fit it snug all the way around the chest piece. It was quite easy.
So to summarize, the non-chill rim was easy to remove, and to put back on, no problems there.
However the diaphragm was really hard to get off, the plastic was super hard.
I nearly broke all my nails, and I actually had to go and get a pair of stronger hands to help me out with that one.
Now the reason I do wanna be able to take off the diaphragm is if I do want to do a thorough clean underneath and all the way in those crevices, or if my diaphragm is damaged in any way and I need to change it.
All these stethoscopes that I use in my videos I actually give away. So if you're interested in entering my giveaway, click the link below, and good luck to you.
Catch you guys next time, I hope you enjoyed this video and remember, listen with your heart.
Nurse Jenny
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Data deduplication in the storage channel
Data deduplication can reduce the amount of data that is being stored by VARs' customers. This provides the oportunity for VARs to enhance storage support for clients and add value to a customer's enterprise.
Some data deduplication solutions focus on reducing the amount of data ingested (inline) or after it is stored (post processing) as part of a backup stream to reduce the amount of storage capacity for storing backups. Some virtual tape libraries (VTLs) have implemented some form of data deduplication to reduce the amount of storage capacity to hold backups in addition to traditional data compression and compaction techniques. VTLs with deduplication should be compatible with existing host server backup software. On the other hand, server based software to perform data deduplication would require new software to installed or existing software updated.
Dig Deeper on Storage Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
Related Q&A from Greg Schulz
Given outages, are you concerned with the security of the cloud?
Service provider outages should be a warning to customers that keeping data safe in the cloud is a shared responsibility. Continue Reading
Are more than five nines of availability really possible?
When cloud durability is added to the mix, cloud providers are able to tout a high number of nines of availability. Continue Reading
Is the cost of cloud storage really cheaper than traditional storage?
Cloud storage can be less expensive from a cost-per-gigabyte perspective, but it's important not to lose sight of other benefits as a value ... Continue Reading


text: Our Stories We're a Certified Age Friendly Employer! Age Friendly Certified employers want age 50+ candidates to know they are valued for their knowledge, experience, maturity, reliability and productivity. Read more Residents and Staff Make "Joyful Connections!" with Barn Babies March 7, 2017 Participants in the Joyful Connections! program at our Brighton campus spent the afternoon playing with adorable barn babies thanks to a visit from Barn Babies Traveling Petting Zoo. Read more JCHE Premieres Cycling Without Age March 1, 2018 Last October, on a beautiful Autumn afternoon in Brighton, a dozen or so JCHE residents could be seen riding in pedicabs, enjoying the outdoors with the wind in their hair. Read more JCHE Fights Scams Targeting Older Americans December 21, 2016 We recently published the inaugural issue of Thriving in Community, JCHE's newsletter featuring timely stories and information. The scam prevention story is reproduced below. Read more JCHE Expands to Brookline December 11, 2017 We recently published the winter issue of Thriving in Community, JCHE's newsletter featuring timely stories and information. One of the stories is reproduced below. Read more JCHE Celebrates Passover Seder April 14, 2017 Reinforcing the strong sense of community that we believe is the linchpin to healthy aging, JCHE hosts a Passover Seder each year at all four of our campuses. Read more Residents and Volunteers Offer Comfort in Wake of Tragedy November 16, 2017 Every week at Shillman House, a group of 15 community-engaged residents and volunteers meet to cut, sew and stuff Feelie Hearts (palm-sized hearts made out of red felt) for individuals in need of compassion and connection. Read more Harvard University Welcomes JCHE Residents December 8, 2017 On a brisk December evening, a group of Russian JCHE residents took the JCHE van across the river to Harvard University. Read more JCHE Love Stories Sure to Inspire Your Valentine's Day! February 14, 2018 There are as many love stories at JCHE as there are residents. Read more Happy International Women's Day! March 8, 2017 International Women's Day may not be a major holiday in the United States, but for many residents who make up JCHE's vibrant multicultural communities, International Women's Day is a special day commemorating the countless ways women make the world a better place. Read more Featured Funder: Tufts Health Plan Foundation March 1, 2018 Tufts Health Plan Foundation has been supporting JCHE for almost a decade. Read more Exercising the Pain Away May 5, 2016 Joan Slaby and Jack Kates come from very different walks of life. But they have two things in common that are near and dear to their hearts: they are both residents of JCHE's Coleman House and they are both deeply committed to regular exercise. Read more Everyone's Story Matters: Residents Build Connections with Boston Students December 15, 2017 A group of high school students from the Boston Community Leadership Academy visited JCHE's Golda Meir House to collect and share stories. Read more First Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next Last


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I drive it almost every day, even to church! The van is All Wheel Drive, it has over 280,000 miles on it, original engine & original transmission. No maj... Show moreor repairs other than to replace the head gasket. The air conditioning compressor has been replaced twice, the water pump twice, altenator once. A rear half shaft has been replaced. That's about it other than routine maintainence.Update: at 275,000 miles a front wheel bearing was replaced.Under the hood it has a K&N air filter, and I added dual exhausts, I had to move the spare tire from under the van to make room for the extra pipes, the resonators make it sound like a GT racecar, it absolutley GROWLS when I get on the gas. The wing has a diffuser on it and it really pushes the rearend down, you can feel it start to push down at about 40-45 mph. You can actually see it 'hunker' down to the road as I get up to speed. I have also added a rear anti-sway bar, between it & the spoiler, the handling in the curves has improved tremendously.please, take a minute to check out "the Scorpion" by going to 'My Garage": Show Less
August 23rd 2009; Just found some Ferrari Logos to put on the speaker grills, the Infinitys will have the Ferrari shield on them, the Rockfords will have the... Show more word 'Ferrari' on them.there are Orion 6.5" mid bass drivers in the low factory speaker placement in the doors, Infinity 3.5"s in the factory tweeter placement & the Alpine tweeters in the sail panels. The idea was to give it studio quality sound, I have a very precise system at home (see page 6), complete with spectrum analyzer and an oscilloscope. And, my intent was for this to sound similar; problem is the exhaust is so loud that you can't listen to Pink Floyd or Steely Dan or classical without that thing growlin' when i'm out prowlin'. At any rate, loud rock kicks ass; I guess that's something I can live with. The new gauges, I replaced the first ones I had in there: Show Less
The newest addition to the collection; a very rare ST-8600 & the matching SU-8600. I originaly bought these for the garage, but they are simply too ... Show morecherry for that. when I first got 'em one channel on the amp didn't work. the toggle switch was fouled with dust & such. cleaned that up with rubbing alcohol. make sure to unplug it from power before DAYS you attempt this. make sure it's DAYS before you put power to it again. it now WORKS. the FM tuning strength meter also didn't work, I noticed a slight movement one day while going through stations and started working with it it now works a lot better, but I think I will have to dig way down deep into it to clean it. they are being "moded" right now. I'm painting all the knobs & switches flat black. I will change the lighting to yellow LEDs. if that doesn't look right, i'll change them to blue. I will also have a cabinet built to replace the factory ones, probably out of some sort of exotic wood. Show Less
This model Recaro has several adjustments on it; height of the headrest, tilt of the headrest, the rake of the shoulder area of the seat has forward and rear... Show more tilt, each side boster has independent adjustment, the seat reclines all the way flat, the leg support adjusts forward & back for people with longer (or shorter) legs. Show Less


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Get funded, build a legacy
Founded in 2018, Arrow Capital is a student-operated venture capital firm, headquartered in Berkeley, California.
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We represent a diverse community of investors, operators, and entrepreneurs, all with strong connections to Berkeley and the wider UC system.


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Adidas - PureBOOST DPR
Save: 37 %
For kids
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Purpose: running
Weight supplement: per shoe at size 38 2/3 (manufacturer's specs)
Prices from: 50 To 98 GBP


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10% of all proceeds will be donated to help suport our healthcare workers on the front line.
This cuff reads 'Love Her But Leave Her Wild', as an appreciation of the irrepressible power of the female spirit.
It is designed to be a symbol of strength, freedom and the untamed wild in all of us.
Regular price


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Mustard Doesn't Go With Girls is an inclusive feminist musical for the modern
child. Join us in the surreal town of Bow-on-Tie, a town deeply rooted in
tradition and run by the dubious mayor Croque Madame (or is it Croc?!). When
the children start mysteriously disappearing, eight-year-old Abigail decides to
investigate further, embarking on an adventure where social norms are
questioned and the town's secrets are uncovered. Will Abigail and the rebel
children be able to prevent their horrific fate, and by doing so change the town's
divide of boys and girls?
Using an original score, slick movement and strong characters this production
seeks to poke fun at fairytales from the past whilst creating new storylines for
the young generation of today. Join Abigail on her journey towards being heard
in a society that is stuck in the past. The show is empowering for both children
and grown-ups, of whatever gender, showing that you can be anyone and
anything you want to be.
Bric à Brac is an international ensemble who tell stories in
unexpected ways. We work collaboratively to create original
devised performances. Made up of theatre-makers from
across the UK, America, and Norway, we graduated
from the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in
2015. The company has a core ensemble of actors, directors,
writers and musicians who have received acclaim for their
debut show, Ash, at the Southwark Playhouse, The Vaults
Festival, the Space UK, and at the Paris and Edinburgh Fringes
2016. Our work has been supported by Arts Council England,
The Space, ArtHouse Jersey, The Pleasance, and St. Margaret's
House. We were also selected as one of the New Diorama's
Emerging Graduate companies in 2018/19.
Primary Times ***** "A charming and original gem of a kids show."
One4Review ***** "clever, funny, thought provoking and funny"
Edinburgh With Kids ***** "their energy is just infectious"
A younger theatre **** "A Delightful piece of Children's Theatre"
Edinburgh Festival For Kids **** "This warming, witty and melodic show is not to be missed"
Families Edinburgh Magazine **** "This is a lovely show with an outstanding group of young actors who use their physicality to create these cartoon like characters. It's like watching a Pixar film!"
Can't see any ticket details? When the website is busy, sometimes it can take a few seconds for the Spektrix frame to load. If you're having trouble, please get in touch.
Universal Combo & Members Offers: To save you time (and money) we'll give you £1 off every time you book to see two (or more) different shows at the same time. Find out more about this and our Members offers on the Special Offers page.
Flexi Ticket: Many events at VAULT Festival have a "Flexi Ticket" option, which will be presented to you, if available, before you get to the Checkout. By choosing the Flexi Ticket option you have the ability to swap your tickets for another performance (of the same show) if you can no longer make the original date. All tickets are subject to availability and customers will need to cover the cost of any difference in price. Adding the Flexi Ticket to your basket will automatically cover all tickets in the order.
Festival Contribution: Every ticket at VAULT Festival includes a £1.50 "Festival Contribution" which is your direct contribution to the continuation of the Festival. It helps us to pay for all the infrastructure, overheads and staff which make the Festival possible. The Festival Contribution is always included in the advertised price of an event, so there are no surprises at the Checkout.


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If you are interested in any of the dogs available at New Leash Rescue, you can reach out to the foster listed below for more information and then complete an adoption application which can be found at https://www.newleashrescue.org/adopt/policy. Please email the completed application to email@example.com
Meet Tater! What a handsome guy he is! He likes swimming, playing with other dogs and the occasional cheeseburger (who doesn't?) He loves to be a couch potato too! He originally came to us from a shelter that was closing. He is not a big fan of puppies or cats. He also needs a home where kids are ages 9 and up.
He's 2.5 years old and about 50 lbs. Up to date on all his shots, dewormed, neutered and microchipped. Who wouldn't just love this cuddle bug?!
Adoption fee is $275 + tax (no checks)
Foster to contact: Pauline at 952-454-8095 or firstname.lastname@example.com
Please contact the foster to find out if Tater will be attending an upcoming adoption event.
Our fosters do the best they can to provide all information about the animal's background and temperament while in foster care in their home. An adopters routine and home environment is likely going to be different than that in their foster home. Sometimes there is more that comes out about a dog's personality once they have been able to settle in a home and truly become comfortable.
There are great articles out there written about the different stages a pet goes through after adoption, discussing transitions that happen at 3 days, 3 weeks, and 3 months. We highly recommend reading about this - it will help you understand the transition your new pet goes through.
Powered by PetfinderTM


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A couple of significant unpublished NMCCA decisions Part I: Parental compulsion doesn't satisfy force element of 2006 version of child rape statute
Over the last month (plus two days), NMCCA has issued several potentially significant unpublished opinions. This post will look at one concerning child rape. A follow-on post will look at another concerning lab reports and confrontation.
The recent case of United States v. Valentin dealt with, among other issues, whether parental compulsion could satisfy the force element for a child rape conviction under the 2006 version of Article 120. United States v. Valentin, No. NMCCA 201000683 (N-M. Ct. Crim. App. May 17, 2012). No, NMCCA held. Senior Judge Payton-O'Brien wrote for a unanimous panel.
The military judge instructed the members that the force element could be satisfied by "constructive force in the form of parental distress or compulsion." NMCCA held "that the theory of constructive force by parental compulsion is not encompassed in the definition of force under [the 2006 version of] Article 120(t)(5), UCMJ. Despite the lack of defense counsel objection, it was plain error for the military judge to instruct the members that they could find constructive force based on a parental compulsion theory, and . . . the error materially prejudiced the appellant." Valentin, slip op. at 18.
The court reasoned, in part:
Force under Article 120(t)(5)(C) is defined as, "action to compel submission of another or to overcome or prevent another's resistance, by . . . physical violence strength, power, or restraint applied to another person, sufficient that the other person could not avoid or escape the sexual conduct." Finding that "power" describes a physical act and not psychological forces conforms to the canon of statutory construction noscitur a sociis: words are judged by the company they keep. United States v. Martinelli, 62 M.J. 52, 61 (C.A.A.F. 2005). All of the words surrounding "power" in Article 120(t)(5)(C) contemplate physical action. To find that "power" means something other than physical compulsion would make "power" an anomaly in the middle of a list describing other physical acts.
Id., slip op. at 19.
The court found further support for that conclusion in the statute's legislative history. The court noted that before Article 120 was amended, "a task force was assembled and six options for changing the statute were offered." Id., slip op. at 20.
The task force ultimately recommended not changing the statute, for a variety of reasons including the belief that a major change to the law from a common law statute would eviscerate the applicability of military appellate court decisions. In the six options presented, some included incorporating the parental compulsion theory of constructive force while other options did not. Ultimately the task force's recommendation not to change Article 120 was rejected, and the statute was amended without expressly including a theory of constructive force based on parental compulsion.
Id. (internal footnote omitted).
Finally, the court reasoned that the inclusion of a parental compulsion theory in the 2011 version of the child rape statute (Article 120b, which applies to offenses committed on or after 28 June 2012) "indicates that the theory was simply not included in the prior version under which the appellant was convicted." Id. Accordingly, the court overturned the child rape conviction, but affirmed a conviction to the lesser included offense of aggravated sexual assault of a child who had attained the age of 12 but not the age of 16. The court knocked 1 year, 10 months, and 15 days off of the approved confinement portion of the sentence (which had been 14 years, 10 months, and 15 days) to remedy the erroneous conviction to the greater offense of rape of a child.
The Valentin decision notes that the force element can be satisfied by parental compulsion under both the pre-2006 and 2011 child rape statute, the former as a result of judicial construction and the latter as a result of statutory language. But not under the 2006 version, NMCCA held.
While Article 120b will soon go into effect, the 2006 Article 120(b) will remain with us for quite some time. It will continue to govern child rapes that occurred between 1 October 2007 and 28 June 2012. Since there's no statute of limitations for that offense, prosecutions under that statute are likely to occur for years to come. When they do, even though it's unpublished, Valentin may prove to be a significant opinion.


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Balmain FALL 2020 MENSWEAR
As Rousteing said: "I think my vision has become bigger because I've discovered where I come from. I'm proud of my origin and I'm proud of who I am today thanks to my French parents in Bordeaux." Rousteing's agenda this evening was to create a collection of clothes that was a mirror of himself, a man whose upbringing and cultural identity is French and bourgeois, but whose recently established genetic code is bi-national and North East African. Or as he put it: "Half Ethiopian, half Somalian, and 100% Frenchman."
Rousteing's new self-knowledge has given him access to a hitherto unseen spectrum of expression upon which a key realization was that the multi-cultural identity he was haunted by when it was unquantified is, now that he knows, a superpower. This he used gently by reminding the hundreds in his audience—via map of the world prints and zodiac embroidered coats (he's a Virgo, btw)—that all our differences are what we have in common. Or as he put it: "we are all together. We have one sky and we look at that sky together. We are just nomads, nomads of the world." This made me think of an excellent line from Yellowman's "Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt": "he come from the planet of Earth." Plus those sneakers were out of this world. (vogue.com)


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Colleen Sullivan
Youth Pastor
Colleen's journey to New Life City began in November 2012. She had a powerful encounter with Jesus that set her life on a new trajectory. While attending the Global School of Supernatural Ministry she traveled to Cambodia and Tanzania on various mission trips and discovered her pastoral gifting for youth and young adults. Colleen has served as the Youth Pastor for New Life City since 2015. She has a passion for the next generation and carries a desire for youth to encounter the Lord in a profound way. Colleen serves our church family with the belief that our youth will transform this city, this nation, and the world.


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ConnectUp Emeritus
Thursday, March 26, 2020, 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM EDT
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ConnectUp Emeritus Meeting
Contact Terry Prince at [email protected] to register.
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Tue Apr 7, 2020Master Trainer Series: Learning Theories - Where are We Now?
Category: Class - live
Mon Apr 13, 2020Pacific ConnectUp Meeting
Category: Connect-Up Meetings
Tue Apr 21, 2020Language and Literacy Disorders and the CD Client: Red Flags and How You Can Help
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If you are regularly experiencing fatigue, high stress, low sex drive and uncontrollable weight gain, you may be suffering from hormonal imbalance.
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We all shed hair sometimes, but excessive hair loss can be a big concern for both men and women of all ages. Hair loss can make even the most confident individuals feel insecure about their appearance.
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Laser Hair Removal permanently reduces unwanted facial and body hair, allowing you to look and feel your very best without the hassle of shaving or waxing. At Illuminate Plastic Surgery, we offer laser hair removal for all skin types using Intense Pulsed Light (IPL).
Cellulite is a dimpling of the skin that is most often found on the buttocks and thighs. This dimpling is caused beneath the skin's surface when strands of fibrous tissue tethers the skin to the muscle below. When this occurs, small pockets of fat develop around these areas which creates dimpling or rippling cellulite.
Kybella is the first and only injectable medication that is FDA approved to reduce fat beneath the chin, most commonly known as a double chin. Prior to its release, the only solution to treating this area was liposuction surgery. Thanks to Kybella, patients who prefer a non-invasive treatment approach to submental chin fat finally have one.
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