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Obama: America not as divided as some suggest
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected any notion that the past week's stunning violence signals a return to racial brutality of a dark past, saying that as painful as the killings of police and black men were, "America is not as divided as some have suggested."
With five Dallas police officers dead at the hands of a sniper and two black men dead at the hands of police, Obama appealed to Americans not to be overwhelmed by fear of a return to 1960s-style chaos and to understand the progress that has been made in racial relations since that time.
"You're not seeing riots and you're not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully," he said. "You've seen almost uniformly peaceful protests and you've seen, uniformly, police handling those protests with professionalism."
Obama spoke at the conclusion of a NATO summit in Warsaw before leaving for Spain, part of a farewell trip to Europe he was cutting short by one day because of the developments at home.
The comments marked the third time in as many days that Obama has spoken, from a distance, about the police-involved fatal shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that were followed by a sniper attack in Dallas that killed five police officers. Seven other officers and two civilians were also injured.
Obama said the Dallas shooter, a black Army veteran who was later killed by police, was a "demented individual" who does not represent black Americans any more than a white man accused of killing blacks at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, represents whites.
The president said he would visit Dallas in a few days to pay respects and mourn with the stricken Texas city. The shootings, and the ensuing protests in some U.S. cities, led to an uncharacteristic response from the president: He cut his five-day, two-country European trip to four days. On his flight to Spain, he called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to offer his condolences on behalf of the American people, the White House said.
While Obama proceeded with his plan to visit Madrid, he scrapped a stop in the southern city of Seville. He was cramming two days of events into one, including meetings with interim President Mariano Rajoy and a visit with U.S. sailors stationed at a naval base in Rota.
In his news conference before departing Poland, Obama said that while "there is sorrow, there is anger, there is confusion" in the U.S., "there's unity in recognizing that this is not how we want our communities to operate. This is not who we want to be as Americans and that serves as the basis for us being able to move forward in a constructive and positive way."
The president said he planned to convene a White House meeting in coming days with police officers, community and civil rights activists and others to talk about next steps. He said the "empathy and understanding" that Americans have shown in responding to the events of the past few days, including Dallas police officers even as they came under attack, had given him hope.
"That's the spirit that we all need to embrace," Obama said. "That's the spirit that I want to build on."
But Obama, who has angered his political opponents after every deadly mass shooting by calling for tighter gun laws, made clear that he will continue to speak out about the need for such measures, which the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to go along with. He said the U.S. is unique among advanced countries in the scale of violence it experiences.
The president spoke sympathetically of police officers in gun-filled communities who have "very little margin of error" when deciding how to engage with people on the street who may well be armed, whether they mean harm or not. "Police have a really difficult time in communities where they know guns are everywhere," he said.
"If you care about the safety of our police officers, then you can't set aside the gun issue and pretend it's irrelevant."
Citing laws allowing the carrying of guns in Texas, he said that even some of the Dallas protesters who staged a peaceful rally before the sniper attack were armed. He also cited the presence of an apparently legally owned gun in the car where motorist Philando Castile was shot dead during a traffic stop in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota.
Obama also tried to calm public anxiety about personal safety, saying violent crime is actually down in the U.S.
"So as tough, as hard, as depressing as the loss of life was this week, we've got a foundation to build on," he said. "We just have to have confidence that we can build on those better angels of our nature."
Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Seville, Spain, contributed to this report.


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Featuring a 'fluted' gold foil, these milestones range from age 18 up to 80, and are all paired with a luxury grey Colorplan envelope.
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Angelina Jolie Flattens Nicolas Cage in Weekend Dream Melee
While your dreams still won out, Angelina and her band of merry guns came in a close second. Let's take a look at this most recent non-holiday summer weekend.
1) Inception — $43.5M
I'm allowed to like Inception, right? This isn't one of those movies like Garden State where I'll get shot in the face for saying I like, right? (I have since cooled considerably on that movie.) Is it OK to think that people who hated this movie are kind of being pointless contrarians? (I'm looking in your direction, Edelstein.) Because I really liked it, plot holes and dead-end corridors be damned, and I think there was enough in the movie for everyone and that anyone who outright hated it either A) just wanted to hate it from the get-go or B) expects wayyy too much from a summer blockbuster entertainment movie. Remember guys: this isn't some David Fincher autumn mind-bender like The Game or something. This is July popcornery. And for July popcornery, this is a pretty darn good movie! Especially the music. The music was so loud and booming and good. And who can forget Joseph Gordon Levitt's zero-gravity sex scene? It was a sex scene, right? Or was that just a dream I had. I can't tell! Oh my god...
2) Salt — $36.5M
Angelika Jorlemon is an action star! Well, we knew this already, but this further proves it. How? Well, because this isn't based on a popular video game series, it doesn't costar toasty sex lion Brad Pitt, and she doesn't play second-fiddle to an assassin origin story like she did in Wanted. Here she is the sole focus of an original story. And she sold many tickets! Good for her. You know, you don't hear a lot about Angela Jorfin. Who is she dating? Where does she live? Does she have any kids? For someone who we know so little about, we do like to go see her in the moving pictures. Maybe it's because she's not some over-exposed Barbara Hershey or Laura Dern — people so written about and scrutinized that when their movies come out we don't see them because we already know everything about them. That's probably what we find refreshing in Agmar Jenkins. She's a cipher, a mystery calling to us out of the dark.
4) The Sorcerer's Apprentice — $9.7M
Hey, can you come into our office for a second? Great, hi, thanks. So, listen... We've been crunching the numbers here and though you're doing a great, great job... It just seems like we're going to be unable to offer you a position once your apprenticeship has ended. We think you'll make a great sorcerer and we'd love to have you aboard here at Nicolas Cage's FaceMagic™, but receipts aren't as high as we'd hoped this summer, and we have that big $150m overhead to worry about, and we've only earned about $42m so far this quarter. It's just a tough economy, kid. Even for us sorcerers. Can we make magic money appear out of nowhere with our sorcerer magic? Of course we can. But that's not doing it the honest, American way. We don't do that here at Nicolas Cage's FaceMagic™. We'd be happy to give you a great reference to go work somewhere else, because we think you're quite capable. But even that is hard. Nicole Kidman's WrinkleSpell™ shut down a few years ago. If you want to go a little boutique, there's Fairuza Balk's MouthMojo™, though they don't do much these days. Obviously we'd send you over to Harry 'n' the Gang's BritishBlessings™, they've been doing gangbusters for years, but there's a whole working papers/visa thing that's pretty impenetrable, even for accomplished sorcerers. So we understand if you don't want to finish out the apprenticeship, just know how sorry we are. We thought this was going to work out. We really, really did.
6) Ramona & Beezus — $8M
Hm. Some are calling this a failure. Movie only cost $15m, so I don't really know about that. Plus, eight million in tickets is a lot of tickets. That's 800,000 people who saw this movie and thus will think that Ramona Quimby is some sparkplug asshole with dreamfantasy CGI worlds in her head and a Selena Gomez monster for a sister. When that is not at all who Ramona Quimby is! Ramona has scraggly hair and funny hand-me-down pants and a nice, normal sister, and wants to go rollerskating but can't because it's rainy, and has a cat named Picky-picky and sometimes she and her dad talk about Mt. Hood and funny things happen and Ramona Quimby is great and cute and wonderful. She is not this horrid piece of moderned-up, fried, pandering garbage. I wish I could tell all those 800,000 people not to believe it! Not to believe this terrible lie. Go read Ramona the Pest, you 800,000 people, and tell me if that's anything remotely like this Disney Channel Original piece of shit movie.
11) The Kids Are All Right — 2.6M, up 148%, $13,174 per screen average
Hey Maggie, are you getting tired of sucking it? Well, I'm sorry, you are going to have to suck it some more, you hateful harpy blob. It's just how the tide's going.


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As a strong defender of executive power (when properly exercised) and executive privilege (when properly invoked), I am concerned when claims of executive power or privilege are abused for any reason—especially if they are invoked to shield potential wrongdoing. In addition to shielding the wrongdoing, it jeopardizes the very executive power that the President is entrusted with when Congress and the courts react—as they did in the post-Watergate era—to the abuse of power.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is rightfully investigating the Fast and Furious debacle, in which the Administration allowed thousands of guns to flow across the Mexican border, resulting in the death of one U.S. border patrol agent and at least 200 Mexican citizens—according to the Mexican attorney general. The most glaring violation of executive power in that investigation prior to today was the refusal of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to turn over 1,300 pages of documents subpoenaed by the committee without even an assertion of executive privilege. Attorney General Eric Holder simply refused on his own initiative in a blatant act of stonewalling.
As Holder surely knew all these past months, there is no privilege that exists between Congress and the executive branch to withhold documents except the constitutional executive privilege, which is based on the separation of powers. For example, the attorney-client privilege does not exist between Congress and the executive branch because they have the same client—the American people. Holder also knew that executive privilege does not attach to documents automatically. It can be asserted only by the President or with his direct approval. It can be waived; indeed it should be waived in many or most instances when Congress needs the information for its legislative functions. So the slated House committee vote to hold Holder in contempt today was unfortunately necessary to get him to at least reconsider his lawless course of stonewalling.
In a desperate attempt to prevent the contempt vote in the last few hours, Holder asked President Obama to invoke executive privilege to shield these 1,300 pages of documents from Congress, and the President apparently agreed to do so. Yet that is not the end of the story. Even if properly involved, the Supreme Court has made clear that executive privilege is not absolute. DOJ must provide an explanation why all those documents fit one of the recognized categories of executive privilege. It is questionable whether they all are legitimately subject to executive privilege, for several reasons.
First, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974) held that executive privilege cannot be invoked at all if the purpose is to shield wrongdoing. The courts held that Nixon's purported invocation of executive privilege was illegitimate, in part, for that reason. There is reason to suspect that this might be the case in the Fast and Furious cover-up and stonewalling effort. Congress needs to get to the bottom of that question to prevent an illegal invocation of executive privilege and further abuses of power. That will require an index of the withheld documents and an explanation of why each of them is covered by executive privilege—and more.
Second, even the "deliberative process" species of executive privilege, which is reasonably broad, does not shield the ultimate decisions from congressional inquiry. Congress is entitled to at least some documents and other information that indicate who the ultimate decision maker was for this disastrous program and why these decisions were made. That information is among the most important documents that are being withheld.
Third, the Supreme Court in the Nixon case also held that even a proper invocation must yield to other branches' need for information in some cases. So even a proper invocation of executive privilege regarding particular documents is not final.
And lastly, the President is required when invoking executive privilege to try to accommodate the other branches' legitimate information needs in some other way. For example, it does not harm executive power for the President to selectively waive executive privilege in most instances, even if it hurts him politically by exposing a terrible policy failure or wrongdoing among his staff. The history of executive–congressional relations is filled with accommodations and waivers of privilege. In contrast to voluntary waivers of privilege, Watergate demonstrates that wrongful invocations of privilege can seriously damage the office of the presidency when Congress and the courts impose new constraints on the President's discretion or power (some rightful and some not).
But there is at least one helpful development in Holder's request that the President invoke executive privilege to shield these documents: The President now owns the consequences of further stonewalling. There is no ongoing DOJ prosecution or investigation to protect. There is no obvious reason why the President can't waive even what legitimately privileged documents there are (which is probably far fewer than the 1,300 pages being withheld).
The American people will now clearly understand that it is President Obama who doesn't want them to know who is to blame for the Fast and Furious scandal—and whether his Administration has done anything to prevent it from happening again.
Todd Gaziano is the Director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served in the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the Attorney General and the President on the invocation of executive privilege. He was also a chief oversight counsel in the House of Representatives.


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首页 - Education Foundation
Tax deductible gifts
Tax deductible gifts may be sent to:
Long Beach Education Foundation
1515 Hughes Way
Long Beach 90810
Call (562) 997-8330 to learn more about helping students and schools.
About the Foundation
What began as a handful of volunteers in 1989 now is the single largest donor to the Long Beach Unified School District. The Long Beach Education Foundation directs its donations to students and public schools here in Long Beach, 莱克伍德, Signal Hill and Avalon.
Contributions of generous school employees, local citizens and corporations to the Foundation help thousands of courageous students beat the odds. 每年, the Foundation honors these students and their families at the Most Inspiring Student Awards Dinner. Some of these students have become the first members of their families to graduate from high school and to go on to college. Some students have triumphed over tough challenges: serious injuries, life-threatening illnesses, severe disabilities, 极端贫困, loss of loved ones and other difficulties that could impair their education. Some have excelled academically despite incredible odds.
The Foundation provides school uniforms to needy students through Operation School Bell of the Assistance League of Long Beach. This program makes sure that students whose families cannot afford proper clothing are dressed for academic success.
Thanks to the Foundation, dozens of teachers receive classroom grants for their innovative projects to increase student performance. The Foundation provides additional classroom grants for literacy, field trips and other classroom needs.
The Foundation improves education in dozens of other ways. Scholarships in Escrow are awarded to promising eighth graders who agree to take challenging college prep courses and complete high school. When they enroll in college, they receive a $500 scholarship. Musical instruments are provided for students who cannot afford them.
更多的 than simply giving to a charity, donors are concentrating their contributions where they will do the most good for schools and children.
Department Info
Department Address
1515 Hughes Way
Long Beach, CA 90810
Department Phone
(562) 997-8330


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A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] at sacred-texts.com
2 Chronicles 31:1
ch2 31:1THE PEOPLE FORWARD IN DESTROYING IDOLATRY. (Ch2 31:1-10)
all Israel . . . present went out to the cities of Judah--The solemnities of this paschal season left a deep and salutary impression on the minds of the assembled worshippers; attachment to the ancient institutions of their country was extensively revived; ardor in the service of God animated every bosom; and under the impulse of the devout feelings inspired by the occasion, they took measures at the close of the passover for extirpating idolatrous statues and altars out of every city, as at the beginning of the festival they had done in Jerusalem.
Judah and Benjamin--denote the southern kingdom.
Ephraim also and Manasseh--refer to the northern kingdom. This unsparing demolition of the monuments of idolatry would receive all encouragement from the king and public authorities of the former; and the force of the popular movement was sufficient to effect the same results among the tribes of Israel, whatever opposition the power of Hoshea or the invectives of some profane brethren might have made. Thus the reign of idolatry being completely overthrown and the pure worship of God re-established throughout the land, the people returned every one to his own home, in the confident expectation that, through the divine blessing, they would enjoy a happy future of national peace and prosperity.
2 Chronicles 31:2
ch2 31:2Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests, &c.--The king now turned his attention to provide for the orderly performance of the temple-worship--arranging the priests and Levites in their courses, assigning to every one his proper place and functions--and issuing edicts for the regular payment of those dues from which the revenues of the sanctuary were derived. To set a proper example to his subjects, his own proportion was announced in the first instance, for to the king it belonged, out of his privy purse, to defray the expenses of the altar, both stated and occasional (Num 28:3-4, Num 28:9, Num 28:11, Num 28:19); and in making this contribution from his own means, Hezekiah followed the course which David and Solomon had taken before him (see Ch2 8:14; Kg1 9:25). Afterwards he reappointed the people's dues to the temple; and from its being necessary to issue a royal mandate in reference to this matter, it appears that the sacred tribute had been either totally neglected, or (as the idolatrous princes were known to appropriate it to their own purposes) the people had in many cases refused or evaded the duty. But with the improved state of public feeling, Hezekiah's commandment was readily obeyed, and contributions of first-fruits and tithes were poured in with great liberality from all parts of Judah, as well as from Israel. The first-fruits, even of some articles of produce that were unfit for sacrifice (Lev 2:11), such as honey (Margin, "dates"), were appropriated to the priests (Num 18:12-13; Deu 18:4). The tithes (Lev 27:31) were intended for the support of the whole Levitical tribe (Num 18:8, Num 18:20, Num 18:24).
2 Chronicles 31:6
ch2 31:6and laid them by heaps--The contributions began to be sent in shortly after the celebration of the passover, which had taken place in the middle of the second month. Some time would elapse before the king's order reached all parts of the kingdom. The wheat harvest occurred in the third month, so that the sheaves of that grain, being presented before any other, formed "the foundation," an under-layer in the corn stores of the temple. The first-fruits of their land produce which were successively sent in all the summer till the close of the fruit and vintage season, that is, the seventh month, continued to raise heap upon heap.
2 Chronicles 31:9
ch2 31:9Hezekiah questioned with the priests and the Levites concerning the heaps--The object of his enquiries was to ascertain whether the supplies afforded the prospect of a sufficient maintenance for the members of the sacred order.
2 Chronicles 31:10
ch2 31:10Azariah . . . answered . . . we have had enough--This is probably the person mentioned (Ch2 26:17), and his reply was to the following purport: There has been an abundant harvest, and a corresponding plenty in the incoming of first-fruits and tithes; the people have testified their gratitude to Him who has crowned the year with His goodness by their liberality towards His servants.
2 Chronicles 31:11
ch2 31:11HEZEKIAH APPOINTS OFFICERS TO DISPOSE OF THE TITHES. (Ch2 31:11-19)
Hezekiah commanded to prepare chambers in the house of the Lord--storehouses, granaries, or cellars; either the old ones, which had been allowed through neglect to fall into decay, were to be repaired, or additional ones built. Private individuals brought their own first-fruits to the temple; but the tithes were levied by the Levites, who kept a faithful account of them in their several places of abode and transmitted the allotted proportion to the priests. Officers were appointed to distribute equal rations to all in the cities of the priests who, from age or other reasons, could not repair to the temple. With the exception of children under three years of age--an exception made probably from their being considered too young to receive solid food--lists were kept of the number and age of every male; of priests according to their fathers' house, and Levites from twenty years (see Num 4:3; Num 28:24; Ch1 23:24). But, besides, provision was also made for their wives, daughters, and servants.
2 Chronicles 31:18
ch2 31:18for in their set office they sanctified themselves--This is the reason assigned for providing for the wives and children out of the revenues of the sanctuary, that priests, withdrawing from those secular pursuits by which they might have maintained their households, devoted themselves entirely to the functions of the ministry.
2 Chronicles 31:20
ch2 31:20HIS SINCERITY OF HEART. (Ch2 31:20-21)
Hezekiah . . . wrought that which was good and right--He displayed the qualities of a constitutional king, in restoring and upholding the ancient institutions of the kingdom; while his zealous and persevering efforts to promote the cause of true religion and the best interests of his subjects entitled him to be ranked with the most illustrious of his predecessors (Kg2 18:15).


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The Yigal Arnon Law & History Workshop of the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University has announced its Spring 2012 schedule. It meets Thursdays 15.00 - 16.30, in the Minkoff Building, Room 17. The Workshop's moderators are Professor Leora Bilsky, Professor Ron Harris, and Dr. David Schorr.
March 22 Yael Braudo, Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law
Striving for women's autonomy within the family: The involvement of Israeli women's organizations in the legislation of the Spouses (Property Relations) Law
March 29 Ariela Gross, University of Southern California Law School
From the streets to the courts: Doing grass-roots legal history of conservatism and race
April 19 Henry Rousso, Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, CNRS
Competitive narratives: The Papon trial
May 3 Seán Donlan, University of Limerick School of Law
Hybridity and diffusion in Spanish West Florida, c. 1803-1810
May 10 Ely Aharonson, Haifa University Faculty of Law
"Law to him is only a compact between his rulers": The criminalization of violence against slaves in the colonial and antebellum periods
May 17 Barbara Welke, University of Minnesota Department of History
The Cowboy Suit Tragedy: Owning hazard in the modern American consumer marketplace
May 31 Laura Jockusch, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University
The Jewish People's advocate? The World Jewish Congress and retributive justice in postwar Germany
June 7 Jessica Marglin, Princeton University Department of Near Eastern Studies
In the courts of the nations: Jews and legal pluralism in nineteenth-century Morocco
June 14 Yael Berda, Princeton University Department of Sociology
Categorizing populations – forms, spaces, and emergencies: the mundane administrative legacies of colonial rule in India and Israel


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Toxic epidermal necrolysis is an acute severe bullous cutaneous disease characterized by extensive areas of skin necrosis accompanied by a systemic toxic condition. It may occur in all age groups. In most children TEN develops in the form of blistered erythematous patches and plaques which evolve within hours to extensive areas of skin necrosis with severe epidermolysis. In few children the lesions will begin with denuding of oral mucosa followed by extensive areas of skin necrosis but with some areas of normal skin in-between. Malaise and fever accompany marked skin tenderness and erythema. The rash rapidly becomes confluent over large areas and forms large slack blisters. Mucous membranes may be extensively involved. Because of the extensive area of eroded skin, large amounts of body fluid are lost with consequent distrubances of the electrolyte and fluid balance. A number of drugs have been incriminated as causative agents including pyrazolones, hydantoin derivatives, sulfonamides and barbiturates.
Lyell Syndrome, Lyell Syndrome, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN), Epidermonecrolysis
Epidermal Necrolyses, Toxic, Epidermal Necrolysis, Toxic, EPIDERMOLYSIS, ACUTE TOXIC, LYELL SYNDROME, Lyells Syndrome, Lyell's Syndrome, Necrolyses, Toxic Epidermal, Necrolysis, toxic epidermal, Nonstaphylococcal Scalded Skin Syndrome, Scalded skin syndrome, Scalded Skin Syndrome, Nonstaphylococcal, Scalded, skin syndrome, SYNDROME LYELL'S, Syndrome, Lyell's, Syndrome, scalded skin, TENS, TENS <2>, Toxic Epidermal Necrolyses, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis


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Welcome to Cumbred School of Motoring
We're on call 24/7 to react promptly to your driving lessons
We're on call 24/7 to react promptly to your driving lessons
The Cumbred School of Motoring in Wilton, Cork aims to be a one-stop provider for the citizens of Cork. We not only help you obtain or recover your Irish driving licence. We support you all the way in friendly style
It is natural to have a little flutter in the tummy. However you will feel okay if you train the Cumbred School of Motoring Way in Wilton, Cork.
Folk in Wilton, Cork hold the Cumbred School of Motoring in high esteem. That is because our exceptional Cork EDT and Pretest Driving Lessons have sent ripples far and wide. What can we say? Our pass rate has averaged 97.4% over the past 5 years. We put this down to a combination of our dedication to making Ireland's roads safer, and our policy of choosing the very best approved driving instructors fully registered by the National Road Safety authority.
Our driving school is in a quiet suburb that's just perfect for nervous first-time drivers. It is also conveniently near the Test Centre in Doughcloyne Industrial Estate on Sarsfield Road. These details mean that we can spend more time on actual training and less on travelling to the start point.
By now, you may be saying 'big deal, all Driving Schools Brisbane say something similar but maybe these folk are different'. Different indeed we are! How many other motoring colleges in Cork can claim that:
We receive regular calls for help from all four corners of Cork and are delighted to assist. The only difference is where the person lives beyond the ten-kilometre radius. In this case we ask them to find their way to us. With that one exception, we guarantee the same sterling service that has made the Cumbred School of Motoring a household name to everyone.
Our clientele extends beyond first-time learners. We also assist people needing to up skill for any reason they may have. We are expert at teaching folk from Europe and America convert to driving on the left side of the road. Our motorway-driving module is worthy of consideration by anyone entering a multi-lane highway for the first time.
Most of our pupils are youngsters starting out in life and we do not believe in penalising them because they can only afford to pay month by month. Everybody pays the same regardless of their plan. If you face affordability issues speak to us about our voucher system, whereby your friends and family pay for sessions.
The Cumbred School of Motoring – A Cut Above the Rest
Training staff members at The Cumbred School of Motoring are very friendly, and I enjoyed driving with them.
Just one word, Splendid people….. I passed my test in first attempt. Thank You So Much :)
Professional, prompt and superbly proficient. This endorsement comes from my first experience with Cumbred School of Motoring


text: This antenna tuner is controlled remotely using geared motors and legos. The tuner needed to be closer to the antenna for performance reasons. This created a problem; most of the radio gear is inside while the tuner is outside. The gear motors and Legos combine to form a closed loop servo, operating two air core caps and an inductor switch. A control box placed near the radio is hard wired to the modded tuner outside. We would like to see something like this under gesture control using the Wii MotionPlus + Arduino.


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Cowen Park Shelterhouse
Please contact us for tours and availability.
- Kitchen
The Cowen Park Shelterhouse is located in the wonderful Cowen Park. It is a marvelous location for hosting your company retreat, neighborhood association meeting or your next birthday. The Shelterhouse is a cozy space with a glass front facade allowing natural light to help brighten the space. It is a very quaint and serene location.
- Capacity: 35 max.
- ADA accessible
- indoor bathroom
- sink, small refrigerator, microwave and toaster available most hours
- Tables and chairs are available upon request.
Rental Rules & Tips
Have a great event with us! Learn what permits you need to serve alcohol at your event, how we take payment, best practices, and more. Read more on our Rental tips and rules page.


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SGD Pharma is a global leader in glass pharmaceutical packaging
SGD Pharma produces over 8 million vials and bottles per day at its five manufacturing plants in Europe and Asia.
All plants are ISO 15378 certified, and two are entirely new facilities.
With 9 sales offices and a wide distribution network, SGD Pharma offers a broad range of sizes and finishes in Type I, II, or III, amber and clear glass, as well as innovative added-value services like internal siliconization or protective plastic coatings.


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A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
Antibiotic Azithromycin Won't Harm Healthy Hearts: Study
Researchers found no increased death risk in those free of cardiovascular disease
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Danish researchers evaluated more than a million episodes of azithromycin use, comparing it to both the use of no antibiotics and to the use of penicillin V, from 1997 through 2010. Patients were aged 18 to 64.
"We believe that the results are reassuring," said Henrik Svanstrom, a researcher at Statens Serum Institute, in Copenhagen. His study is published in the May 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Our study shows no increased risk in the general population of young and middle-aged adults," he said. That, he added, "would reinforce the hypothesis that any increased risk of cardiovascular [death] associated with azithromycin is restricted to high-risk patients -- for instance [those] with a history of cardiovascular disease."
More than 56 million prescriptions were written for azithromycin in the United States in 2011, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. That compares to about 54 million written in 2011 for amoxicillin, another popular antibiotic.
Azithromycin is prescribed for bacterial sinusitis, pneumonia, skin infections and infections linked with lung disease, among other problems.
Concern about azithromycin surfaced in 2012, after a study in which researchers estimated an absolute risk of 47 cardiovascular deaths for every 1 million prescriptions for azithromycin. The study prompted a statement from the U.S. Food and Drug Association, cautioning that those taking the drug should be aware of the potential for heart problems.
In March 2013, the FDA renewed the warning, cautioning that the drug and others in its class, known as macrolides, can cause abnormal changes in the electrical activity of the heart. That, in turn, may lead to a potentially fatal irregular heart rhythm. The FDA warned that those especially at risk of developing the abnormality are those who have existing heart problems such as rhythm abnormalities.
That begged the question about the safety of the antibiotic for those without heart problems.
In the Danish study, supported by grants from the Danish Medical Research Council, Svanstrom and his team looked at data on filled prescriptions, causes of death and patient characteristics.
They looked at azithromycin use compared to no antibiotic use. Patients not using an antibiotic, Svanstrom said, likely did not have an infection at the time.
Using azithromycin for the typical five-day treatment increased the risk of cardiovascular death nearly three times compared to no antibiotic use. When researchers compared azithromycin use to penicillin V use, however, there was no increased risk with the azithromycin.
When they compared each antibiotic by use per 1.1 million people, 17 people on azithromcyin died and 16 on penicillin died.
"This indicates that the increased risk in comparison to non-use is entirely explained by an increased risk of cardiovascular death associated with acute infection, rather than the treatment with azithromycin," Svanstrom said.
Decisions about medication use need to be made after weighing pros and cons, Svanstrom said. "Our study is just one piece of the puzzle," he said. "However, if this drug is needed in the general population, our results do not argue against its use."
The results are good news for those without heart problems, said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, who reviewed the study.
"This study provides welcome and reassuring news regarding the cardiovascular safety of the antibiotic azithromycin in the general population," Fonarow said. The large numbers are a strength of the study, he added.
"These findings suggest that for the general population of adults azithromycin can be safely prescribed without concerns regarding an increased risk of cardiovascular events," he said.
The risk for those with existing heart disease is still unclear, he said. Fonarow said those patients should talk with their doctors about the risks and benefits of each treatment option.
Health News Copyright (c) 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com All photographic images contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are the exclusive property of DefenseReview.com. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. All photos were shot with an Olympus Stylus 790 SW 7.1-megapixel digital camera, which is advertised as "shock + waterproof". September 14, 2008 DefenseReview recently got the …Read More »
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FERFRANS SOAR AR-Type CQB Subcarbines/SBRs: Photos and Video on the Way
By David Crane defrev at gmail.com DefenseReview recently got a chance to put approx. 1200-1300 rounds through two 5.56x45mm NATO (5.56mm NATO)/.223 Rem. select-fire FERFRANS SOAR (Special Operations Assault Rifle) subcarbines/SBRs (Short-Barreled Rifles) with 10.5" and 11.5" barrels, respectively. We ran both guns on semi-auto and full-auto. Designed specifically for Direct Action and Security Operations (particularly deployment/employment from vehicles), the …Read More »


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56° 10'/ 22° 06'
Seda is in the northwest of Lithuania, 25 km from the regional capital, Mazeikiai. At the time of the German invasion some 200 Jewish families lived there. German forces were observed around Seda on the 2nd day of the invasion. Even before the arrival of the Germans the Lithuanian activists were being organised under the command of Kamatas Ustankos. They immediately began to round up young Jews, took them to the Jewish cemetery, and murdered them. Among the first victims were the brothers Binder, Kan, Popas and others. Realising what awaited them, the Jews of Seda felt great fear.
One day the activists took the Rabbi Mordechai Rabinowitz. One of the murderers who had brought the victims to the Jewish cemetery shot and wounded the Rabbi, left him to suffer in agony all night, and only returned in the morning to finish him off. Believing that the murderers wanted a sacrifice from the Jewish community, the old rebbetzin, widow of the late Rabbi Mordechai Graff, approached the doctor Schachat and the chemist Yonah Mosiah, both of them having a good relationship with the Lithuanians. The wife of Dr Schachat was a gentile Lithuanian and Yonah Masiah had been a leader in the local underworld. She asked them to inform the activists that she was prepared to sacrifice herself in order to stop the murder of the young Jews. The murders did not stop and the number of victims increased.
The market square in the centre of the town had two long walls running parallel, two metres apart. On each side were the stores belonging to the Jews. At the end of June or in early July, the activists forced the Jews to assemble in this narrow passage and held them there for many days without food or drink, in the most difficult and overcrowded conditions, surrounded by the stench of refuse and garbage.
The Jews were then moved to the nearby Jewish agricultural settlement called Zhidu-Dvaras (Jews' village). It consisted of about 250 acres divided among the 10 -12 Jewish families who earned their living from this land. On the 250 acres were dairies, stables, granaries and sheds. The younger males were separated from the women, children and elderly, and murdered nearby on 3 July.
At the beginning of August the remainderwomen, children and elderlywere force-marched to Mazeikiai , with the old and sick transported on farmers' carts. They were taken to the old Jewish cemetery of Mazeikiai, where large pits had been dug. Armed Lithuanians were waiting there. All the Jews were murdered there together with the Jews of Mazeikiai and of the surrounding villages on 9 August 1941.
The last days of the Jewish remnants of the Seda community were described by one of the participants of the massacre, the activist Alfensas Rimsa, giving evidence at an inquiry on 2 October 1958.
In 1941, in the months of July and August, all the Jewish citizens of Seda were imprisoned. At the beginning they were held between the buildings that previously had been their stores. Afterwards in the granaries and dairy sheds of Zhidu-Dvaras, some distance outside of Seda.
In order to prevent any attempts to escape, I spent some days as their prison guard. In the month of August about 200 women, children and old people were taken to Mazeikiai and shot on the banks of the River Venta. I took part in herding them to the place of execution and then shooting them. Jews from places other than Seda were brought to the banks of the river and held. All together there were some thousands standing shoulder to shoulder.
Controlling the shooting was a commander from Mazeikiai unknown to me. As the Jews arrived, the stronger ones among them were made to dig the pits. On the orders of the commanders, we explained to the Jews that the pits were to store lime, in spite of the fact that we knew that these pits were to be their graves. As far as I can remember, the Jews dug two long channels. Among them were some who were naked and some in their underclothes. Those wearing simple clothes were shot as they were.
The activists who had brought them from the towns and villages organised them in groups, and then one group after another was shot.
One of the officers whom I did not know told us to fire upon the Jews in front of us. He also added that for each volley of fire there should be two activists, one to fire at the heads of the victims and the second at their chests. I was issued bullets from a case full of ammunition and was allowed to take as much as I wanted. Together with me in my group was Josias Vilnius and Stusis Zeima. After I had killed 20 persons, men and women, I left the group as I could not stand the screams of pain and death. As far as I can recollect, there were no children among them. The children were shot at another place by other activists. I do not remember what happened afterwards as I returned to the woods to bring an additional group to the pits. Some Germans arrived, but they did not take part in the shooting. Some of them were apparently officers, and they gave our commanders orders and advice. For my share of the shooting, I received 300 rubles and was able to partake of strong alcoholic drink of which there was more than enough at the place of the shooting.
The lists of mass graves in the book The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II, include the following:
Place - 500 metres from the village of Zhidu-Dubras (Jews' Village). Date - second half of 1941. Number who perished - 550.
Zalman Bloch Migdal Ha-Emek, Israel.
Tzvi Tiger Ramat Josef, Bat Yam, Israel.
In the Service of the SS, Government Publication of Political Information, Vilnius 1961, pp. 48-49.
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II. Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 330.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 320.
55° 46'/ 23° 46'
The small town of Seduva is situated 40 km west of the regional capital Panevezys. Before World War II, the Jewish population consisted of 200 families (about 800 souls).
The German forces captured the town on 25 June 1941. The Lithuanian activists headed by the teacher Gorionos had already began to terrorize the Jews, even before the entry of the Germans. By the beginning of July they had forcibly expelled the Jews from their homes, maltreated them, moved their possessions that were needed in the ghetto, transported the Jews to the village of Pakuteniai, 5 km beyond Seduva, and locked them in a number of houses surrounded by barbed wire. Guards were positioned outside the wire.
The first ten victims were taken under the pretense of being put to work on the road to Radviliskis, and were shot next to some lime pits. The murderers covered the bodies with still burning lime. In mid-August the Lithuanian murderers took another 27 victims, among them Rabbi Mordechai David Henkin, past the village of Kaulalishkisi and killed them with rifle fire.
Then 35 Jews who at the beginning were made to do farm work were murdered at the red estate a few kilometers from Seduva and buried in the fields, which were afterwards plowed with a tractor. Three families, the only Jewish doctor in the area, Patovsky, and those from the Jewish Fighters' Front, Cooper and Noll, were kept alive in the town for 54 weeks and then also murdered.
Mrs. Shulamith Noll survived this massacre. She was not hit by the gunfire and fell between the bodies of murdered victims. The Lithuanians had decided to take a break to get drunk and did not cover the bodies in the pit at that time. Mrs. Noll, dressed only in undergarments, climbed out of the pit during the night and made her way to the church where luckily she met the priest, and she told him about the murders. He brought her some clothes and organized refuge with some local farmers, where she remained for the duration of Nazi occupation. While there she made contact with Jews in the Siauliai (Shavel) ghetto. When the ghetto was eliminated, she helped Gershon Kirpitznik hide with the same farmer. Both survived the war.
On the initiative of a number of Jews who survived, especially with the help of Isaac Balkar, memorial tombstones awere erected at all the sites where the Jews of Seduva had been murdered.
The lists of mass graves in the book The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II, include the following:
Place - Liaudiskiai forest about 10 km southwest of Seduva, one site 400 meters north of the Seduva road and a second site 900 meters northwest of the same road, close to a path in the forest. Date - 25-26 August 1944. Number who perished - 664 men, women and children.
Isaac Balkar, Jerusalem
Ephraim Cohen questionnaire of the Central Council of Lithuanian Jews in Italy.
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II. Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 362.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 363.
55° 05'/ 23° 25'
The town of Seredzius (Shrednik) is on the banks of the narrow river between the towns of Vilnius and Vilkija. It was 40 km from the capital and also from the regional capital of Kaunas. In 1941 the Jewish community numbererd some 600 souls.
The following account is based on witnesses from surrounding areas as eyewitness accounts could not be found.
On the invasion of the Germans, the local Lithuanian authorities issued orders limiting the movements of Jews. Jews were expelled from their homes and forced to assemble at the synagogue, and their homes taken over by their Lithuanian neighbours.
Small groups of adult males, especially young males, were murdered first. The males were murdered at Vilkija on 28 August 1941 by firing squads. The women and children were murdered near the town on 3 September 1941.
The Small Lithuanian Encyclopedia records that 600 residents of Shrednik were murdered in 1941 by the Hitlerist nationalist local citizens, in the vicinity of the town, almost all of them Jews.
The Small Lithuanian Encyclopedia, Chapter III, Vilnius, 1975.
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Parts I and II, Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 333.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 325.
55° 15'/ 24° 45'
Part I
The town was called Wilkomierz in Polish, Vilkomir in Russian, Vilkomerge in Lithuanian and later Ukmerge. The name is derived from the many wolves (vilkas) that roamed in the area where Vilkomir was established. The river Sventoji runs through the town, dividing it into two parts: the new town and the river crossing where the poorer neighborhood was located.
In the early 13th century, the town was originally established on the hill nearest the river to guard the roads that passed through to Vilnius and Riga. Invasions from the West were stopped many times at the fortress built there, but in 1365 German tribes successfully invaded and destroyed the fortress. After the death of Prince Algirdas ir Kestutis, a crisis for succession developed between Princes Vitobet and Jogaila. In 1391 the former succeeded in conquering Vilkomir and again destroyed the [rebuilt] fortress.
In 1435 Swedrigaills, brother of Jogaila, invaded Lithuania at the head of a large army and reached Vilkomir. Here a great battle ensued where 10,000 men died. The victor was Zigmund Kestutis, who destroyed the invaders. To commemorate his victory, he named the river around which the battle had raged, the River Victoria. There he started a new settlement called Pole Walki (Polish for battlefield), 10 km from Vilkomir.
In 1487 while under Lithuanian Church rule, he together with Jaroslaw, King of Poland and Prince of Lithuania, built a large church in Vilkomir named after Patrus and Paulus. This church was razed to the ground numerous times, but each time was rebuilt and enlarged. King Stephen Batory and others granted to this church ownership of many tracts of land, of which a large part was allocated for the establishment of Vilkomir. Prince Zigismund (1505-1548) granted the town the rights of Lhe laws of Magdaburg and decreed that there should be two market days a week, Wednesday and Friday, and an annual market on 29 June on the holiday of Patrus and Paulus.
Because of the geographical locaion of the town and the crossroads near the banks of the River Sventoji, the river was open to sailboat traffic. From 1589 to 1792 the boatmen operated as a guild with a strict constitution, laying down the rules of sculling and navigation. The Boatman Guild and and its constitution also applied to the various merchants who had built storerooms on the banks of the river.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, because of obstacles such as rocks and the lowering of the water level, the river could be used only by flat-bottom barges. The town developed into an important commercial and administrative center and remained so until the Northern War of 1700-1701, when the Swedes conquered the town, burning and plundering on a grand scale.
In the Third Partition [of Poland] of 1795, Vilkomir was in the province of Vilnius under Russian law. Two years later it became a regional capital in the province of Lithuania. In 1802 it was returned to Vilnius but continued a regional capital. Although the Russians planned to make Vilkomir the provincial capital of Vilnius, with Anysciai the regional capital, the plan was not carried out. In 1842 Vilkomir was in the province of Kaunas.
Napoleon's army, which passed through in 1812, did not detrimentally affect the population and in the first Polish Revolt of 1831, Plater and his daughter Emelia (known as the Lithuanian Jeanne d'Arc) operated on the Polish side of the border. During this revolt there were many casualties on Plater's side and the Vilkomir population suffered from hunger for many years, particularly during the fires of 1878, 1895 and 1904.
In 1878 a fire broke out on market day and the whole town was ablaze. The Jewish Councils of Kaunas and Memel collected 25,000 rubles in cash and clothes to help relieve the suffering of the victims. Among the donors from other countries were the Rothschild and Montifiore families of England. After this fire of 1878, the town was completely rebuilt, the streets widened, a fire brigade formed, and because the town lay close to important roads, its recovery was very rapid. Nevertheless the Boatman's Guild was broken up and the town never again became the important commercial centre it had been.
During World War I the Russians evacuated the town, set many homes ablaze, destroyed the bridge over the river Sventoji, and robbed many of its inhabitants. German planes also helped in the general destruction, and many of the inhabitants were killed or disappeared. During their occupation the Germans built a narrow road connecting Vilkomir with Jonava. In 1918 there were many battles between the Poles and Red Army battalions in the area surrounding the town, and in 1919 the Lithuanian authorities took over.
Jewish settlement began in the 13th Century, perhaps even late in the 12th century. By 1665 the number of Jews in the settlement were 622, and they lived there under the patronage of the Princedom of Zamut. They were also given permission to build their first synagogue, called "River Crossing," and were also given an area for their cemetery. One of the first duties of the Chevra Kadisha was to restore the old tombstones, some of which dated back 300 years and of which a register had been kept by the community. The Jews were concentrated at the "River Crossing." Street names were "Egypt", "Bath", etc. The gentiles lived in a different section of the town, mainly on the Kaunas road.
In 1766 there were 716 Jews and by 1797 in the entire region of Vilkomir there were 6,088 Jews. By 1864 the town of Vilkomir alone had a Jewish population of 4,561. At that stage there were already two synagogues and 12 minyans. The census of 1897 showed 7287 Jews, which made up 53% of the population. By 1914 the Jews totalled 10,000. During World War I the Russians expelled the Jewish population with the exception of one person, Dr. Katzenellenbogen, who was to remain as the official military doctor, but he refused this honour and left with the rest of the Jews.
Many of them sought refuge in Russia and the rest sought temporary refuge in Vilnius and the surrounding areas. During the German occupation the Jews of the area of Vilnius moved to Vilkomir. Also seeking refuge there were Jews from other towns and surrounding settlements. In 1918 the Germans evacuated the town as the Red Army battalions approached. Also the Polish Army tried to control the town. The Jews, suspicious of the Poles and remembering previous periods under their rule, organised self-defence groups and sent a delegation to the Red Army, asking them to take over the town, which they did in January 1918, staying there for 6 months. Many Jews left and escaped to Gulevan, which had remained as a neutral area. Under pressure of the rebel battalions of Lithuanians, the Bolsheviks left the town.
The Jews, fed up with the Bolshevik rule, welcomed the Lithuanians who had promised equal rights to the Jews and to improve their situation. But after a number of days, riots began, after the Jews had had a meeting to celebrate the Balfour Declaration, and some shots were fired. The son of Tzvi Zildov, who had organised a Zionist Youth movement, was killed and many Jews were wounded. Hundreds were arrested and locked up at the jail and police station. Two young Jews, the sons of Baruch Bina and Leib Matovian, were sentenced to death on suspicion of being Communists and were buried alive at the village of Seta. Three hours after their burial they were pardoned by President Smetona. The victims were reinterred at the Jewish Cemetery. After intervention by Jewish businessmen, those arrested were released, including the Commandant Potar who was of Polish origin. After this, life returned to normal in the town. The Lithuanian authorities made a complete reversal and gave the Jews complete religious and national rights, allowing Jews to participate in the economic and public life of the country. Also the Jews who had sought refuge in Russia now began to return.
After the occupation of Vilnius by the Poles, thousands of refugees from there arrived and were welcomed with open arms by the Jews of Vilkomir. Their houses were opened to them, and they supplied them with all that they needed. The Joint Organisation also contributed to their relief and opened an office in the town. The Lithuanian authorities gave all the refugees temporary citizenship.
Hundreds of Jews of Vilkomir volunteered for the Lithuanian army and the Minister of Jewish Affairs, a Slovak, tried to calm down the Jews of the town after the following tragedy: during the battles with the Poles, a Polish aircraft had attacked Vilkomir, shooting up the town and scores of people were killed and wounded, among them Engineer Tshishli of Vilnius, the representative of the Joint Organization there.
In the elections for mayor and town council Jews came in with a large majority. The first mayor was Ben-Tzion Goldberg and many municipal employees were Jewish. Their handling of municipal affairs was more successful than that of the Lithuanians themselves.
Parties of left and right also stood for elections in the Jewish Community Council and the Chairman, Zionist Raphael Gwirskin, was elected unanimously. But differences developed between the Zionists and those against Zionism, as well as those of the left and right political parties. However, in spite of all that, the community managed to restore religious, educational and welfare institutions.
By 1921 the Jewish population was 7,000, growing to 8,000 in 1935 of a total population of 15,000. The original Jewish settlers were involved in the timber industry, as bargemen, and as traders of grain and linseed. Their contribution to commerce was large and active. Convoys of Jewish traders often passed through the town on the road to Vilnius, Kaunas, Petersburg and Warsaw. They built large storerooms and were active in the export of timber and linseed to Germany. The Jewish merchants were regular and honoured guests at the Konigsberg, Danzig and Stettin Commercial Exchanges. They also owned flour mills, and in the 19th Century there was even a guild of Jewish Millers. They also owned the brick burning kilns, all centralized on Egypt Street; workshops producing clay products; and some were textile merchants. The majority of grocery and hardware stores were owned by Jewish merchants.
Before World War I, there were 900 Jewish farmers in Vilkomir and the surrounding area. In the small village of Laibiskes (Leibishuk), 6 km along the road to Jonava, there lived dozens of Jewish families with their own synagogue, and the owner of the estate in the area was a friend of the Jews. Jews of the surrounding settlements were also Innkeepers. Among the Jewish tradesmen were builders (who also built the local churches), blacksmiths, metalworkers and tinsmiths. Their tailors produced clothes selling over a wide market as well as uniforms for the various armies which had passed through the town.
Wagon owners used to leave their homes at the completion of Shabbat and return before the eve of the next Shabbat. They were also the first to purchase and use the new motorised vehicles at the beginning of the 20th century. They were quick to keep up with the times and got rid of their horses and quickly learnt the mechanics of engined vehicles. There were also a number of hostels for merchants and other passing travellers. Until the 1930s, water pipes were unknown and the needs of the Jews for water were met by pumping from the river or wells.
In 1935 the Jews owned the following industries:
3 lumber millsThe Jewish National Bank opened a branch there in 1920, and by 1929 had 593 depositors. This bank provided important means for the economic life of the town. The manager was Israel Los and the treasurer Tzvi Zildow, and after him Moshe Glazer. There also existed two private banks, one owned by the brothers Eliahu and Aharon Yudelowitz, and the other by Yehuda Levit.
2 flour mills (Krikun and Orben)
1 leather goods factory (Zelik & Gerov Mishinomer)
1 ceramic tile factory
2 wineries
1 carton factory
1 soft drink factory
2 underwear factories
2 farming equipment factories
6 brickmaking yards
In the town there were 12 houses of prayer and many minyans. Among them was the Great Synagogue, built 300 years previously. The majority of the population used to pray there on Yom Kippur. There was also a study hall for the Chasidim of Chabad. The majority of the prayer houses served the tradesmen of the town, with one large one for the bosses and business owners, and there was much competition in the formation of choirs.
For many centuries, Vilkomir was the centre of Torah studies in Lithuania; therefore their Rabbis were the most important in the country. Before World War I there were 150 Baale Beitim (householders) certified to be Rabbis and in its yeshivot there were hundreds of excellent students. At the Beit Midrashim the Torah was studied 24 hours a day.
Vilkomir was also the stronghold of the Haredim and it became renowned as a town of zealots. In the 1860s, after the death of the town Rabbi Aharla, there developed two rival groups, the Chasidim and the Mitnagdim. When they wanted to put a Chasidic Rabbi together with a Mitnagdim Rabbi, violent arguments developed, especially during the days of Moshe-Leib Lilienblum, a native of Keidainiai who had married the daughter of Leib Dalugetz of Vilkomir. He stood at the head of the crisis with the zealots and sent his followers against the enemies of secular higher education and also demanded changes in the religious laws, until he was forced to leave the town. His writings, lectures, articles and poem "The Ghost Community," all bear witness to this crisis.
In the same period Vilkomir was active in the accumulation of funds for the early Moshavim/ot (settlements) in Palestine. In the later generations there was always much argument between the Zionist extremists from both left and right. Public life of the community revolved around these arguments and crises. During independent Lithuania these arguments continued between the Bolshevik Yiddishists and the Zionists over the establishment of a Hebrew High School there.
Before World War I there was a large yeshiva, a Talmud Torah and many study rooms. In the late 19th century, a government school was opened with Russian as the official language, as well as a Jewish school and a municipal school. A pre-high school and a high school to whic Jews were freely admitted were also established. Jewish students from these schools developed the Yiddish Bund and from among them also came many active Bolshevik underground revolutionaries.
At the time of the German occupation during World War I, the Yiddishists established a large library, a dramatic society, orchestra and choir. All these influenced the Bund and the Yiddishist movement in the town and surrounding region. Among the active workers were the teacher Sovlintsky and writer Kolinchik, famous afterwards as a poet and author of a novel based on the German occupation during World War I.
Jewish educational institutions at the time of Lithuanian Independence included the following: a large yeshiva at the old Beit Ha-Midrash; two high schools, one Hebrew and one general, that were combined into the Hebrew High School in 1934; a Yavne elementary school, whose the first principal was Abba Glickman, and then Yitzhak Shemes, may his blood be avenged, followed by the spiritual leader and teacher Toritz, may his blood be avenged; a cultural school, whose principal was Zeroch Viddokler; a technical high school; a cultural nursery school under Nachama Jaffe and then Yocheved Sakov; and two libraries. The yeshiva and high schools were only for Vilkomir and the neighboring towns and villages.
The community also ran numerous institutions, including a hospital administered by Dr. Eliezer Gling; a home for the aged first managed by Israel Levy; and an orphanage of 90 children named after its patron, local-born Sol Rosenblum, who also built the first cinema, whose income was used to maintain and manage the orphanage. Director of the orphanage was A. Zibutz.
A Talmud Torah was built in the name of the magnanimous Chaim Farinkel. There was a public pharmacy, the income of which was used to maintain a number of social institutions. Also the Jewish poor were provided with free medicine and free firewood from the community.
In the public life of Vilkomir were branches of all Zionist parties, Agudat Yisrael, Communists, HeChalutz; and youth movements, HaShomer HaTzair, Gordonia, and Betar, as well as sport organisations Maccabi, HaPoel, Jak. Also the Jewish Womens' Union was extremely active.
The town's Rabbis included: Rav Raphael HaCohen; Rav Shlomo Segal; Rav Chaim Muvlosian; Rav Yehuda Leib Zilkind; Rav Aharon; Rav Alexander HaCohen Kaplan, head of the Beit-Din at the time of Rav Aharon and author of the book The Vow of Peace on the subject of vows; Rav Benyamin Rabinowitz; Rav Moshe son of Rav Yehoshua Isaac Shapiro; Rav Shaul Padova (Rav Shaul from Polotsk); Rav Leib Rubin, the last Rav, Yosef Suzmanowitz, may his blood be avenged; and the last Rav of the River Crossing, Rav Yakov Reznick, may his blood be avenged.
Heads of the yeshiva included: Rav Eliahu Kemerman, Rav Moshe Graetz, Rav Alter Bravida, and Rav Leib Gordon. Famous students of the Vilkomir Yeshiva were Dr. Issar Gesfsburg, author Tzvi Nissan Golomb, and Rav Simha Itzhak Broide, who was among those massacred at Hebron in 1929.
Famous native born Rabbis included: Rav Tzvi-Hirsch Wilek; Rav Yakov Meskin; Rav Yosef Yoffe; Rav Israel-Yakov Yoffe; Rav Yehuda HaLevi Lipschitz; Rav Yehuda Leib Anolik, author of the poem "The Ways of Judgement"; Rav Yoel Zelig Zilkin; Rav Eliahu, son of Rav Shmuel Wilek, well known author who died in Jerusalem; Haredi businessmen Rav Yakov HaLevi Lipschitz; Rav Tzvi Hirsch, son of Rav Abraham Yitzhak Ram, author of the book Land of the Gazelle; Rav Chaim Rappaport, the Preacher of Vilkomir who settled in Jerusalem in the 1890s and died there at the age of 101; Rav Arella Slomias scholar, public figure and great philanthropist who died in 1901; Rav Shlomo Aharls, author of The Defender and active in the Mizrahi movement, who settled in Eretz Israel in 1925 and died there in 1937; Rav Mendel Zilber; Rav Yakov Geffen, the man of Belz Dov Leibowitz of the Second Aliya; Tuvia Ziskind and his brothers Isiah Miller and Shlomo Sadawotz (son of David) Mashashik of the Third Aliya; Mordechai Weiss; Abraham Geiger; and Reuben Gordon.
Also of note are journalist Moshe Zeirt, chemist Sor Brandt, publishers M. Guntzer and Reuben Maas; poet Shraga Feigenson; journalist and author Kolchick; businessmen Rav Aharon Klatzko and Rav Shabtai Bornstein; industrialists and producers Chaim Frankel, Shmuel Blum, Sol Rosenblum, Tzvi Levitt, a major contractor to the Russian Army and very active for the benefit of the community; revolutionaries Sender Zildov and Abraham Motnick, Trotsky's secretary in 1917; the young poet Yechezkiel Praker, drowned at the age of 16; chazan and senior conductor of the choir at the Great Synagogue Yona Geffen, son of Korach; Ze'ev Stubalov (Kazan and businessman of England); Shlomo David Peletz (London); Friedman (Germany and England); Baruch Rubin, one of the first members of Young Zion in Lithuania, afterwards a lawyer in South Africa; the poet Shmuel-Nahum Stern, who translated Dante's Inferno into Yiddish; Yakov Levin, pioneer of Hertzlia; Chana Bohakov, sponsor of Hertzlia and one of the first settlers there.
Public figures of the last generation include: Bishko Elimelah Itzkovitz and his wife Esther Borstein, who was active in WIZO and women's rights not only in Lithuania but abroad; the brothers Israel and Shlomo Buknatz; son of Tzaddik Goldberg Rav Raphael Groskin; Zel Geren; D Glass; Itzak Janovsky; Israel London; Dr. S Sapir; Zipporah Dam; Dr. A. Krilinsky and his wife; engineer Baruch Cling; Dr. Eliezer Cling; Azriel-Yehuda and Nehama Levitt; Dr. Rachmiel; and Rav Nahum Zeev Braude.
Part II
In 1935 the Jewish population of Vilkomir was 8,000. On 25 June 1941 when the town was conquered by the Germans, many Jews who had fled from places in Western Lithuania were trapped here on their flight eastwards. Many Lithuanians immediately went wild, attacked Jewish homes, destroyed and murdered. They brutally forced the chemist Joseph Shalkan, who was 80 years of age, to run after a cart pulled by a wild horse, by tying him to it. When Dr. Aharon Cohen left the hospital to return home, he was shot and murdered in the middle of the road.
On the day that the town was overrun, two German soldiers were killed, apparently hit by stray bullets. This incident encouraged the wild Lithuanians to attack Jews. When the two soldiers were buried in the main square at the centre of the town, the Jews were blamed for firing on the soldiers.
Respected Jews and leaders of the community were arrested as witnesses. German soldiers entered the Jewish Hospital (Bikur Cholim) and forcibly rounded up the doctors and nurses. They also arrested the rabbis, lawyers and public figures. All of them were taken to the local jail with threats and blows. After that, they were forcibly marched to a large sandy plot adjoining one of the Christian cemeteries and there they were all brutally murdered. The leaders and instigators of these murders were the local Chief of the Secret Police Matzias Paskivitzios, the engineer Vatzios Daviakus, the driver Zivulanios who spoke Yiddish fluently, and Lalabiuda of the Polish section of the town. Paskiavatzios with his own hands stabbed Jews with a pair of scissors; Daviakus butchered the bodies of the Jewish scholars with a hatchet; and Zivulanius threw living people into the ditches. The Pole Lalabiuda took pleasure in dipping his hands in Jewish blood.
In the first week of the German occupation, 200 Jews were arrested on charges of cooperating with the Communists during the two years of Russian rule. The residents encouraged the murderers and on Friday 4 July 1941, the 200 Jews were transported to the Pivona Forest adjoining the village of Pasalina, 3 km from Vilkomir, and there were murdered and buried. In the middle of July Lithuanians stopped 12 Jewish girls in the centre of the town, tortured them brutally and then murdered them. At the beginning of August 1941 the Germans issued order to all Jews to vacate their homes and to move to a ghetto situated in the poor Christian neighborhood between Bolnick and Nikukar Lanes leading to the Secutanai River (Unteren Wasser). The Ghetto was not fenced off but was guarded by armed Lithuanians.
Every day Jewish men and even young women were taken for all sorts of forced labor, digging sewage ditches at various places in the town and surrounding areas. Not only were the Germans intent on forcing the Jews to work, but they also seized every opportunity to humiliate, ridicule and deride them. Numbers of honoured and aged Jews were taken and treated as playthings or for entertainment; to clean gutters in the streets of the town and to clean public latrines and similar places. The Germans especially enjoyed humiliating the tailor Noah Chisserk, who was very fat and very tall, as well as a the owner of an hotel and restaurant, Katy, a woman who was also very fat and tall. They marched Noah with a broom and Katy with a bucket, forcing them to clean the worst streets in the town. Germans and Lithuanians stood around to laugh and mock the comic pair.
The Germans often surrounded places frequented by young and healthy Jews and chose a number of men, marching them out of Vilkomir to work on the farms closer to Vilnius. On 8 August the Germans also collected a large number of young women from their places of work and marched them in the same direction. Afterwards, all of the men and women were taken to the Pivona Forest, murdered, and buried in ditches next to the underwear factory. During the month of August young men and women were transported to this forest from the surrounding towns and villages of Sirvintos, Balninkai, Alanta, Musninkai, Bagaslaviskis, Giedraicia, Sesuoliai, Kukliai, Vidiskiai, Siesikai and Jonava. In the great massacre of the Jews from these places that took place in the Pivona Forest on 5 September 1941, large numbers of the Jews of Vilkomir also perished.
The only people now remaining in the Ghetto were the old and sick, and women and children, but their fate came on 26 September. At the break of dawn, the Ghetto was surrounded by the armed guards and cruelly attacked by Germans and Lithuanians. The Jews were forced to leave their homes, taking only a small amount of food with them. They were told that they were being taken to a work camp where all the other Jews of Vilkomir were being held, and that they would be sorted out, all families together with children and parents reunited, and the traders sent to a proper work camp. At 9 a.m. the Jews were force marched to the Pivona Forest. There they were forced to undress completely and then the Germans fired at them with light machine guns.
One Jew, Eliahu Karunsky, a qualified electrician, was taken from the Ghetto to work for the Germans. He was the neighbour of a Christian who had taught him the electrical trade and they had worked in partnership for many years. Karunsky had remained alive even after his son and daughter perished in the Ghetto, but after they used his services as an electrician, he too was murdered.
A number of Jews from Vilkomir fled and hid at some farms and in the forests. They endured much hardship and moved from place to place, but not one of them succeeded in escaping the enemy. As they were caught, most of them were brought to the mass grave in the Pivona Forest and murdered there.
Among the last Jews to perish were Dr. David Gerev and a venerable old man, Abraham Pick. The Lithuanian surgeon Dr. Dumbris at the beginning defended and himself hid Dr Gerev, who served as his assistant in his clinic, and then Dr. Dumbris succeeded in hiding him with a farmer. Another person reported his presence and he was caught. The old man Pick hid for a long time in the flour mill, but again someone reported him.
After the war, on returning to Lithuania, the survivors began a search in the Pivona Forest for the mass graves of their martyred families and townspeople. The grave was not easy to find as high weeds covered a wide area. After much clearing, they found only three large graves, where human bones were scattered. According to farmers of the area who assisted them in their search, they were advised that in this place was a long wide channel that led up the slopes of a hill. This channel had been dug and completed by the Germans to bury the Jews that they had murdered. As there was not enough earth to cover all the bodies, the Germans had dragged some of the bodies to the shoulders of the hill and covered them there. This cover was thin and loose. It did not take long for the rains to uncover shallow graves, and after that grazing animals trampled and ate the weeds, and forest and field animals picked at the bodies.
The survivors of Vilkomir created a tradition to collect the bones of victims of Pivona, especially on Tisha bav, and bury them in a common grave. The surviving Jews of Vilkomir approached the municipal authorities to build a monument for the victims but the authorities refused, in spite of the fact that many of the victims had been butchered by the town's citizens. The Jews then took the initiative into their own hands, collected money, and in1950 built their own monument in the middle of the three common graves that were in a semi-circle in a flat open space. The monument was built of concrete 2-1/2 metres high and 1-1/2 metres wide.
Soviet clerks found in Vilkomir long lists of the records of 12,000 Jews with their names and ages, most likely the people of Vilkomir and the surrounding area who were murdered. Many survivors found the names of their loved ones and friends who were there at the time.
When a Jewish museum was opened in Vilnius at the initiative of some individual Jews, items that had been owned by the Jews of the communities of Lithuania were exhibited. The survivors of Vilkomir submitted this list of victims. On the closing of the hall containing the collection of stories of the Jews, the entire Museum was also closed, and the list of Vilkomir Jews disappeared together with many of the other exhibits.
The lists of mass graves in the book The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II, include the following:
Place - Pivona Forest 4 km southeast of Vilkomir. Dates 1 August 1941, 19 August 1941, 5 September 1941. Number who perished - 6,354.
Place - farm adjoining the prison 5 km from Vilkomir in the direction of the town of Sesuoliai (Zsasalova). Date 10 July, 1941. Number who perished - 83 men and women.
Sandler Shulman, Ramat Gan
Mordehai Pashkus, Karkur
Itzhak Nemenchik, USA
Dusia Morashchik-Kaplan, Tel Aviv.
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II. Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 303.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 273.
54° 52'/ 24° 36'
Zasliai is in the Trakai district, 10 km from Kaiiadorys (Kushidar) and halfway between Kaunas and Vilnius. There were 1, 000 Jewish residents living there in the year of the massacres, 1941. In the first days of the invasion, the Germans had already shelled the town. Part of the Jewish population attempted to escape eastwards into Russia, but they encountered the advancing German forces and were forced to return to Zasliai.
As the Soviet forces withdrew, the Lithuanian activists seized control of the town. Their first step was to round up those suspected of cooperation with the Soviets, both Jews and non-Jews. The arrested Jews immediately felt what their situation was and what fate awaited them. The non-Jews who had no serious charges against them were immediately released. The charges against the Jews were not investigated and the Jews were not permitted to try to prove their innocence. They were transported to Kaiiadorys (Kushidar), from which none of them returned.
After the lovers of the Soviets were dealt with, it was the turn of the rest of the Jews. Day after day the activists sent the Jews out to forced labor, mainly to clean the streets and do other kinds of menial labour. They were made to work from the early hours of the morning until about 5 p.m. Returning home, they would be arrested at the entrance to their homes. They were not provided with any food and they had to beg their gentile neighbors to sell them food at exorbitant prices or in exchange for precious personal items. Day and night the Jews were threatened by unexpected visitors, armed Lithuanians who broke into their homes, robbed them, shouted at them, and generally did whatever they wished.
In the middle of the night on 17 August 1941 the activists brought out all the men and some of the women, transported them to Kaiiadorys, bound and held them there for 10 days, and on 26 August murdered them in a wood adjoining Kaiiadorys. These Jews were buried there together with the Jews of Kaiiadorys and some Jews from the surrounding villages. The rest of the Jews of Zasliai were transported to Shilishek on 29 September 1941 and together with other Jews of the area were murdered on 6 October 1941 in the vicinity of that village.
Only three women and two children succeeded in escaping from these actions. They found shelter with local farmers and after difficult periods of concealment, reached freedom.
The lists of mass graves in the book The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II, include the following in the vicinity of Zasliai:
Place - woods of Kaiiadorys (Kushidar) in deep channels and pits. Date 26 August, 1941. Number who perished 1,911 men, women, and children.
Place - Smilishok on the forest paths, 200 metres northeast of the village. Time 6 October 1941. Number who perished - 962 men, women, and children.
Raya Schiff-Berkman, Jerusalem.
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II. Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 312.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 285.
56° 17'/ 24° 00'
Zeimelis is a small village in the Siauliai (Shavli) region of northern Lithuania, 30 km from Joniskis and on the Latvian border. Before 1941 about 50 Jewish families were living there.
The Germans arrived at the end of June, and for the first month of the occupation the Jews did not suffer from any unusual treatment. The tragedy started when the Lithuanian activists rounded up all the Jews on 8 August, led them two kilometers outside the village, and there murdered them with automatic gunfire.
The site has since been fenced in, but as of 1984 no monument had been erected, since the survivors had escaped to the Soviet Union.
The adopted son of the pharmacist Abraham Shulhoff was saved by two priests who testified that the boy was not Jewish.
A new immigrant to Israel brought to the Lochamei Hagetaot Museum a document found in Zeimelis immediately after the Germans withdrew from the village in 1944. It was a report from the mayor of Zeimelis to the head of the Siauliai Regional Council as follows: In reply to your request No. 962 I advise that there were a total of 205 Jews, 160 of them executed on August 8, 1941. At present we have two Jewish women whose attempt to escape failed and we have sent them on to Zagare.
The list of mass graves in the book The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II, includes the following:
Place: forest near Vileisiai, two km from Zeimel. Date: 8 August, 1941. Number who perished: 160 Jewish men, women and children.
Feivel Zagarsky of Givatayim,
Zvi Kaf [?] of Kibbutz Afikim, recorded in the archives of Beit Lochamei Hagetaot
The Popular Massacres of Lithuania, Part II. Vilnius, 1973.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 313.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 286.
55° 58'/ 23° 25'
Part I
The small village of Zeimiai was close to Jonava (14 km), Seta (12 km), Kedainiai (20 km), Vandziogala (20 km), Shaishik (15 km), and about 14 km.from the village Koplizia, a former Jewish settlement.
Before World War I about 60 Jewish families lived in the village, but at the period just before World War II only 20 families lived there, as most Jews had emigrated to South Africa and the U.S.A.
In the village was a Beit HaMidrash and a cheder of 10 pupils. The rabbis were Rav Chaim, son of Rav Yakov Glatzer; Rav Chaim Klivanov; followed by Rav Boviandzigola.
Part II
In late July 1941 or early August, the Zeimiai Jews were transported to Keidaniai into the Ghetto along with the Jewish residents of Keidaniai, and their fate was the same as that of the Keidaniai Jews.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume III: Part A - Personalities. Part B - Places. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, established by Abraham Dov Abrams and Former Lithuanians in Philadelphia and Israel, 1967. p. 313.
Lithuanian Jewry, Volume IV: The Holocaust 1941-1945. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984. p. 286.
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text:
Developing an Isolated Word Recognition System in MATLAB
By Daryl Ning, MathWorks
Speech-recognition technology is embedded in voice-activated routing systems at customer call centres, voice dialling on mobile phones, and many other everyday applications. A robust speech-recognition system combines accuracy of identification with the ability to filter out noise and adapt to other acoustic conditions, such as the speaker's speech rate and accent. Designing a robust speech-recognition algorithm is a complex task requiring detailed knowledge of signal processing and statistical modeling.
This article demonstrates a workflow that uses built-in functionality in MATLAB® and related products to develop the algorithm for an isolated digit recognition system. The system is speaker-dependent—that is, it recognizes speech only from one particular speaker's voice.
Classifying Speech-Recognition Systems
Most speech-recognition systems are classified as isolated or continuous. Isolated word recognition requires a brief pause between each spoken word, whereas continuous speech recognition does not. Speech-recognition systems can be further classified as speaker-dependent or speaker-independent. A speaker-dependent system only recognizes speech from one particular speaker's voice, whereas a speaker-independent system can recognize speech from anybody.
The Development Workflow
There are two major stages within isolated word recognition: a training stage and a testing stage. Training involves "teaching" the system by building its dictionary, an acoustic model for each word that the system needs to recognize. In our example, the dictionary comprises the digits 'zero' to 'nine'. In the testing stage we use acoustic models of these digits to recognize isolated words using a classification algorithm.
The development workflow consists of three steps:
- Speech acquisition
- Speech analysis
- User interface development
Acquiring Speech
For training, speech is acquired from a microphone and brought into the development environment for offline analysis. For testing, speech is continuously streamed into the environment for online processing.
During the training stage, it is necessary to record repeated utterances of each digit in the dictionary. For example, we repeat the word 'one' many times with a pause between each utterance.
Using the following MATLAB code with a standard PC sound card, we capture ten seconds of speech from a microphone input at 8000 samples per second:
Fs = 8000; % Sampling Freq (Hz) Duration = 10; % Duration (sec) y = wavrecord(Duration*Fs,Fs);
We save the data to disk as '
This approach works well for training data. In the testing stage, however, we need to continuously acquire and buffer speech samples, and at the same time, process the incoming speech frame by frame, or in continuous groups of samples.
We use Data Acquisition Toolbox™ to set up continuous acquisition of the speech signal and simultaneously extract frames of data for processing.
The following MATLAB code uses a Windows sound card to capture data at a sampling rate of 8000 Hz. Data is acquired and processed in frames of 80 samples. The process continues until the "RUNNING" flag is set to zero.
% Define system parameters framesize = 80; % Framesize (samples) Fs = 8000; % Sampling Frequency (Hz) RUNNING = 1; % A flag to continue data capture % Setup data acquisition from sound card ai = analoginput('winsound'); addchannel(ai, 1); % Configure the analog input object. set(ai, 'SampleRate', Fs); set(ai, 'SamplesPerTrigger', framesize); set(ai, 'TriggerRepeat',inf); set(ai, 'TriggerType', 'immediate'); % Start acquisition start(ai) % Keep acquiring data while "RUNNING" ~= 0 while RUNNING % Acquire new input samples newdata = getdata(ai,ai.SamplesPerTrigger); % Do some processing on newdata ... <DO _ SOMETHING> ... % Set RUNNING to zero if we are done if <WE _ ARE _ DONE> RUNNING = 0; end end % Stop acquisition stop(ai); % Disconnect/Cleanup delete(ai); clear ai;
Analyzing the Acquired Speech
We begin by developing a word-detection algorithm that separates each word from ambient noise. We then derive an acoustic model that gives a robust representation of each word at the training stage. Finally, we select an appropriate classification algorithm for the testing stage.
Developing a Speech-Detection Algorithm
The speech-detection algorithm is developed by processing the prerecorded speech frame by frame within a simple loop. For example, this MATLAB code continuously reads 160 sample frames from the data in 'speech'.
% Define system parameters seglength = 160; % Length of frames overlap = seglength/2; % # of samples to overlap stepsize = seglength - overlap; % Frame step size nframes = length(speech)/stepsize-1; % Initialize Variables samp1 = 1; samp2 = seglength; %Initialize frame start and end for i = 1:nframes % Get current frame for analysis frame = speech(samp1:samp2); % Do some analysis ... <DO _ SOMETHING> ... % Step up to next frame of speech samp1 = samp1 + stepsize; samp2 = samp2 + stepsize; end
To detect isolated digits, we use a combination of signal energy and zero-crossing counts for each speech frame. Signal energy works well for detecting voiced signals, while zero-crossing counts work well for detecting unvoiced signals. Calculating these metrics is simple using core MATLAB mathematical and logical operators. To avoid identifying ambient noise as speech, we assume that each isolated word will last at least 25 milliseconds.
Developing the Acoustic Model
A good acoustic model should be derived from speech characteristics that will enable the system to distinguish between the different words in the dictionary.
We know that different sounds are produced by varying the shape of the human vocal tract and that these different sounds can have different frequencies. To investigate these frequency characteristics we examine the power spectral density (PSD) estimates of various spoken digits. Since the human vocal tract can be modeled as an all-pole filter, we use the Yule-Walker parametric spectral estimation technique from Signal Processing Toolbox™ to calculate these PSDs.
After importing an utterance of a single digit into the variable 'speech', we use the following MATLAB code to visualize the PSD estimate:
order = 12; nfft = 512; Fs = 8000; pyulear(speech,order,nfft,Fs);
Since the Yule-Walker algorithm fits an autoregressive linear prediction filter model to the signal, we must specify an order of this filter. We select an arbitrary value of 12, which is typical in speech applications.
Figures 1a and 1b plot the PSD estimate of three different utterances of the words 'one' and 'two'. We can see that the peaks in the PSD remain consistent for a particular digit but differ between digits. This means that we can derive the acoustic models in our system from spectral features.
From the linear predictive filter coefficients, we can obtain several feature vectors using Signal Processing Toolbox functions, including reflection coefficients, log area ratio parameters, and line spectral frequencies.
One set of spectral features commonly used in speech applications because of its robustness is Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs). MFCCs give a measure of the energy within overlapping frequency bins of a spectrum with a warped (Mel) frequency scale1.
Since speech can be considered to be short-term stationary, MFCC feature vectors are calculated for each frame of detected speech. Using many utterances of a digit and combining all the feature vectors, we can estimate a multidimensional probability density function (PDF) of the vectors for a specific digit. Repeating this process for each digit, we obtain the acoustic model for each digit.
During the testing stage, we extract the MFCC vectors from the test speech and use a probabilistic measure to determine the source digit with maximum likelihood. The challenge then becomes to select an appropriate PDF to represent the MFCC feature vector distributions.
Figure 2a shows the distribution of the first dimension of MFCC feature vectors extracted from the training data for the digit 'one'.
We could use
dfittool in company/newsletters/articles/developing-an-isolated-word-recognition-system-in-matlab.html™ to fit a PDF, but the distribution looks quite arbitrary, and standard distributions do not provide a good fit. One solution is to fit a Gaussian mixture model (GMM), a sum of weighted Gaussians (Figure 2b).
The complete Gaussian mixture density is parameterized by the mixture weights, mean vectors, and covariance matrices from all component densities. For isolated digit recognition, each digit is represented by the parameters of its GMM.
To estimate the parameters of a GMM for a set of MFCC feature vectors extracted from training speech, we use an iterative expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to obtain a maximum likelihood (ML) estimate. Given some MFCC training data in the variable
MFCCtraindata, we use the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox
gmdistribution function to estimate the GMM parameters. This function is all that is required to perform the iterative EM calculations.
%Number of Gaussian component densities M = 8; model = gmdistribution.fit(MFCCtraindata,M);
Selecting a Classification Algorithm
After estimating a GMM for each digit, we have a dictionary for use at the testing stage. Given some test speech, we again extract the MFCC feature vectors from each frame of the detected word. The objective is to find the digit model with the maximum a posteriori probability for the set of test feature vectors, which reduces to maximizing a log-likelihood value. Given a digit model
gmmmodel and some test feature vectors
testdata, the log-likelihood value is easily computed using the
posterior function in Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox:
[P, log _ like] = posterior(gmmmodel,testdata);
We repeat this calculation using each digit's model. The test speech is classified as the digit with the GMM that produces the maximum log-likelihood value.
Building the User Interface
After developing the isolated digit recognition system in an offline environment with prerecorded speech, we migrate the system to operate on streaming speech from a microphone input.We use MATLAB GUIDE tools to create an interface that displays the time domain plot of each detected word as well as the classified digit (Figure 3).
Extending the Application
The algorithm described in this article can be extended to recognize isolated words instead of digits, or to recognize words from several speakers by developing a speaker-independent system.
If the goal is to implement the speech recognition algorithm in hardware, we could use MATLAB and related products to simulate fixed-point effects, automatically generate embedded C code, and verify the generated code.
Published 2010 - 91805v00