text:
The elastic constant tensor of an inorganic compound provides a complete description of the response of the material to external stresses in the elastic limit. It thus provides fundamental insight into the nature of the bonding in the material, and it is known to correlate with many mechanical properties. Despite the importance of the elastic constant tensor, it has been measured for a very small fraction of all known inorganic compounds, a situation that limits the ability of materials scientists to develop new materials with targeted mechanical responses. To address this deficiency, we present here the largest database of calculated elastic properties for inorganic compounds to date. The database currently contains full elastic information for 1,181 inorganic compounds, and this number is growing steadily. The methods used to develop the database are described, as are results of tests that establish the accuracy of the data. In addition, we document the database format and describe the different ways it can be accessed and analyzed in efforts related to materials discovery and design.
Design Type(s)
observation design
Measurement Type(s)
elastic constant tensor
Technology Type(s)
stress-strain methodology
Factor Type(s)
Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)
Background & Summary
The elastic tensor of a crystalline solid provides a complete description of its response to external forces within the elastic limit. This property is thus one of the most fundamental probes of the nature of the interatomic bonding in a given material system (e.g., ref. 1). Further, it is known that the elastic tensor correlates with many mechanical and thermal properties, and it is thus a critically important quantity for use in screening in the process of materials discovery and design. For example, since the work of Pugh in the 1950's the ratio of the bulk to shear modulus has been used as a basis to understand and predict trends in the ductility of materials2–9. More recently, extensions of the Pugh analysis have been used to derive descriptors for hardness, in the attempt to discover new materials for hard coating applications, and to guide the search for the elusive inorganic compound with a hardness greater than diamond3. Elastic tensors can also be used to screen for materials with targeted thermal properties, as it provides a basis for rapid estimation of trends in heat capacities and thermal conductivities10–13. Knowledge of the full anisotropic elastic tensor can be used in conjunction with mathematical homogenization theories to predict the elastic response of composite materials, and thus guide the design of such materials with targeted stiffnesses14,15. Additionally, an area in which elastic properties find widespread use is geophysics, where acoustic velocities are used for interpretation of seismic data16,17.
Despite the importance of the elastic tensor, experimental data for this quantity is available for only a very small subset of all known inorganic compounds. This presents a fundamental bottleneck for the discovery and design of materials with targeted thermal and mechanical properties, or for performing continuum simulations of mechanical response that require elastic moduli as input. Considering only materials for which the full tensor of elastic coefficients is available, the classical works have references that sum up to a total number of around 150 independent systems for which experimental measurements have been compiled18–26. Considering papers that have investigated elastic constants of particular systems, this number might be twice as large, which is a very small fraction of the approximately 30,000 to 50,000 entries for ordered compounds in the inorganic crystal structure database27–29. Among the systems for which experimental data is available are approximately 70 pure elements, with the remainder consisting of binary systems and—to a much smaller extent—ternary systems and a variety of complex minerals. Among the binary materials are solid solutions and compounds, the latter often being ordered intermetallic compounds.
One challenge associated with using published experimental data for elastic moduli is that the spread in the reported values for a given system can be quite large, depending on the details of the experimental conditions and techniques employed. For example, elastic moduli derived from inelastic neutron scattering can be 10% greater than those derived from pulse-echo measurements30. Differences of over 20% in reported experimental values for the bulk and shear moduli for the same system have been observed in some cases, such as NiO31,32. Other experimental factors, such as different measurement temperatures33 and/or the presence of impurity phases, can also lead to variability in reported elastic constants.
Efforts aimed at developing databases of elastic moduli from first-principles computational methods have been undertaken in previous work (e.g., refs 34,35). Such a computational approach provides an advantage that all of the data can be derived in a consistent manner, facilitating comparisons across materials chemistries. In the present work we expand on this approach. Specifically, we present here the to-date largest database of calculated elastic properties of crystalline inorganic compounds, ranging from metals and metallic compounds to semiconductors and insulators. These calculations are part of a high-throughput (HT) effort36, undertaken within the framework of the Materials Project (MP) (www.materialsproject.org)37. The database of elastic tensors currently consists of over 1,181 materials and is being updated regularly. The elastic properties are obtained using first-principles quantum-mechanical calculations based on Density Functional Theory (DFT). As shown below, the calculated elastic constants are typically within 15% of experimental values, which represents a smaller scatter than that observed in experimental values in some cases. Pearson (r) and Spearman (ρ) coefficients indicate that the calculations performed in this work yield elastic properties that show an excellent correlation with experimental values, making the database presented here useful for screening materials with properties based on elastic tensors.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. We first describe our method for calculating elastic constants from DFT in a HT-environment. We then give an overview of the structure of the data, followed by a description of our results. Finally, we describe the verification and validation tests to assess the precision and accuracy of the chosen density functional and the HT algorithms employed in the calculations.
Generation of elasticity data
In this launch of the elastic constant database we tabulate results for a subset of 1,181 compounds chosen from those present in the current MP database. This subset includes 2 broad categories: i) metallic and small-band-gap compounds and ii) binary oxides and semiconductor compounds. The first category is taken from the MP-database, under the constraint that 1) the calculated bandgap <0.3 eV and 2) the energy above the convex hull (decomposition energy38) <0.5 eV/atom. These properties have been calculated previously by DFT using the standard HT-procedure and chosen MP parameters suitable for ground-state energy, lattice structure, and band structure37,39. The constraints are chosen to represent a set of materials that are metallic or near-metallic and energetically stable or near-stable, and yields the majority of the data set (approximately 1,100 systems). For the binary oxides, different selection criteria were used: 1) the bandgap >0.3 eV and 2) the energy above the convex hull=0 eV/atom, which yields approximately 100 systems. Furthermore, approximately 20 technologically relevant semiconductors were added to create a representative set of materials.
For these systems we compute the elastic constants using a stress-strain methodology. Specifically, starting from a relaxed structure for each compound, we generate a set of distorted structures, as follows. The Green-Lagrange strain tensor has 6 independent components, each of which is applied independently to every structure, with differing magnitudes, as described in the Workflow section below. For each deformed structure, the 3×3 stress tensor is calculated by DFT. If the components of the stress tensor are denoted by Sij and the components of the Green-Lagrange strain tensor are denoted by Eij, the constitutive relation within linear elasticity can be written as in equation (1), which relates stresses to strains via the symmetric elastic matrix, with components Cij. In equation (1), the following Voigt-notation is employed: .
For each of the applied strains Eij, the full stress tensor is obtained from a DFT calculation in which ionic positions are relaxed. Consequently one row (or equivalently, column) of the elastic matrix is obtained from a linear fit of the calculated stresses over the range of imposed strains. Repeating this procedure for each of the 6 independent strain components, all elements of the elastic modulus tensor can be calculated. The result is a calculated set of Cij values that can be used to calculate properties such as the bulk modulus K and the shear modulus G, as described in Table 1. The components of Cij depend on the choice of coordinate system and lattice vectors, and in this work we have adopted the IEEE standard40 for all reported tensors.
The first-principles results presented in this work are performed using the projector augmented wave (PAW) method41,42 as implemented in the Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package (VASP)43,44. In all calculations, we employ the Perdew, Becke and Ernzerhof (PBE) Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) for the exchange-correlation functional45. Other parameters employed in our HT-DFT calculations of elastic constants are system-dependent. For the metals and metallic compounds, we employ a cut-off for the plane waves of 700 eV. Further a uniform k-point density of approximately 7,000 per reciprocal atom (pra) is used, which means that the number of atoms per cell multiplied by the number of k-points equals approximately 7,000. For the compounds that contain magnetic elements, a ferromagnetic state is initialized in the calculation. We expect to correctly converge to ferromagnetic and non-magnetic states in this way, but not to anti-ferromagnetic states. This set of parameters results in elastic tensors that are converged to within 5% for 95% of the considered systems. Given the chemical breadth of the compound set—spanning metals, semiconductors and oxides—it is unlikely that one set of parameters performs equally well for all classes of materials. Therefore, to detect anomalies and outliers, tests were designed and corresponding first-principles calculations with higher convergence setting were performed (for more details see the next section). The set of approximately 20 semiconductors is calculated with the same convergence parameters as the metals and metallic compounds with similar resulting convergence. For the binary oxides, a plane wave cut-off of 700 eV is also used, with a k-point density of 1,000 pra. This leads to elastic constants converged to within 5% for all binary oxides considered in this work. Due to the presence of strongly correlated electrons in some of the oxides, the GGA+U method is employed, with U representing the Hubbard-parameter46,47. The values of U are chosen consistent with those employed in the MP37,39.
In this subsection we describe the workflow for the HT implementation of the stress-strain approach to computing elastic constants described above. We note that the workflow developed for this purpose shares many features in common with that developed for elastic constant-calculations in the Vlab distributed cyberinfrastructure for materials computation34. The main difference between the current approach and that described in ref. 34, is that the focus here is on elastic constants at zero pressure and temperature, whereas the Vlab workflow is developed more generally to consider elastic constants under finite pressures and temperatures, which are particularly important in the context of geophysical applications. The workflow in ref. 34 thus contains tasks related to the calculations of equations of state and finite-temperature phonon contributions, which are not considered in the present work. The emphasis here is on developing comprehensive databases of elastic moduli across a broad class of inorganic compounds, for materials design applications, and on interfacing the data with the Materials Project (MP) infrastructure.
Figure 1 summarizes the workflow for data generation implemented within the MP HT calculation infrastructure used in the present work. We start from the optimized structures in MP, and perform a tighter structural relaxation, with more stringent convergence parameters in the DFT-calculation. This initial step is necessary since the calculation of elastic constants by the stress-strain method requires a well-converged stress tensor, and the standard HT-settings in the MP, which are optimized for the total energy, are not always sufficient for this purpose. This procedure leads to a structure exhibiting close to zero residual stresses and forces on the atoms.
The next step is to construct a set of deformed structures, for calculations of the resulting stresses. Each structure in this set is deformed homogeneously by one of the 6 independent components of the strain tensor defined above, with a magnitude chosen over a prescribed range. Similar to previous work (e.g., refs 33,48) in which a stress-strain method for computing elastic tensors has been employed, a maximum strain of 1% is applied initially to distort the structures. In our experience this value is typically large enough for most compounds to minimize the numerical noise in the calculation of the stress tensor, but small enough to remain well within the linear-elastic regime. In this initial step we choose four values for the strain magnitude, varying between −1 to 1%, leading to a set of set of 24 initial deformed structures. First-principles calculations of the stress tensor for each of these structures are performed, including ionic relaxations. The calculation is considered to be unsuccessful if one or more of the single deformation runs fails to converge. In such cases, the calculations are rerun with tighter numerical convergence parameters. In the case of several unsuccessful iterations, a tag to this material is generated indicating that the calculation of the elastic tensor has failed.
Once the 24 stress tensor calculations have been successfully computed, a check is performed to determine whether the range of strains considered is appropriate for deriving the elastic constant tensor using a linear stress-strain relationship. This is done by fitting the elastic constants over different ranges of strain, and examining the sensitivity of the results. We employ the following nomenclature for the chosen ranges of strains investigated: ε1=(−1%, −0.5%, +0.5%, +1%), ε2=(−0.5%, +0.5%), ε3=(−0.75%, −0.5%, +0.5%, +0.75%), and finally ε4=(−1.25%, −0.75%, +0.75%, +1.25%). We first fit the elastic constants to the default strain range, ε1, and compare the resulting bulk and shear modulus to those as obtained from a fit to ε2. If the results are within 15%, we move on to the next step in the workflow using the elastic constants as obtained from the fit to the strain range ε1. If the discrepancies are larger than 15%, additional stress tensors are calculated for strain values of (±0.75%). We then compare the bulk and shear modulus, as fit from strain ranges ε2 and ε3. If the results agree to within 15%, we progress in the workflow using the elastic constants as fit to the strain range ε2. If again the results disagree, we compare the bulk and shear modulus, fit to ε1 and ε4. If these agree to within 15%, we progress in the workflow using the elastic constants fit to the default strain range ε1. If all of these steps fail, a warning message is generated for the compound, warranting further investigation.
From our initial set of 1,181 materials, we find that in 34 cases, either the bulk modulus and/or the shear modulus are different by over 15%, depending on whether ε1 or ε2 is used for fitting the elastic tensor. A refitting of the elastic constants of those systems is performed over the range of strains corresponding to ε3, and the bulk and shear moduli are compared to those as obtained from fitting to ε2. We find that only 20 systems exhibit discrepancies of over 15%. For the latter systems, we finally compare the bulk and shear moduli as obtained from fitting to ε1 and ε4, respectively, finding that only 10 still show discrepancies of over 15%. Thus, for the vast majority of the cases considered, the default range of strains ε1 is found to suffice for calculations of the elastic constants by a stress-strain methodology, and for more than two-thirds of the remaining compounds the additional checks implemented in the workflow lead to identification of an appropriate range of strains to yield reasonable results.
As illustrated in Fig. 1, for the systems where the calculation ends successfully and an appropriate range of strains is successfully identified, the elastic tensor results are further checked using various filters, designed to detect possible errors related to the assumption of linear elastic behavior, or other numerical inaccuracies that might occur due to the need for tighter convergence. The filters are designed to reveal physically unlikely behavior or mechanical instabilities behavior, which can be indicative of such errors. The filters include: i) KR >2 GPa, ii) GR >2 GPa, iii) all 6 eigenvalues of the elastic tensor are larger than zero, and iv) Born-Huang stability criteria49 are obeyed to within a 10% margin (see below). Note that KR and GR represent the Reuss-averages of the bulk and shear moduli, respectively50 (see Table 1 for definitions).
Conditions i) and ii) are selected based on an empirical observation that the most compliant known metals have shear and bulk moduli larger than approximately 2 GPa. Hence if our calculations yield results below 2 GPa for either the Reuss averages50 (a lower bound estimate) of K or G, these results might be correct but deserve additional attention. Condition iii) expresses the conditions for mechanical stability of solids under zero stress. If one (or more) of the eigenvalues of the elastic tensor is (are) negative, the compound is mechanically unstable at zero temperature. The effects of finite temperatures may lift the mechanical instability in some systems, such as B2 NiTi51. However, negative eigenvalues may also indicate the calculation is erroneous, and hence these cases are flagged for a more detailed investigation. The final set of filters iv) is used to identify elastic tensors that correspond to materials that are mechanically stable but are near an elastic instability. This is done by applying the Born-Huang elastic stability criteria for the appropriate crystal system. As an example for the cubic crystal system, we require that C11−C12>0, C11+2C12>0, C44>0. If one or more of these criteria is violated, one or more of the elastic tensor eigenvalues is negative. To identify compounds that are close to a mechanical instability, we apply a small tolerance to the Born-Huang criteria. As an example, for the case of cubic crystal systems, we check if C11>ϵC12 holds true, where ϵ=1.1. We find empirically that when C11<ϵC12, frequently the first-principles calculation was not properly converged or a more accurate PAW potential is required (e.g., including semi-core states). For other crystal systems, similar tests are performed.
For the materials that do not obey one or more of the conditions i)-iv), we investigate the effect of the various convergence parameters in the DFT calculations, and if the results still do not pass the filters, a warning tag is generated warranting further investigation. From the initial set of 1,181 materials, it is found that 97 systems fail to meet criteria i)-iv). In particular, 57 systems are found to be mechanically unstable, 16 systems have Reuss averaged shear or bulk moduli lower than 2 GPa and 19 systems are within a margin ϵ=1.1 of being mechanically unstable. For these 97 systems, a new set of calculations is performed using a substantially higher k-point density of approximately 25,000 pra in both structural relaxations and stress-calculations. This set of calculations results in a reduction in the number of systems that do not obey conditions i)—iv) from 97 to 76 systems. Of these, 50 systems are found to be mechanically unstable, 14 systems have Reuss averaged shear or bulk moduli lower than 2 GPa and 12 systems are mechanically stable but within a margin ϵ=1.1 of being mechanically unstable. In particular, the pure metals Al and Cu are flagged by the filters in the initial DFT-runs employing lower k-points, since these metals are close to mechanical instability. However, upon increasing the k-points, results improve (this finding was not unexpected since Cu and Al which are known to exhibit complex Fermi surfaces52). The filters described above are designed to identify anomalies, and they will likely be refined as our approach evolves and additional validation is performed.
All elastic tensors that have achieved sufficient numerical convergence are inserted into the MP database and reported on the web site. We also store and report on the website results for mechanically unstable compounds, but include a warning message to the user. A JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data document is generated for each reported elastic tensor. This JSON data document is publicly available at the Dryad-repository (Data Citation 1). We perform the structure generation and data analysis for elastic constant calculations using our open-source materials analysis code pymatgen53. The workflow software FireWorks54 is used to automate the HT calculations and data management.
Code availability
The code for calculating elastic constants and related properties is part of the open-source code pymatgen53. Pymatgen is released under the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) License and is freely accessible. The workflow as shown in Fig. 1 is powered by the open-source code FireWorks and is released under a modified GPL (GNU General Public License). Also FireWorks can be accessed and used freely.
Data Records
The calculated elastic property data and related metadata of 1,181 materials are publicly available at the Materials Project (www.materialsproject.org). The complete data set can be downloaded in a JSON (Data Citation 1) file or via the Materials Project REST API. The Materials Project also provides a convenient web interface that allows searching for materials with particular properties by querying the elastic constant database. In addition, the materials detail pages on the website now include calculated elasticity data when available.
File format
The data set for each material is stored as an individual JSON document (Data Citation 1). Based on a series of key/value pairs, the JSON format offers a readily parsable yet human readable solution for data exchange. The metadata record for each material includes descriptions of the material (e.g., structure, structure symmetry) and calculation parameters (e.g., k-points density). The JSON keys for the metadata and their descriptions are listed in Table 2. Note that the structure is presented both in Crystallographic Information File (cif) and poscar-format. The poscar-format is the standard structure description used by the VASP-code.
The elastic constants appearing in equation (1) are calculated by DFT and represent the elastic constants of a single crystal. While single-crystal elastic properties are important as input into higher length-scale modeling of mechanical behavior, we also derive and report several polycrystalline averaged properties. In this work, we calculate for all considered systems the Voigt and Reuss averages of the bulk and shear modulus. The Voigt average provides an upper bound on the elastic moduli of an untextured polycrystalline material whereas the Reuss average provides a lower bound50. The experimental quantities will lie between the bounds, with the precise value determined by the detailed orientation of the various grains in the material. Also we provide the empirical VRH-average for the bulk and shear modulus. This empirical average is known to represent the bulk and shear modulus of polycrystalline materials with comparable accuracy as more advanced polycrystalline homogenization schemes such as those by Hashin and Strickman14,55. Other properties computed in this work are the index of elastic anisotropy56 and the Poisson ratio in the isotropic approximation. The various derived properties are listed in Table 1, including expressions relating these properties to the elements of the single-crystal elastic tensor. The corresponding JSON keys and the datatypes are also listed in Table 1. The elastic tensor Cij is presented in two ways in Table 1: i) in the standardized IEEE-format and ii) in the format corresponding to the orientation of the crystal structure as defined in the poscar-key in Table 2.
Graphical representation of results
A graphical representation of our dataset is presented in Fig. 2, which shows a log-log plot of the VRH averaged bulk modulus versus the VRH averaged shear modulus for all materials considered in this work. The orientation of each arrow corresponds to the volume per atom (VPA) of that specific material. The material with the minimum VPA in our dataset is assigned an arrow pointing at 12 o'clock (diamond) and the arrows rotate anti-clockwise towards the materials with the maximum VPA in our dataset at 6 o'clock (barium). The angle of rotation from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock is proportional to the normalized VPA. The VPA is considered since it is known to correlate well with elastic properties such as bulk modulus57–59. Indeed, Fig. 2 illustrates this apparent correlation. Specifically, diamond exhibits the highest bulk and shear moduli of all materials in our database and it also has the smallest VPA among those materials. The more elastically compliant materials in Fig. 2 show relatively higher values for the VPA. The color coding in Fig. 2 represents the Poisson ratio in the isotropic approximation. Also, two lines of constants KVRH/GVRH ratio are drawn. As described in the Introduction, this quantity, known as Pugh's ratio2, has been shown to correlate with ductility in crystalline compounds2,3 and is further related to the Poisson ratio5. The bar plots show the distribution of materials relative to their respective values for the bulk and shear modulus. The distribution shows that most materials considered, lie in the region around 80 and 190 GPa for the shear modulus and bulk moduli, respectively. Thus, this diagram distills several well-known results in the field of elasticity and illustrates them through a large amount of data.
Technical Validation
Verification of computational methodology
To verify proper implementation of HT version of the stress-strain method described above, detailed comparisons have been undertaken between the data derived from this approach and independent computational results obtained in the present work using alternative methods, or published previously by other authors using the same DFT approximations. Such comparisons have been undertaken for a subset of systems that are representative of the material types in the database. Overall, the comparisons yield agreement at the level of approximately 5%, with a few exceptions, as described below.
Considering first insulator compounds, the Cij values obtained here for α-Al2O3 are all within 2% of the results reported in ref. 33 using the same DFT approximations, combined with a similar stress-strain method. The present α-Al2O3 results are also within 3% of the values for all Cij components obtained from a numerical differentiation of the energy versus strain using Wien2K60,61, and within 5% of the results for all components obtained by energy differentiation methods derived from Quantum Espresso62 and reported in ref. 63. It should be noted that for α-Al2O3 the C14 component obtained in this work has a sign opposite to that reported in ref. 63. In fact, the sign of C14 in α-Al2O3 has been a source of controversy in other previous theoretical and experimental studies33,63,64. However, as discussed in ref. 63, the ambiguity in choosing the Cartesian reference coordinate system for trigonal materials with R centering type is the likely cause of these discrepancies. For cubic Y2O3 the present results for each of the Cij components are within 10% of those reported from the stress-strain calculations performed within GGA in ref. 64 (the largest discrepancy is found for the C12 component). For β-Si3N4 the present results agree to within 5% of those reported in the same publication64. For the polar wurtzite ZnO compound, the results obtained in the present work agree to within 8% for C44, and within 2% for all other moduli, with the values obtained by Wu et al.65 using the same DFT approximations, and an approach that employs density-functional perturbation theory to compute internal displacement contributions.
We have also conducted a number of comparisons between the present results and other theoretical calculations for metallic and small-band-gap systems. We have compared results obtained using our HT methodology with those derived from a method that fits the calculated total energy as a function of volume-conserving strains, as developed by Mehl et al.48,66. The present HT stress-strain methodology yields results within 4% of those obtained from this energy versus strain method for BCC Lithium and FCC Aluminum. Further, the elastic constant tensor components for orthorhombic TiB, reported from full-potential-linear-augmented-plane-wave GGA calculations, along with total energy differentiation methods67, are within 5% for of the values obtained here for all Cij components, with the exception of C44 (reported as C66 in ref. 67), which is within 15%.
As described in the previous section, consistency checks are built into the HT-workflow employed in the present work to ensure that the range of strains employed in the fit of the stress-strain relations are appropriate. The dependence of calculated elastic constants on the range of strains considered has been examined in detail in previous work, e.g., ref. 63. The authors of ref. 63 employ an energy versus strain method, using sixth-order polynomial fits of the energy to a strain range of up to 8%. The authors conclude that for small deformations, the best results are obtained by low-order polynomial fits, and that the stress-strain approach is more accurate in the sense that only first-order derivatives are required, in which case smaller distortions are required. This is consistent with the findings in this work, where a maximum strain of 1% is found to provide reliable results for over 97% of the compounds considered, using a linear stress-strain fit. To investigate this issue further we have performed detailed tests similar to those in ref. 63 for a select number of systems. Strains in the range of 1 to 8% were applied and the stresses and strains fit using n-th order polynomials, where n ranges from 1 to 4. In particular for KBr, which is one of the most elastically compliant materials in the database, we found changes of less than 2% in the bulk and shear moduli, as the strain was varied from 1 to 8%, regardless of the order of the polynomial. For diamond, the stiffest material in our database, one might expect relatively strong non-linear behavior of the stress with strain, even for small strains. However, also for diamond we find that the bulk and shear moduli vary by less than 2% as the strain is varied and the polynomial order ranges from 1 to 4. Overall, the tests described in this and the previous section suggest that the stress-strain approach and the range of strains considered in its application, yield reliable results for the vast majority of the compounds considered in the development of the current database.
Validation through comparison to experimental measurements
A comprehensive literature review was performed to compile measured elastic constant tensors, for comparison with the present calculations, in order to establish the expected accuracy of the calculated results. In this comparison we consider only experimental sources that report the full elastic tensor, rather than only the bulk or shear modulus, so that a systematic comparison with the calculated elastic tensors can be made. In total, 104 systems are used in the comparison, including oxides and semiconductors18,20,23,30,32,68–74 and metals and metallic compounds18,20,22,26,75–79. In the comparison, we make use of the Voigt-Reuss-Hill average for K and G (denoted by KVRH and GVRH, respectively), which is the arithmetic mean of the Voigt and Reuss bounds50. See also Table 1 for their definitions. The shear (GVRH) and bulk (KVRH) moduli of these 104 systems are compared by calculating the VRH-average from the experimentally measured and calculated tensors. In addition a Euclidean difference norm80, normalized by the magnitude of the calculated elastic tensor, is used to probe errors relative to the mean elastic constants: . In this expression, Cij represents the elastic tensor (in matrix form) as defined in equation (1).
The comparison of calculated and experimental values for KVRH and GVRH are shown in Figs 3 and 4, respectively. In each plot, lines are shown indicating relative differences between computation and experiment of ±15%. As can be seen, the agreement between experiment and calculation is generally within this threshold, although there are some outliers. Specifically, in the case of the bulk modulus a discrepancy between experiment and calculations larger than 15% is found for 16 systems (in order of absolute deviation, from low to high): Na, Tl, Pb, Ca, CsI, Nd, Yb, YZn, Cd, Mg2Sn, Ge, Pt, CaAl2, Au, Co, CdAu. The first 11 in the list disagree with experiment by less than 10 GPa. For the shear modulus, a discrepancy between experiment and calculations larger than 15% is found for 15 systems (in order of absolute deviation, from low to high): KI, Ca, CsI, KBr, CdSe, Tl, Cd, GaSb, GaAs, Ge, CdAu, Y2O3, Au, Cr3Si, MnSi. The first 6 in the list disagree with experiment by less than 10 GPa. These larger discrepancies may be due to errors in the calculations, the experimental measurements or a combination of both. Note that most of the systems displaying greater than 15% discrepancy between calculations and measurements are those with relatively low bulk and shear moduli, see the insets in Figs 3 and 4. Similarly, we find for the quantity most of the systems show discrepancies below 20%, with the largest discrepancies found for the systems with the smallest values of . For these systems with relatively small elastic moduli, the discrepancies may be due to the larger effect of the numerical errors in the calculations on the relative precision of the calculated elastic tensors.
Other factors that might contribute to discrepancies are temperature variations: DFT provides a zero-temperature description of the state of the material, whereas many experiments are done at room temperature. While such temperature variations are typically relatively small below room temperature, in some systems this effect can be large. For example, in previous experimental studies of single-crystal Nb3Sn, the value of (C11-C12) starts at 140 GPa and decreases to zero as temperature decreases from 300 to 32 K ref. 75. Our calculated results for Nb3Sn at 0 K show a mechanical instability with C11 slightly less than C12. Thus, these mechanical instabilities can contain useful information indicating potentially anomalous mechanical properties or shear instabilities at low temperature. Methods have been implemented in the literature to predict the temperature dependence of the elastic constants from first-principles81,82, and implementation of such approaches represents a future extension of the database. The elastic constants reported in this work represent the zero-temperature limit of the isothermal moduli, whereas experimentally it is often the adiabatic elastic tensor that is measured; however, the differences between these two types of elastic constants are typically small83. From the computational perspective, we have found that for some elements, PAW potentials exhibiting a different number of electrons as valence states can significantly affect the calculated elastic properties. This is the case for the elements V, Ti and Nb. Also, some of the systems listed above exhibit antiferromagnetic states. These states are both temperature and strain dependent, and resolving these details in HT DFT-calculations of elastic constants is challenging and the topic of current work that is expected to impact future releases of the database.
For the purpose of using the elastic constant database in the context of materials discovery, it is useful to characterize the correlation between the calculated and measured elastic quantities. For this purpose we again consider the values for KVRH and GVRH, and calculate the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients (r and ρ, respectively). Also computed are 95% bootstrap-based confidence intervals for the correlations. The lower (LB) and upper (UB) bounds of these confidence intervals are presented as ([LB, UB]). For the bulk modulus, the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients are 0.988 ([0.978,0.994]) and 0.988 ([0.973,0.993]), respectively. For the shear modulus, we find values of 0.994 ([0.985,0.998]) and 0.982 ([0.955,0.993]) for the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, respectively. These values suggest that the measured and calculated values for bulk and shear moduli are strongly linearly associated and also, a high monotone association exists.
Usage Notes
The database presented here represents the to-date largest collection of consistently calculated or measured elastic tensors for crystalline inorganic materials. We anticipate that this dataset, and the methods provided for querying it, will provide a useful tool in fundamental and application-related studies of inorganic compounds. We expect, in particular, that the database will be useful for efforts aimed at materials discovery and design, in the search for and optimization of materials with targeted mechanical and thermal properties. For the first time, researchers will be able to query existing compounds from the database by specifying desired elastic properties, for example a maximum value of the shear modulus with minimum elastic anisotropy. For compounds that are currently not in the database, future extensions of this work will be a web interface where MP-users will be able to calculate elastic properties on demand, by uploading a file describing the crystallography of the material of interest. Techniques such as data mining and machine learning can be used to reveal fundamental trends in the elastic properties of compounds, and guide the screening of potentially interesting materials for target properties.
Additional information
How to cite this article: de Jong, M. et al. Charting the complete elastic properties of inorganic crystalline compounds. Sci. Data 2:150009 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2015.9 (2015).
Pettifor, D. Theoretical predictions of structure and related properties of intermetallics. Mater. Sci. Technol. 8, 345–349 (1992).
Pugh, S. XCII. Relations between the elastic moduli and the plastic properties of polycrystalline pure metals. Philos. Mag. 45, 823–843 (1954).
Niu, H. et al. Extra-electron induced covalent strengthening and generalization of intrinsic ductile-to-brittle criterion. Sci. Rep. 2, 718–723 (2012).
Gschneidner, K. et al. A family of ductile intermetallic compounds. Nat. Mater. 2, 587–591 (2003).
Greaves, G. N., Greer, A., Lakes, R. & Rouxel, T. Poisson's ratio and modern materials. Nat. Mater. 10, 823–837 (2011).
De Jong, M., Olmsted, D. L., van de Walle, A. & Asta, M. First-principles study of the structural and elastic properties of rhenium-based transition-metal alloys. Phys. Rev. B 86, 224101 (2012).
De Jong, M., van der Zwaag, S. & Sluiter, M. Ab-initio modeling of metastable precipitation processes in aluminum 7xxx alloys. Int. J. Mater. Res. 103, 972–979 (2012).
Mao, Z., Chen, W., Seidman, D. N. & Wolverton, C. First-principles study of the nucleation and stability of ordered precipitates in ternary Al-Sc-Li alloys. Acta Mater. 59, 3012–3023 (2011).
De Jong, M. et al. First-principles and genetic modelling of precipitation sequences in aluminium alloys. Solid State Phenom. 172, 285–290 (2011).
Snyder, G. J. & Toberer, E. S. Complex thermoelectric materials. Nat. Mater. 7, 105–114 (2008).
Cahill, D. G., Watson, S. K. & Pohl, R. O. Lower limit to the thermal conductivity of disordered crystals. Phys. Rev. B 46, 6131 (1992).
Clarke, D. R. Materials selection guidelines for low thermal conductivity thermal barrier coatings. Surf. Coat. Technol. 163, 67–74 (2003).
Feng, J. et al. Stability, thermal and mechanical properties of PtAl compounds. Mater. Des. 32, 3231–3239 (2011).
Hashin, Z. & Shtrikman, S. A variational approach to the theory of the elastic behaviour of multiphase materials. J. Mech. Phys. Solids 11, 127–140 (1963).
Zohdi, T. I. & Wriggers, P. Aspects of the computational testing of the mechanical properties of microheterogeneous material samples. Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng. 50, 2573–2599 (2001).
Karki, B. B., Stixrude, L. & Wentzcovitch, R. M. High-pressure elastic properties of major materials of Earth's mantle from first principles. Rev. Geophys. 39, 507–534 (2001).
Anderson, O. L., Schreiber, E., Liebermann, R. C. & Soga, N. Some elastic constant data on minerals relevant to geophysics. Rev. Geophys. 6, 491–524 (1968).
Nelson, D. Landolt-Börnstein, Numerical data and functional relationships in science and technology, group III/Vol 29a (1992).
Gale, W. F. & Totemeier, T. C . Smithells metals reference book. (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003).
Simmons, G. & Wang, H . Single crystal elastic constants and calculated aggregate properties: a handbook (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971).
Hearmon, R. F. S. The elastic constants of anisotropic materials. Rev. Mod. Phys. 18, 409 (1946).
Tanaka, K. & Koiwa, M. Single-crystal elastic constants of intermetallic compounds. Intermetallics 4, S29–S39 (1996).
Nakamura, M. Elastic constants of some transition-metal-disilicide single crystals. Metall. Mater. Trans. A 25, 331–340 (1994).
Schiltz Jr., R. J. . & Smith, J. F. Elastic constants of some MAl2 single crystals. J. Appl. Phys. 45, 4681–4685 (1974).
Varshni, Y. Temperature dependence of the elastic constants. Phys. Rev. B 2, 3952 (1970).
Yasuda, H., Takasugi, T. & Koiwa, M. Elasticity of Ni-based L12-type intermetallic compounds. Acta Metall. Mater 40, 381–387 (1992).
Taylor, P. Crystallographic databases edited by F. H. Allen, G. Gergerhoff and R. Sievers. Acta Crystallogr., Sect. C: Cryst. Struct. Commun. 44, 1153–1154 (1988).
Belsky, A., Hellenbrandt, M., Karen, V. L. & Luksch, P. New developments in the inorganic crystal structure database (ICSD): accessibility in support of materials research and design. Acta Crystallogr., Sect. B: Struct. Sci. 58, 364–369 (2002).
Setyawan, W., Gaume, R. M., Lam, S., Feigelson, R. S. & Curtarolo, S. High-throughput combinatorial database of electronic band structures for inorganic scintillator materials. ACS Comb. Sci. 13, 382–390 (2011).
Beg, M. M. & Shapiro, S. M. Study of phonon dispersion relations in cuprous oxide by inelastic neutron scattering. Phys. Rev. B 13, 1728–1734 (1976).
Du Plessis, P. de V., van Tonder, S. J. & Alberts, L. Elastic constants of a NiO single crystal: I (Magnetic transitions). J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 4, 1983–1987 (1971).
Uchida, N. & Saito, S. Elastic constants and acoustic absorption coefficients in MnO, CoO, and NiO single crystals at room temperature. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 1602–1605 (1972).
Shang, S., Wang, Y. & Liu, Z.-K. First-principles elastic constants of α and θ-Al2O3. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 101909-1:3 (2007).
Da Silveira, P. R. C., da Silva, C. R. S. & Wentzcovitch, R. M. Metadata management for distributed first principles calculations in Vlab-a collaborative cyberinfrastructure for materials computation. Comput. Phys. Commun. 178, 186–198 (2008).
Da Silva, C. R. S. et al. Virtual laboratory for planetary materials: System service architecture overview. Phys. Earth Planet. Inter. 163, 321–332 (2007).
Curtarolo, S. et al. The high-throughput highway to computational materials design. Nat. Mater. 12, 191–201 (2013).
Jain, A. et al. Commentary: The Materials Project: A materials genome approach to accelerating materials innovation. APL Mater 1, 011002 (2013).
Morgan, D., Ceder, G. & Curtarolo, S. High-throughput and data mining with ab initio methods. Meas. Sci. Technol. 16, 296 (2005).
The Materials Project. https://materialsproject.org/. Accessed: 2014-09-30.
IEEE standard on piezoelectricity. ANSI/IEEE Std 176-1987, 0–1 (1988).
Blöchl, P. E. Projector augmented-wave method. Phys. Rev. B 50, 17953–17979 (1994).
Kresse, G. & Joubert, D. From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method. Phys. Rev. B 59, 1758–1775 (1999).
Kresse, G. & Hafner, J. Ab initio molecular dynamics for liquid metals. Phys. Rev. B 47, 558–561 (1993).
Kresse, G. & Furthmüller, J. Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set. Phys. Rev. B 54, 11169–11186 (1996).
Perdew, J. P., Burke, K. & Ernzerhof, M. Generalized gradient approximation made simple. Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 (1996).
Anisimov, V. I., Zaanen, J. & Andersen, O. K. Band theory and Mott insulators: Hubbard U instead of Stoner I. Phys. Rev. B 44, 943 (1991).
Dudarev, S. L., Botton, G. A., Savrasov, S. Y., Humphreys, C. J. & Sutton, A. P. Electron-energy-loss spectra and the structural stability of nickel oxide: An LSDA+U study. Phys. Rev. B 57, 1505 (1998).
Michael, J., Mehl, B. M. K. & Papaconstantopoulos, D. A. Intermetallic Compounds: Principles and Practice vol. 1, chap. 9 (John Wiley and Sons, 1994).
Born, M. & Huang, K. Dynamical Theory of Crystal Lattices Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1988).
Hill, R. The elastic behaviour of a crystalline aggregate. Proc. Phys. Soc. London, Sect. A 65, 349 (1952).
Huang, X., Bungaro, C., Godlevsky, V. & Rabe, K. M. Lattice instabilities of cubic NiTi from first principles. Phys. Rev. B 65, 014108 (2001).
Grabowski, B., Hickel, T., Kormann, F. & Neugebauer, J. DFT-based materials and steel design at finite temperatures. Tech. Rep. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL): Livermore, CA, 2011).
Ong, S. P. et al. Python materials genomics (pymatgen): A robust, open-source python library for materials analysis. Comput. Mater. Sci. 68, 314–319 (2013).
Fireworks workflow software http://pythonhosted.org/FireWorks. Accessed: 2014-09-30.
Man, C.-S. & Huang, M. A simple explicit formula for the Voigt-Reuss-Hill average of elastic polycrystals with arbitrary crystal and texture symmetries. J. Elast. 105, 29–48 (2011).
Ranganathan, S. I. & Ostoja-Starzewski, M. Universal elastic anisotropy index. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 055504 (2008).
Anderson, O. L. & Nafe, J. E. The bulk modulus-volume relationship for oxide compounds and related geophysical problems. J. Geophys. Res. 70, 3951–3963 (1965).
Cohen, M. L. Calculation of bulk moduli of diamond and zinc-blende solids. Phys. Rev. B 32, 7988 (1985).
Kaxiras, E. Atomic and electronic structure of solids (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Schwarz, K. & Blaha, P. Solid state calculations using WIEN2k. Comput. Mater. Sci. 28, 259–273 (2003).
Schwarz, K., Blaha, P. & Madsen, G. K. H. Electronic structure calculations of solids using the WIEN2k package for material sciences. Comput. Phys. Commun. 147, 71–76 (2002).
Giannozzi, P. et al. Quantum espresso: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 21, 395502 (2009).
Golesorkhtabar, R., Pavone, P., Spitaler, J., Puschnig, P. & Draxl, C. ElaSTic: A tool for calculating second-order elastic constants from first principles. Comput. Phys. Commun. 184, 1861–1873 (2013).
Yao, H., Ouyang, L. & Ching, W.-Y. Ab initio calculation of elastic constants of ceramic crystals. J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 90, 3194–3204 (2007).
Wu, X., Vanderbilt, D. & Hamann, D. R. Systematic treatment of displacements, strains, and electric fields in density-functional perturbation theory. Phys. Rev. B 72 035105-1:13 (2005).
Mehl, M. J. & Papaconstantopoulos, D. A. Applications of a tight-binding total-energy method for transition and noble metals: Elastic constants, vacancies, and surfaces of monatomic metals. Phys. Rev. B 54, 4519 (1996).
Panda, K. B. & Ravi Chandran, K. S. First principles determination of elastic constants and chemical bonding of titanium boride (TiB) on the basis of density functional theory. Acta Mater. 54, 1641–1657 (2006).
Bond, W. L., Mason, W. P. & McSkimin, H. J. Elastic and electromechanical coupling coefficients of single-crystal barium titanate. Phys. Rev. 82, 442–443 (1951).
Lee, M. & Gilmore, R. S. Single crystal elastic constants of tungsten monocarbide. J. Mater. Sci. 17, 2657–2660 (1982).
Chu, F., Lei, M., Maloy, S. A., Petrovic, J. J. & Mitchell, T. E. Elastic properties of C40 transition metal disilicides. Acta Mater. 44, 3035–3048 (1996).
Sumer, A. & Smith, J. F. Elastic constants of single crystal CaMg2. J. Appl. Phys. 33, 2283–2286 (1962).
Cline, C. F., Dunegan, H. L. & Henderson, G. W. Elastic constants of hexagonal BeO, ZnS, and CdSe. J. Appl. Phys. 38, 1944–1948 (1967).
Son, P. R. & Bartels, R. A. CaO and SrO single crystal elastic constants and their pressure derivatives. J. Phys. Chem. Solids 33, 819–828 (1972).
Ogi, H., Nakamura, N., Hirao, M. & Ledbetter, H. Determination of elastic, anelastic, and piezoelectric coefficients of piezoelectric materials from a single specimen by acoustic resonance spectroscopy. Ultrasonics 42, 183–187 (2004).
Keller, K. R. & Hanak, J. J. Ultrasonic measurements in single-crystal Nb3Sn. Phys. Rev. 154, 628–632 (1967).
Wu, Y. & Hu, W. Elastic and brittle properties of the B2-MgRE (RE=Sc, Y, Ce, Pr, Nd, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er) intermetallics. Eur. Phys. J. B 60, 75–81 (2007).
Wang, J. et al. First-principles calculations of binary Al compounds: Enthalpies of formation and elastic properties. Calphad 35, 562–573 (2011) World Round Robin Seminar 2010.
Xie, Y.-P., Wang, Z.-Y. & Hou, Z. The phase stability and elastic properties of MgZn2 and Mg4Zn7 in Mg-Zn alloys. Scr. Mater 68, 495–498 (2013).
Shannette, G. & Smith, J. Single crystalline elastic constants of MgZn2. Scr. Metall 3, 33–35 (1969).
Shahsavari, R., Pellenq, R. J.-M. & Ulm, F.-J. Empirical force fields for complex hydrated calcio-silicate layered materials. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 13, 1002–1011 (2011).
Shang, S.-L., Zhang, H., Wang, Y. & Liu, Z.-K. Temperature-dependent elastic stiffness constants of α-and θ-Al2O3 from first-principles calculations. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 22, 375403 (2010).
Wu, Z. & Wentzcovitch, R. M. Quasiharmonic thermal elasticity of crystals: an analytical approach. Phys. Rev. B 83, 184115 (2011).
Grimvall, G. Thermophysical properties of materials. (Elsevier, 1999).
Data Citations
De Jong, M., Chen, W., Angsten, T., Jain, A., Notestine, R., Gamst, A., Sluiter, M., Krishna Ande, C., Van der Zwaag, S., Curtarolo, S., Toher, C., Plata, J., Ceder, G., Persson, K., & Asta, M. Dryad Digital Repository (2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h505v
This work was intellectually led by the Materials Project Center, supported by the BES DOE Grant No. EDCBEE. Work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. This work made use of resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
ISA-Tab metadata
Rights and permissions
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Metadata associated with this Data Descriptor is available at http://www.nature.com/sdata/ and is released under the CC0 waiver to maximize reuse.
About this article
Cite this article
de Jong, M., Chen, W., Angsten, T. et al. Charting the complete elastic properties of inorganic crystalline compounds. Sci Data 2, 150009 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.9
This article is cited by
Photoacoustic 2D actuator via femtosecond pulsed laser action on van der Waals interfaces
Nature Communications (2023)
Multi-scale investigation of short-range order and dislocation glide in MoNbTi and TaNbTi multi-principal element alloys
npj Computational Materials (2023)
Searching for ductile superconducting Heusler X2YZ compounds
npj Computational Materials (2023)
High-accuracy thermodynamic properties to the melting point from ab initio calculations aided by machine-learning potentials
npj Computational Materials (2023)
Lattice Strain Analysis of Antimony Sulphide Nanorods
Journal of Cluster Science (2023)


text:
Demurrer Sustained: Child Support Mishandling Claim Dismissed
Child support battles are usually emotional, but a child support claim that devolves into negligent infliction of emotional distress claims and demurrer pleadings stands out from the child support crowd.
L.K.'s son was born in 1988. The father, P.G. (Father), was obligated to pay child support until the child's 18th birthday in 2006.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Child Support Services Department (CSSD) filed a motion to determine child support arrears. The attorney declaration attached to the motion stated that an audit conducted by the CSSD had determined that Father owed $43,104.02 in child support arrears as of August 3, 2007.
On July 10, 2008, L.K. filed a "Request for Complaint Resolution" with the Los Angeles Local Child Support Agency (LCSA), contending that her account had been mishandled and that she was "owed more money." After a hearing, an administrative law judge found that LCSA collected from Father, and disbursed to L.K., child support arrears in the amount of $47,161.56.
The LCSA contended that interest accounted for the difference between the $43,104.02 in arrears previously determined by the court and the $47,161.56 that was actually collected. LCSA closed L.K.'s account in 2008 because all arrears had been paid in full. The CSSD dismissed L.K.'s complaint.
L.K. had two options to appeal the dismissal: a written request for rehearing or judicial review. Instead of pursuing either, she filed suit against the CSSD and its director, Steven Golightly, alleging claims for negligence, negligent supervision, and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and seeking "at least" $10 million in damages.
Demurrers and amended complaints began flying between CSSD and L.K., until a trial court sustained CSSD's demurrer without leave to amend and dismissed L.K.'s case. L.K. appealed. Noting that L.K. filed a tort action instead of a petition for judicial review, a California appellate court affirmed the dismissal.
Would L.K. have fared better if she had used the proper appellate channels instead of filing a $10 million negligent infliction of emotional distress claim?
Related Resources:
- Court Reinstates SVPA Petition, Citing "Good Faith" Mistake (FindLaw's California Case Law blog)
- Jaycee Dugard Suing the Government for Phillip Garrido Failures (FindLaw's California Case Law blog)
- Appeals Court: Kissing a Vampire Freak Can Be a Lewd Act (FindLaw's California Case Law blog)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Link doesn't work
A MemoryLink to the Past
During COVID-19, finding connection with the church's past is a challenge, as entire congregations cannot access their church buildings. A device that initially released nine years ago provides a much-needed link to the past.
MemoryLink was a project of Pennant Hills Uniting Church, led by the late Dr Fenton Sharpe. The solar-powered device that came out of the project is a collection of popular church hymns. children's songs and meditations.
The device aims to help senior Protestant Christians with their memories, particularly regarding their earlier lives.
In order to recreate the soundscape of the past, the team working on the MemoryLink project started with a research survey. The survey aimed to find out what popular hymns from the mid-1900s would resonate with the target audience.
The result was a small audio device that collects 30 hymns, 30 children's songs and 40 short meditations. The MemoryLink plays for eight hours.
The hymns were recorded in the St Mark's Anglican Church at Pennant Hills by a local community choir under the musical direction of Dr Paul Whiting.
The children's songs were performed by children from the Uniting Church Scripture class at Pennant Hills Public School.
Production was designed to make the songs sound similarly to congregational and Sunday School singing that seniors experienced during childhood.
One piece of correspondence was a detailed three-page letter. The unit had brought so much comfort and so many smiles to the writer's mother as they shared the content of the old familiar songs. The mother was in a care home and MemoryLink had eased the writers burden of care.
Over the years the MemoryLink team has supplied a number of units to an 83 year-old who spent four days each week visiting folk in nursing homes.
The devices have also been used by chaplains in the course of their work.
For more information, visit the official Memory Link website, contact Annette on 84112168 or email email@example.com.


text:
16 listed
|BEC Consulting
BEC is a professional green building consulting, certification and mechanical design firm. Our firm works on new construction and major renovations of green homebuilding ... more »
to set a brand new standard of service and workmanship in the insulation industry. At Enerliv, we offer a wide variety of home insulation services for homes, renovations, ... more »
water and coolers, a full line of water treatment products including the Fusion 2 family of softeners and filters, and home and commercial RO systems and UV light ... more »
Modern Karibou is a leading source for contemporary furnishings and home decor products in Canada. We feature designers such as Amenity, Avalisa, Blomus, DwellStudio, ... more »
general, people endeavor to do their best and take pride in what they do. DK Total Home Solutions Ltd. works under the same standard - and the surpasses ... more »
When it comes down to it, we make programs that work, for people and for the planet. It's our mission to go easy on lifestyle, and hard on waste, celebrating ... more »
Construct and Conserve Building is a construction company specializing in sustainable development and green building. Construct & Conserve works on all types ... more »
In 1973, the Fullers decided to apply the Fund for Humanity concept in developing countries choosing the former country of Zaire to launch their house building ... more »
Restore sells used building material. Recycle your used building material by donating to Restore. If you are looking for building material, check with Restore. ... more »
- provides turn-key solutions for wastewater treatment and disposal / reuse for residential, commercial and municipal development in non-sewer areas. Sani Tech ... more »
Eco-friendly architecture and interior design. Specializing in bold designs for:... more »
Grasshopper Solar provides turnkey solar power system solutions across Ontario helping their customers in the residential, commercial, institutional, industrial ... more »
We provide tailor made tour packages by connecting different tourist places in Kerala. We also charter Houseboat cruise in the backwaters of Kerala. Our services ... more »
Get connected to thousands of dollars in grants and rebates for your energy efficiency upgrades project. Profit from solar power on your roof or land. Commercial ... more »
Airwave Electronics is a Canadian company based in Calgary, Alberta specializing in the manufacture and sales of gas detection equipment. Our product line is ... more »
Canada Salt is a trusted and reliable bulk road salt suppliers in Ontario catering to a wide range of industries.We pride ourselves in developing long-term ... more »
3 listed
|Ecological Renovations
offers ecological renovations. If you do choose to renovate with us, we will be working within your personal space at home. We understand that the disruption caused ... more »
|Erin Farm House
our new project; it is a custom farm house which is foam insulated from the basement up to the attic. The whole home is conditioned with a GeoSmart 6-ton Geothermail ... more »
|Retrofit Home Wall Insulation
services in Retrofit Home Wall Insulation involve insulating the walls of your home using our Dense Pack Process. Since older homes have little or no wall insulation, ... more »
Builders – Building – Business – Commercial – Green – Homes – House – Recycle – service – Sustainable


text:
30 jobs are to go at the Oatfield Confectionery factory in Letterkenny.
Highland Radio News has obtained a letter circulated to staff today by the company's board of management confirming the job losses.
In the letter the company says that it is with regret that they have to transfer the 'boiling production' from Oatfield in Letterkenny to its sister company Tilley's in the UK
The letter states the transfer of the production will result in the loss of 30 jobs.
It says the decision follows a detailed strategic review of all the operating costs of the business.
The letter states that in recent years Oatfield has struggled to maintain profitability and blames rising manufacturing costs for the decision to move production to the UK.
It is understood 15 staff will be retained in Letterkenny to continue the company's toffee production.
The transfer will take place in mid October with company stating that it will now work with unions on a financial package and a range of support measures to help all affected staff.
30 jobs to go at Oatfield Letterkenny
30 jobs are to go at the Oatfield Confectionery factory in Letterkenny.


text:
Coleman Double-High Wrap 'N' Roll Quickbed, Queen
Made for extra comfort, the Queen-Sized Coleman Double-High Quickbed offers a raised airbed with heavy-duty, puncture-resistant PVC, topped with soft suede for a luxurious sleep. Measuring 78-Inch long by 60-Inch wide when inflated, this Double-High Quickbed inflates to 18-Inch -- as tall as a regular mattress. Coleman-Inchs ComfortSmart system features 21 coils for reliable firmness More »B000EH4TVU


text:
Ghana's Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia has said that the country is developing a new strategy that would see it purchase oil products using gold rather than U.S. dollar reserves.
Mahamudu disclosed this via Facebook on Thursday, noting that the decision is intended to address Ghana's declining foreign exchange reserves and the demand for dollars from oil importers, a situation that has drastically weakened the local cedi and driven up living expenses.
The West African country has been facing one of its worst economic crises.
The Vice President said that since domestic vendors would no longer require foreign currency to import oil products, using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting the cost of fuel or utilities.
"The demand for foreign exchange by oil importers in the face of dwindling foreign exchange reserves results in the depreciation of the cedi and increases in the cost of living with higher prices for fuel, transportation, utilities, etc.
"To address this challenge, the Government is negotiating a new policy regime where our gold (rather than our US dollar reserves) will be used to buy oil products. The swap of sustainably mined gold for oil is one of the most important economic policy changes in Ghana since its independence.
"If we implement it as envisioned it will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency with its associated increases in fuel, electricity, water, transport, and food prices.
"This is because the exchange rate (spot or forward) will no longer directly enter the formula for the determination of fuel or utility prices since all the domestic sellers of fuel will no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products," he explained.
Reuters reports that Ghana's Gross International Reserves stood at around $6.6bn at the end of September 2022, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from around $9.7bn at the end of last year, according to the government.
If implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, the new policy "will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency," Bawumia said.
Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products, he explained.
"The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change," he added.
The proposed policy is uncommon. While countries sometimes trade oil for other goods or commodities, such deals typically involve an oil-producing nation receiving non-oil goods rather than the opposite.
Ghana produces crude oil, but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017.
Bawumia's announcement was posted as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced measures to cut spending and boost revenues in a bid to tackle a spiralling debt crisis.


text:
Call Today, Home Today Speak To An Immigration Bond Agent
800-940-8889 24/7 Bilingual Bondsmen
When you get that call that a loved one has been arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that situation can seem very desperate. Don't panic! This is important!
Call us right now so that we can get started. We want you to read this article in full, but the sooner you notify us, the faster we can get your loved one out of jail, we can usually have them out the same day. 800-940-8889
There are laws that guide your family member's incarceration and processing, including the US Constitution. That means that there are rules, not just for the accused, but also for the ICE agents and police.
Firstly, most undocumented immigrants are allowed to post bail and be released. This means that the person or their family can put up money to get them released from jail. We will talk about what immigration bail bonds are later on, but for now know that you might not have to come up with the whole amount all at once.
Secondly, your loved one has some very clear rights, such as the rights afforded in the Fifth Amendment, which protect life and liberty.
The first thing that should happen is that the accused (your loved one) will be taken into custody. If you are there, make sure that they stay calm and don't resist arrest.
Your family member or friend will arrive at the processing center or jail and be taken through the process.
The immigration bail bond process begins with the arrest of an illegal alien by the Department of Homeland Security Immigrations Customs Enforcement, that person is then taken to a federal law enforcement station for processing and booking. The bond therefore is posted to the federal government. This is one of a number of differences between local bail bonds and immigration bail bonds.
Next, the immigration bond amount is set by an immigration judge or via custody determination after an interview with the alien by a Deportation Officer. The amount of an immigration bond is determined by the Department of Homeland Security—there is no standard amount. An outside party (Indemnitor) must pay—also referred to as post or "put up"—the immigration bond. If the outside party cannot pay the full amount of the bond, they must make arrangements with an immigration bond company.
This is where ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. helps you get the bond posted in order to get the person out of jail.
An immigration bail bond, technically a "surety bond", is a three-party contract between the Homeland Security, the Obligor (Surety) and co-obligor (Agent), and the Principal (also called defendant, respondant or alien). It is the Surety/ Agent who guarantees to Homeland Security that the alien–when released on bond–will be present for each and every Notice to Appear (NTA) in the future. In turn, the Indemnitor (or co-signer) guarantees to the Bondsman that he/she will make sure that the alien appears when required. For this service, the Indemnitor is charged a bond fee or premium. ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. charges a fixed fee based on the full bond amount. Some companies charge an annual premium percentage of the set bond with a two-year minimum, which will result in a higher cost in the long run. The co-signer of the contract (usually a family member or friend of the detainee) guarantees to pay the full amount of the bond if the alien fails to make scheduled appearances.
To arrange a bond, collateral is needed, such as equity in a home. ACTION is an expert in using creative forms of collateral, including using credit cards. Call ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. now at 800-940-8889 for a complete explanation of collateral. During the initial phone consultation, one of our multilingual specialists will gather basic information about your situation in order to begin the approval process. If you don't have this information, don't worry. Our specialist will do the background research for you.
Once the proper documents are prepared, ACTION will process the paperwork immediately by fax or email, or if necessary dispatch a licensed bail agent to you to complete the process.
Finally, the licensed bondsman will pay or "post" the immigration bond at the appropriate Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) office which will result in the release of the alien. From start to finish, the entire process can be completed within hours and the person is released from jail that same day!
Call one of our specialists at ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. now at 800-940-8889 to get your questions answered and your loved one, friend or employee out of jail today.
If you are in the United States and are not a citizen, you are an alien. As an alien, you may be in the United States legally or illegally. There are many reasons you may find yourself in a removal proceeding..
There are two types of bonds - delivery bonds and voluntary departure bonds.
Our agents can tell you more about your particular needs.
"It seemed scary at first but with your kind reassuring attitude and your genuine willingness to help made it really easy. My husband was released the same day."
"Action was more knowlegable than the facility. I am truly greatful for your prompt attention enabling our family to get back to our lives."
"Action was a really big help, our son was home within 8 hours, I was truly amazed! Thank you very much Action Immigration Bonds!"
"Dear Rick, It would be very difficult to accurately convey how I felt on Friday afternoon when Lena called to inform me that Debbie was to be released; emotionally overwhelming to say the least.
It is difficult to adequately express how disturbing these situations are for the family and your guidance and understanding brought both calm and results. On behalf of my family - thank you."
Disclaimer - This is the website of ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. Our postal address is 1133 SE 3rd Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316 USA. Our toll free number is 1-800-940-8889. Each visitor to our website is assured that at no time will any of the information gathered here or by any other means be sold, distributed or otherwise given to any third party companies for any reason. Any information that we may collect is used solely by ACTION to improve our website, our services, product offerings and customer service. We do not make the email addresses, domain names or any other information of those who access our site available to any organizations not owned by ACTION Immigration Bonds & Insurance Services, Inc. Real testimonials used. Actor portrayal of customer used to protect their identity. REFERRAL COMMISSIONS ARE PAID ONLY TO PROPERLY LICENSED PROPERTY & CASUALTY AGENTS. NO COMMISSIONS ARE PAID TO AGENTS IN THE STATE OF UTAH.
Action Immigration Bonds and Insurance Services, Inc. charges a yearly management / maintenance premium of $245.00 and NO management premium in CA if case goes beyond 1 year.
© 2023. Action Immigration Bonds and Insurance Services, Inc.


text:
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has hit hard at the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration over some of the moves by the government in the handling of the Coronavirus Disease in the country.
Abubakar, in an opinion article he wrote on Tuesday, said there are several moves by the Buhari Administration that must be reversed in order not to put the country in further trouble.
In the article, titled: "What Africa must do to mitigate damaging effects of Coronavirus," the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2019 elections, said: "Oil prices have crashed, and that by itself should not be enough to trigger a crisis. After all, the current price of oil was lower than it is today when President Olusegun Obasanjo and I assumed office on May 29, 1999. Yet we paid off Nigeria's entire foreign debt.
"However, there are two remarkable differences. The first is that we had a stellar cabinet between 1999-2007. We had the right people manning our economy. We certainly would not have proposed to take out a $500 million loan to digitalise the Nigerian Television Authority, or devoted N37 billion to renovating the National Assembly complex (which was built from the scratch at less than 20 per cent of that amount).
"Today's Nigerian government is severely lacking in qualified hands. And nothing proves this than the state of the Presidency itself. To think that after devoting N13 billion to the State House Clinic in the last five years, it is virtually useless as we face the most significant public health challenge of our national life. That is a pointer to the state of our federal government.
"The second and perhaps more important thing is that we did not have to deal with a worldwide pandemic of this extent (although we had the H5N1 incident).
"As it stands today, the world is too preoccupied with its challenges to prioritise Africa, and so we have to prioritise ourselves. The issue of Nigeria wanting to borrow $6.9 billion at this time shows the almost delusory state of our government. No one has that type of money to throw about."
Abubakar went on to proffer the way forward.
The full article is published elsewhere on this news website.
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has hit hard at the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration over some of the moves by the government in the handling of the Coronavirus Disease in the country.


text:
You'll buy them weeks ahead of time, find the perfect gift for everyone you love, and you'll even wrap them up as perfect as a professional! But something always seems to get in the way—if you don't want that to happen again this year, consider these 4 shockingly easy tips to ramp up your holiday gift game this holiday season.
It can be hard finding the perfect gift for the person you love, especially since a lot of romantic gifts tend to be on the cheesier side. If you don't want your loved one to give you that all-too-telling grimace smile due to a gift that's heavy on the cheese, opt for something that's understated and romantic without being "too much." For instance, the wooden You Complete Me puzzle is a fun, heart-shaped puzzle that looks elegant when put together instead of looking silly or cheesy. You can also opt for elegant photo frames like the Clipic (don't forget to put a photo inside before wrapping) or a pre-made photo book filled with memories.
How you wrap a gift is almost as important as what's inside. A nicely done wrap is a way to show someone that you took the time and effort to make their present look nice. You can make a gift look nicer by adding unique writable stickers, such as Greeting Stickers; or even use a cool wrapping gift set, such as the Robot Gift Wrap that will make your present look like a miniature robot. And don't forget about the card! A nicely done card--either sent on its own or attached to a gift--is a must for the holiday season. A Greetings Card Kit will help you put together personalized cards that people will cherish.
If you'll be gifting something that can't be neatly wrapped in wrapping paper (such as a candle, bottle of wine, or anything else that looks messy when wrapped) then you can still class it up with a nice ribbon. Ribbons like Gifted - Elastic gift wrap are simple, elegant and perfect for tying together a gift that you don't plan on wrapping up. Remember, it's better to have a simple nicely tied ribbon than crinkled, messy wrapping paper on a gift you give to someone.
If you're looking for stocking stuffers or other small gifts, why not look for winter-themed presents that people will love to display around the house? Items like winter-themed snow globes, a nice Christmas ornament or cute Winter Wonder Magnets are perfect for people who want to decorate for winter.
This holiday season, don't sweat the small stuff: follow these above tips and your gift-giving game will be truly on top.


text:
Most Popular Products
Sterile Latex Surgical Gloves
12.50 INR/Pair
Product Details:
- Material Latex
- Grade Medical
- Color White
- Disposable Yes
- Sterilized Yes
- Usage Personal safety
- Click to View more
Price And Quantity
- 12.50 INR/Pair
- Any order Pair
Product Specifications
- Yes
- Personal safety
- White
- Yes
- Medical
- Latex
Trade Information
- Cash Advance (CA)
- 8-10 Days
- All India
Product Description
Sterile Latex Surgical Gloves prevents hands from infections and being dirty. These are widely used by medical professionals & doctors to avoid any kind of infection. Our gloves are developed by using top grade rubber and under the guidance of our vendors skilled professionals and are made available in various specifications for our clients to choose from. Moreover, these Sterile Latex Surgical Gloves are comfortable to wear and available at affordable rates.
Enter Buying Requirement Details
SOLUMED INDIA All Rights Reserved.(Terms of Use)
Developed and Managed by Infocom Network Private Limited.


text:
SOJOS Small Round Sunglasses Metal Frame Thin Lightweight Mirrored – Red
KSh 1,499
- Metal frame
- Plastic lens
- Non-polarized
- Lens width: 52 millimeters
- UV400 PROTECTION FOR YOUR EYES – SojoS Vision anti-glare lenses can block 100% of both UVA and UVB radiation. UV400 rated sunglasses is essential to filtering out sunlight reflected glare and protecting your eyes against long term UV damage when you go out.
- FASHION UNIQUE DESIGN – This round sunglasses is the perfect choice for outdoor activities, such as walking, driving, shopping, taking photos, and is suitable as high fashion accessory and daily wear all year round. It is also gift ready, making it a wonderful yet practical gift idea for friends and family.
- SOFT SILICONE NOSE PADS – SojoS Vision silicone nose pads can adapt to different nose shape. Reduce the burden on your bridge of the nose and create a new sense of fashion.
- PRODUCT DIMENSION – Lens Width: 52mm(2.05inches) | Lens height: 24mm(0.94inches) | Temple Length: 144mm(5.67inches) | Nose Bridge: 23mm(0.91inches).
In stock


text:
Grrr! – Broadband in Menlo Park, California SUCKS!
Our AT&T Broadband cable modem has been down for two days. I called AT&T's customer service last night — they diagnosed it as a problem which will require a truck roll to our home to fix. The earliest they can come is next Thursday morning!
I don't believe this is a problem with our cable modem (which is about 4 years old). I believe this is a connectivity problem someplace upstream from our home and the modem simply isn't getting a signal. The rest of our cable TV works fine (at least, as usual) — so the cable itself isn't the problem.
AT&T's responsiveness really sucks. But this is a monopoly situation. In our neighborhood, we can only get high speed Internet access from AT&T Broadband. Unfortunately, we live too far from the telco central office to be able to get DSL service to our home. We had ISDN about 8 years ago — maybe it's time to re-install ISDN — or to move!
There was an article in yesterday's Wall St. Journal about how broadband is going to be the Bush administration's major tech initiative this year. Unfortunately, I'll bet that nothing is really done about the monopoly environment in which we find ourselves.


text:
SINGAPORE — Chinese stocks turned around from early declines on Tuesday after plunging the previous day, despite Covid fears in China as Beijing expands mass testing.
The Shanghai composite was up 0.41%, while the Shenzhen component jumped 0.74%. The CSI 300 rose 0.84%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index jumped 1.5%, adding on to the morning's gains after dropping more than 3% the previous day. The Hang Seng Tech index was up more than 4%.
Earlier, China's central bank released comments from an interview with the Financial Times saying it has noticed recent "fluctuations" in the country's stock markets, which it said were mostly caused by investor sentiment.
"At present, my country's economic fundamentals are sound, the potential for endogenous economic growth is huge, and substantial progress has been made in preventing and defusing financial risks," according to the English comments. The People's Bank of China added that it will increase support for the economy, especially for industries severely affected by the pandemic.
Markets reacted negatively to news that Covid is spreading more rapidly in China, prompting fears of additional lockdowns and reduced output. This directly impacted Asian markets and also rippled through global financial markets.
ANZ Research
Brian Martin and Daniel Hynes
Mainland and Hong Kong stocks had tumbled Monday as worries over a Covid surge and potential lockdowns in Beijing took hold. Beijing also announced late Monday that mass testing will be expanded to another 10 districts and one economic development area, according to Reuters.
"Markets reacted negatively to news that COVID is spreading more rapidly in China, prompting fears of additional lockdowns and reduced output. This directly impacted Asian markets and also rippled through global financial markets," ANZ Research analysts Brian Martin and Daniel Hynes wrote in a Tuesday note.
Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, said he sees risks that China's GDP may shrink in the second quarter.
"Many high frequency indicators such as mobility, truck cargo, power plant coal utilization show negative growth. It is not clear where the bottom of this economic slowdown is without a change of the zero tolerance policy," he said.
Other Asia markets mixed
Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.5%, while the Topix rose 0.23%. South Korea's Kospi was up 0.38%.
Australian stocks however fell as trading resumed from a holiday on Monday. The S&P/ASX 200 plummeted 2%.
In earnings, HSBC reported its first-quarter results which showed pretax profit slumped 27% compared to the year before, to $4.2 billion. Still, it beat the average estimate of $3.72 billion from 16 analysts compiled by HSBC, according to Reuters.
HSBC shares listed in Hong Kong were down 2.8%.
Major miners slumped, as Rio Tinto fell nearly 4%, Fortescue Metals dived 6.4% and BHP plummeted more than 5%.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.84%.
U.S. stocks were in negative territory earlier in the day, but recovered by the close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average cut a nearly 500-point intraday loss Monday, rising 238.06 points, or 0.7%, to 34,049.46. The S&P 500 ticked up 0.6% to 4,296.12. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.3% at 13,004.85.
Currencies and oil
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 101.61, extending its rise from levels just above 101.
The Japanese yen traded at 128.08 per dollar, softer than levels above 127 earlier. The Australian dollar was at $0.7224, trading up around $0.71 earlier.
Oil prices rose on Tuesday morning in Asia trade after tumbling on Monday as the Covid situation in China raised demand fears.
U.S. crude futures traded 0.84% higher to $99.38 per barrel. International benchmark Brent crude futures rose 1.15% to $103.50 per barrel.


text:
Chevrolet introduces the Captiva Sport, a variant of the Chevrolet Captiva compact crossover. It will be available for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2011 as a 2012 model. Variants of the compact crossover are available in more than 50 global markets. The U.S.-specific version is a contemporary five-seat crossover that addresses fleet customers' needs for roominess, utility and fuel efficiency. The Captiva Sport features either an Ecotec 2.4-liter direct-injected four-cylinder or 3.0-liter direct-injected V-6 engine - each matched with a fuel-saving six-speed automatic transmission.
General Motors.www.gm.com. Circle 31


text:
Repossessions, bankruptcies and insolvencies on the rise…
Perhaps it's no surprise in the current economy that the above situations are much more common. Now that government support has stopped, i.e. the furlough scheme and bounce-back loans, many businesses are finding it tough as they navigate this stage of the pandemic. Whilst many businesses have thrived since restrictions lifted in July, there are still some that are yet to meet the level of income they enjoyed before Covid came along.
For some enterprises, the pressure has simply become too much. In September 2021 there were 1,446 insolvencies, a 56% increase on the same month in 2020. Experts warn that this is just the beginning and that we'll see many more.
As well as reduced income, companies are battling rising rent and utility costs. They're also suffering from staff shortages and the challenges of receiving the stock they order. Their suppliers have been forced to raise their prices to keep their own heads above water. Inflation is rising fast. There's only so much a small business can pass on to their customers before it prices itself out of its market.
The Bank of England suggests that the debt levels of a third of all businesses equate to ten times their cash balances, which is a precarious position to be in. Those that do make it through will be paying back their debt for years.
Some small businesses are fully liable for any debt or losses their business makes. If their enterprise is not a limited company and they're registered as a sole trader, if their business folds whilst owing money to creditors, they will be personally responsible. This leads financial experts to believe that the number of individual bankruptcies will also escalate in coming months. People already living on the breadline will simply fail to cope.
It's a horrible position to be in, and I can say that from experience. I was subject to bankruptcy around seven years ago. If suicide actually resulted in a life insurance pay out, I would have seriously thought of this as an option—I felt that desperate at the time. However, the only viable solution was bankruptcy.
Your troubles don't automatically end when your bankruptcy period finishes—despite it no longer being on my financial record, it still affects any decisions credit-givers make and has provided more than a few extra hurdles to jump through when re-mortgaging for a better interest rate or when I change my phone contract, for example. Not that I regret it…going bankrupt saved my sanity, my marriage and the future wellbeing of my family.
Though the media paints various stories of calculating companies/businesspeople who purposely and perpetually go bankrupt/insolvent, this is not the case for the majority of those petitioning to go bankrupt—for most people it's a very last resort.
I am thankful that I'm in a better financial position now the economy has tanked again, though I'm still only one or two paydays away from disaster, as are many other people. I went back to work after being bankrupt, though I kept my (very) small business as a lifestyle enterprise; I needed a reliable income in order to build back my fragile finances. So much so that I now have four jobs as I write this—I don't want to ever again rely on one source of income in case the rug is pulled out from under me.
The bosses of bigger businesses will also have taken a financial hit because of the pandemic, but if you were in a good position before Covid came along, you'll likely still be managing now. It's the people like me, who were just getting by when the virus appeared who will be hardest hit. It's so difficult to build a financial cushion when your money is being sapped from you on a daily basis because your outgoings equal (or exceed) your incomings; if you've already cut your expenditure to its bare bones, once price rises come into the picture, there's nothing left to play with. Where do you find extra money in that scenario, if you're already working all the hours God sends?
The UK's level of income inequality is 'very high' compared with other countries, according to The Equality Trust. The top fifth of all earners hold 40% of the entire country's wealth. The poorest fifth holds just 8%.
The surge of property repossessions, insolvencies and bankruptcies will hit the poorest the hardest—to what extent remains to be seen. The cost of this 'written off' debt will impact the economy further and could result in even more price hikes for everyone…but, as I can testify, if that's the only way out for someone, what else are they supposed to do?
The people for whom bankruptcy or insolvency is their only answer didn't ask for Covid to come along. They might not have done anything 'wrong', so to speak—it's more likely that they will just never have had the opportunity (or luck) to escape their situation.
Want your article or story on our site? Contact us here


text:
Please login to continue
Sign Up for Free
Choose Password
Confirm Password
As the Church grows across the Muslim world, there is an urgent need for more and more qualified Christian leaders to be trained and equipped with robust theology and the skills to care for and teach congregations. MTW is searching for theological education coordinators to help facilitate these training efforts. In cooperation with local church partnerships, MINTS International Seminary, and ThirdMill, this person would coordinate courses, professors, students, and funding for the development of future leaders.


text:
At Senior Services Inc we do everything we can to help our elderly citizens life with dignity, independence and peace of mind.
Our mission at Senior Services Inc is to help older adults stay in the comfort of their homes as long as possible allowing them to live the life of dignity and independence that they so deserve. Additionally, we also help those who care for their loved ones – whether spouse, partner or parents. We know that helping a senior adults can be difficult and tiring so we also help caregivers through services and education that will benefit them.
At Senior Services Inc we believe that the retirement years can be the best years of a persons life. Giving these individuals the opportunity to thrive and stay independent is so important to their well-being. By allowing our beloved seniors to stay active, socialized and engaged, we ensure a healthier life for them – and peace of mind for their families and friends.
For those individuals who cannot afford Senior Services Inc, we have a special opportunity for them to receive assistance. We do our best to go through every extent possible through philanthropic contributions and available public funds to help each patient get the service they so need and deserve.


text:
[New Series] Ask the Policy Expert: Dr Rabih El Chammay, Lebanon
Over 1 million registered refugees live in Lebanon alongside thousands of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese returnees from Syria. In the midst of this complex situation, the Lebanese health system has show tremendous resilience. In May 2014, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in Lebanon launched the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) with the support of WHO, UNICEF and International Medical Corps (IMC). The aim of the NMHP was to reform mental health care in Lebanon and provide services at the community level, in line with human rights standards and evidence for best practice.
Since the launch of the NMHP, the MoPH has been working on coordinating the MHPSS response through a task-force co-chaired by WHO, UNICEF and 62 other organizations.
As part of the new MHIN webinar series "Ask the Policy Expert", Dr Rabih El Chammay will join us to talk about:
- Why the programme was created
- How the programme was developed
- The ongoing mental health reform process
- Learning lessons from the implementation process
Key details:
Who: Dr Rabih El Chammay, Head of the National Mental Health Programme, Ministry of Public Health Lebanon
What: An opportunity to ask policy related questions during a Q&A session with a lead mental health policy maker in Lebanon
About the "Ask the Policy Expert" webinar series
WHO's comprehensive mental health action plan 2013-2020 was adopted by the 66th World Health Assembly. The four major objectives of the action plan are to:
- strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health.
- provide comprehensive, integrated and responsive mental health and social care services in community-based settings.
- implement strategies for promotion and prevention in mental health.
- strengthen information systems, evidence and research for mental health.
Each "Ask the expert" webinar in the series will focus on country level implementation of one of the mental health action plan objectives. Through this series, we aim to learn more about the approaches used by policy makers to implement mental health programs and how policy makers are aiming to achieve the action plan targets.
The first webinar focuses on the action plan's first objective to strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health and the action plan global target 1.1: By 2020, 80% of countries will have developed or updated their policies/plans for mental health in line with international and regional human rights instruments.
Related Resources:


text:
Congrats are in order to Delica Kitchen of Toronto!
Yesterday morning, the fabulous eatery catered breakfast for the Queen of England's arrival at the Toronto Island Airport. Their scrumptious food was served to the Queen and she even took two boxes of their "strawberry jammies" with her for her trip to Waterloo! A breakfast truly fit for a Queen!
Congratulations Delica! Keep up the amazing work!
photo credit: delica kitchen facebook page


text:
Download PDF
Download page What is New in 10.06.100?.
What is New in 10.06.100?
You will find the release notes for IGEL OS 10.06.100 as a text file on our download server and in the Knowledge Base under Notes for Release 10.06.100.
New Workaround Switch for Dual RTME Sessions and H.264
You can use this workaround when launching multiple desktop session with RTME and H.264 does not work; see Highly Secured XenServer Has Problems with LD_BIND_NOW Workaround
Configuration of the Display Setting for Notebook Lid Handling
You can configure the lid handling of a notebook so that the notebook goes into standby mode by closing the lid, regardless of whether the notebook is plugged in or not, see Auto Switch Monitor Configuration for Notebooks.
Configuring the Automatic Appearance of On-screen Software Keyboard
You can configure the on-screen software keyboard so that it will appear automatically when you select an input box (e. g. Firefox and lockscreen); see Showing and Hiding the On-Screen Software Keyboard Automatically.
Make the Search Order for UMS and ICG Configurable
You can make the device prefer the local UMS over connecting with the ICG, see the tip in Using ICG Agent Setup.
Auto Switch Monitor Configuration for Laptops
This display switch can use multiple different profiles which are automatically chosen at runtime depending on the currently connected monitors, see auto switch monitor configuration for Laptops under Using Display Switch.
Advanced Buddy Update Features
You can provision your devices with different firmware versions by dividing buddy update servers and buddy update clients into groups; see Configuring the Buddy Update Server, "Configuration for Different Firmware Versions" and Configuring the Buddy Update Client, "Configuration for Different Firmware Versions". Also, you can distribute the load of the buddy servers evenly using a load balancing mechanism; see Configuring the Buddy Update Client, "Balancing the Server Load".
Timed Command (Cron Replacement)
You can define one or more commands which are executed at a defined time; the configuration is similar to that of a
cron job. For more information, see Creating a Timed Command (Cron Replacement).
NCP VPN Client
The NCP VPN client has been added; see NCP VPN Client.
Network Connection Symbol Visible When Screen Is Locked
The network connection symbol is visible even when the local desktop is locked; see Taskbar.
RDS Collection
Added a field to connect to a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) collection in RDP server settings.
Login with IGEL Smartcard When Desktop Is Not Locked
Sessions stored on an IGEL smartcard can be started even when the desktop is not locked; see Enable IGEL smartcard without locking desktop under IGEL Smartcard.
IBM iAccess
The configuration of IBM iAccess Client via Setup has been improved.