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Cano, Francisco pace Yankees' offense in victory
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Robinson Cano drove home two runs and Ben Francisco laced a go-ahead RBI single in the eighth inning to help lead the Yankees to a 9-7 win over the Twins on Friday in front of a record crowd of 8,366 at Hammond Stadium.
Cano, serving as the designated hitter, went 1-for-2 with an RBI double and a sacrifice fly in his second game back with the Yankees after helping lead the Dominican Republic to the World Baseball Classic title.
But it was Francisco who came up with the go-ahead hit, as his RBI single in the eighth off left-hander Tyler Robertson gave New York the lead. The Yankees added three more runs that inning off Robertson to put the game out of reach for the Twins.
Right-hander Ivan Nova started for the Yankees and gave up five runs (four earned) on seven hits and a walk over 5 1/3 innings.
He served up back-to-back homers to Justin Morneau and Ryan Doumit in a three-run second inning for the Twins. Brandon Boggs also brought home a run that inning on an RBI single.
The Yankees roughed up right-hander Vance Worley, who allowed five runs (four earned) on eight hits over five innings.
"Early on, I was just a little up in the zone," Worley said. "Later on, I was able to get the ball down and get ground balls and they weren't tagging it as hard."
Yankees second baseman Corban Joseph had an RBI triple and a double, while Juan Rivera had an RBI single in the fifth.
Twins third baseman Trevor Plouffe, playing in his first game since March 8 because of a strained right calf, went 2-for-3 in his return. Doumit went 2-for-2 with a walk and scored three runs.
Up next: Left-hander Andy Pettitte makes his second start of the spring when the Yankees take on the Tigers in Lakeland, Fla., on Saturday at 1:05 p.m. ET.


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RCUK: Benefits of Engagement for Researchers
RCUKBenefitsofPE.pdf application/pdf Object. * Skills development * Career enhancement * Enhancing your research quality and its impact * New research perspectives * Higher personal and institutional profile * Influence and networking opportunities * Forming new collaborations and partnerships * Enjoyment … Continue reading
Times Higher Education – Research Intelligence – Alt-metrics: fairer, faster impact data?
"The idea that Twitter will substitute for reading a paper is just ludicrous beyond words. Can you imagine the buzz around Peter Higgs' 1964 papers, or any other serious bit of basic research? If [alt-metrics] were taken seriously for selection … Continue reading
Posted in Metrics, STEM Policy Leave a comment
We love to call new technologies "creepy." – Slate Magazine
Evan Selinger with another article in Slate: Facial recognition software, targeted advertising: We love to call new technologies "creepy." – Slate Magazine. The warning: don't let "creepy" become crutch for not thinking things through. In other words, think before you … Continue reading
Sometimes science must give way to religion : Nature News & Comment
CSID Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz has another piece out in Nature that's sure to cause a stir: Sometimes science must give way to religion : Nature News & Comment. Here's The New York Times: "The Higgs boson is the only … Continue reading
Posted in TechnoScience & Technoscientism Tagged Higgs, Sarewitz 2 Comments
Coming Next – Doctors Prescribing Apps to Patients – NYTimes.com
Simple apps that track users' personal fitness goals have already gained wide traction. Now medical professionals and entrepreneurs want to use similar approaches to dealing with chronic ailments like diabetes or heart disease. via Coming Next – Doctors Prescribing Apps … Continue reading
How generous is the UK science budget, really? guardian.co.uk
Whatever you think about spending on sport, in times of austerity or otherwise, there is no denying that the strategy paid off – at least, if your yardstick for success is Olympic medals. The message couldn't be more clear: if … Continue reading
Posted in Basic News, Broader Impacts, Economics & STEM Research, Globalization, Metrics, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, TechnoScience & Technoscientism Tagged broader impacts, climate science, global science research, globalizing science, monetary returns, national science research, olympic medals, science budget, technoscientific competition, worldwide recession Leave a comment
The Veil of Ignorance: How Americans view wealth & inequality – BBC News
When you taste wine and you know the label and you know the price, you are going to be influenced by that. And when you are tasting wine in a blind way, now you don't have anything to base it … Continue reading
Carl Elliott – How to be an Academic Failure: A Guide for Beginners
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Measuring Value: Societal Benefits of Research – WorldWise – The Chronicle of Higher Education
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BBC News – Living Pigments
Professor Pettigrew and his colleagues studied 80 of these Bradshaw rock artworks – named for the 19th-Century naturalist who first identified them – in 16 locations within Western Australia's Kimberley region. They concentrated on two of the oldest known styles … Continue reading
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Bernanke to Economists: More Philosophy, Please – Businessweek
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The science of the future is… art?
Philosopher Santiago Zabala has a piece out today in Al Jazeera about the saving power of art. Globalization, he claims, has wrought an era where the aesthetic calling is not l'art pour l'art – art for art's sake, or what … Continue reading
AAAS – Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research and Education: A Practical Guide
AAAS has just released a report. Haven't read it, yet! AAAS – The World's Largest General Scientific Society.
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Whither Science Publishing? | The Scientist
Well worth reading. Whither Science Publishing? | The Scientist.
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Science funding: Duel to the death : Nature News & Comment
@ananyo with a very nice discussion of the 'impact agenda' and recent changes at EPSRC. Science funding: Duel to the death : Nature News & Comment.
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George Orwell: What is Science?
An attitude or something that happens in a lab? George Orwell: What is Science?.

subset: commoncrawl


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Christian Teen Junior Garcia Carrying Cross From Texas to Washington, DC
A 19-year-old college student from Texas has embarked on a cross-country journey to draw attention to Jesus Christ, saying he believes God put it in his heart to carry a 12-foot cross from his home to the gates of the White House.
"I'm not trying to be Christ. I'm not trying to act like I'm Jesus. I'm not even trying to live up to that," Junior Garcia told KDFW-TV. "All I'm doing is carrying the cross to show his love, that's all I'm doing."
He added, "Jesus has already carried the cross — that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to show his love and remind people of who he is and the salvation you can have through Jesus Christ."
Garcia, who is studying to become a physician's assistant, has been on his journey for about 11 days, as documented by photos on the Facebook page of his home congregation in Saginaw, The Oasis Church, members of whom are accompanying him on the nationwide walk.
Although Garcia's father said he was apprehensive when he first learned of his son's plans, he prayed about it and decided to have faith in God.
"I had to go to the Lord in prayer, but I trust in the Lord and I just put it in his hands," Jorge Garcia told KDFW-TV. Garcia has been accompanying his son on the journey.
The teen explained why he felt compelled last summer to start preparing for the trip.
"I just felt that separation from Him and felt like it was just time to get rid of worldly desires and focus on Him," Garcia told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth.
"I remember looking up to heaven saying, 'I'm yours.' That day, I decided to take up my cross. And I felt so strong in my heart. And I felt Him tell me where to go and how to go. And that's where we're going — Washington, D.C."
The cross the college student is carrying is made of wood and has wheels at its base. Garcia is seen in news videos on his faith-filled journey walking on highways with heavy traffic. When parts of his walk become too dangerous due to traffic, his group hops into a small passenger van that takes them to a safer spot to continue the journey.
Garcia started his trip Thursday, June 7 in Saginaw and plans to conclude the more than 13,000-mile journey in Washington, D.C., where he will hold a prayer service near the White House. The young Christian estimates the journey should take less than 40 days, although he and those with him walk only during the day. He hopes to conclude the walk on July 13, 2012.
In addition to drawing attention to Christ, Garcia's efforts are also to help raise money for an Assembly of God program called "Speed of Light" that benefits a missionary in Mexico. The Oasis Church has been documenting Garcia's travels on its website and Facebook page.
The teen has drawn comparisons to fellow Christian Arthur Blessit, who is known for walking a cross nearly 40,000 miles around the world over a 44-year period. Blessit, who is 72 years old and has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for his feat, called Garcia a "wonderful young man."


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Karbala – A Lesson For Mankind
The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins."
The straight path or the right path is always the most difficult one to travel but one that rewards the most, and so we are told when young. This battle of good versus the evil is an age-old phenomenon. Every religion has some story or the other to show us the 'right' path from the 'wrong' one.Hinduism celebrates the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon Narakasura (among other stories) as Diwali, Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as a supreme sacrifice in the way of God, and so do Muslims observe Moharram (the month in which the tragedy of Karbala took place) to commemorate the supreme sacrifice of Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet [PBUH].
"Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord."—Surah Aal-e-Imran (Chapter 3), Verse 169
The tragedy of Karbala took place some 49 years after the death of Prophet Mohammad [PBUH] in 61 Hijri (AD 680).
The Events Leading Up To Karbala
The Muslim Caliphate briefly came to Imam Hasan (elder grandson of the Prophet [PBUH]) after the martyrdom of Hazrat Ali bin Abi Talib r.a (son-in-law of the Prophet [PBUH] and the Fourth Caliph of Islam). Sensing a possible split in the Muslim empire Hasan entered into a peace treaty with Amir Mu'awiyah, the son of Abu Sufyan and father of Yazid.
"Imam Hasan agreed to relinquish all authority to Mu'awiyah in exchange for an agreement not to harm any of the supporters of Ali, and to govern by the book of God and the examples of the Prophet. This he would do by letter and by word, explaining to the congregation in the Kufa mosque that he had ceded his right to rule 'for the best interest of the community and for the sake of sparing blood'. Mu'awiyah acknowledged that 'the reign would belong to Hasan after him' (though this would soon be quietly forgotten) and that to avoid all future strife the next Caliph was to be decided by a formal council."
All the first four Caliphs had first been acclaimed by the people of Medina but this right and duty had now been brushed aside in favour of the courtiers at Damascus. The solemn pledge to hold a 'shura' was broken. None of the previous Caliphs had thought to impose their own sons on the community and had looked beyond the narrow loyalties of a family, towards their brother in faith. When Mu'awiyah died, Yazid was acclaimed as the Caliph. It marked the decisive emergence of dynastic monarchy triumphing over the religion of God.
The moment Yazid came to power he started demanding the oath of allegiance (bay'ah) from everyone using unfair means. Paying allegiance was an old Arab practice which was carried out in important matters such as that of rulership and authority. Those who were ruled, and especially the well-known among them, would give their hand in allegiance, agreement and obedience to their king or the one in authority and in this way would show their whole-hearted support for his actions without any opposition to him. The approach of Yazid was proof enough of the kind of Muslim he was. He showed complete disregard for the tenets of Islam.
*Ibne Aseer (A renowned historian Allamah Ali bin Abil Karam more famous as Ibne Aseer Jazari) in his Tareekhe Kamil has this to say for Yazid, "Yazid was notorious and well known for his love of numerous musical instruments, passion for hunting and play with young boys, dogs, monkeys, etc. Every morning he rose still drunk. His monkeys and young boys wore gold caps. If a monkey died, he spent a considerable time in mourning it."
"Traditions inform us that Yazeed loved worldly vices, would drink, listen to music, kept the company of boys with no facial hair, played drums, kept dogs, making frogs, bears and monkeys fight. Every morning he used be intoxicated and use to bind monkey with the saddle of a horse and make the horse run."
—Al Bidayah Wal Nihayah, Ibn Kathir
Yazid's message was delivered to Imam Husain as well but he said a firm no. Acknowledging Yazid's authority by the Prophet's [PBUH] grandson at this point would have meant confirmation of his evil deeds and Caliphate. For Yazid, Husain's seal of approval was the one most needed.
*Abul Hasan Ali bin Husain Mas'oodi in his Muroojuz Zahab wa ma'adinul Jawahir reported, "Whoever accepted the slavery of Yazid by swearing fealty at his hands was spared, otherwise he was subjugated. Thus the meaning of allegiance to Yazid was not merely the acceptance of a new caliph, but it meant to sell one's Religion and faith in slavery to a tyrant."
The Kufans urged Imam Husain in Medina to ride north and lead them against the usurpation of the Islamic world by Yazid, and to reclaim his rightful place as the head of the Muslim nation. Husain, encouraged by the chief men of Medina, decided to respond and rode out of the oasis to assume the leadership of the true army of Islam. But not a soul left the garrison city to join him on the desert trail. The Kufans too would betray him! When Husain settled at a land devoid of water or vegetation named Karbala ('Karb' in Arabic means grief and 'bala' is for trials) he had just 72 loyal soldiers with him.
Battle For Truth
The battle of Karbala finds great similarity with the one at Badr – Islam's first battle. It was the Holy Prophet [PBUH] at Badr who fought with 313 die-hard supporters against a formidable army of some 1000 men. That day against all odds the small group won a decisive victory and paved the way for a future Muslim empire. 56 years later it was his grandson with just 72 loyal men, who fought against an impossible opposition of several thousand to save Islam from the clutches of tyranny.
Karbala was a battle of truth against falsehood, humanity against villainy, righteousness against evil, justice against corruption. The much-loved grandson of the Prophet [PBUH] stood in the scorching heat of Karbala along with his companions, devoid of water but determined. His loved ones, including his six-month-old son, fell martyr one after the other. In spite of this he repeatedly invited the other party towards righteousness and forbade them from evil and immorality, but it all fell on deaf ears. When the time arrived for him to march ahead all alone, he did it in a fashion which was reminiscent of his illustrious father Ali.
One of those who fought the battle of Karbala against him says, "I have never seen a person bereaved of his sons, menfolk and his companions more Lion-hearted than him. The foot soldiers were scattering to his right and left like goats when a wolf come upon them." —–Ibne Aseer, Tareekh Kamil
Hazrat Husain fell in the desert of Karbala on that fateful Friday, the 10th of Moharram 61H. Worse was to follow. The bodies of the martyrs including the Imam were not only refused a proper burial but were trampled under the horses' hooves and were left for the birds. The Kufan army looted the belongings of Husain. Imam's family including his women-folk and tender children were humiliated and taken captives after burning down their camps. The women were paraded with uncovered heads. It wasn't Islam!
"If Imam Hussain fought to quench his worldly desires, then I do not understand why his sisters, wives and children accompanied him. It stands to reason therefore that he sacrificed purely for Islam." —Charles Dickens
The severed heads of the martyrs including Imam Husain were raised on spears. How Yazid played with Husain's head and the emotions of Imam's family is a well-documented fact. Karbala to this day remains a heart-wrenching story of exemplary courage and bravery to uphold the real principles of Islam.
"In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Husain will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader."—Edward Gibbon
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the famous English translator of Qurán, has beautifully summed up the whole essence of this epic battle.
There is, of course, the physical suffering in martyrdom, and all sorrow and suffering claim our sympathy, —- the dearest, purest, most outflowing sympathy that we can give. But there is a greater suffering than physical suffering. That is when a valiant soul seems to stand against the world; when the noblest motives are reviled and mocked; when truth seems to suffer an eclipse. It may even seem that the martyr has but to say a word of compliance, do a little deed of non-resistance; and much sorrow and suffering would be saved; and the insidious whisper comes: "Truth, after all, can never die." That is perfectly true. Abstract truth can never die. It is independent of man's cognition. But the whole battle is for man's keeping hold of truth and righteousness. And that can only be done by the highest examples of man's conduct – spiritual striving and suffering enduring firmness of faith and purpose, patience and courage where ordinary mortals would give in or be cowed down, the sacrifice of ordinary motives to supreme truth in scorn of consequence. The martyr bears witness, and the witness redeems what would otherwise be called failure. It so happened with Husain. For all were touched by the story of his martyrdom, and it gave the deathblow to the politics of Damascus and all it stood for.
Lessons From Karbala
Karbala stands for courage, self-sacrifice, integrity, honesty, vision, and bravery beyond words. It symbolises all that is pure and true. Karbala teaches us that real battles are always fought in the minds and not on the ground. Yazid was powerful and yet he lost the battle for truth.
"I learned from Imam Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner." —Mahatma Gandhi
Also, being in the majority need not necessarily make you right.
"The best lesson which we get from the tragedy of Karbala is that Imam Hussain and his companions were the rigid believers of God. They illustrated that numerical superiority does not count when it comes to truth and falsehood. The victory of Hussain despite his minority marvels me! —Thomas Carlyle
As the old adage goes, "Nothing lasts forever." Husain and his followers made sure that their martyrdom gave a fatal blow to Yazid's oppressive rule. Karbala haunted Yazid till his eventual death two years later.
"Imam Husayn uprooted despotism forever till the Day of Resurrection. He watered the dry garden of freedom with the surging wave of his blood, and indeed he awakened the sleeping Muslim nation. Husayn weltered in blood and dust for the sake of truth. Verily he, therefore, became the bed-rock (foundation) of the Muslim creed; la ilaha illa Allah (There is no god but Allah)."—Sir Muhammad Iqbal
It also teaches us to be patient and stand up against any form of wrong treatment. We curse Yazid and his army for their inhuman treatment of people. Muslims must recognize and protest against the savagery of inhuman treatment at all times, no matter who does it and where it takes place.
"If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein (For ever): And the wrath and the curse of Allah are upon him, and a dreadful penalty is prepared for him."— Surah An-Nisa (Chapter 4), Verse 93
The best homage that we can pay to the great tragedy is to do some soul-searching. Do we have the right to be called the followers of the Prophet [PBUH]? Have we really understood the message of Imam Husain? Are the tears for Husain drawn merely by the scenes of mere butchery? Would we ever stand up to the false narrations of the events at Karbala by some maulanas to generate excessive grief? Was Karbala a political war or a struggle for true faith? Are we ready to shed aside our differences and respect each others' view during our religious discourses during Moharram?
According to the Islamic calendar, it was the time of the Friday prayer on the 10th of Muharram in 61 Hijrah when Imam Husain was martyred.
And when we finally have all the answers then we would understand the real message of Karbala.
"Shah ast Hussain, Badshah ast Hussain,
Deen ast Hussain, Deen e Panah ast Hussain,
Sar dad, na dad dast, dar dast-e-yazeed,
Haqaa key binaey La ila ast Hussain"
"It's Hussain the Prince, it's Hussain the king,
He is Faith, and Faith's Defender most daring,
He preferred death to Yazid's allegiance,
With his blood, Islam has verily been living."
Hazrat—Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (ra)
RIC Managment
Head Imam Mian Sajid Latif


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Welcome Back
In today's post I will be reviewing; Seth Apter's Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques, DVD.
Product Details
- Title: Easy Mixed Media; Surface Techniques by Seth Apter
- Manufacturer/Brand; North Light DVD
- Item number: ISBN 13: 978-1-4403-2421-5 of ISBN 10: 1-4403-2421-2
- RRP at time of writing: $24.99
Reason For Buying
Having read Seth's blog; 'The Altered Page' for several years now, I already liked his style of art. A trip to America to take a class with him is beyond my budget so when I heard he had DVD's out, I jumped at the chance when I saw one of them on Amazon. Please note if you are in Europe that this DVD is in NTSC format not the European standard PAL.
- The DVD is like taking a one to one class with Seth and ideal if you can't get to America
- 71 minutes run time
- Excellent menu system if you wish to go back to a particular technique easily
- Very watchable all the way through but you can watch individual sections if you want to review a specific technique
- Ideal if you are new to mixed media, the techniques show are very achievable with only a few materials and products
- Add dimension with the simplest of tools that you are likely to have around the home
Personally I haven't got any, I saw some reviews on Amazon saying it was a bit basic but the clue is in the title 'Easy Mixed Media'. This is a great DVD for picking up new ideas and ideal for newbies too.
Build Quality
Excellent, easy to navigate to individual sections if you wish too and very watchable beginning to end.
Value for Money
Excellent, like taking a one to one workshop with Seth.
Would I buy it Again?
Yes, I love Seth's artistic style and his tutorial style is encouraging, empowering and reassuring, which is great for those who would like to create more but are bewildered by the wealth of mixed media materials out there.
Summing up
Love this DVD, I learnt a lot of new techniques, and had lots of ideas for adapting them to my own style rather than the sort of tutorial where you can only create the project as shown. This to me is the mark of a good tutor. Nice job Seth, and since streaming video seems to be beyond my current internet connection this DVD was ideal for me.
If you are in Europe, bear in mind this DVD is in NTSC format not PAL, that European countries use. The DVD is a region 0 disc though, so you need to check what your own DVD player will handle.
- Seth Apter Blog; The Altered Page
- Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques on Amazon.COM
Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon
Billie 🙂


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|EPM Scientific
US-CA, Clinical Research Medical Director- Bone and Nephrology for a Top Global Pharmaceutical Company 452431264286-MZ
|Clinical Research Medical Director- Bone and Nephrology for a Top Global Pharmaceutical Company
Salary:250,000 - 300,000$ per Annum
Global Medical Director| Bone - Nephrology
Location: San Francisco - Relocation available
Salary: $250,000- $300,000 + Benefits + bonus
A top global pharmaceutical company with over 60,000 employees and a robust pipeline is looking for a Clinical Research Medical Director to help launch their new product. This is a highly visible role and will have leadership responsibilities for the USA. The ideal Clinical Research Medical Director will ideally have a deep network of KOL's in the Bone space and be seen as an industry leader within the therapeutic area. This Clinical Research Medical Director should have 2 years industry experience in the USA as well as 5 plus years in clinical and or research experience in Osteoporosis.
This company is one of the most well known pharmaceutical companies in the world. This is an extremely visible role and is a great chance for the candidate to display the skills and experience they have obtained in their career.
Key responsibilities:
Participate in interactions with regulatory agencies.
Author CSRs, publications and regulatory submissions.
Develop key opinion leaders and make scientific presentation at advisory boards, key scientific meetings and external committee meetings.
Qualifications for the Clinical Research Medical Director
Please visit our website at www.epmscientific.com


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CMU promises to fix speech recognition with a chip
A chip made by a robotic flying car
Hot Chips Speech technology ranks right down there with flying cars, robots and Windows as the grandest of disappointments in geekdom. Thankfully, the horrid state of the technology hasn't broken the will of all researchers in the speech field.
In fact, one team at Carnegie Mellon University optimistically thinks they may have solved the speech recognition conundrum with a new chip.
Armed with a $1m grant from the National Science Foundation, CMU's In Silico Vox team has set the modest goal of showing a 100 to 1,000 times improvement in the performance of speech recognition systems. Such a leap would improve the quality of speech technology to the point where it would feasible to place sophisticated speech engines in devices such as cell phones or PDAs. Rob Rutenbar, a professor at CMU, unveiled the processor that is key to the project's end goal today at the Hot Chips conference.
"It's just a bad idea trying to push this technology in software only," Rutenbar said. "Most of the applications of tomorrow don't want 20 to 30 per cent better performance. They want factors of 100 or factors of 1,000."
Rutenbar likened the move to create a speech chip with the well established practice of creating specialized processors to deal with graphics operations.
"Nobody paints pixels in software," he said. "You would have to be nuts. Videos from ESPN are not painted on your cell phone screen by software. There's a small graphics engine doing that."
Some companies have produced decent speech recognition software for large call centers and automated phone systems. These packages, however, require far more processing power than you're likely to find on smaller computing devices.
The speech systems must compare 50 main sounds used in typical conversation against thousands of permutations on these sounds made when people pronounce words in different ways. The speech engines then run through database of common two- and three-word combinations against a backdrop of some 50,000 different words to come up with strong matches for what a person is actually saying. All told, this process chews through processor, memory and energy resources. That's bad news for a cell phone designer.
The CMU team, however, has already created a lightweight hardware speech engine based on an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) from Xilinx that solves many of these problems. Rutenbar showed the chip in action with it successfully converting the question, "When will Windows arrive?" into text on the screen.
Right now, the processor can only handle about 1,000 words at a modest speed. By the end of the year, CMU hopes to create a larger FPGA system capable of dealing with 5,000 words in real-time. Then, next year it will march to 10,000 and 50,000 words on the FPGA system, while exploring full-fledged silicon designs. Rutenbar said the project could eventually result in a start-up, during an interview with The Register.
Along with the NSF, DARPA and the Department of Homeland Security have put money into the project, which seems to have some possible military uses.
"Homeland security applications are the big reason we were chosen for this award," Rutenbar said. "Imagine if an emergency responder could query a critical online database with voice alone, without returning to a vehicle, in a noisy and dangerous environment. The possibilities are endless."
Government officials might also use such a speech recognition engine to scan phone calls – always a pleasing thought.
So, here's to speech recognition being solved. Now, start hoisting your flying car. ®
Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business


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Quote:Fair point, Cord, but boxers generally train for strength over fitness.
Quote:I'm only comparing him to the average butter tub I see walking about on a daily basis.
Quote: I want to be compared to bit fat butter tubs!!
Quote:WORRY ABOUT YOURSELF NOT WHAT BRUCE DIS IT YOUR PRSONAL DEVELOPMENT COME FIRST,. U SPEND TOO MUCH TIME WORRYING ABOUT WHATHER A DEAD GUY TOOK DRUGS~~
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For sale: SeaWorld files to offer shares of stock
SeaWorld stock price to be determined
SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc. filed a registration statement to offer shares of its company in the stock exchange late Wednesday.
The company announced in a news release its interest in selling public shares of stock for the first time and its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg.com reports the company listed the initial IPO at $100 million.
SeaWorld Orlando, which is owned by Blackstone Group, is just one of the company's 11 theme parks. SeaWorld has two sister parks, one in San Antonio, Texas and another in San Diego, Calif.
Joseph Bert, chairman and CEO of Certified Financial Group, Inc. in Altamonte Springs, said it's good news for the theme park.
"If you can sell your stock to the general public, then you have an opportunity to bring in capital. Capital is the mother's milk of running a company," he said. "Who knows what they'll do with the money?"
Bert said it's also good news for central Florida. If they use the money to expand, it could mean more jobs.
Blackstone bought Sea World in 2009 in a deal worth about $2.3 billion.
"They're just being smart. What they're doing is getting back some of the money they put in to buy Sea World," said Bert.
Industry analysts said Sea World earned more than $86 million in the first nine months of the year, which is up from $50 million during the same time last year.
The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not been determined.


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Schroders Quickview: Swiss franc volatility reinforces focus on fundamentals
The Swiss National Bank's decision to abandon its euro currency peg has led to extreme volatility within European equities. Our response is to remain focused on the fundamentals.
We have seen extreme volatility within European equities as the market grapples with the Swiss National Bank abandoning the currency peg and the lowering of sight deposit rates from -0.25% to -0.75%. Initially the Swiss currency appreciated more than 30% against the euro and Swiss stocks fell significantly, although in many cases the falls were more than offset by the currency strength. In other words, the Swiss market was down 5% in Swiss franc terms but up significantly in euro terms.
"Experience tells us to react carefully but with conviction having understood the longer term fundamentals."
In many of our portfolios we were opportunistic in realising the implied gains in some stocks where the moves were anomalous. However, during periods of extreme volatility our view is to focus on the fundamentals. The transactional impact on many Swiss-based companies will be significant given their cost base in Swiss francs has significantly increased relative to many of their European and international peers.
Indeed, since the announcement we have seen Swiss company share prices adjust to the reality that whilst their companies have become more valuable in euro terms, their operational performance will be impacted by the revaluation. The currency has lost some of the initial gains and appears to be settling just above parity versus the euro. Over the coming days, throughout our portfolios at Schroders, we will make our own assessment of the likely impact on the underlying earnings of our companies.
Protecting and adding value to our client portfolios is paramount to every decision we take here at Schroders. We are acutely aware that volatility can create opportunities and our experience tells us to react carefully but with conviction having understood the longer term fundamentals.


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Lehigh guard and GlenOak graduate C.J. McCollum broke a bone in his left foot last week and may have ended his college playing career. The timing of the injury couldn't be worse. All 30 NBA teams have been tracking McCollum, who was on pace to become the leading scorer in Lehigh history. But McCollum was on pace to do much more, too.
Since 2007, Brett Reed has been the men's basketball coach at Lehigh University. When an assistant coach found C.J. McCollum playing at GlenOak and then called Reed in on the recruiting process, he knew he had a diamond in the rough.
Reed spent 2002-2007 as an assistant coach at Lehigh. He has a firm grasp on the history of the Mountain Hawks basketball program.
McCollum broke a bone in his left foot last week and may have ended his college playing career. The timing of the injury couldn't be worse. All 30 NBA teams have been tracking McCollum, who was on pace to become the leading scorer in Lehigh history.
But McCollum was on pace to do much more, too.
McCollum was leading the nation in scoring with 24.9 points per game, one year after finishing fifth in the country with 21.9 points a game.
McCollum has 2,361 career points. He likely would have scored in the neighborhood of 700 points if he had finished the season and he would have been near the top 20 all-time scorers in college basketball history.
Pete Maravich tops the list with 3,667 points, followed by Freeman Williams (3,249), Lionel Simmons (3,217) and Harry Kelly (3,066). McCollum would have been in company with players such as Hersey Hawkins, Oscar Robertson, Danny Manning, Elvin Hayes, Tyler Hansbrough, Larry Bird, David Roberston and Stephen Curry. He would have passed Elgin Baylor, Bill Bradley, Austin Carr and Andrew Toney.
Daren Queenan is Lehigh's all-time scorer with 2,709 points.
"The injury will take its toll, and he won't accumulate that number of points," Reed said of McCollum. "C.J. has a realistic chance of doing it. Because of his on-court success — and I don't want to take anything away from the other great players here — but it is my personal opinion he should go down as one of the greatest players in Lehigh history."
McCollum's rehabilitation after surgery is eight to 10 weeks, but it isn't a great chance that McCollum returns at all. He is considered a first-round NBA Draft pick, and risking further injury to the foot isn't something Reed is willing to do.
Reed has a strong belief that McCollum's injury will not affect his draft status that much.
"He had established himself in that position prior to his injury," Reed said. "He had a high draft status based on his performance and injuries like this are not debilitating. He will have an opportunity to perform at a high level upon recovery. He has a bright future ahead of him in professional basketball."
Plenty of players from around the country, as well as college and NBA analysts, took to social media to wish McCollum a speedy recovery. Among those sending word to him via Twitter were Greg Anthony, David Aldridge and Fran Fraschilla, as well as rival players and coaches. Then Dick Vitale used a portion of his time on ESPN on Saturday to wish McCollum well.
Basketball types not only respect McCollum because of the player he has made himself during the last four year, but also because of the class in which he carries himself.
Asked what he remembers thinking when he saw McCollum play at GlenOak as a sub-6-foot guard, Reed laughed.
"I made the simplest comment to an assistant coach that I felt C.J. could really help our program," Reed said. "That was the understatement of my career here."
New Browns owner Jimmy Haslam III didn't really settle for career coordinator and NFL assistant Rob Chudzinski as the team's new head coach. As a matter of fact, when looking at what was left — or willing to come to Cleveland — Chudzinski isn't a bad hire.
It was laughable that people were saying Haslam was going after Alabama head coach Nick Saban. There never was a real chance Saban would come to Cleveland. He already upset the salary apple cart in college football, and the Browns would have had to upset one in the NFL, too, just to get Saban to think about it. Besides, coaches who have statues of themselves outside of stadiums don't leave.
Once Chip Kelly stopped flirting with the NFL and Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher weren't about to ruin their legacies here, the second-tier guys were the only ones the Browns could get.
And that's OK.
Cleveland needs a dynamic personality running its football team, and one with an offensive mind. Kelly would have been a good fit. If Chudzinski has the personality part of this down and can be somewhat of an egomaniac, he will do fine in Cleveland.
I'm tired of nice, polite head coaches. I want someone with a little passion and fire brewing on the sideline and the postgame press conferences.
There may not be a more improved high school basketball player in Stark County from freshman to senior year than Hoover's 6-foot-5 Harrison Blackledge. His absence Friday night because of early foul trouble was obvious. But his presence in the third quarter against GlenOak was even more obvious.
Blackledge has gotten bigger and stronger, and his footwork is so far superior from where it was a year ago that he is a different player under the basket.
What colleges need to remember about Blackledge is he is only 17 years old. He could easily have been held back when he was younger, but he has advanced academics, so his best basketball is still in front of him. Blackledge doesn't turn 18 until the summer.
Hoover's boys team may be the best in the county, because the Vikings have three legitimate scoring threats. Senior Dom Iero can shoot from anywhere — 30 feet and in — and knock 'em down on a consistent basis. Blackledge's presence inside is worth 15 points. And Nick Evans is capable of going for 15 most nights, too.
The one weakness is a lack of depth inside. When Blackledge picked up a cheap offensive foul — his second — in the first quarter, GlenOak was able to attack the basket. However, Hoover got quality minutes from Matt Zehnder, forced into extended time in the first half.
Longtime Pro Football Hall of Fame ambassador — and the longest serving executive director of the Hall — Pete Elliott was laid to rest Saturday at a quiet service in Ann Arbor, Mich. There was a service for Elliott in Canton on Friday. Stephen Perry, the current Hall of Fame executive director and president, spoke at the service, as did Elliott's former University of Illinois running back Jim Grabowski, who played with Bart Starr and Green Bay in the NFL. There was a reception at the Hall of Fame after.
Elliott was a one-of-kind gentleman, who was loyal to Stark County and could always spin a great story. He will be missed.


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Baby-faced Teen Who Killed His Family Gets Five Consecutive Life Sentences
An Oklahoma teenager who helped his brother murder their parents and siblings was sentenced to five consecutive life terms in prison. Michael Bever was convicted of planning the murder with his brother Robert, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty in 2016. The two stabbed their mother, father, two young brothers and five-year-old sister to death in their Broken Arrow home. Two of their sisters survived the horrific attack.
Bever's attorney Corbin Brewster said that he plans to appeal the ruling and believes the sentences should run concurrent, and give the 19-year-old a chance for parole. According to Fox News, in Oklahoma, a life sentence is considered to be 45 years for terms of parole and an inmate must serve 85% of their sentence to be eligible for early release. Under his current sentence, Bever would be eligible for parole in 215 years, effectively a life sentence with no chance of parole.
Brewster pointed out that the jury believed Bever should be given a chance for parole because he was just 16-years-old when he committed the crimes.
"This was a very strong verdict for life with parole. There are a group of jurors that submitted a letter to the judge saying this was our verdict, we want the sentences to run concurrent. They've come to both sentencing hearings in support of that ruling and that's not what we got today," Brewster told News on 6. "They're emotional. They feel like that wasn't their verdict, so it's difficult."
Photo: Broken Arrow Police Department


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Zhejiang Construction Investment Group is not only the earliest state-owned enterprise established in Zhejiang province, but also the largest construction enterprise group in the province. Zhejiang Construction Company, the predecessor of ZCIG was established on July 11th, 1949. It went through 15 times of transformation successively from Zhejiang Urban Construction Bureau, Zhejiang Construction Engineering Bureau, Zhejiang Construction Industry Bureau, Zhejiang Infrastructure Construction Bureau,Zhejiang Construction Engineering General Company and Zhejiang Construction Investment Group Co., Ltd etc. On Mar.28th, 2016, the group was reorganized and became Zhejiang Construction Investment Group Co., Ltd.
After 70 years' development, our business has become a modern large enterprise group with complete industrial chain, full range of specialties and favorable market access. The group processes 94 qualifications of 35 categories in the constructon field, four of which are for special-grade general contractor of building construction, 8 for A-grade design qualification. Among those qualifications, 45 qualifications of 19 categories are the highest qualifications in this industry. The group is licensed to carry out foreign business, manpower export and import&export. It is the important door for Zhejiang construction field to go onto the world stage to participate in the competition on international construction and foreign trading. ZCIG is spreading its business in 31 provinces, cities and autonomous regions domestically, and over 10 countries and regions in Algeria, Nigeria, Japan, and Hong Kong.
In 2015, the value of newly signed contracts of the group reached 97.7 billion yuan, realizing total output value of 84.6 billion yuan and business income of 55.131 billion yuan. The comprehensive economic and technical index for many years maintains the leading position in all cities and provinces in China. The group successively listed in Top ENR 250 International Contractors, Top 60 Chinese Contractors, Top 500 Chinese Enterprise and Top 100 Zhejiang Enterprises and Top 100 Enterprise of Tax payment.
The group cares about the overall situation of the country. We are ready to implement three major responsibilities of politic, economic and society made by the Party committee and the government. In the 1950s, the group undertook most of the former industrial enterprises projects in Zhejiang province such as construction of Hangzhou Steel Plant, Quzhou Chemical Plant and Zhenhai Refining and Chemical Company(ZRCC) and infrastructure construction in urban and rural areas. In the 1960s and 1970s, the group completed in total 31 foreign-aid projects in Kuwait, North Korea, Guinea and Sierra Leone for the province. We participated in Cangnan disaster relief and reconstruction and was awarded as "Zhejiang Advanced Collective of Typhoon relief" by the Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government in 2006. The group actively assisted in the earthquake relief work, creating 8 items of No. 1. It also successfully completed 10 post-disaster reconstruction projects, including Dongshan District and Wisdom Island Education Park, accounting for one third of the assisting construction works of the province. Recently, the group actively took part in low-income housing construction projects, new type urbanization, a total of five water treatment which means sewage disposal, flood prevention, waterlogging drainage, water supply and water saving. The group has also engaged in supporting construction work for Xinjiang and Tibet. In addition, the group has undertaken many major projects such as Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, Projects of G20 Summit, the permanent site of World Internet Conference in Tongxiang, Wuzhen as well as Hangzhou East Railway Station.
The comprehensive economic and technical index has taken the lead among the fellow companies in other provinces, cities and regions domestically for many years and successively listed in ENR Top250 Global International Contractor, Top 60 Chinese Construction Contractor, Top 500 Chinese enterprise and Top 100 Enterprise and Top 100 Taxpayer in Zhejiang province. ZCIG is also awarded as National May 1 Labor Award, National Excellent Construction Enterprise and National Spiritual Civilization Work Excellent Unit in Construction Industry at provincial or ministerial level.The group has a post-PhD science and technology research station and 6 technical centers at provincial level. It has won 44 Luban prize, 67 National Excellent Works, 5 Jeme Tien Yow prize for Chinese civil works and almost 400 Provincial-level Cup which has been holding the laurel crown of Qianjiang Cup for successive 25 years. Huaneng Yuhuan Power Plant constructed by our group is chosen as 100 Classic and High-quality Construction as New China founded for 60 years. It is the only one high-quality construction being chosen in Zhejiang Province. ZCIG has almost 500 items of national grade technical achievements such as patented inventions, practical patents, technical methods and new technical application model projects in construction field.


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Concerning Spam
Updated February 9, 2007. Originally posted in 2004 and updated several times since.
Spammers have discovered bloggers and sooner or later if you allow comments or trackback pings on your weblog you will get spammed.
Types of Blog Spam
Blog spam appears in many flavors:
- Basic comment spam. The spammer leaves a short uneventful message in a comment field in one of your entries. The spam comes from the URL placed in the comments URL field. These URLs link back to every conceivable scam.
- Comment spam flooding. The spammer uses an automated computer bot to flood your blog with comment spam messages, up to hundreds in an hour. The spammer doesn't necessarily leave a URL, but can leave garbage messages, almost like a graffiti artist. The comment spam can put a severe load on the server hosting your blog software to the point that it crashes.
- Trackback Spam. Spammers have discovered how to take advantage of Trackback. TrackBack spam is very similar to comment spam. The spammer sends TrackBack pings to your site that direct viewers to a totally unrelated URL.
- Referral spam. The spammer links to your site from their site, and then pings your site through their link, thus creating a reference and link to their site on the statistics referral log of your website. When you are reviewing your stats and see the reference to an odd site (ex. Paris Hilton), clicking on the link takes you to their site. Many people list "referrals" on their site publicly, so by spamming referral logs, not only does the spammer get a link on your referral log (which is picked up by Google) but may even get a link on your main page.
How can you fight spam on your blog?
MT 3.3 offers a built-in spam protection plugin called SpamLookup. In addition to this plugin, there are several other options you can implement to help stem the tide of spam. Note that the spammers are constantly improving their methods to game the system, requiring constant vigilance on the part of the MT community to keep coming up with new ways to block them.
- SpamLookup
SpamLookup is a Movable Type plugin, developed by Brad Choate, that uses several techniques to identify spam, and then uses user-supplied choices to either moderate or block it. SpamLookup is an integrated part of MT 3.3, so if you have installed the latest version of MT, there is nothing more you need to install. SpamLookup utilizes several blacklist services to check incoming comments and trackbacks against known spammers. It allows you to either "junk" or moderate comments and trackbacks based on different settings for links and keywords. You can even "white list" domains or IP addresses. To adjust the settings on SpamLookup, simply open up your Plugins menu from the System Overview of your Movable Type editing window. Scroll to the bottom and select "Show Settings" from any of the SpamLookup modules. See Neil Turner's suggestions on Making the Most of SpamLookup and David Philip's SpamLookup's Keyword Filter Explained for more information on how to best use this plugin.
- Akismet
Akismet is a distributed spam filtering service developed by the Wordpress community. According to the Akismet FAQ, the way it works is "When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down." MT developer Tim Appnel has created an MT plugin for Akismet (MT-Akismet) which can be downloaded from the Akismet website. Many have found Akismet to be more effective at catching spam than SpamLookup.
- Comment Challenge
Jay Allen's Comment Challenge plugin requires a commenter to type a keyword into a separate field from the comment field in order for the comment cgi script to run. This plugin effectively halts automatic computer generated spam comments.
- Use a "Captcha"
A captcha is a security code that a commenter must enter in order for her comment to load. The benefit is that it screens out automated comment spam bots. The downside is that it keeps visually disabled people from easily contributing a comment. Arvind has released an SCode plugin to work with MT 3.2 - MT-SCode 1.0.
- Require approval before a comment posts
One way to ensure that your readers never have to see a spam message is that you personally approve comments before they are posted. MT3 has the comment moderation features built-in. (See Settings > Feedback > check "Immediate publish comments from No one".)
- Force "preview" before allowing comment submissions
Forcing site visitors to preview their comments before submitting them will not only give you more error-free comments, but will put yet another hurdle up against automatic comment spam bots. Just remove this line of code:
<input type="submit" accesskey="s" name="post" id="comment-post" value="Post" />
from your Individual Entry Archive Template.
- Close old comments.
One way to cut down on blog spam is to reduce the opportunities by closing the ability to comment on blog posts older than X number of days. Mark Carey's BlogJanitor plugin lets you do just that, and all automatically.
Fighting Comment Spam Flood Attacks
One way that spammers can cause trouble is by repeatedly pinging your server, hundreds of times an hour, trying to leave their comment spam. This can cause server CPU overloads and crashes and can even have your web host shut down your account.
Used in conjunction with a spam filter such as Spam Lookup or Akismet, the MTAutoBan plugin can help automatically stop spam floods by banning or redirecting comments from IP addresses that have been identified as generating junk comments.
Fighting TrackBack Spam
The primary measures to fight TrackBack spam are similar to comment spam - SpamLookup, Akismet and/or Trackback moderation. To moderate Trackbacks, open the settings for your weblog. Select the Feedback settings. Under Trackbacks, select, "Hold all Trackbacks for approval before they are published."
Fighting Referral Spam
Fight referral spam by ammending .htaccess file. Referral spam is annoying, but it doesn't affect the public display of your site unless you are publishing your referral log. If it bothers you enough that spam companies are benefiting by creating backlinks to their sites on your referral logs, you can ammend your .htaccess file (see What is .htaccess?) with the following lines of code:
SetEnvIfNoCase Referrer ".*(casino|gambling|poker|porn|sex|nude|xxx|hilton|pics|video).*" BadReferrer
order deny,allow
deny from env=BadReferrer
See this Killing Referrer Spam article for more info on using the htaccess method to fight referral spam.
Six Apart Guide on Combatting Comment Spam
SpamLookup's Keyword Filter Explained by David Phillips.
Making the Most of SpamLookup
New Comment Spam Technique - Adam Kalsey notes that spammers are creating comment spam with links to legitimate sites that have been spammed to get the page rank up for those links.
ARIN WHOIS Database Search - Look up the ISP of the IP address of the person spamming you and report the spammer behavior.
Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win? - article from the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review.
Mod Rewrite method to divert spam bots to a 403 error
Killing Referrer Spam


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Willow Garage Blog
Clearpath Robotics welcomes the PR2 robot and community to its growing family
(Menlo Park, CA and Kitchener, ON, Canada – January 15, 2014) Willow Garage, the developer of PR2, announces the immediate transfer of support and services responsibilities to Clearpath Robotics, a leader in mobile robotics for research and development. Willow Garage's development of PR2 along with the Robot Operating System (ROS) has produced the world's leading mobile manipulation platform for research and development. Willow Garage will continue to sell its remaining stock of PR2 systems while Clearpath Robotics now becomes the sole provider of hardware and software support to current and future PR2 customers. Interest in PR2 systems should continue to be directed to Willow Garage through its portal at www.willowgarage.com, while members of the PR2 community should direct correspondence to www.clearpathrobotics.com.
"Willow Garage is committed to continue to support customers of its PR2 personal robotics platform," said Scott Hassan, Founder and Chairman, Willow Garage. "I am delighted that Clearpath Robotics will be fulfilling that commitment at least through 2016."
"The PR2, along with ROS, changed the pace of robotics research and created history," said Matt Rendall, CEO at Clearpath Robotics. "We've been a champion of ROS since the start, so we understand and value the PR2 community and their work. We're ecstatic to take on service responsibilities for this piece of history, and advance development within the community."
The PR2 is a compliant mobile manipulation platform built by Willow Garage. Released for production in 2010, the robot's safe, modular design spurred groundbreaking research in the fields of autonomy, mobile manipulation, and human robot interaction. The standardized platform enables researchers to share their work and leverage the open source software community (ROS); today over 1000 software libraries exist for the 40 PR2's in use in over a dozen countries.
Clearpath Robotics has been a longstanding partner of Willow Garage as an early adopter of ROS, the first manufacturing partner for Turtlebot, founding sponsors of the annual ROS developers conference, ROSCon, and Clearpath's CTO, Ryan Gariepy, is a founding board member for the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF).
In order to provide continued customer excellence for PR2 support, Clearpath Robotics is currently hiring Open Source Software Engineers.
About Willow Garage
Willow Garage developed hardware (including PR2) and open source software (including ROS) for personal robotics applications. It was founded on the vision that personal robots is the next paradigmshifting personal productivity tool. Willow Garage was organized to encourage spinouts and created eight companies from 201113. Among these companies are Suitable Technologies, the leading provider of products that let people be where they need to be regardless of where they are in the world, as well as Redwood Robotics and Industrial Perception Inc. that were recently purchased by Google Inc.
About Clearpath Robotics
Clearpath Robotics, a global leader in unmanned vehicle robotics for research and development, is dedicated to automating the world's dullest, dirtiest, and deadliest jobs. The Company serves robotics leaders in over 30 countries worldwide in academic, corporate, industrial, and military environments. Recognizing the value of future innovation, Clearpath Robotics established Partnerbot, a grant program to support university robotics research teams, internationally. Clearpath Robotics provides robust robotic vehicles and autonomous solutions that are engineered for performance, designed for customization, and built for open source. Visit Clearpath Robotics at www.clearpathrobotics.com, follow us on Twitter @clearpathrobots or like us on Facebook.
Robert Bauer, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Commercialization 650.ILV.RBOT [458.7268] firstname.lastname@example.com www.willowgarage.com
Clearpath Robotics:
Meghan Hennessey Marketing Communications 5195132416 email@example.com www.clearpathrobotics.com
Palo Alto, Calif., August 21, 2013 - Suitable Technologies, Inc., has retained a majority of employees from Willow Garage, Inc. to increase and enhance the development of Suitable Technologies' BeamTM remote presence system. Suitable Technologies will use the combined resources to further product development, sales and customer support.
Beam enables users to travel instantly to remote locations using video conferencing technology, over a WiFi or cellular 4G LTE connection, that users can drive. Beam is the market's most effective and reliable solution for remote presence, providing uncompromising quality with a robust offering of features.
Scott Hassan, founder of both Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies, said, "I am excited to bring together the teams of Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies to provide the most advanced remote presence technology to people around the world."
Willow Garage will continue to support customers of its PR2 personal robotics platform and sell its remaining stock of PR2 systems. Interest in PR2 systems or support should continue to be directed to Willow Garage through its portal at www.willowgarage.com.
By increasing resources in research and development, production and customer support, Suitable Technologies is positioned to successfully serve demands for Beam remote presence technology. To learn more about Beam, please visit www.suitabletech.com.
About Suitable Technologies
Suitable Technologies develops world-class remote presence technologies. Its first product, Beam, allows people to travel instantly and is designed and manufactured at its headquarters in Palo Alto.
The MoveIt! team at Willow Garage has been busy adding a new feature: pick and place with the PR2 robot. A new manipulation tab in the MoveIt! Rviz Plugin allows users to interact directly with the manipulation capabilities in MoveIt! and with the object recognition capabilities provided by the Object Recognition Kitchen (ORK). The plugin also allows users to select object and tables in the scene. Users can plan and execute a pick plan for an object with a single click. MoveIt! will plan grasps using the household objects database. To place an object, just select the table that you want to place it on in the Rviz plugin. MoveIt! will automatically sample a set of poses on the table at the right distance from the edges, determine the right target pose to put the object down, and plan and execute the place action.
For more information please visit moveit.ros.org
During his internship at Willow Garage, Pablo Speciale a masters student from Vibot worked on allowing robots to better perceive their environment by improving calibration across multiple RGB cameras. Proper calibration allows robots to accurately interact with their environment by combining measurements from different cameras in an optimization process.
In this method, calibration is obtained by minimizing the reprojection error with a non-linear solver (in our case, Ceres Solver). The approach starts off with the assumption that one camera is already calibrated with respect to the robot. Next, an initial calibration from the robot model is taken. This solution is able to estimate the best relative position between cameras by taking measurements of 2D patterns, in our case, a checkerboard that's held by the PR2. By using this process, proper calibration is achieved when all points move as a rigid entity during movement of the robot and its joints.
The goal of this project was the creation of a ROS calibration package for multiple cameras, such as RGB cameras, Microsoft Kinect, and Prosilicas (high-definition cameras). Thanks to Vincent Rabaud and David Fofi for assisting with this project.
Please visit the following links for more information on this project and related past work:
Github repository (in development)
Original calibration work: www.ros.org/wiki/calibration
During his internship, Russell Toris from Worcester Polytechnic Institute worked on improving the ROS JavaScript libraries to make creating intuitive user interfaces easier for researchers. These improvements have helped to lower the bar for both robotics researchers who want to design web interfaces, and web designers who want to connect their work to robotics.
By using such an interface, non-expert users can now easily instruct a robot to manipulate the world by simply specifying how they want to world to look. The robot begins by perceiving any known objects on the table, and displays them to the user as 3D meshes. The user is then able to drag-and-drop objects around in order to specify how he or she wants the objects arranged. Users can also specify configurations of objects and save them as templates, as a form of programming by demonstration. Having such an interface available in web browsers means that non-expert users with a wide array of operating systems and browsers can perform manipulation tasks remotely, using their own computers or mobile devices.
This work was done in collaboration with Kaijen Hsiao from Willow Garage, Sarah Osentoski from Bosch, and Chad Jenkins from Brown University. For more information, see ros3djs, SharedAutonomyToolkit, and robotwebtools.org.
During his internship at Willow Garage, Mihai Pomarlan from the Politehnica University of Timisoara spent his time improving the process in which robots move in complex situations, also known as motion planning.
Finding the best motion plan from a variety of options is typically a time-consuming search. Opportunity lies in the optimization of motion planning to speed up the task and some planners attempt to do just that, by keeping a roadmap for the robot. However, if the environment changes, some parts of the roadmap will become unusable.
Checking the entire roadmap against the current environment is an inefficient process. Instead, Mihai employed a heuristic approach which discovers and checks candidates for feasibility. If one aspect of the plan is found invalid, its neighbors have their cost increased and another candidate is selected from the roadmap. If a component of the plan is found to be valid, its neighbors have their cost decreased.
The newly developed planner, called sparse lazy PRM, has been tested against RRTConnect on problems for manipulation. The planner is efficient as well as able to provide good quality paths and the package is freely available online.
Another instance where a precomputed set of possible behaviors is useful is when the planning problem involves narrow passages and complex spaces. Such is the case when planning for a manipulation task, in which the robot needs to use both arms and change grasps on an object. A simple demo in MoveIt has been coded to showcase this. The robot is tasked to move a ring around a fixed plane. A roadmap planner, similar to SLPRM, is used to plan the movements of the ring. The robot then follows those movements with its arms by inverse kinematics, choosing from a finite set of grasps, as appropriate.
Although this project is in an early state, it may reveal useful extensions for the OMPL and MoveIt libraries that allow easy definition and reliable solving of complex manipulation tasks.
For more information visit moveit.ros.org and ompl_slprm.
During his internship at Willow Garage and the Open Source Robotics Foundation, Paul Mathieu from the University of Tokyo has been improving ROS support for ARM platforms with a focused effort on Raspberry Pi. His work makes the installation ROS Groovy a simple task on the pint-sized platform.
Until recently, installing ROS on ARM platforms required building a large quantity of ROS software from source code, a long and tedious task. The lack of easy-to-use cross compilers meant that the software had to be built on the board itself, a time consuming process due to the limited computational power of the Raspberry Pi. Paul's work focused on providing a repository of binary packages for such boards, as well as improvements and extensions to the current build farm's capabilities, allowing for non-x86 binary packages to be easily generated.
The ROS packaging system has been reworked and a new API for the ROS distribution system has been drafted with deep extensibility in-mind. These improvements make building and packaging ROS (and non-ROS) software for PC or embedded targets an easy task, as well as facilitate the replication of build farms.
To install ROS Groovy on Raspberry Pi, please check out the following page here.
During his internship at Willow Garage, Alex Ichim, from EPFL Switzerland concentrated his efforts on simplifying the process of using off-the-shelf RGB-D cameras to capture objects and rooms in 3D. In contrast to other proposed systems utilizing low cost sensors, his goal was to leverage the geometric information gathered from the depth camera as much as possible, without the need for RGB cameras to align elements together in space. The result is comparable to more complex state-of-the-art SLAM algorithms that use color features.
To help with the captre of 3D information, Alex and his team present a system that makes use of geometric features such as planar regions. Planes are used for different purposes ranging from noise removal, alignment of pairs of frames, and global error relaxation within the captured information. In addition, much of their effort was spent with enhancing the different stages of point cloud registration by implementing and benchmarking techniques such as filtering, normal computation, correspondence estimation, and filtering.
At the end, his team refined how the collection of 3D data can be transformed into a compressed representation, such as colorized 3D models. Such a system opens a lot of possibilities given the simplicity of the setup, ranging from scanning small objects such as toys, larger items such as cars, going all the way to reconstructing entire rooms. Once captured, the models can be converted into physical form using off-the-shelf 3D printers.
A thorough evaluation of possible RGB extensions of the application are left for future work. In the meantime, a complete analysis of the components of the system, as well as implementations are available online at www.pointclouds.org.
For more information about Alex's work, check out his thesis (PDF) and presentation (PDF).
During his internship at Willow Garage, Scott Niekum from the University of Massachusetts Amherst developed a learning from demonstration system that allows users to show the PR2 how to perform complex, multi-step tasks, which the robot can then generalize to new situations. Our main test application was the autonomous assembly of simple IKEA furniture.
First, the user provides several kinesthetic demonstrations of the task in various situations, demonstrations in which the user physically moves the arms of the robot to complete the task. A series of algorithms are then used to discover repeated structure across the demonstraions, resulting in the creation of reusable skills that can be used to reproduce the task.
The robot is then able to sequence these skills in an intelligent, adaptive way by using classifiers learned from the demonstration data. If the robot happens to make a mistake during execution of the task, the user can stop the robot at any time and provide an interactive correction, showing the robot how to fix the mistake. This information is then integrated into the robot's knowledge base, so that it can deal with similar situations in the future.
For more informaton see:
Scott Niekum, Sachin Chitta, Andrew Barto, Bhaskara Marthi, Sarah Osentoski, Incremental Semantically Grounded Learning from Demonstration. Robotics: Science and Systems 9, June 2013.
For more information please visit:
At Willow Garage, we believe in the power of the web enabling new applications in robotics. The web browser, taking advantage of emerging HTML5 web standards such as WebGL, websockets, and unified video streaming, can be a powerful and versatile frontend for accessing, operating and gathering information from robots. Today we are announcing a set of new Open Source libraries for 3D visualization and interaction, promoting the development of new web-based frontends for ROS systems.
On the robot side, dedicated ROS nodes throttle the transmission of TF information and provide precomputed transforms for the Interactive Markers client. The 3D meshes and textures needed for the robot model are provided by an HTTP file server. In addition, the depth and color information from the Kinect is jointly encoded into a compressed video stream that is provided via HTTP. In order to increase the dynamic range of the streamed depth image, it is split into two individual frames that encode the captured depth information from 0 to 3 meters and from 3 to 6 meters, respectively. Furthermore, compression artifacts are reduced by filling areas of unknown depth information with interpolated sample data. A binary mask is used to detect and omit these samples during decoding. Once this video stream is received by the web browser, it is assigned to a WebGL texture object which allows for fast rendering of the point cloud on the GPU. Here, a vertex shader is used to reassemble the depth and color data followed by generating a colored point cloud. In addition, a filter based on local depth variance is used to further reduce the impact of video compression distortion.
For more information, read the tutorials at ros.org and visit robotwebtools.org.


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After reading the chapter on Recursion in my book, it posed a very interesting statement:
I understand it is all about choosing the right style for the job in hand, so why teach me somthing when it is deemed as bad to do? Im interested to know if what they have told me is somthing I need to look at, and avoid recursion in my programs.Recursion has many negatives. It repeatedly invokes the mechanism, and consequently the overhead, of function calls. This can be both expensive in both processor time and memory space. Each recursive call causes another copy of the function variables to be created, this can comsume considerable memory.
Iteration normally occurs within the function, so the overhead of repeated function calls and extra memory assignment is omited.
So, why choose recursion?


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Tooling Update
Destacker Tooling Developed for Feeding Aluminum and Steel Blanks
Bilsing Automation, Clinton Township, MI, has developed a flexible destacking setup for separating and feeding steel and aluminum blanks of various sizes and configurations, regardless of lubrication on the blanks. To design the system, engineers compiled field data for strategic placement of peel cylinders used typically with aluminum-blank destackers to lift the corners of the blank with air knives and break the vacuum that can cause blanks to adhere to one another.
During operation, the destacker's automation equipment lowers toward the blank stack so that the peeler suction cups are level, with the spring-loaded front cups programmed to fire just prior to the remaining cups. This allows the air knives to peel back the top sheet for reliable blank separation.
Bilsing also has released a newly updated 12-page capabilities brochure featuring its new advanced traction yellow vacuum cups. Also included is a new section on the firm's Bond+Bolt fastening technology used in its line of carbon-fiber tooling.Bilsing Automation: www.bilsing-automation.com
See also: Bilsing Automation North America
Related Enterprise Zones: Automation, Tool & Die


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Americans spend a mind-blowing $1.2 trillion every year on stuff they don't need. As a professional organizer, I deal with the fallout from shopping gone wrong all the time.
Some lessons from closets I've seen:
DOUBLE TROUBLE: It's a classic money-waster: People (mysteriously) buy things they already own.
While organizing one woman's closet, we discovered she had 12 pairs of nearly identical tan trousers!
Smart Shopping Tip: Before you shop, double-check what you own: check the back of the fridge, in the far reaches of closets, on the high and low shelves of the linen closet.
Then, create a "Do Not Buy List" of items you've stockpiled. Keep the list in your smart phone or planner, so it's handy when you see the next little black cardigan you don't need.
COSTCO CRAZY: Shopping in bulk can save time and money. But do you really need 500 manila envelopes, or would 10 suffice? Can you save money by buying only one glue stick, instead of the 20-pack?
Smart Shopping Tip: Calculate how long it will take you to use up the stash you're considering (and whether items might deteriorate). If the bargain is too good to pass up, split the cost of a bulk buy with a friend. Or skip it.
FANTASY SHOPPING: Shopping based on a dream, rather than reality, is a big source of money misspent.
One client, a busy working mom, was wedded to the fantasy that one day she would have time to cook elaborate meals, using the specialized gizmos and appliances that sat idle in her kitchen.
Smart Shopping Tip: Give purchases a reality check. If you need a rake, your shopping cart should not also include a pan that makes a cake shaped like a giant donut. Even if it's on sale. Even if it's really cute.
You're human. You've made some shopping mistakes. Hopefully you've learned from them. Here are some ways to recoup your losses:
Return items that still have the tags on them, if possible.
Sell new or nearly-new items at consignment shops, on online classifieds sites like ebayclassifieds.com, or hold a tag sale.
Donate items to a not-for-profit thrift shop or organization and get a tax deduction.
Swap unwanted items with friends. It's like shopping for free.
Re-gift new items—carefully!
Organization expert Lisa Zaslow is the founder of www.GothamOrganizers.com. Visit to receive super-easy free organizing tips to save money, time, space and effort.


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Sunday: @ Brooklyn Cyclones 6, Vermont Lake Monsters 3
CF Brandon Nimmo, who had been shelved for five days after getting hit by a pitch last Sunday returned on Saturday and was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk and a strikeout. He was 2-for-5 with another double on Sunday. He's hit a robust .442/.500/.698 with eight doubles and a homerun in his last 10 games dating back to July 28 to lift his overall line to .273/.391/.432 as a 19-year old. Those numbers are much, much better than they look based on his age and the run environment of the NYP which hits a collective .247/.322/.349. Nimmo is second in the NYP in doubles and fourth in extra-base hits hits while playing in a park that traditionally has been tough on left-handed power.
After a slow start to the year, Kevin Plawecki has warmed up. He had multiple hits in each game over the weekend, and a homerun on Saturday. This year's supplemental first rounder is hitting .333/.417/.600 in his last 10 games with five walks and three strikeouts and .264/.367/.396 with 17 walks against 11 strikeouts in 41 games this year.
Sunday, RHP Rainy Lara, who has a K/BB ratio above 10 (63 K/6 BB) in 50.2 innings, gave up four runs on seven hits, just the second time in nine starts he's given up more than two earned runs. Mets pitching coordinator Ron Romanick broke down Lara's successful 2012: "He's a big tall guy, creates a lot of leverage. He's got an exceptional changeup, a nice little breaking ball and a very good fastball. It's hard to barrel him up. He'll touch in the low 90s [with his fastball]." Lara is second behind teammate Luis Mateo in strikeouts (63), but edges him (barely) on strikeout rate, 31.6% to 31.2%.
Saturday was Julian Hilario's turn. He was sharp again: 5 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K.


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A bridge to the future
European policy for vocational education and training 2002-10
Cedefop's latest policy report evaluates the progress achieved in European policy-making in the field since the beginning of the Copenhagen process. It also looks ahead to how the new policy framework, Europe 2020, will underpin continuing reform in vocational education and training and lifelong learning in the next decade.
The report was officially presented at the ministerial meeting held in Bruges on 7 December 2010, along with the Bruges Communiqué.
Publication Details


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Acenzine is a comprehensive solution to stubborn acne problems. It works by targeting acne from both side of your skin – The Inside, and the Outside.
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Acnezine uses patented "Acne Targeting" technology and only uses clinically-proven ingredients that are third-party tested, and crafted in FDA approved labs. In short, you're getting the best ingredients that the experts know work for people just like you.
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In part 1, I reported that in 2006, there were eight state Republican parties with antievolution planks embedded in their official platforms, and that in 2014, there were again eight such state Republican parties. In part 2 and part 3, I offered pairwise comparison between the earlier and the later versions of those planks in the states in both lists, namely Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, along with a few comments.
It was all somewhat discouraging. But there's hope. In 2004, I also checked the platforms of the state Democratic parties, finding none with planks opposing the teaching of evolution and only one with a plank that arguably supported the teaching of evolution: the Texas Democratic Party platform decried "efforts by right-wing extremists to censor textbooks," presumably in part a reference to the state's struggle over the adoption of biology textbooks in 2003.
Well, in 2014, I found no fewer than five state Democratic party platforms with planks arguably supporting the teaching of evolution: in Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Texas. To be sure, none is as explicit in supporting the teaching of evolution as any of the antievolution planks are in opposing the teaching of evolution. Still, I'll present all of them here, even though Texas's is the only party that had a comparable plank in 2004, along with comments.
- Iowa: "We oppose attempts to distort science or health education."
This is short and sweet. Since state-level controversies about evolution in Iowa are rare, it wasn't entirely clear that the platform's authors were thinking about evolution, but since the Iowa Republican Party's platform in 2004 and 2014 was firmly antievolution, it's plausible to understand the plank as included as a response.
- Michigan (PDF): "Our state's Board of Education should base science class subject matter on current scientific knowledge, not religious beliefs. ... Academic textbooks should be written only by recognized experts in each subject. Teaching material for our public schools should not be subject to modification by people who have a political, religious, or other agendas [sic] to advance by discarding legitimate educational material and compelling the use of their own version of scientific knowledge or historical events." (emphasis in original)
Michigan is hardly free of creationist activity, but the planks here are responding, I suspect, not so much as to events in Michigan as to events in Texas. The constant furor over science (and social science) standards and textbooks in the Lone Star State provoked reactions elsewhere, up to and including legislation to insulate textbooks from ideologically-motivated revisions forced by Texas's board of education, such as California's Senate Bill 1451 of 2010 (which passed both houses but was subsequently vetoed) or Mississippi's House Bill 1103 (PDF) of 2011 (which died in committee). It's plausible to regard these planks as in the same vein.
- Nevada (PDF): "We support the accurate and comprehensive teaching of science and history."
Like Iowa's, this is short and sweet and not explicitly aimed at evolution, but like Michigan's, the reference to science and history suggests that the authors of the platform were looking at events in Texas and registering their opposition to their replication in their own state.
- New Hampshire: "We support policies that ensure excellence in primary and secondary education for all New Hampshire students, including: … education that is scientifically-based and not driven by ideology … ."
Again, this is short and sweet and not explicitly aimed at evolution, but since New Hampshire saw not one but two antievolution bills in 2012—perhaps because it was a presidential election year, so a chance for state politicians in the state with the first presidential primary election to make a bid for national attention—it is plausible to regard the plank as included as a response.
- Texas (2004): "Texas Democrats believe we should: ... Oppose efforts by right-wing extremists to censor textbooks ..."
- Texas (2014): "The Republican extremists steering the State Board of Education have made a laughingstock of our state's process for developing and implementing school curriculum standards that determine what our students learn. The damage they have done is no laughing matter. In rewriting the curriculum for … science, they repeatedly have dismissed the sound advice of professional educators. … Texas Democrats will put the interests of our schoolchildren ahead of politics and ideology. We will realign curriculum with objective reality and the facts of history and science …"
There's no room for doubt here, at least, that the 2014 plank is aimed at efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution. There's been antievolution legislation in Texas over the past decade, such as House Bill 220 from 2005, whose sponsor claimed that it would enable the state board of education to ensure that creationism was taught alongside evolution, and House Bill 4224 from 2009, which would have required the state board of education to retain the "strengths and weaknesses" language in the state science standards. But the action in Texas, as the 2014 plank indicates, is at the state board of education, whose creationist members have continually strived to undermine the treatment of evolution in the state science standards and in the textbooks submitted for state adoption. Emblematic of these efforts was a remark from Don McLeroy, the young-earth creationist who served on the board from 1998 to 2011, and as chair from 2007 to 2009: "Somebody's got to stand up to experts!"
The fact that in 2004, there was one, but in 2014, there are five state political parties with platforms including planks that arguably support the teaching of evolution against attempts to undermine it is encouraging—up to a point. It's when you consider that the authors of these platforms might not have seen the need to adopt these planks in the absence of attempts to undermine the teaching of evolution that you might become discouraged again. A good reason to support NCSE, if you ask me...


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To promote, develop, encourage and popularize implementation of Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Conservation projects and measures sponsored by both state and central governments propelling Madhya Pradesh to be the leading state in the areas of new and Renewable Energy.
To be the premier Department to facilitate the sustainable generation of green and quality power for the people of the state through new and Renewable sources and to conserve the environment by promoting the Energy Efficiency and Conservation measures, devices in the state.
This web site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, FireFox and Google Chrome using 1024x768 or higher screen settings
All Rights Reserved | Copyrights © 2012 | www.mpnred.com


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New York City Ballet alluded to the unseasonably toasty season in a sunny program choreographed entirely by Jerome Robbins. Decked out in simple costumes reminiscent of sandy shores and bygone days, dancers embodied Robbins' familiar motif of fanciful youth.
The show included "In G Major," "In Memory Of … " and "The Concert." Brian Seibert wrote a great review of the show for the New York Times, available here. If you're just in the mood for eye candy, click here for the multimedia slideshow. Whether you're shivering through the drafty season or basking in winter warmth, both are worth a look.


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As I wrote in my last post, three kinds of behaviours are most often discussed in debates about animal consciousness and cognition:
"1. Mirror self-recognition
2. Tests of metacognition;
3. Metacognition of others' mental states" (Gómez 2009: 45)
After having discussed the first capacitiy in my previous post, I will discuss the latter two in this post, starting with metacognition, that is being aware of one's own knowledge states, and then turn to being aware of other's mental states.
Being aware of one's own mental states, i.e., reflective consciousness, surely seems to be one of the most crucial components of self-awareness. In one paradigm used to test for metacognitive awareness, monkeys were trained to select, out of a number of two or more images, the one that is identical to an image they have been shown earlier. As is to expected, the monkeys' performance progressively deteriorated the longer the delay was between the sample image and the selection task.
Continue reading "Animal Cognition & Consciousness (II): Metacognition & Mentalizing"


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Seamed Pencil Skirt - 7th Avenue
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IMAX 3D: Walking with Dinosaurs—for schools
Experience a year in the life of hundreds of dinosaurs as they face the challenges of a changing world.
From Early Years to Key Stage 4 and beyond, the National Science and Media Museum provides stunning opportunities to learn about the principles of light and sound and the science behind photography, film and television.
Inspire your class with our exciting interactive science shows, workshops and galleries, experience a documentary in our spectacular IMAX cinema, or explore our learning resources.
Experience a year in the life of hundreds of dinosaurs as they face the challenges of a changing world.
Follow orphaned orang-utans and elephants, and meet the extraordinary people who care for these incredible animals.
Take a journey through the history of photography. Step into a 19th century portrait studio, see hundreds of incredible objects from our collection, and watch the world's first moving colour film.
Discover original models and artwork from over 100 animations, meet your favourite characters and see science in action!