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The trouble with stealth games, for me anyway, is all that stealthiness. Which isn't to say that stealth in games can't be an enjoyable factor, but too often the stealth genre deals in such rigid requirements of absolute precision in movement and execution that it kills a lot of the fun for players who aren't invested in becoming the most skilled thieves, ninjas, or special operatives out there. Sometimes, you don't necessarily want to lose every single time a guard spots you. Sometimes, you just want a little more chaos in your stealth gameplay, you know?
If you share my sensibilities, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Pocketwatch Games' Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine quite a bit. In development for something like four years now, Monaco has evolved from its early showings as an intriguing indie curiosity into a full-fledged adventure, replete with numerous characters, skills, and challenging stages to master. It's especially strong in cooperative multiplayer, where up to four players can plan, execute, and in some cases, frantically try to salvage elaborate heists that often have a tendency to go haywire, albeit often in the most enjoyable ways possible.
There are eight characters to choose from in Monaco. Four--the Locksmith, the Cleaner, the Lookout, and the Pickpocket--are available right at the beginning of the game. Over time, you'll also unlock the Mole, the Gentleman, the Redhead, and the Hacker. Each of these characters has a unique skill that makes them vital for specific tasks throughout the story. The Locksmith, for instance, can push through locked doors twice as quickly as any other character; the Hacker can disable security systems by uploading viruses through any power outlet; the Gentleman can disguise himself for a set amount of time; and the Cleaner can chloroform any in-game enemy he manages to sneak up on.
If you're playing alone, you can just pick from any one of these characters once they're unlocked. Every stage in Monaco can be beaten with any character, but some levels are definitely designed with certain abilities in mind, and some characters are just balanced better than others. The Mole, for instance, can dig through walls, and especially in the first half of the game, is exceptionally useful. Conversely, the Pickpocket, despite having a monkey that collects coins for him, is regrettably pretty useless in most key situations.
The primary goals of Monaco's many unsavory characters evolve over time, but objectively speaking, pretty much everything revolves around you getting into a heavily guarded/booby trapped area, stealing something, and getting back out. Cops, civilians, guard dogs, cameras, laser barriers, computer-locked doors, and just about every other manner of security must be navigated successfully in order to survive a mission. In addition to your primary goal, you'll also be trying to collect the many coins that have been scattered throughout each stage, all while generally trying to avoid detection.
The thing is, you won't avoid detection forever. While it's distinctly possible that some obsessive players may be able to sneak through whole levels of Monaco without ever spooking a guard or being spotted on a camera, you really don't have to do this to succeed. When playing solo, getting detected really only means that you need to bolt to a nearby hiding spot, either in another room, or in an air duct, or even inside a nearby shrub. Enemies aren't terribly thorough in their searches, so if you're far enough out of their sight line and aren't making noise, they'll usually just wander off, and you're good to go.
Multiplayer requires a bit more strategy, given that you could have up to four people all wandering around different areas of the environment. It pays to have a plan, which is to say that it pays to spend time learning the layouts of the different stages, and have certain characters attack certain areas for maximum coin collection and minimum collateral damage. That, of course, doesn't always go according to plan. In most games, seeing your best laid plans go to pot is usually a source of frustration. However, at least in the early goings, Monaco's levels are generally bite-sized enough to avoid forcing players to restart large chunks of content, while also providing just enough challenge to ensure that when things do go wrong, they go hilariously wrong. Later on, as the levels become more intricate and frankly just a lot longer, those failures do become a bit less amusing.
Obviously a disastrous outcome isn't the point of playing Monaco, but that the disastrous outcomes are, in their own way, often so very entertaining is a testament to how fun the game can be in multiplayer. Pulling off a well-constructed heist, filled with coordinated distractions and intricately executed strategy is awesome, but even having it all fall apart on you, with guards and sirens and dogs all converging on everybody, is weirdly fun too. Of course you never want to be the guy who ruined everything, but there are, thankfully, just enough ways to get yourself out of a jam in Monaco to prevent you from ever feeling like you've hopelessly destroyed everyone's chances just by screwing up once or twice.
It helps that Monaco is a pretty simple game, mechanically. You can use a controller on the PC version if you like, but the default controls really only require movement via the WASD keys, holding the right mouse button down to sneak quietly, and using the left mouse button to use weapons and other items that pop up from time to time. These can range from simple guns to EMPs that knock out all the electronics in a nearby area. For every ten coins you pick up, you earn another use of the item you're currently equipped with, which can be very handy when you just need to get one guard out of your way to get to the next area.
There are quite a few chapters to play through in Monaco, though you can't unlock the second volley of levels--which are essentially remixed versions of previous levels designed with more challenge, and an alternate story path, in mind--until you've "cleaned out" enough stages on the first. Cleaning out requires collecting all the coins in a given stage, which, especially in the later stages, is easier said than done. The earlier stages are easier to pull this off in, and in fact, I managed to clean out a few levels without really even trying too terribly hard. But those aren't the norm, and in most cases, you'll have to painstakingly scour levels to find all those coins.
The story is cutely written, meting out pieces of info that simultaneously flesh out the stories of the game's characters, and pay homage to a few of the all-time crime movie classics. Still, the atmosphere of this game isn't really what sells it. The piano-heavy soundtrack by Austin Wintory does a nice job of capturing the sort of jaunty, old-timey soundtracks of classic silent film, but the game's visual palette sometimes has a hard time differentiating certain environments and settings. It's a good looking game with some nice pixel art, but there are definitely moments where all the little icons, characters, and pieces of scenery turn into something of an indistinct blur.
While I admittedly became less enamored with Monaco as it ramped up its difficulty and turned some of its later missions into tedious exercises in trial-and-error, the vast majority of Monaco's content is simply a delight to play, especially when enjoyed alongside a rogue's gallery of your most deviously skilled friends. It may not best serve the solitary brand of player, but for a cooperative group of would-be thieves, Monaco can be terrific fun.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Ruth asks…
Is the Global citizenship Diploma recognised?
I'm going to be completing 12 years of school by 2014, and our grade are going to be the first to graduate with this high school certificate ( Global Citizenship Diploma ).
I have heard good things and bad things about it. I believe its American..
Universities in my region recognise this certificate but I'm thinking of studying abroad, I know its recognised in the US but will universities in Australia, Canada and the UK accept/recognise it?
Best Answer:
It really doesn't matter, they don't look at that degree, they look at the courses you took to evaluate where you fit in their system. You send your transcripts and a description of your courses to the institution abroad where you wish to study so that they can be convalidated (so they can determine where to place you in their system). There are three outcomes, that you need to take a test or multiple tests to get in the institution or take courses prior to attending, that you can begin your studies, or that you can begin your studies and get credit for course work you have already done.
Posted From Yahoo! Answers (for informational purposes only)


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Product Description
The Sunstone® Designer Series, Raised Style 15" Width by 23" Height Left & Right Swing Single Door Storage Pantry with inside Shelf provides a dry storage space inside island structure to store away oversized grill tools, BBQ accessories, sealed dry goods and other spices. On back left side of component box is a removable panel allowing utility access for use with Stereo Components and or DVD player. This Single Door Dry Storage Pantry is specially designed to be the same consistent 23" height as all other Designer Series components – which provide a true designer friendly appeal. The component is raised off the finish wall 1-1/2" inches so to work with most any island structure including Veneer Stone, Stucco and as extra 4" inch deep inside flange to work with all Masonry Stone types. In Addition the frame is designed with an additional 1/16" inch frame around all four sides of component, plus adjustable Self-Leveling Legs in back. Which make all components multi-configurable Vertically & Horizontally, and are styled to match with Sunstone® Cabinet Island products, with both Cabinet Island and individual Designer Component combinations.
- 16 Gauge 304 Stainless Steel Frame
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- Horizontal & Vertically Configurable
- Pantry Box Assembly Required


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|Bear Feat
Bear Feat is a 1949 Looney Tunes short directed by Charles M. Jones.
Junyer Bear is reading a Bugs Bunny comic on Papa Bear's newspaper and begins tickling him. Papa Bear manages to punch Junyer and slaps him in the face hard causing Junyer Bear to land on his bowl of oatmeal. Papa Bear then tells him "Eat your oatmeal!" and continues reading his newspaper. Junyer Bear cries with oatmeal on his face remarking "Pop! Wha'd I do?! Wha'd I do?!" Papa Bear notices something in the newspaper saying, "Wanted Trick bear act, Apply at Mingling Bros. Circus" and tells Mama Bear and Junyer Bear about it telling to need a little practice. Mama Bear tries to protest but Papa Bear yells, "Shut up and let's get going." Junyer is delighted and wants to be a trick bear act and grabs him and makes Henry spin like a beach ball. Mama Bear, who at first was hesitant, joins in singing wearing a sport outfit and Junyer Bear lands Papa bear on Mama Bear's finger still upside down. He tries to punch her but misses, (or possibly stopped himself from doing it) and spins and makes an angry face at Junyer knowing it's really his fault, so Papa kicks him in the butt and he shakes in rage.
Papa Bear and Junyer Bear practice uni-cycling on a string which they tied on two trees. As they start pedaling their unicycles, Junyer's heavy weight makes them fall on the ground and bump into each other. Papa Bear yells him to get off the wire and calls him a size three head which causes Junyer to get off the string sending Papa bear into the air with Junyer chasing telling he be a good bear and won't do bad and Papa Bear lands on their fireplace blackening him and dazedly pedal toward Junyer. Junyer ask him if he's all right. Papa bear tries to punch him but he slips and fells on the floor fainted with a shocked Junyer looking on. They proceed on the next act to swing and grab the next swing. Junyer did not grab Papa Bear and swing for the second time Papa screams "Grab me stupid!" which Junyer to pick him but falls on the ground Papa Bear screams to let go of him, to which Junyer sends him into the branch knocking him out. Papa Bear is ready to make a hit on the white circle gong which is hold by Mama Bear Junyer sees this while eating a cheese and ready to hit only to crash each other. Junyer this time with his head on the board which reads "Hit my Baby son 25 cents for 3 shots", Papa bear throws a baseball at Junyer but it bounces back and hits him, which in turn, knocks him out. Mama Bear carries a couch chair for Papa Bear to land on and Junyer acts to land on the seesaw to send him into the air to land on the couch but he sends him into the sky and to outer space. They return to their house, giving the impression that Henry died after being sent into the air. The next day, they proceed to return to the exact spots they were at the previous day after Henry was launched, with Mama Bear holding the couch waiting for Papa Bear to land on, but he misses the couch and lands on the ground instead.
The next activity is a high diving act. Mama Bear begins playing the drums and Papa Bears dives to the pail of water. However, Junyer steps in eating salt crackers and drinks the pail of water making Papa Bear land on the empty pail. Junyer realizes this what he has done and calls Mama Bear to call for a doctor. Papa Bear proceeds the motorcycle race with Mama Bear holding the finish flag and asks her if she ready and she replies and Papa Bears starts his motorcycle. Mama Bear swings the flag and watches the race. However Junyer is eating a banana and throws the banana peel onto the track, sending Papa Bear to crash his motorcycle injuring him (off screen). Papa Bear wakes up covered in bandages and asks where the newspaper is. Mama Bears hands it to him and protests, only to be silenced when he yells at her to shut up. Henry proceeds to check the address on the circus ad, but finds out that the newspaper was printed on April 16, 1928 and realizes that they are 21 years too late, because the day when he found the ad was on August 1, 1949. Junyer jumps to Mama Bear in fear. Mama Bear says she tried to tell Henry. Papa Bear gets upset because he figures out that they have been practicing all for nothing. Unable to accept the reality of his blunder, he questions why he has such an abnormal family, escapes his house, and commits suicide by flying off a cliff. However, he lands in a pail of water set by Junyer, who tells him that he done a good thing, resulting in Papa Bear punching him again which sends Junyer crying and remarking "Wha'd I do?! Wha'd I do?!"
- (2008) DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6, Disc 1
- (2009) DVD - TCM Spotlight: Doris Day Collection
- When this cartoon aired on the former WB channel, the ending where Pa, after finding out that the circus act wanted ad is from an outdated newspaper, becomes so despondent that jumps off the cliff (only to be saved by Junyer with the tub of water, with Papa Bear punching his son in the face for saving him from suicide) was cut. Surprisingly, Cartoon Network and Boomerang (both channels of which have been known for editing scenes depicting suicide) left this ending uncut.[1]
External Links


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This site is intended for young people aged 11 – 18 and not all the content may be suitable for younger viewers
During the COVID-19 pandemic - for local information please visit www.burgesshill.gov.uk or facebook.com/BurgessHillTownCouncil
The Hurstpierpoint Players are an amateur theatre group performing a huge variety of shows from comedies like Bouncers to dramas like Macbeth, and also including an annual traditional pantomime. Plus back stage work such as lighting, sound, set design and building. Also a lot of work for all levels of skill maintaining our own theatre building. A hearing loop is installed in the theatre.
We meet once or twice weekly throughout the year. Day of week varies depending on the time of year.
Players Theatre, 147 High Street, Hurstpierpoint.
Who for?
Unisex. 16+ years.
How much?
Student member £6 per year. Adult member £15 per year.
More info?
Richard Coney: 01273 835128.
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A single moment holds so much power, emotion + value, yet it is so easily overlooked + forgotten. Photographs have the power to make a single moment stand still forever. They have the power to bring every emotion, thought and affection that words just cannot express into the very forefront of our attention.
Click the photograph below to see our full photography portfolio.


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Latest News and Upcoming Events
Check here for the latest news and information about upcoming events.
New Apprentice Joins GKW Design & Associates
Arseney Woloschuk has joined GKW Design & Associates as a new apprentice. His ambition and interest to become an Architect makes an excellent addition to the company. He has also assisted in developing a Logo, scripts,and testing this website.
Upcoming Design/Graphic Arts Workshop
GKW Design & Associates will be offering a new workshop on design/graphic arts to help individuals seeking real world knowledge, practice, skills. The workshop is open to anyone, but seating is limited so please RSVP as soon as possible.
GKW Design & Associates Welcomes You to Its New Website!
GKW Design & Associates is online with a new website. The consulting firm hopes prospective clients will explore the full range of services online, and invites them to contact GKW Design & Associates directly via the site.


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Creating a digital web experience takes craft, teamwork and innovation. We help you find your fit within the matrix of the Internet. You and your business.
It can be a challenge. That is why a good web design company will be one with open communication and ideas to get the job done. When we execute a web design and development project, we consider the brand, visual structure, organization, customer experience, loading speed, SEO, mobile and talent sourcing – every step of the way. We won't stop working until you have the website that fits your needs. Having a good website means more than having one that looks nice. The experience your visitors and potential customers have with your business greatly depends on their experience with your website. A website by Digital Elementz is a web presence that works for them.
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Elodie Lauten - Piano Works (Unseen Worlds)
Lauten was born in 1950, some 12 to 15 years after the first wave of minimalists and her work didn't surface by and large until the early to mid 80s, so she's always stuck in my head as "second generation minimalist" along with people like Daniel Lentz and John Adams. Like Lentz, she's much more overtly melodic and playful than her predecessors which is sometimes good, sometimes not so.
This 2-disc set contains four works from 1983 to 1991. Disc One has two suites, Piano Works (1983) and Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory (1984), plus a brief Tango. The former is pretty rollicking, somewhere between Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (it's not justly tuned, however) and Charlemagne Palestine's lush elaborations. There's synth involved. both for textural accompaniment and some bass. It also has an improvisational feel; in his better moments, Jarrett in the 70s came close to this music.I wrote a while back about Ron Geeson's solo piano album, "Patruns"; there's a good bit of that flavor here as well. The second suite is in similar territory, at first maybe even more propulsively burbling, with Arthur Russell (cello), Peter Zummo (trombone), Voirabh (violin) and Ron Lawrence (viola) accompanying (and electronically enhanced). Sometimes, the keyboard almost bows out and the strings and brass edge into a Bryars-y morass (an attractive one). But overall, it meanders overmuch from section to section, not establishing any solid feel or theme, more like a string of unfinished ideas. The tango, though, with a vocal in French, is quite lovely.
Variations on the Orange Cycle is the most recent work (1991) and is even less in the minimalist vein than earlier ones (which are reasonably far afield themselves) though again one thinks of Young and even Riley in his more expansive, less rigorous moments. I've been listing many references because I find it tough to hear much I can specifically think of as Lauten in much of this music. I don't know that that's necessarily an awful thing as much of it is attractive and even beguiling, but I do often find myself hearing strong echoes of others (perhaps in some instances it's actually the reverse). Indeed on "Sonate Modale", a live performance for piano and tape from 1985, I could add Muhal Richard Abrams and "Blue" Gene Tyranny to the list. Here, the electronics, softly screeching and whistling are an intriguing offset to the ruminative piano. Once the listener settles in and accepts the dichotomy, it's a sensual and evocative journey.
All in all, an interesting set. Probably too "gentle" for both the eai crowd and the stricter minimalist fans but a damn sight better than Adams. IF work like Lentz' "On the Leopard Altar" appeals to you, this should be right up your alley.
unseen worlds
Posted by Brian Olewnick at 2/18/2010 06:05:00 PM
1 comment:
- viagra online said...
before I read this blog I have gotten a old magazine that said "Lauten's opera Waking in New York, written on poems by her late friend Allen Ginsberg, was presented by the New York City Opera VOX and Friends 2004"22dd
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I was in Atlanta a week ago. Not being home meant I fell behind on podcasts and television. I was already behind on newspaper comics from a trip to Albuquerque and a part time job before that, now I'm more than six weeks behind. But today was the public grand opening of the new California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. I had to go – you know how I like science museums and aquariums; the free admission was just a bonus. I've been going there for years, but never visited it in its Howard Street location, now it is back in the park, all redesigned and special. I still want a job there, but can't get one.
Anyway, I planned the trip yesterday. The website said they opened at 9:30am. I knew there would be loads of people, so I planned to be there extra early. I left home at 8:30am, getting to the park vicinity by 9:10am (early Saturday morning means little traffic). I was expecting most people to be local residents and to take public transportation. However, cars were everywhere, such that it took me 50 minutes to find a spot 17 blocks away from the park entrance, which is still another walk to the museum entrance. By the time I got to the entrance at 10:15am, there was a mile long line (that is no exaggeration) around the building and through more of Golden Gate Park. I found a guy in front directing Academy members to form groups for expedited admission (I would join, but I really can't afford the $99 membership fee). He said the line was at least two hours long and that they already closed the line, such that even those in line were not guaranteed entry. So I wasted 2 hours of driving and parking and $5 in bridge toll (not mentioning gasoline).
All I could do was walk around the booths and try to get some free stuff. I got a license plate frame from WildCare, which is actually something I could use. Back in 1996, some lady ran into the front of my car, shredding the license plate, which put the car into the shop, which meant I couldn't use it to drive and transport cargo to Southern California for my sister's wedding. But I digress. I wanted something as a leg guard. I bought a cheap border a couple months after the collision, which was loose and flappy, but it did the job in preventing tetanus. This frame should work much better. I also got a recyclable plastic cup made of corn from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which was promoting tap water as a green commodity (vs environmentally unfriendly bottled water). Actually, I just kept the cup instead of throwing it in the recycling bin, everyone could take one and sample tap water. Both items combined were not worth the trip. Neither was the overpriced pulled pork sandwich ($8, really? And $2 for a can of soda?).
I couldn't even get any good pictures of the day, total dissapointment all around. I ended up heading home around 2pm. I spent all that time getting there, I figured I should spend an equal time there.
Here you can see the dozens of Port-O-Potties lined up outside, as there is also a music and food festival (good luck with those high prices). I reckon there were at least 200 of them.
From across the concourse, in front of the de Young Museum (also a future visit):
The de Young Museum with a Chihuly glass-blown sculpture in front:


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You are here: Home Entertainment
This site is owned by Shebes Shabeshabes. Shabeshabes.com will contain my pasttimes and other items of interest. This will be the site for my mad scientist expressions and rantings.
This site is all about the things Shabes likes.
Anime, Manga, Manwha, Comics, Fantasy novels, Sci-fi novels, art, web design, computational intelligence, and clean living.
Because of my interests in space, computational technology, and Japanese animation one of my very favorite anime franchises is GUNDAM (General Unilateral Neuro-Link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver System).
One of my strongest desires is to develop a company that produces every aspect of these machines, all hardware and software.
As a man with PhD strong software research & development experience, I will grow my brand, power, knowledge and resources until this goal is achieved.


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There are lots of good things going on at the pool! First, our newly renovated restrooms opened officially this morning. Improvements included wood refinishing, hardware replacement, and replacement of sinks, showers, toilets and tile. Check out the attached photos!
Second, the pool will be open for use beginning at 6 am this Monday, Labor Day (9/2) instead of closed for its usual cleaning. The weather forecast looks good for a full day of swimming! Please remember also that 9/2 is the last day of lifeguard coverage for the season. The pool will remain open during September and October, but please be considerate and keep the pool area clean by discarding your trash and resetting pool furniture before you leave.


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FlashGraph: Processing Billion Node Graphs on an Array of Commodity SSDs – Zheng et al.
The Web Data Commons project is the largest web corpus available to the public. Their hyperlink (page) graph dataset contains 3.4B vertices and 129B edges contained in over 1TB of data, and a graph diameter of 650.
To the best of our knowledge, the page graph is the largest graph used for evaluating a graph processing engine to date. The closest one is the random graph used by Pregel, which has a billion vertices and 127 billion edges. Pregel processed it on 300 multicore machines.
If you recall from the Pregel paper, it took Google a little over 10 minutes to run the single-source shortest path algorithm on their graph. FlashGraph ran a breadth-first search on the page graph in less than five minutes. That's impressive, but given five years of progress between the results in the Pregel paper (2010) and this paper (2015) perhaps not totally surprising.
Here's the part that should make you sit-up and take notice though:
In contrast (to Pregel's 300 machines), we process the page graph on a single multicore machine.
Not wanting to brag or anything, but FlashGraph could also go bigger (still on a single machine), one order of magnitude bigger:
Our solution allows us to process a graph one order of magnitude larger than the page graph on a single commodity machine with half a terabyte of RAM. The maximal graph size that can be processed by FlashGraph is limited by the capacity of RAM and SSDs. Our current hardware configuration allows us to attach 24 1TB SSDs to a machine, which can store a graph with over one trillion edges. Furthermore, the small memory footprint suggests that FlashGraph is able to process a graph with tens of billions of vertices.
For those of you with graphs containing on the order of 100B vertices, regrettably it looks like you're still going to need more than one machine to process them ;).
This all translates into significant cost savings too of course (not just in capital equipment costs, but also in power consumption) :
FlashGraph results in a more economical solution to process a massive graph. In contrast, it is much more expensive to build a cluster or a supercomputer to process a graph of the same scale. For example, it requires 48 machines with 512GB RAM each to achieve 24TB aggregate RAM capacity, so the cost of building such a cluster is at least 24−48 times higher than our solution.
How do they do it?
As we've seen so far in this series, graph engines typically keep the full graph in memory….
Graph processing engines have converged on a design that (i) stores graph partitions in the aggregate memory of a cluster, (ii) encodes algorithms as parallel programs against the vertices of the graph, and (iii) uses either distributed shared memory or message passing to communicate between non-local vertices. Placing data in memory reduces access latency when compared to disk drives. Network performance, required for communication between graph partitions, emerges as the bottleneck and graph engines require fast networks to realize good performance.
There are systems that have tried to reduce costs by processing graphs from disk, however "there is a huge gap between these systems and in-memory processing." Instead, Zheng et al. optimise heavily for SSDs with a design that they call 'semi-external' :
We present FlashGraph, a semi-external memory graph-processing engine that meets or exceeds the performance of in-memory engines and allows graph problems to scale to the capacity of semi-external memory. Semi-external memory maintains algorithmic vertex state in RAM and edge lists on storage. The semi-external memory model avoids writing data to SSDs. Only using memory for vertices increases the scalability of graph engines in proportion to the ratio of edges to vertices in a graph, more than 35 times for our largest graph of Web page crawls. FlashGraph uses an array of solid-state drives (SSDs) to achieve high throughput and low latency to storage. Unlike magnetic disk-based engines, FlashGraph supports selective access to edge lists.
Vertices are kept in-memory, edges are stored on SSD. Through a series of optimisations, FlashGraph is able to make this combination perform competitively with state-of-the-art in-memory only graph systems. There is a familiar vertex-centric programming model:
…a vertex has to explicitly request its own edge list so that a graph application can significantly reduce the amount of data brought to memory. Furthermore, the interface does not constrain the vertices that a vertex can communicate with or the edge lists that a vertex can request from SSDs. This flexibility allows FlashGraph to handle algorithms such as Louvain clustering, in which changes to the topology of the graph occur during computation. It is difficult to express such algorithms with graph frameworks in which vertices can only interact with direct neighbors.
The programming model is given less treatment than in some of the other papers we've looked at so far. It seems to be a more restrictive model closer in spirit to Pregel than to GraphLab/PowerGraph. Of particular note, though not explicitly stated anywhere in the paper, it appears that while edges can have properties these are read-only and cannot be updated as an algorithm progresses. The model is certainly sufficient to implement a variety of graph algorithms though: breadth-first-search, betweenness centrality, PageRank, weakly connected components, triangle counting, and scan statistics algorithms are all implemented as part of the evaluation.
FlashGraph is built on top of the SAFS user-space filesystem for high-speed SSD arrays in a NUMA machine. To get the performance FlashGraph requires, there need to be many parallel I/O requests. SAFS avoids the overhead of buffer allocation and data copying for these asynchronous requests.
In the SAFS user-task programming interface, an application associates a user-defined task with each I/O request. Upon completion of a request, the associated user task executes inside the filesystem, accessing data in the page cache directly. Therefore, there is no memory allocation and copy for asynchronous I/O.
Vertex communication is via a messaging abstraction. Messages are buffered and then passed to vertices in batches. Multicast is used for the common broadcast pattern:
FlashGraph supports multicast to avoid unnecessary message duplication. It is common that a vertex needs to send the same message to many other vertices. In this case point-to-point communication causes unnecessary message duplication. With multicast, FlashGraph simply copies the same message once to each thread. We implement vertex activation with multicast since activation messages contain no data and are identical.
With edges stored on SSDs, efficient access to edges is key to good performance:
FlashGraph merges I/O requests to maximize its performance. During an iteration of most algorithms, there are a large number of vertices that will likely request many edge lists from SSDs. Given this, it is likely that multiple edge lists required are stored nearby on SSDs, giving us the opportunity to merge I/O requests. FlashGraph globally sorts and merges I/O requests issued by all active state vertices for applications where each vertex requests a single edge list within an iteration.
Intelligent scheduling of vertex-programs helps to ensure there is plenty of opportunity for performing such merges:
In general, FlashGraph favors a large number of running state vertices because it allows FlashGraph to merge more I/O requests to improve performance. In practice, performance improvement is no longer noticeable past 4000 running state vertices per thread. The default scheduler processes vertices ordered by vertex ID. This scheduling maximizes merging I/O requests for most graph algorithms because vertices request their own edge lists in most graph algorithms and edge lists are ordered by vertex ID on SSDs.
To further minimize I/O, and to handle the largest graphs possible, FlashGraph pays great attention to efficient in-memory (for vertices) and on-disk (for edge lists) structures. See sections 3.5 and 3.6 of the paper for details.
FlashGraph uses 2D partitioning. First there is range partitioning by vertex id to divide the vertices into horizontal partitions (edge cutting). This range partitioning helps FlashGraph to improve data locality for disk I/O in many applications. A range can then be vertically partitioned (vertex cutting):
The vertical partitioning in FlashGraph allows programmers to split large vertices into small parts at runtime. FlashGraph replicates vertex state of vertices that require vertical partitioning and each copy of the vertex state is referred to as a vertex part. A user has complete freedom to perform computation on and request edge lists for a vertex part. In an iteration, the default FlashGraph scheduler executes all active vertex parts in the first vertical partition and then proceeds to the second one and so on. To avoid concurrent data access to vertex state, a vertex part communicates with other vertices through message passing.


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- By Emily GurnonJune 5, 2015
- By Emily Gurnon
The first drug for lack of sexual desire in premenopausal women may be available soon following a recommendation this week by a federal committee.
An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged the agency to approve flibanserin — dubbed "the female Viagra" by the media — for the treatment of so-called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSSD) in women. But that recommendation was conditioned on safety measures being put into place.
Risks of the drug include low blood pressure and fainting. Safety concerns may be heightened when drug interactions and alcohol use are taken into effect, according to an FDA briefing document.
Flibanserin could be approved by Aug. 18. The FDA usually approves drugs that have won recommendation by an advisory panel, but a green light is not guaranteed.
MoreWhat to Do About Loss of Libido?
HSDD is defined as "the persistent or recurrent deficiency or absence of sexual thoughts, fantasies, and/or desire for sexual activity, which causes marked distress or interpersonal difficulty," according to an FDA briefing document.
An FDA spokeswoman declined to comment Friday, saying the agency was able to provide information only on approved drug applications.
Cindy Whitehead, chief executive officer of flibanserin maker Sprout Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement, "With today's decision, we are one step closer to bringing to market the first treatment option for the most common form of female sexual dysfunction." A spokeswoman reached by email declined to speculate on the outcome of the FDA process.
About one in three American women suffer from low sexual desire, the company said.
The FDA usually approves drugs that have won recommendation by an advisory panel, but a green light is not guaranteed.
Flibanserin is believed to work on key neurotransmitters in the brain that affect sexual desire.
Applauding the advisory committee's vote was the group Even the Score, which accuses the FDA of unfairly limiting drugs for women's sexual problems while approving treatments for men.
"The Advisory Committee's recommendation has historic repercussions. First, for the 1-in-10 women who are living with HSDD without a single approved medical treatment for their condition. And second, it will mean the difference between opening a pipeline of future options for women's sexual health and closing it for good," said Susan Scanlan, chairwoman of Even the Score.
The FDA "strongly rejects" claims of gender bias, it said in a statement. "We are committed to working with companies to develop safe and effective treatments for female sexual dysfunction, as we do for all diseases with unmet medical needs."
Critics have said flibanserin has not been shown to be effective and safe.
A separate process is required in order for the drug to be approved for postmenopausal women.
Researchers conducted a large clinical trial for that demographic that showed similar results, said Sheryl A. Kingsberg, chief of behavioral medicine at University Hospitals Case Medical Center at Case Western Reserve University.
"We have the results of it, and we offered to show (those) yesterday, because somebody asked," Kingsberg said. "I think the plan will be to get it approved in postmenopausal women."
A testosterone patch was previously approved for low female libido in several European countries, but has since been withdrawn.
Next Avenue Editors Also Recommend:
- 3 Fun New Guides to Dating, Sex and Romance
- 8 Reasons Why Sex Is Better After 50
- What to Know About Health By 50, 60, 70
- Sex and the Midlife Woman
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Eating disorders are illnesses in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions. Those suffering from eating disorders typically become obsessed with food and their body weight as well. Eating disorders affect some several million people at any given time, most often women between the ages of 12 and 35. There are three main types of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. People with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa tend to be perfectionists who suffer from low self-esteem and are extremely critical of themselves and their bodies. They usually "feel fat" and see themselves as overweight, sometimes even despite life-threatening semi-starvation (or malnutrition). An intense fear of gaining weight and of being fat may become all pervasive. In early stages of these disorders, patients often deny that they have a problem.
In many cases, eating disorders occur together with other psychiatric disorders like anxiety, panic, obsessive compulsive disorder, and alcohol and drug abuse problems. New evidence suggests that heredity may play a part in why certain people develop eating disorders, but these disorders also afflict many people who have no prior family history. Without treatment of both the emotional and physical symptoms of these disorders, malnutrition, heart problems, and other potentially fatal conditions can result. However, with proper medical care, those suffering from eating disorders can resume suitable eating habits, and return to better emotional and psychological health.
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is diagnosed when patients weigh at least 15 percent less than the normal healthy weight expected for their height. People with anorexia nervosa do not maintain a normal weight because they refuse to eat enough, often exercise obsessively, and sometimes force themselves to vomit or use laxatives to lose weight. Over time, the following symptoms may develop as the body goes into starvation:
• Menstrual periods cease
• Osteopenia or osteoporosis (thinning of the bones) through loss of calcium
• Hair/nails become brittle
• Skin dries and can take on a yellowish cast
• Mild anemia and muscles, including the heart muscle, waste away
• Severe constipation
• Drop in blood pressure, slowed breathing and pulse rates
• Internal body temperature falls, causing person to feel cold all the time
• Depression, and lethargy
Bulimia Nervosa
Although they may frequently diet and vigorously exercise, individuals with bulimia nervosa can be slightly underweight, normal weight, overweight or even obese. However, they are never as underweight as anorexia nervosa sufferers. Patients with bulimia nervosa binge eat frequently, and during these times sufferers may eat an astounding amount of food in a short time, often consuming thousands of calories that are high in sugars, carbohydrates, and fat. They can eat very rapidly, sometimes gulping down food without even tasting it. Their binges often end only when they are interrupted by another person, or they fall asleep, or their stomach hurts from being stretched beyond normal capacity.
During an eating binge sufferers feel out of control. After a binge, stomach pains and the fear of weight gain are common reasons that those with bulimia nervosa purge by throwing up or using a laxative. This cycle is usually repeated at least several times a week or, in serious cases, several times a day. Many people don't know when a family member or friend has bulimia nervosa because sufferers almost always hide their binges. Since they don't become drastically thin, their behaviors may go unnoticed by those closest to them. But bulimia nervosa does have symptoms that should raise red flags:
• Chronically inflamed and sore throat
• Salivary glands in the neck and below the jaw become swollen. Cheeks and face often become puffy, causing sufferers to develop a "chipmunk" looking face
• Tooth enamel wears off, teeth begin to decay from exposure to stomach acids
• Constant vomiting causes gastroesophageal reflux disorder
• Laxative abuse causes irritation, leading to intestinal problems
• Diuretics (water pills) cause kidney problems
• Severe dehydration from purging of fluids
Binge Eating Disorder
Presently, the criteria for binge eating disorder are under investigation or are still being defined. However, people with binge eating disorder have episodes of binge eating in which they consume very large quantities of food in a brief period and feel out of control during the binge. Unlike people with bulimia nervosa, they do not try to get rid of the food by inducing vomiting or by using other unsafe practices such as fasting or laxative abuse. The binge eating is chronic and can lead to serious health complications, particularly severe obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.
Eating disorders clearly illustrate the close links between emotional and physical health. The first step in treating anorexia nervosa is to assist patients with regaining weight to a healthy level; for patients with bulimia nervosa interrupting the binge-purge cycle is key. For patients with binge eating disorder it is important to help them interrupt and stop binges. However, restoring a person to normal weight or temporarily ending the binge-purge cycle does not address the underlying emotional problems that cause or are made worse by the abnormal eating behavior.
Psychotherapy helps individuals with eating disorders to understand the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that trigger these disorders. In addition, some medications have also proven to be effective in the treatment process. Because of the serious physical problems caused by these illnesses, it is important that any treatment plan for a person with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder include general medical care, nutritional management and nutritional counseling. These measures begin to rebuild physical well-being and healthy eating practices.


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NC State ranks No. 25 among the 200 research institutions studied in the Milken Institute's latest listing of best universities for technology transfer.
The report, called "Concept to Commercialization: The Best Universities for Technology Transfer," puts NC State in the top 10 of schools without medical research facilities. NC State also joins three of its 16 peer institutions making the list.
"Creating human capital and conducting research, along with its efficiency as measured by output (patents, licenses executed, licensing income and startups) relative to input (research expenditures), depict the production of good universities delivering on their mission," the institute says about its rankings.
The list is broken down into four major categories, with NC State ranking 10th in licensing issued, 18th in licensing income, 21st in start-ups and 25th in patents issued. It is ranked in the top 10 of each of those categories when universities with medical schools are removed.
Original story published April 20, 2017. Written by Tim Peeler.


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The family of Neil Bantleman, a Canadian teacher jailed for years in Indonesia on disputed sexual assault charges, says the man is back in Canada.
Bantleman's brother, Guy Bantleman, did not immediately provide details of his sibling's release or exact location.
Neil Bantleman and an Indonesian teaching assistant were arrested in July 2014 while working at a prestigious international school in Jakarta.
Both men were accused of abusing three students and went through years of legal wrangling in Indonesian courts.
The men were initially convicted, saw those convictions overturned, then ultimately went back to prison when Indonesia's highest court reinstated the original decision and sentenced them to 11 years behind bars.
Bantleman's family consistently maintained both the teacher and his co-accused were innocent and had become victims of a corrupt legal system in Indonesia.
The federal government had been lobbying for Bantleman's release for years, but Global Affairs Canada declined to comment on his return Thursday.
Source: Read Full Article


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Mundane History
The opener of Extra Virgin's Director's Screen 2010, Mundane History (เจ้านกกระจอก, Jao Nok Krajok) is a family drama that's loaded with symbolism as it comments on Thai society as well as life, the universe, and, well, everything.
The story is about a young man who's been paralyzed in an accident. He's the scion of a well-to-do Bangkok family. The dad is cold and distant, too busy with his work to care much. He hires a male nurse for his son. The two are ill at ease – the rich kid because he's bitter about having to waited on hand and foot, and the nurse because he comes from upcountry and is ill-equipped to deal with the way his new patient looks down on him.
The film is made unique by a non-linear structure, which gives it a jagged, jazz-like feel that's enhanced further by an alternative-rock soundtrack by the bands Furniture and the Photo Sticker Machine.
Since premiering at last year's Pusan International Film Festival and opening the World Film Festival of Bangkok, director Anocha Suwichakornpong's film has been on a tear through the festival circuit, winning the VPRO Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Transilvania Trophy at the Transilvania International Film Festival and most recently the Grand Prix at the Era New Horizons International Film Festival in Poland.
The movie has gained notoriety as the first Thai film to be given the restrictive 20- rating, which bars viewers under 20 years of age and requires an ID check if you look young. The rating is presumably for a much-talked-about bathtub scene involving the main character. Mundane History received the 20- rating so it could be shown at last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok. Since then, another movie, Sin Sisters 2, gained notoriety as the first commercially released Thai film to get the 20- mark.
Mundane History will play as part of the Director's Screen Project until September 1 at SFX the Emporium, with nightly screenings at around 7 and additional Saturday and Sunday matinees at around 2. The daily showtimes are not fixed exactly, so check the SF website or Extra Virgin's calendar for the latest timings. Every Saturday, there's special activities, with a director's Q&A after the evening show. This Saturday, Anocha will be around for both the afternoon and evening show, so if you have questions, ask away. Rated 20-.
Boonchu 10
If you're not looking too closely at the poster, you might be led to believe the latest installment in Five Star Production's long-running Boonchu teen-comedy series has joined the 3D trend, which might be a historic first for Thai cinema.
But it's all just another marketing gimmick, with the 3D action actually presented in 2D.
What do you expect from the franchise that is on its eighth installment but is called Boonchu 10? The series skipped from Boonchu 2 to Boonchu 5 in a similar display of good-natured showbiz hucksterism.
Kiat Kitjareon, a Boonchu cast member from when the series started back in the 1980s, takes over as director for Bhandit Rittakol, the veteran helmer who died last year when this movie was in the early stages of production.
From what I can tell in the trailer, it has the same flavor, with loads of wholesomeness and nostalgia.
The original series starred Santisuk Promsiri as a country boy who gets up to adventures after he goes to university in Bangkok, where he meets his lifelong love Mo, played by Jintara Sukapat.
When the series was rebooted in 2008 with Boonchu 9, the action shifted to a new generation, with Boonchu's son Boonchoke leaving the monkhood to go to the city to study.
Thanachat Tulayachat reprises his role in Boonchu 10 (บุญชู จะอยู่ในใจเสมอ, Boonchu 10 Ja Yoo Nai Jai Samer) as the earnest Boonchoke. He's now studying at at Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai but is still adjusting to life outside the temple and struggling to keep his racing hormones from running off the road.
Meanwhile, parents Boonchu, Mo and their friends come to campus for a visit only find that the boy has gone to the jungle with his friends. They follow and so does adventure.
The shenanigans involve high-kicking hilltribe girl, played by Natthaveeranuch Thongme. The Shutter leading lady is doing her best Jeeja impression as she mows down a pack of villains with a flying double knee drop. Nice.
It's said to be the final entry in the series. But maybe that's just another gimmick? Rated 13+.
Also opening
Salt – Angelina Jolie stars in this globetrotting action thriller as a CIA agent who goes on the run to clear her name and find out her true identity after she is accused of being a Russian double agent. Directed by Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American), the script is by Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, Ultra-Violet). Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor also star. Jolie has said she performed her own stunts. The movie has been long in production, with Tom Cruise at one point attached to play an agent named Edwin Salt. He bowed out, and Edwin became Evelyn when Jolie got involved. Critical reception is mixed, with the consensus being that it's a fine performance by Jolie, but is a typically predictable and ludicrous action flick. Rated 13+.
Baarìa – Giuseppe Tornatore directs this epic autobiographical comedy-drama that covers three generations in the Sicilian village where he was born. In Italian with English and Thai subtitles at the Lido. Rated 13+.
Step Up 3 – Check out the poster. It makes a point of saying "shot in 3D", to distinguish it from those shoddy pretenders that are filmed in 2D and then converted. Apart from that, it's the usual story of these dance movies. A New York street-dance crew tangles with a team of polished dancers from the university, and then they join to take on rivals in a make-it-or-break-it breakdancing contest. No critical reception yet. In 3D in some cinemas. Rated 13+.
Also showing
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Though it was scheduled to end its Bangkok run on July 25, continued interest has kept Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Golden Palm winner on the Bangkok big screen, and it moves this week over to SF Cinema City MBK before heading to the SF branch in Apichatpong's hometown of Khon Kaen on August 11. It's the strange tale of a dying man, living out his last days in the countryside, surrounded by his loved ones, including the ghost of his late wife and the monkey spirit of his long-lost son. Check SF Cinemas for the showtimes. Rated 15+.
FCCT-NETPAC Asian Film Festival – The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand's series of films accoladed by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema continues this week with Eliana, Eliana. Indonesian director Riri Riza's 2002 drama won the NETPAC Award at the Singapore International Film Festival as well as a Dragons and Tigers special citation at the Vancouver festival. Eliana (Rachel Sayidina) arrives home at the end of a day in which she lost her job and kicked a man in the groin to find her mother (veteran actress Jajang C. Noer), whom she has not seen in five months. Her roommate, Heni (Henidar Amroe), is missing. So the mother and daughter go searching while they work out some of their own issues. It screens at 8 tonight. Admission is 150 baht for non-members.
Bangkok IndieFest – Organized by Camerado Southeast Asia, the inaugural Bangkok IndieFest promises "a cross-cultural cinematic showcase of compelling non-mainstream independent films and videos from Thailand and the rest of the world". The line-up has around 80 features and shorts, and includes documentaries, animation, comedy, cult films and music movies. The shows start at 1 on Friday with short documentaries in the main room and features on the sidebar screen. There's also room for the Short Film Jam, in which directors can bring just about anything they like, as long as its under 10 minutes and isn't porn or a commercial.
Bangkok IndieFest runs from Friday to Sunday at HOF Art on Ratchadapisek Road, about a three-minute walk from the Ratchadapisek subway station. Visit www.BangkokFest.com.
The Adventure of Sudsakorn – The late animator Payut Ngaokrachang's seminal animated feature is based on an episode from Phra Aphai Mani, a 30,000-line epic poem by Sunthorn Phu, and depicts the fantastic adventures of the young son of a mermaid and a minstrel prince. It's screening at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, at 11am every Sunday until October 3. Call (02) 482 2013-14, ext 111.
Cinema Feminine – Film Virus and Toot Yung Gallery have organized a program of short films by female directors. The rough lineup includes shorts by Agnes Varda, Naomi Kawase, Lucrecia Martel, Marina De Van, Margaret Tait, Helke Sanders, Su Friedrich, Christelle Lhereux and Sara Driver. Toot Yung Gallery is at 19 Prachatipatai Road, in Pra Nakhon District, Bangkok, between Wat Tri Thosathep and Saphan Wanchaat. The show's on Sunday, starting at 2.
Eldorado – Bouli Lanners directs this 2008 comedy drama about a fortysomething car dealer bonding with a would-be auto thief on a road trip in an old Chevrolet. In French with English subtitles on Wednesday, August 11 at 7:30pm at the Alliance Francaise, which regularly shows French films on Wednesday nights. Admission is free.
Aisha – It's Bollywood teen romance in the Delhi upper-class world with its own set of social rules. Aisha (Sonam Kapoor) navigates her world, matchmaking for all her friends. It's based on Jane Austen's "Emma". In Hindi with English subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit (Ekamai) on Wednesday at 8 and at Major Cineplex Central Rama III on August 12 at 4, August 14 at 8 and August 15 at 4. Call (089) 488 2620 or visit www.BollywoodThai.com.


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FOUR FRIENDS Robyn Carr: Women's Fiction
This is a good story on the journeys of many women. The ultimate truth: be good to yourself and allow the others needs to fall into place.
HEAVY WEATHER Normandie Ward Fischer: Women's Fiction
Fischer, as always, gives us a great story with deep understanding of women's trials. By returning to the Carolina coast, she utilizes a setting that is deep and rich. Sit back and enjoy!
PRE-FIX Linda Grimes: Urban Paranormal Fantasy
Find out how Ceil Halligan's job as an aural adaptor began...You won't be sorry. ;-)
HANGING FROM THE HIGH WIRE Bridget Straub: Women's Fiction
This is an amazing and gritty look at emotional illness from the inside. This is a must read.
Next Week: A run down on recent releases. You know you need a book(s) to read. Of course, you do!
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
4 Mini Book Reviews/June part 2: R. Carr, N. Ward Fischer, L. Grimes, B. Straub
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Grey Anna Grace Zip Coin Pouch – AGP1109
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UltraISO allows you to read the content of a lot of CD image formats without having to burn them, you can manage them from your Hard Drive.
It supports .BIN, ISO, CIF, CCD, BWT, MDS, TAO, DAO, CDI, FDC, VCD, VDI, LCD, VaporCD, NCD, GDC, GI, p01, md1, xa, C2D and VC4.
UltraISO allows you to create CD images and to modify and use previously created ones.
The ISO image can't be longer than 300 MB if you use the trial version.


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One popular behavioral model system with which to study learning and memory is a robust learning paradigm that capitalizes on the capacity of mammals, including rodents, to associate environmental cues with a mild aversive stimulus. This type of learning, generally called fear conditioning, is an example of classical associative conditioning similar to Pavlovian conditioning. Some aspects of the neuronal circuitry underlying this behavior have been worked out and it is clear that the amygdala is involved in memory formation in this behavior (see references 1 and 2 for example). In addition, the fear-conditioning paradigm has been quite fruitful of late as a model in which to study molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory, as we will return to repeatedly in this book. One final reason for the high level of enthusiasm for pursuing this behavioral paradigm is its potential relevance as a model system for human anxiety disorders.
A typical fear conditioning experiment proceeds as follows. Animals are placed in a fear-conditioning apparatus for about 2 minutes, then a 30-second acoustic CS (tone or preferably white noise, but light cues can also be used) is delivered. During the last 2 seconds of the tone, a mild foot shock (US) is applied to the floor grid. This pairing protocol can be repeated with a brief intervening period (e.g., 2 minutes) between pairings. The stimulus strength and number of training pairs are typically chosen based on pilot experiments to optimize learning without overtraining the animals. When trained in this fashion, the animals learn at least two things. One thing they learn is that the training chamber is bad news; that is, that the context in which they are trained is a place to be feared. Another thing that they learn is that the noise or light CS predicts an upcoming foot shock, and thus it also is to be feared. These two components of the learning are referred to as contextual and cued fear conditioning, respectively (see Figure 1).
Cued Fear Conditioning
Cued fear learning is assessed by quantitating the amount of fearful behavior exhibited by the animal following representation of the CS, when the CS is presented in a different context from that in which the training took place. This use of a different context is important to isolate the cued conditioning from the contextual conditioning: a variation is to habituate the animal to the fear-conditioning apparatus before presenting the CS-US pairing (see reference 3 for example).
Increased fearful behavior upon later representation of the CS is an indication of the animal having formed a lasting association between the CS cue and the fear-evoking stimulus. To assess cue learning, animals are placed in a context different from the training context (e.g., novel odor, cage floor, and visual cues or alternatively a context similar the the home cage) and baseline behavior is measured for a few (e.g., 3) minutes. Then the acoustic CS is presented for about 3 minutes, and learning is assessed by measuring fearful behavior every 5 seconds (see Figure 2).
To assess short-term cue learning, the animals are typically placed in the nontraining context 1-2 hours following the completion of the training session and fear assessed in response to re-presentation of the acoustic or light CS. Long-term cue learning can be tested 24 hours to several weeks later.
How does one assess the fearful behavior indicative of learning? There are two basic ways to assess fear in rodents: freezing and startle potentiation. Freezing is a stereotyped immobile posture exhibited by rats and mice when they are fearful; it is readily recognizable to a trained human observer. In this case, the scorer of the behavioral experiments should, of course, be blind in reference to whether the animal is a control or an experimental. The other variation for assessing fear in rodents is measuring fear-associated potentiation of their normal startle response, which can be quantitated automatically using a variety of devices. Potentiation of the animal's normal startle response to a loud noise, by representation of the CS (light for example) is one of the standard indices of cue-evoked fear. Anyone who has ever watched a Hollywood "slasher" movie is familiar with fear potentiated startle.
To assess contextual learning, the animals are placed back into the training context post-training and scored for fear behavior for a short period of time, typically a few minutes to minimize extinction of their fear of the context (see Figures 1-3). Similar to cued fear conditioning, contextual fear conditioning exhibits short-term and long-term forms.
It also is possible to train animals using a context-alone variant (see Figures 1 and 3).
FIGURE 2 Cued-plus-contextual fear conditioning. (A) Freezing behavior on the day of training. The white noise CS is presented for the three periods of time underlined. Foot shocks are presented at the arrows. Stereotyped freezing posture is scored visually and expressed as percent of time spent freezing. (B) Freezing in response to CS presentation on day 2 after training. For these experiments the animals are in a different context than that in which they were trained. The period of white noise (CS) presentation is indicated by the line. (C) Freezing in response to replacement in the training context. The animal is placed in the context at t = 0. All panels: Results shown are for C57Bl6 animals, mean ± SEM for n = 10 animals. Freezing is scored every 5 seconds and averaged over 1-minute epochs. Data from Weeber et al. (5).
FIGURE 2 Cued-plus-contextual fear conditioning. (A) Freezing behavior on the day of training. The white noise CS is presented for the three periods of time underlined. Foot shocks are presented at the arrows. Stereotyped freezing posture is scored visually and expressed as percent of time spent freezing. (B) Freezing in response to CS presentation on day 2 after training. For these experiments the animals are in a different context than that in which they were trained. The period of white noise (CS) presentation is indicated by the line. (C) Freezing in response to replacement in the training context. The animal is placed in the context at t = 0. All panels: Results shown are for C57Bl6 animals, mean ± SEM for n = 10 animals. Freezing is scored every 5 seconds and averaged over 1-minute epochs. Data from Weeber et al. (5).
The procedures are essentially the same as the context-plus-cued paradigm, but no visual or auditory cue is delivered when the animal is trained. With this procedure, the animal learns to fear the training context— upon re-placement into the training context the animal exhibits marked freezing.
There is good evidence indicating that contextual fear conditioning is hippocampus-dependent, mostly based on lesioning studies, selective infusion of pharmacological agents into the hippocampus, and animals genetically engineered to have hippocampal deficits. However, the point of the hippocampal dependence of contextual fear conditioning is still somewhat controversial. A certain amount of controversy is perhaps not surprising given the ill-defined nature of the "context." Generally what is meant by context is a multimodal representation of the training environment. Of course, an individual animal may simply be associating a single aspect of the training environment with the foot shock, in essence converting contextual conditioning into cued conditioning for a
Naive Context Shock Context
FIGURE 3 Contextual fear conditioning in rats. Rats were placed in the fear-conditioning chamber for 2 minutes, then a 1-second shock (1.5 mA) was delivered to the floor grid. This protocol was repeated for a total of five shocks with 2 minutes between each shock. Following the fifth shock, the subject remained in the training chamber for 1 minute and was removed to its home cage. Results shown are an assessment of fear conditioning 24 hours after training. Freezing behavior was measured every 10 seconds for 5 minutes, 24 hours after exposure to the contextual fear conditioning paradigm. One control group of animals ("Context") was exposed to the conditioning chamber for the same amount of time as the fear conditioned group but did not receive any shocks. A second control group ("Shock") was shocked (5 sec, 1.5 mA) immediately upon placement into the conditioning chamber and immediately removed. "Naïve" animals were not exposed to the fear-conditioning chamber, nor did they receive an electric shock. Exposing animals to the contextual fear-conditioning paradigm significantly enhanced freezing behavior in animals 24 hours after training that paired the context and electric shock, but did not affect freezing behavior of animals that received either the context or shock alone, relative to naïve animals (Fig. 4A; F[3,24] = 226.6, p < 0.0001). Data from Levenson et al. (15).
single visual or olfactory cue in the training apparatus. To help get around this problem, a variant of contextual fear conditioning called context discrimination has been developed (4). In this variant, an animal is tested in the training environment and also in another environment that shares some of the same cues as the training environment. The testing thus allows one to determine if the animal has learned to distinguish two similar environments from each other. The available evidence indicates that context discrimination is very sensitive to hip-pocampal deficits.
In experiments where one is looking for learning deficits in an experimental animal, a variety of behavioral control experiments are necessary to bolster any conclusion that animals are deficient in learning or memory versus simply having derangements of normal sensory or motor function. A wide variety of these experiments are described in the last section of this chapter. However, one simple control is to monitor animals during the training phase of fear conditioning, for example by assessing the freezing of the animal in response to presentation of the foot shock (see Figure 2). Normal animals exhibit a freezing response to foot shock presentation. Normal freezing by an experimental animal during training indicates that they are able to at least sense the foot shock and to freeze normally.
As an additional control in experiments where a learning deficit is indicated, one can undertake a retraining experiment. Thus, you simply retrain the same animals that exhibited a learning deficit using a more vigorous training protocol in order to assess whether they are capable of fear conditioning at all. The goal in retraining experiments is to control for the potential confound that an apparent fear-conditioning deficit is simply due to an inability of experimental animals to exhibit the freezing or fear-potentiated startle that is quantitated as an index of learning. With retraining or overtraining, if the animal ultimately learns, you can conclude that at least they are capable of exhibiting the learned behavior. It is also reasonable to infer that they are capable of sensing the environmental stimuli, although one possible explanation for a necessity for overtraining is that the animal has sensory deficits.
Passive avoidance training can also be used as a "control" for cued fear conditioning, although it also is a learning model in its own right as well. In this test (see the next section and Figure 4), animals learn to suppress their normal dark-seeking reflex because their entry into a dark chamber is paired with a foot shock. This control is
particularly appealing because it can be set up to use the identical aversive sensory stimulus (foot shock) as cued fear conditioning. Passive avoidance is not as well suited as a control for contextual fear conditioning because both tasks are likely to involve the hippocampus and share some underlying mechanisms, although manipulations have been found that can lead to selective deficits in passive avoidance versus contextual fear conditioning (see reference 5 for example).
In summary for this section, fear conditioning is a robust form of classical conditioning exhibited by rodents. Cued conditioning can be used as an index of general associative learning that is amygdala-dependent but hippocampus-independent. Context-dependent conditioning is a variant to assess a likely hippocampus-dependent form of learning. The initial responses of the animal during and immediately after the training period also serve as a good screen for sensory responses to the foot shock and for the ability of the animal to exhibit fearful behavior.
FIGURE 5 Passive avoidance. This test utilizes the natural tendency for mice to retreat from a lighted area to darker area during the training session. Upon entering the dark area, a mild foot shock is given, and learning is assessed as the avoidance of the dark area following the training session. Passive avoidance was tested by measuring step-through latencies from a lighted compartment to a dark compartment when the animals are re-placed into the avoidance chamber. Results are shown as step-through latency during trial sessions 1, 2, or 3 days following training for PKCp deficient mice (□) or wildtype mice (■), mean ± SEM. Data from Weeber et al. (5). Both control and knockout animals successfully learned to avoid the darkened half of the chamber.
FIGURE 5 Passive avoidance. This test utilizes the natural tendency for mice to retreat from a lighted area to darker area during the training session. Upon entering the dark area, a mild foot shock is given, and learning is assessed as the avoidance of the dark area following the training session. Passive avoidance was tested by measuring step-through latencies from a lighted compartment to a dark compartment when the animals are re-placed into the avoidance chamber. Results are shown as step-through latency during trial sessions 1, 2, or 3 days following training for PKCp deficient mice (□) or wildtype mice (■), mean ± SEM. Data from Weeber et al. (5). Both control and knockout animals successfully learned to avoid the darkened half of the chamber.
In the passive avoidance learning test, rodents learn to suppress their natural tendency to seek out dark areas over well-lit areas after being exposed to the pairing of a mild foot shock with the animals' passage into the dark area from the well-lit one. One typical variation is referred to as the step-through passive avoidance task (see Figures 4 and 5). Animals are placed in a conditioning chamber separated into two compartments, one illuminated (e.g., by a 75-W light bulb) and one dark. The two sides are separated by a guillotine-type partition. On the training day, animals are placed into the illuminated side of the conditioning apparatus and the amount of time it takes to move into the dark compartment, called the step-through latency, is measured. Once a subject has passed into the dark chamber, the partition is lowered and the animal receives a foot shock through the grid floor. After 10 seconds in the dark compartment, the animal is removed and returned to its home cage. Various periods of time later, each animal is tested for associating the darkened chamber with the foot shock by measuring their step-through latency upon re-placement into the lit side of the conditioning chamber.
Another variation of passive avoidance is referred to as step-down avoidance. During one-trial step-down avoidance training, animals are placed on an elevated platform and given a mild foot shock when they step off the platform onto the grid below. Memory is then assessed by the latency to step off the platform following training. Both step-down avoidance and step-through avoidance learning are subject to disruption with hippocampal lesions.
Much more elaborate avoidance conditioning paradigms that involve active avoidance on the part of the animal have also been developed. Because specific directed behavior on the part of the animal is required, active avoidance is, of course, an example of operant conditioning. In one popular active avoidance paradigm, an apparatus called a shuttle-box is used. In the shuttle-box paradigm animals are trained to move from one side of the apparatus to the other in order to avoid foot shock. The trigger for movement can be linked to various CS cues such as light or sound, or the animal can simply learn that it must periodically change sides within a given time period. Interestingly, several different types of operant learning such as active avoidance in a shuttle box are actually enhanced by hippocampal lesions.
The study of maze learning in rodents has always played a prominent role in experimental psychology, so much so that in some ways it can be considered the archetypal experiment in the field. From a historical perspective, this can be illustrated nicely by Karl Lashley's use of maze learning in his studies to try to find the anatomical locus of the engram—the engram being defined as the finite locus for memory storage in the central nervous system. Lashley undertook a number of studies of maze learning in rats and of memory storage for previously learned mazes. His basic experiment was to induce lesions of the cerebral cortex and evaluate the subsequent effects on learning and memory in rats learning or remembering the location of food rewards in mazes of increasing complexity. These pioneering studies were some of the first studies to illustrate the complexity of learning and memory, for Lashley found that no single cortical locus for learning or memory could be found using this approach. At best, memory loss could be related in a general sense to the extent of the lesioned area. These studies ultimately led to the currently held view that complex memories are held in (or at least accessed by) broadly distributed loci in the central nervous system.
Fast-forwarding to the current day, a wide variety of mazes containing food rewards are still gainfully employed in behavioral studies of rodent learning and memory. Popular variations include "T"-shaped mazes of various sorts, and four- and eight-armed radial mazes (see Figure 6). Most applications of these types of mazes are fairly ethological in the sense that they capitalize upon rodents' natural foraging tendencies and involve food rewards. There is a wide variety of applications of mazes for rats and mice learning placements of food rewards in various limbs of the maze, and quantitation generally involves counting errors (i.e., the animal entering places in the maze where they should know, based on prior experience, that no food is available). Also, manipulating the delay period between training and testing is commonly used to parse short-term memory from long-term memory, and variations in the use of distal spatial cues can assess the role of this type of information in the learning process.
Overall, maze learning has been widely used to probe for the role of the hippocampus in rodent learning and memory, using a wide variety of types of lesions to the CNS. Also, maze learning has lent itself well to studies where hippocam-pal cellular responses are recorded in vivo in real time as the animal learns and remembers. Using these approaches along with others, hippocampal "place cells"
(i.e., hippocampal pyramidal neurons that fire specifically when an animal occupies a specific spatial location) have been identified. We will return to behaviorally identified patterns of hippocampal neuron firing later when we discuss neuronal firing patterns that are capable of eliciting long-lasting changes in synaptic function in the hippocampus. Various types of maze learning and attendant insights from in vivo recording during maze learning have recently received sophisticated treatment by Eichenbaum and Cohen (6), so I refer the reader to this text for more detailed discussion. We also will discuss these experiments in more detail in the next chapter.
D. Spatial Learning
The Morris Maze
Richard Morris has developed a "water" maze that is now a classic test of spatial learning in rodents (7). The Morris water
FIGURE 7 Morris water maze. The basic components of the Morris water maze system include visual cues on the walls, a monitoring camera, a pool with opaque water, and a hidden platform.
FIGURE 7 Morris water maze. The basic components of the Morris water maze system include visual cues on the walls, a monitoring camera, a pool with opaque water, and a hidden platform.
maze is a hippocampus-dependent spatial learning task in which mice or rats are required to learn to locate an escape platform in a pool of water, using visual cues surrounding the maze (see Figure 7). The basic set-up is a circular shallow pool full of opaque water with an escape platform hidden just under the surface of the water so that it is not visible to the animal. Animals are placed in the pool at either constant or varying starting positions and forced to swim because the water is just deep enough that they cannot touch the bottom. Similarly, the walls of the pool are high enough that they cannot climb out. Rodents, while they are generally good swimmers, of course prefer to be on a stable platform out of the water. In initial training trials, by random chance most animals bump into the hidden platform and can thus escape the water. Those who don't find the platform by luck (usually swims are limited to a 1-minute duration) are retrieved from the water by the experimenter and manually placed on the platform.
For the hidden platform version of the task, a typical training protocol generally consists of two blocks of four training trials a day with an interblock interval of approximately 1 hour (see Figure 8). Subjects are released into the pool from 1 of 4 starting positions, and the location of the platform remains constant throughout training. The training is given for about 6 consecutive days. Time to find the escape platform is measured. Mice and rats display significant improvement in their performance in locating the hidden platform over the several blocks of training trials (Figure 8A), as assessed by the animals' escape latencies (i.e., the time taken to locate the escape platform).
To determine if animals are using a spatial learning strategy to locate the escape platform, they are subjected to "probe" trials after training (see Figure 8B, C). In the probe test, the platform is removed, and animals are allowed to search the pool for 60 seconds. Quadrant
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With all the stresses and strains of modern living, panic attacks are become a common problem for many people. Panic attacks occur when the pressure we are living under starts to creep up and overwhelm us. Often it's a result of running on the treadmill of life and forgetting to watch the signs and symptoms of the effects of excessive stress on our bodies. Thankfully panic attacks are very treatable. Often it is just a matter of learning to recognize the symptoms and learn simple but effective techniques that help you release yourself from the crippling effects a panic attack can bring.


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I think it was Shakespeare who said, "Parting is such sweet sorrow."
Well, I'm convinced he was wrong. Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things to do and it's definitely not sweet.
At least, I've not found it sweet. It's bitter and it hurts.
I had to say goodbye to a good friend today, and even though I knew it was coming, I still wasn't quite prepared for the after shock of realizing I may never see him again.
I didn't cry, but I wanted to.


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Blog Archives
Pseudo parents and cops
Posted by thaiteachers
When will teachers in Thailand learn that we want them to spend their time EDUCATING our children. In other words spend their time teaching our children Math, Science, English, History, Art etc.
Too many teachers spend too much time behaving like pseudo parents, social workers and even policemen.
If a child has a problem then refer them to the correct people. If they dont do homework tell their parents, if they are having sex underage tell a social worker and if they are doing drugs then report them to the police.
It is NOT the job of a teacher to behave as a "second parent" and certainly not their job to act as pseudo police officers. For the sake of our children, and our countries' future, spend your time teaching the good kids who want to learn and stop wasting time on the bad ones who don't.
Posted in Thai Teachers
Tags: parents, policemen, social workers, teach, Thai Teachers, Thailand


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Defense ignites Palo Verde win
Palo Verde likes to push the pace on the basketball court, so it was a welcomed sight for the Panthers as Coronado came calling Friday night.
Even though the Cougars also play an up-tempo pace, it was Palo Verde's defense that made the difference.
The Panthers held Coronado to two field goals and forced five turnovers in the final four minutes as Palo Verde earned an 87-79 victory, its first win of the season.
The Cougars (0-2) were without 6-foot-7-inch senior Jamel Morgan, who missed the game due to an illness.
Still, Coronado trailed by only 74-69 with 4:14 left after Brett Hoisington's 12-footer.
However, Coronado, which made 26 field goals in the first 28-plus minutes, made only two from the field the rest of the way.
"We told the kids to play smart basketball down the stretch," Palo Verde coach Jermone Riley said. "We like to push the tempo, but once we get a lead late, we need to learn how to finish. Our team is getting better and better each time we step on the floor."
Moses Morgan, saddled with foul trouble in the first half, led six Panthers scorers in double figures with 21 points.
Bryce Cotton added 18 points, Drew Topham 14, D.J. Stennis 12 and Davion Pearson and Nick Hipwell 10 each.
Morgan made the difference for the Panthers (1-1), with 15 points and just one foul in the second half.
"Moses is maturing physically and mentally each and every day," Riley said. "He's a very coachable kid, and that's a delight to have. He's going to be a great player for us."
The Cougars erased a 10-point deficit in the opening half to pull even at 42-all at halftime.
Palo Verde did a much better job on the Cougars' outside game in the second half.
Coronado's William Wakefield, who hit four 3-pointers in the first half, didn't have a trey in the second half.
"We didn't know much about Coronado, so we were glad to see that they wanted a fast pace as well," Riley said. "We made the plays late and hit the big shots when needed. It's good to get a big win like this early in the season."
Wakefield led Coronado with 20 points.
Austin Nelson added 17 and Nicholas Schmitt 10 for the Cougars.


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