Placement tests are free of charge, non-binding and available at any time.
Admission to a course that is already running is possible after taking our placement test.
Course material: Depending on the level between EUR 30.00 – EUR 40.00, Level A1/A2/B1, including 4 CDs, Level B2 including 1 CD, Level C1 including 1 CD and 1 DVD.


text:
back to what we do
faema, bell & ross, david's tea
prototyping & proof of concept
faema, bell & ross, david's tea
for every new project that comes into the mill, we have a rigorous procedure for prototyping the project, to ensure its proof of concept. this allows the team of engineers and designers to adjust and tweak every element needed in the concept, so we can roll out appropriately afterwards. that's the icm fabrication way.
test and test again. it's our firm belief that we need to deliver the best to all of our clients. for that reason, we prototype new projects to ensure that we can deliver, and that we have a viable concept which can be proved in the factory before we produce the final work.
1107 Rue Levis
Terrebonne| qc | 6W 6E5 | Canada
marco@icmfabrication.com
copyright © 2017. design by optima design

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Bamboo vs.Willow
by Katrina Kramer
Cricket bats made from bamboo might help batters hit farther and faster, researchers have discovered. While willow has been the bat wood of choice for nearly 200 years, bamboo could deliver more energy to the ball during impact, though at the price of being much heavier. But bamboo's fast growth could help make the sport more affordable to its rapidly growing fanbase.
Source: © Tom Almeroth-Williams
Almost all high-end cricket bat willow comes from just two suppliers in England. The trees take around 15 years to mature, and bat makers often discard up to 30% of the wood due to imperfections.
Darshil Shah, former member of Thailand's under-19 national cricket team, and his colleagues from the University of Cambridge, UK, decided to investigate bamboo as an alternative. Bamboo is cheap and grows in many countries that have seen increasing cricket participation – China, Japan and South America for example. The plant matures within six years and can produce several harvests without needing to be replanted.
Darshil Shah holding a bamboo cricket bat …. Source: © Tom Almeroth-Williams
Working with cricket bat manufacturer Garrard & Flack, the team created a bat from bamboo strips held together with an adhesive. The bat turned out to be fairly heavy, since bamboo is denser than willow, lending itself to straight rather than cross strokes, Shah recounts. 'But because it is stiffer, we can reduce the thickness of the blade, which will reduce the weight,' he explains. His team was surprised to find that the bamboo bat also had a larger sweet spot, the area that transfers maximum energy onto the ball on impact.
'The other important property is the sound of a bat,' says Shah. Bamboo's resonant frequencies are almost identical to willow's, so players and spectators are unlikely to notice the difference.
The mechanical differences between the materials come down to cellular rather than molecular differences, says wood materials scientist Ingo Burgert from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. Both bamboo and willow contain cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin as their main structural components. But in trees, water and sugar transport take place in different tissue types. As a type of grass, there's only one structure performing both functions in bamboo, Burgert explains.
The current prototype is about 40% heavier than a traditional bat, because bamboo is denser
One way to get an idea of a bamboo's potential is from children playing baseball with bamboo bats, says Philip Evans from the Wood Surface Science Lab at the University of British Columbia in Canada. 'They mention that the bat is heavy, but they also say that the ball pings off well.' However, unlike willow, bamboo doesn't recover well from deformation and becomes dented more easily.
However, as a game steeped in tradition, cricket regulators have so far resisted changes to bat material and design. Since 1979, when Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee used an aluminium bat in a match against the English team, rules have only allowed for wooden blades in professional games. And no amount of science will convince cricketers if the bat doesn't feel and handle right, Evans points out. 'But if the work at the Cambridge group can put bats in the hands of young kids who have fun playing cricket then that's great,' he adds.
'Certain uses, like cricket bats and musical instruments get associated with particular species to the point that people stop considering if any other species would work,' says Dan Ridley-Ellis, head of the Centre Wood Science and Technology at Edinburgh Napier University in the UK. 'But two bits of wood from one species can be as different – in terms of properties like density and stiffness – as two pieces of different species. It becomes increasingly important to look for alternatives, species and sources, to meet wood demand without costing too much financially or ecologically.'
Understanding bamboo's properties, in particular its sound absorption behaviour, might also help Shah and his colleagues with their principal research: understanding how bamboo and engineered timber could be used in the construction sector.
(Chemistry World)
Foreign relations in the context of geopolitics
Did the Air Vice Marshall miss his flight?


text:
Home Sports BYU Dastrup announces transfer from BYU basketball to Oregon State
Dastrup announces transfer from BYU basketball to Oregon State
Rebecca LaneJun 26, 201800
BYU forward Payton Dastrup plays in a game against the University of Utah in the Marriott Center on Dec. 16, 2017. (Photo by Rebecca Lane/UV360)
Former BYU basketball forward Payton Dastrup has decided to transfer to Oregon State University, Dastrup announced on Instagram Monday night. He announced he would transfer from BYU in May.
Dastrup, a 6-foot-10 forward from Mesa, Arizona, played for the Cougars for two years. He has two years of eligibility remaining.
With much consideration, and pondering, I have decided to commit to Oregon State University to further my career as a student athlete. I want to thank my Heavenly Father for blessing me with this amazing opportunity, my family for supporting me in this decision, and all those who have been behind me since day 1. I can't wait to start this next chapter in life, and see where it takes me. Go Beavs!!李
A post shared by Payton Dastrup (@pdaddy_15) on Jun 25, 2018 at 7:05pm PDT
As a sophomore in 2017–18 Dastrup averaged 3.3 points and 1.8 rebounds while shooting 52.0 percent from the field and 43.3 percent from 3-point range. Dastrup posted season highs of 14 points, six rebounds, three blocks and two steals.
Oregon State competes in the Pac 12. During the 2017–18 season, the Beavers ended the season 7–11 in league play and 16–16 overall. The Beavers fell to USC 61–48 in the Pac 12 Tournament quarterfinals.
Dastrup was the second player to announce he will not be returning to the BYU basketball team for the 2018–19 season. Guard Elijah Bryant hired an agent in April and entered the 2018 NBA Draft, in which he went undrafted last week.
10 FHE lessons that will take your family outside this summer Previous post
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While her first language is sarcasm, Rebecca dabbles in English and Russian to achieve her lifelong dream of being a journalist. A BYU sports fan, reading enthusiast and wannabe world traveler, Rebecca is a Colorado transplant that is convinced Colorado's mountains are much larger than the many Utah County peaks. Rebecca manages UtahValley360.com for Bennett Communications. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccalane.


ISIRI Architects | architects | civil engineers contractors | home builders in bangalore | iRenovate.in Interior Designers in Delhi Rated 4.3 / 5 based on 211 customer reviews.
ISIRI Architects is a well known Architectural firm practicing since past about 15 years in Bangalore. With an excellent experience, we do Architectural Designs along with Constructions of Residential, Industrial & Commercial Buildings...…….


The Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta would like to thank all the volunteers who have contributed their time and effort to supporting our organization. Without our dedicated volunteers, we would be unable to provide our many products and services. We are very appreciative of their support.
If you are interested in writing for LawNow, please visit https://www.lawnow.org/contribute.
Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any additional volunteer opportunities at this time. Please check back in the future.


The purpose of the app is to train Intcomex sellers through questions and answers. It has two ways of play, series or match; there users can choose if they want to answer questions or choose an opponent to challenge. The questions add points and then the users can redeem them for prizes. The app also has a screen courses where sellers can take them and increase their scores.
This application is available for Android and iOS platforms.


The Baby Pets Candy Kitty in Pink from Zaxy are perfect for your little ones. They feature a cute cat design on the toe. Velcro strap ensures secure closure. These shoes are made from recyclable PVC and have a padded insole for extra comfort. Zaxy is a Brazilian brand that specialise in eco-friendly jelly sandals. Their ethical approach and vibrant colour choices make them a fashion favourite.


text:
Monday's 12-degree high marks coldest peak temperature for March 4 since 1890
By Sun-Times Wire Mar 4, 2019, 9:43pm CST
Share All sharing options for: Monday's 12-degree high marks coldest peak temperature for March 4 since 1890
A man walks down a snow covered road Monday morning. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Chicago's freezing temperatures shattered a pair of longstanding weather records Monday, including a 129-year-old mark for the coldest high temperature recorded on March 4.
About 3:30 p.m, Monday's high temperature topped out at a sweltering 12 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. That was enough to break the previous record from 1890, when the high temperature for March 4 only reached 17 degrees.
The city also recorded its lowest March temperature since 2002 about 5 a.m., when the mercury dipped to minus 3 degrees at O'Hare International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record of minus 7 was set on March 4, 2002.
The frigid conditions are unusual for March, which typically sees highs near 40 degrees, the weather service said.
But the cold weather is expected to linger for much of the week, the weather service said. As temperatures dip into the single-digits late Monday, scattered snow showers are expected to start moving through the area throughout the overnight hours and into Tuesday morning.
Partly sunny and breezy conditions are in the forecast Tuesday, when a daytime high of 21 degrees will feel more like minus 7 because of heavy winds that could reach up to 25 mph, the weather service said. At night, temperatures are expected to dip to 9 degrees while wind chill values jump to minus 4 degrees.
A daytime high of 28 degrees is expected Wednesday before temperatures drop to 15 degrees at night, the weather service said.
Despite the unusual cold for the first week of March, Chicagoans have escaped anything similar to the life-threatening polar vortex from late January.
However, residents are still warned to take measures against risk of frostbite, which could still seep into exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes, the weather service said.


text:
<?php
/**
 * @author @jenschude <jens.schulze@commercetools.de>
 */

namespace Commercetools\Core\Model\ProductType;

use BadMethodCallException;
use Commercetools\Core\Model\Common\EnumCollection;
use Commercetools\Core\Model\Common\JsonObject;
use Commercetools\Core\Model\Common\LocalizedEnumCollection;

class AttributeTypeTest extends \PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase
{
    public function testTypeEnum()
    {
        $type = AttributeType::fromArray([
            'name' => 'enum'
        ]);
        $this->assertSame(
            EnumCollection::class,
            $type->fieldDefinitions()['values'][JsonObject::TYPE]
        );
    }

    public function testTypeLocalizedEnum()
    {
        $type = AttributeType::fromArray([
            'name' => 'lenum'
        ]);
        $this->assertSame(
            LocalizedEnumCollection::class,
            $type->fieldDefinitions()['values'][JsonObject::TYPE]
        );
    }

    public function testTypeUnset()
    {
        $type = AttributeType::fromArray([
            'name' => 'text'
        ]);
        $this->expectException(BadMethodCallException::class);
        $type->getValues();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Hoeu Sareth has been giving customers a good deal for over 20 years.
PROVIDING wooden stools for the customers of the small jewellery shop he opened in 1987 at Phnom Penh's Russian Market was the beginning of business success for Hoeu Sareth, who is now better-known as Mr Sit-Down.
"I usually said 'sit down' to all my foreign customers who came to my shop, and then they called me Mr Sit-Down, because it was easy for them and their friends to look for and remember," he says.
The name has stuck and now, more than 20 years later, Mr Sit-Down, otherwise known as Hoeu Sareth, has put his name to three Mr Sit-Down shops.
One is run by his daughter, whom he taught all about jewellery, just as Mr Sit-Down learned from his parents. Soon his son will have a shop of his own, too.
"I learned to design jewellery from my parents during the 1950s. I have never gone to study anywhere - I believe in my work," he said.
I usually said 'sit down' to all my foreign customers who came to my shop.
"When I was selling at Russian Market I had only few apprentices and now I have more than 10," he says, adding that creating jewellery is not difficult as long as you have the passion for it.
Far away from the small stall at the Russian Market, his shops are now situated at Sihanouk Boulevard and Sisowath Quay but still feature stools for customers to sit on as well as an abundance of gold and silver jewellery with different types of stones.
Most of the stones come from Cambodia, while the satisfied customers come from all over the world.
"My customers are more than 97 percent foreigners and very few are Cambodian. I think it is because Cambodian people do not know my shop, and the foreigners know my shop as their friends or relatives tell them about it," he says.
He has never needed to advertise his businesses because the expat community and tourists have spread the word among themselves, he adds.
"When our products are good we do not need to advertise, the users will promote for us," Mr Sit-Down says with a smile.
Sit-Down also designs and manufactures made-to-order, custom jewellery with various designs - Western, traditional Cambodian and any other - and Hoeu Sareth is very proud of his businesses.
"I have struggled to do my business and now I have success with it. Sometimes I tried to care for my customers until midnight or a whole day without taking rest in order to satisfy the customers," he says.
"It is not only famous because of my name, but it is also the quality and the work of art that I do for the customers according to their wants," he says. "We do not cheat the customers."


The seminar will give an overview of the liquid-argon neutrino physics programme at Fermilab. The Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will consist of a 1.2-megawatt proton beam neutrino source at Fermilab in Illinois, sending high-energy neutrinos to large liquid argon detectors located 1300 kilometers away and a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The detectors will be constructed and operated by the DUNE collaboration. The principle goals of this experiment are a comprehensive investigation of neutrino oscillations to test CP violation in the lepton sector, determining the ordering of the neutrino masses, and testing the three-neutrino paradigm. The experiment will perform a broad set of neutrino scattering measurements with the near detector and exploit the large, high-resolution, underground far detector for non-accelerator physics topics including atmospheric neutrino measurements, searches for nucleon decay, and measurement of astrophysical neutrinos especially those from a core-collapse supernova. The future long-baseline programme is complemented by a set of liquid-argon detectors (MicroBooNE, SBND, ICARUS) at short baseline that will search for sterile neutrinos and study neutrino interactions on liquid argon.


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I've got a zonestar (or anet) based printer using a Melzi 2.0 based board with an inductive sensor mounted next to the nozzle. this is the only z endstop indicator the printer has as there is no microswitch mounted on any of the z rods.
Everything is working great until I try to enable 'Z-Probing' in the configuration file.
Normally, when the printer homes it would slowly lower, trigger the endstop, raise a bit and then lower slowly until the z-endstop is triggered again.
* The head lowers as before.
* When the sensor triggers, the head rises a bit.
* It would then start lowering slowly like before.
* When triggered a second time, instead of stopping it would instead increase speed without stopping.
#define Z_PROBE_HEIGHT 0 This is the actuall Z distance from the bed to the nozzle when the probe triggers.
I forget to mention that in one of my previous attempts, I tried setting z_probr_height to 0, that did not help however.
I'll try the other suggested settings a bit later, but I still don't understand why they cause the printer to behave like that.
* I tried trigerring the probe above the bed manually with something conductive, the same behavior was observed without stopping (I had to power the printer down when it reached the build plate).
* Perhaps even more important, the weird thing with this is that this happens whenever I try to home z, I didn't even start the bed leveling procces yet.
I tried that as well but am unable to use it since the firmware ends up being too large.
Use only one language and remove some features not necessary. I know it is tight, but it should fit if enough is disabled.
I've just tried with version 1.0.2 after disabling almost everything.
However, the same behavior can be observed as before when homing Z (no bed leveling actions taken yet).
As soon as z triggers twice, (second time after going up and then slowly going back down) the printer continues moving down faster, I've even tried retriggeting the z-stop to no avail.
Maybe there's something wrong with my configurations?
for a inductive probe. That is in 99% wrong as the inductive probe will trigger before nozzle touches the head. That is the nice thing with these probes. Then when finished it would go down the z probe height.
to copy config to eeprom and then test what happens.
otherwise the position for homing z is ignored.


4.8 22 based on 22 ratings.
Possibly the best electricians in the whole Chicagoland. The guys brought excellent results for the right money.
I have nothing to complain about the staff at T&D. The job was done correctly and everything works without flaws.
3 different electricians took worked on my defective A/C but only T&D were able to diagnose the installation error. Excellent work guys!!
Trustworthy because the whole cost was just as we agreed on during the project estimation. Everything was done in a professional way, too.
A very good company with plausible work ethos. Provided me with clean and prompt service without any hassles.
The knowledge of their profession that goes along with superb customer service is what made me award them with 5*. I called to request a repair service but was instead guided through telephone and managed to do it myself. A big thank you from a new customer!
I recommend them for how quickly they responded to my call. The job was done much faster than expected, and we're talking about the installation of a new panel.
These guys are true professionals and their prices are killer. I still can't believe how much I saved thanks to them.
Fast, clean, solid – that's how you can easily describe their work. The lightning in my new bathroom works perfectly and was done within a few hours.
T&D Electrical - local company based in CHICAGO. Ready to provide best service possible and always at reasonable prices.


text:
Friends in Need,
Moon of Alabama has a concise and information dense update on the war in Syria. Syrian Arab Army forces have raised the Syrian flag in Manbij, after Kurdish (Syrian separatist) forces withdrew so they could do so. Turkey and Kurds are in Russia, negotiating with the Russians. Turkey has stepped back from invasion plans, and is likely being schooled on how good it would be for Turkey to withdraw from the Syrian territory it currently occupies. The US is withdrawing, and has set up 2 new bases in Iraq to cover that. The Iraqi parliament is in the process of legislating US forces out of Iraq. Israeli F16s fired smart bombs at Syrian positions from behind 2 commercial passenger planes (cowards),over Lebanon, did a little damage, since most of the guided bombs were shot down by short range missiles, and stopped when Syria hit an Israeli position with a missile. (Note, Israel, it gets worse after this. Stop!) The Arab League is welcoming Syria back in, having failed in their attempted murder. There will be a price for them to pay. Syria will not forget their role, and will not forget that Iran shed blood and gold to save Syria at the critical moment. Blood brothers. Hezbollah, the other blood brother is not mentioned here...
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/syria-sitrep-army-to-regain-northeastern-territory-political-isolation-ends.html
As confusion and tensions mount in the Syrian Kurdish city of Manbij, located just 70 miles north of Aleppo, US helicopters have been filmed hovering above the potential battle lines, even after widespread reports of a US troop pullout from the area and following Kurdish militias quickly calling on Assad's help to prevent a Turkish invasion.
This as Turkish Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), other heavy equipment, and Turkish troop reinforcements were seen crossing into Syria. Currently, the Syrian Army is deployed in and around the city saying it stands ready to protect it from nearby pro-Turkish forces after Friday Syria's defense ministry announced it had "raised the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic" over Manbij for the first time after years of war as confirmed by Russian television footage from on the ground; however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly refused to acknowledge the Syrian Army's presence, dismissing the Syrian statement as a "psychological action." ...
On Saturday Russia and Turkey announced plans to coordinate ground operations in Syria following last week's surprise announcement of a full US troop draw down from Syria, according to statements by Moscow's top diplomat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. When it comes to Manbij, for Erdogan this will require proof of a full withdrawal of armed Kurdish YPG fighters from the town and countryside.
Lavrov said after talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Moscow, "Of course we paid special attention to new circumstances which appeared in connection with the announced US military pullout." He explained further, "An understanding was reached of how military representatives of Russia and Turkey will continue to coordinate their steps on the ground under new conditions with a view to finally rooting out terrorist threats in Syria."
"We will continue active work (and) coordination with our Russian colleagues and colleagues from Iran to speed up the arrival of a political settlement in the Syrian Republic," he said in remarks also confirmed by Cavusoglu, according to the AFP.
However, the wild card that remains is whether or not US forces will fully and truly make a complete break from the theater. Considering the Trump administration is currently considering whether or not to leave US weapons with the Kurds, it appears a full pullout is indeed happening.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-29/us-helicopters-flying-over-manbij-confusion-reigns-turkey-and-russia-announce
President Trump has been invited by to visit Turkey in 2019 by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House said on Monday night. While Trump has not accepted the offer, he "is open to a potential meeting in the future," according to White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.
As Bloomberg notes, the invitation was extended less than a week after President Trump announced a massive withdrawal of US troops from Syria - where they have supported Kurdish forces considered enemies of the Turkish state. Erdogan considers the US allies an extension of the PKK - deemed a terrorist group by both the EU and US.
During a lengthy phone call on Dec. 14, Trump shocked even those in his inner circle by yielding to a suggestion from Erdogan to pull U.S. forces from the country, where eight years of civil war has forced millions of citizens to flee and established Iran and Russia as protectors of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The president later declared that the U.S. had won the battle against Islamic State, saying that was "my only reason for being there." -Bloomberg
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-26/turkey-mulls-purchase-patriot-missiles-amid-ongoing-russian-s-400-sales
President Donald Trump's announcement of an imminent withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria summoned a predictable paroxysm of outrage from Washington's foreign policy establishment. Former secretary of state and self-described "hair icon" Hillary Clinton perfectly distilled the bipartisan freakout into a single tweet, accusing Trump of "isolationism" and "playing into Russia and Iran's hands."
Michelle Flournoy, the DC apparatchik who would have been Hillary's secretary of defense, slammed the pull-out as "foreign policy malpractice," while Hillary's successor at the State Department, John Kerry, threw bits of red meat to the Russiagate-crazed Democratic base by branding Trump's decision "a Christmas gift to Putin." From the halls of Congress to the K Street corridors of Gulf-funded think tanks, a chorus of protest proclaimed that removing U.S. troops from Syria would simultaneously abet Iran and bring ISIS back from the grave.
Yet few of those thundering condemnations of the president's move seemed able to explain just why a few thousand U.S. troops had been deployed to the Syrian hinterlands in the first place. If the mission was to destroy ISIS, then why did ISIS rise in the first place? And why was the jihadist organization still festering right in the midst of the U.S. military occupation?
Too many critics of withdrawal had played central roles in the Syrian crisis to answer these questions honestly. They had either served as media cheerleaders for intervention, or crafted the policies aimed at collapsing Syria's government that fueled the rise of ISIS. The Syrian catastrophe was their legacy, and they were out to defend it at any cost.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/27/critics-of-syria-withdrawal-fueled-rise-of-isis/
Much, much more here. Operation Timber Sycamore was just the beginning.
The invasion and occupation of Syria by tens of thousands of jihadists who were recruited from around the world to overthrow Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, was financed mainly by US taxpayers and by the world's wealthiest family, the Sauds, who own Saudi Arabia and the world's largest oil company, Aramco. America's international oil companies and major think tanks and 'charitable' foundations were also supportive and providing propaganda for the operation, but the main financing for it came from America's taxpayers, and from the Saud family and from the Government that they own.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/12/26/who-was-secretly-behind-america-invading-and-occupying-syria.html
Tom Luongo on the remarkable stability of the Russian Ruble, despite sanctions and oil price fluctuations:
Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev finally made it clear that Russian political leaders have turned a corner on their thinking.
He added that US sanctions have pushed Moscow and Beijing to think about the use of their domestic currencies in settlements, something that "we should have done ten years ago."
"Trading for rubles is our absolute priority, which, by the way, should eventually turn the ruble from a convertible currency into a reserve currency," the Russian prime minister said.
That's what Putin's endless meetings are all about, building trade across central Asia with the ruble as a viable alternative for the dollar.
The trend is clear. The West is broke. The endless hunt for taxes to shore up federal budgets will continue. The U.S. is interested solely in maintaining its power. This is really what Trump means when he says, "Make America Great Again."
https://tomluongo.me/2018/12/27/a-stable-ruble-is-the-key-to-russias-survival/
Always colorful, Jim Kunstler,on dealing with fundamental economic changes...
Thursday's last minute 900-point turnaround was another marvelous stunt to behold. Somebody gave the drowned man a pair of swim fins to kick himself furiously to the surface for a gulp of air. The truth, of course, is that pension funds are sunk, however you balance their investment loads while they're underwater. They over-bought stocks out of sheer desperation during ten years of near-ZIRP bond yields, and started rotating back into bonds as they crept above the ZIRP handle, and now with bond yields retreating, they're loading up again on still-overpriced stocks that pretend to be "bargains." Everybody knows that this will not end well for pension funds. Glug Glug.
The financial press and their red-headed step-siblings in the regular news media seem to think that getting rid of Mr. Trump will power the perpetual bull market into an Elon Musk nirvana of Martian vacations, hyperloops, and another chapter of US world domination — with Wonder Woman running the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spearheading an army of eunuchs. ..
The true rebalancing of pension funds, and everything else in American life, will come with the recognition that we are tapped out and bumping up against actual limits. Alas, economies don't de-grow, at least not in an orderly way. They reach a certain complete efflorescence and then they wilt, or collapse. ..
The argument will come down to the Mitigationists versus the Adapters. The problem for the Mitigators is that most of what they can do is based on pretending: e.g. that some energy miracle is at hand… that we'll soon be mining asteroids… that we'll build dikes around Miami Beach… that Modern Monetary Theory (the "science" of getting something for nothing) can negate the physical laws of the universe. The Mitigationists will be disappointed as they "consume" their last images of iPhone porn, waiting for Elon Musk to save the world. The Adapters will be out there working with the changes that reality serves up, probably with hand tools. There may be a lot fewer of them, living in a more austere everyday economy, but they will remain onstage when the Mitigationists depart this earth in tears for a mysterious realm that turns out not to be a golf course subdivision on Mars with a Tesla in every driveway.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/which-side-are-you-on/
There was a stock market head-fake Friday afternoon as "somebody" placed buy orders on stocks, in the pattern of pension funds buying, in order to force a short squeeze and run up prices (and presumably sell into the rally). It started to work, then didn't work at all.
Meanwhile, as it became clear that no real pension bid was coming, the selling returned, and stocks closed near session lows, with the Dow losing almost 400 points of gains and briefly dropping below 23,000 although the selloff was far more controlled than the liquidation puke observed on Monday.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-28/stocks-soar-then-slide-following-epic-pension-buying-fake-out
America, the "Mock Democracy"
The citizens are disenfranchised and conditioned to be politically apathetic consumers. In recent decades, democracy has been replaced by the illusion of democracy. New forms of organization of power and psychological methods for manipulation of our consciousness protect the powerful against the risks of democratic empowerment and strengthen their position... Democracy today really means an elected oligarchy of economic and political elites, in which central areas of society, especially the economy, are fundamentally removed from any democratic control and accountability; at the same time, large parts of the social organization of our own life lie outside the democratic sphere. And freedom today means above all the freedom of the economically powerful...Democracy, which was originally associated with great hopes for political self-determination and a safeguarding of internal and external peace, is left only as a formal shell in the real structure of society. Democracy has been reduced to a staged spectacle of periodical elections, where the population can choose from a given «elite spectrum». Real democracy has been replaced by the illusion of democracy; free public debate has been replaced by opinion- and outrage-management. The guiding principle of the responsible citizen has been replaced by the neoliberal ideal of the politically apathetic consumer... Hardly more than a historical memory is left of the great hopes originally associated with democracy and international law, namely, the hopes that civilization could contain power and violence. The populace is all the more being forcefully convinced of the political rhetoric of democracy and international law, with which the economically or militarily strong seek to win the consent or tolerance of the populace for their actual practice of a violent realpolitik. In today's realpolitik, the right of the strongest has again long been accepted...The social transformation process associated with these things is similar to the effects of a «revolution from above», i.e. a revolution that represents a project of the economic elites and serves to expand and consolidate their interests. The transformation process that accompanies this revolution essentially rests on two pillars... The first pillar of this transformation process is that the organizational forms of power are designed more abstractly and with a purposeful diffusion of social responsibility, so that the unease, indignation or anger of those ruled can find no concrete, i.e. politically effective, targets. Thus a will for change in the population can no longer find expression among the actual decision-makers... The second pillar is the development of sophisticated and highly effective techniques that can in a targeted way manipulate the consciousness of the ruled. Ideally, those who are ruled should not even know that there are centers of power behind the political surface, presented by the media, of seemingly democratically controlled power. The most important goal is to neutralize any social will to change in the population or divert their attention to politically insignificant goals. (transgender bathrooms?) ... We can only develop promising strategies of resistance to the current order based on power and violence if we sufficiently understand these new organizational forms of power. The same applies to the manipulation techniques, through which specific properties of our mind can be exploited for political purposes.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/28/the-mock-democracy/
Imagine you were the chief of a CIA section called Consciousness Covert Ops. What would you try to do, given that your motive, as always, is control?
"The brain functions according to laws. We're discovering more and more about those laws. We can determine when the brain is malfunctioning. We're learning how to correct those malfunctions."
You're spinning narrative about the brain as if it were a car that has to visit the shop. That's what you want. You want to make people believe their brains need fixes, because, after all, you come out of the long tradition of CIA MKULTRA mind control...
"Consciousness? A very old idea that, in light of the progress of technology, has no merit. It's really information processing. The brain handles that. The brain is a computer. We're learning how to build a better brain…"
Brain=computer=consciousness is the greatest covert op on the planet. It's supported with major money and labs and journals and armies of psychiatrists and neurological professionals and physicists and the military.
And the op is completely false, because, again, the very scientists who push it are saying the brain is composed of sub-atomic particles THAT CONTAIN ZERO CONSCIOUSNESS.
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/if-you-chief-of-cia-consciousness-ops/
Thinking It Over
Threats Of Peace
Christmas Context
Anticipating Spring
Full Moon Solstice
Expect Disruptions
Seeing The Difference
Do It Yourself World
Heimlich Maneuver Empire
Yellow Jacket Swarm


text:
Schlagwort-Archive: covid19
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-bluetooth-contact-tracing-covid-19/
The tech giants have teamed up to use a Bluetooth-based framework to keep track of the spread of infections without compromising location privacy.
The companies chose to skirt privacy pitfalls and implement a system that collects no location data.Photograph: Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe/Getty Images
Since Covid-19 began its spread across the world, technologists have proposed using so-called contact-tracing apps to track infections via smartphones. Now, Google and Apple are teaming up to give contact-tracers the ingredients to make that system possible—while in theory still preserving the privacy of those who use it.
On Friday, the two companies announced a rare joint project to create the groundwork for Bluetooth-based contact-tracing apps that can work across both iOS and Android phones. In mid-May, they plan to release an application programming interface that apps from public health organizations can tap into. The API will let those apps use a phone's Bluetooth radios—which have a range of about 30 feet—to keep track of whether a smartphone's owner has come into contact with someone who later turns out to have been infected with Covid-19. Once alerted, that user can then self-isolate or get tested themselves.
"We need to keep advocating to make sure this is done properly."Cristina White, Stanford University
Crucially, Google and Apple say the system won't involve tracking user locations or even collecting any identifying data that would be stored on a server. "This is a very unprecedented situation for the world," said one of the joint project's spokespeople in a phone call with WIRED. "As platform companies we've both been thinking hard about what we can do to help get people back to normal life and back to work effectively. We think in bringing the two platforms together we can solve digital contact tracing at scale in partnership with public health authorities and do it in a privacy-preserving way."
Unlike Apple, which has complete control over its software and hardware and can push system-wide changes with relative ease, Google faces a fragmented Android ecosystem. The company will still make the framework available to all devices running Android 6.0 or higher by delivering the update through Google Play Services, which does not require hardware partners to sign off.
Several projects, including ones led by developers at MIT, Stanford, and the governments of Singapore and Germany, have already proposed, and in some cases implemented, similar Bluetooth-based contact-tracing systems. Google and Apple declined to say which specific groups or government agencies they've been working with. But they argue that by building operating-level functions those applications can tap into, the apps will be far more effective and energy efficient. Most importantly, they'll be interoperable between the two dominant smartphone platforms.
In the version of the system set to roll out next month, the operating-system-level Bluetooth tracing would allow users to opt in to a Bluetooth-based proximity-detection scheme when they download a contact-tracing app. Their phone would then constantly ping out Bluetooth signals to others nearby while also listening for communications from nearby phones.
If two phones spend more than a few minutes within range of one another, they would each record contact with the other phone, exchanging unique, rotating identifier "beacon" numbers that are based on keys stored on each device. Public heath app developers would be able to "tune" both the proximity and the amount of time necessary to qualify as a contact based on current information about how Covid-19 spreads.
If a user is later diagnosed with Covid-19, they would alert their app with a tap. The app would then upload their last two weeks of keys to a server, which would then generate their recent "beacon" numbers and send them out to other phones in the system. If someone else's phone finds that one of these beacon numbers matches one stored on their phone, they would be notified that they've been in contact with a potentially infected person and given information about how to help prevent further spread.
Courtesy of Google
The advantage of that system, in terms of privacy, is that it doesn't depend on collecting location data. "People's identities aren't tied to any contact events," said Cristina White, a Stanford computer scientist who described a very similar Bluetooth-based contact tracing project known as Covid-Watch to WIRED last week. "What the app uploads instead of any identifying information is just this random number that the two phones would be able to track down later but that nobody else would, because it's stored locally on their phones."
Until now, however, Bluetooth-based schemes like the one White described suffered from how Apple limits access to Bluetooth when apps run in the background of iOS, a privacy and power-saving safeguard. It will lift that restriction specifically for contact-tracing apps. And Apple and Google say that the protocol they're releasing will be designed to use minimal power to save phones' battery lives. "This thing has to run 24-7, so it has to really only sip the battery life," said one of the project's spokespeople.
In a second iteration of the system rolling out in June, Apple and Google say they'll allow users to enable Bluetooth-based contact-tracing even without an app installed, building the system into the operating systems themselves. This would be opt-in as well. But while the phones would exchange "beacon" numbers via Bluetooth, users would still need to download a contact-tracing app to either declare themselves as Covid-19 positive or to learn if someone they've come into contact with was diagnosed.
Google and Apple's Bluetooth-based system has some significant privacy advantages over GPS-based location-tracking systems that have been proposed by other researchers including at MIT, the University of Toronto, McGill, and Harvard. Since those systems collect location data, they would require complex cryptographic systems to avoid collecting information about users' movements that could potentially expose highly personal information, from political dissent to extramarital affairs.
With Google and Apple's announcement, it's clear that the companies chose to skirt those privacy pitfalls and implement a system that collects no location data. "It looks like we won," says Stanford's White, whose Covid-Watch project, part of a consortium of projects using a Bluetooth-based system, had advocated for the Bluetooth-only approach. "It's clear from the API that it was influenced by our work. It's following the exact suggestions from our engineers about how implement it."
Sticking to Bluetooth alone doesn't guarantee the system won't violate users' privacy, White notes. Although Google and Apple say they'll only upload anonymous identifiers from users' phones, a server could nonetheless identify Covid-19 users in other ways, such as based on their IP address. The organization running a given app still needs to act responsibly. "Exactly what they're proposing for the backend still isn't clear, and that's really important," White says. "We need to keep advocating to make sure this is done properly and the server isn't collecting information it shouldn't."
Even with Bluetooth tracing, the app still faces some practical challenges. First, it would need significant adoption and broad willingness to share Covid-19 infection information to work. And it will also require a safeguard that only allows users to declare themselves Covid-19 positive after a healthcare provider has officially diagnosed them, so that the system isn't overrun with false positives. Covid-Watch, for instance, would require the user to get a confirmation code from a health care provider.
Bluetooth-based systems, in contrast with location-based systems, also have some problems of their own. If someone leaves behind traces of the novel coronavirus on a surface, for instance, someone can be infected by it without their phones ever being in proximity.
A spokesperson for the Google and Apple project didn't deny that possibility, but argued that those cases of "environmental transmission" are relatively rare compared to direct transmission from people in proximity of each other. "This won't cut every chain of every transmission," the spokesperson said. "But if you cut enough of them, you modulate the transmission enough to flatten the curve."
Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Biologie, Data Analystics, Machine Learning, Privacy, Security und getaggt mit corona, covid, covid19, Mass Surveillance, Surveillance am 11. April 2020 von innovation.
We're all feeling a little cooped up right now. So why not shelter in place like you're in a space shuttle, orbiting above the Earth?
Source and VIDEO:
https://www.wired.com/story/astronaut-mike-massimino-isolation-coronavirus/
Mike Massimino has experienced the greatest isolation a human being could ever know: the solitude of space, hundreds of miles above humanity. A NASA astronaut for 18 years, Massimino spent about a month total sheltering in place—or, more accurately, sheltering in space—aboard two separate missions on the space shuttle, donning a suit and stepping out into the ether to repair the Hubble telescope, and taking in the greatest view a human could ever know.
But it was isolation, nonetheless. "Like many of you, I'm sheltering in place right now," says Massimino, who is currently back on Earth. "I'm inside my home, and it's kind of like being inside of a spaceship again." We Earthlings may have the luxury of gravity and grocery stores and fresh air, but you might be feeling more like an astronaut right now than you know. So take it from Massimino: You're more in control of your isolation than you know.
First of all, he advises, reach out to "mission control," and be a mission control for someone else. In other words, let others know if you need help, and be available to help them as well. On one spacewalk to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, Massimino recalls, he ended up stripping a bolt on a science instrument while trying to remove a handle. "I thought it was game over," he says. "I felt like we're never going to solve this. I've created this horrible problem and we're never going to find out if there's life anywhere else in the universe and everyone will blame me." But Massimino took his problem to mission control down on Earth, and they suggested a … blunt solution: Just give the handle a good yank. And indeed, it snapped off. Problem solved.
Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.
"Reach out, be the person that people can call for help," Massimino says. "Be their mission control. And don't forget that your mission control is there to help you as well." If astronauts can email their loved ones from space (fun fact: Massimino was the first to tweet from space), you can certainly call Grandma.
Also, like astronauts, you need exercise right now—badly. Up in space, microgravity doesn't give the astronauts opportunities to work their muscles, so they use special treadmills and weight machines. If you're stuck in your house, you need exercise to keep your body and mind in order. And while you're out there, take in the scenery. (Six feet away from any other human, of course.) It can't compare to the view from orbit, but it'll shake you out of the mundanity of looking at the same walls and furniture all day.
For more tips from Massimino about how to make the most of isolation, including the importance of pursuing meaningful distractions (emphasis on meaningful), check out our video above.
Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Privacy und getaggt mit corona, covid, covid19 am 11. April 2020 von innovation.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
FREE-FOR-ALL VS. ATTEMPTED QUARANTINE
MODERATE SOCIAL DISTANCING vs. EXTENSIVE SOCIAL DISTANCING
This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May.
That is math, not prophecy. The spread can be slowed, public health professionals say, if people practice "social distancing" by avoiding public spaces and generally limiting their movement.
Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population.
We will call our fake disease simulitis. It spreads even more easily than covid-19: whenever a healthy person comes into contact with a sick person, the healthy person becomes sick, too.
In a population of just five people, it did not take long for everyone to catch simulitis.
In real life, of course, people eventually recover. A recovered person can neither transmit simulitis to a healthy person nor become sick again after coming in contact with a sick person.
Let's see what happens when simulitis spreads in a town of 200 people. We will start everyone in town at a random position, moving at a random angle, and we will make one person sick.
Notice how the slope of the red curve, which represents the number of sick people, rises rapidly as the disease spreads and then tapers off as people recover.
Our simulation town is small — about the size of Whittier, Alaska — so simulitis was able to spread quickly across the entire population. In a country like the United States, with its 330 million people, the curve could steepen for a long time before it started to slow.
[Mapping the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. and worldwide]
When it comes to the real covid-19, we would prefer to slow the spread of the virus before it infects a large portion of the U.S. population. To slow simulitis, let's try to create a forced quarantine, such as the one the Chinese government imposed on Hubei province, covid-19's ground zero.
Whoops! As health experts would expect, it proved impossible to completely seal off the sick population from the healthy.
Leana Wen, the former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, explained the impracticalities of forced quarantines to The Washington Post in January. "Many people work in the city and live in neighboring counties, and vice versa," Wen said. "Would people be separated from their families? How would every road be blocked? How would supplies reach residents?"
As Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, put it: "The truth is those kinds of lockdowns are very rare and never effective."
Fortunately, there are other ways to slow an outbreak. Above all, health officials have encouraged people to avoid public gatherings, to stay home more often and to keep their distance from others. If people are less mobile and interact with each other less, the virus has fewer opportunities to spread.
Some people will still go out. Maybe they cannot stay home because of their work or other obligations, or maybe they simply refuse to heed public health warnings. Those people are not only more likely to get sick themselves, they are more likely to spread simulitis, too.
Let's see what happens when a quarter of our population continues to move around while the other three quarters adopt a strategy of what health experts call "social distancing."
More social distancing keeps even more people healthy, and people can be nudged away from public places by removing their allure.
"We control the desire to be in public spaces by closing down public spaces. Italy is closing all of its restaurants. China is closing everything, and we are closing things now, too," said Drew Harris, a population health researcher and assistant professor at The Thomas Jefferson University College of Public Health. "Reducing the opportunities for gathering helps folks social distance."
To simulate more social distancing, instead of allowing a quarter of the population to move, we will see what happens when we let just one of every eight people move.
The four simulations you just watched — a free-for-all, an attempted quarantine, moderate social distancing and extensive social distancing — were random. That means the results of each one were unique to your reading of this article; if you scroll up and rerun the simulations, or if you revisit this page later, your results will change.
Even with different results, moderate social distancing will usually outperform the attempted quarantine, and extensive social distancing usually works best of all. Below is a comparison of your results.
Finishing simulations…
Simulitis is not covid-19, and these simulations vastly oversimplify the complexity of real life. Yet just as simulitis spread through the networks of bouncing balls on your screen, covid-19 is spreading through our human networks — through our countries, our towns, our workplaces, our families. And, like a ball bouncing across the screen, a single person's behavior can cause ripple effects that touch faraway people.
[What you need to know about coronavirus]
In one crucial respect, though, these simulations are nothing like reality: Unlike simulitis, covid-19 can kill. Though the fatality rate is not precisely known, it is clear that the elderly members of our community are most at risk of dying from covid-19.
"If you want this to be more realistic," Harris said after seeing a preview of this story, "some of the dots should disappear."
Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Big Data, Biologie, Data Analystics, Machine Learning und getaggt mit corona, covid, covid19 am 21. März 2020 von innovation.
Researchers are studying the effects of China's lockdowns to glean insights about controlling the viral pandemic.
David Cyranoski
Social distancing has been used to halt the transmission of the coronavirus in China.Credit: Getty
As the new coronavirus marches around the globe, countries with escalating outbreaks are eager to learn whether China's extreme lockdowns were responsible for bringing the crisis there under control. Other nations are now following China's lead and limiting movement within their borders, while dozens of countries have restricted international visitors.
In mid-January, Chinese authorities introduced unprecedented measures to contain the virus, stopping movement in and out of Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, and 15 other cities in Hubei province — home to more than 60 million people. Flights and trains were suspended, and roads were blocked.
Soon after, people in many Chinese cities were told to stay at home and venture out only to get food or medical help. Some 760 million people, roughly half the country's population, were confined to their homes, according to The New York Times.
It's now two months since the lockdowns began — some of which are still in place — and the number of new cases there is around a couple of dozen per day, down from thousands per day at the peak. "These extreme limitations on population movement have been quite successful," says Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease scientist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
In a report released late last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) congratulated China on a "unique and unprecedented public health response [that] reversed the escalating cases".
But the crucial question is which interventions in China were the most important in driving down the spread of the virus, says Gabriel Leung, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Hong Kong. "The countries now facing their first wave [of infections] need to know this," he says.
Nature talked to epidemiologists about whether the lockdowns really worked, if encouraging people to avoid large gatherings would have been enough and what other countries can learn from China's experience.
What happened after the lockdowns?
Before the interventions, scientists estimated that each infected person passed on the coronavirus to more than two others, giving it the potential to spread rapidly. Early models of the disease's spread, which did not factor in containment efforts, suggested that the virus, called SARS-CoV-2, would infect 40% of China's population — some 500 million people.
But between 16 and 30 January, a period that included the first 7 days of the lockdown, the number of people each infected individual gave the virus to dropped to 1.05, estimates Adam Kucharski, who models infectious-disease spread at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "That was amazing," he says.
The number of new daily infections in China seems to have peaked on 25 January — just two days after Wuhan was locked down.
Why does the coronavirus spread so easily between people?
As of 16 March, roughly 81,000 cases have been reported in China, according to the WHO. Some scientists think that many cases there were unreported — either because symptoms were not severe enough for people to seek medical care, or because tests were not carried out. But it seems clear that measures implemented during this time did work, says Christopher Dye, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, UK. "Even if there were 20 or 40 times more cases, which seems unlikely, the control measures worked," says Dye.
Could China's response have worked better?
Epidemiologists say China's mammoth response had one glaring flaw: it started too late. In the initial weeks of the outbreak in December and January, Wuhan authorities were slow to report cases of the mysterious infection, which delayed measures to contain it, says Howard Markel, a public-health researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "The delay of China to act is probably responsible for this world event," says Markel.
A model simulation by Lai Shengjie and Andrew Tatem, emerging-disease researchers at the University of Southampton, UK, shows that if China had implemented its control measures a week earlier, it could have prevented 67% of all cases there. Implementing the measures 3 weeks earlier, from the beginning of January, would have cut the number of infections to 5% of the total.
A church in Wuhan is sprayed with disinfectant. Credit: Feature China/Barcroft Media/Getty
Data from other cities also show the benefits of speed. Cities that suspended public transport, closed entertainment venues and banned public gatherings before their first COVID-19 case had 37% fewer cases than cities that didn't implement such measures, according to a preprint1 by Dye on the containment measures used in 296 Chinese cities.
Did China's travel bans specifically work?
Multiple analyses of air travel suggest that the Hubei travel bans, which stopped people leaving the province on planes, trains or in cars, slowed the virus' spread, but not for long2. A 6 March study3 published in Science by scientists in Italy, China and the United States found that cutting off Wuhan delayed disease spread to other cities in China by roughly four days.
The bans had a more lasting effect internationally, stopping four of five cases from being exported from China to other countries for two to three weeks, the team found. But after that, travellers from other cities transported the virus to other international cities, seeding new outbreaks. The team's model suggests that even blocking 90% of travel slows the virus's spread only moderately unless other measures are introduced.
How much is coronavirus spreading under the radar?
Since travel bans can only slow the spread of this type of disease, it's important that bans be implemented in a way that encourages trust, says Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "If you encourage people to lie or try to circumvent the ban, it is destined to fail," he says.
Dozens of countries across Europe, the Americas and Africa and Asia have now introduced travel restrictions.
Although the WHO warns against them, saying they aren't usually effective in preventing an infection's spread, and they could divert resources from other more helpful measures and block aid and technical support, in addition to harming many industries.
What are the lessons for other countries?
Tatem and Lai's model assesses the combined effect of China's early detection and isolation, the resulting drop in contact between people and the country's intercity travel bans on reducing the virus's spread. Together, these measures prevented cases from increasing by 67-fold — otherwise, there would have been nearly 8 million cases by the end of February.
The effect of the drop in contact between people was significant on its own. Using mobile-phone location data from Chinese Internet giant Baidu, the team found a dramatic reduction in people's movements, which they say represents a huge drop in person-to-person contact. Without this decrease, there would have been about 2.6 times as many people infected at the end of February, the pair says.
But early detection and isolation was the most important factor in reducing COVID-19 cases. In the absence of those efforts, China would have had five times as many infections as it did at the end of February. "If you are to prioritize, early detection and isolation are the most important," says Tatem.
Early detection paid off for Singapore. The country was one of the quickest to identify cases, because doctors had been warned to look out for a 'mysterious pneumonia', says Vernon Lee, who heads the communicable-disease response team for Singapore's health ministry. As the first cases popped up in Singapore, doctors promptly identified and isolated those people and started contact tracing, says Lee.
Labs rush to study coronavirus in transgenic animals — some are in short supply
The country still has under 250 COVID-19 cases, and it didn't need to introduce the drastic movement restrictions used in China. Some events have been cancelled, people with COVID-19 are being quarantined and temperature screening and other community measures are in place, says Lee. "But life is still going on," he says.
The impact of school closures in China is unknown. A preprint study4 of the spread of COVID-19 in Shenzhen has found that although children are just as likely to be infected as adults, it is still not clear whether children, many of whom don't show symptoms, can transmit the virus. "This will be critical in evaluating the impact of school closures," says Lessler, the co-author of the study.
Are COVID cases coming to an end in China?
New cases of COVID-19 have slowed dramatically in China, but some fear that once the country fully eases its control measures, the virus could start circulating again. It could even be reintroduced into China from the countries now experiencing outbreaks. Because China's measures protected so many people from infection, a large pool of people have no immunity against the virus, says Leung.
China is suppressing the virus, not eradicating it, says Osterholm. The world will need to wait until about eight weeks after China resumes to some form of normality to know what it did or didn't accomplish with its population-movement limitations, he says .
There is probably a fierce debate going on in China about when to relax the lockdown measures, says Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London. He suggests there could be a second wave of new infections when they are lifted.
Lockdowns have to end at some point, and governments should remind people to maintain social distancing and good hygiene, says Anderson. "It's our actions more than government measures that will matter," he says.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00741-x
Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Biologie und getaggt mit corona, covid, covid19 am 20. März 2020 von innovation.
The U.S. government is in active talks with Facebook, Google and a wide array of tech companies and health experts about how they can use location data gleaned from Americans' phones to combat the novel coronavirus, including tracking whether people are keeping one another at safe distances to stem the outbreak.
Public-health experts are interested in the possibility that private-sector companies could compile the data in anonymous, aggregated form, which they could then use to map the spread of the infection, according to three people familiar with the effort, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the project is in its early stages.
Analyzing trends in smartphone owners' whereabouts could prove to be a powerful tool for health authorities looking to track coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 people globally. But it's also an approach that could leave some Americans uncomfortable, depending on how it's implemented, given the sensitivity when it comes to details of their daily whereabouts. Multiple sources stressed that — if they proceed — they are not building a government database.
In recent interviews, Facebook executives said the U.S. government is particularly interested in understanding patterns of people's movements, which can be derived through data the company collects from users who allow it. The tech giant in the past has provided this information to researchers in the form of statistics, which in the case of coronavirus, could help officials predict the next hotspot or decide where to allocate overstretched health resources.
Google also confirmed late Tuesday it had been in conversations with government officials, tech giants and health experts. The company says it is working on its own to tap its trove of location data, particularly any insights it can derive from its popular maps app.
"We're exploring ways that aggregated anonymized location information could help in the fight against COVID-19. One example could be helping health authorities determine the impact of social distancing, similar to the way we show popular restaurant times and traffic patterns in Google Maps," spokesman Johnny Luu said in a statement, stressing any such partnership "would not involve sharing data about any individual's location, movement, or contacts."
At the White House, an official at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the government is "encouraged by American technology companies looking to leverage aggregated, anonymized data to glean key insights for covid-19 modeling efforts."
The official added those insights might "help public health officials, researchers, and scientists improve their understanding of the spread of covid-19 and transmission of the disease."
Live updates: Coronavirus quarantines, lockdowns and closures upend life across the globe
A task force created by tech executives, entrepreneurs and investors presented a range of ideas around disease mapping and telehealth to the White House during a private meeting Sunday. The discussions included representatives from tech giants, including Apple and Google; investors led by the New York-based firm Hangar and well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway; public-health leaders from Harvard University; and smaller telehealth start-ups like Ro, two people said.
"We are still in the process of collecting ideas, recommendations, and proposed actions from task-force members, which we intend to present to the White House in the coming days," said Josh Mendelsohn, the managing partner at Hangar, who helped organize the effort.
Many of those involved either did not respond or declined to comment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to a request for comment. Apple said Tuesday it has only worked on issues related to telehealth and distance learning, stressing it doesn't collect iPhone users' locations.
The early, unprecedented collaboration between Washington and Silicon Valley reflects the urgent, nationwide scramble to stop a deadly malady that has shuttered businesses, skewered the stock market, sent students home from school and now threatens to overwhelm the U.S. medical system with patients in need of critical care.
Over the past week, White House officials led by Michael Kratsios, the country's chief technology officer, have convened meetings to leverage the tech expertise of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM and other technology leaders. The government has encouraged social-media sites to take a more aggressive approach to thwart coronavirus conspiracy theories, The Washington Post has reported, responding to concerns that foreign misinformation might be stoking panic about the outbreak. And the Trump administration has explored partnering with the tech industry to improve telework and telehealth offerings for millions of Americans.
White House asks Silicon Valley for help to combat coronavirus, track its spread and stop misinformation
The relationship hasn't been without its hiccups: On Friday, President Trump announced Google would be developing a website so Americans could learn how to get tested for coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19. That differed from the initial statements from Google's parent company, Alphabet, which had indicated it planned a more limited offering targeting residents of California. Ultimately, though, Google said soon after it would unveil a website to provide information for U.S. patients nationwide.
On Monday, White House leaders, tech experts and health officials struck a more unified note, unveiling a portal for roughly 29,000 research papers on coronavirus. The portal allows the tech industry's artificial-intelligence tools — which can scan and analyze data en masse — to process the papers rapidly to uncover new insights about the global malady.
"Decisive action from America's science and technology enterprise is critical to prevent, detect, treat, and develop solutions to COVID-19," Kratsios said in a statement.
'It shouldn't take a pandemic': Coronavirus exposes Internet inequality among U.S. students as schools close their doors
The new efforts by Washington and Silicon Valley arrived the same week that dozens of engineers, executives and epidemiologists issued an open letter, calling on companies to take a greater stand against coronavirus. Specifically, they encouraged Apple and Google to adopt "privacy preserving" features that might enable authorities to help doctors determine people who were in contact with a patient that later tested positive for coronavirus.
"Technology companies have taken important steps already, such as closing offices in affected areas or showing custom search results in place of user generated content. But we believe there is a lot more that Silicon Valley can do to assist with large scale mitigation," they wrote.
Smartphones regularly transmit their locations to wireless carriers and often to major tech companies as well, including Google and Facebook, to make some of their services work. The makers of apps that deliver weather reports, hail rides or help people find a coffee shop also frequently collect location information, and some sell it to firms that mine the data for business insights and opportunities.
Privacy advocates typically look skeptically on such commercial uses of location data, calling for stricter laws governing its use. Recent news about Israel's plans to use location data to help track the coronavirus similarly sparked intense discussions about the legal and ethical implications of deploying such data to thwart the spread of disease and get medical help to infected people.
"The balance between privacy and pandemic policy is a delicate one," Al Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, tweeted last week. "The problem here is that this is not a law school exam. Technology can save lives, but if the implementation unreasonably threatens privacy, more lives may be at risk."
The issues are all the more sensitive for Silicon Valley because the companies faced a severe backlash in 2013, following disclosures about the role of tech company data in surveillance by the National Security Agency, made public by agency contractor Edward Snowden. Relations between tech companies and government officials were severely strained for years after and have improved only gradually.
"Privacy is the first to go when there are national security issues," said Ashkan Soltani, a former Federal Trade Commission chief technologist who covered the Snowden revelations as a journalist.
In seeking to battle the coronavirus, the U.S. government is not seeking to collect and maintain a database of Americans' whereabouts, sources cautioned. Rather, U.S. officials have asked whether companies' vast stores of geolocation data might help epidemiologists spot trends, including vulnerable populations, or identify areas at risk, such as hospitals under strain, two people said.
Facebook is already working with health researchers and nonprofits in several countries to provide anonymized and aggregated statistics about people's movements through a project called disease-prevention maps.
Facebook populates its maps with the aid of its users, who have given the company permission to collect their location — harnessed via their smartphones — while its app runs in the background. Those locations are then aggregated and anonymized by Facebook engineers, who can calculate the likelihood people in one city or town are likely to visit another area, potentially spreading the outbreak there.
The most granular data Facebook provides to outsiders can locate a person to within about a third of a mile, Facebook officials say. The tech giant does not provide any data about individuals' movement, aggregated or otherwise, to governments for disease tracking, the company says.
"You're trying to predict the probability that a group of people in Prince George's County might interact with a group of people from D.C.," said Laura McGorman, who leads the project, referring to the Maryland county in suburban Washington. Such a prediction could offer clues for how infections might travel.
McGorman said government officials, including those in California, are also interested in seeing whether people are practicing social distancing and whether it is an effective strategy. She said engineers had labored over the past 48 hours to help authorities with their requests.
She said the project is in the early phases because it is challenging to map real-time location streaming in from smartphones against analog information coming in from hospitals and cities. "It is very humbling because we have one piece of the puzzle that we can offer but there are so many other inputs in understanding how disease will spread."
For its part, Google said Tuesday it had not shared any aggregated, anonymized data, stressing the project is still in its early stages — and that it was still considering whether to participate. The company added it did not plan to tap its cache of users' location information to help in so-called "contact tracing" efforts to find people at risk of contracting coronavirus, explaining the data could not be adapted to help in that manner.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/17/white-house-location-data-coronavirus/
Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Privacy und getaggt mit corona, covid, covid19, Mass Surveillance, Privacy, Surveillance am 20. März 2020 von innovation.
An Israeli technology company, which has gained notoriety for the spyware it sells, has developed a new product it says has the ability to track the spread of the coronavirus.
NSO Group Ltd.'s product analyzes huge volumes of data to map people's movements to identify who they've come in contact with, which can then be used to stop the spread of infection, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Global Curbs Tighten; Mnuchin Seeks $850 Billion: Virus Update
About a dozen countries are testing the NSO technology, the person familiar said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a private matter. The software takes two weeks of mobile-phone tracking information from the infected person — the incubation time of the virus — then matches with location data collected by national mobile phone companies that pinpoints citizens who were in the patient's vicinity for more than 15 minutes and are vulnerable to contagion, the person said.
NSO's new product is being tested just as Israel approves the use of a tracking technology developed to combat terrorism to retrace the movements of coronavirus patients and people they've encountered. The step has proved controversial, with critics saying it constitutes an invasion of Israeli citizens' privacy.
NSO itself has a history fraught with privacy and human rights controversy. Its spyware has been suspected of helping Saudi Arabia spy on murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an accusation the company has denied. Speculation its software may have been used to hack the phone of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was also denied by the company. WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against NSO, alleging that it violated the messaging platform's terms of service by using it as a delivery mechanism for its spyware.
Why You Don't Need to Be Bezos to Worry About Spyware: QuickTake
Civilian Product
The data analysis tool is the company's first civilian product. Unlike NSO's better-known Pegasus spyware, the big-data software doesn't track mobile phones or conduct surveillance, the person said. It's a civilian product sold to national health ministries and doesn't need special export permission from Israel's Ministry of Defense, the person said.
Should the software determine a possible case of contagion, a text message is sent to the SIM number, without revealing the owner's identity to authorities, the person familiar said. Only when citizens test positive for the virus — and give permission — can officials correlate their SIM cards with their identities, the person said.
An NSO spokesman confirmed that the company developed a new data-analysis product with the ability to map the spread of the epidemic and help contain it. He declined further comment.
NSO has said it sells its surveillance technology to law enforcement and intelligence agencies to help catch criminals and terrorists. It can tap into a phone's microphone and camera, view email and messages and collect location data on the user.
'Surveillance Democracy?'
On Monday, the Israeli government authorized the country's Shin Bet internal security agency to deploy a similar technology to track the virus among its citizens, which was originally developed to monitor the movement of militants.
Critics raised concerns about putting such technology in governments' hands.
"We can use any technology to fight this horrible disease," said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the democracy in the information age program at the Israel Democracy Institute research center. "The question is, who will do it? And who will supervise it? And who will promise that after this is over, we won't become a surveillance democracy?"
In Taiwan, Singapore and all of Europe, governments hired private companies that send the data they collect to health ministries, Altshuler noted.
"Nowhere have they involved the secret services," she said.
The disease, which originated in China late last year, has spread to 141 countries and regions, infecting more than 180,000 people, killing more than 7,000 and sending economies cratering. Israel has 304 confirmed cases, with no deaths.
Israel's Internal Security Agency to Track Coronavirus Patients
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the technology "will greatly assist us in locating patients and thereby stop the spread of the virus" and stressed "strict oversight" of the tools "to ensure they would not be abused."
source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/surveillance-company-nso-supplying-data-analysis-to-stop-virus


This article describes cumulative update package 4 (build number: 12.0.5540.0) for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 2 (SP2) . This update contains fixes that were released after the release of SQL Server 2014 SP2.
We recommend that you upgrade your SQL Server installation to the latest SQL Server 2014 service pack .
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Q: Spring Data Redis as cache manager of a Spring MVC, spring security fails authentication I am working on utilising cache with spring mvc(Spring framework 5.1.0) application that uses spring security(5.1.4) with Spring data JPA(2.0.13). I have tested the caching with SimpleCaching that is available in Spring and works fine. I want to move to a better caching manager such as Redis (Redis server 5.0.3). I have configured the RedisCacheManager as such (Spring data redis:2.0.13; Jedis: 2.10.2):
<bean id="poolConfig" class="redis.clients.jedis.JedisPoolConfig">
    <property name="maxIdle" value="8"/>
    <property name="maxWaitMillis" value="6000"/>
    <property name="testOnBorrow" value="true"/>
</bean>

<bean id="jedisConnectionFactory" class="org.springframework.data.redis.connection.jedis.JedisConnectionFactory"
      p:host-name="localhost" p:port="6379"
      p:pool-config-ref="poolConfig" p:usePool="true"/>

<bean id="redisCacheWriter" class="org.springframework.data.redis.cache.DefaultRedisCacheWriter">
    <constructor-arg name="connectionFactory" ref="jedisConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="defaultRedisCacheConfiguration" class="org.springframework.data.redis.cache.RedisCacheConfiguration"
      factory-method="defaultCacheConfig"/>

    <bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.data.redis.cache.RedisCacheManager"
   c:cacheWriter-ref="redisCacheWriter" c:defaultCacheConfiguration-ref="defaultRedisCacheConfiguration" c:initialCacheNames="user"
   p:transaction-aware="true"/>

I use @Cachable and @CachePut to perform the caching. I see in the log that it correctly picks up the cache and initilise it from the retrieved value from the database.
TRACE [ework.cache.interceptor.CacheInterceptor]: Computed cache key 'User= \********\' for operation Builder[public abstract eee.entity.User eee.repository.UserRepository.findByEmail(java.lang.String)] caches=[user] | key=''User= ' + #result.email' | keyGenerator='' | cacheManager='' | cacheResolver='' | condition='#result != null' | unless=''
However, when a user attempts to login it fails indicating that the user doesn't exist. As if the data doesn't exist in the database. This only happens if I switch to Redis as cacheManager. Any ideas? Thanks in advance

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Standard features of the Formax 6406 Series Inserters includes a large vertical output stacker which can hold up to 500 filled envelope and a top-loading envelope hopper with a capacity of up to 325 envelopes which can be refilled on-the-fly. Double document detectors located at each feeder and the insertion area ensure no double documents are fed into the system. The 6406 Series utilizes electromechanical detectors which can operate with any print density, paper color, thickness or paper dust. Documents requiring inspection can be delivered automatically to the divert station. The 6406 Series also offers energy savings with its auto standby mode, which goes into effect after 1 hour of idle time.
One of the many user-friendly features of the Formax 6406 Inserter is the 7" full-color touchscreen control panel with graphics-based display and automatic paper and envelope presence sensors. AutoSetTM allows operators to load envelopes and documents, then adjusts all settings automatically with the ability to store up to 50 programmed jobs for instant recall. Its powerful folding capacity folds up to 10 sheets (half fold) or up to 8 sheets (tri-fold) at one time, plus it's capable of folding and inserting top, middle and bottom-address documents into top-flap envelopes.** Cascade Mode allows users to link feeders for continuous operation: when one feeder empties, another takes over.
The versatile 6406 Series can be configured to accommodate a range of folding and inserting applications. Models are available with 2 to 6 stations for flexibility and include a variety of input configurations: a high-capacity document feeder for up to 725 sheets, 1 or 2 high-capacity production feeders, standard and special feeders, and short feed trays.
high-capacity production feeders, short feed trays for small inserts or BREs, side exit trays, custom cabinets and 402 Series Joggers.


The banking landscape in Ghana is increasingly becoming competitive due to rivalry among existing players, of new entrants, bargaining power of bank customers, availability of substitutes such as mobile money, insurance among others.
s is an indication that bank customers have become enlightened and are trying to play safe.
For ???RCB's???? to be successful in this financial space, it is crucial to service quality.
This article therefore, consider the strategies that ???RCB's??? should adopt to improve service quality, remain competitive, ensure customer loyalty, improve brand image among others.
To improve service quality, of RCB's, especially customer contact staff should be empowered to enable or permit them to make a range of decisions to assist customers.
This will result in improved service quality. There is also the need to give some staff a limit to operate in order to enhance delivery process.
It is worth mentioning that not everybody is well suited for service position. For example, people who are always in bad mood, have bad temper, unfriendly, low self-esteem, lack of passion to serve customers are not fit to occupy customer contact positions.
Knowledge about , pricing and other issues about the bank are important in order to ensure that customers are given accurate information.
In vein, lack of knowledge on the part of staff which makes it impossible for them to handle basic enquiries from customers will result in disappointment on the part of customers.
Some managers are sometimes reluctant to allow their staff to attend customer service training the reason that they do not see any results after the training.
Let me point out the fact that, customer service training is meant to modify staff negative and attitude as well as ensuring that they acquire the necessary skills to improve service quality.
Do you think staff can make a customer happy? Management of RCB's should motivate staff to improve service quality.
Let me point out the fact that, of staff is not always about money.
When the staff are motivated, there would be moment of truth.
Management should view and treat employees as internal customers.
This dissatisfaction and in worse case cognitive dissonance.
To improve service quality RCBs should not what they cannot deliver.
According to marketing 96 per cent of dissatisfied customers not complain to the service organisation.
Banking as a service is characterised by heterogeneity. This means it is difficult to ensure consistency in service delivery.
In order to minimise of service delivery, RCBs should deploy technology such as ATM Platform, Mobile Banking and others to deliver services.
of RCBs should work as a team to improve and offer superior service quality to customers.
Management of RCBs should examine their operations with a view to identifying service quality gaps and put forth effort to close the gaps.


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Oakland Athletics Information
The roots of the modern day Oakland Athletics can be traced back to 1901 in Philadelphia, when former catcher Connie Mack organized the team. Immediately, the A's established themselves as a dominant team. From the time of the team's inception to 1914, the team had won six American League pennants and three World Series titles. The A's cooled off until the team recaptured the World Series crown in both 1929 and 1930.
The next twenty years proved to be difficult and unsuccessful ones, as the team's record slipped significantly and revenues dropped. In 1954, the owners of the A's approved the sale of the team to a Chicago businessman, who moved the team to Kansas City. After Charles Finley purchased a controlling interest in the team in 1960, he was persistent in his efforts to move the team out of Kansas City.
In 1967, the American League owners agreed to allow Finley to move the team to Oakland. The team was just beginning to gel as it moved to Oakland. This resulted in three consecutive World Series titles from 1972-1974. Stars like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers played crucial roles in the team's utter domination during these years. After the 1976 season, most of the A's veteran players became eligible for free agency, and almost all left. The A's once again won the World Series in 1989, beating cross-bay rival San Francisco Giants.
Lately the A's have been trying to hold a winning record after coming up short for the past three seasons. In 2008, they finished with a 75-86 record, finishing in third place in the AL West. In the process of rebuilding, they traded away Rich Harden, Chad Gaudin, and Joe Blanton to the Chicago Cubs. In return they picked up Sean Gallagher, Josh Donaldson, Eric Patterson, Matt Murton, and three minor-league prospects. They concluded the 2009 season with the same number of victories to fill the fourth spot in the division.
Before the start of their 2010 campaign, the A's front office took action and traded Brett Wallace to the Toronto Blue Jays for OF Michael Taylor. They also signed starting pitcher Ben Sheets to a one-year deal. In May of 2010, Dallas Braden became the 19th player in MLB history to throw a perfect game in a 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. They finished the season with an 81-81 record, good enough for second in the division.
In 2011, Oakland suffered a setback and came in third in the division at 74-88. During the off-season, they traded away many pitchers, including Andrew Bailey to the Red Sox, Craig Breslow and Trevor Cahill to the Diamondbacks, and Gio Gonzales to the Nationals. In return, they received a number of prospects who they are hoping will help them in the future. The 2012 season will see them trying to compete with the AL Champion Rangers and much-improved Angels.


Once referred to as alimony, spousal support is the payment of money by one spouse to the other following divorce. During divorce proceedings, spousal support must be decided before child support. While this payment used to be routinely awarded to the wife, today either spouse may be expected to make these payments, regardless of gender. A Boca Raton spousal support lawyer can explain all of the factors that influence the amount, duration and taxability or deductibility of these payments.
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The fourth edition of the Toffler Festival brings together several great artists in the house and techno genre. International artists this year cover the poster, but also familiar faces like Benny Rodrigues and Michel de Hey are back. Have you always wanted to attend a Toffler Festival concert? Then now it's your chance to get your Toffler Festival tickets for the next live gig! True Toffler Festival fans pay attention, because another Toffler Festival concert has been scheduled! Of course Toffler Festival will play and sing all the well-known songs, so it's a real pleasure for the real fan to be present at this Toffler Festival 2019! Official Toffler Festival tickets can now be ordered from your online ticket specialist. As a true fan of Toffler Festival you do not want to miss this show, so reserve your tickets before it's too late. Toffler Festival tickets for 2019 can now be booked easily!
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