Katherine (Irene) Kurtz (born 18 October 1944) is the author of numerous fantasy novels, most notably the Deryni novels. Although born in America, for the past several years, up until just recently, she has lived in a castle in Ireland. She now lives in Virginia.
She was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. She also was an early member of the Society for Creative Anachronism; in her persona of Bevan Fraser of Stirling she achieved the rank of Countess, ruling the Kingdom of the West as Queen Consort for one reign in the 1970s.
Source: Wikipedia, "Katherine Kurtz", available under the CC-BY-SA License.


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Memory process in patients with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction
Heart failure is a complex syndrome characterized by hemodynamic and neuro-hormonal alterations. In recent literature a relationship between heart failure and the presence of cognitive disorders, in particular in the domain of the attentional-executive functions, was reported and associated with neuroradiological modifications. Although different studies present very heterogeneous data, it was found that patients with heart failure show a higher risk of developing dementia. It has been proposed that two mechanisms may explain the onset of cognitive disorders: 1) chronic cerebral hypoperfusion related to reduced cardiac output, and 2) the formation of microemboli due to atrial fibrillation or thrombus at ventricular level. Among the factors that contribute to this complex picture the presence of left ventricular dysfunction (i.e. a reduced cardiac capacity measured by ejection fraction) might have a crucial role although it is not yet fully understood. Most of the studies were conducted in patients with moderate or severe heart failure, therefore in a context of co-morbidity which can be rather complex. In the absence of advanced-stage disease, it is still unclear how the cardiac hemodynamic changes affect brain functional performance in elderly people. From a prevention perspective it would be useful to be able to detect sub-clinical signs of cognitive decline in patients with cardiac disorders, but who do not yet have a marked decompensation, that is to say when patients are substantially asymptomatic from a clinical point of view. Electrophysiological measures, such as event-related potentials (ERPs), might be useful in characterizing cognitive involvement associated with ventricular dysfunction. Indeed ERPs make it possible to determine the electrical activity in the brain during the execution of a task and to identify which areas are specifically involved. Based on these premises, a study was conducted in which behavioural measures and electrophysiological recordings were combined to assess the impact on cognitive performance of ventricular dysfunction (reduced ejection fraction) which is not associated with notable cardiac decompensation.
Two groups of patients with clinically stable coronary artery disease associated with heart failure were investigated: the first group with left ventricular dysfunction [ejection fraction < 40%], the second without left ventricular dysfunction [ejection fraction > 55%].
The patients were subjected to a verbal memory protocol in which lists of words to be memorized were presented. Immediately after this set presentation, the same words (old) were presented along with new words, i.e. words that were not on the memorized list. The subjects' task was to indicate whether each word belonged to the original list or not. ERPs were recorded during the behavioural task.
The results showed a dissociation between behavioural data and electrophysiological data. In particular, the two groups of patients showed no significant differences in memory task performance, and no differences in neuropsychological assessment were found. Regarding the ERPs, it is known from the literature that a positive component – in the range 350 to 550 ms after stimulus presentation – is larger for previously stored stimuli (old) with respect to stimuli seen for the first time (new). This old/new effect, which is particularly evident in the frontal sites, was present in the group of patients without ventricular dysfunction while it was not observed in patients with dysfunction.
These preliminary data suggest that ERPs can be useful in detecting functional anomalies that cannot be observed at behavioural level. Early identification of small sub-clinical signs of cognitive decline may help plan preventive treatment for clinically asymptomatic patients with ventricular dysfunction.
Giovannelli F., Simoni D., Gavazzi G., Giganti F., Olivotto I., Cincotta M., Pratesi A.,
Baldasseroni S., Viggiano MP.
University of Florence, Italy
Electrophysiological correlates of word recognition memory process in patients with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction.
Giovannelli F, Simoni D, Gavazzi G, Giganti F, Olivotto I, Cincotta M, Pratesi A, Baldasseroni S, Viggiano MP
Clin Neurophysiol. 2016 Sep
Significant effect of polyoxometalates on the… Gold(I) cluster complexes have attracted much attention owing to their excellent catalytic activity in a broad range of organic reactions. We recently discovered that polyoxometalate (POM ) - mediated clusterization…
Pathophysiological advantages derived from… It has been over 100 years since Marie Krogh developed the method to measure the transfer of carbon monoxide (CO) through the alveolar wall. Since then, the single-breath CO diffusing…
Efficient catalyst-free removal technique of benzene… Benzene (C6H6) is a typical VOC (volatile organic compound) pollutant which is widely detected in the atmosphere of both indoor and industrial areas. Especially in indoor environment, it would make…
Less may be more in catheter ablation of persistent… Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most prevalent heart rhythm disorder worldwide; at present, it affects more than 33 million subjects globally and it is expected that its prevalence will double…
Fistula salvage For patients with renal failure renal replacement therapy, better known as dialysis is necessary. Without dialysis the body's waste products rapidly build up posing a risk of immediate death to…
Mind-wandering plus mindfulness: say 'no' to… Mind wandering and its equivalent concepts such as self-generated thought, stimulus independent thought, task-unrelated thought, and spontaneous thought refer to a mental phenomenon that occupies considerable time in everyday life.…
coronary artery disease, ERP, heart failure, left ventricular ejection fraction, memory, old–new effect

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Blériot XI – jeden z pierwszych samolotów francuskich zbudowany przez Louisa Blériota i Raymonda Saulniera w 1909.

W Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego w Krakowie znajduje się replika samolotu Blériot XI zbudowana w 1967 przez Pawła Zołotowa.

Konstrukcja
Maszyna była wykonana z drewna dębowego i topolowego w konfiguracji jednopłata ze skrzydłami pokrytymi płótnem. Początkowo napęd stanowił silnik innego francuskiego pioniera lotnictwa Roberta Esnault-Pelterie, napędzający czterołopatowe metalowe śmigło, z którego jednak zrezygnowano na korzyść 3-cylindrowego silnika Anzani o mocy 25 KM, który mimo prostej konstrukcji charakteryzował się lepszymi parametrami. Dodatkową zachętą dla Blériota był fakt, że silnik ten był zdolny do nieprzerwanej pracy przez godzinę. Blériot XI posiadał również nowatorskie rozwiązanie podwozia głównego, które było zamocowane elastycznie, umożliwiając lądowanie także przy bocznym wietrze. Na skrzydłach zamiast lotek znajdowały się zintegrowane z płatem ruchome powierzchnie sterowe. Usterzenie ogonowe składało się ze steru wysokości i steru kierunku bez statecznika pionowego. Niezamierzenie Blériot zapewnił dodatkową stabilność boczną maszyny poprzez pozostawienie tylnej części kadłuba bez poszycia, co przyczyniło się do zmniejszenia sił wywieranych przez boczne podmuchy wiatru.

Przelot nad kanałem
Pierwszy przelot nad kanałem La Manche w maszynie cięższej od powietrza miał miejsce 25 lipca 1909. Blériot, zgodnie z wymaganiami stawianymi przez Daily Mail, fundatora nagrody za ten wyczyn, wystartował o wschodzie słońca (4:35 rano) z Les Barraques niedaleko Calais. Po 37 minutach lotu o 5:12 samolot wylądował po drugiej stronie kanału, w Dover pokonując drogę 22 mil statutowych, czyli 35 kilometrów. Jedynym wyposażeniem nawigacyjnym pilota był kompas, gdyż pilotowanie maszyny na podstawie nawigacji wzrokowej było niemożliwe ze względu na mglistą pogodę. Lądowanie odbyło się na wybrzeżu Anglii, gdzie na zwycięzcę oczekiwał wymachujący francuską flagą reporter brytyjskiej gazety Daily Mail. Lądowanie było dość twarde, ale zakończyło się powodzeniem mimo uszkodzenia samolotu. Nagrodą ufundowaną przez redakcję Daily Mail było 1000 funtów szterlingów, czyli 25 tysięcy franków francuskich.

Jedyny konkurent Blériota w wyścigu przez kanał La Manche będący jednym z pionierów lotnictwa Hubert Latham w samolocie typu Antoinette zaspał i nie stawił się na starcie odpowiednio wcześnie, aby mieć szansę na zwycięstwo.

Dla upamiętnienia wyczynu Louisa Blériota miejscowość Les Barraques została później przemianowana na Blériot Plage.

Wersje rozwojowe
Po zakończonym sukcesem przelocie nad kanałem La Manche pojawiły się zamówienia na samolot Blériot XI, dlatego też Louis Blériot musiał zająć się robieniem interesów kosztem pasji lotniczej. Do września 1909 roku wytwórnia Blériota otrzymała zamówienie na 101 maszyn napędzanych różnymi silnikami włącznie z mocniejszym rotacyjnym Gnome oraz unowocześnionym Anzani. Samoloty te były sprzedawane w czterech wersjach: jako samoloty szkolne, sportowo-turystyczne, wojskowe i wyścigowe. W 1911 roku w warszawskich zakładach Awiata zbudowano trzy egzemplarze.

Niektóre z odmian samolotu Blériot XI:
 Blériot XI-2 – standardowy dwumiejscowy samolot z siedzeniami w układzie tandem (jedno za drugim)
 Blériot XI-2 bis "côté-à-côté" – większy dwumiejscowy samolot z siedzeniami obok siebie
 Blériot XI-2 Hyrdroaeroplane – wodnosamolot z pływakami i większą powierzchnią skrzydeł
 Blériot XI-2 Génie – wersja wojskowa przystosowana do łatwego przewożenia i składania. Czas montażu lub demontażu samolotu w warunkach polowych nie przekraczał 25 minut
 Blériot XI-2 BG – górnopłat w konfiguracji parasol
 Blériot XI-3 – trzymiejscowy samolot z siedzeniami w układzie tandem

Przypisy

Samoloty rajdowe i wyścigowe
Francuskie samoloty wojskowe I wojny światowej
La Manche

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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covid-19 Mar. 10, 2021
What Should We Wear Now?
A year into the pandemic, there are no more dress codes.
By Molly Young
The Unforgettable Year
Dispatches from 12 months of pandemic.
Photo: Peter King/Fox Photos/Getty Images
This article was featured in One Great Story, New York's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
Although COVID has brought an avalanche of new stressors into our lives, it has also eradicated a number of minor ones. For example: the anguish of wondering whether you are dressed appropriately for a social occasion. Social occasions — ha! When this is all over (a clause that, by the way, I first typed one year ago for a completely different article), will anyone remember how to iron a shirt, much less affix a cummerbund?
Well, at least one person will. Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History is a new book by Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford Law School professor who has terrific personal style. This is an irrelevant biographical detail for most academics but a qualification here. Ford is not only a decorated scholar and fashionisto but a Best Dressed Real Man, as we learn in the book's introduction. In 2009, Ford writes, he entered Esquire's Best Dressed Real Man contest on a lark. His second child was 10 months old at the time. Family life was a whirlwind of plastic baby toys and diaper changes. It struck him as potentially entertaining to submit himself as "a harried 43-year-old dad versus a bevy of lantern-jawed aspiring actors, sinewy fashion models, and athletic-looking frat boys." The contest winner would receive an all-expenses-paid weekend in the Big Apple. One of the submission photos, reproduced in the book, depicts Ford in a blue pinstripe suit with a squirming infant in his lap. To his own astonishment, he made it to the semifinals before being eliminated in favor of the ultimate winner.
But the joke is on that guy, wherever he is, because he didn't go on to write a 464-page survey of Western fashion legislature with full color inserts and sections like "Hip Hijabs" and "Decorative Orthodontic Devices (a.k.a. Grillz)." Ford was also probably the first to offer a detailed analysis of Donald Trump's "disturbingly long" neckties, which he published a few years ago in op-ed form as a kind of sneak preview of this book. In the opinion piece, he outlined the aesthetic felonies of Trump's accessory: too shiny, improperly knotted, and misassembled so that the short end couldn't properly moor in its loop and was instead doomed to flap in the breeze. The piece made strong points. Nothing about a president should "flap." The overlong tie, Ford argued, might even constitute a sort of fraud; after all, in Renaissance England, a man caught overstuffing his codpiece was forced to march through the streets with the stuffing pulled out as a public admission of stealing penis-size valor.
How we should be dressing now, and how we'll want to dress when this is all over, is an open question.
The joy of Ford's book comes from learning about all the things people have historically been banned from doing to or with clothes. And by banned I don't mean that a gauzy societal opprobrium might have descended if you stepped out in the wrong "payre" of pants but that a Scottish man who wore a kilt in 1746 could be tossed into prison (no bail) for six months. Governing bodies absolutely live to sweat the small stuff.
Those bodies are no longer determinant forces of how we dress. During COVID, the tacit guidelines for dressing — the ones that deal with coolness or professionalism or gender — have disintegrated even further, opening a wormhole into realms of unprecedented sloppiness, eccentricity, discovery, and creativity. There has likely never been a point in U.S. history when the populace has spent so much time being unobserved by the public. You may have experienced this as a relief, or you may have experienced it as a loss.
I know that my inability to observe the self-ornamentation of others in real time over the past months — the stark removal of people watching as an available activity — has turned down all the saturation levels on life. There was a lady in my old neighborhood who was entirely green, for example. Green hair, green clothes, green accessories. Her age: mid-60s? Who knows, doesn't matter. Nothing about the green goddess suggested that she was enacting Greenness for the pleasure of the world. It was a private quest that only inadvertently revealed itself in the course of her going out to buy milk or hit the ATM.
It is perhaps because I've not had access to such people that my own COVID dressing has slipped over the months from adult swaddling clothes into green-goddess territory. In autumn, I transitioned from pants to tights and from tights to sheer leopard-print stockings. In winter, I collected fluffy bits of lichen from the yard and tried to sew them into a wig. (Too crumbly.) Last week, I Googled images of Marie Antoinette with a model frigate woven into her hair and wondered if I could Do It Myself. Without external stimulation, some of us are driven to "be the person you wish to randomly walk past in the world."
Today, the online Trump Store offers a $125 replica of the tie Ford analyzed. It arrives complete with a "complementary" [sic] gift box. But who is buying ties — jumbo red ones or otherwise — in a pandemic? The past year has scrambled the way we present ourselves. For the nonessentials among us, COVID has done away with dress codes and replaced them with a fashion abyss. We are left with a question that is as peripheral as it is prevalent: What to wear, what to wear? Here, some suggestions:
A Zoom Mullet
Locked Down is the name of a Doug Liman movie that came out on HBO Max in January. The project was completed entirely during the pandemic and, as Metacritic puts it, received "mixed or average reviews" upon release. I liked it. The genre is "romantic comedy/heist," and though the sum is less than those parts, the parts are fun enough that it doesn't matter. The film's triumphs are its documentations of life under COVID, including what we might now term the Zoom Mullet: Business on top, party on the bottom. In one scene, the high-powered businesswoman played by Anne Hathaway Zooms with her team while wearing elegant earrings, a tailored blazer, silk blouse, and loudly patterned pajama pants yanked well north of her bellybutton. What her team doesn't know won't hurt them.
The Zoom Mullet adds both a comedic and an erotic charge to routine digital workplace interactions. Is the person on the other end of the line wearing baggy leggings? Sweatshorts? Tighty-whities? Lacy underwear? No underwear? You'll never know … and they'll never tell. Here, we have one method of dressing destined to flourish as long as people continue to work remotely. Dance like nobody's watching, sing like nobody's listening, dress like your lower body is invisible.
An Outraygeous Payre of Hose
Photo: Tara Moore/Getty Images
Until the Late Middle Ages, Western fashion moved at a crawl. The general shape of clothes remained the same for decades, maybe centuries. A rich person's tunic might have been silk instead of wool, and the length might have gone up or down over the years, but it was otherwise a near-identical sack. Most people wore clothes until they were rags. The idea of discarding a piece of clothing because it was no longer cool, rather than no longer functional, was inconceivable. Equally absurd was the idea that you could infer something about a person's character or taste from his clothes. His rank, yes. His soul, no.
Trade expansion in the 14th century made cloth more widely available to the emergent middle class. This coincided with a dawning sense that a person's identity might be more tied up with what he did than with how many hectares his dad owned. Selfhood wasn't preordained after all — it could be constructed piece by piece, with clothing as a tool.
This was immediately recognized by those in power as a problem. Ford writes about a servant in England who was arrested in 1565 for wearing "a very monsterous and outraygeous greate payre of hose." The pants in question were trunk hose, which are inflated shorts with sewn-in panels that a wearer can yank to puff out the shorts, bullfrog style. The offender was detained and ordered to change outfits, and the illegal pants were exhibited in public so that others could meditate on the "extreme folye" of the servant. "Dressing wrong" in the confines of your house is not a rebellion on the scale of English the servant, but a way to exert deviance without repercussion—a form of self-soothing that every infant with a spoonful of food and a throwing arm understands.
Unflattering Colors
A few years ago, a co-worker pointed out that I had a habit of wearing unflattering colors. She said things like, "It's not that you look bad in yellow; it's that no one looks good in it."
As a gift — and also a remarkable neg — she booked me a color consultation and face-shape analysis. I took a train to see the consultant, who wore jewel-tone fabrics with abundant draping. During the appointment, she held cards to my face, examined me under a white light, and demonstrated how to spread a green paste over my cheeks to deemphasize my rosacea. It was revealed that my color type was Exotic Winter and my face shape an inverted triangle.
I bought the green paste and a booklet of hairstyle suggestions. Asymmetrical cuts, the consultant explained, would correct for the defects of my head shape. Recognizing the undertones of my skin color would have a powerful impact on the choices I made. A wardrobe of flattering hues would bring out my best. Under no circumstances was I to wear brown, orange, yellow, or warm pastels. These days I don't work at the office with the color-obsessed co-worker — or any office — but I think about her, now and then, when I slip into a forbidden hue.
A Zoot Suit
Photo: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
Underpinning a law like the one against trunk hose is, of course, an attempt to freeze and control a social order. In 1943, a squadron was dispatched to East Los Angeles in search of Mexican American men wearing zoot suits so they could beat up the men and tear off the zoot suits, which they trampled, burned, and peed upon. In theory, the suits were offensive because they used a lot of fabric, which was rationed at the time. It is more likely that the wearing of the suit indicated a sense of self-determination, which poked at a racial hierarchy that looked, increasingly, like the end stages of a Jenga game. Young ladies who wore zoot suits were called zooterinas.
Louis XIV amused himself by inventing rules about who was allowed to wear brocade. The people on the king's Brocade List included himself and an assortment of people he liked. If a person wanted to wear, say, an embroidered brocade justaucorps with a scarlet sash, he needed to obtain physical authorization from the king. Only 50 people at a time could be on the Brocade List. As soon as one person was cut, there was drama about who would replace him. Today, elite fashion brands maintain similarly strict guidelines about which celebrities they'll agree to dress on the red carpet. This practice can be weaponized, too. In 2010, a rumor circulated that Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, from Jersey Shore, had been sent a free Gucci handbag — not by Gucci but by one of the brand's competitors.
"Sumptuary law" is law that regulates what people spend their money on: Luxury goods, jewelry, clothes, fancy foods … all the fun stuff. But especially clothes. Women were prohibited from wearing multicolored robes in second-century BC Rome. Commoners were banned from wearing fine black sable in 11th-century China. Sumptuary laws exploded toward the end of the 12th century, detonating all over France, Italy, and Spain. Fourteenth-century women living in Siena were not allowed to wear platform shoes unless they were sex workers.
By the 1700s, even youthful America had its own dress regulations, mostly about lace, which was considered one of Satan's temptations. But above all, sumptuary laws were a way to crack down on social mobility. It's a lot harder to "fake it till you make it" if you're not allowed to fake it in the first place. Although they've dwindled, sumptuary laws still exist — and when they do, they tend to adhere to a certain pattern. Municipalities in at least seven states have criminalized the wearing of "sagging" pants. In 2008 Abercrombie & Fitch rejected a job applicant for wearing a hijab. (She sued and won.) UPS only relaxed its rules about natural Black hairstyles just last year.
… Or Better Yet, Pleasers
Photo: yacobchuk/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Platform shoes still have sultry connotations, especially the style recognized in modern times as the Classic Stripper Shoe: needle heel, clear PVC straps, dizzying platform of transparent Lucite. You can buy imitations everywhere, but the industry standard might be a model called Adore-708 made by a company named Pleaser that precision engineers its footwear to serve its true functional purpose as a piece of athletic equipment. Everything about the design of Adore-708 is ingenious. The angled toe box makes it possible to rock on your toes without losing stability. The platform creates an illusion of a high arch without requiring a user to actually stand en pointe. Clear straps allow the whole apparatus to serve as an uninterrupted extension of the leg. The transparency of the heel makes it possible to do floor work without scuffing the shoe (because there's no color to scuff away). And the lining is padded for all-night comfort. It is an object artful enough that the Met has a Pleaser in its fashion collection.
In a 2004 TV special, Chris Rock observed that there's something about clear heels "that just says nasty." But why let one man's opinion get in the way of the perfect shoe? Pleaser is one of very few footwear brands that allow users to have their cake and eat it too: ease and glamour in one reasonably priced package. The pandemic has ushered in a reversion to comfort in all aspects of dress. This is one form that may surprise you.
Something Expensive
The fashion critic Cintra Wilson once delivered a piece of (ruinous) financial advice that I've never forgotten, which is this: If you find an ideal piece of clothing with a price tag that violates your budget, you should buy it anyway, because otherwise you'll become obsessed with the item and waste money on inferior replacements for years to come.
"Your subconscious will punish you by turning [the piece of clothing] into a kind of Holy Grail that you will spend the remainder of your wretched time on earth trying to find again," Wilson wrote, calculating that for every perfect item she'd surrendered, she had purchased six to ten inferior substitutes.
As you'd expect, dark-net markets are full of contraband. Anyone with several hours of spare time can purchase jewels, gold, bank details, ID cards, body armor, weapons, fake documents, malware, every drug on earth, and … fashion. A convincing faux Louis Vuitton duffel bag goes for the crypto equivalent of $75. A Gucci backpack is $164, a Versace sweater $100, an Offwhite hoodie $30, an Hermès belt with box and bag just $54.80 — a discount of 95 percent from the real thing.
In some cases, the customer service from forgers is better than that of the brands they're ripping off. A few years ago, I went to the (real) Prada flagship store on Broadway and a salesperson told me my arm was too fat for one of the handbags. I left an angry Yelp review. The fake Prada vendors online are extremely solicitous. "We treat every customer as VIP," one of the more prolific sellers promises. "We want you to be a happy customer." It makes you think.
Women who wore loose-fitting pants in the 1920s constituted a sexual fetish known in the trade as bifurcation. Magazines depicted women in pants roughhousing, getting spanked, and hiding under each others' beds. The fetish has long gone extinct — a case of erotic energy being normalized away by the sands of time.
There are 6,497 customer reviews on a pair of shorts with built-in butt pads on the fast-fashion website Shein. The shorts, which cost $13, are one of many available butt-pad options. You can get lace-trimmed shorts, sheer shorts, mesh shorts, shorts in black or apricot, and shorts with convenient detachable pads. The butt-pad shorts are clearly intended as an affordable alternative to surgical intervention, or a lazy person's alternative to doing thousands of squats, but one off-label use that immediately suggests itself is that of "portable seat cushion." If we're ever allowed to board airplanes again, I will take one for a whirl in the depths of economy class.
Earth Shoes
Comfort shoes are back, baby! Sales of "unapologetically ugly" Crocs (CNN's words, not mine) soared in 2020 as millions of people realized that the foam-based clogs fell well beneath the Zoom Mullet threshold. Slipper sales surged. Dress shoes plummeted. As Pleasers demonstrate, functionality need not equal clumsiness. But often it does.
A Danish yoga teacher named Anna Kalsø invented one of the definitive styles of the 1970s when she created a sandal with "negative heel technology" — that is, a shoe in which the toes were higher than the heels by 3.7 degrees, which apparently replicated the sense of walking barefoot on soft ground. An American couple visiting Copenhagen in 1969 bought a few pairs and wore them experimentally, then — locating curative powers in their lumpy new footwear — begged Kalsø to let them sell her shoes in the U.S. After evaluating the couple's astrological signs, she agreed. Similar to the contemporary company Supreme, Kalsø prohibited advertising and relied on word-of-mouth to sell her wares.
On Earth Day 1970, the Earth Shoe debuted Stateside. There were many styles, all globular and functional, and all promoted as a way to straighten posture, improve circulation, clear the mind, and "reduce the aches and fatigue caused by living in a cement coated world." Kalsø herself had walked 500 miles in her shoes to prove their durability. The shoes were divisive: About 10 percent of users were totally unable to adapt to the height inversion, while others became so committed that they got married in their Earth Shoes. The shoes attracted a crunchy audience and were quickly seen to be co-morbid with things like brown rice and feminism. Still available for purchase, Earth Shoes now come in updated styles — such a leopard slip-on with laser-cut accents.
Even before COVID, comfort shoes would periodically trend. A celebrity would be photographed in Birkenstocks, or a cushioned New Balance would be refurbished as "normcore." One imagines that people whose livelihoods demand comfort shoes — health workers, the entire food-service industry — view these oscillations, if at all, with one eyebrow elevated.
A Plague Doctor Costume
Photo: Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty
The hazmat suit of the 17th century consists of an ankle-length oilcloth or waxed leather cloak and beaky mask with goggles, plus a cane and goat-leather boots. All of these elements served a purpose. The cane was for prodding and examining patients at a suitable distance, taking their pulse and lifting up their clothes to check for inflamed lymph nodes. The coat's waxed treatment would have repelled loose bodily fluids. Same with the goggles. The iconic part of the outfit, that mask, was stuffed with herbs meant to filter air emanating from the patient and to conceal foul odors. Sometimes the herbs were lit and allowed to smoke out through a pair of nose-holes, which would have made the costume even more terrifying to anyone on the receiving end.
Miasma theory blamed "corrupt vapors" for the spread of disease, which wasn't true but was based on the (correct) observation that unsanitary conditions sped up transmission. The length of a plague doctor's coat probably helped repel fleas, too, which were the actual vectors of plague. It was an accident that the look transformed a regular person into an anonymous and bestial spectacle. Even the mask's beak wasn't intended to look creepy; it was just a practical design solution for keeping a bouquet of herbs hovering beneath a wearer's nose all day.
But if the birdlike mask is accidental, it is also the element that glued this costume to our collective image bank and caused it to stick around for so long. We've always loved and feared an animal-human hybrid. Centaurs, sphinxes, , minotaurs; Ganesha, Anubis, Pan: They whiz straight past our conscious minds and into a sunken Pinterest board of the id. There are more than ten "plague doctor" costumes available from HalloweenCostumes.com, including a sexy version and one for children. (But, thankfully, no sexy version for children.)
Remember when fashion brands touted the fact that their clothes could go "from day to night"? With a change of shoes, your office-appropriate sheath could metamorphose into flirty cocktail attire. I'm not sure anyone was convinced of this line, but it was a line. Day-to-night dressing.
COVID, of course, has introduced day-to-bed dressing. A large chunk of workers can log off and tumble directly from desk to mattress in their marshmallow-soft sweats and athleisure made of fabrics that can stretch up to 300 percent of their own size. Will the end of COVID spark a resurgence of physically punishing clothes? Will we sprint toward stiletto heels, Spanx, itchy wide-fiber wools, tube tops, and restrictive latex? Could bandage dresses make a comeback? Chafing bustiers? Those A.P.C. jeans that take a decade to break in? Chain mail? Girdles? Hair shirts?
Nudism came to America from Germany during the Great Depression, and perhaps it's time to reconsider the movement as a rational response to the overindulgences of capitalism. Nudism started as a tendril of a broader (but still niche) response to everything about modernity that obscured a person's relationship to nature: urbanization, consumerism, industrialization. Being naked, the German thinking went, exposed a person to the healthy healing powers of sun, light, and air. It was hygienic. It aimed to unravel the shame that society had insisted on attaching to the body. It was an ideal and a therapy — and, to this day, arguably the only fashion choice immune to being commodified or appropriated. If style wars are class wars, could nudity be the future of resistance?
Five years ago, I was walking north on Bowery when I paused at a red light behind a slight young woman in a faux-leather jacket and sunglasses. It turned out to be the actor Rooney Mara. As we waited for the light, I noticed that a raw egg had been broken against the shoulder of her jacket and allowed to slightly calcify. The light changed and Mara strode forward, while I paused to examine the situation. How had the egg gotten there? It was not in a place where an egg might have naturally fallen over the course of being eaten. Also, the egg was raw. Had someone thrown an egg at Rooney Mara? Had she thrown an egg at her own jacket? Either way, why? She clearly knew the egg was there — it glistened, unmissable — and, equally clearly, didn't care.
The purpose of clothes is to cloak our private parts and protect our bodies from hailstones and heat and the world's millions of species of insects. The effect of clothes, which isn't so simple, is what we call fashion. For a certain kind of person, the Mystery of Rooney Mara's Jacket is exactly the appeal of it. An outfit is a crossword puzzle: The clothes are clues; the solution is the person wearing them. Sometimes a puzzle is booby-trapped with tricks and fake-outs, which can either be deciphered exegetically or abandoned in bewilderment.
One Great Story: A Nightly Newsletter for the Best of New York
The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected by New York's editors.
More From This Series
This Sexless Year
A Year of Secrets
dress codes: how the laws of fashion made history
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Q: Calculate the limit. I am given the limit $  \lim_{x \to 0^{+}}\frac{\ln x}{\sqrt{x}}    $.
As far as I am concerned $ \ln x \rightarrow - \infty   $ and $\sqrt{x}\rightarrow 0 $ so I got $[\frac{-\infty}{0}]$ . What should I do next? Should I transform it and then use  de l'Hospital rule? $[\frac{-\infty}{0}]$ is not indeterminate form so how should I deal with this?

A: You can do like this:
$$ \lim_{x \to 0^{+}}\frac{\ln x}{\sqrt{x}}=\lim_{x \to 0^{+}}\frac{1}{\sqrt x}*\ln x \rightarrow (\infty*-\infty) = -\infty $$

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


What is Magma?Magma is the molten material beneath the earth's crust from which igneous rock is formed. Magma is made of a hot liquid called melt, minerals that are crystallized by the melt, solid rocks, and dissolved gases. Magma is extremely hot. Its temperature is between from 12,292 and 2,372 degrees Fahrenheit. Magma comes from the lower part of Earth's crust and the upper portion of the mantle. Differences in temperature, pressure, and structural formations in the mantle and crust cause magma to form in different ways. Some of these ways are Decompression Melting, Transfer of Heat, and Flux Melting. In addition, there are different types of magma. The first is Mafic Magma. This type of magma has low silica content, higher contents of iron and magnesium and low viscosity. Another type of magma is Intermediate Magma, which has a higher silica content and higher gas content and viscosity. The last type of magma is Felsic Magma, which has the highest content of magma, high gas content and viscosity.
What is a Sedimentary Rock?Sedimentary rocks are formed when mud and sand are deposited in layers on Earth's surface, with the oldest layers on the bottom and the youngest on the top. The layers can be deposited in oceans, rivers and deserts. These layers of sand and mud are buried and then compressed by the weight of the overlying layers to form rocks. Sedimentary rocks can also be formed by the evaporation of water. In addition, you can find fossils in sedimentary rocks. This happens when sediments covered dead plants and animals. As the sediments turn to rock the remains or outlines of these organisms were preserved. Some examples of sedimentary rocks are coal, rock salt, and limestones.
What is an Igneous Rock?Igneous rocks are formed by the crystallization and hardening of molten material that originates deep in Earth. Scientists have classified igneous rocks in two groups.The first group are Extrusive Igneous Rocks. These rocks are formed when magma flows to Earth's surface along fissures and volcanic vents. Then, it forms broad flat sheets, or it can build up a volcanic shape by repeatedly erupting from a vent. Some types of lavas cool quickly, which causes the formation of rocks composed of mainly of microscopic crystals. The second group are Intrusive Igneous Rocks. These rocks can be found in mines and tunnels. The formation of intrusive rocks varies from thin sheets to huge irregular masses. In addition, this type of igneous rocks have large crystals because the magma cools more slowly. Two types of igneous rocks are basalt and granite. Basalt is an extrusive rock while granite is an intrusive rock.


This item is 100 percent free of veep speculation.
In fact I'd be willing to post almost anything here besides such speculation, including a Dominique Wilkins highlight video set to RUN-DMC's "Rock Box." It's probably more worthy of your time.


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TARDIS Traveller Reviews
The Flash: Season 5 Episode 3: The Death of Vibe - Review
So far this new season of The Flash has quickly established the whole cast as a family unit. But within that family unit, there are some family struggles too. Iris is struggling with Nora and while that storyline is proving to work in the show's favour so far, there still seems to be a long way to go with the show's supporting cast. The Death of Vibe is the first episode this series to turn its attention to Cisco, Caitlin and Ralph. It also introduces us to a new version of Harrison Wells and the results from both plot points are mixed at best.
One thing I liked was how quickly this episode set up the notion that Nora inherited her father's ability to screw up the timeline and make things worse. The opening moments of this episode lends itself to give us more context into her decision to come back in time and meet her father and the threat that is posed by Cicada. We now know he is a serial killer who never got caught on this Earth, even when characters like Supergirl, Arrow and the Legends came up against him. I thought that was a nice touch. But while that was all interesting it was a really nice move for the show to make by making it all Nora's fault when she travelled back in time she made it so that Cicada was never caught in her timeline.
Another cool moment was when Nora namedropped, 'The League', almost confirming that at some point the Arrowverse will give us our own version of The Justice League. Maybe this will be something we see come into being at the end of the upcoming crossover event, Elseworlds? And so long as the Legends don't get booted in favour of a more traditional team-up show, then I'm game for it.
Perhaps the biggest struggle the show has come up against so far is that it is only the Nora storyline that is pushing the overall arc. While it is nice to see Barry Allen being a father to a daughter he hasn't had yet, the voice over moments do edge on corny, even if they do a good job at highlighting Nora's personal growth and her evolution as a speedster. And it was nice to see that no matter what troubles Nora has already caused, she finds a way to get Cisco out of harms way.
As for the Cicada storyline, well, things aren't going quite so well. In the winning side, we see that is a human man, who has gone through a very big tragedy and is someone who doesn't really want to fight but believes he has too. On the down side though he doesn't cut such a fine figure as he did in the past episodes when we only saw him sparingly. The scenes between Cicada and Joe certainly lacked the tension and horror that they should have had. And the digital voice for the Arrowverse baddies is really becoming tired. Unless you've got someone amazing doing it, like Tony Todd as Zoom or Michael Dorn as Prometheus, then it doesn't really work. Chris Klein is both voicing and playing Cicada but he doesn't have the menacing quality in his voice that the character needs.
The Vibe/Cicada fight did little to spice this episode up either as we need a lot more information on why Cicada has it out for Vibe as badly as he does. Thankfully though, the death of Vibe that the title was alluding too turned out to just be something shocking and it didn't actually happen as it is hard to imagine anything being gained by killing Cisco. And the buildup was so hollow that the actual act of killing Cisco would have felt pointless anyway. I do hope that the 'death' of Vibe might actually work in the show's favour as I've never been sure what the series was supposed to accomplish by establishing Cisco as a metahuman in the first place. And as the end result was Cisco having to give up being Vibe and lying low for a while, then that isn't too much of a bad thing either.
Certainly the biggest development of this episode was the introduction of this season's new Harrison Wells. The rotating versions of Harrison have been a fun little gag in the show's past but as the series enters its fifth year, it seems to feel a little redundant now. One wonders whether the show really needs a new Wells now, especially when it has trouble in juggling all its supporting characters anyway. And was there any point in introducing a new detective version of the character when Team Flash has a competent detective in their corner in the form of Ralph?
The biggest problem with this new Harrison Wells for me is that these cartoon versions of the character aren't the greatest of creations. Tom Cavanagh has already created three distinctive versions of the same character in the form of Dr. Wells, Harry and H.R. However, when the show introduced the other multiverse versions of the character, Cavanagh relied on stereotypes and funny accents to make the characters tolerable. It just doesn't have the same impact anymore. If this season's Harrison is going to add anything to the overall arc, it will be his relationship with Nora as so far, he's the only one to see through her deceptions.
What this episode did bring to it was a little more to Caitlin's hunt for her supposedly deceased father. I am enjoying this shift of focus for Caitlin, moving away from her Killer Frost alterego and instead focusing on her scientist side again. However, apart from her confrontation with her mother, the Caitlin/Ralph storyline didn't really seem to go anywhere. There seems to be a lot hinging on her Father's reveal and I'm not sure the storyline is there to do that just that.
While The Flash has picked up with this new season, it also makes it clear that the show has a long way to go before it reaches the same highs as Season One and Two. It also seems to still be struggling with its supporting cast with much of this episode still focusing on Barry, Iris and Nora, the guest cast was pushed aside again, even though the episode should have looked more at them instead. And while it was nice to Tom Cavanagh again and for me, he will always be a welcome presence on this show, this new Harrison Wells has a long way to go to measure up to his previous incarnations so far...
Doctor Who: Battlefield - Review
Battlefield sees Doctor Who take on the whole mythology surrounding Merlin and it should have been epic but instead, they managed to make a right dogs-dinner of it! Now I'm pretty certain that back in the day, this was one of the first Doctor Who adventures I ever owned on video and I remember loving every second of it! I remember loving all the talk about Merlin and Excalibur mixed with crashed spaceships, alien knights and also being confused as to why everyone was referring to the Doctor as Merlin, wondering if a chalk circle would really protect you from an all powerful sorceress and cheering as the Brigadier shot the Destroyer, despite having absolutely no idea who this bloke was! However, watching it back recently for the first time in yonks, it is clear that no matter what my younger mind thought, Battlefield just amasses to a load of tosh. It is pretty clear the series' budget went into producing the epic, Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light , leaving Battl
Legends of Tomorrow: Season 3 Episode 2: Freakshow - Review
I've said it a lot before but I really love how Legends of Tomorrow is happy to embrace its own silliness. On paper, the idea of the Legends meeting P.T. Barnum, played by Billy Zane seems pretty pedestrian but in practice, this episode really leans into what makes the Legends dysfunctional as a team and you can't help but be entertained by the results. The whole point of this episode is to prove that the Legends simply can't just do a little job without making much, much, worse before it gets better. As much as I found Rip Hunters treatment of the Legends weird in the premier, you can't help but sympathise with characters viewpoints like Agent Sharpe's. Why is Rip putting so much faith in a team who muck things up badly? Sharpe is quickly developing into a fun antagonist for the Legends and Sara in particular. She is a jerk but you really can't blame her for wanting more accountability for the Legends' actions. The brawl between Sharpe and Sara prove
Star Trek Picard: Season 1 Episode 8: Broken Pieces - Review
In my review for the previous episode Nepenthe , I said that I don't like shows to take breathers when they are reaching their conclusions and the pace is really picking up. However, Nepenthe had a lot going for it, including the return of Will Riker and Deanna Troi. Broken Pieces , which is another breather-episode despite being only two episodes from the end, doesn't have much going for it and while it should have been picking up the pace, it seemed much happier keeping things confined to a few sets and not really advancing the plot. It was a bottle episode, but it didn't try to hide it. What Broken Pieces did do though was show us the new status quo for Picard. All the characters are finally where they are meant to be with Soji finally aboard La Sirena, alongside most of the main cast and its the first time she's joined them for any reasonable length of time, though she hasn't met Elnor in any meaningful way, despite a scene a few episodes ago where he re


You can now decide the navgation of the abstract submission.
In Abstract Setup - Wizard, you can rearange the steps.
Only position of the "Summary" page will stay as final step and can not be changed.
In a new event only the mandatory steps will be automatically added (Upload, Basic Settings and Summary).
You can also delete steps out of the abstract submission.
Removed pages can be added again with the dropdown at the bottom.
This settings here and also the mandatory options in Basic -Settings are not working "together".
When you set e.g. "Categories" as a mandatory options you also have to make sure that the step "Categories" is added in the "Wizard".


Abstract : Dealing with large databases of galaxy spectra is a good example of a new problematic task in astrophysics. Current and forthcoming big surveys provide millions of spectra each containing thousands of wavelengths. These spectra must be confronted with physical and chemical models. This requires an unsupervised classification which is a dimensionality reduction in both the number of observations and parameters. In this poster, we present some approaches that we are implementing.


Saint John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, author of the fourth Gospel, and the only Apostle at the foot of the Cross, was chosen by Our Lord to care for His Mother. He preached in Samaria and was eventually banished to . the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse. Tradition has it that Saint John died in Ephesus about 100 A.D., the only Apostle not martyred.
O glorious Apostle, Saint John, who for thy virginal purity wast so beloved by Jesus as to merit to rest thy head upon His divine bosom, and to be left, in His stead, as a son to His most holy Mother, I implore thee to set me on fire with a burning love for Jesus and Mary. Obtain for me, I pray, this grace from our Lord, that, even now, with my heart set free from earthly affections, I may be made worthy to be ever united to Jesus as His faithful disciple and to Mary as her devoted child both here on earth and then forever in heaven. Amen.
Indulgence of 300 days; plenary indulgence once a month, on the usual conditions, for the daily repetition of these prayers with devotion.


Bored using old typefaces and want to have some fresh royalty free fonts for your website and project? So, here are these 21 beautiful royalty free fonts for commercial use.
What's matter a lot when going to make a new website or project for your client? Colors, textures, background color, font color and among all the most important thing is selection of fonts. Here are 20 royalty free fonts for commercial use.
Yes, fonts do matter a lot when designing a website or making any project. Because readers are supposed to read content and it must be readable. They shouldn't have to face any difficulty of reading material. So, readable and awesome typeface must be your preference to facilitate the readers.
You'll think of choosing so simple font may doesn't look nice and cool. There's no issue of this now as there are many beautiful free fonts are available that can be used for free.
In this post, 21 beautiful royalty free fonts will be shared that can be used for commercial use. These commercial use free fonts are not actually so minimal, rather they are fine-looking too.
Free commercial fonts will give new elegant touch to your project. They are commercial use fonts for your next project. Pick them up and give new fine-look to your website and project or assignment.
Check this out another Royalty Free Sans Serif Fonts collection.


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Q: How to set height to ExtJs Grid? I have follow structure:
TabPanel->FormPanel->Grid

And i want to set grid's height to all free space on formpanle. If i says layout:fit` in FormPanle first textfield get all space of formpanel. How to do what i want?
FormPanel:
var search = new Ext.FormPanel({
                labelAlign: 'top',
                frame:true,
                title: 'Поиск',
                //layout:'fit',
                viewConfig:{ forceFit: true },
                //bodyStyle:'padding:5px 5px 0',

GridPanel:
var searchTab = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({
    store: searchStore,
    region: 'center',
    cm: searchCm,
    layout:'fit',
    selModel: new Ext.grid.RowSelectionModel(),
    stripeRows : true,
    height: 390,
    autoExpandColumn:'expColumn',
    loadMask: true,
    id: 'searchTab',
    title:'Найденные объекты',
    autoScroll: true,

A: Fix the height for textfield and Try height:'100%' for gridpanel. Sushant Jain's solution is good but in that too go for height:'100%' if you want grid to occupy leftover area. region: 'center' helps to occupy leftover area by north region but if you fix height or width than even if center region expand to occupy left over area grid panel will remain on fixed height.

A: User borderLayout and devide in 2 Region.North and center. Add your top panel content in north region and grid in center region.
layout: 'border',
        items: [{
            title: 'North Region is resizable',
            region: 'north',     // position for region
            xtype: 'panel',
            height: 100
        },{
            title: 'Center Region',
            region: 'center',     // center region is required, no width/height specified
            xtype: 'panel',
            layout: 'fit',
            items: {
                new Ext.grid.GridPanel({
                    store: searchStore,
                    region: 'center',
                    cm: searchCm,
                    layout:'fit',
                    selModel: new Ext.grid.RowSelectionModel(),
                    stripeRows : true,
                    height: 390,
                    autoExpandColumn:'expColumn',
                    loadMask: true,
                    id: 'searchTab',
                    title:'????????? ???????',
                    autoScroll: true
                })
            }
        }]


text:
Farah Daley
Posted on 08 October 2019 | 3,806 views | 4 comments
Submitted by Stomper Aish
This story was submitted via Facebook. Click here to join our Facebook page.
A lorry caught fire in the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE) tunnel towards the Tampines Expressway (TPE) at the Upper Paya Lebar Road exit on Tuesday afternoon (Oct 8).
Stomper Aish alerted Stomp to the incident after he received a photo from his friend of signs saying the tunnel was closed due to a fire.
A video posted on Lao Peh Road SG's Facebook page showed a lorry engulfed in flames.
https://www.facebook.com/LaoPehRoad/videos/503644206851957/
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Twitter at about 1.30pm that the Upper Paya Lebar Road exit was closed due to the fire.
Fire on KPE (towards TPE) at Upper Paya Lebar Road Exit. Upper Paya Lebar Road Exit closed
— LTATrafficNews (@LTAtrafficnews) October 8, 2019
In response to a Stomp query, the Singapore Civil Defence Force said it responded to the vehicle fire at about 1.30pm.
The SCDF extinguished the fire, which involved the engine compartment of a lorry, using a hose reel, an SCDF spokesman said.
No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is under investigation.
Get more of Stomp's latest updates by following us on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
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UK And France No Longer In Internet Population Top 10
The Latest Insights from International Online Marketing
Data from Internet World Stats has revealed that the UK and France are no longer in the top 10 markets for internet population. These countries have been replaced in the top 10 by newcomers Mexico and Indonesia. Indonesia almost doubled its internet population between 2014 and 2015, jumping from 12th to 8th globally. As developed markets reach internet saturation point and developing countries with large populations start to come online, we can expect to see more emerging markets in the top 10 in coming years. Nigeria was in the top 10 last year but, thanks to a boom in smartphone ownership, has overtaken Germany to take 7th place. It is approaching an internet population of 100 million – with over half the Nigerian population now having access to the internet. Russia has also made a great splash with close to 25% year-on-year growth and an internet population now above 100 million. Japan, in turn, has dropped to 5th, overtaken by Brazil. However, despite now being the 4th largest internet market in the world, Brazil has seen relatively modest growth, its maturity considered. Looking at the top of the table, second-place India keeps growing by leaps and bounds, with over 50% growth year-on-year and an internet population of 375 million people. In contrast, growth has slowed down considerably in China, although with a staggering 674 million internet users, the country is still the undisputed champion when it comes to the number of citizens online. The total global internet population is 3.3 billion people.


text:
Marine Microbiomes: Towards Standard Methods and Best Practices View all 5 Articles
Stéphane PESANT
European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), United Kingdom
Gerhard J. Herndl
University of Vienna, Austria
Marine Landa
University of California, Santa Cruz, United States
Ocean Omics Methodology Categories
Essential Metadata for Omics Protocols
PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Mar. Sci., 11 October 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.758694
Toward a Global Public Repository of Community Protocols to Encourage Best Practices in Biomolecular Ocean Observing and Research
Robyn M. Samuel1,2*, Raissa Meyer3, Pier Luigi Buttigieg4, Neil Davies5, Nicholas W. Jeffery6, Christopher Meyer7, Christina Pavloudi8, Kathleen Johnson Pitz9, Maxime Sweetlove10, Susanna Theroux11, Jodie van de Kamp12 and Alison Watts13
1School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
2Ocean Technology and Engineering Group, National Oceanography Center, Southampton, United Kingdom
3Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
4Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration, GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany
5Gump South Pacific Research Station, University of California, Berkeley, Moorea, French Polynesia
6Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada
7Department of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States
8Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Heraklion, Greece
9Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, CA, United States
10Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
11Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, Costa Mesa, CA, United States
12Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, TAS, Australia
13Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
Biomolecular ocean observing and research is a rapidly evolving field that uses omics approaches to describe biodiversity at its foundational level, giving insight into the structure and function of marine ecosystems over time and space. It is an especially effective approach for investigating the marine microbiome. To mature marine microbiome research and operations within a global ocean biomolecular observing network (OBON) for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and beyond, research groups will need a system to effectively share, discover, and compare "omic" practices and protocols. While numerous informatic tools and standards exist, there is currently no global, publicly-supported platform specifically designed for sharing marine omics [or any omics] protocols across the entire value-chain from initiating a study to the publication and use of its results. Toward that goal, we propose the development of the Minimum Information for an Omic Protocol (MIOP), a community-developed guide of curated, standardized metadata tags and categories that will orient protocols in the value-chain for the facilitated, structured, and user-driven discovery of suitable protocol suites on the Ocean Best Practices System. Users can annotate their protocols with these tags, or use them as search criteria to find appropriate protocols. Implementing such a curated repository is an essential step toward establishing best practices. Sharing protocols and encouraging comparisons through this repository will be the first steps toward designing a decision tree to guide users to community endorsed best practices.
The term "omics" generally means studying anything holistically, and here we take a broad view of biomolecular omics that includes, but is not limited to: quantitative target gene amplification (e.g., qPCR, qNASBA etc.), (meta)barcoding, (meta)genomics, (meta)transcriptomics, (meta)proteomics, and metabolomics; and field collection approaches that target organisms or parts thereof, including single-celled organisms (microorganisms), as well as environmental DNA (eDNA). In the marine realm, omic techniques are used to assess and monitor biodiversity, reveal population structure and gene flow, and discover new compounds with applications in medicine and industry. Rapid advances in omic research, and the declining cost of high-throughput sequencing technologies (Wetterstrand, 2020) support the increasing application of omics in marine microbiome research.
The recent expansion in marine omics has led to a proliferation of protocols specific to multiple applications. However, these protocols are rarely shared publicly with sufficient detail to reliably reproduce a study (Dickie et al., 2018). While the omics community has already achieved high standards for sharing sequence data through the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, these data often lack sufficient metadata and provenance information on the protocols used (Dickie et al., 2018), undermining efforts to implement the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) data principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016). These limitations create challenges for marine microbiome research and operations from individual labs up to global (meta)data analysis efforts such as MGnify (Mitchell et al., 2019), which must identify data collected using comparable methods, in order to integrate and re-use data for meta-analysis (Berry et al., 2020). Moreover, a lack of protocol-sharing impedes the identification of comparable methods needed for global monitoring efforts aiming to understand, and sustainably manage the changing marine ecosystem (Aylagas et al., 2020; Berry et al., 2020; Makiola et al., 2020).
Many projects are looking to develop best practices for omics research: standards organizations, such as the Genomic Standards Consortium's (GSC) Genomic Biodiversity Interest Group, the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and the Biocode Commons are working collaboratively toward standards specifications for genomic observatories (Davies et al., 2012, 2014). Large campaigns, such as the Earth Microbiome Project (Gilbert et al., 2014; Thompson et al., 2017), TARA Oceans (Sunagawa et al., 2020), and the Australian Microbiome Initiative (AM; Bissett et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2018; doi: 10.4227/71/561c9bc670099), have already developed standardized practices, and innovative software enterprises, such as protocols.io, are providing powerful solutions for sharing protocols. Yet there is currently no global, publicly-supported infrastructure developed explicitly for encouraging the exchange and harmonization of omic protocols, so these valuable contributions remain fragmented and underutilized.
For marine ecosystems, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission's Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS) provides a public repository for all ocean research methodological documentation that can interlink protocols, standard specifications, and other guidelines. The OBPS seeks to support continuous convergence of methods as they undergo community refinement to become best practices (Hörstmann et al., 2021). In collaboration with the broader omics community, through the Omic BON initiative (Buttigieg et al., 2019), we propose to develop a best practice system specific to marine omics research, leveraging the framework of the OBPS to curate a global repository for marine omics protocols.
As part of the omics/eDNA session at the 4th OBPS workshop, we discussed recommendations and community needs for an omics/eDNA specific best practices system. Recognizing an urgent need for the ocean omics community to get organized as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development starts, we identified the demand for publishing protocols into a user-friendly decision tree framework. With such a framework we would aim to support protocol selection, increase protocol findability and improve recognition for protocol developers. In a series of focused follow-up meetings, we identified that an omics decision tree would require a library of constituent parts (the protocols) and framework to: (1) locate where the protocol fits within the entire omics workflow (outlined in section "Ocean Omics Methodology Categories"), and (2) organize protocols using focused descriptive terms (metadata tags), based on what the protocol does and how/why it is used (outlined in section "Essential Metadata for Omics Protocols").
The typical omics workflow involves a series of protocols, which take a project from ideation, through to publication, and on to societal use. Protocols from each step in the omics workflow hold valuable information for different groups. For example, sample collection protocols may be most relevant to scientists/technicians in the field, whereas local stakeholders and indigenous communities may primarily engage with aspects of how the project and resulting data address and impact important ethical, legal, and societal issues (Nagoya Protocol, 2010; Carroll et al., 2020). Documenting details and provenance for the entire marine omics workflow requires input from multiple parties, as each step of the workflow may be conducted by different individuals or groups. The omics OBPS therefore needs to identify these key methodological categories, to allow protocols and accompanying metadata to be uploaded in modules that link together to form the entire workflow.
We propose twelve protocol categories (Figure 1A) for ocean omics research and operations. Protocols and guidelines are assigned into these categories according to the purpose they serve1. Categories 5–12 outline methodological categories for operational activities used in the AM Initiative (van de Kamp et al., 2019). Categories 1–4 were identified to additionally cover cross-cutting documentation in the omics workflow: (1) Society, (2) Sampling/observational design, (3) Ethics and law, and (4) Data management.
Figure 1. (A) Proposed methodology categories to enhance exchange of ocean omics analysis knowhow. Protocols, guidelines, and other methodologies in some of these categories (such as Sample archiving/biobanking, Data Management, and Society) are cross-cutting and may apply at multiple points in the workflow. (B) Example workflow for a DNA metabarcoding project. Colors correspond to the methodology categories outlined in panel (A) and arrows indicate the order of the workflow. Square boxes show essential steps in a metabarcoding workflow, whereas rounded boxes indicate non-essential steps. Data management and QA/QC are required throughout the entire workflow.
1. Society—All workflows should begin and end with society; societal needs inform the question or purpose behind the research, and societal impacts show the value in the research once it has been completed.
2. Design and logistics—This category covers the practical logistics for implementing ocean omics research and operations, including the experimental/observational design formulated to address the societal priorities outlined in 1.
3. Ethics and law—A survey of workshop participants highlighted a need for guidance on sharing data and complying with important ethical and legal requirements (Simpson et al., 2021). This category will include information on permits and permission required to obtain samples and release data. Collating and publishing this information will firstly provide examples for how previous projects have adhered to legal requirements/ethical principles and secondly stimulate discussion on how to facilitate adherence to these requirements and principles, perhaps through checklists, templates, or training materials.
4. Data management—The data management plan (DMP) is designed to support all the downstream steps according to the ethics, legalities and societal needs identified in (1–3), while making sure that the (meta)data flows to the right stakeholders in society that we need to interface with. DMPs should be drafted prior to data collection and referred to throughout the workflow to ensure that quality assurance and quality checks take place, and that detailed information on (meta)data requirements for both short and long-term (meta)data storage is given. There is a growing body of tools and best practices surrounding DMPs, including principles for making them more machine-actionable, that should be leveraged in omic protocols and associated infrastructure (see Miksa et al., 2019). Publishing documentation on omics specific DMPs will increase transparency for funders by providing direct links to the protocols they refer to. Furthermore, collating examples of omics specific DMPs will provide insight into what the community needs from omics specific data management tools.
In Figure 1B, we give an example of a DNA metabarcoding workflow, where the colour of each step corresponds to a methodology category in Figure 1A. Protocols uploaded to OBPS can be assigned (tagged) to the relevant omics categories. The granularity of protocols uploaded to the OBPS may include individual uploads for sub-stages (i.e., Tagging/Enrichment within 4, Omics sequencing procedures), or single documents spanning multiple methodology categories (i.e., 7, Sample extraction and purification, through to 9, Bioinformatics). To accommodate these levels of granularity, each upload could be tagged with single or multiple methodology category and linked to those protocols pre- and succeeding it. The granular use of methodology categories will increase modularity within the omics workflow and facilitate the mixing and matching of methods from various projects.
The interplay between the activities within and across the steps within a workflow—and how they bring value to the community and society—is complex and beyond the scope of this article; however, we have provided an initial perspective on this using the Porter's value chain approach (Porter, 1985; Supplementary Figure 1).
The targeted discovery and reuse of protocols can be improved if protocols are effectively described using standardized metadata terms on upload to OBPS and other platforms. Terms and checklists to standardize metadata about primary sequence or biodiversity data already exist [GSC's Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence checklist (MIxS; Yilmaz et al., 2011) and TDWG's Darwin Core standard (Wieczorek et al., 2012)]; however, no such standards have thus far been published for metadata about omics protocols.
Here we present initial suggestions for the Minimum Information for an Omic Protocol (MIOP), a set of ten metadata categories which could correspond to ten key decision tree questions asked to identify the relevant protocol for any project. The ten MIOP categories (Table 1) consist of five novel categories (methodology category, purpose, resources, analysis, target) and five categories already used in the GSC's MIxS (project, geographic location, broad-scale environmental context, local environmental context, and environmental medium). Each category is linked to a set of predefined keywords (metadata terms) from existing vocabularies or ontologies; except for the "project" category, which contains project names, affiliations, and contact details and the "methodology category" outlined in section "Ocean Omics Methodology Categories" (Figure 1A). Omics users would then select the most appropriate keywords for each category, assigning the terms as metadata for the protocol. This will improve the FAIRness of our protocol data, by allowing consequent users to search the protocol database using the same set of keywords; thereby, limiting the proliferation of descriptive keywords (e.g., mapping synonyms) and increasing the findability of protocols.
Table 1. Description of keyword categories for protocol metadata and the terminologies (controlled vocabularies, thesauri, and ontologies) containing the relevant keywords.
Ocean Best Practices System provides a neutral, global public repository for ocean community practices. It is a stable and persistent foundation that can host protocols themselves, or link to other protocol tools and functionalities that can (and should) continue to be developed by other organizations including the private sector. The primary function of Omics OBPS would be to publish and archive omics protocols to enhance their global visibility and discoverability, and provide stable links to the entire workflow of protocols. Expanding and improving the functionality of the OBPS for omics protocols will help the community mature by providing a structured system in which context-based best practices can be discovered and identified. A transparent and structured process for handling our omics protocols will be an essential step toward operationalizing omics observing.
Increasing protocol transparency, through detailed publication on OBPS, also means that simple cited protocol strings can become a core component of methods sections in publications. Those strings can then be harvested by machines to generate a graph of "what came before" and "what came after." When used with the decision tree recommendations this process could point out the most recent protocol development to users and would essentially provide the decision-tree resource we are aiming for. Such an approach enables "practices" (which might be defined as "protocol strings") to emerge from how protocols are actually being used in the community. Assessment of which of these practices represent a "best" practice in a given context is a distinct challenge, but not a unique one in knowledge sectors. Peer endorsement and citation metrics are two commonly employed ranking mechanisms that could also be applied here.
Learning From Community Preferences
Community-use metrics offer a way to capture the community's preference for certain protocols. We suggest that metrics such as times cited, user upvotes, and number of associated data records all be recorded and used to rank lists of relevant protocols. Combined with the MIOP-based grouping into methodology categories, this process will help accelerate the identification of potential best practices within each category. Narrowing down the list of relevant protocols will additionally provide the basis for more targeted and rigorous scientific comparisons between multiple potential best practices for a given scientific endeavor. Outputs of such comparisons may offer further information about the superiority of certain protocols, and could be considered in addition to the more general community-use metrics2. Furthermore, focusing on these community driven best practices will help to reveal protocols that are effective and convenient for a broad range of research facilities. This in turn can reduce literature biases toward novel state of the art practices, which may not be feasible for mainstream use.
Learning From Failed Practices
During the initial workshop, participants outlined a desire for a best practice system to include "failed practices" and flag when a protocol may limit or eliminate a range of downstream applications. While this type of functionality would not be immediately addressed by implementing MIOP metadata, there would be potential for users to provide feedback for protocols using MIOP metadata and Boolean operators. For example, if a protocol, originally designed for seawater, was used with freshwater samples, the user could upload additional MIOP metadata using "AND freshwater" if the protocol was successful or "NOT freshwater" if unsuccessful. Thereby, broadening the findability of successful protocols and documenting potential limitations to be aware of. Documenting these failed attempts has the potential to save both time and resources.
Promoting Collaborative Omic Networks
Minimum Information for an Omic Protocol may additionally promote collaboration between groups. For example, the "Project" category is an administrative metadata field that will describe the project (study or program) for which the protocol was developed, including contact details and affiliated institution. To create links between similar projects and facilitate collaboration, it would be possible to introduce an option to tag a protocol as compliant with pre-existing projects. In such cases, a notification could be sent to the PI of the lead project, allowing them to add or reject the protocol to their list of compliant protocols. Protocols linked this way could form overarching protocol concepts, which may contain a variety of versions and accepted, cross-comparable protocols that include minor adaptations to make them suitable in different circumstances.
An endorsement process for a global observation network has already been developed by Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) in cooperation with OBPS, to encourage standardized methods for global observations and for reporting on GOOS' Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) (Miloslavich et al., 2018; Hermes, 2020). To gain this endorsement, protocols will have to undergo a rigorous community review process that will be strengthened if there is a large source of omics protocols to compare with on the OBPS. Standardized practices and official endorsements are likely to become increasingly valuable as countries begin to use legislation to make biodiversity targets legally binding. Any omic method used to measure biodiversity impacts will need to undergo legal scrutiny if it is used as evidence of a country/organization meeting or failing to meet biodiversity targets. Therefore, protocols officially endorsed through international programmes, such as GOOS, are likely to hold more sway legally. Broad participation from the omics community in open sharing and reviewing of protocols on the OBPS will help to ensure that community endorsed best practices are representative of the wider community needs and not only focused on expensive state of the art methodologies.
Machine Readability
Machine readable tracking of protocol versions presents an opportunity to visually map the progression of protocols by linking all versions to a "concept," as implemented in Zenodo and GitHub. Like software, omic protocols may be updated, corrected, and improved necessitating forms of version control and tracking, such as the use of semantic versioning (Hörstmann et al., 2020; Preston-Werner, 2021). Implementing this would help to increase recognition for the scientists/technicians/students involved in protocol development through citable documentation of their contributions.
Machine-readable and machine-actionable protocols are becoming more important as autonomous technologies evolve. Devices such as the Environmental Sample Processor (ESP) and the Robotic Cartridge Sampling Instrument (RoCSI) are currently being used and developed for autonomous collection, preservation, and in situ analysis of omics samples (Yamahara et al., 2019; National Oceanography Centre, 2021). Eventually, smart sensing platforms using these technologies will be able integrate data from various sensors and satellites to implement adaptive sampling regimes or extraction protocols based on real-time environmental observations (Whitt et al., 2020). To reach this goal a variety of protocols will need to be translated into a machine actionable format using common workflow language. A systematic review of protocols will help to devise such machine actionable formats and protocol templates may help to bridge the gap between lab-based protocol development and in situ autonomous use.
Multiple groups within the omics community are actively developing best practices for their field. To ensure that all these efforts are effectively utilized, a concerted and community wide effort will be needed to gather and organize these practices. By harnessing the OBPS infrastructure and further developing the MIOP metadata we can: (1) allow protocols to be searched for within a decision tree framework; (2) establish a system that encourages the systematic review of protocols; and (3) reveal community preferences through the accumulation of community use data. Taking these steps toward a structured and global public repository of omics protocols will increase transparency and streamline biomolecular ocean observing research to foster the collaborative networks needed to achieve global scale biodiversity observations.
This manuscript has been released as a preprint at https://zenodo.org/record/5482852#.YVNeo55KjAM (Samuel et al., 2021).
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.
AW, CM, and RS constructed the main text figure with input from all authors. RM, PB, and RS developed the supplementary figure. All authors contributed to the discussion and wrote the manuscript.
RS was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) NEXUSS Studentship (grant number NE/N012070/1). RM's contributions were supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programmes under grant agreement N° 862923, project AtlantECO (Atlantic ECOsystem assessment, forecasting and sustainability), and grant agreement N° 862626, project EuroSea (Improving and Integrating European Ocean Observing and Forecasting Systems for Sustainable use of the Oceans). NJ was supported by the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Marine Conservation Targets programme. CP was supported by BIOIMAGING-GR (MIS 5002755) implemented under "Action for Strengthening Research and Innovation Infrastructures" funded by the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (NSRF 2014–2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund), ECCO (project ID 343) funded by the 1st call for the support of Post-doctoral Researchers by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and FutureMARES (grant agreement N° 869300) funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. In addition, CP's research is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund- ESF) through the Operational Programme «Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning» in the context of the project "Reinforcement of Postdoctoral Researchers—2nd Cycle" (MIS-5033021), implemented by the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). JK was supported by the CSIRO Environomics Future Science Platform and the Australian Microbiome Initiative. The Australian Microbiome initiative was supported by funding from Parks Australia through the Bush Blitz program funded by the Australian Government and BHP, Bioplatforms Australia and the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) through the Australian Government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), and the CSIRO. KP was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grants 80NSSC20M0001 and 80NSSX21M003.
We would like to thank participants and organisers from the OBPS workshop IV omics/eDNA working group (Simpson et al., 2021), who have contributed to discussions on how to create an ocean best practice system to serve the biomolecular omics community.
^ Currently, the protocol categories focus on genomics and transcriptomics but we expect this list to expand with further input from the broader omics community, particularly in areas such as proteomics and metabolomics.
^ In certain cases (e.g., for contributing to a standardized global sampling scheme) it may not be about which method is "best," but about which method delivers reliable results while being applicable throughout all regions of the ocean and inclusive of lower capacity research activities.
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Keywords: omics, eDNA, ocean best practices, ocean observations, metadata, protocol management, methods
Citation: Samuel RM, Meyer R, Buttigieg PL, Davies N, Jeffery NW, Meyer C, Pavloudi C, Pitz KJ, Sweetlove M, Theroux S, van de Kamp J and Watts A (2021) Toward a Global Public Repository of Community Protocols to Encourage Best Practices in Biomolecular Ocean Observing and Research. Front. Mar. Sci. 8:758694. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.758694
Received: 14 August 2021; Accepted: 21 September 2021;
Published: 11 October 2021.
Stéphane Pesant, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), United Kingdom
Gerhard Josef Herndl, University of Vienna, Austria
Marine Landa, University of California, Santa Cruz, United States
Copyright © 2021 Samuel, Meyer, Buttigieg, Davies, Jeffery, Meyer, Pavloudi, Pitz, Sweetlove, Theroux, van de Kamp and Watts. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Robyn M. Samuel, r.m.samuel@soton.ac.uk