When we say we are going to focus on Korea for our main summary, the first thing you probably think of is the recent high-profile summit between the angry, rotund guy with the funny haircut – and Kim Jong-un. Not today. For once it isn't developments on the northern side of the DMZ, but rather a fascinating bit of news from South Korea, announced by the government this week, that caught our attention.
In the opening six months of 2018, more than 8,000 men in South Korea went on paternity leave. This is interesting for sure, but two other snippets of information should make us sit up and take notice. First, this number is an impressive 66% increase from the first half of 2017 and a staggering tenfold rise from 2010. Second, men in South Korea are now entitled to 52 weeks of paid paternity leave, which can be taken any time before their child turns eight years old.
Given that this is so incredibly generous, why haven't more men been taking it up before? Even in 2018, which appears to be something of a breakthrough,men only accounted for 17% of the 50,000 people who took family leave. So-called traditional values clearly play a role in this dynamic, but so does fear. The South Korean ministry of welfare has released a report finding 60% of Korean working parents worried that asking for parental leave from their workplace would result in career reprisals later. Pleasingly, some employers, including big conglomerates and smaller companies, are embracing the new government plans. Some are even making parental leave mandatory, so over time this fear should hopefully be dispelled.
Why is this happening now? East Asian countries are not generally known for such social liberalism. Well, there is a clear objective behind the government's recent drive: South Korea needs more South Koreans. In 2017, the country's fertility rate, trending in the wrong direction for a number of years, hit an all-time low. Authorities had been monitoring the problem for a long time and, conscious that increasing numbers of South Koreans said financial instability or an aversion to traditional gender roles were putting them off having children, decided to pursue these radical measures.
Will the move be successful? It is unclear. After all, no one cites the attractiveness of the parental leave package on offer as their main reason for having children. However, if people are happier, feel more secure and are quite simply spending more time together then…well, you know.
President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker used a joint news conference at the White House to agree to a suspension of new tariffs between the US and the EU. Discussions will also begin on eliminating tariffs and subsidies that currently exist, including the steel and aluminium tariffs imposed by the Trump administration this year, as well as the retaliatory EU measures.
The President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has sacked the country's central bank governor, as the economic situation worsens following the reimposition of US sanctions. The move was partly in preparation for those sanctions taking effect later this year, including trading in cars, gold, oil exports and transactions with the central bank.
Cricket legend Imran Khan looks set to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. Early results in one of the most controversial, and violent, elections of recent times puts his PTI party ahead of the PML-N, which is currently led by Shebaz Sharif, brother of disgraced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. This election is only the second time that a civilian government has handed power to another after serving a full term, although there have been concerns that Pakistan's powerful military has been trying to influence the outcome. Mr. Sharif has already said he will challenge the results, citing vote-rigging as a major concern.
Facebook's latest quarterly results saw the company post revenue of $13.2bn and $5.1bn of profit. Whilst both of these numbers were up on Q2 2017, with revenue climbing more than 40% from a year ago, shares in the company fell by as much as a quarter of their value following the announcement. This has been attributed to the company's admission that operating margins will be hit over the next few years as it seeks to implement new privacy safeguards and slow usage in its biggest advertising markets.
Leading chipmaker Qualcomm has pulled out of a planned $44bn takeover of Dutch rival NXP. Qualcomm has failed to win approval from Chinese regulators for what would have been the semiconductor industry's largest ever takeover and the agreement between the two companies expired late last night. The CEO of Qualcomm conceded defeat yesterday afternoon on a results conference call with analysts, instead announcing a $30bn share buyback programme.
In a surprise move, leading Australian media companies Nine Entertainment and Fairfax have announced a $3bn merger. The new entity will be called Nine and will see a 51.1% to 48.9% split in terms of control. Nine's television network, one of the biggest in Australia, will now join with Fairfax's newspaper business, which includes The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne's The Age and The Australian Financial Review.
Earlier this morning, Airbus has posted its Q2 earnings, where revenues rose 8% year-on-year to €14.8bn euros and earnings doubled over the same period to €1.14bn. The performance of the long-haul A350 aircraft was cited by CEO Tom Enders as a key factor in the positive results, although he noted that challenges remain in terms of meeting the company's full-year A320neo delivery target.
Indexes in Europe saw slight falls yesterday, with the FTSE 100 down 0.7% and the Dax in Frankfurt decreasing 0.9%. There was better news in the United States, where the news regarding the agreement with the EU saw the S&P 500 close 0.9% up, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climb 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite equity index adding 1.2% to close at a record high. General Motors latest results, which saw the company cut its full-year earnings forecasts because of higher aluminium and steel costs, were followed by a sharp fall in its share price value.
In China, the CSI 300 index of major Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed stocks ended 0.1% lower, as the week's stimulus-driven rally looked to be slowing down. There was better news in Hong Kong, where the Hang Seng rose 0.9%.
Forex-wise, the dollar index was down 0.4% as the euro climbed by the exact same margin, to $1.1730. Sterling was up 0.4% at $1.3193.
Philip Stephens, writing in The Financial Times, laments the political shift which has seen leaders who sold visions of the future – such as Harold Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair – replaced by the likes of Donald Trump, the Brexiteers and Europe's new nationalists, all of whom "inhabit a rose-tinted past". He argues that this nostalgia, whilst hugely powerful, omits the obvious issues such as the widespread prejudice and poorer living standards which existed back then. Blaming the baby-boomer generation for driving this trend, Stephens calls for leaders to adopt "a message about the future powerful enough to reclaim the voters' collective gaze" and in particular a plan to explain how our children are better off than their parents.
In The Times, Jenni Russell explores the current challenges facing South Africa and notes that, whilst the ousting of President Jacob Zuma earlier this year was a welcome first step, his removal has only served to highlight the huge problems his successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, must now deal with. Most notably, the corruption which has sent state electricity company Eskom to the verge of collapse and seen the head of the country's tax ministry suspended for giving preferential tax treatment to his friends, are highlighted as the first issues to be tackled. She argues that "the culture of payoffs, theft and cronyism has filtered down to every level of government because under Zuma it was apparent that the rewards were great and the chances of retribution minute". With public anger rising at each new revelation, and youth unemployment now at 52%, Ms. Russell suggests that Mr. Ramaphosa is the right man for the job, although he has a hugely difficult task of balancing different factions whilst trying to sort out the mess.
350 million years ago, the largest living thing on dry land was a 20 foot tall mushroom. Known as Prototaxites, a fossil of the giant fungus was first discovered in the nineteenth century, in present-day Saudi Arabia.


text:
Q: Android Parse Push I'm using Parse services to send push messages to devices.
On iOS everything works well but on Android if I send a push message it shows my package name ("com.example.app") to the receiver. Why isn't it showing my app's name ("Example App")?

Thanks.

A: You should check again your source code, I follow Parse Document and it works properly, You maybe send wrong content of the title
Intent intent = new Intent(context, ZHSplashActivity.class);
    PendingIntent pIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, (int) System.currentTimeMillis(), intent, 0);
    Notification n  = new Notification.Builder(context)
            .setContentTitle(context.getResources().getString(R.string.app_name))
            .setContentText(message)
            .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.app_icon)
            .setContentIntent(pIntent)
            .setAutoCancel(true).build();

    NotificationManager notificationManager =
            (NotificationManager) context.getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);

    notificationManager.notify(0, n);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Examination Process
Legal Nurse Consultant Professional Course
LNCC Review Course
Become an LNC
Find an LNC
Why Join AALNC?
Earn CNE contact hours through AALNC's Monthly Educational Webinars. As AALNC continues to meet the needs of its members, it offers a series of webinar presentations with dynamic educational presentations and renowned speakers from all over the country.
To register for an upcoming AALNC Webinar please visit AALNC's Events Calendar.
In AALNC's Events Calendar, you can view the descriptions for each upcoming webinar and complete the registration process. To register, click the webinar you would like to attend, then click "Add to Cart." Following registration, you will receive an email with instructions to access the live session via the Professional Development Center.
2021 Upcoming Webinar Schedule
Note: Schedule is subject to change
Jan. 6 @ 11 am CT Management of Acute Ischemic Stroke
Feb. 3 @ 11 am CT
March 4 @ 11 am CT Expert Witness from Inception to Trial
AALNC's collection of On-Demand Webinars includes some of AALNC's most popular presentations. Originally presented live, these webinars are now offered in a recorded format. CNE contact hours are available for AALNC's On-Demand Webinars. Click here to browse and purchase AALNC On-Demand Webinars through the AALNC Professional Development Center.
Throughout the year AALNC offers webinars that are FREE of charge to members only. Participants in these live and on-demand webinars are awarded CNE contact hours. To browse our current live and on-demand webinars that are free to members visit the Professional Development Center.
Throughout the year, AALNC offers webinars that are free of charge to EVERYONE! These webinars help provide the basics of becoming and being an LNC. If you would like access to these recordings, please click here!
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


There is not a lot new to write about Debbie, my Debbian 4.0 server.
Uptime is not a criteria I've applied to Debbie or any other Home Server generally because the current hardware was not selected for its "green" power characteristics. It was what I had on hand when I put the system together. In fact I took down a Windows XP Pro system to install Debian Linux 4.0 on the system. As a result, when nobody needs any of the systems in the house, its turned off. I've not been one that believes leaving computer hardware up and running is the preferred way to operate in either a business office or home environment. If the server was needed 100% of the time it would make sense to leave it on 24/7.
A criteria I do use is "successful starts", generally not a industry-wide measured performance criteria! At present Debbie is 100% successful in this criteria. Start time is typically 1.5 minutes. Its running a DNS tertiary server, DHCP, NFS, Samba, MySql, ClamAV, cupsys, ssh and Apache 2.0. Its a Celeron running 2.5 Ghz and 512 Megabytes of RAM.
In comparison my Windows XP Pro desktop takes 2.25 minutes to boot, and it has every possible service either disabled or set to manual so it only starts when necessary. It also has just an anti-virus application set to start on power-up. Its running a P4 at 2.8 Ghz and 1GB of RAM. On Windows XP Pro, the clock stops when I can reach a network resource not when the desktop comes up.
The Microsoft boys have cheated by pushing the network startup until after the desktop is running. It makes it appear that the system is starting earlier than it truly has. Something a lot of Windows users have experienced when they try to get something real done as soon as their desktop pops up! Windows XP Pro is about 99.9% successful at starting during the same period of time. I've had 3 hard drive crashes on the XP system since May and replaced the hard drive once. The Debian system is running on used drives and hasn't faltered once.
I've also upgraded the Debian server approximately 15 times since May. Windows XP Pro has required approximately 35 updates, mostly security updates to various applications. Debbie installed the updates (including a couple of kernel updates) and the added applications and kept running. The XP Pro system required nearly 30 reboots with the 35 updates. I also got at least one update I didn't know about and one I would have liked to have heard about before it installed itself. So, hmm, who wins this criteria category?
BTW I do know that Debian Linux does reboot. I've deliberately rebooted a few times just to see if it does. It has only been shutdown deliberately, not by accident or by software failure.
Kraken, the Windows 2003 based Homer Server, was functional but didn't really offer enough functionality to interest me, not to mention the fact that it seems as if the entire system is likely to be totally proprietary. I never did get the backup functions of Kraken to work on my Windows XP Pro box so it basically failed the biggest feature that attracted me at first.
I still do not have a backup program for Debbie I trust yet.
The Linux learning curve has been fairly steep. I've learned enough of Samba 3.0 to be extremely impressed with the programmers working on it. Apache 2.0 is likewise been on my plate and is still a work in progress. I have been able to set up Apache to display a webpage of shared files but not to implement "active pages" to hint at an evil empire phrase.
Its been a long time since I've updated this blog. This hopefully will be a more constant process in the future bearing in mind that this activity takes third place to family and work.


text:
Airbag Recall — Do You Have a High-Risk Vehicle?
The air bag inflators in certain 2001-2003 Hondas and Acuras pose the biggest threat. Those models include the 2001 and 2002 Honda Civic, the 2001 and 2002 Honda Accord, the 2002 Honda Odyssey, the 2002 Honda CR-V, the 2003 Honda Pilot, the 2002 and 2003 Acura TL and the 2003 Acura CL.
Vehicle manufacturers have been conducting the largest safety recall in US history after it was discovered that the Takata company had manufactured defective airbags that could injure or even kill drivers and passengers if they rupture.
Authorized dealerships are replacing defective airbags for free. But still, many motorists, even after being contacted, are ignoring the warning.
As the weather heats up, the recall is particularly urgent for residents of the San Fernando Valley — especially for drivers of older vehicles — because prolonged exposure to high heat or humid conditions over time worsens the defect in these faulty airbags.
"The Department of Transportation is maintaining its aggressive oversight of the efforts to recall Takata air bags as quickly as possible," then Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.
Motorists are being warned that tens of millions of airbags are defective, and even a minor fender-bender can cause these airbags to rupture, spraying metal shrapnel into drivers and passengers. More than a million vehicles being driven in Southern California contain these dangerous airbags.
This problem is across the country, so much so that formed coalitions of legislators, community organizations and faith groups have been contacted to help get the the word out.
"For those that drive a vehicle with a recalled airbag, they face as high as a 50 percent chance of serious injury or death if your airbags are activated," Foxx said. It was also pointed out that three people living in Southern California have been killed and at least 180 people have been injured. Injuries have included loss of eyesight, broken teeth, broken facial bones and lacerations.
"In Southern California, many of us drive or ride in a car every day, several times a day," said Kenn Phillips, President & CEO, Valley Economic Alliance. "If your vehicle contains a defective airbag, this part of your daily life could threaten your life.
"Our organization is committed to supporting outreach efforts throughout Southern California and to helping prevent another deadly accident caused by a defective airbag inflator."
In January, according to Consumer Reports, Takata agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud charges after the US Department of Justice said the company deceived automakers about the safety of their products. Takata is expected to pay a $1 billion penalty.
Owners of those affected vehicles are advised to schedule a free repair by calling (800) 234-2138. Drivers can also visit SaferCar.gov, AirbagRecall.com or contact their local dealer to see if their auto is affected.


CHICAGO -- A 13-year-old girl was shot in the back while riding in the backseat of a car in the city's West Englewood neighborhood.
The shooting happened just before 10 p.m. Thursday on the 6500 block of South Bell.
The girl was a backseat passenger in a car, when the armed offenders emerged from a house and fired shots at the vehicle.
It's not known who else was in the car, but the girl was the only person hit.
The girl was transported to Stroger Hospital in stable condition.


Let's face it, long-term care is not a "hot" topic with the average consumer. To establish relationships with sons and daughters before mom and dad need your services, you need to "think outside the box." Special caregiver support programs and intergenerational education partnerships with local schools are just two strategies that we use successfully.
Enhance your credibility by positioning your community or facility as experts in senior care. Share your knowledge with the public via special initiatives and programs that put your materials in their hands. Use education as a means to build awareness and bring both your residents' family members and the public to you.
Ever wonder why almost all hospitals have "education" as a major component of their public relations program? Education provides an opportunity to create credibility and establish relationships with consumers long before health care services are needed. Let's learn from this and use this strategy to help build our own consumer relationships.


text:
\section{Abstract}
Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning is a popular approach that cuts
down on the classical planning search space by relying on a given
hierarchical library of domain control knowledge. This provides
an intuitive methodology for specifying high-level instructions on how
robots and agents should perform tasks, while also giving the planner enough
flexibility to choose the lower-level steps and their ordering. In this
paper we present the HATP (Hierarchical Agent-based Task Planner)
planning framework which extends the
traditional HTN planning domain representation and semantics by making them more
suitable for roboticists, and treating agents as ``first class'' entities
in the language. The former is achieved by allowing ``social rules'' to be
defined which specify what behaviour is acceptable/unacceptable by
the agents/robots in the domain, and interleaving planning with geometric
reasoning in order to validate online--with
respect to a detailed geometric 3D world--the human/robot actions currently
being pursued by HATP.\footnote{This work has been conducted within the EU ARCAS
project (http://www.arcas-project.eu/) funded by the E.C. Division FP7-IST under
Contract ICT 287617. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback. The second author has now
moved to The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.}

\section{Introduction}

Real-world robotics domains and problems offer natural testbeds for HTN
(Hierarchical Task Network) planning. The intuitive hierarchical
representation used by such planners allows the often available expert
knowledge about a domain to be included with relative ease to guide the
search process. This guidance might be abstract steps detailing
how a task, such as cleaning a table full of different types
of objects, should be performed by the robot, with sufficient flexibility
over the more detailed steps and states---e.g. the final locations of
objects on the shelf. In practice, the inclusion
of such search control knowledge makes HTN planning faster than classical
planning, which is particularly important when dealing with robots as they need to
be responsive to environmental changes involving other robots,
and more importantly, humans.

In this paper we describe the HATP (Hierarchical Agent-based Task Planner)
HTN planner and show how it is particularly suited for use in robotics.
HATP is based on SHOP \cite{bib:Nau1999}, but unlike this planner and
other HTN planners such as Nonlin \cite{Nonlin76},
SHOP2 \cite{bib:Shop2-2003} and UMCP \cite{bib:Umcp94}, HATP offers
a user-friendly domain representation language inspired by popular programming
languages, making it easier for roboticists, and indeed computer scientists
alike, to become quickly acquainted with the syntax and semantics. We
give insights into a formal mapping from this HATP language into an equivalent
classical representation, but leave the detailed treatment for a separate paper.

An important feature of HATP is that it treats agents as ``first-class
entities''
in the domain representation language. It can therefore distinguish between
the different agents in the domain as well as between agents and the other
entities such as tables and chairs. This facilitates a post-processing step in HATP that splits the final
solution (sequence of actions) into multiple synchronised solution streams, one per agent,
so that the streams may be executed in parallel by the respective agents by synchronising when necessary.

The planning algorithm of HATP has also been
extended in various ways. First, it incorporates a simple mechanism to take
into account the (user-defined) cost of executing actions, so that instead
of returning the first arbitrary solution found, it keeps searching until an
optimal (least-cost) one is found.\footnote{The notion of optimality here is
``local'': HATP finds an optimal solution only from the set of
HATP solutions obtained using the given methods.} Second, HATP has been extended to be
more suitable for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI); in particular, ``social
rules'' can be included by the user to define what the acceptable (and
unacceptable) behaviours of the agents are. Two examples are: what
sequences of steps should be avoided in final solutions, and a limit
on the amount of time a person should spend waiting (and doing nothing).
The rules are then used to
filter out the primitive solutions found that do not meet the constraints.

Finally, there is much ongoing work on interleaving HATP with geometric
planning algorithms, so as to validate online the actions being pursued
by HATP, by consulting its geometric counterpart. This results in
motion planning being performed by the geometric planner to check if
the HATP action being planned is actually feasible in
the real world, modelled in great detail via the
Move3D \cite{Simeon_2001_Move3d} simulation environment. This integration
takes an important step towards interfacing HATP's
AI planning algorithms and techniques with the planning algorithms
and techniques more commonly used by roboticists. In this paper we
summarise all of these extensions to HATP, and explicate how they
make HATP particularly suited for the Robotics community.

\section{HTN Planning}

While classical planners such as
STRIPS focus on achieving some goal state, Hierarchical Task Network (HTN)
planners focus on solving \textit{abstract tasks}.
We have found HTN planning to be
particularly useful for robotics applications, as it allows---the often
available---instructions from the domain expert to be included in the domain
as an intuitive hierarchy.
This helps guide the search, making it faster in general than classical
planning approaches, and thereby also more practical for real robots that
need to be responsive to environmental changes.

The Hierarchical Agent-based Task Planner (HATP) is based on the
popular ``totally-ordered'' HTN planning approach, which unlike
``partially-ordered'' HTN planning allows calls to external functions---a
necessity in our work. This is also highlighted as a feature in the SHOP
\cite{bib:Nau1999} planner, on which HATP is based. The rest of this section
focusses on totally-ordered HTN planning.

We define an HTN \textit{planning problem} as the 3-tuple $\tuple{d, s_0,
\mathcal{D}}$, where $d$, the ``goal'' to achieve, is a sequence of primitive
or abstract tasks, $s_0$ is the initial state, and $\mathcal{D}$ is an HTN
\textit{planning domain}. An operator is as in classical planning, and
actions are ground instances of operators. We generally use the terms
operator and action interchangeably in this paper.
An HTN planning domain is the pair $\mathcal{D} = \tuple{\mathcal{A}, \mathcal{M}}$ where
$\mathcal{A}$ is a finite set of operators, and $\mathcal{M}$ is a finite
set of HTN \textit{methods}.
A method is a 4-tuple consisting of: the name of the method, the abstract
task that it needs to solve, a precondition specifying when the method is
applicable, and a \textit{body} realising the ``decomposition'' of the
task associated with the method into more specific subtasks. Specifically,
the method-body is a sequence of primitive and/or abstract tasks.

The HTN planning process works by selecting applicable methods from $\mathcal{M}$
and applying them to abstract tasks in $d$ in a depth-first manner. In each
iteration, this will typically result in $d$ becoming a ``more primitive''
sequence
of tasks. The process continues until $d$ has only primitive tasks left, which
map to action names.
At any stage during planning if no applicable method can be found
for an abstract task, the planner essentially ``backtracks'' and tries an
alternative method for an abstract task refined earlier.

In more detail, the main steps of the HTN planning process are the following:
in each iteration all ground instances are found of the methods available
to decompose a chosen task from task network $d$; one such method instance
is chosen arbitrarily that is applicable (whose precondition holds) in the
current state of the world; and the instance is applied to $d$
by basically replacing the chosen task with the subtasks in the
method's body. The planner backtracks to choose an alternative method
instance to one that was previously applied to $d$ only if that method instance
did not eventually
allow a complete (and successful) decomposition of the top-level
goal task(s).

\section{Features of HATP}
In this section we present our own encoding in HATP of the Dock-Worker Robots
domain~\cite{bib:automated_planning}. In this domain,
there is a robot (R1) that can move and carry containers, and two crane-agents
(K1 and K2) that can lift and put down containers. Furthermore, there are two
locations (L1 and L2), each containing two piles (P11 and P12 at L1,
and P21 and P22 at L2) that can hold containers. The goal is to
place the two containers C1 and C2 on piles P21 and P22, respectively.

\begin{figure}[h!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{DWR.pdf}
\caption{A planning problem in the Dock-Worker Robot domain: robot R1 has
to carry the container C1 from P11 to P21, and the container C2 from P12 to P22.}
\label{fig:dwr-problem}
\end{figure}

\subsection{World state representation}
In addition to having the standard advantages of total-order HTN planning, HATP
also provides an intuitive object-oriented-like syntax for
representing and manipulating the world state. This allows roboticists and
computer scientists alike to quickly get acquainted with the syntax and
start developing HATP domains.

The HATP world specification is defined
as a collection of entities, which represent the agent types and object
types in the world. This distinction between agents and other objects is
important. Agents are treated as first class entities in the language of
HATP; moreover, different types of agents may be defined by simply
instantiating the default Agent entity. This distinction also facilitates
a post-processing step in HATP, which splits the final solution into
separate sub-solutions to be executed by the respective agents.

An entity has a set of attributes, where an attribute
either represents a data value, or a relation between the entity and other
entities. For example, a robot-agent may have an attribute \code{carry} of type
\code{Container} indicating that the robot can carry objects of type \code{Container}.
HATP supports some of the standard data types found in programming
languages, such as integers and strings, and also allows defining sets of
objects, which are manipulated using the standard set operations. An
example of an HATP world specification is shown in listing~\ref{lst:entities}.\newline  \newline \newline

\begin{lstlisting}[
caption={HATP entities for the Dock-Worker Robot domain in figure~\ref{fig:dwr-problem}. There are five entity types: Agent (default entity), Crane, Location, Pile and Container. The initial value assigned to a \code{static} attribute cannot change during planning, whereas a \code{dynamic} attribute can be assigned different values over the course of planning. An attribute classified as an \code{atom} can only have one value, whereas one classified as a \code{set} can have a set of values. The \code{type} of an attribute can be any of the primitive types allowed as well as an entity.},
label={lst:entities}]
define entityType Crane, Location, Pile, Container;

define entityAttributes Agent {
  //An agent can be of type Robot or Crane
  static atom string type;

  //For cranes
  static atom Location attached;

  //For robots
  dynamic atom Location at;
  dynamic atom Container carry;
  dynamic atom bool loading;
}

define entityAttributes Location {
  static set Location adjacent;
  dynamic atom bool occupied;
}

define entityAttributes Pile {
  static atom Location attached;
  dynamic set Container contains;
  dynamic atom Container top;
}

define entityAttributes Container {
  dynamic atom Location in;
  dynamic atom Container on;
}

\end{lstlisting}

The HATP initial world state is then an instantiation of the defined entities,
along with value assignments to their attributes.
An example of an HATP initial world state is shown in listing~\ref{lst:state}.
Notice that attributes of entities generally map to predicate symbols in
standard ``classical'' initial states, and the
entities and values to the
parameters of the predicate. For example, \code{K1.attached = L1} could map to
predicate \code{attached(K1,L1)} in a classical initial state, \code{R1.loading = false}
to \code{$\neg$loading(R1)}, and \code{R1.carry = NULL} could be represented in the
classical initial state by not
including any positive literal in it that has predicate symbol
\code{carry}, with \code{R1} as its first parameter.

\begin{lstlisting}[
caption={An HATP initial state for the Dock-Worker Robot domain. After instantiating the entity types, their attributes are assigned initial values. Note that symbol ``$<<=$'' is used to add the element on its RHS to the set on its LHS.},
label={lst:state}]
R1, K1, K2 = new Agent;
L1, L2 = new Location;
P11, P12, P21, P22 = new Pile;
C1, C2 = new Container;

R1.type = ``ROBOT'';
R1.at = L1;
R1.carry = NULL;
R1.loading = false;

K1.type = ``CRANE'';
K1.attached = L1;
K2.type = ``CRANE'';
K2.attached = L2;

L1.adjacent <<= L2;
L1.occupied = true;
L2.adjacent <<= L1;
L2.occupied = false;

P11.attached = L1;
P11.contains <<= C1;
P11.top = C1;
P12.attached = L1;
P12.contains <<= C2;
P12.top = C2;
P21.attached = L2;
P22.attached = L2;

C1.in = L1;
C1.on = NULL;
C2.in = L1;
C2.on = NULL;
\end{lstlisting}

\subsection{Domain representation}
As in standard HTN planning, an HATP domain consists of a set of methods and
a set of operators. These are written similarly to traditional HTN domains with
the exception where the HATP language offers some user-friendly constructs
for defining preconditions of methods and operators,
bodies of methods and effects of operators.
In particular, variables are defined in HATP methods, and their bindings
controlled, via the following constructs; examples of their use can be
found in listing~\ref{lst:method}.

\begin{itemize}
\item \code{SELECT} binds the given variable in the usual way.
In essence, the construct amounts to a ``backtrack point'' that allows all
values of the associated variable---and thereby all ground instances of the
method---to be considered.
\item \code{SELECTORDERED} binds the variable in some given order, governed
by a user-supplied ordering relation. Moreover, the variable can be bound
in ascending or descending order with respect to the relation.
\item \code{SELECTONCE} binds the variable only once---the remaining bindings
are disregarded. This offers a reduction in the branching factor at the
expense of completeness, as some of the ignored bindings may also yield
HATP solutions.
\end{itemize}

While the last construct may result in the loss of HATP solutions, this
heuristic is useful in domains where if a solution pursued
by taking one binding of the variable---and applying the resulting ground
instance of the HATP method---turns out to not work, then no other binding
for that variable will work either. For example, imagine a slightly different
Dock-Worker Robot domain/problem that has multiple robots, and where taking
the shortest path during navigation is not important. This means that
if one robot cannot navigate from one location to another, then none of the
others will be able to either. Therefore, there is no need to consider
all possible robot-agent bindings as done in listing~\ref{lst:method}:
a single binding will be sufficient.

\begin{lstlisting}[
caption={Part of an HATP method to move a container from a source pile to a
target pile in a different location. Note that \code{distance} is a
user-supplied
ordering relation; ``$<$'' means that the variable bindings should be in descending
order; and ``$N_1:T>N_2;$'' means that task $T$ (labelled $N_1$) must precede the
task labelled $N_2$.},
label={lst:method}]
method Transport(Container C, Pile Target) {
  // do nothing if container is in target pile
  empty{C.in == Target;};
  {
    preconditions {
      // container not already in target location
      EXIST(Pile Source2, {C.in == Source2;},
	    {Source2.attached != Target.attached;});
    };
    subtasks {
      S = SELECT(Pile, {C.in == S;});
      R = SELECTORDERED(Agent, {R.type == ``ROBOT'';},
	  distance(R.at, S.attached), <);
      K1 = SELECT(Agent,
	   {K1.type == ``CRANE''; K1.at == S.attached;});
      K2 = SELECT(Agent,
	   {K2.type == ``CRANE''; K2.at == Target.attached;});
      1: GetReady(R, C, S);
      2: LoadRobot(K1, R, C)>1;
      3: NavFromTo(R, S.attached, Target.attached)>2;
      4: UnloadRobot(K2, R, C)>3;
      5: Put(K2, C, Target)>4;
    };
    ...
}
\end{lstlisting}

Observe from listing~\ref{lst:method} that, as expected, the subtasks
within the method's body are totally
ordered. HATP, however, also allows partially ordering subtasks; this
is achieved by
not specifying ordering constraints between some (or all) of the tasks in
the method's body. For example, removing constraint ``$>2$''
from the method in listing~\ref{lst:method} would then not require that the
task with label $3$ occur after the one with label $2$. Note that such partial
ordering of tasks is merely a convenience: it is an alternative to supplying
multiple totally-ordered methods corresponding to every possible linearisation
of the partially ordered subtasks. This is exactly what happens during
planning: the set of
partially ordered subtasks in a method's body is handled by taking all possible
linearisations of the set, essentially creating additional HATP method options
to consider for the parent task's decomposition.
Since partially ordering subtasks results in an exponential increase in the number
of method options, it should be used with appropriate care. Introducing ``true''
partially-ordered planning into HATP is left as future work: the algorithms are
not obvious as we want to have the ability to use evaluable predicates in
preconditions, for which maintaining the complete state of the world at each step of the
planning process is the obvious solution \cite{bib:Nau1999}.

Some other useful constructs supported by HATP are \code{EXIST},
\code{IF}, and \code{FORALL}. As in other HTN planners such as SHOP,
construct \code{EXIST} is used only in preconditions of methods and
operators; \code{IF} only in the effects of operators; and \code{FORALL}
in both preconditions of methods and operators, as well as in the effects
of operators.
Examples of how these constructs may be used are shown in
listings \ref{lst:method} and \ref{lst:action}.

\begin{lstlisting}[
caption={An HATP operator. The expression ``$A >> B.attr$'' holds if element $A$ is in the set $B.attr$, and the expression's negation is specified using ``$A !>> B.attr$''. Expression ``$B.attr <<= A$'' adds element $A$ to set $B.attr$, and ``$B.attr =>> A$'' removes $A$ from $B.attr$.},
label={lst:action}]
action Move(
  Agent R, Location From, Location To, Location FinalDest) {
  preconditions {
    R.type == ``ROBOT'';
    To >> From.adjacent;
    R.at == From;
    To.occupied == false;
  };
  effects {
    R.at = To;
    From.occupied = false;
    To.occupied = true;
    R.path <<= To;
    IF{From !>> R.path;}{R.path <<= From;}
    IF{To.isForbiddenBy == R;}{To.isForbiddenBy = NULL;}
    IF{To == FinalDest;}{
      FORALL(Location LocP,
        {LocP >> R.path;},{R.path =>> LocP;});
    }
  };
  cost{costToMove(From, To)};
}
\end{lstlisting}

\subsection{Plan production}
HATP is able to find the least-cost primitive solution that solves the goal task(s)
at hand, as done for example in \cite{bib:Shop2-2003}. To this end,
HATP keeps track of the least-costly plan computed so far, as well as the
total cost of the current partial plan being pursued, and then avoids adding
any action to it that will definitely lead to a costlier partial plan.
Indeed, in the worst case this requires looking through all HATP solutions
for the given goal task(s). Moreover, since the HATP search space is governed
by the methods supplied, there may be other low-cost solutions (corresponding to
methods not supplied) that HATP does not take into account.

The cost of the partial plan is computed via ``cost functions''. A cost function
is a user-supplied C++ function that is linked to an HATP operator as shown at
the bottom of listing~\ref{lst:action}. The function can perform any arbitrary
calculation to estimate the cost of executing the
action; however, for efficiency reasons the function should terminate quickly.
An example of such a function is one that computes the cost of
executing an action to send data from one robot to another. This might involve checking
how much data needs to be sent and thereby how much time it would take
to do the transfer.

By using cost functions associated with the sequence of
primitive actions pursued so far, HATP determines the total cost of the
sequence, and avoids pursuing it further if by adding the next action
the total cost would exceed
the cost of the lowest-cost solution found so far.

Once HATP finds a solution---a sequence of primitive actions---it then splits
the solution into multiple ``streams'', one per agent in the
domain, and adds causal links between streams for
synchronisation \cite{bib:belief}.
To determine which actions in the final solution belong to which agents, the HATP
language reserves the first variable of every operator's name: it must always bind
to the name of the agent responsible for eventually executing the operator.
The second and subsequent variables of an operator's name may also be used as
placeholders for agent names if necessary. Such an operator would then be a
``joint operator'': one that needs to be executed in parallel by all the
robots/agents that it refers to.

Once the different streams are separated, they may then be executed. The stream
(if any) belonging to the agent that formulated the plan may be executed by the
agent directly, whereas
actions in other streams need to be delegated to their respective agents, and
the environment monitored to determine if the actions were successfully executed.
Figure~\ref{fig:dwr-planstreams} shows a plan produced for the Dock-Worker
Robots problem depicted in figure~\ref{fig:dwr-problem} with different streams
belonging to the different agents in the domain.

Note that in the case of joint operators, all the agents involved need a
``stronger'' synchronisation than what causal links entail.
For instance in a robot-robot synchronisation they may need to
set some rendezvous points so as to exchange information
just before starting. This may also involve visual servoing,
both in robot-robot and human-robot joint operators.

\begin{figure*}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{DWR-planStreams.pdf}
\caption{The HATP solution for the DWR problem. There are three streams
corresponding to the actions belonging to the three agents, ordered using
causal links (shown as arrows). The yellow stream represents the actions
of the first crane, the green the actions of the other crane, and the blue
the actions of the robots. }
\label{fig:dwr-planstreams}
\end{figure*}

\section{HATP in an HRI context}
As highlighted by \cite{bib:alili} one challenge in robotics is to develop socially
interactive and cooperative robots. The meaning of socially interactive
robots is defined in \cite{bib:fong} which states that they must
``operate as partners, peers or assistants, which means
that they need to exhibit a certain degree of adaptability and flexibility
to drive the interaction with a wide range of humans''. \cite{bib:klein}
implemented that in what they called ``ten challenges for human
robot teamwork''. We are convinced that task planners can take care of several
of these challenges. In this case the robot should be able to \cite{bib:klein}: \textit{(1)}
signal in what tasks it can/wants to participate; \textit{(2)} act in a
predictable way to ensure human understanding of what it is doing;
\textit{(3)} publicise its status and its intentions; \textit{(4)}
negotiate on tasks with its human partner in order to determine roles
and decide how to perform the tasks; and \textit{(5)} deal with social
conventions, as well as its human partner's abilities and preferences.

To address some of those challenges HATP includes mechanisms to
filter plans so as to keep only those suitable for HRI.
To this end, HATP allows the specification of the following filtering criteria.
\begin{description}
\item[Wasted time:] Avoids plans where an agent(s) mentioned in a plan
spends a lot of its time waiting.
\item[Effort balancing:] Avoids plans where efforts are not fairly distributed
among the agents mentioned in a plan.
\item[Control of intricacy:] Avoids plans with too many interdependencies
between the actions of agents mentioned in the plan, as a problem with executing
just one of those actions could invalidate the entire plan.
\item[Undesirable sequences:] Avoids plans that violate specific user-defined
sequences.
\end{description}

Combining some of the above criteria could help yield the following
interesting behaviours: \textit{(1)} the human ends up doing a lot of the
tasks, but yet the overall effort \cite{bib:alili} taken to do them is significantly lower
than what the robot puts to do a lower number of effort-intensive tasks;
\textit{(2)} avoiding, when possible, having the human wait for the robot
several times, which essentially prevents the streams from having too
many causal links between them. The filtering criteria are implemented
by looking through all the plans produced and filtering out the ones that
do not meet the requirements specified. In the future we intend to study
algorithms that do such filtering online, rather than after primitive
solutions are found.

\section{Interleaving with geometric reasoning}
\label{sec:interleave}

While an HTN hierarchy allows one to intuitively reason about high-level
tasks such as \code{Transport} in terms of more specific tasks, and eventually
in terms of basic actions, these still ``abstract out'' the lowest possible
level of detail by making certain assumptions about the world. For example,
HATP
operator \code{Move} in listing \ref{lst:action} assumes that as long as
location \code{To} is adjacent to location \code{From}, and \code{To} is
not occupied, that the robot at \code{From} will be able to navigate to
location \code{To}. Clearly, this may not always work for various reasons,
such as there being an obstacle in the path, or certain geometrical
characteristics of the robot and the connecting path making
the move physically impossible. Combining HATP---and symbolic/task planning in
general---with the geometric planning algorithms used in robotics
is therefore essential to be able to obtain primitive solutions that
are viable in the real world.

The work in \cite{silvaIROS13,silvaICRA14,Silva13}
proposes an interface between HATP and a
geometric planner. This interface is mainly provided via ``evaluable
predicates''---predicates in HATP preconditions that are evaluated
by calling associated external procedures. Such a predicate evaluating to
$true$ amounts to a geometric solution existing for the ``geometric task'' that
the predicate represents, and evaluating to $false$ amounts to the
non-existence of such a solution. For example,
the precondition of an HATP action that gives an object
to a person might have an evaluable predicate that invokes the geometric
planner to check the feasibility of the task of giving the object to the
person, and to store the resulting geometric trajectory if any.
This notion of a geometric task is something that is both important in order
to have a meaningful link between the two planning approaches, and also
specific to the type of geometric planner used. A geometric task essentially
corresponds to one or more motion planning goal-configurations, computed
(automatically) by the geometric planner by taking into account
various criteria such as the visibility and
reachability of objects from the perspectives of different robots
and humans
in the domain. Aptly called Geometric Task Planner (GTP) \cite{Pandey_2012_GTP},
this planner liberates HATP from having to reason in terms of low-level
details such as grasps and orientations. Using this particular planner
for forming the link with HATP also makes the interface proposed
different to other interfaces in the literature, such as
\cite{Dornhege09,Dornhege09icaps,Karlsson12,Lagriffoul12}.

The interface between HATP and the GTP is used to interleave their planning
algorithms. In one approach, whenever the GTP is invoked by HATP while testing
an evaluable predicate, the non-existence of a GTP solution for the
associated geometric task (from the current geometric world state) does not
lead to the
predicate evaluating to $false$; instead, the GTP backtracks to try
alternative solutions for the previously invoked geometric tasks
in an effort to make a solution
possible for the most recently invoked one. Since this may cause changes
to intermediate geometric world states, this approach comes with
mechanisms to ensure that such changes do not affect the
symbolic world state in a way that invalidates the HATP
plan being pursued. Such mechanisms are, however, not necessary in the
second approach to interleaved planning that the authors present.
Here, whenever the GTP cannot
find a solution for a geometric task, it does not---as before---backtrack
to find alternatives for previous geometric tasks,
but instead immediately returns with ``failure''. If this leads to
HATP backtracking, HATP
then has the option to try, intuitively, a different ``instance''
of the action that needs to be ``undone'' as a consequence of the backtrack
(in addition to the standard option of trying different \textit{actions});
this different ``instance'' is basically the same HATP action that needs
to be undone, but this time with a different geometric solution attached
to it.

An interesting feature of the GTP is its ability to plan not just the
robots' tasks/actions but also the humans', by taking into account their
respective kinematic models. This makes way for the multiple robots/agents
defined in an HATP domain to have a clear association with those defined in
the GTP domain. For example, figure \ref{fig:hatp-gtp} shows a simplified library
domain \cite{silvaICRA14} where a PR2 robot serves a human customer, consisting of both human and
robot actions. While the PR2-actions will be planned by the GTP from the
perspective of the PR2 (using its kinematic model), those of the
human, which involve paying and taking a book, will be planned
from the human's perspective.

\begin{figure*}[ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{hatpGtp2.pdf}
\caption{This figure depicts a simplified version of the library
domain in \cite{silvaICRA14}. Members ($M$) reserve library books ($B$) online and then come
in person to pick them up from the PR2 ($R$). The PR2 manages the order placed
for the books by
recursively lending all the books ordered until there are no more books to
lend---in which case it will stop the recursion by choosing method $m_2$---and
then taking payment from the member. Books can either be made accessible
on the table (\code{makeBkAcc}) via method $m_3$, or displayed to the member
and then given to his/her hand via methods $m_5$ and $m_4$. Action
\code{say} involves speaking out the title ($T$) of the book.}
\label{fig:hatp-gtp}
\end{figure*}

\section{The planning and execution architecture}

Both HATP and the GTP are part of the larger LAAS
robotics architecture \cite{fleury97,bib:belief}.
This architecture has many components.
It uses the Move3D \cite{Simeon_2001_Move3d}
motion and manipulation planner for representing the robot's version
of the real world in 3D and for doing
geometric task planning. Through various sensors the robot can also
update its 3D world state in real-time. To this end, a tag-based stereo vision
system is used for object identification and localisation, and a Kinect
(Microsoft) sensor for localising and tracking the human. The execution
controller---the Procedural Reasoning System (PRS)\cite{Ingrand1996}---is
responsible for invoking HATP when
a task needs to be planned, and also executing the resulting primitive
solution returned by HATP by invoking various actuators via the interface
provided by Genom \cite{fleury97} to the low-level controllers, which
is also the framework used to wrap them into individual well-defined modules.

In the current architecture, PRS receives goals from the environment,
which it validates by checking for things such as whether the goal has
already been achieved. If the goal is valid, it is sent as a task to
HATP. If HATP (possibly together with the GTP)
successfully returns a solution, it is then executed by PRS,
by directly executing the robot's actions and indicating in the right
order to other agents,
via a dialogue module, what actions they need to execute. To execute an action
directly, PRS sends requests to the relevant Genom modules which may result in
the robot or an arm moving, for example. Indeed, the Genom modules may
actually execute the trajectories found and stored by the GTP if it
was invoked by HATP during the planning process. PRS is also able to
confirm whether the robot's actions and those of the other agents were
successfully executed, by examining the current state of the (symbolic
and geometric) world.

\section{Conclusion and future work}

We have described in this paper the HATP HTN planner, which has been used
extensively for practical robotics applications in the LAAS architecture
\cite{laasArchi} over many years \cite{bib:alili,bib:guitton,bib:warnier,silvaIROS13,silvaICRA14}.
We have focussed on describing how HATP is suited for not just
HTN planning but also planning in the context of Human-Robot Interaction,
in a multi-agent setting consisting of multiple humans and robots.
This was based on two main extensions
to HATP: the ability to handle user-supplied ``social rules'' that specify what
is appropriate behaviour for the agents in the domain; and
interleaving the
HATP planning algorithm with geometric planning algorithms from the
robotics community. We have also presented the advantages of the
user-friendly syntax and
semantics of HATP using our own encoding of the Dock Worker Robot
domain described in \cite{bib:automated_planning}.

There has also been some initial efforts toward extending HATP to support
separately modelling the beliefs of the different agents in the domain
\cite{bib:belief}. This allows reasoning about what the different agents
know, including finding conflicting beliefs, and synchronising beliefs by
planning to notify agents when there are inconsistencies between their beliefs.
Other interesting work
on HATP that is currently underway is formalising its domain representation
language to show its relation with more traditional representations such
as that used by the SHOP planner \cite{bib:Nau1999}.
Indeed, this involves developing a mapping from
the syntax and notions of HATP to PDDL-like syntax and notions.

In terms of the link between HATP and the GTP, it would
be interesting to compare the two different combined backtracking strategies.
As the authors in \cite{silvaICRA14}
have stated, this would require completing the implementation of the
system presented in \cite{silvaIROS13} so that it may be compared empirically
with the system in \cite{silvaICRA14}. An analytical evaluation would also be
useful to understand in what situations/domains one combined backtracking
approach should
be favoured over the other. Finally, modifying HATP to interleave planning
with execution to make HATP more ``responsive'' to changes in the environment
would make it even more suitable for real-world robotics applications
\cite{silvaICRA14}.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


TBILISI, DFWatch–Tbilisi City Court on Tuesday approved the extradition of UK fugitive Jack Shepherd, whom British media have dubbed 'the speedboat killer'.
At the hearing, Shepherd himself also expressed his consent to be extradited, explaining that it was not an easy decision, but he wants to clear the issue and reunite with his family.
The 31-year-old UK national was sentenced last July to six years in jail by a UK court for the unintentional killing of 24-year-old Charlotte Brown. In January, he surrendered to police in Tbilisi, Georgia where he had been hiding for months.
Shepherd denies the charges according to which he was driving a boat under the influence of alcohol and says Charlotte Brown was at the wheel at the time of the accident, not him.


The latest version of the PowerCADD Demo, which includes PowerCADD and PowerDWG, is available for Mac OS? X.
We encourage everyone to always take a test drive. We all do that when before we buy a new car or motorcycle and why should software be any different! In software speak -- download the demo Obviously we encourage new users to check things out before jumping on board with a new product. We also recommend veteran users download the PowerCADD demo and check things out first hand before upgrading or while you're waiting for your upgrade to arrive so you can get a leg up on things.
Caution: Current PowerCADD v6 users installing the PowerCADD v7 Demo should read this related Known Issues Article before installing and running the PowerCADD v7 Demo.
Remember to download the user manual too as it contains a lot of helpful information for new users. Veteran users should look for the new icon that flags over 100 new items in the latest version (yes, that's a new 'feature' in the manual and one we're pretty proud and fond of).
In Canada visit the PowerCADD Canada Demo Page for download links and instructions. Don't forget to download and review Chapter 2 of the PDF? manual too!
In the United States and Other Countries visit Engineered Software's Demo Download Page Don't forget to download and review Chapter 2 of the PDF manual too!
If you're new to PowerCADD please take a moment to review the various topic areas in our PowerCADD Resources Center for some helpful hints and tips on getting started.
Submitted by huc on Sat, 04/09/2011 - 11:09.
Looking for a Demo for the most recent version of PowerCADD?


Heights and Lows: A good first start.
So this is my first post game review, and I am going to start doing this feature after every BC game, it may look similar to this feature at many other blogs, but I am going to also put a little H&L spin on it. I'm sorry for the delay of the post, but I wanted to get a second viewing before running my mouth, since the first viewing was only partial audio for me.
The game started out about as rocky as you can imagine, somewhat like the FSU game of '05, wait exactly like the FSU game of '05, but the mistakes weren't enough to derail the amazingly powerful new offense, even if they showed a little shakiness.
Matty Ice and the boys played like a 10 at times, but the mistakes early in the game could have been costly. They quickly built the whole that they dug themselves out of so nicely. Matt Ryan looked cool and calm in the pocket with good protection, the zone blocking seemed to work nicely for him. The receivers also looked good, they made a lot of really spectacular catches and protected the ball well, even if they weren't always where they needed to be. The running corps was a little off, although I loved seeing A.J. Brooks out there as much as we did, he did fumble the ball in a critical play.
I know that they weren't superior, but they held Wake to two TDs since the offense stuck them with the other 14. I really liked DeJuan's leadership and his interceptions. I also loved the pressure the line gave Riley Skinner. I want to see a little better pass coverage from these guys, it has always been our weak spot. Run defense was amazing, kept them under 10 yards. I can't wait to see them chew up Dana Bible and his piss-poor offense next week.
The win was nice, but I really want to see us crank up the game and be a bit more stable. We looked great at most times, but had some garring weaknesses. I loved the Jags/Logan offense, but it needed that game to get settled.
This game was a setup game for the rest of the season, and our win was fantastic. I only see us getting better and see Matty Ice hitting the Heisman list this week, watch for him!!!!


Kimberly K. Bocell is an attorney providing legal services covering Personal Injury - Medical Malpractice: Defense and Health Care.
Kimberly Bocell, who practices law in Dallas, Texas, was selected to Super Lawyers for 2014 - 2019. This peer designation is awarded only to a select number of accomplished attorneys in each state. The Super Lawyers selection process takes into account peer recognition, professional achievement in legal practice, and other cogent factors.
Prior to becoming an attorney, she studied at University of North Carolina School of Law. She graduated in 2003. After passing the bar exam, she was admitted to legal practice in 2003.


In a recent interview with The Oncology Nurse-APN/PA (TON), Beth Faiman, PhD, APRN-BC, AOCN, Nurse Practitioner, Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, OH, and Editor-in-Chief of TON discussed her recent acceptance of a nomination for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Woman of the Year award.
Beth Faiman (BF): I am a nurse practitioner and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) researcher at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; I have been at the Cleveland Clinic since 1994. My primary role is as an adult nurse practitioner, and I focus on taking care of patients with multiple myeloma (MM). I have also been Editor-in-Chief of TON since 2008.
BF: The LLS is one of the largest voluntary healthcare organizations, and has been around since 1949. It has been on the forefront of blood cancers for many, many years.
I have been working with patients with blood cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, and MM, since 1994. I was fortunate to learn at an early age that I wanted to become a nurse. I have advanced myself from registered nurse to nurse practitioner to PhD throughout my time.
The importance of the LLS for me is that I have seen, firsthand, the wonders that they do, not only in research and trying to find a cure for blood cancers, but—most importantly, and impactful to me—the resources they provide for patients and caregivers.
These days, I work primarily with patients with MM. I do see that my patients struggle with having a chronic illness; when they are diagnosed, they don't pass away in a few years—they live for 10, 20 years. Cancer medications are very expensive in many cases, and the LLS helps with copayment assistance for these medications. They help with transportation reimbursements, and also have live informational sessions for our patients.
The LLS provides many benefits to the patients and caregivers, which in turn helps me to do my job. If I know a patient needs a certain medication that I need to prescribe for their cancer, I know that the LLS is there and could potentially help the patient with copay assistance if they can't afford it.
BF: The LLS has this annual Man and Woman of the Year campaign, which has been going on for several years. The focus, really, is to raise funds for the LLS for blood and cancer research. We don't get to where we are today in 2016 without doing clinical research. From the bench and the researchers who do the research to the bedside and actually giving the drugs to the patients, the supported care is really important. Every dollar helps, and much of the money funding the LLS comes from this campaign.
The Man and the Woman of the Year campaign is meant to honor a Boy and Girl of the Year—so it's not about me. It's about the people who live with blood cancer. Children are affected the most, and they inspire and motivate me as a candidate. I am running on behalf of a Girl of the Year, and helping to make as much money in her name as possible.
The campaign is timely, and begins at the end of February. I am working to assemble a team of people who will help me raise the money. I don't necessarily expect people to write a check, but if we can do fun activities, such as 50-50 raffles or lunch and learns (where you can learn and have some lunch and donate time as much as anything else), then that's what I want to do to help raise the money for the LLS.
This is a national campaign—it's not just in Cleveland, where I am based and running. There will be a kickoff celebration starting in February; at the midpoint, we are going to have another event where all of the candidates from my area come together. Then there's a grand finale, which is a big gala celebrating all of the candidates' teams' fundraising efforts.
BF: I am blessed to be able to take care of these patients and their caregivers, but it is really the day in and day out—they are the ones who are living with the cancer. Organizations like the LLS are critical to help our patients get what they need, and that's why I wanted to support them. I am also very passionate about helping, specifically, the International Myeloma Foundation. I'm a founding member and delegate on their Nurse Leadership Board.
I try to volunteer my time through them, but felt that, in this venue, with the LLS—because they do help my patients locally so much—I'll hopefully be able to raise awareness for this as a good charity. I also hope that we'll be able to make even just a little bit of money, because every dollar helps to make the lives of our future cancer patients better, and honors the patients who have been struggling with this disease for many, many years.


text:
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Chasing Lincoln's Killer
by James L. Swanson
This fast-paced thriller tells the story of the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth and gives a day-by-day account of the wild chase to find this killer and his accomplices.
Henry Smith's father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you. But Trouble comes careening down the road one night in the form of a pick-up truck that strikes Henry's older brother, Franklin.
My Friends Call Me Monster
by R.L. Stine
Michael Munroe is learning a few new lessons in school this week: Never trust a teacher who believes in monsters. Don't even think about entering her house.
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena live, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.
by Meg Cabot
Allie Finkle's starting her first day of school at Pine Heights Elementary! Plus, she's getting a new kitten, the first pick of show cat Lady Serena Archibald's litter!
Clifford's Pals
by Norman Bridwell
Clifford and his pals just can't stay out of trouble, but that's what they get for playing around a construction site!
Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice
by Steve Metzger
This wintery take on the popular Five Little Monkeys books will have every child singing along!


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Реконструктивистский иудаизм — движение, базирующееся на идеях раввинов Мордехая Каплана и  об иудаизме как цивилизации.

Теология
Свободная система идей, рассматривающая иудаизм как развивающуюся религиозную цивилизацию, которая, подобно любой другой цивилизации, обладает, наряду с религией, также собственной историей, языком, социальной структурой, правилами поведения и духовными и общественными идеалами. Евреи, утверждает Каплан, несмотря на гонения и страдания, оставались верны своей религии, потому что верили в избавление в будущем мире, однако сегодня в это уже не верят, и потому иудаизм должен превратиться из цивилизации, ориентированной на загробную жизнь, в цивилизацию, которая была бы способна помочь евреям достичь избавления в этом мире.

Определение Капланом Бога как «силы, движущей к избавлению», то есть силы, которая обращает человека к этой жизни и выявляет в нем лучшее, вызвало критику некоторых его последователей. Поскольку для реконструктивизма иудаизм — это цивилизация, то его компоненты могут функционировать только во взаимодействии друг с другом; на этом основании зиждется концепция «органической общины», жизнь которой сконцентрирована вокруг синагоги, образовательных учреждений, сионистских организаций и других общественных объединений, действующих совместно под эгидой демократически избираемого общинного руководства. Каплан был одним из первых, кто считал, что синагога должна действовать как еврейский центр, способный удовлетворить практически все потребности живущего еврейской жизнью индивидуума.

Реконструктивизм оказал значительное влияние на евреев США — деятелей просвещения, социальных работников и раввинов, особенно — на студентов Еврейской теологической семинарии, где Каплан преподавал с 1909 г. по 1963 г. Около десяти конгрегаций (около 2,5 тыс. семей) входят в Федерацию реконструктивистских конгрегаций и сообществ; тем не менее, влияние идей реконструктивизма выходит далеко за пределы этих немногочисленных общин.

История
 Датой основания движения принято считать январь 1922 г., когда в США было создано общество по распространению реконструктивистского иудаизма — Общество содействия прогрессу иудаизма.
 В 1935 г. под руководством Каплана начал издаваться журнал «Реконстракшнист».
 В 1941 г. реконструктивисты издали «Новую Хаггаду» и «Руководство по еврейскому ритуалу». В «Руководстве» ритуал рассматривается не как закон, а как способ коллективного выживания еврейской общины и духовного развития её членов; решение, какие ритуалы и обряды должны практиковаться, принадлежит индивиду, который, однако, должен принимать в расчет не только собственные потребности, но и потребности общины.
 В 1945 г. вышел в свет реконструктивистский «Субботний молитвенник», из которого, в соответствии с концепцией Каплана, были исключены упоминания об избранности еврейского народа, о Богоданности Торы и о Мессии как личности. Американская ортодоксальная организация раввинов — Аггудат ха-раббаним — подвергла «Субботний молитвенник» херему (анафеме).
 В 1967 г. в Филадельфии был основан Реконструктивистский раввинский колледж. Студенты колледжа должны по меньшей мере один год обучаться в Израиле (в Еврейском университете, иешиве и т. п.), что рассматривается как интегральная часть их профессиональной подготовки. Продолжает выходить «Реконстракшнист». Движение организует визиты своих членов в Израиль и приглашает израильских лекторов в свои учреждения.

 2006 Реконструктивистское движение впервые сумело провести своего представителя на Всемирный еврейский конгресс в Иерусалиме.

В Израиле
В 1963 г. в Иерусалиме была основана реконструктивистская конгрегация Мевакшей дерех (буквально «взыскующие пути»), которая стремится прилагать концепции Каплана к специфическим условиям Израиля и ведет активную работу во всех сферах еврейской культуры. При общине действуют ясли и детский сад, образовательные кружки и курсы. Цель этой деятельности — попытка преодоления духовного и морального кризиса, который, по мнению членов конгрегации, переживает израильское общество, моральное совершенствование еврейского общества и объединение еврейского народа в Израиле и в рассеянии. Значительный упор делается на интеграцию выходцев из различных этнических общин.

Среди членов конгрегации насчитывается около 300 семей выходцев из бывшего СССР.

Ссылки
 Краткая еврейская энциклопедия, т. 1—11, Иерусалим, 1976—2005

См. также
 Гомосексуальность и иудаизм. Реконструктивистский иудаизм

Ссылки
 Сайт старейшей в мире реконструктивистской синагоги

Течения в иудаизме
Новые религиозные движения

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Open World games give you a lot of freedom to act as you like and complete the game at your own pace. In other words Open World games feature non-linear gameplay structure that will allow you quite some free will on how and when to complete challenges and missions.
However Open World games still have boundaries. Sometimes you will encounter such boundaries because of game's linearity, sometimes it will be simply because of technical reasons.
Sometimes Open World games are made from both linear and nonlinear areas. Since there is a lot of freedom in Open World games and you may not follow the path or the path is not quite clear, the main storyline of the game is usually separated into missions which you can engage in whenever you choose (with a few exceptions when you are kicked into some mandatory mission you have to complete before being set loose again).
Open World games are great when they have a good balance between a decent and intriguing storyline and free roaming the open world. From a developer's point of view this is not so easy to achieve. And you may encounter games that are lacking in some aspects from time to time, you may also encounter games that grant you almost absolute freedom and a story to remember.


*S2M-2737 Mr Tom McCabe: Family Law (Scotland) Bill: Financial Resolution—That the Parliament, for the purposes of any Act of the Scottish Parliament resulting from the Family Law (Scotland) Bill, agrees to any increase, in consequence of the Act, in expenditure charged on, or payable out of, the Scottish Consolidated Fund.
S2M-2737 Mr Tom McCabe:Family Law (Scotland) Bill: Financial Resolution—That the Parliament, for the purposes of any Act of the Scottish Parliament resulting from the Family Law (Scotland) Bill, agrees to any increase, in consequence of the Act, in expenditure charged on, or payable out of, the Scottish Consolidated Fund.
The second question is, that motion S2M-2737, in the name of Tom McCabe, on the financial resolution in respect of the Family Law (Scotland) Bill, be agreed to. Are we agreed?


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Home Rule
Frank Hugh O'Donnell
Frank Hugh O'Donnell was an Irish politician and journalist, known as a fierce opponent of British imperialism and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. He was born Francis Hugh MacDonald at a barracks in Devon to a sergeant in the British Army. He was educated in Galway at a Jesuit high school and then at Queen's College, where he rapidly earned a reputation as an orator and controversialist.
In 1874 he was elected Member of Parliament for Galway but, in a judgment probably influenced by political bias, was convicted of electoral malpractice and removed from office. Undeterred, he returned to the Commons three years later as Member for Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, and held that seat until its abolition in 1885. A provocative and popular figure within the Home Rule League, he served the party with champion filibustering and in 1888 he launched the historic libel action against The Times which led to C. S. Parnell's exoneration from conspiracy in the Phoenix Park Murders.
In Parliament he often spoke on British imperialism in India in analogy with Irish matters. He received a schooling in Indian nationalism from his friend G. M. Tagore, with whom he, J.C. Meenakshya and four other Irish MPs joined in 1875 to form the Constitutional Society of India. Further information was gleaned from his brother Charles J. O'Donnell, an civil servant in Bihar who earned the nickname 'the enfant terrible of the ICS' for his public criticism and exposure of government policy. In 1882 he told Parliament that the Irish Party were 'the natural representatives and spokesmen for the unrepresented nationalities of the empire' and in 1883 he threw his weight behind a premature campaign to have Dadabhai Naoroji elected to Parliament. In 1905 he sent a message of support to Shyamji Krishnavarma upon his inauguration of India House.
Defeated by Parnell in his bid for the party leadership, O'Donnell abandoned parliamentary politics and, after joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians), pursued a chequered career of furious pamphleteering. During the Boer War he secured funds from the Transvaal Government to militate against Irish enlistment, but he was later accused of pocketing the money and condemned by the United Irishman. He spent much of his later career campaigning for secular and mixed education in a series of determined sallies against the political might of the Catholic clergy. He died unmarried at London, and is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
Published works:
Souls for Gold (1901)
Paraguay on Shannon (1908)
A History of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 2 vols (1910)
Maud Gonne, Shyamji Krishnavarma, J. C. Meenakshya, Dadabhai Naoroji, T. P. O'Connor, Charles J. O'Donnell, Charles Stewart Parnell, G. M. Tagore, Alfred Webb, W. B. Yeats.
Jeffery, Keith, An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996)
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (Pluto Press, London, 2002)
Devonport, Devon
Country of birth:
Francis Hugh O'Donnell
Location of death:
Naoroji
George Arundale
George Arundale was a Theosophist. He was tutored by Charles Leadbeater and went to St John's College, Cambridge in 1895. In 1902, he moved to Benares and became principal of the Central Hindu College. Arundale became involved with the All-India Home Rule League and was imprisoned, with Annie Besant, in 1917, under the Defence of India Act, 1917.
In 1920, he married a Brahmin girl, Rukmini Devi, which caused some controversy in India. In 1926, he became Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in India. In 1934, he became President of the Theosophical Society. He edited the Theosophist. He died in 1945 in Adyar at the Theosophist headquarters.
Various works on theosophy include:
Bedrock of Education (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1924)
Thoughts of the Great (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1924)
You (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1935)
Gods in the Becoming (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1936)
Education for Happiness (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1938)
Adventures in Theosophy (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1941)
Annie Besant, C. R. Jinarajadasa, Jiddu Krishnamurti (Arundale tutored him), C. W. Leadbeater, Emily Lutyens, Jiddu Nityananda (Arundale tutored him).
Dixon, Joy, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (London: John Hopins, 2001)
Lutyens, Mary, Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening (London: John Murray, 1975)
Lutyens, Mary, The Life and Death of Krishnamurti (London: John Murray, 1990)
Meduri, Avanthi (ed.), Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904-1968): A Visionary Architect of Indian culture and the Performing Arts (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2005)
Theosophical Archives, Adyar, India
Wonersh, Surrey
George Sydney Arundale
Adyar, India
Annie Besant was a leading member of the Theosophical Society, a feminist and political activist, and a politician in India. She had a close relationship with Charles Bradlaugh, MP, a free-thinker who was often known as the 'Member for India'. Having declared herself an atheist, Annie Besant was drawn to other ideas of spiritualism and joined the Theosophical Society in 1889. She was very close to the co-founder, Madame Blavatsky, and allowed Blavatksy to live in her house in St John's Wood from 1889. In 1907, after the death of Colonel Olcott, Besant was made President of the Theosophical Society.
In 1911, Besant brought Jiddu Krishnamurti and his brother to England and acted as their guardian. She proclaimed in 1927 that Krishnamurti was the 'coming', i.e., messiah, and was devastated when he left the Theosophical Society in 1929.
Besant also campaigned for the rights of Indians and for Indian 'home rule'. She launched the Home Rule League in 1916, modelling the Indian plight on that of Ireland. She was a member of the Fabian Society, owing to her close relationship with George Bernard Shaw. In 1917 she became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress at a session in Calcutta.
Why I Became a Theosophist (London: Freethought Publishing, 1889)
An Autobiography (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893)
The Bhagavad Gita (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1895)
The Case for India [Congress Presidential Address, December 1917] (London: Home Rule for India League, 1918)
George Arundale, H. P. Blavatsky, Charles Bradlaugh, Esther Bright, Mohini Chatterjee, M. K. Gandhi, C. Jinarajadasa, Jiddu Krishnamurti, C. W. Leadbeater, Emily Lutyens, Jiddu Nityananda, Colonel Olcott, A. P. Sinnett.
Contributions to periodicals:
Lucifer (edited September 1889 to 1909)
The Theosophical Review (edited 1897-1909)
The Manchester Guardian, 6 August 1895 (Bhagvad-Gita)
Western Mail (Cardiff), 6 August 1895
Liverpool Mercury, 28 August 1895
For articles relating to Annie Besant, see: 'A Talk with Mrs Annie Besant', Christian World, 12 April 1894, p. 259; 'The New Messiah', The Spectator, 26 June 1926
Bright, Esther, Old Memories and Letters of Annie Besant (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1936)
Nethercott, Arthur, The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963)
Taylor, Anne, 'Besant , Annie (1847-1933)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30735]
Broughton, T. L. , 'Women's Autobiography: The Self at Stake?', Prose Studies 14 (September 1991), pp. 76-94
Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, London
Theosophical Society Archives, Adyar, India
Letters to Annie Besant, 1914-1926, Mss Eur C888, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Theosophical Society in England, London
College of Psychic Studies, South Kensington