text:
Presno is one of nine parishes (administrative divisions) in the Castropol municipality, within the province and autonomous community of Asturias, in northern Spain.

The population is 385 (INE 2005).

References

Parishes in Castropol

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


As soon as we arrived we were told to pitch our tents and pack our day packs for a sunset river safari down the Chobe River and into the heart of the national park.
We loaded back into the truck with our cameras ready and the cooler full of beer and we made the short five minute drive down the road to the river dock.
At the dock we found a small speed boat waiting for us and our group squeezed in, with some passengers resorting to sitting on the floor.
As we set sail the hot afternoon sun beat down on the river and we were lucky the boat had a canopy to shade us and keep us cool.
Our river guide's name was Cherry and as we chugged down the river toward the edge of the national park, he told us if we were lucky we'd we able to see elephants, crocodiles, hippos, water buffalo and a variety of other African wildlife.
Of course up until this point we hadn't been very lucky on our safaris, so Tarynne didn't bother bringing the zoom lens she's quickly fallen in love with. In fact, at one point she even thought about not even bringing the camera because she figured we already had plenty of pictures of elephant poop.
Tarynne's decision to not bring the zoom lens would quickly turn out to be the worst decision of our entire trip.
As we cruised down the river and into the national park it was only a few minutes until we saw our first piece of wildlife, the African Crocodile.
As soon as we turned away from the crocodile and the piercing gaze of its eyeball just above the surface we looked up to see a herd of elephants marching down the river bank for a drink and a swim.
As we moved closer to the river's edge to get a better look at the elephants we saw a baby crocodile (a.k.a. 15-years-old) basking in the sun.
After getting unnecessarily closer to the crocodile due to the absence of a zoom lens we continued down the winding river to find a pair of reptiles camouflaged in a tree overhanging the water's edge.
From under the trees we continued to follow the river as it curved to the left and as we came around the river bend we feasted our eyes upon a single water buffalo laying the the shallow water.
As interesting as this ugly fatty was, there was another crocodile a few meters away so the boat cruised right up, nearly banking on land so zoom-less idiots could get a good shot.
As we crept closer to the the croc there was a loud rustling in the bushes a few meters down the river and suddenly a pack a baboons came tumbling out of shrubbery and down to the river for a drink.
We all excitedly suggested we were over the boring crocodile and wanted to move towards the baboons. Well Cherry agreed, but informed us that unfortunately the battery was dead. So we waited, about 1m away from the crocodile for a jump start.
After another tour boat successfully saved us, we watched the baboons drink, play and pause for a quick mating session (yes, I sang The Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Gang out loud to our boat while the baboons were doing it).
While being entertained by the blue butted baboons, another parade of elephants stumbled out of the trees to the water's edge.
From the riverbank we headed out toward the marshy reeds in the middle of the river where we were greeted by a large group of hungry hippos.
After closely watching the hippos (T: geez James cuts out the suspenseful parts. The boat died once more. This time it was with another crocodile just a foot from us and with hippos bopping around nearby) we continued down the river taking in the scenery and watching even more elephants, crocodiles and hippos as we went.
On the way back the sun began to set and we watched the orange and red rays of light shine through the acacia trees around us and glisten of the surface of the Chobe River.
When we arrived back at camp Prosper had dinner ready for us. While we ate he explained that we needed to be packed up and ready to go by 6 a.m. the next day, because we had a ferry to catch at the Zambian border.
Due to the early wake up call we only spent a few minutes looking through our non-zoom pictures at the bar before retiring to our tent.
On Tuesday morning our group was on the bus and ready to leave on time for basically the first time in three weeks.
It was a short 20 minute drive to the Zambian border crossing and after we all passed through immigration and successfully left Botswana we followed our truck by foot onto a flat barge, which took us across the river and into Zambia.
It took the better part of an hour for our entire group to buy Zambian visas and clear immigration, but once we did it was only an hour long drive to Livingstone.
In Livingstone we stopped for 45 minutes to take out Zambian money, go to the toilet and get a quick snack before getting back on the bus and driving straight to Victoria Falls.
We were allotted an hour an 45 minutes to explore the falls from the Zambian side and Tarynne and I took full advantage of the time we had.
Things don't seem to be stuck in "African Time" here and the water level of the falls has already almost reached its highest level, about two months ahead of schedule. This means right now approximately 5,000 cubic meters of water is pouring over the falls every minute.
Almost the entire waterfall is on the Zambian side, which means one can only see about 10 percent of the waterfall from Zambia. In order to see the massive face of the waterfall, one must cross the border into Zimbabwe and look back at the falls.
After taking in the dramatic scenery, we climbed back aboard the truck and headed to camp.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on Tuesday bumming around camp and swimming in the pool. In the evening we ate at the campsite restaurant which is positioned on the bank of the river, upstream from the falls. In the distance the mist and spray from the waterfall is visible, spiraling up into the sky like smoke from a massive explosion.
On Wednesday we woke up bright an early, as a full English buffet breakfast is included with out stay and we wanted to take full advantage of it.
Dumbfounded I stared back blankly, wondering how on earth she hadn't picked up in the last day and a half that the massive river we were sitting next to and the river that goes flying off a cliff a few kilometers away is named the Zambezi. Oh, and it's also the fourth largest river in Africa. No big deal.
Anyway, with our bellies stuffed full of beans we met up with some others from our group and decided to fork over some cash to "walk in the footsteps of David Livingstone" and visit Livingstone Island.
Livingstone Island is a very small island in the middle of the Zambezi River positioned on the very edge of Victoria Falls. It is also the island were visitors can access Devil's Pool and swim in the river on the very edge of the waterfall, about 80 meters above the water churning at the bottom of the gorge.
After a short taxi ride to the swanky Royal Livingstone Hotel, our group was picked up on the river bank by a small five person speed boat. The ride to Livingstone Island was only three minutes long and with out feet on solid ground we were led by our guide through the island to the edge of Victoria Falls.
Our first order of business was to creep up to the edge of the waterfall just to side of the highest point of the falls and peer over the edge to look at the rainbow below.
At this vantage point we were about 95 meters above the river below. The highest point of the entire falls was just to the left measuring 107 meters from top to bottom.
After looking over the edge, we turned around and posed for a few photos.
From this spot we were then led to the far side of the island and shown where Devil's Pool is located. Unfortunately since the water levels are currently so high we were not able to swim in Devil's Pool. Instead we were allowed to swim in a secondary pool that is also located directly on the edge of the waterfall.
The actual swim felt quiet safe, it was the walk to the pool that was pretty scary. Lead by our guide in a chain-like, we had to shimmy across underwater rocks hand-in-hand with the force of the mighty river pounding against our shins. If you slipped, you were going down and over.
Yes, the random girl we were with clung onto me the entire time. Tarynne was convinced she was going to slip and take all of us down, so suggested she'd just push her over the edge.
Fortunately, we all made it. And with some fabulous pictures of an idiot leech we don't know.
After navigating the treacherous waters back to Livingstone Island we were treated to a very posh brunch under a white tent with Victoria Falls thundering in the background as we ate.
Since we spent the morning risking our lives, we ended up relaxing back at camp next to the pool and the bar.
On Thursday we ate breakfast early and were headed for Victoria Falls Bridge and the border crossing to Zimbabwe by 10 a.m.
The taxi ride was only about ten minutes and we were dropped off outside Zambian immigration.
After exiting Zambia we walked down a winding road and crossed the Victoria Falls Bridge into Zimbabwe.
Now, I always thought my boy George W. Bush did everything humanly possible to absolutely obliterate the U.S. economy, but it turns out President Obama stepped in just before things got Zimbabwe bad.
You see, inflation in Zimbabwe exploded to the point the country no longer has its own currency. In fact, it hasn't had its own currency since 2008. And to give you an idea of how bad things got, one of the last bills ever printed was a ten trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill.
Yes, we obviously bought one. Okay, Tarynne got excited and bought two and we are now trillionaires.
Luckily for Zimbabwe shortly after this crisis they struck gold. Literally. And diamonds. So the country is slowly climbing back in the game, but is currently using U.S. dollars for its currency.
It's a weird situation and because of the instability our travel insurance doesn't work in Zimbabwe, so we had to be extra careful on Thursday.
Anyway, for the first time in five weeks we had overcast skies, and because of it we decided to go shopping in a few local markets in hope that the sun would come out before we went to see the falls.
Unfortunately even after some quality procrastination and buying a few goodies for the folks back home, the sun was still a no show and we headed for the falls anyway.
After taking in the unbelievable scenery we weren't quite ready to leave Zimbabwe, so we snuck onto the grounds of the famous Victoria Falls Hotel and snapped some photos. If anyone asks, this is where we stayed.
From the hotel we walked back to the border, across the bridge and back into Zambia. Once again we spent the evening chilling out at the campsite by the bar and pool.
On Friday we happily awoke in a warm stuffy tent to sunny skies. It's our last day in Livingstone before we hit the road once again on the second leg of overland journey.
Still in awe of the falls and having seen them from almost every other angle possible we decided it was time to take to the skies.
By 9 a.m. we were on board an open air bus and on the way to the airstrip for a helicopter ride over the smoke that thunders.
It's too difficult to describe the immense beauty of the scene we saw below us, so I'll let David Livingstone and our photographs do the talking.
After the flight we took the campsite shuttle into Livingstone in search of quality Internet to update the blog.
Later is afternoon we'll head back to the campsite to do laundry, relax and to prepare for the 20 days.
Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, here we come!
Please tell us you had the go pro camera strapped to the back of your head when the monkey was chasing you James! Otherwise another great episode in your African adventure.
Just wanted to let you know I was laughing so hard about the monkeys. Reminds me of the racoons when we went camping. Later dood.


text:
\section{Introduction}

Many interesting physical systems can be categorized as rare-event
systems. The uniting feature of these systems is that the dynamics
involved require a time resolution much smaller than the timescale on
which interesting events take place. Of central importance to the
evolution of such systems is the free energy. Low lying regions of the
free energy and the barriers separating these regions dictate the
thermodynamics and, to some extent, the kinetics\cite{ht90} of the
system. Because free energy barriers are only rarely crossed,
efficient exploration of the free energy landscape is practically
impossible with straightforward integration of the equations of
motion.

Recently, a number of approaches have used the history of the dynamics
to accelerate exploration of the free energy
landscape\cite{wl01,dp01,lp02,mb06,mv06,lrs07}.  In these methods
information about the free energy is estimated during simulation and
that information is fed back to the dynamics as a statistical
bias. While there are many variations on this idea, the common aim is
to minimize the time spent sampling regions of the free energy that
have been sampled in the past.  These schemes may be classified into
two categories: adaptive bias force methods (ABF)\cite{dp01,dp08}
which use an approximation of the mean force to bias the dynamics;
adaptive biasing potential methods (ABP)\cite{wl101,lp02,mb06} which
use an approximation of the free energy as a bias potential.

The underlying idea for all adaptive methods is that it is
computationally more efficient to sample the distribution associated with a
flattened free energy than it is to sample the density associated with
the actual, very rough free energy.  We propose an ABP method that builds
an approximate density of states (DOS) and uses that approximation to
define a bias potential.
Mollification of the underlying density of states produces the
desired approximation and leads to a smooth, adaptive bias potential
whose gradient admits a simple analytic expression
and that can be computed without knowledge of the actual density of states.
Because
the actual and approximate free energies are related by a convolution,
it is easy to recover the former from the latter via deconvolution.
Our framework is not restricted to one-dimensional or orthogonal
reaction coordinates. Moreover, it
avoids second derivatives of the reaction
coordinate.

This paper is organized as follows. We describe our ABP method in
Section~\ref{sec:description} (see in particular
Eqs.~\eqref{Cbias}, \eqref{CbFE} and~\eqref{CbwMD}), and comment on its convergence.
We contrast this method to existing ones in Section~\ref{sec:comparison},
and present some numerical validation on a benchmark system in
Section~\ref{sec:numerical}. Our conclusions are summarized in Section~\ref{sec:ccl}.

\section{Description of the method}
\label{sec:description}

\subsection{Free energy and its mollified version}

Consider a system whose configuration is described
by a variable $x \in {\mathcal{X}}$, where ${\mathcal{X}}$ is the configuration
space. We denote by $V$ the potential energy function.
Assume that we are given a $N$-dimensional reaction coordinate
$\xi(x)$ with values in $\Omega$, which characterizes some physical event.
The density of states at a value $\xi^*$ of the reaction coordinate is
defined as
\begin{equation}
  \label{eq:def_DOS}
  e^{-\beta A(\xi^*)} = Z^{-1} \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx,
\end{equation}
where $\beta = 1/(k_{B}T)$, and $Z$ is a normalization constant, chosen such that
\[
\int_\Omega e^{-\beta A(\xi)} \, d\xi = 1.
\]
Eq.~\eqref{eq:def_DOS} defines the free energy $A(\xi^*)$. Recall that, in practice,
the free energy needs only be known up to an additive constant since the important quantities
to describe the relative likelihoods of physical states are free-energy differences.

In general, the free energy is unknown and has to be approximated.
The method we propose in this work is based on the following limit:
\[
e^{-\beta A(\xi^*)} = \lim_{\alpha \rightarrow 0} e^{-\beta A_\alpha(\xi^*)},
\]
where
\begin{equation}
  \label{eq:approx_FE}
  e^{-\beta A_\alpha(\xi^*)} =
  Z^{-1} \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx,
\end{equation}
with for instance a Gaussian approximation of the
Dirac delta function:
\[
\delta_{\alpha}(\xi) = \left(\frac{1}{\alpha \sqrt{\pi}} \right)^N
\exp\left(-\frac{|\xi|^2}{\alpha^2}\right).
\]
Equation~\eqref{eq:approx_FE} defines an approximate free energy $A_{\alpha}$,
obtained by sampling the density of states at a finite $\alpha$,
\textit{i.e.}, by sampling a mollified density of states.
Notice that the approximation resulting from finite $\alpha$
can in fact be rewritten as a convolution of the actual density of
states $e^{-\beta A}$ with $\delta_{\alpha}$. Indeed,
\begin{eqnarray}
\label{conv}
&& e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*)} \\
&&= Z^{-1}\int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx \nonumber \\
&& = Z^{-1}\int_\Omega \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_{\alpha}(\bar{\xi}-\xi^*) \,
\delta(\xi(x)-\bar{\xi}) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx \, d\bar{\xi} \nonumber\\
&& = \int_\Omega \delta_{\alpha}(\bar{\xi}-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta A(\bar{\xi})}
\, d\bar{\xi}.\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
This remark is the basis for an extraction of the actual
free energy $A$ from $A_{\alpha}$ through a deconvolution procedure
(see Section~\ref{sec:simu_details}).
While we make this presentation with a scalar $\alpha$,
this could easily be generalized to the case where $\alpha$ takes
different values in different dimensions of the reaction coordinate.

Equation~\eqref{conv} is also helpful in assessing the errors introduced
in umbrella sampling (US) and thermodynamic integration (TI) simulations
employing harmonic constraint potentials.
The corresponding error is analogous to the
convolution errors discussed in this paper.
Note that the parameter $\alpha$ can be converted to a force
constant for a harmonic potential via $k = 2k_BT/\alpha^2$, where $k$
is the force constant. Errors resulting from finite $k$ in TI and US
computations can be identified as resulting from a convolution between
the true density of states and a known Gaussian function.  Typically,
the harmonic constraints are tight enough for $A_{\alpha}$ to be a
good approximation of $A$ but any persisting bias can, at least in
principle, be removed by deconvolution as shown below.

\subsection{Interest of the mollified free energy}

In this work, we
use $A_{\alpha}$ to define an adaptive bias.
The first interest of this approach is that the gradient of $A_{\alpha}$ is much easier to
compute than the gradient of $A$. Indeed, the laster reads (see References~[\citenum{o98,sc98,cle07}])
\begin{equation}
  \label{cle}
  F_j(\xi^*) = \left\langle \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^N \nabla V \cdot G^{-1}_{ji}\nabla \xi_{i}
  - \beta^{-1}\nabla \cdot (G^{-1}_{ji}\nabla \xi_{i}) \right\rangle_{\xi^*},
\end{equation}
where $\langle \cdot \rangle_{\xi^*}$ denotes a canonical average for a fixed value of the
reaction coordinate, and $G$ is the Gram matrix. The latter matrix is defined
as $G = J J^t$ with $J_{ij} = \partial \xi_i/\partial x_j$ ($x_i$ are the Cartesian coordinates on which
the reaction coordinates are defined).
The computation of the free energy gradient therefore requires the computation
of second derivatives of the reaction coordinate, which is cumbersome in many cases.
The gradient of the mollified free energy has a much simpler expression:
\begin{equation}
  \label{convFg}
  \frac{\partial A_{\alpha}(\xi^*)}{\partial \xi^*_j} = -k_B T\frac{\displaystyle \int_{\mathcal{X}}
    \partial_{\xi^*_j} \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx}
       {\displaystyle \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta V(x)} \, dx},
\end{equation}
where $j$ is a reaction coordinate index and
\[
\partial_{\xi^*_j} \delta_{\alpha}(\xi_j(x)-\xi^*) =
\frac{2}{\alpha^2} (\xi_j(x)-\xi_j^*) \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x)-\xi^*).
\]
In particular, no derivative of the reaction coordinates are required.

Another interest of the mollified free energy
lies in the nonlocality of $\delta_{\alpha}$, which allows a single observation of
$\xi$ to contribute to $A_\alpha$ for a range of values $\xi^*$,
leading to a faster convergence. The
question is then whether there is a range of $\alpha$ for which: (i)
$\alpha$ is sufficiently large so that $A_\alpha$ could be estimated
with fewer samples than what would be required to compute $A$ and (ii)
$\alpha$ is sufficiently small, so that $A_\alpha$ is close enough to
$A$ to efficiently bias the dynamics. We show in Section~\ref{sec:choice_alpha}
that a large range of $\alpha$ satisfies these two conditions
on a paradigmatic test case.

\subsection{A new ABP method}

\subsubsection{Construction of the method}

To compute approximations of~\eqref{conv} and~\eqref{convFg} as time averages along
a trajectory $x_t$ driven by the potential function $V(x)$, we first
assume that $x_t$ is ergodic with respect to the canonical ensemble.
We may take $x_t$ as a solution to the Langevin equation driven by the potential $V$,
for example. Using trajectory averages, \eqref{conv} can be obtained as the following
longtime limit:
\begin{equation}
  \label{CweakFE}
  e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,t)}
  = Z_t^{-1} \left(1+\displaystyle\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, ds\right),
\end{equation}
where the normalization constant $Z_t$ is
\[
Z_t = \int_\Omega \left(1+\displaystyle\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, ds\right)
d\xi = |\Omega|  + t.
\]
The normalization constant ensures that
\begin{equation}
  \label{eq:normalization_mollified}
  \int_\Omega e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)} \, d\xi = 1
\end{equation}
at all times $t \geq 0$.
Notice that we implicitely assumed that the reaction coordinate has values
in a finite space $\Omega$. This is indeed the case when angles are considered.
For unbounded reaction coordinates, it is always possible to restrict the sampling
to important values of $\xi(x)$. In practice, the range of the reaction
coordinate needs to be truncated anyway.

From~\eqref{CweakFE}, we obtain
\begin{equation}
  \label{CweakFEg}
  \frac{\partial A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,t)}{\partial \xi^*_j} =
  -k_B T\frac{\displaystyle\int_0^t \partial_{\xi^*_j}\delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, ds}
  {\displaystyle 1+\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, ds},
\end{equation} which, in the longtime limit converges to~\eqref{convFg}

Now, a simple ergodic average such as \eqref{CweakFE} or \eqref{CweakFEg}
can of course not be used
in practice since the dynamics at hand are usually metastable for complex systems,
and the convergence of the time averages~\eqref{CweakFE} and~\eqref{CweakFEg} is very slow.
We therefore need to bias the dynamics in order to remove the metastability.

In what follows, we will consider a trajectory $x_t$ obtained from the equations of motion
with the biased potential $V+V_b$.
The idea behind adaptive method is to use the opposite of some current approximation
of the free energy as a biasing potential, and to update the estimate
as time goes on, in a way such that the bias eventually converges
to the correct free energy.
Here, we consider an adaptive biasing potential method,
defined through the following update of the biasing potential $V_b$:
\begin{equation}
  \label{Cbias}
  e^{\beta V_b(\xi,t)} = e^{-\beta \Delta A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)} \, e^{\beta c}
\end{equation}
where the renormalized current approximation of the mollified free energy
$e^{-\beta \Delta A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)}$ is
\[
e^{-\beta \Delta A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)} =
\frac{e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)}}{\displaystyle \max_{\xi^*}\left[e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,t)}\right]}.
\]
The parameter $c$ in~\eqref{Cbias} is an important quantity in our method, which allows
to tune the convergence rate of the method. We discuss its choice in Section~\ref{sec:cv}.
With these definitions, $V_b = -A_\alpha$ up to an additive constant which is chosen such that
$\max[V_b] = c$. Similarly, $\Delta A_\alpha = A_\alpha$, again, up to an additive constant which
is such that $\min[\Delta A_\alpha] = 0$

Departing from standard ABP/ABF frameworks
we use ideas from importance sampling to write
\eqref{CweakFE} and \eqref{CweakFEg} as time averages over biased trajectories
\begin{equation}
  \label{CbFE}
  e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,t)}
  = Z_t^{-1} \left(1+\displaystyle\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \,
  e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_s),s)}\, ds\right),
\end{equation}
where $Z_t$ is still a normalization constant
ensuring~\eqref{eq:normalization_mollified}, and
\begin{equation}
  \label{CbwMD}
  \frac{\partial A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,t)}{\partial \xi^*_j} =
  -k_B T\frac{\displaystyle\int_0^t \partial_{\xi^*_j}\delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \,
    e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_s),s)}\, ds}
  {\displaystyle 1+\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_s),s)} \, ds}.
\end{equation}
The ABP method we discuss here is based on the biasing potential~\eqref{Cbias},
updated with the current estimate of the free energy~\eqref{CbFE}. New configurations are
obtained by integrating in time the biased equations of motion using the simple
estimate~\eqref{CbwMD} for the biasing force.
The convergence of this method is discussed in Section~\ref{sec:cv}.

In fact, Eq.~\eqref{CbFE} is a way to evaluate the convolution in
Eq.~\eqref{conv} at each point $\xi^*$ using a biased trajectory. This
gives us a precise understanding of how using finite $\alpha$
introduces error in the estimate $A_{\alpha}$ and how to remove that
error. This is a strength of our method which makes it unique.  If we
try to draw analogy with metadynamics, the framework
of~\eqref{CbFE} would imply the continuous deposition of the Gaussians
$\delta_{\alpha}$ at each point $\xi(x_t)$ along the trajectory.
Notice that in this analogy the Gaussians would be added to the
density of states rather than to the bias potential, precluding us
from going any further with the analogy.

\subsubsection{Time-discretization}

Let us briefly discuss the time-discretization of the method
based on \eqref{Cbias}-\eqref{CbFE}-\eqref{CbwMD}.
Assume that we have a suitable discretization where time is broken into
parts of duration $\Delta t$ so $t = n\Delta t$ and $x_{i\Delta t}$ is
written $x_i$. The biasing potential is now updated as
\begin{equation}
  \label{bias}
  e^{\beta V_b(\xi,n)} = e^{-\beta \Delta A_{\alpha}(\xi,n)}e^{\beta c}
\end{equation}
where $e^{-\beta \Delta A_{\alpha}(\xi,n)} =
e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi,n)}/\max_{\xi^*}[e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,n)}]$, and
\eqref{CbFE} and \eqref{CbwMD} are respectively replaced by
\begin{eqnarray}
  \label{bFE}
  && e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,n+1)} \\
  && = Z^{-1}_n
  \left(1+\displaystyle\sum_{i=0}^n \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_i)-\xi^*)
  \, e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_i),i)}\right),
  \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and
\begin{eqnarray}
  \label{bwMD}
  && \frac{\partial A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,n+1)}{\partial \xi^*_j} \\
  && = -k_BT
  \frac{\displaystyle\sum_{i=0}^n \partial_{\xi^*_j}\delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_i)-\xi^*)
    \, e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_i),i)}}{1+\displaystyle\sum_{i=0}^n \delta_{\alpha}
    (\xi(x_i)-\xi^*) \, e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_i),i)} }. \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
At $t=0$ we have $\exp[-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi,0)] = 1/Z_0$.
Let us emphasize again that the trajectory $x_i$ is generated from biased equation of
motion associated with the biased potential $V+V_b$.

The implementation only requires storing the current value of
the numerator and denominator of Eq.~\eqref{bwMD} at the points $\xi^*$. In particular, $Z_n$ is
never needed in practice.
(see Appendix \ref{app:algo})
The biasing force $-\nabla V_b$, needed for instance to integrate the Langevin dynamics,
is obtained through Eq.~\eqref{bwMD}.
\subsubsection{Convergence and consistency}
\label{sec:cv}

It can be checked that, if the biasing potential $V_b$ converges
in the long-time limit, then
it converges to $-A_{\alpha}$ up to an additive constant.
Indeed, denoting by $\overline{A}_\alpha(\xi) = \lim_{n\to+\infty} A_\alpha(\xi,t)$,
the trajectory $x_i$ is sampled according to the limiting canonical
measure associated with the potential $V-\overline{A}_\alpha + C$ (where $C$ is
an unimportant constant), so that~\eqref{CbFE} leads to
\begin{eqnarray*}
&& e^{-\beta \overline{A}_\alpha(\xi^*)} \\
&& = \lim_{t\to+\infty}
\frac{1+\displaystyle\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi^*) \, e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_s),s)} \, ds}
{\displaystyle\int_\Omega \left(1+\int_0^t \delta_{\alpha}(\xi(x_s)-\xi') \,
  e^{\beta V_b(\xi(x_s),s)} \, ds \right) d\xi'}\\
&& =\frac{\displaystyle \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_\alpha(\xi(x)-\xi^*) \, e^{-\beta (V(x)+C)} \, dx}
{\displaystyle \int_\Omega \int_{\mathcal{X}} \delta_\alpha(\xi(x)-\xi') \,
  e^{-\beta (V(x)+C)} \, dx \, d\xi'}\\
&& = e^{-\beta A_\alpha(\xi^*)}.
\end{eqnarray*}
The fact that, if a limit exists, then it is the correct one,
is an important consistency
check of the method. However, we were not able to prove that the biasing potential
indeed converges (this issue arises in all ABP methods while
such an alalysis can rigorously be done for some ABF methods\cite{lrs08}).

Let us now look more carefully at the first iterations of the algorithm,
in order to understand the role of the constant $c$ in~\eqref{Cbias} or~\eqref{bias}.
We base our considerations on the numerical discretization~\eqref{bFE}
to simplify the argument. First, recall that the constant $c$
does not change the longtime limit of the algorithm.
However, it helps accelerating the convergence during the initial transient regime.
The first iteration of~\eqref{bFE} indeed shows that
\[
e^{\beta V_b(\xi^*,1)} = e^{\beta c} \frac{1 + \delta_\alpha(\xi(x_0)-\xi^*)
  \, e^{\beta c}}{1 + \delta_\alpha(0) \, e^{\beta c}}.
\]
When $c$ is such
that $e^{\beta c}$ is small, $V_b(\xi^*,1)$ is raised by a small
amount and the gradient of $V_b$ encourages trajectories to move away
from $\xi^*$ to some small extent. By increasing the value of $c$, we
obtain a bias potential that pushes trajectories away from $\xi^*$
more strongly, hence increasing the efficiency of the bias potential, in
particular at the early stages of the process.
We therefore conclude that the value of $c$ should be as large
as possible while maintaining numerical stability.
Not all ABP methods update their biases according to this rule,
see the comparison between our approach and the standard Self-healing umbrella sampling
algorithm in Section~\ref{sec:SHUS}.

\section{Comparison with other methods}
\label{sec:comparison}

\subsection{Self-healing Umbrella sampling}
\label{sec:SHUS}

Self-healing umbrella sampling\cite{mb06} (SHUS) can be seen as a
special case of the method presented here. SHUS can be written in
terms of Eq.~\eqref{bias} using the following
time-dependent constant:
\[
e^{\beta c(n)} = \displaystyle \max_{\xi^*}\left[e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*,n)}\right].
\]
With this choice we have, $V_b = -A_\alpha$ and $  \int_\Omega e^{\beta V_b(\xi,t)} \, d\xi = 1$.
This choice for $c(n)$ was suboptimal since the analysis of section \ref{sec:cv} shows that the
value of $c$ should be as large as possible. Notice also that when the reaction coordinate space
is discretized into a finite number of bins, the normalization condition
\eqref{eq:normalization_mollified} should be restated as a sum over bin indexes and the maximal
value of $\exp[-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi,n)]$ is therefore less than one. This corresponds to a
negative value of $c(n)$. We checked for the testcase considered in Section \ref{sec:numerical}
that our method outperforms SHUS for precisely this reason.

\subsection{Adaptive biasing force}

We compare numerically our approach to two ABF formulations in
Section~\ref{sec:simu_details}.  ABF is a good reference for
comparison because there are no model parameters to choose. Errors
arise only through time and reaction coordinate discretization.  Two
exact formulations of the free energy gradient are~\eqref{cle} above,
and
\begin{equation}
  \label{dp08t}
  F(\xi^*) = -\left\langle \frac{d}{dt}
  \left(M_{\xi}\frac{d\xi}{dt}\right)\right\rangle_{\xi^*},
\end{equation}
where $M_\xi^{-1}= J M J^t$ with $M$ the mass matrix and $J$
defined in~\eqref{cle} (see reference~[\citenum{dp08}] for this
second expression). We point out that in practice $F(\xi)$
is approximated by a trajectory average $F(\xi,t)$ which is then used to bias
the dynamics.
For further details on the expressions~\eqref{cle} and~\eqref{dp08t} or their
numerical implementation, we refer the reader to the cited works.

With ABF, one must address constructing the free energy from an estimation
of its gradient, the calculated field $F$. While there are specific solutions to this
problem\cite{dp08,mv08,k09} we employ a standard variational
formulation.
We recast this question as an optimization problem where
the objective function
\begin{equation}\label{obj}
I(u) = \int_\Omega \| F(\xi) - \nabla_{\xi}u \|^2 \, d\xi
\end{equation}
is to be minimized. The corresponding Euler-Lagrange equation is
\begin{equation}\label{peq}
\Delta_{\xi} u(\xi) = \nabla_{\xi} \cdot F,
\end{equation} which is just Poisson's equation, to be supplemented with
appropriate boundary conditions (depending on the domain $\Omega$). The solution $u(\xi)$ is
the best representation of the free energy given the vector field
$F(\xi)$. This is solved via finite difference in the present work, but
finite elements (or any Galerkin method) could be used as well.

\subsection{Metadynamics}

Because we have developed a method within the adaptive bias potential
paradigm, we also make a comparison to well-tempered
metadynamics\cite{bbp08}. In this formulation of metadynamics the bias
potential in one dimension is given by
\begin{equation}\label{metad}
V_b^{\rm meta}(\xi,\tau) = \sum_{t'\leq \tau} G(\xi-\xi_{t'},h(\xi,t'),w),
\end{equation}
where the functions $G(X,H,W)$ are Gaussians of width $W$
and height $H$, centered on $X$. We write $V_b^{\rm meta}$ to indicate
that this is the bias potential generated by metadynamics. The
Gaussian height in well-tempered metadynamics is both dependent on
time and position along the reaction coordinate $h(\xi,t) = \omega
\exp[-V_{b}^{\rm meta}(\xi,t)/k_B\Delta T]\tau_G$. For details of this version of
metadynamics we refer the reader to reference [\citenum{bbp08}]. We
compare to this particular formulation because it requires less
interaction with the user and a choice of parameter values is given in
the cited reference.

\section{Numerical examples}
\label{sec:numerical}

\subsection{Simulation details and results}
\label{sec:simu_details}

Alanine dipeptide is a familiar system for benchmarking sampling
methods\cite{bk97,mv08,sw08,bbp08,dp08,ss09}.  Here, we employ AMBER
with a half femtosecond timestep, no constraints, solvent effects are
modeled with the generalized Born model and we use the ff94
parameterization. The temperature was maintained at $T=300$K with
Langevin dynamics where the collision frequency is $1$~ps$^{-1}$. We
select the common backbone dihedral angles $(\xi_1,\xi_2) =
(\Phi,\Psi)$ as reaction coordinates.

When discretizing the reaction coordinate, it is common to use a small
bin size to be sure that the free energy is correctly captured.  Here, we
use $300$ bins of width $1.2$ degrees.  We will also consider a bin
width of $3.6$ degrees for Eq.~\eqref{dp08t} to examine the influence
of bin size on ABF.  In practice, for Eqs.~\eqref{bFE} and
\eqref{bwMD}, the current configuration along a trajectory may
contribute only to an $m$ by $m$ grid centered around
$(\xi_1(x_t),\xi_2(x_t))$, which amounts to truncating the range
of the Gaussian function~$\delta_\alpha$. The number of bins $m$ were chosen so that
$\delta'_{\alpha}(\xi-\xi^*)$ is negligible for $\xi^*$ outside this
box. For example, when $\alpha = 5^{\circ}$ we use $m=20$. In practice we neglect
the normalization $Z_n$ as well as the normalization of $\delta_\alpha$. We give
a schematic algorithm in appendix \ref{app:algo}.

In simulations with equations \eqref{bFE}, \eqref{cle} and
\eqref{dp08t}, we use a ``ramp function''
$R(N_{l,k})=\min[1,N_{l,k}/N_0]$ to scale the biasing force
(see for instance reference~[\citenum{dp08}]), where $N_{l,k}$ is the population in bin
      $(l,k)$ and the parameter $N_0=10$ was optimized for equations
      \eqref{cle} and \eqref{dp08t}. The ramp function scales the
      biasing force so that the initially noisy observations of the
      force do not induce non equilibrium effects. The biasing force
      for the method presented here is given by Eq.~\eqref{bwMD}. The
      biasing force for the ABF methods are given in equations
      \eqref{cle} and \eqref{dp08t}. The biasing forces (and biasing
      potential) are updated at each timestep.

To study sampling efficiency we use the average difference
\begin{equation}
  \label{error}
  d(t) = \frac{1}{n^2}\sum_{k=1}^n \sum_{l=1}^n \left|A_{\text{ref}}(k,l) -
\hat{A}(k,l,t)\right|
\end{equation}
between the estimated free energy and a reference to be defined below.
$n$ is the number of bins in each coordinate, $k$ and $l$ are bin
indices.  For Eq.~\eqref{cle} and \eqref{dp08t} $\hat{A}$ is the
solution of Eq. \eqref{peq}.
In out method, $\hat{A}$ is either
the left-hand side of Eq.~\eqref{bFE}, $A_{\alpha}$, or its deconvoluted
version $A_{\alpha}^{\rm dcnvl}$. Finally for Eq.~\eqref{metad}, $\hat{A}=-(T+\Delta
T)V_b^{\rm meta}/\Delta T$. The reported results for $d(t)$ are found
by using only a single trajectory with each method.
We do not report the results obtained with SHUS
since the convergence was found to happen much slower than for cases where $c>0$.

\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics[width=7in]{fepanels.eps}
\caption{Contours are placed every $1/2 k_B T$ (kcal/mol).  (A) an
  estimate of the exact free energy (see text) which compares well to
  reference [\onlinecite{dp08}]. (B) the free energy estimate after 1
  ns of biased dynamics ($\alpha = 5$). \label{ugly}}
\end{figure*}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{convergfig.eps}
\caption{Error~\eqref{error} as a function of time for the method presented
  in this paper, for various $\alpha$ with and
  without deconvolution. Unless otherwise stated, $c=15 k_BT$. The
  $\alpha=5$, $c=0$ simulation demonstrates slow convergence due to a
  suboptimal choice of $c$, as described in the text. In the inset we
  show the last 4 ns of the $\alpha = 5^{\circ}$ results.
\label{alpcon}}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{convergfigs.eps}
\caption{Error~\eqref{error} as a function of time for $\alpha=5^{\circ}$ and
  $\alpha=10^{\circ}$ with the method proposed in this paper,
  and comparison with ABF results obtained from Eqs.~\eqref{cle} and~\eqref{dp08t}.
\label{compcon}}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics[width=7in]{diff.eps}
\caption{In panel (A) we show the absolute difference between the computed
$A_{\alpha=10}$ and the reference $A$. Most of the error is, as expected, due to the regions of large
curvature. In panel (B) the absolute difference between the deconvoluted free energy $A_{\alpha=10}^{dcnvl}$ and the reference $A$
is shown. In panel (C) we show the absolute difference between $A^{meta} = -(T+\Delta T)V_b^{meta}/\Delta T$
and the reference $A$. The
free energy estimates in panels A-C were taken at the end of a $4$ ns trajectory.
In panel (D)~\eqref{error} is shown for the well-tempered metadynamics method~\eqref{metad} for comparison
with results from the mollified DOS method.
\label{metafig}}
\end{figure*}

We use the Richardson-Lucy algorithm\cite{r72,l74} to deconvolute
$A_{\alpha}$ because of its simplicity but another method of deconvolution could be used,
in particular if $\delta_{\alpha}$ is not defined as a Gaussian.
This algorithm is denoted by ``RL''
throughout.  The RL algorithm uses the following iterative procedure:
\begin{equation}\label{RLeq}
f_{i+1}(\xi) =f_{i}(\xi)\int_\Omega \frac{e^{-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi^*)}}{\int_\Omega
  \delta_{\alpha}(\hat{\xi}-\xi^*)f_i(\hat{\xi})d\hat{\xi}}
\, \delta_{\alpha}(\xi^*-\xi) \, d\xi^*,
\end{equation}
where
$f_0(\xi) = \exp[-\beta A_{\alpha}(\xi)]$, which is given by equation
\eqref{bFE}. To begin the algorithm, $\delta_{\alpha}$ and $f_i$ must
be normalized. The fixed-point iteration~\eqref{RLeq} suggests that $f_n(\xi) \rightarrow
\exp[-\beta A(\xi)]$ as $n \to +\infty$.
We use 10 iterations in the reported results.

The reference free energy was computed by reweighting a long biased
trajectory (120~ns) as
\begin{eqnarray*}
&&A_{\text{ref}}(k,l) =-k_BT
\ln \left( \sum_i \delta[\xi_k-\xi_1(x_i)] \times \right.\\
&& \qquad \qquad \delta[\xi_l-\xi_2(x_i)] \exp[\beta
  V_b(\xi(x_i),\tau)] \Big),
\end{eqnarray*} where $V_b(\xi,\tau)$ was constructed from 4 ns of simulation with the mollified DOS
method. The bias was not updated during construction of the reference free energy.
This produces a
result free from errors associated with the choice of $\alpha$.
The reference profile $A_{\text{ref}}$ is shown in figure \ref{ugly}(A) and in figure
\ref{ugly}(B) we show $A_{\alpha}(\xi,t)$ at 1 ns of sampling with
$\alpha = 5^{\circ}$. The average difference $d(t)$ is shown in figure
\ref{alpcon} for $A_{\alpha}$ with different values of $\alpha$.  To
show how the zero of energy of the bias potential controls the speed
of convergence, in figure \ref{alpcon} we plot Eq.~\eqref{bFE} with
$c=0$ in~\eqref{bias} and we set $c=15k_{B}T$ for the remaining simulations.
In figure \ref{compcon} we show $d(t)$
for Eqs.~\eqref{cle} and~\eqref{dp08t} (ABF methods).
Results for Eq.~\eqref{metad} (well-tempered metadynamics)
are shown in figure~\ref{metafig}(D).

\subsection{Efficiency of the results as a function of $\alpha$}

For small $\alpha$ the nonlocality of the formulation disappears and
in figure \ref{alpcon} we see slow convergence for $\alpha =
0.8^{\circ}$.  For intermediate values of $\alpha$, nonlocality allows
the bias potential to equilibrate much faster.  For $\alpha
=2^{\circ}$ and $\alpha=5^{\circ}$, $A_{\alpha}$ is a good
approximation of $A$, $d(t)$ falls well under $1$ kcal/mol and we
observe high efficiency.  With the value $\alpha = 10^{\circ}$, $d(t)$
plateaus at roughly $1$ kcal/mol; $\alpha$ is now too large for
$A_{\alpha}$ to be a good approximation of $A$.  After applying the RL
deconvolution to $A_{\alpha=10^{\circ}}$, $d(t)$ drops to match
the accuracy obtained with $\alpha = 2^{\circ}$ or $\alpha = 5^{\circ}$.  The
correspondence between $A_{\alpha}$ and $A$ has deteriorated but not
enough to decelerate the sampling: $A_{\alpha=10^{\circ}}$ is still a
good biasing potential and $A$ can be recovered with
deconvolution even at very short times.

For large $\alpha$ Eq. \eqref{bwMD} approaches zero, leaving only a
small biasing force to accelerate the dynamics.  To assess whether
$\alpha=20^{\circ}$ is so large as to slow down the sampling, we apply
the RL deconvolution.  The results in figure \ref{alpcon} demonstrate
that $A$ can be recovered to high accuracy for $\alpha=20^{\circ}$ at
long times but that sampling efficiency is affected.

In figure \ref{compcon} we show $d(t)$ for Eqs. \eqref{cle}
and \eqref{dp08t} with a bin size of $1.2^{\circ}$ and also for
Eq. \eqref{dp08t} with a bin width of $3.6^{\circ}$.  If we compare
the time to reach $d(t)=1$ kcal/mol, simulation with Eq. \eqref{bFE}
is roughly three to ten times faster than Eqs. \eqref{cle} and
\eqref{dp08t} for $2 \le \alpha \le 20$ at the bins size of
$1.2^{\circ}$.  For the larger bin size $3.6^{\circ}$, ABF sampling
speed becomes competitive with the mollified density of states
approach but it is impossible to remove the error.  The $3.6^{\circ}$
bin width coincides with the Gaussian half-width of $\delta_{\alpha}$
when $\alpha = 2^{\circ}$.  A larger bin size can enhance sampling
speed for ABF but at a cost in accuracy.  Note that
$\alpha=20^{\circ}$ corresponds to a $\delta_{\alpha}$ with a half
width that spans $33.3^{\circ}$ in one dimension. This is a very large
effective bin width for the accuracy of the results; A similar bin
size with Eqs. \eqref{cle} or \eqref{dp08t} would produce large,
irreparable errors.

In figure \ref{metafig} we show results for the metadynamics simulations.
We use the values $\Delta T=1800$ K,
$\omega=0.24$ cal mol$^{-1}$ fs$^{-1}$ and $\tau_G = 120$ fs, as suggested in reference [\citenum{bbp08}].
We could not improve the results by choosing different parameters. In panels (A) and (B) of figure \ref{metafig}
we show the absolute difference between the computed $A_{\alpha=10}$ and the reference $A$ with and without
deconvolution, respectively. Clearly, the bulk of
error is due to the missrepresentation of the very negatively curved regions of the free energy and the
ability to deconvolute $A_{\alpha}$ drastically reduces this error. In panel (C) we show the absolute difference
between the free energy computed via equation~\eqref{metad} and the reference. We see again that the error is concentrated
in the regions of large negative curvature but there is not simple and obvious way to reduce these errors with some
post-process. Panel (D) confirms that the metadynamics promotes extremely rapid sampling but that the long time
accuracy, especially in strongly curved regions, is limited.

The results summarized in figures \ref{alpcon}, \ref{compcon} and
\ref{metafig} imply that a wide range of values $2 \le \alpha \le 20$
lead to good efficiency. The ability to use the simple deconvolution
algorithm is a clear advantage of the method.

\subsection{Choosing $\alpha$ \textit{a priori} }
\label{sec:choice_alpha}

We now discuss how to \textit{a priori} choose $\alpha$ based on some
rough error estimates.  Taking $\xi$ as a scalar, we may expand
$e^{-\beta A(\xi^*)}$ as a Taylor series.
Eq. \eqref{conv} yields
\begin{align}\label{rerror}
e^{-\beta (A_{\alpha}(\xi^*)-A(\xi^*))} &\simeq 1+\frac{\alpha^2}{4}
\left[ \left( \frac{A'(\xi^*)}{k_BT}\right)^2 -
  \frac{A''(\xi^*)}{k_BT}\right],
\end{align} where we keep terms up to the second moment of $\delta_{\alpha}$.
Assuming that $A(\xi)$ is harmonic near the minimum $\xi=q$, the
curvature can be estimated as $A''(q) = k_B T/\sigma^2$ where
$\sigma^2$ is the variance of the reaction coordinate at temperature
$T$.  From Eq.~\eqref{rerror},
\[
\exp\big[-\beta(A_{\alpha}(q)-A(q))\big] \simeq 1-\frac{\alpha^2}{4\sigma^2}.
\]
While the higher order terms and
the regions where $A'\ne 0$ are certainly important to the total
error, this motivates defining $\alpha$ as a function of $\sigma$ if
little is known about the free energy --- we can always calculate
$\sigma$ in the initial state.

We calculate the variance of the reaction coordinates to be about
$\sigma^2 = 340$ degrees squared for both $\Phi$ and $\Psi$.  In terms
of the values of $\alpha$ discussed above, this implies $\sigma /9 \le
\alpha \le \sigma /2$ as a good range for fixing $\alpha$ from
calculation of $\sigma$.
Of course, different $\alpha$'s may also be used for different
coordinates.

\section{Conclusion}
\label{sec:ccl}

In conclusion, we have developed and tested an efficient ABP
scheme. The nonlocality of $\delta_{\alpha}$ leads to a bias potential
and a bias force that equilibrate rapidly. Shifting the zero of energy
on the bias potential was shown to result in efficient importance
sampling.  The parameter $c$ has influence on only the efficiency of
the importance sampling but not on the limiting error of $A_{\alpha}$.
Because the bias potential is related to a convoluted free energy,
deconvolution can be applied at the end of a simulation to remove all
of the errors associated with the choice of the model parameter
$\alpha$ --- a unique feature and strenght of this approach.
This is limited only by the extent of sampling and the
spacial discretization.  This scheme easily accommodates the
computation of the free energy surface and free energy gradient in
several dimensions.  We also suggest a simple means of \textit{a
  priori} specifying $\alpha$ and $c$ that should be quite general in
applicability.

\section*{Acknowledgements}

This work is funded by the SIRE project (contract number
ANR-06-CIS-014) of the French national research agency (ANR).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


As part of the local Smithsonian Water/Ways exhibit, the Jeanerette Museum Board and Iberia Parish Library have partnered to present the film screening of the documentary, King Crawfish. In attendance will be Conni Castille, the film's producer and writer, who will introduce the film and lead a brief discussion. 6 pm. Free. jeanerettemuseum.com.


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Gently exfoliating pumice is suspended in this clear, blue glycerine bar. And when the sea foam washes away, back into the sea, a small blue starfish will be revealed on the beach.


text:
A Mount Hope Landmark Is Auctioning Off Memorabilia.
Mount Hope, WV – (WWNR) – A piece of Mount Hope's history was on display Sunday.
The Bon Bon Confectionary and Hardware Store closed in 2020 after 100 years in business.
But the store reopened its doors for a preview tour of an online auction of hundreds of items of memorabilia, including beer signs, soda fountain collectibles, movie theater items, old photographs and a 1930 Model A Ford.
"Anyone who ever grew up here in Mount Hope at some point came through the doors and got them a coke or a candy bar," says current Bon Bon co-owner Dean Bonifacio. His grandfather Sam opened the store in 1920 and it was later run by his father and mother, Floyd and Phyllis.
"It was started by my grandfather who came from Italy, he was actually a shoemaker, and started a business here. My father expanded it to hardware and to a convenience store and we were open for a hundred years."
In addition to memorabilia from the Bon Bon, the auction also features items from the Princess Playhouse and the Mount Hope Theater, which Floyd Bonifacio also operated, as well as items from the Bonifacio's home, which is located right behind the Bon Bon.
But the item that gets everyone's attention is the Model A Ford, which has been stored inside the hardware store for years.
"It's a 1930 Model A Ford," says Dean Bonifacio. "It was my dad's pride and joy. It's still in excellent condition. It would probably just take a little bit to get it running. But yeah it's in excellent shape."
The auction features over 1,000 lots and is being run thru https://entrustedauctions.com/. The bidding ends on January 17th at 6pm. After selling the personal property, Dean Bonifacio says the plan is to sell the store itself.
"There's a lot of emotion. When you're not only a business, but it was our family, but it's the right thing to do at the right time."
"I hope someone has some great ideas, who's ready to put some energy into the town and make the most out of it."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


With a history rich in culture and tradition, diversity in employment, strong commercial and residential sectors, and an Economic Development Commission linking government, community, and businesses, we continue to bring forward annual statements showing healthy profits and capital re-investments back into the community.
List of open and closed Requests for Proposals and Quotations.
Overview of the local WFN and Okanagan economic climate.
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List of resources for current and potential businesses.
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text:
Before and After: Seeing a Winchester Cape in a New Light
A small, dark house in the suburbs was reimagined into a bright and airy sanctuary.
By Madeline Bilis·	 4/12/2017, 4:28 p.m.
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Photos by Mary Prince Photography
Melissa Schneberger isn't particularly fond of New England homes. After deciding to sell her Somerville condo, she embarked on a search for a house in the suburbs—but found nothing she and her family could be comfortable in.
The region's antique homes are too formal, she explains. Schneberger prefers an open floor plan, and the capes and colonials she toured with her husband were divided up into small rooms. "We're not a part of that generation in which you want to have a formal eating space and living room space separated from the family room," she says.
But the houses that did feel open and modern didn't check all the boxes—they had the wrong finishes, for example, or too steep of a price tag. After two years of house hunting, Schneberger was pleasantly surprised by a small cape in Winchester. It boasted a sizable backyard for her two daughters and two golden retrievers, which she loved, but she wasn't keen on the house itself.
"It needed a lot of work," says Schneberger. "Definitely cosmetic work."
She explains the home had a less-than-ideal layout: the kitchen was tiny, the flow of the first floor was jumbled, and there was an abundance of wood paneling. Plus, it was divided up into a bunch of small rooms—which Schneberger had tried to avoid—and overall, the place felt dark. So, she decided to buy the house and enlist the help of Morse Constructions to knock down some walls and revamp the home into the airy abode she'd been dreaming about.
"It was obvious from the very beginning that the house could stand to be opened up quite a bit," says Paul Morse, president of Morse Constructions. His task was simple: reimagine the floor plan to create brighter, more open spaces. The only condition? There could be no additions.
"They wanted to make the best use of the space that was available, rather than adding onto it, so they had the yard space for their dogs and kids," says Morse. Along with architecture firm Downer Associates, he took the home's 2,100-square-foot footprint and rearranged its walls and doorways, transforming the cramped, dimly lit cape into a sunny and inviting sanctuary.
The group started by scrapping the original kitchen, which was much too small and tucked into a corner on the first floor. A laundry room-mudroom hybrid was built in its place. Then, they created a larger, more open kitchen overlooking the family room and dining area. A hallway was installed to create a flow from the front of the house to the back of the house, and the detested wood paneling was torn from the walls.
Builders upped the number of bathrooms from one and a half to three, and finished off a master suite. Visibility to the backyard was increased with additional windows, and the former sunroom became a cozy den. During the seven-month-long process, Schneberger, who works in finance, handpicked the home's furniture and decor. She describes her style as modern yet comfortable.
"Sometimes when people think of modern, (it's) kind of harsh lines or cold and stiff, but we're very informal," she says, adding her tastes aren't in traditional New England style. Her favorite design elements are the black scaled wallpaper in one bathroom and the natural wood cabinets in the master bathroom.
Morse says this type of project—reorganizing the inside of an aging home—is trending with his younger clients. "Creating that open space allows the family to be together, and you can have communication even if you're on your tablet or on your phone or TV," he says. In Winchester, Schneberger says she took a chance on the interior overhaul, and is pleased with the results.
"When you're buying a house, you end up having to compromise on some things unless you're going to build a house from scratch," she says. "But I think we were fortunate that Morse was able to help and work with us to get us pretty much everything we had wanted."
On the Market: A Boston Brownstone with a Custom Basement Bar
On the Market: A Contemporary Single-Family Home in Charlestown
On the Market: A Norfolk Home with a Screened in Porch Looking Out on Crystal Lake
On the Market: A Brick Manor in Concord with a Heated Pool
On the Market: A Secluded Country Manor in Hamilton
On the Market: A Cape Cod Compound with a Bowling Alley
On the Market: A Wellesley Home with a Renovated Spa Bathroom


Fine Cut are always keen to support local charities and businesses. One very close to their heart is the RNLI Lifeboats.
Peter Tyler MD, has had a long standing relationship with the Shoreham RNLI and recently ran the Great South Run in aid of the charity, raising well over £1100.
Please show your support today by following the link below and 'Thanking' the RNLI for all their hard work saving lives on our British coast.


text:
4X4 NEWS AND PRODUCTS
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Volvo Update XC90
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Chief among the updates to Volvo's range-topping SUV is an energy recovery system, that works with the existing combustion units and will wear the new 'B' badging.
The flagship XC90 can offer an 15% increase in fuel frugality and emission reductions, and the new brake-by-wire system works in conjunction with the energy-recovery system.
These new powertrains join the T8 twin-engine PHEV version of the XC90, which is subtly refreshed on the exterior, with new alloys, exterior colours and an updated grille at the forefront of the updates.
Safety features include blind spot information system, automatic city braking that recognises pedestrians, cyclists and large animals. So drivers will be helping save the polar bears in more ways than one… Oncoming lane mitigation still remains, having been introduced on the XC60, and the cross traffic alert technology also now works with the autobrake function.
The XC90 is also now compatible with Android Auto, joining Apple CarPlay, and the Sensus infotainment system also integrates Spotify in places throughout the XC90 range.
The 2020 model year version will enter production in Sweden this May, with UK orders opening in mid-March. Full pricing will come in due course, with first deliveries anticipated to be late in Q2 of this year.
4WD Volvos Get Rear Torque Boost
Volvo have announced that a new software upgrade to all of their four-wheel drive vehicles will increase torque distribution to the rear axles.
The Polestar-developed update alters the bias towards the rear axle, increasing the frequency of torque sent that way to improve turn-in, more control and engagement whilst driving.
Only present in Dynamic driving mode, the update comes after tweaks to the system's throttle response, quicker gear changes, more refined points of gear change and in-corner gear holding.
The optimisation will affect both petrol and diesel AWD versions of the XC90, XC60 and XC40 models from August 2018.
Volvo To Integrate Google Assistant Into Vehicles
Volvo began a partnership with Google last year, with the announcement that the next Sensus infotainment system would be the first to be run on the Android platform.
Now, news has been added that the next-gen Sensus will involve the voice-controlled Google Assistant. The system – the Android equivalent of Apple's Siri – will be accompanied in the new suite by Google Maps and other apps from the Google Play Store along with features developed by the two companies in collaboration.
The inclusion of Google Assistant means you can simply tell your car what setting you want the air conditioning to be on, or you can dictate text messages and choose what music you want to listen to. Whilst the involvement of Google Maps will keep up to date with traffic levels and offer responsive alternative routes.
The system is due in 2020, and could make travelling much simpler and easier, but do you like the sound of it? Let us know in the comments section.
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Mercy Road Minute: Why are we here?
Why are we here? This is a question so many people have asked, I am sure. I have heard this question in science classes, churches, on the city streets, and the list goes on. But if you are sitting in your house of worship, or heading to that sacred place, or getting ready to go, or gearing up for the next service or meeting let me ask again…. Why?
Some do it for the vain glory of being seen in front of people (or even just seen in church) and getting that pat on the back. There are those that are there because it is just a habit, and nothing more than a routine instilled in them from childhood. Some come because they think if they spend an hour at a church once a week that they have "put their time in" for God and makes them okay for the week.
Some who are blinded by their misguided reasons will be sitting in church and complaining about how long the service runs, whining about too many scriptures being read, and will likely show more reverence during a movie in a theatre than in a sanctuary of God. So again, why are we here?
In a time such as now when liberties seem to be slipping away; when people are sick, and cancers and new sicknesses are showing up on every corner; when you or loved one's friends still do not know the love that is Jesus Christ and will pass through this life into eternity without the knowledge of his saving grace…… should we not know for a certainty why we are here?
If you know Christ personally, you are a minister, and your walk should show that you are his servant. When I say "know," I mean a personal walk with him and continual growth in his light. Satan and his demons know Christ and the scriptures better than most Christians.
We should strive to be as Christ and not worry about what time it is, whether or not we will be missing our show on TV if the preacher does not shut up, or that we may miss our ballgame if the song leader sings two more verses. Maybe if that is our mindset going into the service, we are not really into the service anyway.
Maybe we should have done one of two things: Either prayed to prepare for the service before, or if that was our attitude toward the service, stayed home as to not dampen the spirit of the service, or distract those trying to worship and glean the portions of God's Word being delivered.
I know why I am here. I will refer back to Joshua 24:15. Let me leave you with a different question. Why are YOU here?
Posted in Christian interest, sgn scoops magazine | Comments Off on Mercy Road Minute: Why are we here?


2018-10-9 · The Raymond mill is used to grind materials in the fields of building materials, mining, metallurgy and chemical industry.
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Manoj Tiwari 'Mridul', Member of Parliament, Delhi, India gets felicitated with Certificate of Commitment by Global Pledge Campaign WBR - London
His contribution in serving humanity and philanthropic activities in the Coronavirus pandemic has been matchless.
NEW DELHI: Shri Manoj Tiwari 'Mridul' Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, New Delhi, India has been honoured by Global Pledge Campaign of World Book of Records, UK for serving humanity and dedicated activities in Coronavirus pandemic. He was felicitated with a Certificate of Commitment by Shri Santosh Shukla, Supreme Court, Advocate (President & CEO, World Book of Records) and Dr. Suchita Shukla (General Manager, ALMA). On this occasion, Shri Rajendra Jajoo were present. Significantly, Shri Manoj Tiwari is singer and actor serving as the Member of Parliament from North East Delhi. He contested 2014 Indian general elections as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate and won. He was appointed as Delhi BJP president in 2016. He was the head of the BJP organisation in Delhi when the party recorded a record victory in 2017 MCD elections. World Book of Records has greatly thankful and enthused about the response and appreciation for its CSR Initiative - Mass Pledge Campaign drive which has been instrumental in motivating people of all continents so that together we will win this fight against COVID-19. Under the pioneering guidance of Mr. Wilhelm Jezler from Zürich, Switzerland (Head of WBR European initiative) to motivate and inspire people with a pledge to be committed to safe and educate others to stay safe in the Covid-19 pandemic period. This global campaign of the pledge has covered people and organizations of 70 countries. WBR bestows certificates of Commitment to people and organizations for espousing the cause of humanity in Coronavirus pandemic.


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Case Study: Chronic Severe Constipation Caused by Asymptomatic L3-4 Intervertebral Disc Syndrome and Closed Ileocecal Valve
Presented at the International College of Applied Kinesiology-USA Annual Meeting, 2003–2004, p. 69–70
Abstract: The case of a thirteen year old boy who had never moved his bowels is discussed. Normalization of the bio-mechanics of his lumbosacral spine and ileocecal valve function corrected the case of a young man who had a once a week enema for all of his life. After his third visit he was moving his bowels daily.
Keywords: Applied Kinesiology, Ileocecal Valve, Challenge, Constipation
Introduction: As a result of a passing conversation with a mother of a thirteen year old boy, I found out that he had never begun to move his bowels since birth. He had extensive workups at many of the Worcester and Boston area hospitals to no avail. He had gone through a series of treatments which included repeated cycles of X-rays and mineral oil – none of which worked. For the better part of his life, his mother had given him a weekly enema. Constipation is defined as less than three bowel movements per week. 1 Constipation is common and significantly impairs health-related quality of life. 2, 3 The incidence range in the pediatric age is 0.3 to 8% and in 90–95% of cases it is functional, often due to an exclusively milky diet.
Discussion: Through my own past experience in treating people with closed ileocecal valves 5 I thought he may have an asymptomatic low back problem that may be related to a dysfunctional gastrointestinal tract from a mechanical basis. Therefore I suggested that she bring him in.
Physical examination revealed that he in fact had a bilateral sacroiliac sprain/strain (right posterior externally rotated, left anterior) with a compression of the L3–4 intervertebral disc. Additionally L3 was anterior and there was a positive challenge suggestive of a closed ileocecal valve. Other findings included a lateral tarsal tunnel syndrome with laterally displaced talli and externally rotated tibias. The muscles relating to his stomach (pec major claviculars) were weak bilaterally suggestive of hypochlorlydria. There was also tenderness on palpation of the gallbladder so we suggested that he use beet greens.
They have a lipotrophic effect. After his second office visit, he had two small bowel movements on his own and after the fourth office visit, seven weeks from his first visit, he was moving his bowels on a daily basis. Treatment consisted of some lumbar intersegmental traction to the L3–4 disc along with corrective stretching exercises. He avoided several foods that he was found to be sensitive to using muscle testing. With a gustatory challenge, he was found to be sensitive to milk, corn, soy and wheat. We also gave him some nutritional advice to increase the water soluble fiber in his diet by incorporating the use of papaya and apples in his diet.
Conclusion: Normalization of the lumbosacral plexus outflow to the gastrointestinal tract specifically the ileocecal valve should be one of the first lines of approach to normalizing bowel function. It is both a non-invasive and cost effective (given the fact that poor quality of life is an important predicator of healthcare utilization in these patient types 6 ) approach as well as represents a perfect example of the relationship between structure and visceral function. The tool of "challenge" utilizing applied kinesiology through muscle testing represents a technology which has awesome clinical applications that are unfortunately highly under utilized.
Cayaran S, Dorule E, et al. "The Assessment of constipation in monosymptomatic primary nocturnal enuresis." Int Uro Nephrol 2001; 33(3): 513–6.
Irvine EJ, Ferrazzi S, Pare P. "Health-equated quality of life in functional GI disorders: focus on constipation and resource utilization." Am J Gastroenterol 2002 Aug; 97(8): 1986–93.
Walter S, Hallbook O, et al. "A population-based study on bowel habits in a Swedish community: prevalence of faecal incontinence and constipation." Scand J Gastroenterol 2002 Aug: 37 (8): 911–6.
Dito L. "Constipation in Children." Clin Ter 2002 Jul–Aug: 153 (4): 281–7
Walther, David S DC, "Ileocecal Valve Syndrome: – Applied Kinesiology Synopsis- Second Ed. 1988, p. 494–500.
Irvine EJ, Ferrazzi S, PareP "Health-equated quality of life in functional GI disorders: focus on constipation and resource utilization. Am J Gastroenterol 2002 Aug; 97 (8): 1986


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Location DB > United States > Massachusetts > Boston > Fort Strong
Fort Strong
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created by Mike Dijital on 7/31/2014 1:51 AM
last modified by Emperor Wang on 12/19/2020 2:39 PM
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This is a pretty big military bunker on the tip of an Island in boston harbor, well worth the trip if you're into military stuff
Type: Outdoors
Status: Abandoned
Accessibility: Difficult
Recommendation:	worth the trip
Owner: City of Boston
See a map of this location
Interesting Features
Its a really cool military base on the tip of an island in boston harbor
Guard at the end of the bridge to get on the island
Historical Dates
Closed: 1960
long pants / sleeves
Fort Strong (1870 - 1960's), is located on Long Island in Boston Harbor.
It was originally named Long Island Military Reservation until 1899.
Camp Wightman, a Civil War training camp, was located on the island in 1861.
At the end of the Civil War, the government decided to keep Fort Strong which had been located in East
Boston, and move it to Long Island. It was officially designated in 1867 as being located on Long Island. The
name is a dedication to Massachusetts Governor Caleb Strong. [1]
The gun blocks and magazine of Long Island Head Battery (1874 - 1876), a 10-gun battery, still remain.
Endicott period batteries which were located here:
Battery Hitchcock (1899 - 1939)
Battery Ward (1899 - 1939)
Battery Drum (1899 - 1917)
Battery Smyth (1906 - 1921)
Battery Stevens (1906 - 1946)
Battery Taylor (1906 - 1942)
Battery Basinger (1901 - 1947)
A two-gun AA battery was built in the 1920s, extended to three guns in 1935. A mine casemate was
constructed in 1906, which commanded the northern channel (President Roads) harbor minefields until
replaced by Fort Dawes in 1944.
Fort Strong was a NIKE missile launch site in the 1950s, with the control site in Squantum. The Radar
Section, 15th AAA Group, was there from January 1958 to June 1961.
This property had been owned by the Long Island Hospital, and is now operated by The Boston Public
Health Commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Strong
Sun, Apr 21st, 2013
posted by Kurt
Mike Dijitals Pictures
Thu, Jul 31st, 2014
posted by Mike Dijital
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Coolness 10 / 10
Content Quality 10 / 10
This location's validation is current. It was last validated by Emperor Wang on 12/19/2020 2:41 PM.
on Dec 19 20 at 14:41, Emperor Wang validated this location
on Dec 19 20 at 14:39, Emperor Wang changed the following: Description
on Dec 17 20 at 17:51, Kurt updated gallery picture
on Dec 17 20 at 17:51, Kurt added some pictures to a gallery
on Dec 17 20 at 17:50, Kurt updated gallery 2013
on Dec 17 20 at 17:49, Kurt created a new gallery
on Jul 31 14 at 2:10, Mike Dijital validated this location
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The City of Dayton is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply. Applicants are considered for employment based on their qualifications without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital or veteran status, medical conditions or disability, or any other factor prohibited by law or regulation.
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@Ryan - any idea when the update with the fix will be released?
It's been a while since the last post and I'm still wondering if there will be an update. I don't mean to be rude or anything considering the app is free but this bug does make the app mostly useless for me.
Really sorry for the trouble caused by this issue. We are developing some new features to release with the fix in next update. Your support and patience is greatly appreciated!
All is good in da hood, removed middle names (which Facebook put in not me) and Verizon already had issues with +1 numbers so fixed that. Great product can't wait till screen capture works.


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Sci-fi blockbuster 'Dune' brings stars to Venice
One of the most hotly anticipated sci-fi blockbusters in years finally landed on Sept. 3, as the world premiere of "Dune" arrived at the Venice Film Festival.
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Venice film fest returns with another blockbuster lineup
Published by Hurriyet on Sun, 08/29/2021 - 09:49
The Venice Film Festival returns on Sept. 1 with an ultra-glitzy lineup, including the world premiere of sci-fi blockbuster "Dune" and Kristen Stewart's turn as Princess Diana, cementing its status as a serious rival to Cannes.
Read more about Venice film fest returns with another blockbuster lineup
Nominations for the Oscar have been Announced
Published by Novinite on Wed, 01/24/2018 - 13:03
The 90th Oscar Award Ceremony will be on March 4 in Los Angeles, Darik writes. In the category of the best film will be the Call me by your name, Darkest hour, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Get out, Post, Three Billboards Outside the Ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water, Phantom Thread.
Nominations for Best Actress:
Read more about Nominations for the Oscar have been Announced


Over the last few years we've witnessed the maturation of the designer role. Companies are investing in designers beyond just pushing pixels and production work. People rely on designers more-and-more for business and product decisions. With this growth of opportunities we've seen more designers taking on leadership roles and fostering design-centric company cultures.
At thoughtbot, we've always emphasized and understood the importance of design in product development. We were one of the first consultancies to employ product design sprints created by Google Ventures. Our team has released numerous open source tools for designers in the form of bourbon, neat, and bitters. Internally we've been improving the design culture through research and a slew of experiments. However, we didn't have a single designer in a management position within the company.
Design has its seat at the table. Our leadership team felt that if the design culture was to continue growing we needed to have designers in management roles. So, last year we introduced our first Chief Design Officer and the Design Director role.
To keep with thoughtbot's flat organizational structure, we didn't want to add additional levels of hierarchy. Instead of creating a middle-management layer, we view Design Directors as a support layer for our co-workers. We needed them to continue growing the internal design culture while ensuring the success of their team.
So what does a Design Director do?
Traditionally, design management roles have been more inline with Art Directors inside ad agencies. The Art Director role conjures up images of hovering people telling you to nudge it 10 pixels to the left. Micro-management is very anti-thoughtbot, and unpleasant in general.
Instead of going the traditional route we've been using this opportunity to continue building the design culture in each of our respective offices and throughout the company. Design Directors are still actively working as designers on their own projects, alongside the rest of the team. On top of that, they are making sure their team is happy, inspired, and successfully delivering for their clients. They facilitate critiques, discussion of new processes, exercises, outings, help with sales leads, and any problems whether code or client. We also look to push forward any ideas or concerns our local team has outwards to the entire company.
The team in Denver specifically brainstormed and established a handful of things to help push our design culture further. We've found balancing the frequency of the following activities has helped grow our design culture without them becoming too much of a nuisance. After all, more meetings for the sake of it is never a good thing. While the team helped establish some of these activities, the Design Director is responsible for making sure they happen.
Our team talks daily about our work. We're constantly pairing and helping each other with problems that crop up. However, sometimes we get so wrapped up in our projects we never step back and get an outsider's view. Weekly design critiques allow us to present our project, get the team's feedback, and work through any of the tough problems we're having. As a director, I find myself picking someone to present the day before, and facilitating a basic conversation around their work to keep us on track.
With the amount of articles, books, and topics to stay up-to-date with, one can easily get overwhelmed. Each of us wants to continue learning, but can often have a hard time staying motivated. By establishing a book club it holds each of us accountable to learning something new together.
Every other Friday we sit down to discuss a few chapters. Our conversation often ends up focusing on ways to improve our design process from what we've learned. I'm often the note-taker and frequently walk away with actionable items to help push changes and ideas further.
The New York City office has been enjoying lunch-time draw time on Fridays for a while now. They found it was a great way to end the week, but also a chance to be creative away from the screen. We decided to bring that into the Denver office and expand on it.
We spend our entire week in front of our screens working on features and user flows. Beyond that, designers are easily susceptible to creative burnout. By being creative and practicing problem solving away from the screen we're able to refresh ourselves.
Every other week I find an exercise we are going to work on. The team at Foursquare came up with a great list of exercises I often refer to.
Directors are here as a support layer and want to help with any problem a designer might come up against. Whether it's a design solution or a tough client, we're here as a sounding board to help out. I never try to prescribe solutions to a problem and often draw on my past experiences to help guide other designers. However, I never outright state I would do it a certain way. By avoiding that it allows them to find a solution themselves. I'm here to get their brain churning and moving in the right direction.
By establishing design leaders within thoughtbot, we're able to grow the design team and culture. Design leadership shouldn't be about hovering over someone's shoulder, or nitpicking their work to death. It's about enabling our team members and ensuring they're able to produce the best work possible.
Our directors have a slew of other tasks they handle. Inspiring, enabling, and helping their team learn should be at the top of their priorities. The activities above have helped establish ways for directors and team members to do that. They provide a way for each designer to learn, grow, and stay successful day-to-day. This is the right way to go about leading.


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Opening Sept. 19th: Ruud van Empel, Carolyn Carr, Kahn & Selesnick
Jackson Fine Art is excited to kick off the fall season with two exemplary solo exhibitions by Dutch artist Ruud van Empel and Atlanta native Carolyn Carr. In addition, we will have an intimate installation by the New York-based collaborative artist team of Kahn and Selesnick on display in the viewing room. As we participate in Atlanta Celebrates Photography during the month of October, we're pleased to present these four artists with disparate origins and processes, but who share the distinction of creating innovative and original work. All three exhibitions comment on the photograph's shifting narrative potential in the new world of contemporary art.
Ruud van Empel's surreal digital collage and Carr's new series of sculptural clay vessels and landscape photography tell very different stories, but both reflect on the role of images in constructing identity and organizing nature. Kahn and Selesnick's Truppe Fledermaus will be displayed in the viewing room, further actualizing the exhibition's incisive glimpse of worlds real and imagined. The show opens Friday, September 19th with a reception from 6-8 pm, and a reception with Kahn and Selesnick will be held the morning of October 16th at 11 am. On Saturday, October 18th, at 1:30 pm, Carolyn Carr will give an artist talk to complement Vestibule.
Renowned Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel's work reveals to us the possibilities of fusing art and technology. Trained as a graphic designer, van Empel creates rich digital photographs that are manipulations of people and places as seen in his imagination. He invents these images by shooting a variety of models in his studio and combing through his native Dutch forests to find the perfect leaves, branches and waters to photograph. He digitally dissects and reconstructs these images to create his fantastical, photo-realistic worlds and portraits. With his most recent work, he continues the exploration of lost innocence in a digital age present in his earlier series. These pieces directly interrogate the dichotomy of appearance and reality, with an eye to the demands of constructed, "online" identity and the disconnection that it engenders.
Ruud van Empel was born in 1958 in Breda, The Netherlands. His work has been exhibited globally at prestigious galleries and institutions including Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden; Groninger Museum, The Netherlands; MoPA, USA, and placed in numerous important permanent collections including The Sir Elton John Collection, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
In Vestibule, Carolyn Carr places photographs that have been printed and altered through traditional and unconventional methods in context with sculptural objects in situ. Vestibule is the second in Carr's series of installations to address and embody interior spaces as a 'still life.' Carr describes these room-sized installations as "fictitious interiors of quiet contemplation."
Carr made a pilgrimage to writer Flannery O'Connor's family farm, Andalusia, in rural Georgia in 2012. Her aim was to observe and photograph the place where O'Conner had created rooms for her characters. She also drew inspiration from a nearby town called Milledgeville, that was once home to an asylum housing women suffering from mental distortions. The institution, now shuttered, was criticized for locking up women who simply questioned and lived beyond the norms of their time. Coincidentally, the clay Carr used to create her initial series of hand-built vessels was sourced from Lizella, Georgia (also near Andalusia). Another critical facet of Carr's work process involved two self-imposed summer residencies in the North Carolina mountain range. In Appalachia, she learned pottery techniques on the wheel that had been passed down generationally. As a contemporary artist raised in the South, learning traditional craft techniques in this artistically rich area raised new questions for Carr around her own cultural identity. Carr continued photographing the landscape from whence the clay originated, focusing on peripheral angles, rather than typical points of view. The sculptures, once completed, were formally arranged in the studio and photographed. Some images are straight prints; some images were printed as inkjet negatives and taken into the darkroom to be double exposed with the traditional negatives of the landscapes. Other photographic prints were over-painted with drawings of the vessels.
The vessels are surrogates for content. The photographs are an examination of perspective. The arrangement of the work in a pale pink room serves as a document of inquiry, a place of labor, and is a decidedly feminine space. Artist Craig Drennan has described it as "[having] an otherworldly feel, like props for a dystopian film. They seem old and futuristic at the same time."
Carolyn Carr received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art (with a focus on Photography), she is a native Atlantan known for her compelling abstract paintings of interwoven curvilinear lines derived from captured graffiti signatures. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries including Gavlak (New York, Palm Beach), Artists Space (New York), 10 Chancery Lane (Hong Kong), National Museum of Women (Washington D.C.), the Contemporary, David Heath and Fay Gold (Atlanta). Recently she completed a site-specific Flux.org work entitled Tomorrow is Another Day. In addition to her studio practice Carr is on a number of institutional boards as well as being an activist for local community and political organizations.
Jackson Fine Art is also excited to present a special exhibition of work by Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick, featured speakers for Atlanta Celebrates Photography. Kahn & Selesnick are a collaborative artist team who have been working together since they met at art school at Washington University in St. Louis in the early 1980s. Both were born in 1964, in New York City and London, respectively. They work primarily in the fields of photography and installation art, specializing in fictitious histories set in the past or future. These may include: documentary-style panoramic and square photographs that combine absurdist fantasy and bogus anthropology; elaborately crafted artifact, costumes and sculpture, often constructed of unlikely materials such as bread or fur; painting and drawings ranging from large scale works on plaster to pages of conceptual doodling. Their current work features the recreation of the famous Truppe Fledermaus's Memory Theatre of 1932 with its full complement of Batfolk, Greenmen, Rope-Slingers, and Death-Dancers in all their Carnivalesque glory. Kahn & Selesnick have participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide and have work in over 20 collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. In addition, they have published 3 books with Aperture Press—Scotlandfuturebog, City of Salt, and Apollo Prophecies.
Click here to read the full Press Release
Carolyn Carr
Kahn + Selesnick
Ruud van Empel
Carolyn Carr: Vestibule
Sep 19 - Nov 29, 2014
Kahn + Selesnick: Truppe Fledermaus
Sep 19 - Nov 5, 2014


Madison River Ranch is a luxurious home located on the Madison River, only minutes from downtown Ennis, Montana. It is well suited for families and fishermen and comfortably sleeps 9 in 4 bedrooms and an additional 2 in a guest office. The end of the road location provides wonderful privacy and stunning views of the Madison Range and River Valley.
Located 1 mile south of Ennis, and 73 miles from West Yellowstone and the West entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Madison River Ranch has 4 bedroom and three and a half bathrooms. There are two main floor master bedrooms. The first has a queen size bed and full bath with a soaking tub and private access to the deck and river. The second has a queen size bed with a 3/4 bath and walk in shower. The upstairs has two bedrooms, one with a full size bed and one with a full on the bottom and twin on the upper bunk. The upstairs shares a full bath and has a stunning balcony view of the river. There is an additional half bath near the front entry.
The kitchen is fully equipped with state of the art appliances and everything a cook would need. There is a gas range and oven, large refrigerator, toaster, microwave, dishwasher, island with seating for two and a separate coffee bar including a Keurig coffee maker. There is seating for 8 at the dining room table and outside seating in the gazebo and on the deck as well.
The comfortable living area has a beautiful rock fireplace, large flat screen TV with satellite service and stunning views of the Madison Range and river. There is also a privacy corner, perfect for reading or visiting and a large antique bar, with outside access to the expansive deck and gas barbecue grill.
Ennis and surrounding areas are known for it's great fishing. The famous Madison River runs right in front of the property. Other rivers in the area include the Jefferson, Ruby, Big Hole and Beaverhead. Yellowstone National Park is an easy hour and a half away. Lakes in the area include Ennis, Harrison, Cliff, Wade, Hebgen, Quake and Henry's Lake. The historic town of Virginia City is an easy 15 minute drive. Other things to do in the area include hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, paddle boarding, hunting, golfing and Geo caching. The town of Ennis has a great kids fishing pond at Lion's Park, a golf course, new wonderful library and hospital. Local favorites include Willie's Distillery, the Gravel Bar and the McAllister Inn, known for their giant burgers.


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