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Kangna Ranaut said Priyanka Chopra called me after my National award win
Bollywood is always be a battle field for rivalry and we have seen these kind of many news in the past. But this time the equation is totally opposite. Because Kangna Ranaut said Priyanka Chopra called me after my National award win. As we already know that Priyanka Chopra is also nominated for the best actress awards for Mary Kom.
Post Kangna’s win, Priyanka had congratulated Kangna Ranaut and tweeted, “I hate losing. But if I had to take a back seat to anyone this year it would be you #KangnaRanaut ! Congratulations!yay Queen!#SmallTownGirls.”
Kangna, 28, won her second national award for the Queen, Vikas Bahl-directed film.
Kangna said ”It’s been long-long journey with Priyanka and it began during ‘Fashion’ when I was a starry-eyed fan of hers. She was a superstar during that time and today I am competing with her. It feels great. We have always maintained our friendship since 2008. She had no reason to choose me as her friend because I was a nobody at that time. She called me from California and congratulated me after the awards were announced. We spoke for an hour,”
“I have been misquoted many times when it comes to Priyanka. But it hasn’t changed our equation. Art is subjective and if people say that her performance in ‘Mary Kom’ was better than I have no issues with that. It’s just the spirit which matters,” she said.
|
Q:
Python: Netcat function doen't work
When I use this command on Linux, it works:
echo "test.bash.stats 44 1459116000" | nc myhostname.com 2003
But now, I try to implement this command in a Python script.
Method 1: Use os.system("")
# this works
os.system("echo 'test.bash.stats 14 1459116000' | nc myhostname.com 2003")
#It does not work because there are a problem with quote
data['time_timestamp'] = 1459116000
os.system("echo 'test.bash.stats 14 "data['time_timestamp']"' | nc myhostname.com 2003")
Method 2: Use socket
import socket
def netcat(hostname, port, content):
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((hostname, port))
s.sendall(content)
s.shutdown(socket.SHUT_WR)
while 1:
data = s.recv(1024)
if data == "":
break
print "Received:", repr(data)
print "Connection closed."
s.close()
netcat("myhostname.com", 2003, "test.bash.stats 14 1459116000")
I don't get an error, but I don't receive data.
A:
You should try concatenating the string like this
os.system("echo 'test.bash.stats 14 " + str(data['time_timestamp']) + " '| nc myhostname.com 2003")
or this
os.system("echo 'test.bash.stats 14 %d '| nc myhostname.com 2003" % data['time_timestamp'])
|
A Pakistani court has upheld the death sentence of a Christian woman whose 2010 conviction for blasphemy led to the assassination of two politicians who supported her, a defense lawyer said Friday.
Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old mother of five, had appealed before the Lahore High Court against the ruling, in which she was found guilty of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad, but the court rejected her appeal Thursday, her lawyer said.
"We have the right to appeal in 30 days, and we will continue this legal battle by approaching the Supreme Court of Pakistan," Sardar Mushtaq said.
Bibi's case drew global criticism in 2011 when Pakistan's minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti and eastern Punjab governor Salman Taseer were killed for supporting her and opposing blasphemy laws. Taseer was killed in the capital Islamabad by one of his police guards after visiting Bibi in jail. Bhati was killed months later by the Pakistani Taliban, who called him an "infidel Christian."
Under Pakistani blasphemy laws, insulting the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad can be punished with life imprisonment or death. Experts say the laws often are exploited for personal gain.
Pakistan imposed a moratorium on executions in 2008 and has never executed anyone convicted of blasphemy. Instead, such cases usually linger on appeal.
Mushtaq said Bibi was arrested after Muslim women told a cleric in a village in the eastern Punjab province that she had made "derogatory remarks" about the prophet. He said the trouble began when the women objected to Bibi using their drinking glass because she was not a Muslim, setting off a heated verbal exchange.
"We have a strong case, and we will try our best to save her life," he told The Associated Press.
Another one of Bibi's lawyers, Naeem Shakir, said his client had been involved in a dispute with her neighbors and that her accusers had contradicted themselves. But Gulam Mustafa, the lawyer for the complainant, said the court's decision was correct.
"Asia's lawyer tried to prove that the case was registered on a personal enmity but he failed to prove that," he said.
International and local human rights groups have called for amending blasphemy laws introduced by the military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1980s.
"This is a grave injustice," said David Griffiths, Amnesty's deputy Asia Pacific director. He said there were serious concerns about the fairness of the trial. "Her mental and physical health has reportedly deteriorated badly during the years she has spent in almost total isolation on death row. She should be released immediately and the conviction should be quashed," he said.
Wire services
|
PsiPerlPackageExprImpl(Perl5: PACKAGE_EXPR) at 0 in packageExpr.pl
(0,10)
'Foo::Bar::'
PsiPerlDerefExprImpl(Perl5: DEREF_EXPR) at 0 in packageExpr.pl
(0,18)
'Foo::Bar::->method'
|
Bipolar disorder cases boom among youths
Researchers say doctors mislabel many patients
By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times | September 4, 2007
LOS ANGELES - The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents has risen fortyfold since 1994, according to a new study released yesterday. But researchers partly attributed the dramatic rise to doctors overdiagnosing the serious psychiatric disorder.
The report in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry said bipolar disorder was found in 1,003 of every 100,000 office visits from children and adolescents in 2002-03, compared with 25 of 100,000 office visits in 1994-95 .
The diagnosis of bipolar disorder among adults increased twofold during the same period, researchers said.
The study didn't investigate the reasons for the explosion in bipolar cases among children and adolescents, which began after the 1998 publication of "The Bipolar Child," which made the controversial assertion that one-third to one-half of children with depression had bipolar disorder.
Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatrist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and senior author of the latest study, said part of the increase was attributable to an underdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in the past.
But Olfson said another reason was the mislabeling of children and adolescents with aggressive or irritable behaviors as bipolar, an illness that is treated with powerful psychotropic medications.
Dr. Thomas R. Insel , director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study, called the increase in bipolar diagnoses worrisome.
"The way the label is being used is probably a little exuberant - not fitting with the strict definition of the illness," Insel said. The disorder "is probably not as common as the very high rates we're seeing."
Bipolar disorder is marked by severe mood swings between depression and mania, which is characterized by an excess of energy and restlessness. For most patients, depressive episodes are three times more common and longer-lasting than those of mania. Symptoms of the disorder can interfere with daily activities, and severe cases carry a risk of suicide.
Until recently, the illness, which appears to run in families, was seldom diagnosed in children. It was believed to begin in late adolescence or early adulthood. About 2 percent of American adults are believed to have bipolar disorder, although not all of them have been diagnosed with the illness.
In the latest study, researchers analyzed data from an annual national survey that collects information from doctors about the nature of patient visits. Researchers found striking differences between adults and the young. Among children and adolescents, boys were more likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Among adults, the illness is more common in women.
Olfson said the gender difference between the groups suggested that some boys with behavior problems or conduct disorders were being misdiagnosed as bipolar. Irritability is a characteristic of bipolar disorder, he said, but it also is a normal part of adolescence.
Young people were 10 times more likely to also receive a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder than bipolar adults, according to the report. Olfson said it was likely that some children with ADHD received the diagnosis of bipolar disorder because the symptoms of the two illnesses overlapped. For example, he said, some children and adolescents with ADHD have a "volatile, aggressive subtype" that is easily confused with bipolar disorder.
Dr. Gabrielle A. Carlson, a psychiatrist at Stony Brook University in New York, said 1 in 5 children referred to her with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder have it. The rest have autism, depression, anxiety, or another psychological disorder. All these conditions involve different treatments, either with drugs or behavioral therapy, or both.
Carlson, who has studied the increase in bipolar diagnoses, said some parents seemed to prefer a diagnosis of the disorder because the illness, thought to be largely genetic, absolves them of blame. "They don't have to deal with their chaos, their psychiatric disorder, their marital troubles or abuse."
She said that in some cases providers diagnose psychological problems in children as bipolar disorder to obtain insurance reimbursement for hospitalizations - a practice called upcoding.
Insel said his institute was conducting research that might lead to more accurate diagnoses of bipolar disorder in young people. The agency said recent imaging studies had detected differences between the brains of children with and without bipolar disorder. A large study looking for the genes responsible for the disorder is nearing completion and may yield additional clues, Insel said.
In addition, the agency is tracking children with bipolar disorder to see how their symptoms change over time. A small fraction of children referred for the study actually had bipolar disorder, Insel said, another indication that the label is misused.
"We urgently need to improve diagnosis and treatment for these kids with severe emotional problems," he said.
|
The data are in the supplementary information file [S2 File](#pone.0212511.s002){ref-type="supplementary-material"}.
Introduction {#sec001}
============
Improving our understanding of the seasonal nature of influenza is important since it provides insight into the underlying mechanisms modulating influenza transmission \[[@pone.0212511.ref001]--[@pone.0212511.ref003]\], it likely has important effects on viral evolutionary processes \[[@pone.0212511.ref004]--[@pone.0212511.ref006]\], and because it can illuminate pandemic influenza patterns \[[@pone.0212511.ref007]--[@pone.0212511.ref011]\]. As such, numerous studies have investigated seasonal influenza epidemic patterns and have shown that influenza is strongly seasonal in temperate regions with epidemics that peak during the winter; whereas in subtropical and tropical regions the seasonality of influenza can be less pronounced, characterized by multiple peaks, or relatively aseasonal \[[@pone.0212511.ref001], [@pone.0212511.ref012]--[@pone.0212511.ref016]\].
A non-linear relationship between absolute humidity and influenza activity has been suggested to underlie the seasonal influenza signals observed globally. Although some laboratory studies have found no measurable relationship between influenza and humidity \[[@pone.0212511.ref017]\], most laboratory studies indicate that low absolute humidity increases the survival and transmission of influenza \[[@pone.0212511.ref003], [@pone.0212511.ref018]\] which is consistent with annual influenza epidemics that peak during the winter when absolute humidity is near minimal levels in temperate regions \[[@pone.0212511.ref003], [@pone.0212511.ref019]--[@pone.0212511.ref021]\]. On the other hand, in subtropical and tropical regions influenza activity tends to peak when absolute humidity is at high levels \[[@pone.0212511.ref016], [@pone.0212511.ref019], [@pone.0212511.ref022], [@pone.0212511.ref023]\]. Although the associations between influenza and absolute humidity for temperate and tropical regions appear paradoxical, these observations have been reconciled by studies showing a U-shaped relationship between influenza transmission and absolute humidity, with suppressed influenza activity when absolute humidity is at moderate levels \[[@pone.0212511.ref019], [@pone.0212511.ref023]\]. That said, the mechanisms that link absolute humidity and transmission are not fully understood, and it is possible that additional and confounding factors are responsible for the relationships observed.
A recent study showed that Australia is characterized by wintertime influenza epidemics, but summer influenza activity is elevated in the northern subtropical and tropical regions of the country \[[@pone.0212511.ref005]\]. The study also used phylogenetic data to show that many viruses circulating in the summer displayed extended chains of transmission that continued into the winter influenza season, suggesting that the increased summer influenza activity in tropical and subtropical Australia may play an important role in seasonal influenza dynamics. Given the significant spatial and seasonal variation in absolute humidity in the US, and our current understanding of the relationship between humidity and influenza activity, it would not be surprising if the seasonal nature of influenza varies across the US which may impact seasonal influenza dynamics.
As such, here we investigate spatial differences in influenza activity during the influenza season relative to activity outside of the influenza season, or "cross-seasonal influenza activity." We use a recently available influenza dataset that is highly resolved in both spatial and temporal dimensions and, more importantly, distinguishes between influenza A and B. These detailed influenza A and B time-series allow us to show significant regional differences in the seasonal nature of influenza in the US, and develop hypotheses about their causes.
Methods {#sec002}
=======
Data {#sec003}
----
We received influenza A and B test results for July 1, 2016---June 30, 2018 from the Quidel Corporation. These tests results are generated by a network of diagnostic sensors based at clinics, hospitals and pharmacies through the Virena platform. The Virena platform uses an immunofluorescence-based, lateral-flow assay that automatically transmit the data in real-time to a cloud based database. The HIPPA compliant data are de-identified and include the location (zip code), result (positive/negative), unique identifier for the reporting sensor, and date of each test performed. The analysis included results from sensors that reported 1 or more results in the prior year and in the final 90 days of the influenza year being analyzed.
We aggregated the influenza data from each sensor into geographic "subregions" that are composed of groups of metropolitan areas that share economic, cultural and environmental characteristics. The subregions were previously defined by the strength of commuter traffic flows \[[@pone.0212511.ref024]\]. [S1 Fig](#pone.0212511.s003){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. maps the states that comprise each subregion and the distribution of reporting sensors. We also added Honolulu, HI as a unique subregion. Aggregating the data across these broader spatial units (e.g., versus zip codes or metropolitan areas) increased the number of test results per spatial unit, improving the stability of our measures of cross-seasonal influenza activity (see below).
Specific humidity (a measure of absolute humidity, or total amount of moisture in the air) and air temperature were obtained from the NCEP/NCAR Global Reanalysis (GR) dataset for 2016--2018 \[[@pone.0212511.ref025]\]. The temperature and humidity data was extracted from the GR for the centroid of the largest metropolitan area in each subregion. The GR was used because it provides up-to-date environmental data across the US. The drawback of the GR dataset is its coarse spatial scale (2º x 2º latitude/longitude), which can introduce statistical bias to humidity and temperature estimates. Specific humidity and temperature were weighted by the number of positive influenza tests to better reflect the average conditions during influenza transmission. [S2 Fig](#pone.0212511.s004){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. illustrates the weighted average and maximum or minimum of specific humidity for the baseline and influenza seasons.
The population size of each subregion was derived from census tract level population counts from the 2010 US Census \[[@pone.0212511.ref026]\]. Vaccination rates were calculated using state level vaccination data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for the 2016--2017 season \[[@pone.0212511.ref027]\]. For subregions that intersected multiple states, a weighted average of the vaccination rate was calculated based upon the contribution of each state to the total subregion population.
Analysis {#sec004}
--------
A straightforward way to measure spatial variation in seasonal influenza activity would be to calculate attack rates (i.e., the proportion of individuals infected), and compare across subregions and seasons. However, since the data did not allow us to estimate total number of infected individuals in each subregion we could not estimate attack rates, instead, we calculated a relative measure of influenza activity by comparing counts of positive influenza results between "influenza" and "baseline" seasons. For each analytical procedure, we assessed the 2016--2017 and the 2017--2018 "influenza years" (July 1---June 30) independently.
Defining the influenza and baseline seasons {#sec005}
-------------------------------------------
We defined the influenza season as the 270-day (\~9 months) window corresponding to the maximum count of positive tests during an influenza year. The baseline season was defined as the remaining 95-days outside of the influenza season. These seasons were defined independently for each subregion, influenza type and year to mitigate the potential impacts of differential timing of the influenza/baseline seasons on the analysis. Given the window size arbitrarily defines the duration of the influenza and baseline season, we assessed, as a sensitivity analysis, the consistency of the results for influenza seasons defined as the window corresponding to the maximum count of positive tests for 180 and 330 days.
A "cross-seasonal ratio" was defined as the number of positive influenza tests during the influenza season divided by the number of positive tests during the baseline season. Subregions with fewer than 170 total positive tests during the influenza year were dropped from the analysis. Although aggregating the data to the subregional level increased the number of cases in each spatial unit, we still had subregions with limited data. As such, we artificially added a single positive-test to the baseline season for subregions that had over 170 positive tests, but no positive tests during the baseline season, to avoid division by zero. As additional support for our findings, we also calculated the influenza percent-positivity rate, i.e., the percent of tests that were positive for influenza, for both the epidemic and baseline seasons.
We used multiple Fisher's exact tests to evaluate if the observed frequencies of influenza cases during the influenza and baseline seasons in each subregion significantly diverged from expected frequencies based on the data pooled across all other subregions. We used the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to correct for the multiple tests performed, with the false discovery rate (Q) set to 0.01 \[[@pone.0212511.ref028]\]. We then assessed spatial autocorrelation of the cross-seasonal ratios (log transformed) using global Moran's I (MI) \[[@pone.0212511.ref029]\]. Neighbors were defined as subregions whose centroid fell within a 600 km radius of each subregion. This threshold distance generally included 4--7 of a subregion's nearest neighbors. The spatial weights matrix was row standardized and the MI were calculated using the PySAL library \[[@pone.0212511.ref030]\]. Likewise, we used Fisher's Exact tests to evaluate differences in percent-positivity for each subregion as compared against the data pooled from all other subregions, and corrected for multiple testing using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure.
Next, we assessed the relationship between the cross-seasonal ratios and candidate independent variables using bivariate mixed-effects maximum likelihood regression. The dependent variable was the log of cross-seasonal ratios (it was transformed to reduce the weight of outliers). Different models considered each independent variable: seasonal (epidemic or baseline) weighted-mean specific humidity or temperature (we also included square humidity and temperature terms to assess non-linear relationships), latitude, longitude, vaccination rate, or total population. We treated each subregion as a random effect to account for the repeated samples from each unit. After selecting the best fitting bivariate relationships, we further adjusted the effect estimates by including fixed effect dummy variables to account for year and influenza type. Finally, a forward stepwise AIC variable selection procedure tested whether the best fitting bivariate relationship could be further improved by the remaining independent variables.
Results {#sec006}
=======
We analyzed the results of 755,170 tests from 7,533 unique sensors administered between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2018, with 136,793 positive for influenza A and 86,498 positive for influenza B ([S1 Fig](#pone.0212511.s003){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The number of subregions analyzed varied between 34--40 by year and influenza type (Tables [1](#pone.0212511.t001){ref-type="table"} and [2](#pone.0212511.t002){ref-type="table"}). In general, the 270-day window with the greatest influenza activity was from early September through the end of May, with influenza A and B influenza seasons highly aligned ([Fig 1](#pone.0212511.g001){ref-type="fig"}). Accordingly, the summer baseline season was defined as approximately June-August for a wide majority of subregions in both years and influenza types. Median cross-seasonal ratios varied by influenza type and year, ranging from 104--426 ([Table 1](#pone.0212511.t001){ref-type="table"}).
{#pone.0212511.g001}
10.1371/journal.pone.0212511.t001
###### Basic summary of the results stratified by year and influenza type.
Moran's I values are similar to correlation coefficients with values typically ranging from -1 to 1 and higher values indicating higher spatial autocorrelation.
{#pone.0212511.t001g}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type / Influenza Year \# Subregions \# Positive\ \# Positive\ Median Cross-Seasonal Ratio Moran's I
Influenza Season Baseline Season
-------------------------- --------------- ------------------ ----------------- ----------------------------- -----------------
Influenza A / 2016--2017 37 57,554 386 237 0.24\
(p\<0.01)
Influenza A / 2017--2018 40 79,239 547 426 0.19\
(p\<0.02)
Influenza B / 2016--2017 34 37,521 632 104 0.42 (p\<0.001)
Influenza B / 2017--2018 37 48,977 613 277 0.30 (p\<0.001)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.1371/journal.pone.0212511.t002
###### Cross-seasonal ratios for each subregion by year and influenza type.
For more detailed results see the [S1 File](#pone.0212511.s001){ref-type="supplementary-material"}.
{#pone.0212511.t002g}
2016 / 2017 2017 / 2018
---------------- ------------- ------------- ------ ------
Albany --- --- 1189 513
Albuquerque 283 --- 740 535
Atlanta 132 77 699 133
Austin 51 28 257 131
Birmingham 33 18 264 89
Boston 211 159 536 191
Buffalo 606 393 454 411
Charleston 119 21 338 54
Charlotte 61 34 1410 131
Chicago 178 184 592 753
Cleveland --- --- 421 ---
Columbus 598 413 605 316
Corpus Christi 299 99 437 150
Dallas 148 46 671 232
Denver 543 109 409 231
Des Moines 1730 331 2535 1586
Detroit 780 150 1653 836
Honolulu 16 10 59 33
Houston 105 29 470 212
Indianapolis --- --- 410 212
Kansas City 400 226 684 375
Knoxville 546 468 655 163
Louisville 114 33 1642 1301
Lubbock 253 41 3299 805
Memphis 122 25 945 2615
Miami --- --- 58 39
Midland 258 100 1072 527
Milwaukee 289 506 337 257
Minneapolis 388 430 2555 755
Nashville 105 15 632 339
New Orleans 162 44 411 151
New York City 109 --- 1639 1627
Oklahoma City 357 101 821 5313
Omaha 237 397 506 1998
Orlando 54 19 158 70
Phoenix 247 257 486 105
Pittsburgh --- --- 259 ---
Raleigh 381 135 1304 771
Richmond 150 105 396 410
San Diego --- --- 205 169
San Francisco --- --- 163 ---
Seattle --- --- 442 434
Sioux Falls 239 221 270 ---
St Louis 153 --- 205 ---
Washington DC 1363 122 1098 666
The cross-seasonal ratios were spatially autocorrelated for each influenza type and year, and the autocorrelation tended to be stronger for influenza B than for influenza A ([Table 1](#pone.0212511.t001){ref-type="table"}). The spatial patterns were characterized by lower cross-seasonal ratios in the southeastern quadrant of the US and Hawaii (HI), and they were always significantly lower (p\<0.0001, Q\<0.01) in Florida (FL) and HI ([Table 2](#pone.0212511.t002){ref-type="table"}, Figs [2](#pone.0212511.g002){ref-type="fig"} and [3](#pone.0212511.g003){ref-type="fig"}). Outside of the southeastern US and HI, there tended to be little or no trend in cross-seasonal ratios ([Fig 2](#pone.0212511.g002){ref-type="fig"}). Although the general spatial structure of the cross-seasonal ratio patterns observed was consistent across types and years, the pattern was weakest during the severe 2017--2018 influenza A season ([Table 1](#pone.0212511.t001){ref-type="table"}, [Fig 2](#pone.0212511.g002){ref-type="fig"} and [S1 File](#pone.0212511.s001){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The geographic pattern of the ratios was relatively consistent across all seasonal definitions, with lower ratios in the southeastern US and HI ([S2 Fig](#pone.0212511.s004){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
{#pone.0212511.g002}
{#pone.0212511.g003}
We also assessed the percent-positivity rate for each year and influenza type. During the influenza season positivity rates averaged approximately 14--19% and 7--13% for influenza A and B, respectively. There did not appear to be a consistent geographic pattern to positivity rates during the influenza season ([S3 Fig](#pone.0212511.s005){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). During the summer baseline season influenza positivity rates were lower, averaging 2--5% and 1--4% for influenza A and B, respectively ([Fig 3](#pone.0212511.g003){ref-type="fig"}). There was a strong geographic trend in positivity rates during the summer baseline season with rates significantly lower outside of the southeastern US, and a higher number of positive tests for influenza A and B in the southeastern US ([Fig 3](#pone.0212511.g003){ref-type="fig"}).
Mixed-effects models {#sec007}
--------------------
Bivariate mixed-effects regression analysis showed several variables were significantly associated with cross-seasonal ratios, including temperature during the influenza season, specific humidity during the baseline season, latitude and vaccination rate ([Table 3](#pone.0212511.t003){ref-type="table"}). Based on BIC, however, weighted specific humidity during the influenza season was a stronger fit than the other variables (AIC only provided marginal support over other models). Adding dummy variables that accounted for differences in influenza type and year also significantly improved the fit ([Table 4](#pone.0212511.t004){ref-type="table"}). Adding additional variables to the model containing these dummy variables and specific humidity (during influenza season) did not improve the model. Moran's I showed that the residuals from the mixed effects models were not spatially autocorrelated (Moran's I = 0.01, p-value = 0.48).
10.1371/journal.pone.0212511.t003
###### Results of bivariate mixed-effects regression analysis where the log of the cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable.
The models were sorted in ascending order by AIC.
{#pone.0212511.t003g}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Predictors Bivariate
----------------------------------------------- ---------------- ---------
Weighted specific humidity (influenza season) -0.14\ 145/157
(-0.16, -0.11)
Weighted temperature (influenza season) -0.04\ 161/173
(-.05, -.04)
Latitude 0.04\ 198/210
(0.03, 0.06)
Weighted specific humidity (baseline season) -0.05\ 208/220
(-0.07, -0.03)
Vaccination Rate 0.05\ 213/225
(0.02, 0.08)
Weighted temperature (baseline season) -0.02\ 221/233
(-0.04, 0.00)
Longitude 0.00\ 225/237
(-0.01, 0.01)
Total Population / 10^5^ 0.01\ 225/237
(-0.26, 0.28)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.1371/journal.pone.0212511.t004
###### Results of select multivariate mixed-effects regression models where the log cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable.
The models were sorted in ascending order by AIC. A null model that only includes the dummy variables was included for comparison.
{#pone.0212511.t004g}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Null Model
----------------------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- --------------- --------- ----- ---------
Latitude --- 105/126 --- 107/131 0.00\ 107/132 --- 146/164
(-0.02, 0.02)
Longitude --- --- --- ---
Weighted specific humidity\ -0.10\ -0.10\ -0.10\ ---
(influenza season) (-0.13, -0.08) (-0.13, -0.07) (-0.14, -0.06)
Weighted specific humidity\ \ \ \ \
(baseline season) --- 0.00\ --- ---
(-0.02, 0.02)
Weighted temperature\ --- --- --- ---
(influenza season)
Weighted temperature\ --- --- --- ---
(baseline season)
Total Population --- --- --- ---
Vaccination Rate --- --- --- ---
Influenza A/2016-2017 -0.15\ -0.15\ -0.15\ -0.26\
(-0.28, -0.01) (-0.28, -0.01) (-0.29, -0.01) (-0.39, -0.12)
Influenza A/2017-2018 0.14\ 0.14\ 0.14\ 0.21\
(0.01, 0.27) (0.01, 0.27) (0.01, 0.27) (0.07, 0.34)
Influenza B/2016-2017 -0.40\ -0.40\ -0.40\ -0.60\
(-0.55, -0.26) (-0.55, -0.25) (-0.56, -0.25) (-0.74, -0.46)
Influenza B/2017-2018 0 0 0 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a sensitivity analysis, we also defined the influenza season as the 180 and 330 days with maximum influenza counts. For both alternative definitions of the influenza season, the mixed-effects regression models showed that specific humidity was the strongest predictor of cross-seasonal ratios ([S1 Table](#pone.0212511.s007){ref-type="supplementary-material"} and [S2 Table](#pone.0212511.s008){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Indeed, the multivariate models for the 180 day influenza season were similar to the main results ([S3 Table](#pone.0212511.s009){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). However, when the influenza season was defined by 330 days, specific humidity during the baseline season--rather than the influenza season--generated the best bivariate model. Further, based on AIC (but not BIC), the combination of specific humidity during the influenza and baseline seasons provided the best multivariate model fit, although this was only a marginal improvement relative to other models with baseline specific humidity and baseline temperature ([S4 Table](#pone.0212511.s010){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
Discussion {#sec008}
==========
Here we measured variation in the seasonal distribution of influenza activity across the US by contrasting influenza activity within and outside of the influenza season, or "cross-seasonal" influenza activity. The results indicate that seasonal characteristics of influenza vary across the US, and that this variation is associated with absolute humidity. We suggest that these seasonal changes may highlight important differences in seasonal influenza dynamics in the US.
Specifically, our analysis suggests that seasonal characteristics of influenza vary across the US, following climatological gradients ([S4 Fig](#pone.0212511.s006){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). We analyzed two years of influenza data for \~40 subregions and found that the rate of influenza detection during the influenza season relative to the summer season to be lower in the southeastern US and HI ([Table 2](#pone.0212511.t002){ref-type="table"}, [Fig 2](#pone.0212511.g002){ref-type="fig"}). For example, during the 2016--2017 influenza season the median cross-seasonal ratio in the southeastern US and HI was approximately 80/1 for influenza A, meaning for every positive influenza A test result in the influenza season, there was one positive influenza A test result in the summer baseline season; whereas it was 280/1 outside of these regions ([Table 2](#pone.0212511.t002){ref-type="table"}). The spatial patterning of cross-seasonal ratios was broadly consistent for influenza A and B in both years with lower ratios in the southeastern quadrant of the US and HI ([Fig 2](#pone.0212511.g002){ref-type="fig"}), however, the ratios varied by year and influenza type ([Table 1](#pone.0212511.t001){ref-type="table"}).
Cross-seasonal ratios provided significant analytical traction for detecting differences in the seasonal characteristics of influenza across the US, however, this measure was not well suited for determining whether the differences observed were associated with processes during the influenza and/or the summer baseline season. However, our mixed-effects regression models showed that absolute humidity levels during the influenza season demonstrated a much stronger fit to the data than other variables assessed (Tables [3](#pone.0212511.t003){ref-type="table"} and [4](#pone.0212511.t004){ref-type="table"}), suggesting that the underlying mechanism causing variation in cross-seasonal ratios is related to humidity during the influenza season. Given the moderate levels of absolute humidity during the influenza season in the southeastern US and HI ([S4 Fig](#pone.0212511.s006){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), this is consistent with our understanding of absolute humidity and influenza, i.e., influenza transmission is less efficient in moderate levels of humidity. This also aligns with the result of a past study showing a significant and negative relationship between influenza mortality and absolute humidity (during the influenza season) across the US \[[@pone.0212511.ref031]\]. Overall, this suggests that the differences in cross-seasonal ratios may be, at least partially, a result of decreases in influenza activity during the influenza season in humid regions.
We also observed increased influenza percent-positivity rates during the summer baseline season in the southeastern US across both years and subtypes, and there were more positive test results in the southeastern US during the baseline season than in other regions ([Fig 3](#pone.0212511.g003){ref-type="fig"}). This suggests that influenza activity is greater in the southeastern US and HI during the humid summer season. Further, when we extended the influenza season to 330 days, specific humidity during the baseline season (i.e., the summer) provided the best-fit to cross-seasonal ratios, which is consistent with the results of previous studies showing increased influenza activity in some subtropical regions when absolute humidity is at high levels \[[@pone.0212511.ref016], [@pone.0212511.ref019], [@pone.0212511.ref022], [@pone.0212511.ref023]\].
Altogether, our analysis suggests that variability of cross-seasonal ratios may be driven by spatial variability in the intensity of influenza activity during both the influenza and summer baseline seasons. A potential mechanistic explanation of our findings is that the moderate-humidity levels that characterize the southeastern US and HI during the influenza season may slightly suppress influenza activity (i.e., lower attack rates), which engenders higher population level susceptibility in the summer baseline season. This increased population level susceptibility, perhaps combined with higher humidity levels, allows for increased influenza activity in the summer. This would be in contrast to drier subregions in the US where influenza may transmit more efficiently during the winter and decrease the susceptible population to lower levels thereby limiting significant summer influenza activity. If this is indeed the case, the increased summer influenza activity and higher levels of susceptibility in the southeastern US may be related to recent observations that influenza epidemics often begin in the southeastern US \[[@pone.0212511.ref021], [@pone.0212511.ref032]\] including the 2009 A/H1N1 fall pandemic wave \[[@pone.0212511.ref033]\]. It is not readily clear how this dynamic would progress over multiple years, but previous studies have shown that environmental factors may have effects on influenza dynamics that emerge in the subsequent years \[[@pone.0212511.ref034]\].
A recent study by Dalziel et al. (2018) showed a strong relationship between influenza-like-illness (ILI), humidity and population density \[[@pone.0212511.ref035]\]. The study suggests that humidity affects the intensity of epidemics, but that this effect is diminished in large cities due to increased transmission efficiency in crowded conditions. Interestingly, we did not find that population was a strong predictor of cross-seasonal ratios in our analysis which conflicts with their results. This may indicate that cross-seasonal ratios are not a strong measure of epidemic intensity, or that this relationships was obscured when we aggregated the data to a subregional scale (this was necessary to increase the number of observations in each unit). That said, our conclusions regarding humidity are consistent with their findings, i.e., influenza cases are distributed more evenly across the year in more humid areas. We were also able to show evidence of substantial differences between the cross-seasonal patterning of influenza A and B across the US, which Dalziel et al. were unable to discern because their study used ILI data. Further, our analysis suggests the possibility that summer humidity may also play a role which Dalziel et al. did not consider.
We did not have sufficient data in many populations in the western US to include in the analysis and, thus, we were unable to make any general conclusions about cross-seasonal influenza activity in these populations. As more data become available in future years it will be interesting to assess cross-seasonal influenza activity in these regions. For example, many areas in California are characterized by absolute humidity levels during the influenza season that are commensurate with humidity levels in much of the southeastern US. Other regions such as the high elevation areas and deserts of the interior western US may also have unusual seasonal characteristics given their long low-humidity seasons. For instance, the influenza season in Phoenix, AZ during the 2016--2017 season persisted into June, substantially later than other subregions.
This study had several significant limitations. First, only two years of data were available which is problematic for generalizing our findings beyond the years evaluated. However, given that the data included information about influenza types A and B, we were able to assess patterns across 4 distinct influenza seasons, including the severe 2017--2018 A/H3N2 season, and the broad consistency of our results provides evidence that the patterns observed are a stable feature of influenza activity in the US. Another major limitation inherent to this dataset is that we do not know if protocols and practices of the health care organizations and clinics administering tests vary seasonally. We assumed that the probability that a patient with ILI symptoms was administered an influenza test was time invariant (or temporal variations were relatively homogeneous across subregions), as differences in these practices could have significant consequences for our findings. That said, although variability of clinical practices are likely present in the data, these effects cannot easily explain the regional patterns of cross-seasonal influenza activity observed since the data in each region were generated by numerous clinicians at multiple independent healthcare organizations.
Our analysis shows that cross-seasonal influenza activity varies across the US and that this variation is spatially structured. We suggest that the variability of cross-seasonal influenza activity may be the result of decreased influenza activity during the influenza season (\~September-May), and increased activity during the summer baseline season (\~June-August) in the southeastern US and Hawaii. We also showed that variability in cross-seasonal influenza activity is significantly associated with absolute humidity during the influenza season, and we found some evidence that humidity during the summer may also play a role. The differences in the seasonal nature of influenza across regions may highlight important differences in influenza dynamics across the US.
Supporting information {#sec009}
======================
###### Supplementary results.
Excel spreadsheet with the raw results for each influenza year, influenza type and subregion.
(CSV)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Raw data.
A CSV file that contains the raw data used in this analysis.
(CSV)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Population and subregions.
Top map shows the total population of each subregion. The markers represent reporting sensors for both years. The dark areas indicate areas with a high density of sensors. The bottom map shows the subregions in relation to states for comparison.
(TIFF)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Maps from sensitivity analysis.
Maps of cross-seasonal ratios for each subregion by influenza year and type for 180-day and 330-day influenza seasons. Plus/minus symbols indicate subregions where the ratio was significantly below/above expected value (based on Fisher's exact tests). Dashed areas are subregions with no or inadequate numbers of positive tests.
(TIFF)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Percent positive during influenza season.
Percent-positivity rates during the epidemic seasons for influenza A and B during 2016--2017 and 2017--2018. Plus/minus symbols indicate subregions where the ratio was significantly below/above expected value (based on Fisher's exact tests). Dashed areas are subregions with no or inadequate numbers of positive tests.
(TIFF)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Subregional humidity.
Weighted average and max specific humidity levels by subregions for the epidemic and baseline season for 2016--2017 and 2017--2018.
(TIFF)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Bivariate results for sensitivity analysis (180-days).
Results of bivariate mixed-effects regression analysis where the cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable and the influenza season was defined as the 180 days with the maximum number of cases. The models were sorted in ascending order by AIC.
(DOCX)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Bivariate results for sensitivity analysis (330-days).
Results of bivariate mixed effects regression analysis where the cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable and the influenza season was defined as the 330 days with the maximum number of cases.
(DOCX)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Multivariate results for sensitivity analysis (180-days).
Results of select multivariate mixed-effects regression models where the log cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable and the influenza season was defined as the 180 days with the maximum number of cases. The models were sorted in ascending order by AIC. A null model with dummy variables was included for comparison.
(DOCX)
######
Click here for additional data file.
###### Multivariate results for sensitivity analysis (330-days).
Results of select multivariate mixed-effects regression models where the log cross-seasonal ratio was the dependent variable and the influenza season was defined as the 330 days with the maximum number of cases. The models were sorted in ascending order by AIC. A null model with dummy variables was included for comparison.
(DOCX)
######
Click here for additional data file.
This publication was developed under Assistance Agreement No. (RD No. 83574901) awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency to Christopher K. Uejio. It has not been formally reviewed by the EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.
[^1]: **Competing Interests:**The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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Redington.com -I've been with Redington a long time for one simple reason. They have great equipment, great warranties and great customer service. And if you haven't looked at their products recently, they have rods and reels that easily compare to anything out there.
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The Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing - This is a northeast
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blues and albies.
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Open acromioplasty does not prevent the progression of an impingement syndrome to a tear. Nine-year follow-up of 96 cases.
We performed open acromioplasty for intractable impingement syndrome on 96 shoulders (93 patients) with an intact rotator cuff. All the shoulders were examined by ultrasound after a mean interval of nine years. Those showing pathological findings, a poor or fair subjective result, or deterioration of the primary excellent outcome had MRI and/or arthrography. The mean Constant score for the affected shoulders was 70 points and that for 48 non-involved, symptom-free shoulders, 84 points. The subjective outcome was excellent in 45, good in 24, fair in 18 and poor in 9 shoulders. Complete tears were found in 12 shoulders and partial tears in seven. A total of 14 shoulders was symptom-free after acromioplasty, but after an average of five years became painful again and showed deterioration. Of these, six had complete tears and four partial tears of the cuff. The tear rate was 4% in shoulders initially judged to be excellent, 25% in good, 33% in fair and 55% in poor shoulders. The tear rate was 71% in shoulders which subsequently deteriorated. The incidence was higher in men (25%) than in women (11%). We conclude that a tear of the rotator cuff may appear after acromioplasty, although there was no evidence of a tear at the time of operation. This is usually the reason for deterioration in a shoulder with an initially good operative outcome.
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Relationship between gluconeogenesis and glutathione redox state in rabbit kidney-cortex tubules.
The intracellular glutathione redox state and the rate of glucose formation were studied in rabbit kidney-cortex tubules. In the presence of substrates effectively utilized for glucose formation, ie, aspartate + glycerol + octanoate, alanine + glycerol + octanoate, malate, or pyruvate, the intracellular reduced glutathione/oxidized glutathione (GSH/GSSG) ratios were significantly higher than those under conditions of negligible glucose production. Changes in the intracellular GSH/GSSG ratio corresponded to those in glucose-6-phosphate content and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate/oxidized nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH/NADP(+)) ratio obtained from malate/pyruvate measurements. Gluconeogenesis stimulation by extracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or inosine caused an elevation of the intracellular GSH/GSSG and NADPH/NADP(+) ratios, as well as glucose-6-phosphate level. Surprisingly, in the presence of 5 mmol/L glucose, both the intracellular GSH/GSSG and NADPH/NADP(+) ratios and glucose-6-phosphate content were almost as low as under conditions of negligible glucose synthesis. L-buthionine sulfoximine (BSO)-induced decline in both the intracellular glutathione level and redox state resulted in inhibition of gluconeogenesis accompanied by accumulation of phosphotrioses and a decrease in fructose-1,6-bisphosphate content, while cysteine precursors altered neither GSH redox state nor the rate of glucose formation. In view of the data, it seems likely that: (1) intensive gluconeogenesis rather than extracellular glucose is responsible for maintaining a high intracellular GSH/GSSG ratio due to effective glucose-6-phosphate delivery for NADPH generation via the pentose phosphate pathway; (2) a decline in the intracellular glutathione level and/or redox state causes a decrease in glucose synthesis resulting from a diminished flux through aldolase; (3) induced by cysteine precursors, elevation of the intracellular GSH level does not affect the rate of glucose formation, probably due to no changes in the intracellular GSH/GSSG ratio.
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The interstellar object ʻOumuamua was discovered back on October 19, 2017, but the puzzle of its true nature has taken months to unravel, and may never be fully solved.
Meaning ‘scout from the distant past’ in Hawaiian, ʻOumuamua was found by astronomers working with the University of Hawaiʻi‘s Pan-STARRS1 survey as it came close to Earth’s orbit. But what is it—an asteroid, or a comet? As soon as it was spotted, astronomers from around the world were on the case.
The first clue: its trajectory. Extensive follow-up observations by the Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope, the European Space Agency’s Optical Ground Station telescope in Tenerife, Canary Islands and other telescopes around the world have helped pin it down.
ʻOumuamua was first spotted about a month after its closest approach to the Sun, which took it within the orbit of Mercury. Unlike any asteroid or comet observed before, this new object sped past the Sun, approaching from ‘above’ the plane of the planets on a highly inclined orbit, moving fast enough (70,800 miles per hour as of July 1, 2018) to escape the Sun’s gravitational pull and eventually depart our Solar System.
Initially, astronomers assumed ʻOumuamua was a comet. Current understanding of planet formation predicts more interstellar comets than interstellar asteroids. However, astronomers did not see evidence of gas emission or a dusty environment in the observations. Without these hallmarks of cometary activity, it was classified as the first interstellar asteroid.
A team of astronomers led by Marco Micheli of ESA ‘s SSA-NEO Coordination Centre, and Karen Meech of the UH Institute for Astronomy, continued to make high precision measurements of the object and its position.
The story has another surprising twist. Learn more at the Institute for Astronomy website.
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A pilot who made an emergency landing after his co-pilot was partially sucked through their broken cockpit window has been hailed a hero.
Liu Chuanjian braved the intense cold and blasting wind to coax the plane into a safe landing in southwest China.
He had to slow the Airbus A319 of Sichuan Airlines from its original speed of about 500-560 mph (800-900 kph) to land in about 20 minutes.
All 128 people on board survived the ordeal.
The cockpit window shattered at an altitude of about 9,800m (32,000ft).
:: 'Here we go again': Hero pilot says doomed flight reminded her of navy career
Pilot does emergency landing on Devon beach
"The windshield burst suddenly and a loud noise was heard, and when I looked to the side, I saw that the co-pilot was already halfway out of the window. Luckily his seatbelt was tied," Mr Liu told the Chengdu Business Daily.
Mr Liu, a former flight instructor for the Chinese air force, said the plane was vibrating strongly and it was impossible to read the instruments.
"I didn't think about anything at all. I wanted to control the plane and land," he later told Sichuan Television.
The plane had been bound for Lhasa in Tibet from the southwestern city of Chongqing, but was diverted to the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province.
By Tuesday afternoon, more than 160 million people had viewed or participated in discussions about the pilot on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The most popular chat forum on the incident was titled "My Hero Captain".
"This is a miracle in the history of Chinese aviation, and shows the special psychological mindset of flight instructors," one commenter wrote.
The safety director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China said at a media conference that the plane "shed its right windshield" as it was flying over Chengdu.
"The windshield has not recorded any failures, nor did it require any maintenance and replacement work" before the incident, Tang Weibin said.
The cause of the incident is still under investigation, he added.
It was the second emergency landing in China in less than a month.
On April 15, an Air China flight was diverted after a man briefly took hostage a crew member he was threatening with a fountain pen.
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REPORT: Wayne Simmonds agrees to six year extension with Flyers
Flyers’ bad boy Wayne Simmonds, who now has enough money to buy a lifetime supply of bananas to take revenge on those damn Canadians.
Hell yes!
According to Bob McKenzie, the Flyers and Simmer have agreed on a 6 year extension that will likely be around 4 million per year. It’s good to see them reward Simmonds after a nice 1st season in Philly. He’s well-liked by his teammates and popular with the fans. Everybody’s happy.
4 thoughts on “REPORT: Wayne Simmonds agrees to six year extension with Flyers”
I’m very happy. That’s an extension that, while it wasn’t truly essential, was still very nice to see done. He’s 23, six years isn’t all that long considering the longevity of hockey players compared to other sports.
The biggest improvement I saw this year in Simmonds is scoring. He set a career high in goals and has really developed a shot here in Philly. If he can keep scoring 25-30 goals a year he’s going to be a great asset with the toughness and energy he brings to the table. He’s not going to dazzle you with moves, but he’s got scoring ability.
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"This line." "All the good candy is gonna be gone." "Come on." "Taking candy from babies now, eh?" "Hey, hey, I'm eight months clean." "If that's what it takes..." " What's this festival about anyway?" " Drinking." "I thought it was to honor the patron saint of..." "Drinking." "Thought they'd cancel it this year with all the rain." " Can you believe that storm last night?" " I slept right through it." "Ryan sleep through it?" "I wouldn't know." "How about Zee?" "How did she do?" "Maybe the patron saint of mind- your- own- business." " Sounds about right." " Yeah." "Hey, no cutting in line." "I gotta go get supplies." "You're on your own, mate." "Pata de vaca, cow's hoof." "Lowers blood sugar in diabetics." "Without the risk of what, doctores?" "Hypoglycemia, a side effect of all Western diabetes medications." " Very good, Dr. Brenner." " Why hasn't it caught on?" "What American is gonna walk into a pharmacy and ask for a 30- day prescription of cow's foot?" "Muira puama, potency wood." "A very potent male aphrodisiac." "Dr. Clark." "What's up?" "Used to treat erectile dysfunction." "I don't need that." "Can you ask your boyfriend where all the sick people are?" " Because I'm dying here." " He is not my- " "I already asked him and he said the clinic would be pretty dead during the festival." "Well, how long does the festival last?" " Three days." " Ladies." "Amor seco, natural antihistamine." "Didn't you use that on the farmer having an allergy attack?" "You read my book, Dr. Brenner." "Twice, actually." "I don't know how you read it once." "It was boring as hell." "Are you kidding?" "The part about using army ants to close a wound?" "That was- " "I taught you the ant trick." "Funny you didn't put that in your little book." "Car crash, way up in the mountains." " Oh, thank you, God!" " Probably the roads are flooded." " They say how many are injured?" " Didn't say." "Fuller, Brenner, let's pack up." "I'll go get Ryan." "Don't worry about me." "I'm fine." "Look, breathe it out, mi amor." " How far apart are the contractions?" " Sweet mother of- " " Not far." " This cannot be happening." "We were on our way to the airport." "Were gonna fly sooner, but we're in the Peace Corps." "Had to finish rotation." "Supposed to be having the baby with my family in New York." "I'm afraid that's not gonna happen." "Even minor accidents can jump- start labor and you're well on your way." "We gotta get you to the clinic." "Okay, change of birth plan." "I can roll with it." "You?" "Okay." " It hurts." " Oh, wait, your iPod, it's in the truck." "No, Roberto, leave it." "It's fine." "But it's got all your birthing music." "Worked my ass off making that mix." "Wait, Roberto!" "Wait, wait, stop!" "Robbie!" "Robbie!" " I'm okay!" " Robbie!" " I'm okay!" " Robbie?" "Okay, I need you to wiggle your toes for me." "Distal neuro- circ intact." "Can you breathe?" "Femur is broken." "That's a massive tree." "There's no way we're gonna move that without a pulley." "She's in active labor, three minutes apart." "We can't wait." "We gotta get her back now." "Please, don't worry about me." "Just take care of Syd and the baby." "Push four of morphine, a liter of saline." "I'm gonna send a rescue team as soon as we're back." "No!" "I'm not leaving without him!" "Look, I'll be right behind you, baby." "Just remember what the baby books said." "I never read the baby books." "Okay, okay." "Forget them." "Look, you can do this, Syd." " Look, don't worry, okay?" " Okay?" "We'll get him back to you." "You can do this." "Okay." "Look, it's our first kid, she's nervous and she apparently didn't read the baby books." "So if you like your colleagues, you'll get me out of here fast." "What are you doing?" "You guys don't have a filing system, so I'm setting one up." "You know most hospital error is caused by inaccessible medical records?" "We had a system." "It was my system." "Okay." "So then why is Ruiz before Peña?" "Because there are over a hundred patients here by the name of Peña." "It's not alphabetical, it's by village." "Oh, yeah, smart." "Okay." "Why don't you just go take the night off?" "Hit the festival, connect with the community." "That's half of what practicing medicine here is anyway." "Partying isn't gonna make me a better doctor." "No, but it just might get that stick out of your ass." "Oh, my God." "Is that still a contraction?" "Okay." "I was gonna read the books." "I was." "I just figured that since I thought Roberto would be here with me, that he could give me, like, a CliffsNotes version of them." "It's just what we do." "I impulsively get things, like babies and electronics, and he reads the instructions." "It's just that he's the prepared one." "He set up this whole amazing birth plan with- " "Baby looks good." "Normal cephalic lie." "" " Music and aromatherapy- " "Americans and their birth plans." "The plan around here is to squat in a bush and get back to work." "Baby's heart rate is dropping, 90." "Late decels." "Let's get her on her side." "Five liters of oxygen." " What's going on?" " The baby's heart rate is decelerating after you contract." "He's not tolerating labor." "Means that we're gonna have to do an emergency C- section, okay?" "Oh, God." "I'll tell him." "Thanks, Lily." "Good news." "Your rescue team is on its way." "And they're battling muddy roads, but they'll be here." "Wait, how's Sydney?" "The baby's heart rate is dropping, so, Sydney is gonna need a C- section." "Oh, God, she must be freaking out." " You gotta get this thing off me." " No, hey, look." "The rescue team are gonna have this big pulley system." " They're gonna get this thing- " " Screw that." "Let's rescue ourselves." "What, did you just cut a tree down with a machete?" "What tree?" "It's a lever." "Help me out." " All right, let's do this." " Okay." "Okay, let me get that." "All right." "Lever time." "You have to take off your shirt to move a tree?" "It's really hot here." "You push down on the lever, I'll get Roberto." " Okay." "Okay, ready?" " Hey." "All right." "Easy, easy." " On three, ready?" " Ready." "One, two, three." "Got him." " Splint the femur." " All right." " There you go." " All right." "We're gonna make it out, sí?" "Well, I didn't wanna say anything, but missing your wife give birth is like years of free back rubs." "Pulmonary hemorrhage." "Get suction." "Looks like you took a blow to the chest on your way down the hill." "That why it hurts when I breathe?" "Yeah, it's called a pulmonary contusion." "The trauma you took to your chest is causing bleeding in your lungs." "We need to get you back to the clinic and put you on oxygen." " I'm gonna go call the rescue team." " Yeah." " You like her." " What?" "L" " I like a lot of girls." "You must be cleaning up down here." "This place is kind of awesome." "There's hot doctor chicks, hot tourists coming in almost every single day." " It's kind of great." " An all- you- can- eat international buffet." "Exactly." "I used to be like you, hermano." "I was a lawyer in Mexico City." "Made some money, came down here." "All I did for a year was surf and screw." "Sounds awesome." "See, I was free, but I was aimless." "I used to be terrified of being tied down." "What I got in return?" "So much better." "It's amazing." "Finding that person you wanna give your whole life to." "Sydney?" "Sydney saved me." "Gave me purpose." "And I never even saw her coming." "You were at the buffet, she was on the special à la carte menu, you know?" " Hey, that's my wife you're talking about." " Sorry." "Question." "Okay, English is not my first language, but I'm sure that was a statement." "Which one of your weird- ass plants will make a sorority chick's hangover even worse tomorrow?" "Festival casualty." "You know, I was thinking that maybe we could stop by later." "Or tomorrow, if you want." "Like a real date?" "You getting serious on me now?" "Call it whatever you want." "I just like to dance." "Yeah, see, parties full of debauchery and drinking aren't exactly the best environment for me." "But you go and rumba your little ass off with all the lobos you can find." "I'm not the jealous type." "No more questions." "I've got surgery." "Have we heard from the rescue team yet?" "I feel like Roberto should be here by now." "Well, the roads are still flooded, mi vida." "It's slowgoing." "It'll take them a while to get back." "I just can't believe he's missing this." "You know he even prepared for a C- section?" "He said that it wouldn't happen, but if it did, that he would talk me through it every step of the way." "You know what?" "Fear of surgery is a lot like fear of flying." "If you know what the pilot is doing, that the turbulence is normal, then it's much easier to sit back and order a cocktail, right?" "I'm gonna tell you everything we're doing, okay?" "Every step of the way." "Brenner, this is not a football game, running commentary while the patient is on the table." "Well, I really think it would help her." "Your patient, your call." "Hey, blondie." "What's up?" " You're sounding like Tommy now." " Yeah?" "Cool." "It's not a compliment." " Want some cuy?" " No." " It's a delicacy." " No, it's full of parasites." "No." "I really thought Americans loved to travel and eat weird stuff." "No, this American likes to work, but I've been placed on a time out." " A doctor time out." " Yeah." "Whoa, watch it." "You must be the life of the party back home." "No, I don't really go to parties." "Pork sandwiches." "Oh, I hope they're using a meat thermometer." " I just had one." " Well, you just had a brain cyst on a bun." "Okay, I need a time out." "Time in." " Suction." " Noisy electric Band" " Aid." " What's going on now?" " The grid must have blown." " Zee, tamponade." "Brenner, here." " Where are you going?" "Open wound here." "Apply pressure to the incision." " I can barely see anything." "L- " " Get in there and squeeze!" "Come on, come on." " You piece of- -!" " Cole!" " Cole, I need your help!" " Lord, grant me the serenity." " He's saying he lost something." " Probably his wallet." "He's got bigger things to worry about." "He got hit by a high- powered DC current entering the leg and exiting the chest." " Explains the power outage." " Exit wound caused his shirt to set on fire." "Got third- degree burns, increasing respiratory distress." "What's that smell?" "Is that the burn?" "No, that's the taco meat." "Hey, you said get a stretcher." "It was the best I could do." "Festival blew the grid, fried our generator, but it should be going again soon." "Fetal heart rate is 140." "We're good to continue." "Any news on Roberto?" "The rescue team radioed in while I was out there." "Unfortunately, they never made it." " The truck got stuck a couple of miles out." " So he's still out there?" "He's got two excellent, capable doctors with him." "He'll be fine." "They just might take a while." "It's cold and it's dark and he's hurt." "And he's just laying out there on the side of the road." "Oh, my God." "This is crazy." "BP is way up, 150 over 95." "Sydney, it's not safe to operate if you don't calm down." " Please." "I don't even know if he's okay." " Sydney, Sydney." "What if we tried to get him on the radio?" "You could at least hear his voice." "It could calm her down." "Please." "Then we gotta move." "We gotta get this baby out." "It's okay." "It's okay." " He's barely breathing." " The burns have scarred his skin." "His chest can't rise." "He needs an escharotomy." " What's that?" " We cut through the burned skin" " to relieve the pressure." " Betadine, cutdown tray, two scalpels." "Get out of here." "You don't wanna see this." "Yeah, I do." "All right, fine, but face the wall and don't peek." "Now listen, you're gonna go lateral and inferior." "Ready?" " Will it hurt?" " No, he won't feel a thing." "He's burned off all of his nerve endings." "Did I say turn around, Charlie?" "He took a jolt big enough to blow the town generator." "I can't believe it didn't kill him." "It's crazy it didn't kill him." "Instead of wondering why it didn't kill him, let's make sure it doesn't, okay?" "He's still saying he lost something." "Pulse ox is 78." "He's drowning on his own secretions." "Where the hell is the rescue truck?" " It's not coming." " They're coming." "They went off the road." "It's gonna be a while." " He'll pass out soon." "We have to bag him." " I know." " Is the truck here?" " No." "I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen." "It's gonna get a little harder to breathe." "And then you're gonna pass out, but that's okay, because we're gonna breathe for you." "And when you wake up, you're gonna be at the clinic with your wife and your son." "Max." "His name is gonna be Max." "That's a great name." "No, it's not." "I wanted Diego." "That's a great name." "But since I'm missing the whole thing," "I guess the woman should probably get her way." " There it is." " All right." "All right, I'm in." "Okay." " Yeah." " Clark." "How's the patient?" "His wife wants to talk to him." "That's not gonna happen." "He's in respiratory failure from pulmonary contusions." " We took his airway." " Great." "It's all we could do, Ben." "Look, until the rescue team gets here with the truck..." "It doesn't look good." "Hey, listen, did he say anything?" "Something that I can pass on to Sydney?" "Max." "He said Sydney could name the baby Max." "Why?" "Did you reach them?" "He did wanna talk to you, but we lost the signal." " Is Roberto okay?" " He's not the happiest camper right now." "You know, it's pretty chilly out there and he's got one broken leg." "But he did say you could name the baby Max." "He did?" "He's been fighting me on that one for nine months." "What do you say we get this show on the road, then?" " So your husband can meet Max." " Yeah, thank you." "So everything is...?" "Fine, yeah." "Everything is fine." "Let's do this." "Say good day to Max." "Hi, baby." "Hi, Max." "You have a beautiful baby boy, Sydney." "What's wrong with his skin?" "Bilirubin has got to be over 30." "I'm starting an umbilical line." " What's wrong with him?" " He's severely jaundiced." "He may need a transfusion, Sydney." "Can you take over?" "Your baby is gonna be okay, Sydney." "We just- " "Sydney?" "She's losing consciousness." "God, she's bleeding out." "Okay, massage the uterus." "Use 20 of PIT." "We don't have suction without electricity." " Well, we'll use lap pads then." " Will that be enough?" "It has to be." "We don't have a choice." "Pulse ox is up to 94." "Kid is exhausted, but he's getting air." "There's gotta be something going on with this guy." "Anybody else would be a fried chicken right now." "I'm gonna run a differential and then- " "You didn't shock him so you could come back to work, did you?" "Hey, had to ask." "All right." "He wants to go back to the festival." "I lost- " "The love of my life." "Okay, sir, you're very sick." "Just try and relax." "I have seen her every year at the festival." "She's linda." "Beautiful." "Always wearing blue." "He says he's like Peter Parker with no spider powers?" "I think he's delirious." "Yup." "He's running a fever." " And he's got a crazy low heart rate." " Have you talked to her?" "Last year, he finally got up the courage to talk to her." "They talked for hours about comic books." "They fell in love." "But when he went to go buy her a drink, he lost her in the crowd." "What's her name?" "I never ask." "Well, that was dumb." "I'm more concerned about your fever and your low heart rate." "So I'm gonna run an EKG, okay?" "Okay." "That one doesn't have a single romantic bone in her body." "B" " Lynch sutures in place." " It looks dry." " Yeah, I think we got it all." " How's the baby?" " Not good." "He's headed for brain injury or death without an exchange transfusion." " He's B positive." "So is Sydney?" " Yeah, but she lost half her blood volume." " She needs a transfusion herself." " Have any B pos?" "Not enough." "We need a live donor." "The father." "If Sydney and Max are both B positive, then he should be compatible." "Sí, and since he's a relative, the baby is less likely to have a transfusion reaction." "Sounds like our best shot." "It's our only shot." " Absent doll's eye sign." " Try a corneal." "Pulse ox is 55." "He's brain- dead." "This was all we could do." "Time of death, 23:30." " Yeah?" " Clark." " How is he?" " We called it." "Damn it." " How long ago?" " Less than a minute." "Does he still have a pulse?" " What?" " Pulse!" "Does he still have a pulse?" "What- -?" " Yeah, yes." " Okay, start bagging him again." "Bring him back." "Keep his heart beating." "Don't wait for the truck." " Carry him." " We're miles away." "That will take all night." " Just get him back here." " Why?" "His wife and kid, they need his blood." " Bag him." "Bag him." " What?" "He's dead?" "Yeah, respiratory failure a few hours ago." "He never had a chance." "But his heart's pumping, so the blood should be usable." "A few hours ago?" "You mean before surgery?" "You said he was fine, that he just had a broken leg, that he would be here to meet his baby." "Told her what she needed to hear to get through surgery." "Oh, well, what do we tell her now?" ""I'm sorry, but your husband is dead and you and your baby both need his blood to survive"?" "That sounds about right." "Oh, my God." "Poor Sydney." "Look, if it had to happen, it's good that it happened like this, okay?" "How is it good?" "Look, the guy is brain- dead, all right?" "There's no gray area here." "There's no hooking him up to a machine and hoping he recovers." "She can move on with her life, put it away." "Now I'm gonna go see if she's up." " Are you coming?" " I can't believe you." "I thought I..." " Fine, I'll go tell her myself." " No." "No- " "I'm gonna tell her." " My patient, my call." " Hey- " "Are you sure this is the right road?" "I can't see a damn thing." "It's almost dawn and we've only got about 10 more miles to go." "I didn't need to know that." " Hey." " Hey!" "Hey." "Hey!" " Stop!" " I don't think they're gonna stop." "Hey!" "I don't think they're gonna- " "Hey!" "There." "They stopped." "I feel you, hermano." "There's this girl, smart, beautiful, nice to everyone." "I don't even think she knows my name." "Trust me, you have to tell her." "Splenomegaly." "Enlarged spleen." "Write that down." " What's going on?" " Heart rate is 49." "BP is only 60 palp." "Push atropine." "Man, his pupils are normal." "What the hell is going on with this guy?" "Enlarged spleen, fever, bradycardia." "What causes that?" "Mosquitoes, sandflies, parasites..." "He says he sometimes sits by the river, watching the water taxis go by, looking for the girl." "Enough with the romance novel." "I'm trying to save his life." "Aren't there more mosquitoes by the river?" "Don't they spread diseases?" " Hold this." " What are you doing?" "I told you, saving his life." "What happened?" "How's the baby?" "Max is sick, Sydney." "He needs a blood transfusion." "And so do you." "You've lost a lot of blood." "Where's Roberto?" "Is he here?" "Roberto suffered chest trauma." " His lungs filled with fluid." " What?" "They did everything they could." "His brain couldn't get enough oxygen and last night he had a stroke." "And the thing is, they kept his heart beating, because his blood is a match for you and Max and you both need it very badly." "I'm sorry, I don't..." "What are you telling me?" "Are- -?" "Is my husband dead?" "Yes." "And you wanna put his blood inside me?" "Yes." "Oh, my God." "Oh, my God." "I know I promised you that I would tell you everything." "And I didn't, but now I am." "You and your baby, you both will die without this transfusion." "Save the baby, then." "Let me die." " I can't do it." " I won't let you." " Get out." " Sydney- " "I said get out." " Please- " " Get out!" "Get out, go." "Get the hell out of here!" "Get out!" "Get out!" "Great news, Jorge." "I looked at your blood work." "You've got malaria." " I don't think he gets it." " He gets it." "I get it, but how is that great?" "Because it's a unique strain called vivax." "A small percentage of people who get it develop a low heart rate." "So low, in fact, that the electric current that hit you hit between heartbeats and it didn't stop your heart." "Now, it also causes an enlarged spleen, which could've exploded and could've killed you." "So as I see it, you were meant to die twice over and didn't." "You lucky man!" "Forget the blue dress." "This is your money story." "He's not lucky." " What?" " He's 22 years old." "He's had three broken arms, four broken toes." "Yesterday, he missed finding the love of his life, because he got electrocuted, and today he has malaria?" "He is not lucky." "Sorry." "Perhaps "lucky" was the wrong choice of words." "But I'm gonna fix you." "Just promise me that at the next party, you're gonna get the chick's name." "How is she?" "Well, we gave her iron to bring up her counts, but she still won't consent to the transfusion." "Sydney." "I'm Dr. Fuller." "I was in the field with your husband." "I remember." "You said that you'd bring him back to me." "I've been trying and she's just not ready, okay?" "So you should go." "I did." "What?" "I did bring your husband back to you." "All he wanted was to come back to you and now he's here." " And it doesn't have to be for nothing." " Stop." "No, look, that guy loved you so much that it was crazy." "The way he talked about you," "I don't even know what it's like to feel that way about a person." "And the last thing he would want right now is for you to give up, because that would mean you're giving up on him." "I'm so sorry that I could not save Roberto." "I am so sorry that he's never gonna get to meet his son, because he was so psyched to be a dad." "But what he's doing right now for Max, that is being a dad." "He told me that you saved him." "Let him save you." "I don't know how to do it." "I don't know how to live without him." "I know." "It's not easy." "But you just do." " Hi." " Hi." "You know my name, right?" "Yeah, Charlie." " I'm just checking." " Okay." "Yes." "Vivax malaria." "Finally found your infectious disease." "Yeah, I guess I did." "But you acted like an addict doing it." " What?" " You had a few hours yesterday with nothing to do, and you couldn't handle it." "Your mind starts spinning, your palms get sweaty, your skin starts itching." "Am I close?" "No." "No, actually I just like to work." "It's not work." "It's penance." "What was his name?" "The kid you misdiagnosed back in the States." "We all got one." "Eric." "PFC Marcus O'Grady." "I was a medic when I started using and..." "The work doesn't help." "Doesn't make you forget." "So, what does?" " Come on." " Why?" "Where are we going?" "To that stupid party." "Even the damned deserve a night off." "See you." "I thought you weren't coming." "Come on, loca." "Show me what you got." "Wait, wait, wait." "So then this guy stopped!" " Oh, God!" " Right in front of her face." "She's a superhero, this chick." "Yeah, well, I have my kryptonite." "Whatever." "This is officially the festival of Ryan's giant balls." "Thanks." "Don't worry." "No one else is gonna drop dead." "The pork is cooked." "Lots of girls wear blue, blondie." "Señorita." "Señorita?" "Yeah, okay, ask her if she knows Jorge." "No, wait." "If he didn't know her name, then she doesn't know his." "Ask her if she's waiting for her Peter Parker." "Yeah, I know." "Just do it." "He's waiting for you." "Here, la clínica." "Tell her that he's a real superhero." "He escaped death twice." "See?" "I mean, I listen to some stuff." "Oh, come on." "Please, give me a break." "I'm trying to be good here and- " "Oh, you work here." "I'm sorry, I thought you were trying to hit on me, and I'm just- " "No inglés." "Oh, well, no español." "Except hola." "It was a rough one today." "Yup." "How was Keeton?" "With the patient, was he okay?" "Well, he was not who I thought he was." "He lost his wife and kid a few years back." "The accident last night hit pretty close to home, so..." "Go easy." "Abby."
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Kitchener News | Local Breaking | CTV News Kitchener
New production targets student gambling issues
A new production by The Responsible Gambling Council is targeting Ontario's students, a group that is increasingly facing problems associated with the habit.
Ontario students are gambling in droves, whether it's poker, lottery tickets or online betting, and for many the habit causing issues.
A York University study reveals nearly half of Ontario's students gamble, and for some it's an activity that can lead to substance abuse, mental health issues and delinquency.
In fact, the research suggests nearly 30,000 Ontario students are dealing with problems associated with gambling.
The production is called 82%, a title based on a common poker strategy, and it aims to teach students how to prevent the problems that can be associated with gambling.
Rick Simm is an actor in the production, "There are risks, we want to show them how to avoid the risks," he says, "we go in with a message of prevention and awareness, so we just want to equip students with the knowledge that they need to stay out of trouble."
Student Kevin Chau knows the reality of gambling isn't what it seems, "They always talk about winning stuff, but when they actually lose they're really sad about it."
And he says the production is getting the message across, "Watch out what you do, just try and focus on things that are important, rather than things you don't need to do."
Student Kody Szymanski adds, "Gambling is actually a lot bigger deal than I thought it was because I didn't really realize that kids my age and slightly older had issues with this. I thought it more so an adult thing."
The Responsible Gambling Council is also hoping to give students a strategy to pass along to friends you might have a problem.
Szymanski says she'd be willing to talk to his friends, pass on information about who they can talk to, and tell them it's something that "isn't going to work out for you in the end."
For more information, or if you or someone you know has a gambling problem, please contact St. Mary's Counselling Service at 519-745-2585. The service is free. You can also call the 24-hour Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-888-230-3505.
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abstract: 'Recent developments in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have enabled the recovery of large quantities of natural gas and oil from old, low permeability shales. These developments include a change from low-volume, high-viscosity fluid injection to high-volume, low-viscosity injection. The injected fluid introduces distributed damage that provides fracture permeability for the extraction of the gas and oil. In order to model this process, we utilize a loopless non-trapping invasion percolation previously introduced to model optimal polymers in a strongly disordered medium, and for determining minimum energy spanning trees on a lattice. We performed numerical simulations on a 2D square lattice and find significant differences from other percolation models. Additionally, we find that the growing fracture network satisfies both Horton-Strahler and Tokunaga network statistics. As with other invasion percolation models, our model displays burst dynamics, in which the cluster extends rapidly into a connected region. We introduce an alternative definition of bursts to be a consecutive series of opened bonds whose strengths are all below a specified value. Using this definition of bursts, we find good agreement with a power-law frequency-area distribution. These results are generally consistent with the observed distribution of microseismicity observed during a high-volume frack.'
author:
- 'J. Quinn Norris'
- 'Donald L. Turcotte'
- 'John B. Rundle'
bibliography:
- 'IPPaper.bib'
date:
-
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title: 'Loopless non-trapping invasion percolation model for fracking'
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Introduction
============
Fracking is the use of hydraulic fractures to enhance the permeability in petroleum reservoirs. The fluid is water with small quantities of additives. In a frack, water is injected from a well perforation that can be regarded as a point source. The objective is to generate fractures that result in distributed damage and a network of flow pathways to the well after the frack is completed. In this paper we utilize a loopless non-trapping invasion percolation model for the statistical migration of an invading fluid from a point source. We hypothesize that the migrating fluid reactivates preexisting healed fractures.
A standard procedure in oil (or gas) production is to inject a fluid (typically water) in injection wells in order to drive the oil (or gas) to production wells. In order to model this process, the invasion percolation model was introduced [@Wilkinson1983]. In two dimensions a square grid of sites represent the fluid filled pores. The sites are connected by bonds through which fluid can flow. In this model all sites are initially occupied by a defending fluid, for example oil. An invading fluid such as water is injected along one side of the region under consideration; typically, this region is a layer of width $L$. The bonds are assigned random strengths $s$. A random number is drawn from a uniform distribution in the range $[0,1]$. At each time step, the invading fluid flows through the weakest pathway (smallest $s$) displacing the defending fluid. As time proceeds the cluster of occupied invading sites grows from the injection side of the layer, the maximum selected strength $s$ also increases with time. When the cluster crosses the region in consideration, it has been found to follow many power-law scalings [@Furuberg1988]. Additionally, the highest strength of the invaded bonds is approximately equal to the critical value $p_{c}$ of the static model for bond percolation.
The original version of the invasion percolation model assumed that the defending fluid (oil) was incompressible. Thus when a region became disconnected from an edge of the lattice, that region could no longer be invaded and the defending fluid was trapped. One of the earliest and simplest variants was to remove trapping rule. Models without the trapping rule are called non-trapping or compressible invasion percolation. It was found that the non-trapping version of invasion percolation is equivalent to ordinary percolation, details of which have been given by Stauffer and Aharony [@Stauffer1994]. The trapping version of the model appears to be much more complicated [@Knackstedt2002]. A comprehensive review of the invasion percolation literature has been given by Ebrahimi [@Ebrahimi2010].
An interesting aspect of invasion percolation is the occurrence of “bursts". The failure of a strong bond (large $s$) allows fluid to enter a region where there are weaker bonds (smaller $s$). The failure of these bonds is considered to be a burst. Roux and Guyon [@Roux1989] defined the size of a burst to be the number of smaller $s$ values that follow each failure in the sequences. Thus there can be bursts within bursts. Maslov[@Maslov1995] and Paczuski et al.[@Paczuski1996] have carried out extensive studies of these burst statistics. They found the frequency-size statistics of bursts to be well approximated by power laws. Roux and Wilkinson [@Roux1988] associated invasion percolation bursts with resistance jumps observed in laboratory studies of mercury injection into a porous medium.
The purpose of this paper is to reintroduce a form of invasion percolation that is applicable to fracking. Before doing this, a brief discussion of the physics of fracking is given. Oil and gas producing reservoirs are made up of sediments and organic material. As the thickness of deposited sediments increases, the temperature of the sediments increase and oil and/or gas are generated from the organic material. Oil is generated from organic material in the “oil window" (temperatures of $60-120\,^{\circ}{\ensuremath{\, \mathrm{C}}}$, depths of $2-4{\ensuremath{\, \mathrm{km}}}$). Gas is generated from the organic material in the “gas window" (temperatures of $100-200\,^{\circ}{\ensuremath{\, \mathrm{C}}}$, depths of $3-6{\ensuremath{\, \mathrm{km}}}$).
The current principal focus of fracking is the recovery of oil and gas from very old (200-300 million years) tight shale rocks. Shales are very fine grained sedimentary rocks. Oil and gas shales typically have grain diameters of about 4 microns and gas and/or oil filled porosity of $2-12\%$. Capillary forces associated with the fine structure reduce granular permeabilities to very low values. However, the chemical reactions associated with oil and gas generation produce high pressures in the oil and gas shales. One consequence of these high pressures is the generation of extensive sets of natural hydraulic fractures. In relatively young (2-30 million years) oil and gas shales these natural fractures generally produces high fracture permeabilities.
While natural hydraulic fractures generate high permeabilities in young shale reservoirs, these fractures are often sealed by natural processes in old shale reservoirs. One sealing process is deposition of calcite in the fractures. The existence of the sealed natural fracture sets plays an essential role in the effectiveness of fracking in the extraction of oil and gas from tight shales. The calcite fills the natural fractures impeding the flow of injected fluids. However, the bond between the calcite and the shale is relatively weak, allowing the natural fractures to be reopened.
In the past 10 to 15 years a new approach to fracking has been successful in extracting large quantities of tight shale oil and gas. An essential feature of the new approach is the use of “slickwater" as the fracking fluid where additives reduce the viscosity of the water. Large volumes of water, typically 5,000-15,000 [$\, \mathrm{m^3}$]{}, are used in each frack. The water is driven into the preexisting natural fractures reactivating them [@Engelder2009]. Observed associated microseismicity indicates shear offsets on these fractures [@Maxwell2011]. The preexisting stress field focuses the seismicity in a plane perpendicular to the maximum principal compressive stress. The maximum principal compressive stress is generally vertical so that the seismicity is concentrated in a horizontal plane. We will associate the microseismicity observed in fracking with the bursts associated with invasion percolation. We will also associate the efficiency of fracking in extracting oil and gas to the self-similar structure of invasion percolation clusters.
Our Model
=========
Our invasion percolation model is based on the model given by Wilkinson and Barsony [@Wilkinson1984]. These authors considered invasion percolation from a point source in two and three dimensions. The result was a single growing cluster of invaded sites. The scaling properties of this model were studied by De Arcangelis and Herrmann [@Herrmann1990a].
While our model may be applied to any lattice in any number of dimensions , we consider only a two-dimensional square lattice as illustrated in Figure \[fig:procedure\]. The sites are connected by bonds. The sites are considered to be pore spaces on sealed natural fractures that the injected fluid will fill. The bonds are the sealed pathways for fluid flow between the pore spaces. The injected fluid flows through the natural fractures when the bonds are opened. If fluid injection is relatively slow, the injection is resisted primarily by capillary forces rather than viscous forces. Our invasion percolation model neglects pressure drops associated with viscous flow. In Figure 1, occupied sites are shown as solid circles and adjacent accessible sites are shown as dashed circles. The numbers in the circles identify the sites. Opened bonds (open fractures) between sites are shown as double solid lines and unopened bonds (sealed pathways) are shown as dashed lines.
High pressure fluid is introduced at the central site (0,0). The central cite is connected to the four neighboring sites (0,1), (1,0), (0,-1) and (-1,0) with closed bonds. These bonds are given random strengths $s$ in the range $[0,1]$. The random strengths $s=0.49$, $0.22$, $0.53$, $0.32$ of the bonds to the adjacent sites are shown in Figure \[fig:origin\]. The weakest bond (smallest $s$) opens and the high pressure fluid flows into the adjacent site. In the example illustrated in Figure \[fig:procedure\](b) the weakest bond is (0,0)-(1,0) with $s=0.22$ and fluid fills site (1,0). This site is now connected with closed bonds to three neighboring sites (1,1), (2,0), (1,-1). These bonds are given random strengths $s=0.10$, $0.83$, $0.56$. On the next time step, illustrated in Figure \[fig:procedure\](b), fluid is allowed to flow through the weakest (smallest $s$) of the six available bonds, this bond is (1,0)-(1,1) with $s=0.10$. Site (1,1) is now connected with closed bonds to three neighboring sites (0,1), (1,2) and (2,1). These bonds are given random strengths $s=0.26$, $0.66$, $0.52$. On the next time step illustrated in Figure \[fig:procedure\](d), fluid is allowed to flow through the weakest (smallest $s$) of the eight available bonds, this bond is (0,1)-(1,1) with $s=0.26$ and site (0,1) is filled. Two new nearest neighbor bonds are added but the bond (0,0)-(0,1) is removed because both adjacent sites are filled.
We justify this removal because the two adjacent sites are at the same injection pressure so there is no differential pressure to open the bond. This bond removal condition is the major difference between our model and non-trapping invasion percolation. It prevents internal loops of opened bonds, thus the evolving cluster has a single path from the injection site to each filled site. This loop removal rule has been introduced previously by Barabási [@Barabasi1996] for determining minimum energy spanning trees on a lattice and by Cieplak et al. [@Cieplak1996] to model optimal polymers in a strongly disordered medium. In the case of minimum energy spanning trees, it was shown that this model is simply the application of Prim’s algorithm [@Prim1957] to a lattice. Also, we note that Sahimi et al. [@Sahimi1998] intoduced a more complicated invasion percolation model that also prevents the formation of internal loops. Additionally, a loopless version of regular percolation based upon the Leath algorithm [@Leath1976] has been introduced by Tzschichholz et al. [@Tzschichholz1989].
The process illustrated in Figure \[fig:procedure\] is continued forming a single connected cluster. At each time step, a bond is opened and an occupied site is added to the growing cluster. We will refer to the number of occupied sites in the growing cluster as the mass $m$ of the cluster. Because there is a one to one correspondence between an opened bond and a occupied site, $m$ is also the number of opened bonds in the cluster. The structure of our evolving cluster can be illustrated using either the filled sites or the opened bonds. A typical small cluster with mass $m=200$ is shown in Figure \[fig:cluster\]. It can be clearly seen that the bond structure illustrated in Figure \[fig:cluster\](b) has no internal loops.
To prevent confusion, we wish to clearly define the terminology used in this paper for the various percolation models. Random percolation (RP) is the traditional, noninvasion model covered in detail by Stauffer and Aharony [@Stauffer1994]. Loopless random percolation (LRP) is the modification of this model introduced by Tzschichholz et al. [@Tzschichholz1989]. Non-trapping invasion percolation (NTIP) is a variant of invasion percolation where the defending fluid is compressible and invasion can occur along the entire cluster perimeter. Trapping invasion percolation (TIP) is the more common variant where the defeding fluid is incompressible and invasion can only occur along portions of the cluster perimeter that are connected to the edges of the lattice. Loopless non-trapping invasion percolation (LNTIP) is the invasion percolation model presented in this paper. To our knowledge there has not be a study of loopless trapping invasion percolation (LTIP).
While our model has been introduced previously [@Barabasi1996; @Cieplak1996], there has not been very much work to quantify the model. In particular, the associated fractal dimensions of the growing cluster have not been determined. These values are necessary to test the hypothesis that this model (LNTIP), non-trapping invasion percolation (NTIP), random percolation (RP), and loopless random percolation (LRP) all belong to the same universality class [@Barabasi1996]. Additionally, the statistics of the bursts and the statistics of cluster structures have not been considered. These will be a focus of this paper.
We have carried out extensive numerical simulations of our 2D invasion percolation model. The evolution of a typical cluster is shown in Figure \[fig:clusterGrowth\], three times during the growth of the cluster are shown. There are many interior regions with no occupied sites. The boundaries of these regions have relatively strong bonds (high $s$) which prevent further invasion but are not explicitly trapped. Within these cutoff regions, bonds with low values of $s$ are present, but they are not accessible.
Statistics of Grown Clusters
============================
At each time step the weakest bond to a adjacent empty site breaks and the adjacent site fills with fluid. The invading cluster grows outward as illustrated in Figure \[fig:clusterGrowth\]. It is clear from this figure that the boundary of the growing cluster is complex with fingers of occupied sites extending in all directions. It is of interest to study the distribution of strengths $s$ of the bonds that have opened. In Figure \[fig:hist\] the frequency density of open bond strengths $f\left(s\right) = \frac{\mathrm{d}n}{\mathrm{d}s}$ is given as a function of $s$ in blue. The data are from a cluster with $m=100$ million occupied sites. The green region adds the strengths of unopened bonds that have been removed (i.e. bond (0,0)-(0,1) in Figure \[fig:procedure\](d)). The blue and green region is the frequency density of both the open and removed bonds. The rollover of open bond data is attributed to the systematic removal of relatively strong bonds. This data are characterized by the very strong cutoff. In order to study the nature of the strong cutoff, we give in Figure \[fig:hist\] the frequency density of open bond strengths as a function of $s$ in the vicinity of the cutoff. The cutoff is very sharp at about $s=0.4999$ for this cluster of $m=100$ million occupied sites (open bonds). The small number of strengths greater than this cutoff are part of an initial transient occurring while the cluster is smaller than $m=200,000$.
As we have noted our problem is basically bond percolation as we utilize a statistical distribution of bond strengths in our model. It is important to note that the critical probability for the creation of a spanning cluster in bond percolation is $p_c=0.5$ [@Stauffer1994]. Our invasion percolation model also creates a spanning cluster so that it is not surprising that this requires the breaking of bonds weaker than $s=0.5$.
). The inset gives the frequency density in the vicinity of the cutoff near $s=0.5$. The cutoff is very sharp at about $s=0.4999$ for our cluster of 100 million occupied sites (open bonds). The small number of strengths greater than this cutoff are part of an initial transient occurring while the cluster is smaller than $m=200,000$.[]{data-label="fig:hist"}](histogram_both){width="75.00000%"}
To characterize clusters grown using our model and to allow comparisons with other growth models, we utilize the approach given by Bunde and Havlin [@Bunde2012] and determine the fractal and chemical dimensions of clusters grown using our model. The fractal dimension $d_f$ is associated with a power-law dependence of the number of occupied sites $M$ contained within a circle of radius $r$ centered on the injection site on the radius $r$. $$M\left(r\right) \sim r^{d_f}
\label{eq:fractalDim}$$ We plot the number of occupied sites $M$ as a function of $r$ over several orders of magnitude. The fractal dimension of the cluster is the slope of the straight line through the data on a log-log plot. We have obtained the mass data as a function of $r$ for 1000 realizations with $m=100$ million occupied sites each. The average values obtained for these realizations are shown in Figure \[fig:fractalDims\]a. For small values of $r$, the data contains artifacts that arise from the discrete nature of the lattice. For large values of $r$, nearly the entire cluster is contained within a radius $r$ and the slope flattens out as the radius approaches the cluster size and the cluster begins to appear point-like. We chose a region for determining a linear fit of the log-log data that excludes both of these artifacts. Using the aggregated log-log data we do a least squares fit to Eq. as shown in Figure \[fig:fractalDims\]a. The fit gives a fractal dimension of $d_f=1.8769$. Because we performed the fit over an arbitrary region, the error shown in Figure \[fig:fractalDims\]a represents the uncertainty in the fit and not necessarily the uncertainty in the fractal dimension.
We next turn out attention to the chemical dimension $d_l$ of our clusters. We define the chemical distance $l$ as the number of bonds between two sites along the cluster. The chemical dimension is of particular interest in polymer science and is associated with a power-law dependence of the number of occupied sites $M$ with a chemical distance from the origin less than or equal to $l$ on the chemical distance $l$ $$M \sim l^{d_{l}}
\label{eq:chemicalDim}$$ We have also determined the chemical dimension of clusters grown using our model. We do so by keeping track of the chemical level of the bonds as they are added. Bonds connected to the origin are in the first chemical level ($l=1$). As bonds become available they belong to the next chemical level ($2$). The cluster is grown to a specified size $m$ and the number of bonds in each chemical level is determined. We plot the number of occupied sites $M$ as a function of $l$ over several orders of magnitude. The chemical dimension of the cluster is the slope of a straight line through the data on a log-log plot. The mass data as a function of chemical level $l$ were obtained for the same 1000 realizations used for the fractal dimension. The average values obtained for these realizations are shown in Figure \[fig:fractalDims\]b. We did a least squares fit of the aggregated log-log data as shown in \[fig:fractalDims\]b. This fit gives a chemical dimension of $d_l=1.54628$. We note that the error shown in Figure \[fig:fractalDims\]b represents the uncertainty in the fit and not necessarily the uncertainty in the chemical dimension. We note that for small chemical levels, the average cluster size deviates from a power law due to the fixed coordination number of the square lattice.
Our demonstration of the validity Eqs. and for our clusters implies a power-law scaling between $l$ and $r$ that defines a fractal dimension $d_{\mathrm{min}}$ $$l \sim r^{d_{\mathrm{min}}}
\label{eq:minDim}$$ the three fractal dimensions discussed above are related by $$M \sim \left(r^{d_{\mathrm{min}}}\right)^{d_{l}} \Rightarrow M \sim r^{ d_{\mathrm{min}} d_l} \Rightarrow d_{\mathrm{min}} = \frac{d_f}{d_l}
\label{eq:fractal_dim_relation}$$ Taking $d_{f}=1.8769$ and $d_l=1.54628$ we find that $d_min=1.2138$.
We now compare the fractal dimension $d_f$, chemical dimension $d_l$, and $d_{\mathrm{min}}$ for our model (LNTIP) to the dimensions for random percolation (RP), loopless random percolation (LRP), site non-trapping invasion percolation (site NTIP), and bond trapping invasion percolation (bond TIP) on a square lattice. Because our model is inherently a growth model and because we make other comparisons later, we feel it appropriate to also compare our model to DLA. For RP in two dimensions $d_{f} = 91/48 \approx 1.896$, $d_l = 1.678 \pm 0.005$, and $d_{\mathrm{min}} = 1.13 \pm 0.004$ [@Bunde2012]. For the LRP $d_{f} = 1.90 \pm 0.04$, $d_l = 1.68 \pm 0.02$, and $d_{\mathrm{min}} = 1.13 \pm 0.03$ [@Tzschichholz1989]. For site NTIP $d_{f} = 1.8959 \pm 0.0001$, $d_l = $, and $d_{\mathrm{min}} = 1.1307 \pm 0.0004$ [@Knackstedt2002]. We note that these values are consistent with the belief that NTIP is identical to RP. For bond TIP on a square lattice $d_{f} = 1.822 \pm 0.008$, $d_l = $, and $d_{\mathrm{min}} = 1.214 \pm 0.002$ [@Knackstedt2002]. As larger DLA clusters have been studied, it has been shown that DLA clusters on a square lattice are not self-similar [@Meakin1987]. However, we give results that are useful for comparison and are valid for small ($N < 10^4$) DLA clusters. For square lattice DLA simulations in two dimensions $d_{f} = 1.69 \pm 0.24$, $d_l = 1.69 \pm 0.05$, and $d_{\mathrm{min}} = 1.0 \pm 0.02$ [@Stanley1984]. These values are compared with our values given previously in Table \[table:fractal\_dim\_comparison\].
--------------------------------------------- ----------------------- --------------------- --------------------- -- --
$d_{f}$ $d_{l}$ $d_{\mathrm{min}}$
LNTIP (This Paper) $1.8769$ $1.54628$ $1.2138$
RP [@Bunde2012] $91/48 \approx 1.896$ $1.678 \pm 0.005$ $1.13 \pm 0.004$
LRP[@Tzschichholz1989] $1.90 \pm 0.04$ $1.68 \pm 0.02$ $1.13 \pm 0.03$
Site NTIP [@Knackstedt2002] $1.8959 \pm 0.0001$ $1.6767 \pm 0.0006$ $1.1307 \pm 0.0004$
Bond TIP (square lattice) [@Knackstedt2002] $1.822 \pm 0.008$ $1.5001 \pm 0.007$ $1.214 \pm 0.002$
DLA [@Stanley1984] $1.69 \pm 0.24$ $1.69 \pm 0.05$ $1.0 \pm 0.02$
--------------------------------------------- ----------------------- --------------------- --------------------- -- --
: Comparison of three different fractal dimensions for loopless non-trapping invasion percolation (this paper), with random percolation (RP), loopless random percolation (LRP), site non-trapping invasion percolation (NTIP), bond trapping invasion percolation (TIP) on a square lattice, and DLA. The relationship between the fractal dimensions is given by Eq. .[]{data-label="table:fractal_dim_comparison"}
The fractal dimension $d_f$ for LNTIP is slightly lower than RP, LRP, and NTIP. This is likely due to the systematic removal of bonds making our clusters less space-filling and lowering the fractal dimension. However, the fractal dimension $d_f$ for LNTIP is higher than that of bond TIP on a square lattice suggesting that the systematic removal of bonds in LNTIP is less extensive than the removal of bonds in TIP. While all of the cluster models except TIP, have similar chemical dimensions ($\approx 1.68$), the chemical dimension of LNTIP is significantly lower leading to a higher $d_{\mathrm{min}}$. This means that on average the shortest distance between two points along the cluster is longer for LNTIP than for all other models considered, except in the case of TIP. In this case, the fractal dimention $d_{\mathrm{min}}$ for LNTIP is consistent with that of bond TIP. This is in agreement with the previous results of Porto et al. [@Porto1997]. While the differences in fractal dimensions between LNTIP and the other models considered might make little difference in practice, LNTIP is significantly different from the other percolation models considered and is not part of the same universality class. The hypothesis that LNTIP, RP, LRP, and NTIP all belong to the same universality class is based on the assumption that the removal process is local and thus after a small renormalization, the removed bonds vanish. The assumption that the removed bonds vanish under renormalization is not true if the removed bonds are fractal and thus exist in some sense at all scales as was the case with loopless percolation [@Tzschichholz1989]. We find that the removed bonds in our model are fractal with a fractal dimension of $\approx1.877$ and thus never vanish after renormalization at any scale.
We argue that our model belongs to a distinct class from other percolations models; however, we do not claim that it belongs to a new universality class for the following reason. Universality in a very general sense is the notion that many systems have similar properties (scaling exponents, etc.) despite differences in the details of those systems (lattice type, etc.). A more restrictive, but very common requirement for a universality class is that the different systems possess the same set of scaling exponents. This definition is derived from the theory of renormalization where a universality class is associated with a single fixed point of the renormalization group and the critical exponents are associated with the relevant observables of that fixed point. A more complete description of the relationship between renormalization, critical exponents and universality can be found in [@Cardy1996]. The fact that LNTIP and TIP share a fractal dimension is evidence that our model is in fact nonuniversal. TIP has been shown to be nonuniversal with fractal dimensions that depend on the lattice type [@Knackstedt2002]. This suggests that our model might depend on the details of the lattice and thus our model is not universal. While our model belongs to a distinct class from other percolations models, more simulations using different lattice types are required to determine whether that class is universal.
Bursts
======
We now turn our attention to “bursts" in our model. A burst is the breaking of a strong bond with a high strength $s$ followed by the breaking of a sequence of weak bonds with small strengths $s$. We associate “bursts" in our model with the small seismic events that occur in fracking. Alternative definitions have been proposed for what constitutes a burst. Roux and Guyon [@Roux1988] defined a burst to start when $s_{i+1} < s_{i}$ in the sequence of breaking bonds. The burst sequence continued until $s_{i+n} > s_{i}$, the length of the burst is $n$. Maslov [@Maslov1995] and Paczuski et al. [@Paczuski1996] utilized this definition. This definition results in a hierarchy of bursts within bursts. Bursts have also been observed in more realistic invasion models [@Martys1991].
In this paper, we propose an alternative definition of a burst that removes the hierarchical structure. Our definition is illustrated in Figure \[fig:timeSeries\]. A typical sequence of 25 open bond strengths $s$ is given. This sequence was extracted after a run of 17,910 open bonds. The plot gives the values of $p_c-s$ with $p_c=0.5$. We introduce a burst threshold strength $s_b$. For the example given in Figure \[fig:timeSeries\] we take $s_b=0.49$. A burst begins when an opened bond strength $s$ is smaller than $s_b$ and ends when an opened bond strength is higher than $s_b$. The bursts associated with the values of $s$ given in Figure \[fig:timeSeries\] are shown. The number of opened bonds or filled sites in a burst is $m_b$. For the example illustrated $m_b=4$, 1, and 13.
![(Color online) Illustration of our definition of a burst. A typical sequence of 25 opened bond strengths $s$ is given. The values of $p_c-s$ $\left(p_c=0.5\right)$ are shown as a function of time in dashed blue. We introduce a burst threshold $s_b=0.49$ $(p_c-s=0.01)$. A burst begins when an opened bond strength $s$ is smaller than $s_b$ and ends when an opened bond strength is greater than $s_b$. Three bursts with masses $m_b=4$, 1, and 13 are illustrated in solid red.[]{data-label="fig:timeSeries"}](timeSeries){width="75.00000%"}
We now turn to the frequency size statistics of bursts. Our data are aggregated from 1000 realizations with 100 million time steps each ($m=t=1 \times 10^8$) and $s_b = 0.49995$. In Figure \[fig:burstDist\] we give the aggregate number of bursts $N_b$ with mass $m_b$. For $1 \leq m_b \leq 3000$ we show the unit data (i.e $m_b=1,2,3,\dots$) in blue. For $m_b>2000$ we show this data in red. In this range the data are sparse and $N_b=0$ for many values of $m_b$. The standard treatment of this type of sparse data is to bin the available data [@Malamud2004]. Our binned data in this range are shown in blue. We have an excellent correlation of the blue data with the noncumulative distribution $$N_b \sim m_b^{-1.534 \pm 0.001}
\label{eq:bursts}$$ over seven orders of magnitude of cluster area $m_b$.
![(Color online) The dependence of the number of bursts $N_b$ with mass $m_b$ on $m_b$ aggregated from 1000 runs with $m=100$ million each. For $1 \le m_b \le 200$ we have $N_b > 10$ for all values of $m_b$, the data are shown as blue dots. For $m_b > 3000$ the observed data are shown as red crosses. The data are sparse with $N_b=0$ and 1 for many values of $m_B$. We bin this data and the binned data are shown as blue dots. The solid line is the least squared fit to the blue data as given in Eq. . The error estimate given is the error estimate of the fit. Because the fit depends on the choice of binning, the error estimate of the fit does not necessarily represent the uncertainty in the scaling exponent.[]{data-label="fig:burstDist"}](burst_agg){width="75.00000%"}
The cutoff value $s_b=0.49995$ that we have used is certainly arbitrary. However, we note that the value of cutoff used is very close to the critical probability for bond percolation on a square lattice $p_c = 0.5$. For smaller simulations ($m \approx 1$ million), we have determined the frequency-mass statistics for other cutoff values in the range $0.45 \le s_b \le 0.498$ and we find good power-law data in all cases with the same slope $\approx 1.53$. For comparison, the power-law slope in 2D non-trapping invasion peroclation was found to be $\approx1.60$ [@Maslov1995] and for the more realistic invasion model the slope was found to be $\approx1.35$ [@Martys1991]. It should be noted that in both cases the definition of a burst is different from what is presented in this paper.
We find that as simulations become larger and larger, a value of $s_b$ closer and closer to $p_c=0.5$ has to be used to produce good power-law data. We have also performed simulations on a triangular lattice (not given in this paper) and have found that using a cutoff close to the critical probability of $p_c = 0.34729$ also produces good power-law data. This suggests a relationship between the bursts and an underlying cluster structure of traditional percolation. In traditional percolation, the number of clusters of size $n_s$ is related to the size of a cluster $s$ near the critical point by the scaling relation $$n_s \sim s^\tau
\label{eq:cluster_size_dist}$$ The exponent $\tau$ is the Fisher exponent and $\tau = \frac{187}{91} \approx 2.05$ for traditional 2D percolation [@Stauffer1994]. We note the similarity between Eq. and Eq. . Allthough there is a similarity between the distribution of static clusters in percolation and our bursts, the different growth procedure clearly leads to a different scaling exponent.
It has been noted that in finite lattices an effective critical occupation probability slightly less than the true critical occupation probability is required to obtain the proper critical point scalings [@Stauffer1994]. This suggests a reason why a cutoff just below the critical occupation probability is required to produce a power-law burst distribution. In the limit that simulations become very large, the cutoff required to produce a power-law burst distribution will become the critical occupation probability for traditional percolation.
Bursts have spacial structures that resembles traditional percolation clusters. An example of burst structures is given in Figure \[fig:bursts\]. The four largest bursts in a cluster with mass $m=50,000$ are shown in color. The smaller bursts and non-burst points are shown in black.
![(Color online) An example of burst structure for a simulation with mass $m=50,000$. The four largest bursts are shown in color. Smaller bursts and non-burst occupied sites are shown in black. The initiation site for the cluster is shown as a star.[]{data-label="fig:bursts"}](burstsSpatial){width="75.00000%"}
Gutenberg-Richter scaling for earthquakes gives a power-law dependence of the number earthquakes $N_e$ on the rupture areas greater than $A_r$ [@Turcotte1997]. $$N_e = C A_{r}^{-b}
\label{eq:GRscaling}$$ where $b$ has a universal value near unity. It is important to note that the data given in Fig. \[fig:burstDist\] and the scaling given in Eq. are noncumulative whereas Eq. is cumulative. Maxwell [@Maxwell2011] determined the frequency magnitude scaling of the microseismic events associated with fracking and found that $b \approx 2$. More recent measurements of microseismicity generated during cold water injection into a geothermal reservoir found $b \approx 1.4$ [@Tafti2013]. The distribution of microseismicity associated with fracking as given by Maxwell [@Maxwell2011] and the observed power-law scaling indicates that the bursts statistics of our idealized invasion percolation model qualitatively represents the fluid migration in a fracking injection.
Branching Statistics
====================
The network of fractures generated by a fracking injection is effective in extracting large quantities of oil and gas. In order to study the extraction associated with our invasion percolation model, we now consider the branching statistics of our clusters.
Because the growing bond cluster forms a tree graph (contains no internal loops), it can be analyzed using the branch ordering statistics introduced by Horton [@Horton1945] and Strahler [@Strahler1952] for river networks. This ordering is illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]a. Tip branches (bonds) are defined to be first order $(i=1)$. When two first-order branches combine, they form a second order branch $(i=2)$, and so forth. The bifurcation ratio $R_b$ is defined by $$R_b = \frac{N_i}{N_{i+1}}
\label{eq:bifurcationR}$$ where $N_i$ is the number of branches of order $i$. The length-order ratio $R_r$ is defined by $$R_r = \frac{r_{i+1}}{r_i}
\label{eq:lengthR}$$ where $r_i$ is the mean length of branches of order $i$. For a self-similar branching cluster the $R_b$ and $R_r$ are constant independent of $i$. In this case the fractal dimension of the cluster is given by $$D = \frac{\ln{R_b}}{\ln{R_r}}
\label{eq:TfractalDim}$$ Many natural phenomena are well approximated by self-similar branching statistics [@Turcotte1997], one example is river networks.
We have obtained the Horton-Strahler branching statistics for a typical numerical simulation of our invasion percolation model. The branch-order statistics for a $m=10$ million cluster are given in Figure \[fig:orders\]. This is a $n=11$ order cluster and the $N_i$ are given as a function of $i$. An excellent correlation with $$N_i = 1.246 \times 10^7 \times 4.581^{-i}$$ is found. Thus the bifurcation ratio is nearly constant with a value $R_b = 4.581$. The length-order statistics for this cluster are given in Figure \[fig:orders\], the mean lengths $r_i$ of branches of order $i$ are given as a function of $i$. An excellent correlation with $$r_i = 1.970 \times 2.658^i$$ is found. Thus the length-order ratio is nearly constant with a value $R_r = 2.658$. Our invasion percolation cluster exhibits fractal behavior and the fractal dimension from Eq. is $D=1.557$
![(Color online) As blue squares, the mean length $r_i$ of branches of order $i$ is given as a function of $i$ for a cluster of mass 10 million. The blue squares are the data and the line is the best least squares fit to a linear correlation, from Eq. we have a length-order ratio $R_r=2.658$. As red triangles, the number $N_i$ of branches of order $i$ is given as a function of $i$ for a cluster of mass 10 million. The red triangles are the data and the line is the least squares fit to a linear correlation, from Eq we have the branching ratio $R_b = 4.581$.[]{data-label="fig:orders"}](orders_both){width="75.00000%"}
An improved branch-ordering classification was introduced by Tokunaga [@Tokunaga1978; @Tokunaga1984]. This ordering takes into account side branching and is illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b. A first-order branch that joins another first-order branch is denoted $1:1$, a first-order branch that joins a second-order branch is denoted $1:2$, and so forth; $N_{ij}$ is the number of branches of order $i$ that join branches of order $j$. The total number of branches of order $i$, $N_i$, is related to the $N_{ij}$ by $$N_i = \sum_{i=1}^n N_{ij}$$ where $n$ is the branch order of the cluster.
The branch numbers $N_{ij}$ constitute a square upper triangular matrix. The $n=3$ branch-number matrix for the cluster illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b is given in Table \[table:branchMatrix\]a.
[c c c]{}
------------- ------------- ------------- ------------
$N_{1:1}=6$ $N_{1:2}=3$ $N_{1:3}=2$ $N_1 = 11$
$N_{2:2}=2$ $N_{2:3}=1$ $N_2 = 3$
$N_{3:3}=1$ $N_3 = 1$
------------- ------------- ------------- ------------
: (a) Branch-number matrix and (b) the branching ratio matrix for the cluster illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b.[]{data-label="table:branchMatrix"}
& &
------------- ------------- --
$T_{1:2}=1$ $T_{1:3}=2$
$T_{2:3}=1$
------------- ------------- --
: (a) Branch-number matrix and (b) the branching ratio matrix for the cluster illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b.[]{data-label="table:branchMatrix"}
\
(a) & & (b)\
The structure of branching clusters can be further classified in terms of branching ratios $Tij$. These are the average number of branches of order $i$ that join a branch of order $j$ and are defined by $$T_{ij} = \frac{N_{ij}}{N_{j}}$$ Again the branching ratios define a square, upper triangular matrix. The branching ratio matrix for the cluster illustrated in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b is given in Table \[table:branchMatrix\]b. Tokunaga [@Tokunaga1978; @Tokunaga1984] defined a restricted class of self-similar branching networks by introducing the branching ratio $T_k = T_{i,i+k}$ and requiring that $$T_k = a c^{k-1}
\label{eq:tokunaga}$$ where a and c are constants. The example given in Figure \[fig:branchingIllustration\]b and Table \[table:branchMatrix\]b satisfies this condition since $T_1=1$, $T_2=2$, $a=1$, and $c=2$. This class of branching networks is known as Tokunaga networks.
We now give the Tokunaga branching statistics for the mass $m=10$ million cluster considered above. The branch-number matrix is given in Table \[table:branchNum\]. Values of $N_{ij}$ are given for this $n=11$ network as well as values of $N_{i}$. The branching-ratio matrix is given in Table \[table:branchRatio\], values of $T_{ij}$ are given. In order to test whether this is a Tokunaga network we determine mean values of $T_k$ using the relation $$T_{k} = \frac{1}{n-k} \sum_{j=1}^{n-k} T_{i,j+k}$$ The dependence of the mean branching ratios $T_k$ on $k$ is given in Figure \[fig:tokunaga\]. An excellent correlation with Eq. is found taking $a=1.193$ and $c=2.642$, our invasion percolation cluster is a Tokunaga network to a good approximation.
----- ----------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -------- -------- -------- -------- ------- ------- -----------
i=1 1,190,268 767,355 417,458 243,197 139,578 85,601 49,716 24,880 25,414 7,441 7,287 2,958,195
2 0 257,348 139,793 81,452 47,524 29,333 16,963 8,627 8,878 2,662 2,554 595,134
3 0 0 56,716 29,436 17,124 10,799 6,253 3,178 3,296 932 940 128674
4 0 0 0 12,519 6,224 3,997 2,421 1,246 1,223 362 366 28,358
5 0 0 0 0 2,710 1,438 886 428 502 157 138 6,259
6 0 0 0 0 0 582 336 172 176 45 44 1,355
7 0 0 0 0 0 0 122 60 69 71 23 291
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 19 7 5 61
9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 5 4 15
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3
11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
----- ----------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -------- -------- -------- -------- ------- ------- -----------
: Branch-number matrix for a cluster of mass 10 million. Values of $N_{ij}$ are given for this 11^th^ ($n=11$) order network, the values of $N_i$ are also given.[]{data-label="table:branchNum"}
----- ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- -------- -------- ---------- --------- ------
i=1 1.29 3.24 8.58 22.30 63.17 170.85 407.87 1,694.27 2480.33 7287
2 0 1.09 2.87 7.59 21.65 58.29 141.43 591.87 887.33 2554
3 0 0 1.04 2.74 7.97 21.49 52.10 219.73 310.67 940
4 0 0 0 0.99 2.95 8.32 20.43 81.53 120.67 366
5 0 0 0 0 1.06 3.04 7.02 33.47 52.33 138
6 0 0 0 0 0 1.15 2.82 11.73 15.00 44
7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.98 4.60 5.67 23
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.27 2.33 5
9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.67 4
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
----- ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- -------- -------- ---------- --------- ------
: Branching-ratio matrix for a cluster of mass 10 million. Values of $T_{ij}$ are for this 11^th^ ($n=11$) order network.[]{data-label="table:branchRatio"}
![(Color online) Dependence of the mean branching ratios $T_k$ for a cluster of mass $m=10$ million. The blue dots are the data and the black line is the fit.[]{data-label="fig:tokunaga"}](tokunagaBranchings){width="75.00000%"}
As noted previously it has been shown that river drainage networks are well approximated by Tokunaga branching statistics. We now compare our branching statistics for the percolation cluster with branching statistics for two river networks. Peckham [@Peckham1995] has determined branching statistics for the Kentucky River basin in Kentucky and the Powder River basin in Wyoming. Both of these river networks are 8th order $(n=8)$. For the Kentucky River basin, the bifurcation ratio is $R_b=4.6$, the length-order ratio is $R_r=2.5$, the fractal dimension is $D=1.67$ and the Tokunaga branching constant is $c=2.5$. For the Powder River basin the bifurcation ratio is $R_b=4.7$, the length-order ratio is $R_r=2.4$, the fractal dimension is $D=1.77$, and the Tokunaga branching constant is $c=2.5$. For comparison, the values we obtained for our percolation cluster were $R_b=4.581$, $R_r=2.658$, $D=1.557$, and $c=2.642$. These values are summarized in Table \[table:comparison\]. Tokunaga self-similar branching networks are universally accepted as the extraction mechanism for water in drainage networks. It has been argued that these networks provide optimum removal of water in landscapes [@Rodriguez-Iturbe1997]. We argue that Tokunaga scaling of our invasion percolation network provides an explanation for the efficient extraction of tight shale oil and gas in a high volume fracking injection.
The concept of Tokunaga self-similar side branching was independently introduced into the physics literature by Vannimenus and Viennot [@Vannimenus1989]. Using their approach Ossadnik [@Ossadnik1992] studied the branching statistics of diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) clusters. We note that Ossadnik used a slightly different branch labeling scheme. Average statistics were obtained for 47 DLA clusters each with $10^6$ particles. On average the clusters were 11th order $(n=11)$ fractal trees. The average bifurcation ratio was $R_b=5.15$ and the average length-order ratio was $R_r=2.86$. From Eq. the corresponding fractal dimension is $D=1.56$. An excellent correlation with Tokunaga network statistics was also found using Eq. with $c=2.7$. These values are compared with our values given above in Table \[table:comparison\]. Clearly the branching statistics for our invasion percolation cluster are quite similar to the branching statistics of DLA clusters. It is interesting to note that alternative invasion percolation [@Stark1991] and DLA [@Masek1993] models have been published to explain the Tokunaga statistics of drainage networks.
------------------------------------- ---- ------- ------- ------- -------
n $R_b$ $R_r$ $D$ $c$
Invasion Percolation (This Paper) 11 4.581 2.658 1.557 2.642
Kentucky River Basin [@Peckham1995] 8 4.6 2.5 1.67 2.5
Powder River Basin [@Peckham1995] 8 4.7 2.4 1.77 2.5
DLA [@Ossadnik1992] 11 5.15 2.86 1.56 2.70
------------------------------------- ---- ------- ------- ------- -------
: Comparison of branching statistics for our invasion percolation cluster (this paper), with branching statistics for two river networks [@Peckham1995], and with branching statistics for DLA clusters [@Ossadnik1992]. The network order $n$, branching ration $R_b$, length-order ratio $R_r$, fractal dimension $D$, and Tokunaga branching constant $c$ defined in Eq. are given.[]{data-label="table:comparison"}
Discussion
==========
It should be emphasized that our planar 2D invasion percolation model does not include many of the known features of actual reservoirs (three dimensions, anisotropic nonhomogeneous stress fields, natural fractures, joint sets, faults, etc.); however, it does provide a simple framework in which these features can incorporated. We will give just a few of the ways these features can be incorporated. The procedure illustrated in Fig. \[fig:procedure\] can easily be extended to a cubic lattice to allow for simulation of three dimensional. Microseismic activity associated with high volume fracking tends to be confined to a horizontal layer which is attributed to the vertical stress being the maximum compressive stress. This anisotropic stress can be built into the random numbers by choosing random numbers in the range 0 to 1 for the vertical direction and random numbers in a smaller range, say 0 to 0.25 for the horizontal direction so that fractures are 4 times more likely to propagate in the horizontal direction than the vertical direction. Additionally, if the local stresses within the reservoir are known, the random numbers could be modulated based upon the local stress. Natural fractures, joint sets and faults can be included by introducing regions with lower random numbers. In the case of a faults, all the bonds lying in a plane could have their strength values reduced by a factor of 10 so that once the growing fracture network reaches the fault, fracture growth is likely to be confined to the fault plane. These and other additions will be the subject of future work.
One of the basic assumptions in most percolation papers is that the bond strengths are assigned independently so that the strengths are uncorrelated. However, the granular permeability of sandstones has been shown to have long-range correlations [@Turcotte1997]. Prakash et al. [@Prakash1992] solved an invasion percolation problem with spatially correlated occupancy variables. The correlations were obtained using fractional Brownian motion. These studies showed that scaling exponents depend on the Hurst exponent of the assumed correlation. Herrmann and Sahimi [@Herrmann1993] studied invasion percolation with radially dependent occupancy variables.
It is clearly desirable in future studies of invasion percolation associated with fracking to include spatially correlated bond strengths. However the applicable correlation laws applicable to super fracking are far from clear. The permeability in tight shales is associated with natural fractures generated by oil and gas generation. Studies of the statistics of natural fractures [@Engelder2009] indicate that they are quasi periodic with spacings of 0.1 to 1.0 meters. The deposition of carbonates in the natural fractures generates the tight shales subjected to super fracking. The spatial correlation of the resistance to opening of the sealed fractures by high pressure fluid injection is not established.
Before considering the many possible additions to this model, we felt it valuable to first characterize the simplest version of the model. This allowed us to determine that this model is indeed unique from other percolation models and determine some of the qualitative aspects of this model that are relevant for fracking.
We have shown in Figure \[fig:burstDist\] the power-law scaling of the bursts of cluster growth in our model. We believe this provides an explanation for the power-law scaling of the microseismic fractures observed in high volume fracking. However, we would expect different power-law exponents due to the geometrical limitations of our 2D model. The network of propagating fractures as indicated by microseismicity [@Maxwell2011] certainly resembles our expanding percolating cluster.
We have also quantified the branching statistics of our evolving percolation cluster. Specifically, we obtain excellent Tokunaga self similar scaling as shown in Figure \[fig:tokunaga\]. This scaling is quantitatively similar to the scaling of river networks. These networks are recognized as an optimal geometry for extracting the water from rainfall in a river basin. The landscape associated with a drainage topography is similar to the distribution of fracture permeabilities associated with a tight-shale reservoir. We argue that the Tokunaga scaling of our invasion percolation network provides an explanation for the efficient extraction of oil and gas by the fracture network generated in a high volume fracking injection.
Acknowledgements
================
The authors would like to acknowledge valuable discussions with William Klein and Armin Bunde. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Mark Yoder and Eric Heien during code development. Additionally, we would like to thank the two anonomous reviewers for their thorough critique of our manuscript. The research of JQN and JBR has been supported by a grant from the US Department of Energy to the University of California, Davis \#DE-FG02-04ER15568.
|
Hercules used them to regain his strength after his legendary labours, Hippocrates lauded their beneficial properties and even a famous Roman general, Sulla, said he owed his health to them.
Their praise was for hot springs, a medicinal resource known and appreciated in Greece since antiquity—though regrettably less so nowadays.
"Greece invented the therapeutic use of hot springs thousands of years before the birth of Jesus Christ," says Zisis Aggelidis, a professor of hydrogeology at Thessaloniki's Aristotelio University.
In ancient Greece, healing temples known as Asclepieia—named after the god of medicine Asclepius—were popular with pilgrims.
Greece today has some 700 hot springs known to have curative properties, but just over 100 are accessible and even fewer are commercially exploited.
Many are still free of charge to the public, out in nature with minimal facilities, even on popular tourist islands such as Santorini, Milos and Kos.
Evangelos Kyriazis, a barrel-chested man in his sixties, says he has not been to a doctor in years thanks to his local spa.
Kyriazis' magic potion bubbles forth from a mountain in central Greece, near the town of Thermopylae.
His self-styled treatment is to take 300 baths a year for half an hour in the sulphurous water, which has a temperature of between 30 and 40 degrees Celsius (86-104 Fahrenheit).
"It detoxifies and oxygenates the body, regulates pressure, dilates the blood vessels, relaxes the muscles, clears the lungs, strengthens the bones and relaxes the nervous system," says Kyriazis.
"It even whitens the teeth."
'Hot gates'
Thermopylae, literally "hot gates" in Greek, has become synonymous with the ferocious battle in which 300 Spartans sacrificed themselves against overwhelming Persian odds in 480 BC.
Few today, however, associate Thermopylae with the hot springs Hercules frequented in Greek mythology, except a few locals and a small number of connoisseurs.
"These springs cured my aching knees and shoulder. The waters here are more natural than in Germany," says pensioner Alfred Weigel, who makes an annual pilgrimage from his native Bavaria for a dip here.
To the uninitiated, the site appears inauspicious, close to an abandoned petrol station and a derelict hotel. Bathers change in their car, and step over a wobbly wooden pallet to reach the springs.
"We have an exceptional product but it is poorly used," sighs Markos Danas, secretary general of the union of Greek spa towns.
He notes that across the country less than a dozen sites offer acceptable tourism infrastructure.
"Hot springs are mostly run by local communities, and this has limited the scope of development," he adds.
Three of Greece's best-known spa towns are Loutraki in the Peloponnese, Kamena Vourla in central Greece and Edipsos, on the island of Evia.
The latter is known to posterity through the Greek biographer Plutarch as the site that cured Rome's Sulla.
For years much of the clientele were Greek pensioners on state-funded curative tours.
However, in the wake of the economic crisis gripping the country for the past five years, demand has fallen dramatically.
The union of spa towns reports a 50-percent drop in paying customers since 2009.
The spa towns are now hoping an EU directive that authorises reimbursing citizens taking hot baths in other member states will revive interest.
Greece's state privatisation agency last year also offered four hot springs in central Greece, including Thermopylae, for sale to private developers.
But there were no takers—meaning more free visits for Evangelos and his fellow bathers in the foreseeable future.
Explore further Swiss Red Cross cuts blood supply to broke Greece
© 2014 AFP
|
The use of photolithographic and etching steps to produce via-holes in insulating layers formed during the semiconductor wafer processing are important and critical steps in the course of the manufacturing of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) silicon chips. For example, via-holes may be etched through an insulating layer, and a metal layer subsequently deposited thereon, filling the via-holes and providing an elecrrical contact with the underlying conductive layer, i.e., a polysilicon land or a monocrystalline silicon substrate.
With a continuous trend towards still further integration and microminiaturization of active/passive devices, the need for methods of producing extremely small via-holes becomes more acute. Known wet etching processes fail in that respect because of capillary problems, so that the liquid etchant cannot reach the bottom of the via-holes. Therefore, it clearly appears today that dry etching processes such as Plasma Etching and Reactive Ion Etching have a greater potential to produce extremely small via-holes of a diameter equal to or less than 1 micron.
Unfortunately, when dry etching processes are used, the etching direction is substantially anisotropic, i.e. in a vertical direction only, thereby producing via-holes with substantially vertical sidewalls. As a result, step coverage problems are encountered during metallization, with the metal layer being substantially thinner on the sidewalls and the step of the via-hole than elsewhere. These metal thickness irregularities can give rise to a risk of potential cracks and cause variations in the land resistances. As a result, they may cause subsequent metal land opens which in turn, sometimes result in a total failure of the functional circuit integrated in the chip.
Accordingly, in order to prevent such cracks from occurring, the slopes of these contact openings have to be tapered, i.e. as smooth as possible (about 60 deg.) to allow a good metal coverage.
In order to minimize or preferably to eliminate these step coverage problems, efforts have been made to develop dry etching methods for producing via-holes with sloped profiles through an insulating layer formed by a single dielectric material. One method of doing this has been to suggest the use of a conventional photoresist mask which has a sloped profile.
A technique to produce tapered via-holes in a patterned photoresist mask formed on an insulating layer consists of heating the structure so that the resist softens, and because of the surface tension, develops tapered walls.
Since the mask is anisotropically eroded to some degree by the plasma gas as the underlying insulating layer is etched, the result is replication of the mask profile, more or less, in the insulating layer.
This technique suffers from the difficulty of ensuring that the etch rate ratio equals the ratio of thicknesses and also limits the profile conformal to the shape assumed by the photoresist mask during the bake step (after the development of the resist).
Another method has been to use the sensitivity of certain photoresist compositions to erosion. It has been discovered that said erosion is substantially isotropic, making it possible to produce anisotropic etching results by the use of controlled isotropic photoresist erosion during the etching process.
This process suffers from the use of non-standard photoresist compositions.
In addition, various variables such as lithographic conditions, exposure parameters, surface topography and hole size seriously affect hole profiles and dimensions to such an extent that precision control by this method and reproducible results are very difficult to obtain.
Moreover, it is frequent in the silicon chip processing, and in particular in the manufacturing of MOSFET's, to etch extremely small contact via holes over either a silicon substrate or a polysilicon land through a thick composite insulating layer comprised of at least two dielectric materials having different etching rates, e.g., a layer of Phospho Silicate Glass (PSG) overlying a layer of silicon dioxide (SiO.sub.2). The problem of precision control mentioned above becomes even more acute when such a composite layer is used, because of the different etching rates of the two materials. If wet etchant is used to etch the via-hole, the openings become too large for high density circuits, because PSG etches much faster than thermally grown SiO.sub.2.
A first attempt to produce via-holes with sloped profiles in a composite insulating layer, while still fully complying with dry etching techniques, has been developed by the applicant and consisted of a succession of etch (using CHF.sub.3) and ash (using O.sub.2) steps.
The basic principle of this technique has been published in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin: "Multi-step contour etching process", Vol. 27, No. 6, November 1984, pp. 3259-3260 and "Multi-step etching of dissimilar materials achieving selectivity and slope control", Vol. 28, No. 7, December 1985, pp. 3136-3137.
For example, real experiments were conducted in the manufacturing line of a typical CFET product, in the etching of conaact via-holes through a photoresist masked PSG/SiO.sub.2 composite insulating layer, to expose a portion of an underlying polysilicon layer. This process consisted of the following steps:
______________________________________ No. 1 Etching 3.6 min Ashing .4 min No. 2 Etching 3.1 min Ashing .6 min No. 3 Etching 2.2 min Ashing 1.1 min No. 4 Etching .5 min Ashing 2.2 min No. 5 Etching .6 min Ashing 3.3 min No. 6 Etching .7 min Ashing 1.0 min No. 7 Cleaning 1.0 min ______________________________________
This "multi-step" process has a long down time, because it implies 6 etching steps, each followed by an ashing step. Between two successive steps, long pumping sequences are necessary, to exhaust the previous gas system (e.g. CHF.sub.3) before filling with the following gas system (e.g. O.sub.2).
The total etch + ash time is 20.3 min. while the overall time including the pumping time is about 42.0 min. Such an overall time is a serious problem in a manufacturing line where high throughputs are desirable.
The "multistep" process is also characterized by its full anistropy. CHF.sub.3 etches vertically the composite oxide layer, but the photoresist mask is not attacked, while O.sub.2 does not attack the composite oxide layer but attacks the photoresist mask. The photoresist mask is attacked by O.sub.2 only if its openings are tapered. This implies a requirement to cure the photoresist mask in order to reflow the resist material. As a result of the reflow, vertical sidewalls are modified in tapered sidewalls. Unfortunately the use of a cured photoresist mask is a non-desired limitation. The ashing is only used for mask erosion. The anisotropic etching of oxide has a selective etch rate ratio between resist and oxide. The above process is characterized by its vertical etching component.
So there still exists a need for a dry etching method for producing a tapered via-hole with sloped profile in a photoresist masked composite insulating layer such as a PSG/SiO.sub.2 layer.
|
Q:
SVN INFO fails in PowerShell when CD'ing into a working copy while spelling the directory name with wrong letter case
When I use Set-Location (aka cd) to change the current directory in a PowerShell window, but deliberately avoid auto-complete and type the name in the "wrong" case...
PS C:\> Set-Location winDOWs
...then Get-Location (aka pwd) will return that "wrong" path name:
PS C:\winDOWs> Get-Location
Path
----
C:\winDOWs
This causes problems with svn info:
PS C:\svn\myDir> svn info --show-item last-changed-revision
2168
PS C:\svn\myDir> cd ..\MYDIR
PS C:\svn\MYDIR> svn info --show-item last-changed-revision
svn: warning: W155010: The node 'C:\svn\MYDIR' was not found.
svn: E200009: Could not display info for all targets because some targets don't exist
As you can see svn info fails when the user doesn't type the name of the working copy directory "myDir" with the correct letter case when cd'ing into it.
Is there a way to solve this? I could not find a suitable parameter of svn info.
Another option could be to overwrite PowerShell's cd alias and make sure the letter case of the typed path is fixed before actually cd'ing, but how to accomplish that? Resolve-Path, for example also returns the "wrong" directory name.
A:
Something like this might work for you:
Set-Location C:\winDOWs\sysTEm32
$currentLocation = (Get-Location).Path
$folder = Split-Path $currentLocation -Leaf
$casedPath = ([System.IO.DirectoryInfo]$currentLocation).Parent.GetFileSystemInfos($folder).FullName
# if original path and new path are equal (case insensitive) but are different with case-sensitivity. cd to new path.
if($currentLocation -ieq $casedPath -and $currentLocation -cne $casedPath)
{
Set-Location -LiteralPath $casedPath
}
This will give you the proper casing for the "System32" portion of the path. You will need to recursively call this piece of code for all pieces of the path, e.g. C:\Windows, C:\Windows\System32, etc.
Final recursive function
Here you go:
function Get-CaseSensitivePath
{
param([System.IO.DirectoryInfo]$currentPath)
$parent = ([System.IO.DirectoryInfo]$currentPath).Parent
if($null -eq $parent)
{
return $currentPath.Name
}
return Join-Path (Get-CaseSensitivePath $parent) $parent.GetDirectories($currentPath.Name).Name
}
Example:
Set-Location (Get-CaseSensitivePath C:\winDOWs\sysTEm32)
|
Risk and Outcomes of Clostridium difficile Infection With Chronic Pancreatitis.
Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is associated with high rates of recurrent hospitalizations, which predisposes to Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). We investigate the burden of CDI in CP. We identified records of patients with CP from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) 2012-2014 and estimated the impact of CDI on their outcomes. We calculated the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of CP on having CDI (NIS 2014). From NIS 2007-2014, we plotted the trends of CDI and its interaction with CP. From 2012 to 2014, 886 (2.72%) of the 32,614 CP patients had concomitant CDI, which was associated with poorer outcomes: acute kidney injury (AOR, 2.57 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 2.11-3.13]), length of stay (13.3 vs 7.4 days), and charges (US $127,496 vs US $72,767), but not mortality (AOR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.28-3.05]). In 2014, CP was associated with an increased risk of CDI (crude odds ratio, 2.10 [95% CI, 1.95-2.26]), which persisted after multivariate adjustment (AOR, 2.03 [95% CI, 1.87-2.19]). From 2007 to 2014, the annual prevalence of CDI was 106.4 cases per 10,000 hospitalizations, increasing from 2007 (95.5/10,000) to 2014 (118.4/10,000), with a 3.7 times higher annual rate of increase among CP versus no-CP patients (13.4/10,000 vs 3.7/10,000 population/year). Chronic pancreatitis patients have high burden of CDI and may benefit from CDI prophylaxis.
|
Q:
Error in posting to model with foreignkey django-tastypie
I am getting error when making a post request to api in my django webapp , I am using tastypie for api and getting following error.
post request
curl --dump-header - -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST --data '{"title": "Post Title 1", "video": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u03h73ClZ8", "artist": "artist_name 1"}' "http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/video/" -u "username:password"
error
"error_message":{"error_message": "The URL provided 'artist_name 1' was not a link to a valid resource.", "traceback": "Traceback (most recent call last):\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 195, in wrapper\n response = callback(request, *args, **kwargs)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 426, in dispatch_list\n return self.dispatch('list', request, **kwargs)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 458, in dispatch\n response = method(request, **kwargs)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 1320, in post_list\n updated_bundle = self.obj_create(bundle, **self.remove_api_resource_names(kwargs))\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 2083, in obj_create\n bundle = self.full_hydrate(bundle)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 876, in full_hydrate\n value = field_object.hydrate(bundle)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/fields.py\", line 739, in hydrate\n return self.build_related_resource(value, request=bundle.request)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/fields.py\", line 655, in build_related_resource\n return self.resource_from_uri(self.fk_resource, value, **kwargs)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/fields.py\", line 574, in resource_from_uri\n obj = fk_resource.get_via_uri(uri, request=request)\n\n File \"/home/w0w/lmvapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tastypie/resources.py\", line 802, in get_via_uri\n raise NotFound(\"The URL provided '%s' was not a link to a valid resource.\" % uri)\n
models.py
class Artist(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
def __unicode__(self):
return unicode(self.name)
class Video(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
# url Should be a valid youtube URL
video = EmbedVideoField()
artist = models.ForeignKey(Artist)
slug = AutoSlugField(populate_from='title', unique=True)
# SLUG depends on title
def __unicode__(self):
return unicode(self.title)
api.py
class ArtistResource(ModelResource):
class Meta:
queryset = Artist.objects.all()
resource_name = 'artist'
class VideoResource(ModelResource):
artist = fields.ForeignKey(ArtistResource, 'artist')
class Meta:
queryset = Video.objects.all()
resource_name = 'video'
authorization = DjangoAuthorization()
authentication = BasicAuthentication()
A:
You post data:
{
"title": "Post Title 1",
"video": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u03h73ClZ8",
"artist": "artist_name 1"
}
change artist property to:
"artist": {"name": "artist_name 1"}
or the url of resource:
"artist": "/api/v1/user/1/"
|
By Nichola Saminather | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Asian stocks got off to a shaky start on Monday after a renewed FBI probe of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server sparked fresh tumult in markets, just days before the Nov. 8 presidential vote. The Japanese yen, seen as a safe-haven in times of uncertainty, rose slightly against the U.S. dollar. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was off 0.2 percent in early trading on Monday. It is set to end the month down 2 percent. Japan's Nikkei slipped 0.6 percent, but remains poised for a monthly gain of 5.4 percent. On Friday, Wall Street and the dollar closed lower, after FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to the U.S. Congress informing it that the agency is again reviewing emails related to the private server Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Mark...
|
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a semiconductor laser device used for reproducing information from optical disks with different formats, such as a compact disk (CD) and a digital video disk (DVD), in a single optical pickup device.
2. Related Background Art
Currently, the CD market is the largest market among the optical disk markets. In the device for reproducing information from CDs, a near infrared semiconductor laser element with a wavelength in a 780 nm to 800 nm band has been used. On the other hand, for recording and reproduction with respect to DVDs, which are optical media with higher recording density and are expected to come into wide use rapidly in the future, a red-color semiconductor laser element with a shorter wavelength in a 635 nm to 680 nm band has been used, since a light spot is required to have a small diameter. It has been requested to enable information to be recorded and reproduced with respect to two such kinds of optical disks with different standards in one device. An optical pickup device for such a purpose is described, for example, in JP 10(1998)-320815. FIG. 9 shows a configuration of a conventional optical pickup device.
An operational principle of the conventional optical pickup device is described with reference to FIG. 9 as follows.
For recording and reproduction with respect to a CD, a semiconductor laser element 101 with a wavelength of 780 nm is used. A beam 116 emitted from the semiconductor laser element 101 in the direction perpendicular to the surface of an optical disk 106 is diverged into three beams by a diffraction grating 115. A collimator lens 103 disposed on an optical axis converts the divergent beam into a parallel beam. The parallel beam goes through a wavelength deflection filter 109 and is focused on the optical disk 106 by an objective lens 105.
The beam reflected by the optical disk 106 is converted from a divergent beam into a parallel beam by the objective lens 105 and goes through the wavelength deflection filter 109 again. Subsequently, the beam is converted into a converged beam by the collimator lens 103 and then enters a hologram element 111. The beams divided by the hologram element 111 are detected as electric signals in receiving optics 113. Based on the detected signals, the reproduction and focusing/tracking servo are carried out with respect to the CD.
On the other hand, for recording and reproduction with respect to a DVD, a semiconductor laser element 102 with a wavelength of 635 nm (or 650 nm) is used. A beam 117 emitted from the semiconductor laser element 102 in a direction parallel to the surface of an optical disk 106 is converted from a divergent beam into a parallel beam by a collimator lens 104 disposed on an optical axis and goes through a polarization beam splitter 107 and a xc2xc wavelength plate 108. Subsequently, the beam is reflected by the wavelength deflection filter 109 so that its path is deflected by 90xc2x0, and then is focused on the optical disk 106 by the objective lens 105.
The beam reflected by the optical disk 106 is converted from a divergent beam into a parallel beam by the objective lens 105 and is reflected by the wavelength deflection filter 109 again so that its path is deflected by 90xc2x0. Subsequently, its polarization direction is changed by the xc2xc wavelength plate 108. Therefore, the beam entering the polarization beam splitter 107 is reflected so that its path is deflected by 90xc2x0, and then is converged by a detection lens 110. The converged beam goes through a cylindrical lens 112 and is detected as an electric signal in receiving optics 114. Based on this detection signal, reproduction and focusing/tracking servo are carried out with respect to the DVD.
In the above-mentioned configuration, the semiconductor laser with a wavelength of 780 nm is mounted and therefore recording and reproduction also can be carried out with respect to CD-Rs.
However, such a conventional optical pickup device as shown in FIG. 9 is configured with many optical components such as two semiconductor laser elements 101 and 102 with different emission wavelengths and a plurality of receiving optics 113 and 114 for respective beams emitted from the semiconductor laser elements 101 and 102, as well as the hologram element 111, the cylindrical lens 112, the wavelength deflection filter 109, and the like. Therefore, it is difficult to reduce the size of the device.
Moreover, since the respective optical components are disposed discretely, a lot of positional adjustments and fixation are required, and thus great amounts of time and cost are required for the assembly, which have been problems.
Therefore, the present invention was made to solve the aforementioned conventional problems. The present invention is intended to provide a small and inexpensive semiconductor laser device capable of carrying out recording and reproduction with respect to various optical disks with different formats and to provide an optical pickup device having the same.
In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, a semiconductor laser device according to the present invention includes a receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate and an optical element. In the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate, a first semiconductor laser element, a second semiconductor laser element, and a plurality of receiving optics are integrated on a substrate. The first and second semiconductor laser elements have different emission wavelengths. A distance L1, when measured in air, from the first semiconductor laser element to a focusing member is substantially equal to a distance L2, when measured in air, from the second semiconductor laser element to the focusing member.
According to this configuration, the two semiconductor laser elements and the plurality of receiving optics are integrated in the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate, so that a small and inexpensive semiconductor laser device can be provided. In addition, since the distances, when measured in air, from the two semiconductor laser elements to the focusing member are substantially equal, one single focusing member (for instance, a collimator lens) can be employed. Thus, the optical configuration is simplified.
In the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, preferably, a difference between the distance L1 and the distance L2, when measured in air, is within xc2x150 xcexcm.
According to this configuration, particularly the influence of aberration can be suppressed to a low level and it becomes easy to configure the optical pickup device employing a single focusing member.
In the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, preferably, the optical element is disposed in an optical path at least between the first or second semiconductor laser element and the focusing member.
This configuration enables return light from the optical disk to diverge efficiently to be lead to the receiving optics.
In addition, it is preferable that the optical element includes a member allowing a distance for which a beam emitted from the first semiconductor laser element travels to go through the optical element to be different from a distance for which a beam emitted from the second semiconductor laser element travels to go through the optical element.
According to this configuration, the distances for which the two emitted beams travel to go through the optical element are made different, so that the distances, when measured in air, for which the two emitted beams travel after leaving the optical element can be made substantially the same.
It also is preferable that a light diverging member is formed in the optical element and a diffraction grating, a reflector, or the like is used as the light diverging member.
In the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, preferably, the first semiconductor laser element has an emission wavelength in a 780 nm band, and the second semiconductor laser element has an emission wavelength in a 650 nm band.
According to this configuration, recording and reproduction can be carried out with respect to optical disks with both the CD format and the DVD format.
Preferably, the light diverging member exhibits different diverging efficiencies depending on wavelengths.
According to this configuration, for example, when a diffraction grating is used as the light diverging member, a semiconductor laser device can be obtained which has light diverging efficiencies optimized with respect to respective wave lengths through adjustment of the depth of the diffraction grating. When using this, therefore, an optical pickup device with excellent light utilization efficiency can be configured. Consequently, a low power consumption type optical pickup device can be obtained.
Furthermore, in the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, it is preferable that the substrate is a silicon substrate with a principal plane that is a plane obtained when a plane equivalent to a plane (100) is rotated about an axis extending in a direction equivalent to a direction less than 0-11 greater than by 5xc2x0 to 15xc2x0 in a direction equivalent to a direction less than 100 greater than , concave portions are formed in the substrate, the first and second semiconductor laser elements are placed on bottom surfaces of the concave portions, and each beam emitted from the first and second semiconductor laser elements is reflected by one side face of the corresponding concave portion.
According to this configuration, when the concave portions are formed at the surface of the silicon substrate by anisotropic etching using a potassium hydroxide-based etchant, a plane equivalent to a plane (111) can be formed as one of side faces of each concave portion, having an angle of 40xc2x0 to 50xc2x0 with respect to the bottom surface of the concave portion. Therefore, when the first and second semiconductor laser elements are disposed on the bottom surfaces of the concave portions, the one of side faces of each concave portions serves as a reflecting mirror and thus emitted beams can be lead out upward in the direction substantially perpendicular to the silicon substrate. Furthermore, the plurality of receiving optics are formed in the area where the concave portions are not formed, so that the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate can be configured easily.
In the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, it is preferable that the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate and the optical element are disposed in one case.
According to this configuration, a plurality of elements can be disposed in one case and the whole is sealed, so that the reliability can be improved easily. In addition, when this case is formed as one optical unit, its handling in the assembly of an optical pickup device is considerably easier as compared to the case where separate elements are handled. Thus, the assembly process and line can be simplified.
In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, an optical pickup device according to the present invention includes a focusing member and a semiconductor laser device provided with a receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate disposed in a case, and an optical element. In the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate, a first semiconductor laser element, a second semiconductor laser element, and a plurality of receiving optics are integrated on a substrate. The first and second semiconductor laser elements have different emission wavelengths. The optical element is disposed in the same case as that including the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate. A distance L1, when measured in air, from the first semiconductor laser element to the focusing member is substantially equal to a distance L2, when measured in air, from the second semiconductor laser element to the focusing member. The focusing member is positioned to be fixed to the case of the semiconductor laser device.
According to this configuration, the assembly process and line of the optical pickup device described above can be simplified.
Preferably, the optical pickup device according to the present invention further includes a supporting member, and the case and the supporting member are connected by a supporter, and the case is movably semifixed to the supporting member.
According to this configuration, all the optical components of the optical pickup device are integrally movable. Therefore, when the focusing/tracking servo is carried out with respect to an optical disk, no optical shift is caused and thus reliable recording and reproducing characteristics can be obtained.
In the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, preferably, the first and second semiconductor laser elements are integrated in one chip.
According to this configuration, a plurality of semiconductor laser elements are integrated in one chip, so that a semiconductor laser device with a reduced number of components can be obtained. This enables the size of the optical pickup device to be reduced.
In addition, in the semiconductor laser device according to the present invention, it is preferable that the optical element is placed on the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate.
According to this configuration, the optical element is placed on the receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate, so that a semiconductor laser device with a protected receiving/emitting optics integrated substrate can be obtained. Consequently, the reliability of the optical pickup device can be improved.
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Analysis of pipelines in-situ is an important function that, unfortunately, is not readily achievable with conventional technology. In order to investigate pipelines, such as for defects within the materials of the pipeline, the pipelines must be readily accessible for visual/material inspection. Pipelines that extend underground, therefore, must be uncovered so that investigators may visually identify the surface of the pipe.
Removal of the overburden from a pipe is a difficult and dangerous situation for work crews that are tasked with the function. To this end, the progress of analyzing pipelines is a costly proposition that also involves a safety concern of investigators. Pipelines that have changes in geometry, such as elbows, moreover, cannot be readily evaluated even by remote methods. Changes in geometry of a pipeline necessitate both direct visual inspection by inspectors and the ability to touch the pipeline in the area of concern so that material investigation can begin. Such access to the piping system may be impossible in certain circumstances, so these piping systems go uninspected. These significant drawbacks of conventional systems cost excessive money to be spent by pipeline owners who desire to carefully maintain their equipment to a desired standard.
In light of the drawbacks presented above, there is a need to provide for a pipeline inspection system that is mobile and is economical to use.
There is an additional need to provide a pipeline inspection system that can account for changes in geometry of the pipeline so that the pipeline may be remotely inspected.
There is an additional need to provide a pipeline inspection system that will account for various environmental and construction factors, such as a coating on a pipe.
There is a further need to provide a pipeline inspection system that will allow an investigator to pinpoint defects in a pipeline or analyze more closely a selected area of a pipeline desired by investigators.
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Vaginal birth after cesarean section: 10 years of experience in a tertiary medical center in Taiwan.
Because of the increased risk of uterine rupture and other morbidities, instances of trial of labor after cesarean (TOLAC) have decreased in number each year. Nevertheless, under careful assessment and advanced medical care, TOLAC is still a safe option for delivery. The objective of this study is to find the factors that impact the success rate for TOLAC and to compare the results with Taiwan national registry data. A longitudinal cohort study that includes a total of 254 cases of women receiving TOLAC in a tertiary medical center over a period of 10 years. A total of 254 participants who underwent TOLAC, which accounts for 1.67% of total labor instances (254/15,166), were enrolled for analysis. The success rate of TOLAC was found to be 80.70% (205/254), including 146 (57.5%) normal deliveries, 45 (17.7%) vacuum-assisted deliveries, and 14 (5.5%) forceps-assisted deliveries. The conversion rate to cesarean section was 19.3%. There were no uterine rupture cases in our study, and there were only two suspected cases, which turned out to have no actual rupture. When analyzing the factors affecting the results of TOLAC, we found that a successfully spontaneously delivered baby had a lower birth weight than the failed TOLAC cases that were converted to cesarean delivery (mean, 2989 g vs. 3379 g; p < 0.001). Among the patients who were converted to cesarean section, the most common reason was dysfunctional labor (79.6%), followed by fetal distress (14.3%). Under intensive care and observation, TOLAC section may still be a feasible choice. Nevertheless, the body weight of the baby has been shown to be a factor that can influence the success rate.
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It’s a terse rhyming couplet that probably expresses the way many people feel about the green cruciferous vegetable. I don’t know how Antonin Scalia feels about eating broccoli—but I do know that the nutritious vegetable has been getting a lot of press lately due to remarks that the Justice made about it and the health care mandate during the recent Supreme Court hearings on the Affordable Care Act:
“Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” Scalia said, discussing a hypothetical. “Therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”
He added, “Does that expand your ability to, to issue mandates to the people?”
Some journalists and bloggers believe that Justice Scalia didn’t come up with that bad broccoli analogy on his own. They think he may be echoing GOP and conservative media talking points on the ACA.
In The Baltimore Sun, Dan Rodricks wrote:
His fans keeping telling us of the brilliance of Justice Scalia — so brilliant, no one can touch him. But the broccoli hypothetical didn’t strike me as particularly brilliant. It sounded more Limbaughian than anything else, some conservative talking point on Obamacare circulated by the Republican Party.
“There’s no doubt that lack of exercise causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up,” Justice Scalia said, as the audition continued. “So the federal government says everybody has to join an exercise club.”
This wasn’t genuine judicial probing. This was cheap, sound-bite rhetoric that betrayed a predisposed hostility toward the law.
From David Lyle of Media Matters:
Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have promoted the right-wing talking point that any reading of the Constitution that supports the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance would also permit Congress to require all Americans to purchase broccoli. In doing so, they frighten their audience with the specter of limitless federal government power. This slippery slope argument turns out, however, to be too slippery by half, and it gets both the Constitution and the facts of the health care marketplace wrong.
Limbaugh’s “broccoli mandate” talking point is refuted by economists who argue that the individual mandate is an appropriate response to the serious problem of consumers with preexisting conditions being unable to purchase insurance in the health care market. Furthermore, legal experts argue that the Constitution gives Congress the power to adopt the mandate, and this power does not extend to absurd hypotheticals such as a requirement to purchase broccoli.
Limbaugh on his imagined broccoli mandate: “Mr. New Castrati, if they can force us to buy health insurance, they can force us to buy broccoli…. Once you people get it in your heads that you can force us to buy health insurance, what’s to stop you from making us buy a stupid electric car?” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 2/1/11, emphasis added]
In addition to injecting right-wing talking points into the discussions on the ACA, it appears that Scalia may not be as knowledgeable about the act as he might like some people to think. The associate justice brought up the “11th-hour deal” that the Democrats made with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska in order to secure his vote:
“It’s clear that Congress would not have passed it without that. You are telling us that the whole statute would fall because the Cornhusker kickback is bad.”
Actually, what we know is that the “Cornhusker kickback” — a rightwing term of art — is not in the Affordable Care Act at all. Scalia was repeating something he heard on his radio or on his TV. It was eliminated before the bill passed. So Scalia was constructing his “hypothetical” around something that is no more part of the ACA than the public option is. He’s just not trying very hard anymore. Neither, apparently, are many of his defenders. (Charles P. Pierce, Esquire)
In his article for TPMDC titled Scalia Echoes GOP Buzzwords Against ‘Obamacare’, Sahil Kapur provides a number of right-wing talking points—including broccoli, the Cornhusker kickback, execrcise, and the Tenth Amandment—that Scalia brought up during the hearings:
“I mean, the 10th Amendment says the powers not given to the Federal Government are reserved, not just to the States, but to the States and the people,” Scalia said Tuesday, arguing that the court has held certain laws “reasonably adapted” but not “proper” because they “violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure.”
The 10th Amendment argument is a common line of attack by Republicans, including Mitt Romney, invoked to argue that ‘Obamacare’ tramples states rights. And though the states challenging the law claim the Medicaid expansion violates the 10th Amendment, Scalia cited it in reference to the individual mandate.
Charles Fried, who served as President Reagan’s Solicitor General, was critical not only of Scalia but also of the other conservative justices who appear to oppose the ACA. He thinks their opposition to it is about “politics, politics, politics.”
From Media Matters:
Fried has been “scaldingly critical” of Scalia and other conservative justices for their willingness to “traffic in some of the most well-worn Tea Party tropes about Obamacare” according to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. Sargent quotes Fried:
“I was appalled to see that at least a couple of them were repeating the most tendentious of the Tea Party type arguments …. I even heard about broccoli. The whole broccoli argument is beneath contempt. To hear it come from the bench was depressing.”
Charles P. Pierce thinks that Justice Scalia is bored, has already begun his retirement, and really isn’t putting in much of an effort any longer:
It’s been clear for some time now that he’s short-timing his job on the Supreme Court. The job bores him. All these inferior intellects coming before him. All those inferior intellects on the bench with him, now with some other Catholics who aren’t even as Catholic as he is, Scalia being the last living delegate who attended the Council of Trent. Inferior Catholics with inferior minds. What can a fellow do? He hung in there as long as he could, but he’s now bringing Not Giving A Fuck to an almost operatic level…
It is plain now that Scalia simply doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act on its face. It has nothing to do with “originalism,” or the Commerce Clause, or anything else. He doesn’t think that the people who would benefit from the law deserve to have a law that benefits them. On Tuesday, he pursued the absurd “broccoli” analogy to the point where he sounded like a micro-rated evening-drive talk-show host from a dust-clotted station in southern Oklahoma. And today, apparently, he ran through every twist and turn in the act’s baroque political history in an attempt to discredit the law politically, rather than as a challenge to its constitutionality. (What in hell does the “Cornhusker Kickback” — yet another term of art that the Justice borrowed from the AM radio dial — have to do with the severability argument? Is Scalia seriously making the case that a banal political compromise within the negotiations from which bill eventually is produced can affect its ultimate constitutionality? Good luck ever getting anything passed if that’s the standard.) He’s really just a heckler at this point. If he can’t do any better than that, he’s right. Being on the court is a waste of his time.
Former Reagan Official Debunks “Broccoli” Mandate Charge
We’ll now have to wait until June to find out how the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the Affordable care Act. I hope ideology doesn’t rule the day.
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Justice Scalia gets confused in his old age. He confuses cornhuskers with cornholers and Obamacare with ScaliaCare. We need someone in the Congress to introduce a bill to end ScaliaCare as we know it. The taxpayers are paying for all of Scalia’s health care be it hearing aides, reading devices, oxycotton or whatever he is on. Start with the federal judges’ ScaliaCare and then rescind the Supreme Court justices’ annual two month vacation. Let them eat broccoli or ecoli. This bill has to be in the hopper before these schmucks issue their opinion in the Obamacare Act case in June. It gives them something to think about while they are on their two month vacation. Or is it a three month vacation?
Hey kids? Are you down in the dumps after Tuesday’s oral argument? Do you want a limiting principle that justifies the individual mandate but doesn’t give Congress unlimited power under the Commerce Clause? Fine. Here are three of them. Pick your favorite.
1. The Moral Hazard/Adverse Selection Principle. Congress can regulate activities that substantially affect commerce. Under the necesary and proper clause, Congress can require people to engage in commerce when necessary to prevent problems of moral hazard or adverse selection created by its regulation of commerce. But if there is no problem of moral hazard or adverse selection, Congress cannot compel commerce. Courts can choose different standards of review to decide how much they want to defer to Congress’s conclusion. Even under the strictest standard of review the individual mandate passes muster.
Explanation: The guaranteed issue and community rating rules prevent insurers from discriminating against uninsured people because of preexisting conditions. These rules create a moral hazard: people will wait until they get sick to buy insurance. (this might be better described as an adverse selection problem) Congress can require them to buy insurance early to prevent gaming the system. (Actually, it exacerbates an already existing problem in all health insurance, because insureds know more about their health condition than insurers).
Why not broccoli? There is no moral hazard or adverse selection problem created when people refuse to buy broccoli. It’s true that buying and eating broccoli might make you healthier, but people don’t wait until they are sick to buy broccoli. That’s because broccoli is not going to do them much good at that point. In this sense, broccoli doesn’t work like health insurance.
Why not cars? Under this principle, Congress can’t make everyone buy a car in order to help the auto industry. There is no moral hazard or adverse selection problem that Congress is responding to that is caused by people strategically waiting to buy cars. Note, by the way, that if fewer people buy cars, the price of cars might go down, not up, as Justice Scalia thought.
Closest analogy: In United States v. Comstock, the Supreme Court held that Congress could create a civil commitment system for mentally ill prisoners following their criminal sentences when no state wanted to take them. Congress had created a situation in which after long prison terms connections to states were attenuated, and no state wanted to risk being stuck with the costs of civil commitment. As a result, Congress could create its own system.
2. The Interstate Externalities Principle. Congress can regulate activities that substantially affect commerce. Under the necesary and proper clause, Congress can also require people to engage in commerce when necessary to prevent spillover effects on states, interstate externalities and solve interstate collective action problems. But Congress can’t require people to engage in commerce if there are no serious interstate externalities or spillover effects, or if Congress is not seriously attempting to solve a collective action problem. Once again, courts can adopt higher or lesser standards of review to prevent sham or pretextual attempts, but even under the strictest standard, the individual mandate is fine.
Explanation: States that adopt guaranteed issue and community ratings rules will become magnets for sick people, driving up rates, and uninsureds may flock to states without individual mandates, further driving up rates in the states they leave. This discourages many states from adopting this combination of reforms. Put differently, states might adopt these rules only if other states did so as well. Only Massachusetts, because of peculiar features of its health care markets, was able to make its reforms work on its own.
The incentive structures just described create a national problem that requires a national solution. Congress had plenty of evidence to this effect; therefore even under a strict standard of review, the mandate is constitutional.
What about broccoli? A broccoli mandate doesn’t work like an insurance mandate, because of the way that insurance works. First, a mandate to buy broccoli is unlikely to cause people to leave Massachusetts in significant numbers. Second, and more importantly, a broccoli mandate won’t make Massachusetts a magnet for broccoli lovers or people who desperately need broccoli. They can buy broccoli in their home states. Broccoli doesn’t work like health insurance because grocers don’t refuse you the right to buy broccoli because of a preexisting condition. On the other hand, insurance is based on risk pools, and so it is a different kind of product.
What this justification most resembles: Social security disability programs, which solve collective action problems between states. By creating a national system of disability insurance, no state becomes a magnet for the disabled and employers don’t leave for states without disability insurance.
3. The “It’s a tax, stupid!” Principle. Congress can regulate economic activities that cumulatively affect interstate commerce. But if Congress wants to regulate inactivity, it must use the taxing power instead. Congress can use its taxing power to give people a choice between engaging in commerce or paying a tax. The rules for the taxing power are well settled since the New Deal. The tax (1) must promote the general welfare, (2) must raise revenue; and (3) and it must not be a criminal penalty in disguise. The individual mandate passes this test with flying colors. The tax was estimated to raise some 4 billion dollars in revenue. In earlier cases, involving taxes on guns and drugs, the Court found that 500 dollars was sufficient.
Justice Ginsburg worried about the revenue question in the oral arguments on Monday. She argued that the individual mandate was designed to give incentives to buy insurance. If it works perfectly, she argued, nobody will pay, so it won’t raise revenue. That argument proves too much– it would also apply to taxes on contraband, drugs and guns, which the Court has previously upheld.
But there’s an even more important response to Ginsburg’s concern. That’s not the way the individual mandate was actually designed. The penalty was not set to ensure total compliance. It was not set to be equivalent to the most expensive health care premium available, but only to the average amount of health care premiums calculated nationally. That means that Congress expected that some people would rather pay the penalty. Congress knew it wouldn’t get 100 percent compliance, and the bill was not intended to ensure 100 percent compliance. This is like a tax on pollution, which allows some people to continue to pollute if it is worth it to them to pay the tax.
Paul Clement argued that the individual mandate is a direct tax, like a head tax, and therefore has to be directly apportioned by state population under Article I, section 9. This is incorrect. Head taxes are taxes that you can’t get out of by anything you do. They just tax you for living. But you can easily get out of the individual mandate. Just buy insurance. The mandate is like a tax on people who don’t invest in solar panels or antipollution devices. Such taxes give people a choice; they won’t get 100 percent compliance, so they raise revenue.
In sum, without giving Congress unlimited powers under the Commerce Clause, the Court can uphold the mandate under the moral hazard/adverse selection theory, the interstate externalities theory, or the “It’s a tax, stupid!” theory. Tony Kennedy, John Roberts, are you listening?
Jack Balkan on Balkanization
For the record, Rush’s main rush involved doctor shopping for Hydrocodone, with a number of Oxycontin and Xanax thrown in for good measure. Not much else is known about his drug use, nor should it be, as the records are protected.
He’s a world class hypocrite when it comes to his views on addiction and got a real easy ride on the prosecutorial side.
Now back to the regularly scheduled rant on broccoli and why Tony Scalia has got a piss poor attitude and doesn’t feel appreciated.
If the mandate were to be upheld the US Federal government would have gone from regulating interstate commerce to regulating commerce within states to regulating activity which may impact commerce to requiring someone to engage in commerce. This last step is too far in my opinion. I don’t think there is any limiting constitutional principle to that. There may be a limiting political principle to it but that’s not the court’s job to rule on that.
But who knows how the Court will rule. It could come back 5-4 or even 6-3 in favor. I am not by any means a conservative but it is way too funny to see so many people on the liberal side getting agitated by the possibility of losing and using phrases like “judicial activism” or “unelected judges” and the like. When courts rule against state level immigration laws or in favor of gay marriage or against attempts to defund Planned Parenthood etc, liberals are only too happy to piously intone about the importance of separation of powers and how critical it is to ensure courts are not carried away by the passions of the day.
Well we can’t have it both ways. Either we accept judicial review or we don’t.
Making someone engage in commerce with a private company when they don’t want to do so is not covered by the Commerce Clause in my opinion. Congress should have just created a public option and taxed everyone. That would have been cheaper and had the added bonus of being (Clarence Thomas not withstanding) completely within the realm of constitutional powers.
Scalia-care is no care. Scalia’s questioning seems to reveal more than legal curiosity about the bill. As was said above, he’s not even trying anymore.
I read in the past few days (and saw the story on Maddow) that 74% of the people polled by in a Bloomberg poll believe the Court will decide the case based on politics. This quote seems to validate the opinion. I would think the nature or validity of the obligation is not central to the case so why bring it up?
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“GENERAL VERRILLI: No. It’s because you’re going — in the health care market, you’re going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get, getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social norms that allow — that — to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.
No one hates Lord Scalia more than I do. However I don’t allow my hatred of the man interfere with my analysis of his arguments.
Simply because a person receives health care it does not necessarily follow that it is also part of commerce. A person may come into this world with the free help of a midwife and leave this world with the aid of a charitable hospice.
The fact remains that the health care legislation commandeers the individual by forcing him to purchase a service as a condition precedent for merely residing lawfully in the United States.
Let’s be clear, the activity here is not health care, it’s the participation in an insurance pool that profits corporations; rather than simply reimbursing the government.
I grew up believing that liberals were the good guys; that so long as your intentions are good you can’t be wrong. How wrong I was. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The dark side of liberal thinking comes into play when the liberal deludes himself into believing that so long as the intention is good, then the rules MUST bend to provide the means. This type of thinking left unchecked would leave us without an exclusionary rule or rules of criminal procedure since the liberal will always ‘know’ in a vigilante way who the guilty really are. Taken to the extreme, this type of thinking leads us down the path to communism and Stalinist like regimes.
The law is not a search for truth, but a search for process. Contrary to liberal thinking here, we do not treat the constitution like a urinal puck simply because we feel we’re on the side of the angels.
Congress has all the power it needs to achieve the same ends for health care reform by adjusting the tax rolls and medicare/medicaid rules toward a single payer system.
The word is federalism people. Please make a note of it and adjust your thinking accordingly.
Posted Tuesday, March 27, 2012 in Reporting by Graham White
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People rally outside the Supreme Court in favor of the Affordable Care Act
SOURCE: Campus Progress / Graham White
The second day of arguments on the Affordable Care Act was marked by demonstrations for women’s rights.
The loudest voices at Tuesday morning’s demonstrations outside the Supreme Court came from those defending women’s rights.
For the second day, hundreds of protestors convened at the Supreme Court building as the highest court in the nation continued to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. But unlike earlier protests, the issue of women’s rights became the focal point of these demonstrations.
Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health each brought scores of supporters from throughout the country to demonstrate in the nation’s capital, supplying them with T-shirts and signs and leading them in chants.
While marching, protestors carried signs that featured messages such as “We Love ObamaCare” and “Protect Women’s Health.” One toddler, who was joining his mother in the demonstration, touted a small sign that read, “Every Mommy Deserves Health Care.”
In between chants, demonstrators indicated they were drawn to the rally to voice their support for the benefits women received as part of the health care reform law.
Indeed, the law eliminates co-payments for the aforementioned preventive services and ensures that those and other basic health services are covered.
“ObamaCare also protects women from insurance discrimination,” noted Veronica Aveis, the Manager of Political Affairs at Planned Parenthood–New York City. “If we don’t keep it, it will be a major setback for women everywhere.”
Aveis, who traveled to the rally from her job in New York, is referring to the fact that before the Affordable Care Act was implemented, it was legal in most states to charge higher premiums to people because of their gender.
But not all of the demonstrators are happy with the changes. Tea Party groups organized a simultaneous counter-protest outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning, though with far fewer supporters. Those who did show up were steadfast in their opposition to all of healthcare reform, even when pressed with the fact that the law makes it significantly easier for women to access crucial preventive health services.
“Nobody had a problem accessing those services before,” said Sylvia Smith, a Tea Party coordinator from Littleton, New Hampshire. “We need to keep fighting this socialism.”
Unfortunately, the comments from Smith and others protesting against the Affordable Care Act reflect a troubling disconnect from reality. Until the legislation was passed, many low-income women didn’t have access to preventative screenings for the top killers of women because they couldn’t afford it. But over the past two years, 20 million women have been able to receive preventive care with no co-pay through the law.
Despite the Tea Party opposition, women’s rights advocates dominated the morning protests with overwhelming numbers. Many of those who demonstrated said they plan to return on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court concludes its hearings on the Affordable Care Act. The court is expected to deliver its ruling in late June.
I submit that there are no actual liberals or conservatives in Washington. They’re all corporatists. As Gore Vidal noted (and I hate to have to agree with Gore Vidal), “There is only one political party in Washington; the Property Party. It has two wings; the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.” Much like Bob, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hates Scalia more than either of us, but I have to agree with his reasoning about the individual mandate. That part of the “Obama-care” proposals has from the start stuck in my craw and for the very reasons that Bob lays out: it is mandating purchasing a for profit corporate provided product instead of using tax dollars to provide universal single payer insurance provision. The later is a good idea for a variety of financial and structural reasons (operational efficiencies, largest possible risk pool, etc.), the former is the equivalent of a corporate protection racket. The only difference in the fascism that both the GOP and DNC are delivering is which suits they serve and in many cases, both parties are serving the same corporate masters. Health care is considered a human right in most of the Western civilized world. But not here. Somebody has to make a buck off the insurance skimming first.
Well, Gene, it looks like the DNC not the RNC serves the women’s groups so that is the side I am on. Do you have a negative opinion of Planned Parenthood, Naral, Now, etc.? There are aligned these days with the democratic party and the GOP has declared war on women’s healthcare.
You know quite well that I’m not a partisan and will remain so no matter if groups with agendas I agree with are or not choose to be partisan. I think both parties suck and for essentially the same reason: they cater to special interests, their own egos and their campaign war chests filled with corporate graft instead of looking out for the best interests of the public. You may have your reasons for being partisan, but they are no more valid than my reasons for being non-partisan. The only reason the DNC is not waging war on women is because unlike the RNC, they didn’t get into political bed with the fundamentalist “Christian” far right. Instead, they got into bed with the insurance industry. That’s a political reality you can take to the bank. After all, they did.
After reading the couplet I hasten to defense.
Broccoli is lovely when eaten lovingly and lightenly cooked
Particularly with rib eye or garlic flavored beef. beef, beef. Guess it is good for saturated fats, that’s why they go well together. Mother Nature’s guidance.
I didn’t say there was no difference. One party promises a form of theocratic corporatist fascism while the other promises a secular form of corporatist fascism, but both are delivering forms of fascism. The Founders would likely be for hanging almost the entire lot of those graft pigs currently on the Hill.
You should also read very carefully what my issue with Obamacare is before proceeding. It’s the individual mandate. Nothing more, nothing less. The rest of it is largely acceptable, but forcing citizens to buy a for-profit product from a corporation (or small group of corporations as it is in this case) is simply wrong as both a matter of Federalism and an exercise of the Commerce Clause.
The health care agenda went way off the rails early on — and lost much attraction after Obama inexplicably (except if you’re a corporatist) abandoned any fight for the public option. Seems like it became mere inside politics from then on. Some good points in the legislation no doubt, but the mandate became the poison pill, rightly so.
A rich, western democracy should be able to do much better. They all do, except the U.S. of course.
Bob, Esq. and Gene,
I understand your Federalism argument and I think Prof. Turley is in agreement with you, if I can remember his earlier articles on the Affordable Care Act. However, I cannot understand why commercial activity at an insurance company or a hospital or a doctor’s office is any less of a measure of commerce. Isn’t health care about 1/6 of our entire economy? The mandate merely brings everyone into the market in order to save money for all. If the mandate alone is deemed unconstitutional, I can live with the rest. However, the Supremes are setting their sights on Medicare and non-mandate issues. I also understand the language deficiency that Prof. Turley spoke about which would allow sections to be removed by the Court without requiring the entire bill to be overturned.
How can a Supreme Court Justice have the balls to ask the SG if he thinks they have to read the entire bill before ruling on its constitutionality of it? If I was in front of a judge that would not read the entire brief or the entire ordinance before ruling, I would still be in contempt for arguing the validity of that approach. It is fundamentally unfair. I had one judge who was going to rule in a hearing without even letting me speak on behalf of my client after the other side had their opportunity and I almost ended up in contempt. I got to argue, but the writing was already on the wall. But I didn’t expect that judge to ever get to the highest judicial post in the land. Scalia also either was too unprepared or too stupid to realize his cornhusker issue never made it into the bill. Since I do not think Scalia is stupid, is he just following orders?
I think the Affordable Care Act could have been much better. Unfortunately, the two major political parties seem to have difficulty working together to write laws that would benefit the 99%. I would have liked to have seen a public option included in the bill. That was not to be. Let’s look at what Senator Olympia Snowe had to do with the exclusion of that option:
Excerpt:
Very grumpy Maine senator and recent quitter Olympia Snowe is not gone yet, sadly. First she must say that the reason why she is quitting politics is because President Obama made her feel rejected and ignored. In an interview with ABC, she scolds the President for being aloof, which he, duh, is, and which everyone else has long gotten over, and say that in her centuries-long reign in legislative land, Obama is the president who spoke with her the least. ABC News claims that “If there were ever a Republican for President Obama to work with, it was Maine Senator Olympia Snowe,” but uh, it turns out that Obama tried a zillion times to get the woman to listen to him, and her response was to act like some kind of perfect moderate Queen of America!
Snowe was obsessed with centrism to the point that she would vote for something, only to turn around and vote against it a day later because it had been changed slightly, as if left, right and center could actually be measured down to 1/16 of an inch, and she just had to follow what the ruler said. Case in point, as the Huffington Post points out, is the healthcare bill. Obama apparently “wooed” Snowe for weeks over the bill. When she objected to the public option clause of the bill, “Democrats removed it.” She then “voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor.” Why? Because things were “moving too fast.” Government decisions moving TOO FAST? This is a problem because…? Anyway, now, somehow this kind of behavior is now being translated into, “Obama never talked to me.”
Excerpt:
The characteristic Snowe episode came during the health care fight. The Obama administration, desperate to win her vote, wooed her with endless meetings and pleas, affording her a once-in-a-generation chance to not only help pass health care reform but make it smarter, more efficient, and more compassionate. Instead, Snowe tormented the administration by dangling an elusive and ever-changing criteria before their noses. She at first centered her objections around the inclusion of a public option. Democrats removed it, and she voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor. Snowe complained that the process was happening too fast, and that it was too partisan, which seemed to be her way of saying she wouldn’t vote for it unless other Republicans joined her.
This may sound sensible, even admirable, if you subscribe to the notion that securing bipartisan support for major bills is inherently valuable. But it’s worth noting that moderates like Snowe and their fans worship bipartisanship for reasons that have nothing to do with good government. A Republican representing a blue state, or a Democrat representing a red state, faces an inherently precarious situation. Often she will find the demands of her party’s national base pitted against those of her home state electorate. Olympia Snowe’s worst nightmare is to have to choose between infuriating Republicans in Washington and moderate voters in Maine. Creating legislation that passes by wide margins is not done out of a desire to bring bills closer into alignment with any abstract standard of good government, but to ensure her vote sits comfortably in the middle of a wide swath of support from both sides. In a farewell op-ed in the Washington Post, Snowe complains that centrism offers no electoral rewards. For her, though, such careful positioning was a matter of political self-preservation.
What do you think the probability is that he (and his usual coterie of right wing corporatist brethren on the Court) are just following orders?
There is far more at stake here than just the ACA.
This case is about the already tattered integrity of the SCOTUS itself.
They are either about to redeem themselves in the eyes of the public or remove any doubt that they are as manifestly politicized and bought off as Congress is at this point.
All three branches of government are failing right now. Congress has been a failure since the repeal of the campaign contributions set forth in FECA. The Presidency has began moving to failure under Reagan and finished the move under Bush II. SCOTUS began failing under Rehnquist, nearly finished the job with Roberts and Citizens United and looks like they could administer the coup de grace on their credibility with the present case. And they are all failing for the same reason. Corporatism, corporate political spending and being staffed by a bunch of narcissists more concerned about their personal checkbook than their duty to the American people.
Gene,
I do think he is following orders. He is beholden to the corporations that the Roberts court is answering to. It was not a coincidence that he used Republican talking points in his comments in open court. I truly think that the Supreme Court has already lost its integrity. They shipped sailed in the Bush v. Gore decision and everything since is just icing on the cake. A corporation can be a person and have more rights than a real person, but health care can’t be mandated. The single payer is my ideal, but the only way this country will ever get there is incrementally. The way Canada got there.
I am no apologist for the Democratic party. I think the Affordable Care Act could have been much better. That said, I think we have to look at the Republican party’s refusal to work with the Democrats and the Obama Administration to write a health care law that would actually have been of great benefit to many Americans and that would have helped to bring down the cost of health care in this country.
Shady_Grady.
I see you don’t bother rebutting the JB blog, but run your own drivel.
As usual, you depend on not meeting any opposition from yourself.
Courageous and cunny person. i say person like in corporate person.
Inanimate but excreting shit.
Rafflaw: “How can a Supreme Court Justice have the balls to ask the SG if he thinks they have to read the entire bill before ruling on its constitutionality of it? …
Scalia also either was too unprepared or too stupid to realize his cornhusker issue never made it into the bill. Since I do not think Scalia is stupid, is he just following orders?”
———
This is not a new phenomenon, how often have we heard the excuse or truth from a politician that they did not read the bill before voting on it? How often does it become apparent in an interview that an elected official simply does not know what is in the law they are attempting to pass or what it will result in? There is no more clear indication that we are in an era that is ruled by ideology and not intellect. I think that they may well be ‘following orders’ but not necessarily at any particularized level, it’s just the ideologically driven nature of politics and the court.
Personally, I think Scalia is dim at best but a bear for ideology. That he questions the need for reading the law before he decides it is just another indication of the complete transition away from reason in favor of ideology. I am becoming convinced that we are in the era of the American dark age.
Actually, wouldn’t a failure to bother to read the bill before ruling on it constitute some kind of negligence? Maybe in a parallel universe but not here, not now.
Excerpt:
If conservative Justice Antonin Scalia hadn’t already made up his mind on the individual mandate before Tuesday’s oral argument, he apparently wanted people in the court to think otherwise.
Scalia aggressively questioned the Obama administration’s lawyer Donald Verrilli on the limits of federal power, and how they might be impacted if the health care law’s requirement to purchase insurance is upheld.
That may not seem like much of a surprise. But Scalia’s opinion in a recent, key case — one that hinged on a similar question of the extent of Congress’ commerce clause power — convinced many health care reform supporters he might be in play.
“If the government can do this,” Scalia asked, “what else can it not do?” He even raised the now-famous specter of a “broccoli mandate.”
Verrilli argued that the mandate is appropriate because everyone is already part of the health insurance market. He argued that it’s there as part of a broader regulatory scheme to ensure that sick, uninsured people don’t pass the costs of their health care onto others.
Scalia didn’t seem to buy it, asking, “Is that a principle basis for distinguishing this from other situations?” He pointed out that the government might then “define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”
“In addition to being necessary, it must also be proper,” he said of the mandate, indicating that he does not believe it’s proper.
Scalia was vocal in needling Verrilli about the constitutionality of the insurance requirement, but was largely silent when attorneys for the 26 Republican-led states challenging it were fielding questions.
Some liberals have held out hope for winning Scalia’s vote to uphold the law, pointing to his decision in the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case for sweeping federal power. If Scalia’s line of questioning is any indication, they shouldn’t hold their breath — he appears to believe the two cases are apples and oranges.
*****
Is The Obama Admin Trying To Box In Scalia On The Health Care Mandate?
Excerpt:
On first blush, it seems like a no-brainer that Antonin Scalia will vote to overturn the health care reform law’s requirement that Americans buy insurance: the Reagan-appointed justice is a staunch conservative who’s beloved by Republicans; for what possible reason could he deliver such a devastating blow to his own side and boost President Obama?
The answer: judicial precedent. His own. And the Obama administration has noticed.
In its brief filed with the Supreme Court Friday, the Justice Department cited no fewer than 10 times the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case, in which Scalia (and Justice Anthony Kennedy) broke with the court’s conservative wing to hand down what scholars viewed as one of the broadest declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause: a 6-3 ruling decreeing that Congress may ban a medical-marijuana patient from growing cannabis for personal use in California where it’s legal.
I guess in the early days government did grant monopolies to run Post Rds.
And the Dutch East India Company had a royal charter.
Have a pool for people who arent covered or just enlarge medicare and allow insurance companies to compete across state lines and offer ala carte plans. And change the focus of insurance to catastrophic coverage, not for going to the doctor for the flu. If the insurance isnt paying, the doctor will probably charge $50 per visit. The savings in paper work filings alone would probably pay for itself.
Back in Madison’s day the idea was for government to protect commerce not destroy it. To husband rather than restrain competition.
The Constitution is almost dead, its death will be the passage of Obama Care. Good intentions usually pave the road to hell.
Gene H
yeah, that’s a position. welcome to it, but it’s refutable. It was the blue dem caucus who sold out, as far as I know. And the insurance companies have not been especially, and would not without Obamacare, women friendly with all their pre-existing conditions and chronic conditions, etc.
So that choice is like that behind all partisanship. a person choosing from the standpoint of what serves them best. And for now, it is the dems who have their support.
Will women cleanse our political system, well, if men will too. And if it is possible with minds like yours to help.
I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Also, a bit of research would reveal that condemning both major political parties in this country is not a new stance for me. I’ve never been a partisan. I’m pretty sure I’ve said words to the effect of “they both suck” on more than one occasion. Again though, my issue with the ACA is not in toto, but in specific with the individual mandate. I thought it was a bad and improper idea the first time I heard it, I think it’s a bad and improper idea now. It’s not about health care. It’s about propping up the for-profit health care insurance industry. A industry which is proven to not be a value add to health care but rather a systemic parasite that draws off dollars that could be spent on patient care for things like executive perks and bonuses, ridiculous executive salaries that are way out of proportion with the job these people actually do, and a profit model that is based on denial of coverage.
As for Obama and his folding, said to be done (above) as an accomodation to Snowe, let us look at his total record.
Anybody got a count on how many things he has conceded with OUT getting anything in return. I have lost count—-actually given up hoping.
How many remember, if you saw it. the very junior press guy who asked O. why he did not use his approval to extending the Bush tax cut to get a deal on (Obamacare or XXX) in return. O stalled for a restatement, which was stupid, but that’s par for his on his feet thinking then. And then ignored the replay.
Are you agreed he could have done better. But then we let him off the hook, just as the veteran WH reporters did then.
As long as he plays fumble- Charlie for the Repugs, he’ll be not much good.
As for GeneH, nihilism never got us out of the dark ages either. So what else do you propose?
And ego too on some plane, but it comes down to the same thing. I mean how many diamonds can your wife wear without looking like a hooker who just came in to rest her feet?
And how many meals can you eat without dying as many kings did in not so ancient times. It’s ego. Mine is bigger than yours.
When will we realize that corporations buy votes, they cannot vote.
And 350 millon with 10 bucks to donate could maybe buy a clean President.
Find him, support his candidacy, and vote for his platform. And all the congressmen who sign HIS pledge.
How can you be so sure that this bill will lower healthcare costs if you dont understand the mechanics of pricing or what effects the governments previous actions have already had on them?
And a more trivial follow up: Considering that we have already had a case of a government agent confiscating a 4 year old’s lunch on the grounds that it was not “nutritious” enough, why is it such a ridiculous notion that the government will begin to regulate everyone’s dietary consumption if you allow it to regulate everyone’s healthcare?
Did everyone miss what they did to tobacco? How long until we see pictures of leftover liposuction goo ontop of big mac boxes?
Regardless of any relevance to the actual legal merits of obamacare why are you deluding yourself into thinking that those in power do not want to control that part of your life?
Idealistst707.. I wish there were a way I could type more slowly so that you might understand but unfortunately there is not.
Pity.
Moral hazard is not a recognized constitutional limiting principle. The federal government, no matter how much you may cry about it, is supposed to have enumerated limited powers. Powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are to be retained by the states or people.
Just because something seems like a good idea doesn’t mean it’s constitutional, no matter how many times supporters stamp their feet and whine.
Saying that “not” doing something is economic activity which has an impact on interstate commerce and therefore you may be required to do something is asinine. And with any luck, in June the Supreme Court will rule just that. It’s not just about health care but about the future limitations on federal power. But based on your previous writings, I doubt you will be able to understand that.
“How can you be so sure that this bill will lower healthcare costs if you dont understand the mechanics of pricing or what effects the governments previous actions have already had on them?”
I think you’ve inferred things from my post that I never stated or implied. This post isn’t about the Affordable Care Act lowering healthcare costs. If you had read all of my comments, you would have known that I think we could have gotten a much better ACA. I would like to see the justices of the Supreme Court rule on the constitutionality of the law based upon their best legal judgment and not their ideology. I get concerned that won’t happen when I hear an associate justice who appears to be using right-wing talking points in his arguments.
We have a guy who wrote a very interesting book on guruism and his own search in India.
He got kudos and then followed it up with a more scholarly work on Gandhi.
From Gujarat to his death.
But it was such a bore, I hopped off in the middle of the Salt March.
Please tell me more of your vision of the American Salt March.
And when and if you want to amuse yourself with rulers, humanity. progress, dictators who are aware who are the taxable and the concessions which must be made to them, and edicts which have stood in monuments since 300 BC (even in Kandahar), then read this book. (You may have already)
India: A History by John Keay, Grove Press, (c) 2000
One idea emerges: Technology is not the measure of man or society.
Neither is power or riches.
Rafflaw: “I cannot understand why commercial activity at an insurance company or a hospital or a doctor’s office is any less of a measure of commerce. Isn’t health care about 1/6 of our entire economy? The mandate merely brings everyone into the market in order to save money for all.”
That’s just the problem; bringing people into commerce and thence regulating them nunc pro tunc.
It’s an exercise of power beyond right which no one has a right to. John Locke called that something….
Who cares where he got his talking points from? You are saying his objections of government telling us what we can and cannot eat are absurd, yet there have already been cases of this abuse of power. So what makes it so absurd to bring it up?
Shady_Grady,
As before, you are like a corporate person still excreting shit which you have ingested, completely undigested. You sound like Scalia with his sound bites he loaned to show his party loyalty. Where do you get your crap.?
You as before don’t respond to others points but excrete shit stored someplace in your computer disc. Are kin with a computer program. You sound like it. One file for insults, one for ideological crap, nothing is in the least living, it’s all reactively steered. Goddag Yxskaft. Translate that and chew it. .
The broccoli argument brings the murky problem of abusing the commerce clause as a gateway to unlimited power into specific relief.
Whether it began as a partisan talking point or not bears no relevance to the validity of the argument itself.
All you’ve done is poison the well here; detracting attention away from the issue of ignoring the concepts of specifically enumerated powers & federalism, i.e. the foundation of our republic, and distracting everyone with the background noise of talking points.
Unhooking Health Care & Employment, would lead to the Biggest Boom in Small Business & Self Employment seen since the days of Expansion. With that expense out of the way, good ideas & willingness to Work would have a Chance.
No longer having to be a Wage Slave to a Corporation so Your Family would have their Health covered might be a Freeing Benefit Too.
Single Payer = Sense & Freedom & security.
“Who cares where he got his talking points from? You are saying his objections of government telling us what we can and cannot eat are absurd, yet there have already been cases of this abuse of power. So what makes it so absurd to bring it up?”
I care.I didn’t say it was absurd. I said it concerned me. I believe that justices of the Supreme Court should give thoughtful consideration to the arguments they make in such important hearings. I don’t think they should be taking talking points from party spokespersons/strategists and media personalities. Let them speak for themselves and not echo the thoughts, beliefs, or arguments of others.
One of the fascinating things about the constitutional battle of the coming week is how much argument and agitation is going on outside the Court—and how disconnected much of it is with anything going on inside the Court. And yet there are many subtle connections between the popular and judicial conversations. I wonder, for instance, whether part of the reason courts evaluating the ACA have talked so much about the commerce power, and so little about the power to tax (which to my mind is at least as strong an argument for the ACA’s constitutionality), has to do with the fact that the public, political battle about the ACA has been joined in terms of commerce, not taxation.
Outside the courts, one huge argument is if the government can make you buy insurance, can it make you eat broccoli? This argument seems to have a lot of rhetorical bite. But the most straightforward response is the question in the title of this post. Can your state government make you eat broccoli? If the answer is no, as it surely is, then there must be some reason, other than limits on federal power, why that is so. The most likely reason is that states force-feeding us vegetables would violate fundamental liberty interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
In other words, the “broccoli argument” does its rhetorical work by turning a question of Congressional power into a question of individual liberty. And that, in microcosm, is what the entire public debate about the health care law is about, and why that public debate differs so much from the debate at the Court. Few people other than Mitt Romney really believe that it is perfectly fine for states to pass an individual mandate, yet unconstitutional for Congress to do so. That position—pure federalism, drained of all libertarian talk of personal freedom—simply does not have the political heft it needs in order to be a winning argument. And so opponents of the ACA marry federalism to individual liberty in a way that leaves them in the odd position of suggesting that if Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to pass the individual mandate, then it could make you eat broccoli… in which case, Texas could pass a statute and force me to eat broccoli right now.
One of the things I will be watching for this week is the degree to which any Justices who are skeptical of the ACA find ways to make their arguments resonate with the arguments against the law out in the public sphere—which means getting beyond commerce and enumerated powers and speaking in terms of individual liberty.
BobEsq,
Talking of distractions. Are you ignoring Scalias previous stand on Congress’ right to overrule California on medical use of marijuana.
You bring up ancient arguments of federalism and the 10th amendment as though thay have not been long abandoned by Congress since the abandonment of requiring all principles to be enumerated only as amendments.
And then came the New Deal. And then came……but you know if far better than I. You just ignore the situation and call for federalism until when the next bill impinging on the rights of others suits your tastes. Be honest. Fess up.
Not all lawyers agree with your position on the healthcare mandate and the commerce clause. In addition, I think the broccoli analogy was not a very good one. If Justice Scalia is as brilliant as some say, one would think that he could have come up with a better and more thoughtful comparison…and not have used some right-wing talking point.
I’d rather have a Supreme Court use a talking point as part of a RELEVANT ARGUMENT, to wit broccoli illustrating the limitless power problem, as opposed to someone like Rehnquist appealing to song and poem in his opinion as to why it’s wrong to burn the American flag (See Rehnquist dissent in Texas v. Johnson).
You are poisoning the well. Your argument is Scalia is wrong because he used a talking point used by conservative pundits.
In lieu of addressing the argument, you would have your audience dismiss it in toto because the speaker is somehow tainted by the talking point. However, the analogy holds. As I stated before, the ACA commandeers the individual by forcing him to purchase a service as a condition precedent for merely residing lawfully in the United States. The broccoli comment clarifies the point that there is no limit to the power that could be exercised by so blatantly ignoring the principles of separation of powers & federalism.
“If Justice Scalia is as brilliant as some say, one would think that he could have come up with a better and more thoughtful comparison…and not have used some right-wing talking point.”
Again, I hate Scalia but I don’t allow my hatred of him interfere with my analysis of his arguments. The mere fact that he borrowed from a particular talking point bears no relevance to the validity of the argument he made. Scalia doesn’t need to be more brilliant; you need to be more wise — i.e. focused on the argument itself.
Excerpt;
The fate of universal healthcare coverage that the United States has been trying to achieve for over 100 years may boil down to broccoli.
The broccoli argument is simple and was frequently referred to in the recent Supreme Court arguments: If the government can require people to buy health insurance, why couldn’t it require people to buy broccoli, which also enhances people’s health? This question, at the heart of the conservative objection to the individual mandate to buy health insurance, illustrates the so-called limiting principle the Supreme Court must rule on: Under the Commerce Clause, does Congress have the constitutional power to compel people to act, in ways they might object to, when their inaction can harm others?
The High Court never got clear on why health insurance is not like broccoli and can thus be constitutionally regulated. There are two important differences that inform the principle for limiting congressional power to compel people to purchase goods and services.
First, as George H.W. Bush made quite clear, you need never eat broccoli. But unless you are a hermit in Alaska, you will use healthcare at some point in your life. Today, it is estimated that the uninsured use more than $116 billion in healthcare services each year. When they will need healthcare is unpredictable. If they are lucky – only at the end of their life. If they are unlucky, an accident, unplanned pregnancy or cancer diagnosis may compel an earlier need for a physician, hospital services, or both. What happens if they don’t have health insurance? Thankfully, doctors and hospitals don’t turn them away when they most need care. They give them the tests and treatments they need – at least to get over the emergency or acute episode. Thus, while it is feasible that you may never be engaged in the broccoli market, at some point, everyone – including the uninsured – will be engaged in the healthcare market.
Why couldn’t we let people voluntarily decide whether they want health insurance or not, instead of compelling them to buy the insurance with the mandate?
Unlike broccoli, when some people don’t participate in the health insurance market – 50 million people in 2009 – there are direct consequences for the insured who are participating. The costs of caring for the uninsured are shoved onto the rest of us through higher insurance premiums or taxes that hospitals, insurers and doctors must charge to recoup the costs of uncompensated care.
Voluntary health insurance exchanges piloted in several states without mandates all failed because healthy people opted out. Those who are relatively healthy figure the cost of insurance is too high, that they are subsidizing insurance premiums for sicker people and they probably (it is a risk) won’t need the insurance because they are healthy. When some healthy people stop buying coverage, the premium goes up for the remaining slightly sicker people. Then, as premiums go up, more and more healthy people drop out, creating an inevitable downward spiral. This is cost-shifting from the uninsured to the insured, and it is true not just in theory, but in practice. We have tried many such exchanges, and they have all failed. Only the Massachusetts exchange has worked because of its mandate requiring healthy, as well as sicker, people to buy insurance.
The broccoli situation is entirely different. At the supermarket, you cannot get the person behind you to pay for your broccoli. If you don’t pay for broccoli, you don’t get it. Unless you steal the broccoli, you are not influencing the market by not buying it. And unlike healthcare, there is no cost-shifting in the broccoli market. If you don’t buy any broccoli, the price of broccoli for me is the same. Indeed you might lower my price, because demand for the product is lower.
Non-participation in the healthcare market has additional, more far-reaching effects. The market for health insurance is both complex and very fragile. If people only bought health insurance when they were sick, there would be no market. There would be no reason for insurance – you would just pay the doctor and hospital bills on an as-needed basis. The only way we can have a health insurance market, where we pay a set amount but get covered when we need services – is to have a diverse risk pool that includes healthy people, as well as sick people. It is important to notice that in this case, opting out of the market for insurance – inaction – has a profound effect on the market. It is not neutral. It leads to collapse of the market.
Thus, Congress decided to create a broad risk pool by requiring people who did not get their insurance through their employer – or through Medicare or Medicaid – to buy coverage through the exchange. Large employers understand the efficiency of this and basically create these broad risk pools by combining all their employees and insuring them together. That is why they get insurance at lower rates, typically, than small businesses or single individuals.
Again, broccoli is very different. The voluntary broccoli market works just fine today. If people voluntarily do not participate in the broccoli market, it will not collapse. Congress does not need to require people to buy it for the broccoli market to function. More important, unlike healthcare, no one needs broccoli. We all can live just fine without it, as if it never existed. There is a need for a health insurance market – we would all be worse off without it.
Will a Tea Party Supreme Court guarantee Obama a second term?
The court’s conservative wing appears ready to engage in some despicable judicial activism on ObamaCare. Politically, at least, the justices are doing Obama a favor
posted on March 30, 2012, at 9:45 A
Recall the scorn toward health reform dripping from the lips of Injustice Antonin Scalia. Or think of the tight-lipped Clarence Thomas, who could send a mannequin to sit in his place at the court’s oral arguments for all the difference his brooding presence makes. Along with the more plausibly judicious Samuel Alito, he too had more than likely made his decision. And so on the nation’s highest court, satire replaced stare decisis in a slightly altered version of the Red Queen’s jurisprudence in Alice in Wonderland: First the verdict, then the trial.
Some observers, and administration officials, hold out hope that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy will decide to save health reform from the revanchist claims of right-wing constitutionalism. I’m pessimistic because I lived through Bush v. Gore, when the court acted like a political ward committee, stopping the vote count in Florida to hand the presidency to George W. Bush by the margin of a single judicial vote.
A politically infected court could produce a politically unexpected result, strengthening Obama and weakening Romney and the Republicans.
Now comes the historic decision on health reform — which could reach far beyond the case to fray the whole fabric of progress in modern America. To overturn the individual mandate, to throw out all or most of the rest of the law, would be an act of naked judicial activism, which conservatives profess to despise. In truth, though, they practice it vigorously, in barely concealed disguise, when it advances their own ends. Depending on the “reasoning” rationalized by five horsemen of the judicial right, they could jeopardize other basic protections — for example, the prohibition against segregation at distinctly local enterprises like lunch counters, a prohibition that depends on a generous and long-prevailing view of federal regulation of interstate commerce. R. Schrum The Week
“You are poisoning the well. Your argument is Scalia is wrong because he used a talking point used by conservative pundits.”
My point in writing this post was to express my opinion: Scalia was wrong TO use conservative talking points. I also think the broccoli analogy is definitely a poor one. I had expected better from him.
FYI: I have mixed feelings about the Affordable Care Act. I think there are some very good things in it. Unfortunately, I don’t think the ACA is what it could and should have been because of politicking–on both sides of the Congressional aisle. I had hoped that there would have been a public option included in the ACA. I don’t think this country is ready for single-payer.
Gene, To get back to your earlier comments about the war on women and the democrats. If one goes to a democratic convention, one could see that the make-up of the delegates would preclude even considering a party platform that would include an anti abortion, anti-contraception. anti-equal rights platform. The rooms are full of feminists both men and women, people of color, gay rights activists and labor organizers. And that’s even it Texas. Now, on the other side the white christians pour out of the bible churches to attend the republican conventions.
“Off the top of my head, the war on drugs seems a readily available example of government overreach into the private decisions of individuals regarding what they can or cannot do with their own bodies.”
I’m for the legalization of marijuana–and prostitution. I think it might cut down on crime…and to fewer people being incarcerated.
How do you feel about the anti-woman legislation–ultrasound bills, etc.–being proposed and voted upon in state legislatures? How about DOMA? What do you think about single-payer health insurance?
I asked the question because the march was a revolt against the British tax on salt. The comparison seemed to be a poor choice for someone who is a proponent of higher taxes and government suppression of the citizenry through force.
This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the US Supreme Court debating economics. They called it a discussion about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but it was more economic than legal. They spent an enormous amount of time on markets for health insurance and food (broccoli, to be specific); they spent little time analyzing precedent. Between the 9 justices and the 7 lawyers, there were 16 people who took part in the debate. As best as I can tell, not one of them had any training in economics.
As a professor of economics, I can say without hesitation that the Supreme Court failed its oral exam. For the sake of patients and physicians, I hope they do better on the final.
The first mistake the Supreme Court made was to try to make a distinction between taxes and mandates. Consider 2 ways of achieving universal health insurance coverage: telling people they must buy insurance or instituting a $10 million annual tax on people who choose not to be covered. Does anyone doubt that the substantive effect of these 2 policies would be the same? Yet most of the justices were at pains to distinguish between them. All agreed that the second of these is constitutional; a number of the lawyers suggested that the first was not.
But they got it wrong: Economics 101 teaches us that anything one can do with a mandate can be done with a tax as well. Indeed, the argument the lawyers were making is equivalent to saying that single-payer health care is perfectly fine (because it is financed by a tax) but universal private coverage is not (because it’s a mandate to buy private insurance). If that is the only way to guarantee universal insurance coverage, the ranks of the single-payer community will swell.
This fuzzy distinction led to serious problems. The government is “hands-off” about requiring people to buy broccoli, it was asserted, so what right does the government have to compel people to buy health insurance? In fact, the government is hands-off about neither health insurance nor broccoli. We subsidize agriculture, as we subsidize medical research. We regulate supermarkets, as we regulate hospitals—and so on. Government involvement in different industries is demarcated in shades of gray, not black and white.
Once it was decided that health care had to be special to merit a mandate, the court then spent an enormous amount of time figuring out if it is indeed special. Here, they obviously missed the relevant lecture in Economics 101. Every economics textbook will tell you why government intervention in health care is particularly warranted: The decision of some people not to buy coverage ripples throughout the economy; these ripple effects (technically, they are called externalities) need to be addressed, and the ACA does that. Insurers dump people or charge them more when they become sick? Tell them they can’t do that. People rely on the largesse of strangers when they get sick? Have them pay in advance so that doesn’t happen. Use subsidies so that everyone can afford coverage, and if you really want to be sure that people are covered, mandate that they buy insurance.
This is not an area of great economic disagreement. Every economics textbook agrees with this set of solutions, as was pointed out in several briefs to the Court (including one I participated in).
Without knowing these facts, you cannot pass introductory economics—but apparently you can be a US Supreme Court justice. Thus, Justice Scalia asserted that the problem was of Congress’s making because it wanted to mess around with rates for the healthy and the sick (wrong: Congress was responding to a sick market, not creating a sick market). Justice Alito couldn’t see the difference between health insurance and burial insurance (lack of burial insurance doesn’t impose costs on others the way lack of health insurance does, and insurance markets for burial insurance work just fine). And Justice Roberts asserted that deciding not to purchase health insurance but relying on strangers instead is somehow less of a decision than deciding to purchase health insurance in the first place (got it?).
Follow this logic, and the destination is clear: we are not a society, but a collection of individuals. Don’t tell insurers to pool the healthy and sick; that is too dicey. Don’t worry about uncompensated care; it’s our constitutionally given right to pass on our costs to others.
The unspoken law in the Supreme Court hearing was the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). That act, which passed with little debate and was signed by President Reagan, mandates that hospitals that accept Medicare stabilize patients who come to their emergency rooms with emergency conditions, even if the patient cannot pay for the care he or she needs. EMTALA was built on previous state laws and centuries of experience with physicians acting as moral actors, not just market participants out to make a buck.
The dissonance between this law and the spirit of the Supreme Court hearing is jarring. If we don’t think it’s a social obligation to create a health care system, what is the rationale for making providers bear the burden of the uninsured after they get sick?
Actually, the mandate discussion did strike a chord—it reminded me of the recent legislative debates about abortion and contraception. A few weeks ago, the governor of Virginia announced his medical view about whether a transvaginal ultrasound was an appropriate procedure to require of a woman considering an abortion. Around the same time, the Senate voted on whether employers should be able to selectively decide that women do not have the right to contraception on equal terms with other medical services. Now, we have the Supreme Court discussing the finer points of economics. This much we have learned: politicians are terrible physicians and awful economists.
People with powerful positions in government sometimes wonder why they are held in such low esteem. Perhaps it would be better if they left the doctoring to doctors and economics to economists. Having untrained people messing in areas where knowledge is essential is not a formula for doing good.
“Bron, so You Like the Wage Slave system?
Wal-Mart doesn’t offer many employees Health Insurance.”
I dropped out long ago, most corporations suck. And they suck the life out of you. But socialism also sucks the life out of people. Not many places it really works, usually small countries in northern Europe.
What we need to do is take the government out of the economy and free up the imagination and ingenuity of the American people so that we can take care of ourselves.
When labor is scarce it writes its own ticket. Labor is usually scarce when there is a good economy. Prosperity ends wage slavery, wealth eliminates poverty.
I think some people have misconstrued my post. I didn’t write about my support of the ACA–but about Justice Scalia’s use of right-wing talking points in his arguments. The Affordable Care Act could have been so much better…could have helped to bring down insurance costs. Unfortunately, Washington has become so politicized and the relationship between Republicans and Democrats so acrimonious that little that is good for the people/99% gets accomplished there.
I’ll accept critiques of logic from you the day you demonstrate you can properly and consistently apply the tool. However, since you just demonstrated that cannot even distinguish an example from a comparison, I think that I’ll be over here not holding my breath. That and you’ve demonstrated that you have no problem with an insurance executive having power over somebody’s health care because they’re making a profit whereas a government single payer system would not face that constraint. A constraint, by the way, that operates against the best interests of the patient because paying for care cuts into said executive’s profit margin.
Bob,
I would expect a Supreme Court to use its own words and actually read the bill that they are discussing. No matter how long the bill is. It is also interesting that the individual mandate was not a constitutional problem until a Democratic President employed it.
Bron, Hows the weather on that island you raised yourself on?
Watching the water rise?
When society is what makes you sick, does not society hold some responsibility for its effects?
Unfortunately, Canadians are prone to short-sighted Greed too, but They are waking up, as are citizens of my good ol USA.
Elaine, This court became politicized in 2000 and continued on through Citizens United. It is really not that surprising. One would hope for something better in the opinions than we got with Scalia’s Limbaugh imitation but I am not holding my breath. Don’t get intimidated by lawyers that neither practice constitutional or even healthcare law or in some cases they do not practice at all. They only are rendering their opinions.
That was exactly what Bob was trying to say….. I think….. Just because Scalia is a pundit for the right and is using the grotto speak…. We can still focus on his lack of judicial ethic as a starting point…..
Bob wrote;
“In lieu of addressing the argument, you would have your audience dismiss it in toto because the speaker is somehow tainted by the talking point. However, the analogy holds. As I stated before, the ACA commandeers the individual by forcing him to purchase a service as a condition precedent for merely residing lawfully in the United States. The broccoli comment clarifies the point that there is no limit to the power that could be exercised by so blatantly ignoring the principles of separation of powers & federalism.”
What argument is Bob referring to? The argument about the mandate’s constitutionality? That wasn’t the point of my post. I was attempting to shed light on Scalia’s use of right-wing talking points. I’m not allowed to do that? Another thing: I happen to disagree with Bob regarding the broccoli analogy.
“The moral outrage that the law has provoked is weird. It’s a tyrannical intrusion on your liberty if government makes you pay for health insurance before you get sick and demand treatment! But if millions of people die from preventable diseases, or are bankrupted by medical expenses, no problemo. Libertarians focus obsessively on threats to liberty from the state, but there are lots of other things that threaten your ability to live as you like. Getting cancer and not being able to afford chemotherapy, for instance. (No, you can’t get that at the emergency room.)” Prof. Koppelman
I submit that there are no actual liberals or conservatives in Washington. They’re all corporatists. … Fuck ‘em … A pox upon all of their houses.
========================================
I love clarity.
If the government cannot provide medical care for me then why can it provide medical care for its employees, like Scalia? I would live a Congressman to introduce a bill to eliminate Scalia’s health care along with all federal employees health care paid for with my dimes. This would then put us all on a level playing field. When Scalia has to pay for his own oxycotton then he might think about the rest of us.
Scalia is a mediocre hack and a perfect example of the Emperor who thinks he’s richly clad in stunning robes but is, in all actuality, naked.
Had he addressed the matter in the manner Bob, Esq used in his post on March 31, 2012 at 3:39 pm then we could have some confidence that a real understanding was going to be applied by Scalia to this important issue. Instead he chose to cheapen the whole process with his purely political broccoli talking point. The goof ball couldn’t even come up with an original quip. (Probably he was hoping to get recognized by Colbert at the next White House Correspondents’ Dinner)
Bob’s analysis is 100% correct and we need to keep throwing that at our elected officials in Congress:
“Congress has all the power it needs to achieve the same ends for health care reform by adjusting the tax rolls and medicare/medicaid rules toward a single payer system.
The word is federalism people. Please make a note of it and adjust your thinking accordingly.”
Being on vacation I’m not able to comment much.
Elaine’s work on this post was excellent in its depth. Bob and Gene’s arguments are persuasive.
Single payer is the Constitutional way to go. The fear of putting huge insurance companies out of business is too great for those who have bought into the current counter-factual concept of capitalism. Mandating people to utilize private insurance, without offering a governmental alternative does seem like it is going beyond the limits of legality. Those lobbying dollars just make cowards of all politicians.
Elaine is not a lawyer. Her message was quite clear. She is not the one who cheapened the argument … Scalia did. She simply told us about it.
You took the opportunity to explain exactly what the issue is and why, Constitutionally, it is so important. You did it with a clarity and brevity that we non-lawyers could easily grasp and it is important that we do so.
No, I’m not a lawyer. I wasn’t arguing for or against the individual mandate in the ACA–just bringing up a concern I have about one of our Supreme Court justices. I didn’t think I was poisoning the well. Some people may think it unimportant where the justices get ideas and talking points for their arguments. I’m not one of those people.
Excerpt:
For anyone who still thought legal conservatives are dedicated to judicial restraint, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the health care case should put that idea to rest. There has been no court less restrained in signaling its willingness to replace law made by Congress with law made by justices.
This should not be surprising. Republican administrations, spurred by conservative interest groups since the 1980s, handpicked each of the conservative justices to reshape or strike down law that fails to reflect conservative political ideology.
When Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were selected by the Reagan administration, the goal was to choose judges who would be eager to undo liberal precedents. By the time John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr. were selected in the second Bush administration, judicial “restraint” was no longer an aim among conservatives. They were chosen because their professional records showed that they would advance a political ideology that limits government and promotes market freedoms, with less regard to the general welfare.
There is an enormous distinction to be made between the approaches of the Roberts court and the Warren court, which conservatives have long railed against for being an activist court. For one thing, Republican-appointed justices who led that court, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan Jr., were not selected to effect constitutional change as part of their own political agenda.
During an era of major social tumult, when the public’s attitudes about racial equality, fairness in the workings of democracy and the dignity of the individual proved incompatible with old precedents, those centrists led the court to take new positions in carrying out democratic principles. Yet they were extremely mindful of the need to maintain the court’s legitimacy, and sought unanimity in major rulings. Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 landmark case that said states are bound by Supreme Court rulings, was unanimous. So was Katzenbach v. McClung, the 1964 case upholding the constitutionality of parts of the Civil Rights Act under the commerce clause.
Second an article by Walter Dellinger (who served as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and acting solicitor general from 1993-1997; and filed a brief on behalf of the Senate and House Democratic leadership defending the ACA) “Five myths about the health-care law.”
“I’m for the legalization of marijuana–and prostitution. I think it might cut down on crime…and to fewer people being incarcerated.”
Im for going much farther and legalizing any chemical you wish to put into your own body. As for crime and incarcerating rates, thats not a might. An overwhelming majority of the people who are incarcerated are nonviolent drug offenders.
Not only that but you instantly remove the primary aspect that defines the illicit drug trade right now, violence. I could write you a paper on why legalization either drastically reduces or outright eliminates the problem of drugs
“How do you feel about the anti-woman legislation–ultrasound bills, etc.–being proposed and voted upon in state legislatures?”
I see them in the same light i see the extreme labeling of cigarette packs. Its a behavior they want to control but lack the support to ban it outright, so we end up with these ridiculous half measures, where we pretend we arent trying to control you but we’ll see what we get away with to influence your decision.
“How about DOMA?”
HAHA i forgot they named it that. I think straight people have done plenty to tarnish the “sanctity” of marriage. Britney spears was married for what, a day? Kim kardashians marriage lasted all of 3 months? Being afraid that gay marriage will affect your relationship, says more about your relationship than it does about gay people.
“What do you think about single-payer health insurance?”
I think its a terrible idea, especially as I said, if you put the government in charge of healthcare all objections to legalizing drugs becomes moot, but at this point id rather be discussing the merits and failure of that instead of this legal rube goldberg machine we’ve set in motion.
Scalia’s attempt to draw a credible comparison falls quite short. Certainly, eating broccoli is a healthier choice than a bag of chips, but the ACA is not concerned with whether one eats healthfully. It deals with who pays for medical services whether one eats healthfully or not, has a traffic accident or develops a cancer. Apparently, in Scalia’s world it’s Constitutional for me to continue paying the bill for an uninsured’s poor eating habits AND for the medical care for those who do eat healthfully, but who have some other condition, illness or accident but who has no insurance coverage. On my list of things I truly despise, Scalia ranks right near the top—–quite close to broccoli.
I kinda hope the ACA is struck down. This country needs healthcare reform, not health insurance reform. True healthcare reform will get rid of health insurance. The ACA is a barrier to true healthcare reform.
rafflaw, Single payer is clearly not going to happen. Not even one republican is for it. Meanwhile we have 37 million uninsured people that have to go to the ER for healthcare. If one of them gets cancer, the ER does not provide chemo and they are left to die.
For anyone who still thought legal conservatives are dedicated to judicial restraint, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the health care case should put that idea to rest. There has been no court less restrained in signaling its willingness to replace law made by Congress with law made by justices.
This should not be surprising. Republican administrations, spurred by conservative interest groups since the 1980s, handpicked each of the conservative justices to reshape or strike down law that fails to reflect conservative political ideology.
When Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were selected by the Reagan administration, the goal was to choose judges who would be eager to undo liberal precedents. By the time John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr. were selected in the second Bush administration, judicial “restraint” was no longer an aim among conservatives. They were chosen because their professional records showed that they would advance a political ideology that limits government and promotes market freedoms, with less regard to the general welfare.
There is an enormous distinction to be made between the approaches of the Roberts court and the Warren court, which conservatives have long railed against for being an activist court. For one thing, Republican-appointed justices who led that court, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan Jr., were not selected to effect constitutional change as part of their own political agenda.
During an era of major social tumult, when the public’s attitudes about racial equality, fairness in the workings of democracy and the dignity of the individual proved incompatible with old precedents, those centrists led the court to take new positions in carrying out democratic principles. Yet they were extremely mindful of the need to maintain the court’s legitimacy, and sought unanimity in major rulings. Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 landmark case that said states are bound by Supreme Court rulings, was unanimous. So was Katzenbach v. McClung, the 1964 case upholding the constitutionality of parts of the Civil Rights Act under the commerce clause.
The four moderates on the court have a leftish bent, but they see their role as stewards of the law, balancing the responsibility to enforce the Constitution through judicial review against the duty to show deference to the will of the political branches. In that respect, they and the conservatives seem to be following entirely different rules.
That difference is playing out in the health care case. Established precedents support broad authority for Congress to regulate national commerce, and the health care market is unquestionably national in scope. Yet to Justice Kennedy the mandate requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance represents “a step beyond what our cases have allowed, the affirmative duty to act, to go into commerce.” To Justice Stephen Breyer, it’s clear that “if there are substantial effects on interstate commerce, Congress can act.”
Likewise, Justice Scalia’s willingness to delve into health care politics seems utterly alien to his moderate colleagues. On the question of what would happen if the mandate were struck down, Justice Scalia launched into a senatorial vote count: “You can’t repeal the rest of the act because you’re not going to get 60 votes in the Senate to repeal the rest.” Justice Breyer, by contrast, said firmly: “I would stay out of politics. That’s for Congress; not us.”
If the conservatives decide that they can sidestep the Constitution to negate Congress’s choices on crucial national policies, the court’s legitimacy — and the millions of Americans who don’t have insurance — will pay a very heavy price. Chief Justice Roberts has the opportunity to avoid this disastrous outcome by forging even a narrow ruling to uphold the mandate and the rest of the law. A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law. And if that happens along party lines, with five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.
NYT editorial
The opponents’ Commerce Clause argument doesn’t pass the smell test. Health-care accounts for about 17 percent of the national economy, and virtually everyone needs it at some point. Regulating commerce “among the several States” is among the “enumerated powers” that the Constitution gives Congress. I can’t say it better than legal scholar Charles Fried, solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan, did last week: “Health care is interstate commerce. Is this a regulation of it? Yes. End of story.”
“Congress isn’t forcing people into that market to regulate them,” Fried told the Washington Post, rejecting as “a canard” that key framing by Obamacare opponents. “I was astonished to hear it coming out of the mouths of the people on that bench.”
When he took over the case for Obamacare’s opponents, Paul D. Clement, another former solicitor general, wisely ditched the hair-splitting distinction the law’s foes first tried to make between regulating activity and inactivity. But the new framing – that Congress is wrongly using the individual mandate “to create commerce” – is only slightly less artificial.
The truth is, we’re all “in the health care market,” simply because life is fragile and unpredictable. Young and healthy as you are, you can arrive at a hospital unconscious after getting hit by a bus. Which brings us to …
No, it’s not like broccoli, or cellphones, or burial insurance. My not buying a cellphone generally doesn’t raise the cost for everybody else. Burials can be pricey, but keeping people alive is what can cost millions. The price of a commodity like broccoli will likely rise if more people buy it, not fall, and people can live without it. Above all, none of those markets is subject to massive cost-shifting.
Death panels. Remember this, the most famous canard of the long debate over Obamacare – the claim that a new, 15-member Medicare board charged with finding ways to save money without harming coverage or care would somehow send the old and disabled to their deaths?
Well, here’s the real irony: If a majority of the Supreme Court throws out Obamacare, the high court itself may deserve that title.
For all its faults, Obamacare was Congress’ best attempt to provide quality medical insurance to tens of millions of uninsured Americans – a man-made malady that, according to a 2009 Harvard study, raises death risks by 40 percent and kills nearly 45,000 people a year.
Go back to square one, and more people are pretty much guaranteed to die. Is that really what the Supreme Court wants to do?
if Bush were pushing the individual mandate, everyone on this page would be in agreement; it sucks. Government forcing it’s citizens to pay but not forcing private enterprise to deliver, period. And Scalia would find it marvelous.
That liberals are carrying water for this extreme right wing crap sandwich is stunning. To think that the ACA has anything at all to do with health care after all the assaults Obama and his merry band of Dems have put out on the social safety net, after each and every campaign promise Obama made has been broken — and in many cases broken without any pressure from the right wing fruit cake circus — is just shy of clinical myopia.
And make no mistake, we are not discussing whether this mandate is constitutional or not any more than the justices are. We are instead arguing whether or not we like it, whether or not we like Obama and whether or not we think Obama is playing 11 dimensional chess and he really didn’t make sure that no negotiations on drug prices would take place and he really did break the monopoly exemption on insurance companies and he really didn’t allow the totally new restrictive language on providing abortion services to be snuck into the ACA.
The thugs justices of the Supreme Joke Court may be lacking in objectivity and Scalia even in intelligence, but they know damn well which side of the bread has butter on it. And they will prove that it in June by letting the mandate stand just as the Republicans will prove it in November by letting Obama continue to give them every thing they have ever wished for.
Next chapter: The mandate that we buy social security and Medicare from private insurance companies all of whose employees live in China, and the official recognition that government should not get involved with regulating what business does, only with enforcing payment by its citizens Is it constitutional? And if Obama’s selling it, you can bet that many of the whiz-bangs on this page will be buying it.
I must have missed that part of the Constitution that called for a separation of state and market.
Not that anything about health insurance resembles a market — nobody knows what anything actually costs, so you don’t have a working price system, you don’t have a working signalling system between consumers and producers, and what you’re left with is something more akin to an extortion racket…
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded its three days of listening to the merits and demerits of “Obamacare,” and will spend the next eight weeks or so deliberating the fate of the American health care system, we ordinary folk are left to ponder the key question raised by the hearings:
Are we going to have to eat broccoli?
At least I think that was the key question. I listened to some of the proceedings, and I recall waking up to hear President Barack Obama’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, explain that the reason the prez wants to require everyone to buy health insurance is because if only people who need health insurance buy it, there won’t be enough money to pay for health insurance for people who don’t need it.
Or something like that.
This caused several justices to somewhat rhetorically inquire as to whether the federal government could by the same logic force everyone to buy cellphones or funeral insurance.
Justice Antonin Scalia – who presumably already has health insurance – suggested that the next thing we know, the feds will require us all to eat broccoli: “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later … therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”
Of course Justice Scalia is not the first person to raise this doctrine, known in legal circles as “caveat emptor brassica oleracea,” or “let the buyer beware of buying broccoli, particularly if you have children or a finicky spouse, or try serving it without a cheese sauce of some kind.”
Last September, a federal appellate judge in Washington, D.C., named Laurence Silberman asked during a hearing on the Obama plan whether the feds could force people to buy broccoli. Evidently a broccoli aficionado, Silberman voted to uphold the law. In December, another federal judge named Roger Vinson in Florida asked the same broccoli question, and then ruled the law was unconstitutional.
It seems to me that a better analogy would be whether the government could force younger workers to pay into a system that financially supports people who don’t work anymore. I don’t know; maybe call it “Social Security.” But the judiciary has settled on a member of the cabbage family for its legal imagery, so there you have it.
Given the leafy parameters the court has chosen, here’s my best guess on how each justice will vote:
• Chief Justice John Roberts: Roberts was born in Buffalo, N.Y., where they mostly eat chicken wings. Roberts will vote to overturn the health care mandate.
• Associate Justice Antonin Scalia: Scalia is a strict constitutional constructionist. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote that “government should never require the purchase of any comestibles, even when said purchase is for the common good, unless it’s those little snack cakes my wife Dolley makes.” Scalia is a definite thumbs-down on Obamacare.
• Associate Justice Clarence Thomas: Thomas’ wife is a lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation. One of the foundation’s most important tenets is that vegetables are for hippies. He’s voting to throw it out.
• Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr.: Alito is an Italian American, and according to Wikipedia, the word “broccoli” is of Italian origin. This will not enter into his decision, and he will vote against Obama’s plan.
• Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Ginsburg just looks like the kind of person who actually enjoys broccoli. She’s a vote to uphold the law.
• Associate Justice Elena Kagan: Kagan was just named to the court by Obama two years ago, not that she would be swayed by that any more than Justice Thomas would be influenced by his wife’s employer. But she’s still a cinch to give the prez’s plan a thumbs-up.
• Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor: See Kagan.
• Associate Justice Stephen Breyer: I’m pretty sure Breyer’s family is in the ice cream business, and they don’t make a broccoli flavor. But it’s probably one of those families where the parents make you eat all your vegetables or no dessert, so he’s going to vote to uphold.
• Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy: Kennedy is often viewed as a swing vote on court decisions. This might be because no one knows what he is talking about. To wit: “The young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries. That’s my concern in the case,” he said Tuesday.
Let’s list him as a “maybe.” That makes it 5-4, either way.
And I don’t care what the government says, I’m still not eating broccoli.
What is particularly poignant to me is I recall Bush1 saying that he doesn’t like broccoli and he won’t eat broccoli….. This is recall him saying as well as he did not know the price of a gallon of milk….. I think this may have cost him his reelection ….. Talking Points for sure….. It is sad the justice has to use this term….. But we at least know where he stand
Incremental change does not flow logically from a pure give-a-way to private corporations. Nor does It follow simply because we think Obama is a nice man and is being badly treated by the right and the left alike.
It is not supported by any precedent or known facts that if insurance giants have a captive audience, they will service people with prior conditions. What is supported by precedent and known facts is that Insurance giants, like other corporate behemoths, have powerful lobbies that can get around every rule ever made. That is why insurance companies have an exemption from monopolistic practices. That is why drug companies do not have to negotiate prices with our government. That is why they can charge what ever scandalous prices they want with the blessing of congress. There is your precedent. That is what you can look forward to.
It is a proven fact that when big corporations do break the rules — repeatedly — they suffer no consequences from this administration. It is a known fact that when corporations suffer no consequences from illegal behavior they continue that illegal behavior. Robo signing is dead! Long live robo-signing!
It does not flow smoothly from common sense or from what we see around us that simply because modest programs created over 70 years ago that were government run and managed simply because those DID expand over time, that the same thing will happen from a program that is entirely independent of government constraint or management.
And if you don’t believe your lying eyes, or common sense, or every bailout of giant corporations for the last 3 plus years, I’ve got plenty of great deals for your hard earned cash…
There was in a strange moment in today’s severability argument at SCOTUS. Justice Antonin Scalia referred to a deal that Sen. Ben Nelson once made, to make a hypothetical point about what could take down the law.
“If we struck down nothing in this legislation but the — what’s it called, the Cornhusker kickback, okay, we find that to violate the constitutional proscription of venality, okay?” asked Scalia, talking to Paul Clement. “When we strike that down, it’s clear that Congress would not have passed it without that. It was the means of getting the last necessary vote in the Senate. And you are telling us that the whole statute would fall because the Cornhusker kickback is bad. That can’t be right.”
The deal that Scalia was referring to — legendary in conservative anti-Obamacare circles — was not a classic “kickback.” Nelson negotiated for indefinite, unending Medicaid funding for his state. That ended up as part of the bill that initially passed the U.S. Senate on a 60-40 vote.
Here’s the rub: It’s not actually part of the law. Democrats removed the Nebraska deal in the final tortured negotiations that passed the PPACA in the House. When it got to the Senate again, Democrats only needed 51 votes to pass it; Nelson, who’d gotten the bad press from the deal AND nothing to show for it, glumly voted no.
Here’s another rub. In early coverage of Scalia’s zinger, the fate of the “kickback” is totally left out. It might be because no one in the room pointed out the mistake. Or it might be that Scalia, and lots of other people, have internalized the conservative case against the law.
Excerpt:
Scalia’s use of the term “Cornhusker Kickback,” coined by GOP political operatives during the healthcare reform debate, also raised concerns — especially since Scalia appeared unaware the provision was scrapped before Obama signed the law.
“Scalia said [Wednesday] that it was totally unrealistic to read the whole law. Sen. Nelson didn’t think it was too much for the justices to know what they’re talking about when questioning the law’s content,” said Nelson spokesman Jake Thompson.
“It seems fitting that Justice Scalia’s attempt at humor instead displayed his ignorance of the law. Sen. Nelson hopes the justice will concentrate on the actual instead of the perceived or interpreted views as he weighs the laws against the Constitution,” Thompson added.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon
Summary;
As the Supreme Court examines whether Americans can be penalized if they lack medical coverage, we’re joined by health industry whistleblower, Wendell Potter. A former spokesperson for CIGNA and Humana Insurance, Potter is the author of “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.” “I, myself, am somewhat agnostic and detached from the outcome of what the justices decide,” Potter says. “We eventually have to get the for-profit insurance companies out of providing coverage, and need to move toward a system or systems like in the other developed countries, that don’t permit for-profit companies to run their healthcare systems.”
Excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: Today, the Supreme Court hears its final arguments on the constitutionality of the healthcare overhaul law. They will focus on whether the law can survive if the justices decide to strike the individual mandate. The case is expected to have huge implications for the nation in the 2012 elections and is being followed closely by all sides of the healthcare debate.
To talk more about the debate and what’s happening in the Supreme Court, we’re joined by Wendell Potter, former spokesperson for CIGNA and Humana Insurance, now turned whistleblower. He was outside the Supreme Court Tuesday. He’s the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.
Wendell Potter, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the questions raised by the judges and how you think the Affordable Care Act is faring in the Supreme Court?
WENDELL POTTER: I think the questions that were raised by the conservative judges were to be expected. I think that most of their questions were along the lines of expansion of government and where are the limits of government. So that doesn’t surprise me a bit. And I don’t think we should read into their questions what the court will actually decide. One of the things that was said in one of those sound bites was, one of the justices said—I think it was Scalia—this may be necessary, but is it proper? I think there will be a realization that the individual mandate actually is necessary. If this—if we expect to try to expand healthcare coverage and to bring down cost, you’ve got to have an individual mandate. I think that’s what they will ultimately decide to do.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Can you explain why the individual mandate is as controversial as it is?
WENDELL POTTER: Because this whole issue became very political. As you know, the idea of an individual mandate actually is a conservative idea. It can be traced back to a proposal that came out of the Heritage Foundation in the 1990s in response to the Clinton healthcare reform plan. So you would think that the Republicans would embrace this. In fact, I think the President felt that he could get bipartisan support in Congress if he did go along with it. He was lobbied very heavily by the insurance industry, as was Congress. But there are a lot of people who don’t like Barack Obama. And the people I saw outside of the court yesterday were people who I think would not vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances. They see this as a political issue, as a way to try to turn people away from the President, not just the reform act.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, that’s a very interesting point. Polls have been done that show that the vast majority of Americans, something like three-quarters, think this is a political decision that is being made by the Supreme Court. You know, let’s go back to Citizens United and, before that, Gore v. Bush. But let me ask you about Justice Antonin Scalia asking the Obama administration’s lawyer, Donald Verrilli, to defend the controversial individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act. He drew an analogy between forcing people to buy health insurance and forcing them to buy broccoli.
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Everybody has to buy food, sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.
AMY GOODMAN: I am convinced that soon everyone is going to be calling it “Barackoli.” But Wendell Potter, talk about this comparison.
WENDELL POTTER: Yeah, I think that was anticipated, too. There have been discussions by punsters—excuse me, by analysts in the past who have said that, “What’s next? A requirement to buy broccoli?” It was an inevitable question, I think, because, again, it’s a question about the limits of government. And when you’re being asked a question by an advocate of small government or a strict interpretation of the Constitution, then I think that you would see a question like that. Clearly, I don’t think anyone would expect that the federal government would go so far as to require us to eat broccoli. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with interstate commerce or the commerce of the country, so—
But the other thing is, I don’t think that, from the transcripts that I heard and the recordings that I heard—the transcripts I read, that the government’s attorney was quite well prepared to defend the act. I think that we saw something that, in my view, was a continuation of the administration’s inability to really communicate about the Affordable Care Act.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, one of the criticism that’s been leveled against it has to do with its cost. You’ve talked elsewhere about how—well, first of all, the U.S. has one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, and certainly more than most advanced, or if not all advanced, economies. Can you say a little about how you suggest healthcare costs in the U.S. can be cut and how the Affordable Care Act either fails or succeeds in fulfilling some of the things that you’ve pointed to, some of the measures that could be taken?
WENDELL POTTER: The Affordable Care Act would bring down the deficit. It would curtail government spending. One of the things that is necessary to control healthcare spending is to bring more people into coverage, and the Affordable Care Act would do that by expanding Medicaid and to provide subsidies to many millions of others who are not eligible for a public plan. When you get more people in coverage, they behave differently. They don’t go to seek care all the time at the emergency room, and it would alleviate the cost shifting that is the hallmark of the American healthcare system.
But it’s not—the Affordable Care Act, in my view, is a start; it is not what we ultimately need. It doesn’t bring everyone into coverage, even with the individual mandate. There are people who could be exempted from that requirement, many millions of people who could be. In fact, it’s only estimated that about 30 million of the 50 million uninsured who would be brought into coverage, if the Affordable Care Act does go forward. We eventually have to get the for-profit insurance companies out of providing coverage, and we need to move toward a system or systems like in the other developed countries, that don’t permit for-profit companies to run their healthcare systems. And there are states that are looking at single payer. Vermont, in particular, has already passed a bill that would establish a single-payer system in Vermont. And I think there will be a growing recognition that that is probably the ultimate way to control cost and to bring everybody into coverage.
WASHINGTON, DC — According to one Republican attorney general in the lawsuit against the health care individual mandate, the problem with Obamacare is that it’s not a government takeover of health care.
ThinkProgress spoke with Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Caldwell opposes Obamacare and the individual mandate, but for a different reason than most of his fellow litigants: it props up the private health insurance industry. “Insurance companies are the absolute worst people to handle this kind of business,” he declared. “I trust the government more than insurance companies.” Caldwell went on to endorse the idea of a single-payer health care system, saying it’d “be a whole lot better” than Obamacare:
KEYES: You don’t think the subsidies for low-income people are going to be helpful?
CALDWELL: No, no. The worst thing you can do is give it to an insurance company. I want to make my point. All insurance companies are controlled in their particular state. If you have a hurricane come up the east coast, the first one that’s going to leave you when they gotta pay too many claims is an insurance company. Insurance companies are the absolute worst people to handle this kind of business. I trust the government more than insurance companies. If the government wants to put forth a policy where they will pay for everything and you won’t have to go through an insurance policy, that’d be a whole lot better.
So much to appreciate, both links and comments-
The econ 101 on JAMA Forum, and the many put downs both fact wise and otherwise for these conservatives on the Court.
Good luck folks. The biggest sorrow was when the public option disappeared, and the mandate to suckle the insurance leaches lifelong came in its place. Swm says iACA has done some good, and she’s right.
But was it the right move? Can’t go that road and find out.
The Supreme Court this past week heard arguments on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health-care law. At heart of the hearings was the law’s “individual mandate,” requiring every American to purchase health insurance. Its critics tell us that the mandate violates basic constitutional principles of individual freedom and limited government.
Opponents ask: If the federal government has the power to compel all Americans to purchase private health insurance, why couldn’t it require every American to purchase broccoli and other foods that it deems healthy to reduce health-care costs?
They claim that if the government has the authority under the interstate commerce clause to penalize even inaction – in this case, the decision not to buy insurance – there is effectively no limit on what government could require. As Judge Stanley Marcus of the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals asked: “If they [the federal government] could compel this, what purchase could they not compel?”
This idea has great currency in opponents’ circles, but its rationale is utterly flawed.
Why? Because of “free-riders.” A free-rider is a person who benefits from something without paying for it, meaning that somebody else must shoulder the cost. A primary aim of the insurance mandate is to prevent free-riders who receive health-care services but do not pay for them because they lack adequate insurance coverage.
In the health-care market, the only recourse that free-riders leave providers is to withhold their services in what are typically emergency circumstances – the very instances in which we all agree services should not be denied. It is often impossible, in any case, to determine whether individuals who are in severe pain or delirious can pay or not. Current law, in fact, does not permit providers to deny medical services in these circumstances. And beyond these logistical and legal obstacles, most providers are also reluctant to deny care for humanitarian reasons.
Free-riding, in turn, shoves the free-riders’ costs onto others through higher prices. This problem is so substantial that in 2009, Newt Gingrich castigated individuals who didn’t purchase health insurance yet could afford it, calling them free-riders and saying that they ought to be required by law at least to post a bond.
An insurance mandate aimed at stopping free-riders is in complete harmony with a free market. Indeed, the mandate is essential for a free market to be able to operate properly, which is why the Heritage Foundation, a fierce advocate of the free market, was among the first to propose mandating the purchase of health insurance as a solution to both the free-rider problem and rising health-care costs.
Other markets – like the ones for broccoli or spinach, or the vast majority of markets for other products and services – don’t normally face free-ridership issues at the point of service. Nor does free-ridership result from “inactivity” in these other markets the way it does in the health-care market. These distinctions provide clear grounds for differentiating the mandated purchase of health insurance from the myriad other purchase options individuals have within other markets.
Thus critics need not worry that the health-care mandate represents a “potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority” as articulated by the 11th Circuit Federal Court, which ruled the mandate unconstitutional in August 2011.
Should the Supreme Court rule the insurance mandate to be unconstitutional, the mandate’s opponents will hail its decision as a victory for both freedom and limited government. The opposite will be so.
The court, instead, will have ruled for the one-sided autonomy of free-riders and rejected the freedom of providers, taxpayers, and consumers, subjecting them all to what is essentially a form of stealing.
Providers will be legally required, not to mention under the influence of professional obligations going back to the Hippocratic Oath, to deliver services to the free-riders without knowing or often even being able to determine whether they will be compensated.
To have to work without compensation is a core characteristic of forced labor. The providers then will be forced to finagle third-party consumers and their insurers – innocent bystanders – to pay for the free-riders’ costs by charging them higher prices.
If this is a victory for freedom, it will be for a fraudulent anything-goes notion of freedom that is amoral.
And if this is a victory for limited government, it will be so only in the false sense of a government rendered so impotent as to be incapable of protecting its own citizens from free-riders.
*****
John E. Schwarz is distinguished senior fellow at Demos, a public policy organization in New York, and professor emeritus of government and public policy at the University of Arizona. He is currently writing “Common Credo: How Both the Left and the Right Have Led America Astray,” to be published next March by W.W. Norton.
Specious reasoning by Schwarz there, Elaine. It is committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. This isn’t a binary situation where either the free riders win and the insurance companies loose or the insurance companies win and people are still left without coverage when it cuts into profits. The government has the option of dealing with the free rider problem by making health care insurance universal, single payer and government run. There are no free riders when everyone is insured.
Elaine, There is not one republican that supports single payer that i know of. Maybe others know of some since they seem to think there would be no problem passing it. Their goal is to de-fund plan parenthood not pass single payer.
At oral argument, we heard about two ways of understanding the individual mandate. One is that it gives people a choice. You must do one of two things, the law says: (a) obtain health insurance, or (b) pay a penalty on your taxes. On this view, the mandate is no different from an ordinary tax law provision such as a deduction or credit. Your tax bill will be lower by some amount (specifically, in this case, an amount between $695 and $2085, depending on income) if you choose to take an action the government would like to encourage (specifically, in this case, obtaining insurance).
Those challenging the ACA see it very differently. They say that they are not challenging these tax provisions, but rather, the mandate itself. That is, the problem is not tax penalties or credits that raise or lower one’s bill, but rather, the fact that the statute requires individuals to buy insurance. Indeed these opponents often say that the mandate “forces” people to engage in transactions to buy insurance. What do the words “requires” or “forces” mean, exactly? If you choose to pay the penalty, the law is entirely satisfied; the government asks nothing more of you.
Those challenging the ACA argue that there is something more. They say the government is demanding, or mandating, that you choose (a), not (b). On this view, to put it in the more familiar terms of a speed limit statute, the law does not say, “it’s fine to drive 90 miles per hour, but you will have to pay a special toll of $100 if you do.” Rather, the law says, don’t do it! Don’t drive 90 miles per hour. And if you do, the penalty will be $100 (and suppose the law also says, there will be no possibility of arrest, points on your license, escalating penalties in the case of multiple violations, or any other negative consequences). In the cold light of cost-benefit analysis, the special toll and the speeding ticket look exactly the same. But they are not the same, because law has a normative dimension.
This implies some surprisingly deep claims about the normativity of law and the limits of the rational-actor model of how people interact with the law. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to ask how this relates to severability. Why not go farther than Farr (the court-appointed lawyer arguing for greater severability), and hold that even if the mandate must be struck, it is severable from the tax provisions that enforce it? That is, why not strike, and sever, the mandatory exhortation: strike any suggestion that you “must have” insurance, any suggestion that the government in any way “mandates” that you do (a) rather than (b). Leave all functional tax code provisions as they are. Those who do not have insurance will pay $695-$2085. Choose (a) or (b), either is fine.
Conveniently, as it turns out, the only language in the statute saying that individuals “shall” maintain insurance coverage is located in its own (very short) section, Section 5000A(a). The tax penalty can be found in Sections 5000A(b) and following. It would be very straightforward for either Justice Scalia or his law clerks to strike 5000A(a) and leave everything else intact.
For those who think the word “penalty” retains a kind of mandatory sting, as though it’s not really ok to choose to pay a “penalty,” I would suggest that you are perhaps a bit hung up on labels, but if you must, simply strike the first four letters PENA throughout the statute, leaving in place LTY, an abbreviation for “little tax yearly.” That way there will be no more “penalty”; those who choose to go without insurance will have to pay a “little tax yearly” in the amount of $695-$2085.
Some of us believe this change would produce… more or less what the statute already says now. But those challenging the ACA strongly disagree. They believe the ACA is very different—that it is an intrusive government command that does not give anyone a choice but instead “forces” everyone to buy insurance. Ok then. Let’s agree to disagree. But if the Court agrees with the challengers that the mandate must go, then let’s sever the controversial and disputed bit—the “mandate itself,” separate from the tax penalty—and give all sides what they say they want. Challengers get an end to the oppressive, individual-liberty-crushing mandate they abhor, the one that threatens to change fundamentally the relationship between the people and their government. In its place will be nothing but a little tax. Meanwhile, defenders of the ACA will get all the functional provisions of the law upheld, so that most of the uninsured will have a path to obtaining health insurance and we can begin to slow cost growth and achieve the rest of the law’s substantive aims. This solution has the great virtue that, unlike every other possible solution to the severability problem (including striking the entire ACA), it causes no unforeseen consequences, raises no specter of effects the law’s sponsors did not anticipate, and requires no further action from Congress. That last is especially helpful if we think of the “real” Congress, as Justice Kennedy mused at oral argument.
What’s not to like? Unless, that is, all this talk by the challengers of how they are challenging only the “mandate,” not the tax provisions enforcing it, is just talk, and really it is the entire ACA they are after, by any means they can get their hands on.
Elaine, I know but I feel this is better than nothing for the 37 million uninsured. The ER’s don’t provide chemotherapy. Obama now leads Romney 2-1 with women under 50 while Romney swamps Obama with the over 50 male. Women are more likely to lack health insurance as they are employed in occupations that don’t provide it so again they are more in favor of Obamacare.
Possible with the current set of pols and the state of campaign finance and lobbying? Probably not. Is it salable to the American public? Certainly. The business case for it is very strong unless you work for a health insurance company. The human rights case for it is very strong if most people knew how much of the Western world already operates on a single payer system. I think the real question around single payer is will it eventually become necessary or not and when. The current systemic inefficiencies sucking money out of patient treatment will eventually force the necessity of creating a single payer system as a matter of national security eventually even if the economics of it don’t force the issue before then, thus leaving the remaining question of when. FWIW, I agree about the public option. It was a step in the right direction, but it was contrary to the financial interests of the health insurance companies – the people Congress really represents as long as graft is essentially legal in the form of campaign donations and lobbying by corporations.
I’m not as optimistic as you about single payer being “salable” to the majority of Americans–not with all these well-funded groups “poisoning the well” on the subject and getting people freaked out about “socialistic” programs. Heck, we’ve got a Republican party that is trying to privatize programs like Social Security and Medicare.
As I wrote in an earlier comment–I have mixed feelings about the ACA. There are some good things in it. They are the reasons why I don’t think I’d like to see the the baby thrown out with the bath water. I doubt we’d have a chance of getting a better bill with the Congress we have at the present time.
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Democrats are not waiting long to use Rep. Paul Ryan’s federal budget proposal for next year as a campaign billy club.
Last week, the House passed the Wisconsin Republican’s $3.5 trillion budget plan, complete with measures to switch Medicare to a private system, slash more than $700 billion from Medicaid, and cut programs such as food stamps.
On Monday, the Democratic-aligned Americans United for Change and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are firing off a round of ads aimed at Ryan and three other Republicans in tough races, focusing especially on the electorally potent topic of Medicare.
Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, and his colleagues took a beating over his plan last year, and the ads predict it will happen again.
“Last year, Congressman Ryan voted to end Medicare,” the ad says, arguing that the push to switch Medicare to a significantly less generous private system will essentially end the program that seniors now rely on.
Please don’t mistake my statements for optimism. I don’t think you know the worst case scenarios I’m thinking of when I say single payer will eventually become a matter of national security. No. I’m many things, but optimistic isn’t one of them.
How To Defend Obamacare; Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was grilled by the Supreme Court’s conservatives. Here is what he should have said.
By Akhil Reed Amar ’84
May It Please the Court,
I have never written an open letter to Your Honors, but I now do so in response to several things that were said—and not said—in this week’s historic oral argument on the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare.”
In the spirit of the season, please permit me to proceed in the same style of Socratic Dialogue powerfully on display in the oral argument itself.
Q: What are the limits of congressional power?
A: The limits are those found in the Constitution itself, of course—its text, its history, and its structure as glossed by subsequent practice and precedent. The Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to “Regulate commerce . . . among the several states.” Here, we have a genuine regulation—both the micro-mandate/penalty/tax and the larger regulatory regime of which it is an integral part. We have commerce under any reading of the word. Insurance is a purely commercial or economic question about who pays whom. And we have an underlying problem that is truly “among the several states.” The problem of health care creates spillover costs that cross state lines, problems that result in some states in effect imposing costs on other states or bearing costs that properly belong to other states.
Q: How so?
A: At any given instant, literally millions of Americans are out of state. Most of my students come from other states. I myself am out of state three days a week. If any of us falls sick while out of state, we can seek ER care in the host state. And unless we have insurance, we will be imposing costs on other states. Obamacare addresses this obvious interstate problem in a direct way. The two leading cases in which the court has recently invalidated congressional laws as going beyond the scope of the commerce clause—U.S. v. Lopez in 1995 and U.S. v. Morrison in 2000, involving guns in schools and violence against women—did not involve similar interstate spillovers. Those cases were thus rightly decided on commerce clause grounds, as I myself have argued. And these cases prove that limits do really exist.
A: With due respect, no. The obligation to care for the urgently sick—including the strangers in our midst—is ultimately rooted in morality and centuries of tradition. Many ERs would and should pitch in even without a federal requirement, and the interstate problem is ultimately created by travel itself—travel that the interstate commerce clause in fact was designed to promote. Which leads me to a second and independent argument supporting Obamacare, namely . . .
Q: Before you get to that, wouldn’t your argument allow the feds to mandate burial insurance? Indigents sometimes die out of state, don’t they?
A: Yes, but in what numbers, Your Honor? With due respect, it is easy to hypothesize from an armchair—but is there really, truly, an interstate problem of indigent interstate burials anywhere near the magnitude of the actual ER problem in America? States can individually handle burials, but any state that on its own tries to generously handle the health-care issue risks becoming a massive magnet for out-of-staters. Sick people can flock to states with generous medical benefits. And this really doesn’t happen with dying people leaving their home states just so that they can die on some other state’s nickel.
Q: What about a federal mandate to buy broccoli?
A: Thank you for that softball, Your Honor. There is no real, substantial, honest-to-goodness interstate spillover/externality problem with broccoli that I see at the moment. [Pause] Even if nothing I have said yet persuades Your Honors, my second commerce clause claim is that millions of Americans suffer from preexisting medical conditions. If they get a better job offer out of state, they should take it so that they can contribute more to their families and to the general economy. But they will not be able to do so if the out-of-state employer discriminates against preexisting conditions. This discrimination creates a huge lock-in of labor. It prohibits interstate mobility—the free interstate flow of services. The core purpose of the interstate commerce clause is to allow Congress to remove interstate barriers—legal, physical, economic—such as this.
Q: That explains the ban on preexisting condition discrimination, but how does that explain the mandate?
A: The two are of course intertwined, as Your Honors recognized on Day 3 of oral argument, regarding the law’s “severability.” The ban on discrimination will only work if almost all are obliged to insure before they become expensively sick.
Q: But nothing you’ve said so far addresses the unprecedented issues raised by a federal mandate that a person buy a private product.
A: Several answers, Your Honor. First, this law is hardly unprecedented. The Militia Act of 1792 had a similar mandate, obliging Founding-era Americans to privately procure muskets, ammo, pouches, and so on. George Washington signed onto that law. And no one at the time said that mandates such as this were somehow intrinsically improper regulatory tools.
Q: Even if so, that law was passed under a different clause of the Constitution?
A: It’s hard to see why that matters. If a mandate is a permissible regulation of a well-regulated militia, it is an equally permissible regulation of interstate commerce. In the most important case ever decided on the scope of congressional power, the iconic 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall said that because a corporation-creating law was a valid under one clause of the Constitution (the territories clause), a corporation-creating law should be equally valid under other clauses. What is true of corporation-creating laws is also true of mandate laws.
Q: If 200 years ago, national security enabled government to mandate muskets, might national security today enable government to mandate vaccines?
A: The next terrorist attack might very well be biological, Your Honor. And our best national defense is herd immunity, which does mean that we need a large percentage of Americans to have vaccines. They will be more likely to have such vaccines if they have insurance. And states cannot individually handle these issues well because viruses do not stop at state lines. They spill over. They create interstate externalities. McCulloch itself, I might add, was decided on national security grounds. In the wake of the war of 1812, Marshall explained how a national bank was useful in fighting wars and supporting armies.
Q: You said that no one in 1792 thought mandates were somehow especially troubling. Why not?
A: Because they understood simple logic—and we must do the same today. If government can tax me, and use the money to buy a musket/insurance policy with my name on it, and then give me the musket/insurance policy, then government can for the very same reason oblige me to procure the musket/insurance policy myself. I am being taxed/mandated by persons that I helped elect and that I can vote against. That is the main guarantee against abuse, as Chief Justice Marshall stressed in McCulloch and is obvious from the Constitution’s basic structure. And speaking of taxes, another easy way to handle this case is simply to uphold the mandate/penalty as a genuine revenue measure, enforced by the IRS and predicted by the Congressional Budget Office to improve the federal government’s fiscal situation by several billion—with a B—dollars a year.
Q: But isn’t liberty especially at risk with these kinds of federal mandates?
A: Respectfully, no. Not at all. I emphatically deny Your Honor’s key proposition. It flunks a logic test, and a history test, and a structure test, and—well, just about every other legal test I can think of. If government can take my money and pay it to Detroit, there is no liberty difference than if government tells me directly to buy from Detroit. And if one thinks that money is speech such that a compelled payment is a First Amendment problem, then the 1792 Act was unconstitutional; and all state mandates of health insurance (Romneycare) and automobile insurance are unconstitutional. And a vast range of other state and federal laws would also be unconstitutional. Nothing in the Constitution or history or structure—or precedents, for that matter—provides suitable support for the “mandates are different” intuition, which cannot survive analytic scrutiny. Such an opinion will not write—or if it does, it will not last.
Q: Meaning what?
A: Meaning, with the greatest of respect for an institution and individuals whom I hold dear, I have to teach the stuff that Your Honors write year in and year out to my students. And if a judicial opinion simply fails tests of text, history, structure, and logic—and if it comes down by a 5-4 vote; and if the vote seems to track the party-alignment of appointing presidents; and if the four dissenters are emphatic that the majority’s arguments simply don’t wash; and if the vast majority of us who study constitutional law professionally, including most conservative scholars, agree that these arguments simply don’t wash; and if I already have to do a lot of work to explain Bush v. Gore, in context—well, what will I tell my students when they say to me, cynically, that “it’s all politics”? What will I say, when they ask me (as I have already been asked by one former student): “Just how many presidential elections are five conservative justices allowed to undo?”
Q: Are there any middle positions that might generate a broader consensus on the Court?
A: One possibility, perhaps, might build on various comments by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and others, at oral argument. The “mandate” should not be understood as free-floating requirement but simply as connected to the tax-penalty. In turn, the penalty can be upheld as a genuine revenue measure designed to bend down the cost curve. If the relevant statutory section needs in effect to be “reworded” to achieve this result, a judicial re-writing/re-reading of this section would be in keeping with various earlier cases, including the 2005 sentencing guidelines case of U.S. v. Booker and the 2009 Voting Rights Act case of NAMUNDO v. Holder. Both cases, in turn, can be seen as rooted in principles of judicial restraint and charitable interpretation famously put forth by Justice Brandeis in his concurrence in the 1936 Ashwander v. TVA opinion. With all due respect, several other possible approaches are also sketched out in an essay I wrote last summer for the Yale Law Journal online.
And I’m sure that there are many other possible consensus positions that may emerge as Your Honors begin to deliberate among yourselves. Perhaps it would be too much to expect the kind of unanimity this court achieved in McCulloch, Marbury v. Madison, and Brown v. Board of Education—to name some of the most iconic cases. But an opinion that in some way genuinely crossed party lines would, with all due respect, be just what America now needs, and needs desperately, from the highest court in our land.
Excerpt:
The characteristic Snowe episode came during the health care fight. The Obama administration, desperate to win her vote, wooed her with endless meetings and pleas, affording her a once-in-a-generation chance to not only help pass health care reform but make it smarter, more efficient, and more compassionate. Instead, Snowe tormented the administration by dangling an elusive and ever-changing criteria before their noses. She at first centered her objections around the inclusion of a public option. Democrats removed it, and she voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor. Snowe complained that the process was happening too fast, and that it was too partisan, which seemed to be her way of saying she wouldn’t vote for it unless other Republicans joined her.
Excerpt:
Nocera holds up Sen. Snowe (R-Maine) as a model of “moderate beliefs.” If you call it moderate to vote against the Affordable Care Act, after forcing the removal of the public option on the pretense that she would vote for the final bill, then Snowe is a moderate. If you call it moderate to take a stand against a jobs bill because it imposed a teeny tax on millionaires, then Snowe is a moderate. If you call it moderate to back “a balanced budget amendment, which “is likely to push the economy back into recession,” then Snowe is a moderate. If you think “it’s just too darn easy to get legislation through the U.S. Senate,” then Snowe – who partnered with Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to try to make the process even more convoluted – is a moderate. As far as I can tell, Snowe’s actual positions on economic and other issues put her in lock-step with many conservative Republicans.
“A Supreme Court activist enough to strike down Obamacare would probably be activist to strike down single-payer, too. Whatever arguments the conservative justices have concocted to nullify an individual mandate, they can discover different ones to nullify a much more intrusive big-government system. This doesn’t mean we should give up on ever passing such a law. But it does require a different strategic calculation. Instead of the presidency, a House majority and 60 senators, you probably need the House, the presidency, 50 senators and five Supreme Court justices. In the long run, there will be more times when Democrats have five members of the Supreme Court than 60 senators. The Supreme Court will function as a kind of second Senate, an additional political veto point. (Again, all this is assuming the kind of Republican activism that would be entailed be striking down the whole law.)
The even worse news is that getting 50 senators to vote for single-payer will be really, really hard. You’d be asking them to vote to completely destroy a major industry. That is something very few senators, even liberal ones, are willing to do.
It’s not impossible, though. What would have to happen would be for Democratic activists to organize such that supporting single-payer became an essential element of the party platform, like regressive tax cuts are for Republicans — something that, whatever else you may disagree about, a candidate must sign on to in order to be nominated. That process would a massive organizational and financial commitment and take a generation to succeed. That’s not hopeless, and it would be the best option in the face of legal disaster. But the best option, by far, is not to get struck down in the first place.” excerpt Jonathan Chait New York magazine
“In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.”
Main Points
•The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) is a federal law that requires anyone coming to an emergency department to be stabilized and treated, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay, but since its enactment in 1986 has remained an unfunded mandate.
•The burden of uncompensated care is growing, closing many emergency departments, decreasing resources for everyone and threatening the ability of emergency departments to care for all patients.
•Emergency physicians provide the most charity care of all physicians (AMA 2003).
•ACEP advocates for recognition of uncompensated care as a legitimate practice expense for emergency physicians and for federal guidance in how fulfill the requirements of the EMTALA mandate in light of its significant burden on the nation’s emergency care system.
•Everyone is only one step away from a medical emergency.
Who pays for EMTALA-related medical care?
•Ultimately we all do, although EMTALA places the greatest responsibility on hospitals and emergency physicians to provide this health care safety net and shoulder the financial burden of providing EMTALA related medical care.
•According to a May 2003 American Medical Association study, emergency physicians on average provide $138,300 of EMTALA-related charity care each year, and one-third of emergency physicians provide more than 30 hours of EMTALA-related care each week. Physicians in other specialties provide, on average, about six hours a week of care mandated by EMTALA, and on average incurred about $25,000 of EMTALA-related bad debt in 2001.
•Some health insurance plans deny claims for legitimate emergency departments visits, based on a patient’s final diagnosis, rather than the presenting symptoms (e.g., when chest pain turns out not to be a heart attack). Some also attempt to require preauthorization before a patient can seek emergency medical care, resulting in denied payment. These managed care practices endanger the health of patients and threaten to undermine the emergency care system by failing to financially support America’s health care safety net.
•ACEP advocates for a national prudent layperson emergency care standard that provides coverage based on a patient’s presenting symptoms, rather than the final diagnosis. In addition, health insurers should cover EMTALA-related services up to the point an emergency medical condition can be ruled out or resolved.
Elaine H very enlightening to me about emergency care. Seem they put a bandaid on it and forgot to pay. Great solution. thanks. says he who don’t know nothin’.
Sw;.
Thanks, will stop harping about you know what. It is all part of learning for someone who never was with people. Learning to interpret silence or no reply requires training. thanks..
Ahmar, very impressive. Maybe he has a night course for ex-pat americans.
“Amar is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College (B.A., 1980) and the Yale Law School (J.D. 1984) and was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Amar clerked for now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer when he was a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Amar is the author of numerous publications and books, most recently the acclaimed America’s Constitution: A Biography. The Supreme Court has cited his work in over 20 cases, including the landmark 1998 decision in Clinton v. City of New York, which ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional.[1] In their book For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights, Amar and Alan Hirsch introduce a variation on the four boxes of liberty theme often quoted by conservatives opposed to gun control. Discussing the American Constitution, they assert that the ideal of citizenship generates four “boxes” of rights. The first three are the ballot box, jury box and cartridge box. To these, with some reservations, they add the lunch box: the idea of a social safety net that supports basic physical and educational needs.[3][4]
He was a consultant to the television show The West Wing, on which the character Josh Lyman refers to him in an episode in Season Five. His course on constitutional law is one of the most popular undergraduate offerings at Yale College. Amar’s younger brother, Vikram Amar, teaches at the UC Davis School of Law.”
What does this mean?
“The Supreme Court has cited his work in over 20 cases, including the landmark 1998 decision in Clinton v. City of New York, which ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional.[1] “
Although I do not profess to be a constitutional scholar, I have argued on several threads that I believe the individual mandate is constitutional under the Commerce Clause. I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve said before, but I do wish to comment on the so-called broccoli analogy. My objection is not only that it demeans the seriousness of the issue (because it is silly), but that it is a bad analogy.
Justice Scalia’s argument would have some weight if the mandate compelled that I must either buy a Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy or pay a tax. But that is not what the law says. It says that I must purchase health insurance or pay a tax. Broccoli is one of many vegetables, just as Blue Cross/Blue Shield is one of many insurance companies. Properly framed, therefore, Justice Scalia’s question should have been, can the government force me to buy vegetables?
Which brings me to the second reason his analogy is bad. Fruit and vegetable farmers do not receive federal subsidies. However, growers of many other cash crops do. For example, between 1995 and 2010, taxpayers paid over $32,000,000,000.00 to wheat farmers. If we ate more wheat, those subsidies would be reduced. So, to further refine the point, Justice Scalia’s question should have been, can the government force me to buy wheat products? Perhaps not directly, but it does so by supporting wheat prices. Either I eat more wheat or I pay more in taxes to fund subsidies.
There is no doubt whatsoever that health care is interstate commerce. The individual mandate says that I may either purchase health insurance to spread the cost of health care or pay a tax for the same purpose. It is a bad compromise on a single payer system, but the compromise was made to get the law past the same people who are now challenging it in court. There’s more than enough irony to go around in this case.
Great post, Mike, but I still disagree with you about the Commerce Clause versus the federalism issue. Like you said though, that’s an old conversation. I do agree though that Scalia’s analogy is terrible. :mrgreen:
I know we disagree on the federalism issue, but in Scalia’s case, federalism is ignored anyway if it might produce a different election result (Bush v. Gore) or enable states to protect consumers against unconscionable contracts (AT&T v. Concepcion). If his opinion in this case begins with an ode to federalism, we won’t have to read the rest.
The mandate to buy health insurance from private enterprise will be upheld and will ultimately replace Medicare
soon thereafter, the mandate to buy retirement insurance from private enterprise will piggy-back. it will be upheld and will replace social security
Neither justices nor people on one side or the other of this fiasco have any interest whatsoever in constitutionality except by coincidence. Under virtually every argument pro or con is the “activism” of perceived interest or personal view point. It is farcical to suggest that liberals are upholding the constitutionality of mandating citizens into coercive relationships with private enterprise.
No, underneath that gymnastic they are simply arguing for a practical highly relative outcome which they often express as, a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. And underneath that is the assumption that their team, “the Democrats”, must have decent motives in the main and at the end of the day.
Some even imagine this to be a strategy, to use the fire of this eminently right wing legislation, the mandate, against the conservatives themselves; to Trojan Horse in a program that will magically transform over time into a viable decent and humane health care system. I say magically, because that is what it would apparently take to get Democrats to actually stand up for what’s right, for any “progressive” transformation of something as small as a jay walking ordinance, never mind a national health care system. And that also makes an increasingly dubious assumption that Democrats are so motivated at all; that they have any interest whatsoever in enlightenment humanity or compassion that equals or surpasses or even approaches their interest in doing what industry lobbyists ask of them in return for a higher statistical chance of re-election and personal enrichment.
What liberals forget or what they are simply unwilling to “observe” is that their own party is working just as diligently for the profit of private enterprise — which is the antithesis of enlightenment humanity or compassion — as are the conservatives.
Oh well. At least we have a Democrat for a president. It’s not as if we have a someone in the oval office who would assert presidential authority to terminate the lives of human beings, even citizens, with no judicial review. It’s not as if our president would sign a bill that eliminates the right of citizens to challenge secret indefinite detention by a potentially corrupt and/or authoritarian police and judicial system. It’s not as if we have a president that would allow or condone spying on it’s own citizens. It’s not as if we have the most anti transparent president in the history of the country. Eh?
So what could possibly go wrong when it comes to legitimizing a mandate forcing citizens buy health care insurance from profit driven, monopolistic, proven ruthless sharks of private industry? We know full well it’s all for a good cause in the end, n’est pas? With this level of tragically misplaced responsible, adult trust in team D, who needs a public option anyway?
And to think those nasty Supreme Court justices would take all this away simply because it’s not officially a Republican monster in the oval office who is driving the legislation.
Here is a point that no one has made yet, but we all should consider it. IF the mandate is somehow tossed out [and I do not believe it should be], query what happens to the mandate in RomneyCare? Sure, I know that health care can be regulated by each state for its citizens as part of a state’s policing power, but no state can regulate a national solution to a national problem of accessing and affording health care and its financing arm-insurance. If folks cannot be forced to buy insurance on a federal level, then folks in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts cannot be forced to buy insurance either. To say otherwise is to assert a difference without a distinction. And for anyone to say the Supreme Court cannot override a state law, just look at what the Supreme Court did recently to an opinion out of the Montana Supreme Court (American Tradition Partnership vs. Bullock) that held corporations that contribute to campaigns violate that state law, and that act is constitutional under Montana law. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court where it stayed the Montana decision based upon the Citizens United opinion, in effect overruling Montana state law. If the Court can trump a state campaign law that is in contradiction to a Supreme Court decision, then what justification can there be in saying if the Court finds unconstitutional the individual mandate in the health law, a similar provision in a state law remains valid? None that I can think of. And carrying this logic further, no state could ever pass a health law with a mandate to purchase insurance. What then—a single payer, medicare-type solution?; a Public Option? Didn’t those proposals “crash and burn” in Congress? What next?????
“Here is a point that no one has made yet, but we all should consider it. IF the mandate is somehow tossed out [and I do not believe it should be], query what happens to the mandate in RomneyCare?”
***************
When Scalia tossed up the tea party’s “Can the federal government force me to eat broccoli,” I thought, “Can it make me vaccinate my kids?” BTW, my kids are vaccinated by a physician in private practice and insurance did not cover all of the cost — so, yeah, I purchased a product/service in the private market to fulfill the government mandate.
But wait — the federal government doesn’t mandate vaccinations (although federal money covers the biggest chunk of such vaccines); the states do — and the courts have repeated held the requirement to to be constitutional.
Why? State governments exercise general powers — a state can do just about anything not limited by its own constitution or preempted by federal law. So RomneyCare is OK, and the principle is established that forcing a private person to make a purchase in a private market for the purpose of promoting the general welfare of the people is not per se unconstitutional.
But the federal government exercises limited powers — the powers must be found either in the constitution or in the inherent status of the United States as a nation-state. If ObamaCare can be linked to such a power, the mandate to purchase insurance will stand because it is no different than being forcing me to vaccinate my kids.
Excerpt:
Three days of oral argument over the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court made one thing clear: The Court doesn’t feel bound by existing doctrine and practices. If it did, as judges and scholars of many ideological hues have explained, the individual mandate’s constitutionality would hardly be a question. Instead, the Court may be ready to embark on a dramatic reconstruction of federal-state relations in favor of narrow reading of Congress’s power to regulate “inter-state commerce,” and, in particular, the use of that power to regulate that matters that are not “commerce” in the most banal and obvious sense.
Concerns about the health-care law are often framed in terms of liberty from government regulation. At Tuesday’s oral argument, for example, Justice Kennedy expressed a concern that the mandate “changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.” Presumably, then, striking down the mandate would preserve an individual’s insulation from federal control.
Even if you accept Justice Kennedy’s concern—and we’ll get in a moment to why you might not want to do so—this argument doesn’t convince. In this case, the Court has been asked to contract the federal regulatory power to provide for a kind of social security; that is, against risks such as illness, poverty, and joblessness. But the very Justices who seem most eager to limit the government’s power in this domain have shown no inclination to check its national security powers—powers that pose more immediate risks of intrusions on individual liberty. The peculiar result of a decision invalidating the law would be a government barred from saving its citizens from catastrophic health crises, and yet perfectly able to track, surveil, and perhaps even detain them within only thin judicial review. Federal officials seeking to exercise regulatory power in the future would have a perverse incentive to garb their programs in the mantle of national security.
Such a lopsided constitutional constraint would not produce more freedom. It would instead result in a different distribution of freedom the day after the Court’s decision. It would foster a federal government empowered to provide a kind of security most valued by the well-off (who, after all, can’t get afford their own armies—yet), yet unable to provide meaningful security for the most disadvantaged from the threats of illness, poverty, and exploitation.
But it’s not clear that we should accept Justice Kennedy’s claim about the law’s effect on its face. That is, even if the short-term effect of invalidation would be to make federal social programs more difficult to enact, it may be that Congress’s power to regulate individual decisions in the same fashion as the individual mandate, without calling it that, may not be significantly diminished in the long term. Invalidating the mandate therefore would be less important for the durable limits it imposes on federal power, and more important for dealing a political blow inflicted on President Obama. If that is so, it is hard to see how invalidation can be defended as anything more than a partisan strike.
Everyone now seems to agree that Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution to enact the mandate is the main issue raised by the case. It also appears that that the Court will not consider justifying the mandate on the basis of any other constitutional provision. Yet no one disputes that Congress could have imposed precisely the same mandate using its separate constitutional power to raise taxes, simply by clearly invoking that authority in the law’s text. Notice that the mortgage-interest tax deduction operates in precisely this way to much the same effect—changing private incentives through a tax penalty—and does so often with a larger fiscal impact than the mandate. Moreover, it is hard to see why Congress could not use its taxing and spending powers to enact and fund a single-payer system. The result might, from a libertarian perspective, be an even more intrusive federal intrusion into individual lives.
Of course, if the mandate gets struck down, there is almost no chance that Congress will reenact it under these theories. But this has nothing to do with the Constitution, which endows Congress with the power to reenact the mandate using other powers. It has everything to do with the current political landscape. A decision invalidating the mandate thus may not recalibrate federalism—but it would promote the agenda of one political faction while harming another’s agenda.
Compounding the partisan effect of the decision, Justices Kennedy and Scalia have suggested that if the Court finds the mandate unconstitutional, it should invalidate the whole Act. They claim that’s more “democratic” than picking and choosing through the law’s many provisions. Their argument that papers over the fact that Congress’s partisan make-up is simply not going to respond to invalidation by enacting any new legislation. Under these political circumstances, wholesale invalidation would distort, not enable, the expression of democratic preferences in a distinctly partisan way.
The Supreme Court is so full of it. The entire institution, as well as its sanctimonious judges themselves, reeks of a time-honored hypocrisy steeped in the arrogance that justice is served by unaccountable elitism.
My problem is not with the Republicans who dominate the court questioning the obviously flawed individual mandate for the purchasing of private-sector health insurance but rather with their zeal to limit federal power only when it threatens to help the most vulnerable. The laughter noted in the court transcription that greeted the prospect of millions of the uninsured suddenly being deprived of already extended protection under the now threatened law was unconscionable. The Republican justices seem determined to strike down not only the mandate but also the entire package of accompanying health care rights because of the likelihood that, without an individual mandate, tax revenue will be needed to extend insurance coverage to those who cannot afford it.
The conservative justices, in their eagerness to reject all of this much needed reform, offer the deeply cynical justification that a new Congress will easily come up with a better plan — despite decades of congressional failure to address what is arguably the nation’s most pressing issue. In their passion to embarrass this president, the self-proclaimed constitutional purists on the court went so far as to equate a mandate to obtain health care coverage with an unconstitutional deprivation of freedom; to make the connection they cited the spirit of a document that once condoned slavery.
These purists have no trouble finding in that same sacred text a license for the federal government to order the young to wage undeclared wars abroad, to gut due process and First Amendment protections, and embrace torture, rendition and assassination, even of U.S. citizens.
Now they hide behind the commerce clause of the Constitution to argue that the federal government cannot regulate health care coverage because that violates the sacrosanct principle of states’ rights. If the right-wingers on the high court consistently had a narrow interpretation of federal power over the economy, there would be logic to the position expressed by the Republican justices during the last three days of questioning. Of course, the court’s apparent majority on this has shown no such consistency and has intervened aggressively, as did the justices’ ideological predecessors, to deny the states the power to protect consumers, workers and homeowners against the greed of large corporations.
We would not be in the midst of the most severe economic meltdown since the Great Depression had the courts not interpreted the commerce clause as protecting powerful national corporations from accountability to state governments. Just look at the difficulty that a coalition of state attorneys general has faced in attempting to hold the largest banks responsible for their avarice in the housing disaster.
The modern Supreme Court has allowed the federal government to pre-empt the states’ power to protect homeowners, whose mortgage agreements were traditionally a matter of local regulation and registration. The court has no problem accepting Congress’ grant of a legal exemption in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that allows the bundling of home mortgages into unregulated derivatives.
The court has vitiated the power of the states to control interest rates, even though quite a few had explicit provisions in their constitutions banning usury. The result is that loan-sharking by banks that can claim to be engaged in interstate commerce is constitutionally protected, which is why there are no limits on mortgage, credit card or personal loan interest rates.
The sad truth is that President Obama and the Democrats brought this potential judicial disaster upon themselves. In light of what has been said this week in the Supreme Court, it seems inevitable that the linchpin of the 2010 reform — mandated coverage — will be thrown out, probably along with the crucial accompanying reforms. Forget coverage for the young and those with pre-existing medical conditions. The Democrats will protect themselves from this reversal by arguing that all they did was copy the program that this year’s prospective Republican presidential candidate implemented when he was the governor of Massachusetts. Mitt Romney’s plan included the dreaded mandate that he and the Republican justices condemn.
How ironic that Barack Obama’s health care agenda would be in a far stronger legal position had the president stuck by his earlier support of a public option. Clearly, our federal government has the judicially affirmed power under our Constitution to use public revenues to provide a needed public service, be it education, national security, retirement insurance or health care. Obama’s health care reform should have simply extended Medicare and Medicaid coverage to all who wanted and needed it — no individual mandate — while allowing others to opt out for private insurance coverage. That’s an obvious constitutional solution that even those die-hard Republican justices would have a difficult time overturning.
Excerpt:
To observers of the ‘Obamacare’ oral arguments, it would come as no surprise that Justice Antonin Scalia is a likely vote to strike it down. But there has remained one major wrinkle in his prior jurisprudence that continues to give hope to a handful of the health care law’s proponents that he’ll vote to uphold it.
Now, within days of the historic ruling, Scalia is releasing a new book in which he finds fault with a Roosevelt-era Supreme Court decision that forms a critical part of the legal undergirding for the health care reform law. For Scalia, that’s a dramatic turnaround, because he has previously embraced the premise of that decision in an opinion he authored in 2005 that supporters of the Affordable Care Act have frequently cited.
In Scalia’s new book, a 500-page disquisition on statutory construction being published this week, he says the landmark 1942 ruling Wickard v. Filburn — which has served as the lynchpin of the federal government’s broad authority to regulate interstate economic activities under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause — was improperly decided.
According to an advance review in the New York Times, Scalia writes that Wickard “expanded the Commerce Clause beyond all reason” by deciding that “a farmer’s cultivation of wheat for his own consumption affected interstate commerce and thus could be regulated under the Commerce Clause.”
Scalia himself cited Wickard in his 2005 opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, concurring with a 6-3 majority that said Congress may, under the Commerce Clause, prohibit a licensed medical marijuana patient from growing pot in his or her backyard even if it’s legal in the state. A central foundation for that sweeping federal power, the winning side argued, flowed from Wickard.
At the time, Scalia emphatically agreed, writing in his concurring opinion that “where Congress has authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.” The Reagan-appointed justice’s decision upset libertarians who saw Raich as a squandered opportunity to limit the 70-year trend of reading the Commerce Clause expansively and giving the federal government broad authority when it comes to national economic regulation.
[…] As Media Matters has previously explained, right-wing talking points demonizing birth control made their way into the amicus briefs presented to the court before the case was even argued, and Justice Scalia in particular has been known to repeat verbatim right-wing myths, such as the dubious idea that if the Supreme Court upheld the ACA the federal government could ultimately require consumers to purchase broccoli. […]
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Austrian MPs have voted conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's government out of office, passing a motion of no-confidence days after it became a caretaker administration in the aftermath of a video sting scandal.
Key points: Sebastian Kurz, 32, cast himself as a victim in the political crisis engulfing Austria
Sebastian Kurz, 32, cast himself as a victim in the political crisis engulfing Austria Far-right and centre left parties said the chancellor shares blame for a video scandal
Far-right and centre left parties said the chancellor shares blame for a video scandal Former vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was recorded reportedly promising government contracts to a Russian investor
Last week the sting forced former vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) to step down and Mr Kurz to scrap the coalition between their parties.
Mr Strache was secretly recorded reportedly promising a Russian investor government contracts in return for them purchasing a newspaper and supporting his anti-immigrant party.
Mr Kurz, 32, hoped to use his position as Chancellor during the transition as a springboard for re-election, presenting himself as more of a victim of the political crisis set off by the video than an enabler of it who brought the far right to power.
But with the next parliamentary election expected in September, opposition parties said Mr Kurz must share the blame and voted his minority government down.
"Kurz gambled away his chances and, Mr Chancellor, you bear full responsibility," the Social Democrats' (SPO) deputy parliamentary faction head Joerg Leichtfried said in a speech, minutes before his party submitted the motion.
FPO lawmakers earlier unanimously agreed to support the SPO motion.
Combined, the two parties have a majority of 103 seats in the 183-seat lower house.
Heinz-Christian Strache, left, was forced to quit after a video sting, throwing Austria into political crisis. ( AP: Ronald Zak )
Austria's president Dr Alexander Van der Bellen must now nominate a new chancellor to put together a caretaker government able to last until the election.
While he could in principle choose Mr Kurz again, that is highly unlikely.
The move came shortly after Mr Kurz's People's Party came out on top in Sunday's European Parliament election.
'This power grab is disgusting'
Before the vote, Mr Kurz presented himself to MPs as a force for stability after the scandal that felled his coalition partner.
"To topple the Government a few months before an election is something few people in this country can understand," Mr Kurz said.
Despite the scandal, Mr Kurz's party won a larger share of the vote in the European ballot than in the parliamentary election of 2017, while the SPO's share shrank.
Mr Strache resigned from all his political posts after the video footage, which appeared to show him discussing fixing government contracts, was published by two German media outlets.
Vienna prosecutors said they were investigating the sting video "in multiple directions", but declined to provide further details. Mr Strache denies doing anything illegal.
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen (left) must now choose a new chancellor to replace Sebastian Kurz (right). ( AP: Michael Gruber )
"Parliament will have its say on Monday," Mr Kurz said on Facebook prior to the no-confidence votes.
"But at the end of the day the people will decide, namely in September."
The FPO's Herbert Kickl, whom Mr Kurz forced out of his post as interior minister, forecast a different outcome.
"This power grab is disgusting … And voters will decide about that, too, in September," he told MPs.
Reuters
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Baseball Books Reviewed
Baseball Books Reviewed
As "The Literary Baseball Magazine," Spitball has undertaken as part of its basic mission the task of reviewing as many deserving baseball books as possible, with empathy, appreciation, and authority. On this website and in the magazine itself we attempt to serve as the baseball book reviewer of record. Publishers and Authors NB: to have your baseball book considered for review on this website and in Spitball Magazine, to have your book listed on the "Current Baseball Books" page of this website, and to have the book automatically considered for the CASEY Award, please send a review copy to:
Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine
536 Lassing Way
Walton, KY 41094
Recently Reviewed Baseball Books
Leo Durocher: Baseball's Prodigal Son Paul Dickson, winner of Spitball’s 2012 CASEY award for Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick,
tosses another gem with Leo Durocher:
Baseball’s Prodigal Son. In Durocher,
Dickson captures the essence of a highly controversial player/manager whose Hall
of Fame career spanned the rough and tumble 1920s to the advent of free agency.
If you fancy yourself even a casual baseball fan then this book is a must read.
Casey Stengel: Baseball’sGreatest Character by MartyAppelCasey Stengel: Baseball's Greatest Character is the latest baseball book by Marty Appel, the former Director of
Public Relations for the New York Yankees and author of the 1996 CASEY
Award-winning book Slide, Kelly, Slide.
The many books about Casey Stengel’s baseball career create a challenge for any
biographer to present a new perspective on the legendary Yankee manager. Read More.
Michael Leahy’s The Last Innocents awakens feelings of
empathy that we all have for someone. In Leahy’s case, we empathize with the
starting line up and pitching staff of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s in Leahy’s
book that we get to know players like Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale,
and Wes Parker. By the end of the book, readers not only have a better
understanding of who these men were on the field, but who they were off the
field, too. Read More.
I love to read baseball books, but I have a hard time reading about the minor leagues. I find books about the minors to be dull, tedious, and unexciting. That’s why I was surprised by how much I enjoyed George Gmelch’s Playing With Tigers, a memoir about his days as a minor leaguer in the 1960s Read More.
It’s
ironic that I find myself strongly admiring the 1986 New York Mets after
reading Erik Sherman’s The King of
Queens: Life Beyond Baseball with the ’86 Mets. After all, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool
Red Sox fan who still has somber memories of the 1986 World Series that saw my
boys in red come within a strike of winning it all for the first time in
sixty-eight years. Read More.
A few days
before Christmas, Charles Fountain was gracious enough to sit down with me and
discuss his latest book The Betrayal,
a thorough and lively book about the famed 1919 Black Sox scandal involving
eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball team who took money to
deliberately lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Anyone who has read
W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, or has
seen Field of Dreams, the film based
on the novel, knows the story of the Black Sox scandal, especially about
Shoeless Joe Jackson, the most famous of the eight players permanently banned
from baseball by newly-appointed baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis
in 1920. Jackson has emerged as a folk hero in the last thirty years thanks to
Kinsella’s novel and subsequent film, encouraging hundreds of loyal fans to
lobby for his ban to be lifted so he can take his rightful place the Baseball
Hall of Fame. A stellar World Series performance included a .375 batting
average, twelve runs batted in, and the only home run in the world series,
strongly implying that Jackson, while having confessed to taking money from the
gamblers, decided the disregard his promise to deliberately play poorly.Read More
If asked to pick
a song that effectively summarized the life of Billy Martin, I’d choose U2’s “I
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” But since no one asked me, I’ll use
it as the beginning of my book review of Bill Pennington’s new biography Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius. Pennington’s
latest bookshows two different sides
to the famed New York Yankee player and manager who was no stranger to
controversy, the first side showing a win-at-all-costs warrior who took
advantage of every opportunity to be a better ballplayer, and the other side
being a tortured individual whose life ended tragically before he could finally
find the perfect balance between his personal and professional life that he’d
spent a lifetime looking for.Read More
Reviewed by: Mark Schraf (July 10, 2015)Recently a steady stream of revisionist evidence has surfaced suggesting that perhaps Ty Cobb wasn’t nearly as maniacal in his baseball genius and personal life as he has been universally portrayed for at least one generation, maybe two.From the revelation that Al Stump’s biographical work with Cobb in the early 1960’s was essentially fiction to the 2013 Casey Award winning book written by his grandson Herschel Cobb titled Heart of a Tiger and 2015’s Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen, a more balanced, normal, less pathological picture of the famous and infamous Georgia Peach is emerging. Pity. Read More
Reviewed by Mark Schraf (January 30, 2015)Any baseball bibliophile worth his weight in dust jackets is familiar with the rich history of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and in particular the wonderful anecdote in Peter Golenbock’s Casey winning evocation, BUMS, in which Walter O’Malley is lumped by a pair of Brooklynite literary stars named Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill with Stalin and Hitler as one of the three worst human beings in history.Now, it should be noted that O’Malley finished third on both independently-produced lists, but still, if there was ever a figure in baseball in need of a comprehensively objective treatment, it was the Big Oom. (Michael D’Antonio’s fine 2009 effort, True Blue, is a solid but perhaps overtly laudatory treatment). And for the better part of the last two decades (!), former SABR President Andy McCue had been dedicated to the task of ferretting out the truth from the vitriol, to present a picture of the man who changed the landscape of professional sports in America and almost singlehandedly dragged the business of baseball into the 20th century. Read More
Sometimes all we really want is some comfort food. Familiar and tasty, even when prepared by following the recipe to a T, but in the hands of a talented, inventive chef, a good meal can be elevated to fine cuisine. And when it comes to mystery fiction, the dishes are meant to be served up just as you’d expect, with the different genres like a cozy or police procedural or caper just as distinct as shepherd’s pie is from pumpkin pie. So when Max Everhart’s novel Go Go Gato is described as a classic neo-noir detective tale, it’s definitely meant as a compliment, and when his main character, former minor league phenom turned private investigator Eli Sharpe, easily slides into the traditional smart-witted, sarcastic, borderline alcoholic charmer mold, it’s like sinking your teeth into the perfect chicken fried steak. Read More
Brooks: The Biography of Brooks Robinson, by Doug WilsonReviewed by Scott Ferkovich (August 4, 2014)Brooks Robinson was one of the finest third basemen in baseball history. A first-ballot Hall of Famer, he is arguably the most popular athlete ever to wear the uniform of the Baltimore Orioles, his only team in 23 years in the major leagues. He played in 18 All-Star Games, was the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1964, and won 16 Gold Gloves. He starred on some of the most dominant teams of the last fifty years, including two World Series winners. His fielding heroics in the 1970 Fall Classic made him a one-man highlight film, and he has set the standard for excellence at the hot corner. Read More
Stars & Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76 by Dan EpsteinReviewed by Mark Schraf (July 23, 2014)It’s just plain disturbing when your childhood memories start to appear in history books.But it’s also very interesting to compare what you remember to what actually occurred, to be shown the often surprisingly huge difference between your individual perception and true reality after it’s been filtered through the prism of historical reference. And, assuming the subject is worthy, that journey back in time will only be worth the time, money, and shelf space invested if that the prism – i.e., the author – is an entertaining combination of a great tour guide and your favorite professor in college: knowledgeable, well-versed, an expert on the subject, and a good storyteller to boot. Read More
1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Basefall Forever, by Bill MaddenReviewed by Scott Ferkovich (July 14, 2014) 1947 is remembered as the year when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. From a historical standpoint, however, Major League Baseball’s integration is often portrayed as if it began, and ended, with Robinson, as if his rookie year with the Brooklyn Dodgers opened the floodgates for black players, and from that moment on all other teams willingly rushed to fill the void on their own rosters. But that was hardly the case. As of spring training, 1954, a full seven years A.R. (After Robinson) half of the sixteen major league clubs still did not feature a black athlete on their rosters. Read More
The Closer, Mariano Rivera with Wayne CoffeyReviewed by Tom Eckel (June 7, 2014)Everything about this book exudes calm and class. In the mail order retail business sellers work very hard on the customers’ “box opening experience”. Little, Brown has certainly made a statement with this book. Beneath the dust jacket you discover a dark blue, ribbed cover with a facsimile of Rivera’s autograph slanted in the lower right corner. Inside the front cover the first few (and last few) pages are a dark blue with white pinstripes and River’s “42”, in white, elegantly positioned. Inside, the words and pacing reveal an uncommon man. Sincere and humble and controlled. Read More
We humans are, in general, a fairly myopic bunch. We assume that the way things are right now is pretty much the way they’ve always been. Just ask a teenager if they’ve ever heard of an 8-track cassette. Or a reel-to-reel tape player. Heck, there’s absolutely no way they’d have any idea what a vinyl record was if it weren’t for hip-hop DJ scratching.Just two years ago, there was a raging argument as to exactly who was truly most valuable in the American League – was it the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years, the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera, or Anaheim’s rookie sensation Mike Trout, the darling of the sabermetric crowd. It seems impossible to fathom that a Triple Crown season – just the 16th time it’s been accomplished in the game’s long history – might not be the best season in a given year, although it’s far from a guarantee that the TC = MVP. Just ask Ted Williams or Lou Gehrig or Chuck Klein or Rogers Hornsby. Read More
The typical contemporary baseball fan looks at Johnny Evers’ lifetime batting average of .270 and concludes that Evers’ Hall of Fame credentials are fraudulent, that he rode into Cooperstown on the coat tails of some catchy baseball verse by Franklin P. Adams with the refrain “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” The poem did achieve a bit of fame and is still anthologized regularly, but Evers was not dependent on it for his own celebrity. Nor was his reputation made by the infamous Merkle incident, although the unorthodox brilliance of the play did boost Evers’ standing in the public eye. No, Johnny Evers in his day was simply considered a great baseball player, the heart and soul of the great Chicago Cubs teams of the period, who was entirely deserving of baseball’s highest accolades. In Dennis Snelling’s new biography of “The Crab,” this basic truth about the career of Johnny Evers comes through plainly and convincingly (even though Snelling doesn’t even bother trying to bolster the case for Evers as a Hall of Famer); and no one who reads Johnny Evers: A Baseball Life (McFarland) will ever hold the subject in low esteem again. Read More
Did you know that Art “Superman” Pennington played ten of his 15 professional seasons for the Chicago American Giants in the Negro American League, and the remainder in Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba? Did you know he batted over .300 on 9 occasions? Or that he hit a home run off Dizzy Dean and struck out against Satchel Paige? And, in 1959, in the minors leagues, he beat 1959 AL batting champ Harvey Kuenn by 9 points for the batting title. Read More
The Fight of Their Lives by John RosengrenReviewed by: Tom Eckel (April 6, 1014)“I wish he could have been my catcher.” That’s how Juan Marichal ended his eulogy at John Roseboro’s funeral, and John Rosengren ended the book.In 1965, TV cameras broadcasting a Giants-Dodgers game recorded perhaps the most violent moment in modern baseball history when Giants’ pitcher Juan Marichal clubbed Dodgers’ catcher Johnny Roseboro in the head with a baseball bat, igniting a huge brawl. Read More
Going the Distance by Michael JoyceReviewed by: Mark Schraf (December 2, 2013)If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody’s around to hear or record it, does it make a sound?Of course, the answer is there’s no way to know for sure. However, if a baseball book is published, but not too many people know about it, does that mean it isn’t very good? This question we do have a sure answer for, and the journey of Michael Joyce’s challenging novel, Going the Distance - both into print and into consideration for this year’s Casey Awards – is as remarkable as his brilliant style. Read More
Quick! Take a glance at your baseball bookshelf, and see how many DiMaggio books you own. You have Kostya Kennedy’s 56, the 2011 Casey winner, don’t you, as well as Richard Ben Cramer’s 2000 Casey nominee, the brilliant Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life? How ‘bout Joe and Marilyn by Roger Kahn, or David Halberstam’s The Teammates, or even the more elusive Joe DiMaggio: A Bio-Bibliography by Jack B. Moore, Casey nominees all?
Of course, there are dozens more books of varying quality and utility written about at least one member of baseball’s most famous family, so perhaps the greatest challenge that veteran writer Tom Clavin was able to conquer was to convince Harper Collins to publish yet another addition to the DiMaggio canon. Read More
One of the reasons Mike Shannon and the late Jim Harrison decided way back in 1980 to launch their quixotic endeavor named SPITBALL: The Literary Baseball Magazine was due in large part to the uninformed snobbery of many literary editors and critics, so many of whom couldn’t accept baseball as a proper vehicle for serious literary writing. One can almost hear Marianne Moore, Bernard Malamud, Robert Coover, John Updike, Donald Hall, Mark Harris, and thousands other marvelous poets, novelists, short story authors, and essayists of the day, in one voice, respond with the time-honored, universal descriptor major leaguers have used for a bad call or poor performance since they first started keeping score: “That’s horse%&*t!” Read More
Reviewed by Mark Schraf (October 16, 2013)“I am not an artist,” he was known to say, “I am a cartoonist.”Never were both absolute truth and absolute untruth uttered more succinctly, but when these are the words famed sports cartoonist Willard Mullin used to describe his own work and profession, it’s probably not prudent to disagree. Perhaps the best way to reconcile the conundrum was perfectly addressed in Fantagraphics Books’ latest baseball effort,Willard Mullin’s Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934-1972,written by Hal Bock and Michael Powers, a sumptuous, comprehensive homage to a man aptly named by his peers as “Sports Cartoonist of the Century”. Read More
Reviewed by: Jack Greiner (May 28, 2013)It may be an overstatement to say that Smoky Joe Wood was the Forrest Gump of Major League Baseball, but not much of one. He played with Babe Ruth. He was on the Indians when Ray Chapman was killed by the pitch thrown by Carl Mays. His teammate Bill Wambsganss turned an unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series. Gerald Wood’s biography – “Smoky Joe Wood The Biography of a Baseball Legend” – traces the history of Wood’s major league career, along with his pre-major league days as well as his life after the show as the coach of the Yale Bulldogs. It’s a comprehensive history of the man and his time. Read More
Swinging '73: Baseball's Wildest SeasonReviewed by: By Andrew O'Toole (May 3, 2013)When I was offered the opportunity to review a book on the 1973 baseball season my first reaction was, “Should be lots of Tug McGraw; I’m in.” In Mathew Silverman’s Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season, the reader gets McGraw and much more. On the surface the hardly memorable ’73 campaign is an unlikely subject for a full length book. Silverman, however, makes his material work for him. The beauty of a seemingly mundane season lies in its ordinariness and in Swinging ’73 we are introduced to a cast of irrepressible personalities, notable events, and memorable episodes. Read More
The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark FidrychReviewed by: Mark Schraf (April 23, 2013)58 games. That’s it. That’s the sum total of major league appearances for Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych, who won 19 games in his Rookie of the Year campaign of 1976, but just 10 more over the next four injury-plagued seasons. It’s an oft-seen arc, especially for baseball pitchers, where arms can be as fragile as celebrity itself, but in a day and age when instant fame and fortune is commonplace, what is so special about the career and life of yet another ROY winner who didn’t plan out (remember John Castino? Doug Metzger? Carl Morton? Joe Charboneau? Harry Byrd?) that warrants a full-length biography? Read More
Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up with My Grandfather, Ty CobbReviewed by: Mike Shannon (March 26, 2013)Ty Cobb, the defiant monomaniacal competitor and brilliant batsman, is one of the most famous players in baseball history. He has been written about more extensively than any other player excepting perhaps Babe Ruth, his quasi-contemporary and main challenger; and much of this writing, especially Charles Alexander’s monumental biography published in 1984 by Oxford University Press, has been devoted to debunking myths about the subject. Most recently, researchers have called into question the accuracy of the sensationalized portrait painted by Al Stump of the elder Cobb as a half-crazed out-of-control wild man. Nevertheless, the primary public image of Cobb as pretty much a mean bastard has remained intact, which makes the latest book about the former Detroit Tigers great, a memoir by his grandson Herschel, a most welcome addition to the Ty Cobb canon. Read More
Long ShotReviewed by: Mike Shannon (March 18, 2013)Every Hall of Fame player or Hall of Fame-worthy player deserves not only an autobiography and a definitive biography but an apologia as well, assuming he wants and needs one. Future Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza probably needed the latter, and a good one at that, and he gets it here in Long Shot with the help of collaborator Lonnie Wheeler. What does Piazza, the greatest offensive catcher in baseball history with 427 home runs and a .308 lifetime batting average, have to feel defensive about? Well, plenty as it turns out... Read More
No one should be surprised that baseball today reflects many of the main characteristics of our culture, but the idea bears repeating nonetheless. This connection exists even in the province of baseball literature and baseball books, and a perfect example of it can be found in The Rotation: A Season with the Phillies and One of the Greatest Pitching Staffs Ever Assembled by Jim Salisbury and Todd Zolecki; a book about a hyped-up situation that had to be started and worked on even as the situation came into being. The Rotation is hardly the first baseball book to attempt to capitalize on the latest hot topic, but it did run a greater risk than normal in... Read More
Neil Lanctot's recent biography Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, would seem to refer to the great catcher's life before and after an automobile accident left him a paraplegic, ending his baseball playing career in 1958, 10 years after he became one of the breakthrough group of African American major leaguers with the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, the book's title may also convey two additional double entendres: one concerning his dual ethnicity as an African-American and Italian-American, and another perhaps his two baseball careers as a veteran of both the Negro and Major professional leagues. In any event, themes of duality are consistently revisited throughout this well-balanced assessment of Campanella's complex life. Read More
The book’s illustrations – of course, the main vehicle used to move a graphic novel’s narrative forward - are a joy from first page to last, both in the quality and skill of the mostly representational artwork, but also in the playfulness and originality of the panel choices. Seamlessly melding art with the written word, Shannon employs a chronological structure, beginning with the dark events surrounding the 1919 World Series between the victorious Cincinnati Reds and the infamous Black Sox, to introduce Hutchinson's story. Read More
Captivating, revealing, and dramatic, "21" accomplished through art, creative use of informed imagination, and pure passion, far more than I thought possible from a graphic novel. I believe I now have a more complete picture of Roberto Clemente, but not of his statistics, or even his style of play, or of his place in baseball history. I have a truer sense of his heart. Read More
We are SPITBALL: The Literary Baseball Magazine, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we are passionate about fine writing, especially about baseball. And while literature can be defined as broadly as one might wish, there is nothing that gets us as pumped up as finding an exquisitely written baseball book, regardless of the subject. Bottom of the 33rd is one of those special books, and Dan Barry is one of those special authors. Read More
Anyone who has seen Albert Pujols hit a home run--and there have been ample opportunities since in his ten + years in the major leagues he has hit over 400 of them--should have noted two things: the grace and power of his swing and his gesture as he crosses home plate, looking and pointing skyward. Those two things define who he is: a gifted athlete who works hard to make the best use of his gift and a man who believes in giving thanks to God for bestowing it on him. As he has said: "Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior." Read More
Of all the numerous unique aspects that the game of baseball has going for it, none is more important or more fascinating that the ball itself. Our familiarity with this most commonplace of all sports objects belies just how little we average fans know about it. The antidote to this pervasive ignorance is to be found in the first book to take as its entire subject the baseball itself, Zack Hample’s The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches. Read More
Given the fulsome nature of the sub-title it hardly seems necessary to say what this book is about, but in the event there is any question let me quote two sentences from the front flap of the dust jacket: ”Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the world?" Read More
It’s a cliché but true nonetheless that the typical fan turns to sports for entertainment and a pleasurable escape from the headaches of "real" life. Fans don’t like it when the curtain is pulled aside and they are forced to admit the fact that the sports world is infected with some of the same problems afflicting the larger society: greed, corruption, dishonesty, drug use, etc. Read More
He captures the inner dialog of a father who wants desperately to give his only son the very best possible chance to succeed in the game he so passionately loves. The game descriptions and conversation are both spot on. Characterization is strong, with no cardboard characters to be found. Read More
In Cardboard Gods, Wilker moves us beyond baseball cards as monetary investment to place us inside his Transcendentalist-esque realization of their ability to transcend time and make tangible a golden age of childhood. He takes us to a simpler time when older brothers were idolized and happiness could be found in a nickel pack of cards. Read More
Of all the major team sports baseball is the one which has engendered the most variations upon a theme in terms of playing the game. Far from requiring nine to a side, kids, by themselves or in the smallest of groups, have found innumerable ways to replicate the baseball playing experience, often using something other than a baseball to do so. Corks, rocks, bottle caps, golf balls, tennis balls, rubber balls, and even rubber balls sawed in half (among others) have all served as substitutes for actual baseballs, but the king of all baseball substitutes is a specially-made plastic ball, known as the Wiffle ball. Read More
If you're a kid in a small town in the Dominican Republic and you want to play baseball but have no equipment, you use whatever might be available. You make a ball out of old socks, a bat out of a stick, and a glove out of a milk carton. Read More
Any book that sets out to name the top ten fastball pitchers of all time is sure to provoke controversy, and Tim Wendel accomplishes just that in his somewhat quirky, somewhat biased, freewheeling, and always entertaining book, High Heat. Read More
Heretofore there have been only a couple of books about Roger Maris; including Maury Allen's Roger Maris: A Man for All Seasons, published in the wake of Maris' untimely death at the age of 51 in December of 1985, and Maris at the Bat, a collaborative account with Jim Ogle of his sixty-one home run season in 1961. Thus, it is high time that a more definitive biography, such as Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero, should be attempted. Read More
Reviewed by: Mike Shannon (Jan. 25, 2010)
The baseball mystery novel is a tricky proposition, a combination of delicious tastes difficult to mix successfully. For readers who are more fans of mystery than of baseball, too much who-done-it is an impossibility. On the other hand, when the baseball is subordinate to the mystery, fans of fiction about baseball first and foremost may finish such a book feeling a little dissatisfied. The latest baseball mystery to deal with this literary conumdrum is Rick Wilber's Rum Point: A Baseball Novel. Read More
Given the title, it's not surprising that Achorn's book is a seasonal account of Radbourn's best season on the hill (actually there was no mound back then for pitchers to throw from, an example of the type of detail about the way the game was played in Radbourn's era that Achorn expertly delineates for the reader), which is also the best season any pitcher ever had (from a strictly won-loss record point of view)! But it is also a start-to-finish biography and one which, though seemingly condensed compared to the space given the one year of 1884, is perhaps as complete a biography of the man as we are ever likely to get. Read More
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Malaysian court to Christians: You can't say 'Allah'
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Muslim activists wait outside Malaysia's highest court in Putrajaya for the verdict on June 23, 2014.
Story highlights
Malaysia's top court dismisses bid to overturn ban on Christians using Arabic word for God
Confusion over ruling as government says ban only applies to Church's newspaper
Muslims say use of "Allah" in non-Muslim texts could cause Muslims to convert
Church says it will continue to fight the ruling
Malaysia's highest court has rejected a challenge from the Catholic Church seeking to overturn a ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah" to refer to God.
But after the Federal Court announced its verdict on Monday, the government released a statement saying that the ruling would only apply to the Church's newspaper, which has been at the center of the court battle since Malaysian authorities ordered the publication to cease using the Arabic word in 2007.
Malaysian Christians will still be able to use the word "Allah" in church, the government's statement said.
"Malaysia is a multi-faith country and it is important that we manage our differences peacefully, in accordance with the rule of law and through dialogue, mutual respect and compromise," the statement said.
JUST WATCHED
Malaysian court rules on 'Allah' use
MUST WATCH
The conflicting interpretations of the ban have only added confusion to a debate that has inflamed religious tensions in the Muslim-majority country in recent years.
The editor of the the newspaper, the Herald, said it remains unclear what the implications of the court's verdict would be for the Christian community.
"We are in limbo," Father Lawrence Andrew told CNN.
But the chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, Reverend Eu Hong Seng, said in a statement that Christians will continue to use the word "Allah" in bibles and during church gatherings.
The dispute began in 2007 when the Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs, which grants publishing licenses, threatened to withdraw the Herald's permit for using the Arabic word in its Malay-language edition, on the grounds of national security and public order.
Malaysian authorities say non-Muslim literature that contains the word could confuse Muslims and cause them to convert away from Islam, which is a crime in many parts of the country.
Christian leaders argue that the word "Allah" predates Islam, and has long been used in Malay-language bibles and other texts to refer to God.
Anti-Christian violence
The dispute has sparked violence in recent years against Malaysia's Christian community, which accounts for around 9% of the country's population of 29 million, while more than 60% are Muslim.
A series of fire bomb attacks were carried out on places of worship after a court ruled in 2009 that the Church had a constitutional right to refer to God as "Allah" in the Herald.
But an appeals court reinstated the ban in October 2013. Three months later, arsonists set fire to a church in Kuala Lumpur, and Islamic authorities confiscated hundreds of bibles containing the word "Allah" from a Christian organization in the state of Selangor.
On Monday, a panel of judges at the Federal Court in Putrajaya ruled 4 to 3 that the word was not an integral part of the Christian faith, upholding the decision of the appeals court.
"We thank Allah because the court's decision has favored us this time. We hope that this is no longer an issue in the peninsular, which does not allow others (to use) the term," the head of Perkasa, a conservative Muslim rights group, told reporters.
Father Andrew from the Herald said the Church was looking into ways to challenge the ban.
"We need to fight this case to end, because we have to fight for justice when justice is derided or denied," he said.
"We have a moral obligation to champion the cause of minorities. We have a responsibility to uphold religious freedom."
Politics
It's likely that the ban is politically motivated, according to William Case, a political scientist with the City University of Hong Kong's Department of Asian and International Studies.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak is a reformist to some extent, says Case, but his party failed to win a majority in the last election and he needs to recapture the support of the country's ethnic Malay, and mostly Muslim, community.
However, it's too soon to tell how the Malaysian government will implement the ban in practice, he says.
"This is the kind of ambiguity you would expect, because it's a very complex and tense set of circumstances. You might have the judiciary saying one thing, the cabinet saying another -- meanwhile pressure is mounting from the many Muslim groups involved who bring tremendous mass-based support, and on the other side from Christian groups."
The ruling may lead to further attacks on churches, Case warned.
"We do know that Malaysia has become more and more polarized in recent years on ethnic, and increasingly religious, grounds -- and that's becoming more and more severe."
But while the latest court ruling is distressing, Case says verbal threats against religious groups in Malaysia seldom translate into the kind of violence seen in neighboring countries, like Indonesia.
"We don't see extrajudicial killings, religious-inspired violence and abductions, and that distinguishes Malaysia in the region."
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Friday, March 31, 2017
Robuts takin' jerbs
One advantage of writing down models in math, even if you can't test them, is that you make the ideas concrete. For example, take a recent exchange between Ryan Avent and Paul Krugman. Avent is trying to explain robots could be taking jobs even while productivity is slowing down. Lots of people have said made some variant of the argument: "If robots are taking our jobs, how come productivity growth is so slow?" Here's Avent's theory:
The digital revolution has created an enormous rise in the amount of effective labour available to firms. It has created an abundance of labour...
How does automation contribute to this abundance of labour?...[T]here’s a...straightforward and important way in which automation adds to abundance now. When a machine displaces a person, the person doesn’t immediately cease to be in the labour force...
In some cases workers can transition easily from the job from which they’ve been displaced into another. But often that isn’t possible...Such workers find themselves competing for work with many other people with modest skill levels, and with technology: adding to the abundance of labour.
Second, the abundance of labour, and downward pressure on wages, reduces the incentive to invest in new labour-saving technologies...
Third, the abundance of labour destroys worker bargaining power...
Fourth, low wages and a falling labour share lead to a misfiring macroeconomy...
So there you are: continued high levels of employment with weak growth in wages and productivity is not evidence of disappointing technological progress; it is what you’d expect to see if technological progress were occurring rapidly in a world where thin safety nets mean that dropping out of the labour force leads to a life of poverty.
Some pieces of this I get, others I don't. Reduced bargaining power explains the wage stagnation piece, but doesn't explain how wage stagnation goes along with slow productivity growth.
The macroeconomic piece makes sense if you believe in some form of Verdoorn's Law, but it seems like it would be self-limiting - if faster technological progress led to downward pressure on wages which led to deeper recessions which led to slower productivity growth, then recessions would slow down robotization and allow wages to rise again (maybe that's what's happening now!).
The same is true of the long-term innovation argument. If fast technological progress in robots displaces workers, lowers wages, and reduces the incentive for more robot innovation, productivity will then slow and workers will catch a break.
The first part of the argument is the most interesting, but also the hardest to understand when written in words. Is this just Baumol Cost Disease? If so, why is it happening now when it didn't happen before?
Fortunately, Paul Krugman came in and formalized this part of Avent's argument. I'm not sure Krugman exactly captured what Avent was trying to say, but Krugman's model is simple and interesting in its own right. It's a powerful argument for the "models as simple formalized thought devices" approach to econ that I sometimes pooh-pooh.
Krugman's model is of an economy with 1 good and 2 production processes - one capital-intensive, one labor-intensive:
You can make stuff with more machines with technique A, or with more people with technique B.
Now suppose there's gradual progress in technique A, but not B - it gets cheaper to make things with a lot of robots, but not cheaper to make them with a lot of humans. As Krugman shows, this will lead to falling wages:
It will also lead to more workers going into the labor-intensive B sector, which is the kind of shift Avent seems to be talking about.
OK, so this explains how robots replacing humans could be consistent with both slow productivity growth and slow or negative wage growth, But what it doesn't (yet) explain is the change in the two trends - how faster robotization could have led to both slowing productivity growth and slowing wage growth at the same time. Note in Krugman's model that if technological progress in technique A speeds up, then wage growth slows down (actually, gets more negative), but overall productivity growth in the economy speeds up.
In other words, a productivity speedup in the "robot" sector can't cause overall economy-wide productivity growth to go down in this model. But what can? Answer: A slowdown in productivity growth in technique B.
Suppose productivity in A and B are growing at the same rate initially, so that the isoquant is just sliding in toward the origin. Wages and productivity are both going up. Then B suddenly stops getting better, but A keeps on getting better. Now economy-wide productivity slows down, and wage growth slows down or goes negative.
So in this model it wouldn't be better robots that made economy-wide productivity and wages go down. It would be a slowdown in the technologies that allowed humans to compete with the robots.
This would be hard to verify empirically, since identifying human-complementing productivity growth and human-substituting productivity growth will require some major theoretical assumptions. But just casually glancing at the data, we can see that there are other productivity divergences in the economy that might be roughly analogous. For example, durables TFP growth has increased faster than nondurables TFP growth since the early 70s:
So if we think durables production is a lot more capital-intensive than nondurables production (which includes a lot of services), this could be a sign that a slowdown in labor-intensive production processes is generally underway (maybe as a result of expensive energy? top-out of education? some government policy?).
Anyway, so I think in order to make Avent's thesis work in Krugman's model - in order to make robotization be the cause of both slowing productivity growth and of wage stagnation - there has to be a slowdown in non-robot technology going on.
Interestingly, while writing this, I thought of a way that the Avent thesis could be combined with the "industrial concentration" hypothesis of Autor et al. Autor et al. cast doubt on the "robotization" hypothesis by observing that labor's share of income isn't increasing within firms:
Since changes in relative factor prices tend to be similar across firms, lower relative equipment prices should lead to greater capital adoption and falling labor shares in all firms. In Autor et al. (2017) we find the opposite: the unweighted mean labor share across firms has not increased much since 1982. Thus, the average firm shows little decline in its labor share. To explain the decline in the aggregate labor share, one must study the reallocation of activity among heterogeneous firms toward firms with low and declining labor shares.
Autor et al. suggest that a few "superstar" firms are increasingly dominating their industries, causing profits to rise even as increased monopoly power shrinks markets and reduces measured productivity.
So how could this be reconciled with the Avent "robotization" theory? Well, take a look at Krugman's model. And now imagine that the "superstar" firms are the firms that use technique A, while the laggard firms use B. Krugman's theory doesn't include monopolistic competition, but it's easy to imagine that A, the capital-intensive technique, might have economies of scale that make A-using firms bigger and fewer than B-using firms. So a slowdown in progress in B would lead to a shift of resources toward the A firms, causing increased industrial concentration and a lower overall labor share without affecting the labor share within each firm - exactly what Autor finds. And it would do this while also causing economy-wide productivity to slow down and wages to stagnate.
That's neat. But it still means that, fundamentally, a technology slowdown rather than a speedup would be the root cause of the economy's problems - not a rise of the robots, but a world where robots are the only thing still rising.
18 comments:
Wages go down which would affect aggregate demand except that State intervenes to prop up demand through low interest rates that inflate asset prices creating 'wealth effect' to mop up excess supply. Rich get richer; poor get poorer and economists draw irrelevant diagrams to try to figure out what's happening.
No, I don't think so. Because curves are clearly labeled, it's very clear what they're *not* including (or abstracting away from). If you want to include things like non-rational choice, institutions, and power, you can draw curves for those, if you like.
Imagine extremely low productivity sector C which is just not done if wages are above a threshold.(Avent's 5th landscaper for a tech magnate)
And even lower productivity sector D which hadn't even been considered until wages were at any even lower threshold and would never be automated because it's of no value other than signalling and a tech solution wouldn't signal.(Lewis Black's ball washer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T8Gxk7vbec)
I haven't studied much econ since the the mid-2000's. I'm confused by what you mean by slowing productivity. Do you mean output per worker? Because wouldn't the type A firms be highly productive on a per worker basis? Or is it partially a measurement problem like google searches aren't calculated in GDP?
I am hopeful that you'll respond to one simple question about the "productivity paradox". It's very unrelated to your hypothesis, which I may or may not grok - it's an alternative explanation for the combination of:
To me, this is very simply explained by the effects of automation on demand by "The Lights in the Tunnel" by Martin Ford. Quite simply:
1. Firms lower the cost of their products by a fraction by eliminating workers and replacing with robots/poorer workers in China. The difference is passed to investors.
2. Former workers receive less income, buy fewer things. Furthermore, the increased income for the investor circulates less than the lost income did for the worker. Result: decreased net consumption, at least in first-world countries.
3. Reduced consumption leads to... reduced production! We had a giant recession that, sure, was nominally caused by the financial crisis, but that could also be seen as a reversion to a mean of lower growth, i.e. lower production. The point is that lower consumption almost has to create lower production.
4. If net demand and consumption fall as fast as you automate, then you never see any gain in output per worker. You're constantly decreasing the amount of workers you need to produce a constantly decreasing supply of goods. Productivity is flat.
This seems particularly obvious to me in a world where consumption is highly digital and depends almost *entirely* on demand, i.e. disposable income.
In short, high productivity growth isn't even possible in practical terms without rising demand, which isn't possible in neutral credit terms without rising wages or liquid compensation. Roughly.
Ryan Avent briefly mentions this part in a paragraph here:https://medium.com/@ryanavent_93844/the-productivity-paradox-aaf05e5e4aad
Buyt why doesn't this completely address the "puzzle"? Why isn't this the whole story? Why do we need other explanations at all?
This is the kind of thing that economists typically use "general equilibrium" to think about.
K, so suppose automation & globalization allow us to produce more with less. Demand falls, so we produce less. BUT, since we can now produce more with less, the INPUTS we use to produce stuff must fall even more than the OUTPUT falls. So measured productivity should still go up, even if GDP slows down.
Okay, I follow this argument. But I'm not sure that the hypothetical is as true in practice as it is easy to say? For example, we know that wages are 'sticky', and employment - and choices about level of employment in a firm - may also be sticky. I.e., there may be a finite amount of tolerance for the second stage of input reduction.
Specifically, here: the INPUTS we use to produce stuff must fall even more than the OUTPUT falls..
This feels like a model assumption to me than something empirical - an assumption that all firms choose to operate at the maximum productivity frontier at all times.
After all, shadow of the future exists. It seems equally plausible that this alternative happens:
1) Firm automates, reduces headcount by X1 over a five-year period, expecting static output2) Many other firms also do X over same period, so that net consumption falls3) Production falls in correspondance with consumption, wiping out productivity gains4) Employers, already highly profitable even at reduced production frontier, choose not to further reduce headcount for many reasons. They're sick of layoffs; they want to wait for a recovery; they don't know how to reduce headcount any further without suffering quality risks that undermine market share, etc, etc.
The whole concept seems to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between labor and output. Any given automation allows you to reduce headcount by a fixed amount, to some extent irrespective of the quantity of your output. (Not completely, but you could say it permanently lowers the ratio of labor to output). But while reducing your first 10% in labor may be easy thank to automation, the second 20% may be completely impossible at any level of demand.
Basically, I have no idea why the inputs to production fall a second time in response to the output falling. It seems to assume a completely linear feasibility of input reduction along the entire frontier of firm labor. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of rigidities in there.
I'm very strongly convinced that rising productivity, as measured, is strongly empirically coordinated with overall consumption growth. It would be something to look into, wouldn't it?
Taking this argument even further -- if the output of technique A improves at a much faster rate than that of technique B, wouldn't that ultimately reduce the amount of effort going into improving output for technique B?
Take journalism for example. We could work on an AI that can generate article on its own. Or we could have writers work harder and crank out articles non-stop 24 hours for 365 days a year. Labor would lose out unless there's some way to augment the production (for example, a technology that can automatically generate articles based on neural activities).
But if AI writer is a realistic possibility, why bother investing in technology to help the output by labor? At that point, won't the role of labor be reduced to a stopgap until the robots get perfected? Especially when robots don't require wages like workers do.
So is it possible to reach a point where capital intensive production technology will always beat out labor intensive production technology? If so, how close are we to that point?
Sometime back in the 60's a friend of mine was on a mission studying the Brazilian use of concrete. He found that the cost of a poured yard of concrete was the same as in the U.S. The cost of concrete workers in Brazil was somewhere around 25 cents and hour. I don't remember U.S. rates at that time but it must have been near or greater than $2.50 per hr. Brazil had and still has lots of undifferentiated labor.
Another story. A commenter at CR's blog was involved in dealing with a Chinese supplier of a cast part. It required precision machining to be finished. He recommended using a precision casting that would not require additional machining. The cost of the precision die was around $35k. The supplier laughed as his cost for the extra machining was 5 cents.
I think in one sense a company can be operating on both of Krugman's curves. As a supply chain executive, half of my change initiatives were capital investment / process improvement activities that increased productivity: things like automated picking, more efficient consolidation algorithms, quality training.
The remaining initiatives were labor arbitrage: outsourcing delivery, bringing in temps for spikes instead of carrying more employees, shifting manufacturing to lower cost labor regions. Even though I knew in all these cases we were losing productivity per hour, the lower labor rates more than made up for it.
In my distribution center, robots took jobs as we invested, automated and improved processes. In my delivery network and manufacturing, lower wage workers took jobs from higher wage workers, and the productivity loss was more than covered by the wage difference.
Why did productivity decline from the 80s on? Innovation (and regulatory and societal acceptance) of labor arbitrage was a big part of the answer where I worked. It will be interesting to see if the $15 minimum wage experiment really does spur fast food to invest in capital improvements to increase labor productivity. Owners have been threatening that is the only way they can pay those wages and still make an acceptable return. Sounds less like a threat and more like a virtuous cycle to me.
A) Investment fell to all-time lows during the recession: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A006RE1Q156NBEA
and
B) Educational attainment has stalled.
Seems to me that is better theory.
And why would companies not be investing as much, especially in an era when capital is plentiful and cheap? One theory: market concentration / oligopolies. A really interesting study would be looking at productivity growth of concentrated vs. non-concentrated industries.
By the way, the model you just made provides a great alternative to the false theory of comparative advantage... you see all the capital flowing to the leader "A" firms and away from the "B" firms... in every industry.
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import React from "react";
import PropTypes from "prop-types";
import { useQuery, useSubscription } from "@apollo/react-hooks";
import { Route, Redirect } from "react-router-dom";
import ProfileLayout from "./layouts/ProfileLayout";
import { notificationAlert } from "../utils/alerts";
import {
GET_NOTIFICATIONS,
NEW_NOTIFICATION,
DELETE_NOTIFICATION,
NEW_MESSAGE,
LOAD_USER,
GET_SINGLE_CHAT,
GET_THREAD,
} from "../utils/queries";
const ProfileRoute = ({ component: Component, ...rest }) => {
const token = localStorage.getItem("token");
const { data: userData, loading } = useQuery(LOAD_USER);
useQuery(GET_NOTIFICATIONS);
const { refetch: threadRefetch } = useQuery(GET_THREAD);
const { refetch: singleChatRefetch } = useQuery(GET_SINGLE_CHAT);
useSubscription(NEW_MESSAGE, {
variables: {
notifierId: userData && userData.loadUser.id,
},
onSubscriptionData: async ({ subscriptionData }) => {
// refetch thread and single chat ( apollo cache gets updated automatically )
const { data: newThreadData } = await threadRefetch({
urlUser: subscriptionData.data.newMessage.creator.id,
});
await singleChatRefetch({
threadId: newThreadData.getThread.id,
});
},
});
useSubscription(NEW_NOTIFICATION, {
onSubscriptionData: ({ client, subscriptionData }) => {
const data = client.readQuery({
query: GET_NOTIFICATIONS,
});
if (
subscriptionData.data.newNotification.notifier.id ===
userData.loadUser.id
) {
notificationAlert(subscriptionData.data.newNotification);
const newData = {
getNotifications: [
subscriptionData.data.newNotification,
...data.getNotifications,
],
};
client.writeQuery({
query: GET_NOTIFICATIONS,
data: newData,
});
}
},
});
useSubscription(DELETE_NOTIFICATION, {
onSubscriptionData: ({ client, subscriptionData }) => {
const data = client.readQuery({
query: GET_NOTIFICATIONS,
});
const newNotificationList = data.getNotifications.filter(
(item) => item.id !== subscriptionData.data.deleteNotification
);
client.writeQuery({
query: GET_NOTIFICATIONS,
data: { getNotifications: newNotificationList },
});
},
});
if (!loading && !userData) {
localStorage.removeItem("token");
return <Redirect to="/login" />;
}
return (
<Route
{...rest}
render={(props) =>
token ? (
<ProfileLayout>
<Component {...props} />
</ProfileLayout>
) : (
<Redirect to="/login" />
)
}
/>
);
};
export default ProfileRoute;
ProfileRoute.propTypes = {
component: PropTypes.func,
};
ProfileRoute.defaultProps = {
component: null,
};
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Feature Learning applied to the Estimation of Tensile Strength at Break in Polymeric Material Design.
Several feature extraction approaches for QSPR modelling in Cheminformatics are discussed in this paper. In particular, this work is focused on the use of these strategies for predicting mechanical properties, which are relevant for the design of polymeric materials. The methodology analysed in this study employs a feature learning method that uses a quantification process of 2D structural characterization of materials with the autoencoder method. Alternative QSPR models inferred for tensile strength at break (a well-known mechanical property of polymers) are presented. These alternative models are contrasted to QSPR models obtained by feature selection technique by using accuracy measures and a visual analytic tool. The results show evidence about the benefits of combining feature learning approaches with feature selection methods for the design of QSPR models.
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DMV Lists Thousands Of Cars In Wrong Municipality
DMV's long-running computer nightmare is also causing major problems for local tax assessors, who say tens of thousands of vehicles have been listed in the wrong municipality.
HARTFORD — The state Department of Motor Vehicles' long-running computer nightmare is also causing major problems for local tax assessors, who say tens of thousands of vehicles have been listed in the wrong municipality by the DMV.
The DMV errors also apparently include sending tax assessors listings for vehicles made in 1995 as being 2015 model vehicles, and matching car and truck owner zip codes with the wrong town tax codes. Frustrated local officials say correcting the problems is costing them headaches, extra work and money.
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"It's been a hell of a time sorting through it, and there hasn't been a fix from DMV yet," Hartford's assistant tax assessor, Brian Penney, said Thursday.
West Hartford Assessor Joseph Dakers said the more than 500 vehicles DMV reported as suddenly being missing from West Hartford tax rolls would equate to a loss of about $7.6 million in taxable property for the town — unless the lists are corrected. "In light of what's been going on, I'm very uncomfortable with that," Dakers said.
Dakers said he has "high hopes" most of the problems will be corrected when the DMV sends out an updated motor vehicle address list to towns in May. "Otherwise, when the bills go out, it could be chaos," Dakers added.
"DMV and its [computer] vendor, 3M, are working to correct any outstanding issues for the assessors," the department's spokesman, William Seymour, said Thursday in an emailed response to a request for comment. He said DMV has now resolved problems with hundreds of school buses being mistakenly listed in the wrong tax towns.
"We are working with the towns to look at any specific issues town by town," Seymour said. "We are working to correct all problems as quickly as possible in an effort to help assessors meet their deadlines."
Connecticut's motor vehicle agency has been struggling since last year to correct massive problems with its new $25 million computer system. Customer waiting times have tripled, and some motorists were wrongly stopped by police because DMV erroneously suspended driver's registrations. Andres Ayala Jr. resigned last month after barely a year as DMV commissioner.
Most of the public's outrage has been focused on the difficulties faced by individual car owners and motorists, but the DMV computer problems have created concern for tax assessors all across Connecticut.
"We estimate that about 100,000 vehicles were on the wrong towns' tax lists" that DMV sent to municipalities in December, said John Rainaldi, Manchester's director of tax assessment and collection, and president of the Connecticut Association of Assessing Officers. He said most of those appeared to be school buses and commercial vehicles.
Dakers said West Hartford officials realized that DMV's list failed to account for about 90 West Hartford school buses. He said his staff finally located those buses in the small eastern Connecticut town of Ellington.
Coventry Town Manager John Elsesser said 24 Suffield school buses showed up on Coventry's list from DMV. He added that it appears every 1995 model vehicle owned by Coventry residents was listed by DMV as being made in 2015, which, if left uncorrected, would dramatically increase those vehicle owners' tax bills.
"We will have to correct our grand lists," said an angry Elsesser, explaining that will cost his town in staff time and money.
In Hartford, Penney said that "more than 1,000 vehicles that we know of were placed here by DMV in error." The UPS headquarters in Hartford normally garages about 300 of its trucks in Hartford, according to Penney, but the DMV listed that company as having 900 vehicles in Hartford.
"The DMV placed virtually every UPS vehicle in the state on Hartford's grand list," Penney said. "We had to reach out to UPS and ask them to help us out," he said. "We were also missing vehicles, and probably still are, on our grand list," Penney added. "We still have vehicles on our grand list that don't belong here."
Rainaldi said Manchester officials "knew we should have had about 60 school buses" being garaged in the city, but those were nowhere to be found on the list the DMV sent Manchester on Dec. 18.
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He said local assessors have been working with DMV and their local computer software vendors to correct the errors, and that most of those 100,000 buses and commercial vehicles listed in the wrong locations by DMV have now been properly assigned to town assessment lists.
In his response, Seymour said there "have always been matchup issues based on data provided to DMV and how it is listed by companies on our forms."
But Rainaldi said, "We've not encountered these problems before."
Glastonbury Tax Assessor Nicole Lintereur said she still isn't sure what the DMV's computer issues really mean for her municipality, although it appears there has been a significant increase in the total value of vehicles listed for Glastonbury. "We can't tell yet. We haven't been told what to look for or how to correct it," Lintereur said.
Some towns, including Simsbury, have thus far found what appear to be only relatively minor changes in the motor vehicle lists sent by DMV.
Assessors are required by law to have their motor vehicle grand lists completed by Jan. 31, but it appears a number of the 169 cities and towns may need extensions, which can be granted by their local chief elected officials. Hartford officials have requested an extension and hope to have that city's grand list ready by the end of February.
According to Rainaldi, his office decided not to seek an extension because it appears the problems could take months to correct. "This problem isn't going to be fixed in February," Rainaldi said.
Rainaldi said local assessors have been meeting with DMV officials to work on solutions to the problem, but said there has as yet been no word from state officials as to when the DMV's tax assessment computer glitches will be fixed.
"I'm sure every town is impacted," said Rainaldi.
Most cities and towns won't send out their motor vehicle tax bills until June, and several assessors said they are confident the problems can be corrected by then.
But delays in getting the problem solved could prove troublesome for local budget officials trying to figure out how much money their municipalities can expect in the coming year.
"Come springtime, it's going to be a little tricky for the budget folks," said Penney. "They want to have a good idea how much in taxes we're going to be collecting."
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The brazenness of the theft is astounding. Democrat election officials in Arizona and Florida, not finding the will of the people to their liking, are manufacturing a will of the people of their own. In Florida, they’re miraculously finding ballots — overwhelmingly votes for Democrats, of course — that were somehow inexplicably overlooked on election day. In Arizona, the Republican Party has accused Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes of “premeditated destruction of evidence” leading to “voting irregularities.”
The Democrats are determined to overturn the Republicans’ gain last Tuesday of two Senate seats, and are in the process of stealing those seats in plain sight.
The theft of elections, even defying court orders to stop while the whole world is watching, is a new low in American politics, and testifies to the Left’s overriding lust for power. The Democrats have never recovered their equilibrium after losing to Donald Trump in 2016, and now appear to be willing to stop at nothing — absolutely nothing — to neutralize Trump and regain their hegemony.
But there is more to this open theft than just that. The shamelessness and unapologetic audacity of this election fraud is no accident. The Democrats in Arizona and Florida and their allies in the establishment media piously intone that “all votes must be counted” as this fraud unfolds before our eyes, but they’re neither stupid nor naïve. It is much more likely that their very brazenness is not a bug, but a feature.
The Left is doing this out in the open to send a message:
There is nothing you can do. We will win. If we lose, we will cheat. We will lie. We will steal. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can do about it.
If the Democrats pull this off, they will have shown conservatives — and the world — that nothing could stop them. The governor of Florida couldn’t stop them. The courts couldn’t stop them. President Trump himself, who has been commenting repeatedly on Twitter about the theft, couldn’t stop them.
The election fraud in Arizona and Florida is a continuation of the Kavanaugh hearings. Just as the outrageously false allegations of sexual assault and rape against Brett Kavanaugh did, the election fraud demonstrates that there is no low to which the Democrats will not stoop to gain and hold power. They will even affect a self-righteous mien of moral superiority while stooping.
The lesson that conservatives are meant to learn is not just that the Left will stop at nothing, but that the Left is unstoppable. Republicans and conservatives can vote for “drain the swamp” candidates all they want — but the swamp will not be drained, as those candidates will not take office even if they win.
The intention is to intimidate and demoralize conservatives, induce them to give up and get out of this dirty game. This is, in a word, terrorism. The Left has taken a page from the fourteen-year-old playbook of Islamic jihadists. In my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, I detail numerous analogous incidents, in which Muslim rulers displayed gratuitous brutality against their captive non-Muslim populations solely to intimidate and demoralize them. To reinforce the lesson that resistance was futile.
In one such incident, Abd al-Rahman III, the Tenth Century Umayyad caliph of Córdoba, determined to make sure that his Christian subjects knew their place. The Eleventh Century Muslim historian Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba recounts that one of the officers of Abd al-Rahman III “chose the 100 most important barbarians” (that’s how the Muslim rulers referred to the Christians) and sent them to Córdoba, where Abd al-Rahman was headquartered. As Abd al-Rahman watched joyfully, “all the prisoners, one by one, were decapitated in his presence and under his eyes, in plain sight of the people, whose feelings against the infidels Allah alleviated, and they showered their blessings on the Caliph.”
While noting that the Muslim onlookers were happy at this spectacle, Ibn Hayyan doesn’t record the reaction of any Christians who may have witnessed this scene. It isn’t, however, difficult to imagine: amid their shock and horror came the realization that there was nothing they could do. It was useless to resist Abd al-Rahman. And for the most part, they didn’t.
The Democrats are not rounding up conservative leaders and executing them in the city square — however, the approval of mob violence from the likes of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder is a sign that such a day might not be as far off as we would like to think. In the meantime, however, the effect is the same: we are meant to learn that they have carte blanche, that the democratic process is over, and that we might as well just submit to their will.
This is all the more reason why we must work harder to stop their thefts in Arizona and Florida, and to take all legal means to end their dishonest and underhanded practices once and for all.
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Nrf2 deficiency exacerbates frailty and sarcopenia by impairing skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and dynamics in an age-dependent manner.
Mitochondrial dysfunction during aging is a key factor that contributes to sarcopenia. Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) has been increasingly recognized to regulate mitochondrial function. The present study aimed to investigate the role of Nrf2 in the development of frailty and sarcopenia during aging, and to demonstrate whether Nrf2 contributes to the maintenance of muscle mass and function by regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis and dynamics during the aging process. Young (5-6 months), middle-aged (11-13 months), old (20-24 months) Nrf2-/- (knockout, KO) mice and age-matched wild-type (WT) C57/BL6 mice were used in this study. Physical function of the mice in the 6 groups was assessed by grip strength test, four paw inverted hanging test, rotarod analysis, open field analysis, and treadmill endurance test. Muscle mass was measured by cross-sectional area (CSA) of tibialis anterior muscles and gastrocnemius muscle weight. The frailty status of the 25 old WT mice and 23 old KO mice were assessed based on the mouse frailty phenotype assessment. Expression levels of genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis (nuclear respiratory factor 1 (Nrf1), peroxisome proliferative activated receptor, gamma, coactivator 1 alpha (PGC-1α), mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM)) and mitochondrial dynamics (optic atrophy protein 1 (Opa1), mitofusin 1 (Mfn1), mitofusin 2 (Mfn2), and dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1)) were measured in the skeletal muscle. SDH staining was performed and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number was measured. Transmission electron microscopy was used to measure the mitochondria number and morphology. Physical function and muscle mass decreased during aging. The mRNA expression levels of Nrf2 decreased with increasing frailty phenotype scores in the old WT mice. There were minimal differences in the physical function and muscle mass between the WT and KO mice in the young groups, whereas Nrf2 deficiency caused a declined physical function and muscle mass in the middle-aged and old mice, and exacerbated frailty in the old mice. The decreases of the physical function and muscle mass were accompanied by the reduced expression levels of genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis and dynamics, as well as a reduction of mitochondrial number, mitochondrial content, mtDNA copy number, and an impaired mitochondria morphology in the skeletal muscle. Nrf2 deficiency exacerbated frailty and sarcopenia during aging, at least partially by impairing skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and dynamics in an age-dependent manner.
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Q:
Total size of serialized results of tasks is bigger than spark.driver.maxResultSize
Good day.
I am running a development code for parsing some log files. My code will run smoothly if I tried to parse less files. But as I increase the number of log files I need to parse, it will return different errors such as too many open files and Total size of serialized results of tasks is bigger than spark.driver.maxResultSize.
I tried to increase the spark.driver.maxResultSize but the error still persists.
Can you give me any ideas on how to resolve this issue?
Thanks.
A:
Total size of serialized results of tasks is bigger than spark.driver.maxResultSize means when a executor is trying to send its result to driver, it exceeds spark.driver.maxResultSize. Possible solution is as mentioned above by @mayank agrawal to keep on increasing it till you get it to work (not a recommended solution if an executor is trying to send too much data ).
I would suggest looking into your code and see if the data is skewed that is making one of the executor to do most of the work resulting in a lot of data in/out. If data is skewed you could try repartitioning it.
for too many open files issues , possible cause is Spark might be creating a number of intermediate files before shuffle. could happen if too many cores being used in executor/high parallelism or unique keys (possible cause in your case - huge number of input files). One solution to look into is consolidating the huge number of intermediate files through this flag : --conf spark.shuffle.consolidateFiles=true (when you do spark-submit)
One more thing to check is this thread (if that something similar to your use case): https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-12837
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In 2010-11, Ronnie Brewer was a critical piece of the Chicago Bulls' so-called "Bench Mob" that helped push the team to a conference finals berth. A couple lost seasons later, the Bulls will hope Brewer can again provide a missing ingredient.
Chicago and Brewer came to terms on a contract for the remainder of the 2013-14 NBA season on Monday, the terms of which have not been disclosed. Considering its tenuous straddling of the luxury-tax line, it's unlikely Brewer will receive anything larger than the prorated veteran's minimum. More interesting is whether the deal allots for an option for next season.
Brewer, 29, was released by the Houston Rockets in February. He averaged only 0.3 points on 20 percent shooting in 23 games with the Rockets after signing in Houston last offseason. A swing guard-forward known mostly for his defense, Brewer was coming off a struggle-filled 2012-13 campaign where he failed to stick in the rotations for both the Oklahoma City Thunder and New York Knicks.
Nam Y. Huh
While it's unclear what (if any) role he'll ultimately have in Chicago, there may be no more conducive fit for his style. Coach Tom Thibodeau coaxed some of the best ball of Brewer's career out of him during his two-year stint with the Bulls.
First a member of the "Bench Mob" in 2010-11, Brewer started 43 games the following season. Though the Bulls declined his option and allowed him to walk in free agency, Brewer's on-off splits were always solid, as was his relationship with teammates.
“That’s my guy,” forward Taj Gibson told Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune. “He’s a big guard, can defend multiple positions. He’s athletic and he’s a leader. He has been in the league a long time and has been through a lot with us.”
News of Brewer's potential arrival had been circulating for days. He was at the Berto Center working out for the team on Thursday, and former Bulls guard Mike James has also been a rumored potential addition, per Greenstein. Because the Rockets waived Brewer before the NBA's cut-off deadline, he will be able to play in the postseason.
Brewer's signing puts the short-staffed Bulls at 13 players. With injuries to Derrick Rose and the departure of Luol Deng via trade, Thibodeau has stripped his rotation down to the bare bones and transmogrified into a Joakim Noah-led defensive monolith.
The Bulls are currently tied with the Toronto Raptors for third place in the East. They've allowed an NBA-best 97.1 points per 100 possessions since Jan. 1, per NBA.com. Noah, at times facilitating the entirety of the Bulls' attack on both ends of the floor, is a favorite for the first-team All-NBA center spot.
Jason Getz
It's unlikely Brewer has much effect on Chicago's trajectory. He'll slot in the rotation behind starters Mike Dunleavy and Jimmy Butler, as well as rookie Tony Snell. Jimmer Fredette's complete ineffectiveness since signing in Chicago will probably make it an interesting call whether Thibodeau goes with Fredette or Brewer first off the rotation, though neither will get much playing time barring injury in the playoffs.
More than anything, this is a "just in case" signing. If Butler or Dunleavy goes down, Thibodeau needs to have someone in place who can execute the defensive system. Fredette hasn't proven himself capable yet, and the Bulls' entire system breaks down with one weak link. For all his offensive struggles throughout his career, Brewer is still a fine lockdown defender on the perimeter.
It'll be a surprise if Brewer has much impact, but it's a signing that certainly won't hurt anything.
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Background {#Sec1}
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In the United States, an additional 224,390 new lung cancer cases were diagnosed in 2016, and accounted for about 27% of all cancer deaths \[[@CR1]\]. Although standard platinum-based chemotherapy is the cornerstone of systemic therapy, it has a modest effect on overall survival (OS) \[[@CR2]\]. Lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer death worldwide \[[@CR3]\].
In the most recent decade, treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has evolved to a great extent. The discovery of driver mutations in lung cancer allows the creation of personalized targeted treatment. It is important that lung cancer patients are tested for oncogenic drivers of cancer and receive matched targeted therapy \[[@CR4]\]. Epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR TKIs) provide a favorable treatment outcome in epidermal growth factor receptor (*EGFR*) mutation-positive patients. *EGFR* mutation-positive patients with lung adenocarcinoma had a response rate as high as 80%, and around 10--14 months of progression-free survival (PFS) \[[@CR5], [@CR6]\]. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines recommend EGFR TKIs as first-line treatment for *EGFR*-mutant patients. The most common activating mutations are in-frame deletions in exon 19 and single-point mutation of exon 21 (Leu858Arg), which together account for more than 80% of known activating *EGFR* mutations \[[@CR7], [@CR8]\].
Although EGFR TKIs have a favorable and durable treatment response, most patients will eventually develop progressive disease (PD) within about one year of treatment. Furthermore, acquired resistance develops and limits the long-term efficacy of these EGFR TKIs. A variety of mechanisms of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs have been reported. The most common mechanism is the development of acquired *EGFR* T790M mutation \[[@CR9]\]. T790M was found in about 50% of *EGFR*--mutant cases that acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR9]\]. Patients using either first- or second-generation EGFR TKIs had a similar prevalence of acquired T790M \[[@CR10]\].
Preclinical data showed that the second-generation EGFR TKI, afatinib, could overcome the resistance caused by the T790M mutation \[[@CR11]\], but clinical trials have not revealed the effect due to toxicity limitations. The narrow therapeutic window of afatinib caused severe adverse effects (AEs), probably owing to inhibition of wild-type *EGFR* \[[@CR12], [@CR13]\]. In the phase III LUX-Head & Neck 1 (LHN1) trial, second-line afatinib significantly improved PFS versus methotrexate in patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma \[[@CR14]\]. This suggests afatinib is a drug active against wild-type *EGFR*. The third-generation EGFR TKI, osimertinib, has been approved for patients with T790M-positive NSCLC with acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs. Use of third-generation EGFR TKIs was related to different acquired resistance mechanisms \[[@CR15]--[@CR18]\]. Therefore, in this manuscript, we focused on these recently developed treatment strategies for *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC with acquired resistance to first- or second-generation EGFR TKIs.
Clinical presentation of acquired resistance to first-line EGFR TKIs {#Sec2}
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Although *EGFR*-mutant patients receiving EGFR TKIs have longer median PFS than those receiving platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment \[[@CR5], [@CR6], [@CR19], [@CR20]\], acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs eventually emerges. In 2010, Jackman et al. proposed clinical criteria for acquired resistance to EGFR TKI based on the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) \[[@CR21], [@CR22]\]. Acquired resistance is defined as when *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC patients achieved a response or stable disease with greater than six months of targeted therapy and subsequently developed disease progression while still on the targeted agent \[[@CR22]\]. However, the patterns of disease progression varied in clinical practice.
Oncologists traditionally change treatment regimens when there is objective evidence of radiological or clinical progression. However, in routine practice, different characteristics of disease progression might develop when using EGFR TKIs, and will confuse clinicians. Gandara et al. divided disease progression with EGFR TKIs use into three subtypes, including: oligoprogression (new sites or regrowth in a limited number of areas, maximum of four progression sites), systemic progression (multisite progression), and central nervous system (CNS) sanctuary progression (excluding leptomeningeal carcinomatosis due to the lack of effective treatment options for long-term control) \[[@CR23]\]. For patients with CNS sanctuary progression and/or oligoprogressive disease when using a previously beneficial EGFR TKI, it may be reasonable to consider local treatment and continuation of the targeted agent. This approach yielded more than six months of additional disease control \[[@CR24], [@CR25]\].
Yang et al. proposed another criteria for EGFR TKI failure modes in NSCLC \[[@CR26]\]. Based on the duration of disease control, the evolution of the tumor burden, and clinical symptoms, regardless of genotype profile, the diversity of EGFR TKI failure could be categorized into three modes, including dramatic progression, gradual progression, and local progression. The median PFS was 9.3, 12.9, and 9.2 months (*p* = 0.007) for these three modes, respectively, and median OS was 17.7, 39.4, and 23.1 months (*p* \< 0.001), respectively. In patients with disease in the gradual progression mode, continuing EGFR TKI therapy was superior to switching to chemotherapy in terms of OS (39.4 vs. 17.8 months; *p* = 0.02) \[[@CR26]\]. Determination of the clinical mode could favor strategies for subsequent treatment and prediction of survival.
Mechanisms of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs {#Sec3}
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Acquired resistance mechanisms vary. Several study groups comprehensively explored the mechanisms through re-biopsy tissue specimens. The most common acquired resistance mechanisms were of three types: target gene modification, alternative pathway activation and histological or phenotypic transformation (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 1The distribution of different acquired resistance mechanisms
### Target gene modification {#Sec4}
The T790M mutation, which substitutes methionine for threonine at amino acid position 790 at exon 20 of *EGFR*, was the most commonly acquired resistance mechanism. It accounted for about 50--60% of cases with acquired resistance to gefitinib or erlotinib \[[@CR9], [@CR10]\]. The 790 residue is in a key location at the entrance to a hydrophobic pocket of the ATP-binding cleft, so it is also referred to as a "gatekeeper" mutation. Because of the bulky methionine sidechain, T790M causes conformational change that leads to the development of steric hindrance and affects the ability of EGFR TKI to bind to the ATP-kinase pocket \[[@CR9]\]. In addition, the T790M mutation of *EGFR* could restore the affinity of the mutant receptor for ATP, thus reducing the potency of competitive inhibitors \[[@CR27]\].
Other second-point mutations, such as D761Y \[[@CR28]\], T854A \[[@CR29]\], or L747S \[[@CR30]\], confer acquired EGFR TKI resistance, although the definite mechanism is still unclear.
### Alternative pathway activation {#Sec5}
Alternative or bypass pathway activation also causes primary resistance. Through bypass tract activation, cancer cells can survive and proliferate, even when inhibits by the initial driver pathway. The most common bypass pathway is *MET* amplification, which accounts for 5--10% of cases with acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR31], [@CR32]\]. *MET* gene amplification could activate PI3K-AKT pathway signaling independent of *EGFR* through driving ERBB3 dimerization and signaling \[[@CR31]\]. However, the threshold of *MET* amplification that would induce TKI resistance has not been clarified. Overexpression of hepatocyte growth factor, the ligand of MET oncoprotein, also promotes EGFR TKI resistance \[[@CR33]\].
Activation of other alternative pathways, including *HER2* amplification \[[@CR34]\], *PIK3CA* mutation \[[@CR35]\], *BRAF* mutation, and increased expression of the receptor tyrosine kinase AXL, have been reported to promote acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR36]\].
### Histological and phenotypic transformation {#Sec6}
About 5% of patients suffered from transformation from *EGFR*-mutant adenocarcinoma to small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) after acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR35]\]. A possible theory is that the initial sample bias resulted in missing the preexisting SCLC component in the original tumor. However, the patient had a good treatment response and prolonged PFS \[[@CR37]\], and the original activating *EGFR* mutations of adenocarcinoma persisted in the re-biopsy SCLC specimens \[[@CR38], [@CR39]\]. Recent studies disclosed that the SCLC transformation process is predisposed in adenocarcinoma by inactivation of Rb and p53 \[[@CR40], [@CR41]\]. In addition, evaluation of the RB1 and TP53 status of adenocarcinoma is predictive biomarker for SCLC transformation after TKI treatment \[[@CR40], [@CR41]\]. SCLC transformation arises from common progenitor cells of adenocarcinoma in response to EGFR TKI therapy \[[@CR37]\].
Inappropriate induction of epithelial--mesenchymal transition (EMT) in tumor cells caused tumor invasion, metastasis, drug resistance, and stem cell properties \[[@CR42], [@CR43]\]. Many studies have shown that EMT is a mechanism of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs. Different EMT transcription factors, including Slug, ZEB1, Snail, and AXL, changed with the development of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR42], [@CR44]\]. EMT was reported in two (5%) re-biopsy tumors of 37 patients \[[@CR35]\]. In terms of morphology, the cancer cells lost their epithelial features (e.g., E-cadherin expression) and transformed into spindle-like mesenchymal cells with a gain of vimentin \[[@CR45]\].
Exploring the resistance mechanism of EGFR TKIs {#Sec7}
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Different mechanisms can be detected in disease progression to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR46]\]. It is important to identify the definite tumor resistance mechanism. Repeated tumor biopsy is a key factor for the subsequent treatment plan. Genotyping, whether for the existence of *EGFR* T790M mutations or other oncogenic alterations, is a crucial step in guiding future treatment, according to the current NSCLC guidelines \[[@CR47], [@CR48]\].
However, tumor heterogeneity appears in the primary tumor and in metastatic lesions. Intratumor and inter-metastases may have diverse clones with different oncogenic driver mutations or resistance mechanisms \[[@CR49]\]. The resistant mutations may occur at a small clone of tumor cells and clonal evolution may develop during the treatment process, so molecular-based detection methods play an important role. Mutation-enriched or ultra-sensitive (defined as an analytic sensitivity below 1%) molecular-based detection methods should be considered \[[@CR46], [@CR50]\]. The guideline of the College of American Pathologists, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and Association for Molecular Pathology recommends that the assay for the *EGFR* T790M resistant mutation is able to detect the mutation in as few as 5% of cells or less (assuming heterozygosity, a 2.5% mutant allele fraction) in clinical practice \[[@CR50]\]. For traditional PCR-based methods, Sanger sequencing provided a sensitivity of only about 20%. Other highly sensitive PCR-based assays utilizing locked nucleic acids (LNAs) or peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) could reach 0.1--2% of analytical sensitivity \[[@CR51]\]. Kinase fusions recently were reported as mechanisms of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs \[[@CR52]\]. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is becoming the preferred method because it can provide high sensitivity to detect known and unknown mutations and genetic alterations.
Sometimes, it is difficult to obtain the re-biopsy tumor specimens because of the potential risks of invasive diagnostic procedures. Prospective studies showed that the success rate of repeated biopsy was 75--95%, and serious complications were detected in about 1% of cases \[[@CR32], [@CR53], [@CR54]\]. Although repeated biopsy seems safe in clinical practice, it is still limited in use because of patient fear and physician preference. Therefore, obtaining serial biopsies from the same patient is rarely feasible during the NSCLC treatment course. In addition, the existence of intra-tumor heterogeneity influences tumor evolution, metastasis and resistance mechanisms in different ways, including somatic mutations, epigenetic change and post-transcriptional modification \[[@CR55]--[@CR57]\]. Therefore, there may be selection bias because a single snapshot biopsy specimen is not enough to accurately represent all the resistance mechanisms of different sites.
Liquid biopsy, on the other hand, could provide a source of information on the resistance mutations of the entire tumor landscape, compared with the single site sampled using conventional tumor tissue biopsy \[[@CR58]\]. Cell-free circulating DNA (ctDNA) is adopted for noninvasive exploration of resistance mechanisms and tumor genetic alterations. ctDNA theoretically could provide a surrogate of the whole tumor genome of both primary and metastatic lesions. Different methodologies, with high sensitivity and detection of genetic number and type alteration, are being used for ctDNA testing (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}) \[[@CR59]\]. The *EGFR* T790M mutation could be detected in plasma samples by highly sensitive genotyping methods, including next-generation sequencing, droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR), and bead, emulsion, amplification and magnetics (BEAMing) assays \[[@CR60]--[@CR63]\]. The FDA has approved the Roche real-time PCR assay, cobas® *EGFR* Mutation Test v2, for detection of *EGFR* mutations in ctDNA in blood samples. Using ctDNA to detect mutations can produce a high positive predictive value. But, not all tumors shed ctDNA to the same degree, because of differences in tumor size, stage, location, vascularity, sites of metastatic disease and treatment history \[[@CR64], [@CR65]\]. Several studies found that up to 35% of patients with *EGFR* T790M might have false-negative plasma levels, compared with tissue biopsy \[[@CR66], [@CR67]\]. Therefore, if liquid biopsy shows a negative *EGFR* T790M mutation, tissue biopsy for confirmation is necessary \[[@CR66]\].Table 1Sensitivity of detection of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)TestDetectionAnalytic limitation*EGFR* T790M mutationTest CharacteristicsReferenceSensitivitySpecificityMSKnown SNVs1--10%38.9% for del19/L858R84.6% for del19/L858RQuantitative\[[@CR122]\]dHLPCKnown SNVs1--5%81.8% for sensitizing mutation89.5% for sensitizing mutationProvided information only of presence/absence of known mutations\[[@CR123], [@CR124]\]CobasKnown SNVs1--3%61.4% (76.7% for del19/L858R)78.6% (98.2% del19/L858R)Semi-quantitative\
The only FDA approved ctDNA assay for detection of *EGFR* mutations\[[@CR70], [@CR71]\]Scorpion-ARMSKnown SNVs1--3%61.8%--85.7% for del19/L858R94.3--100% for del19/L858RSemi-quantitative\[[@CR72], [@CR125]\]HRMAKnown SNVs, indels,0.1--10%91.67% for sensitizing mutation100% for sensitizing mutationRapid *EGFR* mutation screening\[[@CR126]\]ddPCRKnown SNVs\> 0.1%77% (74--82% for del19/L858R)63% (100% for del19/L858R)Quantitative Rapid turnaround time\[[@CR73]\]BEAMingKnown SNVs, CNVs, SV\> 0.1--0.01%70%69%Quantitative Detects complex alteration\[[@CR66]\]NGSKnown/new SNVs, indels, CNVs, SV0.01%--5%93% (87--100% for del19/L858R)94% (96--100% for del19/L858R)Quantitative Profiles large gene panels\
Detects more complex alteration\[[@CR127]--[@CR129]\]PNA-PCRKnown SNVs, indel,0.01%78% for del19/L858R100% for del19/L858RSemi-quantitative\[[@CR130], [@CR131]\]*SNV* single nucleotide variant, *ctDNA* circulating tumor DNA, *ARMS* amplification refractory mutation system, *BEAMing* beads, emulsion, amplification and magnetics, *ddPCR* digital droplet polymerase chain reaction, *del* deletion, *indel* insertion/deletion, *FDA* US Food and Drug Administration, *NGS* next-generation sequencing, *CNVs* copy number variants, *SV* structure variants, *HRMA* high-resolution melting analysis, *dHLPC* denaturing high performance liquid chromatography, *MS* mass spectrophotometry (MS), *PNA-PCR* peptide nucleic acid-polymerase chain reaction
Serial analysis of ctDNA can track the molecular dynamic evolution of the tumor and monitor treatment response. However, the technological approach is not standardized because of the broad range of ctDNA isolation techniques, DNA analysis and quantification \[[@CR65], [@CR68]\].
The management of progression during EGFR TKIs use {#Sec8}
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According to the NCCN guideline \[[@CR48]\], subsequent therapy after progression with first-line EGFR TKIs includes different treatment recommendations, which have been plotted as an algorithm. For patients with sensitizing *EGFR* mutations who progress during or after first-line targeted therapy, recommended therapy depends on the acquired resistance mechanism and whether the progression is asymptomatic or symptomatic.
We modified the latest NCCN and ESMO Guidelines \[[@CR48], [@CR69]\], and included the feasibility of liquid biopsy based on the emerging evidence from studies and trials \[[@CR70]--[@CR73]\]. An algorithm was proposed (Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}) to provide clinical physicians with an appropriate practice plan for patients who experience disease progression on EGFR TKIs.Fig. 2Treatment algorism for advanced *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC patients
### TKI beyond progression {#Sec9}
In clinical practice, clinicians may prescribe EGFR TKI therapy beyond progression, especially when patients suffer from asymptomatic progression. Nishie et al. retrospectively analyzed Japanese patients with *EGFR* mutations. Continuous use of EGFR TKIs beyond progression in patients with activating *EGFR* mutations may prolong OS compared with switching to cytotoxic chemotherapy \[[@CR74]\]. In addition, the phase II ASPIRATION study demonstrated that continued erlotinib therapy following progression is feasible in selected patients \[[@CR75]\]. The NCCN Panel recommended continuing EGFR TKIs, whether erlotinib, gefitinib, or afatinib, and considering local therapy in patients with asymptomatic progression \[[@CR48]\].
A flare-up phenomenon (rapid disease progression) occasionally is noted after discontinuation of EGFR TKIs. Intratumor heterogeneity is the possible mechanism of the phenomenon. Compared to the resistant clone with indolent behavior, rapid regrowth of TKI-sensitive clones causes rapid clinical deterioration when EGFR TKIs are discontinued \[[@CR76]\]. One retrospective study also showed that 14 of 61 (23%) patients suffered from disease flare after stopping EGFR TKIs \[[@CR77]\]. Therefore, some patients were prescribed EGFR TKIs after acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs.
The phase III IMPRESS trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of continuing gefitinib combined with chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone in patients with *EGFR*-mutation-positive advanced NSCLC with acquired resistance to first-line gefitinib. A total of 265 patients were enrolled. However, continuation of gefitinib after disease progression on first-line gefitinib did not prolong PFS in patients treated with platinum-based doublet chemotherapy as subsequent treatment. A long-term follow-up found that median OS was 13.4 months in the combination arm and 19.5 months in the control arm (HR 1.44; *p* = 0.016) \[[@CR78]\]. Besides, the gefitinib group had more side effects and grade 3 or worse AEs. According to the results of the IMPRESS trial, continuation of chemotherapy with first-generation EGFR TKIs after acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs is not considered as standard treatment.
### Switch therapy {#Sec10}
Repeated biopsy could provide information about the mechanism of acquired resistance. If there is no targetable oncogenic driver mutations/bypass pathways and corresponding target medications, chemotherapy is still the standard subsequent treatment after acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs. The NCCN guideline offers a treatment algorithm for patients whose disease has progressed on first-line EGFR TKIs. Platinum doublet with or without bevacizumab chemotherapy should be considered and recommended as second-line treatment for patients when they suffer from systemic progression due to acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs.
Two retrospective studies found that for *EGFR*-mutant patients who received platinum-based chemotherapy after disease progression with first-line EGFR TKI treatment, the response rates were 14--18%. Their median PFS with second-line chemotherapy was about four months \[[@CR79], [@CR80]\]. Because *EGFR* mutations are detected mostly in patients with an adenocarcinoma or non-squamous histology, the optimum regimen might be pemetrexed and platinum combination treatment \[[@CR81]\], followed by maintenance pemetrexed for patients who did not suffer from disease progression \[[@CR48], [@CR82]\].
The most common mechanism of acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs is acquired T790M mutation. Second-generation EGFR TKIs, including afatinib, dacomitinib and neratinib, had efficacy in inhibiting proliferation of T790M mutation-positive cells in vitro*.* However, clinical trials showed disappointing results due to high toxicities resulting from the narrow therapeutic window. In contrast to second-generation EGFR TKIs, third-generation EGFR TKIs had a good treatment effect on tumors harboring *EGFR* T790M mutations \[[@CR48], [@CR83]--[@CR85]\].
### Next-generation (third-generation) epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinases inhibitors (EGFR TKIs) {#Sec11}
The third-generation EGFR TKIs can form an irreversible covalent binding to EGFR. They are pyrimidine-based compounds, and differ from quinazolines-based first-and second-generation EGFR TKIs (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}) \[[@CR86]\]. Third-generation EGFR TKIs can attenuate *EGFR* T790M activity and have less epithelial toxicity due to less wild-type *EGFR* activity \[[@CR86], [@CR87]\]. Among them, osimertinib (AZD9291) received FDA and European Medicines Agency (EMA) approval in November 2015 and February 2016, respectively, for treatment of patients with T790M mutation-positive NSCLC after acquired resistance to first-line EGFR TKIs treatment. Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"} shows the available efficacy data of different third-generation EGFR TKIs in clinical trials.Osimertinib (AZD9291)Table 2Different generations of EGFR TKIsGenerationEGFR inhibitionDrugMolecular Targets^a^Adverse effectStatus1st-generationReversible;Gefitinib*EGFR del19, L858R*Skin rash/acne, abnormal LFTFDA approvedcompetitiveErlotinib*EGFR del19, L858R*FDA approved2nd-generationIrreversible; covalentAfatinib*EGFR del19, L858R*, uncommon mutations, HER2, HER4Diarrhea, paronychia. Skin rashFDA approvedDacomitinib*EGFR del19, L858R,* HER2, HER4Diarrhea, skin rash/acnePhase IIINeratinib*EGFR G719X*, HER2, HER4Diarrhea, dyspnea, N/VPhase II3rd-generationIrreversible;Osimertinib*EGFR* mutations and *T790M*Diarrhea, skin rashFDA approvedcovalentRociletinib*EGFR T790M* mutation, IGF-1RHyperglycemia, QTc prolongWithdrawnOlmutinib*EGFR T790M* mutationDiarrhea, skin exfoliation, nauseaApproved in South KoreaASP8273*EGFR L858R, del19, T790M*,Diarrhea, N/V, thrombocytopeniaPhase III DiscontinuedNazartinib*EGFR L858R, del19, T790M*,Rash, diarrhea, pruritusPhase I/IIAvitinib (AC0010)*EGFR L858R, del19, T790M*,Diarrhea, skin rash, abnormal LFTPhase I/IIHS-10296*EGFR* sensitive mutations *(G719X, del19, L858R, L861Q) +/−* T790MNone reportedPhase I/IIPF-06747775*EGFR L858R, del19, T790M*,None reportedPhase I/II*N/V* nausea and/or vomiting, *LFT* liver function test, *del19* deletion in exon19, *EGFR* epidermal growth factor receptor, *FDA* Food and Drug Administration^a^The targets included FDA approved or associated targetsTable 3Efficacy of third-generation EGFR TKIs in *EGFR* T790M-positive NSCLC patientsDrugTrialPatients (N)DoseORR T790MPFS (mo.)OsimertinibAURA phase I \[[@CR92]\]Total: 253 T790M(+): 13820-240 mg QDT790M(+): 61% T790M(−): 21%T790M(+): 9.6 T790M(−): 2.8AURA phase I T790M(+)6380 mg QD71%9.7AURA phase II21080 mg QD70%9.9AURA phase II extension \[[@CR132]\]41180 mg QD62%12.3AURA phase III \[[@CR84]\]416 -Osimertinib arm: 279\
-Chemotherapy arm: 14071%\
31%\
Odds ratio:5.39\
(95% CI: 3.47--8.48)10.1\
4.4\
HR: 0.30\
(95% CI: 0.23--0.41)RociletinibTIGER-X phase I/II \[[@CR98]\]Total: 69\
T790M(+): 51500, 625 or 750 mg bid45%T790M(+): 9.6\
T790M(−): 2.8OlmutinibHM-EMSI-101 phase I/II T790M(+) \[[@CR133]\]76800 mg QD62%6.9ASP8273NCT02113813 phase I/II \[[@CR134]\]Total: 63\
T790M(+): 58300 mg QD29%6.8NazartinibNCT02108964 phase I/II \[[@CR105]\]15275-350 mg QD46.9%9.7Avitinib (AC0010)NCT02330367 phase I/II \[[@CR106]\]13650-350 mg QD44%
Osimertinib (AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, UK) is an irreversible mono-anilino-pyrimidine EGFR TKI that covalently binds to the ATP-binding site, CYS797, of the EGFR tyrosine kinase domain. In EGFR recombinant enzyme assays, osimertinib showed potent activity against diverse activating *EGFR* mutations with/without T790M. According to the preclinical data, osimertinib has 200 times greater potency against L858R/T790M than wild-type *EGFR* \[[@CR88]\]. Two circulating metabolites of osimertinib, AZ5104 and AZ7550, were detected, and both had comparable potency to sensitizing *EGFR* mutation and T790M \[[@CR89]\]. There was no significant difference in pharmacokinetic exposure between Asian and non-Asian patients, showing a minimal food effect \[[@CR90]\]. In addition, unlike first- and second-generation EGFR TKIs, osimertinib exposure was not affected by concurrent administration of omeprazole \[[@CR91]\].
AURA (NCT01802632) is a phase I/II dose-escalation clinical trial of osimertinib, which enrolled 253 Asian and western NSCLC patients with acquired resistance to first- or second-generation EGFR TKIs, as defined by Jackman criteria \[[@CR22], [@CR92]\]. Patients were not preselected according to T790M status \[[@CR92]\]. Thirty-one patients were treated across five dose-escalation cohorts (20, 40, 80, 160 and 240 mg oral, daily) and 222 were treated in the dose-expansion cohort.
In the dose-escalation cohort, there was no dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) and the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) has not been reached. Of the 239 evaluable patients, the objective response rate (ORR) was 51% and the disease control rate (DCR) was 84%. Patients with *EGFR*-T790M mutation had a better ORR (61% vs. 21%), DCR (95% vs. 61%), and longer median PFS (9.6 months vs. 2.8 months) than patients without an *EGFR*-T790M mutation. The drug is relatively safe, and most of the AEs were grade 1 and 2. The most common AEs were diarrhea (47%), skin toxicity (40%), nausea (22%), and anorexia (21%). When patients took higher dose levels (160 and 240 mg), there was an increasing incidence and severity of AEs (rash, dry skin, and diarrhea). Based on efficacy and safety, 80 mg daily was selected as the recommended dose for further clinical trials \[[@CR92]\].
Then, a phase II "AURA2" study (NCT02094261) was initiated to enroll NSCLC patients with an *EGFR*-T790M mutation and acquired resistance to approved EGFR TKIs; the enrollment criteria were similar to those of the AURA study extension cohort. A preplanned pooled analysis was performed, including 201 patients from the 80 mg osimertinib expansion cohort of AURA and 210 patients from AURA2; ORR was 66%, DCR was 91%, and median PFS was 11.0 months \[[@CR93]\].
In the phase III AURA3 study, 419 patients were randomized into osimertinib or platinum-pemetrexed chemotherapy (maintenance pemetrexed was allowed) groups after they had acquired resistance to first-line EGFR TKI therapy. The investigator-assessed PFS (primary endpoint) was significantly longer in the osimertinib arm than in the chemotherapy arm (median 10.1 vs. 4.4 months; HR 0.30; *p* \< 0.001). The FDA has granted regular approval to the third-generation EGFR TKI, osimertinib, for the treatment of patients with metastatic *EGFR* T790M mutation-positive NSCLC.
In the preclinical study, osimertinib demonstrated greater penetration of the mouse blood-brain barrier than gefitinib, rociletinib, or afatinib \[[@CR94]\]. There were several reports of dramatic intracranial response to osimertinib in patients with *EGFR* T790M lung cancer \[[@CR94], [@CR95]\]. A phase I study (BLOOM, NCT02228369), which has enrolled pretreated *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC patients with leptomeningeal metastasis treated with 160 mg osimertinib once daily, is ongoing. The preliminary data is promising \[[@CR96]\].Rociletinib (CO-1686)
Rociletinib, a 2,4-disubstituted pyrimidine compound, is an oral, irreversible, mutant-selective inhibitor of activating *EGFR* mutations, including T790M, and spares wild-type *EGFR* \[[@CR97]\]. TIGER-X (NCT01526928A), a phase I/II trial of rociletinib, enrolled 130 *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC patients with acquired resistance to first- or second-generation EGFR TKIs \[[@CR83]\]. The ORR was 59% for the 46 evaluable T790M mutation-positive patients and 29% for the 17 T790M mutation-negative patients \[[@CR83]\]. Because of targeting of IGF-1R, hyperglycemia (22%) was detected as the most common grade 3 AE. An independent updated analysis of the TIGER-X trial showed that the T790M mutation-positive patients had an ORR of 45% \[[@CR98]\]. In addition, a series of cases with response to osimertinib after resistance to rociletinib were reported \[[@CR99]\]. Clovis Oncology, Inc. decided to stop enrollment in all ongoing rociletinib studies and terminate the future development program in May 2016.Olmutinib (BI-1482694/HM61713; Olita™)
A phase I/II dose escalation clinical trial, HM-EMSI-101 (NCT01588145), was initiated in South Korea \[[@CR100]\]. Patients took olmutinib in doses ranging from 75 to 1200 mg/day. Among the 34 patients with NSCLC harboring T790M detected by a central laboratory, the ORR was 58.8%. The DCR was 97.1% for patients treated with olmutinib in doses greater than 650 mg. The most common DLTs involved gastrointestinal symptoms, abnormal liver function (AST/ALT), and increasing amylase/lipase levels. Therefore, 800 mg/day was selected as the recommended phase II dose. Seventy-six patients with centrally confirmed T790M mutation-positive NSCLC were enrolled in part II of the study, and 70 were evaluable for response. The ORR was 61% and median PFS was 6.9 months \[[@CR101]\]. Based on the aforementioned result, olmutinib was first approved in South Korea in 2016. However, Boehringer Ingelheim decided to stop the co-development of this drug because of an unexpected grade 3/4 skin toxicity (including palmoplantar keratoderma) \[[@CR102]\].ASP8273
Preclinical data showed ASP8273 had antitumor activity against EGFR TKI-resistant cells, including those with resistance to osimertinib and rociletinib \[[@CR103]\]. A multi-cohort, phase 1 study (NCT02113813) was initiated to evaluate the safety and efficacy of ASP8273 in NSCLC patients with disease progression after EGFR TKI treatment. The most common AEs included diarrhea (47%), nausea (42%), and fatigue (32%). The most common grade 3/4 AE was hyponatremia (17%). Across all doses, the ORR was 30.7%, and median PFS was 6.8 months in patients with *EGFR* T790M \[[@CR104]\]. A phase III randomized clinical trial (SOLAR) was conducted to compare the efficacy and safety of ASP8273 with that of erlotinib or gefitinib as first-line treatment for advanced *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC (NCT02588261). However, Astellas Pharma (OTCPK: ALPMY) terminated the phase III SOLAR study in May 2017 because the treatment advantage apparently was not adequate enough to justify continuation.Nazartinib (EGF816)
A phase I/II first-in-human study, NCT02108964 (EGF816X2101), investigated nazartinib in *EGFR*-mutant patients. A total of 152 patients were treated across seven cohorts using doses ranging from 75 to 350 mg \[[@CR105]\]. Among the 147 evaluable patients, the ORR and DCR were 46.9% and 87.1%, respectively. The median PFS across all dose cohorts was 9.7 months. Skin rash (54%), diarrhea (37%), and pruritus (34%) were the most common AEs. The skin rashes related to nazartinib were different from those caused by other EGFR TKIs in pattern, location, and histology. The most common grade 3/4 AE was diarrhea (16%) \[[@CR105]\]. A phase II clinical trial with six cohorts is ongoing. In addition, a phase Ib/II trial (NCT02335944 and NCT02323126) is ongoing to investigate the efficacy of combined treatments with INC280, a specific MET inhibitor, and with nivolumab, an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody in patients with *EGFR*-T790M mutation after acquired resistance to first-line EGFR TKI.AC0010
A phase I/II, first-in-human dose-escalation and expansion phase clinical trial (NCT02330367) was carried out with advanced NSCLC patients with acquired T790M mutation after first-generation EGFR TKIs treatment \[[@CR106]\]. In all, 136 patients have been treated across seven cohorts (50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, and 350 mg BID), and MTD has not been reached. The most common drug-related AEs were diarrhea (38%), rash (26%) and ALT/AST elevation. Grade 3/4 AEs of diarrhea (2%), rash (2%) and ALT/AST elevation (4%, 2%) were recorded. The 124 evaluable patients had ORR and DCR of 44% and 85%, respectively. Because of the drug safety profile and activity against NSCLC with acquired T790M mutation, a phase II, AEGIS-1 study is ongoing to evaluate treatment efficacy for patients with T790M mutation-positive NSCLC with acquired resistance to first-generation EGFR TKIs. An open label, randomized phase III trial (NCT03058094) also is ongoing to compare AC0010 (300 mg, BID) with pemetrexed/cisplatin (4--6 cycles) in patients with advanced NSCLC who have progressed following prior therapy with EGFR TKI. T790M in biopsy samples was confirmed by a central laboratory.HS-10296
An open-label, multicenter, phase I/II dose escalation and expansion trial (NCT02981108) is currently recruiting patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC after acquired resistance to first- and/or second-generation EGFR TKIs.PF-06747775
PF-06747775 has potent antitumor efficacy against NSCLC harboring a classical mutation with/without T790M. It significantly attenuates T790M activity and has less toxicity because of the reduction of proteome reactivity relative to earlier EGFR TKIs \[[@CR107], [@CR108]\]. A phase I/II clinical trial (NCT02349633) involving patients with advanced NSCLC harboring *EGFR* mutations (Del19 or L858R with/without T790M) is ongoing.
### Combination therapy {#Sec12}
*Vertical pathway*
Cetuximab is a recombinant human/mouse chimeric EGFR IgG1 monoclonal antibody. Combining afatinib and cetuximab may be useful for patients who have progressed after receiving EGFR TKI therapy and chemotherapy \[[@CR109]\]. Among 126 patients, the response rate of patients with T790M-positive and T790M-negative tumors was comparable (32% vs. 25%; *p* = .341). The two groups showed no statistical difference in PFS. The NCCN Panel recommends considering an afatinib/cetuximab regimen for patients who have progressed after receiving EGFR TKIs and chemotherapy \[[@CR48]\]. However, skin rash (90% all grades) and diarrhea (71% all grades) were the two most common adverse effects. Grades 3 and 4 adverse effects were 44% and 2%, respectively. Because of the high rate of AEs with this combination therapy, it is no longer a preferred treatment for patients with tumor harboring *EGFR* T790M mutations \[[@CR110]\].*Horizontal pathway*
Since bypass signaling pathway activation is an important acquired resistance mechanism of EGFR TKIs, it is reasonable to combine inhibition of EGFR pathway signaling and inhibitors for the bypass signaling pathway to overcome resistance. Different horizontal combination strategies are being investigated, but results are preliminary and immature (Table [4](#Tab4){ref-type="table"}).Table 4Main mechanisms involved in acquired resistance to EGF receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors and the associated targetable drugsMolecular alterationPathwayTargetable drugHER2 amplificationAfatinib, Trastuzumab, ado-trastuzumab emtansine (TDM1)MET overexpression/genetic alteration● Anti-HGF antibody: Rilotumumab, Ficlatuzumab\
● Anti-c-MET antibody: MET Mab, Emibetuzumab (LY2875358)\
● Selective c-MET inhibitor: Tivantinib (ARQ197), Capmatinib (INC280),\
Savolitinib (AZD6094), Tepotinib (EMD 1214063),\
SGX523, SAR125844,\
● Multikinase inhibitors: Crizotinib, Cabozantinib (XL184), Glesatinib (MGCD265),\
Merestinib (LY2801653), S49076PIK3CAPI3K-AKT-mTOR● PI3K inhibitor: Pilaralisib (XL147), Dactolisib (BEZ235) and Pictilisib (GDC-0941),\
Buparlisib (BKM120)\
● AKT inhibitor: MK-2206\
● mTOR inhibitor: Everolimus, Temsirolimus, RidaforolimusBRAFRas-Raf-MEK-ERKVemurafenib (PLX4032), Dabrafenib (GSK2118436), Selumetinib, LY3009120AXL overexpressionGAS6-AXL● Tyrosine kinase inhibitor: Cabozantinib (XL 184)\
● AXL antibody: E8, D9, Mab173\
● AXL decoy receptor: AXL-Fc, MYDI
*MET* amplification is an important mechanism of acquired resistance to EGFR TKI therapy \[[@CR31], [@CR111]\]. A randomized, open-label, phase 2 study enrolled patients with advanced NSCLC (enriched for *EGFR*-mutant disease) who developed acquired resistance to erlotinib to receive emibetuzumab (LY2875358), a humanized IgG4 monoclonal bivalent MET antibody, with or without erlotinib therapy. The ORR of patients whose re-biopsy samples harbored MET overexpression (≥60%) was 3.8% in the combination arm and 4.8% in the monotherapy arm \[[@CR112]\]. In Japan, another phase II clinical trial enrolled 45 patients with advanced *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC who developed acquired resistance to first-generation EGFR TKIs to receive tivantinib (ARQ197) and erlotinib combination therapy. The response rate was 6.7%. High MET expression (≥ 50%) was detected by immunohistochemical stain in 48.9% of the patients, including all three partial responders \[[@CR113]\]. In addition, a combination of capmatinib (INC280) and gefitinib was tested in a phase 2 study (NCT01610336) in *EGFR*-mutant NSCLC patients after acquired resistance to gefitinib. *EGFR* T790M NSCLCs were excluded and high cMET expression was required. Of the 65 evaluable patients, the ORR was 18% and DCR was 80%. More responses were seen in tumors with *MET* amplifications \[[@CR114]\].
In addition to *MET* amplification, different medications are being investigated to inhibit other bypass signaling pathways, including a heat shock protein 90 inhibitor, AUY922 ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov): NCT01259089 and NCT01646125); a JAK inhibitor, ruxolitinib ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov): NCT02155465 and NCT02145637); a MET/AXL/FGFR inhibitor S- 49076 ([EU Clinical Trials Register](https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/about.html): EudraCT Number: 2015--002646-31) and a PI3K inhibitor, buparlisib (BKM120) ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov): NCT01570296 and NCT01487265).
Furthermore, combination therapy with osimertinib has been investigated. The TATTON study ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov): NCT02143466) enrolled patients who received osimertinib-based combination therapy with either a MET inhibitor (savolitinib), MEK inhibitor (selumetinib), or anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody (durvalumab) \[[@CR115]\]. However, the rate of drug-related interstitial disease was high in the osimertinib plus durvalumab arm, so the development of this combination therapy was discontinued \[[@CR116]\]. Other clinical trials, including osimertinib in combination with ramucirumab, necitumumab, bevacizumab, or navitoclax ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), NCT02789345, 02496663, 02803203 and 02520778), are ongoing.
Combination therapies have higher rates of toxicities and side effects than a single agent does. Although the aforementioned medications have been evaluated in clinical trials, clinicians should keep in mind the possibility of AEs when prescribing combination therapy.
### Immunotherapy {#Sec13}
For subsequent therapy, or immunotherapy, nivolumab and pembrolizumab have been approved as standard treatment, and high-level PD-L1 expression in tumors can predict a higher response rate. Phase III trials assessing pembrolizumab, nivolumab, or atezolizumab compared to docetaxel as subsequent therapy for patients with metastatic NSCLC found there were no survival benefits for *EGFR*-mutant lung cancer patients. Also, there were not enough patients with these mutations to determine whether there were statistically significant differences. However, immunotherapy was comparable to chemotherapy and was better tolerated. \[[@CR117]--[@CR119]\]. Until now, there is not enough evidence to recommend pembrolizumab, nivolumab, or atezolizumab as subsequent therapy for *EGFR*-mutant patients.
In vitro, *EGFR*-mutant lung cancer cells inhibited antitumor immunity by activating the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway to suppress T-cell function \[[@CR120]\]. This finding indicates that EGFR functions as an oncogene through cell-autonomous mechanisms and raises the possibility that other oncogenes may drive immune escape \[[@CR120]\]. However, retrospective studies showed that NSCLCs harboring *EGFR* mutations were associated with low response rates to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, which may have resulted from low rates of concurrent PD-L1 expression and CD8(+) TILs within the tumor microenvironment \[[@CR119]\]. A retrospective study on the efficacy of nivolumab in patients with *EGFR* mutation-positive NSCLC after EGFR TKI failure found that T790M-negative patients were more likely than T790M-positive patients to benefit from nivolumab \[[@CR121]\].
Different phase 1 trials combining EGFR TKIs with immunotherapies include nivolumab ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), number NCT01454102); pembrolizumab ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), number NCT02039674); and atezolizumab ([ClinicalTrials.gov](http://clinicaltrials.gov), number NCT02013219). These studies are all ongoing.
Conclusions {#Sec14}
===========
EGFR TKIs are currently the standard first-line treatment of patients with advanced NSCLC harboring activating *EGFR* mutations. After acquiring resistance to first-line EGFR TKI therapy, it is important that the mechanisms of acquired resistance in all patients are explored. Then, based on the mechanism, subsequent treatment can be chosen. Continuation of EGFR TKI therapy is suitable for select patients with asymptomatic progression and/or oligoprogression. Repeat tumor biopsy to detect the *EGFR* T790M mutation is the current standard of care, and osimertinib has been approved for patients with acquired *EGFR* T790M-mutant disease. Liquid biopsy is an alternative method to detect plasma *EGFR* T790M mutation and to identify patients suitable for osimertinib therapy. Combination therapy may be effective for acquired resistance resulting from activation of the bypass signaling pathway. Advances in the detection method for different resistance mechanisms and the development of new drugs are both urgently needed for personalized therapy.
95% CI
: 95% confidence interval
AEs
: adverse effects
ASCO
: American Society of Clinical Oncology
ctDNA
: circulating tumor DNA
DLT
: dose-limiting toxicity
EGFR
: epidermal growth factor receptor
EMT
: epithelial--mesenchymal transition
ESMO
: European Society for Medical Oncology
FDA
: Food and Drug Administration
MLT
: maximum tolerated dose
NCCN
: National Comprehensive Cancer Network
NSCLC
: non-small cell lung cancer
ORR
: objective response rate, DCR disease control rate
OS
: overall survival
PD
: progressive disease
PFS
: progression-free survival
SCLC
: small cell lung cancer
TKI
: tyrosine kinase inhibitor
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
SGW and JYS both completed data collection, literature search, generation of figures, and writing of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Competing interests {#FPar1}
===================
Jin-Yuan Shih has received speaking honoraria from AstraZeneca, Roche, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, and Eli Lilly. Shang-Gin Wu has no conflicts of interest.
Publisher's Note {#FPar2}
================
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
|
// Code generated by thriftrw-plugin-yarpc
// @generated
// Copyright (c) 2020 Uber Technologies, Inc.
//
// Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
// of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
// in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
// to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
// copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
// furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
//
// The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
// all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
//
// THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
// IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
// AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
// LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
// OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
// THE SOFTWARE.
package secondservicefx
import (
fx "go.uber.org/fx"
yarpc "go.uber.org/yarpc"
transport "go.uber.org/yarpc/api/transport"
restriction "go.uber.org/yarpc/api/x/restriction"
thrift "go.uber.org/yarpc/encoding/thrift"
secondserviceclient "go.uber.org/yarpc/internal/crossdock/thrift/gauntlet/secondserviceclient"
)
// Params defines the dependencies for the SecondService client.
type Params struct {
fx.In
Provider yarpc.ClientConfig
Restriction restriction.Checker `optional:"true"`
}
// Result defines the output of the SecondService client module. It provides a
// SecondService client to an Fx application.
type Result struct {
fx.Out
Client secondserviceclient.Interface
// We are using an fx.Out struct here instead of just returning a client
// so that we can add more values or add named versions of the client in
// the future without breaking any existing code.
}
// Client provides a SecondService client to an Fx application using the given name
// for routing.
//
// fx.Provide(
// secondservicefx.Client("..."),
// newHandler,
// )
func Client(name string, opts ...thrift.ClientOption) interface{} {
return func(p Params) Result {
cc := p.Provider.ClientConfig(name)
if namer, ok := cc.GetUnaryOutbound().(transport.Namer); ok && p.Restriction != nil {
if err := p.Restriction.Check(thrift.Encoding, namer.TransportName()); err != nil {
panic(err.Error())
}
}
client := secondserviceclient.New(cc, opts...)
return Result{Client: client}
}
}
|
#COURSE:Bubblegum Pop;
#METER:REGULAR:6;
#METER:DIFFICULT:8;
#MODS:
TIME=0.1:END=16.50:MODS=1x, 40% Boost:
TIME=16.50:END=33.74:MODS=60% Sudden:
TIME=33.74:END=48.50:MODS=40% Brake:
TIME=48.50:END=63.96:MODS=60% Sudden:
TIME=63.96:END=150.00:MODS=40% Wave:
#SONG:In The Groove 2/No Princess:Medium:;
#MODS:
TIME=0.1:END=21.00:MODS=30% Expand:
TIME=21.00:END=43.80:MODS=30% Drunk:
TIME=43.80:END=70.07:MODS=20% Beat:
TIME=70.07:END=84.07:MODS=40% Bumpy:
TIME=84.07:END=150.07:MODS=70% Sudden:
#SONG:In The Groove 2/Spaceman:Hard:;
#MODS:
TIME=0.1:END=22.81:MODS=20% Dizzy:
TIME=22.81:END=45.42:MODS=1.5x, 50% Mini:
TIME=45.42:END=69.77:MODS=50% Hidden:
TIME=69.77:END=87.16:MODS=40% Tipsy:
TIME=87.16:END=150.07:MODS=1.5x, 40% Boost:
#SONG:In The Groove 2/Bumble Bee:Hard:;
#MODS:
TIME=0.1:END=28.64:MODS=40% Wave:
TIME=28.64:END=42.97:MODS=25% Expand:
TIME=42.97:END=65.40:MODS=1.5x, 20% Sudden:
TIME=65.40:END=85.96:MODS=30% Brake:
TIME=85.96:END=150.07:MODS=40% Bumpy:
#SONG:In The Groove 2/Baby Baby:Hard:;
|
REWARD 4 - Be the 1st to own the Revolutionary TUBECUBE for only $25 ...and we will include 8 Snap n Slide Dividers! They SNAP together so you might be interested in Reward #6 to save 50% on the second CUBE. INCLUDES Shipping in the US only!
Less
|
Tortilla press
A tortilla press is a traditional device with a pair of flat round surfaces of about 8-inch plus to crush balls of corn dough in order to obtain round corn tortillas. Corn tortillas are pressed out between sheets of plastic or corn leaves. Tortilla presses are usually made of cast iron, cast aluminium or wood.
Maintenance and Use
Traditional tortilla presses require the presence of plastic wrap or wax paper or butter paper under and above the dough to prevent the dough from sticking to the surface of the press. However, many modern tortilla presses have addressed this by offering an easy to maintain non-stick surface. Unlike non-stick surfaces of your cookware, these require the application of vegetable oil on the surface after use, in a process known as seasoning, maintaining the surface and at the same time allowing easy and direct use the next time it is used. Traditional tortilla presses do not need to be cleaned as the dough never touches the surface of the press. But when it comes to cleaning modern presses, some come with dishwasher safe faces that can be detached, while the others need to washed manually.
The amount of force you require to produce a tortilla depends a lot on the machine being used and the thickness of the desired tortilla. In some instances, a lot of force is required, especially when using tortilla presses constructed with lighter materials such as Aluminum. But, the amount of force required is a lot lower than rolling them out with a rolling pin.
General Steps to Using a Tortilla Press
Use ground corn or corn flour to make dough, traditionally called masa.
Cut two squares of wax paper and place one on the face of the press.
Place the dough on the wax paper and another piece of wax paper on top of the dough.
Using the handle bring the other face of the press onto the dough ensuring the wax paper stays in place.
Force the handle closed, pressing until the dough is flattened to the desired thickness. You may have to open and reorient the dough to get the perfect circle.
The steps vary with modern machines where there is no need of wax paper or other insulating materials.
References
Category:Cookware and bakeware
Category:Tortilla
|
Q:
MongoDB/Mongoose: updating two different fields in Mongoose model
Is it possible to do something like this:
var updateData = {
"$set": {
content: 'foo'
},
"$push":{
versions: {
some: 'bar'
}
}
};
Model.update({},updateData, {});
or do we need to do two or more separate updates?
A:
There is only one update of course and Mongoose itself has nothing to do with it, and just passes through the operation directly. Reading the documentation for $set should shed a bit more light on this in general.
Your syntax is a bit off and should be:
Model.update({},updateData,function(err,numAffected) {
});
And of course if your wanted to affect multiple documents and not just the first match ( which is the default here ), then pass in "multi":
Model.update({},updateData,{ "multi": true },function(err,numAffected) {
});
The suggestion of .find() and .save() is clearly shown to not be what happens here and is completely the wrong way to do this. That operation sequence means "two" operations to touch the database, and most importantly it is possible that data could change in between a .find() operation and the changes committed in .save() can overwrite this data.
Operators like $set with .update() and related methods are processed atomically. There is one contact with the database only and the point of such operators are to change the data "in place" without needing to return it to the client for modification.
One true statement in comments is to simply turn of debugging:
mongooose.set("debug",true)
And then you will see the actual statements as passed through the driver to MongoDB.
It's just one operation, and depending on the arguments supplied can of course affect multiple fields and even multiple documents.
|
crucial thing
The most common remedy for yeast infection and candida is a suppository, filled with a particular medical cream, placed into the vagina and offering respite from symptoms overnight in many cases. Many of these creams will be available from a drugstore or by having a prescription from your doctor.
There’s a natural substance called candida albicans that form within your body that can grow and trigger an infection, especially if left uncontrolled. Most of these elements can be managed, while others can’t.
Whenever your body’s natural balance is upset in any way, it may give rise to infection. Your regular monthly cycle, being pregnant or even the menopause are greatly recognized to cause imbalances within your body that can result in infections. Other specific things like taking birth control pills, antibiotics, using steroids are some other common, but not so naturally occurring, things that could affect your body’s Ph.
There are additional external influences that may affect your hormonal balance too. Other present day conditions like HIV, leading to a poor immune system or perhaps a cancer patient having to go through radiation treatment. Two more facts to consider are anxiety and high blood glucose.
You will notice with this there are a lot of things that will help to develop a yeast infection. Since most women will have several yeast infections throughout their life time it’s very good to know there are efficient candida yeast infection treatment solutions.
The candida will flourish mainly in warm, damp places and so cutting it off from the places where it may flourish and grow out of control is key. Because of this, it is best if you steer clear of putting on synthetic clothing which are tight fitting.
Nylon under garments and panty hose are also things to stay away from. Pure cotton under garments is advisable and when you have to wear something on the legs, use thigh high stockings rather than tights.
Consistently make an effort to keep clean and dry. After you take a bath or shower, or go swimming, be sure to completely and carefully towel yourself down. Consistently try to keep your “area” as dry as you reasonably are able to.
Scented toilet paper or feminine pads also are items to keep away from. The potential of an infection could possibly be increased by this perfume simply because there may be tenderness round the genital region.
Yet another thing never to use is douches. Your PH balance is all messed up faster than anything at all when you don’t. Your body is designed to keep your areas clean and balanced, with some assistance from you, and that means you don’t absolutely need them.
In order to prevent possible spread of harmful bacteria onto your vaginal spot, it’s crucial you wipe yourself from front to rear after going to the bathroom. It will be easy to avoid infection in this way.
Attempting to unwind is the one other crucial thing. It is possible to decrease the strength of your immune system by getting stressed. This will likely not simply work well to avoid yeast infection, but assist with other health issues as well. Make an effort to take a couple of deep breaths every day, although you may just have a couple of minutes.
Getting an efficient remedy for your candida yeast infection is normally as easy as looking in the nearby drug store.
|
Clinical significance of positive anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies without evidence of anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies-associated vasculitis.
Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) have a role in the diagnostic workup of ANCA-associated vasculitis. However, the clinical significance of positive ANCA in the absence of vasculitis is yet to be determined. Therefore, we sought to investigate the clinical spectrum and rate of patients with a positive ANCA without evidence of vasculitis. Retrospective analysis of patients positive for cytoplasmic ANCA (C-ANCA) and proteinase 3 (PR3) or P-ANCA and myeloperoxidase (MPO) between 2007 and 2016 in the Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel. The proportion of patients who had no evidence of vasculitis among all patients with a positive C-ANCA/PR3 or P-ANCA/MPO was calculated according to tertiles of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) antibody levels. Among 113 patients who tested positive for C-ANCA/PR3 or P-ANCA/MPO, 68 (60.1%) had no evidence of vasculitis. ELISA antibody titers were significantly higher among patients with vasculitis than those without (6.2 vs 3.2, for C-ANCA/PR3 and 5.4 vs 2.6 for P-ANCA/MPO, P < 0.05). The proportion of patients without vasculitis among all patients with a positive C-ANCA/PR3 and among all patients with a positive P-ANCA/MPO declined in parallel to the increases in ELISA antibody level tertiles (96%, 57% and 22% in the 1st, 2nd and highest tertiles, respectively, for patients with C-ANCA/PR3 patients and 100%, 66% and 20% in the 1st, 2nd and highest tertiles, respectively, for patients with P-ANCA/MPO). A significant proportion of patients with a positive C-ANCA/PR3 or P-ANCA/MPO do not have evidence of vasculitis, particularly those with low-medium ELISA antibody titers. Using a higher threshold of ANCA titers may be required to improve specificity.
|
Q:
Number representation discrepancies SQL Server 2012
I have a table in SQL Server 2012. One of the column is decimal (18,2) and is being used to store simple financial numbers.
In ASP Net program, rows are retrieved and based on some logic, some rows are added up (using variables of type double). Based on the result, a logic is executed in which different loops are used : if the result is equal to, greater than or less than another variable.
The issue is that in some cases (and there is nothing in particular to point out what are those cases), the result is xxx.00000000000000000000000000000xxxx. (meaning at some billionth places, there are some numbers). This forces the logic to go into a different loop when the other variable (with which a comparison is being made) is xxx.
It happened only in some cases but not sure what causes it to happen. For now, I have added Math.round to 2 decimal places. But making this change at every place will be a burden.
Any ideas what is causing this behavior?
A:
Floating point data types (e.g. .NET double, SQL Server float) are approximate because some values cannot be stored exactly according to the IEEE standard. If you need exact decimal values, use Decimal in your .NET code.
|
P. J. Carey
Paul Jerome "P. J." Carey (November 4, 1953 – December 7, 2012) was an American professional baseball player, manager, instructor, and farm system official.
In , Carey served as senior advisor, player development, of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball. Carey was a minor league catcher, coach and manager, and a Major League coach and player development official, during his 40-year baseball career, which began in .
Carey was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Scranton Preparatory School in 1971 and attended the University of Scranton before signing his first professional contract with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1972. A catcher who threw and batted right-handed, he stood tall and weighed . His four-year playing career was spent at the Rookie, Short Season-A and Class A levels of the Philadelphia organization, where he batted .215 in 143 total games. From 1976 through 1979, Carey coached on Phillies' farm teams before launching his managerial career in 1980 with the Bend Phillies of the Short Season-A Northwest League.
His minor league managing career extended for 22 seasons — largely at the Rookie or Short Season-A levels — between 1980 and and included stints with the Phillies, Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, and Colorado Rockies. He served as a coach on the Rockies' Major League staff in 1997. After 13 years with the Rockies, Carey joined the Dodgers in as minor league field coordinator, and held his position as senior player development advisor from .
References
External links
Baseball Reference
Category:1953 births
Category:2012 deaths
Category:Asheville Tourists managers
Category:Auburn Phillies players
Category:Baseball players from Pennsylvania
Category:Billings Mustangs managers
Category:Colorado Rockies (baseball) coaches
Category:Los Angeles Dodgers executives
Category:Major League Baseball bullpen coaches
Category:Minor league baseball managers
Category:Sportspeople from Scranton, Pennsylvania
Category:Pulaski Phillies players
Category:Rocky Mount Phillies players
Category:Spartanburg Phillies players
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MSNBC’s Al Sharpton in JEFFERSON CITY, MO: It’s war on black people, it’s war on women, it’s war on immigrants. … We have got to turn this around and start targeting in Missouri those legislators that want to roll back our right to vote!”
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Rep. John Garamendi John Raymond GaramendiWuhan is the final straw: The world needs to divest from China GOP seizes on 'defund the police' to galvanize base Peace Corps faces uncertain future with no volunteers in field MORE (D-Calif.) on Friday said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to "stand down" and not appear on five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the coronavirus.
Garamendi told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson that Anthony Fauci was scheduled to do all five major Sunday talk shows, but says Fauci canceled the appearances after Vice President Pence took over the administration's response to the disease.
Trump on Wednesday named Pence as the official overseeing the government's response.
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"I can repeat what he said, he said, 'I was not muzzled. However, I was to go on the Sunday talk shows five of them. The vice president’s office then took over the control of this situation, and told me to stand down, not to do those shows,'" Garamendi said, quoting Fauci.
"Now, you can draw your own conclusions whether he was muzzled or not, but clearly he was scheduled to do Sunday talk shows and he was not to proceed with that," the congressman added.
The claim from Garamendi comes amid pointed criticism from top Democrats, including former Vice President and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden Joe BidenBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll GOP set to release controversial Biden report Can Donald Trump maintain new momentum until this November? MORE, who urged the Trump administration "to let the experts speak" in an interview with CNN on Friday morning.
“You need to let the experts speak,” former VP @JoeBiden says about the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus fears. “...No one takes the President's word for these things. At a minimum, he exaggerates everything.” https://t.co/43RdvxhMVw pic.twitter.com/eh8HV74pHO — New Day (@NewDay) February 28, 2020
Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow Larry KudlowMORE told reporters Friday, "No one's being stifled. No one's being told what to say," with Kudlow adding it was more about coordinating the message.
|
Q:
expected value of $f(U)$ where $U$ has a uniform distribution on $[0,1]$ and $f$ is a measurable function on $L^1[0,1]$
Let $ (\Omega, F , P)$ a probability space. And let $(\mathbb R,B(\mathbb R))$ the real numbers and the borel sets. Let's consider $ U: (\Omega, F , P)\to (\mathbb R,B(\mathbb R))$ be a random variable that has uniformly distribution on $[0,1]$, let's consider a mesurable function $f:[0,1] \to \mathbb R$, such that $\int_0^1 |f(x)|dx <\infty$. I want to compute the expected value of the new random variable $f(U): (\Omega, F , P)\to (\mathbb R,B(\mathbb R))$ using the change of variable formula
$Ef(U)=\int_{\Omega}f(U(\omega))dP=\int_{\mathbb R}f(x)d\mu$
Where $\mu$ the the measure defined by $\mu(A)=P(U\in A)$
I want to compute that expected value but I don't know how to proceed. I think that the first step is to separate $\mathbb R = (-\infty,0)\cup[0,\infty)$ and since $\mu ((-\infty,0))=0$ then
$\int_{\mathbb R}f(x)d\mu=\int_{[0,\infty)}f(x)d\mu$
The second possible step it's to separate $[0,\infty)=[0,1]\cup (1,\infty)$ and use the fact that on $[0,1]$ $\mu$ is the lebesgue measure. But I'm very confused to work on $(1,\infty)$ Please help me!
A:
I think you are working a little too hard on this. The statement $U$ is uniformly distributed on $[0,1]$ means $\mu = 1_{[0,1]}d\lambda$ where $\lambda$ is the Lebesgue measure. Then we have $$Ef(U) = \int_\Omega f(U)dP = \int_{\mathbb{R}} f(u) d\mu(u) = \int_\mathbb{R} f(u) 1_{[0,1]}(u)du = \int_0^1 f(u)du.$$
The key point here is justifying the change of measure
$$
\int_\Omega f(X(\omega))dP(\omega) = \int_{X(\Omega)}f(x)dPX^{-1}(x)
$$
which is proved through simple functions and holds for $f\geq0$ measurable or $f\in L^1$.
Also I should point out that it is important for the $L^1$ case, $f \in L^1(PX^{-1})$, in general $\int_0^1|f(x)|dx < \infty$ is not enough, it is in this case since $\mu = 1_{[0,1]}d\lambda$ so the previous statement exactly says $f \in L^1(\mu)$.
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Parents tell of guilt over daughter killed by suspected drink driver
Like many parents of teenagers, Ann and Edward Cleverley provide a free taxi service at all hours of the day and night.
But when their 18-year- old daughter Eluned phoned for a lift from a party early on Saturday morning, they had to say no because they had both had a couple of glasses of wine.
So Eluned left the party on foot - and was killed by a suspected drink-driver, just 20 minutes after making the call to her parents.
Yesterday, they spoke of their sorrow at losing their 'beautiful,
talented daughter' and their torment over the tragedy in which they unwittingly played a part.
Eluned, an art student, went to the 18th birthday party in Wallasey, Merseyside, about seven miles from her home in Hoylake in Wirral.
Mrs Cleverley, 51, a systems analyst, said: 'She left the house at 4pm. I wasn't worried about her.
'She rang at 1.30am - she wanted a lift, but we had had a couple of glasses of wine at home and we didn't feel it was right for us to drive. We said, "No we can't come to get you tonight".
'She said she would go to a friend's house to order a taxi. She said, "I love you mum".'
Mr Cleverley, 58, who works for a food processing plant, added:
' Normally when she rings I have just got to sleep and when I have woken up properly I go to get her.
'We have been the most conscientious parents. We always would go and get her and run her friends home.
'On this one occasion, when we didn't go - this happens. It is just unbelievable.'
His wife added: 'I woke up at 3.30 and realised she wasn't home. I rang her mobile a number of times and was panicking. At 3.58 I sent her a text saying, "Sick with worry. Ring us immediately".
'I couldn't sleep. I came downstairs and was just sitting there when I saw a car coming, I thought, "It's her taxi!" - and of course it was the police. I said to the officer, "Is she alive?" and he said, "No. I have to tell you she is dead".'
After leaving the party, Eluned was hit by a parked unoccupied Ford Puma on a road in Wallasey. The car had been shunted by a white Mercedes Sprinter van driven by the suspected drinkdriver.
It is thought Eluned died instantly from massive injuries.
A friend with her, a 20-year-old man, suffered minor injuries and is recovering in hospital.
Eluned had just finished her A-levels at West Kirby Grammar School, in Wirral, and next month was to start an art and design course at West Cheshire College, Ellesmere Port.
Mrs Cleverley added yesterday: ' She was a lovely, lovely girl. Talented, beautiful, crazy and loveable. She was such a popular girl, with all her life ahead of her.
'She had such a wide circle of friends, a typical teenager. She was just so enjoying life.'
The couple have another daughter, Carys, 13, who is said to be devastated at the death of her elder sister. The family are originally from Dolgellau, North Wales.
Mr Cleverley added: 'Just as she left the house, I called to her through the window, 'What time are you coming home, tonight or tomorrow?'
'I said to myself, "Definitely tomorrow!" - but tomorrow will never come now.'
Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident. A spokesman for Merseyside Police said: 'Police have arrested a 24-year-old local man on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and drink driving.'
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Nicorandil protects pial arterioles from endothelial dysfunction induced by smoking in rats.
Our aims are to investigate the effect of nicorandil, which is used for angina prevention and treatment, on the endothelial dysfunction induced by acute smoking and to clarify the underlying mechanism. A closed cranial window preparation was used to measure changes in pial vessel diameters in Sprague-Dawley rats. The responses of arterioles were examined to an endothelium-dependent vasodilator acetylcholine (ACh) before smoking. After intravenous nicorandil (200 μg/kg bolus infusion and then 60 μg/kg/min continuous infusion; n=6) or saline (control; n=6) pretreatment, the pial vasodilator response to topical 10 M ACh infusion was reexamined both before and 1 hour after 1-minute cigarette smoking. Thereafter, either glibenclamide or N-ω-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) was infused 20 minutes before nicorandil infusion. In the glibenclamide (n=6) or L-NAME; n=6 pretreatment group, the pial vasodilator response to topical ACh was examined before and after smoking. Percentage changes in pial vessel diameters were used for the statistical analysis. Cerebral arterioles were dilated during topical ACh infusion. After smoking, 10 M ACh constricted cerebral arterioles (-7.7±1.8%). After smoking, in the nicorandil-pretreatment group, 10 M ACh dilated cerebral pial arterioles by 10.5±3.0%. When given before nicorandil infusion, glibenclamide, but not L-NAME, abolished the preventive effects of nicorandil against smoking-induced endothelial dysfunction in pial vessels. Acute cigarette smoking causes dysfunction of endothelium-dependent pial vasodilatation, and nicorandil prevents this effect of smoking. The mechanism underlying this protective effect may depend mainly on adenosine triphosphate-sensitive potassium-channel activation.
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ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences
A Londoner has lost a £10 million legal battle with Donald Trump over his controversial claims that parts of the city are so radicalised that police are afraid to go there.
Kamran Malik, and his east London-based Communities United Party, were seeking £10 million damages against the US presidential candidate for allegedly defaming Muslims living in the Green Street and Romford Road area of Forest Gate.
In a bid to justify his comments last December that Muslims should be barred from entering the US, Mr Trump said parts of London and Paris were so "radicalised" that police officers were scared.
Mr Malik said that Mr Trump's comments had the potential to affect the trust and confidence that Muslims in his part of London had built with non-Muslim friends and business partners.
He wanted permission to proceed with his claim by serving Mr Trump out of the jurisdiction in the USA or deeming him to have been served in Scotland at his Turnberry golf course business.
On Thursday at London's High Court, Master Victoria McCloud ruled that Mr Malik's case was not actionable.
She said that Mr Trump's comments were not capable of being the subject of a defamation claim "even if what was said by him caused real upset and a sense of injustice to a section of the London community more widely.
"It is important that in dismissing this case this court is not understood to be endorsing or making any judgment on the merits of comments such as those in this case which have already been roundly condemned by among other people both the former Prime Minister and the Mayor of London."
She said there were breaches of procedural and legal requirements in how the defamation case was put and Mr Malik's claims under the European Convention on Human Rights, the Equality Act and the Racial and Religious Hatred Act also failed for legal reasons.
She added that even if the case was not struck out, she would have refused permission on the basis that the claim did not have a reasonable prospect of success.
Mr Malik, who was not in court, was ordered to pay £35,000 costs and refused permission to appeal although he can re-apply to the Court of Appeal.
|
Q:
how to calculate limit of double integral
I have a rather simple problem which I can't make rigorous:
Let $\varphi \colon \mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}$ be a continuous function. Then it holds that
$$ \lim_{m \to \infty} \, \, \,\lim_{n \to \infty} mn \int_{x}^{x+1/m} \int_y^{y+1/n} f(u,v) \, du dv = \lim_{m \to \infty} m \int_{x}^{x+1/m} f(u,y) \, du = f(x,y)$$.
Intuitively, it should also hold that
$$ \lim_{m \to \infty} m^2 \int_{x}^{x+1/m} \int_y^{y+1/m} f(u,v) \, du dv = f(x,y).$$
How can one prove this?
A:
Use the mean value theorems for definite integrals, and you should have
$$ \int_x^{x+1/m} \int_y^{y+1/m} f(u, v) \,dudv = \frac{1}{m^2} f(\alpha_m, \beta_m),$$ where $\alpha_m \in [x, x+1/m], \,\beta_m \in [y, y+1/m]$.
The continuous property of $f(u, v)$ implies that
$$\lim_{m \to \infty} m^2 \int_x^{x+1/m} \int_y^{y+1/m} f(u, v) \,dudv = \lim_{m \to \infty} f(\alpha_m, \beta_m) = f(x, y).$$
References: The Mean Value Theorem for Double Integrals
|
NOTE: My sourceforge account was compromised on May 1, 2017. A malicious bitcoin related program was added under my account name. That program have nothing to do with me, and I have filed a report and removed the malware since I found out on May 27, 2017. Very sorry for those who were affected by it. I believe my password was leaked when LinkedIn was compromised awhile ago, refers to: LinkedIn Password Breached. Since then, I have changed my passwords and am slowly migrating my projects to github. Again very sorry for those who were affected by the incident.
MY PROFILE
I am a critical thinker, visionary, innovator, entrepreneur, physicist and a dedicated Christian.
“One have to see rightly with the heart. What is important is invisible to the eye.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” ― Albert Einstein
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INTRODUCTION {#sec1-1}
============
A child constitutes the most priority and vulnerable group in terms of survival, growth, and development. Acute respiratory infections (ARI), particularly lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI), are the leading cause of under-five morbidity for an estimated just about two million childhood deaths globally.\[[@ref1]\] ARI contributes to one-fifths of all under-five deaths in developing countries which is around 12 million every year.\[[@ref2]\] It is estimated that Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Nepal together account for 40% of the global ARI mortality. ARI is responsible for about 30-50% of visits to health facilities and for about 20- 40% of admissions to hospitals.\[[@ref3]\] In developed countries also physicians frequently encounter acute respiratory tract involvements in children.\[[@ref4]\] In Indian slums, ARI constitutes more than two-third of all childhood illness.\[[@ref5]\]
Childhood ARI is a significant public health problem in India, although robust epidemiological data are not available on its incidence. Higher risk is seen among young infants, malnourished children, non-exclusively breastfed children, and those with exposure to solid biomass fuel use.\[[@ref6][@ref7]\]
Studies in developing countries have identified risk factors to be among others crowding, nutritional factors, and parental smoking. Because of major differences in living conditions and environmental exposures, the certainty of these factors remains controversial.\[[@ref8]--[@ref11]\]
Population in the urban slums is a heterogeneous conglomerate of all caste, creed, and religion with a diversified lifestyle. In addition, the risk factors for childhood ARI is also present in respect to the environmental, socioeconomic, and health seeking behavior of the inhabitants. With this background, the study was undertaken in urban slums of Guwahati to elicit the prevalence and risk factors of ARI among under-five children.
MATERIALS AND METHODS {#sec1-2}
=====================
Study design and study period {#sec2-1}
-----------------------------
A population based analytical cross-sectional study was undertaken in the urban slums of Guwahati from 15 September to 30 December 2004.
### Study design {#sec3-1}
A population based analytical cross-sectional study was undertaken in the urban slums of Guwahati.
### Study period {#sec3-2}
From 15 September to 30 December 2004.
Sample size {#sec2-2}
-----------
The sample size for the study was calculated using the formula *n* = 4 pq/l^2^, with 4%, where *P* = known prevalence, q = 1-p, and l = allowable permissible (absolute) error, set at 4%. Considering the prevalence of ARI in the age group under five in children in Assam to be 18% as reported by National Family Health Survey -- 2 (NFHS- 2), 370 under-five children were recruited for the study. The list of registered slums was taken from the Town and Country Planning Department, Government of Assam. Out of 21 registered slums, seven slums were selected by simple random sampling and the number of participants selected per slum was based on "probability proportionate to size" technique.
The study instrument {#sec2-3}
--------------------
This data collection tool was an interview schedule that was developed at the institute with the assistance from the faculty members and other experts of Department of Community Medicine, Guwahati Medical College. Detailed information regarding socio-demographic characteristics, socio-economic status, and health parameters were collected using this structured schedule for each household, regarding housing condition, family information, literacy and occupation, and parent\'s income, hygienic condition. By initial translation, back-translation, re-translation followed by pilot study, the questionnaire was custom-made for the study.
Method of data collection {#sec2-4}
-------------------------
Institutional ethical committee approved the study. The respondents were the caregivers of the children. So, all the caregivers were explained the purpose of the study and were ensured strict confidentiality. Written informed consents were taken from respective caregiver prior to the study. They were given the option not to participate in the study if they wanted. The principal investigator collected the data using the interview technique by house to house visits in the households of the selected slums. Children below five years were surveyed, with an average of five to six children per day, till 370 children from 184 families were covered. All efforts were made to collect the correct age of the child on the basis of parents information, age of other siblings, birth certificate etc. The nutritional status was assessed and graded on the basis of expected weight for age, by plotting in growth chart as classified by Indian Academy of Pediatrics. The weight of the children was measured with a standardized weighing scale (bathroom scale) with minimal clothes and bare foot. When the child was unable to stand, the weight of the child with the caregiver was taken and then the weight of the caregiver was deducted to get the weight to nearest 500 g.
Inclusion criteria {#sec2-5}
------------------
Under-five children and either a positive or negative history of ARI at the time of interview or within last 2 weeks recall period were included in the study.
Exclusion criteria {#sec2-6}
------------------
The cases with chronic respiratory ailments and in case of non-consenting caregivers were excluded from the study.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION {#sec1-3}
======================
Acute respiratory infections {#sec2-7}
----------------------------
Children with any one or combinations of symptoms and signs like cough and cold, running or blocked nose, sore throat, rapid breathing, noisy breathing, stops feeding and or drinking, chest indrawing etc, A new episode was taken as one occurring in an individual who had been free of symptoms for at least three consecutive days or more as per WHO (1997) definition of ARI.\[[@ref12]\]
Immunization {#sec2-8}
------------
Immunization status of the participants were obtained from immunization cards and for the evaluation of the immunization status, the criterion described by Narain was followed.\[[@ref13]\]
1. Completely immunized: Three doses of DPT and three doses of OPV taken between 6 weeks to 9 months at an interval of 4 weeks, plus one dose of BCG, plus one dose of measles within 1 year of life.
2. Partially immunized: Not completely immunized but received one or more doses of the above vaccines.
3. Not immunized: Did not receive any vaccine dose.
Nutritional status {#sec2-9}
------------------
The nutritional status was assessed and the grading of malnutrition was calculated on the basis of expected weight for age, by plotting in Growth Chart, as classified by Indian Academy of Pediatrics.\[[@ref14]\]
1. 80-100% Normal
2. 71-80% Grade I
3. 61-70% Grade II
4. 51-60% Grade III
5. \<50-% Grade IV
Ventilation {#sec2-11}
-----------
Adequate: Window area one-fifth of the floor area or doors and windows combined two-fifth of the floor area.
Inadequate: Failing to fulfill the above criteria.\[[@ref15]\]
Overcrowding {#sec2-12}
------------
Overcrowding is when the per capita floor space area of the living room is below 50 sq foot, or otherwise when there is no sex separation in case of individuals more than 9 years of age, not husband and wife.\[[@ref15]\]
### Type of house {#sec3-3}
1. Pucca house: Houses where floor paved, walls are stone or brick-built and roof is tin, asbestos or concrete.
2. Kutcha house: Where floor packed earth, walls are dried mud or thatched, and roof is thatched, slate or other stone.
3. Semi-pucca: Houses where floor packed earth, walls are stone or brick-built and roof either tin or thatched.
### Statistical analysis {#sec3-4}
The collected data were entered into MS-Excel spread sheets for analysis. The statistical analyses were done using Graph Pad In Stat version 3 soft ware. Percentages and Chi square tests were used in this study to analyze epidemiological variables.
RESULTS {#sec1-4}
=======
The study population consisted of children in the age group of less than 5 years from a heterogeneous group in terms of religion, language, place of origin, occupation, and income. Majority of the study participants were in the age group of 1-12 months and the prevalence of ARI was also common in that group (38.14%) followed by 13- 24 months (21.65%). The overall prevalence of ARI was found to be 26.22%. Among all participants, females were more affected with ARI (27.35%) than males (25.69%). As the children grew older, the prevalence of ARI gradually decreased in our study participants \[[Table 1](#T1){ref-type="table"}\].
######
Demographic profile of the study participants
ARI was seen mostly in children from nuclear families (84.54%), living in kutcha houses (90.72%), with inadequate ventilation (84.54%), overcrowded (81.44%) with kitchen attached to the living room (65.98%), and using biomass fuel for cooking (89.69%).
Undernourished children had an increased risk of ARI as compared to normal participants (RR = 3.76). Any sort of undernourishment in terms of decreased weight of the child was compared with normal nutritional status as per Gomez classification. Similarly non-immunized kids had more chances of developing ARI. (RR = 2.01). Complete immunization among ARI cases was only 10%. In the non-immunized group ARI cases was noted as 57.5%. Children with completed primary immunization status were combined with those partially immunized and were compared with non-immunized children in determining the risk for ARI in relation to immunization status. A strong statistical difference exists between diseased and non-diseased participants in terms of ventilation in house location of kitchen in household, type of house, the presence of overcrowding, nutritional, and immunization status of the child. However, there was no significant statistical difference among the two groups in terms of type of family, religion, parental current smoking habits, and use of fuels for cooking \[[Table 2](#T2){ref-type="table"}\].
######
Correlates of ARI among the study participants
DISCUSSION {#sec1-5}
==========
The present study has identified a high prevalence of ARI among under-fives and pointed out various socio-demographic, nutritional, and environmental as the modifiable risk factors. The overall prevalence of ARI was found to be 26.22%. In our study, the age group of 1-12 months were mostly affected with ARI. As the children grew older, the prevalence of ARI gradually decreased.
A study from Delhi reported that 14.6% in all children surveyed, had an attack of ARI in the preceding 2 weeks.\[[@ref16]\] A cross-sectional study from Brazil reported that ARI in children under-five years was 25.6%, among which 76.4% had upper and 23.6% lower respiratory infections; no associations in respect to nutritional status or passive smoking in the family.\[[@ref17]\] A study from Zambia reported that 6.9% of under-five children had ARI in the last 2 weeks; age of child and sex of child were significantly associated.\[[@ref18]\] Related study reported that among under-five children prevalence of ARI was 49.8% where hospitalization was required in 7.6% of cases.\[[@ref19]\] A comparable study in a rural community in Bangladesh reported that the prevalence of ARI in the community was 58.7%; the mean of ARI episodes was less than two per child per year.\[[@ref20]\] Another community-based study carried out in a rural area of Delhi also reported the prevalence of ARI of 12.1% among under-fives that declined with increasing age; the incidence was 2.5 episodes per child per year.\[[@ref21]\] A cross sectional study from Ahmadabad reported that prevalence of ARI was 22%. Age group of 4-5 years were mostly affected (47.3%).\[[@ref22]\] A community-based study in a coastal village of Karnataka reported 6.42 episodes of ARI per child per year; the incidence of pneumonia was significantly higher among infants.\[[@ref23]\] An epidemiological study carried out in West Tripura reported that the incidence of pneumonia was 16 per 1000 children in urban area. The incidence of pneumonia was found to be the highest in infant group.\[[@ref24]\] A community-based study carried out in Maharashtra noted that the average incidence of ARI was 3.67 episodes/child/year.\[[@ref25]\]
Sex {#sec2-13}
---
Among all participants in our study, females were more affected with ARI (27.35%) than males (25.69%). The study from Zambia observed that in the under-five children ARI was significantly associated with sex of child.\[[@ref18]\] Bangladesh study reported that ARI in the rural community was 14.9 and 14.4% in males and females respectively in the ARI episodes.\[[@ref18]\] Researchers concluded in the community-based study in a rural area of Delhi that among under-fives ARI episodes had no difference between sexes.\[[@ref21]\] A hospital based case control study from Delhi reported that sex of the child was not documented to be significant risk factors of ARI.\[[@ref26]\]
Ventilation in house {#sec2-14}
--------------------
Inadequate ventilation (84.54%) was found to be significantly associated with ARI in our study. Similar findings were seen by Researchers from Ahmadabad where the prevalence of ARI in under-fives was significantly associated with inadequate ventilation.\[[@ref20]\] Similar study from Mysore study reported that lack of adequate ventilation was significantly related with ARI in under-fives.\[[@ref27]\] A study from rural Delhi reported that ARI incidence was significantly lower among children living in well-ventilated homes (1.79 episodes/child/year) than those living in poorly ventilated homes (2.87 episodes/child/year).\[[@ref28]\] Another study from Maharashtra reported that inadequate ventilation was found to influence the incidence of ARI.\[[@ref25]\]
Housing condition {#sec2-15}
-----------------
Our study reflected a strong statistical association between occurrences of ARI with those living in kutcha houses (90.72%). The Delhi study reported that, type of housing was not documented to be significant risk factors of ARI.\[[@ref26]\] The Karnataka noted that children of poor housing conditions suffered more frequently from ARI.\[[@ref23]\]
Researchers from Maharashtra noted that incidence of ARI among under-five children was influenced by environmental factors like type of house.\[[@ref25]\]
Presence of overcrowding {#sec2-16}
------------------------
Our study reflected an association of overcrowding (81.44%) with risk of ARI. The Bangladesh study observed that the prevalence of ARI in under-fives in a rural community was significantly higher in overcrowded condition than not (62 *vs*. 38%).\[[@ref20]\] Similar study from Ahmadabad reported that significant statistical association of ARI was seen in regard to overcrowding.\[[@ref22]\] Mysore study on ARI in under-fives reported overcrowding as a significant socio-demographic risk factor.\[[@ref27]\]
Parental current smoking habits {#sec2-17}
-------------------------------
Our study could not find any significant statistical association between ARI and parental current smoking habits. A study from Brazil noted that ARI in children under five years was not associated with the passive smoking in the family.\[[@ref17]\] The Bangladesh study noted that the prevalence of ARI in under-fives in the community was significantly associated with parental smoking (61 *vs*. 39%) when compared to those without ARI.\[[@ref20]\] However, in the prevalence of ARI in under-five years of age, significant difference was not observed with parental smoking in a study from Ahmadabad.\[[@ref22]\]
Use of fuel used for cooking {#sec2-18}
----------------------------
Though our study showed that use of biomass fuel for cooking was higher (89.69%) in the study area, however, there was no significant statistical association of prevalence of ARI with use of biomass fuels for cooking. The Ahmadabad study reported that prevalence of ARI in under-fives, significant statistical association was seen with the use of biomass fuel and smoky chullhas in the family.\[[@ref22]\] The study from Delhi reported that cooking fuel other than liquid petroleum gas was the significant contributors of ARI in children under 5 years.\[[@ref26]\] Mysore study on ARI reported that significant socio-demographic risk factors were use of biomass fuel pollution.\[[@ref27]\] Similar Karnataka study reported higher ARI episode with smoke producing conditions.\[[@ref23]\] A study from Zimbabwe reported that about two-thirds (66%) of children lived in households using biomass fuels and 16% suffered from ARI during the 2 weeks preceding the survey. After adjusting for child\'s age, sex, nutritional status, religion, household living standard, children in households using wood, dung, or straw for cooking were more than twice as likely to have suffered from ARI as children from households using LPG/natural gas or electricity.\[[@ref29]\] Study carried out in Maharashtra found that incidence of ARI was closely associated with biomass fuel used for cooking.\[[@ref25]\]
Nutritional status (weight for age) {#sec2-19}
-----------------------------------
Our study reflected that undernourished children had an increased risk of ARI as compared to normal participants (RR = 3.77). A strong statistical difference exists between diseased and non-diseased participants in terms of the poor nutritional status of the child. The study from Brazil reported that ARI was not associated with the nutritional status in under-five years children.\[[@ref17]\] Researchers from Bangladesh reported that the prevalence of ARI in the rural community was significantly higher in ARI cases compared to those without ARI when malnutrition (63 *vs*. 37%) was a risk correlate.\[[@ref20]\] The study from Ahmadabad reported in the prevalence of under-five, significant statistical association of ARI was seen in regard to malnutrition.\[[@ref22]\] The Delhi study observed that severe malnutrition was a significant contributor of ARI in children under-five years.\[[@ref21]\] Mysore study on ARI reported that significant socio-demographic risk factors were overcrowding and partial immunization. Significant risk factors were use of biomass fuel pollution, lack of ventilation, and malnutrition.\[[@ref27]\] A study from rural Delhi, that, the annual ARI incidence was 3.27 episodes per child in the moderate to severely malnourished children. Lower respiratory infection was more affected by adverse nutritional status than upper respiratory infection.\[[@ref28]\] A similar study from West Tripura reported that Malnourished under-five children had higher likelihood for developing respiratory infection.\[[@ref24]\] The incidence of ARI was found to be closely associated with nutritional status of the child as reported by researchers in Maharashtra\[[@ref25]\] The researchers from Kolkata opined that malnutrition is significantly associated with occurrence of ARI among under-five children.\[[@ref30]\]
Primary immunization status (in participants above 12 months) {#sec2-20}
-------------------------------------------------------------
Non-immunized kids were found to be at an increased risk for ARI in our study (RR = 2.01). Complete immunization among ARI cases was only 10%. In the non-immunized group, ARI cases were noted as 57.5%. Inappropriate immunization for age was significantly related with ARI in under-five children in Delhi study.\[[@ref26]\] Mysore study on ARI reported that significant socio-demographic risk factors were overcrowding and partial immunization. Significant risk factors were the use of biomass fuel pollution, lack of ventilation, and malnutrition.\[[@ref27]\] Similarly, a study from West Tripura noted that the incidence of respiratory infection was higher among non-immunized children.\[[@ref24]\] A hospital-based prospective study conducted in Kolkata found that non-immunization was a significant risk factor for ARI.\[[@ref30]\]
We found that ARI was mostly seen in children from nuclear families (84.54%). However, there was no significant statistical difference among the two groups in terms of type of family. Further, our study documented a strong correlation ARI with location of kitchen. But, our study failed to find any association between episodes of ARI with the religion of the child. We have yet to find comparable references in the published literature on these two variables.
### Strength of the study {#sec3-5}
ARI is still a public health problem killing millions of our future citizens. The study would be an eye-opener for further research in this part of country with resource poor health care settings. The risk factors identified for ARI would help the planners and program managers of our state of Assam and neighboring states to select and plan approaches in curbing the menace in North eastern states.
### Limitations of the study {#sec3-6}
The study was undertaken in the urban slums of Guwahati city. Due to diversity of slum population in different parts of India and also the living condition, the findings cannot be generalized. Farther, it could have been better if other related risk variables could be included in the study that was not possible due to manpower, money, and time constraints.
### Future directions of the study {#sec3-7}
There is a need to carry out extensive multi centric studies involving both rural and urban areas to identify all the risk factors precipitating ARI, so that preventive program becomes more successful in India. Not only the array of socio-demographic, socio-economic, and environmental factors along with the health seeking behavior, but also other physiological and behavioral risk factors need to be explored for effective control of ARI in under-five segment of population.
CONCLUSION {#sec1-6}
==========
The present study had identified a high prevalence of ARI among under-fives. It also pointed out various socio-demographic, nutritional, and environmental modifiable risk factors which can be tackled by effective education of the community.
We acknowledge co-operation of Faculties of the department of Com Med, Guwahati Medical College and the participants of the study in undertaking the project.
**Source of Support:** Nil
**Conflict of Interest:** None declared.
|
Q:
Maven clean fails
I really am having trouble with running Maven clean on my Java project, so not sure what to do anymore. I am very new to Maven and working on an existing project and trying to setup the environment on my PC.
Setup:
Maven 2.2
Java7
Added all environment paths (M2, M2_HOME, JAVA_HOME)
Problem:
Project ID: org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin
POM Location: C:\Users\myuser\.m2\repository\org\apache\maven\plugins\maven-clean-plugin\2.2\maven-clean-plugin-2.2.pom
Reason: Not a v4.0.0 POM. for project org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin at C:\Users\myuser\.m2\repository\org\apache\maven\plugins\maven-clean-plugin\2.2\maven-clean-plugin-2.2.pom
After maven clean the content of maven-clean-plugin-2.2.pom is the following:
<html>
<head><title>301 Moved Permanently</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center></hr>
</body>
</html>
I tried:
- copying the maven-clean-plugin-2.2.pom from official website
- deleting everything in repository (.m2/repository)
- taking the sources again (new repository)
- ???
Really at a loss what to do anymore, I would appreciate your help.
Why is it doing that? What should I see in the file maven-clean-plugin-2.2.pom and it instead updates to something that triggers error ?
A:
The POM error was being triggered by a tag which was not closed in the m2 repository. I fixed the HTML markup and the POM error did not show anymore.
|
/*
* This file is part of Bisq.
*
* Bisq is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
* under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at
* your option) any later version.
*
* Bisq is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
* ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
* FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public
* License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
* along with Bisq. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/
package bisq.core.btc.nodes;
import bisq.core.btc.setup.WalletConfig;
import bisq.network.Socks5MultiDiscovery;
import bisq.common.config.Config;
import org.bitcoinj.core.NetworkParameters;
import org.bitcoinj.core.PeerAddress;
import org.bitcoinj.params.MainNetParams;
import com.runjva.sourceforge.jsocks.protocol.Socks5Proxy;
import java.util.List;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import javax.annotation.Nullable;
public class BtcNetworkConfig {
private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(BtcNetworkConfig.class);
@Nullable
private final Socks5Proxy proxy;
private final WalletConfig delegate;
private final NetworkParameters parameters;
private final int socks5DiscoverMode;
public BtcNetworkConfig(WalletConfig delegate, NetworkParameters parameters, int socks5DiscoverMode,
@Nullable Socks5Proxy proxy) {
this.delegate = delegate;
this.parameters = parameters;
this.socks5DiscoverMode = socks5DiscoverMode;
this.proxy = proxy;
}
public void proposePeers(List<PeerAddress> peers) {
if (!peers.isEmpty()) {
log.info("You connect with peerAddresses: {}", peers);
PeerAddress[] peerAddresses = peers.toArray(new PeerAddress[peers.size()]);
delegate.setPeerNodes(peerAddresses);
} else if (proxy != null) {
if (log.isWarnEnabled()) {
MainNetParams mainNetParams = MainNetParams.get();
if (parameters.equals(mainNetParams)) {
log.warn("You use the public Bitcoin network and are exposed to privacy issues " +
"caused by the broken bloom filters. See https://bisq.network/blog/privacy-in-bitsquare/ " +
"for more info. It is recommended to use the provided nodes.");
}
}
// SeedPeers uses hard coded stable addresses (from MainNetParams). It should be updated from time to time.
delegate.setDiscovery(new Socks5MultiDiscovery(proxy, parameters, socks5DiscoverMode));
} else if (Config.baseCurrencyNetwork().isMainnet()) {
log.warn("You don't use tor and use the public Bitcoin network and are exposed to privacy issues " +
"caused by the broken bloom filters. See https://bisq.network/blog/privacy-in-bitsquare/ " +
"for more info. It is recommended to use Tor and the provided nodes.");
}
}
}
|
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine or laser beam printer which forms an image by transferring a toner image of at least one color onto a sheet by an electrophotographic method or electrostatic recording scheme, and an image forming apparatus control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 18 shows an example of a conventional image forming apparatus.
The image forming apparatus comprises a rotary developing unit 3 rotatably supported by a rotation support (not shown). The rotary developing unit 3 includes a yellow toner developing unit 3Y, magenta toner developing unit 3M, cyan toner developing unit 3C, and black toner developing unit 3K.
The color toner developing units 3Y, 3M, 3C, and 3K of the rotary developing unit 3 sequentially face a photosensitive drum 4 to develop images with the respective color toners.
The photosensitive drum 4 serving as a photosensitive body is driven to rotate at a predetermined angular velocity, and the drum surface is uniformly charged by a charger 8. The drum surface is exposed and scanned with a laser beam in accordance with image data of the first color (e.g., yellow), forming an electrostatic latent image of the first color on the photosensitive drum 4. The yellow toner developing unit 3Y for the first color develops and visualizes the electrostatic latent image. The visualized first toner image is transferred onto an intermediate transfer member 5 driven to rotate in press contact with the photosensitive drum 4 at a predetermined press force.
This transfer process is similarly repeated for the remaining toners (magenta, cyan, and black). Toner images of the respective colors are sequentially transferred onto the intermediate transfer member 5, forming a color image. For a full-color print, color images transferred on the intermediate transfer member 5 are transferred at once onto a sheet 6 fed from a sheet feed unit. The sheet 6 bearing the color images is discharged after the fixing process by a fixing unit 7, obtaining a full-color print.
These days, as the number of full-color outputs increases, the stability of density of an output image and the stability of tonality are required of electrophotographic image forming apparatuses of this type.
In this situation, there is proposed an image density/tonality control method of stably maintaining density for a long period in electrophotographic image forming apparatuses such as a copying machine and printer.
According to this proposal, an image forming condition table corresponding to the environmental status and the durable number of sheets is stored in advance. The environment around the image forming apparatus is detected from an output from an environmental sensor incorporated in the image forming apparatus.
The durable number of sheets of the image forming apparatus or process unit is detected from a sheet counter incorporated in the main body. Appropriate image forming conditions are selected from the image forming condition table on the basis of the durable number of sheets.
According to this proposal, however, it is difficult to cope with a case where the state of the image forming apparatus deviates from the image forming condition table due to an unexpected use. A small change of the state of the image forming apparatus cannot be tracked.
To solve this, there is proposed the following technique. First, a density sensor detects the density of a specific toner patch formed on a photosensitive drum or transfer member. Then, image forming conditions are selected on the basis of the detected density. The image forming apparatus is controlled to obtain a predetermined density or tonality.
According to this proposal, the image forming apparatus can be controlled in accordance with its state, and a stable image can be obtained for a long period. A fine output image according to the state of the image forming apparatus can be attained by executing density/tonality control when the image forming apparatus starts up after left to stand for a long time, or every predetermined number of sheets.
Recently, the throughput needs to be maintained while stabilizing the density and tonality, in order to obtain a fine output image according to the state of the image forming apparatus. With this proposal, however, it is difficult to satisfy both the control frequency and maintenance of the throughput.
Density/tonality control is done by detecting not the density on a sheet but a pattern formed on the photosensitive drum or transfer member. Thus, a density obtained by control and an actual density on the sheet differ from each other.
To solve these problems, the following technique is proposed for tonality control in an image forming apparatus.
According to this proposal, an image reader reads a specific tone pattern formed on a sheet, determining a density correction characteristic. An optical sensor detects the density of an image formed on an image carrier such as the photosensitive drum in accordance with the density correction characteristic, storing the detection result.
The density correction characteristic is adjusted on the basis of the relationship between the stored detected density and the density, detected by the optical sensor, of an image formed on the image carrier at a predetermined timing (see, e.g., Japanese Patent No. 3441994).
In Japanese Patent No. 3441994, the density at each halftone level can be adjusted to a desired one by correcting the density correction characteristic on the basis of the relationship between the stored detected density and the detected density of an image formed on the image carrier at a predetermined timing. However, the maximum density cannot be adjusted to a desired one.
As for the maximum density, an image forming contrast potential is set as an image forming condition defined when the density correction characteristic is determined.
For example, even if the maximum density decreases upon the lapse of time after determining the density correction characteristic, it cannot be increased by the method of correcting the density correction characteristic (input signal) because there is no means for increasing the maximum density upon density variations.
When the optical sensor detects the density of a specific pattern formed on the image carrier such as the photosensitive drum, especially an optical sensor using specularly reflected light is lower in detection precision in the high-density region than in the low- and intermediate-density regions, and the detection value greatly varies.
For this reason, no high detection precision can be obtained when controlling the maximum density by forming a high-density pattern in solid black or the like on the image carrier and detecting it.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an image forming apparatus capable of maintaining the throughput, and maintaining a desired maximum density stably at high precision for a long period, and an image forming apparatus control method.
|
Jose Valdivia Jr.
Jose Valdivia Jr. (born December 8, 1974 in Lima, Peru) is a jockey in American Thoroughbred horse racing. The son of a top South American jockey, he is the nephew of retired jockey Fernando Toro and trainer, Juan Suarez. He and his family moved to the United States in 1989 and settled in the West Palm Beach, Florida area where his father worked as a trainer.
In 2000, he married his wife Renee. The couple have two children, Siena and Luca.
In 1994, Valdivia began his professional riding career as an apprentice at Belmont Park, earning his first win in just his third start. Riding for fellow Peruvian, trainer Julio Canani, his first important win came aboard Val Royal when he won the 2001 Breeders' Cup Mile at Belmont Park and that year became a breakout year.
Year-end charts
References
Jose Valdivia Jr. at the NTRA
Category:1974 births
Category:Living people
Category:American jockeys
Category:Peruvian emigrants to the United States
|
A proposal to impose a federal tax on revenues from municipal bonds would be a destructive and unconstitutional way for profligate Washington to raise funds. The tax would deter investors and squeeze cash-strapped states and cities like Detroit. Americans would pay the price.
A man walks past a boarded-up home in a once vibrant neighborhood near downtown Detroit July 19. Investors dumped Detroit's municipal bonds a day after the city's historic bankruptcy filing last week. Op-ed contributors Stephen M. Shapiro and Timothy S. Bishop write: 'With one city after another on the edge of bankruptcy and some states not far behind, [a proposal to tax municipal bonds] could not come at a worse time.'
Chicago — It is hard to imagine a more destructive and less constitutional way for the US government to raise revenues than with a new tax proposal now afloat in Washington.
In February, the US Senate passed a budget resolution calling for taxation of previously tax-exempt municipal bonds. In April, President Obama’s budget repeated the call. For the first time since 1913, when the 16th amendment – which established the income tax – was ratified, the federal government is considering taxing investors’ municipal bond income.
Presented as closing high-end “tax loopholes,” taxing municipal bonds, known as “munis,” would impose crushing new expenses on US states and municipalities – the consequences of which would be felt by citizens at every income level.
If taxes are imposed on muni bond income, will investors lend US states and municipalities money at all? Investors already have more reasons than they need to say “no” to state and local government paper: rising interest rates that have sent the bond market into decline, mounting dangers of default (Detroit has declared bankruptcy), and poor financial disclosure. Detroit is not alone. With one city after another on the edge of bankruptcy and some states not far behind, the proposal could not come at a worse time.
By some estimates, the hike in state and municipal borrowing costs could exceed 70 percent. Some states simply could not afford to borrow for new projects.
Consider what that means. Three quarters of US infrastructure projects are the work of state and local governments. Tax-exempt bonds finance them. But the bonds’ uses don’t stop there. Yes, bonds fund roads, bridges, schools, libraries, hospitals, prisons, and sewer systems. But bonds also provide disaster relief. And when old debt matures (comes due), municipalities must issue new bonds to pay off the old – a process known as “rolling.”
A report by the National League of Cities finds that had the Obama administration’s proposal to tax muni bonds been in place over the past decade, it would have cost states and localities a staggering $173 billion in additional interest.
Indeed such profound destructiveness to state and local government raises questions about whether the courts would see taxing munis as a direct assault on the federal system of government and, therefore, unconstitutional. It is true that in South Carolina v. Baker (1988) the Supreme Court upheld a federal tax on municipal “bearer” bonds. But this was a very special case in a very different time.
The bonds in question at that time were constructed not just to exempt income but to hide ownership. Congress feared that these untraceable instruments would encourage evasion of estate and gift taxes. On appeal, the Supreme Court found that taxing them would have little impact on state finances as few had been issued. Even so, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s dissent questioned whether the federal government could constitutionally step across the line to impose such a burden on states at all. Her concern echoed Chief Justice John Marshall, who famously wrote that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.”
Today’s Supreme Court takes federalism and state sovereignty much more seriously than did the Court on which Justice O’Connor sat in 1988. It is safe to say that if Baker were reheard today, the current federalism-minded majority would side with O’Connor on the far more injurious tax now at issue.
The experience of the last quarter century has made it unlikely that a municipal bond tax would survive Supreme Court scrutiny. The Baker decision in 1988 was written in an era of enormous prosperity. The Court’s majority suggested that states did not need constitutional protection from federal tax laws, as no Congress would try to raid state coffers. And the federal government had plenty of money.
Since then an increasingly cash-strapped Washington has heaped more and more obligations on the states, most recently Obamacare, without providing dollars to pay for its mandates.
A federal tax on muni-bond revenues would make them less attractive to investors who would then expect the bonds to give higher yields to compensate for the tax. But many struggling states and municipalities would not be able to pay the higher interest rates on their debt and would be priced out of the lending market. In many cases, tax exemption is the only reason for investing. (When the idea of taxing muni bonds was first floated in December, muni interest rates went up a half point.)
Some have discussed the possibility of federal bailouts for those states and municipalities that could no longer afford to pay the higher interest rates the market would demand, but such prospects are hardly reassuring. Those assurances depend on a national government that now grasps at every penny from every source to pay for the rising trillions of its own debt.
Indeed, bailouts would make things worse all the way around. As the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has told Congress, “the tax exemption is better than direct subsidies for infrastructure investment because bonds must be repaid, forcing a market test on the project’s viability.”
Threatening irreparable injury to state and municipal finances would not close a tax loophole, but it would transfer resources from struggling states to spendthrift Washington. Meanwhile, investors would feel duped and resolve not to be duped again: They invested in muni bonds based on the understanding that the revenues would not be taxed. A retroactive change would likely lead investors to sue. A test in the Supreme Court would almost certainly follow. That is not a test that the administration and its allies would likely win.
It would be better for state and local economies, investors, and the American people if Washington dropped the foolish proposal to tax muni bonds before it gets any further off the ground.
Stephen Shapiro served as deputy solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. Timothy Bishop is a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. They are both partners in the Supreme Court practice group at the law firm of Mayer Brown.
|
Exact results for fixation probability of bithermal evolutionary graphs.
One of the most fundamental concepts of evolutionary dynamics is the "fixation" probability, i.e. the probability that a mutant spreads through the whole population. Most natural communities are geographically structured into habitats exchanging individuals among each other and can be modeled by an evolutionary graph (EG), where directed links weight the probability for the offspring of one individual to replace another individual in the community. EGs have recently spurred huge interest, as it has been shown that some topology can amplify or suppress the effect of beneficial mutations. Very few exact analytical results however are known for EGs. In this article we show that the use of a new technique, the fixed point of probability generating function, allows us to compute the exact fixation probability for a large subset of bithermal graphs. We also show by numerical simulations that the computed solution holds for all bithermal graphs. Moreover, the analytical solution allows us to clarify the opposing consequences of birth-death versus death-birth processes as amplifier or suppressor of beneficial mutations for the same bithermal topology.
|
A cyclotron as a typical spiral orbit charged particle accelerator was invented by Lowlence in 1930, and the cyclotron includes a magnet 11 for generating magnetic field, accelerating electrodes 12 for generating radio-frequency (RF) voltage to accelerate charged particles, and an ion source 13 for creating charged particles as shown in FIG. 1-(A) and (B). The magnet 11 includes north pole 15 and south pole 16. The particles are accelerated on the spiral orbit 14.
The cyclotron is based on the principle that a period (Tp) of a charged particle circulating in a magnetic field is given by Equation (1):Tp=2πm/eB (1)where π is the ratio of circle's circumference to its diameter, m is mass of moving particle (kg), e is electric charge (C), and B is magnetic flux density on a beam trajectory (tesla).
The mass m is given by the rest mass of m0 and the particle velocity of v(m/s) as follows:m=m0/(1−(v/c)2)1/2 (2)where c is the velocity of light (approximately 3×108 m/s).
The Equation (1) shows that the revolution period of the particle is constant if the value of m/eB is constant on the beam trajectory. This distribution of magnetic field is called an isochronous magnetic field distribution. Particularly, when the velocity v is much smaller than the light velocity c, the revolution period of the particle is constant in the uniform magnetic flux density B. Thus, the period of the accelerating RF voltage should be constant. FIG. 2 is a view of waveform of the RF voltage showing a relation between phases of the particle and the RF voltage in the isochronous magnetic field. In FIG. 2, the horizontal axis is time and the vertical axis is an RF voltage.
A ratio of the particle revolution period (Tp) to the period (Trf) of accelerating RF voltage is called harmonic number N and given by Equation (3).N=Tp/Trf (3)
In FIG. 2, a case of N=2 is shown.
A kinetic energy E of a particle moving in a magnetic field is given by Equation (4),E=((ecBR)2+m02c4)1/2−m0c2 (4)where R is a radius of a trajectory curvature.
Equation (4) shows that the magnitude of BR has to be increased to increase particle energy. Thus, the magnetic field or the radius must be increased. However, a proton energy accelerated with a moderate size cyclotron is limited about 200 MeV because technical problems are encountered when the BR increases.
In order to solve the problem, a ring cyclotron as shown in FIG. 3 was developed. The ring cyclotron includes several bending magnets 31 located separately from each other and accelerating RF cavities 32 formed between the magnets 31. A low energy particle beam pre-accelerated is injected at an injection point 33 of the ring cyclotron. The injected particles are accelerated by the RF cavities and bent by the bending magnets. As a result, the accelerated particles pass on the spiral orbit 34 and extracted at an extraction point (not shown). The energy at the injection point is the injection energy and that at the extraction point is extraction energy. The radius of the trajectory curvature at the injection point is the injection radius and that at the extraction point is extraction radius. In the ring cyclotron, accelerated energy in one revolution can reaches higher than 1 MeV because the accelerating cavities and the bending magnets are spatially separated (see Non-Patent Document).
The ring cyclotron also requires the isochronous magnetic field distribution. In other wards, the field averaged on the trajectory must satisfy the condition that Tp of Equation (1) is constant. The particle energy E is also given by Equation (4) using the averaged magnetic field B and the averaged radius R. An energy gain G of the ring cyclotron is given by Equation (5),G=extraction energy/injection energy={((ecB2R2)2+m02c4)1/2−m0c2}/{((ecB1R1)2+m02c4)1/2−m0c2} (5)where B1 and B2 are averaged magnetic flux densities at injection and extraction points, and R1 and R2 are averaged radiuses of injection and extraction points.
Particularly, when the velocity v is much lower than the light velocity c or in a non-relativistic case, Equation (5) is rewritten as follows:G=(B2R2/B1R1)2 (6)
Thus, the ratio of R2 to R1 is larger as the energy gain G is higher. Consequently, the size of magnets becomes larger as the energy gain becomes higher.
Non-Patent Document 1:
T. Kamei and H. Kihara, “Accelerator Science”, MARUZEN Co. Ltd., Sep. 20, 1993, p. 210–211
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Manu makes return official
Spurs’ Manu Ginobili warms up for Game 2 of the Western Conference final against the Golden State Warriors, in Oakland, Calif., on May 16, 2017.
Spurs’ Manu Ginobili warms up for Game 2 of the Western Conference final against the Golden State Warriors, in Oakland, Calif., on May 16, 2017.
Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez /Associated Press
Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez /Associated Press
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Spurs’ Manu Ginobili warms up for Game 2 of the Western Conference final against the Golden State Warriors, in Oakland, Calif., on May 16, 2017.
Spurs’ Manu Ginobili warms up for Game 2 of the Western Conference final against the Golden State Warriors, in Oakland, Calif., on May 16, 2017.
Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez /Associated Press
Manu makes return official
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Manu Ginobili is back. Officially.
Ginobili formally signed a new contract with the Spurs on Thursday, ensuring his return for a 16th NBA season. The 40-year-old Argentine dynamo re-signed a two-year deal worth about $5 million, according to league sources.
The team’s announcement came as no surprise.
The venerable Spur, a four-time NBA champion, signaled his intention to return in a column he wrote for Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper last month. Having spent most of the summer traveling overseas, Ginobili got around to autographing his new deal Thursday.
The fifth-leading scorer in Spurs history, Ginobili averaged 7.5 points and shot 39 percent last season, career lows. Yet he remains vital to the Spurs both on the court as a leader of the team’s second unit, as well as in the locker room, where he — along with longtime teammate Tony Parker — provide the bulk of the club’s famed “corporate knowledge.”
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Vaginal discharge
Vaginal discharge
Most girls have vaginal discharge for a year or more before they have their first period, and will keep getting discharge between periods once those have started. Vaginal discharges are a liquid produced by the mucous membranes in your vagina and the glands in your cervix (which is at the top of the vagina, where it meets the womb). Normal discharges are transparent, and white or yellowish. They can also be brown, before your period gets going properly. They smell slightly acidic, but you have to get really close to be able to smell them at all. No one standing next to you will be able to smell that you have a discharge. The discharges make sure that your vagina stays moist and healthy and are nothing to worry about, so long as they look normal and only smell slightly acidic. You may like to wear Bodyform freshness liners if you are worried about staining your underwear in between periods.If you notice that the discharges are starting to look green, or they’re lumpy or smell odd, or causing incredible and embarrassing itching, it might be a sign of a yeast infection (often called thrush). You can develop a yeast infection if your jeans are too tight, if you wear panties made from synthetic materials, you always wear nylon tights, or if your panties are too tight. That’s because these create a heat build up, which encourages the yeast to multiply. Be kind to your body and alternate with airy cotton panties and trousers that aren’t as tight as a second skin, so that your intimate area has the chance to breathe. It’s also a very good idea to sleep without panties, so that your vagina and the mucous membranes get some air at night. If you suspect that you have a yeast infection, you can ask your doctor to check that’s the problem and they can prescribe medication that quickly gets rid of it, or you can buy treatment at a pharmacy, though it’s best to get a proper diagnosis from a doctor first. Remember - a yeast infection is not a sexually transmitted disease, and it’s not catching.
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Portland, Oregon, sues to stop Uber online car service
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Portland sued Uber on Monday to stop the fast-growing ride-hailing service from operating in the Oregon city until it follows local regulations.
An Uber app is seen on an iPhone in Beverly Hills, California, December 19, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Uber operates in areas around Portland, but only started up in the city itself on Friday, without consent from authorities or any agreement over how it should be regulated.
“The city’s lawsuit is asking for a declaration by the court that Uber is subject to the city’s regulations,” the city said in a statement. “The lawsuit also asks the court to order Uber to stop operating in Portland until it is in compliance with the city’s safety, health and consumer protection rules.”
Local media reported that the service has been available in Portland for the past few days.
“Uber has received a tremendously warm welcome from riders and drivers in and around Portland. We appreciate the way residents have welcomed Uber into the Rose City, their support illustrates why it’s time to modernize Portland transportation regulation,” said Uber spokeswoman Eva Behrend.
The online ride service was valued at $40 billion last week after its latest funding round ahead of an expected initial public offering.
However, it has been dogged by controversy surrounding its aggressive approach to local governments and traditional taxi services.
It has been banned from taking bookings in the Netherlands because authorities say it lacks a special license.
On Monday Uber was banned from operating in the Indian capital New Delhi after a female passenger accused one of its drivers of rape.
The case is City of Portland v Uber Technologies Inc, filed in the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for the County of Multnomah.
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Possible Creek Wood Middle School Land Search Continues | AutoTraffic
Possible Creek Wood middle school land search continues
As construction continues on the middle school in Burns, the Dickson County education leaders approved the continued search for land to possibly locate a future Creek Wood middle school. County School... read more
Jerome School District looking for land for a possible future elementary school
There’s no timeline for when a decision could be made about buying land or potentially building a new school. Like many school districts in the Magic Valley, Jerome has seen rapid growth as the area’s ... read more
Why I’m a climate change denier
Whether it is land temperature records, sea temperatures ... In the same letter, George Orwell continues: I believe that it is possible to be more objective than most of us are, but that it ... read more
Stepping up for Jamaica's good
First, there was the launch of the documentary Where is Melissa — The Conversation Continues from Kairos Productions ... our girls and women have access to the best possible education. Delmarine, a sc... read more
Will the real Montessori please stand up?
Related: Rival studies shed light on the merits of a Montessori education A Google search ... of land. Paved pathways weave between flowers and grassy areas to connect the six different cottages that ... read more
On June 18, CBS3 filed an open records request with the Lower ... be pursued as a last resort and the District continues to aggressively pursue other options for necessary field space for a new middle ... read more
Lockheed Martin Space, headquartered near Denver, continues to be a leader in the space industry. Current projects include: operating eight spacecraft for NASA, with the newest, the InSight Mars lande... read more
Cryptocurrency Is Not Just a Boys' Club
That’s all possible because of how these currencies are built ... Empower women, hire them, give them capital. We are in the middle of one of the largest wealth-creation cycles of this decade, if not ... read more
While the debate continues over the mayor’s plan ... sixth graders had more than five tardies on their records in the 2017-2018 school year. “Why should a public school, especially on the middle schoo... read more
Ask Boswell: Redskins, Nationals and Washington sports
He was a pretty decent football player in high school and he saw it with the passion of an ex ... No, of course I've never seen either except on old newsreels. But the records are there, and the legen... read more
Photo: IAF The first two F-35s expected to land in Israel next week will be the first 5th Generation ... to get the first unit operational as quickly as possible. By the end of 2017, Israel is expecte... read more
|
Epidemiology of Exposure to Anesthesia, Surgery, and Mortality in a Children’s Hospital Population
Background
Advances in anesthesia and surgery enable children to receive anesthesia with relative safety. Recently, young age, prolonged, and multiple anesthetics have been highlighted as risk factors for poorer neurodevelopmental outcome, with neurotoxicity of anesthetic agents as a putative causal link. Because epidemiologic studies cannot fully disentangle patient factors associated with outcome, questions persist about causality, and neurodevelopmental attainment may be a health outcome with multiple genetic, social, and physiologic determinants. We hypothesized that the risk factors of age, multiple and prolonged exposure to anesthesia and surgery would be related to the hard outcome of mortality, not uniquely linked to neurodevelopment. Methods: Records from all patients having anesthesia or surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and its outpatient center from 2013-2016 were used in this analysis. Age, ASA-PS score, individual and cumulative anesthesia duration, number of case, and interval between date of service and death were extracted. Data were summarized by count (%) mean ± SD, median (IQR), and range. Relationships between risk factors and outcome were tested by likelihood ratio tests, logistic regression, and multiple regression techniques, with predicted risks expressed as point estimate ± SE or (5-95% CI). Analysis was performed using Stata (v14, Statacorp). Results: Data from 104237 cases in 61088 patients were analyzed, with average cases/patient 1.73±2.3, range 1-87. Patients were age 5.36(9.7) years, 19.6(30.4) kg, ASA-PS 2.26±0.84. Death occurred in 400 patients for a patient-mortality rate of 0.65% (CI 0.59-0.72). The overall risk of death by case was 0.135% (CI 0.114-0.160) at 48 hours, 0.539% (CI 0.49-0.59) at 30 days, and 2.62% (CI 2.52-2.72) at an average follow-up time of 800 days. Death occurred at a median of 147(320, range 0-1483) days after any case, at 172(465) days after the first case, and at 20(90) days after the last case (figure). Younger age, higher ASA-PS, case duration, and number of cases were mortality risk factors. ASA-PS was correlated with exposure to multiple and prolonged procedures. Mortality odds ratios were 1.80 (CI 1.67-1.95) for age<3 years, 16.2 (CI 14.9-17.6) for ASA>3, 2.09 (CI 1.88-2.31) for anesthesia duration>3hours, 19.1 (CI 16.6-22.0) for number of cases>3, and 9.96 (CI 9.00-11.0) for cumulative anesthesia duration>3hours. The combination of age<3yrs and case duration>3hrs identified 3234 (3.14%) cases, with average ASA 3.21±0.87, and mortality odds of 3.36 (CI 2.94-3.85). In multiple regression analysis (table), greater cumulative case time and multiple cases remained risk factors, while longer duration for each individual case was not. The cutoff age for higher risk was <2 years. Conclusions: Mortality following anesthesia and surgery is highly related to patient characteristics including younger age and higher ASA-PS. While both multiple and prolonged exposures are associated with increased mortality, these risks are small in multifactorial analysis. These results suggest that young age, prolonged and multiple exposures are relatively small and unmodifiable proxy measures of patient factors related to outcome.
|
The Scientific Method Is Racist
The scientific method is one of the greatest contributions of Western civilization. The scientific method, limited representative government, and capitalism were the West's winning hand that created the modern world. All three are now under attack by the left. In this article, their assault on the scientific method is examined.
Critical Race Theory Overview
A Brown University orientation pamphlet for the 2015 freshman class suggests an alternative tool to the scientific method for the formulation and testing of hypotheses:
As you might learn in your time at Brown [University], research and academics have often emphasized and valued quantitative data, statistical information, and documentation through written word. Our goals through our research are to push back on this systematic oppression through valuing our personal experience, oral and creative histories and the celebration of collaboration and community. (6:42 min. into the YouTube video "Is the University Killing Free Speech and Open Debate")
The social justice warriors at Brown University are describing an "analysis tool" that has come to be known as critical theory. When refined to address racial issues (primarily African-American), its name is critical race theory (CRT).
The theoretical framework of CRT was developed in the mid- to late 1980s to better understand black oppression in the United States. Its major themes now include white privilege and micro-aggression. It is taught in nearly every grievance department in the country (women's studies, African-American studies, Hispanic studies, and ethnic studies). The white privilege theme was first introduced in a 1988 paper by Peggy McIntosh. Ms. McIntosh suggested that issues involving Band-Aid color and free hotel shampoo, rather than education deficiencies and a breakdown in the family structure, are impediments to black progress in America.
Offshoots of CRT have been developed for other marginalized groups. They include Latino critical race studies (LatCrit), Asian-American critical race studies (AsianCrit), and American Indian critical race studies (TribalCrit).
An example of CRT methodology as applied to FDA drug testing
Clarification of CRT methodology can be by gained from DrugCrit, the author's interpretation and description of how critical race theory methodology would be used to secure FDA approval of a new drug to treat breast cancer. 1) The pharmaceutical company informs the FDA that it has developed a new drug effective in the treatment of breast cancer. 2) The company reminds the FDA that 250,000 new cases of breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2016. 3) Case studies are presented that might, for example, describe the emotional toil of the disease and the impact of a mother's death on her children. The FDA approval would be granted once the company established that the treatment of breast cancer is important and that a new treatment is desirable.
My profession and training in applied physics (Caltech Ph.D., 1978) fuel my contempt and disgust that CRT has become so widely accepted as a serious analysis tool (primarily in university grievance departments and far left law schools). Calling one another scholars and inventing pretentious names are not enough to validate a methodology that has no place in a modern world. It's tragic that white liberal college administrators were so cowed by possible charges of racism and so determined to increase the size of grievance departments (satisfy racial quotas for the faculty) that CRT was accepted as a scholarly endeavor. One may state without exaggeration that the actions of the school administrators are comparable to hiring astrologers for the astronomy department and witch doctors for the medical schools.
The application of CRT to support legal arguments has been rejected by a number of judges. For example, Judge Richard Posner of the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that CRT is a tool used by the "lunatic core of radical legal egalitarianism." He stated that it turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry and replaces it with fictional, science-fictional, and quasi-fictional anecdotes and storytelling Critical Race Theory is Irrational.
Case Study Comparison of the Scientific Method and CRT Methodology
We now present a comparison of CRT methodology and the scientific method as applied to answer an important racial/economic question: can the poverty and lack of economic development in Africa today be, at least partially, attributed to the slave trade spanning the 500-year period between 1400 and 1900? (Historical note: The trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States after 1807.)
CRT Analysis: One trained in CRT can immediately answer the question in the affirmative. This conclusion is then supported by delineating features of the slave trade that were detrimental to Africa, such as its brutality and the profits made by slave traders and slave owners. The psychological impact on those who remained in Africa could also be used to support the conclusion.
Scientific method analysis: Nathan Nunn, a Harvard economist, used the "western approach" to reach his conclusion. He collected data that allowed him to generate plots of the per capita GDP of 52 African countries as a function of slave trade activity in each country over a 500-year period. He employed two different metrics for slave trade activity: 1) number of slaves taken per square mile in each country; 2) fraction of estimated population that was enslaved (normalization needed to adjust for size differences in African countries).
A plot of some of his results is shown below. Nunn claims that his regression analysis demonstrates with 95% certainty (p-stat = 0.05) that the slave trade is responsible for some of the poverty in Africa today. The large spread in the data points (R2 = 0.31) suggests that other factors are also in play.
In summary, critical race theory (as applied to demonstrate black oppression in America today) offers the following advantages for liberal research over the scientific method: 1) flexibility to reach any desired result, since the conclusion is the first step in the analysis; 2) personal life experiences can be used in place of actual data to support the conclusion; 3) expertise can be realized by those afflicted by dyscalculia; 4) implicit acceptance and recognition of Western analysis methods can be circumvented.
The author believes he has presented a fair and balanced summary of critical race theory, without misrepresentation or exaggeration.
The scientific method is one of the greatest contributions of Western civilization. The scientific method, limited representative government, and capitalism were the West's winning hand that created the modern world. All three are now under attack by the left. In this article, their assault on the scientific method is examined.
Critical Race Theory Overview
A Brown University orientation pamphlet for the 2015 freshman class suggests an alternative tool to the scientific method for the formulation and testing of hypotheses:
As you might learn in your time at Brown [University], research and academics have often emphasized and valued quantitative data, statistical information, and documentation through written word. Our goals through our research are to push back on this systematic oppression through valuing our personal experience, oral and creative histories and the celebration of collaboration and community. (6:42 min. into the YouTube video "Is the University Killing Free Speech and Open Debate")
The social justice warriors at Brown University are describing an "analysis tool" that has come to be known as critical theory. When refined to address racial issues (primarily African-American), its name is critical race theory (CRT).
The theoretical framework of CRT was developed in the mid- to late 1980s to better understand black oppression in the United States. Its major themes now include white privilege and micro-aggression. It is taught in nearly every grievance department in the country (women's studies, African-American studies, Hispanic studies, and ethnic studies). The white privilege theme was first introduced in a 1988 paper by Peggy McIntosh. Ms. McIntosh suggested that issues involving Band-Aid color and free hotel shampoo, rather than education deficiencies and a breakdown in the family structure, are impediments to black progress in America.
Offshoots of CRT have been developed for other marginalized groups. They include Latino critical race studies (LatCrit), Asian-American critical race studies (AsianCrit), and American Indian critical race studies (TribalCrit).
An example of CRT methodology as applied to FDA drug testing
Clarification of CRT methodology can be by gained from DrugCrit, the author's interpretation and description of how critical race theory methodology would be used to secure FDA approval of a new drug to treat breast cancer. 1) The pharmaceutical company informs the FDA that it has developed a new drug effective in the treatment of breast cancer. 2) The company reminds the FDA that 250,000 new cases of breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2016. 3) Case studies are presented that might, for example, describe the emotional toil of the disease and the impact of a mother's death on her children. The FDA approval would be granted once the company established that the treatment of breast cancer is important and that a new treatment is desirable.
My profession and training in applied physics (Caltech Ph.D., 1978) fuel my contempt and disgust that CRT has become so widely accepted as a serious analysis tool (primarily in university grievance departments and far left law schools). Calling one another scholars and inventing pretentious names are not enough to validate a methodology that has no place in a modern world. It's tragic that white liberal college administrators were so cowed by possible charges of racism and so determined to increase the size of grievance departments (satisfy racial quotas for the faculty) that CRT was accepted as a scholarly endeavor. One may state without exaggeration that the actions of the school administrators are comparable to hiring astrologers for the astronomy department and witch doctors for the medical schools.
The application of CRT to support legal arguments has been rejected by a number of judges. For example, Judge Richard Posner of the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that CRT is a tool used by the "lunatic core of radical legal egalitarianism." He stated that it turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry and replaces it with fictional, science-fictional, and quasi-fictional anecdotes and storytelling Critical Race Theory is Irrational.
Case Study Comparison of the Scientific Method and CRT Methodology
We now present a comparison of CRT methodology and the scientific method as applied to answer an important racial/economic question: can the poverty and lack of economic development in Africa today be, at least partially, attributed to the slave trade spanning the 500-year period between 1400 and 1900? (Historical note: The trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States after 1807.)
CRT Analysis: One trained in CRT can immediately answer the question in the affirmative. This conclusion is then supported by delineating features of the slave trade that were detrimental to Africa, such as its brutality and the profits made by slave traders and slave owners. The psychological impact on those who remained in Africa could also be used to support the conclusion.
Scientific method analysis: Nathan Nunn, a Harvard economist, used the "western approach" to reach his conclusion. He collected data that allowed him to generate plots of the per capita GDP of 52 African countries as a function of slave trade activity in each country over a 500-year period. He employed two different metrics for slave trade activity: 1) number of slaves taken per square mile in each country; 2) fraction of estimated population that was enslaved (normalization needed to adjust for size differences in African countries).
A plot of some of his results is shown below. Nunn claims that his regression analysis demonstrates with 95% certainty (p-stat = 0.05) that the slave trade is responsible for some of the poverty in Africa today. The large spread in the data points (R2 = 0.31) suggests that other factors are also in play.
In summary, critical race theory (as applied to demonstrate black oppression in America today) offers the following advantages for liberal research over the scientific method: 1) flexibility to reach any desired result, since the conclusion is the first step in the analysis; 2) personal life experiences can be used in place of actual data to support the conclusion; 3) expertise can be realized by those afflicted by dyscalculia; 4) implicit acceptance and recognition of Western analysis methods can be circumvented.
The author believes he has presented a fair and balanced summary of critical race theory, without misrepresentation or exaggeration.
|
Chile Route 215
Route 215-CH is a branch line road going eastward from Osorno at Chile Highway 5 to Cardenal Antonio Samoré Pass at the border to Argentina. Apart from connecting southern Chile with Argentina, the road is also the main access to Antillanca ski resort, Puyehue Hot Springs and Puyehue National Park.
See also
Route U-40
Category:Roads in Chile
Category:Transport in Los Lagos Region
|
Renal tubular processing of small peptide hormones.
Reabsorption and/or degradation of proteins or peptides are functions of the proximal tubule. Large polypeptides or proteins are reabsorbed by luminal endocytosis and hydrolyzed by lysosomal enzymes. Our recent studies indicate that small linear peptides are hydrolyzed at the luminal membrane, with reabsorption of metabolites. The renal transport and hydrolysis of radiolabeled Al, All, BKN, oxytocin, glucagon, insulin, and LHRH were studied. Techniques for in vivo microinfusion of surface tubules in rats, arterial infusion in filtering and nonfiltering rat kidneys in vivo, and in vitro microperfusion of isolated rabbit nephron segments were used. Reabsorption of radiolabeled material was measured and the intact peptide or its metabolites were identified and quantified in urine, renal venous blood, bathing medium, and/or collection fluid. In addition, peptides were incubated in the presence of isolated renal membrane preparations to identify a probably cellular site of hydrolysis. The findings indicate that in proximal, but not distal tubules, radiolabeled Al, All, BKN, glucagon, and LHRH are hydrolyzed by brush border enzymes at the luminal membrane, followed by reabsorption of metabolites. In addition, it was found that, similar to the small intestine, the proximal tubule reabsorbed small peptide fragments, which were further degraded intracellurarly, In vivo inhibition studies with excess peptides revealed that hydrolysis is a more specific process than studies with excess peptides revealed that hydrolysis is a more specific process than reabsorption of metabolites. Large or small, complex peptides like insulin, oxytocin, or vasopressin that contain disulfide bridges are not hydrolyzed at the luminal brush border of the proximal tubule. In vivo sequestration and slow degradation of insulin by rat tubules suggest that this peptide is reabsorbed by endocytosis and degraded in lysosomes. Thus, as the molecular complexity or weight of a peptide increases, the mechanism for renal tubular degradation, instead of depending on luminal membrane hydrolysis, may primarily involve endocytosis and lysosomal digestion. This recently described mechanism for hydrolysis and transport of small linear peptides in the proximal nephron is characterized by having a high capacity and is analogous to membrane hydrolysis described for intestinal microvilli. The process may be biologically important to (1) conserve amino acids, (2) inactivate toxic peptides, and (3) help regulate circulating levels of peptide hormones.
|
/*
Broadcom B43 wireless driver
Common PHY routines
Copyright (c) 2005 Martin Langer <[email protected]>,
Copyright (c) 2005-2007 Stefano Brivio <[email protected]>
Copyright (c) 2005-2008 Michael Buesch <[email protected]>
Copyright (c) 2005, 2006 Danny van Dyk <[email protected]>
Copyright (c) 2005, 2006 Andreas Jaggi <[email protected]>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Steet, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
*/
#include "phy_common.h"
#include "phy_g.h"
#include "phy_a.h"
#include "phy_n.h"
#include "phy_lp.h"
#include "phy_ht.h"
#include "phy_lcn.h"
#include "b43.h"
#include "main.h"
int b43_phy_allocate(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
struct b43_phy *phy = &(dev->phy);
int err;
phy->ops = NULL;
switch (phy->type) {
case B43_PHYTYPE_A:
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_a;
break;
case B43_PHYTYPE_G:
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_g;
break;
case B43_PHYTYPE_N:
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_PHY_N
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_n;
#endif
break;
case B43_PHYTYPE_LP:
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_PHY_LP
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_lp;
#endif
break;
case B43_PHYTYPE_HT:
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_PHY_HT
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_ht;
#endif
break;
case B43_PHYTYPE_LCN:
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_PHY_LCN
phy->ops = &b43_phyops_lcn;
#endif
break;
}
if (B43_WARN_ON(!phy->ops))
return -ENODEV;
err = phy->ops->allocate(dev);
if (err)
phy->ops = NULL;
return err;
}
void b43_phy_free(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
dev->phy.ops->free(dev);
dev->phy.ops = NULL;
}
int b43_phy_init(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
struct b43_phy *phy = &dev->phy;
const struct b43_phy_operations *ops = phy->ops;
int err;
phy->channel = ops->get_default_chan(dev);
ops->software_rfkill(dev, false);
err = ops->init(dev);
if (err) {
b43err(dev->wl, "PHY init failed\n");
goto err_block_rf;
}
/* Make sure to switch hardware and firmware (SHM) to
* the default channel. */
err = b43_switch_channel(dev, ops->get_default_chan(dev));
if (err) {
b43err(dev->wl, "PHY init: Channel switch to default failed\n");
goto err_phy_exit;
}
return 0;
err_phy_exit:
if (ops->exit)
ops->exit(dev);
err_block_rf:
ops->software_rfkill(dev, true);
return err;
}
void b43_phy_exit(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
const struct b43_phy_operations *ops = dev->phy.ops;
ops->software_rfkill(dev, true);
if (ops->exit)
ops->exit(dev);
}
bool b43_has_hardware_pctl(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
if (!dev->phy.hardware_power_control)
return 0;
if (!dev->phy.ops->supports_hwpctl)
return 0;
return dev->phy.ops->supports_hwpctl(dev);
}
void b43_radio_lock(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
u32 macctl;
#if B43_DEBUG
B43_WARN_ON(dev->phy.radio_locked);
dev->phy.radio_locked = true;
#endif
macctl = b43_read32(dev, B43_MMIO_MACCTL);
macctl |= B43_MACCTL_RADIOLOCK;
b43_write32(dev, B43_MMIO_MACCTL, macctl);
/* Commit the write and wait for the firmware
* to finish any radio register access. */
b43_read32(dev, B43_MMIO_MACCTL);
udelay(10);
}
void b43_radio_unlock(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
u32 macctl;
#if B43_DEBUG
B43_WARN_ON(!dev->phy.radio_locked);
dev->phy.radio_locked = false;
#endif
/* Commit any write */
b43_read16(dev, B43_MMIO_PHY_VER);
/* unlock */
macctl = b43_read32(dev, B43_MMIO_MACCTL);
macctl &= ~B43_MACCTL_RADIOLOCK;
b43_write32(dev, B43_MMIO_MACCTL, macctl);
}
void b43_phy_lock(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
#if B43_DEBUG
B43_WARN_ON(dev->phy.phy_locked);
dev->phy.phy_locked = true;
#endif
B43_WARN_ON(dev->dev->core_rev < 3);
if (!b43_is_mode(dev->wl, NL80211_IFTYPE_AP))
b43_power_saving_ctl_bits(dev, B43_PS_AWAKE);
}
void b43_phy_unlock(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
#if B43_DEBUG
B43_WARN_ON(!dev->phy.phy_locked);
dev->phy.phy_locked = false;
#endif
B43_WARN_ON(dev->dev->core_rev < 3);
if (!b43_is_mode(dev->wl, NL80211_IFTYPE_AP))
b43_power_saving_ctl_bits(dev, 0);
}
static inline void assert_mac_suspended(struct b43_wldev *dev)
{
if (!B43_DEBUG)
return;
if ((b43_status(dev) >= B43_STAT_INITIALIZED) &&
(dev->mac_suspended <= 0)) {
b43dbg(dev->wl, "PHY/RADIO register access with "
"enabled MAC.\n");
dump_stack();
}
}
u16 b43_radio_read(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 reg)
{
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
return dev->phy.ops->radio_read(dev, reg);
}
void b43_radio_write(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 reg, u16 value)
{
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->radio_write(dev, reg, value);
}
void b43_radio_mask(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 mask)
{
b43_radio_write16(dev, offset,
b43_radio_read16(dev, offset) & mask);
}
void b43_radio_set(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 set)
{
b43_radio_write16(dev, offset,
b43_radio_read16(dev, offset) | set);
}
void b43_radio_maskset(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 mask, u16 set)
{
b43_radio_write16(dev, offset,
(b43_radio_read16(dev, offset) & mask) | set);
}
bool b43_radio_wait_value(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 mask,
u16 value, int delay, int timeout)
{
u16 val;
int i;
for (i = 0; i < timeout; i += delay) {
val = b43_radio_read(dev, offset);
if ((val & mask) == value)
return true;
udelay(delay);
}
return false;
}
u16 b43_phy_read(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 reg)
{
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.writes_counter = 0;
return dev->phy.ops->phy_read(dev, reg);
}
void b43_phy_write(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 reg, u16 value)
{
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->phy_write(dev, reg, value);
if (++dev->phy.writes_counter == B43_MAX_WRITES_IN_ROW) {
b43_read16(dev, B43_MMIO_PHY_VER);
dev->phy.writes_counter = 0;
}
}
void b43_phy_copy(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 destreg, u16 srcreg)
{
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->phy_write(dev, destreg,
dev->phy.ops->phy_read(dev, srcreg));
}
void b43_phy_mask(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 mask)
{
if (dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset) {
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset(dev, offset, mask, 0);
} else {
b43_phy_write(dev, offset,
b43_phy_read(dev, offset) & mask);
}
}
void b43_phy_set(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 set)
{
if (dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset) {
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset(dev, offset, 0xFFFF, set);
} else {
b43_phy_write(dev, offset,
b43_phy_read(dev, offset) | set);
}
}
void b43_phy_maskset(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 offset, u16 mask, u16 set)
{
if (dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset) {
assert_mac_suspended(dev);
dev->phy.ops->phy_maskset(dev, offset, mask, set);
} else {
b43_phy_write(dev, offset,
(b43_phy_read(dev, offset) & mask) | set);
}
}
int b43_switch_channel(struct b43_wldev *dev, unsigned int new_channel)
{
struct b43_phy *phy = &(dev->phy);
u16 channelcookie, savedcookie;
int err;
if (new_channel == B43_DEFAULT_CHANNEL)
new_channel = phy->ops->get_default_chan(dev);
/* First we set the channel radio code to prevent the
* firmware from sending ghost packets.
*/
channelcookie = new_channel;
if (b43_current_band(dev->wl) == IEEE80211_BAND_5GHZ)
channelcookie |= B43_SHM_SH_CHAN_5GHZ;
/* FIXME: set 40Mhz flag if required */
if (0)
channelcookie |= B43_SHM_SH_CHAN_40MHZ;
savedcookie = b43_shm_read16(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED, B43_SHM_SH_CHAN);
b43_shm_write16(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED, B43_SHM_SH_CHAN, channelcookie);
/* Now try to switch the PHY hardware channel. */
err = phy->ops->switch_channel(dev, new_channel);
if (err)
goto err_restore_cookie;
dev->phy.channel = new_channel;
/* Wait for the radio to tune to the channel and stabilize. */
msleep(8);
return 0;
err_restore_cookie:
b43_shm_write16(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED,
B43_SHM_SH_CHAN, savedcookie);
return err;
}
void b43_software_rfkill(struct b43_wldev *dev, bool blocked)
{
struct b43_phy *phy = &dev->phy;
b43_mac_suspend(dev);
phy->ops->software_rfkill(dev, blocked);
phy->radio_on = !blocked;
b43_mac_enable(dev);
}
/**
* b43_phy_txpower_adjust_work - TX power workqueue.
*
* Workqueue for updating the TX power parameters in hardware.
*/
void b43_phy_txpower_adjust_work(struct work_struct *work)
{
struct b43_wl *wl = container_of(work, struct b43_wl,
txpower_adjust_work);
struct b43_wldev *dev;
mutex_lock(&wl->mutex);
dev = wl->current_dev;
if (likely(dev && (b43_status(dev) >= B43_STAT_STARTED)))
dev->phy.ops->adjust_txpower(dev);
mutex_unlock(&wl->mutex);
}
void b43_phy_txpower_check(struct b43_wldev *dev, unsigned int flags)
{
struct b43_phy *phy = &dev->phy;
unsigned long now = jiffies;
enum b43_txpwr_result result;
if (!(flags & B43_TXPWR_IGNORE_TIME)) {
/* Check if it's time for a TXpower check. */
if (time_before(now, phy->next_txpwr_check_time))
return; /* Not yet */
}
/* The next check will be needed in two seconds, or later. */
phy->next_txpwr_check_time = round_jiffies(now + (HZ * 2));
if ((dev->dev->board_vendor == SSB_BOARDVENDOR_BCM) &&
(dev->dev->board_type == SSB_BOARD_BU4306))
return; /* No software txpower adjustment needed */
result = phy->ops->recalc_txpower(dev, !!(flags & B43_TXPWR_IGNORE_TSSI));
if (result == B43_TXPWR_RES_DONE)
return; /* We are done. */
B43_WARN_ON(result != B43_TXPWR_RES_NEED_ADJUST);
B43_WARN_ON(phy->ops->adjust_txpower == NULL);
/* We must adjust the transmission power in hardware.
* Schedule b43_phy_txpower_adjust_work(). */
ieee80211_queue_work(dev->wl->hw, &dev->wl->txpower_adjust_work);
}
int b43_phy_shm_tssi_read(struct b43_wldev *dev, u16 shm_offset)
{
const bool is_ofdm = (shm_offset != B43_SHM_SH_TSSI_CCK);
unsigned int a, b, c, d;
unsigned int average;
u32 tmp;
tmp = b43_shm_read32(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED, shm_offset);
a = tmp & 0xFF;
b = (tmp >> 8) & 0xFF;
c = (tmp >> 16) & 0xFF;
d = (tmp >> 24) & 0xFF;
if (a == 0 || a == B43_TSSI_MAX ||
b == 0 || b == B43_TSSI_MAX ||
c == 0 || c == B43_TSSI_MAX ||
d == 0 || d == B43_TSSI_MAX)
return -ENOENT;
/* The values are OK. Clear them. */
tmp = B43_TSSI_MAX | (B43_TSSI_MAX << 8) |
(B43_TSSI_MAX << 16) | (B43_TSSI_MAX << 24);
b43_shm_write32(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED, shm_offset, tmp);
if (is_ofdm) {
a = (a + 32) & 0x3F;
b = (b + 32) & 0x3F;
c = (c + 32) & 0x3F;
d = (d + 32) & 0x3F;
}
/* Get the average of the values with 0.5 added to each value. */
average = (a + b + c + d + 2) / 4;
if (is_ofdm) {
/* Adjust for CCK-boost */
if (b43_shm_read16(dev, B43_SHM_SHARED, B43_SHM_SH_HOSTF1)
& B43_HF_CCKBOOST)
average = (average >= 13) ? (average - 13) : 0;
}
return average;
}
void b43_phyop_switch_analog_generic(struct b43_wldev *dev, bool on)
{
b43_write16(dev, B43_MMIO_PHY0, on ? 0 : 0xF4);
}
bool b43_channel_type_is_40mhz(enum nl80211_channel_type channel_type)
{
return (channel_type == NL80211_CHAN_HT40MINUS ||
channel_type == NL80211_CHAN_HT40PLUS);
}
/* http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net/802.11/PHY/N/BmacPhyClkFgc */
void b43_phy_force_clock(struct b43_wldev *dev, bool force)
{
u32 tmp;
WARN_ON(dev->phy.type != B43_PHYTYPE_N &&
dev->phy.type != B43_PHYTYPE_HT);
switch (dev->dev->bus_type) {
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_BCMA
case B43_BUS_BCMA:
tmp = bcma_aread32(dev->dev->bdev, BCMA_IOCTL);
if (force)
tmp |= BCMA_IOCTL_FGC;
else
tmp &= ~BCMA_IOCTL_FGC;
bcma_awrite32(dev->dev->bdev, BCMA_IOCTL, tmp);
break;
#endif
#ifdef CONFIG_B43_SSB
case B43_BUS_SSB:
tmp = ssb_read32(dev->dev->sdev, SSB_TMSLOW);
if (force)
tmp |= SSB_TMSLOW_FGC;
else
tmp &= ~SSB_TMSLOW_FGC;
ssb_write32(dev->dev->sdev, SSB_TMSLOW, tmp);
break;
#endif
}
}
/* http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net/802.11/PHY/Cordic */
struct b43_c32 b43_cordic(int theta)
{
static const u32 arctg[] = {
2949120, 1740967, 919879, 466945, 234379, 117304,
58666, 29335, 14668, 7334, 3667, 1833,
917, 458, 229, 115, 57, 29,
};
u8 i;
s32 tmp;
s8 signx = 1;
u32 angle = 0;
struct b43_c32 ret = { .i = 39797, .q = 0, };
while (theta > (180 << 16))
theta -= (360 << 16);
while (theta < -(180 << 16))
theta += (360 << 16);
if (theta > (90 << 16)) {
theta -= (180 << 16);
signx = -1;
} else if (theta < -(90 << 16)) {
theta += (180 << 16);
signx = -1;
}
for (i = 0; i <= 17; i++) {
if (theta > angle) {
tmp = ret.i - (ret.q >> i);
ret.q += ret.i >> i;
ret.i = tmp;
angle += arctg[i];
} else {
tmp = ret.i + (ret.q >> i);
ret.q -= ret.i >> i;
ret.i = tmp;
angle -= arctg[i];
}
}
ret.i *= signx;
ret.q *= signx;
return ret;
}
|
Q:
Final vote to close doesn't update the UI
I just gave the final vote to close on this question through the iOS app. As it doesn't show the number of close votes already, I was curious to see the status so I opened the question in Safari.
There I saw I was the final voter on that question, so the question got closed. The UI in the app wasn't updated though, like it does in the web site. When I refreshed the question manually, it did show the 'closed banner'.
I don't know whether this is considered a feature request or a bug, but either way: can this be added please?
A:
This will be fixed in 1.4.3.2.
We were calling /questions/{id}/flags/add (which returns the updated question) and just discarding the result.
Now we get the relevant updated fields (anything starting with closed_), applying it to the already loaded question and reloading the section.
|
Prayer walk
A prayer walk is an activity that consists in walking and praying at the same time. It's done not for the physical benefit but for the spiritual exercise, either publicly functioning also as a demonstration or rally (to let other people know the group is praying), or quietly in sight of the subject. For instance, a person or group may be praying for a town or city, and walk the streets of the city while praying, either out loud, or in silence.
See also
March for Jesus
References
Category:Prayer
Category:Walking
|
import Ember from 'ember';
const CommentCard = Ember.Component.extend({
classNames: ['comment-card'],
classNameBindings: ['isExpanded:expanded', 'isHighlighted:highlighted'],
actions: {
toggleReplies: function() {
var expanded = this.toggleProperty('isExpanded');
if (expanded) {
this.expandAll();
}
}
},
bodyStyle: function() {
var quality = this.get('comment.quality');
if (typeof quality === 'undefined') {
quality = 1;
}
return `opacity: ${quality}`;
}.property('comment.quality'),
level: function() {
var level = this.get('comment.isInternal') ? -1 : 0;
var parent = this.get('parentView');
while (parent instanceof CommentCard) {
level += 1;
parent = parent.get('parentView');
}
return level;
}.property('parentView'),
isExpanded: function() {
if ( this.get('preferences.autoFold') ) {
return this.get('level') < this.get('preferences.autoFoldDepth');
} else {
return true;
}
}.property('level', 'preferences.autoFold', 'preferences.autoFoldDepth'),
isHighlighted: function() {
return this.get('highlight') === this.get('comment.id');
}.property('highlight', 'comment'),
_onHighlighted: function() {
if (this.get('isHighlighted')) {
var parent = this.get('parentView');
while (parent instanceof CommentCard) {
parent.set('isExpanded', true);
parent = parent.get('parentView');
}
Ember.run.scheduleOnce('afterRender', this, () => {
var $body = this.$('> .body');
var scrollBy = $body.position().top - Ember.$(window).height() / 4;
var $container = $body.closest('.app-panel');
$container.animate({
scrollTop: $container.scrollTop() + scrollBy
}, 500);
});
}
}.observes('isHighlighted').on('init'),
expandAll: function() {
this.set('isExpanded', true);
this.get('childViews').forEach( (child) => (child instanceof CommentCard) && child.expandAll() );
},
});
export default CommentCard;
|
Curable, or thermosettable, coating compositions are widely used in the coatings art, particularly for topcoats in the automotive and industrial coatings industry. Basecoat-clearcoat composite coatings are topcoats that offer exceptional gloss, depth of color, distinctness of image, or special metallic effects. The automotive industry has made extensive use of basecoat-clearcoat composite coatings for automotive body panels. Single-layer topcoats and the clearcoats of color-plus-clear composite coatings require an extremely high degree of clarity and gloss to achieve the desired visual effect. Such coatings require a low degree of visual aberrations at the surface of the coating in order to achieve the desired high gloss and high distinctness of image (DOI).
Because defects are so noticeable in the smooth, glossy surfaces required for these coatings, they are especially susceptible to a phenomenon known as environmental etch. "Environmental etch" is a term applied to a kind of exposure degradation that is characterized by spots or marks on or in the finish of the coating that often cannot be rubbed out. It has been difficult to predict the degree of resistance to environmental etch that a high gloss topcoat or color-plus-clear composite coating will exhibit. Many coating compositions known for their durability and/or weatherability when used in exterior paints, such as traditional high-solids enamels in which a hydroxyl-function acrylic polymer is crosslinked with a melamine-formaldehyde resin, do not provide the desired level of resistance to environmental etch when used in high gloss coatings such as the clearcoat of a color-plus-clear composite coating. While the ether linkages formed by aminoplast resin crosslinkers like the melamine-formaldehyde resin with hydroxyl-functional resins are undesirable from the standpoint of resistance to environmental etch, aminoplast crosslinkers are desirable for other reasons such as providing high solids coatings having excellent appearance that cure under moderate conditions.
Recently, automotive coating compositions based on carbamate-functional acrylic resins have been shown to be more resistant to environmental etch damage. Curable coating compositions utilizing carbamate-functional acrylic resins are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,356,669, 5,474,811, 5,552,497, 5,559,195, 5,605,965, 5,639,554, 5,639,828, and 5,726,246, each of by reference. Carbamate groups can be crosslinked at moderate temperatures with melamine-formaldehyde resins or other aminoplast resins. The coating compositions can thus take advantage of many of the benefits of aminoplast resins while at the same time forming coatings that are resistant to environmental etch degradation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,356,669, for example, describes methods of preparing an acrylic polymer having carbamate functionality. One suggested method is to react a cyclic carbonate-functional acrylic with ammonia to form the carbamate group or groups. A carbonate-functional monomer could similarly be converted to a carbamate-functional monomer and then carbamate-functional monomer in turn used in the polymerization of the carbamate-functional acrylic polymer. These synthetic routes to producing the carbamate functionality have advantages. A drawback to the carbonate ring-opening synthesis is that the reaction also produces a hydroxyl group that may then react with an aminoplast crosslinker (as in the traditional enamel compositions) to form undesirable ether linkages.
Other methods that have been suggested for preparing a carbamate-functional acrylic polymer also result or potentially result in an acrylic polymer that has hydroxyl functionality in addition to the desired carbamate functionality. U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,497 describes a method of transesterification of a hydroxy-functional acrylic with a carbamate compound to produce a carbamate-functional acrylic polymer. In this case, again, the acrylic polymer may have hydroxyl groups in addition to the carbamate groups, as some of the hydroxyl groups would be expected to remain unconverted. In a different synthesis, U.S. Patent No. 5,552,497 discloses a simultaneous addition polymerization of hydroxy functional acrylic monomer and esterification with an alkyl carbamate such as methyl carbamate to produce a carbamate functional acrylic polymer. The simultaneous polymerization and esterification avoids problems of incompatibility of carbamate-containing monomer in the polymerization mixture and undesirable molecular weight gains during transesterification of a pre-formed hydroxyl-functional acrylic polymer. The acrylic polymer may have hydroxyl groups, however, if the esterification reaction is not complete. Another method of producing carbamate functionality is to react a hydroxyl group with HNCO, produced by the thermal decomposition of urea, as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,605,965. Hydroxyl functionality remains on the acrylic polymer when less than a stoichiometric amount of the HNCO is reacted.
While each of the methods just described is feasible for producing acrylic polymers having carbamate groups, residual hydroxyl groups may produce undesirable ether linkages with aminoplast crosslinking agents. It would thus be desirable to render the hydroxyl functionality incapable of reacting with the aminoplast crosslinker so that only the carbamate groups form crosslinks during curing of the acrylic resin in order to maximize resistance of the cured coating to environmental etch.
|
Copyright © 2012 by Rockridge University Press, Berkeley, California
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Rockridge University Press, 918 Parker St., Suite A-12, Berkeley, CA 94710.
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ISBNs: Print 978-1-62315-031-0 | eBook 978-1-62315-032-7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: What Is the Paleo Diet?
How the Paleo Diet Came About
What the Paleo Diet Looks Like
Losing Weight on the Paleo Diet
Better Health Through the Paleo Diet
Chapter 2: Starting Your Paleo Diet
What You'll Be Eating on the Paleo Diet
Shopping for Food on the Paleo Diet
Planning Your Paleo Diet
Paleo-Recommended Foods
Foods to Avoid on the Paleo Diet
Chapter 3: Set Yourself Up for Success
Getting Your Mindset Right
What Kind of Caveman Are You?
Making the Transition
Chapter 4: A Week of Preparation — Ready, Set, Go!
Day 1: Become Your Own Best Cheerleader
Day 2: Keep Your Vision in Front of You
Day 3: Know Where You're Starting So You'll Know When You've Arrived
Day 4: Set Your Goals
Day 5: Make a Rewards Program for Yourself
Day 6: Get Your Fill of the Forbidden
Day 7: Clean House
Chapter 5: The Meal Plans
Sample Weekday Menu
Sample Weekend Menu
Menu for Entertaining
Weekday Menu Recipes
Weekend Menu Recipes
Recipes for Entertaining
Conclusion
WHAT IS THE PALEO DIET?
The Paleo diet has become incredibly popular in the past few years, leading many people to assume that it's a new way of eating. In reality, the Paleo diet has been around for almost forty years.
How the Paleo Diet Came About
In 1975, a gastroenterologist named Dr. Walter Voegtlin published a book called The Stone Age Diet. In the book, he documented how he treated patients with a diet that replicated the eating patterns of people during the Paleolithic era. The diet prescribed consuming large quantities of animal fats and proteins and very small quantities of carbohydrates. Dr. Voegtlin reported that his patients, who suffered from disorders such as Crohn's disease and irritable bowel syndrome, showed significant health improvements when following the diet.
Unfortunately, The Stone Age Diet didn't make much headway with the public. At that time, almost everyone believed that a low-fat, low-calorie diet was the only healthy way to eat.
An Ancient Diet for Modern Times
Ten years later, however, Dr. S. Boyd Eaton and Dr. Melvin Konner published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine that supported Dr. Voegtlin's research and that received a lot of attention from the medical community and the media. The popularity of their paper on the Paleolithic era diet led to the publication of their book, The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living. This book established the principles most variations of the Paleo diet follow today.
The book explained the way our Paleolithic ancestors ate and why that nutritional lifestyle was such a healthy one. The most important thing the authors accomplished was to make the ancient diet suitable for modern times. The book laid out the nutritional content of the original Paleolithic diet and then showed readers how to get that nutritional profile from modern and widely available foods. It was an adaptable way to eat like our ancestors, and it paved the way for today's Paleo diet phenomenon.
The Paleo Diet for You, the Modern Cave-Dweller
There are several versions of the Paleo diet around today; these versions generally differ in terms of how strictly they follow the eating patterns of our Paleolithic ancestors. The Paleo diet described in this book is a version that intends to closely duplicate the nutritional makeup of a Paleolithic diet without being unrealistic, difficult or complicated. You'll reap the health and weight loss benefits of the Paleo diet without having to turn your entire lifestyle inside out or spend time searching for exotic ingredients. You'll be practicing a diet that is moderate in its approach, but you will likely see incredible results.
What the Paleo Diet Looks Like
The Paleo diet is designed to duplicate the results and benefits of our pre-agricultural diet without duplicating the diet's prehistoric methods. While there are a few Paleo followers who do literally hunt, gather or forage all of their food, most people don't have the motivation or time for that level of authenticity. Fortunately, we can achieve the same Paleolithic results with foods readily available to us in grocery stores, health foods stores and farmers markets.
The Paleo diet food pyramid is an inverted version of the one that used to be recommended by the USDA. Meats, eggs and seafood make up the majority of the day's calories, followed by fats from plant foods, fruits and vegetables, and then nuts and seeds. The Paleo diet is a high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet.
In chapter 2, I'll go into more detail on what you'll be eating from each food group and also give you a specific list of allowed (and disallowed) foods. For now, I'll cover the basics.
What Is Not on Your Paleo Plate?
The Paleo diet is effective not only because of what you eat, but also because of what you don't eat. Changing the components and proportions of your diet is only half the Paleo plan. The other half involves eliminating foods that can slow your metabolism, encourage blood sugar problems and fat storage, and slow digestion. These eliminated foods include processed foods, alcohol, grains, legumes and sugar.
Processed Foods
Fast food, frozen meals and store-bought sweets and snacks are not a part of the Paleo diet and should be avoided.
Alcohol
Not only was alcohol an unlikely component of a Paleolithic-era diet, but it is also filled with empty calories and sugar. Alcohol does not supply enough nutritional value to offset its negative dietary attributes, and therefore is not included in the Paleo diet.
Grains
Grains, including all breads, pasta, rice, oats and barley, are agricultural products; you are embarking on a pre-agricultural diet. Later in this chapter, I'll explain in greater detail why grains are specifically off-limits.
Legumes
As with grains, legumes such as beans, peas, soy and soy derivatives are agricultural products and are therefore off-limits. I'll explain the specific risks to your health that these foods pose late in this chapter.
Sugar
One of the remarkable things about the Paleo diet is the impact it can have not only on lowering blood sugar levels, but also on decreasing your risk of developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome. In part, this is because sugars are eliminated on the Paleo diet. It is also very important to avoid substituting artificial sweeteners for sugar. You can, however, use honey in moderation, as it was likely a part of the ancestral diet.
What Is on Your Paleo Plate?
Meats, Eggs and Seafood
This food group is where you will get most of your calories. All meat, fish, shellfish, mollusks and eggs are allowed, but there are some guidelines for choosing the right foods for the best results. The most important thing is that these foods are of high quality and are prepared with Paleo-approved ingredients.
Fats from Plant Sources
These sources include olives and olive oil, avocadoes (which are a fruit but serve as a fat), and nuts and seeds (which are described in detail in the next section). Since butter is a dairy product and does not improve your heart health, it should be avoided when cooking or preparing foods; use pure olive oil for cooking and grape-seed oil or extra virgin olive oil for uncooked dressings.
Nuts and Seeds
Nuts and seeds were a big part of the Paleolithic-era diet. All nuts are allowed, with the exception of peanuts, which are a legume. Seeds are allowed, including flax seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and others. If you are frightened by the idea of giving up pasta and rice, the good news is that quinoa is allowed. Not only is quinoa a seed, but it also makes a great substitute for rice, pasta, oats, barley and other grain foods.
Fruits and Vegetables
The fruits allowed on the Paleo diet are those that would have been readily available (foraged) in the pre-agricultural era. These foraged fruits include berries, such as cranberries, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. Tree fruits are also a mainstay of the Paleo diet; they include citrus fruits, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines and pears.
Condiments
Some condiments are allowed, but they should be limited to those that do not contain sugar or any of the forbidden ingredients. Ketchup, for example, is not allowed; mustard, on the other hand, is made from seeds and usually does not contain added sugar. In general, try to rely on herbs and spices rather than condiments.
Beverages
Allowed beverages include pure fruit and vegetable juices, but they should be unsweetened versions and consumed in moderation. Water should be your primary beverage. Tea and coffee are acceptable on the Paleo diet, as long as you use almond milk to lighten them, rather than dairy milk.
Losing Weight on the Paleo Diet
For years, many mainstream dieticians and healthcare providers have touted the benefits of cutting out most meats and oils (because of their fat content) and eliminating some fruits and vegetables (because of their natural carbohydrate content). They've also strongly advocated eating large quantities of grains and legumes (for their high fiber content).
These nutritionists have insisted that a diet low in calories and fat is the only way to maintain good health and lose weight. However, the research behind the Paleo diet indicates that this isn't the case. Paleolithic diet research shows that a diet rich in healthy fats and proteins and low in sugars and starches is not only extremely healthy, but also an excellent way to lose weight.
How Does It Work?
You may be wondering: How can I lose weight when I'm still eating meats, fats and high-carb fruits and veggies?
The answer: By using the Paleo methods to align your diet with your body's historical genetic programming, you can boost your metabolic rate, speed healthy and complete digestion, regulate some of the hormones related to energy and fat storage, and reduce hunger and cravings for unhealthy foods.
The foods you'll be eating on the Paleo diet are the ones our bodies have been programmed to eat for tens of thousands of years. The foods you're eliminating from your diet are foods we've only been eating for the last one percent of recorded human history; foods that, according to the Paleo diet, are ones that we are not (yet) genetically adapted to eat. These "new" foods slow digestion and metabolism, wreak havoc with our hormones, and cause our bodies to both overeat and store excess fat.
If history serves as a guide, your body needs the good fats, vitamins, minerals, fiber and carbs it gets from meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. But it does not need modern grains, legumes or sugars. If you examine the health of the few cultures that still follow this type of diet, you'll see that they are healthier, leaner and tend to live longer than those of us who eat diets heavy in sugar, grains and processed foods.
Why Many Low-Fat, High-Carb Diets Fail
If you're trying to lose weight, the chances are good that this isn't the first time you've tried to do so. Many of us do our best to find the perfect diet and follow it to a T. We may even successfully lose weight for a short time, but do so at the cost of personal comfort — and often at the cost of good health. When you deprive yourself of adequate protein and fats, you're likely to be hungry.
Another problem with mainstream diets is that the grains they recommend are high in starches, which our bodies quickly convert to sugar. The rapid starch-to-sugar conversion process is a common cause of blood sugar spikes, which are quickly followed by blood sugar crashes. These crashes can cause fatigue, lethargy and a craving for more starchy carbs to help pick us back up.
The main problem with these mainstream diets is that many people fail to stick with them for long periods of time. A common reason for this failure is carb-driven cravings. Eliminating carbs, and therefore these cravings, is one of the biggest benefits of the Paleo diet.
Why the Paleo Diet Works
There are a few major differences between how the Paleo diet works and how other diets work. These differences are important because they are likely to directly affect your odds of success in losing weight.
* Low-glycemic carbs that you eat from plant sources can help reduce cravings and increase your energy level.
* High-fiber foods can help keep you full longer, especially if they don't contain the starches that are present in grains.
* Protein contributes to building lean muscle, which can help you burn fat faster.
* Omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fats can help make you feel full, slow your body's metabolism of sugars, keep your blood sugar levels steady, and help you burn stored fat.
* Increased vitamin C from fresh fruits and vegetables, especially berries, can help your body metabolize fat. The process of metabolizing fat results in burning existing stored fat as fuel and using the fat you eat for energy instead of storing it.
* A low-sugar diet can help you avoid insulin resistance and blood sugar level fluctuations. Steadier blood sugar levels can help keep your energy level constant and reduce fatigue.
As these points show, a major benefit of the Paleo diet is that you'll be unlikely to feel deprived of food or energy. Since the Paleo diet doesn't involve calorie counting, you won't find yourself worrying about a tablespoon of this or one-third of a cup of that. Instead, your primary concern will be to avoid the modern foods that your body can't digest efficiently.
Why You Need Fat to Lose Fat
Why would you need to eat more fats to lose weight? It's a common question. And the idea that you should eat more dietary fat to lose body fat certainly does sound odd. But it's the type of fat you're eating that leads to weight loss (or gain). One type of fat that drives weight loss are the omega-3 fatty acids. These fatty acids are often referred to as "essential" because your body needs them to function properly but is unable to produce them on its own. To get your required amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, you need to either get them from the foods you eat or take a supplement.
One of the main ways omega-3s affect body weight is by regulating insulin production. A common cause of a "belly" or fatty midsection is an insulin-related inability to properly metabolize sugar into glucose, which then fails to be properly converted into glycogen. When the body fails to convert glucose into glycogen, which would then be converted into energy, it stores the excess glucose as fat.
The role of omega-3 fatty acids in this process is to enable the body to produce the chemicals that are necessary to ultimately convert glucose into energy. If you're not getting enough of these essential fatty acids, it becomes more difficult for your body to perform this conversion task optimally. On the Paleo diet, you'll be eating foods laden with omega-3 fatty acids, such as grass-fed meats, seafood, nuts and seeds. While you can get these fatty acids from supplements, incorporating them into your diet naturally is ideal.
All Proteins Are Not the Same
The difference between consuming the processed hamburgers and hot dogs that are forbidden on the Paleo diet and the lean steaks and salmon that are recommended could be the difference between obesity and a leaner, healthier you. There are three main attributes of meats that can affect not only the speed with which you will lose weight, but also your odds of keeping the weight off in the long term.
* The type and quality of the fats. Cheap hamburgers and processed meats such as hot dogs often have added low-quality saturated fats to boost their weight and flavor. While lean steaks and salmon may contain the same amount of fats, they are good fats — the omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fats your body needs to function properly.
* The quality and digestibility of the proteins. Low-end and processed meats usually contain lower amounts of protein and it is of poor quality. High-quality meats and fish contain high amounts of lean protein that your body can easily extract, digest and use to build muscle.
* The addition of fillers and preservatives. Processed meats are typically full of fillers and preservatives that add calories, adversely affect your health, and contribute to weight gain. Lean proteins such as filet mignon don't contain these additives and preservatives.
By changing the quality of the proteins that you eat, you're likely to notice a difference in how you look and feel. You may also lose weight and find that your muscles gain additional tone and definition. You'll probably feel fuller, longer when you eat high-quality protein, as it takes your body longer to digest it. These incentives are some of the many for eating the best proteins available.
Summary: Losing Weight on the Paleo Diet
The Paleo diet has several key advantages for people who are looking for a safe, effective way to lose weight and keep it off. The diet recommends consuming lean proteins and fats that help build lean muscle and convert sugars into glycogen that your body can use as energy. It also recommends eliminating sugar, alcohol and processed foods that can make you sick and overweight.
The Paleo diet isn't meant to be a short-term weight loss method. It's a change in lifestyle that many — particularly those previously eating a modern diet — find leads to long-term weight loss.
Better Health Through the Paleo Diet
While used by many people today as a way to lose weight, the Paleo diet was originally intended to realign humans with their natural, historical way of eating. As a result of this realignment, the diet's goals were to restore good health and avoid the modern diseases that are potentially tied to modern diets.
What's the Theory Behind the Paleo Diet?
The Paleo diet's original creator, Dr. Walter L. Voegtlin, believed humans aren't genetically designed to digest the modern grains, dairy products, sugars and all of the processed food that we exist on today. Instead, he believed our bodies operate best when running on foods such as lean meats, fish, shellfish, eggs, nuts, veggies, fruits and honey — the only foods we consumed and relied on until the Neolithic agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago. Dr. Voegtlin's theory was subsequently supported by the results he saw in his patients and by decades of respected research that followed.
It's only in the past several thousand years, and in some cases only the past several decades, that we've added sugars, alcohol, grains, and engineered and/or processed foods to our diets. As a result, we're suffering from modern diseases commonly referred to as "diseases of affluence" at increasing rates. These diseases are likely the result of our bodies' inability to digest these modern foods.
Preventing or Reversing Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors that increase the odds of developing diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Risk factors include:
* Extra weight around the waist (for men, a waist of 40 inches or more; for women, 35 inches or more)
* Low HDL cholesterol (for men, under 40 mg/dL; for women, under 50 mg/dL)
* High blood pressure (higher than 130/85 mm Hg)
* High triglycerides (higher than 150 mg/dL)
* High fasting blood sugar (higher than 100 mg/DL)
If three or more of these risk factors are present, you are considered to have metabolic syndrome.
The Paleo diet helps reduce and/or prevent the incidence of these factors by eliminating the foods shown to contribute to these illnesses, including refined sugar, white flour and processed, fatty foods. Combined with increased consumption of lean proteins and healthy fats, a decrease in metabolic syndrome risk is likely.
Improved Heart Health
Improved heart health is one of the biggest reasons the Paleo diet has garnered so much attention from the medical community. The lean proteins and good fats of the Paleo diet are essential for heart health.
Because the Paleo diet recommends lean meats, shellfish and fish that are low in the unhealthy saturated fats, it can help lower bad cholesterol and triglycerides and reduce or potentially reverse arteriosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis is one of the leading causes of stroke, blood clots and aneurysms.
Improved Digestive Health
Because the Paleo diet eliminates most processed grains and legumes, diseases such as colitis, celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease are less likely to develop, and those with these illnesses may find their symptoms reduced. The diet encourages you to consume fibrous foods such as fruits and vegetables that help flush your digestive system and keep your colon clean and clear. Digestive issues such as diarrhea, constipation, chronic gas, heartburn, acid reflux and GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease) are often reduced or eliminated after following the diet for a sustained time period.
Maximized Immune System
Eliminating foods that our bodies aren't genetically equipped to digest will often reduce the incidence of allergies and other immune system issues. You may be surprised to learn that conditions such as lupus, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis are also considered to be disorders of the immune system. Some patients with these diseases who switched to the Paleo diet have reported positive results.
The Paleo diet is naturally gluten- and lactose-free; both are substances that some people's bodies treat as allergens. It also eliminates foods that contain other possible allergens, such as antibiotics, preservatives, hormones and dyes. This leaves your immune system increasingly available to fight off disease instead of constantly battling issues caused by foods.
Many people who begin the Paleo diet aren't aware that they're suffering from allergic symptoms until they notice the symptoms have disappeared. Some of these symptoms include frequent headaches, stuffy nose, nausea, swelling of the hands and feet, or general bloating and puffiness. All of these are common immune responses and may go away when you stop exposing your body to the wheat, flours, additives and other ingredients that could be causing them.
STARTING YOUR PALEO DIET
In this chapter I'll cover the foods of the Paleo diet in detail, including how and where to shop for them. I'll also show you how to plan Paleo meals day by day, so that you understand what you'll be eating. Finally, I'll discuss some tips to help make your transition to the Paleo diet a smooth, enjoyable and successful one.
What You'll Be Eating on the Paleo Diet
Much of the success of the Paleo diet lies not only in the types of foods you eat, but also the quality of those foods. Our ancestors ate wild foods that were of high quality and free of chemicals, hormones and many other ingredients that have made the modern diet largely unhealthy.
For most people, the idea of raising, hunting and/or foraging for their own food is unrealistic. Many people also lack the budget for unusual (and therefore often expensive) ingredients. Taking these considerations into account, the following guidelines recommend Paleo-approved foods that are realistic to find and purchase. Later in the chapter, I'll explain how to find these foods in your local supermarket and through other local resources.
Animal and Fish Proteins
Animal and fish proteins make up the majority of the Paleo diet. I recommend purchasing the highest quality proteins that you can reasonably afford. If wild game, exotic meats like buffalo, and wild salmon are too expensive for your budget, rest assured that grass-fed beef, organic chicken and fresh or frozen shrimp are just as good.
The Paleo diet recommends that livestock meats such as beef, buffalo, ostrich, pork and lamb are grass fed, organic, and free of any hormones or antibiotics. You are also encouraged to eat wild meat and game, such as deer and boar. When considering which cuts of meat to buy, lean cuts are preferred to cuts with a high fat content.
Poultry should be organic, vegetarian-raised and free of hormones. Chicken, turkey, duck, goose and Cornish hens are good Paleo options. Eggs are also an easy and excellent source of protein on the Paleo diet, but they should be from free-range, organic birds.
Your seafood choices are numerous. You can eat all kinds of fish, shrimp, crab, clams, oysters, lobster and other crustaceans and mollusks. I recommend prioritizing cold-water fish varieties such as cod, haddock, mackerel and salmon to maximize your omega-3 consumption.
You can prepare your meat, poultry and seafood by steaming, broiling, grilling, sautéing, pan-frying, baking or broiling. Avoid deep frying, because neither the batters nor the typical deep frying oils are recommended.
Fruits and Vegetables
There are a large number of delicious fruits and vegetables to choose from. In general, you can eat any fruits and vegetables other than corn and some root vegetables, which have a high sugar and starch content. Carrots can be eaten in moderation, and onions are historically a wild crop and therefore acceptable.
Try to select low-glycemic fruits and vegetables for most of your meals and snacks. In doing so, you'll be more likely to maintain an even blood sugar level and have a steadier source of energy.
Whenever possible, the fruits and vegetables you purchase (as well as mushrooms and other plant foods) should be organic and in season. This ensures that they are as healthy, nutritious and delicious as possible. Frozen fruits and vegetables are allowed, but you should keep them to a minimum. Canned fruits and vegetables are typically overcooked and over-salted, and should be avoided.
Nuts, Seeds and Oils
Nuts, seeds and oils are an important part of the Paleo diet. They supply healthy fats, fiber and a feeling of fullness that can help keep you from being besieged by unhealthy cravings.
Allowed nuts include tree nuts, such as pecans, walnuts and almonds. Peanuts are a legume and are therefore not allowed. Nuts should be eaten raw as often as possible; if you prefer roasted nuts, make sure they're roasted without sugar, salt or added oil. Seeds such as pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, squash seeds and sesame seeds make great snacks, and flax seed or flax seed oil is loaded with healthy fats and antioxidants.
Use extra virgin olive oil for making dressings, as a substitute for butter on veggies, and for cooking foods at low heat. Use pure olive oil or grape-seed oil for cooking at medium to high temperatures.
Shopping for Food on the Paleo Diet
You should be able to get the majority of your Paleo groceries from a good supermarket, particularly if you shop at a supermarket that has an extensive organics section.
The most important thing you can do to be successful shopping at a regular supermarket is to shop from the outer sections and skip the center aisles. Most grocery stores are set up with the meat, seafood and produce aisles on the perimeter of the store, while packaged and processed foods are often found in the center.
The following overview of supermarket departments will give you some ideas for how to shop Paleo at your local grocery store.
The Produce Department
A large portion of your groceries will come from this department. You want to shop seasonally as much as possible, as seasonal produce is at its peak of freshness and nutritional value. Local fruits and vegetables are often of better quality than those shipped from far away. Buy organic as much as possible. If your budget is tight and you need to be selective about your organic produce, the produce that you peel can be safely eaten non-organic.
Fruits and veggies that are darker in color — such as reds, oranges and yellows — are typically the highest in antioxidants and phytonutrients. Try to get as much produce in these darker colors as possible. I also recommend selecting dark green vegetables, particularly kale, spinach, broccoli, collards and other greens. Iceberg lettuce, on the other hand, is low in nutrients — opt for leaf lettuces or Romaine for your salads.
The Meat Department
Most supermarkets have an organic meat section, which is where I recommend doing most of your meat shopping. There may also be some organic meats and seafood in the frozen foods section.
Read all packaging carefully to make sure your meat selections are organic and grass fed. Choose leaner cuts such as loins, leaner steaks and some roasts. You can occasionally eat fattier cuts, but keep your consumption to a minimum.
The Seafood Department
Try to buy your seafood as fresh and wild as you possibly can. Wild-caught seafood is typically the highest in good fats.
Avoid "pre-seasoned" or prepared seafood items. They usually contain high levels of salt and may also have MSG and other additives.
Canned, Bottled and Jarred Goods
Be sure to have plenty of olive oil, vinegars, sea salt, spices and seasonings (especially salt substitutes). Moderate salt intake is allowed, but try to cut down on salt as much as possible. You may also want organic honey, mustard, broths and stocks. Pure fruit juices are fine in small quantities, as are nut butters other than peanut butter. I recommend checking the organic section to see if healthier versions of these types of foods are available.
Other Resources for Food
Local Farms
Due to the growing demand for healthy, high-quality foods, local farms are increasingly producing and selling organic produce and meats. Farm stands and farmers markets are excellent places to find products from these local farms.
Health Food Stores
If your grocery store has a good organic or health food section, you may be able to get everything you need there. If not, health food stores can be an excellent source for things like bulk foods, raw nuts, nut butters, nut flours, seeds and oils.
Online Resources
The Internet is an excellent resource for foods that may not be available to you locally. The popularity of the Paleo diet has spurred the online availability of Paleo-friendly products. You can order wild game, venison or just about anything else you can think of from small farms and ranches all over the country. Just be sure to do your research — not all of them produce these foods organically.
These online sources can be expensive. But if you get most of your foods at the grocery store, you can use some of the money you previously spent on fast food and vending machines to buy exotic Paleo-approved foods online.
Planning Your Paleo Diet
Knowing what to eat is half the key to success; knowing how and when to eat it is the other. The guidelines for the Paleo diet are intended to be simple, because complicated diets rarely succeed.
Don't Count Calories
Calorie counting or portioning aren't a part of the Paleo diet. The Paleo diet is a natural way of eating what your body was designed to eat; Paleolithic people often consumed a much higher number of calories and fat grams than most diets allow. Once you see the results, calorie counting will no longer be a part of your vocabulary.
On the Paleo diet, you should feel less hunger due to an increased consumption of healthy fats, lean protein and fiber. If you eat only when you're hungry, you're likely to avoid overeating without having to count calories.
The Proper Ratio of Protein to Carbs
You should try to maintain a proper ratio between your protein intake and your carb intake. The easiest way to keep this ratio in line is by looking at your menu and your plate. For all meals, at least half your plate should be protein, and half or less should be fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds.
In general, your daily diet should consist of 55 percent to 65 percent protein, 30 percent to 40 percent carbs, and 5 percent non-animal fats such as those found in nuts, seeds, avocadoes and olive oil. If you feel your energy level is dragging when you first start the diet, try increasing your carb consumption. If you find yourself snacking all day and still feeling hungry, try increasing your protein consumption.
It may take a few weeks for your body to adjust the way it converts food into energy. For the first week or two, you are likely to find yourself craving the carbs and quick energy of pasta, breads or a bowl of cereal. It's normal for your energy level to dip the first couple of weeks, but it should improve as your body begins increasingly to use protein as a source of energy.
Planning Your Daily Diet
I recommend that you eat at least three main meals a day and several healthy snacks in between. Try to avoid going more than two hours without at least a lean protein. Snacking will keep hunger away and keep your blood sugar levels steady.
Even if you're not inclined to plan your menus in advance, many people find that doing so increases their initial chances of success. It's important to have what you need on hand so that you don't fall for an unhealthy temptation.
You will find sample meal plans in chapter 5 to inspire your planning. After a couple of weeks on the diet, you'll have a better understanding of how and when to eat and likely find it easier to create your own meal plans. To get started, here are some guidelines to help you achieve the best results.
Early Morning/Breakfast
Eat as soon as possible after you wake up, especially during your first few weeks on the Paleo diet. If you keep your evening meals protein-heavy and light on carbs, you may awaken with more energy in the morning.
Scrambled eggs and omelets are good breakfast choices if you have time to cook. If you don't have time in the morning, cold leftover meats and protein smoothies are good Paleo options.
Lunch
Lunch should include a large serving of protein, such as a meat stew, cold leftover chicken, or a salad with chicken breast or shrimp. Add some high-fiber carbs for extra fullness and energy, such as fruit with a handful of nuts.
Dinner
Your evening meals should focus primarily on protein. Most people burn less energy during the evening. Unless you work out after dinner, try to limit your carb intake. Choose low-glycemic veggies as your side dishes.
Dessert or Evening Snack
You're free to choose between a sweet treat or a little more of what you had for dinner. Fruit, unsweetened fruit ices or bars, or any of the Paleo-friendly dessert recipes included later in this book can satisfy your sweet tooth.
Snacks
Throughout your day, you should snack as frequently as possible — at least once every two to three hours. Focus on a mix of both protein and carbs for each snack. The protein will help keep you from getting hungry and the carbs will help you avoid fatigue. Eating frequently can also speed up your metabolism.
Paleo-Recommended Foods
Meats
* Eggs (from chickens, ducks or geese; do not buy egg substitutes)
* Game meats
* Alligator
* Bear
* Bison (buffalo)
* Caribou
* Elk
* Emu
* Goose
* Kangaroo
* Muscovy duck
* New Zealand Cervena deer
* Ostrich
* Pheasant
* Quail
* Rattlesnake
* Reindeer
* Squab
* Turtle
* Venison
* Wild boar
* Wild turkey
* Goat (any cut)
* Lean beef (trimmed of visible fat)
* Chuck steak
* Extra lean hamburger (seven percent fat or less)
* Flank steak
* Lean veal
* London broil
* Top sirloin steak
* Lean pork (trimmed of visible fat)
* Pork chops
* Pork loin
* Lean poultry (white meat, skin removed)
* Chicken breast
* Game hen breast
* Turkey breast
* Organ meats
* Beef, lamb, pork and chicken livers and kidneys
* Beef, pork and lamb marrow
* Beef, pork and lamb sweetbreads
* Beef, pork and lamb tongues
* Chicken and turkey gizzards and hearts
* Rabbit (any cut)
Fish
* Bass
* Bluefish
* Branzini (Mediterranean sea bass)
* Cod
* Drum
* Eel
* Flatfish
* Grouper
* Haddock
* Halibut
* Herring
* Mackerel
* Monkfish
* Mullet
* Northern pike
* Orange roughy
* Perch
* Red snapper
* Rockfish
* Salmon
* Sardine (packed in olive oil or water)
* Scrod
* Shark
* Striped bass
* Sunfish
* Swordfish
* Tilapia
* Trout
* Tuna
* Turbot
* Walleye
* Any other commercially available fish
Seafood
* Abalone
* Clam
* Crab
* Crayfish
* Lobster
* Mussel
* Oyster
* Scallop
* Shrimp
Fruits
* Apple
* Apricot
* Avocado
* Banana
* Blackberry
* Blueberry
* Boysenberry
* Cantaloupe
* Carambola
* Cherimoya
* Cherry
* Cranberry
* Gooseberry
* Grape
* Grapefruit
* Guava
* Honeydew melon
* Kiwi
* Lemon
* Lime
* Lychee
* Mango
* Nectarine
* Orange
* Papaya
* Passion fruit
* Peach
* Pear
* Persimmon
* Pineapple
* Plum
* Pomegranate
* Raspberry
* Rhubarb
* Star fruit
* Tangerine
* Watermelon
Vegetables
* Artichoke
* Asparagus
* Beet greens
* Bell pepper
* Broccoli
* Brussels sprout
* Cabbage
* Cauliflower
* Celery
* Collard greens
* Cucumber
* Dandelion greens
* Eggplant
* Endive
* Green onion
* Hot pepper (all kinds)
* Kale
* Kohlrabi
* Lettuce (except iceberg)
* Mushroom
* Mustard greens
* Onion
* Parsley
* Pumpkin
* Purslane
* Rutabaga
* Seaweed
* Spinach
* Squash (all kinds)
* Swiss chard
* Tomatillo
* Tomato
* Turnip
* Turnip greens
* Watercress
* Zucchini
Nuts, Seeds and Oils
* Almond
* Almond butter
* Brazil nut
* Cashew
* Chestnut
* Flax seed
* Hazelnut
* Macadamia nut
* Nut flour (almond and hazelnut are recommended)
* Olive oil
* Pecan
* Pine nut
* Pistachio
* Pumpkin seeds
* Sesame seeds
* Sunflower seeds
* Sesame butter or tahini (pure and raw)
* Walnut
Beverages
* Fruit juice (pure and organic, without any added sugar)
* Green tea
* Herbal tea
* Water
Other
* Carob powder
* Dried fruit without added sugar
* Fresh and dried herbs
* Frozen fruit and fruit bars without added sugar
* Raw, organic honey
* Spices and seasonings
Foods to Avoid on the Paleo Diet
Dairy
* All foods made with any dairy products
* Butter
* Cheese
* Dairy spreads
* Frozen yogurt
* Ice cream
* Ice milk
* Low-fat milk
* Nonfat dairy creamer
* Powdered milk
* Skim milk
* Whole milk
* Yogurt
Cereal Grains
* Amaranth
* Barley (barley soup, barley bread and all processed foods made with barley)
* Buckwheat
* Corn (corn on the cob, corn tortillas, corn chips, cornstarch, corn syrup)
* Millet
* Oats (steel-cut oats, rolled oats and all processed foods made with oats)
* Rice (brown rice, white rice, top ramen, rice noodles, basmati rice, rice cakes, rice flour and all processed foods made with rice)
* Rye (rye bread, rye crackers and all processed foods made with rye)
* Sorghum
* Wheat (bread, rolls, muffins, noodles, crackers, cookies, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, pasta, spaghetti, lasagna, wheat tortillas, pizza, pita bread, flat bread and all processed foods made with wheat or wheat flour)
Legumes
* All beans (adzuki beans, black beans, broad beans, fava beans, field beans, garbanzo beans, horse beans, kidney beans, lima beans, mung beans, navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, string beans, white beans)
* Black-eyed peas
* Chickpeas
* Lentils
* Miso
* Peanuts and peanut butter
* Peas
* Snow peas
* Soybeans and all soy products, including tofu
* Sugar snap peas
Starchy Vegetables
* Cassava root
* Manioc
* Potatoes and all potato products (such as French fries and potato chips)
* Tapioca
* Yams
High-Salt Meats and Snacks
* Bacon (use the lean portions occasionally for seasoning/cooking)
* Deli meats
* Hot dogs
* Ketchup
* Kielbasa or smoked sausage
* Nearly all canned meats or and fish
* Pickled foods
* Pork rinds
* Processed meats
* Salami
* Salted nuts
* Salted spices
* Sausages
* Smoked, dried and salted fish and meat High-Salt Meats and Snacks
Other
* Canola oil
* Safflower oil
* Sugar
* Sunflower oil
* Vegetable oil
SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS
Diets are unlikely to be successful without the right mindset and attitude. In this chapter, I'll give you the tools to get geared up, motivated and ready to begin the Paleo diet.
Getting Your Mindset Right
Making a significant change in your habits and lifestyle is never easy. To succeed, two of the most important things you'll need are the right attitude and the right reasons for making the change.
Doing things for others is admirable, but changing your diet should be for you. If you're trying to lose weight because you want someone else's approval, you may be setting yourself up for failure; the opinions of others may not be enough to keep you on track when times get hard. Ideally, your focus should be on how you want to look, feel and improve your quality of life. The admiration from others should be merely a bonus.
The first couple of weeks of the Paleo diet are likely to require determination, willpower and commitment. For some people, the Paleo diet will require a significant change in their eating patterns. For others, their energy level may be lower in the first few weeks. To increase your chances of success, prepare yourself for these realities.
Beginning the Paleo diet is the hardest part. Once you see and feel the results, you're likely to have all the motivation you need.
What Kind of Caveman Are You?
This quick quiz will help you understand how your lifestyle, habits and personality might affect your experience on the Paleo diet. Once you've tallied your answers, I'll provide some practical tips to help you succeed.
1. Which best describes you?
a) I don't particularly like to cook, and I eat prepared meals or go out to eat often.
b) I'm a pretty good cook, but I don't have much time to do so during the week.
c) Cooking is okay, but I'm not very skilled at it.
d) I live to cook and I consider it recreation.
2. Are you more likely to:
a) Spend a lot of your free time away from home.
b) Spend most evenings at home, tired and stressed from a busy day.
c) Spend most evenings at home working or taking care of the kids.
d) Entertain friends and family on weekends and during the week.
3. Do you like to:
a) Try new things as long as you don't have to cook them.
b) Keep your menu quick and simple.
c) Stick with cooking simple basics that you know how to prepare.
d) Try new recipes and cuisines at home.
4. In the mornings do you:
a) Usually stop for breakfast on the way to work.
b) Tend to skip breakfast and overeat later.
c) Grab a breakfast bar or muffin at work.
d) Always have breakfast.
If you answered A for most of the questions:
Find a few restaurants to eat at regularly that serve lean steaks, fresh seafood (not fried), and fresh vegetables and salads. Ask your server to skip the bread basket, drink plenty of water, and keep your protein-carb ratio in mind.
Be careful of skipping meals while you're away from home, especially at work. Bring deli-baked chicken, prepared salads, fresh fruits and nuts to work for handy and healthy snacks.
If you answered B for most of the questions:
Your main priority when starting the Paleo diet is going to be managing your time. Your main obstacle will be resisting the urge to grab the wrong foods because you're tired or hurried. Spend some time on the weekend preparing large batches of food for the week. This can be as simple as baking chicken legs, boiling shrimp or bagging up your own mix of nuts and dried fruit. If you have healthy meals ready to eat when you're hungry during the week, you'll be less likely to grab whatever is handy.
If you answered C for most of the questions:
Combining healthy prepared foods with some simple homemade dishes may be your best bet. An example of a healthy prepared food might be rotisserie chicken with the skin removed. A simple homemade dish could be a basic soup recipe that you make in large quantities and freeze for later, or a protein smoothie for breakfast.
If you answered D for most of the questions:
You have an advantage because you'll be able to keep meals exciting by trying lots of new ingredients and recipes. You may want to prepare a number of dishes once a week and store or freeze them to eat at work or on busier evenings. If you're cooking for your non-Paleo family in the evenings, don't try to make two meals; instead, just skip the starch or grain they're eating and pile extra proteins and veggies onto your plate.
Making the Transition
There are a number of things you can do to help ease your transition to the Paleo diet and make it enjoyable. Much like the process of preparing for a vacation, you'll want to have a plan for what you'll be doing and make sure you have everything you need. Here are some tips for making your transition smooth and simple.
Find New Food Sources
Do some research to decide where and how you'll be getting your groceries. There are great sources available both locally and online; try to identify these sources before you get started. If you're going to be using online food resources, you'll need to order ahead of time to make sure you have those foods on hand for your first week.
Spread the Word
It's a good idea to prepare the people around you for your lifestyle change. This will enable them to support you and help to avoid unintended temptation from friends who may not know that you're making a change.
In particular, it's very important to prepare roommates and family members for the changes you're making. They don't have to join you or agree with you, but they should be supportive and respectful. Talk to them before you get started and let them see that you're excited. They'll be much more likely (and able) to encourage and help you.
The First Few Weeks
Take care to avoid your dietary weak spots. Skip drinking at happy hour with your office buddies and join them for a healthy lunch instead. Go for a walk instead of sitting in front of the TV after dinner.
You might want to keep an informal journal of how you feel and what you eat during your first couple of weeks. It can be motivating and educational. As you see and feel the changes in your body, take note. These observations can help keep you on track later if you hit a rough spot.
A WEEK OF PREPARATION — READY, SET, GO!
A week of preparation is a great way to begin your transition to the Paleo diet. Below, you'll find a list of activities that outline goals for each day of the week leading up to your Paleo transition.
Day 1: Become Your Own Best Cheerleader
Compile some of your favorite motivational quotes into a document in your computer, or write them on a piece of paper. Print or cut them out and place them in locations that you'll see every day. This might include your desk at work, your kitchen, your bathroom, or the place at home where you work out. Take the time to read and reflect on them throughout the week.
Day 2: Keep Your Vision in Front of You
Visualization is proven to be motivating when you are trying to reach a goal. Today, make yourself a vision board. You can even make two — one for home and one for your workplace. These boards can be elaborate and artistic, or a simple bulletin board or sheet of cardboard. You can even use a clipboard or dry erase board with magnets. Collect pictures that inspire you, but steer clear of pictures of fitness models and celebrities whose bodies you admire. Instead, choose pictures of things you want to do when you're fit and healthy, or even pictures of yourself when you were in better shape.
Day 3: Know Where You're Starting So You'll Know When You've Arrived
Today, you need to take stock of where you are in terms of your fitness and health. This will enable you to set realistic goals, track your progress and celebrate your success.
First, you need to take your measurements. Using a flexible tape measure, measure your chest, upper arms, waist, abdomen, hips, thighs and calves, and record the measurements. Each week, you can record the changes and see the evidence of your weight loss progress.
Next, try doing just two minutes of moderate cardio exercise. This could include jumping jacks, jumping rope or any other activity that gets you moving. Record how you feel during and after the exercise. Repeat this once a week while on the Paleo diet and notice whether your energy and fitness levels are changing.
Weigh yourself and record your starting weight, but understand that your weight is not the perfect gauge of your health. Use an online body mass index calculator (typing "BMI calculator" into a search engine will produce several free options) to calculate your body fat ratio. After starting the diet, weigh yourself and recalculate your body mass once per week. These calculations are a much better picture of how you're doing than weight alone.
Day 4: Set Your Goals
Write down goals that you would like to accomplish along with your change to a Paleo diet. Try not to go into too much detail, but avoid being too general. Establish a few weekly and/or monthly goals, such as:
I will do at least half an hour of moderate exercise three times per week.
I will cut back to two cups of caffeinated beverages per day.
I will eat breakfast every morning.
I will lose at least four pounds each month.
I will walk to work three times per week.
I will swim twenty-five laps twice per week.
I will drink at least sixty-four ounces of water each day.
Put your list of goals in a location where you can check it frequently and mark your progress. It's a good idea to change your goals every couple of weeks to keep yourself excited and moving forward.
Day 5: Make a Rewards Program for Yourself
Write down a list of rewards you will enjoy as you meet each of the goals on your list. Rewards can be as simple as buying your favorite magazine or a night out with your friends. Every success, no matter how small, should be celebrated in some way. You've earned it!
Day 6: Get Your Fill of the Forbidden
This may be your favorite day, but it isn't just for fun.
Today, go ahead and eat those favorite foods that you won't be eating on the Paleo diet. Choose the foods you love the most, whether it's pizza, ice cream or French fries. Thirty to sixty minutes after eating these foods, take a few notes on how you feel. Are you sluggish, bloated, fatigued or mentally foggy? Good. Keep those notes. Read them tomorrow when you're doing the Day 7 activity, and keep them for later if temptations arise.
Day 7: Clean House
It's time to get all the forbidden foods out of the house. That means no processed foods, sugars, legumes, dairy, processed meats, flours, bread, crackers, cookies, cakes, gravy mixes, muffins, bagels or tortillas. Here are some ideas for getting these foods out of your house.
* Donate unopened foods to a local shelter or food bank.
* Pass food boxes on to family members, friends and neighbors.
* Take canned goods to your grocery store's food donation bin or give them to the mail carrier or local firehouse if they're having a food drive.
* Take snack foods, canned fruits, unopened cereal and juices to a local day care center.
* Give unwanted items to your church or community group.
If you're living with others who will not be on the Paleo diet, then at least move their off-limits foods to separate shelves and cupboards that are less accessible and tempting to you.
Now that you've completed your preparation, you're ready to start on the Paleo diet. In the next chapter, I've laid out two weeks' worth of meal plans for you. You can use these plans exactly as they are presented, switch up some of the meals with other dishes you prefer, or just use these meal plans as a template for creating your own.
THE MEAL PLANS
These meal plans will help you get started on the Paleo diet without having to spend too much time planning. Feel free to mix and match them a bit and try other Paleo recipes as well. For dishes marked with an asterisk (*), you can find the recipes at the end of this section. Drink water at every meal, and try to drink juices only moderately.
Sample Weekday Menu
Breakfast
Grain-Free Banana Pancakes*
Or
Grain-free cereal with sliced banana and almond milk
Lunch
Easy Greek Salad*
Or
Egg Salad Lettuce Wraps*
Sliced bananas and strawberries
Snack
Celery sticks with tahini and raisins
Or
Caveman Trail Mix*
Dinner
Baked chicken breast
Steamed spinach
Baked acorn squash
Or
Grilled Salmon with Grilled Vegetables*
Dessert
Chilled cantaloupe pieces
Or
Berry Blitz*
Sample Weekend Menu
Breakfast
Eggs Benedict Paleo Style*
Fresh strawberries
Or
Steak and eggs
Sliced fresh cantaloupe
Lunch
Chicken Avocado Wraps*
Sliced apples with walnuts
Or
Paleo Chicken Sandwich*
Honeydew melon slices
Snack
Paleo Spiced Nuts*
Or
Sliced apples with almond butter
Dinner
Grilled Zesty Lime Chicken*
Steamed quinoa
Or
Hearty Mushroom Meatloaf*
Grilled peppers and summer squash
Dessert
Unsweetened frozen fruit pop
Or
Baked Apples*
Menu for Entertaining
Breakfast
Paleo Waffles*
Canadian bacon
Sliced bananas with blueberries
Or
Paleo Frittata*
Fresh grapefruit
Lunch
High-Protein Grain-Free Burgers*
Garden salad with romaine, mushrooms and red pepper
Sliced watermelon
Or
Stir-fried chicken with vegetables
Steamed quinoa
Fresh oranges
Snack or Appetizer
Teriyaki Chicken Drumsticks*
Or
Sliced cucumber topped with smoked salmon and dill
Dinner
Lamb Chops with Mint Sauce*
Paleo Cranberry Sauce*
Or
Roasted Lemon Pepper Salmon Fillet with Spinach*
Grilled asparagus
Dessert
Berry Tart*
Or
Raspberry sorbet
Weekday Menu Recipes
Grain-Free Banana Pancakes
Nut butter and eggs make a fine substitute for flour in these pancakes. The pancakes cook up light, flavorful and slightly creamy, and with 9.5 grams of protein per serving, they'll keep you full for hours. Drizzle them with a bit of honey or agave nectar for a sweet taste, if necessary, but remember to watch your sugar intake — especially at breakfast.
* 4 ripe bananas
* 4 large, cage-free, organic eggs
* ½ cup nut butter (excludes peanut butter)
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 2 teaspoons olive oil
Place the bananas in a large bowl and mash them with a fork until smooth.
Beat the eggs in a separate bowl until frothy. Add them to the bananas.
Add the nut butter and mix well until creamy and smooth. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Heat the olive oil in a skillet or on a griddle. Pour ¼ cup pancake batter for each pancake onto the griddle or skillet.
Cook pancakes for 2 minutes and then flip with a spatula. Cook 2 minutes on the other side, or until the pancakes are golden brown.
Serves 4
Easy Greek Salad
Avocado, sundried tomatoes and artichokes, along with crunchy onion and bell peppers, create a satisfying salad loaded with flavor — a nice variation on a classic Greek salad. For best results, use the freshest vegetables you can get your hands on.
* 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
* 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 1 teaspoon Greek seasoning
* 1 ripe avocado
* 1 bell pepper, sliced
* ¼ medium red onion, sliced
* 1 cup black olives, pitted and cut in half
* 2 tomatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
* ½ cucumber, halved and sliced
* ⅛ cup sundried tomatoes packed in olive oil
* ⅛ cup artichoke hearts
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Whisk together the balsamic vinegar, olive oil and seasoning to make the dressing.
Combine the rest of the ingredients with the dressing. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Let chill, covered, in the refrigerator 30 minutes before serving.
Serves 2
Egg Salad Lettuce Wraps
When you first begin the Paleo diet, you'll find lunch is the most difficult meal to accommodate. It requires a bit of creativity, but you can still eat well — for example, with these lettuce wraps. Healthy, hearty and delicious, this is sure to become a staple.
* 2 large, cage-free, organic, hardboiled eggs, peeled and chopped
* 2 tablespoons mayonnaise made with olive oil
* 2 tablespoons relish or chopped pickles
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 2 large Romaine lettuce leaves, intact and untorn
* Lemon juice, for seasoning
Put your chopped eggs, mayonnaise and relish in a large bowl and mix thoroughly to combine. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Divide the egg salad mixture even between the lettuce leaves and wrap — but not too tightly, as you don't want the leaves to tear.
Season with lemon juice if desired.
Serve immediately with baby carrots for a healthy and filling lunch.
Serves 2
Caveman Trail Mix
Trail mix is full of antioxidants and protein for energy, making it a great on-the-go breakfast for the Paleo dieter. Substitute your favorite combination of nuts and dried fruit, and pack your mix in individual bags to grab quickly on busy mornings. Trail mix makes a great post-workout or sports practice food, too.
* 2 cups shredded, flaked coconut
* ½ cup dried apricots, apples, blueberries, goji berries or cherries, or a combination (without added sugar)
* ½ cup chopped pecans, walnuts or macadamia nuts, or a combination
* ¼ cup cacao powder
Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Store in an airtight container for up to one month.
Serves 4
Grilled Salmon with Grilled Vegetables
Salmon is a meaty fish that holds up beautifully when grilled. Just make sure to spray the grill first with a non-stick cooking spray, and don't try to turn the fish until it's done on one side. Salmon is cooked when it's firm to the touch and opaque. Don't overcook it, though, because that will dry it out.
* 4 salmon fillets
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* Juice and zest from 1 lemon
* Non-stick cooking spray
* 1 cup zucchini, cut in rounds
* ½ cup red bell pepper, chopped
* ½ cup red onion, sliced
* ½ cup carrots, sliced
Preheat the grill. Place the salmon fillets on the grill and dust them with pepper, lemon juice and zest. Cook 5 to 8 minutes, turning halfway through. Transfer to a plate.
Place the remaining ingredients in a grill basket and spray with cooking spray. Cook 12 to 15 minutes, or until tender. Stir frequently so the onion doesn't burn. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Serves 4
Berry Blitz
Berries are among the healthiest foods you can eat, and should be included in the Paleo diet several times a week. Use fresh berries when they are in season, or try frozen berries during the winter. Simply thaw them for 10 to 15 minutes on the counter.
* 1 cup strawberries, sliced
* 1 cup blueberries
* 1 cup raspberries
* 1 cup blackberries
* Juice and zest of 2 limes
* 2 tablespoons honey
* ¼ cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
Gently combine the fruit in a large serving bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix the lime juice, zest, honey and mint.
Pour the lime juice mixture over the fruit and mix gently to serve.
Serves 4
Weekend Menu Recipes
Eggs Benedict Paleo Style
While this might not be the traditional version of Eggs Benedict, you'll love this grain-free version that is as good for you as it tastes. Once you try it, you'll never want to go back to the old version!
* ½ medium avocado
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 clove garlic
* 1 large, cage-free, organic egg
* 1 tomato slice
* 2 thin slices of turkey breast, lean cut
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Put the avocado, lemon juice and garlic in a food processor and process until smooth and creamy.
Poach the egg in a pot of simmering water until done, about 4 minutes.
To serve, place the egg on top of the tomato slice and top with the avocado sauce and turkey. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Serves 1
Chicken Avocado Wraps
Avocado is high in fat, but it's the good, heart-healthy kind, so feel free to indulge. Choose avocados with firm skins that yield slightly to the touch. Store avocados at room temperature and allow them to ripen for up to one week. You can also peel avocados and store the flesh in the freezer to use later in guacamole.
* 2 cups cooked, shredded, free-range, organic chicken
* ½ cup avocado, cubed
* ½ cup alfalfa sprouts
* ½ cup green onions, chopped
* ½ cup walnuts, chopped
* ½ cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* ½ teaspoon fresh dill, chopped
* 1 teaspoon honey
* 4 tablespoons olive oil
* Bibb lettuce leaves, intact and untorn
Combine the chicken, avocado, sprouts, onions, walnuts and basil leaves in a large mixing bowl. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, dill and honey.
Slowly add the olive oil to the lemon, dill and honey mixture, whisking until it emulsifies and becomes thick and creamy.
Pour the lemon-dill dressing over the chicken mixture and toss to mix. Scoop the chicken mixture into lettuce leaves to serve.
Serves 4
Paleo Chicken Sandwich
If you're looking for sandwiches while on the Paleo diet, most of the time you are going to be out of luck. That's okay, though, because you don't need the bread anyway. So what are you supposed to eat? Well, this pan-seared chicken breast is a good substitute. Be sure to buy the best-quality chicken you can find — and if you can get a good tomato, that just makes it better.
* 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 2 free-range, organic chicken breasts
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 4 large lettuce leaves, intact and untorn
* 2 tablespoons mustard
* Lemon juice, for seasoning
* 1 tomato, seeded and diced
In a large skillet, heat the oil on medium-high. Add the chicken breasts and sear until browned. Flip over and finish cooking, making sure the chicken is brown and crispy on both sides. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste.
When the chicken is cool, slice into strips.
Spread each lettuce leaf with mustard, being careful not to tear the leaves. Add the chicken. Season with lemon juice if desired.
Top with tomato and fold into wraps to serve.
Serves 2
Paleo Spiced Nuts
Nuts are a great snack on the Paleo diet, but sometimes you want something more interesting than plain old roasted nuts. These crunchy and toasty morsels fit the bill perfectly. Use any combination of nuts you like or have on hand — what's in the recipe is just a suggestion. Make sure that whatever you use is raw and unsalted.
* ½ cup whole almonds
* ½ cup walnuts, chopped
* ¼ cup sunflower seeds
* ¼ cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
* ¼ cup pecans, chopped
* ¼ cup whole pistachios
* 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
* 1 teaspoon dried thyme
* ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Put everything in a gallon-size freezer bag. Shake to make sure all nuts and seeds are coated thoroughly with the oil and spices.
Spread in an even layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until nuts are toasted. Cool completely before serving. Store in a tightly sealed container.
Makes 2 cups
Grilled Zesty Lime Chicken
This flavorful chicken is delicious on its own, or makes a great base for a taco salad. The lime marinade tenderizes the chicken and adds flavor, but be sure to marinade at least twelve hours for the best flavor.
* 4 boneless, skinless, free-range, organic chicken breasts
* Juice and zest of 3 limes
* 1 tablespoon honey
* 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
* 1 jalapeño pepper, minced
* ¼ cup onion, finely chopped
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Place the chicken breasts in a shallow dish. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over the chicken breasts. Cover and refrigerate for several hours, or overnight.
Preheat the grill. Drain the chicken breasts and grill them for 10 to 15 minutes, turning halfway through the cooking time. Cook until the juices run clear.
Serves 4
Hearty Mushroom Meatloaf
What holds this meatloaf together is not what you would expect to find in a typical meatloaf recipe. Eggs and mushrooms bind the ground beef, and, when topped with honey, Worcestershire sauce and ketchup (homemade, of course, so there's no added sugar!), the combination creates a subtly sweet and salty taste. Look for homemade ketchup at a farmer's market.
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 2 cups white button mushrooms, finely chopped
* 2 pounds free-range, organic, grass-fed ground beef
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 1 large, cage-free, organic egg
* 1 medium onion, finely chopped
* 1 teaspoon chili pepper flakes
* 3 teaspoons fresh thyme, minced
* 1 teaspoon fresh oregano, minced
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* ½ cup homemade ketchup
* 1 tablespoon honey (optional)
* ½ tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Warm the olive oil in a medium skillet, add the mushrooms and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the mushrooms are soft and browned.
Combine the meat, black pepper, egg, onion, chili pepper, thyme, oregano and garlic in a large bowl. Mix well. Add the cooked mushrooms, making sure they are evenly dispersed.
Lightly grease a loaf pan and add the meat mixture. Place in the oven for about 15 minutes.
While the meatloaf is cooking, in a small bowl combine the ketchup, honey and Worcestershire sauce.
After 15 minutes, spread the sauce evenly on the top of the meatloaf.
Continue cooking another 40 minutes. Allow to rest 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
Serves 6
Baked Apples
You can treat these baked apples as either a dessert or a breakfast treat. You'll find the best cooking apples in mid to late fall. Choose tart but sweet varieties that have a firm texture. Try Winesap, Gravenstein, Jonagold, Fuji or Pink Lady apples.
* 4 large baking apples
* Juice and zest of 1 lemon
* 3 tablespoons almond butter
* 3 tablespoons honey
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* ½ cup raisins
* ½ cup walnuts, chopped
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Wash and core the apples.
Mix the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Stuff the apples with the mixture.
Place the apples on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, or until tender.
Serves 4
Recipes for Entertaining
Paleo Waffles
While this isn't something you'll want to eat every day, using coconut flour in these waffles allows you to indulge once in a while, for a special occasion or just a weekend treat. Serve the waffles with fruit for a complete meal that is ultra satisfying.
* ¼ cup coconut flour
* 4 large, cage-free, organic eggs
* 1 tablespoon coconut milk
* 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
* ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
* ¼ teaspoon baking soda
* Pure maple syrup for serving
Preheat a waffle iron.
Mix all ingredients in a blender, or by hand in a large bowl.
Pour batter in the center of the waffle iron, covering the entire surface area.
Cook until waffles release from the pan. Serve immediately.
Serves 2
Paleo Frittata
* 1 pound fresh spinach
* ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
* Olive oil cooking spray
* 1 red onion, chopped fine
* 3 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 red bell pepper, diced
* 1 green bell pepper, diced
* 12 large eggs
* 1 pound cooked chicken, diced
* ½ teaspoon sea salt
* ½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
* ¼ cup parsley, chopped
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and coat the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13 inch pan with olive oil.
Wash the spinach and place in a large pot. Cover with a lid and cook over medium heat until just wilted. Set aside to cool.
Heat a large skillet over medium heat and spray with olive oil cooking oil. Add the onion to the pan and sauté until translucent.
Add the garlic and bell pepper and continue cooking until the peppers are soft. Break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk until light and frothy.
Squeeze all the moisture from the spinach, chop it roughly then add it to the eggs. Fold in the chicken, cooked peppers, salt and pepper to the egg mixture. Pour the mixture into the pan and transfer to the oven.
Bake for 1 hour, or until the top is brown and the center is firm. Top with parsley before serving.
Serves 4
High-Protein Grain-Free Burgers
While burgers don't usually fit in with the Paleo diet, these do. They're kind of messy, and you'll definitely want to eat them with a fork and knife, but you will be glad you did. With burgers this delicious, it's a wonder there are people who still want to eat them with a bun!
* 8 large, cage-free, organic eggs
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 1 pound high-fat, free-range, organic, grass-fed ground beef
* 1 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1 teaspoon onion powder
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Crack the eggs and add them to the skillet one at a time, as many as will fit. Fry on both sides until cooked, then season with pepper. Remove to a plate and keep warm.
Season the beef with garlic and onion powder and more pepper. Divide into 4 patties. In separate pan, cook each patty until cooked through, turning once.
To serve, place each burger on one egg, then top with another egg. Eat with a knife and fork for best results.
Serves 4
Teriyaki Chicken Drumsticks
Toss this simple dish in your slow cooker in the morning, and by dinner, you'll have tender, flavorful, Asian-inspired chicken that the whole family will love. Substitute whole, cut-up chicken for the drumsticks, if you prefer.
* 8 free-range, organic chicken drumsticks
* ½ cup orange juice
* ½ cup soy sauce
* ½ teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
* ½ teaspoon fresh garlic, minced
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Place the drumsticks in the slow cooker and turn it to low. Combine the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste. Pour this mixture over the drumsticks. Cover and cook for 5 to 6 hours, or until tender. Turn occasionally so the chicken is thoroughly coated with the sauce.
Serve with quinoa or a fresh green salad.
Serves 4
Lamb Chops with Mint Sauce
Lamb chops have a distinctive taste and a rich, succulent texture unlike anything else. Consider them as a substitute for ham in the spring — or any time of the year. You may not find lamb chops at your neighborhood supermarket, but warehouse stores and butchers carry them, especially in the spring.
* 4 free-range, organic lamb chops
* ½ cup chicken broth
* 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
* 1 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced
* ⅛ cup cider vinegar
* ½ cup fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preheat the grill. Grill the lamb chops for 8 to 10 minutes, turning them halfway through the cooking time.
Mix the remaining ingredients for the mint sauce in a saucepan until heated through.
Season with freshly ground black pepper to taste. Serve the mint sauce on the side with the lamb chops.
Serves 4
Paleo Cranberry Sauce
If you're looking for a delicious cranberry sauce to serve alongside your roasted turkey or pork, look no further than this deliciously tart version. Orange juice and a bit of maple syrup take the place of refined white sugar, for a side dish you can enjoy without feeling guilty. Make sure to buy whole oranges and squeeze or juice them yourself for best results.
* 1 pound fresh cranberries
* 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
* 1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
Put the cranberries and juice in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir every few minutes until the cranberries begin to pop open.
Stir in the maple syrup and cook a few minutes more.
Cool before serving.
Serves 6
Roasted Lemon Pepper Salmon Fillet with Spinach
Salmon is one of the healthiest foods you can eat, as well as being pretty easy and fast to cook. It's high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential to heart health. You'll definitely find it on the top of most Paleo favorites lists — and for good reason. Not only is it super healthy, it's also delicious. Since you're not loading up on carbs like rice here, it's okay to buy a bigger piece of fish. Add the wilted spinach and you'll feel full for the rest of the evening.
* 2 (6- to 8-ounce) wild-caught salmon fillets
* 2 teaspoons lemon pepper seasoning
* Non-stick cooking spray
* 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* 4 cups fresh baby spinach, tightly packed
* Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Coat the salmon fillets on both sides with the lemon pepper seasoning. Lightly spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray and add the fillets. Roast the salmon for about 15 minutes, flipping it over halfway through, until it flakes easily with a fork.
While the salmon is cooking, heat the oil in a large sauté pan. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds or so, being careful not to burn it. Add the spinach and cook until it begins to wilt.
Divide the spinach evenly between two plates. Top with the salmon fillets, add pepper to taste, and serve immediately.
Serves 2
Berry Tart
When you're making a dish that relies extensively on the flavor of berries — as this one does — it is best to wait until you can get the freshest and ripest berries possible. Not only will they be so sweet that you won't want to add any sugar, but their flavor will be fresh and pronounced, and unlike any berry you're going to get in a supermarket out of season. If you must use out-of-season berries, you can add a tablespoon or so of honey to the berry mixture.
Filling
* 4 cups fresh mixed berries of your choice
* 1 cup water
* Juice of 1 lemon
Crust
* 1½ cups almond flour
* ¼ teaspoon baking soda
* ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
* ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
* ¼ cup coconut oil
* 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9-inch pie plate and set aside.
Filling
Heat the berries, water and lemon juice in medium saucepan. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring and mashing the berries periodically.
Crust
While the fruit is simmering, combine all the ingredients for the crust in a large bowl and mix. When you have a stiff dough, press it into the pie plate and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool 5 minutes.
Pour the berry mixture into the crust and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.
Serves 6
CONCLUSION
Your decision to go on the Paleo diet has the potential to open a whole new world of vitality, health and delicious foods. Your continued determination to make changes to your lifestyle can ultimately lead to a longer, fuller and more active life.
If times get tough as you're following the Paleo diet, try to keep a positive attitude and remember that healthy habits can take time to become a seamless part of your daily life. Don't beat yourself up when you slip, and don't forget to reward yourself when you get back up. The potential for the Paleo diet to benefit your health, mind, energy levels and weight makes your commitment worthwhile.
Good luck on your journey back to your dietary roots!
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Semantic organization of study materials has opposite effects on recognition and recall.
It has been well established for several decades that semantic organization of study materials greatly enhances recall by facilitating access to information during retrieval. However, the effect of organization on recognition, and its relationship to the effect on recall, is in doubt. We report the first direct comparison of the effects of categorically organizing study lists on recognition, cued recall, and free recall. We found that whereas organization improved recall, it impaired recognition. Organization had a larger effect on free recall than on cued recall. Within the categorized lists, recall was superior for items highly associated with the category; the opposite was true of recognition. In recall, organization improved the proportion of categories recalled, but it lowered the proportion of items per category recalled. A simple framework for interpreting the dissociation is offered. Possible mechanisms underlying the detrimental effect of organization on memory and prospects for future research are briefly discussed.
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import React, { Component } from 'react';
import {
StyleSheet,
Text,
View,
StatusBar,
Dimensions,
Image,
TextInput,
Platform
} from 'react-native';
import Icon from 'react-native-vector-icons/Ionicons';
const {ToolbarAndroid} = Icon;
import Swiper from 'react-native-swiper';
var wHeight = Dimensions.get('window').height;
const contentHeight = parseInt(wHeight - 200);
import { Navigation } from 'react-native-navigation';
import { connect } from 'react-redux';
import * as cinemaActions from '../cinemas/CinemaActions';
import {iconsMap} from '../utils/AppIcons';
import CinemaCard from './CinemaCard';
const navigatorStyle = {
statusBarColor: '#831d19',
navigationBarColor: '#831d19',
navBarBackgroundColor: '#ad241f',
navBarTextColor: '#ffffff',
navBarButtonColor: '#ffffff',
statusBarTextColorScheme: 'light'
}
class CinemaSearchPage extends Component {
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.state = {
search: '',
searchResult: []
}
}
componentDidMount() {
this.props.dispatch(cinemaActions.getCitiesStart());
}
changeSearchText(text) {
this.setState({search: text}, () => {
var {cities} = this.props.cinema;
var cinemas = cities.reduce((prev, current) => [...prev, ...current.theaters], []);
if (this.state.search.length < 3) {
this.setState({searchResult: []});
return
}
text = text.toLowerCase();
cinemas = cinemas.filter(cinema => {
if (cinema.name.toLowerCase().indexOf(text) !== -1) return true;
if (cinema.city.toLowerCase().indexOf(text) !== -1) return true;
return false;
});
this.setState({searchResult: cinemas});
});
}
onCinemaSelected(cinema) {
this.props.dispatch(cinemaActions.setActiveCinema(cinema));
this.props.navigator.switchToTab({tabIndex: 2});
}
render() {
var result = this.state.searchResult;
var {cinema} = this.props.cinema;
return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<StatusBar
backgroundColor="#831d19"
barStyle="light-content"
/>
<View style={styles.mainTab}>
<TextInput
style={[styles.textSearch, Platform.OS == 'ios' ? {height: 30, marginTop: 20} : {}]}
onChangeText={this.changeSearchText.bind(this)}
placeholder={'Type cinema name or city'}
placeholderTextColor={'#999'}
value={this.state.search}
autoFocus={true}
/>
</View>
<View style={styles.content}>
{result.length > 0 ?
<Swiper
style={styles.wrapper}
showsButtons={false}
height={contentHeight}
dot={<View style={{backgroundColor:'rgba(255,255,255,.3)', width: 10, height: 10, borderRadius: 5, marginLeft: 3, marginRight: 3,}} />}
activeDot={<View style={{backgroundColor: '#fff', width: 12, height: 12, borderRadius: 6, marginLeft: 4, marginRight: 4}} />}
paginationStyle={{
bottom: 40,
}}
loop={true}
key={this.state.search}
>
{result.map(item => (
<CinemaCard key={item.id} item={item} onCinemaSelected={this.onCinemaSelected.bind(this)} active={cinema.id == item.id} />
))}
</Swiper>
: <CinemaCard />}
</View>
</View>
);
}
}
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
backgroundColor: '#000'
},
toolbar: {
height: 60,
backgroundColor: '#ad241f',
},
mainTab: {
backgroundColor: '#ad241f',
height: 160,
paddingTop: 5,
paddingHorizontal: 24,
paddingBottom: 50
},
activeTab: {
borderBottomWidth: 2,
borderBottomColor: '#fff'
},
tab: {
flex: 1,
},
tabWrapper: {
padding: 12
},
innerTab: {
height: 60,
flex: 1,
alignItems: 'center',
justifyContent: 'center'
},
tabText: {
color: '#fff',
textAlign: 'center'
},
content: {
backgroundColor: 'transparent',
flex: 1,
marginTop: -80
},
wrapper: {
},
tabContent: {
},
tabContentInactive: {
position: 'absolute',
top: -1000,
left: -1000,
height: 0,
opacity: 0,
},
textSearch: {
color: '#fff'
}
});
CinemaSearchPage = connect((state) => {
return {
cinema: state.cinema
}
})(CinemaSearchPage);
export default CinemaSearchPage;
|
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Jungfraujoch
When I hear someone describe their trip to Switzerland, very often it’s about visiting the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps is a generic term and there are more mountains than you can shake your hat at in Switzerland. Previously, I had blogged about Zermatt, a ski resort for the rich and famous. Unlike Zermatt which is all about the majesty of the Matterhorn, Jungfraujoch is all about ‘in your face’ Swiss Alps tourism.
The Jungfrau forms part of the Bernese Alps and at 4,158m tall is one of the highest mountains in Europe. Together with the Eiger and Monch summits, they form a massive mountain wall and are very distinctive of the Swiss Alps. Jungfrau means virgin maiden in German. So I guessed it was named by some horny cowherd with an active imagination when he looked at the mountain ?
I visited Jungfraujoch in 1997 when I was stationed in Switzerland for a while. The starting off point is the town of Interlaken which is connected to the other major Swiss cities by SBB rail. From Interlaken the private Bernese Oberland Railway runs trains to Jungfraujoch through several villages.
Depending on train schedules and choices, you can take the train from Interlaken to Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen. I would recommend to go to Lauterbrunnen for a more scenic route. The village of Lauterbrunnen lies in a valley under huge cliffs. During summer, the melting snow flows as spectacular waterfalls that fall from the cliff on to the village.
Waterfalls from melting snow fall on to the village of Lauterbrunnen.A bird’s eye view of Lauterbrunnen as I took the train higher to Wengen. More waterfalls can be seen falling from the cliffs.
From Lauterbrunnen, I had to take another train to Wengen. And from Wengen, another train brought me to Kleine Scheidegg, where I finally changed to the Jungfrau Railway. This railway runs through a 9km long tunnel into the mountain and will bring visitors to Jungfraujoch station at 3,454m above sea level. If you decide to take the train to Grindelwald instead, you can continue straight to Kleine Scheidegg instead of going through Wengen. It does save time and hassle of changing trains but you will miss out on the waterfalls at Lauterbrunnen.
The village of Kleine Scheidegg. From here the Jungfrau Railway climbs through a tunnel cut into the mountains.Jungfrau, Eiger and Monch forms a massive mountain wall. The sight is really impressive and I do really feel like an ant standing in front of them.Just before entering the tunnel I could see the valley with the villages below.
It’s incredible how the engineers could have cut through solid mountain for 9km, taking into account that it was built from 1898 to 1912. With a steep gradient of 25%, the train relies on a cogwheel system to climb up the mountain. There a couple of stops inside the tunnel where visitors can alight and look at the glaciers through windows. The windows in the tunnels were made when the engineers had to extract rock from the tunnel.
From the windows in the tunnel wall, I could see the glaciers flowing into the valley below.As we climbed higher up the tunnel, the train made a final stop where we could see the huge chunks of ice becoming part of the glacier.
Finally, I reached Jungfraujoch Station which is the highest train station in Europe, even until now. So what can you do up there? There are several viewing points and a couple of man made ice caves for visitors to explore. There is a hotel and 2 restaurants, and there is also a observatory and ski school.
The view from the restaurant at Jungfraujoch.Is it Junfrau, Eiger or Monch? I cannot remember.Typical Swiss Alps scene. Do heed the warning signs not to over step the barriers as the snow is quite loose and you could fall off the mountain (because I almost did…)Some rich tourists taking a helicopter up and skiing down.The Sphinx Observatory.Walking on the viewing platform under the observatory. It’s just metal grating and you can get vertigo just looking vertically down at the valley which is a thousand meters below.One for the photo album.
So now that you are interested in visiting Jungfraujoch, should you go? It’s not the cheapest place to visit and there are other mountains in Switzerland that are more ‘economical’ to visit if you just want to experience the Swiss Alps. The price of the return train ticket from Interlaken to Jungfraujoch is more than 200 Swiss Francs per person for second class (First class is just a bit more). The journey itself takes 2~2.5 hours one way. So if you are not staying in the mountain villages or Interlaken, you will have to factor this into your visiting hours. I did not stay in the area, but I would say that hotels there are not the cheapest either.
At an average height of 3,500m altitude sickness can be a problem. My first time there I almost fainted because I was too excited in running out of the train upon exiting at Jungfraujoch. A lady tourist actually fainted and paramedics had to resuscitate her with oxygen. So don’t over exert yourself when you reach the top.
But if you have just only one place to go when you are in Switzerland then I would say “Just do it!” for the experience.
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The concept of renewable energy can be deceptive. Power facilities that tap renewable sources of energy – geothermal, hydro, wind, and the like – are often believed to generate little or no adverse impact on the environment or on the people who live in the areas where these facilities are installed. But large hydroelectric dams are renewable energy facilities. And the construction of large dams has already displaced at least 40 million people worldwide (World Commission on Dams 2000). Among those who have been displaced by large dams are indigenous peoples of the Agno river valley in the Cordillera region of northern Philippines. Their experience shows that if undertaken on too large a scale, with only state and corporate interests in mind, and with no regard for the land or the people they affect, renewable energy projects can destroy lives.
Globally, people are campaigning against continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy since these are the main source of the greenhouse gas emissions that account for the climate crisis. However, big business is now capitalizing on popular advocacy of renewable energy to devise profitable projects that appear to be environment-friendly but will, in truth, impact heavily on ecosystems and on the communities that live within these.
In the Philippines, the legal framework for profiting on renewable energy is provided by the Electrical Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) and the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (REA). The EPIRA handed over power generation, transmission, and distribution from state-owned to capitalist-owned corporations, put the supply of electricity on the commodities market, and deregulated pricing by producers as well as distributors. The REA provided fiscal guarantees of high returns on investments in renewable energy projects.
Twelve years after the passage of the EPIRA, Filipinos are burdened with expensive electricity. The Philippines’ Department of Energy admits that the country ranks second to Japan in having the highest priced electricity in Asia, averaging PhP 9.70 per kilowatt hour or USD 0.22/kWh, up from USD 0.08/kWh in 2001. Power generation is dominated by old names in Philippine business – San Miguel, Aboitiz, Lopez, Ayala – plus the world leader in geothermals, Chevron. Transmission is the monopoly of, Henry Sy, owner of a nationwide chain of mega-malls. Only distribution remains unconcentrated. This is in the hands of provincial cooperatives. But they are price-takers. Their members, the ordinary consumers, shoulder the brunt of the privatization of the energy industry and the deregulation of power rates. As its price continues to rise, electricity is becoming unaffordable for the poor and marginalized sectors, such as indigenous peoples.
Five years after the passage of the REA, local governments and indigenous peoples have to put up with the importunate efforts of corporate representatives and state officials to cajole, bribe, or pressure them into accepting a plethora of renewable energy projects. As of 30 August 2013, the Department of Energy had accepted a total of 588 applications for such projects, with a combined capacity of 11,900 megawatts. The current system capacity of the country’s electrical power industry is already 11,449 MW. The current peak demand is only 9,526 MW and is projected to rise to only 12,394 MW by 2022. Need is clearly not the reason for the projects. Rather, it is the prospect of profit.
THE CORDILLERA: A SOURCE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
The Cordillera region has a population of 1.7 million (2010 Census), the majority of which is comprised by indigenous peoples belonging to at least eight ethno-linguistic groups, collectively known as Igorot (literally, those of the mountains). As indigenous peoples, integrated in our ways of life is stewardship and protection of the land and all the natural resources it holds for the enjoyment of future generations. However, the state and big business have long considered the Cordillera as a resource base for the development of the mineral, logging, and power industries, and disregarded the fact that it is our homeland.
Nationwide, the Cordillera region has the highest energy resource potential, estimated at 3,586 MW, 27% of the country’s potential. The region hosts the headwaters of 13 major river systems, and supplies irrigation to Central Luzon, the Ilocos region, and parts of the Cagayan region. It is the watershed cradle of Northern Luzon, playing a key role in maintaining ecological balance in northern Philippines. Its rivers and creeks have been attracting corporate investments in hydropower since the late 1940s. Apart from hydroelectricity, renewable energy potentials include geothermal, wind, and solar power.
In the government’s Regional Development Plan (2011-2016), harnessing the energy potentials of the Cordillera is among the key priorities. As of 30 August 2013, the Department of Energy had already awarded one wind, seven geothermal, and 43 hydro power projects to various corporations, and was processing 60 more hydropower applications. The Department’s list of projects does not include one large multi-purpose dam that another government agency, the National Irrigation Administration, intends to build in the town of Natonin, Mountain Province. It also does not yet reflect ongoing studies for the feasibility of building two more large dams in the neighboring town of Barlig. These would raise the total number of hydropower projects to 106. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) is still trying to secure the free and prior informed consent (FPIC) of the affected communities to most of the aforesaid projects.
At present, the 17 operational hydroelectric facilities in the Cordillera region have an installed capacity of more than 660 MW and a dependable capacity of more than 318 MW. Additional hydropower potential is placed at 1,259 MW, and geothermal resource potential at 510 MW. However, the annual energy peak demand in the region is only 107.5 MW. The region’s energy production goes straight to the Luzon power grid. And not all the villages of the region’s indigenous peoples are supplied with electricity from this grid. In fact, it took almost 50 years before electricity from the grid was finally channeled to households living in the vicinity of the first hydropower dams built in the Cordillera, on the Agno river, at Ambuklao in Bokod and Binga in Itogon, Benguet province. As of 2007, only 89.45% of Cordillera households enjoyed electricity.
Chevron, the notorious US-owned firm, is among the numerous corporations that aim to operate renewable energy projects in the region. Its geothermal energy project in the province of Kalinga, targeted for full operation by 2018, covers 25,682 hectares. Its two other geothermal prospects cover approximately 76,000 hectares in Benguet, Ifugao, and the Mountain Province. Another major firm is Aboitiz, which has partnered with SN Power of Norway, and now owns the Ambuklao and Binga dams, plus a dozen smaller hydro facilities. Aboitiz has 33 hydropower projects. Other companies with renewable energy projects in the region include the Ayala subsidiary Quadriver, Henry Sy’s APC Group of Companies, Sta. Clara, Pan-Pacific, AsiaPac, Southeast Asia Renewable Energy, Basic Energy, AVG Power Systems, Clean Rock, PhilCarbon, and Chevron’s longtime partner, the Philippine National Oil Company Renewables Corporation.
POWER TO CORDILLERA INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Foreign and local corporations are raking in profit from energy projects as guaranteed by the EPIRA and the REA. Indigenous peoples do not benefit from these capitalist projects. Instead, we have to cope with rising electricity prices, adding insult to the injuries our communities have suffered as a result of the impact of the energy projects on our environment, livelihood, and ways of life. There are still communities in the Cordillera that need electricity, but the existing hydropower facilities that generate massive amounts of energy are not providing this.
The state’s promotion of corporate renewable energy projects in the Cordillera has entailed numerous violations of our rights as indigenous peoples to ancestral domain and self-determination. Mega-dams built despite our protests have already displaced hundreds of families of indigenous peoples. Putting up 106 more hydropower facilities will seriously disrupt our livelihood, which includes irrigated farming and freshwater fishing. Drilling for geothermal energy in our heavily mineralized region will aggravate environmental pollution and health problems, which we are already experiencing from large mining operations.
As indigenous peoples, we are guaranteed the right to free and prior informed consent regarding all projects that might impact on our ancestral domains. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples is mandated to facilitate the FPIC process while ensuring that this is conducted properly. However, in the processing of renewable energy projects, the NCIP has colluded with the Department of Energy and the corporations to maneuver around our communities’ opposition and railroad the building of so-called consensus in favor of the projects. In relation to Chevron’s Kalinga project, the NCIP fabricated a bogus resolution of FPIC in the name of the Dananao tribe. In relation to one large dam project, also in Kalinga, the NCIP would have let one corporation get away with fabricating the existence of a new, distinct tribe, were it not for the vigilance of a local peasant organization. And in relation to a set of small hydro projects in Ifugao, it allowed public officials to use the military’s presence in the area to intimidate the local citizens into voting for “FPIC”. Also, the NCIP has adopted guidelines which allow corporations to apply for FPIC again and again when communities persistently refuse their projects. The NCIP has thus disrespected our peoples and violated our right to self-determination.
Most of our communities who are affected by renewable energy projects oppose them because these bear ethnocidal impacts or threaten our survival as persons and as peoples:
Diversion of water, economic dislocation, and even displacement from our ancestral lands;
Water, air, and land pollution, which results in toxic contamination of remaining potable water and irrigation sources, soil degradation and diminishing crop yields, the siltation and biological death of rivers, and the loss of biodiversity;
The loss of the community’s control over its own territory, and the restriction of community access to the resources here;
Heightened human rights violations as the state deploys its armed forces to secure the renewable energy projects.
We do not need state-fostered, capitalist-driven renewable energy projects. We have proven that community-managed renewable energy projects are able to provide for our electricity needs. For nearly three decades now, many of our communities have gotten their electricity from micro-hydro plants, pico-hydro turbines, and photo-voltaic plates which they themselves have installed and managed. Besides supplying them with electricity, the micro-hydros also provide mechanical energy for rice and corn mills.
OUR ALTERNATIVE
For energy development – indeed, for economic development as a whole – to become viable and sustainable in our indigenous peoples’ territories, it must be underpinned by the recognition and respect of our collective rights to ancestral domain, to self-determination, and to basic survival as human beings. Rather than be geared towards satisfying capitalist greed, it should address our practical needs. Rather than consist of a chaos of projects, it should be comprised of a rationally and carefully outlined program in resource utilization and management. It should be a program in responsible stewardship of nature, undertaken for the welfare and interest not only of the present but also of future generations. Consistent with our peoples’ traditions in cooperativism, and in resource and benefit sharing, the ownership as well as operation of facilities should be socialized rather than privatized, and gains should be distributed equitably among the members of society.
At the local level, community-owned and managed, clean and environment-friendly renewable energy systems that directly address the basic needs of rural citizenry in food production and processing, cooking, lighting, communications, and village industry. An example are the already operational micro-hydropower systems designed, installed, and managed by our community organizations;
At the national level, a socialized, integrated power generation, transmission, and distribution system developed to meet the needs of urban citizenry, public service institutions, and vibrant yet regulated and responsible industrial and trade sectors.
Our Present Demands We, indigenous peoples of the Cordillera, collectively demand the full recognition of our right to ancestral domain and self-determination. Uphold the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and other international agreements and declarations that recognize and guarantee indigenous peoples’ rights and basic human rights!
We demand that the Philippine government, especially the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the Department of Energy, ensure the following, and that private corporations do similarly:
Respect indigenous peoples’ right to self-determined and sustainable development.
Respect and abide by the principles of genuinely free, prior, informed consent.
Stop the militarization of the Cordillera indigenous peoples’ territories where projects in energy and other extractive industries are located.
Cancel energy projects and contracts with fraudulent FPIC.
Indemnify the victims of past energy projects that were forced on communities and impacted adversely on them. Provide just compensation, decent relocation, and appropriate livelihood rehabilitation to any indigenous community that might decide in favor of an energy project.
Scrap the EPIRA, the REA, and other laws that have privatized, commodified, and deregulated the power industry, which is supposed to be a public concern, and that have fostered irresponsible, profit-oriented resource exploitation.
Ensure affordable energy for the people.
In addition:
Corporations and the Philippine government itself must be held accountable for the violations of human rights and indigenous peoples’ rights in advancing energy projects.
How You Can Help
We urge indigenous peoples’ organizations, people’s movements, indigenous rights and human rights advocates, other individuals, and institutions to support the Cordillera peoples’ struggle against destructive capitalist renewable energy projects. We enjoin you to support our activities:
Join the Global Indigenous Peoples’ Days of Action on Energy on 9-10 November 2013.
Support and participate in the Cordillera Day celebration on 23-24 April 2014, themed “Resist imperialist plunder. Assert our right to self determination and sustainable development.” It shall highlight renewable energy and other development and human rights issues in the region.
Help us set the record straight! Indigenous Peoples are putting their bodies on the line and it's our responsibility to make sure you know why. That takes time, expertise and resources - and we're up against a constant tide of distorted news and misinformation. By supporting IC, you're empowering the kind of journalism we all need, at the moment we need it most.
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West Palm Beach (CNN) President Donald Trump, on vacation in balmy Florida, suggested that climate change could be a good thing on Thursday, tweeting that cities gripped by freezing temperatures on the East Coast could use some warming.
Trump's tweet further places the President's climate policy out of step with the vast majority of scientists, who believe global warming is damaging for the United States and the world.
"In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Bundle up!"
JUST WATCHED Greenland: 'The melt is winning this game' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Greenland: 'The melt is winning this game' 11:12
Despite Trump's assertion, 2016 was the hottest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and some studies show 2017 is on pace to overtake it. If it does, it will be the fourth consecutive year to rank hotter than all previous.
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?We?re underdogs? says rookie Kiwi
coach
New Zealand coach Brian McClennan claims his Kiwis are underdogs to end Australia's three decades of dominance in Saturday night's Tri Nations rugby league final at Elland Road.
As the guessing game of Stacey Jones' availability continues, McClennan was at pains to talk up the Kangaroos today, declaring they'd hit form and the job facing his players, who'd gone off the boil, was "scary". But McClennan's words rather overlooked the fact that the Kiwis beat Australia convincingly in Sydney the opening game of the series and only went down by two points in their second encounter in Auckland.
McClennan is hoping to know by late tomorrow (Wednesday AEDT) if champion halfback Jones, the team's playmaker, will return for the final after flying home to Auckland at the weekend to be with his wife Rochelle, who is expecting their baby.
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[Health reform, equity and the right to health in Colombia].
The author develops a long-term perspective to assess advances in equity and the right to health in the Colombian health system reform. In a restricted political system, actors in the field of health in Colombia have chosen individualistic alternatives to legalize inequities in individual purchasing power for services. Despite the complex regulations established in the General System for Social Security in Health, there is a trend towards consolidating traditional inequities and to further restrict opportunities for achieving the right to health with full, equitable, universal guarantees.
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Peripheral neuropathy as the sole initial finding in three children with infantile metachromatic leukodystrophy.
Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is a progressive white matter disease caused by arylsulfatase A deficiency. Demyelination in the nervous system is detected by cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and neurophysiological studies. We present three children with infantile MLD, who had difficulties in standing and walking with absent reflexes. Protein levels in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) were elevated and nerve conduction studies revealed slowing down of motor nerve conduction velocity. Initial cerebral MRIs showed no white matter changes. Consecutively, all three children developed clinical symptoms of neurodegenerative disease. Follow-up MRI and arylsulfatase A testing led to diagnosis of MLD. We conclude, that in young children who present with an acute/subacute demyelinating polyneuropathy, MLD is a differential diagnosis.
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Protester Nadine Wolf demonstrates against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) outside the offices of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Stewart was one of more than 160 million people who logged on to Wikipedia Wednesday, the company reported. Instead of an online encyclopedia, the visitors saw a black page directing them to information about the SOPA and PIPA bills. Google, which participated in the protest with a black banner across its logo, said more than four million people signed a petition against the bills.
As The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama and Sarah Halzack reported, the protest inspired four co-sponsors of the Senate version to withdraw their support. Protest organizer say 300,000 people flooded Congress with calls.
Despite the protests, the bills are still under consideration in Congress. The main sponsor of the SOPA bill, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) told the Wall Street Journal he would still move forward with the bill.
Here’s Jon Stewart’s take in which he labels the story “angry nerds:”
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Q:
Peer credentials through unix domain socket ipc mechanism
I'm writing a code for extraction of peer credential by the server process connected through ipc using domain sockets to the client process. There is no error in the code but while running it I don't get the euid and gid of the peer process.
Code for server process is:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/un.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
//#include<ucred.h>
#define SCM_CREDENTIALS
# define UNIX_PATH_MAX 100
int getpeereid(int connection_fd,uid_t euid,gid_t gid)
{
struct ucred cred;
socklen_t len = sizeof(cred);
if (getsockopt(connection_fd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_PEERCRED, &cred, &len) < 0)
return (-1);
euid =cred.uid;
gid = cred.gid;
//int passcred=1;
//setsockopt(connection_fd,SOL_SOCKET,SO_PASSCRED,(void *)&passcred,sizeof(passcred));
printf("effective user id", euid);
printf("effective group id",gid);
return 0;
}
int connection_handler(int connection_fd)
{
int nbytes;
char buffer[1024];
char msg[256];
//while(cont=recv(connection_fd,buffer,sizeof(buffer),0)>0)
//{
//write(1,buffer,cont)
nbytes = read(connection_fd, buffer, 256);
buffer[nbytes] = 0;
printf("MESSAGE FROM CLIENT: %s\n", buffer);
printf("enter the message");
scanf("%s",msg);
nbytes = snprintf(buffer, 256,msg);
write(connection_fd, buffer, nbytes);
//}
close(connection_fd);
return 0;
}
int main(void)
{
struct sockaddr_un address;
int socket_fd, connection_fd,res;
socklen_t address_length;
pid_t child;
uid_t eid;
gid_t gid;
socket_fd = socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if(socket_fd < 0)
{
printf("socket() failed\n");
return 1;
}
printf("socket created\n");
unlink("./demo_socket");
/* start with a clean address structure */
memset(&address, 0, sizeof(struct sockaddr_un));
address.sun_family = AF_UNIX;
snprintf(address.sun_path, UNIX_PATH_MAX, "./demo_socket");
if(bind(socket_fd,
(struct sockaddr *) &address,
sizeof(struct sockaddr_un)) != 0)
{
printf("bind() failed\n");
return 1;
}
if(listen(socket_fd, 5) != 0)
{
printf("listen() failed\n");
return 1;
}
while((connection_fd = accept(socket_fd,
(struct sockaddr *) &address,
&address_length)) > -1)
{
// get the credentials
res=getpeereid(connection_fd,geteuid(),getgid());
if (res==0)
{
//if(res==0)
//{
child = fork();
if(child == 0)
{
/* now inside newly created connection handling process */
return connection_handler(connection_fd);
}
}
/* still inside server process */
close(connection_fd);
//}
}
close(socket_fd);
unlink("./demo_socket");
return 0;
}
the code for client
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/un.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#define UNIX_PATH_MAX 100
int connection_handler(int socket_fd)
{
int nbytes;
char buffer[1024];
char mesg[256];
printf("enter the message");
scanf("%s",mesg);
//printf("message is %s",mesg);
nbytes = snprintf(buffer, 256,mesg);
//fgets(buffer,256,mesg);
//i=atoi(mesg);
write(socket_fd,buffer,nbytes);
//send(socket_fd,mesg,sizeof(mesg),0);
}
//nbytes = read(socket_fd, buffer, 256);
//buffer[nbytes] = 0;
//printf("MESSAGE FROM SERVER: %s\n", buffer);
//}
int main(void)
{
struct sockaddr_un address;
int socket_fd, nbytes,i;
pid_t child;
char buffer[256];
//char mesg[100];
socket_fd = socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if(socket_fd < 0)
{
printf("socket() failed\n");
return 1;
}
printf("socket created\n");
/* start with a clean address structure */
memset(&address, 0, sizeof(struct sockaddr_un));
address.sun_family = AF_UNIX;
snprintf(address.sun_path, UNIX_PATH_MAX, "./demo_socket");
if(connect(socket_fd,
(struct sockaddr *) &address,
sizeof(struct sockaddr_un)) != 0)
{
printf("connect() failed\n");
return 1;
}
child=fork();
while(child==0)
{
return connection_handler(socket_fd);
//printf("connection established\n");
//printf("enter the message");
//scanf("%s",mesg);
//printf("message is %s",mesg);
//bytes = snprintf(buffer, 256,mesg);
//fgets(buffer,256,mesg);
//i=atoi(mesg);
//write(socket_fd,buffer,nbytes);
//send(socket_fd,mesg,sizeof(mesg),0);
}
nbytes = read(socket_fd, buffer, 256);
buffer[nbytes] = 0;
printf("MESSAGE FROM SERVER: %s\n", buffer);
close(socket_fd);
return 0;
}
A:
See http://www.thomasstover.com/uds.html for good overview.
If the server is Linux, the main problem is missing _GNU_SOURCE. Full patch below, it has a few minor changes just to get rid of gcc -Wall -Werror -pedantic -std=c99 errors and warnings.
--- server.c.orig 2014-12-06 13:23:09.138472871 +0200
+++ server.c 2014-12-06 13:21:31.962475754 +0200
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/un.h>
@@ -5,7 +6,6 @@
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
//#include<ucred.h>
-#define SCM_CREDENTIALS
# define UNIX_PATH_MAX 100
int getpeereid(int connection_fd,uid_t euid,gid_t gid)
@@ -20,8 +20,8 @@
//int passcred=1;
//setsockopt(connection_fd,SOL_SOCKET,SO_PASSCRED,(void *)&passcred,sizeof(passcred));
-printf("effective user id", euid);
-printf("effective group id",gid);
+printf("effective user id %d", euid);
+printf("effective group id %d",gid);
return 0;
}
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@
printf("MESSAGE FROM CLIENT: %s\n", buffer);
printf("enter the message");
scanf("%s",msg);
-nbytes = snprintf(buffer, 256,msg);
+nbytes = snprintf(buffer, 256, "%s", msg);
write(connection_fd, buffer, nbytes);
//}
close(connection_fd);
@@ -54,8 +54,6 @@
int socket_fd, connection_fd,res;
socklen_t address_length;
pid_t child;
-uid_t eid;
-gid_t gid;
socket_fd = socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if(socket_fd < 0)
|
Q:
Using valgrind to debug R, extracting column of a mts object causes valgrind to crash
I'm trying to debug my R package with valgrind, but I cannot get past the point where I load make the data, as valgrind crashes when trying to extract a single time series object of a multivariate mts object. I'm using R 2.15.0 with platform x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit).
Minimalistic code is like this:
> data(Seatbelts)
> y<-Seatbelts[,"VanKilled"]
It seems that the crash is caused by the fact that the rows of the Seatbelts are not defined in assignment, but if I use command y<-Seatbelts[1:192,"VanKilled"] the resulting object is not a time series object anymore. Is there some clever way to get around this?
This is the error given by valgrind
vex amd64->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0x66 0xF 0x3A 0xB 0xC0 0xC
==31160== valgrind: Unrecognised instruction at address 0x399fe26990.
==31160== Your program just tried to execute an instruction that Valgrind
==31160== did not recognise. There are two possible reasons for this.
==31160== 1. Your program has a bug and erroneously jumped to a non-code
==31160== location. If you are running Memcheck and you just saw a
==31160== warning about a bad jump, it's probably your program's fault.
==31160== 2. The instruction is legitimate but Valgrind doesn't handle it,
==31160== i.e. it's Valgrind's fault. If you think this is the case or
==31160== you are not sure, please let us know and we'll try to fix it.
==31160== Either way, Valgrind will now raise a SIGILL signal which will
==31160== probably kill your program.
*** caught illegal operation ***
address 0x399fe26990, cause 'illegal opcode'
Traceback:
1: ts(y, start = start(x), frequency = frequency(x))
2: `[.ts`(Seatbelts, , "VanKilled")
3: Seatbelts[, "VanKilled"]
aborting ...
A:
Your program is using an instruction (ROUNDSD) that your version of valgrind doesn't support.
The first thing to do is to make sure that you're using the latest version of valgrind, and ideally to try the svn version as I that it supports some (but not all) variants of that instruction.
If it still fails then you should report it in the valgrind bug tracker, although you may find it's already been reported.
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package com.example.appbluetoothclientsocketdemo1;
import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.BufferedOutputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.ByteOrder;
import java.util.UUID;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothAdapter;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothDevice;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothSocket;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.graphics.Bitmap;
import android.graphics.BitmapFactory;
import android.os.AsyncTask;
//ref. http://androidcookbook.com/Recipe.seam;jsessionid=9B476BA317AA36E2CB0D6517ABE60A5E?recipeId=1665
//ref. http://javarevisited.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/convert-inputstream-to-string-java-example-tutorial.html
/*Draft java code by "Lazarus Android Module Wizard" [4-5-14 20:46:56]*/
/*https://github.com/jmpessoa/lazandroidmodulewizard*/
/*jControl template*/
public class jBluetoothClientSocket {
private long pascalObj = 0; // Pascal Object
private Controls controls = null; // Control Class -> Java/Pascal Interface ...
private Context context = null;
private BluetoothSocket mmSocket;
private BluetoothDevice mmDevice;
boolean mmConnected;
BufferedInputStream mBufferInput;
BufferedOutputStream mBufferOutput;
BluetoothAdapter mmBAdapter;
int mBuffer = 1024;
boolean IsFirstsByteHeader = false;
//Unique UUID for this application.....
//private UUID mmUUID = UUID.fromString("fa87c0d0-afac-11de-8a39-0800200c9a66");
//Well known SPP UUID
private String mmUUIDString = "00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB";
String mMimeType = "text";
public jBluetoothClientSocket(Controls _ctrls, long _Self) {
context = _ctrls.activity;
pascalObj = _Self;
controls = _ctrls;
mmBAdapter = BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter(); // Emulator -->> null!!!
}
public void jFree() {
//free local objects...
mmDevice = null;
mBufferInput = null;
mBufferOutput = null;
mmSocket = null;
mmBAdapter = null;
}
public void SetDevice(BluetoothDevice _device) {
mmDevice = _device;
}
public void SetUUID(String _strUUID) {
if (!_strUUID.equals("")) {
mmUUIDString = _strUUID;
}
}
//write others [public] methods code here......
//GUIDELINE: please, preferentially, init all yours params names with "_", ex: int _flag, String _hello ...
public boolean IsConnected() {
if (mmSocket != null)
return mmSocket.isConnected();
else return false;
}
public void Disconnect() {
mmConnected = false;
try {
if (mmSocket != null)
while (mmSocket.isConnected()) {
mmSocket.close();
}
} catch (IOException e2) {
}
}
//talk to server
/* System.arraycopy
* src the source array to copy the content.
srcPos the starting index of the content in src.
dst the destination array to copy the data into.
dstPos the starting index for the copied content in dst.
length the number of elements to be copied.
*/
//talk to client
public void Write(byte[] _dataContent, byte[] _dataHeader) {
try {
if (mBufferOutput != null) {
int sizeContent = _dataContent.length;
int tempsizeHeader = _dataHeader.length;
if (tempsizeHeader > 32767) tempsizeHeader = 32767;
short sizeHeader = (short)tempsizeHeader;
byte[] extendedArray = new byte[sizeContent+4+sizeHeader+2];
byte[] sizeContentBuff = intToByteArray(sizeContent, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
byte[] sizeHeaderBuff = shortToByteArray(sizeHeader, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
System.arraycopy(sizeHeaderBuff, 0, extendedArray, 0, 2);
System.arraycopy(sizeContentBuff, 0, extendedArray, 2, 4);
System.arraycopy(_dataHeader, 0, extendedArray, 2+4, _dataHeader.length);
System.arraycopy(_dataContent, 0, extendedArray, 2+4+_dataHeader.length, _dataContent.length);
mBufferOutput.write(extendedArray, 0, extendedArray.length);
mBufferOutput.flush();
}
} catch (IOException e) { }
}
public void WriteMessage(String _message, byte[] _dataHeader) {
Write(_message.getBytes(), _dataHeader);
}
public void WriteMessage(String _message) {
try {
if (mBufferOutput != null) {
byte[] _byteArray = _message.getBytes();
mBufferOutput.write(_byteArray, 0, _byteArray.length);
mBufferOutput.flush();
}
} catch (IOException e) { }
}
//talk to client
public void Write(byte[] _dataContent) {
try {
if (mBufferOutput != null) {
mBufferOutput.write(_dataContent, 0, _dataContent.length);
mBufferOutput.flush();
}
} catch (IOException e) { }
}
public void SendFile(String _filePath, String _fileName, byte[] _dataHeader) throws IOException {
if (mBufferOutput != null) {
File F = new File( _filePath + "/" + _fileName);
int sizeContent = (int)F.length();
int tempsizeHeader = _dataHeader.length;
if (tempsizeHeader > 32767) tempsizeHeader = 32767;
short sizeHeader = (short)tempsizeHeader;
byte[] extendedArray = new byte[sizeContent+4+sizeHeader+2];
byte[] sizeContentBuff = intToByteArray(sizeContent, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
byte[] sizeHeaderBuff = shortToByteArray(sizeHeader, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
System.arraycopy(sizeHeaderBuff, 0, extendedArray, 0, 2);
System.arraycopy(sizeContentBuff, 0, extendedArray, 2, 4);
System.arraycopy(_dataHeader, 0, extendedArray, 2+4, _dataHeader.length);
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(F));
if (bis.read(extendedArray, 2+4+_dataHeader.length, sizeContent) > 0) {
try {
mBufferOutput.write(extendedArray, 0, extendedArray.length);
mBufferOutput.flush();
}
finally {
bis.close();
}
}
}
}
public void SendFile(String _filePath, String _fileName) throws IOException {
if ( mBufferOutput != null) {
File F = new File( _filePath + "/" + _fileName);
int size = (int)F.length();
byte[] buffer = new byte[size];
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(F));
if (bis.read(buffer, 0, size) > 0) {
try {
mBufferOutput.write(buffer, 0, buffer.length);
mBufferOutput.flush();
}
finally {
bis.close();
}
}
}
}
public void WriteMessage(String _message, String _dataHeader) {
WriteMessage(_message, _dataHeader.getBytes());
}
public void Write(byte[] _dataContent, String _dataHeader) {
Write(_dataContent,_dataHeader.getBytes());
}
public void SendFile(String _filePath, String _fileName, String _dataHeader) throws IOException {
SendFile(_filePath,_fileName, _dataHeader.getBytes());
}
public boolean GetDataHeaderReceiveEnabled() {
return IsFirstsByteHeader;
}
public void SetDataHeaderReceiveEnabled(boolean _value) {
IsFirstsByteHeader = _value;
}
public void SetReceiverBufferLength(int _value) {
mBuffer = _value;
}
public int GetReceiverBufferLength() {
return mBuffer;
}
public void SaveByteArrayToFile(byte[] _byteArray, String _filePath, String _fileName) {
File F = new File( _filePath + "/" + _fileName);
FileOutputStream fos;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(F);
try {
fos.write(_byteArray, 0, _byteArray.length);
fos.flush();
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
fos.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private byte[] intToByteArray(int value, ByteOrder order) {
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(4); // in java, int takes 4 bytes.
buffer.order(order);
return buffer.putInt(value).array();
}
private int byteArrayToInt(byte[] byteArray, ByteOrder order) {
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(byteArray);
buffer.order(order);
return buffer.getInt();
}
private byte[] shortToByteArray(short value, ByteOrder order) {
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(2); // in java, shortint takes 2 bytes.
buffer.order(order);
return buffer.putShort(value).array();
}
private int byteArrayToShort(byte[] byteArray, ByteOrder order) {
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(byteArray);
buffer.order(order);
return buffer.getShort();
}
public void Connect() {
if (!mmBAdapter.isEnabled()) {
controls.activity.startActivityForResult(new Intent(BluetoothAdapter.ACTION_REQUEST_ENABLE), 1000);
}
if (mmBAdapter.isDiscovering()) mmBAdapter.cancelDiscovery(); //must cancel to connect!
if (mmSocket != null) {
try {
mmSocket.close();
mmSocket = null;
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
try {
mmConnected = false;
mmSocket = mmDevice.createRfcommSocketToServiceRecord(UUID.fromString(mmUUIDString));
// This is a blocking call and will only return on a successful connection or an exception
mmSocket.connect();
} catch (IOException e) {
mmConnected = false;
mmSocket = null;
}
if (mmSocket != null) {
try {
mBufferInput = new BufferedInputStream(mmSocket.getInputStream());
mBufferOutput = new BufferedOutputStream(mmSocket.getOutputStream());
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
mBufferInput = null;
mBufferOutput = null;
e.printStackTrace();
}
new ASocketClientTask().execute();
}
}
public String ByteArrayToString(byte[] _byteArray) {
return (new String(_byteArray));
}
public Bitmap ByteArrayToBitmap(byte[] _byteArray) {
return BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(_byteArray, 0, _byteArray.length);
}
class ASocketClientTask extends AsyncTask<String, ByteArrayOutputStream, String> {
int bytes_read = 0;
int count = 0;
int lenContent = 0;
int lenHeader = 0;
byte[] inputBuffer = new byte[mBuffer];
ByteArrayOutputStream bufferOutput;
ByteArrayOutputStream bufferOutputHeader;
byte[] headerBuffer;
@Override
protected String doInBackground(String... message) {
while (mmConnected) {
try {
bytes_read = -1;
bufferOutput = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
if (mBufferInput!=null)
bytes_read = mBufferInput.read(inputBuffer, 0, inputBuffer.length); //blocking ...
if (bytes_read < 0) {
mmConnected = false;
}
} catch (IOException e) {
mmConnected = false;
e.printStackTrace();
}
if (IsFirstsByteHeader) {
if(bytes_read > 6) {
bufferOutputHeader = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
byte[] lenHeaderBuffer = new byte[2]; //package lenght [int]
byte[] lenContentBuffer = new byte[4]; //package lenght [int]
if (inputBuffer!=null) {
System.arraycopy(inputBuffer, 0,lenHeaderBuffer, 0, 2);
System.arraycopy(inputBuffer, 2,lenContentBuffer, 0, 4);
lenHeader = byteArrayToShort(lenHeaderBuffer, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
lenContent = byteArrayToInt(lenContentBuffer, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
int index = 2+4; // [header+content len]
int r = bytes_read;
while ( r < (lenHeader+index)) {
if (bytes_read > 0) {
bufferOutputHeader.write(inputBuffer,index, bytes_read-index);
if (mBufferInput!=null) {
try {
bytes_read = mBufferInput.read(inputBuffer, 0, inputBuffer.length);
if (bytes_read < 0) {
mmConnected = false;
//return null;
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
mmConnected = false;
e.printStackTrace();
}
index = 0;
if (bytes_read > 0)
r = r + bytes_read;
}
}
}
if (bytes_read > 0)
r = r - bytes_read; //backtraking..
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
if (bufferOutput!=null) {
if ( (lenHeader-r) > 0 ) {
//---System.arraycopy(inputBuffer, 2+4 ,headerBuffer, 0, lenHeader);
bufferOutputHeader.write(inputBuffer,index,lenHeader-r); //dx
headerBuffer = bufferOutputHeader.toByteArray();
//---bufferOutput.write(inputBuffer, 2+4+lenHeader, bytes_read-2-4-lenHeader);
if ((bytes_read-index-(lenHeader-r)) > 0 ) {
bufferOutput.write(inputBuffer, index+(lenHeader-r), bytes_read-index-(lenHeader-r));
//--count = count + bytes_read-2-4-lenHeader;
count = count + bytes_read-index-(lenHeader-r);
publishProgress(bufferOutput);
}
}
}
}
while ( count < lenContent) {
try {
bytes_read = -1;
if (mBufferInput != null)
bytes_read = mBufferInput.read(inputBuffer, 0, inputBuffer.length); //blocking ...
if (bytes_read < 0) {
mmConnected = false;
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
mmConnected = false;
e.printStackTrace();
}
if (bufferOutput!=null) {
if (bytes_read > 0) {
bufferOutput.write(inputBuffer, 0, bytes_read);
count = count + bytes_read;
publishProgress(bufferOutput);
}
}
}
}
else {
mmConnected = false;
}
}
else{
if (bufferOutput!=null) {
if (bytes_read > 0) {
bufferOutput.write(inputBuffer, 0, bytes_read);
publishProgress(bufferOutput);
}
}
}
} //main loop
return null;
}
@Override
protected void onPreExecute() {
super.onPreExecute();
mmConnected = true;
controls.pOnBluetoothClientSocketConnected(pascalObj,mmSocket.getRemoteDevice().getName(),mmSocket.getRemoteDevice().getAddress());
}
@Override
protected void onProgressUpdate(ByteArrayOutputStream... values) {
super.onProgressUpdate(values);
if (IsFirstsByteHeader) {
if (values[0].toByteArray().length == lenContent ) {
controls.pOnBluetoothClientSocketIncomingData(pascalObj, values[0].toByteArray(), headerBuffer);
try {
if (bufferOutput != null)
bufferOutput.close();
if (bufferOutputHeader!= null)
bufferOutputHeader.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
//TODO
/*
else controls.pOnBluetoothClientSocketProgress(pascalObj, values[0].toByteArray().length);
*/
}
}
else {
controls.pOnBluetoothClientSocketIncomingData(pascalObj, values[0].toByteArray(), headerBuffer);
try {
if (bufferOutput != null)
bufferOutput.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String values) {
super.onPostExecute(values);
controls.pOnBluetoothClientSocketDisconnected(pascalObj);
try {
mmConnected = false;
mBufferOutput = null;
if (mmSocket != null) mmSocket.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
}
}
}
}
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives in Lima, Peru for the Summit of the Americas on Thursday, April 12, 2018. Trudeau will aim to advance Canada’s position on North American free trade talks when he meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence here over the next two days. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Trudeau to talk NAFTA with Mexican president, U.S. vice-president while in Peru
Trudeau will aim to advance Canada’s position on North American free trade talks when he meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will aim to advance Canada’s position on the North American free trade talks when he meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence here over the next two days.
There had been hopes leading up to Trudeau’s visit to Peru, where he and the others are attending the Summit of the Americas, that Canada, Mexico and the U.S. would emerge with some sort of North American free trade agreement.
While those appear to have been dashed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to stay home to deal with Syria, the chance to sit down with Pena Nieto on Friday and Pence on Saturday is nonetheless important.
Much has changed in the NAFTA negotiations since Trudeau last met with Pena Nieto in November, and this will also be one of their last formal meetings as Mexico prepares to elect a new president in July.
The meeting will thus provide an important opportunity for the two leaders to update each other on their respective positions and look for a way to advance talks at this critical time.
That job looked to be a little easier after U.S. trade officials surprised many by indicating on Thursday that they were willing to soften their demands on automobiles, before Trump warned he was willing to “renegotiate forever.”
Trudeau will look for clarity when he meets Saturday with Pence, who was sent to Peru in Trump’s stead.
NAFTA will only be one trade deal on the agenda, particularly after Trump ordered his officials on Thursday to look at whether the U.S. should rejoin the Trans Pacific Partnership after pulling out last year.
Canada is one of 11 countries involved in the massive free-trade bloc, which also includes Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
Trudeau is scheduled to meet with the presidents of Chile and Peru, in addition to Pena Nieto, and at least some of the talk is expected to touch on the partnership and an American re-entry into a revamped TPP.
The prime minister will also address prominent business leaders from across the Americas in the hopes of attracting new investment to Canada.
The prime minister will seek to leverage some of the many free trade agreements that Canada has in the region and around the world to entice businesses to set up shop.
The pitch could face some difficulty, however, in large part because of the significant amount of uncertainty around the NAFTA negotiations.
Peru is the first stop in a major foreign tour for Trudeau, who also plans to visit France and the United Kingdom, the latter to participate in a Commonwealth meeting.
The prime minister was scheduled to fly directly from Peru to France, where is scheduled to address the French National Assembly.
But he will make a quick stop in Ottawa on Sunday to meet with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and B.C. Premier John Horgan, who have been locked in a bitter dispute over Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
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Black Panther opened up China this past weekend and had a very strong showing. The record-breaking film hauled in $63 million which helped the film pass the billion dollar mark putting it in some very elite company. The movie definitely did bring moviegoers out in China, but it didn’t get the rave reviews it enjoyed here in the states.
One of the main complaints was the movie was just “too black” or “too dark” for some Chinese viewers.
Blinks in Wakandan. They also seemed to hone in on the Lion King equivalences a lot.
On the Chinese equivalent to IMDB called Douban, Black Panther is holding a very modest 6.8 out of 10 rating. Half of science-fiction and action movies on the site have been rated higher by users. In the reviews (which have been translated), some Chinese viewers accused the film of “trying too hard to be politically correct”. One viewer even said “Maybe the Chinese are still not used to a film full of black people,” and claimed he had had to pinch himself to stay awake because “blackness made him drowsy”.
Here are some of the reviews posted on the site:
“The villain has its own skills: intense phobia attacks! This can be said to be a black movie with no black soul, because there is no sense of rhythm. This race setting is a bit reminiscent of the mystical race Nox where the dragons in the interplanetary stare are not seen. Ending egg: Jesus in the winter. The front seems to say that after the Oscars in the water, someone asked Nolan what the Oscars will be next year, and Nolan said that the next time the Oscars will probably be Panthers. It feels a bit dark.”
“There was no preview of the film’s good looks. The entire essence of the game was a small part of it. The story was simple and cliched. The latter part was boring and almost impossible to see.”
“Even if the screen with the highest brightness is selected, the movie still looks “dark”.”
“It feels really visual fatigue on Marvel, and the old-fashioned story of “Prince’s Revenge” infuses the politically correct theme of black equality. There is of course a great ambition, but the limitations of creative vision are still obvious. The other is Disney’s garbage transfer. 3D technology should really be used to criticize it. Night shows and blacks are all too special to see! ! ! !”
“Marvel’s success lies in the fact that it will not be because the story is inferred and the drama sets the first half of the movie. It is so stunning that the tribal culture world it created has a solemn and complete thickness that can stand the scrutiny, but the second half is too far away from the sky. After playing from South Korea, it became a lame Lion King to catch the circus. It was not fun to play. The extension did not delay disappointment. Male coach but the performance needs to improve and why do you think that all blackheads are a bit longer?”
Now there were some positive reviews as well but some a good number of them posted to the site were damn near racist. China still has some work to do when it comes to race, just recently a Chinese actress donned blackface during the annual Lunar New Year TV gala. They also cast a black actor to play a monkey.
Black Panther might be the first taste of black culture for the Chinese, hopefully, by the time Black Panther 2 rolls around they will have a better understanding and will be used to the “blackness”, it’s not going anywhere. They not alone in their hate though even White folks here in the States tried their best to hate the greatness that is Black Panther.
––
Photo: Disney/Marvel Studios
|
Revision history of "Development/Further Information"
Diff selection: Mark the radio boxes of the revisions to compare and hit enter or the button at the bottom.
Legend: (cur) = difference with latest revision, (prev) = difference with preceding revision, m = minor edit.
(cur | prev)20:05, 1 March 2014 Maidis(Talk | contribs) m. .(17,660 bytes)(+2,457) . .(→Historic: add a few more. there is more in other languages but can't be found information. if you know free online version for these books please add links)
(cur | prev)19:15, 1 March 2014 Maidis(Talk | contribs) m. .(14,711 bytes)(+261) . .(→English: some updates on The C++ Programming Language, add a link to a list at Stack Overflow. also checking whether there are new editions of the above books could be nice)
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/*
* Old U-boot compatibility for 8xx
*
* Author: Scott Wood <[email protected]>
*
* Copyright (c) 2007 Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
* under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published
* by the Free Software Foundation.
*/
#include "ops.h"
#include "stdio.h"
#include "cuboot.h"
#define TARGET_8xx
#define TARGET_HAS_ETH1
#include "ppcboot.h"
static bd_t bd;
static void platform_fixups(void)
{
void *node;
dt_fixup_memory(bd.bi_memstart, bd.bi_memsize);
dt_fixup_mac_addresses(bd.bi_enetaddr, bd.bi_enet1addr);
dt_fixup_cpu_clocks(bd.bi_intfreq, bd.bi_busfreq / 16, bd.bi_busfreq);
node = finddevice("/soc/cpm");
if (node)
setprop(node, "clock-frequency", &bd.bi_busfreq, 4);
node = finddevice("/soc/cpm/brg");
if (node)
setprop(node, "clock-frequency", &bd.bi_busfreq, 4);
}
void platform_init(unsigned long r3, unsigned long r4, unsigned long r5,
unsigned long r6, unsigned long r7)
{
CUBOOT_INIT();
fdt_init(_dtb_start);
serial_console_init();
platform_ops.fixups = platform_fixups;
}
|
According to US Weekly,“things have been extremely strained” in Khloe and Tristan’s relationship, ever since the cheating scandal. Another source added that “Khloé is being extremely cautious about uprooting her entire life for Tristan again.”
Kardashian also made a series of sentimental posts on her Instagram this month, including the quotes,
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-- This is assuming the following structure:
--
-- bin/
-- repo/
-- /faf
-- /gw
-- /coop
-- etc...
--
-- And that SupComDataPath gets copied from here to bin/
dofile(InitFileDir .. '..\\repo\\faf\\init.lua')
|
Russians want protest vote to be returned
A poll conducted by the independent Levada-Center has revealed that most Russians support the return of the “against all” option on the election ballot.
The vast majority of those surveyed (73%) have said they agree that the option should be included on the ballot along with the candidates. Only 11% of respondents do not support this kind of protest vote. The line “against all” was eliminated from the ballot in 2006, before the 2007 parliamentary election. This followed a Constitutional Court decision which ruled it was in violation of the constitution, as the “virtual” candidate appeared on the list along with real politicians.
Another question sociologists asked was whether Russians believe the forthcoming parliamentary election this December will be transparent. According to the study, 54% expect that “dirty technologies” such as mudslinging and voter pressure will be used in the run-up to the election. However, 29% are convinced the election is going to be free and fair.
As for the election campaign, about a third of respondents (35%) think there will actually be real competition, while 53% believe that it will be “an imitation of an election and seats in the State Duma will distributed as the authorities wish.”
59% consider the parliamentary election to be “a struggle of bureaucratic clans for access to the state budget”. About half as many (28%) believe it to will be a real democratic undertaking. The poll has also revealed that Russian citizens want the liberalization of election legislation. 46% are in favor of lowering the vote threshold, as well as a return to single-seat election districts (49%).
Last week, a group of opposition leaders have called on all those who disagree with the incumbent authorities policies to “actively ignore” the election. Under the current law, there is no voter turnout threshold for the election to be recognized as valid. So their suggestion is either to “ruin” the ballots by ticking the names of multiple candidates, or simply taking them home from the polling station.
Another poll, released by the All-Russia Public Opinion Study Center (VTSIOM) last week, showed that protest sentiment is not so important and wide spread as to significantly impact the election. According to its results, almost half of Russians (49%) would vote for the majority United Russia party if elections took place this July.
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Q:
how to use where clause on laravel eloquents that depend on relation table?
i have two tables,
one is - question table - and other is - answers table - , answer will have question_id.
I'd like to know how can i filter all questions where not has an answer yet in laravel
so i'm assuming something like
Forum::where(forum->comments->count(), 0)
i already set the relation, of course the code didn't work, just for an example
thanks!
A:
Try this
Question::doesntHave('answers')->get();
if you want the count
Question::doesntHave('answers')->count();
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Viktor Zhirmunsky
Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky (; 2 August 1891 – 31 January 1971; also Wiktor Maximowitsch Schirmunski, Zirmunskij, Schirmunski, Zhirmunskii; ) was a Russian literary historian and linguist.
Life
Born in Saint Petersburg in 1891 to a Jewish family, Zhirmunsky was a professor at universities in Saratov and Leningrad, and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He was a representative of Russian formal studies, though in certain respects he was less inclined to accept formalism as sufficient for all literary analysis. His critique of the ahistorical nature of formalism, in the introduction to his translation of Oskar Walzel′s Die künstlerische Form des Dichtwerkes (1919) helped speed the end of Russian formalism's initial phase, as critics began to accommodate their work to the developing ideology of the Soviet regime.
Though originally trained in German Romanticism, he started to research the epics of the Asian people of the Soviet Union after he was settled in Tashkent following the evacuation of Leningrad. In particular, he studied the akyn of Kazakh and Kyrgyz culture. This research created a foundation that allowed Eleazar M. Meletinskii to make his considerations on the relations between myth and epos.
In April 1948, Zhirmunsky was among the scholars and critics who recanted their supposed "comparativism" and "Veselovskyism" in Andrei Zhdanov′s purge of that year. "Comparativism," or the study of possible borrowing and dissemination of motifs and stories among cultures, was deprecated. In response, Zhirmunsky developed a historical-typological theory, according to which such similarities arose not from historical influence but rather from a similarity of social and cultural institutions.
He died in Leningrad in 1971.
Works
Skazanie ob Alpamise i bogatirskaya skazka, Moskva 1960
Narodnij geroicheskiy epos, Moskva 1962
Related works:
E.M. Meletinskij, Proischoždenie geroičeskogo eposa, Moskva 1963
Notes
References
External links
Viktor Maksimovic Zirmunskij
V.M. Žirmunskij: Russian Literature: A special issue
The Lyrical Heritage of the Young V.M. Zhirmunskii
Category:1891 births
Category:1971 deaths
Category:Linguists from Russia
Category:Russian historians
Category:Ethnology
Category:Russian formalism
Category:Dialectologists
Category:Russian Jews
Category:Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Category:Soviet literary historians
Category:Soviet male writers
Category:20th-century Russian male writers
Category:20th-century historians
Category:Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
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Share the photo of the building and location that make you more easy when driving to some place by looking to the building/area.
Or the building that you can see all the way which I put it.
Welcome to Malaysia !
Thanks. Hope It will help you
[email protected]
[email protected]
from USJ-Subang Jaya-Selangor-Malaysia
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