text:
Cloud Expo on Google News
Cloud Expo & Virtualization 2009 East
Smarter Business Solutions Through Dynamic Infrastructure
Smarter Insights: How the CIO Becomes a Hero Again
Windows Azure
Why VDI?
Maximizing the Business Value of Virtualization in Enterprise and Cloud Computing Environments
Messaging in the Cloud - Email, SMS and Voice
Freedom OSS
Stairway to the Cloud
Sun's Incubation Platform: Helping Startups Serve the Enterprise
Cloud Computing & Enterprise IT: Cost & Operational Benefits
How and Why is a Flexible IT Infrastructure the Key To the Future?
Click For 2008 West
Event Webcasts
TripIt Helps "Passports with Purpose" Raise Money for Clean Water in Haiti
An Additional USD $5 Will Be Donated for Every TripIt Pro Gift Purchased By December 15

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TripIt, the leading mobile trip organizer from Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR), today announced an additional USD $5 will be donated for every gift of TripIt Pro purchased at through December 15 to Passports with Purpose, a travel-inspired philanthropic effort to raise money for clean water in Haiti, for which it is a sponsor.

TripIt joins fellow sponsors, TBEX, HomeAway, Travellerspoint, Hostel Bookers, Go with Oh – and more than 175 travel bloggers from around the world – to raise USD $100,000 for five wells in Haiti through a partnership between Passports with Purpose and Each well will serve an average of 370 people in Boucan Carre and Mirebalais.

For the past 21 years, has been working in partnership with people in developing countries to help them meet their own water and sanitation needs. Founded by Gary White and Matt Damon, empowers local communities as invested owners, ensuring that the new, clean water source lasts for generations to come.

Passports with Purpose started in 2008, when Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby, Michelle Duffy of WanderMom, Pam Mandel of Nerd's Eye View and Beth Whitman of Wanderlust and Lipstick began a travel-inspired initiative to raise money online and do long-lasting good for people in the places travelers visit. By uniting a community of more than 150 travel bloggers around the world and leveraging social media platforms, Passports with Purpose has raised money for Heifer International; the Passports School with American Assistance for Cambodia; a village in Tamil Nadu, India for 25 Dalit families with Land for Tillers' Freedom; and the construction of two libraries in Zambia with Room to Read.

How to Get Involved

The annual Passports with Purpose fundraiser began at 12:01 a.m. ET on November 28, 2012 and ends December 11, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET at For each $10 tax-deductible donation on the site, a person can enter to win a prize of their choice, which are secured by participating travel bloggers. Donations for multiple prizes and multiple $10 increments are acceptable, as well as donations without entering for a prize. On December 18, a winner will be randomly selected and notified for each prize. Donations go directly to the 2012 beneficiary,

In addition, TripIt will donate USD $5 for every gift of TripIt Pro that's purchased at between November 28, 2012 at 8 a.m. PT and December 15, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. PT. At $49/year, TripIt Pro is an ideal gift for frequent travelers looking for a helping hand on the road. It sends alerts for check-in, flight changes and cancellations; monitors fares and automatically sends a notification if the price drops; organizes frequent traveler points in one place; and keeps those who need to know in the loop. For more information, visit

About TripIt

TripIt®, the leading mobile travel organizer from Concur® (Nasdaq: CNQR), makes it easy for millions of travelers to organize and share their trips.  Simply forward confirmation emails from anywhere you book to and TripIt automagically creates one simple, smart itinerary to access on a smartphone, calendar, or anywhere online.  For even greater peace of mind while traveling, TripIt Pro acts like a personal travel assistant that keeps travelers in the know regarding flight status, alternate flights, and more; tracks all frequent traveler points in one place; and monitors eligible flights for fare refunds. TripIt for Business is an easier way for companies to organize office travel; keep track of who's traveling when and where, and whether travel dollars are being spent wisely. For more information, please visit and follow @TripIt at

About Concur

Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. Concur's easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time. Concur Connect is the platform that enables the entire travel and expense ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and solution partners to access and extend Concur's T&E cloud. Concur's systems adapt to individual employee preferences and scale to meet the needs of companies from small to large. Learn more at or the Concur blog.

About PR Newswire
Copyright © 2007 PR Newswire. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PRNewswire content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of PRNewswire. PRNewswire shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Latest Cloud Developer Stories
The time is ripe for high speed resilient software defined storage solutions with unlimited scalability. ISS has been working with the leading open source projects and developed a commercial high performance solution that is able to grow forever without performance limitations. ...
The speed of software changes in growing and large scale rapid-paced DevOps environments presents a challenge for continuous testing. Many organizations struggle to get this right. Practices that work for small scale continuous testing may not be sufficient as the requirements gr...
"We got started as search consultants. On the services side of the business we have help organizations save time and save money when they hit issues that everyone more or less hits when their data grows," noted Otis Gospodnetić, Founder of Sematext, in this interview ...
"We've just seen a huge influx of new partners coming into our ecosystem, and partners building unique offerings on top of our API set," explained Seth Bostock, Chief Executive Officer at IndependenceIT, in this interview at 16th Cloud Expo, held June 9-11, 2015, at th...
Explosive growth in connected devices. Enormous amounts of data for collection and analysis. Critical use of data for split-second decision making and actionable information. All three are factors in making the Internet of Things a reality. Yet, any one factor would have an IT or...
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text:
Cloud Expo on Google News
Cloud Expo & Virtualization 2009 East
Smarter Business Solutions Through Dynamic Infrastructure
Smarter Insights: How the CIO Becomes a Hero Again
Windows Azure
Why VDI?
Maximizing the Business Value of Virtualization in Enterprise and Cloud Computing Environments
Messaging in the Cloud - Email, SMS and Voice
Freedom OSS
Stairway to the Cloud
Sun's Incubation Platform: Helping Startups Serve the Enterprise
Cloud Computing & Enterprise IT: Cost & Operational Benefits
How and Why is a Flexible IT Infrastructure the Key To the Future?
Click For 2008 West
Event Webcasts
Avast Selects Nexway's In-Product Store Solution To Boost International Online Sales

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Today, Nexway, a premium e-commerce platform and digital marketing expert, announced that Avast, a leading publisher of free antivirus software, including the world's most widely-used consumer security software, with over 170 million installed protected devices, has chosen to use Nexway In-Product Store (IPS) technology for worldwide online sales of its digital products.

As part of the international agreement, Nexway supports Avast in achieving its strategic goal to market its solutions and consumer products. Avast leverages Nexway's innovative e-commerce technology which is integrated directly into its software products. With Nexway's In-Product Store (IPS) solution, Avast can now market e-commerce offers to customers inside the software, without requiring a traditional web-based e-commerce redirection.

The new IPS technology creates a unique, friction-free e-commerce experience, enabling the user to take advantage of multiple commercial offers, such as purchasing software updates offered directly within the software for a streamlined shopping experience. The consumer completes each step of the purchase process with a higher level of confidence, without leaving the software. Nexway's IPS technology is a perfect match for Avast's business model, which allows consumers to test the product before making any purchase. In-product store offers can be targeted and personalized for each user segment, installed product or individual regions.

For the publisher, the benefit is immediate: conversion rates are increased, acquisition of new customers is optimized and retention of existing customers is improved, as well. Nexway's IPS technology offers new opportunities and a new way to drive online sales strategically and tactically, by reaching customers more directly. The customer relationship and brand awareness are strengthened, as the consumer feels closer to the publisher. With Nexway's IPS technology, consumers are a click away from becoming customers, as each installed product becomes a potential sales agent.

"Nexway has been selected to develop an In-Product Store e-commerce platform for Avast" said Glenn Taylor, Avast vice president of sales. "Nexway challenged our existing business model and proved to increase conversion. We performed extensive AB testing to validate the Nexway solution, closely comparing In-Product-Store results with our traditional web-based solution. We're very excited about the relationship and continued opportunities to improve our business with Nexway", said Glenn Taylor.

"This new partnership proves the success of our international strategy and expansion into major global markets," said Gilles Fabre, Nexway Managing Director. "Working with an industry leader like Avast is a huge reward for our team's effort. We're proud to have gained Avast's confidence and to find our place in this global competition."

Learn more about Nexway In-Product Store at CES, Las Vegas 8th to 11th January 2013.

Email Nexway USA TEAM at

NEXWAY is a global company based in Paris (France), with two main activities: digital content aggregation and e-commerce solution provider for the digital industry. Its primary client base includes software and video game editors as well as their distributors and resellers.

As a digital content provider and distributor, NEXWAY offers a catalogue of 12,000 references (software and video games) through its dedicated e-commerce platform (DistiPaas). Clients include major e-commerce and internet players such as Amazon, Orange, Intel,, T-Online, Telefonica, Dell… As a market leader, NEXWAY is also Microsoft's digital distribution preferred partner for the European market.

As a supplier of e-commerce solutions and services, NEXWAY serves the end consumers of software and video game editors. NEXWAY is also a pioneer in the most innovative sales models such as subscription, item-selling, In-Product Store etc… The technological modules and the value-added services provided by NEXWAY are designed to optimize the consumer life-cycle value (acquisition, retention and value optimization).

NEXWAY operates in the main digital markets throughout the globe with 150 people and local offices in Europe, Japan, North America and Brazil.

More info:

Media Contact: Christian Desert Nexway, Inc., +1 (415) 971 8189,

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach:

About PR Newswire
Copyright © 2007 PR Newswire. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PRNewswire content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of PRNewswire. PRNewswire shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Latest Cloud Developer Stories
The time is ripe for high speed resilient software defined storage solutions with unlimited scalability. ISS has been working with the leading open source projects and developed a commercial high performance solution that is able to grow forever without performance limitations. ...
The speed of software changes in growing and large scale rapid-paced DevOps environments presents a challenge for continuous testing. Many organizations struggle to get this right. Practices that work for small scale continuous testing may not be sufficient as the requirements gr...
"We got started as search consultants. On the services side of the business we have help organizations save time and save money when they hit issues that everyone more or less hits when their data grows," noted Otis Gospodnetić, Founder of Sematext, in this interview ...
"We've just seen a huge influx of new partners coming into our ecosystem, and partners building unique offerings on top of our API set," explained Seth Bostock, Chief Executive Officer at IndependenceIT, in this interview at 16th Cloud Expo, held June 9-11, 2015, at th...
Explosive growth in connected devices. Enormous amounts of data for collection and analysis. Critical use of data for split-second decision making and actionable information. All three are factors in making the Internet of Things a reality. Yet, any one factor would have an IT or...
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avdvdb homepage

What's avdvdb

(A)ny (V)ideo to (DVD) (B)urner (avdvdb) is a set of bash scripts which will do the process of converting, authoring and burning any video to a dvd compliant disc in a really simple way even though it's command-line based.
You will need: With all this avdvdb will join every video file, convert it to mpeg2, add subtitles and make a dvd with a main menu and a scenes selection menu. Every scene (chapter) is set to be made every 10 minutes unless you are in episode mode (-e), in this case they will be made at the beginning of evey file specified (as it assumes their are episodes).

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Download links

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svn co https://avdvdb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/avdvdb

Well it's a command-line based script but...
avdvdb in action 1
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About the author

My name is Carlos Diaz I am currently studying "Informatics Engineering" in Spain, if you want to contact me please send an e-mail to:
Carlos Diaz, 2010SourceForge.net Logo Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional


text:
Award Events Archives

SAAR’s headquarters named ‘Best Rehab Office Project’  Elnur Amikishiyev

The Scottsdale Area Association of Realtors® (SAAR), a trade organization headquartered in Scottsdale for the past 50 years, recently repurposed an existing vacant building in Scottsdale’s Perimeter Center to use as its new headquarters. Growth of the 8,000-member organization prompted the move from SAAR’s longtime home in Downtown Scottsdale. It purchased the vacant building at… Read More →

Phoenix Chamber honors winners of 2015 IMPACT Awards

The Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce (GPCC) recognized eight outstanding Valley businesses at the 28th annual IMPACT Awards today, with Pinnacle Transplant Technologies and Goodwill of Central Arizona earning accolades as the 2015 IMPACT Businesses of the Year. The luncheon celebrated the remarkable contributions these companies and their employees make to the Greater Phoenix community.… Read More →

Meet the 2015 AAED EDDE award winners

Galleria Corporate Center, new home to weebly, for Scottsdale Economic Development Department

  The Arizona Association for Economic Development has been a community of practitioners who have worked through four decades to improve business attraction throughout the state. Every year, AAED awards Economic Development Distinguished by Excellence (EDDE) awards to those who keep the nonprofit organization at the top of its game and those who best uphold… Read More →

Az Business names Healthcare Leadership Awards finalists

Each year, AZ Business magazine hosts the Healthcare Leadership Awards to honor the women, men and institutions that bring excellence and innovation to Arizona’s healthcare sector. Az Business is proud to announce the 2015 Healthcare Leadership Awards finalists, who were chosen by a panel of industry experts and will be recognized at the Healthcare Leadership… Read More →

Sam Fox is UA Eller’s Executive of the Year

Sam Fox, CEO and Founder of Fox Restaurant Concepts, will be recognized as the 2015 University of Arizona Executive of the Year on Friday, April 17. The luncheon takes place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Westin La Paloma Resort, 3800 East Sunrise, in Tucson. “Sam studied real estate finance at the University… Read More →

Az Business honors Industry Leaders of Arizona winners

Executives from Sprouts Farmers Market accept an Industry Leaders of Arizona Award Wednesday at the Camelback Inn. Photo by Shavon Rose, AZ Big Media

Some of the most dynamic businesses in Arizona were honored Wednesday as winners at the 2015 Industry Leaders of Arizona (ILoA) Awards, which recognize the contributions and impact of Arizona‐based companies on both the economy of Arizona and in the communities they serve. Companies were selected from five key industries: • Aerospace and defense •… Read More →

Az Business names Industry Leaders of Arizona finalists

Az Business magazine is proud to present the Industry Leaders of Arizona (ILoA) Awards, which recognize the contributions and impact of Arizona‐based companies on both the economy of Arizona and in the communities they serve. Companies were selected from five key industries: • Aerospace and defense • Commercial and residential real estate service contractors •… Read More →

Az Business announces finalists for ACC Awards

Az Business magazine, in conjunction with the State Bar of Arizona, have announced the finalists for the 2015 Arizona Corporate Counsel (ACC) Awards. The finalists and winners will be honored at an awards dinner and reception on Jan. 15, 2015 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort & Spa in Scottsdale. Click here for… Read More →

Phoenix Center Announces Mayor’s Arts Awards

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and Phoenix Center for the Arts will present the Mayor’s Arts Awards, November 21, 2014, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. Tickets cost just $75 and are available for purchase at the Phoenix Center for the Arts box office or by calling 602-254-3100. Art lovers and community-minded individuals can reserve their spot in this… Read More →

BOMA Greater Phoenix TOBY Awards 2013

Portales I Exterior 2, WEB

This year’s BOMA Greater Phoenix TOBY Awards were presented Nov. 15 at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown. AZRE Magazine would like to congratulate the seven winners of this year’s BOMA Greater Phoenix TOBY Awards. 100,000- 249,999 SF Category: Portales Corporate Center II 4800 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale Owned by: Principal Real Estate Investors Architect: DFD Conoyer… Read More →

Lincoln Property Company Grows Portfolio to Highest Point in Office’s History

Game and Fish, WEB

The Desert West Region of Lincoln Property Company (LPC) this week pushed its management portfolio to the highest point in the office’s history with the assignment of 7025 North Scottsdale. Under the leadership of new Director of Management Services Alisa Timm, the firm also retained 100 percent of its nearly 6 million-square-foot portfolio in 2013… Read More →

Arizona Architects Honored at AIA Awards Gala Saturday

Estrella Hall

The American Institute of Architects Arizona Design Awards recognize excellence in design, planning and construction of projects located anywhere in the world that are designed by AIA Arizona architects registered and licensed in Arizona. The awards honor the highest standards of design in response to user requirements, site, context, climate and environment. Each entry, regardless… Read More →

Twin Arrows Named 'Best Native American Casino' at G2E Conference

Twin Arrows Wins at G2E

The Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise’s (NNGE) Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort, located 20 minutes east of Flagstaff, Ariz., was recognized as the top Native American Casino Facility in the nation at this week’s G2E (Global Gaming Expo) Conference. The Friedmutter Group of Las Vegas, which designed the structure in collaboration with Navajo tribal members, and… Read More →

Clear Title Agency Of Arizona Ranked On Inc. 500/5000 List

  Clear Title Agency of Arizona, a leader in commercial and residential title and escrow services, is ranked No. 988 on the seventh annual Inc. 500|5000 List, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Clear Title’s 436 percent growth during the past three years helped secure the competitive ranking among an elite group… Read More →


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Private Ice Rentals

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Contact Us

Sharon Buck

bouquet toss
Photo from YouTube

Should Sharon Toss Her Bouquet Like THIS? [POLL]

I'm all for having fun at my upcoming wedding to Chad. We want to have a quick ceremony, maybe a half hour of pictures and then dig right into the food! Hey, we like to eat...

But there are traditions that have to be dealt with: the cake cutting, first dance and, to some men and women, the tossing of the bridal bouquet and garter.

Having been to many a wedding, I have never caught a bouquet. I've been trying to think of something creative to do to make it different but I will definitely NOT go this far!

Read More

Lost On A Mountain In Maine
Photo from YouTube

‘Lost On A Mountain In Maine’ Becoming a Movie

Donn Fendler's novel, the true story of his experiences of being lost on a mountain in Maine when he was 12 years old, has been turned in to a movie!

Take a look at the trailer here!!

Golf-Sharon and Luis Tiant
Photo by Sharon Buck

Sharon Hung Out With the Red Sox…For Charity

I received a call a few weeks ago asking me to be the host of the 2013 Ray Haskell Ford Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association Golf Classic at the Belgrade Lake Golf Club yesterday. It was all to benefit the Alfond Youth Center youth programs.

Who am I to turn down anything to do with children? In my job, I get to help others and I love doing it!

But I think I received more than I gave yesterday. I got to meet some of my favorite team!

Read More

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The Author

Sam Mills

A-level student, politically-active Football Manager enthusiast and vegetarian. Write in my spare time as a passion. Please let me know how to improve in the comments, criticism welcomed. Follow me on twitter: @SamMills11

Harry Jamie Redknapp 1

The paternal bond

by Sam Mills

Sam Mills looks at some of English football’s father/son relationships.

January Arrivals XI

by Sam Mills

Sam Mills picks a team of the best Premier League signings during the January transfer window.


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Friday, 1 November 2013

Grocer's Illicit trade in bottled beer.

The general public. What a bunch of vicious, back-stabbing bastards. Otherwise tney wouldn't have grassed up Mr. Lowden.

On the other hand, as a grocer by trade, he must have been well aware that a licence was required for the sale of beer. Who grassed him up? Quite likely someone in possession of such a licence - a landlord or off-licence holder - who didn't like unfair competition.

AN anonymous letter led to the prosecution of William Lowden merchant Toll House, Tyrebagger, Newhills, at a J.P. Court in Aberdeen yesterday for trafficking in exciseable liquor without a certificate. He was fined £10 with the alternative of thirty days' imprisonment by Sir Sydney Gam mell and Mr G. Harper.

Mr Farquhar MacRitchie, solicitor, tendered plea of guilty for accused, a country grocer, to a charge of selling thirteen half-pints of beer between May 26, 1939, and November 25, 1939, to various people.

These people, Mr MacRitchie said, were Lowden's customers, and once or twice he gave them a bottle of beer when they paid their accounts. They came pretty frequently and, knowing he had beer in the house, suggested that he might give them a small bottle. He could not afford to give them beer for nothing on every occasion. They suggested paying for it and he fell to the temptation.

The beer was not in stock, but was from his private supply. Mr George Alexander, prosecuting, said that

when the police searched the premises they found two dozen bottles of aerated waters, four dozen and eleven bottles of beer and three dozen empty bottles. Investigations revealed that from one firm from November 3 to December 3 he received sixty-six dozen bottles of beer.

During the past year his regular supply was from thirty to fifty dozen a week. It was a really serious case of wholesale dealing.

Mr MacRitchie objected to these charges because Lowden had not had an opportunity of answering them. They ought not to be taken into account. Sir Sydney Gammell said they did not charge a man with having various quantities of liquor. They charged him with selling definite drinks to definite people. In investigation it came out that these things took place. There was no excuse for carrying what was really an illicit trade which reached considerable magnitude. "
Aberdeen Journal - Thursday 11 January 1940, page 5.

Thirty to fifty dozen a week doesn't sound like a "personal supply" to me. Even I don't get through more than a couple of dozens a week. Even just selling the odd single bottle to his customers when paying their accounts wouldn't account for that much beer.  It sounds to me as if selling beer was part of his regular business.

Given the seriousness of the crime, a £10 fine seems a lenient sentence.

No comments:


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Home / John Best

John Best

John Best had enjoyed a lengthy media management career, in television and radio and now print. As Vice President, News at CHCH in Hamilton, John oversaw a significant expansion of the news operation. He founded Independent Satellite News, Canada’s only television news service providing national content to Canadian independent TV stations. John is a frequent political commentator on radio and television, a documentary producer and author of a book and numerous articles on historical and political subjects. John is a past recipient of the New York Festival’s award for writing in the International TV category.

Hamilton transit picture still muddy

lrt debate

A fair criticism of Hamilton Council is that it tends to avoid taking action on tough, divisive issues until the very last minute. The stadium location is a prime example. Now in 2016 it appears council is prepared to tackle the issue of transit in Hamilton. Arguably council has already taken the first step with its approval of the Rapid ...

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Transit panel needs good information

If Hamilton councillors go ahead with a citizen panel on public transit it behooves them to make sure the panel has good unbiased information. There will be no shortage of LRT advocates making their case; we’ve seen them in the last go-round which resulted in $9 Milllion in public money being spent to promote both LRT and the B-Line route ...

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Same performance becoming tired

It doesn’t have the longevity of Agatha Christie’s the Mousetrap or les Miserables, but last month’s performance by the Hamilton Waterfront Trust in front of city council had a familiar ring. It started as it has several times in the past with a walk-on presentation with no advance agenda for council to see—this despite the fact that the HWT had ...

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Bay Observer communication with Ontario Ombudsman

    Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario                                                            April 9, 2015 Bell Trinity Square 483 Bay Street, 10th Floor, South Tower Toronto, ON M5G 2C9   Dear Sir/Madam   For several ...

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Metrolinx open to bus-first approach to transit in Hamilton

Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig

When Hamilton Transit Chief David Dixon presented his 10 year transit master plan to council last month, Mayor Eisenberger and some councillors expressed concern that the plan, which called for an immediate build-up of bus capacity would send a signal to Metrolinx that Hamilton did not want LRT. This despite the fact that the plan made it clear that the ...

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Going where Bettie Page never got

Watching Katy Perry shooting through the air with a comet trailing behind her at the Superbowl XLIX half time, I realized she reminded me of someone, but who? A chance trip to Steel City Video to return a movie provided the answer. There, tucked away in the B’s, between The Best of Me and the Boxtrolls was a Katy Perry ...

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A golden opportunity for transit clarity

lrt debate

Forget about the he-said, she-said news conferences that followed Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s meeting with Premier Wynne to discuss transit. It is time for Hamilton council to seize the opportunity to take charge of its transit future, hopefully in a spirit of pragmatism and seeking the best solution for the entire community. The solution might be as simple as allowing  city ...

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Queen’s Park LRT summit exposes Hamilton’s lack of readiness

LRT ham

It looks like some political fence-mending will be required between Hamilton and Queen’s Park following Mayor Fred Eisenberger’s  meeting last month with Premier Wynne to discuss LRT funding. The meeting was billed as an attempt to get some clarity around the amount of cash the province was willing to give Hamilton to fund transit. What ensued, however, was a pair ...

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Former World Bank head clears the air

One time IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on trial in France for pimping and abetting prostitution has refuted charges that he is a sex- obsessed satyr and rapist. According to Strauss-Kahn he adhered strictly  to an almost Spartan regimen of four orgies a year. Details here:

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Delta Secondary is slated for closure despite the expenditure of $5 Million on upgrades in recent years

A group of Hamiltonians critical of the way schools are closed in Hamilton has decided to develop a body armed with  independent knowledge to counter the various provincial formulae that are currently used to justify school closures. Hamilton activist Gary Santucci first became a vocal critic of the school closure process during the controversial demolition of the historic Sanford Avenue ...

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  • Children’s Vision and Eye Exams

    You know your child inside out, but there is one thing you can't know and that is how well they see.
  • Braydin’s Story

    After visiting a Doctor of Optometry, Braydin’s mom realized the importance of bringing her child in for an eye exam. Watch his story.
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    Find out how a Doctor of Optometry helped diagnose Shrie with meningioma during a routine eye exam.
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  • Cute alert! 10 month old Piper can see for the first time.

    Imagine what your reaction would like if you were seeing the world clearly for the first time just like Piper! We can’t resist the beaming smile on this little ones face. Piper was 10 months old when her Doctor…

  • Feed Your Eyes – 5 Snacks for Healthier Eyes

    Just as we drink water to stay hydrated or fill up on fruits and veggies to maintain our health, it’s also important to nurture our eyes with food. Keep your eyes in tip top shape with these great go-to snack…

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A naturalist’s must-see destination: Cape May County (and, the rest of south Jersey)

Earlier this year I was happy to see that the federal government had awarded New Jersey a $1 million grant to protect the ecologically sensitive wetlands in Cape May County (“Where Nature Smiles for 30 Miles” and where my hometown is located). The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will use the money to purchase 140 acres to add to the existing 17,000-acre Cape May Wetlands Wildlife Management Area. These wetlands are not only where I fell in love with the natural world, but are also home to many species of migratory birds and act as a nursery for many commercially important species of fish that spawn in the estuaries.

So with a combination of my pride in the DEP’s award and my feelings that an ‘ode to home’ in the Where We Live series is long overdue, I decided to take the time to compile a list of “10 unique and interesting natural history or maritime features of south Jersey”. I am sure there are plenty more out there, so please feel free to comment below or send me an email at info@beachchairscientist.com if you have any additional comments or questions.

1. South Jersey sits to the east of the Delaware Bay. The Delaware Bay boasts the second-highest concentration of shorebirds in North America (second to Quivira, Kansas which is mid-point in the United States). The Bay is mid-point in travel for many birds that travel from the warm weather of South America up to the Arctic. The Bay is also a perfect wintering habitat for many species of songbirds and waterfowl.

2. The world’s largest population of Atlantic horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) spawn in Delaware Bay.

3. At the entrance of the Delaware Bay is the Cape May Lighthouse, built in 1859, which documents the beginning of Cape May County’s nautical history. There is also the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, built in 1874, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Cape May County peninsula in North Wildwood. Speaking of Cape May, the famous Cape May diamonds people have been looking for since the 1880’s are actually quartz crystals that wash up as smooth rock.

4. At 3800 Boardwalk Mall in Wildwood you can see the 43rd Wyland Whaling Wall, “Humpbacks off the Jersey Coast” (pictured right). Wyland is known as “one of America’s most unique creative influences, and a leading advocate for marine resource conservation”.

5. The A.J. Meerwald, New Jersey’s official Tall Ship, began life as a sailing schooner built for oystering,  but was commandeered during World War II to serve as a fireboat on the Delaware Bay.

6. The Stone Harbor Point is one of the few parcels of New Jersey’s coast that has not been stabilized (86% of the shoreline has been stabilized) leaving a remarkable wide open space that has been shaped (and reshaped) by waves and tides for centuries. It also has one of the last thickets of bayberry left on New Jersey’s coast.

7. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine has the impressive achievement of responding to over 3,900 strandings of whales, dolphins, seals, and sea turtles (all, of course, done with a permit and authorization from the state and federal governments).

8. In south Jersey you’ll also find the Pine Barrens, a distinctive natural area spanning over  1 million acres of the Outer Coastal Plain (pictured left) in southern and central New Jersey. Dr. Witmer Stone, an early New Jersey natural scientist described the area as “always sandy and thickly covered with more or less scrubby vegetation, interspersed with swamps and infested by hordes of mosquitoes”. This area is particularly prone to fires and some species, such as the rare pygmy Pitch Pine, have become adapted to the fires and count on the fires to reproduce. The sandy soil of the Pine Barrens is sometimes referred to as sugar sand.

9. Blueberries were officially named the state fruit in 2004. New Jersey produces the second most blueberries in the world (Maine is first). Hammonton is considered the “Blueberry Capital of the World”.

10. After the federal government designated the Outer Coastal Plain as an American Vinticultureal Area, south Jersey started up on the wine trend! Now south Jersey has more than 20 fully functioning wineries and vineyards.

As Jacques Cousteau said, “People protect what they love“. I am sure you can tell from this blog that I do love the ocean. This love no doubt came from growing up in south Jersey and spending time everyday at the beach or the nearby Bay.  Here’s a poem I wrote (almost 12 years ago) about the area. I hope you’re inspired to learn about the natural history of your own area – especially on this upcoming Earth Day weekend.


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Review and Giveaway: Tasty Cookies from Dr. Lucy’s!

November 16, 2012 By: Kathleen

Is there anything better than getting cookies in the mail?

Let me rephrase the question — how awesome is it when you come home from a long day and it’s cold outside, MUCH colder than you expected, and goodness gracious you are not wearing enough clothes, and all you want to do is take a hot bath when you get home, and you’re grumpy, and… you see a package. You open it. It has a variety of cookies in it!

Grumpy has left the building.

Also, how awesome is it to get cookies that are great, period. Not just “good for the gluten-free variety” but good. Darn good. That’s what these are.

dr lucy's gluten free cookies giveaway

make the holidays sweeter

I have a gluten sensitivity, but my friends and family do not. So I thought I’d share these cookies with them, and see what they thought.

My family loved them. They were excited to see cookies in my house, and really excited that they didn’t “taste gluten-free” which is a sincere compliment from people who can more easily digest wheat.

My sister’s favorite were the chocolate merry mint, and my mom loved the ginger snaps, which were lemony and gingery all in the same bite.

Lucy’s has generously offered one of our readers an assorted basket of treats, just in time for Thanksgiving!

lucy's gluten free gift basket

Do you know gluten-free people? Are you lucky enough to have someone with fussy dietary needs in your life?

Then, become a fan of Dr. Lucy’s on Facebook, and you can win!

Good luck!

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Sunday, 15 June 2014

#Juneathon day 15 - better than nowt!

The thing about this Juneathon challenge is it makes you get creative with squeezing in exercise! Today was never going to be a good one for fitting in a lot as it was church then a lunch party... However I was determined to do something!

So when I had to nip to the cash point I jogged instead of walking (the fact it was raining was an impetus). Turned out this only added up to 0.5 km of running on my iPhone app. This was deemed too pathetic to be my final result, but how to do more?

Next up the library dash... If you use the car park for less than 10 minutes its free - a great incentive to run to the library and back to return some DVDs... I made it back in under the time but only clocked another 300m of running.

One final chance at Asda. I parked as far from the entrance as possible then jogged across the car park to get in to do my shopping. A jog back would surely make it to 1km? No such luck the app didn't add any of this to my total for the day...

  1. Coombe Mill (Fiona)15 June 2014 at 18:34

    Stunning sunset.

  2. What a beautiful sunset! Is that a creature I spy on top of the shed??

  3. Twinstiarasandtantrums Lisa15 June 2014 at 20:51

    Wow great sky!

  4. Beautifully coloured sky. Great photo :-)xx

  5. E told me that I had to see it!

  6. my goodness what a gorgeous sky

  7. Oh what a beautiful sunset!

I love it when people leave a message


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Human Services Neighborhoods Planning Initiatives Accessibility City Hall Emergency City Government Departments Public Safety Publications Services A-Z
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News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, July 31, 2008

National Night Out Tuesday

Neighborhoods throughout Bellevue are being invited to join forces Tuesday with thousands of communities nationwide for the 25th annual "National Night Out" crime and drug prevention event.

In Bellevue, from 4 to 7 p.m., there will be a community party at the Bellevue Police Crossroads station, on the 1200 block of 156th Avenue Northeast.  There will be games and prizes for the kids and demonstrations on ways to keep safe for adults.

Entertainment and food will be available for all. This is going to be a great opportunity to get out and meet your local police officers and neighbors as well as to learn about ways to organize your neighborhoods to fight crime. For more information, contact Officer Tory Mangione at the Bellevue Police Crossroads Station or by phone at 425-452-7933.

Local block watch groups also organize block parties in their own neighborhoods too.

National Night Out is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch, and co-sponsored locally by the Bellevue Police Department, the Crossroads Shopping Center, Target, Top Foods Grocery Store, Baskin Robbins Ice Cream and Westernco Donuts.

It will involve over 10,000 communities from all-50 states, U.S. Territories, Canadian cities and military bases around the world. In all, close to 34 million people are expected to participate in "America's Night out against Crime."

National Night Out is a civic event designed to: (1) Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness; (2) Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime efforts; (3) Send a message to criminals letting them know neighborhoods are organized and fighting back; and (4) Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships.

Return to News Release Index

Contact Information

450 110th Ave. NE
P.O. Box 90012
Bellevue, WA 98009
Contact: Officer Seth Tyler
Phone: 425-452-4129
E-mail: bellevuepd@bellevuewa.gov

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Why a great teacher fears standardized tests and how to make it better.

Sarah Hagan is a great teacher. But she fears standardized tests:
Will I be freaking out Monday morning? Yeah. Do you want to know why? I'm going to be in a room with my Algebra 1 students who are being forced to take a standardized test. A test that will tell my school district how well I did my job. A test that will label my students as smart or dumb. A test that will make me feel like a success or a failure. A test that will determine whether my students will be able to graduate with their high school diploma. A test that my kids will be stressing about because I've spent the entire year reminding them what a big deal it is. A test that many of my students are already convinced they are going to fail because they've never passed their standardized math tests before. (source)
This quote shook me. Sarah is a dedicated teacher. When she gets evaluated, the results should reflect her great performance. Her students are learning. When they get evaluated, their results should reflect their improvement. These things aren't happening. And the blame lies squarely on the evaluation.
Sarah points out several problems with the test, none of them focused on its content, all of them focused on how it makes her and her students feel. I want to hone in on one of these, the students who are made to "feel dumb".
The problem is in the report:
The report focuses on student performance compared to their peers. Say a freshman starts algebra 3 years behind their peers and they finish algebra 1 year behind their peers. By any realistic measure, they have made an amazing gain. But when they see their progress report, they won't see "Amazing Gain!", instead they will see "Below average". Again.
Imagine how frustrating this is for a student that is behind. When they work hard, they remain behind. What's the point of working hard? Imagine how deceitful this is to an advanced student. When they slack for a year they are remain advanced. Why not slack?
These reports emphasize the wrong outcome. Fortunately, there is a simple remedy. Rather than comparing a student to other students, compare them to their past. Show them how much better they are than last year. The reports should say something like "This year, Genevieve correctly solved 5 types of problems that she could not solve last year". By this measure most students will improve every year because most students learn every year. Instead of feeling dumb as ever, students will feel smarter than ever. This is better, not just because it is more compassionate, but also because it is true.

Learning the rules of image transformation

text - code - both

How a computer can learn the rules of rotation, reflection, scaling, translation, and many other transformations that images can undergo.

We recognize images despite transformations.

As your eyes move across this sentence, the image hitting your retina is constantly changing. Yet you hardly notice. One reason you do not is because your brain recognizes letters regardless of their position in your field of view.

Consider the following image. Look first at the blue dot and then at the red. Notice that the number '2' between them is recognizable regardless of your focus. This, despite the fact that the image is falling on a completely different set of neurons.

Images go through many such transformations. They reverse, rotate, scale, translate and distort in many ways we have no words for. That's not to mention all the changes in lighting that can occur. Through all of this they remain recognizable.

The number of transformations that can happen to an image is infinite, but that does not mean that all transformations are possible or probable. Many never occur in the real world and our brain cannot recognize the images after these improbable transformations.

But computers are bad at learning the rules of image transformation.

The rules of transformation are important for anyone who wants to teach a computer how to process images. The algorithms that are best at image recognition learn a representation of the world that considers many shifts of focus. These are called translations as illustrated above.

However, these algorithms do not learn that images can be translated, the way they learn to recognize digits. Instead the laws of translation are programmed into the algorithm by the researcher.

Would it be possible to have computers learn about translation without telling them explicitly? What about the myriad other transformations that are possible?

I propose that these transformations can be learned.

I propose they can, and submit the following experiment as evidence. First, I show that we can learn that flipping an image upside down is a valid transformation, but randomly rearranging the pixels is not. Then I show that examples each of the aforementioned transformations can be discovered. Finally, I wax poetic about the future of this kind of work.

note: I can't claim that this work is unique. I just hope that it is interesting.

What data are we using?

I will use MNIST data, a handy collection of handwritten digits.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-2

Where to focus?

We will focus on a small region of data. Specifically, the three vertical pixels highlighted in each digit below.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-3

What patterns are common?

Next we look at the pixel patterns across many images.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-4

We see that certain patterns are more common than others. For example, there are many cases where one of the three pixels is blank but only one case where this is the middle pixel.

Clearly the patterns observed are not random ones.

Upside down, the patterns have similar frequencies.

Then we flip the pixels upside down and look at the patterns.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-5

Notice that the patterns have roughly the same frequency as before. Flipping upside down does not substantially change the image.

But switching the first two pixels produces very different frequencies.

Finally, we make an improbable change, switching the first two pixels, while keeping the third in place.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-6

The patterns have a very different frequency than the prior cases. For example, the pattern where two filled in pixels surround a blank pixel is common, where it was only observed once in the previous two examples.

What's going on?

We are seeing the difference between a probable image transformation, flipping upside down, and an improbable one, only switching the first two pixels. Objects in the real world flip upside down regularly. But, unless we are stretching taffy or entertaining contortionists, it is unusual to see the middle of something switch places with its top.

After a probable transformation, the image retains the same patterns as any other image. After an improbable transformation the image contains improbable patterns.

Can we quantify the effect?

We can estimate the likelihood of each reordering given the frequencies observed in the original order. For example, if a pattern, off-on-on, occurred 20% of the time in the original image then it will most likely occur 20% of the time in a valid rearrangement of the image. Concretely we use the multinomial distribution.

order loglikelihood
1 2 3 -19.92
1 3 2 -558.85
2 1 3 -596.12
2 3 1 -597.38
3 1 2 -583.60
3 2 1 -45.92

We see quantitative evidence that reinforces our visual proof and our intuition. The reverse order, "3 2 1", is more similar to the original order, "1 2 3", than any other possible transformation.

Let us consider a wider frame of reference.

Up until now, we have considered a very limited set of transformations, each possible order of three pixels. Now let's focus on a wider region. We will continue to use the three pixels as before, but we will compare them to a wider field, the 12 surrounding pixels, highlighted below.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-8

What transformations are likely?

Now let us consider each set of three pixels from this wider field in each of their possible orders. As before, we will use the multinomial distribution to determine how similar each set and order is to our original three pixels.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-9

Here we see the sets of pixels most like our original three. The most likely set (our original three itself) occupies the top left corner and the subsequent images show other sets in order of descending likelihood. For clarity, a red dot has been put on the 'middle' pixel, where 'middle' is defined as the middle pixel in the original image.

First, note that the middle pixel always stays in the middle through all of the likely transformations. This is because likely transformations tend to maintain order (except that they may flip entirely as illustrated before).

Next, notice that we see examples of each of the likely transformations that we already know to exist.

  • Rotations are common, vertical and horizontal patterns appearing nearly equally often.
  • Reversals are similarly common, though they cannot be seen as the ends are indistinguishable.
  • Translations are ubiquitous as can be clearly seen by how the pixels shift within the region in focus from left to right, top to bottom.
  • Distortions are common, very often we see not-quite straight lines, ones bent or stretched.
  • Scaling occurs, though it is rare, only occasionally do we see pixels more than one unit apart. I haven't determined why scaling is rare in this image. Obviously in the real world scaling is very common as you can see if you press your face against the screen.
Through all of these transformations, the basic pattern holds, the middle pixel in the original image remains the middle through each likely transformation. We see no examples of taffy stretching contortionism.

What transformations are unlikely?

Next lets look at those transformations ranked least likely. This will assure you that I have not hoodwinked you by divining patterns in the results that would be seen regardless of their order.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-10

Here we see the misfits, the unlikely patterns. Like before, except the top left is occupied by the least likely transformation.

The thing to notice here is the breakdown of our basic pattern. What was the middle, marked in red, is no longer in the middle. Instead we see the two tails abutting one another and the red middle cast aside. It stands to reason that these transformations are as unlikely as taffy and contortionists.

We understand that images can transform, but computers, generally, are blind to this fact. Here, I have given a simple visual demonstration of how those rules of transformation can be discovered by a computer using real world datasets with little external expertise.

Certainly, huge strides in computational efficiency would be necessary to make this a practical approach to image recognition problems, and it may well be that we can describe the rules of image transformation so well that a computer need never discover them on its own.

However, it is important to realize that such discovery is possible. And this does show practical promise for several reasons:

  1. Not all transformations are easy to describe. Even this simple inquiry uncovered many likely image transformations which are difficult to describe formally. Likely images were stretched and bent in ways that are quite familiar to the eye, but difficult to describe using the geometric transformations we learned in high school. We can only explicitly teach computers those things that we can describe, for the rest, computers, like us, must learn on their own.
  2. Not all datasets are so well understood. I have focused on image and image transformation, a subject both intuitive and well studied. But there are many datasets for which we have much less intuition and understanding. Think for instance of weather systems for which we have only recently developed sophisticated datasets and modeling tools or genetic sequences which are still 95% mysterious to us. In these less-familiar domains we might find that an algorithm which discovers the rules of transformation can quickly outpace the experts who attempt the same.
  3. At some point new rules must be discovered. While we may be able to impart our computers with all the benefit of our expertise in the same way that we impart it upon children, at some point, they must reach the boundaries of what is known. If computers are to join us in the exploration of brave new domains of thought, they must become more adept thinkers. Discovering the rules of transformation as I have illustrated here is part of what makes us intelligent. It is a necessary step to producing truly intelligent machines.

Do they love to learn?

Why our standardized exams should measure student attitude.

Editorial By Ben
Great teachers inspire their students.  They show them the beauty of a subject and ignite within them a burning desire to learn.
The effect of such a teacher reaches far beyond his or her classroom. Our lives are shaped by these people because, once the will to learn is burning bright within us, it continues without the catalytic spark of its creator.
And yet, when we use standardized exams to measure our students, our classrooms, and our education system, we ignore attitude.  The teacher that inspired a lifelong passion for learning is little acknowledged for his or her labor, the fruits of which are spread across the remainder of the student's lifetime.
Why is this? Why do we ignore this fundamental outcome that aligns so closely with our ideal of great teaching?

Perhaps we cannot measure attitude?

At this point, you are probably thinking that we don't measure attitude for a good reason. Several objections come to mind:
  • Perhaps attitude cannot be measured reliably by a multiple choice survey?
  • Perhaps our intuition is wrong -- ability has little to do with attitude?
  • Perhaps measuring attitude is too difficult and time consuming?

Except that we already have.

I could address these plausible objections one by one using a combination of research and reasonable arguments. Fortunately, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has made my job easy.
In 2012, PISA administered an international Mathematics exam to half a million 15-year-olds around the world. This exam included a 30-minute survey on student attitudes. They have also been gracious enough to provide an extremely good write up of their results.
This quick assessment of attitude was highly informative.  For example, PISA measured students’ math anxiety by asking how much they agree or disagree with statements like, “I get very nervous doing mathematics problems.”  A student who was among the top 15% most anxious math students was likely to perform more than one full grade level below his or her peers with average math anxiety.
Many attitudes had similar correlations with student success (see table 1).

Example Question
Difference in performance (grade level)
Sense of belonging
I feel like an outsider at school.
I give up easily.
Openness to problem solving
I am quick to understand things.
Perceived control of success
Whether or not I do well in mathematics is completely up to me.
Intrinsic motivation to learn
I do mathematics because I enjoy it.
Extrinsic motivation to learn
I will learn many things in mathematics that will help me get a job.
I can understanding graphs presented in newspapers.
I learn mathematics quickly.
I get very nervous doing mathematics problems.
Table 1 - How math attitudes related to math aptitude
Students taking the PISA exam were asked several attitude questions in each of the above categories. A one standard deviation difference in their responses corresponded to the following grade level change in performance. One grade level corresponds to one typical year of improvement. An example of each type of question is provided.  (summarized from data presented in the pisa report)

Perhaps aptitude already tells us everything we need to know?

Okay, so attitude can be quickly measured and it correlates to aptitude.  But if we are going to include it on our standardized exams, it must provide additional value.  Perhaps aptitude already tells us everything we need to know?

Except that attitude precedes aptitude.

Intuitively we know that changes in attitude regularly precede changes in aptitude.  A student gets inspired, works hard at math, and then becomes better at math.
At PERTS, I work with a group that delivers growth mindset interventions.  These interventions are designed to convince students that the brain is like a muscle: it grows stronger with effort.  We work hard to measure the effect of these interventions both on attitude and aptitude.  The pattern that we see is reliable.  First, students become convinced that the brain is like a muscle, and then their grades go up.  We can predict the long term success of a student earlier and better if we measure their changes in attitude.
Moreover, there is solid evidence that GPA predicts college success better than standardized exam scores (using both is best of all).  Many researchers believe that this is because GPA measures 'non-cognative factors', things like attitude and behavior. Additional evidence that our standardized exams would be more powerful instruments if they measured attitude too.
However, more work in this area is needed.  We know that attitude precedes aptitude, but we don’t know by how much or how precisely we could detect the effect.  How much better would our long term predictions of success become if we measured student attitudes?  How much better could we assess the impact of teachers and teaching methodologies?  The answers to these questions requires a study on the scale of the PISA exam; one that follows a group of students over an extended time period.

Ok, I'm convinced. What can I do to help?

PISA's work is a great start, and there are others too. But there is still a lot of work to do as a society to in order to get attitude assessment included as a basic part of our standardized education assessment.
  • Tell your friends - Our education system is ultimately beholden to us. If we as a collective think that measuring student attitude is a priority, then it will become a reality.
  • Measure your students - If you are an educator, measure your student's attitudes and use these measurements to evaluate your impact.  PERTS developed an assessment that can be done online or you can adapt the PISA pencil and paper assessment.
  • Help us quantify the effect of attitude on aptitude - If you help to administer education to large groups of students you could help the most by measuring student attitudes over time.  If someone can prove that measurable changes in attitude regularly precede and predict meaningful changes in aptitude, then the case for measuring attitude will be made much stronger.

And what will the future look like?

Imagine a world where 'teaching to the test' means inspiring your students, igniting within them a burning desire to learn that contributes to happiness and success throughout their entire lives.  This world can be ours if we can learn how to test what matters most.

Nice Virus

On the whole, viruses are actually good for their hosts.

Editorial by Ben
It is a common misconception that most biological viruses are bad for their hosts. The driving reason for this misunderstanding is that the viruses we care about are bad, Influenza, HIV, etc. These viruses hurt us and we hurt them.
But these pathogenic viruses represent a very very small minority of the viruses in the world. If you sample seawater you will find 10 x more viral particles than bacterial cells. Could all of these packets of RNA and DNA be bad?
The answer is no. What we are calling a virus would be more accurately called a message. Just like messages on the internet, a small minority are pathogenic viruses aimed to hurt their hosts. But the vast majority are welcome messages. If they were not, then a cell, just like a computer, would simply stop listening to external messages.
If the cell is listening to these messages even though some of them are fatal, they must confer some evolutionary advantage. The total advantage of the useful messages must outweigh the detriment of the pathogenic ones. What sort of advantages are these?
In essence viruses play the role of a letter in a critical message exchange system. We don't know everything that RNA and DNA do, but we do know that viruses help to spread useful bits of code between cells. This includes useful proteins, regulatory sequences, and sequences that we do not yet understand the value of.

One in a Thousand

Yesterday I saw a report on an experiment that we were conducting at the Khan Academy.  Students in the experimental group were becoming proficient at more exercises than students in the control group.  The effect was highly significant p < 0.001!  Hurray, the experiment worked, time to make a change, right?

Not so fast.  This was an A vs A test, which means that the experimental condition was exactly the same as the control condition.  There should not have been any difference at all.  So what went wrong?

Lets think about a p value < 0.001.  That means we are confident 1:1000 that the effect is real.  Big confidence right?  Maybe too good to be true?  How often are we this confident in life?  The answer is seldom.

How often would you take a 1:1000 to one sports bet that one team would beat another?  Maybe if the Harlem Globetrotters were playing, except even they lose 1.5% of their games.  Even really low performing teams usually win more than 1 in 1000 games.  It would have to be a very rare matchup to inspire such confidence.

What if I bet you that when you flip your light switch the light will turn on.  Easy bet to win, until the light bulb burns out.  And how many switches before a lightbulb burns out?  Well if you keep your light on for an hour at a time, an incandescent bulb will burn out after ~1200 switches.  And then there’s the chance of a brown out, circuit breaker trip, or rat gnawing on the wires.  A 1 to 1000 be might be reasonable, but just barely.

Now what if we were dealing with a teaching method.  Say I told bet you 1:1000 that Montessori schooling is better for students than traditional public schools.  Is it a fair bet?  How could you possibly have the expertise to judge so strongly?

If you see a p value that is highly significant you should get excited.  Not that things are working, but that something is wrong.  Wrong with your statistics, wrong with your experiment, wrong with you.  You should vet the process every which way in search of the source of over-confidence.

In our case it was bad stats, a few renegade bots were driving up the proficiency count and our statistical test was brittle in the case of these outliers.  A non-parametric test would not have been confused.  But this is not an essay to extol the virtues of non-parametric tests.  It is an essay extolling the virtues of common sense, skepticism, and rational uncertainty.

The Residual Method

The Residual Method

Recently I stumbled across an interesting method to leverage lots of partial data in order to accurately find a relationship among a little data.  I doubt I’m the first to come up with such a method, but its news to me and my statistically inclined friends, so I figured I’d better write it up.

First some motivation.  Imagine you are working in the promotions department for a new health insurance company.  You want to send out a mailing to potential customers, but you’d like to find customers that are going to be profitable, so you want to try to estimate their potential health costs and send mail to those that will be low.

You don’t know too much about the people you are mailing to, just their age.  So you want to find the relationship between age and health insurance costs as accurately as possible.  Fortunately your research department has conducted a smallish study of 1000 people where they asked about their real medical costs, ages, and other things.

You can use this real data to figure out the effect of age on medical costs using a simple regression.

Cost ~ Age

Sounds lovely, but clearly age isn’t the only thing that is affecting medical costs.  There are many other factors, for example weight, which will contribute.  You’d be tempted to set up a model that’s a bit more complicated to account for these other factors.

Cost ~ Age + Weight + ...

This model is nice because these other factors account for the noise in your data and may produce a cleaner relationship between age and cost to use for your mailing.  However, there is a problem here because age and weight are related to one another.  Older people tend to be a little heftier than younger people and so by putting weight in the model you will affect the relationship between cost and age.  This might be fine in some circumstances, but in this case your mailing will have no information on weight and so its effect on age will be misleading.

This point might not be obvious at first glance, so lets invent some sample data to help us make the case.  Imagine that your survey data is composed of Cost, Age, and Weight.  Age is a randomly distributed normal variable.  Weight is the sum of Age and another randomly distributed normal variable, and Cost is the sum of Age, Weight, and a third error term.  Obviously this data and its relationships are contrived, but no bother, they will serve the point none-the-less.

In R we can build this kind of dataset with the following code.

n    = 1000
mean = 0
sd   = 1

Age = rnorm(n, mean, sd)
Weight = Age + rnorm(n, mean, sd)
Cost = Age + Weight + rnorm(n, mean, sd)

data = data.frame(Age, Weight, Cost)

Now if we build our basic relationship Cost ~ Age we might have:

summary(glm(Cost ~ Age, data=data))

            Estimate Std. Error
(Intercept) -0.000305   0.046821
Age          2.055623   0.045261

Basically Cost is about 2 times age give or take a little error.  What happens when we throw weight in the mix.

summary(glm(Cost ~ Age + Weight, data=data))

           Estimate Std. Error
(Intercept)  0.01624    0.03260
Age          1.02703    0.04459
Weight       1.02202    0.03135

You see we’ve magled the relationship between age and cost by throwing weight in the mix.  Since we know squat about weight in our mailing, this is quite useless to us and we’d rather stick with the previous result.

If only we could account for the component of weight that does not depend on age.  Simple you think!  I will find the relationship between weight and age then subtract that portion of weight which is explained by age leaving me with a weight Residual.  I’ll add this to the model of cost and get an even better estimate of the relationship between cost and age.  In R this might look like:

data$Predicted = predict(glm(weight ~ Age, data=data))
data$Residual = data$weight - data$Predicted

summary(glm(Cost ~ Age + Residual, data=data))

            Estimate Std. Error
(Intercept) -0.000305   0.032593
Age          2.055623   0.031508
Residual     1.022017   0.031355

Marvelous!  Our estimate of the standard error of age to cost has gone down!  We must have improved the condition.  But LO, why is the estimate of the age coefficient the same as it was in our first regression?  Surely if the estimate is a better one it must also be a different one?

It seems we have stumbled upon an old problem in statistics.  The problem of the generated regressor (Pagan 1984).  The standard error is now leading us astray.  It is not to be trusted.  The basic problem is that we cannot be certain of the true relationship between weight and age.

But what if we could?  What if we somehow knew what the true relationship between weight and age actually was.  Well in this case we do, because we made up the data.  weight is simply age plus some error term.  So all we have to do is subtract age from weight and we have the ‘true’ Residual.  How does this kind of residual fare?

data$Residual = data$Weight - data$Age
summary(glm(Cost ~ Age + Residual, data=data))

           Estimate Std. Error
(Intercept)  0.01624    0.03260
Age          2.04905    0.03151
Residual     1.02202    0.03135

Now this really is something!  Once again the standard error of the estimate of age has shrunk, but more notably the estimate itself has gotten closer to 2 which is the value we actually know it to be!

If only we knew the real relationship between weight and cost we would be in business.  Of course we never can know this real relationship without unlimited data but what if we simply had a very good estimate.  Imagine that we had access to census records which reported age and weight for the entire country.  Then we could probably get an estimate of the relationship that was quite close to the truth and we could use this to calculate the residual.  In R we might imagine:

n    = 100000
mean = 0
sd   = 1

Age = rnorm(n, mean, sd)
Weight = Age + rnorm(n, mean, sd)

census <- data.frame="data.frame" ge="ge" span="span" weight="weight">

data$Predicted = predict(glm(Weight ~ Age, data=census), newdata=data)
data$Residual = data$Weight - data$Predicted

summary(glm(Cost ~ Age + Residual, data=data))

           Estimate Std. Error
(Intercept)  0.01210    0.03260
Age          2.05207    0.03151
Residual     1.02202    0.03135

How cool is this once again we have a different better estimate of the relationship between age and cost.  Now when we go to make our mailing we can make a more informed mailing.

And that’s the residual method.  We leverage a large body of incomplete data to estimate a more precise relationship in a small amount of full data.  In this example the result is rather simple and of limited utility.  But I think it points is bright new direction for statistics.

Humans are amazing at leveraging all the knowledge we have of the world to solve small new puzzles.  When a child learns the alphabet, they don’t need to see ten thousand examples before they have it mastered.  Several dozen will do.  This is because this child has seen millions of images in its life-time and the ones that present the alphabet are quite distinct.  It doesn’t need to learn how to account for lighting and orientation because it has solved those problems using the images that came before.  Instead it can focus on crux of the matter.

The residual method is a step in this direction.  It works by exploiting knowledge of the world to get at the crux of the matter.


text:
Rocks (was Re: [Beowulf] hpl size problems)

Chris Samuel csamuel at
Thu Sep 29 17:05:11 PDT 2005

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 09:40 pm, Joe Landman wrote:

> Note:  I can and will say nice things about Rocks to people who ask BTW.

Just remember that the Rocks 4.0 installer on the management node will
silently wipe all partition tables on any and all disks it can get its grubby
little hands on, without asking and *before* it asks you how you want to
partition your now blank drives.  I don't believe it's documented anywhere
either (that I could find anyway), and Google doesn't appear to show anything
about it.

If you do get caught by this, I can thoroughly recommend gpart, at:

Which is fortunate as the people who had purchased the cluster originally
hadn't been able to afford a backup system to go with it, and I had naively
assumed it would act like the usual Anaconda installer and ask me what I
wanted to do with the RAID arrays.

Also, Rocks suffers from being a RHEL^H^H^H^HProminent North American Linux
Distribution (PNALD) rebuild (via CentOS), it's missing the same useful
filesystems that R.., er, PNALD, does, such as XFS, which leaves it a bit
hamstrung in my view.

It also has this wacky idea that on the compute nodes you should have a
small /tmp and a large partition of another name /state/partition1 which,
IIRC, has the same permissions as /tmp. Of course this is fairly easily
changed through their XML config files for the compute nodes!

 Christopher Samuel - (03)9925 4751 - VPAC Deputy Systems Manager
 Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
 Bldg 91, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia

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Project Records

Project records contain Project Data Sheets (summary information on projects or programs), project and evaluation documents, business opportunities and other information.

Download projects search results

Country Project Name Types of Assistance Approval Number/s Status Approval Date
Afghanistan Primary Health Care Partnership for the Poor (formerly Piloting Health Care Partnership) Grant 9030 Closed / Terminated 19 Dec 2002


text:
HERE Drive Beta reappears in the Nokia Collection on Windows Phone

Late last week, HERE Drive Beta disappeared from Nokia's exclusive app collection for Lumia smartphones, leaving many users stranded in the process. The issue affected new devices, as well as older phones which had been factory reset, with the Store returning a 805a0194 error when users tried to update from Nokia Drive or install HERE Drive Beta.

But lo and behold, Nokia's navigation app for Windows Phone is available to download and install from the Store once more. Users will get an updated counter in the app store tile informing them of an upgrade to HERE Drive Beta from Nokia Drive, a service which comes preinstalled on compatible Lumia devices.

Impatient users who have yet to be informed of the update can head over to the Store, tap on Nokia Collection, scroll down to HERE Drive Beta and select the app. From there on just press the "Update" button to take advantage of the new navigation software. Or simply open this link for HERE Drive Beta on Lumia smartphones.

Via Twitter, Nokia Care has said the following regarding the app's availability: "Good to hear that you can see Drive+ Beta from Store, unfortunately we don't have the info why it happened".

I have reached out to Microsoft and Nokia for an official statement as to what was causing the HERE Drive Beta mishap. Neither company has responded at the time of writing this article.

Comments are closed.

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