Vice President Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op when he visits Des Moines today, according to Joe Biden’s campaign. “Iowans are seeing up close the most consequential failure...

DES MOINES — In traveling to Iowa to call attention to the burdens COVID-19 brought to religious services and the food supply, Vice President Mike Pence unwittingly called attention to another...

“It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.”

-William Styron.

In my 35 years on earth I’ve heard the term “unprecedented” used only a handful of times to describe global events. I don’t know about you, but as I write this tucked away in my basement where I’ve been working from for the last two months, I’m pretty darn sick of the word “unprecedented.”

All of us are now experiencing the culmination of a global pandemic, a painful economic reality and the challenge of stay at home orders.

Social connectedness is one of the most important aspects of the human condition. During times of crisis we come together, not apart. Time spent with friends and family is immensely important to our well-being, heck, even time spent with co-workers has its benefits. Physical proximity to our supports matters, it matters a lot.

For those of us with a history of mental health struggles (and without), this “unprecedented” crisis has presented unique challenges to our well-being: uncertainty, fear, and a sense of hopelessness. The daily loss of life, the 24-hour news cycle with its constant focus on the pandemic, and a massive economic crisis. Good news is hard to come by.

The psychologist and suicidologist Edwin Schneidman coined the term “psychological pain” to describe “how much you hurt as a human. It is mental suffering; mental torment.”

All of us hurt right now.

During times of stress, it is not uncommon to experience thoughts of suicide.

The vast majority of individuals who experience suicidal thoughts or behaviors go on to live healthy and full lives. During this time where many of us have already felt financial impacts or experienced increased depression, the possibility of experiencing suicidal ideation or behavior increases.

Support is available, help is out there.

1. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) to immediately speak with a counselor (24/7/365). If you are thinking about suicide, are worried about someone else, or would like emotional support, the Lifeline network is available.

2. Mobile Crisis Outreach: If you live in Eastern Iowa you can call the Iowa Helpline (855-581-8111) to receive free telehealth services from a mobile crisis counselor. Counselors will connect with you via telehealth to provide screening, immediate intervention and guidance.

There are several warning signs that can help you determine if you or a loved one is at risk for suicide. These include:

• Talking about wanting to die or to kill themselves

• Looking for a way to kill themselves, like purchasing a firearm

• Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live

• Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain

• Talking about being a burden to others

3. Social distancing does not mean social isolation. While we can’t be physically with many of our friends and family, we should still make an effort to connect with them. If there is someone you’ve worried about in the past, a friend or family member with a history of depression, now is an important time to reach out and see how they are doing.

4. Take care of what you can. I’ve noticed with many of the clients I work with (and myself) that as social distancing and stay at home orders have been in place for nearly two months now, sleep habits and routines have started to change. I find myself staying up later and sleeping in later. Sleep and mental health go hand in hand. It’s hard to feel good when we are not sleeping, or if our sleep cycles are significantly disrupted. Depression can drive us to want to sleep away the days. This is something to be avoided and tends to compound our feelings of loneliness.

5. Connect with your mental health providers. Connecting with a mental health provider remains an important component of support. Let your provider know that you’ve had thoughts of suicide so you can work collaboratively on treatment and support.

6. Know that you matter. Individuals who experience thoughts of suicide and/or depression will often report that they feel or think their lives don’t matter. As Kevin Hines, the motivational speaker and suicide prevention advocate says “You matter to people you haven’t even met yet.” Treatment for suicide ideation and behavior is very effective. You are worth it. The vast majority of people who experience suicide ideation go on to live healthy and fulfilling lives.

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”

-Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations.

Drew Martel (LISW, CADC) is the director of crisis services at Foundation 2 and has been involved in several suicide risk assessments, as well as provided trainings across the state on suicide intervention and treatment. Drew also provides individual therapy at Meadowlark Psychiatric Services and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work.

Multisite is a powerful tool that will help you create a network of sites to fulfill a variety of purposes, and which you can customize to make life easier for your users and help your network run more efficiently and make you money.

Vice President Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op when he visits Des Moines today, according to Joe Biden’s campaign.

“Iowans are seeing up close the most consequential failure of government in modern American history,” said Kate Bedingfeld, spokeswoman for the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“With nearly 300,000 Iowans filing for unemployment, rural hospitals on life support, Latino communities disproportionately suffering and workers on the job without sufficient protection, Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op — he owes them answers,” she said.

Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, is scheduled to meet with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, all Republicans, as well as with faith, farm and food production leaders.

Pence will talk to faith leaders about how they are using federal and state guidelines to open their houses of worship in a safe and responsible manner.

Later, he will go to Hy-Vee’s headquarters in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with agriculture and food supply leaders to discuss steps being taken to ensure the food supply remains secure.

Pence has called Iowa a “success story” in its response to the COVID-19, but Bedingfeld said the Trump administration failed to protect Iowa families from the virus that has claimed the lives of 231 Iowans.

“From devastating losses across the state, at meatpacking plants to rural communities, one thing is clear — it’s Iowans and the American people who are paying the price for the Trump administration’s denials and delays in response to this pandemic,” she said.

“Instead of listening to our own intelligence agencies and public health experts, Donald Trump was fed dangerous propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party — and he bought it,” she said. “Iowans deserve better — they deserve Joe Biden.”

For his part, Grassley said he welcomes the discussion with Pence.

“There’s much work to be done, and the pandemic is disrupting all of our communities,” Grassley said. “It’s important to hear directly from those who help feed the nation and the world.”

Ernst also is looking forward to the discussion of how Iowa is working to protect the health and safety of Iowa’s families and communities while reopening the state’s economy.

“We continue to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackling this pandemic,” she said. “Together, we will get through this.”

Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

DES MOINES — In traveling to Iowa to call attention to the burdens COVID-19 brought to religious services and the food supply, Vice President Mike Pence unwittingly called attention to another issue: whether the White House itself is safe from the disease.

So far this week, two White House aides — President Donald Trump’s valet on Thursday, and Pence’s press secretary on Friday — have tested positive for the virus.

On Friday morning, Pence’s departure to Des Moines was delayed an hour as Air Force Two idled on a tarmac near Washington. Though Pence’s press secretary was not on the plane, White House physicians through contact tracing identified six other aides who had been near her who were aboard, and pulled them from the flight. The White House later said the six had tested negative.

Trump, who identified the Pence aide as press secretary Katie Miller, said he was “not worried” about the virus in the White House.

Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols and were considering a mandatory mask policy for those in close contact with Trump and Pence.

The vice president and 10 members of his staff are given rapid coronavirus tests daily, and the president is also tested regularly.

Miller, who is married to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, had been in recent contact with Pence but not with the president. Pence is leader of the White House coronavirus task force and Katie Miller has handled the group’s communications.

After landing in Des Moines, Pence spoke to a group of faith leaders about the importance of resuming religious services, saying cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the virus have “been a burden” for congregants.

His visit coincided with the state announcing 12 more deaths from the virus, a total of 243 in less than two months.

Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit. He also spoke later with agricultural and food company executives.

“It’s been a source of heartache for people across the country,” Pence told about a dozen people at the Church of the Way Presbyterian church in Urbandale.

Pence told the group that continued efforts to hold services online and in other ways “made incalculable difference in our nation seeing our way through these troubled times.”

Iowa is among many states where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease. GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, who joined both of the state’s Republican senators at the event, has instituted new rules that allow services to resume with restrictions.

At Friday’s event, some religious leaders expressed hesitation at resuming large gatherings, while others said they would begin holding services soon,

“We are pretty much in a position of uniformly believing that it’s too early to return to personal worship. It’s inadvisable at the moment particularly with rising case counts in communities where we are across the state,” said David Kaufman, rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines.

The Rev. Terry Amann, of Church of the Way, said his church will resume services May 17 with chairs arranged so families can sit together but avoid the temptation to shake hands or offer hugs. He said hand sanitizer will be available.

A new poll by The University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 9 percent of Americans think in-person services should be allowed without restrictions, while 42 percent think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48 percent think they shouldn’t be allowed at all.

Pence later met with agriculture and food industry leaders. Iowa tops the nation in egg production and pork processing and is a top grower of corn and soybeans.

Meatpacking is among the state’s biggest employers, and companies have been working to restart operations after closing them because hundreds of their workers became infected.

As Pence touted the Trump administration’s announcement of the reopening of 14 meatpacking plants including two of the worst hit by coronavirus infections in Perry and Waterloo, the union representing workers called for safer work conditions.

“Iowa’s meatpacking workers are not sacrificial lambs. They have been working tirelessly during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure families here and across the country have access to the food they need,” said the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in a statement.

The Associated Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme workers can extend their stay for up to 12 months to work for approved employers as long as pastoral care and accommodation needs of workers are met to minimise health risks to visa holders and the community. Approved employers under the Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme […]

The post What can I do if I am on a working holiday or seasonal worker visa in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

International students who have been in Australia for longer than 12 months who find themselves in financial hardship will be able to access their Australian superannuation. The Government will undertake further engagement with the international education sector who already provide some financial support for international students facing hardship. International students working in supermarkets will have […]

The post Student visa holders and New Zealand citizens in Australia and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

'It can happen to you anywhere, at any moment, and just change your world'

Many people think the word “disability” means people who require a wheelchair or walker. In reality, however, there is much more to disability than meets the eye. 

Do you know the difference between a mission and a vision? Or the difference between a purpose and a goal? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Let's clarify!

By Julia  Conley Common Dreams “Our message as scientists is simple: Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forest.” With a new statement rejecting the notion that drastically curbing emissions alone is enough to curb … Continue reading →

John Jantsch is a veteran marketer. He’s written several bestselling books including Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine. He’s out with a new book called the Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business  As you might know, I’m a bit of a fan of daily habits, so of course John gives us a little preview into some of the daily explorations of thoughts and writings from notable American authors. Of course, that’s not all…  we also get into: We go deep into following your own path and listening to your intuition. What we can learn from rabble rousers of our history and those who embraced counter culture to follow their own beliefs. The role that self-awareness has in pursuing our dreams. and much more. Enjoy! FOLLOW JOHN: facebook | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New […]

The post Self Reliance + Personal Uprising with John Jantsch appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.

We extend the analytic theory of Frobenius manifolds to semisimple points with coalescing eigenvalues of the operator of multiplication by the Euler vector field. We clarify which freedoms, ambiguities and mutual constraints are allowed in the definition of monodromy data, in view of their importance for conjectural relationships between Frobenius manifolds and derived categories. Detailed examples and applications are taken from singularity and quantum cohomology theories. We explicitly compute the monodromy data at points of the Maxwell Stratum of the A3-Frobenius manifold, as well as at the small quantum cohomology of the Grassmannian G(2,4). In the latter case, we analyse in details the action of the braid group on the monodromy data. This proves that these data can be expressed in terms of characteristic classes of mutations of Kapranov's exceptional 5-block collection, as conjectured by one of the authors.

Let the group $G = AB$ be the product of subgroups $A$ and $B$, and let $p$ be a prime. We prove that $p$ does not divide the conjugacy class size (index) of each $p$-regular element of prime power order $xin Acup B$ if and only if $G$ is $p$-decomposable, i.e. $G=O_p(G) imes O_{p'}(G)$.

We consider a fair division setting where indivisible items are allocated to agents. Each agent in the setting has strictly negative, zero or strictly positive utility for each item. We, thus, make a distinction between items that are good for some agents and bad for other agents (i.e. mixed), good for everyone (i.e. goods) or bad for everyone (i.e. bads). For this model, we study axiomatic concepts of allocations such as jealousy-freeness up to one item, envy-freeness up to one item and Pareto-optimality. We obtain many new possibility and impossibility results in regard to combinations of these properties. We also investigate new computational tasks related to such combinations. Thus, we advance the state-of-the-art in fair division of mixed manna.

Interaction languages such as MSC are often associated with formal semantics by means of translations into distinct behavioral formalisms such as automatas or Petri nets. In contrast to translational approaches we propose an operational approach. Its principle is to identify which elementary communication actions can be immediately executed, and then to compute, for every such action, a new interaction representing the possible continuations to its execution. We also define an algorithm for checking the validity of execution traces (i.e. whether or not they belong to an interaction's semantics). Algorithms for semantic computation and trace validity are analyzed by means of experiments.

The accurate assembly of the system matrix is an important step in any code that solves partial differential equations on a mesh. We either explicitly set up a matrix, or we work in a matrix-free environment where we have to be able to quickly return matrix entries upon demand. Either way, the construction can become costly due to non-trivial material parameters entering the equations, multigrid codes requiring cascades of matrices that depend upon each other, or dynamic adaptive mesh refinement that necessitates the recomputation of matrix entries or the whole equation system throughout the solve. We propose that these constructions can be performed concurrently with the multigrid cycles. Initial geometric matrices and low accuracy integrations kickstart the multigrid, while improved assembly data is fed to the solver as and when it becomes available. The time to solution is improved as we eliminate an expensive preparation phase traditionally delaying the actual computation. We eliminate algorithmic latency. Furthermore, we desynchronise the assembly from the solution process. This anarchic increase of the concurrency level improves the scalability. Assembly routines are notoriously memory- and bandwidth-demanding. As we work with iteratively improving operator accuracies, we finally propose the use of a hierarchical, lossy compression scheme such that the memory footprint is brought down aggressively where the system matrix entries carry little information or are not yet available with high accuracy.

We present a new mouse cursor designed to facilitate the use of the mouse by people with peripheral vision loss. The pointer consists of a collection of converging straight lines covering the whole screen and following the position of the mouse cursor. We measured its positive effects with a group of participants with peripheral vision loss of different kinds and we found that it can reduce by a factor of 7 the time required to complete a targeting task using the mouse. Using eye tracking, we show that this system makes it possible to initiate the movement towards the target without having to precisely locate the mouse pointer. Using Fitts' Law, we compare these performances with those of full visual field users in order to understand the relation between the accuracy of the estimated mouse cursor position and the index of performance obtained with our tool.

We study the specification and verification of hyperproperties for probabilistic systems represented as Markov decision processes (MDPs). Hyperproperties are system properties that describe the correctness of a system as a relation between multiple executions. Hyperproperties generalize trace properties and include information-flow security requirements, like noninterference, as well as requirements like symmetry, partial observation, robustness, and fault tolerance. We introduce the temporal logic PHL, which extends classic probabilistic logics with quantification over schedulers and traces. PHL can express a wide range of hyperproperties for probabilistic systems, including both classical applications, such as differential privacy, and novel applications in areas such as robotics and planning. While the model checking problem for PHL is in general undecidable, we provide methods both for proving and for refuting a class of probabilistic hyperproperties for MDPs.

Bitvector filtering is an important query processing technique that can significantly reduce the cost of execution, especially for complex decision support queries with multiple joins. Despite its wide application, however, its implication to query optimization is not well understood.

In this work, we study how bitvector filters impact query optimization. We show that incorporating bitvector filters into query optimization straightforwardly can increase the plan space complexity by an exponential factor in the number of relations in the query. We analyze the plans with bitvector filters for star and snowflake queries in the plan space of right deep trees without cross products. Surprisingly, with some simplifying assumptions, we prove that, the plan of the minimal cost with bitvector filters can be found from a linear number of plans in the number of relations in the query. This greatly reduces the plan space complexity for such queries from exponential to linear.

Motivated by our analysis, we propose an algorithm that accounts for the impact of bitvector filters in query optimization. Our algorithm optimizes the join order for an arbitrary decision support query by choosing from a linear number of candidate plans in the number of relations in the query. We implement our algorithm in Microsoft SQL Server as a transformation rule. Our evaluation on both industry standard benchmarks and customer workload shows that, compared with the original Microsoft SQL Server, our technique reduces the total CPU execution time by 22%-64% for the workloads, with up to two orders of magnitude reduction in CPU execution time for individual queries.

Network security has become an area of significant importance more than ever as highlighted by the eye-opening numbers of data breaches, attacks on critical infrastructure, and malware/ransomware/cryptojacker attacks that are reported almost every day. Increasingly, we are relying on networked infrastructure and with the advent of IoT, billions of devices will be connected to the internet, providing attackers with more opportunities to exploit. Traditional machine learning methods have been frequently used in the context of network security. However, such methods are more based on statistical features extracted from sources such as binaries, emails, and packet flows.

On the other hand, recent years witnessed a phenomenal growth in computer vision mainly driven by the advances in the area of convolutional neural networks. At a glance, it is not trivial to see how computer vision methods are related to network security. Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of work that highlighted how methods from computer vision can be applied in network security for detecting attacks or building security solutions. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of such work under three topics; i) phishing attempt detection, ii) malware detection, and iii) traffic anomaly detection. Next, we review a set of such commercial products for which public information is available and explore how computer vision methods are effectively used in those products. Finally, we discuss existing research gaps and future research directions, especially focusing on how network security research community and the industry can leverage the exponential growth of computer vision methods to build much secure networked systems.

Public key encryption with equality test (PKEET) allows testing whether two ciphertexts are generated by the same message or not. PKEET is a potential candidate for many practical applications like efficient data management on encrypted databases. Potential applicability of PKEET leads to intensive research from its first instantiation by Yang et al. (CT-RSA 2010). Most of the followup constructions are secure in the random oracle model. Moreover, the security of all the concrete constructions is based on number-theoretic hardness assumptions which are vulnerable in the post-quantum era. Recently, Lee et al. (ePrint 2016) proposed a generic construction of PKEET schemes in the standard model and hence it is possible to yield the first instantiation of PKEET schemes based on lattices. Their method is to use a $2$-level hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) scheme together with a one-time signature scheme. In this paper, we propose, for the first time, a direct construction of a PKEET scheme based on the hardness assumption of lattices in the standard model. More specifically, the security of the proposed scheme is reduces to the hardness of the Learning With Errors problem.

This paper investigates a class of optimal control problems associated with Markov processes with local state information. The decision-maker has only local access to a subset of a state vector information as often encountered in decentralized control problems in multi-agent systems. Under this information structure, part of the state vector cannot be observed. We leverage ab initio principles and find a new form of Bellman equations to characterize the optimal policies of the control problem under local information structures. The dynamic programming solutions feature a mixture of dynamics associated unobservable state components and the local state-feedback policy based on the observable local information. We further characterize the optimal local-state feedback policy using linear programming methods. To reduce the computational complexity of the optimal policy, we propose an approximate algorithm based on virtual beliefs to find a sub-optimal policy. We show the performance bounds on the sub-optimal solution and corroborate the results with numerical case studies.

Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) requires an agent to follow natural-language instructions, explore the given environments, and reach the desired target locations. These step-by-step navigational instructions are crucial when the agent is navigating new environments about which it has no prior knowledge. Most recent works that study VLN observe a significant performance drop when tested on unseen environments (i.e., environments not used in training), indicating that the neural agent models are highly biased towards training environments. Although this issue is considered as one of the major challenges in VLN research, it is still under-studied and needs a clearer explanation. In this work, we design novel diagnosis experiments via environment re-splitting and feature replacement, looking into possible reasons for this environment bias. We observe that neither the language nor the underlying navigational graph, but the low-level visual appearance conveyed by ResNet features directly affects the agent model and contributes to this environment bias in results. According to this observation, we explore several kinds of semantic representations that contain less low-level visual information, hence the agent learned with these features could be better generalized to unseen testing environments. Without modifying the baseline agent model and its training method, our explored semantic features significantly decrease the performance gaps between seen and unseen on multiple datasets (i.e. R2R, R4R, and CVDN) and achieve competitive unseen results to previous state-of-the-art models. Our code and features are available at: https://github.com/zhangybzbo/EnvBiasVLN

Need some inspiration to build a high converting website? Websites that convert persuade visitors to become customers. These websites drive more revenue, so if you want to increase your site’s revenue, use these examples of websites that convert as inspiration! We’ll go over what makes for the best converting websites and five examples of websites […]

The post 5 Magnificent Examples of Websites That Convert Visitors into Customers appeared first on WebFX Blog.

Summary

One feature that Go does not offer that is really useful in visitor patterns is overriding methods. The basic idea is to write a concrete class that contains all the VisitX methods with empty implementations, and a subclass can choose to only override the methods it cares about, ignoring the rest.

We'll see an example of how to implement this pattern in idiomatic Go code.

Coronavirus Family Tree The University of Washington Virology lab, which is testing samples for coronavirus, tweeted last night.…

Uncut Gems is one of those "his own worst enemy" capers. You know, the kind of movie where you sit there for two hours watching some doofus constantly trip over his own laces — usually figuratively, sometimes literally — on the way to a personal epiphany about how all his bad choices and lack of useful self-awareness have led him to whatever unpleasant place they lead him to.…

[IMAGE-1] Harrison Ford has gone full Grizzly Adams and Buck the canine hero is fully CGI, 100-percent digital, not a scrap of real fur or dog farts about him. There is so much about this new umpteenth film version of Jack London's classic novel The Call of the Wild that is ready-made for meme-iriffic snarking.…

[IMAGE-1] The days of Post Falls being merely an exit you point out to your restless kids to assure them you're almost to Coeur d'Alene are over. In the next 20 years, the little town is projected to explode to 100,000 people.…

[IMAGE-1] Visiting Spokane Valley is a little like when a child visits their grandparents' place: At first you don't understand why you're there, but after you leave with new toys, clothes and a full stomach, you can't wait to go back. And the Spokane Valley Mall has all of that.…

[IMAGE-1] It's not surprising the most popular destinations for Inlander readers in North Spokane involve shopping — NorthTown Mall and the Garland District were the top vote-getters in this year's poll — but looking at the overall results, one quickly realizes the region north of the river has a lot going on. Riverside State Park and the Little Spokane River were popular picks, too, along with Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park; clearly people love to get outside up north in between their trips to Bon Bon or Buffalo Wild Wings.…

[IMAGE-1] Midtown Coeur d'Alene. The pedestrian-friendly strip of restaurants and shops that runs north-south along Fourth Street in between Garden and Harrison avenues.…

[IMAGE-1] The people were unequivocal: The South Perry District and Manito Park are the most popular reasons to visit the South Hill, and for good reason. Manito Park is sprawling and beautiful, with 78 acres of native and cultivated landscape and 20 acres of botanical gardens.…

Weeks after being raped at a wedding — an experience already wrapped in feelings of self-blame and fear — the 18-year-old Eastern Washington University student realized something else was wrong.…

It’s March. The regular season is now in the rearview mirror.…

An input combination of at least one condition value to be evaluated against at least one rule of a decision table is received. The at least one rule includes at least one condition and the rule is associated with a result. The at least one rule is evaluated against the input combination to determine conditions fulfilled for the at least one condition value. In one aspect, a rule from the at least one rule that best matches the input combination is determined and a result associated with the rule that best matches the input combination is outputted.

Formaldehyde-free binder compositions are described that include an aldehyde or ketone, a nitrogen-containing salt of an inorganic acid, and an acidic compound. The acidic compound may be an organic acid, such as maleic acid or citric acid among others. The acidic compound is supplied in quantities that lower the pH of the binder composition to about 5 or less. The binder compositions may be used in methods of binding fiberglass and the resulting fiberglass products have an improved tensile strength due to the addition of the acidic compound.

Formulations comprising an isosorbide-modified unsaturated polyester comprising maleic acid, fumaric acid, itaconic acid or maleic anhydride and isosorbide and one or more low profile additives. The formulations exhibit better shrink control in molding compound formulations with standard low profile additives than their non-isosorbide-modified analogues. These isosorbide-modified unsaturated polyester resins may be applied in molding compounds like sheet molding compounds or bulk molding compounds and may be components of fiber reinforced composites or other composite materials.

A method for manufacturing a plurality of glass microspheres comprises: melting a batch into a first glass melt in a melter system, processing the first glass melt into a second glass, pulverizing the second glass into a plurality of glass fragments, thermally processing the plurality of glass fragments into a plurality of glass microspheres, providing at least one of a plurality of redox reactions and a plurality of events in at least one of the first glass melt and a melt of the second glass, and the plurality of redox reactions and the plurality of events are induced by a plurality of redox active group (RAG) components.

The invention relates to a granulated powder intended, in particular, for the production of ceramic sintered parts, said powder having the following chemical weight composition, based on dry matter, namely: a zirconia stabiliser selected from the group containing Y2O3, Sc2O3, MgO, CaO, CeO2, and mixtures thereof, the weight content of stabiliser, based on the total zirconia and stabiliser content, being between 2% and 20% and the MgO+CaO content being less than 5% based on the total zirconia and stabiliser content; at least 1% of a first binder having a glass transition temperature less than or equal to 25° C.; 0-4% of an additional binder having a glass transition temperature greater than 25° C.; 5-50% alumina; 0-4% of a temporary additive different from the first binder and the additional binder, the total content of the first binder, the additional binder and the temporary additive being less than 9%; less than 2% impurities; and ZrO2 to make up 100%. According to the invention, the median diameter D50 of the powder is between 80 and 130 μm, the percentile D99.5 is less than 500 μm and the relative density of the granules is between 30% and 60%.

Materials and Methods are disclosed for producing nanoparticles linked to antibacterial ligands, including antibiotics and/or molecules which bind to bacterial markers, and for the use of the nanoparticles for the treatment of conditions treatable by the antibiotic ligands.

A composite material and method of making and using the same is described. In particular a dental (and preferably photocurable) composite material, and the use of a composite material according to the invention as a dental material and a method for preparation of a composite material according to the invention. Also disclosed are novel radically polymerizable monomers comprising at least one polyalicyclic structure element and certain ethylenic structure elements, which are particularly suitable for use in a composite material according to the invention.

Disclosed herein are acrylic and methacrylic acid ester-based polymeric materials containing as flexibilizing and brittleness reducing agents 1-60% of C4-C8 polyalkylene or polyalkyldiene compounds, preferably having a molecular weight of 300-2100, and the use of such materials in dentistry and medicine.

An environmentally beneficial process for utilizing waste drill cuttings from oil and gas exploration. The waste drill cuttings (20) are used as a filler and combined with plastic to provide a plastic based product (26) in the plastics industry. In an embodiment the cuttings are thermally treated and formed into pellets. In a further embodiment the cuttings are treated and mixed with recycled plastic to be formed into pellets. The pellets are then used in the manufacture of rigid plastic products such as bollards, planters, benches and decking.

The invention provides a method and apparatus for creating plasma particles and applying the plasma particles to a liquid. Liquid feedstock (e.g., water and/or hydrocarbons mixed with biomass) is pumped through a pipeline; the single-phase stream is then transformed into a biphasic liquid-and-gas stream inside a chamber. The transformation is achieved by transitioning the stream from a high pressure zone to a lower-pressure zone. The pressure drop may occur when the stream further passes through a device for atomizing liquid. Inside the chamber, an electric field is generated with an intensity level that exceeds the threshold of breakdown voltage of the biphasic medium leading to a generation of a plasma state. Furthermore, the invention provides an energy-efficient highly adaptable and versatile method and apparatus for sanitizing water using plasma particles to inactivate biological agents contaminating water.

Described is a radiation-crosslinkable hotmelt adhesive comprising at least one radiation-crosslinkable poly(meth)acrylate formed to an extent of at least 60% by weight of C1 to C10 alkyl(meth)acrylates and at least one oligo(meth)acrylate which comprises nonacrylic C C double bonds and has a K value of less than or equal to 20. The hotmelt adhesive comprises a photoinitiator which may be present in the form of an additive not attached to the poly(meth)acrylate and/or not attached to the oligo(meth)acrylate, may be incorporated by copolymerization into the poly(meth)acrylate, and/or may be attached to the oligo(meth)acrylate. The hotmelt adhesive can be used for producing adhesive tapes.

A cloud system may create physical resource tags to store relationships between cloud computing offerings, such as computing service offerings, storage offerings, and network offerings, and the specific physical resources in the cloud computing environment. Cloud computing offerings may be presented to cloud customers, the offerings corresponding to various combinations of computing services, storage, networking, and other hardware or software resources. After a customer selects one or more cloud computing offerings, a cloud resource manager or other component within the cloud infrastructure may retrieve a set of tags and determine a set of physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings. The physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings may be subsequently used to provision and create the new virtual machine and its operating environment.