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Kalpana Roy vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

CRM No. 3354 of 2020 (Via Video Conference) In Re:- An application for bail under section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with Jalpaiguri Women Police Station Case No. 144/2019 dated 07.11.2019 registered for investigation into offences punishable under Sections 498A/304B/34 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act.

And In the matter of : Kalpana Roy ... Petitioner Ms. Jeenia Rudra .. for the petitioner Mr. Neguive Ahmed ..for the State The petitioner undertakes to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking. The petitioner is the mother-in-law of the deceased victim. The prayer for bail of the husband of the victim has been rejected earlier today.




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Amit Kumar Kamat @ Amit Kumar @ vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

And In the matter of: Amit Kumar Kamat @ Amit Kumar @ Lala...petitioner Mr. Koustav Bagchi.........for the petitioner Mr. Neguive Ahmed.........................for the State The petitioner undertakes to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hour of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking.

The petitioner claims that since the petitioner has been in custody for a long time and the charges are of dacoity, the petitioner should be given a reprieve temporarily.




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Dipraj @ Dipu Chhetri & Ors vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

And In the matter of : Dipraj @ Dipu Chhetri & Ors.

... Petitioners Mr. Navanil De .. for the Petitioners Mr. Neguive Ahmed ..for the State The petitioners undertake to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking. The case of the first petitioner appears to be on a different footing than the two other petitioners. Though the names of the two other petitioners were mentioned in the initial complaint and in the eye witness' account, the first petitioner is neither named nor did the eye witness allude to him.




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Kheru Mondal & Anr vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

And In the matter of : Kheru Mondal & Anr.

... Petitioners Mr. Subir Debnath .. for the Petitioners Mr. Neguive Ahmed ..for the State The petitioners undertake to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking.




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Sonu Singh & Anr vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

And In the matter of : Sonu Singh & Anr.

... Petitioners Mr. Arka Chakraborty .. for the Petitioners Mr. Neguive Ahmed ..for the State The petitioners undertake to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking.




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Jahirdur Islam @ Jahedur & Anr vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

04. 2020 b.

CRM No. 3356 of 2020 (Via Video Conference) In Re:- An application for bail under section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with Kushmandi Police Station Case No. 25 of 2020 dated 05.03.2020 registered for investigation into offences punishable under Sections 305/34 of the Indian Penal Code.

And In the matter of : Jahirdur Islam @ Jahedur & Anr.

... Petitioners Ms. Jeenia Rudra .. for the petitioners Mr. Swapan Banerjee ..for the State The petitioners undertake to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking.




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Hablu Bag @ Bhatuk vs Unknown on 28 April, 2020

04. 2020 b.

CRM No. 2996 of 2020 (Via Video Conference) In Re:- An application for bail under section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with Lalgarh Police Station Case No. 117/2019 dated 22.10.2019 registered for investigation into offences punishable under Sections 302/201/120B/34 of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 25/27 of the Arms Act.

And In the matter of : Hablu Bag @ Bhatuk ... Petitioner Mr. Soumyajit Das Mahapatra .. for the petitioner Mr. Neguive Ahmed ..for the State The petitioner undertakes to affirm and stamp the petition as per the Rules within 48 hours of resumption of normal functioning of the court. The petition is taken up through video conference on the basis of such undertaking.




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Roster of the Signal Corps, U.S.A., 1861-1865: 1. Members whose addresses are known; 2. Members who have died; 3. Members whose addresses are unknown / compiled by the Secretary, U.S. Veteran Signal Corps Association, July 1901

Archives, Room Use Only - UG573.U78 1901




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(1Z,2Z)-1,2-Bis{2-[3,5-bis­(tri­fluoro­meth­yl)phen­yl]hydrazinyl­idene}-1,2-bis­(4-meth­oxy­phen­yl)ethane including an unknown solvate

The complete mol­ecule of the title compound, C32H22F12N4O2, is generated by a crystallographic twofold axis aligned parallel to [010]. The F atoms of one of the CF3 groups are disordered over three orientations in a 0.6: 0.2: 0.2 ratio. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming zigzag chains propagating along the a-axis direction. In addition, weak C—H⋯O and C—H⋯F bonds are observed. The contribution of the disordered solvent to the scattering was removed using the SQUEEZE routine [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9–18] of PLATON. The solvent contribution is not included in the reported mol­ecular weight and density.




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Tris­(4,4'-di-tert-butyl-2,2'-bi­pyridine)(trans-4-tert-butyl­cyclo­hexa­nolato)­deca-μ-oxido-hepta­oxido­hepta­vanadium aceto­nitrile monosolvate including another unknown solvent mol­ecule

The title hepta­nuclear alkoxido(oxido)vanadium(V) oxide cluster complex, [V7(C10H19O)O17(C18H24N2)3]·CH3CN, was obtained by the reaction of [V8O20(C18H24N2)4] with 4-tert-butyl­cyclo­hexa­nol (mixture of cis and trans) in a mixed CHCl3/CH3CN solvent. The complex has a V7O18N6 core with approximately Cs symmetry, which is composed of two VO4 tetra­hedra, two VO6 octa­hedra and three VO4N2 octa­hedra. In the crystal, these complexes are linked together by weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between the 4,4'-di-tert-butyl-2,2'-bi­pyridine ligand and the V7O18N6 core, forming a one-dimensional network along the c-axis direction. Besides the complex, the asymmetric unit contains one CH3CN solvent mol­ecule. The contribution of other disordered solvent mol­ecules to the scattering was removed using the SQUEEZE option in PLATON [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9–18]. The unknown solvent mol­ecules are not considered in the chemical formula and other crystal data.




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Biological fallout of shale-gas production still largely unknown

In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand […]

The post Biological fallout of shale-gas production still largely unknown appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.




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Synthesis and crystal structure of (1,10-phenanthroline-κ2N,N')[2-(1H-pyrazol-1-yl)phenyl-κ2N2,C1]iridium(III) hexa­fluorido­phosphate with an unknown number of solvent mol­ecules

The cationic cyclo­metallated iridium(III) complex [Ir(C9H7N2)2(C12H8N2)](PF6) has been synthesized and crystallized by the inter-diffusion method. It contains an unknown number of solvent mol­ecules and has a different space-group symmetry (C2/c) structure than its solvatomorph (P21/c).




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Firewall dropping incoming unknown packets am i safe?




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Synthesis and crystal structure of (1,10-phenanthroline-κ2N,N')[2-(1H-pyrazol-1-yl)phenyl-κ2N2,C1]iridium(III) hexafluoridophosphate with an unknown number of solvent molecules

The cationic complex in the title compound, [Ir(C9H7N2)2(C12H8N2)]PF6, comprises two phenylpyrazole (ppz) cyclometallating ligands and one 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) ancillary ligand. The asymmetric unit consists of one [Ir(ppz)2(phen)]+ cation and one [PF6]− counter-ion. The central IrIII ion is six-coordinated by two N atoms and two C atoms from the two ppz ligands as well as by two N atoms from the phen ligand within a distorted octahedral C2N4 coordination set. In the crystal structure, the [Ir(ppz)2(phen)]+ cations and PF6− counter-ions are connected with each other through weak intermolecular C—H...F hydrogen bonds. Additional C—H...π interactions between the rings of neighbouring cations consolidate the three-dimensional network. Electron density associated with additional disordered solvent molecules inside cavities of the structure was removed with the SQUEEZE procedure in PLATON [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9–18]. The given chemical formula and other crystal data do not take into account the unknown solvent molecule(s). The title compound has a different space-group symmetry (C2/c) from its solvatomorph (P21/c) comprising 1.5CH2Cl2 solvent molecules per ion pair.




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LAUSD Schools Still Set To Start August 18 … Whether Virtually Or In-Person is Unknown

Two security guards talk on the campus of the closed McKinley School, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) system, in Compton, California.; Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

AirTalk®

Los Angeles Unified School District officials are making plans for summer — and for now, none of those plans involve reopening school campuses shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a video address Monday, Superintendent Austin Beutner said LAUSD leaders have "made no decisions" about whether the fall semester — still scheduled to begin on August 18 — will involve students in classrooms, online or both. He said it's not clear what the public health conditions will allow.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom surprised many educators when he suggested California schools could resume in-person instruction early — perhaps even as soon as mid-July. Newsom fears the longer students remain at home, the farther they'll fall behind academically. Read more about this on LAist

We get the latest on LAUSD’s plans (or lack of them) for the upcoming school year. Plus, if you’re an LAUSD parent or student, weigh in by calling 866-893-5722. 

With files from LAist.

Guest:

Kyle Stokes, education reporter for KPCC; he tweets @kystokes

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.




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Gemstone turns out to be fossil of an unknown dinosaur

Miners in Australia uncover the opal-filled fossil of a dog-size herbivore named Weewarrasaurus pobeni.



  • Wilderness & Resources

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Into the unknown: Exploring New Mammoth Cave

Alexandra Cousteau ventures out of sight, deep into the cool world of New Mammoth Cave in Tennessee.



  • Wilderness & Resources

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Bat flu? Human risk for newly detected disease unknown

Scientists have found a new influenza virus that infects bats. But don't pull out the hand sanitizer leftover from the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic just yet. Wh




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Centering unknown width horizontal menus - revisited

After much searching of the web and with the arrival of IE8, I now have a method of positioning horizontal menus of unknown width left / center / right in the containing element.




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A Quantum Algorithm To Locate Unknown Hashes For Known N-Grams Within A Large Malware Corpus. (arXiv:2005.02911v2 [quant-ph] UPDATED)

Quantum computing has evolved quickly in recent years and is showing significant benefits in a variety of fields. Malware analysis is one of those fields that could also take advantage of quantum computing. The combination of software used to locate the most frequent hashes and $n$-grams between benign and malicious software (KiloGram) and a quantum search algorithm could be beneficial, by loading the table of hashes and $n$-grams into a quantum computer, and thereby speeding up the process of mapping $n$-grams to their hashes. The first phase will be to use KiloGram to find the top-$k$ hashes and $n$-grams for a large malware corpus. From here, the resulting hash table is then loaded into a quantum machine. A quantum search algorithm is then used search among every permutation of the entangled key and value pairs to find the desired hash value. This prevents one from having to re-compute hashes for a set of $n$-grams, which can take on average $O(MN)$ time, whereas the quantum algorithm could take $O(sqrt{N})$ in the number of table lookups to find the desired hash values.




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The Great Unknown

Never before has an issue of Health & Home been produced and delivered in such a strange and scary time.…




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Process, Apparatus or System and Kit for Classification of Tumor Samples of Unknown and/or Uncertain Origin and Use of Genes of the Group of Biomarkers

The present invention refers to a process for classifying tumor samples of unknown and/or uncertain primary origin, specifically including the steps of obtaining patterns of biological activity modulation of tumor of unknown and/or uncertain primary origin and comparing them to an specific and unique group of biomarkers which determine the profiles of biological activity modulation of known origin tumors. The present invention belongs to the molecular biology and genetics field.




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An injection assembly for a combustor of a gas turbine has an outer body provided with inlet passages for comburent air, a conical tubular portion housed inside the outer body and delimiting partly an inner duct and an outer annular duct; a first and a second supply means for supplying a liquid fuel into the inner duct and, respectively, into the outer annular duct; at least one circumferential annular seat formed being carried by one of the tubular portion and the outer body, so as to collect a mass of liquid fuel advancing in the outer annular duct and make uniform the flow of liquid flowing out of the circumferential annular seat.




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How to Send Robocalls, Spammers, and Unknown Callers Directly to Voicemail on iOS

In this podcast, Thomas Domville introduces us to “silence unknown callers”, a new feature in iOS 13 that helps you block unwanted calls without having to block callers one by one.

With this feature enabled, unknown callers will automatically be sent to voicemail, meaning that robocalls, spam calls, and other unwanted distractions will no longer be able to bother you.




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Clarke Blackham – Unknown Restyle Of Neural

Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit




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Small Business Owners In Georgia Open Their Doors To A Great Unknown

In the week since Georgia’s shelter-in-place order ended for most, businesses have started to open back up. But with new rules and wary customers, many small businesses are still finding their feet. GPB News reporters fanned out across the state to ask small business owners how their reopening process changes the way they operate.




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'It's not an unknown issue': Remote farmer calls for Telstra to rectify SMS flaw

While Australians debate privacy issues around the new COVIDSafe app, those in rural areas are being forced to go to great lengths just to activate the app before even being able to use it.




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Mass shellfish die-off remains unknown, as millions of mussels wash up on WA's south coast

Authorities in Western Australia investigate a large mussel die-off that covered a 1km stretch of beach on the south coast last week.




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Man dies after taking 'unknown substance' at Lost Paradise music festival

A 22-year-old Queensland man dies after attending the Lost Paradise music festival on the NSW Central Coast as police reveal the sophisticated and bizarre ways revellers attempt to smuggle drugs in including inside a barbecue chicken.




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[unknown title]

Yeet the rich




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BHS School To Close For ‘Unknown Period’

BHS has announced that a “decision has been made to close the School at the end of the day on Monday, March 16th.” A spokesperson said, “On Sunday afternoon, BHS received news that a Secondary student was screened for Covid-19, as a precautionary measure over the weekend. “This student was absent from BHS for most […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Life's a Biotech - The Unknown Legend

In between topics to rant about, I thought I would tell you a little bit more about what it's like to be a biotech scientist. I've been in many different sized biotechs and even between them, the culture can vary quite a bit. Therefore, I'll try and describe it in general terms to give you an overview of the life of an industry scientist in research and development (R&D). Of course, some people wi; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech




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RTÉ Sport Classics: Briggs steps back into the unknown

Ireland's historic 2013 Women's Six Nations Grand Slam victory is the latest of our RTÉ Sport Classics which you can watch on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player at 9.30pm tonight. Niamh Briggs, who played a key role in that triumph relives the glory day before she watches it back for the first time.




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Can fluorescence-guided surgery help identify all lesions in unknown locations or is the integrated use of a roadmap created by preoperative imaging mandatory? A blinded study in prostate cancer patients.

Rationale: Lymphatic tracers can help visualize the lymphatic drainage patterns and sentinel nodes of individual prostate cancer patients. To determine the role of nuclear medicine, in particular the positional guidance of a SPECT/CT-based 3D imaging roadmap, in this process we studied to which extend fluorescence-guidance underestimated the number of target lesions. Methods: SPECT/CT imaging was performed after intraprostatic tracer administration of either ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid (hybrid tracer group) or 99mTc-nanocolloid to create a roadmap that depicted all sentinel nodes (SNs). Patients who received 99mTc-nanocolloid were injected with "free" ICG immediately prior to surgery ("free" ICG group). Before unblinding, fluorescence-guidance was used for intraoperative SN identification. This was followed by extended pelvic lymph node dissection (ePLND). Following unblinding of the SPECT/CT images, the number of missed SN’s were recorded and their resection was pursued when the anatomy allowed. Results: Preoperative SPECT/CT revealed no differences in the SN identification rate between ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid and 99mTc-nanocolloid. However, fluorescence-guidance only allowed intraoperative removal of all SNs in 40% of patients in the hybrid tracer group and in 20% of patients in the "free" ICG group. Overall, 75.9% of the intraoperatively resected SNs in the hybrid tracer group and 51.8% of the SNs in the "free" ICG group were removed solely under fluorescence-guidance. During ePLND 22 additional SNs were resected (7 in the hybrid tracer group and 15 in the "free" ICG group). After unblinding 18 remaining SNs were identified (6 in the hybrid group and 12 in the "free" ICG group). In the "free" ICG group, ex vivo evaluation of the excised specimens revealed that 14 SNs removed under ePLND or after unblinding contained radioactivity but no fluorescence. Conclusion: The preoperative imaging roadmap provided by SPECT/CT enhanced the detection of prostate SNs in more ectopic locations in 17 of the 25 patients and the hybrid tracer ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid was shown to outperform "free" ICG. Overall, fluorescence-guided pelvic nodal surgery underestimated the number of SNs in 60-80% of patients.




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Ukraine and NATO: Destination Unknown

1 August 2008 , Number 10

As ever between NATO and Ukraine, the process advances, the destination is in doubt. Or so it seemed until the Bucharest summit declaration of April 3. The statement that Ukraine and Georgia ‘will become members of NATO’ was designed to remove doubt. Yet it was also designed to alleviate pressure on the organisation. Four months later, as the European Union prepares for its summit with Ukraine, pressure remains and doubt has returned.

James Sherr

Head, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House




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Embrace the Ultimate Unknown

 The best way to have a good death is to live a good life

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com




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Born With the Desire to Know the Unknown

America is awash in secrets and conspiracies. Moviegoers are agog over the 2,000-year-old conspiracy theory in "The Da Vinci Code," which suggests that Jesus may not have died celibate. In a conspiracy exactly one order of magnitude smaller, Brad Meltzer's new novel, "The Book of Fate," tells about...




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Preparing for the Unknown: Designing Effective Predeparture Orientation for Resettling Refugees

Refugees encounter a range of challenges after resettlement—from adjusting to a new culture and language, to finding a job. Many resettlement countries invest in predeparture orientation to help refugees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to face these challenges. This report explores the many forms these programs take, highlighting important design questions and key elements that effective programs share.




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Beware the Rareness Illusion When Exploring the Unknown

Here's a great vacation idea. Spend the summer roaming the world in search of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, exiled from Samaria by the Assyrians 2700 years ago (2 Kings 17:6). Or perhaps you'd like to search for Prester John, the virtuous ruler of a kingdom lost in the Orient? Or would you rather trace the gold-laden kingdom of Ophir (1 Kings 9:28)? Or do you prefer the excitement of tracking the Amazons, that nation of female warriors? Or perhaps the naval power mentioned by Plato, operating from the island of Atlantis? Or how about unicorns, or the fountain of eternal youth? The Unknown is so vast that the possibilities are endless.

Maybe you don't believe in unicorns. But Plato evidently "knew" about the island of Atlantis. The conquest of Israel is known from Assyrian archeology and from the Bible. That you've never seen a Reubenite or a Naphtalite (or a unicorn) means that they don't exist?

It is true that when something really does not exist, one might spend a long time futilely looking for it. Many people have spent enormous energy searching for lost tribes, lost gold, and lost kingdoms. Why is it so difficult to decide that what you're looking for really isn't there? The answer, ironically, is that the world has endless possibilities for discovery and surprise.

Let's skip vacation plans and consider some real-life searches. How long should you (or the Libyans) look for Muammar Qaddafi? If he's not in the town of Surt, maybe he's Bani Walid, or Algeria, or Timbuktu? How do you decide he cannot be found? Maybe he was pulverized by a NATO bomb. It's urgent to find the suicide bomber in the crowded bus station before it's too late - if he's really there. You'd like to discover a cure for AIDS, or a method to halt the rising global temperature, or a golden investment opportunity in an emerging market, or a proof of the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry.

Let's focus our question. Suppose you are looking for something, and so far you have only "negative" evidence: it's not here, it's not there, it's not anywhere you've looked. Why is it so difficult to decide, conclusively and confidently, that it simply does not exist?

This question is linked to a different question: how to make the decision that "it" (whatever it is) does not exist. We will focus on the "why" question, and leave the "how" question to students of decision theories such as statistics, fuzzy logic, possibility theory, Dempster-Shafer theory and info-gap theory. (If you're interested in an info-gap application to statistics, here is an example.)

Answers to the "why" question can be found in several domains.

Psychology provides some answers. People can be very goal oriented, stubborn, and persistent. Marco Polo didn't get to China on a 10-hour plane flight. The round trip took him 24 years, and he didn't travel business class.

Ideology is a very strong motivator. When people believe something strongly, it is easy for them to ignore evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, for some people, the search itself is valued more than the putative goal.

The answer to the "why" question that I will focus on is found by contemplating The Endless Unknown. It is so vast, so unstructured, so, well ..., unknown, that we cannot calibrate our negative evidence to decide that whatever we're looking for just ain't there.

I'll tell a true story.

I was born in the US and my wife was born in Israel, but our life-paths crossed, so to speak, before we were born. She had a friend whose father was from Europe and lived for a while - before the friend was born - with a cousin of his in my home town. This cousin was - years later - my 3rd grade teacher. My school teacher was my future wife's friend's father's cousin.

Amazing coincidence. This convoluted sequence of events is certainly rare. How many of you can tell the very same story? But wait a minute. This convoluted string of events could have evolved in many many different ways, each of which would have been an equally amazing coincidence. The number of similar possible paths is namelessly enormous, uncountably humongous. In other words, potential "rare" events are very numerous. Now that sounds like a contradiction (we're getting close to some of Zeno's paradoxes, and Aristotle thought Zeno was crazy). It is not a contradiction; it is only a "rareness illusion" (something like an optical illusion). The specific event sequence in my story is unique, which is the ultimate rarity. We view this sequence as an amazing coincidence because we cannot assess the number of similar sequences. Surprising strings of events occur not infrequently because the number of possible surprising strings is so unimaginably vast. The rareness illusion is the impression of rareness arising from our necessary ignorance of the vast unknown. "Necessary" because, by definition, we cannot know what is unknown. "Vast" because the world is so rich in possibilities.

The rareness illusion is a false impression, a mistake. For instance, it leads people to wrongly goggle at strings of events - rare in themselves - even though "rare events" are numerous and "amazing coincidences" occur all the time. An appreciation of the richness and boundlessness of the Unknown is an antidote for the rareness illusion.

Recognition of the rareness illusion is the key to understanding why it is so difficult to confidently decide, based on negative evidence, that what you're looking for simply does not exist.

One might be inclined to reason as follows. If you're looking for something, then look very thoroughly, and if you don't find it, then it's not there. That is usually sound and sensible advice, and often "looking thoroughly" will lead to discovery.

However, the number of ways that we could overlook something that really is there is enormous. It is thus very difficult to confidently conclude that the search was thorough and that the object cannot be found. Take the case of your missing house keys. They dropped from your pocket in the car, or on the sidewalk and somebody picked them up, or you left them in the lock when you left the house, or or or .... Familiarity with the rareness illusion makes it very difficult to decide that you have searched thoroughly. If you think that the only contingencies not yet explored are too exotic to be relevant (a raven snatched them while you were daydreaming about that enchanting new employee), then think again, because you've been blinded by a rareness illusion. The number of such possibilities is so vastly unfathomable that you cannot confidently say that all of them are collectively negligible. Recognition of the rareness illusion prevents you from confidently concluding that what you are seeking simply does not exist.

Many quantitative tools grapple with the rareness illusion. We mentioned some decision theories earlier. But because the rareness illusion derives from our necessary ignorance of the vast unknown, one must always beware.

Looking for an exciting vacation? The Endless Unknown is the place to go. 




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Habit: A Response to the Unknown


David Hume explained that we believe by habit that logs will burn, stones will fall, and endless other past patterns will recur. No experiment can prove the future recurrence of past events. An experiment belongs to the future only until it is implemented; once completed, it becomes part of the past. In order for past experiments to prove something about the future, we must assume that the past will recur in the future. That's as circular as it gets.

But without the habit of believing that past patterns will recur, we would be incapacitated and ineffectual (and probably reduced to moping and sobbing). Who would dare climb stairs or fly planes or eat bread and drink wine, without the belief that, like in the past, the stairs will bear our weight, the wings will carry us aloft, and the bread and wine will nourish our body and soul. Without such habits we would become a jittering jelly of indecision in the face of the unknown.

But you can't just pull a habit out of a hat. We spend great effort instilling good habits in our children: to brush their teeth, tell the truth, and not pick on their little sister even if she deserves it.

As we get older, and I mean really older, we begin to worry that our habits become frozen, stodgy, closed-minded and constraining. Younger folks smile at our rigid ways, and try to loosen us up to the new wonders of the world: technological, culinary or musical. Changing your habits, or staying young when you aren't, isn't always easy. Without habits we're lost in an unknowable world.

And yet, openness to new ideas, tastes, sounds and other experiences of many sorts can itself be a habit, and perhaps a good one. It is the habit of testing the unknown, of acknowledging the great gap between what we do know and what we can know. That gap is an invitation to growth and awe, as well as to fear and danger.

The habit of openness to change is not a contradiction. It is simply a recognition that habits are a response to the unknown. Not everything changes all the time (or so we're in the habit of thinking), and some things are new under the sun (as newspapers and Nobel prize committees periodically remind us).

Habits, including the habit of open-mindedness, are a good thing precisely because we can never know for sure how good or bad they really are.




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MOOCs and the Unknown


MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses - have fed hundreds of thousands of knowledge-hungry people around the globe. Stanford University's MOOCs program has taught open online courses to tens of thousands students per course, and has 2.5 million enrollees from nearly every country in the world. The students hear a lecturer, and also interact with each other in digital social networks that facilitate their mastery of the material and their integration into global communities of the knowledgable. The internet, and its MOOC realizations, extend the democratization of knowledge to a scale unimagined by early pioneers of workers' study groups or public universities. MOOCs open the market of ideas and knowledge to everyone, from the preacher of esoteric spirituality to the teacher of esoteric computer languages. It's all there, all you need is a browser.

The internet is a facilitating technology, like the invention of writing or the printing press, and its impacts may be as revolutionary. MOOCs are here to stay, like the sun to govern by day and the moon by night, and we can see that it is good. But it also has limitations, and these we must begin to understand.

Education depends on the creation and transfer of knowledge. Insight, invention, and discovery underlay the creation of knowledge, and they must precede the transfer of knowledge. MOOCs enable learners to sit at the feet of the world's greatest creators of knowledge.

But the distinction between creation and transfer of knowledge is necessarily blurred in the process of education itself. Deep and meaningful education is the creation of knowledge in the mind of the learner. Education is not the transfer of digital bits between electronic storage devices. Education is the creation or discovery by the learner of thoughts that previously did not exist in his mind. One can transfer facts per se, but if this is done without creative insight by the learner it is no more than Huck Finn's learning "the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five".

Invention, discovery and creation occur in the realm of the unknown; we cannot know what will be created until it appears. Two central unknowns dominate the process of education, one in the teacher's mind and one in the student's.

The teacher cannot know what questions the student will ask. Past experience is a guide, but the universe of possible questions is unbounded, and the better the student, the more unpredictable the questions. The teacher should respond to these questions because they are the fruitful meristem of the student's growing understanding. The student's questions are the teacher's guide into the student's mind. Without them the teacher can only guess how to reach the learner. The most effective teacher will personalize his interaction with the learner by responding to the student's questions.

The student cannot know the substance of what the teacher will teach; that's precisely why the student has come to the teacher. In extreme cases - of really deep and mind-altering learning - the student will not even understand the teacher's words until they are repeated again and again in new and different ways. The meanings of words come from context. A word means one thing and not another because we use that word in this way and not that. The student gropes to find out how the teacher uses words, concepts and tools of thought. The most effective learning occurs when the student can connect the new meanings to his existing mental contexts. The student cannot always know what contexts will be evoked by his learning.

As an interim summary, learning can take place only if there is a gap of knowledge between teacher and student. This knowledge gap induces uncertainties on both sides. Effective teaching and learning occur by personalized interaction to dispel these uncertainties, to fill the gap, and to complete the transfer of knowledge.

We can now appreciate the most serious pedagogic limitation of MOOCs as a tool for education. Mass education is democratic, and MOOCs are far more democratic than any previous mode. This democracy creates a basic tension. The more democratic a mode of communication, the less personalized it is because of its massiveness. The less personalized a communication, the less effective it is pedagogically. The gap of the unknown that separates teacher and learner is greatest in massively democratic education.

Socrates inveighed against the writing of books. They are too impersonal and immutable. They offer too little room for Socratic mid-wifery of wisdom, in which knowledge comes from dialog. Socrates wanted to touch his students' souls, and because each soul is unique, no book can bridge the gap. Books can at best jog the memory of learners who have already been enlightened. Socrates would probably not have liked MOOCs either, and for similar reasons.

Nonetheless, Socrates might have preferred MOOCs over books because the mode of communication is different. Books approach the learner through writing, and induce him to write in response. In contrast, MOOCs approach the learner through speech, and induce him to speak in response. Speech, for Socrates, is personal and interactive; speech is the road to the soul. Spoken bilateral interaction cannot occur between a teacher and 20 thousand online learners spread over time and space. That format is the ultimate insult to Socratic learning. On the other hand, the networking that can accompany a MOOC may possibly facilitate the internalization of the teacher's message even more effectively than a one-on-one tutorial. Fast and multi-personal, online chats and other networking can help the learners to rapidly find their own mental contexts for assimilating and modifying the teacher's message.

Many people have complained that the internet undermines the permanence of the written word. No document is final if it's on the web. Socrates might have approved, and this might be the greatest strength of the MOOC: no course ever ends and no lecture is really final. If MOOCs really are democratic then they cannot be controlled. The discovery of knowledge, like the stars in their orbits, is forever on-going, with occasional supernovas that brighten the heavens. The creation of knowledge will never end because the unknown is limitless. If MOOCs facilitate this creation, then they are good. 




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Family Law: The Latest and Greatest – A Review of Case Law (Unknown Unknowns).




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Statistical inference for autoregressive models under heteroscedasticity of unknown form

Ke Zhu.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 6, 3185--3215.

Abstract:
This paper provides an entire inference procedure for the autoregressive model under (conditional) heteroscedasticity of unknown form with a finite variance. We first establish the asymptotic normality of the weighted least absolute deviations estimator (LADE) for the model. Second, we develop the random weighting (RW) method to estimate its asymptotic covariance matrix, leading to the implementation of the Wald test. Third, we construct a portmanteau test for model checking, and use the RW method to obtain its critical values. As a special weighted LADE, the feasible adaptive LADE (ALADE) is proposed and proved to have the same efficiency as its infeasible counterpart. The importance of our entire methodology based on the feasible ALADE is illustrated by simulation results and the real data analysis on three U.S. economic data sets.




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A fast algorithm with minimax optimal guarantees for topic models with an unknown number of topics

Xin Bing, Florentina Bunea, Marten Wegkamp.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 1765--1796.

Abstract:
Topic models have become popular for the analysis of data that consists in a collection of n independent multinomial observations, with parameters $N_{i}inmathbb{N}$ and $Pi_{i}in[0,1]^{p}$ for $i=1,ldots,n$. The model links all cell probabilities, collected in a $p imes n$ matrix $Pi$, via the assumption that $Pi$ can be factorized as the product of two nonnegative matrices $Ain[0,1]^{p imes K}$ and $Win[0,1]^{K imes n}$. Topic models have been originally developed in text mining, when one browses through $n$ documents, based on a dictionary of $p$ words, and covering $K$ topics. In this terminology, the matrix $A$ is called the word-topic matrix, and is the main target of estimation. It can be viewed as a matrix of conditional probabilities, and it is uniquely defined, under appropriate separability assumptions, discussed in detail in this work. Notably, the unique $A$ is required to satisfy what is commonly known as the anchor word assumption, under which $A$ has an unknown number of rows respectively proportional to the canonical basis vectors in $mathbb{R}^{K}$. The indices of such rows are referred to as anchor words. Recent computationally feasible algorithms, with theoretical guarantees, utilize constructively this assumption by linking the estimation of the set of anchor words with that of estimating the $K$ vertices of a simplex. This crucial step in the estimation of $A$ requires $K$ to be known, and cannot be easily extended to the more realistic set-up when $K$ is unknown. This work takes a different view on anchor word estimation, and on the estimation of $A$. We propose a new method of estimation in topic models, that is not a variation on the existing simplex finding algorithms, and that estimates $K$ from the observed data. We derive new finite sample minimax lower bounds for the estimation of $A$, as well as new upper bounds for our proposed estimator. We describe the scenarios where our estimator is minimax adaptive. Our finite sample analysis is valid for any $n,N_{i},p$ and $K$, and both $p$ and $K$ are allowed to increase with $n$, a situation not handled well by previous analyses. We complement our theoretical results with a detailed simulation study. We illustrate that the new algorithm is faster and more accurate than the current ones, although we start out with a computational and theoretical disadvantage of not knowing the correct number of topics $K$, while we provide the competing methods with the correct value in our simulations.




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Footsteps into the Unknown

Anna (Germany) and Christina (Canada) are the youngest members of OM Montenegro. They describe how God called them into missions, and led them unexpectedly to Montenegro, a Balkan country neither had heard much about before. Here God is changing them as they prepare for further service...




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"Madagascar's Back on Track -- Destination Unknown"

Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries, has been mired in political crisis, since 2009, when 34-year-old former radio disc jockey Andry Rajoelina toppled President Marc Ravalomanana in a military coup d’état.




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David Torrance: The SNP's independence proposition resembles another Brexit-like leap into the unknown

In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.






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Court of Appeal finds that injunctions against “persons unknown” can (i) be framed by reference to a defendant’s intention and (ii) prohibit lawful conduct

Cuadrilla Bowland Ltd & Ors v Persons Unknown & Ors [2020] EWCA Civ 9 Background In Boyd v Ineos Upstream Ltd...