By David Suzuki David Suzuki Foundation People sometimes get bugged by insects, but we need them. They play essential roles in pollination, combating unwanted agricultural pests, recycling organic matter, feeding fish, birds and bats, and much more. They’re the most … Continue reading →

By David Suzuki with contributions from Senior Editor Ian Hanington David Suzuki Foundation By 2002, drivers in London, England, were spending as much as half their commuting time stalled in traffic, contributing to much of the city centre’s dangerous particulate … Continue reading →

UN Environment Press Release Hundreds of millions of people in Asia rely on rice not only as a staple but as their main source of nutrition. But new research suggests the rice they eat will become less nutritious due to … Continue reading →

The United States faces a major meat shortage due to virus infections at processing plants. It means millions of pigs could be put down without ever making it to table. This is what the predicament looks like on a Minnesota farm. ... According to the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, an estimated 10,000 pigs are being euthanised every day in the state. ... [Farmer Mike Boerboom:] "On the same day that we're euthanising pigs - and it's a horrible day - is the same day that a grocery store 10 miles away may not get a shipment of pork. It's just that the supply chain is broken at this point."

When it was time to think about the cover – the whole design package – for my NEW BOOK, Creative Calling, I knew I wanted it to be something different. After all…see if you follow me here… it’s just wrong to make a book about creativity with just any old trend, cliche book cover.  Instead, the package needed to embody the ideas within. So when we approached this design challenge of a hard bound book – it had to be meaningful, beautiful, AND stand out in a sea of other books on the shelf.  No small task… And consider this:  you know that this isn’t just a nice story about the book cover.  This is a metaphor for any creative challenge.  Like every episode of podcast is full of practical advice….this is the real life story of ups and downs on this process…on how we struggled to overcame the challenge front of us… with costs, design options, time, publisher feedback, and other real-life constraints.  In short of EVERY CREATIVE PROCESS.  I’ve included 2 live-recorded phone calls with the designers on the project, Lou and Vasco, so you get their take on the creation process, challenges, the concepts behind what we set out to […]

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Today’s episode is going to rock your world … pun fully intended because today’s guest is an actual rock star. You may remember a band called Presidents of the United States of America. They took the world by storm in 1995 with their self titled album, Presidents of the United States of America playing songs like Lump and Peaches. Yes, that’s right. My guest today is frontman Chris Ballew. Chris and I have been friends for years, including collaborating on a music video together and at least one live performance (gotta listen to find out ;). Of course we get into his musical journey, a meteoric rise to success, and then realizing something was missing. We take some deep dives into Chris’ creative process, including his method for capturing his small bits and later using those to write new works, including his new project Casper Babypants. In this episode: Consider what kind of artist you are and how you relate to other artists. For years Chris played in bands, but what he learned about himself is his work is actually solo. Don’t censor yourself while you’re creating. Get it out, no matter how crazy or ridiculous or unusual and then […]

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A cellist since the age of eight, Zoë Keating pursued electronic music and contemporary composition as part of her Liberal Arts studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. I came across her music almost 10 years ago and love it so much I reached out to see if she would be interested on being on the show. Not only did she respond, she left us reeling from her incredible live performance and chat on art + entrepreneurship. Now she’s back on tour with her latest album Snowmelt. In this episode, we go deep into personal growth, dealing with incredible loss, balancing parenthood and career, and landscape for independent artists. Enjoy! FOLLOW ZOË: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  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 York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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My book Creative Calling is out! Thanks for all your love, support, and help getting it out into the world. We kicked off celebrations in Seattle with over 700 people in attendance to talk about Creativity with my good buddy, Humans of New York creator, Brandon Stanton. I recorded the session for you. Hope you enjoy! FOLLOW HUMANS OF NEW YORK: instagram | 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 York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Debbie Millman is one of my dear friends, a powerhouse creative and someone who inspires me every day. When I was developing my online companion class to the Creative Calling book, of course I had to ask Debbie to join me on stage for a conversation around designing our life with intention. Debbie’s insight is pure gold. AND – this is just one of the segments from the class. If you already have my book, you can access the entire class for free. All you need to do is visit www.creativelive.com/creativecalling and sign up there. Enjoy! FOLLOW DEBBIE: instagram | 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 York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Today I’m sitting down with investor, serial entrepreneur and all around good human, Kevin Rose. If you’re a long timer listener, you might remember Kevin was part of 30 Days of Genius. Now the tables are turned and I’m in the hot seat as a guest on his podcast, the Kevin Rose Show. Of course, it’s always fun sitting down with one of my long time homies to unpack some of my favorite topics, including: How to build your creative muscle and why it’s becoming more important Standing out and why you’re uniquely qualified. Forgetting the “shoulds” is a must do to uncork our richest lives and much more… Big shoutout to Kevin for having me on the show … and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out his podcast The Kevin Rose Show anywhere you listen to podcasts. Enjoy! FOLLOW KEVIN: instagram | 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 […]

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Recently sat down with my man Jordan Harbinger on his podcast The Jordan Harbinger Show. As a radio personality and a podcaster long before it was cool, Jordan is no stranger to the mic. It was a fun conversation and I hope you enjoy! A few of my fav topics: I share my framework for learning from the masters by deconstructing what they do and applying it My creative slumps and how I dug out How mindset matters and unwinding our self-limiting beliefs and much more … Big shoutout to Jordan for having me on the show … and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out his podcast The Jordan Harbinger Show anywhere you listen to podcasts. Enjoy! FOLLOW JORDAN: instagram| 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 York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our […]

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Kamal Ravikant was in a dark place. After four years of pouring his heart, soul, and money into his tech startup, it blew up. He lost everything – including himself. In a moment of desperation, a vow deep within came to the surface: to love himself. Though it was a bit of a foreign concept, he set out to undo the misery in his head through the lens of love. The practice Kamal formed became the self-published book: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. It sold over a half a million copies and is now newly expanded. In our conversation Kamal shares his ruthlessly practical way he unwound the negative thoughts and more importantly, made it last. In our conversation we explore: Mindset as a practice, including the 7 minute meditation Kamal uses to break old mental patterns Kamal shares his advice in getting unstuck, including giving yourself time to simply live Our brain is a monkey gone bananas. Pain, joy, loneliness, love are a universal part of the human condition such that no matter our individual circumstance we are all trying to tame it. and much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW KAMAL: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast […]

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Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. Dr. Berger is a world-renowned expert on change, word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. He has published over 50 articles in top‐tier academic journals, teaches Wharton’s highest rated online course, and popular outlets like The New York Times and Harvard Business Review often cover his work. He’s keynoted hundred of events, and often consults for organizations like Google, Apple, Nike, and the Gates Foundation. Enjoy! FOLLOW JONAH: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode 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 York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Increases time on page and boosts engagement with your site Thanks to the ever-increasing internet speeds, videos are in high demand. Right now, video is everywhere on social media, websites, and apps. We are watching them on all our screens, desktops, tablets, phones and smart TVs. It is expected a growth in video content up …

Wix Video — a great marketing tool for any website. Read More »

The characterization of phase dynamics in coupled oscillators offers insights into fundamental phenomena in complex systems. To describe the collective dynamics in the oscillatory system, order parameters are often used but are insufficient for identifying more specific behaviors. We therefore propose a topological approach that constructs quantitative features describing the phase evolution of oscillators. Here, the phase data are mapped into a high-dimensional space at each time point, and topological features describing the shape of the data are subsequently extracted from the mapped points. We extend these features to time-variant topological features by considering the evolution time, which serves as an additional dimension in the topological-feature space. The resulting time-variant features provide crucial insights into the time evolution of phase dynamics. We combine these features with the machine learning kernel method to characterize the multicluster synchronized dynamics at a very early stage of the evolution. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of our method for qualitatively explaining chimera states, which are states of stably coexisting coherent and incoherent groups in systems of identical phase oscillators. The experimental results show that our method is generally better than those using order parameters, especially if only data on the early-stage dynamics are available.

Recent advances in deep learning have facilitated the design of speaker verification systems that directly input raw waveforms. For example, RawNet extracts speaker embeddings from raw waveforms, which simplifies the process pipeline and demonstrates competitive performance. In this study, we improve RawNet by scaling feature maps using various methods. The proposed mechanism utilizes a scale vector that adopts a sigmoid non-linear function. It refers to a vector with dimensionality equal to the number of filters in a given feature map. Using a scale vector, we propose to scale the feature map multiplicatively, additively, or both. In addition, we investigate replacing the first convolution layer with the sinc-convolution layer of SincNet. Experiments performed on the VoxCeleb1 evaluation dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and the best performing system reduces the equal error rate by half compared to the original RawNet. Expanded evaluation results obtained using the VoxCeleb1-E and VoxCeleb-H protocols marginally outperform existing state-of-the-art systems.

Histopathology is a reflection of the molecular changes and provides prognostic phenotypes representing the disease progression. In this study, we introduced feature scores generated from hematoxylin and eosin histology images based on deep learning (DL) models developed for prostate pathology. We demonstrated that these feature scores were significantly prognostic for time to event endpoints (biochemical recurrence and cancer-specific survival) and had simultaneously molecular biologic associations to relevant genomic alterations and molecular subtypes using already trained DL models that were not previously exposed to the datasets of the current study. Further, we discussed the potential of such feature scores to improve the current tumor grading system and the challenges that are associated with tumor heterogeneity and the development of prognostic models from histology images. Our findings uncover the potential of feature scores from histology images as digital biomarkers in precision medicine and as an expanding utility for digital pathology.

This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of the time-fractional heat equation discretized on non-uniform temporal meshes. Non-uniform grids are essential to capture the singularities of "typical" solutions of time-fractional problems. We propose an efficient space-time multigrid method based on the waveform relaxation technique, which accounts for the nonlocal character of the fractional differential operator. To maintain an optimal complexity, which can be obtained for the case of uniform grids, we approximate the coefficient matrix corresponding to the temporal discretization by its hierarchical matrix (${cal H}$-matrix) representation. In particular, the proposed method has a computational cost of ${cal O}(k N M log(M))$, where $M$ is the number of time steps, $N$ is the number of spatial grid points, and $k$ is a parameter which controls the accuracy of the ${cal H}$-matrix approximation. The efficiency and the good convergence of the algorithm, which can be theoretically justified by a semi-algebraic mode analysis, are demonstrated through numerical experiments in both one- and two-dimensional spaces.

Deep learning-based models, such as convolutional neural networks, have advanced various segments of computer vision. However, this technology is rarely applied to seismic shot gather noise localization problem. This letter presents an investigation on the effectiveness of a multi-scale feature-fusion-based network for seismic shot-gather noise localization. Herein, we describe the following: (1) the construction of a real-world dataset of seismic noise localization based on 6,500 seismograms; (2) a multi-scale feature-fusion-based detector that uses the MobileNet combined with the Feature Pyramid Net as the backbone; and (3) the Single Shot multi-box detector for box classification/regression. Additionally, we propose the use of the Focal Loss function that improves the detector's prediction accuracy. The proposed detector achieves an AP@0.5 of 78.67\% in our empirical evaluation.

Generative feature matching network (GFMN) is an approach for training implicit generative models for images by performing moment matching on features from pre-trained neural networks. In this paper, we present new GFMN formulations that are effective for sequential data. Our experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method, SeqGFMN, for three distinct generation tasks in English: unconditional text generation, class-conditional text generation, and unsupervised text style transfer. SeqGFMN is stable to train and outperforms various adversarial approaches for text generation and text style transfer.

Hypertension is a potentially unsafe health ailment, which can be indicated directly from the Blood pressure (BP). Hypertension always leads to other health complications. Continuous monitoring of BP is very important; however, cuff-based BP measurements are discrete and uncomfortable to the user. To address this need, a cuff-less, continuous and a non-invasive BP measurement system is proposed using Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal and demographic features using machine learning (ML) algorithms. PPG signals were acquired from 219 subjects, which undergo pre-processing and feature extraction steps. Time, frequency and time-frequency domain features were extracted from the PPG and their derivative signals. Feature selection techniques were used to reduce the computational complexity and to decrease the chance of over-fitting the ML algorithms. The features were then used to train and evaluate ML algorithms. The best regression models were selected for Systolic BP (SBP) and Diastolic BP (DBP) estimation individually. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) along with ReliefF feature selection algorithm outperforms other algorithms in estimating SBP and DBP with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 6.74 and 3.59 respectively. This ML model can be implemented in hardware systems to continuously monitor BP and avoid any critical health conditions due to sudden changes.

Chest computed tomography (CT) becomes an effective tool to assist the diagnosis of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19). Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide, using the computed-aided diagnosis technique for COVID-19 classification based on CT images could largely alleviate the burden of clinicians. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive Feature Selection guided Deep Forest (AFS-DF) for COVID-19 classification based on chest CT images. Specifically, we first extract location-specific features from CT images. Then, in order to capture the high-level representation of these features with the relatively small-scale data, we leverage a deep forest model to learn high-level representation of the features. Moreover, we propose a feature selection method based on the trained deep forest model to reduce the redundancy of features, where the feature selection could be adaptively incorporated with the COVID-19 classification model. We evaluated our proposed AFS-DF on COVID-19 dataset with 1495 patients of COVID-19 and 1027 patients of community acquired pneumonia (CAP). The accuracy (ACC), sensitivity (SEN), specificity (SPE) and AUC achieved by our method are 91.79%, 93.05%, 89.95% and 96.35%, respectively. Experimental results on the COVID-19 dataset suggest that the proposed AFS-DF achieves superior performance in COVID-19 vs. CAP classification, compared with 4 widely used machine learning methods.

Coordinating the operation of combined heat and power plants (CHPs) and heat pumps (HPs) at the interface between heat and power systems is essential to achieve a cost-effective and efficient operation of the overall energy system. Indeed, in the current sequential market practice, the heat market has no insight into the impacts of heat dispatch on the electricity market. While preserving this sequential practice, this paper introduces an electricity-aware heat unit commitment model. Coordination is achieved through bid validity constraints, which embed the techno-economic linkage between heat and electricity outputs and costs of CHPs and HPs. This approach constitutes a novel market mechanism for the coordination of heat and power systems, defining heat bids conditionally on electricity market prices. The resulting model is a trilevel optimization problem, which we recast as a mixed-integer linear program using a lexicographic function. We use a realistic case study based on the Danish power and heat system, and show that the proposed model yields a 4.5% reduction in total operating cost of heat and power systems compared to a traditional decoupled unit commitment model, while reducing the financial losses of each CHP and HP due to invalid bids by up-to 20.3 million euros.

Your website serves several important purposes for your company — attracting customers, generating leads, and making sales, just to name a few. And as your home on the Internet, it also needs to explain who you are to the world and why they should choose you over your competitors.   However, creating an “About Us” […]

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When you bookmark pages on the web, it’s challenging to remember the name of the page. As you dive back into your bookmarks to find it, you see a small icon next to the page. You recognize the icon and realize it’s the website you viewed prior. This icon, known as a favicon, is small, […]

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Summer Camps 2020 A Good Impression Camp Split light and splatter color; from prisms to paint this camp has kids constructing, drawing, painting and playing with color.…

Summer Camps 2020 Cinderella Join Cinderella and her animal friends on a magical adventure.…

At these gatherings in northeast Washington, the jackboot of tyranny is always said to be descending, the hand of the federal government always inches away from stealing your guns, your land, your freedom to speak or to pray.…

[IMAGE-1] Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story begins as its central marriage is coming to an end. Our two protagonists are fiercely independent, articulate, opinionated creative types: Charlie (Adam Driver) is the director of an avant-garde theater troupe in New York City; Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is an actress and one of his primary collaborators.…

Sam Mendes' 1917, which took Best Picture and Best Director awards at the Golden Globes earlier this week, looks like a standard period piece.…

Spokane chef Ricky Webster is bringing tips, recipes and good cheer from his kitchen to yours through a series of lighthearted cooking videos.…

Earlier this morning, Sleater-Kinney announced on Twitter that they're hitting the road on a co-headlining tour with Wilco this summer. Great news!…

As the threat of the Coronavirus spreads throughout the country, public events everywhere are being canceled and postponed for public safety concerns. The Fox Theater is the latest venue to follow suit, closing its doors and canceling all events through April 10.…

Calling all fearless freaks! Mark your calendars: The Flaming Lips have rescheduled their now-canceled April gig at the Fox Theater for March 19, 2021.…

We've known that Hamilton was going to be part of the 2020-21 STCU Best of Broadway season for a while, but now we finally know the exact dates, as well as the rest of the featured shows for the season. Granted, the whole world has changed since WestCoast Entertainment announced Hamilton was coming to town back when they announced their 2019-20 season — a season that's been roiled, along with the rest of our lives, by the coronavirus pandemic.…

ON INLANDER.COM WORLD: Roughly two weeks after Canada's deadliest mass shooting, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced an immediate ban on what he called “military-style assault weapons.”…

By The New York Times The New York Times Company As President Donald Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.…

ON INLANDER.COM NATION: Even as U.S. President Donald Trump urges states to reopen their economies, his own administration projects that the death toll from COVID-19 will spike to 3,000 people per day.…

By David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery The New York Times Company Hundreds of Wendy’s restaurants have run out of hamburgers.…

Two more residents who were staying at the Spokane Veterans Home have died of complications related to COVID-19, according to the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs. There have now been five residents of the home who have died following their diagnosis of COVID-19.…

[IMAGE-1] The legal cannabis industry has only been around for a handful of years, but one local farm's green thumb goes back generations. Since the 1950s the Lima family has been in the business of growing — their namesake Lima Greenhouses dominate Vinegar Flats, where they still grow bedding plants and vegetables.…

While events around the country have been put on hold, Coeur d’Alene’s Summer Theatre is still slated for a show at the end of the month. But it won’t be in the usual format.…

A coalition of immigrant-focused organizations has created the Spokane Relief Fund for Undocumented Immigrants, in order to help families who are unable to access federal aid during the coronavirus shutdowns. The partners sponsoring the work include the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (SIRC), the Hispanic Business and Professional Association, Latinos en Spokane, Mujeres in Action and Raiz.…

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

Q: I recently read that a combination of the drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin might be effective against COVID-19. I have diabetes and I am at risk for this viral infection.…

Best Golf Course DOWNRIVER Originally built in 1916, Downriver Golf Course hits that sweet spot where duffers of a wide range of expertise can feel at home on its 18 holes abutting the Spokane River and adjacent to Riverside State Park.…

Tool's music is not only not for everyone, it's such a challenging polyglot of oft-derided musical styles that it risks not being for anyone. And yet, the quartet's blend of prog-rock, art-rock, metal and performance art has become a genre unto itself over the course of 30 years, and it's a genre that has proved remarkably commercial.…

ProPublica’s health reporter Caroline Chen explains what the conversation around asymptomatic coronavirus carriers is missing, and what we need to understand if we’re going to beat this nefarious virus together. By Caroline Chen, ProPublica In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., around the last week of February, I joked to a colleague that maybe now, finally, people would learn how to wash their hands properly.…

The present invention relates to a process for preparing a compound of formula wherein: R2 is cycloalkyl or alkyl, each of which may be optionally substituted; Y is —CONR3R4, —CN or CO2R5; R3, R4 and R5 are each independently H or alkyl; n is 1 to 6; wherein said process comprising the steps of: (i) treating a compound of formula (IV), where R1 is alkyl, with a compound of formula (V) and forming a compound of formula (IIIb); (ii) treating said compound of formula (IIIb) with a compound of formula (I1) to form a compound of formula (I).