Tom Davenport, Babson College professor and coauthor of the HBR article "Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine."

Vijay Govindarajan, director of the Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business and coauthor of the HBR article "How GE Is Disrupting Itself."

There is a great opportunity for government contractors to save on sales or use taxes paid for consumables used on government contracts. The U.S. Government is not subject to sales/use tax, however, government contractors typically pay tax on their consumable purchases. Government contractors may be paying tax on many of their overhead purchases needlessly. Sales...

The post Reverse Audits for Government Contractors appeared first on Anders CPA.

NECA's top three legislative items for the week of January 6, 2020.

1. Senate to Vote on America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act 

On February 12, 2020, NECA joined dozens of other organizations and sent a letter to Senate leadership urging quick action on the NECA-supported America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act (ATIA) (S. 2302).

NECA’s Look Ahead: NECA has long believed that we must find a sustainable solution to our nation’s surface transportation. We were encouraged last summer when the bill passed out of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) and was the largest highway bill ever passed, authorizing $287 billion over five years. We will be continuing to urge the swift passage of this important legislation.

2. Take Action: Tell Your Representative to Support H.R. 5644 to Prohibit Reverse Auctions

The Construction Consensus Procurement Improvement Act of 2020 (H.R. 5644) would prohibit the use of reverse auctions on federal construction projects. The Senate already passed this important legislation, and NECA remains optimistic that this sensible reform can pass the House and be enacted into law. Tell your Representative to cosponsor H.R. 5644 today!

NECA’s Look Ahead: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a report stating that using reverse auctions to procure construction services did not guarantee the lowest price nor did it establish any clear benefits over the traditional sealed-bid approach. Awarding contracts solely on price requires contractors to cut costs in materials and labor, ignoring the importance of quality construction and the consideration of life-cycle costs.

3. Recess Weeks are for In-District Visits

Congress was in recess this week, which is the perfect opportunity to set up a meeting with your Member of Congress at home in your districts. In-district visits are a great opportunity for your congressman to tour your company, jobsite, or training center to learn about NECA and the electrical contracting industry. Visit NECA’s Congressional Visit Toolkit to learn how to set up your meeting today!

NECA’s Look Ahead: Remember, you can earn 5 points for your NECA chapter with each in-district visit in the Chairman’s Challenge. You can also earn points for sending a letter through our Legislative Action Center or attending the upcoming National Legislative Conference. 

A hike in taxes on fuels, which will add to government’s revenue, helped lift sentiment.

Last week we discussed the Santa Clara county study, in which 1.5% of the people tested positive for coronavirus. The authors of the study performed some statistical adjustments and summarized with a range of 2.5% to 4.2% for infection rates in the county as a whole, leading to an estimated infection fatality rate of 0.12% […]

The CALIFORNIA COURT OF APPEALS has reversed a $9.4 million court judgement in favor of music producer QUINCY JONES. JONES and the estate of MICHAEL JACKSON had been battling over royalties … more

This image shows a particular optical illusion that confronts us every day. Notice the difference between the black text on a white background and the reverse. With reversed type — light text on a darker background — the strokes seem bolder.

Black text on white is very familiar, so we can be forgiven for thinking it correctly proportioned. For familiarity’s sake we can say it is, but there are two effects happening here: The white background bleeds over the black, making the strokes seem thinner. With reversed type the opposite is true: The white strokes bleed over the black, making it seem bolder.

One of the most obvious examples of this is with signs where the letters are punched into the surround then lit from inside. In his article, Designing the ultimate wayfinding typeface, Ralph Herrmann used his own Legibility Text Tool to simulate this effect for road and navigational signs.

One might say that characters are only correctly proportioned with low-contrast. Although objective reality hails that as true, it isn’t a good reason to always set type with low contrast. Type designers have invariably designed around optical illusions and the constraints of different media for us. Low-contrast text can also create legibility and accessibility problems. Fortunately, kind folks like Gez Lemon have provided us with simple tools to check.

As fascinating as optical illusions are —  the disturbing, impossible art of Escher comes to mind — we can design around reversed body type. On the Web, increasing tracking and leading are as simple as increasing the mis-named letter-spacing and line-height in CSS. However, decreasing font weight is a thornier problem. Yes, we will be able to use @font-face to select a variant with a lighter weight, but the core web fonts offer us no options, and there are only a few limited choices with system fonts like Helvetica Neue.

Reversing a logotype

For logotype there are plenty of options, but it makes me slightly uncomfortable to consider switching to a lighter font for reversed type logos. The typeface itself is not the logotype; the variant is, so switching font could be tricky. Ironically, I’d have to be very sure that that was no perceivable difference using a lighter weight font. Also, with display faces, there’s often not a lighter weight available — a problem I came across designing the Analog logo.

The logotype worked well when testing it in black on white. However, I wanted a reversed version, too. That’s when I noticed the impact of the optical illusion:

It looked bloated! Objective reality be damned; it simply wouldn’t do. After a few minutes contemplating the carnage of adjusting every control point by hand, I remembered something; eureka!

Punching the paths through a background image in Fireworks CS4 removed the illusion. (Select both the path and the background then using Modify > Combine Paths > Punch.) Is this a bug? I don’t know, but if it is, it’s a useful one for a change!

I grinned. I was happy. All was well with the world again. Lovely! Now I could go right ahead and think about colour and I wouldn’t be far from done. This is how it emerged:

A final note on logotype design & illusions

Before we even got to actual type for the Analog logo, we first had to distill what it would convey. In our case, Alan took us through a process to define the brand values and vision. What emerged were keywords and concepts that fed into the final design. The choice of type, colour, and setting were children of that process. Style is the offspring of meaning.

I always work in greyscale for the first iterations of a new logo for a few simple reasons:

1. The form has to work independently of colour — think printing in greyscale or having the logo viewed by people with a colour-impairment.
2. It allows for quick testing of various sizes — small, high contrast versions will emphasise rendering and legibility issues at screen resolutions, especially along curves.
3. I like black and white. :)

I realise that in this day and age the vast majority of logos need to perform primarily on the Web. However, call me old-fashioned, but I still think that they should work in black and white, too.

Brands and display faces emerged with consumer culture during the 19^th Century. Logotypes were displayed prominently in high streets, advertising hoardings, and on sign boards. In many instances the message would be in black and white. They were designed to be legible from a distance, at a glance, and to be instantly recognisable. Even with colour, contrast was important.

The same is true for the Web today; only the context has changed, and the popularity of logomarks and icons. We should always test any logo at low resolutions and sizes, and the brand must still have good contrast (regardless of WCAG 2.0) to be optimal. A combination of colour and form works wonders, but in a world of a million colours where only a handful are named in common parlance, having the right form still seems a smarter choice than trying to own a palette or colour.

A final word

This article was prompted by a happy accident followed by a bit of reading. There are many references to optical illusions in design and typography books. The example image at the start of this article was inspired by one found in the excellent Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger. There’s also plenty of online material about optical or visual illusions you can dive into. There’s also more on . Oh, and don’t forget the work of M. C. Escher!

Human eyes are amazing. In two sets of watery bags we get a wide-angle lens with incredibly sharp focus and ridiculous depth of field. Apparently our brain is even clever enough to compensate for the lag in the signal getting from retina to cortex. I know next to nothing about ocular science. Spending a morning reading and thinking about optical illusions, and contemplating my own view here in the garden office is pretty awe-inspiring. If only my photographs were as good as my eyes, illusions or no.

An exemplary embodiment provides a regenerative burner apparatus. The apparatus includes a burner housing having a gas channel and a single-stage heat regenerator equipped with a housing enclosing a fluid-porous heat regenerative media bed. A first gas passageway in the housing directly interconnects the gas channel and the lower surface of the media bed. A second gas passageway in the housing interconnects an opening in the housing communicating with the exterior and the upper surface of the media bed. This arrangement allows hot waste combustion gases to pass upwardly through the media bed so that any condensable contaminant in the gases condenses to a liquid and flows out of the bed under gravity before becoming solid and clogging the bed. The liquid contaminant may then be removed from the regenerator from a position below the media bed.

A protein which is composed N-terminally of one or several C-terminal parts of the amino acid sequence of the mature tumor necrosis factor and C-terminally of one or several N-terminal parts of the amino acid sequence of the mature tumor necrosis factor, which activates epithelial ion channels and improves the lung function and which can be used for the manufacture of medicaments for the treatment of diseases associated with the lung function, such as oedemas.

The Virtual Aggregation Processor enables end user devices to share a common wireless forward path of a multicast communication architecture in which the forward path delivered content is dynamically changed or modified based on a real-time, near-real-time, or delay-time basis via aggregated reverse path feedback from at least one of a plurality of end user devices. The Virtual Aggregation Processor periodically or continuously aggregates the feedback input received via the reverse path (having wired and/or wireless connectivity), modifies the forward path multi-media content, and delivers this dynamically modified multi-media content to the then connected population of end user devices via a wireless forward path multicast in a repetitive closed loop fashion.

In one aspect, an apparatus for drilling a wellbore into an earth formation is disclosed, which apparatus, according to one embodiment, may include a drill string configured to be conveyed into a wellbore, wherein an annulus is formed between the drill string and a wellbore wall, a first flow device configured to circulate a first fluid from an annulus to a bore of the drill string, and a second flow device positioned downhole of the first flow device, the second flow device configured to circulate a second fluid from the bore of the drill string to the annulus.

A reverse thrust detent system for an aircraft includes a throttle quadrant having an intermediate reverse thrust detent position, a reverse thrust scheduling system interfacing with the throttle quadrant, at least one aircraft engine interfacing with the reverse thrust scheduling system and a programmable input interfacing with the reverse thrust scheduling system and adapted to receive an engine reverse thrust setting. The reverse thrust scheduling system is adapted to operate the at least one aircraft engine according to the engine reverse thrust setting responsive to actuation of the intermediate reverse thrust detent position of the throttle quadrant. A reverse thrust detent method for an aircraft is also disclosed.

Apparatus and associated method for sharpening a cutting edge of a tool. In accordance with some embodiments, a side of the tool is placed in contacting engagement against a reverse sharpening guide surface to orient the tool at an acute angle with respect to an abrasive surface, with the abrasive surface extending in a lateral direction from a first end to a second end and the reverse sharpening guide surface located proximate the first end. The tool is moved away from the reverse sharpening guide surface and along the abrasive surface in the lateral direction toward the second end while nominally maintaining the tool at the acute angle so that a cutting edge of the tool is sharpened against the abrasive surface in a trailing cutting edge orientation with a top surface of the tool opposite the cutting edge maintained closer to the second end than the cutting edge.

A one time programming (OTP) apparatus unit cell includes magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with reversed connections for placing the MTJ in an anti-parallel resistance state during programming. Increased MTJ resistance in its anti-parallel resistance state causes a higher programming voltage which reduces programming time and programming current.

In a locking type reverse input blocking clutch, smooth finished surfaces having no directionality are formed, by barrel polishing, on surfaces brought into contact with rollers while rotation is being transmitted from the input side to the output side, i.e. an inner peripheral cylindrical surface of an outer ring and a surface of a lid portion opposed to the rollers. With this arrangement, it is possible to reduce the sliding resistance between the rollers and the outer ring and between the rollers and the lid portion, without the need to reduce the forces of springs for pushing the rollers into narrow portions of wedge-shaped spaces. This in turn makes it possible to reduce the torque necessary to transmit rotation from the input side to the output side, while maintaining high locking performance.

An apparatus for reverse mounting an electronic device in a server housing is provided. The apparatus includes a first bracket, a second bracket, and a coupling. The first bracket couples to the device body and extends outward from the device body toward a front rail of the server housing. The first bracket includes a first end configured to releasably couple to front rail of the server housing. The second bracket includes a protrusion that extends outward from the device body in an opposite direction relative to the first bracket. The coupling includes a first portion that couples to a rear rail of the server housing and a second portion defining a channel that receives the protrusion of the second bracket.

A reverse coil head coil and innerspring has a generally cylindrical and helical wire form coil body and opposing coil ends which terminate on opposite sides of a reference plane that passes through the coil body. The reverse coil head coils are interconnected in a matrix to form an innerspring wherein only one terminal end of each coil is located at a perimeter of the innerspring. Variations in the number and pitch of helical turns of the coil body are also disclosed.

A thrust reverser system is provided with an axial centerline. This thrust reverser system includes a first translating element, a second translating element and an actuator mechanism. The actuator mechanism is attached to the first translating element and the second translating element. The actuator mechanism is configured to translate the first translating element along the axial centerline at a first rate. The actuator mechanism is configured to translate the second translating element along the axial centerline at a second rate, which may he different than the first rate.

Aspects of the disclosure are directed to a system associated with a thrust reverser of an aircraft, comprising: a set of cascades incorporating a track, the track including a first track end and a second track end, a blocker door, and a link including a first link end coupled to the track and a second link end coupled to the blocker door, where the cascades are configured to translate between a stowed position and a deployed position to cause the first link end to traverse the track.

A reverse osmosis (RO) water filtration device includes a body, a RO cartridge, a first cartridge, a second cartridge and a storage tank all mounted inside the body. Water to be filtered sequentially goes through a water inlet of the RO water filtration device, the first cartridge, the RO cartridge, the storage tank, the second cartridge, and a faucet to get the water filtered. The storage tank provides additional water supply when the pressure between the faucet and RO cartridge is below the water pressure inside the storage tank to increase water volume upon opening a faucet.

CITY bosses have reversed their decision to ban doormats from all council-owned properties in Southampton.

Kilohearts has announced a sale on selected plugins, offering a 50% discount for the next few weeks. We are offering 50% off some of our most popular effects (VST/AU/AAX/Snapin). Trance Gate, Tape Stop, Reverser, and Resonator are all HALF-PRICE for a limited time. Chop your sounds up, wind them down, flip them over and make […]

The post Save 50% on Kilohearts Trance Gate, Tape Stop, Reverser, and Resonator plugins appeared first on rekkerd.org.

What we refer to as “reverse psychology” is more or less a strategy of deception based on expected defiance, and any short term gratification is often met with long term problems. So why has reverse psychology become such a trope in parenting or dealing with contrarians? On this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art...

Technology isn't permanently harming our ability to concentrate, despite the widely held belief that our devices and the internet are making us worse at focusing, according to a cognitive psychology expert.

The modern motoring experience is one of self-parking vehicles, multi-storey car parking complexes and stacking systems, but in many Australian country towns, reverse angle parking remains.

Spraying graffiti on heritage listed buildings is something that is usually frowned upon. But when it is done in an environmentally sound way, does no actual damage and delivers an important message about sustainability, the results are surprisingly well received.

Two South Australian police officers will continue to be prosecuted for allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old boy on the Eyre Peninsula in 2013, after the state's top judge finds the investigation was legal.

South Australia's Opposition says it will reverse the State Government's plan to privatise Adelaide's train and tram services if elected in 2022.

A call of six-again is reversed with eight minutes left on the clock during the 2019 NRL Grand Final between the Sydney Roosters and Canberra Raiders.

Why have so many leveraged and inverse ETFs reverse split their shares lately?

We played another successful “reverse” game recently, so I want to document them in one place. Sushi No (Sushi Go) Play normally. Goal is to have the lowest score at the end of the game. 7 Blunders (7 Wonders) Play … Continue reading →

Major League Baseball has informed teams they no longer need to advise fans to hold on to tickets for games affected by the coronavirus shutdown.

Carbon monoxide (CO) remains the most common cause of human poisoning. The consequences of CO poisoning include cardiac dysfunction, brain injury, and death. CO causes toxicity by binding to hemoglobin and by inhibiting mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase (CcO), thereby decreasing oxygen delivery and inhibiting oxidative phosphorylation. We have recently developed a CO antidote based on human neuroglobin (Ngb-H64Q-CCC). This molecule enhances clearance of CO from red blood cells in vitro and in vivo. Herein, we tested whether Ngb-H64Q-CCC can also scavenge CO from CcO and attenuate CO-induced inhibition of mitochondrial respiration. Heart tissue from mice exposed to 3% CO exhibited a 42 ± 19% reduction in tissue respiration rate and a 33 ± 38% reduction in CcO activity compared with unexposed mice. Intravenous infusion of Ngb-H64Q-CCC restored respiration rates to that of control mice correlating with higher electron transport chain CcO activity in Ngb-H64Q-CCC–treated compared with PBS-treated, CO-poisoned mice. Further, using a Clark-type oxygen electrode, we measured isolated rat liver mitochondrial respiration in the presence and absence of saturating solutions of CO (160 μm) and nitric oxide (100 μm). Both CO and NO inhibited respiration, and treatment with Ngb-H64Q-CCC (100 and 50 μm, respectively) significantly reversed this inhibition. These results suggest that Ngb-H64Q-CCC mitigates CO toxicity by scavenging CO from carboxyhemoglobin, improving systemic oxygen delivery and reversing the inhibitory effects of CO on mitochondria. We conclude that Ngb-H64Q-CCC or other CO scavengers demonstrate potential as antidotes that reverse the clinical and molecular effects of CO poisoning.

CJ Fielding
Feb 1, 1995; 36:211-228
Reviews

Carbon monoxide (CO) remains the most common cause of human poisoning. The consequences of CO poisoning include cardiac dysfunction, brain injury, and death. CO causes toxicity by binding to hemoglobin and by inhibiting mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase (CcO), thereby decreasing oxygen delivery and inhibiting oxidative phosphorylation. We have recently developed a CO antidote based on human neuroglobin (Ngb-H64Q-CCC). This molecule enhances clearance of CO from red blood cells in vitro and in vivo. Herein, we tested whether Ngb-H64Q-CCC can also scavenge CO from CcO and attenuate CO-induced inhibition of mitochondrial respiration. Heart tissue from mice exposed to 3% CO exhibited a 42 ± 19% reduction in tissue respiration rate and a 33 ± 38% reduction in CcO activity compared with unexposed mice. Intravenous infusion of Ngb-H64Q-CCC restored respiration rates to that of control mice correlating with higher electron transport chain CcO activity in Ngb-H64Q-CCC–treated compared with PBS-treated, CO-poisoned mice. Further, using a Clark-type oxygen electrode, we measured isolated rat liver mitochondrial respiration in the presence and absence of saturating solutions of CO (160 μm) and nitric oxide (100 μm). Both CO and NO inhibited respiration, and treatment with Ngb-H64Q-CCC (100 and 50 μm, respectively) significantly reversed this inhibition. These results suggest that Ngb-H64Q-CCC mitigates CO toxicity by scavenging CO from carboxyhemoglobin, improving systemic oxygen delivery and reversing the inhibitory effects of CO on mitochondria. We conclude that Ngb-H64Q-CCC or other CO scavengers demonstrate potential as antidotes that reverse the clinical and molecular effects of CO poisoning.

Renza Scibilia
Jul 1, 2019; 37:302-303
Book Reviews

A Florida sheriff's office said a driver reversing out of a bank parking lot accidentally ended up backing up onto two other cars.

Prediabetic state -- Prevention.

Back is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Back is Roe v. Wade. Back is climate change. and the word "democratic." A new proposal incorporating those revisions was presented to the Michigan board of education last week.

The post Reverse Engineering to Fix the Laser Cutter appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

One teacher embraced the technique, with encouragement from a former district administrator. But he was told he had to reverse course, in part because of parent complaints.

Malaria parasites invade and replicate within red blood cells (RBCs), extensively modifying their structure and gaining access to the extracellular environment by placing the plasmodial surface anion channel (PSAC) into the RBC membrane. Expression of members of the cytoadherence linked antigen gene 3 (clag3) family is required for PSAC activity, a process that is regulated epigenetically. PSAC is a well-established route of uptake for large, hydrophilic antimalarial compounds and parasites can acquire resistance by silencing clag3 gene expression, thereby reducing drug uptake. We found that exposure to sub-IC50 concentrations of the histone methyltransferase inhibitor chaetocin caused substantial changes in both clag3 gene expression and RBC permeability, reversing acquired resistance to the antimalarial compound blasticidin S that is transported through PSAC. Chaetocin treatment also altered progression of parasites through their replicative cycle, presumably by changing their ability to modify chromatin appropriately to enable DNA replication. These results indicate that targeting histone modifiers could represent a novel tool for reversing epigenetically acquired drug resistance in P. falciparum.

Carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative pathogens are a critical public health threat and there is an urgent need for new treatments. Carbapenemases (β-lactamases able to inactivate carbapenems) have been identified in both serine β-lactamase (SBL) and metallo β-lactamase (MBL) families. The recent introduction of SBL carbapenemase-inhibitors has provided alternative therapeutic options. Unfortunately, there are no approved inhibitors of MBL-mediated carbapenem-resistance and treatment options for infections caused by MBL-producing Gram-negatives are limited. Here, we present ZN148, a zinc-chelating MBL-inhibitor capable of restoring the bactericidal effect of meropenem and in vitro clinical susceptibility to carbapenems in >98% of a large international collection of MBL-producing clinical Enterobacterales strains (n=234). Moreover, ZN148 was able to potentiate the effect of meropenem against NDM-1-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in a murine neutropenic peritonitis model. ZN148 showed no inhibition of the human zinc-containing enzyme glyoxylase II at 500 μM and no acute toxicity was observed in an in vivo mouse model with cumulative dosages up to 128 mg/kg. Biochemical analysis showed a time-dependent inhibition of MBLs by ZN148 and removal of zinc ions from the active site. Addition of exogenous zinc after ZN148 exposure only restored MBL activity by ~30%, suggesting an irreversible mechanism of inhibition. Mass-spectrometry and molecular modelling indicated potential oxidation of the active site Cys221 residue. Overall, these results demonstrate the therapeutic potential of a ZN148-carbapenem combination against MBL-producing Gram-negative pathogens and that ZN148 is a highly promising MBL inhibitor, capable of operating in a functional space not presently filled by any clinically approved compound.

Google's reverse image search is a breeze on a desktop, but what about when you're on a mobile device? Google, Bing, and others have options.