Against the grain: Could farmers feed the world and heal the planet?

Humanity relies on agriculture to provide nourishment, yet there is an urgent need to reduce the agricultural sector’s environmental footprint. Meeting these two goals is crucial for both people and the planet to thrive. Please join us for a conversation featuring Roger Thurow, award-winning author and journalist, whose recently released book argues it is possible […]

The post Against the grain: Could farmers feed the world and heal the planet? appeared first on IFPRI.

TORONTO, ON — New research from the University of Toronto Scarborough shows that animal dispersal is influenced by a gene associated with feeding and food search behaviours. The study, which was carried out by UTSC Professor Mark Fitzpatrick and PhD student Allan Edelsparre, provides one of the first aimed at gaining a functional understanding of […]

Giving feedback can be tricky and awkward, especially if you’re conflict averse. How do you give feedback that’s empathetic yet effective?

I want to get constructive feedback and grow from it, without getting upset. Is that too much to ask.

RSF Elektronik unveils the MSR 40 modular rotary position feedback system to machine designers who want a quick way to measure angle on larger rotary axes.

This Episode as well as the next one take a look at remoting infrastructures such as CORBA, .NET Remoting or Webservices. In this first part we will take a look at why remote communication is necessary in the first place, what remoting middleware can do for you as well as which other middleware technologies exist in addition to OO-RPC systems, such as messaging middleware. Finally, we conclude with a brief overview of what the broker pattern can do for us in the context of remoting middleware.

This is a short episode that outlines the upcoming episodes and interviews, as well as reports on some listener feedback.

This is an episode with some more of your feedback. Specifically, the episode also contains a 5 minute section from Geert Bevin where he explains how Continuations are used an implemented in the Rife Framework. This is in response to a discussion about continuations and Rife in Episode 15, Future of Enterprise Java. We also have some feedback from Bill Pugh about flaws in our description about the problems of double-checked locking in Java.

The RSS feeds of the RSS-Public and RSS-Board mailing lists are no longer available. Yahoo Groups used to offer feeds for each of its public lists, but Yahoo dropped support last year. A member of the service's product team said the feature was retired in July 2013.

To read the lists and subscribe to receive them in email, visit the Yahoo Groups pages for RSS-Public and RSS-Board.

We may move the lists to Google Groups, which does offer RSS feeds for each group.

Brent Simmons, the developer of the NetNewsWire RSS reader, is questioning his decision to put an unread count next to each feed, reasoning that it encourages people to be too obsessive about reading every item:

Instead of a dozen bookmarks, people had a hundred feeds. Or two hundred. Or two thousand.

And there was a tyranny behind keeping track of unread items and showing an unread count. People reacted in different ways, but many people felt like they always had to go through everything.

Including me. To this day.

I did not know this was going to happen. That was not the idea: it was a side effect of reasonable (at the time) choices.

I like seeing these counts on feeds where I need to read all items that are posted, but that's only a small percentage of the 100-120 feeds I follow. It would be nice to turn that off for others I read more casually.

Feedly presents unread counts on each feed and folder of feeds. There's a Mark As Read button to clear a count, but when you click it, the confirmation dialog acts like it's an extremely consequential decision: "Are you sure you want to mark this entire source as read? This operation cannot be undone."

I've posed a question on the RSS-Public mailing list: Do you think feed readers should count unread items?

The distributed social network Mastodon has grown to 12.8 million user accounts, supporting itself through user donations and a lot of effort by the volunteers running servers. There's no CEO changing the network at whim, no ads and no algorithms that manipulate what you see to increase engagement. Just a scroll of posts by the people you follow pulled from all over the world.

Every Mastodon account has an RSS feed that can be found by going to the user's Mastodon page and adding ".rss" to the URL of that page. For example, the RSS feed for Bonaventure Software is at this address:

https://mastodon.online/@bonaventuresoft.rss

The feeds are valid RSS and use the Media-RSS and Webfeeds namespaces.

The Media-RSS content element contains the photo, audio or video included in the Mastodon post, if one is present:

The Webfeeds icon element holds the URL of the user's avatar:

One potential improvement to the feed would be to add a link element from the Atom namespace to identify the URL of the RSS feed, as in this example:

That might not happen anytime soon. Mastodon is a frenetic open source project with 61 open issues and suggestions involving RSS.

If you need to load an RSS feed with the PHP programming language, the open source library SimplePie greatly simplifies the process of pulling in items from a feed to present on a website, store in a database or do something else coooool with the data. There's a full installation guide for SimplePie but you can skip it with just three steps:

1. Download SimplePie 1.5.
2. Copy the file autoloader.php and the folder library to a folder that's accessible from your PHP code.
3. Make note of this folder; you'll be using require_once() to load autoloader.php from that location.

SimplePie has been designed to work the same regardless a feed's format. It supports RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, Atom and the earlier versions of RSS. Additionally it can read feed elements from nine namespaces.

Here's PHP code that loads feed items from the news site Techdirt and displays them in HTML:

// load the SimplePie library
require_once('/var/www/libraries/simplepie-1.5/autoloader.php');

// load the feed
$feed = new SimplePie();
$feed->set_feed_url('https://www.techdirt.com/feed/');
$feed->init();
$feed->handle_content_type();

// create the output
$html_output = '';
foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item) {
  $html_output .= '<p><a href="' . $item->get_link() . '">' . $item->get_title() . '</a></p>';
  $html_output .= $item->get_description();
  $html_output .= '<p>By ' . $item->get_author(0)->get_name() . ', ' . $item->get_date();
}

// display the output
ECHO <<<END
$html_output
END;


The API documentation for SimplePie_Item lists the functions that can extract data from each feed item. The versatility of the library is demonstrated by get_authors(), which can retrieve an item's authorship information whether it was in the RSS author element, Dublin Core creator, iTunes author, or Atom author.

SimplePie supports caching so that a feed isn't downloaded every time code is executed. The addition of these lines turns on caching, specifies the location of a cache folder and sets the time to use a cached version to four hours (14,400 seconds):

$feed->set_cache_location('/var/www/cache/');
$feed->set_cache_duration(14400);
$feed->enable_cache();

SimplePie was created by RSS Advisory Board member Ryan Parman, Geoffrey Sneddon and Ryan McCue. The project is currently maintained on GitHub by Malcom Blaney.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the effort that became the Atom feed format. It all began on June 16, 2003, with a blog post from Apache Software Foundation contributor Sam Ruby asking for feedback about what constitutes a well-formed blog entry.

The development of RSS 2.0 had been an unplanned hopscotch from a small group at Netscape to a smaller one at UserLand Software, but Atom was a barn raising. Hundreds of software developers, web publishers and technologists gathered for a discussion in the abstract that led to a concrete effort to build a well-specified syndication format and associated publishing API that could become Internet standards. Work was done on a project wiki that grew to over 1,500 pages. Everything was up for a vote, including a plebiscite on choosing a name that ballooned into a four-month-long bike shed discussion in which Pie, Echo, Wingnut, Feedcast, Phaistos and several dozen alternatives finally, mercifully, miraculously lost out to Atom.

The road map of the Atom wiki lists the people, companies and projects that jumped at the chance to create a new format for feeds. XML specification co-author Tim Bray wrote:

The time to write it all down and standardize it is not when you're first struggling to invent the technology. We now have aggregators and publishing systems and search engines and you-name-it, and I think the community collectively understands pretty well what you need, what you don't need, and what a good syntax looks like.

So, now's the time.

As someone whose only contribution to the project was voting on names, I think I was too quick to rule out Phaistos, a suggestion inspired by a clay disc produced by movable type before 1600 B.C. Comments on the wiki page proposing that monicker offer a sample of the name wars:

MikeBlumenthal: Does one of the great mysteries of antiquity, a document which, after almost 100 years of trying, is still a mystery not only as to its meaning but even as to its purpose, and which stands as a paragon of impenetrability, really fit as a name for an interoperability format?

Jayseae: Actually, the current state of RSS is pretty much a mystery -- why should this project be any different? I like the association with publishing -- though I'm not sure the pronunciation really flows. Perhaps it could be shortened somehow?

AsbjornUlsberg: Sorry, but I don't like it. We could just as gladly give the project any other Greek-sounding name, like Papadopolous.

Arising from all the chaos and debate, the Atom format became a beautifully specified IETF standard in 2005 edited by Mark Nottingham and Robert Sayre that's used today in millions of feeds. It is the most popular syndication format that's never argued about.

Everybody got that out of their system on the wiki.

The software developer Niko Abeler has crawled 51,165 podcast feeds to study what RSS elements they contain. His comprehensive Podcast Feed Standard report looks at the usage of core RSS elements and namespace elements from Apple iTunes, Atom, Content, Podcast 2.0 and Simple Chapters. He writes:

In the world of podcasting, there is a great deal of freedom when it comes to the format and content of a podcast. Creators are free to choose their own audio format and feed content, giving them the flexibility to create something truly unique. However, when it comes to distributing a podcast, certain standards must be followed in order to be added to an aggregator such as Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the podcasting community has come to agree upon certain conventions that can be used to add additional features to a podcast, such as chapters, enhanced audio, and more. These conventions allow for a more immersive and engaging listening experience for the audience.

This website is dedicated to providing guidance and information on the conventions and standards used in podcasting.

There's a lot of interesting data in the RSS 2.0 report, which finds that these are the six least popular elements in an RSS feed's channel:

Over 99 percent of feeds contain the optional channel element language and the optional item elements enclosure, guid, pubDate and title. Only 0.2% of feeds contain a source element in an item.

The iTunes namespace report shows a lot of variation in support. The required element itunes:explicit is only present in 18 percent of feeds and four optional elements have less than 20 percent: itunes:new-feed-url, itunes:block, itunes:complete and itunes:title. One namespace in the report, Podcast 2.0, has been proposed by Podcastindex "to provide a solution for problems which previously have been solved by multiple competing standards" and is still under development.

The report also analyzes the audio files enclosed in the podcast feeds to determine their format, bitrate, channel and loudness. The report finds that 95.6 percent use MP3 and 4.4 percent AAC/M4A. People who like an alternative open source format will be oggravated that its sliver of the pie graph is so small it can't be seen.

If Abeler isn't tired of crunching numbers, one thing that would be useful for the RSS Advisory Board to learn is how many of the feeds contain more than one enclosure element within a single item.

There are a lot of libraries for processing XML data with Java that can be used to read RSS feeds. One of the best is the open source library XOM created by the computer book author Elliotte Rusty Harold.

As he wrote one of his 20 books about Java and XML, Harold got so frustrated with the available Java libraries for XML that he created his own. XOM, which stands for XML Object Model, was designed to be easy to learn while still being strict about XML, requiring documents that are well-formed and utilize namespaces in complete adherence to the specification. (At the RSS Advisory Board, talk of following a spec is our love language.)

XOM was introduced in 2002 and is currently up to version 1.3.9, though all versions have remained compatible since 1.0. To use XOM, download the class library in one of the packages available on the XOM homepage. You can avoid needing any further configuration by choosing one of the options that includes third-party JAR files in the download. This allows XOM to use an included SAX parser under the hood to process XML.

Here's Java code that loads items from The Guardian's RSS 2.0 feed containing articles by Ben Hammersley, displaying them as HTML output:

// create an XML builder and load the feed using a URL
Builder bob = new Builder();
Document doc = bob.build("https://www.theguardian.com/profile/benhammersley/rss");
// load the root element and channel
Element rss = doc.getRootElement();
Element channel = rss.getFirstChildElement("channel");
// load all items in the channel
Elements items = channel.getChildElements("item");
for (Element item : items) {
  // load elements of the item
  String title = item.getFirstChildElement("title").getValue();
  String author = item.getFirstChildElement("creator",
    "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/").getValue();
  String description = item.getFirstChildElement("description").getValue();
  // display the output
  System.out.println(">h2>" + title + ">/h2>");
  System.out.println(">p>>b>By " + author + ">/b>>/p>");
  System.out.println(">p>" + description + ">/p>");

All of the classes used in this code are in the top-level package nu.xom, which has comprehensive JavaDoc describing their use. Like all Java code this is a little long-winded, but Harold's class names do a good job of explaining what they do. A Builder uses its build() method with a URL as the argument to load a feed into a Document over the web. There are also other build methods to load a feed from a file, reader, input stream, or string.

Elements can be retrieved by their names such as "title", "link" or "description". An element with only one child of a specific type can be retrieved using the getFirstChildElement() method with the name as the argument:

Element linkElement = item.getFirstChildElement("link");

An element containing multiple children of the same type uses getChildElements() instead:

Elements enclosures = item.getChildElements("enclosure");
if (enclosures.size() > 1) {
  System.out.println("I'm pretty sure an item should only include one enclosure");
}

If an element is in a namespace, there must be a second argument providing the namespace URI. Like many RSS feeds, the ones from The Guardian use a dc:creator element from Dublin Core to credit the item's author. That namespace has the URI "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/".

If the element specified in getFirstChildElement() or getChild Elements() is not present, those methods return null. You may need to check for this when adapting the code to load other RSS feeds.

If the name Ben Hammersley sounds familiar, he coined the term "podcasting" in his February 2004 article for The Guardian about the new phenomenon of delivering audio files in RSS feeds.

Once the branch circuit loads are calculated, the feeder circuit loads may be calculated by applying demand factors to the branch circuit loads. General Lighting Loads (Article 220.42) Show window or track lighting (Article 220.43) Receptacles in other than dwelling... Read more

The post 8 NEC Basic Feeder Circuit Sizing Requirements appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

At its most basic, Solar Power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity; either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP systems use a combination of lenses/mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area... Read more

The post Solar Panels and Feed-in Tariffs – The Intricacies of Solar Power appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

6-10-22 Our focus on breastfeeding continues with a look at the increase in public accommodations for breastfeeding moms. https://fb.watch/dz7s3mmxy1/ https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1535283771251085313?s=20&t=d8Pb52gE3vOjcBIAujH0rQ   6-9-22 Our series on Maternal & Early Childhood Issues continues with a look back at the passage of the PA law to permit breastfeeding in public. https://fb.watch/dz7zQTeSHv/ https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1534961334323904512?s=20&t=d8Pb52gE3vOjcBIAujH0rQ  

6-16-22 Interesting story here on one person’s belief that the COVID lockdowns are to blame for many moms turning away from breastfeeding and, in turn, contributing to the current shortage in baby formula. pic.twitter.com/1iU3XYFbZF — PAcatholic (@PAcatholic) June 16, 2022 https://fb.watch/dHdtLvKsVG/ 6-14-22 Sharing an article that came out Tuesday for our series on breastfeeding about trying to still do it while returning to work. Sharing an article that came out Tuesday for our series on breastfeeding about trying to still do it while returning to work. pic.twitter.com/Fb43upYGpy — PAcatholic (@PAcatholic) June 15, 2022 https://fb.watch/dHdp5IzKNN/   6-13-22 Continuing our series on breastfeeding for June. Women of color are less likely to breastfeed than those of other races and that has made them more vulnerable to the baby formula shortage. We look at some of the societal factors involved. https://fb.watch/dHdd4Kl8j6/ https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1536404428735094788?s=20&t=K3d74k2cioFdzcdNNHbHTg

6-30-22 We finish up our stories on breastfeeding by talking again with Colette Acker of the Breastfeeding Resource Center about the culture that exists towards BF in the U.S. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1542502773232631808?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZztlqwT-k/ 6-29-22 As we’ve focused this month on issues involved in breastfeeding, we’ve talked with our advocates and moms about the challenges involved in doing so while going back to work full time. Colette Acker of the Breastfeeding Resource Center shares her views on what’s involved. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1542181083462221833?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZzB2MlLo-/ 6-28-22 Colette Acker of the Breastfeeding Resource Center talks with us about why many new moms give up on breastfeeding within the first several weeks after the birth of their child. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1541812970275180546?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZzHsbhiOH/ 6-27-22 We begin today a series of stories with Colette Acker of the Breastfeeding Resource Center in Montgomery County. They’ve been providing vital support for new moms for nearly 20 years. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1541447488065966082?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZA4NAhnvc/ 6-24-22 We wrap up our conversation on breastfeeding with Amy Wilt by talking about two potential problems that may affect moms during breastfeeding. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1540366512262975488?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZAjWQcR-8/ 6-23-22 We continue our June focus on breastfeeding by talking with doula Amy Wilt about the challenges involved in breastfeeding while returning to work. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1540060616722989056?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZApmYqCFR/ 6-22-22 We continue our chat with Amy Wilt about breastfeeding. Today’s focus is on relactation. A total education for many of us. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1539653795398836224?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZAyeP5WNk/ 6-21-22 We continue the conversation with our doula consultant, Amy Wilt, about the influence and pressure that moms get from those closest to them when trying to decide whether or not to breastfeed their newborns. https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1539255591914328065?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZAFgKarE-/ 6-20-22 We continue our series on breastfeeding by talking again with Amy Wilt of Dauphin County Doulas. She has provided a ton of information for us in our nine-month long focus on Maternal & Early Childhood Issues. Today Amy talks about ”the latch.” https://twitter.com/PAcatholic/status/1538962868414169094?s=20&t=y-vWAw8jWy_JOJQb9YkGAw https://fb.watch/dZAMmSazHv/  

Allpax, a ProMach brand, recently delivered a new high-speed automated pouch loading and unloading system to a customer to feed an existing bank of Allpax retorts.

 Redesigned packaging features a "New & Improved" badge, setting the stage for a new chapter of growth for the brand.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) for receiving updated psychology web content and subscribing to AssessmentPsychology.com.

Interfacing of renewable energy or distributed power sources to up to 400 VDC power feeding systems

Will Explore Feed help burst our respective Facebook bubbles?

Read more: Facebook officially rolls out Explore Feed to desktop and mobile

A new front has opened in the war for eyeballs on the mobile screen.

Read more: Google takes on Facebook with new algorithmic news feed

We want to hear from you.

Why is wheat diversity important? To help address feeding the world's growing population, experts turn to 100-year-old wheat.

Location: Engineering Library- TK7872.C8W835 2016

Location: Electronic Resource- 

For users who would like to selectively read our latest News and announcement, check out our RSS feed at http://www.newlook.com.sg/rss/news.xml in XML format. Other sources of RSS feeds and free News reader downloads and aggregators are also suggested.

Here's a weblog or blog on masquerading emails. This free RSS feed could help you to identify masquerading emails that are worms, virus, scams or spams. Having an increased awareness and understanding may help to prevent your computers from being infected or being misled by some scams.

It's not easy choosing a chaotic, uncertain gig over a lucrative, secure career…

Update your feedreader: this feed has now moved to https://thesmokinggun.com/rss

I'm sure there's a huge cultural essay just waiting to be written (or perhaps someone has already tackled it and I haven't read it) on how the indie rock kids absolutely go ape shit for the music of Girl Talk, but for the most part shy away from hip hop and rap music in general by itself. Perhaps it's because Greg Gillis simply recontextualizes the music itself by slamming it up alongside so many other styles that it simply becomes impossible to place into any sort of genre. One could call it a mash-up, but Gillis goes far beyond just about anyone else I've heard doing this sort of thing, to the point where a mind-boggling amount of song samples (averaging about 10 or more per minute of song) makes the head spin. For reference, a Wikipedia article thoroughly lists everything.

"Feedback is a gift…" or so they say. But are your gifts useful, or are they more like the third pair of socks you get at Christmas? Delivering…

We have listed our RSS feeds on separate page for easy access and subscription to all our feeds. The page also includes easy-to-follow instructions for those who are not familiar with the methods of subscribing to RSS feeds.

It seems like the SHPAMEE feed was not updating correctly. This issue has now been resolved. Please let us know if you are still experiencing problems with the SHPAMEE feed.

The Regulatory Authority of Bermuda [RA] has approved an adjustment to the Feed-In-Tariff [FIT], increasing it from 0.131 $/kWh to 0.1915 $/kWh. A spokesperson said, “This decision is a calculated response to the dynamic shifts unfolding in both the energy and economic landscapes. “The rationale behind this move is grounded in a commitment to maintaining […]

Calling it a “once in a lifetime encounter,” Weldon Wade posted video footage showing sharks feeding on dead 30-35 foot sperm whale floating off Bermuda, with the video also showing Marine Biologist Choy Aming on top of the whale capturing GoPro footage from a very unique perspective. In an Instagram post, Weldon Wade said, “Here […]

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