A meeting was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 21-22, 1999, to generate discussion and consensus about interoperability of publicly available scholarly information archives. The invitees represented several well known e-print and report archive initiatives, as well as organizations with interests in digital libraries and the transformation of scholarly communication. The central goal of the meeting was to agree on recommendations that would make the creation of end-user services -- such as scientific search engines and linking systems -- for data originating from distributed and dissimilar archives easier. The Universal Preprint Service (UPS) Prototype was developed in preparation for this meeting. As a proof-of-concept of a multi-discipline digital library of publicly available scholarly material, the Prototype harvested nearly 200,000 records from several different archives and created an attractive end-user environment. This paper describes the results of the project. This is done in two ways. On the one hand, the experimental end-user service that was created during the project is illustrated. On the other hand, the lessons that the project team drew from the experience of creating the Prototype are presented.
The main aim of the meeting of the Open Archives initiative (Ginsparg, Luce and Van de Sompel 1999) was to agree on recommendations that would make the creation of end-user services -- such as scientific search engines and linking systems -- for data originating from distributed and dissimilar e-print archives easier. The UPS Prototype project was developed in preparation for this meeting.
The prototype was a feasibility study for the creation of cross-archive end-user services. With the premise that users would very much prefer to have access to a federation of digital libraries, the main aim of the project was the identification of the key issues in actually creating an experimental end-user service for data originating from important existing, production archives. It was expected that a better understanding of the problems would facilitate the Santa Fe discussions on making recommendations to archives regarding their openness to cross-archive services. This paper describes the most fundamental problems that occurred during the project, and looks at those that are related to the specific nature of e-print collections. The project was also a testbed for the digital library technologies that were selected to create the prototype. These issues are out of the scope of this paper but are described at length in a companion paper (Van de Sompel, Krichel, Nelson, et al. 2000).
The UPS Prototype project was sponsored by the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and by the WoPEc project of the JISC funded e-Lib program. The coordinators of the project were Herbert Van de Sompel, Thomas Krichel and Michael Nelson, each of whom brought additional researchers into the project. Most of them never met in person; project communication has mainly been conducted via a list server. Work started around the end of June 1999 and was finalized with a report on the project results given by the coordinating trio as the opening presentation for the Santa Fe Meeting of the Open Archives initiative on October 21, 1999. Experience developed during the prototype was one of the foundations of the concepts brought forward in the Santa Fe Convention (Van de Sompel and Lagoze 2000; Open Archives initiative 2000) that formalizes the recommendations resulting from the Santa Fe discussions.
The aim of the prototype was to demonstrate a multidisciplinary end-user service that covers a variety of e-print and reports services, as a special instance of a cross-archive service. Most e-print and reports services have a focus in a specific discipline. Beyond the communities of scholars that are aware of the existence of discipline-specific points of entry to e-print information, little effort has been made to serve the communities of libraries, students and interdisciplinary researchers for whom multidisciplinary services are important tools. In addition to increasing the accessibility of e-print data, the existence of such a service helps raise the awareness of alternative communication mechanisms outside a core group that no longer needs convincing.
The amount of cross-archive end-user services is limited (see, for instance, Pl�mer and Schw�nzl 1996; Pl�mer and Schw�nzl 1997; Canessa and Pastore 1996; Canessa 1996; Powell 1998; Powell and Fox 1998). Most of them are prototypal and do not compare in scale to what the UPS Prototype set out to realize. The Astrophysics Data System is a noteworthy exception. Most of the services are discipline-specific and none of them works across as many initiatives as the UPS Prototype. This made the UPS Prototype project a challenging, realistic feasibility study, since it anticipated that future end-user services will have to deal with the complexity caused by an environment in which discipline-oriented as well as institution-based -- hence multidisciplinary -- archives with dissimilar architectures will co-exist.
The UPS Prototype project set out to create end-user services for data originating from some major archive initiatives: arXiv.org (commonly known as the the Los Alamos E-Print Archives), Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive (CogPrints), the Digital Library for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library ( NCSTRL), the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). Table 1 provides links to descriptions of these initiatives as well as to their end-user service(s).
Submission model: Some archives use a procedure in which material is submitted to a central system. Others handle the submission in a decentralized manner, for instance by submission to distributed systems that are part of the archive initiative.
Publication model: In some archives, authors submit papers directly to the e-print archive. In other archives, the submission is handled at the level of the author's affiliation (organization, department, etc.).
Storage facility: The archive initiatives with a centralized submission mechanism also keep the submitted data in a central repository. Archive initiatives with a decentralized submission procedure store the data in the distributed systems of which the archive initiative consists, but some also create a central mirror that keeps all the data.
Native end-user service: All archives initiatives except RePEc offer a native end-user service. This service can be built around a central index that refers to all the data in the archive initiative. This is the case for all systems with a central storage facility. For others it relies on searching of decentral indexes referring to each of the systems that make up the archive initiative. For NDLTD, each of the decentral indexes must be searched separately as long as the federated search functionality (Powell and Fox 1998) is in an experimental stage. Although NCSTRL originally supported distributed searching, its current production version only supports centralized searching.
Third-party service: For some archives, data is also being made searchable via third-party services. RePEc goes to the extreme in this scenario, by fully relying on third-parties for end-user services.
Discipline: Some archives are discipline-oriented in the sense that knowing that a record originates from a certain archive or sub-archive is equal to knowing its research area. Other archives are multidisciplinary in the sense that such knowledge cannot be derived merely from the origin of the record.
Scale: Of the six archives, arXiv is the largest with about 130,000 objects in the collection. It also is the most diverse in terms of contributing authors and institutions (Table 3).
Addition of a SFX linking service.
At a first stage of the project, data was collected from the originating archive initiatives. This data was stored in a new repository that was the subject of the end-user services created. For each of the archives, the data was collected at a fixed moment in time, around July 1999. Updates to the originating archives are not reflected in the new repository: the UPS prototype builds on static dumps of archive-data. Only the metadata was collected; the full-content associated with that metadata was left in the originating archives and hence, the end-user service points at the full-content there.
Table 3 presents some figures related to the data harvested for the project. The "Records" column shows the total amount of records resulting from the data-gathering phase for each archive initiative. The "Records in UPS" shows the amount that made it into the Prototype. The "Records linked to full content" shows for how many of the UPS records an associated full-text file exists.
(*) Only data from NDLTD Virginia Tech is involved in the experiment.
Achieving an appropriate level of subtagging of metadata elements: Several input metadata formats do not have adequate subtagging of important data fields. In order to address these problems, the native data was parsed via several routines that use heuristics to try and achieve the desired level of subtagging.
Creation of a UPS namespace of unique identifiers: It was decided to accord unique UPS identifiers to metadata records originating from all archives. The hierarchical structure of the UPS identifiers is derived from the identifier-conventions used in ReDIF. All record identifiers in UPS start with a value that unambiguously reveals the origin archive of the record.
Dealing with multiple manifestations of a work: An e-print is commonly only the first manifestation of a work that is followed by other publications such as a peer-reviewed paper, a conference proceeding, a chapter in a book, etc. In some metadata sets post e-print information is available within the e-print metadata record. It was decided to maintain this concept in the converted data: e-print metadata and post e-print metadata related to the same work were stored in distinct zones of a single metadata record.
Subject classification and keywords: Subject classification schemes that are native to various input datasets were preserved and values were stored in separate ReDIF-tags for each scheme. Author supplied keywords that do not follow a controlled vocabulary were mapped into a shared Keywords tag. In addition, an attempt was made to add a broad subject classification to the complete collection. A scheme from NASA -- as proposed in (Tiffany and Nelson 1998) -- was chosen. The classification values were generated by an automated process, which mapped information on the research domain of archive data into the common scheme.
While the above illustrates that important steps were taken to try and achieve an appropriate level of metadata quality, the short project time frame prevented the creation of an optimal metadata collection.
Once the input data is converted to ReDIF, it is moved to archives with a Smart Object Dumb Archive (SODA) architecture (Maly, Nelson, and Zubair 1999). The fundamental concept underlying such archives is the transfer of intelligence away from the digital library towards the data objects in the digital library. In a SODA environment, the data objects are called buckets. Their features are described in detail in (Nelson, et al. 1999). Buckets are object-oriented, aggregate,intelligent digital objects optimized for use in digital libraries. Buckets are designed to be self-contained and mobile, carrying inside themselves all the code and functionality required for operation. For instance, buckets do not need digital library software to display their content: they carry the software required to self-display their own content. Communication with buckets occurs through bucket methods, which are invoked using HTTP as a transport protocol. While the bucket concept originates in the NCSTRL+ research project (Nelson et al. 1998), it is a general concept that is independent of digital library protocols and systems.
Individual SODA archives were created for arXiv, CogPrints, NACA, NCSTRL, NDLTD and RePEc. The ReDIF metadata files are used as seeds for the creation of buckets. Screencam 1 as well as Figure 4 & Figure 7 -- in the Project Results section -- demonstrate some of the methods available for buckets in the UPS environment. Screencam 3 and Screencam 4 show buckets being approached via the NCSTRL+ user interface and how they are integrated with the SFX linking service.
It was decided to use the NCSTRL+ environment for the creation of the end-user search facility. NCSTRL+ is an extension of the Dienst architecture (Lagoze, Shaw, Davis, et al. 1995) that supports buckets and clusters. Clusters provide a way to partition a dataset along predefined metadata axes. Each cluster divides the dataset into virtual sub-collections.
By building on its Dienst heritage, the UPS search interface provides a simple and advanced search interface. The interface was redesigned in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing and comprehensible than the original NCSTRL/NCSTRL+ interface. The simple search option provides a keyword search across the entire bibliographic metadata set. The advanced search provides fielded searches for title, author and abstract. It also provides the capability to restrict searches to specific clusters. Search results can be resorted according to any cluster without the need to redo the actual search. The search results show brief information from metadata records. Selection of a search result leads the user outside the NCSTRL+ environment, because it causes the bucket corresponding to the search result to display itself.
To link references between archives, the UPS prototype end-user service interfaces to the SFX context-sensitive linking service. This provides a concrete illustration of integrating an e-print environment with other information resources, which is an important aspect of e-print interoperability (Harnad 1999).
The details of the SFX framework are described in (Van de Sompel and Hochstenbach 1999a); (Van de Sompel and Hochstenbach 1999b) and (Van de Sompel and Hochstenbach 1999c). The fundamental aim of the SFX linking framework is to link information within digital library collections in a fully dynamic way. When an information system is interoperable with SFX -- SFX-aware --, it presents each search result with an accompanying SFX-button. When the SFX-button of a search result is clicked, a list of services that are relevant for this result is dynamically generated. The services SFX generates are context-sensitive. The services will reflect the nature of the digital library collection that is accessible to the user: the service links will point back into the collection of the user's institution.
In the UPS Prototype project the digital object buckets -- rather than the NCSTRL+ service -- are SFX-aware. This turns out to be a very interesting feature. For instance, when a bucket contains metadata describing both an e-print and a formal publication (see Metadata Conversion) it will autonomously decide to display two SFX-buttons -- one for the e-print and one for the publication. As can be seen from Screencam 3, Screencam 4 and Figure 7 to Figure 13 -- in the Project Results section -- the two buttons may generate quite different services when clicked.
In the course of the UPS Prototype project, the SLAC/SPIRES system has been made SFX-aware. SLAC/SPIRES is a free citation database for high-energy physics. It contains all the references from published papers and e-prints in that research domain. SLAC/SPIRES can be used to dynamically request a list of all references of a publication, using metadata about the publication as parameters. This service is integrated in SFX. When a user requests extended services for buckets describing a high-energy physics e-print, one of the services allows him to get the reference list of the e-print from SLAC/SPIRES. But since SLAC/SPIRES is SFX-aware, all references returned by SLAC/SPIRES are equipped with an SFX-button, allowing the user to request extended services for each them. Since such references are to both published and e-print material, an attractive integration of the e-print environment and the traditional scholarly communication environment is achieved, using the references as an intermediate stage.
In order to obtain the archive data, the maintainers of the archives need to be contacted individually.
In the course of these contacts, it becomes apparent that -- willingly or unwillingly -- most archive initiatives do not have clear indications on the terms and conditions for usage of their data.
Some archives do not have protocols to support harvesting and, as such, a single static dump of data is delivered by the administrator of the archive.
Other archives do provide such protocols but differ in the richness of the criteria that are available for metadata extraction as well as in the publication of these features.
Overall, the lack of a shared framework organizing all of the above hinders a smooth operation of the Prototype project.
There is a need for mutually agreed namespaces for e-print identifiers, author names, author-affiliations, subject classification schemes, etc.
As a result of the UPS Prototype project, an experimental cross-archive end-user service was presented at the Santa Fe Meeting of the Open Archives initiative. At the time of writing, it is available at http://ups.cs.odu.edu and will remain online for an uncertain period of time. For archival purposes, the concrete results of the project are illustrated in the Appendix by means of Lotus Screencam movies and screendumps that show how a user navigates the multidisciplinary UPS Prototype environment.
The most important results of the Prototype project are the lessons learned while actually doing the project and the insights gained in the problems related to the creation of cross-archive services. These insights -- briefly summarized above -- enable the identification of some crucial areas where work is required in order to more easily accommodate the creation of third party services. As a result of the UPS Prototype project, the coordinating trio drew some conclusions and presented them to the Open Archives group, as a means to facilitate the discussions at the Santa Fe meeting.
a machine interface that allows for data-access by third-parties.
A native end-user service remains a possible, but not an essential, function of an archive. The proposed open archive architecture is represented in Figure 2.
As a result of such a reorientation, a scenario emerges in which the maintainers of archives can be seen as data providers that concentrate on the crucial functions of data-submission and long-term storage of submitted data. Minimally, these data providers also enable third-party service providers to create end-user services based on their data. In some cases, they fully rely on them for this. This concept is represented in Figure 3.
As a mechanism for data-access by service providers, a harvesting approach rather than a distributed search scenario is proposed. The main justification for this approach is the ease with which these are able to be part of a highly distributed environment. Web-harvesting tools have sufficiently demonstrated this property that will become crucial in anticipation of a situation in which thousands of archives, both discipline-specific and institution-based, may become available. Harvesting approaches have the additional attractive property that they allow data enhancing procedures to be run on the collected data. Enhancements such as normalization, augmentation and restructuring are applied to data originating from different sources in order to create consistent end-user services. In a harvesting scenario, these activities can be dealt with in a batch manner. Distributed searching solutions may ultimately develop the same degree of scalability and flexibility, but given the current status of research, that may not happen on the short to mid-term time range that the Open Archives initiative has set itself to outline and implement a workable set of interoperability recommendations.
For this purpose, data providers need to support a harvesting interface enabling service providers to periodically poll the archives to collect data that is relevant for their end-user services. Such end-user services can create their identity in a variety of ways. Services can be discipline-oriented, multidisciplinary, regional, only for discovery of certain types of material, etc. Therefore, a harvesting interface should support a variety of harvesting criteria such as Accession Date; Publication Date; Subject Classification; Author Affiliation.
Terms and conditions of data use: In order to overcome the ambiguity regarding the terms and conditions of use of archive data that is identified in the course of the project, the framework must accommodate a means by which data providers can express both the openness and limits of the usage of their archives. Data providers need a means to express that service providers are welcome to use archive data for any purpose, provided that they tell the data provider how they are using the data and that they are not using it in a way that the data provider has explicitly prohibited.
Technical characteristics: The framework must accommodate a way in which the data providers can describe the technical characteristics of their archive, such as harvest protocols, harvest criteria, metadata format(s), subject classification scheme(s), material-type scheme(s), identifier scheme(s), etc.
Administrative characteristics: The framework must also provide supporting information such as contact addresses for data providers and service providers, the content of archives and services, etc.
A concrete proposal concentrating on the terms and conditions was prepared and presented to the Open Archives group (Krichel 1999).
There is a need for a shared universal namespace for e-print identifiers just as they exist for journals (ISSN), books (ISBN) and articles, e.g., Astrophysics Data System Bibcode (Schmitz et al. 1995), DOI (Paskin 1999) and PubMed ID (NCBI 1998). Such identifiers become crucial as a means to keep track of the provenance of e-print data when it starts to penetrate into scholarly resources outside the native archive. This is important in de-duplication processes, in linking services, for citations and citation databases as well as to track the lifecycle of a research effort from the e-print, to the publication, to citations.
In addition, namespaces for metadata-elements that are important as a harvesting criterion -- author affiliation, discipline -- are desirable.
The lack of quality of the metadata available in the UPS Prototype project has an important, baleful influence on the creation of cross-archive services as well as on the quality of services that can be created. In order to solve this problem, data enhancement procedures need to be run to improve the quality of existing metadata in archives. In parallel with that, an exploration of submission techniques is required, in order to identify ways in which the data quality can be improved at the source, without demotivating authors by requiring them to submit material with lengthy and complex submission mechanisms.
The addition to the e-print metadata of the references made in the e-print is desirable. As illustrated via e-prints of the high energy sub-archive of arXiv, for which references are available in the SLAC/SPIRES database, doing so can create a seamless integration of the e-print environment with other scholarly information resources. Such integration is attractive from a navigational point of view. But even more important is that this navigational power can help to level the perceived difference in hierarchy between the established scholarly communication mechanisms and communication via e-print archives. Ultimately, the availability of references in the metadata can also lead to the creation of citation databases services such as the Universal Citation Database envisioned by Cameron (Cameron 1997), in which scholarly work is included without regard to the venue in which it has been published. Again, the leveling power of such services can be an important tool in the transformation of scholarly communication.
In a four-month timeframe, the project team demonstrated the feasibility of creating a cross-archive end-user service by means of its UPS Prototype system. The project identified a number of issues that are crucial in making the creation of such services more straightforward and that aim at the creation of rich, diverse and high quality services. These issues were incorporated in recommendations made to the Open Archives group during their first meeting in Santa Fe. An important concern in the formulation of these recommendations was the balance between the efforts required at the end of the data provider to implement the recommendations and the objective of making it easy for the service provider. The Santa Fe Convention, that is the result of the discussions at that meeting, has adopted many of these recommendations.
The group has adopted the concept of the data-provider/data-implementer space. It has also concluded that -- in a short to mid-term timeframe -- a harvesting approach gives more guarantees for success than a distributed searching approach. For some recommendations, the group went further than the coordinating trio. This was the case for the harvesting protocols and the metadata formats, for which the coordination trio left the choice of these to the data providers, but required them to document their choices in the data-provider/service-provider framework. The group agreed on a standardized harvesting protocol and on a joint basic metadata set, leaving the options open for community-specific metadata formats to be used in parallel. For other recommendations, the group did not go as far as the coordinating trio. This was the case for the "Terms and conditions of data use" aspect of the data-provider/service-provider framework, that is only addressed in a minimal way by the Convention, reflecting the "don't ask don't tell" policy of some archive maintainers. The e-print identifier namespace concept has found its way into the Convention, be it in a pragmatic rendering that can ultimately lead to a more elaborate implementation.
Other recommendations were outside the immediate scope of the first meeting, and they might become elements for future meetings. This is definitely the case for the submission mechanism and its relation to the quality of the metadata. Other issues that might be studied later include identifiers for other metadata elements such as author-affiliation and subject, and also the case for the inclusion of citation data in the metadata.
The project also provided interesting new insights regarding the digital library technologies that have been used. As mentioned in the opening section of this paper, these are out of the scope of this paper, but are described in detail in (Van de Sompel, Krichel, Nelson et al 2000).
Canessa, Enrique and Giorgio Pastore. 1996. One-Shot Service Searches Preprint Repositories at a Mouseclick. Computers in Physics 10, no. 6: 520.
Krichel, Thomas. ReDIF version 1. 2000b. [http://openlib.org/acmes/root/docu/redif_1.html].
Schmitz, M. and others. 1995. NED and SIMBAD Conventions for Bibliographic Reference Coding. Information & On-line Data in Astronomy p. 259.
Herbert Van de Sompel wishes to thank the Belgian Science Foundation for a special PhD grant.
The ScreenCams are provided as stand-alone executables that can only be run on WinTel computers. Since the ScreenCams are large files, their size is mentioned. The ScreenCams do not contain audio. In addition to these ScreenCams, some examples are also given by means of screen dumps.
A user is directly accessing a bucket from a web-browser, typing in supported bucket-methods as URLs. The user successively displays the content of the bucket, its rfc-1807 metadata element, its ReDIF metadata element and the access-log of the bucket. The bucket in the example is the one with UPS identifier RePEc:aah:aarhec:1996-9. ups.cs.odu.edu is the server on which the SODA archives are stored. Figure 4 & Figure7 also illustrate bucket-methods. As long as the UPS Prototype archive remains on-line, clicking the URLs in the captions of those figures will yield the results shown in the figures and the ScreenCam.
results in the display of the ReDIF element of the bucket's metadata package.
The main interface features of the NCSTRL+ search facility, created for the UPS Prototype are illustrated. The ScreenCam starts by showing the simple search screen that has a single field to search the collection. It also has a Display option, allowing search results to be grouped by a chosen cluster and within the chosen cluster by author, title, date or relevance rank. Next, the features of the advanced search are illustrated. The top -- Search -- part of the advanced interface is the area for fielded searches. Author, Title and Abstract fields can be combined by Boolean and/or. The middle -- Filter -- part of the interface allows the user to limit a search to certain clusters. The Archive Collection and Subject Division fields are not implemented, but included to illustrate functionality that could be created in a more flexible project time span. The special interface element created to deal with the high amount of author affiliations is also illustrated. The bottom part of the screen has the same features as the Display part of the simple search interface. After having performed a search, search results are reorganized along another cluster than the one chosen at the time of performing the search. Figure 5 and Figure 6 illustrate the described features of the advanced interface.
Screencam 3 : Buckets and the SFX linking service (Lotus Screencam executable for WinTel computer; no audio; size 50 Mb). The ScreenCam is recorded with the Dienst indexing engine in place. Also, the SFX server matches the collection of the University of Ghent.
A user performs a search on the term "complexity". Search results are grouped along the Archive cluster, but the user decides to regroup them by Subject. Next, the user scrolls through the brief search results displayed by the NCSTRL+ service. Regularly, he clicks a specific search result. This results in the bucket corresponding with the search result to self-display. Since the buckets are lightweight, the full-content links followed by the user point into the original archives, not the UPS environment. Special attention is accorded to the features of the SFX-linking service. The Screencam shows how buckets containing data originating from RePEc, ArXiv and NCSTRL self-display SFX buttons. The user clicks some of these buttons in order to request extended services. For RePEc buckets, service links are provided that enable the user to look-up authors of the e-print in the EconLit and ABI/Inform databases. For ArXiv buckets this author service point at the Inspec database. When the user requires SFX-services for data originating from the ArXiv:hep-th sub-archive, the reference service appears. This service points into SLAC/SPIRES that contains the references of publications in high energy physics and, as such, also of e-prints submitted to ArXiv:hep-th. Clicking the reference link brings the user to the SLAC/SPIRES environment where all references of the e-print described by the current bucket are displayed. The SLAC/SPIRES environment is SFX-aware and therefore, SFX-buttons are available for every reference. Some references are to e-prints, others to formal publications. The user clicks several of these SFX-buttons. For formal publications, service links similar to the ones demonstrated in the "SFX@Gent & SFX@LANL" experiment show up. For e-prints, a link to the full-content in the UPS environment shows up. Clicking it causes the corresponding bucket to self-display. The Screencam also shows how buckets can display two SFX-buttons: one for the e-print and one for the published version. When a user clicks the published SFX-button, the full_text service brings him to the article that was formally published after the e-print. At the end of the Screencam, some bucket methods are illustrated again. Amongst others, the access log of a bucket from which SFX services have been requested is being displayed. The log shows that the bucket has been approached several times by a web browser (Mozilla) but also that the SFX service has fetched the bucket metadata.
Screencam 4 : Buckets and the SFX linking service (Lotus Screencam executable for WinTel computer; no audio; size 56 Mb) .The ScreenCam is recorded with the freeWAIS-sf indexing engine in place. The SFX server does not particularly match the collection of any institution. Rather, it illustrates the type of services that can be provided as a means to integrate the e-print environment with other parts of the scholarly communication mechanism.
The user performs a search on "fractional supersymmetry". The search results are sorted by archive, and the user reorganizes them according to subject. He clicks a search result, causing the corresponding bucket to self-display. The bucket displays two SFX-buttons, since it describes an e-print that has been published formally. The e-print SFX-button provides an author link into the Inspec database. The SFX-button for the published version provides a wide range of services. From those, the user chooses to follow a holdings look-up leading him into the catalogue of the Library of Congress. He also chooses a recommendation service that will advise him on journals related to the one in which the formal publication has occurred. This service is based on the SpreadIt system (Bollen, Van de Sompel and Rocha (in preparation) that generates recommendations by applying spreading activation to a previously established set of associative relations among electronic journals. These journal relationships have been generated from user interaction patterns by the @ApWeb methodology (Bollen and Heyligen 1998) applied to logs of usage of electronic journals. Next, the user moves to another search result for which the bucket -- again -- displays two SFX-buttons. The user clicks the SFX-button for the published version. From the SFX-menu, he selects a link to PubList, which displays journal information. He also selects the recommendation link again. At this time, the service presents a different list of related journals, reflecting the fact that -- by now -- he has "traversed" two journals in his actual session. The user moves on to a search result originating from arXiv:hep-th. From the bucket, he requests SFX-services for the e-print version. Since the actual record is about high-energy physics, the reference service pointing at SLAC/SPIRES shows up. The user clicks this link and the citations made in the e-print are displayed by the SLAC/SPIRES system. Each citation has an SFX-button. Clicking the buttons generates the typical extended services. For the second citation selected by the user, an e-print version exists. Therefore, the SFX-menu screen now also shows a link that leads into the UPS Prototype system. Clicking this link causes the UPS bucket corresponding to the cited e-print to be displayed. Next, the user moves on to a search result originating from the RePEc initiative. Clicking the SFX-button generates author services pointing into EconLit and ABI/Inform.
The user accesses a bucket originating from the ArXiv:he-ex sub-archive (Figure 7). The bucket contains SFX buttons for both the e-print version and for a published version. Clicking the latter results in a wide range of services to become available (Figure 8), variations of which have been demonstrated in earlier SFX experiments. The SFX-button for the e-print version generates two services: an author link pointing into the Inspec database and a reference link pointing to the SLAC/SPIRES citation database for high energy physics (Figure 9). The user follows the reference service causing citations made in the e-print to be displayed by the SLAC/SPIRES system. Each citation carries an SFX-button (Figure 10), and the user decides to request extended services for one of those. Again, a range of services become available (Figure 11). The user follows the recommendation service that provides him with information on journals related to the ones he already has "traversed" during his current session. Their titles are shown at the top of the recommendation screen; the recommendations themselves are listed in the remainder of the screen (Figure 12). Each of the recommended journals also carries an SFX-button. The user moves back to the SFX-menu of Figure 11 and from there follows a service linking him to the e-print version of the cited paper. Since that e-print is also part of the UPS collection, this service points back into the UPS environment, causing the appropriate bucket to self-display (Figure 13).


So, I ran into an interesting problem the other day.
I've been part of building HR Auditor for Microsoft Lync these last couple of months. Now, when you turn on archiving, Lync starts dumping all the conversations from its platform into a SQL database. HR Auditor is a front end platform that lets users search for that conversation by keyword, user, and time, or some combination thereof. And that's good, because on a medium to large company, you can end up with forty thousand distinct conversations in a few days -partly because every time you close a window, Lync counts it as you closing your side of a conversation, which writes it out to the logs.
So after I hammered out the installation for Windows Server 2008 and WS 2012 (Using the VS 2010 installer project. Not...not my favorite thing ever), I switched out onto SQL side of things. Now, most of my experience has been with raw SQL, so I was/am a LINQ to SQL newbie. All the extant SQL behind the searching was in LINQ to SQL, so I caught up and tried to find how to implement case insensitive search.
As I found out, by itself LINQ isn't concerned with case. That is to say, it doesn't have a lot of tools for dealing with it, and can't be set to ignore it on a high level. What LINQ does is follow the collation set by SQL database. And Lync (as separate from LINQ, and links...yeah, my office doesn't get confusing at all) sets up LCSLOG, where it stores its conversation logging data, with Latin1_General_BIN as the collation. Latin1_General_BIN is --you guessed it-- case sensitive.
Okay, okay, not a problem, just say (s=>s.UPPER(Body)) and you'll be fine, right? Normally yes, and that was my first impulse. Except I was foiled by Lync again, because all body fields are encoded as NTEXT, which will not accept casting like that.
The person who had been working on the problem before me had tried to solve the problem by dynamically altering the table collation, which worked...and also built up enough logging records to crash our SQL server.
I decided not to do that.
There's a translate method to be had, though. What that does is take an IQueryable (hang on; I'll define it below) and build an IEnumerable out of it, which is what I get back from LINQ in the first place, so I want that back from my modified method, too.
Which is exactly what I want to have. I've already converted my keyword to upper case (did that in C# before I even passed down the parameter), so now any instance of "cAmEl CaSe" will match "CAMEL CASE" or "camel case" or any mix thereof.
And there are two parts to that magic. The first is the reader. That's a lot like using System.IO.File.ReadAllText. Only where ReadAllText gets all the text in a file, ExecuteReader gets all the results from the SQL query and packs it into your custom data structure.
"results" is going to be whatever enumerable type you've declared (usually something like a dictionary, for me), and it's actually getting populated when you make the call to Translate, which is what passes the LINQ in.
For my program, there was a little more transformation required before I passed things home, but it worked out.


In a future scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, Jenna Hoolman's world is dominated by illegal smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. When her young niece goes missing that world implodes.
Christy’s life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, who has his own demons to fight. Last but not least there's Maree, a young woman undertaking a journey that will change her world forever.
The Race weaves multiple together story threads and realities to take us on a gripping and spellbinding journey.
If I were to start this article by stating that The Race is the best debut of the year to date, I'd be telling the truth, to be sure, but I'd be lying to you, too—and that's as apt a tack as any I could take to introduce a review of a book as deceptive and self-reflexive as said.
You see, it might be that I was more moved by Nina Allan's first novel than by any other released in recent months—emotionally and, yes, intellectually—but The Race was not released in recent months, not really: NewCon Press published an earlier edition in 2014, which, even absent the substantial and supremely satisfying expansion Allan has added for Titan Books' new and indubitably improved take two, went on to be nominated for the BSFA's Best Novel Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Prize and the Kitschies' Red Tentacle. And although The Race is indeed Allan's first novel proper, it is, in a sense, a cycle of stories that share subjects and settings, not unlike several of the aforementioned author's earlier efforts, such as Stardust and The Silver Wind.
So it's not really a debut and it wasn't really released this year, which leaves just one of my first line's facts unfudged. Happily, The Race actually is amazing, and if you haven't read it already, don't let this second chance pass you by.
The Race is a book about longing, and belonging. It's a book about identity—how it's formed for us, and how we go on to fit it to ourselves or else ourselves to it. It's a book that teaches us the value of family; the damage those nearest and dearest to us can do, and the good things, too. It's a book that instructs us to take the measure of our previous experiences before moving fully into the future.
Valuable enough to kidnap and hold to ransom, to truly devastating effect, not least because the only way Del knows how to raise the money to buy Lumey back from her captors is to wager a sizable sum on his smartdog, Limlasker, winning the Delawarr Triple. "What it came down to was this: Del was proposing to bet his daughter's life on a sodding dog race." (p.67) The race Allan's title refers to, right?
Well, you know... yes and no.
Christy's share of The Race is only speculative insofar as she writes slightly science-fictional stories set in Sapphire. That said, there is much magic in her narrative, and some tremendously rewarding resonance, culminating in the figurative collision of Christy's world with Jen's when the former rushes to find a missing person that she suspects her brother—a loose cannon reminiscent of Del from the latter's narrative—might have hurt, like he hurt her, or worse.
The third and shortest component of the whole addresses race in the ethnic sense. Herein we have Alex, a bit-part player in the second section who, decades later, in the wake of a separation, returns "to the harbour of his home port, a narrow, mean-minded place, rife with old rivalries and uneasy memories" (p.240) at the invitation of an certain writer.
Like Cloud Atlas recombined with Jo Walton's wonderful Among Others, The Race is interested, above all other things, "in how the lives of ordinary people can become unfastened from reality." (p.251) As such, it steps back and steps back and steps back, Inception-esque, undoing assumptions and exceeding expectations, until the only way further backward is forward. So forth it goes.
For all that, though, it's a wonderfully understated work of words, worthy of all the awards NewCon Press' earlier edition was nominated for. But never mind the date of its publication, nor whether or not it's actually Nina Allan's first novel: in and of itself, The Race is absolutely remarkable.


Framesoft Contract Repository (FCR) is a dynamic application for Legal, Documentation, Credit and Treasury functions. It enables financial institutions engaged in OTC Derivatives; REPO and Security Lending transactions to maximize the value of all information contained within Master Agreements, such as close-out nettings provisions and associated Collateral Arrangements.
By translating complex yet qualitative information into centrally managed, usable, referenceable data, FCR will accurately generate the fundamental parameters for netting, both enhanced Credit Line Management and Regulatory Capital Relief. In this way, FCR facilitates sound management of Credit, Legal and Operational Risks for Legal, Documentation and Credit Risk functions across institutions.
Framesoft Contract Repository (FCR) already helps leading Banks and Security Houses in managing and evaluating information on thousands of Master & Collateral Agreements globally, whilst also taking account of multi branch relationships between both parties, products traded, and jurisdictions relevant for determining the “Nettability” of transactions.
The Framesoft Contract Repository (FCR) is an integral part of Framesoft’s Contract Management Suite.
FCR allows companies to gain control of all contracts and associated privileges & obligations. With Framesoft Contract Management, all corporate professionals dealing with mission critical contract documents have immediate access and visibility into contracts across the enterprise, resulting in elimination of operational risks, acceleration of processes, instant management control and compliance with guidelines and regulatory requirements. Even external parties may be fully integrated in all relevant steps of the workflow associated with mission critical contracts.
Automatic Generation of documentation such as first draft, execution copy, etc.
As trading volumes increase and firms both reach their credit limits and increase counterparty exposure and therefore credit risk, the need to collateralize their activities becomes increasingly important. Coupled with the growth in numbers and type of trading counterparties, this need to collateralize to free up trading lines and reduce exposure becomes critical.
The credit risk mitigation achieved by master and collateral agreements delivers two key business benefits, namely, the opportunity for enhanced credit line management and the potential for obtaining regulatory capital relief. Such relief can be secured by the firm, through having lower exposures to counterparties and thus reducing capital burdens imposed by regulators.
The further reduction of counterparty exposures through collateralization and the potential reduction of actual loss upon default, through legally enforceable close-out netting provisions, are clearly beneficial. However, these techniques, whilst mitigating one form of risk, introduce two other major types of risk: Legal Risk and Operational Risk. In a growing collateralization market, these risks take on new significance. Moreover, the Basel Capital Accord II actively proposes the introduction of capital charges for less than robust management of these risks.
Put simply, the full benefits of mitigated credit risk in today’s regulatory environment can only be realized if legal and operational risks are also managed successfully. Framesoft Contract Repository (FCR) does exactly this.
As the market grows, the need to manage agreements centrally and the ability to scale up and adapt to changing legal and operational requirements is critical. FCR performs these requisite functions and more.
The functional elements of Framesoft Contract Repository (FCR) are all designed to enable the successful management and administration of master and collateral agreements from a central point.
This centralised approach to document and data management will become essential in ensuring the execution of truly firm-wide credit risk management strategies, given the changing emphases of regulatory capital allocation regimes. As agreement information is effectively transformed into useable data items, adaptability, flexibility and scalability are achieved with consummate ease.
FCR builds on these base functional characteristics to improve both communications between front and middle office functions and more specifically, provide the fundamental rules for firm-wide, accurate netting processes. This power and flexibility creates a key advantage over incumbent, conventional contract management systems, typically derived from desktop database applications or even spread sheet based programs. These distributed, hard-to-control, inflexible and therefore unwieldy tactical applications simply will not be able to provide the quality of data management required for the critical reporting and netting process requirements placed upon firms by regulators for proper operational risk control.
FCR not only provides the necessary flexibility, scalability and quality of data management, but goes on to provide the deliverables of key reporting structures and netting processes themselves.
FCR is able to build and manage additional data types dynamically. This functionality provides the flexibility to handle any new legal, contractual, counterparty type, product or regulatory requirements. This has proven invaluable to clients, many of whom have needed to respond to changing capital adequacy qualifications by inserting “early termination” clauses across their agreements. The freedom of free configurability of data types is of enormous benefit, yet represents only one piece of functionality.
The specification of contract, counterparty and product information, which are of relevance to the firm’s regulatory or internal credit line netting conventions. With FCR, it is possible to highlight all clauses, all attributes of a counterparty and all characteristics and related facets of a traded product as to their requirement to be identified and valued in the netting process. Building on the function above, FCR utilizes its own netting algorithm to generate netting data, which describes empirically, which combinations of counterparty (down to branch / city level per jurisdiction) and traded products are nettable. This is a unique function to Framesoft Contract Repository. The application can determine the rules against which netting may be permitted. These tables of netting information are also viewable as defined reports or on-line, across the firm (access permitting).
The Framesoft Netting Analyzer provides the opportunity of Real-time netting evaluations of single agreements or groups of agreements.
Starting off with a draft agreements generated based on XML templates in PDF or Microsoft Word (rtf) format.
Capturing of structured data items for any kind of agreement gets easy using the FCR‘s data model designed for current & future requirements offering unlimited expandability with regard to agreement types and clauses.
FCR can use its core data relating to jurisdictions, including counterparty data, netting provisions and products to be covered under the agreement, to generate schedules from pre-defined templates and clause wording.
Tight integration with Framesoft Document Management System (FDM) for archiving of execution copies as well as any king of associated documentation.
As FCR supports the whole lifecycle of a document a comprehensive workflow engine for approval, negotiation, e.g. is an integrative part of the FCR capabilities.
The ability to interface with in-house or third party applications, enabling the provision of agreement and netting information to all relevant business units or integration to legacy system delivering e.g. counterparty data or rating information.
FCR has extensive user definable reporting capabilities.
FCR can be customized to the company’s specific needs.
Access rights & user privileges are fully configurable within FCR.
The auto-population of FCR can also generate audit trail information relating to data entry, approval and release, creating further security in management of the data.


Sometimes new languages are used in the design of jewels, and authors may attribute a product's success to the use of a particular language or type of language. Here, I have grave doubts. I have lost count of the number of languages that have been introduced to me as the solution to the software problems that everyone experiences.
I don't care what kind of fridge I use. If I go buy a fridge, I will probably look at a few features and pick something that I think is reasonably priced. Heck, I'll probably let myself be influenced by what the guy in the store says, and even worse, I am likely to let the looks of the thing weight heavily.
How I buy fridges is how 95% of people buy software. And what 95% of people do, becomes the rule for everyone's business model. It decides how software is produced. Much like I won't see how the fridge has faults that will fail in the next 3 years, noone cares how often exactly a piece of software crashes, how clumsy its UI is in practise, or how much it eats into your virtual memory.
The fact that the vast majority of people doesn't have time to invest into understanding things outside their primary scope isn't going to change, infact I predict it will get worse.
So the only way here to improve software quality is to produce tools that under the same economic pressure of writing code fast without much work into making it "lean", will produce higher quality product.
Programming languages can help here, but only in a very limited way. Yes you can improve stability by going from unsafe typing to safe typing, but that is only a small step. The problems Wirth is talking about will not change by switching languages, a word processor with 10 million features isn't going to be any less bloated in Haskell than it will be in C++ (infact, it will probably be more bloated in Haskell, because its implementation is less "lean").
Is there a language or system that will effectively counter the degradation normally associated with throwing millions of lines of unorganized code for new features at a code base? I don't think so. Most programming language features we are fond of only help counter degradation when coupled with design (or refactoring), which is something you can't expect given the reality of the world.
The paper makes good points about the realities of programming with real-world constraints. But I think the negativeness about languages is incorrect, and the author didn't really provide any support for it. He seems to be thinking of particular examples he's seen, and perhaps he's only thinking of general-purpose languages, but there are plenty of counterexamples where DSLs have succeeded in solving real problems very well.
The main real objection to language-based solutions is that designing in terms of languages isn't familiar to the average programmer, so solutions that take that approach may be thought "too advanced" and thus considered subject to maintenance risks.
I find that thinking in terms of language design can be a very successful strategy for attacking real-world problems. Even if the end result isn't actually implemented as a language, sketching out the design as though it were a language can make a big difference. That's partly because it's possible to define a language so clearly and formally, whereas many other design methodologies and their tools (e.g. OO & UML) don't lend themselves to this nearly as well.
Many of the ways in which XML is used today demonstrate how much real systems need DSLs. I know of various big companies that use real DSLs (not XML) internally to good effect. In short, I think that languages are a practicable solution, that can lead to jewels in practice, and it's only the lack of familiarity with the approach that inhibits this from being more widely recognized. They're often used in more advanced cases, as many previous articles here on LtU have shown.
The fridge analogy shows a problem with picking concrete, real world examples and then trying to apply them to how various computer realities work.
"Much like I won't see how the fridge has faults that will fail in the next 3 years, noone cares how often exactly a piece of software crashes, how clumsy its UI is in practise, or how much it eats into your virtual memory."
the fridge faults are not enumerated, the software faults are. The software faults are of a nature that while not apparent in the showroom will become apparent when it is taken home. These software faults are not faults that will cause the software to fail in three years, it is instead a fault that make the software irritating and difficult to use now. Software faults which make software fail in 3 years are, dependencies on things outside the software which are likely to be updated in 3 years (OS differences generally), new formats for which the software was not built to interact with becoming standard, and other similar occurences.
3. buy a new fridge when the old one finally kicks it, never buy that brand again though.
The only thing that I think might cause people to not shift brands of fridges would be if they had to totally relearn how to open the fridge doors and how to put food in the new fridge.
I'm convinced that the fridge analogy is a poor one because all analogies between a computer and non-computer devices will be poor ones.
it is a shaky analogy. but that doesn't change the underlying fact that people don't see/evaluate these faults, which in turn defines the economy around it.
XML can be used for DSL creation, and it need not be an ugly incoherent mess, the problem is that just as the skills required for the design of good DSLs there are skills needed for the design of good XML dialects, these are not necessarily the same.
I agree creation of good XML DSLs requires skill. My point is really just that XML demonstrates that a demand for DSL creation exists in real projects.


Going back a couple of years for this little review of Foster the People’s debut ‘Torches’. Originally written due to speculation of an upcoming release that eventually happened in March and will also be reviewed. The review was left in ‘drafting hell’ for a while until I eventually finished it early this week. Anyway, let’s get on with the album.
To give some context, Foster the People is the release name of Mark Foster’s written material and eventually after recruiting some friends has become the name of the band. Torches was primarily performed and written solely by Mark Foster and in some ways is an exceptionally individual record. Previously working as a jingle writer for radio, Mark Foster eventually collected these songs and put them together for the album. After getting some exposure with Pumped Up Kicks gaining support from Paul Epworth, Epworth and Foster worked to produce Torches.
‘Helena Beat’ opens with processed and tight drums, before going into a brief tape delayed effect. In come the mid bass/synth tones that have become more favourable in the last 3 years. Mark Foster’s falsetto sits on top of the mix, and by the chorus become a chorus in itself with quite a bit of reverb, again quite favourable at the moment. Whilst the opening track doesn’t sound too distinct and unlike a lot of other acts (like Foals or MGMT for example), there is something a little ‘unordinary’ in it too. The lyrics are often indecipherable at first listen, and it should be noted they aren’t anything particularly inspired, treading common themes with somewhat clichéd phrases.
‘Pumped up Kicks’ is the lead single and a song so engrained in any mind if they have turned on the television or radio recently in the last 3 years, because it was an unescapable tune. To sum it up, it is a great single and that stabbing bass hook is going to last a lifetime. ‘Call it What You Want’ starts with a mix of electronics and sampled beatboxing, and inchoate effects. It is a great song, and keeps the pace of the album well but does little else for the sense.
‘Waste’, is probably my second favourite due to its cut and paste style and walking bass line, that is almost a pure tone. It feels almost like an old Megaman or Sonic the Hedgehog level and you can’t help but wonder if we have truly come full circle from Japananese pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, to the game music in the early 90s, influencing the music of today. The biggest criticisms is it ends rather shortly and abruptly.
I would do anything for you whereas ‘Houdini’ follows with its Baba O’Reily staccato pianos. The chorus is interesting to because of the modulating chords, throwing in a wild minor 6th chord instead of the major chord in the key of the song.
‘Miss You’ culminates in wonderful over driven drums and gated chords, however the album version is easily surpassed by the live version From the Basement. It places much more focus on the expansive piano and Mark’s vocal performance is honest, wary, tender. The album version stripped this touch and what could easily be the best song on the album is a tad over produced and robotic.
‘Warrant’ starts with synth choir before it arrives in a swinging tom filled drum stomp. The choir lingers and freezes as the rock heavy thick bass and piano keep the song together for the verse. As a closer it works well by combining lots of the elements that made up the success of the album. From catchy thumbing bass, larger than live drums, frozen synths and pads, piano forte, enticing chorus hooks and harmonies, light distortion and some upbeat nonsensical lyrics.
The album is fairly inoffensive musically. It curtails between beautifully catchy radio friendly pop, and slightly intriguing production. What it shows most of all is promise and a bright future for Mark Foster and the group. Whilst it does not feature much in the way of heavy emotional tussles, it does adhere respectfully as an individual album crafted for a group of people born with headphones attached to their navel. I’m excited for their next album, and think it is an album that could still be as musically appropriate (uhh horrible word choice) in several years time, where as some other recent albums wouldn’t. The album does suffer from one unfortunate downside that occurs on most debuts, the obvious single out the bunch that can cause ear worm for days. But if you look a little closer you do find other key moments that show where the album is better than Pumped Up Kicks.
Review of the groups second album, Supermodel, will follow shortly – however will it live up to the expectations the first album has created?


The Ten in 10 Challenge kicked off yesterday and, while I'm excited to start making the necessary changes in my life that will help me achieve my goal, I'm nervous at the same time. After looking at the list of participants and reading through their respective goals, I discovered that I'm among the relatively small number of people whose goal is to gain weight over the course of the Challenge. A recent discussion with my doctor made me realize that I am underweight, despite being petite. There's nothing urgent about my situation, but my weight is not something I want to mess around with. Given my current eating habits, active lifestyle, and naturally high metabolism, I know that seeing any true lasting changes with regard to my weight is more than likely going to take longer than ten weeks.
In my attempt to draft a plan of action for the Ten in 10 Challenge, I've made a list of the reasons why I think it's hard for me to gain weight (and keep it on) and some preliminary steps I want to make to make it easier for me to succeed in this Challenge.
It's a matter of money. - I only recently returned to work after being unemployed for four months, so I have been operating on a very strict budget, cutting back on a lot of expenses that I deemed "unnecessary" or "extravagant." This habit of keeping an eye on the bottom line is nothing new for me since I developed my heightened sensitivity to money when I was in graduate school. Unfortunately, the cutting back resulted in too many meals that were unbalanced or were simply non-existent. I ate the absolute minimum to keep functioning in order to make my food resources stretch as far as possible, thereby reducing the number of trips I'd have to make to the market to restock my kitchen. When the cupboard was bare, I'd often skip a meal altogether to avoid the expense of ordering food for delivery or the temptation of buying cheap empty calories at the nearest fast food restaurant, arguing that I'd make up for the missed meal the next time. This has to stop. Once I get my first paycheck, I want to ensure that my pantry is well-stocked with the essentials and that I have wholesome snacks on hand, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables in my refrigerator.
It's a matter of lifestyle. - I do not live a sedentary life. I'm always moving and very rarely allow myself any time to slow down. This was especially true when I started training for my first half marathon. While remaining active and keeping a regular exercise schedule was good for me, I was hurting myself by not compensating for the extra calories I was burning while training. If you combine that with the financial situation I was in, I was doing more harm than good. As I continue running (once it gets a little warmer out there) and continue living my life on the go, I must physically stop what I'm doing and take the time to eat and I must be more mindful of the number of calories that I'm eating. I was burning more calories than I was consuming, so it's any wonder that I've lost weight over the past several months. In addition to running, I want to get myself back to the gym (when I can afford it) and develop a resistance training plan to help build/gain muscle.
It's a matter of genetics. - I was blessed with a naturally high metabolism. Ordinarily, this would not be viewed as a problem, but given the issues I outlined above, it's a big problem for me. Even though I'm a "grazer" who picks on food throughout the day rather than relies on "three square meals," I still need to make the smaller meals I do eat more balanced. I want to integrate more omega-3 fatty acids into my diet, as well as more lean proteins and more whole grains.
The idea of gaining weight on purpose has come across as "completely insane" to some people, and even before I officially agreed to join the other participants in the Ten in 10 Challenge, I received negative feedback about my goal. People who've known me for years have made sarcastic comments about how "hard it must be to be skinny," dismissing the issue as if I have nothing to worry about. But being underweight can increase a my risk of dying from diseases such as heart failure and cancer. As a woman, if I continue to remain underweight, I may be putting myself at risk to develop osteoporosis or bone fractures later in life. I may not have anything immediate or pressing "to worry about" right now, but I don't want to put myself in a position where I'll have to worry in the future. Especially if there's something I can do to lower my risks NOW.
For me, the Ten in 10 Challenge is not going to end at the end of ten weeks. I'm going to be using this time to take the necessary steps to set myself on a path for healthier living. Although the Challenge started yesterday and most participants will likely be writing about their progress every Saturday, I will be writing every Sunday, the "quietest" day of my week, so I can devote the appropriate amount of time, thought, and energy to these posts. It's my hope that I'll be able to gain valuable advice toward achieving my goal, to offer support to those who may be in a similar situation, and to help others understand that being underweight/skinny/thin can carry its own set of problems.
If you're interested in joining us, it's not too late! Details about the Ten in 10 Challenge can be found here.


Seven filed suit to force prestigious college to divorce its fortune and its future from fossil fuels.
Harvard's fossil fuel divestment movement recently hit a snag.
Last week, a Massachusetts court dismissed a novel lawsuit brought by seven Harvard students seeking to make the university in Cambridge, Mass., divest its $36.4 billion endowment of holdings in major coal, oil and natural gas companies.
The students made two claims in the lawsuit. The first claim, filed on behalf of themselves, argued that divestment is justified under their interpretation of the school's charter. The second claim, filed on behalf of future generations—people whose "future health, safety and welfare depends on current efforts to slow the pace" of man-made climate change—argued that the school was intentionally investing in a known dangerous activity and should be stopped.
Justice Paul Wilson disagreed. In his opinion, he wrote that the students "have brought their advocacy, fervent and articulate and admirable as it is, to a forum that cannot grant the relief they seek."
The students filed the lawsuit in November 2014. Their goal is to force the school to sell off all of its stocks and bonds tied to fossil fuel companies.
In December, both Harvard and the state's attorney general moved to dismiss the case. Hearings were held at the Suffolk Superior Court in Boston in late February.
Alice Cherry, a plaintiff in the case and a second-year law student at Harvard, told InsideClimate News that she and the other students plan to appeal. This is the first time students have attempted to use a lawsuit to force fossil fuel divestment. Cherry said she believes "lawsuits could be an important part of escalating the divestment movement going forward."
Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal wrote in an email, "As the Court notes in its decision, Harvard has been, and continues to be, focused on supporting the research and teaching that will ultimately create the solutions to this challenge" and will continue to tackle the issue through these means.
Harvard students launched their divestment campaign back in 2012. In an October 2013 letter rejecting divestment, Harvard president Drew Faust wrote: "the endowment is a resource, not an instrument to implement social or political change."
Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for the green group 350.org, which helped launch the fossil fuel divestment movement, told InsideClimate News that this argument doesn't make sense. Historically, the university divested from tobacco companies and companies tied to apartheid in South Africa, he said.
Apart from the lawsuit, Harvard students have ramped up their actions in support of fossil fuel divestment in recent months. On Feb. 12, a group of students staged a sit-in in an administrative office. Since then, dozens of alumni, including actress Natalie Portman and author Cornel West, have signed a letter in support of divestment and a week of activities—dubbed "heat week"—supporting the movement in April.
Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., was the first school to pledge to divest from fossil fuels, in December 2011. Since then, 28 schools worldwide have committed to divest and at least nine have already met their goals. Moreover, the trend has extended beyond academia—at least 41 cities, 72 religious institutions, 30 foundations and hundreds of individuals have also joined the cause.
According to 350.org, the primary argument for divestment is: "If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage."


How do I send in my Kamishibai story?
A Kamishibai story is made up of a gamefile.txt file, images, sounds, and music. All of these must be bundled up and sent to Otaku World. I would suggest using WinZip to bundle up the story. Winzip is very easy to use and does a good job of preserving file directories and the like. It is also very reasonably priced and they even offer a free evaluation copy you can download. Just go to http://www.winzip.com/ for details.
After you have created your story, fire up WinZip. Cancel out of the Wizard if you have it running by selecting Winzip Classic button. Create a new archive in the Stories directory of Kamishibai by clicking on the New button, changing to the Kamishibai Stories directory, and typing in a descriptive name and pressing return. If the Add files dialog did not come up, click the Add button.
Now that the Add Files dialog is up, make sure the display is showing the contents of the Stories directory. You should be able to see the name of your story directory. In the File name box, replace what is there with the name of your story directory followed by a backslash followed by "*.*". For example, if your story directory is called MyStory, enter "MyStory\*.*" in the File name box (don't enter the quotes). Make sure the Save File Info check box is checked. Now, click on the Add with WildCards button to add your story to the zip file. When the Add Files dialog box goes away, your archive has been created! Exit Winzip and use the File Explorer to look into the Stories directory. You should see a .zip file there which bears the name you entered when creating the zip archive. This is the file you send to Otaku World.
By using WinZip and preserving the directory names, you will be saving me some time so I don't have to create the directories and move the files where they belong. Also, it makes sure you have sent me everything needed. Use the "Validate File On Load" option and List Unused Resources in the Game menu in Kamishibai to make sure everything is present in the story before archiving it.
Please remember that there is a size limit of 7 megabytes for the final archive. If your archive is larger than that, you need to make some changes. Read about this Size Limit for ideas on what to do.
Is the Zip File Too Big for E-mail?
Some mail servers don't allow mail to attach files over a certain length. When this occurs, you may need to break down the zip file into smaller files. The trick I use is this: I take the total size of the zip file and divide it by the maximum size I can send. This will tell me the number of zip files I need to create. I then copy the current zip file that many times, each to a new name. For example, if I have a zip file called thadius.zip and I need to break this down into three zip files, I would copy thadius.zip to thadius1.zip, thadius2.zip, and thadius3.zip. Next, I would load up into Winzip the first of the new zip files, in this case thadius1.zip, and I would delete from the end of the list enough files to make the size of the zip file roughly one third of the original. You can use the File Explorer to watch the actual size of the zip file. If I remove too much, I simply copy over the archive from the original and start over. Once I have removed enough files, I write down the name of the last file in the first archive and then close that archive.
I next load the second archive and I highlight from the first name in the list to the name I wrote down, inclusive. I then delete those entries from the second archive. Then I start removing files from the end again, to reduce the size of this second archive to the proper size. When I get it just right, I right down the name of the last filename in the second archive and then load the third archive.
In the third (last) archive, I highlight from the first name in the list to the name I wrote down for the second archive and delete them. I am now done.
I now have three archives that each should fit as an attachment.
Or you could just bundle everything up in a zip file and upload to your web page or a friend's web page, send me the URL and I will download it. I'll send you an e-mail that I got the file so you can remove it from your web page if you desire.
The name of your story.
the author's name as it should appear on the web site.
A description of the story (this description appears on the web page for downloading your story so make it a good one).
What the author's name should link to: a web site url or an e-mail address (or neither, if that is your preference).
If you have to send more than one zip file, make sure the above information is included in every single e-mail! This is important: we sometimes get attachments with names such as 1.zip and 2.zip but no story name to go with it. Since we receive a large number of e-mail messages a day, it is easy to lose one or more parts of a story unless they are clearly identified. It would help a great deal if you name the zip archives after your story title.
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Have you ever wondered how the wind affects the performance of a Derby racer? You may have seen some interesting results on a gusty race day, when a big ''sled'' somehow beat the ''sure winner''. Let's examine mathematically how this works.
Once a Derby racer gets up to speed it's estimated that aerodynamic drag accounts for over 80% of the total drag an the car. So, as cars approach the finish line, it is common to see the more aerodynamic cars seem to pull away. Since air drag is a highly nonlinear function of apparent wind velocity, and since a Derby has a larger lateral area than frontal area, it appears that there are aerodynamic effects that work to increase the drag forces of crosswinds and even "quartering'' tailwinds. This article describes calculations for the, effects.
The most beneficial wind is not a direct tailwind but a ''quartering'' tailwind of about 30 degrees from the rear.
The most detrimental wind is not a direct headwind, but rather a ''quartering'' headwind blowing at about 45 degrees to the racer's path.
Crosswinds are not harmless. A pure crosswind (at 90 degrees to the direction of travel) actually slows a racer down almost as much as a direct headwind.
''Marginal'' tailwinds (i.e. winds Making an angle of about 100 degrees to 140 degrees to the direction of the racer) can be either beneficial or detrimental depending on there speed, the speed of the racer, and the design of the racer.
All of these effects are due to the fact that the lateral area of a Derby racer is about 4 to 7 times the size of the direct frontal area of the racer. The racer is simply a bigger ''Sail'' I then viewed from the side. It should be noted that energy consumed by wind drag is a nonlinear function of both apparent wind speed and actual racer speed.
The basic approach is to do a vector addition of the wind speed and the Derby speed to obtain an apparent wind speed and direction (see figure 1, and then calculate the drag force produced by this apparent wind acting on the projected area of the car exposed to the apparent wind. The results are shown in figure 2 as a ratio of drag forces on the Derby in windy conditions to the drag under windless conditions. These ratios are given as a function of wind angle (A) and the ratio of the wind speed to the racer speed (v/u). Drag ratios less than 1.0 mean that the wind is helping to speed up the racer; drag ratios greater than 1.0 indicate an increase in drag.
This constitutes the primary expression for the drag-related effects of crosswinds. The task is to evaluate the right-hand side of Equation 6 in terms of quantities we already know, such as racer speed (u), wind speed (v), the angle between them (A), and the area terms and the drag coefficients.
But immediately there is a problem we have no data on the effective area and the drag coefficient of the racer in crosswinds. To my knowledge no one has ever actually measured the drag coefficient of a Derby racer except in conditions where the apparent wind is head on. This could be a topic for future research.
It turns out that only the ratio of lateral area to frontal area is im- portant in evaluating Equation 6.
In designing a car to run primarily in ''quartering tailwind conditions, there are several ideas that a designer may want to consider.
Note: unfortunately many of these ideas don't allow much room for the driver.
The ''pencil nosed'' designs that ran well in 1986 are good examples of a car designed to perform in ''quartering'' headwind conditions.
- Reducing the lateral area is the key. Using a SMALL, LOW, LONG nose is one way to achieve a smaller lateral area; this could be a ''pencil nose'' or "wedge'' type lateral section.
- A side profile based off of a standard aerofoil section would have a lateral area of about 1030 square inches. It would be possible to get the lateral area down to the 700 square inch range using one of the above mentioned techniques.


I had a problem. Although she was 25, Mary, my client, couldn't read and didn't have a telephone, and I needed to tell her the date of her court hearing.
What Mary did have was a TV that she had rented. Unable to afford the $300 purchase price, Mary signed a contract in which she agreed to pay $12 a week to rent the TV. If she made all the payments over a 2 year period, Mary would own the TV.
In case you don't have a calculator handy, Mary had agreed to pay $1248 over 2 years for a TV worth $300. By signing the contract, Mary also agreed that if she got behind in her payments she would owe, you guessed it, $1248. Did Mary know what she had signed? No, but she wanted a TV and $12 a week sounded good.
Mary came to see me because, after making 47 payments, she had missed one $12 payment and the rental company filed suit against her for the full $1248. It's been over 30 years but I'm still angry about that contract.
In Virginia, the fact that Mary could not read the contract she signed was irrelevant because she was an adult and had the capacity to take care of her own affairs. However, I planned to argue that the terms of the contract were "unconscionable" -- basically the terms were so outrageous that they "shocked the conscious" and, as a matter of public policy, the court shouldn't enforce them. At legal aid we made that argument a lot, and most of the time we lost. But every once in a while a judge would agree with us, and I had a feeling this would be a winner.
Since Mary needed to be at the trial, I drove out to her house to let her know the court date. Mary lived in a small brick rambler. The white trim was peeling and the front porch was cracked, but it was on a bus line and had enough bedrooms for Mary and her 4 kids. In fact, it was right next door to the hospital and the social services agency. Mary used her monthly welfare check to pay the rent, utilities, diapers, and things like the TV contract. I parked on the street in front of the house and walked up the steps. It was a hot, sticky, day. I rang the bell and was relieved when the door opened. I couldn't wait to get into the air conditioning.
A young girl, about 4, had answered the door. She was wearing dirty pjs even though it was 2 in the afternoon. Something that looked like peanut butter was in her hair. At that point what appeared to be the oldest of Mary's 4 children, a 6 year old girl, came to the door and told me that Mary was not home.
"Are there any grown ups there?," I asked.
"No," said the 6 year old.
Quickly, the other 2 kids gathered by the screen door wriggling to stand where they could see me. I could see behind the children that the inside of the house was packed with piles of clothes and toys and food and junk. It was a huge mess and I could hear the TV blasting.
I was alarmed. Kids this young can't be home alone, even for a few minutes. I needed to do something to ensure that the kids were safe, but in order to do that I would have to leave the house and find a phone (no cell phones back then.) And who would I call? Mary was my client. Could I turn her in for child neglect? I thought about staying in the house until Mary came home, but this made me uncomfortable. I didn't have permission to enter her home and what if someone claimed that I harmed the kids? Nonetheless, I decided to go in and wait for Mary.
As I entered the house, I was engulfed by a wave of heat and by a stench so strong that I started to throw up. I immediately backed out of the house and back onto the front porch. Of course Mary didn't have air conditioning. Quickly, I remembered that social services was right across the side street. It would only take me a few minutes to report that the children were alone. Could I do that? Could I leave them alone? What if they left the house? Could I turn in my own client? Was that even permitted? My mind was spinning.
I froze, caught between my concern for the kids and, frankly, my concern that reporting her would make me lose my law license.*** But, I couldn't stand on the porch outside with 4 kids huddled on the inside staring at me, and I didn't want to throw up in their house. So, I did something foolish. I left the children in the house, darted across the street, ran to the social services office, and reported that there were 4 children home alone next door. I gave my name and Mary's name. My intentions were good, but those kids could have died in a fire in the time it took me to go to social services.
I sat in my car outside the house watching the social services folks enter the home, and then went back to my office, full of conflicting emotions: guilt for leaving the kids, relief that the kids hadn't been injured while I was at social services, happy that I had reported the neglect, worry about all of them, and, finally, fear that Mary would file a complaint against me with the State bar for violating attorney/client confidentiality.
Mary still didn't know about her court date. A court judgment against her for $1248 would be devastating -- it could lead to the garnishment of her bank account and then eviction. That's how it worked when you were poor. You rent a TV and the next thing you know you and your kids are homeless.
I sent Mary a letter informing her of the court date for the TV hearing even though I knew she couldn't read it. Maybe she would share it with someone. I didn't hear from Mary, and was unable to get the hearing continued. We had the trial without her -- I got away with explaining that Mary was unavailable. Based on the terms of the contract itself, the Judge ruled in Mary's favor. Surprisingly, the Judge let her keep the TV and ruled that she didn't owe anymore money. Had the circumstances been different, I would have been celebrating a big win. But when I got back to my office I sent Mary another letter, this time informing her of the outcome.
I didn't hear from Mary and, as the months went by, I never heard anything about her filing a complaint against me. I thought about Mary and the kids and guilt tugged at me. I should have stayed at the house until she returned. I shouldn't have left the kids alone. And then, because we like to justify our actions, I'd think about how she had left the kids alone in a filthy house and at least I had done something. I wondered what happened when social services got involved. Eventually, though, the constant flood of new clients with their urgent problems shoved Mary and her kids to the back of my mind.
About 9 months later I noticed that Mary was scheduled to see me. I was prepared for her anger. Mary shocked me when she exclaimed in one big rush: "At first I was really angry with you. I wanted to sue you because you were my lawyer and reported me, but I knew I shouldn't have left my kids alone. After the kids were put in foster care, I did everything to get them back. The county helped me enroll in a reading program. I can read now! And I have a job working in the cafeteria at the hospital next door to my house and it comes with health insurance and the kids are back home. Losing the kids was bad, but it gave me the time to learn to read and to get a job."
I was stunned, as this was the last thing I expected. Before I could react, Mary handed me more legal papers and continued: "But now I have another problem. After I lost my welfare, but before I got a job, I couldn't keep up with the rent and my landlord is trying to evict me. I'm afraid I'll lose the kids again if I get evicted. Can you help me keep my house?"
Mary kept her house (and the TV still worked!). We worked out a payment plan with her landlord, made possible by the $700 that Salvation Army gave to the landlord towards Mary's back rent. (Salvation Army was one of the very few charities willing to give cash in situations like this.) Mary was lucky that she lived in a progressive, generally very well to do, county. In order to facilitate the return of the children, Mary was able to put her kids in county-subsidized day care (it was cheaper for the county to help Mary pay for day care than for the county to pay for foster care or welfare), so Mary kept her job.
I had a problem that day I went looking for a client who couldn't read and didn't have a phone. But Mary had bigger problems, and the kids had the biggest problems of all. I'm not entirely happy with the choice I made. I lucked out that day, and so did Mary, and so did the kids.
It's been over 30 years since I left legal aid. When I did, I left it all behind and rarely gave my clients a thought. I was overwhelmed by their problems and my inability to help many of them. My brain needed a break from that much sorrow and frustration.
But, as the years go by, I find myself thinking back to some of my clients, particularly the ones who achieved some measure of success. It was the nature of the job that I rarely saw or heard from them again. Whether a book, a movie, or real life, I crave a happy ending, and even though I know it may be foolish, I choose to believe that Mary and her kids left the worst of their problems behind them on that hot sunny day.
*** I never learned for sure if reporting my client under these circumstances was permissible under the Virginia Bar rules. However, I am fairly certain that it was permissible, given that the safety of others was at stake.
TFS, Joan. It was a good read.
So glad that it turned out good for Mary. I am a pediatric physical therapist, I have been for almost 32 years. I worked many years as a home health therapist in inner city Baltimore. My job was not as stressful as I'm sure yours was, but I have seen many sad situations throughout the years. I have given money to a family to pay for the flowers for their toddlers funeral, I've purchased food, diapers and clothing and car seats over the years.telling you this not to brag, or call attention to myself,but to say that I TOTALLY understand the need for books and movies to have a happy ending. I see enough of reality every day, I need my leisure pursuits to be joyful.
Another wonderful read on Monday Morning. Thank you.
I am sorry you still struggle a bit about how you handled the situation. Once you saw little ones home alone in a bad situation, you did what you had to do. And your actions got "the system" involved to help the children and the mom. Just imagine the tragedy you probably saved those children from! I say when children are endangered, no other rules apply.
Oh , Joan. I live such a sheltered life with a warm bed and plenty of food and a safe street to walk on. My prayer of gratitude this morning is not just for that but more for the people like you that have done battle with other people's hellish circumstances. We all have hard decisions to make, but you have had more than your share. I am grateful to you for the positive intentions and the good that you have done.
As always Joan, your real life stories reflect the highlights and low points of a legal aid attorney. Anyone of us would have done the same thing - those kids were in danger. In the end for Mary and her family, I hope that the blessings caused by your actions far outweighed the hardship and just consequences that Mary had to endure. I always love your realistic point of view - the good, the bad and the ugly. It makes me think and ponder and learn!
I think you are amazing and thoughtful, and I thank you for sharing your stories. They are so touching and help us to remember to be thankful for what we have.
I know we have to consider the times and the circumstances of her upbringing, but it stuns me that at age 25 she couldn't read. That alone is a sad story. You were conflicted as you were faced with a difficult decision, but ultimately you did the right thing. What else could you do? By now her kids are grown. I hope it was a happy ending for them.
Thank you for sharing. I am always surprised when I learn of adults who can't read. But doesn't that really illustrate how privileged I have been? You did what you thought was right. That is all we can do, and hope that we caused no harm. Bless you for your loving heart.


- His father, Mnesarchus, was a gem merchant and his mother Pythais, was a native of Samos.- Pythagoras had two or three brothers. - He was well educated, and he played the lyre throughout his lifetime, he also knew poetry and recited Homer.- He was interested in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and music. He worked under and was greatly influenced by Pherekydes (philosophy), Thales (mathematics and astronomy) and Anaximander (philosophy, geometry).- He went to Egypt where he was accepted into the priesthood at Diospolis between the ages of 18 and 20.- He founded a secret society called Pythagoreans who developed a theory that states that everything in the universe can be explained with numbers, specifically whole numbers. - He founded a school in Croton that stressed four disciplines: arithmetica (number theory), hormonia (music), geometra (geometry), and astrologia (astronomy). -The members of his school were divided into the "mathematikoi" (or "learners") the inner circle of which Pythagoras headed. The mathematikoi extended and developed the more mathematical and scientific work that Pythagoras himself began, and the "akousmatikoi" (or "listeners"), focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of his teachings.- The mathematikoi had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. They were taught by Pythagoras himself and obeyed strict rules. The beliefs that Pythagoras held were:(1) that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature,(2) that philosophy can be used for spiritual purification,(3) that the soul can rise to union with the divine,(4) that certain symbols have a mystical significance, and(5) that all brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.- There are two popular stories of Pythagoras's death, some say that those who opposed Pythagoras banded together and created an uprising against the Pythagoreans. Others say Pythagoras fled to Metapontum and died from starvation.
*Of Pythagoras's actual work nothing is known. His school practiced secrecy making it hard to distinguish between the work of the individual and that of the group. In Math:- The most profound contribution to mathematics by Pythagoras and his society is the formalization of mathematics with the use of axiomatic systems. - From those axioms, a number of theorems were deduced. Among these is what Pythagoras is most widely known. He is credited for discovering the Pythagorean Theorem of geometry (although this theorem was previously utilized by Babylonians and Indians). It is widely believed that Pythagoras was the first to prove the theorem which says that for any right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides (as an equation: a2 + b2 = c2).-Among his other achievements in geometry, Pythagoras (or the Pythagoreans) also realized that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles (180°).-The discovery of irrationals, although some tried to suppress this discovery due to their belief in the sole existence of whole numbers. - Pythagoras was also credited with devising the tetractys, the triangular figure of four rows which add up to the perfect number, ten. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the worship of the Pythagoreans.In Music:- He is credited with the discovery that the intervals between harmonious musical notes always have whole number ratios.In Astronomy: - He taught that the Earth was a sphere at the centre of the Universe.- He also recognized that the orbit of the Moon was inclined to the equator of the Earth and he was one of the first to realize that Venus as an evening star was the same planet as Venus as a morning star.
Atkins, William Arthur; Koth, Philip Edward. "Pythagoras." Mathematics. 2002. Encyclopedia.com. 19 Nov. 2014 ."Pythagoras - Greek Mathematics - The Story of Mathematics." Pythagoras - Greek Mathematics - The Story of Mathematics. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2014."Greatest Mathematicians Born before 400 A.D." Greatest Mathematicians Born before 400 A.D. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2014Hopkins, James. "Contributions of Pythagoras." YouTube. YouTube, 03 July 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2014."Genius of Pythagoras - Science Documentary." YouTube. YouTube, 25 Nov. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
- With the help of Pythagoras ' discovery that the length and size of strings on a musical instrument corresponds to the tone of the musical not it produces, we are able to tune modern day string instruments. - A few jobs that use the Pythagorean Theorem today are construction managers, architects, aerospace engineers, computer hardware engineers, etc.