Suppose you were building a cartel — a group of business interests who coordinate to fix high prices that consumers must pay. How would you design it? Received economic wisdom says transparency among cartel members is crucial: If colluding suppliers share information, they can keep prices high and monitor members of the cartel to make sure no one deviates from the cartel’s norms.

A newly published paper co-authored by MIT economist Alexander Wolitzky offers a different idea: Firms do not have to share information extensively in order to collude. Indeed, the paper contends, extensive information-sharing can help firms undercut cartels and gain market share for themselves.

“If I’m thinking about entering your market, which I’m not supposed to do, but if I’m tempted to do it, then I can do it better if I have this information about your market,” Wolitzky says. The corollary, he notes, is that there appear to be cases where “by not sharing information about their pricing behavior, the firms make it easier to sustain collusion.”

The paper is thus a rethinking of an important policy topic: In the U.S., Europe, and across the world, governments are charged with regulating cartels and collusion, in an attempt to ensure that consumers can benefit from market competition.

Given the prevailing notion that data-sharing helps cartels, firms investigated for price-fixing can argue that they must not be illegally colluding if the evidence shows they have not been extensively sharing information with other businesses.

“Because of this conventional wisdom that firms that collude share a lot of information, a firm’s defense is, ‘We weren’t sharing so much information,’” Wolitzky says. And yet, as the new paper suggests, that level of cooperation may not be necessary for collusion to occur.

The paper, “Maintaining Privacy in Cartels,” is by Takuo Sugaya, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Wolitzky, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Economics; it appears in the December issue of the Journal of Political Economy.

What’s the whole story?

The current paper adds to a body of academic literature whose best-known component is “A Theory of Oligopoly,” a 1964 paper by economist George Stigler, which describes how the availability of information should help cartels maintain their grip on prices. Some subsequent empirical work also shows that in some conditions, increased transparency helps cartels sustain themselves.

Sugaya and Wolitzky do not deny that a degree of transparency among cartel members helps collusion occur, but they complicate this picture by introducing alternate circumstances, in which less transparency helps cartels thrive and more transparency undercuts them.

“We’re investigating the generality of this [older] result, and whether it tells the whole story,” says Wolitzky.

The paper by the scholars builds a new model of firm behavior oriented around the “home-market principle” of collusion, in which cartels reduce the competitive supply of products in each other’s markets — which may often be segmented by geographic reach. North American and European firms in the same industry, in this scenario, would stay away from each other’s territory, thereby reducing competition.

In the study, the authors contend that there are three effects that increased transparency has on cartels. Transparency within cartels enables firms to keep each other in check, and it helps them coordinate prices — but it also “lets individual firms tailor deviations to current market conditions,” as they write in the paper.

This last point, Sugaya and Wolizky assert, has been seriously underexplored by scholars in the past. In the model they propose, the “deviation gain” — what happens when a firms leaves the cartel — “is strictly larger when all prices and quantities are observable,” that is, when the firm has more information about its erstwhile collaborators.

Real cartels, low transparency

The proposition that a relative lack of information-sharing coexists with collusion is not just an arbitrary function of the authors’ model, but something supported by empirical evidence as well, as they note in the paper. The European Commission, for instance, has uncovered several cartels that seemingly made a point of limiting transparency: The firms in question largely shared just industry-wide sales data among all members, not extensive firm-level data.

These low-transparency cartels include industries such as plasterboard production, copper plumbing tube manufacturing, and plastics — all of whom structured their collusion operations around intermediaries. Those intermediaries — industry associations, in some cases — handled the sensitive information and only distributed small portions of it to the individual firms.

A more vivid example comes from a graphite manufacturing cartel, as Sugaya and Wolitzky recount. At a meeting of cartel representatives, each member secretly entered their own sales data into a calculator passed around the room, in such a way that the firms could only learn the industry-wide sales volume, not the specific sales data of each firm.

Such examples indicate that “conventional wisdom may not tell the whole story” when it comes to cartels and transparency, Sugaya and Wolitzky write.

To be sure, the new theory developed by the scholars does not propose a uniform relationship between transparency and collusion; it all depends on the circumstances.

“It would be nice to have a very thorough characterization of when more information among cartel members makes colluding easier, and when it makes it harder,” Wolitzky says.

In the new model, Sugaya and Wolitzky do suggest that greater transparency corresponds with collusion specifically in volatile business conditions, which may necessitate more robust long-term projections of sales and demand. By contrast, given less volatile, more consistent consumer demand over time, firms need less transparency to deviate from tacit collusion agreements and undercut their erstwhile cartel partners. As the authors acknowledge, firm behavior within cartels, in a variety of these circumstances, could use further study.

Wolitzky received support for the research from the National Science Foundation.


Q:

Stop browser window from switching workspace and getting focus when opening a link?

(I just switched from Gnome 2 to Xfce 4, so I have still to find my way around how Xfce works.)
Iceweasel is opened on Workspace 1, Icedove is opened on Workspace 2. I click at a link in Icedove, which opens a tab in Iceweasel. Great, but: Iceweasel moves to Workspace 2 and gets focus.
Can I configure it so that windows always stay on their workspace, no matter if other application interact with them? And that the focus doesn’t get changed?
On Gnome 2, Iceweasel stayed on Workspace 1, but it was highlighted/blinking in the taskbar of Workspace 2 (instead of being focused). I’d like to have that (or a similar) behaviour in Xfce, too.

A:

The setting you're looking for is listed under "Window manager tweaks".

XFCE menu
Settings
Window Manager Tweaks
Focus
"When a window raises itself"
"Do nothing"

Note that you cannot get the behavior where it will show raised windows on other workspaces. You can have it show all windows on all workspaces, or the current workspace. There's no option for "only this workspace plus raised windows on other workspaces".


BizStream's Blog

Amarillo and Perryton entrepreneurs were recognized as recipiences of the 10th Annual Aggie 100, awards honoring the fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world.

Amarillo-based A-1 Rocket Industries and Veterinary Medical Providers and Perryton Aviation were honored on Oct. 17 by the Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M for positively impacting the economy with outstanding growth and determination.

Dillard’s is pleased to further its commitment to Ronald McDonald House Charities with its 21st annual holiday fundraiser.

Since 1994, Dillard’s has supported RMHC with a fundraiser benefiting its Ronald McDonald House program which provides families with seriously ill children a “home-away-from-home” while their children are receiving treatment at nearby hospitals.

Deward Adams, owner of Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Amarillo, recently received the Top Gun award from the Mr. Rooter Plumbing corporate office during the company’s 2014 International Convention in Orlando, Florida, in September.

The award goes to franchise owners who achieve sales goals and reach operation benchmarks. The Top Gun recipients represent the top 10 percent of Mr. Rooter Plumbing owners across North America.

Atherton will focus on strategic business development, driving company growth and expanding on EnergyNet’s client-focused agenda. He has been with EnergyNet for over 12 years and is based in Houston.

Michael Baker has been promoted to vice president of business development. He has served in various senior business development roles and is active in numerous industry associations including ADAM Energy Forum and currently serves on the board of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

Matthew J. Agnew obtained his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 2014. He graduated from Wichita State University with a bachelor of arts in women’s studies and political science in 2010. His practice is focused in health law.

Happy State Bank opened a branch at Allen on Monday, according to an announcement by J. Pat Hickman, chairman and CEO.

The office will be located in the Watters Creek area at One Allen Center, 700 Central Expressway South, Suite 120, in Allen.

“We are so excited about opening this office in Allen – our second office in the Greater Dallas market,” Hickman said. “We have assembled an experienced and professional banking team to bring ‘the Happy Experience’ to this booming community.”


Q:

how to add style to span like .attr('style', 'width:newWidth '); where newWidth is dynamic

I have a code like below
var newWidth = Math.floor(width * .75) + 'px';
$(this).find("input:first").attr('style', 'width:newWidth ');

could you please correct me as what should be the right syntax as passing newWidth directly is not working also I have to do this via style only

A:

Use .css()
$(this).find("input:first").css('width', newWidth);


by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USATODAY

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USATODAY

It sounds like something out of a Hollywood thriller: Anti-terrorist politician actually running guns to terrorists. But that's precisely what's been charged in California, although with a final plot twist that Hollywood would never imagine.

California State senator (and, until last week, candidate for secretary of state) Leland Yee was well-known as an anti-gun activist. Then, last week, he was indicted for, yes, conspiring to smuggle guns and rocket launchers between mobsters and terrorists in exchange for massive bribes. Some highlights, as excerpted by San Francisco Magazine.

Yee told an FBI agent that, in exchange for $2 million in cash, he'd fill a shopping list of weapons, which he took personal responsibility for delivering, according to the indictment. He also allegedly "masterminded" a complex scheme bring illegal weapons into the country, agreeing to "facilitate" a meeting with an illegal arms dealer to arrange for the weapons to be imported via Newark, N.J. In arranging all of this, the indictment said, Yee relied on connections with Filipino terrorist groups who could supply "heavy" weapons, including the Muslim terrorists of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Yee allegedly noted that the Muslim terrorists had no reservations about kidnapping, extortion and murder.

This all sounds like news. You've got charges of huge bribes, rampant hypocrisy, illegal weapons and even a connection with foreign terrorists - and from a leading politician in an important state.

But - and here's the part Hollywood would miss - outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Times buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, "California: State Senator Accused of Corruption." This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.

CNN, home (also until last week) of Piers Morgan, whom Yee had praised for his anti-gun activism, didn't report the story at all. When prodded by viewers, the network snarked that it doesn't do state senators. Which is odd, because searching the name of my own state senator, Stacey Campfield, turns up a page of results, involving criticisms of him for saying something "extreme". Meanwhile, CNN found time to bash Wisconsin state senator and supporter of Gov. Scott Walker, Randy Hopper over marital problems.

But there's a difference. They're Republicans. When Republicans do things that embarrass their party, the national media are happy to take note, even if they're mere state senators. But when Democrats like Yee get busted for actual felonies, and pretty dramatic ones at that, the press suddenly isn't interested.

We've seen this before, of course: Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff dismissed the horrific Kermit Gosnell trial as a "local crime story", even as the press was going crazy covering another equally local crime story, the George Zimmerman trial. Likewise, another state senator, Texas' Wendy Davis, got national attention when she filibustered an abortion bill, a story that fit conveniently with the "war on women" theme used by Democrats.

It's almost as if "what's news" is just a synonym for "what advances the narrative chosen by the Democratic Party." The question that "news" operations like CNN may want to ask is, how many people are really interested in getting their news from party organs.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.


Taiwan Football Premier League

Taiwan Football Premier League (TFPL; ) is the top-ranked division in the Taiwanese football league run by Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA).

History

The Taiwan Football Premier League was founded in 2017 after the folding of the then highest-ranked National First Division Football League (Intercity Football League).

Competition Format

The Taiwan Football Premier League's schedule runs nearly year-round from April to October. It contains 8 teams that compete in a series of three round-robin tournaments, each composed of seven games. After the 21 game schedule is complete, the top team wins the league title and an automatic berth in the following year's AFC Cup.

For the relegation and promotion system the bottom two teams from the Taiwan Football Premier League will play in a qualification tournament against two clubs. The top two teams will get a spot for next season.

The league plans to retract to six teams in 2020.

Teams

The Taiwan Football Premier League comprises eight teams, currently using five locations:

Champions

See also

Intercity Football League
Enterprise Football League
Chinese Taipei Football Association

References

External links

Category:Football leagues in Taiwan
Taiwan
Category:Recurring events established in 2017
Category:2017 establishments in Taiwan


Q:

How would I solve $φ(2^{100} · 3^{20} · 19^{200})$?

I don't even know how to begin this question because solving the numbers inside the parenthesis is too high to be solved. $φ$ is Euler's Phi Function.

A:

$\varphi(2^{100}3^{20}19^{200})=2^{99}(3^{20}-3^{19})(19^{200}-19^{199})$.
Here I used that $\varphi(p^n)=p^n-p^{n-1}$ and that $\varphi$ is multiplicative.


Fatal hypoxemia following mitral valve replacement.
Patency of the foramen ovale is a common condition. In certain clinical settings it permits the development of right-to-left intracardiac shunting. A case is described of sudden, fatal hypoxemia due to shunting through a patent foramen ovale immediately following mitral valve replacement.


ROME (Reuters) - An Italian student found dead by a roadside in Cairo with cigarette burns and other signs of torture on his body had written articles critical of the Egyptian government, according to the Italian newspaper that published them.

A dog walks pass as police stand guard in front of a morgue where the body of an Italian Giulio Regeni is kept in Cairo, Egypt, February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Il Manifesto, a left-wing newspaper based in Rome, published Giulio Regeni’s final article on Friday, written by the 28-year-old graduate student before his Jan. 25 disappearance. His body was found on Wednesday.

The article describes the difficulties faced by independent unions in Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The paper ran it on the front page under the headline “The Witness”.

“President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi presides over the Egyptian parliament with the highest number of police and military personnel in the history of the country, and Egypt ranks among the worst offenders with respect to press freedom,” Regeni wrote in the first paragraph of the story.

“He feared for his safety,” the newspaper said, explaining that Regeni asked to use a pseudonym on this article and on his previous articles, which were also critical of Sisi’s government. Regeni did not mention any specific threats.

“We do not know who his assassins were or why they committed this crime,” the newspaper added. “But we ask for the truth.”

With Italian police specialists en route to Cairo to participate in the investigation, a spokesman at Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said on Facebook both countries had “a mutual desire to uncover the reasons behind this incident”.

Both sides are “keen to prevent any party from exploiting this incident to harm the excellent relations between Egypt and Italy,” the statement said.

On Thursday, the Italian Foreign Ministry “urgently” summoned the Egyptian Ambassador to express concern about the student’s death, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi telephoned Sisi, asking for a joint investigation and the swift return of his body to Italy.

Regeni’s corpse is due to be returned to Italy on Saturday, where it will undergo an autopsy, sources at the Foreign Ministry and in the prime minister’s office said.

Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain’s University of Cambridge, disappeared on the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising that ended former leader Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

His body was found in a ditch along the main road between Cairo and Alexandria, security officials said.

Rights groups say Egyptians are often detained by police on little evidence and beaten or coerced. Scores have disappeared since 2013. Egypt denies allegations of police brutality.


/* -*- Mode: C++; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4 -*- */
/*
 * This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
 *
 * This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
 * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
 * file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
 *
 * This file incorporates work covered by the following license notice:
 *
 *   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 *   contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed
 *   with this work for additional information regarding copyright
 *   ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache
 *   License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file
 *   except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
 *   the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 .
 */

#ifndef INCLUDED_SC_SOURCE_UI_INC_ACCESSIBLECONTEXTBASE_HXX
#define INCLUDED_SC_SOURCE_UI_INC_ACCESSIBLECONTEXTBASE_HXX

#include <com/sun/star/accessibility/XAccessible.hpp>
#include <com/sun/star/accessibility/XAccessibleComponent.hpp>
#include <com/sun/star/accessibility/XAccessibleContext.hpp>
#include <com/sun/star/accessibility/XAccessibleEventBroadcaster.hpp>
#include <com/sun/star/uno/Reference.hxx>
#include <com/sun/star/lang/XServiceInfo.hpp>
#include <cppuhelper/interfacecontainer.h>

#include <svl/lstner.hxx>
#include <cppuhelper/basemutex.hxx>
#include <cppuhelper/compbase5.hxx>
#include <cppuhelper/implbase1.hxx>

namespace tools { class Rectangle; }

/** @descr
        This base class provides an implementation of the
        AccessibleContext service.
*/

typedef cppu::WeakAggComponentImplHelper5<
                css::accessibility::XAccessible,
                css::accessibility::XAccessibleComponent,
                css::accessibility::XAccessibleContext,
                css::accessibility::XAccessibleEventBroadcaster,
                css::lang::XServiceInfo
                > ScAccessibleContextBaseWeakImpl;

typedef cppu::ImplHelper1<
                css::accessibility::XAccessibleEventListener
                > ScAccessibleContextBaseImplEvent;

class ScAccessibleContextBase
    :   public cppu::BaseMutex,
        public ScAccessibleContextBaseWeakImpl,
        public ScAccessibleContextBaseImplEvent,
        public SfxListener
{
public:
    //=====  internal  ========================================================
    ScAccessibleContextBase(
        const css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessible>& rxParent,
        const sal_Int16 aRole);

    virtual void Init();
    virtual void SAL_CALL disposing() override;
protected:
    virtual ~ScAccessibleContextBase() override;
public:

    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    bool isShowing();

    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    virtual bool isVisible();

    ///=====  SfxListener  =====================================================

    virtual void Notify( SfxBroadcaster& rBC, const SfxHint& rHint ) override;

    ///=====  XInterface  =====================================================

    virtual css::uno::Any SAL_CALL queryInterface(
        css::uno::Type const & rType ) override;

    virtual void SAL_CALL acquire() throw () override;

    virtual void SAL_CALL release() throw () override;

    ///=====  XAccessible  =====================================================

    /// Return the XAccessibleContext.
    virtual css::uno::Reference< css::accessibility::XAccessibleContext> SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleContext() override;

    ///=====  XAccessibleComponent  ============================================

    virtual sal_Bool SAL_CALL containsPoint(
        const css::awt::Point& rPoint ) override;

    virtual css::uno::Reference< css::accessibility::XAccessible >
        SAL_CALL getAccessibleAtPoint(
        const css::awt::Point& rPoint ) override;

    virtual css::awt::Rectangle SAL_CALL getBounds(  ) override;

    virtual css::awt::Point SAL_CALL getLocation(  ) override;

    virtual css::awt::Point SAL_CALL getLocationOnScreen(  ) override;

    virtual css::awt::Size SAL_CALL getSize(  ) override;

    virtual void SAL_CALL grabFocus(  ) override;

    virtual sal_Int32 SAL_CALL getForeground(  ) override;

    virtual sal_Int32 SAL_CALL getBackground(  ) override;

    ///=====  XAccessibleContext  ==============================================

    /// Return the number of currently visible children.
    virtual sal_Int32 SAL_CALL getAccessibleChildCount() override;

    /// Return the specified child or NULL if index is invalid.
    virtual css::uno::Reference< css::accessibility::XAccessible> SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleChild(sal_Int32 nIndex) override;

    /// Return a reference to the parent.
    virtual css::uno::Reference< css::accessibility::XAccessible> SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleParent() override;

    /// Return this objects index among the parents children.
    virtual sal_Int32 SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleIndexInParent() override;

    /// Return this object's role.
    virtual sal_Int16 SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleRole() override;

    /// Return this object's description.
    virtual OUString SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleDescription() override;

    /// Return the object's current name.
    virtual OUString SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleName() override;

    /// Return NULL to indicate that an empty relation set.
    virtual css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessibleRelationSet> SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleRelationSet() override;

    /// Return the set of current states.
    virtual css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessibleStateSet> SAL_CALL
        getAccessibleStateSet() override;

    /** Return the parents locale or throw exception if this object has no
        parent yet/anymore.
    */
    virtual css::lang::Locale SAL_CALL
        getLocale() override;

    ///=====  XAccessibleEventBroadcaster  =====================================

    /** Add listener that is informed of future changes of name,
          description and so on events.
    */
    virtual void SAL_CALL
        addAccessibleEventListener(
            const css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessibleEventListener>& xListener) override;

    //  Remove an existing event listener.
    virtual void SAL_CALL
        removeAccessibleEventListener(
            const css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessibleEventListener>& xListener) override;

    ///=====  XAccessibleEventListener  ========================================

    virtual void SAL_CALL
        disposing( const css::lang::EventObject& Source ) override;

    virtual void SAL_CALL
        notifyEvent(
        const css::accessibility::AccessibleEventObject& aEvent ) override;

    ///=====  XServiceInfo  ====================================================

    /** Returns an identifier for the implementation of this object.
    */
    virtual OUString SAL_CALL
        getImplementationName() override;

    /** Return whether the specified service is supported by this class.
    */
    virtual sal_Bool SAL_CALL
        supportsService(const OUString& sServiceName) override;

    /** Returns a list of all supported services.  In this case that is just
        the AccessibleContext and Accessible service.
    */
    virtual css::uno::Sequence< OUString> SAL_CALL
        getSupportedServiceNames() override;

    ///=====  XTypeProvider  ===================================================

     /// returns the possible types
    virtual css::uno::Sequence< css::uno::Type > SAL_CALL
        getTypes() override;

    /** Returns an implementation id.
    */
    virtual css::uno::Sequence<sal_Int8> SAL_CALL
        getImplementationId() override;

protected:
    /// Return this object's description.
    ///
    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    virtual OUString
        createAccessibleDescription();

    /// Return the object's current name.
    ///
    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    virtual OUString
        createAccessibleName();

    /// Return the object's current bounding box relative to the desktop.
    ///
    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    virtual tools::Rectangle GetBoundingBoxOnScreen() const;

    /// Return the object's current bounding box relative to the parent object.
    ///
    /// @throws css::uno::RuntimeException
    virtual tools::Rectangle GetBoundingBox() const;

public:
    /// Calls all Listener to tell they the change.
    void
        CommitChange(const css::accessibility::AccessibleEventObject& rEvent) const;

    /// Use this method to set initial Name without notification
    void SetName(const OUString& rName) { msName = rName; }

    /// Use this method to set initial Description without notification
    void SetDescription(const OUString& rDesc) { msDescription = rDesc; }

    void SetParent(const css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessible>& rParent) { mxParent = rParent; }

protected:
    /// Calls all FocusListener to tell they that the focus is gained.
    void CommitFocusGained() const;

    /// Calls all FocusListener to tell they that the focus is lost.
    void CommitFocusLost() const;

    bool IsDefunc() const { return rBHelper.bDisposed; }

    /// @throws css::lang::DisposedException
    void IsObjectValid() const;

    /// Reference to the parent object.
    css::uno::Reference<css::accessibility::XAccessible> mxParent;

private:
    /** Description of this object.  This is not a constant because it can
        be set from the outside.  Furthermore, it changes according to the
        draw page's display mode.
    */
    OUString msDescription;

    /** Name of this object.  It changes according the draw page's
        display mode.
    */
    OUString msName;

    /// client id in the AccessibleEventNotifier queue
    sal_uInt32 mnClientId;

    /** This is the role of this object.
    */
    sal_Int16 maRole;
};

#endif

/* vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: */


Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 PublicDeposited

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by the Frontiers Research Foundation. The published article can be found at: http://www.frontiersin.org/Microbiology.

Grapevine leafroll disease (GLD) is one of the most important grapevine viral diseases affecting grapevines worldwide. The impact on vine health, crop yield, and quality is difficult to assess due to a high number of variables, but significant economic losses are consistently reported over the lifespan of a vineyard if intervention strategies are not implemented. Several viruses from the family Closteroviridae are associated with GLD. However, Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 (GLRaV-3), the type species for the genus Ampelovirus, is regarded as the most important causative agent. Here we provide a general overview on various aspects of GLRaV-3, with an emphasis on the latest advances in the characterization of the genome. The full genome of several isolates have recently been sequenced and annotated, revealing the existence of several genetic variants. The classification of these variants, based on their genome sequence, will be discussed and a guideline is presented to facilitate future comparative studies. The characterization of sgRNAs produced during the infection cycle of GLRaV-3 has given some insight into the replication strategy and the putative functionality of the ORFs. The latest nucleotide sequence based molecular diagnostic techniques were shown to be more sensitive than conventional serological assays and although ELISA is not as sensitive it remains valuable for high-throughput screening and complementary to molecular diagnostics. The application of next-generation sequencing is proving to be a valuable tool to study the complexity of viral infection as well as plant pathogen interaction. Next-generation sequencing data can provide information regarding disease complexes, variants of viral species, and abundance of particular viruses. This information can be used to develop more accurate diagnostic assays. Reliable virus screening in support of robust grapevine certification programs remains the cornerstone of GLD management.


1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a semiconductor device including an improved structural stability and an enhanced capacitance, and a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, semiconductor memory devices such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices or static random access memory (SRAM) devices can store data or information therein. The data or information is stored in the semiconductor memory devices, and also the data or information is read from the semiconductor memory devices. A typical single unit memory cell of the semiconductor memory device includes one capacitor and one transistor. The capacitor of the semiconductor memory device generally has a storage electrode, a dielectric layer, and a plate electrode. To improve the storage capacity of the semiconductor memory device, the capacitor needs a large capacitance.
As the degree of integration of the semiconductor memory device has increased, the unit memory cell of the semiconductor memory device has continuously decreased in area. To ensure a sufficient storage capacitance of the semiconductor memory device, the capacitor may have various shapes such as a box, a fin, a crown, a cylinder, etc. However, due to design constraints of the semiconductor memory device that include size decreases, the capacitor should have an increasingly large aspect ratio, defined as the ratio between the height and width of the capacitor. Thus the capacitor may have sufficient capacitance when formed in a limited unit area of the semiconductor memory device. As a result, however, the capacitors having a high aspect ratio may mechanically collapse so that a so-called two-bit failure may occur between adjacent capacitors.
A conventional capacitor includes a cylindrical storage electrode connected to a contact pad formed on a semiconductor substrate. The cylindrical storage electrode is electrically connected to the contact pad through a contact plug formed in an insulation layer that covers the semiconductor substrate. To increase the storage capacitance of the semiconductor memory device, the cylindrical storage electrode of the capacitor has a greatly increased height. When the cylindrical storage electrode has this greatly increased height, the cylindrical storage electrode may collapse toward an adjacent cylindrical electrode so that adjacent capacitors may be inadvertently connected to each other. The collapse of the cylindrical storage electrode is referred to as a two-bit failure. When the two-bit failure occurs in the semiconductor memory device, the semiconductor memory device may not properly operate.
Accordingly, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/85420 discloses a semiconductor device including a beam-shaped insulating member between capacitors of the semiconductor device to improve the mechanical strength of the capacitor.
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view illustrating the semiconductor device including the beam-shaped insulating member, and FIG. 2 is a plan view illustrating the semiconductor device in FIG. 1.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, after a semiconductor substrate 40 is divided into an active region and a field region by forming an isolation layer 45 on the semiconductor substrate 40, gate structures 60 are formed in the active region of the semiconductor substrate 40. Each of the gate structures 60 includes a gate oxide layer pattern, a gate electrode and a mask pattern.
Impurities are implanted into portions of the semiconductor substrate 40 by an ion implantation process using the gate structures 60 as masks, thereby forming source/drain regions 50 and 55 at the portions of the substrate 40 between the gate structures 60. Thus, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) transistors are formed on the semiconductor substrate 40.
After a first insulating interlayer 80 is formed on the substrate 40 to cover the MOS transistors, capacitor plugs 63 and a bit line plug 65 are formed through the first insulating interlayer 80. The capacitor plugs 63 and the bit line plug 65 are connected to the source/drain regions 50 and 55, respectively.
After a second insulating interlayer 85 is formed on the first insulating interlayer 80, the second insulating interlayer 85 is partially etched to form a bit line contact plug 70 making contact with the bit line plug 65.
A third insulating interlayer 90 is formed on the second insulating interlayer 85. The third and second insulating interlayers 90 and 85 are successively etched to form capacitor contact plugs 75 making contact with the capacitor plugs 63, respectively.
After an etch stop layer 95 is formed on the third insulating interlayer 90 and the capacitor contact plugs 75, holes 100 exposing the capacitor contact plugs 75 are formed through the etch stop layer 95. Cylindrical bottom electrodes 105 making contact with the capacitor contact plugs 75 are formed in the holes 100, respectively. Here, the cylindrical bottom electrodes 105 are electrically connected to the source/drain regions 50 and 55 through the capacitor contact plugs 75 and the capacitor plugs 63.
After beam-shaped insulating members 130 are formed between sidewalls of adjacent bottom electrodes 105, dielectric layers 110 and top electrodes 115 are successively formed on the bottom electrodes 105 to thereby form capacitors 120 on the semiconductor substrate 40.
An additional insulation layer 125 is formed over the substrate 40 to cover the capacitors 120. Since the beam-shaped insulating members 130 are formed between the sidewalls of the adjacent bottom electrodes 105, the mechanical strength of the capacitor 120 may be improved.
However, in the above-described semiconductor device, processes for manufacturing the semiconductor device are complicated because at least four beam-shaped insulating members 130 should be formed between the adjacent bottom electrodes 105 in order to improve the mechanical strength of the capacitor 120. Thus, manufacturing cost and manufacturing time for the semiconductor device is increased. Additionally, the manufacturing processes are more complicated because the capacitor 120 has a complex structure including the bottom electrode 105, the beam-shaped insulating members 130, the dielectric layer 110 and the top electrode 115 as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. Further, the additional insulation layer 125 may not be precisely formed between the capacitors 120 having the complex structure so that the capacitors 120 may be inadvertently electrically connected to an upper wiring formed on the capacitors 120. As a result, the processes for manufacturing the semiconductor device including the capacitor 120 having the complex structure may have poor throughput.


That was the question I asked myself when the Cereal Killer Cafe (no relation) opened to great fanfare in London this week. Just because I think it is one of the stupidest commercial concepts I have ever seen does not mean Londoners won’t flock to send their blood sugar surging en route to a sedentary 9 hour cubicle session. But then again, with a general decline in the sales of cereals and a woeful crowdfunding campaign under their belt, it seems crazy that this project opened its doors at all.

Or does it?

The most remarkable aspect of this new cafe is not the vast selection of junkfood/cereal or the 12 varieties of milk on offer - it is the media coverage. Cafes and eateries open every day in London but I have yet to see one garner the media attention of this cute little cereal project.

In today’s world, top billing TV and newspaper coverage does not happen by chance - it is conducted and carefully orchestrated. So when I see article after article and national TV coverage of a little cafe in east London selling cereals, I smell one of those rodents that chose to eat the box instead of the Cereal Killer Cafe fare inside (in an infamous nutritional experiment).

There may or may not be a direct involvement with this venture by Kellogg’s et al, but there is a whiff of arm's length influence all over this. It is reminiscent of a certain “eggs will kill you” study published by an anonymous little university that somehow managed to gather instantaneous global media attention. At arm's length behind that particular curtain? The Big Pharma PR machine.

This type of behaviour is smart business by polished PR pros and it makes all kinds of sense that vested interests would assert some influence across their network when a story like this presents itself. The media likes to keep their big spenders sweet you know! The fact that these are clandestine strategies means we will never really know - even the Cereal Killer Cafe itself may not be aware of any such influence. Nonetheless, their little project has been thrust in to the limelight thanks to the billions of dollars, euros and pounds fighting proactively against real food.

Ironically, on the very day the Cereal Killer Cafe opened its doors, we made substantial progress in our own fight for real food. We have no PR assistance and a lot of folks standing firmly against us, but 403 early adopters said “yes” and we broke through the £20,000 goal we set for Cereal Killers 2 on kickstarter.

There is no commercial interest behind our curtain - if you pull it back you will see me sitting at a table with an Ironman Champion drinking salted water and Dr Peter Brukner enjoying a glass of red wine. Tim Noakes will be carving karoo lamb to one side and Steve Phinney will be serving his home made pemmican for starters (and his magnificent cacao ice cream for dessert!).

So, in the spirit of this “Cereal Killer(s)” contest for the hearts and minds of Londoners and the world, everyone who pledges £1 or more to Cereal Killers 2 (Click here to do that it - it only takes 2 minutes) in our last 35 hours is invited to join us at the table for a free viewing of Cereal Killers 1. You also get a free public viewing license which can be gifted to any school of your choice - we will send them a digital download copy of the movie. Don't worry, if you've already pledged you're included :)

All funds in excess of our goal will be committed to taking this movie, and our real food message, on the road.

Now, if someone could kindly go tell the Guardian, the Times, the Indepedent and Channel 4 that there’s a real Cereal Killer at large...

Are you going to do a Kickstarter project for the dinner you mentioned above? I'd fund that ;)
I've met the doctors, Brukner, Noakes and Phinney but I haven't met you! Maybe after I've run the 'Durban fun run' in May on fat I'll make it over to Cape Town.
Keep up the good work Donal. We show people CK1 and it's the secret sauce that brings them round.

Reply

Donal

12/11/2014 05:19:10 pm

Thanks Matt! We may be screening CK2 with the Sharks again in Durban. They hosted a great event for CK1. Watch this space!

Reply

Lincoln

12/11/2014 08:27:34 am

Loved the first one

Reply

Donal

12/11/2014 05:20:07 pm

Thanks Lincoln - slightly different flavor to CK2 but the real food message is paramount!

Reply

david walker

12/11/2014 10:31:48 am

I am sure your suspicions about the publicity are 100% correct.

Reply

Donal

12/11/2014 05:21:03 pm

We will never know David! These are certainly interesting times.

Reply

Andrew

12/11/2014 02:59:42 pm

I'ld like to get in contact with Donal personally. I have a proposal to put to him. Can you provide me with his tweeter address or face book address. would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Andrew from Down Under

Reply

Donal

12/11/2014 05:22:03 pm

Hi Andrew - we are @cerealkillers13 on twitter and facebook.com/cerealkillersmovie

Reply

Keegan

12/11/2014 07:05:55 pm

Hi Donal, just wanted to enquire on your thoughts about teens on a high fat diet, especially participating in a sport like Rowing?

Reply

Donal

12/12/2014 04:18:10 am

If we can just get teens eating less refined foods, soft drinks and sports drinks they will excel Keegan. Fat adaptation works fantastically for older athletes in particular but rowers would require some carbs given the demands of the sport. Training on low carb/real food fuel and competing higher carb/real food (sweet potatoes etc) on race day could be a great habitual strategy for teens to adopt.

Reply

Keegan Raves

12/19/2014 10:01:08 am

Thanks Doanl, loved the first movie and i cant wait for the second. Keep up the good work
Regards
Keegan

Marcelo Jimenez

12/11/2014 07:35:49 pm

Hi Donal,

Congratulations for the success of the kickstarter campaign. Looking forward to watch Cereal Killers II.

Regards,
Marcelo.

Reply

Donal

12/12/2014 04:12:40 am

Thank you Marcelo!

Reply

FJ

12/14/2014 01:07:39 am

Boom! CK2 let's go!

Reply

Nicola

5/12/2015 09:44:32 pm

Just watched Cereal Killers 2, great movie and so glad I could be part of getting it off the ground. How does it work with the free viewing for the schools? I am in Australia


---
layout: base
title:  'Statistics of PUNCT in UD_Vietnamese'
udver: '2'
---

## Treebank Statistics: UD_Vietnamese: POS Tags: `PUNCT`

There are 17 `PUNCT` lemmas (0%), 17 `PUNCT` types (0%) and 6323 `PUNCT` tokens (14%).
Out of 14 observed tags, the rank of `PUNCT` is: 11 in number of lemmas, 11 in number of types and 3 in number of tokens.

The 10 most frequent `PUNCT` lemmas: ., ,, ", ..., :, ?, -, !, LBKT, RBKT

The 10 most frequent `PUNCT` types:  ., ,, ", ..., :, ?, -, !, LBKT, RBKT

The 10 most frequent ambiguous lemmas: / (<tt>PUNCT</tt> 11, <tt>VERB</tt> 1), giờ (<tt>NOUN</tt> 37, <tt>PUNCT</tt> 1), photo (<tt>PUNCT</tt> 1, <tt>VERB</tt> 1)

The 10 most frequent ambiguous types:  / (<tt>PUNCT</tt> 11, <tt>VERB</tt> 1), giờ (<tt>NOUN</tt> 37, <tt>PUNCT</tt> 1), photo (<tt>PUNCT</tt> 1, <tt>VERB</tt> 1)

* /
  * <tt>PUNCT</tt> 11: Họ đã để lại hậu quả quá lớn bằng chất độc da cam / dioxin hủy diệt .
  * <tt>VERB</tt> 1: giá nấu thuê 5 - 10 triệu đồng / nồi tùy ở thân sơ và cam kết chủ thợ .
* giờ
  * <tt>NOUN</tt> 37: Cho đến giờ có nhiều cá nhân và tổ chức đăng ký tham gia với chúng tôi .
  * <tt>PUNCT</tt> 1: giờ G đã điểm , gậy gộc , nước , lửa ... sẵn sàng để tách chúng nếu xảy ra " song hổ đấu " .
* photo
  * <tt>PUNCT</tt> 1: Thư ghé vào một cửa hàng photo giao việc cho họ rồi sang hàng khác , rồi hai hàng khác .
  * <tt>VERB</tt> 1: đóng vai một sinh viên , Thanh gặp lớp trưởng xin photo danh sách , địa chỉ , nghề nghiệp và số điện thoại của cả lớp .

## Morphology

The form / lemma ratio of `PUNCT` is 1.000000 (the average of all parts of speech is 1.000000).

The 1st highest number of forms (1) was observed with the lemma “!”: !.

The 2nd highest number of forms (1) was observed with the lemma “"”: ".

The 3rd highest number of forms (1) was observed with the lemma “,”: ,.

`PUNCT` does not occur with any features.

## Relations

`PUNCT` nodes are attached to their parents using 6 different relations: <tt>punct</tt> (6299; 100% instances), <tt>dep</tt> (12; 0% instances), <tt>root</tt> (6; 0% instances), <tt>obj</tt> (4; 0% instances), <tt>aux:pass</tt> (1; 0% instances), <tt>nsubj</tt> (1; 0% instances)

Parents of `PUNCT` nodes belong to 12 different parts of speech: <tt>VERB</tt> (4337; 69% instances), <tt>NOUN</tt> (1301; 21% instances), <tt>ADJ</tt> (483; 8% instances), <tt>NUM</tt> (67; 1% instances), <tt>PROPN</tt> (55; 1% instances), <tt>X</tt> (34; 1% instances), <tt>CCONJ</tt> (10; 0% instances), <tt>ADP</tt> (9; 0% instances), <tt>PUNCT</tt> (9; 0% instances), <tt>SCONJ</tt> (7; 0% instances),  (6; 0% instances), <tt>INTJ</tt> (5; 0% instances)

6297 (100%) `PUNCT` nodes are leaves.

8 (0%) `PUNCT` nodes have one child.

8 (0%) `PUNCT` nodes have two children.

10 (0%) `PUNCT` nodes have three or more children.

The highest child degree of a `PUNCT` node is 7.

Children of `PUNCT` nodes are attached using 17 different relations: <tt>nmod</tt> (11; 15% instances), <tt>case</tt> (9; 13% instances), <tt>punct</tt> (9; 13% instances), <tt>advmod</tt> (7; 10% instances), <tt>compound</tt> (5; 7% instances), <tt>cc</tt> (4; 6% instances), <tt>nsubj</tt> (4; 6% instances), <tt>obj</tt> (4; 6% instances), <tt>aux:pass</tt> (3; 4% instances), <tt>cop</tt> (3; 4% instances), <tt>dep</tt> (3; 4% instances), <tt>nummod</tt> (3; 4% instances), <tt>csubj</tt> (2; 3% instances), <tt>parataxis</tt> (2; 3% instances), <tt>ccomp</tt> (1; 1% instances), <tt>conj</tt> (1; 1% instances), <tt>mark</tt> (1; 1% instances)

Children of `PUNCT` nodes belong to 8 different parts of speech: <tt>NOUN</tt> (25; 35% instances), <tt>VERB</tt> (11; 15% instances), <tt>ADP</tt> (9; 13% instances), <tt>PUNCT</tt> (9; 13% instances), <tt>X</tt> (8; 11% instances), <tt>CCONJ</tt> (4; 6% instances), <tt>AUX</tt> (3; 4% instances), <tt>NUM</tt> (3; 4% instances)


Acquired cystic disease of the kidneys and renal cell carcinoma in chronic renal insufficiency without dialysis treatment.
We report 3 cases of acquired cystic disease of the kidneys with associated renal carcinoma in 2 of the cases. In all 3 cases, the patients had chronic renal insufficiency due to hypertension but had never required dialysis. Review of 176 reported cases of acquired cystic disease of the kidneys and renal tumors disclosed that 18 patients (including 1 previously reported by us) had never received dialysis treatment. These cases support the hypothesis that acquired cystic disease of the kidney is not restricted to patients treated with maintenance dialysis. Among the 18 patients, hypertension was the most common underlying cause of renal failure. Patients with chronic renal failure due to or associated with severe hypertension should be monitored carefully for the development of both renal cysts and tumors even though they have not started on chronic dialysis.


<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateVotesTable extends Migration
{
    public function up(): void
    {
        Schema::create('votes', function (Blueprint $table): void {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->uuid('uuid')->unique();

            $table->unsignedInteger('user_id');
            $table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')->onDelete('cascade');

            $table->unsignedInteger('post_id');
            $table->foreign('post_id')->references('id')->on('posts')->onDelete('cascade');

            $table->unique(['user_id', 'post_id']);

            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }
}


/*
 *  ircd-ratbox: A slightly useful ircd.
 *  balloc.h: The ircd block allocator header.
 *
 *  Copyright (C) 1990 Jarkko Oikarinen and University of Oulu, Co Center
 *  Copyright (C) 1996-2002 Hybrid Development Team
 *  Copyright (C) 2002-2005 ircd-ratbox development team
 *
 *  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 *  (at your option) any later version.
 *
 *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *  GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301
 *  USA
 *
 *  $Id: rb_balloc.h 26092 2008-09-19 15:13:52Z androsyn $
 */

#ifndef RB_LIB_H
# error "Do not use balloc.h directly"
#endif

#ifndef INCLUDED_balloc_h
#define INCLUDED_balloc_h

struct rb_bh;
typedef struct rb_bh rb_bh;
typedef void rb_bh_usage_cb (size_t bused, size_t bfree, size_t bmemusage, size_t heapalloc,
			     const char *desc, void *data);

int rb_bh_free(rb_bh *, void *);
void *rb_bh_alloc(rb_bh *);

rb_bh *rb_bh_create(size_t elemsize, int elemsperblock, const char *desc);
int rb_bh_destroy(rb_bh *bh);
int rb_bh_gc(rb_bh *bh);
void rb_init_bh(void);
void rb_bh_usage(rb_bh *bh, size_t *bused, size_t *bfree, size_t *bmemusage, const char **desc);
void rb_bh_usage_all(rb_bh_usage_cb *cb, void *data);
void rb_bh_total_usage(size_t *total_alloc, size_t *total_used);

#endif /* INCLUDED_balloc_h */


from __future__ import print_function
import argparse
import os

from ast import literal_eval
import logging

try:
    import ConfigParser
    config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
except ImportError:
    import configparser
    config = configparser.ConfigParser()

from utils import cfg_process, metrics_manager

CONFIG_TEMPLATE_DIR = './task_config_template.cfg'
CONFIG_DIR = './task_config.cfg'

def run_benchmark(args):
    # modify the template config file and generate the user defined config file.
    cfg_process.generate_cfg(CONFIG_TEMPLATE_DIR, CONFIG_DIR, **vars(args))
    config.read(CONFIG_DIR)

    # the user defined config file should only have one task
    selected_task = config.sections()[0]
    metric_patterns = literal_eval(config.get(selected_task, "patterns"))
    metric_names = literal_eval(config.get(selected_task, "metrics"))
    metric_compute_methods = literal_eval(config.get(selected_task, "compute_method"))
    command_to_execute = config.get(selected_task, "command_to_execute")
    num_gpus = int(config.get(selected_task, "num_gpus"))

    metrics_manager.benchmark(
        command_to_execute=command_to_execute,
        metric_patterns=metric_patterns,
        metric_names=metric_names,
        metric_compute_methods=metric_compute_methods,
        num_gpus=num_gpus,
        task_name=selected_task,
        suffix=args.metrics_suffix,
        framework=args.framework
    )

    # clean up
    os.remove(CONFIG_DIR)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Run a benchmark task.")
    parser.add_argument('--framework', type=str, help='Framework name e.g. mxnet')
    parser.add_argument('--task-name', type=str, help='Task Name e.g. resnet50_cifar10_symbolic.')
    parser.add_argument('--num-gpus', type=int, help='Numbers of gpus. e.g. --num-gpus 8')
    parser.add_argument('--epochs', type=int, help='Numbers of epochs for training. e.g. --epochs 20')
    parser.add_argument('--metrics-suffix', type=str, help='Metrics suffix e.g. --metrics-suffix daily')
    parser.add_argument('--kvstore', type=str, default='device',help='kvstore to use for trainer/module.')
    parser.add_argument('--dtype', type=str, default='float32',help='floating point precision to use')

    args = parser.parse_args()

    log_file_location = args.task_name + ".log"
    logging.basicConfig(filename=log_file_location,level=logging.DEBUG)

    try:
        run_benchmark(args)
    except Exception:
        logging.exception("Fatal error in run_benchmark")
        exit()


Ladies and gentleman, his name is Paul Heyman, and he’s set to take over your screen of choice — even without the monstrous presence of his “Beast” Brock Lesnar.

Heyman and Mitchell Stuart’s Looking 4 Larry (L4L), which has expanded from a marketing agency to now include a studio, have struck a long-term partnership with Roy Bank’s Banca Studio, TheWrap has learned exclusively. Together, they’ll produce unscripted content across multiple platforms.

The first project will star popular WWE personality Heyman, who will also executive produce the potential series. Good choice, even if Paul himself (kayfabe) doesn’t agree. (“Kayfabe” is a wrestling term that presents a staged performance as genuine or authentic — in other words, he’s just kidding around for entertainment, folks.)

“Against my strenuous objection, Roy Bank has decided our first collaborative project will be centered around me,” Heyman told us. “I have come to the educated conclusion Roy has made this decision based on a desire when pitching from the networks that we learn how to deal with rejection.”

Also Read: Ex-WWE Writer Vince Russo Loses PodcastOne Gig in Feud With Wrestling Blogger (Video)

And no, this initial venture will not have anything to do with the business of professional wrestling. Nor does it mean Heyman is walking away from WWE with Lesnar after WrestleMania 34, though that remains an unrelated possibility. It’s also mostly another story for another time, so check back with TheWrap soon about that.

While Heyman and Bank are not revealing many details about their upcoming production’s format, they say it “will straddle the line between talk, opinion, comedy and pop culture — all with the one-of-a-kind Paul Heyman brand and energy as the driving force.”

For more details, read between the following lines: “It’s a pretty radical concept,” Heyman, who recently moved L4L from Gramercy to Long Island City, told TheWrap. “Created by people with ADD for people with ADD, to be enjoyed by people who would subscribe to a theology of ADD.”

Bank (“The Apprentice,” “Flea Market Flip,” “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”) says their mysterious TV series will be a “hybrid” of various genres, with “the energy of what [Heyman’s] been doing in wrestling” mixed with “the DNA of what is happening on late-night cable with the comedic-talk formats.”

“If you are a fan of Paul Heyman or you’re a fan of the energy that Paul Heyman exudes — even if you are not familiar with him directly — you’ll love this show,” Bank promised.

Also Read: Daniel Bryan Medically Cleared by WWE to Wrestle Again - Just in Time for WrestleMania 34

More concretely, Bank says there will definitely be a set on which Heyman interacts with other people. That’s a huge help Roy, thanks — you’ve practically written this story for us.

The talk show-esque project is going to hit the market immediately following WrestleMania, which takes place next month in New Orleans. Heyman, Stuart and Bank will pitch it to both digital and traditional networks, with the expectation that it will air later this year.

This is the perfect time for the busy Heyman to add another gig to his resume.

As we mentioned above, following ‘Mania, Lesnar is set to depart WWE again for the “realer” fighting of the UFC. Heyman’s contract is also up then, but the ECW founder and former play-by-play guy could still be teamed up with another Superstar, with MMA convert Ronda Rousey as the lead option. Roman Reigns, Lesnar’s opponent at the so-called “Super Bowl of Sports Entertainment,” is another candidate to be paired with Heyman’s gift of gab.

The show and the squared-circle circus act will not impact each other — this is why people like Paul Heyman have “carveouts” in their wrestling contracts.

Also Read: Hulk Hogan in Talks With WWE to 'Help Others Learn From His Mistakes'

Bank, the former president of Television at Merv Griffin Entertainment and head of Development for Mark Burnett, cannot believe that no one has tapped Heyman yet for TV work beyond the between-the-ropes stuff. After all, Heyman embodies the spirit of WWE more than most of the actual wrestlers do for many fans — including a casual one like Banks.

“He may not know how to do a flying leap off the top rope, but… nobody can entertain you and engage you and keep you glued to the screen like Paul can — and that includes everybody in that universe,” Bank, who compared Heyman’s crossover appeal to Dr. Phil, said during our interview. “The only one who probably can rival him is Vince [McMahon] himself. And when you think of it from that angle, how has television not taken advantage of expanding Paul’s scope of work outside of just being on the specific WWE things?”

We’re sold.

Until this project reaches your local cabler or favorite streaming service, readers can catch Heyman over the next few Mondays on WWE’s “Raw” and April 8 at WrestleMania 34, when Lesnar will defend his Universal Championship title against Reigns.


The 5-fluorouracil derivatives of the present invention are novel compounds undisclosed in literature.
We carried out extensive research in an attempt to improve the antitumor action of known 5-fluorouracils and 2'-deoxy-5-fluorouridines and to render them less toxic, and succeeded in synthesizing a class of novel 2'-deoxy-5-fluorouridines which are substituted at the 3'- and/or 5'-position with a phenyl-lower alkyl group having a specific substituent, heterocyclic lower alkyl group optionally having a specific substituent or unsaturated heterocyclic group optionally having a specific substituent; and a class of novel 5-fluorouracils which are substituted at the 1-position with a lower alkyl group having a specific substituent and which have a specific acyl group introduced into the 3-position. We have found that these novel compounds are outstanding in anticancer action, absorption, long lasting effect and therapeutic index, low in toxicity, and therefore very useful as antitumor agents.
We have also successfully synthesized novel compounds which are usable as intermediates for synthesis of said novel compounds useful as antitumor agents.


The haftara “Shuva Yisrael” depicts repentance stemming from trouble and distress, as opposed to “Dirshu Hashem be-himatze’o,” which presents a superior form of repentance. Why, then, is “Shuva Yisrael” read between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur?

The psalmist begins mizmor 27 by expressing absolute faith and trust. But in the continuation, he seems to be seized with fear and doubt. What happened? I believe we can understand this if we read the mizmor as consisting not of two parts but of three.

Rosh Hashana is the day on which we declare that God is our King. Why does this day fall in the seventh month, and not the first? And how is our role on this day reflected in the special kingship verses inserted in our prayers?


James Baker

Former FBI lawyer James Baker testified to Congress in October that he was told that DAG Rod Rosenstein said two Trump cabinet members were “ready to support” removing President Trump via the 25th Amendment.

James Baker gave two testimonies to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in October in an unclassified setting and the transcripts of his testimonies still have not been released to the public; only excerpts of his testimonies have been leaked to the media.

Fox News has confirmed the latest portion of James Baker’s testimony, however, according to Fox, Mr. Baker did not identify the two cabinet members.

Mr. Baker said in his testimony that both Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page told him about their conversations with Rod Rosenstein about ousting Trump via the 25th Amendment.

TRENDING: Unhinged Quebec Woman Pascale Ferrier Identified as Suspect in Case of Ricin Letter Sent to Trump White House

Via Fox News:

“I was being told by some combination of Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, that, in a conversation with the Deputy Attorney General, he had stated that he — this was what was related to me — that he had at least two members of the president’s Cabinet who were ready to support, I guess you would call it, an action under the 25th Amendment,” Baker told the committees. Fox News requested further comment from the parties involved. Lawyers for Baker and McCabe declined comment, as did an FBI spokesperson. In his testimony, Baker said of McCabe’s state of mind: “At this point in time, Andy was unbelievably focused and unbelievably confident and squared away. I don’t know how to describe it other than I was extremely proud to be around him at that point in time because I thought he was doing an excellent job at maintaining focus and dealing with a very uncertain and difficult situation. So I think he was in a good state of mind at this point in time.”

The New York Times first reported on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s plot to wear a wire and oust Trump with the 25th Amendment.

DAG Rosenstein began plotting Trump’s removal shortly after FBI Director Comey was fired, The New York Times reported in September, citing memos penned by then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Rosenstein fought back and said the New York Times report is inaccurate; the DOJ also released a statement last week reiterating Rosenstein’s denial he was plotting a coup against the president.

“The deputy attorney general never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references. As the deputy attorney general previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment,” a DOJ spox said last week in a statement.

POLL: Should Trump Declassify The FISA Documents To Expose The Deep State?

According to Fox News, James Baker testified that he was not directly involved in the May 2017 coup discussions, however he maintains that Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe approached him immediately after their meeting with Rod Rosenstein just days after Comey was fired by Trump.

Baker’s partial transcript via Fox News:

“I had the impression that the deputy attorney general had already discussed this with two members in the president’s Cabinet and that they were…onboard with this concept already,” Baker said. During the closed-door hearing, the former FBI lawyer told lawmakers he could not say whether Rosenstein was taking the initiative to seek out Cabinet members: Question: “Do you know what direction that went? Was it Mr. Rosenstein seeking out members of the Cabinet looking to pursue this 25th Amendment approach or was it the other way around?” Baker: “What I recall being said was that the Deputy Attorney General had two members of the Cabinet. So he – how they came to be had, I don’t know, but…” Question: “So he had two members, almost like he was taking the initiative and getting the members?” Baker: “That would be speculation on my part.” Baker also said he did not know the names of the two Cabinet officials. “Lisa and Andy did not tell me, and my impression was they didn’t know themselves,” he said.

McCabe got the attention of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate last week after a portion of his “60 Minutes” interview aired.

McCabe said in his “60 Minutes” interview that top DOJ officials were so worried over President Trump’s decision to fire corrupt Comey as FBI Director that they discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in several different meetings.

Andrew McCabe also ordered officials to open an obstruction of justice case after Trump fired Comey to see if President Trump was acting as an agent on behalf of Russia.

McCabe then panicked and walked back his statements after conservatives accused him of plotting a coup.

Melissa Schwartz, Comms Director for the Bromwich Group and spokeswoman for Andrew McCabe released a statement Friday morning claiming her client, McCabe, was “taken out of context and misrepresented.”

These corrupt officials aren’t even hiding their attempted coup anymore — they’re publicly admitting they plotted to remove the president without any fear of reprisal.


My Experience At East, MIAMI

Recently, I was invited by Condé Nast Traveler and Capital One Venture Card to spend a weekend at one of Miami’s hottest new lifestyle hotels: EAST, Miami. Guys, this place is incredible. It was actually on Condé Nast Traveler’s Hot List of new hotels in 2017, so you know it has to be amazing. I’m so excited to give you all a glimpse into my experience, so keep reading for photos and tips on the best things to order at EAST’s restaurants and bars.

EAST, Miami is located in Brickell, which can be considered Miami’s business district. The area has been completely revamped, thanks to newly opened luxury shopping destination Brickell City Centre. With so many amazing designers calling Brickell City Centre home, it’s only natural that amazing restaurants and bars are popping up all over the area. So, if you’re an out-of-towner looking for a place to stay or even a Miami native wanting a staycation, you have to check out EAST, Miami.

My first thought when I walked into the hotel: Wow, the design is spot-on. Modern, luxurious, and representative of Miami’s unique style. I was fortunate enough to stay in a three-bedroom suite with floor-to-ceiling windows that give way to amazing views of the city of Miami. Tip: there is no need to rent a car if you’re staying at EAST, Miami. You’ll be in walking distance of all the shopping and nightlife you’ll need. If you feel like venturing to Wynwood or Miami Beach, you’re just a super short (and inexpensive) Uber away.

Our first night there, my friend and I had dinner at the hotel’s main restaurant, Quinto La Huella. The Uruguayan restaurant uses a wood parilla to cook most of their food (delicious) and the ambiance is unmatched. Don’t leave without trying the octopus – it’s the best I’ve ever had.

After dinner, we made our way to EAST’s rooftop bar, Sugar. Located on the 40th floor of the hotel, the view from up there is so magical. It’s hard to feel more Miami than when you’re drinking cocktails with beautiful people, city lights and beach within view, with lush and modern decor all around you. Order a mojito and let the good times roll.

Saturday morning started off with breakfast in bed (who loves room service as much as I do)? We spent the rest of the sunny, cloudless, perfect Miami day lounging by the pool. There are plenty of chairs and umbrellas to relax in with drinks in hand. And if you get hungry, order up some snacks from Quinto La Huella.

We couldn’t resist grabbing some cocktails at Sugar before heading out for a night in Brickell. It’s so easy to go from bar to bar and one of the best spots for music and cocktails is Blackbird Ordinary, right down the street from EAST, Miami.

On Sunday, we hit EAST, Miami’s impressive gym for a quick sweat session to get rid of our hangovers. The fitness center is equipped with all the machines you’d find in big-box gyms. But even better? More floor-to-ceiling windows, so you get a workout with a view. More pool-time rounded out my unforgettable stay at EAST, Miami.


A genetic “clock” lets scientists estimate how long extinct creatures lived. Wooly mammoths could expect around 60 years. Credit: Australian Museum

Humans have a "natural" lifespan of around 38 years, according to a new method we have developed for estimating the lifespans of different species by analyzing their DNA.

Extrapolating from genetic studies of species with known lifespans, we found that the extinct woolly mammoth probably lived around 60 years and bowhead whales can expect to enjoy more than two and a half centuries of life.

Our research, published today in Scientific Reports, looked at how DNA changes as an animal ages—and found that it varies from species to species and is related to how long the animal is likely to live.

The mystery of aging

The aging process is very important in biomedical and ecological research. As animals grow older, they experience a decline of biological functions, which limits their lifespan. Until now it has been difficult to determine how many years an animal can live.

DNA is the blueprint of living organisms and it is an obvious place to seek insights into ageing and lifespan. However, no-one has been able to find differences in DNA sequences that account for differences in lifespans.

Lifespans among vertebrates varies greatly. The pygmy goby (Eviota sigillata) is a small fish that lives only eight weeks, whereas individual Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) have been found that lived for more than 400 years.

Knowing the lifespan of wild animals is fundamental for wildlife management and conservation. For endangered species, lifespan can be used to understand what populations are viable. In industries such as fisheries, lifespan is used in population models to determine catch limits.

However, the lifespan of most animals is unknown. Most estimates come from a small number of individuals living in captivity whose ages at death were known. For long-lived species it is difficult to obtain a lifespan as they may outlive a generation of researchers.

Using changes in DNA to measure age

Over the past few years researchers have developed DNA "clocks" that can determine how old an animal is using a special type of change in the DNA called DNA methylation.

Using DNA analysis, scientists can now estimate the lifespans of long-lived and extinct species. Credit: CSIRO, Author provided

DNA methylation does not change the underlying sequence of a gene but controls whether it is active. Other researchers have shown that DNA methylation in specific genes is associated with the maximum lifespan of some mammals such as primates.

Despite DNA methylation being linked to aging and lifespan, no research until now has used it as a method to estimate the lifespan of animals.

In our research, we have used 252 genomes (full DNA sequences) of vertebrate species that other researchers have assembled and made publicly available in an online database. We then compared these genomes to another database of known animal lifespans.

Using this data, we found that we could estimate the lifespan of vertebrate species by looking at where DNA methylation occurs in 42 particular genes. This method also lets us estimate the lifespans of long-lived and extinct species.

Extinct species

We found the lifespan of the bowhead whale, thought to be the world's longest lived mammal, is 268 years. This estimate is 57 years higher than the oldest individual that has been found, so they may have a much longer lifespan than previously thought.

We also found the extinct woolly mammoth had a lifespan of 60 years, similar to the 65-year span of the modern-day African elephant.

The extinct Pinta Island giant tortoise had a lifespan of 120 years by our estimate. The last member of this species, Lonesome George, died in 2012 at age 112.

Interestingly, we found Neanderthals and Denisovans, which are extinct species closely related to modern humans, had a maximum lifespan of 37.8 years.

Based on DNA, we also estimated a "natural" lifespan modern humans of 38 years. This matches some anthropological estimates for early modern humans. However, humans today may be an exception to this study as advances in medicine and lifestyle have extended the average lifespan.

As more scientists assemble the genomes of other animals, our method means their lifespans can readily be estimated. This has huge ecological and conservation significance for many species which require better wildlife management.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


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This case is particularly significant because it will be the first occasion that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court builds on its landmark decision in Tincher v. Omega Flex, Inc., 104 A.3d 328 (Pa. 2014).

Prior to Tincher, there was a firm separation between strict liability and negligence claims, and negligence concepts such as the inherent risks of a product versus its utility were not presented to a jury. Rather, the trial court would examine those considerations and determine whether a product was “unreasonably dangerous” as a matter of law. The jury was simply asked to decide whether the product was “defective,” i.e. “whether the product lacks any element necessary to make it safe for its intended use.” Tincher held that “whether a product is defective depends upon whether that product is ‘unreasonably dangerous’” and that determination is a question of fact for the jury.

The Amato/Vinciguerra case was tried before the Tincher decision came down. However, Crane had anticipated a change in the law and submitted a proposed failure-to-warn jury instruction incorporating considerations of foreseeability and reasonableness. The trial court declined to issue the proposed jury instruction, and the jury returned multimillion-dollar verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs.

Amato/Vinciguerra presents an opportunity for the court to address several issues raised by Tincher. First,Tincher, which involved a design defect claim, did not address how its decision applies to other strict products liability claims, i.e. manufacturing defect or failure-to-warn claims. The Amato/Vinciguerra case is a failure-to-warn case and the court should clarify whether one of its holdings – that a jury should determine whether a product is “unreasonably dangerous” – applies to failure-to-warn cases.

Second, Tincher held that design defect claims may proceed under either the risk-utility test or the consumer expectations test, so Amato/Vinciguerra presents a chance for the court to address whether these two tests will apply to failure-to-warn cases.

Third, the court might consider whether under Tincher, juries are permitted to consider “state-of-the-art” evidence in determining the reasonableness of a manufacturer’s failure to warn. Such “state-of-the-art evidence,” or evidence of the relevant industry standards and the science known during the time period in question, is significant in asbestos cases where manufacturers are often found liable for failing to warn about the dangers of asbestos during a time period when the dangers of asbestos were not known. This type of evidence would certainly be probative of the reasonableness of a manufacturer’s failure to warn and relevant to the jury’s determination of whether the lack of warning made the product “unreasonably dangerous.”


//
//  Protocols.swift
//  CoPilotPlugin
//
//  Created by Sven A. Schmidt on 23/05/2015.
//  Copyright (c) 2015 feinstruktur. All rights reserved.
//

import Cocoa

protocol Serializable {

    init?(data: NSData)

    func serialize() -> NSData

}

protocol UpdateHandling {
    var onDocumentUpdate: DocumentUpdate? { get set }
    var onCursorUpdate: CursorUpdate? { get set }
    var onDisconnect: (NSError? -> Void)? { get set }
}

protocol DocumentConnectable: UpdateHandling {
    var id: NSUUID { get }
    var selectionColor: NSColor { get }
    func update(newDocument: Document)
    func update(selection: Selection)
    func disconnect()
    var connections: [DisplayName] { get }
}


/*
 *  @author Philip Stutz
 *  @author Mihaela Verman
 *
 *  Copyright 2013 University of Zurich
 *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *         http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 *
 */

package com.signalcollect.factory.mapper

import com.signalcollect.interfaces.MapperFactory
import com.signalcollect.interfaces.VertexToWorkerMapper
import com.signalcollect.messaging.DefaultVertexToWorkerMapper

/**
 *  Default random hash partitioning mapper.
 *  Has good load balancing but poor locality.
 */
class DefaultMapperFactory[@specialized(Int, Long) Id] extends MapperFactory[Id] {
  def createInstance(numberOfNodes: Int, workersPerNode: Int): VertexToWorkerMapper[Id] =
    new DefaultVertexToWorkerMapper[Id](numberOfNodes, workersPerNode)
  override def toString = "DefaultMapperFactory"
}


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This black plastic badge holder will hold two ID badges on either side of the holder. It can be attached to a Lanyard or badge reel horizontally or vertically and fits two standard sized ID cards (3.375'' X 2.125'' CR80 or credit card size). Wholesale priced in packs of 50 badge holders.


package net.minecraft.server;

class MojangsonPrimitiveParser extends MojangsonTypeParser {

    protected String b;

    public MojangsonPrimitiveParser(String s, String s1) {
        this.a = s;
        this.b = s1;
    }

    public NBTBase a() {
        try {
            if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]*\\.?[0-9]+[d|D]")) {
                return new NBTTagDouble(Double.parseDouble(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length() - 1)));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]*\\.?[0-9]+[f|F]")) {
                return new NBTTagFloat(Float.parseFloat(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length() - 1)));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]+[b|B]")) {
                return new NBTTagByte(Byte.parseByte(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length() - 1)));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]+[l|L]")) {
                return new NBTTagLong(Long.parseLong(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length() - 1)));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]+[s|S]")) {
                return new NBTTagShort(Short.parseShort(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length() - 1)));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]+")) {
                return new NBTTagInt(Integer.parseInt(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length())));
            } else if (this.b.matches("[-+]?[0-9]*\\.?[0-9]+")) {
                return new NBTTagDouble(Double.parseDouble(this.b.substring(0, this.b.length())));
            } else if (!this.b.equalsIgnoreCase("true") && !this.b.equalsIgnoreCase("false")) {
                if (this.b.startsWith("[") && this.b.endsWith("]")) {
                    if (this.b.length() > 2) {
                        String s = this.b.substring(1, this.b.length() - 1);
                        String[] astring = s.split(",");

                        try {
                            if (astring.length <= 1) {
                                return new NBTTagIntArray(new int[] { Integer.parseInt(s.trim())});
                            } else {
                                int[] aint = new int[astring.length];

                                for (int i = 0; i < astring.length; ++i) {
                                    aint[i] = Integer.parseInt(astring[i].trim());
                                }

                                return new NBTTagIntArray(aint);
                            }
                        } catch (NumberFormatException numberformatexception) {
                            return new NBTTagString(this.b);
                        }
                    } else {
                        return new NBTTagIntArray();
                    }
                } else {
                    if (this.b.startsWith("\"") && this.b.endsWith("\"") && this.b.length() > 2) {
                        this.b = this.b.substring(1, this.b.length() - 1);
                    }

                    this.b = this.b.replaceAll("\\\\\"", "\"");
                    return new NBTTagString(this.b);
                }
            } else {
                return new NBTTagByte((byte) (Boolean.parseBoolean(this.b) ? 1 : 0));
            }
        } catch (NumberFormatException numberformatexception1) {
            this.b = this.b.replaceAll("\\\\\"", "\"");
            return new NBTTagString(this.b);
        }
    }
}


Love Is on the Beach: A Review of HBO’s Preamar

Total depravity is hot right now – at least if we’re talking TV. Breaking Baddramatically covers a guy who hits rock-bottom with a diagnosis and then, (un)surprisingly, continues bottoming out in a series of ever-increasing grabs for power, wealth, and influence, using his chemist skills to begin a long ascent through the world of crystal meth-dealing. Game of Thrones is fascinating in the same way as a train wreck, and HBO’s Newsroom is, right now, the only genuinely optimistic (while still critically-acclaimed) show on TV.

Enter Preamar, a Brazilian show that, like Breaking Bad, starts with a fall – João Ricardo Velasco, a wealthy banker a year into his “sabbatical”, has kept the truth from his family: he was fired from his hotshot position at a leading bank for investing money in (of all things) Bernie Madoff’s fund. Over the course of season one, his family will begin discovering the truth of their impending bankruptcy, and their fall will force them to acknowledge each other, reckon with each other’s faults, and develop a closeness that had eluded them in days of success.

But it’s not so much the plot as the mood of Preamar which makes it stand out. The show moves a snail’s-pace for American viewers, but is always compelling, even captivating, in the small details. It moves with a barely-suppressed energy and joy, with decadent pans of João’s apartment (“supear-chic”) and the trilling petty commerce of Rio de Janeiro’s beach. The stark apartment scaffolding the family’s distant, disinfected intra-relationships is set off by the lively beach, the place where the tide always stands ready to bring surprises, new life, “news from across the sea.” João starts wandering the beach at the beginning of the series, looking for something new in his life, and he discovers a world of doing business on the beach, a place where he can both use his knowledge and partake of the carelessness, the freedom and spontaneity of the beach-goers and his laid-back business partners.

Achievement, and freedom from achievement, take center-stage in the show. João’s professional disgrace frees him to pursue the beach-commerce which actually makes him happy and, incidentally, a much better father than ever before. João’s wife, by contrast, finds out they’re near bankruptcy and begins scheming for any way she can to make money and keep her status – and the show’s writers punish her for her ambition by making her one of the most genuinely loathsome characters I’ve ever seen on the small screen. The family’s Faulkner-esque housekeeper, Da Guia (thinly-veiled “the guide”) is the family’s moral anchor; like The Sound and the Fury’s Dilsey, she exudes grace, instinctually knowing that she cannot provide balm for their pain, nor countervail their sporadic waywardness (spoiler alert – theft, drugs, an affair, etc). She is the watcher, the figure of God dwelling among us, hopeful but non-forcing, knowing what’s in the human heart and knowing with a pang her own powerlessness to change it, to do anything other than listen and stay close, ready to hear confession but demurring to speak advice.

The ocean is the symbol of gratuity: one day it washes up a shark prowling kid-infested waters, another day it washes up a dead body; another, humans sacrifice to its god, Iemanja, in a casually pagan show of respect for the sea that gives. In contrast to the stale social climbers and careerists, carefully captaining their small, underwhelmingly significant ships, mastering their domains, the beach is the place of surprise, gratuity, etc.

Perhaps now we’re overanalyzing – and there couldn’t be a worse mistake for looking at Preamar. It’s a show that worships the god of small things, the everyday pulse of life that underlies every day, though we’re usually too blind with ambition and achievement and compulsive control to feel it. The slow tempo and rich, protracted camera shots reveal that Preamar is primarily about taking this pulse, as we see the world through the newly-clear eyes of João Velasco. Grace abounds in the world, but it takes the death of ambition, and perhaps a few long, pointless walks, for our selves to be opened up to it. All that to say, Viva Iemanja!

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38 comments

Will McDavid, just receive your review through a friend and share it with actors and crew.
We wrote with many of your analysis in mind but never letting it be bigger than the story. Really nice to hear it all from you.
Best,
Estevão Ciavatta

I love this show so so much. When will it come back – just watched the last episode of Season 1.
Thank you creators – author(s?), director, actors and so on…
Please return soon,
Lynn Delaney
Californian

I accidentally stumbled upon this show and 13 episodes later, I cannot wait for Season 2 to begin. The writer’s did a wonderful job in the development of these characters. Who doesn’t want Joao to end up with Paula? This show definitely sets a mood with the scenery, the filming and the music. I also “trust” this show. Although it is not without some violence, it never shows the viewer too much. And who designed that apartment? More please.

I personally love Joao’s wife and hope he doesn’t end up with Paola. She has her faults but she is also a badass who will do anything to preserve her family and wealth. See how she walked into that pawn shop place and got her money at the point of a gun? Badass. That scene however was also a bad thing in my opinion because it felt a bit rushed and contrived. I love this show but my main gripe with the whole thing in contrast to this review is it felt rushed to me. It didn’t seem slow at all. The wife finds out they are near bankruptcy and the first thing she does is rob her closest friends. There was no period of despair really, no dealing with it. Unlike Breaking Bad’s Walter White there has been no gradual transition from normal to badass…we are presented immediately with what these people are capable of and that to me is a bit of a letdown in an otherwise great show.

I was browsing HBO on demand and came across Preamar…so I previewed it. Captivated by the diverse characters and the Ipanema summer
culture, I watched all 13 episodes within one week.

Subtitles never intimidated nor discouraged me from watching a prime film…but I will say that the color of the subtitles (in yellow) were very
difficult to read against a light background such as the beach.

This show is awesome! I came across it by accident also! I have watched nine episodes in two days leaving the last four for tonight because today is the last day. I love the characters, and each actor/actress plays their part beautifully!!!
I agree that it is very fast moving not slow at all! Wish subtitles were in another color so you could see them easier.
Can’t wait for Season Two, anyone know when it will start?

Dear Lynn Delaney,
For sure, i’s not true.
What i going on is that HBO used taxes to produce the series (instead of paying it to brazilian government, HBO payed Pindorama to produce the series) and through brazilian law HBO can’t be the only owner of the product. So they don’t want to produce more seasons of something that is not their property.
Unfortunately it is like this. If HBO changes it’s mind, it would be great because I created the series for, at least, 5 seasons. I’m really sad about that.
Thanks for your message.
Estevão Ciavatta

Mr. Ciavatta, your show is wonderful! I was really looking forward to Season Two.
That is really a shame about HBO & Brazilian law, is there no way around it?
Perhaps another Network like Showtime would pick up the remaining Seasons.

Will the other Seasons be available on DVD formatted to work on DVR’s in the the USA?
I would buy ever Season you have if that were the case!

Please keep trying!
There are not ,many shows that are so completely addicting!!!!

Fantastic job! . I have to say, the first 2 episodes I was bored to tears, and only being entertained by the vistas of Rio however the more I watched the more I got into it. I am not brasilian but lived in rio for a while and I have to say that subtitles are spot on (that never happens aka. Capadocia). I am glad to hear there is material for 5 season s and I hope hbo fixes its problems. Blakie and Pri look like a nice couple!. Also Rei needs to develop his character more rei and manu?. Joao is a great actor and we can guess if preamar was a american show they should pay any money to Clooney to play his character,but talking about good actors: Sheriff eats the show alive . Great lines and bigger than life personality. Keep up the good work. I can call Dilma if you need help with the next seasons!

I’m Dominican now residing in NYC and I must say this is one of the greatest show I’ve seen, would never dare to watch it in Spanish, they way ppl talk in Portuguese captivates my appetite to visit RIO very soon. This show is amazing, love the acting, plot and the location where its been filmed.
About future seasons it is so typical that HBO will want to own all rights to the series but if they are making good money even sharing it with a local company wouldn’t hurt if you only paying the local company with the taxes your are due to pay….To HBO, Mr. Ciavatta is giving you a great show so pay the Brazilian government their taxes and get the show going, we pay good money here in the US to watch the same idiotic movies run for 3-4 months at the time, stop the nonsense and get season 2 rolling.

LOVE this show!!!!!! Found it totally by accident and then couldn’t wait for the rest!!!! Andy btw, why is there not a soundtrack????? I want more of the show and a soundtrack!!!!! Please, we need Season 2. I’ve told so many people about the show and they are all hooked as well. MORE MORE MORE

Bravo, Estevão Ciavatta. I’ve never watched a better presented or more engaging series. I was captured within the first few minutes. I had a hard time explaining to my wife why the show captivated me and so thought I would try to explain it here to share the explanation with others.

Firstly, the beach scene is captivating in its beauty, the simplicity on the surface and the complexity once you take a closer look. It simply draws you in when you start paying attention to the details. Secondly, the actors add flavor and spice without artifice. They each flow seamlessly into the series without any awkwardness you often find in series; it is as if the actors were made especially for this script as they fit within the collage of images perfectly. Thirdly, the story line is engaging in its twists and turns and even though you can see obstacles and tragedy on the horizon you get the sense that Velasco (and his family) will somehow fix things. And of course he does in an exquisite manner. And his wife, what a unique character in that her naivete and newly discovered fierceness allows her to travel outside the boundaries of normal human behavior that is required by the social circle in which she resides. There is so much more that could be said about each character, the plot(s) and images but I’ll end my assessment here and apologize in advance for It would take hours to write in a way that truly honors your work.

I am going to call! This show is really really fun to watch. Escapist and great characters. As a Californian, it is a glimpse of the place and culture of Rio and had changed my perception of the city (positive). The actors and writing are phenomenal. More!!

Thanks for your time and your words. We worked hard and had great pleasure creating and filming it. It’s been a huge success all over Latin America (in Mexico HBO is releasing a DVD box). As I mentioned, I’ve created this series for, at least, five seasons.
These days I was discussing with them a possibility for the situation with the Brazilian agency. If you call, it will help!
I suggest you also get in contact with HBO Brasil at http://www.hbomax.tv/atcolPT.aspx

This is a a total masterpiece. A show that shows true class in every aspect of it’s production. It gently sucks the viewer into it’s addictive web of beauty & honesty. If HBO can’t work something out it will be completely THEIR loss.
Hopefully Netflix, Amazon, Showtime or AMC will pick it up. The continuity of this show is certain to boost profits for one lucky network. In an American version I can only imagine George Clloney or Mark Rufallo playing the lead with Christina Hendricks (Mad Nwn) playing the semi sensitive & full on bitch role.

I sent the following through the website Mr. Cuavatta kindly provided:

“Please allow further production of this series. I am a Venezuelan exile in Miami, and this program is not only of great interest to people from a Latin American background, to whom I constantly recommend a program, but it is also a very sympathetic show to American viewers who recently went (and are still undergoing) an economic shakedown.

This show has such warmth and exquisite execution. The cast chemistry is amazing, the direction of this show is every bit as deserving of recognition alongside shows such as Mandrake.

Please allow this show to continue. Many loyal Latin American viewers as well as Americans have been invested on this wonderful show.

Most importantly, this show puts out to the world what some of Brazil’s finest productions are! It is one of the best promotions you could have of the country and its people. Do not waste the opportunity to allow this amazing show and cast to garner the recognition it so rightly deserves.

Sincerely written from a loyal HBO customer. Please continue the show, it’s a big part of my reason for subscribing.”

I really hope they listen. HBO has broken my heart before by not continuing beauty such as The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency amd Enlightened. I seriously hope they make the right call with Preamar and don’t alienate their Latin American and some American Preamar fans and subscribers over some bureaucratic mess.

Please don’t break my heart again HBO. Give Mr. Cuavatta and company the rightful chance to continue to tell their breathtaking story.

So sad, we are only on episode 7 (just discovered it) and love it. I have Brazilian friends (from Minas Gerais) and they keep telling me how much better the series is than the novellas they are getting on Global.

NOOOOO! This show is the best and I’m not Brazilian. I live in the US. I love this show. My husband and I discovered it by accident. HBO is a fool if they cancel this show. The writers, directors and actors are amazing. I tell everyone about it. Please bring it back.

I agree… We are U.S. HBO watchers and discovered Preamer….now we are so disappointed to learn of its cancellation. We loved it! We spoke little Portuguese words around the house and hummed the title song, it was such a lovely little series…and we aren’t ones to do subtitles, but this was lovely. We are super disappointed there is no 2nd season…

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[…] Law, and of course, A Great Prince Died So a Hedge Knight Might Live would make the cut. The Preamar post still gives me a chuckle too – you know, that time Mockingbird became the international […]

Publications

About

WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard – God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

HOW: Via every medium available! At present this includes (but is not limited to) a daily weblog, weekly podcasts, a quarterly print magazine, semi-annual conferences, and an ongoing publications initiative.

WHO: At present, we employ four full-time staff, David Zahl, Ethan Richardson, Margaret Pope and CJ Green, and four part-time, Sarah Condon, Bryan Jarrell, Luke Roland and Marcy Hooker. They are helped and supported by a large number of contributing volunteers and writers. Our board of directors is chaired by The Rev. Aaron Zimmerman.

WHERE: Our offices are located at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA.

WHEN: Mockingbird was incorporated in June 2007 and is currently in its 12th year of operation.

Online Giving

The work of Mockingbird is made possible by the gifts of private donors and churches. Our fundraising burden for 2019 is roughly $360,000, and with virtually no overhead, your gifts translate directly into mission and ministry. Can you help? Please feel free to email us at info@mbird.com if you have any questions or would like more information.

As a convenience, we are set up to accept online donations via Paypal. This method will allow you to give with a credit card, in any amount you wish. Simply click on the button below and follow the instructions.