An occasional record of one man's struggle for the salvation of his soul; or, the intersection of the Faith once for all delivered to the saints with the life of a man and a father.

The End of the Forty Days

To everything there is a season, and the 40 days of daily memorial prayers for my father has come to an end. We will continue to remember Dad in our daily prayers, as we commemorate the departed by name, but the prayers reserved to accompany the departed from this life into the next will now become less frequent. We will pray them again in a little over four and a half months, and then annually. We will commemorate Dad on the memorial Saturdays which occur periodically throughout the year. But this special period of forty days has come to an end.

As much as these prayers are a comfort to the bereaved, it is nonetheless a good thing for us to rest from these labors. And make no mistake, dying, and grieving too I am learning, is labor.

When I got the call from my sisters that Dad had coded, I was preparing to go to a meeting at work. After speaking to them, I went to the brief noon meeting, my mind racing, numb, shocked. Only a few minutes later I was on my way to the hospital, a three hour drive. The entire drive I have very little memory of, aside from an overarching anxiety. I’m sure it was filled with desperate prayers.

I arrived, embraced my sisters, and went with them to see Dad. One of the doctors talked with us before I entered the room. She explained what she could. And then I saw Dad, as he lay there unmoving and unconscious.

And so, we prayed a little that first night. We held Dad’s hands. We embraced him. We assured him of our love, of our pride to be his children, and our respect for the great strength he had shown us all his life. I slept that night on the hard floor of the family’s quiet room, my messenger bag for a pillow. I forget who offered it, but at some point, I was given a blanket.

We awoke the next morning, listened to the doctors, and accepted the reality that Dad was dying. We made our medical decisions as family, and prepared our hearts.

So we began the important work of serving the dying, the ministry to Dad to support and strengthen him during his final hours. This is the ministry we, the living, give to those we love. After his collapse, Dad never regained bodily consciousness. But as Christians we know the soul inhabits, intertwines and transcends the body. There was no physical or bodily evidence that Dad was conscious of our presence, but it is a Christian certainty that his soul was present and aware. And until that moment when the body relinquishes the life it has been given, the soul labors in its own way for the transition to that temporary state when it will be separate from the body, awaiting the reunion with that very same transfigured body in the Resurrection.

I am the firstborn, and Dad’s son. It was clear that I needed to place his arm around my shoulders, as it were, to bear him up through prayer and my love and embraces, to help him as he walked that final path to which God had called him. I held his hand. I hugged him. I told him of my love for him. I prayed. But mostly I sat with him, in silence and prayer. It was for all of us to bear him up as his strength left him. He lay still and motionless, save for his body breathing.

I did not, could not, then know what a labor it is to die, nor the intensity of the labor we, the living offer to the dying. As his family, it is damnably hard work. And necessary. Our heart-deep and final gift to our beloved.

We continued struggling together with Dad, as his final hours, then final minutes, drew to a close. Earlier in the day, the chaplain (an Orthodox layman, and such a wonderful comfort to me) read the first chapter of John’s Gospel, and the Beatitudes, among several other Scriptures. He read from the Orthodox Trisagion prayers, as well as other such prayers. We prayed the Lord’s Prayer together over Dad. We each prayed our own prayers in our hearts. Later I prayed the psalter seated next to Dad, my hand on his arm. I could not finish the entire psalter, as I did not have the emotional wherewithal. But I prayed what I could.

And then the end came. I held Dad’s right hand. I brushed my hand against his cheek, and smoothed his hair, as his body continued to struggle to hold on to that life God had given, and now was being returned to God. We all touched him, a hand, a foot, a shoulder. We encouraged Dad, assuring him of our love, stroking his arm, caressing his head. We expressed our love again and again. We gave him our blessings of peace, and prayed for him that final repose from God. Then, his soul was at last separated from his body. And our grief, which had already begun, became sharp and hard and fiery.

For the next forty days, my grief and continued labor for Dad’s departure conjoined. For myself it has meant insomnia, sorrow, and an existence I’d never before contemplated. I was now living life without my father, the man who indelibly marked my identity, who bestowed on me that virile manhood that fathers grant to their sons. I still can’t grasp this. I still can’t face the next couple of months. I still sometimes can’t hear his name in the prayers during Liturgy without that spear point of pain. My priest has told me that the intensity of the grief is often an indication of the depth of love.

How can I say this? I did not realize how much I loved my father. Dad and I were never ones to share our emotions, our inner lives with one another. When I was younger, we would work side by side on the farm, or cutting wood, or loading the moving van. Our phone calls were about the weather, Dad’s latest projects, and occasional plans for travel and seeing one another. I would never have questioned my love for Dad. Every phone call ended with, “I love you, son” and “I love you, too, Dad.” But I just did not realize how deeply those roots had grown, unnoticed. And when they were yanked out by his sudden death, the pain was deep as well.

These forty days of laboring with Dad in his departure are now complete. The prayers continue, of course. But now, we are called to a new way of living. For forty days I have intentionally excluded many things from my life. I’ve delinked from some relationships, even blocked others; still others I have let founder from inattention. Not from anger or pique. I’ve had to. I’ve only just had enough resources to continue my day to day obligations, with very little left over. I’ve had to find ways to grieve without overburdening my daughters, and yet at the same time to receive from them their own ways of comforting me. I am the father, the provider, the protector. I don’t know how many times I’ve apologized to them for my tears, not wanting to upset them. They hug me. In their own child ways they offer comforting words. They grab tissues for me. And they have shed their own tears.

So, too have my sisters, my stepmom, and others of our family, nieces and nephews, grandchildren. Our grief is so private and individual, so awfully lonely. And yet, too, shared in some way. It walls us off from those who are not grieving and even from each other. Yet, somehow it connects us, too, in that love we share with that strong and vital man we have known as father, husband, grandfather, brother, uncle.

This new way of living is a way of living that no longer includes the beloved. It hurts. My heart has been broken. This is uncharted territory for me. There is no map, the path is dark. Others tell me this grief will not end in this life, though it becomes less present than it is now. I don’t know what to make of that. I question my sanity. I stand at the grocery store staring at pork chops and am overcome. The once invigorating post-Liturgy coffee hour chatter I can no longer abide. I’m overcome by an anxiousness in the frozen foods aisle, but can’t stand the solitary hours at home. I somehow make it through each day. But I cannot plan for the coming couple of months. It is overwhelming, everything is altered, transformed by the hole that has come into my life. I pray God in his mercy will make all this transfiguring.

I understand on some level that life will indeed go on. Many things will remain unchanged, although now tinged with this new reality, infused with this new grief. And many things will change, too, because one essential thing has changed. Some of them will change because I have no power to control what happens, and consequence rolls from event and choice. Some of them will change because I see it is necessary that they do. Former dreams and hopes may be cast off, because they too died on that September evening. Or perhaps they have now been solidified, pressed into a crystalline clarity by loss. My future has irrevocably changed. It may require that I alter my own imaginings about that future. May God bless it all.

Pages

Sayings of the Fathers

Fr. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina"We are told by the Holy Fathers that we are supposed to see in everything something for our salvation. If you can do this, you can be saved."
Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works

St. Herman of Alaska"The true Christian is a warrior making his way through the regiments of the invisible enemy to his heavenly homeland."

Fr. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina"Anyone who is attracted merely by glittering censors, incense and beautiful vestments, he, first of all, will fall down before Antichrist."
"Signs of the End Times"

Fr. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina"When I became Christian I voluntarily crucified my mind, and all the crosses that I bear have only been a source of joy for me. I have lost nothing, and gained everything."
Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works

Fr. Seraphim (Rose) of Platina"Do not trust your mind too much; thinking must be refined by suffering, or it will not stand the test of these cruel times."
Letters from Father Seraphim

St. Theophan the RecluseHere is a rule for reading:
Before reading you should empty your soul of everything.
Arouse the desire to know about what is being read.
Turn prayerfully to God.
Follow what you are reading with attention and place everything in your open heart.
If something did not reach the heart, stay with it until it reaches.
You should of course read quite slowly.
Stop reading when the soul no longer wants to nourish itself with reading. That means it is full. If the soul finds one passage utterly stunning, stop there and read no more.
The best time for reading the Word of God is in the morning. Lives of saints after the mid-day meal, and Holy Fathers before going to sleep. Thus you can take up a little bit each day.
The Path to Salvation


Blog » Sports News » Cardinals Are National League Favorites At All-Star Break

Cardinals Are National League Favorites At All-Star Break

July 15, 2015

By: Alan Payton

The other day here at BetAdvisor.com, I looked at updated American League futures odds for Major League Baseball at its All-Star Break. And the favorites were the Kansas City Royals. So could we see a “Show-Me” World Series between Kansas City and its Missouri cousin St. Louis? The Cards are the 3.75 favorites to win the National League pennant. The last time the Royals won the World Series, incidentally, was in ’85 against the Cardinals.

Cards Rolling Behind Quartet Of Pitchers

The Cardinals are perhaps the best-run franchise in baseball these days so I guess you can’t call it a huge surprise that they have the best record in the major leagues at 56-33 and with a 2.5-game lead over Pittsburgh in the NL Central. The Cards are 1.25 to win the Central again. It is a tad shocking that the Cardinals are so good because they lost ace pitcher Adam Wainwright in late April to an Achilles’ injury that’s likely going to cost him the rest of the season, although Wainwright keeps saying he is trying to return late in the campaign. In addition, first baseman Matt Adams suffered a potential season-ending injury in late May.

But the Cards keep chugging along with the best team earned run average in MLB at 2.71. They have an amazing four starters with an ERA under 3.00: Carlos Martinez (10-2, 2.52), Lance Lynn (6-5, 2.90), Michael Wacha (10-3, 2.93) and John Lackey (7-5, 2.99). Might the team make a deal before the July 31 trade deadline to add a fifth starter and keep the innings down for the youngsters Martinez and Wacha?

Nationals Can’t Get Healthy

The spring overall favorite to win the National League was Washington as many projected this stacked team would reach triple-digit wins after adding Max Scherzer via free agency. The Nationals are now 4.20 to win the National League. They have a two-game lead in the East Division. Washington has had a major problem with injuries all season. Currently on the disabled list are five pretty good players: third baseman Anthony Rendon (only played 18 games all season), first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, outfielders Denard Span and Jayson Werth and starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg.

Once the Nationals get healthy, they will probably pull away in the NL East. They have a two-game lead over the New York Mets. The Nationals are huge 1.125 favorites to take the division. The Mets have a great young pitching staff but are offensively challenged. They can’t hang with Washington all year but have a shot at one of the NL wild-card spots.

Dodgers Will Add An Arm

Finally, in the NL West the Los Angeles Dodgers lead second-place San Francisco by 4.5 games. The Dodgers are 1.1538 to win the division and 4.00 to win the pennant. They did well in acquiring catcher Yasmani Grandal from the Padres in the Matt Kemp deal this offseason, but the trade for Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins has been a disaster as he has been one of the worst every-day players in baseball. The Dodgers also have lost two starting pitchers, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Brandon McCarthy, to season-ending injuries. They have money to spend and a deep farm system so it’s expected that L.A. will trade for a starting pitcher, someone like the Reds’ Johnny Cueto, Phillies’ Cole Hamels, Marlins’ Dan Haren or Oakland’s Scott Kazmir. Landing one of those guys would likely make L.A. the NL favorite.


---
author:
- |
    Leonardo Giusti$^a$, $^a$, [Alessandro Nada]{}$^b$, Stefan Schaefer$^b$\
    Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano-Bicocca, and INFN, Sezione di Milano-Bicocca\
    Piazza della Scienza 3, I-20126 Milano, Italy\
    John von Neumann Institute for Computing, DESY\
    Platanenallee 6, D-15738 Zeuthen, Germany\
    E-mail: , ,,
bibliography:
- 'lattice\_procs.bib'
title: 'Frequency-splitting estimators for single-propagator traces'
---

Introduction
============

Quark-line disconnected Wick contractions are ubiquitous in lattice QCD, and those involving single-propagator traces contribute to many interesting observables, such as Standard Model processes like $K\rightarrow\pi\pi$, strong and electromagnetic isospin-breaking corrections and isosinglet spectroscopy. These observables are particularly computationally challenging as they can have large vacuum contributions to their variance, as well as large random noise contributions from the auxiliary fields introduced to evaluate them stochastically [@Bitar:1988bb; @Michael:1998sg]. The former can be ameliorated by multi-level integration [@Ce:2016idq; @Ce:2016ajy], whereas in the following, we suppress the latter contribution by introducing a new family of reduced-variance stochastic estimators which are constructed using a frequency splitting and a hopping expansion applied at a large quark mass. These estimators can be applied in standard Monte Carlo simulations, and here we report on numerical tests with $N_\mathrm{f}=2$ O($a$)-improved Wilson fermions, where we observe between one and two orders of magntitude reduction in the variance (or cost), depending on the fermion bilinear considered. Further details and any unexplained notation can be found in ref. [@Giusti:2019kff].

Variances of single-propagator traces {#sec:var}
=====================================

It is often sufficient to study the variance of individual disconnected Wick contractions, e.g. $W_1$ and $W_0$ (assumed to be real), whose product comprises a larger correlation function $$\begin{aligned}
    {\cal C}_{_{W_1 W_0}}(x_1,x_0) &=  \Big\langle \Big[W_1(x_1) - \langle
    W_1(x_1) \rangle \Big]
    \Big[W_0(x_0) - \langle W_0(x_0) \rangle \Big] \Big\rangle\; . \end{aligned}$$ For large $\lvert x_1-x_0\rvert$ the variance factorizes into the product of the variances of the individual contractions, $$\begin{aligned}
    \sigma^2_{_{{\cal C}_{W_1 W_0}}}(x_1,x_0) &\approx
    \sigma^2_{_{{\cal C}_{W_1}}}(x_1) \cdot \sigma^2_{_{{\cal C}_{W_0}}}(x_0)+\dots\; ,
    \quad\textrm{where}\quad
    \sigma^2_{_{{\cal C}_{W_i}}}(x_i) = \Big\langle \Big[W_i(x_i) - \langle
        W_i(x_i)
    \rangle\Big]^2 \Big\rangle,\end{aligned}$$ and the ellipsis stands for exponentially suppressed terms.

A simple example is the disconnected contribution to a two-point function of fermion bilinears, whose disconnected components are the single-propagator traces $$\begin{aligned}
    \bar t_{_{\Gamma,r}}(x_0) &= - \frac{a_{_\Gamma}}{aL^3} \sum_{\bm x}\tr \left[\Gamma D^{-1}_{m_r}(x,x) \right]\, ,\end{aligned}$$ where $D_{m_r}$ is the massive Dirac operator with bare-quark mass $m_r$, $a$ is the lattice spacing and $L^3$ is the lattice volume. The factor $a_\Gamma=-{\mathrm{i}}$ for $\Gamma=\gamma_\mu$ and $a_\Gamma=1$ for $\Gamma={I},\gamma_5,\gamma_\mu\gamma_5,\sigma_{\mu\nu}$, is chosen so that the Wick contraction is real. The gauge variance can be defined in terms of local operators $$\begin{aligned}
    \sigma^2_{\bar t{_{\Gamma,r}}} =  \frac{a^2_{_\Gamma}}{L^3} \sum_{\bf x} a^3 \langle
    O_{_{\Gamma, rr}}(0,{\bf x})\, O_{_{\Gamma, r'r'}}(0)\rangle_c\, ,\end{aligned}$$ where $c$ stands for connected correlation function, $O_{_{\Gamma, rs}}(x) =
\bar\psi_r(x) \Gamma \psi_s(x)$, and $m_{r'}=m_r$. It is evident that the gauge variance is itself a disconnected contraction, and so begins only at order $g_0^4$ or higher in perturbation theory and may be expected to be suppressed. Nevertheless, by the operator product expansion and power-counting the variance has a cubic divergence in the continuum limit.

In practice, it is unfeasible to compute the single-propagator trace exactly, to which end we introduce $N_s$ independent auxiliary fields $\eta_i(x)$, whose components must have unit variance and zero mean, which we choose to be drawn from a Gaussian distribution, and a stochastic estimator $$\begin{aligned}
    \bar\tau_{_{\Gamma,r}}(x) = -\frac{1}{aL^3 N_s}
    \sum_{i=1}^{N_s}\sum_{\bm x}
    {\rm Re} \left[a_{_\Gamma} \eta^\dagger_i(x) \Gamma
    \{D^{-1}_{m_r}\eta_i\}(x)\right]\, .\end{aligned}$$ The variance of the stochastic estimator receives contributions from the fluctuations of the auxiliary fields $$\begin{aligned}
    \sigma^2_{\bar\tau_{_{\Gamma,r}}} \hspace{-0.25cm} =
    \sigma^2_{\bar t_{_{\Gamma,r}}} - \frac{1}{2 L^3 N_s}\left\{
        a_{_\Gamma}^2 \sum_{\bf x} a^3 \langle O_{_{\Gamma, rr'}} (0,{\bf x}) O_{_{\Gamma, r'r}} (0) \rangle
        \hspace{-0.05cm} + \hspace{-0.05cm}\frac{1}{a}
        \sum_x a^4 \langle P_{rr'} (x) P_{r'r} (0) \rangle\right\}\label{eq:tauV2},\end{aligned}$$ where $P_{rs}=O_{_{\gamma_5,rs}}$. The second and third terms in eq.  are connected diagrams which occur at tree level in perturbation theory, which suggests that they will be larger than the gauge variance unless $N_s$ is large. Note that the third term, which is chirally-enhanced, is independent of $\Gamma$.

   id   $L/a$    $\kappa$     MDU     $N_{\rm cfg}$   $M_\pi$\[MeV\]   $M_\pi L$
  ---- ------- ------------ -------- --------------- ---------------- ----------- -- --
   F7   $48$    $0.13638$    $9600$    $100(1200)$        $268$          $4.3$
   G8   $64$    $0.136417$   $820$        $25$            $193$          $4.1$

  : \[tab:ens\] Overview of the ensembles and statistics presented in this study and their simulation and physics parameters.

![Variances of the standard random noise estimators defined in eq.  as a function of $N_s$ for the ensemble F7. The symbols $S$, $P$, $T_{jk}$, $A_k$ and $V_k$ stand for $\Gamma=I$, $\gamma_5$, $\sigma_{jk}$, $\gamma_k\gamma_5$ and $\gamma_k$ respectively. The dashed lines indicate the gauge noise contributions to the variances computed in sec. \[sec:freq\]. \[fig:std1\][]{data-label="fig:onept"}](fig/fig1_standard.pdf){width="0.6\columnwidth"}

In order to investigate the relative magnitude of the contributions to the variance, we employed the ensembles listed in table \[tab:ens\], with $N_\mathrm{f}=2$ flavours of non-perturbatively O($a$)-improved Wilson fermions. In fig. \[fig:onept\] we plot the variance as a function of $N_s$ for the scalar and pseudoscalar densities, and the tensor, axial and vector currents for the F7 ensemble. The linear behaviour in $N_s^{-1}$ illustrates that the random noise variance dominates by orders of magnitude for small $N_s$, and is practically independent of the bilinear, as expected from the arguments outlined above. For large $N_s$, the gauge variance (dashed lines) is saturated, and is orders of magnitude larger for the densities than the currents. It is therefore highly desirable to examine variance reduction methods in particular for the currents in order to reach the gauge noise.

Estimators for differences of single-propagator traces {#sec:diff}
======================================================

In this section, we investigate the difference of single-propagator traces $\bar t_{_{\Gamma,rs}}=\bar t_{_{\Gamma,r}}-\bar t_{_{\Gamma,s}}$ with two different bare quark masses, $m_r<m_s$, which contains the infrared contributions to the single-propagator trace. Such differences arise, for example, from the disconnected contraction of the electromagnetic current in the isosymmetric theory, as well as constituting a component of our improved frequency-splitting estimator in sec. \[sec:freq\].

We examine two estimators for the differences of single-propagator traces defined by[^1] $$\begin{aligned}
    \bar\theta_{_{\Gamma,rs}}(x_0)
    &=  -\frac{(m_s-m_r)}{aL^3 N_s} \sum_{i=1}^{N_s} \sum_{\bm x}{\rm Re} \left[ a_{_\Gamma}\eta^\dagger_i(x) \Gamma
        \{D^{-1}_{m_r}D^{-1}_{m_s}\eta_i\}(x)\right]\, ,\label{eq:theta12}\\
    \bar\tau_{_{\Gamma,rs}}(x_0) &=  -\frac{(m_s-m_r)}{aL^3 N_s} \sum_{i=1}^{N_s}\sum_{\bm x}
        {\rm Re}\left[a_{_\Gamma} \{\eta^\dagger_i  D^{-1}_{m_r}\}(x)\, \Gamma\, \{D^{-1}_{m_s}\eta_i\}(x)\right] \; ,\end{aligned}$$ which we denote as the standard [@Francis:2014hoa] and split-even estimators [@Giusti:2019kff] in the following. Note that the cost of the two estimators is the same for a given $N_s$. Analogously to the previous section, their variances can be defined in terms of local operators $$\begin{aligned}
    \label{eq:RNV6}
    \sigma^2_{\bar\theta_{_{\Gamma,rs}}} & = \sigma^2_{\bar t_{_{\Gamma,rs}}}-
        \frac{(m_s-m_r)^2}{2 L^3 N_s} \left\{
        a_{_\Gamma}^2\hspace{-0.25cm}\sum_{y_1,{\bf y_2},y_3}\hspace{-0.25cm} a^{11} \langle S_{rs}(y_1) O_{_{\Gamma, ss'}} (0,{\bf y_2}) S_{s'r'}(y_3) O_{_{\Gamma, r'r}} (0) \rangle +
        \right.\nonumber\\
    & \left.\hspace{3.375cm}
        \frac{1}{a}
        \sum_{y_1,y_2,y_3} a^{12} \langle S_{rs}(y_1) P_{ss'} (y_2) S_{s'r'}(y_3)
        P_{r'r} (0) \rangle\right\}\, ,\\
    \sigma^2_{\bar\tau_{_{\Gamma,rs}}}  & =
        \sigma^2_{\bar t_{_{\Gamma,rs}}} - \frac{a_{_\Gamma}^2 (m_s-m_r)^2}{2 L^3 N_s}
        \sum_{y_1,{\bf y_2},y_3} a^{11} \Big\{
            \big\langle  S_{rs}(y_1)\, O_{_{\Gamma, ss'}}(0,{\bf y_2})\,
            S_{s'r'}(y_3) \, O_{_{\Gamma, r'r}} (0) \big\rangle \nonumber\\[0.25cm]
    & \hspace{4.0cm} + \big\langle  P_{rr'}(y_1)\, O_{_{\Gamma, r's'}}(0,{\bf y_2})\,
        P_{s's}(y_3) \, O_{_{\Gamma, sr}} (0) \big\rangle
       \Big\}
    \label{eq:RNV7}\end{aligned}$$ where $S_{rs}=O_{_{{I},rs}}$ and the gauge variance $\sigma^2_{\bar
t_{_{\Gamma,rs}}}$ is the fully-connected analogue of the first four-point function in eq. , just as for the single-propagator trace. The two estimators differ only between the second four-point functions in eq.  and eq. . For the standard estimator, the $\langle{SPSP}\rangle$ term is independent of $\Gamma$ and integrated over one more time coordinate compared to the $\langle{POPO}\rangle$ term in the split-even estimator, which furthermore depends on $\Gamma$.

![Variances of the standard $\theta_{_{\Gamma,rs}}$ (filled symbols) and the split-even $\tau_{_{\Gamma,rs}}$ (open symbols) estimators for the pseudoscalar density (left) and the vector current (right) for ensemble F7. \[fig:spln1\]](fig/fig2_light_strange_pseudoscalar.pdf "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"} ![Variances of the standard $\theta_{_{\Gamma,rs}}$ (filled symbols) and the split-even $\tau_{_{\Gamma,rs}}$ (open symbols) estimators for the pseudoscalar density (left) and the vector current (right) for ensemble F7. \[fig:spln1\]](fig/fig2_light_strange_vector1.pdf "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"}

In fig. \[fig:spln1\], we compare the variances of the standard (filled) and split-even (open) estimators for the pseudoscalar and vector channels for the difference of light- and strange-quark propagators with bare-quark masses $am_{q,r}=0.00207$ and $am_{q,s}=0.0189$ on the F7 ensemble. The variance of the split-even estimator is one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the standard one, and reaches the gauge noise with $N_s\sim\mathrm{O}(10)$ for the pseudoscalar channel, and O(100) in the vector channel.

Interestingly, the large gain using the split-even estimator reported here has been confirmed in ref. [@Wittig:2019qbu]. The partial cancellation of stochastic noise between the light- and strange-quark traces is already present in the baseline standard estimator, which is not the origin of the significant gain as suggested there. The large reduction in the variance is well explained instead by the preceding formulæfor the variances of the two estimators. This analysis also explains the origin of the empirical gains observed for the one-end trick for the pseudoscalar density in twisted-mass QCD [@Boucaud:2008xu], in which case it is even possible to show the estimator has a strictly smaller variance than the standard one [@Giusti:2019kff].

![Left: the disconnected contribution to the electromagnetic current correlator using the split-even estimator from $N_\mathrm{cfg}=1200$ gauge configurations with $N_s=512$ noise sources for F7, and (right) the corresponding contribution to $a_\mu$ from distances up to $x_0^\mathrm{cut}$. A striking plateau in $x_0^\mathrm{cut}$ is visible in the connected case, but no evident for the disconnected contribution and moreover, the error grows quickly due to the vacuum contributions to the gauge noise, which can be tackled with multi-level integration. []{data-label="fig:twopt_em"}](fig/fig3_twopt_vector3_allt.pdf "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"} ![Left: the disconnected contribution to the electromagnetic current correlator using the split-even estimator from $N_\mathrm{cfg}=1200$ gauge configurations with $N_s=512$ noise sources for F7, and (right) the corresponding contribution to $a_\mu$ from distances up to $x_0^\mathrm{cut}$. A striking plateau in $x_0^\mathrm{cut}$ is visible in the connected case, but no evident for the disconnected contribution and moreover, the error grows quickly due to the vacuum contributions to the gauge noise, which can be tackled with multi-level integration. []{data-label="fig:twopt_em"}](fig/fig3_amu "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"}

As an application, we consider the disconnected contribution to the electromagnetic current correlator for an isodoublet of light quarks and a valence strange quark, $C^{rs}_{VV}(x_0)\sim\langle\bar
t_{\gamma_k,rs}(x_0+y_0)\,
\bar t_{\gamma_k,rs}(y_0)\rangle$. The disconnected contribution is shown in fig. \[fig:twopt\_em\] (left) using $N_\mathrm{cfg}=1200$, and a good signal is observed up to 1.0 fm. The current correlator determines the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to $a_\mu$, and in fig. \[fig:twopt\_em\] (right) we show the resulting disconnected contribution (times a factor 100, for visibility) computed using the split-even estimator, along with the light-quark connected contribution, from distances up to $x_0^{\mathrm{cut}}$ using the time-momentum representation [@Bernecker:2011gh]. In particular, this variance-reduction technique represents an important computational advance for precision computations of hadronic contributions to muon $g-2$, and as suggested in ref. [@Giusti:2019kff], the use of this estimator can significantly speed up many other computations such as of hadronic matrix elements and their strong and electromagnetic isospin-breaking corrections, see ref. [@Risch:2019xio] for a first application to isospin-breaking corrections.

Frequency-splitting estimators {#sec:freq}
==============================

In order to construct a reduced-variance estimator for the single-propagator trace, we combine the split-even estimator and for the large quark-mass contribution use the order-$2n$ hopping expansion of the Dirac operator [@Bali:2009hu; @Gulpers:2013uca], $D_{m_r}^{-1} = M_{2n,m_r} + D_{m_r}^{-1} H^{2n}_{m_r}\; ,$ where $H_{m_r}$ denotes the hopping part of the Dirac operator and $M_{2n,{m_r}}$ the first $2n-1$ terms in the hopping expansion. We denote the corresponding decomposition of the trace $\bar t_{_{\Gamma,r}} =
\bar t^{M}_{_{\Gamma,r}} + \bar t^{R}_{_{\Gamma,r}}$. The first term can be computed exactly with $24n^4$ applications of $M_{2n,m_r}$ onto probing vectors, while an efficient stochastic estimator for the remainder of the hopping expansion is given by $$\begin{aligned}
    \bar \tau^{R}_{_{\Gamma,r}}(x_0) &= - \frac{1}{a L^3 N_s}
        \sum_{i=1}^{N_s}\sum_{\bf x} {\rm
        Re}\left\{a_{_\Gamma}\big[\eta_{i}^{\dagger} H^{n}_{m_r}\big](x)\,
        \Gamma\, \big[D_{m_r}^{-1}  H^{n}_{m_r} \eta_i\big](x) \right\} \; .\end{aligned}$$ We therefore define the frequency-splitting estimator for the target quark mass $m_1$ by using the split-even estimator for $K-1$ differences with $m_{r_k}<m_{r_{k+1}}$ and applying the hopping decompositon at the largest quark mass $m_{r_K}$ which controls the ultraviolet fluctuations, $$\begin{aligned}
    \bar \tau^{\rm fs}_{\Gamma,r_1}(x_0) =
    \sum_{k=1}^{K-1} \bar \tau_{_{\Gamma,r_k r_{k+1}}}(x_0) +
    \bar t^{M}_{\Gamma,r_K}(x_0) + \bar \tau^{R}_{\Gamma,r_K}(x_0)\, ,\end{aligned}$$ In fig. \[fig:FSEPV\], we investigate two frequency-splitting estimators for single-propagator traces at the sea-quark mass for the G8 (left) and F7 (right) ensemble respectively. For G8 we use $K=3$ and apply the hopping expansion at $am_{r_K}=0.1$, while for F7 we take $K=5$ and $am_{r_K}=0.3$, and $n=2$ in both cases[^2]. In both cases, we see around two orders of magnitude reduction in the random-noise contributions to the variance, but due to the estimated increase of about $3.3$ and $6$ in the cost for G8 and F7, the cost reduction in the vector channel is in the region of $10-30$ depending on the mass.

![Variances of the frequency-splitting estimators (open symbols) for the vector current, compared with the standard random-noise estimators (filled symbols) on the G8 ensemble (left) and F7 ensemble (right). The cost of one iteration of the FS estimator is about 3.3 and 6 times the standard one on F7 and G8 respectively. []{data-label="fig:FSEPV"}](fig/fig4_G8_fs_estimator_vector1.pdf "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"} ![Variances of the frequency-splitting estimators (open symbols) for the vector current, compared with the standard random-noise estimators (filled symbols) on the G8 ensemble (left) and F7 ensemble (right). The cost of one iteration of the FS estimator is about 3.3 and 6 times the standard one on F7 and G8 respectively. []{data-label="fig:FSEPV"}](fig/fig4_F7_fs_estimator_vector1.pdf "fig:"){width="0.45\columnwidth"}

Conclusions {#sec:conclusions}
===========

In these proceedings, we have investigated improved split-even estimators for differences of single-propagator traces, which can be applied to efficiently evaluate the disconnected contributions arising from the electromagnetic current, so that the leading contribution to the variances arises from fluctuations of the gauge field. The cost is reduced by between one to two orders of magnitude depending on the bilinear. Furthermore, these can be used to construct frequency-splitting estimators for single-propagator traces by combining them with the hopping expansion for large quark masses, which reduces the cost by more than an order of magnitude for the vector current close to the physical point. These techniques are compatible with other variance-reduction techniques, such as low-mode averaging [@Giusti:2004yp; @DeGrand:2004qw] and dilution [@Foley:2005ac].

#### Acknowledgments

Simulations have been performed on the PC clusters Marconi at CINECA (CINECA-INFN and CINECA-Bicocca agreements) and Wilson at Milano-Bicocca. We are grateful to our colleagues within the CLS initiative for sharing the ensembles of gauge configurations with two dynamical flavours. L.G. and T. H. acknowledge partial support by the INFN project “High performance data network”.

[^1]: Here, we have used the identity $D_{m_r}^{-1}-D_{m_s}^{-1}=(m_s-m_r)D_{m_r}^{-1}D_{m_s}^{-1}$ to rewrite the difference as a product.

[^2]: See ref. [@Giusti:2019kff] for the relative $N_s$ used in each component.


/* This code is part of Freenet. It is distributed under the GNU General
 * Public License, version 2 (or at your option any later version). See
 * http://www.gnu.org/ for further details of the GPL. */
package freenet.support;

import freenet.client.async.ClientContext;

public interface RandomGrabArrayItemExclusionList {

	/**
	 * Whether this item can be returned right now.
	 */
	public long exclude(RandomGrabArrayItem item, ClientContext context, long now);

}


1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet media position sensing device for an image producing apparatus, such as a laser printer. It is more specifically directed to a sheet media position sensor for registering the printed image with the sheet media.
2. Discussion of the Background
In an image forming apparatus, such as a laser printer, a sheet media feeder is provided for transporting the individual sheets into substantial alignment with a xerographic printing device.
In most printing apparatus of this type a sheet media storage tray is mechanically positioned to register the sheet media as it is fed into the mechanism in proper alignment with a transport path to the image producing device. Thus, mechanically the sheet media is properly aligned by the storage tray with respect to both the transport path and the print producing apparatus. A suitable mechanism, such as a sheet feeder roller, is employed in relation to the storage tray to feed a single sheet of the media from the tray into nipped rollers provided along the transport path of the sheet. The feed roller and nipped rollers move the sheet media as accurately as possible, but in many cases the sheet becomes skewed or shifted with respect to the center line of the transport path, which places the sheet media out of proper position with respect to the image producing portion of the printing apparatus.
Up to now, the primary way of attempting to correct this condition is to provide some kind of mechanical apparatus along the transport path to reposition the sheet media into an accurate position required for the image transfer. In the past, individual rollers set laterally with respect to the transport path or individual positioning rollers along the path which can be arranged perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the path or skewed at an angle with respect to the path have been provided. Various types of sensors, such as photoelectric detectors have been provided in the transport path to determine the position of the sheet media. It is necessary to not only measure the position of the sheet media laterally with respect to the center line of the transport path but also with respect to whether it is skewed with respect to that axis. Once this measurement has been taken and the position calculated the mechanical correction systems, such as the lateral rollers or individual rollers, are rotated at different velocities in an attempt to return the sheet media to the proper position prior to being fed into the image producing device.
Thus, this method produces a sheet alignment mechanism for correcting the positional shift in the sheet media during transportation which is usually caused by rollers which are misapplied or worn within the sheet transporting mechanism. These types of correction devices usually include one of two different types of registration systems. One system is a xe2x80x9cleadxe2x80x9d registration reference in which the posture or position of the sheet media is realigned with respect to the leading edge of the sheet, and the second registration system is a xe2x80x9csidexe2x80x9d registration reference in which the position of the sheet is realigned with respect to the side edge of the sheet media. With the first system, a lateral gate is usually positioned across the transport path so that the sheet media as it moves along the transport path will be stopped momentarily by the lateral gate to reposition the sheet properly with respect to the image producing device. The second registration system causes the sheet to move laterally so as to register the side of the sheet against a fixed elongated member which aligns the sheet with respect to the proper transport path and the image producing device.
The problems with these systems are that with the leading edge registration the sheet is caused to abut and temporarily stop to finalize the correct position of the sheet media. The side registration does not always function properly in that the side of the sheet may buckle preventing the sheet from becoming properly aligned with the respect to the imaging device. This is especially true when the thickness of the sheet media is quite thin and provides little strength or rigidity for the alignment process.
In other prior art, small individual rollers are used at various locations along the transport path and once the position of the sheet is determined, various mechanisms, such as stepper motors or motor driven belts, are used to rotate the rollers at various speeds in order to move the sheet into proper alignment with the transport path. Various slippage between the sheet media and the rollers and the inevitable wear of the mechanical devices driving the rollers as well as the rollers themselves cause variations in the rotational speed of the placement rollers which, in turn, affect the actual correction or realignment of the sheet media with respect to the image producing device.
One of the most critical elements of this type of position alignment and correction is a system for measuring the actual location of the sheet media with respect to the transport path. In one configuration, an LED light bar is used in conjunction with a photosensitive bar. These two elements are placed one above and one below the transport path for the sheet media so that the sheet will pass between. Thus, the LED light bar and photosensitive bar are set perpendicular to the transport path. At predetermined time intervals, readings of the position of the sheet media are recorded which Identifies the actual position of the sheet media and whether it is skewed in relation to the center line of the transport path. This arrangement is quite expensive due to the costs of producing the LED light bar as well as the sensing bar. In fact, it is so expensive that the use of this type of position sensor has been substantially ignored.
The present invention addresses the limitations and problems which exist with the present type of sheet media alignment registration and de-skewing devices. The arrangement provided in the present invention and disclosed in this application is considerably cheaper and more reliable than those prior art devices. No attempt is made to actually move the sheet media, thus, eliminating the considerable number of electrical and mechanical devices which have been utilized in the past. As a result, the reliability and the accuracy of the present invention will considerably improve any printing process using the present correcting arrangement.
The following statement is provided to comply with the applicant""s acknowledged duty to inform the Patent and Trademark Office of any pertinent information of which he is aware. The following information refers to the most pertinent patents of which the applicant has knowledge with respect to the subject matter of the present invention. There is no intent to show that a comprehensive patent ability search has been performed on this subject.
In the Castelli, et al. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,887,996) a de-skewing and registering device for an electro-photographic printing machine is provided. A single sensor determines the actual position and the skew of a sheet in a paper path and generates a signal indicative of this position. A pair of independently driven nip rollers forwards the sheet to a registration position at a proper time based on signals from a controller which generates the motor control signals for applying the necessary corrections to reposition the sheet. An additional single photoelectric sensor can be used to provide feedback for updating the control signals for positioning the sheet.
The Uedo, et al. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,130) shows an image forming apparatus which has the capabilities of correcting a slant of the image which is recorded after the scanning of a document. The image signal is electrically processed so as to correct the slant of the image to be printed in a xerographic printing process.
The Fujikura, et al. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,273,418) discloses a sheet registration device which includes a sheet positioning member which is disposed along a side of the sheet transport path and parallel with the transport direction. Lateral moving rollers are provided for moving the sheet into contact with the side positioning member to register the sheet properly with respect to the image transferring device. Sensors are provided for identifying the position of the sheet and moving it accordingly into contact with the side positioning member. This arrangement properly aligns the sheet with respect to the transport path whereby the text from the imaging device will be positioned properly on the sheet.
The Nakamura, et al. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,324) allows detection of multiple sheets of paper being conveyed in an image reading or forming operation. In addition, a facility is provided for recovery to eliminate double or triple sheet feeding in the process. A pressure sensitive electrical conductive rubber roller is included which identifies when changes exist in the length and thickness of the sheet being conveyed. Electrical signals are produced so that multiple sheet conveying can be detected. This patent has nothing to do with the positioning of the sheet or identifying the position of the sheet in the transport path.
The Tanaka, et al. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,676,477) discloses a sheet carrying apparatus which is arranged for reducing the skew of a sheet in the transport path. Electrical and magnetic holding devices are disclosed in contact with the sheet as part of the holding device for positioning the sheet and correcting the skew. Position detecting devices are disclosed which primarily include an optical light sensing device on each side of the sheet transport path. Multiple readings as the sheet is transported provide output signals which are used to calculate the skew of the sheet. From this information, course determinations are produced for moving the sheet in proper position to eliminate the skew.
The Brookner patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,234,694) is a device for printing postage or other images onto media of variable size. A detection device determines the size of the media in at least one dimension prior to or during the printing of the image. From the information received, the image is adjusted accordingly. As a result, the image printing facility is positioned to apply the image to the media in a proper location.
The Haselby patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,241,334) discloses a technique for aligning the ink jet print head cartridge of an ink jet printer. The print cartridge moves along a horizontal carriage which is transverse to the transport path of the media. Optical sensors are supported on the movable carriage which read the horizontal positions of vertical test lines which are imaged on a detector in conjunction with horizontal alignment corrections of the media. In this way, alignment of the printed image is made possible.
The Kimura patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,160,608) discloses an improved image recording apparatus which includes a recording light modulated in accordance with the image which is allowed to be incident in a specified recording position. Light sensitive material is transported in an auxiliary scanning direction as it is held in the recording position. The transport has a first nip transport device and a second nip transport device. The supply device for transporting the light sensitive material is supplied in an appropriate posture into the first nip transport device; any skew which is detected can be corrected in the position of the light sensitive materials upstream of the recording position without affecting the exposure thereby ensuring consistent production of photographic prints properly positioned on the light sensitive material.
The present invention is directed to a novel arrangement for sensing and measuring the position of sheet media as it is transported in a recording or printing operation. It is understood that this sensing device can be utilized with any type of printing operation and is not specifically limited to any one type.
As is well known, paper and other types of sheet media have a relatively high resistance with respect to the passage of an electrical current. The present sensing device utilizes this characteristic in determining the position and skew of the sheet media as it is being transported.
A pair of nipped rollers is positioned transverse to the longitudinal direction of the sheet media transport path. As is common in most devices of this type, the sheet media travels along the transport path at a known constant velocity. The rotating nipped rollers, according to the present invention, can include a solid metal roller which is usually positioned below the transport path with the corresponding parallel upper roller formed from a generally metallic support shaft having a thickness of electrically conductive rubber evenly applied thereto. Thus, it is possible to have a relatively thin diameter center shaft with a relatively thick coating of conductive rubber as the outer surface or a relatively large diameter metallic roller provided with a relatively thin coating of electrically conductive rubber forming the outer surface. In most cases, the thin coating of conductive rubber is desirable since it produces a lower resistance in the electrical circuit making up the sensing device. The mid-point of the conductive roller has an insulator which separates the roller into two substantially equal halves. The centered insulator position is aligned with the center line of the transport path of the printing device. The contact area for the pair of nipped rollers is a contact line or nip along the entire length of the rollers. A predetermined constant DC biasing voltage is applied to the metal roller and an electrical lead is connected to each half of the rubber conductive roller to provide output signals of the current passing through the conductive halves of the roller. Thus, without having any sheet material positioned in the nip or contact area of the rollers, the output current flowing through the electrical conductive halves will be equal. These output circuits can also be balanced for calibration purposes to maintain the output current in the idle condition as being equal. The output current from each half of the rubber conductive roller is fed to a position calculating circuit which can be part of a microprocessor contained within the printer device.
As stated earlier, paper and other types of sheet media have a relatively high electrical resistance. As the paper or sheet media is moved along the transport path, it is introduced into the electrically conductive rubber nipped roller and metal roller. The paper causes a change in the current flowing in the two halves of the nipped roller. These two output currents are measured and compared and an output signal is generated indicative of the proportion of the current flowing in each half of the nipped roller. This output signal indicates the exact position of the sheet material with respect to the center of the divided roller and, thus, the center line of the transport path. Multiple readings can be taken at predetermined time intervals as the sheet passes between the rollers with variations in the output signals being used to calculate the actual skew or lateral shift of the sheet media. The skew calculations, in the form of the output signals, are then passed directly to the processor for realignment of the image on the photosensitive drum or print head. Thus, the output signals precisely indicate the position of the sheet media and the skew or shift of the sheet media, if present. In this way, exact registration of the print image can be provided for each page of the sheet media.
As is well known, the processor within the printer device, such as a laser printer, receives the incoming digital data signals and scans a photosensitive drum which electrostatically transfers an image producing media, such as toner, to the sheet media as it passes along the transport path. The toner is transferred electrostatically to the sheet media where it is fixed by heat and pressure applied by a pair of fuser rollers.
The microprocessor in a laser scanning circuit applies the image directly to the photosensitive drum. Additional aligning circuitry can be provided in the processor for adjusting the position of the scanned image on the photosensitive drum in accordance with the skew or shift that has been identified for the individual sheet media upon which the image is to be placed. Thus, the position of the image is adjusted in accordance with the output signals received from the sheet media sensing device rather than the sheet media itself. In this way, the image as it is applied directly to the sheet media is registered properly with respect to the outer dimensions of the sheet. Through this very inexpensive and novel arrangement, image registration on the sheet media can be provided to produce a high quality printed page.
As stated above, it is possible to use this sheet media positioning sensor in any type of transport where a sheet media, such as paper, labels, or transparencies, can be properly printed with aligned text or images. This is true with any printing operation wherein the image transfer device is alignable with respect to the transport path of the media. This is not only true with a xerographic type of printer, such as a laser printer, but could be used with an ink bubble jet printer or a dot matrix printer, so long as the print head can be realigned with the determined position of the sheet media.


Quantum dot-based lab-on-a-bead system for multiplexed detection of free and total prostate-specific antigens in clinical human serum samples.
An immunodiagnostic lab-on-a-bead suspension microarray based on microbeads encoded with quantum dots (QDs) has been developed and preclinically validated for multiplexed quantitative detection of prostate cancer markers in human serum samples. The sensitivity and specificity of the microarray are similar to those of "gold-standard" single-analyte ELISA. Moreover, the array has an improved immunoassay capacity, ensures quantitative detection of multiple cancer biomarkers and may be operational in a considerably wider dynamic range of concentrations. The array is characterized by reduced time and cost of analysis and is compatible with classical flow cytometers. Proof-of-concept preclinical tests ensured simultaneous quantitative determination of free and total prostate-specific antigens in human serum, with clear discrimination between the control and clinical samples. The proposed approach is flexible and paves the way to development of a wide variety of immunodiagnostic assays for multiplexed early diagnosis of various diseases. Early diagnosis of cancer can result in better prognosis for patients. Thus, the use of specific tumor markers is widely employed in clinical practice. Traditional screening methods only employ single markers. The authors here developed a microarray system based on microbeads encoded with quantum dots (QDs), which can be used for multiplexed quantitative detection. The validated results on patient samples should lead to the development of a wider variety of assays for other diseases.


West Coast-Trained for a Washington, D.C. Think Tank

Immediately after the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), you headed to Washington, D.C., as a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. What are you working on now, and how did your graduate studies help?

Currently, I track various metrics for measuring the North Korean economy to ascertain how and at what levels their economy is growing. I also have an ongoing project assessing the extent of South Korean humanitarian and economic aid in North Korea.

I have always wanted to be in the mix of discussions on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia, and Washington, D.C., is the hub. GPS combines quantitative analysis skills and top-notch research and was the best place for my studies.

What lessons prepared you to work at a leading think tank?

I use my quantitative skills every day. The economics training at GPS is great, and so is the broad training in public policy. In a town like Washington, D.C., you are never too far removed from politics, and I gained a superb foundation for understanding this. It is not about learning facts; it is about acquiring that foundation to analyze problems in many contexts.

North Korea represents uncertainty for many in the world. What are your thoughts on the current tensions?

We are in a very difficult time. We need bold new ideas to signal the intent of the U.S. toward long-term peace and engagement with North Korea while simultaneously improving sanctions enforcement and continuing to punish aberrant behavior. This is not an easy balance to find.

Just as important as analyzing these complex policy issues, it is necessary to connect them with stakeholders. That is why I maintain relationships with government officials, diplomats, and members of the media. This makes my work better but also allows for opportunities to share it with others.

As a graduate student, how pivotal were your multiple fellowships?

Immensely pivotal. The Robertson Foundation for Government Fellowship provided unparalleled financial assistance to support my training in public policy with an eye on public service. The Boren Fellowship provided funding to study Korean in South Korea, and the Rosenthal Fellowship supported my U.S. Department of State internship. The Career Services staff at GPS kept me up to speed with fellowship deadlines and made sure my applications were solid.

To what extent has your collaborative work with faculty benefitted you?

While a student, I had the chance to work with truly fantastic professors such as Stephan Haggard and Susan Shirk—experts in Korea and China, respectively. It is hard to imagine a better place to study if you want to think deeply and critically about Northeast Asia policy.

I am currently working on research with Stephan Haggard and writing posts for his and Marcus Noland’s blog, North Korea: Witness to Transformation. Faculty members Susan Shirk and Emilie Hafner-Burton also have been very helpful in encouraging me in my career and carrying on policy discussions even after classes ended.


When the Pfizer bid for AstraZeneca was revealed last month most people in the City would have placed a 90 per cent chance on the deal being done.

Britain’s commitment to the efficiency of markets and the Government’s support for a merger that would validate its tax policies looked to make it inevitable.

The most senior Tory politician who had the courage to speak out against the transaction was Lord Heseltine, who was dismissed by critics as a dinosaur.

Deal or no deal? Most people in the City would have placed a 90 per cent chance on the Astrazeneca deal being done

Moreover, Ian Read, the chair and chief executive of Pfizer, was a very different kettle of fish to Irene Rosenfeld, the boss of Kraft who failed to engage with the political classes when she bid for Cadbury.

Read conducted an intense lobbying process on Downing Street and Whitehall and also accepted the need to appear before both the Commons Business and Science committees.

The reception in government was probably more friendly that he had any right to expect and the hostile, if ineffectual, Commons Select Committee appearances provided a useful counterbalance.

Those of us who have covered bids and deals down the years are always told that price should be the overwhelming factor and it is shareholders, many of them global, who should have the last word.

But some disastrous decisions have been made.

The reckless way in which shareholders, for instance, approved the purchase of ABN Amro by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2007 – after Northern Rock had demonstrated the fractures in the banking system – is a case in point.

Indeed, shareholders have become more cautious in their behaviour and did not much like the G4S bid for Danish cleaning company ISS.

The board of water utility Severn Trent also stood firm against an offer from Canadian marauders. So there is no longer any certainty that overseas bids will be automatically approved.

What makes deals in the pharmaceutical sector so different is the time scale of R&D in the industry. AstraZeneca thinks in terms of 12 years to bring drugs to market.

Pfizer’s initial guarantees were only for five years and in the end its heavy play of tax advantages did not win many hearts and minds because it smelled of financial engineering.

If the financial crisis has taught the City anything it is that consumers and citizens have become deeply sceptical about the way business is conducted.

Free and open markets are all very well but the ethics of the marketplace, whether it be the growing wealth divide between directors and workers, or ruthless behaviour such as the payment of bribes in foreign climes, is no longer acceptable.

Companies are starting to get this message and so are some hedge funds. Lansdowne Partners was savaged because it was allowed to be a core investor in Royal Mail.

But it has kept its holding constant whereas other, so-called long funds, have sold. Even the most robust believers in free enterprise are learning that a more moral capitalism is required that pays attention to considerations beyond the money on the table.

Better banking

The fines for the bad bankers keep on rolling in as the regulators require institutions responsible for the ‘great panic’ and ‘great recession’ to pay the price for their misdeeds with heavy fines.

The risk is that such disciplinary action comes to be seen as a cost of doing business rather than a reason to improve behaviour.

That is why the new Banking Standards Review Commission, largely designed by former FT editor Sir Richard Lambert, is so important. It intends to hold banks to account on issues of ethics, culture and behaviour.

Smartly, Lambert managed to persuade Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, to head the senior appointments committee. It is very hard to turn down the governor especially one like Carney who has been working on fixing the banking system since 2010 and the formation of the

Financial Stability Board.

The idea is that the project costing £5million to £10million a year will be funded by the banks and the new commission will seek to draw in citizens, consumers and workers in the financial sector who are impacted by poor ethics in the industry.

Carney wants a system that is ‘safe, fair and acts with integrity’. Good luck with that.

Loyalty shares

Looking after customers is all the rage at present. Silver-haired clients have been given favoured status and free shares in the Saga initial offering.

At another end of the age spectrum Game Retail is planning to distribute virtual shares, to the value of £2million, among thousands of loyal customers in its reward scheme who will be able to spend the points online and in the shops. Kerching!


Michelle Rodriguez: biography

Michelle Rodriguez is an American actress. She is known to the public by her roles in the movies "Resident Evil", "Avatar" and also by her participation in the extremely successful franchize "Fast & Furious".

Mayte Michelle Rodriguez was born on the 12th of July, 1978 in the family of the Dominican and the Puerto-Rican. The parents of the future film actress met in America where Michelle's father had been at military service.

Michelle Rodriguez in her childhood and at present

Since childhood Michelle had an independent character and was very broad-minded that was rather surprising for the child who was brought up in the religious family. The girl's grandmother was especially godfearing.

For several years the family of Rodriguez lived in Texas, but when Michelle turned was 8 years, her mother left her father and took her daughter to the Dominicana. In a year the parents of the future star officially divorced. Michelle’s grandmother got engaged in education and upbringing of her granddaughter and she repeatedly tried to involve the girl in the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses but it was in vain. During four years Michelle Rodriguez had been living in the native country of her mother and then they came back to the United States and settled in New Jersey.

The actress Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle often changed schools, she studied badly and misbehaved. In 17 years the girl left school, but soon she came to her senses and got the high school certificate. At this time Rodriguez already dreamed about the career in the cinema, but she couldn't choose the specialization. At first Rodriguez wanted to be a scriptwriter, then she decided to become the director, but as a result, she stopped on the actor's profession.

Movies

Being 20 years old Michelle Rodriguez moved to New York. At first, the movie actress took part in extras and actively visited auditions. In 1999 Michelle played two roles in the movies "Cradle Will Rock" and "Summer of Sam". The audience hadn't even noticed the young actress. Such indifference pushed and motivated Michelle, but soon the destiny rewarded Rodriguez for her persistence. Once the actress had seen the announcement of the audition for of actors for the movie "Girlfight". Rodriguez was late for the audition, was reading the text stumbling, but the beginning actress managed to enchant the director by some miracle. She was selected for this role from other 350 applicants. In such a way the creative career of Michelle Rodriguez had begun.

The debutant had to take up boxing and practice it for three months so that she could look natural in the movie. The girl had coped with it perfectly. After the premiere of the movie "Girlfight," the public began to talk about Michelle.

In 2001 Michelle took part in the movie "3 AM", then she played a role in the picture "Fast & Furious". In a year she began to shoot in the horror movie "Resident Evil" and in the youth picture "Blue Crush". The actress embodied in the movies an image similar to her – a sexy girl ready to stand for herself.

In 2003 the actress played in the action movie "S.W.A.T.", in 2004 Rodriguez finished her shootings in the movie "Control" and at once began to work in the series "Lost".

Every year Michelle Rodriguez pleased her admirers with new works in the movies. The fighter of "BloodRayne" in which Michelle played one of the leading roles got 6 nominations in the Golden Raspberry Awards. At the same time, neither critics nor the audience questioned the acting talent of Rodriguez.

In 2009 Michelle was invited to take part in the prestigious and costly project "Avatar". The plot of the picture was based upon the struggle of the mankind against aliens. Rodriguez expected that after the premiere the whole world would start to talk about her. Really, the movie "Avatar" had met the expectations of the creative group – the box office of the movie reached the level of the Oscar-winning picture "Titanic".

While the audience was watching the interplanetary peripetias, the actress was shooting in the pictures "Fast & Furious 4" and "Machete".

Michelle Rodriguez

In 2013 the admirers of the American actress got really disturbed and were alarmed. Michelle Rodriguez admitted in the interview that she was going to take a break in her acting career to be engaged in the literary activity.

The movie actress told the press that she had come to show business to become a writer, but got to the movie industry. As Rodriguez admitted, she was going to lodge in the mountains to realize her goal, to find the source of inspiration for her novel. Nevertheless, several years have passed after this statement, and Michelle continues to please TV spectators with her acting on the shooting stage.

Personal life

Personal life of Michelle Rodriguez is extremely active and passionate – messages about new love affairs of the Hollywood celebrity regularly appear in the society news. The first boyfriend of Michelle was a Muslim and demanded respect for Islam from the actress and wanted her to observe the religious rules. In 2000 the couple broke up.

Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriquez

In 2001 Michel Rodriguez and Vin Diesel got acquainted on the movie set of shootings of "Fast & Furious". A short love story began between them. Soon the paparazzi had taken a photo of the actress in a company of Olivier Martinez who at that time was in relations with the Australian singer Kylie Minogue. In the pictures, Michelle was passionately kissing the singer's boyfriend.

In 2005 the actor's beau monde discussed Michelle Rodriguez's bisexuality, but the movie actress herself told in the interview to the representatives of Mass Media that she wasn't a lesbian. This happened because of the frank interview of the American model Kristanna Loken in which the girl said that she had been in an intimate relationship with Michelle. Then the actress hadn't commented on the words of her girlfriend in any way, but in a year she admitted that she had experimented with the partners of both sexes. Michelle’s followers on Instagram at once demanded from the actress to show the photo where she was naked in the company of another woman.

Michelle Rodriguez and Cara Delevingne

In 2008 the journalists again noticed Michelle in the company of Olivier Martinez. The couple had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant in Los Angeles in which the actor had stayed. The journalists claimed that they had seen how Rodriguez was leaving the hotel in the morning.

In winter of 2014 the actress was in relations with the British model Cara Delevingne, but soon they separated. After that, she had relations with Zac Efron.

Michelle Rodriguez sometimes appears with a wedding ring on her finger. It’s a mystery who has presented it to her. The actress says that this ring reminds her of sufferings which she doesn’t want to feel anymore because of love.

Michelle Rodriguez and Zac Efron

The appearance of the actress (Michelle's height is 165 cm and her weight is 55 kg) allows her to participate in the photoshoots for world magazines. In 2009 Michelle appeared on pages of the January edition of the Maxim magazine. The representatives of "Maxim" magazine invited the movie actress to take part in the shooting, as in 2009 the girl had played in the movie "Avatar" which became one of the most successful projects of James Cameron.

Michelle Rodriguez at present

In 2016 the movie "Assignment, The" came on the screen. Walter Hill who had produced the movie "Alien" became a co-producer and the co-author of the script of the transgender thriller, and Giorgio Moroder became the composer. Except for Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, Kathleen Gerard, and Terry Chen took part in this movie.

Michelle plays the role of the elite killer Frankie Kitchen who entered the conflict with the gangsters and after a number of scrapes gets into the hands of the maniac surgeon Rachael Kay (this role was performed by Sigourney Weaver) with the ominous nickname - "the Doctor". The specific physician changes the sex of Frankie and transfers him into a woman. The critics noted excellent impersonating, as it’s really hard to represent such a character on the shooting stage.

This role is compared by experts with the movie "Alita: Battle Angel" where Michelle had played the role of the cyborg Geldu. It is interesting that the shootings of this movie had begun long ago, but the members of the mass media managed to find out that the actress had got a role in this movie only sometime later. Till the last moment participation of Michelle Rodriguez in this picture was kept in secret. Today the users try to guess what was the reason for such secrecy.

The actress Michelle Rodriguez

The picture narrates the future where the female cyborg becomes a soldier hunter who tracks down and kills criminals. In the context of epic adventures, the movie is aimed to show the process of self-discovery and search of the love of the young woman.

In 2017 the movie "The Fate of the Furious" was released. Michelle is the old-timer of "The Fast and the Furious". The actress participates in the project since 2001. For 16 years this franchize which movies have transformed from the action movies about the entertainments of illegal street racers to the global pictures featuring a number of stars with special effects and stunts, action shows, has become extremely successful.

The new part of the movie hasn't disappointed the fans. In this picture, there is a great number of crazy and impressing episodes which are full of pursuits and firefights, fights and jokes. Some of these scenes are the most exciting and crazy in the history of the franchize. The actress notes that she considers the 8th part of " The Fast and the Furious " the most gloomy of all the parts which had been shown on the screen.

By the words of Rodriguez, the process of the shootings was very interesting, and they were laughing all the time on the movie set because Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham just couldn’t help joking and amused all the people who were present there.

In the movie, the characters embodied by Johnson and Statham also have interesting dynamics: Luke Hobbs (the role was played by Dwayne Johnson) gets to the strict-regime colony, and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) endures a certain transformation, which in a way has something in common with the subject line of Vin Diesel.

The actress is often called the woman who conquers the man's world, breaks the artificial space created by the representatives of the strong half of the mankind. Michelle considers such success a merit of all women of the planet, and Hollywood is a real proof to this.

"In this sense, Hollywood reflects the public processes happening in the world. For a long time, we have lived in the world which the men have made comfortable for themselves until one of us has decided that life is given only once and it’s necessary to try to change the situation radically. Initially, there weren't many of us, but today women are leaders in all spheres — from the policy to business. Hollywood cinematography just fixes that the world no longer belongs to the men only", – Michelle Rodriguez has said.


Coupons are a popular and convenient way for a company to promote a product or service. Coupons are typically distributed on paper and then scanned by a merchant so that the coupon is applied against a particular purchase. The merchant then typically collects all of the coupons for a particular promotion and sends them to the coupon issuer, or their agent, for reimbursement. This system protects against persons from simply reusing coupons because the merchant is only reimbursed if the merchant can return a paper copy of the coupon. Thus, the coupon issuer can ensure that only a limited number of coupons are used for a particular promotion. Despite all of this, there is significant coupon fraud, both by retailers repeatedly scanning a coupon and by consumers improperly copying and sharing coupons.


Willy Wilson

William Joel Wilson (born January 30, 1980) is a Filipino former professional basketball player who is currently an assistant coach for the Phoenix Pulse Fuel Masters of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). He played for four teams in the PBA. He spent his college years playing in De La Salle University before being drafted fifteenth overall by the Alaska Aces in the 2004 PBA draft.

On November 3, 2013, Wilson was traded from Barangay Ginebra to the Barako Bull Energy along with Rico Maierhofer for James Forrester.

PBA career statistics

Correct as of September 24, 2016

Season-by-season averages

|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Alaska
| 43 || 7.5 || .443 || .000 || .600 || 1.5 || .5 || .3 || .0 || 1.5
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Alaska
| 36 || 10.6 || .398 || .222 || .889 || 2.0 || .7 || .3 || .0 || 3.0
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | San Miguel
| 61 || 18.9 || .545 || 1.000 || .841 || 4.7 || 1.0 || .3 || .1 || 5.6
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Magnolia / Barangay Ginebra
| 21 || 11.5 || .488 || .000 || .765 || 2.2 || .7 || .3 || .1 || 2.6
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barangay Ginebra
| 39 || 23.0 || .507 || .000 || .679 || 4.9 || 1.0 || .4 || .2 || 4.9
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barangay Ginebra
| 44 || 20.1 || .497 || .000 || .787 || 4.7 || .8 || .3 || .2 || 5.9
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barangay Ginebra
| 52 || 19.2 || .570 || .000 || .784 || 4.4 || 1.2 || .3 || .1 || 2.6
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barangay Ginebra
| 39 || 20.0 || .401 || .000 || .701 || 4.7 || 1.0 || .4 || .2 || 5.0
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barangay Ginebra
| 35 || 15.7 || .456 || .000 || .744 || 3.3 || .6 || .2 || .0 || 3.8
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barako Bull
| 33 || 18.9 || .400 || .100 || .651 || 4.3 || 1.1 || .2 || .0 || 3.6
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barako Bull
| 28 || 21.9 || .508 || .263 || .679 || 3.9 || 1.1 || .5 || .1 || 6.0
|-
| align=left |
| align=left | Barako Bull / Phoenix
| 34 || 33.0 || .507 || .333 || .773 || 8.9 || 2.5 || .5 || .3 || 11.6
|-class=sortbottom
| align=center colspan=2 | Career
| 465 || 18.4 || .489 || .227 || .756 || 4.2 || 1.0 || .3 || .1 || 5.0

References

Category:1980 births
Category:Living people
Category:Alaska Aces (PBA) players
Category:Barako Bull Energy players
Category:Barangay Ginebra San Miguel players
Category:De La Salle University alumni
Category:Filipino men's basketball players
Category:Phoenix Pulse Fuel Masters players
Category:Power forwards (basketball)
Category:San Miguel Beermen players
Category:Small forwards
Category:University Athletic Association of the Philippines basketball players
Category:Basketball players from California
Category:Sportspeople from Los Angeles
Category:Filipino men's basketball coaches
Category:Philippine Basketball Association coaches


Underdetermined blind source separation of temporomandibular joint sounds.
The underdetermined blind source separation problem using a filtering approach is addressed. An extension of the FastICA algorithm is devised which exploits the disparity in the kurtoses of the underlying sources to estimate the mixing matrix and thereafter achieves source recovery by employing the ll-norm algorithm. Besides, we demonstrate how promising FastICA can be to extract the sources. Furthermore, we illustrate how this scenario is particularly appropriate for the separation of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) sounds.