Russia’s military presence in Syria has effectively turned the tide of war back in 2015, the year Islamic State was about to “roll over Damascus,” the head of Israeli Air Force intelligence said in an interview.

The Aerial campaign Russia started against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in 2015 had “categorically” decided the fate of war in President Bashar Assad’s favor, Brig. Gen. Uri Oron, head of the Israeli Air Force Intelligence, told Haaretz newspaper. He acknowledged the Russians came at the time when Syrian defenses were on the brink of collapse.

Read more

“In the summer of 2015 everyone was sure that ISIS was about to roll over Damascus too,” Oron opined. The Russian deployment in Syria “was one of the strongest things to shape reality in the area in recent years,” along with the milestone nuclear deal the six major world powers signed with Iran the same year.

Dozens of Russian warplanes, including the state of the art fighter jets, tactical bombers and attack helicopters, are now stationed at Khmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province. The fortified compound is protected by S-400 air defense systems.

In Oron’s view, the situation is changing rapidly on the ground, and Damascus secured huge strategic wins over the past months after it regained sovereignty over militants-held parts of Syria. “In south Syria, the story is over,” Oron said.

Asked if Russian presence constrain Israeli Air Force’s (IAF) operations, Oron said: “It challenges us. We have to be very precise.” Nevertheless, he stated that does not mean “the IAF only flies in Israeli skies.”

Russia and Israel established a military-to-military hotline to prevent dangerous encounters in Syrian airspace, yet an incident involving both sides still occured just recently.

A Russian Ilyushin Il-20 surveillance plane, with 15 crew on board, was shot down by a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile earlier in September. Syrian air defenses were trying to repel an Israeli attack in Latakia province, and the Russian military said Israel’s jets were using the Russian plane for “cover” during the strikes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed “regret” over the loss of lives and promised to assist in investigating into the incident. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the downing of the plane as a tragedy, but noted the incident “looks like a chain of tragic circumstances, because the Israeli plane didn’t shoot down our jet.”

Israel rarely acknowledges carrying out raids in Syria, but recently the Israeli military revealed that it carried out at least 202 attacks on Iranian targets in the war-torn country. A total of 792 bombs and missiles were launched at Syria since 2017, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) informed, saying the strikes were to hamper Iran’s influence in the region. Damascus has repeatedly branded such sorties "a violation" of its sovereignty.

The intelligence chief casually claimed Tehran is striving to dominate the country, despite Iran says its military advisers are present on Syrian soil upon an official request from the Syrian government.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!


java_library(
    sources = ["*.java"],
    compiler_option_sets = ["fatal_warnings"],
    provides = artifact(
        org = "com.twitter",
        name = "util-core-java-service",
        repo = artifactory,
    ),
)


Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.

Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. As a young artist, Gill had assisted Johnston in its early development stages. In 1926, Douglas Cleverdon, a young printer-publisher, opened a bookshop in Bristol, and Gill painted a fascia for the shop for him in sans-serif capitals. In addition, Gill sketched an alphabet for Cleverdon as a guide for him to use for future notices and announcements. By this time Gill had become a prominent stonemason, artist and creator of lettering in his own right and had begun to work on creating typeface designs.

Gill was commissioned to develop his alphabet into a full metal type family by his friend Stanley Morison, an influential Monotype executive and historian of printing. Morison hoped that it could be Monotype's competitor to a wave of German sans-serif families in a new "geometric" style, which included Erbar, Futura and Kabel, all being launched to considerable attention in Germany during the late 1920s. Gill Sans was released in 1928 by Monotype, initially as a set of titling capitals that was quickly followed by a lower-case. Gill's aim was to blend the influences of Johnston, classic serif typefaces and Roman inscriptions to create a design that looked both cleanly modern and classical at the same time.

Marketed by Monotype as a design of "classic simplicity and real beauty", it was intended as a display typeface that could be used for posters and advertisements, as well as for the text of documents that need to be clearly legible at small sizes or from a distance, such as book blurbs, timetables and price lists. Designed before setting documents entirely in sans-serif text was common, its standard weight is noticeably bolder than most modern body text fonts.

An immediate success, the year after its release the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) chose it for all its posters, timetables and publicity material. British Railways chose Gill Sans as the basis for its standard lettering when the railway companies were nationalised in 1948. Gill Sans also soon became used on the modernist, deliberately simple covers of Penguin Books, and was sold up to very large sizes which were often used in British posters and notices of the period. Gill Sans was one of the dominant typefaces in British printing in the years following its release, and remains extremely popular: it has been described as "the British Helvetica" because of its lasting popularity in British design. Gill Sans has influenced many other typefaces, and helped to define a genre of sans-serif, known as the humanist style.

Monotype rapidly expanded the original regular or medium weight into a large family of styles, which it continues to sell. A basic set is included with some Microsoft software and Mac OS.

Characteristics

The proportions of Gill Sans stem from monumental Roman capitals in the upper case, and traditional "old-style" serif letters in the lower. This gives Gill Sans a very different style of design to geometric sans-serifs like Futura, based on simple squares and circles, or realist or grotesque designs like Akzidenz-Grotesk, Helvetica and Univers influenced by nineteenth-century lettering styles. For example, compared to realist sans-serifs the "C" and "a" have a much less "folded up" structure, with wider apertures. The "a" and "g" in the roman or regular style are "double-storey" designs, rather than the "single-storey" forms used in handwriting and blackletter often found in grotesque and especially geometric sans-serifs.

The upper-case of Gill Sans is partly modelled on Roman capitals like those found on the Column of Trajan, with considerable variation in width. Edward Johnston had written that, "The Roman capitals have held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions." While Gill Sans is not based on purely geometric principles to the extent of the geometric sans-serifs that had preceded it, some aspects of Gill Sans do have a geometric feel. The J descends below the baseline. The "O" is an almost perfect circle and the capital "M" is based on the proportions of a square with the middle strokes meeting at the centre; this was not inspired by Roman carving but is very similar to Johnston. The 'E' and 'F' are also relatively narrow.

The influence of traditional serif letters is also clear in the "two-storey" lower-case "a" and "g", unlike that of Futura, and the "t" with its curve to bottom right and slanting cut at top left, unlike Futura's which is simply formed from two straight lines. The lower-case "a" also narrows strikingly towards the top of its loop, a common feature of serif designs but rarer in sans-serifs.

Following the traditional serif model the italic has different letterforms from the roman, where many sans-serifs simply slant the letters in what is called an oblique style. This is clearest in the "a", which becomes a "single storey" design similar to handwriting, and the lower-case "p", which has a calligraphic tail on the left reminiscent of italics such as those cut by William Caslon in the eighteenth century. The italic "e" is more restrained, with a straight line on the underside of the bowl where serif fonts normally add a curve. Like most serif fonts, several weights and releases of Gill Sans use ligatures to allow its expansive letter "f" to join up with or avoid colliding with following letters.

The basic letter shapes of Gill Sans do not look consistent across styles (or even in the metal type era all the sizes of the same style), especially in Extra Bold and Extra Condensed widths, while the Ultra Bold style is effectively a different design altogether and was originally marketed as such. Digital-period Monotype designer Dan Rhatigan, author of an article on Gill Sans's development after Gill's death, has commented: "Gill Sans grew organically ... [it] takes a very 'asystematic' approach to type. Very characteristic of when it was designed and of when it was used." (At this time the idea that sans-serif typefaces should form a consistent family, with glyph shapes as consistent as possible between all weights and sizes, had not fully developed: it was quite normal for families to vary as seemed appropriate for their weight until developments such as the groundbreaking release of Univers in 1957.)

In the light weights, the slanting cut at top left of the regular "t" is replaced with two separate strokes. From the bold weight upwards Gill Sans has an extremely eccentric design of "i" and "j" with the dots (tittles) smaller than their parent letter's stroke.

Development

Morison commissioned Gill to develop Gill Sans after they had begun to work together (often by post since Gill lived in Wales) on Gill's serif design Perpetua from 1925 onwards; they had known each other since about 1913. Morison visited Cleverdon's bookshop while in Bristol in 1927 where he saw and was impressed by Gill's fascia and alphabet. Gill wrote that "it was as a consequence of seeing these letters" that Morison commissioned him to develop a sans-serif family.

In the period during and after his closest collaboration with Johnston, Gill had intermittently worked on sans-serif letter designs, including an almost sans-serif capital design in an alphabet for sign-painters in the 1910s, some "absolutely legible-to-the-last-degree ... simple block letters" for Army and Navy Stores in 1925 and some capital letter signs around his home in Capel-y-ffin, Wales.  Gill had greatly admired Johnston's work on their Underground project, which he later wrote had "redeemed the whole business of sans-serif from its nineteenth-century corruption" of extreme boldness. Johnston apparently had not tried to turn the alphabet (as it was then called) that he had designed into a commercial typeface project.  He had tried to get involved in type design before starting work on Johnston Sans, but without success since the industry at the time mostly created designs in-house. Morison similarly respected the design of the Underground system, one of the first and most lasting uses of a standard lettering style as corporate branding (Gill had designed a set of serif letters for WH Smith), writing that it "conferred upon [the lettering] a sanction, civic and commercial, as had not been accorded to an alphabet since the time of Charlemagne".

Morison and Gill had met with some resistance within Monotype while developing Perpetua and while Morison was an enthusiastic backer of the project, Monotype's engineering manager and type designer Frank Hinman Pierpont was deeply unconvinced, commenting that he could "see nothing in this design to recommend it and much that is objectionable". (Pierpont was the creator of Monotype's previous mainstay sans-serif, a loose family now called Monotype Grotesque. It is a much less sculptured design inspired by German sans-serifs.) Morison also intervened to insist that the letters "J" and "Q" be allowed to elegantly descend below the baseline, something not normal for titling typefaces which were often made to fill up the entire area of the metal type. In the early days of its existence it was not always consistently simply called "Gill Sans", with other names such as "Gill Sans-serif", "Monotype Sans-Serif" (the latter two both used by Gill in some of his publications) or its order numbers (such as Series No. 231) sometimes used.

A large amount of material about the development of Gill Sans survives in Monotype's archives and in Gill's papers. While the capitals (which were prepared first) resemble Johnston quite closely, the archives document Gill (and the drawing office team at Monotype's works in Salfords Surrey, who developed a final precise design and spacing) grappling with the challenge of creating a viable humanist sans-serif lower-case as well as an italic, which Johnston's design did not have. Gill's first draft proposed many slanting cuts on the ends of ascenders and descenders, looking less like Johnston than the released version did, and quite long descenders. Early art for the italic also looked very different, with less of a slope, again very long descenders and swash capitals. The final version did not use the calligraphic italic "g" Gill preferred in his serif designs Perpetua and Joanna (and considered in the draft italic art), instead using a standard "double-storey" "g".

In the regular or roman style of Gill Sans, some letters were simplified from Johnston, with diamond dots becoming round (rectangles in the later light weight) and the lower-case "L" becoming a simple line, but the "a" became more complex with a curving tail in most versions and sizes. In addition, the design was simply refined in general, for example by making the horizontals slightly narrower than verticals so that they do not appear unbalanced, a standard technique in font design which Johnston had not used. The "R" with its widely splayed leg is Gill's preferred design, unlike that of Johnston; historian James Mosley has suggested that this may be inspired by an Italian Renaissance carving in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Particular areas of thought during the design process were the "a" (several versions and sizes in the hot metal era had a straight tail like Johnston's or a mildly curving tail) and the "b", "d", "p" and "q", where some versions (and sizes, since the same weight would not be identical at every size) had stroke ends visible and others did not. Rhatigan has commented that Monotype's archives contain "enough [material] for a book just about the 'b', 'd', 'p', and 'q' of Gill Sans".

The titling capitals of Gill Sans were first unveiled at a printing conference in 1928; it was also shown in a specimen issued in the Fleuron magazine edited by Morison. While initial response was partly appreciative, it was still considered dubious by some ultra-conservative printers who saw all sans-serif type as modern and unsound; one called it "typographical Bolshevism". Sans-serifs were still regarded as vulgar and commercial by purists in this period: Johnston's pupil Graily Hewitt privately commented of them that: In Johnston I have lost confidence. Despite all he did for us ... he has undone too much by forsaking his standard of the Roman alphabet, giving the world, without safeguard or explanation, his block letters which disfigure our modern life. His prestige has obscured their vulgarity and commercialism. Nonetheless, Gill Sans rapidly became popular after its release.

Gill Sans' technical production followed Monotype's standard method of the period. The characters were drawn on paper in large plan diagrams by the experienced drawing office team, led and trained by Pierpont and Fritz Steltzer, both of whom Monotype had recruited from the German printing industry. The drawing staff who executed the design was disproportionately female and in many cases recruited from the local area and the nearby Reigate art school; they worked out many aspects of the final drawings including adaptations of the letters to different sizes and the spacing. The diagrams were then used as a plan for machining metal punches by pantograph to stamp matrices, which would be loaded into a casting machine to cast type. It was Monotype's standard practice at the time to first engrave a limited number of characters and print proofs (some of which survive) from them to test overall balance of colour and spacing on the page, before completing the remaining characters. Walter Tracy, Rhatigan and Gill's biographer Malcolm Yorke have all written that the drawing office's work in making Gill Sans successful has not been fully appreciated; Yorke described Gill as "tactless" in his claims that the design was "as much as possible mathematically measurable ... as little reliance as possible should be placed on the sensibility of the draughtsmen and others concerned in its machine facture".

Reception

Gill Sans rapidly became very popular. Its success was aided by Monotype's sophisticated marketing, led by Gill's supporter (and sometime lover) Beatrice Warde, and due to its practicality and availability for machine composition in a very wide range of sizes and weights.

Despite the popularity of Gill Sans, some reviews have been critical. Robert Harling, who knew Gill, wrote in his 1976 anthology examining Gill's lettering that the density of the basic weight made it unsuitable for extended passages of text, printing a passage in it as a demonstration. The regular weight has been used to print body text for some trade printing uses such as guides to countryside walks published by the LNER. William Addison Dwiggins described it and Futura as "fine in the capitals and bum in the lower-case" while proposing to create a more individualistic competitor, Metro, for Linotype around 1929. Modern writers, including Stephen Coles and Ben Archer, have criticised it for failing to improve on Johnston and for unevenness of colour, especially in the bolder weights (discussed below). More generally, modern font designer Jonathan Hoefler has criticised Johnston and Gill's designs for rigidity, calling their work "products more of the machine than the hand, chilly and austere designs shaped by unbending rules, whose occasional moments of whimsy were so out of place as to feel volatile and disquieting.”

Gill broached the topic of the similarity with Johnston in a variety of ways in his work and writings, writing to Johnston in 1933 to apologise for the typeface bearing his name and describing Johnston's work as being important and seminal. However, in his Essay on Typography, he proposed that his version was "perhaps an improvement" and more "fool-proof" than Johnston's. Johnston and Gill had drifted apart by the beginning of the 1920s, something Gill's groundbreaking biographer Fiona MacCarthy describes as partly due to the anti-Catholicism of Johnston's wife Greta. Frank Pick, the Underground Electric Railways Company managing director who commissioned Johnston's typeface, privately thought Gill Sans "a rather close copy" of Johnston's work.

Expansion and new styles

Following the initial success of Gill Sans, Monotype rapidly produced a wide variety of other variants. In addition, Monotype sold moulds (matrices) for Gill Sans in very large sizes for their "Supercaster" type-casting equipment. Popular with advertisers, this allowed end-users to cast their own type at a very competitive price. This made it a popular choice for posters. Gill's biographer Malcolm Yorke has described it as "the essence of clarity for public notices".

Versions of Gill Sans were created in a wide range of styles such as condensed and shadowed weights. Several shadowed designs were released, including a capitals-only regular shadowed design and a light-shadowed version with deep relief shadows. In the metal type era, a 'cameo ruled' design that placed white letters in boxes or against a stippled black background was available. The shadowed weights were intended to be used together with the regular, printing in different colours, to achieve a simple multicolour effect. Some of the decorative versions may predominantly have been designed by the Monotype office, with Gill examining, critiquing and approving the designs sent to him by post. The long series of extensions, redrawings and conversions into new formats of one of Monotype's most important assets (extending long beyond Gill's death) has left Gill Sans with a great range of alternative designs and releases. A book weight was created in 1993 in between the light and regular weight, suitable for body text, along with a heavy weight.

Gill Kayo

In 1936, Gill and Monotype released an extremely bold sans-serif named Gill Kayo (from KO, or knockout, implying its aggressive build). This has often been branded as Gill Sans Ultra Bold, though in practice many letters vary considerably from Gill Sans. It is available in regular and condensed widths. Gill, who thought of the design as something of a joke, proposed naming it "Double Elefans". Harling reviewed it as "dismal" and sarcastically commented that "typographical historians of 2000AD (which isn't, after all, so very far away) will find this odd outburst in Mr Gill's career, and will spend much time in attempting to track down this sad psychological state of his during 1936." Forty years later he described it as "the most horrendous and blackguardly of these display exploitations". The design was begun in 1932; some of the first drawings may have been prepared by Gill's son-in-law Denis Tegetmeier. It made a return to popularity in the graphic design of the 1970s and 80s, when Letraset added a condensed weight.

The boldest weights of Gill Sans, including Kayo, have been particularly criticised for design issues such as the eccentric design of the dots on the "i" and "j", and for their extreme boldness. (Gill Sans' standard weight is, as already noted, already quite bold by modern standards.) Gill argued in his Essay on Typography that the nineteenth-century tendency to make sans-serif typefaces attention-grabbingly bold was self-defeating, since the result was compromised legibility. In the closing paragraph he ruefully noted his contribution to the genre: There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools. I myself am responsible for designing five different sorts of sans-serif letters – each one thicker and fatter than the last because each advertisement has to try and shout down its neighbours.

Alternate characters

Monotype developed a set of alternate characters for Gill Sans to cater for differing tastes and national printing styles of different countries. These include Futura-inspired designs of "N", "M", "R", "a", "g", "t" and others, a four-terminal "W" in the French renaissance style, a tighter "R", a "Q" in the nineteenth-century style with a tail that looped upwards (similar to that on Century among others, and preferred by the LNER), oblique designs as opposed to the standard true italic, a more curving, true-italic "e" and several alternative numerals. In particular, in the standard designs for Gill Sans the numeral "1", upper-case "i" and lower-case "L" are all a simple vertical line, so an alternate "1" with a serif was sold for number-heavy situations where this could otherwise cause confusion, such as on price-lists. (Not all timetables used it: for example, the L.N.E.R. preferred the simple version.) Some early versions of Gill Sans also had features later abandoned, such as an unusual "7" matching the curve of the "9", a "5" pushing forwards, and a lower-case letter-height "0".

Gill was involved in the design of these alternates, and Monotype's archive preserves notes that he rethought the geometric alternates. With the increasing popularity of Futura Gill Sans was not alone in being adapted: both Erbar and Dwiggins' Metro would undergo what historian Paul Shaw has called a "Futura-ectomy" to conform to taste. After Gill's death, Monotype created versions for the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. Monotype also added additional features not found in the metal type, notably text figures and small capitals.

Series and styles

According to Rhatigan and other sources, by the end of the metal type period Gill Sans had been released in the following styles (not all sold at the same time):
Gill Sans Titling (1928, series 231)
Gill Sans (1930, series 262, sometimes called Gill Sans Medium)
Gill Sans Bold (1930, series 275)
Gill Sans Shadow Line (1931, series 290)
Gill Sans Shadow Titling (1931, series 304)
Gill Sans Bold Titling (1931, series 317)
Gill Sans Extra Bold (1931, series 321)
Gill Sans Light (1931, series 362)
Gill Sans Shadow (1932, series 338)
Gill Sans Bold Condensed (1932, series 343)
Gill Sans 5pt (1932, series 349, sometimes called Gill Sans No. 2)
Gill Sans Bold 5pt (1932, series 350, sometimes called Bold No. 2)
Gill Sans Poster (1932, series 353)
Gill Sans Bold Condensed Titling (1933, series 373)
Gill Sans Cameo (1934, series 233)
Gill Sans Cameo Ruled (1935, series 299)
Gill Sans Shadow No. 1 (1936, series 406)
Gill Sans Shadow No. 2 (1936, series 408)
Gill Sans Ultra Bold (1936, series 442)
Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed (1937, series 468)
Gill Sans Condensed (1937, series 485, sometimes called Medium Condensed)
Gill Sans Bold No. 3 (1937, series 575)
Gill Sans Bold Condensed Titling (1939, series 525)
Gill Sans Extra Bold Titling (1939, series 526)
Gill Sans Light 5pt (1958, series 662, sometimes called Light No. 2)
Titling series were capitals-only.

Phototypesetting
Monotype offered Gill Sans on film in the phototypesetting period. The fonts released in 1961 included Light 362, Series 262, Bold 275, Extra Bold 321, Condensed 343, all of which were released in film matrix sets "A" (6–7 points) and "B" (8–22, 24 points).

Infant and rounded versions
Monotype created an infant version of Gill Sans using single-storey "a" and "g", and other more distinguishable characters such as a rounded "y", seriffed "1" and lower-case "L" with a turn at the bottom. Infant designs of fonts are often used in education and toys as the letters are thought to be more recognisable to children being based on handwriting, and are often produced to supplement popular families such as Gill Sans, Akzidenz-Grotesk and Bembo. Monotype also created a version with rounded stroke ends for John Lewis for use on toys.

Digital releases

The digital releases of Gill Sans fall into several main phases: releases before 2005 (which includes most bundled "system" versions of Gill Sans), the 2005 Pro edition, and the 2015 Nova release which adds many alternate characters and is in part included with Windows 10. In general characteristics for common weights the designs are similar, but there are some changes: for example, in the book weight the 2005 release used circular ij dots but the 2015 release uses square designs, and the 2015 release simplifies some ligatures. Digital Gill Sans also gained character sets not present in the metal type, including text figures and small capitals.

Like all metal type revivals, reviving Gill Sans in digital form raises several decisions of interpretation, such as the issue of how to compensate for the ink spread that would have been seen in print at small sizes more than larger. As a result, printed Gill Sans and its digital facsimile may not always match. The digital release of Gill Sans, like many Monotype digitisations, has been criticised, in particular for excessively tight letter-spacing and lack of optical sizes: with only one design released that has to be used at any text size, it cannot replicate the subtlety of design and spacing of the metal type, for which every size was drawn differently. In the hot metal era different font sizes varied as is normal for metal type, with wider spacing and other detail changes at smaller text sizes; other major sans-serif families such as Futura and Akzidenz-Grotesk are similar. In the phototype period Monotype continued to offer two or three sizes of master, but all of this subtlety was lost on transfer to digital. To replicate this, it is necessary to make manual adjustment to spacing to compensate for size changes, such as expanding the spacing and increasing the weight used at smaller sizes.

Former ATypI president John Berry commented of Gill Sans' modernised spacing that "both the regular weight and especially the light weight look much better when they're tracked loose". In contrast, Walter Tracy wrote in 1986 that he preferred the later spacing: "the metal version ... was spaced, I suspect, as if it were a serif face".

Gill Sans Nova (2015)
As of 2019, Monotype's current digitisation of Gill Sans is Gill Sans Nova, by George Ryan. Gill Sans Nova adds many additional variants, including some of the previously undigitised inline versions, stylistic alternates and an ultra-light weight which had been drawn for Grazia. The fonts differ from Gill Sans MT (MT stands for Monotype) in their adoption of the hooked 1 as default, while the regular weight is renamed 'Medium'. Monotype celebrated the release with a London exhibition on Gill's work, as they had in 1958 to mark the general release of Gill's serif design Joanna. One addition was italic swash caps, which had been considered by Gill but never released.

The family includes 43 fonts, including 33 text fonts in 9 weights and 3 widths, 6 inline fonts in 5 weights and 2 widths (1 in condensed), 2 shadowed fonts in 2 weights and 1 width, 1 shadowed outline font, 1 deco font. Characters set support includes W1G. The basic set of Regular, Light and Bold weights is bundled with Windows 10 in the user-downloadable "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts" package.

Usage

First unveiled in a single uppercase weight in 1928, Gill Sans achieved national prominence almost immediately, when it was chosen the following year to become the standard typeface by the LNER railway company, soon appearing on every facet of the company's identity, from metal locomotive nameplates and hand-painted station signage to printed restaurant car menus, timetables and advertising posters.
The LNER promoted their rebranding by offering Gill (who was fascinated with railway engines) a footplate ride on the Flying Scotsman express service; he also painted for it a signboard in the style of Gill Sans, which survives in the collection of the St Bride Library.

In 1949 the Railway Executive decided on standard types of signs to be used at all stations. Lettering was to use the Gill Sans typeface on a background of the regional colour. Gill Sans was also used in much of its printed output, very often in capitals-only settings for signage. Specially drawn variations were developed by the Railway Executive (part of the British Transport Commission) for signs in its manual for the use of signpainters painting large signs by hand. Other users included Penguin Books' iconic paperback jacket designs from 1935 and British official mapping agency Ordnance Survey. It was also used by London Transport for documents which could not be practically set in Johnston. Paul Shaw, a historian of printing, has described it as a key element of the 'Modernist classical' style from the 1930s to the 1950s, that promoted clean, spare design, often with all-capitals and centred setting of headings.

Gill Sans remains popular, although a trend away from it towards grotesque and neo-grotesque typefaces took place around the 1950s and 1960s under the influence of continental and American design. Typefaces that became popular around this time included original early "grotesque" sans-serifs, as well as new and more elegant designs in the same style such as Helvetica and Univers. Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for the old Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers, the fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties." He added in 2007 "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the ... prettiness of Gill Sans". As an example of this trend, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert's corporate rebranding of BR as British Rail in 1965 introduced Helvetica and Univers for printed matter and the custom but very similar Rail Alphabet for signage, and abandoned the classical, all caps signage style with which Gill Sans is often associated. Kinneir and Calvert's road signage redesign used a similar approach. Linotype and its designer Hermann Zapf, who had begun development on a planned Gill Sans competitor in 1955, first considered redrawing some letters to make it more like these faces before abandoning the design project (now named "Magnus") around 1962-3.

An additional development which reduced Gill Sans' dominance was the arrival of phototypesetting, which allowed typefaces to be printed from photographs on film and (especially in display use – hot metal continued for some body text setting for longer) massively increased the range of typefaces that could cheaply be used. Dry transfers like Letraset had a similar effect for smaller projects; their sans-serif Compacta and Stephenson Blake's Impact exemplified the design trends of the period by choosing dense, industrial designs. Of the period from the 1930s to 1950s, when he was growing up, James Mosley would later write: The Monotype classics dominated the typographical landscape ... in Britain, at any rate, they were so ubiquitous that, while their excellent quality was undeniable, it was possible to be bored by them and to begin to rebel against the bland good taste that they represented. In fact we were already aware by 1960 that they might not be around to bore us for too long. The death of metal type ... seemed at last to be happening.

While extremely popular in Britain, and to a lesser extent in European printing, Gill Sans did not achieve popularity with American printers in the hot metal era, with most preferring gothic designs like Franklin Gothic and geometric designs like Futura and Monotype's own Twentieth Century. Gill Sans therefore particularly achieved worldwide popularity after the close of the metal type era and in the phototypesetting and digital era, when it became a system font on Macintosh computers and Microsoft Office. One use of Gill's work in the United States in this period, however, was a custom wordmark and logo made by Gill for Poetry magazine in 1930 based on Gill Sans. Its editor Harriet Monroe had seen Gill's work in London.

The BBC adopted the typeface as its corporate typeface in 1997 for many but not all purposes, including on its logo. Explaining the change, designer Martin Lambie-Nairn said that "by choosing a typeface that has stood the test of time, we avoid the trap of going down a modish route that might look outdated in several years' time". The BBC had an earlier association with Gill, who created some sculptures on Broadcasting House. Other more recent British organisations using Gill Sans have included Railtrack (and initially its successor Network Rail), John Lewis and the Church of England, which adopted Gill Sans as the typeface for the definitive Common Worship family of service books published from 2000. Notable non-British modern businesses using Gill Sans include United Colours of Benetton (which commissioned a custom variant), Tommy Hilfiger and Saab Automobile. British rock band Bloc Party has used Gill Sans in its logo. AT&T used it until 2006, before changing it to Clearview after feeling that it was too in keeping with market research that people found the company "monolithic". Edward Tufte, the information design theorist, uses Gill Sans on his website and in some of his published works. The Wikimedia Foundation uses Gill Sans on its wordmark.

Similar fonts

Early competitors

The Sheffield type foundry Stephenson Blake rapidly released a commercial competitor named Granby, influenced by Gill Sans, Johnston and Futura. Stephenson Blake had cut the original metal type for Johnston, making them familiar with its design and perhaps explaining its Johnston-influenced diamond-dot tittles.

Granby was a large family with condensed and inline styles. It also included a "Granby Elephant" weight influenced by Gill Kayo.

Another similar but more eccentric design was created by Johnston's student Harold Curwen for the use of his family company, the Curwen Press of Plaistow. Named "Curwen Sans" or "Curwen Modern", it has many similarities to Johnston also, and was occasionally used by London Transport in work printed by the Curwen Press. Curwen described it as based on his time studying with Johnston in the 1900s, although it was not cut into metal until 1928, around the same time as Gill Sans was released, with a lower-case similar to that of Kabel. A digitisation by K-Type was released in 2018.

Several intended Gill Sans competitors were developed during the period of its popularity but ultimately did not see mass release. Jan Tschichold, who would later make extensive use of Gill Sans while designing books for Penguin, created a similar design for an early phototypesetting machine, which was at the time little-used but also since digitised. During the 1930s Dutch type designer Jan van Krimpen, also a friend of Morison's, worked on a superfamily named Romulus, with serif and humanist sans-serif companion: the sans-serif, with a low x-height, never progressed beyond test proofs. As described above, Linotype began work in 1955 on a Gill Sans competitor, intended to be named 'Magnus'. Designed by the German type designer Hermann Zapf with input from British Linotype manager Walter Tracy, the design was ultimately abandoned by 1963 for reasons of lack of manufacturing capacity and changing tastes, although it too reached test proofs.

Besides similar fonts, many signs and objects made in Britain during the period of Gill Sans' dominance, such as the Keep Calm and Carry On poster, received hand-painted or custom lettering similar to Gill Sans. Fighter Command during the war used a standard set of letters similar to it. Matthew Carter, later a prominent font designer, recalled in 2005 that when his mother cut linoleum block letters for him to play with during the Blitz they were based on it. Another little-known follower was the NEN 3225 standard lettering, a project by the Dutch Standards Institute to create a set of standardised lettering for public use in the Netherlands, comprising a sans-serif similar to Gill Sans and a companion serif font drawn by Jan van Krimpen. The project was begun in 1944 but not published until 1963, and ultimately did not become popular.

Later and digital-only designs
The category of humanist sans-serif typefaces, which Gill Sans helped to define, saw great attention during the 1980s and 1990s, especially as a reaction against the overwhelming popularity of Helvetica and Univers in the 1960s and 1970s.

Modern sans-serif designs inspired by Gill often adapt the concept by creating a design better proportioned and spaced for body text, a wider and more homogeneous range of weights, something easier since the arrival of the computer due to the use of multiple master or interpolated font design, or more irregular and hand-drawn in style. Jeremy Tankard's Bliss and Volker Küster's Today Sans are modern variations; Tankard commented on the genre's eclipse that his aim was to create "the first commercial typeface with an English feel since Gill Sans". Rowton Sans is inspired by Gill but has a nearly upright italic, similar to that used by Gill in his serif font Joanna. More distantly, Arthur Vanson's Chesham Sans is inspired by the British tradition of sans-serif signpainting, with many similarities to Gill's work. Bitstream's Humanist 521 was an unofficial digitisation, to which its Russian licensee ParaType added a Cyrillic version in 1997. The companies SoftMaker and Fontsite also released Gill Sans digitisations under different names including 'Chantilly', 'Gibson' and others.

More loosely, Syntax by Hans Eduard Meier is similar in some ways. Released in 1968 and praised by Tschichold, it was intended to be a more dynamic, handwriting-influenced sans-serif form. Its italic is, however, more of an oblique than Gill's. Hypatia Sans, designed by Thomas Phinney and released by Adobe, was intended to be a more characterful humanist sans design. Many other fonts are influenced by Gill Sans to some extent.

Font superfamilies
A logical extension of the humanist sans-serif concept is the font superfamily: a serif font and a matching humanist sans-serif with similar letterforms. Martin Majoor's FF Scala Sans is a popular example of this influenced by Gill's work, as are Charlotte Sans and Serif by Michael Gills for Letraset, Mr and Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko, which are based on Baskerville, and Dover Sans and serif by Robin Mientjes, based on Caslon. Monotype itself released Joanna Sans in 2015, as a screen-optimised sans-serif font intended to complement (but not exactly match) Gill's serif design Joanna.

Legal aspects

Typeface designs are in many countries not copyrightable, while in others such as the United Kingdom the design is out of copyright with 70 years passed since Gill's death in 1940, by which time the metal type family was essentially completed. This makes it legally permissible to create alternative digitised versions of Gill Sans (although not necessarily of later Monotype additions to the font such as the book weight and Euro sign). However, the name "Gill Sans" remains a Monotype trademark (no. 1340167 in the US) and therefore is not eligible to be used to name any derivative font.

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Carter, Sebastian. Twentieth Century Type Designers. W.W. Norton, 1995. .
 Johnson, Jaspert & Berry. Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Cassell & Co, 2001. .
 Ott, Nicolaus, Friedl Fredrich, and Stein Bernard. Typography and Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. 1998, .
 Ovenden, Mark. Johnston and Gill: Very British Types. Lund Humphries. 2016,

External links

 Gill Sans Nova
History:
 Gill Sans Arabic
Metal type era publicity materials:
 1928 showing, The Fleuron (shows the first rare alternate 'R' with shorter leg, 5 without a vertical and 7 with curving leg)
 Monotype Recorder, Winter 1933 special issue:
 'The Story of Gill Sans' (Monotype Recorder, winter 1933)
 Use by the LNER (Monotype Recorder, winter 1933)
 Gill on the Flying Scotsman
 First showing of Kayo (1936): 1, 2
 Gill Sans posters: 1, 2
 Gill Sans Colour Series (example of using a regular and shadowed design together to achieve a multicolour effect)
 Gill Sans Ultra Light specimen
 Series numbers index (also listed in Rhatigan)
Design process:
 Album of original drawings, by Gill and others
Transport use:
 British Railways Standard Signs Manual (1948; for signpainters)
 Example compositions – British Railways almost always used all-caps settings where possible
 British Railways tourism poster for Shrewsbury – many were issued in the 1940s and 50s to this general design
 London Transport bus timetable, 1962 – while London Transport has historically used Johnston for signs, the more widely available Gill Sans was also often used for printed material

Category:Humanist sans-serif typefaces
Category:Typefaces with infant variants
Category:Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1928
Category:Monotype typefaces
Category:Display typefaces
Category:Typefaces designed by Eric Gill


anchester is a creative hive of activity, famed for
its multicultural make-up, impressive music
history and worldwide sporting prowess. We
recently visited the buzzing city centre with ourEast Street Market collection, celebrating the
vibrancy and excitement that surrounds the city.

Explore our online features for an array of goodies,
from upmarket shops in Exchange Square, trendy
beatnik boutiques and cafes of the Northern Quarter to
Canal Street's delightful bars and restaurants. Take a
trip to the wonderful Northern metropolis and while
you're there, pop into our lovely Manchester shop!

Manchester's art & craft scene can be found
everywhere you go, from knitting groups to craft co-ops. Communitiesare coming
together to craft!

There's a plethora of independent cafes, bars
and delis with a difference in Manchester.
Head to the Northern Quarter, the best spot
for people watching

Still a hub for musical talent, there's a lot
more to the Manc music scene than its Brit
pop bands and prodigal sons.

The Mancunian accent is more subtle than
we thought, and no one appeared
to be 'mad fir it'.

Beyond the 'theatre of dreams', Manchester
has some surprising and unusual
sporting customs.


Before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was even dreamt up at Warner Bros., Zack Snyder was trying to figure who the villain would be in the Man of Steel sequel.

"I remember talking about 'What's the next villain?'" Snyder recalled to Entertainment Weekly. "'We can't do another alien invasion.' Brianiac was definitely down the road. Metallo, I think, was going to be the main bad guy of this movie."

Metallo (also known as John Corben) is a nearly-invulnerable cyborg that uses Kryptonite as a power source.

The direction of the Man of Steel sequel changed drastically when Snyder made a suggestion at a meeting with screenwriter screenwriter David S. Goyer and executive producer Christopher Nolan (See, he is involved). "I said, 'What about at the end of the movie we do a scene where there's a crate full of Kryptonite delivered to Wayne Manor,'" Snyder remembered. "Everyone was like...'Okaay.' Once you say it out loud it's a problem because you can't unsay it."

That's the moment Batman v Superman was born. Luckily for Snyder, Henry Cavill doesn't mind sharing the superhero spotlight. "As far as the individual character is concerned, this is not a Superman sequel," Cavill explained. "It's more of an introduction to Batman, an opening to Justice League, and an expansion of the world that was created in Man of Steel."

In Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice opens March 25, 2016.


Traumatic evisceration of intestinal loops through the anus.
A case of traumatic evisceration of intestinal loops through the anus in a young child is presented. This unusual injury took place in a swimming pool and was brought about when a negative pressure applied to the child's perineum by the suction pump created a pressure differential of sufficient force to cause the injury. Surgical management of the case is discussed.


Occurrence and leachability of polycyclic aromatic compounds in contaminated soils: Chemical and bioanalytical characterization.
An important concern regarding sites contaminated with polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) is the risk of groundwater contamination by release of the compounds from soils. The goal of this study was to investigate the occurrence and leachability of 77 PACs including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heterocyclic aromatic compounds (NSO-PACs) among total aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonists in soils from historical contaminated sites. A novel approach combining chemical and bioanalytical methods in combination with characterization of leachability by use of a column leaching test was used. Similar profiles of relative concentrations of PACs were observed in all soils, with parent PAHs accounting for 71 to 90% of total concentrations in soils. Contribution of oxy-PAHs, alkyl-PAHs and N-PACs ranged from 2 to 9%, 3 to 9% and 1 to 14%, respectively. Although the contributions of groups of PACs were small, some compounds were found in similar or greater concentrations than parent PAHs. Leachable fractions of 77 PACs from soils were small and ranged from 0.002 to 0.54%. Polar PACs were shown to be more leachable than parent PAHs. The contribution of analyzed PACS to overall AhR-mediated activities in soils and leachates suggests presence of other AhR agonists in soils, and a potential risk. Only a small fraction of AhR agonists was available in soils, indicating an overestimation of the risk if only total initial concentrations in soils would be considered in risk assessment. The results of the study strongly support that focus on 16US EPA PAHs may result in inadequate assessment of risk and hazard of PACs in complex environmental samples.


Cullen Finnerty, the Former Grand Valley State Quarterback Found Dead in May, Had C.T.E.

Cullen Finnerty was found dead in May of this year after he disappeared on a solo fishing trip while on a family vacation, less than 100 yards from a road near Baldwin, Michigan. He had been dropped off to go fishing for a few hours, and when the family returned to pick him up, the boat was there but he was not. The circumstances surrounding the death were confusing; he was just a short distance from civilization, even if he got lost, and there were no signs of foul play.

Of course, the circumstances reflected the possibility of someone plagued by the symptoms of head trauma, and the possibility that his involvement as the star quarterback and three time national champion at Grand Valley State was part of the puzzle.

None of it made sense. How he complained of headaches and restless sleep in the days before he disappeared. How he went fishing by himself. How he ended up dead not much more than 100 yards from a road, out in the open, about half a mile west of where he docked his pontoon boat.

His last two phone calls proved most haunting. One was to his wife, the other from his brother-in-law. Family members said that in both, Finnerty sounded panicked. He said he was uncomfortable. He said he ran into two men on the Baldwin River. He thought they might be following him.

The New York Times now has the follow up. According to the autopsy performed by the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Finnerty died of pneumonia complicated by oxycodone toxicity and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly referred to as C.T.E. It is the same diagnosis that has been made post-mortem on former NFL players like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau.

Finnerty was taking the oxycodone for a back injury. The pneumonia diagnosis was caused by Finnerty becoming incapacitated, vomiting, and inhaling his own vomit.

Finnerty was described as a tough guy playing quarterback in that earlier NY Times story at the time of his death. He sought out contact, and was a multi-purpose threat who ran for over 2,000 yards in college. He was the ideal; a college coach’s dream for a team leader. He did not want to slide, seeking out contact on runs. He missed one half of one game in his college career, playing through a broken collarbone, an elbow injury, and cleat marks to his head. He was also, according to the NY Times, officially diagnosed with only one concussion during college, in his redshirt freshman season.

That earlier NY Times piece noted that the family did not blame football for what happened (“Some even resent the speculation that it played a role.”) Will that opinion change with the findings? Finnerty appears to have shown paranoia, and disorientation, and expressed difficulty with sleep in the very short time period right before his death–all symptoms that those who have later been diagnosed with C.T.E. have expressed. Wrong place at the wrong time, with no one around to help at the specific moment he needed it?

Junior Seau’s death was a shock to the public. Junior Seau also played in the NFL for two decades, after being an All-American linebacker at USC. Very few people will play that long and take that many hits; the population size can be counted on your hands. Finnerty’s story, on the other hand, should hit a lot closer to home for the average person. He had a few brief stints in camp with NFL teams, but never appeared on a NFL roster in the season. He was a star at a smaller school, not facing crushing hits in the backfield from the likes of a Clowney. According to his father, he started playing football in the third grade, as part of a football family (his dad played for Bill McCartney).

It was in his nature to seek contact and fulfill the macho aspect of the sport. That nature may have been at the root of what happened in Michigan earlier this year. He died at age 30, alone in the woods, less than a football field away from a road, in what appears to have been a horrible death. He left behind a wife, two very young kids, and plenty of questions about where we go from here.


Toronto Blockchain Consortium for Global Energy Transformation

@ md-ataullah-khan Md Ataullah Khan SEO marketer with an experience of 7+ years.

Let’s unravel how blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt the $1.3 trillion global energy market!

The modern lifestyle we live today would not be possible without energy and, as a matter of fact, the demand for more energy is escalating at a rapid pace. The burden of this rising demand lies on the shoulders of centralized and monolithic power producers. The current value chain of the energy industry has not undergone many changes since about a century or more. On the other hand, the way the world works has entirely transformed since then.

reactions

Clearly, there is a need to think from the first principles.

Putting on the blockchain hat

The fundamental features of blockchain are described below. These features will guide us to think from the first principles.

reactions

Efficient P2P transaction platform: Blockchain technology enables peer-to-peer communication using decentralized storage to record all transactional data. The communication can be autonomously governed by smart contracts. Any conflicts occurring in the network would be solved by swarming i.e. by using a consensus algorithm.

Blockchain technology enables peer-to-peer communication using decentralized storage to record all transactional data. The communication can be autonomously governed by smart contracts. Any conflicts occurring in the network would be solved by swarming i.e. by using a consensus algorithm. Self-auditable records: Inherently, the blockchain does not require any explicit auditor. All data is recorded in a chronological fashion on the blockchain which makes the blockchain auto-accountable.

Inherently, the blockchain does not require any explicit auditor. All data is recorded in a chronological fashion on the blockchain which makes the blockchain auto-accountable. Fast processes, great flexibility, low costs: Blockchain has the potential to eliminate counterparties which cuts down costs and speeds up processes significantly.

These above-mentioned features help in creating a conducive environment for blockchain to be used in the energy industry. As a result, a wide variety of use cases can be orchestrated to fit varying needs.

reactions

Assessment of the current system

The global energy market is presently full of monopolies and oligopolies with strict entry barriers. As a result, there is no visibility into the internal processes and no healthy competition in the market. These factors affect prices and trust directly. Blockchain technology can create opportunities for prosumers (consumers who are also producers). These prosumers would not only be able to consume and produce energy but also sell and buy energy in a P2P fashion with a high degree of autonomy.

reactions

Presently, the value chain of the energy industry is multi-tiered. It consists of energy producers, transmission infrastructure operators, distribution infrastructure operators, and suppliers who are linked with end-consumers. All of these parties communicate with each other thereby convoluting the system. Blockchain has the ability to radically simplify this value chain by eliminating the middlemen and directly linking consumers with producers.

reactions

This multi-tiered energy infrastructure is no longer reliable or efficient since the power grids are still working on old-school technology. In times of catastrophe, the first thing to go down is the power and since everything is dependent upon power, the entire infrastructure of the area collapses like a domino. In this day and age, most of the work is done manually on a grid; from rerouting power to computing amount of power generated. Futurists envisage resilient and efficient models like ‘smart grids’ which would have smart sensors and software installed on the grid. Other components required to complete the ecosystem are smart meters, smart devices like electric vehicles (EV), smartphone apps. Renewable sources of energy can be connected with this smart grid easily to generate clean fuel. This grid revolution would completely transform the way we consume energy.

reactions

Another problem that plagues the energy sector is that of cyber attacks. Since the energy sector plays a critical role in the functioning of a modern economy, it becomes an attractive target for cyber attacks. These attacks may result in blackouts, economic and financial disruptions, or may even lead to loss of life. Since blockchain tech touts itself to be unhackable due to decentralized storage of records, it is safe to assume that energy-related data would remain safe and sound.

reactions

The aim is to shift from a centralized value chain to a fully decentralized energy value chain where contracts are carried out autonomously and are bound directly between consumers and producers. This would give rise to a shared economy and a new business model that no longer require any controlling authorities.

reactions

Use Cases and The Future

A wide variety of applications can be crafted on top of the blockchain. Let’s explore these applications one by one.

reactions

1. Open market for buying and selling electricity

Today, anyone can produce energy by installing solar panels. Blockchain enables these producers to sell excessive energy produced to their neighbours, friends, or family. This would result into emergence of an open market where an individual with a solar panel can participate in a community-driven market. This is an opportunity for the prosumers to either sell their excessive energy to their neighbours or feed it in the smart grid or store it for later use. These decisions can be governed by smart contracts running on top of any blockchain platform.

reactions

2. Recording ownership and a current state of electricity

Till date, the most robust accounting system created is the blockchain system. In the energy sector, electrons are assets and management of these assets can be done on the blockchain.

reactions

3. Certification of renewable energy

Presently, renewable energy has to get a certificate before actually be used. This process of getting certified can sometimes take weeks. This time can be cut short to a few minutes if blockchain technology is put into practice.

reactions

4. Provenance of electricity

Today, it is hard to say where the electricity is coming from since electrons in the wire look alike regardless of their origin. Using blockchain technology, origin of electricity can be easily tracked. To do this in quickly, blockchain provides with fast swarming algorithms.

reactions

5. Metering and billing electricity consumption

Smart meters can be installed to manage electricity consumption end-to-end. The price of electricity fluctuates throughout the day. It is expensive at peak hours and cheap at, say midnight. One can schedule their smart washing machine to run during midnight to save on utility bill. With added functionality, one can even pay for the utility bill in cryptocurrency. Apart from this, an immutable and a comprehensive archive of electricity billing data can be generated over a period of time.

reactions

6. Electric mobility

Electric vehicles (EV) will become common only if EVs can access charging stations everywhere. EVs can be equipped with crypto wallets which will enable EVs to communicate with charging station (M2M communication) autonomously using smart contracts.

reactions

A look around the world…

Recently in Toronto a consortium was formed, including Insolar blockchain platform, Toronto and Region conservation authority, York University and Hero Engineering to test blockchain for smart energy systems. The objective of this partnership is to integrate the Insolar platform within a city-wide fleet of electric vehicles and charging stations that support vehicle (EV) to grid charging (V2G), which will be one the first blockchain-based V2G blockchain pilots in the world.

reactions

Electric Vehicle getting charged. Source: https://pexels.com/

Insolar blockchain platform will become the backbone technology enabling seamless interaction and smart contracts fulfillment within the transactive energy system running in Toronto. Insolar platform has been already tested showing capacity of 19,000 transactions per second. Recently Insolar, the company behind the platform, has been ranked by the Startup Energy Transition rating among the Top-100 high tech startups contributing to the energy sector. All of the above-mentioned use cases can leverage the open source nature, of the Insolar blockchain platform to unlock the future.

reactions

Ultimately, it is in the hands of the community to spearhead the adoption of blockchain in the energy sector.

The success of blockchain in transforming global energy market is contingent upon R&D in the blockchain space, R&D in other technologies like artificial intelligence, and technical and legislative regulations. Apart from these, the applications should be quick, easy to use with great user experience. In the blockchain space, user experience is directly dependent on swarming.

reactions

Such a culture where good behaviour is incentivised may indirectly affect socio-economic stimulus of that area. More job avenues would emerge in the field of management and operations. Blockchain has the capability to mitigate corruption which may be prevalent in the legacy multi-tiered value chain. Most importantly, blockchain is empowering people to transact on their own terms with a high degree of autonomy.

reactions

Share this story @ md-ataullah-khan Md Ataullah Khan Read my stories SEO marketer with an experience of 7+ years.

Tags


---
title: WMDRM_IMPORT_SESSION_KEY structure (Drmexternals.h)
description: The WMDRM\_IMPORT\_SESSION\_KEY structure holds the session key for importing protected content.
ms.assetid: 2dd1e8ec-a25f-4ced-8f1b-286534c66ebf
keywords:
- WMDRM_IMPORT_SESSION_KEY structure windows Media Format
- structure windows Media Format
topic_type:
- apiref
api_name:
- WMDRM_IMPORT_SESSION_KEY
api_location:
- Drmexternals.h
api_type:
- HeaderDef
ms.topic: reference
ms.date: 05/31/2018
---

# WMDRM\_IMPORT\_SESSION\_KEY structure

The **WMDRM\_IMPORT\_SESSION\_KEY** structure holds the session key for importing protected content.

## Syntax

```C++
typedef struct WMDRM_IMPORT_SESSION_KEY {
  DWORD dwKeyType;
  DWORD cbKey;
  BYTE  rgbKey[1];
} ;
```

## Members

**dwKeyType**

Session key type. Set to WMDRM\_KEYTYPE\_RC4.

**cbKey**

Size of the session key, in bytes. This value can be as large as you need, given the limits of a single RSA OAEP operation over the entire message (this structure plus the session key).

**rgbKey**

Address of a buffer containing the session key. The buffer size must match the value of **cbKey**. The data in the buffer is a randomly generated key value.

## Remarks

This structure, including the buffer containing the session key, must be encrypted with the Windows Media DRM machine public key and included in the **pbEncryptedSessionKeyMessage** member of the [**WMDRM\_IMPORT\_INIT\_STRUCT**](/previous-versions/windows/desktop/api/wmsdkidl/ns-wmsdkidl-wmdrm_import_init_struct) structure.

## Requirements

|                                     |                                                                                |
|-------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Minimum supported client
 | Windows XP \[desktop apps only\]
                                               |
| Minimum supported server
 | Windows Server 2003 \[desktop apps only\]
                                      |
| Version
                  | Windows Media Format 11 SDK
                                                    |
| Header
                   |

Drmexternals.h

 |

## See also

[**Structures**](structures.md)


Q:

WPF refreshing control basic question

I have a very basic question about binding between controls.
I have a class that has bunch of fields, lets call it "Style".
One of the field is called "Images" with only getter and no setter.
Then i have another class "StyleImages" that is called with constructor "new StyleImages (Style)" in getter on class "Style". Meaning that every time i call Images on Style i always get fresh Images created for current style.
In WPF i created a window. In XAML i have two controls.
1) Image control.
2) PropertyGrid control (from WF).
In code behind i create new instance of Style. In PropertyGrid i push entire "Style" while in Image control i push Style.Images.Image1
No what i want is when i change any attribute of "Style" in PropertyGrid i want that the Image control is refreshed.
What is the proper way to achieve this? If necessary i will paste some code also.

A:

You need to notify that the property has changed.
Consider implementing INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyPropertyChanging.
Every time any other property changes, call OnPropertyChanged("ImageControl"). This way WFP framework will know the property changed and will act accordingly.
Also, make sure the Binding mode is correctly set, for debug purposes set it=TwoWay.


Utah Scenic Byway 12 traverses the eastern side of the mountain from Torrey through Boulder and on to Escalante. A series of unpaved backcountry roads and jeep trails provide access to the top during the brief snow free time, which is usually only a few months from July to September.


1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a lithium ion secondary battery.
2. Related Art
To prevent the short-circuiting between a positive electrode and a negative electrode of a lithium ion secondary battery, a technique of providing a tape with an insulating property (hereinafter referred to as “insulating tape”) at a part of the positive electrode and/or the negative electrode has been known. For example, JP-A-2006-147392 discloses a lithium ion secondary battery configured such that an insulating tape covers a part of a main plane of a positive electrode current collector included in a positive electrode and a part of a surface of an end of a positive electrode mixture layer included in the positive electrode.


# frozen_string_literal: true

require 'spec_helper'

RSpec.describe PersonalAccessTokens::CreateService do
  describe '#execute' do
    context 'with valid params' do
      it 'creates personal access token record' do
        user = create(:user)
        params = { name: 'Test token', impersonation: true, scopes: [:api], expires_at: Date.today + 1.month }

        response = described_class.new(user, params).execute
        personal_access_token = response.payload[:personal_access_token]

        expect(response.success?).to be true
        expect(personal_access_token.name).to eq(params[:name])
        expect(personal_access_token.impersonation).to eq(params[:impersonation])
        expect(personal_access_token.scopes).to eq(params[:scopes])
        expect(personal_access_token.expires_at).to eq(params[:expires_at])
        expect(personal_access_token.user).to eq(user)
      end
    end
  end
end


#include "ace/OS_NS_stdio.h"
#include "ace/Get_Opt.h"
#include "TestC.h"

const ACE_TCHAR *ior_server = 0;

int
parse_args (int argc, ACE_TCHAR *argv[])
{
  ACE_Get_Opt get_opts (argc, argv, ACE_TEXT ("k:"));
  int c;

  while ((c = get_opts ()) != -1)
    switch (c)
      {
      case 'k':
        ior_server = get_opts.opt_arg ();
        break;
      case '?':
      default:
        ACE_ERROR_RETURN ((LM_ERROR,
                           "usage:  %s "
                           "-k file://<iorfile>"
                           "\n",
                           argv [0]),
                          -1);
      }
  // Indicates successful parsing of the command line
  return 0;
}

int
ACE_TMAIN (int argc, ACE_TCHAR *argv[])
{
  try
    {
      CORBA::ORB_var orb = CORBA::ORB_init (argc, argv);

      if (parse_args (argc, argv) != 0)
        ACE_ERROR_RETURN ((LM_ERROR, "Wrong arguments\n"), -1);

      CORBA::Object_var tmp = orb->string_to_object (ior_server);

      Test::Server_var server =
        Test::Server::_unchecked_narrow (tmp.in ());

      if (CORBA::is_nil (server.in ()))
        ACE_ERROR_RETURN ((LM_ERROR, "Nil reference\n"), -1);

      server->shutdown ();

      orb->destroy ();
    }
  catch (const ::CORBA::Exception &ex)
    {
      ex._tao_print_exception ("Exception in client.cpp:\n");
      return -1;
    }

  return 0;
}


Q:

Program stucks in infinite loop although there is a condition to terminate it: MATLAB

I'm building a program that fills a hollow cube with many small cubes. Then, makes a connected path through random cubes. The path is found step by step by looking at the direct neighbors of each cube and select anyone of them as the next step. To illustrate, The following picture shows the path that consists of cubes (red cubes),

To build the path I started form some cube, colored it with red, found its neighbor cubes (6 neighbors because we have 6 faces), selected any of them randomly, colored the selected one with red, then find its neighbors by repeating the same process. This method is good, but if a neighbor cube is already red (already belongs to the path) it won't recognize that and it can select it again. To solve this I did the following,
1- I made an array called visited, and I stored the index of any visited cube in it.
2- I stored the neighbors of the current cube in another array called a and compared it with the visited one, and I deleted any common elements, then took a random number from the elements remaining in a.
3- Sometimes all of the neighbors can be visited, so a will become empty. In this case, I looked for any of the current cube's, selected any of them randomly, checked for its neighbors, stored them in the neighbors array (a) and compared that with the visited cubes array. This will keep repeating (while loop) if the neighbors array is not empty. But in my case, the program gets stuck in the while loop. Also, sometime it doesn't get stuck, but the number of cubes in the path becomes less than the specified one.
I have obtained the code that builds the main cube, fills it with small cubes, and gets the neighbors by Hoki in a previous question (Filing the entire volume of a cube with small cubes in MATLAB) I just added the mechanism that builds the path using the neighbors. Here is the code,
%%
clf; figure(1); format compact
h(1) = axes('Position',[0.2 0.2 0.6 0.6]);

%These are the different 8 vertices of the cube, each is defined by its 3 x y z coordinates:
vert = [ 1  1 -1; -1  1 -1; -1  1  1; 1  1  1; -1 -1  1; 1 -1  1; 1 -1 -1; -1 -1 -1];

%These are the 6 faces of the cube, each is defined by connecting 4 of the available vertices:
fac = [1 2 3 4; 4 3 5 6; 6 7 8 5; 1 2 8 7; 6 7 1 4; 2 3 5 8];

%// How many small cube do we want
MainCubeSide = 2 ;              %// dimension of the side of the main cube
nCubeOnSide = 5 ;               %// number of small cube in one "row/column" of the main cube
nCubesTotal = nCubeOnSide^3  ;  %// total number of small cube

% define the Main container cube
MainCube.Vertices = vert *(2/MainCubeSide) ; %// because the cube as defined above has already a side=2
disp (2/ MainCubeSide);
MainCube.Faces = fac ;
MainCube.FaceColor = 'w' ;

hMainCube = patch(MainCube);  %// patch function for the first big cube. MainCube can be seen as an object that contains all the infor that the patch function needs.
axis([-1, 1, -1, 1, -1, 1]);
axis equal;
hold on; %wait we didn't finish yet.
material metal;
alpha('color');
alphamap('rampdown');
view(138,24)
%view(3);

%% // generate all the coordinates of each cube first
dstep = MainCubeSide / nCubeOnSide ;                                                 %// step size for small cube vertices, this will determine the edge length for the small cube that best fits the required small cubes per edge.
vElem = bsxfun(@plus, vert / nCubeOnSide , -( MainCubeSide/2 - dstep/2)*[1 1 1] )  ; %// elementary cube vertices. Because the small cube was defined in the center of the big cube, to push it to one side we only need to move it by half the size of the main cube (minus half the size of a small cube)

%%
hold on;
coords = zeros( size(vElem,1),size(vElem,2), nCubesTotal ) ;  %// To store the coordinates (8 rows * 3 columns) in every of the nCubesTotal slices.
colors = zeros( nCubesTotal , 3 ) ;                           %// To store the RBG colours for every small cube.
hcube  = zeros( nCubesTotal , 1 ) ;                           %// To store the handles of the patch objects

iNeighbour = zeros( nCubesTotal , 6 ) ;   %// To save the index of the neighbours
idc = permute( reshape(1:nCubesTotal,nCubeOnSide,nCubeOnSide,nCubeOnSide) , [3 2 1] ) ;

%// For each cube ...
iCube = 0 ;
for iline=1:nCubeOnSide         %// Lines
    for icol=1:nCubeOnSide      %// Columns
        for ih=1:nCubeOnSide    %// Slice (height)* all for loops have the smame length, because the total number of cubes = mCubeOnSide^3
            iCube = iCube + 1 ;

            %// Take the base corner coordinates and add an offset to each coordinate
            coords(:,:,iCube) = bsxfun(@plus, vElem , dstep*[(iline-1) (icol-1) (ih-1)]); %the fist one will not have offset, iline-1=0.

            %// Save the colour
            colors(iCube,:) = rand(1,3) ;

            %// Draw the cube and store its info in the cube handler hcube.
            hcube(iCube) = patch('Faces', fac, 'Vertices', coords(:,:,iCube), 'FaceColor', colors(iCube,:) ) ; %Remember each slice of coords contains the vertices of one of the small cubes, that's why it corresponds to vertices here.

            drawnow     %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
            pause(0.05) %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines

            %// save adjacent cubes indices
            ixAdj = [iline-1 iline+1 icol-1 icol+1 ih-1 ih+1] ;  %// indices of adjacent cubes
            idxFalse = (ixAdj<1) | (ixAdj>nCubeOnSide) ;  %// detect cube which would be "out" of the main cube
            ixAdj(idxFalse) = 1 ;                                %// just to not get an "indexing" error at this stage
            iNeighbour(iCube,:) = [idc(ixAdj(1),icol,ih)    idc(ixAdj(2),icol,ih) ...
                                   idc(iline,ixAdj(3),ih)   idc(iline,ixAdj(4),ih) ...
                                   idc(iline,icol,ixAdj(5)) idc(iline,icol,ixAdj(6)) ] ;
            iNeighbour(iCube,idxFalse) = NaN ;
        end
    end
end
getNeighbourIndex = @(idx) iNeighbour(idx,~isnan(iNeighbour(idx,:))) ;

set(hcube,'Visible','off')  %// turn off all small cubes
cubeOfInterest = 32 ;      %// select one cube
%// display the main cube of interest, and it's neighbours in transparency
set(hcube(cubeOfInterest),'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)
%set(hcube(getNeighbourIndex(CubeOfInterest)),'Visible','on','FaceColor','g','FaceAlpha',.05)
visited= []; %to hold the indices of the visited cubes.

for i=1:124
visited (i) = cubeOfInterest; %the first visited cube is the cube of interest.
a=  (getNeighbourIndex(cubeOfInterest)); %get all the neighbors\ indices and store them in an array so we can select randomly from them.
disp (a);
looping=true;

while looping==true %To avoid visiting any previously visited cube.
    disp ('program is looping') %just to know if the program is stuck in an infinite loop.
inds = find(ismember(a, visited)); %store the indices of the common elements if found.
a(inds)= []; %delete the indices of the common elements.

if (isempty (a)==1)
    temp = randsample((getNeighbourIndex(cubeOfInterest)), 1);
    a= getNeighbourIndex(temp);
    disp (a)
else
    looping=false ;

end
end

x = randsample(a, 1);
set(hcube(x),'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)
cubeOfInterest= x;
end

Building the path in the code above starts from the line in which I initialize the visited cubes array (visited = []).
Can anyone please tell me why the program gets stuck in the while loop?
EDIT: I've added some code to Hoki's code to make the path continue even if the neighbors are visited. It will select any not visited cube and move to it if it will not make the path disconnected. The code is now working vey well as required. Here is the modified part,
%% // Random path

rng(1)                     %// set that if you want reproducible results, otherwise comment it
set(hcube,'Visible','off')
startCubeIndex = randi([1 numel(hcube)],1) ;    %// random starting cube
%// startCubeIndex = 1 ;                            %// or fixed one

maxPathLength = 125 ;       %// maximum length of path
maxPathLength= maxPathLength+1;
path_terminated = false ;   %// condition to get out of loop
path_visited = [] ;         %// store the generated path (visited cubes)this to be checked in case 2 as well.

ptIndex = 1 ;
path_visited(1) = startCubeIndex ;
set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)
availableAll =[1:125];
while ~path_terminated
    available_next = getNeighbourIndex( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ;   %// get all the neighbours
    [~,~,ib] = intersect(path_visited,available_next) ;             %// check if we already went through some
    if ~isempty(ib)
        available_next(ib) = [] ;                                   %// remove visited cube from "available" list
    end
    nAvail = numel(available_next) ;                                %// number of actually available neighbour

    if nAvail == 0                                                  %// Exit loop if no neighbour available
        msgTerm = 'Path blocked. No other neighbour available.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
        %//path_terminated = true ;
        %//here I want to make the modification.
        looping=true; %//To keep looping until we find the correct next move.
        counter=0; %//to iterate through the cubes which are not visisted.
        while looping==true
        counter= counter+1;
        jump= availableAll (counter); %//select the first available cube and check if it is suitable or not
            if (~isempty (intersect(getNeighbourIndex(jump), path_visited))) %// if the selcted cube has a visited neighbor, it means it is suitable. The path will stay connected.
                %good we found it.
                 ptIndex = ptIndex+1 ;
                 path_visited(ptIndex) = jump ; %//add the selected cube to the path.
                 availableAll (availableAll==jump)= []; %//remove the selected cube from the list of available cubes.
                 looping= false; %//stop looping.
            end
        %continue
        end

    else
        ptIndex = ptIndex+1 ;
        path_visited(ptIndex) = available_next( randi([1 nAvail],1) ) ;
        availableAll (availableAll==path_visited(ptIndex))= []; %//remove the selected cube from the list of available cubes.
    end
    if ptIndex >= maxPathLength                                          %// exit loop if we reached the max number of elements
        msgTerm = 'Path terminated. Reached max number of elements.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
        path_terminated = true ;
        continue
    end

    %// choose one neighbour randomly among the available ones

    set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)      %// highlight new cube
    set(hcube( path_visited(1:ptIndex-1) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','g','FaceAlpha',.2) %// shade old cubes

    pause(0.05)         %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
    drawnow             %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
end
disp(msgTerm)

The code above is working well. Hoki provided a great help, thanks a lot Hoki.
Thank You.

A:

Here's a way to implement the random path. I've explicited the exit conditions. You can add more exit conditions if you want or regroup them, but the mechanism is roughly the same. An extract of the important steps:
while ~path_terminated
    available_next = getNeighbourIndex( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ;   %// get all the neighbours
    [~,~,ib] = intersect(path_visited,available_next) ;             %// check if we already went through some
    if ~isempty(ib)
        available_next(ib) = [] ;                                   %// remove visited cube from "available" list
    end
    ptIndex = ptIndex+1 ;
    path_visited(ptIndex) = available_next( randi([1 nAvail],1) ) ;

Then you add the checking for exit conditions and the coloring of the cubes the way you want.

The basic logic to advance the path:

Get the list of neighbours. available_next = getNeighbourIndex( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ;
check if some of them were already visited. [~,~,ib]=intersect(path_visited,available_next);
remove already visited from the "Available" list. available_next(ib) = [] ;
choose (randomly) one of the remaining available. path_visited(ptIndex) = available_next( randi([1 nAvail],1) ) ;

The logic for exit conditions:

Max number of path element has been reached (if you decide to set a maximum length of path). if ptIndex >= maxPathLength
No more "Available" neighbour (i.e. all available neighbour have already been visited). if numel(available_next) == 0

Full code (after all the cube generation):
%% // Random path
rng(1)                     %// set that if you want reproducible results, otherwise comment it
set(hcube,'Visible','off')
startCubeIndex = randi([1 numel(hcube)],1) ;    %// random starting cube
%// startCubeIndex = 1 ;                            %// or fixed one

maxPathLength = 100 ;       %// maximum length of path
path_terminated = false ;   %// condition to get out of loop
path_visited = [] ;         %// store the generated path (visited cubes)

ptIndex = 1 ;
path_visited(1) = startCubeIndex ;
set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)

while ~path_terminated
    available_next = getNeighbourIndex( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ;   %// get all the neighbours
    [~,~,ib] = intersect(path_visited,available_next) ;             %// check if we already went through some
    if ~isempty(ib)
        available_next(ib) = [] ;                                   %// remove visited cube from "available" list
    end
    nAvail = numel(available_next) ;                                %// number of actually available neighbour

    if nAvail == 0                                                  %// Exit loop if no neighbour available
        msgTerm = 'Path blocked. No other neighbour available.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
        path_terminated = true ;
        continue
    end

    if ptIndex >= maxPathLength                                          %// exit loop if we reached the max number of elements
        msgTerm = 'Path terminated. Reached max number of elements.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
        path_terminated = true ;
        continue
    end

    %// choose one neighbour randomly among the available ones
    ptIndex = ptIndex+1 ;
    path_visited(ptIndex) = available_next( randi([1 nAvail],1) ) ;
    set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)      %// highlight new cube
    set(hcube( path_visited(1:ptIndex-1) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','g','FaceAlpha',.2) %// shade old cubes

    pause(0.05)         %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
    drawnow             %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
end
disp(msgTerm)

On a cube with 8 elements on the side (so 512 cubes total), if you set maxPathLength to 100, the path visits 100 elements without stopping:

If you do not set the max length (or just set it to the max number of cube or even more), then the path generation goes on until the cube get "stuck" (e.g. until it arrives in a place where all the neighbours have already been visited):

EDIT:
A variation of the logic which allow you to choose the path generation mode between 3 options:

open :    No constraint, a cube can be revisited anytime (path terminates only when max number of element is reached).
stuck :   A cube may only be revisited if no other free path can be found
never :   A cube cannot be revisited (the path terminates if stuck).

The code is not that different from the initial one but instead of just modifying I prefer to give the full modified code below, so you can see how the different functionalities are implemented.

%% // Set options
cube_revisit_options = {'open','stuck','never'} ;
%// "open" :    No constraint, a cube can be revisited anytime (path
%//             terminates only when max number of element is reached).
%// "stuck" :   A cube may only be revisited if no other free path can be found
%// "never" :   A cube cannot be revisited (the path terminates if stuck).
cube_revisit_mode = 'stuck' ;

cube_path_history = true ; %// set to false to display ALL path history, otherwise only "nHist" points displayed

nHist = 30 ;                            %// number of cubes in the history "trail"
alphatrail = linspace(0.1,0.9,nHist) ;  %// decreasing transparency values for the trail
cmaptrail  = cool(nHist) ;              %// colormap for the trail
% cmaptrail = winter(nHist) ;           %// other nice colormaps you can try
% cmaptrail = flipud(hot(nHist)) ;

%% // go for it
set(hcube,'Visible','off')
rng(2)                     %// set that if you want reproducible results, otherwise comment it
startCubeIndex = randi([1 numel(hcube)],1) ;    %// random starting cube
%// startCubeIndex = 1 ;                        %// or fixed one

maxPathLength = 1000 ;      %// maximum length of path
path_terminated = false ;   %// condition to get out of loop
path_visited = [] ;         %// store the generated path (visited cubes)

ptIndex = 1 ;
path_visited(1) = startCubeIndex ;
set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)

while ~path_terminated
    %// exit loop if we reached the max number of elements
    if ptIndex >= maxPathLength
        msgTerm = 'Path terminated. Reached max number of elements.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
        path_terminated = true ;
        continue
    end

    all_neighbours = getNeighbourIndex( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ;    %// get all the neighbours
    available_next = setdiff(all_neighbours,path_visited,'stable') ; %// find only "unvisited" cubes
    nAvail = numel(available_next) ;                                 %// number of actually available neighbour

    switch cube_revisit_mode
        case 'open'
            %// any neighbour can be selected
            available_next = all_neighbours ;

        case 'stuck'
            %// visited neighbour can only be selected if no other choice
            if nAvail == 0
                fprintf(2,'Got stuck cube %d at iteration %d. Escaping ...\n',path_visited(ptIndex),ptIndex);
                available_next = all_neighbours ;
            end

        case 'never'
            %// visited neighbour CANNOT be selected - Exit loop if no neighbour available
            if nAvail == 0
                msgTerm = 'Path blocked. No other neighbour available.' ;   %// Reason for terminating path
                path_terminated = true ;
                continue
            end
    end
    nAvail = numel(available_next) ; %// recalculate in case we just changed it above

    %// choose one neighbour randomly among the available ones
    ptIndex = ptIndex+1 ;
    path_visited(ptIndex) = available_next( randi([1 nAvail],1) ) ;

    %// recolor
    if cube_path_history
        %// draw only "N" history cube, in a different color and with decreasing transparency
        idxTrace = max(1,size(path_visited,2)-nHist):size(path_visited,2)-1 ;
        set(hcube( path_visited(1:max(idxTrace(1)-1,1) ) ) ,'Visible','off') %// disable very old cubes
        for ic=1:length(idxTrace)
            set(hcube( path_visited(idxTrace(ic)) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor',cmaptrail(ic,:),'FaceAlpha',alphatrail(ic)) %// shade old cubes
        end
    else
        %// draw ALL history cube, same color and transparency
        set(hcube( path_visited(1:ptIndex-1) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','g','FaceAlpha',.1) %// shade old cubes uniformly
    end
    set(hcube( path_visited(ptIndex) ) ,'Visible','on','FaceColor','r','FaceAlpha',1)      %// highlight new cube

    drawnow             %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
    pause(0.010)        %// just for intermediate display, you can comment these 2 lines
end
disp(msgTerm)

An example for 10 cubes/side with maxPathLength=1000:


Capnocytophaga species: a cause of amniotic fluid infection and preterm labour.
Subclinical amniotic fluid infection and subsequent preterm labour may occur with intact membranes. We report two cases of subclinical amniotic fluid infection with intact membranes presenting in preterm labour. Capnocytophaga species, fastidious Gram-negative bacilli normally found in oral flora, were isolated in pure culture from amniotic fluid obtained by transabdominal amniocentesis. The distinctive microbiological features and spectrum of infections associated with Capnocytophaga species, and the importance of recognition of subclinical amniotic fluid infection as a cause of preterm labour, are discussed.


Is it necessary to postpone pregnancy after bariatric surgery: a national cohort study.
The optimal interval between bariatric surgery (BS) and pregnancy remains clearly undefined. The aim of this study was to assess pregnancy outcomes according to the interval from BS to conception. The nationwide study cohort consisted of 130 women with previous BS and postoperative singleton delivery during 2005-2015 in Lithuania. Women who conceived within the first 12 months after BS were included in the early conception (EC) group (n = 30); who became pregnant after 1 year were included in the late conception (LC) group (n = 100). Mean surgery-to-conception time in the EC group was 6.9 ± 3.5 months; in the LC group was 41.4 ± 21.6 months. Anaemia was diagnosed significantly more frequently in women who conceived after 12 months compared with the EC group (56.0% versus 33.3%, p = .04). No significant differences were found between the EC and the LC group regarding gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, caesarean section rate, and adverse neonatal outcomes. Impact statement What is already known on the subject? Bariatric surgery is recognized as a safe and highly effective approach to obesity treatment. Optimal interval between bariatric surgery and conception remains undefined, however most bariatric surgeons advise patients to delay pregnancy for 12-18 months. What do the results of this study add? The results of our study did not show significant differences in pregnancy complications and neonatal outcomes in women who conceived within the first 12 postoperative months and in women who conceived later. Women who become pregnant within the first year after surgery, should be reassured that obstetric complication rates generally are low. What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? Patients with prior BS should be provided with multidisciplinary prenatal care and screening for nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy. Further studies are needed to determine the optimal interval after BS and to assess the influence this interval has on perinatal outcomes.