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infradapt · 1 year ago

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Meta Exposes Eight Firms Behind Spyware Attacks on iOS, Android, and Windows Devices

Meta Platforms’ Actions Against Surveillance-for-Hire Companies

Meta Platforms has taken action against eight surveillance-for-hire companies based in Italy, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), as per their Adversarial Threat Report for Q4 2023. The companies were reportedly involved in malicious activities, including the development of spyware aimed at iOS, Android, and Windows devices.

The malware developed by these companies had the ability to gather and access a wide range of device data, including information about the device itself, location data, photos, media, contacts, calendar entries, emails, SMS, and data from social media and messaging apps. The malware could also activate device microphones, cameras, and screenshot functions.

The companies implicated in these activities are Cy4Gate/ELT Group, RCS Labs, IPS Intelligence, Variston IT, TrueL IT, Protect Electronic Systems, Negg Group, and Mollitiam Industries. According to Meta Platforms, these companies also engaged in data scraping, social engineering, and phishing activities across a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Skype, GitHub, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Quora, Tumblr, VK, Flickr, TikTok, SnapChat, Gettr, Viber, Twitch, and Telegram.

Specific Malicious Activities

RCS Labs, owned by Cy4Gate, reportedly used a network of fake personas to trick users into providing their phone numbers and email addresses, and to click on fraudulent links for reconnaissance purposes. Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Spanish spyware company Variston IT were used for exploit development and testing, including the sharing of malicious links. Reports suggest that Variston IT is in the process of shutting down its operations.

Meta Platforms also identified accounts used by Negg Group for testing spyware delivery, and by Mollitiam Industries, a Spanish company offering data collection services and spyware for Windows, macOS, and Android, for scraping public information.

Actions Against Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB)

Alongside these actions, Meta Platforms also removed over 2,000 accounts, Pages, and Groups from Facebook and Instagram due to Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) originating from China, Myanmar, and Ukraine. The Chinese cluster targeted U.S. audiences with content criticizing U.S. foreign policy towards Taiwan and Israel and supporting Ukraine. The Myanmar network targeted local residents with articles praising the Burmese army and criticizing ethnic armed organizations and minority groups. The Ukrainian cluster used fake Pages and Groups to post content supporting Ukrainian politician Viktor Razvadovskyi and expressing support for the current government and criticism of the opposition in Kazakhstan.

Industry-wide Efforts to Curb Spyware Abuse

This action by Meta Platforms comes as part of a broader initiative involving a coalition of government and tech companies aiming to curb the abuse of commercial spyware for human rights abuses. As part of its countermeasures, Meta Platforms has introduced new features such as Control Flow Integrity (CFI) on Messenger for Android and VoIP memory isolation for WhatsApp to make exploitation more difficult and reduce the overall attack surface.

The Persistence of the Surveillance Industry

Despite these efforts, the surveillance industry continues to evolve and thrive in various forms. Last month, 404 Media, building on prior research from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) in November 2023, revealed a surveillance tool called Patternz. This tool utilizes real-time bidding (RTB) advertising data from popular apps like 9gag, Truecaller, and Kik to track mobile devices. The Israeli company behind Patternz, ISA, claims that the tool allows national security agencies to use real-time and historical user advertising data to detect, monitor, and predict user actions, security threats, and anomalies based on user behavior, location patterns, and mobile usage characteristics.

In addition, last week, Enea unveiled a previously unknown mobile network attack known as MMS Fingerprint.

The Use of Pegasus-maker NSO Group’s Alleged Techniques

According to some sources, the Pegasus-maker NSO Group is believed to have employed specific techniques, as stated in a contract they had with Ghana’s telecom regulator in 2015. The exact means used by the group are still somewhat unclear. However, Enea, a Swedish telecom security firm, has put forward a plausible theory.

The Role of Binary SMS in the Suspected Method

Enea suggests that the group likely used a unique form of SMS message known as binary SMS, specifically MM1_notification.REQ. This particular message informs the recipient’s device of an MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) that is pending retrieval from the MMSC (Multimedia Messaging Service Center).

The Process of Fetching MMS

The process of fetching the MMS involves the utilization of MM1_retrieve.REQ and MM1_retrieve.RES. The former is an HTTP GET request directed to the URL address contained in the MM1_notification.REQ message.

The Significance of User Device Information

What makes this technique particularly interesting is the inclusion of user device information such as User-Agent (distinct from a web browser User-Agent string) and x-wap-profile in the GET request. This data essentially serves as a unique identifier for the device.

Understanding User-Agent and X-wap-profile

Enea explains that the User-Agent in this context is a string that typically identifies the device’s OS and model. The x-wap-profile, on the other hand, points to a User Agent Profile (UAProf) file that outlines the capabilities of a mobile handset.

Potential Exploitation of Device Information

This device information could potentially be used by a threat actor to deploy spyware. They could exploit specific vulnerabilities, customize their harmful payloads to suit the target device, or even design more efficient phishing campaigns. However, it’s important to note that there is currently no evidence to suggest this security loophole has been exploited in recent times.

https://www.infradapt.com/news/meta-exposes-eight-firms-behind-spyware-attacks-on-ios-android-and-windows-devices/

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hydralisk98 · 3 years ago

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LEARNBLR #2, Weekend-mode engaged

New hexadecimal number system based around Latin/Cyrrilic/Greek letters so around (A,B,C,D,E,F,K,M,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z)

'Argentique'

12x12 pixel cells & ~12x12 cells grid

MINIX3

TIS-100 low-power as low as possible tech-level requirements

Microsoft BOB's Chaos as virtual assistant analogy

SVG

Free and Open Source Software community

Georgism

Syndicalism

Libertarianism

Nomad48 color palette

OpenPOWER

ITS

CTSS

Multics

IPL

Tumblr 'WIN3D' theme custom overhaul

HyperCard/HyperTalk

Hypermedia with static HTML/CSS pages

Analog and home video rental store analogies

Lisp family structural and symbolic meta-programming similarities

Swift programming language

Fish shell

ZealC easy low-level access, full transparency and in-line multimedia editing

Esolangs site's deque, mysticism and analogical turing tarpit assomptions

Wax cylinders -> 45rpm autoplay small-size vinyls -> large Laserdiscs -> middle-sized optical symbolic disks

Cassettes -> Datasettes -> MiniDiscs -> SD cards

JVM & bytecode compiler/interpreter

Minitel, Prestel, Alex & Bulletin Board Systems, SAM Coupe, Armstrad CPC, Commodore 64, CBM II, SEGA Computer 3000,

Ural computer, MIR-1, MIR-2, russian ALGOL variants, Akademset, OGAS, Soviet Electronic Data Processing, Soviet Unit Record Equipment, BK-0010, AGAT, Law on Cooperatives, Runet, Yandex, OK, VK, EVM, SM EVM, Robotron, Hungarians' TPA, fifth generation computers initative up to 2010 from Japan & Bulgaria, Didaktik, Z9001, K-202, Galaksija, Rapira, Superplan, ALGOL68 with ALGOL W elements, Karel, SAKO, AGAT Schoolgirl's Robic, Perl, Rak...

NOOR, Teuton, BASICOIS, Smalltalk, Lusus, LOGO, FOCAL, Scratch, UTF-8,

Digital Equipment Corporation's COS-310, DIBOL, DECmate III(+?) & OpenVMS

Sun Microsystems' Voyager & misc. hardware

Konrad Zuse's KG

Wolfenstein The New Order's Pflaumen brand, Arya and Tekla

Computer job ladies from all times in history

Microsoft F# & F*

OpenXanadu project

Xerox Alto

SEGA Dreamcast hardware first edition

Olivetti Programma 101

Elektronika MK-52

Transmuters from Atari

PLATO V system's TUTOR language

Pixar early CGI renders

Pouet.net and all the demoscene world

Keypad-based I/O controls?

Cyberware augmentations?

First Tier aka playable Civs: Shoshones, Morocco, Assyrians as Inuits, Mayas Civ, Portugal, Polynesia...

Second Tier aka non-playable Civs: Poland, Songhay, Persia, Carthage, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Sweden, Iroquois as Hurons, Austria, Brazil, Incas, Ottomans, Netherlands, Venice.

City-States: [to be written]

Barbarians, Rebels, Observers and more: [to be written]

Constructed world considerations such as 12-bit tribbles as smallest data unit, multilingual coding paradigm, alternate history of media formats, 16^3 (so 3 elements of 16 unique possible sub-glyph each) ideogrammic dictionary, synthetic android machines of the Stellaris' Rogue Servitor vibe, no Wilsonism or at least way less of such, electricity cars are way ahead, harmonious collaboration on technologies, more variety in ways of thinking aka spirituality and rationalism coexist better, Panian grammars strongly credited link to Turing+Church thesis, less spatial exploration, even less extroverts success compared to introverts, smaller world, more isolation in between social spheres so less harmonious as of the last few decades, less biological matters understanding, medical technologies somewhat behind by two decades, cross-dimensional idiosyncratic imports, synthetic developments ahead by ~20-40 years, free high education similar to Soviet Union / Russia's, much wild-west style software piracy space on the sidelines, many super advanced free software resources to levels like Habrahabr and beyond, synthetic service grids outpacing human agencies' controls yet keeping a neutral attitude towards humans, many disperate computer networks instead of the world wide web we know, lesser adoption of such hyperTech by the laymen as non-enthusiasts went back to some sort of early 20th century-style primitivisms, some sort of aesthetic subculture tribe diversification developments growing real strong as of the last two decades, earlier global pandemic around 1996-2000, advanced nuclear energy abundance, more cross-national collaboration + harmony, sapient-kinds inclusivity as early as the last century or the last half-millenia, longer historical record going back more than ~2000 further into their past (so like 3000 BC instead of 1000 BC here)...

So I want to make a general-purpose (if I had to choose one topic, it would be to describe symbolic computation ala 'TuringTarpit' around video rental store deque operations) programming language 'Servitor' with specific analogical media and low-tech [any medieval scroll vellum media included] constraints in mind.

#maskoch #maskutchew #servitor #16^12 #descriptive affirmative programming

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juniperpublishersoceanography · 4 years ago

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Real Time Wave Prediction Using Neural Networks at Karwar, West Coast of India-Juniper Publishers

Abstract

The knowledge of ocean waves is an essential prerequisite for almost all activities in ocean. Traditional methods have disadvantages of excessive data requirement, time consumption and are tedious to carry out. ANN is being widely applied in coastal engineering field since last two decades in variety of time series forecasting. Study has been carried out to predict waves using FFBP and NARX networks. Wave data obtained from INCOIS is made use in the present study. Effect of network architecture on the performance of the model has been studied. It was found that for time series prediction NARX network outperforms FFBP.

Keywords: Artificial neural network; Feed forward back propagation network; Non-linear auto regressive with exogenous input; Coastal engineering

Introduction

Accurate forecasting of wave characteristics is important for many coastal and marine activities. Different methods have been developed for this purpose. There are many empirical formulae for wave growth which have been derived from large visually observed data sets. The curves developed by Sverdrup and Munk in 1947 and Pierson, Neumann and James in 1955 (PNJ) were also used for wave forecasting. These two number of visual observations by graphical methods using known parameters of wave characteristics. Its major disadvantage is the time necessary to make the computations and also it requiring large information about oceanographic and meteorological data.

A new model based on the working of human brain has been idealized to meet the objective of learning relationship between complex parameters involved in the interaction without having to know the underlying physics behind it. As it is an attempt to mimic the capabilities of human neural system it is called Artificial Neural Network (ANN). An extensive literature survey has been carried out to understand the dynamics of ocean waves, their interactions and transformations. As the subject is very vast only some relevant literature which implemented the neural network for wave forecasting has been presented. [1] describes the application of neural network analysis in forecasting of significant wave height with 3 hour lead period. Wave forecasting was done using wind velocity, fetch and duration as input parameters by [2]. The results were not satisfactory fetch and duration was excluded as their presence did not have any effect on predictions. After MuCulloch and introduced the concept of ANN, many models were developed. Among those models the multi-layered network trained by back propagation algorithm has been applied extensively to solve various engineering problems by [3]. They reported an application of the feed forward neural network to forecast the wave heights of a site based on the observed wave data of other sites at Taichung Harbor. Results showed that wave forecast of a local site has a better performance when the wave data of multisite observations are used. The most common training algorithm is the standard back-propagation (BP), although numerous training schemes are available to impart better training with the same set of data as shown by [4] in their harbor tranquility studies. The work carried out by [5] describes hind casting of wave heights and periods from cyclone generated wind fields using two input configurations of neural network. They use updated algorithms in back propagation neural network and the wave forecasting yielded better results. Deo MC [6] describes the application of neural network analysis in forecasting of significant wave height with 3 hour lead period. They have carried out different combinations of training patterns to obtain the desired output in addition to the work of average 12 hour and a day wave forecasting. They used three different algorithms of back propagation, conjugate gradient descent and cascade correlation to predict wave height. Tsai CP [3] used back propagation neural network to forecast the ocean waves based on learning characteristics of observed waves and also based on wave records at the neighboring stations. Dwarakish GS [4] carried out a study to predict the breaking wave height and depth using five different datasets. Deo M [7] explained multilayered feed forward and recurrent networks with conjugate gradient and steepest descent with momentum method to predict waves and compared the results with those obtained from stochastic models of Auto Regressive and Auto Regressive eXogenous input models. Sensitivity analysis showed that wind speed and direction is the most important parameter for wave hind casting. Present study utilizes the advantages of Feed Forward Back Propagation (FFBP) and Non-linear Auto Regressive eXogenous (NARX) networks for prediction of waves [8-10].

Methods

FFBP network

Development of ANN can be attributed to the attempt carried out to mimic the working pattern of human brain. Its success lies in its ability to exploit the non-linear relationship between input and output data by continuously adapting itself to the information provided to it by means of some learning process. ANN can be classified based on network type in to feed forward and feedback or recurrent networks. The basic difference between the two is that, in feed forward networks the information is passed from one layer to the other in a forward manner till the output is obtained in the output layer. Whereas in, feedback network the output obtained in the output layer is fed back in to the network through input layer thus this type of network will have minimum of single loop in its structure. A neural network consisting of a set of connected cells called the neurons. A graphical representation of neuron is given in Figure 1.

A neuron is a real function of input vectors xl, x2, x3....xn and wkl, wk2, wk3...wkn are the weights associated with the connections i.e. synaptic weight connections from input neuron 'i' to neuron 'k'. 'k' neuron is the summing junction where net input is given by

uk = Σ wki* xi (1)

vk=uk+bk (2)

bk is the bias value at the kth neuron.

The output yk is the transformed weighted sum of vk

Yk = ⌉ (vk) (3)

Where, is the transfer function or activation function used to convert the summed input. A nonlinear sigmoid function which is monotonically increasing and continuously differentiable is the most commonly used activation function. It can be mathematically expressed as,

Yk = ⌉(vk) = 1/(1+exp(-avk))

Once the activities of all output units have been determined, the network computes the error E, which is defined by the expression.

E = 1/2Σ(yi - di) 2 (5)

Where yi is the activity level of the ith unit in the top layer and di is the desired output of the ith unit. The most commonly used learning algorithm in coastal engineering application is the gradient descent algorithm. In this the global error calculated is propagated backward to the input layer through weight connections as in Figure 2, during which the weights are updated in the direction of steepest descent or in the direction opposite to gradient descent. However the overall objective of any learning algorithm is to reduce the global error, E defined as

Where Ep is the error at the pth training pattern, Ok is the obtained output from network at the kth output node and tk is the target output kth output node and N is the total number of output nodes. Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm used in this study can be written as

Wnew=Wold-[JT+γl]-1JTE(Wold) (8)

Where J is the Jacobian matrix that contains first derivatives of the network errors with respect to the weights and biases, I is the identity matrix and γ is the parameter used to define the iteration step value. It minimizes the error function while trying to keep the step between old weight configuration (Wold) and new updated one (Wnew). The performance of the network is measured in terms of various performance functions like mean squared error (MSE or 'mse'), root mean squared error (RMSE) and Co-efficient of Correlation (CC or 'R') between the predicted and the observed values of the quantities [11-13].

NARX network

In the present study along with FFBP, a recurrent type of network namely Non-linear Auto Regressive network with exogenous inputs (NARX) has also been used. In recurrent networks, the output depends not only on the current input to the network but also on the previous input and output of the network. The response of the static network at any point of time depends only on the value of the input sequence at that same point whereas, the response of the recurrent networks lasts longer than the input pulse. This is done by introducing a tapped delay line in the network which makes the input pulse last longer than its duration by an amount which is equal to the delay given in the tapped delay. This makes network to have a memory of the input that is fed. The defining equation for the NARX model is

y(t) = f( y(t-1), y(t-2),.... y(t-ny), u(t-1), u(t-2) u(t-nu)) (9)

Where, the next value of the dependent output signal y(t) is regressed on previous values of an independent (exogenous) input signal. The output of NARX network can be considered to be an estimate of the output of some non-linear dynamic system that is being modeled. The output is fed back to the input of the feed forward network in standard NARX architecture as shown in Figure 3. Since the true output is available during training, the true output itself can be used instead of feeding back the estimated output as shown in Figure 4. This will have two advantages. The first is that the input to the feed forward network is more accurate. The second is that the resulting network has a purely FFBP architecture and static back propagation can be used for training instead of dynamic back propagation, which has complex error surfaces exposing the network to higher chances of getting trapped in local minima and hence requiring more number of training iterations [14-16].

Network parameters and performance indicators

Three layered FFBP network with single input layer, hidden layer and output layer was used. Tangent sigmoid (tansig) was used in the hidden layer as transfer function as data was normalized to fall in the range of -1 to 1 and purely linear (purelin) transfer function was used in the output layer, as this combination of 'tansig' and 'purelin' transfer function is capable of approximating any function. The training was carried out using the aforementioned network architecture for various data size matrices. The number of the neurons in the hidden layer was kept on increasing starting from one, till the best combination was found in terms of network performance indicators. One thousand iterations were set as the stopping criteria for the training of the network. The performance of the network is measured in terms of various performance indicators like sum squared error (SSE), mean squared error (MSE), root mean squared error (RMSE) and co-efficient of correlation (CC or 'R') between the predicted and the observed values of the quantities. In the present study 'mse' and 'R' are used as performance indicators; lower value of MSE and higher value of 'R' indicates better performance of the network.

Mean square error: In statistics, the mean squared error of an estimator measures the average of the squares of the 'errors', ie., the difference between the estimator and what is estimated. It is given by the formula

mse = Σ(xi-yi)2/n (10)

Correlation co-efficient: It measures the strength of association between the variables also it represents the direction of the linear relationship between two variables that is defined as the covariance divided by the product of their standard deviations and is given by the formula:

R = Σ(Xi.yi)/√(Σxi2).(Σyi2) (11)

Study area and data division: The study is carried out for Off Karwar coast located at northern tip in the coastal segment of Karnataka state, along west coast of India. It lies between 14.083 North latitude and 74.083 East longitude as shown in Figure 5.

FFBP and NARX networks have been used for the prediction of waves at Karwar. Significant wave height from January 2011 to December 2013 obtained from Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) is made use of in the present study. Predictions were carried out for various length of duration using a week's data and month's data as input. The data was divided into weekly and monthly data sets for the prediction of waves using various duration of data sets. In weekly data sets a row in a input matrix comprises of 336 data points. These rows represent a single node in the input and output layer of the network. Similarly in monthly data sets a single row consists of 1440 data points. In the present study yearly data sets were divided into 12 months consisting of 30 days each for the regularity of input data matrix size.

Results and Discussion

Prediction with FFBP network

In the present study four week’s prediction was carried out using one week's wave data from 01/01/2011 to 07/01/2011 as input. The target data set comprised readings of four weeks duration from 08/01/2011 to 04/02/2011 (28 days), a week’s data having 336 time steps represent a single node in this case, similarly output layer consists of four nodes for four weeks of data. Subsequent weeks in similar fashion were given as input and target for testing the trained network. The ‘R’ values showed marginal increase in 4 weeks prediction which might be due to the increased number of target values available for the network generalization. However the ‘R’ value decreased for the 12 weeks significant wave height as one week's input data range was too small for predicting a long duration of 12 weeks wave height. The number of neurons was increased in hidden layer by one after every prediction. The best performance was obtained at four and six neurons in hidden layer during 4 weeks and 12 weeks prediction of significant wave height. The training performance showed considerable increase in 'R' values but testing 'R' values drastically reduced hinting at the overfitting behaviour of the network when the number of neurons was increased beyond four and six during 4 weeks and 12 weeks significant wave height prediction when number of neurons in hidden layer was increased. In both the cases the prediction duration is large (4 weeks and 12 weeks) compared to input data of one week. Table 1 gives the results of weekly prediction duration of four weeks and twelve weeks using one week’s data as input. Naturally the range of targets will be greater than those of input provided, weakening the prediction capability of the network when new data set is fed to the network.

Similarly, yearlong predictions are carried out using data of year 2011 as input and data of year 2012 as target in training process and next two consecutive year’s data (2012 and 2013) as input and target for simulation purpose respectively. The input and output layer consist of 52 nodes representing 52 weeks data for a single year. The prediction done using yearlong data yielded satisfactory results with training process 'R' value reaching up to 0.988 and simulation 'R' value reaching up to 0.957. The optimum number of neurons beyond eight led to decrease in the prediction capability of the trained network when simulation data sets are presented to the network as seen in Table 2. The scatter plot of training and simulation of the network is shown in Figure 6 & 7. The plot of observed values and predicted values is shown in the Figure 8.

Monthly prediction involved feeding the network with a month’s data having 1440 data points in a single input node. The year 2011 hourly wave data were divided into twelve sets having 1440 data points each corresponding to 30 days of observation, hence the yearly data comprised of 01/01/2011 to 26/12/2011 (360 days). For one month’s wave prediction data from 01/01/2011 to 30/01/2011 and from 31/01/2011 to 01/03/2011 was given as input and target data respectively. The subsequent data of 30 days period were given as input and targets for testing purpose. The number of neurons was increased in the hidden layers, however not much appreciable improvement was seen hence the number of neurons was taken as one for all the forthcoming predictions which has a month's data as input in a single node which involved one month's data as input as shown in Table 3.

A year’s data set contains 17592 readings however this was cut short to 17472 readings so that the data can be divided equally in to 12 months comprising of 30 days (1440 readings) each. Prediction for entire year using 12 months data of year 2011 as input with equal number of input nodes is carried out giving the year 2012 wave data of 12 months as target during the training process. The trained network is then used to predict the 2012 wave data using 2011 wave data as input. The results obtained are very good in this case and 'mse' value as low as 191.67 and 1234.18 were obtained for training and simulation respectively, also high 'R' value of 0.980 and 0.977 were obtained. The optimum number of neuron in hidden layer is found to be six in this case. The increase in number of neurons beyond six led to decrease in the prediction capability of the trained network when simulation data sets are presented to the network as seen in Table 4. Figure 9 & 10 gives the scatter plot of training and simulation of the network. The plot of observed values and predicted values are shown in the Figure 11.

Prediction with NARX network

Data was divided into weekly and monthly sets in a similar fashion as done for the purpose of prediction of waves using FFBP network. Weekly predictions were carried out using one week’s data to predict 4, 12, 25 and 52 weeks wave predictions respectively. The results obtained in terms of 'mse' and 'R' was good ranging from 0.99 for one week's prediction to greater than 0.97 for 25 weeks prediction. However the accuracy dropped to 0.85 for predictions of 52 week wave data using one week's data. The use of target data as one of the input nodes as explained in Figure 3 helped in improving the efficiency of the network and also in long term prediction of wave data using small amount of data. The best performance for prediction of 25 weeks was obtained for seven numbers of neuron in the hidden layer. The variation of 'R' values for the case is shown in Table 5.

The increase in number of neurons beyond seven led to decrease in the prediction capability of the trained network when simulation data sets are presented to the network as seen in Table 6. Scatter plot and graph observed versus predicted waves are shown in Figure 12-14.

Monthly predictions were also carried out on similar lines using one month data set for predictions of wave height with duration ranging from one month to twelve months the results of which are tabulated in the Table 7. January 2011's data used as input and subsequent months as target for all training iterations of various lengths of predictions. One year's prediction can be obtained with accuracy greater than 0.98. Also the NARX network's results in both the weekly and monthly analysis showed steady decrease in accuracy when the duration of prediction was increased keeping the input data length as constant. The increase in neurons in the hidden layer beyond the best network architecture also showed gradual decrease in accuracy rather than varied ones which would have rendered the study inconclusive.

The increase in number of neurons beyond six led to decrease in the prediction capability of the trained network when simulation data sets are presented to the network as seen in Table 8. Scatter plot of training and simulation are shown in Figure 15 & 16. The graph of observed and predicted values are shown in Figure 17.

Conclusion

Traditional methods of predictions of waves were carried based on semi empirical formulations and numerical modeling which is data intensive. The present study makes use of relatively new technique of ANN which has been tried and tested in various coastal engineering applications. Predictions for yearlong significant wave height using equal length of input data of weekly and monthly sets gave satisfactory results in FFBP network with co-efficient of correlation values greater than 0.95 in both the cases. Whereas, using the NARX network, one week's data was successfully utilized to predict waves at the same location for six months duration with 'R' value greater than 0.86. The yearlong prediction using one month’s data gave good 'R' value of 0.97. The NARX network outperformed FFBP network in terms of data requirement and accuracy achieved also it takes less computational time as well.

For more about Juniper Publishers please click on: https://twitter.com/Juniper_publish

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#sea waves #Underwater vehicles #Aquatic toxicology #coastal science #impact factor

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juniperpublishers-agriculture · 4 years ago

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Which Sustainable Development Goals and Eco-challenges Matter Most to Niger’s Farmers and Herdsmen? A Best Worst Scaling Approach- Juniper publishers

The sustainable development has been defined as the capacity of the present generation to achieve their needs without preventing the future generation to achieve their needs. Several studies have indicated that concerted effort have been globally, regionally, nationally, and locally undertaken to increase public awareness for sustainable development goals and eco-challenges.

At global level, the 193 world leaders have e 1gathered at United Nations (UN) to adopt the seven (17) sustainable development goals to achieve several extraordinary things by 2030 namely ending poverty, promoting prosperity and well-being for all and protecting our environment (2015). It has been documented that for the goals to work, people need to know them and if goals are famous, they cannot be forgotten. The united Nation secretary stated that 2015 is year of historic opportunity for our generation to end poverty, to take a step to reduce climate change threats, to adopt a new development agenda and finally set the world on course for a better future [1]. He also stated that our generation can be the first to end extreme poverty, the most determined generation to end injustice and inequalities and the last generation to be threatened by climate change.

At national level, governments around the world have pledged to leave no one behind, meaning that working towards shared progress so that progress is equality shared amongst people on top of society and those on the margin of society. This is furthered illustrated by Gandhi saying that a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members. The steps the international community needs to set on course to make sure no one is left behind have also been documented and disseminated. Previous studies have indicated that more and better data should be collected, policies and programs focusing on reaching vulnerable populations need to be developed and awareness must be raised in the community and beyond [1].

At regional level, sustainable development goals have integrated in all projects and programs. Projects such herd rebuilding, restoration of fragile ecosystems via tree planting and sustainable land management, income generating activities, cash and food for asset and support for crop production have been executed so as to guide farmers and herdsmen towards wise utilization of scare resources and thereby building sustainable communities. The water-energy-food nexus approach has great potential to increase the resilience of marginalized communities in southern Africa by contributing towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 13). Studies have well-documented that climate change adaptation strategies and water-energy-food nexus should be integrated to achieve opportunities geared towards proper resource management, better harmonization of activities across all sectors, build resilience, and reduce vulnerabilities; thereby attaining regional development goals [2-4].

At local level, a grass root level movement aims at creating awareness around sustainable development has been initiated and reinforced. Local movement via farm and garden schools where a few farmers received training on human capacity building has been a success. These farmers once well-equipped are encouraged to train and share production experience with other farmers, thereby creating a wide learning networking. This technique has been increasingly experimented with a high-level adaptation rate. The saying thinking locally and acting globally as well as the bottom up approach in which farmers are encouraged to design the project and the project does the development are well shared and documented by keeping producing p successful stories.

However, little is relatively known about the farmers and herdsmen awareness and preferences for sustainable development and eco-challenges and it is often based on merely simple speculation. The overall objective of this paper is to evaluate farmers and herdsmen’s awareness and preferences for sustainable development goals and eco-challenges.

Synthesis of Previous Studies

Several studies related to sustainable development have been researched and documented. [5] have focused on the relevance of endogenous preferences in the explanation of consumer behavior and its role for sustainable development. The motivation for their study is based on their thought that demand side has received far less attention in the sustainability discussion than the production side. They feel that there seems, however little doubt that consumption is equally important to achieving sustainability. With reference to a specific type of local food market of community supported agriculture (CSA) groups, this study investigates consumer behavior and its relevance in sustainable development. This study is important in providing information on the change in preferences after interaction with the farmers and other market participants for several years. This learning aspect may, however, prove crucial to identify paths towards sustainable development.

[6] have also explored linkages between climate change and sustainable development from a “developing country perspective” in Brazil, India, the West African region, South Africa and South Asia. These authors reported that the central concerns about sustainability include economic, social and environmental dimensions and will necessary influence action in each of these areas. [7] have also reported that the main objective in the economic dimension of sustainability is the “economic use” of natural resources. Another cross-cutting sustainability issue relates to maintaining eco-system “health’. Climate change may threaten eco-system health in several important ways, including accelerating irreversible change such as through loss of species and of habitats (for example, coral reef systems). Such concerns lead decision-makers to focus on “durability” as opposed to optimization. The social dimension of sustainability raises a number of important “fairness” issues [8]. These authors have reported that fairness in the process of making climate policy including participation and access to decision-making, which will inevitably determine the perceived fairness of any policy and ultimately its effectiveness.

The application of Likert scale in ranking items has gained popularity in psychology before spreading in various academic fields. However, Likert scale does not give room for trade off amongst items being ranked and interpreting results from Likert scale estimation is still a big challenge. The application of best worst scaling (BWS) and count-based method has recently been gaining a momentum in the academic literature. The BWS application in agricultural sector include studies on evaluating consumers general and specific food values [9,10], [11] who studied preferences for sustainable agricultural production, [12] who evaluated Haitian’s preferences for food and other basic commodities after the earthquake, [12] assessed improved cowpea seed attributes evaluation, [13] who evaluated US consumers preferences for agricultural and food policies and [14] who investigated Bangladeshi consumers’ preferences for fresh vegetable. These studies have failed to document sustainable development goals and eco-challenges and their respective policy options.

Methodology and Data Collection Method

The authors have followed the methods developed by [9] stating that in a set of k elements, there are k(k-1) possible combinations. He further highlighted that the choice of a pair of strategies in the k(k−1) combinations corresponds to a maximum allocation of the choice difference. [9] also concluded that countbased approach and conditional logit used to model this process yield the same results. Thus, conditional logit model was used to analyze the best worst scale data. For each question, the ecochallenge selected as best is coded as 1, while those selected as worst is coded minus one and the remaining eco-challenges not being selected is coded as zero. The joint probability distribution is more appropriate to model this behavior. The probability that in each block one sustainable development goal has been chosen as the best and another as a worst is the probability that the difference between that of best and worst must be greater all k(k- 1)-1.Thus, this probability can be mathematically represented as follows:

Thirdly, the preference shares for each sustainable development goals were evaluated using the exponential function expressed as follows:

Where Vj =Xβj is the utility of the goal j, whilst Vk=Xβk is the utility of the goal k.

The best worst scaling (BWS) is increasingly used in various fields of study. It was used to collect data. In the field of agricultural economics, the use of BWS is still in its infancy and there is need to investigate the merit of several experimental design techniques. The balanced incomplete block design (BIBD) was used to design questionnaire served in the data collection. Thus, seventeen (17) sustainable development goals as documented in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) agenda were used to create three goals per block. Each goal is randomly assigned to block in three times, thereby maintaining the equal probability principle. For each question, respondents were asked to choose his best and worst sustainable development goals and this behavior is consistent with random utility theory, which is well-rooted in the microeconomics theory.

The survey was conducted in two three villages namely Dakatche, Fonkoye and Tahoua city, all located in Tahoua State. Respondents were randomly selected and interviewed. To increase diversity in our sample, a specific gender is targeted within a given household, thereby creating opportunity for rural women get their voices heard. In total, 136 respondents consisting of 69 farmers and 67 herdsmen were selected and interviewed. As shown in Table 1, an example of a question related to sustainable development goals is presented.

Similarly, the count-based method was used to determine the nine (9) eco-challenge values. First the nine eco-challenges were presented and their meanings clearly explained to respondents. Secondly, the questionnaire was immediately administered by asking respondents to select his three most important eco-challenges and his three least important eco-challenges. Respondents have also received explanation that eco-challenge cannot be selected as best and worst at the same time, implying that selecting one eco-challenge as best excludes its chance to be chosen as the worst and vice versa. As depicted in Table 2, the questionnaire related how eco-challenges are presented to respondents:

The process of asking respondents to repeatedly ranking his best and worst eco-challenges is consistent with utility theory, which is deeply rooted in microeconomic theory. This implies that the difference between the number of times an eco-challenge being selected as best and the number of times being chosen as worst is underlying utility maximization.

Thus, the utility function for eco-challenge can be mathematically expressed as follows:

Where Vi is utility for person i, WA is for water, HEA is for health, FO is for food, NA is for nature, CO is for community, EN is for energy, SI stands for simplicity, WAS stands for waste and TRA stands for transportation. The preference shares were also computed by taking the exponential function of each coefficient, summing them up and calculating the weight of each ecochallenge. The analysis of the literature indicates that the countbased and conditional logit estimates are quiet similar [9,12].

Results and Discussion

This section presents results from summary statistics of surveyed respondents, conditional logit estimates and the best worst scaling. Table 3 reports summary statistics of respondents. Table 3 reveals that most of the respondents were men (96%), married (99%), uneducated (38%) and had an average income (37500 FCFA) with an average age of 42 year. Table 3 also shows that most respondent had 10 persons, 30ha and 5 animals for family size, farm size and herd size respectively. The question related to awareness indicates that 80% of farmers are not aware of sustainable development goals, implying that awareness exercise should be carried out among uneducated farmers and herdsmen to increase the understanding of the sustainable development goals.

Table 4 reports results from conditional logit estimates. Results from likelihood ratio test indicate that the null hypothesis was rejected and the authors concluded that data from farmers and herdsmen could be pooled and therefore only the pooled model was reported and interpreted. Coefficients with positive signs are considered as the most important, while coefficients with negative sign are considered as the least important. Table 4 reveal that gender equality (0.736), followed by industry, innovation and infrastructures (0.611), no poverty (0.378), climate action (0.362), reduced inequalities (0.341), clean water and sanitation (0.323), zero hunger (0.210), quality education (0.190) are positive and significant, indicating that these sustainable development goals were most commonly selected as the most important policies for farmers and herdsmen relative to partnerships to goals. However, affordable and clean energy, responsible production and consumption and life on land are negative and significant, showing that these sustainable development goals were least preferred by farmers and herdsmen. Table 4 also provides results for relative scores. The relative importance of each sustainable development goals is calculated relative to partnership. Results revealed that 11% and 9% of farmers and herdsmen consider gender equality and industry, innovation and infrastructures as the most and second most important sustainable development goal policies respectively. Similarly, 11% and 10% of farmers consider gender equality and industry, innovation and infrastructures as the most desirable polices respectively; while 10% and 9% of herdsmen view gender equality and industry, innovation and infrastructures, respectively. This implies that farmers’ preferences for these sustainable development goals are higher than those of herdsmen. In addition, no poverty, clean water and sanitation, reduced inequalities and climate action were viewed by 7% of farmers and herdsmen as the third most important sustainable development goals in the study area.

Table 5 presents results from the count-based method analysis related to eco-challenges. Coefficients with positive signs are considered as the most important, while coefficients with negative sign are considered as the least important. Table 5 shows that water (0.309), followed by health (0.257) and food (0.252) are positive, implying that these eco-challenges are the most preferred by farmers and herdsmen. However, nature (-0.020), community (-0.032), energy (-0.108), simplicity (-0.135), waste (-0.164) and transportation (-0.184) are negative, revealing that these ecochallenges are least preferred by farmers. The relative importance as shown in Table 3 indicate that water as eco-challenge has the highest share (14.58%), against health (13.84%) and against food (13.77%). However, transportation as eco-challenge has the lowest share (8.90%), followed by waste (9.08%) and simplicity (9.35%). This implies that water, health and food are the most preferred eco-challenges that should be promoted in the study. Results reveal that the sum of best (422) is greater than that of worst (350), implying that best options are more likely to be chosen that worst options. These results are consistent with studies by Flammini et al (2017) and Beddington [2] concluding that water, energy, and food resources are important for human wellbeing, poverty reduction, and sustainable development and their management is vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Furthermore, FAO [4] stated that understanding and managing water, energy and food are essential for human wellbeing, poverty reduction and sustainable development [15-17].

Conclusion

Several studies have investigated the impact of sustainable development goals and eco-challenges on the economic growth in both developed and developing nations. The definition and goals of sustainable development as well as eco-challenges have been increasingly becoming harmonized and widely accepted by United Nations. Tremendous efforts and strategies have been undertaken both at local, regional, national and global level to achieve the sustainable development goals and eco-challenges. However, relatively little is known how farmers and herdsmen’s values these sustainable development goals and eco-challenges. This paper sought to determine farmers and herdsmen’s preferences for sustainable development goals and eco-challenges.

Results suggest that young male and married farmers and herdsmen having large family size and herd size should be identified and trained to successful implement the sustainable development goals and eco-challenges in the study area. Results reveal that gender equality, followed by industry, innovation and infrastructures, no poverty, climate action, reduced inequalities, clean water and sanitation, zero hunger and quality education are the most preferred sustainable development goals. Results also indicate that water, health and food are the most desirable ecochallenges.

In this study, the authors have attempted to determine farmers and herdsmen’s preferences for sustainable development goals and eco-challenges as documented by United Nations Development program. The findings of this study should be fully integrated in the sustainable development agenda, thereby providing baseline information for policymakers to strategically plan and guide local development program by considering sustainable development goals and eco-challenges as suggested by farmers and herdsmen. Future direction for research is to assess sustainable development goals and eco-challenges across counties, regions, nations and continents. It could be important to track a panel of people to study the stability of farmers and herdsmen’s preferences for sustainable development goals and eco-challenges over time. It is also important to determine the influence of farmers and herdsmen socioeconomic characteristics on the sustainable development goal and eco-challenges values. Finally, the use of a BWS approach to expl

ore not only Niger’s Farmers and herdsmen preferences for sustainable development and eco-challenges policies, but also to enrich the existing literature would provide strong basis for various policy evaluations in the future.

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skyfire85 · 4 years ago

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A program to upgrade the Mi-28N was started by Mil in 2009. The redesign removes the nose radar and thimble radome, with the functions consolidated into the H025 unit above the rotors. The helicopter is fitted with uprated VK-2500P turboshafts, which incorporate FADEC. The engines drive a redesigned rotor, giving the aircraft 13% greater top speed and 10% greater cruise speed. A new fire control system feeds into the Izdeliye 296 data processing system, giving the crew greater situational awareness and target acquisition abilities. In addition to the existing 9M123 or 9M127-1 anti-tank missiles, the Mi-28NM is planned to utilize the new Izdeliye 305 LMUR (Light Multi-role Unified Missile), which would be capable against ground or air targets. The LMUR is expected to be fitted with an inertial guidance system, with mid-course guidance provided by the Mi-28 before the missile's own seeker provides terminal guidance. The prototype Mi-28NM made its maiden flight in 2016, with trials of the upgraded engines beginning in 2020.

-The prototype Mi-28NM in flight in 2019. | Photo: Anna Zvereva

-An Mil Mi-28N on display at MAKS-2007 airshow. | Photo: RuLavan

FLIGHTLINE: 163 - MIL MI-28 "HAVOC"

The Mi-28 was designed in the early 1980s as a successor to the Mi-24 "Hind" as the premiere attack helicopter of the Soviet Army.

In 1972 the Mil OKB began work on a follow-on to the Mi-24 (NATO reporting name: "Hind"). In contrast to the Hind, the new helicopter would focus more on the anti-tank/CAS role, and as a result the cabin was omitted, reducing the transport capacity to three troops. A number of designs were reviewed, including a compound design similar to the Lockheed AH-56 or Sikorsky S-67, before settling on a more conventional arrangement in 1977.

Bearing a passing resemblance to the contemporary AH-64 Apache or Agusta A129 Mangusta, the eventual design arrived at by Mil incorporates a narrow fuselage with the engines housed in pods on either side, driving a five-bladed main rotor and a three-bladed tail rotor. Stub wings provided mounting points for weapons, backed up by an underslung cannon. The fuselage would be armored, able to withstand up to 12.7mm AP bullets and 20mm fragments. The non-retractable tricycle landing gear and armored seats allow the crew to survive an impact at up 12 m/s.

-An Mi-24 modified into a test mule for the Mi-28 program. | Photo: Mil OKB

Several prototype and pre-production Mi-24 helicopters were fitted with various components for testing, and in 1981 a mockup was presented for inspection. Further work was approved, and on 10 November 1982 the first prototype had its maiden flight, followed by the second prototype in 1983. The new helicopter was given the designation Mi-28 in the Soviet Union, and was called "Havok" by NATO. The following year, the Mi-28 was passed over for the Ka-50 for production as the Soviet's new attack helicopter, though work on the Mi-28 was continued, with lower priority, as a fall back.

-Orthograph of the Mi-28. | Illustration: Dr. Dan Saranga

In 1987, low-rate production of the production Mi-28 was authorized, with the first flying in January 1988. The A model differed from the first prototype in having more powerful engines and an X-shaped tail rotor instead of the three bladed unit on the original. In June 1989, the Mi-28A was displayed at the Paris Air Show. In 1991 the second helicopter was completed, but the upheaval surrounding the end of the USSR saw production put on hold. In 1993 the program was canceled, as the Mi-28 was judged to be inferior to the Ka-50/52, largely as Mil's copter was not all-weather capable.

-The Mi-28A prototype on display at the Paris Air Show. | Photo: Roy Cochrun

In 1995 an all-weather version of the Mi-28, the Mi-28N, was unveiled. The 28N (the N signifying "night") was fitted with millimeter wave radar in a mushroom-shaped dome atop the rotor, much like the AH-64 Apache Longbow. The N was also equipped with FLIR and a laser rangefinder, allowing the employment of laser-guided anti-tank missiles. Development of the Mi-28N was slow due to competition from the Ka-50/52 and general instability in Russia in the post-Cold War environment, and nearly ten years passed before the second prototype was completed. In 2003, the Russian Air Force reversed course, and announced that the Mi-28 and Ka-50 would both be produced, with the Mi-28's lower costs and similarity to the Mi-24 being citied as reasons for the change in position. In 2006 the first production Mi-28N was delivered, with an order of 67 placed in 2015, allowing the retirement of the Mi-24, though this was later deferred following successful deployment of the Hind to Syria.

-An Mi-28N on display at a Russian airshow in 2013. Compare to the Mi-28A above for differences in the nose-mounted sensors, cockpits, and engines, as well as the radome above the rotors. | Photo: Vitaly V. Kuzmin

WEAPONS AND SENSORS

The Mi-28 family is equipped with a chin-mounted 30mm autocannon, which has selective fire capability of either 200 or 800 RPM, and can carry fire a number of different rounds, including high-explosive incendiary (with or without tracer), armor-piercing ballistic cap (with tracer) or AP sabot (with or without tracer). The cannon has dual feed lines, allowing two types of ammo to be used against a variety of targets, including aircraft. Guided missiles include the 9M120 (NATO: Spiral -2) (radio/SACLOS), 9K121 (NATO: Whirlwind) and 9M123 (NATO: Springer), both of which use laser guidance. The Havok can also carry S-8 or -13 unguided rockets, UPK-23 gunpods, 9K38 (SA-18 Grouse) or R-73 (AA-11 Archer) anti-aircraft missiles, or KMGU mine dispensers. Up to four drop tanks can be carried to increase ferry range, if needed.

-An Mi-28N on display with a number of different weapons that can be carried. | Photo: Mil Helicopters

The pilot and gunner are provided with LCDs, including a moving map display which can overlay targets provided by the MMW radar and FLIR. Both crew are provided night vison goggles (currently the GEO-ONV1 family). Unlike with western attack helicopters, the Havok's pilot, but not the gunner, is fitted with a helmet mounted target designator. As with other such systems, the pilot is able to select a target by looking at it, at which point the navigator/weapons officer can employ the required weapons. The view systems have two optical channels, providing narrow and wide FOV, and can cover 110° horizontally and from +13° to -40° vertically. The thimble radome on the nose covers a conventional weather/navigational radar, giving the Mi-28 its distinctive silhouette.

-The radar, LD and camera systems of an Mi-28NE give the chopper an air of menace, which is backed up by the chin cannon as well as the missiles and rocket pods on its wings. | Photo: Oleg V. Belyakov

AIRFRAME AND ENGINES

The Mi-28 is somewhat less imposing than its predecessor, being about as long as an Mi-24 (17.01 vs 17.5 meters, excluding the rotors), but shorter and with a slimmer fuselage (3.82 vs 6.5 meters, and 4.88 vs 6.5m wingspan). In addition to the armored fuselage, the cockpit glass is also proof against 12.7-14.5mm shells. The narrow fuselage contains a cramped passenger compartment, with room for three, useful for rescuing downed crew.

-The protection provided by the Havoc's cockpit is indicated by the thickness of the WSO's door. | Photo: Mil Helicopter

Power is provided by two 2,200hp Isotov/Klimov TV-3-117VM or two 2,699hp VK-2500 turboshafts, giving the Mi-28 a cruise speed of 270kmh, a max speed of 320kmh, and a combat range of 200km (with 10 minutes loiter and a 5% reserve). For transport over longer ranges, the rotors can be removed and the Mi-28 loaded into an An-124 or similarly large transport.

-An Mi-28A being unloaded prior to an airshow in Sweden. | Photo: Swedish MOD

EXPORTS AND UPGRADES

In addition to service with the Russian Air Force, the Mi-28 has been offered (in the downgraded Mi-28NE or Mi-28D (Daylight) variants. Kenya and India have both examined the Havok, but the type has not been accepted by either country. Mi-28NEs are in service with both the Iraqi Army and the Algerian Air Force, with the former acquiring between 23 and 30 Havoks, and the later placing an order for 42 in 2010. In April, Venezuela ordered ten Mi-28s as part of a deal worth an estimated $5 billion USD.

-Mi-28NEs of the Iraqi Army, with the nose of an Mi-35 in the foreground. | Photo: Iraqi MOD

#aircraft #aviation #avgeek #cold war #cold war history #coldwar #aviation history #ussr #russia #russian air force #attack helicopter #helicopter #mi28 #mi 28

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imarkt001 · 5 months ago

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Ekomilk Ultra Milk Analyzer in Hyderabad

Ekomilk Ultra is a premium milk product known for its advanced processing and superior quality. Typically, this product is part of the ultra-high-temperature (UHT) milk category, which involves heating the milk to a very high temperature for a short period of time to kill harmful bacteria while preserving its taste, nutritional value, and shelf life.

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brajeshupadhyay · 5 years ago

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India's coronavirus numbers continue to defy experts' projections; flattening of curve remains distant proposition

For the past two months, NITI Aayog members have been predicting that the number of positive COVID-19 cases are stabilising and that the government lockdown has successfully "flattened the curve."

The most recent instance of this came on Sunday, when VK Paul, a member of the think-tank, said the continuous rise in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus is expected to stabilise "anytime soon". Paul also stated that India is nowhere close to the kind of escalation of coronavirus cases that it witnessed during the pre-lockdown phase.

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“In the pre-lockdown stage, we were doubling our number of cases in every five days. Before that even at every 3 days. Now, we are doubling in 11 to 12 days. So, overall the rate of spread has diminished but yes the number still has not stabilised. But we expect it to stabilise any time soon,” Paul said.

But data on the spread of COVID-19 shows the coronavirus has a long history of defying experts' predictions and models.

Just today, economist Shamika Ravi, previously part of the prime minister's Economic Advisory Council, put up data on her Twitter account showing the number of active COVID-19 cases actually grew faster at 6.8 percent with a doubling time of 11 days compared to 4.8 percent with a doubling time of 15 days. Ravi said the trend is driven by rising concerns in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, Delhi and Tamil Nadu, where the infection is "at worrying rates, mortality rates are increasing and there is no specific strategy for testing and contact tracing".

And on Tuesday, the Union health ministry reported the highest single-day spurt in a 24-hour span with 3,900 cases and 195 fatalities. Joint Secretary, Health, Lav Agarwal, speaking about the new figures at a press briefing, said it is the highest increase noted in the number of cases and deaths” in 24 hours.

NITI Aayog experts miss mark

In fact, this isn't even the first time Paul, or other members of the NITI Aayog, have completely missed the mark when it comes to talking about the coronavirus.

Earlier in April, Paul expressed optimism while unveiling a study that suggested that the lockdown had slowed the rate of transmission and increased the doubling time, the period it took for cases to double, to about 10 days and predicted that there would be no new COVID-19 cases after 16 May.

In fact, one of the members of Paul's committee, speaking to The Hindu on condition of anonymity, said his claim was "highly unlikely." The member told the newspaper there would have to be declines in Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal, all fuelling the increase in numbers, for the national average to decline.

“So far there is no such evidence of a decline. So I don’t know the basis of that forecast. We are planning, in terms of keeping ventilators, beds, ICU facilities ready on the assumption that this will last much longer,” the member told The Hindu.

And with good reason. While the study projected that India would hit its peak on 3 May, adding slightly above 1,500 cases a day, which would then reduce to 1,000 cases on 12 May and hit zero by 16 May, India actually saw six straight days of over 2,000 cases since 1 May, with a peak of 3,932 cases on 4 May.

Also in April, NITI Aayog chief executive Amitabh Kant, speaking after India registered its 1,000th coronavirus death, said, "Our analysis finds that the rate of growth in positive cases and fatalities has been consistently lower: linear but non-exponential."

Eminent scientist VK Saraswat, another member of NITI Aayog, claimed in mid-April that the country was in the process of "flattening the curve" and that the government's lockdown had paid dividends. "I can only say that the rate is not going to go beyond what has been going on now, maybe 700 to 800 cases per day," Saraswat was quoted as saying by PTI.

Predictions fall flat

Other expert predictions have also fallen flat. The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), using Artificial Intelligence-driven data analysis at the end of April, estimated that the COVID-19 crisis would end in India around 21 May. As per the university's website, calculating the data-driven estimates, the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model is regressed based on the data from different countries to estimate the key dates of transition during the pandemic life cycle curve across the globe.

The university further predicted the end date for the United States around 11 May, while the crisis in Iran would end around 10 May. As of today, the United States and Iran have seen 74,809 and 6,418 deaths respectively. Disease experts in the United States, which is gearing up to reopen, have predicted as many as 200,000 cases per day with the daily toll touching 3,000 on 1 June and anywhere from 1,00,000 to 1,30,000 total deaths in the country by August.

Italy, whose end date for COVID-19 was predicted as today, saw a rise both in the number of deaths (369) and a jump in new daily infections (1,444) even as the number of active cases dropped from 98,467 yesterday to 91,528 today. Italy is the second-worst affected country by coronavirus in Europe. The university also predicted 8 December as the day the COVID-19 crisis would abate worldwide.

And in March, News18 reported that scientists examining the pandemic said India had "entered a crucial phase" in curbing the spread of disease as numbers climb steadily, and offered two distinct scenarios: success in containing the disease like in China or an outbreak that could stress the country's health system.

“If we assume the disease will progress like China and if we can implement a strong self-quarantine with social distancing successfully, just like the Chinese did — which means we will be able to yield the Chinese success in India — then we can assume about 415 cases by April 15,” Sourish Das, associate professor at the Chennai Mathematical Institute, told News18.

“In the worst-case scenario, if we fail to control the progression of the disease, and go on the Italian way, we can expect more than 3,500 cases by 15 April,” Das warned, adding that it is unlikely to touch so many cases considering India’s younger demographic. “I strongly believe an Italian scenario is very unlikely. Because the average age in Italy is 45, one of the highest in the EU. On the other hand, the average age in India is 28, one of the lowest in the world.”

Unfortunately, the 'extremely unlikely' scenario, one three times worse than the worst-case scenario envisaged by Das, came to pass. By 15 April, India had registered 12,370 cases and 422 deaths.

If anything can be gleaned from the repeatedly dashed hopes and predictions of experts, is that the aphorism "all models are wrong but some models are useful" rings particularly true in the case of coronavirus.

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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LIVE Liverpool – Manchester United – Premier League – 19 January 2020

Premier League – Follow the Football match between Liverpool and Manchester United live with Eurosport. The match starts at 17:30 on 19 January 2020. Our live coverage lets you follow all the key moments as they happen. Who will come out on top in the battle of the managers Jürgen Klopp or Ole Gunnar Solskjær? Find out by following our live matchcast.

Have your say by voting on who will win between Liverpool and Manchester United? Enjoy some pre-match reading with related articles about these two Enjoy some pre-match reading with related articles about these two Football teams. Head-to-head: see historical stats and visit our detailed profiles for Liverpool vs Manchester United. Get all the latest on Football: fixtures, results and tables. Tickets: Barclays Premier League official site

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keesbuiel-blog · 6 years ago

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It is widely known that the United Kingdom was involved in the early research and development of the internet, although the United States of America was driving the project and provided the funding; the UK played a crucial part. Tim Berners-Lee, Peter Thomas Kirstein and Donald Watts Davies are some of the names that stick out when you talk about the development of the internet. I wonder what they would think about how we use the internet today.

To help answer this and other questions such as what country produces the most traffic? How fast is our internet speed? Are we at the front of the internet advances or the back? Let’s having a quick look at what the average person uses their phone and the internet for.

The top 5 activities for mobile devices are: 1 map, 2 instant messaging, 3 music, 4 photos and 5 weather. You could say we all like to find a nice place to take a good photo while listening to music and then tell everybody about your activity and today’s weather.

Despite the UK having one of the fastest and longest physical internet lines in the world (England to USA) I find it hard to fathom why our internet speeds are so slow and why our ISP bang on about speed so much when in reality the UK is badly served. Have you ever connected to the internet in the UK? It’s really slow. If your living in the UK I bet you have experienced video buffering when streaming and I bet if you have ever complained to you IPS provider they tell you to turn your router off and on again or the buffering is due to peak hours. I think this is a load of twaddle, peak hours? We are in 2019 not 1999.

As of January 2019 the top 5 countries with the fastest average fixed line internet speeds are: Singapore with 189.38 MBPS, Iceland with 147.13 MBPS, Hong Kong with 139.58 MBPS, Romania with 107.42 and South Korea with 103.51, these are all great speeds to be averaging in 2019. The United Kingdom on the other hand averages a miserable 55.14 MBPS this is not a good speed to be averaging in 2019. I didn’t expect Romania or Iceland to have such a good fixed line average. The top average mobile internet speed range from 63.13 MBPS to 48.64 MBPS and again the UK does not appear on the top 10 list. Forget BREXIT, this is INTERNEXIT!

In Singapore you could download and fill up a 120GB hard drive in around 10 minutes that’s around 31,000 songs. In the UK it would take around 36 minutes with a download speed 55.14 MBPS but if you have a connection speed like mine it would take over an hour! Forget video and pictures!! Slow internet speed is a concern for e-commerce companies and anyone offering a web based service. 40% of all people will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load and 80% of all those people will never return. This won’t be solely down to website optimization as internet speed will play apart; if the site you’re visiting doesn’t load you typically abandon the request and try again or try another website to see if that site loads. We briefly discussed this in a previous blog. This means that you cannot adopt the latest video formats and designs or up the graphics on your site – you are constrained by the ISP!! Basically you have to down size everything on your home page or landing to ensure the page will load within 3 seconds.

In the UK online shopping is big business the online shopping market per capita is around $4,000 which is pretty astonishing when you compared the UK internet speed and usage to USA. There must be some patient shoppers in the UK. I sourced a list of the apparent top websites visited in the UK. Considering online retail shopping brings in some much online revenue it doesn’t seem to bring much traffic. The top 20 Google- YouTube - Facebook - Amazon - BBC Online - Wikipedia - eBay UK - Reddit - Twitter - Live - Netflix - Twitch TV - Instagram - Office - Yahoo - Pornhub - The Lad Bible - VK - The Guardian - Live Jasmin. If you look closely you will see a lot of free service providers who use their free website space on their platform for marketing. This product marketing is done through your search history and cookies.

TonkaBI builds capability to process insurance claims, such as car insurance claims, Ai Image Processing though Artificial (AI) and Machine Learning. TonkaBI’s Artificial Intelligence capability is based on image processing. This is used to build a capability that is specific to your company and process.

It’s reported most people in the UK prefer to use a desktop rather a mobile device or tablet, care to take a guess at the sites most visited on a mobile device or tablet? Around 51% of people use desktop computer or laptop when surfing the web this fallen by 3% in recent years whereas 36% is from smart phone this is expected to grow. I know you don’t need fast internet to purchase clothes etc online but considering the market value VS internet speed this is quite low. However new VR tech is on the way and augmented sales channels – how will the UK stack up then?

By 2021 it’s predicted there will be 3.8 billion active Smartphone devices and with Asian owning half of those devices. 61.09% of all web traffic from Asian is from mobile devices whereas Europe’s mobile web traffic only consists of 37.08% to the overall internet usage.

Over 20 years ago, in 1992, global Internet networks carried approximately 100 GB of traffic per day. Ten years later, in 2002, global Internet traffic amounted to 100 Gigabytes per second (GBps). In 2016, global Internet traffic reached more than 20,000 GBps. That’s an astonishing leap. Check out our earlier blog on data.

Know more about it at: https://www.tonkabi.com/artificial-intelligence

#ArtificialIntelligence AiImageProcessing

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girlinpride · 4 years ago

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Marine Actuators & Valves Market Price (USD/Unit) and Gross Margin (%) analysis 2021

The latest report published by Profshare Market Research projects that Marine Actuators & Valves Market is expected to show impressive CAGR of 5.2 % between 2019-27. The study covers detail market analysis, growth and forecast of the Marine Actuators & Valves Market. The report includes market analysis on global as well country specific level. Historical data analysis from 2015 to 2019 is very important to forecast market for 2019 to 2027.

The report uses value chain analysis for each of the product segments. Value chain analysis offers in depth information about value addition at each stage of the product development. It is very important for organization to reduce cost of the final product without compromising much on quality. If organization receives correct value chain analysis information then it can ease the product manufacturing process to large extent. Seamless product delivery to consumer has become more important than it ever were, proper value chain analysis exactly delivers the same.

Access sample report @ https://www.profsharemarketresearch.com/enquiry/marine-actuators-valves-market-report-enquiry/

Major players in the Marine Actuators & Valves Market are identified through secondary research and their market revenues determined through primary and secondary research. Secondary research included the research of the annual and financial reports of the top manufacturers; whereas, primary research included key opinions of leaders and industry experts. The percentage splits, market shares, growth rate and breakdowns of the product markets are determined through using secondary sources and verified through the primary sources.

Research report includes the extensive use of primary and secondary data sources. Research process focuses on multiple factors affecting the industry such as competitive landscape, government policy, historical data, market current position, Marine Actuators & Valves Market trends, upcoming technologies & innovations as well as risks, rewards, opportunities and challenges. Study used very precise top-down and bottom-up approach in order to validate market revenue, volume, manufacturers, regional analysis, product segments and end users/applications.

Research report provides details analysis on drivers and restraints Marine Actuators & Valves Market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. The study also provides key market indicators affecting the growth of the market. Research report includes in depth competitive analysis with shares of each player inside market, growth rate and market attractiveness in different end users/regions. Research study on Marine Actuators & Valves Market helps user to make precise decision in order to expand market presence and increase market share.

Regional analysis of Marine Actuators & Valves Market includes North America, Asia Pacific, Europe , Middle East & Africa as major region. These Major regions are further divided into countries like US, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, England, France Italy, Netherlands, Spain, India, China, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea & Australia. Regional outlook is one of the most important aspects of research study. Research study delivers clear picture of product market for various regions globally.

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Market Segmentation

Marine Actuators and Valves Market: Product Type

· Pneumatic Actuators

· Hydraulic Actuators

· Electric Actuators

· Mechanical Actuators

· Hybrid Actuators

· Linear Motion Valves

· Rotary Motion Valve

Marine Actuators and Valves Market : Application

· Passenger Ships and Ferries

· Dry Cargo Vessels

· Tankers

· Dry Bulk Carriers

· Special Purpose Vessels

· Service Vessels

· Fishing Vessels

· Off-Shore Vessels

· Yachts

Research report on Marine Actuators & Valves Market includes competitive analysis that provides better insight of the major manufacturers of Marine Actuators & Valves. These major players include:

· VK Holding A/S

· Bürkert Fluid Control Systems

· Emerson Electric Co.

· Flowserve Corporation

· Honeywell International Inc.

· KITZ Corporation

· Rotork Plc.

· Schlumberger Limited

· Tyco International Ltd.

· Watts Water Technologies, Inc.

Some of the important aspects of the Marine Actuators & Valves Market study include:

· Report heavily focuses on major market aspects such as Volume, Revenue, market share, concentration rate, supply-demand scenario, growth & challenges.

· Market growth drivers, trends analysis, future scope, government policies as well as environmental aspects.

· Study uses many important analytical techniques to reach highest level of data accuracy. These techniques includes Primary & secondary research, Porters five analysis, SWOT analysis, Qualitative analysis, market sizing.

About Profshare:

Profshare Market Research is a full service market research company that delivers in depth market research globally. We operate within consumer and business to business markets offering both qualitative and quantitative research services. We work for private sector clients, along with public sector and voluntary organizations. Profshare Market Research publishes high quality, in-depth market research studies, to help clients obtain granular level clarity on current business trends and expected future developments. We are committed to our client’s needs, providing custom solutions best fit for strategy development and implementation to extract tangible results.

Contact :

Prachi M.

Profshare Market Research

[email protected]

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haulix · 7 years ago

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Music Industry Job Board (October 8, 2018)

New openings:

Coordinator, Music (SiriusXM - NYC)

Works with members of the music programming team to create superior radio programs as needed. Supports creative processes, content development and production. Exercises both creative abilities and technical skills. Edits materials and operates an audio board. May be assigned to more than one program and perform slightly different functions across channels.

Assistant, Timed Release (WMG - NYC)

The WEA Release Management team is involved in the production of digital releases originating from the main US labels (WBR, ATL, Rhino), UK labels (WBR UK, ATL UK, Parlophone UK, East/West) and the 3rd party distributed labels (ADA US and ADA UK). This team is also involved in the international exploitation of releases from the rest of the world.

Timed Releases are the new hot promotional tool, where we manipulate the systems to release an album, a track, or a preorder to go live at a particular time and day with all partners that can support it. This role will be assisting both the ATL Release Management Senior Manager and the Central Scheduling team to coordinate Timed Releases for ATL US repertoire.

Global Go-to-Market Marketing Manager (YouTube Music - NYC)

As the Global Go-to-Market Marketing Manager, you'll work closely with local and regional teams to build marketings plans for the launch of YouTube Music and the acquisition of new users.

Know the user. Know the magic. Connect the two. At its core, marketing at Google starts with technology and ends with the user, bringing both together in unconventional ways. Our job is to demonstrate how Google's products solve the world's problems-from the everyday to the epic, from the mundane to the monumental. And we approach marketing in a way that only Google can-changing the game, redefining the medium, making the user the priority, and ultimately, letting the technology speak for itself.

Program Coordinator, Music Marketing (Luther College - Decorah, IA)

The program coordinator plans, markets and manages 1-2 annual music ensemble tours; manages details for an annual Dorian festival; serves as operations manager for Christmas at Luther, and coordinates a variety of music marketing projects and programs as assigned.

Content Coordinator, UGC & Rights Management (Symphonic Distribution - Brooklyn, NY)

Symphonic Distribution is a 100% independent music distribution and marketing company based in downtown Tampa. We focus on distributing electronic, hip-hop, and urban music in general. We pride ourselves in finding the newest, most talented up-and-coming bands, producers, rappers, managers, and labels with promise of developing long careers.

Symphonic Distribution is looking for an experienced, reliable and energetic individual to be its Content Coordinator (UGC & Rights Management) based out of the New York location. This role is focused on UGC Platforms and rights clearances for Symphonic Distribution and is vital in protecting the intellectual property rights of our clients. In addition, responsibilities include overseeing the administration of YouTube Monetization (Content ID & Channel Monetization), Soundcloud Monetization, Facebook, and United Media Agency (VK).

Manager, Publicity (Sony - NYC)

The Manager we are looking for is a proactive individual with music publicity, media experience and established industry relationships. This role will consist of planning, strategizing and executing publicity campaigns.

Talent Casting Director (Disney Parks Live Entertainment - Kissimmee, FL)

This Disney Parks Live Entertainment Talent Casting Director role provides casting support for live entertainment offerings on the Disney Cruise Line, consistently striving to find and maintain the highest level of performance talent possible – exceeding expectations for guests and providing exemplary service to shipboard partners, agents and talent.

Assistant Manager, Audio Studios (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI)

The Assistant Manager, Audio Studios at the Duderstadt Center, in the Media & Studio Arts group, is a key member of a team of highly specialized, skilled, technology and media arts professionals dedicated to advancing the Center’s mission of providing state-of-the-art tools and facilities to the U-M community. The Assistant Manager, Audio Studios assists the Managing Producer, Audio Studios, in supporting a complex studios infrastructure of interconnected spaces: the Audio Studio, the Video Studio, two Electronic Music Studios, the Personal Studio and four MultiMedia Editing Rooms.

This position reports to the Managing Producer and includes direct supervisory responsibility over 10-15 student staff, and coordination responsibility of project staff as studio productions demand.

Brand Partnerships Assistant (Paradigm Talent Agency - Beverly Hills, CA)

The Brand Partnerships Assistant is responsible for performing a variety of administrative tasks to provide support to the agent in all client and internal matters. The role provides the Assistant a broad understanding of the entertainment industry in general (as well as some of the advertising industry) and the representation business in particular.

Coordinator, Content Insights (WMG - NYC)

Data is the lifeblood of today’s record business, and in this role you’ll get a chance to apply your creativity and problem-solving skills to some massive amounts of data to help our labels and artists identify trending songs and break hits. Because the R+A team works closely with departments all across the company, you will have the opportunity to see the inner workings and decision-making of a global record label - and the chance to influence those decisions with analysis. We’re a collaborative team that loves learning new things, sharing ideas, thinking about the future of the music industry – and helping our company get there.

Partner Operations Manager, Music (YouTube - San Bruno, CA)

The Partner Development and Services team embodies a partner first mindset, whether it’s building custom tools, providing education to get the most from the platform, or helping creators to grow their channel to the next level.

YouTube has grown into a community used by over 1 billion people across the globe to access information, share video, and shape culture. The YouTube team helps budding creators build careers, creates products like YouTube Kids, YouTube Music, and YouTube Gaming, and engages communities around shared passions and global conversations. Together, we empower the world to create, broadcast, and share.

Talent Manager (Improvement Company - Denver, CO)

We are looking for a hard working, bright, motivated manager with a competitive drive and passion for digital media to join our talent signing team. The main objective of this role is to seek new talent, AR up and coming talent, and establish relationships with talent to provide the best in class services while helping creators develop their careers and their social media audiences across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat and tech platforms.

Members of the talent signing team are expected to quickly develop vertical expertise to best source creators and communicate growth strategies that will drive revenue for creators. A solid understanding of the digital tv, studios, video landscape, entertainment industry, and Fullscreen business model is required.

Live Events Marketing Coordinator (Townsquare Media - Greenwich, CT)

The Townsquare Live Events (TSLE) Marketing Coordinator is responsible for the implementation of TSLE policies and procedures. He or she implements short and long-term programs and processes to optimize work-flow and productivity. The TSLE Marketing Coordinator is responsible for assisting the Senior Marketing Manager to construct, manage, execute and complete advertising/marketing campaigns for TSLE properties including radio, TV, outdoor, artist marketing, digital and social advertising The MC will be responsible for coordinating the needs of all festival departments. This person will use online forms, spreadsheets, festival software, site meetings and phone calls to coordinate with both festival department managers and outside vendors to insure everyone has the tools and information they need to do their job efficiently. He or she will report directly to the Senior Marketing Manager.

Booking Agent, Electronic Music (Pier 30 Music Agency - Nashville, TN)

Pier30 Music Agency is seeking qualified candidates for a booking agent position within our newly developed electronic music department. The subsidiary will be officially released to the press (along with its roster) at the end of the month and we would like to have all agents in place by this time. You will be working alongside the department head and another agent working exclusively in booking opportunities for our roster of electronic musicians.

The ideal candidate has experience working with and/or booking festivals, clubs and colleges and should have working knowledge of the EDM industry. The position has variable hours meaning that the hire will have relative flexability to determine his or her daily work schedule. The position is part-time initially with lots of movement potential within the company.

Production Coordinator, Audio (AEG - NYC)

The Production Coordinator will assist in all areas of production for venue events. The Production Coordinator will serve as the main point of contact for shows, communicating with staff, vendors, security and artist management. Additionally, the position is responsible for coordinating and advancing production needs and requirements for all shows, and oversees all stage and technical needs including lighting, sound, A/V, equipment and venue maintenance.

Business Development, Commercial Audio (JAM Industries - Newbury Park, CA)

Assist and support the SVP in driving adoption of Allen & Heath solutions in the United States installation market, across all verticals.

Live Concerts Tour Coordinator (MGP Live - NYC)

MGP Live is looking for an energetic self-starter to be its next Booking Assistant responsible for developing booking strategies for multimedia symphony concerts and tours. The position entails keeping in frequent contact with venue partners to establish a calendar of available dates; strategically planning concerts, tours, and other live entertainment properties; and a variety of other tasks related to the planning and execution of shows. You will work closely with MGP Live’s President to develop new show concepts, with MGP Live’s Marketing department to conceptualize and execute promotional ideas for ongoing tours, and with our clients and venue partners as the day-to-day point of contact for the execution of shows. The ideal candidate should be someone who really wants to make things happen in the music business!

Entertainment Director (Refinery29 - NYC)

We create all written content for the website, from long-form articles and programs to service and slideshows. We're composed of six categories — Health + Wellness, Living, Entertainment, News, Work & Money, Fashion, and Beauty — and we help shape and guide how Refinery29 and its impact can grow into those spaces, delivering on those promises with fresh content, tools, and discussion every day.

Director, Online Marketing (WMG - NYC)

To efficiently and effectively manage all aspects of online marketing for an assigned roster of projects. Liase with the marketing, press, and digital sales departments in the company (and any hired, third party companies) in conjunction with Label Services artists and label clients to maximize the potential for each project’s success. To find innovative and cost effective ways to brand Label Services artists and label clients with associated online partners, including content development and management, grassroots community building and marketing, tastemaker sites, and genre-related digital marketing lifestyle outlets.

Senior Booking Manager (SMG - Reading, PA)

SMG, the leader in privately managed public assembly facilities has an opening for a Senior Booking Manager for the Santander Arena and Santander Performing Arts Center. The primary responsibility is to book, develop and coordinate events, tournaments and festivals. Candidate must be a self starter, highly motivated, extremely organized, excellent communicator and a great personality.

#Music Industry #Job Board #Music Jobs #Jobs #Careers #Hiring #Now Hiring #Music PR #Music Promotion #Music Marketing #Music Industry Job board #Music Job Board #Music Careers

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maryturck · 7 years ago

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Caricature used under Creative Commons license

Trump says undocumented immigrants are flooding into the country to take advantage of DACA. Except that in real life, DACA was only available to young immigrants who were here for at least five years before 2012. He clearly does not know what he is talking about—and doesn’t care.

In other news: One district court rules that a lawsuit against the administration’s DACA decision can continue; another requires USCIS to give asylum seekers clear direction on time limits for applying; social media accounts and extreme vetting; and real people’s individual stories, including deportation of Minnesota Somalis.

Venting on Immigration, Trump Vows ‘No More DACA Deal’ and Threatens Nafta (New York Times, 4/1/18)

“‘NO MORE DACA DEAL’?!!” Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota wrote on Twitter. “You were never doing a DACA deal. Your actions gave you away: cancelling DACA with no plan, making racist comments about Black/Brown immigrants, ejecting several by bipartisan deals. You didn’t fool anybody.”

Trump’s Easter morning Twitter tirade was probably triggered by a Fox news segment about this story: A huge caravan of Central Americans is headed for the US and no one in Mexico dares to stop them (Buzzfeed, 3/30/18)

“For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.

“Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.”

Social media screening and extreme vetting

14 million visitors to U.S. face social media screening (New York Times, 3/30/18)

“Last September, the Trump administration announced that applicants for immigrant visas would be asked for social media data, a plan that would affect 710,000 people or so a year. The new proposal would vastly expand that order to cover some 14 million people each year who apply for nonimmigrant visas.

“The proposal covers 20 social media platforms. Most of them are based in the United States: Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine and YouTube. But several are based overseas: the Chinese sites Douban, QQ, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Youku; the Russian social network VK; Twoo, which was created in Belgium; and Ask.fm, a question-and-answer platform based in Latvia.”

Hand over my social media account to get a U.S. visa? No, thank you. (The Guardian, 3/31/18)

“The government doesn’t need to ask for people’s social media handles in order to vet them. Bar China, perhaps, the US is the world’s most powerful surveillance state – thanks, largely, to Obama’s expansion of the government’s surveillance powers. This new proposal has nothing to do with national security. It’s about cracking down on free speech.

“If you’re planning a trip to the US you are probably going to start thinking twice about criticising Trump online now. It’s a warning to the world to watch how you talk about the US if you ever want to set foot in the place.

“And while this new proposal may be directed at visitors, it also sends a message to residents and citizens that you ought to watch what you say online.”

U.S. to require would-be immigrants to turn over social media handles (CNN, 3/29/18)

“According to notices submitted by the State Department on Thursday, set for formal publication on Friday, the government plans to require nearly all visa applicants to the US to submit five years of social media handles for specific platforms identified by the government — and with an option to list handles for other platforms not explicitly required.

“The administration expects the move to affect nearly 15 million would-be immigrants to the United States…”

Other extreme vetting measures have already begun. State Department enhances vetting of skilled immigrants (Detroit News, 4/1/18)

“Still, businesses have noticed a change.

“We’ve got employees that are going through the process, who have gone through such a level of scrutiny and interrogatory that is unprecedented,” said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, which advocates for H1B visas and has had one of its own workers have to move back overseas because of delays in approving the requisite visa.”

In other news

Citing Trump’s ‘racial slurs,’ judge says suit to preserve DACA can continue (New York Times, 3/29/18)

“One might reasonably infer,” Judge Garaufis wrote, “that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office.”

District Court Issues Favorable Nationwide Ruling on Behalf of Thousands of Asylum Seekers (American Immigration Council, 3/28/18)

“A federal district court judge in Washington State ruled today that the federal government’s failure to notify asylum seekers that they must apply for asylum within one year of arriving in the United States violated their right to due process and ordered the government to provide such notice….

“In addition, the Court ordered Defendants to accept as timely any asylum application from a class member filed within one year of receiving such notice. Finally, the Court ordered the government to create a uniform, procedural mechanism to ensure that all class members have a meaningful opportunity to file their asylum applications in a timely manner.”

Real people, real stories

Man freed after wrongful conviction only to be taken into custody by immigration authorities (Chicago Tribune, 3/29/18)

“In the two decades since Ricardo Rodriguez was convicted of murder, he has maintained his innocence.

“This week, the Cook County state’s attorney agreed to drop the case against him amid allegations that a discredited police detective manipulated witnesses.…

“Before he was sent to prison for a 1995 murder, Rodriguez was a lawful permanent resident. His status was revoked when he was convicted, his attorneys said. Now he faces the possibility of being deported despite being freed.”

Deported U.S. Army veteran wins fight for U.S. citizenship (NBC, 3/29/18)

“A deported veteran who launched a health clinic for other deported veterans in Tijuana, Mexico, has been granted citizenship in the United States.

“Hector Barajas-Varela was deported 10 years ago. On Thursday, in uniform and surrounded by supporters and fellow deported veterans, Barajas-Varela received the news from the Department of Homeland Security.

“Barajas-Varela was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and arrived in the U.S. with his parents when he was 7. He grew up in the United States and enlisted in the Army in 1995.”

He spoke out against Somalia’s terrorist groups. Now ICE has deported him there. (The Intercept, 3/31/18) Minnesotan Guled Muhumed, was one of the planeload of deportees in last year’s aborted deportation attempt. On Thursday, Muhumed and other Somalis were again loaded on a plane bound for Somalia. Before he left, The Intercept interviewed him and tells his story:

“In interviews this week, Muhumed recounted his experiences in West Texas, and the terror he has been living through, faced with the serious possibility of being separated from his wife and children and dropped off in a war-ravaged nation that he has not seen since he was a child.

“Muhumed also described the anguish of watching mistakes he made when he was a young man come back around more than a decade later to wreak havoc on his adult life. As a high school administrator and youth counselor, Muhumed spearheaded a program in his community to turn refugee children, particularly young Somalis, away from drugs, crime, and radicalism. He has spoken out publicly against the terrorist groups that wield considerable power in Somalia, making the fact that the U.S. government has treated him like some sort of national security threat, while working hard to drop him off on the very turf where those groups operate, all the more ironic and terrifying.”

She fled LIberia’s civil war 24 years ago. Now Trump wants her to go back. (Guardian, 4/1/18) Trump’s order ending DED will separate Magdalene Menyongaro and her daughter.

“Gabrielle Gworlekaju, 16, is a sophomore in high school in Minnesota, a cheerleader and an A student. She wants to pursue a career in medicine and, in about a year’s time, she’ll begin the process of choosing a university.

“There’s one person she leans on more than most for advice in such decisions – her mother, Magdalene Menyongaro, 48, who came to the US from Liberia 24 years ago, fleeing the country’s civil war. ”

Manhattan church shields Guatemalan woman from deportation (New York Times, 3/28/18)

“The strategy can work. Of the 39 immigrants who sought public sanctuary nationally in 2017, nine were granted reprieves from deportation, according to a database kept by the organization. Of the 12 who have sought sanctuary in 2018, six have gotten reprieves.”

April Fool tweets again Trump says undocumented immigrants are flooding into the country to take advantage of DACA. Except that in real life, DACA was only available to young immigrants who were here for at least five years before 2012.

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superfashionworldme-blog · 7 years ago

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“Cooperation and Sharing” — It is Worth Your Attention!

Cooperation is horizontal integration, Sharing is vertical excavation; Cooperation and sharing are the coordinates of mission, Cooperation and sharing are the witness of dream; In this way, for the perfect transformation in 2018, CWMALLS people, CWMALLS team, CWMALLS complex have carried out earthshaking self revolutions, cooperation revolutions and sharing revolutions all over the world; everything is for the initial dream and mission, everything is for the good vision and attitude! Only cooperation can realize the super sublimation from 1+1=2, only sharing can annotate the value and meaning of 1+1＞2! Distinctive responsibility and mission will become more pragmatic in the call of time, extraordinary choices will become the aim and direction in cooperation and sharing; this is the second season of CWMALLS, CWMALLS COMMODITY, it moistens things silently, it has personal independence of conduct, it pulls one hair and the whole body is affected, only cooperation and sharing can make us run to the distance! “Cooperation and Sharing” whether the cooperation and upgrade of the back-end technology, product, promotion, management and other aspects, or the front-end sharing and interaction of attention, appreciation, experience, service and other aspects, its only standard is uniting everything and blossom itself; therefore, having a common goal became the motive power, staying true to the mission became the steering wheel, only with the interaction of cooperation and sharing can we activate and release everything, and maximize value finally! Similarly, as the cores of “Cooperation and Sharing”, making the best of the both worlds, mutual encouragement and supervision, seeking common points while reserving differences are fully implemented and executed in every process and link! It is just like a catalyst or additive which makes everything scale new heights! “Cooperation and Sharing of CWMALLS People” is a three-dimensional sublimation from top to bottom, from left to right, inside and out; only with one-to-one cooperation with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, CWMALLS people can be stronger, only with free and equal sharing, CWMALLS people can be more clinging; feelings, dream, mission and responsibility, this is a marathon without terminus, only with mutual understanding, help and cooperation can we make better achievements; for instance, cooperating with educational institutions, training institutions and recruitment agencies not only increases publicity efforts, but also finds more partners; for example, sharing with web celebrities, fashion icons, opinion leaders not only promotes our products, but also transforms the earnings, which realize win-win results! This is “Cooperation and Sharing of CWMALLS People”, which is pragmatic, low-key and progressive, it suits action to the word, its Inside equals outside, it starts well and ends well! “Cooperation and Sharing of CWMALLS Team” is like a group of “chorus”, unification, coordination, resounding and other properties can only be immortal in an open heart; whether management consulting agencies, insurance agencies, media agencies, testing and certification bodies, or third-party platform (Google, Yahoo, Bing, VK, PayPal, Amazon, Apple, SAMSUNG, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), CWMALLS team stands at the height of history, builds cooperation with many industry leaders and shares more information, data, results to achieve overtaking of CWMALLS®’s networking, internationalization, globalization and space sharing! Meanwhile, via powerful alliances, excavating, activating more innovative, original, patented products, and realizing the virtuous circle development of standardization, value, and ecological to truly realize all the promises, vows of "MADE IN CWMALLS" ! Therefore, under the leadership of CWMALLS team, CWMALLS Global Networked Lab, CWMALLS Global Patent Review Committee and CWMALLS Global Networked Factory deepen cooperation and share everything for achieving dream and mission! “CWMALLS Complex” is the spokesman of cooperation and sharing, its unique DNA structure achieves each other, inspires each other and then becomes the super spokesman of the Internet and Internet of Things era; it is the crystallization of cooperation and sharing, also the future of cooperation and sharing; ideology with a flexible, transparent, free, fair and value-based blockchain makes every point, line and plane become the protagonist and maximize the value; it is the root of recycling economy and ecological economy, also the molecular of cooperative economy and sharing economy, as the “new species” of the networked, standardized era, “CWMALLS Complex” will have an epoch-making significance; this is the pearl of CWMALLS, CWMALLS COMMODITY 2018 Growing, Sharing Series— “Cooperation and Sharing”, it is worth your attention! Cooperation and Sharing: the “free falling body” in the Internet era, things will be easily settled when conditions are ok, letting nature take its course; Cooperation and Sharing: “a clear stream” in the Internet of Things era, which is remarkable and worthy of attention. CWMALLS COMMODITY Feb. 24, 2018

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