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See the latest vacancies and find out about working for MSF IrelandJobs in Ireland
A social media action in solidarity against violence on health professionals and facilities
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched a social media act of solidarity to stand up for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, patients, medical staff and hospitals in conflicts.
On average, an MSF-supported health structure was bombed or shelled every single week in 2015 in Syria and in the first six weeks of 2016. Health workers and health structures have also been targeted in Yemen, South Sudan and Afghanistan, among other countries, causing intolerable suffering, death and destruction.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg of reported attacks. These horrific attacks contravene humanitarian law and have a catastrophic impact on people already made vulnerable by war and violence. When hospitals are bombed, civilians are often severely maimed or killed, and those who survive lose access to the medical help they desperately need.
More articles on hospital bombings
Why have we launched the #NotATarget hashtag?
- To stand in solidarity with civilians, patients, medical workers and hospitals who continue to be targeted victims of attacks by armed groups around the world;
- To highlight the horrific consequences of targeted attacks on people;
- To demand the respect of health professionals’ ethical obligation to treat people on the basis of their health needs alone.
What can you do?
1. Spread the word on Social Media using the hashtag #NotATarget
Make your voice heard and urge United Nations member states to support the strongest possible version of this resolution by sharing the following messages:
Hospitals are #NotATarget! I believe access to medical care is a universal human right
Over 60 health facilities in Syria bombed in 2015. Unacceptable! Hospitals are #NotATarget
Attacks on civilians & hospitals must stop! This cannot be the new normal! #NotATarget
Copy and share the following in a Facebook message:
On average, an MSF-supported health structure was bombed or shelled every week in 2015 in Syria and in the first six weeks of 2016. MSF's health workers and health structures have also been targeted in Yemen, South Sudan and Afghanistan, among other countries, causing intolerable suffering, death and destruction.
This is unacceptable! Medical aid is #NotATarget. Join me in speaking out with MSF against these attacks. Hospitals are #NotATarget msf.ie/NotATarget
2. Change your profile image on Twitter or Facebook in support:
3. Share this video
Join the conversation on social media
Like our page on Facebook
Follow #NotATarget on Twitter
The world has reached a disturbing tipping point in modern warfare. After World War II, hundreds of countries agreed to protect civilians by signing onto the Geneva Conventions.
Today, these same countries are now ruthlessly bombing civilian targets. The states that signed the Geneva Conventions, including United Nations member states and members of the Security Council, no longer seem compelled to uphold international humanitarian law, which regulates just and proportionate warfare.
The February 2016 example in Syria, where an airstrike bombed a hospital, was presumably carried out by the Syrian or Russian military. Twenty-five people died, and thousands more no longer have access to emergency medical care.
In 2015, 63 hospitals and clinics supported by MSF were hit by bombing and shelling in Syria more than 94 times – that’s on average more than once a week. In total, 23 MSF medical staff were killed, and 58 staff were wounded.
In Afghanistan, on 3 October 2015, the US military destroyed MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, killing 42 people – the highest number of staff and patients killed in a single incident in the history of the organisation’s humanitarian work.
In Yemen, MSF medical activities were attacked four times in just three months between October 2015 and January 2016. The first attack took place on October 26, 2015, when fighter jets from the Saudi-led coalition repeatedly bombed a hospital.
On December 2, 2015, a mobile clinic was hit by an airstrike, wounding eight people and killing one person nearby. On 10 January 2016, an attack on the Shiara hospital killed six people and injured at least seven, and on 21 January an ambulance was hit and its driver killed in a series of airstrikes in Saada Governate.
Attacks also occur in other regions of the world. In Sudan, a hospital was bombed by the Sudanese Air Force on 20 January 2015, forcing the suspension of medical activities and thus cancelling medical care for thousands of Sudanese.
MSF cannot accept that this “new normal” should define modern warfare. The targeted killing of civilians, medical staff and patients cannot continue, regardless of which armed force or forces is responsible.
MSF is seeking to grow the public’s awareness around this issue. We encourage you to help us by participating in our #NotATarget social media campaign, and to take a stand in solidarity with innocent civilians and health workers around the world.
Listen to a special episode about attacks on healthcare on our Everyday Emergency podcast


text:
26 May 1965
Is The Key In His Mind...Or In Her Arms?
Central Park Zoo, Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Mirage Wikipedia »
Mirage is a 1965 thriller directed by Edward Dmytryk from a screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel "Fallen Angel," written by Howard Fast under the pseudonym Walter Ericson; the novel is not credited by title onscreen. The film stars Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, and Kevin McCarthy, and was released by Universal Pictures.
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domain: artistic


Critics' Circle names 'Book of Mormon' top musical
NEW YORK The New York Drama Critics' Circle has voted "Good People" the best play of the season, "Jerusalem" the best foreign play and "The Book of Mormon" the season's best musical.
The group on Monday also handed out special citations to the revival of "The Normal Heart," Mark Rylance for his dual performances in "La Bete" and "Jerusalem," and for the direction, design and puppetry of "War Horse."
The Circle is composed of drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines, wire services and websites based in the New York metropolitan area.
While the vote for best play went to four ballots, the musical category was quickly decided, with "The Book of Mormon" winning 17 of the 24 votes cast.
The Associated Press


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A second clip from Universal Pictures’ Cowboys & Aliens has been posted online and puts on display the aliens’ desire to get their hands on star Olivia Wilde. I’d start a war over her too….
Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s big summer acitoneer arrives in theaters July 29, “ ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ begins when a spaceship arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys are all that stand in their way.” Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig both star,
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domain: entertainment


text:
Rated 4 out of
Great filmWent just to see John Hurts last film and was so much better and so very moving than expected.
Date published: 2018-06-08
Rated 5 out of
Outstanding Performance by John HurtI have recently moved to Lyme Regis and a good friend and I walked to The Marine Theatre to watch this brilliant movie, it was very touching with moments of humour and perfect music, we both thoroughly enjoyed every minute


text:
Episode 83 – Dogs and Cats Living Together!
On this episode, Derek and Steve discuss the late Harold Ramis and his most famous role in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. Also included is talk about Guardians of The Galaxy, the new Lex Luthor, and Clone Wars and Rebels. It’s your safe place to geek out! http://media.blubrry.com/geek_out_loud_geek_out_loud/www.geekoutonline.com/podcasts/GOL83.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSRead more


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I finally finished knitting a purse for future felting. I'll felt it when I have acouple of other things to throw in the washer to felt with it. I'm looking forward to seeing how this lilac color looks felted. It's an Irish wool I've never used before called Galway Highland and Heather.
upcycled needle felted brooches which I have been adding to my Etsy shop. I love cutting them out and punching pretty colors of roving into their centers with my felting needles. I also enjoyed choosing vintage buttons for the felted brooches I made with button centers.
This upcoming week...who knows what I will be doing! Happy Fiber Art Adventures and stuff!

domain: design


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What Can You Expect from a Urologist Appointment?
A urologist is a physician that specializes in matters related to the urinary tract and the male reproductive system. They diagnose and treat conditions such as incontinence, bladder infections, erectile dysfunction, and enlarged prostate. In some instances, your primary care physician will refer you to a Urologist Brooklyn, New York, if your case is complicated or severe. You may also choose to see a urologist because you are experiencing symptoms that are not improving.
- When preparing to visit a urologist, it is essential to know what to expect. This can help take the anxiety out of it and help you prepare sufficiently.
Here is a guide on a typical urologist appointment and what to expect.
As part of the initial visit, your urologist will want to learn about you, your reason for visiting, and your medical history. They may ask about your symptoms, lifestyle, and environmental factors. This is your chance to disclose any pre-existing conditions or medications you may be taking. Be honest, as this information will be the basis of all your visits from here on.
Next, the urologist will ask you to provide a urine sample. It will be subjected to a test for information purposes. In relation to this step, it is advisable to show up to your appointment with a full bladder. Otherwise, you should inform the urologist of any pre-existing conditions that prevent you from providing a sample.
After the urine test, the specialist will inquire about your symptoms. Make sure to mention everything, no matter how insignificant it may seem. You can come up with a list before your appointment to make sure you cover everything.
- Explain to the urologist what you are experiencing and for how long you have experienced it.
Urologists specialize in problems of the urine tract and reproductive system. Consequently, your doctor will perform a physical exam focusing on the bladder, kidneys, reproductive organs, adrenal glands, and urethra. This exam, coupled with your symptoms, should help the urologist make an accurate diagnosis. It is important to note that the exam will be different for men and women. Where a man will get a rectal exam, a woman may require a pelvic exam.
Following the physical exam, your doctor will discuss your condition if you have one. He/she will recommend a plan of action that may involve one or several treatment options. The urologist may also prescribe medication, request additional tests, or suggest a surgical procedure. In case your condition is caused by controllable factors, they may also recommend some lifestyle changes. Don’t be pressured. You don’t have to make a decision immediately unless the urologist says the matter is urgent.
- Ask as many questions as you want about all the recommendations. Finally, arrange your next urologist appointment with your doctor.
Contact Lazare Urology Today
Now that you know all there is to know about a urologist appointment and what to expect, you can plan your first visit. If you have further questions or concerns about urology, feel free to contact Lazare Urology to speak to a professional urologist in Brooklyn, New York.
You can also call our office at (718) 568-7143 to schedule an initial consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.
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domain: medical


text:
We saw how effortlessly glamorous these wedding dresses from GALA by Galia Lahav are in the official campaign shoot. Now see it in another (and no less beautiful, mind you!) Light, photographed by The Street Vibe photographer, Asaf Liberfroind. Shot on the streets of Jerusalem, the wedding dresses from Fall 2020 Collection No. IX take on a lighter, modern romantic look that really makes you feel the need to walk fabulous in one of these beauties, like now. Look!
Photos courtesy of Galia Lahav. For details, visit Galia Lahav.


Deep metric learning has been actively researched recently. In deep metric learning, feature embedding function is modeled as a deep neural network. This feature embedding function embeds input images into feature embedding space with a certain desired condition. In this condition, the feature embeddings of similar images are required to be close to each other while those of dissimilar images are required to be far from each other. To satisfy this condition, many loss functions based on the distances between embeddings have been proposed[3, 6, 4, 37, 25, 29, 33, 27, 28, 14]. Deep metric learning has been successfully applied in image retrieval task on popular benchmarks such as CARS-196 , CUB-200-2011 , Stanford online products , and in-shop clothes retrieval  datasets.
Ensemble is a widely used technique of training multiple learners to get a combined model, which performs better than individual models. For deep metric learning, ensemble concatenates the feature embeddings learned by multiple learners which often leads to better embedding space under given constraints on the distances between image pairs. The keys to success in ensemble are high performance of individual learners as well as diversity among learners. To achieve this objective, different methods have been proposed [39, 22]. However, there has not been much research on optimal architecture to yield diversity of feature embeddings in deep metric learning.
Our contribution is to propose a novel framework to encourage diversity in feature embeddings. To this end, we design an architecture which has multiple attention modules for multiple learners. By attending to different locations for different learners, diverse feature embedding functions are trained. They are regularized with divergence loss which aims to differentiate the feature embeddings from different learners. Equipped with it, we present -way attention-based ensemble (ABE-) which learns feature embedding with diverse attention masks. The proposed architecture is represented in Fig. 1(b). We compare our model to our -heads ensemble baseline , in which different feature embedding functions are trained for different learners (Fig. 1(a)), and experimentally demonstrate that the proposed ABE- shows significantly better results with less number of parameters.
2 Related works
2.0.1 Deep metric learning and ensemble
The aim of the deep metric learning is to find an embedding function which maps samples from a data space to a feature embedding space so that and are closer in some metric when and are semantically similar. To achieve this goal, in deep metric learning, contrastive [6, 4] and triplet [37, 25] losses are proposed. Recently, more advanced losses are introduced such as lifted structured loss , histogram loss , N-pair loss , and clustering loss [28, 14].
Recently, there has been research in networks incorporated with ensemble technique, which report better performances than those of single networks. Earlier deep learning approaches are based on direct averaging of the same networks with different initializations[15, 24] or training with different subsets of training samples [32, 31]. Following these former works, parameter sharing is introduced by Bachman et al.  which is called pseudo-ensembles. Another parameter sharing ensemble approach is proposed by Lee et al. . Dropout  can be interpreted as an ensemble approach which takes exponential number of networks with high correlation. In addition to dropout, Veit et al.  state that residual networks behave like ensembles of relatively shallow networks. Recently the ensemble technique has been applied in deep metric learning as well. Yuan et al.  propose to ensemble a set of models with different complexities in cascaded manner. They train deeply supervised cascaded networks using easier examples through earlier layers of the networks while harder examples are further exploited in later layers. Opitz et al.
use online gradient boosting to train each learner in ensemble. They try to reduce correlation among learners using re-weighting of training samples. Opitzet al.  propose an efficient averaging strategy with a novel DivLoss which encourages diversity of individual learners.
2.0.2 Attention mechanism
uses soft attention, therefore, the parameter update is straightforward by backpropagation in a fully gradient-based way while previous approaches in[26, 19, 1, 17, 40]
use hard attention which requires policy gradient estimation.
Jaderberg et al.
propose spatial transformer networks which models attention mechanism using parameterized image transformations. Unlike aforementioned approaches, their model is differentiable and thus can be trained in a fully gradient-based way. However, their attention is limited to a set of predefined and parameterized transformations which could not yield arbitrary attention masks.
3 Attention-based ensemble
3.1 Deep metric learning
Let be an isometric embedding function between metric spaces and where is a dimensional metric space with an unknown metric function and is a dimensional metric space with a known metric function . For example, could be a Euclidean space with Euclidean distance or the unit sphere in a Euclidean space with angular distance.
Our goal is to approximate with a deep neural network from a dataset which are samples from . In case we cannot get the samples of metric , we consider the label information from the dataset with labels as the relative constraint of the metric . For example, from a dataset where is the set of labels, for the contrastive metric constraint could be defined as the following:
where is an arbitrary margin. The triplet metric constraint for could be defined as the following:
where is a margin. Note that these metric constraints are some choices of how to model , not those of how to model .
An embedding function is isometric or distance preserving embedding if for every one has . In order to have an isometric embedding function , we optimize so that the points embedded into produce exactly the same metric or obey the same metric constraint of .
3.2 Ensemble for deep metric learning
A classical ensemble for deep metric learning could be the method to average the metric of multiple embedding functions. We define the ensemble metric function for deep metric learning as the following:
where is an independently trained embedding function and we call it a learner.
In addition to the classical ensemble, we can consider the ensemble of two-step embedding function. Consider a function which is an isometric embedding function between metric spaces and where is a dimensional metric space with an unknown metric function and is a dimensional metric space with an unknown metric function . And we consider the isometric embedding where is a dimensional metric space with a known metric function . If we combine them into one function , the combined function is also an isometric embedding between metric spaces and .
Like the parameter sharing ensemble , with the independently trained multiple and a single , we can get multiple embedding functions as the following:
We are interested in another case where there are multiple embedding functions with multiple and a single as the following:
Note that a point in can be embedded into multiple points in by multiple learners. In Eq. (5), does not have to preserve the label information while it only has to preserve the metric. In other words, a point with a label could be mapped to multiple locations in by multiple and finally would be mapped to multiple locations in . If this were the ensemble of classification models where approximates the distribution of the labels, all should be label preserving functions because the outputs of become the inputs of one classification model .
For the embedding function of Eq. (5), we want to make attends to the diverse aspects of data in while maintaining a single embedding function which disentangles the complex manifold into Euclidean space. By exploiting the fact that a point in can be mapped to multiple locations in , we can encourage each to map into distinctive points in . Given an isometric embedding , if we enforce in mapped from to be far from each other, in mapped from will be far from each other as well. Note that we cannot apply this divergence constraint to because metric in is unknown. We train each to be isometric function between and while applying the divergence constraint among in . If we apply the divergence constraint to classical ensemble models or multihead ensemble models, they do not necessarily induce the diversity because each or could arbitrarily compose different metric spaces in (Refer to experimental results in Sec. 6.2). With the attention-based ensemble, union of metric spaces by multiple is mapped by a single embedding function .
3.3 Attention-based ensemble model
As one implementation of Eq.(5
), we propose the attention-based ensemble model which is mainly composed of two parts: feature extraction moduleand attention module
. For the feature extraction, we assume a general multi-layer perceptron model as the following:
We break it into two parts with a branching point at , includes , , and includes , , , . We call a spatial feature extractor and a global feature embedding function with respect to the output of each function. For attention module, we also assume a general multi-layer perceptron model which outputs a three dimensional blob with channel, width, and height as an attention mask. Each element in the attention masks is assumed to have a value from 0 to 1. Given aforementioned two modules, the combined embedding function for the learner is defined as the following:
where denotes element-wise product (Fig. 1(b)).
Note that, same feature extraction module is shared across different learners while individual learners have their own attention module . The attention function outputs an attention mask with same size as output of . This attention mask is applied to the output feature of with an element-wise product. Attended feature output of is then fed into global feature embedding function
to generate an embedding feature vector. If all the elements in the attention mask are 1, the modelis reduced to a conventional multi-layer perceptron model.
The loss for training aforementioned attention model is defined as:
where is a set of all training samples and labels, is the loss for the isometric embedding for the -th learner, is regularizing term for diversifying the feature embedding of each learner and is the weighting parameter to control the strength of the regularizer. More specifically, divergence loss is defined as the following:
where is set of all training samples, is the metric in and is a margin. A pair represents feature embeddings of a single image embedded by two different learners. We call it self pair from now on while positive and negative pairs refer to pairs of feature embeddings with same labels and different labels, respectively.
The divergence loss encourages each learner to attend to the different part of the input image by increasing the distance between the points embedded by the input image (Fig. 2). Since the learners share the same functional module to extract features, the only differentiating part is the attention module. Note that our proposed loss is not directly applied to the attention masks. In other words, the attention masks among the learners may overlap. And also it is possible to have the attention masks some of which focus on small region while other focus on larger region including small one.
, we use the output of max pooling layer following theinception(3b) block as our spatial feature extractor and remaining network as our global feature embedding function . In our implementation, we simplify attention module as where consists of inception(4a) to inception(4e) from GoogLeNet, which is shared among all learners and consists of a convolution layer of 480 kernels of size 11 to match the output of for the element-wise product. This is for efficiency in terms of memory and computation time. Since is shared across different learners, forward and backward propagation time, memory usage, and number of parameters are decreased compared to having separate for each learner (without any shared part). Our preliminary experiments showed no performance drop with this choice of implementation.
where is set of all training samples and corresponding labels, is the number of training sets, is a binary indicator of whether or not the label is equal to , is the euclidean distance, denotes the hinge function and is the margin for contrastive loss. Both of margins and (in Eq. 8) is set to 1.
We implement the proposed ABE-
method using caffe
framework. During training, the network is initialized from a pre-trained network on ImageNet ILSVRC dataset. The final layer of the network and the convolution layer of attention module are randomly initialized as proposed by Glorot et al.
. For optimizer, we use stochastic gradient descent with momentum optimizer with momentum as 0.9, and we select the base learning rate by tuning on validation set of the dataset.
224. All training and testing images are scaled such that their longer side is 256, keeping the aspect ratio fixed, and padding the shorter side to get 256256 images. During training, we randomly crop images to 224224 and then randomly flip horizontally. During testing, we use the center crop. We subtract the channel-wise mean of ImageNet dataset from the images. For training and testing images of cropped datasets, we follow the approach in . For CARS-196  cropped dataset, 256256 scaled cropped images are used; while for CUB-200-2011  cropped dataset, 256256 scaled cropped images with fixed aspect ratio and shorter side padded are used.
We run our experiments on nVidia Tesla M40 GPU (24GBs GPU memory), which limits our batch size to 64 for ABE- model. Unless stated otherwise, we use the batch size of 64 for our experiments. We sample our mini-batches by first randomly sampling 32 images and then positive pairs for first 16 images and negative pairs for next 16 images, thus making the mini-batch of size 64. Unless mentioned otherwise, we report the results of our method using embedding size of 512. This makes the embedding size for individual learners to be 512/.
We use all commonly used image retrieval task datasets for our experiments and Recall@ metric for our evaluation. During testing, we compute the feature embeddings for all the test images from our network. For every test image, we then retrieve top similar images from the test set excluding test image itself. Recall score for that test image is 1 if at least one image out of retrieved images has the same label as the test image. We compute the average over whole test set to get Recall@. We evaluate the model after every 1000 iteration and report the results for the iteration with highest Recall@1.
We show the effectiveness of the proposed ABE- method on all the datasets commonly used in image retrieval tasks. We follow same train-test split as  for fair comparison with other works.
CARS-196  dataset contains images of 196 different classes of cars and is primarily used for our experiments. The dataset is split into 8,144 training images and 8,041 testing images (98 classes in both).
CUB-200-2011  dataset consists of 11,788 images of 200 different bird species. We use the first 100 classes for training (5,864 images) and the remaining 100 classes for testing (5,924 images).
Stanford online products (SOP)  dataset has 22,634 classes with 120,053 product images. 11,318 classes are used for training (59,551 images) while other 11,316 classes are for testing (60,502 images).
In-shop clothes retrieval  dataset contains 11,735 classes of clothing items with 54,642 images. Following similar protocol as , we use 3,997 classes for training (25,882 images) and other 3,985 classes for testing (28,760 images). The test set is partitioned into the query set of 3,985 classes (14,218 images) and the retrieval database set of 3,985 classes (12,612 images).
Since CARS-196 and CUB-200-2011 datasets consist of bounding boxes too, we report the results using original images and cropped images both for fair comparison.
6.1 Comparison of ABE- with -heads
To show the effectiveness of our ABE- method, we first compare the performance of ABE- and -heads ensemble (Fig. 1(a)) with varying ensemble embedding sizes (denoted with superscript) on CARS-196 dataset. As show in Table 8 and Fig. 4, our method outperforms -heads ensemble by a significant margin. The number of model parameters for ABE- is much less compared to -heads ensemble as the global feature extractor is shared among learners. But, ABE- requires higher flops because of extra computation of attention modules. This difference becomes increasingly insignificant with increasing values of .
ABE-1 contains only one attention module and hence is not an ensemble and does not use divergence loss. ABE-1 performs similar to 1-head. We also report the performance of individual learners of the ensemble. From Table 8, we can see that the performance of ABE- ensemble is increasing with increasing . The performance of individual learners is also increasing with increasing despite the decrease in embedding size of individual learners (512/). The same increase is not seen for the case of -heads. Further, we can refer to ABE-1, ABE-2, ABE-4 and ABE-8, where all individual learners have embedding size 64. We can see a clear increase in recall of individual learners with increasing values of .
6.2 Effects of divergence loss
Histograms of cosine similarity of positive (blue), negative (red), self (green) pairs trained with different methods. Self pair refers to the pair of feature embeddings from different learners using same image. (a) Attention-based ensemble (ABE-) using proposed loss, (b) attention-based ensemble (ABE-) without divergence loss, (c) -heads ensemble, (d) -heads ensemble with divergence loss. In the case of attention-based ensemble, divergence loss is necessary for each learner to be trained to produce different features by attending to different locations. Without divergence loss, one can see all learners learn very similar embedding. Meanwhile, in the case of -heads ensemble, there is no effect of applying divergence loss.
6.2.1 Abe- without divergence loss
To analyze the effectiveness of divergence loss in ABE-, we conduct experiments without divergence loss on CARS-196 and show the results in Table 2. As we can see, ABE- without divergence loss performs similar to its individual learners whereas there is significant gain in ensemble performance of ABE- compared to its individual learners.
We also calculate the cosine similarity between positive, negative, and self pairs, and plot in Fig. 5. With divergence loss (Fig. 5), all learners learn diverse embedding function which leads to decrease in cosine similarity of self pairs. Without divergence loss (Fig. 5), all learners converge to very similar embedding function so that the cosine similarity of self pairs is close to 1. This could be because all learners end up learning similar attention masks which leads to similar embeddings for all of them.
We visualize the learned attention masks of ABE-8 on CARS-196 in Fig. 6. Due to the space limitation, results from only three learners out of eight and three channels out of 480 are illustrated. The figure shows that different learners are attending to different parts for the same channel. Qualitatively, our proposed loss successfully diversify the attention masks produced by different learners. They are attending to different parts of the car such as upper part, bottom part, roof, tires, lights and so on. In 350th channel, for instance, learner 1 is focusing on bottom part of car, learner 2 on roof and learner 3 on upper part including roof. At the bottom of Fig. 6, the mean of the attention masks across all channels shows that the learned embedding function focuses more on object areas than the background.
6.2.2 Divergence loss in -heads
We show the result of experiments of 8-heads ensemble with divergence loss in Table 3. We can see that the divergence loss does not improve the performance in 8-heads. From Fig. 5, we can notice that cosine similarities of self pairs are close to zero for -heads. Fig. 5 shows that the divergence loss does not affect the cosine similarity of self pairs significantly. As mentioned in Sec. 3.2, we hypothesize this is because each of could arbitrarily compose different metric spaces in .
6.3 Ablation study
To analyze the importance of various aspects of our model, we performed experiments on CARS-196 dataset of ABE-
model, varying a few hyperparameters at a time and keeping others fixed. (More ablation study can be found in the supplementary material.)
6.3.1 Sensitivity to depth of attention module
We demonstrate the effect of depth of attention module by changing the number of inception blocks in it. To make sure that we can take the element wise product of the attention mask with the input of attention module, the dimension of attention mask should match the input dimension of attention module. Because of this we remove all the pooling layers in our attention module. Fig. 7 shows Recall@1 with varying number of inception blocks in attention module starting from 1 (inception(4a)) to 7 (inception(4a) to inception(5b)) in GoogLeNet. We can see that the attention module with 5 inception blocks (inception(4a) to inception(4e)) performs the best.
6.3.2 Sensitivity to branching point of attention module
The branching point of the attention module is where we split the network between spatial feature extractor and global feature embedding function . To analyze the choice of branching point of the attention module, we keep the number of inception blocks in attention module same ( 5) and change branching points from pool2 to inception(4b). From Fig. 7, we see that pool3 performs the best with our architecture.
We carry out this experiment with batch size 40 for all the branching points. For ABE- model, the memory requirement for the is times compared to the individual learner. Since early branching point increases the depth of while decreasing the depth for , it would consequently increase the memory requirement of the whole network. Due to the memory constraints of GPU, we started the experiments from branching points pool2 and adjusted the batch size.
6.3.3 Sensitivity to
Fig. 7 shows the effect of on Recall@ for ABE- model. We can see that performs the best and lower values degrades the performance quickly.
6.4 Comparison with state of the art
We compare the results of our approach with current state-of-the-art techniques. Our model performs the best on all the major benchmarks for image retrieval. Table 4, 6 and 7 compare the results with previous methods such as LiftedStruct , HDC , Margin222All compared methods use GoogLeNet architecture except Margin which uses ResNet-50  and Proxy-NCA uses IncpeptionBN  , BIER , and A-BIER  on CARS-196 , CUB-200-2011 , SOP , and in-shop clothes retrieval  datasets. Results on the cropped datasets are listed in Table 5.
|Proxy NCA2 ||49.2||61.9||67.9||72.4||73.2||82.4||86.4||87.8|
|Smart Mining ||49.8||62.3||74.1||83.3||64.7||76.2||84.2||90.2|
|Angular Loss ||54.7||66.3||76.0||83.9||71.4||81.4||87.5||92.1|
|PDDM + Triplet ||50.9||62.1||73.2||82.5||46.4||58.2||70.3||80.1|
|PDDM + Quadruplet ||58.3||69.2||79.0||88.4||57.4||68.6||80.1||89.4|
|Proxy NCA2 ||73.7||-||-||-|
In this work, we present a new framework for ensemble in the domain of deep metric learning. It uses attention-based architecture that attends to parts of the image. We use multiple such attention-based learners for our ensemble. Since ensemble benefits from diverse learners, we further introduce a divergence loss to diversify the feature embeddings learned by each learner. The divergence loss encourages that the attended parts of the image for each learner are different. Experimental results demonstrate that the divergence loss not only increases the performance of ensemble but also increases each individual learners’ performance compared to the baseline. We demonstrate that our method outperforms the current state-of-the-art techniques by significant margin on several image retrieval benchmarks including CARS-196 , CUB-200-2011 , SOP , and in-shop clothes retrieval  datasets.
-  Ba, J., Mnih, V., Kavukcuoglu, K.: Multiple object recognition with visual attention. In: International Conference on Learning Representations(2015)
-  Bachman, P., Alsharif, O., Precup, D.: Learning with pseudo-ensembles. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems(2014)
Bell, S., Bala, K.: Learning visual similarity for product design with convolutional neural networks. Graphics34(4), 98 (2015)
Chopra, S., Hadsell, R., LeCun, Y.: Learning a similarity metric discriminatively, with application to face verification. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2005)
Glorot, X., Bengio, Y.: Understanding the difficulty of training deep feedforward neural networks. In: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (2010)
-  Hadsell, R., Chopra, S., LeCun, Y.: Dimensionality reduction by learning an invariant mapping. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2006)
-  Harwood, B., VijayKumarB., G., Carneiro, G., Reid, I.D., Drummond, T.: Smart mining for deep metric learning. In: International Conference on Computer Vision(2017)
-  He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S., Sun, J.: Deep residual learning for image recognition. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2016)
Huang, C., Loy, C.C., Tang, X.: Local similarity-aware deep feature embedding. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems(2016)
-  Jaderberg, M., Simonyan, K., Zisserman, A., Kavukcuoglu, K.: Spatial transformer networks. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems(2015)
-  Jia, Y., Shelhamer, E., Donahue, J., Karayev, S., Long, J., Girshick, R., Guadarrama, S., Darrell, T.: Caffe: Convolutional architecture for fast feature embedding. In: International Conference on Multimedia (2014)
-  Krause, J., Stark, M., Deng, J., Fei-Fei, L.: 3D object representations for fine-grained categorization. In: Workshop on 3D Representation and Recognition (2013)
Law, M.T., Urtasun, R., Zemel, R.S.: Deep spectral clustering learning. In: International Conference on Machine Learning(2017)
-  Lee, C.Y., Xie, S., Gallagher, P., Zhang, Z., Tu, Z.: Deeply-supervised nets. In: Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (2015)
-  Lee, S., Purushwalkam, S., Cogswell, M., Crandall, D., Batra, D.: Why M heads are better than one: Training a diverse ensemble of deep networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.06314 (2015)
-  Liu, X., Xia, T., Wang, J., Lin, Y.: Fully convolutional attention localization networks: Efficient attention localization for fine-grained recognition. arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.06765 (2016)
-  Liu, Z., Luo, P., Qiu, S., Wang, X., Tang, X.: DeepFashion: Powering robust clothes recognition and retrieval with rich annotations. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2016)
-  Mnih, V., Heess, N., Graves, A., et al.: Recurrent models of visual attention. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems(2014)
-  Movshovitz-Attias, Y., Toshev, A., Leung, T.K., Ioffe, S., Singh, S.: No fuss distance metric learning using proxies. In: International Conference on Computer Vision(2017)
-  Opitz, M., Possegger, H., Bischof, H.: Efficient model averaging for deep neural networks. In: Asian Conference on Computer Vision(2016)
-  Opitz, M., Waltner, G., Possegger, H., Bischof, H.: BIER-boosting independent embeddings robustly. In: International Conference on Computer Vision(2017)
-  Opitz, M., Waltner, G., Possegger, H., Bischof, H.: Deep metric learning with BIER: Boosting independent embeddings robustly. arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.04815 (2018)
-  Russakovsky, O., Deng, J., Su, H., Krause, J., Satheesh, S., Ma, S., Huang, Z., Karpathy, A., Khosla, A., Bernstein, M., et al.: Imagenet large scale visual recognition challenge. International Journal of Computer Vision115(3), 211–252 (2015)
Schroff, F., Kalenichenko, D., Philbin, J.: Facenet: A unified embedding for face recognition and clustering. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2015)
-  Sermanet, P., Frome, A., Real, E.: Attention for fine-grained categorization. In: International Conference on Learning Representationsworkshop (2015)
-  Sohn, K.: Improved deep metric learning with multi-class n-pair loss objective. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems(2016)
-  Song, H.O., Jegelka, S., Rathod, V., Murphy, K.: Deep metric learning via facility location. In: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(2017)
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-  Srivastava, N., Hinton, G., Krizhevsky, A., Sutskever, I., Salakhutdinov, R.: Dropout: A simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting. Journal of Machine Learning Research 15(1), 1929–1958 (2014)
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-  Zhao, B., Wu, X., Feng, J., Peng, Q., Yan, S.: Diversified visual attention networks for fine-grained object classification. Multimedia 19(6), 1245–1256 (2017)


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Bob Woodward is an American investigative journalist and writer who has a net worth of around $30 million in 2024. He has been working for The Washington Post for a long period, which began in the year 1971. He is a leading investigative journalist and has done a lot of influential work in his career. He became popular in America when he and Carla Bernstein started doing new reporting for The Washington Post on the Watergate scandal, and this finally resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. He has also been doing this for a very long period as an investigative journalist.
He has also released a total of 21 books on the topic of American politics and current affairs, and 13 of them became best-sellers and became popular in America. He has been really appreciated by the people of America for his reporting on the Watergate scandal, and after the investigating agencies, he also started to investigate the matter seriously. He is now the associate editor of The Washington Post after hard work for years. You may also like Sway Calloway Net Worth.
Bob Woodward Net Worth
American journalist “Bob Woodward” has a net worth of $30 Million. Bob Woodward became a popular investigative journalist after the Watergate scandal. He has made a net worth from his long career as an investigative journalist, and he also started to get a sum of money when he got popular on television after his new report on the Watergate scandal. This case has really helped him to get success in his career and also his salary has increased after he made growth in his career. Woodward has also appeared on television shows.
|Net Worth (2024)
|$2 Million +
Bob Woodward Net Worth Growth
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2024
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2023
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2021
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2020
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2020
|Bob Woodward Net Worth in 2019
He has made this net worth through years of working in the same industry and company, which has earned him the position of associate editor of The Washington Post. He charges a high amount of salary for his appearance on the new show, and he also makes the money from the sales of his books, having already sold millions of copies around the world. As per the report, this investigative journalist will have a net worth of $30 million in 2024. Must Check Alain Wertheimer Net Worth.
Bob Woodward Biography
Bob Woodward was born on the 26th of March 1943 and he is currently 81 years old. He was born in Geneva, Illinois. He is the son of Jane and Alfred E. Woodward, who started as a lawyer and later became the chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in the area of Wheaton, Illinois. His parents were separated from each other when he was just twelve years old, and he grew up with his father, along with his one sibling. He has been really hardworking and passionate since his childhood, becoming the leading personality.
He began working at a young age and began working as an investigative journalist for The Washington Post in 1971. He also got married to Kathleen Middlekauff in the year of 1966 with his high school friends. He separated from her and had two marriages after that. In the year 1989, he got married to Elsa Walsh, who worked as a writer for The New Yorker and is also the author of Divided Lives.
|Robert Upshur Woodward
|Geneva, Illinois, United States
|Date Of Birth:
|26 March 1943
|81 years old
|In Centimetres – 178 cm
In Feet and Inches – 5′ 10″
|In Kilograms – 79 Kg
In Pounds – 174 lbs
|Kathleen Middlekauff (m. 1966, div. 1969), Frances Kuper (m. 1974, div. 1979), Elsa Walsh (m. 1989)
|Taliesin Woodward, Diana Woodward
|Father – Alfred W. Woodward
Mother – Jane Upshur
|Wheaton Community High School
Bob Woodward: Career and Awards
He started his career in the US Navy services, and he has served his country for five years and has handled major projects for the US navy. He began working for The Washington Post in 1971 and has been with the company for a long time. One of the big projects in his career was the Watergate scandal, on which he did that reporting which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was a big opportunity in the initial stages of his career as an investigative journalist. You may also like Tamron Hall Net Worth.
Bob Woodward Social media Accounts
|Almost 25K Followers
|Almost 215.3K Followers
|Almost 58K Followers
He has received various awards in his career for his work as a journalist. In the year of 1972, he received the American journalism award and the Heywood Broun award. He has also received the Sigma Delta Chi Award and the George Polk Award. He won another award called Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, and it was for courageous journalism. Over the years, he has also gotten the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism and various other awards.
Bob Woodward completed his high school education at the Wheaton Community High School in the fall of 1961, which was the public school in the area. He then completed his graduated from Yale College and got his B.A. degree in the year of 1965.
What is the net worth of Bob Woodward?
Bob Woodward's total net worth is around $30 Million.
How old is Bob Woodward?
Currently, Bob Woodward is 81 years old (26 March 1943).
How much does Bob Woodward make annually?
Bob Woodward earns an estimated salary of $1 Million per Year.
What is the height of Bob Woodward?
The height of Bob Woodward is 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m).
What is the name of Bob Woodward’s wife?
Bob Woodward was married to Kathleen Middlekauff (m. 1966, div. 1969), Frances Kuper (m. 1974, div. 1979), and Elsa Walsh (m. 1989).

domain: finance


text:
Naperville — The City Council is considering throwing out the city's cable television provider.
Council member Jack Tenison suggested revoking Jones Intercable's license at Tuesday's council meeting, saying that he had examined the franchise agreement with Jones and discovered that the company was not complying with its terms.
"There are punitive legal damages for failing to conform," he said. "In my opinion, there are several areas (where) they have not complied with material sections of the franchise agreement."
Tenison said the action would allow the city to seek bids and abolish Jones' monopoly. He said that financial information required by the agreement, including debt ratio, has not been disclosed.
But John Miller, general manager of Jones' Naperville operation, said after the meeting that he was not concerned about the council's directing its attorney to draft a resolution for revocation.
"I think it is obviously a traditional thing they do to show they don't like rate increases," he said.
Tenison also charged that Jones' rate increases since 1987 have exceeded those of the industry in general.
Mayor Samuel Macrane told Miller that the city has been continually frustrated in attempts to have Jones meet requirements of the franchise agreement. He complained about the lack of financial information.
`We have sent you audited financial statements for years," Miller said.

domain: news


text:
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Morgan Stanley, IPI buy back $104.5M in auction rate securities
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Morgan Stanley in New York is buying back $103 million in frozen auction rate securities from Missouri investors, and Investment Professionals Inc. of Texas is repurchasing more than $1.5 million, under settlements Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley also was ordered to pay $215,000 and IPI $50,000 to the Missouri Investor Education and Protection Fund.
Since the $330 billion market melted down in February 2008, Carnahan’s office has settled auction rate securities cases with Credit Suisse, NatCity, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, Banc of America, Citigroup, Commerce Brokerage Services Inc. and Wachovia Securities, which is now Wells Fargo Advisors.
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domain: economics


Alice Giles – Hindemith Harp Sonata
Alice Giles is one of the world’s leading harpists and a dedicated and inspiring teacher. She won the honor of the 8th Israel International Harp Competition, performed extensively as a soloist, and taught the whole class master class. She was born in Australia, studied in the United States, and lived in Germany for many years before returning to her roots, where she lived in rural New South Wales. She is always ready to take risks, even performing at Mawson Station in Antarctica. She is the director of the Seventh Harp Ensemble and artistic director of the non-profit company Harp Centre Australia
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Hindemith Sonata for Harp: First Movement
- Hindemith Sonata for Harp: Second Movement
- Hindemith Sonata for Harp: Third Movement
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Sep 28, 2020
This week we sit down with Chris Parrino and talk about some of the many adventures he's had and some of the incredible adventures he's had with stick and string! Chris has had some crazy adventures and yet is as down to earth and humble as a guy can get. Great conversation with a great guy!!
Sep 23, 2020
Join us in this weeks episode as Chad Slagle presents our final installment of Bowhunting Alaska's Wild Rivers by Jay Massey. We would like to to extend a hear felt thank you to the Massey family for allowing us the opportunity to share this now rare and out of print book. Jay was a pioneer in modern...
Sep 21, 2020
This week we sit down to discuss saddle hunting and where to start with them. Joey has been utilizing saddles for not only deer, but many other species for over 20 years now. You can say he was a saddle hunter before saddle hunting was cool!! On this episode, Joey explains some of the things he's learned along the...
Sep 14, 2020
Woodsmanship... it's one of those things that you pay for, but you certainly can't buy! Alan Altizer and Nathan Killen are two of the most knowledgeable woodsman you will ever find. We sit down to discuss skills and observations they've learned over the years that will help you become an all around better woodsman and...
Sep 9, 2020
Bowhunting Alaska's Wild Rivers by Jay Massey. Chapters 10,11 & 12

domain: literature


text:
The Prime Minister has sought to rally the Conservative party around a private members' bill due to be discussed in the House of Commons today.
In an email to party activists last night he wrote:
As I made clear in my speech on Europe earlier this year, we want an in-out referendum by the end of 2017. And tomorrow Conservative MP James Wharton will propose a Bill that would write this commitment into law.
The Bill has my full support - and it has support from across the Parliamentary Party: ministers and backbenchers, Conservatives of all views. We are united behind it and together we will vote for it.
For decades, politicians have denied the British people a voice on Europe. Tomorrow the Conservative Party will fight to give them one. And let us all be proud of that.
More top news
Actor Harrison Ford had a near miss at a Californian airport after landing a plane on a taxiway.
The 18-month-old baby girl was in "excruciating pain" after suffering broken ribs, leg fractures and injuries to her spine, face and neck.
The "world's first transgender doll" has appeared at New York's Toy Fair and will go on sale in July.


A 9mm Glock used to kill a local man says its owner is to blame for the murder.
The gun’s attorney asserts that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
“My client may have actually killed this person by ejecting a bullet from its chambers that went into the body of the murdered man, but he did not pull the trigger,” said the attorney.
He said his client had nothing against the dead man and would never kill him on his own volition. All the blame lies with the guns owner, he said.
“My owner tried to get away with murder, but I am here to turn him in. He’s an asshole and deserves to go to jail for the rest of his life,” said the gun.
The gun added that, while he was built for the sole purpose of killing people, he is truly a gentle soul who would rather cuddle on a couch with a hot cup of coffee and a good old black and white movie than be an agent of death.
“I can’t help it that I was born a gun, but this is my lot in life. I wish I was a fuzzy blanket or a pair of slippers, but I’m not — I’m a gun and I have to live with it, but I don’t have to sit silently by and let people get away with murder.”
Experts say this new breed of smart sensitive guns could spell trouble for criminals. While they are the instruments of death, they are also all witnesses to murder and could testify against their murderous owners.
“This could end gun violence as we know it,” said the expert. “If guns start to implicate their owners with crimes, it could be a real effective deterrent.”


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Alibaba appoints Brooklyn Nets billionaire owner Joseph Tsai as new chairman
Taiwanese Canadian billionaire Joseph Tsai will be replacing Daniel Zhang, the Chinese e-commerce’s former chairman and CEO, as Alibab...
Brooklyn Nets’ Owner Joe Tsai Pledges $50 Million to Brooklyn’s Black Community
Joe Tsai, the co-founder of Alibaba and owner of the Brooklyn Nets, is donating $50 million for social justice initiatives.
The amount, whic...
Alibaba Billionaire Now Owns the Brooklyn Nets After Paying $2.35 Billion
A co-founder of Alibaba became the sole owner of the Brooklyn Nets this week.
Joseph “Joe” Tsai, who currently serves as the company’s execu...
Alibaba Co-Founder Joseph Tsai to Buy 49% of the Brooklyn Nets
Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai is reportedly in talks to purchase a 49% stake in the Brooklyn Nets.
Based on the said agreement, the Taiwane...


Quality Assurance Consultant V
Jul 28, 2023
Position Summary Conducting end-to-end testing on applications and technology to ensure that business technical and functional requirements are being met throughout the SDLC
Design build and execute test scripts based upon test strategy/plans in an effort to identify defects prior to production deployment
Capable of multi-tasking and prioritizing efficiently.
Identify and develop ways to improve the quality capability or efficiency of the testing process
Enjoy working with new and emerging technologies.
Working in a fast-paced evolving growing and dynamic environment.
Must be an excellent collaborator with strong communication skills.
Role / Responsibilities Overview:
Work with Data Engineers Developers DBAs as part of Database Design and Development
Develop and maintain Enterprise Data Models for Enterprise wide Data Initiatives
Developing and enforcing data modeling standards and best practices
Data Architect will be responsible for the mapping of data sources data movement interfaces and analytics with the goal of ensuring data quality.
Collaborate with project managers address data related problems in regards to systems integration and compatibility as well as act as a leader for coaching training and providing support for the development team
1 Linux Unix Windows Oracle RDMBS UNIX Shell and Perl scripting
2 Agile practices Horizon/Jira
3 Automation with Selenium Cucumber-Java Gherkins Web service and API testing manual and automation IBM SI experience with SSP and EA Cluster from the installation perspective
Linux Unix Windows
UNIX Shell and Perl scripting
Agile practices Horizon/Jira
8 to 10 years of experience in Back and Front-end Testing
Automation with Selenium Cucumber-Java Gherkins
Web service and API testing manual and automation
IBM SI experience with SSP and EA Cluster from the installation perspective
Ability to liaise and work with remote team
Good communication and problem solving skills
Knowledge of creating test cases in J-Unit or N-Unit
Knowledge of IBM Connect:Direct
Load testing using Apache J-meter
Knowledge of Encryption software like PGP
Knowledge IBM/Sterling's Sterling Integrator 4.x/5.x
Understanding of networking concepts such as firewalls proxies etc. Intermediate


December 05, 2022
Taurus knows a good thing when it sees it, and the TX22 platform is definitely a good thing. Introduced in early 2019, it is a polymer-frame, striker-fired .22 pistol that earned high praise as a great all-round rimfire. Taurus followed that up a couple of years later with the Competition version, which incorporated reversible optics mounting plates that make it easy to add a red dot.
Now we have the TX22 Competition SCR, the SCR standing for Steel Challenge Ready. Not familiar with Steel Challenge? It’s my favorite among the action sports: eight stages of five targets, where you simply engage those targets as fast as you can—no moving, no on-the-clock reloads, just shooting. To create the SCR, Taurus added the Game Change Pro Squared 22 compensator from Tandemkross. It’s contoured specifically for the Taurus TX22, although it will fit other makes. It’s made of stainless steel and features Tandemkross’s proprietary Easy-Clean coating for simple maintenance.
This compensator adds a bit of weight out front for better balance, and it vents gases at 45 degrees on both sides of the comp to reduce muzzle jump. Think muzzle jump doesn’t matter in a rimfire? It does in events like Steel Challenge where every fraction of a second counts. If you don’t want to shoot the compensator, a barrel thread cap is provided. The other upgrade also comes from Tandemkross, and it’s the Eagle’s Talon extractor. If you’re a plinker or a hunter, you don’t give much thought to extractors other than keeping them clean because it’s unlikely you’ll ever wear one out. But serious competition shooters care, as they put thousands of rounds through their guns every year. The Eagle’s Talon is made of hardened tool steel, and it’s precisely EDM machined so its hook will grab and eject each round without fail, year in and year out.
Aside from these two upgrades, the rest of the pistol remains the same, which is good. The first thing you’ll notice is the gun’s outstanding grip. Taurus designers spent two years working on it, and they got it right. It’s hand-filling, but not to the point anyone will have a problem handling it. It has a small ridge just below the trigger guard—which is undercut for a high grip—where my middle finger naturally fits. A slight flare at the base allows me to exert more pinky pressure, which helps keep the muzzle down on presentation and therefore helps acquire a red dot faster.
The second thing you’ll notice is the excellent trigger. While it has a rather long take-up, the break is excellent. The trigger on my sample broke at four pounds, five ounces with almost no overtravel. The reset is short and crisp. The gun also sports a reversible magazine release, which lefties will appreciate. The slide on the TX22 Competition SCR is skeletonized, and in addition to the Tandemkross extractor, it also features an oversize ejection port. Slide serrations are both front and rear. Iron sights include a white-dot front and a white dot rear that’s adjustable for windage and elevation.
Red dots mount to the 5.25-inch match-grade bull barrel. This setup gives the TX22 an accuracy advantage in that the red dot does not ride on a reciprocating slide but instead stays fixed on the barrel. The barrel’s custom feed ramp is polished for smooth, sure feeding. For testing and competition, I mounted an Ameriglo Haven red dot, an easy task thanks to the two polymer sight plates that come with the pistol. Bench accuracy was excellent with the three competition-type loads I had on hand. While CCI Clean wasn’t the most accurate from the bench, it did provide the most velocity and therefore the most energy to operate the slide, and that’s what I chose for a Rimfire Challenge match I took the gun to.
It’s a sport that is almost identical to Steel Challenge and combines speed and accuracy. And one critical note here: While the SCR is designed to be competition ready, it comes with only three magazines. You really need five for both Steel Challenge and Rimfire Challenge, so you’ll need to buy two more. Sixteen-, 15- and 10-rounders are available at Taurus’ website. While pinpoint accuracy isn’t crucial because the targets are relatively large, reliability is. I saw several pistols on my squad choke at various points in the match, costing their owners precious seconds, but the Taurus never hiccupped once. The compensator kept the muzzle nice and flat, and the gun’s balance made for sure target transitions.
The Taurus TX22 was already a terrific .22 semiauto, and with the upgrades on the Competition SCR version, it’s a great gun to get you into the rimfire games or simply to enjoy shooting a well-balanced, nice handling, accurate .22 pistol. I didn’t own a dedicated competition rimfire pistol prior to testing the TX22 Competition SCR. I do now.
Taurus TX22 Competition SCR Specs
- Type: Semiauto, rimfire
- Caliber: .22 Long Rifle
- Capacity: 16+1 rds., 10+1 rds. (tested)
- Barrel: 5.25 in. w/Tandemkross Game Changer Pro Squared compensator; barrel thread cap
- OAL/Height/Width: 8.2/5.4/1.3 in.
- Weight: 23 oz.
- Construction: Aluminum slide, polymer frame
- Trigger: Single action, 4 lbs., 5 oz. pull (tested)
- Sights: Three-dot, adjustable-rear irons; two optics mounting plates
- Safeties: Ambidextrous thumb, trigger, striker block
- MSRP: $589
- Manufacturer: Taurus


Superstrata’s e-bike is a strange specimen — there’s no two ways about it.
In some ways that makes sense; the bike’s concept, borne out in seamless 3D-printed carbon fiber, springs from an equally strange premise. We’ll get into that.
Talking to Sonny Vu, founder of Superstrata’s parent company Arevo, the bikes were crafted not out of a love of cycling, the hunt for a climate-friendly urban transportation solution or any traditional justification for going to all the trouble of making an e-bike.
Instead, Vu created the Superstrata e-bike (and its non-electrified counterpart) as a proof-of-concept for Arevo’s carbon fiber manufacturing process. In that light, how the bike wound up makes perfect sense — even if buying one probably doesn’t.
“Everyone thought we’re an e-bike company, but we’re not, we’re an advanced manufacturing company,” Vu told TechCrunch. We certainly can’t blame e-bike enthusiasts for being confused.
Superstrata is deep into what Vu calls “deep tech” — basically manufacturing processes so cutting edge that they haven’t even shown up in consumer products yet. “This isn’t your typical 3D printing system — it’s built for industrial speed and scale,” Vu said.
Arevo, Superstrata’s parent company, is exploring aerospace applications in the future and potentially UAVs. Superstrata and Arevo spun up the e-bike as a consumer proof-of-concept to fill the gap while they wade through the regulatory red tape that defines more complex industries. The company’s bike frames are currently printed in Vietnam, though Vu has plans for print farms in the U.S. and Europe to reduce shipping times and generally make its whole carbon fiber printing operation more efficient.
So, carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is one frontier of climate technology, promising fuel-saving lightweight materials at the cost of a fairly energy intensive production process. Superstrata’s silky, unibody bike frames are made out of industrial grade 3D-printed thermoplastic carbon fiber composite rather than “thermoset” — a more common polymer process. While Vu was eager to dive into the technical advantages and the manufacturing process, at the end of the day what you need to know is: This is an e-bike and its frame is made out of very fancy 3D-printed carbon fiber.
Here’s the basic pitch. The Superstrata e-bike is a carbon fiber unibody bike that’s custom printed to meet your preferences, souped up with a 250W pedal-assist motor and shipped in an array of fun prints and colors. The sleek, angular design of the bike’s frame and its conspicuous absence of a seat tube — the part of the frame that would normally flow down from where the seat sits — is pleasantly futuristic or downright odd, depending on who you ask.
Table of Contents
A luxury price
While early critics raised alarms about Superstrata’s missing seat tube, which would normally connect the top tube and down tube to form a strong triangle shape to hold the rider’s weight, Vu assured us that the single, seamless piece of carbon fiber was rated up to 750 lbs. and more than strong enough to hold a cyclist. Riding the Superstrata, I wasn’t concerned about the strength of the carbon fiber, though the potential for smoothing the ride with adjustments involving a seat tube are a missed opportunity. The frame is strong and the ride is stiff — and that’s just how it is.
(The frame’s design is eye-catching even without the missing tube, and does bear some striking similarities to Greg LeMond’s excellent looking e-bike the Prolog. It’s possible that Superstrata printed those frames but the company isn’t listed anywhere and they do boast a much more traditional geometry.)
The missing chunk of frame turns heads, but Superstrata’s other aesthetic choices also set the bike apart visually. The company is all about customization and that applies to the paint too. My review unit was an intense purple, maybe a periwinkle. Honestly, as someone who wears all black most days, the color hurt my soul a bit but my wife found it appealing.
Some of the special paint jobs you can order are very cool — including two that look like starry skies and another designed to evoke the aurora borealis — but they’ll run you an extra $1,250. That extra cost would get you most of the way to a more affordable e-bike made by competitors like Charge or Rad Power. This isn’t a bike for the wallet conscious (most of us).
That choice and other aspects of the Superstrata feel a bit “It’s one banana, Michael, What could it cost?” I’m not convinced the bike is really designed to be sold to much of anyone and that’s just a weird takeaway to have when reviewing something.
Superstrata’s e-bike is obviously meant to present as a luxury product, but the experience of the ride and the deeper design doesn’t exactly give off a luxurious, cohesive vibe. At the end of the day, if you asked the question: What is special about this bike? The full answer is “the 3D-printed unibody carbon fiber frame.”
At this price point — the e-bike starts $3,500 — Superstrata’s base offering gives you a lot less for your money than what you’d get with a much more fully-featured electric bike like the Cowboy ($2,990), VanMoof’s new model ($3,498) or even its last generation models, which float around $2,000. Those tech-forward bikes pack perks like built-in interfaces, companion apps, embedded automatic front and back lights, phone chargers and alarm systems for at or around what you’d pay for a base price Superstrata bike.
A feature that illustrates this well is the fact that Superstrata initially planned to have integrated front and back lights — many of the bikes pictured on its website still misleadingly show this — but that idea was scrapped in the finished version. The lights, the little computer for the electric motor and any bells and whistles are all after market, not integrated into the bike’s design.
After speaking to Vu — who was transparent to the point of admitting the whole e-bike idea was just kind of for the hell of it — it didn’t particularly feel like Superstrata was trying to actively mislead people about the headlight situation or anything else. The fact that Superstrata’s website shows a product you literally can’t buy just further demonstrates that it isn’t this company’s main thing. The problem with that is that most people making a purchase this big would feel safer buying from a company that lives and breathes bikes — not carbon fiber.
Custom carbon fiber
Back to the frame — the meat of the innovation here. The Superstrata bike is custom printed to order and that’s a huge boon for people who are on the extremes of the height spectrum, including adults under 5’2”, who apparently ordered the bike with gusto. For these folks, who are hard-pressed to find properly sized bikes elsewhere, Superstrata’s frame size options are probably genuinely a big deal. If you’ve searched high and low for a bike to fit your unusually small or large stature, Superstrata’s bikes might be a great choice.
For anyone who falls in the normal-ish height spectrum, the rest of the customization process is relatively shallow. When relying on a bike for commuting or urban transportation purposes, the real customization options that matter offer utility — things like baskets, front or back racks and tire width.
Building the bike, you can choose from an “urban” or “sport” configuration for the bars, yielding a casual upright ride or a more aerodynamic drop bar road bike style. You can opt for a single speed or multiple gears, an option that most people would probably prefer but one that also adds $500. You can pick whether you’d want tires for the road or for “paths” — maybe gravel and light offroading — but there’s not much detail offered here. Superstrata buries the components list, but the review unit we had packed Shimano disc brakes, Bafang powering the electric side of the bike and a grab bag of brands for the rest.
After that stuff is dialed in, you can input your specific height and measurements for a custom-sized frame. On that count, we couldn’t really make a determination — my review bike was designed for someone a bit taller though was still rideable and okay. What else? The experience of riding the bike is fine, but nothing particularly sophisticated. The frame’s design makes for a very stiff ride so watch out for being jolted by uneven terrain.
The battery life is more than adequate for normal needs. Superstrata claims that it will last for 60 miles, but on a higher assist setting you’re going to get significantly less than that. Still, the battery would serve you for at least 20 miles even when drawing more power, which is more than fine for most around-the-town needs. It’s also worth mentioning here that the Superstrata e-bike doesn’t have a throttle — basically a button that gives you a burst of speed to power the bike along. A throttle is a really nice way to scoot quickly through dangerous intersections or to get your bike to maintain a higher speed and it’s tough to go back once you’ve used one. The Superstrata e-bike can go up to 20 miles per hour but you’ll have to work for it.
On that note, Superstrata’s state of the art frame might be carbon fiber, but the e-bike doesn’t exactly feel like a featherweight. Because the bike is so light in the front and so heavy in the back where the motor lives, it actually feels heavier than it is. It’s also more awkward to carry than a bike that’s uniformly weighted and you’re not going to want to be lugging this thing down more than a few stairs at a time.
The Superstrata website claims that the e-bike weighs 24 pounds but there’s no way this thing weighs that much less than my regular ride, a VanMoof X3 that’s a hefty but evenly weighted 45.8 pounds. Vu noted that the final version’s weight varies, but the e-bike weighs in around 38.5 to 39.6 lbs, enough to pretty much obscure the weight savings of the carbon fiber.
Ultimately, the Superstrata could be a solid option for someone who falls outside of normal height parameters and desperately wants an e-bike. Superstrata’s bikes might also be a good choice for someone who wants a custom-printed carbon fiber bike frame and is confident about dialing in the rest themselves, though buying the frame alone isn’t an option on the website.
In either of these cases, the advanced carbon fiber technology doesn’t come cheap and neither does this bike — especially when compared to competitors building feature rich, cohesive e-bike experiences. Superstrata should probably focus on its custom unibody carbon fiber frames and let other companies — or people — build the bikes out. And since this whole thing was an experiment anyway, that might very well be what the company plans to do.


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Media Personality Tony Kwalanda has spoken out after Switch TV’s Joyce Maina went public with their Breakup months after engagement.
In a number of Insta-stories, Kwalanda who also works at Switch TV, expressed gratitude towards Ms Maina stating that her love is genuine. The sports presenter went on to reveal that Joyce changed his life for the better; appreciating the moments they shared together.
Switch TV Presenter cum actress Joyce Maina has officially broken the silence over her relationship status with boyfriend, Tony Kwalanda.
Through her Instagram stories, Joyce had asked her fans to ask her anything in which she would respond.
One fan asked her if she was single to which she said yes.
Fans then started getting into specifics with one asking whether she was still dating her colleague Tony Kwalanda, which she responded to with an ‘No’.
However, one fan asked her how she had already moved on to which she replied, “I don’t take what people have to say about me personally.”

domain: sociology


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Tim Van Hal advises clients on a variety of corporate, securities and capital markets law matters including advice related to corporate restructurings, securities offerings and transactions, mergers and acquisitions, corporate refinancings and general corporate matters. He has worked on a variety of debt and equity deals serving corporate clients as well as private equity houses and underwriting banks as well as varied mergers and acquisitions, block trades, and other smaller capital markets matters. Tim works across a range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, pharmaceuticals, biotech, REITs and online retailers.
Prior to joining Bass, Berry & Sims, Tim practiced at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP in Frankfurt, Germany, as part of their U.S. Capital Markets team.
American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA)
Represented Addus HomeCare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS) in four strategic acquisitions and in its underwritten public offering of 2.3 million shares of common stock in 2019.
Engility Holdings Merges with SAIC for $2.5 Billion
Represented i3 Verticals, Inc. in its initial public offering (IPO) of of 7,647,500 shares of Class A common stock for a total net proceeds of $92.5 million.
Represented Engility Holdings, Inc. in its exchange of 8.875% Senior Notes due 2024
Represented Quorum Health Corporation in its exchange of 11.625% Senior Notes due 2023
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law — Managing Editor
Vanderbilt Law School — Law and Business Certificate, Chancellor’s Law Scholar
Phi Beta Kappa

domain: law


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Joe J. Taylor, 84, of Dana, husband of Gail Boyd Taylor, died Sept. 13, 2012, at Riverview Health Care.
Joe was born Oct. 17, 1927, to the late Trimble Taylor and Elizabeth Stone Robinson. He was an auto body repairman and a member of the Boldman Freewill Baptist Church.
In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by a sister, Pauline Jones, and a brother, John L. Taylor.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Joe David Taylor, of Dana; special daughter, Beatrice Jacobs, of Stanville; grandson, Joe Dustin Taylor; and sisters, Phyllis Stratton, Audrea Clark and Billy Jean Fife.
Services will be held at 11 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 15, at Nelson Frazier Funeral Home, in Martin, with Beaumont Johnson and Barry Clark officiating. Burial will follow in the A.A. Boyd Cemetery, at Dana.
Visitation will be after 5 p.m., Friday, at Nelson Frazier Funeral Home.
Nelson Frazier Funeral Home, of Martin, is in charge of arrangements.


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Highlights & Projects
Tracking gas quality in Colombia: from the Caribbean coast to the equator
The gas grid in Colombia is supplied from various sources. On the Caribbean coast in the north, natural gas is fed into the grid of the state-owned transmission operator TGI (Transportadora de Gas Internacional S.A.) both via pipelines from Venezuela and via an LNG terminal.
In addition, natural gas is produced from domestic sources in the east of the country. The construction of a further LNG terminal on the Pacific coast in the south-west of the country is currently being planned. In total, the transport network stretches over more than 4000 km of pipeline, with differences in altitude of more than 2500.
A challenge for the Colombian grid operator are the large differences in gas quality, as the LNG imported by ship can differ significantly from the domestic source. In order to be able to correctly determine the energy supplied to downstream customers, a project to implement SmartSim was started in 2018. In this way, the gas quality can be tracked precisely throughout the country. The project, which is being carried out in cooperation with the Colombian Consultancy Firm Polygon Energy S. A., has a pioneering character because it is the first application of this kind in South America. The metrological evaluation of the method is carried out in accordance with the international standard ISO 15112 and the international guideline R 140 of the OIML.

domain: geography


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domain: game


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That the Urhobo Nation is the most divided tribe in Nigeria today is to state the obvious! Every day one is confronted with a deluge of divergent views of some prominent Urhobos who supposed to give direction to the young ones on how to unite the Urhobo nation but are rather creating division among the Urhobo people for no other reason than selfish gains and self-aggrandizement. Thus, the Urhobo nation is currently factionalised into varied political groups as Urhobo Political Forum (UPF) Urhobo Political Congress (UPC) Delta Central Political Movement (DCPM), etc just to mention a few. These political groups have not been able to harmonise their differences and unite for the common good of the Urhobo nation!
Chief Great Ovedje Ogboru lost the 2011 governorship election in Delta State partly due to the awful roles played by some prominent Urhobos who saw nothing good in producing a governor of Urhobo extraction that will not line their pockets with silver and gold but a governor from other tribe that will enrich them. Thus, the Urhobos tear and pull themselves down for personal gains than the collective good of the Urhobo people. But the question agitating the minds of many right-thinking Urhobos is, must any Urhobo person pulls down the Urhobo nation before he or she can be relevant politically in Delta State? The Vice-Chairman of Urhobo Political Forum (UPF), Hon. Monday Igbuya said that the Urhobo in Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), would follow the directive of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan in choosing the next governor of the state. Igbuya said, “….For the avoidance of doubt, and for more emphasis, Uduaghan is the leader of our party in the state, where ever he directs us, we will surely go as members of PDP and UPF….”. Was that the reason Chief Amori who chairs the UPF, took the immediate past Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe to London to consult Chief James Ibori and possibly be anointed for the 2015 governorship election in the state? Is that the political permutation of Governor Uduaghan for Orubebe to become the next governor of the state so he could have easy access to the Senate at the detriment of Delta North and Delta Central Senatorial Districts?
These Urhobos have indeed become albatross to the political progress of the Urhobo nation. They styled themselves as PDP stalwarts but have never occupied any public office outside the state and cannot project any Urhobo person for national assignments. They should without further delay bury their faces in shame! The Urhobos who helped to scuttle Great Ogboru’s governorship ambition with promises of appointment as ministers and senior special assistants have become irrelevant politically as they have been used against the Urhobo Project and dumped! But why will a man pull down his tribe just for a morsel of bread? Those pulling down the Urhobo nation politically should realise the fact that they will be accorded disdain if the Urhobo nation which they belong does not attract the desired honour as a result of their nefarious activities.
Where were Chief Amori, Magege, Hon. Igbuya and other Urhobos who called themselves PDP stalwarts when Urhobos are utterly excluded from leadership positions at the national level? Chief Kenneth Gbagi was relieved of his appointment as the Minister of State for Education but till date, he has never been replaced by any Urhobo person. Dr. Otive Igbuzor who hitherto represented the South-South geopolitical zone in the Police Service Commission was not sworn into office for a second term due to a petition against him but he has not been replaced by another Urhobo person! Are these so-called apostles of equity saying there is no other qualified Urhobo person who can occupy the position formerly occupied by Dr. Otive Igbuzor an Urhobo person? One would have expected Chief Amori, Magege, Igbuya, etc as PDP stalwarts to have visited President Jonathan and presented another Urhobo person to him for appointment into the Police Service Commission. Somebody from another tribe might have taken over that position from the Urhobos!
The true Urhobos are convinced beyond every reasonable doubt that these Urhobos that are clamouring for the Delta State governor from other senatorial districts in 2015 under the guise of equity are not true Urhobos; they must be people from other tribes who adopted Urhobo names in order to destabilize the Urhobo nation! If the opposite is the case, why will any Urhobo person be struggling to enthrone a non-Urhobo as governor in 2015 for the sake of equity when the Urhobos are obviously side-lined in political appointments at the federal level? The Delta South Senatorial District which produced Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan also have the following appointments: Executive Director Project, NDDC, Eng. Tuoyo Omatsuli, Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Mr. Patrick Z. Akpobolokemi, Secretary to Delta State Government, Mr. Ovuozorie Macaulay, until recently, Minister for Niger Delta Affairs was Godsday Orubebe, commissioner representing Delta State in the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Barr. Rita Irone Begho. Justice Tabai of the Supreme Court who was suspended sometimes ago also hails from Delta South Senatorial District.
Here are the appointments from Delta North: Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador Joy U. Ogwu, Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Prof. Sylvester Monye, Chairman, National Social Insurance Trust Fund, Mrs. Ngozi Ojelem, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Director General, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Prof. Epiphany Azinge, Director General, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Mr. Peter Idabor, Chairman, Export Processing Zone (EPZ), Calabar, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, Speaker, Executive Vice-Chairman (Chief Executive Officer), Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah and Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele.
But the Delta Central Senatorial District that is home to majority of the Urhobo people that are crying for equity because of their individual selfish lucre, has Chief Tom Amioku in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), as the only Urhobo person in any federal agency!


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Best way to create a mould - 3D printing or CNC?
Hello all, I have a general question I'd appreciate your help on please. I want to create a mould (mold in American!) to make cakes in, in the shape of a car. So the mould has to be food-grade which is usually polycarbonate. Using some of the CAD files on Grabcad, I see the following necessary steps:
1. modify 3D Cad file to fill in wheel arches behind the wheels, make air intakes shallower etc
2. can I 3D print the "negative" space to make a mould directly in polycarbonate?
3. or do I print the negative space in silicon, have a car cast, and then make a food mould?
Your design and manufacturing experience would be appreciated.
Ideally I'd like something like this, plus wheels, that I can make a top and bottom mould for Aston martin DB11 (thanks to Valentino Les on Grabcad)
Cake shaped molds are available, and I would start by looking at them: https://www.amazon.com/car-cake-pan/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acar%20cake%20pan
Aluminum appears to be the material of choice, and all of the designs appear to be formed with a die press or stamping operation.
You could use polycarbonate, but I don't see how you'd bake a cake in plastic. Silicone is a material to consider, but it may depend on the size. A flexible pan is not good for large items.
Something to consider is draft angles. The car shape has to be pulled from the mold, so it needs to have tapered walls (like an ice cube tray). No undercuts, no negative draft.
Since you want polycarbonate, and the CAD data will need pretty steep draft angles, I'd take a look at having the mold vacuum or thermo formed.
I think you'll want to look at having the shapes formed in aluminum then. Stamping, and casting are both operations which can get you a professional cake pan.
The biggest limitation is cost.
People make sort of generic looking pans now so they are suitable for a wide range of cars. Instead of making a Tesla Model S cake pan, they make a "Sedan" cake pan. The goal being that it be used for almost any sedan on the market.
Once you start making a specific cake pan, you've invested a large amount of money, and will likely experience limited sales as the market for cake pans of specific luxury vehicles may be limited.
These types of molds are typically made from silicone.
These videos should give you some idea of the process and a source for materials. You'll need to manufacture or find a master. 3D printing might be the least costly method dependent on your skill set.
I think you're wanting low costing mold making process. My advice is edit the car model to reduce sharp edges and add wheel then 3d print it. Then create the mold by silicone from your 3d printed model.
You can search on youtube for the silicone mold making tutorials.

domain: hobby


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FAIRFIELD - Suppliers of winter-storm equipment in southwestern Connecticut say business is booming as residents prepare for an expected barrage of snow Friday.
At Goodyear Auto Service Center in Fairfield, employees say people are rushing to buy snow tires. Harry Adams, the lead technician at the Kings Highway Cutoff center, says people are looking for tires that can quickly stop on snow and ice.
"We have two tire machines, two balancers constantly running," he says. "Four guys back there right now just constantly changing over snow tires."
Other stores are seeing increased sales of ice scrapers, shovels and ice melt. Hemlock Hardware store manager Scott Pesavento says he's just as busy but expects a frantic Friday.
"Usually when a snowstorm comes, you do get some people the day before, but the majority of our business will be done tomorrow during the day," he says.


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DIY Anti-Wrinkle Cream
- 3/4 C Organic Coconut Oil
- 2 drops Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree)
- 2 drops Lavender
- 2 drops Roman Chamomile
- 2 drops Geranium
- 2 drops Carrot Seed (Optional SPF protection)
In a medium sized bowl, place Coconut Oil and whip with a hand held mixer until creamy, approximately 5-10 minutes.
Add each Essential Oil, whip until evenly combined and store in a glass jar.