Petersson square of twist

Question: I should know this, but can't find a reference. Let $F$ be a cusp form,
not necessarily an eigenform, on some congruence subgroup. It seems experimentally that the ratio of the Petersson square of a twist of $F$
(say by some quadratic character) to the Petersson square of $F$ belongs
to $\mathbb Q(F)$. Is this true, and what is the proof ? Or are there conditions on the twist ? Is this directly related to Manin's rationality
theorem, i.e., are the periods $\omega^{\pm}$ of the twist related to
those of $F$ ?
Comment: "Petersson square" = $\langle F, F \rangle$ w.r.t. Petersson inner product?
For an eigenform, at least, the relation should follow from the formula where
$\langle F, F \rangle$ appears in the leading coefficient of the asymptotic
growth of $\sum_{n \leq x} |a_n(F)|^2$; twisting by a character
of conductor $q$ only removes the terms for which $\gcd(n,q) > 1$,
so we need also the growth of $\sum_{n \leq x} |a_{dn}(F)|^2$
for each $d|q$, and then relate $a_{dn}$ with $a_n$ via multiplicativity.
Comment: Have you experimented with forms which are combinations of newfoms of different level?  Do you still get rational relations if you twist by characters which are ramified at places the levels of some but not other of the newforms?
Answer: For an eigenform, the product of the periods associated to $f$ ($\omega^{\pm}$ in your notation) is equal modulo $\mathbf{Q}(f)^\times$ to $i^{1-k} G(\chi) \langle f, f\rangle$, where $G(\chi)$ is the Gauss sum of the nebentypus character of $f$, and $k$ is the weight. This is Theorem 1 (iv) of Shimura's On the periods of modular forms (Math. Ann. 229, 1977).
Since the periods of the twist $f_\varepsilon$ are $G(\varepsilon)$ times the periods of $f$, and $G(\varepsilon^2 \chi) / [G(\chi) G(\varepsilon)^2]$ lies in the field of values of $\chi$ and $\varepsilon$, it follows that the ratio $\langle f_\varepsilon, f_\varepsilon\rangle / \langle f, f \rangle$ lies in $\mathbf{Q}(f, \varepsilon)^\times$ (and hence in $\mathbf{Q}(f)^\times$ if $\varepsilon$ is quadratic).
(Are you sure the statement is true for non-eigenforms? It seems very unlikely, somehow.)

Petersson square of twist


Is Quicksilver Sash or Cleanse better for Vayne?

Question: I've been playing Vayne a lot, and I'm having trouble deciding whether Cleanse or Quicksilver Sash is more efficient.
Answer: I'm not sure it's a good idea to compare them - while they do the same thing, they have very different costs.
I'd say only go Cleanse if there's dangerous CC in bot lane, and you might need the summoner spell to avoid losing early game, which Vayne is usually bad at. Otherwise, use that slot for Heal (or maybe Exhaust), again mostly for early game. Basically, you spend this summoner spell to keep you alive before you have time to farm up and get items.
Quicksilver Sash on the other hand, is a mid-late game item buy. You get this to survive in teamfights when the enemy has CC that can lock you down. Most team comps have at least some CC, and if you're playing Vayne correctly, you are probably their #1 target, so you should expect to eat all of those abilities. The question isn't really "should I get Quicksilver Sash?" but "when should I get Quicksilver Sash?". You want at least one big item (i.e. Bloodthirster, maybe Phantom Dancer) to really boost your damage, and then think about your next items. If there's a lot of enemy CC, you might pick up the Quicksilver Sash next; if you think you can survive the teamfights, you might instead buy another big damage item, and only get the Sash if the game goes long.
Answer: Quicksilver Sash if you want to run a different summoner spell other than Cleanse. (i.e. Heal/Exhaust)
Quicksilver Sash also is a good counter to Malzahar.
Answer: If they have Malzahar/Urgot/Warwick and focus you, you should go for an early Quicksilver Sash (probably after Infinity Edge/Bloodthirster or after Infinity Edge/Bloodthirster + Zeal).
If they just have a team with a lot of stuns/taunts, it's a good idea to run Cleanse instead and go full damage with your build, and get a Guardian Angel later.


norm of ridge regression estimator

Question: is there a characterization or an upper bound on the norm of the ridge regression estimator (coefficients)?  As the Tikhonov regularization attempts to regularize these coefficients as part of the loss function, is there an exact form for this norm after the estimator is computed?
Comment: There is a closed form solution to the ridge regression problem, hence a closed form expression for the norm.
Answer: We have
$$
\hat\beta = (X^TX + \lambda I)^{-1}X^Ty
$$
with $X \in \mathbb R^{n\times p}$
so, as @passerby51 commented,
$$
\|\hat\beta\|^2 = y^TX(X^TX + \lambda I)^{-2}X^Ty.
$$
To interpret this, let $X = UDV^T$ be the SVD of $X$. Then
$$
\|\hat\beta\|^2 = y^T UD(D^2 + \lambda I)^{-2}DU^Ty = \sum_{i=1}^p \frac{d_i^2}{(d_i^2 + \lambda)^2} z_i^2
$$
with $z = U^Ty \in \mathbb R^p$. $\lambda \geq 0$ means $0
\leq \frac{d_i^2}{(d_i^2 + \lambda)^2}\leq 1$ which reflects the shrinkage nature of this.
$U$ gives an orthonormal basis for $\text{ColSpace}(X)$ so $z = U^Ty$ is the $p$ coordinates of $y$ expressed w.r.t. this basis (if $\text{rank}(X) < p$ then some singular values will be zero so it won't matter what values $z$ has for those coordinates). If $p > n$ then $U$ may be $n \times n$ in size instead but the ideas are the same.
So in light of this, $\|\hat\beta\|^2$ will be relatively large when $z$ is concentrated in the first few coordinates, so equivalently when $y$ can be well approximated by a linear combination of just the elements of $U$ with relatively large singular values. These are the elements that are used for giving the best low rank approximation of $X$ in the Frobenius sense (and other senses; this is just via the SVD) so if $y$ is well explained by just these then $y$ is close to the "essential" column space of $X$ rather than being noisier.

norm of ridge regression estimator


How to be more logical? (less bugs/errors)

Question: I have been programming for 6 years and I am in high school (I prefer not to disclose my age). I have dabbled in many different languages. Just to list a few: Java, PHP, C++, Python, Autohotkey, Mathematica and many more. I have a very good understanding of the basics of general programming. The only problem is I still  create bugs all the time. I think too often. Do you have any hints besides continuing to program that will help me become a better programmer and make less errors?
Comment: It's a good idea to get into good habits whilst you're young.
Comment: Learn unit testing, check out http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html. and keep on learning stuff. Also ask specific questions with examples.
Comment: Try to learn some powerful abstractions that help you build your code on solid foundations (you can get lots of useful ideas e.g. from http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html). I am always amazed to see how thorough design can produce code with very few bugs (most of them are usually due to typos, not to logical errors).
Answer:
Keep your methods small. When methods grow too big, extract units of logic to new methods.
Name your classes, methods, and variables things that make sense. Never feel undue pressure to abbreviate any of these.
Use GoF design patterns whenever they make sense. [Here's a good beginner's book.]
Cover your code with automated unit tests. This will force you to modularize your code and give you confidence when refactoring.
Read Code Complete 2.
Comment: +1 if only for testing. Whatever the methods you use, there's always a possibility of screw-up. Only testing can build confidence in the code... even though it's not exhaustive either :) Fuzzy testing, when applicable, really helps too.
Answer: Do some analysis on the nature of the bugs themselves. Are they more logical or are they coding errors?
For the former, a good way is to model the potential use case scenarios with UML or relationship diagrams and then take it up from there.
If you are having more coding errors, do some root cause -- what's causing the error? Global variables? Pointers? Too many if-else statements? Lack of comments in the code? You need to take each of these issues piecemeal and then see how you want to go about it.
Last  but not the least, please do read the design patterns book by Gang of Four (google this).
Answer: One of the things that helps the most is using asserts.  How many times a day do you assume something that can be checked with a simple predicate "can't happen"?  If, everytime you run into something like this, you put in an assert to prove at runtime that you're right, buggy code will fail fast and close to the root of the problem.  Furthermore, the act of stating your assumptions about the current state explicitly is itself a good exercise.
IMHO asserts are actually more valuable than unit tests.  Some things are hard to unit test either because they have so many dependencies (either data or other code), because the algorithm is so complex that it's virtually impossible to figure out what the "right answer" is except by programming an implementation and running the code, or because they're non-deterministic.  Unit tests also only test the specific cases that you thought to test.  Asserts, on the other hand, don't require you to come up with a specific test case, making them much easier to write and thus more likely to actually get written even when in a hurry.  They also see real-world inputs, including cases that you never thought of.
Comment: This is called coding by contract. You assert on input to the method, and assert on your out put for the method. So you are saying that the method is only guaranteed if the input complies with these restrictions, and the output will comply with these other restrictions.
Comment: @Dominic:  That's part of it, but even internal consistency within a method can be worth asserting.
Answer: We all create bugs.  I do think experience tends to reduce them.  After you've made a particular mistake a few times you'll recognize the situations where it occurs and develop techniques to avoid it.
One thing you could do right away to help limit the number of bugs you miss is to start doing more testing - add unit testing to your methodology, or go all the way and start doing Test Driven Development.
Answer: As others have said, analyse the mistakes you are making, and work out what they are. Once you know what the mistakes generally are work out how you can ensure that you don't make those mistakes.
But once you know what the mistakes are that you are making you have to make the solution a habit. Mentally rap yourself on the knuckles every time you do what caused the mistake (or don't do the step that ensures you don't make the mistake), and mentally pat yourself on the back when you do implement the solution, until it becomes second nature.
Your habits will determine what you will do when under pressure. If you haven't got good habits you will make errors that you should know not to.
Last of all, every one writes bugs. To quote Edgser Dijkstra,

If debugging is the process of
  removing bugs from a program, then
  programming must be the process of
  putting them in.
Answer: There will always be bugs, but striving to avoid them is excellent.

You've enough experience to be trying to avoid this, rather than thinking you're great and will get it right first time every time -- just realising that is excellent.
Whenever you find an error, ask yourself "could I have avoided that? how?"
Look for best practices on stackexchange and elsewhere, understand why they're that way, and follow them (assuming you agree).
Read well-written code, either by working with someone else, looking over a high quality existing code base (hard to find), or reading good coding books (look on programmers or stackoverflow for many decent suggestions on books on how to get good, not just how to get started).
You probably already know this, but turn on compiler warnings and if possible use a static code-checking tool (and for that matter, a decent debugger). For a short program, you can ignore warnings. For a large program, you need zero warnings so that if one shows up you can see if it matters.
Based on your experience and reading, develop a spider-sense for code smells. That is, whenever you're about to do something, recognise if it will be risky if you're distracted, or go away from the code for six months and forget what you're doing. Trivial examples:

Have you hard-coded the length of an array in more than one place, even implicitly by giving it an initialisation list? Don't leave it like that even for a minute, there's great likelihood that one day you'll change one but not the other. Use a const variable or use sizeof to calculate the length. If you change something, you should be able to do so by changing one thing and have it still work.
Have you made a temporary assumption? Did you think "Oh, for testing, it'll always be less than 1k?" That's ok -- but put in an assert, so if you ever exceed that you'll see immediately that you have to go back and make it properly variable sized, rather than getting weird errors you have to debug.
Are you writing code which took you more than a minute to get right? Or borrowed a technique from the web? Put in a comment saying why it's like that. If you're not sure the comment will stay current, put in a date. You can always delete it later if you decide that the usage is sufficiently obvious and is now second nature to you, but the chance is almost certain that if you had to stop and think now, you'll have to stop and think when rereading the code.
Are you writing an if() statement based on a bool variable or function? Change its name -- now -- to reflect the sense of the value. Don't write "if (retval)", write "if (success)" or "if (failure)". It'll seem obvious at the time, but later, you'll massively avoid the risk of getting it the wrong way round without noticing.
You presumably already do this, but ALWAYS use source control before you change ANYTHING. The chances are endless that you'll change something and think "wait, did that break it?" If you can compare before and after, it'll be completely transparent where the problem was.

And more in that vein (including more sophisticated examples like antipatterns in archetecture, not just syntax).
Answer: Are you working on projects by yourself?  You might try getting involved with a larger-scale project.  Fixing other people's bugs is a great way to get exposed to all kinds of errors you might not even think were possible.
Everybody creates bugs every day - the goal is just to find and fix them before they become a big problem.
Answer: What helps me, is to always list the ways each section, function can fail in my head.
So then I work harder on variable scoping, form validation, anti-sql injection, writing better and correct sql etc.
I guess over time we create our own mental checklists of what NOT to do.
And over time our code get's better...
Answer: One practical way to improve your code quality is to learn a highly abstract functional language like Haskell/Caml/Lisp. Haskell would be my recommendation, though others suggest that it's not a good first functional language.
You don't have to make those your primary languages (unless you want to, of course). Just knowing them is extremely beneficial, even if you find them to be extremely difficult.
Once you get in the groove of thinking about concepts like statelessness and higher order functions, you'll know what kinds of mistakes to look out for when you're writing code in your usual imperative languages.
Obviously design flaws and integration mistakes are harder to avoid, but ever since I learned F# and Haskell, I've nearly completely stopped making small-scale bugs.


What does the lucky foot do?

Question: The wiki states that the lucky foot raises luck. Unfortunately, it fails to state just what that means. So, what does raising my luck do?
Comment: It makes you win.
Answer: In addition to the other answer, I have experimentally found that the lucky foot increases the chances of winning at the shell game in the arcade. The wiki says that the probability of winning on any single run is 33%, but when playing as Cain I have recorded a greater than 50% win rate (so far it seems to be 66%).
Edit: according to discussion on the item page on the wiki, the foot also makes you only get good pills. The comment said that collecting it turned a bad pill into a good pill like the PhD item.
Edit 2: it appears that the Womb levels decrease or nullify the effect of the Lucky Foot. I went to an arcade on The Womb 2 and found that my win rate was below 50%.
I tested with 140 consecutive runs of the shell game in The Womb 2 and I won 77 times, so it looks like the win chance is a bit over 50%, but definitely not 66%.
In addition, the lucky foot increases the chance of getting an item from the beggar. Without the lucky foot, it often takes 4 or 5 coins before the beggar will drop a single item. With the lucky foot, however, I have never seen it take more than 3 coins for him to drop something.
Comment: Can any information about the slot machine be added?  Does the Lucky Foot increase your chance to win at them?
Comment: I don't have that information right now, but if I get a chance I'll test it. And if someone else tests it, I'll put it in my answer.
Answer: If you have a look at the items page on the wiki, there are a couple of people there who state the foot does several thing:

Slot machine winnings
Improved pill effects
Easier rooms
Better items found

While as a programmer it makes sense to me that all the above are based on some global "luck" factor, which the lucky foot improves, I can't say I have actually noticed any of the above in one of my playthroughs (that doesn't mean that the effects aren't too subtle to easily notice).
What I did notice, personally, is that when I play as Cain, who starts with the lucky foot, I tend to get more pick-up drops once I clear a room of baddies.
Comment: So far the only effect I'm reasonably certain of is a higher coin and heart drop rate, but that's based on one playthrough with Cain. I'm hoping there's a more definitive answer than the comments section of the wiki.
Comment: @Fambida: Then your experience is similar to mine. I doubt you can get a "definitive" answer for this, unless someone actually takes the time to sit down and perform some statistics. Even then, there is no telling how many factors effect the things I listed above, so I'm not sure anything short of disassembling the game can give the correct answer.

What does the lucky foot do?


How can I tell the difference between male and female trees?

Question: How do you know what a male tree looks like from the female? Is it because of the leaves that fall or the ones that have more pollen?
Please help me to understand if there is such a thing.
Comment: Welcome to the site! You might want to have a look at this related question http://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/13609/how-do-you-tell-if-a-tree-is-male-or-female, to see if it helps you in addition to the answers you have here.
Answer: It's down to the particular variety of tree or plant how to tell, but bear in mind that not all trees are either male or female (dioecious), many are monoecious, meaning they have male and female parts on the same plant. Of those that are dioecious, information at the point of sale can be helpful, because often it's very difficult or impossible to tell whether a plant is male or female unless there are flowers or berries present.
Holly is probably an obvious example - these plants are dioecious, so there are male and female plants. Usually, you know when a plant is female because it produces berries, and the male doesn't. The only other ways to know are by its varietal name and looking it up to see if it's male or female, or by examining a flower - the stamens are longer in male flowers than they are in female ones. Very unhelpfully, for hollies, you can't guess from looking at the varietal name alone - Ilex Silver Queen, for instance, despite its feminine name, is actually a male plant, so you still need to know the varietal name and then look them up. In the case of Holly, if you want berries, it's necessary to have both a male and female plant for the female to produce fruits.
Gingko biloba is also dioecious - the female produces fruits, but the male doesn't. However, many people prefer to have a male plant, because the fruits on the female have an unpleasant smell, which obviously isn't a problem with male plants.
Whether a plant is male or female is usually only important if you particularly want fruit of some sort, whether that be ornamental berries or edible fruits. Some fruiting plants are dioecious, others aren't, so that's something which should be established in order to have fruits of a particular type.
Answer: In addition to Bamboo nice answer, I reply to one of your doubt:
Pollen is produced by male organ, so if it has pollen you know that the plant is male, or it has also male flowers, or some flowers have both sexes, or all of this. The Examination of only one flower cannot be definitive, but in the case of a well know strictly dioceous plant.
If the plant has fruits, you can say that the plant is (also) female.
Usually the differentiation is only on flowers and fruits, the rest it is usually identical.
Answer: This is a bit of a less scientific explanation, but is accurate enough.
To tell the sex of an animal, the easiest way is often to inspect the genitals. You can do the same with a plant. The flowers are the plants genitals. Some plants have both the male and female parts, whereas others have only male parts or female parts. Pollen is the equivalent of plant sperm, think about that next spring when the air is full of it. Once the plants have been fertilised, they will have the equivalent of a plant pregnancy (growing fruit), where the seeds are like little plant eggs ready to create another plant, and they are often wrapped in a fruit to convince animals to eat them. The seeds are protected against being digested, and so they will be carried some distance by the animal and be deposited somewhere along with a nice helping of fresh fertiliser (animal poop) to prepare the little baby plant to start growing.
So the next time you see a girl recieving flowers, think about how they have just received a gift of plant genitals, and if you bite down into a piece of fruit youve just started eating plant placenta. Yum!
Comment: Flowers that have polen (similar to sperm) are male; And fruits, which hold seeds (similar to little eggs) are female. I like your metaphor, it's easy to remember! ( → ♂,  → ♀)


RDP support in unity

Question: Is there any support yet for remote desktop protocol in Ubuntu Desktop yet? - I need to give access to >100 users in an AD domain and I would rather not have to install VNC clients. I know RDP is supported in other desktops but that is not what they want to use.
Comment: I would really like to see this, too. Remote desktop should be a first class citizen in Ubuntu.
Answer: Ubuntu 16.04 desktop (and several previous versions have as well) comes with Remmina Remote Desktop Client pre-installed, and it supports connecting directly to RDP clients, such as windows. I have used to connect to Windows 7 machines without any difficulty.
You could try it out from the livedisk version of Ubuntu Desktop if you want to verify it will work for you.
Comment: Thanks Afforess, but isn't this a client for Ubuntu? - I'm looking for the something on Ubuntu that will allow RDP from the built in client on Windows, specifically to Unity Desktop
Comment: Ah, I didn't realize you meant running a RDP server on Ubuntu. You can install xRDP, it is essentially a proxy between RDP and a local VNC session.

RDP support in unity


FCC-approval and "modular" integration

Question: I see that a PCB requires certification even if it incorporates a certified RF module, so EMC tests for spurious emissions will still be needed. Is FCC-approval needed if a Raspberry Pi is shipped/sold with a USB WiFi dongle? So how is modular integration actually defined? Are EMC tests for spurious emissions needed when a USB WiFi dongle is connected to a Raspberry Pi? Or is it that FCC doesn't consider integration via USB isn't considered to be "
Comment: You're in the wrong place to be asking legal questions. Better you should access 47CFR through https://www.fcc.gov/
Answer: Assuming (1) that the USB dongle itself is approved as a computer peripheral and (2) the dongle has not been modified, then I believe the dongle is considered a separate and independent product (non-module) and does not need an additional approval to be sold with the Pi.
The safest best is to include the dongle in its original packaging and let the user plug it into the Pi. The of course means that you need to make the Pi's USB port user accessible.
If instead you want to include the dongle already plugged in and the assemblage is contained in a non-accessible enclosure, then I think you need to do verification testing on the resulting assembly and label the outside to indicate that the approved transmitter is located inside. This makes sense since a person inspecting the full device would otherwise have no way of knowing what certification that are relying on - or even that there was a certified device was inside.
Answer: The Raspberry Pi has it's own FCC ID:  https://fccid.io/2ABCB-RPI32
Presumably the RF module does also.
You should check that the FCC IDs for both pieces of hardware are actually valid, and were tested using the devices that you intend to ship, as there are very many manufacturers that will "blindly" stamp whatever FCC ID on a product in order to say it has a number, even though that number is for a different product and the certification doesn't apply.  That seems to get it though border clearance currently, but if they ever tighten that you might be in a pickle with invalid IDs.
If both have FCC IDs then you can likely get away from having to do any testing and still have a commercially viable product.  Without testing the entire device your Declaration of Conformity (DOC) is based on the testing of the devices individually, and they technically can't be shipped in the same box (however many many manufacturers do that and aren't penalized).  The penalty that you are at risk of is having your shipments to USA held up while you prove that they conform, which rarely happens, but when it does it's probably not convenient, and government agency fees/fines could mount up!  Seems like it would have to be willful, egregious and impactful before it would really pop on the FCC's radar though, considering the large volume of eBay product that enters the country (USA/Canada) on invalid IDs.
Having a full system EMC test allows you to quickly send a document that proves what you say on the DOC is true, and would allow you to send the device with the module installed, with your head held high, and no worries that your competition would try to rat you out and possibly make a big deal out of it.
You're not alone in navigation of the bewildering path of certification, though...
Specifically to your questions:

Is FCC-approval needed if a Raspberry Pi is shipped/sold with a USB WiFi dongle?

Technically yes, practically and following other successful manufacturers' examples, no.  "No" carries more risk.  The exact definition of "with" is the gray area.

So how is modular integration actually defined?

FCC recognizes modules as separate from the main system, so if you build a board from scratch, you would need to have an EMC test that shows that the board alone meets FCC- Class B (or A, whatever your target), and that the module has valid FCC certification.  In this case you state on your documentation and box "Contains FCC:  xxx-yyyyyy" (for the module), but you don't need an FCC ID for your device in most cases.

Are EMC tests for spurious emissions needed when a USB WiFi dongle is connected to a Raspberry Pi?

If shipped/purchased together then yes, otherwise no.  Nobody seems to actually follow that, though.

FCC-approval and "modular" integration


What are the possible evolutionary changes humans will undergo in future?

Question: Owing to the ever changing environment will humans evolve to better adapt or will they rather use technology to do it for them?
Which option is better?
Comment: Human had long abandoned evolution and in favour of upgrade by either genetically or mechanically enhancement. Unless a broke out of nuclear holocaust which could set us back to bronze age we will be having lithium battery for breakfast soon.
Comment: I understand ,  we are more likely to modify the environment unfavourable to us rather than undergo natural selection to develop traits to survive .
Comment: @user6760 Humans have not stopped evolving. As long as genetic factors make some people more likely to have children than other people, evolution is happening. For example, people with a particular mutation that makes them immune to developing AIDS if they contract HIV have been getting more common in certain parts of Africa, because the rampant AIDS epidemic there is affecting reproduction prospects.
Answer: Humans will always evolve, short of a strictly regulated, global eugenics program that would have to be combined with a near-omniscient level of knowledge: it's not something that we can make a choice about as a species. However, the way that we interact with technology will certainly be part of what influences how humans evolve. People already have replaced much of the labour of previous generations with machinery, to give one example. Living in cities close to each other makes people more susceptible to quickly-spreading infections, and in response, they evolve forms of resistance against these pathogens. As the modern world and the skills needed for it change, it's entirely possible that mental and behavioral traits will evolve as well. However, we don't even have a full understanding of the current behavior and minds of humans or how we got to be this way; we know even less the specific ways in which we will evolve in the future.
Comment: We have not stopped evolving. It's just slow.
Answer: First off, humans will evolve, no matter what. That is simply due to the fact that in reproduction, the genes are always shuffled (yes, this is a very rough description). When comparing evolution to technology, technology will always win, at least short- to mid-term.
The reason: A human will reproduce every 20 years if in a hurry, while 30 years seems to be a more common figure. That is how long one iteration takes. Even if we eliminated randomness, for example by some sort of "breeding plans", you could not speed up the process (much). With technology, you can not only have much shorter improvement cycles, you can also combine efforts from different sources o achieve a better result.As a result, the answer to your question is: We will use technology to solve our problems, and will most likely evolve more or less independently from that.
Answer: We will likely evolve to better use our technology.
Those with more sensitive nerves on their fingers/thumbs and better dexterity will have advantages in environments where everyone uses touch-screen phones and computers.
When it comes to evolution vs technology, no option is better. Evolution is short-sighted and greedy, but it is brutally efficient. Evolution, or rather, natural-selection invariably favours evolutionary advantages that have short-term benefits, even if they have disastrous effects in the long-term.
Because of this, you may think technology is better. In some regards it is, but evolution applies to human behaviour as well. We're inclined to use our technology for short-term gain, at our long-term expense.
Answer: Neither option is 'better'. But evolution, in general, is extremely slow. As such, we've mainly used technology to better adapt to this world. This has been fairly true since the beginning and is perhaps one of the defining aspects that makes us human. In fact, when technology enables us to do things, it eliminates the need to evolve to to do it directly. We figured out how planes work, so no need for us to evolve wings any time soon, for example.
Answer: In my opinion (backed by a little research, but not extensive):
Unlike the other answers suggest, humans do not evolve any more.
Evolution means (simplified), that the species which can adapt best, has the most (or most generations of) [surviving] offspring. This doens't work with humans.
For humans, there is no evolutionary pressure. Success is no more coupled to reproduction.
Answer: Evolution also means selection to adapt to the environment the organism is living in. Humans can move quite long distances (even without technology; our distant ancestors literally walked across the entire planet), so we are less likely to be stuck in one place and forced to adapt to a singular diet, climactic condition or other factor which drives organisms to specialize. This also means humans can choose to find mates almost anywhere, so even if your ancestors lived in Peru and are somewhat adapted to high altitudes, you might have moved to the United States to go to school and have children with someone who's ancestors came from the plains of Europe...
The future driver of human evolution will be space travel. Since it will be very expensive and time consuming for centuries, populations will become isolated for long periods of time in alien environments (one of the preconditions for evolving). Even without technological intervention, people who are naturally more resistant to radiation or bone loss or whatever conditions obtain in distant moons or asteroids will pass that on to their children.
Technology, especially genetic engineering will simply speed things up. Differences in conditions will force genetic engineers to make different choices in different environments, and of course there will also be different preferences among the various populations which will also drive changes.
So look for a burst in human evolution starting late in the 21rst century when populations start settling on places like Mars, the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter and into deep space.


Which one has the correct punctuation of these two sentences?

Question:
I, not he am doing the project.

They, not he are the criminals.

or

I, not he, am doing the project.
They, not he, are the criminals.
Comment: In the first and third examples, the first comma should be immediately after "I", not immediately before "not".
Answer: ooo... comma rules can get a bit grey with your particular flavour of English but in this case I think everyone stands united. Well at least in theory.
Have a look at rule 5 here. The "not he" is an optional element (we could put parenthesis around it) so needs commas front and back


Issue exiting video after playing(ios phonegap app)

Question: I am currently using iwebkit and phonegap together. Once everything is compiled and tested on an idevice, I can click a video link and get it to play. It play full screen but it uses the ios web video player (the one that doesn't have the "done" button" and the top and has a bar that spans the bottom of the screen. I can then press the full screen button to have it use the regular ios media player but when i click done from that, it doesn't take me back to the part of the app before the video, it just takes me to the full screen video in the web player. I hope someone can help me solve this and I hope I was able to describe my problem in a clear way. I've spent 2 hours searching and have come up with nothing.
Answer: I'm having the same problem. iOS 4.3.x introduced this problem as far as I can tell. There's a few comments about it on Apple's developer site but so far I haven't found any solution. Part of the problem seems to be Phonegap because I experience the exact same thing you describe when running the compiled app. However, if I simply browse to the same HTML pages it seems to work fine. Note - I changed from directly linking to video files to using the HTML5  tag. Using the tag works better than direct linking in Phonegap -- the videos still open in the player but when you click the Done button it returns to where it was. Keep in mind that if you do this the video will be on the inline in the page and paused but when you click the play button it opens in the player. The only problem I've found with this solution is that it won't rotate when you change from portrait to landscape when running in the phonegap app but it does rotate when browsing to the video in mobile safari. Not sure if any of that helps. I would be interested in what you've been able to work out since you posted.


Extra bag with Qatar Airways - Can i pay for an extra bag?

Question: I am flying with Qatar Airways, Manchester to Melbourne, via Doha in March of this year. However I would like to check in an additional bag. However the website does not display a cost per bag, but simply per kilo. Why, when other airlines only charge £65 per extra bag (British Airways) do an airline such as Qatar not offer a similar service, but charge per Kilo. I am flying in 3 months so I have no idea how many kilos exactly I would need and to just pay for an additional bag seems so much more simple. Any help would be appreciated
Comment: Related: http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38282/overweight-baggage-policy-in-qatar-airways/38301#38301
Answer: Luggage Allowance on Qatar Airlines
The luggage allowance on Qatar Airlines operated flights is summarised in the table below (taken from the Qatar Airlines Baggage webpage):

Note that, quoting from the same page:

A single piece of checked baggage must not weigh more than 32kg (70lb). Any bags weighing more than 32kg (70lb) must be broken down such that each piece weighs less than 32kg (70lb).

Extra Luggage on Qatar Airlines
Indeed you can purchase an extra bag wen flying with Qatar Airways, only if you are flying to/from the Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the USA). Quoting from their page on the matter:

Excess baggage is charged per kilo except to / from the Americas, where it is charged per piece.

Excess baggage on flights to/from the remaining countries are charged by kilogram. Moreover, excess baggage for these countries can be sold in 5kg bundles. Quoting from the same page:

Purchase units are offered in increments of single pieces or bundles of 5kg (11lb) each.

This would somewhat allow you to buy an extra 5kg luggage.
The price per kilogram is dependent on departure and destination countries. It would seem that from Europe to Australia, the price per kilogram of excess luggage is 55USD if bought online and 70USD if bought in person (either ticket counter or check-in). Here is a screenshot from the afore-mentioned Qatar Airwayspage:
Comment: According to the chart, a 20 kg extra bag to Australia from EU would cost $1,100 USD.. that is more than 10 times of what it would cost in any other airlines...
Comment: But you get 30 kg for free even in cheapest economy, when most other airlines only offer 20 kg.
Answer: I did fly with Qatar airways to Singapore, Doha, New York, and I'm telling you to not bring an extra baggage (they are very strict). Your suitcase for check in should not exceed 20 kilo, and the handbag should not exceed more that 10 kilo (30 overall). See their term and conditions for the business class or first class as they have additional benefits for them.  The best option is to update your ticket to Business class or First class; if you still want to bring extra baggage either as an additional handbag or suitcase.


Tidal locking of a moon

Question: When a moon is in orbit around it's planet but is so close that it will become tidally locked does it experience a large 'wobble' in between the phase when it still has its own rotation and the final phase when it is always showing the same face to the planet?  I can only imagine that it would 'wobble' very widely, back and forth like a pendulum until finally settling into a locked position.
Comment: I assume by "wobble" you mean something different than libration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration so, more of a "as it settles into resonance" it first swings back and forth, different than the way it appears to do this as it moves closer and further from the planet due to any eccentricity in the orbit.
Comment: Wow, this is a *really interesting* question! I'll bet there are plenty of simulations, but it would be wonderful to find an animation of the transition in video form. It would be even more interesting to find *an observed example* of a body in this transition period!
Comment: See further  the discussion in Physics.SE  https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/156845/physics-of-tidal-locking-can-the-process-be-underdamped
Comment: @userLTK it's an important distinction. Assuming a moon had an essentially circular orbit (and both bodies had the necessary physical requirements for tidal locking) there still would be a transition, when viewed from the planet, when it stopped complete apparent rotation and started *not showing* at first a small, then larger fraction of it's back side to the planet, right?
Comment: See also https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/12154/what-causes-objects-to-become-tidally-locked
Comment: See the reference post in the close vote:  since the moon is always rotating, it has never stopped rotating.  There's no force that would cause it to rotate **slower** than tidal lock.
Comment: The "duplicate question" doesn't answer this, but the physics question that @CarlWitthoft linked above, does.
Answer: There's no back and forth motion on the way towards tidal locking.   There's kind of two ways to look this kind of "settling", there's overshooting and correction, basically a back and forth, and there's a very gradual force that grows smaller, basically moving towards zero but not overshooting.    I realize that's just re-writing your question, but it helps to understand the 2nd option.
I'll use the Earth as an example, because the Earth is in the gradual process of becoming tidally locked to the Moon.  It's the same process, but easier to visualize.
Because the Earth rotates faster than the Moon orbits, the tidal bulge moves ahead of the moon.   This is called the tidal bulge offset.

Source.
It's the size of the bulge and the angle of the offset (and the mass and distance of the Moon) that causes the familiar gravitational effects, the Earth's rotation slowing down and the Moon moving away from the Earth.

Source
The current angle of offset for the Earth's tidal bulge to the Moon is about 3 degrees, often exaggerated in diagrams so it's easier to see.  (I should find a source for that - I've not been able to find a good one).
From the Moon's point of view (and if we assume a circular orbit), the tidal offset stays in the same place.  It's a factor of the relative rotation speed.   As Earth slows down, the angle of offset will move towards zero.    At tidal locking, the angle of offset becomes zero and there's no force to continue in the other direction.    In a simple mathematical model, tidal locking wouldn't ever happen completely, it would just gradually get closer and closer, like an object shot from the Earth at exactly escape velocity.
In reality, because objects aren't perfectly symmetrical and because orbits aren't perfectly circular, the "take forever to get to zero", doesn't happen.  But it's still a gradual approach to zero and no overshooting and returning because the force on the rotation approaches zero as the angle of offset approaches zero and the force needed to change a planet's rotation is enormous and there's essentially zero force to make that happen.
With more eccentric orbits, like Mercury and it's 3:2 rotation to orbit resonance, that might be different.   Not sure how eccentricity might play into this.   That's more complicated.
Comment: So are you saying the moon, previous to being tidally locked, continues to have complete rotations showing all sides but the rotation rate is just continuously slowing down until it's so slow it just stops and the same face is towards Earth with minimal to no rocking into position?
Comment: @BrooksNelson  Basically yes.   I don't see any other way that it could work.   The angular momentum changes very slowly (outside of a truly enormous impact).   That's a given and as the moon moves closer to tidal locking the tidal offset angle grows smaller and smaller, leading to smaller and smaller force.     I see no mechanism where it would over-slow-down and then speed up again.   It should just be a gradual approach towards tidal locking.
Comment: Try to avoid "I can't see" responses, since those are subjective.
Comment: speaking of "back and forth"; see [this comment](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/45342/how-locked-are-pluto-and-charon-how-much-does-each-librate-as-seen-from-the-o#comment147131_45349) on an answer to *How "locked" are Pluto and Charon? How much does each librate as seen from the other?*
Answer: For an animated lesson, see Isaac Author's amazing space engineering anthology, including TIDAL LOCKING EXPLAINED.
Comment: We tend to downvote answers which consist purely of a link, both because links go stale and because they do not actually answer the question.
Comment: Vote it down if you must for those reasons , but if you vote to delete, and have not cared to view the video or series, then that is dis-service to all. Right, my praise of the authors does not directly answer the questions but damn straight the video with series answers many, so worth the posting by many a moonshot.
Comment: Besides,  Animated artistic celestial mechanics is such epic learning.
Comment: Do you know the difference between a downvote and a moderator's right to delete(no vote needed)?
Comment: I did not.  Do now.  So thanks then I suppose :)

Tidal locking of a moon


Making pearl couscous in slow cooker

Question: I've been using a slow cooker to make casseroles lately and would like to try using it to make Israeli couscous. I can't find anything online that tells me how to do this. The reason I would like it to sit is so that it will absorb the herbs and spices I make it with. Most recipes just have you add it in the last 10 mins. That doesn't seem long enough to absorb enough flavor. Anyone have any idea how to achieve what I'm looking to do?
Comment: Letting it sit in liquid longer will likely turn it to mush.
Answer: I got it to work! I added chicken stock and zucchini and cooked on high until zucchini started to soften. I added sautéed onions, garlic, spinach and let sit for a while so stock would absorb flavors. Then I added canned tomatoes and cooked sausage. I let the liquid get hot and then added the couscous. I let it cook for 20-30 mins. It took longer than I thought for it to soften. It's not "fluffy" but that's not what I was going for. I wanted more of a casserole feel. Then I added some cheese and feta after I turned the heat off. I ended up having to add a lot of salt, but it tastes great!
Comment: Glad you found something that worked.
Answer: While I agree with the others on it turning to mush if you cook it too long, there is a way to get your desired effect of absorbing more flavor.
What does the couscous absorb really quickly? Liquid! So, let's make some flavored liquid, aka stock.
You can buy stock or make it on your own and add whatever herbs, veggies and spices you like. Then, replace stock for water in the recipe.
This concept is similar to cooking risotto with chicken stock.
Answer: Couscous is a pasta. Like any other pasta, couscous would be overcooked and mushy if you cooked it in a slow cooker for any duration longer than 10-15 minutes. Even 15 minutes may be too long. I would stick to the recipe. You'd be surprised how well spices and seasoning adhere to couscous-- especially if the seasonings are steamed with the couscous.

Making pearl couscous in slow cooker


Using "sorry" to mean "pardon"

Question: In British English, a common way of expressing a polite request for a person to repeat what they just said because you didn't hear (all) of it is to use the interjection, "sorry?".  I was wondering how common this is outside of British English.  Is this as common in the US, Australia, etc.?  Would it be understood as a perfectly normal thing to say, or as a quaint British expression?
Comment: It might just be worth adding as a footnote that 'pardon' is deemed to be non-U. As Professor Ross said in his 1956 paper, 'Pardon is used by the non-U in three main ways: (1) if the hearer does not hear the speaker properly; (2) as an apology (eg on brushing by someone in a passage); (3) after hiccuping or belching. The normal U-correspondences are very curt, viz. (1) What? (2) Sorry] (3) (Silence).'
Comment: To add to what Barrie says, when I was a child in London 50 years ago, we were taught not to say "pardon". But I'm pretty sure we also did not have "sorry" in this sense. Since we were also enjoined not to say "what?" we were left with "What did you say?" as the only acceptable possibility. I reckon "Sorry" came in in the 80's, but I have only personal recollection to support this.
Comment: In the US, *Hmm?*, *Sorry, I didn't catch that...?*, and *Excuse me?* (the last, with a quizzical look, not the look you might give someone who just stepped on your toe) are reasonably common, though *Pardon?* is not very common, in my experience.
Comment: And this is what Kate Fox wrote in her book, Watching the English: "This word is the most notorious pet hate of the upper and upper-middle classes. Jilly Cooper recalls overhearing her son telling a friend 'Mummy says that "pardon" is a much worse word than "f*ck"'. He was quite right: to the uppers and upper-middles, using such an unmistakably lower-class term is worse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as 'Pardonia'."
Comment: It is a well reported phenomenon (and don't ask me where) that if you bump into someone in the streeet it is the bumpee who will say 'Sorry'.
Comment: In the US, you can also hear "what was that?" (said as "what wazzat?").
Answer: The NOAD reports the following entry for sorry:

used as a polite request that someone should repeat something that one has failed to hear or understand: "Sorry? In case I what?"

It is not marked as being chiefly British. In ten years I have visited the USA, I have heard sorry being used when somebody didn't hear or understand what somebody else said.
Answer: I've lived in both the UK and the US and my anecdotal experience is that "sorry" is very much more common in the UK than the US. It sounds very British to my ear. In the US "excuse me?" or "huh?" are considerably more commonly used to serve this purpose.
However, as the saying goes, data is not the plural of anecdote.
Answer: I live in the U.S. and I use "sorry" by itself to mean exactly as you stated. More often than not I'm met with a confused look and I have to continue, "I didn't hear that, could you repeat it?" So saying sorry by itself may not be too commonly understood in the U.S.
Disclaimer: I also use other British words and, after having studied in England for a year, found that the things deemed as quirks in the U.S. are seen as normal in England. My use of sorry may not be the norm in the U.S.
Answer: It's definitely used in Australia as well, far more frequently than "pardon" if you haven't heard what someone has said.
Answer: I live in the U.S. but when I have visited Canada, I notice this usage of sorry to be much more common than in the U.S.
Comment: I can't speak to how common it is in the USA, but I wouldn't bat an eye hearing it in Canada, and in fact tend to use it myself instead of "what?" when I'm trying to be polite. The alternatives "beg your pardon?" or "pardon me?" are wordy and sound stilted; "excuse me?" sounds a smidgen rude.
Answer: It's used in India to mean the same thing. Old people still use pardon.
Comment: This is a very short answer, and not nearly as comprehensive as other answers. It can be improved by broadening it and adding citations, or else reposting as an edit to improve one of the other answers.

Using "sorry" to mean "pardon"


programmable build automation tool?

Question: I'm trying to find a build automation tool (like Apache Ant or Maven), where build script is written in an OOP language (for example Java, or Ruby, or something similar). My build process is rather complicated and Ant programming mechanism is not powerful enough to handle it (the script is now very complex and unmaintainable). Can you recommend some?
Answer: You could give Scons a try. It's a software construction tool in python (which is an OOP scripting language)
Answer: Rake (ruby DSL), Gradle (Groovy) or Buildr (they claim to be a Ruby replacemnt for Maven)?
http://rake.rubyforge.org/
http://www.gradle.org/
http://buildr.apache.org/

programmable build automation tool?


Minecraft Inventory Problems

Question: I was on Minecraft the other day and I encountered a problem.  Normally on my Minecraft I click an item once and I an move it around my inventory at will.  Although when I tried it the other day, I had to click the item and drag it to move it anywhere.  It started when I loaded up the Vechs Super Hostile, Inferno Mines off of Minecraft forums. I've tried deleting Minecraft and re-downloading it, restarting Minecraft, and shutting down the computer.  Any and all help would be appreciated on the matter ASAP.  I really like this game and I don't want to have to deal with this annoying feature on adventure maps.  Thank you.
Answer: Does this happen often? If so, then other people may be experiencing this problem. I do not experience it so it may be something related to your key board. If it doesn't happen often, I suggest you ignore it because it only takes away like 1 second every time (Excluding the use of chests).

Minecraft Inventory Problems


Pre checks and Post checks of SharePoint Server reboot

Question: Is there any good list for Pre checks and Post checks of SharePoint Server reboot from SharePoint administration perspective?
Answer: There is no such thing but I can share you some checks which I normally perform. Mostly, we rebooted either due to issues or updates...so normally no pre check. Here couple of thing to verify

Make Sure SharePoint Admin And Times Service Is Up And Running.
Make Sure all apps pools are started,
If It Web Front End Then browse the Web application to make sure they are working.
If Search app is on that server then test it, same thing with other services apps.
Check Event Log For Any Potential Error, Check Application, system and setup logs.
Also check the health rules from central admin, if it detect anything
If This Is Distributed cache server then make sure DC is up and running.
Answer: I also created some lists for our administrations to test email processing - we've had that break on occasion.
I created a 'TestWorkflowEmail' custom list, and left it with just the title column. I added a SPD workflow to run on create, that sends an email to the creator of the item.
I also had the administrator create an alert on the same list, to test that functionality
I also created another list using the announcement template. I added an incoming email to it, so they could test incoming.
So after an update or a reboot, they can:

Test alerts and workflow emails by adding an item to the first list
Test incoming emails by emailing the address and verifying the information shows up in the second list.


Is there a smooth real function on some open interval containing x=a such that its power series expansion at x=a has zero radius of convergence?

Question: Is there a smooth real function $f$ on some open interval containing $x=a$ such that its power series expansion at $x=a$ has zero radius of convergence? or maybe the series fails to converge even at $a$?
Comment: See [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-analytic_smooth_function#A_smooth_function_which_is_nowhere_real_analytic) a concrete example. The Taylor series at $x=0$ (and at many other points too) has radius of convergence $0$.
Comment: @SamuelAdrianAntz: the example you gave in the now-deleted answer is actually cool. If ever you rewrite another answer please include it. It is nice to remark that a Taylor series may converge, but to the wrong function.
Comment: @GiuseppeNegro Yes, I will definitly do that.
Comment: @user85667: great link. It also discusses the theorem of Borel which both David C. Ullrich and I mention without proof. I guess that in the end the function constructed via the Borel theorem is not so different than the one you directly point to. Indeed, the proof of Borel that is in that Wikipedia page also contains an infinite series.
Answer: As the answers by David C. Ullrich and Giuseppe Negro explained, there is a theorem by Borel that every power series can be realized as a Taylor series. First of all, an example with a radius of convergence arbitrarily small can be given by including poles in the complex plane. For example the radius of convergence of the Taylor series with $a=0$ of:
$$f(x)=\frac{1}{x^2+\varepsilon^2}$$
with poles at $\pm i\varepsilon$ is $|\varepsilon|$. There are examples of smooth functions where the radius of convergence of the Taylor series is zero: Two of them are given in this MSE answer taken from A primer of real functions by R. Boas Jr., section 24 on page 168, and Counterexamples in Analysis by by B. Gelbaum and J. Olmsted, counterexample 24 on page 68. This forum also mentions counterexample 22 on page 68, a series which converges only for $x=0$:
$$f(x)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty n!x^n$$
but is indeed the Taylor series of a function. (This counterexample connects to the answer of Giuseppe Negro by choosing a function $f\colon\mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ with $f^{(k)}(0)=(k!)^2$, but it is not this series here due to its convergence.)
Here is also my previously deleted answer, where I misunderstood the question as finding a Taylor series that converges, but only to the function in a single point. (Ironically, somebody in the forum linked above did as well.) It is counterexample 23 on page 68 of Counterexamples in Analysis:
First of all, the power series always converges at $x=a$ since the term of zeroth order is given by the constant $f(a)$ and all terms of higher order vanish when $x=a$ is put into $f^{(n)}(x)(x-a)^n$. But there is a popular example for a smooth function with a Taylor series that converges everywhere (even uniformly), but not to the function in any neighborhood of the point chosen for expansion, which is:
$$f(x)
=\left\{\begin{array}{cl}
e^{-\frac{1}{x^2}} & ;x\neq 0 \\
0 & ;x=0
\end{array}\right.$$
for $a=0$. There it is differentiable infinity often (the exponential function beats every single power map in the limit) and all derivatives vanish, so the power series does as well even though the function does not.
Comment: The Taylor series centered at $x=0$ of that function does converge. In fact, it converges everywhere. What it doesn't do is to converge to the function.
Comment: Ah, you're right. I was a bit too fast there. I'm going to delete my answer and think about it again.
Answer: As pointed out, of course the series converges at $a$. But yes, it can have radius of convergence $0$. This is clear from the following exercise, somewhere in Rudin Real and Complex Analysis:

Exercise: Given a sequence $(c_n)$ of real numbers there exists a smooth function $f:\Bbb R\to\Bbb R$ such that $$f^{(n)}(0)=c_n$$for all $n$.
Comment: I think maybe because the question asked for a concrete example if there is one? It's a cool theorem though, +1.
Comment: Your last remark reminds me of the joke where a mathematician is asked "Can you tell me what time it is?"  and answers "Yes."
Comment: @SamuelAdrianAntz What you suggest may be what was intended, but no it's not what was asked. The question asks only about existence...
Comment: ok, what's the problem with _that_?
Comment: @DavidC.Ullrich That's indeed just my interpretation of the question. This theorem by Borel is also a way more general and elementary answer than just one example.
Answer: Yes, there are smooth functions $f\colon \mathbb R\to \mathbb R$ such that the series
$$
\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{f^{(n)}(0)}{n!} x^n$$
converges only for $x=0$.
There is a theorem, attributed to Borel, that states the following:

for each sequence $(a_n)_{n\in \mathbb N_{\ge 0}}$, there is a smooth function $f\colon \mathbb R\to \mathbb R$ such that $f^{(n)}(0)=a_n$.

The answer to the previous question is a corollary of this theorem. A smooth function $f$ such that $f^{(n)}(0)=(n!)^2$ is an example.
The theorem of Borel is discussed here in considerable detail.


Change  class on one specific menu?

Question: I'd like to change the  class from "menu" on one specific menu I have showing up as a block on about 3 pages in a Drupal 7 site. I've been researching but can't seem to figure out the best way to go about doing this.
Comment: If it's only for 3 pages, I believe fastest/easiest way to do this is through JS.
Answer: You can do this with theme_menu_tree() hook in your theme's template.php file.
Or with a more specific version of theme_mene_tree() hook like MYTHEME_menu_tree__MYMENU().
function MYTHEME_menu_tree__MYMENU(&$variables) {
    return '
' . $variables['tree'] . '
';
}

See more here https://gist.github.com/gagarine/3201854
UPDATE:
if menu machine name have hyphne like main-menu then change hyphen to underscore, like MYTHEME_menu_tree__main_menu()
Comment: Would the MYMENU part just be the machine name of the menu?
Comment: Yes MYMENU part is just machine name of the menu. I tried with "management" menu like MYTHEME_menu_tree__management it worked.  But this will not work if menu machine name have hyphen like main-menu or user-menu.
Comment: UPDATE: if menu machine name have hyphne like main-menu then change hyphen to underscore, like MYTHEME_menu_tree__main_menu().
Answer: If you need add class to your primary or secondary tabs you need change theme callback of theme_menu_local_tasks(). Use hook_registry_alter() to change callback. If you need change menu links, drupal has theme_links() which has $variables['attributes'] where you can set class for ul. For this solution you need create function mymodule_preprocess_links() and set $variables['attributes'] = array('class' => array('my-class')).
P.S. look at theme_links() ortheme_menu_local_tasks() function to implement some solution.

Change  class on one specific menu?


Can I become a Muslim Comic artist

Question: I love drawing comics, they are my lively hood and I hope I can be one amidst all the logical careers I have to choose from. I know that drawing a person isn't good, but is okay if they are not realistic. The people would still include their eyes and noes and mouths, but I wouldn't give them tear ducts, or nostrils (depending on the panel) and I wouldn't show divisions in their teeth when I drew them (and its impossible to have one big tooth spanning your whole mouth so that's unrealistic right?). Also I draw "manga" which is the Japanese style of drawing comics where girls usually have unrealistically large eyes, and Guys have unrealistically long faces (and eyelashes are very undetailed). What I'm trying to say is, is it okay for me to draw comics if the people are unrealistic but not absurdly unrealistic? Thank you so much for taking your time to answer this!
Answer: It is not permissible, if it is living beings then it is not permissible even if it wasn't realistic. According to this hadith
The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "The most severely punished of the people on the Day of Resurrection will be the image-makers." Narrated by al-Bukhaari (5950) and Muslim (2109).
the Prophet said: "Those who depict images will be punished on the Day of Resurrection; it will be said to them: 'Breathe a soul into what you have depicted.'" [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]
However, if the picture is not complete; i.e., it is missing a part that is essential for life, such as the head or the chest, then, according to many scholars, such a picture is permissible.
In your drawing which includes the head and the mouth is not permissible, it should not include the whole head or a part of the body that will leave it lifeless. As long as the character looks lifeless it is permissible.
Answer: As your question seems more about realistic/unrealist than about the drawing of living beings rights.
I think realistic and unrealistic is the same. I can't see anywhere in hadeeths where there's a difference between both.
Simple logical rule:
If you consider halal drawing persons, unrealistic is allowed.
If you consider haram drawing persons, urealistic is forbidden.

Can I become a Muslim Comic artist


Stacked column chart in Excel with the label of x-axis between the bars

Question: I want to draw a stacked column chart in Excel and I want to put the label of the x-axis between the bars; for example:
Comment: I don't understand: is the image a depiction of what you want, or is it what you have now (which you want to change)?
Comment: I'm afraid it's not exactly possible in excel 2007. Workaround can be to enter empty values between each column and set desired `x` values for them. Then you can requested only each second x axis labels to be shown. This will be similar to your picture, but there will be a one bar wide space between the columns.
Answer: You can easily enough fake this, if you can follow this protocol.
Here is the data for the red and green bars, and a second set of XY data, with X values where you will show labels.
Below the data is a stacked column chart using the first block of data.

Copy the second range, select the chart, and use Paste Special to add the data as new series, series in columns, series names in first row, and category data in first column. It's added as a new set of stacked bars, which don't show up because their height is zero.
Select the added series by selecting the green bars and clicking the up arrow key. Click the menu key (between the right Alt and Ctrl buttons) or hold Shift and click the F10 function key to pop up the context menu. Click Change Series Chart Type, and choose XY Scatter. This adds a set of markers along the bottom of the chart (blue circles in the top chart below) and it adds secondary X and Y axes.
Format the scale of the secondary horizontal axis (top of chart) so it fits the data: min = -115, max = -50 (bottom chart below). Note that the markers are now aligned between the bars, where the labels will go.

Hide the secondary axes by formatting the label position as No Label, and the line color as No Line. Hide the primary horizontal labels by using a custom number format of " " (that's right, a space surrounded by double quotes). This hides the labels but keeps the space there for the other labels we're going to add (top chart below).
Right-click the series of dots, and choose Add Data Labels. You get the default Y values (zeros) added to the right of the markers (bottom chart below).

Format the labels so they are in the Below position, and so they show the X values instead of the Y values (top chart below).
Finally format the series of dots so they use no markers (bottom chart below). And you're done.
Comment: You may recognize this answer in my new tutorial [Column Chart with Category Axis Labels Between Columns](http://peltiertech.com/column-chart-with-category-axis-labels-between-columns/).
Answer: You can achieve this by adjusting the data itself.
Your original data and default bar chart in excel can be seen as below:

Then you can insert 0 between every two labels, e.g., insert 0.05 between 0 and 0.1 and set the frequency as 0 so that it will not be visible.
Then your data will be look like that and corresponding figure will be what you want:

Note that to make the figure more beautiful, you may need to adjust the Series Overlap and Gap Width by double clicking the bars in the figure as below:

Hope that it can help.


Is creating a simulator/mock of an API considered "derivative work"?

Question: We have a number of clients integrating their software with a specific third party service via a HTTP REST API. In order for our clients to be able to test efficiently their software we need to create simulators (API mocks) of that HTTP service. The third party service has a requirement that we should not "modify or create derivative works of Technology (incl the HTTP API)".

Client's Production Environments:

Client's Software Users -> Client's Application -> Third Party API

Client's Test Environments:

Client's Software Testers -> Client's Application -> Third Party API Mock/Simulator provided by us

We are building the mocks/simulators for that specific third party API, but they are solely based on our mocking/simulation opensource technology and not on the third party's server or API technology. The common thing between our simulators/mocks we crate and the real third party API is the definition of the service - the "protocol", syntax and semantics of the HTTP messages.
Is creating a mock or a simulator of an API on top of our opensource technology for the purpose of testing software for our clients considered "derivative work"?
Answer: No
The copyright is in the code that takes the input and returns the output. You are not copying this.
Just like you can write an original calculator app that returns "4" when presented with "2+2".


how to draw graphs for mobile application?

Question: I need to develop a mobile app (stand alone app.) for blackberry, android, iPhone and other devices. the app. is mainly to display various data using graphs (pie, bar, line and others). Please suggest me how to go about it? what language will help me or what API i need to use?
Answer: Try using Sencha framework and their ext.js library. It has functions to draw graphs.
Also there is a very good javascript library protovis which can help you to draw visually interactive graphs


What is a shorter term for "grammatical correctness"?

Question: The only one I can think of is "pronunciation", but that one is more related to the way you say it rather than to the way you write it.
Comment: You can always just ask, " Is this ***right?***"
Comment: @Jim Whether something is *right* is quite a different concept to *grammatical correctness*.
Comment: @Lawrence - Yes of course, but if someone is wanting to know if something is grammatically correct but doesn't want to use the "normal words" for that then "right" is probably sufficient for their purposes.
Comment: @Jim If the context constrains the term sufficiently, that's fine.
Comment: @Lawrence - yeah it was just a comment.
Answer: "The state or quality of being grammatical," or "grammatical correctness" is known as:

grammaticality.

Dictionary.com
And Mithrandir has provided the adjective form in Mithrandir's answer above.
For example:

Grammatical correctness is also known as grammaticality.
Grammatical correctness as related to the way you write is also known as grammaticality.
"In...linguistics...a grammaticality judgement...is based on whether the sentence is produced and interpreted in accordance with the rules and constraints of the relevant grammar" ("Grammaticality," Wikipedia).
"The grammaticality of a sentence is things that conform to the linguistic rules or syntactic rules (Fromkin and Rodman 1998:106) ("The Grammaticality versus The Acceptability," Linguistik.)
Answer: grammatical without 'correctness'?

of or relating to grammar:
grammatical analysis.
conforming to standard usage:
grammatical speech.
  -dictionary.com

dictionary.com gives 'antigrammaticalness, noun' as a related word, so I assume that if you remove the 'anti' that gives 'grammaticalness', which should work as a noun.


Custom Search Box in Community/Napili

Question: I am trying to use the Napili template (migrating from an APEX page).  Currently we do not have search functionality on that custom page, so the thought was to use Napili and the pre-built templates.  However, there doesn't seem to be a component or even a VF code example that I can use.  Anyone have ideas?  I simply need to look up/display cases for a user then let them click on that return.
Answer: You can use forceCommunity:searchInterface to create Custom Search Box. The component can be set as Custom Search from Napili configuration - Theme and change Default search functionality with new Aura component you have created. I have created custom search and it worked fine. Only pain is to show autocomplete which I believe can achieve using CSS/JS.
Please let me know how it goes.

Custom Search Box in Community/Napili


How do I get the fluorescent bulb out of this fixture?

Question:
The bulb blew last night. I've been trying to get it out to change the bulb but it's not budging. I got the outer case off but the end covers aren't budging so the bulb won't pull or twist out.
How do I remove the bulb from this fixture?
Answer: It had clips on the inside of the cover. Managed to get a screwdriver underneath which freed the clips and then would slide off.
Answer: I've seen some units where the bulb wasn't designed to be replaced. Based on your photo, that may be the case here. Units with replaceable fluorescent bulbs have a "twist-in" connector on either end that's visible after you remove the cover. You may need to buy a new unit and replace the fixture. I would buy a double bulb unit, since those are almost always replaceable.
Answer: Both tubes were really stuck in a fixture with minimal space to grab the bulbs, I tried a strip of Duck Tape on both ends, but still would not budge. I then sprayed the pins at each end with WD-40 and pulled slightly on the Duck Tape again. They Moved! then they easily popped right out. ShaZamm! Duck Tape and WD-40 come through again!
Of course, I was also standing on an upended Drywall Bucket.
Comment: Hello, and welcome to Home Improvement. Thanks for the answer; keep 'em coming. And, you should probably [take our tour](//diy.stackexchange.com/tour) so you'll know the details of contributing here.
Answer: Put on safety glasses when you try to remove it.  I just broke a circular bulb trying to remove it.  It was held by very stiff clips.
Answer: Not all fixtures twist some are spring loaded where you apply a light force to one end of the lamp. The spring collapses and the other end will drop out. This kind of fixture is mostly used on single pin tubes but I have seen them on standard lamps also.
Answer: My fluorescent tube just would not turn to get it out.  I took 2 strips of duct tape and layed them over the bulb near both ends.  Couldn't get it around the tube all the way.  I then pulled on the duct tape which had a pretty good hold and the tube twisted allowing me to change the fixture.
Answer: The duct tape and vaseline works ... IF you do it right. I had a tough time twisting the old tube out over our kitchen sink and was lucky it didn't break in my fingers. The new tube would not twist in, I couldn't get a good enough grip on it and it probably was going to break with my increasing finger pressure. I then put a bit of Vaseline on the terminals on each end of the tube, and ripped two 6" x 1" strips of duct tape. You put in on the ends of the tube so most of the tape is on the metal with a bit on the glass. Here's the key part - - make sure you put it on so that when you pull down on both ends of tape, that the tube is rotating correctly. Also, don't wrap it all the way around the tube because when I did that the tube spun into place then right back out of position when the tape got to its end and pulled off. SO .... put just enough of the tape on that when the pins get to 90 degrees and pop in place, the tape is at its end and pulls off. To get an old tube off, just put the tape on in reverse and pull. ALSO - wear goggles just in case.


What are the advantages of landers rather than rovers?

Question: Landers usually are constructed around a centerpiece that its power sources protrude from the side, while rovers power sources are usually built into the rear, or top. Landers are a type of spacecraft built to land on a celestial body and never move from their landing site. What are the advantages of landers over rovers? Currently, I don't see very many advantages of landers over rovers, one disadvantage landers are at is they can't move. If there are any, what advantages do landers have over rovers.
Comment: I need ten more characters. Cost.
Comment: I don't understand why you add in the first sentence.  Some landers have their power sources in the center (e.g. Venera).  Many (maybe most?) rovers have their power sources all around the top (famously the Mars Exploration Rovers).  Power source location is not a way to distinguish between these two things.
Comment: @ColonelCornieliusCornwall I didn't say there were no examples of those configurations; it was obvious what you were thinking of.  I said that's not how you tell landers and rovers apart.  It's not relevant to the distinction between the two.
Comment: @ErinAnne Insight solar panel location: sides. Pheonix solar panel location: sides. MPL solar panel location: sides. Curiosity RTG location: rear. Perserverance RTG location: rear. You're right in some places though, Zhrohong (or whatever its name is): all over, but mostly sides and back. Spirit/Opportunity: back and middle.
Comment: @ErinAnne ok. That's true, considering you can build either one however you want.
Answer: From a purely scientific perspective, there are several experiments that a rover platform cannot perform as well as a fix lander. Basically, take a look at the payload of InSight to see lander-optimized science payloads.
Seismic observation
A lander does not move and doesn't have things like wheels, motors, suspension, rocker-bogie systems, etc. between the main body and the surface of whatever celestial body it is located on. This gives the extremely stable and (hopefully) static platform of a lander the capability to measure even the tiniest of quakes or nearby impact events using an on-board seismograph
Weather and climate monitoring
Climate and more specifically weather data is more meaningful if the monitoring station doesn't move. If, for example, you want to analyze years of climate data and during that time period the sensors you were monitoring moved to somewhere else, that would potentially invalidate your conclusions.
Astronomy and large scale planetary science
Similarly to the stability that a lander provides for a precise seismographic measurements, space observation also benefits greatly from a stable platform. A telescope on board a rover that crosses bumpy terrain isn't that useful and similar long-range high-precision experiments also don't work as well. For example, the insight lander is equipped with a radio experiment (RISE) that's designed to perform extremely exact measurements so that properties about Mars's interior can be estimated.
Answer: Landers are simpler than rovers. A rover needs to do everything a lander can do (i.e. land) and more. Adding complexity adds weight, cost, and points of failure. If you can accomplish a goal by simply landing, it will always be easier and cheaper than landing and then moving somewhere else.
Rovers are simply not needed for all applications. Using a rover instead of a lander may be like buying a car when you don't actually need to go anywhere.
Comment: Of, you can make the lander as "complex" as the rover, so it does more things (albeit just sitting there).
Comment: Using a rover is much worse than buying a car, in that cars are an off-the-shelf technology and you don't need to design and build them yourself!
Answer: In addition to the mechanical and electro-mechanical complexities of rovers compared to landers: motors, gears, wheels, bearings etc. there are operational complexities with rovers.
Because of the large distances between Earth and the locations where exploratory space craft are sent there will always be a time delay in sending and receiving communications between Earth and such craft.
Getting a lander to do anything is less complicated than getting a rover to do any thing, particularly move from one location to another. With a lander all that is required is a signal and software and things happen. With a rover, a move from one location to another needs to be carefully planned by humans on Earth and those instructions sent to the rover: path of travel, speed of travel and duration of travel. Rovers are not autonomous and they do not have enough, if any, artificial intelligence to determine their owning functioning.
Comment: All of NASA's Mars rovers have had some level of autonomous driving ability. Humans are still very much involved in the route planning process, but moment-to-moment navigational adjustments are handled by the rover's AI. Rovers generally are not controlled in real-time by humans sending every explicit instruction, they absolutely do have sufficient AI to autonomously determine some aspects of their own functioning.


Error: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

Question: I have created windows service in .Net 4.5.Service is written to open outlook client. The code written is correct, since I have run in local host. But when I run from IIS Server, the server throws following error on following line of code:

Error retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID
  {0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following
  error: 0x80040154 Class not registered

I tried the following solutions:
 IIS Server > Advanced Settings > Enable 32 Bit APP = true & Identity=Windows
Many Thanks
Answer: The IIS runs in a low privilege mode, I believe it is NETWORK SERVICE.  This account is restricted heavily from using client-related COM objects, and Outlook client is registered under the respective user account.  Technically, you change the (COM configuration)[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/com/hkey-local-machine-software-microsoft-ole], but you should not do it.
Office objects, including Outlook, require a logged user session.  With Outlook in particular, it requires a logged user who also has a registered Outlook profile, and an Exchange license (if applicable).
In your case, when you run it from the local host, you have such a session - yours.  When you run it on IIS, this session is not available.
What you want to do if officially not supported and is greatly discouraged.
Comment: Though you linked to the right Microsoft KB article, some of the sentences are not 100% correct. "This session is not available" should be replaced by "this is in session 0 and isolated", https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askperf/2007/04/27/application-compatibility-session-0-isolation/


Is it possible to run a .NET core 3.1 app on Windows 7 Embedded?

Question: I am trying to run a .NET Core 3.1 WPF application on a Windows 7 Embedded VM. Unfortunately, Windows 7 Embedded does not officially support .NET Core. Is there a workaround to get this to work anyway?
I have already tried publishing the app as a self-contained package, and as a single file (which is also self-contained), hoping that this would include all the necessary dependencies. But unfortunately, this didn't work. The event viewer showed me this exception:
<code>Message: Failed to load the dll from (path)\hostfxr.dll, HRESULT:0x80070057
The library hostfxr.dll was found, but loading it from (path)\hostfxr.dll failed
- Installing .NET Core prerequisites might help resolve this problem.
  (download link)
</code>
But of course that installer does not work on Windows 7 embedded ("This update is not applicable to your computer").
Is there a way to manually include all necessary dependencies, to get this to load anyway?
Comment: https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/release-notes/3.0/3.0-supported-os.md - Upgrade the OS version?
Comment: Unfortunately, that's not possible. There is other software running on that machine that cannot run on later OS versions.
Answer: I had the same error regarding hostfxr.dll while starting from a barebones Windows 7 installation.  Microsoft lists a specific security patch that fixed the error once I installed it.
KB3063858
64-bit: https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=47442
32-bit: https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=47409
.Net 5/Core Dependencies
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/windows?tabs=net50#dependencies
.Net 5/Core Dependencies


Convergence of best response dynamics to pure Nash equilibrium

Question: In a 2 player game with a unique pure nash equilibrium (PNE), what are the conditions for the best response dynamics to converge to this PNE? Both players have concave and continuous utility functions and the best response functions are linear. I see in my simulations that no matter where I start, the iterated best response dynamics always finds the Nash Equilibrium, but is there a generalization of this and a theorem you can direct me to? Thanks.
Answer: The paper you're after is Milgrom & Roberts (1990) Econometrica
'Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities'.
In particular, supermodular games, as defined in the paper, are a broad class of games in which iterated best-response dynamics converge to (pure strategy) Nash equilibrium (though these need not be unique).  One sometimes sees this in simple oligopoly models where best-replies happen to be contractions; this is, of course, far from necessary though as the linked paper illustrates.
In particular, a simple two-player case when best replies converge is given by when:

Each agent's strategy space is a compact interval in $\mathbb{R}$.
Payoff functions for each player are twice continuously differentiable.
The cross derivatives of the payoff functions are positive.

For a significant step up in generality see Theorem 4 in particular.
Comment: Milgrom and Roberts (1990) is great, but surely there's a much larger literature to refer to regarding equilibrium dynamics? For one thing, I know Hart has a number of papers on this that, IIRC, speak more directly to the OP's question.


Gap in the middle of type on double truck ad

Question: I collect old car advertising and noticed on a double truck ad for a 1968 VW Bus the headline when laid flat reads-" New Impr oved Box "- I assume this is to remain readable in the middle of a magazine with a huge page count(I bet publishers would love this problem in today's market)What is the gap in the word improved referred to as? I am not a graphics professional so forgive my ignorance
Answer: The two pages treated as one layout is called a Double Page Spread. The space between the letters is called Kerning and the part of the double page spread that gets obscured due to the binding is called the Gutter.
The designer of your example increased the kerning between the r and the o to make it more readable across the gutter of the spread.
Comment: Gutters refer to the white space between and around columns of text. Though the space between the two pages is *also* a gutter, the term doesn't refer specifically to that space.
Comment: Ooops...I have to take my previous comment back. After researching a bit more, I found out that some people do use the term 'gutter' to refer specifically to the space between the two pages, while others use the term 'gutter' to refer to space between columns of text. I learned the latter. (I suppose we should call them *page* gutters and *column* gutters to be clear...)


SIKE as Diffie-Hellman exchange

Question: SIKE involves a Diffie-Hellman like construction using isogenies between elliptic curves. Is it possible to express it as an instance of Diffie-Hellman? I.e. what is the underlying group if so, and further, why wouldn't Shor's algorithm apply and render it vulnerable?
Answer: I am one of the inventors of SIKE.
There is no actual Diffie-Hellman group in SIKE. If there were, then SIKE would be vulnerable to Shor's algorithm, as you said, largely defeating the purpose of a post-quantum cryptosystem.
Among other reasons, isogenies typically have a domain different from their codomain, so an isogeny cannot be iterated. You can compose two different isogenies (provided that their respective domains and codomains are compatible), but usually not an isogeny with itself.
Comment: SIKE does not use group actions. CSIDH uses group actions. Although Shor's polynomial-time quantum algorithm cannot handle group action DH, Kuperberg's subexponential-time quantum algorithm can. Hence CSIDH is vulnerable to Kuperberg's subexponential quantum algorithm, whereas SIKE is not.
Comment: I'm going to accept this -- can't really beat the actual author -- though I think the "real answer" is that SIKE is based on the group action view of DH, and Shor's algorithm does not generally apply to group action DH (correct me if I'm wrong here).

I was misled since if you squint hard enough SIKE does sorta look like classic DH + SIDH has it in the name, but this was a good read for me to learn the basics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.04803.pdf w/ slides: https://caramba.loria.fr/sem-slides/201905141330.pdf for anyone else confused
Comment: Schooled! Thank you for your insight.
Answer:
what is the underlying group

Isogenies do not form a group; one easy way to show that is that inverses do not exist.
An isogeny is a mapping between two elliptic curves $A$ and $B$ that maps a specific subgroup (kernel) in $A$ to the identify in $B$.
If an isogeny $\phi$ has a kernel that consists of at least two elements ($A$'s identity and something else), then there cannot be an inverse $\phi^{-1}$ isogeny (because it would have to map the identity element back to $A$'s kernel, and an isogeny cannot map an element (including the identity element) to multiple elements.

why wouldn't Shor's algorithm apply

Shor's algorithm works by providing a way to compute the length of a cycle.  By an extension of the above observation, we cannot have a cycle of isogenies, that is, a series of isogenies that map back to the original curve and preserve all the points, and hence there isn't a cycle for Shor's to determine the length of.

SIKE as Diffie-Hellman exchange


Is a person files a complaint against someone in an organization, is that person usually prohibited from further communication with them?

Question: If someone in an organization files a complaint against someone else, let's say a superior (but even a colleague), is that person prohibited from further communication with the complainant?
Edited to remove identifying/personal information
Answer: An employer is likely to advise an employee to not communicate with an individual, if the employee has no legal obligation to communicate with the individual, and the employer believe that there is a risk of the individual suing the employer.
Answer:
So, from a legal perspective, would faculty be prohibited or advised against communicating with a student if that student brought some type of allegation against them such as triggering their anxiety?

I've seen this sort of thing play out before, not in an academic situation admittedly (it was a workplace) but the initial allegations were of a similar nature and one of the very first things HR and legal advised was not to communicate with the person making them. In your scenario communications between a member of the faculty and yourself were even the inciting incident, were there to be further allegations arising out of subsequent communications the university would not only be opening itself up to any liability for those allegations but for having failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the situation recurring.

Even if the university didn't take the allegation seriously (i.e. they saw that these were perfectly professional emails), at the time I, I was upset and accusing her of inflicting an emotional injury. That has to factor into all of this

There's a distinction between not taking an allegation seriously and deeming an allegation unfounded. Communicating with an individual with a track record of taking unnremarkable communications and using them as a basis for unfounded allegations of a serious nature, is only going to provide more opportunities for a repeat. That an allegation has been deemed unfounded or retracted doesn't make it as though it never happened, and nor should it - it just means that the allegation is not being treated as true.

Anyway, on the one hand, I've been told by their legal dept. that this wasn't considered a grievance, and that it wasn't "taken seriously," etc. However, if that was the case, I don't understand why I couldn't talk to the professor afterwards to apologize. The easiest way for the university to reassure me that she was not "harmed" would have been for her to have told me so herself. It would have required no more than a few minute conversation (or a short email since she was living out of state), plus admin. (and the prof.) knew that I was suffering from a disability that predisposes me to worry.
The chair also stopped communicating with me at that point, for what it's worth. However, when I brought this up to the temp. asst. gen. counsel, he said that "faculty are not obligated to respond to student emails." This was the same response I was given when I wanted to apologize to the professor.

This touches on the crux of the matter - even if there were no advice or prohibition specifically against communicating with you that wouldn't mean they were obligated to communicate with you. As I understand the situation you are no longer a student at the university, and the professor is no longer an employee there which will further reduce any possible obligations to communicate, so from the information you have provided you are reliant on them choosing to communicate with you. And, frankly, why would they?
Comment: @Gemini That makes sense - unfortunately I can't answer that for you. Personally I'd probably say if that were the case but I can't speak for anyone else. Ultimately though it doesn't matter whether they are not permitted to communicate with you or they don't **want** to, the end result is the same.
Comment: @Gemini To your first comment - while I can understand how you might see that as callous really it appears very much as though they are taking only eminently sensible precautions. As to your second, I'm not really sure what you mean by "advise communicating with an individual"?


What does it mean to have a "pyloric" house?

Question: When a friend says my house is "pyloric" he says it means dirty. When I look it up it means "part of a stomach". Is there a meaning of "pyloric" for dirty or is he wrong?
Comment: I think your friend is simply mistaken. Perhaps he's conflating *pyloric* (which I only know as "relating to the pylorus - the sphincter connecting the stomach to the duodenum") with *pyaemic/pyemic - relating to pus*.
Comment: Ha Ha. He cannot mean it is like blood poisoned with pus. I shall wait for another answer. Thank you.
Comment: Why not accept your friends definition (your house is dirty), regardless of his actual word choice (which might, or might not, refer to partially digested food).
Comment: Yes it is dirty from the hot winds bringing sand and dirt inside but I ask about the word that he uses because it is a word I cannot find to mean dirty.
Answer: My daughter has found the answer.
Her university master says that "pylor" is an old word for dust and powder.
My friend was right in one way because he knew the word but unfortunately for him "pyloric" is not a right way to mean dusty and does mean as Fumblefingers has said about the stomach. So I hope this helps you to understand the meaning of the word "pylor" now and I want to thank the people who tried to help but didn't know about the word "pylor".
Comment: It seems that your friend is thinking of [***pulver***](http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/154449) (the base of the word _pulverise_), which is an word for powder, ultimately from the same Latin word as _powder_ itself. The adjective is [_pulverous_](http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/154472), meaning 'powdery, dusty'. To say that someone has a pulverous home would be misusing even that word, though, since it would mean the house is _made of dust_, rather than _filled with dust_.
Comment: I think your daughter's professor was probably simply mistaken. Apart from *pylor-* as a prefix based on *pyloric*, OED only records *pylor* as a an obsolete spelling of ***pillar***. So my downvote will stand unless and until you provide a supporting link for your definition.
Comment: Pylor is from Greek pylōrós [literally, gatekeeper]. I cannot agree that this has a different meaning in English. Thr pyloris is the part of the stomach which is figuratively the gatekeeper to the intestines, in terms of food.
Comment: Allow me the time to check with my daughter today. She is in the UK and time difference means she cannot respond straight away when I asked her by email.
Answer: My best guess is that OP's friend is actually thinking of...

psoric (adj. and n.) - of, relating to, or associated with psora
psora any of various skin diseases characterized by the presence of scabs or scales, usually with itching; esp. scabies, mange, or (in later use) psoriasis.

I base that on the fact that when describing someone dwelling as "dirty", we're very much inclined to go for references to skin diseases, body parasites, etc. As in lousy, flea-pit, scabby, mangy, etc.

On the other hand, perhaps he's just from Czechoslovakia (Czech pyl = "dust").
Answer: I could not find anything to support your friend's usage of Pyloric in the English language. Even if it is based on a foreign word, such as the Czech "pyl", the suffix "ic" is an English construct.  All modern references refer to the Pyloric sphincter or Heliobacter pylori, a bacteria found in the stomach.  If they are using it in the sense of the bacteria, one might as well say your house is Staphylococcal, or some such nonsense.  The word itself stems from the Greek "gate" or "gate-keeper", in this sense, the usage to describe something as dirty or messy makes no sense.  There are any number of words your friend may be misusing, but I hope it's not pyemic!  Yuck...
Comment: My friend understands that using "pyloric" instead of "pylor" is not a right way to mean dusty. Thank you. I hope to bring more information to the question above in time.
Answer: The confusion is cleared.
There is some detail information my daughter did not provide in her first response email.
The word "pylor" is a word from the language in Wales in Welsh with the meaning of dust.
The word "pyloric" is from English language.
I have never visited Wales but when checking they can speak both languages.
I think it is now right to say that my friend used a UK word but said it in the wrong way but that he did not use an English word in the right way.
Thank you again to everyone who have taken their time to help me with this question and please accept my apologies for the confusion caused. I now understand what is the difference between a word in the UK and a word in English.