Home / Business News / Agriculture State regulators considering penalties for dairy identified as the source The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread Manure-laden runoff from a dairy farm killed more than 100,000 small fish in a creek in March near Decorah according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Two people reported the manure runoff March 10 and the Iowa DNR traced it to Dale Humpal Dairy Rainfall and snowmelt is believed to have washed manure from open lots at the site through a field and into a tile intake that goes to Dry Run Creek an environmental specialist for the Iowa DNR "We assume it was probably from that weekend," Meyers said "But we don't really have a good way to estimate how much was discharged because it was a continuous flow — a small flow over a long period of time." The department's investigation found dead fish in a stretch of about 10 miles of the creek which was tainted with ammonia concentrations from manure that were toxic to aquatic life The runoff at the dairy wasn't visibly contaminated by manure but an investigative report noted areas of the creek that were covered with ice that had manure and fish stranded on their surfaces Iowa DNR officers "visually observed fish gasping for air on ice," one report said Meyers said Humpal was unaware of the contamination before the department's investigation Humpal had constructed dams on parts of the site to prevent runoff from leaving the property Humpal did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this article The department's fish kill investigation estimated that about 126,000 small fish perished It is among the largest fish kills in Iowa documented by the Iowa DNR The value of the fish in the kill near Decorah — for which the state can seek compensation from those responsible for killing them — was about $31,000 The department can also impose an additional fine of up to $10,000 It's unclear when the department might issue the penalties Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com The Gazette has been informing Iowans with in-depth local news coverage and insightful analysis for over 140 years independent journalism with a subscription today © 2025 The Gazette | All Rights Reserved The Central Coast can expect a pleasant week of dry and warm weather While some coastal and inland valleys may experience night and morning low clouds mostly sunny skies will prevail for much of the week Temperatures will be in the mid-60s to around 70 Some low clouds may move into coastal and valley areas and interior locations tonight in SLO and Santa Barbara Counties Mostly sunny skies will return Tuesday afternoon Beachgoers and mariners should be aware that a High Surf Advisory remains in effect for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara County beaches until 9 PM PST Tuesday These conditions pose an increased risk for ocean drowning and beachgoers are advised to remain out of the water or stay near occupied lifeguard towers Rock jetties can be particularly hazardous during high surf Wednesday will see mostly sunny skies and warm temperatures with highs reaching the upper 60s to lower 70s in the warmest inland coastal areas and valleys A weakening cold front will bring some additional cloudiness with temperatures a few degrees below normal for portions of SLO and Santa Barbara Counties Gusty north to northeast winds are possible particularly in the mountains and southern Santa Barbara County The warming trend will continue into the weekend with temperatures expected to climb significantly above normal by Sunday and Monday Highs could reach the mid-70s away from the beaches Dry conditions are expected to persist through the extended forecast period with no significant chance of rain in sight The Central Coast is in for a stretch of beautiful Take advantage of the sunshine and warm temperatures “Dry-Run” as a CSRD preparation tool  Discover the insights you need to make better decisions today AI insights CFO agenda EY Center for Board Matters EY podcasts EY webcasts Operations leaders Technology leaders EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform EY.ai - A unifying platform Strategy, transaction and transformation consulting Technology transformation Tax function operations Climate change and sustainability services EY Ecosystems EY Nexus: business transformation platform Experienced professionals EY-Parthenon careers Student and entry level programs Talent community our purpose is building a better working world The insights and services we provide help to create long-term value for clients The EY Global IPO Trends Q3 2024 covers the news and insights on the global area and regional IPO markets for Q3 and year-to-date 2024 Leaders that put humans at the center to navigate turning points are 12 times more likely to significantly improve transformation performance The new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) approved on 28 November 2022 by the European Council applies from 2024 to companies listed and already subject to the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) even larger wave is looming on the horizon promising to broaden the scope of corporate transparency Among the more than 49,000 companies affected by the CSRD in Europe a majority will be from 2026 for the 2025 financial year when the application will also cover large companies which are not subject to the NFRD and which meet two of the following three criteria for the previous two financial years:  In order to anticipate the challenges linked to this regulation With the main objective of identifying gaps the “Dry-Run” reviews the assessment of double materiality (effect of the company's activities on the environment and/or of the environment on the company's activities) made by the company its compliance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) as well as its sustainability report in order to best prepare its CSRD report the “Dry-Run” enables the improvement of processes and data collection by identifying the different internal centers and external stakeholders likely to produce and provide the data required by the ESRS The final evaluation then draws a conclusion on the various points to be improved with a view to the final external audit Preparing the CSRD report starting with a “Dry-Run” saves valuable time for firms it allows an inventory of the company's maturity level on CSRD and its data collection and production processes which can be long and significant efforts to undertake It gives a better understanding of the work to be carried out its different stages and the time required to construct the final report Since it is not publicly disclosed and is used as a construction support for the final report it is also an excellent way to reduce the risks of errors All these parameters give the company a head start and thus enable a more efficient external audit The “Dry-Run” is not the only tool helping companies prepare for their first CSRD audit In order to draw attention to the importance of the CSRD and educate on the key points of this directive raising awareness through tailor-made training remains a useful and easy way to raise the level of knowledge of companies and the collaborators involved As part of the review of one or more defined procedures a gap analysis can also prove to be a very robust compliance tool as it can perfectly identify the gap between regulatory expectations and the information disclosed by the company A “Dry-Run” within the framework of the CSRD remains the most complete and effective tool It constitutes an important stage of preparation allowing companies to prepare proactively and effectively thus minimizing risks and maximizing the effectiveness of the official audit The new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) affects over 49,000 companies in Europe To anticipate the challenges linked to the regulation Dry-Run saves time and is an excellent way to reduce the risks of errors and non-compliance before the final report is conducted of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited Iowa (IOWA'S NEWS NOW) — Manure runoff from an animal feeding operation is being blamed for a fish kill at Winneshiek County's Dry Run Creek The Iowa DNR Field Office in Manchester got a report about the issue southwest of Decorah on Tuesday Staff checked the site and found dead fish for several miles and murky conditions It's not know how much manure was released into the water but the operation behind it is working to get everything under control and cleaned up People downstream on Dry Run are being told to avoid using the creek's water for now Meanwhile, DNR officials are blaming a large gizzard shad kill in the Cedar River near Ellis Harbor in Cedar Rapids on the rapid temperatures swings over the past week or so Nearly half of North Carolina is experiencing a moderate drought those exceptionally dry conditions have persisted since early October the region’s environmental experts worry about an increased risk of wildfires and parched soil come springtime chair of the North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council there is a bright spot: At least the arid conditions are happening during this time of year Residents are less likely to water lawns and gardens and farmers aren’t necessarily praying for rain like they were over the summer Cold temperatures also help stabilize things — vegetation isn’t as thirsty parts of Eastern North Carolina got an inch of moisture This likely won’t be enough to pull the region out of its drought but might prevent things from getting worse some find that the conditions are concerning rainfall levels are nearly 9 inches below normal for the last three months The water level in Wayne County’s Grantham Well — one of the state’s major drought indicators — is remarkably shallow And farmers are reporting dry and brittle winter wheat in the fields “The coast is just continually not getting as much rain as they should be for each month,” Albertin told Carolina Public Press “It’s more of a drawn-out drought versus those real short Last summer’s drought left Eastern North Carolina farmers reeling with corn crop losses in the millions of dollars Winter typically brings the rainfall that allows the water table and soil conditions to moisten before temperatures rise in the spring But northeastern counties largely missed out on the rain that Tropical Storm Debby and a mid-September cyclone dumped on the region in early fall with some coastal towns implementing intermittent water restrictions “We would like to be seeing a recharge here instead of more depletion,” said Corey Davis a drought expert at the State Climate Office “Some of these areas right along the coastline have these heavily-organic soils A dry winter like this one raises the possibility of an active spring wildfire season.” And that’s what happened in spring 2023 when a massive wildfire consumed 32,000 acres in the Croatan National Forest More residential developments have cropped up near the forest since then a wildfire this spring could put the growing population near New Bern and Jacksonville at risk — an area Rondall Hudson refers to as the "Croatan fireshed." Hudson is monitoring the drought closely hoping the forest's swamps get replenished with water before spring “Those swamps are a lot drier than normal,” Hudson told CPP and we really don’t want those lighting off.” extension agents across Eastern North Carolina in counties like Pender and Dare say wetlands are looking dry — a sign of increased flammability and loss of habitat “We've still got a couple months left in the winter,” Davis said we'll get some more rain and moisture here … and at least get a reset by the time we get to the spring.” low stream and river levels coupled with cold temperatures are creating harsh conditions for North Carolina’s fish and other wildlife a research coordinator at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission said that’s affecting winter-breeding amphibians such as frogs and salamanders “If you have a couple winters like this one in a row,” he said “you can really start seeing an impact on the population of some species.” Jaipur [India], : Sound the alarm bells as five-time Indian Premier League champions Mumbai Indians are back to their best, rising to the top of the points table with a stunning 100-run win over Rajasthan Royals at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Thursday. MI continues ominous form as chart-topping performances from key players help overcome dry run MI are peaking at the right time, with their top players like Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Trent Boult, and Jasprit Bumrah showing glimpses of their greatness, which helped shape the franchise's legacy as the most-feared one in the IPL, is surely not a good sign for the other teams, especially the ones aiming to finally get a title to their name. This win over RR is their sixth successive win this season, taking them to the top with seven wins, four losses, and giving them 14 points. This has been a remarkable turn of events for the five-time champions, who looked set to re-live their previous disappointing season, with just one win in their first five games. But since their win over Delhi Capitals by 12 runs, thanks to some suicidal run-outs by the Capitals, they might have just got their mojo back. MI has previously won six successive matches in the 2008 season and the 2017 season. While they managed to fumble the momentum in the inaugural season and failed to reach the knockouts, they have reached the finals of every season they have won five or more successive games. In the 2017 season, after starting their season with a loss to Rising Pune Supergiant, MI went on to win six successive games, reach the playoffs. In the finals, they managed to turn the tables, beating RPS by one run at Hyderabad. In 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2020 seasons, MI won five successive games each, ending as runners-up in 2010 to Chennai Super Kings , but winning the title in 2013, 2015 and 2020 seasons. MI has been extremely strong while defending 200-run-plus targets, and bowling teams should let them cross this mark at their own peril. On 17 times MI has given a team a total above 200 runs to chase, MI has come out on top on all occasions. Another stunning aspect of this brilliant run is how things are finally falling in place for MI. Ever since their win over DC on April 13 which kickstarted this revival, three of the top five run-getters between then to now are MI stars, namely Suryakumar Yadav , Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickelton , as per ESPNCricinfo. At the time of writing, Suryakumar holds the Orange Cap for most runs with his remarkable consistency, scoring 475 runs at an average of 67.85, with a strike rate of 172.82 and three half-centuries. He has not faced a failure yet, delivering 25-plus score everytime he walked in. Out of all bowlers, Boult is racing towards the top of the Purple Cap charts, sitting at third spot with 16 wickets so far, such a massive improvement after just five wickets in his first five games. Three more wickets will see him surpass Royal Challengers Bengaluru Josh Hazlewood . Even Bumrah, after just two wickets in the first three games, managed nine wickets in his next four. Will MI continue with this winning momentum and reach a peak even higher? Can the fans and players of Blue and Gold dream this year after four seasons without a title? Only time can tell. Coming to the match, MI was asked to bat first by RR, who chose to field. The Men in Pink were soon made to regret their decision, as openers Ryan Rickelton and Rohit Sharma launched an assault that lasted 116 runs. After both openers were dismissed, Suryakumar Yadav and skipper Hardik Pandya stitched a 94-run stand, taking MI to 217/2 in 20 overs. Maheesh Theekshana and skipper Riyan got a wicket each. During the run-chase, RR looked helpless against a top-class MI attack right from the powerplay, sinking to 47/5. It was Jofra Archer who top-scored as RR were bundled out for 117 in 16.1 overs, losing by 100 runs. Karn Sharma and Boult were the pick of the bowlers for MI, with Jasprit Bumrah also delivering a pressurising four-over spell of 2/15. Skipper Hardik also got a wicket. Rickelton was awarded the 'Player of the Match' award. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text. Volume 11 - 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fninf.2017.00040 NEST is a simulator for spiking neuronal networks that commits to a general purpose approach: It allows for high flexibility in the design of network models and its applications range from small-scale simulations on laptops to brain-scale simulations on supercomputers developers need to test their code for various use cases and ensure that changes to code do not impair scalability running a full set of benchmarks on a supercomputer takes up precious compute-time resources and can entail long queuing times which enables comprehensive dynamic code analysis without requiring access to high-performance computing facilities A dry-run simulation is carried out by a single process which performs all simulation steps except communication as if it was part of a parallel environment with many processes We show that measurements of memory usage and runtime of neuronal network simulations closely match the corresponding dry-run data we demonstrate the successful application of the dry-run mode in the areas of profiling and performance modeling The neuronal network simulator NEST (Gewaltig and Diesmann, 2007) has an active and growing community of developers and users Advances in computer hardware on the one hand and the requirements of novel computational models on the other hand push the development of new simulation technology and have made NEST a tool for a broad spectrum of applications It enables simulations of spiking neuronal networks that differ greatly in size and complexity and depending on the requirements of the models researchers can run the simulations on their laptops or they can make use of high-performance computing (HPC) facilities A simulation with NEST consists of two main phases During the build phase (or setup phase) NEST creates neuron and synapse objects and the data structures to access these objects Afterwards the actual simulation phase starts in which the main simulation loop is repeated iteratively Each iteration comprises the update of synapses and neurons the exchange of recent spikes between MPI ranks and the delivery of these spikes to their local targets A description of the fundamental data structures and the main simulation loop of NEST follows in Section 2.1 The software-development framework around NEST is becoming ever more comprehensive. A testsuite (Eppler et al., 2009b) and continuous integration technology (Zaytsev and Morrison, 2012) help to ensure code quality; models of memory usage (Kunkel et al., 2012) and runtime (Adinets et al., 2015; Schenck et al., 2014) enable the structured analysis of existing code and the design of new more scalable data structures and algorithms in order to confirm the model predictions and to check for errors that occur only in the supercomputing regime NEST developers still need to carry out actual simulations on supercomputers that may employ hundred thousands of MPI processes Running such tests and benchmarks takes up compute-time resources and slows down the code-development process due to long queuing times where only one MPI process carries out its part of a distributed simulation with NEST the process sets up all local data structures as if it took part in a parallel simulation with many processes it creates fake spikes to represent input from other MPI ranks We refer to this method as the dry-run mode of NEST and to the actual distributed neuronal network simulation that corresponds to a specific dry run as real run we distinguish between static and dynamic dry-run mode the MPI process creates fake spikes according to a predefined firing rate while in the dynamic mode the process uses the spikes of its local neurons to invent the fake remote spikes we provide details on the implementation of the dry-run mode and also an example script that shows how the mode can be enabled the term “dry run” often refers to hardware tests under controlled conditions but it is also used in the context of software development to refer to the static analysis of an algorithm by mentally evaluating each step The NEST dry-run mode enables dynamic code analysis and hence differs from the latter definition A NEST dry run corresponds more to a hardware dry run: Simulation code is executed in the controlled environment of a single MPI process such that failure cannot cause any severe damage as the simulation does not use any allocated HPC resources The definition of the term “dry run” is rather vague as the concept is rather uncommon. Examples of programs that provide a dry-run option are among others the rsync utility (Tridgell, 1999) and the GPAW project (Enkovaara et al., 2010) The command-line tool rsync enables file synchronization and transfer; a dry run produces an output of the potential changes which the user can check before performing a real run GPAW enables electronic structure calculations; a dry run allows the user to estimate the memory usage and to inspect the parallelization settings for a given number of MPI processes the dry-run mode of GPAW is conceptually similar to the dry-run mode of NEST concerning the build phase we are not aware of any simulation software which is able to perform a dry run of the simulation dynamics The dry-run mode of NEST allows developers to investigate the performance of different parts of the code without consuming precious computing time that dry run and real run exhibit similar memory-access patterns which may seem questionable given that in dry-run mode most spikes do not originate from real network dynamics in Section 3.1 we compare spiking activity and runtime of dry-run and real-run simulations for different network sizes and number of processes because the dry-run mode only requires a single compute node developers can debug their NEST code for different regimes of number of processes without requiring access to HPC facilities—a single workstation is sufficient Dry-run simulations can also help NEST users to estimate the HPC resources that they need to request for planned simulations In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the dry-run mode we give several sample use cases in Section 3.2 The conceptual and algorithmic work described here is a module in our long-term collaborative project to provide the technology for neural systems simulations (http://www.nest-initiative.org) We devised the dry-run mode as a software-development method for NEST the concepts that we present here are transferable to other simulators The development of NEST is coordinated by the NEST Initiative (http://www.nest-initiative.org). NEST is under the GNU General Public License. It can be cloned or forked on GitHub (https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator). Documentation, examples, and releases are available on the website of the NEST Simulator (http://www.nest-simulator.org) Figure 1. Major steps of build and simulation phase of NEST. The vertical black arrow on the left indicates single-threading and multi-threading (single and multiple lines, respectively), MPI communication (squares with bidirectional arrows), and the repetition of the main simulation cycle (dashed upward pointing arrow). Colored and dark gray text highlighting corresponds to the data structures shown in Figures 2, 3 respectively; they indicate when the data structures are created Data structures on MPI rank 0 for (A) an example network of eight neurons with ring-like connectivity which is simulated using two MPI processes and three threads per process For each local neuron (blue squares) the SparseNodeArray local_nodes (dark green) stores a struct of a pointer to the neuron and the neuron's GID The two-dimensional vector nodes_vec (light green) stores a pointer to the local neurons sorted by thread Each synapse is represented on the thread of its target neuron Each thread owns a sparsetable (dark orange) which stores a pointer to a Connector (orange) for every source neuron that has targets on the thread The Connectors hold the local synapses (pink) sorted by type (here only one static_synapse per Connector) which pass them on to the local target neurons The delivery step comprises also the update of plastic synapses Example spike buffers for a simulation cycle with four neuronal update steps and for a network of eight neurons (A) During neuronal updates the three-dimensional vector spike_register stores the GIDs of the local neurons that spike (dark gray squares) sorted by thread and update step (B) Before MPI communication each rank collocates its send buffer based on the entries in its spike_register Communication markers (light gray squares) define update step and thread Buffers may not be completely filled (white squares) (C) After MPI communication using MPI_Allgather each rank holds the complete spike data in its receive buffer (global spike buffer) which is the concatenation of the send buffers of all ranks (D) Filling of the global spike buffer in dynamic dry-run mode The section that belongs to MPI rank 0 is copied to the section that belongs to fake rank 1 The GIDs in the section of rank 1 are then replaced with randomly chosen GIDs of neurons that would be local on rank 1 in the corresponding real-run simulation; the assignment of local neurons to threads 0 The second step in every simulation cycle is the threaded update of all neurons and devices. When an update is triggered, neurons typically propagate their dynamics in submillisecond steps according to the globally defined simulation resolution; we refer to these integration steps as h-steps. Thread-specific spike registers (see Figure 3A) collect all spikes that the local neurons emit during the current update sorted by h-step Every simulation cycle terminates with a gather step, which is the communication of the newly generated spikes using MPI_Allgather. To this end spikes need to be transferred from the spike registers to the local MPI send buffers (see Figure 3B) where markers indicate the sections for different h-steps and threads The send buffers are equally sized on all ranks; their size depends on the maximum number of spikes per rank which was emitted so far during the course of the simulation within one simulation cycle each rank holds the recent spikes from all ranks in its MPI receive buffer which is the global spike buffer that is processed in the next delivery step The minimum synaptic transmission delay in the network defines the interval at which MPI processes need to exchange spikes in order to maintain causality (Morrison and Diesmann, 2008) the min-delay interval or communication interval defines also the time interval of the simulation cycle NEST is executed only by MPI rank 0 but this rank behaves as if it was part of a distributed simulation with many MPI processes; we refer to all MPI ranks except rank 0 as fake ranks as they exist only conceptually but are not instantiated In the build phase the dry-run process needs to take into account the total number of MPI processes when creating the local data structures and in the simulation phase the dry-run process needs to generate fake spikes that represent the input from the fake ranks We describe this in more detail in the following Sections 2.2.1 In order to implement the dry-run mode we used the NEST-kernel parameter num_processes which is initialized to MPI_Comm_size and then used as reference for the total number of MPI processes throughout the simulation NEST users can only inspect num_processes but they cannot manipulate it the parameter is unlocked and can be set to the desired number of MPI processes (see Section 2.3) even though the simulation runs only on one MPI process As MPI processes operate independently of each other during the build phase (see Figure 1) MPI rank 0 does exactly the same in a dry-run simulation as in the corresponding real simulation The implementation of the dry-run mode for the build phase did not require any changes to code except for making it possible to set the NEST-kernel parameter num_processes at the beginning of a simulation As neurons are distributed in a round-robin fashion according to their GIDs MPI rank 0 creates the neurons whose GIDs modulo the total number of MPI processes equals 0 the rank does not require any information from the fake ranks but it just needs to know the number of MPI processes which is provided by the parameter num_processes Connecting two neurons also does not require any interaction with the fake ranks As synapses are represented on the same MPI rank as their target neurons rank 0 just needs to check whether the target neuron of a particular synapse is local in order to decide whether it should create the synapse NEST uses MPI_Allgather to communicate spikes such that the spikes of each neuron will reach every MPI rank regardless of the existence of local targets the MPI rank of the source neuron does not need to be notified of a newly created connection As in real simulations rank 0 registers the rank-local neurons and synapses with the local neuron and connection infrastructure (see Figure 2) While the implementation of the dry-run mode for the build phase required virtually no changes to the NEST code base the extension of the dry-run principle to the simulation phase needs to address the problem that a major part of the neuronal network is missing There are no remote neurons that send spikes to the dry-run process in every simulation cycle Therefore, NEST omits the MPI communication of the gather step in dry-run simulations; there is only one process running anyway. Instead, rank 0 fills the global spike buffer (see Figure 3C) with fake spikes the buffer holds the GIDs of all neurons that spiked in the previous simulation cycle (see Section 2.1) rank 0 generates the GIDs at random but it needs to comply with the structure of the global spike buffer in order to create a similar instruction flow as in a real simulation As every rank has its own section in the global spike buffer and every thread has its own subsection the dry-run process needs to make sure that every part of the buffer contains only the GIDs of neurons that are local on the corresponding rank and thread We can assume a round-robin distribution of neurons such that gid % num_processes defines the rank and gid % (num_processes * local_num_threads) / num_processes defines the thread where local_num_threads is the NEST-kernel parameter for the number of threads that run on each MPI process During the gather step of both dry runs and real runs each MPI rank collocates the MPI send buffer based on the spike-register entries (see Figures 3A,B in real runs the MPI communication of the buffers is triggered whereas in dry-run mode each rank fills the global spike buffer with fake spikes using multiple threads It is not possible to obtain estimates of communication times from dry-run simulations the NEST kernel variable send_buffer_size provides a good approximation for the send-buffer size of the corresponding real run Based on this value realistic estimates of communication times can be obtained from MPI communication benchmarks the communication time in real runs is very short compared to the overall runtime of the simulation phase (percentages in the lower single-digit range as shown in Section 3.1.3) so that the dry-run mode covers most part of the simulation phase anyhow The local_spike_counter is another kernel variable that is especially useful for benchmarking purposes The variable keeps track of the number of spikes that the local neurons emit and hence enables the calculation of firing rates without using a spike detector We developed two versions of the dry-run mode: the static and the dynamic mode The two modes differ in the way they determine the number of fake spikes in each simulation cycle The static mode does not aim on mimicking the dynamics of a real simulation but it allows for direct control of the frequency of the spikes that enter the delivery step within every simulation cycle This can be useful for very specific profiling needs in static mode the firing rate is a parameter controlled by the user In each simulation cycle the entire global spike buffer including the part which belongs to rank 0 is filled with as many fake spikes as necessary to approximate the target firing rate An exact match is hardly possible because the global spike buffer is at the lowest level subdivided in parts which correspond to a single h-step and thread and because the number of spikes in such a part has to be an integer number To obtain a close approximation even for low firing rates the number of spikes per h-step and thread is varied between buffer parts such that the average firing rate is close to the target firing rate Please note that the firing rates of the neurons on MPI rank 0 are not directly affected by this procedure and can deviate from the target firing rate as these spikes are ignored in further processing this has negligible influence on the runtime of the simulation phase One could argue that ignoring the spikes generated by rank 0 gives away important information it belongs to the core concept of the static dry-run mode to have full external control over the number of incoming spikes the concept of preserving information is in contrast fully realized in the dynamic dry-run mode The main objective of the dynamic dry-run mode is to mimic the spike dynamics of the corresponding real simulation as closely as possible on the single dry-run process In simulated neuronal networks firing rates vary over time neuronal populations with many recurrent connections show synchronization behavior which means that the neurons of the same population tend to fire together and pause together the number of spikes generated by a subset of the population is an indicator of the overall number of spikes generated by the entire population at a specific point in time We use this as a principle for the dynamic dry-run mode: The number of fake spikes per fake rank is always equal to the number of spikes generated by the neurons on the dry-run process (MPI rank 0) This is carried out using multiple threads In order to enable the dry-run mode, NEST users need to adapt their simulation scripts only marginally, which is demonstrated in the following PyNEST example. The simulation script creates a balanced random network (Brunel, 2000) of 100 000 incoming synapses per neuron (80% excitatory Spikes of all neurons on rank 0 in the first 500 ms of a 10 s simulation (A) in static dry-run mode with a target firing rate of 5 Hz (average firing rate of 4.97 Hz) (B) in dynamic dry-run mode (average firing rate of 4.82 Hz) and (C) in the corresponding real run (average firing rate of 5.91 Hz) using 24 MPI processes The dry-run mode can only be enabled in simulations that use one process (i.e., num_processes is initialized to one). Once it is enabled, the dry-run mode can only be disabled by a reset. Currently the method is not compatible with precise spike times (Hanuschkin et al., 2010; Morrison et al., 2007b), gap junctions (Hahne et al., 2015), or structural plasticity (Diaz-Pier et al., 2016); see Section 4.2 The PyNEST command GetKernelStatus allows NEST users to inspect all kernel parameters such as num_processes All dry-run parameters are tagged by a dryrun_ prefix The kernel status dictionary also contains the local_spike_counter and the send_buffer_size The network is driven by random spikes emitted by a Poisson generator whose output frequency is scaled via the parameter η The size of a single integration step (h-step) is set to 0.1 ms It is discussed in Section 4.2 why balanced random networks were chosen for validation due to the short recording period of 500 ms these histograms should be taken with a grain of salt the spike patterns of real runs are very closely mimicked by dynamic dry runs over a large range of network sizes Spike raster plots for dynamic dry runs and real runs with different sizes of a balanced random network Network size N is directly proportional to the number of ranks M (weak scaling design with approximately 5 The spikes of the first 500 neurons are shown over a simulated time of 500 ms η values are slightly different for real and dry runs to enable better matching spike frequencies Figure 6. Statistical properties of the spike data shown in Figure 5. The six panels in (A,B) correspond to the six panels in Figure 5 Vertical lines and dashed lines indicate mean and standard deviation relative to mean For successive time intervals of 2.5 ms the spikes of the recorded neurons were taken into account in order to determine the instantaneous population activity 4.0 spikes per second from left to right and top to bottom panel (B) Distribution of coefficient of variation (CV) of inter-spike intervals (ISIs) The CV of ISIs was calculated for every neuron of the recorded population that spiked at least three times in the 500 ms interval; a percentage of 97 top to bottom) of the neurons fulfilled this requirement 0.26 from left to right and top to bottom panel but strongly on network connectivity—the spike frequencies are much larger for KS = 0.25 compared to KS = 1.0 it becomes visible that the dry runs overestimate the spike frequency of the real runs systematically the gap is not large and can easily be reduced by choosing a smaller η value for the dry runs a reduction of η between 5 and 10% can be derived from these curves as a reasonable rule of thumb to arrive at dry-run spike frequencies which are close enough to real runs to be perfectly usable for profiling and related purposes Figure 7. Each subplot shows how the spike frequency in a balanced random network depends on η (the parameter which scales the random input to the network), comparing dynamic dry runs (red) and real runs (blue). There were 10 repetitions with different random master seeds in each experimental condition, the error bars show the resulting standard deviations. Between subplots, M is varied as in Figure 5 and in addition the number of incoming synapses per neuron (according to the scaling factor KS; the number of incoming synapses per neuron amounts to K = KS ∗ 11 250) In contrast to the dynamic dry-run mode, the static dry-run mode produces always a homogeneous pattern of incoming spikes without any synchronization patterns. This is clearly visible in Figure 4 and a direct consequence of the underlying mechanism of fake spike generation (see Section 2.2.2) supplemented by the code for dry-run functionality at revision 11501 In a factorial experiment, the number of ranks M was varied between 32 and 28672 (M ∈ {32, 128, 512, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 28672})3 the number of threads T per rank between 4 and 64 (T ∈ {4 and the number of neurons per rank between a half-fill and a full-fill setting nearly the whole available main memory in each compute node was consumed by NEST data structures Due to a limited amount of available computing time only 71 of the 80 experimental conditions of the full factorial design were included in the experiment The η value in the real runs was set to η = 1.685 resulting in a spike frequency of approximately 7 Hz F was also set to F = 7 Hz in the static dry runs The two dynamic dry runs differed with regard to the parameter η One was carried out with η = 1.685 like in the real runs one with η = 1.56 to match the spike frequency F of the real runs (according to the rule of thumb suggested in Section 3.1.1) The results of this study are shown in Figure 8 Each boxplot depicts the distribution of the relative differences between the real runs and the dry runs over all experimental conditions for the different variations of the dry-run mode (left: static; middle: dynamic with η = 1.685; right: dynamic with η = 1.56) and for different measures (A: Memory consumption; B: Mean real spike frequency per rank Freal; C: Build time; D: Simulation time excl Boxplot B reveals that the mean spike frequency Freal is very well matched between real runs and the dynamic dry-run mode with η = 1.56 the median of the relative differences in spike frequencies amounts to approximately 12% and for the static dry-run mode to approximately 60% (although F = 7 Hz like in the real runs; thus in static mode we observe F ≠ Freal) Dry-run performance relative to corresponding real simulations The relative difference between real and dry runs is computed by (ddry − dreal)/dreal with d being the measured value This is combined with rather high variability in the range [3%;25%] the static dry-run mode is not as well suited as the dynamic dry-run mode for the estimation of the overall simulation time of real runs the dynamic dry-run mode comes very close to real simulations Both for η = 1.56 and η = 1.685 the median of the relative differences amounts to approx 0%; variability is approximately restricted to the range [−0.7%;1.2%] differences are slightly larger with a maximum of over 2% These results show that dry runs provide a realistic assessment of the memory consumption of real simulations The same holds for build times (boxplot C) In the build phase of NEST (creation of neurons and network wiring) exactly the same code path is executed in dry runs and real runs the expected runtime difference is 0%; the observed median of the relative runtime differences amounts to approximately 1% in all dry-run variations The variability is mostly confined to the range [−5%;5%] This seems to be the normal variation range on JUQUEEN when exactly the same code is executed at different points in time we conclude that the simulation time measurements with the dynamic dry-run mode and adjusted η are already as close to real runs as achievable in practice From a single-compute-node perspective, the substantial difference between a dry run and a real run is what happens during the gather step in each simulation cycle: Fake spike generation in dry runs, MPI communication in real runs. For users of the dry-run mode, it would be unfavorable if fake spike generation required a lot more time than MPI communication. Figure 9 supports the claim that this is not the case at least not for typical simulation settings and assumptions using JUQUEEN (B) Relative values: Gather runtime as percentage of the overall simulation time (incl These models depend in turn on model-based estimations of the send buffer size The models were fitted to a subset of the data from the experiments described in Section 3.1.2 (real runs with η = 1.685 and dry runs with η = 1.56 resulting in approximately the same mean spike frequency of F = 7 Hz; T ≤ 32) The model fit was very good with the coefficients of determination being in the range between R2 = 97.9% and R2 = 99.7% the shown curves are representative for experimental data collected on JUQUEEN It can be observed that the dry-run mode is faster for T = 32 and will continue to be so even beyond the shown limit of M = 8192 ranks for T = 8 real runs are faster if the number of ranks is larger than M ≈ 2 The largest values can be observed for real runs with M = 8192/T = 32: For this setting the runtime of the gather step converges to about 7% of the overall simulation time The data proves in summary that the runtime of the gather step is in the same order of magnitude for real runs and dynamic dry runs and that the generation of fake spikes does not cause any systematic and considerable performance penalty the gather step contributes only by a small part to the overall simulation time and can therefore be ignored in dry-run measurements without the fear to miss an important piece of information the development of the dry-run mode was motivated by several use cases the dry-run mode allows to estimate the memory footprint and the runtime of a NEST simulation—the former very precisely because the memory footprint depends mainly on the number and type of neurons and connections and the respective infrastructure which is created in exactly the same way during the build phase of real runs and dry runs—the latter with good accuracy as described in Section 3.1.2 adjustments are necessary in practice to get the absolute maximum the network size has to be increased in an iterative way over several NEST runs which saves a large amount of core hours and effort A similar argument holds for the following use cases which rely on estimating the runtime in advance It is common practice at computing centers that users only have a limited amount of computing time at their disposal and that it is necessary to specify in advance how long a compute job will run on a system at maximum the maximum runtime can only be guessed if new scaling sizes or simulation parameter settings are explored with the help of the dry-run mode it is possible to get a very good estimate in advance without the need for full-scale test runs This is a considerable advantage from the user perspective and helps to manage the granted computing time in a better way measurements that are carried out with the dry-run mode can be used to collect data for scaling plots when writing computing time applications use cases from the user perspective were considered estimating the memory footprint and the runtime is also a highly valuable tool for NEST developers The collection of profiling data is carried out rarely at large scale because of the associated computational costs and effort—although it is common wisdom in the HPC community that the behavior of parallel codes depends strongly on simulation size and the number of compute nodes involved Some optimizations may be very useful at small scale but cause a performance bottleneck at large scale The dry-run mode enables the developers to investigate the behavior of their code at different scales at low cost two specific applications of the dry-run mode from the developer perspective are presented Many performance problems in HPC applications only show up in large-scale simulations because the resources wasted by minor inefficiencies grow disproportionately high with simulation size they are barely noticeable when running on a small number of MPI ranks but take up a considerable amount of computing time when running full scale on a supercomputer profiling of large simulation runs is rarely done because of the accompanying costs in terms of core hours and queueing time the dry-run mode is of great help because it allows the creation of performance profiles for large-scale simulations on a single rank (excl the dry-run mode facilitates systematic profiling as it shortens turn-around times and requires fewer data to be processed This shortens the development cycles for scalable NEST code This example demonstrates the usefulness of the dry-run mode for the development of highly scalable code Performance gain for the simulation phase of NEST by changes to the Time class and to the handling of Time objects in the NEST code base T denotes the number of threads per MPI rank The number of MPI ranks is varied along the x-axis The percental changes are reported relative to the original code version Performance data was collected on the supercomputer JUQUEEN with a pre-release version of NEST 2.4.0 combined with an early implementation of the dry-run mode and (conceptually) one compute node per MPI rank A balanced random network was used as test bed in a close to maximum memory filling setting based on experimental data from JUQUEEN for a scaling size of up to 16,384 compute nodes the dry-run mode for the simulation phase did not yet exist data collection for the performance model was very expensive in terms of required core-hours such an endeavor would not have been feasible users of NEST can use the dry-run mode to estimate in advance the required memory consumption and runtime of large-scale simulations This helps to make better use of the available computing resources by saving core hours on test runs by running full simulations with optimal parameter settings and by enabling users to generate scaling data for compute-time proposals in an inexpensive way It is important to note that the same cannot be achieved by just running small simulations instead of large simulations The connection infrastructure generated during the build phase of NEST differs considerably depending on simulation size The subsequent simulation phase uses these data structures for processing and shows therefore also different runtime behavior depending on overall simulation size The dry-run mode in its current form has two restrictions The first restriction belongs inherently to the concept: the non-consideration of MPI communication and synchronization in NEST terms the non-consideration of the gather step during the simulation phase This restriction is not severe as we have shown in the results section the gather step is very short in real runs In the data from the supercomputer JUQUEEN reported in Section 3.1.2 it consumes between 1 and 8% of the overall simulation runtime In case it is desired to estimate the time required for the gather step as well in advance the dry-run mode helps at least insofar as it also predicts the size of the send buffers used for MPI operations In combination with benchmarks of the MPI_Allgather operation on the respective cluster the time required for MPI communication can be calculated The second restriction concerns the current focus on balanced random networks where the inhibitory and the excitatory subpopulation show the same firing rates and spike characteristics (especially the same synchronization patterns). Such network models are good-natured because their overall spike patterns are invariant with regard to network size if the neurons are sparsely connected (Brunel, 2000) These are important reasons why dynamic dry runs exhibit very similar spike patterns and frequencies as the corresponding real runs For NEST developers and their typical use cases the confinement to balanced random networks is unproblematic because these networks can be parameterized in various ways to cover most base scenarios relevant for profiling and performance modeling (e.g. NEST users may want to simulate networks with rich internal structure consisting of many different subpopulations with varying characteristics For such networks it is less clear whether a dry run will yield a simulation runtime similar to a real run operations during the build phase are exactly the same between dry and real runs and since nearly all of the required memory is allocated during network wiring at least the estimation of the memory usage and of the runtime of the build phase will be quite accurate even for complex networks which require MPI communication outside the standard spike-communication framework the dry-run mode is an important contribution to the software-development framework of NEST It facilitates the maintenance and further development of NEST as an open source project with a general-purpose orientation and extreme scalability the basic idea of the (dynamic) dry-run mode is applicable to other parallel applications in a straightforward way if the following preconditions are fulfilled: • The buildup of basic data structures on each rank does not depend on actions on other ranks • Statistical properties of the data that is generated during the simulation can be inferred from the single existing rank in dry-run mode this needs to be true for those properties which are relevant for the simulation runtime and which are employed to generate fake data in place of real data • The replacement of real data by fake data does not change the overall simulation dynamics in a way that considerably affects simulation runtimes or memory consumption direct and intellectual contribution to the work This work was partially funded by the Helmholtz Association through the Portfolio Theme “Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain” Use of the JUQUEEN supercomputer was made possible through VSR computation time grant JINB33 The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest The authors would like to thank Alexander Peyser from the SimLab Neuroscience at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre for his work on the NEST Time class which is presented as one of the use cases in Section 3.2.1 1. ^Each compute node of JUQUEEN is equipped with a 16-core PowerPC-A2 CPU and 4-fold SMT (64 hardware threads) and 16 GB of RAM number of usable compute nodes amounts to 28 2. ^URL: https://trac.nest-initiative.org 3. ^The setting M = 28 672 corresponds to using full JUQUEEN; each compute node of JUQUEEN hosted exactly one MPI rank in all experiments 4. ^The explanation for this increase in simulation time is as follows: In static dry-run mode, the dynamics of the neurons on the single existing rank are quite different to the real simulation. They produce actually more outgoing spikes than in a real simulation as shown in Figure 8B This entails that more spikes need to be processed when updating STDP synapses; therefore the increase by 15% is observed 5. ^Generated with HPCToolKit (Adhianto et al., 2010) via statistical profiling 6. ^Credit for the code changes goes to Alex Peyser from the SimLab Neuroscience at Forschungszentrum Jülich and to WS (Peyser and Schenck, 2015) 7. ^A publication about this study is in preparation HPCTOOLKIT: tools for performance analysis of optimized parallel programs “Performance evaluation of scientific applications on POWER8,” in High Performance Computing Systems 5th International Workshop on Performance Modeling Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (held as part of SC14) 11/16/2014–11/16/2014 8966 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (New Orleans LA; Cham: Springer International Publishing) Dynamics of sparsely connected networks of excitatory and inhibitory spiking neurons Google Scholar Parallel implementation of a monte carlo molecular simulation program CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Automatic generation of connectivity for large-scale neuronal network models through structural plasticity Electronic structure calculations with GPAW: A real-space implementation of the projector augmented-wave method “Multithreaded and distributed simulation of large biological neuronal networks,” in Proceedings of European PVM/MPI Google Scholar PyNEST: a convenient interface to the NEST simulator A testsuite for a neural simulation engine CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar A unified framework for spiking and gap-junction interactions in distributed neuronal network simulations A general and efficient method for incorporating precise spike times in globally time-driven simulations Supercomputers ready for use as discovery machines for neuroscience “Performance modeling for systematic performance tuning,” in State of the Practice Reports (New York Google Scholar CrossRef Full Text Meeting the memory challenges of brain-scale simulation Spiking network simulation code for petascale computers Regulation of synaptic efficacy by coincidence of postsynaptic APs and EPSPs Spike-timing dependent plasticity in balanced random networks “Maintaining causality in discrete time neuronal network simulations,” in Lectures in Supercomputational Neurosciences: Dynamics in Complex Brain Networks CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Exact subthreshold integration with continuous spike times in discrete time neural network simulations ls1 mardyn: the massively parallel molecular dynamics code for large systems The NEST neuronal network simulator: Performance optimization techniques for high performance computing platforms in Posters presented at the “Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting Google Scholar “Efficient parallel simulation of large-scale neuronal networks on clusters of multiprocessor computers,” in Euro-Par 2007: Parallel Processing 4641 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science eds A.-M Google Scholar “Performance model for large–scale neural simulations with NEST,” in Extended Poster Abstracts of the SC14 Conference for Supercomputing (New Orleans Google Scholar Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization Increasing quality and managing complexity in neuroinformatics software development with continuous integration CyNEST: a maintainable Cython-based interface for the NEST simulator A critical window for cooperation and competition among developing retinotectal synapses Citation: Kunkel S and Schenck W (2017) The NEST Dry-Run Mode: Efficient Dynamic Analysis of Neuronal Network Simulation Code Received: 22 December 2016; Accepted: 07 June 2017; Published: 28 June 2017 Copyright © 2017 Kunkel and Schenck. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Wolfram Schenck, d29sZnJhbS5zY2hlbmNrQGZoLWJpZWxlZmVsZC5kZQ== Susanne Kunkel, c3VrdUBrdGguc2U= †These authors have contributed equally to this work Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish Home / News / Environmental News The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is investigating a fish kill in Winneshiek County’s Dry Run Creek than spanned six miles an environmental specialist with the Field Services & Compliance Bureau at the DNR was not complete but that an investigation is underway the department’s Field Office in Manchester was notified Tuesday of a possible manure release and fish kill in an unnamed tributary of Dry Run Creek “Upon arrival, staff observed dead fish and very murky conditions in the tributary,” the release stated DNR officials identified overland runoff from an animal feeding operation near the headwaters of the tributary of Dry Run Creek as the source of the release Meyers said the responsible party — whose name has not been released — is “taking steps to correct the problem of manure runoff from the open lots.” The DNR’s news release said the amount of manure released into the tributary is unknown at this time but that “dead fish have been observed for several miles in the creek.” but Meyers did not say how long the cleanup would take Meyers said there will be a “potential” for a fine for both the fish and the investigation’s cost The DNR is urging water users downstream from Dry Run Creek to avoid using the water at this time If you see dead or stressed fish at a lake or river the Iowa DNR asks you call their 24-hour spill line at 515-725-8694 as soon as possible Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues Sign up here for The Gazette’s weekly environmental and outdoors newsletter Energy and Environment reporting as a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover under-reported issues. Sign up for the Environment & Outdoor newsletter today Investigative stories and local news updates Coverage of the Hawaiʻi State legislature in 2025 Award winning in-depth reports and featured on-going series Get the week’s news delivered straight to your inbox election workers prepare for the big night Unfortunately, being named a finalist for a Pulitzer prize doesn’t make us immune to financial pressures. The fact is, our revenue hasn’t kept pace with our need to grow, and we need your help Civil Beat is a nonprofit, reader-supported newsroom based in Hawaiʻi. We’re looking to build a more resilient, diverse and deeply impactful media landscape, and we hope you’ll help by supporting our essential journalism Civil Beat has been named the best overall news site in Hawaii for the 14th year in a row by the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter I often find myself disappointing artists who contact me in hopes I’ll attend their show and write about it But with Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “The Seasons,” the situation is flipped — I write about this show despite the company’s request that it not be reviewed That request arrived just four days before Wednesday’s opening night performance at the Emerson Paramount Center and was told that “some production elements for this run could not be realized in a way that fully represented the original vision.” Ticketholders were told the same thing in a “Know Before You Go” email about the opera which marries the music of Antonio Vivaldi with a new libretto by “The Clean House” playwright Sarah Ruhl the scenery’s centerpiece didn’t make it to the stage because of unspecified technical limitations Designer Mimi Lien and design and materials technologist Jack Forman had planned to include dynamic features made from dish-soap bubbles would still go on for the planned five performances The Poet (as portrayed by countertenor and “The Seasons” co-progenitor Anthony Roth Costanzo) sings: “You know poets sometimes we feel the weather inside of us more than we feel the weather outside of us.” Given Wednesday’s performance it’s clear that axiom doesn’t just apply to poets There’s no doubt that “The Seasons” would have been a different show had the six singers and six dancers been working with the visual and tactile elements of Lien and Forman’s soapscape set in addition to the lighting the lithe modern choreography by Pam Tanowitz and Vivaldi’s music as performed by a zesty Baroque pit band “The Seasons” was on solid ground musically and visually The iconic concertos of “The Four Seasons” served as the piece’s creative springboard and other pieces from Vivaldi’s vast catalog made up the bulk of the score blending the familiar with the old-made-new Baroque arias often manifest emotions through nature or weather imagery in both voice and instrumentation: plinking pizzicato for rain here and “The Seasons” made plentiful and effective use of that trope an artists’ rustic retreat is disturbed when the seasonal cycle falls out of order due to climate change and the singers portraying those artists were all outstanding soprano Ashley Emerson unfurled luscious melismas while chopping vegetables and countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim’s warm velvety timbre as the Painter provided a keen contrast to Costanzo’s icy mezzo-soprano and BLO emerging artist Alexis Peart partnered with dancer Lindsey Jones in a touching and tragic duet for human voice and human body Every baroque opera must have its rage arias and soprano Whitney Morrison and bass-baritone Brandon Cedel tackled those with incisive wrath where “actual spring” comes only after “fool’s spring,” “second winter,” “spring of deception,” and a few more false starts which destroyed thousands of homes and killed more than two dozen people with the flip of a few switches and a shift in the light the stage effectively transformed from an inferno to an ash-blasted wasteland Further productions in New York and beyond are planned for “The Seasons,” and hopefully by then the complications with Lien and Forman’s iridescent set piece will be resolved I do look forward to experiencing “The Seasons” as its creators envisioned it though the Boston run of “The Seasons” may not have realized everything it had wanted It’s even there in the stage directions of Ruhl’s libretto: “Mostly an empty set Presented by Boston Lyric Opera and ArtsEmerson. Through March 16. www.blo.org A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten. Home Delivery Gift Subscriptions Log In Manage My Account Customer Service Delivery Issues Feedback News Tips Help & FAQs Staff List Advertise Newsletters View the ePaper Order Back Issues News in Education Search the Archives Privacy Policy Terms of Service Terms of Purchase Work at Boston Globe Media Internship Program Co-op Program Do Not Sell My Personal Information This initiative aimed to evaluate data quality and support financial entities in preparing for mandatory reporting To facilitate the Dry Run and broader industry readiness and detailed guidance for completing data fields Financial entities also received support through workshops the ESAs have supported financial entities in preparing to report contractual arrangements related to ICT services provided by third-party providers The Dry Run exercise was designed to simulate the official reporting process enabling entities to test their systems in a controlled environment These registers will play a critical role in the designation of critical ICT third-party providers (CTPPs) under the ESAs’ oversight starting in 2025 This preparatory phase underscores the importance of collaboration between financial entities and regulatory authorities to address data quality challenges and refine reporting processes By leveraging insights from the Dry Run exercise entities can align their systems and practices with the requirements outlined in DORA ensuring that the 2025 reporting cycle is both efficient and effective in supporting the oversight and designation of critical ICT third-party providers DryRun Security TX-based AI-native company delivering application security (AppSec) for development and security teams Backers included LiveOak Ventures and Work-Bench with participation from Cannage Capital The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts Co-founded in 2023 by James Wickett and Ken Johnson DryRun Security is an AI-native company delivering application security (AppSec) for development and security teams The company is also introducing Natural Language Code Policies (NLCP) a feature that frees AppSec teams from the work of building and maintaining scripted policy rules By allowing them to define their security policy in a domain-focused way NLCP cuts custom rule writing and helps teams get coverage across all of their code bases without worrying about the language or framework Suspect DHL package bound for Britain that started fire in Leipzig possibly part of Russian plan to cause ‘mayhem’ An incendiary device hidden in a DHL package that caught fire in Germany in July was due to be sent by air to the UK as part of a suspected Russian sabotage plot that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada Sources indicated the suspect package in Leipzig was also bound for the UK though why the UK was chosen as the destination for the two devices An unconfirmed German report suggests they were addressed to fake recipients at real addresses in the UK as were two other incendiary devices found in Poland one of which Polish media said caught fire at a warehouse in Warsaw while the other was successfully intercepted Metropolitan police counter-terror officers declined to comment The only official statement in the UK about the alleged plot was made last month when counter-terror police confirmed a device had caught fire in Birmingham and it was dealt with “by staff and the local fire brigade at the time” Four people were arrested in Poland as part of the alleged plot, it was announced last week, which the country’s chief prosecutor said was intended to commit sabotage using “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” in Europe Two other individuals are also wanted by investigators in the country Another intention, according to the Polish authorities, was “to test the transfer channel” for similar parcels to be sent to the US and Canada to see if similarly dangerous and destructive attacks could be reproduced elsewhere British police and officials, as well as their European counterparts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, strongly suspect that Russia was behind the attacks as part of an effort to cause “mayhem” in the west in retaliation for western military support to Ukraine. Read moreLast month, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned that Russia’s GRU military intelligence appeared to be on “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson His German counterpart, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag that had the Leipzig package started burning during a flight “it would have resulted in a crash”. Although Haldenwang did not say Russia was behind the fire when he gave evidence he accused the Kremlin’s spy agencies of “putting people’s lives at risk” On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the massage items in the suspect packages were booby trapped with a magnesium-based flammable substance Magnesium fires are notoriously difficult to put out and are worsened if water is applied; special dry powder extinguishers should be used instead Russia has denied involvement in the alleged plot “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the US newspaper Sophomore Grace Montoya goes with the lead pack on the wet Grace placed 2nd overall in a time of 18:28 Senior Benjamin Sanchez gets some advice from Head Coach Steven Montoya late in the race finishing in a time of 15:58 and placing 2nd overall The Hilltopper Cross Country teams distinguished themselves despite inclement weather at the Albuquerque Academy Extravaganza on Saturday This was explicitly a dry-run for the State Championship on Nov same schedule and separate races for each school-size classification but that didn’t slow down the defending State Champion Hilltoppers 2nd place finish on the 5k course on Albuquerque Academy’s campus the ’Toppers beat the home team by a score of 39-49 and posted the best average time across all classifications Rounding out the scoring quintet were Ensley Jorgenson (5th Cara Gauss and Elizabeth Buck completed out the varsity squad All five ’Topper scorers improved upon their times at the same meet last year the Hilltopper Boys were considered underdogs to this season’s strong Charger squad but the final score (37-51) was close enough that the ’Toppers will definitely be in contention to defend their State Championship from last season all six Hilltopper boys who ran this meet last year improved their time this year Koen Christensen and Will Gartz rounded out the team Next up: The Hilltopper Home Meet on Friday afternoon Several of the Los Alamos Middle School State Champion squad will be putting on Hilltopper uniforms for the first time to compete with their future teammates Younger kids can compete in the popular Elementary School Mile All are welcome to cheer on these athletes Sophomore Ensley Jorgensen was the 2nd Hilltopper Seniors Eddie Gartz and Mikey Bane were the 3rd and 4th Hilltoppers in 11th and 15th places overall and times of 16:32 and 16:44 The victorious Hilltopper Girls show off their first place trophy Copyright © 2012-2025 The Los Alamos Daily Post is the Official Newspaper of Record in Los Alamos County This Site and all information contained here including graphs and graphics is the property of the Los Alamos Daily Post Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted provided that the Los Alamos Daily Post and author/photographer are properly cited columnists and other contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Los Alamos Daily Post The Los Alamos Daily Post newspaper was founded Feb MITCHELL — The Mitchell City Council has approved an agreement with the state of South Dakota and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove homes in the 500 block of West Ash Avenue over flood concerns Residents on West Ash Avenue have requested the city’s aid in relocating from the flood-prone Dry Run Creek area after the recent flood events in 2019 and 2024 The city is also taking proactive steps to identify other areas of the city prone to flooding and offer homeowners a way forward “Flooding isn't a bad thing if it's controlled Flooding is a bad thing when it affects homeowners,” said Joe Schroeder Two homes with detached garages on West Ash Avenue will be purchased and then demolished The city of Mitchell will be paying for 15% of the estimated project and the cost to the city for the lots of 512 and 514 W Ash Ave The total project is an estimated $292,950 with FEMA paying 75% and the state of South Dakota responsible for 10% The probability of a 500-year flood is based on the chance of it happening today each new day wipes the slate clean and a flood could happen each day of the calendar year “FEMA is really trying to get away from the 500-year flood (vocabulary) because it creates the misconception that we've got time here,” City Planner Mark Jenniges told the Mitchell Republic you have a 0.2% chance of that event happening and every day So you could have the 1% (rain event) four days in a row But then you might go the next 150 years without having it.” The FEMA program is voluntary for homeowners Homes will be demolished and homeowners will be assisted with relocation The city will then own the property to further reduce potential disaster relief in that area with a deed restriction that the property can only ever be used for parkland A city trail currently runs behind these homes agreed to receive aid from the Hazard Mitigation Assistance Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Grant Program which acts to “categorically shift the federal focus away from reactive disaster spending,” according to FEMA’s website “The only time we do this is when (homeowners) bring it to us,” Schroeder told the council but at this time they wish to move forward.” This will be the only home to remain on West Ash Avenue between South Wisconsin Street and South Edmunds Street Jenniges put the paperwork together and submitted the grant request on behalf of the Public Works department The agreement is for the city to cover 15% of the project cost the city’s application letters stated a commitment to pay for 25% of the cost and any additional expenses over the agreed upon amount FEMA is to release an updated floodplain map for eastern South Dakota in May 2026 The map project began in 2016 and is just now getting toward the end phase for Davison County the city uses the best available information on hand to make zoning approvals in regard to potential floods inside of city limits The city of Mitchell has partnered with FEMA in the past to remove structures from floodplains within city limits was torn down a year and a half after a FEMA grant was agreed to by the city It’s paperwork that takes a year and a half,” Schroeder said Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker After winning a national championship with Billy Joe Hobert and providing a flurry of Huards and supplying a first-round NFL draft pick in Jake Locker the UW has had to literally scramble to find an outside signal-caller to run things in Montlake This year's designated starting Husky QB comes from Arizona The state of Washington once could be counted on to produce a UW quarterback worthy of at least an NFL draft pick Steve Pelluer and Jacob Eason lumped with the aforementioned players the position appears to be making a comeback geographically with the emergence of Sione Kaho who's had a pair of sterling seasons for Lincoln High School -- which once produced an NFL-bound quarterback in Jon Kitna who had to go through Central Washington University to get there who recently toured UCLA and has visits to the UW and BYU lined up is a 2027 recruit who comes off a pair of sterling seasons at Lincoln in which he's collectively thrown for 4,488 yards and 35 touchdowns He'll take an unofficial tour of Montlake on April 5 in and around all of the camps he hopes to attend Tacoma (Wash.) Lincoln 2027 quarterback Sione Kaho checked out UCLA earlier this month and has visits to BYU and Washington lined up https://t.co/X9R6qCi5qn pic.twitter.com/fub1nb8c8t was committed to the UW in 2018 when the family lived in Reno showed up for summer football initiation and bailed on the Huskies shortly before the season began drawing a release from coach Chris Petersen Ale Kaho immediately transferred to Alabama where he largely was a special-teams player for three seasons where he started five times over four seasons basically sitting out nearly all of 2022 and 2023 he used up all of his eligibility last fall after collectively appearing in 60 games He'll probably always wonder if walking away from the UW was the right move for his career living and playing just 30 miles down the road he completed 162 of 235 passes for 2,296 yards and 18 scores while helping Lincoln to a 7-3 season and the playoffs Kaho quarterbacked a 9-3 Lincoln team headed to the postseason and connected on 172 passes in 277 attempts for 17 TDs the Huskies have Arizona-produced Demond Williams Jr a pair of freshman in the 2025 class on campus in California's Dash Beierly and Hawaii's Kini McMillan and are pressing hard to sign Brady Smigiel from SoCal for their 2026 class Kaho would fit right in at the tail of all that collected or pursued quarterback talent -- with the Huskies needing at least one scholarship guy a year -- and provide a local face and arm To get the latest UW football and basketball news The content on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only Betting and gambling content is intended for individuals 21+ and is based on individual commentators' opinions and not that of Sports Illustrated or its affiliates All picks and predictions are suggestions only and not a guarantee of success or profit If you or someone you know has a gambling problem crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER 162nd Infantry Regiment prepared for its upcoming mission to help keep peace in Kosovo with a dress rehearsal this week at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels Role players simulated scenarios they may face in a mock town set up to mimic a rural Kosovo setting Small teams of soldiers interacted with the pretend residents who included people playing the roles of local police chief and medical director the Oregon soldiers trained alongside other NATO forces to handle tasks like riot control their conversations were aimed at maintaining peace and preventing violent escalation northern Kosovo has seen violent protests as a result of increased tension between ethnic Albanians and Serbs There were 4,600 NATO troops in Kosovo at the start of this year MITCHELL — Dry Run Creek resembled a lake on Friday as stormwater from a record rainfall event on Thursday caused water levels in the creek to drastically rise The record rain storm that drenched Mitchell with just under 5 inches of rain on Thursday prompted city officials to ask some residents living along Dry Run Creek to evacuate their homes Friday morning Mayor Bob Everson said the Mitchell Recreation Center is being set up to provide temporary shelter for the evacuated residents The shelter at the Rec Center is anticipated to be fully operational by 4 p.m “We had to evacuate some areas along Dry Run Creek “The Rec Center is being used as an emergency shelter by the Red Cross People displaced from their homes can go seek shelter at the Rec Center.” The creek serves as a main stormwater drainage artery for Mitchell Dry Run Creek was being inundated with stormwater throughout Friday “This was a lot of rain in a very short time especially in my final few weeks,” said Everson who has about two weeks remaining before his second mayoral term comes to a close Everson is no stranger to a historic flood The 2019 flood that dropped 8 to 10 inches of rain on Mitchell in a two-day span hit the city during Everson’s second year in office he said the latest storm mirrored the 2019 flood Mitchell received a total of 4.87 inches of rain Thursday That breaks the daily rainfall record for Mitchell set in 1984 That total does not include overnight rainfall amounts that persisted into the early morning hours on Friday Several unofficial reports had rain totals hovering around 8 inches As water levels in Dry Run Creek rapidly rose to dangerous levels on Friday city officials blocked off traffic on Burr Street where a bridge sits atop Dry Run Creek near the skate park A portion of Minnesota Street where a bridge runs atop the creek was also closed off to traffic The creek was inches away from submerging both bridges Friday evening City Council member Tim Goldammer represents many of the residents in Ward 1 who were evacuated from their homes along the Dry Run Creek area The major flooding wreaking havoc on homes in the west side of Mitchell near Dry Run Creek has Goldammer ready to dive deeper into the issues the area frequently experiences during heavy rain events “Dry Run Creek is a major problem we will have to do something with at some point,” Goldammer said This is the second time in the last five years that several Dry Run Creek areas have flooded to the point of evacuating people.” City Administrator Stephanie Ellwein said Dry Run Creek typically begins filling more rapidly a few hours after heavy rains we know that it didn’t really peak here in town between 4 p.m So we are anticipating that Dry Run Creek is going to continue going up,” Ellwein said many residents’ sump pumps were working in overdrive Although the rain had let up Friday morning Dry Run Creek continued rising as more residents discharged basement water that ultimately winds up in the city’s already stressed sewer system Christie Gunkel owns multiple rental properties in Mitchell with basements that were flooded Thursday night “We had one rental with a wall in the basement fall in We had another rental that had water so high a tenant had to climb out of the window because the water was so high surrounding the house,” Gunkel said When the 2019 flood left standing water in many basements Ellwein offered a helpful tip she learned to reduce a collapsed basement wall “One thing I learned was if someone has a lot of water in their basement they have to be careful with how fast they remove the water You need to do it slowly so you don’t end up with basement wall problems,” Ellwein said Chattanooga will host a one-day WRC-style test event on Saturday Photography by Trevor Lyden & Steven Fast/Rally USA Words by David Evans America’s bid for a return to the World Rally Championship will take another step with Saturday’s Tennessee Rally USA test event Initially planned for two days with two service parks rally manager Stuart Wood was forced to cut the itinerary after losing two stages due to bridge repairs on those roads After a ceremonial start on Friday evening Saturday will include all 77 miles of competition across eight stages to the east of the host city “There was nothing we could do about the roads,” Wood told DirtFish “The contractors couldn’t budge on the date of the work and the forest service couldn’t say no [to the work] so we lost those roads – which is a shame because they were two great stages “That means we consolidate everything into a busy Saturday – which is going to be a great day The priority for the event is to execute the event the whole operation in the full day in front of all the law enforcement the EMS (emergency medical services) teams and everybody in the community We’re running a WRC-style day to show everybody what’s coming.” which is the anticipated date for a possible 2026 inclusion on the world championship calendar That March event is expected to draw personnel from the WRC teams “We’re about showing what Chattanooga’s about this time,” said Wood “Friday night is a big concert night and the rally’s going to be right in the middle of that big street party this week There’s going to be a lot of people down there and we’ll be showing the public and the politicians that this event will bring a bunch of people and it’ll bring a bunch of money in.” Tennessee Rally USA had just nine cars on the start list “The entry is the only thing I’m disappointed in,” said Wood every aspect of the safety side of the event is great – those folk are very serious and they have great knowledge of what’s coming and how to run an event.” Sign up today and be the first to know about special offers The presidential election is three months away What if the billionaire contests the result an insurrectionist mob found each other online stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose One in which the billionaires have been unchained vast swathes of the American population became convinced the vote had been stolen and a violent mob almost pulled off a coup and we’re now in a very different – and significantly worse – place uncontained racism spreading like wildfire across multiple platforms To lies amplified and spread by algorithms long before the facts have been reported laundered and whitewashed by politicians and professional media grifters Because just as Brexit prefigured Donald Trump’s election in 2016 there are signs that we are again the canary in the coalmine But this time with a whole new set of dangerous unchecked technological vulnerabilities to be exploited where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls America is facing a singularly dangerous moment Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned it’s not even necessarily about winning any more The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon If Musk chooses to ‘predict’ a civil war in the States what will that look like?He got away with it And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States If he chooses to contest an election result If he decides that democracy is over-rated Even the FBI has been prevented from communicating with tech companies about what officials have warned is a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations after a lawsuit brought by two attorneys general went all the way to the supreme court The New York Times reported that it has only just now quietly resumed Just last week, Facebook killed off one of its last remaining transparency tools, CrowdTangle a tool that was crucial in understanding what was happening online during the dark days before and after the 2021 inauguration It did this despite the pleas of researchers and academics But what Musk – the new self-appointed Lord of Misrule – has done is to rip off the mask. He’s shown that you don’t even have to pretend to care. In Musk’s world, trust is mistrust and safety is censorship. His goal is chaos. And it’s coming. Carole Cadwalladr is a reporter and feature writer for the Observer This article was amended on 22 August 2024 because an earlier version, referring to the storming of the US Capitol, said it occurred “just over four years ago”. The incident occurred on 6 January 2021 – over three years ago. Also a reference to “the 2020 inauguration” should have been to the 2021 inauguration. This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025. The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media. Speaking before making his way to Washington for his much-anticipated tête-à-tête with Mr Trump, Micheál Martin (pictured) stressed Ireland’s need to invest in LNG, which the Government has confirmed is now firmly on the table. with its substantial tech sector and creative industry represents the opportunities to deepen the economic relationship between Ireland and the US the Texas visit provided Mr Martin with the nearest thing to a dry run with Donald Trump he was going to get ahead of the actual meeting today It was a balmy 24C when Mr Martin arrived at the governor’s mansion a colonial style property straight out of Hollywood film Crystal glasses of cold ice water were produced as the Taoiseach and his traveling party were left waiting in a reception room for Republican governor Greg Abbott a man who during the meeting was keen to stress that he had been on the phone to Donald Trump the longest-serving incumbent governor in the US who also acted as Texas attorney general between 2002 to 2015 Since entering the governor's office a decade ago he has promoted an increasingly conservative agenda including measures against abortion such as the Texas Heartbeat Act and of course a tough stance on immigration During the pandemic Mr Abbott was vehemently against implementing face mask and vaccine mandates and went as far as blocking local governments, businesses, and other organisations from implementing their own. With many shunning vaccines, the west of the state is currently battling a measles outbreak Mr Abbott accompanied vice president JD Vance and other Trump administration officials to Eagle Pass It came after a visit to the Oval Office last month during which the governor offered up a number of state facilities to help Mr Trump secure the border "Texas has completed more than 50 miles of border wall," Mr Abbott said afterwards When Mr Abbott arrived into the room to a waiting Taoiseach on Monday his wife Cecilia keen to explain her Irish roots the Irish media pack were ushered out of the room and back onto the shaded white veranda covered Mr Martin's visit to Dell earlier that morning and Ireland's pro-enterprise model as well as infrastructure investment in the years ahead Mr Trump is a transactional politician who looks for business opportunities everywhere and a hint on what message Mr Martin might be wise to take into the Oval office came from the governor A readout hinted to what could be bartered in a potential tariff trade-off: "The governor touted Texas as the leading state for liquified national gas (LNG) exports and noted the importance of continued collaboration between Texas and Ireland in the energy industry." Increasing imports of LNG from the US has already been raised as a potential way to avoid a threatened 25% tariff on EU goods Speaking before making his way to Washington for his much-anticipated tête-à-tête with Mr Trump Mr Martin stressed Ireland’s need to invest in LNG which the Government has confirmed is now firmly on the table "It has been very clear to us by officials how serious the vulnerability is for Ireland If anything was to happen to gas connectors in terms of the Irish economy we would not survive a week without some back-up nothing to do with timing or just visit or anything like that While the Taoiseach was remaining brief in his description of discussions with the governor it is understood Mr Abbott did advise him that Trump is a very personable man But that advice of course came from someone who very much speaks Mr Trump's language Mr Martin can only hope today’s Oval Office encounter goes as well as his discussions with Mr Abbott From as little as €1 a week with our digital introductory offer Already a subscriber? Sign in more st patrick's day articles Fr Paul Murphy leaves the Criminal Courts of Justice on Tuesday In a voluntary exercise involving nearly 1,000 submissions to check Dora regulation compliance the European Supervisory Authorities found that only 6.5% of the registers passed all data checks with missing required information being the most common issue The European Supervisory Authorities’ Dora preparedness “dry run” revealed that 93.5% of the 947 voluntary submissions contained at least one data error across 116 quality checks the ESAs concluded that most financial entities are on track to meet the 2025 deadline though additional efforts will be required to achieve full Dora compliance As the 17 January 2025 deadline for the digital operational resilience act (Dora) approaches the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs)--comprising the European Banking Authority (EBA) the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (Eiopa) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma)--on Tuesday 17 December 2024  the key findings from their “dry run” exercise which took place from April to August 2024 tested the readiness of financial entities for Dora reporting and aimed to assess the quality of the data submitted by institutions in preparation for official reporting starting in 2025 While the exercise identified areas for improvement the ESAs confirmed that meeting the required standards for Dora compliance remains achievable A total of 1,039 financial entities across the European Union participated in the dry run with the reporting deadline set for 30 August 2024 These institutions were tasked with submitting their registers of information (Roi) detailing their contractual arrangements with ICT third-party service providers Of the 947 registers that passed the initial data integration checks 6.5% met all 116 data quality requirements while 50% of the remaining submissions failed fewer than five checks 93.5% of submissions (886 out of 947) exhibited at least one data quality issue The ESAs noted that the quality of the data submitted was in line with expectations considering the voluntary nature of the exercise the findings highlighted several common issues particularly the missing mandatory information Other frequent issues included the improper use of unique identifiers for both financial entities and their ICT third-party service providers with the legal entity identifier (LEI) being the mandatory identifier for financial entities Among the different types of financial entities credit institutions exhibited the lowest proportion of data quality issues with only 1.9% of errors relative to the number of data points submitted This was followed by investment firms (2.4%) and insurance and reinsurance undertakings (3.3%) Dora requires financial entities to maintain a comprehensive register of their ICT third-party service providers The Roi will serve multiple purposes: it will help financial entities monitor their ICT third-party risk provide a tool for EU competent authorities to supervise the management of this risk and serve as the basis for the ESAs to designate critical ICT third-party service providers (CTPPs) financial entities are required to report their Roi to the relevant competent authorities which will then provide the data to the ESAs the ESAs stressed that ongoing preparations are crucial for meeting the 2025 reporting deadline The feedback provided to financial entities during the exercise is expected to guide further improvements to the quality of their data Entities will need to ensure that their Roi are complete meet all regulatory requirements and contain the necessary information for the ESAs to designate critical third-party ICT providers Meeting these standards will be vital for compliance with Dora when official reporting begins in January 2025 The complete 28-page summary report is available : Ahead of the third Test against India in Brisbane Australian batter Steve Smith insisted he is not out of form and also spoke about when he might retire from the sport just out of runs...": Steve Smith breaks silence on dry run ahead of Brisbane Test With the five-match series level at 1-1 who has totalled just 19 runs in three innings so far In the ongoing ICC World Test Championship 2023-25 cycle Smith has scored only 757 runs at an average of 31.54 with one century and four fifties in 27 innings His last Test century came more than a year ago during the Ashes against England managing just 232 runs in 13 innings at an average of 23.20 with a single half-century against West Indies in a losing cause Smith said he told Australia's batting coach Michael Di Venuto "I don't feel like I'm out of form just out of runs."' Smith's training regime involves a near-obsessive amount of batting to fix current issues or prepare for future challenges He acknowledged this can be exhausting as he grows older I think the day I don't want to work out certain problems and try to solve them is the day I will say I've had enough,' he said He also mentioned his decision not to train the day before the Adelaide pink-ball Test: 'Last game so I didn't want to fatigue myself mentally I wanted to give myself every chance of having enough in the tank to go and hopefully score big I do that now and then if I feel I'm batting well and have got what I need from my sessions I probably wouldn't hit as many balls as I do in the lead-up It's just if I need to feel a bit better about something or work on a certain movement Smith revealed that after Australia were bowled out for 104 in the first innings of the Perth Test urging calm and pointing out the missed opportunity to score big on challenging surfaces "We are playing on some tricky wickets at the moment and this was an innings where we all missed out together." Normally we have one or two batters who step up and change the momentum or get through a tough period and put a total on the board It just happened to be a day where we all missed out,' he said Not since he transformed himself from a spin-bowling all-rounder has Smith experienced such a long stretch without a Test century He noted that pitches have become more difficult and that the current Kookaburra balls make posting big first-innings scores challenging and I know how things have changed from 10 years ago With these Kookaburra balls and the extra grass on the wickets you're not seeing those first-innings totals of 450 or 500 anymore but it has been far more challenging for top-order players Those first 35 overs are as tough as they've been since I started playing 'I even looked at the seam movement averages from 10 years ago to now That backed up what I was thinking,' he concluded Smith said that to score on these pitches He also shared a solution for thriving on such surfaces the players getting runs are often going harder at the ball giving themselves room and hitting hard to score quickly You have to put the bowler under some pressure and dictate terms a bit But I should never stop looking to score; the moment I stop This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text Already have an account? Sign in here Delivering high-value research and information on best practices to help improve farming productivity each focused on a key discussion point for the farming sector This month Kondinin Group has capacity tested four high-density large square balers in what is believed to be a first for Australia Massey Ferguson and New Holland were put through their paces Chaser bins play a vital role when it comes to on-farm grain logistics The January Research Report features a comprehensive round up of the latest chaser bins of 30 tonnes-plus capacity Rather than spending hours a day moving around volumes of liquid or waiting for microbes to grow I’m able to assemble accurate genomes of 300 bacterial isolates in one day But the learning curve for the coding skills to do dry lab is steep Before I can even get to a meaningful biological result I need to concern myself with more mundane questions like “How do I move this file?” And “Is the computer running?” Contemporary microbiology research projects are considered either “wet” lab (experimental laboratory science) with tubes and liquids and petri dishes there was a divide between dry lab people and wet lab people They poked fun at the silliness of how the others spent their time “I haven’t pipetted in years and I never will!” a dry lab person would shout “The computational projects look pretty but don’t show a single causal relationship,” the wet-lab person would whisper after a PowerPoint presentation with colorful diagrams and gigantic heat maps with unlabeled axes no axes at all and a bunch of circles with lines connecting them The bacterial species I study is called Gardnerella vaginalis Gardnerella vaginalis is the cause of bacterial vaginosis (known colloquially as BV) it is annoying and smelly and resolves itself; at its worst it causes preterm birth and an increased susceptibility to HIV It is really hard to get rid of because antibiotics don’t always kill it; this is because it grows in a film called a biofilm Biofilms are colonies of bacteria that adhere to each other and a surface offers a community and structural protection for the bacteria BV causes a lot of vaginal discomfort and an unpleasant odor Part of what we’re studying is that there is a common intermediate phase between having and not having BV Another thing we are studying is that Black and Latinx people get BV at a much higher rate than white people There are two types of people I talk to about my research The first has no idea what bacterial vaginosis is or thinks it’s a yeast infection The second has had bacterial vaginosis once or twice or ten times and is completely traumatized “What you’re doing is so important!” they tell me “Please let me know if you find out anything and the cause and mechanism of infection is pretty much unknown aside from some guesses The genome of Gardnerella vaginalis is complete but we don’t know the function of over half of its genes I have to wonder if it is understudied because it is an infection of the vagina I worry and stress about running the right lines of code and putting forth the next experiment to my advisor As a scientist I’m trying to put together a complex puzzle Is it one of those little knobs jutting out I’m not simply wrestling with Gardnerella vaginalis’ unruly genome banging my head against the wall for clicking in the wrong way two months ago with half-analyzed data on a piece of paper written in a language I can’t read a little at a time to solve a problem that will really make people’s lives better After I do get BV (statistically speaking) maybe the treatment won’t be a pitying look and a pat on the shoulder any longer Or a last-ditch recommendation to sit in a tub of vinegar (it worked) I’m going to figure out what makes BV so hard to get rid of by figuring out how Gardnerella’s genetics enable it to make a biofilm we can go forth with better and more informed treatments but it isn’t always obvious; the work of a Ph.D is work on a gigantic problem zoomed in 100X you think you’re looking at a squiggly line but really you’re looking at the edge of the lost piece that fits perfectly in the puzzle that’s been sitting out for decades Or maybe you realize the puzzle was not put together correctly at all What you thought was the sky is really a large lake Madeline Topf is a second-year graduate student getting a Ph.D If you are interested in submitting an essay to Isthmus you'd be a great writer in the Gould niche please send an email with the following information to calendar@isthmus.com Here's the information we need to include your event in our calendar: * event date; RSVP/ticket deadline if there is one email or website we can publish (REQUIRED) Optional info:* bios/press releases for posting with the online listing Admins who work with Ansible for configuration management should check out the dry run also referred to as check mode to deploy changes safely This built-in feature tests playbooks against the intended host -- but doesn't make any actual modifications It is similar to the -whatif parameter in PowerShell When you run an Ansible playbook in check mode it reviews the syntax and proceeds to run through -- and observe only -- each task This simulated playbook experience enables you to see the tasks in action before pushing them to production systems on a real run simply add --check when executing the ansible-playbook command Watch the video to see check mode in action This tutorial uses a VM running Ubuntu in Microsoft Azure to update the app cache on the Ubuntu server as well as to install Apache's HTTP Server service and enable it Then SSH into the Ansible control server and write in the playbook Be sure to specify that file in the dry run This tutorial uses an Ansible Vault encrypted string which means you must also write in a command to unencrypt it Use the command --check to signify to Ansible that this playbook executes as a dry run and should not enact any changes in the environment Add the -v verbose flag so that Ansible displays background information Now input the Vault pass and run the playbook Ansible returns a confirmation of success when it completes the playbook's dry run under "start and enable the Apache2 service" section but Ansible assumes it will be there on a full run of the playbook Clear the screen and run the command a second time in check mode Ansible returns an identical output -- and will every time as no changes are made to the system by the dry run remove the --check flag to follow through on the playbook's commands and make the change to the system Note that the output has changed this time Watch out for playbooks containing custom scripts within your tasks during an Ansible dry run If you're using the Ansible 'shell' or 'command,' these common modules do not support check mode Ansible will automatically skip them when performing a dry run You can change this behavior by adding check mode: no in the tasks Ansible will make modifications to the target even when running in check mode Here's an example of using check mode: no in your tasks: Adding on to the already powerful check mode you can see additional output of what the playbook would change and not just a changed vs Ansible displays detailed change information output comparing the current state with the new state Example of using --diff and --check simultaneously: ansible-playbook myplaybook.yml --check --diff Dry runs are a fantastic tool to accelerate change testing, and can help provide confidence in playbook creation take time when reviewing playbooks to confirm they're fully compatible with check mode before you run tasks in this mode I'm using Ansible check mode to perform a dry run of your Ansible playbooks. Just a quick general overview of our working environment: I do have a virtual machine running Ubuntu in Microsoft Azure And then just a quick overview of the playbook that we're going to be running check mode against: This is going to update the App Cache on this Ubuntu server And then it's also going to install the Apache HTTP server and service it's going to make sure that the service is set to 'enabled.' And the last file before we get into our dry run -- I just want to show you the credential file that I'm using; these other variables for my Ansible user Now we're ready to open up our terminal and run our dry run So let's open up our Ansible control server connection. Here I am SSHed into my Ansible server; I'm also in my project directory. And then I'm going to type in and run our playbook. That is going to be the Ansible playbook command: the YAML file; I'm going to specify that. And then here's the important part: Since I'm using an Ansible Vault encrypted string I do need to ask for the vault password to unencrypt that And then the most important bit here is the --check that is going to be and signify our dry run mode I'm also going to use a 'verbose' flag so we can see some of that background information on how that check mode actually runs Things to keep in mind: We're going to see here it is going to gather fat So that is not something that gets ignored when you run a dry run as well as this 'ping' command that I've instructed it to run -- that is still also going to run Be aware that some modules will still run while you're in this dry run mode It's just not going to make any changes to the system Right here it is saying in the recap that everything came back okay So the syntax -- the tasks that we've configured and coded -- have all been successful One of the key verbose outputs I want you to pay attention to here is under the "start and enable the Apache2 service" section It does state that the Apache2 service was not found on the host So it knows that it's running in a check mode and it's not going to make that change because it is in that check or dry run state And just to showcase how powerful and repeatable this is by running dry runs while you're creating your code And the nice part here is we're going to get the exact same output every time because we are not making changes to the system we are just validating that the playbook that we're running would do what we expect And here at the conclusion of our second dry run -- we can see that the output is identical to what we saw before So there were no changes made to our destination system This is exactly what we want out of our dry mode because we're checking "did our playbook get coded correctly?" let's remove that 'check' flag and no longer do a dry run We're going to actually follow through with our playbook as if it was going to make changes to our destination system but we will see that the output does change now that we've run this Here at the end of our non-dry run completing we can see that there were changes made to the system Namely: We did install the Apache2 service and that everything did still come back OK otherwise We're going to run one more time just to show what happens when we run the playbook after it's already made the changes I want to make sure that nothing's changed on the endpoint system So we should see that everything comes back with the zero changes this time because nothing has been modified from the state that we expect because we're going to check in that final configuration against what our playbook should have I hope this video has shown you the value of running a dry mode of your Ansible playbooks before you push that code to production Ever feel like a quack when trying to debug software sometimes it just helps to hear yourself talk -- even if.. Measuring only the hard numbers of dev activity can have deleterious effects on developer experience API testing tools are essential for ensuring reliable high-performing APIs in modern software development Successful pseudocode conversion goes beyond simply making the code work It's about creating implementations that respect each .. Discover how organizations can streamline operations and improve operational analytics by using AI and machine learning in their .. Can you teach an old programming dog a new trick CompTIA Cloud+ and Cloud Essentials+ cover various areas and target different career paths Developers can use Amazon Lightsail to quickly build websites and applications Once admins have acknowledged the cloud skills gap within their team Many organizations struggle to manage their vast collection of AWS accounts There are several important variables within the Amazon EKS pricing model Dig into the numbers to ensure you deploy the service .. This walkthrough explains what AI agents can do In today's world of web application development and SaaS what does the future hold for Java desktop applications Want to unlock the power of AI in your Java applications This walkthrough guides you on how to use OpenAI and Java with large .. Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are RHEL-compatible distributions created after Red Hat announced the discontinuation of CentOS in 2020.. Integrating AI into legacy data center infrastructure is challenging Increased heat and load require advanced cooling systems Monitoring Linux server performance is vital for optimal operation System admins should consider these 19 performance monitoring.. The evenings cooled down nicely without turning cold The condition of the playa was pretty good generally—it was decent between the Temple site and where the Man will be built and was mostly free of the dust mounds that can grab your bike and throw you to the ground We also thought this trip would be a smart time to test our own processes and procedures to make sure that attending this event in the desert is in the realm of the possible for someone in a situation like the one I am in right now I worry about being too big a burden on the people around me This is a place of Radical Self-reliance which is an expressed value of the community So the Radically Self-reliant atmosphere is moderated by the need for Communal Effort People have been amazingly supportive and we appreciate each and every gesture and helping hand the playa was still pretty much an open space and the only people on site were the survey crew; but now there are hundreds and hundreds of containers that have all been transported to the playa in preparation for the event when all the containers are brought to the playa big day that happens after the Spike and before the gates open the entire area was encircled with a trash fence—nine miles around the perimeter of the event site This year the operation turned Biblical in difficulty with driving sandstorms reducing visibility to a couple of feet—it looked like the end of times There are videos circulating out there on social media (if anyone would like to share them in the comments here there was very little happening on the desert The heavy equipment yard is always among the first to be set up on the playa as well as the Depot (where many large shipments of supplies get staged for distribution) around the playa it was time for us to leave again to further prepare for the upcoming adventure It was so fantastic to get an early taste of the community and friends that we will see in a few weeks There is most definitely a certain romance to being out in the desert before everyone and everything else—but make no mistake this is a work site and will remain one for the next several weeks until the gates open and the event begins It’s beautiful work but it’s work nonetheless Cover image: Reminder that you always have to be ready to make a hasty exit from the playa (Photo by Trevor Tarin) All other photos courtesy of John Curley Thank you for your great update and thank you for being out there! Report comment Report comment Your pre-event reporting has been a gift for many years Report comment This is scary because if it rains then no one will know what to do There’s only so much cheese and meat to go around Without the Nevada National Guard to save us from the flood Report comment Everyone reading this truly appreciates your commitment and skill and I wish you better health and comfort as we move ever closer to Waking Dreams Report comment I’m so grateful to have your reports once again this year I’ve always loved your insight and your ability to connect all of the human dots in that ethereal place Report comment Great to see your pix and hear your voice from out there!! Report comment Always WOW…what it takes to build a city <3 Most who show up have worked really hard to get there Make getting to the gate a tearful experience Report comment I am extremely excited to be able to return to the Playa again I am so grateful to everyone behind the scenes that create the magic dominant eye earlier this year and have undergone eye surgery and a second medical procedure I have some vision again and hopefully it will get better with time But it will not stop me from making the journey !!! Report comment Report comment Report comment Report comment Report comment it makes me feel as if I am right there with you Report comment one day I will join your elited ranks … I adore the logistics the building of the city and the work it takes … you all are the Cat’s ME-OW Report comment See you out there soon and stop by Anonymous Village for a cuppa coffee Report comment It is a good reminder of the fickle weather on Playa and a cautionary tale for folks to be prepared for whatever dust and wind storms can move quickly through the Black Rock desert Report comment for the excellent-as-ever peek behind the scenes As a chronically ill person (fibromyalgia) I can empathize and am not sure how much longer my body will tolerate my desire to join this city: “I worry about being too big a burden on the people around me Report comment John – I have recently been talking about Radical Self-Reliance with a friend who has lost his sight and now insists he can’t go to BRC as he won’t be self-reliant I have tried to impress upon him that part of Radical Self-Reliance is building a network of people you can count on when you need em as they have counted on you previously – an individual does that and as you point out – this leads to communal effort but I firmly believe they’re entwined And we’re all here to support whatever you need Report comment And your radical community is here to help you with whatever you may need we are happy to return the favor…sparkle on ;-) Report comment Due to Elder care and COVID it’s been 9 years and you just gave me bad stomach cramps Report comment Report comment Stories about the annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City The University of Oregon is participating in the annual Great Oregon ShakeOut on Thursday and is recommending all students and employees take part in the earthquake safety drill at 2:19 p.m The UO will send a notification that the drill is about to start through the UO Alerts mass-notification system UO Alerts sends an email to all students and employees and text messages to everyone signed up to receive the notifications The event is designed to promote earthquake preparedness an important issue in a region that faces an overdue and potentially massive Cascadia quake and coastal tsunami Earthquakes can happen anytime and almost anywhere and most injuries during such events are caused by falling or flying objects The drill is an opportunity to practice “drop Those are the key steps to remember if there is an earthquake Modification and adaptation may need to occur based on your situation Be in a crawling position to protect your vital organs and be ready to move if necessary Cover your head and neck with your hands and arms Do not move to another location or run outside Shaking can quickly become violent so that you may be unable to run or crawl Any students or employees who have not signed up to receive UO Alerts are strongly encouraged to do so as that is how the UO gets information out quickly in emergency situations Kelly Missett, the ShakeAlert regional coordinator, and Vicki Strand, the UO’s continuity and emergency manager in Safety and Risk Services, will host a presentation from noon to 1 p.m. Oct. 18 in the Lease Crutcher Lewis Room in the Erb Memorial Union Participants will learn about earthquakes and how individuals can take steps to be more prepared on campus and at home and hold” drill as part of the Great Oregon ShakeOut The presentation is sponsored by the Department of Earth Sciences and UO Safety and Risk Services Students and employees are encouraged to make sure they can receive ShakeAlert earthquake early warning alerts on their cellphones The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system can detect significant earthquakes quickly so alerts can be sent to people before they feel shaking For more tips and training on earthquake preparation and response for individuals and UO departments, visit the Safety and Risk Services website All stories in Campus and Community uonews@uoregon.edu but they seem to have found a temporary option The selectors rested vice-captain Shubman Gill for the T20Is to manage his workload and keep him fresh for the upcoming long Test season Ruturaj Gaikwad also failed to make a place in the squad India's Sanju Samson has scored 444 runs in 30 T20Is at an underwhelming average of 19.30.(PTI) Skipper Surya has already revealed that Sanju Samson has been chosen as the opening batter for the three-match T20Is "Sanju Samson will play and open the batting in this series going forward with Abhishek Sharma," Suryakumar Yadav said in the pre-match press conference Former India cricketer turned commentator Aakash Chopra has also backed Sanju Samson to open the innings alongside Abhishek Sharma considering his decent experience batting in the top order "Sanju re baba - make Samson open because Abhishek Sharma is certain at one end and we have even seen him bat down the order at No Samson has earned marquee status in the IPL but is yet to make a mark in the Indian colours has been in and out of the Indian setup and is striving hard to establish himself as a mainstay for the Indian team Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma's retirements have given him another chance to cement his place in the T20I set-up The wicketkeeper batter has scored 444 runs in 30 T20Is at an underwhelming average of 19.30 Chopra pointed out what is pulling Samson down at the international level and said sometimes he tries too many shots his problem is that he goes for one too many shots Then he gets out and you say - 'How did you do that Sanju this was a chance and you let it go'," Chopra added.