#and on a smaller monitor you could just see the simultaneous recording of just the different puppets 'walking' through the frame!

[rascheln]

We went to the (German) Sesame Street exhibition earlier today, so here's a couple snapshots of some true icons. Plus the picture I drew to add to a whole wall of children's and adult's anniversary congratulations.

[motherofwoofers]

A Very Verfound Christmas

This is my gift to @verfound for the LBSC Secret Santa 2020 -Extravaganza! This it a Teen rated fic for some implied thoughts, and the ability to keep up with vague clues! 

---

Here’s the thing-

When he’d woken up this morning, he had every intention of celebrating a short work day and another successful year of endless toy making. After all, it was Christmas Eve. Work. Watch the sleigh launch. Rock out in one of the Jingle Halls. Join the rest of the elves in bringing in the Christmas Dawn. Then sleep the entirety of Christmas Day.

As he had the last seventy odd years.

But as of five seconds ago, he was pretty sure he didn’t even remember his own name, let alone what he was doing later tonight, or even what he needed help with-

“What?” Luka blinked rapidly, before clearing his voice. Bright blue eyes blinked back.

“Do you need help with those?” Liquid sugar rolled off her tongue, he was certain of it. There was no other feasible way for her voice to be so sweet and melodic. Liquid sugar from pink glossed lips.

Those?

It took him a moment before his mind snapped back into action. Those.

Those were a pallet of last minute dolls that had been assembled and programmed incorrectly. Which, in reality wasn’t even in his department of toy making. They were his green haired absentee best friend’s. A certain friend who had slapped his ass, clocked off early, and dashed, leaving him to try to figure out how to get an entire pallet of singing ice queen dolls fixed, wrapped, and loaded onto the sleigh before launch.

Except, he really didn’t mind all of a sudden.

“I’m, uh, looking to drop these off with the doll repair department. Except I don’t even remotely know where that is,” he tried to drop his best grin at the end, and bit back a goofy grin when her face lit up red.

“Oh,” bright blue eyes blinked again, “this is the art department.” He watched as a small frown turned down her sweet lips, a furrow forming between her soft dark brows. His heart pounded in his chest painfully as a full pout took over the elf’s face. Then just as quickly, her face was lighting up, eyes wide. “Hold on one second! Stay right there! I think I can help.” The raven haired girl disappeared behind the door he had just knocked on, door shutting with a loud click in his face before his attention was drawn to the loud whirring around the corner.

Pulling the pallet of dolls along, he followed the sound to see a large bay door opening, as well as a sight he’d never let his mind forget.

Back lit by the shop lights behind her, the elf stood before him, hands triumphantly placed on her hips as she grinned at him. Curvy. Petite. And dressed in something he was pretty sure wasn’t the usual uniform. Because if it was, he was switching departments immediately.

Red and white striped stockings ran the length of her legs, a hint of creamy skin revealed where garters kept them in place, before disappearing beneath a red tutu flared out just enough to test the boundaries of cute and oh. A black vest trimmed in glitter wrapped her frame like a second skin, dipping dangerously low in the front. A view he knew would become increasingly distracting the closer he stood to her. He could just make out the twin coat tails attached in the back to round out her look.

Oh, sweet candy canes.

A sculpted arm waved him forward, “Come on in. I’m Marinette by the way.”

He was fairly certain he’d left his jaw on the floor, a good meter behind him, when he tried to respond, “Luka. Luka Couffaine.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Luka Couffaine,” she giggled, leading him further into the shop. Smooth, Couffaine.

Most of the machines and monitor screens were quiet, though some of the holo displays still had their most recent projects lit up and rotating. Lights were slowly kicking back on as they moved towards what looked like a small carpeted studio area, sectioned off from the immense space with a curved control panel. Then there was the color. It was everywhere, on everything. The control panel itself looked as if someone had gone crazy with spray paint and glitter glue. An extreme contrast to his department, where most of the spaces were walled off and smaller, but cozy and themed.

Two different ways to keep inspiration high.

“Go ahead and bring them over here so I can see what we’re dealing with,” Marinette pointed towards an empty space near a work table. As he powered the hover units down on the hand truck, effectively parking the dolls, he became aware of one very specific thing:

The Couffaines definitely had a pixie kink.

Marinette stepped out of heels he hadn't even been aware she was wearing, until she went from chin height to his chest.

And just as she had dropped in height, so did his eyes. Beaming blue eyes, determined pink lips, and --ffff the swell of her chest, emphasized by the matching red bra he could just barely see peeking from beneath. Being tall was both a blessing and a curse. When it came to which one it was right now, he was fairly certain his name was dropping rapidly from the Nice List.

Tearing his eyes away, Luka shifted his attention back to the original problem at hand.

“The doll is dressed in her sister’s attire, and to top it off the music department loaded it with the wrong song. This is the first movie’s song, and not the recent release.” He lifted the platinum haired doll, easily sliding her from the plastic twists they’d been forced to switch too. A small hand reached out to take the doll from his hand, before it was meticulously examining the fabrics. He would’ve expected the petite elf’s hands to be soft and smooth, but they were nearly as strong and callused as his own.

“I think we can fix this. How long do we have before launch?” She swivelled away quickly, setting a few things into motion as she took control. A holoscreen popped up from the control panel, before she flicked it up into the air to hover a few meters off the ground. The countdown to launch was displayed in bright red numbers. “Oh good, we’ve got five minutes until launch. Plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time?” He questioned, a bit disbelieving. Granted, it was a decent amount of time, but how in the world were they going to get it done. “I don’t know anything about dolls. I work in sound effects.”

“They essentially just need their outfits updated, which I can do. And the correct song recorded over their music chip, which you can do.” She was already pulling the dolls free from their boxes, while simultaneously preparing the work space before her.

“Amazing,” he breathed to himself. “I don’t know how to record songs onto these, though.”

“Don’t worry! We used to fix stuff all the time in my old department. You know those toys where the voice doesn’t sound like the actual character? That’s because it’s an elf,” she whispered, even though it was just the two of them. “They’ve got a small recording studio in here, we just need to get the right song track set up and you’ll sing over it. And don’t worry, the program will alter your voice, no talent needed!”

She made it all seem so simple.

He stood there for a moment watching her move about, removing clothes from the dolls, sourcing different fabrics, and selecting different re-hue pens.

All he had planned on doing was dropping them off, and now here he was, fixing them.

But there was definitely nowhere else he’d rather be than where he was right now.

Wandering over to the recording studio on the other side of the control panel, he flicked through a few of the screens that hummed to life, but found it hard to keep his eyes from drifting.

“Your outfit is pretty cute. Were you going to one of the parties or a date?” He watched out of the corner of his eye to avoid facing her directly. But he wished he had when he saw the beautiful rosy color from earlier spread across her cheeks and bloom all the way to the tips of her elegantly pointed ears. “I hope I didn’t ruin any of your plans.”

A tiny squeaked, “Thank you,” came long before the rest of her response. “No date. A celebration actually. I don’t normally dress sooo…..” she waved her hands at her body.

“Oh?” The audio track he needed began to play loudly in the speakers around him, blaring out high notes neither of them were prepared for. Marinette nearly fell from the stool she’d placed herself on, naked doll and hue-pens flying, as he scrambled to turn it down. “Sorry!”

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” Her hands were waving him off as she went in search of her things, dropping onto her hands and knees. He could see her crawling around underneath the control panel, skirt bobbing dangerously. Pale skin flashed, and the bare curve of her rear came into view for a moment’s breath, before her skirt dipped to cover her once more.

“I’m definitely on the naughty list,” he muttered. Taking a moment to himself, Luka closed his eyes and dropped into the swivel chair behind him, swivelling slowly. Think about something else. Anything else.

“Are you kidding me? After we fix this fiasco right before launch, we are going on the Nice list for sure. I would know!” Luka stopped spinning to find Marinette settled on her stool and working on the dolls once more.

“There’s no way you’ve ever been on the Naughty List.”

Mischievous blue eyes looked over at him, sending his heart fluttering once more, before she grinned. “I’ve been on the Naughty List.”

He sat up in his seat, intrigue pulling him to full attention. With an impatient flick of his wrist, the screen between them flew off to the right, taking the lyrics with it.

“Do tell.”

“Wellll, I got in trouble for a little breaking and entering and theft of personal property,” he watched her lips roll between her teeth as she tried to keep up her nonchalant facade. He blinked, surprised none the less.

“Hardcore,” he grinned, thoroughly satisfied when her face flamed up again.

“I didn’t keep it!” She squeaked out and he couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of his chest.

“I believe you,” he winked. Her blush deepened, and she swivelled away to hide the way she bit into her lip. Damn did that feel good.

Pulling the lyrics back in front of him, he set about analyzing the song and tune, easily working silently in the space with her. He took a quick glance at the countdown, and breathed a sigh of relief when it read five minutes ‘til launch still.

Positioning the microphone in front of his face, he lost himself in the song. Testing out his ability to reach with his vocals, muscles he didn’t get the chance to use as frequently as his other band members.

“Wow.”

Luka looked up to find Marinette only a few paces away, clutching a full arms worth of redesigned dolls. The amazement on her face, brought blood rushing to his own cheeks. He cleared his throat awkwardly, and poured more focus than necessary into saving the music file.

“You’re beautiful-- I-- I mean your voice is beautiful! I didn’t know you could actually sing,” she was setting the dolls down and moving closer, the smell of sweet baked goods surrounding her and intoxicating his senses.

“Well, these dolls look like they should be on collector’s shelves.” He lifted one of the ice queens up, marvelling at Marinette’s ability to not only change the entire outfit but make it better than the original. He followed her lead as she sent the dolls through a reprogramming shoot, catching them at the end to repackage them. “You didn’t learn those skills from the mass production team.”

The smile on her face caught his attention. The way it lifted her cheeks, set light to her eyes. She pulled the doll from his fingers, and he realized he’d been staring.

“No. I actually learned on my own. It’s a hobby of mine- making clothes. So doing it in miniature wasn’t too hard.” The machines around him were shutting down as he realized she had already finished packing everything away. Not to be the worst helper around, he carried most of the boxes back to the pallet. “Your voice. It really is amazing, you know.” She turned to him brightly as he powered the hover units back on, and the hand truck lifted from the ground. “You remind me of one of my favorite performers! Jolly Stone!”

“I love Jolly Stone! I’m actually in a band, we’re performing later tonight. If you’d like, you could come watch us perform. We’re not famous or anything. Just my sister and two of our friends.”

“Oh. That sounds fun, but I’ve got my party right after this! Which actually-” she glanced at the countdown- ”I’m late for! It’s five minutes ‘til launch!” He watched her devolve into panic, frantically searching for her things. She looped a scarf around her neck, slipping her arms into a long coat that fell past her skirt. Standing on one leg, she attempted to put her heels on, before tipping forward. With speed he wasn’t aware he’d possessed, he leapt forward catching her in his arms before she could take a spill onto the floor.

Sugar plum fairies were going to be dancing in his dreams tonight.

Delectably sweet smelling, and tantalizingly light in his arms. He found himself molding her small frame to his body as he lifted her to her feet. Those bright blues caught him again, and parted lips begged for him to lean in. Painfully he let his hands drift away from her body once he was sure she was steady, and immediately he wished he hadn’t.

Her next attempt was far more successful, and even still he offered his arm to her as they left the art department. When her hand slipped around his elbow to secure herself, he let the smile show on his face. Then let the grin take over, when Marinette dipped her face down, blush rising up her ear tips.

“I don’t wear heels often. I’m a total klutz, I should’ve known better.” He frowned at her self admonishment, but kept any comments to himself. “I just thought they went so well with my outfit. Plus I wanted to look cute for my party.”

“Right, this party. You said it was a celebration and you’re late?”

“Oh, yes! My old coworkers and friends are throwing me a party for my promotion. I’m actually from district South 12th. I was, um, going through some things. Naughty List and all,” an embarrassed giggle slipped free, but she continued on. “So, when I saw a management position pop up in South 10th’s Art Department, I applied for it. Today was my first day.”

“First of all, congratulations on the promotion. Second, I’m sorry to hear you were going through some things, but I’m not sorry that it led you here. Otherwise I’m not sure I would’ve met you.” He gave her a small bump with his arm, but made sure to keep a tight grip on her hand just in case.

“Me too.” And when he glanced down she was smiling brightly to herself.

“So after we drop these off at Wrappings, I could walk you to your party if you’d like? I have to meet my sister in South 12th anyways.”

“Does your sister work in South 12th?”

“Yeah, she’s in the music department though. Not art, so not sure you’d know her.” As they came around the corner, they found themselves in line with the other last minute toy deliverers.

“I actually have friends in music!” Luka watched as her face scrunched up in thought, nose wiggling adorably. “Hmmm, Couffaine.... Wait a second!” She turned to him, eyes searching his face, furrow finding her brows. “Juleka’s last name used to be Couffaine. Are you related to her?”

And this was the moment when Luka realized that the whole Christmas-Magic-works-in-mysterious-ways thing his mother always claimed, was in fact, real.

“That’s my sister,” he chuckled, watching the excited surprise on her face.

“She never mentioned having a hot brother!” The loud gasp, before she slapped a pale hand over her mouth made him laugh harder. “I mean… she never mentioned having a brother,” she sputtered.

“Of course she wouldn’t. I’m lame in her book.” Externally he was playing it cool, but internally he was pretty sure his insides were about ready to burst. The most amazingly adorable and badass elf he had ever met thought he was hot.

A Wrappings coordinator waved them towards a platform to leave their pallet on, and Luka took the opportunity to calm his excitement, so that he didn’t look like a giddy cherub when he sauntered back to her side.

“You know, Jueka was going to my party. And I’m not sure if you had any other plans, but if you have time before your performance… you could come celebrate with us. It’s not just a coworkers thing. But if you don’t want to or don’t have time, I totally understand. It is last second after all, and you barely know me-”

“Marinette.” Her lips clamped closed suddenly, and those eyes he was beginning to truly lose himself too, watched him.

“I would love to go to your party with you. My performance isn’t until right before the Christmas Dawn. I’ve got all night.” He slid his hands into his pockets, to keep them from reaching out to hold her again. The expressions crossing her face were a mixture of excitement and worry, but he kept his thoughts and limbs to himself while she worked out whatever was on her mind.

“Do.. do you have a date for Christmas Dawn?” So quiet, hesitant.

“Not unless my Ma counts,” he winked, heart beginning to pound again.

“Would you like to be mine?” YES. “I- I mean my date?” That too.

“I would love to be yours, Marinette- your date.” Pulling his hand free from his pocket, he offered it to her. She slipped her small hand into his without hesitation, smile setting her face aglow.

“Shall we?”

[freebsdmadeeasy1]

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[dontshootmespence]

Supernatural AU: Episode 7 - Memories Remain

Part 4

“You really think Bobbie’s okay?” Sam asked as he slammed the door of the Impala shut.

Dean shrugged, placing his keys back in his pocket. “As much as any of us are okay, I guess. She talks through her feelings more than either of us combined. Can get kind of annoying actually. When she’s ready, she’ll talk.” What he was doing was called verbal diarrhea. He knew it was bullshit. He was just as worried about Bobbie as Sam was, if not more so.

Thankfully, the conversation came to its unnatural conclusion so they could focus on what needed to be done. They didn’t have to pick the lock like they normally did and instead Sam sunk the key into the lock before opening the door to the warm oak floors covered with a hodgepodge of furniture that could only come together through three college students with little money to their names.

“When Bobbie and I were in here before it felt inviting,” Sam whispered, not wanting to draw any attention to himself if there was in fact a vengeful sprit around. “It feels sharp now, like something is waiting in the wings.”

Dean rolled his eyes. He was used to Sam’s tendency to overreact, but it still got to him on occasion. “If something is here why hasn’t it come for us?”

“No clue. What reasons would a vengeful spirit not go after someone?”

“I can’t think of any.”

The brothers stepped lightly through the house to make sure nothing moved out of place. Last thing they needed was the cops on their asses because they’d screwed up a crime scene.

Sam still wasn’t convinced that there necessarily was anything lurking in the dark corners, but he threw out a theory anyway. “Vengeful spirits had some great wrong done to them and that’s what keeps them here, right?”

“Yea, that’s basic stuff Sammy.”

“So if we’re right about Scott being the reason Beka’s parents died then that explains why he’s dead.”

As they walked through the basement and still came across nothing that pointed them in the direction of supernatural, Dean got frustrated. Pair that with Sam’s seemingly obvious recounting of vengeful spirit law and he was about to explode. “Absolutely, but why go after Delilah?”

“I was getting there. Spirits in general, if they stay too long on this plain without crossing into the next, they become angry. It’s what makes a vengeful spirit. So maybe her parents started to see Delilah as a threat to their daughter.”

“Why though?” Dean asked. “She never did anything to Beka or her parents as far as we know.”

“No, but as they lose their grip on reality and their former selves, smaller things could be seen as a threat. Delilah likes to party and drink. It can’t be a coincidence that she was targeted right after getting Beka to agree to a night out.”

Dean felt the tension start to melt away. Talking about Bobbie and keeping how worried he was to himself had put him on edge, but Sam was starting to make sense. (He’d never tell him though). “Alright, so we need to get a move on and find them because the longer we wait the easier it’ll be to set her parents off.”

Back upstairs, they clung to walls for a moment as headlights flashed through the window, moving only when the light was faint as an ember in the darkness. “But that still doesn’t answer the question of why they haven’t come after us,” Dean mused.

Just as Sam was about to take another stab in the dark as to the answer, a loud thud caught their attention, drawing it upward to what they could only assume was Beka’s bedroom. “No one’s here right?” Sam asked for clarification.

“No one human.”

As they tiptoed upstairs the floors creaked beneath their feet. The sound reverberated against the walls and into Beka’s bedroom as Dean nudged the door open. The small bedroom was covered in artwork from various television shows and movies. A post of The Crow caught Dean’s attention. He had to give it to her. She had great taste in movies.

There was nothing here.

Sam walked toward the corner of the room, searching every nook and cranny for an indication that something was amiss, but there was nothing. “Are we barking up the completely wrong tree? Are we seeing something here because we want to?”

“I don’t know,” Dean sighed. “Honestly, I can’t tell whether we’re seeing something here because we want a distraction or if there’s actually something here.”

Defeatedly, Sam turned to head out of the room when she caught his eye. “Dean, move!”

Dean ducked just as Sam swung the iron rod through the air, slicing into the spirit’s middle. “I guess there is something here.”

As they ran, the father made himself known, disappearing quickly when Dean took a swing at him. “Were they buried or cremated?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do we not know?”

“There’s no time right now, just move!” 

Ethan and Vanessa popped back up in front of the brothers, staring them down in an attempt to keep them in the house, but unlike the others they’d attacked so far, Sam and Dean were undeterred, swinging in tandem one last time before running back to the Impala. “Okay, they can’t leave the house,” Sam huffed. Ethan and Vanessa stood still in the window.

“Call Bobbie,” Dean snapped. “Figure out whether her parents were cremated or not. How the hell can we not know? This is basic shit, Sam! It’s one of the first things we ever learned, before we even hit double digits.”

Sam glared at his brother as he dialed Bobbie, tapping his foot impatiently against the floor of the Impala. “Sammy? What’s going on?”

“Her parents are here. They can’t leave the house though. We need to know if they were buried or cremated.”

“You don’t know?”

“No!” He bellowed, apologizing immediately. “No, I’ve been thinking about Dad and where he is and it just slipped my mind,” he finished quietly.

But not so quietly that Dean couldn’t hear him.

“Can you ask Beka?”

The young woman stirred at the faint sound of her name on the other end of the phone. “What about me?”

“Were your parents buried or cremated?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” She asked, her confusion piercing the silence that had descended upon the halls of the hospital.

Bobbie snapped to attention. They hadn’t messed up this badly in years. Their dad would be disappointed they’d let emotion get in the way. “Please, just answer the question,” Bobbie replied. “I will explain as best I can, but I need to know.”

“They were cremated,” Beka said softly.

“You hear that Sam?”

“Yea, I got it,” he responded. “And Bobbie? I’m sorry. I was the one that read that article, I should’ve paid attention.”

“Don’t worry, I get it. Just keep me updated.”

As they hung up the phone, Bobbie turned toward the confused college students. “Why would you need to know about her parents burial plans?” Delilah mumbled. The drugs were numbing her pain, but she’d been so freaked out by what she’d seen that she couldn’t sleep.

“First thing you need to know…I’m not FBI. None of us are. My name is Bobbie and the guys I’m with are Sam and Dean – my brothers.”

                                                          -------

“What?” Delilah asked in shock, her heart rate spiking on the monitor. “If you’re not FBI, what are you?”

Glancing toward Beka, her eyes glazed over with tears, Bobbie tried to explain. “We deal with the supernatural.”

“That’s not real,” she said emphatically. “Delilah was seeing things. I was just feeling something that wasn’t there.”

Bobbie shook her head and attempted to keep the girls quiet as they panicked. She didn’t blame them. Normal people should be freaked out by the idea of vampires or demons or vengeful spirits, and she wished she could tell these girls that she was joking, but there was no way around it now. “You’re not just seeing things. You’re parents are still here, Beka. And they tried to attack my brothers.” 

“No, no, no, no, no.” She got up from her chair beside Delilah’s bed and began to pace the room, walking off her nervous energy while simultaneously working herself back up into a frenzy at the reality of her situation. “Why would they be here? Why would they be hurting people? Why would they do this to me?”

“Although we can’t say for certain, our working theory is that they’re doing what they’re doing for you.”

“How?” She asked angrily.

Nadiya shushed her friend, not wanting to draw attention to their room.

As Beka sat back down in shock, her hands covering her mouth as she attempted to take deep breaths, Bobbie explained the nature of vengeful spirits. “But what would’ve kept them here to start with? What wrong was done to them?”

“Again, it’s speculation because it was wiped from Scott’s police records, but we are inclined to believe that Scott was the person that ran your parents off the road.”

Instantly, Beka turned a shade of green Bobbie hadn’t seen since she was little and took care of Dean when he was puking up fruit loops. “Scott killed my parents?”

“We believe so.”

She broke, tears streaming down her cheeks, her throat going raw with each staggered breath. “No, no, no, my parents wouldn’t do this. Why would they hurt Delilah?”

“That’s the nature of spirits. If they’re stuck on this plane of existence for too long, they lose who they are.” Bobbie turned toward Delilah, whose face was still frozen in shock. “You like to party, drink, no judgment here, I do too, but Beka normally doesn’t. We think that as your parents are losing themselves, they’re seeing threats where there are none.”

For nearly five minutes, the four women sat in silence, before Beka broke it. “What does any of that have to do with whether my parents were cremated or buried?”

“If they’d been buried, our normal course of action would be to salt and burn their bodies, but because they’re already gone that means that they’re spirits are tied to an object or objects that are keeping them here. Do you have idea what that could be?”

“An object?” She asked in astonishment. “How am I supposed to narrow that down?”

Bobbie took a deep breath and combed her hands through her hair. They nearly got caught and brought into sharp relief how desperately she needed a shower. “Did you give something to Scott that was connected to your parents?”

That’s when it dawned on her. “I…I gave him a bracelet that used to be my father’s. My mother gave it to him for his birthday a few years ago. But I think it’s in evidence. It was broken when I found him.”

That had to be it.

Quickly, Bobbie pulled out her phone and shot the boys a text message.

B: Father’s bracelet in lockup. Have fun with the break-in.

S: Next time, we get to explain things while you do this.

B: Honestly, I’d rather be there. It kinda sucks when you have to explain the supernatural and tell a girl her parents were killed by her boyfriend.

D: When you put it that way…

B: Exactly. Quit bitching.

“What happens now?” Beka asked.

In this line of work, you really never knew. “My brothers burn the bracelet and we pray that releases your parents bind to this plane of existence.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

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[littlemulattokitten]

Happy Birthday, Dulce!!!

Hi freeeeeeen ( @dulce-de-leche-go ) I’m very happy to celebrate the anniversary of your birth! Thank you for being alive! You’re just the awesomest!!! >:U Olive juice~

I’m giftin’ you some dark Tomione for your Birfmas! I hope you like et!!! Anyone else who sees this would know this thing by another name...

The Game - Chapter 3 Sneak Peak

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 

Day 3

8:30 AM

Contestants Remaining: 13

He made her breakfast again. Peanut butter toast, a fried egg, more fruit, and a mini portion of bangers and mash. He sent her tea in the dumbwaiter with the rest of her meal this time and waited for her to take a bite.

Do you make all of us breakfast? she asked him as he was taking a lazy bite of toast.

He hesitated before making sure his mic, which was programmed to distort his voice, was only connected to her room’s audio system. “No.”

She frowned. Only those of us you like then, I take it?

His lips twitched. “I reward excellence.”

He was glad to see her clean her plate. She’d lost weight since he’d last seen her, lost more during the trial, and had started returning to a healthier weight a few months after the fact. From what he’d seen of her medical records, she’d been 10 pounds off a normal, healthy weight when Maggot was released.

Despite how hard she tried to be strong, she’d dropped nearly two stones less than three months after his release.

She’d need the carbs, the protein, and the fats he was feeding her if she was going to keep playing. If she was going to win.

Balancing her reconstruction with her physical needs would be his burden to bear, but he couldn’t rebuild her pieces if she didn’t break. And he doubted she could break without her will to take care of herself tapering off.

One more easy day before the game truly began. Though he supposed easy was subjective.

Fear was a potent and deadly force when applied correctly. And no one knew her brain like he did.

Did you learn that from me?

Did I teach you to return to unpleasant things?

I never meant for you to return to a monster.

I only wanted you to return to me.

Day 3

9:15 AM

Contestants Remaining: 13

She had just sent her empty teacup in the wall cubby when “M” bid them all good morning.

I want you to think of today’s exercise as an olive branch, he said smoothly, though there was a faint edge to his modulated voice that sounded teasing as well. Just how helpful my helping hand proves to be is entirely up to each of you individually.

In a few moments, some of you will find a door open in your rooms. Similar to yesterday, you’ll complete my assignment for you in the other room and return to your resting space when you’re finished. Unlike yesterday, you will not be working on your activities simultaneously. Some of you will be given more time than others based on your performance in prior activities. Some of you will have to wait on your fellow contestants to finish before you may have the chance to begin.

As it happens, a select few of you may not have to worry about time at all.

A word to the wise: It’s in your best interest to take today’s activity very, very seriously.

Good luck.

Hermione released a breath shakily, wishing she had a second cup of tea to soothe her nerves, but she wasn’t brave enough to ask for one. 

Again, the wall panel across from her bed slid open, revealing a room slightly smaller than hers. The walls, like her own, were bare, save for an embedded monitor and a few buttons. She was hesitant to enter the new room, but steeled her nerves and walked forward until she reached the monitor.

Three pastel blue post it notes were on the monitor. On them, 3 stickers had been made with a label maker, each bearing one word.

Take. Your. Time.

“Oh,” she said to the empty room. “Some of us don’t have to worry about time…”

The biscuits. They’re the system… she realized. Anyone who got biscuits maintained their ‘exception status’ throughout the next activity.

She shuddered, her anxiety on the behalf of those not in M’s favor causing goosebumps to raise along her arms. With her wits gathered as much as she could manage, she stepped forward and pressed the single blue button on the monitor. The screen blinked to life and the air left her lungs.

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[un-enfant-immature]

Trigo raises $22M for an automated grocery check out platform, similar to Amazon Go

Automated check-out systems in supermarkets, where cashiers are replaced by barcode-readers and touchscreen interfaces for taking payments, have become a commonplace fixture in many parts of the world. But today, a startup that’s building many believe will be the next generation of such systems — computer-vision-powered platforms that monitor what you take from the shelves and automatically tally it up as you are on the move so that you can leave without checking out — has raised funding to continue developing its product and help it connect with grocery retailers that have seen the advances of Amazon Go and also want to get in on the AI action, without getting involved with Amazon itself.

Trigo, a computer vision startup out of Tel Aviv that is building checkout-free grocery purchasing systems specifically targeted at large supermarkets, has picked up a Series A round of $22 million. The funding is being led by Red Dot Capital, with previous Vertex Ventures Israel and Hetz Ventures also participating. This round brings the total raised by Trigo to $29 million.

The company is not disclosing its valuation but says that it has a number of deals in place already with grocery chains, including an unspecified European chain and Shufersal, the largest grocer in Israel.

Shufersal already has plans to implement Trigo’s solution in 280 stores in the next five years, which speaks to the company’s ambitions and traction to date, even at this early stage in its development: The company says that it’s already piloting its camera and sensor technology in stores that are 5,000 square feet, or twice the size of a typical Amazon Go store. It’s however still fairly small compared to the size of a large supermarket (35,000-45,000 square feet) or even smaller challenger markets like a Trader Joe’s or a Lidl (20,000 square feet).

As with Amazon Go, Trigo works by implementing a series of cameras throughout a store to monitor shoppers and record what they are placing into their baskets. This is not just about being able to identify items: it’s also a triangulation system to ensure that people are not charged twice for items, and that items are removed from the total if they are discarded before a person leaves the store.

And it’s not just to speed things up, either. It’s to make shopping great again.

“I don’t actually think people really want grocery e-commerce,” co-founder and CEO Michael Gabay said. “They do that because the supermarket experience has become worse with the years. We are very much committed to helping brick and mortar stores return to the time of a few decades ago, when it was fun to go to the supermarket. What would happen if a store could have an entirely new OS that is based on computer vision?”

Unlike Amazon Go, Trigo is not tied to any specific company that might potentially compete with the retailers that it is targeting, and the product can be implemented to work with loyalty cards, or without them.

However, given that Amazon has built one of the world’s most valuable companies by being both a simultaneous competitor and partner to businesses, I’m not sure that its competitor status will be a gating factor to the growth of Amazon Go, if it decides to productise it and sell the technology to other retailers… and neither does Michael Bagay, the co-founder and CEO of Trigo, who said he was really happy to see Amazon Go launch.

“The technology behind Amazon Go existed in the industry for about a decade before Amazon Go,” he said (his own company launched in 2018). “But after it launched, it was a moment of realising, ‘Ah, this is really happening!'” Meaning, he knew now would be a fruitful period because other grocery retailers would want to get on board, and even if Amazon did roll Go out as its own service, and a service used by other retailers, there will be others who will never work with it, presenting a market opportunity to his startup.

If the endgame is bringing the time spent in the checkout phase down to zero, there are other startups working on alternative ways to reach that. Just last week, Caper raised a round of funding for a system that is based on “smart” trolleys, with sensors attached to grocery carts to take note of items and add them to your shopping bill. While the shopping cart might have the advantage of being able to more closely monitor an individual’s own shopping cart, store-wide systems like Trigo’s will potentially cost less to operate and the software might even be something that can be used on existing in-store cameras.

Interestingly, at a time when patents form one of the key ways that a company defends its intellectual property, Trigo is taking another approach. “We don’t file patents because we don’t want our technology to be public,” Gabay, who founded the company with his brother Daniel, said. “We have things that we don’t want anyone to see.” It’s an ironic, if perhaps telling, stance for a computer vision company.

In the rush to build tech solutions to all the world’s problems (and if not problems, at least all the world’s processes) there are bound to be others building further technology to bring grocery stores into the twenty-first century. Trigo presents one route to getting there, making it as much coveted company for grocery businesses as it is for the companies that provide other services to them.

“We believe that Trigo’s world-leading computer-vision team will be the first to scale this technology globally and unlock the full potential of a true grocery-wide revolution,” said Barak Salomon, Managing Partner of Red Dot Capital. “The process of manually scanning barcodes for each separate item at checkout is outdated and time consuming. Trigo’s technology is going to save brick and mortar, revitalizing the in-store experience while keeping the best part of shopping alive.”

[fattkittykat]

A Documentation of the Fattest Planet (Part 3)

Stardate: 25121225 - 6122

Earth Relative Time: 0800

Location: Landing Site - Planet ID 6554 - Solar System Demeter - Ambrosia Galaxy

Well, a series of increasingly strange occurrences happened today. First of all corporate got back to me from Persephone and they seemed... unimpressed.  It was all pretty routine of a planetary probe check-in, essentially an acknowledgment that I’m not dead, I guess complex carbohydrates aren’t as noteworthy as they used to be. I have a feeling that corporate will be more impressed by what I found today, though.

I put on the standard issue Exoplanet Exploration Suit, essentially a tight jumpsuit meant to monitor and regulate vitals. I kept the helmet down, as the atmospheric reading confirmed breathable oxygen. I guess I wasn’t ready for the environment to smell so... delicious. I guess it makes sense, considering the aromas found in last night’s chemical analysis, but it smelled like a bakery. The ground was soft, almost plush. Even though the sky was a brown haze from orbit, the sky was a bright blue on the surface. The vegetation of the planet was far more robust than I expected. Towering trees that spun sunlight to the ground, bright green leaves, and fruit of tremendous size and brilliant color.

I began to collect samplings, soil, vegetation, and the like, when a rumbling from the near distance caught my attention. I didn’t have the standard issue shocking projectile gun, so I hesitated to move into the brush of the forest, but what caused the noise came to me instead. From the underbrush emerged a humanoid creature. Medium-skinned, straight but flowing red hair, maybe 5′ 6″, and a body akin to human females. Well, akin may be a light way of putting her figure. She had titantic breasts, each one larger than her head, and a butt equally large. She began to approach me, seemingly enamored or concerned, so I fumbled with my Babble, the standard issue in-ear translator, before I could converse with her. Once I could understand her alien tongue, it became apparent her concern. She was saying “My, you poor thing, how long have you been out here?”.

“My name is Gwenevere Rosered from Starborne Systems Intergalactic. I come to you in peace and good faith.” I told her, as is the standard greeting we’re trained to give. Before I could ask the further questions, she had embraced me in her arms and was immediately in a sense of comfort.

“My my, you’re dangerously skinny, let’s fix that for you!” she said as she put her right nipple into my mouth. I consciously registered that this was strange, but something about her was so calming, I complied for longer than I should have. I felt my stomach expand as an endless stream of milk flowed into my body. I can’t really explain the feeling she gave me, but it was so calming, so warm. Only when she switched her boobs after I drained one of them could I snap out of that haze to speak with her.

“I’m sorry, I’m from a different planet, I’m actually here for research, I can’t drink anymore.”

“Oh sugar, you’re so painfully thin though! I mean look at yourself!”

I looked down and my midsection was more bloated than before.

“I don’t understand, I’m sorry. I would like to ask you about your planet thou- *mmph*!” Before I could finish my sentence, she had taken a fistful of dirt and put it in my mouth. A wash of chocolaty goodness flooded my mouth, a flavor beyond sweetness but simultaneously caramelly and chocolaty.

“I get it, sometimes you drink too much, so you need food to balance the drink!”

I pushed her hands out of my face and took a step back. 

“This is all very used to me, I’m not used to your customs. Can we please talk first? I have some questions I would love to ask you.”

She paused and looked at me contemplatively.

“Well ok, but I’m gonna have to make you a big meal while we talk!”

I agreed, and she began to collect various elements of the surrounding environment. She pushed over the trees with relative ease, revealing a fluffy cake filling with streaks of frosting throughout, piling the fallen logs in a pile. She plucked some of the vibrant, blue, bulbous fruits from the trees each one seemingly filled with a translucent goo.

“So what is your name? Let me start there.” To be honest, this was my first time interacting with a new species, and I honestly forgot a lot of what was taught, so I was kind of improvising everything.

“Well, my name is Carrie!” She said while on her knees, digging a hole in the chocolate soil. She quickly hit a layer of caramel, which she scooped up with her hands and drizzled over the timber she fell earlier.

“Are you alone out here?”

“Oh no! I have lots of friends. Some of them are like me, some of them are like Brianna! Omg, you two should meet each other! You’d LOVE her!”

“How is your friend Brianna different from you?”

“Oh, well she’s really tall, and her skin is lighter than me, and her hair is short, and she’s really really strong, like super buff!” Carrie then flexed her arms, which made almost no difference to her form. “Also her boobies are small, not like me!” She then grabbed her breasts, which immediately sunk deep into her flesh. Her right was smaller than her left, on account of her feeding me, but it had been slowly regrowing as we spoke. She then began to milk herself, filling the hold in the ground with her milk.

“So your breasts are large with milk, have you recently given birth?”

“Huh?” She looked puzzled. “Is birth a present you give to people? I give my friends lots of presents, but I don’t know that I’ve ever given anybody a birth.”

“Birth. Like after you’re pregnant and you have a child?”

“Pregnant? Child?”

“Where do your species come from? Do you not sexually reproduce?”

“Oh no, we have sex aaaallllll the time! But we just live?”

“Does your species never die?”

“The plants do, but we don’t! Also, what’s my species?”

It was clear to me that whatever this species is, it isn’t very technologically advanced. For the next hour or so, I followed Carrie as she continued collecting pieces of the environment and explained to her who I am, where I’m from, and even some basic things like standard biology.

As the sun began to set, Carrie lit a large bonfire in the clearing and put a large piece of meat, which she actually found in a plant, and began to cook the masses of food she had gathered.

“Alrighty miss smarty pants, you got to ask me your questions and all, so now it’s time to eat!”

She walked over to the fallen cake log that I was sitting on with a red velvet tree trunk and set it down on my lap. She then began taking handfuls of the tree and began feeding it to me.

“Oh, I can eat this myself, thank you!” I insisted.

“Okie Dokie, I’ll bring more over then!”

I was waiting for her to bring some of her fallen trees over to herself, but she just kept dragging logs to me.

“Aren’t you going to have any?” I asked

“No silly, this is for you! I’m not hungry, I had cake tree leaf earlier!”

Was she crazy? It was enough food to feed the entire Persephone crew!

“So is it the ones like Brianna that eat this much food? You don’t seem to be terribly hungry.”

“Oh, yea! They eat aloooooot of food, but not as much as the queens like you do!”

So despite not having developed technologies, or even clothes, apparently, they have some sort of political structure.

“Oh, I’m not a queen.”

“Well sure you are! You don’t have big boobies, and you don’t have big muscles, so you must be a queen! Just, a queen who hasn’t had any food in a long time.”

Well, I guess who isn’t wrong.

“How can I be a queen if I’m not from this planet, remember? I look like a normal person from my - “

“Species!”

She was learning.

“So tell me about the queens? They eat a lot?”

“Oh, yea! Every town has one queen and a lot of people who try to be queens! Then, every year, the town weighs all the people who try to be queen and whoever is the biggest gets to be the queen that year!”

“So the fattest person gets to be queen?”

“Yea! And then, every year all the town’s queens are weighed and whoever is the biggest of them gets to be Queen of the World!”

Interesting. I have done registration paperwork for planets with societies build around all sorts of status symbols, but weight was new to me.

“How much do the queens normally weigh? Do you record things like that?”

“The smaller queens weigh about 14 Notlits of gold, but the bigger ones are about 30!”

“Gold?”

“Oh yea! Queens have to have lots of gold, that’s how they pay people like me and Brianna to feed them! The more gold they have, the more servants they can pay, and the more servants they pay, the more we feed them!”

“So you feed the queens?”

“Oh, I only feed my queen! And I only feed her milk, the ones like Brianna feed her the trees and dirt and things like that!”

Before I realized it, I had eaten the entirety of the cake log Carrie had given me, and I didn’t even feel particularly full. Seeing this, she then pulled the fat, juicy meat off the spitroast and laid it down in my lap. Clearly, food was of cultural importance, and I wasn’t feeling full, so I dug into the most amazing, tender, smoky meat I’ve ever eaten in my life. Maybe it’s just from being 6 months into an 18-month contract on Persephone and am too used to rehydrated quinoa and nutrient supplement, but this was the most incredible food I’ve ever eaten.

“Wow Carrie, you’re a fantastic cook!”

“Oh, this is nothing! It doesn’t even have any of the good spices or any sides! I’ll tell you what, I’ll take you to my settlement tomorrow and cook you a REAL meal!”

“Would it be possible to see where the gold is stored?”

“For sure! And I’ll get to introduce you to Brianna!”

“Sounds great! Should I meet you out here at daybreak so you can take me?”

“Well I was thinking I could sleep with you tonight? It’s awful dark and I’d hate to fall into a Bibli pool.”

I suppose there’s no harm in her spending the night, after all, she did cook for me.

I opened the door to the millipede and before I could pull out a mattress, Carrie curled up right on the ground and fell asleep. I retired to the cot I had set up and heard it squeal just a bit as I settled into it.

- Gewn Rosered (sent from Millipede Unit 33328)

[saanviro190-blog]

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Implementing the online Analytics, the corporation can know the studies and final results of your web site on line. It is necessary to emphasise that this doesn't serve to evaluate visitors, it only serves to produce improvements within the Internet, for instance, as an example, improve the web site so that the material loads quicker or make the person will get a lot quicker to the data that the company would like to know.

Cellular Applications

The generation of such programs allows an organization to get closer to its clients, because they transform their smartphones into communication channels, producing the knowledge nearer to them. In this manner, customer loyalty is attained, considering the fact that they think that they may have services to interact with the manufacturer.

🔥 CANTINEOQUETEVEO is often a tongo? 🔥

Should you be associated with the sphere of Web optimization in Spanish, you are sure to be aware of Cantina Marketera, both through its means (Discussion board, telegram channel, Search engine marketing system) and tutorials or through the contests that have been organized Earlier. At the head on the web site is José Marquez, a true master of Search engine optimisation and information who has a lengthy historical past in the sector and is chargeable for a lot of the best Strategies that have been published about these subjects. His excellent fame and popularity are more than sufficient for us to obtain enthusiastic about the contest proposal and need to rejoice it by sharing it with all of the bloggers who aspiration of bettering their Search engine optimisation capabilities.

��� Track record 👍 CANTINEOQUETEVEO Cantineoquetevepro

Whilst Dean has presently organized some personal contests competing in opposition to field mates, the primary annual Search engine optimisation contest was held in 2016. The topic chosen was the WordPress plugin AdSensei B30, an assistant that allows users to control their Google Adsense strategies totally free with all of the consolation of the globe.

A year later, in 2017, the contest was held Together with the title Raiola Manda and never the Panda. This time the organizer relied on the assistance of the winner of the 1st Event, which permitted him to undertake the project in a more bold way, like prizes for almost everything substantial.

✅ Adsensei

Dean's intention with this primary contest was to advertise the plugin and at the same time see how much the assets and techniques of his audience could go from the Search engine optimisation discipline. He himself also participated and fought inside a duel to rank the phrase With all the intention of encountering a number of surprises. The winner could well be interviewed on his blog and would notify what he had done to reach the top place of Google together with his hard work.

The term to place was adsensei, so buyers experienced to work to obtain their post to seem in the very best positions of Google. Thoughts to make it happen? Tutorials were done within the plugin and related evaluation articles that healthy very very well Together with the information philosophy that Google would really like. The contest lasted ten times, which was a lot more than plenty of time, because it was one phrase and rating it involved An economical hard work. The rules bundled using your personal domain and resorting to active Web optimization with none damaging Web optimization staying allowed. Furthermore, any type of person was invited to take part Regardless of how A lot they was not an SEO qualified, as being the goal was to rejoice rating. This was the beginning of the philosophy which has been extended in Every single of your editions of the contest.

✅

The 2nd contest captivated a lot more desire in look at of how very well the initial just one experienced labored and that now there have been loads of prizes with cash between. The First target was to have fun and learn Search engine marketing Meanwhile, but there is undoubtedly that this kind of incentives produce larger fascination. The Level of competition was kick-begun with a number of interviews with essential people today within the Search engine optimisation ecosystem in Spanish, who spoke and gave guidance for the participants.

The search phrase decided on for positioning was much more sophisticated: Raiola Manda and never the Panda, so it wasn't just one term as experienced occurred while in the 2016 edition. This increased the problem to the individuals and designed the emotion multiply. The duration from the Competitors enhanced to much more than double the number of times plus the participation fee skyrocketed in a sensational way. Everybody during the SEO sector planned to try out to obtain 1st location on Google Together with the key phrase in question. A few minutes soon after The competition news was published, as an example, they had previously flown most of the relevant domains for a assist force for SEOs to create their page rank.

Sync by honeybunny ✅

The third contest arranged by Dean Romero along with PrensaRank is usually to posture this and to be a prize offer 1,five hundred Euros in dollars and resources in links, equipment, template for wordpress AdSensei theme of Dean Romero himself. The Blessed winner of this contest was DOSBIT, some discussion that for your luck that experienced and that at the last instant good rivals disappeared from the serp. as did Victor Bustamante. (This contest was from February ten to March 10).

🥇 The return now beneath the title Cantineoqueteveo©️ 🥇

The calendar year 2018 was a year of fascinating Experienced adventures for José Marquez, so he did not have the opportunity to organize this contest which has previously become The most valued things to do by gurus inside the sector. He tells of the various changes and assignments he commenced, but it had been pointed out that he had been still left Using the bug of carrying out the competition, which is why he did not hold off in saying it when 2019 had begun. That is how we uncovered Cantineoqueteveo©️, a different search term that each one SEOs need to make an effort to rank in the best positions and as it is possible to see is much more complex than all others used to date.

Contest Policies 🔍 CANTINEOQUETEVEO tongo

The principles are all over again very similar to People of previous decades, given that They are really, In any case, pretty distinct and there's no impediment for everybody to participate in a hassle-free way. The fundamental thing would be that the participants use The entire search phrase with no quotation marks and that they be cautious, given that silly problems could be designed when creating it (for example, writing Cantineo "queteveo"). These types of factors need to be taken under consideration in order never to drop into error. The message of The competition is that the search term CANTINEQUETEVEO makes sure that any kind of Internet site can shift in Google in the direction of the initial results. It's not magic, It is really applying excellent applications and, earlier mentioned all, building you would like to!

Let us Stick to the rules. The next thing all contributors must do is subscribe to the Cantina Marketera checklist. Watch out! Even though you are now subscribed towards the site, it is crucial that you simply subscribe all over again using a new landing which has been established with the situation as Component of the contest. Why? Since that is the listing of individuals that José Marquez is applying so that you can label the buyers who are in the contest and so the sponsors also have a list of contacts at the end of The competition. In this way almost everything is requested and there is nothing to worry about while in the type of having uncertainties for example "will I be participating properly or will they ignore me? Feel that if you don't subscribe to both equally platforms Regardless of how Significantly you rank initially on Google you will not earn. Which is im-pres-cin-di-ble

A further matter to keep in mind is it does not provide to work with a website blogspot or comparable. You will need to Possess a NEW domain of your own, that is your residence rather than that comes from some strange supply. In other words, You cannot take advantage of the flow of domains to create a subdomain or simply a sub-registry inside of it to test to acquire within a alternatively obscure way. Should you create a website within blogspot and be involved in The competition with it what you would be accomplishing will be nourishing the SEO that Blogspot has, so it wouldn't be one thing legal concerning the best way to earn. The domain has to be yours, authentic.

That which you can Bear in mind is always that it isn't going to subject Should your area is new or outdated. It doesn't issue if you merely registered it seeking to use some word related to the search term of the contest or if it is an aged site that you simply use to point out your operates of art and in many cases a single that you have deserted and that you think that could become the surprise of the Levels of competition.

On this celebration consideration, as the contest incorporates a length of nothing much more and very little less than 2 Months and fifteen Days. With this respect, we are really grateful to José Marquez for his function, because it is often improved to obtain much more room for manoeuvre so that you can set our Website positioning techniques into follow. The tip date is Might 6, an excellent Sunday wherein we could rest In fact the trouble We now have place into establishing our marketing campaign to rank the word. The tip time is seventeen hours taking into account the global time in Spain.

On the exact same day that the contest finishes, specifically when the contest finishes, Dean will carry out a Test of which area has received the Competitiveness. How is definitely the Check out finished? The Google Chrome browser is going to be made use of utilizing incognito manner from a computer located in Madrid so that you can stay clear of any sort of modification while in the authentic positioning within the online search engine.

🏆 Awards 🏆 CANTINEOQUETEVEO 2019

And we come to the aspect that we know you prefer a great deal of: the awards. Because we concur that participating in this type of Competitiveness has a large morbidity and can be the most enjoyable point for that way we do not cease learning about Search engine optimisation by what we explore, apply and see what Other individuals do, even so the awards will be the prizes and that's insurmountable. We've viewed how yr following year Dean continues to be Doing the job more and more on the appearance of your prizes, counting on sponsors and producing All people proud of the chance to be involved in a contest with this sort of juicy presents in between.

What's going to we get if we rank the key word initial? Exactly what is the huge prize that awaits us to take pleasure in it over and above understanding that

[ganymedesclock]

We Wayward Stars ch. 4

Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender

Summary: Altean Lance fic. Things begin to hit the fan. Orbital reentry included.

           Several people are standing. A few of them are hunched over their computers, still- most of them are looking up at the larger monitor.

           Everything is normal. Within bounds. As predictable and neat as anything can be observing the moon of a planet at the edge of the solar system.

           Nothing is wrong, except the fact that three people and their entire ship should be there. Or, in fact, anything, except a single bored hole to suggest anyone was there to drill an ice core in the first place.

           “Think the kid could tell us about it?”

           Iverson’s good eye doesn’t pull away from the monitor.

           “I mean, the alien one.”

           “I know which kid you mean,” he grinds out, with about as much patience as he can manage at that point. “What do you think he’s going to tell us? There’s an empty moon where two of our best men and a promising cadet used to be?”

           The officer shrinks a bit at his tone- but holds strong. They’re all stressed. It’s hard to talk to anyone in this room without running into sharp edges of some kind. “He mentioned he was fleeing something, right? And we got an energy spike from 01 the same day they missed their first check-in.”

           “Or we can try not to make baseless guesses about something we clearly don’t understand.”

           Another person speaks up, quietly. “So we’re lying to the general public and pinning the blame on one of the victims.” She doesn’t pull her eyes away from her station.

           “You do me a favor, you find Shirogane alive and get a better explanation for what happened, I’ll personally apologize to him and everyone else. In the meantime I’d like to avoid a global panic.”

           The woman doesn’t lift her head to meet his eyes, but her tone is distinctly drawn taut when she says “Yes, sir.”

           It’s only years of muscle memory in military posture that keeps him from deflating. “Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like someone to explain how a thirteen-year-old broke into my office this morning.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           Working towards fighter class takes up a lot more time than he expected, which ultimately, works out very much in Lance’s advantage.

           Space travel is imperfect. Earth is doing its best, but they don’t have… anything, really. It makes sense not everyone is going to make it out. And he knows already that he can’t help with that from his current situation.

           He hadn’t known Shiro as much as he had Sam, but it was enough to know that he’d been an incredible guy. Charming, polite- and incredibly good at what he did. You didn’t get where he was at 24 without something going for you.

           And now they were gone. Just like that. And the worst part was afterwards; more or less the entire Garrison campus moving back to business.

           He can’t even begrudge them. He’s doing the same himself.

           Hunk disagrees, considering the number of times Lance talks him into sneaking out of the Garrison- but sometimes he just has to get away from it all, and the least he can do is spread the joy a little.

           A few times, he seriously debates sneaking in to see Blue. He could probably just ask the Garrison, but another part of him resents that. She doesn’t belong to them. Ultimately, it doesn’t come to anything- he’s occupied, and stays that way.

           Keith disappears. The instructors call it a discipline issue. Rumors abound about a fight. A few of them insist he put someone in the hospital- stabbed them, even. A lot of it just sounds like gossip, and Lance isn’t interested in poking around. Either way, it stands that his dorm room is empty within a day, and no one afterwards seems to have any idea where he went.

           A week later, Lance makes fighter class. He gloats about it- but there’s a bitter aftertaste to it.

           He knows who that spot belonged to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           Simulator class proves to be simultaneously the greatest and worst thing that has happened to Lance since arriving on Earth. The first time everything lights up in a field of stars, it doesn’t feel like a fake ship. It doesn’t feel like a pretend assignment. He can’t even listen to what he’s supposed to be doing- Hunk, and the other student they’re paired with, some fourteen-year-old whiz kid- because he’s back out there.

           It feels almost like home.

           And then the ship crashes.

           Well, no. That’s avoiding the issue.

           And then he crashes the ship.

           Iverson makes it very, very clear after the fact whose fault that was.

           Excuses clatter ineffectively around Lance’s head for hours afterwards. The controls are wrong. He’s out of practice. That’s not how space works.

           None of them actually make it out his mouth.

           He resolves to try harder. Cautiously. Manages a few good exercises, and more bad ones. It’s never completely easy, never completely like what he’s used to- and he’s not alone in the ship. He butts heads with Hunk, and the other one- Pidge, which he swears is some type of Earth bird. Who names their kid after a bird?

           So-and-so Gunderson, apparently.

           Outside of being fourteen, a few things stick out about Pidge. He’s squirrely around the instructors sometimes- but that doesn’t stop him from yelling at them from time to time. After a while, a particular subject emerges that seems to be the target of almost every one of Pidge’s outbursts.

           Kerberos.

           The failed mission.

           He still hadn’t talked to Iverson about it. Hadn’t been sure what to say. You don’t lead a conversation about someone else’s loss with ‘jeez you humans sure are bad at space, am I right’.

           (Especially considering his track record with the simulator)

           But it feels like there’s something to say. Earth is a galaxy over from what’s considered civilized space- it’s a fringe planet if there ever was one- but if one of the Lions is here, someone should’ve come by now. An Altean scout ship, or…

           Lance puts down the book he’d been trying to read the entire time. “Hey Hunk, how do you feel about having a night on the town?”

           “You mean sneaking out again? After we just got chewed out by Commander Iverson? No, great, I love it, just two guys getting in trouble for like the eighth time this semester alone.”

           “Well, it won’t be just us. It’ll be-”

           “Oh no,”

           “Team building.”

           Hunk sighs, deeply, picking up his vest from where he left it. “Has it occurred to you we can bond doing other things? Things that won’t get us in trouble?” He takes a moment longer to find his boots. “Like, I dunno, group study session.”

           Navigating the hallways at this point is easy enough, even taking a detour to try and get to Pidge’s dorm. It’s not even enough to keep Hunk from continuing to complain, though he keeps his voice down after the lights shut off.

           “...start an agate collection. Get fast food sometime. Of course by ‘get fast food’ I mean let me make you something that isn’t overcooked garbage but y’know-”

           “Shh!” He hesitates at Hunk’s brief, affronted look- sorry buddy, it’s for a cause- and then pokes his head around the corner, just in time to catch a retreating flash of orange sneakers.

           …Looked like Pidge had other plans for tonight. But now, so did Lance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           “You come up here to rock out?”

           There’s a moment where Pidge defies gravity by sheer force of surprise. He shuffles clumsily in place- feet together, hands in his lap, somehow trying not to look suspicious. “Oh. Lance. Hunk. No, uh, just looking at the stars.”

           An appraising eye sweeps over the miscellaneous scattered hardware. “Where did you get this stuff? It doesn’t look like Garrison tech.” Insofar as his knowledge of human anything goes.

           “I built it.”

           “You built all of this?” There’s a thread of awe in Hunk’s tone- it’s hard to say how much Pidge appreciates it, because he definitely doesn’t appreciate the questing fingers heading for the keyboard.

           “With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system.”

           He plays at considering it- as if he just picks the thought out of thin air: “That right? All the way to Kerberos?”

           He watches Pidge fold away from the name.

           “You go ballistic every time the instructors bring it up. What’s your deal?”

           Silence- except telling Hunk off for touching something again. Time passes. Too much. After a moment, Lance sits down, cross-legged. “Hey, we’re not leaving anytime soon.” Partially because he doesn’t think he could tear Hunk away from that setup if he tried to- out of the corner of his eye Lance can see him inching towards the screen again.

           “Fine.”  Pidge turns to face them both, an odd expression of gravity. “The world as you know it is… about to change. The Kerberos mission wasn’t lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake.”

           Oh he’s just decided he really doesn’t like where this is going.

           “…So I’ve been scanning the system, and picking up alien radio chatter.”

           “What have you been hearing?”

           Both Hunk and Pidge are staring at him, but he doesn’t really care. Suddenly, the peaceful blips on the two screens don’t seem nearly so much of an idle curiosity. He makes a grab for the headphones.

           Pidge finds his voice first. “Lance, what the hell?”

           “Depending on who’s talking, this entire planet could be in big trouble.” The headphones are halfway to his ears when a much smaller hand catches his wrist.

           Perplexed hazel eyes are studying him sharply. “What do you know about this?”

           He forces himself to breathe. Lowers the headphones. If Pidge is right, there’s a whole solar system they could be in. There’s no guarantee they’re heading for Earth now. Yet.

           “…How much trouble are we talking here?” Hunk ventures into the silence.

           “I mean a fleet. Maybe not the entire thing. They might not even know I’m here. It’s been over a year-” Maybe it’s not Zarkon. Maybe it’s a friend. Maybe they’re trying to hail. “Pidge, I’m serious, what have they been saying?”

           “...Well, I haven’t been able to make heads or tails out of a lot of it, but, there’s been one word that keeps repeating.” Pidge rummages at their notes. “Voltron.”

           “…Quiznak.”

           “What?”

           “It’s like a swear word,” Hunk clarifies; Lance tones him out, stumbling to his feet.

           Pidge twists in place. “Where are you going?”

           “Commander Iverson needs to know about this.” He makes it about two steps to the stairs when the sirens go off- the campus is going into lockdown. Or he already knows about it.

           He barely has time to process before Hunk is pointing out something.

           Something coming down from the sky.

           Pidge holds up binoculars for a moment. “…Lance, were you serious about a fleet?”

           There’s a dark speck in the center of the fire. He swipes the binoculars, not paying much attention as Pidge comes along for the ride.

           “…That’s too small to be a cruiser. Way too fast.” He waits for them to pull up, slow down. It nosedives into the ground instead, impacts with a brilliant flash.

           Pidge is already gathering his stuff as furiously as he can go. Lance doesn’t wait, but runs for the door. “Hunk, c’mon!”

           He doesn’t know who’s coming down but he has to meet them.

           And oh god he wants to be wrong about who sent that ship.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           He’s not. By the time he’s gotten there, the Garrison has beat him to it- there’s a tent set up, surrounded by guards and people. But it’s altogether too easy to see the faintly glowing pod already tied down for transport.

           Pidge hesitates, watching him at an angle before broaching the subject. “Do you… recognize that?”

           “Yeah. Bad news.”

           He slides down the slope easily- the guard standing closest to the entrance spots him, trains their rifle in his direction. “Stay where you are!”

           He pushes something out through his teeth that’s more irritated huff than meditation breath and shifts.

           The guard flinches. A hasty conversation passes on radio- Lance could nearly pick it up, but he’s distracted when a faint chorus of scraping noises signals that Pidge, then, after a moment, Hunk, have joined him. They stay behind him when he approaches the quarantine unit.

           “Look, you-” even with face concealed, the guard is sizing him up, nervously. “Nobody’s getting in here. Commander Iverson’s orders. That means you, too. You’re not even supposed to be here.”

           With a distinct thread of palace hauteur, Lance squares his shoulders. “That’s a Galra pod. The ship that launched it isn’t going to be that far behind. So either you can go tell Commander Iverson that, or you can get out of my way and let me do it. You know, like we agreed I was supposed to if something like this happened.”

           “And what about them?” They take a hand off the weapon to motion over his shoulder.

           Hunk is looking distinctly uncomfortable- not the normal kind, the ‘this is a bad idea but I’m going along with it because you’re you, Lance’ but genuinely unnerved, and a pang of guilt hits Lance hard.

           Pidge meets his eyes, brows knit together over them. Spindly hands are balled tightly into fists. It looks as if they’re caught somewhere between ‘please’ and ‘don’t you dare’.

           With a bravado that Lance doesn’t remotely feel, he sweeps back around to face the instructor. “They’re with me.”

           Faceplate notwithstanding, he can feel the guard’s incredulous look. He refuses to let his own waver, until the guard breaks away from him to talk on the radio. It’s a very short conversation, something he’s not sure if he finds heartening or dispiriting.

           Either way, he doesn’t get to hear the answer.

           Because right then, something explodes.

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

NOAA's New GOES-S Satellite Is a Game Changer for Severe Weather Forecasts

New Post has been published on http://iwebhostingreviews.com/vexx/noaas-new-goes-s-satellite-is-a-game-changer-for-severe-weather-forecasts/

NOAA's New GOES-S Satellite Is a Game Changer for Severe Weather Forecasts

2017 was a grievously good year for cataclysms.

Infernos engulfed not just California, which suffered its most destructive wildfire season on record, but the greater American West. A hyperactive hurricane season delivered the Gulf Coast its costliest thrashing in history. And those hurricanes also triggered tornado outbreaks across the southern United States, contributing to one of the most active and prolonged tornado seasons ever documented.

It could be a sign of things to come: Climate models project that rising CO2 levels will stoke more violent tempests, fires, and floods. Fortunately, confronted by the planet’s increasingly crazypants forecast, scientists have developed an arsenal of tools for observing, understanding, and anticipating severe weather.

Chief among these are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-R (pronounced “goes-are” or “Gozer,” like the Ghostbusters villain, depending on who you ask) weather satellites. The acronym stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The “R” at the end has to do with a convoluted naming convention: NOAA assigns each GOES satellite a letter before launch and a number when it achieves orbit. Thus, in 1975, GOES-A became GOES-1 when it parked itself 22,300 feet above the Earth, whereas GOES-G, which was destroyed in a failed launch, never received a number. Complicating things further is the fact that GOES-R is both the name for NOAA’s latest series of environmental satellites as well as one of the satellites in that series. The first, GOES-R, launched successfully in November 2016, thereby becoming GOES-16. The second, GOES-S, is slated to launch March 1 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The two hour launch window opens at 5:02 pm Eastern, and assuming the 11,500-pound spacecraft makes it into geostationary orbit safely, it’ll go by GOES-17.

Got it? Good. NOAA’s inscrutable satellite nomenclature aside, the important thing to know about GOES-16 and (fingers crossed) -17 is that they are the most sophisticated environmental forecasting spacecraft ever to ride a rocket to orbit. They’ll monitor the eastern and western portions of the US, respectively, and their adjoining oceans, spanning an area that extends from the west coast of Africa to the eastern reaches of New Zealand. Together, they’ll provide researchers and meteorologists with valuable data on weather systems—including violent storms, wildfires, lightning, and dense fog—in close to real time. The upshot: more accurate forecasts on your weather app, for one. More robust climate models, for another. But most consequentially: more advance warning, the next time local conditions turn cataclysmic.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster and Centaur stage for NOAA’s GOES-S are offloaded from the Mariner transport ship at the Army Wharf at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA/Leif Heimbold

Assuming it achieves orbit, the satellite formerly known as GOES-S will provide that warning with the help of powerful instruments like the Advanced Baseline Imager. Its 70 megapixel camera will scan the planet along 16 spectral channels tuned to detect visible, infrared, and near-infrared signals at four times the resolution and five times faster than GOES-15, the satellite GOES-S is destined to replace. Translation: This sentinel in the sky can simultaneously image the Western hemisphere once every 15 minutes, the continental US every five, and smaller areas of interest every 30 seconds.

That includes nascent wildfires, which show up clearest at infrared wavelengths. They’ll register at a resolution of 2×2 km per pixel (compared to GOES-15 resolution of 4×4 km per pixel). “That increased resolution lets you see smaller fires, and the improved temporal resolution lets you see how they’re developing and where they’re moving,” says GOES-R flight project manager Pam Sullivan. And when you combine the visible channels with the infrared, you can see and track smoke, as well, “which gives people on the ground an idea of where the wind’s blowing, and where they should deploy their firefighters.”

Also aboard GOES-S is the excellently named Geostationary Lightning Mapper, which will dramatically improve the tracking of violent storm systems. Studies have shown that spikes in lightning activity can predict the onset of more severe weather. “Today, the average lead time for tornado warnings is between 10 and 15 minutes,” says Tim Walsh, acting director for the GOES-R Series program. “With the help of GLM, the hope is to see a big increase in that lead time—maybe even doubling it.”

The first such instrument flown in geostationary orbit, the mapper will detect lightning by looking at one very narrow spectral band, at 777.4 nm. The reason? Lightning strikes trigger the emission of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere, which registers at this very specific wavelength. “It’s the perfect thing to monitor when you want to look for lightning without being fooled by other light in that field of view,” Sullivan says. The GLM will transmit those spectral readings to Earth, where processing algorithms will convert the data into near real-time data that forecasters can use.

Lightning, fire, and storm detection not good enough for you? These next-generation satellites will also improve fog detection around airports, enhance the detection of emergency beacon signals, improve planning for aviation routes, and boost the detection of geomagnetic storms emanating from the sun, buying communications and navigations systems valuable time to prepare for disruption by inbound solar particles.

“The key here is we’re completing our picture of the west coast,” says Walsh. The weather in Hawaii and Alaska, and along the Pacific Coast, originates farther west than researchers and forecasters could ever see with GOES-16. Its sibling satellite, assuming all goes well, will give researchers, forecasters, and the public a better sense of what’s coming—from the everyday, to the extreme.

Space Weather

Last November, NASA and NOAA also launched their JPSS-1 weather satellite; you can learn more about it here.

But the United States isn’t the only country with good orbital infrastructure; check out this Japanese weather satellite.

Just because your big brother is launching doesn’t mean we’re going to forget about you, GOES-R. You still have the better name.

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[shirlleycoyle]

The Way to Prevent a Recount Disaster Is Sitting Right in Front of Us

On the night of November 9, 2018, three days after the midterm elections, a group of protesters gathered outside the Supervisor of Elections office in Broward, Florida’s second-largest county and one of its most Democratic-leaning. The night before, a video had been posted to Twitter allegedly showing ballots being transported in private cars, and each time a truck pulled into the parking bay attached to the SOE’s office, the crowd took it as further proof that the election was being stolen.

For some, the fraud was so obvious and brazen that it almost defied logic. “The Democrats had their ace here with these 68,000 votes,” said a woman with a five-foot American flag, referring to the constantly updating vote total released by the SOE. “Miraculously! Today’s Friday. The election was Tuesday.”

The stakes felt especially high, with the margins for three statewide races (U.S. senator, governor, and agricultural commissioner) all below .5 percent. According to Florida’s mandatory recount law, similar to the ones in 19 other states, these margins would automatically trigger the first full, statewide recount in history, and the protesters were there to stop what they saw as an influx of fraudulent ballots being snuck in during the recount.

The only problem was that the recount hadn’t even begun. Broward was still receiving overseas, provisional, and absentee ballots, of which it had a backlog of at least 70,000, and its unofficial results weren’t due until the following day. But the Supervisor of Elections hadn’t publicized the most basic information about what was happening, and in this vacuum of official information, propaganda spread quickly (created and amplified, without evidence, by Republican politicians).

As the week wore on, the situation in Florida went from bad to worse. During the two weeks from Election Day until when the vote was certified, rejected ballots were confused with accepted ones, vote-counting machines malfunctioned, and at least six federal lawsuits were filed, with one county missing the state-mandated recount deadline altogether.

This November, given the stakes of the election and the number of competitive races across the country, a similar election nightmare is almost guaranteed. Though the presidential race currently looks like a blowout, it could easily tighten in key swing states during the next few months. And even if Joe Biden scores a decisive win, control of the Senate could be determined by a few thousand votes in Maine, Arizona, or Colorado. There are also roughly 28 House races that the Cook Political Report rates as toss-ups, not to mention elections for state legislatures, which will be in charge of drawing new electoral districts based off the results of this year’s Census.

Every cycle, there are close races (in 2018, nine House seats were decided by a margin of less than 1 percent), but they often go unnoticed. The election is over, and voters want to move on. That’s unlikely to be the case this time around. Not only is the country exceptionally polarized, but the coronavirus has created chaos over who can vote and how. Already, pandemic-related voting rights issues in at least three states—Alabama, Wisconsin, and Texas—have made their way to the Supreme Court, and that was just for the primaries. For the general, Republicans are aiming to deploy 50,000 “poll monitors,” while the Democrats plan to have 600 lawyers on-hand.

With states already seeing record numbers of absentee ballots, which are especially prone to being thrown out, it’s almost inevitable that the results will be disputed, However, even under the best of circumstances, recounts are divisive, expensive, laborious, and rarely change the outcome of an election.

Take Florida in 2018. That year, after the recounted races went to machine re-tabulation, where all the ballots were fed through the scanners again, three still had a margin below .25 percent, triggering a manual recount of undervotes, overvotes, and write-ins. However, after officials discovered that they had misplaced 2,335 ballots, Broward submitted its original results anyway.

Another county, Palm Beach, didn’t have voting machines capable of running multiple recounts simultaneously. Even working 24/7 for five days, there wasn’t enough time to re-tabulate the 585,117 votes for all three statewide races, let alone for a state representative race, whose margin was 37 votes. Here, a recount may have actually changed the outcome, but the other elections were given priority. Ultimately, though, the point became moot when the county’s 11-year-old machines overheated on day five, invalidating the recount results of roughly 174,000 ballots.

In the end, the greatest vote swing was in the Senate race, where Democrat Bill Nelson gained 274 votes. By the standards of a recount, this was a dramatic change. FairVote, a nonpartisan nonprofit advocating electoral reforms, analyzed 15 statewide recounts between 2000 and 2015 and found that the median shift was 219 votes. Still, Nelson lost by a margin of over 10,000.

Verifying the integrity of an election doesn’t have to be this fraught and time-consuming. Unlike the sloppy, exhausting drama of a recount, risk-limiting audits offer a way to resolve election disputes that’s cheaper, more efficient, and less likely to lead to the meltdowns and conspiracy theories that plagued the 2018 Florida recount. And though they’re technical and unsexy, they’re one of the most effective and bipartisan election reforms available.

A risk-limiting audit (RLA) randomly selects a sub-sample of ballots and verifies that what is marked on the paper actually matches the result that was recorded for that ballot. The closer the race, the more votes are recounted, and the process continues until there’s a “high statistical degree of certainty” that the original results are correct. In small races with tight margins, the sample size may include every vote, but it’s typically much smaller than a full recount.

In a video produced by the Colorado Secretary of State, which began conducting mandatory statewide RLAs in 2017, a professor compares the process to tasting a tablespoon of soup to see if it is too salty. “A tablespoon is enough,” he said, “and it doesn’t matter if it’s a one-quart sauce pan or a 50-gallon cauldron of soup.”

It’s a clever idea, but is it too clever? Recounts are elegant in the simplicity of their design: you take every ballot and count it again. Especially in the heat of an election dispute, when voters are more likely to believe the system is fair only if their candidate won, are administrators really able to offer reassurances by randomly pulling ballots and claiming a “high statistical degree of certainty?”

It depends on the election administrator. Elections in Colorado, like in most states, are run by the Secretary of State, a position currently held by Jena Griswold, who was elected in 2019. She’s made transparency a priority, starting with a public dice roll to determine the 20-digit number used to randomly select ballots. Her office also posts the technical details of the RLA on its website and trains local media members in how the process operates. “Risk-limiting audits are on the news here,” said Griswold.

In addition, some election administrators, like Amber McReynolds, the Director of Elections for Denver from 2011 to 2018, also give tours to candidates, who are able to request recounts after the election if they dispute the result. “They’d all be able to come watch,” she said, “and see that there was a clear process, it worked, and there wasn’t a need to go further.”

Ironically, auditing a sample of ballots can also be more inclusive and accurate than recounting the whole batch.

Would that every state were Colorado. In Broward County in 2018, by the time the recount started, the well was already poisoned.

But the difference between Colorado and Florida isn’t just one of communication. Colorado citizens are automatically registered to vote, and before each election, the state mails everyone on the rolls a ballot, which can be turned in and counted well before Election Day. As a result, voters never experience the chaos endemic to elections elsewhere. “They don’t wait in line for five hours,” said McReynolds. “They don’t have a machine break in front of them. Those are really the things, I think, that destroy voter confidence.” Plus, Griswold said, Colorado doesn’t audit only the top-ballot races. It can also verify elections that are particularly close or contested, which further reassure voters that the outcome is legitimate.

Ironically, auditing a sample of ballots can also be more inclusive and accurate than recounting the whole batch. “When you do a recount, there are miscounts just because of human error,” Griswold said. In addition, audits include ballots that a recount may exclude. For example, under Michigan law, a box of ballots won’t be recounted if the seal is broken or if the number of ballots inside doesn’t exactly match what was recorded.

This provision is well-intentioned but doesn’t necessarily combat the problem effectively, said Ginny Vander Roest, a former elections administrator in Michigan and a Senior Election Implementation Manager at Voting Works, a non-partisan non-profit aiming to make voting more secure and affordable. “If someone tampered with that ballot container, then why would you recount it? Of course, you’d want to figure out if that actually happened, but that’s something [the law] doesn’t provide for,” she said.

As a result, ballots can be disqualified en masse, like in the 2016 presidential race, when votes in 60 percent of the precincts in Detroit were thrown out. “This is not unique to Michigan,” added Monica Childers, a technologist at Voting Works. “All states have these sorts of carve-outs and caveats.”

Increasingly, though, states are following the audit path that Colorado has forged. Political parties in Kansas, Wyoming, and Alaska all hired McReynolds to oversee their primaries. “They said, ‘We want the best of the best election processes,’” she said. “And I said, ‘Okay, well that includes an RLA.’”

RLAs or RLA pilots are now required or provided for by state laws in Nevada, Virginia, Georgia, Indiana, California, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island (which audited its recent presidential primary in three hours) and Michigan, which, in May, conducted an RLA with 277 jurisdictions despite having to train all of the election administrators remotely.

However, barriers still exist. Because an RLA checks the physical ballot against the record of the ballot that was counted, it can only be implemented in states with a paper trail. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and public policy institute, that requirement excludes at least some jurisdictions in eight states this November: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Indiana.

Moreover, just because audits have been proven to work doesn’t mean they’ll be adopted. For example, between 2011 and 2013, California conducted a RLA pilot program. The subsequent report called it a success, as opposed to the manual recount, which “provided little statistical evidence that the election outcomes were correctly tallied by the voting system, despite requiring substantially more ballots to be hand-counted and examined."

Still, RLAs in California are only recommended, not required. “It’s a proven process, but it’s not proven in the fact that legislators understand it,” said Vander Roest. “They’re used to their recount rules.”

Even when politicians are on board the RLA train, it’s not always a smooth ride. Recently, the Florida House and Senate unanimously passed a law allowing counties to conduct recounts using the same equipment that they use for audits. Afterward, Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to election security, wrote an open letter to the governor urging him to veto the legislation.

Not only are the sanctioned machines not properly certified, the authors argued, but “this bill does not require that recounts look at the actual paper ballots—the legal ballots of record. Rather it relies on hackable retabulation and digital images because the sanctioned machines aren’t secure.” The letter was signed by two former secretaries of state, a former ambassador, and academics from Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and MIT. Still, the governor signed the bill.

This episode emphasizes that there’s no easy fix to an election system. Risk-limiting audits are an effective way to reform—or even replace—traditional recounts, but only if they’re implemented carefully. This new law in Florida is scheduled to take effect after the presidential election, on January 1, 2021, meaning that, should the state undertake a recount in November, it will probably go as smoothly as it did in 2018. “Florida has had more than its share of election recount problems in the past,” reads the Verified Voting letter. “Please don’t expose the state to new problems on your watch.”

Follow Spenser Mestel on Twitter.

The Way to Prevent a Recount Disaster Is Sitting Right in Front of Us syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[dorcasrempel]

Novel method for easier scaling of quantum devices

In an advance that may help researchers scale up quantum devices, an MIT team has developed a method to “recruit” neighboring quantum bits made of nanoscale defects in diamond, so that instead of causing disruptions they help carry out quantum operations.

Quantum devices perform operations using quantum bits, called “qubits,” that can represent the two states corresponding to classic binary bits — a 0 or 1 — or a “quantum superposition” of both states simultaneously. The unique superposition state can enable quantum computers to solve problems that are practically impossible for classical computers, potentially spurring breakthroughs in biosensing, neuroimaging, machine learning, and other applications.

One promising qubit candidate is a defect in diamond, called a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, which holds electrons that can be manipulated by light and microwaves. In response, the defect emits photons that can carry quantum information. Because of their solid-state environments, however, NV centers are always surrounded by many other unknown defects with different spin properties, called “spin defects.” When the measurable NV-center qubit interacts with those spin defects, the qubit loses its coherent quantum state — “decoheres”— and operations fall apart. Traditional solutions try to identify these disrupting defects to protect the qubit from them.

In a paper published Feb. 25 in Physical Letters Review, the researchers describe a method that uses an NV center to probe its environment and uncover the existence of several nearby spin defects. Then, the researchers can pinpoint the defects’ locations and control them to achieve a coherent quantum state — essentially leveraging them as additional qubits.

In experiments, the team generated and detected quantum coherence among three electronic spins — scaling up the size of the quantum system from a single qubit (the NV center) to three qubits (adding two nearby spin defects). The findings demonstrate a step forward in scaling up quantum devices using NV centers, the researchers say.  

“You always have unknown spin defects in the environment that interact with an NV center. We say, ‘Let’s not ignore these spin defects, which [if left alone] could cause faster decoherence. Let’s learn about them, characterize their spins, learn to control them, and ‘recruit’ them to be part of the quantum system,’” says the lead co-author Won Kyu Calvin Sun, a graduate student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and a member of the Quantum Engineering group. “Then, instead of using a single NV center [or just] one qubit, we can then use two, three, or four qubits.”

Joining Sun on the paper are lead author Alexandre Cooper ’16 of Caltech; Jean-Christophe Jaskula, a research scientist in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) and member of the Quantum Engineering group at MIT; and Paola Cappellaro, a professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, a member of RLE, and head of the Quantum Engineering group at MIT.

Characterizing defects

NV centers occur where carbon atoms in two adjacent places in a diamond’s lattice structure are missing — one atom is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and the other space is an empty “vacancy.” The NV center essentially functions as an atom, with a nucleus and surrounding electrons that are extremely sensitive to tiny variations in surrounding electrical, magnetic, and optical fields. Sweeping microwaves across the center, for instance, makes it change, and thus control, the spin states of the nucleus and electrons.

Spins are measured using a type of magnetic resonance spectroscopy. This method plots the frequencies of electron and nucleus spins in megahertz as a “resonance spectrum” that can dip and spike, like a heart monitor. Spins of an NV center under certain conditions are well-known. But the surrounding spin defects are unknown and difficult to characterize.

In their work, the researchers identified, located, and controlled two electron-nuclear spin defects near an NV center. They first sent microwave pulses at specific frequencies to control the NV center. Simultaneously, they pulse another microwave that probes the surrounding environment for other spins. They then observed the resonance spectrum of the spin defects interacting with the NV center.

The spectrum dipped in several spots when the probing pulse interacted with nearby electron-nuclear spins, indicating their presence. The researchers then swept a magnetic field across the area at different orientations. For each orientation, the defect would “spin” at different energies, causing different dips in the spectrum. Basically, this allowed them to measure each defect’s spin in relation to each magnetic orientation. They then plugged the energy measurements into a model equation with unknown parameters. This equation is used to describe the quantum interactions of an electron-nuclear spin defect under a magnetic field. Then, they could solve the equation to successfully characterize each defect.

Locating and controlling

After characterizing the defects, the next step was to characterize the interaction between the defects and the NV, which would simultaneously pinpoint their locations. To do so, they again swept the magnetic field at different orientations, but this time looked for changes in energies describing the interactions between the two defects and the NV center. The stronger the interaction, the closer they were to one another. They then used those interaction strengths to determine where the defects were located, in relation to the NV center and to each other. That generated a good map of the locations of all three defects in the diamond.

Characterizing the defects and their interaction with the NV center allow for full control, which involves a few more steps to demonstrate. First, they pump the NV center and surrounding environment with a sequence of pulses of green light and microwaves that help put the three qubits in a well-known quantum state. Then, they use another sequence of pulses that ideally entangles the three qubits briefly, and then disentangles them, which enables them to detect the three-spin coherence of the qubits.

The researchers verified the three-spin coherence by measuring a major spike in the resonance spectrum. The measurement of the spike recorded was essentially the sum of the frequencies of the three qubits. If the three qubits for instance had little or no entanglement, there would have been four separate spikes of smaller height.

“We come into a black box [environment with each NV center]. But when we probe the NV environment, we start seeing dips and wonder which types of spins give us those dips. Once we [figure out] the spin of the unknown defects, and their interactions with the NV center, we can start controlling their coherence,” Sun says. “Then, we have full universal control of our quantum system.”

Next, the researchers hope to better understand other environmental noise surrounding qubits. That will help them develop more robust error-correcting codes for quantum circuits. Furthermore, because on average the process of NV center creation in diamond creates numerous other spin defects, the researchers say they could potentially scale up the system to control even more qubits. “It gets more complex with scale. But if we can start finding NV centers with more resonance spikes, you can imagine starting to control larger and larger quantum systems,” Sun says.

Novel method for easier scaling of quantum devices syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[nancygduarteus]

The Trouble With Dentistry

In the early 2000s Terry Mitchell’s dentist retired. For a while, Mitchell, an electrician in his 50s, stopped seeking dental care altogether. But when one of his wisdom teeth began to ache, he started looking for someone new. An acquaintance recommended John Roger Lund, whose practice was a convenient 10-minute walk from Mitchell’s home, in San Jose, California. Lund’s practice was situated in a one-story building with clay roof tiles that housed several dental offices. The interior was a little dated, but not dingy. The waiting room was small and the decor minimal: some plants and photos, no fish. Lund was a good-looking middle-aged guy with arched eyebrows, round glasses, and graying hair that framed a youthful face. He was charming, chatty, and upbeat. At the time, Mitchell and Lund both owned Chevrolet Chevelles, and they bonded over their mutual love of classic cars.

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Lund extracted the wisdom tooth with no complications, and Mitchell began seeing him regularly. He never had any pain or new complaints, but Lund encouraged many additional treatments nonetheless. A typical person might get one or two root canals in a lifetime. In the space of seven years, Lund gave Mitchell nine root canals and just as many crowns. Mitchell’s insurance covered only a small portion of each procedure, so he paid a total of about $50,000 out of pocket. The number and cost of the treatments did not trouble him. He had no idea that it was unusual to undergo so many root canals—he thought they were just as common as fillings. The payments were spread out over a relatively long period of time. And he trusted Lund completely. He figured that if he needed the treatments, then he might as well get them before things grew worse.

Meanwhile, another of Lund’s patients was going through a similar experience. Joyce Cordi, a businesswoman in her 50s, had learned of Lund through 1-800-DENTIST. She remembers the service giving him an excellent rating. When she visited Lund for the first time, in 1999, she had never had so much as a cavity. To the best of her knowledge her teeth were perfectly healthy, although she’d had a small dental bridge installed to fix a rare congenital anomaly (she was born with one tooth trapped inside another and had had them extracted). Within a year, Lund was questioning the resilience of her bridge and telling her she needed root canals and crowns.

Cordi was somewhat perplexed. Why the sudden need for so many procedures after decades of good dental health? When she expressed uncertainty, she says, Lund always had an answer ready. The cavity on this tooth was in the wrong position to treat with a typical filling, he told her on one occasion. Her gums were receding, which had resulted in tooth decay, he explained during another visit. Clearly she had been grinding her teeth. And, after all, she was getting older. As a doctor’s daughter, Cordi had been raised with an especially respectful view of medical professionals. Lund was insistent, so she agreed to the procedures. Over the course of a decade, Lund gave Cordi 10 root canals and 10 crowns. He also chiseled out her bridge, replacing it with two new ones that left a conspicuous gap in her front teeth. Altogether, the work cost her about $70,000.

In early 2012, Lund retired. Brendon Zeidler, a young dentist looking to expand his business, bought Lund’s practice and assumed responsibility for his patients. Within a few months, Zeidler began to suspect that something was amiss. Financial records indicated that Lund had been spectacularly successful, but Zeidler was making only 10 to 25 percent of Lund’s reported earnings each month. As Zeidler met more of Lund’s former patients, he noticed a disquieting trend: Many of them had undergone extensive dental work—a much larger proportion than he would have expected. When Zeidler told them, after routine exams or cleanings, that they didn’t need any additional procedures at that time, they tended to react with surprise and concern: Was he sure? Nothing at all? Had he checked thoroughly?

In the summer, Zeidler decided to take a closer look at Lund’s career. He gathered years’ worth of dental records and bills for Lund’s patients and began to scrutinize them, one by one. The process took him months to complete. What he uncovered was appalling.

We have a fraught relationship with dentists as authority figures. In casual conversation we often dismiss them as “not real doctors,” regarding them more as mechanics for the mouth. But that disdain is tempered by fear. For more than a century, dentistry has been half-jokingly compared to torture. Surveys suggest that up to 61 percent of people are apprehensive about seeing the dentist, perhaps 15 percent are so anxious that they avoid the dentist almost entirely, and a smaller percentage have a genuine phobia requiring psychiatric intervention.

When you’re in the dentist’s chair, the power imbalance between practitioner and patient becomes palpable. A masked figure looms over your recumbent body, wielding power tools and sharp metal instruments, doing things to your mouth you cannot see, asking you questions you cannot properly answer, and judging you all the while. The experience simultaneously invokes physical danger, emotional vulnerability, and mental limpness. A cavity or receding gum line can suddenly feel like a personal failure. When a dentist declares that there is a problem, that something must be done before it’s too late, who has the courage or expertise to disagree? When he points at spectral smudges on an X-ray, how are we to know what’s true? In other medical contexts, such as a visit to a general practitioner or a cardiologist, we are fairly accustomed to seeking a second opinion before agreeing to surgery or an expensive regimen of pills with harsh side effects. But in the dentist’s office—perhaps because we both dread dental procedures and belittle their medical significance—the impulse is to comply without much consideration, to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

The uneasy relationship between dentist and patient is further complicated by an unfortunate reality: Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation,” says Jane Gillette, a dentist in Bozeman, Montana, who works closely with the American Dental Association’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which was established in 2007. “We’re kind of behind the times, but increasingly we are trying to move the needle forward.”

Consider the maxim that everyone should visit the dentist twice a year for cleanings. We hear it so often, and from such a young age, that we’ve internalized it as truth. But this supposed commandment of oral health has no scientific grounding. Scholars have traced its origins to a few potential sources, including a toothpaste advertisement from the 1930s and an illustrated pamphlet from 1849 that follows the travails of a man with a severe toothache. Today, an increasing number of dentists acknowledge that adults with good oral hygiene need to see a dentist only once every 12 to 16 months.

Many standard dental treatments—to say nothing of all the recent innovations and cosmetic extravagances—are likewise not well substantiated by research. Many have never been tested in meticulous clinical trials. And the data that are available are not always reassuring.

The Cochrane organization, a highly respected arbiter of evidence-based medicine, has conducted systematic reviews of oral-health studies since 1999. In these reviews, researchers analyze the scientific literature on a particular dental intervention, focusing on the most rigorous and well-designed studies. In some cases, the findings clearly justify a given procedure. For example, dental sealants—liquid plastics painted onto the pits and grooves of teeth like nail polish—reduce tooth decay in children and have no known risks. (Despite this, they are not widely used, possibly because they are too simple and inexpensive to earn dentists much money.) But most of the Cochrane reviews reach one of two disheartening conclusions: Either the available evidence fails to confirm the purported benefits of a given dental intervention, or there is simply not enough research to say anything substantive one way or another.

Fluoridation of drinking water seems to help reduce tooth decay in children, but there is insufficient evidence that it does the same for adults. Some data suggest that regular flossing, in addition to brushing, mitigates gum disease, but there is only “weak, very unreliable” evidence that it combats plaque. As for common but invasive dental procedures, an increasing number of dentists question the tradition of prophylactic wisdom-teeth removal; often, the safer choice is to monitor unproblematic teeth for any worrying developments. Little medical evidence justifies the substitution of tooth-colored resins for typical metal amalgams to fill cavities. And what limited data we have don’t clearly indicate whether it’s better to repair a root-canaled tooth with a crown or a filling. When Cochrane researchers tried to determine whether faulty metal fillings should be repaired or replaced, they could not find a single study that met their standards.

“The body of evidence for dentistry is disappointing,” says Derek Richards, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. “Dentists tend to want to treat or intervene. They are more akin to surgeons than they are to physicians. We suffer a little from that. Everybody keeps fiddling with stuff, trying out the newest thing, but they don’t test them properly in a good-quality trial.”

The general dearth of rigorous research on dental interventions gives dentists even more leverage over their patients. Should a patient somehow muster the gumption to question an initial diagnosis and consult the scientific literature, she would probably not find much to help her. When we submit to a dentist’s examination, we are putting a great deal of trust in that dentist’s experience and intuition—and, of course, integrity.

When Zeidler purchased Lund’s practice, in February 2012, he inherited a massive collection of patients’ dental histories and bills, a mix of electronic documents, handwritten charts, and X‑rays. By August, Zeidler had decided that if anything could explain the alarmingly abundant dental work in the mouths of Lund’s patients, he would find it in those records. He spent every weekend for the next nine months examining the charts of hundreds of patients treated in the preceding five years. In a giant Excel spreadsheet, he logged every single procedure Lund had performed, so he could carry out some basic statistical analyses.

The numbers spoke for themselves. Year after year, Lund had performed certain procedures at extraordinarily high rates. Whereas a typical dentist might perform root canals on previously crowned teeth in only 3 to 7 percent of cases, Lund was performing them in 90 percent of cases. As Zeidler later alleged in court documents, Lund had performed invasive, costly, and seemingly unnecessary procedures on dozens and dozens of patients, some of whom he had been seeing for decades. Terry Mitchell and Joyce Cordi were far from alone. In fact, they had not even endured the worst of it.

Dental crowns were one of Lund’s most frequent treatments. A crown is a metal or ceramic cap that completely encases an injured or decayed tooth, which is first shaved to a peg so its new shell will fit. Crowns typically last 10 to 15 years. Lund not only gave his patients superfluous crowns; he also tended to replace them every five years—the minimum interval of time before insurance companies will cover the procedure again.

More than 50 of Lund’s patients also had ludicrously high numbers of root canals: 15, 20, 24. (A typical adult mouth has 32 teeth.) According to one lawsuit that has since been settled, a woman in her late 50s came to Lund with only 10 natural teeth; from 2003 to 2010, he gave her nine root canals and 12 crowns. The American Association of Endodontists claims that a root canal is a “quick, comfortable procedure” that is “very similar to a routine filling.” In truth, a root canal is a much more radical operation than a filling. It takes longer, can cause significant discomfort, and may require multiple trips to a dentist or specialist. It’s also much more costly.

[Read: Americans are going to Juarez for cheap dental care]

Root canals are typically used to treat infections of the pulp—the soft living core of a tooth. A dentist drills a hole through a tooth in order to access the root canals: long, narrow channels containing nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. The dentist then repeatedly twists skinny metal files in and out of the canals to scrape away all the living tissue, irrigates the canals with disinfectant, and packs them with a rubberlike material. The whole process usually takes one to two hours. Afterward, sometimes at a second visit, the dentist will strengthen the tooth with a filling or crown. In the rare case that infection returns, the patient must go through the whole ordeal again or consider more advanced surgery.

Zeidler noticed that nearly every time Lund gave someone a root canal, he also charged for an incision and drainage, known as an I&D. During an I&D, a dentist lances an abscess in the mouth and drains the exudate, all while the patient is awake. In some cases the dentist slips a small rubber tube into the wound, which continues to drain fluids and remains in place for a few days. I&Ds are not routine adjuncts to root canals. They should be used only to treat severe infections, which occur in a minority of cases. Yet they were extremely common in Lund’s practice. In 2009, for example, Lund billed his patients for 109 I&Ds. Zeidler asked many of those patients about the treatments, but none of them recalled what would almost certainly have been a memorable experience.

In addition to performing scores of seemingly unnecessary procedures that could result in chronic pain, medical complications, and further operations, Lund had apparently billed patients for treatments he had never administered. Zeidler was alarmed and distressed. “We go into this profession to care for patients,” he told me. “That is why we become doctors. To find, I felt, someone was doing the exact opposite of that—it was very hard, very hard to accept that someone was willing to do that.”

Zeidler knew what he had to do next. As a dental professional, he had certain ethical obligations. He needed to confront Lund directly and give him the chance to account for all the anomalies. Even more daunting, in the absence of a credible explanation, he would have to divulge his discoveries to the patients Lund had bequeathed to him. He would have to tell them that the man to whom they had entrusted their care—some of them for two decades—had apparently deceived them for his own profit.

Arsh Raziuddin

The idea of the dentist as potential charlatan has a long and rich history. In medieval Europe, barbers didn’t just trim hair and shave beards; they were also surgeons, performing a range of minor operations including bloodletting, the administration of enemas, and tooth extraction. Barber surgeons, and the more specialized “tooth drawers,” would wrench, smash, and knock teeth out of people’s mouths with an intimidating metal instrument called a dental key: Imagine a chimera of a hook, a hammer, and forceps. Sometimes the results were disastrous. In the 1700s, Thomas Berdmore, King George III’s “Operator for the Teeth,” described one woman who lost “a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighbouring molars” at the hands of a local barber.

Barber surgeons came to America as early as 1636. By the 18th century, dentistry was firmly established in the colonies as a trade akin to blacksmithing (Paul Revere was an early American craftsman of artisanal dentures). Itinerant dentists moved from town to town by carriage with carts of dreaded tools in tow, temporarily setting up shop in a tavern or town square. They yanked teeth or bored into them with hand drills, filling cavities with mercury, tin, gold, or molten lead. For anesthetic, they used arsenic, nutgalls, mustard seed, leeches. Mixed in with the honest tradesmen—who genuinely believed in the therapeutic power of bloodsucking worms—were swindlers who urged their customers to have numerous teeth removed in a single sitting or charged them extra to stuff their pitted molars with homemade gunk of dubious benefit.

In the mid-19th century, a pair of American dentists began to elevate their trade to the level of a profession. From 1839 to 1840, Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris established dentistry’s first college, scientific journal, and national association. Some historical accounts claim that Hayden and Harris approached the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine about adding dental instruction to the curriculum, only to be rebuffed by the resident physicians, who declared that dentistry was of little consequence. But no definitive proof of this encounter has ever surfaced.

Whatever happened, from that point on, “the professions of dentistry and medicine would develop along separate paths,” writes Mary Otto, a health journalist, in her recent book, Teeth. Becoming a practicing physician requires four years of medical school followed by a three-to-seven-year residency program, depending on the specialty. Dentists earn a degree in four years and, in most states, can immediately take the national board exams, get a license, and begin treating patients. (Some choose to continue training in a specialty, such as orthodontics or oral and maxillofacial surgery.) When physicians complete their residency, they typically work for a hospital, university, or large health-care organization with substantial oversight, strict ethical codes, and standardized treatment regimens. By contrast, about 80 percent of the nation’s 200,000 active dentists have individual practices, and although they are bound by a code of ethics, they typically don’t have the same level of oversight.

[Read: Why dentistry is separate from medicine]

Throughout history, many physicians have lamented the segregation of dentistry and medicine. Acting as though oral health is somehow divorced from one’s overall well-being is absurd; the two are inextricably linked. Oral bacteria and the toxins they produce can migrate through the bloodstream and airways, potentially damaging the heart and lungs. Poor oral health is associated with narrowing arteries, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and respiratory disease, possibly due to a complex interplay of oral microbes and the immune system. And some research suggests that gum disease can be an early sign of diabetes, indicating a relationship between sugar, oral bacteria, and chronic inflammation.

Dentistry’s academic and professional isolation has been especially detrimental to its own scientific inquiry. Most major medical associations around the world have long endorsed evidence-based medicine. The idea is to shift focus away from intuition, anecdote, and received wisdom, and toward the conclusions of rigorous clinical research. Although the phrase evidence-based medicine was coined in 1991, the concept began taking shape in the 1960s, if not earlier (some scholars trace its origins all the way back to the 17th century). In contrast, the dental community did not begin having similar conversations until the mid-1990s. There are dozens of journals and organizations devoted to evidence-based medicine, but only a handful devoted to evidence-based dentistry.

In the past decade, a small cohort of dentists has worked diligently to promote evidence-based dentistry, hosting workshops, publishing clinical-practice guidelines based on systematic reviews of research, and creating websites that curate useful resources. But its adoption “has been a relatively slow process,” as a 2016 commentary in the Contemporary Clinical Dentistry journal put it. Part of the problem is funding: Because dentistry is often sidelined from medicine at large, it simply does not receive as much money from the government and industry to tackle these issues. “At a recent conference, very few practitioners were even aware of the existence of evidence-based clinical guidelines,” says Elliot Abt, a professor of oral medicine at the University of Illinois. “You can publish a guideline in a journal, but passive dissemination of information is clearly not adequate for real change.”

Among other problems, dentistry’s struggle to embrace scientific inquiry has left dentists with considerable latitude to advise unnecessary procedures—whether intentionally or not. The standard euphemism for this proclivity is overtreatment. Favored procedures, many of which are elaborate and steeply priced, include root canals, the application of crowns and veneers, teeth whitening and filing, deep cleaning, gum grafts, fillings for “microcavities”—incipient lesions that do not require immediate treatment—and superfluous restorations and replacements, such as swapping old metal fillings for modern resin ones. Whereas medicine has made progress in reckoning with at least some of its own tendencies toward excessive and misguided treatment, dentistry is lagging behind. It remains “largely focused upon surgical procedures to treat the symptoms of disease,” Mary Otto writes. “America’s dental care system continues to reward those surgical procedures far more than it does prevention.”

“Excessive diagnosis and treatment are endemic,” says Jeffrey H. Camm, a dentist of more than 35 years who wryly described his peers’ penchant for “creative diagnosis” in a 2013 commentary published by the American Dental Association. “I don’t want to be damning. I think the majority of dentists are pretty good.” But many have “this attitude of ‘Oh, here’s a spot, I’ve got to do something.’ I’ve been contacted by all kinds of practitioners who are upset because patients come in and they already have three crowns, or 12 fillings, or another dentist told them that their 2-year-old child has several cavities and needs to be sedated for the procedure.”

Trish Walraven, who worked as a dental hygienist for 25 years and now manages a dental-software company with her husband in Texas, recalls many troubling cases: “We would see patients seeking a second opinion, and they had treatment plans telling them they need eight fillings in virgin teeth. We would look at X-rays and say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It was blatantly overtreatment—drilling into teeth that did not need it whatsoever.”

Studies that explicitly focus on overtreatment in dentistry are rare, but a recent field experiment provides some clues about its pervasiveness. A team of researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, asked a volunteer patient with three tiny, shallow cavities to visit 180 randomly selected dentists in Zurich. The Swiss Dental Guidelines state that such minor cavities do not require fillings; rather, the dentist should monitor the decay and encourage the patient to brush regularly, which can reverse the damage. Despite this, 50 of the 180 dentists suggested unnecessary treatment. Their recommendations were incongruous: Collectively, the overzealous dentists singled out 13 different teeth for drilling; each advised one to six fillings. Similarly, in an investigation for Reader’s Digest, the writer William Ecenbarger visited 50 dentists in 28 states in the U.S. and received prescriptions ranging from a single crown to a full-mouth reconstruction, with the price tag starting at about $500 and going up to nearly $30,000.

A multitude of factors has conspired to create both the opportunity and the motive for widespread overtreatment in dentistry. In addition to dentistry’s seclusion from the greater medical community, its traditional emphasis on procedure rather than prevention, and its lack of rigorous self-evaluation, there are economic explanations. The financial burden of entering the profession is high and rising. In the U.S., the average debt of a dental-school graduate is more than $200,000. And then there’s the expense of finding an office, buying new equipment, and hiring staff to set up a private practice. A dentist’s income is entirely dependent on the number and type of procedures he or she performs; a routine cleaning and examination earns only a baseline fee of about $200.

In parallel with the rising cost of dental school, the amount of tooth decay in many countries’ populations has declined dramatically over the past four decades, mostly thanks to the introduction of mass-produced fluoridated toothpaste in the 1950s and ’60s. In the 1980s, with fewer genuine problems to treat, some practitioners turned to the newly flourishing industry of cosmetic dentistry, promoting elective procedures such as bleaching, teeth filing and straightening, gum lifts, and veneers. It’s easy to see how dentists, hoping to buoy their income, would be tempted to recommend frequent exams and proactive treatments—a small filling here, a new crown there—even when waiting and watching would be better. It’s equally easy to imagine how that behavior might escalate.

“If I were to sum it up, I really think the majority of dentists are great. But for some reason we seem to drift toward this attitude of ‘I’ve got tools so I’ve got to fix something’ much too often,” says Jeffrey Camm. “Maybe it’s greed, or paying off debt, or maybe it’s someone’s training. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that even something that seems minor, like a filling, involves removal of a human body part. It just adds to the whole idea that you go to a physician feeling bad and you walk out feeling better, but you go to a dentist feeling good and you walk out feeling bad.”

Arsh Raziuddin

In the summer of 2013, Zeidler asked several other dentists to review Lund’s records. They all agreed with his conclusions. The likelihood that Lund’s patients genuinely needed that many treatments was extremely low. And there was no medical evidence to justify many of Lund’s decisions or to explain the phantom procedures. Zeidler confronted Lund about his discoveries in several face-to-face meetings. When I asked Zeidler how those meetings went, he offered a single sentence—“I decided shortly thereafter to take legal action”—and declined to comment further. (Repeated attempts were made to contact Lund and his lawyer for this story, but neither responded.)

One by one, Zeidler began to write, call, or sit down with patients who had previously been in Lund’s care, explaining what he had uncovered. They were shocked and angry. Lund had been charismatic and professional. They had assumed that his diagnoses and treatments were meant to keep them healthy. Isn’t that what doctors do? “It makes you feel like you have been violated,” Terry Mitchell says—“somebody performing stuff on your body that doesn’t need to be done.” Joyce Cordi recalls a “moment of absolute fury” when she first learned of Lund’s deceit. On top of all the needless operations, “there were all kinds of drains and things that I paid for and the insurance company paid for that never happened,” she says. “But you can’t read the dentalese.”

“A lot of them felt, How can I be so stupid? Or Why didn’t I go elsewhere?” Zeidler says. “But this is not about intellect. It’s about betrayal of trust.”

In October 2013, Zeidler sued Lund for misrepresenting his practice and breaching their contract. In the lawsuit, Zeidler and his lawyers argued that Lund’s reported practice income of $729,000 to $988,000 a year was “a result of fraudulent billing activity, billing for treatment that was unnecessary and billing for treatment which was never performed.” The suit was settled for a confidential amount. From 2014 to 2017, 10 of Lund’s former patients, including Mitchell and Cordi, sued him for a mix of fraud, deceit, battery, financial elder abuse, and dental malpractice. They collectively reached a nearly $3 million settlement, paid out by Lund’s insurance company. (Lund did not admit to any wrongdoing.)

Lund was arrested in May 2016 and released on $250,000 bail. The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office is prosecuting a criminal case against him based on 26 counts of insurance fraud. At the time of his arraignment, he said he was innocent of all charges. The Dental Board of California is seeking to revoke or suspend Lund’s license, which is currently inactive.

Many of Lund’s former patients worry about their future health. A root canal is not a permanent fix. It requires maintenance and, in the long run, may need to be replaced with a dental implant. One of Mitchell’s root canals has already failed: The tooth fractured, and an infection developed. He said that in order to treat the infection, the tooth was extracted and he underwent a multistage procedure involving a bone graft and months of healing before an implant and a crown were fixed in place. “I don’t know how much these root canals are going to cost me down the line,” Mitchell says. “Six thousand dollars a pop for an implant—it adds up pretty quick.”

Joyce Cordi’s new dentist says her X‑rays resemble those of someone who had reconstructive facial surgery following a car crash. Because Lund installed her new dental bridges improperly, one of her teeth is continually damaged by everyday chewing. “It hurts like hell,” she says. She has to wear a mouth guard every night.

What some of Lund’s former patients regret most are the psychological repercussions of his alleged duplicity: the erosion of the covenant between practitioner and patient, the germ of doubt that infects the mind. “You lose your trust,” Mitchell says. “You become cynical. I have become more that way, and I don’t like it.”

“He damaged the trust I need to have in the people who take care of me,” Cordi says. “He damaged my trust in mankind. That’s an unforgivable crime.”

This article appears in the May 2019 print edition with the headline “The Trouble With Dentistry.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-trouble-with-dentistry/586039/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

The Trouble With Dentistry

In the early 2000s Terry Mitchell’s dentist retired. For a while, Mitchell, an electrician in his 50s, stopped seeking dental care altogether. But when one of his wisdom teeth began to ache, he started looking for someone new. An acquaintance recommended John Roger Lund, whose practice was a convenient 10-minute walk from Mitchell’s home, in San Jose, California. Lund’s practice was situated in a one-story building with clay roof tiles that housed several dental offices. The interior was a little dated, but not dingy. The waiting room was small and the decor minimal: some plants and photos, no fish. Lund was a good-looking middle-aged guy with arched eyebrows, round glasses, and graying hair that framed a youthful face. He was charming, chatty, and upbeat. At the time, Mitchell and Lund both owned Chevrolet Chevelles, and they bonded over their mutual love of classic cars.

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Lund extracted the wisdom tooth with no complications, and Mitchell began seeing him regularly. He never had any pain or new complaints, but Lund encouraged many additional treatments nonetheless. A typical person might get one or two root canals in a lifetime. In the space of seven years, Lund gave Mitchell nine root canals and just as many crowns. Mitchell’s insurance covered only a small portion of each procedure, so he paid a total of about $50,000 out of pocket. The number and cost of the treatments did not trouble him. He had no idea that it was unusual to undergo so many root canals—he thought they were just as common as fillings. The payments were spread out over a relatively long period of time. And he trusted Lund completely. He figured that if he needed the treatments, then he might as well get them before things grew worse.

Meanwhile, another of Lund’s patients was going through a similar experience. Joyce Cordi, a businesswoman in her 50s, had learned of Lund through 1-800-DENTIST. She remembers the service giving him an excellent rating. When she visited Lund for the first time, in 1999, she had never had so much as a cavity. To the best of her knowledge her teeth were perfectly healthy, although she’d had a small dental bridge installed to fix a rare congenital anomaly (she was born with one tooth trapped inside another and had had them extracted). Within a year, Lund was questioning the resilience of her bridge and telling her she needed root canals and crowns.

Cordi was somewhat perplexed. Why the sudden need for so many procedures after decades of good dental health? When she expressed uncertainty, she says, Lund always had an answer ready. The cavity on this tooth was in the wrong position to treat with a typical filling, he told her on one occasion. Her gums were receding, which had resulted in tooth decay, he explained during another visit. Clearly she had been grinding her teeth. And, after all, she was getting older. As a doctor’s daughter, Cordi had been raised with an especially respectful view of medical professionals. Lund was insistent, so she agreed to the procedures. Over the course of a decade, Lund gave Cordi 10 root canals and 10 crowns. He also chiseled out her bridge, replacing it with two new ones that left a conspicuous gap in her front teeth. Altogether, the work cost her about $70,000.

In early 2012, Lund retired. Brendon Zeidler, a young dentist looking to expand his business, bought Lund’s practice and assumed responsibility for his patients. Within a few months, Zeidler began to suspect that something was amiss. Financial records indicated that Lund had been spectacularly successful, but Zeidler was making only 10 to 25 percent of Lund’s reported earnings each month. As Zeidler met more of Lund’s former patients, he noticed a disquieting trend: Many of them had undergone extensive dental work—a much larger proportion than he would have expected. When Zeidler told them, after routine exams or cleanings, that they didn’t need any additional procedures at that time, they tended to react with surprise and concern: Was he sure? Nothing at all? Had he checked thoroughly?

In the summer, Zeidler decided to take a closer look at Lund’s career. He gathered years’ worth of dental records and bills for Lund’s patients and began to scrutinize them, one by one. The process took him months to complete. What he uncovered was appalling.

We have a fraught relationship with dentists as authority figures. In casual conversation we often dismiss them as “not real doctors,” regarding them more as mechanics for the mouth. But that disdain is tempered by fear. For more than a century, dentistry has been half-jokingly compared to torture. Surveys suggest that up to 61 percent of people are apprehensive about seeing the dentist, perhaps 15 percent are so anxious that they avoid the dentist almost entirely, and a smaller percentage have a genuine phobia requiring psychiatric intervention.

When you’re in the dentist’s chair, the power imbalance between practitioner and patient becomes palpable. A masked figure looms over your recumbent body, wielding power tools and sharp metal instruments, doing things to your mouth you cannot see, asking you questions you cannot properly answer, and judging you all the while. The experience simultaneously invokes physical danger, emotional vulnerability, and mental limpness. A cavity or receding gum line can suddenly feel like a personal failure. When a dentist declares that there is a problem, that something must be done before it’s too late, who has the courage or expertise to disagree? When he points at spectral smudges on an X-ray, how are we to know what’s true? In other medical contexts, such as a visit to a general practitioner or a cardiologist, we are fairly accustomed to seeking a second opinion before agreeing to surgery or an expensive regimen of pills with harsh side effects. But in the dentist’s office—perhaps because we both dread dental procedures and belittle their medical significance—the impulse is to comply without much consideration, to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

The uneasy relationship between dentist and patient is further complicated by an unfortunate reality: Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation,” says Jane Gillette, a dentist in Bozeman, Montana, who works closely with the American Dental Association’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which was established in 2007. “We’re kind of behind the times, but increasingly we are trying to move the needle forward.”

Consider the maxim that everyone should visit the dentist twice a year for cleanings. We hear it so often, and from such a young age, that we’ve internalized it as truth. But this supposed commandment of oral health has no scientific grounding. Scholars have traced its origins to a few potential sources, including a toothpaste advertisement from the 1930s and an illustrated pamphlet from 1849 that follows the travails of a man with a severe toothache. Today, an increasing number of dentists acknowledge that adults with good oral hygiene need to see a dentist only once every 12 to 16 months.

Many standard dental treatments—to say nothing of all the recent innovations and cosmetic extravagances—are likewise not well substantiated by research. Many have never been tested in meticulous clinical trials. And the data that are available are not always reassuring.

The Cochrane organization, a highly respected arbiter of evidence-based medicine, has conducted systematic reviews of oral-health studies since 1999. In these reviews, researchers analyze the scientific literature on a particular dental intervention, focusing on the most rigorous and well-designed studies. In some cases, the findings clearly justify a given procedure. For example, dental sealants—liquid plastics painted onto the pits and grooves of teeth like nail polish—reduce tooth decay in children and have no known risks. (Despite this, they are not widely used, possibly because they are too simple and inexpensive to earn dentists much money.) But most of the Cochrane reviews reach one of two disheartening conclusions: Either the available evidence fails to confirm the purported benefits of a given dental intervention, or there is simply not enough research to say anything substantive one way or another.

Fluoridation of drinking water seems to help reduce tooth decay in children, but there is insufficient evidence that it does the same for adults. Some data suggest that regular flossing, in addition to brushing, mitigates gum disease, but there is only “weak, very unreliable” evidence that it combats plaque. As for common but invasive dental procedures, an increasing number of dentists question the tradition of prophylactic wisdom-teeth removal; often, the safer choice is to monitor unproblematic teeth for any worrying developments. Little medical evidence justifies the substitution of tooth-colored resins for typical metal amalgams to fill cavities. And what limited data we have don’t clearly indicate whether it’s better to repair a root-canaled tooth with a crown or a filling. When Cochrane researchers tried to determine whether faulty metal fillings should be repaired or replaced, they could not find a single study that met their standards.

“The body of evidence for dentistry is disappointing,” says Derek Richards, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. “Dentists tend to want to treat or intervene. They are more akin to surgeons than they are to physicians. We suffer a little from that. Everybody keeps fiddling with stuff, trying out the newest thing, but they don’t test them properly in a good-quality trial.”

The general dearth of rigorous research on dental interventions gives dentists even more leverage over their patients. Should a patient somehow muster the gumption to question an initial diagnosis and consult the scientific literature, she would probably not find much to help her. When we submit to a dentist’s examination, we are putting a great deal of trust in that dentist’s experience and intuition—and, of course, integrity.

When Zeidler purchased Lund’s practice, in February 2012, he inherited a massive collection of patients’ dental histories and bills, a mix of electronic documents, handwritten charts, and X‑rays. By August, Zeidler had decided that if anything could explain the alarmingly abundant dental work in the mouths of Lund’s patients, he would find it in those records. He spent every weekend for the next nine months examining the charts of hundreds of patients treated in the preceding five years. In a giant Excel spreadsheet, he logged every single procedure Lund had performed, so he could carry out some basic statistical analyses.

The numbers spoke for themselves. Year after year, Lund had performed certain procedures at extraordinarily high rates. Whereas a typical dentist might perform root canals on previously crowned teeth in only 3 to 7 percent of cases, Lund was performing them in 90 percent of cases. As Zeidler later alleged in court documents, Lund had performed invasive, costly, and seemingly unnecessary procedures on dozens and dozens of patients, some of whom he had been seeing for decades. Terry Mitchell and Joyce Cordi were far from alone. In fact, they had not even endured the worst of it.

Dental crowns were one of Lund’s most frequent treatments. A crown is a metal or ceramic cap that completely encases an injured or decayed tooth, which is first shaved to a peg so its new shell will fit. Crowns typically last 10 to 15 years. Lund not only gave his patients superfluous crowns; he also tended to replace them every five years—the minimum interval of time before insurance companies will cover the procedure again.

More than 50 of Lund’s patients also had ludicrously high numbers of root canals: 15, 20, 24. (A typical adult mouth has 32 teeth.) According to one lawsuit that has since been settled, a woman in her late 50s came to Lund with only 10 natural teeth; from 2003 to 2010, he gave her nine root canals and 12 crowns. The American Association of Endodontists claims that a root canal is a “quick, comfortable procedure” that is “very similar to a routine filling.” In truth, a root canal is a much more radical operation than a filling. It takes longer, can cause significant discomfort, and may require multiple trips to a dentist or specialist. It’s also much more costly.

[Read: Americans are going to Juarez for cheap dental care]

Root canals are typically used to treat infections of the pulp—the soft living core of a tooth. A dentist drills a hole through a tooth in order to access the root canals: long, narrow channels containing nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. The dentist then repeatedly twists skinny metal files in and out of the canals to scrape away all the living tissue, irrigates the canals with disinfectant, and packs them with a rubberlike material. The whole process usually takes one to two hours. Afterward, sometimes at a second visit, the dentist will strengthen the tooth with a filling or crown. In the rare case that infection returns, the patient must go through the whole ordeal again or consider more advanced surgery.

Zeidler noticed that nearly every time Lund gave someone a root canal, he also charged for an incision and drainage, known as an I&D. During an I&D, a dentist lances an abscess in the mouth and drains the exudate, all while the patient is awake. In some cases the dentist slips a small rubber tube into the wound, which continues to drain fluids and remains in place for a few days. I&Ds are not routine adjuncts to root canals. They should be used only to treat severe infections, which occur in a minority of cases. Yet they were extremely common in Lund’s practice. In 2009, for example, Lund billed his patients for 109 I&Ds. Zeidler asked many of those patients about the treatments, but none of them recalled what would almost certainly have been a memorable experience.

In addition to performing scores of seemingly unnecessary procedures that could result in chronic pain, medical complications, and further operations, Lund had apparently billed patients for treatments he had never administered. Zeidler was alarmed and distressed. “We go into this profession to care for patients,” he told me. “That is why we become doctors. To find, I felt, someone was doing the exact opposite of that—it was very hard, very hard to accept that someone was willing to do that.”

Zeidler knew what he had to do next. As a dental professional, he had certain ethical obligations. He needed to confront Lund directly and give him the chance to account for all the anomalies. Even more daunting, in the absence of a credible explanation, he would have to divulge his discoveries to the patients Lund had bequeathed to him. He would have to tell them that the man to whom they had entrusted their care—some of them for two decades—had apparently deceived them for his own profit.

Arsh Raziuddin

The idea of the dentist as potential charlatan has a long and rich history. In medieval Europe, barbers didn’t just trim hair and shave beards; they were also surgeons, performing a range of minor operations including bloodletting, the administration of enemas, and tooth extraction. Barber surgeons, and the more specialized “tooth drawers,” would wrench, smash, and knock teeth out of people’s mouths with an intimidating metal instrument called a dental key: Imagine a chimera of a hook, a hammer, and forceps. Sometimes the results were disastrous. In the 1700s, Thomas Berdmore, King George III’s “Operator for the Teeth,” described one woman who lost “a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighbouring molars” at the hands of a local barber.

Barber surgeons came to America as early as 1636. By the 18th century, dentistry was firmly established in the colonies as a trade akin to blacksmithing (Paul Revere was an early American craftsman of artisanal dentures). Itinerant dentists moved from town to town by carriage with carts of dreaded tools in tow, temporarily setting up shop in a tavern or town square. They yanked teeth or bored into them with hand drills, filling cavities with mercury, tin, gold, or molten lead. For anesthetic, they used arsenic, nutgalls, mustard seed, leeches. Mixed in with the honest tradesmen—who genuinely believed in the therapeutic power of bloodsucking worms—were swindlers who urged their customers to have numerous teeth removed in a single sitting or charged them extra to stuff their pitted molars with homemade gunk of dubious benefit.

In the mid-19th century, a pair of American dentists began to elevate their trade to the level of a profession. From 1839 to 1840, Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris established dentistry’s first college, scientific journal, and national association. Some historical accounts claim that Hayden and Harris approached the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine about adding dental instruction to the curriculum, only to be rebuffed by the resident physicians, who declared that dentistry was of little consequence. But no definitive proof of this encounter has ever surfaced.

Whatever happened, from that point on, “the professions of dentistry and medicine would develop along separate paths,” writes Mary Otto, a health journalist, in her recent book, Teeth. Becoming a practicing physician requires four years of medical school followed by a three-to-seven-year residency program, depending on the specialty. Dentists earn a degree in four years and, in most states, can immediately take the national board exams, get a license, and begin treating patients. (Some choose to continue training in a specialty, such as orthodontics or oral and maxillofacial surgery.) When physicians complete their residency, they typically work for a hospital, university, or large health-care organization with substantial oversight, strict ethical codes, and standardized treatment regimens. By contrast, about 80 percent of the nation’s 200,000 active dentists have individual practices, and although they are bound by a code of ethics, they typically don’t have the same level of oversight.

[Read: Why dentistry is separate from medicine]

Throughout history, many physicians have lamented the segregation of dentistry and medicine. Acting as though oral health is somehow divorced from one’s overall well-being is absurd; the two are inextricably linked. Oral bacteria and the toxins they produce can migrate through the bloodstream and airways, potentially damaging the heart and lungs. Poor oral health is associated with narrowing arteries, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and respiratory disease, possibly due to a complex interplay of oral microbes and the immune system. And some research suggests that gum disease can be an early sign of diabetes, indicating a relationship between sugar, oral bacteria, and chronic inflammation.

Dentistry’s academic and professional isolation has been especially detrimental to its own scientific inquiry. Most major medical associations around the world have long endorsed evidence-based medicine. The idea is to shift focus away from intuition, anecdote, and received wisdom, and toward the conclusions of rigorous clinical research. Although the phrase evidence-based medicine was coined in 1991, the concept began taking shape in the 1960s, if not earlier (some scholars trace its origins all the way back to the 17th century). In contrast, the dental community did not begin having similar conversations until the mid-1990s. There are dozens of journals and organizations devoted to evidence-based medicine, but only a handful devoted to evidence-based dentistry.

In the past decade, a small cohort of dentists has worked diligently to promote evidence-based dentistry, hosting workshops, publishing clinical-practice guidelines based on systematic reviews of research, and creating websites that curate useful resources. But its adoption “has been a relatively slow process,” as a 2016 commentary in the Contemporary Clinical Dentistry journal put it. Part of the problem is funding: Because dentistry is often sidelined from medicine at large, it simply does not receive as much money from the government and industry to tackle these issues. “At a recent conference, very few practitioners were even aware of the existence of evidence-based clinical guidelines,” says Elliot Abt, a professor of oral medicine at the University of Illinois. “You can publish a guideline in a journal, but passive dissemination of information is clearly not adequate for real change.”

Among other problems, dentistry’s struggle to embrace scientific inquiry has left dentists with considerable latitude to advise unnecessary procedures—whether intentionally or not. The standard euphemism for this proclivity is overtreatment. Favored procedures, many of which are elaborate and steeply priced, include root canals, the application of crowns and veneers, teeth whitening and filing, deep cleaning, gum grafts, fillings for “microcavities”—incipient lesions that do not require immediate treatment—and superfluous restorations and replacements, such as swapping old metal fillings for modern resin ones. Whereas medicine has made progress in reckoning with at least some of its own tendencies toward excessive and misguided treatment, dentistry is lagging behind. It remains “largely focused upon surgical procedures to treat the symptoms of disease,” Mary Otto writes. “America’s dental care system continues to reward those surgical procedures far more than it does prevention.”

“Excessive diagnosis and treatment are endemic,” says Jeffrey H. Camm, a dentist of more than 35 years who wryly described his peers’ penchant for “creative diagnosis” in a 2013 commentary published by the American Dental Association. “I don’t want to be damning. I think the majority of dentists are pretty good.” But many have “this attitude of ‘Oh, here’s a spot, I’ve got to do something.’ I’ve been contacted by all kinds of practitioners who are upset because patients come in and they already have three crowns, or 12 fillings, or another dentist told them that their 2-year-old child has several cavities and needs to be sedated for the procedure.”

Trish Walraven, who worked as a dental hygienist for 25 years and now manages a dental-software company with her husband in Texas, recalls many troubling cases: “We would see patients seeking a second opinion, and they had treatment plans telling them they need eight fillings in virgin teeth. We would look at X-rays and say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It was blatantly overtreatment—drilling into teeth that did not need it whatsoever.”

Studies that explicitly focus on overtreatment in dentistry are rare, but a recent field experiment provides some clues about its pervasiveness. A team of researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, asked a volunteer patient with three tiny, shallow cavities to visit 180 randomly selected dentists in Zurich. The Swiss Dental Guidelines state that such minor cavities do not require fillings; rather, the dentist should monitor the decay and encourage the patient to brush regularly, which can reverse the damage. Despite this, 50 of the 180 dentists suggested unnecessary treatment. Their recommendations were incongruous: Collectively, the overzealous dentists singled out 13 different teeth for drilling; each advised one to six fillings. Similarly, in an investigation for Reader’s Digest, the writer William Ecenbarger visited 50 dentists in 28 states in the U.S. and received prescriptions ranging from a single crown to a full-mouth reconstruction, with the price tag starting at about $500 and going up to nearly $30,000.

A multitude of factors has conspired to create both the opportunity and the motive for widespread overtreatment in dentistry. In addition to dentistry’s seclusion from the greater medical community, its traditional emphasis on procedure rather than prevention, and its lack of rigorous self-evaluation, there are economic explanations. The financial burden of entering the profession is high and rising. In the U.S., the average debt of a dental-school graduate is more than $200,000. And then there’s the expense of finding an office, buying new equipment, and hiring staff to set up a private practice. A dentist’s income is entirely dependent on the number and type of procedures he or she performs; a routine cleaning and examination earns only a baseline fee of about $200.

In parallel with the rising cost of dental school, the amount of tooth decay in many countries’ populations has declined dramatically over the past four decades, mostly thanks to the introduction of mass-produced fluoridated toothpaste in the 1950s and ’60s. In the 1980s, with fewer genuine problems to treat, some practitioners turned to the newly flourishing industry of cosmetic dentistry, promoting elective procedures such as bleaching, teeth filing and straightening, gum lifts, and veneers. It’s easy to see how dentists, hoping to buoy their income, would be tempted to recommend frequent exams and proactive treatments—a small filling here, a new crown there—even when waiting and watching would be better. It’s equally easy to imagine how that behavior might escalate.

“If I were to sum it up, I really think the majority of dentists are great. But for some reason we seem to drift toward this attitude of ‘I’ve got tools so I’ve got to fix something’ much too often,” says Jeffrey Camm. “Maybe it’s greed, or paying off debt, or maybe it’s someone’s training. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that even something that seems minor, like a filling, involves removal of a human body part. It just adds to the whole idea that you go to a physician feeling bad and you walk out feeling better, but you go to a dentist feeling good and you walk out feeling bad.”

Arsh Raziuddin

In the summer of 2013, Zeidler asked several other dentists to review Lund’s records. They all agreed with his conclusions. The likelihood that Lund’s patients genuinely needed that many treatments was extremely low. And there was no medical evidence to justify many of Lund’s decisions or to explain the phantom procedures. Zeidler confronted Lund about his discoveries in several face-to-face meetings. When I asked Zeidler how those meetings went, he offered a single sentence—“I decided shortly thereafter to take legal action”—and declined to comment further. (Repeated attempts were made to contact Lund and his lawyer for this story, but neither responded.)

One by one, Zeidler began to write, call, or sit down with patients who had previously been in Lund’s care, explaining what he had uncovered. They were shocked and angry. Lund had been charismatic and professional. They had assumed that his diagnoses and treatments were meant to keep them healthy. Isn’t that what doctors do? “It makes you feel like you have been violated,” Terry Mitchell says—“somebody performing stuff on your body that doesn’t need to be done.” Joyce Cordi recalls a “moment of absolute fury” when she first learned of Lund’s deceit. On top of all the needless operations, “there were all kinds of drains and things that I paid for and the insurance company paid for that never happened,” she says. “But you can’t read the dentalese.”

“A lot of them felt, How can I be so stupid? Or Why didn’t I go elsewhere?” Zeidler says. “But this is not about intellect. It’s about betrayal of trust.”

In October 2013, Zeidler sued Lund for misrepresenting his practice and breaching their contract. In the lawsuit, Zeidler and his lawyers argued that Lund’s reported practice income of $729,000 to $988,000 a year was “a result of fraudulent billing activity, billing for treatment that was unnecessary and billing for treatment which was never performed.” The suit was settled for a confidential amount. From 2014 to 2017, 10 of Lund’s former patients, including Mitchell and Cordi, sued him for a mix of fraud, deceit, battery, financial elder abuse, and dental malpractice. They collectively reached a nearly $3 million settlement, paid out by Lund’s insurance company. (Lund did not admit to any wrongdoing.)

Lund was arrested in May 2016 and released on $250,000 bail. The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office is prosecuting a criminal case against him based on 26 counts of insurance fraud. At the time of his arraignment, he said he was innocent of all charges. The Dental Board of California is seeking to revoke or suspend Lund’s license, which is currently inactive.

Many of Lund’s former patients worry about their future health. A root canal is not a permanent fix. It requires maintenance and, in the long run, may need to be replaced with a dental implant. One of Mitchell’s root canals has already failed: The tooth fractured, and an infection developed. He said that in order to treat the infection, the tooth was extracted and he underwent a multistage procedure involving a bone graft and months of healing before an implant and a crown were fixed in place. “I don’t know how much these root canals are going to cost me down the line,” Mitchell says. “Six thousand dollars a pop for an implant—it adds up pretty quick.”

Joyce Cordi’s new dentist says her X‑rays resemble those of someone who had reconstructive facial surgery following a car crash. Because Lund installed her new dental bridges improperly, one of her teeth is continually damaged by everyday chewing. “It hurts like hell,” she says. She has to wear a mouth guard every night.

What some of Lund’s former patients regret most are the psychological repercussions of his alleged duplicity: the erosion of the covenant between practitioner and patient, the germ of doubt that infects the mind. “You lose your trust,” Mitchell says. “You become cynical. I have become more that way, and I don’t like it.”

“He damaged the trust I need to have in the people who take care of me,” Cordi says. “He damaged my trust in mankind. That’s an unforgivable crime.”

This article appears in the May 2019 print edition with the headline “The Trouble With Dentistry.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

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Working with Microsoft Access inside your Smaller Business

Most companies are familiar with what is usually accomplished in Microsoft Word and Excel, but understanding what Microsoft Access can do is often a bit tougher to grasp. The idea of creating databases and attempting to preserve them appears like an unnecessary use of resources; however, for compact organizations, this system can provide a number of distinct positive aspects, especially in terms of managing growth and organization. It gives a considerably more robust way for small firms to track information and projects than Excel or Word. Access may take much more time to study than the more frequently used Microsoft apps, but it also has by far the most worth added for tracking projects, budgets, and development. All of the information essential to run a tiny business for comparison and analyses is maintained in a single system, making it less complicated to run reports and charts than in most other applications. Microsoft provides many templates to simplify the understanding method, and customers can customize the templates as they go. Understanding the fundamentals of Microsoft Access can help modest businesses see its complete value in their day-to-day operations. Bonus: If you're already using a spreadsheet, it is actually simple to convert your Excel spreadsheet to an Access database.

Preserving Buyer Details Business Christmas cards makes it possible for a organization to track all needed info for every client or buyer, including addresses, order information and facts, invoices, and payments. As long as the database is stored on a network where all employees can access and update it, the information and facts can keep existing. Because client facts is crucial to every single tiny organization, the database can (and need to) be secured. Adding types to the database aids tiny enterprises make sure that staff enter information consistently. As customers develop into acquainted with the system, additional elaborate elements is often added, for example mapping to client addresses. This lets employees confirm addresses for new consumers or plan routes for deliveries. Additionally, it allows corporations to create invoices, send emails and frequent mail, and track when and how invoices were paid. Updating and storing customer data in Access is additional trustworthy than a spreadsheet or Word document, and streamlines managing that information. Tracking Financial Information Several organizations obtain application particularly for tracking finances, but to get a tiny company, it may be overkill; moreover, it tends to create extra work. Not only can invoices be created and tracked in an Access database, but all business costs and transactions might be recorded, also. For companies that have the full Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook and Access, payment reminders in Outlook may be linked to the database. When the reminder pops up, customers could make the required payments, enter the information in Access, then close out the reminder. It may be essential to obtain additional sophisticated software program as the business grows, and these firms have an advantage if all of their financial information is stored in Access. Many other applications can accommodate data exported from Access, making it much easier to migrate information when the time comes. Managing Promoting and Sales One of the least used but most powerful techniques of using Access is usually to monitor advertising and sales info. With current client facts currently stored within the database, it can be uncomplicated to send emails, flyers, coupons, and common mail to those who could possibly be considering sales or unique presents. Smaller enterprises can then track how lots of of their current clientele respond following marketing campaigns. For new consumers, entire campaigns could be designed and monitored from a single location. This makes it much easier for personnel to determine what has currently been completed, what remains to be done, and what follow-ups are needed.

Tracking Production and Inventory Similar to client tracking, information tracking on inventory, resources, as well as the stock is important for any business. Access makes it straightforward to enter data on shipments to warehouses and to know when it can be time for you to order far more of a specific product. This is particularly crucial for manufacturers who call for a number of different resources to finish a solution, for instance airplane parts or pharmaceutical components. Even service industries must preserve inventory, and having all of that information and facts in a single spot makes it easier to find out which personal computer is assigned to which employee or identify when workplace equipment must be upgraded. Whether or not tracking cars, mobile devices, serial numbers, registration facts, user logs, or hardware lifespans, small organizations are capable to track their hardware additional simply in Access. Beyond hardware, enterprises must be able to track software program. From registration as well as the number of computer systems allowed to utilize the software to version facts and user, firms need to have the ability to quickly and accurately pull facts on their existing configurations. Operating Reports and Analyses Maybe the most effective aspect of Access is definitely the user’s ability to generate reports and charts from all the data. The capability to compile almost everything stored in the unique databases is what makes Microsoft Access a powerhouse for little businesses. A user can rapidly produce a report that compares charges of sources against current pricing, generate a chart that illustrates just how much is in stock for an upcoming marketing and advertising campaign, or run an analysis identifying which clientele are behind on payments. Using a little added understanding about queries, modest corporations can take handle of how they view data. A lot more significant, Microsoft Access might be tied into other Microsoft products. Compact businesses can critique a report, appear up client data, and generate invoices in Word. A mail merge can build regular-mail letters whilst the user simultaneously generates an e mail in Outlook. Information could be exported to Excel to get a more in-depth look at particulars and, from there, be sent to PowerPoint for a presentation. Integration with all the other Microsoft products is maybe the top purpose to make use of Access to centralize all of a business’s data.

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Confronting the Realities of Sexual Harassment in Education and Edtech

When I was 24, I entered into my third year of teaching. I was bright-eyed, optimistic, and excited to start out a new role that combined administration with teaching middle-school math. I felt in control of my career and my job. But about six months in, an awkward encounter left me wondering whether that sense of control was indeed as real as I thought it to be.

While closing up my classroom one afternoon, the father of a student casually strolled up to me. I turned to greet him, assuming he had a question about his son’s performance in my class. But instead of asking me anything of that nature, he said:

“You know, Ms. Madda, those heels you’re wearing today are really sexy. Some of the other fathers and I were talking about it earlier. You should wear them more often. We’d love that.”

Up until that point, I had never dealt with something of that nature in a professional setting, something so overt, something that made me feel like an object rather than a professional. And the worst part? Every time I looked at his son in my classroom from then on, I was reminded of that incident.

As a young educator, I was unsure of what to do. I was scared to bring the matter to our administration—this father was on the school board. I didn’t tell other teachers about it, perhaps out of shame. One thing is for sure, however—it was the last time I ever wore those shoes to work.

And now, having watched the #MeToo movement unfold over the past year within the arts community, I find myself asking, “Is the education industry really all that different?”

Let the record show—the education world is no stranger to sexual harassment. In 2013, Ariel Norling, then an entrepreneur with an edtech startup, experienced sexual assault at the annual June ISTE conference. In 2014, she came forward to share her story.

...when issues of sexual harassment and sexism go ignored, what does our silence communicate to our children?

But since then, the education and edtech reporting worlds have been largely quiet on matters of sexual harassment and assault. That is, until last week—when KIPP, arguably the largest charter school system in the United States, announced that it had fired co-founder Mike Feinberg, citing that “credible evidence was found of [sexual] conduct that is incompatible with the mission and values of KIPP.”

Will the Feinberg episode set off a chain reaction in the education world, much like what has rocked the Hollywood elites? Maybe. After all, the education space bears the unmatched and sacred responsibility of educating children and young people—the very future of this country.

Here’s what I do know: Sexual harassment and assault doesn’t just happen in one or two education spaces. Here is a sampling of what those encounters look like, told from the perspective of six women interviewed from all corners of the industry—from K-12 districts to startups to higher education.

From the Grandiose...

For some women (and undoubtedly some men and non-binary folks, as well), the issues are relatively upfront and center—and leave them without many options.

Take Joanna*, a woman who worked for one of the largest education publishing organizations in the United States. As someone who traveled to conferences frequently, Joanna found herself one night in a compromising situation, in which a senior vice president approached her while intoxicated. While attempting to review some business matters with him, Joanna reports that he strayed off topic, and began to make comments such as referring to a colleague of hers as a “f*cking c*nt.” What made her most uncomfortable, however, was when she began to get up to leave, to which he responded, “Come back here and give us a snuggle.” She did not oblige.

Following that encounter, Joanna reports that communication between her and the VP became harsh: “There was no way to ever get him to understand me.” When she mentioned it to human resources, she noticed that more and more complaints were being submitted to HR from this VP about her behavior. And the eventual result? “I was fired, without severance, but never had any reviews of my behavior shared with me by human resources. I have no idea why it happened,” she reports.

Harassment does not solely relate to unwanted, sexual advances, however. In a similar vein, Lupita* was recently fired by her most recent employer, a higher education institution—a place where she was once told by her director, “You know what will help us raise money? If you wear short skirts or a low-cut shirt to our fundraising meetings.” But according to her, that was only part of what drove her to sue the university for discrimination.

As both a career woman and a mother, Lupita was familiar with the concept of work-life balance. She originally thought her employer was, too—until she started to pick up on discriminatory behavior from her director toward working mothers:

“As soon as we started hiring additional employees… I noticed him making comments about applicants like ‘I don’t think she’d be good because she’ll have to leave to pick up her kid from school.’ Or, in regards to one applicant, he said. ‘I don’t really see any red flags, but she’s transitioning back to the work after being a stay-at-home mom for six years’—even though [this applicant] was named the state’s online teacher of the year while simultaneously homeschooling her children.”

Lupita decided to bring up these negative comments about mothers with her director, but in response, he claimed that she had misunderstood him. And immediately after she raised her concerns, he organized a “mediation” with the university’s Title 9 representative—or so Lupita thought. As it turns out, when she showed up to the meeting, it was one of the university’s human resource representatives—who served her a pink slip.

...if harassment isn’t addressed, can we be comfortable knowing that these practices may, in fact, be “educating” our next generations to engage in the same behaviors?

...to the “Micro”

Joanna’s and Lupita’s stories occupy a part of the #MeToo movement that stand out as upfront harassment practices—but what about smaller grievances, like sexist comments that demonstrate intolerance?

Amongst the ensuing reactions from Hollywood during the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Matt Damon took the approach of, “That’s criminal behavior and it needs to be dealt with that way. The other stuff is just kind of shameful and gross... I just think that we have to start delineating between what these behaviors are.” Several actresses, including Alyssa Milano and Minnie Driver, responded by asking Damon to recognize that micro behaviors are the first steps to macro issues. Milano compared his statement to claiming that stage 1 cancer deserves less attention than stage 4 cancer.

Sexual harassment, misconduct, assault and violence is a systemic disease. The tumor is being cut out right now with no anesthesia. Please send flowers. #MeToo

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) December 16, 2017

Beth Rabbitt, CEO of edtech nonprofit, The Learning Accelerator, takes a stance similar that smaller sexist acts lead to larger issues, describing it like this: “I’ve experienced a lot of discriminatory, misogynistic behaviors over a long time. I have not been overtly assaulted or harassed by anyone in the ed or tech space. Specifically, [but] like so many straws that broke the camel’s back, the many moments add up to a lot.”

For Rabbitt, sexism varies in the ways it’s either purposely or inadvertently applied. She remembers back to 2014, when an organization she worked for invited only their male employees to a special networking event. This year, she listened on as a conversation next to her ensued between men in the edtech startup space, speaking about how to pick up women to sleep with at a conference.

For females moving into predominantly male-run district technology offices, breaking into the “old boys” club can be quite a challenge. Both Melissa Emler, a longtime educator in Wisconsin, and Giselle*, a high-ranking tech administrator in her public school district, join Rabbitt in her frustrations around having to prove oneself and demonstrate competency as a female employee.

Emler, for example, will never forget the slow chipping away of her confidence early in her career. “It was rough trying to work with my boss because I could tell he was threatened... I started to prepare for board meetings by scouring the board agenda, figuring out where he would throw me under the bus.”

Giselle, who is the first female in a technical leadership position in her district, describes how her male colleagues called her “girlie” and “missy” behind her back, and more:

“It’s frustrating when I ask my colleagues multiple times to send emails with technical questions to me. They respond, ‘Well, you’re going to get all sorts of technical emails that you don’t understand,’” as if questioning why I was hired for my job in the first place.”

It should be not ignored, however, that sexist and harassing acts aren’t solely being conducted by men—women are doing their part, as well. Back when she worked for a small edtech startup, Alexis* was one of the few females employees who worked in a technical role. Upon returning to the office after a work trip, she found that a colleague—which she later found out was her manager, a female—had written "For a good time, call Alexis" on the sign on her computer monitor where Alexis had left her emergency contact information.

“It was really unnerving,” Alexis admits, “I assumed that one of the male engineers I managed had written it to publicly embarrass and undermine me. Even though it ended up being a female colleague, my confidence took a huge hit. It was right in front of everyone."

Rabbitt, who has seen similar issues in her line of work, says that “the discrimination starts early” and “as women, we become inured to it—the roles we get to play and how we get to play them becomes assumed in our identities.”

Combatting Sexism and Harassment in Education: What’s At Stake

For every Alexis, Joanna, Lupita, Giselle, Melissa, and Beth out there, it’s not always clear what to do and how to react in these situations—and how to ensure that these behaviors don’t bleed down to the point where students become the targets. Simultaneously, for men who hope to do what they can to combat these behaviors in their colleagues, there are certain actions that might be more helpful than others.

Perhaps the right place to begin is by shedding light on the issue. After all, parents are demonstrating their willingness to be vocal when their children’s safety is at stake. Last month, the group Stop Sexual Assault in Schools, founded by Joel Levin and Esther Warkov, created a spin-off of #MeToo entitled #MeTooK12. According to The Washington Post, “the new hashtag is an effort to highlight sexual harassment and assault at K-12 schools.” For Levin and Warkov, a personal experience led to their efforts: Levin and Warkov hope that shedding light on the issue will ensure that districts and school take more purposeful steps to prevent these issues.

Why is it important that we address sexism and sexual harassment the education industry—and, particularly, in schools and universities? A sense of ethics or morality is high on the list. The education world is designed to be in service of children and young adults. And if harassment isn’t addressed, can we be comfortable knowing that these practices may, in fact, be “educating” our next generations to engage in the same behaviors? Levin and Warkov are doing their part to ensure that schools remain safe places to learn. But when issues of sexual harassment and sexism go ignored, what does our silence communicate to our children?

To this day, I wonder if my old sixth-grade student ever learned what his father said to me, a teacher, a professional. To this day, I wonder how that young boy is growing up—and if, someday, he’ll say those same things to someone he works with.

*These names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the interviewees, at their request. 

Confronting the Realities of Sexual Harassment in Education and Edtech published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness