The bombers detonated their devices outside a hall where people were watching a football match on TV.
from BBC News - Africa https://bbc.in/31ELnXO
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Monday, June 17, 2019
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Teaching artificial intelligence to connect senses like vision and touch
In Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s book "Blind Assassins," she says that “touch comes before sight, before speech. It’s the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
While our sense of touch gives us a channel to feel the physical world, our eyes help us immediately understand the full picture of these tactile signals.
Robots that have been programmed to see or feel can’t use these signals quite as interchangeably. To better bridge this sensory gap, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have come up with a predictive artificial intelligence (AI) that can learn to see by touching, and learn to feel by seeing.
The team’s system can create realistic tactile signals from visual inputs, and predict which object and what part is being touched directly from those tactile inputs. They used a KUKA robot arm with a special tactile sensor called GelSight, designed by another group at MIT.
Using a simple web camera, the team recorded nearly 200 objects, such as tools, household products, fabrics, and more, being touched more than 12,000 times. Breaking those 12,000 video clips down into static frames, the team compiled “VisGel,” a dataset of more than 3 million visual/tactile-paired images.
“By looking at the scene, our model can imagine the feeling of touching a flat surface or a sharp edge”, says Yunzhu Li, CSAIL PhD student and lead author on a new paper about the system. “By blindly touching around, our model can predict the interaction with the environment purely from tactile feelings. Bringing these two senses together could empower the robot and reduce the data we might need for tasks involving manipulating and grasping objects.”
Recent work to equip robots with more human-like physical senses, such as MIT’s 2016 project using deep learning to visually indicate sounds, or a model that predicts objects’ responses to physical forces, both use large datasets that aren’t available for understanding interactions between vision and touch.
The team’s technique gets around this by using the VisGel dataset, and something called generative adversarial networks (GANs).
GANs use visual or tactile images to generate images in the other modality. They work by using a “generator” and a “discriminator” that compete with each other, where the generator aims to create real-looking images to fool the discriminator. Every time the discriminator “catches” the generator, it has to expose the internal reasoning for the decision, which allows the generator to repeatedly improve itself.
Vision to touch
Humans can infer how an object feels just by seeing it. To better give machines this power, the system first had to locate the position of the touch, and then deduce information about the shape and feel of the region.
The reference images — without any robot-object interaction — helped the system encode details about the objects and the environment. Then, when the robot arm was operating, the model could simply compare the current frame with its reference image, and easily identify the location and scale of the touch.
This might look something like feeding the system an image of a computer mouse, and then “seeing” the area where the model predicts the object should be touched for pickup — which could vastly help machines plan safer and more efficient actions.
Touch to vision
For touch to vision, the aim was for the model to produce a visual image based on tactile data. The model analyzed a tactile image, and then figured out the shape and material of the contact position. It then looked back to the reference image to “hallucinate” the interaction.
For example, if during testing the model was fed tactile data on a shoe, it could produce an image of where that shoe was most likely to be touched.
This type of ability could be helpful for accomplishing tasks in cases where there’s no visual data, like when a light is off, or if a person is blindly reaching into a box or unknown area.
Looking ahead
The current dataset only has examples of interactions in a controlled environment. The team hopes to improve this by collecting data in more unstructured areas, or by using a new MIT-designed tactile glove, to better increase the size and diversity of the dataset.
There are still details that can be tricky to infer from switching modes, like telling the color of an object by just touching it, or telling how soft a sofa is without actually pressing on it. The researchers say this could be improved by creating more robust models for uncertainty, to expand the distribution of possible outcomes.
In the future, this type of model could help with a more harmonious relationship between vision and robotics, especially for object recognition, grasping, better scene understanding, and helping with seamless human-robot integration in an assistive or manufacturing setting.
“This is the first method that can convincingly translate between visual and touch signals”, says Andrew Owens, a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. “Methods like this have the potential to be very useful for robotics, where you need to answer questions like ‘is this object hard or soft?’, or ‘if I lift this mug by its handle, how good will my grip be?’ This is a very challenging problem, since the signals are so different, and this model has demonstrated great capability.”
Li wrote the paper alongside MIT professors Russ Tedrake and Antonio Torralba, and MIT postdoc Jun-Yan Zhu. It will be presented next week at The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Long Beach, California.
from MIT News http://bit.ly/2IkwgLz
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A droplet walks into an electric field …
When a raindrop falls through a thundercloud, it is subject to strong electric fields that pull and tug on the droplet, like a soap bubble in the wind. If the electric field is strong enough, it can cause the droplet to burst apart, creating a fine, electrified mist.
Scientists began taking notice of how droplets behave in electric fields in the early 1900s, amid concerns over lightning strikes that were damaging newly erected power lines. They soon realized that the power lines’ own electric fields were causing raindrops to burst around them, providing a conductive path for lightning to strike. This revelation led engineers to design thicker coverings around power lines to limit lightning strikes.
Today, scientists understand that the stronger the electric field, the more likely it is that a droplet within it will burst. But, calculating the exact field strength that will burst a particular droplet has always been an involved mathematical task.
Now, MIT researchers have found that the conditions for which a droplet bursts in an electric field all boil down to one simple formula, which the team has derived for the first time.
With this simple new equation, the researchers can predict the exact strength an electric field should be to burst a droplet or keep it stable. The formula applies to three cases previously analyzed separately: a droplet pinned on a surface, sliding on a surface, or free-floating in the air.
Their results, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, may help engineers tune the electric field or the size of droplets for a range of applications that depend on electrifying droplets. These include technologies for air or water purification, space propulsion, and molecular analysis.
“Before our result, engineers and scientists had to perform computationally intensive simulations to assess the stability of an electrified droplet,” says lead author Justin Beroz, a graduate student in MIT’s departments of Mechanical Engineering and Physics. “With our equation, one can predict this behavior immediately, with a simple paper-and-pencil calculation. This is of great practical benefit to engineers working with, or trying to design, any system that involves liquids and electricity.”
Beroz’ co-authors are A. John Hart, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and John Bush, professor of mathematics.
“Something unexpectedly simple”
Droplets tend to form as perfect little spheres due to surface tension, the cohesive force that binds water molecules at a droplet’s surface and pulls the molecules inward. The droplet may distort from its spherical shape in the presence of other forces, such as the force from an electric field. While surface tension acts to hold a droplet together, the electric field acts as an opposing force, pulling outward on the droplet as charge builds on its surface.
“At some point, if the electric field is strong enough, the droplet can’t find a shape that balances the electrical force, and at that point, it becomes unstable and bursts,” Beroz explains.
He and his team were interested in the moment just before bursting, when the droplet has been distorted to its critically stable shape. The team set up an experiment in which they slowly dispensed water droplets onto a metal plate that was electrified to produce an electric field, and used a high-speed camera to record the distorted shapes of each droplet.
“The experiment is really boring at first — you’re watching the droplet slowly change shape, and then all of a sudden it just bursts,” Beroz says.
After experimenting on droplets of different sizes and under various electric field strengths, Beroz isolated the video frame just before each droplet burst, then outlined its critically stable shape and calculated several parameters such as the droplet’s volume, height, and radius. He plotted the data from each droplet and found, to his surprise, that they all fell along an unmistakably straight line.
“From a theoretical point of view, it was an unexpectedly simple result given the mathematical complexity of the problem,” Beroz says. “It suggested that there might be an overlooked, yet simple, way to calculate the burst criterion for the droplets.”
A water droplet, subject to an electric field of slowly increasing strength, suddenly bursts by emitting a fine, electrified mist from its apex.
Volume above height
Physicists have long known that a liquid droplet in an electric field can be represented by a set of coupled nonlinear differential equations. These equations, however, are incredibly difficult to solve. To find a solution requires determining the configuration of the electric field, the shape of the droplet, and the pressure inside the droplet, simultaneously.
“This is commonly the case in physics: It’s easy to write down the governing equations but very hard to actually solve them,” Beroz says. “But for the droplets, it turns out that if you choose a particular combination of physical parameters to define the problem from the start, a solution can be derived in a few lines. Otherwise, it’s impossible.”
Physicists who attempted to solve these equations in the past did so by factoring in, among other parameters, a droplet’s height — an easy and natural choice for characterizing a droplet’s shape. But Beroz made a different choice, reframing the equations in terms of a droplet’s volume rather than its height. This was the key insight for reformulating the problem into an easy-to-solve formula.
“For the last 100 years, the convention was to choose height,” Beroz says. “But as a droplet deforms, its height changes, and therefore the mathematical complexity of the problem is inherent in the height. On the other hand, a droplet’s volume remains fixed regardless of how it deforms in the electric field.”
By formulating the equations using only parameters that are “fixed” in the same sense as a droplet’s volume, “the complicated, unsolvable parts of the equation cancel out, leaving a simple equation that matches the experimental results,” Beroz says.
Specifically, the new formula the team derived relates five parameters: a droplet’s surface tension, radius, volume, electric field strength, and the electric permittivity of the air surrounding the droplet. Plugging any four of these parameters into the formula will calculate the fifth.
Beroz says engineers can use the formula to develop techniques such as electrospraying, which involves the bursting of a droplet maintained at the orifice of an electrified nozzle to produce a fine spray. Electrospraying is commonly used to aerosolize biomolecules from a solution, so that they can pass through a spectrometer for detailed analysis. The technique is also used to produce thrust and propel satellites in space.
“If you’re designing a system that involves liquids and electricity, it’s very practical to have an equation like this, that you can use every day,” Beroz says.
This research was funded in part by the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, BAE Systems, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering via MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the National Science Foundation, and a Department of Defense National Defence Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.
from MIT News http://bit.ly/2KVsoSY
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Meek Mill wins lawsuit over leaked audio featured in upcoming #FreeMeekMill documentary
A prominent Philadelphia lawyer lost his lawsuit against Amazon and Roc Nation over an alleged illegal recording of comments he made about his client, who just so happens to be the judge at the center of rapper Meek Mill’s probation violation case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh dismissed attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr.’s actions against producers of a forthcoming documentary series titled #FreeMeek, alleging they violated the Pennsylvania and Federal Wiretap Acts. Peruto was also seeking the return of the audio files, but the federal judge shot him down, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
The case stems from the #FreeMeek project, which chronicles the hip-hop star’s rise to fame and his 10-year battle with the Philadelphia justice system. Peruto represented Judge Genece Brinkley, who infamously sent Meek Mill to prison on multiple occasions for probation violations. For that reason, the filmmakers interviewed Peruto in May 2018, during which he made statements about the issue that he believed were off the record and not being recording.
“That was hard to do because defending this judge is now becoming – why doesn’t she just grant this f*cking thing?,” he allegedly states. The camera had been turned off but the audio was still recording, and Peruto reportedly never makes clear to the interviewers that what he’s about to say is off the record.
READ MORE: Prince Harry celebrate his first official Father’s Day
In his ruling, Judge McHugh notes how Peruto thanks the defendants and gestures to remove his mic. He then says, “Let me tell you something,” and the camera turns off. The audio, however, continues to record, according to McHugh, and that’s when the attorney makes the colorful statement about his client.
The audio was eventually leaked to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
READ MORE: OJ Simpson joins Twitter and says he has a ‘little gettin’ even to do
Peruto sued Amazon, Roc Nation and others in September over claims that they recorded him without his knowledge. He argued that he made an off-the-record disclaimer before making the statement about Genece but that it was edited out. Judge McHugh wasn’t buying it, and dismissed the case at the summary judgment phase last week.
“Mr. Peruto spoke freely in front of a room full of individuals, some of whom he did not know, in the presence of recording equipment,” McHugh said. “Peruto knew the recording devices had just been recording, yet he began disparaging his client before he even had time to fully remove his microphone.”
As for Peruto’s allegation that the defendants violated the Pennsylvania and Federal Wiretap Acts, the judge wrote that both laws require a speaker to have “a reasonable expectation of privacy” during an oral communication in order to support accusations of violations.
The post Meek Mill wins lawsuit over leaked audio featured in upcoming #FreeMeekMill documentary appeared first on theGrio.
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OJ Simpson joins Twitter and says he has a ‘little gettin’ even to do’
LOS ANGELES (AP) — O.J. Simpson launched a Twitter account with a video post in which the former football star said he’s got a “little gettin’ even to do.”
Simpson confirmed the new account to the Associated Press on Saturday, saying in a phone interview while on a Las Vegas golf course that it “will be a lot of fun.”
“I’ve got some things to straighten out,” he said.
He did not elaborate before he said he had to go and ended the call.
Simpson has generally kept a low profile since his release from prison in October 2017 for robbery and kidnapping over an attempt to steal back some of his sports memorabilia from a Las Vegas hotel room.
READ MORE: Jennifer Lopez admits she doesn’t ‘really count’ two of her previous marriages
In the Twitter video, Simpson said his followers would get to read all his thoughts and opinions on “just about everything.”
“Now, there’s a lot of fake O.J. accounts out there,” he said, adding that this one would be official. He appeared to record the message himself and ended it with a grin.
— OJ Simpson (@The_OJSimpson32) June 15, 2019
The 71-year-old recently told the AP he was happy and healthy living in Las Vegas 25 years after the killings of his ex-wife and her friend. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death on the night of June 12, 1994.
Simpson was ultimately acquitted of the crime after a televised trial that riveted the nation and raised thorny issues of racism, police misconduct, celebrity and domestic violence.
READ MORE: ‘Orange Is the New Black’ star Lorraine Toussaint splits from husband
Relatives of the two victims have expressed disgust that Simpson is able to live the way he does. Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million for the wrongful deaths of the two victims, but most of the judgment has not been paid.
Simpson has continued to declare his innocence in the two slayings. The murder case is officially listed as unsolved.
Killer? You got the wrong guy….. only crime I was convicted of was tryin to get my shit back! https://t.co/MauBg9M7gh
— OJ Simpson (@The_OJSimpson32) June 16, 2019
In his recent interview , Simpson told the AP that neither he nor his children want to talk about the killings ever again.
“My family and I have moved on to what we call the ‘no negative zone.’ We focus on the positives,” he said.
The post OJ Simpson joins Twitter and says he has a ‘little gettin’ even to do’ appeared first on theGrio.
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‘Orange Is the New Black’ star Lorraine Toussaint splits from husband
“Orange Is the New Black” actress Lorraine Toussaint is putting the full stop on her marriage of nearly two years.
On Thursday, the Trinidadian-American actress and producer filed for divorce from husband Michael Tomlinson in Los Angeles, TMZ reports. According to the court docs, they tied the knot on June 25, 2017, and have no minor children together, although there are reports that they share a teen daughter, Samara.
The star of NBC’s The Village previously shared in an interview that she wants to teach Samara “to be an independent, awesome, strong-minded young woman.”
She also explained to The HuffPost that “I want to teach my daughter — not with my words, but with my being — how to be in her body.”
The 59-year-old is asking the court to award her spousal support, and to block support to her estranged husband.
READ MORE: The Marathon Continues: Nipsey Hussle to be honored at 2019 BET Awards
While Toussaint has been racking up television credits for years, her break out role came with inmate Yvonne “Vee” Parker on season 2 on the hit Netflix show, ‘OITNB.’ The role earned her a Critics’ Choice Television Award For Best Supporting Actress In A Drama and a SAG Award For Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble In A Comedy Series.
Her television credits also include Law & Order, Ugly Betty and Friday Night Lights. More recently she has starred in the hit wed comedy Grace and Frankie (2018), the AMC series Into The Badlands (2018-2019) and The Village (2019).
Toussaint has joked that she has two husbands, as it has been erroneously written for years that she was married to “Micah Zane.”
READ MORE:Jennifer Lopez admits she doesn’t ‘really count’ two of her previous marriages
During an April interview on Live with Kelly and Ryan, Lorraine spoke about her “Internet husband.”
“I have a real husband and an Internet husband. My Internet husband is Micah Zane. I’ve been married to Micah Zane for many, many years now,” she said. “When I take Micah Zane off the Internet, he comes back on. My real husband is Michael Tomlinson.”
When asked why folks believe Zane is her husband, Toussaint explained, “Because everyone writes that. It’s on the Internet that I’m married to Micah Zane… I actually call my real husband Micah Zane sometimes.”
The post ‘Orange Is the New Black’ star Lorraine Toussaint splits from husband appeared first on theGrio.
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Jennifer Lopez admits she doesn’t ‘really count’ two of her previous marriages
Jennifer Lopez is known for being a triple threat– singer, actor and dancer– but many have long been fascinated by her love life and multiple marriages.
The Bronx-born diva is currently on the road for her 50th birthday tour, and in a new behind-the-scenes mini documentary, Lopez opens up about her love life and forthcoming wedding to Alex Rodriguez — while taking shots at her first two marriages.
The former MLB star proposed to JLo. in March, after more than two years together. He was previously married to Cynthia Scurtis from 2002-08, and they share two daughters Natasha and Ella. Rodriguez will be Lopez’s fourth husband, and she hopes they tie the knot “soon but next year,” she says, PEOPLE reports.
“I’d like a big wedding, I’d like to get married in a church this time. Never been married in a church,” she admits.
READ MORE: REVIEW: Anthony Anderson, Uzo Aduba and Khalil Everage shine bright in ‘BEATS’
Lopez was previously married to Ojani Noa from 1997-98 and Cris Judd from 2001-03, but she doesn’t recognize them because the romance with each was short lived.
“I’ve been married three times: once was nine months and once was 11 months. So I don’t really count those.”
Lopez was also married to Latin singer Marc Anthony from 2004-14, with whom she shares 11-year-old twins Max and Emme.
“I was married to Marc for 10 years with the kids. I was very young the first two times I tried to get married. I’m saying tried to get married,” she added, laughing.
Lopez, who famously dated Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Ben Affleck, admits she got married for all the wrong reasons when she was young and coming up in the entertainment business.
“It seems like in this life you’re always surrounded by people so you’re never lonely but it’s very lonely. So you always want somebody with you,” she said. “So I felt like if I got married then I would always have somebody but that’s not how life works. That’s not how it goes, a bad reason to get married. Not the right one, the wrong one.”
Jenny from the Block believes “The right one is when you find somebody who makes you better.”
A. Rod, meanwhile, recently gushed about his lady-love on Twitter, giving her props for “all the hard work” she has put into the tour, and noting how he’s having a blast watching Lopez bring her vision to life.
5 shows down, many more to go! Continue to be in awe of @JLo for all the hard work she put into this tour and bringing her vision to life. Having so much fun watching you do what you love. Proud of you, baby! ❤️ #JLOItsMyParty #ItsMyParty pic.twitter.com/Pl6RLtT7cN
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) June 15, 2019
The couple has reportedly started planning for their big day, and a source tells PEOPLE, they may opt for “a small family celebration that will, of course, include all four kids.”
The post Jennifer Lopez admits she doesn’t ‘really count’ two of her previous marriages appeared first on theGrio.
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Kofi Siriboe explains how his heavy ‘Queen Sugar’ storyline caused him to crash
The American Black Film Festival went down in Miami this week and one of the sexiest celebs at the festival was Queen Sugar star, Kofi Siriboe.
TheGrio sat down with the actor who is currently starring on Season 4 of the hit OWN series to find out how he’s dealing with the rough road his character, Ralph Angel, is on.
In case you’re not all caught up, the biggest hardship facing Ralph Angel is the fact that this doting dad recently learned the son he has dedicated his life to raising is not biologically his.
When we asked him how playing the role of this devastated dad affects his own mental health, Kofi Siriboe was candid about how paying attention to his own emotions was a lesson he had to learn the hard way.
“To be honest, sometimes it’s blurry. The lines definitely get blurred because I care so much,” he says about the weight of his character’s storyline. “It’s more about us than it is abut me. I feel like that’s why God put me in this position.”
While he may have four seasons of the series created by Ava DuVernay under his belt, the actor admits he struggled at first.
“At the beginning of this journey, I was oblivious to the weight that I was carrying which kind of made me crash. Once I realized how much was being channeled through me, even just as the vessel, I realized you have to take care of the vessel. What’s a Ferrari with no gas? It’s just going to sit there. It can’t go anywhere,” he explains.
Kofi Siriboe, Rutina Wesley, and Dawn-Lyen Gardner discuss pain & healing of ‘Queen Sugar’
“It has been an education process to learn how to really take care of myself and learning how to pray for the expansion. We can only do so much with our intellect. I didn’t get here by being smart or being intellectual. I was fully on a spiritual journey. I was brought here. I can’t use intellect or my human resources to sustain me. There’s something bigger happening. It’s about clearing enough space and it’s about blocking out the noise to tune in to that.”
“There’s a lack of safe spaces for us to reveal our trauma and transform and talk about what we’ve been through and just get to a place of peace. I feel like if there were more spaces that were curated for us and if we had more access to resources you wouldn’t feel the need to internalize everything and live with that weight and that baggage. The few of us who have the privilege and platform and the resources to share access to those spaces, I challenge us to do that,” he said ahead of the Season 4 premiere.
Anthony Anderson, Marsai Martin, Omari Hardwick and more stars takeover Miami for ABFF
“I believe that is what Ava is doing with Queen Sugar. It’s a safe space that we even get to sit here and talk about these things and broadcast it to our communities and hopefully find healing through that. So I just think we need more space the safe spaces that are specific to us. The more we create the space for it the more the more room there is for expansion.”
The post Kofi Siriboe explains how his heavy ‘Queen Sugar’ storyline caused him to crash appeared first on theGrio.
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What a Cliche!: The 5 Most Overused Resume Phrases
Just because something sounds good, doesn’t mean you should put it on your resume. A million other people probably have used the same phrase time and time again in their cover letter and during their interview. In today’s competitive job market, your resume needs to be innovative, unique, and eye-catching. This can’t be accomplished by using the same tired phrases that recruiters and hiring managers see and hear just about every day. Career strategist Jodi Brockington, founder & president of Niara Consulting talks about the most overused resume phrases and how we can put them to rest for ultimate job seeking success.
5 Most Overused Resume Phrases
‘I’m a team player’
This phrase is used far too often because job seekers know that every employer wants a team player. However, it’s best to demonstrate how you’ve been a team player rather than just saying that you are one. “‘Team player’ can also be misleading because it can suggest that you are a follower rather than a leader,” Brockington says. Consider phrases like “played various roles,” “worked with multiple departments,” “thrived in diverse work environments,” or “handled a variety of tasks.”
“The team player thing is kind of played out,” she adds.
‘I have extensive experience in…’
People love to use this phrase, whether they’ve been working for 10 days or 10 years. Extensive is a very vague word that doesn’t tell an employer much about the actual experience you have, Brockington says. “[Extensive experience] can imply that you’ve been stagnant or that you’re older.” There was a time when this phrase was more acceptable because employers sought out individuals who had been doing the same thing for a long time. “Nowadays people are looking to hire that ‘master of many,'” Brockington says. Employers are more impressed by job seekers who have advanced and have multiple areas of expertise.
More specific phrases such as “five years progressive experience in project management and staff leadership” are a better option.
‘I’m a multitasker’
The fact that you can surf the Web while talking on the phone doesn’t make you a multitasker. In addition, multi-tasking isn’t necessarily a good trait if it isn’t done effectively. Brockington says that if not used in the proper context, “multitasker” can lead employers to believe that you aren’t detail-oriented or able to pay adequate attention to specific tasks.
It may be better to include that you are “able to prioritize and efficiently manage multiple assignments” rather than just saying that you’re a multi-tasker.
‘I am entrepreneurial-minded’
This word can be particularly damaging if it’s not something that the position calls for. Most job seekers refer to themselves as “entrepreneurial” in order to show independence and leadership skills. However, the term often implies that you “lack work experience or want to do things your own way,” Brockington says.
She suggests that a better approach would be to highlight your skills in strategic planning, leadership, understanding corporate vision and culture, risk-taking, and out-of-the-box thinking.
‘I work well in a fast-paced environment’
It’s not very likely that an employer will refer to their company as slow-paced. So, it really isn’t necessary to indicate that you can “work in a fast-paced environment.” The term is too general and doesn’t tell the employer about the specific settings in which you’re most experienced, Brockington says.
She suggests that you provide more valuable phrases that talk about competency and completion of tasks such as “implement key time-management skills in high-demand settings” or “able to exceed company expectations by prioritizing tasks and completing assignments ahead of schedule.”
While these phrases might be cliche, Brockington says they can work for or against a job seeker. While there are no set rules on what phrases should and should not be used, it’s important to research the company and the role to see what might work and what should be avoided. Whenever possible, stay away from generic and general terms and always quantify or quality your experience with specific numbers and tangible evidence of your accomplishments.
-Editors’ Note: This article has been updated from its original publish date in 2012
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