text stringlengths 199 648k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1
value | url stringlengths 14 419 | file_path stringlengths 139 140 | language stringclasses 1
value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 50 235k | score float64 2.52 5.34 | int_score int64 3 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Size: 32.6" x 20" (blank border included) — 2.7 Feet Wide.
Media: Fine Art Canvas.
Splendid fine art giclée reproduction of the magnificent chromolithograph printed directly on the artist’s canvas of the exquisite and beautiful artwork created by Kurz and Allison.
Fine Art Giclée Reproduction.
Masterfully printed on Fine Art artist canvas, which has an acid-free archival-quality base with a neutral pH. Crafted using archival-quality inks.
Enhanced Coating Protection.
Our Canvas Prints are protected with a complimentary clear professional coating against UV light, incidental water contact and atmospheric contaminants. To allow for professional stretching and framing, a blank border of approximately 1½ to 2 inches surrounds the image.
Major General George B. McClellan (Union); General Robert E. Lee (Confederate).
Description of the Artwork/Battle.
Battle of Antietam is also known as Battle of Sharpsburg. On September 16, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan confronted Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland. At dawn September 17, Hooker’s corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee’s left flank that began the single bloodiest day in American military history. In spite of crippling casualties, Lee continued to skirmish with McClellan throughout the 18th, while removing his wounded south of the river. McClellan did not renew the assaults. After dark, Lee ordered the battered Army of Northern Virginia to withdraw across the Potomac into the Shenandoah Valley. Result: Inconclusive (Union strategic victory).
Artist and/or Printmaker.
Founded in 1885, Kurz & Allison is well known for its production of commemorative prints of American historical scenes using the chromolithograph printing process. Drawn in a broad, graphic style that developed from Kurz’s background as a muralist, these prints have a striking appearance that makes them not only interesting historical images but also excellent decorative prints. The Kurz and Allison works of art are highly stylized with bright, dramatic colors. | <urn:uuid:3c341c5b-0722-4009-9e61-c75edcf83bc8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://argusprints.ecrater.com/p/7924832/antietam-sharpsburg-battle-civil-war | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00085-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923193 | 451 | 2.78125 | 3 |
SARS is, by all appearances, under control in Singapore. The Asia Research Institute and the Faculty of Science have each held workshops considering the disease and its consequences. A number of researchers at NUS are now trying to understand the disease in all its aspects. As news reports suggest, controlling the disease and dealing with its effects has been quite costly – not to mention the significant cost in human life.
In April 2003 I began working with a small team of researchers here at NUS that had been organized by the WHO. We worked to understand how the communicable disease spread in Singapore so that, should the disease break out again, intervention can be as swift and as effective as possible. Even if SARS does not return, the possibility of another outbreak of a communicable disease is real.
SARS has been spread directly person-to-person in Singapore. Social contact has been critical. Yet while the disease sometimes spread by the most fleeting contact, in other cases, more extended contact did not result in transmission. We need to sort through quite a lot of information to sort out the reasons for the transmission and non-transmission of the disease.
As part of that effort of simplifying the available data to gain a better understanding, I worked on visualizing the information on the spread of the disease. Two preliminary examples of our graphs are below. These communicate the diffusion of the disease over time and the sources of infection. The horizontal dimension to the graph is time.
These are, of course, rough copies meant for informal use. Of course, there is much more that can be visualized but these two communicate the basics.
This figure shows the uneven pace of diffusion through the end of April
This fugure shows how the cases were transmitted bwteeen persons. Many of the cases can be traced back to a single source.
Back to Stephen Appold's home page. | <urn:uuid:d8a5d628-8278-47fc-924c-8f4cf8e4ffdb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unc.edu/~appolds/SARS/sarsovr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964027 | 383 | 2.734375 | 3 |
RALEIGH, N.C. – It is called a brother’s war, and nowhere was that more true than in North Carolina. The American Civil War claimed more lives than any military engagement undertaken by this country. North Carolina lost at least 35,000 soldiers, more than any other Southern state, and great hardships were suffered by those both at war and left at home.
In observance of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War (1861-1865), the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (www.ncculture.com) has organized the Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory: Civil War Sesquicentennial Photography Exhibit to travel the state from April 1, 2011, through spring 2013 as part of its commemoration (www.nccivilwar150.com).
Visitors will see well-known Confederate generals, women who served as Confederate spies, re-enactment images of soldiers and battles, and more. The battlefield, homefront, African Americans and women all are reflected in the exhibit. A notebook accompanying the exhibit will offer sketches of the generals, of African Americans fleeing bondage, a woman whose home became a hospital, and other glimpses of lives from that turbulent time.
The tour will visit 49 public libraries and was organized through the State Library of North Carolina (http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/index.html), a division of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory also will tour at the Mountain Gateway Museum in Old Fort, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras and the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.
Images were gathered from divisions within Cultural Resources, including four document images and 10 pictures from the State Archives (www.archives.ncdcr.gov), five images from the N.C. Museum of History (www.nchistorymuseum.com) and five images from Civil War-related State Historic Sites (www.nchistoricsites.org).
For information on the tour visit www.nccivilwar150.com or call (919) 807-7389. The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. Information on Cultural Resources is available 24/7 at www.ncculture.com.
Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff. H-Net reproduces announcements that have been submitted to us as a
free service to the academic community. If you are interested in an announcement
listed here, please contact the organizers or patrons directly. Though we strive
to provide accurate information, H-Net cannot accept responsibility for the text of
announcements appearing in this service. (Administration) | <urn:uuid:a123536d-3d86-4b86-bf4e-660f413a3fbf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=182534 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923075 | 595 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Explore the lattice and vector structure of this crystal.
Go on a vector walk and determine which points on the walk are
closest to the origin.
The article provides a summary of the elementary ideas about vectors usually met in school mathematics, describes what vectors are and how to add, subtract and multiply them by scalars and indicates. . . .
Explore the meaning behind the algebra and geometry of matrices
with these 10 individual problems. | <urn:uuid:cf190f36-b2eb-4f68-8d51-c92e6aa96464> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nrich.maths.org/public/leg.php?code=-147&cl=4&cldcmpid=6574 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.863652 | 92 | 3.296875 | 3 |
"Pierre wants to buy a new mountain bike that costs $999. This summer, he earned $476 mowing lawns. This winter he has already earned $201 shoveling snow. How much money has he earned so far this year?" Five winter-themed addition word problems.
"Tracy collects forty-eight icicles for her science class. They are twenty-five inches long on average. What is the total length of the icicles Tracy collects?" Five winter-themed multiplication word problems.
"Bob's class is cutting out paper snowflakes to decorate the classroom. If each child cuts out two snowflakes, how many do five children cut? Six children? Seven children?" Five winter-themed word problems with skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.
"Rebecca is going skiing with her family. It is a seventy-mile drive to the mountain where they ski. They have driven forty miles so far. How far is it to the mountain now?" Five winter-themed subtraction word problems.
"Bob and his friends are baking cookies for a school fundraiser. They baked eight hundred thirty-two cookies. However, they ate sixty-nine of them. How many cookies are left?" Five winter-themed subtraction word problems.
"There are fourteen boys in Mark’s chess club. For Thanksgiving they participate in a food drive. They visit 70 houses and collect a total of 210 cans of food. How many cans of food did they collect per house, on average?" Five Thanksgiving-themed division problems. | <urn:uuid:1702fa41-620a-4eb3-b035-9e53f2651ae9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.abcteach.com/directory/subjects-math-problem-solving-642-3-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958941 | 320 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Take a sneak peek at the new NIST.gov and let us know what you think!
(Please note: some content may not be complete on the beta site.).
SI Units: Mass
The kilogram is the SI base unit of mass and is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram, a platinum-iridium standard that is kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). The primary standard of mass for this country is United States Prototype Kilogram 20, which is a platinum-iridium cylinder kept at NIST.
The kilogram, originally defined as the mass of one cubic decimeter of water at the temperature of maximum density, was known as the Kilogram of the Archives. It was replaced after the International Metric Convention in 1875 by the International Prototype Kilogram which became the unit of mass without reference to the mass of a cubic decimeter of water or to the Kilogram of the Archives. Each country that subscribed to the International Metric Convention was assigned one or more copies of the international standards; these are known as National Prototype Meters and Kilograms. Learn more about the history and current definition of the kilogram.
Among the SI base units, the kilogram (kg) is the only one whose name and symbol, for historical reasons, include a prefix. “Kilo” the SI prefix for 1000 or 103. Names and symbols for decimal multiples and submultiples of the unit of mass are formed by attaching prefix names to the unit name “gram,” and prefix symbols to the unit symbol “g.” Learn more about this historical quirk.
FAQ – What is the difference between the terms “mass” and “weight”?
The mass of a body is a measure of its inertial property or how much matter it contains. The weight of a body is a measure of the force exerted on it by gravity or the force needed to support it. Gravity on earth gives a body a downward acceleration of about 9.8 m/s2. In common parlance, weight is often used as a synonym for mass in weights and measures. For instance, the verb “to weigh” means “to determine the mass of” or “to have a mass of.” The incorrect use of weight in place of mass should be phased out, and the term mass used when mass is meant. The SI unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In science and technology, the weight of a body in a particular reference frame is defined as the force that gives the body an acceleration equal to the local acceleration of free fall in that reference frame. Thus, the SI unit of the quantity weight defined in this way (force) is the newton (N).
Related LinksPrefixesSI Base UnitsBecoming Familiar with SIEveryday EstimationMetric in SportsWriting with SI (Metric) UnitsCooking ResourcesThe SI Unit of Mass (Metrologia Vol. 14 No. 6, 2003)Redefinition of the KilogramNIST Watt Balance - YouTube VideoThe Name "Kilogram": a Historical Quirk (BIPM) | <urn:uuid:3b1aa837-d0c3-4d24-8ce5-d40d6ff22e09> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/mass.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906215 | 656 | 4.09375 | 4 |
What Happens to Your Driving When You're Buzzed or High?
Here is a simple fact: No one can drive safely after drinking alcohol or taking other drugs. Even legal medications you get from your doctor can affect the way you drive. Remember, you need hands, eyes, and feet to control the car, and your brain to control the way you drive. If your brain is affected by drugs, you aren't alert enough to make decisions that could save your life or others' lives. Even a small amount of alcohol or an over-the-counter (OTC) drug can make you and unsafe driver.
Here's the deal:
- Alcohol is a depressant that affects vision, coordination, reaction time, and judgment.
- Marijuana and other hallucinogens hurt your depth perception, attention span, concentration, reaction time, and muscle strength.
- Stimulant drugs, such as methamphetamine or cocaine, may increase alertness, but not in a good way. Stimulants make you more hostile and aggressive on the road. Cocaine can cause you to have blurry vision and to see and hear things that aren't there.
- And mixing drugs makes their effects even stronger. Now imagine trying to drive safely after using any of these drugs—it would be impossible.
In a nutshell, this how alcohol and drugs affect driving. They:
- Slow brain functions so you can't react quickly enough in a dangerous situation;
- Reduce the ability to judge how fast you are moving or your distance from other cars, people, or objects;
- Give you false confidence, which makes you think you're driving better than you actually are;
- Reduce your ability to focus on the road and multitask, such as looking straight ahead while using your peripheral vision to watch for pedestrians; and
- Make you feel sleepy or tired.
So if you have taken any substances that would mess up your ability to drive, don't drive! Stop yourself. Stop a friend. Don't drink or use drugs and drive. | <urn:uuid:30500261-c7fa-422c-8903-f01578e7d824> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.courtinfo.ca.gov/stopteendui/teens/facts/what-happens-to-your-ability-to-drive.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953603 | 414 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Your assignment is to use this monologue to create a video presentation that we can post on the blog. Be as creative as you like. Post it to YouTube and email the link to firstname.lastname@example.org.
A Mary Worth Monologue
To quote a wise person, “Kindness is my true religion.” But when I look back on my past I know my compulsion to help others is more than that… You know, it’s fascinating how our experiences shape who we are in so many ways! Something happened in my past! Something I’ve never forgotten! I have a story to tell you! It’s really not out of the ordinary to look back sometimes! We’re all in the same boat, really! I’m not alone when I say that something happened in my childhood that shaped who I am today! I usually don’t speak about my past, because I like to live in the present! But you asked where I get my compulsion to help others, so I’ll tell you a story! You know, I wasn’t always as you see me today! Remember, things are not always what they seem! I went through a difficult time as a child, before my mother remarried and circumstances improved! My father was out of the picture early on! This forced my mother to look for work, and left me to fend for myself! I was a child of a broken home who had no one to properly take care of me! My mother did her best! Unfortunately, it often wasn’t enough! Whose to say why things happen the way they do? We grow in character because we struggle. We learn and overcome. I used to go to sleep without dinner. Hungry for food… for love… most of all, for a feeling of self worth! Later on, things improved! But not before I went to bed hungry for more nights than a child should have to bear! There were times in my childhood, when I felt unloved, and unworthy! It wasn’t only due to the lack of food or money, either! [My mother] wasn’t a consistent presence in those days! Still, I hoped things would change! It’s been said, “Suffering produces endurance… and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Luckily, I had my friend, Cathy. She didn’t care that my clothes were more than a little worn. We played as kids do. We used to talk and laugh and delight in the insignificant. Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things. Sometimes we didn’t talk. Friendship needs no words. Despite having a friend, the feeling of being lowly and unworthy persisted. I tried to pretend I was the same as other kids, but at home I faced cold hard reality. There’s more to my story. As I said before, something happened that was a turning point for me. It raised me up. Made me feel differently about myself. As I was saying, when I was with my friend Cathy, she made me feel better as friends often do. With her I felt like a normal little girl, instead of a neglected child in a broken home. At my house it was a different story. Having her as a friend almost made the long days and nights more bearable. Almost. Sometimes I visited Cathy’s house. Her parents were kind people. One time, I was quiet and seated at their dinner table. When Cathy’s mother started to say grace, I was unsure, so I followed the others’ example. Then something happened that would change my life forever! Cathy’s mother concluded saying grace, “And let us give thanks for having Mary here… who is always welcome at our home for dinner.” As the child of a broken home, I took note of myself. And of a higher power in that one instance. Over the years, circumstances improved… especially after my mother remarried. But that one incident stands out in my mind because I felt something shift inside. One act of kindness made me feel differently about myself. It’s hard to explain it, Toby. Lao-Tse said, “Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love.” Because of Cathy and because of what Cathy’s mother said, “And let us give thanks for having Mary here, who is always welcome at our house for dinner,” I am who I am today! I help others and I am able to care! That incident made me feel that I am worthy of receiving and ultimately… giving! It’s amazing how a simple act can be transforming. Harold Kushner said, “When you are kind to others, it not only changes you. It changes the world.” What seems unimportant today may take on greater meaning tomorrow. We affect each other in ways that are not always obvious. Children especially are sensitive to things said and done. The simplest word, the smallest deed can have an effect! It’s never too late to have an effect in someone’s life. I was profoundly affected by the kindness of strangers! Someone reached out to me when I needed it most! And now I reach out to others! It’s a privilege to help others as I’ve been helped!… In any way I can… whether it’s advising someone… or inviting a lonely soul to my place for dinner. I’ve gone through hardship, and instead of becoming bitter and angry about it, I’ve taken the high road. It’s called perspective. It comes with experience! Instead of ignoring my past, I look back at the things I truly am grateful for. Like my friend Cathy and her family. They were a Godsend. And they weren’t the only ones! But that’s a story for another day. Lyndon B. Johnson said, “We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.” Looking back makes me feel nostalgic. That’s why I try not to do it too often. I hope I answered your question about what compels me to help others. | <urn:uuid:9d3f5aa1-065c-4efa-83eb-b7ef62aa433f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://maryworthandme.blogspot.com/2008/04/mary-worth-161.html?showComment=1208194140000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972551 | 1,311 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Its not about developing the neurons or axons. here is an excerpt from this site http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27954/
"Conduction velocity in myelinated fibers is proportional to the diameter, while in unmyelinated fibers it is proportional to the square root of the diameter. Thus, differences in energy and space requirements between the two types of fiber are exaggerated at higher conduction velocities. If nerves were not myelinated and equivalent conduction velocities were maintained, the human spinal cord would need to be as large as a good-sized tree trunk. Myelin, then, facilitates conduction while conserving space and energy ."
It isn't just in motor control.
"In the CNS, the structures of myelin are formed by the oligodendroglial cell . This has many similarities but also points of difference with respect to myelination in the PNS. CNS nerve fibers are not separated by connective tissue, nor are they surrounded by cell cytoplasm, and specific glial nuclei are not obviously associated with particular myelinated fibers. CNS myelin is a spiral structure similar to PNS myelin; it has an inner mesaxon and an outer mesaxon that ends in a loop, or tongue, of glial cytoplasm (Fig. 4-3). Unlike the peripheral nerve, where the sheath is surrounded by Schwann cell cytoplasm, the cytoplasmic tongue in the CNS is restricted to a small portion of the sheath. This glial tongue is continuous with the plasma membrane of the oligodendroglial cell through slender processes. One glial cell can myelinate 40 or more separate axons ."
The myelin doesn't just thicken in wraps layers
"Before myelination, the axon lies in an invagination of the Schwann cell (Fig. 4-10A). The plasmalemma of the cell then surrounds the axon and joins to form a double-membrane structure that communicates with the cell surface. This structure, called the mesaxon, elongates around the axon in a spiral fashion (Fig. 4-10). Thus, formation of myelin topologically resembles rolling up a sleeping bag; the mesaxon winds about the axon, and the cytoplasmic surfaces condense into a compact myelin sheath and form the major dense line. The two external surfaces form the myelin intraperiod line."
Here is a little slide show by the guy who wrote the talent code.http://thetalentcode.com/myelin/
Honestly myelin help neuron and axon circuits fire faster and more precisely. How could this not have anything to do with psychic talent? | <urn:uuid:d229988e-17c8-4963-bd1e-c4edb7b7507a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php?topic=19873.0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929959 | 582 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Free printable music sheets Amazing Grace - see the new solo arrangement for late elementary, as well as the primo and secondo piano duet arrangement. Download Christian songs for your beginning and early intermediate students!
This melody needs no introduction... it is popular with church-goers and non-church-goers alike. Amazing Grace is one of the most beautiful and uplifting hymns in the western world.
A recent movie, "Amazing Grace," tells the almost unknown story of how one Englishman, William Wilberforce, forced Parliament and the whole British nation to really SEE the horror of the slave trade. Until Wilberforce, slavery had been common at all times, in all places, and in all cultures.
Here is the new easy piano solo arrangement of this most famous of Christian tunes:
Yes, the timing is doubled. I'm predicting your students will have no problem at all with this time signature.
The harmonies and melody contrive to help elementary players play the whole tune without having to lift their hands.
And here's the solo for beginners, or piano primo if you make a duet out of this piece. Again, I have doubled the timing for young students so they don't have to count eighth notes:
Below is Amazing Grace with notes made easy to read, for reluctant note readers. All those skips are a bit discouraging for new students:
You can treat this music like note-naming worksheets.
Look down the page for a piano secondo to play with the melody above... This secondo uses single bass notes in the left hand and broken chords and chord inversions in the right hand.
But you can help your student MAKE THEIR OWN SECONDO PART, just looking at the chord symbols on the Primo part, and counting to 6! They are surely familiar with the 4 beats that each whole note requires, the 2 beats of each half note, and the 1 beat for quarter notes. So they can play solid chords and HOLD them for the required number of counts, or play broken chords. As with Greensleeves, playing Left Hand-Right Hand broken chords, fingers 5-3-1, 1-3-5, works out perfectly for Amazing Grace, and is beautiful as well! Win-win!
For the most part, the hands "take turns," rendering this secondo duet part easier to play than it looks. (Yes, it is written in 3/4 time, and the primo is written in 6/4 time, but this hasn't been a problem for my students... a kid who is advanced enough to play this part is reading 8th notes, while the beginner on the Primo won't be counting them for some time...)
As is the case with most Middle C position songs, have the top part go up an octave higher to accomodate the Secondo.
Download Amazing Grace secondo for piano
The only tricky spot in the secondo comes in the last two measures, where students (with your help) will have to devise a fingering that will work for them.
I have intentionally not put fingering in, because students with smaller hands might prefer to cross over, while those with larger hands will probably want to replace fingers and stretch down to the "e" on beat 1 of the last measure.
The words "how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me," can touch all hearts in times of despair or in times of gratefulness. It tells the message of God's grace freely extended to all.
The man who penned the words, John Newton, had been an Atlantic Sea slave trader, and knew that he was indeed the worst of wretches!
Bagpipes... perhaps the most inspiring way to hear Amazing Grace:
Enjoy these Christian songs free download!
Music has such power to move the heart... do you have a story or a question about this music? | <urn:uuid:95c39bae-e4a4-4b9c-9eef-13571a9f0150> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.music-for-music-teachers.com/free-printable-music-sheets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948406 | 806 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Anyone who’s ever made his or her own beer knows that fermentation produces energy. So it was just a matter of time before someone decided to harness that energy and put it to good use.
Engineers at Purdue University have developed a tiny medical pump that simply needs yeast (everyday baker’s yeast will do), sugar, water, and the heat from a person’s body in order to function. No electricity is required. When the yeast eats the sugar, it produces carbon dioxide gas (you might call them "yeast farts") and this powers the micropump, whose purpose is to pump drugs into the body.
As the researchers point out, yeast has a long shelf life, even under extreme conditions of varying temperatures and humidity levels. And, since the length of fermentation can be easily controlled over a specified amount of time, so can the allocation of drugs. In addition, the microorganism technique could help make pumps less bulky since they wouldn’t require batteries.
Considering how far back the origins of fermentation date, this is quite an ancient fix to a modern problem—so it’s probably making a lot of other engineers and designers ask why they didn’t think of it first. | <urn:uuid:c6e013c3-b4eb-4808-856a-dac2ba62961f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680594/powering-medical-devices-with-nothing-but-the-bodys-heat-and-yeast-farts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947503 | 252 | 3.625 | 4 |
Ever since spotting a split in the Pine Island Glacier this past October, NASA scientists have been keeping a close eye on things, waiting to see if during this Antarctic summer, a large piece of ice would break apart. So far, the ice has held together, and may continue to do so through the southern winter. The crack, which scientists believe first appeared in early October, has an average width of 240 feet, but is 820 feet at its widest. The icy canyon ranges between 165 and 190 feet deep. NASA scientists believe that the ice shelf is 1,640 feet thick, most of which is below the waters of the Amundsen Sea. The Pine Island Glacier has calved significant icebergs twice since 2000, once in 2001 and again in 2007.
Below, recent Pictures of the Day: | <urn:uuid:3995fde6-b650-41b9-95ae-02964ad3ef99> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/picture-of-the-day-close-up-view-of-a-giant-split-in-the-antarctic-ice/253886/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966591 | 161 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The leading French composer of the nineteenth century, and a great conductor
, music writer, and orchestrator
. He was successor to Beethoven
as high priest of the Romantic
style. All his works are passionate
and personal, though in his own lifetime they were not appreciated enough.
His single best-known work is the Symphonie fantastique of 1830, when he had fallen in love with the Irish actor Harriet Smithson, having seen her as Ophelia and thus also discovered one of his other great loves, Shakespeare; and when he had finally won the Prix de Rome, the prize by which young composers were allowed to live and work in Rome.
His greatest opera is the epic Les Troyens, based on the Aeneid; others are Benvenuto Cellini and Beatrice and Benedict. His standalone overtures, such as Les Francs-juges, Roman Carnival, Rob Roy, Waverley, and King Lear are also very popular.
He wrote a Requiem, a Te Deum, choral works L'Enfance du Christ and La Damnation de Faust, and the extraordinary Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale (to commemorate the July Revolution). These show his characteristic full use of lots of brass, and plentiful work for choirs.
Other works include the viola concerto Harold in Italy, based on Byron, and written for Paganini, who had given Berlioz a generous sum to free him to compose, but who however at first rejected the concerto as too difficult. Another symphony with vocals was Romeo and Juliet; Lélio was a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique; and he wrote a song cycle called Nuits d'été.
He expanded the orchestra that Beethoven used, and the modern assemblage is sometimes known as the Berlioz orchestra. I'm no musician so for technical details I'll quote a to-me incomprehensible passage from Grove:
Though Berlioz's compositional style has long been considered idiosyncratic, it can be seen to rely on an abundance of both technique and inspiration. Typical are expansive melodies of irregular phrase length, sometimes with a slight chromatic inflection, and expressive though not tonally adventurous harmonies. Freely contrapuntal textures predominate, used to a variety of fine effects including superimposition of separate themes; a striking boldness in rhythmic articulation gives the music much of its vitality.
Louis-Hector Berlioz was born in Côte-Saint-André in the Isère
on 11 December 1803. His father destined him for medicine, which he studied for a short time, but he resisted his parents and preferred his musical studies. He went to the Conservatoire
in 1826 and entered for the Prix de Rome four times. After winning it he returned to Paris in 1832.
Although he had fallen in love with Harriet Smithson seeing her on stage, it was only now that he met her. They married in October 1833: it was not alas a happy marriage, despite the romantic beginning; they separated in 1842 and she died, mentally unbalanced, in 1854. This enabled him to marry his partner, the singer Marie Recio. She died in 1862, his and Harriet's son Louis died in 1867, and Berlioz died in Paris on 8 March 1869.
Much of his life and his attitudes to music are documented in his eminently readable Memoirs. He also wrote a treatise on instrumentation. Because his music was not popular, a lot of his income came from journalism, and he was a champion of a number of other great musicians. He travelled widely in his conducting duties, from England to Hungary to Russia. He was enthusiastic for literature: the influence of Shakespeare, Virgil, Byron, and Scott is very evident. | <urn:uuid:ed54ff39-90f3-439c-9ce9-624d4e9f9095> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://everything2.com/user/Gritchka/writeups/Hector+Berlioz | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982202 | 803 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Homer’s The Odyssey Book One Study Questions
1. Who is the “me”? Who is telling this story?
2. What did the shipmates do to bring on the wrath of the gods?
3. Who is Atlas’s daughter who helps Odysseus (and also holds Odysseus captive)?
4. What part of the “hero’s journey” is Odysseus in at this point in the story? Why?
5. What is Poseidon’s grudge against Odysseus?
6. Why does Athena tell Odysseus’s son, Telemachus to go on a journey?
7. Why was Telemachus bothered that a visitor had been kept waiting?
8. What is the news Athena (disguised as Mentes) tells Telemachus and why is it important?
9. Explain Telemachus’s conflict.
10. Why is it important that Telemachus go on his own journey? What is Athena hoping that the journey will do for his character? | <urn:uuid:f08cc816-b03c-4405-9045-3e8c272bb2e0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kingsford.org/khsweb/staff/Sutton/The%20Odyssey%20Book%20One%20Study%20Questions.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945194 | 232 | 3.53125 | 4 |
An order of canons, known as Augustinians because they followed the so-called Rule of Saint Augustine, was formed in the 11th and 12th centuries. This order consisted of the clergy of some cathedrals and collegiate churches who lived a monastic life and took religious vows but whose duties were clerical. They wore a black habit and a white surplice.
The order of Augustinian mendicant friars was formed in the 13th century by groups of hermits who followed the teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo. They wear a black habit with a leather girdle. | <urn:uuid:10db8a5e-6b8e-4033-b8ed-0d71aece1742> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/augustinian | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00074-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985577 | 123 | 3.359375 | 3 |
A Guide to Women in Canadian History
|Home · About · Meet the Author · Contact · People · Gallery · Celebrate · History · Resources · News · Search|
Statues and Monuments
Women are Persons! Monument (Famous Five Monument)
The Women are Persons! Monument.
(Photo courtesy of Frances Wright)
The Women are Persons! Monument is located in Calgary's Olympic Plaza. It was commissioned by the Famous 5 Foundation to "honour the Famous 5, to commemorate the ‘Persons' Case, and to recognize the achievements and contributions of Canadian women in the building of Canada". The monument was unveiled by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson at a special event on October 18, 1999. A similar monument was erected in Ottawa on October 18, 2000.
Five Alberta women fought to have Canadian women recognized constitutionally as "persons" who were eligible to be named to the Senate. Emily Murphy led the battle and she was supported by Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, Henrietta Muir Edwards and Nellie Mcclung. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected their case in 1928 but the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council decided in favour of the women on October 18, 1929. These courageous ladies came to be known as the "Famous Five" and October 18 is now known as Persons Day in Canada.
|Home | About |
Meet the Author | Contact |
Site Map | Heroines | Biographies |
Group Histories | Pictures |
Cartoons | Posters |
Stamps | Statues |
Currency | Historic Sites |
Women's History Month |
Time Travel |
This Month in History | Books |
Shop | Classroom |
Films&Videos | Related Links |
|Copyright © 2004 Merna M. Forster. All rights reserved.| | <urn:uuid:e9f1458e-4863-46b3-9be9-aff5d3d989ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.heroines.ca/celebrate/statuepersonscal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931918 | 380 | 3.125 | 3 |
Why Does Chocolate Turn White?
Notice how a bar chocolate starts to form white to grey mold-like cracks that can also pass as crystals around it every time you put it long enough in the refrigerator to harden? Or even when you leave an open pack or box of chocolates even for a short while, did you notice how easily those goodies turn dry? Though still completely edible, you would feel a little sad because your piece of chocolate no longer seems as delectable as it used to be.
So who or what is the culprit behind this observable fact? Blame it on the fridge. Considering that the environment inside a refrigerator is extremely dry, it will more often than not drain out the moisture in that luscious pack of chocolates most especially if the pack is not sealed well enough. Be it wrapped in pretty box, plastic or even paper wrapper, you must understand that don’t won’t do enough to save it from the drying and crystallization effects caused by a refrigeration.
Also known as sugar bloom, this occurrence is often caused when moisture is formed around the surface the chocolate. The moisture reacts with the sugar in the chocolate by dissolving the sugars and thus creating crystal residue that stick on the surface. When the process is repeated throughout refrigeration time, the surface of the chocolate will in turn become more sticky and change in color all the more.
Look at it this way, think of chocolate as a mixture of very fine and tiny particles of crystalline from sugar, fat, cacao and all the other essentials that make chocolate undeniably delicious. When you expose that kind of crystal like mixture to colder temperatures, the tendency is the crystals would expand thus creating those small white spots on the surface of your chocolate bar. | <urn:uuid:c7f9ab37-3b3d-4bf3-b457-91ffad920735> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.knowswhy.com/why-does-chocolate-turn-white/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00090-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95785 | 358 | 2.53125 | 3 |
In Australia just now, there is an extraordinary contrast unfolding in the heart of Canberra, the nation’s capital. And it is about how government should move forward on climate change and clean energy policies.
The newly-elected Australian federal government, a conservative coalition, has thrown climate initiatives into reverse, busily unwinding the climate change policies and infrastructure installed by the previous Labor government.
It is seeking to remove the carbon price, and institutions such as the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and is under intense pressure from incumbent industry to dilute, or even remove, the 20 per cent national renewable energy target.
In the same city, the local government, which manages Canberra and the surrounding Australian Capital Territory (it’s kind of like Washington DC in the US), has hit the fast-forward button. This year, the city government is scheduled to hold the first of a series of large scale auctions for wind energy installations in and around the ACT.
It follows the successful auction of 40MW of capacity for utility-scale solar farms. Extraordinarily, the solar farms being built in the greater Canberra district will be the first such installations to be constructed in Australia’s coal-dependent National Electricity Market.
Wind developers believe the ACT auction is the best chance of developing new projects in a country where policy uncertainty has brought an industry to an effective stand-still. The initiatives are part of the ACT’s goal to source 90 per cent of its electricity needs from renewables by 2020.
In Australia, Canberra is by no means alone. In Sydney, the largest city, the Sydney City Council has plans to source 100 per cent of its electricity needs by 2030. In Queensland, the Sunshine Cost Council has announced a unique (for Australia) plan to build a 10MW solar plant to meet half of its own needs.
Internationally, cities are being similarly pro-active, here city governments are taking bold-pro-active action while national governments stall on their own initiatives. In the US, for example, the city of Lancaster aims to be the solar capital of the world with its ambitious action to source 2GW of solar power in its region, with much of it to be exported to other areas. The global C40 initiative has 63 large cities seeking to lead their national governments.
Importantly, the targets set by cities, rather than governments, more closely reflect the science and the task in hand – and the ability of humans to innovate and adapt – particularly on the important criteria of emissions reductions, energy transition, energy efficiency and water conservation.
Why the contrast? Part of it is politics – conservative versus left wing (The ACT government is Labor, supported by a single Green member of the city assembly). But the ACT’s ambition was even greater than that of the previous Labor federal government. And the mayor of Lancaster, Rex Parriss, is a Republican.
The ability of cities to be more ambitious and pro-active than national government is possibly due to the ability of a city government to cut through some of the politics. Not only are they closer to the general population, they are closer to business, and business (apart from those vested interests who fear they only have something to lose from new technology) is keen to take up the challenge. And they are insulated from much (but not all) of the vested interests who are focused more on national policy.
In the words of ACT energy minister Simon Corbell: “We need more people to imagine and demonstrate that a different future is possible and it is affordable.” Or, as Lancaster mayor Parriss put it: “This really is a problem that has to be solved in neighbourhoods. That’s where the energy is consumed, in buildings, and housing. (US president Barack Obama doesn’t write building codes. I do.”
RenewEconomy Free Daily Newsletter | <urn:uuid:d8b7cfc6-bceb-4711-81bd-3e0d227254ed> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/cities-take-up-energy-transition-when-nations-fear-to-tread-63650 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00027-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950013 | 794 | 2.640625 | 3 |
As a fitness professional, you are expected to know a certain amount of exercise science, and part of science is math! I know many of you hear the word “math” and want to turn and run in the opposite direction, but my goal is to convince you that you’re fully capable of being an effective exercise mathematician!
First, let me start by saying that the rules regarding a calculator have recently been modified—you will now be supplied with a calculator function on your exam. To see what this is going to look like and get some practice, check out our test administrator, Castle Worldwide, and Take a Sample Test. In the menu at the top, there is a calculator option. The asterisk (*) is the multiplication symbol and the forward slash (/) is the division symbol (see photo below). This is a great way to get familiar with the format of the test and become more comfortable navigating the exam.
There are only a few questions that deal with equations (namely BMI, % Body Fat, and Predicted 1-RM). Other questions might require you to calculate how many calories are in a pound of fat, and then how many calories to create a caloric deficit or surplus each day. I am going to walk you through the math you could potentially see on an ACE Personal Training Certification Exam (those taking the Group Fitness Instructor or Health Coach exam may not see the Predicted 1-RM equation).
Okay let’s get started!
Desired Percent Body Fat
For this example, we’re going to use a theoretical female client who weighs 195 pounds and has 37% body fat. Her goal is lose 10% body fat (27%) to reduce her risk of type 2 diabetes.
Step 1: Determine Fat Mass vs. Lean Mass in Pounds. There are two ways to get this number, and they’re pretty much the same thing so just select the method that makes the most sense to you.
- Variation 1: (100% BF) to give you % Lean Body Mass (LBM) and then multiply their weight by that number
- (100 - 37) = 63 % Lean Body Mass
- 195 lbs. x 0.63 = 122.85 lbs.
- This person has ~123 lbs. of LBM
- Variation 2: Multiply weight by % Fat Mass (FM) and then subtract that from their weight
- 195 x 0.37 = 72.15 lbs. of FM
- 195 - 72.15 = 122.85 of LBM
- This person has ~123 lbs. of LBM
Step 2: Determine Goal Weight Mass Distribution. Essentially, you’re asking, “At her current weight, her lean body mass makes up 63% of her total mass. But if she decreased her FM to 27% then her LBM would now make up what %?”
- Process: Subtract desired % BF from 100
Step 3: Calculate it all out.
- Divide Current LBM in pounds by desired % LBM
- 123/0.73 = 168.49315
- 168.5 pounds to reach desired body composition goal
Body Mass Index and Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Next, let’s look at some of the other anthropometric measurements you might use: Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist-to-Hip Ratio. While BMI is a quick and easy way to classify someone according to their height and weight, it does NOT take into account someone’s body composition. So, someone who has a shorter, more muscular body type might read a little high, but have a normal % Body Fat (BF). Conversely, a person could appear very petite, but still have a high % BF, so use this information wisely. (The advantages and disadvantages of BMI can be found on pages 185-186 of the ACE Personal Training Manual.)
Here is how we calculate BMI:
Your Client is 5 feet 3 inches and weighs 135 pounds.
Version 1: Using Weight in Kilograms and Height in Meters Squared
- Step 1: Convert pounds into kilograms by dividing weight in pounds by 2.2
- 135/2.2 = 61.363636 or ~61.4 kg
- Step 2: Convert inches to meters by multiplying inches by 0.0254
- 63 x 0.0254 = 1.6002 or ~ 1.6 m
- Step 3: Square (multiply by itself) their height in meters
- 1.6 x 1.6 = 2.56 meters-squared
- Step 4: Divide weight in kilograms by height in meters-squared where BMI = kg/(m x m)
- 61.4 kg / 2.56 = 23.984375 or ~ 24
- This persons BMI would be 24 which would place them in the “Normal Weight” Category
Version 2: Using Weight in Pounds and Height in Inches where BMI = pounds x [703/(inches x inches)]
- Step 1: Square height in inches
- Step 2: Divide 703 by height in inches-squared
- 703/3969 = 0.1771227 or ~ 0.18
- Step 3: Multiply weight in pound by product from step 2
- 135 x 0.18 = 24.3
- This person’s BMI is 24.3 which would place them in the “Normal Weight” Category
NOTE: There is a slight difference between the two answers due to rounding differences.
Waist-to-hip ratio looks at the distribution of fat, which can provide information about a person’s health risk. For example, some have more fat around the midsection, known as Android body shape (like an apple), while others carry more fat in the hips, buttocks and thighs, which is known as Gynoid body shape (like a pear). There are two types of fat: subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat sits on top of the muscle (this is what we pinch with the skinfold calipers). Visceral fat sits in your mid-section underneath the muscle and surrounds all of our organs and is associated with insulin resistance (for more detailed explanation see page 188 of the ACE Personal Training Manual). The criteria for obesity in reference to waist circumference is 35 inches for females and 40 inches for males.
Let’s calculate the WHR for another theoretical client:
A male has a waist circumference of 35 inches and a hip circumference of 39.
- Divide Waist Circumference by Hip Circumference
- 35/39 = 0.8974358 or ~0.90 which would place this man in the “Average” category
- Hint: If you forget which number goes on top, just remember the Waist is above the Hips - W/H
Predicted 1-RM Equation
For assessments pertaining to muscular strength, the Predicted 1-RM equation is very helpful, particularly when you are unable to determine a client’s actual 1 Rep Max (RM). You are expected to know the % 1 RM Values for the different number of repetitions listed on Table 8-27 of the ACE Personal Training Manual pictured here (page 224). Hint: For 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10, the values decrease in 5% increments.
Determining 1 RM: What would the 1-RM be for a client who is able to lift 150 pounds 6 times?
- Step 1: Determine % 1 RM based on number of repetitions lifted: 85%
- Step 2: Divide weight lifted (150 pounds) by the percentage determined
- 150/0.85 = 176.47058 or ~176.5 lbs.
Karvonen Formula – Heart Rate Reserve (HRR)
Let’s switch gears to the Karvonen Formula, also known as Heart Rate Reserve (HRR). For clients who enjoy tracking their heart rate, but aren’t comfortable with assessments, you can use the Karvonen Formula to create appropriate heart-rate ranges for them to work in for each of the three zones. While this formula is MOST accurate when you have a measured maximum heart rate (MHR), you can still create a good estimation of where they should be. You will need to measure their resting heart rate (RHR) for this equation.
For this example, your 45-year-old male client has a resting heart rate of 75 and wants to work at 70% of his HRR.
- Step 1: Determine Maximum Heart Rate (MHR): 220 - Age
- Step 2: Calculate Heart Rate Reserve (HRR) by subtracting Resting Heart Rate (HRR) from MHR
- Step 3: Multiply HRR by desired intensity (70%)
- Step 4: Add back RHR to get heart rate for desired training intensity
- 70% HRR + RHR = 70 + 75 = 145
- For this person to work at 70% of their HRR, they will want their heart rate at 145.
HINT: If you calculate their heart-rate range for Zone 2: 60-84% (see page 392 of the ACE Personal Training Manual), then you will know that anything below is going to be in Zone 1, and anything above it will be in Zone 3. You get all three zones with only one calculation!
I hope you’re feeling a little bit more comfortable with why and how we use these calculations. If not, please feel free to contact one of our Study Coaches by calling our Resource Center at 800-825-3636, Ext. 796, Monday-Friday 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. We are always happy to assist you with your studies. | <urn:uuid:d4ffc424-d38f-42b2-9656-286f28b81892> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.acefitness.org/blog/3734/how-to-use-math-as-a-fitness-professional | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00160-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919024 | 2,042 | 2.703125 | 3 |
On August 24, 2009, in Kiev city center on Starokijovsko hill, a three metre high idol of Perun was built. The first time Perun “with a silver head and gold mustache” was built in the year 980 under order of Prince Vladimir, but, eight years later, after baptism was accepted by Vladimir, Perun was demolished.
In 2009 a new Perun was carried on the shoulders of Ridnovir (indigenous religion) followers through the streets of the city. On the same mountain, the sacred fire was ignited in the old traditions. Many Ukrainian history lovers looked upon this event agreeably. However, the Kiev church openly expressed their dissatisfaction, while there has been more than one effort to stop the Ukrainian original faith’s (Ridnovir) revival. Recently, Greek Catholic activists attacked the old faith temple in the village of Sadzivko, it was destroyed and those who tried to defend it were beaten. Similarly, in 2007, Ridnovirs were attacked in the territory of the Kiev National Museum. News of aggressive action against followers of the old faith has been reported in Russia as well.
This time Kiev’s Ridnovir had hopes that their sacred places and objects would not be touched. Unfortunately, this year, on November 1, the recently-built Perun sanctuary on Kiev’s Starokijevsko Hill was secretly demolished. This was reported by the Ukrainian leader of Ridnoviry, Halina Lozko, an eminent scientist, who has published a book “Rodzima wiara ukrainska.” Among other things, she participated in the Conference of Ethnic Religions, organized in Vilnius in 1998.
This event rocked all those who respected the ancient Slavic faith. In Poland, in the name of Rodzimo Wiaro (Stanislaw Potrebowski), an appeal on behalf of their fellow Ukrainians was released. The appeal reads “With pain we are going through the news of your idol’s desecration in Kiev. Through this tragedy we stand in solidarity with you. The authors of this crime should not feel like they still live 1000 years ago, when the sacred groves were destroyed and our people’s idols were profaned. Across Europe, the old spiritual traditions are being reborn, and that which has been persistently forced on us is drawing back. The destruction of our idols and beliefs will not minimize our fidelity to our ancestral faith. Let this sordid crime become one more stimulus to move us into restoring and strengthening our indigenous culture. “
The only photo of Perun can be found through Google “Perun – Wikipedia, wolna encyclopedia”
The Video of demolition is here http://ecer-org.eu/video/the-battle-for-kievs-perun-continues/ | <urn:uuid:cc8715ce-f4e9-4b66-8d72-c53c0a983cdf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ecer-org.eu/the-battle-for-kievs-perun-continues/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96568 | 592 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Chapter 7 Iteration
7.1 Multiple assignment
As you may have discovered, it is legal to make more than one assignment to the same variable. A new assignment makes an existing variable refer to a new value (and stop referring to the old value).
bruce = 5 print bruce, bruce = 7 print bruce
The output of this program is 5 7, because the first time bruce is printed, its value is 5, and the second time, its value is 7. The comma at the end of the first print statement suppresses the newline, which is why both outputs appear on the same line.
Here is what multiple assignment looks like in a state diagram:
With multiple assignment it is especially important to distinguish between an assignment operation and a statement of equality. Because Python uses the equal sign (=) for assignment, it is tempting to interpret a statement like a = b as a statement of equality. It is not!
First, equality is a symmetric relation and assignment is not. For example, in mathematics, if a = 7 then 7 = a. But in Python, the statement a = 7 is legal and 7 = a is not.
Furthermore, in mathematics, a statement of equality is either true or false, for all time. If a = b now, then a will always equal b. In Python, an assignment statement can make two variables equal, but they don’t have to stay that way:
a = 5 b = a # a and b are now equal a = 3 # a and b are no longer equal
The third line changes the value of a but does not change the value of b, so they are no longer equal.
Although multiple assignment is frequently helpful, you should use it with caution. If the values of variables change frequently, it can make the code difficult to read and debug.
7.2 Updating variables
One of the most common forms of multiple assignment is an update, where the new value of the variable depends on the old.
x = x+1
This means “get the current value of x, add one, and then update x with the new value.”
If you try to update a variable that doesn’t exist, you get an error, because Python evaluates the right side before it assigns a value to x:
>>> x = x+1 NameError: name 'x' is not defined
Before you can update a variable, you have to initialize it, usually with a simple assignment:
>>> x = 0 >>> x = x+1
Updating a variable by adding 1 is called an increment; subtracting 1 is called a decrement.
7.3 The while statement
Computers are often used to automate repetitive tasks. Repeating identical or similar tasks without making errors is something that computers do well and people do poorly.
We have seen two programs, countdown and
Another is the while statement. Here is a version of countdown that uses a while statement:
def countdown(n): while n > 0: print n n = n-1 print 'Blastoff!'
You can almost read the while statement as if it were English. It means, “While n is greater than 0, display the value of n and then reduce the value of n by 1. When you get to 0, display the word Blastoff!”
More formally, here is the flow of execution for a while statement:
This type of flow is called a loop because the third step loops back around to the top.
The body of the loop should change the value of one or more variables so that eventually the condition becomes false and the loop terminates. Otherwise the loop will repeat forever, which is called an infinite loop. An endless source of amusement for computer scientists is the observation that the directions on shampoo, “Lather, rinse, repeat,” are an infinite loop.
In the case of countdown, we can prove that the loop terminates because we know that the value of n is finite, and we can see that the value of n gets smaller each time through the loop, so eventually we have to get to 0. In other cases, it is not so easy to tell:
def sequence(n): while n != 1: print n, if n%2 == 0: # n is even n = n/2 else: # n is odd n = n*3+1
The condition for this loop is n != 1, so the loop will continue until n is 1, which makes the condition false.
Each time through the loop, the program outputs the value of n and then checks whether it is even or odd. If it is even, n is divided by 2. If it is odd, the value of n is replaced with n*3+1. For example, if the argument passed to sequence is 3, the resulting sequence is 3, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.
Since n sometimes increases and sometimes decreases, there is no obvious proof that n will ever reach 1, or that the program terminates. For some particular values of n, we can prove termination. For example, if the starting value is a power of two, then the value of n will be even each time through the loop until it reaches 1. The previous example ends with such a sequence, starting with 16.
The hard question is whether we can prove that this program terminates for all positive values of n. So far1, no one has been able to prove it or disprove it!
Exercise 1 Rewrite the function
Sometimes you don’t know it’s time to end a loop until you get half way through the body. In that case you can use the break statement to jump out of the loop.
For example, suppose you want to take input from the user until they type done. You could write:
while True: line = raw_input('> ') if line == 'done': break print line print 'Done!'
The loop condition is True, which is always true, so the loop runs until it hits the break statement.
Each time through, it prompts the user with an angle bracket. If the user types done, the break statement exits the loop. Otherwise the program echoes whatever the user types and goes back to the top of the loop. Here’s a sample run:
> not done not done > done Done!
This way of writing while loops is common because you can check the condition anywhere in the loop (not just at the top) and you can express the stop condition affirmatively (“stop when this happens”) rather than negatively (“keep going until that happens.”).
7.5 Square roots
Loops are often used in programs that compute numerical results by starting with an approximate answer and iteratively improving it.
For example, one way of computing square roots is Newton’s method. Suppose that you want to know the square root of a. If you start with almost any estimate, x, you can compute a better estimate with the following formula:
For example, if a is 4 and x is 3:
>>> a = 4.0 >>> x = 3.0 >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.16666666667
Which is closer to the correct answer (√4 = 2). If we repeat the process with the new estimate, it gets even closer:
>>> x = y >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.00641025641
After a few more updates, the estimate is almost exact:
>>> x = y >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.00001024003 >>> x = y >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.00000000003
In general we don’t know ahead of time how many steps it takes to get to the right answer, but we know when we get there because the estimate stops changing:
>>> x = y >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.0 >>> x = y >>> y = (x + a/x) / 2 >>> print y 2.0
When y == x, we can stop. Here is a loop that starts with an initial estimate, x, and improves it until it stops changing:
while True: print x y = (x + a/x) / 2 if y == x: break x = y
For most values of a this works fine, but in general it is dangerous to test float equality. Floating-point values are only approximately right: most rational numbers, like 1/3, and irrational numbers, like √2, can’t be represented exactly with a float.
Rather than checking whether x and y are exactly equal, it is safer to use the built-in function abs to compute the absolute value, or magnitude, of the difference between them:
if abs(y-x) < epsilon: break
Encapsulate this loop in a function called
Newton’s method is an example of an algorithm: it is a mechanical process for solving a category of problems (in this case, computing square roots).
It is not easy to define an algorithm. It might help to start with something that is not an algorithm. When you learned to multiply single-digit numbers, you probably memorized the multiplication table. In effect, you memorized 100 specific solutions. That kind of knowledge is not algorithmic.
But if you were “lazy,” you probably cheated by learning a few tricks. For example, to find the product of n and 9, you can write n−1 as the first digit and 10−n as the second digit. This trick is a general solution for multiplying any single-digit number by 9. That’s an algorithm!
Similarly, the techniques you learned for addition with carrying, subtraction with borrowing, and long division are all algorithms. One of the characteristics of algorithms is that they do not require any intelligence to carry out. They are mechanical processes in which each step follows from the last according to a simple set of rules.
In my opinion, it is embarrassing that humans spend so much time in school learning to execute algorithms that, quite literally, require no intelligence.
On the other hand, the process of designing algorithms is interesting, intellectually challenging, and a central part of what we call programming.
Some of the things that people do naturally, without difficulty or conscious thought, are the hardest to express algorithmically. Understanding natural language is a good example. We all do it, but so far no one has been able to explain how we do it, at least not in the form of an algorithm.
As you start writing bigger programs, you might find yourself spending more time debugging. More code means more chances to make an error and more place for bugs to hide.
One way to cut your debugging time is “debugging by bisection.” For example, if there are 100 lines in your program and you check them one at a time, it would take 100 steps.
Instead, try to break the problem in half. Look at the middle of the program, or near it, for an intermediate value you can check. Add a print statement (or something else that has a verifiable effect) and run the program.
If the mid-point check is incorrect, there must be a problem in the first half of the program. If it is correct, the problem is in the second half.
Every time you perform a check like this, you halve the number of lines you have to search. After six steps (which is fewer than 100), you would be down to one or two lines of code, at least in theory.
In practice it is not always clear what the “middle of the program” is and not always possible to check it. It doesn’t make sense to count lines and find the exact midpoint. Instead, think about places in the program where there might be errors and places where it is easy to put a check. Then choose a spot where you think the chances are about the same that the bug is before or after the check.
To test the square root algorithm in this chapter, you could compare
it with math.sqrt. Write a function named
1.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 2.0 1.41421356237 1.41421356237 2.22044604925e-16 3.0 1.73205080757 1.73205080757 0.0 4.0 2.0 2.0 0.0 5.0 2.2360679775 2.2360679775 0.0 6.0 2.44948974278 2.44948974278 0.0 7.0 2.64575131106 2.64575131106 0.0 8.0 2.82842712475 2.82842712475 4.4408920985e-16 9.0 3.0 3.0 0.0
The first column is a number, a; the second column is the square root of a computed with the function from Exercise 7.2; the third column is the square root computed by math.sqrt; the fourth column is the absolute value of the difference between the two estimates.
The built-in function eval takes a string and evaluates it using the Python interpreter. For example:
>>> eval('1 + 2 * 3') 7 >>> import math >>> eval('math.sqrt(5)') 2.2360679774997898 >>> eval('type(math.pi)') <type 'float'>
Write a function called
It should continue until the user enters
The brilliant mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan found an infinite series2 that can be used to generate a numerical approximation of π:
Write a function called
You can see my solution at thinkpython.com/code/pi.py.
Are you using one of our books in a class?We'd like to know about it. Please consider filling out this short survey. | <urn:uuid:7b342b52-bfaa-441c-8bca-b5e3b7377a92> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/book008.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906602 | 2,965 | 4.15625 | 4 |
FAISON, NATHANIEL W.
FAISON, NATHANIEL W. (ca. 1817–1870). Nathaniel W. Faison, Dawson and Perote prisoner, was born about 1817 in Tennessee. He immigrated to Texas sometime in the 1830s and arrived in La Grange in 1839 to work as a land surveyor. He purchased land there and seems to have been a merchant as well as a surveyor. Records show that he was given a license as a retailer of liquor by the drink in 1841, and most records of the prisoners of Perote kept by the prisoners themselves show him as a merchant. In the fall of 1842 a force of Mexicans under Gen. Adrián Woll captured San Antonio, and all over the Republic of Texas citizens heeded the call to battle. In Fayette County Capt. Nicholas Mosby Dawson organized a company of volunteers under the live oak tree on the courthouse square in La Grange, and Faison was one of the first to join. Fewer than fifteen men joined Dawson at the square, but by the time they reached the edge of the county on their way to San Antonio, their number had risen to fifty-three. The company rode fast and hard and so were tired when they heard the sounds of battle. Faison and Alsey Miller were scouts for the group, and they rode ahead to check on the condition of the battle of Salado Creek in progress between the Mexicans and the Texans. The two scouts misread the balance of the battle and believed the Texans badly needed help. Dawson gave his men the option of rest, but believing they were needed, they chose to join the main body of Texan forces. This proved to be a fatal mistake, as they advanced directly into General Woll's retreat. Faison was one of those captured in what came to be known as the Dawson massacre. There is a story told by a fellow prisoner, Capt. Edward T. Manton, of their capture and questioning by the Mexicans. The Mexicans asked the prisoners if they had any money, and Faison was the only one with any, having two dollars. He was also wearing a gold ring, which one of the Mexican soldiers was interested in. Faison acted as if the ring would not come off his finger, but when the Mexican guard drew a knife to cut it off, Faison slipped it right off and handed it over.
Those captured after the massacre were briefly imprisoned at San Antonio, where Faison had time to inscribe the names of the surviving prisoners on the walls. The Dawson prisoners were then forced to flee with the Mexican army as it retreated to Mexico. Along the way, the five Dawson prisoners who were injured were left at a small border town to heal their wounds, but Faison and the other nine continued on into the heart of Mexico. They were joined with another group of prisoners from Texas and forced to march on towards Mexico City. Faison and the other prisoners arrived at Perote prison on December 22, 1842, and settled in for a stay that would prove to be much longer than any of them expected. It should be noted that local folklore at one time placed Faison and the Dawson prisoners as present at the black bean episode, but this is not accurate. The story was that Faison had mixed a Mexican guard a cup of eggnog the morning of the drawing of the beans, and the guard had told him that the white beans were rough and the black beans were smooth, and he had thus been saved from execution by drawing a white bean. Faison was held at Perote prison until March 23, 1844, when Gen. Waddy Thompson secured his release and that of the rest of the Bexar prisoners. Faison returned to La Grange and served as county clerk of Fayette County from 1846 to 1854. In 1848 Faison and Manton went with an expedition to bring back the bones of the Dawson men and others from the battle of Salado Creek to be interred at Monument Hill (see MONUMENT HILL-KREISCHE BREWERY STATE HISTORIC SITE). He bought a house a half mile from this monument in 1866. Faison died in June 1870. He had speculated on land all over Texas and at his death owned more than 50,000 acres in various parts of the state. He had never married, and his brother, Peter, and his family moved into his home after his death. This house, along with much of its original furniture, was purchased by the La Grange Garden Club in 1961 and restored to its original condition. It is registered with the Texas Historical Commission and can be visited in La Grange.
Image Use Disclaimer
All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Walter F. Pilcher, "Faison, Nathaniel W.," accessed June 30, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffa22.
Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:3fba7d7d-4d01-4e4d-8988-6d4f42006af6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffa22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982485 | 1,202 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Depending how HippoDraw was configured when built, it supports creating a data source by reading a file in several formats.
The file formats supported are
The file may be read using either the File menu on the canvas window or by Python using the Python extension module tutorial.
The HippoDraw application can read and write NTuple data to a plain text file. The format is quite simple. Here is the contents of such a file.
Mark II Z0 scan
Energy Sigma binsize error
90.73999786 29 0.25999999 5.9000001
91.05999756 30 0.23 3.1500001
91.43000031 28.39999962 0.25999999 3
91.5 28.79999924 0.28999999 5.80000019
92.16000366 21.95000076 0.22 7.9000001
92.22000122 22.89999962 0.25 3.0999999
92.95999908 13.5 0.20999999 4.5999999
89.23999786 4.5 0.28 3.5
89.98000336 10.80000019 0.27000001 4.5999999
90.34999847 24.20000076 0.25999999 3.5999999
The first line is the title. It can contain any number of spaces and is terminated by the new line character. The second line contains the labels. You can't see it but they are separated by the tab character to allow blanks to be in the labels. The remaining lines are the data, row by row. Any white space can separate the data. The title line and labels line can be missing. The labels can't be pure numbers, or it will be read as data.
FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is the standard astronomical data format endorsed by both NASA and the IAU. If HippoDraw was configured with CFITSIO, then FITS file containing images and binary or ASCII tables are supported. A FITS file can be read with C++ or Python using the FitsController class. The example of Reading and writing FITS files with Python shows how it is done and is available in the examples subdirectory of the installation.
Limited support for reading data from a ROOT file is supported if HippoDraw was configured for ROOT support. The C++ RootNTuple class explains these limitations. A ROOT file can be read with C++ or Python using the RootController class. The example of Using data from a ROOT file with Python shows how it is done and is available in the examples subdirectory of the installation.
Generated for HippoDraw by | <urn:uuid:b69d0197-0361-4f44-a650-dcc7076863db> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/ek/hippodraw/files_root.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.862273 | 572 | 2.828125 | 3 |
A Look Back on Summer 2011
The summer of 2011 will be remembered as stormy with spells of excessive dew point temperatures. The peak of the mugginess was on July 19 with an 88 degree dew point temperature measured at Moorhead. This is now the new state record dew point temperature, breaking the old record of 86 degrees that was set at Pipestone and St. James on July 23, 2005. The Twin Cities saw 103 hours of dew point temperatures of 75 degrees or higher, the most on record. The counts of hours of 70 degrees or higher was 319 hours in the Twin Cities, above the 30 year average of 182, but not in the top five. The highest air temperature for the summer in the Twin Cities in 2011 was 103 degrees on June 7.
July was quite stormy, with one of the most widespread severe event occurring on July 1. A large cluster of thunderstorms produced wind damage from South Dakota across Minnesota and into northwest Wisconsin. Six tornadoes touched down with this event. June and July featured some heavy rains, including one event on July 16 during the early morning hours that submerged roads on the north side of the Twin Cities and flooded many basements, including flooding around 50 vehicles in the Garden View Apartments in New Brighton. The total precipitation rank for June-August at the Twin Cities International Airport did not even make the top 20 due to the dry August and wound up placing 32nd wettest back to 1891. August was much quieter and less humid. Average temperatures across the state for Meteorological Summer will finish one to three degrees above normal, with a few exceptions such as International Falls finished just below normal for the summer.
June-August Average Temperatures for the Twin Cities International Airport 1891-2011 Rank Value Year 1 75.5 1988 2 75.2 1933 3 74.2 1894 74.2 1936 (tie) 5 74.3 1949 74.3 2006 (tie) 7 74.2 2010 8 74.1 1921 74.1 1937 (tie) 74.1 1955 (tie) 11 74.0 1983 74.0 2011 (tie) | <urn:uuid:0fad6cf2-6d87-44ac-90de-3be6259204ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/summer_2011.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947205 | 431 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Statistics. On average, a tropical storm, or its remnants, can be expected to impact the Old Dominion yearly, with hurricanes expected once every 2.3 years. These averages are competitive to what is seen down south along the Gulf coast, even though major hurricanes are far more rare.
The chart below breaks down the tropical storm
and hurricane distribution by decade starting at 1851...the year the hurricane
database begins for the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of
Mexico. Tropical storms and hurricane categories before 1886 were determined
by damage done across the area. Surprisingly, some of the most active decades
for Virginia were during the "Little Ice Age", a period of global coolness,
that lasted from around 1870 to 1900. One would expect more storms to impact
the state during warmer years than cool years, but this is not the case.
From the graph above, there appears to be a fifty
year cycle in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in and nearby
Virginia. The peak of the cycle tends to last around 15 years.
Movement. In most cases, tropical
cyclones have moved, regardless of the month, from southwest to northeast
across Virginia. There are some examples were storms crossed from east
to west or vice versa, but that is quite uncommon. To the lower right is
a map showing the tracks hurricanes have taken past Virginia Beach during
a 111 year period. The mean forward motion of tropical cyclones through
the area is 17.3 knots...or 20 mph. This is normal as tropical cyclones
round the western periphery of the Azores- Bermuda High which dominates
the flow across the Atlantic during summer months. To the lower right
shows the distribution of translational speed past Virginia Beach, courtesy
of the National Hurricane Center.
The tracks of most tropical
cyclones that have affected Virginia
are concentrated near the lower coast.
Therefore, the lowest pressures
measured from these storms were
mainly in the area around Norfolk.
Only one category three hurricane is
known to have passed near Virginia,
thus pressures reported across the state
are higher that those you would find
along the Gulf or South Atlantic coasts.
To the right is a chart showing the ten
lowest pressures measured across the
state from hurricanes. Note how all the
readings are from Donna (1960), Floyd
(1999), the Chesapeake-Potomac
Hurricane (1933), and Hazel (1954).
Coastal sections of Virginia get
lashed with sustained winds of hurricane
force about every decade. Cape Henry has
twelve occurrences while Norfolk has six
in the 128-year period ending in 1998. If
you include winds of tropical storm force,
Cape Henry has reported them 73 years
while Norfolk experienced gales 46 years.
The anemometer at Cape Henry is higher
than at Norfolk, which explains the
increased frequency at that site. Friction
close to the ground tends to dampen
stronger winds from aloft. Below are
charts showing maximum winds for Cape
Henry and Norfolk. To the left is a listing
of wind gusts at or above 100 mph reported
Rainfall. The most common effect
of a tropical cyclone passing by Virginia is its associated rainfall. The
heaviest rain in a truly tropical cyclone, outside of terrain effects,
occurs to the east of the track. However, many systems that pass this far
to the north exhibit some non-tropical characteristics, such as cold/dry
air wrapping around the west and south sides of the circulation. When this
happens, the rainfall distribution changes markedly. The maximum rainfall
can then be expected to be just west of the track, and well to the east,
outside the reach of the dry air. Severe weather, such as microbursts,
tornadoes, and hail tend to be more common with this dry air intrusion,
mainly to the east of the track. To the lower right is a chart of
the ten highest rainfall amounts, in the Old Dominion, to be measured in
association with a tropical cyclone.
|Virginia has some special
that can affect rainfall. Mountains to the
west act as a perfect mechanism for
upward motion when a sustained east
wind is present, and can lead to flash
flooding and landslides in that region.
Also, as a tropical system approaches
from the south, a baroclinic boundary
sets up between the moist Atlantic Ocean
and the relatively drier landmass to the
west. This boundary can set up two or
three days in advance of a tropical storm,
and can lead up to prolonged heavy rains
across coastal sections. As the cyclone
advances north, the boundary will slowly
shift west, but rarely makes it west of a
Richmond/Washington, D.C. line.
|Return to Virginia Hurricane History| | <urn:uuid:efacd710-f8fc-409f-90ec-a8502de1dde4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/roth/vaclimohur.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936251 | 1,029 | 3.59375 | 4 |
St Swithin's Day, if it does rain
Full forty days, it will remain
St Swithin's Day, if it be fair
For forty days, t'will rain no more
Celebrated (or berated as the case may be!) on July 15th, weather sayings pertaining to St. Swithin's Day are probably the most infamous weather sayings in the UK. St. Swithin died 862 and was buried outside Winchester Cathedral so that he could 'feel' the raindrops when he was dead. However, when he was canonised a tomb was built inside the cathedral and July 15th 971 was the day his body was to be moved. Legend has it that a storm, breaking the end of a long dry spell, on the 15th and rain on each of the subsequent 40 days led to the monks taking this as a sign of 'divine displeasure' and left his body where it was.
There is, however, some evidence to suggest that St. Swithin's remains were, in fact, moved on or around 15th July 971 and no evidence exists to support 40 days of bad weather. Following the Norman conquest St Swithin's remains were then moved to a new shrine and new cathedral in Winchester. There was a large St. Swithin's cult in the Middle Ages though and this is where the legends and sayings surrounding his day are likely to have come from. During Henry VIII's reign this shrine was destroyed in an attempt to try and end these legends and sayings about St. Swithin. This probably guaranteed the sayings immortality and they have continued to be passed down through the ages!
This is the most famous of all the weather related saints' days in the UK. The legend originally only concerned rain, but later related to 40 days of similar weather. There is very little truth behind these sayings, and since 1861 there has neither been 40 dry nor 40 wet days following a dry or wet St. Swithin's Day. In fact on average about 20 days with some rain and 20 rain free days can be expected between July 15th and August 24th, and of course it goes without saying that the weather on July 15th is independant of conditions for the following 40 days.
However, the summers of 1983, 1989, 1990 and 1995 were near misses. During these summers July 15th was dry over southern England, as were 38 of the following 40 days and on those days on which rain fell, it was only light rain. Meanwhile, in 1976 38 of the 40 days after July 15th were also dry, but on July 15th itself late evening thunderstorms affected parts of southern England, around 25mm rain being dumped on Luton, for example, in just one hour. So 1976 was either a spectacular failure or a near success depending on how you look at it! As for wet weather, Philip Eden reports that in 1985 it rained on July 15th in Luton and then rained on 30 of the subsequent 40 days.
Still, the perpetrators of the sayings surrounding St. Swithin's Day during the Middle Ages were obviously aware that summer weather patterns are usually quite well established by mid July and will then tend to persist until late August, a fact backed up by the fact that similar sayings exist around the same time of year in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and France. It would seem that the sayings surrounding St. Swithin's Day perhaps ought not to be taken completely literally but that a grain of truth does lie behind them. Maybe the sayings should be updated to read, "St. Swithin's Day, if it does rain, 40 days staying unsettled, St. Swithin's Day, if it fair, 40 days staying settled.". Not quite the poetic punch as the rhyme at the top of the page but you get the idea!!!!
As mentioned in the paragraph above some of the UK's northwestern European neighbours have similar sayings based around the idea of 40 days of similar weather (ie wet or dry) after a given day. For example the French have St. Medard's Day and St. Protase's Day on the June 8th and 19th respectively. The Germans have the Day of Seven Sleepers on June 27th whilst the Belgians have St. Godelieve on July 27th. Meanwhile, the Dutch clearly like to hedge their bets with sayings surrounding St. Henricus on July 15th ("Met St. Henricus droog, zeven weken droog. Met St. Henricus regen, veertig dagen duurt die zegen." - Dry on St. Henricus, 7 weeks dry. Rain on St. Henricus, 40 days rain.") and St. Magriet on July 20th ("Is het droog weer op St. Margriet, dan regent het dertig of veertig dagen niet." - Dry on St. Margriet, dry for 30 or 40 days - and "Magriets regen brengt geen zegen." - Margriet's rain is no blessing.).
An articel by Philip Eden in The Daily Telegraph one summer between 1998 and 2000.
EDEN, P. 1995. Weatherwise, Macmillam, 323pp.
MARRIOTT, P. 1981. Red Sky at Night, Sheba Books, 376pp.
to the top of the page
Back to the weather articles index
Back to my Home Page
Dan Suri, 14 July 2002 | <urn:uuid:946f458b-25f9-4aa7-a399-09b216619f8b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dandantheweatherman.com/Bereklauw/swithin.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971708 | 1,147 | 2.59375 | 3 |
United States An Accidental Empire?
-- The United States was born out of a struggle against an
imperial power. Beginning in the 1840s — seven decades after its
founding — it embarked on a succession of "wars of choice" that
were profoundly at odds with its founding principles and left it
with an empire of its own. This inaugural "Thomas Paine" column
looks at how American changed — and how its empire is
handicapping its future.
World War I made World War II inevitable. Wilson's war of choice created Roosevelt's war of necessity. The French and English demanded onerous reparations from Germany. The ensuing inflation destroyed the Germany economy. Hitler rose to power by exploiting the political backlash inside Germany. The Second World War was a continuation of the unfinished business of the First.
World War II laid the foundation for an American empire. Six million Jews and 30 million Russians perished. This led to the creation of Israel and the outbreak of the Cold War. The United States took over British bases around the globe, and our forward presence gave impetus to bin Laden, 9/11 and the permanent war on terrorism.
The 120 million who perished in these 20th-century conflicts died mostly because of the failure of the existing major powers to accommodate the new strength of Germany on the European continent.
The solutions to yesterday's problems create today's problems. We live with the choices made by those who went before us. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was the worst President in American history: His intervention in the First World War was the equivalent of a European power coming to the United States during the Civil War and saying South wins, North loses.
Now the Germans are back in the driver's seat in Europe. The Germans are once again dominating the economy of Europe. The United States is sidelined by the weakness of our economy and our staggering debt. We have lost our way and don't know how to get out of the empire business.
This article was first published at The Globalist
The Globalist's Thomas Paine column will examine the points of departure between America's founding principles and its historical and contemporary reality. Join the debate about this article on our Facebook page. | <urn:uuid:c79436d8-9b5a-4ff3-a20e-0eccbc9f02d8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31287.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957346 | 449 | 3.203125 | 3 |
About the Oil Depletion Protocol
The Oil Depletion Protocol is a historically significant agreement that promises to set a global precedent for dealing with resource scarcity through cooperation and voluntary moderation rather than competition and conflict. It is inherently simple, calling for a gradual reduction in petroleum consumption according to a transparent formula. And it can be implemented at any level-internationally, as well as by individual countries, municipalities, businesses, and individuals.
The Problems of Oil Dependency and Oil Depletion
The overwhelming thing we need is a national plan to deal with oil depletion.
-Christine Milne, member of the Australian Senate
The need for such a protocol is becoming increasingly plain. Petroleum is a non-renewable, polluting, and depleting resource on which the world has become dangerously dependent. This in itself should be cause for nations to find ways to reduce their consumption and thus their dependency.
However, there is also the problem of uncertain future supply. Long before the last drop of petroleum has been recovered from any given reservoir the possible rate of extraction tends to peak and then fall off for purely physical, geological reasons. Today, most oil-producing countries have already reached and passed their national production peaks and are in steady decline. There is universal agreement that the world as a whole will reach its peak rate of production at some point in the next few decades-but there is controversy as to when, exactly, the peak will come. While some analysts forecast the maximum flow rate as occurring later than 2030, others say it will be achieved within the next four or five years.
Once the peak has passed, global rates of oil extraction will gradually wane, even if demand for oil continues to grow. Unless societies prepare for the event by substantially reducing demand ahead of the event, this will be an oil crisis like no previous one, because it will continue inexorably for decades until rates of extraction have become trivially small. The problem will arise not at the point when oil actually runs out (that moment, everyone agrees, is in the distant future), but at the point when the rate of delivery can no longer match the expectations of consumers.
The technical literature on the subject of Peak Oil is robust; for more information please see the “Get Informed” section at www.oildepletionprotocol.org .
There is growing evidence that the rate of world oil production has already entered a plateau, indicating the approaching peak. Yet even if the forecasts that place the peak two decades ahead are correct, there is still cause for immediate concern, as analysis undertaken on behalf of the US Department of Energy indicates that twenty years at a “crash program” scale of effort will be needed prior to the peak to prepare societies adequately. This is because most of the mitigation strategies that are possible (developing supplies of alternative fuels or changing transport infrastructure to use fuel more efficiently) will require enormous amounts of investment and many years of hard effort.
The world is currently unprepared for a sustained decline in oil availability. Indeed, in nearly every recent year the world has increased its demand for oil by over a million barrels per day.
An extended and gradually worsening supply shortfall would lead to economic turmoil. Transportation of people, food, and other goods would be impacted, as would agriculture and the chemicals and plastics industries. Because each of these economic sectors is basic to modern societies, all industries and all segments of the population would feel the effects. High transportation costs would fuel inflation and reduce demand for products while undermining tourism, the automobile industry, and the airline industry. High fuel costs would bankrupt millions of farmers worldwide, leading to an agricultural crisis, while high food transport costs would also conspire to drive up food prices for consumers.
While high oil prices would be challenge enough, volatile prices would make matters much worse. Huge levels of investment in new transportation and energy-efficient manufacturing infrastructure will be required over the next few decades, but unpredictable swings in the price of petroleum would discourage both government and the private sector from taking the necessary investment risks.
At the same time, oil supply problems are likely to lead to political instability and international conflict. Oil has been a primary strategic resource for decades-the object of wars, coups, and intrigues. As petroleum becomes more scarce and expensive, competition for supplies will grow and economic turmoil could create conditions for armed struggles, perhaps on a massive scale. Civil or international conflict could in turn exacerbate shortages and undermine investment in new energy sources and technologies and the accompanying processes of transition and adaptation.
On top of all this there is the fact that burning oil or releasing it into the environment in the form of petrochemicals produces a range of pollutants. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides from oil combustion contribute to lung cancer, asthma, and cardiovascular problems. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides contribute to acid rain, damaging the plant life that would otherwise help to clean pollutants from the air.
Pesticides, plastics, and chemical components of plastics also make their way into many parts of the natural and built landscapes, causing damage as they go. Some of best-known pollutants, DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), are endocrine-disrupting petrochemicals that affect reproduction and development. Other petrochemicals in common use today also display endocrine disruption effects; for example, bisphenol A (BPA), used to make polycarbonate plastics, is an estrogen imitator and can disrupt the balance of sex hormones in living things that come in contact with it, including humans. Some scientists have linked amphibian population crashes to the presence of BPA.
However, of all chemical pollutants issuing from the use of oil and other fossil fuels, perhaps none has more worrisome potential consequences than the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). Burning fossil fuels releases CO2, which traps heat from the Sun, gradually warming the oceans, the atmosphere, and the Earth’s surface. The consequences of this warming effect are likely to be a less stable climate, worse storms, the disruption of agriculture, rising sea levels, and pressure on species to adapt to changing habitats. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere in such small quantities (0.036%) that the massive amounts released through the burning of fossil fuels have already measurably altered the Earth’s climate.
Recent studies have shown that global climate impacts are appearing more quickly and severely than was predicted only a few years ago. A five-year European study of Antarctic ice cores found that current CO2 levels are 30 percent higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years. Moreover, the rates of increase are also extremely high-200 times faster than anything seen in the ancient past. The study, released in November 2005, also found a “very tight” correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures.
Meanwhile Greenland’s glaciers, once stable, are now retreating rapidly. Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center has found that the Jakobshavn glacier, one of the major drainage outlets of Greenland’s interior ice sheet, is thinning over four times faster than was the case during most of the 20th Century; at the same time, the rate at which the ice moves is accelerating. When the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely, as it is projected to do perhaps before the end of the century, the world’s oceans will rise by 20 feet, drowning coastal cities such as London and New York.
In short, our current reliance on oil is unhealthy and unsustainable. It is imperative, for a variety of compelling reasons, that societies find ways to wean themselves from petroleum dependency as quickly as possible.
The proposal to cut oil imports to match depletion rate seems to be simple common sense.
-The Right Honourable Michael Meacher, Member of Parliament, UK
The Oil Depletion Protocol is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward agreement imaginable to help nations, and the world as whole, reduce oil dependency. It calls for a reduction in both extraction and imports of oil, with the rate of reduction tied to the rate of depletion. The world depletion rate for conventional oil is currently approximately 2.6 percent per year (this is simply the amount being extracted yearly divided into the amount left to extract). The Protocol essentially calls upon signatory nations to reduce their petroleum consumption by that amount annually.
This would provide a target, a gauge of progress, and a cooperative framework for a task that will require many years of sustained effort. The Protocol itself need not specify how nations would make the transition away from oil. Presumably they would rely on some combination of two strategies-developing supplies of alternative fuels, and conservation in their use of petroleum and its products. But because each nation has a unique pattern of consumption and a unique alternative-energy resource base, it would not be helpful to mandate a single set of practices or priorities to be implemented universally.
The terms of a draft Oil Depletion Protocol were initially suggested by petroleum geologist Dr. Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), in 1996. They include, principally:
- Reduction in extraction by each producing country according to its depletion rate;
- Reduction in imports by each importing country according to the world depletion rate;
- The creation of a Secretariat to monitor reserves, production, and imports, and to calculate depletion rates.
Under the terms of this draft Protocol, production and import restrictions would apply only to regular conventional oil, a category that excludes deepwater oil (defined as greater than 500 meters depth); heavy oil (with a cutoff of 17.5 API); natural gas liquids; synthetic oils from tar sands, oil shale, coal, and natural gas; and biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Oil-producing nations would agree, upon adoption of the Protocol, to submit to an independent audit of their reserves and an ongoing monitoring of production. Importing nations would submit to an ongoing monitoring of imports.
Some of the terms of this draft agreement are debatable (it may be preferable, for example, to include deepwater oil in the definition of “conventional” oil, rather than excluding it). And further terms may be necessary, for instance, to specify economic penalties for cheating on production or imports. However, the essence of the draft agreement is clear, simple, and non-arbitrary, and is thus likely to be preserved in any accord actually implemented.
Why Is It In Any Nation’s Interest to Adopt the Protocol?
Peace and prosperity for your children and grandchildren may be ensured or squandered depending upon whether world leaders commit to work together to overcome the challenges of global peak oil. The Oil Depletion Protocol provides leaders and citizens a model for discussion and implementation of cooperative steps to reverse the unsustainable trend of increased depletion of the world’s rapidly shrinking oil reserves.
-Roscoe G. Bartlett, Member of US Congress
At first thought, it may seem that the adoption of the Oil Depletion Protocol would run strongly counter to most nations’ economic interests.
It is true that a voluntary reduction in oil extraction and imports will impose challenges to nations that choose to abide by these terms. However, it must be emphasized that a reduction in the global availability of oil is inevitable in any case, and that if nations simply wait for the peak in production to occur before engaging in mitigation efforts, the negative social, economic, and political consequences are likely to be “unprecedented” in scope (this according to the US government-sponsored Hirsch Report).
Three nations have already embarked on a transition away from oil even before being presented with the opportunity to adopt the Oil Depletion Protocol.
- Sweden: In December 2005, Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson acknowledged that the global oil peak is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and announced the appointment of a National Commission on Oil Independence with the objective of making Sweden oil-independent by 2020.
- Iceland: With its enormous geothermal energy resources, Iceland in 2001 officially adopted the goal of making the country oil-free by 2050. This small nation of about 270,000 people has a high per-capita rate of greenhouse gas emissions-despite the fact that about 70 percent of its energy needs, from home heating to electricity for aluminum smelters, are met by abundant geothermal or hydroelectric power. Only Iceland’s transport sector is still reliant primarily on oil and gas. The nation’s leaders plan to run its cars, buses, trucks, and ships on hydrogen produced from electrolysis of water.
- Cuba: The Cuban parliament has passed a measure declaring 2006 to be the year of the Energy Revolution. President Fidel Castro, in a speech delivered November 17, 2005, discussed the goal of reducing all energy use in the country by two-thirds. That nation has already dealt successfully with a dramatic forced reduction in oil consumption, consequent upon the collapse of the USSR in the late 1980s.
Kuwait, a major exporting nation, is contemplating a voluntary reduction in extraction rates. Questions have arisen regarding the size of the country’s actual oil reserves, and the opposition party in the Kuwaiti parliament has called for production to be cut to a percentage of actual reserves so as to preserve some of the resource and its economic benefits for future generations. This is essentially what is proposed for signatory producing nations under the terms of the Protocol.
Some other countries are already in compliance with the Oil Depletion Protocol, or nearly so, and could therefore adopt and implement the agreement with little effort. For example, nations already experiencing steeply declining production are, in that respect, in compliance with the terms of the Protocol, whether they wish it or not. Much the same could be said for poor importing nations that cannot afford to purchase oil at current high market prices. By adopting the Protocol, these nations could make a virtue out of necessity and pave the way toward the global adoption of a policy that would work to the advantage of all nations by stabilizing prices and reducing competition.
Other countries, while not on track to implement the terms of the Protocol, are at least beginning to contemplate ways to reduce oil dependency. In the United States, for example, there is widespread and growing concern over increasing dependence on oil imports. The US House of Representatives has asked its Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality to investigate a motion proposed by Representative Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland “that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the ‘Man on the Moon’ project to address the inevitable challenges of Peak Oil.” In Ireland, Forfás, the national board responsible for providing policy advice to the government on enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation, has released a report titled “A Baseline Assessment of Ireland’s Oil Dependence: Key Policy Considerations.”
This report examines the extent to which the Irish economy is vulnerable to oil production peaking, as well as the policies required for preparing for the event. Other countries such as Germany, Japan, Spain, and the Netherlands have made important strides in implementing renewable energy technologies (primarily solar and wind). China and India are also investing heavily in renewables, though their consumption of fossil fuels is also growing.
Depletion-based and Emissions-based Agreements
The very idea of accepting oil depletion protocols and treaties to guard against irresponsible levels of emissions may not be popular or easily endorsable. Yet, in the annals of history it is clear that epochal crises must be faced. The question is whether they are met with intelligence, resolve, and sacrifice or whether decision makers procrastinate to everyone’s eventual peril and suffering.
-The Rt. Hon. Edward Schreyer, former Premier of Manitoba, Governor General of Canada, and High Commissioner to Australia and the South Western Pacific
As noted above, scarcity is not the only reason for voluntarily reducing oil consumption; the environmental impacts of emissions from petroleum use are arguably far more important motivators. An emissions-based treaty (Kyoto) already exists. How is the Oil Depletion Protocol different, and why is it needed in addition to the Kyoto accord?
The Oil Depletion Protocol differs from emissions-based protocols (e.g., Kyoto) in emphasis and method. Emissions protocols focus on end-of-pipe outcomes from fossil fuel usage, while depletion protocols focus on the supply of those fuels. For both, the goal is a transition away from the use of fossil fuels.
Emissions-based protocols require us to change our consumption of energy resources in order to avert environmental harms, which will in turn impact human society. Depletion-based agreements require us to change our consumption of energy resources in order to adjust to the geological reality of declining extraction rates.
Emissions-based protocols begin by creating emissions rights and then ration those rights. The Oil Depletion Protocol more simply rations supplies, starting at the wellhead.
Throughout much of the world the general public finds it difficult to understand the science of global warming; therefore, even though there is a general, vague understanding that dangerous climate change is somehow related to human activity, there may be insufficient motivation among the general populace in many countries to endure sacrifice, change habits, or support bold energy policies.
Oil depletion is inherently easy to understand. Oil is not a renewable resource; only so much exists, and we began depleting the supply when the first barrel was extracted from the ground. We are at the point now, globally, where the cheap, “easy” oil is gone, and what is left will be more expensive to produce and probably cannot continue to be produced at rates that would match demand under “business-as-usual” growth scenarios.
With emissions-based agreements there is little advantage to any given individual nation in adoption if other nations that are major emitters do not likewise sign on: the climate for the one nation adopting the agreement won’t be improved much, because climate change is a global phenomenon. The real advantage only comes if all nations that are major emitters join the accord.
This is not as much the case with the Oil Depletion Protocol. While this plan will yield its greatest benefits (in terms of stabilizing oil prices and reducing competition for supplies) if all nations sign on, any single nation will be much better off adapting proactively to the new regime of scarce oil and higher prices than it would be if it simply continued attempting to use petroleum at existing or increasing rates. And the Oil Depletion Protocol will help significantly with that proactive process of adaptation.
However, depletion-based transition plans do not do away with the requirement for emissions-based agreements: the latter will be needed to ensure that nations do not substitute low-grade hydrocarbon resources for oil as they reduce their reliance on the latter, thus worsening the global climate crisis.
Depletion-based agreements will help create an economic environment in which emissions-based accords can function. If the world approaches and passes the point of peak oil production without having a proactive depletion-based transition plan in place, the resulting economic and political turmoil will reduce societies’ ability to respond to environmental problems resulting from global warming.
To summarize: Both emissions-based and depletion-based agreements are necessary, and they will work well together.
Adopting the Protocol: The World, the Community, the Individual
Over-reliance on petroleum continues to contribute significantly to the emission of greenhouse gasses that are harmful to our environment and human health, and that must be curbed if we are to avoid serious consequences in the future. Foreign oil’s undeniable ties to terror, to global instability and to continued environmental degradation make immediate, decisive action to reduce our petroleum consumption absolutely critical.
-George Pataki, Governor of New York State
The Oil Depletion Protocol represents a straightforward route to minimizing human misery and is one that is easy and practical to apply.
-Chris Skrebowski, Editor of Petroleum Review
The Post Carbon Institute, working in concert with several funding organizations, has founded the non-profit Oil Depletion Protocol Project, which is currently gathering a small staff. The Project’s purpose is to promote the Protocol worldwide in every way possible-by making copies of this booklet available to policy makers, by maintaining a robust website (www.oildepletionprotocol.org) explaining the Protocol, and by undertaking the lobbying effort that will be needed to obtain adoption. We are also seeking to obtain written endorsements of the Protocol from nongovernmental organizations and prominent individuals. The Protocol Project welcomes the help-financial and otherwise-of the general public in its efforts.
We recognize that we must seek to educate top-level decision-makers not just in government but also in industry, as well as members of the general public, because without pressure from the business community and from the public, government leaders will be unlikely to take the political risk of proposing or supporting the Protocol. In some countries longstanding political interests related to the fossil fuel and automobile industries might discourage influential politicians from supporting mandated limits on petroleum imports or exports. Also, doctrinaire free-market economists are likely to argue strongly against government interference with the unfettered flux of supply and demand.
Adoption of the Protocol within any given nation will require initially that just a few policy makers have the courage to champion it and bring it before their parliament or congress. We hope to identify those specific politicians and to assist them in persuading their colleagues. Simultaneously, the mobilization of widespread public support can embolden other leaders to join in the push toward adoption, until finally a majority of legislators in a given country have been won over and the Protocol gains official acceptance.
Cities around the world are beginning to assess their vulnerability to Peak Oil and are planning to reduce it. Some examples:
Kinsale, Ireland was the first town to undertake a comprehensive Peak Oil assessment and response scenario, titled “The Kinsale Energy Descent Energy Action Plan.” This 25-year report with a year-to-year plan of action has since been adopted as policy by the Kinsale town council.
In November, 2005 the city of Denver, Colorado hosted a World Oil Forum, sponsored by ASPO, at which Mayor John Hickenlooper-together with industry experts, political leaders, and others-addressed both global and local issues related to energy scarcity. The Denver International Airport uses alternative fuels for all non-flight vehicles, and Denver is changing land-use policy to promote high-density zoning areas in conjunction with a new public transit system. The city also promotes full or partial telecommuting to use less fuel.
During the past two years the cities of Willits and Sebastopol, California; Portland, Oregon; and Burnaby, British Columbia, and Hamilton, Ontario in Canada have created Peak Oil task forces to identify key short-term and long-term vulnerabilities to petroleum shortages and price spikes, and to develop recommendations for addressing these vulnerabilities. Municipal, citizen-led efforts now under way in the US include ones in Tompkins County, New York; the San Francisco Bay Area in California; Boulder, Colorado; Plymouth, New Hampshire; Bloomington, Indiana; Port Townsend, Washington; and Eugene, Oregon, among many others.
In countries that have not yet adopted the Oil Depletion Protocol, municipalities, provinces, and citizen groups could leverage their Peak Oil preparation efforts by publicly agreeing to reduce their oil consumption by 2.6 percent per year according to the terms of the Protocol. Many cities and some states in the US are already taking this kind of proactive approach with regard to the Kyoto greenhouse emissions accord, implementing the terms of the accord locally even as the nation as a whole delays ratifying it. This strategy will be most effective if the municipalities, groups, or regions concerned announce publicly that they are abiding by the Protocol and recommend its adoption to national political leaders.
The Role of Business
Most businesses are highly vulnerable to the impacts of oil shortages or major price hikes leading to higher transport costs for raw materials, finished products, employees, and customers; and in some cases to higher costs for feedstock materials (such as for plastics). Businesses can therefore benefit by gradually preparing themselves for steeper oil prices by proactively reducing their reliance on petroleum and petroleum products.
They can do this, for example, by providing alternative transportation options for employees and by reducing the use of petrochemical-based plastics in manufactured products produced or used.
Those businesses that take such steps will benefit not only by improving their long-term ability to adapt to future energy price increases, but also by improving their public image.
The Oil Depletion Protocol would help coordinate such efforts, and would provide both yearly targets and a gauge of progress.
Just as municipalities and businesses can help enact the Protocol, with the Protocol also helping them meet their own Peak-preparedness goals, individuals and small groups can do something similar. Instructions are provided in the accompanying sidebar.
How to Personally Implement the Oil Depletion Protocol
First, create an oil inventory. Where and how are you using both petroleum and the products and services derived from it? If you drive a personal automobile, it will be a simple matter to keep track of how many gallons of gasoline you use. Also, keep track of how many miles you fly in a typical year, and assume a fuel usage for those miles approximately equal to your fuel usage while driving. The greater challenge will be in tracking indirect petroleum usage in food, plastics, and chemicals. On average, for a typical urbanite in an industrialized country, nearly half of oil consumed goes toward transportation, one-third toward food provisioning (including agriculture, transportation of product, storage, and processing), and the rest toward the production of plastics and chemicals.
Next, make a plan, in year-by-year stages, covering at least the next ten years, to reduce your oil consumption. During those ten years, find a way to reduce your consumption of oil by a total of 25 percent at a minimum. With some effort, it may be possible to make that entire 25 percent reduction in the first year.
If transportation is most people’s area of greatest dependence and vulnerability with regard to petroleum, it is also the area in which it is easiest to make measurable reductions in oil usage. Reduce driving, and make your travel more efficient by trading an existing car for a smaller and more fuel-efficient model. Or, better yet, find a way to do without a car. Ride a bicycle or electric scooter. Take public transportation where it is available, and, where it isn’t, help organize other options, such as a car co-op or a community-supported hitchhiking program. Reduce your air travel to a minimum.
Reduce oil dependence with regard to your eating habits by buying local, organic food. Shop at farmers’ markets or join a community-supported agriculture program. And if you live where this is possible, grow a vegetable garden and plant fruit and nut trees.
Avoid using plastic wherever possible, especially in the form of packaging. Carry reusable cloth bags with you when you go shopping, and do not buy water in throwaway plastic bottles. If you do these things consistently, you can credit yourself with a two-percent reduction in oil dependence.
More details are available at www.oildepletionprotocol.org.
These efforts will be of much greater value if they are undertaken in the context of a well-publicized, cooperative local program:
- Explain to your friends and family the problem of Peak Oil and the benefits offered by the Oil Depletion Protocol, and let them know how your personal efforts are contributing to the necessary energy transition.
- Form a support network within your community and hold periodic public events to promote efforts to reduce oil consumption.
- Inform your local officials about Peak Oil and the Oil Depletion Protocol through letters, and request meetings in order to explain further.
- Work with your community officials to establish a commission to assess community oil supply vulnerability and to design a transition plan.
- Seek to obtain endorsement of the Oil Depletion Protocol from your municipality, and from organizations of which you are a member.
- Document your efforts at www.oildepletionprotocol.org.
Finally, please help spread the word about the Oil Depletion Protocol by distributing copies of this booklet.
The next few years may offer humankind its last, best opportunity to avert resource wars, terrorism, and economic collapse as it enters the second half of the Age of Oil. If we grasp that opportunity and succeed, we could set a precedent for cooperative, peaceful approaches to all of the resource problems we are likely to encounter during the coming century. The choice we face is between competition and conflict on one hand, and voluntary moderation and mutual assistance on the other. The first steps toward the latter can be readily taken by endorsing and adopting this simple agreement.
The new book is out! I have a couple of cases of The Oil Depletion Protocol, so pre-publication orders are now being fulfilled; also it will soon be in bookstores. This month’s MuseLetter is one of those occasional issues that must serve stacking functions. To assist the expanding work of the Oil Depletion Protocol Project, a booklet is needed to explain the Protocol in language different from-and hopefully even simpler than-that of the book itself. This month’s essay is a draft of the booklet text. Since it is only a draft, please contact me for the final version before republishing it.Richard has a new website: http://www.richardheinberg.com/
What do you think? Leave a comment below.
Sign up for regular Resilience bulletins direct to your email.
This is a community site and the discussion is moderated. The rules in brief: no personal abuse and no climate denial. Complete Guidelines. | <urn:uuid:22c32e80-1ca0-4968-9814-7f9aa55e81f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-09-07/about-oil-depletion-protocol | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945594 | 6,168 | 3.4375 | 3 |
The Ethics of Learning
Dr. Holly McCartney
Dr. Holly McCartney, associate professor of early, elementary and reading education at James Madison University, earned her B.S. and M.Ed. at the university before completing Ph.D. studies at the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the JMU faculty, she was a preschool teacher working with ESL and at-risk families and children. Now, she serves as coordinator of the master of arts in teaching degree program in early childhood.
Granted education leave for the spring 2014 semester to research "What does it mean to 'Do The Right Thing' as an early childhood or elementary teacher," McCartney conducted focus group sessions, one-on-one interviews and an open-ended survey with educators in Virginia. The research was funded in part by a grant from the Madison Collaborative: Ethical Reasoning in Action. She shares some preliminary findings from her continuing research, which stems from a former graduate student's question on how prevalent is awareness of the National Association for the Education of Young Children Code of Ethical Conduct.
What do your initial research findings show?
"I focused on determining what the typical ethical dilemmas are that teachers encounter in the classroom, with colleagues and parents."
"My research aims to get the stories out of the data, and in classroom research that is very appropriate. That is also aligned with how we prepare our graduate students. We have a course in inquiry, where they learn this type of methodology so when they have a question in their own classrooms they have the tools to find an answer."
In the focus groups and the survey, McCartney asked, 'How did your undergraduate or graduate program of study prepare you to handle ethical dilemmas?' "The majority of them, unless they were recent graduates, did not remember reading the NAEYC code of ethical conduct. But they did remember talking about ethical dilemmas throughout many of their courses."
"What I think is interesting is that so many of them don't really believe that a code is helpful on its own. When you go back and look in the literature, it confirms that finding, that the code is just a document that rests on a shelf in my teacher handbook. That tells me, if we're going to use the code and have it embedded in our courses, we need to teach and practice using it. Here's how it can help you. Probably the best way to do that is by using some case studies and actual examples and work through them with critical reflection and dialogue."
What are the common themes or scenarios reported by teachers?
"How to handle internal gossip about families of students. Teachers concerned about a student's behavior in the classroom ask other teachers, 'What can you tell me about the child's home situation?' How teachers answer this question is important."
"Sharing difficult information with parents about their child. How do you tell the truth when the truth hurts? You have to choose your words carefully, such as, 'This is what I have observed and here is the evidence I have collected to support my observation.'"
"When parents want to know about perceived fairness situations, such as rewarding a child for doing his homework. Most teachers can explain that really well to other children. 'Everybody gets what they need and everybody doesn't need the same thing. For this child, they need something more concrete and you've already got it. You're good to go.' But dealing with parents can be tricky."
Standardized testing and assessment practices in schools are another oft-reported theme. "None of the teachers I talked to went to school to learn how to test students, and today, that is what many of them feel they are doing more than teaching and helping students to learn."
What are major lessons your research confirms?
"Having a supportive administration is critical to working through ethical dilemmas."
"As teachers, we really are in a position of power and it is so important that we act in ethical ways. Even when we are acting in ethical ways, if we feel like others aren't, then we have the dilemma of 'do I report this other teacher?'"
What's ahead in your ethics study?
"In addition to more work on my qualitative survey results from this spring's project, I'm preparing to present at the European Early Childhood Research Conference and the NAEYC annual conference. The Madison Collaborative: Ethical Reasoning in Action has selected me as a Madison Fellow to work with JMU faculty who want to integrate ethical reasoning into their existing courses. This has become my new focus for next year."
# # #
June 24, 2014
Published: Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Last Updated: Thursday, March 3, 2016 | <urn:uuid:fc83f1e4-9f37-4776-8d4c-dd0379bdf5f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.jmu.edu/news/2014/06/24-holly-mccartney-education-ethics-research.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973718 | 961 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Fig. 2. Degradation is a continuum of decline in ecosystem goods and services from primary forest to deforested lands. This continuum is illustrated for a generalized dry closed tropical forest. Biodiversity refers to species richness and ecosystem type richness relative to a baseline. Ecosystem services refers to services related directly to biodiversity such as pollination and biomass production. Sustainably managed forests are shown close to, but slightly below, primary forests based on multiple studies (e.g., Asner at al. 2006, Lewis 2009, Klimes et al. 2012; Putz et al. 2012). | <urn:uuid:e9e802f9-c40b-4da4-8d0e-43c9165dbc1b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art20/figure2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00160-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92481 | 120 | 2.859375 | 3 |
We apply the Montessori philosophy and method preparing our children for not only success in formal education, but for a lifetime of learning and creative thinking. We help our children to develop confidence, competence, creativity, social skills and eagerness to learn. Our curriculum consists of the 5 areas of Montessori education integrated for the total development of your child.
We incorporate music, art, movement, practical life, sensorial development, language, mathematics, geography, science, and social studies. The children are free to choose from this broad scope of activities.
- Practical Life
- Language Development
- Culture – Social Studies/Geography | <urn:uuid:cab682ca-b625-4fd1-8288-05a764e5d6f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://heritagemontessorimn.com/?page_id=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00093-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901464 | 130 | 2.984375 | 3 |
April 05, 2006
I taught my students how to use their binders to do much of their school work each day in class. We begin by organizing the binders with notebook paper and dividers labeled for our subjects. Students turn to that labeled section to do their work for math, writing, etc. Assignments that are in progress stay in that divider section. (Parents are told to not disturb those papers.) Only when an assignment is finished do the 3 rings unsnap and the paper is removed for turning in or I have a student move the assignment to the plastic folder in the front of their binder, as described below for a homework assignment.) I never allow pages to be ripped from the binders. Students can learn to unsnap the rings quietly. Also if I have subject packets, they are 3-hole punched and snapped into the binder in the appropriate section and students keep track of their packets much better this way. I have found that using plastic two-pocket 3-hole punched folders, both in the front and at the back of a student's binder, helps students become even more organized. Paper folders are just too flimsy to last a school year. The front folder is the Home Communication Folder. Students are informed to share that folder with parents daily. (Parents are told to look for that folder daily, too.) The left pocket is for homework assignments to be finished and notes that need to be signed by parents. The right pocket is for school flyers, finished and graded work to be read by parents and left at home. (You can write on the plastic folder with a sharpie pen 'Take Home/Leave Home and Take Home/Bring Back'.) Students know where to find their homework assignments that are to be turned in the next morning, and they know where to put their mail from their classroom mailboxes. It's very easy for me to see which students have not collected their papers from their mailboxes and put them in their binders so they get a reminder from me to 'do it now'. The back plastic folder is the Safekeeping Folder. This is where 'in progress' or unfinished work goes that are not 3-hole punched, such as art projects, things that are being assembled, friendship notes, or whatever. By having this folder, a student's desk stays much cleaner and if something does get lost, a student is reminded to use the back folder. This Safekeeping Folder also allows motivated students to have items to work on at home, but they don't feel the pressure that it is homework. Since they take their binder home daily, the student is always free to work on any assignments in the divided sections as well. Parents appreciate being able to look through the binder and know what their child is working on without the fear that the child has left something important at school. | <urn:uuid:62064367-0821-443c-85b5-0c4b75dbfb9e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nea.org/tools/tips/Three-Ring-Binder-Organization.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981626 | 577 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Coyotes belong to a class of animals which are considered to be very smart, innovative and opportunistic. Their smartness can be analyzed from the fact that they can drop the lunch boxes to the school children by chasing them. Number of coyotes are increasing day by day that is why they are becoming brave and courageous. They are also getting used to the human environment now. So in order to save the humans and coyotes from any mishaps, we have to stop them from going to the places where human activities are taking place or retraining them far in the forest. The following article will explain some steps of how to protect chicken from predators like coyotes or keep coyotes away from your other livestock.
The steps are:
Usage of fences can really reduce the risk of getting any harm from coyotes. As the coyotes are wise enough to jump and dig, so the fence should be approximately 1.8 meters (6 ft) high and 30 cm (I ft)under the ground. Moreover the spacing between the fences should be less than 4 inches. These fences should be a necessary part of farms having livestock as a hungry livestock or chicken predator cannot resist the temptation of food inside the farm. The following steps if taken can also prevent coyotes from digging and jumping.
- Pointed wire placed at the ground can stop the coyotes from digging.
- Electric fencing can also serve the purpose especially for saving the livestock.
- Some guard animals can also be used for the livestock. These guard animals include donkeys and llamas. Choose those donkeys and llamas that do not mingle with other donkeys.
Noisy sound can affect the harmful activities of stray coyotes. The sounds explained in the following points can surely protect your livestock from any sort of danger by coyotes.
- If you find any coyote nearby, make noise by yelling and shouting.
- To scare the coyote who is trying to enter the farm, make noise by banging any sort of tin or can lids.
- Sensors or activated alarms can also be used. These sensors sense the presence of the danger up to some distance. The alarm sound will not only scare the coyote but will also make you alert.
- Another important noise maker is the propane exploder.
- Children’s toys can also be used to make noise such as jingles, bangs and whirrs.
3) If you come across a coyote, be surprised:
In addition of making noise while encountering a coyote, use some scary tactics as well. Coyotes can easily get scare off the frightening expressions made by humans. So never make an eye contact with them and turn your back towards them and play a chase and attack game by running away. Some other tactics are explained below.
- Make yourself terrifying through your body movements. Kick the legs and wave the arms. This will give them a feeling to stay away from you.
- A motion activated light can also prevent coyotes and is rather a good way of how to safe chickens.
4) Remove the food loved by coyotes:
Coyotes are greatly tempted to the food they like and even eat anything which will come in their way. So keep all the favorites’ of coyotes like rodents, flesh food away. Never feed the coyotes for the purpose of taming them. They will never be tamed rather will come back for more food. Some ways are described in the points below for eradicating the food sources from your yard.
- Use coyote proof boxes or garbage bins for the purpose of disposing your garbage off. This will keep the coyotes away as it will be secured and difficult to open.
- Never leave the wasted food lying around. Always dispose it off properly in a secure container both in homes and at farms.
- Empty up your tree from the ripe fruits as soon as possible and pick all the fruit lying nearby on the ground.
5) No pets:
Keep all of your pets away from the coyotes. Coyotes are tempted to dogs, cats and free range chicken for attacking purpose. So if you are living in an area where there is a risk of encountering coyotes, follow these steps
- Neuter the pet male dogs and spraying the female pet dog so their urine smell don’t attract coyotes.
- Make sure that the fish ponds are covered.
- Pet food should be kept inside.
- Birdseed should not be scattered around.
6) Make your area junk free:
Preys liked by coyotes can live and breed in the junk piles lying around. Moreover, these junk piles can also be used by the coyotes for hiding purpose.
7) Use wolf urine:
The odor of wolf’s urine can keep the coyotes away as the population of coyote decreases in the areas where the wolves are more in number.
8) Otherwise call a professional:
If the above mentioned solutions do not work, then take help from expertise to avoid predators of chicken, sheep, cats, dogs or other livestock from harming them. | <urn:uuid:f865fe87-46b5-4934-85e6-7e9c9fe72c22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thepoultryguide.com/how-to-keep-coyotes-away-from-chicken-home-livestock/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938197 | 1,043 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Target 3. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education
158. Data for 2000-2004.
C - Country Data. The figure is the one produced and disseminated by the country (including data adjusted BY THE COUNTRY to meet international standards)
M - Modeled. The figure is modeled by the agency when there is a complete lack of data on the variable being estimated. The model is based on a set of covariates—other variables for which data are available and that can explain the phenomenon.
Source: United Nations Statistics Division - Unless otherwise noted, information in this page is accurate as of February 15, 2007 | <urn:uuid:6ce3b590-faac-462a-a222-ca229a874c37> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.indexmundi.com/papua_new_guinea/literacy-rates-of-15-24-years-old,-men,-percentage.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929879 | 155 | 2.859375 | 3 |
(Science Daily) People who eat meat frequently, especially meat that is well done or cooked at high temperatures, may have a higher chance of developing bladder cancer, according to a large study…
The group with the highest red-meat consumption had almost one-and-a-half times the risk of developing bladder cancer as those who ate little red meat.
Specifically, consumption of beef steaks, pork chops and bacon raised bladder cancer risk significantly. Even chicken and fish -- when fried -- significantly raised the odds of cancer.
The level of doneness of the meat also had a marked impact.
[Click the title, above, to post a comment.] | <urn:uuid:2b39fa85-d63b-48a5-9275-1f437d255044> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.manyyearsyoung.com/2010/04/meat-especially-if-its-well-done-may.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968894 | 134 | 2.875 | 3 |
How All 50 States Got Their Names
Before Europeans landed on American shores, the upper stretches of the Alabama River in present-day Alabama used to be the home lands of a Native American tribe called – drum roll, please – the Alabama (Albaamaha in their own tribal language). The river and the state both take their names from the tribe, that's clear enough, but the meaning of the name was another matter. Despite a wealth of recorded encounters with the tribe – Hernando de Soto was the first to make contact with them, followed by other Spanish, French and British explorers and settlers (who referred to the tribe, variously, as the Albama, Alebamon, Alibama, Alibamou, Alibamon, Alabamu, Allibamou, Alibamo and Alibamu) – there are no explanations of the name's meaning in the accounts of early explorers, so if the Europeans asked, they don't appear to have gotten an answer. An un-bylined article in the July 27, 1842 edition of the Jacksonville Republican put forth the idea that the word meant “here we rest.” Alexander Beaufort Meek, who served as the Attorney General of Alabama, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and the President of the First American Chess Congress, popularized this theory in his writings throughout the next decade.
The rub, of course, is that experts in the Alabama language have never been able to find any evidence to support that translation. What they did find are two words in the Choctaw language (both tribes' languages are in the Muskogean language family), alba (“plants” or “weeds”) and amo (“to cut” or “to gather”), that together make Albaamo, or “plant gatherers.” We also know that the Alabama referred to a member of their tribe as an Albaamo, cleared land and practiced agriculture largely without tools and by hand and had contact with the neighboring Choctaws. Today, the prevailing theory is that the phrase was used by the Choctaws to describe their neighbors and the Alabama eventually adopted it as their own.
Like Alabama (and, as we'll see, plenty of other state names), the name Alaska comes from the language of the area's indigenous people. The Aleuts (a name given to them by Russian fur traders in the mid 18th century; they used to, and sometimes still do, call themselves the Unangan), natives of the Aleutian Islands, referred to the Alaskan Peninsula and the mainland as alaxsxaq (ah-lock-shock), literally, “the object toward which the action of the sea is directed.”
There are two sides in the argument over the origin of Arizona's name. One side says that the name comes from the Basque aritz onak (“good oak”) and was applied to the territory because the oak trees reminded the Basque settlers in the area of their homeland. The other side says that the name comes from the Spanish Arizonac, which was derived from the O'odham (the language of the native Pima people) word ali ?ona-g (“having a little spring”), which might refer to actual springs or a site near rich veins of silver discovered in 1736. For what it's worth, official Arizona state historian Marshall Trimble had supported the latter explanation but for now favors the former.
The first Europeans to arrive in the area of present-day Arkansas were French explorers accompanied by Illinois Indian guides. The Illinois referred to the Ugakhpa people native to the region as the Akansa (“wind people” or “people of the south wind”), which the French adopted and pronounced with an r. They added an s to the end for pluralization, and for some reason it stuck when the word was adopted as the state's name. The pronunciation of Arkansas was a matter of debate (Ar-ken-saw vs. Ar-kan-zes) until it was officially decided by an act of the state legislature in 1881.
California existed in European literature way before Europeans settled the Western U.S. It wasn't a state filled with vineyards and movie stars, but an island in the West Indies filled with gold and women. The fictional paradise, first mentioned in the early 1500s by Spanish author Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo in his novel Las Sergas de Esplandián, is ruled by Queen Califia and “inhabited by black women, without a single man among them, [living in] the manner of Amazons.” The island is said to be “one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks... everywhere abounds with gold and precious stones” and is home to griffins and other mythical beasts.
While there is some consensus that the area was named for the fictional island, scholars have also suggested that the name comes from the Catalan words calor (“hot”) and forn (“oven”) or from a Native America phrase, kali forno (“high hill”).
Colorado is a Spanish adjective that means “red.” The early Spanish explorers in the Rocky Mountain region named a river they found the Rio Colorado for the reddish silt that the water carried down from the mountains. When Colorado became a territory in 1861, the Spanish word was used as a name because it was commonly thought that the Rio Colorado originated in the territory. This was not the case, however. Prior to 1921, the Colorado River began where the Green River of Utah and the Grand River of Colorado converged outside of Moab, Utah, and the United States Geological Survey identified Green River of Wyoming as the Colorado's actual headwaters. The Rio Colorado did not actually flow through Colorado until 1921, when House Joint Resolution 460 of the 66th United States Congress changed the name of the Grand River.
The state is named after the Connecticut River, which was named quinnitukqut by the Mohegans who lived in the eastern upper Thames valley. In their Algonquian language, the word means “long river place” or “beside the long tidal river.”
Delaware is named for the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. These, in turn, were named for Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the first colonial governor of Virginia, who traveled the river in 1610. The title is likely ultimately derived from the Old French de la werre (“of the war” or a warrior).
Six days after Easter in 1513, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed near what is now the city of Saint Augustine. In honor of the holiday and the area's plant life, he named the land Florida for the Spanish phrase for the Easter season, pascua florida (“feast of flowers”). The name is the oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S.
In the early 18th century, the British Parliament assigned a committee to investigate the conditions of the country's debtor prisons and didn't like what they found. A group of philanthropists concerned with the plight of debtors proposed the creation of a colony in North America where the “worthy poor” could get back on their feet and be productive citizens again. Their plan ultimately didn't pan out as the colony wasn't settled by debtors, but the trustees of the colony still wanted to thank King George II for granting their charter, so they named the place after him.
(Bonus: The nation of Georgia is supposedly called so because its inhabitants revere St. George and feature his cross on their flag, though Georgians refer to themselves as Kartvelebi and their country as Sakartvelo.)
No one is certain, so take your pick. The name may come from the Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki or "homeland" (some early explorers' accounts have the natives calling the place Hawaiki, a compound of hawa, "homeland," and ii, "small, active") or from Hawaii Loa, the Polynesian who tradition says discovered the islands.
The origin of Idaho's name, like a few other names we've already talked about, is a mystery. When it was proposed as the name of a new U.S. territory, it was explained as a derivation of the Shoshone Indian term ee-da-how, meaning "gem of the mountains" or "the sun comes from the mountains." It's possible that the word, and its Indian origin, were made up by the man who proposed the name, George M. Willing, an eccentric industrialist and mining lobbyist (not all historians and linguists agree on this, though, and the most common alternate explanation is that the name comes from the Apache word idaahe ("enemy"), which the Kiowas Indians applied to the Comanches they came in contact with when they migrated to southern Colorado). When Congress was considering establishing a mining territory in the Rocky Mountains in 1860, Willing and B. D. Williams, a delegate from the region, championed "Idaho." The request for the name came up in the Senate in January 1861 and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon objected to "Idaho," saying, "I do not believe it is an Indian word. It is a corruption. No Indian tribe in this nation has that word, in my opinion... It is a corruption certainly, a counterfeit, and ought not to be adopted." Lane was roundly ignored, probably because he had the bad luck of having been the vice presidential candidate for the pro-slavery southern wing of the Democratic Party in the previous year's election.
After the Senate approved the name, Williams, for some reason, gave into curiosity and looked into Lane's claim. He heard from several sources that Willing or someone in his group of territorial supporters had invented the name "Idaho" and that the word didn't actually mean anything. Williams went back to the Senate and requested that the name be changed. The Senate agreed and used a name that had been on the table before Willing and Williams showed up: "Colorado."
A year later, Congress set out to establish another mining territory in the northwest part of the continent. "Idaho" was again a contender as a name. Without Williams there to call shenanigans and with the senators who should have remembered the last naming incident just a little bit preoccupied with the Civil War, "Idaho" went unchallenged and became the name of the territory and the state.
"Illinois" is the modern spelling of the early French explorers' name for the people they found living in the area, which they spelled in endless variations in their records. The Europeans' first meeting with the Illinois was in 1674. Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary and explorer, followed a path to a village and asked the people there who they were. According to Marquette's writings, "They replied that they were Ilinois...when one speaks the word...it is as if one said, in their language, 'the men'." The explorers thought the tribal name to signify a grown man in his prime, separate from, and superior to, the men of other tribes.
The state's name means "Indian Land" or "Land of the Indians," named so for the Indian tribes that lived there when white settlers arrived. While its meaning might be simple enough, the way it got the name is a little more interesting. At the end of the French and Indian War, the French were forced out of the Ohio Valley, so a Philadelphia trading company moved in to monopolize trade with the Indians in the area. At the time, the tribes of the Iroquois had already formed a confederacy and conquered territory beyond their home lands, subjugating other tribes and treating them as tributaries. In the fall of 1763, members of the Shawnee and other tribes who were tributary to the Iroquois Confederacy conducted raids on traders from the Philadelphia company and stole their goods. The company complained to the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy and demanded restitution. The chiefs accepted responsibility for the behavior of their tributaries, but did not have the money to pay off the debt. Instead, when making a boundary treaty with the English five years later, the chiefs gave a 5,000-square-mile tract of land to the Philadelphia company, which accepted the land as payment.
The land's new owners, in the search for a name, noted a trend in the way states and countries in both the Old World and New World were named. Bulgaria was the land of the Bulgars, Pennsylvania was the woodland of Penn, etc. They decided to honor the people to whom the land originally belonged and from whom it had been obtained and named it Indiana, land of the Indians. The year the colonies declared their independence from Britain, the Indiana land was transferred to a new company, who wanted to sell it. Some of the land, though, was within the boundaries of Virginia, which claimed that it had jurisdiction over the land's settlers and forbade the company from selling it. In 1779, the company asked Congress to settle the matter. It made an attempt, but, still operating under Articles of Confederation, had no power to compel Virginia to do anything. The argument eventually went to the United States Supreme Court, but Virginia's government officials, strong believers in states' rights, refused to become involved with a federal court and ignored the summons to appear. In the meantime, Virginia's politicians worked to secure the Eleventh Amendment, which protected the states' sovereign immunity from being sued in federal court by someone of another state or country (and was proposed in response to a Supreme Court case dealing with Georgia's refusal to appear to hear a suit against itself, in which the Supreme Court decided against Georgia).
After the amendment was passed and ratified, the company's suit was dismissed and it lost its claim to the land, which was absorbed by Virginia. The name would come back in 1800, when Congress carved the state of Ohio out of the Northwest Territory and gave the name "Indiana" to the remaining territorial land and, 16 years later, a new state.
One pioneer in the area wrote in 1868 that "some Indians in search of a new home encamped on a high bluff of the Iowa River near its mouth...and being much pleased with the location and the country around it, in their native dialect exclaimed, 'Iowa, Iowa, Iowa' (beautiful, beautiful, beautiful), hence the name Iowa to the river and to those Indians." A report from the 1879 General Assembly of Iowa translated the word a little differently and claimed it meant "the beautiful land." However, members of the Ioway Nation, who today inhabit Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, will tell you that Ioway is the French spelling of Ayuhwa, a name meaning "sleepy ones" given to the tribe in jest by the Dakota Sioux. (The Ioway refer to themselves as Baxoje (bah-ko-jay) or "the gray/ashy heads," a name that stems from an incident where tribe members were camping in the Iowa River valley and a gust of wind blew sand and campfire ashes onto their heads.)
Kansas was named after the Kansas River, which was named after the Kansa tribe who lived along its banks. Kansa, a Siouan word, is thought to be pretty old. How old? Its full and original meaning was lost to the tribe before they even met their first white settler. Today, we only know that the word has some reference to the wind, possibly "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind."
There is no consensus on where Kentucky's name comes from. Among the possibilities, though, are various Indians words, all from the Iroquoian language group, meaning "meadow," "prairie," "at the prairie," "at the field," "land of tomorrow," "river bottom," and "the river of blood."
Maine is another case where no one is quite sure how the name came about. Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, who received a charter for land in Maine, were both English Royal Navy veterans, and the name may have originated with the sailors differentiating "the mainland" from the many islands off the state's coast. Maine's state legislature, meanwhile, passed a resolution in 2001 that established Franco-American Day and claimed that the state was named after the French province of Maine.
The English colony of Maryland was named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I, who granted Maryland's charter. Mariana was also proposed as a name, but Maryland's founder, Sir Lord Baltimore, believed in the divine right of kings and turned the name down because it reminded him of the Spanish Jesuit and historian Juan de Mariana, who taught that the will of the people was higher than the law of tyrants.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that preceded it were named after the area's indigenous people, the Massachusett. The tribe's name translates to "near the great hill," referring to the Blue Hills southwest of Boston. An alternate form of the tribe's name, the Moswetuset ("hill shaped like an arrowhead"), refers to the Moswetuset Hummock, an arrow-shaped mound in Quincy, MA.
Minnesota is derived from the Dakota tribe's name for the Minnesota River, mnisota (mni "water" + sota "cloudy, muddy;" sometimes translated to the more poetic "sky-tinted water"). The English language doesn't really dig words beginning with mn (you'll find only one, mnemonic), so early settlers in the region added some i's and produced a mini sound that they wrote as "mine." The city of Minneapolis combines mni with the Greek polis, or "city."
The state is named for the Mississippi River. You may have heard that mississippi means "the Father of Waters" and you may have heard that from no less a source than novelist James Fenimore Cooper or President Abraham Lincoln (who wrote in a letter after the Civil War after Union victories during the Civil War, "the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea"). I hate to pee on Honest Abe's parade, but the word, a French derivation of the Ojibwa messipi (alternately misi-sipi or misi-ziibi) actually means "big river." It may not sound as dramatic as Lincoln's preferred translation, but whatever the meaning, the name caught on. As French explorers took the name down the river with them to the delta, it was adopted by local Indian tribes and replaced their own names, and the earlier Spanish explorers' names, for the river.
The state and the Missouri River are both named after the Missouri people, a southern Siouan tribe that lived along the river. Missouri comes from an Illinois language reference to the tribe, ouemessourita, which has been translated as "those who have dugout canoes," "wooden canoe people" or "he of the big canoe."
Nebraska comes from the archaic Otoe Indian words Ñí Brásge (in contemporary Otoe, it would be Ñí Bráhge), meaning "flat water." The words refer to the Platte River, which flows across the Cornhusker State.
The state's name is the Spanish word for "snowfall" and refers to the Sierra Nevada ("snow-covered mountains") mountain range. The non-Nevadan pronunciation of the name "neh-vah-dah" (long A sounds like the a in father) differs from the local pronunciation "nuh-vae-duh" (short A sounds like the a in alligator) and is said to annoy Nevadans endlessly.
John Mason named the area he received in a land grant after the English county of Hampshire, where he had lived for several years as a child. Mason invested heavily in the clearing of land and building of houses in New Hampshire, but died, in England, before ever venturing to the new world to see his property.
New Jersey was named for Jersey, the largest of the British Channel Islands, by its founders Sir John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Carteret was born on Jersey and served as its Lieutenant Governor for several years.
New Mexico and the country it used to be part of, Mexico, both take their name from Nahuatl Mexihco. The meaning of the word is unclear, but there are several hypotheses. It might reference Mextli or M?xihtli, an alternate name for Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and patron of the Aztecs, and mean “place where M?xihtli lives”. It’s also been suggested that the word is a combination of m?tztli (“moon”), xictli (“center”) and the suffix -co (“place”) and means “place at the center of the moon” (in reference to Lake Texcoco).
Both the state and New York City were named for James Stuart, Duke of York and future King James II of England. The old York, a city in England, has been around since before the Romans made their way to the British Isles and the word York comes from the Romans’ Latin name for city, written variously as Eboracum, Eburacum and Eburaci. Tracing the name further back is difficult, as the language of the area’s pre-Roman indigenous people was never recorded. They are thought to have spoken a Celtic language, though, and Eboracum may have been derived from the Brythonic Eborakon, which means “place of the yew trees.”
King Charles II of England, who granted a charter to start a colony in modern-day North Carolina, named the land in honor of his father, Charles I. Carolina comes from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles.
North and South Dakota both take their names from the Dakota, a tribe of Siouan people who lived in the region. No detailed etymology of Dakota is widely accepted, but the most common explanation is that it means “friend” or “ally” in the language of the Sioux.
A common translation, “beautiful river,” originates in a French traveler’s 1750 account of visiting the region. He referred to the Ohio River as “une belle riviere” and gave its local Indian name as Ohio. People took his description of the river as a translation of the Indian name, though there is no evidence that that was his intention or that that is even a correct translation. In fact, no definitive meaning for the word is available, though ohio is more likely a Wyandot word meaning “large/great” or “the great one,” than “beautiful river.” It could also be derived from the Seneca ohi:yo’ (“large creek”).
Oklahoma is a combination of the Choctaw words ukla (“person”) and humá (“red”). The word was used by the Choctaw to describe Native Americans, “red persons.” Allen Wright, chief of the Choctaw Nation from 1866 to 1870, suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government over the use of the Indian Territory. When the Indian Territory was whittled down to what is now Oklahoma, the new territory took its name from the Choctaw word.
The origin of Oregon may be the most hotly debated of the state names. Here’s a few of the competing explanations (and I may have even missed a few):
- Derived from the French ouragan (“hurricane”) and the state named so because French explorers called the Columbia River le fleuve aux ouragans (“Hurricane River”) due to the strong winds in the Columbia Gorge.
- Derived from oolighan, a Chinook name for the eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), a smelt found along the Pacific coast and prized as a source of food for Native Americans in the area.
- Derived from the Spanish orejón (“big ears”), which early Spanish explorers reportedly used to refer to local natives.
- Derived from Ouragon, a word used by Major Robert Rogers in a 1765 petition asking the British government to finance and supply an overland search for the Northwest Passage. As to where Rogers got the word, it could have come from an error on a French-made map from the early 1700s, where the Ouisiconsink (“Wisconsin River”) is misspelled “Ouaricon-sint,” and broken so “Ouaricon” sits on a line by itself or it might have been derived from the Algonquian wauregan or olighin, which both mean “good and beautiful” (and were both used in reference to the Ohio River at the time).
- Derived from the Shoshone words Ogwa (river) and Pe-On (west) and picked up from the Sioux, who referred to the Columbia as the “River of the West,” by American explorer Jonathan Carver.
Named in honor of Admiral William Penn. The land was granted to Penn’s son, William Penn, to pay off a debt owed by the crown to the senior Penn. The name is made up of Penn + sylva (“woods” ) + nia (a noun suffix) to get “Penn's Woodland.” The younger Penn was embarrassed by the name and feared that people would think he had named the colony after himself, but King Charles would not rename the land.
First used in a letter by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in which he compares an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay (a bay on the north side of Rhode Island Sound) to the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. The explanation preferred by the state government is that Dutch explorer Adrian Block named the area Roodt Eylandt (“red island”) in reference to the red clay that lined the shore and the name was later anglicized under British rule.
See North Carolina above.
North and South Dakota both take their names from the Dakota, a tribe of Siouan people who lived in the region. No detailed etymology of Dakota is widely accepted, but the most common explanation is that it means “friend” or “ally” in the language of the Sioux.
While traveling inland from South Carolina in 1567, Spanish explorer Juan Pardo passed through a Native American village in modern-day Tennessee named Tanasqui. Almost two centuries later, British traders came upon a Cherokee village called Tanasi (in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee). No one knows whether Tanasi and Tanasqui were actually the same village, though it is known that Tanasi was located on the Little Tennessee River and recent research suggests that Tanasqui was close to the confluence of the Pigeon River and the French Broad River (near modern-day Newport). Tennessee could have come from either one of these village names, but the meanings of both words have since been lost.
Texas comes from teysha (sometimes spelled tejas, tayshas, texias, thecas, techan, teysas, or techas), a word widely used by the natives of the eastern Texas region before the arrival of the Spanish. The tribes had various spellings and interpretations of the word, but the usual meaning was “friends” or “allies.” Some tribes, like the Hasinais and the Caddo, used it as a greeting, “hello, friend.” This is the usage that Spanish explorers picked up and used to greet friendly tribes throughout Texas and Oklahoma. The explorers also applied the word as a name for the Caddo people and the area around their East Texas settlement.
Derived from the name of the native tribe known as the Nuutsiu or Utes (which itself may come from the Apache yudah, yiuta or yuttahih, meaning “they who are higher up”), whom the Spanish first encountered in modern-day Utah in the late 1500s. In the tribe’s language, ute means “Land of the Sun.” (The tribe referred to themselves as the “Nuciu” or “Noochew,” which simply means “The People.”)
Derived from the French words vert (“green”) and mont (“mountain”). Samuel Peters claimed that he christened the land with that name in 1763 while standing on top of a mountain, saying, “The new name is Vert-Mont, in token that her mountains and hills shall be ever green and shall never die." Most historians would disagree, as would Thomas Young, the Pennsylvania statesman who suggested that his state’s constitution be used as the basis for Vermont's and is generally credited with suggesting the name to maintain the memory of the Green Mountain Boys, the militia organization formed to resist New York’s attempted take-over of the area.
Named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (known as the Virgin Queen), who granted Walter Raleigh the charter to form a colony north of Spanish Florida.
Named in honor of the first president of the United States, George Washington. In the eastern US, the state is referred to as Washington State or the state of Washington to distinguish it from the District of Columbia, which they usually just call “Washington”, "D.C." or, if they're very local, "the District." Washingtonians and other Pacific Northwesterners simply call the state “Washington” and refer to the national capital as “Washington, D.C.” or just “D.C.”
West Virginia, formed from 39 Virginia counties whose residents voted to form a new state rather than join the Confederacy, was named after the same queen as the state it split from, though the new state was originally to be called Kanawha.
Derived from Meskousing, the name applied to the Wisconsin River by the Algonquian-speaking tribes in the region. The French explorer Jacques Marquette recorded the name in 1673, and the word was eventually corrupted into Ouisconsin, anglicized to its modern form during the early 19th century, and its current spelling made official by the territorial legislature in 1845. Modern linguists had been unable to find any word in an Algonquian language similar to the one Marquette recorded, and now believe that the tribes borrowed the name from the Miami meskonsing, or “it lies red,” a reference to the reddish sandstone of the Wisconsin Dells.
Derived from the Delaware (Lenape) Indian word mecheweami-ing (“at/on the big plains”), which the tribe used to refer their home region in Pennsylvania (which was eventually named the Wyoming Valley [Wilkes-Barre represent!]). Other names considered for the new territory were Cheyenne, Shoshoni, Arapaho, Sioux, Platte, Big Horn, Yellowstone and Sweetwater, but Wyoming was chosen because it was already in common use by the territory’s settlers. | <urn:uuid:7f90d807-7c4f-4e8a-9209-33b21af531fa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mentalfloss.com/article/31100/how-all-50-states-got-their-names | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969996 | 6,650 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Labor's share of income has been declining, and inequality has been increasing. Will these trends continue?:
Labor's Declining Share of Income and Rising Inequality, by Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino, FRB Cleveland: Labor income has declined as a share of total income earned in the United States. This decline was caused by several factors, including a change in the technology used to produce goods and services, increased globalization and trade openness, and developments in labor market institutions and policies.
One consequence of the labor share decline has raised concerns. Since labor income is more evenly distributed across U.S. households than capital income, the decline made total income less evenly distributed and more concentrated at the top of the distribution, and this contributed to increase income inequality. In this Commentary, we look at how the labor share decline has affected income inequality in the past, and we study the likely future path of the labor share and its implications for inequality.
The Decline in Labor’s Share of Income
Household income comes in two types: labor income, which includes wages, salaries, and other work-related compensation (such as pension and insurance benefits and incentive-based compensation), and capital income, which includes interest, dividends, and other realized investment returns (such as capital gains). During the last three decades, labor’s share of total income has declined in favor of capital income (see “Behind the Decline in Labor’s Share of Income” for more detail).
There are a number of ways to measure the share of income that accrues to labor. We look at three different data sources, and each provides broad evidence of the decline. According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, labor’s share of gross national income fluctuated around 67 percent during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, but it has declined since then and now stands at 63.8 percent.1 (See figure 1.) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ratio of compensation to output for the nonfarm business sector fluctuated around 65 percent until the early 1980s and has declined steadily since, from 63 percent during the 1980s and 1990s to 58.2 percent most recently. Finally, a 2011 study of income tax returns and demographic data by the CBO (CBO 2011) finds that labor’s share of income decreased from 75 percent in 1979 to 67 percent in 2007.
These three data sources measure slightly different labor share concepts, which is why their estimated levels are different. But they agree in indicating a significant drop of 3 to 8 percentage points in labor’s share of income since the early 1980s, with the trend accelerating during the 2000s.
Such a decline had implications for the distribution of incomes. Labor income is more evenly distributed across U.S. households than capital income, while a disproportionately large share of capital income accrues to the top income households. As the share that is more evenly distributed declined and the share that is more concentrated at the top rose, total income became less evenly distributed and more concentrated at the top. As a result, total income inequality rose.
Income inequality is the dispersion of annual incomes across households, relative to the average household income. Inequality affects a variety of other important economic variables, such as the composition of consumption and investment, tax revenue and government spending, government policies, economic mobility, human capital accumulation, and growth. Some economists—most prominently Raghuram Rajan in his book Fault Lines—have suggested that rising income inequality contributed to the debt accumulation and financial imbalances that led to the recent financial crisis. And of course income inequality is the focus of much attention as an indicator, albeit imperfect, of the inequality of lifetime income and welfare across households.
Several indicators suggest that inequality was declining up to the late 1970s, but it has since reversed course. It rose sharply during the 1980s and early 1990s and currently is at near record-high levels. ... [facts and figures on inequality, several measures presented] ...
This is a sizeable effect. More importantly, most of the effect occurred during the last decade, when the decline in the labor share was accelerating. Is this trend going to continue, and how will it affect income inequality going forward?
We use the model described in box 2 to learn about the future path of the labor share. The model decomposes the labor share into its long-run trend and its transitory components, and then it forecasts the future path of the overall labor share. We do all the calculations twice, once with the BEA data and once with the BLS data.
According to our model, the labor share trend has declined since 1980, with an accelerated drop in the 2000s, in both sets of data (figure 4). In the BEA data, the trend declined from levels as high as 69 percent before 1980 to 66.9 percent in 2000, to 64.9 percent today. In the BLS data, the trend declined from levels of approximately 64.5 percent before 1980 to 62.8 percent in 2000, to 59.8 percent today. According to these measures, the trend in the labor share declined 1.5 to 2 percentage points between 1980 and 2000, and then dropped an additional 2 to 3 percentage points, for a total of 4 to 4.5 percentage points.
Our model indicates that the labor share is currently 1 to 1.5 percentage points below its long-run trend level. Part of the decline in the labor share in the past five years was temporary, and it will be reversed as the recovery continues. Going forward, the labor share will pick up and converge to its long-run trend value. This will tend to decrease income inequality, lowering the Gini index by up to 0.5 (0.33 × 1.5) percentage points, as the decomposition in box 1 indicates.
Income inequality will not necessarily decrease though. As shown in box 1, inequality is affected not only by the relative shares of labor and capital income, but also by the concentrations of each. Concentration refers to the way each type of income is distributed across the households that earn it. In particular, concentration indexes measure how concentrated capital or labor income is at the top of the income distribution.
The future path of labor concentration is hard to predict, as it depends on the evolution of the returns to education and of the wage-skill premium. The concentration of capital income, however, is strongly procyclical, rising during recoveries (figure 5), and this suggests that capital income will become more concentrated at the top in the coming years of the recovery, helping to raise income inequality even further. This effect has dominated the dynamics of income inequality during the past two business cycles, so the future path of income inequality will likely be determined by the strength of the recovery and the associated pickup of the concentration of capital income. | <urn:uuid:2588a15d-17e8-4fb5-81b3-1fdaf4dc0fcd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/09/labors-declining-share-of-income-and-rising-inequality.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966519 | 1,411 | 2.703125 | 3 |
This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. It is part of a collaboration among the Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting and Michigan Radio. It was featured on Reveal, a new program from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.
MOUNT VERNON, Maine—Living in the lush, wooded countryside with fresh New England air, Wendy Brennan never imagined her family might be consuming poison every day. But when she signed up for a research study offering a free T-shirt and a water-quality test, she was stunned to discover that her private well contained arsenic.
“My eldest daughter said...‘You’re feeding us rat poison.’ I said, ‘Not really,’ but I guess essentially...that is what you’re doing. You’re poisoning your kids,” Brennan lamented in her thick Maine accent. “I felt bad for not knowing it.”
Brennan is not alone. Urine samples collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from volunteers reveal that most Americans regularly consume small amounts of arsenic. It’s not just in water; it’s also in some of the foods we eat and beverages we drink, such as rice, fruit juice, beer and wine.
Under orders from a Republican-controlled Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 established a new drinking-water standard to try to limit people’s exposure to arsenic. But a growing body of research since then has raised questions about whether the standard is adequate.
The EPA has been prepared to say since 2008, based on its review of independent science, that arsenic is 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency now reports. Women are especially vulnerable. Agency scientists calculated that if 100,000 women consumed the legal limit of arsenic every day, 730 of them would eventually get bladder or lung cancer from it.
After years of research and delays, the EPA was on the verge of making its findings official by 2012. Once the science was complete, the agency could review the drinking water standard. But an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that one member of Congress effectively blocked the release of the EPA findings and any new regulations for years.
It is a battle between politics and science. Mining companies and rice producers, which could be hurt by the EPA’s findings, lobbied against them. But some of the most aggressive lobbying came from two pesticide companies that sell a weed killer containing arsenic.
The EPA had reached an agreement with those companies to ban most uses of their herbicide by the end of last year. But the agreement was conditioned on the EPA’s completing its scientific review. The delay by Congress caused the EPA to suspend its ban. The weed killer, called MSMA, remains on the market.
Turning to a powerful lawmaker for help is one tactic in an arsenal used by industry to virtually paralyze EPA scientists who evaluate toxic chemicals. In 2009, President Obama signed an executive memorandum to try to stop political interference with science. That same year, the EPA unveiled an ambitious plan to evaluate far more chemicals each year than had been done in either the Bush or Clinton administrations.
But in 2012 and 2013, the EPA has managed to complete only six scientific evaluations of toxic chemicals, creating a backlog of 47 ongoing assessments. It’s a track record no better than past administrations. The Center found that a key reason for this is the intervention by a single member of Congress.
The story of arsenic shows how easily industry thwarted the Obama’s administration’s effort to prevent interference with science.
A ubiquitous poison
Arsenic is virtually synonymous with poison. But it’s also everywhere, found naturally in the Earth’s crust. Even if the toxin were eliminated from drinking water, people would still consume it in food, a more vexing problem to address.
Scientists are debating whether there is such a thing as a safe level of arsenic. New research has raised questions whether even low levels of arsenic can be harmful, especially to children and fetuses.
The findings of the study Wendy Brennan enrolled in were published in April. Researchers from Columbia University gave IQ tests to about 270 grade-school children in Maine. They also checked to see if there was arsenic in their tap water at home. Maine is known as a hot spot for arsenic in groundwater.
The researchers found that children who drank water with arsenic—even at levels below the current EPA drinking water standard—had an average IQ deficit of six points compared to children who drank water with virtually no arsenic.
The findings are eerily similar to studies of lead, a toxin considered so dangerous to children that it was removed from paint and gasoline decades ago. Other studies have linked arsenic to a wide variety of other ailments, including cancer, heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
“I jokingly say that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin,” said Joseph Graziano, a Columbia professor who headed the Maine research. “Because the lead effects are limited to just a couple of organ systems—brain, blood, kidney. The arsenic effects just sweep across the body and impact everything that’s going on, every organ system.”
For 15 years, Brennan and her family drank water with arsenic levels five times greater than the current drinking-water standard. She has no way of knowing what effect this has had on her two daughters.
Carrington Brennan, now 14, says it bothers her to think that drinking water may have affected her intelligence. “It shocked and scared me, I guess,” she said. “I think it should be prevented in future cases.”
Chemical reviews lag
It’s the job of the EPA to protect the public from toxic chemicals. To do that, the agency must first review the scientific literature to determine which chemicals are harmful and at what doses. This duty falls on an obscure program with a drab bureaucratic name, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
There are tens of thousands of chemicals on the market and by one estimate, 700 new chemicals are introduced every year. Yet since 1987, IRIS has completed evaluations on only 557 of them.
The last time IRIS analyzed arsenic was in 1988, just a year before the Safe Drinking Water Act called for the EPA to set a new drinking-water standard for the toxin. The EPA missed that deadline, so in 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress gave the agency five more years to comply. The EPA turned to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences for help. Scientists there reviewed the EPA’s 1988 analysis. They said it was badly out of date and underestimated the risk of arsenic.
After the EPA set a new drinking-water standard in 2001, the IRIS program moved to update its analysis of arsenic. EPA scientists spent five years reviewing hundred of studies before sending a draft report to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget in October 2008.
EPA scientists concluded that arsenic was 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency currently reports. Put another way, the risk of someone eventually getting cancer from drinking the legal limit of arsenic every day is 60 times greater than any other toxin regulated by drinking-water laws.
The White House at that point had become a nemesis of EPA scientists, requiring them to clear their science through OMB starting in 2004. Scientific assessments were often sent to OMB only to die, seemingly the victim of political influence. A stinging report by the Government Accountability Office in 2008 said that IRIS was at serious risk of becoming obsolete, unable to keep up with the workload or the science. The GAO noted that in 2007 the EPA sent 16 assessments to OMB, where they got held up. That year, the agency managed to complete only two assessments.
Within five months of Obama taking office, the EPA wrested back control of the process. The agency also set up an ambitious timetable to complete toxic-chemical assessments within two years. By that point, the arsenic assessment had already been in the works for six. The arsenic draft had to go through an external peer-review before being considered valid. But IRIS officials were optimistic about completing it by the end of 2011.
Meanwhile, in an entirely different office within the EPA, negotiations were under way that would ultimately prevent IRIS from finishing its work.
Veterans Community Park is one of the busiest parks in Naples, Fla., with softball fields, basketball and tennis courts and a playground. In early 2004, Collier County began spraying the herbicide MSMA on the fields to control weeds. But soon, tests detected high levels of arsenic in the groundwater.
It wasn’t the first time alarms had sounded about MSMA. Tests at nine golf courses using the weed killer had detected significant levels of arsenic in shallow groundwater and ponds, a concern because 90 percent of all drinking water in Florida comes from wells. The EPA had already banned all pesticides containing inorganic arsenic, considered to be the most toxic form of the metal. But evidence showed that the organic arsenic in MSMA converts to inorganic in soil. EPA scientists feared that MSMA could be contaminating drinking water.
In 2006, the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances announced plans to ban all uses of herbicides containing arsenic and began negotiating with the few companies still selling them. Within three years, they had reached an agreement. The pesticide companies would phase out all uses of MSMA, except on cotton fields, by the end of 2013.
But the agreement included a condition. It required the EPA to complete a scientific review of arsenic before the ban could take effect. The pesticide office apparently assumed that the IRIS assessment, then six years in the making, would be done by then.
In all likelihood, IRIS would have met the deadline. But two pesticide companies and their lobbyist turned to Congress.
The two companies are Drexel Chemical Co. of Memphis, Tenn., and Luxembourg-Pamol, whose parent, Luxembourg Industries, is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Both are family-owned. Luxembourg-Pamol doesn’t release sales figures; Drexel Chemical says its sales exceed $100 million a year.
Though anyone can buy MSMA, the label cautions that it should be sprayed only on cotton fields, sod farms, highway shoulders and golf courses. The market for MSMA is likely worth several million dollars for these companies. The EPA estimated in 2006 that about 3 million pounds of MSMA and another similar compound were sold each year in the United States. The weed killer retails for about $5 a pound.
The companies joined forces to hire Charlie Grizzle, a lobbyist who worked as an EPA assistant administrator during the President George H. W. Bush era. When the EPA released a public draft of its arsenic assessment in February 2010, the pesticide companies countered with a unique argument.
Michal Eldan, a vice president at Luxembourg-Pamol, said her company had the scientific literature scoured and found 300 studies published since 2007 that the EPA had not included in the draft.
“If the report is not up to date, a risk assessment cannot be based on that,” Eldan said in an interview. “We mentioned that because this is the one inarguable detail. You can argue about toxicity. You can argue about risk assessment. You can’t argue about 300 publications that are missing from the list of references.”
Grizzle added, “I think it’s safe to say that the missing 300 studies, if you will, really exposed EPA to accusations from congressmen and stakeholders that they were cherry-picking the data.”
In August 2010, 15 Republicans in the House and Senate made that very argument in a letter to then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson: “We are informed that there are nearly 300 studies in the scientific literature on arsenic published since 2007 that were not included in the agency’s evaluation. We find that troubling and are concerned that this could allow critics to conclude that the agency is ‘cherry-picking’ data to support its conclusions."
After reading the letter, Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union who has followed the arsenic review closely, said, “This is a really dishonest couple of sentences ... That’s because the [EPA] document was written in early 2008, and the only reason the public is seeing it [in 2010] is because OMB sat on it.”
“It’s not cherry-picking the data. When the document was written, those studies hadn’t been published yet,” he said.
Yet the missing publications ultimately became the rationale for Congress to derail the EPA’s assessment. In July 2011, language appeared in a House Appropriations Committee report ordering the EPA to take no action on its arsenic assessment and turn the job over to the National Academy of Sciences. The report instructed the academy to include “the 300 studies in the published scientific literature EPA failed to review for its 2010 draft assessment.”
Committee reports explain how to implement a bill. Government agencies could ignore them, but they seldom do, for fear of angering congressional leaders who control funding. Burying language in a report — as opposed to the bill itself—was the same technique once used for earmarks. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group that closely monitors the Appropriations Committee, said rank-and-file members of the House cannot strike or amend language in a report. In fact, he said, only a couple of lawmakers in leadership would likely know who put the language in the report.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees EPA funding, said she has no way of knowing who is responsible for trying to kill the arsenic assessment. “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute,” she said. “So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”
So, who did it? All the evidence from the Center’s investigation pointed to one congressman: Mike Simpson of Idaho.
Simpson was one of the Republicans who signed the letter to the EPA administrator complaining about the missing 300 studies. He was the chairman of the subcommittee that controlled funding for the EPA, where the language first appeared. He was also a member of another committee where the language surfaced again in a different report. He even asked the EPA administrator about arsenic at a subcommittee hearing.
Simpson, who worked as a dentist and state legislator before entering Congress, is a frequent critic of the EPA. But in the 2012 and 2014 election campaigns, he has been portrayed as too liberal by Tea Party candidates funded by the right-wing Club for Growth.
In a brief interview outside his Capitol Hill office, Simpson accepted credit for instructing the EPA to stop work on its arsenic assessment. “I’m worried about drinking water and small communities trying to meet standards that they can’t meet,” he said. “So we want the Academy of Science to look at how they come up with their science.”
Simpson said he didn’t know that his actions kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market. He denied that the pesticide companies lobbied him for the delay. But lobbyist Grizzle offered a different account. “I was part of a group that met with the congressman and his staff a number of years ago on our concerns,” Grizzle said, adding that there were four or five other lobbyists in that meeting but he couldn’t remember who they were.
Other organizations that disclosed lobbying the EPA and Congress on the agency’s arsenic evaluation were the U.S. Rice Federation; the Mulch and Soil Council; the Association of California Water Agencies; and the National Mining Association, including the mining companies Arch Coal and Rio Tinto.
Grizzle began making donations to Simpson’s re-election campaign in January 2011, a few months before Simpson took action to delay the arsenic assessment. Since then, Grizzle has given a total of $7,500. That’s more than he’s given in that time to any other candidate. Asked if the contributions were made in exchange for the delay, Grizzle said, “I don’t see a connection. I’ve been a friend and supporter of Congressman Simpson for a long time.” When Simpson was asked if he was aware of the donations, he terminated the interview, saying, “I have no idea. But I’ve got a hearing.”
The National Academy of Sciences was created during the Civil War to provide objective advice from the nation’s most highly regarded scientists. In 1999 and 2001, the academy twice reviewed the EPA’s analysis of arsenic and concluded it badly underestimated the risk. The EPA’s draft that has been delayed was built in part off the academy’s critique.
Taking scientific assessments out of the hands of the EPA and giving them to the academy has become a tactic to delay regulations, said Charles Fox, a former EPA assistant administrator who oversaw the development of a new drinking water standard for arsenic. “The standard playbook that industry uses first begins with questioning the science, and they can question the science in any one of a number of different forms,” he said. “There is a scientific advisory board at EPA. There’s the National Academy of Sciences.”
But endless delays to perfect the science can jeopardize public health, Fox said. “We always as regulators had to do our best to make decisions based on the best available science we had at the time. Science will always improve and you can always revisit that decision down the road, but fundamentally we have an obligation to protect public health in the environment, and that decision needs to be made on the best science that you have today.”
In a letter last October telling buyers that the EPA had lifted its ban for at least three years, the MSMA manufacturers said in a joint statement that they “fully expect the NAS review to result in a less stringent risk value for human exposure to inorganic arsenic.” If so, the companies said, they are confident the threat of a ban will be lifted permanently and the EPA may even allow other uses of MSMA.
The two manufacturers of the herbicide are still trying to influence the scientific assessment. The National Academy held a meeting in April 2013 to review the science on arsenic. It invited 14 scientists to give presentations. Two of those scientists are funded by Drexel and Luxembourg-Pamol, which lobbied Simpson to delay the EPA.
The academy doesn’t require presenters to disclose their financial ties; some choose to do so and some don’t. Neither of the scientists funded by the pesticide companies disclosed their ties at the meeting.
Dr. Samuel Cohen, a professor at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, told the panel that inorganic arsenic doesn't cause cancer or any other diseases in people below a certain threshold dose, which he suggests is substantially higher than the current drinking water standard. Cohen has been funded by the MSMA manufacturers for more than a decade, according to disclosures in published articles.
Barbara Beck, who works for Gradient, a scientific consulting firm often hired by industry, also gave a presentation without disclosing her ties.
Eldan, with Luxembourg-Pamol, acknowledged that both scientists are paid by her company. Beck prepared a 32-page report on the EPA’s arsenic assessment. Eldan said that Beck and Cohen disclose their ties in published articles in scientific journals. In some cases, Eldan, a scientist herself, is listed as a co-author.
Cohen said in an email that he disclosed his funding in published articles that he provided to the academy. Records show that Cohen sent the academy three articles that listed funding only from the “Arsenic Science Task Force,” with no further explanation about the task force.
Beck said, “Although I have done work for the Organic Arsenical Products Task Force [composed of the two pesticide companies], my presence and presentation at the April 2013 meeting were funded wholly by Gradient …. At both meetings, I am solely responsible for my comments.”
Joseph Graziano, who chairs the National Academy of Sciences panel on arsenic, said he hadn’t realized that Beck and Cohen were being funded by the pesticide companies when they spoke at the workshop. “I was not aware of that,” he said, “and I don’t think the committee was aware of it.”
Congress rescues the formaldehyde industry
This is not the first time Congress has pressured the EPA to hand over science on toxic chemicals to the National Academy. In 2009, Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, held up the nomination of a top EPA official as leverage to force the agency to have the academy review the risks of formaldehyde.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Institute of Health’s National Toxicology Program both say that formaldehyde can cause cancer. The EPA was preparing to say the same.
Yet the agency ultimately relented to Vitter’s demand. After months of review, the academy criticized the IRIS draft on formaldehyde for being repetitive, poorly organized and failing to clearly present all the evidence of its findings. The panel recommended the EPA redo the draft to be more clear and concise. Recognizing that the EPA was having a problem in completing assessments, the academy said it wasn’t calling for a delay.
Soon, however, the formaldehyde industry was turning to Congress to help it delay the assessment. Right next to Simpson’s language in the committee report about delaying the arsenic assessment was another set of instructions to the EPA. This time, IRIS was told to apply the academy’s recommendations on formaldehyde to all ongoing and future assessments. When asked if he requested the language, Grizzle acknowledged only that he was one of the lobbyists for the Formaldehyde Council, an arm of the industry.
The EPA said in a report to Congress it won’t start all its assessments over from scratch, but it will try to incorporate the academy’s recommendations. As a result, the 47 pending reviews have been further delayed.
IRIS Director Vincent Cogliano said the changes will lead to more rigorous assessments that should have an easier time getting through peer review. When asked how IRIS responds to political pressure, he said he had little control over that. “We’re doing our best to keep our assessments focused on the science,” he said. “What happens after that is not part of the IRIS process.”
‘It’s not their right’
Eldan said people shouldn’t be worried about her company’s weed killer. “To be honest, we believe that this is a good product, that it does not pose a concern to health and the environment,” she said. Clearing weeds from the sides of highways can be a safety issue, she said, because tall plants can block vision. Even on golf courses, there are safety concerns, she said. “The weeds have a tendency to spread. If you don’t use herbicides, it’s not only one weed. They can cover the golf course,” Eldan said. “The players can stumble on them.”
Meanwhile, in Maine, Wendy Brennan worries about all the years her family was drinking arsenic-tainted water. “I know a lot of people around the area that have had cancer, and so you always think, ‘Jesus, that's going to be my kids. It’s going to be me or my husband,’ ” Brennan said.
Her congresswoman, Pingree, also worries about her constituents. “When you have a toxic chemical in the environment that could be affecting child development or people who could eventually be contracting cancer from their exposure to this, we shouldn’t be delaying,” Pingree said.
She fears that after the National Academy of Sciences completes its review, the pesticide companies will find another delaying tactic. “That’s the sad part; there’s nothing to stop Congress from finding another roadblock to delay,” Pingree said. “Congress can say, ‘Well, here’s another 200 studies, you better review them.’ ”
Brennan doesn’t understand why there’s a need to wait. “If they’ve already got some proof that it’s 17 times more potent, you’d think they’d want to get the information they had out and then continue to explore scientifically more,” she said. “We need to know what’s going on with our drinking water. If somebody wants to not let us know because they want to keep some pesticides making money for five more years…it's not their right. It’s not their body. It’s not their decision.”
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity | <urn:uuid:3c2c5584-7838-4b17-a4bf-c882009217f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/politics-derail-science-on-arsenic-endangering-public-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9674 | 5,282 | 2.734375 | 3 |
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Hardwick from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "HARDWICK, a parish in Depwade [registration] district, Norfolk; 3 miles SE of Long Stratton, and 5 NE by E of Tivetshall [railway] station. It has a post-office under Long Stratton. Acres: 855. Real property: £1,803. Population: 227. Houses: 53. The manor belongs to F. Bacon Frank, Esq. The living is a rectory, annexed to the rectory of Shelton, in the diocese of Norwich. The church is ancient; and it retains only small part of a tower, which was round, and had an octagonal lantern. There is a Wesleyan chapel.
In 1935 the civil parish was abolished and the land and its inhabitants were absorbed by the neighbouring parish of Shelton.
- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Hardwick has a church (which is famous locally for its ruined tower), as well as several farms and a substantial amount of housing. It was also home to a Royal Air Force airfield, which was used by the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
- GENUKI provides a list of references for Hardwick. Some entries lead to free online transcriptions of registers and censuses.
- GENUKI also advises that the following lists for Norfolk are to be found in FamilySearch:
- England, Norfolk, Parish Registers (County Record Office), 1510-1997
- England, Norfolk Archdeacon's Transcripts, 1600-1812
- England, Norfolk Bishop's Transcripts, 1685-1941
- England, Norfolk Marriage Bonds, 1557-1915
- England, Norfolk Non-conformist Records, 1613-1901
Categories: Norfolk, England | Hardwick, Norfolk, England | Depwade Hundred, Norfolk, England | Shelton, Norfolk, England | Depwade Rural, Norfolk, England | South Norfolk District, Norfolk, England | <urn:uuid:c51ebe63-ecbc-430a-9aaa-92a5aa837f9b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Hardwick%2C_Norfolk%2C_England | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943994 | 465 | 2.65625 | 3 |
What Is Relaxation?
Relaxation is a simple way to quiet the mind and the body. Relaxation can slow the heart rate and breathing rate and decrease blood pressure and muscle tension.
Using relaxation techniques can help you learn to let go of stressful thoughts and feelings. One way to do this is by focusing on:
- A calming word such as “peace”
- Your breath
- A part of the body such as your heart
- A relaxing mental image such as the ocean or the forest
Both the body and the mind are able to deeply relax—the direct opposite of the state of stress. Regular practice, even for very short periods during the day, can calm your mind and body and help you focus on the present moment.
How Can Relaxation Help Me?
Long-term stress can take a toll on the body and on our feelings of well-being. When you become stressed, your body reacts by increasing your heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing. By themselves, these are normal reactions and once stress has passed your body returns to normal.
When stress lasts over a long period of time, however, all these body responses may stay high. This leaves you open to both physical and emotional problems that can sap your energy and your enjoyment of life. Long-term effects of stress can include daily anxiety, chronic sleep problems, a lowered immune system, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and stomach and intestinal problems.
When practiced over time, relaxation techniques can have a beneficial effect on many areas of life.
- On an emotional level, they can help reduce worry, distress, anger, anxiety and depression
- On a mental level, they can help improve memory, focus and creativity
- On a spiritual level, they can help increase awareness of self and others, compassion and well-being
- On a physical level, they can help decrease symptoms of illness, pain, blood pressure, and stress and can improve sleep, energy and overall quality of life
Perhaps most important of all, they are a powerful tool that you can use at any time to:
- Connect to yourself
- Shift gears
- Slow down
- Lower tension and stress
- Enhance awareness of your thoughts, feelings and surroundings
- Feel better able to cope in any situation | <urn:uuid:f96da22b-46bb-4794-99b0-eb8bab81b18e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.montefiore.org/healingarts-relaxation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00085-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942299 | 470 | 3.046875 | 3 |
By Renewable Energy Focus staff
As the thickness of the gold use is 8 nm, the electrodes still have the potential to be relatively cheap. It can also be recouped from organic solar cells at the end of their lives.
Organic solar cells have long relied on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coated glass as the transparent electrode, a complex, unstable material with a high surface roughness and tendency to crack upon bending if supported on a plastic substrate. Indium is also in short supply making it relatively expensive to use.
An ultra-thin film of air-stable metal like gold would offer a viable alternative to ITO for organic solar cells, but until now it has not proved possible to deposit a film thin enough to be transparent without being too fragile and electrically resistive to be useful.
Research led by Dr Ross Hatton and Professor Tim Jones in the University of Warwick ’s Department of Chemistry has developed a rapid method for the preparation of robust, ultra-thin gold films on glass. The method can be scaled up for large area applications like solar cells and the resulting electrodes are chemically very well-defined.
Dr Hatton says: “This new method of creating gold based transparent electrodes is potentially widely applicable for a variety of large area applications, particularly where stable, chemically well-defined, ultra-smooth platform electrodes are required, such as in organic optoelectronics and the emerging fields of nano-electronics and nano-photonics” | <urn:uuid:1271bef7-f496-46dd-822a-cbb1059043c9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/17438/golden-window-electrodes-for-organic-solar-cells/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931609 | 304 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Does taking a step outside these days make you feel like you might collapse of heat exhaustion? We’ve already given you some tips about lowering your energy bill in the hot summer months, but what about keeping you cool on those unbearably hot days outdoors?
Keeping cool is not only a matter of comfort — it’s necessary for your health, too. When your body overheats, a variety of serious health complications can occur, including heat exhaustion, heat cramps or heat stroke. Before you go racing for the thermostat, crank up the air conditioning in your car, or stand in front of the open fridge, consider these natural and energy-efficient ways to beat the heat.
- Loose, light colored clothing made of lightweight materials, such as cotton. Beware that some synthetic fabrics can actually retain heat!
- Most of your body heat escapes through your head and your feet, so avoid caps, tight shoes, and sneakers that do not breathe. Flip-flops, sneakers with breathable mesh, sandals, light bandanas and sunhats are great summertime alternatives.
- Ladies – consider wearing less makeup or switch to powdered makeup instead of liquid foundation, as heavy layers of makeup don’t allow your skin to easily breathe.
- Drinking water is essential when the weather heats up! Pick up a reusable water bottle and invest in a water filter to save on the costs and wastefulness of plastic water bottles.
- Certain foods replenish nutrients and can actually help you stay cool when the weather is hot. Stick to light summer foods like fresh fruit, veggies and salads. Eating small meals, more often, helps as well. Keep in mind that protein-rich foods can actually increase metabolic heat.
- If you’re pregnant, it’s even more important to stay hydrated: pregnancy increases your body fluid by 50%, so you need to replenish that fluid. Dehydration can affect circulation to your organs and cause trauma to the baby.
To Work Out:
- If you’re accustomed to exercising outside, try to avoid the hours when the sun is at its hottest, generally 10AM-4PM. Try switching your outdoor exercises to early morning or evening, if possible.
- Accustomed to running or walking but just can’t bear the heat or humidity of summertime? Consider a switch to swimming for your cardio. And if you’re swimming at home, turn off the heater for your home’s swimming pool (if you’ve got one)! Not only will the sun naturally warm your pool, but you’ll also save on energy costs.
These tips to help keep your mind and body healthy, comfortable and cool also provide some good ways to help reduce dependence on energy exhausting cooling methods.
So grab those flip-flops, water bottles and get ready to chill out! | <urn:uuid:59cf55c7-25ba-4a51-993b-96a0fa93a6aa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.justenergy.com/blog/stay-cool-and-beat-the-heat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908561 | 591 | 2.703125 | 3 |
A new way to finance education: Pay part of what you earn(Read article summary)
Instead of taking out a college loan, students pay back the cost of their education using a portion of their earnings after graduation.
Would you sell a stake in your future for a college degree? Oregon just joined a number of private companies making the idea a reality, and the solution could mean more underprivileged youth get the education they need to get ahead.
College graduates can earn 84 percent more over a lifetime than those with a high school diploma, but most poor youth can't afford the hefty price tag. Crowdfunding higher education may inspire a brighter outlook.
In July, Oregon legislators passed a bill that would allow residents to pay for a college education without undertaking a traditional loan, according to The New York Times. Students would agree to pay back the cost of their education by promising a percentage of future earnings after graduation.
Though Oregon is the first US state to attempt to institutionalize the idea for its in-state students, private companies have been helping the idea gain traction for years, matching competitive students and "impact investors" pursuing both social and financial returns.
Pave and Upstart, both recently launched companies in the US, have raised millions using the unique crowdfunding model, "promoting equity-like investments in young folk," says The Economist. But Lumni is among the first to target low-income parts of the world.
And according to the International Labor Organization, unconventional ways of financing ever-increasing costs of education couldn't come sooner: 73.4 million young people--12.6 percent--are expected to be out of work in 2013, an increase of 3.5 million over the last five years.
With operations in Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and the US, Lumni seeks underprivileged students who may otherwise lack the financial resources necessary to pursue higher education. Like Oregon's new legislation, Lumni asks students to repay their "loan" with a percentage of future earnings for a given term. And, like traditional student loans, those payments don't begin until after graduation.
Armed with a freshly acquired college degree, Lumni-financed students can establish greater financial stability by accessing higher earnings, but they're also free from the growing risk of default that often results from accruing interest and rigid payment terms under traditional financing arrangements. With income-based repayment, no income means no payments.
But what if a Lumni-financed graduate becomes the next Mark Zuckerberg? It’s clear that under income-based repayment, students with greater total income will make larger payments to their investors. The Economist notes that Upstart caps total payback at five times the amount invested, yet few other programs offer such caps. For this reason, the most financially successful graduates will pay much more for for their college degrees.
And tinkering with the future of our youth always raises concern. Lumni's average term of repayment – 10 years – is a long-term financial commitment that students may not have the resources and experience to assess. As promising prospects and financial incentives drive an expanding pool of profit-seeking investors, it will be equally important that companies like Lumni ensure the financial education and protection of the students so they make the best decision for their futures.
Still, the idea of social financial agreements has sparked the interest of many youth and investors. Lumni has helped fund more than 2,000 students and holds more than $15 million in financial commitments from over 100 investors. Because students pay a percentage of earnings, investors have a great incentive to ensure the success of investees' postgraduate futures, which promises larger returns.
For this reason, many companies like Lumni are beginning to witness investors adopting a more active approach, often providing additional resources and professional advice to students as they advance their professional careers. According to The Economist, a student using Upstart reported that one of her investors sent her subscriptions to study materials she needed to get into law school.
The fundamental difference between Oregon legislation and social investment companies is where the the students' payments end up. Oregon plans to establish a state fund to collect payments, which would fund higher education for future generations.
Companies like Lumni direct payments back into the pockets of investors as return. Yet, as economics professor Nancy Folbre notes in the New York Times, obtaining larger payments from higher earners can improve educational opportunity and ideally help reduce income inequality. Both the Oregon legislation and social investment companies are successfully capturing this key component.
Though well-deserved skepticism toward Lumni's model remains, the untapped potential of financing higher education by offering complementing terms of repayment could create radical change. In a world of growing inequality and mounting barriers to education, it may require this sort of unconventional innovation and creative thinking to uncover an approach that offers a more promising future for youth across the globe. | <urn:uuid:0c868eab-4987-4e83-a4d5-8a96627ff535> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://m.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2013/0827/A-new-way-to-finance-education-Pay-part-of-what-you-earn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958954 | 988 | 2.671875 | 3 |
ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, videos, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you.
Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals.
Teacher Resources by Grade
|1st - 2nd||3rd - 4th|
|5th - 6th||7th - 8th|
|9th - 10th||11th - 12th|
Latino Poetry Blog: Blogging as a Forum for Open Discussion
|Grades||8 – 12|
|Lesson Plan Type||Standard Lesson|
|Estimated Time||Six 45-minute sessions|
MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
- Computers with Internet access and print capabilities
- Digital storage (blank CDs or a USB drive)
- Recommended Booklist
- Poetry Signup Sheet
- Rubric for Latino Poetry Blog
- Blogging Information Sheet
- Poetry Analysis Sheet
- Research Tips
- Blogging Instructions
- Peer Analysis Sheet
- Checklist with Comments Log
- Infoplease: Notable Hispanic Americans, A–Z
- The World Factbook
- Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color
- Las Mujeres
- Las Culturas: Hispanic/Latino Writers
|1.||Create a blog by following the instructions at the Edublogs website. The class blog will need a name that does not have any identifying information about the school or its location (e.g., state, mascot). It should include a separate page for each student (use students' first names or aliases, initials, or numbers, but do not use students' full names); a page for the instructor (use your first name or an alias, initials, or a number, but do not use your full name); and a feedback page for students to post their comments about the project. Decide on a template you like. Please note: do not use photos of your students or any photos that identify the school.
|2.||Review the instructions on Edublogs on how to manage the blog once it is created. This includes how to release and delete posts. Create a password that will give you blog administrator privileges and set up the blog so that all posts will be sent to your e-mail. Each post will need to be released by you in order for students to see the posts. This allows you to screen for inappropriate posts or those coming from unwanted sources.
|3.||Bookmark the new class blog and the websites listed in the Web resources on your classroom computer or lab computers. If you do not have classroom computers with Internet access, reserve time in your school's computer lab for Sessions 3, 4, and 5.
|4.||Obtain and review three to four of the Latino poetry books listed on the Recommended Booklist.
|5.||Complete a poetry analysis for a short poem that you have chosen for use during Sessions 2 and 5.
|6.||Post the Poetry Signup Sheet in a visible spot in the classroom.
|7.||Make one copy for each student of the following handouts: Blogging Information Sheet, Poetry Analysis Sheet, Research Tips, Blogging Instructions, Peer Analysis Sheet, Checklist with Comments Log, and Rubric for Latino Poetry Blog.| | <urn:uuid:a068b51f-17bf-4b6a-ac16-cbd887f89890> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/latino-poetry-blog-blogging-1160.html?tab=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.873989 | 727 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art Theme of Time
Keats's "Bright Star" gives us the perspective of somebody on earth looking up at a single, extremely special star in the heavens. This is the North Star, the one star that stays fixed in its place for all time. All the other stars on the sky are constantly changing positions as time passes: they all rotate around the North Star. And the same goes for life on earth: the waters come and go, the seasons come and go, snow falls, and generations are born and die. But the speaker doesn't want to be like the star way up there in the heavens. He wants to take that same eternal existence of the star and enjoy it on earth, in the company of the woman he loves. He loves the things that won't last forever. But that won't stop him from wanting them to last forever.
Questions About Time
- At several points in the poem, Keats draws a connection between eternal existence and motionlessness. Why do you think he made this connection?
- Are there any things in the poem that move but are also eternal? If there is more than one such thing, what do they have in common? What are the differences between them?
- Does Keats use any special poetic devices to give his readers a sense of long-lasting time? If so, what are they?
- Isn't it kind of funny that Keats chose to write about the vast themes of time and eternity in a poetic form that only lets you use fourteen lines? What might have been the advantages of treating these vast subjects in such a small format? What might be the disadvantages?
Chew on This
Everything in the poem that moves but is also eternal has one thing in common: they all follow a cyclical pattern.
At several points in the poem, Keats uses repetition to suggest the passage of time. | <urn:uuid:cf1d2baa-6f13-49e1-85d0-71c93d0fbf06> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/bright-star/time-theme.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970982 | 392 | 3.421875 | 3 |
All living things try to grow and spread their population. This force that tends to spread life can be viewed as a form of inertia, so we can say that a population is either gaining or losing inertia, and sometimes we can view this inertia as a wave.
The object of this lesson is to emphasize the incredible value and ability of modern optics to somebody who values environmental awareness.
For convenience sake’s we’re reading newspaper rock from top to bottom and from left to right more or less. Though it goes without saying that this was not the way these glyphs were put down or meant to be read. And I’ll agree that it is somewhat presumptuous of me to claim to be able to the read newspaper rock. That being said it is without a doubt that these symbols had meaning to the individuals that put them there and no doubt to other members of their culture.
Like all desert animals how desert Bighorn sheep acquire and conserve water is literally a matter of life and death.
Tracking and reading sign is art form that can be applied to any species but here we are going to concentrating on the desert Bighorn sheep.
It could be said that all Bighorns have horns but not all Bighorn have big horns. While this sounds a little bit confusing, basically it means that both male and female Bighorn sheep have horns. However their horns are quite different from one another in both size and structure.
The reason for this series of articles is to give readers the tools and concepts to increase their knowledge of Bighorn Sheep and the value of their own personal experiences in the desert when they're in Bighorn habitat or have the good fortune to actually see some of these magnificent animals.
By knowing a little bit about the Smoketree one can learn a lot about the desert. This tree marks out many unique environmental features in the desert.
Today we see many large-scale solar plants and wind farms changing the ecology of the Mojave Desert. However there are many other changes being brought about that are not as well-known such as the devastation brought on by the wild Burro and Tamarisk.
The creosote bush is truly the unnoticed elephant in the room. If someone were to weigh the biomass of the desert Southwest, this species would certainly possess the highest percentage of life and we would find that a high percentage of all other life in the desert is dependent upon it, yet its importance in the desert environment goes unappreciated by both scientists and artists alike. | <urn:uuid:70f22de7-a9aa-402d-a316-94799addf993> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thewayofthings.org/articles?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971979 | 518 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The U.S Department of Education’s Teaching American History (TAH) grants specify that they are for "traditional American history," however, all history undeniably takes place within a world context. To assess how the TAH grants incorporate the world, AHA staff surveyed the winning grant applications and found the rest of the world appeared in one in five award recipients from 2001 to 2007.
By reviewing the abstracts of grants from 2000 to 2007, one can get a sense of the many different ways TAH grant recipients are approaching the subject of “America and the World”.
Many grant abstracts planned to look at the emergence, establishment, and development of America as a world power, while others had more specific themes. In an application submitted in 2002, West Virginia’s Regional Education Services Agency I intended to look at “America and the world before and after 9/11,” while Louisiana’s Tangipahoa Parish School System was set to examine the “U.S. in a Global, Technological Age,” in 2004. In 2003, the Throp school district of Washington addressed “interactions within our borders and throughout the world (1945-2005).” United States foreign policy and international relations was an often-repeated theme that schools in New York, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, Texas, California, Florida, Oregon, and Virginia all explored.
As the figure below indicates, the number of applications that include world history fell sharply in the last couple of years. | <urn:uuid:3a4752d2-de45-43fc-8f10-d035140ae6ec> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.historians.org/2008/04/teaching-american-history-with-a-global-view/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932243 | 315 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Alkaptonuria, or 'black urine disease', is a very rare inherited disorder that prevents the body fully breaking down two protein building blocks (amino acids) called tyrosine and phenylalanine.
It results in a build-up of a chemical called homogentisic acid in the body.
This can turn urine and parts of the body a dark colour and lead to a range of problems over time.
Normally, amino acids are broken down in a series of chemical reactions. But in alkaptonuria, a substance produced along the way – homogentisic acid – cannot be broken down any further.
This is because the enzyme that normally breaks it down doesn't work properly (enzymes are proteins that make chemical reactions happen).
One of the earliest signs of the condition is dark-stained nappies, as homogentisic acid causes urine to turn black when exposed to air for a few hours.
If this sign is missed or overlooked, the disorder may go unnoticed until adulthood, as there are usually no other noticeable symptoms until the person reaches their late 20s to early 30s.
Signs and symptoms in adults
Over the course of many years, homogentisic acid slowly builds up in tissues throughout the body.
It can build up in almost any area of the body, including the cartilage, tendons, bones, nails, ears and heart. It stains the tissues dark and causes a wide range of problems.
Joints and bones
When a person with alkaptonuria reaches their 20s or 30s, they may start to experience joint problems.
Typically, they'll have lower back pain and stiffness followed by knee, hip and shoulder pain. These are the early symptoms of osteoarthritis.
Eventually, cartilage (a tough, flexible tissue found throughout the body) may become brittle and break, leading to joint and spinal damage. Joint replacement operations are often needed.
Ears and eyes
An obvious sign of alkaptonuria in adults is thickening and blue-black discolouration of ear cartilage. This is known as ochronosis.
The earwax may also be black or reddish-brown.
Many people develop brown or grey spots on the whites of their eyes as well.
Skin and nails
Alkaptonuria can result in discoloured sweat, which can stain clothes and cause some people to have blue or black speckled areas of skin. Nails may also turn a bluish colour.
The skin colour changes are most obvious on areas exposed to the sun and where sweat glands are found – the cheeks, forehead, armpits and genital area.
If the bones and muscles around the lungs become stiff, it can prevent the chest expanding and lead to shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.
Heart, kidney and prostate problems
Deposits of homogentisic acid around heart valves can cause them to harden and turn brittle and black. Blood vessels can also become stiff and weaken.
This can lead to heart disease and may require heart valve replacements.
The deposits can also lead to kidney stones, bladder stones and prostate stones.
How alkaptonuria is inherited
Each cell in the body contains 23 pairs of chromosomes. These carry the genes you inherit from your parents.
One of each pair of chromosomes is inherited from each parent, which means (with the exception of the sex chromosomes) there are two copies of each gene in each cell.
The gene involved in alkaptonuria is the HGD gene. This provides instructions for making an enzyme called homogentisate oxidase, which is needed to break down homogentisic acid.
You need to inherit two copies of the faulty HGD gene (one from each parent) to develop alkaptonuria. The chances of this are slim, which is why the disease is very rare – affecting just 1 in 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide, and only around 64 people in total in the UK.
The parents of a person with alkaptonuria will often only carry one copy of the faulty gene themselves, which means they won't have any signs or symptoms of the condition.
How alkaptonuria is managed
Alkaptonuria is a lifelong condition – there's currently no specific treatment or cure.
However, a medicine called nitisinone has shown some promise, and painkillers and lifestyle changes may help you cope with the symptoms.
Nitisinone is not licensed for alkaptonuria – it's offered "off label" at the National Alkaptonuria Centre, the treatment centre for all alkaptonuria patients based at Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
Nitisinone reduces the level of homogentisic acid in the body. It's currently an experimental treatment, but research into its effectiveness is ongoing and there have been some promising results so far.
The AKU Society has information on DevelopAKUre, a clinical trial programme for nitisinone. Register your interest for DevelopAKUre.
If the condition is diagnosed in childhood, it may be possible to slow its progression by restricting protein in the diet, as this may reduce levels of tyrosine and phenylalanine in your body.
A low-protein diet can also be useful in reducing the risk of potential side effects of nitisinone during adulthood. Your doctor or dietitian can advise you about this.
If alkaptonuria causes pain and stiffness, you may think exercise will make your symptoms worse. But regular gentle exercise can actually help by building muscle and strengthening your joints.
Exercise is also good for relieving stress, losing weight and improving your posture, all of which can ease your symptoms.
The AKU Society recommends avoiding exercise that puts additional strain on the joints, such as boxing, football and rugby, and trying gentle exercise such as yoga, swimming and pilates instead.
Your GP or a physiotherapist can help you come up with a suitable exercise plan to follow at home. It's important to follow this plan as there's a risk the wrong sort of exercise may damage your joints.
Speak to doctor about painkillers and other techniques to manage pain. You may want to try transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), where a machine is used to numb the nerve endings in your spinal cord and reduce pain. This treatment is usually arranged by a physiotherapist.
Read about living with pain.
A diagnosis of alkaptonuria can be confusing and overwhelming at first. Like many people with a long-term health condition, those who find out they have alkaptonuria may feel anxious or depressed.
But there are people you can talk to who can help. Talk to your GP if you feel you need support to cope with your illness. You could also visit the AKU Society website, a charity offering support to patients, their families and carers.
Sometimes surgery may be necessary if joints are damaged and need replacing, or if heart valves or vessels have hardened.
Read about some common procedures:
People with alkaptonuria have a normal life expectancy. However, they will usually experience severe symptoms, such as pain and loss of movement in the joints, which considerably impact on quality of life.
Working and carrying out strenuous physical activity will usually become very difficult, and eventually you may need mobility aids such as a wheelchair to get around.
Visit the AKU Society website for more information and support.
Information about you
If you or your child has alkaptonuria, your clinical team will pass information about you/your child on to the National Congenital Anomaly and Rare Diseases Registration Service (NCARDRS).
This helps scientists look for better ways to prevent and treat this condition. You can opt out of the register at any time.
Find out more about the register.
Page last reviewed: 14/09/2015
Next review due: 14/09/2017 | <urn:uuid:b3136f67-b200-418b-8808-d725d14cba3a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alkaptonuria/Pages/Introduction.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00042-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941263 | 1,651 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Treating a transient ischaemic attack
Although the symptoms of a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) resolve in a few minutes or hours without any specific treatment, you will need treatment to help prevent another TIA or a full stroke occurring in the future.
A TIA is a warning sign that you are at a significantly increased risk of having a full stroke in the near future, with the highest risk in the days and weeks following the attack.
A stroke is a serious health condition that can cause permanent disability and can be fatal in some cases, but appropriate treatment following a TIA can help to reduce your risk of having one.
Your treatment will depend on your individual circumstances, such as your age and medical history. The healthcare team can discuss treatment options with you, and tell you about possible benefits and risks.
It’s likely that you will be advised about lifestyle changes you can make to reduce your stroke risk, in addition to being offered medication to treat the underlying cause of your TIA.
You may also need surgery as part of your treatment.
There are a number of lifestyle changes you can make that may help reduce your chances of having a stroke after a TIA.
- eating a healthy diet – a low-fat, reduced salt, high-fibre diet is usually recommended, including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables
- exercising regularly – for most people, at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as cycling or fast walking, every week is recommended
- stopping smoking – if you smoke, stopping may significantly reduce your risk of having a stroke in the future
- cutting down on alcohol – you should aim not to exceed the recommended alcohol limits of three to four units a day for men and two to three units a day for women
Read more about how lifestyle changes can help to prevent a TIA or stroke.
In addition to lifestyle changes, most people who have had a TIA will need to take one or more daily medications indefinitely to help reduce their chances of having a stroke or another TIA.
Some of the main medications used are outlined below.
Platelets are blood cells that help blood to clot (thicken). If a blood vessel is damaged, platelets stick together to form a blood clot to prevent bleeding.
Antiplatelet medicines work by reducing the ability of the platelets to stick together and form clots. If you have had a TIA, it is likely that you will be offered antiplatelet medication.
Two common antiplatelets offered to people who have had a TIA are aspirin and clopidogrel. Aspirin may also sometimes be taken with another antiplatelet medicine called dipyridamole because this can be more effective than taking these medications separately.
The main side effects of antiplatelet medications include indigestion and an increased risk of bleeding – for example, you may bleed for longer if you cut yourself, and you may bruise easily.
Read more about aspirin and clopidogrel.
Anticoagulant medicines can help to prevent blood clots by changing the chemical composition of the blood in a way that prevents clots.
They are usually offered to people who have had a TIA if the blood clot that caused your TIA originated in your heart. This is often due to a condition called atrial fibrillation, which causes your heart to beat irregularly.
Warfarin, rivaroxaban, dabigatran and apixaban are examples of anticoagulants offered to some people who have had a TIA.
A side effect of all anticoagulants is the risk of bleeding caused by the reduction in the blood's ability to clot. You may need regular blood tests while taking warfarin, so doctors can ensure your dose is not too high or too low.
Read more about anticoagulants.
Antihypertensives (blood pressure medication)
If you have high blood pressure (hypertension), you will be offered a type of medication called an antihypertensive to control it. This is because high blood pressure significantly increases your risk of having a TIA or stroke.
There are lots of different types of medicine that can help control your blood pressure, including:
- thiazide diuretics
- angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors
- calcium channel blockers
Your doctor will advise you about which antihypertensive is the most suitable for you. Some people may be offered a combination of two or three different medications.
Read more about treating high blood pressure.
If you have high cholesterol, you will be advised to take a medicine known as a statin. Statins reduce the level of cholesterol in your blood by blocking an enzyme in the liver that produces cholesterol.
Statins may also help to reduce your risk of a stroke whatever your cholesterol level is, so you may be offered a statin even if your cholesterol level is not particularly high.
Examples of statins often offered to people who have had a TIA include atorvastatin, simvastatin and rosuvastatin.
Read more about statins.
In some cases, a surgical procedure called a carotid endarterectomy may be recommended after having a TIA.
A carotid endarterectomy is an operation that involves removing part of the lining of the carotid artery, plus any blockage that has built up in the artery.
The carotid arteries deliver blood to your brain. When fatty deposits build up inside the carotid arteries, they become hard and narrow, making it more difficult for blood to flow through them.
This is known as atherosclerosis and it can lead to TIAs and strokes if the blood supply to the brain becomes disrupted.
By unblocking the carotid arteries in people whose arteries are moderately or severely narrowed, a carotid endarterectomy can significantly reduce the risk of having a stroke or another TIA.
Read more about carotid endarterectomies.
Driving after a TIA
Although a TIA shouldn't have any long-term impact on your daily activities, you must stop driving immediately.
If your doctor is happy that you have made a good recovery and there are no lasting effects after one month, you can start driving again.
You do not need to inform the DVLA, but you should contact your driving insurance company.
Page last reviewed: 15/10/2014
Next review due: 15/10/2016 | <urn:uuid:006a9d61-48bb-43d3-ba0c-8f28f67004ab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/transient-ischaemic-attack/Pages/Treatment.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951778 | 1,360 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, 1840-1914
Despite the popular assumption that wildlife conservation is a recent phenomenon, it emerged over a century and a half ago in an era more closely associated with wildlife depletion than preservation. In Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, Darcy Ingram explores the combination of NGOs, fish and game clubs, and state-administered leases that formed the basis of a unique system of wildlife conservation in North America. Inspired by a long-standing belief in progress, improvement, and social order based on European as well as North American models, this system effectively privatized Quebec's fish and game resources, often to the detriment of commercial and subsistence hunters and fishers.
- Published: 2013. Paperback February 2014
- Subject Listing: Environmental Studies
- Bibliographic information: 304 pp., 2 illus., 6 x 9 in.
- Territorial rights: Usa Only
- Distributed for: UBC Press
Darcy Ingram is an environmental historian at the University of Ottawa.
"Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec offers a new and important account of fish and game protection in that province and adds significantly to our understanding of the development and implementation of conservationist ideas in Canada .. Ingram's substantial contribution challenges readers to ponder anew the ways in which people have framed their interactions with the natural world and to reflect upon whether, or how far, developments in other jurisdictions parallel those charted here."
-Graeme Wynn, from the Foreword
"Ingram revealingly explores the distinctive class relations that governed attitudes towards wildlife in Quebec in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This well-researched study provides new insights into the social and environmental history of the region."
-Colin M. Coates, Canada Research Chair in Canadian Cultural Landscapes, Glendon College, York University
Foreword: What You See Depends upon Where (and How) You Look / Graeme Wynn
Part 1. Beginnings, 1840-80
1. The New Regulatory Environment
2. Salmon, Sport, and the Lower St. Lawrence
Part 2. Expansion, Consolidation, and Continuity, 1880-1914
4. From Public Space to Private Power
5. The Evolution of Patrician Culture
6. Opposition, Resistance, and the New Century | <urn:uuid:d39b3b95-aadb-49c0-be6a-820f87b288f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/INGWIL.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.882909 | 479 | 2.625 | 3 |
71 years ago, the six most recognized members of the German resistance group called the White Rose Group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. Their crime was for the printing and distribution of leaflets telling the population of Munich about the devastating defeat of the 6th Army at Stallingrad.
The text of their leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, In July, 1943, copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich”.
Another member, Hans Conrad Leipelt, who helped distribute Leaflet 6 in Hamburg, was executed on January 29, 1945, for his participation.
Now, 71 years later, the guillotine used to carry out the gruesome sentence has been found gathering dust in the basement of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich triggering a debate in Germany about whether it should go on show, or remain locked out of sight forever.
A museum spokesman said the machine had been locked away decades ago because it was deemed too macabre to put on display.
Helga Puhlmann, a spokeswoman for the Bavarian National Museum, said the guillotine was among five wooden benches and one metal guillotine mechanism that had landed in the museum’s collection after being handed over by Bavarian justice authorities in the early 1970s.
Ms. Puhlmann said earlier rumors that the guillotine had been dumped in the Danube towards the end of World War II were not true. Instead, the guillotine — of a type used in Germany in the 19th century and revived for broader use under the Nazis — was taken from the Munich jail where the Scholls and hundreds of others were executed and taken first to nearby Straubing, she said.
The exact origin of the guillotine is “not totally clear, but there are several indications” that it was the instrument used to behead the Scholls, including modifications that were the hallmark of Johann Reichhart, a public executioner in the Nazi era, she said.
How the “historically significant” instrument is now treated, and whether it can be exhibited at all to the public, is a matter “for the utmost sensitivity and reverence,” she added.
Sybe Wartena, a senior curator at the Bavarian National Museum,said that rumours about the guillotine had circulated for years. When he took up his post 18 months ago, Mr. Wartena said, he urged a hasty examination. “We are now pretty certain that it is the guillotine used to kill Hans and Sophie Scholl,” discounting the rumours that the guillotine had been thrown in the Danube.
Hans and Sophie Scholl were, two of the youngest members of the group who dared to challenge the world’s most sinister tyranny and paid the ultimate price in doing so.
Opposing the Nazi party was a very dangerous path to take. The government or rather, the Nazi party – controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.
It was ironic that both the Scholls should die at the hands of the Nazi regime. When the Nazis began their climb to power Hans and Sophie were as enthusiastic as everyone else in the ‘New Germany’ about the movement which promised to restore the nation to greatness. However, they very quickly saw the true colours of the evil that lay behind the veneer of Nazi ideology.
As time went on, Sophie became increasingly disillusioned with the Nazis According to her sister Elizabeth on the day before England declared war in 1939. As both went with her for a walk along the Danube her sister said : “Hopefully there will be no war”. ‘And she replied “Yes, I hope there will be. Hopefully someone will stand up to Hitler.”
While attending Munich University they became involved with other students and lecturers that eventually became the White Rose Movement, a symbol of German resistance to Hitler and the Nazis.
The group was motivated by ethical and moral considerations and was heavily influenced by the experience of a number of members while at the Eastern Front.
In 1941 Hans Scholl read a copy of a sermon by an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, Bishop August von Galen, decrying the euthanasia policies which the Nazis maintained would protect the German gene pool.
Horrified by these Nazi policies, Sophie obtained permission to reprint the sermon and distribute it at the University of Munich as the group’s first leaflet.
By 1942, many of the male medical students at the University of Munich were obliged to serve a three-month stint on the Russian front. The idea was to send all medical students to the Russian front for a period of three months in order for them to experience the rendering of medical care under fire, and to work as physician assistants in field hospitals.
It was here they witnessed the horrors of war and the unbelievable cruelty the Germans displayed to the Jews. They personally observed beatings and other mistreatment and heard reliable stories of the persecution of the Jews then in full swing. Some witnessed atrocities of the war on the battlefield and against civilian populations in the East. When the students returned from the front they rejected fascism and militarism and believed in a federated Europe that adhered to principles of tolerance and justice.
From that time onwards, the group actively engage in a war of disinformation against the Nazi and the direction they were leading Germany towards. A key element of their campaign was the leaflet distribution exposing the actions and propaganda of the Nazi,
In total they made six anti-war/anti-Nazi leaflets, which were distributed in public. Members also engaged in an active anti-Nazi graffiti campaign within Munich.
One of the leaflets entitled “Passive Resistance to National Socialism” was aimed to encourage more people who had similar views to the group to engage in resistance to the Nazis.
“Many, perhaps most, of the readers of these leaflets do not see clearly how they can practise an effective opposition. They do not see any avenues open to them. We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of the system. It can be done only by the cooperation of many convinced, energetic people – people who are agreed as to the means they must use. We have no great number of choices as to the means. The only one available is passive resistance. The meaning and goal of passive resistance is to topple National Socialism, and in this struggle we must not recoil from any course, any action, whatever its nature. A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable frightful consequences. We cannot provide each man with the blueprint for his acts, we can only suggest them in general terms. Sabotage in armaments plants and war industries, at all gatherings, rallies and organisations of the National Socialist Party, convince all your acquaintances of the hopelessness of this war and urge them to passive resistance.”
The leaflets caused a sensation, and the Gestapo began an intensive search for the publishers. On the nights of the 3rd, 8th and 15th of February 1943, the slogans “Freedom” and “Down with Hitler” appeared on the walls of the university and other buildings in Munich.
The final leaflet was called “To the fellow fighters in the resistance”, which was written in February 1943, after the German defeat at Stalingrad and resulted in the group being captured. It was designed to inform the population of the shattering defeat of the German armies at Stalingrad.
“The day of reckoning has come – the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is ruthlessly suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS have all tried to drug us, to regiment us in the most promising years of our lives. For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party. The name of Germany is dishonoured for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, smash its tormentors. Students! The German people look to us.”
On 18 February 1943, coincidentally the same day that Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels called on the German people to embrace total war, the Scholls brought a suitcase full of leaflets to the university. Here they decided to drop copies from the top of the staircases for students to find when they came out of lectures. However, they had copies remaining and decided to return to the atrium and climb the staircase to the top floor.
They then threw the remaining leaflets into the air. Unfortunately their actions were observed by the custodian Jakob Schmid who was also a Gestapo informant. The secret police were informed and both were taken into Gestapo custody.
After brutal interrogation by the Gestapo chief interrogation specialist both confessed to their involvement but refused to implicate their fellow members. However, after further torture they were broken.
The Scholls stood trial before the Volksgericht, the feared People’s Court that tried political offenses against the Nazi German state on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of high treason and Roland Freisler, a rabid Nazi and head judge of the court, sentenced them to death.
Sophie was defiant standing in front of the court “You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won’t admit it?”
Found guilty of high treason they were executed the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison.
They both went to their deaths bravely, with Hans shouting “Let freedom live” just before he was beheaded by the guillotine. Sophie Schol was executed by the same manner shortly afterwards. Her last words are disputed either, “your heads will fall as well” or “you are my refuge into eternity”.
Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany among its greatest heroes, for opposed the Third Reich in the face of almost certain death.
This is why the discovery of the actual guillotine that executed the key members of the main German resistance movement has stirred a heated debate within Germany. Should it become a symbol of the sacrifice of these brave individuals in the face of overwhelming evil? Or should it remain hidden from public as too macabre?
Franz Josef Mueller, who at 89 is the last surviving member of the White Rose group, said: ‘No, this should not go on display. ‘No entertainment must be made of their violent deaths.
‘The memory of Sophie and Hans is deep within me. I think of them every day.’
Bavaria’s arts minister Ludwig Spaenle said: ‘One must proceed with great sensitivity and reverence. One cannot decide what to do with this overnight.’
However Dr. Newborn, the American expert on White Rose, called the find “really remarkable” and of great significance in modern Germany, where the story of the Scholls is widely known and used to reinforce the message that Nazi crimes should never be repeated and that civil courage and resistance are important.
Header Image Credit : BAYERISCHES NATIONAL MUSEUM | <urn:uuid:43ef82f8-1147-40d7-b731-007a5d590a3e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.heritagedaily.com/2014/01/nazi-execution-machine-uncovered/100953 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975709 | 2,424 | 3.5 | 4 |
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science. McKinsey & Company, in releasing its report "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools" (April 2009) said, "Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth grade reading, math, and science, US students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students are farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce." That's a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school and the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.
While the academic performance of white students is grossly inferior, that of black and Latino students is a national disgrace. The McKinsey report says, "On average, black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age. This racial gap exists regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score) and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures. Taking the average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for math and reading across the fourth and eighth grades, for example, 48 percent of blacks and 43 percent of Latinos are 'below basic,' while only 17 percent of whites are, and this gap exists in every state. A more pronounced racial achievement gap exists in most large urban school districts." Below basic is the category the NAEP uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.
The teaching establishment and politicians have hoodwinked taxpayers into believing that more money is needed to improve education. The Washington, D.C., school budget is about the nation's costliest, spending about $15,000 per pupil. Its student/teacher ratio, at 15.2 to 1, is lower than the nation's average. Yet student achievement is just about the lowest in the nation. What's so callous about the Washington situation is about 1,700 children in kindergarten through 12th grade receive the $7,500 annual scholarships in order to escape rotten D.C. public schools, and four times as many apply for the scholarships, yet Congress, beholden to the education establishment, will end funding the school voucher program.
Any long-term solution to our education problems requires the decentralization that can come from competition. Centralization has been massive. In 1930, there were 119,000 school districts across the U.S; today, there are less than 15,000. Control has moved from local communities to the school district, to the state, and to the federal government. Public education has become a highly centralized government-backed monopoly and we shouldn't be surprised by the results. It's a no-brainer that the areas of our lives with the greatest innovation, tailoring of services to individual wants and falling prices are the areas where there is ruthless competition such as computers, food, telephone and clothing industries, and delivery companies such as UPS, Federal Express and electronic bill payments that have begun to undermine the postal monopoly in first-class mail.
At a Washington press conference launching the McKinsey report, Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was "Professor James Crow." Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial issue; it's a vital issue for the entire nation. | <urn:uuid:637a24ed-e481-48b1-b4e5-99dbdcfb941c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2009/06/03/dumbest_generation_getting_dumber | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964043 | 816 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Infectious endocarditis is an infection of the lining of the heart chambers and heart valves that is caused by bacteria, fungi, or other infectious substances.
Endocarditis - infectious
Endocarditis is usually a result of a blood infection. Bacteria or other infectious substance can enter the bloodstream during certain medical procedures, including dental procedures, and travel to the heart, where it can settle on damaged heart valves. The bacteria can grow and may form infected clots that break off and travel to the brain, lungs, kidneys, or spleen.
Most people who develop infectious endocarditis have underlying heart disease or valve problems.
However, an organism commonly found in the mouth, Streptococcus viridans, is responsible for about 50% of all bacterial endocarditis cases. This is why dental procedures increase your chances for developing this condition. Such procedures are especially risky for children with congenital heart conditions. As a result, it is common practice for children with some forms of congenital heart disease and adults with certain heart-valve conditions to take antibiotics before any dental work.
Other common culprits include Staphylococcus aureus and enterococcus. Staphylococcus aureus can infect normal heart valves, and is the most common cause of infectious endocarditis in intravenous drug users.
Less common causes of infectious endocarditis include pseudomonas, serratia, and candida.
The following increase your chances for developing endocarditis:
Intravenous drug users are also at risk for this condition, because unsterile needles can cause bacteria to enter the bloodstream.
Symptoms of endocarditis may develop slowly (subacute) or suddenly (acute). Fever is the classic symptom and may persist for days before any other symptoms appear.
Other symptoms may include:
The health care provider may hear abnormal sounds, called murmurs, when listening to your heart with a stethoscope.
A physical exam may also reveal:
A history of congenital heart disease raises the level of suspicion. An eye exam may show bleeding in the retina a central area of clearing. This is known as Roth's spots.
The following tests may be performed:
You will be admitted to the hospital so you can receive antibiotics through a vein. Long-term, high-dose antibiotic treatment is needed to get rid of the bacteria. Treatment is usually given for 4 - 6 weeks, depending on the specific type of bacteria. Blood tests will help your doctor choose the best antibiotic.
Surgery may be needed to replace damaged heart valves.
Early treatment of bacterial endocarditis generally has a good outcome. Heart valves may be damaged if diagnosis and treatment are delayed.
Call your health care provider if you note the following symptoms during or after treatment:
The American Heart Association recommends preventive antibiotics for people at risk for infectious endocarditis before:
Antibiotics are more likely to be recommended those with the following risk factors:
Continued medical follow-up is recommended for people with a previous history of infectious endocarditis.
Persons who use intravenous drugs should seek treatment for addiction. If this is not possible, use a new needle for each injection, avoid sharing any injection-related paraphernalia, and use alcohol pads before injecting to reduce risk.
Fowler VG Jr, Scheld WM, Bayer AS. Endocarditis and Intravascular Infections. In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. 7th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone; 2009; chapt 77.
Karchmer AW. Infective Endocarditis. In: Libby P, Bonow RO, Mann DL, Zipes DP, eds. Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. 8th ed. St. Louis, Mo: WB Saunders; 2007:chap 63.
Wilson W, Taubert KA, Gewitz M, et al. Prevention of infective endocarditis: guidelines from the American Heart Association: a guideline from the American Heart Association Rheumatic Fever, Endocarditis, and Kawasaki Disease Committee, Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young, and the Council on Clinical Cardiology, Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia, and the Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Interdisciplinary Working Group. Circulation. 2007 Oct 9;116(15):1736-54. | <urn:uuid:1e54a3fc-8dfc-4f44-8c62-7125bcd74f48> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.northside.com/HealthLibrary/?Path=HIE+Multimedia%5C1%5C000681.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.862352 | 923 | 3.84375 | 4 |
|Back to Main Print This Page Email to a Friend|
Creeping eruption is a human infection with dog or cat hookworm larvae (immature worm).
Cutaneous larvae migrans; Zoonotic hookworm; Ancylostoma caninum; Ancylostoma braziliensis; Bunostomum phlebotomum; Uncinaria stenocephala
Hookworm eggs are found in the stool of infected dogs and cats. When the eggs hatch, the larvae infest any contaminated soil and vegetation.
Creeping eruption is more common in countries with warm climates. In the United States, the southeast has the highest rates of infection. The main risk factor for this disease is contact with damp, sandy soil that has been contaminated with infected cat or dog feces. More children than adults are infected.
Your health care provider can often diagnose this condition by looking at your skin. In rare cases, a skin biopsy is done to rule out other conditions. In very rare cases, a blood test is done to see if you have increased eosinophils.
Anti-parasitic drugs such as thiabendazole, albendazole, or ivermectin may be used to treat the infection.
Creeping eruption often goes away by itself over weeks to months. Treatment helps the infection go away more quickly and is successful.
Make an appointment with your health care provider if you or your child have skin sores that are snakelike, itchy, or moving from one area to another.
Public sanitation and deworming of dogs and cats have decreased hookworm infestation in the United States.
Hookworm larvae often enter the body through bare feet, so wearing shoes in areas where hookworm infestations are known to occur helps prevent infection.
Diemert DJ. Intestinal nematode infections. In: Goldman L, Schafer AI, eds. Goldman’s Cecil Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2011:chap 365.
Nash TE. Visceral larvae migrans and other unusual helminth infections. In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolan R, eds. Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Churchill-Livingstone; 2009:chap 291.
On a mission to heal body, mind and spirit | <urn:uuid:71a7374c-5d7f-4a0b-8ef8-5607adb478da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.samc.com/body.cfm?id=285&action=detail&AEArticleID=001454&AEProductID=Adam2004_5117&AEProjectTypeIDURL=APT_1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.890701 | 508 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Yeast - a microbe that has served humanity since prehistoric times - has acquired a new dimension of utility. It is the only organism higher than a bacterium which now can be easily manipulated by genetic engineers.
This has made it a major new tool for studying basic genetic processes of truly higher organisms such as mammals, including man.
In fact, the fast-growing ability of genetic engineers to work with yeast has led to the creation of the first artificial chromosome. Genes - the basic genetic units that determine the nature of material organisms - have been synthesized before. To function in higher living organisms, however, whole systems of genes, together with the factors that control their operation, are organized into structures called chromosomes. Thus the creation of a functional man-made chromosome, as reported a few weeks ago by Andrew Murray and Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School, represents a breakthrough to a larger capacity to study, and eventually to manipulate, the genetics of higher plants and animals.
Yeast may seem a humble organism for this awesome role. But seen from a human viewpoint, it is on the right side of the fundamental division of earthly life. This is the division between bacteria, whose genetic material is not confined within a nucleus (the so-called prokaryotes), and virtually all other earthly life forms, whose cells do have a nucleus (the eukaryotes). Yeast is a eukaryote. So is man.
So far, genetic researchers have had great difficulty in manipulating mammalian chromosomes. Now, with the help of yeast, they are in a position to learn more about the basics of how such genetic structures work. As Kevin Struhl , a colleague of Murray and Szostak, explains in a review in Nature, ''yeast is useful for studying many basic questions in eukaryote biology'' because yeast cells contain mechanisms and undergo processes quite similar to those of higher plants and animals. This is why genetic research with yeast is growing explosively. Struhl estimates that the number of workers in this field is doubling every two years.
Yeast has acquired this new laboratory status only within the past seven years. The techniques of genetic engineering, which have been developed with the help of bacteria, can also be used with yeast. These involve cutting and splicing the DNA molecule which carries genetic information - isolating individual genes or inserting new genes, which may be man-made. Often many copies of such genes are made using bacteria. This work has made one type of bacterium - Escheria colim - an organism that is so well understood that it is readily manipulated at the molecular level. Struhl points out that the understanding of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiaem now has also reached a level of sophistication where it is ''the equal of . . . E. colim.'' This is true of no other eukaryote organism.
It is too early to tell where this research is leading. But at the very least it is likely to lay bare the secrets of eukaryote chromosomes within a very few years.
Astronomers have yet another mysterious object to puzzle over. It's a cloud of gas and dark matter as big as a galaxy but with no detectable stars in it at all.
This is the first time such a mass of intergalactic matter has been detected. Thus its discovery by S.E. Schneider and a research team at Cornell University raises anew the old speculation about whether or not much of the matter in the universe exists in a form that has been difficult to detect.
Astronomers have long known that the universe is expanding. Furthermore, they have so far been unable to locate enough mass within the universe for gravitational forces eventually to halt that expansion, let alone reverse it. This has led some of them to wonder if additional mass may exist in an unseen form. This notion is supported partly by the fact that many galaxies and galaxy clusters behave in a way that indicates that they contain more matter than is visible as stars.
Such so-called ''missing mass'' may be gas, dust, burned-out stars, or other dark objects. Now the Cornell team has located a vast intergalactic cloud of gas by the radio noise it emits. The gas itself appears to have something like 800 million to 3 billion times the mass of our sun. Analysis of characteristics of the radio noise which reflect the cloud's internal motions - and hence its overall gravitational strength - suggests its total mass may be 10 to 100 times that amount. Yet there is no indication of stars. Whatever the cloud contains besides gas, it is quite dark.
The giant cloud is estimated to be 30 to 60 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Leo. If it is typical of ''unseen'' cosmic matter, this kind of object would provide at least some of the extra mass needed to halt the expansion of the universe. But before astronomers jump to that conclusion, they need to find out more about this intriguing object. | <urn:uuid:020d5630-6a05-4c50-8f93-28209077abf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.csmonitor.com/1983/1011/101109.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961065 | 1,007 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems.
Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. For more details please see:
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: http://goo.gl/juWdH
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet http://goo.gl/niWy1g
Friday, February 10, 2012
Green IT is revolutionizing UK cyber-Infrastructure via networks, cloud, outsouring and financial incentives
[As readers of this blog may know I have long argued that advances in research and education through cyber-infrastructure (or eInfrastructure) can be largely justified, if not entirely paid for through the energy savings of using clouds, networks or outsourcing.
But a big impediment in adopting cyber-infrastructure in most jurisdictions is the lack of financial incentives. The energy savings of cyber-infrastructure are usually earned by the facilities or estates department or rarely based on to researchers and educators. But initiatives like national Green Revolving Funds, funded by the national government such as the 10 million Salix pound program in the UK, and JISC/JANET programs to promote clouds, outsourcing and Green IT are starting to make a difference. More importantly universities such as Cambridge are developing programs to pass on energy savings to individual departments. Another great example is the public-private partnership of London University and UNIT4 to offer shared outsourcing services to UK universities, as well as the recent JANET cloud brokering offering. If these collocated facilities use green or renewable power, the carbon/energy savings for a university can be significantly greater than more traditional energy saving schemes such as changing light bulbs or adding insulation. Of course, advanced high speed R&E networks supporting Software Defined Networks and Hybrid optical backbones are critical for this vision. Ultimately I think such initiatives can entirely underwrite the cost of such advanced networks by making Green Revolving Funds aware of the huge energy savings available by integrating advanced networks with clouds and outsourcing. Kudos to JISC/JANET for these forward thinking services -- BSA]
Cambridge Shared Savings
(Back to Top)
A new case study from the JISC-funded RECSO Project, managed by Forum for the Future with inputs from SusteIT, describes the background, aims and working of the Electricity Incentive Scheme (EIS) that Cambridge University implemented in 2008/09 and has since developed. The Scheme encourages consumers of electricity across the University to maximise their energy efficiency through a system of financial incentives (both rewards and penalties) at a departmental level. It thus achieves the benefits of fully devolved energy budgets without the administrative and managerial implications that this could have involved. The Scheme saved an estimated £820,000 in energy costs in its first year. Although not targeted at ICT, it obviously provides general incentives to tackle its energy use - as evidenced by an Appendix which details how the scheme helped stimulate an innovative green data centre (PUE approaching 1.1) in the Department of Engineering (also featured in the presentations from our September 2011 workshop at Cambridge).
University of London Computer Centre and UNIT4 join forces to deliver shared services to educational institutions
Further and Higher Education Institutions to benefit from Agresso Campus Platform as a Shared Service.
UNIT4 and the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), the University of London’s provider of shared IT services, today announced they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to deliver shared services based on the Agresso Campus Platform to educational institutions across the UK. This is the first such agreement between an educational establishment and a vendor to jointly provide enterprise software as a shared service.
ULCC will provide hosting and support services to institutions, that will benefit from reduced IT infrastructure costs while capitalising on the economies of scale that come from sharing. With ULCC being a point-of-presence for JANET(UK), the UK’s Higher Education’s network, customers can also rest assured that the service will be fast and reliable.
“Integrated back-office solutions will become indispensable as institutions look to address sector challenges,” said Richard Maccabee, Director of ICT at the University of London. “We chose the Agresso Campus Platform because it provides sector specific solutions across the board for both Further and Higher Education. What’s more, Agresso’s architecture is unique and allows us to easily adapt the solution to meet the individual requirements of customers. This improves our competitive advantage and will keep our development costs low. In fact we have already implemented or agreed service contracts with four institutions in just 12 months.”
The Agresso Campus Platform offers educational institutions a portfolio of tightly integrated solutions covering all functional areas including financial management, student management, research award management, CRM, curriculum management and reporting and analytics. These best-of-class technologies provide agile, interoperable solutions to help Institutions adapt to increasing complexity, business change and funding challenges including the impacts of growing student numbers, new revenue streams and organisational and regulatory changes.
“Shared services delivers huge shared efficiencies allowing institutions to focus their resources on what they do best, education and research,” said Anwen Robinson, Managing Director of UNIT4 Business Software Ltd. “ULCC is an example of best practice in a sector that is desperate to cut costs and modernise. They are also a trusted advisor to the sector and the faith they have demonstrated in UNIT4 sends a clear message to the market.”
R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
- ▼ February (5)
- ► 2011 (37)
- ► 2010 (65)
- ► 2009 (80)
- ► 2008 (55) | <urn:uuid:59714ffc-8ddb-446b-aff8-89f3370b33f7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2012/02/green-it-is-revolutionizing-uk-cyber.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929159 | 1,379 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Trying to lose weight? Turn down the thermostat. A cozy home could be contributing to your fat, suggests new research in the journal Obesity Reviews. When our bodies are cold, we shiver, causing our muscles to contract to generate heat—and burn calories.
Even when we’re not shivering, the cold activates a substance in our bodies called brown fat. Unlike other fat, brown fat works like a furnace, consuming calories. When we don’t use our brown fat to warm us, we lose it, along with its calorie-burning potential, says study researcher Fiona Johnson, a research psychologist in the department of epidemiology and public Health at University College London.
“Changes in the way we eat and physical activity levels are the primary factors behind increases in obesity,” says Johnson, “but other aspects of our lifestyle can also make a contribution.”
Researchers found that since central heating became common in the 1960s, average room temperatures have increased steadily in both the US and the UK. In both countries, obesity has also soared. | <urn:uuid:00a527a1-873b-43a5-ad84-3bd7a4efc27c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.rd.com/health/diet-weight-loss/can-turning-down-the-thermostat-help-you-lose-weight/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944572 | 221 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Hepatic Encephalopathy, Hepatocerebral Intoxication, Portal-Systemic Encephalopathy
What is Hepatic coma?
Hepatic coma is loss of consciousness due to liver failure. Liver failure occurs because the liver tissue has been irreversibly and progressively destroyed (cirrhosis) as a result of infection, poison, or other disease. Hepatic coma is characterized as the final stage of hepatic encephalopathy, a condition in which the brain is poisoned by the toxic elements from the liver, which is no longer capable of properly filtering the blood to remove toxins. Bleeding into the intestinal tract may significantly increase the amount of protein in the bowel and may precipitate rapid development of hepatic coma.
How is it diagnosed?
History: A history of liver disease is present. Hepatic encephalopathy often follows a clearly identifiable precipitating event. The most common predisposing factor is gastrointestinal bleeding, which leads to an increase in the production of ammonia and other nitrogenous substances, which are then absorbed. Increased dietary protein may also precipitate hepatic encephalopathy. The syndrome may evolve over a period of days to weeks. Prior to coma, the individual exhibits a change in personality, confusion, drowsiness and tremulousness. An irregular flapping movement of the hands when the arms are extended (asterixis) is a common feature of hepatic encephalopathy. The individual may fall into a stupor and then a coma.
Physical exam: Examination of an individual experiencing hepatic coma shows a progressive involvement of the nervous system from higher to lower levels. The pupils usually still react to light and the brain stem reflexes are retained. Consciousness is progressively impaired.
Tests: Blood tests will show an increase in ammonia levels, an index of the degree of accumulation of toxins. Measurement of brain activity (EEG) will show abnormalities. Severe brain edema, which can be visualized by MRI, occurs commonly. There are no diagnostic liver function tests.
How is it treated?
Treatment of hepatic coma and encephalopathy is aimed at elimination or treatment of precipitating factors and lowering the blood ammonia levels by decreasing the absorption of protein and nitrogenous products from the intestine. Ammonia absorption can be decreased by the administration of a nonabsorbable disaccharide that acts as an osmotic laxative. Dietary protein restriction is necessary. In severe liver disease, liver transplantation is necessary.
What might complicate it?
Individuals who survive one or more episodes of hepatic coma are occasionally left with residual neurologic abnormalities, such as tremor of the head or arms, asterixis, grimacing, choreatic twitching of the limbs, dysarthria, ataxia of gait, or impairment of intellectual functioning. These symptoms may worsen with repeated attacks of stupor and coma.
In severe cases, the coma is irreversible and death occurs. If the underlying disease is reversible, treatment is usually effective.
Differential diagnoses include acute alcohol intoxication, sedative overdose, delirium tremens, Wernicke's encephalopathy, Korsakoff's psychosis, subdural hematoma, meningitis, and hypoglycemia.
Internist, neurologist and general surgeon.
Last updated 17 November 2011 | <urn:uuid:b0b32fc8-ee6d-40fb-a45b-c18b79e4270f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nmihi.com/h/hepatic-coma.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00066-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.884729 | 685 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Observe the following rules when using a combination square:
Grasp the anvil with one hand, so your fingers and thumb are behind the 90-degree reference surface.
The anvil is designed to be grasped with one hand. Its rear portion is S-shaped, so it fits neatly into the palm of your hand and hooks around the base of your index finger. This grip places the index finger and the thumb on opposite sides of the lock knob so that it can be easily manipulated.
The primary function of the combination square is to provide a standard against which to compare the perpendicularity of two surfaces. Its reference surfaces are on the anvil, and are the large wide surfaces that form 90- and 45- degree angles with the rule. Place the anvil, not the rule, against the reference surface of the work piece when checking for perpendicularity.
A common mistake when using the combination square to check for perpendicularity is to use the edge of the rule as a reference surface instead of the large wide face of the anvil. When making the corner of a work piece square, one of the surfaces comprising the corner should be made uniformly flat and designated as a reference. Then make the surface adjacent to it square to the reference by using the combination square as a guide.
The large wide face of the anvil should be placed against the reference surface of the work piece, and the edge of the rule should be used to check the orientation of the adjacent surface. The wide face of the anvil provides a short, stable platform with which to anchor the combination square against the work piece reference, and the rule can be extended to check a great distance along the adjacent edge. | <urn:uuid:7c864cf9-2332-42c2-ac90-b564a1bd675a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.woodcraft.com/Articles/ArticlesPrint.aspx?ArticleId=291 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921729 | 341 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Number of results: 81,336
Trig - Identies/equation, please help!
2Sin(Θ+47°)=1 ΘЄ[0°, 360°) What I did: Sin(Θ+47°)=1/2 Sin 1/2 = Θ+47° 30°+360 = Θ+47° 343° = Θ Ok, so how do i find the other solutions? In this problem its 103°. I think we were suppose to do something with the graphing calculator and ...
November 12, 2008 by James
The displacement (in centimeters) of a particle moving back and forth along a straight line is given by the equation of motion s= 2 sin pi t + 3 cos pi t, where t is measured in seconds. (a) Find the average velocity during each time period: (i)[1,2] (ii) [1,1.1] (iii) [1, 1....
September 23, 2008 by Sarah
Verify each trigonimetric equation by substituting identities to match right hand side of the equation to the hand side of the equation. Please help. -tan^2x+sec^2x=1
December 8, 2014 by Nancy Jones
Need help with current Trig problem for tomorrow: Solve the logarithmic equation algebraically. Approximate the result to three decimal places. 6log3(0.5x)=11 I know to start off the equation you divide by 6. I know the answer is 14.988. I just am puzzled on how to receive the...
May 16, 2011 by Eric
think of a condition under which product of anytwo binomials is a bionomial. you can support your answer with the help of one of the identies of factorization of polynomials A binomial is a polynomial with two terms. Try (x -a)(x + a)and see what you get.
April 10, 2007 by Liam
Math- gr.12 Trig.
Hi, could someone explain to me how to use a counterexample in trig to prove whether something is either an identity or equation? For ex. how would you do that with this question? sec^2x-tan^2x= cos x
January 11, 2010 by May
math (final trig problem)
Solve for x on the interval [0,π/2): cos^3(2x) + 3cos^2(2x) + 3cos(2x) = 4 I havent done trig for a while so what exactly does that mean in solving for x on that interval and how would i go about doing that? Where are you getting these tough trig questions?? how about ...
April 30, 2007 by jacob
Trigonometry/Geometry - Inequalities
Let a, b, and c be positive real numbers. Prove that sqrt(a^2 - ab + b^2) + sqrt(a^2 - ac + c^2) is greater or equal to sqrt(b^2 + bc + c^2). Under what conditions does equality occur? That is, for what values of a, b, and c are the two sides equal? This looks like a geometry...
December 7, 2013 by Sam
A curve with polar equation r=(8)/7sinx + 36cosx represents a line. This line has a Cartesian equation of the form y=mx+b ,where m and b are constants. Give the formula for y in terms of x . For example, if the line had equation y=2x+3 then the answer would be 2x+3 .
December 13, 2010 by Audrey
How would I go about solving this equation algebraically? Find the equation of the parabola y=ax^2 + bx+c that passes through the given points. (2,0) (3,-1) (4,0) Thanks.
March 5, 2009 by Chris
can you please show me in steps how to find f(1+a) in this equation f(x)=-2x^2+4x+6 i know that you will plug in 1+a anywhere there is x. but after that i get confused. also can you tell me how to find the domain and range of a relation for ex. 2x+5y=10 thanks for your help!
November 14, 2008 by y912f
Find an equation for the tangent to the curve y=1+ (sqrt2)(csc(X)) + cot(X). I just learned, though my teacher wasn't super good with explaining, derivatives for trig functions but they still aren't making too much sense. Could you please give me a step by step solution for ...
December 16, 2015 by Cindy
Could someone please help me on this problem. I'm really confused, and this assignment is due tomorrow. Solve the logarithmic equation algebraically. Approximate the result to three decimal places. log4x-log4(x-1)=1/2 To start off the equation, I know you would do the ...
May 16, 2011 by Eric
write the rectangular equation x^2+y^2=6 in polar form. I do not want people to just post the answer! Please, show your work so that I can understand how to do these kinds of problems myself! Thank you and God Bless!
April 19, 2012 by tabby
Please help I need to solve the following question for x, where 0<x<2pi. and then write a general solution for the equation. The question is 2cos^2 x + cos x =1. I need to solve this using radian measurement. I solved it using algebra and was told I wasn't allowed. Could...
April 29, 2010 by Rae
find each value by referring to the graphs of the trig functions. 1. sec 4 pi...i got 0 Find the values for theta for which each equation is true. csc (theta)=1 i got pi over 2 +2 pi n
October 26, 2008 by gaby
Find an equation of the parabola with vertex at the origin. Passes through the point (4,6); horizontal axis. I know it has to be y^2=4px. But I don't know what to do with (4,6). Please show step by step. Thanks.
February 3, 2009 by Vincent
How do I dertermine the measure of theta for the equation 4cos theta - sqrt 12 = 0. My answer was 2pi/3,4pi/3 I'm told it's wrong could you please show me how to do this type of question
March 17, 2010 by jamie
this is for proving identies and its fustrating i can't solve this one question! lol x=feta (btw the first part is supposed to be divided by the bottom) 1 + 2sinxcosx + sinxcosx sinx + cosx (1 + 2sinxcosx / sinx + cosx) + sinxcosx
December 14, 2008 by diana
Can someone please help me with this? Find all solutions to the equation in the interval [0,2pi) cos2x=sinx I know I have to use some sort of identity, but I have no idea how to go about to solve this.
February 27, 2010 by mary
Can you please help me with this question on my study guide for my trig final? Thanks! I'd also appreciate if you can check out my other postings and check my work for some other study guide questions. I want to make sure I'm ready for my final. :) 4. Transform each polar ...
May 16, 2013 by Kate
How would I solve the following equation for x? 2 sin^2(x) + 3 tanx secx = 2 I've tried the problems from different approaches, but couldn't come up with a solution. Could you please provide your thought process. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
October 1, 2010 by Bethany
solve each equation for č, giving a general formula for all of the solutions: 6. tanč=-1 7. sin(č/2)=1/2 Please show step by step on how to solve these. Im not sure on how to do them. Thank you for your help!
March 7, 2012 by BreAnne
can I please have help with these 3 questions? 1. Solve this equation graphically on the interval [0, 2š]. list the solutions. sin(2x)-1=tan x 2. solve sin x cos x= sqrt3/4 3. solve tan^2 x-3tan x+2=0 thank you! show step by step please.
April 13, 2012 by BreAnne
Find an equation for the hyperbola described. Foci at (-4,0) and (4,0); asymptote the line y= -x. Please explain the steps of this problem. My book does not get an example of this type of problem and I'm not having any luck working this problem.
July 19, 2011 by EVJ
Please help-I'm stuck really bad What are the roots of the equation x^2 - 4x + 3 = 0 I think I was suppose to use b^2 - 4ac so it would be -4 - (-4)*1*3 = 12 so the roots would be 12 and -12 Thank you for any help you can provide
September 6, 2011 by Sheila
Solve the trig equation exactly over the indicated interval. tanθ = 0, all real numbers I know the answer is πn, but I don't understand how they got this. I get that tanθ = 0 on π and 2π on the unit circle, so did they just put n on the end of π ...
April 7, 2013 by Anne
I've tried many times to get the equation to balance using trig identities like half-angle formulas, power-reducing formulas, and double angle formulas, but I couldn't get the equation to equal out. I only need to work one side to make it equal to the other, like a kind of ...
December 2, 2010 by Christina
Write the expression and evaluate. There is only one answer whIch should match the range of the inverse trig function. Sec^-1(-2) I got 2pi/3 could someone tell me if that is right? And if not, could someone please explain how to get the answer.
September 5, 2011 by Charles
Math - Trig
Hi I have a Trig question that i dont understand, can someone please explain how to solve for it using cosine law?? A Clock with a radius of 15 cm has an 11 cm minute hand and a 7 cm hour hand. How far apart, to the nearest centimetre, are the tips of the hands at each time? a...
April 30, 2008 by Mark
Consider the trig equation: 4sinxcos2x + 4cosxsin2x - 1 = 0 in the Interval [0, 2 pi] Either show that there is no solution to the equation in this domain, or determine the smallest possible solution.
November 16, 2009 by Anonymous
Please help me set up these problems. 1.) Find an equivalent equation in rectangular coordinates. r(1 - 2 cos θ) = 1 2.) Find a rectangular equation for the plane curve defined by the parametric equations. x = sec t, y = tan 3.) A projectile is fired with an initial ...
December 8, 2014 by Amber
Precalculus Trig (Geometry)
A rectangular doorway is 38 meters wide and 60 meters high. The doorway is capped with a semi-ellipse that is 13 meters high at its center. Find the height h of the doorway and window 5 meters from the center. From the ellipse equation, I can see that a should be 19 and b ...
April 19, 2015 by Michele
Please take a look at DEVON's trig equation at 9:14 I must be missing something obvious. If the second had been 3sin 2x it would be a straight forward question. The way it stands I was able to "reduce" it to the equation 8sin^4 x - 8sin^2 x + 3sin x + 2 = 0 I tested this ...
April 16, 2007 by Reiny
Math - Trig
For the equation 4 cos theta - square root 12 = 0, where 0 < theta < (or equal to) 2 pi, determine the measure of theta. The answers to choose from are: A) pi/ 3, 5 pi/ 3 B) 2 pi/ 3, 4 pi/ 3 C) 5 pi/ 6, 7 pi/ 6 D) pi/ 6, 11 pi/ 6 Please explain and show work, because I ...
December 12, 2011 by Angi
r=8cos(theta)+5sin(theta), convert the polar equation into a rectangular equation and then complete the square and determine the center radius...? Help?! I missed the section, and am not getting anywhere with the text...
August 12, 2011 by A
For each expression in column I, choose the expression from column II to complete an identity: Column I Column II 1. -tanxcosx A. sin^2x/cos^2x 2. sec^2x-1 B. 1/sec^2x 3. sec x/cscx C. sin(-x) 4. 1+sin^2x D.csc^2x-cot^2x+sin^2x 5. cos^2 x E. tanx I figured #1 is C, #2 is A, ...
March 19, 2011 by gin
Two planes leave an airport at the same time, one flying at 300 km/h and the other at 420 km/h The angle between their flight paths is 75 degrees. Aftar three hours, how far apart are they ? i guss i have to use the equation D= b.h but i cant fit the number in spot can u ...
May 17, 2008 by Doni
Pre-Calculus/Trig Check please and help
Could someone please check the first one and help me with the second one. I'm stuck-Thank you 1.What are theroots of the following polynomial equation? (x+2i)(x-5)(x-2i)(x+8) = 0 I think the roots are -2i,5,2i,-8-you take out the roots as opposites of what are in the equaion ...
September 5, 2011 by Tabitha
Please help me! SHORT ANSWER. Write the word or phrase that best completes each statement or answers the question. Verify that each equation is an identity. (sec α + tan α)^2 = 1 + sin α/1 - sin α
May 2, 2010 by Lilli
N 5 22x2 1 76x 1 430 Use the equation to find N for each year in the table. (b) Discuss how well this equation approximates the data. (c) Rewrite the equation with the right side completely factored. (d) Use your equation from part (c) to find N for each year in the table. Do ...
July 1, 2011 by mmmm
Suppose that z1=6-8i. Find: A. The Trig Form of the complex number z1, where your theta is in degrees. B. The Trig form of z1*z2, where z2=5[cos(60degrees)+isin(60degrees)] C. The Trig Form of (z1)^4
December 5, 2011 by Joshua
Sketch the graphs of y=cos 2x and y= -0.5 over the domain -pi<x<pi. use an algebraic method to determine the values of x where these two graphs intersect. use exact value. Please help me work this problem out! I sketched the graph, just not sure how to set up the ...
November 26, 2010 by rio
For csc^2 A-1/cot A csc A, what is the simplest equivalent trig expression? The answers I have to choose from are sin A, cosA, tan A or csc A, but I don't know how?? csc theta= 1/sin theta but its ^2. Help please I don't even no where to begin
March 10, 2010 by Tye
1. what trig function has an amplitue of 1 and negative values for angles between π/2 and π? 2. what trig function never crosses the x-axis and has a value of 2 at π/6? are these correct? 3. what trig function has a period of π and is undefined for -π/...
September 28, 2015 by anon
Write the expression and evaluate. There should only be one answer which should match the range of the inverse trig function. Sec^-1(-2) sec^-1(-sqrt2) Cos^-1((-sqrt3)/2) Tan^-1(-sqrt3) Could someone explain how to get the answer as well please.
September 3, 2011 by Anonymous | <urn:uuid:c82223d3-4a45-42c9-a4d1-f9b86eb18cf2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jiskha.com/search/index.cgi?query=Trig+-+Identies%2Fequation%2C+please+help! | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00027-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923338 | 3,663 | 2.671875 | 3 |
PVB and Windshield Manufacturing
The following manufacturing process is closer to that of the aftermarket,
windshield replacement process. The windshields used in the production of entire
automobiles are made on a much lager
scale for mass volume and high speed production.
Windshield manufacturing is done in an assembly line manner which contains two
components: Float Glass and Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB) Interlayer. The
manufacturing company buys these components from a supplier and combines
them to make a windshield in a process called laminating.
The float glass layers from the factory are curved together as matching pairs by separately
heating them to 620 degrees Celsius. The temperature is varied widely so as to form complex shapes, required by today's varying windshield design, through press-bending or regular gravity sagging. The shaped glass pairs are then cooled to room temperature before the PVB laminate can be sandwiched between them. This lamination process is actually
forming a safety glazing that keeps the glass in place in case of breakage and affords the driver some degree of visibility
in emergency situations.
The PVB is bought in large rolls and goes to a multistage process before being combined with the float glass and
placed into the furnace. PVB is refrigerated in storage or interleaved because at room temperature the polymer
becomes soft and tacky, making it stick
together.1 A processing line is used to manipulate the PVB into the desired shape, thickness
and curvature, to cut it, and to stack it with the sheets of float glass.
If the PVB has a sunshade band along the top edge then the PVB is sent through a manipulation process to shape the PVB. A machine begins the shaping and curving process by using a moderate amount of heat to
first soften and thin the PVB sheet so that it can attain a curve when it is
later rolled over a conical roller while under tension to stretch one side of the film.
This is done so that the sunshade band has a proper curvature to match the
roofline of the car that will receive the windshield.
The second step is to run the PVB through a relaxation unit. This step requires at least
half an hour for the PVB to settle into its final shape and curvature.
The final step in this process is the cutting of the PVB into individual sheets. This machine can cut the PVB at an angle from 0 to 25 degrees to accommodate the different shapes of car models.
This process is done to reduce the amount of waste involved with cutting excess PVB from a rectangular sheet.
After the glass is bent it is put inside a vacuum bag. When under the vacuum condition the pressure
holds the PVB in place between the layers of glass to remove air bubbles. The vacuum bags are then put into an oven called an
autoclave which heats the vacuumed windshield. The entire setup reaches 135°C to 145°C,
thereby melting the PVB, making it transparent, and fusing the three layers into one. The quality of lamination, or adhesiveness between the PVB and
the layers of float glass, are dependent on the temperature within the autoclave and the effectiveness
of the pressure on the layers of glass and PVB. A combination of vacuum packing and pressurized heated air inside the autoclave must be 175 psi
for the PVB to adhere to both layers of glass. Before going into the autoclave the PVB
appears opaque due to a pattern embossed on the surface that severely diffracts
autoclave uses heat and pressure to press out the embossed pattern and dissolve
any trapped air. If the temperature is too low, the PVB will not melt entirely
and will remain cloudy. If it is too hot the PVB will discolor.
Image courtesy of Sean B. | <urn:uuid:e6c4b25c-0d2c-494f-9d4a-8ff0e9d8c9a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mainland.cctt.org/istf2007/manufacturing.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927093 | 816 | 3.015625 | 3 |
December 1, 1955
November 29, 1902
November 30, 1954
December 2, 1865
December 5, 1919
December 5, 1935
This Week in Alabama History
November 29 - December 5
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a boarding white passenger as required by Montgomery city ordinance. Her action prompted the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott and earned her a place in history as “mother of the civil rights movement.” Ms. Parks was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in August 2000.
Other Events this Week
The New York Medical Record publishes an account of Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performing the first open heart surgery in the western hemisphere when he sutured a knife wound in a young boy’s heart. Dr. Hill was the father of Alabama politician and U.S. senator Lister Hill.
Listen: Click the play button below to hear Archives Staff discuss this event on Alabama Public Radio.
A meteorite weighing eight and one-half pounds crashes into Ann Hodges of Sylacauga as she rests on her living room couch. The event gave Hodges a severely bruised hip and instant celebrity status. The meteorite, the first one known to have caused injury to a human, is housed at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa.
Adhering to President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plan, the Alabama legislature ratifies the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, but with the caveat that such an action did "not confer upon Congress the power to legislate upon the political status of freedmen in this State." The 1868 legislature, adhering to Congress's more radical Reconstruction plan, would ratify the thirteenth amendment again, but without the qualifying statement.
Loraine Bedsole Bush becomes the first woman to head a state agency in Alabama when she is named director of the newly created Child Welfare Department. Long involved in state and national efforts to reform child labor laws, Bush was largely responsible for the establishment of the department.
The Alabama Highway Patrol, Alabama’s first statewide law enforcement agency, is created by Gov. Bibb Graves. The patrol originally consisted of 12 motorcycle officers. Today the Department of Public Safety has a staff of over 1,100 who are responsible for the highway patrol, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, driver’s license administration, and other support activities. | <urn:uuid:34047db2-047e-49b6-b26a-52a17a623c73> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archives.state.al.us/historythisweek/week49.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94716 | 498 | 3.015625 | 3 |
F-1 Engine Injector
Much has been written about the voracious appetite of the Saturn V's S-IC (first) stage engines: They could consume the propellant equivalent of a backyard swimming pool in 10 seconds. They could empty an Olympic-size swimming pool in about 2 ½ minutes. The liquid oxygen (LOX) alone is equivalent to 54 railroad tank cars. Buzz Aldrin once calculated that the S-IC gets about one foot per gallon (although according to heroicrelics calculations, it's closer to .6 or .7 feet per gallon).
This huge quantity of propellant is pumped from the S-IC's tanks into each F-1 engine's combustion chamber through an injector (sometimes called an injector plate).
The injector is located near the forward end of the engine. Just forward of the injector is the LOX dome (also called the oxidizer dome), through which the liquid oxygen is directed en route to the injector. The LOX dome is bolted to the injector by 16 inner-dome support bolts, and both the oxidizer dome and the injector are bolted to the thrust chamber body by 64 outer-dome attach bolts. The LOX dome, injector, and thrust chamber body are indexed to each other by one diamond-shaped and one round, noninterchangeable index pin, spaced 180 degrees apart at the interface flanges below the two oxidizer dome inlets.
Note the index pin in the exploded-view diagram above. The 64 outer-dome attach bolts and the two holes for the index pins are readily visible in the injector photo at the top of the page.
The following cut-away diagram illustrates liquid oxygen flow from the LOX dome to the injector via holes drilled through the injector. Also note the the outer- and inner-dome attach bolts:
The injector's purpose is to distribute the propellants into the combustion chamber at the proper mixture ratio, pressure, and spray pattern to initiate and sustain stable combustion. Determining the "proper mixture ratio, pressure, and spray pattern to initiate and sustain stable combustion" was no easy feat: There were approximately 3200 full-scale tests performed during the development of the F-1 engine, about 2000 of which were conducted during Project First, the F-1 combustion stability program. Since a rocket engine is basically a controlled explosion, it's important to produce combustion which is "dynamically stable"; that is, has predictable combustion which will not create hot spots (and thereby melt the interior of the engine) or burn so rough as to tear the engine apart.
Part of the difficulty in designing an injector with dynamic stability was the sheer size of the F-1 rocket engine: The most powerful rocket engine at the time was the early revision of H-1, with its 165,000 pounds of thrust. The F-1 was to have 1,500,000 pounds of thrust. The F-1 injector had to have what was described as an "extraordinarily high injection density," approximately 5 pounds of propellant per square inch per second. Atlas engines, by comparison, had an injection density of 1.5 lb/in2-sec, and the Apollo Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System engine and Descent Propulsion System engine were on the order of 0.5 lb/in2-sec.
Project First determined the optimal manner in which to inject the propellants into the combustion chamber: The injector face is comprised of 15 rings of oxidizer holes (or orifices) and 14 rings of fuel orifices. The injector face has 1428 oxidizer orifices and 1404 fuel orifices (for a total of 2832 total orifices). The orifices are arranged in pairs such that the propellant being expelled through the holes intersect or impinge in a doublet, like-on-like pattern (i.e., two streams of oxidizer impinge and two streams of fuel impinge). The impinging jets atomize, the fuel and oxidizer vapors intermix, the mixed vapors react (combust), and the resulting hot gases flow out of the combustion chamber to produce thrust. Other impingement patterns tested (and rejected) include a triplet impingement pattern (where three streams intersect) and like-on-unlike (where fuel and oxidizer impinge).
The following diagram, depicting a generic injector (i.e., not the actual F-1 injector), illustrates doublet and triplet impingement patterns (albeit like-on-unlike), as well as a typical like-on-like or self-impinging pattern:
Early in the F-1 engine's lifecycle, it became clear that a family of injector designs called the "5U" injector showed the most promise. The final injector design (photo above) was a member of the 5U family. Among the 5U variations was the following injector design, which I believe was (or was very similar to) the injector used during the Preliminary Flight Rating Test (PFRT), the injector configuration for which was selected in June 1963. The most visible difference between the following injector and the final injector design is that here the LOX orifices are arranged in triplets, rather than doublets:
Project First also determined that the most stable combustion could be achieved by varying both the angle of impingement and the diameter of the orifices (the latter of which controlled the velocity of the injected propellant), depending upon the location on the injector face. The following diagram identifies the number and size of orifices on the final F-1 injector design:
Another injector feature important to promoting stable combustion was the use of baffles on the injector face. Baffles alter the acoustic resonance characteristics of the combustion chamber, dampening tangential and transverse combustion instability shock waves generated during combustion.
For the F-1, 15 different baffle configurations were tested. In the final configuration, two circular and 12 radial baffles divided the injector face into 13 compartments. These compartments are identified numerically, 1 through 13, and the baffles are identified alphabetically, A through N. The 12 radial, fuel-cooled, copper baffles are supplied with fuel by the outer circular baffle to which they are brazed. The center of compartment No. 13 is threaded for the attachment of the throat plug shaft.
The injector measured about 44 inches in diameter, with about 39 inches of that exposed to the combustion chamber. The injector was about 8 inches thick, from back to injector face. It had a CRES (corrosion-resistant steel; more commonly known outside the aerospace industry as stainless steel) body with 31 ring grooves, 16 fuel ring grooves alternating with 15 oxidizer ring grooves. The fourteen copper rings containing the fuel orifices and the 2 circular copper baffles were brazed to the fuel ring grooves. The fifteen copper rings containing the oxidizer orifices were brazed to the oxidizer ring grooves.
As detailed above, the oxidizer ring grooves were supplied with oxidizer from the LOX dome by axially drilled holes. The fuel ring grooves were supplied from the fuel inlet manifold (shown in the exploded view diagram above) by 32 radial fuel feed passages. The arrangement of fuel feed passages in a typical injector is depicted in the following diagram:
The following cut-away diagram of a typical rocket engine combustion chamber depicts an injector's ring grooves and orificed copper rings, with the ring grooves fed by fuel feed passages and holes from the LOX dome:
The fuel feed passages on an F-1 injector are visible in this crop of the tear down photo from my LOX dome page. The injector is mounted on a handling fixture and the ends of several fuel feed passages are visible on the right side of the injector.
The following cut-away diagram of the F-1 injector shows the axially-drilled holes supplying LOX to the oxidizer groove rings and a fuel feed passage supplying RP-1 to the fuel ring grooves. It also shows the flow of fuel used to cool the circular and radial baffles.
The F-1's propellants, RP-1 and LOX, require an external ignition source to initiate combustion. For the F-1, this was provided by the hypergol manifold assembly. Attached to a bracket on the thrust chamber fuel manifold, the hypergol manifold assembly included a cartridge containing a fluid consisting of 85 percent triethylborane and 15 percent triethylaluminum. These two compounds are pyrophoric, meaning that they will ignite spontaneously in the presence of oxygen. During the engine ignition sequence, this fluid was released through 25 igniter fuel orifices on the injector (two igniter fuel housings in each of the 12 outer compartments and one igniter fuel housing in the center compartment) where it spontaneously combusted with the LOX already in the combustion chamber, establishing ignition.
The photo below shows several of the igniter fuel housings, which look much like the heads of slotted screws, on the face of the injector:
Most of the information presented above is summed up in this cut-away diagram of the F-1 injector:
"View A" in the upper left of the diagram shows how fuel entered the injector from the fuel inlet manifold. Every other tube comprising the thrust chamber was a "down tube", and is slotted on its outboard side at the fuel inlet manifold area. A bypass orifice plug was brazed into the tube above this slot to permit 30% of the fuel to go directly to the fuel injector manifold. The remaining 70% of the fuel was used for regenerative cooling of the thrust chamber, being directed down the tube to the fuel return manifold at the end of the thrust chamber. From the fuel return manifold, the fuel is directed by the adjacent fuel return tubes to the fuel injector manifold. From the fuel injector manifold, the fuel enters the fuel feed passages.
Of special note is the hypergol manifold in View A in the upper left of the diagram. Feed lines inside the fuel feed passages deliver the pyrophoric fluid from this manifold to the igniter fuel housings:
The diagram also shows how the outer circular baffle feeds both the inner and outer radial baffles:
For additional information regarding the injector baffles, see my F-1 injector baffle page.
The NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) has a number of documents containing additional information on Project First, the F-1 engine combustion stability program.
In researching this page, I drew information (including a number of verbatim text passages) from the following sources: | <urn:uuid:070fa99f-5f89-4c48-af69-27df4fbd00ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://heroicrelics.org/info/f-1/f-1-injector.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939885 | 2,250 | 2.9375 | 3 |
2. Verb. (past of moot) ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Mooted
1. moot [v] - See also: moot
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Mooted Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Mooted
mooted (current term)
Literary usage of Mooted
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Handy-book of Literary Curiosities by William Shepard Walsh (1892)
"charged that the secession of the New England States was mooted. Peace being soon alter proclaimed, however, nothing resulted from the deliberations. ..."
2. A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present by Edmund Clarence Stedman, Ellen Mackay Hutchinson (1889)
""PEACEABLE SEPARATION" mooted BY THE ABOLITIONISTS OP 1845. [From the Same.] THE levers of disunion ready to the hands of the Massachusetts abolitionists ..."
3. The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French: With a Preliminary by Walter Scott (1827)
"Rf-suscitation of the Jacobin faction.—Increased Dissatisfactions in the Army.—The Claims of'the Emigrants mooted in the Chamber of Delegates. ..."
4. A Treatise on the Law of Evidence as Administered in England and Ireland by John Pitt Taylor (1887)
"Mansfield ' had once permitted a plaintiff to be examined with his own consent This question was afterwards again mooted in the Court of Exchequer, ..."
5. The Missions and Missionaries of California by Zephyrin Engelhardt (1912)
"Spanish Policy Regarding Trade. —The Eighteen Missions.—Achievements in the Spiritual and Temporal Order.—Reduction of Guards mooted. ..." | <urn:uuid:44c38ea7-0191-44a9-bb63-174d753a41cd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/mooted | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.857858 | 414 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Have you ever looked at your iPhone and thought “I wish my keyboard was invisible”? Me neither. But before anybody does, I can tell you that a student at the University Of London has managed to create a piece of software that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to read particular vibrations that correspond to a certain key.
The student managed to do this using a jailbroken iPhone 4 and a piece of paper with a keyboard printed on to it. The iPhone learns each different key be reading certain vibrations strengths when the keys on the paper are touched.
The Telegraph spoke to the student:
“The signals I’m collecting are very weak,” said Florian Kraeutli, a computing student at Goldsmiths, who created the system as part of his work on user interfaces.“At the moment it’s more of a proof of concept but if you made the accelerometer more sensitive you could improve the accuracy quite easily.”
Check out the video below to see the keyboard in action: | <urn:uuid:b61c9c01-6a78-452f-9aad-2dd194717205> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.todaysiphone.com/2012/11/student-creates-vibrative-virtual-keyboard-using-iphones-accelerometer-video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942361 | 214 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The tropical rain forests of the world are home to nearly half the animal species on earthan estimated five million different life forms. More than 100 inches of rainfall each year sustain this lush environment, where some of the most fascinating examples of natural adaptation can be found. Journey to the dense rain forests of Costa Rica and watch as leaf-cutting ants carry sections of leaves many times their weight to underground fungus gardens, a basilisk lizard walks on water, and howler monkeys bask in the sun. Fascinating and thought-provoking, this film is an eloquent warning of the natural wonders we stand to lose on a world scale if human encroachment of the world's rain forests continues.
Not available for shipment outside of the U.S. and Canada.
For the first time ever, National Geographic presents its programming in DVD-R format. Available exclusively through this site, you can now own more of our award-winning specials and documentaries in a high-quality DVD format.
How our DVDs and DVD-Rs Differ
Customers who purchase programs in the NG DVD Exclusives Library will receive a non-interactive, play only disc. There is no chaptering information on these DVDs, but there are chapter marks approximately every five minutes, which make it easy to fast forward through a program. The DVD-R format provides the digital video and audio quality you expect from all of our DVDs.
NOTE: The NG DVD Exclusives titles are not closed-captioned. We apologize for any inconvenience this limitation may cause.
Comments about Classic: Rain Forest DVD Exclusive:
I have used this video for years with fourth graders to give them a visual image of the rain forest and its plants and animals. It is very informative, although it moves a little slowly for kids that age at times. It shows the dark understory and forest floor, interesting and unique animals and plants, and the ecosystem of the forest well and that keeps their interest. Unfortunately, the DVD was very slow to start and began to skip like a broken record until I fast-forwarded past the beginning. It may be incompatibility with my old DVD player, however. It is good enough that I ordered the DVD to replace a VHS I had used for a long time.
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
These four titles represent the best of National
Geographic's wildlife programs. Discover the uncanny hunting prowess and uncertain future of the elusive jaguar. Witness the ancient blood feud waged between Africa’s lions and hyenas. Brave the trackless Great ...
In the harsh northern reaches of Canada's Ellesmere
Island, elusive arctic wolves share their secrets with two patient observers. Shielded by their remote location and inhospitable climate, these wild animals have not yet learned to fear humans. This is the ...
Join renowned wildlife filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert
as they capture the drama of Africa's largest free-roaming elephant herds on their timeless journey across the bush country of northern Botswana. Two years in the making, this remarkable documentary reveals extraordinary ... | <urn:uuid:35131645-9adc-412e-b391-c7f7f010ec03> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/dvds/animals-and-nature/animals-and-wildlife/classic%3A-rain-forest-dvd-exclusive?prevNav=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925476 | 634 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Renaissance Literature ENGL3003
Course Convenor: Prof Helen Hackett
This course reaches from the works of Thomas More to those of Milton and Bunyan, running from Reformation to Revolution and its aftermath, and covering perhaps the most seminal 150 years in all English history and literature.
Though Shakespeare has a paper to himself, he by no means dwarfs such contemporaries as Spenser, Sidney, Jonson and Donne, and is, indeed, only to be appreciated adequately in context. The dramatic achievements of the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, even without Shakespeare, remain unrivalled, and include the morbidity of revenge tragedy and the vitality of city comedy. Poetry develops in rich variety and startling originality, from Wyatt through Donne to Herbert and Marvell: it encompasses all kinds of love from the transcendental to the decidedly carnal, as well as the crises of identity and conscience produced by an age of religious turmoil. Spenser and Milton are responsible for the two great English epics, and much else besides. The new technology of print enables the rise of prose fiction, and the gradual spread of education enables some women writers to come forward. Bacon and Hobbes laid the foundations for 'modern' scientific and political thinking, and a prose style to go with it; while the resonant language of the King James Bible was to echo through English literature for centuries to come. Almost all writers of note in English since have found the era, in one way or another, unforgettable.
The purpose of the course is to introduce students to a range of crucial works, and to build upon and around these towards an appreciation of the surrounding landscape, its characteristic geology and importance as a background for what was to come. (Although Milton’s later works and the works of Bunyan fall after the Restoration in 1660, they are included on this course as their literary character places them in the Renaissance.)
The course is taught by means of a combination of lectures, seminars, and tutorials. Examination is by means of a 3-hour written paper, or by Course Essay, if preferred and if no other Course Essay is being submitted by the candidate in that year. | <urn:uuid:17095a91-e1ab-4787-b730-6080a5886353> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english/current/undergraduate/Renaissance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959498 | 449 | 3.265625 | 3 |
As market shares of "green" products grow, so does debate about their true impacts. Certification and labeling of environmentally and socially sustainable goods have exploded in the last 10 years, coinciding with hotter, more extreme weather, continued deforestation and biodiversity loss, and accelerated depletion of many natural resources.
So it’s fair to ask, is green consumerism working? The idea that we can consume our way to sustainability as long as the label says it's "green" has deservedly been lampooned for years. More recently, the questioning is getting more serious and soul-searching, because environmentalists themselves are often the ones doing the asking.
"Today, precisely because the world is so increasingly out of balance, the sustainability regime is being quietly challenged, not from without, but from within," writes Pop!Tech’s Andrew Zolli. The Worldwatch Institute report, "Is Sustainability Still Possible?" asks "with so much labeled as ‘sustainable’ … is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure [it]?" Greenpeace is publishing case studies to examine whether the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council—which it helped found—are getting "watered down" as the program grows. Environmental scientist Maurie Cohen, co-founder of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, categorizes certification, eco-labeling, and consumer education as ‘weak’ sustainable consumption. They "all tend to induce rebound effects and other perverse outcomes," he says.
Such critiques are generally thoughtful, and the questioning is healthy. Some of them, like Greenpeace’s scrutiny of FSC, clearly aim to improve performance. And new conceptual frameworks related to ideas about resilience and "post-consumerism" are all to the good. Critics are right to expose and decry greenwashing, and to point out that self-professed corporate sustainability is no guarantee of real-world impact (one study found that 86% of companies surveyed reported compliance with key sustainability criteria, while only 11% actually met them). They are also right to point out certification is no panacea for workers. It needs to be accompanied by broad government policy changes to address issues like minimum wage and child labor, but those changes don’t seem to be forthcoming.
To conclude from these critiques, however, that sustainable consumerism is "weak" or doesn’t work would be a colossal mistake. Independent, accredited certification programs are scaling up sustainable practices worldwide and demonstrating huge benefits for the environment, workers, and communities. So why do critics often ignore them?
Perhaps it’s because it’s such a specialized branch of knowledge. If you haven’t spent the last 20 years inspecting farms and forests throughout the tropics, you’re unlikely to know how bananas were grown or what coffee farmers did with their waste in the early 1990s, so you can’t appreciate the transformation that certification has accomplished since then.
Academic and policy studies tend naturally to focus on macro indicators and prescriptions, rather than grapple with actual practices and impacts on millions of acres of farms and forests in a hundred countries. The 2011 study "Solutions for a Cultivated Planet" brilliantly makes the macro case that to meet rising global food demand, we’ll have to raise yields dramatically on existing cropland without clearing more forests. But it ignores the fact that independent programs, like Rainforest Alliance Certified agriculture, have been doing exactly that on many thousands of farms for many years, and have made significant, measurable progress towards the goal.
Gathering and aggregating data from all those far-flung farms and forests is difficult, expensive and takes years. Research results are slow in coming, and the field hasn’t made a priority of synthesizing and communicating them. But that’s starting to change.
A growing body of accredited studies reveals enormous differences between certified operations and non-certified ones. Certified operations have double and higher rates of protecting wildlife and habitats, including in mega-diverse hotspots. They dramatically reduce harmful impacts and dramatically improve the lives of workers, families and communities. They’re providing sustainable livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest countries and achieving life-changing increases in yields and incomes using sustainable methods.
This research is publicly available: There’s a 2012 roundup of some of it here. More is emerging all the time, like these newly published studies showing that Colombia’s 2,100 certified coffee farms shelter endangered species, have higher biodiversity and healthier streams, net higher revenue, and are twice as productive as non-certified farms. If you’re ever stung by the accusation that drinking certified coffee eases consumer guilt without helping the planet or the farmers, facts like these are good to have.
No standard or certification system is perfect—in fact, by design they are iterative programs that require constant learning and improvement from producers and certifiers alike. But there’s abundant evidence that despite some bad actors or self-serving programs, consumers who choose certified products and services are making a huge difference. They’re the reason smallholding farmers worldwide are rapidly adopting sustainable practices, and why industry giants are eliminating deforestation and other harms from their global supply chains.
Skepticism is healthy, but don’t doubt the power of consumers to drive positive, scalable environmental and social impacts. It’s one of the few things that does. | <urn:uuid:416a8408-f333-4142-bd09-e9eba5d5eba5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fastcoexist.com/3015838/can-sustainable-consumerism-work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951401 | 1,122 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Valuing teachers. Writing in Education Next, Eric A. Hanushek explains the importance of academic achievement of schoolchildren, the low achievement of American schools relative to the world, and the huge impact this poor performance has on our economic future. It’s very important, he writes: “From studying the historical relationship, we can estimate that closing just half of the performance gap with Finland, one of the top international performers in terms of student achievement, could add more than $50 trillion to our gross domestic product between 2010 and 2090. By way of comparison, the drop in economic output over the course of the last recession is believed to be less than $3 trillion. Thus the achievement gap between the U.S. and the world’s top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession.” … Teacher effectiveness is one factor that is under control of schools, and is more important than many other factors also under control of schools: “The quality of the teachers in our schools is paramount: no other measured aspect of schools is nearly as important in determining student achievement. The initiatives we have emphasized in policy discussions — class-size reduction, curriculum revamping, reorganization of school schedule, investment in technology — all fall far short of the impact that good teachers can have in the classroom. Moreover, many of these interventions can be very costly.” … Reforms: “better recruitment so that ineffective or poor teachers do not make it into our schools.” We can also work to improve poor teachers, but Hanushek says this is often not effective, as “there is no substantial evidence that certification, in-service training, master’s degrees, or mentoring programs systematically make a difference in whether teachers are in fact effective at driving student achievement.” … There is also the possibility of a “clearer evaluation and retention strategy for teachers.” This means better evaluation systems to identify the best and worst teachers, but Hanushek calls current evaluation systems dysfunctional. Currently, salaries are based on longevity and earned credentials, which he warns are “factors that are at best weakly related to productivity.” … Of note: it is the teachers unions which support the current failing system, and which block any attempt at meaningful reform. In Kansas this year, tinkering with the teacher tenure formula is all that has been accomplished this year regarding school reform. This is in a state that ranks very low among the states in policies relating to teacher effectiveness, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Job recovery is slow. USA Today: “Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression. The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s. In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009.”
Obamacare waivers. Michael Barone: “If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?” Barone cites the high concentration of waivers granted to labor unions, which are a big source of political support for Obama. Then there’s the recent revelation of the large number of waivers to companies in Nancy Pelosi’s district. This is harmful, writes Barone: “One basic principle of the rule of law is that laws apply to everybody. If the sign says ‘No Parking,’ you’re not supposed to park there even if you’re a pal of the alderman. Another principle of the rule of law is that government can’t make up new rules to help its cronies and hurt its adversaries except through due process, such as getting a legislature to pass a new law. The Obamacare waiver process appears to violate that first rule. Two other recent Obama administration actions appear to violate the second.”
Tax increment financing. From Randal O’Toole: “Tax-increment financing (TIF) costs taxpayers around $10 billion per year and is growing as fast as 10 percent per year, according to a new report, Crony Capitalism and Social Engineering: The Case against Tax-Increment Financing published by the Cato Institute. Though originally created to help renew “blighted” neighborhoods, TIF today is used primarily as an economic development tool for areas that are often far from blighted. The report argues that TIF does not actually generate economic development. At best, it moves development that would have taken place somewhere else in a community to the TIF district. That means it generates no net tax revenues, so the TIF district effectively takes taxes from schools and other tax entities. At worst, TIF actually slows economic development, both by putting a larger burden on taxpayers and by discouraging other developers from making investments unless they are also supported by TIF.” … Tax increment financing — TIF districts — are expected to be a major source of revenue for the revitalization of downtown Wichita — and the accompanying social engineering directed from Wichita city hall. Wichita has also shown itself to be totally incapable of turning away from crony capitalism.
Assumptions about capitalism. Burton W. Folsom in The Myth of the Robber Barons: “This shallow conclusion dovetails with another set of assumptions: First, that the free market, with its economic uncertainty, competitive stress, and constant potential for failure, needs the steadying hand of government regulation; second, that businessmen tend to be unscrupulous, reflecting the classic cliché image of the ‘robber baron,’ eager to seize any opportunity to steal from the public; and third, that because government can mobilize a wide array of forces across the political and business landscape, government programs therefore can move the economy more effectively than can the varied and often conflicting efforts of private enterprise. But the closer we look at public-sector economic initiatives, the more difficult it becomes to defend government as a wellspring of progress. Indeed, an honest examination of our economic history — going back long before the twentieth century — reveals that, more often than not, when government programs and individual enterprise have gone head to head, the private sector has achieved more progress at less cost with greater benefit to consumers and the economy at large.” … Folsom goes on to give examples from the history of steamships, railroads, and the steel and oil industries that show how our true economic history has been distorted. Concluding, he writes: “Time and again, experience has shown that while private enterprise, carried on in an environment of open competition, delivers the best products and services at the best price, government intervention stifles initiative, subsidizes inefficiency, and raises costs. But if we have difficulty learning from history, it is often because our true economic history is largely hidden from us. We would be hard pressed to find anything about Vanderbilt’s success or Collins’s government-backed failure in the steamship business by examining the conventional history textbooks or taking a history course at most colleges or universities. The information simply isn’t included.” … Folsom’s book on this topic is The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America. | <urn:uuid:2c17c8bc-46f1-406f-be8e-36860aec38aa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wichitaliberty.org/kansas-wichita-quick-takes/kansas-and-wichita-quick-takes-friday-may-27-2011/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95906 | 1,564 | 2.640625 | 3 |
For a long-term memory to form in our noggins, a complex chain of cellular events needs to kick into action. It starts with chemical cues set off by a behavior or experience that make their way to specific nerve cells in the brain. Upon arrival to those cells, the chemical signals are ferried from the outer waiting area of the cell to the nucleus—a cell’s command center where the genetic blueprints are kept. In the nucleus, the molecular messenger can persuade the cell to switch on or off genes—which can strengthen nerve connections and, ultimately, lock down a memory for long-term recall.
While those general steps are clear, the details are still a bit fuzzy. For instance, researchers don’t know how exactly the molecular signals get shuttled to the command center, which generally has tight security. But a new study may finally have that answer.
In the tiny minds of fruit flies, a protein called importin-7 acts to shuttle the memory-triggering signal into the nucleus with its top-level clearance to the restricted area, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Because this step of long-term memory formation seems the same in everything from flies to humans, and humans have their own version of importin-7, the finding could help fill in the details of how our minds form memories, the authors suggest.
The researchers, led by neuroscientist Yi Zhong of Tsinghua University in Beijing, had an inkling of importin-7’s role after previous research flagged the protein as being important for long-term memory formation.
To test out the idea, the researchers toyed with long-term memories in flies using Pavlovian conditioning. That training involved putting 100 flies in a tight chamber wired with a copper grid that could deliver little electrical zaps. Then, the researchers blew in one of two smells. One of the smelly breezes was always followed by an electrical zap, while the other was not.
To test the flies’ memory of the shocking experience, the researchers would then move the insects to a T-shaped maze, where each arm of the maze smelled like one of the two chemicals. The researchers tallied how many of the flies remembered to avoid the arm with the smell that preceded a jolt in their training.
With genetic tweaking, the researchers dialed up and down the amount of importin-7 in the flies and then put them through the memory training and test. They found that cranking up levels of the shuttle protein strengthened the long-term memories of the flies, while turning it off weakened their memory.
Using fluorescent tags to track the memory signal, called mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), researchers also found that importin-7 was critical for giving MAPK an all-access pass to the nucleus.
“The current work confirms that [importin-7] is indeed critical at the behavioral level in mediating [long-term memory] consolidation,” the authors concluded. | <urn:uuid:6f6699c7-155b-48c1-81f3-87fba39fd594> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/scientists-may-have-found-molecular-gatekeeper-of-long-term-memory/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938713 | 622 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Unhcr unhcr strategy and activities concerning refugee children
Geneva, October 2005
UNHCR and Refugee Children
Refugee childreni are a policy priority of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). The rights of refugee girls and boys, including adolescents, of diverse backgrounds and abilities are of
specific concern to UNHCR.
The following documents provide the framework for UNHCR’s activities to assist and protect children:
• 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees
• 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees
• 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and its Optional Protocols on the Involvement of Children
in Armed Conflict and on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography
• 1993 UNHCR Policy on Refugee Children
• 1994 Refugee Children: UNHCR Guidelines on the Protection and Care
UNHCR’s commitment to the protection of refugee girls and boys has been reinforced through the Agenda for
Protection which includes a specific goal with objectives and activities relating to the protection of refugee
women and children. The Agenda also integrates the concerns of girls and boys of diverse backgrounds into its
other five goals.
UNHCR’s age, gender and diversity mainstreaming strategy supports the participation and protection of girls and
boys. The overall aim is gender equality and the enjoyment of their rights by all refugees of all ages and
UNHCR believes that the protection and care of children have to be an integral part of all activities for refugees,
which can best be addressed using a team approach. Working for refugees also means working with refugees.
Therefore, by using a rights and community-based approach and applying participatory assessment, refugees
should actively participate in all operations from the beginning. In all phases of programming, the refugee
community should be involved in such a way that it represents all groups: women, men, older persons, people with
disabilities, girls and boys, including adolescents, regardless of background and capacity. Thus, the protection and
care of refugee children is not only the responsibility of States and humanitarian organizations, but of the refugee
community as a whole.
In legal terms, every refugee under the age of 18 is a refugee child, ‘unless, under the law applicable to the child,
majority is attained earlier.’ii With regard to refugee children, UNHCR has identified five main global priority
• separation from families and caregivers
• sexual exploitation, abuse and violence
• military recruitment
• specific concerns of adolescents
In certain regions there may be additional issues of importance which require special attention, such as birth
registration, detention of children, trafficking or child labour.
UNHCR’s global strategy for refugee girls and boys is three-fold:
• Prioritization of the above-mentioned five priority issues with a particular focus on participation, sexual and
gender-based violence (SGBV), adolescents and youth employment. These priority issues are supported by
empowerment through targeted action and age, gender and diversity mainstreaming.
• Training and capacity development – UNHCR and its partners are being trained to detect the specific concerns
of refugee girls and boys of diverse backgrounds and to deal with them efficiently. Action for the Rights of
Children (ARC), an inter-agency and child rights-based initiative, is a practical tool designed for this purpose.
• Inter-agency cooperation – UNHCR is networking and cooperating with other UN agencies, NGOs, and
governments to ensure optimum protection and care of refugee girls and boys through a number of initiatives
and networks at the global, regional, and national level.
Priority Issue #1 Separation from Families and Caregivers
In the chaos of conflict, flight and displacement, girls and boys face an increased risk of separation from their
families and caregivers, who play a fundamental role in their protection, physical care and emotional well-being.
Therefore, separation from their closest relatives or caregivers is particularly devastating for refugee children.
Unaccompanied and separated girls and boys face a greater risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, military
recruitment, child labour, lack of access to school and basic assistance, and detention, even if they are
accompanied by members of their extended family.
Unaccompanied and separated adolescent refugees may find themselves in very distressing situations. It is usually
more difficult to find foster families for them than for younger children. Some of them also end up bearing
responsibilities for younger siblings and might be exposed to discrimination and abuse.
Often unaccompanied and separated boys are particularly at risk of military recruitment, while girls require
specific attention as they face the risk of forced labour, early/forced marriage, sexual abuse or human trafficking.
Wherever possible, UNHCR prevents separation of children from their parents. While this is not always possible
in emergencies, UNHCR designs repatriation operations in such a way that separation is unlikely to occur at any
time during the movement.
When an emergency arises or upon arrival in the country of asylum, unaccompanied and separated girls and boys
are identified, registered and documented as quickly as possible and tracing is carried out. This promotes the
protection and assistance of children and is important for restoring links with their families.
Interim care is provided for unaccompanied and separated girls and boys. This may include fostering, other forms
of community-based care, or institutional care as a last resort. The status of all children in care arrangements is
to be followed up and monitored to avoid abuse and neglect.
To assist in finding a durable solution UNHCR applies Best Interests Determination procedures.
For adolescent refugees, who are separated from their families, it is even more crucial to develop life skills and
become self-sufficient. Therefore UNHCR works towards providing adolescent girls and boys with the opportunity
to participate in post-primary education, vocational training and income-generating activities.
Education is also considered an effective tool for UNHCR in order to protect separated girls and boys from the
dangers of military recruitment, exploitation, abuse and violence as well as an important means to give them
better opportunities for the future.
For its operations, UNHCR developed concrete Guidelines on Policies and Procedures in Dealing with
Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum.
In addition, with the introduction through Project Profile of “ProGres”, UNHCR’s new registration database
application, a Specific Needs Branch was introduced in the registration database which includes ‘Unaccompanied
and Separated Children’ with a further breakdown into Separated Child, Unaccompanied Child, Child in Foster
Care, Child in Institutional Care, and Neglected Child with Extended Family. This allows for improved
identification of unaccompanied and separated children, targeting of assistance and services as well as
aggregating statistics consistently worldwide.iii
Inter-Agency Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children were launched in 2004 by UNHCR,
UNICEF, ICRC, IRC, Save the Children UK and World Vision International. A major output of this joint initiative
is the use of a common registration form for unaccompanied and separated children. This makes worldwide
tracing and family reunification easier. Early 2005, these organizations also drafted Guiding Principles on
Unaccompanied and Separated Children in Tsunami-affected Countries and on Psychosocial Care and Protection
of Tsunami-affected Children.
Practical insight was gained and best practices on the rights and best interests of separated children have been
collected through the Separated Children in Europe Programme, which UNHCR and Save the Children
established in 1998.
Priority Issue #2 Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence
Sexual exploitation, abuse and violence often increase during flight. Boys and girls of all age groups are at risk,
but adolescent girls are the principal targets. Certain groups of refugee children are particularly at risk:
• unaccompanied and separated girls, including those living in foster care, or with relatives
• child-headed households
• girls and boys in detention
• girls and boys associated with fighting forces
• mentally and physically disabled girls and boys
• working children
• girl mothers
• girls and boys born to rape victims/survivors
Refugee children, including adolescents, may face various forms of SGBV, such as harmful traditional practices,
trafficking, child prostitution and sexual violence within the family or by strangers. Most cases involve female
victims/survivors and male perpetrators. Fuel and water collection presents severe challenges as well as assistance
shortages leading to child exploitation.
To prevent all forms of sexual violence within refugee communities, UNHCR and its partners run a variety of
programmes to raise awareness on gender issues, human rights, reproductive health, and HIV and AIDS. It is
imperative to involve both girls and boys, including adolescents, in such programmes.
Camp layouts are increasingly being planned in such a way that moving around is safe in all parts of the site.
Involving boys and girls in the planning reduces the risk of sexual exploitation, abuse and violence towards
Improved access to assistance and education diminishes the risk to engage in sex for money or for favours.
Response mechanisms include health care, psycho-social support, measures to ensure the safety of the
victims/survivors and legal redress.
Furthermore, UNHCR’s revised Guidelines for Prevention and Response on Sexual and Gender Based Violence
against Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons (2003) includes a separate chapter on refugee
children and forms the basis for a worldwide training programme to ensure that the Guidelines are implemented.
A Code of Conduct which, among other things, obliges appropriate behaviour by UNHCR staff towards children
was issued in 2002. All UNHCR staff are required to sign the document.
At the inter-agency level, an Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Protection from Sexual Exploitation
and Abuse in Humanitarian Crises developed six core principles relating to standards of behaviour by
humanitarian workers, which were introduced through new clauses in UNHCR’s agreements with implementing
UNHCR staff are also legally bound by the Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Special Measures for Protection from
Lastly, UNHCR contributes to the UN Study on Violence against Children through participation at Regional
Consultations and provision of information to the Secretariat of the Study on UNHCR’s policies/guidelines and
work in this area. A special project has been initiated by UNHCR’s Senior Regional Adviser for Refugee Women
and Children on “Refugee Children’s Experiences and Perceptions of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in
Angola, South Africa, and Zambia” (returnee, urban, and camp areas) which was presented at the Regional
Consultation for Eastern and Southern Africa and is based upon direct participation of children through focus-
group data collection. Refugee/returnee children discussed the causes, forms, coping strategies and impacts of
violence, as well as provided their suggestions for prevention and response.
Priority Issue #3 Military Recruitment
Refugee girls and boys are among those at highest risk of military recruitment. Most children associated with
fighting forces are adolescents, but there are also examples of recruitment of children below 10 years of age.
A refugee child may be recruited compulsorily, forcibly or voluntarily by armed groups or forces. Both girls and
boys participate in fighting as well as take on other duties as porters, cooks, cleaners, and messengers. Girls are at
a higher risk of sexual abuse, forced marriage and pregnancy.
• Some boys and girls become child soldiers because they might feel safer if they have a gun to protect
themselves and their families
• In some situations, the proximity of camps for refugees or internally displaced persons to conflict zones
exposes adolescents to the risk of recruitment
• Unaccompanied and separated girls and boys are at particular risk
Joining armed groups or forces should not be an option to children in conflict zones. To address this issue,
UNHCR, in close cooperation with UNICEF and other partners, promotes alternatives such as enrolment in
schools and training centres while seeking to ensure that such sites are protected from attack and (re-
• Demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programmes for former combatants also include
children associated with fighting forces. Both girls and boys who have been involved in any way with armed
groups or forces should be included in DDR programmes, which also take into account the specific needs of
girls. These children require special protection and psycho-social support until they are able and ready to be
reunited with their families or reintegrated into their communities
• Providing adequate food rations and other assistance also reduces the vulnerability to recruitment of
displaced and war-affected children
• Other measures include income-generating activities, family reunification, psycho-social services and
recreational activities both for potential victims and for children who were associated with fighting forces
UNHCR continues to advocate against military recruitment of children in all circumstances and encourages
States that have not yet done so to accede to the Optional Protocol to the CRC on the Involvement of Children in
Priority Issue #4 Education
Education is crucial for refugee girls and boys from the onset of an emergency, since:
• Going to school brings stability and security back into the lives of children affected by armed conflict and
• Education, by providing a potential “safe place”, may shield children from dangers such as child labour,
military recruitment or sexual exploitation, abuse and violence, and may prevent teenage pregnancies and HIV
infection while registration as a student also allows for follow-up and monitoring
• Education enables children to gain the social skills development of childhood and provides them with the hope
of a better future
Access to education is hampered by shortages in food and material assistance, including education materials, as
well as by fuel and firewood collection.
The UN has formulated two Millennium Developments Goals that apply to education: parity of girls and boys and
universal primary education, which are also reflected in the Education for All (EFA) initiative. UNHCR is
committed to achieving those goals.
UNHCR, in collaboration with governments and local and international agencies, provides education in areas of
acute and chronic emergencies, as well as in the phases of post-conflict and repatriation. Education activities
focus on strategies to increase girls' education and to ensure that refugee schools have the same standard as
To achieve those goals UNHCR engages in a number of networks and partnerships with experienced
organizations. In many parts of the world UNHCR supports:
• low-cost, innovative education projects that can be easily implemented, known as EQUIP (Education Quick
• community initiatives that promote access to quality education
• teacher training in preparation for return
• activities to prevent early drop out of students, and in particular female students
• the promotion of gender equality
• the establishment of safe school environments free from SGBV, including sexual exploitation, and corporal
Priority Issue #5 Specific Concerns of Adolescents
Sometimes it is not only dangerous for refugees in their own countries, they may also face mistreatment during
their flight or upon arrival in the country of asylum. Military recruitment, forced labour, sexual exploitation, abuse
and violence occur during the turmoil of armed conflict and displacement, and adolescents are invariably the
School enrolment can keep adolescent girls and boys occupied and shield them from exploitative activities and
abuse. Yet, adolescent refugees often cannot access education, either because they have economic and family
responsibilities that prevent them from attending, or because there are no appropriate schooling possibilities for
their age group. Adolescent girls are often deprived of secondary education because of domestic chores and lack
of family income.
As interventions tend to focus on younger children, adolescent girls and boys are often neglected in programming.
Even though their responsibilities in the family and the community have increased, e.g. by heading households,
their views are not sought or taken into account and their capacities to provide solutions overlooked.
UNHCR supports a number of activities to ensure the protection and care of adolescent girls and boys, such as:
• non-formal education
• vocational skills training and income-generating activities
• the formation of youth groups and recreational activities
• participation in decision-making processes
• (peer) education on life skills such as HIV and AIDS prevention and reproductive health
Research studies among adolescents initiated by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and
designed and led by adolescent research teams in war-affected areas (Kosovo (Serbia and Montenegro), Uganda,
and Sierra Leone) produced findings that are helping UNHCR and others to tailor their programmes to work
towards realizing the rights of adolescent refugee girls and boys.
For more information, please visit the UNHCR website, www.unhcr.org, or contact the Refugee Children Unit,
Community Development, Education, Gender Equality and Children Section (CDEGECS), Division of Operational
Support (DOS), UNHCR Geneva, Case Postale 2500, CH-1211 Geneva 2 Depôt, Switzerland or UNHCR’s Senior
Regional Advisors for Refugee Women and Children based at UNHCR Offices in Pretoria, South Africa for
Southern Africa; in Nairobi, Kenya for the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes; in Accra, Ghana for
West Africa; and at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva for Europe.
While the words ‘refugee children/girls and boys’ are used throughout the document, this includes all girls and boys of concern to
UNHCR, including internally displaced, returnee, stateless and refugee children.
Article 1 – Convention on the Rights of the Child.
“ProGres” also introduces the category of ‘child/adolescents at risk’ with a further breakdown into child associated with fighting forces,
child in conflict with the law, child-headed household, child with special education needs, and child at risk of not attending school. The
category of ‘women at risk’ includes threat of female genital mutilation.
Photo on left Angola/IDPs/Cazombo camp/UNHCR/
N. Behring/ February 2003
Photo on right Iran/Afghan refugees/UNHCR/
Z.Soleimani/ September 2004 | <urn:uuid:bb1e02a3-8c2e-493c-8d7f-66c338f42df9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slideshare.net/WERI/unhcr-unhcr-strategy-and-activities-concerning-refugee-children | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933273 | 3,799 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Bats in Buildings
Excluding Bats From Buildings
Excluding Bats From Buildings
An important note about bat exclusion in the U.S. and internationally:
Legal issues about bats and bat exclusion vary widely around the globe.
“In Britain all bat species and their roosts are legally protected, by both domestic and international legislation.
This means you will be committing a criminal offence if you:
- Deliberately capture, injure or kill a bat
- Intentionally or recklessly disturb a bat in its roost or deliberately disturb a group of bats
- Damage or destroy a bat roosting place (even if bats are not occupying the roost at the time)
- Possess or advertise/sell/exchange a bat (dead or alive) or any part of a bat
- Intentionally or recklessly obstruct access to a bat roost”
We admire and respect the bat groups in the UK and other European countries which have done such wonderful work protecting bats, and we often refer people to the Bat Conservation Trust website, which contains a treasure-trove of excellent information.
In the United States, bats roosting in buildings is one of the most common issues brought to BCI. While we always discuss the option of doing nothing if bats are roosting in an area of a home or public building where they will not come into contact with humans, many people are not comfortable leaving the bats alone. Since laws about bats are different in every state (if they exist at all), and federal laws generally protect only bats on the endangered species list, proper exclusion of bats (along with proper education ABOUT bats) is sometimes the only way to save them. The key phrase is “proper exclusion;” we rarely recommend the “do-it-yourself” approach to exclusion. Instead, we hope that people armed with proper information will do the right thing - for example, not hire an exclusion professional who seems focused on the “dangers” of bats, refers to bats as “vermin” or “pests” or agrees to exclude bats during the summer when pups may be present.
We also work hard to educate the public about the importance of replacing lost roosts in buildings as an integral part of the exclusion process.
BCI is devoted to conservation, education, and research initiatives involving bats and the ecosystems they serve. We hope that a time will come when bats are more widely protected here in the U.S. and internationally, and that one day excluding bats from buildings will not be necessary.
Why Do Some Bats Roost in Buildings?
Over time, human disturbance of natural roosts in trees and caves has resulted in the loss of important bat habitat, and bats have adapted to human structures because they give bats what they need—stable, warm temperatures, microclimate options, protection from predators and replacement roosts. Some people are tolerant of bats roosting in their attics or in other parts of their homes, as long as the bats are not appearing in living spaces and sharing space with humans.
On occasion, a solitary bat may accidentally fly into a home, garage or other building through an open door or window. Such incidents often involve lost youngsters whose primary goal is a safe escape. These bats will often leave on their own if a window or door to the outside is opened while others leading to the rest of the building are closed. Bats are rarely aggressive, even when chased, but may bite in self-defense if grabbed. As with all wild animals, bats should never be handled with bare hands. If you are sure no human exposure has occurred, the bat’s exit can be hastened by waiting until it lands, and then covering it with a small box or other container, gently slipping a piece of cardboard under the bat and over the opening, and releasing the bat outside (preferably near dark). Keep doors and windows to these buildings closed, and window screens in good repair to prevent bats from re-entering.
Excluding Bats from Buildings and Installing Bat Houses
There may be little reason to evict bats from areas where they don’t come into contact with humans, but when exclusion is the best option, it’s important to fully understand the process and not cut corners. It is also essential in scenarios involving large numbers of bats being displaced to install one or more bat houses as replacement roosts. Bat houses should be installed as far in advance of the exclusion date as possible—weeks or even months ahead, and should be within the flight path of emerging bats. Keeping bats in the vicinity of their former roost allows people to continue to take advantage of their pest suppression services, and may prevent bats from simply moving into another building. | <urn:uuid:ac4a8364-7185-4920-8b8b-92727397e474> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.batcon.org/index.php/resources/for-specific-issues/bats-in-buildings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947146 | 987 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Definitions for downcutting
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word downcutting
Downcutting, also called erosional downcutting, downward erosion or vertical erosion is a geological process that deepens the channel of a stream or valley by removing material from the stream's bed or the valley's floor. The speed of downcutting depends on the stream's base level, the lowest point to which the stream can erode. Sea level is the ultimate base level, but many streams have a higher "temporary" base level because they empty into another body of water that is above sea level or encounter bedrock that resists erosion. A concurrent process called lateral erosion refers to the widening of a stream channel or valley. When a stream is high above its base level, downcutting will take place faster than lateral erosion; but as the level of the stream approaches its base level, the rate of lateral erosion increases. This is why streams in mountainous areas tend to be narrow and swift, forming V-shaped valleys, while streams in lowland areas tend to be wide and slow-moving, with valleys that are correspondingly wide and flat-bottomed. The term gradient refers to the elevation of a stream relative to its base level. The steeper the gradient, the faster the stream flows. Sometimes geological uplift will increase the gradient of a stream even while the stream downcuts toward its base level, a process called "rejuvenation." This happened in the case of the Colorado River in the western United States, resulting in the process that created the Grand Canyon.
The numerical value of downcutting in Chaldean Numerology is: 3
The numerical value of downcutting in Pythagorean Numerology is: 6
Images & Illustrations of downcutting
Find a translation for the downcutting definition in other languages:
Select another language: | <urn:uuid:4ec0bf34-c463-4d09-9e26-4fb095c8a2cd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.definitions.net/definition/downcutting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902093 | 375 | 3.828125 | 4 |
ALEX Lesson Plans
Thinkfinity Lesson Plans
Subject: Language Arts
Title: Author Joel Chandler Harris was born in 1848.
Description: Students study how regional dialect is written phonetically by reading a segment of Harris' story, as well as two others, and compare them using the Interactive Venn Diagram.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 9,10,11,12 | <urn:uuid:38d39360-63ba-47f9-96b3-0131082e55f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://alex.state.al.us/plans2.php?std_id=55792 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905884 | 88 | 2.828125 | 3 |
During the 3d millennium B.C., Bahrain (known in Sumerian as Dilmun) was already an important trade center, functioning as a transshipment point between Arabia and India. In the ancient world it was also famous for the pearling conducted in the waters surrounding the islands. The Greeks knew the island as Tylos. The term Bahrain was used to describe the entire Persian Gulf coast of Arabia in the early Islamic era; the island was also known as Awal or Aval. Bahrain was ruled in the 16th cent. by Portugal and intermittently from 1602 to 1783 by Persia. The Persians were expelled by an Arabian family that established the present ruling dynasty, the al-Khalifas. In 1861, Bahrain became a British protectorate.
Nearly a century later, demonstrations and strikes in the 1950s and 60s demanded greater popular participation in government. Iran claimed the islands in 1970 after the United Nations reported that the inhabitants desired independence. In 1971, after Britain withdrew from the Persian Gulf area, Bahrain became independent. In 1973 a constitution that limited the sheikh's powers was adopted and an elected national assembly established, but in 1975 the sheikh suspended the constitution and dissolved the national assembly. Bahrain was a founding member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, along with neighboring Persian Gulf countries, and it is also a member of the Arab League.
In the 1980s and 1990s relations with Qatar were strained by a dispute over the Hawar Islands and the large natural-gas resources of the Dome field (in the shallow sea between both countries). In the late 1980s a causeway was built connecting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. After the end of the Iran-Iraq War (1988), attempts were made to improve relations with Iran; persistent irritants to Iran were the poverty among Bahrain's Shiite majority and the small Shiite representation in Bahrain's cabinet. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, coalition forces were allowed extensive use of Bahraini territory. In 1993 a consultative council (Shura) was appointed to replace the long-dissolved national assembly. In the mid and late 1990s unrest among Bahrain's Shiites has led to opposition protests and violence; the restoration of an elected parliament was one of the main demands. In 1996 more than 50 people were arrested for involvement in what was said to be an Iranian-backed coup attempt.
Sheikh Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa, who had ruled since 1961, died in 1999; he was succeeded by his son, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. The new ruler moved gradually toward increased democracy for Bahrain. In 2000 he called for the establishment of a national committee to write a new national charter. The charter, which established a constitutional monarchy, was approved in Feb., 2001; the same month a general amnesty for political prisoners and exiles was declared.
Bahrain was proclaimed a kingdom in 2002, and the Shura was dissolved prior to the assembly elections. Because King Hamad had established an appointed upper house in the national parliament, which had not been part of the charter approved in 2001, a number of groups (including the largest Shiite association) called for an electoral boycott; turnout in the October elections was 53%. The elected deputies were largely moderate Sunnites and independents. The election marked the first time that women in a Arab Persian Gulf monarchy could vote or run for national office. Shiite-Sunni tensions in Bahrain increased again after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In Sept., 2006, a former government adviser of Sunni Sudanese descent accused a number of government officials (but not the king or prime minister) of conspiring to manipulate elections and use other means to maintain Sunni control of Bahrain's government and society. The detailed report was denounced by the head of Bahrain intelligence service, who was accused of being central to the conspiracy, and the adviser was deported and then accused of attempting to overthrow the government and other crimes. An investigation into the evidence and charges was sought by Shiite opposition groups. In the Nov.–Dec., 2006, parliamentary elections themselves, the Shiite opposition secured 18 seats while Sunnis won 22; conservatives and Islamists were dominant in both groups.
In 2009 tensions between the government and Shiite opposition activists led to arrests of activist leaders and recurring protests against the government; the protests continued into 2010, with an increased security crackdown in the second half of the year. The results of the Oct., 2010, parliamentary elections were largely similar to those in 2006 except that Sunni Islamists won fewer seats; the opposition again failed to secure a majority.
In Feb.–Mar., 2011, there were massive antigovernment protests in the capital, paralleling the protests in other Arab nations; opposition Shiite legislators resigned after protesters were killed in February (and the main Shiite party boycotted the by-elections held in September). In March, Saudi and Emirati forces entered Bahrain at the request of the government, and Bahrain, which painted the initially relatively nonsectarian protests as an Iranian-inspired Shiite attempt at revolution, quickly and violently quashed the protests and arrested hundreds. A number of opposition leaders and others were convicted and harshly sentenced.
In the aftermath of the protests, sectarian tensions in Bahrain increased, aggravated by anti-Shiite repression that was economic and social as well as political. An indepdendent government report (Nov., 2011) on the events of February and March said that security forces had used excessive force and engaged in torture; the report also said it could not find a clear link between the demonstrators and Iran. Some constitutional reforms were adopted in the first half of 2012, but the opposition criticized them as inadequate. The situation subsequently remained tense and unsettled, and the government continued to take repressive measures against the opposition.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Arabian Peninsula Political Geography | <urn:uuid:ed0b2910-06a2-4d23-9100-40f77dee0e4c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/world/bahrain-history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979772 | 1,178 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Ideally, a photographic lens images the world in a plane, where it is recorded by a sensor. This sensor is typically either an approximately flat film or a strictly flat digital array. Departures from a flat image surface are associated with astigmatism and field curvature, and lead to a spatial mismatch between the image and the sensor. As a result, the sensor samples a part of space in front of or behind the sharp image, and its representation of the image will thus be blurred. Owing to the closely connected natures of astigmatism and field curvature, it is convenient to treat these Seidel aberrations together.
In the absence of spherical aberration and coma, a lens that is additionally free of astigmatism offers stigmatic imaging, i.e. points in object space are imaged as true points somewhere in image space. A lens that suffers from astigmatism, however, does not offer stigmatic imaging. In the presence of astigmatism the rendering of an object detail depends on the orientation of that detail. For instance, a (short) line oriented towards the image center is called a sagittal (radial) detail, whereas a detail perpendicular to the radial direction is called a tangential detail. The astigmatic lens may be focussed to yield a sharp image of either the sagittal or the tangential detail, but not simultaneously. This is illustrated in Fig. 1 with the archetypal example of astigmatism: a spoked wheel. A well-corrected lens delivers an all-sharp image (left wheel). On the other hand, an astigmatically aberrated lens may be focussed to yield a sharp image of the spokes (middle wheel), but at the expense of blurring of the rims, which have a tangential orientation. Vice versa, when the rim is in focus the spokes are blurred. It is customary to speak of the sagittal focus and tangential focus, respectively, as indicated in Fig. 1. Note that these names are potentially confusing, because a "sagittal focus" actually implies blurring in the sagittal direction and a "tangential focus" implies blurring in the tangential direction. Together with lateral color, astigmatism is a leading cause of differences between the sagittal and tangential modulation transfer functions (MTF).
Note that the astigmatism of a photographic lens or a telescope is different from ophthalmic astigmatism. The latter arises from an uneven curvature of the cornea and destroys rotational symmetry . With an astigmatic eye the perceived sharpness of the spokes in Fig. 1 would depend on their orientation.
Although the wheels in Fig. 1 are instructive, they are an oversimplification of astigmatism as it occurs with photographic lenses. Where the figure suggests that the amount of blurring in either the sagittal or radial direction is constant across the field, this is not the case in practice. Unless a lens is poorly assembled, there will be no astigmatism near the image center. The aberration occurs off-axis. With a real lens, the sagittal and tangential focal surfaces are in fact curved. Fig. 2 displays the astigmatism of a simple lens. Here, the sagittal (S) and tangential (T) images are paraboloids which curve inward to the lens. As a consequence, when the image center is in focus the image corners are out of focus, with tangential details blurred to a greater extent than sagittal details. Although off-axis stigmatic imaging is not possible in this case, there is a surface lying between the S and T surfaces that can be considered to define the positions of "best focus".
Lens designers have a few degrees of freedom, such as the position of the aperture stop and the choice of glass types for individual lens elements, to reduce the amount of astigmatism, and, most desirably, to manoeuvre the S and T surfaces closer to the sensor plane. A complete elimination of astigmatism is illustrated in the left sketch of Fig. 3. Although astigmatism is fully absent, i.e., the S and T surfaces coincide, there is a penalty in the form of a pronouncedly curved field. When the image center is in focus on the sensor the corners are far out of focus, and vice versa. In the late nineteenth century, Paul Rudolf coined the word anastigmat to describe a lens for which the astigmatism at one off-axis position could be reduced to zero . The right sketch in Fig. 3 depicts a typical photographic anastigmat. As a slight contradiction in terms, the anastigmat has some residual astigmatism, but more importantly, the S and T surfaces are more flat than those in the uncorrected scheme of Fig. 2 and the strictly stigmatic left scheme in Fig. 3. As such, the anastigmat offers an attractive compromise between astigmatism and field curvature.
The surface P in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 is the Petzval surface, named after the mathematician Joseph Mikza Petzval. It is a surface that is defined for any lens, but that does not relate directly to the image quality—unless astigmatism is completely absent (e.g., scheme A in Fig. 3). In the presence of astigmatism the image is always curved (whether it concerns S, T, or both) even if P is flat as a pancake. In third order aberration theory S, T, and P obey the relationship TP = 3×SP . Here, TP is the longitudinal (horizontal in the sketches) separation between T and P, and SP is the separation between S and P.
Astigmatism and field curvature are not usually obvious with modern photographic
lenses. Sure, when a lens is used at full aperture the corner definition is often
noticeably worse than the center definition and the above aberrations can be (partly)
responsible, but it's no trivial matter to tell them apart from other oblique aberrations.
A different situation arises when a lens is used in a scenario for which it was not
designed. As a case in point, let us consider a standard lens, meant to be used for
objects at intermediate and long ranges, as it performs in the macro regime. The idea is
that a lens that is well corrected for infinity use is not necessarily corrected for use
at close range, and vice versa.
With the help of bellows, a white target with a series of black crosses was reproduced at unit magnification with the Carl Zeiss Planar 1.4/50. Starting from center focus, and with the target and lens positions fixed, the camera was moved towards the lens with 0.5-mm increments. In Fig. 2, this would correspond to the sensor (a film in this case) moving to the left. At center focus (Fig. 4) the image quality distressingly deteriorates with an increasing distance from the image center. Crosses number 2 and 3 are noticeably aberrated, with the tangential cross bars blurred more than the sagittal bars.
When the film is 1.5 mm closer to the lens, the image center is out of focus—as one would normally expect: Fig 5. However, to some extent the off-axis crosses have improved. The sagittal bars 3S of the outermost crosses, which were not well defined in Fig. 4, are now nicely resolved and the same can be said about the tangential bars 2T of cross number 2.
Finally, when the film is 4.5 mm in front of center focus, the only structure that is resolved are the tangential bars 3T of the outermost crosses (Fig. 6). Everything else is blurred.
The three snapshots shown in Figs. 4–6 are consistent with the sagittal and
tangential focal surfaces of the uncorrected scheme in Fig. 2. This can be seen by
realizing that, when the sensor is moved to the left, the sagittal focus shifts relatively
quickly to the image periphery. The tangential focus also moves out from the center, but
at a slower pace. When the tangential focus reaches the image periphery, the sagittal
focal surface S is already behind the sensor, and, consequently, all radial bars are out
of focus. Just like the situation in Fig. 6.
It should be remarked that a detailed study of the test images reveals that there is also some spherical and chromatic aberration going on. The dominant aberrations, however, are astigmatism and the accompanying curved fields. From the previously mentioned relationship TP = 3×SP it can be deduced that the Petzval surface is actually quite flat for this 1.4/50 at unit magnification, but that is little consolation when there is a substantial amount of astigmatism.
As a last illustration, a different type of target is shown in Fig. 7. It consists of white dots against a black background. The blur patches of these dots are a rough indication of the so-called point spread function of the lens. The configuration of Fig. 7 is exactly the same as that in Fig. 4—only the target differs. The peculiar elongation of the blur patches towards the image corners can be directly related to the astigmatism sketched in Fig. 2. Since the tangential focal surface is further away from the sensor than the sagittal focal surface, off-axis tangential details will be blurred more at the position of the sensor. In other words, there will be more blur in the sagittal (i.e. radial) direction than in the tangential direction, which is indeed the case in Fig. 7. The blur patches in Fig. 7, which are mainly due to astigmatism, should not be confused with the characteristic blur shape of a lens that suffers from coma.
A trusty method to mitigate image impairment by astigmatism and field curvature is to
stop down the lens. The curved S and T surfaces themselves are not affected by the
F-number, but the proportions of the blur at the position of the sensor will decrease. Or,
differently phrased, the increased depth of focus helps to mask the worse effects. Of
course, the Planar 1.4/50 is not designed for use in the macro regime. A far more
elegant solution to overcome field curvature is found in the use of a dedicated macro
lens. Such lenses are aberration-corrected for use at close range, including astigmatism,
field curvature and distortion, to enable copying work. Yet another remedy is the use of
floating elements in the lens design. Floating elements (the differential movement of one
or more lens groups) expand the working range of a lens by controlling aberrations over an
extended range of object distances. Short-focus lenses for SLRs with floating elements
are more expensive than their unit-focus competitors, but the performance gain at close
range can be truly remarkable. Just keep in mind that floating elements are only
instrumental when the lens is focussed by means of its focussing ring. Elements do not
float with added extensions.
© Paul van Walree 2004–2016
|||Eugene Hecht, Optics, 3rd ed., Addison Wesley (1998).|
|||Born and Wolf, Principles of Optics, 7th ed., Cambridge University Press (1999).|
|||A.E. Conrady, Applied optics and optical design, part one, Dover Publications (1985).| | <urn:uuid:cb98d811-3903-49e3-acce-7fb389a02330> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://toothwalker.org/optics/astigmatism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93253 | 2,394 | 3.78125 | 4 |
On World Environment Day, Probir Banerjee, President of Pondycan, a Pondicherry citizens' action network highlights a road map to fight the loss of beaches.Banerjee, an engineer recently gave up his various business interests, to devote himself to saving the beaches he once played on during his childhood.
The crusader explains the crisis to A Ganesh Nadar, and suggests solutions which are practical and simple. But will the government listen?
Could you explain the movement of sand from south to north? Does it happen only on the east coast or also on the west coast?
The sand movement depends on the monsoon. It is one of the highest in the world in India and especially on the east coast.
For nine months in the year, the monsoon travels from south to the north. This moves the sand along the coast towards the north. As the sand moves north the balance is kept by nature by bringing sand along with the rivers. If you see the map of India you will see that the eastern terrain is much larger than the west.
The sand outflow on the western side is much lower than the sand outflow on the eastern side. It comes out from the river's mouth and moves north along the beach. The beach is actually a river of sand.
Any obstruction that you create acts like a dam and blocks this movement of sand. So the sand in the north will keep moving. And thus there will be a vacuum north of the obstruction.
It's also happening on the west coast. In Goa, the Taj had a cafe on the beach. Suddenly they saw that the sand was disappearing and one day the cafe collapsed. People thought that it was a natural phenomenon.
It has happened in a village in Tamil Nadu, north of here. They built a groyne into the sea (a groyne is a wall created by dumping huge rocks into the sea). Within three months, 60 metres of the beach disappeared.
In Goa some structures were built south of this beach where the Taj was. They realised that that was the cause only after we explained it. People just say tsunami, global warming or natural disaster without realising the cause.
The beach is dynamic, it is never static. If you stand in the sand in the sea, you can see the movement around your feet. Imagine what happens when you put a permanent obstruction.
The beach has so many functions. It protects us from cyclones and tsunamis. It stops the salinity of the sea water from getting into the ground water inland. It promotes tourism. Festivals are held on it like Ganesh Chaturthi.
The moment erosion happens, the entire ecosystem is lost.
Also people think of development only. They don't look at the economics of the environment. They look at the profits of development. They should also look at the cost of restoring the environment.
What will be the cost of restoring these beaches? What will be the cost of the real estate lost? What will be the loss of agriculture? What will be the cost of restoring ground water to its pre saline days? What will be the loss in tourism? We should look at all this.
Lack of knowledge is why people are doing whatever they want.
In Pondicherry a wall was built into the sea to protect the harbour. Is that the cause of this problem according to you?
Absolutely! The harbour was built from 1986 to 1989. Twenty crores (Rs 200 million) was given for this harbour. We started seeing the erosion in the early 1990s. It has now traveled 12 kms along the beach. You now see a stone wall all along this beach.
It has affected fishing. If you see photographs on Google earth or any satellite picture you will see there is a huge accumulation of sand south of the harbour. But north of the harbour there is no sand. The dividing line is that harbour. That makes it very evident.
The government is aware of this. They dug a submarine tunnel and put up pumping machines to pump the sand from south to north. Why did that not work?
The designers of the harbour were aware of this problem. So they decided to mechanically do what nature does by herself. They put up dredgers to pump it mechanically. They bought two dredgers.
But they did not do this regularly. This was and is a commercial harbour. As there was no revenue, how do you expect them to spend money on dredging?
Actually, the sand has accumulated along the wall and spilt over into the mouth of the harbour. They keep dredging this mouth so that ships can keep moving in and out.
Suppose the central government underwrites the whole thing. They pay for dredging 24 hours a day for all 365 days. Will that solve the problem?
Yes! If they can keep that up perpetually it will solve the problem. It should be for a lifetime. They should have alternatives if the dredgers break down or if there is any other excuse for stopping the work. They can replace nature's work if they do it continuously and forever.
What actually happened in Pondicherry was that they knew what was happening so they put up stone walls all along the coast. This added to the problem by blocking further movement of sand.
But they continue doing it because for the PWD (public works department) it's a big project. The lorry owners are happy. The quarry owners are happy. The panchayat presidents are happy. It's a money-making racket.
It's a perpetual project. Today you throw in stones. By next year it will sink. You continue throwing in rocks. It's a win-win situation for some of the people and a lose-lose situation for a majority of the people.
You have told me what the problem is. What do you think is the solution?
The harbour supports 150 fishing families. To protect these families, 12 fishing villages have been destroyed along the coast. There is a ten feet high wall to protect these 12 villages. Thus their boats cannot go out.
So the government gives them free rice and subsidy for other things. Is this justification? Earlier these Pondicherry fishermen were using Cuddalore port. By holding onto this port the water has become saline in this entire coastal belt.
Nature has a sand bar along the shore to break the waves. Here erosion has removed the sand bar. Now huge waves hit the rocky shoreline and when the water recedes it does so with the same speed. It pulls out the sand from under and in between the rocks further weakening the shore line.
So the shore is sinking as the sand under it is being eroded.
I think closing the harbour is the best solution. Your solution of dredging 24 hours will cost 3 crores (Rs 30 million) a year. Give it to those 150 fishing families. They will find alternative employment.
Photograph: A Ganesh Nadar | <urn:uuid:5a94bef5-9ab4-4d52-980b-4275fbfdb699> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.rediff.com/interview/2009/jun/05/the-fight-to-save-indias-beaches.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970856 | 1,428 | 3 | 3 |
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2006 May 27
Explanation: If you could see gamma rays - photons with a million or more times the energy of visible light - the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! The startling notion is demonstrated by this image of the Moon from the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) in orbit on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory from April 1991 to June 2000. Then, the most sensitive instrument of its kind, even EGRET could not see the quiet Sun which is extremely faint at gamma-ray energies. So why is the Moon bright? High energy charged particles, known as cosmic rays, constantly bombard the unprotected lunar surface generating gamma-ray photons. EGRET's gamma-ray vision was not sharp enough to resolve a lunar disk or any surface features, but its sensitivity reveals the induced gamma-ray moonglow. So far unique, the image was generated from eight exposures made during 1991-1994 and covers a roughly 40 degree wide field of view with gamma-ray intensity represented in false color.
Authors & editors:
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: EUD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U. | <urn:uuid:0ee342b8-5ffd-4c65-86de-1fc5a147d39a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060527.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917913 | 284 | 4.125 | 4 |
Teacher Eligibility Test (TET)
( For a person who intends to be a Teacher for Classes I to V)
(i) Child Development and Pedagogy
(30 Multiple Choice Questions of 30 Marks will be asked from this part of the Question Paper) Marks
Unit 1 07Marks
Child development – Nature and nutrition, role of nutrition in child development, factors motivating child development. Growth and development – Physical, mental, language, social, emotional and psychomotor.
Unit 2 07Marks
Learning – meaning, theories and factors affecting learning ; motivation, Interest, habits and attitude.
Unit 3 07Marks
Personality ; Adjustment ; Exceptional children, mental health and hygiene.
Unit 4 09Marks
In the context of National Curriculum Framework-2005
Teaching : Concept, teaching learning process, Teacher’s Role, Teaching learning strategies and methods.
Assessment – Meaning, purposes, measurement and evaluation ;
Action research – Right to Education Act 2009 (Role and responsbilities of teachers
(30 Multiple Choice Questions of 30 Marks will be asked from these Units)
Unit 1 06marks
Parts of Speech , Basic Sentence Patterns.
Unit 2 06marks
Tenses, Determiners, Modal Auxiliaries.
Unit 3 06marks
Transformation of Sentences :
(a) Change of Degree
(b) Direct Indirect Narration
Unit 4 06 marks
Vocabulary : Synonyms, Antonyms, Spellings.
Unit 5 06marks
Basic knowledge of English Sounds and Symbols.
(30 Multiple choice question of 30 marks will be asked from this part of the paper) Marks
Unit 1 06Marks
Whole numbers upto one crore, Place Value, Comparison ; Fundamental mathematical operations : Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division ; Indian Currency.
Unit 2 06Marks
Concept of fraction, proper fractions, comparison of proper fraction of same denominator, mixed fractions, comparison of proper fractions of unequal denominators, Addition and Substration of fractions. Prime and composite numbers, Prime factors, Lowest Common Multiple (LCM) and Greatest Common Measure (GCM).
Unit 3 06Marks
Unitary law, Average, Profit – Loss, simple interest
Unit 4 06Marks
Plane and curved surfaces, plane and solid geometrical figures, properties of plane germetrical figures; point, line, ray, line segment; Angle and their types.
Unit 5 06Marks
Length, Weight, Capacity, Time, Measurement of area and their standard units and relation between them; Area and perimeter of plane surfaces of square and rectengular objects.
Click Here To RTET Exam Scheme and Level-II (6th to 10th) Syllabus
Click Here To Click Here To Download Other Subject Syllabus | <urn:uuid:790c0926-0091-4d76-a88e-31e34b79a40a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://way2freshers.com/campitative-exams/rtet-syllabus-for-level-i.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.785743 | 597 | 3 | 3 |
Log In to abcteach
Free Account (Settings)
Interactive .notebook activity where students circle bundles of tens and write the tens and ones digits to find the number of objects. Common Core: Math: 1.NBT.2
Interactive Notebook activity with a fun and colorful shapes/patterns theme. Help Sammy and Stephie complete the patterns by dragging the correct color shapes in place.
Interactive notebook activity where students count the Christmas-themed items using the ten frames chart. Click and reveal answer key. Common Core: Math: K.CC.B.4
Interactive lesson for students to learn counting, addition and subtraction with even numbers. Drag and drop the correct numbers in order to solve each problem.
Solve for X. Self-checking. Interactive .notebook file for Smart Board. Upper elementary and middle school. Common Core Math: 5.OA.1 , Common Core_Math_6.EE.A.1
Interactive notebook activity where students move objects to decompose numbers from 11 to 19, trace the subtraction number sentence and solve the problem. Common Core Math: K.NBT.1
Define and work properties of addition and multiplication. Interactive .notebook file.Use with Smart Board, or Notebook Viewer. Includes related printable pdf. document and poster.
Interactive Notebook activity for basic math terminology and symbols. Introduction to terms (addition, sum, plus sign, equal sign, addend) and interactive drag and drop activities. Includes printable PDF math symbols poster.
Interactive .notebook activity where students must look at the rule in order to solve the output boxes by using basic multiplication skills. Includes printable PDF worksheet and answer key.
Interactive .notebook activity where students will solve money word problems involving decimals in two ways; Counting up (addition) and subtraction. Common Core: Math: 4.MD.2
Interactive Notebook lesson, practicing two-digit addition. Solve five number problems and three word problems. Use the eraser to check your answers. Includes correlating morning math printable worksheets.
Interactive .notebook lesson with a candy heart theme for Valentine's Day. Students will drag candy hearts in order to complete addition problems on each page. Includes printable ten frames worksheet. Common Core: Math: K.CC.B.4
Interactive notebook activity where students move, group and count objects to build addition equations. Correlated with the common core curriculum math standards. Common Core Math: K.CC.5, K.OA.1, 1.OA.5, 1.OA.6
Interactive .notebook lesson with over ten pages of simple addition and subtraction problems. Includes answer keys and printable PDF worksheets. Students look at the rule in order to fill in the missing outputs.
Interactive notebook activity where students count the number of candy canes on each page using a ten frame. Click and reveal answers. Includes printable PDF ten frames worksheet. Common Core: Math: K.CC.B.4
Interactive notebook file with a set of algebra problems for upper elementary, comes with a multiple choice quiz. Common Core Math: 5.OA.1
Interactive .notebook activity where students count the number of candy hearts on the page and decide how many there are. They click on the answer box to reveal the answers. Also, have students drag and drop the hearts into the ten frames to match the given addition problem. Common Core: Math: K.CC.B.4
Interactive .notebook activity where students must write an equation to describe each apple tree. Includes printable PDF worksheets and answer key. | <urn:uuid:9c7bcc2a-28a2-4f5d-b4b4-44e6cc524408> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.abcteach.com/directory/interactive-smart-notebook-files-interactive-math-9638-8-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00142-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.846312 | 773 | 3.796875 | 4 |
neuralgia (nŏrălˈjə, nyŏ–) [key], acute paroxysmal pain along a peripheral sensory nerve. Unlike neuritis, there is no inflammation or degeneration of nerve tissue. Neuralgia occurs commonly in the area of the facial, or trigeminal, nerve and brings attacks of excruciating pain at varying intervals. Often no cause can be found for trigeminal neuralgia, and in severe cases deadening of the nerve with novocaine or alcohol, or even surgical interruption of the nerve, is necessary to bring relief. Neuralgia can be caused by such disturbances as diabetes, infections, diseases of the nervous system, anemia, and extreme cold. The pain may occur for many months after an attack of shingles (see herpes zoster), and it is one of the symptoms of syphilitic involvement of the central nervous system. In many cases, pain can be relieved by hot applications, drugs, and various kinds of physiotherapy.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:30e9280d-778f-40ec-8531-6da866a77e62> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/science/neuralgia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00175-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903308 | 234 | 3.546875 | 4 |
The Civil War in California State Parks
On your right, you will see a list of state parks where you can visit a piece of California's Civil War history. Click on them for a brief summary of the park's Civil War Connection. You can then click on the park's name to be taken to the park's website.
Please Note: Parks marked with an asterisk (*) may soon be closing due to recent budget cuts. Please contact the individual parks for updated information on hours, accesibility, and available programs.
Other Civil War Historic Sites in California
Benicia Historical Museum
---During the war, Benicia served as the West's most vital armory for Union interests, and consequentially became the focus of several attempts by secessionists to secure Benicia's massive store of arms away from Union troops for the Confederacy. In early 1861, as the Southern state were still separating from the Union, the most notable attempt at California's secession occurred when future Confederate General Albert S. Johnston, then a Union commander in charge of the Benicia Armory, turned away an armed pack of men who were trying to arm local pro-Confederate militias in an effort to force California out of the Union.
Drum Barracks Civil War Museum
---The officer's quarters located here is the last remaining structure of the former Fort Drum, which was one of California's most active military posts during the Civil War. On April 13, 1862, Colonel James H. Carleton led the bulk of his "California Column" force of 2,350 volunteers out of Ft. Drum to launch the New Mexico expedition, which would push Confederate control out of Arizona and New Mexico and back into western Texas, where the California Column would continue their victorious campaign.
Mare Island Historic Park
---Mare Island was the U.S. Navy's first base located on the Pacific coast, and its founding commander was none other than future Union Admiral David Farragut (our nation's first), who would later become famous for his quote "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!", and for his exploits in attacking the defenses at Mobile Bay. Building 46, a former smithery and later pipe shop that was originally constructed in 1855, houses many artifacts from the Civil War era, and tells more of Farragut's story there.
Oak Grove Butterfield Stage Station
---This station, one of the few surviving mail stations actually built by the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, was designed to serve as a “swing stop” for exchanging mail and horses in preparation for a rider’s long journey along the famous Butterfield Overland Stage route across the western United States. This station also served to re-supply traveling soldiers who used the Butterfield route in travels across the West. During the war, this location was occupied by the U.S. Army, and given the post name of Camp Wright, and was stationed by the 1st Regiment of California Volunteers, who were given orders to intercept any secessionists attempting to leave California to join with the Confederacy. Such an event occurred at nearby Minter’s Ranch on November 28, 1861, when California Legislator Daniel Showalter, along with a party of fellow secessionists, were caught by the 1st Regiment in an attempt to join the Confederacy. Showalter would swear allegiance to the Union in order to be set free, but would become a Lt. Col. In the Confederate Army in 1862. | <urn:uuid:565fef1a-822e-413a-84c4-90818eba37e6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://parks.ca.gov/?page_id=26789 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974226 | 704 | 3.125 | 3 |
18 October 2007 15:45
Differential focus is keeping a small area in focus to allow you to blur the background (or foreground), so that the main subject is more obvious in the picture. This technique is extremely useful when you’re out in the field.
You can try to frame your shot to minimise the distractions behind the subject, but you’ll often have to cope with what nature throws at you. This is where being able to control the amount of the image that’s in focus makes all the difference.
The amount of the picture that’s in focus is called the depth-of-field, and is determined by a combination of aperture, focal length and your distance from the subject. Selecting a wide aperture such as f/2.8 or f/4 gives the smallest depth-of-field, rather than the more normal f/8 or f/11 that you’d use for most standard shots.
Using a long focal length lens and getting closer to your subject will also produce a smaller depth-of-field.
Using all these elements together will result in only a small area of your picture being in focus. This will blur the background and help make your subject stand out, but your focusing technique needs to be spot-on.
Only a tiny amount of the picture will be pin-sharp, so ensure that you focus on the most important part of the subject. For example, use the petals of a flower or the eyes in a portrait to focus on and you’ll get the most out of this technique. | <urn:uuid:d759f843-acdc-45a0-b0dd-6671eedba4f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/Advice/Search-Results/Photopedia/Differential-focus-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945548 | 326 | 2.9375 | 3 |
- Elizabethan (adj.)
- "belonging to the period of Queen Elizabeth I" (1558-1603) of England, 1807 (Elizabethean); Coleridge (1817) has Elizabethian, and Carlyle (1840) finally attains the modern form. The noun is first attested 1859.
John Knox, one of the exiles for religion in Switzerland, publiſhed his "Firſt Blaſt of the Trumpet againſt the Government of Women," in this reign [of Elizabeth]. It was lucky for him that he was out of the queen's reach when he ſounded the trumpet. [The Rev. Mr. James Granger, "A Biographical History of England," 1769] | <urn:uuid:5f27d77c-daf2-4354-bdb1-24375a76d851> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Elizabethan&allowed_in_frame=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942581 | 166 | 2.9375 | 3 |
It will take much money and effort to create a nationwide “smart grid” — a modernized electricity grid that is finely monitored and run by state-of-the-art cyber-systems — but the eventual economic benefit to the nation could approach $2 trillion, a national expert on the smart grid concept said Tuesday at the University of Toledo.
The world is seeing the early stages of a new industrial-Internet revolution wherein physical systems, like the electric grid or natural gas pipeline system, are merging with cyber technology to create cyber-physical systems, said George Arnold, national coordinator for smart grid interoperability with the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Techology.
Eventually, these mergers will allow more efficient control of key physical systems, creating substantial savings for companies and consumers alike. But there’s a long way to go, said Mr. Arnold, who spoke to a group of university faculty and engineering students.
For one thing, the electric grid, named the “signature engineering achievement of the 20th century” in 2003 by the National Academy of Engineering, is still “remarkably similar” to how it was when created in the 1880s, Mr. Arnold said. “The basic system needs to be modernized to meet the needs of the 21st century,” he said.
If it became a smart grid, its efficiency could generate nearly $2 trillion in savings by 2030 and its reliability would reduce power outages that now cost the country $80 billion annually, Mr. Arnold said.
A smart grid also helps sustainability issues by efficiently managing renewable energy such as wind, water, and solar, Mr. Arnold said.
A smart grid uses a plethora of new monitoring devices, technologies, and methods, including home smart meters to measure power usage, grid sensors to monitor power flow, power plants distributed in a more logical pattern, and energy management systems. About $9 billion has been spent so far on smart grid technology, mostly meters, but estimates say to fully implement the smart grid would cost $338 billion.
As a smart grid develops, it is important that open standards be used for new technology so that the entire grid can integrate and communicate, Mr. Arnold said. That may require utilities to give up proprietary technologies in a move to an open standard, he added.
Fortunately, a smart grid was a goal of the Energy Independence and Security Act, enacted in 2007.
The government has been the main force in promoting a smart grid, but Mr. Arnold said fostering several private-public partnerships may push industry to eventually take the lead with the government merely encouraging smart grid development.
A key issue as smart grid projects go forward is security.
A fear, Mr. Arnold said, is that as the grid becomes more computer and Internet-based, it is vulnerable to hackers who could bring it down or gain access to facilities.
“The good news is we are worried about it and are working on it,” Mr. Arnold said. The government and private sector have been proactive in spotting vulnerable areas early so that as a smart grid grows and expands, data and systems will remain secure, he said.
Contact Jon Chavez at: email@example.com or 419-724-6128. | <urn:uuid:b70b9f15-d8de-42b4-b86b-fa9e1a38908e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2013/01/16/Expert-sees-2-trillion-benefit-for-country-in-smart-grid.print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00108-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948766 | 677 | 3.015625 | 3 |
In this installment of "Things Written Long Ago That I Wish I Had Read Long Ago" we'll look at the article, Can Stock Market Forecasters Forecast?, written by Alfred Cowles and published in the July, 1933 issue of the economic journal, Econometrica.
Cowles presented the results of his analysis of the forecasting efforts of professional agencies which attempted either to select common stocks which would outperform the market or predict the future movements of the stock market. The agencies he analyzed included 20 insurance companies, 16 financial services firms and 25 financial publications. He analyzed data from Jan. 1, 1928 through July 1, 1932.
The first group studied was 16 financial services firms which regularly submitted to their subscribers a list of recommended stocks. His analysis followed about 7,500 separate recommendations. Only six of the 16 firms were able to recommend stock purchases that produced gains during the period under study. The firms' recommendations generated annualized returns of between a 21% gain and a 33% loss. The average annual rate of return for all 16 firms' recommendations was less than the stock market's average annual return for the time period studied.
Cowles used mathematical probability analysis to determine whether the most successful firm's 21% annualized return could be attributed to skill. He concluded that among 16 firms, a return of such magnitude should be expected to occur at least once by random chance alone, so it couldn't be definitely attributed to skill.
Cowles' second analysis looked at the stock purchases of 20 insurance companies from 1928 through 1931. At the time, insurance companies were the largest and most experienced stock market investors. The annualized return of the insurance companies during the four years under study ranged from a gain of 27% to a loss of 34%. Just as with the financial services firms, the average annual return of the insurance companies was less than the stock market's average annual return for the time period studied.
Finally, Cowles studied more than 3,000 forecasts made by 25 financial publications from Jan. 1, 1928 through June 1, 1932. The recommendations of only eight of the publications produced a positive annualized rate of return. As a group, the average performance was 4% less than the market — essentially, 4% less than what would be expected from a random selection of stocks. In Cowles' words — "This would seem to indicate that, in general, these stock market forecasters failed to accomplish their objectives."
Cowles did his study with paper, pencil and eraser. Despite the technological advances of the past 80 years and Wall Street's hype and promises, his conclusions are no different than studies done today using a much larger historical database. When it comes to the inability of anyone to predict the near-term direction of the stock market or to select stocks that will outperform market averages, there's nothing new under the sun.
It's time we stopped listening to the “whatsnexters.” These folks are everywhere in the financial media pontificating confidently about what they can't possibly know — what's next for the economy or the stock market.
Constantly uttering hyperbole and opinions disguised as insight, the whatsnexters know they've been wrong more than they've been right. Fortunately for them, their predictions can easily be modified. They don't have to come true; they just need to sound plausible for these modern day Pied Pipers to attract followers. The favorite excuse for failed predictions is, "My timing may have been off but eventually it will happen." More often than not, their predictions are self-serving attempts to get you to put your money into some can't miss investment, subscribe to a newsletter, buy a book or be suckered into purchasing some type of market-timing program.
In one noteworthy example, a well-known market commentator predicted in early 2011 that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index would reach 2,854 by September 2013. Not 2,800, not 2,900, but 2,854. The high water mark for the S&P 500 index in September 2013 was 1,725. For those keeping score at home, his prediction overestimated reality by 65%. Yet he's still making predictions. He's still being interviewed by the financial media. He has gray hair, he should know better. Why is anyone listening?
I remain bewildered that so many people in the investment advisory business attempt to forecast the future. Speaking without divine inspiration, their predictions reveal more about what's inside their heads than what the future holds. Have you ever heard one optimistic word uttered by a gold bug?
The whatsnexters serve no purpose, provide no value and are leading many gullible investors astray. The future holds an infinite number of possibilities and the years ahead are sure to be challenging.
Markets will continue to be volatile but I believe that investors who have a prudent financial plan, a properly diversified portfolio and stay the course can ignore the whatsnexters and will do just fine. | <urn:uuid:a4282203-b937-4f1c-b992-e37401e3338e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-let-market-pundits-lead-you-astray-2014-04-18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971987 | 1,014 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Pug Dental Care is Very Important for a Healthy Dog
Pug dental care is an often overlooked area for a healthy dog. Do you see that adorable little head? Your little Pug has no less than 42 permanent teeth inside his mouth. That many teeth in such a little mouth can lead to problems. Almost all brachycephalic breeds (flat-faced) have a problem with over-crowded teeth.
With that many teeth so close together it’s easy to have plaque build-up very quickly. We all know that this is not a healthy condition in humans so it should come as no surprise that it isn’t good for your Pug either. It can lead to an inflammation of the gums which is called gingivitis. If you do not take care of your Pug’s teeth on a regular basis this inflammation can lead to periodontal disease and, eventually, can result in the loss of teeth.
If you think back to your own trips to the dentist you were probably told that a problem like gum disease can lead to far more serious conditions. Many dentists have posters on the wall warning you of the dangers of gingivitis and gum disease and advising you to brush your teeth carefully every day. The same thing can happen to your Pug. Gum disease can lead to bacteria making its way into the bloodstream and can affect your dog’s heart, liver and kidneys. It can actually result in a disease in any of those organs.
How do you prevent such a condition in your Pug? The same way you do for yourself – Pug dental care is remarkably similar to the care that you take to protect your own teeth. Brushing your dog’s teeth on a regular basis is the best way to avoid some serious dental problems in the future. But don’t use the same tooth brush as you would use for yourself and definitely DO NOT use toothpaste designed for humans. There are tooth brushes specially designed for dogs and, for a Pug, the smallest ones you can find work best. Some of them have bristles on both ends and they make ones that fit over your finger as well. Use what is most comfortable for you and your Pug.
Dog toothpaste is specially flavored to make it a somewhat pleasant experience for your Pug. As you know they are driven by taste so experiment with different flavors. The earlier you start this process in your Pug’s routine the better. The saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks has some application here. It can be very frustrating introducing the tooth brushing process to an older dog. He won’t have a clue as to what you want to do and he may not have an appreciation for the benefits of proper Pug dental care
Start by letting your Pug taste the tooth paste by licking it off your finger and then off the brush. Gradually introduce the brushing process by starting with the front teeth. After a while work your way around to the back. Ideally you’ll want to brush your dog’s teeth every day just like your own. Two to three times a week is the absolute minimum.
What happens if you just can’t do it? Maybe you’ve started late or maybe your Pug just absolutely refuses to open his mouth whenever the toothbrush comes out. What do you do then? They make rinses with a nozzle that can be squirted into your Pug’s mouth. These are definitely not as effective as brushing but may be your only course of action. If you can do both, brushing and rinsing, you’ll be helping your Pug to maintain a healthy mouth.
Your veterinarian should be able to provide a professional cleaning for your Pug or be able to direct you to a place that will provide that service.
Pug dental care is really a part of good veterinarian care.
It’s not a bad idea to do this once a year. It’s especially wise to do if your Pug is getting bad breath or cracking or losing teeth because this could be a sign that a more serious condition is starting to settle in.
Pug dental care can also be supplemented through approved chew toys that can help keep your Pug’s teeth and gums healthy. These are probably the easiest thing to work into your dog’s routine. It’s a good idea to watch your Pug as he starts to chew on the toy. For safety’s sake you should supervise your Pug when he has any chew toy.
As it is with humans, proper Pug dental care is often overlooked as a part of healthy regime for your dog. Remember that gum disease can lead to far more serious conditions so it is well worth the time, effort and expense to keep your Pug healthy through good oral hygiene. | <urn:uuid:f9e45850-a591-43b8-9108-7f7e2a24f581> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.i-love-pugs.com/pug-dental-care.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96471 | 983 | 2.671875 | 3 |
International Symposium on Integrated
Drought Information Systems
Programme | Particpants | Presentations
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the National Meteorological Service of Morocco (Maroc-Meteo), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) are organizing this workshop and background, specific objectives and expected outcomes are listed below.
Drought is an insidious natural hazard that can last for a season, a year or even decades and cover areas from the size of communities up to thousands of km2. Recent drought events have caused economic losses amounting to billions of dollars and concern has grown world-wide that droughts and attendant water scarcity may be increasing in frequency and severity due to climate variability, climate change, and socio-economic demands and practices. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007) states that the world indeed has been more drought-prone during the past 25 years, and that climate projections for the 21st century indicate increased frequency of severe droughts in many parts of the world. Whether due to natural climate variability or climate change, there is an urgent need to improve drought monitoring and early warning systems, as well as broader social responses to manage the risks and mitigate the effects of drought.
Because of its long-term socio-economic and environmental impacts, drought is by far the most damaging of all natural hazards. The effects of drought are due to the physical nature of the hazard, the vulnerability of social, economic and ecological systems, and of society´s ability to manage the associated risks. Drought risk management is a critical component of disaster reduction programs and public water resources policy. Yet, rather than emphasizing drought preparedness and mitigation, most countries, regions and communities, currently assess and manage drought risk through reactive, crisis-driven approaches. Policy development related to national and regional management of drought is lacking in most countries. Likewise, drought early warning information systems, consisting of monitoring, prediction, risk assessment and communication, are inadequate in most regions. In many cases there is insufficient capacity in many drought-prone countries to use drought prediction results and decision support tools effectively in management practice.
Senior experts in the field of drought preparedness, drought monitoring and integrated drought risk management will be invited to prepare state-of-the-art discussion papers to address the above objectives. The programme for the meeting will be designed to engage all the participants in discussions and develop appropriate recommendations for all organizations involved in drought preparedness and management.
The workshop should result in enhanced capacity to: understand, anticipate and respond to droughts and their impacts in different sectors. Emphases will be placed on adaptation; drought mitigation and the different aspects of integrated drought management.
Proceedings of the Meeting will be published by WMO, NOAA and UNCCD and will be widely distributed to promote the integrated drought risl management approach in different countries worldwide.
|© World Meteorological Organization, 7bis, avenue de la Paix, Case postale No. 2300, CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland - Tel.: +41(0)22 730 81 11 - Fax: +41(0)22 730 81 81| | <urn:uuid:918afcce-3a97-48a4-808e-2e109e979e66> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/agm/meetings/isidis11/index.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913715 | 662 | 2.875 | 3 |
Involving low-income parents and parents of color in college readiness activities: an exploratory study.
(Beliefs, opinions and attitudes)
Student counselors (Practice)
Student counselors (Social aspects)
College admissions (Social aspects)
Home and school (Research)
Education (Parent participation)
|Publication:||Name: Professional School Counseling Publisher: American School Counselor Association Audience: Academic; Professional Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: Family and marriage; Psychology and mental health Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American School Counselor Association ISSN: 1096-2409|
|Issue:||Date: Oct, 2010 Source Volume: 14 Source Issue: 1|
|Topic:||Event Code: 200 Management dynamics; 290 Public affairs; 310 Science & research|
|Geographic:||Geographic Scope: United States Geographic Code: 1USA United States|
This article describes an exploratory and descriptive study that
examined the parental involvement beliefs, attitudes, and activities of
22 high schoaol counselors who work in high-poverty and high-minority
schools. More specifically, this study examined school counselors'
beliefs and activities about involving parents in the college admission
process. The results indicated that the participants believe that
working with parents about college opportunities is a major part of
their job. A majority of the participants also reported that they spend
"some time" conferencing with parents about college admissions
and a majority reported that they "never" organize parent
volunteer activities. Implications for school counselor practice and
future research are discussed.
There is a plethora of literature and research that illustrates the positive influence family involvement has on the development of students' educational goals and success (Ceja, 2006; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandier, 1997; Jeynes, 2007; Lee & Bowen, 2006; Moles, 2000; Rich, 1985). In fact, family and/or parental involvement has been positively linked to several outcomes, including higher academic achievement, sense of well-being, school attendance, student and family perceptions of school climate, student willingness to undertake academic work, quantity of parent and student interaction, student grades, aspirations for higher education, and parent satisfaction with teachers (Greenwood & Hickman, 1991). Although all students benefit from family and/or parent involvement, low-income students and students of color (i.e., African American, Latino/Hispanic) fare significantly better in gaining admission to 4-year colleges and universities when their parents are involved in their schooling (Wadenya & Lopez, 2008). National Assessment of Educational Progress data in 2006 indicated that a 30-point scale point differential on standardized achievement tests existed between students with involved parents and those students whose parents were not involved (Dietel, 2006).
Given the emphasis on college readiness in the No Child Left Behind Act and President Obama's Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2010), the role of parents in the college readiness and preparation process has become a significant topic among educators (Rowan-Kenyon, Bell, & Perna, 2008; Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2004). Access to selective 4-year colleges and universities (admitting less than 50% of all undergraduate applicants) has become a highly competitive process in which many parents use extensive and elaborate resources to ensure that their children have the opportunity to attend the most prestigious institutions. Unfortunately, parents who have not had opportunities to attend college themselves have neither experience with the process of college preparation and college-going nor sufficient access to needed information (Ceja, 2006). And, research on African American and Latino parent involvement in college preparation and planning has shown that despite high expectations for educational attainment, few parents have access to meaningful information to help them understand the college application process (Torrez, 2004).
School counselors are influential in disseminating college information, especially among low-income students and students of color (e.g., Latino/ Hispanic, African American). Some have even indicated that school counselors' biases influence the type and quantity of information given to particular groups of students (Hart & Jacobi, 1992; Terenzini, Cabrera, & Bernal, 2001). Further, research suggests that students' perceptions of school counselors' postsecondary expectations of them may influence whether they even seek the school counselor out for college information (Bryan, Holcomb-McCoy, Moore-Thomas, & Day-Vines, 2009).
Therefore, the primary purpose of this article is to describe an exploratory and descriptive study that examined high school counselor beliefs, attitudes, and practices in relation to parent involvement in the college preparation/admission process. In addition, this article includes a review of literature pertaining to parent involvement, college access, and school counseling. And last, implications for future school counseling practice and research will be delineated.
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND COLLEGE ACCESS
Educators understand the importance of parent involvement, and as a result, the literature related to home-school partnerships is increasing in every aspect of education (Pelco, Jacobson, Ries, & Melka, 2000). Because the benefits of parental involvement are well documented, there is reason to believe that high levels of parental involvement increase the college-going rates of low-income students and students of color. Research has indicated that parental support is one of the most important indicators of students' educational aspirations. When low-income African American and Latino students are successful in gaining access to college, parental support is a critical key (Cabrera & La Nasa, 2001; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999). And, students who are strongly encouraged by their parents to attend college are much more likely to attend 4-year institutions than are students who do not receive that support from their families (Tierney & Auerbach, 2005).
Low-income parents, in general, are reported as being less engaged in their children's education when compared to middle- and high-income parents (Moles, 2000). These reports of low parental involvement among low-income parents and parents of color call into question whether parents are truly uninvolved or if what is defined as a lack of involvement is merely a reflection of the dominant culture's (e.g., mainstream America) frame of reference. Smith (2009) purported that this may be the case and that descriptions of low parental involvement among low-income parents and parents of color are a byproduct of the way mainstream America views race, family structure (especially single-parent, female-led households), gender, and the "normative" paradigms for parent involvement in education. In other words, educators' perception that low-income parents and parents of color do not value education is faulty and is based on a definition of parental involvement that is not inclusive of issues of power and marginalization.
When discussing college access for low-income students and students of color, it is important to point out the relationship between college access and financial aid awareness among parents. Several researchers (e.g., Grodsky & Jones, 2004; Horn, Chen, & Chapman, 2003) have indicated that low-income parents and parents of color tend to overestimate the costs of attending college and are more likely to have inaccurate knowledge of actual college costs. Likewise, students and parents with more information about college are much more likely to accurately predict college costs. For instance, recent studies have found that well-informed 11th graders overestimate actual college costs by 5% whereas parents without basic college knowledge overestimate costs by up to 228% (Goldrick-Rab, 2006; Zarate & Pachon, 2006). Knowledge of financial aid for college also varies by race and ethnicity. The Sallie Mae Fund reported in 2003 that 3 out of 4 African American parents do not identify scholarships as a source of aid, compared to half of White parents. Similarly, 83% of Latino parents do not mention grants as a source of aid versus 58% of White parents.
College choice models (e.g., Chapman, 1981; Hanson & Litten, 1982) depict students' college decision-making process and emphasize factors (e.g., economics, family) that influence students' decisions about going to college. Hossler and Gallagher (1987) offered a model of college choice that includes three general stages: predisposition, search, and choice. This model is sequential and is characterized by a student's predisposition to attend college, a student's search for colleges to attend, and ultimately selecting a college/university. Research also has indicated that the college choice process is often characterized by class- and race-based differences that can include parental differences based on perceived entitlement, expectations, use of school counselors, different behaviors regarding college application processes, and differential access to resources that enhance the college choice process (Hamrick & Stage, 2004). Recent college choice studies (e.g., Perez & McDonough, 2008) also have examined parents' cultural and social capital as determinants of college access and school counselors as a source of social capital in the college application process (Bryan, Moore-Thomas, Day-Vines, & Holcomb-McCoy, in press).
COLLEGE ACCESS AND SCHOOL COUNSELING
Critical analysis of the role that high school counselors play in the dissemination of college information to parents and families in high-minority and high-poverty schools is long overdue. Low-income students are more likely to rely on school counselors to discuss financial aid than are their higher-income peers (Terenzini et al., 2001), and research has indicated that African American and Latino students are the most dependent on high school counselors for information about college (Bryan et al., 2009; Perna, 2004). Although counseling has been deemed important for increased student access to college, high school counselors also have been criticized for their gate-keeping function in many schools (Hart & Jacobi, 1992). Grubb (2001) indicated that school counselors treat low-income and minority students as academically incapable and steer them toward less rigorous academic or vocational programs. And, McDonough and Calderone (2004) found that school counselors' personal notions of affordability cause them to advise low-income students toward community college because they believe that community college is all those students can afford, even though low-income students may receive better financial aid.
Overall, the literature suggests that school counselors have an impact on the following aspects of college preparation: (a) structuring information and organizing activities that foster and support students' college aspirations and an understanding of college and its importance, (b) assisting parents in understanding their role in fostering and supporting college aspirations, (c) assisting students in academic preparation for college, (d) supporting and influencing students' decision making about college, and (e) organizationally focusing the school on its college mission (College Board, 2010; McDonough, 2004; Perna et al., 2008). Research has even indicated that improving high school counseling services has a significant impact on college admissions of low-income students, urban and rural students, as well as students of color (Gandara & Bial, 1999). More specifically, several studies have found that if school counselors begin actively supporting and preparing students and their families in middle school for college, as opposed to simply disseminating information, they would increase students' chances of enrolling in a 4-year college (Hossler et al., 1999; Plank & Jordan, 2001).
Many researchers have recommended that more school counselors are needed to improve the college advising services provided to high school students (McDonough, 2004). And, even more studies have argued that school counselors need more training and time to devote to college advising tasks (e.g., Choy, 2002). Until the 1990s, college advising was viewed as an information-dispersing task and many school counselors did not view college advising as a primary responsibility, particularly when they had small numbers of "college-bound students" (Cole, 1991).
Although school counselors are being challenged to increase college admissions of low-income students and students of color, there is no extensive literature or research on the impact of school counselors' work on college admissions. In addition, there is a paucity of literature pertaining to the three areas of school counseling, parent/family involvement, and college admissions and readiness. The primary goal of the present study was to explore school counselors' (who work in high-poverty, high-minority schools) beliefs about their role in relation to parents, the types of parent-related college preparation activities initiated by school counselors, and how much time is spent with parents about college admissions.
This study includes data from a larger study funded by the College Board that examined the beliefs, perceptions, and activities of school counselors in five U.S. high-poverty (> 30% eligible for free and reduced-price lunch) and high-minority (> 50% student-of-color enrollment) schools. The study also examined students' perceptions of their school counselors in relation to college readiness and preparation. For this study, the author utilized items from the study's College Preparation Questionnaire that pertained to parent activities, beliefs about parents, or time spent with parents. The research questions for the current study were exploratory in nature and include the following: (a) How often do high school counselors involve parents in the college preparation process? (b) What are high school counselors' beliefs about their role in assisting parents to gain "college knowledge?" (c) How much time do school counselors spend conferencing with parents about college admissions?
Participant and School Population
The study design called for recruiting a sample of high-poverty and high-minority schools. High-poverty schools were defined as schools having more than 30% of the total student enrollment eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. High-minority schools are those schools that have an enrollment of students of color that exceeds 50%. In consultation with personnel from the College Board's National Office of School Counselor Advocacy, I developed a list of prospective school districts that might be interested in participating in the study. Special attention was given to selecting school districts representative of every geographic region of the United States. School counseling supervisors or district directors of school counseling were contacted initially and if they were interested, the research proposal was sent to the district's research department.
Four school districts in the Northeastern and Southeastern regions of the United States granted research approval to survey students and school counselors. Although permission was granted by one Southeastern school district, because of scheduling conflicts, the schools never collected data. Five schools in three districts agreed to participate (see school descriptions in Table 1). A representative sample of 10th- through 12th-grade students at each of the participating schools was surveyed. Figure 1 includes the educational background of parents at the participating schools (according to students' responses). All of the participating schools reported that less than 40% of their parent population completed or attended college. The University of Maryland at College Park's Institutional Review Board fully approved this study.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
For this article, the focus is on the 22 school counselors' responses to parent-related items during the first year of the project. A majority of the school counselors were female (n = 19) and had been a high school counselor for 1-5 years (n = 12). Nine of the school counselors had been a high school counselor for 6-15 years and one counselor had been a high school counselor for 16-25 years. Regarding their ethnicity, 9 of the school counselors self-identified as African American/Black, 10 identified as White/ European American, 2 identified as Latino/Hispanic American, and 1 identified as "other." And, from an age perspective, 10 of the counselors were 51-60 years of age, 8 were 32-50 years of age, and 4 were 21-31 years of age.
The instrument used for this study included the College Preparation Questionnaire (counselor version). The instrument was developed in consultation with the leadership of the National Office of School Counselor Advocacy. The College Counseling Sourcebook, published by the College Board (2010), was used as a guide for the instrument's development. The questionnaire consisted of 120 Likert scale and dichotomous items to assess the beliefs, attitudes, and activities of school counselors in the context of college preparation. The questionnaire included items such as, "Do you (the school counselor) organize parent volunteer activities?" "Do you send parents calendars of college-planning activities?" and "I believe working with parents about college opportunities for their students is a major part of my job." For this study, only the parent-related items will be examined in order to answer the research questions.
Consent forms were distributed to participants (i.e., school counselors) at each participating school. Each participating school was asked to complete a Quality Control Worksheet when submitting the data. These worksheets documented the number of students enrolled in school during the week of survey, the number of student answer sheets completed in scheduled administration, the number of student answer sheets completed in makeup administrations, and the total number of student and school counselor surveys returned. Each participating school was given copies of the Survey Coordinator's Manual. The manual was used to ensure administration consistency from school to school. The College Preparation Questionnaire was distributed electronically to 26 school counselors, and 22 completed all of the items (84% return rate).
How Often Do High School Counselors Involve Parents in College Preparation Activities?
School counselors were asked to rate how often they engaged in parent-related college preparation activities (see Table 2). They were asked to check whether they conduct the activity once a year, more than once a year, or never. Organizing parent volunteer activities was conducted least often by school counselors whereas sending parents calendars of college-planning activities, test dates, and registration deadlines was conducted more frequently by school counselors.
What Beliefs Do School Counselors Have About Their Role in Involving Parents in College Preparation Activities?
The beliefs of school counselors were calculated using distribution frequencies. School counselors were asked to respond to the items about beliefs based on a 4-point Likert scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. Overall, the school counselors in this study believe that school counselors should assist parents with finding scholarships and with the college admissions process (via workshops). Also, it appears that school counselors believe that a major part of their job is to work with parents regarding students' college preparation. See Tables 3 and 4 for results.
Two items on the questionnaire addressed school counselors' beliefs about working with community groups and about their overall responsibility to work with parents about college opportunities (Table 4). Overall, the participants reported that they believe it is their role to work with community groups (M = 2.9; SD = .57). And likewise, the participants, in general, agreed that working with parents about college opportunities is a major part of their job (M = 3.0; SD = .78).
How Much Time Do School Counselors Spend Conferencing with Parents About College Admissions?
When asked how much time they spend conferencing with parents about college admissions, a majority of the school counselors (55%; n = 12) responded that they spend "some time," 18% (n = 4) reported that they spend "very little time," 18% (n = 4) reported spending "a lot of time," and 9% (n = 2) reported that they do not conference at all with parents about college admissions.
This study is unique from many other parent involvement and college preparation studies because it focuses on the practice of school counselors in relation to their work with parents to increase college readiness. Additionally, this study is unique in that the sample (albeit small) consisted of school counselors who work in high-poverty and high-minority schools. Although exploratory in nature, this study fills a gap in the existing research by focusing on the combination of three key areas--school counseling, parent involvement, and college preparation. Because educators often view low-income families and families of color in terms of their deficiencies (Epstein & Dauber, 1991; Smith, 2009), examining the beliefs and attitudes of school counselors who work in high-poverty and high-minority schools is critical research, which may help to uncover beliefs that serve to hinder students' academic success and college access.
This study's results are promising, but there are still unanswered questions and concerns. Overall, the participants reported favorable beliefs about working with parents and communities within the context of college preparation. In addition, they reported that they are initiating parent-related activities that are intended to increase college knowledge (e.g., holding meetings for parents of juniors, sending parents calendars of college-planning activities). Although a majority of the school counselors reported that they spend "some time" conferencing with parents about college admissions, one might have expected that all of the participating school counselors would spend "a lot of time" conferencing with parents about college opportunities and the admissions process.
There were also some parent activities that a majority of the school counselors reported that they do not engage in on a yearly basis (e.g., organizing parent volunteers, sending parents calendars of test dates). Because this study was exploratory and descriptive in nature, there is no way to determine whether or not these activities have had an influence on "college admissions" and there is no information on the overall efficacy of these activities. Given that school counselors are critical resources for students whose parents did not attend college, one would have expected all of the participants to be engaged in parent activities more than once a year.
The lack of organizing parent volunteer activities is an area to be further examined and discussed in the school counseling literature. The use of parent volunteers in school counseling programs has been rarely discussed in the recent literature. In one article written over 30 years ago, Bradley (1979) suggested that the use of parent volunteers in career and college guidance offices was a means to improve the department's image in the community and to increase parents' knowledge of careers and college opportunities for their children. Although school-family-community partnerships are highly encouraged in today's schools, the use and coordination of parent volunteers by school counselors is rarely discussed. As such, it is possible that this study's participants may be unaware of the utility of parent volunteers in providing college preparation activities for parents and students, such as parent workshops on the college process. Or, they may not perceive organizing parent volunteers as one of their functions. Perhaps organizing parent volunteers is a responsibility of another school staff member.
Ultimately, school counselors must be knowledgeable of parent involvement practices and trends in their schools in order to create successful school-family-community partnerships. Smith (2008) suggested that educators should first consider why low-income parents and parents of color are not more involved in their children's education. He argued that educators using an "assimilationist framework" use the lens of "normative" Anglo-American culture as a basis for comparison. A school counselor practicing from an assimiliationist perspective embraces the notion that to be truly American, a group must conform to mainstream morals, ethics, values, attitudes, and philosophies about the goals and purposes of life. Thus, when working with parents of culturally dissimilar backgrounds, an assimilationist school counselor would likely perceive parents to be "abnormal" if they seem disinterested in or unsupportive of their children's college plans. Or, better yet, many school counselors with an assimilationist perspective believe that low-income parents and parents of color don't value a college education. Therefore, their college preparation activities tend to be designed to "normalize" these parents and mold them into mainstream parental practice (Hornby, 2000). These counseling programs tend to label low-income parents and parents of color as "deficient" and marginalize the parents they are attempting to help.
Smith (2008) suggested that a critical framework should be utilized when working with low-income parents and parents of color. Critical theorists (e.g., Delgado-Gaitan, 1991) have rejected frames of reference that employ cultural deficit models and instead recognize parents of color and low-income parents' power status within mainstream K-12 institutions. School counselors whose work is based on this critical theorist perspective address marginality, culture, and power relationships and ultimately believe that low-income parents and parents of color value education and support their children's education.
Also, the findings of this study do not indicate what type of "college knowledge" information school counselors share with parents and there was no indication of the parental needs in the communities represented in this study. College knowledge is "critical capital" and serves to connect low-income parents and parents of color to the "college choice" process. College knowledge includes valuable information about what is needed to prepare for and choose a college, how to make use of the college experience, the long-term value of a college degree, and how the experience will be financed (Vargas, 2004). An important aspect of college knowledge is recognition of the specific financial value of a college degree relative to other postsecondary options. High-income students and students whose parents are college educated are very familiar with the value of a college degree and are often expected to attend college. For school counselors, it is imperative, then, that they assess parents' needs and, more importantly, that they value all parents and actively include all parents in the college admissions process.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Although the findings in this study help broaden the scope of research to include school counseling, parent/family involvement, and college preparation, several limitations to the research exist. First, this study's sample size of school counselors was very small. Future studies should be designed with much larger samples of school counselors and/or school counseling departments so that trends and patterns of school counselor-initiated parent activities in high schools can be examined. These studies would provide a baseline of information regarding the current school counseling practices related to parent/family involvement and college preparation and readiness. Second, this study is limited by its self-report design. Perhaps the school counselors' responses were based on what they believe they should say or do (i.e., social desirability) rather than their actual beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Third, this study's focus was on individual school counselors with little attention given to school factors (e.g., administration, family outreach policies, school resources) that can shape the activities of a counseling department and staff. And finally, the instrument used in this study was designed specifically for another study that did not focus primarily on parent involvement and college preparation. Future studies should use specific instrumentation that is designed to assess school counselors' practices and services with parents during the college preparation process.
IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE SCHOOL COUNSELOR PRACTICE AND RESEARCH
Parental college knowledge is beneficial and critically important to the future postsecondary success of low-income students and students of color who will likely be first-generation college students. This exploratory study highlighted school counselors' activities and beliefs related to college preparation in high-poverty and high-minority schools. Overall, the school counselors reported favorable views about their role in helping parents with the college admission process, and a majority of them reported facilitating some activities designed specifically for parents. Nevertheless, the majority of school counselors reported that they did not organize parent volunteers or send test-dates calendars home. Given that the schools represented in this study have large numbers of students whose parents never attended college, knowledge of college options, financial aid, and application-related topics is greatly needed. Research tells us that parents, especially those who have not gone to college, are in great need of this sort of information (Zarate & Pachon, 2006). School counselors need to bring parents into the educational experience of their children as much as possible and as soon as possible. Although this sounds easy, partnering with or involving parents does not always exist, particularly in high-minority and high-poverty schools.
The literature has cited many reasons for the lack of parental involvement in urban schools, which include language barriers, a cultural disconnection between schools and communities, a lack of welcoming environment, and the lack of opportunities to become involved. All high school counseling departments and programs should strive to build a personal and cultural connection between the school and parents and, more importantly, to put parents at ease in the school environment. Including speakers and representatives of the community in workshops and informational sessions would be beneficial (Fann, Jarsky, & McDonough, 2009).
Another implication for school counselor practice is the inclusion of more innovative ways to disseminate financial aid and college information to parents. The use of the Internet, for instance, is an increasingly important source of financial aid and postsecondary information for parents and students. Tornatzky, Cutler, and Lee (2002) found that Latino parents used the Internet and printed materials most often for gathering financial aid information, and they rated college nights, visits, and outreach by school counselors as most helpful. Parent-to-parent advising or counseling may be another means of disseminating information to parents. School counselors may want to train parent volunteers about the college admission process and then have the volunteers conduct workshops and information sessions in the community for other parents.
Ultimately, the key element to building successful parent-school relationships is the welcoming and inviting climate of a school. Parents must feel "welcomed" and "wanted" in order for them (particularly low-income parents and parents of color) to be involved (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). High school counselors must present opportunities for parental involvement and design programs that involve school personnel, parents, and university personnel. This sort of collaboration allows for multiple perspectives and to bridge communities (Fann et al., 2009). The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC, 1999) encourages school counselors to provide parents with a welcoming environment in which the following information can be attained: high school courses required for college admissions, college costs, college admission requirements, tests required for college admissions, and the decision-making process that leads to postsecondary options. NACAC also encourages school counselors to help parents investigate the types of programs of study offered in high schools, review course schedules, and participate in course selection. Middle school parents, according to NACAC, should be given lists of middle school courses and information about how they connect with high school courses.
Future research is needed that examines parent-school counselor relationships in the context of college preparation and readiness. For instance, future studies that examine the process by which school counselors and counseling departments disseminate information to parents as well as identifying aspects of positive parent-school counselor relationships in challenging schools arc warranted. Studies about key aspects of the school counselor-parent relationship can assist in our understanding of how to develop meaningful and productive partnerships with parents and communities in order to increase the college readiness of students. In addition, future studies should examine entire high school counseling departments' practices and trends so that there is a clear idea of what departmental structures and formats work to get parents and families involved in the college admissions and college choice processes. Qualitative studies also are needed that investigate the needs of low-income parents and parents of color in relation to college readiness. And finally, future research is needed that examines the influence of school counselors' beliefs about their school communities and their actions and behaviors in the school setting (e.g., scheduling for rigorous courses, developing parent workshops). Linking school counselor beliefs with school counselor actions would uncover areas for school counselor professional development and self-awareness.
The lack of access and educational inequities have plagued the postsecondary trajectories of low-income students and students of color for many decades (Solorzano & Ornelas, 2004). Educators and advocacy groups are challenged to find solutions for improving access to college and school counselors are being critiqued based on their ability and outcomes related to college readiness. This study will hopefully ignite interest among school counseling researchers to bridge the literature and research of three key areas: school counseling, college readiness, and parental involvement. The importance of developing partnerships between parents/families and school counselors is key to increasing the number of students who are college ready, particularly in high-poverty and high-minority schools. School counselors and parents, working together, are the keys to college planning for all students.
Bradley, M. (1979). Extending the circle: Career counseling by parent volunteers. School Counselor, 26, 178-181.
Bryan, J., Holcomb-McCoy, C., Moore-Thomas, C., & Day-Vines, N. L. (2009). Who sees the school counselor for college information? A national study. Professional School Counseling 12, 280-291.
Bryan, J., Moore-Thomas, C., Day-Vines, N., & Holcomb-McCoy, C. (in press). School counselors as social capital:The effects of high school college counseling on college application rates. Journal of Counseling and Development.
Cabrera, A. F., & La Nasa, S. M. (2001). On the path to college: Three critical tasks facing America's disadvantaged. Research in Higher Education, 42, 119-149.
Ceja, M. (2006). Understanding the role of parents and siblings as information sources in the college choice process of Chicana students. Journal of College Student Development, 47, 87-103.
Chapman, D. W. (1981). A model of student college choice. Journal of Higher Education, 52, 490-505.
Choy, S. P. (2002). Access & persistence: Findings from l O years of longitudinal research on students. Washington, DC: American Council on Education, Center for Policy Analysis.
Cole, C. G. (1991, April). Counselors and administrators: A comparison of roles. NASSP Bulletin, 5-13.
College Board. (2010). The college counseling sourcebook: Advice and strategies from experienced school counselors (7th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1991). Involving parents in the schools: A process of change for involving parents. American Journal of Educational, 100, 20-46.
Dietel, R. (2006). Get smart: Nine ways to help your child succeed in school San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Epstein, J., & Dauber, S. (1991). School programs and teacher practices of parent involvement in inner-city elementary and middle schools. Elementary School Journal, 91, 291-305.
Fann, A., Jarsky, K. M., & McDonough, R M. (2009). Parent involvement in the college planning process: A case study of P-20 collaboration. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 8, 374-393.
Gandara, R, & Bial, D. (1999). Paving the way to higher education: K-12 intervention programs for underrepresented youth. Washington, DC: National Postsecondary Education Cooperative.
Goldrick-Rab, S. (2006). Following their every move: How social class shapes postsecondary pathways. Sociology of Education, 79, 61-79.
Greenwood, G. E., & Hickman, C. W. (1991). Research and practice in parent involvement: Implications for teacher education. Elementary School Journal, 91, 279-288.
Grodsky, E., & Jones, M. (2004). Real and imagined barriers to college entry: Perceptions of cost. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, San Diego, CA.
Grubb, W. N. (2001). Guidance and counseling in community colleges (CCRC Brief No. 12). New York, NY: Community College Research Center.
Hamrick, F. A., & Stage, F. K. (2004). College predisposition at high minority enrollment, low income schools. Review of Higher Education: Journal of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, 27, 151-168.
Hanson, K., & Litten, L (1982). Mapping the road to academia: A review of research on women, men, and the college selection process. In R Perun (Ed.), The undergraduate woman: Issues in education (pp. 73-98). Lexington, MA: DC Heath and Company.
Hart, R, & Jacobi, M. (1992). From gatekeeper to advocate: Transforming the role of the school counselor. New York, NY: College Entrance Examination Board.
Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Sandier, H. M. (1997). Why do parents become involved in their children's education? Review of Educational Research, 67, 3-42.
Horn, L. J., Chen, X., & Chapman, C. (2003). Getting ready to pay for college: What students and their parents know about the cost of college tuition and what they are doing to find out (NCES 2003-030). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
Hornby, G. (2000). Improving parental involvement. London, United Kingdom: Cassell.
Hossler, D., & Gallagher, K. S. (1987). Studying college choice: A three-phase model and the implications for policy makers. College and University, 2, 207-221.
Hossler, D., Schmit, J., & Vesper, N. (1999). Going to college: How social, economic, and educational factors influence the decisions students make. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jeynes, W. H. (2007).The relationship between parental involvement and urban school student academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Urban Education, 42, 82-110.
Lee, J., & Bowen, N. K. (2006). Parent involvement, cultural capital, and the achievement gap among elementary school children. American Educational Research Journal, 43, 193-218.
McDonough, P. M. (2004). Counseling matters: Knowledge, assistance, and organizational commitment in college preparation. In W.G. Tierney, Z. B. Corwin, & J. E. Colyar (Eds.), Preparing for college: Nine elements of effective outreach (69-88). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
McDonough, P. M., & Calderone, S. (2004). The meaning of money: Perceptual differences between college counselors and low-income families about college costs and financial aid. American Behavioral Scientist, 49, 1703-1718.
Moles, O. C. (2000). Reaching all families: Creating family-friendly schools, beginning of school year activities. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Association for College Admission Counseling. (1999). PACT: Parents and counselors together program. Alexandria, VA: Author.
Pelco, L., Jacobson, L., Ries, R., & Melka, S. (2000). Perspectives and practices in family-school partnerships: A national survey of school psychologists. School Psychology Review, 29, 235-250.
Perez, P. A., & McDonough, P. M. (2008). Understanding Latina and Latino college choice: A social capital and chain migration analysis. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 7, 249-265.
Perna, L. (2004). Impact of student aid program design, operations, and marketing on the formation of family college-going plans and resulting college-going behaviors of potential students. Boston, MA:The Education Resources Institute.
Perna, L., Rowan-Kenyon, H., Thomas, S., Bell, A., Anderson, R., & Li, C. (2008).The role of college counseling in shaping college opportunity:Variations across high schools. Review of Higher Education, 31, 131-159.
Plank, S. B., & Jordan, W. J. (2001). Effects of information, guidance, and actions on post-secondary destinations: A study of talent loss. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 947-979.
Rich, D. (1985). The forgotten factor in school success--the family. A policymaker's guide. Washington, DC: Home and School Institute.
Rowan-Kenyon, H.T., Bell, A. D., & Perna, L.W. (2008). Contextual influences on parental involvement in college going: Variations by socioeconomic class. Journal of Higher Education, 79, 564-586.
Sallie Mae Fund. (2003). Financial aid: The information divide. Retrieved from http://www.thesalliemaefund.org/ smfnew/news/2003/news_nr184b.html
Smith, M. (2008). Four steps to a paradigm shift: Employing critical perspectives to improve outreach to low-SES African-American and Latino students and their parents. Journal of College Admission, 201, 17-23.
Smith, M. (2009). Right directions, wrong maps: Understanding the involvement of low-SES African American parents to enlist them as partners in college choice. Education and Urban Society, 41, 171-196.
Solorzano, D., & Ornelas, A. (2004). A critical race analysis of Latina/o and African American advanced placement enrollment in public high schools. High School Journal, 87, 15-26.
Terenzini, RT., Cabrera, A. R, & Bernal, E. M. (2001). Swimming against the tide. New York, NY: College Board. Retrieved from http://www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/ rdreport200_3918.pdf
Tierney, W. G., & Auerbach, S. (200S).Toward developing an untapped resource:The role of families in college preparation. In W. G. Tierney, Z. Corwin, & J. E. Colyar (Eds.), Preparing for college: Nine elements of effective outreach (pp. 29-48). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Tornatzky, L. G., Cutler, R., & Lee, J. (2002). College knowledge: What Latino parents need to know and why they don't know it. Claremont, CA:Tomas Rivera Policy institute.
Torrez, N. (2004). Developing parent information frameworks that support college preparation for Latino students. High School Journal, 87, 54-59.
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. (2010). ESEA blueprint for reform.Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http:// www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/blueprint.pdf
Vargas, J. H. (2004). College knowledge: Addressing information barriers to college. Boston, MA: Education Resources institute, College Access Services.
Venezia, A., Kirst, M., & Antonio, A. (2004). Betraying the college dream: How disconnected K-12 and post-secondary systems undermine student aspirations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Wadenya, R. O., & Lopez, N. (2008). Parental involvement in recruitment of underrepresented minority students. Journal of Dental Education, 72, 680-687.
Zarate, M. E., & Pachon, H. P. (2006). Perceptions of college financial aid among California Latino youth. Los Angeles, CA: Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, Ph.D., is a professor and chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Services, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. E-mail: email@example.com
Table 1. Description of Participating Schools School A School B School C School D School E Total enrollment 1,937 1,276 1,655 1,743 1,640 Racial composition African American 1,752 348 1,383 510 552 Hispanic/Latino 37 57 199 837 840 White 64 835 31 292 192 Asian 81 34 37 56 15 American Indian 3 2 5 2 1 Number of school 5 4 5 7 5 counselors Magnet school Yes Yes No No No (yes or no) Percentage of 40% 38% 41% 66% 69% students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch Table 2. Frequencies of Parent-Related College Preparation Activities Initiated by School Counselors Never Do This Once a Year More Than Once a Year Organize parent volunteer 18 (82%) 2 (9%) 2 (9%) activities Send parents calendar of 8 (36%) 5 (23%) 9 (41%) college-planning activities Send parents test dates 7 (32%) 6 (27%) 9 (41%) and registration deadlines Send parents a senior 6 (27%) 11 (50%) 5 (23%) college-planning schedule Set up parent conferences 4 (18%) 7 (32%) 10 (45%) regarding college preparation Set up and hold a meeting 2 (9%) 15 (68%) 5 (23%) for parents of juniors (covering college application process, testing, financial aid, etc.) Table 3. Means of Items Related to School Counselors' Beliefs About Their Role of Involving Parents in College Readiness Activities I believe school counselors should ... M SD N Help parents locate college scholarships 3.4 .60 20 Develop college admissions workshops for parents 3.5 .61 20 Note. The scale is as follows: 4 = strongly agree, 3 = agree, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly disagree. Table 4. Means and Frequencies of Items Related to School Counselors' Beliefs About Communities and Parents Strongly M SD N Agree Agree It is my role to work 2.9 .57 21 3 15 with community groups. Working with 3.0 .78 21 4 13 parents about college opportunities for their children is a major part of my job. Strongly Disagree Disagree It is my role to work 3 0 with community groups. Working with 3 1 parents about college opportunities for their children is a major part of my job. Note. The scale is as follows: 4 = strongly agree, 3 = agree, 2 = disagree, I = strongly disagree.
|Gale Copyright:||Copyright 2010 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.| | <urn:uuid:62dcbcfc-3b6e-47e5-ada1-1c145d7c05dd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biomedsearch.com/article/Involving-low-income-parents-color/241277786.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943044 | 9,662 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Published: Jan 1964
| ||Format||Pages||Price|| |
|PDF (696K)||13||$25|| ADD TO CART|
|Complete Source PDF (11M)||150||$55|| ADD TO CART|
A review has been made of the effects of fluoride ions on the corrosion behavior of zirconium alloys in high-temperature water. Corrosion was found to occur as the result of contamination of the water or the zirconium surface. A major source of fluorides is undue delay in rinsing the HF-HNO3 pickling solution during surface preparation. The oxide on corrosion-resistant material has been found to contain up to 7600 ppm fluoride from this source. The threshold concentration of fluoride in the oxide film which produces poor corrosion resistance ranges from 8500 to 17,000 ppm. Accelerated corrosion from fluorides in water at 300 to 360 C occurs at about 100 ppm, although increased corrosion has been reported at 10 ppm fluoride in water at 300 C. Fluorocarbon plastics degrade and contribute fluorides to the high-temperature water or to the alloy surface when in direct contact with zirconium. Chlorides (1 to 10,000 ppm) and iodides (1270 ppm) do not adversely affect the corrosion behavior of zirconium alloys in water at 360 C. The mechanism of corrosion is not well understood but apparently is related to the formation of insoluble zirconium oxyfluorides during pickling and during exposure to fluoride-contaminated water.
Berry, Warren E.
Assistant Chief, Battelle Memorial Inst., Columbus, Ohio | <urn:uuid:9fa4f3b1-4bd6-4b59-a054-e8ba3134df02> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/STP/PAGES/STP47071S.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904549 | 345 | 2.734375 | 3 |
LIFE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES
To quantify the expression of specific genes, researchers can use a variety of techniques, including arrays, PCR, and high throughput sequencing. However, getting accurate results still depends on precisely carrying out these methods, even with increasingly user-friendly technologies. In fact, as more scientists study gene expression, the standards for analysis are growing more rigorous to ensure that only accurate data are published. Likewise, software has been keeping pace, helping researchers follow protocols and analyze their results.
By Mike May
Inclusion of companies in this article does not indicate endorsement by either AAAS or Science, nor is it meant to imply that their products or services are superior to those of other companies.
One of the biggest challenges for researchers in today's gene-expression analysis arises from choice. "A scientist needs to decide which technology to use—qPCR [real-time polymerase chain reaction], microarrays, or something like RNA sequencing. Those are the big ones," says Heidi Kijenski, microarray marketing director at Agilent Technologies in Santa Clara, California.
Even the now old-school approach to analyzing gene expression by way of arrays keeps offering new twists. For example, the higher density (four-fold higher than the company's previous technology) SurePrint G3 Gene Expression Microarrays from Agilent include one million oligonucleotide probes, which can be arranged to study two samples of 400,000 features each, four samples of 180,000 features apiece, or eight samples with 60,000 features for each. "These higher-density arrays come in catalogue or custom formats," Kijenski says. "This allows a researcher the option of customizing the content for any gene-expression project." She adds, "This includes any organism where the customer has the sequence." Moreover, it takes only weeks to get a custom array, and it doesn't cost any more than a catalogue one. Even the catalogue versions offer considerable variety. "There are 31 organisms in all," Kijenski says.
To enable even better performance, Agilent developed its new, compact SureScan Microarray Scanner. "It's a smaller footprint and provides better sensitivity and image resolution," Kijenski says.
Other companies are also pushing array technology to new capabilities. As an example, Kevin Cannon, vice president of gene expression at Affymetrix in Santa Clara, California, points out the company's new Human Transcriptome and Splice Junction Array. "It includes almost 7 million transcripts—99 percent coverage of the human genes," he says. "A comparative study by Stanford University researchers showed that this array was as sensitive as RNA sequencing in gene-expression profiling studies, and it's more reproducible, faster, and more cost effective."
In addition, Dara Wright, vice president of clinical applications at Affymetrix, notes that gene-expression signatures are becoming increasingly useful for clinical molecular pathology applications. The Powered by Affymetrix Program, for example, enables companies to license Affymetrix's GeneChip technology to develop and clinically validate devices based on multiplex gene-expression signatures. Wright explains that the program's current focus is primarily on developing prognostic cancer applications, and "after years of applied research and the anticipation of clinical utility, we are now seeing tests emerge for routine [clinical] use," she says.
One such clinical application, developed on the Affymetrix gene-expression platform, is the Pathwork Tissue of Origin Test, which uses RNA extracted from a tumor to assess the expression of more than 2,000 genes. That gene-expression pattern can reveal features of the tumor, such as its metastatic potential.
"A lot of researchers have been focusing on subsets of gene markers, or biomarkers," says Handy Yowanto, global product manager at Beckman Coulter in Brea, California. The company's XP-PCR Process for gene expression makes biomarker multiplexing easy, according to Yowanto.
This technology consists of four steps: total RNA isolation, reverse transcription to form cDNA, multiplex PCR amplification, and fragment separation. During the PCR step, says Yowanto, "The universal tags attached to gene-specific primers are used to amplify all of the target genes collectively." He adds, "This minimizes the primer bias typically associated with traditional multiplexed applications."
The specificity of this technology stems from the target-specific primers along with PCR-product separation using capillary electrophoresis. "This enables down to one-base fragment resolution," explains Yowanto. In addition, he points out that researchers can "include multiple housekeeping genes as controls within a single reaction, so they don't have to worry about well-to-well or run-to-run variations."
The technology is beginning to gain traction, Yowanto notes and it's being used in a range of applications. As examples, he mentions cancer research and microbial detection.
For primer design, researchers can use Beckman Coulter's eXpress Designer software. In addition, Yowanto points out a few primer-design tips: "You should make sure that the primer is intron-spanning to minimize the interference with genomic DNA. Also, make sure primers are not designed where SNPs could occur because that might reduce the quantification." He adds, "Designing primers will get easier over time as the users get more experience with this technology in different experiments."
Getting accurate results from PCR demands considerable attention to detail. As early as 1997, Stephen Bustin, professor of molecular science at Queen Mary, University of London, realized this constraint. "It became clear to me early on that the way things were being done was not sufficient if you want to quantify the results," he says.
Specifically, Bustin says, researchers often do not include enough information in their publications about how they perform quantitative PCR. "When there is information," he adds, "it's likely to be wrong. So there's a real problem with peer-reviewed literature."
In 2009, Bustin and his colleagues published the minimum information for publication of quantitative real-time PCR experiments (MIQE) guidelines. Some companies quickly joined this fight. "Bio-Rad was certainly the pioneer," says Bustin. "It has put a huge amount of effort in publicizing and implementing the guidelines with road shows and so on." Some other large vendors—including Agilent Technologies, Life Technologies, and Thermo Fisher Scientific—also provide MIQE-compliant assays. Bustin also points out that qbasePLUS from Biogazelle in Zwijnaarde, Belgium, is "the only qPCR analysis software that complies with MIQE."
According to Frank Bizouarn, field application specialist in the Bio-Rad gene expression division, "qPCR is the tool to analyze gene expression, but you need diligence in how you set up and run your experiments." For sample preparation, he notes "Bio-Rad's Experion automated electrophoresis station determines if the RNA quality is good or bad for gene-expression analysis." He adds that Bio-Rad sponsored the first MIQE qPCR iPad app, developed by Michael W. Pfaffl of the Technical University of Munich and Afif Abdel Nour of the Polytechnic Institute of LaSalle Beauvais. "With this," says Bizouarn, "you can check off MIQE guidelines as you go along."
"The population average is a lie," says Marc Unger, chief scientific officer at Fluidigm in South San Francisco, California. "For gene expression, the population average of any given gene is not necessarily characteristic of any of the cells in the population." For example, the histogram of gene expression of a particular gene's intensity might show two peaks from two different groups of cells. The average—in the middle—would not represent the expression in any of the cells.
Instead of assessing the expression at a population level, some answers can only be found in single cells. "In lots of biological processes, single cells may be driving or dominating the behavior," says Unger. As an example, he mentions cancer stem cells.
In looking at single cells, though, Unger encourages researchers to study multiple genes. "If you're looking at only a few genes at a time," he says, "then you will miss patterns in the expression." He points out that the Fluidigm BioMark HD System for real-time PCR plus its Dynamic Array chips can simultaneously track 96 genes in 96 cells.
Not just any technology provides enough resolution to work with single cells. "By their very nature, single cells are tiny, which means there's not much material to work with," says Ken Livak, senior scientific fellow at Fluidigm. The microfluidic technology underlying the BioMark HD can actually control cells one by one.
To see how different cells vary in expression, though, a researcher must analyze many cells. In just three hours, according to Livak, the BioMark HD can analyze 96 cells, which can produce as many as 9,216 data points (from 96 genes in 96 cells).
"All of the methods in the past that looked at gene expression were relatively indirect—measuring expression levels by labeling transcripts and hybridizing them to an array," says Gary Schroth, distinguished scientist at Illumina, headquartered in San Diego, California. "The trend is very clear that the world is moving more and more towards sequencing or counting assays." He adds, "RNA sequencing is more about counting and directly characterizing the molecules in your biological sample."
In January 2007, according to Schroth, his group was the first to do what researchers now call RNA-seq, which is sequencing full-length cDNA with short-read technology. In just a few years, this technology contributed to many publications. As Schroth says, "Now, there are more than 300 peer-reviewed publications using RNA-seq methods." He also notes the increasing throughput, going from 40-60 million reads per run in 2007 to 3 billion with today's Illumina HiSeq 2000 system. The length of the reads has also tripled in that time—increasing from 35 to 100 base pairs. In addition most of today's studies use paired-end sequencing, which was not available in 2007.
Ongoing releases of kits also make RNA sequencing more appealing. At the end of 2010, for example, Illumina released its TruSeq RNA Sample Prep Kits. Currently, these kits allow 24 samples to be indexed per sequencing lane, which enables researchers to multiplex samples and capitalize on the increased throughput of the sequencing systems.
"These prep kits allow labs to process dozens or even hundreds of samples a week," says Schroth, adding that labs with very high throughput needs can even automate the sample preparation using the kits.
Other technologies also use counting. For example, the nCounter platform from NanoString Technologies in Seattle, Washington, detects up to 800 target molecules in a single-tube reaction for analyzing gene expression, micro RNA (miRNA), and copy-number variation. "It's a direct digital counting method," says Chris Grimley, vice president of marketing at NanoString. Barcode-labeled probes hybridize directly to a target molecule in solution. The reporter probe carries the signal, and the capture probe allows the complex to be immobilized for data collection.
Researchers can select from a range of existing panels, including the recently launched leukemia panel, which simultaneously detects and quantifies 25 fusion-gene isoforms and 23 additional mRNAs related to leukemia. Alternatively scientists can design custom panels using their specific targets of interest.
The nCounter Prep Station processes the samples and the nCounter Digital Analyzer uses the fluorescent reporter on the probe to count the target molecules. "The workflow is simple and results are so reproducible that researchers choose not to run replicates," say Grimley. "This performance combined with the fact that the technology is compatible with a variety of sample input types, such as [formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded], is resulting in strong adoption by the oncology research community."
"There's lots of interest in noncoding RNAs, microRNAs," says Dennis Fantin, product management leader for qPCR at Life Technologies in Carlsbad, California. In analyzing gene expression, results show that miRNA plays a regulatory role. "They don't work through proteins, but interact directly with mRNA to inhibit translation," says Fantin. "You can't explain everything about gene expression with transcription alone."
To help researchers study the gene-expression impact of miRNA, Life Technologies developed its TaqMan OpenArray MicroRNA Panels. Fantin adds that the company offers "predefined TaqMan, noncoding-RNA assays, which work just like TaqMan gene-expression assays." For researchers who find new miRNAs and long noncoding RNAs and need an assay, Life Technologies offers a custom service.
Scientists can also use the nCounter miRNA Expression Assay Kits. "The human miRNA product includes more than 700 miRNAs," says Grimley. The company also makes panels for mouse and rat miRNA. The study of miRNAs is becoming so popular that the company just launched its new nCounter miRGE assays, which enable the simultaneous detection and quantification of mRNAs and miRNAs in a single tube.
Datasets generated in gene-expression experiments keep getting bigger. "This is challenging when trying to analyze a whole dataset," says Shannon Conners, JMP life sciences product manager at SAS in Cary, North Carolina. Beyond dataset size, researchers face other analytical challenges. "People want to look at several factors at once, and they want to remove effects that might be caused by samples being taken at different sites or times," says Conners. She adds that researchers often want to search for correlations in gene-expression data acquired on different platforms.
SAS's JMP Genomics software provides a wide range of analytical tools. For example, Conners says, "It includes tools for the analysis of continuous intensities from array data that work with very big datasets. It also includes tools for count data from high throughput-sequencing studies." She adds that SAS tailors these analytical tools for specific data types. "For example, there are simplified workflows for things like RNA-sequencing analysis," she says. These tools and more come in the new JMP Genomics 5.1.
The analytical tools from SAS and the other technologies discussed here reveal the growing power that comes from combining approaches to analyze gene expression. Today's technological combinations make it faster and easier to dig deeper into gene expression under a wider range of circumstances.
Polytechnic Institute of LaSalle Beauvais
Queen Mary, University of London
Technical University of Munich
Thermo Fisher Scientific
Note: Readers can find out more about the companies and organizations listed by accessing their sites on the World Wide Web (WWW). If the listed organization does not have a site on the WWW or if it is under construction, we have substituted its main telephone number. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this information. Inclusion of companies in this article does not indicate endorsement by either AAAS or Science, nor is it meant to imply that their products or services are superior to those of other companies.
Mike May is a freelance writer and editor for science and technology.
|This article was published as a special advertising feature in the 4 November 2011 issue of Science magazine.|
New Products: Genomics
RNA/DNA ISOLATION KITS
The MagMAX FFPE Isolation Kits are two new magnetic bead-based kits designed specifically for the isolation of both total RNA and DNA from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples. The MagMAX FFPE kits offer the yield, purity, and downstream performance characteristics that scientists expect, while also delivering faster workflow protocols, higher throughput capacity, and eliminating user-exposure to toxic organic solvents typically associated with the FFPE purification process. To enhance user productivity, MagMAX FFPE Kits incorporate magnetic bead-based technology, yielding a workflow amenable to high throughput processing. Offered in a 96-well format, MagMAX FFPE Kits enable an automated-assist protocol, which can effectively reduce hands-on processing time by 50% or more. By substituting xylene-like solvents with a novel solubilization reagent, MagMAX FFPE kits combine protease enzymes and digestion additives. This combo-reagent allows users to eliminate the deparafinization step of the protocol, and the toxicity associated with traditional FFPE processing.
The Magna ChIP-Seq preparation kit is designed to simplify genome-wide profiling of DNA-protein interactions by chromatin immunoprecipitation and next generation sequencing (ChIP-Seq). In contrast to other products that support only part of the ChIP-Seq workflow, the Magna ChIP-Seq kit is a complete solution that provides a set of validated reagents for both chromatin immunoprecipitation and next generation library construction. These reagents, in combination with a detailed protocol and quality control guidelines, simplify the ChIP-Seq process to allow researchers to map interactions of histones, transcription factors, and other chromatin-associated proteins on a genome-wide scale. As successful immunoprecipitation is critical to construction of the sequencing library, the kit includes positive and negative control antibodies and a set of polymerase chain reaction primers that can be used as in-process controls or to verify technique. The kit has been used to construct ChIP-Seq libraries from as little as 1 ng of purified ChIP DNA, meaning that DNA segments associated with low abundance proteins can be sequenced.
For info: 800-645-5476
The new Direct-zol RNA MiniPrep facilitates efficient and consistent broad range purification of high quality (DNA-free) total RNA directly from samples stored in Tri-Reagent or similar acid-guanidinium-phenol reagents. This innovative procedure bypasses phase separation and precipitation with a spin column and eliminates problems with phenol carryover, all traits typically associated with organic extraction-based methods. The Direct-zol RNA MiniPrep is part of the 'next gen' of RNA prep that will meet the demands of today's scientists requiring RNA that is ideal for stringent analytical methods like miRNA profiling, RNA-seq, and viral identification. The procedure couples the effectiveness of infectious agent inactivation and sample preservation with a convenient no hassle, no-mess procedure for DNA-free RNA.
Zymo Research Corporation
For info: 888-882-9682
The new iScript Advanced cDNA synthesis kit for RT-qPCR allows researchers to generate more real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) data from a single 20 μL reverse transcription reaction for their gene expression analyses. With a maximum capacity of 7.5 μg of input RNA, the iScript Advanced cDNA synthesis kit for RT-qPCR surpasses the capacity of its nearest rival by 2 μg. The iScript Advanced cDNA synthesis kit for RT-qPCR offers additional advantages over competitor kits in terms of simplicity and speed. The kit has only two essential components: an iScript Advanced reaction mix and an iScript Advanced reverse transcriptase. The protocol takes only 35 minutes. The iScript Advanced cDNA synthesis kit for RT-qPCR offers excellent sensitivity and efficiency in both real-time PCR (using SYBR Green, EvaGreen, or probes) and conventional RT-PCR.
For info: 800-424-6723
Stellaris FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization) is an RNA visualization method that allows simultaneous detection, localization, and quantification of individual mRNA molecules at the sub-cellular level in fixed samples. Stellaris FISH probes are manufactured on a custom basis, including software for optimum probe design. In addition, premade probe sets for glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) in human and mouse applications are available. This novel RNA FISH technology represents a fast and easy-to-use method to achieve conclusive results through compelling images of RNA expression. By enabling scientists to localize and count discrete molecules of mRNA using widefield fluorescence microscopy, Stellaris FISH probes can lead to streamlined studies in stem cell, cancer, pathology, developmental biology, transcription regulation, and neuroscience research. Stellaris FISH can also be combined with existing technologies such as real-time polymerase chain reaction, DNA FISH, immunohistochemistry, and Western blotting to provide complementary information.
For info: 800-436-6631
Electronically submit your new product description or product literature information! Go to www.sciencemag.org/products/newproducts.xhtml for more information.
Newly offered instrumentation, apparatus, and laboratory materials of interest to researchers in all disciplines in academic, industrial, and governmental organizations are featured in this space. Emphasis is given to purpose, chief characteristics, and availability of products and materials. Endorsement by Science or AAAS of any products or materials mentioned is not implied. Additional information may be obtained from the manufacturer or supplier.
Look for these Upcoming Articles
Outsourcing Lab Services — November 25 | <urn:uuid:43b5f819-c4c3-4510-9c02-a42b8e24ae3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sciencemag.org/site/products/lst_20111104.xhtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919885 | 4,437 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Proper name: Bo Y
Other names: Chung Cha, Trong Gia.
Population: 1,420 people
Local groups: Bo Y and Tu Di
Language: The Bo Y group speaks Tay-Thai language (which belongs to the
Tai-Kadai language family while the Tu Different speak Han or Chinese
History: The first Bo Y people traveled south to
Vietnam from China about 150 years ago.
Production activities: The Bo Y people were originally
experienced in wet rice cultivation. However, since settling in the northern mountainous regions of
Vietnam, they have had to rely mainly on slash-and-burn
agriculture-primarily growing corn, their main crop. In addition, each
family usually has a vegetable garden. Apart from raising livestock and
poultry, the local people are also involved in various crafts such as
cloth weaving, black-smithing, pottery-making, stone carving, silver
engraving, plaiting and woodwork, etc.
Clothing: Formerly, Bo Y women wore full skirts like those worn by
Hmong, or ornamented with batik bee’s wax designs and dyed indigo. The
blouse is short, often having five panels with a bodice covering the
chest and abdomen. Silver ornaments
are popular, such as necklaces,
wrist chains and ear-rings. The women wear their hair wound in a chignon at the top of their head. Their
headgear is traditionally an indigo turban which or ornamented with
colorful embroidery. Nowadays, some Bo Y people have adopted the
neighboring Nung’s way of dressing. Some also wear shirts lie the Han
but with removable sleeves.
Lifestyle: The Bo Y live in Quan Ba (Ha Giang province)
and Muong Khuong (Lao Cai). They live in houses built on the ground
with a thatched, wooden or tiled roof and clay walls. The house usually
has three sections, with an extra bay for the unmarried boys or used as a
The society’s social classes are clearly defined. The upper classes
consisted of the village chief (known as Pin Thau) and his
assistant (Xeo Phai)
Marriage: There are three steps involved to organise a
Bo Y wedding:
Step 1: The boy’s family sends two female matchmakers to ask the girl’s family for her personal information, date of birth, so
tht match-making calculations can be made. The girl’s family, in
return, often shows their good-will by offering the guests 10 red
colored chicken eggs. If the boy’s family finds that the couple is
well-matched, then they will again send two matchmakers-this time male
to read the horoscope of the girl and to consult the girl’s family on
the price for an engagement ceremony.
Step 2: After the engagement ceremony, the marriage is agreed by the
boy’s and the girl’s families.
Step3: The wedding. The bride-groom’s family presents the wedding
presents to the bride’s family. Apart from food, some clothes for the
bride are also included. The bridegroom does not go to the bride’s
house; instead, the bride rides on a horse to the bridegroom, attended
by the bridegroom’s sister who walks alongside. She brings with her a
pair of scissors and a small hen, which she will release to the forest
Birth: In the past, according to local customs, the
women often sit when they deliver. They cut the baby’s umbilical cord
with a bamboo knife and the placenta is often buried right under the
bed. Three days later, a ceremony is held for the goddess, believed to
be the creator and protector of the baby, and also to nickname the baby.
Only when the child reaches two or a tree year is he or she given an
official name. It a child is ailing all the year round, a foster father
will be chosen so that the child’s spirit has a place to rest.
Funerals: Funerals reflects the sentiments of the
living towards the dead, which, according to Bo Y beliefs, will take the
deceased’s sprit back to his or her country land. Four rifle shots are
fired before the funeral, and the deceased’s feet should go first as the
coffin is carried to the grave yard. Between the deceased’s home and
the grave yard, three stops are made (if the deceased’s wife or husband
is still living) or four (if both have died). Mourning is maintained by
the family members for three years, during which time, the men are not
allowed to drink wine, the women can not wear ornaments, and boys and
girls are not allowed to get married.
Beliefs: Three incense bowls are placed on the altar,
which is dedicated to heaven, to the spirit of the heart, and to
ancestors. Under the altar, three is an incense bowl dedicated for
worshiping the land’s god. If the wife’s parents both died without a
son, the son-in-law is responsible for setting up a small altar in the
Festivals: There are many Tet occasions celebrated by
the Bo Y, such as Nguyen Dan (Lunar New Year), Ram Thang Gieng
(mid-lunar-January festival), 30th of Lunar January festival, Han Thuc,
Doan Ngo, 6th of Lunar June, mid-Lunar-July and New Rice festival, in
particular, is held on the 8th or 9th day of Lunar September, featuring
the square sticky rice cake, chay cake and colored steamed
Calendar: The Bo Y calculate the date based on the
Education: In the past, some Bo Y people still used
Chinese for writing their family annals, their ritual texts, and their
destiny accounts sheet.
Artistic activities: In the Tu Di group, the youth
often take part in exchanging songs sung at the beginning of the spring
marketplaces or at their homes. Most songs are in Chinese, accompanied
by ken la, a wind instrument made of leaves.
Games: On special occasions, the Bo Y play with swings,
Chinese chess, spinning top, and | <urn:uuid:52f0d312-5791-43a3-a0c6-11d63ac02ad2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://vietnamcultures.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4791&PID=6084&title=the-bo-y-ethnic-group | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94202 | 1,400 | 2.875 | 3 |
Want to take a weekend roadtrip? If you haven't yet celebrated Texas Independence Day, (which was March 2 if you didn't know) you may want to hop in the car and head down to San Antonio for "Remembering the Alamo Weekend."
Beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, the final two days of the seige of the Alamo by Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna will be reenacted in the Alamo Plaza. It may sound morbid at first, but upon further examination it looks pretty interesting -- especially for history buffs. The event will include cannon demonstrations, marching armies, the arrival of the Gonzales 32 and more to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo.
The dramatization will be put on by The San Antonio Living History Association. For a full schedule of this weekend's events, click here.
So, why is this so special?
If you don't remember your Texas history, or are a transplant, 175 years ago the Alamo was the site of a pivotal moment in the history of the Texas Revolution where 250 or so Texian and Tejano defenders held off an estimated 1,500 Mexican soldiers for 13 days. The garrison eventually fell after being overwhelmed by a full seige on March 6, 1836. Nearly all of the defenders of the mission were killed, with the exception being an estimated 20 women and children.
The perceived cruelty of the Mexican general inspired others living in the new republic, which had just declared it's independence from Mexico four days before, to join the Texian Army.
Santa Anna would be defeated a few weeks later at the Battle of San Jacinto, when the Texian Army, many of whom yelled the now famous phrases "Remember the Alamo and Remember Goliad," suprised and overran the Mexican Army near Lynchburg Ferry during a surprise attack in the middle of the afternoon.
The Mexican army, many of whom were having a siesta, were largely slaughtered after being caught of guard. More than 700 Mexican soliders were killed and another 700 or so taken captive in the 18-minute long battle. Only nine Texians were said to have died in the attack.
With General Santa Anna's capture and signing of the Treaty of Velasco, the Mexican Army was forced to withdraw from Texas.
As explained on thealamo.org, "people worldwide continue to remember the Alamo as a heroic struggle against impossible odds — a place where men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. For this reason, the Alamo remains hallowed ground and the Shrine of Texas Liberty." | <urn:uuid:c877e871-9532-4fb7-841f-49e7c8535356> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nbcdfw.com/the-scene/events/Worth-the-Drive-Remembering-the-Alamo-117368408.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968185 | 531 | 2.6875 | 3 |
The KC-135 reduced-gravity aircraft in flight.
is a modified Boeing 707 four-engine turbojet that NASA uses
to simulate conditions of weightlessness. In a typical flight,
it traverses the Gulf of Mexico in a series of large parabolic
arcs. Peaking at 32,000 feet, the plane then dives to 24,000
feet, its fuselage pitched down at 40 degrees. At the top of
each parabola, passengers lose all sense of gravity and become
weightless for a period of roughly 25 seconds. When the
airplane comes out of the dive and begins its next ascent, the
plane pitches upward at about 50 degrees and passengers on the
craft are subjected to forces up to 1.8 times that of gravity.
This climbing and diving is repeated thirty times in what
might be described as the ultimate roller coaster ride.
Flying on the KC-135 nauseates passengers so frequently,
however, that the plane has been nicknamed the "Vomit
best known for its role in astronaut training, about 80
percent of the plane's flights are actually conducted in
support of research or engineering. Under a program
administered by the Texas Space Grant Consortium,
the space agency makes the KC-135 available to undergraduate
researchers for two weeks each year. In March of 2000 I
traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where my
project team conducted a series of microgravity experiments on
board the KC-135. Our project involved the use of virtual
reality (VR) as a pre-flight adaptation training tool. Our
hope was that advance training in VR would reduce feelings of
motion sickness and give trainees a more intuitive
understanding of the conditions of zero gravity.
Kate trains in the VR simulator.
A screenshot from the simulator showing the
interior of the KC-135 main cabin.
I programmed a VR trainer that simulated the conditions on
board the KC-135. We theorized that after someone has
practiced a series of simple tasks in the simulator, they
would perform the same tasks more effectively in actual
Unfortunately, the sample size in our experiment was too
small for the results to be conclusive, but we learned a great
deal about the conditions on the plane. We were able to
modify the simulator to mirror the conditions more closely, so
perhaps it can be used in a future experiment with a larger test
I float weightless on the KC-135.
to see me fly in zero gravity? Here's a video
of Kate, Randy, and I in flight (9 MB). | <urn:uuid:cd439137-6719-4e0e-a216-eb12fce35136> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.monzy.org/nasa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934101 | 545 | 3.3125 | 3 |
|The Fall Line a.k.a. "The Gnat Line"|
"What is the Gnat Line?"
Much like the seven wonders of the world, the Gnat Line is just one of many wonders of the Deep South. Needless to say, it has been an interesting experience to receive the number of emails from folks who really are searching for the timeless answer to this question.
It is not a gauntlet of hovering swarms of these pestering insects guarding the unseen border south of the Mason Dixon Line. Technically speaking, the Gnat Line refers to a geographic fall line that geologists or archaeologists [or both] believe may have been a prehistoric beach or shoreline. While the graphic map above shows the line beginning a little further north, most scientists believe it begins somewhere near the southeastern coastline of Virginia and proceeds south through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and on to the Gulf of Mexico. The geographic region below this line is often referred to as the southeastern coastal plains region. Many refer to this region as "the Deep South"; most Southerners feel the Deep South includes the entire states' regions rather than parts thereof.
Just know this: the further into the Deep South you venture, the thicker the onslaught of this zoological phenom.
ABOUT THE BUG:
While there are gnats found near and wide most everywhere, the Southern species found 'South of' this geographic anomaly will, in all likelihood, carry you away. They show up in cloud form, swirl all about your face and aspire to pepper the center of your two front teeth at any important outdoor gathering.
Even our beloved Lewis Grizzard had something to say about this pestering bug:
"A South Georgia Hazard:
GNATS: Gnats, tiny bugs, are the cause of a number of deaths in South Georgia each year. Some of these deaths have been attributed to swallowing a large number of gnats while talking or eating. Some also think the reason a lot of South Georgians disappear and are never heard from again is they are carried off by giants swarms of gnats and drowned in the Okefenokee Swamp." ~"Life Span in Georgia"
Camilla, Georgia (Mitchell County) hosts an annual festival the first weekend of every May known to the region simply as "Gnat Days." First held in 1987, the celebration begins on Friday with a 5K race and the two day event includes a music review, bike race, food, a Gnat Market along with a plethora of festivities as well as a pageant, of course. Be sure to check it out!
Savannah's local minor league baseball team is none other than the Savannah Sand Gnats. Sand Gnats are nearly microscopic and fierce! They should not be confused with Sand Flies - an entirely different species of pests.
South Florida has what is well known as "No See'ums" . These gnats are insane making their victims feel as if their legs are being set on fire - one pinhead bite at a time.
Texas has a species of this insect called the Buffalo Gnat that bites the blood right out of you. Anything with a "buffalo" reference is entirely too big for me. I'm happy to live with Georgia gnats and leave it at that.
Gnat's Landing is a place for casual food and fare found on St. Simon's Island and also in Statesboro.
If you don't believe that gnats are detrimental issues to lives in the Deep South, check out this online comment thread.
Politics; what do politics have to do with the gnat line? Read for yourself here.
Then… (insert long pause), there's "the Gnat Hat". You know, to wear. To shield a person from the insect. I'm thinkin' the camo one is my top pick. Bless their hearts.
Don't just take my word for it, find more thoughts written as well as scientific information and references on the Gnat Line from these resources:
- "You Know You're in Georgia When: You Cross the Gnat Line"
- And…even olives are growing south of the gnat line. | <urn:uuid:d9384c99-7a8f-47a8-8142-be67146f161b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://southofthegnatline.blogspot.com/p/gnat-line-101_28.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00173-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946872 | 860 | 2.90625 | 3 |
|Filed under Musings;|
Computers play an important role in education, be it in programming or game design. Retrocomputers like the Apple II can be especially valuable in any of these disciplines, especially programming. The finite, knowable universe of an 8-bit machine provides the perfect canvas on which budding programmers can craft their first algorithms.
But in many schools, the question isn't with what computers should programming be taught, but whether programming should be taught at all. Demand for programmers has never been higher, with the number of positions growing at twice the national rate. Yet ninety percent of schools offer no programming courses at all, leading to colleges graduating fewer computer science majors than they were a decade ago.
The non-profit Code.org is bringing attention to the need for more programming education in this country with a public service announcement (PSA). For this five-minute video, they have recruited the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and will.i.am, as well as some less likely suspects.
When I was in high school, a required course was geometry. I found it a challenging course, but reasonably so. The theorems and corollaries about alternate interior angles and their kin weren't intended to train me to be an architect; rather, they were lessons in logic, teaching me how to think and solve.
Programming is the modern geometry, offering similar value to students, whether or not they seek careers in computer programming. I do not consider myself a programmer, yet I have benefitted immensely from the languages I taught myself outside of school. I have occasionally tried to pass on these lessons to friends, showing them some (literally) BASIC concepts on the Apple II, such as variables and FOR loops. They remain completely mystified, with one going so far as to marvel at my own capacity to grasp programming: "You're a creative person, Ken, yet you can program. I've never met anyone whose mind can switch between those two modes so effortlessly."
But programming is creative. A relative who doesn't realize that basic tenet recently characterized programming to me as "Doing the same thing, over and over". How he confused programming with data entry is beyond me. But the fusion of creativity and logic is perhaps best found on this digital landscape, and students would benefit from being introduced to that sandbox — whether or not it's on an Apple II. | <urn:uuid:6d9c125b-cf2a-4c5e-a22e-98c0099899ae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.apl2bits.net/2013/03/18/code/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969203 | 491 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Technology & Engineering eBooks
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Human technology started with simple items like stone tools, and has developed into the modern age with advanced computers and electronics. It affects nearly every aspect of our lives. You can download eBooks on many aspects of technology and engineering, like electricity, fiber optics, hydraulics, machinery, lasers, radio, telecommunications, and television.
Use our eBook search to find a specific book or author.
Top 10 Technology & Engineering
- GIS Tutorial 1: Basic Workbook, 10.3 Edition
- How to Build a Small Budget Recording Studio from Scratch 4/E
- Becoming an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapist
- Winning the 3-Legged Race: When Business and Technology Run Together
- Reproductive Pathology of Domestic Mammals
- Digital Design and Computer Architecture: ARM Edition
- Marine Control, Practice
- American Sour Beers: Innovative Techniques for Mixed Fermentations
- Donny's Unauthorized Technical Guide to Harley-Davidson, 1936 to Present: Volume IV: Performancing the Evolution
- Cultivating Exceptional Cannabis: An Expert Breeder Shares His Secrets | <urn:uuid:4f0bd3b2-0aba-42bc-a271-a71025baef90> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ebookmall.com/categories/technology-engineering | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.851781 | 298 | 3.125 | 3 |
History of the U.S. and Canada
An index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Includes citations and links to journal articles, dissertations, primary documents, books and reviews. Links to fulltext are included. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Allows limiting to peer reviewed articles, those with references, and to historical periods (date ranges). America: History and Life complements Historical Abstracts from EBSCOhost , which covers scholarship on post-1450 world history. | <urn:uuid:501014db-a3ec-471f-a75e-4d644d7f1f52> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.stlawu.edu/library/database/america-history-life?width=400&height=400 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928316 | 136 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Beginner's Guide to Active Isolated Stretching
Active isolated stretching (AIS) will help you bolster your flexibility and retain the gains you've made. In AIS, you don't hold a stretch for 10 to 30 seconds as you would in traditional stretching. Instead, you use a rope to gently assist in pulling your muscle a little farther than your body would ordinarily allow. This form of stretching reprograms your brain and your body to remember new ranges of motion, so you see fast improvements in flexibility.
How It Works
To understand how AIS works, try this fast exercise: Curl your arm up without any weight and squeeze your biceps at the top. Now try to flex your triceps. The reason your triceps is mush in this position is because of a scientific principle known as "reciprocal inhibition." Reciprocal inhibition states that the muscle on one side of a joint must relax in order for the opposing muscle to contract, and it's the basis of AIS.
"Often times, people stretch one day only to feel just as tight the next," says Sue Falsone, director of performance physical therapy for Athletes' Performance. But with AIS, Falsone says, you utilize reciprocal inhibition to not only loosen up the opposing muscle, but also increase your range of motion. You won't stretch for 10 to 30 seconds, as you would with traditional stretch-and-hold stretches. Instead, by holding stretches for just a couple seconds, you'll increase your range of motion with each repetition.
By using a rope to assist with the stretch, you can increase your range of motion by 6 to 10 degrees more than without the rope. This is key because it helps reprogram your brain to remember this new range of motion. That way it can remind your muscles the next time you stretch or play or lift weights.
Mind Over Muscle
Mentally you’ve conditioned yourself to believe you can stretch only to a certain point. And most often, you've determined that point because you're weak in a given area or you lack focus. With AIS, you're reprogramming your brain, along with any preconceived notions about your flexibility.
For example, say you’re doing a hamstring stretch. You’re lying on your back with a rope wrapped around one leg. First, you squeeze your quadriceps, hip flexors, and abs. As you squeeze, they contract, and your brain sends a message to your hamstrings telling them to relax. That enables you to gently assist with the rope to pull your hamstrings into a slightly deeper stretch, and it helps to reprogram your brain to recognize that new range of motion.
Since your quadriceps and hip flexors are doing the work, your brain is sending signals to your quadriceps, shutting off the signals to your hamstrings, which want to resist. In a sense, you’re tricking your body, and you're constantly reprogramming it.
When to Do It
If you have a tight back or hamstrings, you might find it valuable to practice AIS every day. It's best performed at the end of a workout or when you have some free time at night or on the weekends.
- Move actively through the range of motion and exhale as you gently assist with the rope.
- The rope should add no more than 6 to 10 percent to your range of motion.
- To save time, do the entire series of leg stretches with one leg first, then the other.
Below are a few examples of Active Isolated Stretching movements. Click on each title for detailed exercise instructions.
- Sue Falsone, PT, ATC, CSCS, director of performance physical therapy for Athletes' Performance | <urn:uuid:32c9c73f-689b-4e39-a33c-7d3a4ece7530> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.coreperformance.com/knowledge/training/active-isolated-stretching.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942118 | 778 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Pakistan is by definition a Muslim nation. It was born in the partition of British India in 1947. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding father, had campaigned for a separate state for South Asian Muslims, but envisioned a modern state with a secular government. His Muslim League championed the Two-Nation Theory, according to which Hindus and Muslims could not coexist peacefully as a single nation. Nonetheless, Jinnah and most of the Muslim leadership during the independence struggle did not intend Pakistan to become a theocratic state.
The contradiction between the demand for a separate state on the basis of religion and the wish for non-religious governance was evident from the very start. Scholars say that this contradiction is at the heart of Pakistan's ongoing identity crises, contributing to the extremist challenges the country is facing.
Culture versus faith
"Contradiction is in Pakistan's essence, and that is why we have not been able to figure out our real identity," says Ijaz Khan, the chairman of the Department of International Relations at the University of Peshawar. According to him, there are two schools of thought in Pakistan: those who want a state run along religious lines and those with a secular mindset.
Both schools refer to Islam, however. The secularists invented "Muslim nationalism", stressing cultural matters rather than the faith as such to define Pakistan's identity. Bangladesh's secession from Pakistan in 1971, however, dealt a heavy blow to this philosophy because the Bengalis emphasised cultural differences between south Asian Muslims rather than their unity.
Soon after the partition of British India in 1947, the politicians who had led the campaign for a separate Muslim state became marginalised in Pakistan. The military and the bureaucracy assumed crucial roles in shaping policies, especially after the country's first military coup of 1958. "Both the military and the bureaucracy used religion as a tool to promote their interests," remarks Professor Khan, adding that some Muslim parties, which originally opposed partition on religious grounds, began to campaign for legislation in line with Islamic law. The military and the bureaucracy considered these parties allies.
All governments, however, whether established through elections or by military coups, "played the religion card", Professor Khan argues: "Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan People's Party, came up with the idea of Islamic socialism." Bhutto won a landslide victory against an alliance that included some faith-based parties in the 1973 elections, but he nonetheless continued to further Islamise the country. For instance, he banned the sale of liquor and declared Friday a holiday.
By Mohammad Ali Khan
[Excerpt—See accompanying URL for full original text.] | <urn:uuid:f7de48fd-26e0-49eb-9fa1-87c41a71940b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.islamopediaonline.org/editorials-and-analysis/split-identity-roots-terrorism-pakistan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962938 | 534 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.