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Maps courtesy Courtney Schumacher and Robert A. Houze Jr.
NASA data is helping scientists understand El Niño’s effect on weather. In addition to the change in the amount of rainfall that characterize an El Niño, there is a change in the type of rain, especially over the central Pacific. During an El Niño long periods of steady drizzle—stratiform rain—replace the short-lived thunderstorms that typically occur in the Equatororial Pacific. Stratiform rain pumps heat higher into the atmosphere than thunderstorms, which in turn changes the movement of high-level winds. In this way, El Niño influences global weather patterns, with effects like droughts in Indonesia and floods in Peru.
The maps above compare the “latent heating” in the upper troposphere [about 7 kilometers (4.35 miles) high] during a La Niña and an El Niño. (Latent heat is energy released by water when it condenses from a gas to a liquid.) Color represents latent heat, and the contours represent change in airflow. Solid lines represent clockwise rotation (anticyclonic circulation typical of high pressure systems in the northern hemisphere, cyclonic circulation typical of low pressure systems in the southern hemisphere), and dashed lines are counterclockwise. These changes in circulation, driven by latent heat, contribute to the changes in rainfall associated with El Niño around the Pacific.
The latent heat data were derived from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar data in January-April 1999 (La Niña) and January-April 1998 (El Niño). Streamfunction anomaly contours were calculated by a computer model.
For more information, read: El Niño’s Surprising Steady Pacific Rains Can Affect World Weather
Note: Often times, due to the size, browsers have a difficult time opening and displaying images. If you experiece an error when clicking on an image link, please try directly downloading the image (using a right click, save as method) to view it locally.
This image originally appeared on the Earth Observatory. Click here to view the full, original record.
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1135 — Mnemonic for nucleoTide vs. nucleoSide. A nucleoTide has Three things — base + sugar + phosphate. A nucleoside has only 2 — base + sugar.
Even though the post is over 2 years old it gets hits every day. One fact to whet you interest — we make (and consume) half our body weight of ATP every day [ Nature vol. 417 p. 25 ’02 ]
1136 — What is supercritical CO2 using to extract caffeine from coffee.
1136 — Excellent explanation of why S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) forms so easily — S being a soft nucleophile attacking at a primary carbon attached to a good leaving group (triphosphate). A similiarly good explanation of why the methyl group of SAM is also attacked by many nucleophile metabolic intermediates to methylate them.
1137 — It’s worth noting the way the sequence of bases on a single strand of DNA or RNA is read (by us). The example shows two adenosine and a thymine linked together. The sequence given is read as AAT, where the first letter has the phosphate on the 5′ and the last has it on the 3′. Always read 5′ to 3′. When DNA is copied, the coding strand is read this way which probably gave rise to the convention.
1138 — There are other ways to G, A, T, C to pair with each other. Look up Hoogsteen base pairing, and G quartet.
1138 — Although DNA is more chemically stable than RNA, the current thinking is that life arose in an ‘RNA world’ with RNA acting to both store information, and to act as enzymes (RNAase P is the first known example of an enzyme whose active site is made entirely of RNA).
1139 — No question that cyclic AMP is an important biological messenger (an undefined term which should have been), but so is cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP).
1138 The ribosome as the most elaborate structure in the universe. Here’s some elaboration. The hydrogen atom has a molecular mass of 1 Dalton. The ribosome contains about 4500 nucleotides (base + sugar + phosphate) and 50 proteins with a molecular mass of 2.5 megaDaltons. The average mammalian cell contains 10,000,000 ribosomes.
1141 I can’t believe a British textbook didn’t mention of James Lind when discussing scurvy. He kneweth not vitamin C but by supplying limes to sailors, brought scurvy to an end in the British fleet. It’s where the term Limey comes from.
1143 — Sad that that a huge opportunity was missed to explain why glucose rather than most of the other 2^4 possible stereoisomers is used in cellular biochemistry. It’s right there at the top of the page. See if you can figure out why — answer at the bottom of the post.
1145 — Med students love mnemonics. The one for alpha and beta orientation at the 1 carbon of glucose is very good. Alpha should stand for above, beta for below, but just the opposite occurs.
1145 — While sulforaphane may reduce the risk of prostate cancer, it probably does so by decreasing androgen levels. This may explain why vegetarian men are such wimps. For details see — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/vegetarians-are-wimps-science-now-tells-us-why/
1148 — The kink in oleic acid produced by the cis double bond is crucial for membrane function. It essentially prevents the hydrocarbon tails of the saturated fatty acids found there, from perfectly aligning with each other and forming a liquid crystal. This would cause all sorts of permeability and ridigity problems for the cell (since it is bounded by a lipid membrane).
1153 Nice discussion of why thiol esters are so labile and why the body uses them. Ditto for why histidine is so often found at catalytic sites.
1154 Be careful with pyruvate kinase. The nomenclature is tricky. There is a huge amount of organic chemical work being done to develop inhibitors of protein kinases, as they have been successfully used to treat cancer (Gleevec, imatinib). Our genome codes for some 518 protein kinases (out of about 20,000 protein coding genes). Protein kinases are enzymes which put phosphate on other proteins. Pyruvate kinase is just the reverse, it takes phosphate from phosphoenolpyruvate and puts it on adenosine monophosphate form adenosine diphosphate.
1161 — Again note that all the double bonds in the unsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) found in the body and shown here, are cis, for the same reason as given earlier (p. 1148)
p. 1167 — Nice to see where the 4 membered ring in pinene (and other terpenes) comes from.
At the end of the chapter several books are cited for more in the way of biochemistry. I’d like to put in a plug for Voet’s biochemistry (full disclosure: Don and I were good friends in grad school). It’s a book for chemists and the pictures are great. I don’t know that the others are inferior. I will say that I found Lehninger horribly dull. If you want to see how dull Biochemistry was in the 50’s and 60’s, go to the library and look at Fruton and Simmonds.
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- My doctor has referred me to the eye clinic at the local hospital for surgical treatment.
- The medical wards of hospitals admit the oldest and sickest people in our community.
- Neath is a smaller hospital with a busy medical intake but no acute surgical services.
Latin hospis meant both ‘host’ and ‘guest’. This has given us host (Middle English) itself (in the meaning ‘a person who entertains other people as guests’), hostel (Middle English), and hotel, as well as hospice (early 19th century), hospital, hospitality (Late Middle English), and hostile (late 16th century). Although the immediate source of guest (Old English) is Old Norse gestr, the history of the word can be traced back to an ancient root shared by Latin hostis.
For editors and proofreaders
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Scales of a fish on the Talpiot ossuary?
Although my comments on the Talpiot ossuary B have focused so far on other issues, there is one thing I've been curious about in relation to the "fish" interpretation. If this is a fish, why do the designs in its body change from rectangles, to shaded and non-shaded triangles, to "Y" shapes? Is it more likely that these are several different attempts to depict fish scales, one row at a time, or is it more likely that they are simple ornamentation, as on a vessel of some sort?
My curiosity is aroused by the fact that the design in the middle segment* -- shaded and unshaded triangles -- is apparently the same design as the ossuary's decorative border, also shaded and unshaded triangles. I have drawn attention to these elements in the picture above, which I have also rotated by ninety degrees so that it fits on the page better. I think it is more likely that we are seeing a decorative design on the border that correlates with the same decorative design on the object, rather than that the decorative design on the border contrasts with the scales of a "fish".
* I am speaking here of the middle section in the raw footage, which features three main segments, rather than the doctored image, which features four.
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Universal Newborn Hearing Screening
In an effort to promote public awareness regarding Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, a four-pronged approach covering all steps involved throughout the diagnosis of a possible hearing loss, was developed by the Alaska Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Program. For hard copies of these materials, please for order form, or to go to program contact information.
Alaska’s Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) general brochure (Click here to order this brochure. includes basic information about newborn hearing screening, including information about what the screening is and why it is being done, and strives to represent all Alaskans by including photos of children from various ethnic backgrounds.
The brochure is intended for pregnant mothers, those women that have just given birth, and the general public. Ideal locations for delivery of the brochure include, but are not limited to, childbirth and prenatal classes, ob/gyns offices, mother baby units, and birthing centers.
“What’s the Next Step?” brochure ( to order this brochure) includes information about who parents should contact in their community for further testing regarding a suspected hearing loss and why this is important in terms of reducing or minimizing developmental delays. “What’s the Next Step?” is intended for parents of newborns who refer, or do not pass, the hearing screening in the nursery. It will be available for nurses, audiologists and other health care providers who work with children and hearing loss, to deliver to parents as needed.
Basic Information About Hearing Loss( to order this brochure) was developed in a format easy for parents to read and locate information about what should be done next after a hearing loss is detected, who to contact, why the hearing loss may have occurred, and other basics regarding how best for parents to help an infant/child with hearing loss. The brochure is a condensed version of the parent resource manual and may prove more appropriate for families to receive immediately following a confirmed hearing loss diagnosis, rather than the manual.
Alaska’s Early Hearing Detection & Intervention (EHDI) parent resource manual ( to order/download this manual)is in a format easy for parents to read and divided into sections to make it simple to locate information such as introductions, frequently asked questions, checklists, resources, and terminology. Included in the manual are topics including information regarding hearing loss, tests, early intervention, advocacy, communication options, and educational options.
“Sounds & Silence: A Guide To Identifying Hearing Loss in Children” was developed to educate primary healthcare providers throughout Alaska residing in rural communities, specifically Community Health Aides/Practitioners (CHA/Ps), about the importance of early hearing detection. For infants/children living in rural communities, it is imperative that the primary healthcare providers be given the knowledge necessary for early detection of hearing loss, as well as surveillance of infants/children identified at birth with high risk factors for progressive hearing loss. The 15-minute video/DVD will educate the viewer about hearing loss, the high risk factors for progressive hearing loss, the developmental milestones for speech and hearing, and most importantly, the proper protocol regarding diagnosis and early intervention for an infant/child with a suspected hearing loss. To view a 90 second segment from the video, (The clip is 42 MB). To order copies of the video, click here.
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What Is Business Environment?
Meaning: – The term Business Environment is composed of two words ‘Business’ and ‘Environment’. In simple terms, the state in which a person remains busy is known as Business. The word Business in its economic sense means human activities like production, extraction or purchase or sales of goods that are performed for earning profits.
On the other hand, the word ‘Environment’ refers to the aspects of surroundings. Therefore, Business Environment may be defined as a set of conditions – Social, Legal, Economical, Political or Institutional that are uncontrollable in nature and affects the functioning of organization. Business Environment has two components:
1. Internal Environment
2. External Environment
Internal Environment: It includes 5 Ms i.e. man, material, money, machinery and management, usually within the control of business. Business can make changes in these factors according to the change in the functioning of enterprise.
External Environment: Those factors which are beyond the control of business enterprise are included in external environment. These factors are: Government and Legal factors, Geo-Physical Factors, Political Factors, Socio-Cultural Factors, Demo-Graphical factors etc. It is of two Types:
1. Micro/Operating Environment
2. Macro/General Environment
Micro/Operating Environment: The environment which is close to business and affects its capacity to work is known as Micro or Operating Environment. It consists of Suppliers, Customers, Market Intermediaries, Competitors and Public.
(1) Suppliers: – They are the persons who supply raw material and required components to the company. They must be reliable and business must have multiple suppliers i.e. they should not depend upon only one supplier.
(2) Customers: – Customers are regarded as the king of the market. Success of every business depends upon the level of their customer’s satisfaction. Types of Customers:
(iv) Government and Other Institutions
(3) Market Intermediaries: – They work as a link between business and final consumers. Types:-
(ii) Marketing Agencies
(iii) Financial Intermediaries
(iv) Physical Intermediaries
(4) Competitors: – Every move of the competitors affects the business. Business has to adjust itself according to the strategies of the Competitors.
(5) Public: – Any group who has actual interest in business enterprise is termed as public e.g. media and local public. They may be the users or non-users of the product.
Macro/General Environment: – It includes factors that create opportunities and threats to business units. Following are the elements of Macro Environment:
(1) Economic Environment: – It is very complex and dynamic in nature that keeps on changing with the change in policies or political situations. It has three elements:
(i) Economic Conditions of Public
(ii) Economic Policies of the country
(iv) Other Economic Factors: – Infrastructural Facilities, Banking, Insurance companies, money markets, capital markets etc.
(2) Non-Economic Environment: – Following are included in non-economic environment:-
(i) Political Environment: – It affects different business units extensively. Components:
(a) Political Belief of Government
(b) Political Strength of the Country
(c) Relation with other countries
(d) Defense and Military Policies
(e) Centre State Relationship in the Country
(f) Thinking Opposition Parties towards Business Unit
(ii) Socio-Cultural Environment: – Influence exercised by social and cultural factors, not within the control of business, is known as Socio-Cultural Environment. These factors include: attitude of people to work, family system, caste system, religion, education, marriage etc.
(iii) Technological Environment: – A systematic application of scientific knowledge to practical task is known as technology. Everyday there has been vast changes in products, services, lifestyles and living conditions, these changes must be analysed by every business unit and should adapt these changes.
(iv) Natural Environment: – It includes natural resources, weather, climatic conditions, port facilities, topographical factors such as soil, sea, rivers, rainfall etc. Every business unit must look for these factors before choosing the location for their business.
(v) Demographic Environment :- It is a study of perspective of population i.e. its size, standard of living, growth rate, age-sex composition, family size, income level (upper level, middle level and lower level), education level etc. Every business unit must see these features of population and recongnise their various need and produce accordingly.
(vi) International Environment: – It is particularly important for industries directly depending on import or exports. The factors that affect the business are: Globalisation, Liberalisation, foreign business policies, cultural exchange.
1. Business environment is compound in nature.
2. Business environment is constantly changing process.
3. Business environment is different for different business units.
4. It has both long term and short term impact.
5. Unlimited influence of external environment factors.
6. It is very uncertain.
7. Inter-related components.
8. It includes both internal and external environment.Category: Business, Business & Finance
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Fashion in the 15th century
Fashion in the 15th century, in Europe was characterized by a series of extremes and extravagances, from the voluminous gowns called houppelandes with their sweeping floor-length sleeves to the revealing doublets and hose of Renaissance Italy. Hats, hoods, and other headdresses assumed increasing importance, and were swagged, draped, jewelled, and feathered. Full-bodied houppelandes with voluminous sleeves worn with elaborate headdresses are characteristic of the earlier 15th century.
As Europe continued to grow more prosperous, the urban middle classes, skilled workers, began to wear more complex clothes that followed, at a distance, the fashions set by the elites. National variations in clothing seem on the whole to have increased over the century.
Wool was the most popular fabric for all classes by far, followed by linen and hemp. Wool fabrics were available in a wide range of qualities, from rough undyed cloth to fine, dense broadcloth with a velvety nap; high-value broadcloth was a backbone of the English economy and was exported throughout Europe. Wool fabrics were dyed in rich colours, notably reds, greens, golds, and blues, although the actual blue colour achievable with dyeing with woad (and less frequently indigo) could not match the characteristic rich lapis lazuli pigment blues depicted in contemporary illuminated manuscripts such as the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry.
Silk-weaving was well-established around the Mediterranean by the beginning of the century, and figured silks, often silk velvets with silver-gilt wefts, are increasingly seen in Italian dress and in the dress of the rich throughout Europe. Stately floral designs featuring a pomegranate or artichoke motif had reached Europe from China in the previous century and became a dominant design in the Ottoman silk-producing cities of Istanbul and Bursa, and spread to silk weavers in Florence, Genoa, Venice, Valencia and Seville in this period.
Fur was worn, mostly as a lining layer, by those who could afford it. The grey and white squirrel furs of the Middle Ages, vair and miniver, went out of style except at court, first for men and then for women; the new fashionable furs were dark brown sable and marten. Toward the end of the century, wild animal furs such as lynx became popular. Ermine remained the prerogative and hallmark of royalty.
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There were 5 major Philistine cities (1Sa 6:17; Josh 13:3),
but in later days the prophets carefully leave Gath out of the picture (Amo
1:6-8; Zep 2:4; Jer 25:20; Zec 9:5,6). Why? Uzziah, in his war against the
Philistines, smashed up Gath, Jabneh and Ashdod (2Ch 26:6). The last of these
was evidently strategic enough to warrant rebuilding (Isa 20:1), but the other
two disappeared from history -- and from prophecy also.
FOREIGN: Heb "ereb" = "mixed", with special ref to Arab
peoples (see Lesson, Arab/"mixed"). Also in v 20.
SHESHACH: A cryptogram for "Babel", or Babylon. The
method used is a simple code in which each letter is replaced by its counterpart
marked off from the other end of the alphabet. Thus, in English, BAD becomes
YZW. (The same code is used in Jer 51:1,41 also.)
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Revista médica de Chile
versión impresa ISSN 0034-9887
ALLIENDE, M Angélica et al. Genetic screening to determine an etiologic diagnosis in children with mental retardation. Rev. méd. Chile [online]. 2008, vol.136, n.12, pp.1542-1551. ISSN 0034-9887. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0034-98872008001200006.
Background: Mental retardation or intellectual disability affects 2% ofthe general population, but in 60% to 70% of cases the real cause ofthis retardation is not known. An early etiologic diagnosis of intellectual disability can lead to opportunities for improved educational interventions, reinforcing weak aáreas and providing a genetic counseling to the family Aim: To search genetic diseases underíying intellectual disabilities of children attending a special education school. Material and methods: A clinical geneticist performed the history and physical examination in one hundred and three students aged between 5 and 24 years (51 males). A blood sample was obtained in 92 of them for a genetic screening that included a standard karyotype, fragile X molecular genetic testing and search for inborn errors of metabolism by tándem mass spectrometry. Results: This approach yielded an etiological diagnosis in as much as 29 patients. Three percent of them had a fragile X syndrome. Inborn errors of metabolism were not detected. Conclusions: This type of screening should be done always in children with intellectual disability to establish an etiological diagnosis.
Palabras clave : Fragile X syndrome; Genetic screening; Mental retardation.
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When starting any plant from seed, you will be most successful by mimicing what happens to the seed in its natural environment. Pine seeds, once released from the cone, fall to the forest floor where they will remain all winter in a cold, moist environment. When the weather warms and conditions are conducive to germination, the seed will break its dormancy and sprout. When starting pine trees from seeds, you can mimic that process in your own home.
Fill a plastic sandwich bag with moist sand. Add the pine tree seeds and make sure they are pushed into the sand. Close the bag, place it in the refrigerator and allow it to remain there for 90 days.
Fill individual planting pots with equal parts of sand, peat moss and potting soil. Moisten the mixture well and allow the pots to drain completely.
Remove the bag from the refrigerator and the pine tree seeds from the sand. Push the seeds 1 inch into the planting medium in the pots. Cover the seeds with soil.
Place the pots on a heat mat set to 70 degrees F, in a sunny area. Water the soil to keep it moist at all times. The seeds should sprout within 30 days.
Water the seedlings only when the soil feels dry when you poke your finger into the root area.
Transplant the pine tree seedlings into the landscape when they reach 6 inches in height.
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Just months after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans fired all 7,500 of its teachers. After a seven-year legal battle, the teachers union won a measure of justice in June when a judge ruled the firings illegal.
In many respects, the victory was too little, too late. Fired teachers will be getting some money for their troubles, but they won’t be getting their old jobs back. Nor will the city be getting its public school system back any time soon.
But United Teachers New Orleans is eager to prove it’s not dead yet. Though the union has no contracts at any New Orleans schools, UTNO is fighting for teachers and students through a grassroots, social justice approach to unionism. With a membership of 1,000, about a quarter of all teachers in the city, it’s made some notable achievements without collective bargaining rights.
DEMOLISH SCHOOLS & UNION
Before the 2005 storm, the city oversaw 128 public schools. After Katrina, the state legislature seized the opportunity to privatize. Control of 107 schools deemed low-performing was given to the state-run Recovery School District, which in turn handed the majority to private charter operators.
The Orleans Parish School Board canceled UTNO’s contract nine months after the flood. Teachers have no collective bargaining rights written into law in Louisiana, as in many Southern states.
Thus the great experiment in New Orleans—watched closely by corporate-inspired school “reformers” nationally—was born. More than 80 percent of New Orleans students now attend charter schools.
Teachers who remained in the profession post-Katrina are now scattered across 80 schools governed by 50 public and private bodies, including the Recovery District, the disappearing Orleans Parish public school district, and a throng of charter operators.
The shrinking pool of veteran teachers, historically the core of New Orleans’ black middle class, is being replaced by recent college graduates, recruited from out of town by Teach for America.
Besides paving the way for privatization, the firings were an attempt to kill the teachers union. “We were the strongest union in the state,” says Katrena Ndang, a retired high school teacher who worked as an UTNO community organizer after the storm. “We know that was the reason because people say to us, ‘You’re still around? I thought we got rid of you.’”
For “reformers” who blame education’s problems on bad teachers and seek to cut costs, the teachers union was seen as an obstacle. Veteran teachers cost more than recent graduates and unionized teachers are harder to fire.
INTO THE COMMUNITY
Senior teachers say years on the job translate into connections to community—which has been key to UTNO’s visibility and voice.
The union has close ties with the NAACP. It has partnered with building trades unions to renovate classrooms in public schools and worked with clergy to develop education committees at churches to discuss the impact of the schools overhaul. The union meets regularly with a day laborer worker center and brings members to its rallies.
“You have to recast your union as not just an organization that’s looking out for teachers,” says Dave Cash, a social studies teacher and UTNO recording secretary. “You have to care about everything that’s happening in the community.”
Visibility has turned into victories on issues affecting students and teachers alike.
When John Dibert Elementary School was taken over by a charter, the new management announced it would be closing its pre-kindergarten. The union worked with parents to organize rallies and the program was saved.
Earlier this summer, the Algiers Charter School Association, one of the largest charter operators in the city, announced it would be laying off teachers in droves and transferring principals from high-performing to low-performing schools. UTNO rallied with parents and turned members out to a 400-person public meeting, convincing the charter to postpone its radical plans.
The union will work with local groups to develop candidates for the school board election in November. The board now directly runs just six schools and oversees 12 charters. The union hopes to stave off charterization of the few remaining Orleans Parish schools.
UTNO Vice President Jim Randels says, “A locally elected school board that has as its core interest public education for the citizens it represents is going to handle fiscal matters differently than someone looking to develop profit margins.”
Since Katrina, both the charters and the state-run Recovery District have turned to teacher recruitment programs like Teach for America, a corporate-backed nonprofit that brings in young college graduates, most without any teaching background, and whips them through a six-week boot camp.
They are assigned to two-year teaching stints. Most don’t stay in the profession, ensuring a constant churn of low-cost, compliant, eager young teachers. TfA opposes the job security teacher unions have won.
Unsurprisingly, there’s animosity between the young, mostly white, out-of-town recruits and veteran teachers, who are predominantly African American.
UTNO began a “racial healing” group to bring together new teachers with veteran and retired teachers and community members.
Getting the two groups together proved a stiff climb. Ndang, who facilitates the group, said charter operators told new teachers, “Don’t have anything to do with veteran teachers because they’re the cause of the problems you’re going in there to solve.”
The monthly group discusses frankly everything from the New Orleans culture to classroom discipline to the school-to-prison pipeline.
For veteran teachers, it’s a way to help students by making sure new teachers have the tools to be effective and culturally competent. Young teachers get guidance from teachers rooted in the community and can fill some of the gaps left by their skimpy training. Out of this space, the union has developed a formal mentorship program.
“Sometimes it’s a crying session,” Ndang said. “To come to that meeting and have people understand the things you’re going through is one of the greatest things that could happen to them.”
The group has proved to be the union’s most effective recruitment tool for new teachers.
PRESENT IN THE WORKPLACE
Though the union has neither collective bargaining agreements nor a majority among teachers, it’s still striving to address workplace issues.
In the six schools run by the school district, the union has about 80 percent density. There, most work rules from the old contract are still followed. Members have regular meetings with principals and union reps negotiate solutions.
UTNO has an agreement with the Recovery District that gives it access to the schools, dues check-off for teachers who sign up, and the right to partner with the district on professional development training. The union represents members when workplace issues arise.
When the Recovery District decided last year to use the state’s new test-based evaluations to fire teachers, the union won an individual appeals process and UTNO President Larry Carter spent time in July sitting in on those hearings.
While the union has not been able to stop the conversion of public schools to charters, it has brought clarity to the process. At George Washington Carver High School, officials refused to give straight answers on who would be losing their jobs when and what the reapplication process would be. The union forced them to sit down with teachers and discuss the transition.
Outreach like the racial healing group, professional development sessions, and good old-fashioned door-knocking have helped UTNO keep members signed up and relating to the union. The long-run goal is collective bargaining, but Carter estimates that covering all city teachers would require more than 60 agreements.
“We’re not in a position to really win much right now,” acknowledges Cash, the UTNO secretary. “But we’re in a position to prepare ourselves for a time when times change. A lot of people believe that all the money coming into New Orleans right now will dry up. Are we going to be ready to pick up the pieces when that happens?”
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<urn:uuid:4fbb4500-be4d-4ed4-b5c2-931e38895d60>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.zcommunications.org/znetarticle/lacking-contracts-new-orleans-teachers-use-old-school-tactics-by-theresa-moran/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965558
| 1,715
| 2.59375
| 3
|
What are the key statistics about kidney cancer?
The American Cancer Society’s most recent estimates for kidney cancer in the United States are for 2016:
- About 62,700 new cases of kidney cancer (39,650 in men and 23,050 in women) will occur.
- About 14,240 people (9,240 men and 5,000 women) will die from this disease.
These numbers include all types of kidney and renal pelvis cancers.
Most people with kidney cancer are older. The average age of people when they are diagnosed is 64. Kidney cancer is very uncommon in people younger than age 45.
Kidney cancer is among the 10 most common cancers in both men and women. Overall, the lifetime risk for developing kidney cancer is about 1 in 63 (1.6%). This risk is higher in men than in women. A number of other factors (described in “What are the risk factors for kidney cancer?”) also affect a person’s risk.
For reasons that are not totally clear, the rate of new kidney cancers has been rising since the 1990s, although this seems to have leveled off in the past few years. Part of this rise was probably due to the use of newer imaging tests such as CT scans, which picked up some cancers that might never have been found otherwise. The death rates for these cancers have gone down slightly since the middle of the 1990s.
Survival rates for people diagnosed with kidney cancer are discussed in “Survival rates for kidney cancer by stage.”
Visit the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Statistics Center for more key statistics.
Last Medical Review: 02/24/2014
Last Revised: 02/10/2016
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<urn:uuid:8a26db33-8e96-413f-afd6-fe7c55e52e6d>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/kidneycancer/detailedguide/kidney-cancer-adult-key-statistics
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970964
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| 2.890625
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|
A real-time MRI scan enables neurosurgeons to target the tumor.
According to the American Cancer Society, most people will survive just 15 months following diagnosis of this kind of tumor, because it is so difficult to treat.
Laser heat is known to kill brain tumor cells, and now it seems that the technology can also penetrate the blood-brain barrier.
Co-corresponding author Dr. Eric C. Leuthardt, a professor of neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, was part of a team that developed the technology.
It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2009 as a surgical tool to treat brain tumors, but this is the first time it has been shown to disrupt the blood-brain barrier.
Surgery takes place as the patient lies in an MRI scanner, giving the neurosurgical team the chance to observe the tumor in real time.
After making an incision of 3 mm, the neurosurgeon robotically inserts the laser, which kills the tumor cells by heating them to around 150 °F.
Tumor growth stalled during treatment
The researchers anticipated that the heat would kill the tumor cells, but they were surprised to find, while reviewing MRI scans, that changes had occurred near the former tumor site that indicated a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier.
The laser treatment kept the blood-brain barrier open for 4-6 weeks, which presented a window of opportunity to deliver chemotherapy drugs.
The current research is part of a larger phase 2 clinical trial with 40 participants. The current study originally enrolled 20 patients, of whom 14 were deemed suitable for the trial.
The 14 candidates underwent minimally invasive laser surgery to open the barrier, and 13 of them received a widely used chemotherapy drug, doxorubicin, delivered intravenously over the following weeks.
In 12 patients, the tumor did not grow during the 10 weeks of the study. One patient's tumor grew before chemotherapy, and another's progressed after the treatment.
Researchers are continuing to monitor the patients' progress.
The laser surgery was well tolerated by the patients, most of whom went home after 1-2 days. There were no severe complications.
Dr. Leuthardt says:
"Our early results indicate that the patients are doing much better on average, in terms of survival and clinical outcomes, than what we would expect. We are encouraged but very cautious because additional patients need to be evaluated before we can draw firm conclusions."
Previous attempts to break the barrier have either provided a window of only about 24 hours, insufficient for consistent delivery of chemotherapy, or had limited benefits.
Not only does the laser technology leave the barrier open for long enough to deliver multiple doses of chemotherapy, but it also opens the barrier near the tumor. The protective cover remains intact elsewhere, limiting the harmful effect of chemotherapy.
On the basis of these findings, the team speculates that alternative approaches, such as cancer immunotherapy, could also be used for patients with glioblastomas. Cancer immunotherapy involves harnessing immune cells to seek out and destroy cancer.
The researchers are next planning to trial the laser technology together with both immunotherapy and chemotherapy.
Medical News Today reported last year that mapping proteins could enable experts to track the regrowth of brain tumors.
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<urn:uuid:dbad4f10-f4e0-4727-9d53-6350502aff8e>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306994.php
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958226
| 679
| 3.0625
| 3
|
The Indirect Test
The point of departure for the indirect attack is the scale of distance as determined from apparent luminosities. There are evidently two possible scales, depending upon whether or not the nebulae are receding. The distinction is not merely a difference in the unit; the ratios of the distances on the two scales do not remain constant. Consequently, the wrong scale may lead to peculiarities or inconsistencies in the map of the observable region, which might be recognized, or, at least, suspected. The project of mapping the observable region in detail cannot be carried out, but it is possible to examine precise formulations of the general characteristics of the region. Actually, the investigation reduces to a study of the laws of red-shifts and the laws of nebular distribution as derived from the alternate scales of distance.
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<urn:uuid:52b1b1c1-7eb0-4399-90c4-1cafcd874ff2>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept04/Hubble/Hubble2_7.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.929177
| 165
| 2.78125
| 3
|
What is postscript?
If you’re a graphic designer,you must have heard of postscript format file before.But what is postscript on earth?
Postscript,also called PS,is a kind of programming language which describes the appearance of a printed page. Postscript was developed by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982 and has become an industry standard for printing and imaging. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. All major printer manufacturers make printers that contain or can be loaded with Postscript software, which also runs on all major operating system platforms. A Postscript file can be identified with the extension name of .ps.Postscript has been used by print service providers, publishers, corporations, and government agencies around the world.
Which software can be used to convert word to postscript?
Maybe someday you will receive a task which requests you to convert word to postscript file format.Maybe it is a task that you have never done before and you want to know which software can be used as a tool.Don’t worry,docPrint Pro will do you a great favor.
docPrint Pro is a Windows printer driver that saves ink, paper and time by controlling printed output, it supports print 2, 4, 6, 8 or 16 pages on a single sheet of paper, it also supports scale A0, A1, A2, A3 papers to standard Letter or A4 paper sizes.docPrint Pro is also a Document Converter, it converts any printable document to 50+ graphics, it may be a Microsoft Word file, Adobe PDF file, HTML file, Excel file and others, docPrint Pro supports various image formats, resolutions and compressions.You may ask is it easy to access?In essence,docPrint Pro is easy-to-use, just print a document to "docPrint", you will be able to start using Document Printer software.
How to convert word to postscript with docPrint Pro?
Please open the word document in your computer first and click “File”—“Print” to run the printer driver in your computer.You can also take the quick way—pressing “Ctrl”+ “P” on your keyboard at the same time.All these two ways can pop up a “Print” dialog box in which you can choose your printer.Please see Figure1.
After choosing docPrint as your current printer in “Name” combo box,you should click “OK” button to pop up “docPrint” dialog box in which you can do all the things you want,such as converting word to postscript.Please see Figure2.
You will find there are many icons on the toolbar to control many kinds of functions.But if you want to convert word to postscript without setting any parameters,you can ignore the toolbar and click “File”—“Save As” directly.You can also click the icon framed in the rectangle below “File” to pop up “Save As” dialog box showed in Fiugre3.Of course,the hot key “Ctrl”+ “S” will also aim at the same goal.
In “Save As” dialog box,you can specify the path for the target file in “Save in” combo box,please see rectangle1;edit a suitable name for the target file in “File name” edit box,please see rectangle2;ensure the type of the target file in “Save as type” combo box,please see rectangle 3.You should choose “PS File(*.PS)”here as we have mentioned that .PS is the suffix of postscript format file.Then you can click “Save” button.
In no more than 10 seconds,the conversion of word to postscript will be over and you can find your target file in specified location to complete your task.
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<urn:uuid:9df93fbc-3c7d-4966-8f8e-a0261e776a61>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.verypdf.com/wordpress/201111/how-to-convert-word-to-postscript-file-using-document-converter-2-13115.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.888801
| 836
| 2.984375
| 3
|
This is an initiative game for Boy Scouts and Venturers. Its purpose is to get a group to work together to solve a problem. This should build teamwork and cooperation in the group. There is no need to pit teams against each other. Let each group take it’s time figuring out how to work together. Don’t forget to leave time at the end for reflection. Let the team spend a few minutes talking about how they worked together.
Materials (for each team/patrol/group):
- a 12 inch square board with 8 6 foot ropes attached (see diagram in the printable instructions above). Attach the ropes by whatever means you choose. Drilling holes in the board and tying them on works well.
- A small can – like a clean empty vegetable can or orange juice can
- Prepare the board and ropes before the meeting.
- Mark a starting point on the ground.
- Mark an ending point about 25 feet away from the starting point.
- Fill the can with water (“nitro”) almost to the top.
- Place the board on the starting point.
- Place the can of water on top of the board.
- Have the team pick up the board using only the ropes.
- They must transport the “nitro” to the ending point without spilling it.
- The team should keep working together to solve the problem.
- When time is up, the team should spend a few minutes reflecting on how the exercise went, what worked well, what didn’t work, etc.
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<urn:uuid:82e8ae5b-37a7-4428-a02b-955c1244de26>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://scoutermom.com/334/nitro-transport-game/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.922325
| 326
| 2.59375
| 3
|
Clerestory windows make for stunning architectural detail, but how can they lower your energy bill? Arranged in rows, clerestory windows (pronounced “clear-story”) mimic their name, creating an entire level of light. Usually installed higher than surrounding roofs, clerestory windows are located well above eye level and won’t compromise your privacy like standard windows can.
Often used for daylighting purposes, clerestory windows help reduce or eliminate the need to use electrical lighting during the day. Though they are typically fixed, clerestory windows can be made operable, providing a means of cross-ventilation for the home. Clerestory windows increase the amount of natural sunlight in the home, and they can also be installed in a thoughtful manner depending on the level of heat gain desired.
For pricing on window installation in your area, click here.
For instance, to increase natural lighting without increasing direct heat gain that can potentially overheat the home, clerestory windows can be shaded by awnings or roof overhangs. They can also be installed on the north side of the home, where they won’t be exposed to the highest level of direct sun. On the other hand, to increase heat gain in the home, clerestory windows can be installed on the south side, where solar windows are placed. Here, include a low-emissivity coating to reduce heat loss. In the winter, the south-facing clerestory windows invite heat in from the sun. In the summer, trees and window shades can help minimize excessive heat gain.
Clearly, clerestory windows are a critical passive solar element. They are also used in numerous forms of architecture a popular feature in churches, large buildings, and even factories. Because they rise above adjoining roofs, clerestory windows can be used to light an interior room that wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to windows. Clerestory windows can also be a creative way to join two distinct roof sections.
To help direct the path of light made available by clerestory windows, use light colored surfaces on your interior walls. The walls can help reflect indirect light and take your even daylight farther.
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<urn:uuid:6f0a3393-1695-4529-8b4e-c1371c163513>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://solar.calfinder.com/blog/solar-information/clerestory-windows-highlight-passive-solar-homes/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.925095
| 450
| 2.734375
| 3
|
Language and Development in Africa "discusses the resourcefulness of languages, both local and global, in view of the ongoing transformation of African societies as much as for economic development.. "
Teachers need a clear description of what constitutes grammar and how it
can best be taught in the English language classroom. This book illustrates
a new way of describing the grammar of spoken and written English and
demonstrates how lexical phrases, frames and patterns provide a link
between grammar and vocabulary. These processes and techniques are
contextualised within a task-based approach to teaching and learning.
Numerous interactive tasks are provided to guide readers. Over 40 examples
of teaching exercises are included to illustrate techniques which can be
applied in the classroom immediately.
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<urn:uuid:c8d46bbc-3e31-4084-b5ff-19f2d7f82d0b>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=49794
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00160-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924813
| 154
| 3.734375
| 4
|
Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology
Master of Arts
In this thesis the author uses oral histories to study vernacular architecture, analyzing the changes in the way people in the Catskills have used buildings, specifically farm dwellings, to make a living, first as farmers and then as proprietors of boarding houses. The Catskills region in upstate New York is well known for its dairy farms and also for its resorts, but little has been researched to trace continuities and discrepancies between the rural residents and urban visitors. Boarding on farms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries showed continuity between the two groups: recent immigrants who lived in New York City and rural families, whether long-established or recently arrived. The two groups used their living spaces in similar ways, one to achieve a healthful family vacation and the other to earn a living for the family on the farm. They made generalized use of unitary spaces (rooms), accommodating multiple activities and numbers of people in ways that were antithetical to the suburban middle-class' prescriptions for individual privacy, family privacy, and the specialization of spaces. Using oral histories and other primary sources, the author describes these similarities in space utilization as a commonality between urban and rural people in the Catskills, demonstrating that neither group is a passive consumer of architecture. Instead, they not only modify the rooms in the farmhouse but also continue to use or actively revive ways of using space that meet their goals, within the material resource at hand. Vernacular architecture is sometimes inaccurately equated with buildings that lack style. For architecture that may not seem to meet the criteria of the historians of style, people's words are the most eloquent interpretation of buildings and of the lives they sheltered.
Architecture | Folklore
Scheer, Virginia, "Farmhouses That Became Boarding Houses in the Catskill Mountains of New York State" (1999). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 755.
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<urn:uuid:424bba45-0e90-4b6a-a224-34d31651de5c>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/755/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945366
| 394
| 3.234375
| 3
|
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Fusion, the process that powers the sun, is the forever dream of energy scientists — safe, nonpolluting and almost boundless. Even here at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the primary focus of fusion work involves nuclear weapons, many scientists talk poetically about how it could end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels.
“It’s the dream of the future, solving energy,” said Stephen E. Bodner, a retired physicist who worked on fusion at Livermore in the 1960s and ’70s, recalling that the military focus was basically a cover story, a way to keep government money flowing to the lab for energy research.
“Everyone was winking,” he said. “Everyone knew better.”
The basic concept behind fusion is simple: Squeeze hydrogen atoms hard enough and they fuse together in helium. A helium atom weighs slightly less than the original hydrogen atoms, and by Einstein’s equation E = mc2, that liberated bit of mass turns into energy. Hydrogen is so abundant that unlike fossil fuels or fissionable material like uranium, it will never run out.
But controlled fusion is still a dream, avidly pursued and perpetually out of reach. Scientists have never figured out a way to keep a fusion reaction going long enough to generate usable energy. The running joke is that “fusion is 30 years in the future — and always will be.”
Now, however, scientists here have given the world some hopeful progress. Last month, a team headed by Omar A. Hurricane announced that it had used Livermore’s giant lasers to fuse hydrogen atoms and produce flashes of energy, like miniature hydrogen bombs. The amount of energy produced was tiny — the equivalent of what a 60-watt light bulb consumes in five minutes. But that was five times the output of attempts a couple of years ago.
When a physicist named Hurricane generates significant bursts of fusion energy with 192 mega-lasers, the Twitterverse revels in the comic book possibilities.
“Wasn’t he in X-Men?” one person tweeted.
“Awesome science story, but there’s a zero percent chance that a fusion laser scientist named Dr. Hurricane isn’t a supervillain,” another chimed in.
Actually, Dr. Hurricane, 45, is more Clark Kent than superhero. Instead of saving the world, his ambition is to explore the scientific puzzle in front of him.
He said it was too early to speculate about future laser-fusion power plants, and tried to deflect credit to the more than 20 scientists on the team. “I don’t want it to be about me or my funny name,” he said.
The fusion reaction occurred at the National Ignition Facility, a Livermore project with a controversial and expensive history. After the United States ended underground nuclear testing in 1992, lab officials argued that some way was needed to verify that the weapons would work as computer models said they would. The National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Department of Energy, agreed.
The key to the facility is its middle name — ignition. For simplistic government purposes, ignition was defined as a fusion reaction producing as much energy as the laser beams that hit it. To achieve that, an initial smidgen of fusion has to cascade to neighboring hydrogen atoms.
The center of NIF is the target chamber, a metal sphere 33 feet wide with gleaming diagnostic equipment radiating outward. It looks like something from “Star Trek.” Indeed, it has been in “Star Trek,” doubling as the engine room of the Enterprise in last year’s “Star Trek Into Darkness” movie. (NIF’s vast banks of laser amplifiers also served as a backdrop for a starship commanded by a renegade Starfleet admiral.)
The laser complex fills a building with a footprint equal to three football fields. Each blast starts with a small laser pulse that is split via partly reflecting mirrors into 192, then bounced back and forth through laser amplifiers that fill a couple of warehouse-size rooms before the beams are focused into the target chamber, converging on a gold cylinder that is about the size and shape of a pencil eraser.
The laser beams enter at the top and bottom of the cylinder, their heat generating an intense bath of X-rays that rushes inward to compress a peppercorn-size pellet. The pellet contains a layer of carefully frozen deuterium and tritium, the heavier forms of hydrogen, and in a brief moment — about one ten-billionth of a second — the imploding atoms fuse together.
The scientists call it bang time.
Each shot is so short that the cost in electricity is just $5.
Livermore officials were confident enough that NIF would achieve ignition soon after it was turned on that they laid out a plan for building a demonstration power plant, called Laser Inertial Fusion Energy with the appealing acronym LIFE, technology they said could be ready for the world’s electrical grids by the 2030s.
Dr. Bodner, who had left Livermore in 1975 and set up a competing program at the Naval Research Laboratory, was a persistent critic of NIF. In 1995, he wrote a paper predicting that instabilities in the imploding gas would thwart ignition.
“Why did they go forward with something that failed almost immediately?” he said in an interview.
Dr. Bodner championed a different laser fusion concept that he believed would work far better for a power plant. The gold cylinder in Livermore’s design is inefficient. Not all of the laser energy is converted into X-rays; most of the X-rays miss the pellet. Only 0.5 percent of the laser energy reaches the fuel.
In Dr. Bodner’s designs, the lasers shine directly on the fuel pellets. That creates other technical difficulties, but Dr. Bodner said his team was able to show those could be overcome. He retired in 1999.
NIF began firing its lasers in 2009. A banner unfurled on the outside of the building proclaimed, “Bringing Star Power to Earth.” But for all of the technical wizardry, the first three years of bang time were largely a bust.
Livermore’s computer simulations had predicted robust implosions leading to ignition. Instead, each pellet released just a bit of energy. Livermore officials remained publicly confident. Edward Moses, then NIF’s director, told the journal Nature, “We have all the capability to make it happen in fiscal year 2012.”
It did not happen. The cost of building and operating NIF to date is $5.3 billion.
In stars like our sun, the immense gravity provides the squeeze that enables fusion. On earth, there are two main possibilities: powerful lasers to jam the hydrogen together, as at NIF, or magnetic fields to contain a hot hydrogen plasma until the atoms collide and fuse. Most fusion energy research has focused on the latter approach, particularly doughnut-shaped machines known as tokamaks.
From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, the amount of power produced by ever larger machines doubled every year, on average. In 1994, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton generated 10.7 million watts of power for a brief moment. Three years later, the Joint European Torus in England topped that, at 16 million watts.
But by then, without an immediate energy crisis, government financing of fusion research had dipped sharply.
The next step is a mammoth international collaboration known as Iter, originally an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, but now referring to the Latin for “the way.” Construction on Iter has begun in southern France, with the first operations expected to begin in the 2020s — if it comes together.
Under a byzantine, dispersed management structure, the partners in the project (the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, the United States, India and South Korea) agreed to contribute pieces of the reactor, with the central Iter organization attempting to coordinate. A review criticized Iter’s management for delays and cost overruns. Iter officials, however, say they are fixing the problems.
“This is a risk we consider well managed,” said Carlos Alejaldre, an Iter deputy director general.
General Atomics, a company in San Diego, is responsible for a main piece of the American contribution, a stack of huge magnetic coils at the center of Iter that will help control the shape of the hydrogen gas within the doughnut-shaped ring. The company has spent the past few years rounding up the machinery it will need to produce the seven coils, each more than 13 feet wide and weighing 120 tons. It will begin manufacturing a test coil this summer, and company officials say they are on track to finish production on schedule.
If Iter succeeds, a demonstration fusion power plant is to follow.
Tony S. Taylor, General Atomics’s vice president for magnetic fusion energy, started there in 1979. “I wanted to do something that was useful for the future of mankind,” he said. Back then, practical fusion power was expected to be 30 years away.
Thirty-five years later, Dr. Taylor, nearing retirement age, is still waiting. “It could have happened on that time scale,” he said. “What’s limiting our progress is funding.”
For most of his Livermore career, Dr. Hurricane worked in the classified shadows as a nuclear weapons designer. In 2009, he received a prestigious award for solving a mystery first recognized in the 1960s involving the physics of what happens inside nuclear bombs, although he still cannot say much about that.
“There was a discrepancy there,” he said, carefully choosing words. It was not a limitation of computer simulations but something more fundamental. “It was more mysterious,” he said. “We actually did resolve what the discrepancy was and understand the origin of the problem..”
With NIF’s failure at ignition, Dr. Hurricane was asked to take a fresh look. “The managers knew I just like solving problems,” he said. “And I don’t have any other ambition,” he joked.
In the rush to achieve ignition, the NIF scientists had used laser pulses that hit the fuel pellet as hard as possible, but the pellet was being ripped apart before fusion occurred. Dr. Hurricane adjusted the laser pulse to warm the gold cylinder initially. That reduced the implosion pressure, but calmed some of the instabilities, yielding a higher rate of fusion.
In September, Dr. Hurricane’s team had its first shot that showed signs of the fusion reaction spreading through the fuel.
“Now we at least have a sparking match,” said Jeff Wisoff, NIF’s acting director.
Since then, they have nudged up the energy by using cylinders of depleted uranium instead of gold, although the output is still considerably short of ignition.
But Dr. Hurricane is not aiming to solve the world’s energy problems.
“I actually don’t constrain myself personally with the practical applications at this point,” he said. “We don’t have to get a home run here.” In his baseball analogy, he said, he was looking to just get on base with singles and walks, and if enough small things work, then perhaps NIF will get to ignition.
Even then, practical fusion would still likely be decades away. NIF, at its quickest, fires once every few hours. The targets take weeks to build with artisan precision. A commercial laser fusion power plant would probably have to vaporize fuel pellets at a rate of 10 per second.
And if Dr. Bodner is right, the best approach is not even being pursued.
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Summary: Governments and companies have a duty to work together to promote human rights rather than simply protect against human rights from corporate abuse. Ruggie’s endorsement of a dual responsibility misses the mark on what is truly needed, i.e. a drastic shift in corporate culture and a decrease in corporate influence of national legislative agendas.
On June 16, 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed a new set of global guiding principles for businesses (“Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights“) designed to ensure that companies do not violate human rights in the course of the their transactions and that they provide redress when infringements occur. The principles are a culmination of six years of research led by Professor John Ruggie of Harvard University, the UN’s special representative on business and human rights since 2005, who visited 20 countries, conducted online consultations with thousands of participants, and received dozens of recommendations. According to Ruggie, states and companies have a dual responsibility under which states must enact and enforce the appropriate laws and companies have an independent responsibility to respect human rights. This is an effort to combat the lack of enforcement or weak status of national laws which is often used as an excuse or explanation for the failure of businesses to act responsibly.
However, one should pause to think about what type of solution will resolve this inefficiency and yield the desired results. When national laws are inadequate and/or unenforced companies are free to violate human rights on their path to gaining market share, in the so-called, “best interest of their shareholders.” This problem is further exacerbated by the exponential growth of multinationals which, due to the nature and expanse of their global operations, are capable of committing both major and minor violations and these often go unnoticed and/or unpunished.
The guiding principles differ from the UN’s Global Compact (which Ruggie was also instrumental in designing) and mark the culmination of Ruggie’s tenure as the special representative on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. In spite of the Global Compact’s 8,000 corporate members from over 135 countries, it has befallen a great deal criticism for its failure to punish those companies who violate its code. Whereas the Global Compact was enacted as an initiative of the secretary general, the principles recently adopted by the Human Rights Council were established by governments and include remedy and prevention mechanisms in order to broaden their scope beyond that of the Global Compact. Yet after six years and extensive research, more should be expected.
The framework is based on three pillars – the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business, through appropriate policies, regulation, and adjudication; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means avoiding infringing on the rights of others and to address adverse impacts that occur; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, both judicial and non-judicial.
Under the ‘State Duty to Protect,’ the guiding principles recommend how governments should provide greater clarity of expectations and consistency of rules for business in relation to human rights.
The ‘Corporate Responsibility to Respect’ principles provide a blueprint for companies on how to know and show that they are respecting human rights.
The ‘Access to Remedy’ principles focus on ensuring that where people are harmed by business activities, there is both adequate accountability and effective judicial and non-judicial redress.
Human Rights Watch described the Principles as a “squandered opportunity” to take meaningful action to curtail business-related human rights abuses. In spite of the differences from the Global Compact, the Principles represent only a “weak” stance on human rights in business due to the absence of a mechanism to ensure that the basic steps to protect human rights set forth in the Guiding Principles are put in practice.
Ruggie claims the Principles are the authoritative global reference point for business and human rights and also provide a concrete mechanism to civil society, investors and others through creating the necessary tools to measure real progress in the daily lives of people. On the other hand, critics see them as guidance alone, where companies are encouraged but not obliged to respect human rights, and there is little certainty that they are clear enough to ensure that they are carried out and monitored effectively. According to Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch, rather than guidance alone, what is needed is a mechanism to scrutinize how companies and governments apply these principles.
Furthermore, while the Guiding Principles were adopted by governments and in Ruggie’s view, represent collaboration between states and corporations, his own belief that the inadequacy of the current status quo is a result of unenforced state laws. Yet when state legislative bodies are so heavily influenced by business and lobbied by corporate interests, it is hard to imagine a collaborative endeavor in which businesses pressure governments to demand more corporate responsibility. Until corporate culture changes in such a way that respecting human rights becomes synonymous with making profit and actions that benefit stakeholders are equally promoted as those that benefit shareholders, when the triple bottom line is considered as important as the single bottom line, then businesses will be in a position to push governments to accordingly enact those laws that will accommodate and further corporations’ needs and desires to promote and respect human rights because doing so is not only good, but also profitable.
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Perils of a sunny lifestyle
A sunnier world encourages young people to expose more skin. This increases the risk of malignant melanoma skin cancer. The American Society of Clinical Oncology recently reported on two studies using new drugs to prolong the life of those with advanced melanomas.
There are two types of skin cancer; malignant melanoma, which is less common but more serious and non-malignant melanoma, which is very common but not so serious.
Melanoma skin cancer is now the sixth most common cancer in the UK and rates have quadrupled over the last thirty years. In other countries like Australia where there is more sunshine it can be much more common.
Like most cancers skin cancer is more common with increasing age, but certainly in the UK there is a worrying trend for younger people to be affected. Almost a third of the cases of malignant melanoma in the UK now occur in people under 55. Young adults in the 15 to 34 age group are particularly vulnerable and every day more than two are diagnosed with malignant melanoma, making it the second most common form of cancer in this age group. Thirty years ago it was the seventh.
For men the most common sites for melanoma are on the chest or back, while for women the most common site is on the legs.
As with all cancers, early diagnosis significantly improves the chances of survival and in spite of the rise in the number of cases, survival rates have been improving for the last 25 years, but in the UK about 2,000 people die of malignant melanoma skin cancer each year.
If a malignant melanoma goes untreated, the cancer can rapidly spread to other parts of the body, by which time it is practically untreatable. Fewer than 10% of cases respond to traditional chemotherapy.
At a recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology scientists reported promising results with two new kinds of drugs. Although they are not able to provide a cure, there is evidence that these new drugs are able to prolong life.
The first study used ipilimumab, which is a drug that helps the immune system fight cancer. The study showed that 21% of patients who had been treated with this, in additional to conventional chemotherapy, were still alive three years later, compared with only 12% of those who had just received chemotherapy.
In the second study an experimental drug called vermurafenib was used. This drug targets a specific gene mutation that triggers growth in about half of all advanced melanomas. Patients with advanced melanoma who were given this drug in addition to chemotherapy were 63% less likely to die within three months than those receiving chemotherapy alone.
The next stage is to match the specific mutations to the appropriate drugs, or combinations of drugs.
The only real solution is to reduce the risk of skin cancer in the first place. As the world warms up and the sunny days get longer there will be a greater incentive, especially among young people to expose more skin. They must learn that this can prove to be fatal.
Top Image Credit: © RTimages
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The Protheans have been credited with creating the Citadel and the mass relays, feats of engineering that have never been equaled and whose core mass effect field technology forms the basis of contemporary civilization. Prothean artifacts, therefore, have immense scientific value and are seen to belong to the whole galactic community.
Forging an Empire Edit
Very little is known about the origins of the Prothean race. After achieving spaceflight, the Protheans discovered the ruins of a previous spacefaring race, the inusannon, and from those ruins learned about mass effect physics and developed FTL technology. The Protheans would expand throughout the galaxy with the help of the mass relay network and make the Citadel their capital.
Eventually, the Protheans faced a hostile machine intelligence which threatened to overwhelm them. To defeat the machines, the Protheans decided to unite all of the galaxy's sentient organic life under their empire. Organic races that resisted the Protheans were soundly crushed. In time, each of the servant races assimilated into Prothean culture and came to think of themselves as Prothean. The Prothean Empire held its own against the machines in a conflict known as the "Metacon War".
At some point the Protheans learned of the existence of the Reapers and their cycles of galactic destruction through studying the ruins of other extinguished civilizations. Several countermeasures were devised, including the Crucible, which was based on designs left behind by previous civilizations. In the event that the Reapers prevailed, the Protheans also began extensive observation of primitive species such as the asari, hanar, humans, salarians, and turians; it was hoped that some Protheans would survive the Reapers' purge and go on to unite these species to create a new empire.
The Protheans' belief that they could hold their own against machine intelligence was shattered with the arrival of the Reapers, who were far more advanced than the machines the Protheans had been battling. Even though the Protheans already knew of the Reapers, they were nonetheless caught completely off-guard by the scale and rapidity of the assault. The Reapers entered the galaxy through the Citadel, instantly decapitating the Protheans' government and disrupting the mass relay network, isolating Prothean systems from one another. Worse, records on the Citadel provided the Reapers with access to all of the Protheans' census data and star charts, allowing them to effectively track every Prothean in the galaxy. The Protheans' greatest strength, their unified empire, proved to be their downfall. As the Protheans were united under the leadership of a single governing species with a series of subordinate races, the Reapers were able to quickly undermine the Prothean hierarchy and cause Prothean forces to become scattered when their ruling body had been compromised. On top of that, as all the races within the Empire conformed to a single military doctrine they proved unable to adapt and compensate for when the Reapers identified and exploited their weaknesses.
Over the next several centuries, the Protheans would fight the Reapers from system to system, world to world, and city to city. If necessary, whole colonies were sacrificed and abandoned to the Reapers; while the Reapers concentrated on subsuming the inhabitants of those colonies, the Protheans had time to regroup. In the long run, however, this strategy was extremely costly, depriving the remaining Protheans of whatever infrastructure and manpower they had given up. Inexorably, the Reapers conquered, enslaved, or destroyed Prothean-controlled planets. Indoctrinated Protheans acted as sleeper agents for the Reapers, infiltrating and swiftly betraying their own kind and revealing the Protheans' dwindling hiding places and carefully laid plans to survive the destruction. Growing desperate, some Protheans made repeated offers of surrender, but these were always met with silence. Some Protheans believed that the Reapers could be controlled, but fell prey to indoctrination in their attempts to harness Reaper technology, sabotaging their race's attempts to destroy them with the Crucible.
After centuries of careful, systematic work, the Reapers had killed or enslaved every Prothean in the galaxy, and stripped their worlds of resources. Removing all traces of their presence, the Reapers then retreated through the Citadel into dark space and sealed it behind them.
A Sanctuary Edit
begin to rebuild. But as the centuries passed and the Reapers persisted in their genocide of the Protheans, Vigil's power supplies began running low, and the cryo pods were in danger of failing.
Following contingency planning, Vigil began cutting power to the pods of non-essential staff to conserve energy. When the Reapers finally withdrew through the Citadel relay, only the top researchers — a dozen individuals — were left. Vigil woke them, and the scientists pieced together what had happened.
They soon realised the situation was dire. Without sufficient numbers to sustain a viable population, the Prothean species was doomed. Desperate for contact with others of their kind, a carefully-coded signal was sent to the beacons on other planets. Though it was unlikely there were other survivors, the scientists thought it was worth the risk to try reaching them. The signal not only contained a warning of the Reaper invasion, but a description of Ilos itself, to give them hope.
The surviving Prothean scientists knew that rescue was unlikely. Instead, they chose to protect the races they had been studying, spared destruction due to their lack of advancement, and began working out where the Reapers had come from, and how. After decades of study, they worked out the connection between the Reapers, the Citadel, and the keepers, and discovered a way to interfere with the signal that compels the keepers to activate the Citadel relay. Using the Conduit, the Prothean scientists left Ilos, travelled to the Citadel and altered this signal. Their intention was to prevent the Reapers from opening the Citadel relay again, and trap them in dark space, but they had no way to be certain their plan had succeeded. The fate of these Prothean scientists is unknown. As the Conduit portal only links one way and there was no food or water left on the Citadel, Vigil hypothesized they eventually starved to death.
Near the culmination of the next cycle, Vigil knew that the Protheans' efforts were not in vain when Commander Shepard's squad found Ilos. Sovereign had tried to signal the Citadel which would compel the keepers to open the relay to dark space, but thanks to the efforts of the scientists from Ilos, nothing happened. Vigil provided a data file to grant Shepard temporary control of the Citadel's systems, told Shepard all he knew of the Reapers and the Prothean extinction, and gave directions to the Conduit. When Sovereign was defeated and the Reapers' return to the galaxy was stalled, the Protheans' work finally succeeded, but ultimately this only bought the galaxy a short reprieve before the rest of the Reapers in dark space made their return.
While all evidence points to the Protheans being completely wiped out by the Reapers, this was not the case. The Reapers are believed to have attempted harnessing the genetic material from millions of Protheans to create a new Reaper. It is speculated by EDI that this attempt failed and so the Reapers decided to repurpose this substantial number of captive Protheans to suit the needs of the Reapers. Mordin speculated that these Protheans were indoctrinated and after a prolonged period of time as indoctrinated slaves, they were given cybernetic modifications to compensate for their growing lack of ability, which was a side effect of indoctrination. After several cloned generations, most likely during the centuries of Reaper genocide against the Protheans, the Reapers eventually decided to genetically rewrite these Protheans. These captives were transformed into an entirely new race which cooperated with the Reapers and would eventually be known to the citizens of the galaxy as the Collectors.
Being a rarely seen species whose existence was questioned by most, the Collectors resided in the Collector base, a space station located in the galactic core and only accessible through the Omega 4 Relay. Nobody had ever returned from a trip through the Omega 4 Relay and a Collector had never been examined, thus the Prothean/Collector link had never been discovered. Collector technology, while very advanced, no longer resembles Prothean technology, the species likely having developed on its own after the Reapers completed the genocide of the Protheans, also adding to the belief that the Collectors and Protheans are unrelated. The Collectors are presumed to have been left with partial access to Reaper technology, possessing Husks, a Reaper IFF with which they could safely operate the Omega 4 Relay, and Reaper technology which protected the Collector base from the harshness of the galactic core.
For the next 50,000 years, the Collectors would periodically travel to the Terminus Systems and make efforts to acquire seemingly unimportant items or small numbers of very particular types of individuals from certain species in exchange for their advanced technology. Whether the Collectors were always acting as directed by the Reapers during this time is unknown and the reasons for these transactions were never revealed by the Collectors. Immediately after the destruction of Sovereign, the Reaper known as Harbinger began directing the Collectors in the abduction of what would have eventually been millions of human colonists as part of the Reaper plan to create a Human-Reaper, part of a renewed attempt to begin the next cycle of extinction. Shepard took a team to the Collector base and ensured that the Collectors were wiped out, aware of the fact that the Collectors were once Protheans. This possibly eliminated the last remnants of the Prothean race.
Ilos was not the only place where Protheans tried to survive in stasis. Nearly one million Prothean warriors and their commander, Javik, were stored in cryogenic lifepods in a bunker facility on Eden Prime. Javik's mission was to lead the warriors in rebuilding the Prothean Empire once the Reaper threat had passed. Before the facility could be sealed, however, indoctrinated traitors leaked its existence to the Reapers. Hundreds of thousands of stasis pods were destroyed in the attack on the facility, killing their occupants. To preserve the few remaining survivors, the facility's VI, Victory, initiated a neutron bombardment to purge Reaper forces. The bombardment also severely damaged the facility and rendered the systems responsible for automatically awakening the Protheans from stasis inoperable. As Javik's survival was a priority, Victory was forced to divert power from the remaining stasis pods to keep Javik's pod working as long as possible in the hope that future civilizations would discover it and revive him.
Over 50,000 years after Javik entered stasis, Commander Shepard discovered and activated his pod. With his race destroyed and his mission failed, Javik believes his only purpose now is to wreak vengeance on the Reapers by joining Commander Shepard.
The Citadel was the Prothean seat of government, and the heart of their galaxy-wide empire. Although the Protheans were a single race, as they expanded and assimilated other spacefaring races into their empire, those servant races adopted the name "Prothean" for themselves as well. This assimilation was not always peaceful, as advanced species who attempted to deny or oppose their admittance into the empire were forcibly conquered and assimilated into Prothean society. The Protheans justified this cultural reconditioning by claiming that if the races who opposed them were actually stronger than the Protheans, then they would take the Protheans' place as the galaxy's dominant civilization. This ideology was also dictated by necessity. After the Protheans encountered hostile machine intelligences, they ultimately decided that all organic races should join together for the sake of survival.
The beacons and the Eletania ruins suggest that, like the asari, the Protheans were comfortable with the notion of transferring data to an individual's mind. They invested heavily in their scientific research, a policy that eventually paid off, if too late to save their own species.
Prothean society was heavily regulated; Javik mentions that playing games of chance was an offense punishable by death.
Though the Protheans did not create the mass relays or the Citadel, they were still very technologically capable and scientifically curious. As well as studying developing races like humans and the hanar, they built a galaxy-wide communications network using beacons that transmitted information directly from mind to mind, and created data storage devices that still worked fifty thousand years later. They also developed a form of VI technology and used cryogenic preservation techniques, which could help an occupant survive a neutron bombardment, as well as advanced architectural design and intricate holographic interfaces.
The architecture on Feros and Ilos shows the Protheans were able to build and maintain enormous cities and arcologies. However, given the fact that the Protheans were victims of the Reapers' trap, using their technology without knowing they would eventually be harvested as a result, much of Prothean architecture seems to have been influenced by structures like the Citadel, blurring the line between what the Protheans built and what they found. In addition, at least some of their cities - those of Ilos in particular - were built upon the ruins of a previous civilization, the Inusannon, which had been wiped out by the Reapers 50,000 years prior.
The Protheans were also skilled at creating kinetic barriers. They built elaborate mass-effect defense grids using barrier curtains and a kind of personal defense shield that acted like an energy bubble, surrounding and levitating the individual who activated it. While inside, the person was impervious to harm but helpless, similar to a biotic stasis field.
Perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology developed by the Protheans was the Conduit, a miniature, prototype mass relay designed to reach the Citadel from Ilos. This was a feat unequaled by any known contemporary or precedent race; given the complexity of the relays and other Reaper technology, reverse-engineering a mass relay is believed to be extremely difficult.
While little is known of the Prothean military, it is known that they possessed fleets capable of defending their empire from threats. The flagship of the late-invasion Prothean navy, Penumbra Apex, was equipped with a cannon similar in power to that of a Geth Dreadnought. Also, the Protheans produced Particle Beam Rifles for their infantry (also in the late stages of the Reaper invasion) and had at least one Biotic in the same timeframe.
Various Prothean ruins still survive on planets like Feros, Quana, and Therum, as well as many known yet unexplored sites in the Attican Traverse, with more unknown sites believed to exist elsewhere throughout the galaxy. While these ruins are surprisingly intact for their age, many were plundered long ago with time and generations of looters having picked their dead cities and derelict stations clean. Functioning examples of Prothean technology are rare.
While hunting for rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, Shepard discovers Prothean data discs and ancient ruins on some uncharted worlds; the commander can even receive a Prothean "trinket" as a gift from Sha'ira, but as Liara T'Soni claims, solid evidence on the Protheans is scarce.
With the help of Shiala on Feros, Shepard also gains the Cipher, which is the key to fully comprehending the vision from the beacon. As the vision was meant for a Prothean mind, understanding it requires the individual to think like a Prothean - to understand their culture, biological instincts, history and ancestral memory. This "cipher" then allows the individual to unlock the true meaning of the images, and understand the vision as it was meant to be seen. According to Shepard, the Cipher's effect on the vision is quite subtle, and Liara's Prothean expertise is necessary to make sense of the images. The Cipher also grants Shepard complete knowledge of the Prothean language.
In addition to the technology they left behind, the Protheans left a greater influence through their in-depth study of other races. Their work has had the greatest impact on humans and the hanar. In humanity's case, the discovery of Prothean ruins on Mars, which were home to a small data cache, introduced humans to element zero and eventually revealed the location of the Charon Relay. A Prothean ruin on Eletania can also yield an ancient recording from a Prothean data recorder that was implanted into a Cro-Magnon human. The hanar, who call the Protheans "the Enkindlers", credit them with giving the hanar sentience and language, and worship them as an elder race who allowed them to become civilized.
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The news this week is that the Druid Wolf Pack is no more.
The Druids were one of the most frequently photographed wolf packs in the Lamar Valley of the Yellowstone.
What happened to the Druids?
Life has a way of stepping in pretty frequently in the world of wolves, and in that tale lies a couple of lessons about dogs -- lessons about inbreeding and (yes) about dominance.
First, who were the wolves of the Druid Pack?
Like all wolf packs, the Druid pack was made up of a single dominant male, a single dominate female, and several satellite females, generally from previous whelps.
This architecture is not unique to wolves. Study red fox and African lions, and you will see the same thing -- a solitary mature male with one or more females, and only very young or adolescent males in attendance.
What happens to all the male wolves, fox, and lions that are born?
Simple: they are driven out.
In the case of a fox this usually occurs at around seven to nine months of age, and with a wolf anywhere from nine to 18 months of age, depending on the amount of food in the the area and the tolerance of the alpha male and the submissiveness of his get.
By then, the young males of these respective species are big enough to hunt on their own and yet they are also beginning to become potential rivals for females. The top male cannot have that.
Is the request to leave a good-natured "get along now?"
Plain and simple, it is anything from harassing growls and small bites to a full-scale ass-whipping by the big male.
However, it goes, in the end there will only be one mature male in the pack. Either the younger male will be driven off, or the old male will be dead or driven off himself.
You have heard of a "lone wolf"?
A lone wolf is almost always a young male driven out of his pack and traveling some distance to establish his own territory, and perhaps pick up a loose female or two along the way.
The same thing happens with fox and African lions, of course.
American Mountain Lions do not establish packs or prides like their African counterparts, but here too we find young males driven out to find their own territories in a distant country. When a mountain lion shows up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, or Iowa, it is almost certain to be a young male driven out his natal home range to find a place for himself.
Now to be clear, what is going on here is dominance.
Anyone who says wolf packs are not governed by dominance has no idea what they are talking about.
Dominance creates wolf packs and dominance maintains wolf packs. The driving out of adolescent males is at the core of how wolf packs are created and maintained. This is dominance. And it is Wolf Pack 101.
What about females?
The female wolves in a wolf pack also have their dominance issues. You see with wolves, there may be many mature females in the pack, but there will almost always be only one female who will come into estrus, be mated, and whelp.
How is that "top female" determined?
Well, the male picks her, of course (or vice versa if the pack has lost its alpha male)
That said the individual picked is generally the healthiest and strongest female in the group - the one that all the other females are submissive to.
This is what Darwin was talking about when he refered to "survival of the fittest." The weakest genes are not just culled out of the gene pool due to disease, defect and predation. They are also selected out.
Why does Mother Nature drive all the young males out of the pack?
The answer is that Mother Nature demands a regular reshuffling of the genetic deck. The way that is done is by driving out the males to discourage inbreeding with sisters.
The sisters, of course, stick around to help bring down larger game and feed the alpha female's young. But the young males? They have to hit the road.
A strong and lucky male may hold a top slot for as long as a decade, but more often that not the top male will die from injuries or disease long before that. And with that male's death, a new male, from outside the pack, will be recruited and a complete outcross achieved.
Injuries? How do wolves get injured?
Wolves get injured all the time. A lone male wolf from another pack may show up and stand at the edge of a territory and try to "call off" a female or two in order to start his own pack. That may, in turn, be met with a challenge by the dominant male who wants to hold on to what he has. Injuries can occur!
The pick up artist.
More often injury and death will come from a jaw-shattering kickfrom an elk or deer, a trap, vehicle impact, a hunter or rancher's bullet, intentional or unintentional poisoning, a ripped ligament, an infected wound, or disease.
Disease is no small issue. Distemper routinely knocks down wild canid populations, and so too does rabies and mange. Add in worms and infections, and the bottom line is simple: Most male wolves do not live too far past age 7.
But, of course, the vagaries and savageries of life in the wild can befall the top female wolf in the pack, as well as the top male wolf. The hand of God shuffles red cards, same as black.
And so, in the real world, we tend to have a turnover every few years as either the alpha male or the alpha female rotates out of their respective top slots.
And with every turnover at the top, new dominance and submission issues are front and center.
No, there is not a constant battle in a wolf pack, but Mother Nature does abhor a power vacuum, and yes individuals do rush in to fill a power vacuum.
And yes, life-ending battles do occur in every Yellowstone pack every year.
In the video clip, at the very top of this post, cinematographer and wolf expert Bob Landis talks about conflicts he has seen between and within wolf packs, and he talks about Wolf 21, the Alpha male in the Druid pack.
How did 21 become the Alpha male?
It seems that in late December of 1998, the top male wolf in the Druid Pack was Wolf 38. The pack left the boundaries of Yellowstone Park to follow the elk, however, and just outside the park's boundaries, Wolf 38 was killed by a poacher.
With their alpha male dead the Druid Pack re-entered Yellowstone National Park where Wolf 21, a single "lone wolf" refugee expelled from the Rose Creek Pack, happened to be waiting.
If the old alpha male, Wolf 38, had still been alive, Wolf 21 would have been drive out or killed (as three other displaced Rose Creek Wolves had met their fate before 21's arrival). But with Wolf 38 now dead, Wolf 21 now had an unexpected opportunity to impress.
The Alpha Female of the pack, Wolf 40, realized she needed a mate, but 21 still had to spend 6 hours, bowing, flexing, strutting, sniffing, and facing down all the females in the Druid Pack before he was deemed to be big enough, strong enough, friendly enough, and smart enough to be the leader. Yes, this 21 wolf had skills! And in the end, the older, but still fertile, Wolf 40, was won over and gave 21 his slot in the pack as her new mate, the alpha male. with the task of fighting off all interlopers, as Wolf 38 had done before him.
I tell this story, because it's important to realize Landis does not just make stuff up. He films it all, and he gets lucky" because he spends 300 days a year in the field in heat and snow, bugs and rain, watching the wolves.
So what happened to cause the Druid Pack's demise? The Casper Wyoming Star Tribune summarizes:
Only two months ago, there were 11 wolves in the pack. But after the alpha female was killed by another pack, the old alpha male wandered off rather than breed with one of the other female wolves that were his offspring. He also suffered from a bad case of mange. Mange is a skin infection caused by a mite, which leads to hair loss. In animals with weakened immune systems, it can be fatal. Seven other females in the pack also had mange, and all but one have died either from mange or been killed by other packs.
"They're down to one and that one probably won't make it through the winter," Smith said.
Killed by other packs? But I thought wolves were gentle!
You think a wolf killing a wolf might have something to do with dominance?
"This space is my space," "this food is my food," "this female is my female"?
Nah! No doubt they died in a religious war!
The Casper Wyoming Star Tribune article goes on to note that at one point the Druid pack had 37 members, making it the largest known wild wolf pack in the world.
In 2000, however, "an alliance of three subordinate females in the Druid pack is believed to have killed the pack's alpha female, the first such intra-pack kill documented in the park."
WHAT? Three other wolves ganged up to kill their mother or sister? And she was the alpha? Whoa! That's right out of Shakespeare! No aggression or dominance issues there! And she is the second alpha female to bite the dust in this one article?! Whoa! There are clearly no aggression, dominance, or pack pecking orders in a wolf pack! All sweetness and familial light.
Bob Landis and the Yellowstone wolf team, of course, have spent more time, watching wolves in the wild than anyone in the world, living or dead. And yes they have it all on video tape.
But you won't hear his name mentioned by the pure click and treat crowd who want to negate all hierarchies, all dominance, and all submission in wolf packs.
You see if the facts do not fit the frame, you throw out the facts!
And so they quote people like Tamar Geller, who says wolves and dogs are just like each other and she knows because she watched a few wolves for a month at a feeding station in the deserts of Israel.
Ms. Geller says wolves do not have pack hierarchies, have no aggression, and dominance is never an issue. With wolves, it's just play, play, play.
Or else they quote Ian Dunbar who, to the best of my knowledge has never had anything to do with wolves.
Or else they make extraordinary claims, such as that "there are no such things as packs of wild dogs."
Really? No packs of wild dogs?? How about the fellow that was killed and eaten by a pack of wild dogs right here in the U.S. just a few months back? That did not happen? No rural farmer has ever seen a pack of feral dogs hunting deer in the woods? Really? Who knew!?
And then, of course, there are the folks who have never read L. David Mech's paper on wolves, but act as if they have.
To be clear, this paper is NOT the ground-breaking study, some have made it out to be.
In fact, is it a very weak and not too well written paper that simply says wolf packs are an extended family unit. No news there!
And what does Mr. Mech say about dominance?
Well actually, he says there is quite a LOT of it! For example, he writes:
We noted each time a wolf submitted posturally to another wolf. Usually this deference was characterized by "licking up" to the mouth of the dominant animal in the "active submission" posture similar to that described by Darwin (1877) for domestic dogs. Often this behavior took place as an animal returned to the den area after foraging, and sometimes the returning individual disgorged food to the soliciting wolf (Mech 1988; Mech et al. 1999). Other behavior noted included "pinning," or passive submission (Schenkel 1967), in which the dominant wolf threatened another, which then groveled, and "standing over," in which one wolf stands over another, which often lies nonchalantly but in a few cases sniffs the genitals of the other. I did not consider "standing over" a dominance behavior.
Eh? Mech does not consider one dog standing over another an act of dominance?
Oooooo-kaaaaaay. Let's not count those then.
But if it's not dominance, pray tell what is it?
Well actually, he does not say.
Like I said, the paper is not too well written !
Consider this paragraph:
The only consistent demonstration of rank in natural packs is the animals' postures during social interaction. Dominant wolves assume the classic canid standing posture with tail up at least horizontally, and subordinate or submissive individuals lower themselves and "cringe" (Darwin 1877). In fact, submission itself may be as important as dominance in terms of promoting friendly relations or reducing social distance.
WHAT??? Now one wolf standing over another IS dominance?
But just a few paragraphs earlier, Mech said it was not.
Pick a point of view and stick with it why don't cha?
Of course, that's the problem a lot of folks have in these wolf and dog debates.
One person says dogs are not wolves and then five minutes later they say they are great admirers of Tamara Geller who thinks dogs ARE wolves and that wolves are all about play, play, play.
Eh? Pick one.
Of course the same people claim Cesar Millan says dogs are wolves, but when challenged to cite a page, paragraph or episode where that claim is made, there is (so far) a failure to deliver.
We are similarly told that Cesar Millan says everything about dogs is related to dominance.
He does? I missed that! Citation please!
In fact, what Millan actually says is that everything is about loving your dog, exercising your dog, and not treating your dog like it's your child.
And he says, at the top of every show, what he actually does.
He does not train dogs.
He rehabilitates dogs. He trains people.
What he is saying here is pretty clear: Cesar Millan is NOT the person you go to if your goal is to get your dog to learn a decent "sit-stay" or agility routine.
Ian Dunbar or any of the college girls down at PetSmart can help you with that, and they prove it every week.
But if you have a dog that is phobic, or is routinely ripping into another dog (or your child or wife) then the girls at PetSmart might not be the right wrench for that nut.
Cesar Millan is, and he proves it every week.
The funny part of all this is that I have written many times that dogs are not wolves. Dogs are dogs.
So far as I can tell, Cesar Millan has never said dogs are wolves. Please give me a citation if you find him saying otherwise.
And, to put a point on it, I have never said a bad word about clicker training. Quite the opposite. It works well for training puppies, young dogs, and dogs with no serious issues.
So far as I can tell, Cesar Millan has never said a bad thing about clicker training either. Again, please give me a citation if you can find him saying otherwise.
So who is raising up all the wolf stuff?
Well, actually, it's the people who are opposed to any kind of aversives (no matter how mild) in any kind of situation.
They are not arguing that clicker training works (there is no opposing argument on the matter); they are arguing it is the ONLY solution to EVERY dog problem, and that NO other system works.
Yes, that's right, a clicker is a "one size fit all" wrench for every problem under the sun.
But instead of proving that by actually going on TV to "cure" a psychotic pit bull that lives to kill cats, they have decided to go off into the weeds to talk about wolves.
Wolves? I thought we were talking about training dogs?
But no, they want to talk about wolves.
Which would be fine, I suppose, but what they have to tell us about wolves is, in fact, contradicted by the very studies they cite!
They cite Mech. Mech!?? Appended below is the list of tables for his paper on dominance among wolves. It looks like he found some dominance there!
But of course, if the facts do not fit the frame, then throw out the frame, right?
And what about the video tape?
Yeah, throw that out too. Especially the clip below, and the next one and the next one. Who cares if this is a story about dominance as riveting as anything penned By Shakespeare? This does not fit the frame, so out it must go.
The omega female is driven out by the alpha female.
The alpha female is killed by her sisters.
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LOS ANGELES (CBSDC/AP) — Stephen Hawking, who spent his career decoding the universe and even experienced weightlessness, is urging the continuation of space exploration — for humanity’s sake.
The 71-year-old Hawking said he did not think humans would survive another 1,000 years “without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
The British cosmologist made the remarks Tuesday before an audience of doctors, nurses and employees at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he toured a stem cell laboratory that’s focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Hawking was diagnosed with the neurological disorder 50 years ago while a student at Cambridge University. He recalled how he became depressed and initially didn’t see a point in finishing his doctorate. But he continued to delve into his studies.
“If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way,” he said.
Renowned for his work on black holes and the origins of the cosmos, Hawking is famous for bringing esoteric physics concepts to the masses through his best-selling books, including “A Brief History of Time,” which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Hawking titled his hourlong lecture to Cedars-Sinai employees “A Brief History of Mine.”
Hawking has survived longer than most people with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the muscles. People gradually have more and more trouble breathing and moving as muscles weaken and waste away. There’s no cure and no way to reverse the disease’s progression. Few people with ALS live longer than a decade.
Hawking receives around-the-clock care, can only communicate by twitching his cheek, and relies on a computer mounted to his wheelchair to convey his thoughts in a distinctive robotic monotone.
Despite his diagnosis, Hawking has remained active. In 2007, he floated like an astronaut on an aircraft that creates weightlessness by making parabolic dives.
Hawking rattled off nuggets of advice: Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Be curious.
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at,” he said.
Dr. Robert Baloh, director of Cedars-Sinai’s ALS program who invited Hawking, said he had no explanation for the physicist’s longevity.
During the hospital tour, Hawking viewed microscopic stem cells through a projector screen and asked questions about the research, which last year received nearly $18 million from California’s taxpayer-funded stem cell institute.
Baloh said he has treated patients who lived for 10 years or more.
“But 50 years is unusual, to say the least,” he said.
In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded Hawking the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work.
(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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- freely available
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, 11(6), 6136-6146; doi:10.3390/ijerph110606136
Abstract: Healthy carriers of severe Hemoglobinopathies are usually asymptomatic and only efficiently detected through screening campaigns. Based upon epidemiological data, screenings have been offered for decades to populations of endemic Southern Europe for primary prevention of Thalassemia Major, while for many populations of the highly endemic African and Asian countries prevention for Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassemia Major is mainly unavailable. The massive migrations of the last decades have brought many healthy carriers of these diseases to live and reproduce in non-endemic immigration areas changing the epidemiological pattern of the local recessive diseases and bringing an urgent need for treatment and primary prevention in welfare countries. Nonetheless, no screening for an informed reproductive choice is actively offered by the healthcare systems of most of these welfare countries. As a consequence more children affected with severe Hemoglobinopathies are born today in the immigration countries of Northern Europe than in the endemic Southern European area. Following the Mediterranean example, some countries like the UK and The Netherlands have been offering early pregnancy carrier screening at different levels and/or in specific areas but more accessible measures need to be taken at the national level in all immigration countries. Identification of carriers using simple and inexpensive methods should be included in the Rhesus and infectious diseases screening which is offered early in pregnancy in most developed countries. This would allow identification of couples at risk in time for an informed choice and for prenatal diagnosis if required before the first affected child is born.
Genetic epidemiology and public health: There are quite a few examples of genetic diseases that are more prevalent in one population then in another. Just to mention the common one: Cystic Fibrosis (CF), which is most prevalent in people of European heritage; Tay-Sachs disease (TSD) is frequent among Ashkenazi Jews; Hereditary Hemochromatosis (HFE), most common among people of Northern European Celtic descent and the most common of them all and subject of this review, the Hemoglobinopathies (HBP) better known in the two major forms as Sickle-Cell Disease (SCD) and Thalassemia Major (TM).
Not just by chance these genetic diseases are autosomal recessive, meaning that the conditions are not sex linked and that carriers are just healthy persons, with or without some minor symptoms. Recessive means also that when two carriers get children, the traits will be inherited according to the Mendelian law of inheritance and that at each and every pregnancy the statistical outcome will be 25% chance to have a severely affected child, 50% chance to have a healthy carrier just like the parents and 25% chance to have a child not carrier. In origin HBPs were restricted to populations living in the tropical and subtropical regions of the “Old World” infested for thousands of years by malaria and by malaria tropica in particular. This brings us to the question why these diseases are prevalent in specific populations.
Diseases, selection mechanisms, epidemiology and prevention: The key mechanism at the base of evolution is the selection of random gametic mutations passed to the progeny to be tested for their beneficial or adverse effect. If a new recessive mutation gives an advantage to the offspring (better genetic fitness to survive and reproduce) in a particular environment then it will be passed more frequently to the following generations and become prevalent in that particular population living in that particular environment. In spite of the adverse effects, recessive trait advantageous in the carriers will then become more and more common until equilibrium is reached between advantages and disadvantages at a stabilized level that will characterize the epidemiology of the severe disease in a particular population.
Due to the severity of recessive diseases that manifest in the children of healthy carrier couples, prevention and carrier detection are important public health issues. Morbidity prevention can be offered by newborn screening to reduce the severe symptoms in the born child and primary prevention can be made available to couples at risk to prevent the birth of a severely affected child. Primary prevention can be prospective if offered before the first affected child is born or retrospective if made available after the birth of the first affected offspring.
Cystic Fibrosis: Several selection hypotheses have been proposed to explain the epidemiology of CF. Being a disease that disrupts the water balance in the body, the most acceptable explanation seems to be a better chance of survival during epidemics of infectious diseases causing life threatening diarrhea such as cholera and typhoid, which are known to have infested Europe for centuries . Whether this is the only cause of CF epidemiology in Northern Europeans is not sure, but the fact remains that to date, about one in 25 persons of European descent is a carrier and that the incidence of the severe disease in these populations can reach one in 2,500 to 3,000 newborn.
But for some milder forms, the symptoms of CF usually manifest within the first year of life, causes severe impairment of the respiratory and digestive system and the available cures may prolong the life of the patient up to early adult age. Due to the severity of the disease, primary prevention for CF is offered in many countries but mainly retrospectively, to couples at risk after the birth of the first affected child. But for a limited “population screening” among Ashkenazi-Jewish no national screenings campaign for prospective prevention have been implemented on a large scale thus far because of the expensive tests needed to identify symptomless carriers at the DNA level. New developments in molecular diagnostics will hopefully offer a financeable method for screening either before marriage/conception or early in pregnancy in the near future.
Hemochromatosis: The prevalence of Hemochromatosis (HFE) among people of Northern European Celtic descent suggests that the disease may also have given some advantage to the carriers. A sensible theory to explain the epidemiology of the disease seems that a higher dietary iron reserve might have given a reproductive advantage to carriers in particular during pregnancies in harsh famine winters. Among northern and central Europeans over 12% of the indigenous people are carriers . Because of late onset, screening for primary prevention seems only appropriate for those rare and severe cases when iron overload begins before birth .
Tay-Sachs Disease: Not all recessive traits common in a specific population can be explain with a genetic advantage and a positive selection mechanism. Due to founder effect, genetic drift and inbreeding 57% of the population of the island of Tristan da Cunha has been reported with different degrees of asthma and high frequency of retinitis pigmentosa . This brings us to Ashkenazi Jews, particularly affected with Tay-Sachs disease. No advantages have been found for TSD carriers and some authors suggests indeed a combination of founder effect, genetic drift, and differential migration patterns . To these three factors one may easily add the effect of cultural isolates and endogamy.
Kabak et al. report that screening for TSD has been well organized among Ashkenazi-Jewish for many years, decreasing the incidence of the disease by more than 90% and that practical, social, and ethical complexities had to be tackled and that educational and counseling components had to be properly explained before and after screening in total confidentiality. The same author wondered about the fact that wide-scale testing and screening could be felt, in some systems, as a conflict of interest on the part of entrepreneurial scientists, clinicians, and institutions.
Mitchel et al. presented in 1996 the results of a 20 years program for education, screening, and counseling of senior-high-school students in populations at high risk for Tay-Sachs and beta-thalassemia diseases in Montreal . Screening 14,844 Ashkenazi-Jewish students they identified 521 HexA-deficient carriers (frequency 1:28). The corresponding data for the concomitant beta-thalassemia program were 25,274 students (mainly of Mediterranean origin) representing 67% of the cohort with 61% voluntary participation in the screening phase (693 carriers; frequency 1:36). Virtually all the carriers identified in the high-school screening program remembered their status, had their partner tested and took up the options for reproductive counseling/prenatal diagnosis. Incidence of the two diseases has fallen by 90%–95% over 20 years in Canada.
While TSD carriers can be identified retrospectively after the birth of the first affected child or prospectively before marriage or early in pregnancy at the enzymatic and/or DNA level, HBP carriers can be identified at any time with a simple, fast, and inexpensive Hb separation and measurement on high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or capillary electrophoresis (CE), the modern version of the classic Hb electrophoresis . With an incidence of over 350,000 affected newborn p.y. HBP are the most common autosomal recessive disease worldwide . The conditions are caused by mutations that impair or modify the expression of the globin genes causing respectively lack of globin synthesis (thalassemias) or structural defects (abnormal hemoglobins). But for some semi-dominant mutation, carriers are either slightly anemic (thalassemia) or asymptomatic (most abnormal hemoglobins) and thus healthy. Conversely, children of healthy carrier couples have 25% chance of being affected with the severe forms Thalassemia Major (TM) and/or Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). While thalassemias can be caused by more than 450 mutations, almost 1200 mutations have been reported changing the structure of the alpha-like and beta-like globin gene products that are needed to build up the hemoglobin tetramers, the essential oxygen transport proteins during embryonic, fetal and postnatal life.
Among this broad spectrum of mutations some are very frequent and population specific. As mentioned above, specificity is explained by the random occurrence of a particular mutation and frequency by the advantage given against malaria in tropical or subtropical region of the old world by that particular mutation. Random HBP mutations might very well be archaic but positive selection have probably started with the beginning of agriculture around 10,000 years ago when man had to share his surrounding with the anopheles mosquitos. In these surroundings children carriers of the trait had better chances to survive malaria during infancy, to reproduce and to pass the trait to the next generation increasing the gene frequency. This mechanism has generated carrier frequencies of structural hemoglobin variants like HbS (the main cause of SCD) of around 40% in some regions of central Africa. Equally the HbE variant, alpha thalassemia and beta thalassemia have reached respective frequencies of 40%, 50%, 8% in some highly endemic regions of Thailand, the Arabian Peninsula and the Mediterranean.
Due to the high incidence and the severity of the disease, pioneering Mediterranean countries have provided carrier screening and primary prevention mainly for TM, the most frequent form in the area. In countries like Italy [12,13], Greece , France , Cyprus Israel, [17,18], Turkey and Egypt , the incidence of the disease have been reduced substantially and in some areas by more than 90%. The tools used are information, premarital/preconception screening or screening in early pregnancy identifying couples at risk in time for an informed reproductive choice. Ongoing screening programs are summarized in Table 1, adapted and updated from Cousens et al. .
Today, the historical epidemiology of these diseases has changed dramatically and healthy carriers are present all over the world, while more affected children are born in the non-endemic immigration areas of Northern Europe than in the endemic Mediterranean countries. The growing incidence in non-endemic areas is not only caused by the increasing number of immigrant carriers and endogamous marriages but by the fact that primary prevention, often available in the countries of origin, has not been properly introduced in the healthcare systems of most non-endemic immigration countries. Figure 1 adapted from Modell et al. .
|Country (Region) Screening type||Extent: Universal (U) Regional (R)||Pre-conception: Mandatory (M) Voluntary (V)||Early in pregnancy Mandatory (M) Voluntary (V)||NBS: Carriers reported: Y, N|
|Cyprus||U||M for Turkish &||V Turkish||---|
|M for Greeks #||V Greeks|
|Italy (Latium)||U||V (School) @||V||---|
|Italy (North East)||R||V||V||R, Y|
|France (Southern)||R 1978–85||V (School) * @||V*||U, Y|
|Canada||R 1979–92||V (School) @||V||R, Y|
|Saudi Arabia||U||M &||V||---|
|UK||U||If requested||V||U, Y|
|The Netherlands||R||If requested||V||U, Y|
|Germany||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Austria||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Swiss||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Belgium||---||If requested||If requested||R, Y|
|Denmark||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Sweden||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Norway||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Spain||---||If requested||If requested||R, Y|
|Portugal||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|USA||---||If requested||If requested||U, Y|
|Latin America||---||If requested||If requested||R, Y|
|Australia||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Japan||---||If requested||If requested||---|
|Africa||---||Not available||Not Available||Some pilots|
Newborn screening: During the last decade HBP’s have been included in the ongoing newborn screening (NBS) in a number of Northern European countries, in the USA and as pilot experiments in some South American and African states [23,24,25,26,27] (Table 1). NBS has been originally planned following the model used for metabolic diseases like Phenylketonuria (PKU), and thus for morbidity (secondary) prevention providing early treatment directly after birth, before irreversible organ damage occurs.
Strictly speaking SCD and TM do not need to be diagnosed at birth for urgent treatment directly after birth. The affected newborns are perfectly healthy at birth and stay symptomless for several months, until the fetal hemoglobin has disappeared. The pathological symptoms begins when postnatal HbA cannot be formed due to the total absence of normal beta globin chains (TM) or when red cells begin to sickle due to the increasing presence of HbS due to the following common genotype combinations (Hb S/S, HbS/C, S/D, S/E, S/beta thal, etc.…).
Nevertheless, thanks to early diagnosis, NBS allows morbidity (secondary) prevention to be started in time about 6 months after birth. During the first 6 months one may confirm the disease at the genotype level, make a genotype/phenotype correlation and a prognosis and may tailor the best supportive treatment to be offered when the symptoms begin. In the same period parents can be counseled in a genetic center and become able to make a retrospective reproductive choice for the next child. Also parents at risk who had a carrier can be counseled for prospective primary prevention in the future. Obviously couples at risk who had a “non-carrier” (25%) are not identified by NBS until the first affected child is born. The benefit of NBS consists mainly of a lower risk of mortality during the first few years of life when patients may die of an acute condition while not yet diagnosed. This benefit comes with increased treatment costs which are already considerable for these patients and can be estimated around 2 million US $ per average patient treated in developed countries .
While one could have expected that some primary retrospective or prospective primary prevention could have been reached after NBS, data have shown that this is not the case, at least not in The Netherlands, where after 7 years of NBS screening, no reduction of incidence has been monitored. The reasons can be searched in the partial report of carriers (HbS only), in the possibly directive counseling if focused on treatment rather than on explaining the severity of the progressive diseases, in the lack of motivation of part of the badly informed target population and last but not least in potential conflict of interests that, as suggested by Kabbak, could be felt in some systems, as conflicts of interest on the part of entrepreneurial scientists vs. clinicians, and institutions . Politics might be afraid of the public opinions of conservative voters if a screening campaign, which may imply medical abortion, is approved. Scientist might be tempted to propose treatment or prevention technologies more for their scientific reward than for the benefit of the patients and couples at risk. Prevention might reduce considerably the number of chronic patients in need of expensive treatment which might stimulate pediatricians to focus on treatment rather than on prevention. In addition, counseling given by pediatricians is bound to be optimistically directive not to distress the parents describing the severity of these progressive incurable diseases in the years to come. All these factors may prevent NBS from being a useful tool for at least partial retrospective and prospective primary prevention and therefore screening should be offered much earlier to couples at risk also in non-endemic immigration countries with large multiethnic populations. In fact, the epidemiology of HBP in most non-endemic immigration countries has already reached levels that, according to WHO recommendation, justify the implementation of carrier screening for prospective primary prevention .
3. Implementation of Carrier Screening
3.1. Screening at School Level
Beside the Montreal experience mentioned above , two successful programs have been implemented in endemic Southern Europe (Table 1). A screening in Marseille has been shown successful, but the program has been stopped due to lack of funds and the very low incidence in the meanwhile well informed population. The Italian program in the Latium region is an exemplary one and is the longest ongoing (Table 1). The reason for screening is explained to parents and students, herewith reaching two generations and providing cascade screening for more family members as well and is therefore welcome by the local population. In Latium the incidence among natives has been zero for almost a decade, while it has increased among those recent immigrants that have not been reached by the screening protocol as yet.
Although feasible, no school screening programs are available or have been planned in non-endemic immigration countries eventually coupled to a biology lesson. Ethnic discrimination could become a problem if the fact that everybody is carrier of recessive diseases regardless the ethnic origin is not well explained to the students.
3.2. Pre-Conception Screening
Screening young adults before pregnancy or marriage allows more prevention options, from adapting partner choice to remaining childless, using gamete donation, pre-implantation diagnostics (PGD) or, still the most common, prenatal diagnosis (PD).
As mentioned above, screening before marriage or conception has been offered to couples at risk in endemic countries and in different ways. The mandatory way has been ongoing for a long time in Christian Greek Orthodox Cyprus where in order to marry in the Church, couples need among the usual documents also a lab result for HBP (Table 1). The same mandatory rule is applied in Islamic countries like Iran and the UAE’s before legal marriage. While in Cyprus there is no interference on partner choice, in Iran adapting partner choice has been advised as a first option and PD with legal medical abortion as a second. In the UAE’s adapting partner choice is the only advice provided while PD and (illegal) medical abortion are possibly done abroad.
But for some Jewish minorities who are used to screen before marriage or pregnancy, screening is not customary among immigrants in most non-endemic countries where in fact there are not many structures available for a pre-conception / pre-marital screening that could operate at the national level. Conversely, screening early in pregnancy is socially accepted and is the most rational alternative already routinely offered at the national level for other inborn diseases.
3.3. Screening Early in Pregnancy
Screening early in pregnancy does not stigmatize the female partner (a risk in some cultures when screening before marriage) but on the contrary, it involves both parents in the process of choosing not to have a severely affected child. The disadvantage is however that screening early in pregnancy leaves as only prevention option PD and medical abortion.
Deciding to interrupt a pregnancy, even if in an early fetal stage and knowing to bear a fetus that will become severely affected, is a difficult and emotional process for most couples involving their moral feelings and/or religious believes. Religious leaders have different views on this matter, some may reject medical abortion regardless the situation while others may consider it as an act of mercy .
While some parents may not feel restricted in exploring there medical options, others may feel religiously conflicted between their medical options and the decision to have an affected child who will likely have a shorter life with a severe progressive disease which can be treated but which is still incurable.
Following the Mediterranean example, some immigration countries like the UK and the Netherlands are offering carrier screening early in pregnancy at different levels and/or in specific areas. Since in all non-endemic immigration countries all women are offered Rhesus and infectious diseases screening at the first pregnancy control, structures are available for offering HPB screening in early pregnancy that could operate at the national level (Table1).
Cost/benefit analysis. Koren et al. have recently calculated that the expenses for running a thalassemia prevention program in Northern Israel during one year (2011) was about 400,000 US $, while the cost of basic treatment of a single patient for an average life expectancy was about 2,000,000 US $ . Other authors have commented that primary prevention of HBP is not only financially justifiable but it is also an act of mercy sparing suffering to potential patients and families .
This paper is meant to make public health authorities aware of the fact that measures at the national level should be taken to offer an informed reproductive choice to multi-ethnic couples at risk in non-endemic immigration countries. Since all women are offered Rhesus and infectious diseases screening at the first pregnancy control in most countries, identification of HBP carriers using simple and inexpensive methods should be included in this screening to identify healthy couples at risk at the national level and in time for an informed choice and for prenatal diagnosis if required before the first affected child is born .
The authors declare to have no conflict of interest concerning the matters discussed in this paper and to have conducted their studies according to local medical-ethical regulations.
Piero C. Giordano wrote the paper. Cornelis L. Harteveld and Egbert Bakker contributed to the writing and approved the essence of the manuscript and of the recommendations.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
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- -ise (non-Oxford British spelling)
From Middle English -isen (“-ise, -ize”), from Old French -iser (“-ize”), from Latin -izāre (“-ize”), from Ancient Greek -ίζειν (-ízein), from Proto-Indo-European *-idyé- (verbal suffix). Cognate with Gothic -𐌹𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (-itjan, verbal suffix), Old High German -izzen (verbal suffix), Old English -ettan (verbal suffix). Also see notes.
- Used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives, the verbs having the sense of "to make what is denoted by the noun/adjective".
- The suffix -ize has historically been used on words originating from Greek. -ise was used, especially as -vise, -tise, -cise, and -prise, on words that come from various roots (usually via French). In the 19th century, it became common in the United Kingdom (due to French influence) to use -ise also on words that had historically been spelled -ize. -ise is also common in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. -ize remains, however, the spelling used by the influential Oxford University Press; it has also always been the spelling used in the United States and Canada.
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The Buff-Bellied Hummingbird is the least studied of hummingbirds indigenous to the United States.
For unknown reasons, the Buff-bellied Hummingbird usually flies to the northeast from its breeding areas in the southern part of Texas. This movement is unique among North American hummingbirds.
- Food Preferences
Food Preferences of Buff-Bellied Hummingbirds
Buff-Bellied Hummingbirds require a constant energy source (nectar) and protein source (insects).
The very high metabolism of Buff-Bellied hummingbirds is due to the incredible speed at which they flap their wings, continuously burning the food they have consumed for fuel.
After feeding from the nectar of flowers, the Buff-Bellied Hummingbirds carry pollen to other flowers.
Birdfeeders.com is the top destination to find quality Wild Bird Feeders and Accessories. Perky-Pet®, K-Feeders® and NO/NO® wild bird products are trusted brands to bird lovers everywhere. Interact with nature, relax and build memories that last a lifetime by conveniently ordering from birdfeeders.com. Happy Bird Feeding!
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(Phys.org) —Is the Internet causing a revolution in education by enabling large numbers of students to take college courses online, at little or no cost, from faculty members at leading universities?
The jury is still out, say Meng Sang Chew and Kelly Grim, but massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are already posing a challenge to the educational and business models of traditional universities.
Chew, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, and Grim, director of Lehigh's Center for Academic Success, recently wrote an article titled "Massive Open Online Courses—A Revolution in Education?"
The article, which won one of two Best Paper Awards at the 4th International Conference on Teaching and Learning in Bangkok, Thailand, examines the effects of MOOCs on six "stakeholders"—course instructors, course providers, students, parents, colleges and universities, and society, including the government agencies that subsidize higher education.
Students in MOOCs have a much higher dropout rate than students enrolled in traditional college courses, say the authors. They do not enjoy as close a relationship with their teachers, and they lack access to tutoring facilities like the Center for Academic Success.
The advantages of MOOCs, says Chew, are low cost and flexibility. "You can take a course anytime, anywhere," he says, "as long as you have an Internet connection."
The Internet, says Grim, connects MOOCs students in other ways.
"Students can organize online discussion boards," she says. "They can get together with each other and ask questions and figure things out on their own. In the process they can get to know people all over the world."
MOOCs have caused "great turbulence" in American higher education, Chew and Grim conclude in their paper, and could soon do so in other countries.
"With the open environment of the Internet, and the large profits that can possibly be made using MOOCs as an inexpensive alternative to higher education," they write, "it is just a matter of time before the effects currently being felt in the U.S. spread throughout the world."
"I don't really think MOOCS will be a revolution," says Chew, "but universities will definitely need to keep an eye on MOOCS, how [this] evolves and how it can affect our current mode of teaching."
At the forefront of technology
Lehigh has long been a leader in using technology to reach and teach students. The office of distance education has offered graduate-level courses to students in other states and countries, most of them working professionals, for two decades, making the transition to exclusively online courses in 2010. Lehigh offers accredited master's degrees to distance-education students in bioengineering, business administration, chemistry, molecular biology, chemical engineering, manufacturing systems engineering, mechanical engineering, and polymer science and engineering, as well as certificate programs in six subject areas.
The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning helps faculty members use technology to improve classroom teaching. The center also helps students learn to use technology to do research and to communicate with instructors.
An Online Learning Advisory Committee (OLAC) led by Provost Pat Farrell and Bruce Taggart, vice provost for library and technology services, has been meeting for a year to study online education and recommend next steps for the future. At a one-day OLAC forum last semester, more than 100 people discussed a variety of topics, including whether Lehigh should make online education a priority, and which areas of the curriculum could best be improved by online education.
Chew and Grim became acquainted after exchanging emails in which they discussed the problems that students were having in one of Chew's advanced classes.
"Staff members who work closely with students can often provide faculty with a different perspective on why students are not doing well," says Chew.
When their discussions turned to MOOCs, the two educators decided to study the phenomenon, and its effects on groups involved in higher education, by reading articles in the literature.
"A lot of research has been done on this topic," says Chew. "We tried to pull it all together. Millions of students have taken online courses just in the last 2-3 years. What does this mean? How does each stakeholder look at MOOCs?"
Seeking a financial model
Several dozen of America's top universities, Chew and Grim write in their article, have joined forces to create and/or invest in Coursera, edX and Udacity, the three main companies that provide MOOCs courses. Schools jumping on the MOOCs bandwagon include Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Texas recently announced it would begin offering credit for edX courses. Some schools in California already do.
Several financial factors, say Chew and Grim, make MOOCs potentially attractive to society. These include the costs of higher education, which have been growing faster than the rate of inflation for 30 years, and budget constraints that are causing some states to curb support for higher education. If large numbers of universities offer credit for MOOCs, this could significantly reduce the cost of four years of college.
"For parents, MOOCs [could] seem to be the answer to the rising cost of higher education today, particularly if more colleges begin to accept MOOCs for credit," the authors write.
But MOOCs need to overcome two challenges to gain a foothold in higher education. First, the dropout rate for MOOCs courses, Chew and Grim say, has been reported to be as high as 90 percent. Second, MOOCs need to develop a financial system that ensures a return on the investments made by universities and venture capitalists.
"Venture capital and philanthropy have thus far helped fund some providers," the authors write, "but for the most part … providers and institutions bear their own costs. Given that it takes millions of dollars to fund a startup as a provider, it is logical that in the longer term, these providers must find a way to make a profit out of their investments."
Explore further: College credit for online courses gains momentum
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The ZUBR hovercraft of the Russian
Navy is the largest hovercraft in existence. The
ZUBR has a displacement of 555 tons and is 57.3
metres long. Used as a landing craft the ZUBR can
carry 8 tanks and 140 personnel.
Largest Submarine, Typhoon Class
The Russian Typhoon-class submarines are the largest
submarines ever built. Now retired, the gigantic
undersea monsters first entered service in 1981.
They were 574 feet (175 metres) long, 75 feet (23
meters) wide, and had a crew of 160 men.
Fastest Boat, Spirit of Australia
The fastest boat in the world is the Spirit of Australia.
It is a wooden-hulled speed boat built in a backyard
in Sydney by Ken Warby. On October 8 1978 she was
officially clocked at 317 mph (511 km/h). Power
came from a J34 jet engine normally found in jet
fighters and other aircraft. Despite several attempts
to take the record, a few of them fatal, the Spirit
of Australia remains the fastest boat in the world.
Largest Warships, Nimitz-Class Aircraft Carrier
The Nimitz-class or American aircraft carriers are
the largest warships the world has ever seen. The
first vessels were commissioned in 1975 and since
then 10 have been constructed. They measure in at
1,092 feet (332 metres) long, and 252 feet (76.8
metres) wide. Onboard are 3,200 sailors and a further
2,480 who service, maintain and operate the up to
130 aircraft. Although typically the carriers play
host to 64 aircraft of different varieties.
World's Smallest Submarine
The world's smallest submarine was built by Pierre
Poulin of Canada. It made it's first official dive
in the Memphremagog Lake, Quebec on June 26 2005.
Ironically called 'BIG' the submarine weighs just
620 kgs - including pilot. During its official dive
the sub stayed underwater for 43 minutes at a depth
of 5 metres and traveled roughly 500 m (1,500 ft).
Deepest Submarine dive, Bathyscaph Trieste
The Bathyscaph Trieste reached a
record depth of 35,800 ft (6.78 miles) at Challenger
Deep off Guam (the lowest point of any ocean).
The two men who made the descent were Lt. Don Walsh
of the US Navy, and Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard.
The only habitable part of the Trieste is the 6
ft x 6 ft sphere hanging from the main body.
Largest Private Yacht, Prince Abdul Aziz
Prince Abdul Aziz is the largest megayacht at 482
ft. It was commissioned by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
The Prince Abdul Aziz reportedly cost $184 million
and features a hospital, Cinema and mosque, amongst
the usual luxuries. For more luxury yachts visit
Longest Ship, Seawise Giant
The longest ship in the world was Seawise Giant.
It was a supertanker built in 1979 by Sumitomo Heavy
Industries Ltd. at their shipyard in Japan. Seawise
Giant was 1,504 feet (458 meters) long. That's nearly
half a kilometer! She was scrapped in 2009.
The Bluebird is one of the most famous World Record
breaking boats of all time. Piloted by Donald Campbell
it broke and then re-broke the water speed record
several times. The story ended with tragedy however
when Campbell was killed attempting to break his
own record on lake Coniston, Northern England.
World's Largest Propeller
The world's largest ship propeller was built in
2006 by MMG for the Emma Maersk, one of the longest
container ships ever built. The six-bladed propellor
is 6.6 metres (31 feet) across. It weighs 131 tons,
and it took over two weeks to cool after it was
Most Valuable Shipwreck Discovered
The Spanish ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha sank in
1622 off the coast of what is now Florida. It was
carrying 40 tons of gold and silver, as well as
32 kgs (70 lbs) of emeralds. It was discovered in
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| 926
| 2.890625
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Discuss this article or ask questions at the LDS.net Forums.
Ezra Taft Benson
President Benson was born August 4, 1899, in Whitney, Idaho, and was the oldest of eleven children. When he was a youth, his father was called on a mission. The family worked hard to keep up the farm while he was gone, but his father’s example touched the children, and all eleven served at least one full-time mission.
In 1918, Ezra Taft Benson enlisted in the army just as World War I was ending. He then pursued a career in farming and took courses from Utah State University in agriculture. In 1921, he was called on a mission to England. Following his mission, Ezra Taft Benson attended Brigham Young University, where he was named the most popular man on campus and graduated with honors.
On September 10, 1926, Benson married Flora Smith Amussen, a woman with many talents. She had won the women’s singles tennis championship in college and had served a mission to Hawaii. Together, they had six children.
In 1929, President Benson was appointed to be the Franklin County agricultural agent and helped farmers solve agricultural problems. In 1930, he was appointed to serve as the executive secretary of the Idaho Cooperative Council, and he remained in this office for five years. He left in 1936 for additional graduate study at the University of California. When he returned in 1938, he was called to be a Stake President. In 1939, Ezra Taft Benson was asked to be the executive secretary of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives at its headquarters in Washington, D.C.
On July 26, 1943, Elder Benson was called as an apostle. He was called in 1945 to oversee the European mission and help the people who were suffering from the war. In ten months he delivered 92 boxcar loads of food, clothing, bedding, and medical supplies. He also helped reopen the missions in Europe.
In 1952, President Benson accepted a cabinet position under Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Secretary of Agriculture. He served in this position for eight years. His presence in politics helped the Church become accepted throughout the world. In 1973, Ezra Taft Benson became the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and in 1985 became the President of the Church. He was 86 years old. President Benson emphasized the importance of reading the Book of Mormon, missionary work, and strengthening families. He served as president until his death in 1994.
See also Beware of Pride, President Benson's classic talk from general conference
Quotes from President Ezra Taft Benson
- “We have a sacred responsibility to fulfill the threefold mission of the Church—first, to teach the gospel to the world; second, to strengthen the membership of the Church wherever they may be; third, to move forward the work of salvation for the dead.”
- “A Sacred Responsibility,” Ensign, May 1986
- "Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves. Most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on the top, such as the rich and the learned, looking down at the rest of us. There is, however, a far more common ailment among us—and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous."
- “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
- "The Church will always stand for that which is honest, virtuous, true and praiseworthy. Such a pronounced stand for righteousness constitutes a repudiation against every evil and all false philosophies. The First Presidency and the Twelve are not oblivious to false philosophies and evils and will continue to warn the world and the Saints as the Lord directs."
- “May the Kingdom of God Go Forth,” Ensign, May 1978
See also Quotes from the Prophets
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The Coming Revolution
Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an ax in the hand of a pathological criminal.
— Albert Einstein
A great revolution is brewing; a world revolution. Consider the origin of the two most important revolutions of modern times: the French and the Russian. During the 18th century France was ruled by a monarchical government and a hereditary aristocracy. This regime had originated in the Middle Ages and had been founded on feudal concepts and values — concepts and values suitable for a warlike agrarian society in which power was based principally on heavy cavalry that fought with lance and sword. The regime had been modified over the centuries as political power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the king. But it retained certain traits that did not vary: It was a conservative regime in which a traditional and hereditary class enjoyed a monopoly on power and prestige.
Meanwhile, the rate of social evolution was accelerating, and by the 18th century it had become unusually rapid. New techniques, new economic structures, and new ideas were appearing with which the old regime in France did not know how to deal. The growing importance of commerce, industry, and technology demanded a regime that would be flexible and capable of adapting itself to rapid changes; therefore, a social and political structure in which power and prestige would belong not to those who had inherited them but to those who deserved them because of their talents and achievements. At the same time new knowledge, together with new ideas that reached Europe as a result of contact with other cultures, was undermining the old values and beliefs. The philosophers of the so-called Enlightenment were expressing and giving definite form to the new yearnings and anxieties, so that a new system of values incompatible with the old values was being developed. By 1789, France found itself in the grip of an obsolete regime that could not have yielded to the new values without destroying itself; for it was impossible to put these values into practice without throwing off the domination of a hereditary class. Human nature being what it is, it is not surprising that those who constituted the old regime refused to give up their privileges to make way for what was called “progress.” Thus the tension between the old values and the new continued to rise until the breaking-point was reached and a revolution followed.
The prerevolutionary situation of Russia was similar to that of France, except that the Russian regime was even more out-of-date, backward, and rigid than that of France; and in Russia, moreover, there was a revolutionary movement that worked persistently to undermine the regime and the old values. As in France, the old regime in Russia could not have yielded to the new values without ceasing to exist. Because the Tsars and others who constituted the regime naturally refused to give up their privileges, the conflict between the two systems of values was irreconcilable, and the resulting tension rose until a revolution broke out.
The world today is approaching a situation analogous to that of France and Russia prior to their respective revolutions.
The values linked with so-called “progress” — that is, with immoderate economic and technological growth — were those that in challenging the values of the old regimes created the tensions that led to the French and Russian Revolutions. The values linked with “progress” have now become the values of another dominating regime: the technoindustrial system that rules the world today. And other new values are emerging that are beginning to challenge in their turn the values of the technoindustrial system. The new values are totally incompatible with technoindustrial values, so that the tension between the two systems of values cannot be relieved through compromise. It is certain that the partisans of technology will not voluntarily give in to the new values. Doing so would entail the sacrifice of everything they live for; they would rather die than yield. If the new values spread and grow strong enough, the tension will rise to a point at which revolution will be the only possible outcome. And there is reason to believe that the new values will indeed spread and grow stronger.
The naive optimism of the 18th century led some people to believe that technological progress would lead to a kind of utopia in which human beings, freed from the need to work in order to support themselves, would devote themselves to philosophy, to science, and to music, literature, and the other fine arts. Needless to say, that is not the way things have turned out.
In discussing the way things have turned out, I will refer especially to the United States, which is the country I know best. The United States is technologically the most advanced country in the world. As the other industrialized countries progress, they tend to follow trajectories parallel to that of the United States. So, speaking broadly and with some reservations, we can say that where the United States is today the other industrialized countries will be in the future.
Instead of using their technological means of production to provide themselves with free time in which to undertake intellectual and artistic work, people today devote themselves to the struggle for status, prestige, and power, and to the accumulation of material goods that serve only as toys. The kind of art and literature in which the average modern American immerses himself is the kind provided by television, movies, and popular novels and magazines; and it is not exactly what the 18th-century optimists had in mind. In effect, American popular culture has been reduced to mere hedonism, and hedonism of a particularly contemptible kind. “Serious” art does exist, but it tends to neurosis, pessimism, and defeatism.
As was to be expected, hedonism has not brought happiness. The spiritual emptiness of the culture of hedonism has left many people deeply dissatisfied. Depression, nervous tension, and anxiety disorders are widespread, and for that reason many Americans resort to drugs (legal or illegal) to alleviate these symptoms, or to modify their mental state in some other way. Other indications of American social sickness are, for example, child abuse and the frequent inability to sleep or to eat normally. And, even among those Americans who seem to have adapted best to modern life, a cynical attitude toward the institutions of their own society is prevalent.
This chronic dissatisfaction and the sickly psychological condition of modern man are not normal and inevitable parts of human existence. We need not idealize the life of primitive peoples or conceal facts that are unpleasant from a modern point of view, such as the high rate of infant mortality or, in some cultures, a violent and warlike spirit. There is nevertheless reason to believe that primitive man was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is and suffered much less from psychological problems than modern man does. For example, among hunting-and-gathering cultures, before they were disrupted by the intrusion of industrial society, child abuse was almost nonexistent. And there is evidence that in most of these cultures there was very little anxiety or nervous tension.
But what is at stake is not only the harm that modern society, does to human beings. The harm done to nature must also be taken into account. Even today, and even though modern man only occasionally comes into contact with her, Nature, our mother, attracts and entrances him and offers him a picture of the greatest and most fascinating beauty. The destruction of the wild natural world is a sin that worries, disturbs, and even horrifies many people. But we don’t need to dwell here on the devastation of nature, for the facts are well known: more and more ground covered with pavement instead of herbage, the abnormally accelerated rate of extinction of species, the poisoning of the water and of the atmosphere, and as a result of the latter the alteration even of the Earth’s climate, the ultimate consequences of which cannot be foreseen and may turn out to be disastrous.
Which reminds us that the unrestrained growth of technology threatens the very survival of the human race. Human society, together with its worldwide environment, constitutes a system of the greatest complexity, and in a system as complex as this the consequences of a given change cannot in general be predicted. And modern technology is in the process of bringing about the most profound changes in human society as well as in its physical and biological environment. That the consequences of such changes are unpredictable has been demonstrated not only theoretically, but also through experience. For example, no one could have predicted in advance that modern changes, through mechanisms that still have not been definitely determined, would lead to an epidemic of allergies.
When a complex and more-or-less stable system is disturbed through some important change, the results commonly are destabilizing and therefore harmful. For example, it is known that genetic mutations of living organisms (unless merely insignificant) are almost always harmful; only rarely are they beneficial to the organism. Thus, as technology introduces greater and greater “mutations” into the “organism” that is biosphere (the totality of all living things on Earth), the harm done by these “mutations” becomes correspondingly greater and greater. No one but a fool can deny that the continual introduction, through technological progress, of ever-greater changes in the system of Man-plus-Earth is in the highest degree dangerous, foolhardy, and rash.
Still, I am not one of those who predict a worldwide physical and biological disaster that will bring down the entire technoindustrial system within the next few decades. The risk of such a disaster is real and serious, but at present we do not know whether it will actually occur. Nevertheless, if a disaster of this kind does not come upon us, it is practically certain that there will be a disaster of another kind: the loss of our humanity.
Technological progress not only is changing man’s environment, his culture, and his way of life; it is changing man himself. For a human being is in large part a product of the conditions in which he lives. In the future, assuming that the technological system continues its development, the conditions in which man lives will be so profoundly different from the conditions in which he has lived previously that they will have to transform man himself.
The yearning for freedom, attachment to nature, courage, honor, honesty, morality, friendship, love and all of the other social instincts...even free will itself: all of these human qualities, valued in the highest degree from the dawn of the human race, evolved through the millennia because they were appropriate and useful in the primitive circumstances in which people lived. But today, so-called “progress” is changing the circumstances of human life to such an extent that these formerly advantageous qualities are becoming obsolete and useless. Consequently, they will disappear or will be transformed into something totally different and to us alien. This phenomenon can already be observed: Among the American middle class, the concept of honor has practically vanished, courage is little valued, friendship almost always lacks depth, honesty is decaying, and freedom seems to be identified, in the opinion of some people, with obedience to the rules. And bear in mind that this is only the beginning of the beginning.
It can be assumed that the human being will continue to change at an accelerating rate, because the evolution of an organism is very swift when its environment is suddenly transformed. Beyond that, man is transforming himself, as well as other living organisms, through the agency of biotechnology. Today, so-called “designer babies” are in fashion in the United States. A woman who wants a baby having certain characteristics, for example, intelligence, athletic ability, blond hair, or tall stature, comes to an agreement with another woman who has the desired characteristics. The latter donates an egg (usually in exchange for a sum of money — there are women who make a business of this) which is implanted in the uterus of the first woman so that nine months later she will give birth to a child having — it is hoped — the desired traits. There is no room for doubt that, as biotechnology advances, babies will be designed more and more effectively through genetic modification of eggs and sperm cells, so that human beings will come more and more to resemble planned and manufactured products instead of free creations of Nature. Apart from the fact that this is extremely offensive to our sense of what a person should be, its social and biological consequences will be profound and unforeseeable; therefore in all probability disastrous.
But maybe this won’t matter in the long run, because it is quite possible that human beings will some day become obsolete. There are distinguished scientists who believe that within a few decades computer experts will have succeeded in producing machines more intelligent than human beings. If this actually happens, then human beings will be superfluous and obsolete, and it is likely that the system will dispense with them.
Although it is not certain that this will happen, it is certain that immoderate economic growth and the mad, headlong advance of technology are overturning everything, and it is hardly possible to conceive how the final result can be anything other than disastrous.
In the countries that have been industrialized longest, such as England, Germany, and above all the United States, there is a growing understanding that the technological system is taking us down the road to disaster.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, practically everyone gladly or even enthusiastically welcomed progress, economic growth, and above all technology, and believed without reservation that they were purely beneficial. A German I know has told me that the same attitude toward technology was prevalent in Germany at that time, and we may assume that the same was true throughout the industrialized world.
But with the passage of time this attitude has been changing. Needless to say, most people don’t even have an attitude toward technology because they don’t take the trouble to apply their minds to it; they just accept it unthinkingly. But in the United States and among thoughtful people — those who do take the trouble to reflect seriously on the problems of the society in which they live — attitudes toward technology have changed profoundly and continue to change. Those who are enthusiastic about technology are in general those who expect to profit from it personally in some way, such as scientists, engineers, military men, and corporation executives. The attitude of many other people is apathetic or cynical: they know of the dangers and the social decay that so-called progress brings with it, but they think that progress is inevitable and that any attempt to resist it is useless.
All the same, there are growing numbers of people, especially young people, who are not so pessimistic or so passive. They refuse to accept the destruction of their world, and they are looking for new values that will free them from the yoke of the present technoindustrial system. This movement is still formless and has hardly begun to jell; the new values are still vague and poorly defined. But as technology advances along its mad and destructive path, and as the damage it does becomes ever more obvious and disturbing, it is to be expected that the movement will grow and acquire firmness, and will reinforce its values , making them more precise. These values, to judge by present appearances and also by what such values logically ought to be, will probably take a form somewhat like the following:
Rejection of all modern technology. This is logically necessary, because modern technology is a whole in which all parts are interconnected; you can’t get rid of the bad parts without also giving up those parts that seem good. Like a complex living organism, the technological system either lives or dies; it can’t remain half alive and half dead for any length of time.
Rejection of civilization itself. This too is logical, because the present technological civilization is only the most recent stage of the ongoing process of civilization, and earlier civilizations already contained the seed of the evils that today are becoming so great and so dangerous.
Rejection of materialism, and its replacement with a conception of life that values moderation and self-sufficiency while deprecating the acquisition of property or of status. The rejection of materialism is a necessary part of the rejection of technological civilization, because only technological civilization can provide the material goods to which modern man is addicted.
Love and reverence toward nature, or even worship of nature. Nature is the opposite of technological civilization, which threatens death to nature. It is therefore logical to set up nature as a positive value in opposition to the negative value of technology. Moreover, reverence toward or adoration of nature may fill the spiritual vacuum of modern society.
Exaltation of freedom. Of all the things of which modern civilization deprives us, freedom and intimacy with nature are the most precious. In fact, ever since the human race submitted to the servitude of civilization, freedom has been the most frequent and most insistent demand of rebels and revolutionaries throughout the ages.
Punishment of those responsible for the present situation. The scientists, engineers, corporation executives, politicians, and so forth who consciously and intentionally promote technological progress and economic growth are criminals of the worst kind. They are worse than Stalin or Hitler, who never even dreamed of anything approaching what today’s technophiles are doing. Therefore justice and punishment will be demanded.
The movement in opposition to the technoindustrial system should develop something more or less similar to the foregoing set of values; and in fact there is much evidence of the emergence of such values. Clearly these values are totally incompatible with the survival of technological civilization, just as the values that emerged prior to the French and Russian Revolutions were totally incompatible with the survival of the old regimes of those countries. As the damage done by the technoindustrial system grows worse, it is to be expected that the new values that oppose it will spread and become stronger. If the tension between technological values and the new values rises high enough, and if a suitable occasion presents itself, what happened in France and Russia will happen again: A revolution will break out.
But I don’t predict a revolution; it remains to be seen whether one will occur. There are several factors that may stand in the way of revolution , among them the following:
Lack of belief in the possibility of revolution. Most people take it for granted that the existing system is invulnerable and that nothing can divert it from its appointed path. It never occurs to them that revolution might be a real possibility. History shows that human beings commonly will submit to any injustice, however outrageous, if the people around them submit and everyone believes there is no way out. On the other hand, once the hope of a way out has arisen, in many cases a revolution follows.
Thus, paradoxically, the greatest obstacle to a revolution against the technoindustrial system is the very belief that such a revolution cannot happen. If enough people come to believe that a revolution is possible, then it will be possible in reality.
Propaganda. The technological society possesses a system of propaganda, made possible by modern media of communications, that is more powerful and effective than that of any earlier society. This system of propaganda makes more difficult the revolutionary task of undermining technoindustrial values.
The pseudorevolutionaries. At present there are too many people who pride themselves on being rebels without really being committed to the overthrow of the existing system. They only play at rebellion or revolution in order to satisfy their own psychological needs. These pseudorevolutionaries may form an obstacle to the emergence of an effective revolutionary movement.
Cowardice. Modern society has taught us to be passive and obedient, and to be horrified at physical violence. Moreover, the conditions of modern life are conducive to laziness, softness, and cowardice. Those who want to be revolutionaries will have to overcome these weaknesses.
I wrote “The Coming Revolution” several years ago at the suggestion of a young Spanish man, and I wrote it in Spanish. Here, obviously, I’ve translated it into English.
As I originally wrote the notes to “The Coming Revolution” many of them contained direct quotations, translated into Spanish, from English language sources. If I translated these quotations back into English, the results certainly would not be identical with the original English-language versions. Therefore, where possible, I have returned to the original English-language sources in order to quote them accurately. However, in several cases I no longer have access to the English-language materials in question, and in such cases I’ve had to use paraphrases in these notes rather than direct quotations. But material enclosed in quotation marks always is quoted verbatim.
Quoted by Gordon A. Craig, The New York Review of Books, November 4, 1999, page 14.
My correspondent who writes under the pseudonym “Último Reducto” disagrees. he says that the United States, with its “hard capitalism,” is in a certain sense backward: The path of the future is that of Western Europe, which, with its more advanced social-welfare programs, seduces and weakens the average citizen by making his life too soft and easy. This is a plausible opinion, and Último Reducto may well be right. But it is also possible that he is wrong. As technology increasingly frees the system from the need for human work, growing numbers of people will become superfluous and will then constitute no more than a useless burden. The system will have no reason to waste its resources in taking care of the superfluous people, and therefore may find it more efficient to treat them ruthlessly. Thus, possibly, it is the “hard” capitalism of the United States rather than the softer capitalism of Western Europe that points to the future. Only time will tell.
In regard to the sickly psychological state of modern man, see, e.g.: “The Science of Anxiety,” Time, June 10, 2002, pages 46–54 (anxiety is spreading and afflicts 19 million Americans, page 48; drugs have proven very useful in the treatment of anxiety, page 54); “The Perils of Pills,” U.S. News & World Report, March 6, 2000, pages 45–50 (almost 21 percent of children 9 years old or older have a mental disorder, page 45); “On the Edge on Campus,” U.S. News & World Report, February 18, 2002, pages 56–57 (the mental health of college students continues to worsen); Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, 1996, Volume 24, page 423 (in the United States the suicide rate of persons between 15 and 24 years old tripled between 1950 and 1990; some psychologists think that growing feelings of isolation and rootlessness, and that life is meaningless, have contributed to the rising suicide rate); “Americanization a Health Risk, Study Says,” Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1998, pages A1, A19 (a new study reports that Mexican immigrants in the United States have only half as many psychiatric disorders as persons of Mexican descent born in the United States, page A1).
E.g.: Gontran de Poncins, Kabloona, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1980, pages 32–33, 36, 157 (“no Eskimo has ever punished a child,” page 157); Allan R. Holmberg, Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia, The Natural History Press, New York, 1969, pages 204–05 (an unruly child is never beaten; children generally are allowed great latitude for physical expression of aggressive impulses against their parents, who are patient and long-suffering with them); John E. Pfeiffer, The Emergence of Man, Harper & Row, New York, 1969, page 317 (The Australian Aborigines practiced infanticide, but: “Nothing is denied to the children who are reared. Whenever they want food...they get it. Aborigine mothers rarely spank or otherwise punish their offspring, even under the most provoking circumstances.”)
On the other hand, the Mbuti of Africa did not hesitate to give their children hard slaps. Colin Turnbull, The Forest People, Simon And Schuster, 1962, pages 65, 129, 157. But this is the only example that I know of among hunting-and-gathering cultures of what by present standards could be considered child abuse. And I don’t think that it was abuse in the context of Mbuti culture, because the Mbuti had little hesitation about hitting one another and they often did hit one another, so that among them a blow did not have the same psychological significance that it has among us: a blow did not humiliate. Or so it seems to me on the basis of what I’ve read about the Mbuti.
E.g., Gontran de Poncins, op. cit., pages 212,273,292 (“their minds were at rest, and they slept the sleep of the unworried,” page 273; “Of course he would not worry. He was an Eskimo,” page 292). Still, there have existed hunting-and-gathering cultures in which anxiety was indeed a serious problem; for example, the Ainu of Japan. Carleton S. Coon, The Hunting Peoples, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1971, pages 372–73.
See, e.g., Elizabeth Kolbert, “Ice Memory,” The New Yorker, January 7, 2002, pages 30–37.
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age, translated by J. S. Whale, Doubleday, 1973, page 13 (“Jay W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown that in the field of complex systems, cause-to-effect relationships are very difficult to analyse: hardly ever does one given parameter depend on just one other factor. What happens is that all factors and parameters are interrelated by multiple feedback loops, the structure of which is far from obvious....”)
“Allergy Epidemic,” U.S. News & World Report, May 8, 2000, pages 47–53. “Allergies: A Modern Epidemic,” National Geographic, May 2006, pages 116–135.
In regard to the decay of honesty in the United States, see an interesting article by Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1998, pages E1, E4.
Rebecca Mead, “Eggs for Sale,” The New Yorker, August 9, 1999, pages 56–65.
“Redesigning Dad,” U.S. News & World Report, November 5, 2001, pages 62–63 (sperm cells may be the best place in which to repair defective genes; the technology is nearly ready).
See Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 2000, pages 238–262. One should not have too much confidence in predictions of miraculous advances such as the development of intelligent machines. For example, in 1970 scientists predicted that within 15 years there would be machines more intelligent than human beings. Chicago Daily News, November 16, 1970 (page citation not available). Obviously this prediction did not come true. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to discount the possibility of machines more intelligent than human beings. In fact, there is reason to believe that such machines will indeed exist some day if the technological system continues to develop.
See Bruce Barcott, “From Tree-hugger to Terrorist,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, April 7, 2002, pages 56–59, 81. This article describes the development of what may become within a few years a real and effective revolutionary movement committed to the overthrow of the technoindustrial system. (Since writing the foregoing several years ago, I’ve had to conclude that no effective movement of this kind is emerging in the United States. Capable leadership is lacking, and the real revolutionaries have failed to separate themselves from the pseudo-revolutionaries. But Bruce Barcott’s article, along with information from other sources, shows that the raw material for a real revolutionary movement does exist: There are people with sufficient passion and commitment who are willing to take risks and make great sacrifices. Only a few able leaders would be needed to form this raw material into an effective movement.)
Último Reducto has pointed out a possible ambiguity in this phrase. To eliminate it, I need to explain that the word “materialism” here refers not to philosophical materialism but to values that exalt the acquisition of material possessions.
See the interesting article “Propaganda”; The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 26, 15th edition, 1997, pages 171–79. This article reveals the impressive sophistication of modern propaganda.
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When it comes to designing your home garden, half the fun is in the planning. Your yard reflects your family’s own style, your garden’s conditions, and your region’s climate. While there are plenty of resources to advise you on the last two, you’re the expert when it comes to creating a garden that matches your family’s personalities and needs. Give your children a voice in your garden’s design and plantings to help generate interest and a lifelong passion for nature. It also creates memories and teaches cooperation, patience, and responsibility. Brainstorm together and don’t be afraid to use your imagination!
Start by using old magazines, newspapers, and art materials. Create a postboard size vision of the garden, encourage your child to label structures and identify desired flowers and plants. For younger children, encourage them to phonetically spell out words, inventive spelling is essential for beginning readers and writers. Don’t be afraid to dream big and talk with your children about their vision of the perfect garden space, this gives you an opportunity to dream as well. Encourage your children to use their imagination and share their ideas by reflecting on garden features you may have seen together on a family trip, at the playground, or perhaps at a children’s garden.
Castles, waterfalls, and ponds are frequent requests of young children for garden structures. It’s important to hear these ideas and later consider how to create small or alternative versions. We have included some suggestions for creating inexpensive and creative garden structures below.
When it comes to implementing ideas and making an official plan, you may need to scale it down. Begin by drawing or creating a digital model of the actual size of the space you have to work with- it may only be a small strip of land, a deck or perhaps a large backyard. Now you know what you are working with and can begin to think about your child’s ideas in terms of how they can come to fruition.
Once you have your basic shape, sketch it out on graph paper or use a digital model, try to keep it to scale using one square equaling one foot. First add paths or any permanent structures that exist in your space. Next draw any structures you’d like to include, perhaps a theme will dictate your design. The last step will be choosing plants that best accommodate your design, space, and budget. But before you do, here are some practical landscape considerations to think about as you fill that bit of earth:
- Have a small space? Try planting in unique shapes or patterns.As you choose your location, think inside out. Place the garden/play area where you can see it from your kitchen window or other rooms you spend a lot of time in.
- Look up and down. Before you dig, be aware of any power lines, pipes, septic systems, or other existing limitations.
- Consider where there is the most sunlight and the most shade, you will need to choose plants accordingly.
- A fence or wall adds privacy and sets boundaries for kids.
- Choose your materials wisely. They should resist rust, rot, and roughhousing. Surfaces should be comfortable and safe for bare feet but not too slippery when wet.
- Give yourself room, don’t overcrowd the space. If you are including paths make sure they are at least 2 feet wide.
- Create a place for family gatherings. No space? At least make room for kids’ outdoor lunches. You don’t have to build a deck; a simple fire pit for roasting marshmallows in a country yard or a canopy in a corner of an urban lot will do.
- Make the yard adaptable as the kids grow- are there are structures that you will be able to adapt as the children grow older?
Exciting Garden Structures and Features
- You may already know that you cannot install that castle, moat, or climbing rock but using some of the alternative structures and garden ideas below you can still generate excitement and joy.
- Plan a sunflower house by planting sunflowers in a square to form a “room”
- Using five or more poles or large branches bound at the top and grow gourds, beans, cucumbers, miniature pumpkins, morning glories, or love-in-a-puff.
- Create a tunnel: insert 8-foot poles every 3 feet along both sides of a path; lash horizontal poles at 2-, 4-, and 6-foot heights; and then plant and train vines along this corridor.
- Use a simple platform to create a stage or as a gathering place. Consider building a small wooden deck (child-sized) with 2 x 4’s and plywood.
- Instead of a water feature, create a shallow bird bath.
- Arrange 4-5 tree stumps at varying heights (not too tall) for children to step across or move throughout the yard.
- Use a shallow children’s pool as a circular raised garden bed.
Learn more about creating a child-friendly space.
Have you decided on the plants you want to grow? Check out this article on creating your own garden signs.
Article By: Julia Parker-Dickerson and NGA Staff
Original Source: kidsgardening.org
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Plan for fingerprinting Great White Sharks
Press release issued: 13 August 2010
Computer scientists from the University of Bristol are collaborating with international shark researchers to build a visual biometrics database of Great White Sharks.
Computer scientists from the University of Bristol are collaborating with shark researchers to build an international visual biometrics database of Great White Sharks.
The computer identification system will store images of the White Shark's unique dorsal fin to help international shark groups recognise and track individual species, providing them with a better insight into their behaviour and how to protect them.
Dr Tilo Burghardt from the the University’s Department of Computer Science, who is working on the project in collaboration with international partners, said: “We are developing the software for a system that will be able to automatically recognise features of White Shark dorsal fins using 'computer vision' technology, and then archive the animal information along with their IDs.
“We hope it will be usable within two years, with members of the public able to participate."
Michael Scholl, founder of NGO White Shark Trust, initiated and designed the photographic based fin-printing identification system enabling scientists to identify individual White Sharks over long periods of time with minimal interference with the wild animals. The present White Shark Trust fin-print database includes over 1,500 different White Sharks.
Michael added: “An automated software-based identification system is necessary for building an international centralised database for scientists to be able to collaborate and work together efficiently.”
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Chapter 6 Presentation of findings
- Explores ways in which the findings from coastal studies can be communicated to others and provides a number of worked examples of the techniques outlined;
- Reviews the ways in which data and results can be presented effectively within a report;
- Discusses space-time summaries as a useful method for conveying the behaviour of an estuary, temporally and spatially;
- Includes a sediment budget to emphasise how results can be collated and synthesised effectively.
To complete the study process, the results must be documented in a way that explains the conceptual model and makes clear any uncertainties. There is no established way of doing this and the approach is likely to vary from one situation to another. In most cases, the conceptual model will comprise a written description, illustrated with results, schematic figures and flow diagrams. It is unlikely that the format of output available from a single technique will be sufficient to fully describe the conceptual model (Figure 6.1). The complexity arises because one is often trying to present a number of behavioural concepts that interact over different space and time scales. Without any clear hierarchy this can be difficult to communicate. Whilst there are various forms of system diagrams that allow the linkages to be identified, such techniques often fall short of encapsulating the behaviour of the system.
Typically the synthesis report might include:
- a description of the estuary and a summary of the estuary characteristics (Estuary setting);
- the summary of the results from each of the analysis/model outputs (Box 6.1);
- space-time summaries for the existing case and any scenarios investigated (Table 6.3);
- more detailed descriptions to support the individual summaries given in the space-time table (e.g. Humber holocene chronology - PDF 871KB (ABPmer, 2004));
- further description of how the system will respond to the scenarios envisaged, such as sea level rise, dredging, flood defence;
- maps of sediment pathways (Figure 6.1) and a sediment budget for the various scenarios;
- identification of the most sensitive behavioural response mechanisms for the particular estuary; and
- a summary of the conceptual model and how the various studies support the model with accompanying notes on any areas of uncertainty.
A case study, which illustrates many of the concepts presented here, is given in the paper on Southampton Water case study - PDF 2.14MB (ABPmer). The following sections explain some of the presentation techniques in a little more detail.
Each individual analysis or modelling approach is usually documented, or reported in its own right. This ensures that details about the method used, assumptions, calibration and validation, sensitivity, etc are all captured and can be revisited if they appear to have a particular relevance to the synthesis. Such reports can be copious in their own right and do not therefore lend themselves to the overall presentation of findings. One way of distilling this is to prepare brief summaries of the individual studies (Box 6.1). It may even be necessary to summarise this further, presenting just the key findings or conclusions, in order to give a concise but reasonably complete overview of all the studies undertaken (Box 6.2).
To explore an appropriate form for the intertidal recharge, some work was undertaken fitting existing intertidal profiles, taken along the Hythe to Cadland shore, to a theoretical form. The theoretical form was derived by considering wave energy dissipation over the intertidal and mud density (Lee & Mehta, 1997). Furthermore, the shape of the profile is thought to provide an indication of stability of the shore, with convex-upward profiles being accretionary and concave profiles being erosional (Kirby, 1998).
The equation was found to give a very good description of the existing cross-shore profiles. The values are given below, and can be compared with the reported values of Lee and Mehta (1997):
|Parameter||Actual||Accepted range: mean (st.dev)|
|Wave attenuation coefficient, ki||0.0007||0.420 (0.130)||0.016 (0.027)|
|Foreshore slope, F||0.0450||0.058 (0.083)||0.026 (0.019)|
|Depth correction factor, ß||0.0068||0.046 (0.054)||0.015 (0.008)|
The form of the profile is weakly accretional having a convex form in its lower portion. In the upper part, the profile exhibits scour due to wave breaking at the shoreline, as indicated by the relatively high value of foreshore slope. These results are consistent with the erosional scarp observable in front of the saltmarsh and the noted potential for sediment deposition over an area that covers the lower intertidal.
In this example the findings of the study summarised in Box 6.1 are distilled down to the key findings:
|Intertidal form analysis||
One way of communicating this complexity to the user is to describe the behaviour in a series of space-time intervals. Using a table, where the columns define time intervals and the rows various spatial elements that make up the system, an explanation of the mechanisms at work and the resultant behaviour can be given, as illustrated in Table 6.2. Individual cells in the table can then link to sections in the explanatory text (or separate reports) that provide a more complete explanation. In addition the same format can be used to summarise the existing situation and the behaviour predicted for a given set of imposed changes (e.g. sea level rise, new development, etc). This is particularly valuable if there is a need to use the results in some form of impact assessment.
An example of this approach, based on work carried out in the Humber for the estuary shoreline management plan (Winn et al., 2002), is shown in Table 6.3, for the existing situation.
|Holocene change (8000BP-present)||Decadal change(10-100 years)||Short-term change (tides and storms)|
|Estuary||Landward transgression due to predominantly monotonically increasing sea level. Physical constraint of the sill at Hull has had a major influence on the estuary form as sea levels have risen.||Continued adjustment to both sea level and the reclamation of large areas of upper intertidal. Estuary has infilled whilst maintaining the overall volume of water as sea level has risen. Some evidence of landward transgression, with shorter-term response to variations in sea level (e.g. lunar nodal cycle).||Significant sediment flux and bed level changes dominated by tidal flows, with fresh water flows having increasing influence landwards and waves and density currents influencing movements in outer estuary.|
|Mouth||Mouth retreats along line of channel from New Sand Hole to present position||Acts as a tidal embayment. Spurn has been held by defences but is now beginning to realign as defences fail.||Major circulation cell around Bull Sand Fort. Storm action eroding the Holderness cliffs influences sediment supply to Spurn and the estuary.|
|Meanders||Channel alignment seaward of Hull cut into the tills by ice melt and subsequently fluvial flows. Tidal waters have progressively occupied and infilled the channel, with periods of stable alignment and periods of migration.||Meanders in the outer Humber are constrained by underlying till. In the inner Humber, channel switching from south to north of Read's Island is a result of large river flows, in conjunction with periods of relatively high tidal range. The training works at Trent Falls have reduced the length over which this switching occurs.||Switch of meander from south of Reed's Island into the Redcliff channel happens in response to major flood events. The switch back, to north of Read's Island is more of a progressive migration. If the period between flood events is long enough, the channel switches to south of Reed's Island.|
|Rivers||Humber lake infilled initially with fluvially derived sediments, followed by the formation of tidal channels once sea level rose over the sill at Hull. Some evidence for substantial movement of the river alignment.||Heavily constrained by flood defences all the way to the tidal limit on the main rivers. There is a gradual switch, some 20km above Trent Falls, from tidal to fluvial dominance. There appears to be a cyclical link between fresh water flows and sedimentation in the outer estuary.||High flows during winter periods with very little storage space. Trent is artificially charged and so low summer flows not as significant on this river.|
|Ebb/flood delta||Only evidence is the scour holes in the palaeo-channel out to New Sand Hole, which suggests that any sand bank/delta formations migrated with the mouth||No evidence of a delta in the vicinity of Spurn. Hydraulic and sedimentary evidence indicates circulation cells around Foul Holme Spit and Middle shoal, suggesting that the delta may operate about a "mouth" at the neck just west of Hawkins Point and Grimsby||Middle shoal exhibits rapid change and also responds to longer-term trends, which appear to be linked to variations in fresh water flow. Foul Holme Spit exhibits less rapid, more progressive changes.|
The explanation of the space-time summary and the assessment of how the estuary may change under different scenarios of sea level rise or the removal of various lengths of sea defence are explained more fully in the synthesis report (ABP Research, 2000). Hence, in this case the conceptual model is not a single description but rather a multiple space-time description, where there is an appreciation of the relative importance of individual behavioural components but the precise interactions between components is not fully understood.
In order to understand how the estuary is evolving, a useful starting point is to try and establish how the sediments are being redistributed. Typically this is a set of vectors showing the direction, with the length of the arrow depicting the magnitude. This generally requires the separate consideration of the fine and coarse fractions, as they invariably respond to different characteristics in the forcing conditions. However, they can be presented together, in a map of the main pathways (Figure 6.2). This type of presentation can be used to combine data from a variety of sources. For example, Figure 6.2 simply denotes direction, whereas in Figure 6.6 some indication of different types of transport and their relative magnitude is also provided. As an alternative form of presentation, the arrows can be drawn in a way that indicates the confidence there is in a particular pathway. So, a solid thick arrow may indicate a high degree of confidence, a solid thin arrow - a somewhat lower confidence and a dashed arrow (or arrows going in opposite directions) - a degree of uncertainty or conflicting evidence.
One of the most useful summaries of estuary behaviour is the sediment budget. This describes the main sediment exchanges, both in and out of the estuary and internally (Figure 6.3). Further refinement can add detail to the description of the various sediment transfers. It must be recognised that this says very little about the current state of the estuary or how this state may change in the future. A future development may be to produce a time dependent budget for given scenarios. However, this would require a substantial amount of information about all the components of the system and so demands a high degree of confidence in the predictive capability of the models being used, to justify the effort required.
In many cases, it can be difficult to identify, let alone quantify, all the mechanisms that give rise to sediment transfers. It may however be possible to derive approximate estimates of the amounts moving to and from sources and sinks based on measures such as transport potential and sediment demand. In effect, one establishes an account and as with any account, the prime requirement is that it balances. For this reason, Pethick suggested the sediment audit as an approximate balance that could be carried out on a number of scales (e.g. local, sediment cell, or regional). The relative importance of changes in supply and demand could then be assessed at the different scales being considered (Pethick, 1992).
An example of how to formulate a net sediment budget is proposed in Townend and Whitehead (2003), and the result is illustrated schematically in Figure 6.4. This focuses on the net (long-term) exchanges between key features of the system, whilst noting some of the gross movements of sediment (e.g. the amount moving back and forth on every tide).
An alternative, is to present the same sort of information on a schematic map of the estuary, so that the spatial relationship of the exchanges can be seen (Figure 6.5).
For many studies of change, one of the main objectives is to determine how volumes and areas are likely to change and what this is likely to mean for the extent of particular types of habitat. Quantitatively this can be reported in tabular form but it is often helpful to illustrate this with maps or sketches to show just where and how the changes are likely to take place. One form of this is to map the areas of erosion and accretion as shown in Figure 6.6, which also includes arrows to illustrate the main sediment pathways. However this only provides a limited view of how the form is changing, particularly if vertical and horizontal changes are happening simultaneously but usually at very different rates. An alternative, therefore, is to use sections to show the various rates of change and how this effects the extent of subtidal and intertidal area (Figure 6.7).
Model output on its own does not usually have a particularly high explanatory power. However, if combined with suitable annotation, or reworked into schematic figures, it can have a much greater value, as I have tried to illustrate in a number of the figures shown in this section.
One of the difficulties in identifying morphological change in estuaries is that there is as yet no well-defined theoretical framework. The constituent processes are understood to a greater or lesser degree but the basis for formulating the behaviour, related to dynamic equilibrium states, is far less developed. The process outlined seeks to use the methods and techniques that are currently available, to identify system behaviour in a way that is transparent, with a clear recognition of the current uncertainties.
A key to this process is the synthesis of the study findings and the way in which the results are presented. Both of these areas would merit further research. For the former, the development of a more formal experimental basis may be of benefit (Mayo, 1996). For the latter, interactive presentations, with the user able to investigate particular aspects in more detail, supported by a mix of graphics, animation and text, may well provide the way forward.
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(AP) New evidence shows humans lived in North America more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than had previously been known.
Discovered in a cave in Oregon, fossil feces yielded DNA indicating these early residents were related to people living in Siberia and East Asia, according to a report in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.
"This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis," said Dennis L. Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, referring to the Clovis culture, well known for its unique spear-points that have been studied previously.
Humans are widely believed to have arrived in North America from Asia over a land-bridge between Alaska and Siberia during a warmer period. A variety of dates has been proposed and some are in dispute.
Few artifacts were found in the cave, leading Jenkins to speculate that these people stayed there only a few days at a time before moving on, perhaps following game animals or looking for other food.
The petrified poop - coprolites to scientists - is yielding a look at the diet of these ancient Americans, Jenkins said.
While the analysis is not yet complete, he said there are bones of squirrels, bison hair, fish scales, protein from birds and dogs and the remains of plants such as grass and sunflowers.
The oldest of several coprolites studied is 14,340 calendar years old, said co-author Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.
"The Paisley Cave material represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas," he said. "Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained."
The date for the new coprolites is similar to that of Monte Verde in southern Chile, where human artifacts have been discovered, added Willerslev.
Jenkins said it isn't clear exactly who these people living in the Oregon caves were, since there were few artifacts found. He said there was one stone tool, a hand tool used perhaps to polish or grind or mash bones or fat.
"We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human signature," he said.
"If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them," Jenkins said.
The Clovis culture has been dated to between 13,200 and 12,900 calendar years ago and is best known by the tools left behind.
Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, said the find, along with indications of human presence at other locations, adds to the evidence for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America.
"The genetic evidence from the coprolites from Paisley Caves is also consistent with the current genetic data for the peopling of the Americas - that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from Northeast Asia," added Waters, who was not part of the research team.
Anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said this data along with material from Alaska provide increasing "evidence that ancestors of Native Americans used a coastal route during the colonization of the Americas." Malhi was not part of the research team.
Jenkins said that discoveries like those in the Oregon caves "help us to reconstruct the American past."
"Our heritage is really important and it is important to the majority of the American public. If you don't know where you come from, it's hard to have a feeling of community, of participation."
To make sure the Oregon cave material hadn't been contaminated with modern DNA, the researchers tested more than 50 people who worked at the site. The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native Americans in two groups that can be traced to Siberia and East Asia.
In their paper the researchers dated the coprolites at 12,300 "carbon years" before the present. Prior to 3,000 years ago, carbon years differed from calendar years, resulting in the date of approximately 14,300 calendar years for the coprolites.
The research was funded by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon; Association of Oregon Archaeologists and the Marie Curie Actions program.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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It's easy to see how the concept of universal health coverage (UHC) became so elusive.
At the start, the idea must have seemed straightforward enough. Lots of countries "covered" only part of their population, and several were making efforts to expand coverage to "uncovered" populations. China, for example, started out on this process in 2003, trying to expand coverage to the rural population that lost coverage when the old rural cooperative medical scheme collapsed following the de-collectivization of agriculture in 1978.
It didn't take long, however, for someone to point out that in a sense everyone already has coverage. China's rural health facilities continued to receive subsidies even after 1978. Thailand already had a network of government facilities even before it launched its UC scheme. Mexican families without a social security member already had access to the network of government facilities run by the ministry of health even before the Seguro Popular scheme was launched.
Coverage was already universal. That wasn't the issue. Rather the issue was that not everyone enjoyed the same depth of coverage: people outside a "scheme" (often the less well off) were liable for higher out-of-pocket payments than those inside a "scheme" (often the better off). So what was needed was not universal coverage (which existed already) but rather "deep coverage for everyone" (or DCFE). The argument was accepted, but the acronym DCFE was horrible. Adding a D to make UDHC didn't get any support either so it was decided to stick with UHC but add a second dimension to coverage—depth.
Soon there was another complaint. We were focusing on the financial side of coverage and ignoring the issue of what health benefits countries would get by expanding and deepening coverage. If the focus was on reducing out-of-pocket payments, might not coverage expansion initiatives be skewed against low-cost but highly effective interventions in favor of costly inpatient and pharmaceutical-based interventions with limited effectiveness? In short, shouldn't we be thinking about what is covered and not just who is covered and how deeply. There was of course some debate. There were those who accepted that publicly-financed coverage expansion initiatives needed to have an eye to the health impacts, but that wasn't the only goal of public policy: financial protection mattered too. But it was conceded that there needed to be a third dimension to UHC reflecting what is covered.
A cube is born
And so the famous WHO UHC cube was born. This helped for sure. But since the adjective "universal" captures only one of the three dimensions, and since all countries afford some coverage to everyone, the concept underlying UHC would always be hard to get across: "Well yes actually it's not so much who has coverage we're talking about so the 'universal' bit is indeed a bit misleading; it's more about the depth of people's (financial) coverage and what (services) they're covered for."
It didn't take long after the cube's birth before people started asking awkward questions about the three dimensions.
Are we talking about coverage on paper on paper (de jure) or coverage in practice (de facto). What if a country promises but doesn't actually deliver coverage? After all one of the complaints with government facilities has been that people don't always get the services they think they're entitled to. There's plenty of evidence on health worker absenteeism, drugs being unavailable, and so on.
And what of providers failing to deliver the correct care? We know many fail to make the correct diagnosis, and even when they get the correct diagnosis often fail to prescribe the right treatment. This isn't always due to ignorance. Often providers make the wrong diagnosis because they fail to do everything they know they should do.
It soon became clear that when thinking about the "service coverage" dimension of UHC, we need to look beyond what services people are entitled to. Service coverage is about people getting the care they need. We can't get at this by looking at the number of contacts with a provider.We need to look at what happens during the contact, comparing the services the person gets (or doesn't get) to what's needed. In some cases, this is straightforward. A child of a certain age requires a specific set of vaccinations, and one can verify whether they've been received. In most cases, though, establishing what's needed and what's received during the contact is much harder—if not impossible beyond a detailed case study. But if we don't try, and instead focus on what services people are entitled to or the number of contacts, we could go badly wrong.
The de jure and de facto distinction matters too for the financial coverage dimension. We need to look beyond the payments people should make on paper. Financial coverage is about what people pay in practice, and how affordable these payments are. Patients may end up paying considerably more out-of-pocket than they expect to on the basis of what's written on paper. Providers may deliberately overprescribe to make money. They may do this even more when they know a patient is in a "scheme". Or providers may deliberately switch to a more resource-intensive style of care. Paradoxically we may find that expanding coverage may lead to larger out-of-pocket payments and hence shallower coverage.
So what exactly is UHC?
As each layer of argument has been added, UHC has thus morphed from a straightforward notion of making sure everyone has coverage to something much more complex and useful.
Yes universalism is still there. But UHC isn't about getting everyone coverage, since everyone already has it.
So what exactly is UHC? I think it means that that in practice everyone—whether rich or poor—gets the care they need without suffering undue financial hardship as a result.
UHC is about equity: linking care to need, not to ability pay. UHC is also about financial protection: making sure that people's use of needed care doesn't leave their family in poverty. And UHC is about quality of care: making sure providers make the right diagnosis, and prescribe a treatment that is appropriate and affordable.
New labels aren't always bad
Are these new ideas? No. They've been around for a long time. Countries have been pursuing these goals for ages, and scholars have been studying these issues for ages. It's just that it hasn't been called UHC. UHC is indeed old wine in a new bottle. We've all been working on UHC all along; we just didn't know it!
And yes the term UHC doesn't capture the richness of the agenda we've been working on very well. There is indeed a risk that it draws people's attention toward the rather empty question of who has coverage—the dimension of UHC that gave its name, but the one that turned out to the least useful.
But if we can manage this risk, UHC may yet serve as a useful rallying cry for the goals of equity, financial protection, and quality of care. We just have to downplay the original concept and explain that despite its name UHC isn't just about giving everyone coverage. It's about ensuring that in practice everyone—whether rich or poor—gets the care they need without suffering undue financial hardship as a result.
If by slapping the UHC label on the bottle, we get people more interested in the wine—even if the label is a bit misleading—that's surely a good thing. After all the wine's not a bad one. Far from it.
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Conception of soul in philosophy -- Jaina theory of soul -- considered
from noumenal and the phenomenal points of view -- Upayoga as
characteristic of soul -- bahiratman, antaratman and paramatman --
compared with distinction between `ME' and 'I' of William James -- seat of
the soul-classification of Samsari Jivas -- freedom of soul from Samsara.
I. The problem of the soul has been a perennial problem
in religion and speculative philosophy. Primitive man ha made a
distinction between body and soul. The burial of the dead with their
belongings and even the mummification of the Egyptians are based on such a
distinction between body and spirit. The philosophical concept of the soul
has developed from such primitive distinctions.
Anthropological evidence shows that the notion of Sol
and spirit was first formed by primitive man as an explanation of certain
features of his experience like dream an sleep. For him soul is an
ethereal image of the body. It is ethereal, tennous or filmy; and it
possesses the power (flashing quickly from one place to another. Yet it
was not conceived as purely immaterial. In Plato we find the emphatic
primacy of the psyche or soul in the dialogues from the Apology onwards to
In the Homeric thought psyche appears as a shadow
double of the body. But Socrates and Plato recognized the soul as mans
real selfSocrates said that we should aim at the perfection of our souls.
Plato shows that of all the things that man has 1 next to the gods, his
soul is the most divine and most truly his own.' Body in fact is the
shadow of the soul. Jowett says that Plato was concerned wit emphasizing
the priority of the soul to the body, towards the end of his life, as he
gave importance to the idea of good in the Republic and of beauty in the
Symposium.2 Plato said that the soul is immortal because its very idea and
essence is the self-moved and self moving, that which is the foundation
and the beginning of motion to all that moves besides.3
Plato reversed the primitive conception of the soul as
shadowy double of the body and identified the true as the soul, but he
preserves and accentuates the original animistic dualism. Approaching the
question with the scientific spirit, Aristotle started with the living
organism and defined the psyche as the principle of life. He distinguished
the different levels of psychical functions, from the vegetative to the
rational. The soul is the actualisation of the potentiality of life, and,
therefore defined as the 'entelechy', 'as the fulfilment of the body'.
The idea of the soul is intrinsically independent of the body implies the
conception of its substantiality. Conceiving the soul as a simple and
indestructible substance, the scholastic metaphysics was argued to
demonstrate its immortality. So did Plato emphasize the simple and
unitary nature of the soul.
In modern psychology, the idea of the soul is no longer
important. In its place has come the notion of self or 'the centre of
interest.' The word 'soul' is ambiguous. Sometimes it stands for mind,
sometimes for self and sometimes for both. The English word points to an
entity as the cause or vehicle of physical or psychical activities of the
individual person. The soul is a spiritual substance.
In Indian thought the word atmanhas undergone various changes. It is
little used in the Vedas. It primarily meant breath. In the Upanisads
another word, prana, is used for breath, and atman stands for the
innermost part of man. Man was atmavat. For the Upanisadic seers, the
soul as a propocition for all experiences Indian philosophies, with the
exception of Miayavada of Samkara and Ksanikavada of the Buddhists,
fundamentally agree about the nature of the soul as a pert manent, eternal
and imperishable substance. But the primitive Aryans believed that the
essence of man is continued after death in a shadowy existence in some
subtle bodily form. This is not the soul of the later philosophers.
Jacobi calls it psyche. This is the development of the primitive motion
of life after death lingering in some form. It is found even today in the
practice of sraddha. The psyche frequently spoken of as purusa and of the
size of the thumb (angustha-matra). At the time of death it departs from
the body. In the oldest Upanisads the psyche is described a eonstituted
by the prdnas, psycho-physical factors. Still these factors were not
regarded as principles of personality .
II. The idea of the soul has occupied an importar
position in Jaina philosophy. Jainism aims at the liberation of the soul
from the cycle of birth and death. The saving the soul is the Christian
ideal. In the Apology, Plato makes Socrates say that his mission was to
get men to care for their souls and to make them as good as they can be.
Jainism is dualistic. There is a dichotomous division
of categories. All things are divided into living and nonliving, souls and
non-souls. In the first verse of the Dravya samgraha, we read, "The
ancient among the great Jainas have described the dravyas as jiva and
ajiva." Jiva is a category and jiva personalized becomes human. Jainism
believes in the plurality of souls. Souls are substances distinct from
matter. Souls influence one another. But they are quit distinct from one
another and not connected in any higher unity. They may be called
spiritual monads. Jainism emphasizes the diversity of souls. Amongst the
Muslim theologians, Nazam and his school maintained that the soul is
Jainism considers the soul from two points of view :
the noumenal (niscaya naya) and the phenomenal (vyavahar naya). The
Dravyamcyogatarkana of Bhoja describes the distinction as mentioned in the
Visesavasykabhaisya by saying that the niscaya narrates the real things
and the vyavahar narrates things in a popular way. In the Samayasarc
Kundakundacarya points out that the practical standpoint is essential for
the exposition of the inner reality of things, canonAryan is never capable
of understanding without the non-Aryan tongue.
The existence of the soul is a presupposition in the
Jaina philosophy. Proofs are not necessary. If there are any proofs, we
can say that all the pramanas can establish the existence of the soul. "
Oh Gautama, the soul is pratyaksa", said Mahavlra, " for that in which
your knowledge consists is itself soul ". What is pratyaksa need not be
proved like the pleasure and pain of the body. It is pratyahsa owing
to the aham-pratyaksa, the realization of the I, which
is associated with the functions pertaining to all the three tenses.
William James and James Ward present self-consciousness in this form.
Ward talks of the 'internal perception' or self-consciousness. The last
order of knowledge of the duality of subject and object is an
indispensable condition of all actual experience however simple. It is.
therefore, first in order of existence. It is the subject of experience
that we call the pure ego or self. William James says, "For, this
central part of the self is felt. It is something by which we also have
direct sensible consciousness in which it is present, as in the whole life
time of such moments. Thus, one who ignores the self-evidence of the
soul is like one who says that sound is inaudible and the moon is devoid
of the moon. The existence of the soul can be inferred from the behavior
of others. Similarly, the soul exists because, " it is my word, O Gautama"
The jiva is described from the noumenal and phenomenal
points of view. From the noumenal point of view, the soul is described in
the pure form. The phenomenal describes the empirical qualities of the
soul. From the pure point of view, it is not associated with body or any
physical or mental qualities. Mahavlra points out to the third Ganadhara
that the soul is different from the body and its sense is just as
Devadatta recollects an object perceived through the five windows of the
palace, which is different from the palace and the five windows, so also a
person recollecting an object perceived through the five senses of the
body is different from the senses and the body. The Buddhist
impermanence of the soul is also refuted. Buddhists had said that there
was no self except the khatldas. Kundakundacarya points out that from the
noumenal point of view the soul and the body are not one, although in
worldly practice the soul having a beautiful body is called beautiful and
fair like the beautiful body of the living Arhat. In the
Chandogyopanisad, in the dialogue between Yajnavalkya and Janaka, the idea
of the self is progressively brought out by showing that it is not a
physical entity nor a dream-state.
From the noumenal point of view, the soul is pure and
perfect. It is pure consciousness. From the real point of view, the soul
is unbound, untouched and not other than itself. The soul is one and not
composite. In the Sthanainga we get a description of the soul as one (ege
atta). The commentator describes it as 'ekavidhah atmanah. In
Sama-yasara, Kundakundacarya describes the absolute oneness of the soul
"on the strength of my self-realisation". This does not contradict the
plurality of souls in Jainism. Only emphasizes the essential identity of
souls. Jivas in all-their in living all characteristics are essentially
the same. If the souls were one, then, "O Gautama, there would not be
sukha, duhkha, bandha, moksa etc. ' Individual souls are different like
The nature of jiva has been well described by Nemi
candra in his Dravyasamgraha. He describes the soul both from the noumenal
and phenomenal points of view. He say that jiva is characterized by
upayoga, is formless and is a agent. It has the same extent as its body.
It is the enjoyer of the fruits of karama. It exists in samsara. It is
siddha and has a characteristic of upward motion. We get a
similar description in the Pancastikayasara of
Kundakundacarya. Jiva is formless. It is characterized by upayoga. It is
attached to karma. It is the Lord, the agent and the enjoyer of the fruits
of Karma. It pervades bodies large or small. It has a tendency to go
upward to the end of loka, being freed from the impurities of Karma.
The Tattvarthasutra describes the nature of the soul as possessing upayoga
as its essential characteristic.
Every Jiva possesses an infinite number of qualities.
Glasenapp, in his Doctrine of Karma in Jaina Philosophy, mentions eight
1. The faculty of ominisicence (kevala-jnana)
2. The faculty of absolute undifferentiated congnition
3. Superiority over joy and grief.
4. Possession of belief in complete religious truth (samyaktva),
and irreproachable moral conduct (caritra)
5. Possession of eternal life (akasayasthiti).
6. Complete formlessness (amurtatva)
7. Unrestricted energy (viryatva).
8. Complete equality in rank with other jivas.
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Learn something new every day
More Info... by email
A delegated authority is a type of legal authority or power given from one party to another, granting the receiving party the power to represent the giver and freely utilize the power given. This term can be used in a number of different applications, though it is typically used in reference to the actions of businesses or government bodies and organizations. In business, when this extension of power is granted, it allows employees of a company to act on behalf of the company itself. A delegated authority in government is a power or function granted by one government agency to another.
In legal terms, the idea of delegated authority allows one person or group to give power it has to another person or group for a variety of purposes. This can be seen, for example, in a client granting control of his or her estate to a lawyer to execute a will after his or her death. Similarly, a lawyer or attorney who represents a person in a criminal or civil case has been delegated authority by that client to act on his or her behalf and provide information that, otherwise, only the client would be allowed to present.
A delegated authority in business law usually refers to legal rights, powers, and privileges a company holds, which it can then pass to employees within the company. Companies often have the power to make purchases or sales when dealing with other companies or individuals. When power or authority is delegated from the business to an employee within that company, then that employee is granted the power to act on the behalf of the larger company when doing business. This type of delegated authority allows employees within a company to make purchases for the company, billing the company itself and allowing the employees to act on behalf of the business.
Governmental delegated authority typically extends from one government body or agency to another, granting that second agency powers that may have otherwise been reserved for the first agency. For example, certain powers may be considered the sole responsibility of the executive branch of a government. If that branch then grants those powers to a particular agency, created with the purpose of handling that power and those responsibilities, then it has delegated authority to the new agency. This can be an area of some contention in a government, though it often allows government branches to more efficiently run and ensure various tasks are being overseen and completed.
One of our editors will review your suggestion and make changes if warranted. Note that depending on the number of suggestions we receive, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Thank you for helping to improve wiseGEEK!
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The Monument stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill in the City of London. It was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London (1666) and to celebrate the rebuilding of the City.
As part of the rebuilding, it was decided to erect a permanent memorial near the place where the Great Fire began. Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor General to King Charles II and the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, and his friend and colleague Dr Robert Hooke provided a design for a colossal Doric column in the antique tradition. They drew up plans for a column containing a cantilevered stone staircase of 311 steps leading to a viewing platform. This was surmounted by a drum and a copper urn from which flames emerged, symbolising the Great Fire. The Monument is 61 metres high (202 feet) - the exact distance between it and the site in Pudding Lane where the fire began.
The column was initially used as a place for experiments by the Royal Society, later becoming a place of historic interest, providing visitors with views across London in all directions.
Last admission 17.00
City of London
0207 626 2717
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The Gallio Inscription
(IG 7.1676; SIG 2 no. 801 D)
The Gallio Inscription from Delphi
(Deissmann, Plate I)
Lucius Junius Novatus was the oldest son of the elder Seneca (c. 55 BCE-37 CE) and brother of the philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 5 BCE-65 CE). Gallio, however, carried the name of his adoptive father, Lucius Junius Gallio. His change of family status, however, did not destroy his relationship with the younger Seneca who, in fact, dedicated some of his writings to his brother. Seneca's involvement in the Pisonian plot against the Emperor Nero resulted not only in Seneca's suicide but also Gallio's in the same year.
According to Acts 18:12-17 the Jews of Corinth brought Paul up before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, on charges that he was persuading residents to worship in ways contrary to the law. The text has Gallio refuse to intervene because the "law" involved as far as he is concerned is Jewish law.
In a thesis at the University of Paris from 1905 Emile Bourget published four fragments of an inscription from Delphi. The inscription clearly mentions Gallio as proconsul (anthupatos) of Achaia and the 26th acclamation of the Caesar. This raises the interesting possibility of dating the event Acts describes. The 26th acclamation of the Caesar should have occurred in the first half of the year 52. Since the proconsul normally served only a year and began his term in the spring, the inscription either refers to a Gallio who has only recently left the proconsulship or, perhaps more likely than this, has been proconsul for a few months. Exactly how Paul’s sojourn might relate to that period is difficult to say, and nothing in Acts makes it clear whether Paul faced Gallio at the beginning of his service or toward the end of that service.
Although the inscription does not make the historicity of Acts 18 unquestionable, it does provide an excellent dating for the event described and has encouraged many scholars to use the time of Gallio's proconsulship as a benchmark date for reconstructing Paul's chronology.
The current translation is of the first four fragments only. For additional translation see especially the works of Plassart noted in the bibliography.
C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 48-49.
HHans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles, trans. J. Limburg et al. ("Hermeneia"; Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 1987.
A. Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, trans. William E. Wilson (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), 261-286; Plate I.
W. Dittenberger, ed. Sylloge Inscriptionem Graecorum, 4 vols. (3d ed.; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1915). (SIG)
D. J. Doughty, "Luke's Story of Paul in Corinth: Fictional History in Acts 18 ," JHC 4/1 (Spring 1997): 3-54. (See especially 45-49.)
W. Ellinger, Paulus in Griechenland: Philippi, Thessaloniki, Korinth. SBS 92/93. Stuttgart, 1978
F. J. Foakes Jackson, D. D. and Kirsopp Lake, D. D., D. Litt., The Beginnings of ChristianityPart I: The Acts of the Apostles. Vol V: Additional Notes to the Commentary, eds. Kirsopp Lake, D. D., D. Litt. and Henry J. Cadbury, Ph. D. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House,1979), 460-464.
R. Garnsey, "Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity," Persecution and Toleration, ed. W J. Shields. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 1-27.
Maurice Goguel, "La vision de Paul à Corinthe et sa comparution devant Gallion: Une conjecture sur la place originale d'Actes 18,9‑11," RHPhR 12 (1932): 321-33.
E. Groag, Die röaut;mischen Reichsbeamten von Achaia bis auf Diocletian. (Vienna, 1939).
K., Haacker, "Die Gallio-Episode und die paulinische Chronologie," BZ 16 (1972): 252‑55.
_________, "Gallio," ABD 2:901-903.
E. Haenchen, Apostelgeschichte (5th ed., Myers Kommentar; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1968), 58-60.
C. J. Hemer, "Observations on Pauline Chronology" Pauline Studies. Essays Presented to Professor F. F. Bruce on his 70th Birthday,. D. A. Hagner and M. J. Harris, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 3-18.
C. J. Henter, Observations on Pauline Chronology. in Pauline Studies. Essays Presented to Professor F. F. Bruce on his 70th Birthday, ed. D. A. Hagner and M. J. Harris. (Exeter and Grand Rapids, 1980), 3-18
R. Jewett, Dating Paul's Life. (London, 1979).
A. H. M. Jones, "Procurators and Prefects in the Early Principate," Studies in Roman Government and Law. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960).
J. Juster, Les juifs dans I'Empire romain: Leur condition juridique, économique et sociale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1914).
J. Murphy-O'Connor, St. Paul's Corinth. (Wilmington,1983).
J. H., Oliver, "The Epistle of Claudius which Mentions the Proconsul Junius Gallio," Hesperia 40 (1971): 239‑40.
L. Petersen, Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I. I1.11I Pars IV Fasc.3. (Berlin,1966).
A. Plassart, "L'inscription de Delphes mentionnent le proconsul Gallion," Revue des Ėtudes Grecques 80 (1967): 372‑78.
_________, Les inscriptions du temple du lVe si;egrave;cle. Fouilles de Delphes. T.3: Ėpigraphie, Fasc.4: Inscriptions de la terrasse du temple et de la région nord du sanctuaire (3:) Nos. 276- 350. (Paris, 1970).
B. Rapske, Paul in Roman Custody: The Books of Acts in its First Century Setting, vol. 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1994).
A. N. Sherwin-White,, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament: The Sarum Lectures 1960-61 (Oxford,1963).
E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule. (Leiden, 1976).
A. Vassileiou, "Dulcem Gallionem (Note sur Stace, Silvae 11,7,32)," RP 46 (1972): 40-42.
J. Wiseman, "Corinth and Rome I," ANRW 2/7/1(1979): 438‑548.
In a Russian work on the inscriptions at Delphi (1894—1895), Alexander Nikitsky published a drawing of the largest of the four fragments without, however, taking note of its significance. Adolf Deissmann writes that in 1910 H. Pomtow allowed him access to the four fragments and goes on to say that Pomtow claimed to have known about them for “more than twenty years” (Deissmann, 265).
It is very difficult to understand Hanson's "desti[tu]te of [citi]zens" here. See L-S 689b. The suggestion follows that of Plassart, Hemer, and Oliver that the occasion for the inscription was Gallio's report to Claudius of the depopulation of Delphi and contains the Emperor's encouragement of the proconsul's efforts to encourage settlement there. It is certainly true that the venerable sanctuary at Delphi fell on hard times during Roman administration. On this see F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970) 456-457.
See L-S 1251c; M-M 457b.
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(click on image to enlarge)
Projected world carbon emissions (top blue line) may be reduced by varying amounts according to how policies take effect (middle three lines), but probably none will follow the trajectory needed to stabilize climate by midcentury (bottom blue line).
Source: Columbia Climate Center
A new comprehensive analysis of global market and policies aimed at stemming climate change says that even if all current or proposed major policies take maximum effect, they will be insufficient to avoid higher temperatures by mid-century. The report adds that governments will need to ensure greater certainty in their policies if they are to attract the needed capital. The analysis was issued today by Deutsche Bank’s Climate Change Advisors group with input from the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.
Deutsche Bank researched 270 laws, treaties, targets and regulatory frameworks in 109 countries, and Columbia researchers incorporated these into a model that estimated their impacts on carbon emissions. The analysis included some major laws not yet passed, such as climate legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. The model shows that if all policies take maximum effect, worldwide carbon emissions projected for 2020 will come down from some 59,000 megatons, to 51,000. However, emissions would still have to come down almost as much again in order to reach generally agreed upon levels that scientists say would hold worldwide temperature increases down to 2 degrees C by 2050.
“Even if we implement all the policies we have, it still is not enough,” said Mary-Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center, who helped lead the climate modeling part of the study. “It is not a surprise, but it is the first comprehensive quantification.”
More capital is needed to mobilize industries including better energy-generating technologies, and more efficient appliances and vehicles, says the report. Using figures from the International Energy Agency, it estimates that about $2 trillion would have to be invested between 2010 and 2020 in order to more or less stabilize warming by midcentury. Over half of the improvement would come from better energy efficiency, both in power plants and end uses.
To achieve this, investors need stable, predictable government policies that provide clear incentives, says the report. However, many major emitters do not yet have policies with enough transparency, longevity or certainty, said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division. “The research [shows] that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, all countries will have to do more to encourage investment,” said Parker. Specifically, the report calls for governments to introduce incentives that decrease over time as technologies are scaled up and become more competitive; to provide fair and open access to energy grids; and to provide strong enforcement of mandates on energy efficiency and other regulations.
Ranking the 16 largest national economies by risk, the report puts China, Germany and France in the safest category, because they have developed detailed national strategies with generous and well-targeted incentives. Australia, Brazil and Japan also are considered low risk. Those presenting moderate risk include the United States and the United Kingdom and Canada. In the United States particularly, climate policies have been characterized by a stop-and-start approach and a reliance on the idea of tradeable carbon credits. The report says these have been less successful than more straightforward incentives. Other countries ranked moderate risky include India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea. Italy stands out because it is the only major economy ranked as high risk, because it has so far been unable to come up with consistent climate change policies.
The report, “Global Climate Change Policy Tracker,” is available free at: http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/investment-research/investment_research_1780.jsp
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Researchers led by Dr Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick's plant research arm Warwick HRI have found evidence that genetics supports the idea that the emergence of agriculture in prehistory took much longer than originally thought.
Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model
Now a team led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick have developed a new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought, well before the Younger Dryas (the last "big freeze" with glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere). It also shows that useful gene types could have actually taken thousands of years to become stable.
Up till now researchers believed in a rapid establishment of efficient agriculture which came about as artificial selection was easily able to dominate natural plant selection, and, crucially, as a consequence they thought most crops came from a single location and single domestication event.
However recent archaeological evidence has already begun to undermine this model pushing back the date of the first appearance of plant agriculture. The best example of this being the archaeological site Ohalo II in Syria where more than 90,000 plant fragments from 23,000 years ago show that wild cereals were being gathered over 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, and before the last glacial maximum (18,000-15,000 years ago).
The field of Archaeobotany is also producing further evidence to undermine the quick development model. The tough rachis mutant is caused by a single recessive allele (one gene on a pair or group of genes) , and this mutant is easily identifiable in the archaeological specimens as a jagged scar on the chaff of the plant noting an abscission (shedding of a body part) as opposed to the smooth abscission scar associated with the wild type brittle rachis.
Simply counting the proportion of chaff types in a sample gives a direct measure of frequency of the two different gene types in this plant. That study has shown that the tough rachis mutant appeared some 9,250 years ago and had not reached fixation over 3,000 years later even after the spread of agriculture into Europe was well underway. Studies like these have shown that the rise of the domestication syndrome was a slow process and that plant traits appeared in slow sequence, not together over a short period of time.
Genome wide surveys of crops such as einkorn and barley that in the past that have suggested a single origin from a narrow geographical range, supporting the rapid establishment view, have long been in conflict with other gene studies. The most notable conflict is in the case of barley for which there is a large body of evidence that suggests more than one common ancestor was used in its development.
These challenges to the fast model of agricultural development need a new model to explain how and why the development was so slow and demonstrate why artificial selection of just one plant type does not have the expected quick result. This computer model has now been provided by Dr Robin Allaby and his team at the University of Warwick, the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre has outlined the new mathematical model in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 2008 and in a summary article in the Biologist (2008 55:94-99).
Their paper entitled The genetic expectations of a protracted model for the origins of domesticated crops used computer simulations that showed that over time a cultivated population will become monophyletic (settle into one stable species) at a rate proportional to its population size as compared various gene variations in the wild populations. They found this rate of change matched closely the 3000 years it took the tough rachis mutant to become established.
Ironically, this process is actually accelerated if there is more than one wild source population (in other words if attempts at domestication happen more than once) because any resulting hybrid between those domesticated populations then has a heightened differentiation compared with either one of the wild populations of the two parent plants.
This mathematical model also more supportive of a longer complex origin of plants through cross breeding of a number of attempts at domestication rather than a single plant type being selectively bred and from a single useful mutation that is selectively grown quickly out paces the benefits natural selection
Dr Robin Allaby says:
"This picture of protracted development of crops has major implications for the understanding of the biology of the domestication process and these strike chords with other areas of evolutionary biology."
"This lengthy development should favour the close linkage of domestication syndrome trait genes which may become much more important because linked genes will not be broken up by gene flow - and this makes trait selection and retention easier. Interestingly, as more crop genomes become mapped, the close linkage of two or more domestication syndrome genes has been reported on several occasions."
"This process has similarities to the evolution of 'supergenes' in which many genes cluster around a single locus to contribute to one overall purpose."
"We now need to move this research area to a new level. Domestication was a complex process and can now be viewed more legitimately as the paragon of evolutionary process that Darwin originally recognized. There are many interacting factors involved that we know about operating on a wide range of levels from the gene to the farmer and climate - the challenge is to integrate them into a single story."
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One of the greatest ironies of physics is that to see the smallest things in the Universe we need huge machines. The Compact Muon Solenoid detector (or just CMS for short) is one of two extremely complex – and very, very large – pieces of equipment used by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva to sift through the bits of shrapnel created when packets of protons smash into each at very nearly the speed of light.
Just how big is the CMS? BABloggee Thomas Radke sent me this picture of it.
Click it to see the original 6000 pixel picture hosted at CERN. Then pick your jaw up from the floor. This monstrosity is 15 meters high – nearly 50 feet! To give you a sense of the scale here, look to the bottom of the green scaffolding on the sides, and you’ll see handrails where people can stand.
I visited the LHC a few years back, thanks to Brian Cox who brought me there for a tour and interview. This was shortly before the gigantic machine was switched on, so we went down 100 meters below the Earth’s surface to take a look. I stood off to one side of the CMS, and the scale of it was hard to grasp. It’s over 20 meters long, and weighs over 12,000 tons – 24 million pounds! A lot of that weight is from the huge slabs of iron you can see painted red.
I made a video during my LHC visit, and the CMS part is about five minutes into it.
Yeah. That’s the kind of stuff we do when we want to pry open the seams of the Universe and peek inside.
Image credit: CERN
I have nothing to add to this, except to say it’s great, and I saw it because Brian Cox mentioned it on Twitter.
Oh yeah: one more thing; watch it in HD and full screen. Coooool.
Professor Brian Cox is a physicist in England, very well-known there as a popularizer of science. The reasons for this are many-fold, including his ubiquity across media (including podcasts, Twitter, and of course TV)… but also because he has an infectious enthusiasm for science coupled with a boyish charm.
This was all on display recently when he hosted a great segment on the BBC’s show A Night With The Stars, where he simply and effectively demonstrates why atoms are mostly empty space:
Pretty cool, isn’t it? It helps if you can enlist Simon Pegg to help, too!
I like this demo a lot. On a very tiny scale, objects act like both particles and waves. On a big scale, like our solar system, we can think of planets as discrete particles, interacting through gravity only, and it works pretty well. Our semi-evolved brains want to think of electrons that way as well: little spheres whizzing around atomic nuclei. But that’s not the way the Universe works on the quantum scale; electrons act like waves, and that means they can interfere with each other. When a crest meets a trough they cancel, when a crest meets a crest they add together. If you have a wave bouncing around inside a box the result can be chaos.
I like to use the example of sitting in a tub, and rhythmically pushing your body along its length with your toes. It’s hard to do unless the rhythm is just right; otherwise the waves smack into each other chaotically and it’s a mess. But get the pattern timed just right and you’re in sync. That timing is just a simple multiple (like 1 or 1/2) of the time it takes a wave to move from one end of the tub to the other. You can actually feel it as you push; the correct timing just feels natural.
Electrons around an atomic nucleus work the same way. It’s more complicated than your bathtub, but the principle is the same. The electrons can only exist where the wave crests and troughs add up correctly. They literally cannot exist anywhere else. They’re like standing waves, as Brian shows.
We teach kids that atoms are like little solar systems, but that model is really bad! In principle, planets can orbit the Sun at any distance — give a planet more orbital energy and it’ll move away from the Sun and continue orbiting, happy as you please. But electrons can’t do that. They can only be at energy levels where they don’t interfere with themselves (and each other). It’s more like a staircase; they can only move up or down by discrete amounts. Once you figure this out, a ton of stuff becomes possible: lasers, semiconductors, fluorescent bulbs, atomic bombs… it’s quantum mechanics, and it’s a huge, huge field of science.
And it’s all because, as Brian demonstrates, a rope held at both ends won’t vibrate at any old frequency. Amazing, isn’t it?
Post script: can you imagine a show like this running on American TV? No, I can’t either, unless they had a toll number you could call to vote for atoms being a hoax perpetrated by
Big Little Science.
A new Symphony of Science has come out today, in honor of Carl Sagan’s birthday. And I’m pleased to see it features three people I call friends: Neil Tyson, Brian Cox, and Carolyn Porco:
Isn’t that wonderful? Symphony of Science is the work of musician John Boswell, who takes the words of scientists and creates these lovely videos. You should watch them all.
I mention that Neil, Brian, and Carolyn are all friends for two reasons; one is that sharing a love of science is not a zero-sum game, a conserved quantity. The more we share it, the more people who are heard and seen doing it, the more desire there is for it. Each of us broadens the audience for all. There is no fixed capacity for learning and wonder.
But also, it’s more than that. It’s a reason I think Sagan would’ve agreed with as well: we’re all in this together. Paupers and kings, famous and infamous, men, women, black, white, all flavors of humanity. We are all riding this planet, and where we go is largely up to us. We can make the most of it, or we can squander it.
I am personally inspired by pieces like this. Like most people, I sometimes lose sight of my own goals, I sometimes get mired in the day-to-day business of life. But when I see Neil and Brian and Carolyn and, yes, Carl Sagan, letting their passion show, mine returns as well.
Keeping the passion is what drives the personal thirst for learning. Showing that passion is what instills it in others.
Show a little passion now and again. Who knows who you’ll inspire?
A new Symphony of Science has just been released: "The Quantum World!"
This one is more upbeat than the others, and features my pal Brian Cox, as well as a few other familiar faces… including a delightful end quote by Richard Feynman which I think can be rephrased to say why scientists love doing what they do: science answers the questions posed by the imagination.
You should watch all the Symphony of Science videos. They’re delightful.
Tip o’ the boson to Gia.
In the midst of a lot of bad science news (though to be fair there’s some good news, too) comes some great news: in the UK, students taking A-level math and science has gone way up. There’s been a 40% jump in math, and 20% each in physics and chemistry over the past 5 years.
Why? No doubt it’s at least partly because employers need people highly-trained in sciences — our new technology won’t invent itself, folks (the T-1000 notwithstanding).
Brian is a scientist, a speaker, a science popularizer, and has hosted several TV shows, including the wildly popular "Wonders of the Solar System" and "Wonders of the Universe". Brian used to be in a rock band, and has the sort of Beatles-esque look, charm, and talent that makes his work very compelling.
Full disclosure: Brian and his wife, Gia, are friends of mine. I’ve done a few things with Brian in the past (a podcast taped at the Large Hadron Collider, for example — that picture here is the two of us deep inside the LHC — and a fun bit on NASA’s Deep Impact mission for a BBC show). But that’s not why I’m supporting him here; in fact, it’s the reverse: I like him because he’s a good guy doing good work.
It’s not hard to see why The Guardian — and the people interviewed in that article — might say Brian is behind this recent jump in sciencophilia. His impact on the culture of science in the UK is both wide and deep. It’s probably not possible to know the exact influence he’s had, but when you look at how many people were drawn into science by Carl Sagan 30 years ago, it’s not out of the question that Brian really has taken up that mantle. As have many others, as I’m sure my
Hive Overmind Discover Magazine co-blogger and science writer Carl Zimmer would agree, too.
There are times I despair for my own country because of the copious and pernicious attacks on science, but if what The Guardian says is true, it means science popularization may be stemming that tide, or at least holding it back a bit. Making science understandable, comprehensible, even fun, is having a more profound and very real impact on individuals. It may even be inspiring an interest in math and science, and causing people to study these fields further.
And that, my friends, is exactly the whole point.
I have long said that science fiction on television, even when it’s bad, can serve as inspiration for a budding scientist. Heck, I watched some pretty phenomenally bad scifi TV and movies and a kid, and it fueled the fire of interest and love I had for science. Do I wish the quality of science in the entertainment media were better? Sure! But that doesn’t mean it’s not serving a purpose.
Science in other media, like the news, is another matter. There, it’s critical that it be accurately represented. And it gets worse when someone makes a documentary that’s actually a polemic – a persuasive piece meant to change or guide opinions.
That’s why I really like this talk by scientist Brian Cox, who makes science documentaries for the BBC and is becoming a science celebrity in the UK. It was the Royal Television Society Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture which he gave earlier this month on BBC2. he has a lot to say about the difference between documentaries and polemicals, and it’s worth your time to watch.
I love social networking on the internet. All the usual reasons apply here, but I also get an added bonus: I find a lot of interesting stories I can write about when I surf places like Fark, reddit, and so on.
I also read the site BuzzFeed to get my daily nerd-meme info. At the bottom of the page they have a list of five interesting stories becoming popular. Today, I was a bit surprised to see this one:
[Click to emprimatenate.]
For those who don’t know, that’s Professor Brian Cox, an English physicist and TV science documentary host… and also a friend of mine. Over the years I’ve seen Brian in a varied number of states, and while he does look all too human, I can’t think of any time I’ve been with him that would qualify him as a "naked chimp". I’ve heard he shares 98% of his DNA with chimpanzees, though. Oh, and there’s a rumor he got so agitated after giving a TED talk he had to be shot with a tranquilizer dart. That one does have the ring of truth to it.
Anyway, when you click the link, it takes you to an article that actually is about a naked chimpanzee (it has alopecia). The primate in question is shown on the right. Hmmm. Quadraped, bilateral symmetry, nerve and sensory center located up high in a protected bony structure… yup. It’s Brian.
For those of you wondering what’s going on, the explanation is actually pretty simple. A lot of these social network sites allow you to enter a link and a comment for others to see, and the software automatically searches that link for an appropriate photo to add. So, for example, when someone posts one of my blog entries to reddit, the link will include a little thumbnail image of, maybe, the comet nucleus picture I was describing. It saves the submitter time and effort, and is pretty nifty.
This must have happened at BuzzFeed. The software examined the naked chimp story page, and on the sidebar was a link to a video interview with Brian about the Large Hadron Collider. It grabbed the picture, and there you go. Here’s the actual sidebar bit:
Of course, shortly after this picture was taken Brian sat down and started picking insects out of the photographer’s hair. I think that’s in the video. They’ll probably have edited it out by the time you look at it, though.
Libel is a serious issue in the UK: the laws are seemingly right out of the Dark Ages, making it easy for antiscience cranks to sue journalists when unflattering pieces are written about their crankery. That’s why the Libel Reform campaign was started, and that’s why they’re trying to raise money. And what better way to popularize this serious issue than to make a decidedly unserious geek calendar?
I love that picture; it’s of my friends Gia Milinovich and her husband Brian Cox. If you’re from the UK he needs no introduction, but if you’re American, he’s a scientist and TV presenter and becoming quite the media darling — not the least reason for which is that he speaks his mind when it comes to nonsense.
Brian and Gia are just one page of the Geek Calendar, which you get purchase online. Lots of other photogenic geeks are pictures as well, including
The Hive Overmind’s Discover Magazine’s own Ed Yong.
And while I do like that picture of Brian and Gia, I think I may still like the one I took of them better when I was visiting them in London. I can’t prove it, and they wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I’m pretty sure when I snapped this shot they were texting each other.
Oh– I also totally believe he would jam a screwdriver into a toaster to try to fix it. And I know it would be up to Gia to actually get it working again.
Graphing variables is a critical skill in science. If something depends on something else — like the speed of sounds depends on air density, or the surface gravity of an object depends on its size — then if you plot the two things on a graph, you should see a pattern. The result is a line, or a curve. If the two things don’t depend on each other, you get a random collection of dots: a scatter plot.
About a hundred years ago, two astronomers plotted the brightness of stars against their color (from blue to red) and what they found was amazing: a clear connection between the two! In fact, stars fell into several groups, and over the years we’ve learned about why that happens. Most stars are stable, like the Sun, and fall into the Main Sequence of the plot. Some are old, some young, some dying, some dead. And they all have their place in what we now call the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, or H-R diagram for short. It’s one of the most useful tools astronomers have ever created.
And now my friend Stuart who runs Astronomy Blog has done it one better: he’s created an H-R diagram of media stars. It’s awesome:
That’s really funny, and I wish I had thought of it. The vertical axis is fame, as denoted by Google results, and the horizontal axis is peer-reviewed papers. I’m actually only first author on I think two papers, but I was listed as author on a lot due to my work on Hubble. So I do OK on this diagram. I note that Brian Cox is more luminous than me, but then, he’s an actual rock star. If there were a branch for white main sequence stars, he and I would be in a dead heat.
Next up, I hope: a space-time diagram showing warping due to massive astronomers.
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A yeast infection, also referred to as candidiasis or a thrush, is a common fungal infection caused by an overgrowth of the Candida (yeast) species in certain areas of the body such as the mouth, vagina, digestive tract, lungs, liver or skin. These types of infections typically occur when there is an alteration of bacteria which are responsible for controlling and limiting yeast production. This variation may be triggered by the use of oral contraceptives (due to an increase in estrogen levels), antibiotics, corticosteroids (steroids), and cancer treatments, specifically chemotherapy. Other causes of a yeast infection may include pregnancy, human immunodeficiency virus, hormonal therapies, or diabetes.
Vaginal yeast infections may produce the following symptoms:
Signs of an oral or skin yeast infection include:
Generally, the body will stabilize the yeast naturally. However, persons with a yeast infection should be sure to practice proper hygiene, particularly cleaning and washing the mouth and vagina effectively. Yeast infections may be treated through over-the-counter products such as suppositories, fungal creams to apply to the area, or antifungal medications. Persistent or recurring yeast infections should be examined by a healthcare professional to determine the cause and prevent further imbalances.
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San Diego (SPX) Dec 07, 2009
A new study by an international research team has opened up a window into the earth to reveal Hawaii's deep roots and the best picture yet of a plume originating from the lower mantle. The findings suggest that the Hawaiian hot spot is the result of an upwelling high-temperature plume from the lower mantle.
The project, called the Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Melt Experiment (PLUME), deployed a large network of seafloor seismometers at 73 sites off Hawaii during four research cruises over more than two-years. It represented the largest ocean-bottom seismometer (OBS) experiment in the world, reaching deeper into the lower mantle than previous experiments.
The study, titled "Mantle Shear-wave Velocity Structure beneath the Hawaiian Hotspot," is published in the Dec. 4 issue of Science magazine. The Hawaiian volcanoes are a classic example of the unique type of volcanic activity that occurs in the interior, rather than at the edges, of the earth's tectonic plates.
Geophysicist Gabi Laske of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego led the PLUME experiment. Laske's research involves long-term, ocean-bottom earthquake monitoring to find and image the plume that gives rise to spectacular Hawaiian island chain of volcanoes and to better understand how they are fed by a super-heated plume from deep in the earth.
"The PLUME team has unambiguously traced the Hawaiian plume from the seafloor through Earth's mantle transition zone," said Laske. The transition zone was previously thought to be a layer that obstructs whole-mantle convection between the core and the surface of the planet.
The seismometers were used to record the timing of seismic shear waves from large earthquakes (magnitudes greater than 5.5) around the world. This information can be used to determine whether seismic waves travel more slowly through hot rock as they pass beneath Hawaii. Combining the timing measurements from many earthquakes recorded on many seismometers allowed researchers to construct a sophisticated three-dimensional image of the Hawaiian mantle.
The large, 1,000-kilometers (621-miles) wide aperture of the seafloor ocean bottom seismometer network, developed at Scripps yielded unprecedented precision and resolution in a remote oceanic region and included SKS waves, a type of wave that travels through the earth's core, was critical for extending the imaging down to 1,500 kilometers (932-mile) depth. Researcher John Collins from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution also developed new instruments for the experiment.
Strikingly, the plume tilts toward the southeast of Hawaii as it extends downward. Such southeast tilting is consistent with prior dynamic predictions that the background circulation of Earth's mantle associated with plate tectonics will deflect the upwelling Hawaiian plume. Similar to rising smoke on a windy day, the Hawaiian plume is blown in the background mantle wind.
The location of the Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean had hampered past seismological efforts to resolve the plume's deep structure. Seismometer deployments limited to just land sites on the islands did not provide sufficient coverage for high-resolution imaging, and Hawaii is also far from the most active circum-Pacific zones of earthquakes.
As a result, scientists had to turn to a more technologically challenging marine seismology approach by placing temporary instrumentation on the seafloor to record seismic waves for two one-year deployments.
Results of the project indicate a strong case for the existence of a deep mantle plume, which has fundamental implications-not just for Hawaii, but more generally for the form of convection in the solid Earth, Earth's composition with depth, its evolution over geologic time and how the earth releases heat.
"This experiment was first conceived by our team a decade ago. Fortunately, the results have been worth the wait and exceeded all expectations," said Cecily Wolfe, professor at the University of Hawai'i and the paper's lead author.
"The data collected by the PLUME experiment helped pioneer an entirely new class of marine seismology research," said Scripps professor John Orcutt and a co-author of the paper. "The state-of-the-art broadband OBS instruments developed at Scripps represent a great advancement for seafloor seismology."
Authors are C.J. Wolfe, University of Hawaii at Manoa; S.C. Solomon and E.H. Hauri, Carnegie Institution for Science; G. Laske and J.A. Orcutt, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; J.A. Collins and R.S. Detrick, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and D. Bercovici, Yale University. The PLUME project is supported by the National Science Foundation.
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Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
When the Earth Quakes
A world of storm and tempest
Colombia volcano eruption subsides, evacuation continues
Bogota (AFP) Nov 21, 2009
A volcanic eruption has eased enough to allow a local airport to open, but thousands of people are staying clear of Colombia's most active volcano as more activity is feared, authorities warned Sunday. Ashes are still falling near the Galeras vocano in the south, after Friday's eruption, but a color-coded alert has been lowered from red to orange, the Colombia Institute of Geology and Mining ... read more
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But when the sun is away, if the night is clear we have light from the starts. Do these then too make waves all across the enormous distance between them and us? Certainly they do, for they too are suns like our own, only they are so far off that the waves they send are more feeble, and so we only notice them when the sun’s stronger waves are away.
But perhaps you will ask, if no one has ever seen these waves not the ether in which they are made, what right have we to say they are there? Strange as it may seem, though we cannot see them we have measured them and know how large they are, and how many can go into an inch of space. For as these tiny waves are running on straight forward through the room, if we put something in their way, they will have to run round it; and if you let in a very narrow ray of light through a shutter and put an upright wire in the sunbeam, you actually make the waves run round the wire just as water runs round a post in a river; and they meet behind the wire, just as the water meets in a V shape behind the post. Now when they meet, they run up against each other, and here it is we catch them. Fir if they meet comfortably, both rising up in a good wave, they run on together and make a bright line of light; but if they meet higgledy-piggledy, one up and the other down, all in confusion, they stop each other, and then there is no light but a line of darkness. And so behind your piece of wire you can catch the waves on a piece of paper, and you will find they make dark and light lines one side by side with the other, and by means of these bands it is possible to find out how large the waves must be. This question is too difficult for us to work it out here, but you can see that large waves will make broader light and dark bands than small ones will, and that in this way the size of the waves may be measured.
And now how large do you think they turn out to be? so very, very tiny that about fifty thousand waves are contained in a single inch of space! I have drawn on the board the length of an inch, and now I will measure the same space in the air between my finger and thumb. Within this space at this moment there are fifty thousand tiny waves moving up and down. I promised you we would find in science things as wonderful as in fairy tales. Are not these tiny invisible messengers coming incessantly from the sun as wonderful as any fairies? and still more so when, as we shall see presently, they are doing nearly all the work of our world.
We must next try to realize how fast these waves travel. You will remember that an express train would take 171 years to reach us from the sun; and even a cannon-ball would take from ten to thirteen years to come that distance. Well, these tiny waves take only seven minutes and a half to come the whole 91 millions of miles. The waves which are hitting your eye at this moment are caused by a movement which began at the sun only 7 1/2 minutes ago. And remember,
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Gardening Articles: Landscaping :: Container Gardening & Ponds
Fuchsia Flair (page 2 of 3)
by Joseph F. Williamson
Care During the Flowering Season
Throughout the five- to six-month blooming season, care for fuchsia plants intensively, and if the growing conditions are right, they'll repay you with abundant blooms.
- Keep plants in a fairly shaded place (full shade for half the day or dappled shade all day).
- Water daily if it's hot, every other day if it's not. The watering should moisten the roots as well as mist the environment.
- Feed with a complete fertilizer every two to four weeks, or as frequently as the fertilizer label indicates.
- Pinch off stem tips regularly to force side branching and keep the plant dense and bushy. After flowers fall, they usually leave fat reddish or brownish berries. Pick those regularly to encourage continuing bloom, but leave them on the plant if you'd like to sow fuchsia seeds (see next section).
- Pests are usually not much of a problem. Nevertheless, keep an eye out for fuchsia gall mites, fuchsia rust (Pucciniastrum epilobii), whiteflies, and aphids. Spray with pesticide as needed. Overhead sprinkling can discourage pests.
How to Multiply Fuchsias
When fuchsia plants are growing well and you want more, they're easy to propagate. The most common method is to take tip cuttings (do it in October in mild climates, in late August in cold-winter climates). Cut off stem tips with four or five pairs of leaves, removing the bottom two pairs. Bury the stripped part in a mix of sand and peat moss. Put cuttings in light shade, and keep the growing medium damp.
In about six weeks, when roots have developed, move the cuttings into small pots. Pinch tips as they grow. Keep them in a freeze-protected place over the winter. Plant out the next year when danger of frost has passed.
The more difficult and more adventurous route (you get your own new varieties) is to sow seeds. Pick the ripe fruits that form at the bases of the fallen flowers. Cut them open, pick out the larger seeds, and sow them on the surface of a propagation mix. Then, follow instructions in any book on seed propagation of shrubs and trees. Collect seeds in the fall. Sow and grow in a heated greenhouse or just keep the seeds in a protected, not-too-dry place over the winter. Sow them in March (in California) or April (elsewhere) on a regular seed-starting mixture. You'll probably get vegetative growth (leaves and stems) the first year and flowering the second year.
If you keep a fuchsia over the winter, you should cut it back pretty hard in late winter or early spring. First, cut out all dead, broken, or weak growth. Then remove about as much growth on the remaining branches as formed the previous year. Cut back far enough to leave two or three pairs of buds on each branch base. (Fuchsia leaf stems and accompanying bud pairs always form in pairs.)
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Revista mexicana de biodiversidad
versión On-line ISSN 2007-8706
CABRERA-GUZMAN, Elisa y HUGO REYNOSO, Víctor. Use of sleeping perches by the lizard Anolis uniformis (Squamata: Polychrotidae) in the fragmented tropical rainforest at Los Tuxtlas, Mexico. Rev. Mex. Biodiv. [online]. 2010, vol.81, n.3, pp.921-924. ISSN 2007-8706.
The use of nocturnal perches by the lizard Anolis uniformis is described. Bimonthly surveys were made throughout a year in small fragments and continuous tropical rainforest areas at Los Tuxtlas, Mexico. Twenty three juvenile individuals and 7 adults were recorded sleeping during the sampling time (18:00 - 23:00 h.). All individuals were found on leaves of plants of 14 species. Perch height ranged from 41.0 to 140.5 cm (mean: 90.1 cm juveniles; 80.6 cm adults) and the most frequent sleeping position observed was with the body oriented along the longitudinal axis of the leaf and the head facing the stem of the plant. This apparently vulnerable position can permit the perception of external stimuli such as proximity of predators; although, eco-physiological factors may also influence selection of sleeping perch sites.
Palabras llave : perch; nocturnal; Anolis uniformis; Los Tuxtlas; to sleep; leaves; plants.
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2001 — Somehow, when we look at an object, we know what it is. A red, round object is a fruit called an apple, fresh from the orchard. Or it’s a piece of sports equipment, like a kickball on a playground. It seems so straightforward, yet the door opens to more questions when we pause and wonder how the brain distinguishes between similar-looking objects that end up classified into otherwise different groups.
Researchers like Earl Miller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tease apart the basic processes of how we can automatically associate objects with specific categories. It is this basic level of perception that allows humans to conduct higher-level thinking about meanings, ideas and concepts. Miller is intrigued by how the brain processes information from changing environments and landscapes, which provide new stimuli to the senses that make up “experience.”
“Your definition of what things mean is constantly changing,” he remarked.
Using monkeys and morphed “cat-dogs,” Miller and his research colleagues peered into the operative intricacies of the mind to demonstrate a neural correlation between sensory perception and actual categorization, described in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Just another mammal?
Wild primates don’t usually meet tabby cats and golden retrievers in the jungle — yet, if they did, what would they think? Would all these strangely domesticated four-legged furry friends register as one and the same type of animal? Two eyes, four limbs, some fur — Eureka, a mammal! Or, would monkeys actually tell the difference between slobbering, barking dogs and prowling, meowing cats?
Miller’s group trained rhesus monkeys to classify computer-generated images of systematically morphed felines and canines to find out. The researchers inserted thin wires into the monkeys’ brains and hooked them up to monitoring devices. Then they recorded the reactions of single nerve cells in the “executive” area of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking, called the prefrontal cortex, as the monkeys responded to rendered graphics of cats and dogs.
Regardless of how morphologically close the images looked, and even after the monkeys were retrained to learn revised criteria for dogness and catness, individual nerve cells responded by reflecting the newly learned categories.
In other words, the brain had rewired itself.
“This laundry list of features that make up what defines a cat or dog becomes internalized due to a unitary representation in a brain,” Miller explained. “The bottom line is, our experience changes. We physically rewire our brain so we process our environment. Our experiences with those items have rewired our brains to recognize chairs, doors, and windows. Even though chairs and these objects come in different shapes, we can still recognize a chair is a chair.”
Miller’s research has attracted the attention of other researchers because it shows the perceptual sophistication of single neurons, as well as their extraordinary plasticity as a result of experience, according to Dr. Charles Gross, a Princeton University neuroscientist.
Gross said this is “the first demonstration that single neurons in the frontal lobes can categorize complex stimuli, and that they can do so under arbitrary dimensions imposed by experience.”
“There has been some evidence from past experiments that neurons in the temporal lobe can categorize faces and other stimuli, but Miller’s study shows a far more finely tuned categorization for arbitrary stimuli than anyone has shown before,” Gross said.
Examining these phenomena interests Miller because of the interplay between two areas in the brain — the prefrontal cortex, which requests and processes the information used in high-level thinking and organization, and the inferior temporal cortex, which provides long-term storage of cognitive categories.
There is an interplay or collaboration between the collection of visual information and processing, and the brain is very dynamic, Miller said. “The whole cerebral cortex is rewiring itself.”
The Miller study contributes to the rising amount of research devoted to experiences that can alter the anatomy and physiology of the brain.
InsertArt(856679)“This reflects a general paradigm shift over the last decade that the wiring of the brain and the properties of single neurons are far more plastic than had been believed,” Gross said. “We knew that since we learn and remember, the effects of experience have to be stored in the brain. However, until recently, there was little evidence for anatomical and physiological changes in the adult brain as a result of experience.”
In traditional brain science, people assumed that distinct parts of the brain were hard-wired for specific job functions early in life. For example, certain parts of the brain were slated for sensation, perception, learning and memory. “Now, we realize that mechanisms for sensory processing, perceptual analysis, short-term memory and long-term memory can exist in one brain area and even in a single neuron,” Gross explained.
The future of brain science
Miller continues to study the prefrontal cortex, adding to what he already knows about how the brain assigns meaning to the outside world. In addition to figuring out how quickly brains can rewire themselves and accommodate new categories, he wants to find out whether the same neurons represent the same categories in different brains.
From such basic science, medical applications may emerge, Miller noted. Research into the function of the brain’s executive may lead to new treatments for such conditions as schizophrenia, strokes and attention deficit disorder.
For now, though, the most immediate step is to understand the other intricate processes behind categorization, such as neurochemical interactions.
How much is left to learn?
“We know so little that we don’t even know what percentage of the brain workings we understand,” Gross explained. “On the other hand, our knowledge of the brain’s function increases by an order of magnitude every few years. We probably have learned more about the brain in the last 30 years than the previous 300.”
© 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science
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Last name origins & meanings:
- English and Scottish (of Norman origin): habitational name, a
variant of Vaux.
- English and Scottish (of Norman origin): There are a number of early English
examples of the name with articles rather than prepositions, which
Reaney explains as being from a southern form of Middle English
faus ‘false’, ‘untrustworthy’ (late Old English fals,
from Latin falsus, reinforced by Old French fals,
faus from the same source).
Comments for Vause
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Definition of hypermetropia
n. - Alt. of Hypermetropy 2
The word "hypermetropia" uses 13 letters: A E E H I M O P P R R T Y.
No direct anagrams for hypermetropia found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after hypermetropia (in bold), or to aeehimopprrty in any order:
s - hypermetropias
All words formed from hypermetropia by changing one letter
Browse words starting with hypermetropia by next letter
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Aniracetam is a pharmaceutical drug made in 1970’s and patented by Hoffmann-La Roche. It is created by the combined reaction of 2- Pyrrolidone with Anisoyl Chloride in the presence of Triethylamine. It is a fat soluble nootropic belonging to the racetam and ampakine chemical classes.
Aniracetam is chemically more potent than Piracetam at improving memory and cognitive functions. It is also known to have anxiolytic properties and may have mood boosting benefits.
Research has proven that Aniracetam regulates the AMPA receptor in the brain. By doing this, it affects our brain’s ability to absorb glutamate. Glutamate is extremely important and has a major role in our brain as it helps form and strengthen new synaptic connections among neurons. Through this process, Glutamate helps in one’s ability to learn and form memories.
Scientists have proven that Aniracetam also has an effect on our body’s Choline consumption. Aniracetam has a prominent effect on the cholinergenic receptors which results in the production of Acetylcholine. Acetylcholine plays an important role in our brain to form and strengthen new synaptic connections between neurons. The ability of these new formations of neuron connections help in keeping our brains young, prevent Alzheimer’s and enhance our memory. Aniracetam helps in improving what is already memorized within our mind and helps in maintaining a state of concentration and focus.
Aniracetam helps in the stimulation of Acetycholine receptors which contributes to increased focus and energy within our brain and increases the rate at which memory is processed. It does not work only in the areas of ememory and learning, but may also help prevent Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s & Cerebral infraction. Aniracetam can help reduce sleep disorders, anxiety and depression. Studies have proved that it helps with post stroke disorders as well.
Aniracetam may also protect one against excitotoxicity and has other effects such as, increasing glucose metabolism and reducing free radical formation. When faced with neuronal injury, Aniracetam helps in releasing inhibitory neurotransmitters. Clinical studies have proven that Aniracetam can improve memory loss, perception, concentration, creativity and alertness. This is done by increasing the communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Aniracetams effect on reducing anxiety is not fully understood. Aniracetam does play a role in GABA production so one can theorize this may be the method of action. The anti-anxiety effects of Aniracetam are not sedating like some GABAeric drugs. Aniracetams anti-anxiety method of action is likely more complicated and further investigation into the neurology need to be completed. Several drug companies have been investigating Aniracetam for its anti-anxiety effects.
Side Effects of Aniracetam
Some of the very common side effects of Aniracetam include: restlessness, anxiety, and insomnia. There are a few other side effects which are rarer such as, headaches, nausea, and diarrhea. These side effects are noted to be temporary and do not usually require termination of the treatment. If you experience long periods of side effects it is recommended to discontinue use immediatly.
The recommended dosage of Aniracetam is usually 1500 mg per day which is split into two 750 mg doses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is a fat soluble supplement
Shelf Life & Storage:
The shelf life of Aniracetam is about 2 years and is required to be stored in a cool, dry place at room temperature. Keep away from the reach of children.
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The key to fighting cancer in many cases is early detection, and earlier detection at the cellular level could mean survival for many cancer patients.
A University of Texas at Arlington electrical engineer has developed a novel cancer cell detection method that will improve early diagnosis through a tool that tracks cellular behavior in real time using nanotextured walls that mimic layers of body tissue.
Samir Iqbal, UTA associate professor of electrical engineering.
Samir Iqbal, an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, detailed his team's results in a recent Nature’s Scientific Reports paper called “Effects of Nanotexture on Electrical Profiling of Single Tumor Cell and Detection of Cancer from Blood in Microfluidic Channels.”
Iqbal worked on the project with Young-tae Kim, a UTA associate professor in the Bioengineering Department; Muhymin Islam, a STEM doctoral candidate; and engineering students Mohammad Motasim Bellah, Adeel Sajid and Mohammad Raziul Hasan.
Iqbal said his team noted the many layers of tissue in the human body and decided to develop something that would mimic that layering.
“The answer was in creating a nanotextured wall that fools blood samples into thinking its actual tissue,” Iqbal said. “We used inherent properties of the cell walls to create a diagnostic tool. The cancer cells behave differently as they come into contact with the nanotextured walls. They dance.”
Identifying those “dancing cells” will help doctors pinpoint cancer cells and start treatment earlier than allowed with current technology.
“Discovering the cancer earlier, before it metastasizes, is essential to surviving cancer,” Iqbal said. “Our device has the potential to do that.”
The published results stem from a 2014 $480,000 National Science Foundation grant that funded the design and creation of the device.
Iqbal has received nearly $1.4 million in grants since his arrival at UTA in 2007. Those grants included an NSF CAREER grant to create a nanoelectronic microfluidic biochip to detect biomarkers. He also directs the UTA Nano-Bio Lab and is an affiliated faculty for the UTA Bioengineering Department. Iqbal also is an adjunct professor in the Department of Urology at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
In addition to his numerous research accolades, Iqbal is a senior member of IEEE-USA, a member of Biomedical Engineering Society, American Physical Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Biophysical Society. In 2013, Tau Beta Pi inducted him as an Eminent Engineer.
Khosrow Behbehani, dean of the UTA College of Engineering, said Iqbal’s research is groundbreaking.
“Dr. Iqbal and his colleagues are bringing engineering innovation to meet the challenge of early cancer detection," Behbehani said. “The research aligns with UTA’s Strategic Plan, particularly the focus on Health and the Human Condition. Dr. Iqbal’s device could greatly improve cancer survival rates, which is good news for humanity. There are very few people around the world whose lives have not been touched by this dreadful disease.”
About The University of Texas at Arlington
The University of Texas at Arlington is a Carnegie “highest research activity” institution of more than 50,000 students in campus-based and online degree programs and is the second-largest institution in The University of Texas System. The Chronicle of Higher Education ranked UTA as one of the 20 fastest-growing public research universities in the nation in 2014. U.S. News & World Report ranks UTA fifth in the nation for undergraduate diversity. The University is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is ranked as the top four-year college in Texas for veterans on Military Times’ 2016 Best for Vets list. Visit www.uta.edu to learn more, and findUTA rankings and recognition at www.uta.edu/uta/about/rankings.php.
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Welcome! We hope that you enjoy reading about our Yurok Redwood Plank House. If you like, you can also view photos of the plank house details and construction as well as museum displays. Thanks so much for visiting. Please continue through the rest of this website to learn more about Plank Houses and Yurok culture.
Redwood or Cedar Plank Houses were built by many North Coast tribes up to and through most of the 19th century. Typically the houses were approximately 20 feet by 20 feet not including the roof overhang. The planks were either split from naturally fallen trees or removed from large trees, allowing the tree to heal and remain alive. The center section of the roof had moveable planks to allow for adaptation to varying climatic conditions. It also served as an outlet for the smoke generated from the fire below in the center of the pit. The pit was dug into the earth approximately 4 feet and it is where the family lived - cooking, sleeping and the rest of a family's indoor activities took place here. In Yurok culture, the men did not sleep in these family houses. They, instead, spent their nights in sweat houses. We plan on building a limited number of sweat houses in various scales soon.
We use traditional material to build our models. Reclaimed very fine-grained old growth redwood is used throughout. Our first models were built from old growth split rail fencing while current models are constructed from leftover old-growth used to build Sumeg Village. The wild grapevines used in the model are gathered at Weitchpec at the confluence of the Klamath and Trinity rivers. The stones for the front porch area and those used to support the bottom of the planks around the perimeter of the plank house are gathered from the rivers and beaches of the North Coast. This model is fully landscaped.
It is most important that our plank houses are as close to the original as possible. To this end, we researched photographic archives and made many trips to Sumeg Village at Patrick's Point State Park, North of Trinidad, California and other locations to take measurements, photographs and detailed drawings. Sumeg Village is a replica of a Yurok town that was built by Yurok tribal members in the 1980s. We also relied heavily on the knowledge, input and feedback of local tribal people. All of our models are crafted from reclaimed/recycled old growth redwood.
Note that what we have created is a scale model of a typical Yurok Redwood Plank House. The model is 1/6th scale -- every 1 inch in the model represents 6 inches in the full size houses. Our model represents a full size house of 20 feet by 20 feet. This house is similar to, but not exactly the same as homes built by Wiyot, Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa and other North Coast Native Americans.
The project could not have been completed without the friendship, knowledge and craftsmanship of many.
Dale Ann Frye Sherman is the curator of the Nealis Hall at the Clarke Memorial Museum in Eureka, California. This project would not have happened if Dale Ann had not contracted with us to build the exhibit in the first place. Dale Ann coaxed us along and helped us with the cultural aspects of the project in many ways. Dale Ann also works as a cultural design consultant to architectural firms who design buildings for various Native American institutions and tribes. Her most recent work is the United Indian Health Service' Potawot Health Village in Arcata, California (Click here for photos). Dale Ann is of Yurok, Tolowa, Hupa and Karuk descent and spent her childhood and early adult life living on the Klamath River. Dale Ann also teaches in the Native American Studies Department at Humboldt State University.
Marlon Sherman first spotted the material that we used for our plank house while we were rummaging through the piles of wood at a recycled lumber yard on Humboldt Bay. The old growth Redwood split rail fencing that Marlon found became the beams, walls and roof material of our first plank house. Marlon and I spent many hours at Sumeg Village photographing and measuring, and many more discussing the various aspects of the project. Marlon teaches in the Native American Studies program at Humboldt State University. Marlon is Lakota and spent his younger years living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He is married to Dale Ann and has spent most of his adult life on the North Coast. Marlon is now a fulltime professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University where he teaches classes such as The Indian In American History, Tribal Water Rights and Native American Film.
Mike Meuser has crafted wood and built scale models most all of his adult life. In college, Mike earned degrees in Environmental Studies and Sociology. Doing the plank houses combines his loves of environmental history, environmental justice and scale woodworking. Mike also founded and maintains MapCruzin.com a website devoted to "helping democratize the production and consumption of information and knowledge" and Learn2Map.com.
Each of us takes an active part in the research, design, creation and marketing of the plank houses. Many thanks too, to all for your help, care and inspiration.
Our services and products range from historical and on-site research through exacting scale model and full-size building to complete display project creation and management. We also provide indigenous architectural consulting and, in some cases, plans and kits.
If you are interested in a museum quality scale model or fully developed exhibit or any of our related services, or just want to talk, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.
We look forward to your return visit!
Dale Ann, Marlon and Mike
P.S. For more about Native Americans on the North Coast, check Redwood Ecotours.
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- Download PDF
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Social Darwinism was the idea that human societies function in much the same way that nature does. That is, Darwinistic processes of natural selection occur in society just as in nature. In human society, as in nature, only the “fittest” survive.
This idea had at least two distinct sides to it. First, it explained why some people prospered and other people did not. The poor, clearly, were less “fit” than the rich. Second, it applied to whole countries, warning that a country that was not sufficiently “fit” might lose its place in the world and be swallowed up or at least dominated by countries that were more fit.
These ideas, particularly the second one, led to eugenics of both sorts. If you need your country to be made up of strong and fit people, it clearly makes sense (in this way of thinking) to rid yourself of the weakest and least fit in society. Negative eugenics prevented such people from reproducing. If you need your country to be made up of the fittest people, it makes sense to encourage the best people to reproduce more and to make sure that they were reproducing with other of the fittest people in society.
Thus, the desire to improve the fitness of the overall society led to the ideas of positive and negative eugenics.
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But isnt a photon a particle as well as a wave? Doesn't that mean that it is a tiny…albeit not necessarily a ball…fundamental element?
Basically, light really is a wave. We known it is a wave since something like 1670, being able to calculate how much light hits any object by assuming light is a wave since perhaps 1800 or earlier. The double slit experiment (performed with a lot of light) is old. We ruled out the intuitive model of light as some itty bitty things that bounce around, and that holds.
But sometime in beginning of 20th century, it was discovered that light always interacting with stuff in discrete punches. The 'photon' is this discrete punch. Not some tiny itty bitty thing that bounces around. The light intensity that the old wave formulas would give, turned out to correctly give probability of the photon hitting there ; the average photons detected per time. The wave theory was never overturned; quite to the contrary.
In quantum mechanics, every thing is a wave - photons, electrons, nuclei, et cetera - the wave whose intensity of waving gives you the probability. When that wave is absorbed by some sensor that detects 'individual photons', the absorbed probability is the probability of this sensor clicking. It must be noted that not the wave itself, but it's intensity gives the probability. The wave 'waves' between positive and negative (well actually between field pointing up and down or left and right, you get the idea), and two waves of equal nonzero intensity can add up to the intensity of zero (if they are waving oppositely to each other), giving the probability of zero.
Then it had to be ruled out that somehow the light would be little tiny pieces of the wave, that each by themselves don't act like a wave, and that was ruled out by reducing the intensity so that the detector clicks rarely enough, yet the interference pattern still exists (not that anything else should've been expected as nobody even had a sensible theory where a huge number of bouncing particles would produce interference pattern).
The logic trap here that is incorrect is that you have to pick one (particle or wave).
You're applying macroscopic concepts to a microscopic world, and the concept of a 'wave' or a 'particle' are the opposite sides of the same coin. Particles at that level (light, electrons, and even protons/neutrons to a degree), have both properties and are actually some mish/mash inbetween state our macroscopic minds can't fully understand.
Stating any particle is exclusively one or the other is technically false. The true answer is neither or both.
It can't be stressed enough tho how much closer is the wave aspect (as in everyday wave in a material) to the underlying math than the 'particle' as in everyday rubber ball. It just is - we do have everyday phenomena for the wave aspect of it, but we do not have everyday phenomena for 'particle like' aspect of it.
This is why a lot of theoreticians just stick to doing the math, the interpretations tend to be biased and lead to confusion and incorrect conclusions. Math and raw data trump musings.
Of course. The math is wavefunctions though, for the huge part, which is aptly described as wavefunction - and also the whole quantization thing that is really very badly conveyed by the word 'particle'. Why? Because we don't have any everyday phenomena even remotely similar to this aspect of QM. So for the purpose of layman explanation - you CAN use waves as metaphor but you CAN'T use particles unless your goal is to confuse/mystify (which, sadly, seem to be the goal of most of the popularization books)
And if you follow math all the way, what you have on the detector is all the atoms on it being in mix of the hit-by-photon and not-hit-by-photon states (proportionally to the intensity), there wasn't even an impact on any defined position - not resembling macroscopic particle behaviour at all. You follow it further all the way into observer, you end up with MWI. That's what you get 'ignoring' particle aspect, and it (MWI) is entirely valid alternative way to see things, it gives valid predictions. The shut up and calculate leads to MWI when you keep calculating (instead of stopping half way and saying 'wavefunction collapse' and squaring the complex amplitudes). You get particle-like behaviour derived from the wave behaviour.
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2 Answers | Add Yours
One thing to remember is that rules of propriety were different in Shakespeare's day than many people hold them to be today. In Shakespeare's day, a young unmarried woman remaining chaste was considered a virtue. Audrey may be a simple, uneducated country girl, but she evidently very much prides herself in her virtuous chastity and is not likely to relinquish her virtue very easily. What's more, Touchstone is really only interested in a relationship with Audrey for the sake of satisfying his lustful desires. If he could get her to agree to yield her virtue without marrying her, he would probably do just that. However, he knows very well that, being the virtuous country girl she is, she absolutely will not yield her virtue unless she is married; hence, Touchstone devises a scheme to marry her.
We especially see Audrey proclaim her virtue in the first scene in which he courts her, Act 3, Scene 3. When Touchstone tries to wile her with his educated, witty tongue and she fails to understand, he then states he wishes she was more "poetical," and Audrey refers to her virtuous nature in her reply:
I do not know what "poetical" is: is it honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? (17-18)
In these lines, the word "honest" has a double meaning. In one sense, she is referring to being "honorable and true," but a chaste woman is also considered an "honest" woman (Shakespeare Navigators); hence, with just these two simple lines, Audrey shows how much she values all of her honorable virtues, especially her chastity.
We also learn about Touchstone's devious plan to marry her and leave her in this same scene. Jaques comes forward and cautions Touchstone not marry her under the clergyman Sir Oliver as the marriage may not be fully legally binding. Touchstone's reply is to say he doesn't mind if the marriage is not legal as it would make it easier for him to leave her. Yet we must question his sincerity in saying he does not want to legitimately marry her, for next he marries her, along with the other couples, under Hymen, the Greek god of marriage ceremonies, which they certainly would consider to be a very binding marriage. Hence, while it is probably true that Touchstone is marrying Audrey to satisfy his lust, it's unlikely that he really will leave her in the end.
Maybe too late to answer now, but its mostly because Touchstone feels that he needs entertainment while he is staying in the forest and that once he no longer wanted Audrey, he could just easily leave her. Audrey, being a simple woman, would not protest much. Their love is an example of sexual love, unlike Rosalind-Orlando's and Celia-Oliver's true love at first sight.
It may be a little wrong.
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About the exhibition
Beetles are one of the most successful organisms on the planet. Representing 40 percent of all insects and having existed for millions of years, they make up 25 percent of all known species. Immerse yourself in "Beetles" and explore their diversity, beauty and behavior. Highlighting hundreds upon hundreds of beetles the exhibition includes: the dung beetle, famous for recycling animal feces, and in fact, one species is successful in removing 80 percent of all cattle droppings in parts of Texas; Hercules beetles, as part of the rhinoceros beetle subfamily, is capable of supporting 850 times its weight making it the strongest animal on earth; and the well known and beautiful ladybug is considered an omen of good luck!
Download large image [1.6 MB stag_beetle.zip]
Download large image [1.27 MB Dicronorhina_derbyana_1925px.zip]
Download large image [1.96 MB eudicella-gralli_large.zip]
Download large image [1.15 MB nature_Bark_beetle_sharp.zip]
Download large image [1.14 MB hennaPalm.zip]
Download large image [1 MB european_rhinoceros_large.zip]
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ALICE experiment opens a window to the creation of the universe
Project leads: Thomas J. Humanic, Ph.D., The Ohio State University; Paul Buerger, Ph.D., OSC; Douglas L. Olson, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lawrence Pinsky, Ph.D., University of Houston; Ron Soltz, Ph.D., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; & Michael Lisa, The Ohio State University
Research title: Developing extensions to grid computing for ALICE at the LHC
Funding source: National Science Foundation
To analyze tracking data from up to 8,000 collisions per second, researchers are employing a worldwide network of computing resources, including those of the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
In a lush valley on the border of Switzerland and France, more than 1,000 physicists, engineers, and technicians from 30 countries are working to answer questions about the fundamental nature of matter. The massive physics research project recreated on a small scale within the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear Research, the explosive first moments of the birth of the universe.
As part of the ALICE experiment, short for A Large Ion Collider Experiment, physicists accelerated lead atoms to nearly the speed of light, collided their nuclei and then visualized the expelled particles that make up the protons and neutrons of the lead nuclei — quarks and gluons. Sensitive detectors measured the particles’ reactions, recording approximately 1.25 gigabytes of data per second — or as much as three DVDs per minute.
“Traditionally, researchers would do much, if not all, of their computing at one central computing center. This cannot be done with the ALICE experiments because of the large data volumes,” said Thomas J. Humanic, Ph.D., professor of physics at The Ohio State University.
The massive data sets were distributed to researchers around the world through high-speed connections to the “Grid,” a network of computer clusters at scientific institutions, including the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Beyond serving as a storage and analysis resource for researchers working on the project, “OSC has been critical in the development and testing of a computing model to analyze the ALICE data,” Humanic said.
OSC already has provided 300,000 CPU hours for data simulations and has allocated up to one million hours for analysis of the first experimental data, collected in September, 2008. ALICE already has yielded many valuable second-order benefits in areas such as distributed computing, mass data storage and access, software development, and instrument design.
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Analysis: Narrator Point of View
First Person Peripheral Narrator
World War Z is technically a first-person peripheral narrator but it reads like first-person central narrator, and… we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we? Let's back up a bit and start with what it means to be a first-person narrative.
You can tell a story is in the first person when the narrative character is telling you what's happening to them. The easiest way to discern this fact is if the narrator uses the "I" pronoun when speaking. "I" equals first person about 99.6 percent of the time. Rounding down.
A peripheral narrator is a narrator who isn't the central character in the story being told. They stand on the sideline—the periphery —and tell you what they are seeing, like a sports announcer versus someone actually playing in the game. If you've read The Great Gatsby, then you've read a first-person periphery narrator. Nick Caraway sits on the periphery and tells you the main character's, Gatsby's, story.
But wait—aren't all these stories are being told by characters in their own story? Like, a central narrator?
Yes and no. It reads like it's a central narrator because each interviewed characters tells us his or her story. But remember that all these stories are being related to us through the Interviewer. The best way to remember this is to check out the opening of any section:
[I stand on the short with Ajay Shah, looking out at the rusting wrecks of the once-proud ships.] (4.2.1)
This opening paragraph lets us know the Interviewer is on the periphery, relaying to us what the central narrators—the interviewees—have told him. And since the central narrators aren't telling us, the readers, directly, we have to land on first-person peripheral narrator as this novel's narrative technique.
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Definitions for antisepticˌæn təˈsɛp tɪk
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word antiseptic
a substance that destroys micro-organisms that carry disease without harming body tissues
thoroughly clean and free of or destructive to disease-causing organisms
"doctors in antiseptic green coats"; "the antiseptic effect of alcohol"; "it is said that marjoram has antiseptic qualities"
clean and honest
"antiseptic financial practices"
freeing from error or corruption
"the antiseptic effect of sturdy criticism"
devoid of objectionable language
"lyrics as antiseptic as Sunday School"
Any substance that inhibits the growth and reproduction of microorganisms. Generally includes only those that are used on living objects (as opposed to disinfectants) and aren't transported by the lymphatic system to destroy bacteria in the body (as opposed to antibiotics).
Of, or relating to antisepsis, or the use of antiseptics.
Capable of preventing microbial infection.
Very clean; aseptic.
Free of unpleasantness; sanitized or bowdlerized.
alt. of Antiseptical
a substance which prevents or retards putrefaction, or destroys, or protects from, putrefactive organisms; as, salt, carbolic acid, alcohol, cinchona
Antiseptics are antimicrobial substances that are applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putrefaction. Antiseptics are generally distinguished from antibiotics by the latter's ability to be transported through the lymphatic system to destroy bacteria within the body, and from disinfectants, which destroy microorganisms found on non-living objects. Some antiseptics are true germicides, capable of destroying microbes, while others are bacteriostatic and only prevent or inhibit their growth. Antibacterials are antiseptics that have the proven ability to act against bacteria. Microbicides which destroy virus particles are called viricides or antivirals.
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
an-ti-sept′ik, adj. and n. counteracting putrefaction and analogous fermentive changes: preventing moral decay.—adv. Antisept′ically. [Gr. anti, against, and sēpein, to rot.]
The numerical value of antiseptic in Chaldean Numerology is: 8
The numerical value of antiseptic in Pythagorean Numerology is: 8
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Translations for antiseptic
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A condition dubbed “Wii shoulder” is the latest illness to be triggered by overuse of computer games, according to a report in the BMJ today. Paediatricians in the UK report the case of child who presented after Christmas was complaining of tiredness and a sore shoulder, having been inactive over the past three years through illness.
The boy had been playing the new generation Nintendo Wii computer game which has a remote controller that can detect acceleration and orientation in three dimensions and is used as a handheld pointing device to simulate activities such as bowling or playing tennis.
“Anyone who has played interactive games on Wii sport will relate to this shoulder pain in muscles that have not been used for a long time.1 Within a day the discomfort wears off, as with exercise after a period of inactivity,” the doctors say.
Link to us http://wii.mmgn.com/News/new-wii-condition
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LA VIDA BUENA
Teoría crítica del vivir
ISBN 9972-603-16-4 ?
Lima: Universidad del Pacífico. 1999
La Teoría critica del vivir es parte de la teoría general de las fuerzas. Es parte del visism.
V i s i s m
Summary of the theory and elucidation through its application
Our life, the world we live in, is understood most deeply by someone who grasps it as a pattern of forces. Forces cause or solve the problems of life. NEWTON already recognised how all forces of nature form a coherent system, HEGEL recognised that in that system the naturally occurring forces act on each other. KANT proved that man can release himself from naturally occurring forces; he can invent new forces and bring them to fruition in the world he lives in. In that way he determined and fixed the equality of rights of all men in their claim to a good life.
So the common good life is the measure by which the theory orders, and evaluates all forces. The theory shows that among the many forces especially health, love, freedom and material strength – money – are those that make for a good life which determines both security of existence and what goes beyond that, that is to say, expansion of existence. Only he who brings that forces to a positive impact for himself and others can be lastingly satisfied and happy – with the help of (self)education and (self)training.
Linking the theory of visism, the theory of forces, with what is a given of evolution for man, his existential relativism, protects us from getting lost in unprovable speculation (for example, the “ideas” of Platon, which he claimed are unchanging and independent of man). Rather, what everyone can know by experience and reflection is to bring into a logically coherent system, hence in effect a philosophical one, that really serves the common good life.
The self-interest of all living beings is a given of evolution without which evolution would not at all be possible, and so it is the pre-condition and characteristic of human life. Whether and how self-interest is directed is therefore the basic question in every explanation of human conduct and action. Cui bono?, who benefits? was asked already by the Romans. It is therefore clear that the goal cannot be to abrogate things already known, already written, but to develop criteria of examination to be able to decide which knowledge is valuable for life techniques and hence for solving problems.
In the world of man six basic forces are to be distinguished: one’s own intelligence/reason, one’s own corporeality, the others’ intelligence/reason, the others’ corporeality, and finally the organic and inorganic environments. That is illustrated by a hexagon in whose area the reciprocal effects take place. But every person has his individual force-field, his own life structure which is linked in community in a general life structure.
For the technique of life it is not essential whether reason and corporeality exist separated from each other, but it serves for the good life if we think of them as distinguishable. Each person experiences that he can direct his feelings, a force of his corporeality, with the help of reason, a force of his intelligence.
If we ask about the relative effects on life of those six basic forces, we can, with PARSONS, give this structure: one’s own and others’ intelligence/reason creates in particular culture and community in which each can develop as a personality; on the other hand corporeality effects via its characteristics, for example through feelings, activities, by movement; the organic environment conspicuously through animals and plants, the inorganic though objects, landscape, climate.
All forces constitute a unity (a system). In that unity through reciprocal effects of the six basic forces are constituted almost without limit many individual forces, of which, as written above, four characterise our life: health, love, freedom, and material force such as money.
Conduct or action
The effects of the forces on each other man perceives as desirable or undesirable tasks, that is as problems, which he himself creates or which come to him. As challenges they require conduct from him, in the best case consciously and in a planned way, that is, his action. Every action has its content and needs a method (a text is the content of action, a method is his reading). Contents and methods are to be applied in the six steps of each action.
First in internal action, that is, reflection: starting with finding a goal, analysis, planning; then in external action, in focus a performance: organisation, realisation, evaluation. With that structure, as justified in the book, basically all problems in the world of the life of man are to be handled. Another two features (forces) should be named since they operate in all the steps of an action: the fine structure from the point of view of method. Every step, for example analysis, has its own goal-finding, analysis, planning, organisation, realisation, evaluation, which means that each of the six steps can be divided into six steps. And so on, if necessary.
Applications ordered with the help of the general "structure of living"
Conduct we define as an action if it is based on arguments. Actions are possible only for man, animals and plants have conduct. If we were to make contact at some time with extraterrestrial living beings, they would have the same rights as human beings if they were open to arguments.
Religion and belief are inaccessible to reason and its argumentation. For example, natural sciences can neither prove not refute the existence of God. The various religions therefore each construct their system from incomprehensible things, from miracles that can be believed or not. Religions are to be understood as more or less distinguishable attempts to grasp a world-force; also in the hope of security of existence after death. As early as the Gilgamesh epic, written more than 3,000 years ago, the hero wants to achieve immortality in order to overcome his own death.
But we must understand: rats directed through a labyrinth do not understand that direction. The intellectual difference between rats and human beings is, however, almost infinitely smaller than that between human beings and that world-force named God. So what can man know of that force? Why there is matter, why genetic material strives for survival and expansion, why human beings came into existence in that way, why therefore self-interest is an inextinguishable characteristic; after all no man can answer those questions.
For enlightened religions that ignorance, which of its very nature is true for atheists too, means that focus is on moral education, that is, on the equality of all men, and on help to making a good life on earth so as to be a force against material and intellectual poverty. From that ignorance it also follows that religions that claim to be in sole possession of the absolute truth persecute or murder people of a different faith, and are invincibly opposed to a theory of life technique that has as its goal a good life for all. That is true, for example, of the persecution of Christians by Jews in the late Persian Empire and for the incomprehensible murder of Jews by Christians in the Second World War.
But since we have known that we are results of evolution, formed by the principle that what enables our survival and secures our existence is the truth, in all the sciences, including the natural sciences, our thinking has to be governed by the relativity of truth. A meteor that blows up on reaching earth, destroying everything in its proximity, does that silently if there are no organs that have developed in such a way that they can “hear” its force and effects. Another example: an apple seems to us to be “red”, ripe and tasty because that has shown itself to be favourable to our life, to our genetic material and its expansion. Whoever cannot perceive any colours is at an existential disadvantage. For the sciences, for example for philosophy, the consequence is that all knowledge that is not relative for human beings, claimed to be absolute and independent, can now only be a part of the history of science.
Human truth exists only relative to the human being. That must distinguish a philosophy today from SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE up to KANT and HEGEL. The categorical imperative of KANT (act only in such a manner that it could be valid as a general law), which we have made easier to grasp through the principle of security of existence, makes that clear. It can in reality be an approximation to knowledge that serves man. For example, a white lie to save a person’s life is justified, in contrast to what KANT claims.
But what makes KANT’s ethics unique and superior is the basis, namely the conceived separation of practical and pure reason. Pure reason considers not what actually exists and happens in the world, but what would be if man existed as only reason, as an unchangeable force. Then no man would have an individual corporeality with its ephemeral feelings and varied talents. Then everyone would be only reason and hence everyone equal.
However, the categorical imperative till today is assessed by most of his critics as inefficient “formalism” because it names none of the individual problems of man as contents, while a free thinker recognises its essential contents: the categorical imperative deals in the first place only with reason, so only with human beings; in the second place it deals with all human beings without distinction. So the categorical imperative recognises a right the same for all, equality.
One more thing is not sufficiently recognised by traditional philosophy. Respecting equality is indeed a duty, and that is how – felt negatively – the categorical imperative is almost entirely interpreted. However, it opens up freedoms and chances. Act in such a way that is consonant with your needs and wishes, but avoid hurting yourself and others, help them when necessary. That is the general, more realistic law of equality.
Ancient writings show that that fundamental right was known about, but that it almost without exception contradicted the self-interest of the mighty. That is how it was expressed in 2000 BC in a Babylonian hymn: For seven days the slave woman was equal to her mistress, the slave walked with his master, in my city the mighty and the lowly slept side by side. Whether ancient Greece, where women and slaves were excluded from equality, can still be admired as the birthplace of democracy, should probably be reconsidered. Similar things can be said of the volks-thing of the Germanic peoples, in which only the free men were allowed to participate.
The revolutionary significance of the categorical imperative lies in that very point, the right to a good life on the basis of equality. That makes it a measure independent of time, valid in the past (the “great men” Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon are to be evaluated as power hungry, covetous, merciless mass murderers); in the present (the life of a person has the same value everywhere, whether on the Nile or the Thames); and in the future (unexplainable except as self-interest, that in future this will still be possible: a government, a few persons, decide on war, possibly against a despot ruling his helpless people, and then the war costs an unforeseeable number of lives among the innocent people).
Among the essential characteristics of evolution is that everything living must be self-interested in order to preserve itself and to be able to pass on its genetic material. That is valid for human beings too, though they are from birth dependent for those purposes on the community. Since both of those things are characteristic of man, self-interest has to be a basic problem given by nature within the community.
If self-interest is inherited as a core of the human being, it is different with equality. In today’s Iraq, over 4,000 years ago, the ruler was an early social reformer, Urukagina. He called himself the protector of widows and orphans; he forbade exploitation of the poor by the rich. Our finding: morality, as respect for equality in the claim to a good life, is not inherited; it has to be handed on to every newborn. Hence the task of education arises. Its procedure is arduous (through argumentation, being a model, praise and criticism), and yet the inborn unscrupulous self-interest again and again succeeds in dominating. Education, since its content is morality, is characterised by conflicts; training for a life in technology is not to the same extent.
Hence another insight is that the reality in a democracy can be only an approximation to the ideal. Not the idea of democracy is wrong, it is based on equality, but it becomes imperfect because of the citizens in their self-interest in every area. That argument can also be put forward by the models of communism, of socialism. But the essential difference consists of control through free elections. Whoever – in a democracy – is elected on the basis of unfulfillable promises, which is all the easier the less educated the voters are, risks being voted out by the disappointed. You can indeed win elections with half-truths and untruths, but not rule for long with them. But being voted out is contrary to the self-interest of the one elected. So in a democracy there is an added check by the voters through the self-interest of the rulers.
If a society is democratic, that form of state has the additional task of struggling against excessive controls. Just that distinguishes democracy from dictatorships. Excessive here means every control that does not contribute to the common good life. The basis for that is a reciprocal effect directed by reason, therefore dependent on education, between the life structures and the life concepts of the members and the overarching structure of society, right down to its legal foundation.
In that we see the general problem of many developing countries. For the transition from despotic or dictatorial systems to democratic ones there is usually a lack of education among the people. Self-interest is a given as a characteristic of every corporeality; recognition of equality on the other hand is a force that arises from reason. And reason is above all a result of education.
Democracy has to come from within, it cannot be forced from outside. From within, that is a very lengthy process lasting generations, because it depends on education, best achieved by small, careful steps from despotism via dictatorship to democracy. Whoever wants to impose democracy from outside by violence exposes himself to the arguments that he is either “simple-minded” or dependent on political-economic, or on religious grounds. Probably on a hodge-podge of things that contains something from all of them.
What is to be done if taking wars from outside into a country is ineffective or disastrous because the “liberated” people, uneducated in the short and long term, does not know what to do with the results? The government changes, but not the basic inability to use democracy. The number of refugees to the industrialised states grows even bigger, because the deceptive, probably short-lived freedom in the ensuing disorder can also be exploited in that way.
More valid would be: enduring development aid can be brought about by political and economic pressure on the ruling powers there. Such pressure should demand and promote a modern, democratic education; after all, it brings about – with sufficient probability – a basically better life for all in the more or less distant future. That is the continuation of war by other, more legitimate means. However it would be one-eyed to overlook that it must be difficult for the self-interest of the exporting industrialised countries and their citizens to actually help technologically in a lasting manner the increasingly competitive developing countries.
Of the four fundamental forces (health, love, freedom, material goods) the material, whether as product or money, is particularly important for security of existence, but also for expansion of existence in all areas. So every community needs an economic system. That works best, measured against the good life, when it is based on the market economy; on the market, whether a vegetable market or a complex financial one, the self-interest of the buyer runs up against the self-interest of the vendor, so the product and its price can be reciprocally negotiated.
Social market economy, capitalism in the market economy, or a planned economy?
What is necessary for life is the production and consumption of goods. Between them money functions as a general means of exchange. So money comprises only a part of economic processes.
But because of its universality money – especially paper money – can be conceived of as independent of production and consumption and accordingly be used independently – as capital. Its market, the capital market and its conception in capitalism, can therefore flourish almost detached from the state of the economy as a whole, independently of the quality of life of the population in its majority. That proves that capitalism cannot be the justified basic and economic form of a society. It is lacking the moral foundations needed to qualify as a general system according to the categorical imperative, that is, to serve the good life of all citizens.
A socially directed market, on the other hand, can basically do justice to the claims of people to a good life. It encompasses as a market economy production, consumption, and also the money economy and – committed to the common good life – the solution of social problems, especially security of existence of those individuals who cannot look after themselves, who are lacking marketability: children, the sick, the old, and those unable to work.
A social market economy is necessary for the ecology too, because it regards future persons as having equal rights, and so it pays attention to sustainability. So a social market economy is the best security against the risks of globalisation; it aims to provide every citizen with the basic ability to be able to take care of his own security of existence and expansion of life in a flexible way. Educated in that way, the citizen is most able to do justice to his striving for a good life, in a global future too, through exchange of his intellectual or material production and products.
We should not overlook that a social market economy is not a rigid model. Its concrete form and its possibilities are dependent on the conditions of a society. To the needy only that can be given only which is available as superfluities, as taxes. But only he can pay levies and taxes who has more than what is necessary for the security of his own existence. The more economically viable, the more wealthy persons there are, the better it is for the non-viable ones.
Hence the question must be asked why the development of a social market economy is even being hindered. Here too we see self-interest at work. It is obvious that capitalistically organised enterprises, which are therefore less burdened by social levies and socially oriented legislation, have better chances of gaining high profits for their owners. And certainly, as proved by history, to the basic disadvantage of the workers. It was not until the uniting in trade unions – almost two thousand years AD – that that could be changed. In addition: whoever has achieved big profits with low taxation prefers to be celebrated as a generous donor and benefactor rather than to have paid anonymously taxes aiming at welfare.
The “planned economy”, a counter-concept especially to the market economy, means the directing of the economy of a country in a centralised way and by functionaries on hierarchically descending levels. It is basically an ideal model with a social orientation, so to say of pure reason, which in reality has to fail because of corporeality, the individual self-interest of man. Who, when there are no free elections, controls the self-interest of the controllers? Socialists confuse cause and effect when they describe the first fenced-in private property as the beginning, the cause of social inequality. Castle and key, fence and city wall serve first of all as protection against aggressive self-interest of others.
In our world of scarcity of many resources and of self-interest of all persons it is basically difficult for each individual to attain a good life. So it will have negative consequences if we live from day to day without a plan. Whether it is a search for attractive jobs or an attractive partner, the advantage will be with him who fashions his present and future according to a thought-through “life concept”, a life concept by which he determines individually and flexibly what he himself must do, wants, and justifiably may do – and keeps aiming at that.
With our life concept each of us sets the individual meaning of our life, and to a great extent we ourselves determine that. Security of existence is a given of our nature, expansion of existence on the other hand we must ourselves create in its goals. Hence in our concept of life, in the system made up by the goals of a person, both necessity and relative freedom merge.
Being pleased with achieving our own individual goals and realising them is what makes for satisfaction, happiness. Major goals we basically reach step by step. Step by step, as on a staircase, we get closer to them. So we are conscious that momentary happiness has its best meaning only if it constitutes a mosaic stone in the picture we are striving for of a successful life, and momentary unhappiness is easier to bear if it does not smash that mosaic.
In a world of self-interest we should not be an independent satellite, but rather a “sun”. The point is not to make our good life dependent on other people alone. Each of us should live – nearly independent as a “sun” – our own life too. However, a partnership will probably be more stable if the life structures interpenetrate, if the partners have as many common elements as possible.
To become a “sun” is also a leading thought in education and training for the good life. Even at the pre-school level security of existence is indeed the basic thing, but expansion of existence must be achieved individually. Independence, the freedom to live by one’s own goals, is what constitutes the good life and should be prepared, promoted right from the beginning.
Learning is closer to self-interested security of existence than education which tries to reshape self-interest in a social direction. So education is more conflict-ridden, and hence as well as the fundamental methods of argumentation, learning of models, and conditioning, particular importance is placed on “management of conditions”. Then the conditions shape directly, but the educators not directly, which lessens the resistance of the adolescents.
Even being a “sun” was – and is – never a characteristic feature of the majority. Since the earliest times men have sought a leader, above all on the grounds of security of existence, but then he raised himself above them, made them his subjects – expanding his own existence as an “aristocrat” – exploited them, sent them to war and death. Napoleon is an almost incomprehensible example of that. After the hundreds of thousands of dead in the Russian campaign, whose purpose it was, as he himself said, to lift his own fame, he succeeded in a short time in winning the French people for himself again and making them enthusiastic for his wars.
So: an individual fighter, an outsider, or a member of a network, that is, a member in a union of forces? Outsiders are freer and more creative (as explained in the book, through the difference between pure reason, socially less dependent, and practical reason) but often endangered in their existential security (Mozart was an outsider, Haydn in the network). Members of a network support each other (security of existence) and promote each other (expansion of existence). But they also limit, because the common consent characteristically diminishes the chances of the particular, the unique (Bruckner’s friends worsened-improved his groundbreaking symphonies).
An argument against the basic self-interest of man is the readiness of a few to risk their life for others. Why does a fireman put his life at risk? In non-human nature that is unknown toward others. So it is basically linked with the unique intelligence of man. That enables him to feel the suffering of another living thing as his own and – empathy arises from reciprocal effect of corporeality and intelligence – to try to save someone. A necessary force in that is the concrete perception of the person addressed. That explains why among educated, morally trained people killing is rare, while in wartime, for example, men firing cannons and bomber pilots hardly show inhibitions. On the atom bomb directed at people in Japan was written: “With love and kisses”.
The good life has as its basis corporeality, so death is waiting for all life. That shows that our world of life is not marked by an “eternal cycle” (NIETZSCHE) but by a temporal beginning and a temporal end. Points of time in the past are to be defined as systems of forces that no longer exist. For a human being looking back, only approximations are possible. The worldwide life structures of man at any chosen point of time can be known and described only in a very abbreviated form. The limitation to what is still visibly influential today from the past, is the sort of approximation of the scholarship of history.
The future should be defined as a system of forces that do not yet exist. Here all the more only approximations are possible. It is a part of the essence of the future that it goes beyond human power of knowledge, because the future will consist of force systems that have arisen not only from necessities – their results are easier to predict – but also from a share of human freedom and other unpredictable contingencies.
Between the past and the future lies the present. Since the world as a system of forces is incomprehensible for the human intellect and as well quickly changes, even the present can be defined only subjectively and relatively. The present is for a person what he himself knows and feels individually.
Man has evolved from nature. The theory of evolution teaches us that most probably it was that living being (including man) which generated offspring if it best secured its existence by reacting best to the forces, the conditions of its environment. The human being of today therefore has a fundamental interest in not having those conditions altered in a dangerous way. Impacts on the environment are to be examined particularly critically and to be implemented only carefully. Only when they mean enduring security of existence or expansion of existence, judged by the measure of the common good life, are they justified.
Environmental problems that arise due to the complex reciprocal effects of man and nature are global dangers. Depletion of raw materials and enlargement of raw materials, deforesting or intensive farming, do not only bring advantages for the good life, they also mean risks for man and animal. Industrialisation brings with it existential problems if it involves pollution of the atmosphere. Chinese landing at a west-European airport in 2015 only hesitantly take off bit by bit their breathing protection, wondering at the unaccustomed positive quality of the air.
We are becoming more and more aware of the twofold relationship to animals, in particular to animals as food for human beings. Whoever lives in proximity to animals notices in them likenesses to humans. A cat lost its partner through death, and the dea one was buried quite deep under a stone slab, imperceptibly for the cat, apparently imperceptibly. Days later it showed the humans what it knew. It leapt onto the slab, marked it, and started a dance never seen before. For joy, for lamentation? It could not say – and there is the difference, in speech. However: in our world of approximations the following argument is not easy to rebut: if, according to KANT, equality is valid even for stupid humans, why should it not be valid for intelligent animals? Still now or forever man’s self-interest rates man before everything in the world.
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Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/History of Toleration
In any attempt to deal historically with the attitude of the Church towards religious toleration two considerations have throughout to be kept in mind. In the first place, nearly all ecclesiastical legislation in regard to the repression of heresy proceeds upon the assumption that heretics are in wilful revolt against lawful authority, that they are, in fact, apostates who by their own culpable act have renounced the true faith into which they were baptized, breaking the engagements made by them, or by sponsors in their name, when they became members of the Church of Christ. It is easy to see that in the Middle Ages this was not an unreasonable assumption. The Church of God was then indeed as a city set upon a hill. No one could be ignorant of her claims, and if certain people repudiated her authority it was by an act of rebellion inevitably carrying with it a menace to the sovereignty which the rest of the world accepted. This at least was the case with the Cathari, the Waldenses, and the Albigenses, with the Lollards and the Hussites, and it was still the case with the immediate followers of Luther, of Calvin, of Knox, and of the other early Reformers. Only by degrees and after a considerable lapse of time did generations come into being who could be regarded as inculpably heretical, for the plea of invincible ignorance implies not only that their education took place entirely under heretical influences, but also that they could attain adult life without being effectively confronted with the claims which the true Church makes upon the loyalty of reasonable men. It might plausibly be maintained, for example, that such conditions were at no time realized among the Huguenots of France, or in the more Catholic districts of Central Europe. Hence we cannot be entirely surprised that there were those who excused such measures as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or who supported the repressive legislation which was inaugurated by the Catholic sovereigns of Poland and Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the second place it is to be remembered that owing to the fact that the canon law deals very largely with the enunciation of principles of right and wrong which are of their own nature irreformable, the direct repeal of its provisions has never or very rarely been resorted to. This course undoubtedly has the great advantage of inspiring respect for the sanctity and stability of the law, but the consequence follows that there remain upon the statute-book a number of enactments which owing to changed conditions are to all practical intents and purposes obsolete. The medieval legislation of the Church with regard to usury, testamentary dispositions, matrimony, and especially heresy, largely falls under this category, while the natural result of the retention of a considerable mass of obsolescent decretals must be the creation of an element of, at least temporary, uncertainty, under which some will favour and others resist the legislation that is passing away. For example there was bound to be a period during which rigourists would still appeal to the very uncompromising measures in dealing with heretics which were contemplated by many texts of the canon law, while on the other hand larger-minded contemporaries who were themselves perhaps living under political conditions which forced them to appreciate the advantages of toleration, tended to treat these same provisions as a dead letter and to deny them all validity in practical life. The effect of both these considerations has been to make it extremely difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between the circumstances under which the Church recognized the desirability of a large toleration of dissident opinions on the ground both of justice and expediency, and those under which it seemed a duty to stamp out by a policy of firm repression an evil germ which threatened indefinite mischief to the well-being of Christian society. Every lawfully-constituted society must put down on principle the propagation of such sedition as threatens its own existence, and this is not persecution so long as reason and humanity are respected in the means of suppression employed.
Persecution begins when no reasonable proportion is observed between the force used in compulsion and the importance and power of the interests which it is sought to control. To determine the exact point at which legitimate repression passes into persecution is hence a matter of extreme difficulty. For this reason we should probably obtain a clearer view of the toleration of the Church in past history by studying the relations of the papacy with those bodies which like the Jews and pagans were recognized as lying outside her direct jurisdiction. Regarded as a centre of spiritual authority the Holy See did not claim the unbaptized as subjects, but still the popes as sovereigns of a temporal state had to adopt a definite attitude towards the Jews who lived in their dominions. Tracing these relations as a whole and comparing them with the ideas which prevailed among secular rulers of the time the principles formulated, and for the most part acted upon, by the popes, set an example of mildness to the rest of Europe. As early as A. D. 598, Gregory the Great clearly laid down that the Jews, while they were to be restrained from presuming upon the toleration accorded to them by the law, had a claim to be treated equitably and justly. They were to be allowed to keep their own festivals and religious practices, and their rights of property, even in the case of their synagogues, were to be respected (Greg. Mag. Regesta, M. G. H., II, 67 and 383). In the later Middle Ages there may be traced through a long series of pontificates the repeated confirmations of the Bull, assignable probably in the first instance to Pope Callixtus II (c. 1120) and known as "Sicut Judæis". It was a sort of papal charter of protection to the Jews and in its first sentence are embodied certain words of one of Gregory the Great's letters just referred to. "As licence", says this document, "ought not to be allowed to the Jews to presume in their synagogues beyond what is permitted by the law so they ought not to be interfered with in such things as are allowed. We therefore, although they prefer to continue in their hardness of heart rather than be guided by the hidden meaning of the prophets to a knowledge of the Christian faith, do nevertheless, since they invoke our protection and aid, following in the footsteps of our predecessors and out of the mildness of Christian piety, extend to them the shield of our protection." The document then lays down;
(1) that the Jews are not to be compelled by force to embrace Christianity, but are only to be baptized of their own free will;
(2) that apart from a judicial sentence in a court of law no one is to injure them in life or limb or to take away their property or to interfere with such customary rights as they may have enjoyed in the places where they live;
(3) that they are not to be attacked with sticks and stones on occasion of their festival celebrations, nor are they to be compelled to render any feudal services beyond such as are customary;
(4) that their cemeteries in particular are not to violated. (See M. Stern, "Urkundliche Beiträge", n. 171.) This charter reissued and confirmed as it was by some twenty or thirty pontiffs during a period of 400 years is certainly of much more weight as laying down the Church's view of the duty of toleration, as an abstract principle, than any persecuting edicts evoked by special circumstances or coloured by the prepossessions of the individual legislator.
Looking at the documents of unquestioned authenticity extracted by Stern from the papal Regesta it becomes clear that throughout the later Middle Ages the Jews in almost every emergency turned to the popes as to their natural protectors. Despite such legislation as that of the Fourth Council of Lateran (1215) imposing the wearing of a distinctive badge and excluding Jews from public offices, still even such a summary as that in the Jewish Encyclopedia (s. v. "POPES") distinctly leaves the impression that the Holy See exercised on the whole a markedly restraining influence on the persecuting spirit of the Middle Ages. In particular, more than one of the popes, beginning with Innocent IV, issued Bulls exonerating the Jews from that charge of ritual murder, which, as in the well-known story of little Hugh of Lincoln, prejudiced public opinion so strongly against them (cf. Vacandard, "La Question du meurtre rituel chez les Juifs" in "Etudes de critique et d'histoire religieuse", 3d series, Paris, 1912). It was again the popes (e.g., Sixtus IV and Clement VII) who at the time of the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition exerted themselves to set some check upon the severities exercised against the Maranos in the Iberian Peninsula. The edicts issued at various times for the destruction of copies of the Talmud, the Bull "Cum nimis absurdum" of Paul IV constraining the Jews of Rome to live segregated in a Ghetto and subject to other harassing disabilities, represent rather the prejudices of individual pontiffs than any consistent principle of persecution. Let it also be noted that the influence of the Church has repeatedly been exerted for the protection of pagan races against forcible conversion, and that it has freely tolerated such religious rites amongst savages as were not openly debasing and immoral. The history of the preaching of Christianity in the New World shows many examples in which the fanatical zeal lay with the profligate Spanish adventurers who conquered the country, while ecclesiastical authority advocated sympathy with the natives and indulgence for their religious observances. On the other hand this indulgence shown to pagan customs, obviously enough, could not be extended without limit. Even British rule in India ultimately considered it desirable to abolish the practice of suttee by which the wives of the upper classes were required to commit suicide upon the death of their husbands. This, however, was not effectively prohibited, even in the British provinces, until 1829.
With regard to the toleration of Christian heretics and schismatics the reader will do well to consult the article INQUISITION. No very systematic measures of repression seem to have come into practice before the twelfth century. The aggressive attitude adopted in the case of the Priscillianists (q. v.) and Donatists (q. v.) was owing less to the action of the bishops than to that of the emperor. On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that after the authority of the popes was firmly established, ecclesiastical campaigns were undertaken against the Cathari, the Waldenses, and Albigenses as well as later on against the followers of Wicklif and Hus. Moreover isolated executions for heresy (burning at the stake being commonly employed for this purpose) were known before the twelfth century both in East and West; though at the same time the actual infliction of the punishment, then as after, must be regarded as an act of the civil power rather than that of any ecclesiastical tribunal. But though an Inquisition of heretical practices may be regarded as having been first formally set up, at any rate in embryo, about the second half of the thirteenth century no measures of extreme severity were in the beginning prescribed or generally adopted. The Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215 imposed as a penalty the deprivation of property and civil stakes. Convicted heretics even though repentant, were excluded from public offices and were compelled to wear a badge. If their retractation was insincere they were liable to be confined in a public prison. At the same time it must not be forgotten that all these medieval heresies, as such an historian as Gairdner has noticed (Lollardy, I, 46), struck at the foundations of social order. M. Guiraud's account of the extravagant teaching of the Cathari and Albigenses is conclusive upon the point. It cannot be doubted that the severities which then began to be exercised in the name of religion were prompted by no lust for blood. It seemed rather to orthodox churchmen that the Church was so menaced by these subversive doctrines that her very existence was at stake.
Under these circumstances it was not wonderful that the ordinances of the canon law, for the most part formulated at a time when Albigensian teachings were a present danger, should have inclined to the side of severity and that to the lawmakers of that age toleration seemed only a weakness. "The proscription of the Albigenses", says M. Guiraud, "was not the effect of any ferocious hatred of misbelievers too often attributed to the princes of that age. It was inspired by a consideration which has been happily defined by saying that heresy was at that time as much a crime against social order as against religion" (Guiraud, "Chartulaire de Prouille", I, lxxxiv). Even so anti-Roman an historian as Hase sums up the practical effects of the Lollard movement by saying "Wyclif produced no permanent religious impression upon the mass of the people. His teaching was misunderstood and caused a revolt of the peasants which resulted only in disaster" (Kirchengeschichte 1886, p. 353). Again it was not to be expected that the first fruits of the Reformation would be likely to mitigate the prevalent view of the mischievous nature of heresy. The political and social evils to which the teaching of Luther and Calvin gave rise, as well as the fanatical persecution of the Catholics by so many of their followers, are made clear beyond dispute in such a work as that of Janssen's "History of the German People", to which the reader may be referred. It was only natural that the conception of heresy as an attack upon law and order as well as upon religion should be thereby deepened. Moreover in nearly every case where the reproach of intolerance has been cast against the Church, as for example, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (see HUGUENOTS), the persecuting initiative has come far more from temporal rulers than from the Church or her representatives. On the other hand, the ferocity of the leading Reformers more than equalled that of the most fiercely denounced inquisitors. Even the "gentle" Melanchthon wrote to Calvin to congratulate him on the burning of Servetus. "The Church", he said, "both now and in all generations, owes and will owe you a debt of gratitude." "Let there be no pity", Luther exhorted his followers, "it is a time of wrath not of mercy. . . . Therefore, dear Lords, let him who can slay, smite, destroy" (see Beard, "The Reformation and Modern Thought"). "John Knox", said Acton (History of Freedom, p. 44), "thought that every Catholic in Scotland ought to be put to death." Moreover in any case there is more to be urged than a mere "tu quoque" argument. The Church has often given proof of her moderation when brought into relation with those whom she was not logically compelled to treat as rebels. No better examples can perhaps be afforded than the history of the foundation of some of the colonies in the New World, and notably that of the Province of Maryland (q. v.).
HERGENRÖTHER, Catholic Church and Christian State (tr. London, 1876); DEVAS, Key of the World's Progress (London, 1906). 189-210; ACTON, Hist. of Freedom (reprinted London, 1907); CREIGHTON, Persecution and Tolerance (London, 1895); DÖLLINGER, Akademische Vorträge, III (Leipzig, 1891), 274-301. These last three works can only be recommended with many reserves. See also bibliography of article INQUISITION.
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In the Garden:
Coastal and Tropical South
Angelwing begonia seed sprout readily, but are finer than dust.
Flowers and Seeds
Often the first gardening experience a person has is to plant seeds, and the absolute wonder of watching a tiny speck become a full-sized plant never ebbs.
Starting Tiny Seeds
The first seeds most people handle are big, like beans, corn, and morning glories. But some seeds are tiny, and starting them is often frustrating. For impatiens, begonias, petunias, and other truly tiny seeds, try this: Recycle a plastic food container with a clear dome. Clean it very well, including a dip in a 1:10 bleach:water solution. Soak a piece of oasis floral foam in water and set it into the bottom part of the container. Use your hands to crush a clump of milled sphagnum moss into dust and sprinkle that on top of the foam. Sow seed there, and finish with another dusting of the sphagnum moss. Milled sphagnum is available where houseplant supplies are sold. Cover the foam block with the clear top of the recycled plastic and place it in bright light, but not direct sunlight. Keep the top on until the seeds sprout, allowing it to stand ajar at least daily to ventilate and prevent condensation from building up inside. Do not allow the foam to dry out; mist with a hand sprayer occasionally. Once the seedlings have sprouted their first set of true leaves (a small set of "seed leaves" emerges first), cut each one out in a small chunk of foam and move it up to a suitable pot for growing on.
How Seeds are Produced
Reproduction of plants by seeds requires both of the traditional components, male and female. The different plant parts may be obvious (think hibiscus blooms) or so subtle that no one can figure out which is which, like streptocarpus. Male flowers produce pollen, females receive it and when the union is successful, viable seeds are produced. Sometimes the flowers are complete, and both sexes are present in the same flower. Such plants are called self-pollinating, and their seed will "come true." That means the child will be the same as the parent in the majority of cases. Other species bear male and female flowers separately on the same plant and the two get together with the help of gravity, roaming insects, and, occasionally, people. Still others bear the sexes on separate plants, such as mayhaw. The male flower's anthers must release their pollen and travel to the female at the same time that the ovary is mature to accept it. Insects, birds, and mammals assist with transport, as well as wind and sometimes water.
Botanically speaking, flowers are complex adapted stems. The beautiful flowers we prize are adaptations to attract pollinators and the flowers are constructed to conduct its processes, all to produce future generations. Considering the diversity of flower forms, their colors and arrangements of parts, plus the natural combinations that must converge for pollination to succeed, it's amazing any seeds are ever produced!
Care to share your gardening thoughts, insights, triumphs, or disappointments with your fellow gardening enthusiasts? Join the lively discussions on our FaceBook page and receive free daily tips!
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Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, other than skin cancer. And according to the American Cancer Society, it is the second leading cause of cancer death in women; the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer sometime during her life is about 1 in 8.
But the good news is that cancer death rates are going down. Improved treatment capabilities and earlier detection are credited for helping women catch it early.
"Every woman is at risk, and the risk increases as you age," explains Deborah Kerlin, MD, director of breast health services for John Muir Health. "It is important for each woman to be familiar with the physical characteristics of her own breasts so that she is aware of changes that may occur over time."
Fortunately, most changes are normal and benign. If there is a problem, early identification allows for rapid evaluation and increases the potential for successful treatment.
"Most suspected risk factors are not fully understood and therefore can't be controlled," says Carolyn Berson RN, MSN, nurse educator/patient navigator at John Muir Health. "But you can take steps for early detection and appropriate treatment."
Proactive measures include:
- Performing breast self-exams (BSE) beginning at age 20.
- Having a clinical breast exam (CBE) every three years by a health professional if you are 20-39 years old. Then annually after age 40.
- Annual mammograms for women over 40.
What to look for
Women should know how their breasts normally look and feel. Beginning at age 20, you may want to examine your breasts once in a while.
The best time to do a breast self-exam is 7 to 10 days after the start of your menstrual period, when swelling and tenderness are minimal. If you no longer have periods, are pregnant, or are currently breastfeeding, choose a regular time for BSE. Look for:
- Lump or mass in breast or armpit
- Change in size or shape of breast
- Dimpling or redness of the skin
- Itching, scales, sores, or rashes
- Sudden nipple inversion
- Abnormal nipple discharge or bleeding
See your doctor if you have any of these symptoms. And remember, 8 out of 10 breast lumps are not cancerous.
Your doctor will first carefully feel the lump and surrounding tissue. Then the doctor may use mammography, and in some cases an ultrasound test, to help identify the breast mass. A needle aspiration or needle biopsy of the mass may yield fluid or indicate a solid mass, giving additional information.
Techniques such as stereotactic breast biopsy, where delicate instruments are guided to a specific area by the use of three-dimensional scanning, and core biopsy guided by ultrasound, make the procedures more reliable, cost-effective, and less invasive than surgical biopsy.
Mammograms are quick and easy. As you stand facing the X-ray equipment, the technologist places your breast between two plastic plates, compressing it briefly.
The process is designed to get a clear picture of your breast. The entire procedure only takes 5 to 10 minutes and may detect lumps that are still too small to feel.
"Screening mammography is the best tool available to screen for breast cancer," observes Vivian Wing, MD, chair of the department of medical imaging at John Muir Health. "Multiple, randomized, controlled trials and observational trials have clearly shown a decrease in breast cancer mortality with screening," she says
Those without insurance and low-income and underinsured women can call 1-800-4-CANCER for details about free annual mammography screenings.
Health care providers agree that no one method of detection is 100 percent accurate. But what is important is that if you do have a suspicious lump, you catch it early.
A three-pronged approach of BSE, CBE, and mammography is your best chance at early detection.
"Learning and practicing BSE, staying on a regular schedule of clinical breast exams and following the appropriate guidelines for mammograms are all highly effective screening tools," notes Dr. Kerlin. "Early diagnosis and treatment are key."
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Damieta meeting - Minutes: 18/08/06
What do you think is causing violence in our community?
1. Unemployment – we can start a community project (e.g. garden)
2. Attitude to status – people are sometimes not sensitive to other people’s problems because “they are already better off than you and loosing something can’t hurt them that much.”
3. Poverty – the only means you can think of to provide for your family is by taking from others by force
4. One step at a time – realize things might take more time to right, and don’t try overdo at once or even to “not do” just because you can’t afford to help them all at once.
5. Crime rate leads to decreased safety in neighborhoods due to the violence it brings.
6. Taxi drivers – road rage leading to violent speech and general upheaval of peace.
7. Unemploymentè poverty è crime all linking together to increase violence in the community.
8. Inefficiency of bus service in the community can cause upheaval of internal peace.
9. Influences of T.V and things that are shown on it.
10.War zones seen on TV causing suffering mostly of the young children.
· help sick people – send medications (Children are a big concern).
· Malnutrition contribute towards relief.
11.Jewish - Jo’burg march
12.reflective within self
13.neighbourhood – own thought mentality.
15.There is a need to make ourselves responsible (conscietize ourselves) for others’ dilemmas, e.g. what you use in one day might cost enough to feed a family for one month.
16.Look at intra -family relationships i.e. treatment/actions on a daily basis. Remember “charity begins at home.”
17.Our response to desperate people. By default we react as this is my property and you are trespassing? Is there anything we can do as individuals to supercede this natural response?
18.Bitterness and anger reduce internal peace, while lack of respect, trust and forgiveness lead to a chaotic world. Greed for power in one person mostly in the work place will reduce consideration for others, so we need to understand and care for one another.
19.We need to build families and nurture parent – child relationships (consider teenagers from broken homes).
20.Strikes are not always peaceful as they usually lead to violence. Mostly this is because no-one wants to give-in or to compromise in the issue.
21.There is a lack of cultural tolerance mostly in tertiary institutes.
22.Orphans in Mphumalanga.
Overally most concerns were about crime and its causes or things that increase its rate. Peoples’ attitudes were also mostly addressed during the discussions determining response to any given situation (natural or otherwise).
1. Respect yourself first and look at your own values.
2. Learn about trust of self and others.
3. Look at set-up of other PACT group and how they work and manage things in order to build structure for this group.
4. We meet once a month, but what do we do the rest of the time something in the group. Socials, volunteer escapades?
Still to be done:
Write letter to regional office to register group.
Select Leadership in our group – 1st on agenda (15 sept).
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Addison Cairns Mizner
(1872 – 1933) was an American resort architect whose
Revival style left an indelible stamp on south Florida, and
which continues to inspire architects and developers.
He was the brother and sometime partner of businessman,
raconteur and playwright, Wilson Mizner.
Benicia, California, he traveled as a child around the world with
his father, Lansing Bond Mizner, a lawyer and the U. S. minister to
Guatemala. Little is known about his sketches and artwork prior to
his architectural career, but his subsequent work shows him to be a
fine draftsman and an artist who painted beautiful watercolors.
Although he lacked formal university training, Mizner served a 3
year apprenticeship in the office of San Francisco architect, Willis
Jefferson Polk. While in San Francisco, he co-illustrated a book
with Ethel Watts Mumford in 1903 entitled The Limerick Up To Date
Book. He eventually relocated to New York City, where he
designed numerous country houses across Long Island and the region.
At age 46,
he moved for his health to Palm Beach, Florida. His Mediterranean
Revival designs, beginning with the Everglades Club, won the
attention and patronage of wealthy clients in Palm Beach and West
Palm Beach. The 6 foot 2 inch, 250-pound bon vivant would
epitomize the "society architect." Rejecting modern architecture for
its "characterless copybook effect," he sought to "make a building
look traditional and as though it had fought its way from a small,
unimportant structure to a great, rambling house."
designed the 37-room El Mirasol (now The Sunflower),
completed in 1918, for banker Edward T. Stotesbury, head of the
town’s most notable family of the time, and for whom he installed a
40-car garage, a tea house, an auditorium and private zoo. Another
fanciful mansion, Villa Flora, was built in 1921 for a banker
at J. P. Morgan. La Guerida ("bounty of war") was built in
1923 for Rodman Wanamaker of Philadelphia, heir to the Wanamaker's
department store fortune. It was later purchased by Joe Kennedy for
a paltry $120,000 in 1933, and eventually would become John F.
Kennedy's Winter White House. Mizner's own Palm Beach home was built
in 1925. It was called El Solano after the hot, oppressive
wind which blows off the Mediterranean Sea in eastern Spain, but
also for Solano County, California, his birthplace. Sold to Harold
Vanderbilt, the estate was later purchased by John Lennon.
were generally one-room deep to allow cross ventilation, with
kitchens located in wings to keep their heat away from living areas.
Other characteristics included loggias, colonnades, clusters of
columns supporting arches, French doors, casement windows, barrel
tile roofs, hearths, grand stairways and decorative ironwork. In
West Palm Beach, he founded Mizner Industries to make the tiles,
cast stone trim and columns, wrought iron and, eventually, furniture
for his buildings. He designed and built the Riverside Baptist
Church in Jacksonville, completed in 1926. Because he promised to
build it in honor of his mother, Ella Watson Mizner, the architect
refused payment for his services. The church is Mizner's only work
of religious architecture. In 1928, he designed the original
Cloister Hotel at Sea Island, Georgia.
early 1925, Mizner entered into the Florida land boom with
disastrous consequences. He formed the Mizner Development
Corporation, a syndicate of prominent investors, to buy and
transform Boca Raton from an unincorporated town into a resort
dubbed the "Venice of the Atlantic." The group purchased over
1,500-acres (600 hectares), on which was planned a 1,000-room hotel,
golf courses, parks and a 160-foot (49 meter) wide grand boulevard
called Camino Real, all envisioned by Mizner. In an address before
100 salespeople, the architect declared:
"It is my plan to create a city that is
direct and simple... To leave out all that is ugly, to eliminate the
unnecessary, and to give Florida and the nation a resort city as
perfect as study and ideals can make it."
it appeared his enterprise would succeed. Sales at Boca Raton
reached $26 million in the first 24 weeks, and Mizner used the money
to design and built infrastructure, the administration building, a
100-room hotel called The Cloister Inn, and some houses, although
none of the proposed oceanfront mansions. By 1926, however, land
sales were declining as the speculative real estate bubble deflated.
To revive investor confidence, sales and working capital, Mizner
promised in advertisements to continue the project regardless. But
nervous Mizner Development Corporation members started resigning,
including T. Coleman du Pont and Jesse Livermore, concerned that
Mizner's promise held them financially liable in failure. Unpaid
contractors began to sue for payment. Then in September the 1926
Miami hurricane hit the coast, causing considerable damage. The
project was, as Wilson Mizner put it, "nixed by nature." Addison
Mizner went bankrupt. The Boca Raton holdings were sold to public
utility magnate and syndicate member, Clarence H. Geist, for $71,500
and an assumption of about $7 million in debt.
died in 1933 of a heart attack. In March of 2005, an 11-foot tall
statue of the architect by Colombian sculptor Cristobal Gaviria was
erected in Boca Raton at Mizner Boulevard and U.S. 1 to commemorate
his visionary contributions to both the city and Florida
architecture. In addition, an elementary school in Boca Raton was
named for him in 1968. Once dismissed by critics for their
idiosyncratic traditional aesthetic, today Mizner's buildings are
highly prized. Many are listed on the National Register of Historic
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by J. Lestschinsky
Translated by Rae Meltzer
The Jews live under very crowded conditions. Often several families live in one small room. Uncleanliness inside and outside is the sign of great poverty. Their financial resources are very small. In the morning they eat radishes, onions, garlic, or herring with bread. Those who are a little better off drink tea. Midday they may have soup, fish, or meat and in the evening the same menu. There are workers whose families fast all day until the family wage earner comes home and brings his earnings. (Written Kovno Gubernia (region), St. Petersburg, 1861 page 582.)These dreadful descriptions are not an exaggeration and can be confirmed in the writing of the Hebrew writer Popernow, who wrote about the Lithuanian shtetl at the same time as the above quote. (Perezhitoya, Vol. II, page 39). The following is a quote from his writing:
The workers and merchants operated with 50 or 100 rubles, barely earning a bitter livelihood. Not finding any opportunity in the shtetl for their skills and professional training, many shtetl dwellers left for unknown places to try to find work. They left their families to the protection of God and to the soft hearts of their neighbors. They were laughed at in the Ukraine and called Litvaks with their small stomachs and taunted with the song, Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes, and so on.Lithuanian Jews were very poor, but they did not make peace with their bitter fate and went out in the world to search for ways to earn a living. In the better-off Ukraine, one would meet Lithuanian Jews who were teachers and skilled workers. Lithuanian Jews went far afield to find a livelihood. We know about Litvisheh young people who left for South Africa as early as 1865 and opened the way for thousands of Litvisheh Jews. In the collected books Budzhtzenost (1900) we find a very interesting description of the first immigrants from Kovner gubernia. We quote from that source:
The first two Jews from Lithuania, to come to South Africa were two brothers, Shmuel and Elijah. Their family name was Max, from Nyshtot" (New Town), Kovno Gubernia. Their father was a tailor in a little hamlet and extremely poor. The two boys decided to leave their birthplace and find someplace where they could earn a livelihood. They came to London, where for a time they were tailors, but they decided to look for a better livelihood. They came to London in 1865-66. A London Jew took pity on them and gave them a recommendation to a wholesale business and asked the wholesalers to give them merchandise on credit to be repaid later. They were peddlers, and in two years they learned to speak English well and pass as Englishmen. They heard from friends that in Africa one can make a good living. They went to Cape Town, South Africa, again without a penny. Here they suffered hunger and they did what they did in London, peddled and dragged merchandise on their backs from farm to farm. During this period diamond mines were discovered in Kimberley. Immigrants traveled to Kimberley and the brothers decided to go there. They bought shares in the diamond mine for a low price and soon earned several thousand dollars on their investment. The brothers began speculating with capital, and they made a big financial fortune. They wrote to their brother-in-law in London, whose name was Lewis, and founded the firm of Max and Lewis (or Louy).I do not know if this firm still exists. Perhaps in Johannesburg they are more informed about it than I am here in New York. I am interested in describing how Lithuanian Jews were and are still energetic in using their initiative to pursue opportunities. Lithuanian Jews continued to initiate immigration to other places. In the Report of the Yiddisher (Sys portion of the Second Lithuanian Sys, 1923-1926) Kovno, 1926, page 63, it states that it is a solid fact that the economic condition of the Jews in Lithuania is much worse than before World War I. I cannot cite here all the data. It is compelling to note that the fearful urge to immigrate pulled entire families to such unknown and far-off lands as Paraguay and Uruguay.
As is well known, the Uruguay Jewish community (about 38,000 souls) is one of the best known, most active, and best organized. One can conclude from reading their newspapers that the leaders in the cultural activities of the community are the Jews from Lithuania. They can be proud of their well-organized, democratic community, and their good network of Yiddish schools. Most of the immigration from Lithuania was from the provinces, from the small shtetlach whose poverty was described in the references mentioned above. We will later document this with statistics.
Until the 1920's, the immigration did not carry a massive character, which is understandable. Not everyone can be as successful as the Max brothers described above. To immigrate one must have financial resources. In the Lithuanian shtetlach, one married young and had many children. In the census of 1897, for the Kovno region, the percentage of children under the age of nine was much higher among Jews than Christians. Especially in the provinces, those with children were very hesitant to immigrate when they had no relatives to go to. When the peasants were given their freedom in 1861, the situation in Russia and in the Kovno region improved somewhat, but there was still severe poverty.
Research carried out in the Lithuanian shtetlach in 1886 gives us important information about the dire situation of the Jews living there, and what a toiling mass of humanity they were. The research was done by the Kovno region committee under A. Dedelov. He writes:
The situation of the workers is a very tragic one. They work from 4-5 in the morning until 9-10 at night. And for all this toil they have only some dry bread and cramped living quarters. They can afford only a bit of meat on the Sabbath and eggs only on holidays, because the prices are very high (16-23¢ per lb.) Even on the Sabbath he can afford only a very limited amount, just barely one half pound for a family of seven souls. ( Atcheri Pa Vaproses Economishsheskoi Yovreiev (Jewish) Russia,” S.P. Terburg, 1913, page 30.)
|Jews of Rokiskis at the marketplace|
The same author describes the dreadful situation of the Jewish horse and wagon drivers, and the Jewish peddlers in the Kovno region. The poor peddlers, who do not have an open stall in the market, go a mile or more from the shtetl, waiting for the peasants who are on their way to the market. They stop these peasants, barter with them, and buy their farm produce. Then they try to sell this farm produce to the families living in the shtetl. Their profit is a miserable 5-10%. That is why the hunger and poverty in their families is so great. They live in dirty and crowded rooms. They have no clothes, only rags on their bodies, and they live a lamentable life.
The situation of the small shop-keeper is not much better. The same author writes:
The life of the small shopkeeper is not one to be envied. He sits all day in the dirty and crowded shop, from dawn to dark, wearing old, worn clothes and searching with his weary eyes for customers.Of course, there were one or two rich families and about 10 families who were middle-class merchants or owned a business, and made a living. But the majority of peddlers and small storekeepers lived in miserable poverty as described above by the quoted author.
A crisis occurred due either to a poor crop or a fallen market in exporting farm produce. Exports played a major role in the economy of the people and especially so in the livelihoods of the Jewish people who were dependent on trade. In these crises there was widespread hunger in the shtetlach and in the small hamlets where the Jewish people lived. All suffered from hunger. The Russian government took care of the Russian peasants, but did nothing for the starving Jewish people; they were left without resources and had to find a way to take care of themselves. Everything was disorganized.
The catastrophic year of starvation occurred in 1880. In many Jewish communities in the cities and shtetlach the starving Jewish masses, being desperate, accused the community leaders and merchants of causing the widespread hunger. There was a report in the Voschod in the year 1880 on pages 1048-1059 by A. Margolis that in the shtetl of Koidanov in Kovno region:
There was a dreadful hunger. The poor class gathered in a sizable mass near the synagogue and attacked those who owned the export businesses. All day and late into the night the starving people roamed the streets, breaking windows and screaming that they will break the bones of the wealthy if they will not take care of their families and prevent their death from starvation. (A. Margolis, Yiddisher Folk Masses in their Struggle Against their Oppressors, Moscow, 1940, p.86.)
The Intensive Growth of the Jewish People in the Shtetlach
In spite of the bitter situation of the Jewish people in the shtetlach in the Kovno region, the Jewish population grew significantly. This was due to several factors. The economic situation of some groups of the Jewish population did improve in the latter half of the 1900's. Germany, the closest neighbor to Kovno, became increasingly industrialized and needed more agricultural produce. The exports from the Kovno region grew. After the peasants gained their freedom, their situation improved. The people in the countryside began to buy more goods from the city and shtetlach. In the shtetl, the shopkeeper's economic situation improved and he was able to hire salespersons and other helpers. A class of skilled craftsmen developed and they employed and trained others. In some of the shtetlach, craft industries developed.
|The extended Davidovitch(itz) family in Rokiskis
[no individual names appear]
The growth of the cultural life of the Jewish community had an influence on the shtetl. The Jewish people of the shtetl rubbed their eyes they came awake, longing for a better life, a richer cultural life, and more freedom. They began receiving letters from America and South Africa with funds and with information about living conditions there. American newspapers managed to get by the censors and were read avidly. People in Kasrilevke" (shtetlach) began to stir away from the traditional nest and started looking for their luck in the big cities of Russia and in the distant lands across the oceans.
All these developments led to a major decrease in deaths in the Jewish population. The Jewish birthrate was still quite high until World War I. The death rate dropped significantly in the last quarter of the 1800's. The Jewish population in the big cities grew impressively.
A comparison of the Jewish population in several shtetlach, for which
there is data for the year 1847 and 1897 demonstrates the remarkable growth
of the Jewish population.
|Shtetl||1847||1897 (%)||1897 (number)|
The Jewish population in the Kovno region more than doubled. No doubt this is related to the intensive industrialization of the region during the last quarter of the 1800's. Under the reign of King Alexander III, who was crowned in 1881, persecution of the Jews in the hamlets (dorf) increased, which forced the Jews to stream to the shtetlach and larger cities. In some shtetlach the growth of the Jewish population was notably high. In Zarasai (Novo-Alexandrovsk) the Jewish population increased seven-fold, in Rakishok three-fold, and in Dusiat more than two-fold.
To consider the total Jewish population of the aforementioned shtetlach, one cannot arrive at a firm number because no data exists on the total Jewish population in these shtetlach before the Holocaust. One can arrive only at an indirect total. In 1937, under the auspices of the Yiddish Folk Bank, a census was taken of the Jewish workers. This census was authentic and truthful. We know that the Jewish workers made up about 35% of all Jews engaged in earning a living. We know that Jewish wage-earners were 33% of the total wage-earners in Lithuania. The situation in the following shtetlach is typical of the other shtetlach in Lithuania.
The Number of Jewish Workers in the Following Shtetlach of Lithuania (The Jewish Handicraft Workers in Lithuania, 1937, Kaunus, 1938)
|Shtetl||Number of Workers|
Based on the data that one-third of the Jewish population consisted of workers, we arrive at a total population for the previously referred to seven shtetlach of 3,700 souls in 1937. This is one-quarter of the Jewish population in these seven shtetlach in 1897 The data indicates that in 1938 there were 123,000 Jews in Kovner gubernia (region) and more than 212,000 Jews according to census of the Kovner region in 1897. This means that in 1897, Jews were 60% of the total population. In the larger cities, like Kovno, Shavli, and Ponevezh, the Jewish population grew slightly. Where did the Jews in these three largest cities come from? They apparently came from the shtetlach of Kovno gubernia, which lost considerable numbers of Jews. The consequence of this was that there were no longer shtetlach with 75% - 90% Jewish populations. Thus the Yiddish culture that developed in the shtetlach could not be sustained once the demographics of the shtetl changed. Nevertheless, the longing and nostalgia for the shtetl did not diminish because the foundation of the Yiddish lifestyle and culture was the shtetl.
The Lithuanian culture was not as rich or as developed as the Yiddish culture, and did not pull the Jews to assimilate, but the economic and political activity of Lithuania did attract the Jewish population. Perhaps sensing from the discrimination of the majority toward the Jewish minority that they could not expect a promising future in Lithuania, Jews began to emigrate not only to America and South Africa, but also to Israel. No Jewish community sent more chalutzim and Hebrew-speakers to Israel than the small Yiddish community of Lithuania.
The Change in the Demographics of the Yiddish Shtetl in Lithuania
There is no doubt that in the last quarter of the 1800's and in the first 14 years of the 1900's, the economic conditions of the Jews in Russia and in the shtetlach of the Kovner region did improve. Generally, the economic conditions in Russia at that time became better, with periodic economic crises and even years of hunger, but the overall situation had improved. In spite of this, the Jewish emigration from Russia increased. From the Kovner region, between 1897 and 1917, 56,000 souls left the country. The Jewish population naturally increased by 70,000 souls. The net result was that there was hardly any increase in the total Jewish population. The major population increase was in the larger cities, not in the shtetlach.
In 1898, Kovno's Jewish community grew by 8,662 families, which represented 22.9% of the total Jewish population. This was a larger percentage than in neighboring Grodno and Vitebsk, but smaller than in the Vilna region.
One must acknowledge that the concept of poor man, beggar, pauper" changes with time and circumstances. The poor man of Nicholas I’s time was very different from the pauper of the period of the last Nicholas. The concept of poor man changed radically. The poor man at the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's had very little patience and was not very inclined to suffer hunger in silence. He was impudent and bold and demanded help. The days of Linetzki when a Jew had to eat, but not gorge himself on food, and Mendele's olive-sized stomach which was supposed to feed only the soul and not the body those days were vanishing. Perhaps the strong impetus to emigrate was in part the result of growing appetites for better living conditions. Those who emigrated were often those with energy and initiative. Those who emigrated were not even the poorest, nor the very richest, but those who had a little money and yearned for a life that was a little better than what they had; a life that offered some possibilities and opportunities. Those left behind were the weaker, the poorer, the submissive ones.
The Jewish population fell during the WWI years. According to the data from the Yiddish Statistical Society, 69,000 Jews were expelled from the Kovno region. During WWI the death rate among Jews was high. This, together with the movement of Jews from the Shtetlach to the bigger cities, accounted for the large decline of the Jewish population in the shtetlach. In the 1930's, most of the Jewish youth left the shtetlach, and the percentage of old people in the shtetlach was greater than in the cities. In the 1930's, the Lithuanian Jewish youth were convinced they had no future in Lithuania, and immigration was their only option and hope. The large number of marriages in the shtetlach reflects the reality that a couple could go to Israel on one certificate.
In Rakishok district between 1934-1936, there were 182 births and 155 deaths; i.e., 27 more births than deaths. In the years 1937-39, there were 175 births and 184 deaths, or nine more deaths than births. In the shtetlach, the percent of older people continued to increase.
The Tragic Situation of the Jews in Lithuania Especially in the Provinces
Evaluating the economic development of the independent Lithuania and the condition of the Jewish population, it is evident without a doubt that Lithuania prospered economically. Its industry increased as did crafts and skilled workers. The Jewish people also gained from this economic growth in the overall economy of Lithuania. But almost from the beginning it became clear that the Jews would be allowed in just so far and no further to the economic table. The economic and political powers which would allow Jewish access only to the older generation with whom they had practical ties were useful for the Lithuanian majority, and they considered it to be to their advantage to use the superior skills and knowledge of the older Jews for the benefit of the general Lithuanian population. The Jewish youth felt and knew that for them there was no future and no opportunities in Lithuania and therefore they had to emigrate and leave Lithuania.
After WWI, the Jewish refugees wandered back to their hometowns to find chaos and destruction. Nothing was left of their houses or belongings. They had to start over from scratch. The workplaces and shops had been plundered. The Russian money was worthless. The refugees were helped by Jewish relief organizations. In 1923, the refugees in Kovno found themselves in a dreadful situation. They were waiting for the relief organizations to resettle them someplace. They were waiting in barracks where conditions were very unsanitary and the food was horrible. More refugees streamed to the barracks, almost naked and starving. Those who returned to the shtetlach found only devastation. They were starved and feeble and sick. There was no place or medicine to help the sick. Many of the diseases spread among the refugees, and the death rate rose. Epidemics were spreading over the land, especially the dreaded typhus.
|Councilmen of Rokiskis with President Molevin
[no individual names appear]
After WWI, there was desperate irony, tragedy, and great suffering for the Jews of Lithuania. They had played a significant role in the struggle of Lithuania for its independence. The contribution of the Jewish people to Lithuania’s struggle for independence was recognized by the political leaders of Lithuania. This gave the Jews some reason for hope, inasmuch as the Jews had helped Lithuania achieve nationhood, they hoped for justice and equality from the new nation. At the very least they expected that Lithuania would treat the Jews humanely. But the facts proved otherwise. A report by the Jewish section of the second Lithuanian legislature [Sym?] relates the following events of a blood libel:
The first blood libel broke out in the shtetl of Ponidel in 1932. This shtetl was in the Rakishok circle. A Lithuanian shopkeeper planned and initiated the libel. The shopkeeper was a woman who had converted to Christianity from Judaism and married a Lithuanian who was a former petty official. The one accused was the father of the convert. The libel was spread just before the market fair was about to begin; thus the libel spread quickly to a wide circle of the peasant population. The shtetl experienced some very tense, difficult days. The police, fearful of the instigators of the libel, remained aloof and passive.Thanks to the swift intervention of the Jewish faction of the Legislature (Sym) the central government prevented any excesses. Another entry in the report referred to previously:
In 1924 there were blood libels in Mariampol, Shantz, Linkova, and Ayranoleh. In the last two shtetlach, the witnesses upon whom the accusers relied were two young Jewish girls, aged seven and eight. The girls were students in a Lithuanian school and were brought as witness by the instigators of the libel who were the girls’ teachers in the Lithuanian school. In both situations, it was the Lithuanian intelligentsia of the small towns that sounded the alarm and protested the libel.The intervention averted a pogrom on the Jewish population. The Lithuanian intelligentsia of the larger cities were more practical than the peasants in the small towns. The Lithuanians living in the larger cities did not make accusations of blood libels nor commit hurtful acts.
There is an entry in the same report as follows:
In September and October, 1923, Kovno will memorialize the attack on Jewish youth passing through the town by ‘chauvinistic’ Lithuanian youth, who also defaced synagogues and other Jewish institutions. Further, it is reported that about 20 Jews were wounded, and on Yom Kippur eve in one of Kovno's synagogues, 25 windows were broken.Further quotes from the Jewish Section of the Second Lithuanian Legislature (Sym):
The Lithuanian Jews held in their hands the economy, and as the Lithuanians began to move from peasantry to urbanization, they became resentful of the Jews who were already there in positions they coveted. The Lithuanian government used all its power to favor the new merchant class and to discriminate against the Jewish merchant.As far as is known at the time of this writing, the archival material of the Holocaust has not been opened by the government of Lithuania. The archives will not document all attacks of terror because the censor did not report these events. The terror among Lithuanian Jews must have been very great before the onslaught of the Holocaust. The majority of Lithuanians were active participants in the murderous rampages that were organized by the Germans.
The Lithuanian government wanted to wrest commerce from the Jewish entrepreneurs, and also their livelihoods. The government gave million-dollar subsidies to non-Jewish cooperatives, passed laws that made it mandatory for merchants to keep their books in Lithuanian, passed laws that all exams for skilled work must be in Lithuanian, raised taxes on Jews, and held trade fairs and markets on the Sabbath. Thus they weakened and wounded the Jewish community, not just from year to year, but actually from day to day. The condition and situation of the Jews became ever more tragic. The Jews of the provinces and shtetlach suffered greatly; they felt helpless and hopeless. With the invasion of Hitler and his armies, they felt squeezed, threatened, and faced open brutality and death.
In Lestschinsky’s book on the Jews of Lithuania he documents how Jewish people tried to defend themselves and diminish the severity of the economic blows coming from the government and from the organized Lithuanian economic organizations. The gentile enterprises and economy were heavily subsidized from the government treasury, which received a substantial portion from taxes on the Jews.
The following episodes were reported in the Jewish press (Folks-Blatt ). Sometimes the news report did not appear until later because it did not become known until the Jewish community intervened with the central government.
1) October 10, 1935: In connection with the attacks on Jews, two Jewish representatives, one of them a member of the Legislature, Mr. Itzkovitsh, and his associate, Mr. Shapira, went to the director of the Interior Department who promised to take strong measures against these actions.The author of these lines. lived through the fear and dread and the heart-stopping fearfulness of the time just before a pogrom was beginning. At any moment one would expect a hard blow on the head. Anyone who has lived through a pogrom, or even the expectation of a pogrom, knows that Jews suffer with their blood and their nerves which are shaken and ruined.
2) December 19, 1935: In the shtetlach Karsh and Varneh, near Telz, there was an anti-Semitic attack by the peasants from the surrounding area. Thirty-three Jews were wounded and one Jew was seriously wounded.
3) January 11, 1936: One of the victims of the pogrom in Varneh on 12/19/35 died. The Jews in the entire region are terrified. Those who led the pogrom are fomenting a wild hatred against the Jewish community.
4) January 16, 1936: A reader of Paris Today (a Lithuanian Jew), received a heart-rending letter from the shtetl Varneh where bloody onslaughts upon the Jews of Varneh wounded 30 Jews. The pogrom is described in the letter as follows:
I wrote you this letter a week ago, but could not mail it because of the great unrest here. I write you in the name of all our associates perhaps something can be done to help us? We are today at the very edge of our reason. We are attacked in the streets and we cannot do anything. The trade fair turned into a battlefield. There were 36 Jews who were wounded. They came from shtetlach around Telz. You know that Jews come to the trade fair to earn a bit of their livelihood. Instead, one got clobbered on his head, and another had his hand broken. Those who were hurt and wounded are in an extremely difficult situation. All the wounded were taken to the hospital. One of the wounded already died. For the past week all the shops have been closed and their doors bolted. People are hungry, but everyone is afraid to go out on the street to shop. Everyone is afraid of these hooligans. Thus, we are in a life-threatening situation, just as if we were in Germany. The police are afraid and no one seems able to calm and control these hooligans who are reigning over us.
5) March 20, 1936: A personal letter received describes the following situation. When the market day ended, some agitators stirred up a drunken rowdy crowd and brought them to the apteka (drugstore) of Zelig Rapaport. The agitators convinced this drunken crowd that the body of Veronika Pishvaishkyny is hidden in the apteka and that the Jews killed her. They tore into the apteka and proceeded to ransack and search everywhere. Of course they did not find the corpse. During the search inside the apteka, bricks and stones were hurled from outside and shattered the windows of the Apteka, as well as the windows of the house next door which belonged to Mr. Soloveichik. The police chased the drunken rabble away and there is supposed to be an inquiry of the guilty ones. We received a report that the apteka and several Jewish houses were demolished.
6) July 22, 1936: The resident of Ausdkalner village, Kretiner Wolost Trokim came to the market on the 16th of July, with his 16-year-old daughter Mariana The girl wandered off somewhere and did not return. Immediately, rumors spread in town that Jews had kidnapped the girl. Irresponsible elements started to foment violence by shouting, Let’s beat up the Jews! In the evening of July 18, 1936, two gentiles wanted to beat up Jews. They were arrested. Before the arrest, these two hooligans managed to slug a Jew in the face and destroy another’s clothes and break 10 windows in Jewish homes. We brought all the latest information to the authorities, but they did not consider the victims important or significant.
All the pogroms were the prologue to the hate-filled atmosphere that was rising and, in 1939, took on its vengeful, wretched, deadly form. All the subsequent data points to the fact that the enemies of the Jewish people were prepared for mass-murder. Hitler's murderers knew the plan. The Nazis depended on the strength of the Lithuanians who showed from the very beginning that they would take the initiative. When Hitler attacked Russia, they started to murder Jews. The Lithuanians did not wait for the official German commands; they quickly started to murder Jews.
The Occupations of Jewish Workers in the Provincial Shtetlach of Lithuania
In 1937, the Folks-Bank, sponsored a census of all Jewish workers in each of the shtetlach in the Rakishok region. The names of the Jewish correspondents who conducted the census is shown below for each shtetl.
|Autian (Utian)||H. Yoffe|
|Azshpol||Fraulein Z. Lauffer|
|Antolept||Frau Sh. Levin-Gershtein|
|Widukleh (Widzeh)||Isaac Beker|
|Widishkis||Chloine Weiner and Honech Pehter|
|Zarasai (Novo-Alex.)||A. Shtejn|
|Panemunelis||Fraulein B. Yoffe|
|Kamai (Comay)||Chaim Anulnik|
|Total||Misc||Watch -Maker||Carpenter||Lock/ Tin/ Black||Baker||Butcher||Shoe||Tailor/ Modiste|
Summary of Above Table
Tailors and shoemakers make up almost half of all workers. If we add
butchers, we find that those three occupations make up more than half of
all Jewish workers. The metal and iron-skilled trades make up only 8% of
all workers. These latter are allied to industrial work. The Jewish working
population of Rakishok was 101, of which 73 were employed in the following
occupations: tailors and seamstresses, 16; butcher, 24. The shtetl of Aution
had a more unusual distribution. It had a Jewish working population of
150, of which 68 were employed as tailors, shoemakers, and butchers. They
had 17 workers in the iron and metal trades, which was a very high number
for the size of the population of Jewish workers. None of the other shtetlach
listed in the above chart came anywhere near that number. The closest was
Aniksht with nine just half the number.
JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of
the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
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In any event, the down trend of the county’s cash reserves is supported by all of the data. This is an important election issue because it goes to philosophy.
Prior to 2003, the cash reserves showed an upward trend. But, since 2003, the cash reserves show a downward trend, even though currently, the taxable value (on which property tax is collected) is more than twice what it was prior to 2003. Cash reserves today are back where they were in 1996. Trends over a period of time tell a story, a philosophical story. I’ll share two.
Story One: Mr. Ant spent his summer days gathering food. What he didn’t need to get him through the day, he stored away in his little pantry. His philosophy was to use what he needed and save any extra. When the cold weather came and food was scarce, Mr. Ant would have food in his pantry. That gave him great comfort.
Mr. Grasshopper enjoyed the bounties of warm summer days. His philosophy was to eat everything he wanted and then some. He’d worry about tomorrow another day.
Story Two: Once there were three young men: Tom, Dick, and Harry. Each had been gifted $1,000. Each had a philosophy.
Tom put his $1,000 in the bank at the best interest he could get and lived on the money he earned from his job. Over time, Tom watched the interest turn his $1,000 into $2,000 and more and more. He smiled. Tom’s philosophy was not to spend more than he earned and let his savings grow. This money would be available for future financial challenges that always come. This upward trend of cash gave Tom great comfort.
Dick put his $1,000 in the bank at the best interest he could get. Most of the time, he lived on the money he earned at his job; but often he withdrew the interest earned on the money because there were a few things he wanted. But, Dick’s philosophy was to never spend the $1,000. He only allowed the spending of the earned interest and always had the $1,000.
Now Harry, he also put his $1,000 in the bank at the best interest he could find. He lived on the money he earned at his job. Over time, Harry watched his savings grow. However, Harry died unexpectedly. Harry, Jr. inherited the savings which had grown significantly. Harry Jr. did not share his father’s financial philosophy. Harry Jr. did not like living only on the money he earned at his job; he began to spend the money in the savings account. Each time he dipped into the account, he spent the interest and then some. Soon the savings account was shrinking, trending down.
Harry Jr.’s philosophy was to spend more than he earned and worry about tomorrow another day.
SO, prior to 2003, the philosophy of the county commissioners was that of Mr. Ant and Tom. The county did not spend more than it brought in and allowed the cash reserves to grow. They wanted the county to be prepared for the financial challenges which always come. This gave them great comfort.
Since 2003, the philosophy of the county commissioners has been more that of Mr. Grasshopper and Harry Jr. In spite of more money coming to the county from increasing property values and holding to a high tax rate, the cash reserves are trending down because of over spending. Folks should take another look at the graphs I obtained from the county that I published in my ad last week and in my campaign flyers. These pictures speak 1,000 words.
Yup, it’s a matter of philosophy.
(By the way, I support the philosophies of Mr. Ant and Tom.)
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See a list of Zoology Programs by Clicking Here!
What is Zoology and Animal Biology?
Zoology and Animal Biology is the study of animals, their environments and interactions, and the cellular makeup and processes that keep them alive. Degrees in zoology and animal biology can be obtained at the associate level and continue until the PhD, though most individuals will typically pursue at least a bachelor's degree. Zoology and animal biology is considered a very broad sub-field of biology, and provides skills and knowledge in scientific research, laboratory science, along with chemistry, physics and genetics.
Individuals enrolled in a zoology and animal biology programs will study the various aspects of animal life, particularly the physiology of a given animal and how it has adapted to operate in its natural environment. Students will be learn to utilize scientific analyses and research, utilizing actual specimens to study both in the wild and in a laboratory setting. Student will also learn how to apply the information obtained from the various sciences into applicable use, particularly when studying animals at cellular and molecular levels. Schools with programs in zoology and animal biology typically have resources such as wildlife preserves, estuaries, or other such locations from which to perform tests and experiments, allowing for the development of practical knowledge and experience prior to pursuing internships or career opportunities.
A curriculum in zoology and animal biology may include:
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Animal Physiology
- Animal Behavior
- Organic Chemistry
Zoology and animal biology as a career is a narrow field that is predominantly occupied with research. There are job opportunities available and job growth is expected to remain steady, but these opportunities will be limited. Careers in zoology and animal biology are typically defined by the field of study.
- Ornithologist (Birds)
- Mammalogist (Mammals)
- Herpetologist (Reptiles)
- Ichthyologist (Fish)
- Entomologist (Insects)
Due to the nature of zoology and animal biology, career opportunities are highly competitive, often requiring individuals to participate as interns for two or more projects prior to obtaining a paid position. Those who obtain positions will either do so through research proposals, or as a member of an existing agency or project. Research studies and projects may be funded by the government, colleges or universities, private business or a combination of these. Many individuals will work in parks, incorporating study opportunities into a preservation work, often identifying changes in patterns or behaviors in animals that may adversely affect the environment or animal populations.
Salary, Job Growth and Related Fields
The average salary of zoologists and animal biologists is approximately $55,000 per year. The lowest 10% earned less than $33,500 per year. The primary employer of zoologists and animal biologists is the federal government through research grants. The obtaining of available grant money is competitive due to the large number of proposals put forward by individuals or groups in a given year, and competition is expected to be higher as the number of PhDs awarded increase each year. Because the grants are typically long term and budgeted for in the year the grant is awarded, grantees are less affected by recession than other professions. Individuals working in non-research positions but employed by local, state or federal governments are subject to budgetary constraints in a given year. Those who work in the private sector typically earn higher and have greater job security.
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Bracken, John, 1883–1969, Canadian political leader, b. Ontario. A noted agricultural expert, he was premier of Manitoba for 20 years (1922–42). In 1942 he was chosen to lead Canada's Conservative party, which he renamed Progressive Conservative. Elected in 1945 to the Canadian House of Commons, he served as leader of the opposition until 1948, when he resigned.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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English 125 T/TH
Football is a sport that reflects life, and in both you must prepare for success in order to achieve it. There are various stages of life and lessons within each one to learn from and grow to take to the next. Most of the players that have played at the highest level of football began there preparation as a student of the game in their formative years long before the NFL was ever a possibility in their life. Through dedication to better their craft, perseverance, and the will to overcome, they realized what everyone should be conscious of: Regardless of the person or profession, the only limits we have are the ones we place on ourselves.
For many players, their journey started with being signed up for youth football. Usually ranging from ages 5 and up, this stage is to teach fundamentals of the sport. Although the rules of the game are definitely important and key for their development, it’s characteristics such as teamwork, leadership, discipline, and effort that will resonate within the young boys and girls participating at this level. Children of this age are expected by their parents and peers to have self-control and to show signs of discipline. Elementary school is Kelly 2
When kids learn to take on individual responsibilities that benefit the group as a whole. These core concepts are reinforced everyday throughout school and during football practice when they can apply these skill sets and can participate in the progression of the team. I had the opportunity to play PeeWee football and I remember we didn’t have the best team, but our coach never got angry; he would only be mad if we didn’t show effort or compete. I also recently coached a youth football team myself, and what I love about this level is that there are no egos to check or stats to keep. The only thing to worry about is to have fun and get better; this is why in my opinion it’s the purest form of football. It lays the foundation for which they can further build upon as they grow into adolescents.
The fundamentals are instilled in their brains and they have a very good grasp of the game, but their environment is changing dramatically. The amount of distractions and especially the volume of peer pressure increases and can often times influence whether or not someone tries out for a sport. They may or may not depending on whether their friends are doing the same. Some may join just to fit in and want to be identified as a football player. Physical changes are also a huge factor at this point as everyone’s bodies are changing. People are becoming more self-aware and in turn more self-critical. Understanding your weaknesses is just as important as finding out your strengths. Winning is more important now as well; the stakes have been raised. Players will now have to deal with injuries, which were not necessarily a problem in youth football but are definitely a factor now. I remember when I was in 8th grade and playing in a playoff game for my football team, and I injured my neck. That was the first time I had been injured to the point where I stayed down on the field for the trainers to come. The only thing on my mind was, when can I go back in the game to be with my team? When they told me I could not return I was angry and couldn’t comprehend at the time that it was for my own good and probably my team as well. We ended up losing and I remember feeling like I had let my team down. Players at this level have to learn to swallow their pride and do what is best for others around them, even if it is not what you want at the time. The ability to focus, set goals, and reach them is what will set apart some from others. Each player’s motivation will be tested as they have to multi task at a higher level and attempt to keep balance during this chaotic and stressful time.
In high school the pressure is a lot more out in the open. Players are made aware that their actions...
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On Friday, Jan. 20, NASA Langley Research Center engineers will be standing by as Virginia Beach high school students work to break composite wings they've spent weeks designing and building.
The tips that these students have learned at NASA Langley's model shop will impact this wing test ... and their final course grade.
Students from the Math and Science Academy at Ocean Lakes High School's Materials Science Class have been studying composite materials and wing design. To conclude the course, they have been tasked to build a lightweight, but strong, composite wing. This has provided a real-world spin to their theoretical class discussions over the past semester.
Media are invited to attend the students' wing test from 10 a.m. to noon Jan. 20 at NASA Langley. For more information and access onto Langley, please contact Lindsay Crouch at 757-864-3189 by 9 a.m. Jan. 20.
In December 2005, the students visited NASA Langley's model shop to pick up some pointers from technicians and engineers for their project. The students will return to Langley Friday to test their wings to the breaking point, with the goal of having a wing that can withstand the highest pressure before actually breaking. Engineers and model shop technicians have acted as mentors in this project and will be present for their tests.
This composite-building project was modeled after an annual contest sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Material and Processing Engineering (SAMPE). Contest criteria were applied to the Ocean Lakes students' tests.
This project will not only demonstrate composite structure designs, but will be another prime example of the newly-established partnership between NASA Langley and Virginia Beach City Public Schools. The partners signed an official Space Act Agreement in summer 2005.
For more information on research and exploration at NASA, visit:
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Call in to speak with the host
Nathaniel Bacon was a member of the colony council and a militant opponent of Virginia land policy. He had prepared the revolt a few years earlier by organizing an armed mutiny of angry taxpayers at Lawnes Creek Parish, and, in November of 1676, proclaimed freedom to all bond-laborers, in anticipation they would join his cause against the big tobacco bourgeoisie. He was right. Thousands of bond-laborers – six thousand European Americans and two thousand African Americans – took up arms against the numerically tiny Anglo-American slave-owning planter class. Seizing the day, dramatically, they drove Governor Berkeley back to England, hat in hand, and shut down all tobacco production for fourteen straight months.
When I ask this question to students in my early American literature course, the answer comes easily: divide the bond-laborers in two by letting one half go free and the other half – keep them in bondage and have the “free” half patrol them. This common sense has escaped most U.S. historians, but not Allen. “The solution,” he writes, “was to establish a new birthright not only for Anglos but for every European-American, the ‘white’ identity that ‘set them at a distance,’ to use Sir Francis’s phrase [Francis Bacon], from the laboring-class African-Americans, and enlisted them as active, or at least passive, supporters of lifetime bondage of African Americans” (vol. 2, p. 248). From this point forward, the pattern was set: “the appeal to ‘white race’ solidarity would remain the country’s most general form of class-collaborationism”http://WWW.DRYBONESCONNECTION.COM
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Per the explanation in what's going on?.....the thin film of sweat on your
hands acts like the acid in a battery reacting with the copper plate and
with the aluminum plate. In one of these reactions, your hand takes
negatively charges electons....
I do not agree. Something else is happening. I put the two plates (zinc and
copper this time) side by side (1-2 inches apart) and made a "bridge" out of
litmus paper that was soaked in a saturated NaCl solution. The meter
registered 0.37 volts DC. There is no acid to react this time. The copper
was well polished. I can conjecture that the more active zinc was losing
electrons. However, how was the copper receiving them if there are not
copper +1 or + 2 ions.
I do not have an explanation.
NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY: This electronic communication may contain
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Apr 24 2006 - 11:34:52 PDT
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- Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2014. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: Version 6.9. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
Boyd's shearwater (Puffinus boydi), also known as the Cape Verde little shearwater, is a small shearwater which breeds in the Cape Verde archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean some 570 km off the coast of West Africa. The epithet commemorates British ornithologist Arnold Boyd.
Boyd's shearwater is sometimes considered a subspecies of either the little shearwater, Audubon's shearwater or Macaronesian shearwater. It has also been shown to be synonymous with the extinct Puffinus parvus Shufeldt of Bermuda.
- "Cape Verde Little Shearwater". Avibase. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
- Olson, Storrs L. (2010). "Stasis and turnover in small shearwaters on Bermuda over the last 400 000 years (Aves: Procellariidae: Puffinus lherminieri group)". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 99 (4): 699–707. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2010.01393.x.
|This Procellariiformes-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|
EOL content is automatically assembled from many different content providers. As a result, from time to time you may find pages on EOL that are confusing.
To request an improvement, please leave a comment on the page. Thank you!
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Death of Paddy Roy Bates, “Prince” of Sealand
Paddy Roy Bates, the self-proclaimed Prince of Sealand, passed away on October 9. Prince Roy was the founder and first sovereign of the non-recognised Principality of Sealand.
Bates was born on 29 August 1921 in London to Harry and Lilyan Bates He served in the British Army, rising to the rank of Major. After leaving active service, he was briefly a fisherman before moving into pirate radio.
In 1965, Paddy ousted Radio City staff who had occupied Knock John Tower (a World War II British naval defence platform) and, using the military equipment left behind, started broadcasting his own radio station. His channel, renamed BBMS (Britain’s Better Music Station) in 1966, became the first pirate radio station to provide 24 hour entertainment. Unfortunately, it was forced off the air at the end of the same year because of insufficient funds.
After the station was closed, Bates moved to Roughs Tower – a platform beyond the boundary of the United Kingdom’s territorial waters. On 2 September 1967, Paddy Roy Bates declared the independence of Roughs Tower and named it the Principality of Sealand. In 1968, the Royal Navy entered what Bates claimed to be his territorial waters, in order to service a navigational buoy near the platform. Michael Bates fired warning shots for “trespass” into Sealand territorial waters to scare the workmen off by firing warning shots from the former fort. Both Michael and his father were then swiftly arrested.
Ironically, it was the subsequent court ruling that, at least according to Bates, became the first de facto recognition of Sealand. The court threw out the case, claiming that because the platform was outside UK’s territorial waters, they did not have jurisdiction to charges Paddy Roy and Michael with anything. Inspired by the ruling, Bates issued a constitution, national anthem, flag, passport and other attributes of a sovereign state for his Principality.
Another international incident connected with Sealand occurred in 1977: several German and Dutch citizens invaded Sealand and took Prince Michael hostage, before releasing him a couple of days later in the Netherlands. Paddy and his “countrymen” launched a successful counter-attack and held the invaders captive, claiming them as prisoners of war. recaptured the fort, taking all the “invaders” hostages. While they later released most of them, one of the German citizens also carried a Sealand passport, which enabled Prince Roy to accuse and try him for treason. He was held unless he paid DM 75,000 (over US$ 35,000). Germany requested Britain to negotiate the release of their citizen, but to their bemusement the British claimed to have no jurisdiction over Sealand. Germany was then forced to negotiate with Sealand directly – another de-facto recognition of its sovereignty (although Germany denies the claim).
In recent years, Prince Roy suffered from Alzheimer’s and lived at a care home in Leigh-on-Sea where he died on October 9. He lives behind his widow, Princess Joan, and two children – Michael and Penny. While succession to the Principality of Sealand is not an automatic process, it is expected that Prince Michael (who has already been Regent for several years) will continue his father’s work.
Whatever is made of Paddy Bates’ principality, he was certainly a colourful man, an epitome of strength of British character, sense of humour and harmless eccentricity. As Bates put in a 1980s interview, “I might die young or I might die old, but I will never die of boredom”. He was certainly a man of his word, for what with such eventful life, boredom is one thing that should have been quite unknown to him. Prince Michael said about his father following the death announcement that he was a “huge, huge character”. It’s hard to not to agree.Filed under Miscellaneous
Tagged Biography, Death, Paddy Roy Bates.
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by Adam James
As you may have noticed, the natural gas industry has undergone a bit of a boom in the last few years.
In April, generation from natural gas tied that from coal for the first time ever. The boom has some energy analysts hailing a natural gas “miracle.” But others are very concerned, largely because of the local environmental impacts and the long-term climate impacts. Letting natural gas displace coal is a net-benefit on carbon emissions, but there are still unanswered questions about methane release and the impact on renewables.
What we know for sure is that the climate threat is real and must be taken seriously in charting a path forward for energy policy. The amount of natural gas we burn for electricity is critical in determining whether or not we’re on the right path. This post compares a few climate pathways related to natural gas, and then presents a recommendation for developing natural gas capacity — including balancing additions and retirements.
The bottom line is this: in order to meet climate targets, the United States needs to build only planned additions and, starting in 2023, retire all natural gas plants over 45 years old. This will allow the United States to develop renewable alternatives and not waste excess natural gas capacity through uneconomic retirements later in an effort to meet climate goals. Of course, there are little adjustments around the margins, but this approach represents the most likely solution given the data available.
Before diving into an explanation of this point, I’ll summarize some of the more interesting conclusions from the different projections of natural gas capacity from Energy Information Administration (EIA), EPA, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL):
- There is a gap between the business-as-usual (BAU) pathway for natural gas capacity and where we need to be to hit climate targets, and that gap widens significantly over time. In 2025, capacity of natural gas exceeds the recommended climate target by 13.9 GW. In 2030, natural gas capacity exceeds the climate target by 83.6 GW. In 2035, it exceeds the climate target by 143.8 GW. Assuming no further retirements, by 2050, natural gas capacity exceeds climate targets by 218.8 GW.
- Coal retirements won’t make up the difference in this increased natural gas capacity. The coal retirements needed to continue business-as-usual natural gas development and meet the NREL scenario’s 80 percent CO2 reduction would be unlikely. Specifically, it would require taking 240 GW of coal out of the system before 2035, a feat that the NREL scenario does over 40 years to ensure reliability.
- Aggressive retirements of natural gas capacity later on to meet the climate target are pretty unlikely. Over half our current natural gas capacity is under 12 years old. 38 percent of our current natural gas capacity was built between 2000 and 2004. An additional 15 percent was built between 2005 and 2011. That means 53 percent of capacity is basically brand new. These plants aren’t going anywhere anytime soon — retirements would be incredibly uneconomical.
This post will walk through where we need to be to address climate change, where we are headed, and quantify the gap between the two. Next, it will dismiss a few of the common excuses for our business-as-usual path of natural gas development, including that coal retirements will make up the difference and that we can retire old natural gas later on. Finally, it will present a reasonable approach to natural gas development that will ensure we can meet a climate target of 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050.
Assessing the Status Quo: Where do We Need to be and Where Are We Headed?
What are the implications of the increased utility investment in natural gas for the fight against climate change? To answer this question, we must compare current trends of natural gas capacity investment to projections for the levels of natural gas capacity needed to meet climate targets.
The “climate target” here is an 80 percent emissions reduction below 2005 levels in the power sector by 2050 (or reducing power sector emissions by about 2000 MMTCO2e a year). The three data points used to model how to reasonably get to 80 percent emissions reductions are the EIA and EPA projections, respectively, of implementing the Waxman-Markey bill (which projected an 83 percent GHG reduction below 2005 levels by 2050) and the excellent “Renewable Electricity Futures” study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (the core scenario would achieve 80 percent emissions reductions from the power sector).
In these studies, analysts from NREL, EIA, and EPA charted a course from our present day generation mix to a low-carbon fuel mix that ensures climate safety. In each case, the analysts show the year-by-year capacity additions and retirements for each fuel sources that would be necessary to ensure reliable electricity delivery during the transition. Because these pathways each look a little different, I have also shown an average of their recommendations.
For business-as-usual projections of natural gas capacity, this post uses the EIA Energy Outlook. Using these projections, we can ascertain what the planned capacity additions are for natural gas out to 2035.
As you can see in Figure 1, the U.S. is actually projected to be close to being on track to meet the climate scenario up until 2020, when new additions of installed natural gas capacity kick in, and natural gas capacity takes a dramatic uptick right when it ought to be declining.
Well, we can always retire more coal or more natural gas later on, right? Right?
Let’s look at coal first. While some could argue that this additional natural gas capacity is okay for climate because it will eat up some of the carbon allowance these projections provided for coal, our analysis shows that the retirements of coal needed to make that true would be incredibly dramatic and steep; retiring about 240 GW of coal before 2035. To put that in context, the NREL pathway phases out that same amount of coal capacity, but does so between now and 2050 to ensure reliability. The point is that we cannot stick to the climate target and justify our business-as-usual natural gas installations on the basis very aggressive — and unlikely — coal retirements.
So what is the main conclusion of this data? We are projected to blow past our ability to hit a climate target starting in 2017 unless we are prepared to later sacrifice reliability or retire plants uneconomically. The gap between the BAU pathway for natural gas capacity and where we need to be to the hit climate target is real, and widens exponentially over time. In 2025, capacity of natural gas exceeds the recommended climate target by 13.9 GW. In 2030, natural gas capacity exceeds the climate target by 83.6 GW. In 2035, it exceeds the climate target by 143.8 GW. Assuming no further retirements, by 2050, natural gas capacity exceeds climate targets by 218.8 GW.
That ever widening gap can only be bridged by natural gas capacity retirements. But where are those going to come from? The next section takes a quick inventory of the natural gas capacity stock to gauge the likelihood of retirements.
The simple fact is, most of our natural gas fleet is very, very new — and it isn’t going anywhere.
Since retiring plants early is uneconomical (utilities want to get the most out of their existing investments), it is important to assess our existing natural gas stock. As Figure 2 below shows, over half of the existing natural gas capacity was built between 2000 and 2004 (green). An additional 19 percent was built after 2005 to the present date (red), making 70 percent of our natural gas fleet under 12 years old.
Further, as Figure 3 shows, the construction of this installed natural gas capacity was an outlier compared to other construction trends. Solar, for instance, hardly registers. Even coal, with its spike in the 1960’s and 1970’s, pales in comparison. What does this mean? Well, these plants are highly unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon — so when we are thinking about building additional natural gas capacity, we should remember that the vast majority of our existing capacity is very, very new.
Of course, building excess natural gas capacity doesn’t necessarily exclude retiring old natural gas. But it would make it uneconomical, as utilities would be left with stranded costs. Similarly, you can shut down certain fuel sources in a manner not recommended by these analysts, but there is no guarantee that electricity will be delivered reliably.
Looking Ahead: Charting a Reasonable Course for Natural Gas
There is a way forward on natural gas that would enable us to stay on the NREL pathway to 80 percent renewables, and thus, 80 percent carbon dioxide emission reductions. Building only planned additions and, starting in 2023, retiring plants over 45 years old would keep us on well track, as Figure 4 shows below.
The key years to look at here are 2020 and 2025.
In 2020, we will either build out the EIA projected capacity for natural gas, and give up on meeting the climate target, or we will build only planned additions. That will mean natural gas capacity remains stable out to 2025, at which point retirements of plants built over 45 years old will need to start taking place.
This may not be a popular view, but for those of us who want to address the climate challenge, it is important to recognize that the investments we make today will have a serious impact on the decisions we will be able to make in 10, 20, and 30 years. By working backwards from where we know we need to be, and considering real constraints like reliability and utility return on investment from generation, we can get an idea of our year-by-year goals for natural gas and how that fits into the climate picture.
Adam James is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.
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To boost your heart health, start by changing what’s on your plate. Whether you're trying to prevent future heart problems, are already living with high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or have a problem like atrial fibrillation, which often results from a diet-related heart problem, making simple tweaks to your diet could have big benefits. Here are some guidelines to follow.
Believe the hype. Eating heart-healthy really does matter. One study of more than 42,000 healthy women found that those who ate a diet that emphasized vegetables, lean meats, grains, and low-fat dairy were 31% less likely to die in the next 6 years than women with unhealthy diets.
Did You Know?
Don't diet. A crash diet may work if you're trying to fit into a dress by next month. But if you're trying to improve your heart health, cycling through different fad diets won't help. Diets that rule out one type of food -- whether it's carbs or fat -- don't work either. Instead, take a sensible approach. Focus on lean meats, vegetables, and whole grains to get long-term benefits for your heart and your waistline.
Eat less salt. Most Americans think sea salt is a low-sodium alternative to regular table salt. Wrong. It has the same amount of sodium. Any type of salt increases your blood pressure. You probably need to eat less salt; most people do. The guideline is no more than a teaspoon a day. If you already have high blood pressure, you should eat even less. And it doesn’t just come from the salt shaker. Up to 75% of the salt you eat comes from processed foods such as soups and frozen meals. If food comes in a can or a box, check the sodium content.
Drink in moderation. Yes, studies show that drinking modest amounts of alcohol, not just wine, has heart benefits. But don't assume that if a glass is good, a jug must be better. More than one drink a day for women or two for men increases your risk for heart problems. It drives up blood pressure and can trigger irregular heartbeats in people with atrial fibrillation.
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Analysis: What's Up With the Title?
Isn't this the perfect title? It's simple, elegant, and straightforward. It's a concise mini-summary of the novel, focusing on the two crucial ideas being explored on every page.
It's actually kind of hard to talk about the title without sounding silly. It's so small, so self-explanatory. Even most little kids have some idea what these three words mean, and they translate fairly smoothly from the Russian, Prestuplenie i nakazanie, into most languages.
We don't want to bore you, but we should point this out: the Third Edition of the Norton Critical Edition of the novel notes that the Russian word "prestuplenie" is more closely related to the English word "transgression" than it is to the English word "crime."
But, really, what's the difference? They both mean to do, be, say, or even think something the people in charge say is wrong. (The people in charge are political figures, teachers, the community, family members, religious leaders, our peers, etc.)
There is a small difference. "Transgression" makes us think of breaking rules because they don't work anymore or, perhaps, never did. Whereas plain old crime is senseless, crude, and doesn't do anybody any good.
But, wait. How do you know the difference? How do you know when an action is a crime versus a transgression? This is pretty close to the conversation Raskolnikov and Porfiry have about Raskolnikov's essay. What is crime? What is transgression? Is there any difference? How do you know? These questions are recycled over and over in the novel and never really answeredthat's your job!
"Crime" and "punishment" make a cute couple, like Sonia and Raskolnikov. Something about their combination enthralls us. It signifies a process that we've come to expect: we do something bad, we get in trouble. Punishment follows crime. Crime comes before punishment. If something in you is protesting, you aren't alone. As the novel shows, sometimes, maybe even often, punishment comes before crime. Especially if you are vulnerable and powerless, like many of the children in this book. Some would say it's a cycle.
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Molecular Biology and Genetics
Barcode data: Alpheus bellulus
No available public DNA sequences.
Download FASTA File
Statistics of barcoding coverage: Alpheus bellulus
Public Records: 3
Specimens with Barcodes: 4
Species With Barcodes: 1
Tiger pistol shrimp
Alpheus bellulus can grow to a size up to 4 to 5 cm, not including antennae. The body is stout and opaque. The background color of the body is yellowish white or plain yellow. The patterns drawn on the cephalothorax, abdomen and tail are irregular but symmetric, their coloration varies from light brown, brownish purple to brownish orange. The legs are banded with the same colors as the body and are covered with short bristles. The antennae are red. The chelipeds are also banded, with the right cheliped being bigger and modified into a powerful weapon. By closing at extreme speed, the cheliped expels an air bubble at more than 100 km per hour (62.1371 miles per hour) towards the prey. This action is accompanied with a loud bang. This powerful sonic weapon creates a violent shock wave which can kill or knock out prey, which could be another shrimp or a small fish passing close to the Alpheus bellulus.
Alpheus bellulus can be found in tropical waters of the Indo-West Pacific area.
Alpheus bellulus likes the sandy, muddy and detrital substratum in shallow waters until 20m.
Alpheus bellulus has a meat-based diet and feeds on crustaceans and small fish.
Alpheus bellulus lives in burrows in symbiosis with certain goby species such as Cryptocentrus cinctus, Amblyeleotris guttata or Stonogobiops yasha. The shrimp digs and maintains the burrows which are the dens for both animals. And the goby is like a watchman that warns in case of potential danger because the shrimp has poor vision.
Alpheus bellulus is one of the most popular pistol shrimp in the marine aquarium hobby as it has a peaceful temperament, is inexpensive and does not require complicated care.
Miya, Y. & S. Miyake, 1969. Description of Alpheus bellulus sp. nov. associated with gobies from Japan (Crustacea, Decapoda, Alpheidae).— Publications from the Seto Marine Biological Laboratory 16: 307-314.
- Vilcinskas, Andreas.La vie sous-marine des tropiques. Vigot,2002. ISBN 2711415252
EOL content is automatically assembled from many different content providers. As a result, from time to time you may find pages on EOL that are confusing.
To request an improvement, please leave a comment on the page. Thank you!
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Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
When we have children, the idea of handing down our planet to them takes on a different context. At the same time, parents and children are being bombarded by companies with all sorts of must-have items. The mixed messages can make treading lightly on the Earth an increasingly difficult task, but there are many ways in which we can leave a positive legacy for our children while helping them to tread lightly, themselves.
- Keep your baby close. Many parents who practice attachment parenting are able to take a minimalist approach to baby gear.
- Recycle! With city wide programs and curbside pick-up in many towns, it’s easy to recycle these days. This is also an easy way for children to help, which they love to do. Even young children can keep an eye out for items that can be recycled and they can help get those items into the recycling bins. Make it a family challenge to decrease the amount of trash your family sends to the dump.
- Get crafty with the recycle bin. If your kids are anything like mine, they are in a constant state of creativity. We’ve found a few ways to help lower their creative footprint. Rather than always using new materials, we often use recycled materials for craft and science projects. Packing materials make fantastic canvases, and items from the recycle bin can inspire sculptures or science experiments.
- Give new life to the numerous art projects. Giving handmade gifts not only saves money and resources, it is special to those who receive it. Using your child’s projects as gifts extends the life of their work while cutting down on the ever-growing pile of creations in your home. Take pictures of the precious works of art and recycle them.
- Get unplugged! Our world is one of electronic connectivity. Try connecting with your children in ways that don’t involve plugging in (even wirelessly). Electricity is a valuable resource. Cutting down on use lowers our impact on the world. Go for a walk, kick a ball around, read together, or try out a board game. You can even make getting unplugged a family challenge. Try spending a day or weekend without electricity. You can even regale your kids with stories about when you were a kid.
- Clean up. Our family keeps old plastic bags in our van. Whenever we are out hiking or at a park, we try to clean up some of the trash we encounter.
- Visit your local library. Borrowing from the library is a free way to share media with your children while sharing resources.
- Buy locally. Take a trip to your local farmer’s market. Stock your freezer with meat purchased from a farmer. Get to know the people you buy from. Not only will you be supporting your local economy and neighbors, you’ll use fewer resources to get your items home.
- D.I.Y. Grow your own food. Make items from scratch. You may not have the time to grow all of your own food and make things from scratch, but doing even a small amount cuts down on resource use.
- Dispose of disposables. In our throw away society, every little bit helps. Use reusable items whenever you can, even if it’s only part-time. Give used items a new life in your home. Give items you don’t need to others.
- Talk to your kids. Let them know why you choose not to buy from certain companies or why you spend your money they way the do. It’s great to model, but go the extra step and explain the reasons behind your actions.
- Be respectful. People who are treated respectfully are more likely to be respectful – to others, to themselves, to animals and to the world around them.
Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video
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The race for green energy continues and an unlikely rival has entered the scene: Saudi Arabia. As the world’s largest exporter of oil, one would not necessarily associate the country with clean energy. But as the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) announced, Saudi Arabia seeks to install 41 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy by 2032.
The program would cost $109 billion and supply about 1/3 of the country’s energy by the target date. If everything goes according to plan, Saudi Arabia could emerge as a global leader in clean energy.
The first step in Saudi Arabia’s renewable energy roadmap is a series of bidding rounds for 5 utility-scale solar projects. The first tenders are already being prepared, with bidding directed at 1.1 GW of photovoltaics and 900 megawatts (MW) of concentrated solar power.
The country is currently looking for investors, but once financing becomes available, Saudi Arabia will begin work immediately on new solar plants.
But a lingering question remains. Why would the world’s largest producer of crude oil invest so heavily in renewable energy?
From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, it actually makes sense to include as many renewables in its energy mix as possible. With oil prices on a perpetual incline and renewable energy becoming increasingly cost-competitive, the country could make more money by increasing its share of renewable energy for domestic use. This would allow the country to sell as much oil as possible on the global market.
Plus, given Saudi Arabia’s geographical location, it receives a high amount of sunlight thus making the use of solar energy more efficient (Australia finally came to this conclusion last year with plans for two utility-scale solar farms).
Although solar energy will be Saudi Arabia’s main focus, it will also diversify into other alternative sources such as wind, geothermal, waste-to-energy, and nuclear.
Image CC licensed by Radio Nederland Wereldomroep: Saudi Arabia
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Mother’s Weight Puts Children at Risk for Obesity, Study Finds
Posted: July 26, 2010 at 1:00 am, Last Updated: July 26, 2010 at 3:12 pm
What causes childhood obesity? Mason College of Health and Human Services researchers Panagiota Kitsantas, Lisa R. Pawloski and Kathleen F. Gaffney believe that obesity risk factors begin even before a child is conceived.
Pediatric obesity affects one out of every seven low-income, preschool-aged children, according to the Centers for Disease Control. To understand its root causes, Mason’s researchers examined the body mass index (BMI) of white and Hispanic women before they became pregnant and compared it to their children’s BMI at ages 2 and 4.
Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, which followed thousands of children from birth through kindergarten entry, the researchers found that both white and Hispanic women who were overweight or obese prior to pregnancy were more likely to have children who were overweight or obese as toddlers and preschoolers than women who had a normal prepregnancy BMI.
In the cohort, 41.6 percent of Hispanic mothers and 34.8 percent of white mothers were overweight or obese prior to pregnancy. When compared to children born to Hispanic mothers with a normal prepregnancy BMI, preschoolers born to overweight or obese Hispanic mothers were more than twice as likely to be overweight or obese, while preschoolers born to overweight or obese white mothers were approximately 1.4 times more likely to be overweight or obese.
Children who were overweight or obese at age 2 were more likely to be overweight or obese by age 4 for both racial and ethnic groups.
“This study is exciting, as it clearly shows a link between a mother’s prepregnancy weight and the weight of her child. Therefore, prevention of childhood obesity begins earlier than we ever thought before. Interventions should be tailored that way, particularly among specific ethnicities, as these data clearly show,” says Pawloski, associate professor and chair of the Department of Global and Community Health.
By understanding how maternal prepregnancy obesity influences children’s BMI in different racial and ethnic groups, it may be possible to design effective intervention and prevention programs that reduce both maternal and childhood obesity.
The researchers also found that children born to white or Hispanic mothers who never breastfed them were more likely to be overweight or obese at age 2. Additional risk factors — high birth weight, low socioeconomic status, smoking and having fewer children — increased the risk of obesity only among children born to white mothers.
The good news, according to Kitsantas, is that maternal obesity can be prevented by developing targeted health programs that include the assessment and treatment of obesity for women of childbearing age before pregnancy begins. Early intervention programs for overweight or obese toddlers can also be developed.
”This study adds to the body of current research that points out how important it is for women of childbearing age to develop lifestyle habits that promote a healthy weight before they become pregnant. These early habits may have a big influence, not only on their own health and well-being, but also on that of their future children,” says Kitsantas, an associate professor in the Department of Global and Community Health.
The results of the study, “Maternal prepregnancy body mass index in relation to Hispanic preschooler overweight/obesity,” were published in the June 8, 2010, online edition of the European Journal of Pediatrics.
This study was supported by George Mason University.
Write to mediarel at email@example.com
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When writing an action plan to achieve a
particular goal or outcome, you can get much
help from the following steps.
Clarify your goal. Can you get a
visual picture of the expected outcome? How
can you see if you have reached your
destination? What does make your goal
measurable? What constraints do you have,
like the limits on time, money, or other
Write a list of actions. Write down
all actions you may need to take to achieve
your goal. At this step focus on generating
and writing as many different options and
ideas as possible. Take a sheet of paper and
write more and more ideas, just as they come
to your mind. While you are doing this, try
not to judge or analyze.
Analyze, prioritize, and prune. Look
at your list of actions. What are the
absolutely necessary and effective steps to
achieve your goal? Mark them somehow. After
that, what action items can be dropped from
in the plan without significant consequences
for the outcome. Cross them out.
Organize your list into a plan.
Decide on the order of your action steps.
Start from looking at your marked key
actions. For each action, what other steps
should be completed before that action?
Rearrange your actions and ideas into a
sequence of ordered action steps. Finally,
look at your plan once again. Are there any
ways to simplify it even more?
Monitor the execution of your plan and
review the plan regularly. How much have
you progressed towards your goal by now?
What new information you have got? Use this
information to further adjust and optimize
Get Organized Now!
Ideas, tips, tools and more to help you organize your home, your office and your life!
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I always found it interesting that Dental Health Month coincided with one of the sugary-est events of the year – Valentine’s Day. As we approach the Day O’ Love at the end of this week, we should also use this time to teach and reinforce good dental health habits with our children.
- Start with the source – give your pantry and your refrigerator a makeover! Have your child(ren) help you move healthier food choices to the front (and lower for smaller, searching eyes) of the pantry and fridge. Make healthy choices, such as cheese, fruits, vegetables and whole grain snacks, readily available for little hands.
- Switch away from sodas – work on making mouth-healthy drink choices, such as milk and water instead of fruit juices and sodas. Making the same choices yourself sets a strong example for your children, too.
- Make a dental appointment. If your child hasn’t been to a dentist, definitely make an appointment to do so. Don’t know who to see? Ask around! Ask friends, neighbors with children and even that mom you see across the grocery store with her own kids for recommendations of pediatric dentists. Our dentist is great with kids and supplies us with floss, brushes, toothpaste and even a toy when we’re done.
- Brushing twice a day – make a chart for brushing teeth twice a day if this is difficult to remember. Always brush teeth in the morning and before bed. With smaller children, have them “help” with teeth-brushing, but closely supervise and step in to make sure all of their teeth are getting well-brushed. While small children still have “baby teeth”, problems like cavities can be devastating to the adult teeth below the surface as well.
- Floss – teaching my own boys about flossing was much easier than I realized. I invested in a hand mirror and had them lie down on the couch while I sat next to their head. My boys would hold the mirror so they could see what I was doing while I quickly ran floss around their teeth (baby teeth tend to be spaced out quite a bit, but flossing at an early age builds good dental hygiene further down the road).
- For older kids, consider a model for them to explore and study, such as the Bio Signs Human Anatomy Models: Teeth and Gums. Reasonably priced, they provide a detailed model of teeth and gums as well as a discussion guide.
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Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Carroll Ellis Izard (born 1924) is an American psychologist known for his contributions to Differential Emotions Theory (DET), and the Maximally Discriminative Affect Coding System (MAX). DET maintains that universally recognizable innate, basic emotions emerge within the first 2 to 7 months of post-natal life "without facial movement precursors" (Izard, et al., 1995), and argues for congruence of emotion expression and subjective experience (Izard & Abe, 2004). He also proposed the facial feedback hypothesis according to which emotions which have different functions also cause facial expression which in turn provide us with cues about what emotion exactly a person is feeling.
- (2008). Accelerating the development of emotion competence in Head Start children: Effects on adaptive and maladaptive behavior. Development and Psychopathology 20: 369–297.
- (2007). Kindergarten children's emotion competence as a predictor of their academic competence in first grade. Emotion 7 (1): 77–88.
- (2003). First grade emotion knowledge as a predictor of fifth grade self-reported internalizing behaviors in children from economically disadvantaged families. Development and Psychopathology 15 (2): 331–342.
- (2002). Emotion processes in normal and abnormal development and preventative intervention. Development and Psychopathology 14 (4): 761–787.
- (2002). Modeling the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral predictors of peer acceptance. Child Development 73 (6): 1775–1787.
- (2002). Translating emotion theory and research into preventative interventions. Psychological Bulletin 128 (5): 796–824.
- (2001). Emotional intelligence or adaptive emotions?. Emotion 1 (3): 249–257.
- ↑ Siegler, Robert (2006). How Childred Develop, Exploring Child Develop Student Media Tool Kit & Scientific American Reader to Accompany How Children Develop, New York: Worth Publishers.
- Carrol Izard's homepage at University of Delaware's Department of Psychology
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The child obesity epidemic is no joke; you've heard that 17 percent of American children are obese and you want to do the right thing for your growing child. You control you own weight by limiting your fat intake—even foregoing fat in your daily diet altogether— so why not do the same for your toddler? What harm could it do? Well, according to many experts on childhood nutrition, limiting—or eliminating—fat intake for young children isn't wise.
Dr. Greg Lawton, author of the blog A Musing Pediatrician, says, "Toddlers are in their prime years of brain development. This means making use of dietary fat to properly grow a brain, in addition to having higher energy needs due to pure growth. Children under three years of age actually need fat in their diets."
While AAP guidelines recommend no restrictions on fat intake for children under two, a recent Purdue University study suggests that the 5-year mark may be the "sweet spot" age for fat limitations to begin. Low-fat diets may hinder crucial maturation in very young children—brain growth, healthy eyesight and nerve development up to age five all depend on fat, especially abundant omega-3 fatty acids, a type of "good" fat found in vegetable oils and fish. A generous amount of dietary fat is necessary for many other essential processes in growing children as well, such as bone and muscle development.
But don't throw caution to the winds and invite your two-year-old to join you in a junk-food feast just yet—full-fat doesn't necessarily mean fast-food. Follow these sensible steps as you plan high-calorie—but healthy—meals for your little one:
- Good fat v. bad fat. Omega-3's and essential fatty acids (EFAs) have many benefits for adults and infants alike. Good fats are found in kitchen staples like fish, olive oils, whole milk, nuts and other unprocessed foods. These essential fats promote absorption of fat-soluble vitamins—such as vitamins A, E, D and K—and strengthen nerve connections in growing brains. As you introduce new foods to your growing toddler, stick with the fats found in plant foods, fish and dairy. Avoid "bad" fat products, full of saturated and trans-fats that are almost always hidden in highly processed snack food. Skip on anything that's packaged, processed or says "partially hydrogenated" on the label.
- Whole food rules. Processed food not only contains more "bad" fat, it's likely to have other strange, unpronounceable ingredients that you don't want your child ingesting. Whole foods are balanced by nature and the fat that they contain is paired with essential nutrients. All of the elements work together, making dishes with the fewest added ingredients the best bet for your budding foodie. Full-fat dairy products such as cheese or yogurt, nuts and nut butters (barring allergies) and avocados are ideal healthy-fat (and scrumptious) options for your little one's meals.
- Balance is best. Balance high-fat foods with healthy veggies. Green vegetables with real butter can make the healthy stuff more appealing to picky palates. Pairing good fat with a veggie-packed plate can help speed absorption of vital fat-soluble vitamins and nutrients. Whole milk organic yogurt is also great choice for your growing toddler's brain and bones. Try making flavorful sauces or dressings with olive oil (loaded with essentials fatty acids) or a yogurt base to add interest to vegetable dishes. Flavorful dipping sauces can keep your child engaged at mealtime and will teach him to love—and have fun—with his healthy food.
- Teach by example. Your child's old enough to pick up on eating habits and he'll want to do what you do—so it's time to ditch the doughnuts and opt for healthier fare. Incorporate plenty of omega-3's and plant-based fats into the family diet, and make a show of enjoying your nutritional meals. As a parent you can eat less of a specific fatty food at mealtimes—such as a few slices of avocado or a sprinkle of chopped nuts atop a salad—but don't separate your food from your child's. Omega-3's are good for everyone!
- Get physical. If you're worried about weight and fitness, encourage physical activity for your child instead of restricting calories and fat. A rotation of healthy dishes combined with robust activity is possible even for the tiniest tot, so break out of the stroller and let your little one walk, toddle or run. With a well-rounded diet that includes plenty of good fats, vitamins and protein, your little one will have plenty of energy to burn off!
- Taper off slowly. As your child grows, introduce more low-fat foods into his diet and let him get used to a variety of options. At about 3 to 4 years of age, try substituting lower-fat (1 or 2 percent) milk for his usual whole milk. Reduced fat yogurt can also be swapped for the full-fat kind. Beware, however, that many manufacturers boost the sugar levels in foods as they lower fat content. Cereals, yogurt and snack products are the worst offenders, so continue to read labels and watch for excessive sugars. "Low-fat" doesn't always mean healthier!
Remember, there's no single rule that fits every child. It's enough to know that as far as fat is concerned, it's not smart to apply adult guidelines to children under 5. Restricting dietary fat, while generally good for adults, is not so great for children. As always, be aware that your toddler has unique nutritional needs and consult your pediatrician throughout childhood to determine what's best for your growing child.
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APA Style is followed by over a thousand research journals in psychology, education, and other fields. The style is documented in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.; 2009).
The APA Publication Manual is focused on just that, preparing papers for publication. If you are writing a college research paper or theses the rules change a bit. The last (5th) edition gave special instructions for these works (see chapter 6), now lost to this new edition. Nonetheless, Doc Scribe has kept this lost knowledge alive while following the latest fashions in APA style.
Doc's guides follow APA advice for preparing final manuscripts--college and conference papers. These differ slightly from the copy manuscripts described in the APA Publication Manual (see below).
Final ManuscriptsThe APA calls papers written for publication copy manuscripts. They are formatted to aid the publication process, not the reader. When not writing for publication "the manuscript must be as readable as possible" (APA, 2001, p. 323). The APA calls these papers final manuscripts. There are minor differences:
- Organization. "In a manuscript submitted for publication, figures, tables, and footnotes are placed at the end of the manuscript; in theses and dissertations, such material is frequently incorporated at the appropriate point in text as a convenience to readers" (APA, 2001, p. 325).
- Line spacing. "Double-spacing is required throughout most of the manuscript. When single-spacing would improve readability, however, it is usually encouraged. Single-spacing can be used for table titles and headings, figure captions, references (but double-spacing is required between references), footnotes, and long quotations [this is sometimes referred to as block spacing]" (p. 326).
- Title page. The title and abstract pages of a copy manuscript are organized for anonymous review and typesetting. Elements that require separate pages are usefully combined on a single page: the title, author, abstract, and author note. The running head becomes the page header, as it does in published articles.
The Science of Scientific Writing by George Gopen and Judith Swan. This article was first published in the pages of the American Scientist in 1990. It was originally developed in a faculty writing workshop at the Duke Medical School. It has worn well the test of time. For many years it was embargoed on the American Scientist website. The embargo has lapsed and Doc has made it available in PDF format: The Science of Scientific Writing (90 KB).
American Psychological Association. (2009). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Links to Amazon.com: (Spiral Bound $35)
(Paperback $22). Doc's Review.
Sixth Edition. The latest edition of the APA Publication Manual has tightened its focus on writing for publication at the expense of those crafting college or conference papers--gone is the old chapter 6, "Material Other Than Journal Articles." Also gone are 166 pages of text, which is better news for students. The section on avoiding bias is still the best found anywhere. See what's changed at www.apastyle.org. Warning! If you are interested in a used copy at amazon.com be sure it is the 6th edition.
Official Websites: AMA Style (Oxford UP) APA Style Site Chicago Manual of Style MLA Handbook
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From Our 2011 Archives
Elderly Sleep Problems May Be Tied to Hormones
Latest Sleep News
Sleep Disruptions Associated With Hormonal Changes With Aging May Be Treatable
By Jennifer Warner
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
April 11, 2011 -- Elderly people's reputation as early birds may have a biological and potentially treatable cause.
A new study suggests that sleep problems associated with aging, such as going to bed and waking early, may be caused by hormonal changes.
Researchers say if further studies confirm these results, some sleep problems among the elderly may eventually be treatable with drugs.
Although a person's daily circadian or sleep/wake rhythm is controlled by the brain, researchers say its mechanism is encoded by circadian clocks operating in nearly every cell of the body.
In the study, researchers compared the internal circadian cycles of skin cells taken from both elderly and young donors in two different experiments.
When both sets of skin cells were grown in bovine serum, a standard nutrient solution used by researchers to culture cells in the lab, there were no differences in their circadian rhythms.
But when the skin cells were cultured in human serum taken from older donors, the circadian rhythms shifted in the same manner seen among the elderly.
Researchers say the results suggest that changes in hormone levels circulating in the blood of older adults may play a role in early bedtimes and waking times, as well as other sleep problems commonly seen among the elderly.
"Our results suggest that hormonal changes can alter cellular clocks and these changes in turn might underlie the differences in circadian behavior caused by aging," write researcher Lucia Pagani, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
SOURCES: Pagani, L. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 11, 2011, advance online edition.News release, National Academy of Sciences.
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One of the best known scenes in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 movie “Gangs of New York” is that which depicts the enlistment of Irish emigrants ‘straight off the boat’ into the Union army. The seemingly unsuspecting men are quickly dressed in uniform and packed off for the front, even as those unfortunates who have gone before are brought back in coffins. This scene is one of the most influential in dictating modern memory of Irish recruitment into the Union army. The popular image of thousands of Irishmen, ignorant of what they were getting into, joining up the moment they stepped ashore, is one I encounter frequently. But how true is it?
There is little doubt that many Irishmen enlisted in the Union army very shortly after their arrival in the United States. There is even some evidence of illegal recruitment from Ireland itself, although this appears to have been extremely rare. When Irishmen were ‘duped’ into joining the army, it was unfortunately often the case that it was other Irishmen – like Patrick Finney- who were the ones trying to profit from their enlistment. It is also open to question just how unaware the Irish landing in America were of the realities of the American Civil War. The sheer number of Irish in the United States meant that there was a constant flow of information about the conflict crossing the Atlantic. Many of these letters - written before the age of censorship - gave explicit detail of what was occurring in America between 1861 and 1865, and of what service in the Northern armies meant.
Read more: Irishman's photographs of the Civil War
The more I investigate the Irish experience, the more apparent it is that the type of incident portrayed in "Gangs of New York" rarely, if ever, occurred. Far from being duped, it was much more likely that many of these men had travelled to the United States with the express intention of joining the military, in the hope of benefiting from the financial rewards available for doing so. This was the primary motivation for Irish enlistment in the Union Army from at least 1863 onwards. These men were not stupid - they came from a country where enlistment in the British Army for economic reasons was commonplace, and they came informed about the Civil War.
The New York Irish-American Newspaper of 23rd July 1864 presents an interesting counter-point to the scene depicted in Gangs of New York. It outlines that serious consideration had in fact been given to opening a recruiting station at Castle Garden, where Irish and other emigrants arrived in America. However, they decided against it, as it was thought it would ultimately prove counter-productive. The main reason put forward for this was that Irish-American and other communities would quickly inform those at home as to what was going on, discouraging future prospective emigrants. This would impact not only the economy, but ultimately also enlistment into the military.
The New York County Volunteers Recruiting Committee, presided over by Mr. Orison Blunt, recently applied to the Commissioners of Emigration for permission to establish a recruiting rendezvous within and in connection with the emigration depot at Castle Garden. The Commissioners very properly refused such permission, and authorized their agent to convey such intelligence to the Committee. The following is a copy of the letter of Mr. Casserly:-
OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF EMIGRATION, NEW YORK, JUNE 30
Elijah F. Purdy, Esq.:
Dear Sir- Mr. O. Blunt, the Chairman of the County Recruiting Committee and member of the Board of Supervisors, called here yesterday, and stated that he had conversed relative to a building to be erected on the Battery for recruiting purposes, with some of the Commissioners, and concerning a passage-way opening into and connection Castle Garden with said building, and that he had been sent to me for the purpose of learning if there were any objection to such connection with Castle Garden. In reply I informed him that I had not heard anything about the matter before, and that I believed there were no serious objections; which, however, I did not deem proper to state at that time, but would do so in case the matter came before the Board at the meeting to be held in the afternoon, and my opinion was requested by the Board. To do so sooner, on such an important matter, might have been considered an assumption of authority on my part.
At the meeting to-day, I mentioned the matter to several of the Commissioners, and while on account of their being no quorum, and as no official communication had been received by this Board from the Board of Supervisors or any other body, there could be and was no official action taken on the matter; yet the opinion of the Commissioners was decidedly adverse to granting such a request, on the ground that it would be injurious to the country in interfering with emigration, as would be the case as soon as known in Europe; and would be confirmatory, to a certain extent, of the charges made in the British House of Commons, as well as in France and Germany, by rebel emissaries and sympathizers, that the armies were being filled by the forced enlistments of arriving emigrants. As it is, the resident friends of emigrants expected to arrive are much excited on this very subject at present, and their persuasions and advice, in the form of letters of their friends in Ireland and Germany, as well as other countries from which emigrants come, would be immediately added to keep emigration from the country, and thus an injury inflicted on the industrial prosperity of the country exceeding a thousand fold the increased benefit in the way of additional recruits obtained in the manner proposed by Mr. Blunt.
Being a member of the Board of Supervisors, as well as of this Commission, I have deemed it proper to advise you of what occurred in relation to this matter, to which I have taken the liberty of appending my own views of the application, as the subject appears to me.
* Damian Shiels is an archaeologist and historian who runs the IrishAmericanCivilWar.com website, where this article first appeared. His book "The Irish in the American Civil War" was published by The History Press in 2013 and is available here.
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1421 : The Year China Discovered the World
On 8 February 1421 the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, 500 foot long junks made from the finest teak and mahogany, were led by Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last over two years and circle the entire globe.When they returned Zhu Di had fallen from power and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. They has also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans.Gavin Menzies has spent fifteen years tracing the astonishing voyages of the Chinese fleet. Now, in a fascinating historical detective story, he shares the remarkable account of his discoveries and the incontrovertible evidence to support them, bringing together a compelling narrative, ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts by Chinese explorers and the later European navigators. It brings to light the artefacts and inscribed standing stones left behind by the emperor's fleet,the evidence of sunken junks along its route and the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, in thanks to Shao Lin, Goddess of the sea.1421 is the story of a remarkable journey of discovery that rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be revised. 1421:The Year China Discovered the World is destined to become a classic work of historical detection. First published 2002.
Born in 1937, Gavin Menzies lived in China for two years before the Second World War. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. As a junior officer he sailed the world in the wake of Columbus, Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. When in command of HMS Rorqual (1968-1970), he sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and Captain Cook. Since leaving the Royal Navy, he has returned to China and the Far East many times, and in the course of researching 1421 he has visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and every major sea port of the late Middle Ages. And he is continuing to investigate China's remarkable circumnavigation of the globe in the 15th century. Gavin Menzies is married with two daughters and lives in North London.
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MORDECAI BEN HILLEL, a German rabbi, who died as a martyr at Nuremberg in 1298.
The famous Rabbi Maimonides (A.D.
The father of the controversy may be said to be the Jewish rabbi, Aben Ezra, who died A.D.
In later days the same function was performed by the Purim Rabbi, who often indulged in parodies of the ritual.
During his student career he made a special study of Hebrew and Greek; and in order to learn Hebrew more thoroughly, he for some time put himself under the instructions of Rabbi Ezra Edzardi at Hamburg.
SAMUEL OF NEHARDEA, usually called MAR SAMUEL or YARHINAI (c. 1 65 - c. 257), Babylonian Rabbi, was born in Nahardea in Babylonia and died there c. 257.
Each synagogue is served by a rabbi assisted by an officiating minister, and in each consistory is a grand rabbi.
Serajevo is also the seat of the Jewish chief rabbi; and of the highest Moslem ecclesiastic, or reis-el-ulema, who with his council is nominated and paid by the government.
Their work may be said to culminate in the vocalized text which resulted from the labours of Rabbi Aaron ben Asher in the 10th century.
(Rabbi) Ishmael, is a useful source for old Haggadah (especially on the narrative portions of Exodus), and is interesting for its variant readings of the Canonical Massoretic text.
By this time the collection of halakhic material had become very large and various, and after several attempts had been made to reduce it to uniformity, a code of oral tradition was finally drawn up in the and century by Judah ha-Nasi, called Rabbi par excellence.
It was, therefore, during the reign of Antipas, and partly if not wholly within his territory, that the Gospel was first preached by the rabbi or prophet whom Christendom came to regard as the one true Christ, the Messiah of the Jews.
Apart from these bitter provocations - the prohibition of the sign of the covenant and the desecration of the sacred place - the Jews had a leader who was recognized as Messiah by the rabbi Aqiba.
ABBA MARI (in full, Abba Mari ben Moses ben Joseph), French rabbi, was born at Lunel, near Montpellier, towards the end of the 13th century.
In the Roman camp the rabbi was courteously received, and Vespasian (whose future elevation to the imperial dignity Johanan, like Josephus, is said to have foretold) agreed to grant him any boon he desired.
AARON CHORIN (1766-1844), Hungarian rabbi and pioneer of religious reform.
RABA BEN JOSEPH BEN HAMA (c. 280-352), Babylonian rabbi or amora.
After the fall of Jerusalem the new system of biblical exegesis founded by Rabbi Hillel reached its climax at Jamnia under the famous Rabbi Aqiba (d.
155), the crowd shouted, "This is the father of the Christians" 2; but the words were probably prompted by the Jews, who took a prominent part in the martyrdom, and who naturally viewed Polycarp in the light of a great Christian rabbi, and gave him the title which their own teachers bore.
In making his selection of halakhoth, Rabbi used the earlier compilations, which are quoted as "words of Rabbi `Agiba" or of R.
Later on, Jacob 3 I Hebrew vi, from the initial letters of Rabbi Shelomoh Yizbagi, a convenient method used by Jewish writers in referring to well-known authors.
YAIR BACHARACH (1639-1702), German rabbi, was the author of Ilawwoth Yair (a collection of Responsa) and other works.
It has been variously ascribed to the patriarch Abraham and to the illustrious rabbi `Agiba; its essential elements, however, may be of the 3rd or 4th century A.D., and it is apparently earlier than the 9th (see L.
Those of preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers, interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi, musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets."
JOSEPH PERLES (1835-1894), Jewish rabbi, was born in Hungary in 1835, and died at Munich in 1894.
Rabbi - la's text of the Gospels " represents the Greek text as read in Antioch about A.D.
(1) Jacob (1630-1695), rabbi (Hakham) of the Spanish Jews in London from 1680.
" Jealousy Offering") called upon the famous rabbi Solomon ben Adret of Barcelona to come to the aid of orthodoxy.
The Roman Catholic chaplains are classed as parish priests, curates and assistants, and are subject to an army Vicar Apostolic. In war, at an army headquarters there are a "field-rabbi," a "military imam," an evangelical minister, as well as the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
In 1854 he was appointed rabbi at Cincinnati.
But Rabbi Jonah saw the true vocation of his life in the scientific investigation of te Hebrew language and in a rational biblical exegesis based upon sound linguistic knowledge.
1 The other writings of Rabbi Jonah, so far as extant, have appeared in an edition of the Arabic original accompanied by a French translation (Opuscules et traites d'Abou'l Walid, ed.
A few fragments and numerous quotations in his principal book form our only knowledge of the Kitab al-Tashwir (" Book of Refutation") a controversial work in four parts, in which Rabbi Jonah successfully repelled the attacks of the opponents of his first treatise.
The grammatical work of Rabbi Jonah extended, moreover, to the domain of rhetoric and biblical hermeneutics, and his lexicon contains many exegetical excursuses.
JOHANAN BEN ZACCAI, Palestinian rabbi, contemporary of the Apostles.
He mentions a rabbi from Lydda, a rabbi from Tiberias, and above all rabbi Ben Anina, who came to him by night secretly for fear of the Jews.
This improvement was first proposed by Rabbi Samuel, rector of the Jewish school of Sora in Mesopotamia, and was finally accomplished in the year 360 of our era by Rabbi Hillel, who introduced that form of the year which the Jews at present follow, and which, they say, is to endure till the coming of the Messiah.
But the Hebrew version of Rabbi Joel, made somewhat later, was translated in the 13th century into Latin by John of Capua, a converted Jew, in his Directorium vitae humanae (first published in 1480), and in that form became widely known.
In 1848 he came to London, but passed on in 1849 to America, where he ministered as rabbi in Cleveland,Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Detroit and Newark, New Jersey.
In November 1832 he went to Wiesbaden as rabbi of the synagogue, and became in 1835 one of the most 1 The words gige, gigen, geic appear suddenly in the M.
In 1863 Geiger became head of the synagogue of his native town, and in 1870 he removed to Berlin, where, in addition to his duties as chief rabbi, he took the principal charge of the newly established seminary for Jewish science.
The development of Talmudic Law (or Halakhah) was much indebted to this rabbi, whose influence in all branches.
ISAIAH HOROWITZ (c. 1 555 - c. 1630), Jewish rabbi and mystic, was born at Prague, and died at Safed, then the home of Jewish Kabbala.
Yohai, a Rabbi of the 2nd century.
The opposition, as might be expected, came from the side of the Jews, and was due partly to the controversial use which was made of the version by the S Christians, but chiefly to the fact that it was not suffi- ciently in agreement with the standard Hebrew text estab.- lished by Rabbi Aqiba and his school.
Aquila was a Jewish proselyte of Pontus, and since he was a disciple of Rabbi Aqiba (d.
135), and (according to another Talmudic account) also of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua, the immediate predecessors of Aqiba, his version may be assigned to the first half of the 2nd century.
Consequently an exaggerated emphasis is often laid upon single words; as, for example, in the school of Rabbi `Agiba, where even individual letters were forced to reveal their meaning.
Ad loc.) The Apostle Paul, once a disciple of the famous Rabbi Gamaliel, uses in i Cor.
Rabbenu, " our Rabbi teaches us "; on the critical questions connected with the titles and the present redaction (probably 5th century), see Jew.
Pirqe or Baraitha de-Rabbi Eliezer, a fanciful narrative of events i They contain (as I.
Though associated by name with a well-known 1st century Rabbi, it is hardly earlier than the 8th (Latin trans.
Scholar, so called from the initials of his full name, RABBI SAMUEL BEN MEIR, was a leading member of the French school of Biblical exegesis.
5, § 4) testifies that the belief in the immediate appearance of the Messianic king gave the chief impulse to the war that ended in the destruction of the Jewish state; after the fall of the temple the last apocalypses (Baruch, 4 Ezra) still loudly proclaim the near victory of the God-sent king; and Bar Cochebas, the leader of the revolt against Hadrian, was actually greeted as the Messiah by Rabbi Aqiba (cf.
The place is usually the synagogue house, or that of the Rabbi, sometimes that of the widow.
In the Talmud the voice from heaven, called Bath Kol, attested Rabbi Hillel, as he walked in Jericho, to be worthy of the holy spirit's descent and in-dwelling.
Chinese character which had formerly the sound of po); in Mongolian, Ti%bet, Tobot; in Arabic, Tubbet; Istakhri (c. 590), Tobbat; Rabbi Benjamin (1165), Thibet; J.
Rabbi Enoch Altschul of Prague recorded his own escape on the 22nd of Tebet 1623 in a special roll or megillah, which was to be read by his family on that date with rejoicing similar to the general Purim.
MAIMONIDES, the common name of RABBI MOSES BEN
His early education was cared for by his father and by the local rabbi, David Frankel.
JONATHAN EYBESCHUTZ (1690-1764), German rabbi, was from 1750 rabbi in Altona.
The chief rabbi, who is the ecclesiastical head of the United Synagogue, has also a certain amount of authority over the provincial and colonial Jewries, but this is nominal rather than real.
(Rabbi Resh Lakish).
RABBI JONAH (ABULWALID MERWAN IBN JANAII, also R.
ISAIAH BERLIN (1725-1799), an eminent rabbi of Breslau; he was the author of acute notes on the Talmud which had their influence in advancing the critical study of that work.
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Resources for Educators and Health Professionals
These resources may be used for teaching students, residents, and fellows in multiple health disciplines, as well as for the training of direct care workers. See below for a brief description of each resource and its intended audience.
Best-Practice Geriatric Oral Health Training teaches healthcare providers about the role of oral health in promoting quality of life for older adults. It is intended for long-term care professionals such as medical directors and nurses. It may also be used by direct care workers.
Info-Connects are informational pamphlets designed to be a source of practical information on topics of key importance, intended for long-term care providers.
GeriaCasts are audio lectures with synchronized slides on important geriatric topics. They are intended for physicians, nurses, and other primary healthcare providers. They may also be used by residents, fellows, and health professions students.
This annual conference, now in its 35th year, is designed for primary care physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. The focus of this year's program is on dementing illnesses.
GeriaFlix are video lectures on important geriatric topics. They are intended for physicians, nurses, and other primary healthcare providers. They may also be used by residents, fellows, and health professions students.
GeriaSims are interactive, "virtual patient" simulations on the care of older adults. They are intended for physicians, residents and fellows, and medical students. They may also be used by physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
Standardized Patient Actor Training is intended to prepare the educator to play the role of a patient with either Parkinson's or early Alzheimer's disease for training of medical students.
Geriatric Assessment Tools are intended for educational purposes.
The Train-the-Preceptor Program in Functional Assessment is intended to train community physicians who precept medical students in the principles and practical strategies of office-based functional assessment.
The Geriatric Consult Service Curriculum is intended for physicians, residents, and students who provide or will provide primary care to elderly patients. It has been used in the inpatient geriatric rotation for internal medicine residents at the University of Iowa.
GeriaTrailers are brief "teaching moment" movie trailers that can serve as introductions to important geriatric topics.
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There may be a nascent resurgence of interest in the idea of engineering people. Outside of the limited circle of self-identified transhumanists, the complexities of the genome and the setbacks suffered by gene therapy seemed to dampen enthusiasm for germline "enhancement" in the first decade of this century. But a few recent signals suggest that this may be changing:
- The Atlantic just published, on February 16th, an earnest article titled "More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers." Author Patrick Lin, a professor of philosophy at Cal Poly who consults with the U.S. intelligence community, "In the next generation," Lin predicts, "our warfighters may be able to eat grass, communicate telepathically, resist stress, climb walls like a lizard, and much more."
- Paul Root Wolpe, senior bioethicist at NASA, has posted a "Big Think" video, uploaded February 18th, about the routine enhancement of our children (perhaps grandchildren, perhaps sooner). He's not worried about that, he embraces it as inevitable, but expresses a vague concern about how different societies might choose different directions to take this. Americans, he suggests, might choose competitiveness and productivity; Europeans might choose to improve social life.
- In a forthcoming article in Ethics, Policy & Environment, S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Ruache argue that "human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering" and that "it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change." We could, they suggest for example, be engineered to be smaller, averse to meat, and more altruistic.
How realistic are these prognostications? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), one of the agencies with which Lin has consulted, is already involved in enhancement research, from psycho-pharmaceuticals to "Z-Man" spider-inspired climbing aids. Consumer demand, which Wolpe sees as driving the enhancement of children, could perhaps be stoked to an almost equally strong force (though the product liability lawsuits could be onerous). And the imminent prospect of disruptive global climate change seems to be pushing some to consider absurdly far-fetched schemes.
Confronting these schemes, dreams, nightmares and fantasies is at the heart of what CGS has always tried to do. We need to encourage technologies that are useful, and offer realistic and compelling assessments of those that could potentially do harm. Those of us who fear the loss of what makes us most deeply human have a lot of work to do.
Previously on Biopolitical Times:
Posted in Inheritable Genetic Modification, Media Coverage, Pete Shanks's Blog Posts
Comments are now closed for this item.
Comment by Pete Shanks, Mar 1st, 2012 1:25pm
Thanks for the response, Jessica. Libraries have been written on what "being human" means, so I confess to using shorthand. A general concern about the tone of the proposals discussed is that they treat people as objects, subject to being "designed" by pre-existing people. There are also disquieting echoes of eugenics in the idea of tailoring people to be thus and not so. Check out the various "perspective" sections of the main CGS website; we all have a lot to learn from the disability rights movement, for example.
Comment by Jessica, Feb 23rd, 2012 9:35pm
You mention a fear of losing what makes us human, but don't specify what that is. What essential "humanness" is lost in the scenarios you mention?
Thanks - this was an interesting column. Just trying to understand all the arguments.
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Ann T. Moriarty, MD
Joel S. Bentz, MD
Teresa M. Darragh, MD
Cervical cancer screening in women less than 21 years of age has changed significantly with the introduction of the 2006 Consensus Guidelines for the Management of Women with Abnormal Cervical Screening Tests.1 Women who are 20 years or younger are considered “adolescents.” HPV testing is not indicated in these women, and any HPV results should be ignored in managing the patient. Additionally, unless a Pap test demonstrates HSIL, colposcopy is not recommended. It has proved difficult to disseminate the information and to assess adherence to the guidelines.
To address these issues, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology sponsored an intersociety Practice Improvement in Cervical Screening and Management (PICSM) Committee meeting in Bethesda, Md., at the National Institutes of Health. The primary goal of the June 19–20 PICSM symposium was to bring together 40 to 50 experts in the fields of adolescent medicine, cervical cancer prevention, and treatment of HPV-associated conditions of the cervix and vulva who would review the data supporting current screening and management recommendations for adolescents and young women and develop a communication strategy to promote their dissemination and better adoption. At the meeting, group leaders reviewed the evidence, participants identified gaps in knowledge, and this was followed by open floor and small group discussions.
At the meeting’s conclusion, the participants identified the following three key messages:
- Adolescent (women age 20 years and under) cervical cancer prevention programs should focus on preventing HPV infection through universal HPV vaccination.
- Screening should start at age 21. Screening of adolescents (age 20 and under) is potentially harmful because it can lead to unnecessary evaluation and treatment.
- It is important for adolescents to have access to family planning as well as assessment of and treatment for sexually transmitted infections other than HPV.
These key messages relate to the scientific data that indicate that human papillomavirus is ubiquitous in women at the onset of sexual activity and the incidence of squamous cell carcinoma in this age group is nonexistent. Squamous cervical cancer develops after persistence of HPV and over time. Over-screening in this population leads to overtreatment and potential harm. Most squamous intraepithelial pathology in this age group will regress; premature eradication by biopsy or conization may lead to complications of premature rupture of membranes in pregnancy, premature birth, and other fertility problems. Instead of screening for cancer, efforts should be focused on preventing cervical cancer through vaccination. Adolescent women still need health care during early sexual activity. Family planning, contraceptive advice, screening for Chlamydia or other sexually acquired infections, and prenatal care are all important to adolescents, who need to be seen by their health care providers.
The purpose of the PICSM symposium was not to establish guidelines but to develop a strategy for disseminating those guidelines that are established based on the strength of scientific data. All of the participating organizations have been asked to bring the key messages home to their organizations and to develop a plan and a timeline specific for their organizations to disseminate the information. Pathologists will play a key role in disseminating information to and educating their clinical colleagues.
- Wright TC, Massad LS, Dunton CJ, et al. 2006 consensus guidelines for the management of women with abnormal cervical screening tests. J Lower Gen Tr Dis. 2007;11:201–222.
Dr. Moriarty is vice chair, and Drs. Bentz and Darragh are members, of the CAP Cytopathology Committee. Dr. Moriarty is in the Department of Pathology, AmeriPath Indiana, Indianapolis. Dr. Bentz is with Laboratory Medicine Consultants Ltd., Las Vegas. Dr. Darragh is at the University of California San Francisco Mount Zion Medical Center.
Dr. Bentz attended the symposium as the CAP liaison. Dr. Moriarty attended as ASC liaison.
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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|
en
| 0.929072
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The Excel Tbillyield function calculates the yield of a Treasury Bill.
The syntax of the function is:
Where the arguments are as follows:
|settlement||-||The settlement date of the treasury bill (i.e. the date that the bill is purchased).|
|maturity||-||The maturity date of the treasury bill (must be greater than, and within one year of the supplied settlement date).|
|pr||-||The treasury bill's price per $100 face value.|
Note that the settlement and maturity arguments should be supplied to the function as either:
Warning: If you attempt to supply Excel functions with dates in a text form, these can be interpreted differently, depending on the date system and date interpretation settings on your computer.
The following example shows the Excel Tbillyield function used to calculate the yield on a treasury bill with settlement date 01-Feb-2011, maturity date 30-Jun-2011 and a price of $99 per $100 face value:
|3||=TBILLYIELD( B1, B2, 99 )|
The Tbillyield function in the above example returns the yield 2.44%.
Note that, as recommended, the settlement and maturity dates in the above example have been supplied to the function as references to cells containing dates.
Further examples of the Excel Tbillyield function are provided on the Microsoft Office website.
If you get an error from the Tbillyield function, this is likely to be one of the following:
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.excelfunctions.net/Excel-Tbillyield-Function.html
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en
| 0.793946
| 319
| 2.796875
| 3
|
To assist in the learning process, the library has 30 computers available for students usually before school, on specified lunch periods (shown in weekly bulletin), and after school. Students may take Accelerated Reader (AR) quizzes with a pass from their reading teacher. The Internet is available for research for school work with a pass from the student’s teacher. Students must have their ID for Internet use, showing that parental permission for Internet use is on file. Word Processing is available for school work only and students must show their notes or rough draft for computer use.
SIRS Discoverer is an online database of periodicals and newspaper articles, almanac, dictionary and encyclopedia that is updated daily. This program is available in the library on the computers, as well as at home, to assist students in their information gathering and research process. Students wanting to use this resource at home should contact the library for the address and password.
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<urn:uuid:9afc07ae-8712-40b5-b02e-ad8c90ac9d6d>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://pbvusd.schoolwires.net/Page/3091
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95736
| 188
| 3.109375
| 3
|
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