text
stringlengths 199
648k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
419
| file_path
stringlengths 139
140
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 50
235k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A frog species thought to be extinct in northern Israel reportedly has been seen for the first time in 50 years.
The Hula Painted Frog was rediscovered Tuesday. The frog was believed to have gone extinct following the draining of the Hula Valley in the 1950s in an effort to stop malaria.
According to Dana Milstein, an ecologist with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the frog was rare even before it was declared extinct. She credits rehydration of the area for the frog sighting.
The Hebrew name for the frog is “agulashon shehor-gahon,” which refers to its black belly and round tongue.
|
<urn:uuid:9d5350d5-3016-4b04-b02a-e73b20b98d1e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.jewishjournal.com/israel/article/extinct_frog_rediscovered_in_israel_20111117
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00133-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979413
| 135
| 2.625
| 3
|
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers have long tried to get the optic nerve to regenerate when injured, with some success, but no one has been able to demonstrate recovery of vision. A team at Boston Children’s Hospital reports a three-pronged intervention that not only got optic nerve fibers to grow the full length of the visual pathway (from retina to the visual areas of the brain), but also restored some basic elements of vision in live mice.
Larry Benowitz, PhD, and colleagues at the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, showed that mice with severe optic nerve damage can regain some depth perception, the ability to detect overall movement of the visual field, and perceive light, allowing them to synchronize their sleep/wake cycles. Findings were published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of May 21.
The findings hint at the possibility that patients blinded by optic nerve damage from trauma or from glaucoma, estimated to affect more than 4 million Americans, might be able to regain at least some visual function. In other forms of vision loss, such as macular degeneration, people can sometimes regain visual acuity, but there is currently no way to recover from damage to the optic nerve.
Previous studies, including many by the Benowitz lab, have demonstrated that optic nerve fibers can regenerate some distance through the optic nerve, but this is the first study to show that these fibers can be made to grow long enough to go from eye to brain, that they are wrapped in the conducting “insulation” known as myelin, that they can navigate to the proper visual centers in the brain, and that they make connections (synapses) with other neurons, allowing visual circuits to re-form.
"Dr. Benowitz and his group have, for the first time, established proof-of-concept that a damaged optic nerve can regenerate and attain lost function,” says Nareej Agarwal, PhD, of the National Eye Institute, which supported the study. “This is an important advance in an effort to reverse vision loss in glaucoma and other neurodegenerative diseases.”
Building on their previous studies, Benowitz and colleagues combined three methods of activating the growth state of neurons in the retina, known as retinal ganglion cells: stimulating a growth-promoting compound called oncomodulin, originally discovered in the Benowitz lab in 2006, elevating levels of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and deleting the gene that encodes the enzyme PTEN. In a 2010 paper, Benowitz and colleagues showed that these interventions have a synergistic effect on growth of optic nerve fibers.
“Sixteen years ago, people said it was impossible to get any regeneration in the optic nerve,” notes Benowitz, also director of the Laboratories for Neuroscience Research in Neurosurgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Our study regenerated only a small percentage of the total number of fibers that would normally come into the brain, but it answers questions that have been real unknowns in the field.”
Benowitz cautions, however, that the vision the mice regained was limited, and probably didn’t restore the ability to discriminate objects.
“What lies behind what we call seeing is very complicated – so many subsystems contribute to seeing,” he says. “We’re in a sense just scratching the surface about functional recovery.”
Specifically, the study demonstrated:
1) Circadian entrainment: Whereas circadian sleep/wake cycles in mice blinded by optic-nerve injury drifted out of synch with the room’s day/night light cycle, treated mice came back into synch with the light cycle.
2) Depth perception: Mice were made to walk on clear plexiglass platforms above a checkerboard pattern that appeared to drop off abruptly. Untreated blind mice showed an equal probability of walking over either end, whereas mice with regeneration spent less time over the “deep” end.
3) Optomotor response: When treated mice were put on a platform surrounded by rotating vertical stripes, they moved their heads reflexively to follow the pattern.
The molecular manipulations performed in the mice would need to be adapted to create an actual treatment for patients, says Benowitz. He hopes to investigate a gene-therapy approach in the future; such an approach has been proven to work in Leber’s hereditary neuropathy, a rare genetic disease causing vision loss.
“The eye turns out to be a feasible place to do gene therapy,” says Benowitz. “The viruses used to introduce various genes into nerve cells mostly remain in the eye. Retinal ganglion cells are easily targetable.”
Silmara de Lima, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, was first author on the study. The research was funded by the National Eye Institute, the Department of Defense, the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation, and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.
Provided by: Children's Hospital Boston
|
<urn:uuid:12d51132-89ac-4202-8b34-8ec19e9ff27e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-scientists-regenerate-optic-nerve-components.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948438
| 1,096
| 2.90625
| 3
|
When gentlemen are first and ladies are last: Effects of gender stereotypes on the order of romantic partners' names
Hegarty, PJ, Watson, N, Fletcher, L and McQueen, G (2011) When gentlemen are first and ladies are last: Effects of gender stereotypes on the order of romantic partners' names British Journal of Social Psychology, 50 (1). pp. 21-35.
2011 PH et al BJSP when gentlemen are first.pdf
Available under License : See the attached licence file.
A preference to name stereotypically masculine before stereotypically feminine individuals explains why men are typically named before women, as on the Internet, for example (Study 1). Heterosexual couples are named with men's names first more often when such couples are imagined to conform to gender stereotypes (Studies 2 and 3). First-named partners of imaginary same-sex couples are attributed more stereotypically masculine attributes (Study 4). Familiarity bounds these effects of stereotypes on name order. People name couples they know well with closer people first (Study 5), and consequently name familiar heterosexual couples with members of their own gender first (Study 6). These studies evidence a previously unknown effect of the semantics of gender stereotypes on sentence structure in the everyday use of English.
|Divisions :||Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences > School of Psychology|
|Date :||2 March 2011|
|Identification Number :||10.1348/014466610X486347|
|Related URLs :|
|Additional Information :||Article first published online: 2 MAR 2011 | DOI: 10.1348/014466610X486347|
|Depositing User :||Symplectic Elements|
|Date Deposited :||29 Feb 2012 15:15|
|Last Modified :||23 Sep 2013 18:57|
Actions (login required)
Downloads per month over past year
|
<urn:uuid:804bbbb1-09f7-4118-962d-6e73da69f2b0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/72249/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.806058
| 392
| 2.640625
| 3
|
Research and experiences tell us that involved parents make for better students. Studies have shown that the involvement of parents help in producing better students.
The advantages of parents and communities getting involved in education are numerous. For students, it tends to result in higher marks, better academic skills, reduction in school truancy, and makes it much more likely that the child will go on to tertiary education level. For the school, it also has possible benefits, as shown in Henderson and Mapp’s 2002 book titled ‘A New Wave of Evidence’. Henderson and Mapp state that upgraded school facilities, an increase in school leadership and staffing, better programmes for students, and new resources to improve teaching and curricula. But most importantly, getting parents and communities involved makes it possible for them to become agents of change within the education system. Since ‘active’ parents and communities are few and far between, more often the onus lies on the school to persuade parents and communities to get involved.
An essay by Eleanor Lemmer (2007) of the University of South Africa discusses six steps by Joyce Epstein, a professor in sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, which advises schools to take in order to encourage parental and community involvement. The study provides examples of these steps being effectively implemented in five South African schools - Saxonwold Primary and Rosebank Primary in Gauteng, Mbilwi Secondary in Limpopo, Inkomazi Secondary in Mpumalanga, and Bergvliet in the Western Cape.
1. The first step relates to parenting: ‘Schools should assist families with parenting and child-rearing skills, family support, understanding child and adolescent development, and setting home conditions to support learning at each stage and grade level.’ A South African school in which this type of activity is prevalent is Saxonwold Primary. The annual newsletter constantly reinforces the responsibilities of the parents. Parents are reminded that children have to arrive on time, parents are no allowed to leave the child to ‘loiter’ on the pavement, children should be given a healthy breakfast, and that they should come to school with water bottles.
2. The second step is to ensure two-way communication ‘about school programmes and students’ progress’. Saxonwold stresses the importance of parents checking homework and signing homework diaries everyday, thus ensuring this two-way communication. This can be accomplished if each parent can take time to visit the principal of a school personally, or, as in the case of Mbilwi Secondary School, by calling parents at every opportunity. The school contacts parents; to highlight the rules and pass requirements at the beginning of the year, when a learner is seriously misbehaving, when the learner is sick, when the learner receives an award, and when Saturday classes are being held. Considering that the school has doubled in size over the past year, this is an outstanding achievement which requires serious dedication.
3. Encouraging parents to volunteer is difficult, but worthwhile. Lemmer tells us that schools must strive to become places where families and communities feel wanted. Often they are encouraged to help by participating in functions and school-improvement ventures. Saxonwold has formed a ‘Club Family’, which is comprised of those ‘willingly participating’ parents who will (hopefully) always form some part of the parent body. Saxonwold extends invitations to parents so regularly that it is apparent that the parents feel guilty if they don’t attend at least one function a year. Once a parent attends, it is easier to get them to come again, and they gradually become more involved. These functions are held in the evenings and dinner is provided so there is no excuse for absenteeism on the part of the parent.
4. ‘Schools should involve families with their children in learning activities at home, including homework.’ Inkomazi asks parents to come and ‘check’ their child’s work every term so that they are better able to assist them at home. In addition, when sending their students on camps, they ask parents to come and stay with the students and prepare the food. In this way the parents – even those who are illiterate – understand how the students are working, what that work entails, and the challenges that each student faces.
5. Including parents in the school’s decision making is important. Inkomazi includes parents by asking them to attend strategy sessions about how students can be helped to achieve the best possible results. Mbilwi’s school governing body (SGB) calls parents for the budget committee meeting, and parents elect the SGB, ensuring their direct involvement in the school’s governance.
6. Epstein’s final step involves collaboration with the community. For example, Rosebank Primary is very involved with the Rosebank SAPS – they let the police use their school as a venue, and in return the police keep a close eye on the school, even helping out at various school events. Bergvliet mandates that each student must do 10 hours of community service per term. This exposes students to the needs of various communities, and the communities become more aware of and alert to children who are out of school or who are misbehaving.
Remember being given a school newsletter to take home, that ended up squashed at the bottom of your school bag? Schools should be using whatever means to reach out to parents and communities. Bergvliet is very active in this regard – they have a school website and Facebook page that keep parents and the community in touch with what is happening at the school. In addition, they send out SMSes to parents to remind them of important meetings and parent/teacher evenings.
You may think that much of this is common sense but unfortunately, as Banu Sankaran of Mbilwi succinctly writes, ‘In South Africa the school has a bigger role in shaping the youth. When we get cooperation from the parents, it is good. But most of the time we don’t get it.’
In the small selection of schools in this study, the enormous effort that goes into trying to get parents and communities involved is apparent, and shows how hard our schools are willing to work to enhance the education system in South Africa.
- Beatrice Ralfe is corporate social investment practitioner at Tshikululu Social Investments (TSI). This article first appeared on the TSI website. It is republished here with the permission of TSI www.tsi.org.za.
|
<urn:uuid:7841656d-a135-4ffe-a860-3dc5f22d684b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ngopulse.org/article/parents-and-schools-teaching-and-learning-together
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.967139
| 1,356
| 3.546875
| 4
|
A new analysis ups the number of the Civil War dead by 20% , an equivalent to 6.2 million deaths today.
Historian David Hacker says
"The traditional estimate has become iconic. It's been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute -- 620,000 -- the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million."Posted by Jill Fallon at April 4, 2012 10:53 AM | Permalink
Like earlier estimates, Hacker's includes men who died in battle as well as soldiers who died as a result of poor conditions in military camps.
"Roughly two out of three men who died in the war died from disease," Hacker says. "The war took men from all over the country and brought them all together into camps that became very filthy very quickly." Deaths resulted from diarrhea, dysentery, measles, typhoid and malaria, among other illnesses.
|
<urn:uuid:7c52e8c2-057d-46ca-9a72-82b0fbe81622>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.estatevaults.com/lm/archives/2012/04/04/the_astonishing.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.984684
| 247
| 3.125
| 3
|
Sandia National Laboratories researchers have created a system to monitor how clouds affect large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) farms.
One of the challenges for power companies in effectively utilising solar energy on a large scale is the ability to predict and prepare for fluctuations in electricity generation due to changes in weather – cold, heat, airborne dust and especially clouds can have a major effect.
On small installations such as a grid connected home solar power system, the effect of clouds is unnoticeable as the system automatically switches to drawing power from the mains grid if the amount of electricity being generated isn’t sufficient. When it comes to utility scale generation and solar panels are spread over a large area and cloud can cast a shadow onto one part of a solar farm, but leave another in full sun; the effects are not well understood.
"Our goal is to get to the point where we can predict what’s going to happen at larger scale plants as they go toward hundreds of megawatts," says Sandia researcher Scott Kuszmaul.
Sandia’s system observes cloud shape, size and movement and is currently being tested at the 1.2-megawatt La Ola Solar Farm on the Hawaiian island of Lana’i. La Ola provides up to 30 percent of the island’s peak electric demand, which is one of the highest rates of solar PV power penetration in the world.
As researchers were not able to interrupt operations of the plant, Sandia’s engineers have connected 24 small sensors to the farm’s Sunpower solar panels and use a radio frequency network to transmit data. The sensors take readings at one-second intervals.
For very small installations, there is already portable and economical equipment for carrying out site surveys such as the Power Predictor, but Sandia researcher Josh Stein says Sandia’s technique will allow a developer to place a sensor network at the proposed site of a major solar farm, take measurements and use that to predict plant output variability.
Sandia National Laboratories is a government-owned/contractor operated (GOCO) facility and has been developing science-based technologies since 1949.
(Photo by Randy Montoya)
|
<urn:uuid:2db8e2ff-fff2-4b61-8904-8572920a60fe>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/em1089/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.932727
| 453
| 3.484375
| 3
|
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
“Daniel is our King.”
“All hail King Daniel!”
Crows belong to the family Corvidae, which is Latin for something that translates to English that we'll figure out later. Often described as intelligent, crows are in fact unbelievably stupid. They often fly in circles, fly into windows, explode spontaneously, and land on ship railings. (See below) Crows are no strangers to fame, as the famous American Crow (corvus brachyrynchos) Morgan Freeman consistently demonstrates with his ever growing popularity in the human world.
edit How to Create a Crow
A poem of the creation of a crow:
put it inside nothing,
add nothing to it,
and to prove it doesn't exist.
Squash it flat as nothing with nothing,
chop it up with nothing,
shake it in nothing,
turn it completely inside out,
and scatter it over nothing
so everyone sees that it's nothing
and that nothing more can be done with it.
When your nothing hits the ground and breaks,
there lies Crow, cataleptic.
edit Crows in Religion
Beige and yellow crows, often confused with canaries, are revered in many religions all around the world. In fact, many obscure religions like Hinduism, Scientology, and Judism are all centered around crows. Gifting a crow meant that all religious significance would be lost. There appears to be some explanation for this in various religious treatises, but it is believed to be completely difficult to comprehend crow language.
Crow followers believe that there are two gods. One is much bigger than the other, loving all his enemies and having all the weapons, while the smaller god was crucified to bring peace to all mankind. Big deal.
These religions revere crows so much that it is forbidden to sodomize, exercise, scold, and in the case of extremely orthodox fanatics, fry crows. If anyone is caught doing this, they are usually condemned to the rest of their lives in Hell and are forced into the most horrible punishment imaginable, to ingest the crow that they have sodomized, excercised, scolded or fried.
To make matters worse, the crow you have to ingest is brought back to life as you are swallowing it. If the crow is sucessfully swallowed the person is free to go. If the crow is puked out, or if the crow slips out of your throat, you must spend the rest of your life as a slave to demon crows until you die.
The religious believe in this just like Christians believe in God, which is a load of crap to every other religion on the world. This is where the expression "eat crow" originated from, despite the fact you don't actually eat the crow, you just swallow it.
edit Crows in Politics
George W. Bush is well known to regularly sodomize, excercise, scold, and fry crows. The CIA hushes up his links with the devil by claiming it is all "meaningless rumors", however, Bush's malpractices with crows clearly indicate his inclination towards devil worship. Bush being elected president further points out his ties with the devil, since Bush couldn't possibly be elected without some underworldly votes
Since everyone agrees that politics is devil worship, it is apparent that crows are the reason for so many politics. There are some radical movements that blame the crows instead of the religious fanaticism surrounding them and therefore want to exterminate all crows alive. However, the people for the protection of crows (PPC) (with considerable political backing) have managed to stall the movement on ecological grounds.
Politicans from all over the world met in the great political convention of 1957 and passed a resolution banning the sodomising, excercising, scolding and frying of crows (except by those with license, a.k.a. the devil worshipping politicians). The killing of crows to reduce devil worship by means of guns, swords, sticks, bones, vegetables, unstoppable killing machines, and Grues were banned.
Radical fanatics reacted by finding a loophole in the ban, and began to kill crows by chewing off their heads. Jimi Hendrix is the most famous example, having performed it onstage in the middle of a rock concert to show his dedication against devil worship. This is when the phrase "eat crow" reached its popularity peak among punks and wannabe rock stars alike.
edit Crows in Circuses
Crows are used in circuses as props, lighting, and as compensation to patrons who have been attacked by, bitten, decapitated, urinated on, or otherwise are disgusted by the smell of an animal that has broken free. The patrons were usually left disgusted and insulted, probably because they thought that the Ringmaster thought they were politicians. Since the crow that was gifted was wasted and of no religious significance, the crow was simply chopped up and thrown into the mess for use in some soup or salad of some sort. This is where the phrase "eat crow" reached it's disgusting reputation.
edit Crows in History
Crows have great historic significance. They have played a major role in almost every major historical event in human history, even the ones that nobody cares about, everybody forgot or has been talked about so many times that it eventually wound up as a JFK conspiracy theory that was posted on the internet (Which actually lead to a video of 2 Girls 1 Cup).
In the year 24,671 BC, during the great Neanderthal smallpox outbreak, a crow is said to have flown in with a cure all the way from Athens. However, the cure was dropped in a bag of crowfood, and many crows ingested it and none of the cure could be salvaged. The only resource of the Neanderthals was to eat the crow to get to the cure. This is how the expression "eat crow" was forgotten entirely. In the year 30 A.D. Jesus was lying dead on his cross and was waiting for the second coming. In the meanwhile, his body had lost all it significance and was being eaten by crows. Joseph of Armithea was standing by and pointed out to his buddy John that the crows were eating bits of the lord. This is where the lesser known expression "crow eat" has originated. During the great seige of Constantinople in the year 2001, Crows were the messengers between allies Turkey and France. Constantinople used crows as messengers to ask for help from Yugoslavia, India and Afghanistan but got no replies. Due to the seige food was running out and the people were forced to resort to eating their messengers. This is where the phrase "eat crow" has become popular wartime talk.
Before the Titanic sank a crow is said to have shouted to Captain Smith, "Iceberg right ahead!!", however, Captain Smith was busy masturbating to a picture of Katie Holmes, and did not hear the warning. As a result the iceberg hit the the Titanic, killing hundreds of passengers and decapitating Captain Smith's penis. The surviors told everyone on shore that that crow was a bad omen, and as a result the reputation of crows took a gigantic nosedive. Nowadays crows perching on a ships railing for more than five seconds are to be shot immediatly.
sinks floats your ocean liner.
edit Crows vs. Owls
Crows are intelligent creatures, and are beyond holding a grudge for no apparent reason, except for in the case of owls. There is an ongoing war that has been raging on since before the days of Megatron and Optimus Prime.It is a well documented fact that crows have a deep seated hatred of owls (Heddus Twistusphorgayus) and will attack an owl on sight, given half the chance.This hatred is believed (in certain circles) to have stemmed from when a drunk owl informed some nearby crows that the reason they could rotate their heads almost all the way around behind them, was so that they could see George Michael performing his most secret of party pieces.
In time owls have come to all be flagrant Homosexuals that enjoy nothing more than flying away without reciprocating and laughing about it on the other side of town with all their gay owl buddies. Crows remember this and upon seeing an owl sleeping in the middle of the day (A telling habit of the out homosexual or half-breed Human-Owl) they will attack en-masse and ruin said owl's shit. Owls return this act of cleansing with attacks on young crows, a truly cowardly act which gives us proof that owls are in fact, total fags.
edit Crows in Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise had one look at his baby and realised that Katie Holmes was not only being sodomized by crows. He took revenge by killing all crows in existance, but because of the ban, could only bite their heads off. This is where the term "Eat crow" has originated from, but will be terribly short lived because of his actions.
edit Language of Crows
CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW!!! ... CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW!!!
edit Crows Relating to Awesomeness
"Crows are lyk, the most awesomest birds in the Universe!"
edit Famous Crows
- Jim Crow
- Sheryl Crow
- Russell Crowe
- Counting Crows
- The Black Crowes
- Crow T. Robot
- Eric Draven
- Michael Carbery
|
<urn:uuid:ba0fd548-119b-4263-9d97-42a6693a4e96>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Crow
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975923
| 2,002
| 2.59375
| 3
|
(The following is excerpted from "Chemical Weapons Disposal and
Environmental Justice" written by Suzanne Marshall PhD. and published by
the Kentucky Environmental Foundation, November, 1996, with funding from the
Educational Foundation of America.)
"The people are dying. Even the houses are dying."
--80 year old African-American resident of Anniston
while observng the bulldozing of houses in his neighborhood
as a result of PCB contamination caused by a Monsanto factory
Anniston, Calhoun County, Alabama lies in the southern Appalachians in the east central
portion of the state approximately 60 miles east of Birmingham and 90 miles west of
Atlanta, Georgia. The city was founded as an iron and pipe company town. It still exhibits
many of the characteristics of southern cities born during the Jim Crow years of strict racial
segregation. Clear demarcation lines separate the races in residential areas, social relations
and political participation.
The African-American population of the state is 25%. Anniston has a population of
26,623, 44% of which is African-American. Anniston's percentage of African Americans
is 267% higher than the national average of 12%. Calhoun County has a population of
116,034--19% African-American. Many Anniston citizens--24%--live below the poverty
level, almost twice as high as the national average of 13.2% (Bureau of the Census, 1990).
The Anniston Army Depot (ANAD), the site of a proposed incinerator, is situated 3.7 miles
west of the city, close to the African-American west side. One small African-American
town, Hobson City, is near the depot. Pockets of poor whites and working class people,
many employed by ANAD, also live very near the depot in Bynum, Eastaboga and other
small communities. Fifteen miles south of ANAD is Talladega whose population is 41%
African-American. Residents of that area have not participated in the incinerator
discussions to any extent (Bradbury, et. al. 1994, Appendix B).
Anniston and the surrounding area first encountered the military in 1917 when Camp
McClellan was built north of the town. During World War II, the camp was upgraded to
fort status, grew to dominate the region and created an economically dependent
relationship. A second facility, ANAD, was established in 1941 as an ammunition storage
facility. After the war it expanded, adding new military tasks such as tank rebuilding and
contract industrial work. In 1963, the Army began to maintain a store of chemical
weapons--VX, GB and mustard gas. Although the Army decided to incinerate on-site in
1988, the sky-rocketing costs of the current incineration program are resurrecting the issue
of transportation to regional sites. The most likely eastern regional site would be Anniston
or Pine Bluff, Arkansas (Pace, 1995).
In Anniston, local officials promoted the Army's incineration decision to the public,
claiming patriotic duty and economic need. However, they did not fully inform the
residents of the hazards of working or living near an incineration facility. Jobs were
promised without disclosing that many high tech jobs would go to outsiders. The right to
safe and clean jobs was not addressed. Any challenge to the Army or their local supporters
elicited cries of unpatriotic sentiment.
The people living in the region have been significantly and disproportionately impacted
by pollution from local industries and the military. For example, preliminary information
from the Toxics Release Inventory National Report released by the Department of Defense
(DOD), shows ANAD as second in the nation (after number one--Pine Bluff Arsenal in
Arkansas) for toxic releases--548,073 pounds in 1994. Reported chemicals included zinc
compounds, hexachoroethane, 1,1,1-Trichloroethane, chlorine and others (DOD, 1996).
In addition, communities such as Cobbtown and Sweet Valley, two local African-American
neighborhoods, have been contaminated by PCBs. One resident of the area whose blood
was tested for PCBs found that she had an extremely elevated level of 240.0 mcg/l.
Expected average levels should be less than 3 mcg/l to 20.0 mcg/l (Alabama Dept. of Public
Currently, Monsanto Company, which has been in Anniston since 1939, is trying to buy
out the surrounding toxic land on which Cobbtown and Sweet Valley are located. Citizens
from these communities have initiated a lawsuit against Monsanto for life-long health
monitoring and damages. Pollution by the old iron foundries, other industries and ANAD
combine to create multiple and cumulative exposures that already threaten and harm human
Furthermore, in Anniston the Citizens Advisory Commission (CAC), appointed by the
state's governor, does not serve as the conduit for community concerns. For example, in
January 1995, the local opposition group, SAFE (Serving Alabama's Future Environment)
hosted Steve Jones, the Tooele, Utah safety inspection officer, who blew the whistle on the
Tooele plant for safety and operational violations. The Anniston CAC agreed to feature
Jones at their January meeting. However, the acting chair unilaterally decided to cancel
Jones' appearance despite citizens' demands that he be allowed to speak. The Anniston
CAC is establishing a pattern of denying incinerator opponents a chance to make their
CWWG Home Page
Chemical Weapons Working Group
Kentucky Environmental Foundation
P.O. Box 467
Berea, KY 40403
For comments about this WWW page contact Lois Kleffman.
|
<urn:uuid:4177ab44-f117-4ba1-ad0d-bcfa11829240>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.cwwg.org/alabama.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00197-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94461
| 1,209
| 2.578125
| 3
|
If you know anything about Enceladus, an icy moon in Saturn’s tow, it’s probably the amazing jets of water spurting off the satellite’s south pole. The image is one of the most stunning to come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, orbiting within the Saturnian system for 10 years — not just because it looks cool, but because it showed that tiny Enceladus, just over 300 miles across, could harbor interesting activity.
Well that was just the start: new findings from Cassini indicate that Enceladus hosts a huge subsurface sea of liquid water beneath its south pole, possibly fueling those very jets.
The Cassini probe is pretty impressive. Not only does it have your standard space cameras to capture pretty pictures and important information, but the probe itself can measure a world’s mass distribution. The subtle variations of mass pull on Cassini with slightly different gravitational strengths, so scientists can learn about a body’s internal structure just by seeing what the probe does.
After three close flybys of Enceladus (within 62 miles, or 100 km), Cassini revealed something odd about the moon’s south pole: It didn’t have enough stuff on the surface to account for the strong gravitational tug it exerted on the probe. Something else, almost certainly a subterranean ocean of liquid water, was accounting for that strong gravity. More specifically, the water is likely 18 to 24 miles down, trapped between a rocky core and an outer shell of ice. The findings appear in this week’s edition of Science.
Tip of the Ice Sheet
Only a handful of worlds (including our own) are known to have liquid water in any abundance, so the news is exciting purely on its own merits. But it’s also great to finally have a possible answer to what was fueling those impressive jets of water.
Spewing out of long, unusual fractures on the surface nicknamed “tiger stripes,” the jets had led astronomers to suspect a possible subsurface reservoir, but with no evidence to prove it. With this data, not only do astronomers finally have evidence as to what might be feeding the jets, but they even know how widespread the water is — extending up to latitudes of nearly 50° in the southern hemisphere, making the ocean about the same size as Lake Superior.
Which isn’t to say it’s all figured out, of course. Scientists suspect the tiger strips, jets and subsurface ocean might ultimately be the result of heating deep within the moon, as its core stretches and flexes during its approaches to Saturn.
Exactly what’s going on, however — along with the nature of Enceladus’ water and whether it might be part of a habitable environment — will require even more data. Let’s hope Cassini doesn’t wait another 10 years before answering some of those questions.
|
<urn:uuid:57cbe1e2-a4c7-434f-9733-4361bdccb3ea>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/03/hidden-ocean-discovered-on-saturns-moon-enceladus/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00147-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.938218
| 608
| 3.625
| 4
|
The important role which Local Knowledge plays in agrobiodiversity management can only be clarified by analyzing the complex nature of local knowledge and by understanding how it is related to agrobiodiversity. Let us first look at a definition of 'knowledge' before we continue with this analysis.
[Box 1] WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
Knowledge concerns the way people understand the world, the way in which they interpret and apply meaning to their experiences. Knowledge is not about the discovery of some final objective 'truth'. It is the understanding of culturally subjective - conditioned products that emerge from complex and ongoing processes. Knowledge involves selection, rejection, creation, development and transformation of information. These processes, and hence knowledge, are inextricably linked to the social, environmental and institutional contexts they are found.
This definition is very important as it contains a number of key features, which are significant to understanding local knowledge. These include:
Knowledge emerges from complex and ongoing processes
Knowledge development happens through selection, rejection, creation, development and transformation (adaptation)
Knowledge is closely linked to social, environmental and institutional contexts
Local knowledge is the information people in a given community have developed over time. It is based on experience, adapted to the local culture and environment, and is continuously developing. This knowledge is used to sustain the community, its culture and to maintain the genetic resources necessary for the continued survival of the community.
Local knowledge includes mental inventories of local biological resources, animal breeds, local plant, crop and tree species. It may include information about trees and plants that grow well together, about indicator plants that show the soil salinity, or are known to flower at the beginning of the rains. It includes practices and technologies, such as seed treatment and storage methods, and tools used for planting and harvesting. Local knowledge encompasses belief systems that play a fundamental role in people's livelihood, maintaining their health, and protecting and replenishing the environment. Local knowledge is dynamic in nature. It may include experimentation on the integration of new plant or tree species into existing farming systems, or the tests a traditional healer carries out for new plant medicines.
Local knowledge is often collective by nature. It is considered the property of the entire community and does not belong to any single individual, but this depends also on the type of knowledge.
Common knowledge is held by most people in a community, e.g. almost everyone knows how to cook rice (or the local staple food).
Shared knowledge is held by many, but not all, community members; e.g. villagers who raise livestock will know basic animal husbandry.
Specialized knowledge is held by a few people, who might have had special training or an apprenticeship; e.g. only a few villagers will become healers, midwives, or blacksmiths.
Depending on the type of knowledge, transmission will occur in different ways. For example, much of common knowledge is shared in daily activities, with other family members and neighbours. During daily work and interactions children, for instance, will watch and experience the knowledge held by elder people and family members and acquire it over time. Public places, such as markets or community mills, are important places where information sharing takes place. Common knowledge is intimately linked to the daily life of local people. They do not treat it as something separate or as needing specific mechanisms for transmittal.
A different case is the transmission of shared or specialized knowledge. Here, the transmission takes place through specific cultural and traditional information exchange mechanisms. For example, it may be maintained and transmitted orally by elders or specialists, breeders and healers. Often, it is only shared with a few selected people within a community.
|
<urn:uuid:b14446ba-4271-4dee-9757-32adbb405825>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5629e/y5629e01.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954732
| 753
| 3.578125
| 4
|
“The only thing that could cause an increased incident of meteors is if somehow there is more debris everywhere, not just here.”
No, that is quite wrong. Increased incidence of meteors colliding with the Earth do occur periodically and occasionally. Periodic meteor showers occur on a periodic and often well known schedule as the result of the rocky debris in the orbital pat of a current or past comet intersects with the Earth on its own orbital path. Occasionally the debris from the collision of asteroids or meteors, usually in the outer Solar Systems such as the asteroid belt, Jovian planets, or the Oort Cloud sends debris on a new orbital path into the inner Solar System. When the orbital path of the Earth and the debris happen to intesect at the same time, we can see an increased number of meteors. Some increased frequency of encounters with meteors and asteroids is random.
Some people are wondering if Frisay’s meteor is related to the lare meteor over Russia recently? The answer is definitely a no. Thier directions of fall were very different and indicate thay came from totally different regions of space. Their appearance in Earth’s skies so close together in time are simply random happenstance. If the two meteors had come from the same direction and region of space, then they could have possibly been related in origin. In this case, however, they are definitely not related in origin in space.
I’m relieved - I was worried about Klendathu
That’s a pretty good disagreement, by the way. I’m aware of all this but my context was based on the presumed assumption that the frequency of meteors is increasing long-term. For that to occur there would need to be more meteors everywhere in the inner solar system, not just in the vicinity of Earth. I’m sure you can agree with that.
|
<urn:uuid:99b14d80-51fd-43c2-88c2-e7c92349f931>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2999903/replies?c=32
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.962278
| 393
| 3.34375
| 3
|
I'm glad you're feeling better.
To answer your question: As you probably know, Osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis, is a thinning of the mineral density of your bones. There is no "cure", however there are things you can do to control the condition. Your bones are living structures, and will always be prone to the affects of your nutrition and health status. Your bones will reach their fullest bone density by about age 30. And there are things you can do to boost that density, to keep it from waning as you age, and to keep the effects of osteopenia from progressing to osteoporosis:
1. Maintain a good intake of calcium and Vitamin D. Milk products, green leafy vegetables and calcium-fortified foods (calcium has been added; an example is calcium enriched orange juice) are the best sources. If you already have osteopenia, your need for calcium is about 1200mg per day; and Vitamin D is 800 to 1000mg per day. Make sure you get adequate amounts of these from foods as there are other minerals in foods that work along with the calcium for bone health. (such as magnesium and phosphorus). For Vitamin D good food sources are eggs, salmon, swordfish, sardines and sunshine on bare skin.
2. Reduce risk factors for osteoporosis: avoid smoking, inactivity, cola soda pop, and excessive alcohol intake. Another risk factor you may not be able to control is use of steroid medications (such as prednisone) which are used for some conditions like asthma.
3. Get plenty of weight-bearing exercise that will stimulate your bones to grow, and then later maintain density. Bones grow in response to stress. Walking, running, hiXXXXX, XXXXXcing are good exercise choices. Light weights and exercise bands can also help.
Bone health is a lifestyle. This is true for everyone, but for those with osteopenia or osteoporosis, it is essential to keep from losing more bone density. Once you have incorporated the above into your life and are able to maintain these things as your normal way of living---you will be "cured", which is to say you will be doing all you can to slow the progression of bone loss.
|
<urn:uuid:d1d46369-8ac9-4c78-9236-fae2f97f5563>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.justanswer.com/health/2rl8n-osteopenia-100-curable.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954178
| 470
| 2.53125
| 3
|
Brain Injury Progression Study Reveals Grim Results
Feeling better after a concussion is certainly deceiving. And new information from a study published in a journal Brain is downright sobering.
The excerpt and story from Time.com dives into the science behind the brain injury progression, which leads to the loss of brain function that brain injury sufferers and their families endure.
Once the damage is done, however, it’s difficult to stop. Even after the physical blows no longer occur, a destructive chain of events is already in motion. From these seed points in the frontal lobes, damage to nerves and brain tissue radiates to other parts of the brain, until it eventually engulfs most of the organ, impairing many cognitive functions. “Even if a person doesn’t get additional trauma, the disease progresses, like a lit fire,” says McKee. “The fire takes hold and continues to affect the brain with more lesions the longer the person lives.”
It’s good to see research in this area of how traumatic brain injuries progress. It all ties into developing treatment for brain injury patients in Tampa, Clearwater and across the globe.Google+
|
<urn:uuid:2935027d-561f-431e-9b4a-992736b1e1aa>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.tampabaybraininjuryblog.com/2012/12/brain-injury-progression/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.93249
| 244
| 2.59375
| 3
|
The Kirkdale Cave was discovered in 1821 by quarrymen working near Kirbymoorside in North Yorkshire. Strange bones and teeth had been turning up in the area, and visiting fossil collector John Gibson traced them back to the quarry in Kirkdale. A small number of local geologists set about excavating the cave during that summer, before the cave was destroyed through the work of the quarrymen.
Enormous numbers of bones and teeth were collected, which seemed to come from an amazing array of exotic animals - certainly not ones commonly seen in England. Bone remains of elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, hyenas, bison and giant deer were all found in the cave, as were smaller animals including wild pigs, foxes, rabbits, mice and birds. Most of these were not normal inhabitants of the British landscape.
At the time the widely held view was that these animals had perished and their remains washed into the cave as a result of the Universal flood, or Noah’s flood, of the Bible.
But that wasn’t the end of the story…
The finds at Kirkdale came to the attention of Reverend William Buckland, the Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford. He had been working on similar cave finds in Germany, and these specimens interested him greatly. He visited the cave, studied the bones, gathered the evidence and eventually mounted a challenge to the flood story.
These are his words…
“Scarcely a single bone has escaped fracture…”
“On some of the bones, marks may be traced, which… appear exactly to fit the form of the canine teeth of the hyena that occur in the cave”
“The hyena’s bones have been broken, and apparently gnawed equally with those of other animals.”
“Not one skull is to be found entire; and it is so rare to find a large bone of any kind that has not been more or less broken…”
“…there is no hope of obtaining materials for the construction of a single limb, and still less of an entire skeleton.”
“The greatest number of teeth are those of hyenas…many of these animals had died before the first set, or milk teeth, had been shed”
“I have information of about ten elephants’ teeth… they must have belonged to extremely young animals”
“In the interior of the cave I could not find a single rolled pebble… that bears the mark of having been rolled by the action of water.”
“… the bones… are never mineralised, but simply in the state of grave bones more or less decayed or encrusted by stalagmite.”
“…small balls of the solid calcareous excrement that had fed of bones”
|
<urn:uuid:a2a403cb-126d-4724-b681-0e44d04c9952>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.mylearning.org/ideas-and-evidence-in-science-the-kirkdale-cave/p-33/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.977242
| 596
| 3.734375
| 4
|
Current Editor: Chris Merrill, email@example.com
Previous Editors: Mark Sanders 1989-1997; James LaPorte: 1997-2010
This synthesis paper discusses the research exploring analogical reasoning, the role of analogies in the engineering design process, and educational applications for analogical reasoning. Researchers have discovered that analogical reasoning is often a fundamental cognitive tool in design problem solving. Regarding the possible role of analogical reasoning in the context of technology education; analogies may be a useful tool to develop student’s design skills, teach abstract or complex concepts, and build students’ analogical reasoning skills for general problem solving. The positive and negative educational implications of analogical reasoning being explored by researchers are also discussed.
With the development of the Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology ( ITEA, 2000 ) and a focus on the integration of engineering design, the profession has attempted to standardize, validate a need for technology education, and most importantly increase students’ technological literacy. Technological literacy has been defined as the “ability to use, manage, assess, and understand technology” ( ITEA, 2000 , p. 9). The National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, in a joint report ( 2002 ), pointed to three interdependent dimensions of technological literacy: (a) knowledge, (b) ways of thinking and acting, and (c) capabilities. Engineering, with its emphasis on design, has been proposed to help bring about technological literacy and improve these cognitive skills (Dearing & Daugherty, 2004).
The emphasis on cognition within technology education has led to an increased focus on cognitive science research, which has sought to understand how people think and learn. These efforts have been used to better develop instructional strategies for applications such as teaching creative, real world problem solving. In this pursuit, researchers have examined how knowledge is constructed, stored, and utilized. Schema theory, for example, has been posited as an explanation of how knowledge is represented and then applied. According to this theory, knowledge is constructed and stored as mental models or schemata. Schemata are the active representations of knowledge and general belief structures that support understanding, reasoning, and prediction. Experiences and knowledge inform the creation of schemata and new knowledge leads to the revision of previously formed schemata. Schema must then be activated from memory to be used or revised ( Ball, Ormerod, & Morely, 2004 ; Gentner, 2002 ). It is this active process that may be of particular interest to the field of technology education.
Understanding how engineering designers store and retrieve knowledge during the design process can be particularly beneficial to informing technology education. The retrieval of prior knowledge to solve engineering design problems is an important part of the design process. As evidenced in the following excerpt from a verbal protocol study by Ball, Ormerod, and Morely (2004) , a subject recalled prior knowledge, stating, “I’ve designed outdoor terminals before, so, straight away, I’m thinking about how this relates to my knowledge of what I’ve done before…” (p. 7). This association between the current challenge (in this example: designing a rental car automated terminal) and past experiences (designing outdoor terminals) is fertile grounds for study. These links differentiate novice and expert designers and provide a tool for connecting previous experiences with new and unfamiliar challenges.
The storage and retrieval of knowledge within the problem solving process is of particular importance to informing the integration of engineering design content and processes into technology education. Design problem solving is an integral component of engineering and by learning from experts, educational practices can be better developed to teach novice students design skills. This integration has been spurred by many researchers within technology education. For example, Lewis (2005) argued that design is “the single most important content area set forth in the standards, because it is a concept that situates the subject more completely within the domain of engineering” (p. 37). Engineering design, however, is not yet fully understood and educators disagree how and at what level design should be taught. Technology education researchers and practitioners are faced with the challenge of how to teach engineering design authentically. An avenue of exploring expert design cognition with the intent of informing technology education teaching practices is to understand how designers store and retrieve knowledge within the associative, similarity-based reasoning system.
Two systems have been theorized to exist within a person’s cognitive structure: (a) the symbolic system, and (b) the associative reasoning system, as shown in Figure 1. Schemata can be viewed as being stored and utilized in both of these cognitive systems. The symbolic or rule-based reasoning system is where abstract real world problems are reasoned about and solved through symbolic representations and rules. The associative, similarity-based reasoning system is where problems are reasoned about through associations or similarities with other known information. Although researchers disagree as to which system is dominant, this second system is significant because associative reasoning is viewed to be a fundamental part of expert design cognition ( Akin, 2001 ; Goldschmidt, 2001 ).
Figure 1. Graphic representation of the cognitive structure for reasoning through analogies.
Analogical reasoning is a function of the associative, similarity-based reasoning system, as shown in Figure 1. This type of reasoning is a method of activating stored schema based on the identification of connections, parallels, or similarities between, what are typically perceived as dissimilar items. Analogies serve as a type of scaffolding, where new information is anchored to existing schemata. Analogical reasoning is thus the use of schema analogues, or knowledge from previous experiences, to facilitate learning in a new situation ( Ball, et al., 2004 ; Cross, 1994 ). Analogies enable an individual’s symbolic ability or “the ability to pick out patterns, to identify recurrences of these patterns despite variation in the elements that compose them, to form concepts that abstract and reify these patterns, and to express these concepts in language” ( Holyoak, Gentner, and Kokinov, 2001 , p. 2). Researchers have discovered that analogical reasoning is often a fundamental cognitive tool for design problem solving. Available resources already stored in the mind as schemata are recruited to fortify the search for problem-solving strategies through analogies ( Goldschmidt, 2001 ).
Perhaps one of the most notable examples of design problem-solving through the use of analogies is the creation of Velcro®. According to the Velcro® Industries B.V.’s website, the inventor, George de Mestral’s walk in the woods led to the hook and loop fastener component of the design. Mestral noticed the “natural hook-like shape” of the cockleburs attached to his dog’s fur and his clothes. He recognized a parallel between the cockleburs attached to his fabric and the potential for a new design in mechanical fastening. To explore the potential of this new design, he analyzed a cocklebur under a microscope and then partnered with a fabric manufacturer to create a fabric system with characteristics similar to the cocklebur. He was able to envision the possibilities of creating a new design (Velcro) based on a naturally existing design (cocklebur) by drawing analogies between the two.
Structure mapping is a theory explaining analogical reasoning. Structure mapping theory posits that schema analogues can be viewed as being similar according to their relational structures or how they relate. In other words, an analogy is the identification of particular aspects of one item (referred to as the known or base domain), as being similar to certain aspects of another item (the unknown or target domain), as shown in Figure 2. The base domain and target domain are not similar on all accounts, but through structure mapping the relational structure of the base and target domains are found to be similar ( Gentner & Gentner, 1983 ). Structure mappings allow for the construction of new schema based on inferences and predictions. The inferences undergo a transformation bringing the two items close enough together to allow mapping and transfer from the base to the target ( Goldschmidt, 2001 ). Causality can then be inferred and causal mental models or schemata developed.
Figure 2. Graphic representation of the structure mapping process that explains analogical reasoning.
Similar to structure mapping, Holyoak and Thagard (1997) outlined the steps involved in learning through analogical reasoning, including; (a) the retrieval step, (b) the mapping step, (c) the inference step, and (d) the learning step. Moving from the target analog (base domain) to the source analog (target domain), analogies are accessed in the retrieval step when the learner is trying to reason about a new situation. During the mapping step, similarities or correspondences between the source and target are found. Inferences about the two domains are made during the inference step and then “a kind of abstraction of the commonalities shared by the source and target” (p. 35) is developed during the learning step.
Holyoak and Thagard further outlined a “multiconstraint theory” of analogical reasoning that explains how analogies are guided by three particular kinds of constraints: (a) similarity, (b) structure, and (c) purpose. The use of analogy is often guided by a similarity of concepts between the base and target domain. In addition, consistent structural parallels often exist between the roles in the base and target domains. Finally, analogical reasoning is typically guided by a purpose or a goal that the analogy is intended to achieve. According to Holyoak and Thagard, these constraints “function more like the various pressures that guide an architect engaged in creative design, with some forces in convergence, others in opposition, and their constant interplay pressing toward some satisfying compromise that is internally coherent” (p. 36).
Researchers have concluded that analogical reasoning can be categorized into two different forms. First, analogical reasoning can be used to understand the operation of a new device. Schema, or stored knowledge, of how a device operates is used to reason about how an analogous device might operate or understanding how to operate a device can be inferred from knowing how the larger system works ( Kieras & Bovair, 1984 ). Second, analogical reasoning uses schema, or knowledge already stored, to reason about, infer, and/or predict information to solve a problem. In other words, analogue schemata are used to compare what is already stored as schemata, to a new domain of knowledge (Schumacher & Czerwinski, 1992).
These two basic forms of analogical reasoning (understanding the operation of a device and problem solving) are also commonly found in the technology education classroom, although they may not be made explicit to the students. For example, in teaching a lesson on automation, teachers may include an activity during which students learn to program a robotic arm. A typical robotic arm is anthropomorphic in structure, meaning that it is analogous to the human arm. Students easily relate their shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers to the robot’s arm and end effectors. This analogy aids the students in learning to program a pick and place operation using a new technology that might otherwise seem foreign and unfamiliar to them. The ability to use analogical reasoning about how the device will perform like a human’s arm enables the students to develop schema about robotics.
In problem solving applications, students may be less aware of the use of analogical reasoning but can be made aware through instruction. The development of analogical reasoning can be an important tool in the development of students’ engineering design knowledge. For example, in presenting students with the challenge of designing a tower for a shake table earthquake simulation, teachers can prompt students to draw on their knowledge of geometric shapes. Many students have learned that triangulation leads to structural stability. During the design and building of this activity, students who consider the analogy between their understanding of triangulation and stability in the design of their tower may be able to reason through their design more easily. An optimization process emerges as students balance the need to conserve building materials in order to meet the goal of a tall structure, with the need for stability during the shake.
An important distinction should be made between metaphors, literal similarities, and types of analogies. According to Gentner and Jeziorski (1993) , metaphor can be viewed as a broad category encompassing analogies. However, Miller (1993) argued that in a broad way, “any expression of similarity or resemblance can be called an analogy” (p. 378). A way to distinguish between the two is to categorize metaphors as items compared from the same category and analogies as items compared from different categories ( Saha, 1988 ). The “grounds for a metaphor, therefore, can be formulated as relations of similitude that can be expressed as comparison statements” ( Miller, 1993 , p. 398). An analogy is perhaps a more creative comparison of less similar relations. An “analogy is a way of aligning and focusing on relational commonalities independently of the objects in which those relations are embedded” ( Gentner & Jeziorski, 1993 , p. 449).
Gentner and Gentner (1983) clarified the distinction between literal similarities and analogies by referring to how the items are structured as schema. Items are literally similar when the particular characteristics of the items are the same. Items are analogous when the relational structures are similar, but the particular characteristics of each item are not the same. Two different types of analogies can be distinguished as shown in Figure 3, surface feature analogies and generative analogies. Goldschmidt (2001) pointed out that analogies can have either structural or surface feature commonalities that are carried over to new items or situations. Items that are analogous based on their surface features, however, may not be analogous structurally or conceptually. For example, language or analogical terms can be borrowed from one domain as a convenient way of talking about another domain.
Generative analogies are the type of analogies that provide the ability to make inferences from the base domain to the target domain. These inferences can be made because the analogous relationship between the base and target domain is based on more than the surface features of each. The structure of each domain is similar enough conceptually to generate inferences from what is
Figure 3. Types of analogies.
known about the base domain. Not only inferences, but also predictions can be made based on analogies. In other words, analogies allow a person to go beyond the familiar and reason about the unfamiliar ( Collins & Gentner, 1987 ). Goldschmidt (2001) pointed out that inferences and predictions with generative analogies can be made because they are often not just identified but visualized. Individuals are able to imagine or “run” actions in their minds, such as causality, based on what is known about the base domain.
Literal similarities, metaphors, and surface feature and generative analogies may all be identified in the classroom. For example, commonly found in technology education classroom are various tools such as multimeters or handheld GPS units. School districts often purchase these tools over a span of a few years and thus classrooms may have multiple units of different models or brands. A teacher will typically provide a demonstration on one unit and expect the students to be able to see literal similarities and realize that each unit will have the same features while the physical appearance may vary drastically.
Metaphors are often used during instruction. Metaphors can serve as “linguistic tools for overcoming certain cognitive limitations” ( Sticht, 1993 , p. 622) by extending students’ active memory through language. A great example of using metaphors in technology education is in the teaching of machining patterns during a lesson on CNC milling. Students are typically more familiar with the use of a lawn mower than they care to be and this provides for a solid knowledge base from which to understand machining patterns. A facing, pocketing, or contouring operation can be compared to cutting grass with the lawn mower. Such concepts as depth of cut, finish passes, and method of cut such as: zig-zag, one way, and spiral lend themselves to comparison with lawn mowing activities. Students clearly understand that tall grass will required multiple depth cuts and/or slower traveling speeds, just as a rotating tool would break if presented with an excessive depth of cut and/or traverse speed.
Surface feature analogies rely primarily on terminology. During a lesson on laser technology, the light from a laser is analogous to a beam and hits a point on the wall or target. While a laser beam and a beam used in the construction industry are two very different concepts, they share some common surface features: they are both straight, with a relatively small cross-sectional area. While the laser beam illuminates what is described as a point, the target has a cross-sectional area that may be more appropriately termed a small circle (assuming the aperture is circular). A point is a theoretical concept, but in this case, it creates an analogy differentiating the laser beam from typical incandescent or florescent lighting that floods the room.
The use of generative analogies in the classroom is exemplified by Gentner (1981) . A student highlighted his or her understanding of electricity by employing a generative analogy, stating:
If you increase resistance in the circuit, the current slows down. Now that’s like a high—cars on a highway where you—if you notice as you close down a lane, you have cars moving along. Okay, as you go down into the thing, the cars move slower through that narrow point. (p. 1)
The student compared the flowing electricity to their knowledge of automobile traffic on a highway. Their ability to visualize and “run” a simulation of manipulating a variable in this system and predicting its effects on the system’s behavior is demonstrated. If cars slow for a restriction, then current must slow when resistance is encountered. As discussed, literal similarities, metaphors, and analogies are often used tools in the teaching of technology and can be furthered enhanced to better prepare students’ problem solving skills.
In their engineering text, Dym and Little (2004) promoted the use of similarities, metaphors, and analogies to encourage creative, divergent thinking in students. In particular they argued that analogies have the potential to be “very powerful tools in engineering design” (p. 103). For example, they compared the designs of scaffolding and angioplasty to indicate the ability of designers to stretch their knowledge to be able to solve complex design problems. An angioplasty stent’s intent and function is similar to scaffolding erected to support walls in mines as they are being built. A stent supports the walls of the artery as surgeons operate. This example makes clear to students that inspiration can be found in other designs whether they are directly similar or only similar in terms of form or function.
Expert analogical reasoning has been studied to understand how to better develop this cognitive tool in novices. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) stated that the ability to analogically reason is an important component in the development of expertise. They outlined five stages in the progression from novice to expert. This progression is characterized by performance based on the analytic, detached behavior of the novice, to the involved, experience-based behavior of an expert. One of the components Dreyfus and Dreyfus saw as a distinguishing mark of proficiency in performance was the ability to recognize new situations as similar to remembered situations (i.e., the ability to use analogies).
Other researchers have differentiated between the type of analogical reasoning used by experts and novices. Ball, et al. (2004) , for example, concluded that expert engineering designers use more schema-driven analogizing while novice engineering designers use more case-driven analogizing. Schema-driven analogizing is the application of abstract knowledge to familiar problem types, affording a design solution seemingly effortlessly. Ball, et al. concluded that experts develop numerous design problem schemata because they are exposed to and learn from many domain-specific problems. Experts develop a conceptual understanding of the underlying nature of domain-specific problems, which then enables them to recognize problem types. Experts not only engage in schema-driven analogizing, but also spontaneous analogizing. When an expert encounters a problem, an appropriate schema that is analogous to the problem type is automatically accessed. This schema usually indicates a straight-forward solution method based upon previous application of the solution to the analogous problem.
Novices, however, have not had the opportunity to develop a repertoire of analogous problem type schemata. They rely heavily on case-driven analogizing when solving design problems. Novices apply specific solution elements from prior design problems to current problems. Novices do not recognize problem types as do experts; instead they analogize according to the specific components of the problem-solution schema. Interestingly, Ball, et al. found that experts and novices alike use this method when experts encounter non-routine engineering design problems. When experts face a problem that cannot be spontaneously mapped to an analogous problem type and cue appropriate solution methods, they focus on developing surface level analogies between the target problem and similarly encountered cases.
Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a methodology that was originally developed in the realm of computer cognition, but as Kolodner (1997) discussed, it has been extended to explore human cognition as well. CBR has two central components; (a) the use of analogies to solve real-word problems, and (b) the use of computational modeling to derive hypothesis about cognition. Analogies in CBR typically reflect personally experienced situations called cases and include “a sought-after goal, a method for achieving the goal or solution to the problem and the results (outcome) of carrying out that method (solution), all of this described specifically” (p. 59). The intention is to provide cases so as to enable the development and use of analogical inferences to help solve real-world problems.
The representation of the problem has been found to be an important component in analogical reasoning in design problems. Akin (2001) , for example, found that analogical reasoning is based on how directly the given problem corresponds to the problem solver’s schemata. If the problem is ill-defined, the problem solver must continually re-structure the problem in order to search for an appropriate solution. These frequent shifts of problem representation can affect the use of analogical reasoning. Because experts seem to rely on problem types to invoke analogous problem schemata, an ill-defined problem, which does not fit into a recognized problem type, requires frequent restructuring or the use of other search strategies besides analogical reasoning in order to develop an adequate solution.
Another important component of analogical reasoning in design problems is creativity. As Perkins (1997) articulated, analogy is “the creature that carries people’s cognitive capacities across the desert of unworkable possibilities from the familiar to true innovations” (p. 524). Specifically, analogies can play an important role in conceptual change, which is a crucial aspect of creativity. Four analogical processes can be used to spur conceptual change: (a) highlighting, (b) projection of candidate inferences, (c) re-representation, and (d) restructuring ( Gentner, et al., 1997 ). Analogies focus attention on specific aspects of the base and target domains, highlighting relevant information. By projecting inferences, analogies aid in the development of knowledge within the target domain. Rerepresenting either or both the base or target domain to improve the analogy can further establish conceptual change. Finally, analogies can spur the restructuring of elements of the target domain to form a new explanation.
Researchers have examined the issues involved with the use of analogies in instructional practices within design. Although analogical terminology is already an often used instructional technique, as Gentner and Jeziorski (1993) pointed out, analogical reasoning is rarely formally taught to students. Typically, language is borrowed from one domain to talk about another usually more complex domain. Instructors seem to believe that students can learn concepts and operations in a new domain by connecting to similarities from a previously learned domain. Instructors teaching electricity, for example, often rely on analogies such as comparing similar features of water to electricity ( Gentner & Gentner, 1983 ).
However, as pointed out earlier, surface commonalities do not necessarily mean that the base and target domains are analogous structurally. Superficially similar problems may not have underlying similarities to where appropriate solutions can be inferred ( Ball, et al., 2004 ; Goldschmidt, 2001 ). Kempton (1986) , for example, found that many individuals’ analogies for thermostats were not structurally similar to how thermostats actually operate. Many analogized that their thermostat system operated like a valve. Although the valve analogy provided for correct functionality of the thermostat, the complete understanding of how thermostats operate would have required a total replacement of the analogue schema. Thus the reliance on analogical reasoning can be problematic for instructors. For example, schemata developed from experience can be resistant to change through instruction ( Gentner, 2002 ). Even when presented with conflicting information, individuals are likely to hold onto their existing schema. This persistence has been referred to as a cultural boundary. Isolated elements or terms may be incorporated into the existing schema, but the underlying schema will remain unchanged ( Kempton, 1986 ).
Halasz and Moran (1982) warned against using analogies to teach new learners computer systems because of these problems. They argued that analogies may actually hinder, not help, the development of a good understanding of the target domain because “analogical reasoning requires considerable work to sort out the relevant mappings and allowable inferences” (p. 385). Instead, they recommend using conceptual models, which can be shaped without the “baggage” of analogies. Conceptual models represent the underlying conceptual structures within a specific context, providing a sound basis for reasoning about the system. Although analogies provide a link to a learner’s prior knowledge, conceptual models increase the learner’s reasoning abilities because complexities of a system are reflected more so in a conceptual model than in an analogical model.
Other researchers, however, have argued that analogical reasoning can be a powerful instructional strategy because students already rely on analogical thinking to comprehend the world and solve problems. Goldschmidt (2001) , for example, declared that people can be trained to maximize the processing resources with which they are endowed. As Holyoak and Thagard (1997) pointed out, young children “before they enter school, without any specialized tutoring from their parents or elders, develop a capacity for analogical thinking” (p. 35). Based on this belief, students can then be taught to improve their analogical reasoning skills. Instructors may also utilize analogies to better teach abstract information. Analogies can be used to increase far learning transfer by bridging knowledge from familiar domains to abstract, unfamiliar domains. Bridging analogies is a type of scaffolding where new information is anchored to existing schema. By progressing in small steps, using analogies along the way, the learner gradually moves to another way of conceptualizing the concept or domain, and ultimately forms a new schema or revises an existing schema ( Gentner, 2002 ).
Analogical reasoning has been studied, however minimally ( Goldschmidt, 2001 ), in the hopes of informing the teaching of design problem solving. Thagard (1988) offered a series of questions that the problem solver can ask and answer to aid in analogical reasoning. Thagard argued that the identification and retrieval of an analogy “must be followed by an attempt to exploit the analogy to produce the desired result of analogical reasoning” (p. 108) within the context of problem solving. The questions Thagard provided include:
Analogical reasoning has also been formalized into a creative design method called synectics as discussed by Cross (1994) . Synectics is a group design method. Groups attempt to build, combine, and develop ideas toward a creative solution by using analogies to make the strange familiar. Synectics is similar to brainstorming; however, the group works toward a particular solution rather than generating a large number of ideas. As the group uses more and more analogies, a conceptualization of the problem is developed that guides the development of a solution. The group is encouraged to use particular types of analogies to help develop unusual, creative ideas. The following is a description of the different types of analogies used in synectics:
Direct analogies : are found by seeking a biological solution to a similar problem. For example, plant burs were used as analogy to design Velcro fastening.
Personal analogies : are used by designers when they imagine what it would be like to use themselves as the system or component that is being designed. For example, designers might ask questions like how would I operate if I were a washing machine?
Symbolic analogies : are poetic metaphors and similes that are used to relate aspects of one thing with aspects of another. For example, words like “head” and “claw” can be used to describe aspects of a hammer.
Fantasy analogies : are impossible wishes for things to be achieved in some magical way. Designers envision the ultimate goal, for example, making bumps in the road disappear beneath a car’s wheels ( Cross, 1994 ).
Analogies may be a useful tool to not only develop design skills, but teach abstract or complex concepts and build analogical reasoning skills, within a technology education setting. Opportunities to model and use analogical reasoning are abundant within technology education. A broader approach to using analogical reasoning in a technology education setting would be to first establish the base domain. For example, by first building a schema around a systems approach (input → process → output; and feedback), analogies can be used to understand a multitude of technical processes. The systems approach focuses on the structure of the system or how the components are connected to each other, the function of the components within the system, and the behavior of those components. By understanding the systems approach, students can better understand the causal interactions that occur between components or devices. An excellent example in technology education is the explanation of inter-modal transportation. There are many components to inter-modal transportation; however, with an understanding of systems thinking, students can more easily map the inputs (cargo), the processes (containerization), and the outputs (shipping, globalization, economic growth, etc.).
The use of analogies as proposed is subject to empirical evidence to support their effectiveness. Perhaps the most essential component to validate the use of analogies as an instructional strategy is to first understand how to assess student’s base domain knowledge. Effective analogical reasoning requires that the base domain knowledge is correct. As pointed out by Lewis (1999) , there is a need in technology education to examine questions pertaining to student’s conceptions and misconceptions of technological phenomenon in order to better inform teaching practices and improve learning. Lewis proposed parallel studies to those done in science examining student conceptions of such things as energy and thermodynamics, be completed in technology education.
Other research needs to be completed to examine the role of analogical reasoning in design and its implications for technology education. For example, studies that examine synectics in the classroom need to be completed. Synectics has been formalized as an expert design method, but how will novice students engage in this type of approach to design? More research also needs to be done to explore the effectiveness of using analogical reasoning in design. Is this an approach that should be taught to novices or one that develops naturally through experience? More thorough understanding needs to be uncovered about the “baggage” described by Halasz and Moran (1982) . Should analogizing not only be avoided, but actually be dissuaded as an approach to problem solving and design? Analogical reasoning is just one of many important elements in design cognition that, with more empirical research, can inform and improve technology education practices.
Akin, O. (2001). Variants in design cognition. In C. Eastman, M. McCraken, & W. Newstetter (Eds.), Knowing and learning to design: Cognition in design education. (pp. 105-124). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Press.
Ball, L. J., Ormerod, T. C., & Morely, N. J. (2004). Spontaneous analogising in engineering design: A comparative analysis of experts and novices. Design Studies, 25 , 495-508.
Casakin, H., & Goldschmidt G. (1999). Expertise and the use of visual analogy: Implications for design education. Design Studies, 20 , 153-175.
Collins, A., & Gentner D. (1987). How people construct mental models. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in though and language (pp. 243-265). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cross, N. (1994). Engineering design methods: Strategies for product design. (2 nd ed.) Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. New York: The Free Press.
Dym, C. L., & Little, P. (2004). Engineering design: A project based approach (Second ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Gentner, D. (1981, August). Generative analogies as mental models. Proceedings of the third annual conference of the cognitive science society. Berkley, California.
Gentner, D. (2002). Mental models, Psychology of. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Bates (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavior Sciences (pp. 9683-9687). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
Gentner, D., Brem, S., Ferguson, R., Wolff, P., Markman, A.B., Forbus, K. (1997). Analogy and creativity in the works of Johannes Kepler. In T. B. Ward, S. M. Smith, & J. Vaid (Eds.), Creative thought: An investigation of conceptual structures and processes. (pp. 403-460). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Gentner, D., & Gentner, D. R. (1983). Flowing waters or teeming crowds: Mental models of electricity. In D. Gentner & A. L. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 99-129). Hissdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gentner, D., & Jeziorski, M. (1993). The shift from metaphor to analogy in western science. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2 nd ed., pp. 447-480). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Goldschmidt, G. (2001). Visual analogy: A strategy for design reasoning and learning. In C. Eastman, M. McCracken, & W. Newstetter (Eds.), Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education (pp. 199-218). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
Halasz, F., & Moran, T. P. (1982). Analogy considered harmful. Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (pp. 383-386). New York: ACM.
Holyoak, K.J., Gentner, D., & Kokinov, B. N. (2001). Introduction: The place of analogy in cognition. In D. Gentner, K. J. Holyoak, & B. N. Kokinov (Eds.), The analogical mind: Perspectives from cognitive science (pp. 1-19). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Holyoak, K.J., & Thagard, P. (1997). The analogical mind. American Psychologist, 52 (1), 35-44.
International Technology Education Association. (2000). Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology . Reston, VA.
Kempton, W. (1986). Two theories of home heat control. Cognitive Science, 10 , 75-90.
Kieras, D. E., & Bovair, S. (1984). The role of a mental model in learning to operate a device. Cognitive Science, 8 , 255-273.
Kolodner, J. (1997). Educational implications of analogy: A view from casebased reasoning. American Psychologist, 52 (1), 57-66.
Lewis, T. (1999). Research in technology education. Journal of Technology Education, 10 (2), 41-56.
Lewis, T. (2005). Coming to terms with engineering design as content. Journal of Technology Education, 16 (2), 37-54.
Miller, G. A. (1993). Images and models, similes and metaphors. In. A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2 nd ed., pp. 357-400). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
National Academy of Engineering & National Research Council. (2002). Technically speaking: Why all Americans need to know more about technology. Washington: National Academy Press.
Oxman, R. (1990). Prior knowledge in design: A dynamic knowledge-based model of design and creativity. Design Studies, 11 , 17-28.
Perkins, D. N. (1997). Creativity’s camel: The role of analogy in invention. In T. B. Ward, S. M. Smith, & J. Vaid (Eds.), Creative thought: An investigation of conceptual structures and processes. (pp. 523-538). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Saha, P. K. (1988). Metaphorical style as message. In D. H. Helman (Ed.), Analogical reasoning: Perspectives of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and philosophy (pp. 41-61). Boston: Kluwer.
Sticht, T. G. (1993). Educational uses of metaphor. In. A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2 nd ed., pp. 621-632). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Thagard, P. (1988). Dimensions of analogy. In D. H. Helman (Ed.), Analogical reasoning: Perspectives of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and philosophy (pp. 105-124) Boston: Kluwer.
Velcro® Direct Online. (2006). History. Retrieved September 20, 2007, from http://www.velcro.com/about/history.html
Note : The url provided above returned invalid results.
Visit the homepage at:
Visser, W. (1996). Two functions of analogical reasoning in design: A cognitive-psychology approach. Design Studies, 17 , 417-434.
Jenny Daugherty ( firstname.lastname@example.org ) and Nathan Mentzer ( email@example.com ) are Doctoral Fellows affiliated with the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education ( www.ncete.org ) at the University of Illinois , Champaign-Urbana and Utah State University , respectively.
|
<urn:uuid:71d07acf-7e50-42d5-b491-616ae99fdec3>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v19n2/daugherty.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.920235
| 8,276
| 3.078125
| 3
|
When it opened in 1848, the Illinois and Michigan Canal was a hub of activity.
Boats took passengers up and down the canal, stopping at such places as Lockport, Joliet, Morris and LaSalle-Peru. As boatmen shouted from ship to shore, mules walked along the adjacent tow path, pulling barges and ferries loaded with such cargo as lumber, stone, iron ore, grain and coal.
Those were the days when the canal was the best way to get from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and on to the Mississippi. That era began fading in 1854 when industry opted for a new and faster transportation mode: railroads.
Now new insights about that period could emerge from a canal bed site in Morris. State and local historians and archeologists are excited about the recent rediscovery of the partial skeletons of seven 19th-Century wooden barges.
"On the Illinois and Michigan Canal, this is an unusual find," said Harold Hassen, the cultural resources coordinator for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The department oversees the canal from near Lemont to LaSalle-Peru.
"It is a unique experience for us (to study the barges). It adds another dimension for us to learn about the canal," said Hassen, who was an archeologist from 1956 to the late 1970s.
Last week, two employees of Fever River Research, a Springfield-based firm specializing in historical preservation and archeology, began tediously documenting the boats, which are 1 1/2 feet tall, 14 to 16 feet wide and 100 feet long.
In the next two weeks or so, the employees will also make detailed drawings and try to determine how the boats were constructed. They will also search for cargo that could be scattered throughout a 125-feet-wide-by-400-feet-long section in Morris.
"It is important (to document the barges)," said Lee Hanson, executive director of the I & M Canal National Heritage Corridor Commission. "We don't have much in terms of details about the early boats."
Canal traffic dropped slowly from the 1850s through the 1870 and 80s, Hanson said. Few boats were plying the canal by 1910 and, in recent years, water levels up and down the canal dropped to a few feet, just enough to float canoes, he said.
This is the second time that the boats have become visible. The first time was back in 1978. State officials, Hassen said, ordered an aerial survey, which showed the outline of the boats. Floyd Mansberger, the Springfield man who is leading the documentation effort, consulted those photos as he prepared for the job.
This year, the boats emerged in August, the result of a disaster: the summer floods. The flooding caused a spillway dam on the DuPage River to collapse, sending an overhead bridge crashing down with it. That bridge blocked waters that flow into the canal, causing it to dry up.
Though the boats are now exposed to the environment, they are not in so much danger that they must be removed, Hassen said. Instead, the boats were probably best protected when they were submerged, he said.
After the barges are documented, the department will make a recommendation about their future to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Hassen said. The barges could be eligible for placement on the National Register of Historic Places, a determination that can be made after the documentation is finished, he added.
In the interim, discovery of the boats started a debate about their future, a decision that the Department of Natural Resources will make. If the boats are raised, they would have to be placed into a similar environment to prevent deterioration, Hassen said. Though some people have called for displaying the boats, finding an appropriate place would be difficult, he said.
Mansberger said the chances of raising the barges intact are limited. Only "bits and pieces" could be raised, he said.
"They are best protected if they are in the ground," said Hanson. "I would prefer leaving them alone."
|
<urn:uuid:b62d2b1a-d585-4f81-b9db-2c3960ce835a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-11-26/news/9611260091_1_barges-boats-lake-michigan
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971425
| 837
| 3.140625
| 3
|
FARWELL, TX (HANSFORD COUNTY)
FARWELL, TEXAS (Hansford County). Farwell, in the center of Hansford County about three miles east of what later became Gruver, was established in 1880 by the Canott family of Illinois and was the first town in the county. Water was supplied to the settlement by a hand-dug well 200 feet deep. Like Farwell in Parmer County, the Hansford County community was named for John V. Farwell, a Chicago merchant and a principal in the Capitol Syndicate, which built the present Capitol building in Austin. The county's first newspaper, the Farwell Graphic, was established in Farwell, which at one time also had a livery stable, store, hotel, saloon, and butcher shop. A post office was established there in 1887 but was moved to Hansford in 1894. Farwell rapidly fell into oblivion after 1889, when it lost a county seat election to Hansford.
Image Use Disclaimer
All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, H. Allen Anderson, "Farwell, TX (Hansford County)," accessed June 29, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvf62.
Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
|
<urn:uuid:1f8644c3-6539-421a-9701-0ccf475cb1e5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvf62
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954001
| 451
| 2.53125
| 3
|
It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Tetryonic theory is founded on the equilateral geometry of Planck energy quanta,
where the square quantum numbers of Physics are in fact equilateral geometries. These h quanta combine to create a 'fabric' of
mass-Energy over the geometric framework that Charge interaction creates and the number of h quanta per charge fascia is what gives
us the de Broglie, Compton frequencies, momenta etc of Matter itself. mass-Energies are 2D planar EM fields and Matter is a 3D
standing-wave geometry made up up [n]pi square number Planck mass-Energy geometries. --ABRAHAM
Boskovic is famous for his atomic theory and made many important contributions to astronomy. including the first geometric precedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon.
He also proposed that attractive Gravitational fields could be explained as diminished interactive EM fields. In 1745 Boskovic published "De Viribus Vivis" in wihch he tried to find a middle way between Isaac Newton's gravitational theory and Gottfried Leibniz's metaphysical
theory of the monad-point. --ABRAHAM
Originally posted by Thought Provoker
reply to post by subtleperspective
I think it possible that... well, black holes "evaporate." It's like the matter falls through the singularity and "goes away." This caused Hawking's "Information Paradox" that confused everyone for years. He explained it one way; this could explain it another: if the matter is converted to energy as it passes through the singularity, that energy could be dispersed into some kind of sub-dimensional "power grid" that distributes the energy evenly over all of space-time. Add up all the matter being converted by the evaporation of every black hole in the universe. Probably pretty big.
But I'm also a Christian (non-denominational). I don't pretend to know what God is, but he too could be feeding us all that energy, like underground irrigation.
Whatever the source of the vacuum energy, it's there. It's real. Perhaps we'll find out one day... but it shouldn't get in the way of understanding and controlling it as Tesla predicted we would someday.
Originally posted by Thought Provoker
reply to post by kwakakev
As in, how like charges repel and opposites attract? Hmm. Lightning... the electron charges go from the ground up... pulled along a conductor towards the lack of electrons up above... by golly, that might be a different force, unless it's "in disguise," like magnetism. What imbalance is it that causes electrons to always move towards the more-positive side in a conductor? The force of the electrons in the power source, pushing them, repelling them rather. Least resistance means, if there's a hole for them in the opposite direction from whence they're being pushed, they'll go into that hole. And on and on, until it can't move any more. Lightning isn't pulled into the sky by the clouds; lightning is pushed into the air through whatever water drops and air gaps can conduct electricity. Wow; I guess everything is the opposite of what we think.
And it must be like magnetism, operating over small (single-atom) distances, via valence shells. Electrons must have some special shape, or property, that "shields the wind" in a slightly different way, to cause an effect that only pushes electrons. It's like... a wind within the wind, a wind that ignores everything but charged particles. Maybe a "positive" particle is just "less negative." Less energized. And there's not really any such thing as a "positive charge," like how shadows are the absence of a substance rather than a distinct substance of their own. Magnetism, gravity, and electricity; the same mechanism, but acting differently on different things as well as at different scales...
Thank you very much. That never would've occurred to me.
|
<urn:uuid:baa6ce5d-41d6-497e-bc91-3bc0c0da42e9>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread919381/pg11
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94606
| 918
| 3.046875
| 3
|
Consuming increasing doses of peanut flour can help children build up a tolerance, study claims
Asthma & Allergies
It’s all about dogs, dust and microbes.
Moms pass on protective immunity to their children, and the ability to fight allergies is no exception.
If I kiss a boy who’s eaten nuts, I could die.
Two of Emily Cunningham’s three children have food allergies. And protecting her kids is taking toll on the family budget.
Allergies are certainly the result of both genetic and environmental factors, but there is fresh evidence to suggest that at least one major genetic aberration could be behind everything from hay fever to food allergies to asthma.
Half of children with asthma will continue to suffer from the respiratory disorder as adults, and a new genetic test could reveal who remains at risk past childhood.
A promising new drug for treating asthma could not only reduce asthma symptoms but also improve lung function in patients, according to a new study.
Sneezing and wheezing can make children feel miserable, and that discomfort can hamper how well they do in school.
With pollen and other spring allergens in the air, researchers investigated whether place of birth affected the risk of developing allergies, and the answer turns out to be — yes.
Almost every toddler will sniffle through a cold by the time they are three, but if they wheeze while they’re sick, they may be at higher risk of developing asthma.
|
<urn:uuid:bbbd23df-f7ca-4746-836f-11c70d3cff88>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/asthma-allergies/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.944899
| 306
| 2.921875
| 3
|
Though Druidism, with all its fame and prestige, had now passed away, yet the spirit of it survived in its order of Bards who, now scattered throughout Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and many parts of Britain, became wandering minstrels and sole depositories of Druidic philosophy and learning. There are clear evidences of their existence in all these countries. They were treated with the utmost respect and exempted from taxes and military service, and reverenced as the sole survivors of an age of freedom and liberty, the traditions of which are still cherished in the heart of every true Celt, for they gave poetic expression to the religious and national sentiments of the people which have never become entirely extinguished. It was, however, chiefly in Wales that Bardism attained its highest development and continued to exert a powerful influence even after the introduction of Christianity into that country. This was also the case through the middle ages, and after the conquest of Wales.
At stated intervals great festivals or Eisteddfodaw were held at which the most famous bards from various districts met and contended in song, the umpires being generally the most learned of the princes and nobles. To this day, these festivals are celebrated not only in Wales but in America, Australia, New Zealand and wherever Welshmen abound, who still cherish and retain many of the Druidic traditions, apothegms, symbols and emblems. In Brittany and other parts of France still exist ancient customs and superstitions of Druid origin which have utterly repelled the eradicating influence both of the Catholic and protestant clergy. Through these Bards has been handed down what knowledge we possess of the theology and philosophy of the ancient Druids. The Barddas one of the great occult books preserved in the bardic college in Glamorgan has been published, and contains a vein of teaching and thought clearly which may certainly be regarded as of Druidic origin. Editorial exigencies preclude us from pointing out at great length the many similarities and interesting analogies and correspondences with the religions and philosophy of the East which are presented in the above-named work. To do this in an adequate and satisfactory manner would swell our remarks into a volume, and we therefore most reluctantly limit ourselves to giving short extracts in which are expressed some of the chief teachings of the Druids and a translation of The Circles of Existence which we trust may not prove devoid of interest to the student and general reader. For the better understanding of them we would observe that the Bardic theology is expressed in tercets or verses consisting of three lines, the number three being held in great esteem by the ancient Druids.
THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
Three are the Circles of Being.
Cyleh y Ceugant — The Circle of Space.
Cyleh y Abred — The Circle of Evolutions.
Cyleh y Gwynfyd — The Circle of Happiness.
Three are the successive states of animated beings.
The state of existence in Annouin,
The state of liberty in Abred,
The state of happiness in Gwynfyd.
Three are the phases of existence:
Commencement in the Abyss (Annou-for).
Transmigration in Abred.
Completion and perfection in Gwynfyd.
As supplementary and forming a commentary on these circles, we give the following extracts — Souls when purified ascend to still higher spheres from whence they can no more descend. Souls that are sullied with earthly impurities are refined by repeated changes (incarnations) and probations till the last stain of evil is worn away and they are ultimately ripened for immortal bliss in a higher sphere — the abode of the Blest — of the Sages — of the Friends of Humanity. With respect to the creation of the Universe we learn that this grand event took place "by the voice of the Divine energy, that is, by its melodious sweetness, which was scarcely heard when, lo! dead matter gleamed into life, and the non-entity which had neither place nor existence flashed like lightning into elementation, and rejoiced into life and the congealed, motionless shiver warmed into living existence, the destitute nothing rejoiced into being a thousand times more quickly than the lightning reaches its home." One of the Masters being asked, with what material did God make all corporeal things endowed with life? replies, "With the particles of light, which are the smallest of all small things, and yet one particle of light is the greatest of all great things, being no less material for all materiality that can be understood and perceived as within the grasp of the power of God. And in every particle there is a place wholly commensurate with God; for there is not and cannot be less than God in every particle of light, and God in every particle; nevertheless, God is only one in number. On that account every light is one, and nothing is one imperfect co-existence but what cannot be two, when in or out of itself."
How were animation and life obtained? "From God and in God they were found; that is from the fundamental and absolute life; that is from God uniting himself to the dead, or earthliness; hence motion and mind, that is, soul. And every animation and soul are from God, and their existence is in God, both their pre-existence and derived existence; for there is no preexistence except in God, no coexistence except in God, and no derived existence except in God and from God." (1) With reference to the evolution of men we give the following: "It is necessary that every living and animate being should traverse the circle of Abred from the depth Aunwn, that is, the extreme limit of what is low in every existence endowed with life, and they shall ascend higher and higher in the order of gradation or life, until they become man, and then there can be an end to the life in Abred, by union with goodness."
"But no man at death shall go to Gwynfyd (Nirvana) except he who shall attach himself in life, whilst a man, to goodness and godliness. The man who does not thus attach himself in godliness shall fall in Abred to a corresponding form and species of existence of the same nature as himself, whence he shall return to the state of man as before. And then according as his attachment be either to godliness or ungodliness, shall he ascend to Gwynfyd (Nirvana), or fall in Abred when he dies. And thus shall he fall for ever, until he seeks godliness, and attaches himself to it, when there will be an end to the Abred of necessity and to every necessary suffering of evil and death."
THE CIRCLE OF ABRED (EVOLUTION).
Three necessary things are there in the circle of Abred, — the primordial origin of life, the protoplasm of all things, mortality and death.
Three things shared by every animated being whilst in Abred, Divine aid without which there could be no consciousness, the privilege of sharing in divine love, and harmonious action with the Divine in order to attain the end and object of their destiny.
Three necessary causes operate in the circle of Abred, that of the development of the bodily structure of every animated being, that of the attainment of universal knowledge, also that of moral growth in order to triumph over the spirit of evil (Cythraul) and obtain self-deliverance from evil (Droug) for without these there could be no progress.
Three essentials are there in order to obtain perfect knowledge, reincarnations in Abred, in Gwynfyd and reminiscence of past experiences.
Three are the things inevitable in Abred, the transgression of law (natural and spiritual), deliverance by death from Droug and Cythraul, growth of spiritual life.
Three are the essentials to man's triumph over evil, — suffering, calm endurance of change, — liberty of choosing, by which he can determine his own destiny.
Three are the alternatives offered to man, Abred and Gwynfyd (heaven and hell) necessity and liberty, — good and evil, all in equal balance, man being able to attach himself to one or the other.
By three things man falls under the necessity of Abred; ceasing to strive after knowledge, refusing and resisting good — preferring the evil, in consequence of these he descends in Abred to the place for which he qualifies himself and begins again his pilgrimage through the circle of evolutions.
Three principal things to be acquired in the stage of humanity — knowledge — love — and moral power. These cannot be acquired anterior to the human stage but through the exercise of liberty and free choice. They are the three victories. They begin with humanity and attend it through all the cycles of the ages. Three are the privileges incident to humanity — the adjusting of evil and good, giving rise to comparison — liberty of choice giving rise to judgment and preference — increase of moral power. These are necessary in the working out and accomplishment of human destiny.
THE CIRCLE OF GWYNFYD. — (HAPPINESS).
Three are the principal blessings in the circle of Gwynfyd, — freedom from evil, freedom from care, freedom from death.
Three things attainable by man in the circle of Gwynfyd, his primordial genius, — his primordial love and memory of past incarnations without which he cannot attain to perfect happiness.
Three are the Divine gifts to man, — a life complete in itself — an individuality absolutely distinct, — and natal genius. These constitute the personality of every animated being.
Three are essentials to universal knowledge — transmigration through the stages of being — the memory of each incarnation and its experience — the power of passing at will into previous states for the enlargement of knowledge and experience and these are attainable in the circle of Gwynfyd.
Three are the things of endless growth; fire or light, — intelligence or truth, — spirit or life; the ultimate result of which is the rule over all things when the circle of Abred (evolution) will terminate.
Three are the things continually decreasing, darkness, error and death.
Three are the things which ever become stronger, Love, Knowledge and Justice.
Three are the things which daily become weaker, Hate, Injustice, and Ignorance.
Three are the beatitudes in Gwynfyd, the reciprocal sharing of benefits, — the willing recognition and ready acknowledgment of individual genius and Universal Brotherhood based upon the love of God. Three are the prerogatives of the Divine, to be self infinite, to become finite in the finite and unification with all the various states of existence in the circle of Gwynfyd.
From this outline of Druidic teaching we learn: that in those remote ages, the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma, were understood and grasped with that clearness of apprehension so as to make them facts of the Universe. Its moral teachings were pure and healthy, inculcating chastity in all the relationships of life, the infringement of which was visited with the punishment of death. Druidism throughout its whole career kept itself perfectly pure and un-contaminated from those vices and phallic impurities which have so shamefully degraded most of the great religions of the world ancient and modern.
1. Barddas, p. 257. (return to text)
Universal BrotherhoodTHEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS ONLINE
|
<urn:uuid:bbabbfb3-2f43-4547-933a-1fec4e944258>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/ub/v13n05p282_the-ancient-druids-their-history-and-religion.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.955096
| 2,393
| 3
| 3
|
History has seen some monstrous eruptions of volcanoes, from Mount Pinatubo's weather-cooling burp to the explosion of Mt. Tambora, one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago.
The power of such eruptions is measured using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) a classification system developed in the 1980 that's somewhat akin to the magnitude scale for earthquakes. The scale goes from 1 to 8, and each succeeding VEI is 10 times greater than the last.
There haven't been any VEI-8 volcanoes in the last 10,000 years, but human history has seen some powerful and devastating eruptions. Because it's extremely difficult for scientists to be able to rank the strength of eruptions in the same VEI category, here we present the 10 most powerful volcanoes within the last 4,000 years (within human records) first in order of strength, then within each category, in chronological order.
But let's start with a supervolcano eruption surprisingly close to home, registering a magnitude-8, from our distant past (scroll up and hit the "Next" button).
The entire Yellowstone National Park is an active volcano rumbling beneath visitors' feet. And it has erupted with magnificent strength: Three magnitude-8 eruptions rocked the area as far back as 2.1 million years ago, again 1.2 million years ago and most recently 640,000 years ago. "Together, the three catastrophic eruptions expelled enough ash and lava to fill the Grand Canyon," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In fact, scientists discovered a humongous blob of magma stored beneath Yellowstone, a blob that if released could fill the Grand Canyon 11 times over, the researchers reported on April 23, 2013, in the journal Science.
The latest of the trio of supervolcano eruptions created the park's huge crater, measuring 30 by 45 miles across (48 by 72 kilometers).
The chance of such a supervolcano eruption happening today is about one in 700,000 every year, Robert Smith, a seismologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, told Live Science previously.
Next Up: Largest eruption in history
This peak was the site of South America's largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The explosion sent mudflows as far as the Pacific Ocean, 75 miles (120 km) away, and appears to have affected the global climate. The summers following the 1600 eruption were some of the coldest in 500 years. Ash from the explosion buried a 20-square-mile (50-square-km) area to the mountain's west, which remains blanketed to this day.
Although Huaynaputina, in Peru, is a lofty 16,000 feet (4,850 meters), it's somewhat sneaky as volcanoes go. It stands along the edge of a deep canyon, and its peak doesn't have the dramatic silhouette often associated with volcanoes.
The 1600 cataclysm damaged the nearby cities of Arequipa and Moquengua, which only fully recovered more than a century later.
Next Up: The infamous Krakatoa
The rumblings that preceded the final eruption of Krakatoa (also spelled Krakatau) in the weeks and months of the summer of 1883 finally climaxed with a massive explosion on April 26-27. The explosive eruption of this stratovolcano, situated along a volcanic island arc at the subduction zone of the Indo-Australian plate, ejected huge amounts of rock, ash and pumice and was heard thousands of miles away.
The explosion also created a tsunami, whose maximum wave heights reached 140 feet (40 meters) and killed about 34,000 people. Tidal gauges more than 7,000 miles (11,000 km) away on the Arabian Peninsula even registered the increase in wave heights.
While the island that once hosted Krakatoa was completely destroyed in the eruption, new eruptions beginning in December 1927 built the Anak Krakatau ("Child of Krakatau") cone in the center of the caldera produced by the 1883 eruption. Anak Krakatau sporadically comes to life, building a new island in the shadow of its parent.
Next: A huge and recent one . . .
The Santa Maria eruption in 1902 was one of the largest eruptions of the 20th century. The violent explosion in Guatemala came after the volcano had remained silent for roughly 500 years, and left a large crater, nearly a mile (1.5 km) across, on the mountain's southwest flank.
The symmetrical, tree-covered volcano is part of a chain of stratovolcanoes that rises along Guatemala's Pacific coastal plain. It has experienced continuous activity since its last blast, a VEI 3, which occurred in 1922. In 1929, Santa Maria spewed forth a a pyroclastic flow (a fast-moving wall of scalding gas and pulverized rock), which claimed hundreds of lives and may have killed as many as 5,000 people.
Next: The largest of the 20th Century
The eruption of Novarupta one of a chain of volcanoes on the Alaska Peninsula, part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, was the largest volcanic blast of the 20th century. The powerful eruption sent 3 cubic miles (12.5 cubic km) of magma and ash into the air, which fell to cover an area of 3,000 square miles (7,800 square km) in ash more than a foot deep.
Next: When Pinatubo cooled the world
A stratovolcano located in a chain of volcanoes in Luzon, Philippines, created along a subduction zone, the cataclysmic eruption of Pinatubo was a classic explosive eruption.
The eruption ejected more than 1 cubic mile (5 cubic kilometers) of material into the air and created a column of ash that rose up 22 miles (35 km) in the atmosphere. Ash fell across the countryside, even piling up so much that some roofs collapsed under the weight.
The blast also spewed millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and other particles into the air, which were spread around the world by air currents and caused global temperatures to drop by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius) over the course of the following year.
Next: Huge, and still active
The 257-square-mile (665-square-km) volcanic island, part of the Republic of Vanuatu, a tiny nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, witnessed one of the most impressive eruptions in history, one that sent a wave of scalding ash and dust down the mountain and formed a caldera 7.5 miles (12 km) wide.
The volcano has continued to be one of the most active in the world. It has erupted close to 50 times since 1774, and has proved a dangerous neighbor for the local population. In 1894, six people were killed by volcanic bombs and four people were overtaken by lava flows, and in 1979, acid rainfall caused by the volcano burned some inhabitants.
Next: Mayan city destroyer
Although this mountain in central El Salvador, just a few miles east of the capital city San Salvador, has experienced only two eruptions in its history, the first known eruption was a doozy. It blanketed much of central and western El Salvador with pumice and ash, and destroyed early Mayan cities, forcing inhabitants to flee.
Trade routes were disrupted, and the centers of Mayan civilization shifted from the highland areas of El Salvador to lowland areas to the north and in Guatemala.
The summit's caldera is now home to one of El Salvador's largest lakes.
Next: Strongest explosion witnessed by humans?
Geologists think that the Aegean Islands volcano Thera explodedwith the energy of several hundred atomic bombs in a fraction of a second. Though there are no written records of the eruption, geologists think it could be the strongest explosion ever witnessed.
The island that hosted the volcano, Santorini (part of an archipelago of volcanic islands in Greece), had been home to members of the Minoan civilization, though there are some indications that the inhabitants of the island suspected the volcano was going to blow its top and evacuated. But though those residents might have escaped, there is cause to speculate that the volcano severely disrupted the culture, with tsunamis and temperature declines caused by the massive amounts of sulfur dioxide it spewed into the atmosphere that altered the climate.
Next: The making of a tourist destination
Also known as the Baitoushan Volcano, the eruption spewed volcanic material as far away as northern Japan, a distance of approximately 750 miles (1,200 kilometers). The eruption also created a large caldera nearly 3 miles (4.5 km) across and a half-mile (nearly 1 km) deep at the mountain's summit. It is now filled with the waters of Lake Tianchi, or Sky Lake, a popular tourist destination both for its natural beauty and alleged sightings of unidentified creatures living in its depths.
Located on the border of China and North Korea, the mountain last erupted in 1702, and geologists consider it to be dormant. Gas emissions were reported from the summit and nearby hot springs in 1994, but no evidence of renewed activity of the volcano was observed.
Lastly: The mighty Tambora
The explosion of Mount Tambora is the largest ever recorded by humans, ranking a 7 (or "super-colossal") on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the second-highest rating in the index. The volcano, which is still active, is one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago.
The eruption reached its peak in April 1815, when it exploded so loudly that it was heard on Sumatra Island, more than 1,200 miles (1,930 km) away. The death toll from the eruption was estimated at 71,000 people, and clouds of heavy ash descended on many far-away islands.
|
<urn:uuid:db967b53-84c9-4ad9-b35d-c7a9b5bd5f12>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.livescience.com/30507-volcanoes-biggest-history.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954518
| 2,078
| 3.96875
| 4
|
Definitions for calculatorˈkæl kyəˌleɪ tər
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word calculator
calculator, reckoner, figurer, estimator, computer(noun)
an expert at calculation (or at operating calculating machines)
calculator, calculating machine(noun)
a small machine that is used for mathematical calculations
A mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations.
A person who performs mathematical calculation
A person who calculates (in the sense of scheming).
A set of mathematical tables.
one who computes or reckons: one who estimates or considers the force and effect of causes, with a view to form a correct estimate of the effects
Origin: [L.: cf. F. calculateur.]
An electronic calculator is a small, portable, often inexpensive electronic device used to perform both basic and complex operations of arithmetic. The first solid state electronic calculator was created in the 1960s, building on the extensive history of tools such as the abacus, developed around 2000 BC; and the mechanical calculator, developed in the 17th century. It was developed in parallel with the analog computers of the day. Pocket sized devices became available in the 1970s, especially after the invention of the microprocessor developed by Intel for the Japanese calculator company Busicom. Modern electronic calculators vary from cheap, give-away, credit-card sized models to sturdy desktop models with built-in printers. They became popular in the mid-1970s as integrated circuits made their size and cost small. By the end of that decade, calculator prices had reduced to a point where a basic calculator was affordable to most and they became common in schools. Computer operating systems as far back as early Unix have included interactive calculator programs such as dc and hoc, and calculator functions are included in almost all PDA-type devices.
The New Hacker's Dictionary
Syn. for bitty box.
British National Corpus
Written Corpus Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'calculator' in Written Corpus Frequency: #3772
The numerical value of calculator in Chaldean Numerology is: 6
The numerical value of calculator in Pythagorean Numerology is: 7
Sample Sentences & Example Usage
Generally, the more questions asked by a net price calculator, the more accurate the results.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1
They wanted the same sort of deal as Mercedes and some money. So we tried to work it out. We got a calculator and worked out what nine years would be, what we've done for them is not anything that we need to do, or had to, but we've done it to try and be helpful and keep Renault in Formula One. Our agreement is with Renault and not with Lotus.
Images & Illustrations of calculator
Translations for calculator
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- آلة حاسبةArabic
- сметачна машина, изчислител, калкулаторBulgarian
- calculadoraCatalan, Valencian
- kalkulátor, kalkulačkaCzech
- Rechner, TaschenrechnerGerman
- κομπιουτεράκι, αριθμομηχανήGreek
- calculador, calculadoraSpanish
- kalkulaator, taskuarvutiEstonian
- ماشین حسابPersian
- laskuri, taulukko, laskija, laskin, laskelmoija, laskukoneFinnish
- calculette, calculatriceFrench
- bûsrekkenmasine, rekkenmasineWestern Frisian
- àireamhairScottish Gaelic
- טבלת חישובים, מחשבון, מונהHebrew
- mesin hitung, kalkulatorIndonesian
- calcolatrice, calcolatoreItalian
- 計算機, 計算者, 電卓, 計算表Japanese
- 계산기, 計算機Korean
- skaičiuotuvas, kalkuliatoriusLithuanian
- дигитрон, сметач, калкулаторMacedonian
- mesin kira, kalkulatorMalay
- calculator, berekenaar, rekentoestel, planner, zakrekenmachine, rekenmachineDutch
- calculadora, calculistaPortuguese
- chintader, calculatour, quintader, calculader, calculaturRomansh
- calculator, tabele, mașină de calculat, computere, calculatoare, computerRomanian
- таблица, расчётчик, таблицы расчётов, калькулятор, арифмометр, вычислительная машина, счётчик, счётная машинаRussian
- računar, рачунар, računalo, рачуналоSerbo-Croatian
- računalo, kalkulatorSlovene
- räknare, miniräknare, kalkylatorSwedish
- hesap makinesiTurkish
- máy tính cầm tayVietnamese
Get even more translations for calculator »
Find a translation for the calculator definition in other languages:
Select another language:
|
<urn:uuid:1eb48aa0-bb7a-475d-90c4-d96ffd900189>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.definitions.net/definition/calculator
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.767466
| 1,486
| 3.265625
| 3
|
The importance of science findings to resource management, and the high levels of interest in science findings from the Andrews Experimental Forest, led to the development of the Cascade Center for Ecosystem Management in 1991. The Cascade Center is a program of activities designed to answer management questions through application of scientific methods, test the application of new science concepts and findings in operational projects, and share results from science and management studies with interested individuals.
Identification of the research-management partnership took on the titles of Central Cascades Adaptive Management Area through the Northwest Forest Plan (1994) and then the Central Cascades Adaptive Management Partnership (2004). The sustaining feature of this research-management partnership rooted in the Andrews Forest is its long-term applied studies and cooperative communications programs, including providing forum for sharing information generated within the program and elsewhere.
Outreach activities employ a variety of formats and media including printed materials, workshops, a website, and field tours.
Visit the Central Cascades Adaptive Management Partnership website for more information, or contact the Andrews Forest Director.
|
<urn:uuid:ada00e76-824d-408d-9b82-617cdb582f8b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/lter/edu/rms.cfm?topnav=103
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.897527
| 213
| 3.109375
| 3
|
The green, gelatinous part of a turtle, highly regarded by gourmets.
- However, despite protections, it continues to be hunted for its distinctive green fat and muscle, used in soups and steaks, and its eggs.
- The name of this turtle derives from its green fat, not its external coloration.
For editors and proofreaders
Syllabification: green fat
Definition of green fat in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
|
<urn:uuid:da4a2308-e204-4eb5-b844-d95f03c21640>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/green-fat
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00177-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.917562
| 120
| 2.59375
| 3
|
Cervical (Neck) Implants used in Spine Surgery
Cervical implants are devices surgeons use to decompress and stabilize the spine. These devices are implanted either from the front (anterior) of the spine, or from the back (posterior). Information about anterior implants begins below.
The goals of cervical spine surgery include:
1. Reduce pressure on the nerve(s) by decompression (i.e., surgically removing tissues pushing on a nerve).
2. Stabilize the cervical spine by fusing 2 or more cervical vertebrae together.
Anterior Cervical Approach Implants
Interbody Cages or Spacers
Cages and spacers are placed between 2 vertebrae. Their purpose is to:
1. Maintain space between vertebrae (if the space gets too narrow, nerve roots can be pinched).
2. Preserve spinal alignment (e.g., a healthy neck has a specific curve; a spacer can help restore this curve) and/ or,
3. Promote spinal fusion (i.e., join (fuse) 2 or more vertebrae together).
Cages come in different shapes and sizes; some are cylinder-shaped and others box-shaped. Cages are placed (fit) into the spine between vertebrae. Usually, cages are made from bone, metal, plastic, or carbon fiber. Bone chips (autograft, allograft, other bone graft substitutes, or other bone growth stimulating substances (e.g., demineralized bone matrix) may be packed into the cage. During the months after surgery, the hope is the cage will allow (enhance) fusion between the vertebrae below and above. Fusion increases spinal stability.
Spacers are solid devices and bone cannot be packed inside. A spacer is used to help restore or correct spinal alignment.
Anterior Cervical Plates are attached to the front of 2 or more vertebrae. Plates help to:
1. Increase cervical spine stability immediately after surgery.
2. Stabilize the cervical spine during healing.
3. Increase the chances for a successful solid fusion.
4. Help reduce the time the patient may need to wear a cervical collar after surgery.
Plates are made with screw holes through which screws are placed into the adjacent (to be fused) vertebral bodies to anchor the plates into proper position. Both plates and screws come in different designs and sizes. Most plates are made from metal (mainly titanium); some are made from plastics. Certain newer plates are made from composite materials that dissolve after fusion occurs. Some plate designs are self-compressing to help promote spinal fusion.
Artificial Cervical Discs: Spine surgeons around the world are interested in cervical artificial discs to treat degenerative disease. It is believed maintaining motion between vertebrae is better than spinal fusion. Early studies report cervical artificial discs may help slow down, or prevent, adjacent level disc degeneration. The procedure is called disc arthroplasty. Artificial discs are made from various materials. Some designs are all metal and others metal and plastic composites. There are a number of on-going, and some completed, FDA trials of artificial discs underway in the United States. Devices are being cleared for sale and implantation as the studies demonstrate safety and efficacy compared to fusion in selected cases.
If your surgeon recommends cervical surgery, you can be encouraged that cervical decompression and stabilization procedures are some of the most successful operations spine surgeons perform today. Patients generally have rapid recovery and quickly return to activities of daily living with marked improvement of their symptoms.
|
<urn:uuid:eb74781d-b85a-4f9d-8bc0-d4e230b5cea0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.spineuniverse.com/exams-tests/devices/cervical-neck-implants-used-spine-surgery
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.925618
| 750
| 3.09375
| 3
|
IDS Bulletin, Feb 21, 2012
Why not Basics for All? Scopes and Challenges of Community-led Total Sanitation
The ‘Some for All’ dictum may work well for the water sector but is not appropriate and workable for the sanitation sector. We live in a paradox of concern for water quality for drinking, while displaying less concern about the haphazard and uncontrolled contamination of the sources of natural water. By contrast, the principle of ‘at least something for all/why not basics for all?’ on which Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is based, leads to collective behaviour change on a grand scale and empowers communities to completely eliminate open defecation and thus protect water bodies as well as improve health and livelihoods outcomes.
This is achieved through a process of collective local action with no upfront individual hardware subsidy and no prescribed models. With some 50 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America now adopting the approach, future challenges include sustainability, scaling-up with quality, gaining political buy in and addressing issues concerning environmental health and waste disposal.
|
<urn:uuid:eb02a363-1408-4b9d-a07d-3def87211354>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/why-not-basics-for-all-scopes-and-challenges-of-clts/?like=1&_wpnonce=07995c002f
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924757
| 222
| 2.859375
| 3
|
Bats are nocturnal animals and are adapted to low-light conditions. This means that most bat species can find artificial lighting to be very disturbing. Artificial lights shining on bat roosts, their access points and the flight paths away from the roost must always be avoided.
If it is considered necessary to illuminate a building known to be used by roosting bats, the lights will need to be switched off at bat emergence time and during peak bat activity times. Or better still, it is usually straightforward to ensure that the light does not fall on the roost access point or the flight line away from the roost used by bats. Celebratory lighting of buildings should be limited to special occasions.
Bats and their roosts are all protected by law and bats should always be taken into account when lighting is being considered.
BCT Interim Guidance: artificial lighting and wildlife
An interim guidance note has been produced following the outputs from the 2014 European Symposium detailed below. This will be updated to reflect research developments in this area, however it currently provides recommendations to help minimise the impact of artificial lighting.
Artificial Light and Wildlife Symposium 2014: determining solutions for practitioners
The Bat Conservation Trust in partnership with Arup hosted a European Symposium on 20 & 21 March 2014.
The syposium was fully described with presentations from researchers and professionals across Europe. The presentations from the symposium are now available to view online.
Unfortunately, some of the presentations cannot be circulated owing to the sensitivity of unpublished data contained within them. This data will be used to update the technical guidance note (above) in due course.
Bats and Lighting: overview of current evidence and mitigation
BCT is working with researchers at the University of Bristol to develop a comprehensive overview of current evidence and mitigation for bats. This publication is now available.
Additional reference documents and websites:
- The Institute for Lighting Professionals Guidance for the Reduction of Obtrusive Light
- Buglife reports on the Impact of Artifical Lighting on Invertebrates
- Life+ Life at Night project
What else are we doing?
As more bat workers have access to light meters, the National Bat Monitoring Programme colony counts now allow the opportunity to include information about the lux levels measured during bat emergence.
Those carrying out NBMP car surveys are being asked to record the type of street lighting along their route. All this data being gathered will be important in identifying trends that will support current research.
|
<urn:uuid:fc638c35-9d11-48c4-bfab-9c8a420749f4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_lighting.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.933381
| 507
| 3.421875
| 3
|
Close-up View of 'Snowman' Craters
In this image, obtained by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft, a set of three craters, informally nicknamed "Snowman" by the camera's team members, is located in the northern hemisphere of Vesta. The image was taken on July 24, 2011, from a distance of about 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers).
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. It is a project of the Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.
The framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin; and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by NASA, the Max Planck Society and DLR. More information about Dawn is online at http://www.nasa.gov/dawn .
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
|
<urn:uuid:852b0ef3-9e91-4be5-b314-68be7a84560f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14323.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.899499
| 296
| 3.3125
| 3
|
does (4 3) means
Hey guys, I'm new here, but already have a question
Basically, the task at hand is as follows. You have a set of 52 cards, out of which you randomly draw 8. What's the probability of an event that either a) three aces will be drawn or b) three kings will be drawn or c) three aces and three kings will be drawn.
This is from a high school textbook and the solution says the said events are going to happen in (4 3)(48 5) + (4 3)(48 5) + (4 3)(4 3)(44 2). I get the first two, but I don't get why there is a plus in front of the third. Shouldn't there be a minus? I mean, the event c) is already covered in both the events a) and b), so if anything you should subtract that event so that it isn't counted twice. If my thinking isn't correct, what am I missing?
Thanks in advance, everyone, I've been doing this problem for hours, but still can't figure out where I'm going wrong. Oh, and sorry for not using Latex, I'm not familiar with it. Those (4 3) etc. are supposed to represent binomial symbols, with 4 being "n" (at the top) and 3 being "r" (on the bottom).
|
<urn:uuid:93244d3e-8a00-4645-8e53-800eba534276>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://mathhelpforum.com/statistics/151358-probability-drawing-cards-out-set-52-a.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98001
| 290
| 3.046875
| 3
|
Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan (1954), Dr. Zakir Hussain (1963), and Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997) were awarded the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, before becoming the President of India.
The President is the head of state of the Republic of India. He is the first citizen of the country. He is also the formal head of the executive, legislature, and judiciary of India and is the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. The President is indirectly elected by the elected members of the Legislature Assembly (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) for a term of 5 years. The role of a President is largely ceremonial. The Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi is the official residence of the President.
The Vice President of India is the 2nd highest constitutional office after the President. He/she is also the ex officio Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. The Vice President is elected indirectly by the members of both the houses of Parliament. He holds the office for a period of five years.
Term of Office: 26 January 1950 to 13 May 1962
Achievements: Dr. Rajendra Prasad is the first President of Republic of India. He is the only President to hold the office twice.
Term of Office: 13 May 1962 to 13 May 1967
Achievements: He was one of the first recipients of the Bharat Ratna in 1954. His birthday, 5th September, is celebrated as Teacher's Day since 1962.
Term of Office: 13 May 1967 to 3 May 1969
Achievements: The first Muslim President of India, he was the President up to 1969 till his death. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1963 and is the co-founder of Jamia Millia Islamia.
Term of Office: 3 May 1969 to 20 July 1969 and 24 August 1969 to 24 August 1974
Achievements: V. V. Giri has served successfully as the governor of Uttar Pradesh (1956 - 1960), Kerala (1960 - 1965), and Karnataka (1965-1967).
Term of Office: 24 August 1974 to 11 February 1977
Achievements: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was an active participant of the Indian freedom movement. In the Central Cabinet, he has successfully handled portfolios relating to Food and Agriculture, Cooperation, Education, Industrial Development, and Company Laws.
Term of Office: 25 July 1977 to 25 July 1982
Achievements: Neelam Reddy was the youngest President of India and the only one to be elected unopposed. He had previously held the posts of Chief Minister, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and Union Minister.
Term of Office: 25 July 1982 to 25 July 1987
Achievements: He was given the title of Gyani as he was educated and learned about Guru Granth Sahib. His presidency was marked by Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Term of Office: 25 July 1987 to 25 July 1992
Achievements: R. Venkataraman was a lawyer and a independence activist. He had participated in the Quit India movement. He also served as the Union Finance Minister and Defense Minister.
Term of Office: 25 July 1992 to 25 July 1997
Achievements: Shankar Dayal Sharma was the Chief Minister of Bhopal from 1952 to 1956. He had held various cabinet portfolios like Education, Law, Public Works, Industry and Commerce, National Resources, and Separate Revenue.
Term of Office: 25 July 1997 to 25 July 2002
Achievements: He was a member of the Indian Foreign Service under the Nehru Administration. He was called as the best diplomat of the country by Nehru. He served as ambassador to Japan, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, People's Republic of China, and United States of America.
Term of Office: 25 July 2002 to 25 July 2007
Achievements: Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, usually referred to as Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, worked as an Aerospace engineer with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). He is known as the Missile Man of India. He is also known for his motivational and inspirational books and speeches.
Term of Office: 25 July 2007 to 25 July 2012
Achievements: Pratibha Patil is the first woman to become the President of India. She was also the first female Governor of Rajasthan from 2004 to 2007.
Term of Office: 25 July 2012 to present
Achievements: Pranab Mukherjee is the 13th and the current President of India. He was a senior member of the Indian National Congress and has handled many portfolios. He was the Union Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012, before his election as the President.
Term of Office: 13 May 1952 to 12 May 1962
Achievements: Radhakrishnan had a very successful academic career before entering politics. He became the first Vice President and the second President of India.
Term of Office: 13 May 1962 to 12 May 1967
Achievements: The second Vice President, Zakir Hussain was the Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962. He has also served as the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia from 1928.
Term of Office: 13 May 1967 to 3 May 1969
Achievements: V. V. Giri was elected as the third Vice President of India in 1967. He also became Acting President of India in May 1969 upon the death of President Zakir Hussain while in office.
Term of Office: 31 Aug 1969 to 30 Aug 1974
Achievements: Gopal Pathak was a judge in the Allahabad High Court in 1945-46, member of the Rajya Sabha in 1960-66, Union Minister of Law from 1966-67, and the Governor of Mysore state from 1967-69.
Term of Office: 31 Aug 1974 to 30 Aug 1979
Achievements: Basappa Danappa Jatti was the fifth Vice President of India. He was also the Chief Minister of Mysore from 1958 to 1962.
Term of Office: 31 Aug 1979 to 30 Aug 1984
Achievements: Mohammad Hidayatullah was the eleventh Chief Justice of India from 1968 to 1970. Later, he was elected as the sixth Vice President of India in Aug 1979.
Term of Office: 31 Aug 1984 to 24 July 1987
Achievements: R. Venkataraman was elected to the Lok Sabha four times and has served as the Union Finance Minister and Defence Minister. He was elected as the seventh Vice President of India in 1984.
Term of Office: 3 Sept 1987 to 24 July 1992
Achievements: Shankar Sharma was the President of the Indian National Congress from 1972 to 1974. He was the Union Minister for Communications from 1974 to 1977.
Term of Office: 21 August 1992 to 24 July 1997
Achievements: K. R. Narayanan was elected as the ninth Vice President of India. He later became the President of India and is the only Dalit to hold this position.
Term of Office: 21 August 1997 to 27 July 2002
Achievements: Krishan Kant was appointed as the Governor of Andhra Pradesh in 1989. He was later elected as the tenth Vice President of India in 1997.
Term of Office: 19 August 2002 to 21 July 2007
Achievements: Before being elected as the 11th Vice President of India, he has served as the Chief Minister of Rajasthan three times, from 1977 to 1980, 1990 to 1992, and 1993 to 1998.
Term of Office: 11 Aug 2007 to present
Achievements: Mohammad Hamid Ansari is the current Vice President of India since 2007. He is the only Vice President after Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to serve two consecutive terms in office.
|
<urn:uuid:c8ddc840-c62d-4fa8-b8da-b223c1a5e358>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/a-complete-list-of-presidents-and-vice-presidents-of-india-since1947.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.983603
| 1,645
| 2.703125
| 3
|
This is the pope whose job was to implement the historic Council of Trent. If we think popes had difficulties in implementing Vatican Council II, Pius V had even greater problems after Trent than four centuries earlier.
During his papacy (1566-1572), Pius V was faced with the almost overwhelming responsibility of getting a shattered and scattered Church back on its feet. The family of God had been shaken by corruption, by the Reformation, by the constant threat of Turkish invasion and by the bloody bickering of the young nation-states. In 1545 a previous pope convened the Council of Trent in an attempt to deal with all these pressing problems. Off and on over 18 years, the Church Fathers discussed, condemned, affirmed and decided upon a course of action. The Council closed in 1563.
Pius V was elected in 1566 and was charged with the task of implementing the sweeping reforms called for by the Council. He ordered the founding of seminaries for the proper training of priests. He published a new missal, a new breviary, a new catechism and established the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes for the young. Pius zealously enforced legislation against abuses in the Church. He patiently served the sick and the poor by building hospitals, providing food for the hungry and giving money customarily used for the papal banquets to poor Roman converts. His decision to keep wearing his Dominican habit led to the custom of the pope wearing a white cassock.
In striving to reform both Church and state, Pius encountered vehement opposition from England's Queen Elizabeth and the Roman Emperor Maximilian II. Problems in France and in the Netherlands also hindered Pius's hopes for a Europe united against the Turks. Only at the last minute was he able to organize a fleet which won a decisive victory in the Gulf of Lepanto, off Greece, on October 7, 1571.
Pius's ceaseless papal quest for a renewal of the Church was grounded in his personal life as a Dominican friar. He spent long hours with his God in prayer, fasted rigorously, deprived himself of many customary papal luxuries and faithfully observed the spirit of the Dominican Rule that he had professed.
|
<urn:uuid:4d3648fc-dc94-4f22-8fbf-44686c0fe802>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://www.americancatholic.org/features/saints/saint.aspx?id=1369
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978697
| 459
| 3.453125
| 3
|
New York City public school buildings have been cast in Romanesque Revival, Collegiate Gothic, Art Deco, Modern, and Post-Modern idioms. They are sited across the five boroughs in residential neighborhoods, along the waterfront, among dense high rises, next to parks, and on commercial strips and boulevards.
The oldest school building is the 1787 Federal wood-frame Erasmus Hall Academy in the courtyard of Erasmus Hall Educational Campus. The oldest school building still in use, P.S. 34 (completed 1867), was constructed just after the Civil War in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Public education, malleable and shifting under changing societal expectations over the past two centuries, has required architects to continually reinvent the public school. The grammar school, serving grades one to eight, eventually incorporated a dedicated kindergarten, numbering about five hundred such classrooms by 1905.
In response to the waves of immigrants flooding into the city in the 1890s and 1910s, schools became grand social work agencies, charged with a secondary task of Americanizing children and parents. With the passage of the School Reform Law in 1896, the City embarked on the construction of high schools in each borough.
The junior high emerged as a building type in 1929. Vocational high schools came into vogue in the 1930s; specialized schools like the New York School for Printing and Aviation Trades High School opened their doors in the decades that followed, creating clear educational pathways to industry.
The early childhood center for pre-kindergarten through third grade became a recognizable school building type after World War II. In recent years the trend has been toward the stand-alone small school or the school campus, an association of smaller schools sharing a single building or clustered together in a school precinct.
The system has gone full circle, with the new PS/IS (primary school/intermediate school) combination echoing the old grammar school model serving children in Pre-K through grade eight.
|
<urn:uuid:39d1b489-ccf8-47af-b3da-f6334b896a51>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://schools.nyc.gov/community/facilities/PublicArt/Architecture/default.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959477
| 402
| 3.15625
| 3
|
Analysis: What's Up With the Ending?
When Chillingworth dies and leaves all his money to Pearl, mom and daughter can finally escape the judgy ways of the Massachusetts Bay colonists. In fact, they've been able to put an entire ocean between themselves and those stern Puritans. They live lavishly in England. The End.
Except not. Years later, Hester Prynne actually goes back to the community that's shunned her for so long. She goes back to her little cottage on the outskirts of town. She goes back to wearing her scarlet letter. Her adultery has become so much a part of her that she can't actually feel free unless she's doing penance by wearing that A.
The novel leaves us with a final picture of Hester and Dimmesdale's gravestone. They have been buried near one another (but not directly next to each other). A motto carved on the headstone they share ensures that their punishment follows them even into death: "on a field, sable, the letter A, gules." This motto is a verbal representation of the scarlet letter ("sable" means black and "gules" means reddish).
A final, tragic image? Maybe. But
We could interpret this persistent A as a tragic final image. However, the fact that Hester and Dimmesdale can be buried near each other suggests that the community has, in many ways, forgiven them for their adultery. Even after death, the legend of their love continues.
|
<urn:uuid:b3b18237-9a50-4390-bcb3-988239b81ee1>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.shmoop.com/scarlet-letter/ending.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00018-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.973482
| 310
| 2.765625
| 3
|
What's the Role of Laughter In Our Lives?
What’s so funny?
Why is it that laughter is such a seemingly uncontrollable response? There's many angles in a discussion on laughter, since there is no definitive way of explaining or understanding such a complex aspect of life. So lets start by noting laughter is a form of social bonding.
As we’ve previously discussed, humans are an extremely social species. Our interactions with one another are crucial to forming our understanding of our world and ourselves.
Laughter is a nonverbal form of social communication that can signal many different kinds of cues to a group. It’s a way of noting a shared experience, like those in movie theaters or at comedy shows. It can be a sneaky way to express a thought that straddles between appropriateness or taboo, since laughter is often used to mask any potential discomfort of those expressions with humor.
Laughter is also a reward. We enjoy the company of people who make us laugh and we seek to elicit a response of laughter from people because it’s a sophisticated social skill to be able to arouse the laugh response in a group. We admire people who make us laugh and we reward them by showing our admiration with our laughter. Rarely, if ever, would anyone want to stop someone from laughing. Laughter is an expression of pure enjoyment.
We can sometimes achieve a sense of catharsis from laughter. In some cases, laughter comes in response to a tragic memory after enough time has passed to reframe the narrative associated with the experience in a humorous light. Humor is a tool that we’ve evolved to use in order to psychologically protect our egos.
These are just some of the many ways that we can think about laughter – so have fun continuing to ponder all the ways that laughter adds value in life.
|
<urn:uuid:93f6da35-cbe5-4c27-a56a-8b0623bc916e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://kut.org/post/whats-role-laughter-our-lives
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00153-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959117
| 381
| 2.71875
| 3
|
Buggy Books and Other Resources
- Grades: PreK–K, 1–2, 3–5, 6–8
Professional articles and fact pages feature "all-about" information on insects and bugs from the common bumblebee to the praying mantis.
Curriculum Builders: Discovering Science in Nature
An article on the ins and outs of facilitating a nature unit in your curriculum.
Scholastic Titles for Younger Grades
Sixteen commonly known insects are described through lively couplets, illustrations, and diagrams.
Big Book; Teaching Guide
Bugs, Bugs, Bugs Collection
- Bugs Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!
- Busy, Buzzy Bees Flies Are Fascinating
- Have You Seen Bugs? I'm a Caterpillar
- Inside an Ant Colony It Could Still Be a Butterfly
- It's a Good Thing There Are Insects Mighty Spiders
The Butterfly Alphabet Book
Stunning butterfly images spell magic in this award-winning picture book. A world-renowned nature photographer presents photographs of butterflies from around the world using close-up views of wing designs that look like letters of the alphabet.
A Pill Bug's Life
Strikingly original watercolors depict the pill bug's world from it's unique perspective. Simple text describes her life cycle, as she hatches to when she hibernates. This book will spark questions is young readers.
Science Interactive Packs: Insects and Spiders
Our new Science Interactive Packs are helpful teaching tools to complement your curriculum. The Insects and Spiders Pack contains:
What Do Insects Do?
What Do Insects Do?
What Do Insects Do?
What Do Bugs Look Like?
Where Do Insects Live?
What is This Spiders Name?
What is an Insect?
From Caterpillar to Butterfly
This series traces the growth process of a particular plant or animal, using simple, clear texts and detailed, full-color artwork.
Thematic Poetry Series - Creepy Crawlies
Add pizzazz to thematic units, daily lessons, and shared-reading time with this irresistible collection of easy-to-read poems. Each book includes literacy-building activities and easy cross-curricular projects.
Creepy Crawlies includes butterflies, spiders, ladybugs, worms, grasshoppers, ants, and everything in between.
The Amazing Book of Insect Records
The komodo dragon can weigh up to 230 pounds! The world's laziest mammal, the koala, sleeps 22 hours a day! A goliath beetle is so strong, it can peel a banana with it's forelegs! These and more incredible facts are revealed in these Amazing Books! Background and science information are combined with vivid color photographs and humorous cartoons which will keep young naturalists smiling!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
A very hungry caterpillar eats his way through a variety of foods - and even the book! - before spinning his cocoon and changing into a butterfly.
A Hive for the Honeybee
Presenting a smart, original fantasy from one of Ireland's bright new stars. Out of the great lyrical tradition of Irish writing comes this astonishing tale: the story of a group of bee characters more movingly human than most "people" in contemporary fiction. With the help of two unusual, philosophical drones, worker bees Thora and Belle begin to look at their lives in a radical new way.
A House Spider's Life
Strikingly original watercolors depict the spider's world from it's unique perspective. Simple text describes the spider's movement through life and the activities it does to survive.
Perfect for sparking questions in young readers.
Anansi does the Impossible
The Sky God is asking a high price for the folktales that Anansi feels belong to mankind. The Sky God wants Anansi to bring him a live python, a real fairy, and forty-seven stinging hornets! Luckily, behind every ambitious spider is a clever wife, and with her help, Anansi performs all three impossible tasks. A glossary details the African words used in this folktale. "Brilliant collage illustrations bring out the humor of this tale." -Horn Book.
Scholastic Titles for Middle Grades
National Audubon Society First Field Guide: Insects
These unique field guides -- the only such books developed specifically for children -- offer beginning naturalists easy-to-use, visually stunning resources to help them observe and investigate the natural world.
Spiders Complete Cross-Curricular Theme Unit that Teaches About These Incredible Creepy Crawlies
A complete theme unit on these eight-legged wonders is presented here, including up-to-date information, hands-on activities, and a GIANT, colorful poster.
Do Tarantulas Have Teeth?
Explain the mystery surrounding a topic that fascinates elementary-age kids -- poisonous creatures! From questions like "Can doctors treat snakebites?" to "How does a scorpion sting?" and using dramatic, full-color illustrations, this reference tool will satisfy any child's curiosity about these puzzling creatures.
Do All Spiders Spin Webs?
Delivers the answers to questions like "How many spiders live in your house?" and "How do spiders spin webs?" in a format kids will respond to and understand.
How Do Flies Walk Upside Down?
Developed specifically for second and third graders, this easy-to-follow book answers over 75 simple and complex questions about insects.
SciMan wants to turn your students into scientific thinkers! He's thinking of something related to science, and your class has to discover what it is. The SciMan will provide four clues to help students figure out the mystery science subject. Students can use the Internet to research clues.
Exoskeletons Grades 3-8
Mosquitoes Grades 3-8
Internet Field Trips
Bugs Caught in the Web Grades K-8
Can You Spot the Imposter Ant?
Students try to figure out which ant's description is fictional.
Hackley's Hints: Insect Zoo
Students collect insects for an insect museum.
The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in Its Pants
Students use observation skills as they find out how ants work together.
The Magic School Bus: The Honey-Bee-Bop
This activity introduces students to the way in which bees communicate about food sources.
Mealworms in the Spotlight
Explore characteristics of mealworms with these experiments.
Grades K-2, 3-5
Students learn about insects and other small creatures in this cross-curricular lesson.
Study Life Cycles With Butterflies
Grades K-2, 3-5
This article contains hands-on investigations that compare butterfly and human life cycles and help you connect math and science.
Butterfly Spanish Mini-Book (PDF)
Review the stages of a butterfly's life cycle with this Spanish mini-book.
Butterfly Wings (PDF)
Grades K-2 Find suggestions for butterfly activities.
Follow the Butterflies (PDF)
Grades K-2 Use this reproducible to discuss how monarch butterflies migrate south in the fall.
How Many Bugs in a Box? (software)
( Grades PreK-1)
Based on the best-selling pop-up counting books, this program provides hours of educational fun. You'll "bug out" over activities like the musical memory game Spots-on-a-Bug and the brain-teaser Same-and-Different. The Bug Meter lets you adjust game difficulty to suit specific skill levels, and ensure that kids have new challenges for years to come.
The Magic School Bus : Gets Ants In Its Pants
The Magic School Bus goes into show business when Keesha directs a movie about social animals for the school science fair.
Based on the book series by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen. Starring Lily Tomlin as the voice of Ms. Frizzle.
PestWorld for Kids
PestWorld for Kids has many facts, in-depth information, interactive games, and curricular lesson plans about pests.
Profiles of 14 bugs, including a gallery with photo enlargement capabilities.
Butterflies and Bugs
Activities for all curriculum areas, including, science, art, math, and games.
A site of dangerous bugs intended for older students. Great graphics and interactive technology.
|
<urn:uuid:63b65d3c-8d33-4045-9a9c-ec83adf30ab2>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www2.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/buggy-books-and-other-resources
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.847983
| 1,751
| 3.90625
| 4
|
In one sense, the analysts who forecast that “peak oil”—i.e., the point at which the rate of global petroleum extraction will begin to decline—would be reached over the last few years were correct. The planet is running short of the easy stuff, where you stick a drill in the ground and crude comes bubbling to the surface. The great oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Mexico have begun to dwindle; one result has been a rising price for energy.
We could, as a civilization, have taken that dwindling supply and rising price as a signal to convert to sun, wind, and other noncarbon forms of energy—it would have made eminent sense, most of all because it would have aided in the fight against global warming, the most difficult challenge the planet faces. Instead, we’ve taken it as a signal to scour the world for more hydrocarbons. And it turns out that they’re there—vast quantities of coal and oil and gas, buried deep or trapped in tight rock formations or mixed with other minerals.
Getting at them requires ripping apart the earth: for instance, by heating up the ground so that the oil in the tar sands formation of Canada can flow to the surface. Or by tearing holes in the crust a mile beneath the surface of the sea, as BP was doing in the Gulf of Mexico when the Deepwater Horizon well exploded. Or by literally removing mountaintops to get at coal, as has become commonplace across the southern Appalachians.
Or, in the case of the books under review, by “fracking” the subsurface geology in order to make natural gas flow through new cracks. The word is short for “hydraulic fracturing” and in the words of Seamus McGraw, it works like this: having drilled a hole perhaps a mile deep, and then a horizontal branch perhaps half a mile in length, you send down
a kind of subterranean pipe bomb, a small package of ball-bearing-like shrapnel and light explosives. The package is detonated, and the shrapnel pierces the bore hole, opening up small perforations in the pipe. They then pump up to 7 million gallons of a substance known as slick water to fracture the shale and release the gas. It blasts through those perforations in the pipe into the shale at such force—more than nine thousand pounds of pressure per square inch—that it shatters the shale for a few yards on either side of the pipe, allowing the gas embedded in it to rise under its own pressure and escape.
This new technique allowed the industry to exploit terrain that it had previously considered impenetrable. It was used first in the late 1990s in what’s called the Barnett Shale in Texas, and is also being widely used to liberate oil from beneath the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. But the industry’s biggest excitement has come in the East, where a boom has been underway for several years in the so-called Marcellus Shale that runs from West Virginia into upstate New York. This gas-trapping shale formation has been estimated to hold as much gas as the whole United States consumes in a century. (The estimates are highly contested; some analysts are insisting that new data show them to be considerably smaller, though still vast, and indeed at the end of January the federal government slashed its earlier predictions in half.)
The gas is also ideally situated along the route of many existing natural gas pipelines and near the heavy-consumption eastern megalopolis. If you’re an energy company, it’s about the best place on the planet to find a huge pool of gas—it’s like discovering an underground deposit of beer directly beneath Yankee Stadium. Because of the potential profits, the agents of various companies have fanned out across the back roads of the region in a remarkable land rush, seeking to lock up drilling rights on the hitherto not-very-valuable acreage of marginal dairy farms and cut-over woodlots.
The two books under review tell the story of that land rush. In fact, they manage to tell exactly the same story, with exactly the same set of characters—a few neighbors along a rural road in Dimock, Pennyslvania. Pennsylvania has been the very epicenter of this boom, less for geological than for political reasons: the powers that be in Harrisburg have been remarkably congenial hosts to the new fracking industry, rolling out the red carpet. (They’re so generous that, unlike Louisiana or Texas, they don’t even charge a severance tax on the gas that’s generated in the state. In fact, they’ve even offered up official state forests for use as drill sites.)
That means that some people have come into unexpected riches, including McGraw’s mother, who leased her land for a large sum—for some farmers looking for an easier retirement it’s been a blessing. But the money has also divided communities in painful ways, since those who don’t reap a bonanza suffer the side effects: the noise and squalor of an industrialized countryside, the danger of quiet roads now overrun with trucks. And even the fortunate run the risk that something will go wrong with the wells on their land.
For example, Victoria Switzer and Ken Ely, neighbors who leased their land to Cabot Oil and Gas in the early days of the boom, then turned into adversaries of the company that did the drilling. They had good reason: before long, drinking water from their wells had turned brown. A neighbor’s well exploded, apparently because of “methane migration” from the fracking operations. Cabot insisted it wasn’t at fault; for a while it bought bottled water for the neighborhood, but eventually it stopped doing even that. It was, in other words, a kind of horror show, the sort of tragedy that usually accompanies largely unregulated booms. (And this one has been largely unregulated—the Pittsburgh newspaper reported in January that the state doesn’t even know where many of the wells in the state have been drilled, because companies, which are supposed to report on their operations, often don’t bother.)
The accounts in these two books are complementary. McGraw is the better writer, and because he grew up in the region he has a better story to tell; he describes believable characters and provides a perceptive account of what rural poverty feels like. Wilber is the better reporter; he covered the shale story for the Binghamton newspaper for years, and grounds it in the setting of both Pennsylvania and New York politics.
The two books, however, don’t manage to cover some important aspects of the fracking issue. In fact, the most remarkable work on the subject has been done by Ian Urbina, a New York Times journalist, and by the rebel filmmaker Josh Fox. Urbina’s stories, which seem likely to win a Pulitzer, demonstrate why we can’t do without serious newspapers. Beginning last spring, he documented the health risks, lax regulation, industry overstatement, and general corruption that have surrounded the boom.
Fox, for his part, grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and when a drilling company offered $100,000 for rights to his family land, he took his camera to Dimock, and then out west to communities where fracking had been underway for a few years longer, to investigate. The documentary he produced, Gasland, earned an Emmy and much critical praise. In the key sequence a Colorado homeowner opens his tap and water comes out, but also gas—which becomes obvious when he lights the stream on fire. One film critic, from Bloomberg News, said that Fox “may go down in history as the Paul Revere of fracking,” and indeed he has emerged as one of the principal organizers in the fight to limit the spread of the technique. Other opponents—mostly from grassroots environmental groups—have had the most luck in New York, which enacted a moratorium on fracking that may end later this year, and in the Delaware River Basin, whose governing commission has yet to approve widespread drilling.
The emerging movements against fracking, and the science that informs them, raise three key concerns. In ascending order of importance they are:
First, how much damage is being done to water wells and underground aquifers from methane migration and the chemicals mixed with water and then injected into fracking wells under high pressure? You might call this the “flaming faucet” question, and it has understandably and rightly galvanized many of the local people fighting fracking. The industry claims that there’s no problem—that the cement casings they put in the wells keep the chemicals out of layers of soil where drinking water might be found. But rigorous scientific study has been scant, in part because since 2005 (at the urging of then Vice President Dick Cheney, whose former company Halliburton is a major player in the fracking boom), drilling companies have been exempt from federal safe drinking water statutes and hence not required to list the chemicals they push down wells.
Preliminary research from Duke University seemed to indicate that indeed methane was showing up in drinking water; in December, the EPA released its first thorough study, conducted in the Wyoming town of Pavilion, where residents had reported brown, undrinkable water after nearby fracking operations. The EPA concluded that the presence in the water of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers and the assortment of “other organic components” were “the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracking fluids with ground water,” and told local residents to stop drinking from their wells.
The company involved insisted that the EPA had introduced the contaminants itself; Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, best known for decrying global warming as a “hoax,” added that the EPA report was part of “President Obama’s war on fossil fuels.” But the evidence from Pavilion was a powerful indictment of the industry, and it led several leading doctors to call for a moratorium on fracking pending more health research. “We don’t have a great handle on the toxicology of fracking chemicals,” said Vikas Kapil, chief medical officer at the National Center for Environmental Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control.
December, then, was a tough month for the fracking industry, and it ended on a particularly low note—on New Year’s Eve a magnitude 4.0 earthquake in Youngstown, Ohio, was blamed on the injection of high-pressure fracking water along a seismic fault, a phenomenon also documented in Arkansas and Oklahoma.
A second concern has to do with the damage being done to rivers and streams—and the water supply for homes and industries—by the briny soup that pours out of the fracking wells in large volume. Most of the chemical-laced slick water injected down the well will stay belowground, but for every million gallons, 200,000 to 400,000 gallons will be regurgitated back to the surface, bringing with it, McGraw writes,
not only the chemicals it included in the first place, but traces of the oil-laced drilling mud, and all the other noxious stuff that was already trapped down there in the rock: iron and chromium, radium and salt—lots of salt.
The question is what to do with that volume of bad water. If it leaks into small streams, disaster results: the classic case is Dunkard Creek, which rambles for forty miles along the Pennsylvania–West Virginia border. In Wilber’s words, “its clear, green eddies and swimming holes, shaded by hemlock and sycamore trees, attracted generations of anglers, paddlers, picnickers, and nature lovers” who enjoyed the 161 aquatic species found in its waters.
In September 2009, however, pretty much everything died in the course of a few days—everything except an invasive microscopic algae that normally lives in estuaries along the Texas coast. This bloom of “golden algae” that killed everything else was a mystery—how could a species that usually lives in brackish water on the ocean’s edge have survived in a freshwater Appalachian creek? The answer emerged swiftly: drilling companies had been illegally dumping wastewater in the region, turning it into brine.
Instead of simply dumping the water, the companies could have sent it to the local sewage treatment plant—but these were generally not set up to handle high volumes of briny water. Along the Monangahela River, for instance, when treatment plants started accepting tanker trucks loaded with waste-water, “workers at a steel mill and a power plant in Greene County were the first to notice something strange: river water began corroding equipment.” The state eventually had to put the Monongahela on a list of “impaired rivers,” and 325,000 residents of the region were at one point told to drink bottled water.
As Ian Urbina reported in the Times last February, the water returning from deep underground can carry naturally occurring “radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for…treatment plants to handle.” Despite a 2009 EPA study never made public, the federal agency has continued to allow “most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity.” And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from the sewage treatment plants, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.
Industry, as usual, is unconcerned, at least in public. “These low levels of radioactivity pose no threat to the public,” said the CEO of Triana Energy. They are “more a public perception issue than a real health threat.” But as Urbina pointed out, a confidential industry study from 1990, which looked at radium in drilling water dumped into the ocean off the Louisiana coast, found that it posed “potentially significant risks” of cancer for people eating fish from those waters.
The natural gas wells can cause air pollution problems too: Wyoming, for instance, no longer meets federal air quality standards because of fumes seeping from the state’s 27,000 wells, vapors that contain benzene and toluene, according to Urbina.
In sparsely populated Sublette County in Wyoming, which has some of the highest concentrations of wells, vapors reacting to sunlight have contributed to levels of ozone higher than those recorded in Houston and Los Angeles.
In a county without a single stoplight, regulators this time last year were urging the elderly and children to stay indoors.
There are steps that industry could take to reduce some of the pollution—wastewater, for instance, can be captured in huge on-site tanks and pushed back down so-called “injection wells,” precisely the process that apparently set off the Youngstown temblor. Even this process, however, leaves large quantities of salty residue, and the wells can keep oozing out their toxic load for many years after drilling is done. Some enterprising drilling companies have, Urbina wrote, “found ready buyers [for wastewater] in communities that spread it on roads for de-icing in the winter and for dust suppression in the summer. When ice melts or rain falls, the waste can run off roads and end up in the drinking supply.”
In any event, overmatched regulators who can’t even keep an accurate count of the number of wells are having a hard time coping with waste products—especially since the political power of the industry just keeps growing. Pennsylvania inaugurated a new governor last year, Republican Tom Corbett, who had taken more gas industry contributions than all his competitors combined. Not only did he quickly reopen state land to new drilling, he claimed regulation of the industry had been too aggressive. “I will direct the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to serve as a partner with Pennsylvania business, communities and local governments,” he said.1
What is the effect of this surge of gas on national and global efforts to cope with climate change? Though New York and other states will make their decisions on drilling largely on the basis of local effects, this may be the most important question of all, since the implications will extend far beyond the borders of particular geologic formations or specific watersheds. Four years ago, when word of the spectacular potential scale of the gas finds began to filter out, many environmentalists were thrilled. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance, who founded the Waterkeeper Alliance and who has been a leader in the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining, wrote an Op-Ed for the Financial Times in the summer of 2009 declaring that “a revolution in natural gas production over the past two years has left America awash with natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive coal practically overnight.”
The reason environmentalists prefer gas to coal is simple: when burned, it produces about half as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy. That is, if we could convert our coal-fired power plants to natural gas (which in most cases is not that hard to do), carbon emissions would drop. But it’s actually not that simple. Natural gas—CH4—in its unburned state is a remarkably powerful greenhouse gas itself, molecule for molecule many times stronger than CO2. So if even a little bit leaks out to the atmosphere in the drilling process, gas, according to some estimates, can cause even more global warming than coal.
The data showing just how much it would do so are scarce. An early study from Robert Howarth at Cornell found that fracked gas might do 20 percent more damage to the climate, at least over the next few crucial decades, than coal; earlier this winter another Cornell team, using different leakage rates, found that it might be only half as bad as coal. More data may eventually clarify the extent of the threat. But fracked gas is not as clear a winner in this fight as many had originally assumed.
There’s a deeper question still. If we increased the use of natural gas, it would replace some coal from the planet’s power-generating mix. But it would also crowd out truly low-carbon sources of power: abundant and cheap natural gas would make it that much harder to get sun and wind (or, if it’s your cup of hot water, nuclear power) up and running on a large scale.
As the International Energy Agency reported last summer, the numbers are significant: their projections for a “Golden Age of Gas” scenario have atmospheric concentrations of CO2 peaking at 650 parts per million and temperature rising 3.5 degrees Celsius, far higher than all the experts believe is safe. In September, the National Center for Atmospheric Research tried to combine all the known data—everything from methane leakage in coal mines to the cooling effects of coal-fired sulfur pollution—and concluded, in the words of the scientist Tom Wigley, that the switch to natural gas “would do little to help solve the climate problem.”
As a result of such findings, and of all the on-the-ground problems in Pennsylvania and out west, environmental groups are backing away from their earlier support for gas. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance, has grown increasingly critical; and at the grassroots tens of thousands of highly organized activists with visible and articulate spokesmen (the actor Mark Ruffalo has been especially notable) are making an impressively strong stand against further drilling.2 Their efforts come up against the staggeringly deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, which is used to winning battles. Bowing to that pressure, and trying to ward off the appeal of the GOP’s “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric, the president praised fracking in his State of the Union address, promising to “develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.”
The rush to exploit “extreme energy,” and to rip the planet apart to get at it, knows no national boundaries. Urbina reported last year that the big energy companies have spread the fracking technology around the planet, finding new shale deposits in more than thirty countries.
One can reasonably expect that if regulators are overwhelmed in Pennsylvania, the same may be the case among the shale deposits in Papua New Guinea. In any event, it should by now be clear that fracked gas is not a “bridge fuel” to some cleaner era, but a rickety pier extending indefinitely out into a hotter future. This is one of those (not rare) cases where abundance may prove a great problem.
The list of environmental consequences associated with fracking sometimes seems endless. In January the Chicago Tribune reported that the very fine sand ideal for including with the slick water pushed down the wells is slated to come from a 425-million-year-old rock formation just outside the gates of an Illinois state park, spurring widespread protest from neighbors and conservationists. ↩
Kennedy is not the only one to make this transition. I was originally encouraged at the thought of major natural gas finds as well, because they seemed, as I mentioned in passing in my 2010 book Eaarth, to extend slightly the short time we have to get off fossil fuel without doing more climate damage. But as I researched the method, its appeal steadily lessened, and in the last year I’ve been joining with others to actively oppose fracking. ↩
|
<urn:uuid:d94ed593-1e06-4068-82cb-1155d975b05b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/03/08/why-not-frack/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963678
| 4,474
| 2.96875
| 3
|
The Higher The Magnesium Level, The Healthier Our Arteries
More than 70 percent of the population have an unhealthy balance of 10 calcium to 1 magnesium in our many trillions of cells. A previous study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicated that for every 50 mg per day increase in intake of the mineral, the risk of cancer was modestly reduced by 7%.
Another notable study of more than 4,600 Americans, begun in 1985, found the risk of developing metabolic syndrome over the next 15 years was 31 percent lower for those with the highest intake of magnesium.
Data from 1,276 Mexican-mestizo subjects also indicated that for every 0.17 mg/dL increase in serum magnesium level was associated with a 16% reduction in coronary artery calcification.
While the data indicates correlation and not causation, scientists from the National Institute of Cardiology - Ignacio Chávez in Mexico City said that there is biological plausibility for the potential cardiovascular benefits, adding that the mechanism(s) may be linked to enhancing endothelial function and reducing inflammation.
One study, which combined data from 313,041 people, provides the "most robust evidence to date of the associations between circulating and dietary magnesium across their usual physiologic ranges and CVD risk", wrote Dr Dariush Mozaffarian and his co-authors in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The results add to an ever growing body of science supporting the potential health benefits of the mineral. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) lists magnesium as being necessary for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body, from helping maintain normal muscle and nerve function, to keeping heart rhythm steady, supporting a healthy immune system, and keeping bones strong. The mineral is also needed for blood sugar management, and healthy blood pressure.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued positive opinions on magnesium and the maintenance of normal bone, teeth, and protein synthesis; the reduction of tiredness and fatigue; electrolyte balance; normal energy-yielding metabolism; neurotransmission, and muscle contraction.
However, EFSA was not convinced by claims about magnesium and blood glucose, blood pressure, stress relief, protection of DNA, proteins and lipids from oxidative damage, the immune system and fat metabolism.
The new cross-sectional study, which was published in the Nutrition Journal , assessed magnesium levels in almost 1,300 Mexican participants aged between 30 and 75. None of the participants had any symptoms of cardiovascular disease.
The results indicated that people with the highest average serum levels magnesium (greater than 2.18 mg/dl) had 48% lower odds of high blood pressure (hypertension), 69 % lower odds of type 2 diabetes, and 42% lower odds of coronary artery calcification, compared with people with lowest average levels (less than 1.97 mg/dl).
"The results of this study strongly suggest that lower serum magnesium levels are associated with coronary artery calcification in Mexican subjects free of clinically apparent cardiovascular disease," wrote the researchers. "Confirmation of these results in other populations is required. Additional prospective studies are also needed to determine if hypomagnesaemia predicts the development and progression of coronary atherosclerosis."
|
<urn:uuid:013dd869-ce7c-42d7-adf7-420119590da8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://preventdisease.com/news/16/031416_Higher-The-Magnesium-Level-Healthier-Our-Arteries.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.931875
| 651
| 2.921875
| 3
|
Source: p 603, A Concise Introduction to Logic (12 Ed, 2014) by Patrick Hurley
A similar misuse of percentages is committed by businesses and corporations that, for whatever reason, want to make it appear that they have earned less profit than they actually have. The technique consists of expressing profit as a percentage of sales volume instead of as a percentage of investment. [...] To appreciate the fallacy in this procedure, consider the case of the jewelry merchant who buys one piece of jewelry each morning for $9 and sells it in the evening for $10. At the end of the year the total sales volume is $3,650, the total investment $9, and the total profit $365. Profits as a percentage of sales amount to only 10 percent, but as a percentage of investment they exceed 4,000 percent.
Why is the bold true?
I cannot diagnose why, but I somehow believe that because the merchant buys the 1 piece each morning for 365 days, his total investment should be $9 x 365. Please correct my incorrect thinking.
|
<urn:uuid:28ccd0a5-2177-450a-9e7d-c3e2eac6dc0f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/57892/if-you-buy-something-and-sell-it-later-on-the-same-day-how-do-you-calculate-in
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956865
| 215
| 3.015625
| 3
|
Aug 01 2013
Politics of Parenting: Diaper Availability Found to Be Better Predictor of Maternal Mental Health Than Food
Single mothers who form one of the poorest demographics in the nation often suffer depression linked to poverty. But rather than obvious factors like food insecurity, it is, surprisingly, access to diapers for their babies that was one of best indicators of maternal mental health.
In a new study by the Yale School of Medicine, researchers interviewed hundreds of mothers in New Haven, Connecticut, to reach their conclusions.
It turns out that the government’s welfare reform policies have much to do with why not being able to afford diapers leads to depression – today very few Americans on welfare actually get cash benefits to spend on things like diapers. Instead they get food stamps, which cannot be used toward diapers.
Mothers who cannot afford the more than $100 per month that diapers cost, often stretch the use of each diaper, leading to a dip in self-esteem, and increased anxiety over the care they are able to offer their babies.
Additionally, paid work is often even more out of reach for mothers who are have a hard time providing enough diapers for babies enrolled in childcare.
GUEST: Joanne Goldblum, Founder and Executive Director of the National Diaper Bank Network, and a co-author of the study with Yale’s Dr. Megan Smith
Visit www.diaperbanknetwork.org for more information.
One Response to “Politics of Parenting: Diaper Availability Found to Be Better Predictor of Maternal Mental Health Than Food”
|
<urn:uuid:8471f8c8-0842-4110-a9e1-9058b5e9410a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://uprisingradio.org/home/2013/08/01/parenting-and-child-development-diaper-availability-found-to-be-better-predictor-of-maternal-mental-health-than-food/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950527
| 322
| 2.625
| 3
|
Found 40 - 50 results of 58 programs matching keyword "perception of sound"
An introduction to a crowd-pleasing noisemaker called a sound sandwich, which you can adjust to raise or lower its pitch. A detailed demonstration of how to make this primitive wind instrument using little more than a straw, two craft sticks, and some rubber bands. The science behind this instrument, including a discussion of how vibration produces sound, and how long, massive objects vibrate slowly and produce a low-pitched sound, while shorter, less massive objects vibrate quickly and produce a high-pitched sound. Watch as the best teachers on the planet battle it out for the title of Iron Science Teacher. In this zany competition teachers will have ten minutes to create a science activity. Tee off with this week’s “secret” ingredient-salt! Watch as Exploratorium staff and local teachers compete for the title of Iron Science Teacher. Each contestant has 10 minutes to make a science lesson out of a secret ingredient. In this special Halloween edition, today's secret ingredient is: Plastic Bags! James Turrell studied optics and perceptual psychology in college, but gravitated towards art as his curiosity led him to investigate light itself. In this Webcast of a lecture, James Turrell discusses his experiences manipulating pure light and how it became his artistic medium. He reveals how this early work led him to discover Roden Crater in Arizona and to create his subsequent lifelong project of transforming the crater into an astronomical observatory. Our team of middle school students from the Aim High program investigates new technologies that use our unique physical traits as tools for identification. Vox Unlocks tunes into voice recognition Produced by students from San Francisco's Aim High Program. Today they ask, how do our ears work? Can we communicate without words? How do whales communicate under water? Why don't bats slam into trees as they fly? Middle school students will interview Exploratorium Educator Ken Finn and Biologist Dr. Karen Kalumuck, plus special surprise guests! Why do many things sound different underwater? How are echoes made? Can you feel or see sound? Join us as we delve into the mysteries of sound. This webcast will feature an Aim High student demonstrating how to make a membranophone; Exploratorium physicist Dr. Paul Doherty modeling sound with ringing aluminum rods, corrugated plastic whirlies, and a slinky; and Marco Jordan, lead educator in the Exploratorium's Outreach program, demonstrating sound science with a "whine" glass and a singing bowl. Join the Origins team as they travel to Antarctica. We sent Mary, Noel, Paul, and Julie to explore scientific wonders from McMurdo to the Pole. Learn all about the extreme science being conducted at the South Pole in a daily dispatch from Terra Australis Incognita!
|
<urn:uuid:b3a113db-32f2-4443-95f0-a8b9e01fa8ee>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/archive.php?cmd=keyword&keywordtext=perception%20of%20sound&start=40
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.931261
| 579
| 3.53125
| 4
|
Rural communities are as diverse in kind and character as they are numerous while also often sharing characteristics in common like small population size and diversity, strong senses of tradition, a wariness of outsiders who rush to judgment about them, and reliance on a limited range of economic activity.
In relation to Australia's future, vibrant productive rural communities are of critical importance- an absolutely ‘must have' if we as a nation are going to at least maintain, and hopefully improve, the opportunities and qualities of life for all Australians. The ‘bottom line' is rural communities produce and manage most of the basics for daily living- food, water, energy, minerals, and a healthy natural environment.
As Tim Flannery, an internationally renowned Australian scientist, argues that "[o]ur search for sustainability...[is] the greatest challenge we have ever faced" (2008, p.8).
While it is true that "rural communities themselves...often have long memories, kept alive by the all-too-tangible reminders of better times evident in disused or decaying buildings and faltering local institutions" (Davison, 2005, p.39), it is also true that they are frequently very keen to engage with issues that are central to their survival and thereby, play a very active role in Australia's future. Deficit thinking about rural Australia and rural communities is toxic- it is critically important to adopt a ‘start with what you have' philosophy. Put another way, the power and significance of place linked strategically into and with others like essential government services and business is likely to be more successful than not.
Davison's five phases of rural development in Australia since white settlement are instructive when thinking about rural communities and the future. The first phase he argues commenced when they were planted in the early colonial years. This was followed by the water[ing] phase when governments worked to support the growth and expansion of rural communities, then the protect[ing] phase characterized by special treatment to prop up their survival. The fourth phase (post World War 2) focused on plan[ning] with an emphasis on decentralization. The fifth (and current) phase, sustain[ing], is characterized by rural communities having to deal with the impacts of globalisation and do more than just survive and be more than just survivors (2005, pp.39 & 40).
So, for rural communities, a major question- a survival question- is how to move forward; how to reconnect with and realise the potential of rural for nation building in a context where sustainability must be ‘front and centre' of our thinking and actions?
Education is central to answering the question.
It is absolutely essential that people who live and work in rural and remote Australia have access to high quality, relevant and affordable education, training and care at all ages and stages of life. As well, it is essential that people who live and work in urban contexts and provide policy advice to governments, and design and manage a myriad of programs intended to benefit country people and communities, deeply understand rural. In the Background Paper for the International Conference on Issues Affecting Rural Communities, held in Townsville in 1994, Sher and Sher argue that "[f]rom a rural development perspective, education is both the necessary precondition and the primary enabling strategy for [driving the 3 other arenas of action identified by them-empowerment, environment and entrepreneurship]" (p.27). The validity of the argument remains and if anything, has strengthened in the ensuing period.
Davison, G. (2005). Rural Sustainability in Historical Perspective. In C. Cocklin. & J. Dibden (Eds.) Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Sher, J. & Sher, K.R. (1994). Beyond Conventional Wisdom: Rural Development as if Australia's Rural People Really Mattered. Background Paper: An International Conference on Issues Affecting Rural Communities. Townsville Australia: James Cook University.
|
<urn:uuid:d72d492c-d95d-44eb-93e1-db4ca0592d70>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/education/rural/building-communities/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.940643
| 818
| 3.15625
| 3
|
With support from the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Protection Service, researchers at the University of Illinois are using sophisticated computer modeling to track the spread of the fungal disease known as Asian soybean rust.
In recent years, the aggressive form of the disease has moved from Asia to Africa and into parts of South America. It first showed up in Paraguay in 2001 and has now become a problem for many of the major soybean-growing areas in Brazil and Argentina. While not yet found in the United States, the recent introduction of the disease into South America raises the danger that it could eventually spread to the United States.
The latest computer models from the U of I study indicate, that the disease has most likely already spread to soybean-growing areas in Brazil and Venezuela located north of the equator, making it inevitable that rust will reach the U.S. in a relatively short time.
"Our work shows that the U.S. is at high risk once the pathogen that causes the disease expands its range into the northern part of South America," says aerobiologist Scott Isard from the Department of Geography at the U of I. "We have received credible reports that this has already happened, although the Brazilian government has not confirmed it so far. If it's already established there, we could even see rust in the U.S. as soon as the current growing season and certainly no later than a year or two down the road."
With an additional grant from the USDA's National Research Initiative, Isard is working with USDA plant pathologists Glen Hartman and Montes Miles at the U of I and agricultural meteorologist Joseph Russo from ZedX Inc. in Bellefonte, PA to further enhance the predictive capabilities of the models.
Isard notes that the model has already been used to track the past movement of rust from Asia into Africa in 1996 and the subsequent spread into South America in 2001.
"Using our model, we can pick a day and a source area and take a historic view of how rust has spread," he says. "With detailed weather information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we can easily simulate where the spores will likely go."
Isard points out that most of the spores in the southern hemisphere are produced during late January and early February. Based on the computer model, there is no weather mechanism that will then bring the spores directly into the U.S. from that region.
"Once the disease moves into the northern hemisphere, all that changes," Isard says. "Then you have most of the spores produced during the height of the growing season in mid-summer, which coincides with the major growing season in the U.S. You also have different weather conditions, including hurricanes, which increase the likelihood it will spread north into the U.S."
According to Isard, the spread of rust requires the presence of a large number of soybean plants or other hosts, such as kudzu, and weather-related factors, such as wind currents and rain that can bring the spores down to the ground.
The scientists are also using the model to help assess the most likely times of the year and areas in the U.S. where the first epidemic will occur.
"Given what we know now, the most likely scenario is that it will happen during July or August in either the Appalachian region or the Corn Belt," Isard says. "It is less likely to show up in the Great Lakes States and Northeastern region. We hope that this assessment can help make more efficient use of the limited resources available for the scouting efforts."
Isard notes that the scenario will continue to change as the researchers add more biological information about rust and as it moves closer to the U.S.
He further points out that the fungus that causes rust cannot survive winter weather. It can, however, easily survive in kudzu plants along the coastal areas of the U.S.
"Rust will then spread into the interior during the soybean-growing season, but not to the same places every year," Isard says. "Based on historical weather data over the last 30 years, we predict that there would be outbreaks in about three of every four years in the major soybean areas."
|
<urn:uuid:577fd088-471c-4646-a34b-cd20d0ea009d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/soybean-rust-most-likely-hit-july-or-august
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972569
| 868
| 3.46875
| 3
|
I was supervising the buildout of a four-unit apartment building when the electrical contractor went ballistic, because the drywall crew had covered an electrical box without providing a cutout for it. The electrician was ready to start bashing holes randomly to find the box. If he did, the drywall crew would have had to come back to fix the destroyed wall.
The electrician had to do his job, and he didn’t want to waste his time because of someone else's mistake. I pleaded with him: “Please don't destroy the wall. Let me see if I can find the electrical box.”
There was no access to the backside of the drywall, so I took a variable-speed drill and put some rubber bands on the trigger, so it would growl away slowly. I ran a jumper wire from the drill cord to the end of the buried wire at the breaker box. Then, with a transistor radio tuned off channel, I could hear the RF noise generated by the sparks on the motor brushes as I brought the radio into proximity of the wire. In a couple of minutes, I found the box and cut neatly into it.
This entry was submitted by Oscar Larson and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Tell us your experience in solving a knotty engineering problem. Send examples to Rob Spiegel for Sherlock Ohms.
|
<urn:uuid:48200828-44b1-4227-a3ed-63754f2cb1a9>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1368&doc_id=232360
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978717
| 277
| 2.75
| 3
|
Definition of Satyridae
1. Noun. A widely distributed family of butterflies common near the edges of woods.
Generic synonyms: Arthropod Family
Group relationships: Lepidoptera, Order Lepidoptera
Member holonyms: Ringlet, Ringlet Butterfly
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Satyridae Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Satyridae
Literary usage of Satyridae
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. The Butterflies of the Eastern United States and Canada: With Special by Samuel Hubbard Scudder, William Morris Davis, Charles William Woodworth, Leland Ossian Howard, Charles Valentine Riley, Samuel Wendell Williston (1889)
"... well digested work on the Lepidoptera of Germany and Switzerland (1859) arranged the butterflies in eight families in the following order : — satyridae, ..."
2. The Geographical Distribution of Animals: With a Study of the Relations of by Alfred Russel Wallace (1876)
"The families represented are as follows: satyridae, with 11 genera and 27. species, ... a northern genus yet having a species in Brazil ;—all satyridae. ..."
3. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for by American Philosophical Society (1898)
"I use this term instead of satyridae. because the generic title Satyrus Latreille is preoccupied ... If Satyrus properly falls then satyridae must also go. ..."
|
<urn:uuid:5c5becaa-fea4-4f75-8fe2-36992d469601>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/satyridae
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.824908
| 337
| 3.265625
| 3
|
on Triton's horizon (Click on the image for a larger
largest of Neptune's eight known satellites, Triton is different
from all other icy satellites Voyager has studied. About
three-quarters the size of Earth's Moon, Triton circles
Neptune in a tilted, circular, retrograde orbit (opposite
to the direction of the planet's rotation), completing an
orbit in 5.875 days at an average distance of 330,000 kilometers
(205,000 miles) above Neptune's cloud tops. Triton shows
evidence of a remarkable geologic history, and Voyager 2
images show active geyser-like eruptions spewing invisible
nitrogen gas and dark dust particles several kilometers
has a diameter of about 2,705 kilometers (1,680 miles) and
a mean density of about 2.066 grams per cubic centimeter
(the density of water is 1.0 gram per cubic centimeter).
This means Triton contains more rock in its interior than
the icy satellites of Saturn and Uranus do.
relatively high density and the retrograde orbit offer strong
evidence that Triton did not originate near Neptune, but
is a captured object. If that is the case, tidal heating
could have melted Triton in its originally eccentric orbit,
and the satellite might even have been liquid for as long
as one billion years after its capture by Neptune.
scientists are unsure of the details of Triton's history,
icy volcanism is undoubtedly an important ingredient.
understand what is happening on Triton, one must ask, "How
cold is cold? How soft is soft? How young is young?"
Water ice, whose melting point is 0 degrees Celsius (32
degrees Fahrenheit), deforms more easily and rapidly on
Earth than rock does, but becomes almost as rigid as rock
at the extremely low temperatures found on Triton, more
than 4.5 billion kilometers from the Sun. Most of the geologic
structures on Triton's surface are likely formed of water
ice, because nitrogen and methane ice are too soft to support
much of their own weight.
the other hand, nitrogen and methane, which form a thin
veneer on Triton, turn from ice to gas at less than 100
degrees above absolute zero. Most of the geologically recent
eruptions at those low cryogenic temperatures are due to
the nitrogen and methane on Triton.
that such eruptions occur was found in Voyager images of
several geyser-like volcanic vents that were apparently
spewing nitrogen gas laced with extremely fine, dark particles.
The particles are carried to altitudes of 2 to 8 kilometers
(1 to 5 miles) and then blown downwind before being deposited
on Triton's surface.
extremely thin atmosphere extends as much as 800 kilometers
(500 miles) above Triton's surface. Tiny nitrogen ice particles
may form thin clouds a few kilometers above the surface.
Triton is very bright, reflecting 60 to 95 percent of the
sunlight that strikes it (by comparison, Earth's Moon reflects
atmospheric pressure at Triton's surface is about 14 microbars,
a mere 1/70,000th the surface pressure on Earth. Temperature
at the surface is about 38 kelvins (-391 degrees F), the
coldest surface of any body yet visited in the solar system.
At 800 kilometers (500 miles) above the surface, the temperature
is 95 kelvins (-290 degrees F).
remarkable differences between Triton and the other icy
satellites in the solar system, photographs reveal terrain
that is reminiscent of Ariel (a satellite of Uranus), Enceladus
(a satellite of Saturn), and Europa, Ganymede and Io (satellites
of Jupiter). Even a few reminders of Mars, such as polar
caps and wind streaks, can be seen on Triton's surface.
appears to have the same general size, density, temperature
and chemical composition as Pluto (the only outer planet
not yet visited by any spacecraft), and will probably be our
best model of Pluto for a long time to come.
|
<urn:uuid:66a0cba6-2a17-41e3-936e-27a737871d9b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/neptune_triton.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.890498
| 892
| 4.125
| 4
|
How to Study for ASVAB on Your Own?
Self-help for ASVAB Preparation
Joining the U.S. military services is an ambition that many young U.S. citizens nurture from a very young age. For joining the U.S. military forces, one needs to get a good score in the ASVAB. A strict and disciplined approach and proper preparation will help you achieve high scores in the test.
ASVAB is a battery of tests. It tests the aptitude of the examinees in Verbal, Math, Science and Technology, and Assembling Objects. There are 10 subtests in the entire examination. The following points help you to plan your preparatory schedule for the test.
- Preparation for ASVAB
Strong preparation is required if one has to get a good score in the examination and get enlisted in the U.S. military services. Preparation for the test should be systematic. High school principles in Math and Science should be learnt well.
- Learn About the Test
Before you take up any test, you must understand what the test is about and the different sections and question types in the examination. This will help you prepare and study better. So understand the nature of the ASVAB, before you begin your test preparation.
- Pre Test
Take a practice test to get a feel of the final examination. This will tell you, where you stand. Your strong and weak areas can be understood after you take a pre-test. Based on this score, you can draft your study schedule.
- Self-study or Classes
You have two options for ASVAB preparation. You can study by yourself or you can join some preparation classes and study as per the curriculum recommended by the tutors there. Among the two, self-study is a good option and will help you to study at your convenience. On the other hand, if you join the preparatory classes, the main advantage is that the schedule and materials are ready and you need to follow the instructions given in the class. However, whichever option you choose, you have to study hard.
If you choose to do self-study, you need to first draft a schedule. The schedule must be doable. You have to stick to the schedule and prepare well. Divide your time based on your strengths and weaknesses to cover the four main areas of testing - Verbal, Math, Science and technology and Assembling Objects.The basic information about these sections has been provided here under:
- Verbal Subtests
The subtests Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension fall under this category. The best way to prepare for Word Knowledge is to read a lot of general English books. Use a dictionary to learn the meanings of new words. For Paragraph Comprehension, read small passages and try to understand the meaning and the main idea of the passage. A good vocabulary and a strong foundation in grammar is a great advantage while preparing for this subtest.
- Math Subtests
Arithmetic Reasoning and Math Knowledge are the math subtests. Both these subtests' score is used for computing the AFQT score. Therefore, math subtests are important and a thorough preparation is required. A good knowledge of high school math will help in preparing for these subtests. Regular practice and good concentration are the most important techniques to get a good score in these subtests.
- Science and Technology
There are five subtests that come under the Science and technology category. They are General Science, Electronics Information, Auto Information, Shop Information and Mechanical Comprehension. The scores in these subtests are important as they are required for joining specific jobs in the U.S. military. Here again, high school science concepts must be studied well.
- Assembling Objects
Prior knowledge in this subject is not required. Abstract images need to be perceived and understood to answer this subtest. Solving jigsaw puzzles and answering such abstract questions will help you prepare for this subtest.
When preparing on your own for the ASVAB, one needs to be sincere and disciplined. This battery of tests evaluates the knowledge and aptitude of the candidates that are required for various jobs in the military services. To help with your preparation, you can purchase self-study guides. These books prove helpful for overall test preparation. Take as many practice tests as possible. This will increase your answering speed and will help in understanding the format of the test better. Finally, it must be said that practice is the only fail-safe method to prepare properly for the examination.
|
<urn:uuid:f96fa59b-1d64-45fe-9a40-b3766c7c4e1c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.testpreppractice.net/ASVAB/asvab-preparation-test.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.927359
| 934
| 2.78125
| 3
|
Patent Model, Skyrocket,1865, J.W. Hadfield
This is a patent model for an improved skyrocket invented in 1865 by John W. Hadfield of Newtown, New York. The rocket features three reversible, metal, triangular wings. The wings were turned in when the rocket was packed for shipping, and turned out when it was ready to be fired. They were secured to the rocket body by a clamp. The ordinary fireworks rocket of the day was equipped with a long wooden guidestick lashed to its side. This cumbersome arrangement made such rockets difficult and expensive to transport. Hadfield’s patent did not claim the wings’ originality. Rather, he came up with a way to make the wings reversible, yet insure a controlled flight of the rocket compared with those stabilized with guidesticks. However, it does not appear that Hadfield's improvement was adopted by others.
Alan D. Dunphy gave this patent model to the Smithsonian in 1983.
Gift of Alan D. Dunphy
- Country of Origin
- United States of America
- John W. Hadfield
- MODELS-Missiles & Rockets
- Cardboard body; sheet iron fins
- Overall: 12 x 1in diameter. (30.48 x 2.54cm)
|
<urn:uuid:7330c690-2abe-413b-a81e-f76409aaf900>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19830020000
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00118-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956529
| 264
| 2.796875
| 3
|
|Type||K-12, VS-2, 'Zhar-ptitsa'|
|Wing Load (kg/m2)||57.8|
|Power load (kg/hp)||4.38|
|Speed at 0m||211km/h|
|Speed at 3000m||218km/h|
Experimental tailless bomber with two M-22 engines, yet another step on K.A.Kalinin's way towards his dream - rocket-powered supersonic flying wing aircraft. Light bomber carried crew of three. Construction - wielded steel tube frame with fabric cover. Each wing was a single piece construction, fuselage was assembled from three sections. Center sections of full-span slatted ailerons served as an elevon.
Aircraft could carry 500kg bombload inside, defenses were provided by two turrets (navigator/bombardier and tail gunner).
Prior to aircraft assembly 1/2 scale glider was built, and flown almost 100 times, proving the reliability of the airdynamic scheme.
At Fall 1936 P.M.Stefanovskij took the K-12 into the air. End-plates were found inefficient at low speeds, minor stability problems were encountered. But the designer's goal was reached: he proved that tailless aircraft may serve as a multi-role front-line aircraft: light bomber (including chemical weapons), artillery spotter, photo-reconnaissater, transport-paramedic. After minor factory refinements K-12 was put in production.
Confidence in the K-12 was so high, that the experimental aircraft was included in Tushino parade fly-past on August 18, 1937. Painted in impressive red-yellow-orange feather-pattern, it was presented under nickname 'Zhar-ptitsa' (Fire-bird).
Ten K-12 were built, production was cancelled when K.A.Kalinin fall victim of Stalin's purges.
|Created January 25, 1996
Modified August 24, 1999
|
<urn:uuid:36e27aaa-0e05-469e-9b6b-8bdebd006e06>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://ram-home.com/ram-old/k-12.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.929727
| 430
| 2.84375
| 3
|
The blackberries were late this year. Moreover, they are sparse, small and bitter. The Met Office says it has been the coolest summer in twenty-five years. The blackberries confirm it.
Here in Ireland, blackberries are the one fruit still widely gathered from the wild. When we first came here almost forty years ago, some folks gathered mushrooms from the fields. It's been a while since I've seen anyone mushrooming. It's been a while since I've seen mushrooms.
But the lanes are still edged with bramble, and for the past few weeks we have joined our neighbors trying to fill a bucket or bowl with enough blackberries to make a crumble. I've been able to gather barely enough for my spouse to dress her breakfast cereal.
Why do we do it? Richard Mabey, in his wonderful big compendium Flora Britannica, says: "It is not just that blackberries are delicious, ubiquitous and unmistakable. Blackberrying, I suspect, carries with it a little of the urban dweller's myth of country life: harvest, a sense of season, and just enough discomfort to quicken the senses. Maybe the scuffling and scratches are an essential art of the attraction, the proof of satisfying outdoor toil against unruly nature."
Or maybe we are feeding our inner hunter-gatherer, some resilient impulse inherited from our pre-agricultural ancestors. Blackberry seeds have been found in the stomach of a Neolithic man dug up in a British bog.
Here is a drawing of blackberry bramble from an eleventh-century herbal, probably compiled at Bury St. Edmunds Abbey in Suffolk, England, and now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The herbal contains some of the earliest naturalistic plant drawings, with information on the plants' medicinal uses. A very William Morris-y design. And a precursor of the coming Scientific Revolution.
|
<urn:uuid:ad5cf299-93f3-45ba-a48f-01dd58934bd0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blog.sciencemusings.com/2011/09/berrying.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958117
| 395
| 2.828125
| 3
|
Today I heard about a phenomenon called "translational coupling", where the translation of one protein influences the translation of another protein. The messenger RNA levels don't seem influenced. How does this work? Do they need to be in the same operon?
Translational coupling describes in how some cases an mRNA will code from more than one protein (i.e. will be polycistronic). Translational coupling is thought to be mostly used as a way to make a set of genes are translated at roughly the same amount in the cell.
Translational coupling is very common in prokaryotes and nearly half of e coli genes are found in a polycistronic operon. What we know about them is revealing. There are some fancy mechanisms to adjust the ratios of these adjacent genes, which are still coupled, but with ratios that are not just 1:1. Its shown that the later genes are often translated at somewhat lower frequency because the first genes are available more quickly before the mRNA degrades.
I've only been able to find this reference to a eukaryotic case of "translational coupling" which is very rare, but does exist. The most common cases of translationally coupled genes in eukaryotes are RNA viruses which usually contain only a single full length mRNA which codes for all the genes in the virus. The selective pressures to keep the viral genome small and constrain the ratios of these genes, will cause these genes to even overlap, starting the next one before the current gene finishes.
|
<urn:uuid:8f9f8c40-ae43-4c52-9402-c7228fcead7b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/how-does-translational-coupling-work-in-prokaryotes
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953805
| 313
| 3.109375
| 3
|
Friedrich Wilhelm Rudolf Gerhard August, Freiherr von Steuben, a Prussian military officer, arrives at General George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge on this day in 1778 and commences training soldiers in close-order drill, instilling new confidence and discipline in the demoralized Continental Army.
Baron von Steuben, as he is better known, was the son of a military engineer and became a Prussian officer himself at the age of 17. He served with distinction and was quickly promoted from infantry to Frederick the Great’s General Staff. In 1763, at age 33 and with the rank of captain, he was discharged for unknown reasons. His title of freiherr, or baron, came with his subsequent post as chamberlain (or palace manager) to the petty court of Hohenzollern-Hechingen in Swabia, or the southwestern Holy Roman Empire, in what is now Baden-Wuerrtemberg. Employed by an indebted prince, von Steuben searched for more lucrative employment in foreign armies. The French minister of war recommended von Steuben to Benjamin Franklin as a resource to the Continental Army in 1777. Franklin in turn passed on word of Steuben’s availability to George Washington, and by February 23, 1778, he was among the desperate Continentals camped at Valley Forge.
Von Steuben, who did not speak English, drafted a drill manual in French, which Alexander Hamilton and Nathanael Greene then translated into English. The Prussian drill techniques he shared were far more advanced than those of other European armies, let alone those of the ragtag Patriots. The ego-crushing methods of modern boot camp were practiced among the shoeless soldiers of Valley Forge with remarkable efficacy. Most important for 18th-century battle was an efficient method of firing and reloading weapons, which von Steuben forced the Patriots to practice until it became second nature.
Before von Steuben’s arrival, colonial American soldiers were notorious for their slovenly camp conditions. Von Steuben insisted on reorganization to establish basic hygiene. He demanded that kitchens and latrines be put on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines facing a downhill slope. (Just having latrines was novelty to the Continental troops who were accustomed to living among their own filth.)
On the merit of his efforts at Valley Forge, Washington recommended that von Steuben be named inspector general of the Continental Army; Congress complied. In this capacity, von Steuben propagated his methods throughout the Patriot forces by circulating his Blue Book, entitled Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.
|
<urn:uuid:359b95c0-471a-4d01-8699-2bb51634c0d0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/friedrich-von-steuben-arrives-at-valley-forge
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965379
| 553
| 3.6875
| 4
|
Washington, D.C. (November 30, 2010) -- One of the holy grails of nanotechnology in medicine is to control individual structures and processes inside a cell. Nanoparticles are well suited for this purpose because of their small size; they can also be engineered for specific intracellular tasks. When nanoparticles are excited by radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields, interesting effects may occur. For example, the cell nucleus could get damaged inducing cell death; DNA might melt; or protein aggregates might get dispersed.
Some of these effects may be due to the localized heating produced by each tiny nanoparticle. Yet, such local heating, which could mean a difference of a few degrees Celsius across a few molecules, cannot be explained easily by heat-transfer theories. However, the existence of local heating cannot be dismissed either, because it's difficult to measure the temperature near these tiny heat sources.
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new technique for probing the temperature rise in the vicinity of RF-actuated nanoparticles using fluorescent quantum dots as temperature sensors. The results are published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Amit Gupta and colleagues found that when the nanoparticles were excited by an RF field the measured temperature rise was the same regardless of whether the sensors were simply mixed with the nanoparticles or covalently bonded to them. "This proximity measurement is important because it shows us the limitations of RF heating, at least for the frequencies investigated in this study," says project leader Diana Borca-Tasciuc. "The ability to measure the local temperature advances our understanding of these nanoparticle-mediated processes."
The article, "Local Temperature Measurement in the Vicinity of Electromagnetically Heated Magnetite and Gold Nanoparticles" by Amit Gupta, Ravi Kane and Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc appears in the Journal of Applied Physics. See: http://link.
Journalists may request a free PDF of this article by contacting email@example.com
ABOUT JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS
Journal of Applied Physics is the American Institute of Physics' (AIP) archival journal for significant new results in applied physics; content is published online daily, collected into two online and printed issues per month (24 issues per year). The journal publishes articles that emphasize understanding of the physics underlying modern technology, but distinguished from technology on the one side and pure physics on the other. See: http://jap.
The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.
|
<urn:uuid:b2a6b603-79af-49ee-9c56-488d89454441>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-11/aiop-mtt112910.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.934603
| 652
| 3.234375
| 3
|
Pretoria, Feb 20 :The South African government will pursue safe nuclear power and build more nuclear power plants, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters said.
"The safety of nuclear facilities is of paramount importance to the safety of workers, the environment and residents," the minister said Tuesday, adding the government is serious about developing nuclear energy in a bid to diversify energy resources, reported Xinhua.
South Africa currently relies heavily on coal, which constitutes about 90 percent of the country's energy sources. The government plans to build a large nuclear plant to reduce dependence on coal.
South Africa possesses sound knowledge that makes it competent to run a large nuclear power plant, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has said.
To build a low carbon economy, "we cannot belittle the role that natural gas and nuclear power can play in the realization of that 2030 low carbon energy vision", Peters said at the Africa Energy Indaba (conference) in Johannesburg titled: "2013 World Energy Issues Monitor".
"We need to ensure that energy security is pursued as a catalyst for economic growth and prosperity throughout the continent," said Peters.
She said all South African nuclear installations safety assessment will be closely monitored by regulators following the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
South Africa has worked out the Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) 2010 to 2030 which envisages 9,600 MW additional nuclear capacity by 2030.
South Africa has the African continent's only nuclear power station -- the Koeberg, which is near Cape Town.
The station was shut down twice in September and October in 2011 for repairs, raising concern about nuclear security.
The government said Koeberg's reactors were designed to withstand a Richter scale 7 earthquake. The largest recorded earthquake in South Africa measured 6.1 on the Richter scale which struck the Western Cape towns of Tulbagh and Ceres in 1969.
The country's plan to expand nuclear energy has met with strong opposition from Greenpeace which says nuclear plants pose potential dangers of radioactivity in the event of a nuclear crisis, similar to what was experienced by Japan in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster after the earthquake and tsunami that occurred March 11, 2011. (IANS)
- Scientists say death of a partner may cause an actual ‘heartbreak’
- Trump Criticizes Ford’s Move of Building a New Assembly Plant in Mexico
- Reportedly Pfizer and Allergan Plan to End Merger Deal with New Stricter Tax Rules
- Dollar Close to Its Seventeen Month Low Against the Yen
- Iceland’s Prime Minister Resigns after Panama Paper Leak
|
<urn:uuid:9cf128aa-1e5f-4e93-8d58-2a6859ea63ce>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://topnews.in/south-africa-pursue-safe-npower-minister-2373048
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945649
| 537
| 2.59375
| 3
|
It will be an exciting summer in Maryland as celebrations get underway for the 200th anniversary of the national anthem. On Friday, students brushed up on Baltimore's role in a hands-on history lesson.
For a year, more than 600 students from 10 schools across the state have been researching and learning about the War of 1812. On Friday, they showed off their knowledge at Patterson Park in Baltimore.
"Just showing them that history's all around them, it's underneath their feet, is a pretty amazing experience for them," said Robert Novak, a teacher.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake showed her support for Friday's educational program, saying, "They're learning history, they're learning Baltimore's role in American history and in the War of 1812 and they're doing it in a fun way."
History Field Day is a chance for students to learn about history in their own backyard and what part the neighborhood they live in now played in the War of 1812.
The students did research and went on field trips across the state to get a better understanding of their local history.
Some students formed a fife and drum corps like those that would have played in 1812.
|
<urn:uuid:f0222370-694c-40d6-9ce6-424f3ee849d3>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.wbaltv.com/education/handson-history-lesson-teaches-baltimores-role-in-war-of-1812/26252048
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.976795
| 243
| 2.96875
| 3
|
Evidence of large volcanic activity in the Caribbean uncovered
Scientists from the University of Southampton have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown large volcanic eruption in the Caribbean Sea.
By studying ash layers, known as tephras, in marine sediments they identified an eruption that took place on Guadeloupe 2.4 million years ago.
The research, published in the journal Geology, indicates this eruption is the largest documented volcanic event in the region since that time.
Lead author, Professor Martin Palmer, at the University of Southampton, said: “Volcanic eruptions are relatively common in this area of world, but while they are very disruptive for the local community, as seen on Montserrat over the past 20 years, they do not generally have a major impact on neighboring islands. While a large eruption of the scale that we have identified would represent an important hazard to human populations in the wider region if it occurred today, it is very important to note that our research suggests that such events are rare in the Lesser Antilles - there is no indication that another large eruption is imminent.”
The research team analysed a sediment core recovered by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition at a site 30km southwest of Montserrat and 75km west of Guadeloupe in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. This is close to several volcanically active islands in the Lesser Antilles. The core contained an unusually thick (18 cm) tephra that was deposited 2.4 million years ago.
By analysing the isotopes, trace elements and grain morphology of the tephra, together with volcanological models, the researchers were able to identify the origin and magnitude of the large VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) 6 eruption. In comparison, the largest Montserrat eruptions since 1995 had a VEI of 3-4.
Professor Palmer added: “Reconstructing the magnitude of past volcanic eruptions is important to inform predictions about future eruptions and hazards. This is difficult to accomplish from records on land - old eruptions are often eroded away, buried beneath later eruptions, or obscured by vegetation and soil. Most volcanoes are close to the oceans, so much of the erupted material falls into seawater and accumulates on the seafloor.
“It is important to continue these types of study as they allow scientists to build a more complete picture of conditions required to generate unusually large eruptions in settings where they are normally much smaller.”
The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and IODP.
|
<urn:uuid:42d797c6-6086-40d6-8b6c-68da466e1aad>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/01/caribbean-volcano-study.page
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954888
| 534
| 3.640625
| 4
|
Amazons of the Avant-Garde features the pioneering Modernism of six artists—Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova—all of whom shared an ambition to discover what Rozanova described as "new bases of artistic creation." This exhibition explores the vital role that each artist played in the formation of a radical cultural enterprise-the art of the Russian avant-garde-through an examination of their original and independent approaches to art making. In doing so, the exhibition traces the evolution of modern Russian painting from Neo-Primitivism, Cubo-Futurism, and Rayism to Suprematism and Constructivism.
Alexandra Exter (1882–1949) traveled regularly between the Ukraine, Russia, France, and Italy, and served as an important emissary between the Russian avant-garde and artists in Western Europe. Paintings such as The Bridge (Sèvres), 1912, and Venice, 1915, exemplify the importance of her geographic and cultural interests. Exter's experimentations with such diverse sources of stylistic influence as folk art (Ukrainian embroidery), Cubism, Futurism, and Simultanism culminated in her magnificent non-objective works of 1917-18, such as Composition. Movement of Planes. Although painting remained her primary medium, Exter also applied her stylistic innovations to book illustration, cinema, ceramics, and theater.
Natalia Goncharova's (1881–1962) paintings of peasants, religious subjects (Pillars of Salt, 1908), machinery, and the countryside (Rayist Lilies, 1913) demonstrate the breadth and richness of her vision. Although influenced by Post-Impressionism, Goncharova derived true inspiration from Russian medieval art, peasant embroidery, the lubok (hand-colored print), and stone stele (baba), which she applied to her painting, set design, and graphic work. Peasants Gathering Grapes, 1912, is a convincing paraphrase of these ethnographic influences. Goncharova maintained a radical spirit in both her art and her behavior, shocking the public with her casual cross-dressing and open cohabitation with artist Mikhail Larionov. Her unconventional depictions of religious subjects, as in The Evangelists (in Four Parts), 1911, resulted in the removal of her work from more than one exhibition.
Liubov Popova (1889–1924) produced some of the most important Cubist works of the Russian avant-garde. A student of Le Fauconnier and Metzinger in Paris, her deft assimilation of the Cubist aesthetic is evident in such works as Composition with Figures, 1913. Popova was also interested in incorporating other approaches into her work, such as Futurism (Italian Still-Life, 1914, is dedicated to the Futurists), Suprematism, the reliefs of Tatlin, and even Renaissance art and the Orientalism of Samarkand. These disparate sources informed Popova's unique resolutions of form and color, crystallized in the dynamic reliefs and architectonic paintings of the late 1910s, such as Painterly Architectonics, 1917. Like Exter and Stepanova, Popova eventually came to believe that abstract painting had reached an impasse and later devoted herself primarily to stage, textile, and book design.
Unlike most of the artists represented in this exhibition, Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) lived and worked in St. Petersburg rather than in Moscow. She never visited Europe, but was certainly aware of the Modernist trends developing there. Indeed, Fire in the City (Cityscape), 1914, emulates the apocalyptic dynamism of Futurist art. More synthetic works, such as Pub (Auction), 1914, demonstrate Rozanova's strong interest in Cubism as well as in Malevich's transrational (zaum) paintings. For Rozanova, color was the essence and justification of abstract painting, and she referred to her pictorial system as "color painting," a term that points to her primary goal of creating images that did not rely on external referents for their meaning or subject matter.
Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958) represented a second generation of the avant-garde, one in strong sympathy with the October Revolution, and it is in this context of agitational art that she is best remembered. The Soviet requisite for accessibility and utilitarianism in art appealed to her and husband Alexander Rodchenko, with whom she often collaborated. Like Exter and Popova, Stepanova proclaimed her commitment to giving the new political and cultural order visual form by applying Constructivist principles to stage, publication, and clothing designs, as well as to painting. In Five Figures on a White Background, 1920, for example, Stepanova mechanizes the human form as an illustration of the efficiency and strength of the ideal Soviet in the new proletarian state.
Also included here are examples of Stepanova's visual poetry, inspired by the zaum poetry of Kruchenykh, with which she sought to establish an organic connection between the shape and sound of her language and its spectral accompaniment.
With Popova, Nadezhda Udaltsova (1885–1961) attended the Académie de La Palette, quickly assimilating the principles of Cubism from Le Fauconnier and Metzinger. The two artists' shared commitment to Cubism is exemplified by a comparison of two 1913 works: Udaltsova's Composition and Popova's Composition with Figures are both precise interpretations of the Cubist syntax. Like Stepanova, Udaltsova was committed to working representationally, and exhibited with the Jack of Diamonds group, who emphasized the importance of Cézanne and Picasso. Although she did some work with Suprematist fabrics and taught textile design, Udaltsova's primary interest continued to be painting throughout her artistic career, despite the Post-Revolutionary pressure to adapt the fine arts to utility.
Associate Curator for Research
|
<urn:uuid:f8c7e1de-74d0-43ef-963e-c007dd0e15ca>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/en/exhibitions/amazons-of-the-avant-garde-exter-goncharova-popova-rozanova-stepanova-y-udaltsova/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951521
| 1,280
| 2.53125
| 3
|
FIFTY YEARS AGO, if you met a linguist at a dinner party and asked him how he did his research, his answer would have involved technology no more sophisticated than a good notebook, a tape recorder, and a No. 2 pencil.
These days, if you run into a University of Chicago linguist and ask the same question, you are likely to get a rather different answer. Responses might involve tools like high-speed cameras, eye trackers, visual recognition technology, and EEG machines.
This is not your grandfather’s linguistics.
A generation ago, linguists who wanted to get at questions of meaning, usage, and linguistic change generally had one-on-one interactions with their subjects, and asked them for judgments about words, sounds, and meanings. UChicago linguists were especially known for analyzing patterns of language change and recognized for their detailed studies of foreign languages.
While linguists remain preoccupied with grammar, meaning, social and historical change, and language acquisition, the discipline has grown to encompass ideas from computer science and cognitive psychology, giving rise to new methodologies such as experimental and computational linguistics.
At Chicago, several members of the Department of Linguistics faculty have incorporated the field’s latest approaches—and tools—into their research. Computational linguists like John Goldsmith, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in linguistics and computer science and Gregory Kobele, Neubauer Family assistant professor in linguistics, use computer programs to model different components of human language. Phonologist Alan Yu, associate professor in linguistics, runs experiments that investigate how sounds change over time. Professor Anastasia Giannakidou, a semanticist, collaborates with faculty in psychology to study sentence building in sign languages.
“Traditional methods are still the core of the department, but we’re adding on these other elements in a complementary way,” says Professor Chris Kennedy, the Linguistics Department chair. “I do see it as enhancement of what we’ve already got. You want to build on traditional strengths.”
The P-600 Effect
The so-called generative revolution spearheaded by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s and 60s popularized the notion that grammar is, at a deep level, algorithmic, explains Jason Riggle, assistant professor in linguistics. “The idea is that there is a finite recipe or set of rules that generates the infinite complexity we see,” he says.
“That means the system that we ultimately want to explain is not the one that is English or Cantonese—it’s the one that underlies English or Cantonese,” Kennedy adds.
Today, linguists continue to look across many languages in hopes of discovering the complicated processes by which language is implemented in and executed by the brain. Computational linguists like Goldsmith, for example, have used computer programs to simulate the ways the brain can learn language. Goldsmith has developed a program called Linguistica that can take a sample of any language and learn its morphological structure. Experimental linguists like Ming Xiang, an assistant professor in linguistics, favor other strategies such as monitoring the brain’s electrical activity with an EEG machine.
“The fundamental similarities are what linguistics is going after,” says Xiang. “What are the basic, primitive units that can combine to produce all the languages?”Xiang, who received her PhD from Michigan State University and did postdoctoral research at Harvard and the University of Maryland, trained in theoretical linguistics before turning to experimental methods. She’s grown especially interested in how the brain processes sentences. Her research has unlocked some surprising truths about commonalities among languages that on the surface seem quite different.
Some of her recent research focuses on wh-questions—interrogative words like who, what, when, where, and which. In English, wh-words are in a sentence-initial position, which means they are generally far away from their verb ("What did he buy?"). In Chinese, the word order is the same as in the corresponding non-question, keeping wh-words close to their verb ("He bought what?"). Because of the difference in word order, one might assume that English speakers and Chinese speakers would use different strategies to process these sentences. But Xiang believes this is not the case.
Using an EEG machine, which measures electrical signals generated by neurons firing in the brain, Xiang studied how Chinese speakers responded to wh-words. She focused on P-600, a burst of electrical activity in the brain that has been shown to correlate with the association of wh-words and their verbs in English.
Xiang presented her Chinese-speaking subjects with two sentences, one with a wh-word and one without. In both sentences, because of the Chinese word order, the verb and its object were right next to each other (for example, “John wondered Mary went to see which pop star” vs. “John thought Mary went to see that pop star”). The sentences containing wh-words caused a much larger P-600 effect—even though the verb was close to its object in both sentences.
[wysiwyg_field contenteditable="false" wf_deltas="0" wf_field="field_article_images" wf_formatter="image" wf_settings-image_link="" wf_settings-image_style="" wf_cache="1363374811" wf_entity_id="4855" wf_entity_type="node"]
This suggests that the brain processes the Chinese and English sentences containing wh-words in a similar way, despite the difference in word order. In other words, there seems to be a similar mental strategy for comprehension that extends across languages.
The discovery of such cross-linguistic mental processes is crucial, Xiang says. “The fundamental similarities are what linguistics is going after. What are the basic, primitive units that can combine to produce all the languages?”
For Xiang, it’s satisfying to observe and measure phenomena she once studied through a more theoretical lens. Still, “I feel fortunate I came from a traditional training, because without that foundation, I couldn’t explore how things are implemented in the brain.”
Like Xiang, Jason Riggle is trying to reveal the hidden similarities in languages that seem to make different demands on users. With colleagues at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago and Purdue University, he’s turned his attention to American Sign Language (ASL). Riggle, a graduate of UCLA and director of the Chicago Language Modeling Lab, hopes that his research on ASL can shed light on the process behind language change.
In the pilot study, Riggle brought native signers—including a third-generation deaf signer—into his lab for a marathon fingerspelling session. (In ASL, fingerspelling is used for emphasis and for words that do not have a sign.) The subjects sat before a high-speed camera, spelling a series of words that flashed onto a screen in front of them.
When Riggle’s team reviewed the six hours of footage they had collected, they were immediately struck by the errors the signers made. Because both typing and ASL involve the fingers, they had expected to see the kinds of errors commonly observed in typing—reversing or omitting letters, for instance. Instead, Riggle says, they saw anomalies more commonly observed in speech.
In speech, we are constantly readjusting our tongue and teeth in order to speak quickly and fluidly. As we articulate the word “warmth,” for instance, we very often unconsciously produce a puff of air that sounds like a “p” between the “m” and “th.” This “p” is the accidental result of preparing to articulate the next sound in the word. In linguistics, this is known as “coarticulation.”
Riggle observed the same phenomenon among the signers he studied. For example, when they encountered a word with an “i”—a letter articulated with the pinky finger, which is used relatively rarely in ASL—the signers’ pinkies would begin to drift up. When asked to spell an unfamiliar word like “Felkelni, a town in Ireland, one of the signers rendered it “Felkeklini.”
This might look like a careless mistake, but in a larger sense “the hand is doing a smart thing,” Riggle says. “It’s getting the pinky up because it’s going to be needed later. So the things we’re calling ‘errors’ are motivated by something we see all over the place in language—that is, getting the articulators that aren’t currently needed into the position they need to be in later.” The fingers are trying to take the easiest, most efficient path from Point A to Point B.
Over time, these optimizing strategies can become ingrained in a language, contributing to long-term changes. Studying signers offers powerful insight into language change, Riggle says, because “it allows us to pull apart what is an accidental property of having a mouth, and what is a deep property of language.”
Understanding fingerspelling anomalies yields more than theoretical insight. Riggle and several Toyota colleagues who study computational vision hope to build a computer system that can recognize ASL. By identifying how and when common errors occur, they can teach the computer to anticipate mistakes. If they get a computer to recognize hand shapes, “they might be able to scale up to other kinds of learning from visual cues,” says Kennedy.
[wysiwyg_field contenteditable="false" wf_deltas="1" wf_field="field_article_images" wf_formatter="image" wf_settings-image_link="" wf_settings-image_style="" wf_cache="1363374811" wf_entity_id="4855" wf_entity_type="node"]
Riggle’s ASL research, which borrows ideas from computational, experimental, and traditional theoretical linguistics, is “very clearly at the intersection of several disciplines,” he says. “It involves bringing very new tools to bear on very old questions—and bringing old expertise to new questions. It’s the kind of thing we’re seeing more and more these days.”
The “Forbidden Experiment”
It isn’t just the tools that have changed. It’s also the kinds of data to which linguists have access. The twenty-first century is the era of “Big Data,” says Goldsmith. “Science is changing because of the amount of data we have to deal with.” Computer analysis has made it possible for researchers in many fields look at much larger swaths of information and extract meaningful data from it, and linguists are no exception.
“A lot of the nature of linguistic inquiry 100 years ago was driven pragmatically by the kind of data you had access to,” Riggle explains. It simply wasn’t possible to follow large numbers of people around and record their day-to-day speech for any length of time.
Linguists would love to know what happens when you isolate people in an enclosed space for weeks at a time and record their every utterance.With more and more text and multimedia available online, it’s easier for linguists to study language as it is actually spoken. Increasingly, researchers are seeking out large chunks of raw data that they can analyze—“naturally occurring experiments,” Riggle says.
Two graduate students in Riggle’s lab have embraced this idea of naturally occurring experiments. Max Bane and Morgan Sonderegger, along with Peter Graff at MIT, have been mining the unlikeliest of sources for data—reality television.
“It’s the forbidden experiment,” Bane says. Linguists would love to know what happens when you isolate people in an enclosed space for weeks at a time and record their every utterance, but it’s hardly something a human-subjects board would allow. Fortunately, the contestants on the television show Big Brother did it for them.
Sonderegger, Bane, and Graff examined the changes in speech among the Big Brother participants. They focused on Voice Onset Time (VOT), a measure of how long it takes for vocal chords to relax after articulating certain consonants. It’s variation in VOT that makes “p” sound different from “b,” and “k” sound different from “g.” Longer VOT makes “p”s sound especially “bursty” and clear.
The team charted each contestant’s average VOT over the course of the season, using statistical methods to control for things like word frequency that might skew the average.
Their preliminary results, published in the Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, suggest that the contestants’ phonetics changed in response to social pressures. During periods of tension in the house, the contestants’ average VOT began to shift wildly—some people’s average VOT increased in response to the tension, while others’ decreased. And by the season’s end, the average VOT began to converge. In the absence of social pressures, contestants began to sound more like one another.
“We know language and sounds change over time, and certain social groups get associated with certain sounds,” Sonderegger says. “The implicit assumption is that moment-to-moment interaction leads, in the long term, to some change in the community. But there was no link between interaction and community-level change. We thought this research was a way to connect them.”
It’s the kind of experiment you never would have seen 50 years ago. Fortunately, Riggle isn’t fazed by all the changes to his field. “If the field is not building new tools that suggest new questions that make you build more new tools, then it’s not going anywhere,” he says. “If I’m not obsolete in 30 years, I’m not doing a good job now.”
|
<urn:uuid:e345edb9-3db3-4b4f-967e-16dd7bab9cf6>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://tableau.uchicago.edu/articles/2011/03/new-tools-old-questions
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949373
| 3,048
| 2.953125
| 3
|
|By PR Newswire||
|November 1, 2012 09:00 AM EDT||
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- During American Diabetes Month®, the American Optometric Association (AOA) is encouraging Americans with diabetes to schedule at least annual dilated eye examinations, depending on their particular examination findings and their optometrist's recommendations to help detect and even prevent eye and vision disorders that could lead to blindness. Diabetes is a disease that interferes with the body's ability to use and store sugar, which can cause many health problems. Too much sugar in the blood can cause damage throughout the body, including the eyes.
Each year, 12,000 – 24,000 people lose their sight because of diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, nearly 26 million people in the United States, or 8.3 percent of the population, have diabetes. An estimated seven million Americans are undiagnosed, with Hispanics and African Americans at higher risk for developing the disease.
"Yearly, dilated eye exams given by a doctor of optometry are extremely important for those living with diabetes," said Paul Chous, O.D., a member of the AOA and author of Diabetic Eye Disease: Lessons From A Diabetic Eye Doctor. "When the eyes are dilated, an eye doctor is able to examine the retina for early warning signs of diabetic eye disease and prescribe a course of treatment to preserve an individual's sight. Many eye problems are silent until they are in an advanced stage, but early detection and treatment can truly save a person's vision."
Results from the AOA's 2012 American Eye-Q® consumer survey revealed that only 44 percent of Americans are aware that diabetic eye disease often has no visual signs or symptoms. Additionally, 43 percent of American's don't know that a person with diabetes should have a comprehensive eye exam once a year.
Diabetic Eye and Vision Disorders
People with diabetes are at a significantly higher risk for developing eye diseases including glaucoma, cataracts and diabetic retinopathy, one of the most serious sight-threatening complications of diabetes.
Those with diabetes are 40 percent more likely to suffer from glaucoma than people without diabetes. Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases characterized by damage to the optic nerve resulting in gradual peripheral vision loss.
Many people without diabetes will get cataracts, but those with the disease are 60 percent more likely to develop this eye condition. People with diabetes also tend to get cataracts at a younger age and have them progress faster. With cataracts, the eye's clear lens clouds, blocking light and interfering with normal vision.
Diabetic retinopathy is a condition that causes progressive damage to the retina, the light-sensitive lining at the back of the eye. Damage to the tiny blood vessels that nourish the retina causes swelling of retinal tissue and clouding of vision. If left untreated, diabetic retinopathy can cause blindness.
Since early warning signs of diabetic eye and vision disorders are often subtle or undetected, the AOA recommends that high-risk individuals look for initial signs and contact a doctor of optometry if any of the following symptoms are present:
- Sudden blurred or double vision
- Trouble reading or focusing on near-work
- Eye pain or pressure
- A noticeable aura or dark ring around lights or illuminated objects
- Visible dark spots in vision or images of flashing lights
In addition to a having yearly, comprehensive eye exam, the AOA offers the following tips to help prevent or slow the development of diabetic eye diseases:
- Take prescribed medication as directed
- Keep glycohemoglobin test results ("A1c" or average blood sugar level) consistently under seven percent
- Stick to a healthy diet that includes Omega 3s, fresh fruits and vegetables
- Exercise regularly
- Control high blood pressure
- Avoid alcohol and smoking
For additional information on eye health, and diabetic retinopathy, please visit http://www.aoa.org/diabetic-retinopathy.xml.
About the American Eye-Q® survey:
The seventh annual American Eye-Q® survey was created and commissioned in conjunction with Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB). From May 9 – 16, 2012, using an online methodology, PSB conducted 1,009 online interviews among Americans 18 years and older who embodied a nationally representative sample of U.S. general population. (Margin of error at 95 percent confidence level)
About the American Optometric Association (AOA):
The American Optometric Association represents approximately 36,000 doctors of optometry, optometry students and paraoptometric assistants and technicians. Optometrists serve patients in nearly 6,500 communities across the country, and in 3,500 of those communities are the only eye doctors. Doctors of optometry provide two-thirds of all primary eye care in the United States.
Doctors of optometry (ODs) are the independent primary health care professionals for the eye. Optometrists examine, diagnose, treat, and manage diseases, injuries, and disorders of the visual system, the eye, and associated structures as well as identify related systemic conditions affecting the eye.
Prior to optometry school, optometrists typically complete four years of undergraduate study, culminating in a bachelor's degree. Required undergraduate coursework for pre-optometry students is extensive and covers a wide variety of advanced health, science and mathematics. Optometry school consists of four years of post-graduate, doctoral study concentrating on both the eye and systemic health. In addition to their formal training, doctors of optometry must undergo annual continuing education to stay current on the latest standards of care. For more information, visit www.aoa.org.
Media Contact: Madonna Duncan
SOURCE American Optometric Association
IoT is rapidly changing the way enterprises are using data to improve business decision-making. In order to derive business value, organizations must unlock insights from the data gathered and then act on these. In their session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Hoffman, Vice President at EastBanc Technologies, and Peter Shashkin, Head of Development Department at EastBanc Technologies, discussed how one organization leveraged IoT, cloud technology and data analysis to improve customer experiences and effi...
Jun. 30, 2016 11:30 AM EDT Reads: 596
Basho Technologies has announced the latest release of Basho Riak TS, version 1.3. Riak TS is an enterprise-grade NoSQL database optimized for Internet of Things (IoT). The open source version enables developers to download the software for free and use it in production as well as make contributions to the code and develop applications around Riak TS. Enhancements to Riak TS make it quick, easy and cost-effective to spin up an instance to test new ideas and build IoT applications. In addition to...
Jun. 30, 2016 11:15 AM EDT Reads: 699
The idea of comparing data in motion (at the sensor level) to data at rest (in a Big Data server warehouse) with predictive analytics in the cloud is very appealing to the industrial IoT sector. The problem Big Data vendors have, however, is access to that data in motion at the sensor location. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Scott Allen, CMO of FreeWave, discussed how as IoT is increasingly adopted by industrial markets, there is going to be an increased demand for sensor data from the outermos...
Jun. 30, 2016 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 430
CenturyLink has announced that application server solutions from GENBAND are now available as part of CenturyLink’s Networx contracts. The General Services Administration (GSA)’s Networx program includes the largest telecommunications contract vehicles ever awarded by the federal government. CenturyLink recently secured an extension through spring 2020 of its offerings available to federal government agencies via GSA’s Networx Universal and Enterprise contracts. GENBAND’s EXPERiUS™ Application...
Jun. 30, 2016 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 457
The cloud market growth today is largely in public clouds. While there is a lot of spend in IT departments in virtualization, these aren’t yet translating into a true “cloud” experience within the enterprise. What is stopping the growth of the “private cloud” market? In his general session at 18th Cloud Expo, Nara Rajagopalan, CEO of Accelerite, explored the challenges in deploying, managing, and getting adoption for a private cloud within an enterprise. What are the key differences between wh...
Jun. 30, 2016 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,070
Presidio has received the 2015 EMC Partner Services Quality Award from EMC Corporation for achieving outstanding service excellence and customer satisfaction as measured by the EMC Partner Services Quality (PSQ) program. Presidio was also honored as the 2015 EMC Americas Marketing Excellence Partner of the Year and 2015 Mid-Market East Partner of the Year. The EMC PSQ program is a project-specific survey program designed for partners with Service Partner designations to solicit customer feedbac...
Jun. 30, 2016 10:45 AM EDT Reads: 645
The IoT is changing the way enterprises conduct business. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Hoffman, Vice President at EastBanc Technologies, discussed how businesses can gain an edge over competitors by empowering consumers to take control through IoT. He cited examples such as a Washington, D.C.-based sports club that leveraged IoT and the cloud to develop a comprehensive booking system. He also highlighted how IoT can revitalize and restore outdated business models, making them profitable ...
Jun. 30, 2016 10:30 AM EDT Reads: 551
There are several IoTs: the Industrial Internet, Consumer Wearables, Wearables and Healthcare, Supply Chains, and the movement toward Smart Grids, Cities, Regions, and Nations. There are competing communications standards every step of the way, a bewildering array of sensors and devices, and an entire world of competing data analytics platforms. To some this appears to be chaos. In this power panel at @ThingsExpo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, Bradley Holt, Developer Advocate a...
Jun. 30, 2016 10:15 AM EDT Reads: 971
SYS-CON Events has announced today that Roger Strukhoff has been named conference chair of Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo 2016 Silicon Valley. The 19th Cloud Expo and 6th @ThingsExpo will take place on November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. "The Internet of Things brings trillions of dollars of opportunity to developers and enterprise IT, no matter how you measure it," stated Roger Strukhoff. "More importantly, it leverages the power of devices and the Interne...
Jun. 30, 2016 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 526
The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, provided an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data profession...
Jun. 30, 2016 09:33 AM EDT Reads: 187
Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance – how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders – from customers to the board – will be able to understand and comprehe...
Jun. 30, 2016 09:02 AM EDT Reads: 199
In addition to all the benefits, IoT is also bringing new kind of customer experience challenges - cars that unlock themselves, thermostats turning houses into saunas and baby video monitors broadcasting over the internet. This list can only increase because while IoT services should be intuitive and simple to use, the delivery ecosystem is a myriad of potential problems as IoT explodes complexity. So finding a performance issue is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Jun. 30, 2016 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 425
Cloud Expo, Inc. has announced today that Andi Mann returns to 'DevOps at Cloud Expo 2016' as Conference Chair The @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo will take place on November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. "DevOps is set to be one of the most profound disruptions to hit IT in decades," said Andi Mann. "It is a natural extension of cloud computing, and I have seen both firsthand and in independent research the fantastic results DevOps delivers. So I am excited t...
Jun. 30, 2016 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 365
Apixio Inc. has raised $19.3 million in Series D venture capital funding led by SSM Partners with participation from First Analysis, Bain Capital Ventures and Apixio’s largest angel investor. Apixio will dedicate the proceeds toward advancing and scaling products powered by its cognitive computing platform, further enabling insights for optimal patient care. The Series D funding comes as Apixio experiences strong momentum and increasing demand for its HCC Profiler solution, which mines unstruc...
Jun. 30, 2016 08:45 AM EDT Reads: 577
The Internet of Things will challenge the status quo of how IT and development organizations operate. Or will it? Certainly the fog layer of IoT requires special insights about data ontology, security and transactional integrity. But the developmental challenges are the same: People, Process and Platform and how we integrate our thinking to solve complicated problems. In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Craig Sproule, CEO of Metavine, will demonstrate how to move beyond today's coding paradigm ...
Jun. 30, 2016 08:00 AM EDT Reads: 552
Internet of @ThingsExpo has announced today that Chris Matthieu has been named tech chair of Internet of @ThingsExpo 2016 Silicon Valley. The 6thInternet of @ThingsExpo will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Jun. 30, 2016 07:00 AM EDT Reads: 439
"We work in the area of Big Data analytics and Big Data analytics is a very crowded space - you have Hadoop, ETL, warehousing, visualization and there's a lot of effort trying to get these tools to talk to each other," explained Mukund Deshpande, head of the Analytics practice at Accelerite, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Jun. 29, 2016 04:15 PM EDT Reads: 483
UAS, drones or unmanned aircraft, no matter what you call them — this was their week. Our news stream was flooded with updates on the newly announced rules and regulations for commercial UAS from the FAA. So, naturally we have dedicated this week’s top news round up to highlight some of our favorite UAS stories.
Jun. 29, 2016 03:02 PM EDT Reads: 336
When people aren’t talking about VMs and containers, they’re talking about serverless architecture. Serverless is about no maintenance. It means you are not worried about low-level infrastructural and operational details. An event-driven serverless platform is a great use case for IoT. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Animesh Singh, an STSM and Lead for IBM Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, will detail how to build a distributed serverless, polyglot, microservices framework using open source tec...
Jun. 29, 2016 12:30 PM EDT Reads: 590
IoT offers a value of almost $4 trillion to the manufacturing industry through platforms that can improve margins, optimize operations & drive high performance work teams. By using IoT technologies as a foundation, manufacturing customers are integrating worker safety with manufacturing systems, driving deep collaboration and utilizing analytics to exponentially increased per-unit margins. However, as Benoit Lheureux, the VP for Research at Gartner points out, “IoT project implementers often ...
Jun. 29, 2016 10:45 AM EDT Reads: 584
|
<urn:uuid:287238c2-c83a-419c-83e2-e34bc425a4de>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://xml.sys-con.com/node/2426741
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.925146
| 3,520
| 2.84375
| 3
|
Cutting out or significantly reducing your child's TV time means a quieter home, better quality homework time, and more family bonding. Also, it encourages and challenges your child to use his creativity to entertain himself. Not a bad idea.
Did you know, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation:
- ⅔ of infants and toddlers watch an average of two hours of television a day
- Kids under six watch an average of four hours a day
- Kids ages 8 to 18 watch an average of four hours of TV a day, with an additional two hours on the computer or playing video games
This is especially alarming since the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations:
- No television for children under the age of two
- Children over the age of two watch no more than one to two hours of television per day
I know, no one wants to hear this. Our children's television habits are as guilt-inducing as our own. But cutting out television doesn't have to be hard. It's more about training us parents than the kids. Yes, it's easier to sit them in front of the television while we're getting things done. But does it have to be on in the background all the time? Here are some very simple ways to introduce a limited television schedule into your child's routine.
1. Cut Television Time in Half
Start small. Allow your kids to choose their top one or two programs and that's it. For younger kids, introduce a kitchen timer. Once the time is up, they have to find something else to do. Moping, whining and complaining can result in less TV the next day. This lets them know you mean business. If your kids still watch quite a bit of television, try cutting another 50% in about a month.
2. Track Their Progress
This is especially helpful for the younger tykes. Get a calendar and place stars or stickers on the days they quit watching without whining or moping. Once they collect enough stars, treat them to their favorite ice cream place, or make a craft with them on the weekend. The idea is to show them (and you) the benefits of giving up television.
3. Invest in Some Board Games
Uno, Phase 10, Apples to Apples, Balderdash, Scattegories, Scrabble, Chutes and Ladders, and Candyland are just a handful of the great family games available. After dinner one night a week, set up a game and watch how quickly it becomes a family tradition.
4. Art Time
In our kitchen, we have a huge drawer that is always stuffed with coloring books, paper, crayons, paints and glue so the kids can make art whenever they feel "moved." This is also a great distraction for when they want to watch one more show. Nope, it's art time. You need to finish decorating that card for Emma.
5. Pandora Kids Radio
If you haven't yet, go over to Pandora and create a radio station that your kids will love. We love the "Elmo Song" radio. Whenever the kids are craving a movie, I throw on that station and watch them boogie to the beat. Who knew "Wheels on the Bus" could be so funky?
6. Make Something
Whether it's a fort out of sheets or a Lego castle, encourage their sense of creativity. Trust me, they'll be so busy having fun, they'll forget about how much they miss Sponge Bob. And you'll remember what sanity feels like without Patrick's voice bellowing in the background constantly.
If you're struggling sticking to it, there are many other ways you can manage your child's TV time. Just be consistent, tune in to where your kids are and turn off their voices nagging for more.
|
<urn:uuid:736b1da9-4a2a-4040-9402-f85a6fe2258c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://parentingsquad.com/how-to-ween-your-child-off-tv
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964442
| 778
| 2.734375
| 3
|
Yampa and White River snowpack and reservoir storage as of March 1:
• Percent of average snowpack: 109
• Percent of last year's average snowpack: 130
• Percent of average reservoir storage: 111
• Percent of last year's reservoir storage: 106
With snowfall averages totaling "above average" for the third successive month, Northwest Colorado - as well as the state - stands to have the most abundant water supplies in more than 10 years, the National Resources Conservation Service reported.
December, January and February brought higher-than-normal snowfall and boosted snow accumulation levels across the state, according to the Conservation Service.
The trend rang true for Moffat County.
This December was the wettest in 30 years for the area, bringing more than 33 inches of snowfall, said Graham Roberts, a Trapper Mine environmental health and safety specialist who keeps records of snowfall and precipitation levels at the mine.
January and February followed suit, bringing above average snow accumulation, he said. With it, precipitation levels - or the amount of water produced by the fallen snow - also increased.
Last month brought 1.42 inches of precipitation, Roberts said. The month's 30-year average was 1.16 inches.
Above average precipitation such as that in Moffat County has affected the state's river system.
Recent surveys "show above average snowpack accumulations have now been reached in every major river basin in the state," according to a Conservation Service news release.
Across the state, snowpack topped out at 135 percent of average but reached 98 percent of reservoir capacity.
At a measuring point near Maybell, the Yampa River currently is holding 111 percent of its average flow, said Mike Gillespie, Conservation Service snow survey supervisor.
Colorado hasn't experienced higher-than-normal snowpacks in three years, the Conservation Service reported, and the state snowpack levels constitute the state's highest since 1997, when precipitation levels across the state totaled 145 percent of average.
The results bode well for the state's water supply this year.
"With the abundance of snowpack, along with good reservoir storage across most of the state, this year's water supplies appear to be the best in over a decade," according to the Conservation Service.
Gillespie agreed, but also offered a warning.
The past three months' snowfall "more than made up for the dry fall we had" this year, he said. "We're in good shape for snowpack."
Still, "another dry month or two and we could be down to average or below average" water supplies, he said. "I wouldn't go so far as to say we're out of the woods yet."
Until summer arrives, Moffat County residents should not expect the snow to subside, an area weather specialist said.
"I'd have people be prepared for more snow buildup," said Jim Pringle, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Grand Junction.
Residents can expect more snow for the months of March and April, Pringle said, adding that Craig could accumulate 5 to 10 inches of snow tonight.
Long-range forecasts for coming months predict above average temperatures and near or below average precipitation, Pringle said.
But, the meteorologist said he has doubts on that last point.
"We'll see if that actually happens," he said. "We haven't seen much : below average precipitation" this season.
Bridget Manley can be reached at 875-1795 or firstname.lastname@example.org
|
<urn:uuid:c5712b82-55fa-44f9-ae67-a9b73ae3db86>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.craigdailypress.com/news/2008/mar/13/good_shape_snowpack/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00006-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952435
| 730
| 2.578125
| 3
|
Genetic Disturbance Linked to Schizophrenia
Emerging evidence suggests many people with schizophrenia have small genetic abnormalities that affected their brain in childhood and adolescence.
In a series of new studies on adult onset schizophrenia, NIH scientists discovered individuals possessed high rates of rare genetic deletions and duplications that apparently disrupted their brain during youth.
These tiny anomalies were found in 15 percent of adult onset schizophrenia patients and 20 percent of child and adolescent onset patients, compared with only 5 percent of healthy participants.
Collectively, the mutations carried by patients were significantly more likely than those in healthy participants to disrupt genes involved in brain development — potentially implicating hundreds of genes in the illness, which affects about 1 percent of adults.
“This is an important new finding in the genetics of schizophrenia,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
“Identifying genes prone to harboring these mutations in brain development pathways holds promise for treatment and prevention of schizophrenia, as well as a wide range of other neurodevelopmental brain disorders.”
Two independent teams of researchers report on their combined findings in an article published online in Science Express, March 27, 2008.
The prevailing genetic model of schizophrenia implicates common variants of certain suspect candidate genes, each exerting modest effects, in interaction with each other and environmental factors. This hypothesis holds that risk stems from common variations in the sequence of the genetic code that result in altered protein products.
About a year ago, researchers reported evidence strengthening the case for a different kind of genetic risk. Many people with autism were found to have different, spontaneous and individually rare structural variations — variations in the number of copies of genes. These copy number variations were scattered throughout the genome, suggesting that many different genes could be involved in autism spectrum disorders.
The new findings in schizophrenia echo those in autism, but also broaden their implications. The results suggest a new approach for discovering genes for schizophrenia and other mental disorders, say the researchers. Any mutation in the hundreds of genes involved in brain development could lead to a different set of neurodevelopmental consequences – schizophrenia, autism, mental retardation, or no illness at all. Each person with one of the illnesses could have a different genetic cause for the disorder.
The functional consequences of these structural genetic variations may differ, depending on interactions with other genes or environmental events, say the researchers, making any gene harboring a deleterious structural mutation a “candidate gene.” Any gene harboring one mutation likely contains others. Although each might be individually rare, together such disease-causing variations in one gene could explain a substantial number of illness cases, they suggest.
Among key study findings:
- * Genes disrupted in patients, as opposed to healthy participants, were significantly over-represented in pathways critical for brain development. These included genes involved in creating the infrastructure by which neurons communicate — and for neuronal growth, migration, proliferation, differentiation, and cell death. Among these were genes important for neuronal communications via glutamate and neuregulin, both of which have previously been implicated in schizophrenia.
* The mutations were often specific to single cases or families. Virtually every mutation detected by King, Sebat and colleagues was different in a sample of 150 adults with schizophrenia and 268 healthy controls.
* In families affected by childhood onset schizophrenia, Rapoport and colleagues found that 28 percent (23) of 83 patients harbored mutations, compared with 13 percent (10) of 77 controls. By using the non-transmitted chromosomes of the patients’ parents as controls, the researchers were able to determine if the mutations in their children were likely inherited or spontaneous. The majority turned out to be inherited rather than spontaneous, some from parents unaffected by the illness. Childhood onset schizophrenia is thought to be a more severe and more genetically influenced form of the illness.
Nauert PhD, R. (2015). Genetic Disturbance Linked to Schizophrenia. Psych Central. Retrieved on June 28, 2016, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/03/31/genetic-disturbance-linked-to-schizophrenia/2097.html
|
<urn:uuid:58e3dd4e-eac9-462e-b7c4-9d508895230d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/03/31/genetic-disturbance-linked-to-schizophrenia/2097.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948681
| 850
| 3.40625
| 3
|
February 28th, 2012 // 10:03 pm @ Oliver DeMille
Globalization is changing the demand on governments around the world. Since the advent of the nation-state in 1648, the purpose of national government has been to protect its citizens from attack by international forces and domestic criminals.
Local government has focused on providing the various needs of citizens as deemed appropriate by voters and constitutional by the courts, and together these two levels of government (national and state in the U.S.) have been responsible for certain limited roles; the rest was left to private institutions and citizens.
With the growth of internationalism in the twentieth century, many governments took on the additional responsibility of helping its citizens prosper through the use of diplomacy, military strength and multilateral decision-making abroad.
Such responsibilities included, for example, the safety of citizens traveling the world, the protection of international investments by domestically-owned corporations, and the maintenance of trade and low prices in important commodities (from sugar to petroleum).
Where internationalism added a few such roles to many national governments, globalism is rewriting the entire purpose of government.
And where internationalism assumes a world made up of various separate nations with individual sovereignty and diplomatic arrangements between equals, globalism is based on a different perspective.
In the globalist view, we live in one world, everything that happens everywhere affects us all, and government should care for citizen needs by taking action around the world as needed to protect and promote the best results for its constituents.
Basically nothing is off limits.
This adds numerous implied responsibilities to governments that embrace the globalistic worldview.
For people who believe government should be limited to the authorities explicitly delegated by the people in the Constitution (as I do), this is a disturbing development.
It is becoming a concern for everyone as time passes.
On a technical level, the U.S. Constitution allows the federal government to engage in and ratify treaties with other nations, and when this occurs these treaties become part of the de facto constitutional structure of our nation.
In the era of internationalism (beginning around 1913 and expanding ever since, especially after 1944), the treaty powers have been used to drastically change our Constitutional model.
This is part of the “fine print” of our Constitutional society, and it has been ignored by almost all ordinary citizens.
But the shift from internationalism to globalism is a significantly bigger change (in size and also scope) than the shift from nationalism to internationalism.
Under the new values and ideals of globalism, the role of government is, well, everything it deems desirable.
This viewpoint is fundamentally the end of limited government.
Government in the global era is expected to survey the world, see needs, debate and vote about them, and pass legislation or issue executive orders to deal with whatever the government deems advantageous—the Constitution notwithstanding.
This includes taking action at the most local and personal level, including in peoples’ homes and family decisions, and also at the macro-level in any and every corner of the world.
This is big government gone über.
In this view, government should do whatever is needed to accomplish whatever it considers popular or important.
The courts are allowed to sort out whether or not such action was acceptable, but only after the fact. No checks stop such government action and no balances are required before the government can act.
This is more than big government; it is closer to the philosophy of governance that Hobbes called Leviathan.
No wonder the government hasn’t yet figured out quite how to respond to this changing sense of the state’s proper role.
Congressman Paul Ryan argues that the federal government doesn’t have a tax problem but rather a spending problem, but according to this new viewpoint of globalism the U.S. is going to have to spend a lot more—a lot more!—in the years and decades ahead to fulfill its proper role.
From this perspective, our federal spending spree is just getting started, and the only way to meet the need is to fundamentally reform taxation and get the upper and upper middle classes to foot the bill for a globalist government run from Washington.
In this outlook, we’ll need to keep raising the budget every year and the required spending is deeply underfunded.
Only massive increases in taxes can get us moving in the right direction.
The old debate between Conservatives and Liberals just doesn’t rise to the level of this new challenge, and the current energy in Washington is focused on a globalistic agenda that anticipates drastic increases in government for decades to come.
Georgetown University’s Charles A. Kupchan, wrote:
“A crisis of governability has engulfed the world’s most advanced democracies. It is no accident that the United States, Europe and Japan are simultaneously experiencing political breakdown; globalization is producing a widening gap between what electorates are asking of their governments and what those governments are able to deliver.” (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2012)
Globalism is leading to a natural decrease in the living standard of developed nations, and citizens of such nations are turning to government to help bring back the lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to enjoying.
As the lower and middle classes of the world join the global economy, and as competition for investment and credit is spread around the globe, the special benefits that the middle classes in advanced nations have carved out for themselves are becoming unsustainable.
The middle class was created by generations who worked very hard to earn such benefits, but their posterity seems to prefer keeping these same perks without putting forth the same effort.
When this doesn’t work, they want their government to simultaneously block immigrants from “taking our jobs” and also find ways to maintain their parents’ lifestyle without having to earn them the same way earlier generations did.
Except for the entrepreneurial class—and government is increasing the barriers to entrepreneurship.
This is painful.
And it forces a choice at the voting booth: either more freedom coupled with harder work on the one side or higher taxes on the rich combined with more government benefits on the other.
The “government fix” approach is predictably more popular.
The real answer is to re-establish a truly free system, where the government limits itself to the authority outlined in the Constitution and the laws are altered to re-emphasize true free enterprise where the laws treat everyone (lower, middle and upper classes) equally.
Freedom works, and a refocus on freedom will once again make America’s economy the envy of the world.
Capital, investment and entrepreneurialism aren’t fleeing the United States because of globalism but because Washington’s policies have made the U.S. economy less profitable and attractive to business.
Unless the United States returns to a genuine free-enterprise model, our long-term economic trajectory will decline.
The battle has changed, though most people haven’t realized it yet.
Now it’s less about Left vs. Right and more the burgeoning issues of Free Enterprise vs. Globalism.
He is the co-author of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
|
<urn:uuid:aabe0f86-3db3-4216-951e-d5dfd3720490>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://oliverdemille.com/2012/02/challenge-governments/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.943296
| 1,546
| 2.5625
| 3
|
See Wiki :Battle of Pelusium:
The Persians attacked Egypt while going through the territory which is today Israel:
What happened to that territory when this happened?
Who was the king?
Is this account mentioned in the bible?
closed as off-topic by Louis Rhys, Samuel Russell, Eugene Seidel, Kobunite, Mark C. Wallace Aug 27 '13 at 10:42
This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:
There was no "Israel" at that time. The Kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylonia at 587 BC, see Siege of Jerusalem 587 BC. In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylonia, and established the Yehud province, which were a peaceful part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire until the fall of the Empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great.
Wikipedia even has a section describing the biblical version of this period: Biblical version of the Persian years (539-332 BCE)
|
<urn:uuid:ad90845b-55f8-4e0b-a919-44612c98cfe3>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/10030/what-happened-to-israel-when-persia-attacked-egypt/10031
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948417
| 215
| 3.09375
| 3
|
The blizzard has begun.
Let’s start with the big picture. Earlier today NASA released a satellite image showing how two low-pressure systems were coming together to form this powerful Nor’easter.
In this image there are two distinct storms, a western frontal system stretching across the United States and a coastal low pressure system.
The two systems can also be seen in the infrared satellite image below, upon which the fronts have been superimposed. Note the frontal system is generally linear and moving east-southeast, while the coastal low is a more of a cyclonic feature, rotating about a point of the Maryland coast.
To see both of these systems in motion, check out this really cool loop of visible satellite images.
What’s now happening is that the coastal low is swallowing the frontal system and becoming a still more powerful storm. And it’s going to move northward, up the New England coast.
A foot of snow is possible in New York City, and much more — in excess of 2 feet — is likely in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The map below shows the probability of at least 1 foot of snowfall according to the Boston office of the National Weather Service.
As you can see the probability in Boston is 100 percent. Yep, that’s a big storm. It’s going to be a long, cold night up there.
Be safe, y’all.
|
<urn:uuid:cedd2b72-8238-477e-adca-cbc0b13a5976>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blog.ctnews.com/weather/2013/02/08/bombogenesis-imminent-in-new-england-blizzard/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.939703
| 294
| 2.609375
| 3
|
A professor at Idaho State University in Pocatello has announced that his plan to use an unmanned aerial vehicle to search for Bigfoot is nearly ready for launch.
The man behind the world’s first Bigfoot drone is Jeffrey Meldrum, Ph.D., a versatile professor of both anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State—and a noted Sasquatch hunter. He is the author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”
The professor’s airship is called “The Falcon Project,” reports Idaho Mountain Express. It is 45 feet long. It will carry a remote-control camera. The academic plans to fly it over the densely-wooded forests of “Bigfoot territory.”
Meldrum, whose curriculum vitae includes teaching stints at Northwestern University and Duke University Medical Center, has been spending the summer raising money for the project in the area.
The benefit of a drone in Bigfoot hunting would obviously be the ability to spot and observe the shifty apelike creature in its natural habitat without alarming it.
“The latter is critical for survey in areas of dense stands of forest where a sustained vertical perspective is essential for locating animals on the forest floor,” Meldrum explained in wonderfully academic fashion, according to Boise Weekly.
“These unmanned drones, I believe, are the next step in proving the nature of these creatures,” he added.
The Pacific Northwest never goes long without a Bigfoot sighting. A recent one – in May 2012 – involved some high school students from Pocatello on an erosion expedition in an area called Elk Meadows.
They say they just happened to catch a glimpse of a creature off in the woods. They just happened to have a camera. Video appears to show a swift, bipedal figure similar to famous 1967 video footage that allegedly shows a Sasquatch.
“There’s a dude watching us,” one high schooler said in the 2012 video, as the Mountain Express narrates.
“It just didn’t look human-like,” another student swore. “I don’t know what that is; it’s not a bear, it’s not a moose or anything. It was big and bulky and black. I’m not going to say yes it was a Bigfoot or no, it wasn’t, because I don’t know, and nobody knows.”
The Pocatello high schoolers also produced footprints.
|
<urn:uuid:304f5fe7-66b9-4d57-95b1-e5479f2f199b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/30/science-unmanned-drone-will-hunt-down-bigfoot-now/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949155
| 524
| 2.828125
| 3
|
As we've already discussed, a generator converts mechanical energy into electricity. A motor works on the same principles, but in the opposite direction -- it converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. To do this, a motor needs a special kind of magnet known as an electromagnet. In its simplest form, this consists of an iron bar wrapped in a coil of wire. If you pass an electric current through the wire, a magnetic field is formed in the iron bar, and it becomes a magnet, with definite north and south poles. Turn off the current, and the magnetic properties disappear.
By themselves, electromagnets are useful things. You can use them to pick up metal objects, carry the objects somewhere and then drop them by just turning off the power. For example, roofers use them to pick up nails that have fallen by accident into a homeowner's yard. And wrecking yards have cranes with built-in electromagnets strong enough to pick up and move entire cars.
Electromagnets are especially useful when they're placed on an axis between two stationary magnets. If the electromagnet's south pole is situated against the south pole of one stationary magnet and its north pole against the north pole of the other stationary magnet, the electromagnet will rotate until opposite poles line up. This wouldn't be very helpful, except the polarity of electromagnets depends on the direction of current flow. Pass electric current in one direction, and the magnet's north pole will be on one side; reverse the current flow, and the north pole will be on the opposite side. In motors, a device known as a commutator reverses the direction of flow of electric current. As the poles of the electromagnet flip back and forth, the magnet is able to rotate without interruption. This is a brief explanation of course, so you may want to read How Electric Motors Work for all of the details.
As it turns out, the mechanical energy created in an electric motor can be put to good use in a variety of machines. Many tools in your garage, appliances in your house and toys kids play with rely on motors. Some of these motors require a large current to operate. Others, such as small DC motors used in robots and models, need very little voltage or current to perform efficiently. We'll continue our conversation about voltage and current in the next section.
|
<urn:uuid:1fa2b2b9-91f6-4d6c-9f7e-85683d922810>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://science.howstuffworks.com/electricity6.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949075
| 481
| 3.84375
| 4
|
Brain fertilizer: Phy ed staff stresses connection between fitness, academics
You won't find a copy of "Phy Ed for Dummies" in the Perham school locker rooms.
But you will find copies of "Brain Rules," a book that scientifically proves that exercise boosts brain power.
And that is the thrust of the school's physical education programs-from kindergarten on up.
The mission of the phy ed staff is to enhance academic achievement and learning through physical education. The phy ed department will not function as a separate entity, but rather, as a program integrated into the system, explained Mike Peterson, who made a presentation to the Perham School Board Nov. 18-along with the entire K-12 phy ed department.
Physical activity, learning and memory are all interconnected, according to current research.
Also involved in the presentation were Howie Kangas, elementary and high school phy ed; James Mulcahy, middle school phy ed and health; Ryan Hendrickson, K-6 phy ed and adaptive physical education; Cheryl Rutten, middle school health and phy ed; and Kim Kollar, family and consumer science and phy ed.
One extensive study of a larger school district, which followed the progress of students with a more complete, integrated phy ed program over a decade, concluded that there was a 17 percent improvement in reading and comprehension. Also, 97-98 percent of the students were at a healthy weight and passed fitness tests. Whereas, nationwide, studies suggest that more than 30 percent of high school students are overweight; and they spend more than five hours a day in front of a screen, be it television or computer.
Studies also conclude that integrated phy ed programs cut discipline problems and the number of violent acts in schools.
Among the phy ed highlights outlined by the staff at the Nov. 18 school board meeting:
-- If you visit Heart of the Lakes Elementary School and see children "crab-walking" to use the restroom, don't be alarmed. It is part of a broader school effort to keep students moving and active.
-- Students are studying while walking the school hallways; quizzing one another for tests. Walking and studying has a calming affect, and reduces pre-test anxiety.
-- Individual fitness plans, customized to each student, are a goal in the high school. Weight training and more active use of the Perham Area Community Center facilities are planned.
-- In the middle school, students are walking as much as possible. Students are wearing meters that measure the number of steps and convert to miles. Nearly 5,000 total miles have been walked-or about 9.4 million steps, collectively by all students. Students are deploying math skills by calculating how far they've walked-which at this point is the equivalent of Perham to Minneapolis to the eastern seaboard.
"We are all recognizing the role of phy ed as a tool for learning," said elementary school Principal Kari Yates, describing daily physical activity as "brain fertilizer."
|
<urn:uuid:562db047-45e0-4aaa-9834-a0237489101e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.perhamfocus.com/content/brain-fertilizer-phy-ed-staff-stresses-connection-between-fitness-academics
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960422
| 621
| 2.671875
| 3
|
Denmark has once again been ranked as the happiest nation in the world, this time by UN's World Happiness Report 2016 Update.
The first World Happiness Report, commissioned for the UN Conference on Happiness, held in April 2012, drew international attention as a landmark first survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2016 Update goes further. It gives a special role to the measurement and consequences of inequality in the distribution of well-being among countries and regions. In previous reports the editors have argued that happiness provides a better indicator of human welfare than do income, poverty, education, health and good government measured separately. In a parallel way, they now argue that the inequality of well-being provides a broader measure of inequality. They find that people are happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness.
Long 'tradition' of happiness
This is not the first time the Danes have been awarded this prestigious title. Back in 1973, the European Commission decided to set up a ‘Eurobarometer’ to find out about issues affecting its citizens. Since then member states have been surveyed about well-being and happiness. Amazingly Denmark has topped the table every year since 1973.
Professor of Economics Christian Bjørnskov from Aarhus Business School knows all about happiness, he even wrote his PhD on the subject. “The happiness surveys normally ask people to evaluate their lives. Research show what makes the Danes so happy is that they are very trusting of other people they don’t know. Trust helps make people happy. Also just as importantly, Danes feel empowered to be able to change something in their life if they don’t like it,” he says.
“The great thing about Danish society is that it doesn’t judge other people’s lives. It allows them to choose the kind of life they want to live, which is sometimes not always possible in other countries, so this helps add to the overall satisfaction of people living here,” he adds.
It also seems the Danes attitude to money is refreshing different from other countries. “Money is not as important in the social life here, as for example Britain and America. We probably spend our money differently here. We don’t buy big houses or big cars, we like to spend our money on socialising with others,” concludes the Professor.
|
<urn:uuid:9d9de680-0410-42b2-9526-582e14446ee8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://denmark.dk/en/meet-the-danes/work-life-balance-the-danish-way/happy-danes/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.967848
| 491
| 2.515625
| 3
|
What is the diameter of the Sun?
The Sun's diameter is 1.4 million kilometers. But to most people, that doesn't mean a whole lot!
Imagine the last road trip you took. Even a trip across a state, province, or country can seem to take forever (even if your little sister isn't poking you). Think about how long it would take to travel around the whole Earth (say at the equator). It would take you over 100 times as long to drive around the Sun's equator. In fact, the Sun is so big that if it were hollow, you could fit over one million Earth's inside of it. Now your local McDonald's has probably sold more burgers than one million, but that is still A LOT!
Submitted by Damien
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Learn about Earth and space science, and have fun while doing it! The games
section of our online store
includes a climate change card game
and the Traveling Nitrogen game
You might also be interested in:
It depends on which type of motion you are asking about. If you take a birds-eye view from the top of the solar system all the planets orbit around the Sun in a counter-clockwise (or direct) direction....more
Almost everyone has a question or two about living in space. What do astronauts do in space? How do they do everyday things like eat, sleep and go to the bathroom? It's important to note that astronauts...more
There is a really neat internet program called Solar System Live that shows the position of all of the planets and the Sun for any given day. If you go to that page, you'll see an image similar to the...more
The picture of the American Flag (the one put there by the Apollo astronauts) is waving (or straight out) in the wind. How could that be possible if there is no atmosphere on the Moon? Was it some sort...more
I was wondering if there is a new planet? Are there planets (a tenth planet?) after Pluto belonging to our solar system? What are the names of the new planets discovered in the solar system? Are there...more
If that is so, the energy released during the Big Bang must have created many such black holes. Therefore most of the Energy of the Big bang must have disappeared in that form. Then how did the Universe...more
|
<urn:uuid:5d9001f0-6773-46db-9272-7f67f8d870bd>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.windows2universe.org/kids_space/diam.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95403
| 490
| 3.078125
| 3
|
|Zu, Jinghui -|
|Ma, Xiaoyi -|
|Horton, Robert -|
Submitted to: Soil Science Society of America Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: June 6, 2012
Publication Date: November 16, 2012
Citation: Zu, J., Ma, X., Logsdon, S.D., Horton, R. 2012. Short, multi-needle FDR sensor suitable for measuring soil water content. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 76:1929-1937. Interpretive Summary: Knowing how much water is in the soil is important for agriculture, especially for irrigation timing. This laboratory study was the first step in developing an inexpensive sensor for soil water content, that would not be sensitive to salt level. By selecting the right range of frequency (for alternating current), the effect of salt on the measurement was minimized. The short sensors provided rapid, stable measurements of soil water content. This information is important to scientists who want to evaluate soil water content in soils with high salt content. After further testing in the field, the sensor would be of interest to farmers and advisors interested in appropriate irrigation application.
Technical Abstract: Time domain reflectometry (TDR) is a well-established electromagnetic technique used to measure soil water content. TDR sensors have been combined with heat pulse sensors to produce thermo-TDR sensors. Thermo-TDR sensors are restricted to having relatively short needles in order to accurately measure soil thermal properties. Short needle lengths, however, can limit the accuracy of the TDR measurement of soil water content. Frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) sensors are an alternative to TDR sensors that can provide an inexpensive measurement of soil water content. The objective of this paper is to determine whether short FDR sensors can accurately measure soil water content. We designed and constructed a short FDR sensor. For four soil types over a range of water contents, temperatures, and salt contents, we measured soil dielectric spectra with the short FDR sensor. A vector network analyzer (VNA) was used to obtain soil dielectric spectra in the 1MHz-3GHz frequency range. The ideal frequency of a short FDR sensor is the frequency at which the permittivity is not altered by changing temperature or salt content. The 47MHz-200MHz range was an ideal frequency range for measuring soil water content, and 70MHz was the frequency least influenced by temperature and salt content. Thus, for the four soil types, the 70MHz frequency was useful for measuring soil water content, and the apparent permittivity did not change with changing temperature and salinity. The short FDR sensor provided quick, continuous, stable and cheap measurements of soil water content. Because of the promising performance of the short thermo-FDR sensor in laboratory studies, sensors should be evaluated in a future field study.
|
<urn:uuid:2efaff64-a2c2-4b2e-9409-eaa9ae16d900>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/Publications.htm?seq_no_115=279258&pf=1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00022-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.927873
| 595
| 2.890625
| 3
|
JUSTINIAN I°, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, 527–565, a virulent and consistent persecutor of all non-Orthodox Christians, heretics, pagans, and also of Jews and Judaism. Justinian's famous Corpus Juris Civilis and his novellae (imperial instructions on specific subjects) included legislation on the Jews which confirmed or amended that of *Theodosius II (408–450) and virtually fixed the status of the Jew in Byzantine society for the next 700 years (see *Byzantine Empire). Adding to the restrictions and disabilities imposed by Theodosius, Justinian declared that Jews could not retain heretical and pagan slaves who converted to Orthodox Christianity, and that they could give evidence only for (not against) Orthodox Christians, while they could testify either for or against heretics. Justinian's novellae concerning the Jews are the following:
NOVELLA 37 (535 C.E.), forbidding Jews and heretics in the newly conquered province of North Africa to practice their religious rites. Synagogues and the meeting places of heretics were to be confiscated and, suitably consecrated, put to ecclesiastical use. Contrary to the prevailing Christian attitude, this novella attempted to view Judaism as a heresy and may have been motivated by suspicion of Jewish support for the Vandal regime overthrown by Justinian and the belief, prevalent in North Africa, in the alleged Jewish role in spreading heresy. Although it is known that the ancient synagogue in the city of Borion was transformed into a church and the local Jewish population was forced to accept Christianity, the novella was not put into effect. However, it was a dangerous precedent, symptomatic of the deterioration of the attitude toward the Jews under Justinian.
NOVELLA 45 (537 C.E.), prohibiting Jews, Samaritans, and heretics any exemption from service on local municipal bodies (the decurionate), a service which entailed heavy financial burdens. Previously, Jews as well as gentiles could claim exemption on the grounds of holding a religious office in their own community. The few privileges enjoyed by the decurions, such as immunity from corporal punishment or exile, would not apply to Jewish decurions. It was stated that "Jews must never enjoy the fruits of office but only suffer its pains and penalties." If a Jew was found holding a higher office than a Christian, he had to pay a fine. This novella affected the western provinces for a short time.
NOVELLA 131 (545 C.E.), prohibiting sales of ecclesiastical property to Jews, Samaritans, pagans, and heretics, and declaring synagogues built on land subsequently shown to be ecclesiastical property subject to confiscation.
NOVELLA 146 (553 C.E.), supposedly in response to a Jewish request, forbids the insistence that the readings from the Pentateuch be exclusively in Hebrew from the Scrolls of the Law (Torah). They could be in Greek, Latin, or any other tongue, and the Greek could be either that of the Septuagint or the translation of *Aquila, which had rabbinic sanction. Secondly, the use of the deuterosis, the Mishnah, for exegesis was forbidden. Justinian argued that the deuterosis was not divinely inspired and could only mislead men. Rabbinic interpretations spread errors such as a denial of the existence of angels and the Last Judgment (probably a confusion with earlier *Samaritan beliefs). Just as the Byzantine emperor was the arbiter of Christian practice, Justinian also saw him as the arbiter of the only other legal religion in his dominions. The extent of Justinian's interference in the service of the synagogue is open to question, but it attempted to impose a Christian interpretation of what Judaism and its holy texts should be.
Besides the novellae, Justinian allegedly prohibited the celebration of Passover if its date fell before the date of Easter. Ereẓ Israel was the scene of several outbursts against the empire, mainly on the part of the Samaritans, whose efforts to form their own kingdom were brutally suppressed in 529. In
W.G. Holmes, Age of Justinian and Theodora, 2 vols. (19122); F. Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (19532); D.M. Nicol, in: History Today, 9 (1959), 513–21; R. Schoell and W. Kroll (eds.), Corpus Juris Civilis, 3 (1954), 244–5, 277–9, 663, 714–7; J. Parkes, Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (1934), 245–56; Juster, Juifs, 1 (1914), 167ff., 237–8; 2 (1914), 91–92, 103–4; P. Browe, in: Analecta Gregoriana, 8 (1935), 101–46; G. Ferrari dalle Spade, in: Muenchener Beitraege zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte, 35 (1945), 102–17 (Italian); J.A. Montgomery, The Samaritans (1968), 113f.; Baron, Social2, 3 (1957), 4–15; M. Avi-Yonah, Bi-Ymei Roma u-Bizantiyyon (1952), 177–85; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 1 (1965), 31–32; H.H. Ben-Sasson (ed.), Toledot Am Yisrael, 2 (1969), index; B. Biondi, Giustiniano Primo, principe e legislatore cattolico (1936); idem, II diritto romano cristiano, 3 vols. (1952–54); V. Colorni, Gli ebrei nel sistema del diritto comune fino alla prima emancipazione (1956); idem, in: Labeo, 12 (1966), 140ff.; M. Simon, Verus Israel (Fr., 19642); P. Kahle, Cairo Geniza (1959), 39, 315; J.H. Lewy, Olamot Nifgashim (1960), 255ff.
Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.
|
<urn:uuid:c415bc44-4586-4dd0-a2b6-8adb0ce9a55c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10500.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00030-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.915931
| 1,351
| 3.28125
| 3
|
Mathew Brady (1822-1896), Composite of the Members of The United States Senate, 1859. Salted paper print, 11.75 x 9.5 inches on mount trimmed to 12.5 x 10 inches. Graphic Arts GA 2011- in process
Mathew Brady was the most celebrated of the early American photographers. In 1844, he opened his first commercial studio in New York City and added a Washington D.C. branch in 1856. His success was, at least in part, thanks to the expert operators he employed, included Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, George N. Barnard, among others. Many of these men left Brady’s studio during the Civil War and a few years later, Brady was forced to declare bankruptcy. He was never able to regain his early success and died penniless.
Princeton’s graphic arts collection has acquired a salt print composite of the United States Senate; one of only three known imperial prints of this historic image. To create the print, Brady and his operators photographed each member of the Senate individually, then cut and collaged the photographs and finally, re-photographed the composite.
It would have been worth the trouble, had South Carolina not seceded from the Union shortly after the composite was finished. By the time Brady was ready to sell copies of this photograph, it was already out of date.
Only two other copies have been located, thanks to the research of William Becker. One is in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. That print carries the handwritten notation, “Deposited in Clerk’s office Southern Dist. New York Sept. 20, 1859.” Library of Congress also holds a copy negative of the “key,” a reduced-size copy identifying each of the sitters (copied here on the left).
The other copy of Brady’s Senate photograph is owned by the New-York Historical Society.
The print now at Princeton University was originally the property of U. S. Rep. Henry Waldron (1819-1881), six term Congressman from Hillsdale, Michigan.
Becker has also identified ten of the fourteen members seen in Brady’s composite as ones who were expelled from the Senate for supporting the Confederate rebellion. At least twelve others resigned or withdrew after their states seceded from the union. The composite also depicts Sam Houston of Texas, who served in the US Senate from 1846 to March 4, 1859; Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, who resigned January 17, 1861 to become Vice President of the United States under Lincoln; and Sen. David C. Broderick of California, who died September 16, 1859 after being mortally wounded in a duel with the chief justice of the supreme court of California.
Brady’s 1859 Senate composite includes the following members who did not complete their terms due to the outbreak of the Civil War:
Alabama: Benjamin Fitzpatrick (withdrew January 24, 1861); Clement Claiborne Clay (withdrew January 24, 1861)
Arkansas: William K. Sebastian (Expelled July 11, 1861); Robert Ward Johnson (Term Ended (?) March 3, 1861)
Florida: Stephen R. Mallory (withdrew January 21, 1861); David L. Yulee (withdrew January 21, 1861)
Georgia: Robert A. Toombs (withdrew February 4, 1861); Alfred Iverson, Sr. (withdrew January 28, 1861)
Indiana: Jesse D. Bright (Expelled February 5, 1862 for support of the Rebellion)
Kentucky: John C. Breckinridge (14th Vice President of US; Democratic Candidate for President of US, 1860; Expelled Dec. 4, 1861; CSA General, CSA Secretary of War)
Louisiana: Judah P. Benjamin (withdrew February 4, 1861; Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War, CSA); John Slidell (resigned February 4, 1861)
Mississippi: Albert Gallatin Brown (withdrew January 12, 1861); Jefferson Davis (withdrew January 21, 1861; President, CSA)
Missouri: Trusten Polk (Expelled January 10, 1862 for support of the Rebellion)
North Carolina: Thomas L. Clingman (withdrew March 28, 1861; Expelled July 11, 1861); Thomas Bragg (Withdrew March 6, 1861; Expelled July 11, 1861; Became Attorney General, CSA)
South Carolina: James Chesnut, Jr. (Expelled July 11, 1861); James Henry Hammond (Retired November 11, 1860)
Tennessee: Andrew Johnson (Resigned March 4, 1862; Vice President of U.S. under Lincoln; 17th President of the U.S.); Alfred O. P. Nicholson ( Expelled July 11, 1861)
Texas: Matthias Ward (Resigned December 5, 1859)
Virginia: James M. Mason (Withdrew March 28, 1861; Expelled July 11, 1861); Robert M. T. Hunter (Withdrew March 28, 1861; Expelled July 11, 1861)
For more information, see
Mary Panzer, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), Firestone TR140.B7 P36 1997
|
<urn:uuid:76ed8fcd-634a-4d12-8966-4021c7b05032>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2011/06/bradys_senate.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963573
| 1,121
| 2.625
| 3
|
"The meeting of eyes between two individuals"
The study of eye contact is sometimes known as oculesics.
Although eye contact and facial expressions are often linked together, the eyes could transmit a message of their own.
Eye contact is a type of nonverbal communication that is strongly influenced by social behaviour. In the western civilizations, eye contact is most often defined as a sign of confidence. Eye contact is not consistent amongst different religions, cultures and social backgrounds.
Eye contact can indicate how interested a person is in the communication taking place. It could also suggest trust and truthfulness. Often, then people are being untruthful, they tend to look away and resist eye contact (Eye Aversion [blog]).
Furthermore, eye contact portrays someone's involvement and attention. Attention is a function of eye contact that can be both negatively and positively affect by a person's gaze. The latter can show confidence, anger, fear,...
A person's direction of gaze is important. To engage in a productive communicative session, attention must given. Looking away often demonstrate a lack of involvement in the conversation. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction and communication. A lack of eye contact is not a cause of this disease, but can often be a sign of its presence. This lack of eye contact provides information on how the individual's lack of attention can lead to a lack of communication skills. People suffering from social anxiety (or social phobia) also resist eye contact, although this does not necessarily mean that there is a lack of attention.
Important aspects of gaze:
Cited from Let's Focus on Eye Contact: (link bellow)
How Maintaining Eye Contact Can and Will Benefit You:
In a sales position it is imperative that the sales agent maintain the dominant role. The most effective method of doing so is by portraying confidense. And, as you’re probably thinking, eye contact is one of the most effective ways to do that.
In a sales position whoever is in control of the sale will usually establish eye contact while the more submissive party will avoid it. The same can be said of every argument and confrontation you’ve ever been in. Eye contact is empowering, and because of the natural communicative signals that it sends to the other parties, maintaining it facilitates effective communicaiton.
Studies have shown that maintaining eye contact can effectively reduce tension in a conversation, show an image of assertion, and conveys respect. Though, by the same means, too much eye contact can portray aggression, hostility, and even anger. The “death stare” can infuriate someone without you having to mutter a single word.
Take some time to commit to teaching yourself to use eye contact naturally. When you’re talking to someone quickly glance at their eyes and notice their level of committment to the conversation.
Over time maintaining eye contact will become natural and you will notice a difference in your conversations.
|
<urn:uuid:675b0d7e-a91b-4afe-a1cf-cdf49ee11001>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://sites.google.com/site/nonverbalcommunicationportal/forms-of-nonverbal-communication/eye-contact
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.939305
| 602
| 3.609375
| 4
|
Angus Deaton of Princeton University wins the Nobel prize. Working with the World Bank, Deaton has played a huge role in expanding data in developing countries. When you read that world poverty has fallen below 10% for the first time ever and you want to know how we know— the answer is Deaton’s work on household surveys, data collection and welfare measurement. I see Deaton’s major contribution as understanding and measuring world poverty.
Measuring welfare sounds simple but doing it right isn’t easy. How do you compare the standard of living in two different countries? Suppose you simply convert incomes using exchange rates. Sorry, that doesn’t work. Not all goods are traded so exchange rates tend to reflect the prices of tradable goods but a large share of consumption is on hard-to-trade services. The Balassa-Samuelson effect tells us that services will tend to be cheaper in poorer countries (I always get a haircut when in a poor country but I don’t expect to get a great deal on electronics). As a result, comparing standards of living using exchange rates will suggest that developing countries are poorer than they actually are. A second problem is the cheese problem. Americans consume a lot of cheese, the Chinese don’t. Is this because the Chinese are too poor to consume cheese or because tastes differ? How you answer this question makes a difference for understanding welfare. A third problem is the warring supermarkets problem. Two supermarkets each claim that they have the lowest prices and they are both right! How is this possible? Consumers at supermarket A buy more of what is cheap at A and less of what is expensive at A and vice-versa for B. Thus, it would cost more to buy the A basket at store B and it would also cost more to buy the B basket at store A! So which supermarket is better? Comparing standards of living across countries isn’t easy and then you want to make these comparisons consistently over time as well! Deaton, working especially with the World Bank, helped to construct price indices for all countries that measure goods and services and he showed how to use these to make theoretically appropriate comparisons of welfare. Deaton’s presidential address to the American Economic Association in 2010 covers many of these issues.
I see Deaton’s work on world poverty as a tour de force, he made advances in theory, he joined with others to take the theory to the field to make measurements and he used the measurements to draw attention to important issues in the world.
Earlier in his career, Deaton developed tools to bring theory to data on consumption. A key contributions is the Almost Ideal Demand System. We all know that demand curves slope down which means that a fall in the price of the good in question increases the quantity demanded but in fact economic theory says that the demand for good X depends not just on the price of good X but at least potentially on the prices of all other goods. If we want to estimate how a change in policy will influence people’s choices we need to allow demand curves to interact in potentially many ways but we still want to constrain those reactions according to economic theory. In addition, economic theory tells us that an individual’s demand curve slopes down but it doesn’t necessarily imply that the aggregation of individual demand curves must slope down. Aggregation is tricky! The Almost Ideal Demand system, due initially to Deaton and Muellbauer, in 1980 and further developed since then shows how we can estimate demand systems on aggregates of consumers while still preserving and testing the constraints of economic theory.
The study of consumption leads naturally to the study of savings, consumption in future periods. Here we have Keynes’s famous propensity to consume theory (consumption is a fraction of current income), Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis (consumption is a fraction of estimated lifetime income), Modigliani’s Life Cycle Hypothesis (borrow young, save when middle aged, dissave when old). Robert Hall, building on the work of Ramsey, showed in the 1970s that rational expectations implies the famous Euler equation that bedevils graduate students, which shows that suitably discounted changes in marginal utilities should follow a random walk. Deaton played a big role in testing the new theories, mostly finding them wanting.
Deaton’s book, The Great Escape, on growth, health and inequality is accessible and a good read. A controversial aspect of this work is that Deaton falls squarely into the Easterly camp (Deaton’s review of Tyranny of Experts is here) in thinking that foreign aid has probably done more harm than good.
Here is Deaton on foreign aid:
Unfortunately, the world’s rich countries currently are making things worse. Foreign aid – transfers from rich countries to poor countries – has much to its credit, particularly in terms of health care, with many people alive today who would otherwise be dead. But foreign aid also undermines the development of local state capacity.
This is most obvious in countries – mostly in Africa – where the government receives aid directly and aid flows are large relative to fiscal expenditure (often more than half the total). Such governments need no contract with their citizens, no parliament, and no tax-collection system. If they are accountable to anyone, it is to the donors; but even this fails in practice, because the donors, under pressure from their own citizens (who rightly want to help the poor), need to disburse money just as much as poor-country governments need to receive it, if not more so.
What about bypassing governments and giving aid directly to the poor? Certainly, the immediate effects are likely to be better, especially in countries where little government-to-government aid actually reaches the poor. And it would take an astonishingly small sum of money – about 15 US cents a day from each adult in the rich world – to bring everyone up to at least the destitution line of a dollar a day.
Yet this is no solution. Poor people need government to lead better lives; taking government out of the loop might improve things in the short run, but it would leave unsolved the underlying problem. Poor countries cannot forever have their health services run from abroad. Aid undermines what poor people need most: an effective government that works with them for today and tomorrow.
One thing that we can do is to agitate for our own governments to stop doing those things that make it harder for poor countries to stop being poor. Reducing aid is one, but so is limiting the arms trade, improving rich-country trade and subsidy policies, providing technical advice that is not tied to aid, and developing better drugs for diseases that do not affect rich people. We cannot help the poor by making their already-weak governments even weaker.
Here is Tyler’s post on Deaton.
Addendum: Chris Blattman offers a very good perspective and appreciation.
|
<urn:uuid:ef40f869-05dc-4231-92b1-0abb79a36f69>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/10/deaton.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00071-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957282
| 1,425
| 3.171875
| 3
|
From: Steve Puluka (firstname.lastname@example.org)
Date: Mon Aug 30 1999 - 18:14:59 EDT
>Interesting that the council of Trent would declare the LXX to be an
> >inspired translation and to have authority over the Hebrew. This
>manuscripts of the day or in the originals. I believe that the original are
>accurate but find no where in the scriptures of a guarantee for the copies.
>Dose it make sense for God not to have His hand in keeping the copies of
>his revelation to man accurate, but for >one and only one translation to be
>In Christ -chris
We in the Eastern Christian tradition do not speak about the method of
inspiration at all. Many Roman Catholic theologians have ventured to
articulate a postion which you can read in the Catholic encyclopedia.
There are many clear differences between Hebrew and LXX versions of
scripture. One must choose a version and the Orthodox and Catholic
traditions have choosen LXX because they were used and accepted by the early
church. In fact, some of my material suggests that the Jewish Council of
Jamnia that condemns the use of the LXX and insists on Hebrew for "official"
use was motivated in part by the Christian use of LXX scripture.
Quotations below are from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia articles available
(1) The Septuagint
The Septuagint, or Alexandrine, Version, the first and
foremost translation of the Hebrew Bible, was made in the third and second
centuries B.C. An account of its origin, recensions, and its historical
importance has been given above (see SEPTUAGINT VERSION). It is still the
official text of the Greek Church. Among the Latins its authority was
explicitly recognized by the Fathers of the Council of Trent, in compliance
with whose wishes Sixtus V, in 1587, published an edition of the Vatican
Codex. This, with three others, the Complutensian, Aldine, and Grabian, are
the leading representative editions available.
At the present time, the Septuagint is the official text in the Greek
Church, and the ancient Latin Versions used in the western church were made
from it; the earliest translation adopted in the Latin Church, the Vetus
Itala, was directly from the Septuagint: the meanings adopted in it, the
Greek names and words employed (such as: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers
[Arithmoi], Deuteronomy), and finally, the pronunciation given to the Hebrew
text, passed very frequently into the Itala, and from it, at times, into the
Vulgate, which not rarely gives signs of the influence of the Vetus Itala;
this is especially so in the Psalms , the Vulgate translation being merely
the Vetus Itala corrected by St. Jerome according to the hexaplar text of
At the Council of Trent she enumerated the books which must be considered
"as sacred and canonical". They are the seventy-two books found in Catholic
editions, forty-five in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New.
Protestant copies usually lack the seven books (viz: Tobias, Judith, Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and I, II Machabees) and parts of books (viz: Esther
10:4-16:24, and Daniel 3:24-90; 13:1-14:42) which are not found in the
Jewish editions of the Old Testament.
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [email@example.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to firstname.lastname@example.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:37 EDT
|
<urn:uuid:7005c06c-ae44-49ec-a6e2-657040860bfa>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1999-08/32603.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.90712
| 914
| 2.5625
| 3
|
From a personal trainer in Miami, Florida, USA:
A friend with diabetes asked me about exercise. I know of course that aerobic exercise is all good, from walking to swimming, etc., but is weight training also good and helpful? I would think so, but I am not 100% sure.
Strength training is also an important component of overall fitness for the person with diabetes. The person with diabetes should, however, be carefully evaluated by a health care professional prior to beginning an exercise program to identify the presence of any diabetes related complications. Strength training may significantly elevate blood pressure, potentially increasing risk of injury to the cardiovascular system, kidneys, and eyes of the person with diabetes. Modification of the exercise program may be necessary in the presence of cardiovascular disease, retinopathy, or neuropathy.
Original posting 13 Sep 2002
Posted to Exercise and Sports
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:09:38
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by T-1 Today, Inc. (d/b/a Children with Diabetes), a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, which is responsible for its contents. Our mission is to provide education and support to families living with type 1 diabetes.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2016. Comments and Feedback.
|
<urn:uuid:24cc9bfb-2efb-44be-b1ea-83a9e4645483>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/dteam/2002-09/d_0d_9hg.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.937019
| 308
| 2.515625
| 3
|
Spanish psychologists Itxaso Barberia and colleagues discuss an ambitious new program to train teenagers to better understand causality: Implementation and Assessment of an Intervention to Debias Adolescents against Causal Illusions
The problem is that we are bad at judging causality –
Our cognitive system has evolved to sensitively detect causal relationships in the environment, as this ability is fundamental to predict future events and adjust our behavior accordingly.
However, under certain conditions, the very same cognitive architecture that encourages us to search for causal patterns may lead us to erroneously perceive causal links that do not actually exist.
These false perceptions of causality may be the mechanism underlying the emergence and maintenance of many types of irrational beliefs, such as superstitions and belief in pseudoscience.
These illusions could also be the basis of many types of group stereotypes and may promote ideological extremism…
But can anything be done about it?
We present an intervention in which a sample of adolescents was introduced to the concept of experimental control, focusing on the need to consider the base rate of the outcome variable in order to determine if a causal relationship exists.
The intervention was quite elaborate. Stage 1 involved giving volunteers a little rock, and telling them that it was a high-tech neuroenhancing crystal that would make them smarter via magnetic fields. They then got to use this to ‘boost’ their own performance on some tests.
In Stage 2, it was revealed that it was just a little rock after all, and that they’d suffered from a causal illusion, which was then explained to them. They were shown the importance of controls, and base rates etc.
Finally, to test whether it worked, the trained adolescents were compared to a control group who didn’t get the intervention. They were given a task in which they had to judge whether or not a fictional drug worked, which required them to take into account base rates etc. The trained ones did better.
I have mixed feelings about this. It’s a great concept, but I’m skeptical because it sounds a bit like ‘brain training’ to improve cognition, which has been extensively studied with mixed success, and a difficulty in showing transfer effects to tasks of a different nature to those used in training.
Even if it works though, I’m concerned that few people would want to do this.
Brain training has been super successful because it appeals to our (perceived) self-interest – namely, it promises to make us ‘smarter’ in the kind of quantifiable way that would make you perform better on exams, or in many office jobs. It promises to let you earn a bit more money, in other words.
Not the loftiest thing to aspire to, when you think about it, but that goes to show that brain training has been well marketed.
Being immune to causal illusions, on the other hand, while surely A Good Thing in some abstract sense, doesn’t hold out as many obvious, direct benefits.
Worse, as Scott Lilienfeld et al pointed out, people will be unlikely to partake in debiasing if they don’t perceive themselves as biased – yet the trouble with biases is that when you have them, they don’t seem like biases, they seem like common sense.
So it seems to me that before people will be lining up to do this, it would first be necessary to convince people that they, personally, are irrational (not just ‘people in general’), and that this is a problem – again, for them personally. The marketers have their work cut out of them.
Barberia I, Blanco F, Cubillas CP, & Matute H (2013). Implementation and Assessment of an Intervention to Debias Adolescents against Causal Illusions. PloS one, 8 (8) PMID: 23967189
|
<urn:uuid:3d4bc844-772b-4fda-b294-8b3433818e15>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/08/29/implementation-and-assessment-of-an-intervention-to-debias-adolescents-against-causal-illusions/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971758
| 799
| 3.28125
| 3
|
A study published in 2009, led by a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that climate change may in fact be irreversible. Instead of it taking a couple hundred years to reverse global warming if we cut emissions right now, it looks like it could take more like a millennium. The issue is the oceans' absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The world's oceans play a central role in climate control. It's not just plants that absorb CO2; oceans absorb even more of it. Ocean waters absorb CO2 from the air, effectively cooling the atmosphere. The ocean also emits heat from the sunlight it absorbs, warming the atmosphere. This constant cycle of cooling and warming keeps the Earth at a stable temperature. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to work.
The system starts to break down when the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere rises exponentially, as it has in the last couple of centuries. The ocean can only absorb so much CO2 in a period of time: The upper layers of water absorb CO2, and then, as currents move, lower layers of water replace those saturated surface waters, offering new absorption surfaces. The snail-like turnover pace means any actions we take now to curb CO2 emissions won't have any effect for a long, long time.
There are other cycles involved in the problem, too. The loss of sea ice in the Arctic due to global warming creates further warming conditions that are difficult to undo. Sea ice and glacial mass are another big part of the Earth's climate-control system. While water absorbs sunlight, ice reflects it. Glaciers help keep ocean waters at a stable temperature. When glaciers melt, as they've been doing steadily since the United States started recording their levels in 1978, there's less ice to reflect sunlight and more water to absorb it. With more sunlight absorption, ocean temperatures increase. When ocean temperatures increase, more heat is released into the atmosphere, and overall temperatures increase, leading to more melting.
The end result of these combined cycles could be what some experts are calling an irreversible state of global warming. But are we really at that tipping point where there's no turning back climate change?
|
<urn:uuid:33ab8e3c-9845-45e7-97b4-42bf9e00f42a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/global-warming-irreversible1.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00199-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.941579
| 442
| 4.125
| 4
|
NM launches SIDS awareness Web page
The New Mexico Department of Health has a new Web page aimed at educating parents about ways to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and other sleep-related causes of infant deaths.
Interim Health Secretary Brad McGrath says parents should put their babies to sleep in a bassinet or crib to keep them safe rather than sleeping in the same bed.
The Web page also stresses the importance of having infants sleep on their backs in safe places free of any soft bedding, blankets or quilts.
The department says SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants, and it's the third leading cause of overall infant mortality in the United States.
In New Mexico, 60 deaths were categorized as Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths between 2009 and 2011.
|
<urn:uuid:35dc4de2-01a1-46ba-8da0-0cbcd105889a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://kunm.org/post/nm-launches-sids-awareness-web-page
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00160-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959135
| 163
| 2.71875
| 3
|
May 11, 2010
Scientists Explain How Some Dinosaurs Grew So Large
Scientists explain why the long neck dinosaurs were able to reach such gigantic proportions
There is a simple rule of thumb. The larger an animal is, the more time it spends eating. This means an elephant hardly has time to sleep. It spends 18 hours every day satisfying its huge appetite. 'This led us to one of the many riddles that gigantism of dinosaurs puts before us,' Professor Martin Sander from the University of Bonn explains. 'They were just so large that a day would have had to have 30 hours so that they were able to meet their energy demands.'Martin Sander is a spokesman for an international research group which is looking for explanations for this and other paradoxes. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) has funded the project to date with three million euros. Now the scientists involved have presented the fruits of their work on more than 30 pages in the 'Biological Reviews'. For the first time, their research is offering a plausible answer to the question which the group sought to answer six years ago: why the giant long-neck dinosaurs were even able to exist. The researchers also explain why today's terrestrial animals are nowhere near reaching the Jurassic size record. One reason is that we chew. Giant dinosaurs gulped.
Chewing helps to digest the food faster. By the grinding process it is broken down and at the same time its surface is enlarged. This way the digestive enzymes are able to attack the food more easily. 'Chewing is a property of prototheria which no large herbivorous terrestrial mammal has got rid of,' Martin Sander says. But chewing requires time "“ a resource that becomes scarce with increasing size. At the same time the following is true: the ones that chew need a large head, since molars and muscles have to be put somewhere. Not without reason elephants are quite big-headed.
However, the herbivorous giant dinosaurs had relatively small, light skulls. Only this fact enabled them to grow extremely long necks. And these again helped them to make food intake as efficient as possible. So they did not constantly have to heave their 80-ton body over the Jurassic savanna while looking for their greens. They just remained on the spot and used their agile neck to browse their surroundings. This was particularly relevant for the heavy-weights. Smaller dinos simply had far smaller necks compared to their body length.
New teeth every month
Horsetails were part of the sauropods' diet. For, according to research by the group, they are exceptionally nutritious. However, only a few animals feed off them today. A reason for this is presumably that horsetails are bad for the teeth. They contain a lot of silicate, which acts like sandpaper. But as long as you do not chew them but just pluck them and simply gulp them down, that is no big problem. Scientists from the US have recently discovered that sauropods renewed their teeth exceptionally often, some even in a monthly cycle.
The digestion process itself probably took several days with the giant dinosaurs, due to the missing molars. However, their stomachs were so large that they still provided them with enough energy round the clock. Moreover, the metabolism of these giant animals was incredibly powerful. They possessed amazingly sophisticated lungs, which were far more effective than those of humans. The large number of air sacs which permeated the body cavity and vertebra of the dinosaurs played an important role in their function. Combined with a nifty system of valves they ensured that a gas exchange could take place while breathing in as well as while breathing out. A nice side effect was that the neck got significantly lighter this way. This was important for the statics of the animals.
'In the history of species the lungs of today's birds and of the giant dinosaurs have the same origin,' Martin Sander says. 'This effective air exchange principle was invented about 230 million years ago.' This is consistent with the fact that the earth passed through an oxygen trough at the time. The concentration only 12 to 15 per cent, i.e. a third less than today. So being able to pick out the few oxygen molecules in the thin air as rapidly and well as possible was a huge advantage.
In their article the scientists also deal in detail with further factors, without which the huge herbivores would not have existed. These are inter alia the high reproduction rate which enabled animals even to survive under adverse conditions. As Martin Sander says: '200 million years ago, an unparalleled combination developed of primitive traits, which were new in the history of evolution. This combination made these fascinating giants possible.'
Image 1: Giant dinosaurs did not have any molars but gulped down their food like fast food. Only in this way did they have enough time to meet their intense energy demands, the research group led by Professor Martin Sander at the University of Bonn presumes. Credit: Frank Luerweg, University of Bonn
Image 2: Giant dinosaurs did not have any molars but gulped down their food like fast food. Only in this way did they have enough time to meet their intense energy demands, the research group led by Professor Martin Sander at the University of Bonn presumes. Credit: Frank Luerweg, University of Bonn
On the Net:
|
<urn:uuid:177df2ce-e3ae-4e06-b844-a27603fe2400>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1863531/scientists_explain_how_some_dinosaurs_grew_so_large/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.976869
| 1,107
| 3.671875
| 4
|
Fabled Viking 'sunstone' shown to really work
French researchers have backed up the idea that Viking seafarers were able to navigate even on cloudy days by using 'sunstones' with special properties.
These sunstones are mentioned in several contemporary texts, and were said to work even when the sky was completely overcast or the sun was below the horizon - as it is for long periods at such northern latitudes.
"The weather was thick and stormy... The king looked about and saw no blue sky," reads the 13th-century Hrafns Saga. "Then the king took the sunstone and held it up, and then he saw where [the sun] beamed from the stone."
As far back as the 1960s, scientists suggested that the stones described could be Icelandic spar, or calcite. This shows birefringent and dichroic properties, changing color and brightness when rotated in front of polarized light.
While the light from the sun isn't originally polarised, it becomes so by the time it's passed through the atmosphere.
Many scientists believed the polarization effects of the crystals would be too small to be of any practical use. But the discovery of such a crystal on a 16th-century shipwreck in the 1970s gave a University of Rennes team the chance to check.
While such a stone might seem redundant after the invention of the magnetic compass, says the team, the iron in the ship's cannons would have made a compass unreliable.
Simply rotating the crystal gave a good chance of detecting the sun, the team found. But when the stone was covered with an opaque sheet with a hole at its center, two distinct shadows were created. Rotating the crystal now made one shadow lighter and the other darker, according to their angle to the sun.
The stone had to be 'calibrated' on a sunny day, but can then be used in much darker conditions, says the team.
The full study's available here.
|
<urn:uuid:eb2cc09e-5fd4-43fd-8fc2-6fbb1d982a68>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/59451-fabled-viking-sunstone-shown-to-really-work
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.977048
| 406
| 3.390625
| 3
|
ssh -X is not the same as
startx. SSH is a program used for connecting to another computer with a shell. X is the graphical display program.
SSH can be used as an interactive command shell and can also be used to forward ports.
ssh -X forwards the local X display's port to the remote computer and usually sets up the remote environment so that if you start a graphical program remotely it will display locally. Normally you wouldn't run an entire desktop such as KDE in this way; you'd just run one or two programs.
startx is a command used to start an X server locally when you are logged into the console of the server, that is, the physical keyboard and screen. Most people avoid using startx because it can be a security risk if you leave your computer unattended. Starting X creates a second virtual console (the first was the text console you logged into), and someone can switch back to the text console (CTRL-ALT-F1 or something similar) and hit CTRL-C to kill your X console, and then they are logged-in as you in your text console. But if you don't leave the computer unattended it may be okay to use occaisionally.
The normal way to run a full-fledged graphical desktop on a system is to use a login manager such as XDM (or GDM/KDM for Gnome/KDE). On RedHat and friends this is usually achieved by switching to runlevel 5. From a command prompt you can type
telinit 5 to switch temporarily, or edit
/etc/inittab to set the default runlevel (typical choices are 3 - no X - and 5 - with X).
As for starting GNOME and KDE, by default when you run
startx CentOS should run one of them (probably GNOME). There are configuration files you can change to override the default.
If you want to access a full desktop environment remotely, you need to look into setting XDM up for remote access, or using VNC or some other remote desktop protocol. For a full desktop I'd recommend something like VNC because that way your session stays open when you are disconnected. But you should consider that typical X or VNC over the network is not encrypted and you may want to set up an ssh port forwarding tunnel to encrypt the data. If you just run one or two apps with
ssh -X then it will be encrypted already.
What kind of client computer are you using to connect to this server? Both
ssh -X and XDM require a local X display, whereas something like VNC does not.
If you have an X server on your local computer, you can use ssh -X to connect to the CentOS machine and start a program, such as firefox, which will display on the macbook. This link has information about using X on MacOS X. By default Apple's X server shows each application in its own window, which is perfect for running a few apps using the
ssh -X method. However, if you wanted to run an entire full-screen graphical environment, you'd need to have your local X server connect to the CentOS's XDM; you'll then see (on your macbook) a screen similar to what you'd see if you were logged into the CentOS's local console. This basically uses your Macbook as a dumb terminal: only the display, keyboard, and mouse are used locally. The programs execute on the CentOS machine. Unfortunately I can't help you set up a dumb terminal since it's been about 10 years since I last did it.
If you don't have an X server on your local computer, you can set up something like VNC (see here for more remote-desktop products), so that the X session is running on the server, on its physical display, but can be accessed remotely from a computer with the appropriate remote-desktop client. For example, KDE has a desktop-sharing application which exposes the running KDE session over VNC. You could log into the CentOS server (via XDM or text-console + startx), start the desktop-sharing, and then connect to that with a VNC client on the Macbook.
|
<urn:uuid:fd36ad28-f84a-492c-ab6c-e0011846113a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://superuser.com/questions/26356/centos-difference-between-ssh-x-and-startx-and-starting-a-gui/26415
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.938117
| 864
| 2.671875
| 3
|
The National Park Service's plan to thin the elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park has been working well since being implemented in 2010.
Before the plan was approved, the elk herd in the park had grown to more than 1,200 animals, and officials said the ideal size for the herd was no more than 400 elk. All sorts of goofy ideas were discussed as how to reduce the herd, including a suggestion at one point that federal employees shoot the elk from helicopters.
Eventually, with input from state and federal lawmakers and a host of others, a relatively simple plan was approved that used volunteer hunters gathered from a nation-wide application process. Under the watch of federal employees, the volunteers shoot the elk, and the meat is processed and donated to food pantries and American Indian Tribes.
To date, the program has provided about 45 tons of elk meat, and has reduced the herd to a managable size of about 300 elk. While praising the program's continuing success, we also wonder if at least some of the elk meat could be sold, with all the money raised going to charities that aren't currently benefitting from the donation of meat.
Such a change shouldn't be that difficult to accomplish, and surely it wouldn't take years to approve and wouldn't need to involve a host of federal agencies, as did the initial plan for reducing the herd. The program has greatly helped some charities, but perhaps there are even more that could benefit.
|
<urn:uuid:eea989bf-9d52-41c1-81f5-01b3018dc26c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/571563/Elk-herd-program-successful.html?nav=5614
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.983283
| 301
| 2.953125
| 3
|
Spotting between periods − when is it right to be on the alert?
Spotting between periods scares girls and women for good reason because in most cases such bleeding indicates gynecological diseases, infection or pathology in the body. However, if you found blood stains in your underwear when your periods are still far away from appearing, it may simply be a consequence of stress or nerve strain.
You have to see a gynecologist to determine the actual cause of your vaginal discharge. You should not resort to self-diagnosis. However, that does not mean that not being aware of gynecological diseases with similar symptoms is better than being aware of the causes and consequences of various illnesses.
When is spotting normal?
First, you need to know what a menstrual cycle is and when spotting is normal. A menstrual cycle is cyclic changes that occur in the female reproductive system monthly.
If spotting between periods can indicate a disease, then the presence of blood on the first day of menstruation and the next few days is absolutely normal because the functional layer of the uterus, on which the fertilized egg is not developing, peels off with a bloody discharge. If a woman is pregnant (the egg has been fertilized), then she will not have her periods because the upper layer of the uterus will serve as a place for the development and dwelling of the embryo.
Causes of spotting between periods
If a vaginal discharge mixed with blood is normal during menstruation, then acyclic discharge is usually indicative of a disease and pathological processes in the female body. There cannot be any spotting between periods if the woman’s reproductive system is functioning normally. However, there are some exceptions where the spotting does not indicate abnormalities.
Spotting without a hint of a disease may occur due to:
- psychological factors (acute stress or chronic stress, emotional and physical stress, anxiety, lack of sleep);
- change in time zone or climate zone (holidays abroad, at sea, on air, in the other hemisphere);
- wearing a spiral;
- using oral contraceptives;
When blood discharge is not a sign that the functional layer of the uterus is being discharged, what can it indicate?
Diseases with acyclic bleeding symptom:
- Endometriosis − is a condition in which the endometrium is found elsewhere than in the lining of the uterus. Spotting can vary in color and saturation, from bright red or pink to dark brown. A discharge is typically odorless, and development of a disease is not accompanied by painful feelings or some other symptoms.
- Chronic endometritis –a prolonged inflammation of the lining of the uterus. Bloody clots usually have brownish color and a foul odor. Besides, aching pain in the abdomen is an additional symptom.
- Uterine polyps – abnormal growths protruding from the mucous lining of the uterus. If there is blood discharge, it appears in the middle of the menstrual cycle and is smeared in the underwear. Such discharge is not abundant and comes without painful feelings.
- Cervical erosion characterized by ulcers. Bright red vaginal bleeding usually occurs after a sexual intercourse.
- Endometrial hyperplasia − an abnormal overgrowth of the layer of cells that lines the uterus. Spotting between periods without pain is a sign of hyperplasia if it does not proceed without symptoms.
- Uterine tumors (benign or malignant) and cervical canal. As a general rule, they do not manifest themselves in the form of any symptoms, except in rare intermenstrual bleeding.
So, based on these diseases listed above, it is clear even to a person with no medical education that spotting (vaginal bleeding) between periods is not normal and should make a woman see a gynecologist. Despite the fact that the discharge can indicate a pathology, one should not worry ahead of time because the blood may indicate a menstrual cycle worn down due to stress or hormonal failure in the female body. In such cases, bloody smears are ordinary periods. However, only an experienced gynecologist should determine this.
Spotting between periods: color, shape and consistence
Sometimes spotting may not even resemble the familiar red saturated blood. The discharge may be pink, red, brownish or wine red, and sometimes can have an unnatural yellow or green color. Such oddities indicate that the blood contains pus. Therefore, if you detect stains of a strange color, you should immediately visit a competent clinic where an experienced gynecologist can tell with certainty whether there are abnormalities in the body or not.
|
<urn:uuid:5b9fe90a-19da-4014-b7c0-4405be860d09>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.pinkdischarge.net/spotting-between-periods/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919097
| 940
| 3.046875
| 3
|
1. 100 pyas equal 1 kyat.
4. Divulge information or secrets.
8. Counting the number of white and red blood cells and the number of platelets in 1 cubic millimeter of blood.
11. A river in north central Switzerland that runs northeast into the Rhine.
12. English monk and scholar (672-735).
13. The syllable naming the sixth (submediant) note of a major or minor scale in solmization.
14. A wad of something chewable as tobacco.
16. An edge tool used to cut and shape wood.
17. A loose sleeveless outer garment made from aba cloth.
18. The branch of computer science that deal with writing computer programs that can solve problems creatively.
19. The blood group whose red cells carry both the A and B antigens.
21. (of complexion) Blemished by imperfections of the skin.
25. The United Nations agency concerned with civil aviation.
26. Any of various strong liquors distilled from the fermented sap of toddy palms or from fermented molasses.
31. Type genus of the Alcidae comprising solely the razorbill.
32. Soreness and warmth caused by friction.
35. (Akkadian) God of wisdom.
41. The content of cognition.
44. A member of a Mayan people of southwestern Guatemala.
45. (Scotland) A small loaf or roll of soft bread.
47. A defensive missile designed to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles.
48. A flat wing-shaped process or winglike part of an organism.
49. Relating to the Urdu language.
50. An enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of many body compounds (e.g., epinephrine and norepinephrine and serotonin).
51. A nonmetallic largely pentavalent heavy volatile corrosive dark brown liquid element belonging to the halogens.
1. Large burrowing rodent of South and Central America.
2. A member of an extinct North American Indian people who lived in the Pit river valley in northern California.
3. A constellation in the southern hemisphere near Telescopium and Norma.
4. A small pellet fired from an air rifle or BB gun.
5. A unit of length of thread or yarn.
6. A condition (mostly in boys) characterized by behavioral and learning disorders.
7. A shop where a variety of goods are sold.
8. Group of people related by blood or marriage.
9. A very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk.
10. Of or relating to or characteristic of the Republic of Chad or its people or language.
15. A city in east central Texas.
20. A soft silvery metallic element of the alkali earth group.
22. A bottle with a stopper.
23. An amino acid that is found in the central nervous system.
24. Having undesirable or negative qualities.
27. A silvery ductile metallic element found primarily in bauxite.
28. Being ten more than one hundred ninety.
29. Unknown god.
30. A light strong brittle gray toxic bivalent metallic element.
33. Relating to the deepest parts of the ocean (below 6000 meters).
34. A federal agency established to regulate the release of new foods and health-related products.
36. Toward the mouth or oral region.
37. (Babylonian) God of wisdom and agriculture and patron of scribes and schools.
38. (Islam) The man who leads prayers in a mosque.
39. A Chadic language spoken south of Lake Chad.
40. Projectiles to be fired from a gun.
42. A federal agency established to coordinate programs aimed at reducing pollution and protecting the environment.
43. To make a mistake or be incorrect.
46. A soft yellow malleable ductile (trivalent and univalent) metallic element.
|
<urn:uuid:bcd4d6a2-d58b-43dd-8832-aef90bf3e6a4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/puzzles/gt_954.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.867625
| 849
| 2.875
| 3
|
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
|Hollister Field Office|
Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum)
Parsley/Carrot Family (Apiaceae)
Description/Habitat: Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) was introduced to the U.S. in the 1800s from Europe as a fernlike garden ornamental. It is generally an erect biennial but can sometimes be an annual or short-lived perennial that can reach up to 3m tall, and usually with purple-spotted or purple-streaked stems. Plants exist as a large basal rosette during the first year. When the foliage is crushed it emits a musty odor, similar to mouse excrement.
Warning! Poison hemlock contains piperidine alkaloids, and ALL plants parts are highly toxic to humans and animals when ingested. Poison hemlock can cause coma or death from respiratory paralysis after ingestion. It can cause dermatitis, nausea, and headaches if touched or inhaled after continuous handling, cutting, or mowing. Caution should be used when handling this plant.
Mature leaves and green seeds contain the highest concentration of total alkaloids, but new vegetative growth contains the greatest proportion of the most toxic alkaloid. Hence, many livestock poisonings occur in spring and fall when seeds germinate and new foliage emerges. Habitats include roadsides, pastures, fields, ditches, riparian areas, cultivated fields, waste places, and other disturbed, often moist sites.
Leaves: Generally, the large triangular deeply lobed, pinnately compound leaves are between 15 and 30cm long. The leaflets are generally pinnately lobed or dissected. The lower leaf stalks are sheathing at the base. Upper leaves are sessile.
Flowers: The flowers of poison hemlock are arranged in a compound umbel and are often rounded at the top. The main flower stalk is about 2-8cm long with inconspicuous lanceolate bracts below the secondary stems, which are generally 1.5- 5 cm long, and each main stem has 10-20 of them. Bractletsbelow pedicels are mostly 1.5-2mm long and resemble bracts. The flowers are white, small, and lack sepal lobes. The fruits are grayish brown dried pods. Flowering stems senesce in late summer or fall and can persist with a few fruits attached well into winter or early spring.
Seeds: Poison hemlock reproduces by seed only. Most seeds fall near parent plant, but some may move greater distances with water, soil movement, animals, or human activities. Seed dispersal is prolonged and occurs late summer through winter. After dispersal, most seeds can germinate almost immediately in favorable conditions, but a small portion of seeds will remain dormant. Dormant seeds require a period of high summer and/or low winter temperatures before they can germinate. Seeds are not dispersed to a favorable location can become dormant for up to three years. Germination does not require light and in California it typically commences with the first fall rains through early spring. Seedlings can establish rapidly, especially on disturbed sites with bare soil.
Flowering Period: April through July.
Management: At Fort Ord National Monument,only some areas of poison hemlock are being treated, as there are simply not enough resources to combat all of the poison hemlock present. Manual treatment is the most common form of controlling poison hemlock. This method of control is effective since plants do not regenerate when they are hand-pulled or cut below the crown. Removing plants before seeds mature every year will eventually deplete the seed bank. Repeated mowing can also weaken the plants and reduce the size of an infestation, as well as deplete the seed bank if pursued regularly. Removing poison hemlock is most effective after the plant has matured but before it has flowered, and it is easiest to remove the plant after it has bolted.
Flaming with a propane torch is another method used to control poison hemlock on Fort Ord National Monument. Flaming during the seedling and rosette stage has been a very successful treatment method but can require more than one treatment to kill a plant. The best time to flame poison hemlock is during its germination period, which occurs typically within the first fall rains through early spring. Flaming is most often performed during the rainy season. Flaming is only done when both the ground and the vegetation are wet to prevent starting a fire. The overall goal is not to set plants on fire, but rather to damage the cell structure of their foliage. Brief exposure to intense heat causes the cells to expand, which disrupts cell walls. The flamed weeds don’t senesce immediately, but within several hours or days they wilt and then die. Flaming must occur when plants are small and have not developed a large root system in order for it to be effective. Flaming poison hemlock requires multiple visits to sites to ensure effectiveness of this treatment method. As with all methods of weed control, follow up on any regrowth after any treatment.
Cal-IPC Weed Workers Handbook: A Guide to Techniques for Removing Bay Area Invasive Plants. 2004. The Watershed Project and California Invasive Plant Council: 80-81
DiTomaso, J. M. and E. A. Healy. 2007. Weeds of California and Other Western States. Volume 1: Aizoaceae to Fabaceae. University of California Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources: 132-136
|Last updated: 08-20-2012|
|USA.GOV | No Fear Act | DOI | Disclaimer | About BLM | Notices | Social Media Policy|
|
<urn:uuid:fbdbdaa5-4f6e-4a96-a2d9-9e6da8797c2f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/hollister/noxious_weeds/nox_weeds_list/poisonhemlock.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.929863
| 1,224
| 3.75
| 4
|
The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact
The UN Global Compact asks companies to embrace, support and enact, within their sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption.
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
Principle 2: make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and
Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
Principle 7: Businesses should support for a precautionary approach to environmental challenges:
Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
The UN Global Compact’s Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption enjoy universal consensus and are derived from:
|
<urn:uuid:5e606cb1-4b45-4c8b-b711-214d0aec1cb5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://citiesprogramme.com/aboutus/global-compact-10-principles
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00183-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.896002
| 256
| 2.546875
| 3
|
As the international community is drawn closer together through the phenomenon of globalization, access to international data has become critical for scholars and researchers around the world. Finding reliable data sources that reflect international dimensions can be difficult. In an effort to meet the growing demands for international data, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) has created the International Data Resource Center (IDRC). The IDRC acts as a clearinghouse for international data housed at ICPSR.
Data can be accessed through a variety of mechanisms. Scholars and researchers can browse ICPSR holdings using the Subject Terms, Series Data, Geography, or traditional search engines. IDRC also features a Web page devoted to foundational studies of international relations. Pivotal studies by J.D. Singer and Melvin Small, A.F.K. Organski, Ted Gurr, Bruce Russet, Harold K. Jacobson, among others can be accessed using this page. There are also a variety of instructional resources available on this site.
In an effort to facilitate research and instruction in the social sciences and related areas, ICPSR will continue to work toward the acquisition and distribution of international data.
September 13, 2010
|
<urn:uuid:e840c628-07f1-43ea-817d-f356143fb552>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.lib.vt.edu/find/databases/I/international-data-resource-center-idrc-from-icpsr.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.893033
| 246
| 2.53125
| 3
|
Famous for its knobby "knees" when growing in swamp conditions, the bald cypress can survive for a long time, with several trees in North Carolina believed to be 1,600 years old. Its wood highly valued for water resistance, this conifer is deciduous, with needles that brown and drop over the winter months. It will grow in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 5 through 10 and also makes a good bonsai subject.
Gathering Bald Cypress Seeds
Gather cypress cones in the fall before they open. Spread them on newspapers in a warm area, and leave them to dry.
Pull on disposable plastic gloves. Cover your work area with newspapers to avoid getting resin on the furniture.
Break the dry cones apart. Extract the seeds from the resin.
Germinating Bald Cypress with Indoor Treatment and Artificial Light
Drop the seeds into a jar of distilled water. Screw the lid onto the jar, and place it at the back of your refrigerator for two months.
Drain the seeds by pouring them into a strainer held over a sink. Fill a plastic pot with potting soil made for bog plants. Press the seeds into the soil, but don't cover them.
Set the container under a grow light in a warm room. Keep the soil damp at all times. Watch for germination to take place in two weeks to two months.
Germinating Bald Cypress with Outdoor Treatment and Artificial Light
Fill a heavy clay pot with a potting soil for bog plants. Press the seeds into the surface of the soil.
Carry the pot to a creek. Set the pot in the shallow water at the edge of the creek. Cover it with hardware mesh to prevent animals from digging in it.
Leave the pot in the creek until spring. Bring it indoors then, and set it under a grow light. Watch for germination, which can take from 14 to 60 days.
Things You Will Need
- Bald cypress cones
- Plastic disposable gloves
- Distilled water
- Jar with lid
- Plastic pot
- Potting soil for bog plants
- Heavy clay pot
- Hardware mesh
- Grow light
- As it isn't always possible to completely remove all the resin from the seeds, you can sow some of it along with the seeds.
- Bald cypress doesn't require swampy ground to thrive, but it usually doesn't form "knees" in drier conditions.
- Resin from the cones will stick to your skin if you don't use gloves and can be difficult to remove. Try rubbing petroleum jelly on your hands first before washing them with soap and water.
- Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
|
<urn:uuid:e7ca2793-baa6-427a-8819-c89ef462b39c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/germinate-bald-cypress-artificial-light-48124.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.932375
| 564
| 3.15625
| 3
|
Neal Devaraj watches as undergraduate student Weilong Li works on a next step in their quest to create an entirely artificial cell.
Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms from scratch. Using a novel chemical reaction, they have created self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain and support the reactions required for life.
Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University, report their success in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“One of our long term, very ambitious goals is to try to make an artificial cell, a synthetic living unit from the bottom up – to make a living organism from non-living molecules that have never been through or touched a living organism,” Devaraj said. “Presumably this occurred at some point in the past. Otherwise life wouldn’t exist.”
By assembling an essential component of earthly life with no biological precursors, they hope to illuminate life’s origins.
“We don’t understand this really fundamental step in our existence, which is how non-living matter went to living matter,” Devaraj said. “So this is a really ripe area to try to understand what knowledge we lack about how that transition might have occurred. That could teach us a lot – even the basic chemical, biological principles that are necessary for life.”
Molecules that make up cell membranes have heads that mix easily with water and tails that repel it. In water, they form a double layer with heads out and tails in, a barrier that sequesters the contents of the cell.
Devaraj and Budin created similar molecules with a novel reaction that joins two chains of lipids. Nature uses complex enzymes that are themselves embedded in membranes to accomplish this, making it hard to understand how the very first membranes came to be.
“In our system, we use a sort of primitive catalyst, a very simple metal ion,” Devaraj said. “The reaction itself is completely artificial. There’s no biological equivalent of this chemical reaction. This is how you could have a de novo formation of membranes.”
They created the synthetic membranes from a watery emulsion of an oil and a detergent. Alone it’s stable. Add copper ions and sturdy vesicles and tubules begin to bud off the oil droplets. After 24 hours, the oil droplets are gone, “consumed” by the self-assembling membranes.
Although other scientists recently announced the creation of a “synthetic cell,” only its genome was artificial. The rest was a hijacked bacterial cell. Fully artificial life will require the union of both an information-carrying genome and a three-dimensional structure to house it.
The real value of this discovery might reside in its simplicity. From commercially available precursors, the scientists needed just one preparatory step to create each starting lipid chain.
“It’s trivial and can be done in a day,” Devaraj said. “New people who join the lab can make membranes from day one.”
The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering supported this work. UC San Diego has filed a patent application on this discovery. Anyone with commercial interest in the research or application should contact senior licensing officer Eric Gosink in the technology transfer office at firstname.lastname@example.org.
|
<urn:uuid:687c2eb3-4aca-4f6a-a693-3fc4e7412922>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/envelope_for_an_artificial_cell
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.939032
| 735
| 3.828125
| 4
|
Those left behind also participated in a great societal change. Suddenly the emphasis was on
doing everything possible to aid those efforts in winning the war. Many items were rationed at
home to ensure there would be no shortages of the necessities for the war overseas. Money was
raised not only to finance the Canadian war effort but also to render assistance to those in need in
other Allied countries. At home a variety of programs and projects were launched to provide
"comfort" packages for our fighting men and women in Britain and Europe. Greetings and other
well wishes were featured in customary and military parades, on billboards, and on signs.
Everyone did their part to the best of their ability to aid the prosecution of the war.
A contemporary assessment of the situation during the war, 1915.
Another observation on the impact of war, 1941.
Representatives of key women's organizations met with the War
Committee of Cabinet in Ottawa to plan for wider participation in war work, 1918.
Rose Golden in the War Mothers' Association uniform, 1944.
The 65th Overseas Battalion Regimental Band and Orchestra to perform
at Saskatoon's Strand Theatre, 1916.
Click for larger image.
Promoting war savings in Saskatoon, c. 1943.
The Military District No. 12 Band on stage to Saskatoon's Capitol
Theatre, c. 1944.
Aliens interned at Petawawa, Ontario airing their bedding, ca. 1917.
Individuals considered a threat to the security of the country were confined to special camps
where their activities could be monitored.
One group that performed an important service both at home and overseas was the chaplaincy. These clergy attended to both the spiritual and temporal welfare of those men and women serving with the armed forces at training facilities as well as at the front.
Captain Edmund H. Oliver taught history and economics before becoming the principal of St. Andrew's College in Saskatoon. During the Great War he served as chaplain to the 196th Battalion and the Canadian Training School and Trench Warfare School at Benhill-on-Sea, England. He also launched the University of Vimy Ridge while in England.
Post card of E.H. Oliver addressing Canadian troops and the citizens and children of Benhill-on-Sea, Empire Day, 1917.
Rev. Noah Warnke,OMI was a chaplain with the Canadian Army from 1942 to 1946. In addition to serving overseas at the Canadian Service Hospital in southern England, he served in Brandon, MB, Calgary, AB, and German POW camps in northern Ontario and Alberta.
Rev. Eugene Cullinane, CSB, while teaching philosophy and economics at St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon, also served as chaplain to the RCAF in Saskatoon (1941-1944) and Ottawa (1944-1945).
Rev. Denis J. Mulcahey served in the RCAF chaplaincy in Sydney, BC and as priest at St. Paul's Cathedral, Saskatoon.
Monsignor Alexandre Leslie, a full-time Chaplain in the Canadian Army from March 15, 1944 to August 31, 1946, served overseas briefly before the end of World War II.
Reverend Stanley Joseph Raczynski served as a part-time Air Force Chaplain at the base in Prince Albert during World War II.
Monsignor Joseph Arsène St. Pierre, a Chaplain in the Canadian Army from 1941 to 1946, served overseas from 1943 to 1946.
Photo of Canadian Overseas Catholic Chaplains on New Year's greeting card from Bishop C.L. Nelligan to Bishop Reginal Duprat, January 20, 1941.
|
<urn:uuid:449f656b-a32e-4e4c-9b95-f114f0b1d1db>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/war/homefront.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954281
| 762
| 2.828125
| 3
|
Simple Definition of happenstance
: something that happens by chance
Full Definition of happenstance
: a circumstance especially that is due to chance
Examples of happenstance in a sentence
Our meeting was pure happenstance.
We met each other by happenstance.
It was an agreeable happenstance that we met.
Origin and Etymology of happenstance
happen + circumstance
First Known Use: 1897
Learn More about happenstance
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up happenstance? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
|
<urn:uuid:79b39ee3-ac5b-4165-897d-9ffe4ad130c2>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happenstance
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.932462
| 132
| 2.59375
| 3
|
Pocket K No. 13: Conventional Plant Breeding
Since the practice of agriculture began, eight to ten thousand years ago, farmers have been altering the genetic makeup of the crops they grow. Early farmers selected the best looking plants and seeds and saved them to plant for the next season. Then, once the science of genetics became better understood, plant breeders used what they knew about the genes of a plant to select for specific desirable traits to develop improved varieties.
The selection for features such as faster growth, higher yields, pest and disease resistance, larger seeds, or sweeter fruits has dramatically changed domesticated plant species compared to their wild relatives. For example, when corn was first grown in North and South America, thousands of years ago, the corn cobs farmers harvested were smaller than one’s little finger. Today, there are hundreds of varieties of corn, some of which produce cobs as long as one’s forearm.
Conventional plant breeding has been going on for hundreds of years, and is still commonly used today. Early farmers discovered that some crop plants could be artificially mated or cross-pollinated to increase yields. Desirable characteristics from different parent plants could also be combined in the offspring. When the science of plant breeding was further developed in the 20th century, plant breeders understood better how to select superior plants and breed them to create new and improved varieties of different crops. This has dramatically increased the productivity and quality of the plants we grow for food, feed and fiber.
The art of recognizing desirable traits and incorporating them into future generations is very important in plant breeding. Breeders scrutinize their fields and travel long distances in search of individual plants that exhibit desirable traits. A few of these traits occasionally arise spontaneously through a process called mutation, but the natural rate of mutation is very slow and unreliable to produce all the plant traits that breeders would like to see. (See box “Mutation Breeding”.)
Hybrid Seed Technology
The end result of plant breeding is either an open-pollinated (OP) variety or an F1 (first filial generation) hybrid variety. OP varieties, when maintained and produced properly, retain the same characteristics when multiplied. The only technique used with OP varieties is the selection of the seed-bearing plants.
Hybrid seeds are an improvement over open pollinated seeds in terms of qualities such as yield, resistance to pests and diseases, and time to maturity. Hybrid seeds are developed by the hybridization or crossing of parent lines that are ‘pure lines’ produced through inbreeding. Pure lines are plants that “breed true” or produce sexual offspring that closely resemble their parents. By crossing pure lines, a uniform population of F1 hybrid seed can be produced with predictable characteristics.
The simplest way to explain how to develop an F1 hybrid is to take an example. Let us say a plant breeder observes a particularly good habit in a plant, but with poor flower color, and in another plant of the same type he sees good color but poor habit. The best plant of each type is then taken and self-pollinated (in isolation) each year and, each year, the seed is re-sown. Eventually, every time the seed is sown the same identical plants will appear. When they do, this is known as a ‘pure line.’
If the breeder now takes the pure line of each of the two plants he originally selected and cross pollinates the two by hand the result is known as an “F1 hybrid.” Plants are grown from the seed produced, and the result of this cross pollination should have the combined traits of the two parents.
This is the simplest form of hybridization, but there are complications, of course. A completely pure line can sometimes take seven or eight years to achieve. Sometimes, a pure line is made up of several previous crossings to build in desirable features. The resulting plant is then grown on until it is genetically pure before use in hybridization.
In addition to qualities like good vigor, trueness to type, heavy yields and high uniformity which hybrid plants enjoy, other characteristics such as earliness, disease and insect resistance and good water holding ability have been incorporated into most F1 hybrids.
Unfortunately, these advantages come with a price. Because creating F1 hybrids involves many years of preparation to create pure lines that have to be constantly maintained so that F1 seeds can be harvested each year, the seeds then become more expensive. The problem is compounded because to ensure that no self-pollination takes place, all the hybridization of the two pure lines, sometimes, has to be done by hand.
Another disadvantage is if the seeds of the F1 hybrids are used for growing the next crops, the resulting plants do not perform as well as the F1 material - resulting in inferior yields and vigor. As a consequence, the farmer has to purchase new F1 seeds from the plant breeder each year. The farmer is, however, compensated by higher yields and better quality of the crop.
Though more expensive, hybrid seeds have had a tremendous impact on agricultural productivity. Today, nearly all corn and 50% of all rice are hybrids (DANIDA).
In the US, the widespread use of corn hybrids, coupled with improved cultural practices by farmers, has more than tripled corn grain yields over the past 50 years from an average of 35 bushels per acre in the 1930s to 115 bushels per acre in the 1990s. No other major crop anywhere in the world even comes close to equaling that sort of success story.
Hybrid rice technology helped China increase its rice production from 140 million tons in 1978 to 188 million tons in 1990. Research at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and in other countries indicates that hybrid rice technology offers opportunities for increasing rice varietal yields by 15-20%. And this is achievable with the improved, semi-dwarf, and inbred varieties (IRRI).
Many cultivars of popular vegetables or ornamental plants are F1 hybrids. In terms of improved plant characteristics, tropical vegetable breeders can point to some rather clear achievements over the last two decades:
- Yield improvement. Hybrids often outyield traditional OP selections by 50-100% due to its improved vigor, improved genetic disease resistance, improved fruit setting under stress, and higher female/male flower ratios.
- Extended growing season. Hybrids often mature up to 15 days earlier than local OP varieties. For many crops, the hybrid’s relative advantage over the OP is most pronounced under stress conditions.
- Quality improvement. Hybrids have helped stabilize product quality at a higher, and more uniform level – this implies improved consumption quality (e.g. firm flesh of wax gourd, crispy taste of watermelon).
In the late 1920s, researchers discovered that they could greatly increase the number of these variations or mutations by exposing plants to X-rays and chemicals. “Mutation breeding” was further developed after World War II, when the techniques of the nuclear age became widely available. Plants were exposed to gamma rays, protons, neutrons, alpha particles, and beta particles to see if these would induce useful mutations. Chemicals, too, such as sodium azide and ethyl methanesulphonate, were used to cause mutations.
Mutation breeding efforts continue around the world today. Of the 2,252 officially released mutation breeding varieties, 1,019 or almost half have been released during the last 15 years. Examples of plants that have been produced via mutation breeding include wheat, barley, rice, potatoes, soybeans, and onions. (For FAOs’ Mutant Variety Database, visit http://www-mvd.iaea.org/MVD/default.htm.)
Conventional plant breeding resulting in open pollinated varieties (OP) or hybrid varieties has had a tremendous impact on agricultural productivity over the last decades. While an extremely important tool, conventional plant breeding also has its limitations. First, breeding can only be done between two plants that can sexually mate with each other. This limits the new traits that can be added to those that already exist in a particular species. Second, when plants are crossed, many traits are transferred along with the trait/s of interest - including those traits that have undesirable effects on yield potential.
- Bauman, F. and Crane, P.L. 1992. Hybrid corn - History, development and selection considerations. National Corn Handbook. Purdue University, US.
- DANIDA. 2002. Assessment of potentials and constraints for development and use of plant biotechnology in relation to plant breeding and crop production in developing countries. Working paper. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark.
- East-West Seeds 1982-2002. 2002. Vegetable Breeding for Market Development. Edited by Karl Kunz. Bangkok, Thailand.
- Food and Agriculture Organization. 2002. Crop Biotechnology: A working paper for administrators and policy makers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- History of Plant Breeding (http://www.colostate.edu/programs/lifesciences/TransgenicCrops/history.html)
- Hybrid varieties and saving seed (http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/vegetables/seed.html)
- International Rice Research Institute. (http://www.irri.org)
|
<urn:uuid:43f8ca63-2044-4847-9af3-d1ffea17bfd2>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://isaaa.org/resources/publications/pocketk/13/default.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.944905
| 1,939
| 3.921875
| 4
|
What is the difference between a speech therapist and a speech pathologist?
In a word: none. The terms "speech therapist" and "speech pathologist" have been used for years as titles for persons who work with persons having communication impairments. In the past, the term "speech pathologist" was used by professionals to describe themselves, but the term most commonly used today is "speech-language pathologist" or "SLP." Lay people have more often referred to us as "speech therapists," "speech correctionists," or even "speech teachers."
These are all terms that describe the same profession, but "speech-language pathologist" is the preferred term because it captures the essence of our work (speech and language) and also signifies that we are qualified by our training and clinical experience to identify, assess, and provide remediation for pathological conditions of communication. The term "speech" is used to denote the components of vocal activity such as phonation (the production of a vocal tone via the larynx or "voice box"), articulation (the movement of the structures in the mouth to create speech sounds to produce words), resonance (the overall quality of the voice as well as the process that transforms the vocal tone into what we recognize as a person's "voice") and fluency (the timing and synchronization of these components of the complex speech act). "Language" refers to the comprehension and production of language, including the mode in which it is comprehended or produced (oral, gesturing, writing, or reading).
Even the term "speech-language pathologist" doesn't quite capture the totality of our scope of practice. For example, speech-language pathologists also address the needs of persons who exhibit difficulties with cognitive functions (attention, memory, problem-solving), literacy, social interaction, and swallowing. Considering such a wide scope of practice, perhaps in the future a new term will be coined to describe who we are and what we do.
Dr. Donald R. Fuller has been a speech-language pathologist for 16 years. He is Chair of the Department of Communication Disorders at Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA. His doctorate degree was earned from Purdue University in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).
|
<urn:uuid:c50be8e7-ee8f-4ab7-bf51-cdd3b2da1956>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.speechpathology.com/ask-the-experts/what-difference-between-speech-therapist-1057
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971019
| 458
| 3.0625
| 3
|
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - A potential new treatment for Crohn's disease might sound a bit squeamish. Researchers are testing whether microscopic eggs of the pig whipworm parasite can help the half million Americans living with Crohn's.
Dr. Curtis Baum of the Cotton-O'Neil Digestive Health Center in Topeka says, in Crohn's, there is an inflammation that can involve the small intestine or colon. Tesearchers are studying whether a microscopic parasite can make a big difference in the abdominal pain, diarrhea and other symptoms that result from Crohn's.
The reasoning behind why it might work stems from what's called the "hygiene hypothesis." Some immune disorders like Crohn's are unheard of in developing countries. As hygiene has improved, the theory goes, people's immune systems have become naive to infections that protect us from those diseases.
Researchers looked for a parasite that would not harm humans, but help those diseases. They found the pig whipworm.
Dr. Bause says the parasite, which he stresses does not cause disease in humans, elicits an immune response that then results in a reduction or possibly elimination of the immune response that leads to Crohn's.
While the thought of purposely ingesting a parasite might make some squeamish, the process isn't as obvious as sitting down to a bowl full of worms. Dr. Baum says the worms are in a microscopic larval stage and suspended in a small amount of salt water with about 7500 of them in a small dose. Study participants take a dose every two weeks for twelve weeks.
Dr. Baum says the larvae cannot be seen, tasted or felt. He says they hatch and elicit the immune response and will not be visible as they pass through the gastrointestinal tract.
The bonus, he says, is that there don't appear to be any side effects. Compared to steroids and other drugs, Dr. Baum says, this would be a way of treating people with very little downside.
The Cotton-O'Neil Digestive Health Center is among 15 study sites. The goal is to collectively enroll 220 participants. The total length of the study is 13 months.
People interested in learning further details or to see if they qualify should contact the Cotton-O'Neil Digestive Health Center at 785-270-4896 and ask for Kris in research.
|
<urn:uuid:acc4f910-d491-4071-91b6-006648182891>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/Pig-Whipworms-Studied-To-Help-People-With-Crohns-Disease-179579971.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00018-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949663
| 486
| 2.546875
| 3
|
Use Mindfulness to Manage Stress
Mindfulness may seem to be a strange way to cope with the stress in your life. Perhaps you’re wondering how becoming more aware can help you cope with, say, an elderly parent, a challenging job or a busy family life.
The fact is that awareness is the starting point for managing any change, which is why mindfulness is so important. You can’t expect to change how you manage stress while you remain unaware if or how exactly you’re generating the stress.
That would be like trying to walk from your home to your friend’s place in the middle of the night with no torch — you’re going to get lost and what’s more, not even know whether you’re getting closer or farther away.
In the same way, the awareness that mindfulness offers helps you to notice what’s causing you stress, and the thoughts and emotions that are associated with it. You can then see how the stress arises in the first place and what you need to do to move away from excessive stress. In other words, you switch on your torch and make your way to where you want to go.
Consider the word ‘stress’ and write down what other words or thoughts come into your mind.
This exercise helps to show you how you perceive stress. Some people see stress in a negative way; others think of stress as positive and motivating.
Pressure: A helpful state when at the right level. Leads you to feel awake and motivated and drives you to take positive action in your life to achieve your goals.
Stress: An unhelpful state created by too much pressure. Stress can also be generated by having too little pressure.
Think of yourself as being like a guitar string and the pressure you experience in life as the tension in the string:
If the string is too loose, you don’t get a decent sound. In other words, you’re not under any pressure and feel bored.
If the string is too taut, the sound produced isn’t pleasant and the string can easily break. In other words, being under stress from too much pressure can lead to burnout — physical and emotional exhaustion — in the long term.
If the string is at just the right tension, you get a beautiful sound. In other words, when you feel the right amount of pressure in your life, you feel motivated, focused and energized. You’re likely to be in a state of flow.
The figure illustrates the effects that increasing pressure can have on your performance in daily life. When you have too little pressure, you feel bored. When you have too much pressure, you feel anxious and stressed; if this situation continues over the long term, you can experience burnout.
For protection, all human beings are hard-wired to have a stress reaction when faced with a dangerous or threatening situation. When the stress reaction switches on, your body prepares itself to run, fight or freeze to avoid the danger.
So, if you’re being followed by an aggressive person, your heart starts to beat faster, your muscles tense, your senses heighten, and you feel energized. Your body turns off your digestive system and immune system because you don’t need to bother digesting your breakfast or fighting the flu if you’re about to be attacked.
The problem is that the stress reaction doesn’t just get switched on in physically dangerous situations that require running or beating someone up. Stress is activated when you realize that you’re behind on your deadline, when you think about how annoying your boss is or when your partner says something unkind to you.
But hang on a minute — that’s crazy! You don’t need your immune and digestive systems to shut down while talking to your partner. In fact, even the more reasonable, intelligent, and wise part of your brain shuts down in a stress reaction. You’re placed into a state of mind looking for threats.
So although the stress reaction is fine for extraordinary physical threats, it’s a malfunction during normal life. Not only is chronic stress unhelpful in your everyday tasks, but also it’s dangerous: having your immune system turned down over long periods of time can cause many illnesses. Remembering how dangerous long-term, high-level stress can be is important, as is taking swift action to reduce stress before it creates more problems for you.
Consider what happens to you when you’re under high levels of stress and note down what you find. This exercise helps you to identify your stress. If, in the future, you show any of the warning signs that you’ve listed, you know that you’re experiencing stress and can take preventative measures.
|
<urn:uuid:d079eb04-ccfa-460d-ae7d-fca0767418ec>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/use-mindfulness-to-manage-stress.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00159-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.938307
| 995
| 2.609375
| 3
|
A device that performs useful work by transmitting, modifying, or transforming motion, forces, and energy. There are three basic machines, the inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel and axle; from these, and adaptations of these, are built up all true machines, no matter how complex they may appear.
There are two essential properties of all machines: mechanical advantage, which is the ratio load/effort, and efficiency, the ratio of actual performance to theoretical performance. Mechanical advantage can be less than, equal to, or greater than 1; while efficiency, owing to such losses as friction, is always less than 100% (otherwise a perpetual motion machine would be possible).
Simple machines derived from the three basic elements include the inclined plane, the wedge (effort at the top being translated to force at the sides), and the screw, (an inclined plane in spiral form); from the lever, the wrench or spanner (the balance also uses the principle of the lever), and from the wheel and axle, the pulley, (which can also be viewed as a type of lever).
Related categories CLASSICAL MECHANICS
Home • About • Copyright © The Worlds of David Darling • Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy • Contact
|
<urn:uuid:6815fe60-46c3-4996-b4b3-33fa837b19d4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/machine.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00079-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.929978
| 251
| 3.546875
| 4
|
Imagine you are the head of household for a four-person family renting an apartment in inner city Denver. As the markets shift, your rent skyrockets. Your income remains leaving you without money to spend on other basic necessities such as food and clothing for your family. The apartment is no longer affordable so you must move your family to a less-desirable but affordable area. Less than 30 days after you move, someone has rented your previous apartment at the higher rent. The affordability of the unit has changed.
How do we determine affordability of housing?
According to HUD, affordable housing is defined as a household paying no more than 30% of their annual income towards housing. However, over 12 million people spend more than 50% on housing in the United States.
The national qualifying standard for affordable housing as stated in Section 215 is that household income must equal less than 65% of the median income of the area. However, if affordable housing projects are built under state programs the income standards change. For example, the state of New Jersey classifies moderate income as being between 50% and 80% of the median income, low-income as below 50% and very low as less than 30% of the median income in the area. In Colorado the classifications are by county. For example, residents in Garfield County qualify for affordable housing if their income is less than 80% of the median income.
The qualifying regulations for affordable housing greatly differ at the national, state and county levels. However, an assessment of affordability by Performance Urban Planning in 2012 rated affordability standards around the world by a measure called the Median Multiple: median house cost divided by median household income before tax. If the Median Multiple was below 3.0 then the locality was deemed affordable and if it was above 5.1 it was considered severely unaffordable. What the International Housing Affordability Survey found was that the United States has approximately 20 affordable markets and 15 severely unaffordable markets.
Detroit had the highest affordability rank of all major US cities because it’s median multiple was 1.5, the result of a median house price of $75,700 and median household income of $49,800. Santa Cruz, California and Honolulu, Hawaii were deemed the most unaffordable in the United States with median multiples of 8.2 and 9.3 respectively. This resulted from extremely high median housing prices and relatively low median household incomes.
Affordability has two different definitions. The first is monetary affordability as determined by the median housing price and median household income. The second is what is considered personally affordable. What is affordable to one household may not be for another.
Though affordability rankings according to quantitative components are a good indicator of general areas of high and low affordability, the true indicator of affordability is unique to each household. A $300,000 house in an “affordable market” as quantitatively determined is not necessarily affordable to the family whose income is $40,000. Because of the uniqueness of households, policy solutions cannot be based on a purely quantitative measure of affordable housing because affordability is both place-based and people-based.
Guest Contributor: Elisa Cooper
|
<urn:uuid:cd245ab6-17b6-4c2f-8583-c692f3548e9c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://smartcommunities.typepad.com/suzanne/2013/02/affordability-place-based-or-people-based.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972386
| 640
| 3.296875
| 3
|
Want to travel back in time? In our weekly “Retro Science” series, we’re digging up visual artifacts that capture fascinating moments from science history, including surprising studies, outdated inventions, and breakthrough achievements. By recapturing science’s impressive feats and most amusing flops, RetroScience will remind us of how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go.
We all know that Charles Darwin is the father of evolutionary biology. What is less known is that he was also an early experimental psychologist. In 1872, Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in which he theorized that both humans and animals show emotion through similar behaviors. He corresponded with many scientists to develop this work, including French physician Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne, shown in the photo above. He was particularly interested in a series of slides from Duchenne, which show him applying electrical currents to the face of an old man, stimulating different facial muscles to form emotional expressions. Don’t worry about the man – Duchenne reassured concerned critics that the subject had an anesthetic condition, which prevented him from feeling any pain from the electric shocks.
Based on his findings, Duchenne concluded that the human face expressed at least sixty different emotions, each determined by different muscle contraction combinations. However, Darwin speculated that only a select few of Duchenne’s slides expressed genuine human emotion. To test this idea, he arranged Duchenne’s slides before twenty dinner guests and asked them which emotion they perceived for each slide. Darwin’s guests agreed almost unanimously about certain emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear and surprise, but strongly disagreed about more ambiguous slides, suggesting that humans may perceive a select variety of emotions.
For a small sample size, Darwin’s experimental home test was surprisingly on point. Today, many psychologists agree that certain emotions are universal to all humans, regardless of culture: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness. Darwin’s methods have also been reapplied in modern psychology experiments to study emotional recognition in psychiatric diseases, like autism and schizophrenia. To learn more about this electrifying experiment, read here.
|
<urn:uuid:7de7afba-6287-4af5-a1e0-a21f1b39d818>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/blogposts/retroscience-darwins-early-psychology-experiment/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95038
| 458
| 3.734375
| 4
|
Ringworm infection can be treated with a well known natural remedy
In spite of its name, ringworm has nothing to do with worms. It is caused by a fungus. This itching skin rash is common among children and can affect any one at any age if exposed. If your child or grandchild has it you need to be vigilant or you could be next. There are however at home remedies you can do to both treat and prevent this scourge.
The stigma of this rash can be intense. I remember having it once on my legs as a child and it was traumatic. My schoolmates made me feel as though I had leprosy, and I felt dirty and ashamed. I now realize of course it had nothing to do with poor hygiene and everything to do with the others at school I was exposed to. Certainly they should not have been throwing stones in their glass houses!
Ringworm is caused by a fungus and has different names according to the location where it is located.
Tinea Pedis – Feet (also called athletes foot)
Tinea Cruris – Groin (also called Jock Itch)
Tinea Barbae – Beard
Tinea Capitis – Scalp
Tinea Corporis – Body
It is very contagious and is spread in several ways. It can be spread by person to person contact or contact with shared items such as combs, towels, linens, or shower and pool/spa surfaces. The fungus thrives in moist warm areas.
Symptoms of ringworm include:
- Red rash that is often redder around the outside with more normal skin tone in the center. This is what makes it look like a ring.
- Red, itchy, scaly, raised, patches that may eventually blister, open and ooze.
- The areas often appear to have very well defined edges.
- If ringworm affects your hair or beard, you can develop bald patches.
The majority of the time your healthcare provider can diagnose it by just examining your skin. Sometimes, the doctor may examine your skin using a special blue light called a Wood’s lamp. Ringworm fungus usually glows in this type of lighting. Additional diagnostic tests include KOH skin scraping and skin biopsy.
|
<urn:uuid:d4658945-c64a-4235-bb9c-b236511fb87d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.emaxhealth.com/11631/ringworm-infection-can-be-treated-well-known-natural-remedy
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969605
| 461
| 2.71875
| 3
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.