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Blocking production of a pyruvate kinase splice-variant shows therapeutic promise
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.
– Cancer cells grow fast. That’s an essential characteristic of what makes them cancer cells. They’ve crashed through all the cell-cycle checkpoints and are continuously growing and dividing, far outstripping our normal cells. To do this they need to speed up their metabolism.
CSHL Professor Adrian Krainer and his team have found a way to target the cancer cell metabolic process and in the process specifically kill cancer cells.
Nearly 90 years ago the German chemist and Nobel laureate Otto Warburg proposed that cancer’s prime cause was a change in cell metabolism – i.e., in cells’ production and consumption of energy. In particular cancer cells have a stubborn propensity to eschew using glucose as a source to generate energy. This is known as the Warburg Effect.
While metabolic changes are an important feature in the transformation of normal cells into cancer cells they are not now thought to be cancer’s primary cause. Despite this, metabolic changes remain an attractive target for cancer therapy, as Krainer and colleagues show in a paper published online today in Open Biology
, the open-access journal of Great Britain’s Royal Society.This image compares glioblastoma cells untreated or treated with antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) that modulate splicing for PK-M. The cells are visible under light microscopy in the left column, and the DNA in their nuclei shows up when using the blue dye DAPI in the second column. PK-M2 is visualized using a red stain in the third column, with the merge of the images in each row in the forth column. The 2nd and 3rd rows show cells that have been treated with ASOs. The red dye is nearly all gone indicating that there is less PK-M2 and that the ASOs have worked. Image courtesy of Zhenxun Wang and Adrian Krainer. (click to enlarge)
One difference between metabolism in cancer and normal cells is the switch in cancer to the production of a different version, or isoform, of a protein produced from the pyruvate kinase-M (PK-M) gene. The protein version produced in normal cells is known as PK-M1, while the one produced by cancer cells is known as PK-M2.
PK-M2 is highly expressed in a broad range of cancer cells. It enables the cancer cell to consume far more glucose than normal, while using little of it for energy. Instead, the rest is used to make more material with which to build more cancer cells.
PK-M1 and PK-M2 are produced in a mutually exclusive manner -- one-at-a-time, from the same gene, by a mechanism known as alternative splicing. When a gene’s DNA is being copied into the messenger molecule known as mRNA, the intermediate template for making proteins, a cellular machine called the spliceosome cuts and pastes different pieces out of and into that mRNA molecule.
The non-essential parts that are edited out are known as introns, while the final protein-coding mRNA consists of a string of parts pasted together known as exons. The bit that fits into the PK-M1 gene-coding sequence is known as exon 9, while it is replaced in PK-M2 by exon 10. In this way alternative splicing provides the cell with the ability to make multiple proteins from a single gene.
Krainer, an authority on alternative splicing, previously published research
on the protein regulators that facilitate the splicing mechanism for PK-M. His team showed that expression of PK-M2 is favored in cancer cells by these proteins, which act to repress splicing for the PK-M1 isoform. In the study published today the team explains that it decided to target the splicing of PK-M using a technology called antisense, rather than target the proteins that regulate the splicing mechanism.
Using a panel of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), small bits of modified DNA designed to bind to mRNA targets, they screened for new splicing regulatory elements in the PK-M gene. The idea was that one or more ASOs would bind to a region of the RNA essential for splicing in exon 10 and reveal that site by preventing splicing of exon 10 from occurring.
Indeed, this is what happened. “We found we can force cancer cells to make the normal isoform, PK-M1,” sums up Krainer. In fact, a group of potent ASOs were found that bound to a previously unknown enhancer element in exon 10, i.e., an element that predisposes for expression of the PK-M2 isoform, thus preventing its recognition by splicing-regulatory proteins. This initiated a switch that favored the PK-M1 isoform.
When they then deliberately targeted the PK-M2 isoform for repression in cells derived from a glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer, all the cells died. They succumbed through what is known as programmed cell death or apoptosis -- a process whereby the cell shuts down its own machinery and chops up its own DNA in committing a form of cellular suicide.
As to why the cells die when PK-M2 is repressed: the team found it was not due to the concomitant increase in PK-M1 (the cells survived even when extra PK-M1 was introduced). Rather, it was the loss of the PK-M2 isoform that was associated with the death of the cancer cells. How this works is still unclear but a subject of investigation in the Krainer laboratory.
The next step will be to take their ASO reagents into mouse models of cancer to see if they behave the same way there. While there are some technical and methodological obstacles to overcome, Krainer is optimistic.
“PK-M2 is preferentially expressed in cancer cells, a general feature of all types of cancer -- it’s a key switch in their metabolism,” he says. Thus targeting the alternative splicing mechanism of PK-M2 using ASOs has the potential to be a cancer therapeutic with many applications.
The paper can be obtained online at the following link: Zhenxun Wang, Hyun Yong Jeon, Frank Rigo, C. Frank Bennett and Adrian R. Krainer. 2012 Manipulation of PK-M mutually exclusive alternative splicing by antisense oligonucleotides. Open Biology 2: 120133. http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/10/120133.full
The research described in this release was supported by the National Cancer Institute grant CA13106, the St. Giles Foundation, and a National Science Scholarship from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. CSHL is ranked number one in the world by Thomson Reuters for impact of its research in molecular biology and genetics. The Laboratory has been home to eight Nobel Prize winners. Today, CSHL's multidisciplinary scientific community is more than 360 scientists strong and its Meetings & Courses program hosts more than 12,500 scientists from around the world each year to its Long Island campus and its China center. Tens of thousands more benefit from the research, reviews, and ideas published in journals and books distributed internationally by CSHL Press. The Laboratory's education arm also includes a graduate school and programs for undergraduates as well as middle and high school students and teachers. CSHL is a private, not-for-profit institution on the north shore of Long Island. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.
Written by: Edward Brydo
n, Science Writer
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The United Nations Convention on Narcotic Drugs readmitted Bolivia into its fold on Friday, universally recognizing the right of Bolivians to chew the coca leaf. This gives President Evo Morales one of his most important victories thus far in his global efforts to decriminalize the coca leaf.
Bolivia had voluntary withdrawn from the UN group a year ago because it classified the coca leaf as an "illicit drug." On Friday, however, a majority of the convention's members voted to allow Bolivia back into the committee and also approved a statute which says that chewing the coca leaf is legal within Bolivia's borders.
It's a largely symbolic victory, as this UN commission lacks the power to regulate coca leaf consumption in Bolivia in the first place. But the UN declaration has been welcomed by the Bolivian government, which is planning to invite the country's coca growers to massive coca-chewing events in the cities of La Paz and Cochabamba next Monday.
The coca leaf is the base material for cocaine. But for centuries indigenous people in the Andean mountains have chewed this leaf in its natural form to gain energy and decrease hunger. Some groups in the region also consider the coca leaf to be a sacred plant, and use it regularly for social and religious rituals.
Evo Morales, who is himself a former coca grower, has championed the decriminalization of the leaf since he came into office in 2006, chewing coca in international forums, praising its nutritional qualities, and even asking Sean Penn to be his global ambassador for the coca leaf.
But the UN's decision to tolerate coca leaf chewing in Bolivia was not well taken by U.S. diplomats, who claim that most of Bolivia's coca crops are being used for cocaine production, and not for traditional chewing.
"We oppose Bolivia's reservation and continue to believe it will lead to a greater supply of cocaine," a senior U.S. State Department official, told the AP.
"While we recognize Bolivia's capacity and willingness to undertake some successful counternarcotics activities, especially in terms of coca eradication, we estimate that much of the coca legally grown in Bolivia is sold to drug traffickers, leading to the conclusion that social control of coca (allowing some legal growing) is not achieving the desired results," the official said in a statement.
Only a handful of UN member states voted against the readmission of Bolivia into the antinarcotics group. These included big cocaine consumers like the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom, but also Mexico, a key U.S. ally and the main transit point for most cocaine headed to the United States.
Most member states did not object to Bolivia's readmission into the antinarcotics group or to the new statute which says that chewing, and growing the coca leaf, is fine within Bolivia. The non-objectors included Colombia and Peru which are the world's two biggest cocaine producers and also have very large crops of the coca leaf. U.S. diplomats may want to chew on that dilemma.
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Researchers report some success in using a gene therapy technique to treat one form of congenital blindness. Two teams of scientists have used modified viruses injected into the eye to partially restore vision to people suffering from Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, a congenital illness that results in the degradation of the retina. People with LCA slowly lose all vision, and typically are completely blind by their 20s or 30s. The modified virus used in the therapy carries a replacement gene to the retina, allowing it to produce a missing protein responsible for the disease. In this segment, Ira talks with one of the authors of one report on the research, which was published this week in two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Produced by Annette Heist, Senior Producer
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Please Note: By clicking a link to any resource listed on this page, you will be leaving the KidsHealth site.
Sickle Cell Disease Association of America
This group provides education, advocacy, and other initiatives to promote awareness of and support for sickle cell disease programs.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
NINDS offers research information related to neurological disorders.
United Cerebral Palsy
This organization provides information about cerebral palsy (CP) as well as new research and therapies.
National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY)
NICHCY is the national information and referral center that provides information on disabilities and disability-related issues for families, educators, and other professionals.
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Linn, Amy. Illuminating News: What You Don't Know About Lightning Might
Come As Shock. Providence Sunday Journal. August 21, 1988.
Abstract: This article explains some common misconceptions about
lightning. For example, one misconception is that lightning never strikes
the same place twice. This is untrue. Once lightning discovers an easy target
it will likely strike again. The article also provides important safety
precautions. The safest place during a thunderstorm is inside a house away
from windows or inside a closed car.
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LACMA May Fund The Fading Watts Towers
Due to a severe budget crisis, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is interested in stepping into the breach as curator and conservator of the Watts Towers this summer to maintain the historic landmark.
The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. He created the framework of steel, wire and concrete and ornamented the three main spires and their 14 surrounding sculptural elements with colorful bits of broken glass, pottery and seashells. His work is an example of non-traditional vernacular architecture and American Naïve art. Article LA Times.
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Jump to:Page Content
Susan Greenhalgh, , Professor of Anthropology, Harvard
Since the introduction of the 1-child policy in 1980, the gender gap among Chinese infants has soared, leaving China with a huge surplus of boys and deficit of girls. Today, as the first generation of singletons begins to marry in large numbers, 10 percent of men – mostly rural, ill-educated peasants – will not be able to find brides. How has the PRC regime sought to address these problems? What framings and measures has it used, and with what effect? In this talk, anthropologist Greenhalgh argues that state policy on the gender gap has been heavily biased in favor of rural women, with the result that older rural men, dubbed "bare sticks," now face social marginalization, political exclusion from the category of deserving citizens, and the prospect of reproductive extinction. In Chinese population politics, the woman question has become a serious man question, to the benefit of none.
Lunch will be provided. An RSVP is not required as this is an open event.
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Sitting around a table at Meyers Center BOCES in Saratoga, students, teaching assistants, and teachers were busy crocheting. They weren’t making afghans or shawls– but rather, they were turning plastic into possibility. Little did they know they were also making history.
Profiles of 17 human rights defenders from around the globe, with links to accompanying lesson plans.
Browse the curriculum. Download the complete 158-page guide or individual lesson plans.
Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark brings the voices of human rights defenders into your classroom.
Find out how you can support your students in their efforts to defend human rights.
The Speak Truth to Power project will enter the video documentary world with a contest challenging middle and high school students in New York to create a film based on the experience of courageous human rights defenders around the world.
It is with great sadness that the family of Professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25th September, 2011, at the Nairobi Hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer.
New to the STTP site this month is a lesson plan based on the work of Congressman John Lewis, who has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he described as “The Beloved Community” in America.
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At left, undated handout image provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) shows a clump of Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria (green) in the extracellular matrix, which connects cells and tissue, taken with a scanning electron microscope, showing. At right, undated handout image provided by the Agriculture Department showing the bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe that will be studied as part of NIH's Human Microbiome Project. They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut _ enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds. Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes. (AP Photo/NIAID, Agriculture Department)
Seven scientists have won prestigious medical awards for their contributions to biomedicine, including the development of liver transplants.
The awards were announced Monday by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. Each prize is worth $250,000.
The award for clinical medical research goes to Dr. Thomas Starzl of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Roy Calne, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University, for developing liver transplantation.
An award for basic medical research is split among three scientists for discoveries about biological machines that make muscles contract and carry out other jobs within cells. A third award is shared by two scientists for their genetic discoveries and efforts to promote research in biomedicine.
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All About Canada: he Canada Site is the primary Internet portal for information on the Government of Canada, its programs, services, new initiatives and products, and for information about Canada.
Canadian Health: Healthy living means making positive choices that enhance your personal physical, mental and spiritual health. You make these choices when you:
Eat nutritiously, choosing a variety of foods from all of the food groups as suggested by Canada’s Food Guide;
Canadian Fitness: Current estimates from the 2000/01 Canadian Community Health Survey indicate that 33% of Canadians aged 20 + have a body mass index over 25 and are thus considered overweight. The trend is toward increased overweight: 26% of women aged 20-64 were considered overweight in 2000, compared with 14% in 1985.
General Nutrition: Providing science-based dietary guidance is critical to enhance the public’s ability to make healthy choices in the effort to reduce obesity and other food related diseases. Since dietary needs change throughout the lifespan, specialized nutrition information is provided about infants, children, teens, adult women and men, and seniors.
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|Liftoff to Learning: Lets Talk Robotics - NASA; Johnson Space Center|
This episode of Liftoff to Learning examines some of NASA’s robotic research and how robots are used in space exploration. Classroom scenes show robot study at the intermediate and high school level. Astronauts from STS-85 and STS-87 host the show. The program is intended for grades 5-12. To license this film and get a higher quality version for broadcast/film purposes, contact A/V Geeks LLC.
Keywords: NASA; robotics; STS-85; STS-87
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On January 9th, citizens living in southern Sudan will vote on a referendum to secede from the northern part of the country. A clock in the town of Juba, the political center of southern Sudan, counts down to this referendum, symbolical of the locals’ excitement to part from the hegemonic north. Nearby, the Darfur genocide crisis that continues to plague the area is not an isolated event. It’s all related, part of two brutal civil wars that have been for decades tearing the nation apart; as of late, literally.
Sudan has traditionally been seen by many as the bridge between the Arab and the African worlds—one not particularly easy to cross. The north and the south of Sudan are just about as culturally and religiously different from each other as you could possibly imagine. In the north, Arab culture dominates, and the majority religion is Islam. In the south, the predominant culture is more traditionally sub-Saharan African, and the primary religions are animist belief systems and Christianity. Ever since the country gained independence from Britain in 1956, the cultural and religious systems of the north have been heavily imposed on the whole of Sudan, resulting in southern resistance and the ongoing strife.
In particular, this imposition of a differing set of beliefs can in large part be attributed to the current Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir arose to power in 1989 through a bloodless coup, and this past April, won the first ostensibly democratic election the nation has held in 24 years. I hesitate to call the election democratic because many believe that al-Bashir, who is notorious for his corruption, rigged it in his favor. While there is no proof, it is generally not unsafe to consider that leaders who are in power through a coup have significant sway in any following elections. Whether he is rightfully in power or not, al-Bashir has imposed northern ideals throughout the whole nation, a primary cause of the Sudanese civil wars. Many attribute the Darfur genocide, just a single episode of the extensive bloodshed since Sudan’s independence, to al-Bashir. Because of these accusations, he is currently on trial for war crimes, the only current head of state in such a predicament. To drive home his impositional tendencies further, al-Bashir has said that if the south secedes, he will impose Shari’a in the north, in an effort to make northern Sudan officially an Islamic state.
My first response to this situation was wondering: How did two peoples so immensely different from one another end up together in the first place? This is not the same as the American Civil War, where regional differences led to ideological differences, which in turn led to secession. In the Sudanese case, ideological and cultural differences existed long before the country gained independence. Thus, one should look to colonialism as the primary cause of Sudan’s problems. It seems to me that Sudan’s independence process was dangerously arbitrary; occurring at the time of mass European decolonization in Africa. It’s as if Britain backed out of the region and drew a national border at random. And now, after over half a century, the people want that to change.
Despite the referendum on schedule for next month, the potential new border still has not been set. Money, of course, is a factor. Sudan is one of the most oil-rich nations of Africa, but most of the country’s oil is found in the south. On the one hand, the north might not want to draw a new boundary where the south gets all of the resource wealth, a potential cause for even more strife. On the other hand, some see oil as a potential area that could keep the two sides friendly if they do end up splitting. Mutual desire for the oil wealth may bring the two sides together diplomatically if the split ends up happening peacefully.
As you can see, this situation is extremely complex, far more so than the south simply saying “we want to secede” and secession then happening. To better understand the context, one needs to consider the past, but one should also consider the future: what will happen if the current nation of Sudan does in fact split? I am wondering particularly about those who have their roots in the south but live in the north. Since the referendum was announced, many of these people have moved back to the south, but a fair number still remain in the north. What will happen to these primarily non-Muslim people (and Muslims alike) if the north does in fact impose Shari’a on al-Bashir’s whim? Al-Bashir will go from an imposer of northern Arab and Islamic values to being completely intolerant of this significant minority in his newly allotted half of Sudan, and the results would be tragic.
What message would a Sudanese split portray to the rest of Africa, the rest of the world? The African Union fears that a Sudanese split would incite other secessionists around the continent. Other nations undergoing similar domestic, regional conflicts of interest may feel not only that they have a right to secede, but may even feel encouraged to do so. Is this kind of outright division the right answer to such a complicated historical struggle?
Is there even a right answer? Experts seem to agree that the nation will inevitably split. Whether this bifurcation happens via a timely, democratic, and peaceful referendum or through continuing bloodshed is a matter that only time will tell. I will certainly be following this issue in the coming weeks, and I wrote this article before the scheduled referendum in the hope to spark more interest on the issue. I urge you to follow it in the news; the results affect a much wider area than simply Sudan.
Stay tuned for my next column, where I will compare and contrast two leaders in South America on opposite sides of the political spectrum and compare their respective political systems to that of the United States.
Latest posts by David Klayton (see all)
- Should Turkey be a part of "Europe?" - February 26, 2011
- Moderately Extreme: Ideological Flexibility in Latin American Politics - January 27, 2011
- When One Nation Becomes Two - December 31, 2010
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SINCE evidence of the existence of the belief that the soul lives on is so indubitable, the question arises--what is its condition? In what state does the discarnate spirit find itself after final separation from the body? And first, as to what we may be allowed to call, for want of a better term, its physical condition.
We have already noted that soul is conceived as having both form and substance, the latter, so to speak, greatly rarefied. Moreover, it has been brought to our attention that the most common idea concerning form is that the soul is a replica of the body it inhabited. Consistency in primitive thinking is not to be assumed, as we have seen, nor are logical processes among primitives quite the same as ours. Yet when a disembodied soul took up its post-mortem residence in a serpent, for example, we may not suppose that that soul was still regarded as human in shape. But so far as the author has discovered, no decisive evidence exists on this point. The probabilities favor greatly the supposition that in such cases transformation of the soul shape was supposed to have taken place. Evidence of the common idea, retention by the soul of its human shape, has been before us. We have noted that some tribes mutilate the body of the dead, thinking that by so doing they inflict like wounds upon the soul and thus impose incapacity for harm upon the ghost, the double of the body. The Omahas slit the soles of a murdered man's feet that his spirit may be unable to return and cause damage to the people. Mangaeans prefer death in battle--men are then in their full strength; disease weakens them, and souls have the nature of the body at death. Barongo believe that souls are young or old, according to the age at death, and so do the Indians of Gran Chaco. Naga tribes of Manipur think that ghosts bear whatever tattoo marks, mutilations, or other blemishes or embellishments occurred on the body. Some people carry this idea so far as to prefer
[1. Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, etc., p. 215.]
death before decay of natural powers sets in, and so commit suicide or are buried alive, that the soul may continue to exist in full vigor.
Having form and substance, the soul has certain physical needs. It hungers, thirsts, feels cold and heat. The degrees of grossness of these wants vary greatly. Sometimes the hunger, thirst, and wants and passions may be appeased by the mere spirit or ghost of food, drink, etc.; and the ghosts are served by the spirits or (as our theosophical friends might be imagined as saying) the astral bodies of dishes, implements, or weapons which are destroyed (i.e., killed) that their spirits may accompany the ghost into the spirit land. Indeed, this is by all odds the most prevalent conception. Sometimes it is the more evanescent or the more vital elements, such as the blood, which are used by the ghost, as in the celebrated case of Tiresias in the Odyssey. The cases already cited of food, drink, weapons, utensils, and the like possessing souls and being offered or placed with the dead, oftentimes being broken or mutilated so as to "kill"
[2. Cases are cited in Frazer's Dying God, pp. 9-14.
3 Book XI.]
them, furnish direct testimony to the supposed needs of the ghost. The hunger felt by the disembodied soul is vividly expressed by most African tribes, whose belief is that ghosts can and do eat even human bodies A Ghosts also suffer from cold, hence New Guineans, and others, make fires at the graves, and even build huts, so that when the ghosts come up from the body they may find comfort.'
Ghosts have voices, too, but thin and shadowy like themselves. They chirp like crickets or utter their words in whistling tones. So the wizards by ventriloquistic art impose upon the credulous, and by wheezing utterance produce the effect of communications from a shadowy being or from the ground. Note the indications of shamanistic practice in the Prophet Isaiah (8:19- 29:4).
What we may regard as the disposition of the ghost is by most peoples held to be fixed by the character of the person while on earth.
[4. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 224-225, 232-233, 238, etc.; ERE, vi. 65 ff. The testimony is being exhaustively collected in Frazer, Belief in Immortality--see the Index, under "Food."
5. Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 442 ff.; Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. S18; Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 150-152.]
Was he cruel, warlike, passionate, generous, revengeful in the body, so will he be as a discarnate ghost. So, for instance, the New Guineans hold. Only account must be taken of a very common notion, that the ghost is endowed with increased power. One might find many reasons for this common idea. The general fearsomeness of the unknown and invisible, the fad that the ghost has joined the terrible host of free spirits, its very remoteness, combine to add the idea of power. That which is distant in space or time gains enchantment and enlargement from the imagination, which is the faculty most employed in this sphere. Australians credit to their ancestors deeds to themselves impossible, though they are themselves their ancestors reincarnate. The greed and liking for possessions which existed on earth are attributed in some parts to the spirit, and among the Bakongo, for instance, this desire is satisfied by placing all the deceased's wealth about the grave. The soul's assumed mobility,
[6. Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 142 ff.
7. Roscoe, Baganda, pp. 282 ff.
8. Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, pp. 489 ff
9. Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, p. 278.]
such as was displayed in its power to leave the body during life and to make investigations at even a considerable distance, is not lost but rather enhanced. It has become a free agent, no longer bound by the body's necessities and limitations of locomotion, at liberty to roam unfettered, to use in the wide universe its powers--those that remain or are acquired in its new condition. If it in earthly life could leave the body temporarily and like the lightning speed hither and thither, now, disfleshed, its mobility has gained by the change.
Especially is it believed that spirits acquire a larger knowledge. Not only do they gain a completer survey of the past and the present, but a knowledge of the future becomes theirs. According as their dispositions prompt, they become helpers of their survivors or hostilely active against them.
Particularly interesting in this connection is the relationship of the ghost and other beings to warning and prediction. Among the powers of the soul is that of return and manifestation to survivors. Melanesian, Andaman, and African ghosts, for instance, reappear to and converse with their people and become a medium of information. Particularly through dreams do they mediate--a performance recorded in antiquity and attested by present day belief over a large area. Indeed, it is through the dream that approach to human comprehension is most easily made by divine, superhuman, or discarnate powers, the spirit in this condition being loosed from fleshly trammels. The human spirit in sleep is regarded as not bound by quite the same inflexible laws to the bodily limitations. The employment of the dream as a means of information or warning at once occurs to the reader--Jacob, Joseph, Pharaoh, Nebucbadrezzar; clasctical cases will be found in Pindar, Olympiacs, XIII, 105 and Pausanias, X, xxxiii, II. It will be remembered that in an earlier section the importance of the dream as an index to animistic thought was dwelt upon at some length. One specimen of developed classical and philosophical thought on this has been summarized from Jamblichus.
[10. Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 190 ff.; Klosts, In the Andamans, p. 296; Weeks, Congo Cannibals, pp. 264-265.
11. Herodotus, IV, 172; Pomponius Mela, I. viii. 8; Mauss, Origines des pouvoirs magiques, p. 15; Haddon, Anthropological Essays, p. 179.]
"There is nothing unworthy of belief in what you have been told concerning sleep and the meaning of dreams. I will explain it thus. The soul has a twofold life, a lower and a higher. In sleep the soul is released from the constraint of the body, and enters as one emancipated on its divine life of intelligence. Then as the noble faculty which beholds the objects that truly are, the objects in the world of intelligence, stirs within and awakens to its power, who can be surprised that the mind, which contains within itself the principles of all that happens, should in this, the state of liberation, discern the future in those antecedent principles which will make that future what it is to be? The nobler part of the soul is thus united by abstraction to higher natures, and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods. Recorded examples of this are numerous and well authenticated; instances too occur every day. Numbers of sick by sleeping had their cure revealed to them in dreams. Would not Alexander's army have perished but for a dream in which Dionysius pointed out the means of safety? Was not the siege of Aphritis raised through a dream sent by Jupiter Ammon to Lysander? 'The night time of the body is the daytime of the soul.'"
The student of anthropology will at once recognize here the advanced justification for beliefs which go back very far for their origins. But even in the advanced stage of thought represented by Jamblichus there are present elements that are duplicable today in the most primitive regions.
Several doors open here to alluring bypaths--to inspiration, prediction, oracles, on the one side, these presuming a favoring: disposition on the part of the ghost; and, on the other, to necromancy and the "black art" or black magic, if the ghost or his control be evil. Melanesians and Africans say that the soul may return to seize and inspire the unconscious shaman or prophet to pregnant utterance. We have said "unconscious"--for it seems practically established that, in the earlier stages of culture, prediction and the delivery of the oracle took place only when the medium was in ecstasy. Vergil's description of the
[12. Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries, Part III, chap. vii.
13. Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 218 ff.; Roscue, Baganda, p. 113.]
raging sybil will recur to the classical student. Plato says that "inspired and true divination is not attained to by anyone in his full senses, but only when the power of thought is fettered by sleep or disease, or some paroxysm of frenzy." It is well known that the American Indians regarded the simple or mentally incompetent as peculiarly endowed and in closer touch with the supernatural than those possessed of all their mental powers. In the Old Testament there is an unconscious testimony to the veracity of many parts of the narrative, guaranteed by psychological conclusions, in the fact that the earlier phases of prophecy and prediction are described as involving the ecstatic state or a condition of unconsciousness. Such are the use of the dream, the case of Balaam, the prophets among whom Saul found himself, this form of affection being communicable or "catching"--compare the "dancing mania" of the middle ages-and Elisha, for whom music was in at least one case a prerequisite to the delivery of the oracle--the "hand of the Lord " (2 Kings 3:15) being the Old Testament expression for the modern psychological term
[14. Æneid, V1, 45 ff., 77ff.
15. Timæus, 71.]
"ecstasy" adopted from the Greek. So among perhaps most primitive peoples, like the Melanesians and Africans referred to above, warnings from the supernatural and even knowledge of other matters, as of charms, are supposed to be received under such conditions.
Ghosts do not figure merely as indicators of coming events or as guardians against evil fortune. Their larger capacity for action may make them powerful intercessors with still higher supernatural beings or spirits, through shamans who control them or know them intimately. Or their own success in their earthly vocation makes them interested in survivors who follow their trade. In Africa the spirit of a dead hunter is powerful to help in the chase, and is propitiated to that end. In Melanesia the help of ghosts in securing the right kind of weather, in performing feats of healing, in success with the fishing net or line, and in agriculture is obtained by sacrifices
[16. So the Australians: Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 435-437. On the facts at large of Carpenter, Comparative Religion, pp. 181, 182.
17. Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243.
18. Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, pp. 181-183.]
and offerings. Indeed, from the inhabitants of Ghosttown may come some of the good gifts, agricultural, for instance, which make life worth living. The spirits of the dead may keep a watchful eye upon survivors, preventing or punishing infractions of tribal customs that involve offence to themselves, and warning against repetition by inflicting sickness or failure in various enterprises. Foundation sacrifice had the purpose of procuring for the structure the protection of the spirits of the dead.
On the other hand, ghosts may be among the spirits whose malevolence needs to be guarded against. In fact, among the post mortem transformations may be that into ill disposed spirits. Usually, when this is conceived to be the case, the cause is found in some misfortune in life or death. Among the Ibo, for instance, a childless woman, a wifeless or moneyless man, or a suicide may as ghosts attempt to increase the population
[19. Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 132. ff.: Lambert, Murs et superstitions, pp. 24, 26, 218, 224 ff., 293 ff.; Turner, Samoa, pp. 345 ff.
20. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 238-239.
21. Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 192, 310.
22, B. D. Eerdmans, in Expositor, Nov. 1913, p. 197.]
of the underworld by attacks upon those left on earth. Similarly in New Guinea those who die in childbirth, suicides, and those who have lost their heads become maleficent. The Omahas hold that ghosts of the murdered return and inflict punishment by disease, or by causing the wind to blow from hunter to game and so to spoil his sport. Among Congo cannibals the soul seen in dreams is a wandering human spirit aiming at evil in its travels, and the witch doctor may be hired to kill it. The nostrils of the dead are plugged immediately after death to keep the spirit in the body as long as possible. If the ghost is for any reason unwelcome in the nether world and is driven out, it becomes malicious and aims at mischief, either inflicting positive ills by sending storms and like disasters or preventing success in various pursuits. In some cases ghosts are normally neutral, and their disposition and consequent actions depend upon the treatment they receive from
[23. Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 312
24. Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 212.
25. Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, p. 212.
26. Weeks, Congo Cannibals, p. 263-264, 269.]
the living. So that the well-being of survivors depends on propitiation by gifts and ceremonies or on manifestations of abiding affection. The duties of classic Greeks and Romans to their dead--careful and honorable burial, celebration by games at the funeral or on anniversaries--recur at once to the mind: and in these and other matters these peoples handed down in memory at least and often in ritual the doings and beliefs of far away ancestors. Close parallels to classic customs have been observed among African, Melanesian, and Polynesian peoples, where not only is the funeral offering placed on the ground, but dramatic performances in honor of the dead take place. Among some races, such as British New Guineans and the Mafulu, ghosts are always malevolent.
Among the exercises of the enlarged powers
[28. Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 65, 68, 74, 75, 76, 81 ff.; Roscoe, Baganda, pp. 116, 278, 286.
29. Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 19; Curt, Australian Race, i. 87; Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 461, 463, 473; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 507, and Native Tribes, p. 511.
30. Talbot, In the Shadow of The Bush, p. 18; Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 214 ff.; Milligan, Fetish Folk, pp. 233-236.
31. Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 281 and Mafulu Mountain People, pp. 243 ff., 266 ff., 297 ff.; JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 ff.]
attributed to ghosts by quite diverse peoples is one which, as we shall see later, they possess in common with non-human spirits. This is the infliction of disease in an access of malignancy. Such a belief is held by American Indians, South Sea islanders, Hindus, New Guineans, and many others. They may inflict lockjaw by a blow, cause death, induce phthisis, and bring pestilence. Shamans and medicine men may use them to secure revenge or haunt the living; and this again calls up the need for exorcism. This gives rise to various devices and taboos, aiming at propitiating or deceiving the ghosts, such as change of names assigned to things belonging to the dead, or dropping out of the language words which contained the name borne in life, this going so far in some cases as to involve the destruction of huts, plantations, trees, and other possessions." It is quite in keeping with the
[32. Folk-lore, ii. 420 ff., 431; Kloss, In the Andamans, p. 305; Declé, Three years in Savage Africa, pp. 236, 344.
33. Talbot, In the Shadow of The Bush, p. 230; Weeks, Congo Cannibals, p. 266; Roscoe, Baganda, p. 100; Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 81 ff.; Crooke, Tribes and Caste, iii. 436.
34. Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 81 ff.; Roscoe, Baganda, p. 126.
35. Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 631 ff.; Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, v. 250.]
whole conception of things that ghosts should be especially dangerous at night.
From all this, to anticipate slightly what is yet to come, fear of discarnate spirits may lead to a cult, a worship, which is apotropaic, deprecatory, or propitiatory in character. On the other hand, the sense of favors received or to come gives the rationale of a cultus which embodies more of gratitude and pleasure than of fear. With both these varieties of mental qualities attributed to ghosts, shared by them in common with non-human powers, it seems to require somewhat of ingenuity and a miscalculation or misappreciation of native human traits to force one to derive all worship from fear. Timor fecit deos is now hardly tenable in its original sense, in view of abundance of ascertained fads. Most of the animals, especially those domesticated, display amiable traits, including gratitude. We can hardly hold, therefore, that man, whether the product of evolution or of special creation, developed one of his noblest exercises, that of worship, from a sense of fear alone.
[36. Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 64, 147.
37. Chalmers and Gill, Work and Adventure, pp. 84 ff.]
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An accessor method is an instance method that gets or sets the value of a property of an object. In Cocoa’s terminology, a method that retrieves the value of an object’s property is referred to as a getter method, or “getter;” a method that changes the value of an object’s property is referred to as a setter method, or “setter.” These methods are often found in pairs, providing API for getting and setting the property values of an object.
You should use accessor methods rather than directly accessing state data because they provide an abstraction layer. Here are just two of the benefits that accessor methods provide:
You don’t need to rewrite your code if the manner in which a property is represented or stored changes.
Accessor methods often implement important behavior that occurs whenever a value is retrieved or set. For example, setter methods frequently implement memory management code and notify other objects when a value is changed.
Because of the importance of this pattern, Cocoa defines some conventions for naming accessor methods. Given a property of type
type and called
name, you should typically implement accessor methods with the following form:
The one exception is a property that is a Boolean value. Here the getter method name may be
isName. For example:
This naming convention is important because much other functionality in Cocoa relies upon it, in particular key-value coding. Cocoa does not use
getName because methods that start with “get” in Cocoa indicate that the method will return values by reference.
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Cyber Bullying Leaflet Launch
Sue Ball Consultant for BRAG and Parents from Nechells Parents Forum launched a leaflet of advice for parents and carers about how to prevent and tackle cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullies use the internet, mobile phones or any other form of digital technology to threaten, tease or abuse someone.
This useful resource, produced by Birmingham City Council’s Young People and Families Directorate, in association with Nechells Parents Forum and the POD, helps parents understand how to be cyber-safe, how to spot the signs if their child is a victim of or an instigator of cyber-bullying and what steps to take to stop it. The leaflet provides useful, practical advice with local and national contacts for further support and guidance.
The launch took place at Nechells Zone Olympics at the Alexander Stadium on June 15th Noran Flynn, Director of the POD, and organiser of the Olympics Event said “Nechells parents are keen to support their children at our Olympics, and promote the values of respect, excellence and friendship. They are also very concerned about the rise in cyber-bullying and have worked hard, with Birmingham’s Bullying Reduction Action Group (BRAG) to produce this leaflet to help parents across Birmingham deal with cyber-bullying and keep their children safe”
How to tackle cyber-bullying:
New technologies are amazing. Mobile phones, smart phones, the internet and social networking slites like facebook allow us to keep in touch with our friends and family more easily and to have access to a wide range of information on the world-wide web. They can help children with their learning, prepare them for life in a technological world and improve their communication skills.
But as well as the positives, we all know that there are some negatives and that cyber-bullying is on the increase. Because many children and parents are worried about cyber-bullying Nechells Parents Forum have worked with Birmingham City Council’s Bullying Reduction Action Group (BRAG) to produce an advice leaflet for parents called How to Tackle Cyber-bullying.
This leaflet helps parents understand what cyber-bullying is, how to spot the signs if their child is a victim of or an instigator of cyber-bullying and what steps to take to stop it. It also gives useful, practical advice with local and national contacts for further support and guidance.
Sue Ball said “The Olympic values of respect, excellence and friendship are important to us all. Thank you to the POD and all the members of Nechells Parents Forum, who helped to create this leaflet. It gives great advice to parents and carers across Birmingham about how they can best help their children to lead happy and bully-free lives, build respectful friendships and stay safe from cyber-bullying.”
For more information about Anti-bullying work in Birmingham
Events This Month
Latest Blog Posts
Tue, 14th May 13 at 4:00pm
Some pupils from year 5 in our Nechells EAZ schools: Cromwell, Nechells, St Clement's, St Joseph's and St Vincent's all went to Aston University today for a day of fun, experiments, experiences and inspiration for their future careers. The young people learnt all about team work, had a tour of the campus and then became mini scientists extracting DNA from kiwi fruits. The Nechells Schools and their pupils would all like to say a big thank you to Bal and her team of student volunteers at Aston University for the opportunity they give every year to some our most Gifted and Talents pupils, they really enjoy this fantastic experience, we hope that our pupils will all continue to study hard and in time become the graduates of the future.
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"From the creators of Animachines, a playful way for kids to learn actions, animals, and opposites."
Opposites are everywhere in our world. A day at the park will reveal busy kids and active animals doing opposite actions. There, on the slide: Sam goes up as Hiroko zips down. And there, in the tree: one squirrel climbs up and another scurries down. Not far away, Daddy is quiet but Simon is LOUD, while a mother bird is silent as she feeds her chirping babies.
In Kids Do, Animals Too ten pairs explain opposites to young children. Each pair features people and a different animal, including: fast, slow -- dogs in, out -- mice up, down -- squirrels on, off -- frogs ahead, behind -- ants quiet, loud -- birds under, over -- spiders wet, dry -- ducks toward, away -- butterflies asleep, awake -- squirrels, bats
The softly colored artwork features familiar park settings, and includes look-and-find details that cleverly connect each active scene. Meanwhile, the aptly crafted language keeps the action moving and the learning fun.
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Stop by the library to fill out an application to get a library card. To get a card, the hopeful patron must present a photo identification and at least one proof of residence (a utility bill, an envelope mailed to yourself). Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. This spring, everyone will be recieving a brand new card to celebrate the activation of the One Card Network, a project of the sister libraries belonging to the Washington County Library System. The updated cards are free and each will automatically link to our Overdrive electronic book database.
GREAT SCHOOLS offers ten easy tips for inspiring children to make reading a part of everyday life. Great Schools Website
YOUTH COMPUTER STATION - Visit a quiet corner of our sunny children's room to play (and learn) on our children's computer. The computer provides a myriad of games to encourage many skills and some games just for fun. Parents may also choose to use this work station themselves while their children read books, play with our puppet theatre or learning games, explore our interactive science display, or simply sit at a table to draw in a sunny room.
STOP HUNGER AND LEARN - Every correct answer you give while playing this online brain-building game earns ten grains of rice for the United Nations World Food program. Visit Free Rice.
ONE BOOK, LOTS OF FAMILY FUN - Copies of Suzanne Bloom's picture book The Bus for Us are available at all Pennsylvania pubic libraries. Reading aloud is one of the best activities you can do to prepare your child for school. Make time to read aloud every day, using lots of expression while taking time to enjoy the pictures and asking thought-provoking questions. Before reading the book: Look at the cover, point out the title and author. Ask your child to tell you everything he or she knows about riding a bus and going to school. While reading the book: Occasionally run your finger under the words as you read them. Use facial expressions and vary your voice. Ask questions about the story (Is this the bus, or it is another type of truck? What do you think the children have in their bags?) Have your child help you read the repeated question, "Is this the bus for us, Gus?" After reading the book: Talk about the emotions the children in the story felt. Point out their expressions in the drawings. Talk about the different vehicles shown in the story. Read books about trains, boats, airplanes, dirigibles,trucks or cars. Stop by your California Information Station to pick up an activity book outlining additional ideas, including games to play, activities to develop STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Skills, and tips on safety and preparing for school. For information about the book and its creator, visit www.paonebook.org.
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Like butterflies? Enjoy birds?
Garden with Vermont plants.
Native plants can help turn your yard into a wonderful wildlife preserve. They provide butterflies, birds and bees the habitat and food they need to survive and reproduce, in turn supporting other forms of wildlife that get energy directly from plants or by eating something that has already eaten a plant.
When land is converted to lawn or planted with non-native plants imported from Europe or Asia, native insects have a hard time finding something to eat because they are adapted to use particular plant species for food, lay eggs and hide from predators. Insect diversity and populations drop significantly when native plant species disappear - gardens with native plants have three times as many insect species and 35 times as much insect biomass as those with non-natives. Smaller populations means insects are not fulfilling the critical role they play in an ecosystem's food web.
Here are a few things you can do to create a wildlife and insect haven in your yard:
Plant native perennials, shrubs and trees. They offer birds the best variety and most abundant source of seasonal seeds, fruits and insects. Click here for a list of native Vermont plants and the insects they support.
Replace lawns with woodlands, meadows, native gardens and shrubs. Reduce the need for labor-intensive, gas-consuming lawn care by planting low-maintenance, native vegetation.
Provide pollinators a range of species that bloom throughout the season. Perennial beds do not include the seasonal variety that bees and other pollinators need. Include late-blooming native asters, goldenrods and sunflowers in your borders and meadows.
Whenever possible, leave leaf litter alone. Many insects overwinter in leaf litter, so leaving it on the ground allows many species of moths and butterflies to make it through Vermont’s long winters. For example, leaf litter frequently contains moth eggs, so those moths cannot survive if leaf litter is bagged and sent to the landfill.
Maintain naturally "messy" areas - leave woody debris alone. Many bees live alone or in colonies in twigs, stumps, dead branches or wood, and some birds nest on the ground and forage in leaf litter for insects.
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Dec. 8, 2011 "Dressing" atoms with laser light allows high angular momentum scattering to be seen for the first time in long-lived atomic Bose-Einstein condensates at ultracold temperatures.
Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have for the first time engineered and detected the presence of high angular momentum collisions between atoms at temperatures close to absolute zero. Previous experiments with ultracold atoms featured essentially head-on collisions. The JQI experiment, by contrast, is able to create more complicated collisions between atoms using only lasers. This innovation may facilitate the creation of exotic quantum states that can be exploited for practical applications like quantum computing. The key to the JQI approach is to alter the atoms' environment with laser light. They "dress" rubidium atoms by bathing them in a pair of laser beams, which force the atoms to have one of three discrete values of momentum. In the JQI experiment, rubidium atoms comprise a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). BECs have been collided before. But the observation of high-angular-momentum scattering at such low energies is new.
The new JQI results are being reported in the journal Science.
One of the cardinal principles of quantum science is that matter must be simultaneously thought of as both particles and waves. When the temperature of a gas of atoms is lowered, the wavelike nature of the atom emerges, and the idea of position becomes fuzzier. While an atom at room temperature might spread over a hundredth of a nm, atoms at nano-kelvin temperatures have a typical wavelength of about 100 nm. This is much larger than the range of the force between atoms, only a few nm. Atoms generally collide only when they meet face to face.
However, to study certain interesting quantum phenomena, such as searching for Majorana particles -- hypothetical particles that might provide a robust means of encoding quantum information -- it is desirable to engineer inter-atomic collisions beyond these low-energy, head-on type. That's what the new JQI experiment does.
Scattering experiments date back to the discovery of the atomic nucleus 100 years ago, when Ernest Rutherford shot alpha particles into a foil of gold. Since then other scattering experiments have revealed a wealth of detail about atoms and sub-atomic matter such as the quark substructure of protons.
A convenient way of picturing an interaction between two particles is to view their relative approach in terms of angular momentum. Quantized angular momentum usually refers to the motion of an electron inside an atom, but it necessarily pertains also to the scattering of the two particles, which can be thought of as parts of a single quantum object.
If the value of the relative angular momentum is zero, then the scattering is designated as "s-wave" scattering. If the pair of colliding particles has one unit of angular momentum, the scattering is called p-wave scattering. Still more higher-order scattering scenarios are referred to by more letters: d-wave, f-wave, g-wave, and so on. This model is referred to as the partial waves view.
In high energy scattering, the kind at accelerators, these higher angular-momentum scattering scenarios are important and help to reveal important structure information about the particles. In atomic scattering at low temperatures, the s-wave interactions completely swamp the higher-order scattering modes. For ultralow-temperature s-wave scattering, when two atoms collide, they glance off each other (back to back) at any and all angles equally. This isotropic scattering doesn't reveal much about the nature of the matter undergoing collision; it's as if the colliding particles were hard spheres.
This has changed now. The JQI experiment is the first to create conditions in which d-wave and g-wave scattering modes in an ultracold experiment could be seen in otherwise long-lived systems.
Ian Spielman and his colleagues at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) chill Rb atoms to nano-kelvin temperatures. The atoms, around half a million of them, have a density about a millionth that of air at room temperature. Radiofrequency radiation places each atom into a superposition of quantum spin states. Then two (optical light) lasers impart momentum (forward-going and backward-going motion) to the atoms.
If this were a particle physics experiment, we would say that these BECs-in-motion were quantum beams, beams with energies that came in multiples of the energy kick delivered by the lasers. The NIST "collider" in Gaithersburg, Maryland is very different for the CERN collider in Geneva, Switzerland. In the NIST atom trap the particles have kinetic energies of a hundred pico-electron-volts rather than the trillion-electron-volt energies used at the Large Hadron Collider.
At JQI, atoms are installed in their special momentum states, and the collisions begin. Outward scattered atoms are detected after the BEC clouds are released by the trap. If the atoms hadn't been dressed, the collisions would have been s-wave in nature and the observed scattered atoms would have been seen uniformly around the scattering zone.
The effect of the dressing is to screen the atoms from s-wave scattering in the way analogous to that in some solid materials, where the interaction between two electrons is modified by the presence of trillions of other electrons nearby. In other words, the laser dressing effectively increased the range of the inter-atom force such that higher partial wave scattering was possible, even at the lowest energies.
In the JQI experiment, the observed scattering patterns for atoms emerging from the collisions was proof that d-wave and g-wave scattering had taken place. "The way in which the density of scattered atoms is distributed on the shell reflects the partial waves," said Ian Spielman. "A plot of scattered-density vs. spherical polar angles would give the sort of patterns you are used to seeing for atomic orbitals. In our case, this is a sum of s-, p-, and d- waves."
Simulating Solids Using Gases
Ultracold atomic physics experiments performed with vapors of atoms are excellent for investigating some of the strongly-interacting quantum phenomena usually considered in the context of condensed matter physics. These subjects include superconductivity, superfluids, the quantum Hall effect, and topological insulators, and some things that haven't yet been observed, such as the "Majorana" fermions.
Several advantages come with studying these phenomena in the controlled environment of ultracold atoms. Scientists can easily manipulate the landscape in which the atoms reside using knobs that adjust laser power and frequency. For example, impurities that can plague real solids can be controlled and even removed, and because (as in this new JQI experiment) the scattering of atoms can now (with the proper "dressing") reveal higher-partial-wave effects. This is important because the exotic quantum effects mentioned above often manifest themselves under exactly these higher angular-momentum conditions.
"Our technique is a fundamentally new method for engineering interactions, and we expect this work will stimulate new directions of research and be of broad interest within the physics community, experimental and theoretical," said Spielman. "We are modifying the very character of the interactions, and not just the strength, by light alone."
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
- R. A. Williams, L. J. Leblanc, K. Jiménez-García, M. C. Beeler, A. R. Perry, W. D. Phillips, I. B. Spielman. Synthetic Partial Waves in Ultracold Atomic Collisions. Science, December 8 2011 DOI: 10.1126/science.1212652
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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The marriage of artificial and bio-materials to create cyborg insects and rats is still a bleeding-edge field with fascinating possibilities for human applications. That sometimes controversial vision of the future just took a dramatic turn towards blurring the man-versus-machine lines with the debut of a 3D-printed robot that uses heart cells to walk.
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created the tiny biological robots, or biobots, using a 3D printer to fabricate a flexible gel scaffold, and then injected the structures with heart cells from rats. Once powered by a form of liquid food, the heart cells beat and worked to give the biobot movement, traveling at roughly 236 micrometers per second.
According to the scientists, future versions of the biobot will use more controllable skeletal muscle cells for movement, neurons that will give the devices the ability to sense toxins, and a two-legged structure that will offer more freedom of movement. Extrapolate this development forward about 50-80 years and you have the makings of what could turn out to be real-life Replicants.
You can see the slow, creepy, but nonetheless groundbreaking crawl of the biobot in the video below.
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The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is expected to discover its 1,000TH comet this summer.
The SOHO spacecraft is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. It has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
"Before SOHO was launched, only 16 sun grazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted SOHO would discover more than 60 times that number, and in only nine years," said Dr. Chris St. Cyr. He is senior project scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "This is truly a remarkable achievement!"
About 85 percent of the comets SOHO discovered belongs to the Kreutz group of sun grazing comets, so named because their orbits take them very close to Earth's star. The Kreutz sun grazers pass within 500,000 miles of the star's visible surface. Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is about 36 million miles from the solar surface.
SOHO has also been used to discover three other well-populated comet groups: the Meyer, with at least 55 members; Marsden, with at least 21 members; and the Kracht, with 24 members. These groups are named after the astronomers who suggested the comets are related, because they have similar orbits.
Many comet discoveries were made by amateurs using SOHO images on the Internet. SOHO comet hunters come from all over the world. The United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, and Lithuania are among the many countries whose citizens have used SOHO to chase comets.
Almost all of SOHO's comets are discovered using images from its Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. LASCO is used to observe the faint, multimillion-degree outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona. A disk in the instrument is used to make an artificial eclipse, blocking direct light from the sun, so the much fainter corona can be seen. Sun grazing comets are discovered when they enter LASCO's field of view as they pass close by the star.
"Building coronagraphs like LASCO is still more art than science, because the light we are trying to detect is very faint," said Dr. Joe Gurman, U.S. project scientist for SOHO at Goddard. "Any imperfections in the optics or dust in the instrument will scatter the light, making the images too noisy to be useful. Discovering almost 1,000 comets since SOHO's launch on December 2, 1995 is a testament to the skill of the LASCO team."
SOHO successfully completed its primary mission in April 1998. It has enough fuel to remain on station to keep hunting comets for decades if the LASCO continues to function.
For information about SOHO on the Internet, visit:
Explore further: Long-term warming, short-term variability: Why climate change is still an issue
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What is Encryption?
Encryption is a process by which we use software to scramble sensitive information while it is in transit to Dell.
Please take a moment to read about the steps that we have taken to help protect your information and make your online transmissions safer. We also invite you to review the steps you can take to help protect yourself further.
How Does Encryption Work?
Encryption is based on a key that has two different parts. The public part and the private part. The public part of the key is distributed to those you want to communicate with. The private part is for the recipient's use only.
When you send personal information to dell.com, you use Dell's public key to encrypt your personal information. That means, if at any point during the transmission your information is intercepted, it is scrambled and very difficult to decrypt. Once Dell receives your encrypted personal information, we use the private part of our key to decode it.
What Kind of Encryption Software Does Dell Use?
Dell currently uses the industry-standard SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. But we continue to keep up with the current technologies in an effort to protect the security of your information.
What Information Does Dell Encrypt?
Dell encrypts all personal information you give us when you place an order online. Remember, if you feel uncomfortable providing any of this information online, please feel free to call one of our representatives at 1-800-WWW-DELL.
How Safe is Encryption Really?
Providing encrypted information online is as safe as doing it over the phone.
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The doctrine of purgatory is revealed through certain scriptural texts which speak of a burning fire – cf. 1 Cor 3:15, 1 Pet 1:7. Though there are certainly other passages of the Bible which can be drawn upon (e.g. Job praying for his dead children, the Judas Maccabeus praying for the dead), the Tradition of the Church has principally relied upon the passages referring to fire – this is especially noticeable in the declarations of Florence and Trent.
Hence, we come to a very important question: If the Church discovered the doctrine of purgatory through meditating upon the scriptural images of a purifying fire, ought we to hold that there is material fire in purgatory? With the help of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the great Thomistic theologian Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, we may succeed in shedding some light upon this question.
Not a clear teaching of the Church
That there is fire in purgatory is not a clear teaching of the Church – Garrigou-Lagrange considers it a sententia probabilissima (the most probable doctrine), but not a defined teaching of the Church. He notes that the Council of Florence did not condemn the Greek schismatics who denied the existence of fire in purgatory, though it does favor the common Latin opinion affirming the presence of material fire there.
On the other hand, it is important to mention that the Church has not rejected the possibility of material fire in purgatory. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1030-1032) refers to the fire and flames of purgatory twice, never indicating that these flames are metaphorical. Thus, the Church seems to feel bound to at least allow for the possibility of a strictly literal interpretation of the purifying fire and uses the language of fire and of flames without any hint that this is meant metaphorically.
How can a disembodied soul suffer from material flames?
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, following St. Thomas Aquinas, affirms that it is possible for spiritual beings to “suffer” from material flames – this is called the pain of sense. It is a clear doctrine of the Church that the souls in purgatory undergo the pain of sense, at least spiritually – even if there are no physical flames in purgatory, the souls there suffer in their spiritual senses. The chief pain of purgatory is the delay of the beatific vision, but in addition to this there also the pain of sense.
A disembodied soul cannot suffer from material flames in the same way a body or even an embodied soul can suffer from them. The separated spirit suffers insofar as it is bound to the material flames and hindered from acting as it would and where it would. There is a certain humiliation inflicted upon the soul since it is made to depend upon a material creature (i.e. the fire). A loose analogy is seen in a paralyzed person who cannot act as they would.
Are there material flames in purgatory?
Here we will cite the words of the venerable father Garrigou-Lagrange: “After long discussions and wide historical researches on this particular point, it seems wise to conclude with St. Robert Bellarmine and Suarez as follows, ‘Although the existence of fire in purgatory is less certain than that of fire in hell, the doctrine which admits a real fire in purgatory must be classified as a sentential probabilissima. Hence the contrary opinion is improbable.’
“This view rests on seven reasons: first, the consent of scholastic theologians. Second, the authority of St. Gregory the Great (Dial. 4, 39). Third, the authority of St. Augustine. Forth, the concordant testimonies of St. Cyprian, St. Basil, St. Caesarius, of the liturgy, which begs refreshment of these souls. Fifth, the unanimous decision of the Latin fathers at the Council of Florence. Sixth, the very probable foundation found in 1 Corinthians 3:15. Seventh, particular revelations, for example those of St. Catherine of Ricci. She suffered forty days to deliver a soul from purgatory. A novice, touching her hand, said, ‘But, my mother, you are burning.’ ‘Yes, my daughter,’ she replied, ‘this fire is not seen, but it consumes like a burning fever.’” (from Life Everlasting)
Throughout the next couple of weeks, I will post on several additional questions regarding the nature of purgatory. Let us all pray for the Poor Souls during the next month!
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Volume 15, Number 2—February 2009
Reemergence of Human and Animal Brucellosis, Bulgaria
Bulgaria had been free from brucellosis since 1958, but during 2005–2007, a reemergence of human and animal disease was recorded. The reemergence of this zoonosis in the country highlights the importance of maintaining an active surveillance system for infectious diseases that will require full cooperation between public health and veterinary authorities.
According to the World Health Organization (1), brucellosis is one of the most common zoonoses worldwide and is considered a reemerging infectious disease in many areas of the world. An estimated 500,000 new human cases occur annually worldwide (2). In Europe, 1,033 human brucellosis cases were reported in 2006 (3); data from a passive surveillance system were based on clinical findings, supported by epidemiologic criteria, and confirmed by serologic tests. Here we report the results of a survey performed in Bulgaria during 2005–2007, which has been considered free from Brucellosis melitensis and B. abortus disease since 1958 (4).
In Bulgaria, until 1998 serologic screening was mandatory for all cattle, sheep, and goats >12 months of age. Afterward, based on risk assessment, animal surveillance activities covered 100% of heads reared in municipalities along the borders with countries endemic for brucellosis such as Turkey, Greece, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; 50% of the animals reared in other municipalities of the regions bordering the aforementioned countries; and 25% of animals reared in the inner Bulgarian regions. Currently, an active surveillance system is in place for dairy factory employees and persons considered at risk after outbreaks in ruminants.
During 2005–2007 (Figure 1), a total of 105 human cases of brucellosis were diagnosed among 2,054 persons who were tested on the basis of clinical suspicion or risky exposure. A human case of brucellosis was considered confirmed if results of serologic tests, such as ELISA or complement fixation test, were positive, in accordance with the World Health Organization case definition (5). Bacteria isolation and characterization had not been performed routinely.
The alert started in 2005 (Figure 1, panel A), when a case of brucellosis occurred in a Bulgarian migrant animal keeper working in Greece. Active surveillance of persons at risk was implemented, enabling detection of a total of 34 human cases of brucellosis. All cases were classified as imported cases; therefore, no supplemental active surveillance on animals was implemented. Additionally, during routine screening for at-risk workers, 3 other persons employed in a dairy factory were found to be seropositive. Due to the lack of traceability of the raw material used in the factory, it was not possible to trace the origin of the infection. At that time, there was no evidence of animal cases of brucellosis.
During 2006 (Figure 1, panel B), a total of 10 cases of human brucellosis were reported from different regions of the country. According to anamnestic information, these case-patients had different sources of infection: 3 of the 10 were considered imported infections; 1 case-patient was diagnosed during hospitalization in Sicily (Italy), where the patient reported having eaten ricotta cheese, and 2 occurred in Bulgarian migrant animal keepers working in Greece. Concerning the origin of infection, epidemiologic data suggest that 5 of the 10 cases were related to occupational risk and the remaining to consumption of raw milk and milk derivates. Surveillance activities enabled detection of 10 animals (7 small ruminants and 3 cows) with positive serologic results; these animals were then killed and destroyed. During 2007 (Figure 1, panel C), a total of 58 human cases were identified. Of 58 cases, 54 were classified as autochthonous (i.e., acquired by imported animals found to be infected during regular veterinary surveillance). These cases were identified in a Bulgarian region bordering Greece and Turkey (Haskovo region).
Two other cases, which were also classified as autochthonous, were diagnosed in patients who stated they had consumed a risky product (i.e., raw milk handled without adherence to hygienic standards). The remaining 2 cases were classified as imported because they involved Bulgarian migrant animal keepers working in Greece. Active surveillance in place for animals found a total of 625 heads (618 small ruminants, 7 cows) with positive serologic results; all were killed and destroyed. Analagous with what we observed in humans, most of the infected animals were found in the Haskovo region. All animals found to be infected during surveillance activity were bred at the family farm, and their milk and dairy products were prepared and eaten without adherence to proper hygienic standards.
Our data show that brucellosis is reemerging in Bulgaria (Figure 2). On the basis of information provided in this report, we can make several hypotheses regarding the causes of the resurgence of a previously controlled infection in a transitional, rapidly changing country.
Overall, 105 human cases of human brucellosis were identified over a 3-year period. Of them, 84 cases (80%) were identified in persons at occupational risk. This finding suggests that when brucellosis is introduced into naive territories (i.e., those territories that were considered officially free of brucellosis), the primary source of infection for humans is direct contact with infected animals (i.e., exposure to abortion/delivery products) or domestic consumption of products produced on family farms (milk, raw cheese). However, environmental exposure can also occur, especially in infants and children, who are considered at lower risk for direct contact with potentially infected animals, as recently observed (6). This hypothesis appears to be consistent with the context of a naive setting, where preventive measures are not routinely implemented. Continuous health education and other strategies may contribute to reduce the circulation of human brucellosis in endemic areas (7).
The reemergence of brucellosis is not limited to Bulgaria but involves several countries in the Balkan region and even in the Caucasian region (P. Pasquali, unpub. data). This trend or reemergence has several explanations. First, due to socioeconomic changes, many countries in these regions are experiencing a dramatic increase of animal trade, animal movement, and occupational migration, which in turn may increase the risk for introduction and spread of infectious diseases, such as brucellosis, from other disease-endemic countries like Greece or Turkey (2). Second, the process that has characterized the change of the social and administrative organization since the collapse of the Soviet Union is far from being completed; the public health systems are still flawed in many countries. Finally, part of the increase may simply be that brucellosis is a complex disease, which has different cycles of expansion and regression.
Before drawing conclusions, we should mention 2 possible limitations of the study. First, samples from patients with positive serologic results were used for bacterial culture for brucellosis only if sample collection was properly timed; no culture positive case is available. Second, we cannot exclude the possibility that part of the increase in cases of brucellosis could be due to improved surveillance; in particular, temporal trends and geographic comparison might be, to some extent, affected by the intensity of screening activities. However, this increased surveillance is unlikely to bias the observed shift from imported to locally acquired cases.
In conclusion, this report shows how a disease such as brucellosis may increase its public health impact, particularly in transitional countries such as Bulgaria. Our findings emphasize the importance of the combination of health education and active surveillance systems for controlling infectious diseases and highlight the need for cooperation between public health officials and veterinary officers. Creating and improving capacity building are necessary to properly address issues that pose public health hazards.
Dr Russo is a physician at Sapienza University in Rome. His research interests are infectious diseases in resource-limited countries in the context of natural disasters.
The authors thank Massimo Amicosante and Luca Avellis for logistic support.
This work was conducted as part of a cooperative effort between Italy and Bulgaria, supported by the European Union.
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Organisation for Animal Health, and World Health Organization. Brucellosis in human and animals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2006. WHO/CDS/EPR/2006.7 [cited 2009 Jan 7]. Available from http://www.who.int/entity/csr/resources/publications/Brucellosis.pdf
- Pappas G, Papadimitriou P, Akritidis N, Christou L, Tsianos EV. The new global map of human brucellosis. Lancet Infect Dis. 2006;6:91–9.
- European Food Safety Authority–European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The community summary report on trends and sources of zoonoses, zoonotic agents, antimicrobial resistance and foodborne outbreaks in the European Union in 2006. EFSA Journal. 2007;2007:130 [cited 2009 Jan 5]. Available from http://www.efsa.europa.eu/cs/BlobServer/DocumentSet/Zoon_report_2006_en,0.pdf?ssbinary=true
- Corbel MJ. Brucellosis: an overview. 1st international conference on emerging zoonoses (Jerusalem, Israel). Emerg Infect Dis. 1997;3:213–21.
- Robinson A. Guidelines for coordinated human and animal brucellosis surveillance. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; 2003. FAO Animal Production and Health Paper 156.
- Makis AC, Pappas G, Galanakis E, Haliasos N, Siamopoulou A. Brucellosis in infant after familial outbreak. Emerg Infect Dis. 2008;14:1319–20.
- Jelastopulu E, Bikas C, Petropoulos C, Leotsinidis M. Incidence of human brucellosis in a rural area in western Greece after the implementation of a vaccination programme against animal brucellosis. BMC Public Health. 2008;8:241.
Suggested citation for this article: Russo G, Pasquali P, Nenova R, Alexandrov T, Ralchev S, Vullo V, et al. Reemergence of human and animal brucellosis, Bulgaria. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2009 Feb [date cited]. Available from http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/15/2/08-1025.htm
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CURRENT CZECH NAME: Ostroh
Ostroh Uhersky, Uhersky Ostroh, Ungarisch-Ostra, Ungarisch-Ostroh
LOCATION: Ostroh is a small
town in Moravia, located at 48.59 longitude and 17.23 latitude, 75 km E
of Brno, 9 km ENE of Bzenec (seeMap
- by Mapquest, then click
on your browser's "Back" button to return to this page).
HISTORY: The earliest known
Jewish community in this town dates from 1592. In 1635 there were
22 Jewish houses. In 1671 there were 16 Jewish houses with more than
30 Jewish families, including Isak Schulklopper, Salamon Lateiner, Israel
Isak, Mandl, Salamon Chaska, Benesch, Friedrich Kojeteiner, Schmidl, Jekl
Fleischhacker, Salamon Mojses, Rabiner, Mojses Stanjetz, Jakob Gutman,
Israel Strimpfstricker, and Loebl Isak. From 1798-1848 there were
89 Jewish families. In 1848 the community numbered 478 members, but
dropped to 220 after the First World War. The Jewish population was
70 in 1930. The present town population is 5,000 - 25,000 with fewer
than 10 Jews.
Noteworthy historical events involving or affecting the Jewish community
were the separation of a Jewish quarter in 1727 and the existence of a
self-standing political community from 1890-1920. The old Jewish
cemetery was established in 17th century, with the last known Jewish burial
in 1862. The Jewish congregation was Conservative.
Birth, Death and Marriage record books for Ostroh may be located at the
Czech State Archives in Prague, Statni istredni archiv, tr. Milady Horokove
133, CZ-166 21 Praha 6, Czech Republic, tel/fax: +42 (2) 333-20274.
Search JewishGen/Internet resources for Ostroh.
NOTABLE RESIDENTS AND DESCENDANTS:
According to the entry in the International Association of Jewish Genealogical
Societies Cemetery Project database, Chaim Weizmann, president of the State
of Israel, once lived in Ostroh.
The following rabbis worked in Ostroh: Salomo Mose (1592); David b. Samuel
Halevy (1659); Mose b. Hakadosch Elchanan from Fuerth (1655); Jesaja b.
Sabatai Scheftel (1659); Joel b. Samuel from Krakau (1668); Mhrr Pinchas
(after 1700); Mhrr Salomo (before 1719); Kolonimos b. mhrr Baruch (from
1720); Loeb Steiniz (d. 1760); Mhrr Pinchas b. mhrr Aaron (1766); Jakob
Hirsch b. Mose Loeb (Biach) Feilbogen (1790-1853); Mose Loeb b. mhrr JA
ha-Kohen Mueller (d. 1853); Dr. Joel Mueller; Dr. S. Wolfsohn; (1876-1878);
Dr. Israel Taglicht (1883-1893); Dr. Emanuel Lenke; Dr. D. Herzog (1897-1900);
Dr. Simon Friedmann; Dr. Michael Halberstamm (from 1919).
Other notables include: Mordechai b. Schalom (community elder and author
of the statutes of the chevra kadisha in 1650); Schalom b. Jecheskel (landowner
1668); Mandl Salamon Steinitzer (land deputy 1732); Michl b. R. Sch. David
(judge); Mose Singer (judge 1835); Mandl Duschak (judge 1858); Loeb Winter
(judge 1860); Jesajas Braun (judge 1864); Sal. Kihn (judge 1876); Salamon
Winter (judge 1880-1888); Jonatan Lamberg (judge); Max Kihn (judge 1898);
Dr. Eduard Stern (judge 1902); Jehuda Diamand (judge 1903); Sigmund Klein
(judge 1909); Loeb Nussbaum; Samuel Kornblueh; Sal. Sommer; Jakob Hahn;
Jakob Strauss; Jechiel Gruenbaum.
Rabbi Dr. Moritz Grünwald was born 29 March 1853 in Ostroh.
He studied at the Universities of Vienna and Leipzig. He founded
the Jüdische Centralblatt in Belovar. In 1883 he became rabbi
of Pisek and later Jungbunzlau. He was the chief rabbi of Sofia from
1893 until his death in London on 10 June 1895.
The great-great- grandson of Amalie Reif (b. Ostroh), E.
Randol Schoenberg, is a frequent contributor to Jewishgen's Austria-Czech
SIG and the submitter of this page.
Tom Beer has submitted an interesting story about his great-grandfather,
Beer (b. Ostroh).
CEMETERIES: There are two Jewish
cemeteries in Ostroh. The older cemetery location is urban, on flat
land, separate but near other cemeteries, and not identified by any sign
or marker. It is reached by turning directly off a public road.
It is open to all. The cemetery is surrounded by no wall or fence
and there is no gate. The approximate size of cemetery before WWII
and now is 0.1277 hectares. The cemetery contains no special memorial
monuments. The cemetery contains no known mass graves. Within the limits
of the cemetery there are no structures. The municipality is the
present owner of the cemetery property, which is now utilized for recreation
(park, playground, sports field). Adjacent properties are commercial
or industrial. The cemetery boundaries have not changed since 1939.
Private visitors come rarely to the cemetery. The cemetery
was vandalized during World War II and between 1945 and 1981. No
maintenance has been done. Now there is occasional clearing or cleaning
by authorities. There is a slight threat posed by pollution and proposed
The new cemetery is located at 1.5 km to the E, Veselska-Str. This
Jewish cemetery was established in 1862. The last known Jewish burials
were in the 1950s and 1960s. The cemetery location is urban, on flat
land, separate, but near other cemeteries, and not identified by any sign
or marker. It is reached by crossing the public property of the town
cemetery. It is open to all. A continuous masonry wall surrounds
the cemetery. There is a gate that does not lock. The
approximate size of the cemetery is now 0.2777 hectares; before WWII it
was about 0.47 hectares. There are 100-500 stones. The cemetery
has no special sections. The tombstones and memorial markers
are made of marble, granite and sandstone. The tombstones vary among
flat shaped stones, finely smoothed and inscribed stones, flat stones with
carved relief decoration and obelisks. The cemetery has tombstones
with bronze decorations or lettering and metal fences around graves.
Inscriptions on tombstones are in Hebrew, German and Czech. The cemetery
contains special memorial monuments to Holocaust victims. There are
no known mass graves. Within the limits of the cemetery are no structures.
The present owner of the cemetery property is the local Jewish community
of Brno. The adjacent properties are other cemeteries.
The current Jewish cemetery boundaries are smaller now than in 1939 because
of the town cemetery. Private visitors come occasionally to the cemetery.
The cemetery has been vandalized occasionally, mostly between 1981-91.
No maintenance has been done. Local/municipal authorities and Jewish
groups from within the country did restoration work, finally completed
in 1991. Now there is occasional clearing or cleaning by authorities.
There is a moderate threat posed by pollution, vegetation and vandalism;
and slight threats are posed by uncontrolled access, weather erosion, and
existing and proposed nearby development.
These surveys were completed on 1.3.1992 by Ing. Arch. Jaroslav Klenovsky,
Zebetinska 13, 623 00 Brno.
CONTACTS: Town officials:
Magistrate Jiri Chmelar, Mestsky urad Hradistska 305, 687 24 uhersky Ostroh,
tel. 0632/91116. Regional officials: PhDr. Jana Spathova, Okresni urad,
Referat Kultury, 686 01 Uherske Hradiste, tel. 0632/432. Interested parties:
Slovacke muzeum, dir. PhDr. Ivo Frolec, Smetanovy sady, 686 01 Uherske
Hradiste, tel. 0632/2262. Other sources: Bohumil Gelbkopf, Rybare 198,
687 24 Uhersky Ostroh, Tel. 0.
SOURCES: Gedenkbuch der
Untergegangenen Judengemeinden Mährens, Hugo Gold ed. (1974), pp..
116-117; Die Juden und JudengemeindenMährens in Vergangenheit unde
Gegenwart, Hugo Gold ed. (1929), pp: 563-570 (pictures); Jiri Fiedler,
Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (1991), pp. 53-54; International Association
of Jewish Genealogical Societies Cemetery Project, Czech Republic, Ostroh.
SUBMITTER: E. Randol
Schoenberg, 3436 Mandeville Canyon Road, Los Angeles, California 90049-1020
USA. Tel: 1-310-472-3122 (h), 1-213-473-2045 (w). Fax: 1-213-473-2222.
Web Page: http://www.schoenberglaw.com
Return to GemeindeView
Return to Austria-Czech SIG Homepage
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2011 State Poverty Data Underscore the Need to Protect Programs for Low-Income Women
New data from the Census was just released, and NWLC’s calculations show that many women and their families around the country are still struggling in the wake of the great recession. Though poverty stabilized between 2010 and 2011, protecting low income programs remains absolutely critical for women.
In 2011, more than one in five women was poor in Mississippi (22.3 percent) and Louisiana (20.6 percent). Only one state, New Hampshire, had a poverty rate of less than ten percent for women, at 8.9 percent. In the other 47 states and the District of Columbia, between 10 and 20 percent of women lived below the poverty line.
In 2011, more than half of female-headed families with children were poor in Kentucky (51.3 percent), Louisiana (50.3 percent), Mississippi (51.8 percent), and West Virginia (51.6 percent). In eight more states (AL, AR, ID, MI, NM, OH, SC, and TN), their poverty rates were 45 percent and above.
What about women of color? In eleven states, about a third or more of black women were poor (IA, IN, LA, ME, MI, MN, MS, SD, WI, WV, and, VT). Roughly a third of Hispanic women were poor in six states (IN, MS, NC, PA, RI, TN).
Yet again, these numbers underscore the importance of federal and state programs for low-income people. We’ve talked about this before, but with poverty rates at record highs, programs like Social Security, Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), and the Earned Income Tax Credit, among others, are essential for keeping millions of women and families above the poverty line. We know that women disproportionately rely on these programs, making the message from the state poverty data clear: Programs for low-income families and individuals must be protected. We sincerely hope Congress is taking note.
Articles by Topic
Join the New Reproductive Health Campaign
Go to ThisIsPersonal.org to get the facts and tools you need to help protect women's reproductive health.
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Table of Contents Image Captions
1. "Minnehaha Falls"|
Floral home; or, First years of Minnesota. Early sketches, later settlements, and further developments, by Harriet E. Bishop (New York, 1857).
Bibliographic Information | Page Image Viewer (Viewer linked to image 152)
2. "Chief Little Crow"
3. "Henry Belland, Voyageur"
4. "Fort Mackinac in 1905: Photograph from pasture southwest of the fort, between
the village and the Grand Hotel"
5. "Jefferson's Plan, 1784"|
Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Volume 11 (1888): 452-61.
Bibliographic Information | Page Image Viewer (Viewer linked to image 470)
6. "This drawing by John T. McCutcheon appeared when Battle Creek was booming wheat flakes and cereal stocks. W. K. Kellogg liked the cartoon so much that he reproduced it later in a cornflake advertisement. The building in the background was the Sanitas food factory."
7. "Men of the Red Underground"
8. "The morning milk lunch for under-nourished school children, in an elementary school kitchen. Movement started in 1916"
The History of the Upper Midwest: An Overview
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Many manufacturing plants employ compressed air systems in one capacity or another, and, for the most part, these systems provide similar output. While all compressed air might be the same, the engineering of that air is not. The needs of a petrochemical plant are quite different from those of an automobile manufacturing plant. Application-specific engineered air addresses those different needs.
Engineered air describes compressed air tailored to meet specific industry needs—100 percent oil-free, particulate filtered, and reliable. It goes beyond the simple output of compressed air at a specified pressure pounds per square inch. Engineered air provides the right type of air for the right application. A good example of this concept put into practice is work done at a North American ethylene plant.
Ethylene processing plants use compressed air systems in a number of ways. Air powers pneumatic tools used in general maintenance, and it is employed for other plant operations, such as blow-down and dry-out. Blow-down uses compressed air to clear pipes and vessels of debris and blockage, while dry-out uses compressed air to remove moisture from pipes prior to ethylene processing.
Ethylene plants also use compressed air combined with steam to remove the coke build-up in the cracking furnaces. Scheduled periodic removal of this solid build-up allows the overall ethylene processing operations to run more efficiently.
Recently, a world-scale North American ethylene plant was undergoing a major expansion project that required a specially designed compressor system to handle the additional requirements. With this major expansion underway, it was vital that this new system provide absolutely reliable engineered air.
In order to ensure the most dependable compressed air source possible, the compressor package included a custom-designed compressor with a high-tech control system, meeting requirements for durability and reliability, accessibility and maintainability, and high level of control (Fig. 1).
The base design for this customized system also had to meet stringent API 672 standards for packaged, integrally geared centrifugal air compressors for petroleum, chemical, and gas industry services.
Durability and reliability
A baseload ethylene plant is the lynchpin of any petrochemical manufacturing complex. Ethylene is the building block and feedstock for all the downstream feeder plants. A baseload plant is expected to run continuously, maximizing efficiencies and minimizing costs. Downstream plants totally rely on the plant to provide a continuous supply of feedstock—in this case ethylene.
This is one of the key reasons the compressor system had to be designed to be extremely durable. To ensure this durability, the customized air compressor features self-adjusting tilting pad journal bearings that can adapt to load changes, providing stability, as well as double-acting thrust bearings to accommodate all load conditions. In addition, the system features stainless steel impellers, resistant to corrosion and erosion.
All of the compressor systems had to run reliably also. An unplanned shutdown would have an adverse impact on the entire petrochemical complex manufacturing capabilities. The compressor was built with a redundant oil system, helping eliminate the possibility of system failure, allowing the ethylene plant to meet its availability targets (Fig. 2).
Within an air compressor, the oil pump is the heart of the lubrication system; it is what keeps the machine running smoothly. If the pump breaks down, the machine comes to a grinding halt. To avoid this, we included not one, but two full capacity, full pressure pumps in the design—one motor-driven auxiliary and the other a shaft-driven main.
During regular operations, the shaft-driven main is operating, while the motor-driven auxiliary is on perpetual standby for emergency situations, providing additional overall package protection. Without this redundant system, in the event of an oil system malfunction, the entire compressor system needs to be shut down. The redundant system eliminates downtime and provides a reliable source of engineered air.
Accessibility and maintainability
In order to keep the plant’s compressor system running efficiently and reliably, it was essential to design the unit for maximum accessibility and maintainability. While requiring additional time and attention from plant engineers, scheduled cleaning and maintenance are a sound investment. As with all other plant operating systems, compressed air systems that have a planned maintenance program are less likely to have unexpected breakdowns. Simply put, less downtime allows for more production. In addition, consistent cleaning and maintenance practices help keep wear and tear to a minimum. This ultimately saves money in replacement parts.
The intercooler design is an example of the ease-of-maintenance design philosophy. Within a compressor intercooler, both U-shaped and straight intercooler tubes are industry practice. However, straight tubes are easier to clean than those with a U-bend design. An engineer can simply remove the water piping, unbolt the water box, and rod the tubes in place. Rodding is not possible with U-bend tubes found in some compressors.
In addition, intercooler tubes with a water-in-tube design are easier to clean and maintain than those with an air-in-tube design that require wire brush or chemical bath cleaning. This compressor features straight intercooler tubes with water-in-tube design for this very reason. The longer it takes to clean the intercooler, the longer engineered airflow is down.
Another example of important compressor components that benefit from diligent inspection and maintenance are journal and thrust bearings. These bearings help provide a stable and near frictionless environment to support and guide the rotating shaft. Properly installed and maintained, these bearings can last for extended periods of time. However, regularly scheduled inspections and maintenance keep them running reliably. The ethylene plant’s compressor features horizontally split bearings, which are easy to maintain, inspect, and replace. An engineer simply removes the top half of the gear case to service. No other disassembly is required.
Interchangeability of parts is another factor taken into consideration when designing the ethylene plant’s compressor system. Interchangeability contributes heavily to ease of maintenance. Interchangeable parts save time and money. Multiple stage air compressors use a bull gear and pinion system to power the impellers at each stage of air compression. The quality of the bull gears used directly determines whether they are interchangeable. The customized compressor uses high precision AGMA Quality 13 gears.
The American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) provides established gear quality ratings, ranging from 3-15. These numbers signify the quality levels, or standards, developed by the AGMA that differ per application. AGMA Quality Level 13 gears, otherwise known as aircraft-quality gearing, are generally regarded as high-precision gears. They provide lower noise levels and, under normal operating conditions, have a longer performance life. More importantly, though, they provide interchangeability.
If the gear is AGMA Quality Level 12 or below and any one of the three pieces needs to be replaced, all three pieces—one gear and two pinions—need to be replaced. However, with Level 13 gears, rather than remove and replace all three pieces, the plant engineer needs to swap out only the component in question. This saves time and money in unnecessary replacement parts.
High level of control
The operation of multiple compressors feeding into a single plant air system needs to be coordinated, monitored, and controlled in order to accommodate various applications. An initial investment in innovative monitoring technology can ultimately pay for itself.
With that in mind, the customized compressor can be accommodated with a PLC-based automatic sequencer, which permits up to eight compressor units to communicate with one another and operate in sequence according to a programmed schedule. High-tech PLC-based automatic sequencers are capable of monitoring and matching compressor supply to demand. For example, they can select which compressors to use at any given time, shutting down those compressors not necessary to plant operations, even choosing back-up units if needed. By turning multiple compressors into one, an automatic sequencer can ensure stable system pressure, which allows the entire operation to run as efficiently as possible, saving both time and money.
In addition, a PLC-based modular control system allows for remote monitoring and diagnostic checks on the compressed air systems, helping to predict and prevent any systems malfunctions that could result in stoppage of engineered air. This can save money on repairs and replacements, as well as lost production time.
The most cost-effective systems, like the FS-Elliott Regulus control system, provide state-of-the-art technology and ease-of-use. The ideal control system should feature an easy-to-operate touch screen with a graphic color display. These features allow operators to view easy-to-understand graphics while monitoring the plant engineered air systems. An advanced system also provides easy adjustment of set-points and control mode changes using the touch screen. These flexible controls are fully adaptive, changing to meet the plant’s application-specific needs.
The control system also stores and logs operating data used for trend monitoring and preventive maintenance. This feature permits engineers to monitor and predict trends in their engineered air systems and act before problems arise. Extended monitoring of vital parameters is important for equipment protection, saving money in maintenance and avoiding repairs.
Ethylene plants are extremely energy conscious. A systems operation closer to surge lines saves power and minimizes wasteful unloading, while lower set-points and precise control minimizes energy usage. The advanced control system is able to make more efficient use of the ethylene plant’s manpower. With easy-to-use remote control and monitoring capabilities, this system can reduce the tasks of the ethylene plant operators, allowing them to shift focus to other plant responsibilities.
An engineered air system is created with specific plant applications in mind, to increase reliability and efficiency. The custom-engineered compressor we installed at the ethylene plant was designed with the following key points in mind:
• Durability and reliability—A robust engineered design combined with key system redundancies.
• Accessibility and maintainability—Moving parts designed with ease of access and maintenance in mind.
• High level of control—High-tech control systems provide for efficient operation and allow plant operations to predict and prevent possible problems.
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|NEWSRoom | Source: Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center|
Older Adults May Need More Vitamin D to Prevent Mobility Difficulties
Older adults who don’t get enough vitamin D—either from diet, supplements or sun exposure—may be at increased risk of developing mobility limitations and disability, according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“This is one of the first studies to look at the association of vitamin D and the onset of new mobility limitations or disability in older adults,” said lead author Denise Houston, PhD, RD, a nutrition epidemiologist in the Wake Forest Baptist Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Houston researches vitamin D and its effects on physical function.
The study, published online in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, analyzed the association between vitamin D and onset of mobility limitation and disability over six years of follow-up using data from the National Institute on Aging’s Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) study. Mobility limitation and disability are defined as any difficulty or inability to walk several blocks or climb a flight of stairs, respectively.
Of the 3,075 community-dwelling black and white men and women aged 70-79 who were enrolled, data from 2,099 participants was used for this study. Eligible participants reported no difficulty walking one-fourth mile, climbing 10 steps, or performing basic, daily living activities, and were free of life-threatening illness. Vitamin D levels were measured in the blood at the beginning of the study. Occurrence of mobility limitation and disability during follow-up was assessed during annual clinic visits alternating with telephone interviews every six months over six years.
“We observed about a 30% increased risk of mobility limitations for those older adults who had low levels of vitamin D, and almost a two-fold higher risk of mobility disability,” Houston said.
Houston said vitamin D plays an important role in muscle function, so it is plausible that low levels of the vitamin could result in the onset of decreased lower muscle strength and physical performance. Vitamin D may also indirectly affect physical function as low vitamin D levels have also been associated with diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and lung disease—conditions that are frequent causes of decline in physical function. Houston said people get vitamin D when it is naturally produced in the skin by sun exposure, by eating foods with vitamin D, such as fortified milk, juice and cereals, and by taking vitamin D supplements.
“About one-third of older adults have low vitamin D levels,” she said. “It’s difficult to get enough vitamin D through diet alone and older adults, who may not spend much time outdoors, may need to take a vitamin D supplement.”
Current recommendations call for people over age 70 to get 800 International Units of vitamin D daily in their diet or supplements. Houston pointed out that current dietary recommendations are based solely on vitamin D’s effects on bone health.
“Higher amounts of vitamin D may be needed for the preservation of muscle strength and physical function as well as other health conditions,” she said. “However, clinical trials are needed to determine whether increasing vitamin D levels through diet or supplements has an effect on physical function.”
This research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging; National Institute on Aging contracts N01-AG-6-2101, N01-AG-6-2103, and No1-AG-6-2106; National Institute on Aging grants R01 AG028050, R01 AG029364 and K01 AG030506 (to DKH); National Institute of Nursing Research grant R01 NR012459; and the Wake Forest University Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (P30 AG021332).
Co-authors include: Janet A. Tooze, PhD, Gary G. Schwartz, PhD, Jeff D. Williamson, MD, Stephen B Kritchevsky, PhD, Rebecca H. Neiberg, PhD and M. Kyla Shea, PhD, all of Wake Forest Baptist; Dorothy B. Hausman, PhD, and Mary Ann Johnson, PhD, University of Georgia, Athens; Jane A. Cauley, PhD, University of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Doug C. Bauer, MD, University of California, San Francisco; and Tamara B. Harris, MD, National Institute on Aging.
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Click here to visit the Ignatius Critical Editions website
Written in the sixth century, The Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages. Boethius composed the masterpiece while imprisoned and awaiting the death sentence for treason. The Christian author had served as a high-ranking government official before falling out of favor with Roman Emperor Theodoric, an Arian. In the Consolation, Boethius explores the true end of life-knowledge of God-through a conversation with Lady Philosophy. Part prose, part poetry, the work combines Greek philosophy and Christian faith to formulate answers to some of life's most difficult and enduring questions.
About the Editor/Translator:
Scott Goins, Ph.D., is Professor of Classics and Director of the Honors College at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Florida State University and has published writings on several authors including Virgil and Boethius.
Barbara H. Wyman, M.A., M.F.A., teaches English and Latin at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Besides Boethius, she has published writings on George Herbert, Hopkins, and others
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Fun Learning with Printable Flash Cards
Here you will find our selection of free printable flash cards for preschool learning (and beyond!). Flash cards are a great way for kids to learn the basic elements and memorize them through short repeat sessions. You’ll find helping them learn their first abc, animal names and numbers incredibly rewarding.
A few minutes here, a few minutes there, whether at home, traveling, in the park or at Auntie’s it’s learning on the go. These lovely cards turn learning into playing (… but we also love decorating kids’ rooms by sticking them on the wall or putting them in picture frames.)
We’ve made all our printable flash cards here free for everybody and of course you can print them as many times as you like!
Alphabet Flash Cards
Helping the little one’s first learning fun and sweet!
Vocabulary Flash Cards
Learning new words and concepts is great fun!
Number & Math Flash Cards
Various flash cards for all your math activities.
Shapes & Colors Flash Cards
Try combining abstract shapes and pretty colors with various colorful activities.
We have a growing selection of children’s resources for preschool, homeschool & classroom learning activities. Please check back soon to see what’s new. Thank you!
We’d also love to hear from parents and teachers with suggestions.
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Guest blogger Jon Bowermaster is a writer and filmmaker. His most recent documentary is "SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories" and his most recent book is OCEANS, The Threats to the Sea and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide.
Typically at this time of year a certain breed of shopper purposefully wanders the fish stalls of their favorite grocer taking stock of the piles of fresh oysters carefully arranged on crushed ice or to pick up and judge the heft in their hands of tightly packed tins of caviar, which sell for anywhere from $50 to $2,000.
But maybe this is the year to lay off those two favored treats and replace them with something slightly less traditional: squid.
I know, a big bowl of calamari hardly compares to one of caviar… but, man, there’s a lot of squid out there these days. I’m sure some of those very popular sustainable fish chefs have already dreamed up some special calamari entrée to take advantage of the boom.
How much squid is out there? It’s estimated that around-the-world squid in mass outweighs the human population. And that’s with sperm whales alone munching down more than 100 million tons of squid each year.Squid are one of the most important foods in the ocean, along with other prey like sardines and pollock. Whales and seabirds depend on abundant squid to raise their young, particularly during breeding season.
Along the coast of California, the market squid season has been so abundant the state Department of Fish and Game reports its annual limit of 118,000 tons has already been taken and the squid season is now closed until March 31. Marine biologists credit a rush of colder-than-normal water for the banner year; usually February is prime time.
At the same time, certain squid are booming thanks to a slight warming of sea temperatures, in places like Alaska and Siberia. Many squid, octopuses and other sucker-bearing members of the cephalopod family don't appear to be too troubled by the minor increase. In fact, when it's a little warmer, some thrive. The populations are thought to be exploding because of the overfishing of other fish that used to dine on young squid.
Warmer waters can help squid “balloon” in size because their enzymes work faster when warm. A young giant squid can grow from 2 millimeters to a meter in a single year, the equivalent of a human baby growing to the size of a whale in twelve months.
There’s also been a boom in Humboldt squid along the Pacific coastline ranging from Peru to California, now expanding northward to places they’ve never been seen before. The big tentacled variety can grow more than seven feet long and weigh more than one hundred pounds. A feisty fish, once on the line, the big squids can be slightly dangerous to haul into your boat. They have a nasty, pecking beak, like to spray black ink and have the ability to expel up to two gallons of water into the faces of unsuspecting fishermen (“like a giant squirt gun”).
A downside to the boom in giant squid is that they also have giant appetites, which means they are making a big hit on salmon, for example, thus reducing the amount of the pink fleshy fish for human tables.
The giant squid are also proving to be a menace to divers, being both aggressive and carnivorous, a mean combo when the tentacles of one of the rust-colored, six-foot long creatures latches onto your air tank, or leg.
Editor’s note: It’s typical for squid and other prey species to boom and bust in response to changing environmental conditions. Oceana is working to establish regulations that adapt fishing to this rollercoaster, fishing more during the boom and cutting back during lean times to protect food for whales. As an added complexity, cephalopods are seeing their numbers expand as the fishing industry captures more and more of the big predatory fish that eat squid, such as tuna.
- Stocks Show Signs of Recovery, But Still Work to Do Posted Fri, May 17, 2013
- What Do Historic CO2 Levels Mean for the Oceans? Posted Tue, May 14, 2013
- U.S. Coast Guard Captures Illegal Fishermen in Texas Posted Tue, May 14, 2013
- Victory! Delaware Becomes Seventh State in U.S. to Ban Shark Fin Trade! Posted Thu, May 16, 2013
- It's Endangered Species Day! Posted Fri, May 17, 2013
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Consider this article on why white rice would actually be better for you than brown. One of the USRDA "My Plate" and food pyramid biggest fallacies is the over-reliance on grain. However, if you are going to have grain, have a grain that isn't going to hurt you as bad.
As far as eating for health, look at your macro-nutrients first.
- Protein: Unless you have renal problems, protein should be one of the higher proportions of food in your diet. Minimum is 1g per kg of lean weight if you do no exercise. If you do exercise, you will be better served by 1g per pound of lean weight or more. NOTE: 4 Calories per gram of protein.
- Fat: There are several fat soluble vitamins you need--not the least of which is Vitamin D. If you stay with monounsaturated and saturated fats you will do well. You just want to make sure you balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fats are favorable. NOTE: 9 Calories per gram of fat.
- Carbohydrates: Way to over-emphasized in modern diets, but still very necessary. These usually contain the water-soluble vitamins we need. NOTE: 4 Calories per gram of carbohydrates.
A diet that consists of an even split 33% of Calories from each macronutrient is actually a pretty well balanced diet. Another good split is 30/30/40 (protein/fat/carbs). As far as carbohydrates go, the more you de-emphasize grains and emphasize green vegetables the better your diet will be.
Meat is not bad. Fish is probably one of the best choices, usually anti-inflammatory (which reduces blood cholesterol), but prefer a filet over fish balls. Fruits are also good in moderation. Eggs are also good. To put things in perspective, most sources of meat include about 20g of protein per 4oz (closed fist portion) of meat.
As far as meat selection goes, if you favor grass-fed (or natural diet) sources of meat, the fats will have a more favorable balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fats. This will improve your health overall.
The biggest thing I see in your diet, is it seems to emphasize carb sources over protein sources, and possibly not enough fat.
As to your exercise, you will need to do something more than just upper body if your goal is to lose fat and gain muscle. You want to stimulate your whole body. You can do that with body-weight exercises. Burpees, squat-stands, etc. engage your lower half, and can help improve on the work you are doing with the upper half.
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Diabetic Ketoacidosis Symptoms
The body's cells need two energy requirements to function. The blood stream delivers both oxygen and glucose to the front door of the cell. The the oxygen is invited in, but the glucose needs a key to open the door. The insulin molecule is that key. When we eat, the body senses the levels of glucose in the blood stream and secretes just the right amount of insulin from the pancreas so that cells and the body can function.
People with diabetes don't have the luxury of that auto-sensing. They need to balance the amount of glucose intake with the amount of insulin that needs to be injected. Not enough insulin and the glucose levels in the blood stream start to rise; too much insulin, and they plummet.
The consequences of hypoglycemia (hypo=low, glycemia=glucose in the blood) are easy to understand. No energy source, no function - and the first organ to go is the brain. It needs glucose to function and without it, the brain shuts down quickly. Confusion, lethargy, and coma occur quickly. It's interesting that brain cells don't need insulin to open their doors to glucose, so when people develop coma from low blood sugar, they waken almost instantaneously upon treatment. Blood sugar is one of the first things checked on scene of a comatose patient, because it's so easy to fix and very embarrassing for an EMT to miss.
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Mersen, Treaty of
Mersen, Treaty of, 870, redivision of the Carolingian empire by the sons of Louis I, Charles the Bald (later Charles II) of the West Franks (France) and Louis the German of the East Franks (Germany), signed at Mersen (Dutch Meersen ), now in the Netherlands. The treaty superseded the tripartite division of the empire in 843 (see Verdun, Treaty of). It divided the kingdom of Lotharingia between Charles and Louis, following the death (869) of their nephew, Lothair, king of Lotharingia. France obtained the territories roughly corresponding to the modern Netherlands, Belgium, and Lorraine and Germany received Alsace and the left bank of the Lower Rhine. The borders established did not last long.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
More on Treaty of Mersen from Infoplease:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: German History
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King of clocks
King bong visited
As the UK Parliament prepares to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its world-famous clock, E&T examines the history of Big Ben.
With a few seconds to go to midday, I am told to put my fingers firmly in my ears. Even then, when the four quarters are struck, the noise is phenomenal, but nothing compared to the striking of the hour bell, Big Ben. The belfry reverberates with the sound which they say could be heard all over London when the 300kg clapper was first triggered on 11 July 1859.
Nowadays, of course, amid the roar of London's traffic, it is not so noticeable away from the immediate vicinity of the Palace of Westminster, but for many people all around the world its instantly recognisable sound is familiar from the radio and television, especially on New Year's Eve.
Though over time the clock tower has become known as Big Ben, it is in fact only the hour bell that has that nickname. The mechanism for powering the hands on the four dials and operating the quarter bells and the hour bell is correctly known as the Great Clock of Westminster.
Showing me around the tower are Paul Roberson and Ian Westworth, who are responsible (together with Huw Smith) for the maintenance of the Great Clock and the other 2,000 clocks in the Palace of Westminster, of which 450 are mechanical or antique. Roberson has been an horologist all his life, taking an apprenticeship in watch and clockmaking straight from school. An obvious clock enthusiast, he says: "It gets under your skin. I am interested in anything mechanical." Westworth worked as a turret clock restorer before becoming a Place of Westminster clockmaker four years ago. Both are proud of the Great Clock as, Westworth says, "it still does exactly what it was designed to do 150 years ago".
After the destruction of both houses of parliament by fire in 1834, it was decided that the new buildings should have a grand tower housing "a noble clock, indeed a king of clocks, the biggest the world has ever seen within sight and sound of the throbbing heart of London".
In his specification, the Astronomer Royal, George Airy, wrote: "The striking machinery is to be so arranged that the first blow for each hour shall be accurate to the second of time." No clockmaker thought it remotely possible to construct a mechanism of the required size that, in addition to sounding five bells and powering hands of four dials, would keep such accurate time. But an appeal by the Worshipful Company of Clock-makers for a less onerous specification was turned down and three horologists were invited to tender.
Edmund Becket Denison
If Edmund Becket Denison had not been invited to join George Airy as a second referee, it is unlikely that such an accurate clock would have been built. Though a barrister by profession, Denison was a gifted amateur horologist, the author of articles and the designer of some fine clocks. He favoured the submission of EJ Dent & Company, to whom he suggested many improvements that amounted to a redesign, and it was to that firm that the contract was awarded in 1852.
Within three years the clock was complete, but neither the bells nor the tower in which it would be installed had been finished. However, the delay was fortuitous as it gave Denison the time to design a mechanism that would ensure the clock's accuracy.
The problem with turret clocks had always been how to prevent the external forces on the hands being reflected back to the pendulum thus affecting the clock's accuracy. This is achieved with an escapement, a device that transfers the power of the descending weight to the hands by hitting (impulsing) the pendulum. It was Denison who came up with the double three-legged gravity escapement, an ingenious yet simple device, which, as Roberson says, was "a massive advancement, without which the clock would not be here now". It was successfully tried out in the harshest of conditions in a clock built by Dent for Fredericton Cathedral in New Brunswick, Canada and thereafter became widely used in turret clocks.
While Denison carried out further trials, the great bell had been completed at a foundry in Stockton-on-Tees in northern England and was transported by water arriving in London on 21 October 1856.
Trial and error
With the clocktower still incomplete, it was set up on a specially built gallows near the foot of the tower, where for almost a year it was struck regularly until, on 17 October 1857, a 1.2m crack appeared. The only solution was to break it up and, in April 1858, a new, lighter, bell, which would become Big Ben, was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in London's East End.
In the meantime, the tower designed by Charles Barry, with the decoration and beautiful dials by Augustus Pugin, was completed. In the summer of 1858, the bells were hand-winched up the shaft, the hoisting of Big Ben taking teams of men working in relays some days to complete.
With the installation of the operating mechanism below the Belfry, all was ready by spring 1859. However, each time the minute hands approached the hour, they stopped. The construction of lighter minute hands of hollow copper and hour hands of copper-backed hollow gunmetal allowed it to operate successfully.
As far as is known, the clock started officially on 31 May 1859, with Big Ben first sounding the hour on 11 July and the quarter bells chiming from 7 September. The public appreciated the sound but, perhaps predictably, the Members of Parliament complained that it was too loud.
The trouble with the clock hands had brought Denison to near despair, so it is not difficult to imagine how he felt when told, less than a month later, that a 30cm-long crack had appeared in Big Ben. There were recriminations all round: Denison accused the Whitechapel Foundry of poor workmanship while the foundry put the damage down to Denison's continued use of a 300kg hammer. Two ensuing libel actions both found in favour of the foundry over Denison.
To dismantle the clock, lower the bell and recast it was not considered possible. So, as the crack was neither as deep nor as long as that in the first bell, a slot was cut out to prevent it spreading, a 200kg hammer installed, and the bell turned through about 90°, where it has remained ever since without further problems.
Of course, there have inevitably been a few problems with the clock mechanism, but normally these are discovered and put right before they become severe. Though it has been given a thorough overhaul for its 150th anniversary, Roberson says: "There isn't a servicing schedule like a car. We are up here three times a week and can see any fault developing."
With the last chime of Big Ben, we remove our fingers from our ears, but the resonance seems to go on and on - "for 30 seconds", I am told by Roberson. From the belfry we make our way down to see the dials. Now each illuminated by 28 long-life bulbs of 85W, they were originally lit by gas jets and looked after by a gas man who was required to stay in the tower all night.
As we make our way down the remainder of the 334 steps, it is clear that this is more than just a job for those who work with Big Ben. As Westworth says: "Working on the Great Clock of Westminster is one of the things most horologists want to do because it is probably the most prestigious clock in the world." Roberson adds: "I have been involved in clocks all my life but this is the most famous clock in the world and we are the ones responsible for looking after it."
Behind the scenes
The clock is divided into three sections or trains. In the centre is the going train, which has three functions. First, it is connected to a single shaft that transfers the motion of the pendulum through a nest of bevel gears to the hands on the four clock faces. Its second function is to trigger the chiming train to the right that, via a series of shafts rising up to a linkage room and from there to the belfry, operates the five hammers on the four quarter bells every 15 minutes. Finally, the going train also triggers the strike of the hour train situated on the left which, via a steel wire, raises the hammer on the hour bell (Big Ben).
The whole mechanism is powered by gravity, with the descending weight unwinding the wire wrapped round a large barrel on each train thus rotating it, so that it can operate the train via a series of gears. The escapement controls the rate of descent of the weight in the going train, while on the other two it is controlled by a fly fan or air break.
While the weight on the going train is wound up regularly by hand, those on the other two, which are much heavier, are wound up by an electric motor, though this is not automatic and has to be switched on.
To ensure that the pendulum is protected from vibration and other external forces, a large part of it swings in a 3m-deep pit, made of cast iron. The pendulum is made of a zinc rod in an iron tube to compensate for temperature changes.
The clock's accuracy is maintained by altering its mass. This is done extremely simply by adding or removing an old imperial penny or halfpenny from a shelf, specially constructed near the top of the pendulum. Adding one penny speeds up the clock by two-fifths of a second over 24 hours.
Bells still ringing in Whitechapel
It's a short walk from the City of London's glittering palaces of financial innovation to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where tradition, rather than innovation, holds sway. It's here, in listed premises just along from the site of St Mary's, the original 'white chapel', that skilled craftspeople still make bells in much the same way as they have for more than half a millennium.
Officially Britain's oldest manufacturing company, the foundry has been in business since 1570 producing some of the world's best-known bells. If you visit the foundry shop, you'll pass under a profile of Big Ben. The foundry also made the Liberty Bell for the Philadelphia State House in 1752, produced a Bicentennial Bell to go with it in 1976, and a replica of the Liberty Bell in 2001.
It has also made bells for Westminster Abbey, for Washington DC's National Cathedral in 1964 and for a host of more modest churches scattered across the furthest reaches of what was the Empire. In a nod to old-fashioned customer service, passers-by can sometimes see crates arriving from far-flung churches, bringing back bells that have been in use for decades to be repaired, retuned or even recast.
It's not all about the past though. Last year the foundry cast a new peal of 12 bells for the church of St Magnus the Martyr at London Bridge. It does a steady trade in sets of hand bells, tuned for change ringing. And, in a nod to the modern age, it has a website listing its products with prices and delivery. If you want a standard bell tuned to C, with a diameter at its lip of 60in and a weight of 2,032kg, it will cost £39,481 plus delivery. Since they're not in stock at the moment, you might even be able to watch it being cast...
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Bob Seay of WGBH News and James David Jacobs of Classical New England consider the odd history and captivating power of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait.
To hear a performance of Lincoln Portrait with the United States Marine Band, conductor Col. Michael J. Colburn, and narrator Brian Stokes Mitchell, click on "Listen" above.
|Abraham Lincoln, by Alexander Gardner [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons|
Written in 1942, Lincoln Portrait, by Aaron Copland, is a rare musical tribute to an American President. It played an inspirational role when it was written, during the dark, early days of World War II.
But it continued to inspire over the decades, with countless notable narrators giving voice to the words by Abraham Lincoln that Copland chose for his tribute.
Those words, though, were chosen from within a surprising cultural context, as Bob Seay explains:
If Lincoln's words express the highest ideals of American democracy, Copland's music expresses the diversity of sources that have combined to create an American music and culture, as James David Jacobs writes:
|Aaron Copland (source: AP)|
It’s hard in 2012 to appreciate just how original Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was in 1942. There had been other works that combined spoken text with orchestra, but the combination of serious public statement and serious artistic statement, with ceremony, history, and politics coexisting with music, was, and remains, rare.
The music Copland wrote isn’t mere backdrop for the words, the narrator not even speaking until the piece is about half over. That music tells a story, a story of both an individual life and of a nation. It’s also a story of diverse musical influences, reflecting the diverse musical strands that have come together to create an American music.
The beginning of the work is typical Copland, with woodwinds uttering soft three-note mottoes in intervals of fourths and fifths. That serenity, however, is answered by unsettling chords. It’s not unlike Ives’s The Unanswered Question and its dialogue between a stark, angular statement and its muddled response.
There are also subtle references to the music of Native Americans, engaged in what could be considered Lincoln’s other, less celebrated civil war. The dance-like tone of this section can be considered a sort of analogue to the scherzo in Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, representing both the joys and adventures of the individual heroic figure and the energy and the spirit of the nation and its people.
The strands come together, and the music reverts to the unsettled atmosphere of the work’s beginning. Then, just as we’ve almost forgotten about the speaker, he or she begins to speak.
It’s too important, Copland seems to be saying, to hide behind the cloak of artistic license, of interpretation and ambiguity. No, the meaning of this music must be spelled out, and when we hear the words of Lincoln we know why.
Copland has done us a service by providing a frame in which we can ponder these words, which turn out to be as relevant to today’s struggles as they were in the 1860s. The questions posed by the cultural conflicts illustrated in the differing strands of music are still being asked today.
Lincoln and Copland seem to have some things in common. Both pulled off radical, even revolutionary accomplishments while being regarded as accessible and populist. Both took the ideas of acknowledged radicals and made them palatable for a general audience. Both took their roles in the mainstream as serious, important missions, aimed at bringing wildly divergent philosophical camps together. And both were criticized by those selfsame radicals and branded as sellouts or traitors.
Beyond all that, they occupy similar places in our culture: the historical significance of each has been subject to regular cycles of reassessment, a process that began during each man’s own lifetime. Lincoln Portrait gives us the chance to consider them together, with all the resonance each man’s life and work have for us today.
- James David Jacobs
READ MORE AND HEAR LINCOLN PORTRAIT ON-DEMAND
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What can be learned from the post-election crisis in Greece?
The traditional political establishment in Greece buckled under the weight of crippling austerity and a mass people’s movement when the country went to the polls May 6. Now that the voting is over, and attempts to form a government have failed, another election must be held, scheduled for June 17, raising new questions about the way forward for the Greek working class. The crisis deepens as panicking Greeks withdraw their savings from banks on the brink of collapse.
Since the fall of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967-1974, two parties, PASOK and New Democracy, have dominated the political scene. However, both parties had their worst showing ever, and combined were only able to muster 32 percent of the vote, down from 77 percent in 2009. Instead, support grew for parties of both the left and the far right. With parliament deadlocked, unable to form a new governing coalition, a new election is pending and there is a distinct possibility of a protracted political crisis and a sharp polarization that provides an opportunity for the working class to decisively assert itself.
Background to the elections
Since the worldwide capitalist economic crisis began in 2007-2008, several countries in the eurozone, which all operate with the common euro currency, have experienced severe debt crises. These national economies are more intimately linked than ever before—which was supposed to be the benefit of the eurozone—so the problems of one immediately threatens the rest.
Germany, the strongest capitalist economy of the eurozone, along with the imperialist U.S., have been working hard to force economic restructuring on the most indebted countries, offering bailouts in exchange for severe cuts to social welfare programs and other austerity measures. They have worked through three main entities: the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, collectively referred to as the “Troika.” Over the last two years, the Troika has arranged for around €240 billion ($305 billion) in bailout funds for Greece to service its massive debt. In exchange, the Greek ruling class forced through devastating cuts that have led to repeated strikes and militant popular mobilizations.
The Troika has worked hand in hand with the Greek ruling class, which, while claiming to “understand” the opposition of the people, claims that austerity is a difficult but necessary step toward economic revival. The other option, they claim, is complete collapse. It is a story poor and working people across the world are familiar with, including in the United States.
Narrowly winning first place in the elections was New Democracy, a center-right party that was part of the existing government led by Lucas Papademos. An unelected banker, Papademos was appointed to lead the government through its unpopular debt deal. New Democracy campaigned on a platform of supporting the extreme austerity measures imposed by the Troika, and promised only to try to renegotiate some of the more painful terms of the debt deal.
The other pro-austerity party, the misnamed Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), came in third for the first time in the party’s history. PASOK is led by Evangelos Venizelos, the finance minister under the two previous governments. Venizelos was one of the main architects of the austerity “memorandum” and offered only a pitiful pledge that he would ask the country’s creditors to give them three years, rather than two, to reach absurdly unrealistic economic benchmarks.
Gains on the left
The biggest surprise of the election was the second-place finish of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), with 16.8 percent of the vote. SYRIZA is a collection of small communist tendencies and a larger reformist party that split from the Communist Party of Greece after the fall of the Soviet Union. SYRIZA is led by Alexis Tsipras, a former Communist Youth leader who has received significant international press attention. SYRIZA calls for canceling the bailout deal but keeping Greece inside the eurozone and European Union. This, it says, can be achieved through negotiations with the Troika and through nationalization of the Greek banking sector.
Although there are revolutionary forces within SYRIZA, the dominant line at present is fundamentally social democratic. The “peaceful revolution” they have declared mutes the questions of socialism and working-class power, and raises hopes in a radically reformed capitalism. For example, Tsipras stated in a letter to high-ranking European Union officials, “We must urgently protect the economic and social stability of our country. … It is our duty to re-examine the whole framework of the existing strategy, given that it not only threatens social cohesion and stability in Greece but is a source of instability for the European Union.” While SYRIZA’s leadership wants to reverse austerity, its appeal to “social cohesion and stability” means “stability” under a reformed capitalism.
The second most popular party on the left was the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which registered a modest increase of 1 percent from their previous election result, ending up with 8.5 percent. This was below the 10-12 percent that most opinion polls predicted. The KKE put forward a platform calling for the socialization of the means of production under a “working class-people’s power” government. Of the left groups in parliament, the Communist Party is the only one to call for Greece to leave the European Union, a bloc of the major imperialist and peripheral capitalist states of Europe.
The KKE has played a major role in the massive fight-back movement waged by the Greek working class and especially in its advocacy for general strikes. It intervenes through mass organizations like the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) in the labor movement, the Greek Women’s Federation and the Students Struggle Front, among others.
The lowest scoring of the three left parties was Democratic Left, a split to the right from SYRIZA formed in 2010. It only received 6.1 percent of the vote, but its leader Fotis Kouvelis is often ranked as the most popular politician in Greece by opinion polls. Democratic Left rejects the memorandum, but makes sure to balance its criticism of austerity with pledges of absolute loyalty to the eurozone.
Major gains for far right and fascists
Far-right forces experienced major gains in the election as well. The semi-fascist Popular Orthodox Rally suffered as punishment for its participation in the previous government, but new forces emerged. Independent Greeks, a split from New Democracy, came in fourth with 10.6 percent. The party rejects the austerity memorandum on nationalistic grounds and relies on anti-German and anti-Turkish demagogy in place of a specific political program.
The story that has perhaps gotten the most foreign press attention is the entrance of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party into parliament with 7 percent of the vote, more than 20 times their score in 2009. Its logo is an ancient Greek symbol similar to a swastika, and until recently Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf was displayed prominently at the party’s headquarters.
Golden Dawn campaigned on a platform of expelling all immigrants from Greece and national chauvinist opposition to the Troika. While some voters were attracted to its racist rhetoric and acts of violence against immigrants, Golden Dawn bought the loyalty of others by operating food banks during a time of growing hunger.
The fascists’ success is a serious threat to the working class and all democratic forces in Greece. While its 7 percent may appear small, it is precisely under these polarized economic and political conditions, when the capitalist class cannot achieve stable rule through democratic means, that fascism has historically grown and taken power.
The main bourgeois parties cynically used the threat of Golden Dawn to present the false dilemma of austerity or a descent into fascism. But in reality, these mainstream parties’ promotion of anti-immigrant racism gave Golden Dawn political space to grow. Moreover, if it appeared that the working class could potentially become the ruling power in Greece, the bourgeoisie could accept, if not turn to, a fascist coup.
That the Greek ruling class has operated under fascist military rule before makes such a scenario all the more plausible.
It is up to the revolutionary left and the working class to develop a program and plan of action to smash fascism politically and in the streets.
A ‘government of the left’?
A central component of the SYRIZA campaign was its appeal for the formation of a “government of the left,” encompassing all the left forces opposed to the Troika. The formation of such a government was impossible given the election results and highly implausible given Greece’s undemocratic electoral laws governing coalitions. But SYRIZA’s call for a government of the left clearly resonated with much of the working class and contributed to its success. If SYRIZA were to emerge in first place in the June election, as presently projected, the left could achieve such a majority.
SYRIZA leader Tsipras and other social-democratic proponents of a government of the left argue that it would be able to cancel the memorandum, reverse the wave of austerity measures, potentially nationalize the banks and rebuild the Greek economy in a way that strengthens the working class. SYRIZA makes the case that the European ruling class would never let Greece default and exit the eurozone because of the economic havoc this would create in other heavily indebted states like Spain and Italy. In short, Tsipras pledges to reverse the balance of forces inside the eurozone; instead of the Troika forcing Greece into deeper austerity, Greece would leverage its power against the Troika.
While the Troika obviously wants to avoid a complete Greek default (lenders have already accepted a 53.5 percent write-down on the debt), they have had the last two years to prepare for this eventuality. The centerpiece of the European ruling class’ preparations is the European Financial Stability Facility, a $976 billion bailout fund, meant to act as a “firewall” to counter the immediate effects of a Greek bankruptcy. With this in place, there is a small but growing tendency of capitalist financiers who believe that if Greece were expelled, the eurozone would “end up stronger once the dust had settled.”
Tsipras insists that Greece can out-negotiate the international capitalists, rather than calling for the socialist reorganization of society. He raises unrealistic expectations among the oppressed in electoral and bourgeois political gamesmanship, rather than raising the possibility of a new class power.
Why revolution is necessary
By contrast, the KKE has called the “government of the left” idea a false hope that will lead to disillusionment. The KKE rejects possible participation in a left government, insisting that such a government will leave the capitalist state and the for-profit economic system intact, keep Greece bound to the imperialist institutions of the EU and NATO, and thus cannot resolve the central contradictions at the heart of the political crisis.
More broadly, they explain that the social-democratic program, which arose in the post-war period of capitalist expansion, cannot be achieved in the context of protracted capitalist crisis and neoliberal financial control. They have called the SYRIZA plan opportunist, betraying the long-term interests and political clarity of the working class in exchange for short-term gains for particular leftist parties.
This raises the age-old but still pivotal question of reform and revolution: Does the working class have the capacity to come to power, and how so? Can the capitalist system be reformed to resolve the exploitation at its center? How far can revolutionary organizations go at this time?
Several organizations in Greece—including the KKE—have made the case that the political crisis of the bourgeois class has matured to the point of a revolutionary situation, opening the possibility for the transfer of power to the working class in alliance with middle-class strata.
Revolutionaries, of course, fight for reforms that improve the conditions of the working class and facilitate the political struggle against the ruling class. But a central responsibility is to assess whether the conditions for revolution are approaching, to hasten their development and prepare for such an opportunity.
The basic contradiction in capitalist society is that the productive process is socialized, involving millions of workers, while ownership is private, concentrated in a tiny ruling class. The capitalists control the means of production and distribution, as well as countless financial mechanisms, to squeeze profits out of workers and maintain their political and economic power. The capitalist state (the police, military and courts) allows them to safeguard this system with force, while the government provides for its administration.
A change in administration, like the ascent of a government of the left, will not alter the fundamental underlying character of the state. This can only be achieved by the overthrow of the capitalist state and its replacement by a worker’s state based on independent organs of working-class power—a socialist revolution.
Elections and the revolutionary process
Some communist tendencies support the formation of a government of the left for this reason—not because it would solve the crisis, but because it would further polarize the country and hasten the development of a revolutionary situation.
There can be no doubt that the formation of a SYRIZA-KKE-Democratic Left coalition would cause considerable panic among the Greek and European ruling class, and new bouts of intense class struggle.
History has shown that revolutions can take many paths and tactical turns. In Venezuela, the election of President Hugo Chávez, a socialist presiding over a fundamentally capitalist state, undoubtedly gave a boost to the class struggle and the regroupment of revolutionary forces in the country.
In Nepal, Maoists waged a triumphant revolutionary war against the feudal king that resulted in a negotiated peace and the Maoists’ subsequent election to lead a bourgeois government. Their decision to dissolve their armed forces remains the subject of considerable debate among revolutionaries. Neither country, despite heroic advances, has established socialism.
But for a Greek left government to be a vehicle of revolution, instead of demobilization, demoralization and disillusionment, a left-wing government would need to have clear programmatic unity around the socialization of the means of production, centralized planning, workers’ political power, and so on. It would need to organize the people to take on the police and the military that their own left-unity government would be associated with and nominally leading.
Otherwise, when a revolutionary situation emerged it would only disorient the movement and contribute to the persistence of reformist illusions.
SYRIZA has been silent or worse on these critical questions. In the run-up to the elections, Tsipras said: “A government of the left is in need of industrialists and investors. It needs a healthy business climate.” In other words, his version of a government of the left would not challenge the capitalists’ right to exploit labor.
The capitalist establishment has reciprocated, and the Federation of Hellenic Enterprises (SEV), the Greek equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has called for the formation of a national unity government including SYRIZA.
Tsipras called the election results a “peaceful revolution,” a slogan that misleadingly suggests the electoral realm, rather than continued mass struggle, can provide a way out of the crisis for working people.
The revolutionary crisis and dual power
While support for SYRIZA is likely to increase in the coming election, it is doubtful the new election will produce a clear winner or workable coalition. In the face of the increased likelihood of exiting the eurozone, which would deepen the economic and political crisis, the class struggle will intensify.
With the bourgeoisie so thoroughly discredited, and the Greek masses so clearly calling for an alternative way, the revolutionary left has an opportunity to offer a program that provides not only short-term relief, but also a longer-term vision of a new economic and political system. The question is how to mobilize the working class and broadly unite the revolutionary forces in a struggle to achieve this.
Historically, a key phase in any revolutionary crisis is that of dual power. By organizing what is essentially a second, rival state built on organs of mass struggle, revolutionaries can show concretely what working-class or people’s power looks like and offers. In the Russian Revolution, this took the form of councils of workers and soldiers (called soviets). In China, the Red Army itself functioned as a government in the areas that it liberated. Revolutionaries have also convened constituent assemblies—to rewrite the constitution—as a way to articulate, and establish the legitimacy of, a new political vision.
Clearly, there are millions in Greece who are still holding out hope that the existing capitalist government and state, perhaps with left-wing leadership, can deliver the goods. To this end, a sophisticated political struggle, backed by a concrete plan of action, must be waged against Tsipras and the social-democratic fantasies he projects. In his “April Theses,” designed to guide the Bolsheviks through Russia’s revolutionary crisis, Lenin called for “patient, systematic, and persistent explanation … especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”
Can the struggle in the streets break the deadlock in parliament? Will alternatives to bourgeois state power be built? The Greek working class has found itself on the frontline of the international struggle against capitalism, and the answers to these questions will resonate around the world.
For revolutionaries in the United States, our main role is not to endorse this or that organization and its tactics from afar. Our chief responsibilities are 1) to explain that the Greek crisis is a result of the contradictions of capitalism, not reckless social spending, 2) to defend the unfolding Greek revolution, especially as it could escalate and be slanderously attacked in the imperialist media and even militarily assaulted by U.S.-NATO forces, and 3) to study and learn from the complex revolutionary process that our brothers and sisters are trying to navigate.
While their process is far more advanced than our own, their struggle is ours—and we have much to learn from it.
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Title IX built generation of better athletesby Alex Friedrich, Minnesota Public Radio
ST. PAUL, Minn. — For the girls at this year's Minnesota high school track and field championships, Title IX is a lesson in a history book.
The sports it helped open up now dominate the lives of many of the girls.
Take 18-year-old Aitkin, Minn., High School senior Emily Lundgren, who runs the 400 meters.
Lundgren, who has been captain of her track and basketball teams and also plays tennis, said sports have been a big part of her life since the first grade.
"That's what you do in your summer — you practice your sports," she said. "They mean a lot to me, to say the least. They've really made me who I am today."
Lundgren and her teammates are arguably better athletes because of Title IX. It has given them better coaching, training facilities and even sports and nutrition research than girls received 40 years ago.
The change is the result of Title IX, a landmark piece of federal legislation enacted 40 years ago tomorrow.
Designed to prevent gender discrimination in the nation's education system, Title IX has paid dividends. Ten times more young women now play high-school sports than in 1972, according to statistics from National Federation of State High School Associations. There are six times as many female college athletes in NCAA colleges.
But it has become better known for opening up sports to women. Critics, meanwhile, say that progress has come at the cost of men's programs.
Stronger high school athletes grow into better college players -- and a few into professional athletes.
One example of the resources now available is the basketball camp held for young girls this month at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Varsity women's basketball players helped run the girls through drills, teach them special moves and immerse them in the game.
One of the teachers is Alyssa Favilla, a St. Thomas sophomore varsity forward who said sports gave her structure.
"They taught me time management — and how to be a competitor," she said. "And I use that in the classroom, too."
With each generation since Title IX, female athletes have grown bigger, stronger and faster, said Mary Jo Kane, director of the University of Minnesota's center for research on women's sports.
"They are infinitely more gifted than they have ever been," Kane said. "And it is a direct result of the decision of Title IX."
Kane, 61, knows what it's like to have been excluded. She grew up a tomboy in Illinois in the 1950s and '60s and played touch football, basketball and baseball in her neighborhood. But her high school had no organized sports for girls.
The choice was little better for JoAnn Andregg, now associate athletic director at the University of St. Thomas. At her California high school, women's volleyball and basketball held second-class status: No coaches. No budget. No rights to the gym.
"That usually meant we got in there after the boys' team was finished practicing," Andregg said. "Then we got in there. And we had to wear these God-awful uniforms, these one-piece uniforms for practice and games. I remember that so distinctly. "
Title IX changed that. Now, high schools and colleges typically provide sports opportunities proportional to the number of enrolled students of each gender.
In the last four decades, the number of women's college teams per campus has almost quadrupled, according to a report by Brooklyn College professors R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter. But that has led to criticism that growth has come at the expense of men's programs.
While women now outnumber men on many college campuses, critics note that fewer women play college sports.
The American Sports Council, a group that wants to Congress to overhaul Title IX, has filed two lawsuits contesting the requirement of proportional sports offerings. Council media director Jim McCarthy said cash-strapped colleges have limited or slashed men's sports such as swimming, volleyball and soccer to make room for women's sports such as rowing, ice hockey and bowling.
McCarthy said Title IX requirements have led to a quota system that excludes male athletes who normally would have a shot at sports.
"That's been an absolute outrage, because the law is supposed to protect against discrimination," he said.
The solution, McCarthy said, is to end proportionality -- or at least survey all students about their real sports interests.
"Let the students themselves have a voice in how the law is applied," he said.
Kane and other Title IX supporters don't oppose surveys. But she said the methodology of past attempts has been flawed, and new surveys would have to be constructed and administered correctly.
Title IX supporters also say colleges are
Kane says colleges could cut the fat from large football programs and use the savings to pay for women's sports without dropping men's.
Students still seem to prefer men's sports, judging from what some college athletes say.
"We've earned a lot of respect," Favilla said. "But I can see how they don't see us as equal sometimes. We don't dunk or don't sprint as fast. But usually they treat us well."
Andregg, of St. Thomas, is concerned with one ironic outcome of the legislation.
Thanks to Title IX, women's college sports have become more competitive. So men now want to coach them. According to the Brooklyn College report, more than half of women's college sports teams have male coaches. Before Title IX, only one in 10 did.
"We're going to have daughters coming up who never see a female coach," Andregg said of the trend. "And I just think that's a shame."
If that happens, Andregg says, girls won't have many female athletic role models - and that might risk the gains they've made in the past 40 years.
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Physics Boot Camp & Interactive Lecture Demonstrations - A Professional Development Recipe for Success Feature Summary
Physics Boot Camp & Interactive Lecture Demonstrations
- This workshop was presented at the 2011 PhysTEC conference. Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs) provide a pedagogical tool that has been shown to improve college and pre-college student's conceptual understanding of ideas in classical physics. Teachers in this PD showed fractional gains in concept understanding ranging from .44 to .75 with participants in every comparison group showing strong gains. Just as encouraging, these gains showed no decay over time. In this highly interactive presentation findings were presented along with a model of how the Interactive Lecture Demonstration 8-step methodology is used as a tool to both engage and prepare teachers.
- June 9, 2011 - July 9, 2014
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The Working Group III Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) presents an assessment of the literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of the contribution of six renewable energy (RE) sources to the mitigation of climate change. It is intended to provide policy relevant information to governments, intergovernmental processes and other interested parties. This Summary for Policymakers provides an overview of the SRREN, summarizing the essential findings. The SRREN consists of 11 chapters. Chapter 1 sets the context for RE and climate change; Chapters 2 through 7 provide information on six RE technologies, and Chapters 8 through 11 address integrative issues. References to chapters and sections are indicated with corresponding chapter and section numbers in square brackets. An explanation of terms, acronyms and chemical symbols used in this SPM can be found in the glossary of the SRREN (Annex I).Conventions and methodologies for determining costs, primary energy and other topics of analysis can be found in Annex II and Annex III. This report communicates uncertainty where relevant.
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Residential Photovoltaic Energy Systems in California: The Effect on Home Sales Prices (2011)
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Over the top of the atomic stitch is the main song line, and these patterns are recognized holistically by the shaman as the main identifying characteristic of the corresponding icaro. When I observed the shamans singing a cloth, they would trace their index finger along this main song line pattern, the melody rising or descending in general accordance with the rise and fall of the line. Again we see the visual metaphor of the shamanic staircase, represented as a descending song line.
Along the main song line itself and at various points of intersection along its path, can be seen the beautiful geometric designs called the floras. These flowers represent turning points where the song may take a new direction, such as a new verse or chorus. According to Herlinda, it is also the point where new life is born into the cosmos.
The colors of these flowers have significance as well, and they are woven in eight colors; black and white as the base colors of the cloth and primary stitch patterns; red corresponding with blood, childbirth, and the historical conflict between the Amazonian tribes; yellow for sunlight; green for the jungle; and blue for the rivers and lakes. Other colors include purple and orange their significance is not yet known.
*Source: "Woven Songs Of The Amazon" (Icaros and Weavings of The Shipibo Shamans) by Barrett H. Martin
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Shipibo-Conibo, Village of San Francisco, Amazon, Peru
The Shipibo are one of 14 indigenous tribes living in the Amazon basin in Peru and at present consist of around 35,000 people living in over 300 villages in the Pucallpa area situated mainly along the Rio Ucayali. They believe that the universe was sung into being by a giant anaconda, and as she sang, the patterns of her skin covered the universe. The intricate weavings created for centuries by the Shipibo are an ornate representation of the serpent's skin and, at the same time, are the actual, written music for the songs (icaros). Traditionally, the knowledge of the weaving patterns and songs has been passed down through the women, but due to the recent presence of western influences on the younger generations of women, these traditions are rapidly being lost.
The textile you see here is from the family of the late Herlinda Augustine and other women of the village of San Francisco. Herlinda Fernandez Augustine was one of a few Shipibo-Conibo indigenous woman healers – onaya or auahuasca shaman, whose life work is a unique repertoire of ancient songs (called icaros) which she uses to affect healing of her people and change in the world around her. Her songs speak of the power of plants and the importance of harmony between Man and Nature. She was featured in the award winning documentary film by Anna Stevens and her icaros are featured in a CD by the same name. Herlinda is survived by her husband Enrique, mother Manuela, daughter Magdalena and son Henry.
View other products from Herlinda
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Saint ZachariasArticle Free Pass
Saint Zacharias, English Zachary (born , San Severino, duchy of Benevento [Italy]—died March 14/22, 752, Rome; feast day March 15), pope from 741 to 752.
The last of the Greek popes, Zacharias was supposedly a Roman deacon when he succeeded Pope St. Gregory III in November/December 741. His pontificate was devoted to diplomatic relations with the Lombard and Frankish kingdoms and with the Byzantine Empire. He initiated a policy of conciliation with the Lombards while endeavouring to dissuade their rulers, Liutprand and Rachis, from conquering the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna. Successful, he thus made peace with the Lombards. He maintained amiable relations with the Byzantine emperor Constantine V Copronymus, whom he advised to restore the veneration of icons.
Zacharias’s relations with the Franks were similarly cordial, and his correspondence with St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, shows how great his influence was on contemporary events in the Frankish kingdom. In 741 he made Boniface legate and charged him with the reformation of the whole Frankish church. He supported the deposition (751–752) of Childeric III, the last Merovingian king, and authorized the Frankish church to anoint Pippin III the Short as king of the Franks. Zacharias’s action in the transference of the royal crown from the Merovingians to the house of Pippin (Carolingians) began a new era for church and state by establishing the Carolingian-papal alliance, which was to be of the greatest significance in future relations between pope and emperor and was of extreme importance to the theorists and controversialists of the Investiture Controversy (11th and 12th centuries). The latter dispute concerned secular rulers’ right to invest bishops and abbots, which right became one of the paramount aspects in the struggle for power between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.
Zacharias is known especially in the East for his Greek translation of the Dialogues of Pope St. Gregory I the Great.
What made you want to look up "Saint Zacharias"? Please share what surprised you most...
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Hop into roo before it's too late
A call for Australians to eat kangaroos to combat climate change might be a case of tuck in now before it's too late, research by an Australian biologist suggests.
Writing in the December edition of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Dr Euan Ritchie, of James Cook University in Queensland, says population numbers of the iconic Australian marsupial are at threat from climate change.
Ritchie, from the School of Marine and Tropical Biology, says a rise in average temperatures in northern Australia of just 2°C could reduce suitable habitat for kangaroo populations by as much as 50%.
His findings follow a recent call by economist, Professor Ross Garnaut, of the Australian National University, that Australians help fight climate change by swapping their beef-eating habits for a taste of Skippy.
Ritchie, who admits to being a committed roo eater, says his findings should not deter people from kangaroo steaks and may even help the animal survive.
"The species [of kangaroo] currently being harvested are very well monitored," he says.
"So it means we will pick up differences [in range and population] very quickly and will be in a position to respond to that."
According to the study, the kangaroo species under greatest threat is the antilopine wallaroo.
Ritchie says it is more vulnerable because it has a very defined range across the tropical savannas of far northern Australia from Cape York in Queensland across to the Kimberleys of Western Australia.
Using climate change computer modelling, Ritchie and co-author Elizabeth Bolitho, also of James Cook University, found the 2°C temperature increase, predicted by 2030, would shrink the antilopine's range by 89%.
A 6°C increase, the upper end of temperature increase predictions to 2070, may lead to their extinction if they are unable to adapt to the arid environment which results, Ritchie says.
He says the main threat of climate change is not on the kangaroo itself, but on the habitat that sustains its populations.
Among the impacts that will affect their geographic range are increased prevalence of fires and changes to vegetation and the availability of water.
He says a 0.4°C increase would reduce the distribution of all species of kangaroos and wallaroos by 9%.
An increase of 2°C saw the geographic range of the kangaroos reduced by as much as 50%.
Weathering the changes
However the news is not all bad.
By contrast to the antilopine, Ritchie says the eastern gray kangaroo is in a strong position to weather climate changes because of its predominance in the cooler eastern seaboard of Australia.
And he says the red kangaroo and common wallaroo are better adapted to sustain hotter climates.
Professor Lesley Hughes, of the Climate Change Ecology Group at Macquarie University in Sydney, backs Ritchie's findings.
"Virtually every time we do bioclimatic modelling you get this result [of species under threat]," she says.
However she says few studies "go up to 6°C" because "the more you extrapolate into the future the more doubt you have".
Hughes adds however that a 6°C rise in temperature would "wipe out" most native Australian species.
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The Basics of Home Canning
I never missed the signs of summer coming to a close while I was growing up: shopping for school clothes, getting backpacks and pencils together...and the smell of boiling tomatoes, hot peppers, and pectin permeating the kitchen.
With eleven kids to care for, canning food was not only an event in my household, but a necessity. As soon as we saw the familiar sight of glass mason jars lining the kitchen cupboard, we knew it wouldn’t be long before we were recruited to pick tomatoes, peel peaches, or even pit cherries. Sometimes it seemed mom felt the need to can every living thing in our backyard (with the exception of the dog).
But those long days spent working and canning as a family built stronger relationships, even if it didn’t always build our food storage, like the time a fateful food fight left half our tomatoes on the ground instead of in the bottles.
No matter what produce you plan to stuff away into bottles for the winter, canning can be the ideal way to preserve those fresh foods from your garden or the local market and also provide one last activity to bring your family together before the summer ends.
Canning requires some different utensils that you might not already have in your kitchen. Some of the necessary equipment includes: a boiling-water canner (or a big pot), mason-type jars (different sizes are available, wide-mouth jars are easiest to fill), lids and rings (you can only use the lids once), a jar lifter, and a candy thermometer.
Washing and Sterilizing
This is an important step in the canning process in order to get rid of all bacteria that could contaminate your food. Wash canning jars, new lids, and metal rings in hot, soapy water or the dishwasher, and rinse them thoroughly. To sterilize the jars place them upright in the canner, cover them with hot water, and boil for 10 minutes. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions that come with your lids.
Foods can be processed a number of different ways including: boiling-water, steam-pressure, and freezing. The recipes in this article follow the boiling-water process. To begin the boiling-water method, place a rack on the bottom of the pot to keep jars from touching the canner. Fill the canner half full with hot water and heat to 140º F for raw-packed foods, or 180º F for hot-packed foods. With the jars filled and capped, lower them into the canner with a jar lifter. Add more boiling water, if needed, so the water level is at least one inch above jar tops. Turn the heat to its highest position until water boils vigorously. Set a timer for the minutes required for processing food (according to the recipe).
Add more boiling water, if needed, to keep the water level above the jars. When jars have been boiled for the recommended time, turn off the heat and remove the canner lid. Using a jar lifter, remove the jars and place them on a towel, leaving at least one-inch spaces between the jars during cooling.Start Canning!
If you are trying to can for the first time, it would be best to start with fruit, because most use the boiling-water method. When selecting what fruits to can, select firm, ripe fruit.
Fruits are often canned in light sugar syrups. Depending on your desired taste, the amount of sugar in the syrup varies with fruits. For the recipes here, use a heaping 1/3 cup to 3/4 cup per quart of water. Place the sugar in a quart measuring pitcher and add cold water. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
These are one of the most successfully canned of all foods. Wash and peel. Halve or quarter and cut out the cores. Boil gently in the syrup liquid for five minutes. Pack the hot pears in hot jars. Add the hot liquid, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Process for 20 minutes.
Dip peaches in boiling water and remove after a few seconds; slip off the skins. Cut the fruits in half and remove the pits. Place in a pan without crowding, cover with the desired liquid, and bring to a boil. Ladle the hot fruit into hot jars, packing the halves in layers, cut side down. Add the hot liquid, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace. Process for 20 minutes.
TomatoesTomatoes are a canning favorite and can easily be canned using the boiling-water method. To peel tomatoes: Using a small knife, cut a small X in the bottom of the tomatoes; do not cut the flesh. Ease the tomatoes one by one into a pot of boiling water. Leave ripe tomatoes in for about 15 seconds, barely ripe tomatoes for twice as long. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and drop into a bowl of ice water. Pull off the skin with the tip of a knife.
Wash, peel, and cut tomatoes into halves. Put in a pan without crowding, add water to cover, and boil gently for five minutes. Pack the hot tomatoes in hot jars. Add salt to taste. Add the hot cooking liquid, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Process pints for 40 minutes in canner, quarts for 45 minutes.
Get Yourself into a Jam
Preserving jams can also be a rewarding and easy way to fill your food storage. Jams can be preserved through freezing or canning. For first-timers, frozen jam is generally easier to preserve, but below is also a good canned berry jam recipe for the adventurous.Strawberry Jam (frozen)
2 cups crushed strawberries (1 qt.)
4 cups granulated sugar
1 box fruit pectin
Wash berries, remove stems, and crush. Measure the 2 cups of crushed berries into a large bowl. Measure the sugar into another bowl and then stir it into fruit. Set aside for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Stir 1 box of fruit pectin and 3/4 cup water together in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Boil and stir for 1 minute, and remove from the heat. Stir the pectin mixture into the fruit mixture, stirring constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved and no longer grainy.
Pour quickly into clean plastic containers to within 1/2" of the top. Wipe off the top edges of the containers and cover with the lids. Let stand at room temperature for 24 hours to set, and then refrigerate for immediate use or freeze. (Do not double this recipe; make one batch at a time.)
Berry Jam (canned)
Peel, core, and finely grate:
8 ounces tart green apples
- 2 pounds blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, elderberries, or raspberries (stemmed)
- 1 tablespoon orange juice
3 cups sugar
Cook together, crushing one-quarter of the berries that are in the pot, leaving the rest whole (but do not crush raspberries). Boil rapidly, stirring frequently, to the jelling point. This is the point preserves will jell once cooled; a good visual indicator is when, after boiling high and foamy in the pan, the mixture settles, and suddenly its surface is covered with furiously boiling small bubbles. You can also check using a thermometer. Jelling point is 8 to 10 degrees higher than the boiling point of water. Remove from the heat and skim off any foam before ladling into hot jars. Leave 1/4-inch headspace, and process for 10 minutes.
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The specter of chemical weapons has been hanging over war-torn Syria for months.
Although viewed with skepticism by U.S. officials, the latest claims and counterclaims by the Syrian government and opposition forces over their alleged use in Aleppo province and a Damascus suburb have intensified concerns and prompted the United Nations to promise an investigation.
Syria's government insists it doesn't have chemical weapons, and wouldn't use them against its own people if it did, while the Syrian opposition says it neither has such munitions nor the means to make them.
Whatever the truth of the latest allegations, military analysts say they believe Syria may have one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the world. Specifically, the supply could include sarin and VX gases -- both nerve agents -- and mustard gas, which are banned under international law.
The prospect that these could potentially be deployed by an increasingly beleaguered regime has made many observers anxious -- and has been cited as a "red line" for robust action by the United States.
So why would Syria have such armaments?
Few munitions evoke as much fear as chemical weapons. And unlike nuclear weapons, they are relatively inexpensive to develop and stockpile.
This lends them a disproportionate importance for Syria and the region, analysts say.
"In the Middle East, chemical weapons have been seen as a possible counter to Israel's nuclear weapons," said Dr. Susan B. Martin, of the Department of War Studies at King's College London.
"They are seen as a possible strategic deterrent," she said, "and they are cheaper and easier to have than nuclear weapons."
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Considering the fact that half of you reading this right now are probably wearing one, It’s only right to start this week off with the most commonplace of all acronymic items– the OCBD (oxford cloth button down.) While the latter half is attributed to the shirt’s button down collar, Oxford Cloth itself has a far less straightforward explanation. As the last remaining fabric from a series of four, Oxford cloth’s story is one of inexplicable survival. In the late nineteenth century a Scottish Mill designed and produced four cloths, one for each of the world’s most distinguished universities. While Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge all had their respective cloths lost to history, for reasons unknown Oxford endured becoming one of the most widespread fabrics in the world. Oxford cloth is created by weaving together two yarns that are of the same color but just a shade different, giving it a marled texture that breaks from the ordinary aesthetic of a solid dress shirt.
Oxford Cloth shirts were originally perceived to be a piece of formal wear and were exclusively worn as part of a suit. This all began to change in 1896, when John E. Brooks, (the grandson of Henry Sand Brooks, the founder of Brooks Brothers’) went to England and noticed that polo players were wearing shirts with button down collars to keep them secured during games. Brooks brought the design back to the states, and Brooks Brothers combined the button down collar with oxford cloth to create the OCBD. They remained a relatively formal shirt until the 1930′s, when tennis and polo players began wearing Oxford cloth button downs during their games. While these were still unequivocally upper class sports, they nonetheless placed the Oxford shirt in an entirely new context, and by the 50′s Ivy League undergrads were wearing OCBD’s. For the students, and their limited wardrobes, the versatile shirts were a major asset. OCBD’s could not only be worn untucked on weekends, or with a jacket when going out, the shirts relaxed basket weave also allowed them to be worn pretty much year round. Today, practically every company produces their version of the OCBD, and they’re somewhat of a collectors item, not because they’re rare but because you can never collect too many.
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Art. XXIX.—The Older Gravels of North Canterbury. [Read before the New Zealand Institute, at Christchurch, 4th—8th February, 1919; received by Editor, 24th February, 1919; issued separately, 16th July, 1919.] |General Description of the District where the Beds are best developed||269| |Description of Typical Localities||270| |Grey River, East Branch||270| |Grey River, West Branch||273| |Okuku River and Mairaki Downs||274| |Kowai River, North Branch||274| |Kowai River, South Branch||274| |Lower Warpara Gorge||278| |Other Canterbury Localities||279| |General Conclusions as to the Origin and Age of the Beds, and Relation to the Gravels of the Canterbury Plains||280| Widely distributed along the base of the Southern Alps lies a series of unfossiliferous sedimentary beds, consisting for the most part of well-stratified gravels, sands, and clays, with occasional lignite, whose position has hitherto been somewhat doubtful. Haast (1879, p. 316, and map, p. 370) included them in his Pareora formation, and mentioned the occurrence of lignite-beds (p. 318) in the “Moeraki” Downs, at the mouth of the Waipara River, and in the Broken River basin, but hardly mentions the locality where they attain their maximum development—viz., the Mount Grey Downs and the vicinity of the two branches of the Kowai River. Hutton (1885, p. 211) considered them as equivalent to the Wanganui system of the North Island, but remarked that they were difficult to distinguish from the upper gravels of the Pareora system. Park (1910, p. 252) considered them older fluvio-glacial drifts. Thomson (1917, p. 411) refers to them more fully, but is extremely doubtful whether they shall be assigned to his Notocene or Notopleistocene set of deposits. Owing to the practical absence of fossils it is difficult to determine their position accurately, but they nevertheless represent an interesting series, and the following account is intended to bring out their chief features. In addition to the difficulty noted by Hutton, there is the additional one that in their lithological content as well as to some extent the conditions under which they were laid down they resemble the beds that overlie them, and this makes it at times impossible to separate them from subsequent gravel and sandy beds. General Description of the District Where the Beds Are Best Developed. The chief area where they are developed lies to the south-east and south of Mount Grey, between the Waipara and Okuku Rivers, but they attain their greatest development in the basins of the Southern Kowai and the Grey Rivers. Important outliers also occur to the west of the Okuku, on the lower slopes of Mount Thomas, and south of the Ashley River, where they form the Mairaki Downs (= Moeraki Downs of Haast). The beds form a kind of frontal apron to the higher greywacke hills, such as Mount Grey and Mount Karetu; but still they rise in places to well over 1,000 ft. above sea-level. The downs country has been dissected to some extent, and on the front facing south-east consequent streams have cut deep narrow channels, with high precipitous banks, whereas in the north-eastern portion the tributaries forming the Northern Kowai tend to develop valleys along the strike. The same is also true of the east branch of the Grey. The character of the drainage points to recent and rapid uplift, perhaps in agreement with that of which there is distinct evidence on the coast farther north (McKay, 1877, p. 177; Hutton, 1877, p. 55; Speight, 1918, p. 99). On the sides of the steep banks, especially those running with the dip, numerous good sections are exposed; and it will be best at this stage to give a more detailed description of typical sections, preferably those illustrating the relationship between the underlying Tertiary beds and the overlying gravels. Although the beds are typically developed in the basin of the Kowai River, and I have selected the name of that locality as the one most appropriate to designate the series, yet the most instructive sections are to be seen in the basin of the Grey River, and these will therefore be taken first. Descriptions of Typical Localities. Grey River, East Branch. The eastern or chief branch of the Grey River rises in the country between Mounts Grey and Karetu, flows south therefrom in a deep wooded gorge, and then gradually turns to the south-west and follows along the north-western edge of the Mount Grey Downs till it enters on the plains and joins the Okuku River in the neighbourhood of White Rock Station. The first part of its course has been cut in greywacke, but on leaving the higher country it crosses the marginal fringe of Tertiary sedimentaries at an angle of about 45° with their strike, so that when the stream runs in the direction of the dip the cross-section of its channel is narrow and trench-like, but when it runs along the strike the valley opens out somewhat, with dip slopes bordering the stream on its north-western side and steep scarp slopes on its south-eastern side. The latter are in places very bold and precipitous, and show clear-cut sections. Especially is this the case at the Horseshoe Cliff, about a mile below the gorge, where the north-western slope of the downs has been scored by a deep washout, and the strata are clearly exposed for 500 ft. In the lower part of the river-gorge there is a most interesting occurrence of the lower members of the Cretaceo-Tertiary series, analogous to that seen in the Waipara and Weka Pass sections. These beds when followed along the strike run in the direction of the greywacke mass of Mount Grey; and unless they turn round on approaching it, as they do on the north-east slope of the mountain, the junction between the two sets of beds will in all probability be a fault contact. To the west of the gorge, however, the junction between the two sets of beds is a normal unconformity. The following is a description of the beds here exposed, the sequence being in ascending order:— Greyish sands and sandy shales, glauconitic, concretionary in places, and stained with sulphur; succeeded by light-coloured argillaceous and slightly glauconitic sands—all striking north-east and dipping south-east at 45°. Greenish glauconitic sand passing up into glauconitic limestone, the glauconitic material being disposed in irregular patches and lenses, giving the rock a somewhat streaky appearance; it is also full of worm-borings filled with glauconitic material. This passes up into Amuri limestone, 25 ft. thick, with less glauconite than 2. The passage beds between this and the lower bed consist of fragments of Amuri limestone in a greensand matrix, the limestone finally taking on the facies of the typical Amuri stone, being white and jointed into quadrangular blocks. The strike is as before, but the dip is less, being about 30°. Glauconitic limestone, 20 ft. thick, comparable with the Weka Pass stone as it approaches a shore-line (Speight and Wild, 1918, p. 77), but passing up into a more sandy facies. Marl, slightly sandy, with concretionary layers and rounded concretions. This is the stratigraphical equivalent of the “grey marl” in the Weka Pass district. It has the same strike and dip as the limestone, and its thickness is about 70 ft. Thus far the sequence is quite clear and conformable, but for a time the exposures are obscured and the relations to the underlying beds are not plain. Just below the gorge there is a well-marked bed, striking north-north-east, with slightly flatter dip than the limestone, and containing numerous specimens of Ostrea ingens. Farther down-stream, but higher in the series, is a sandy conglomerate followed by sands with broken shells. These pass up into sands with a layer of oyster and other shell fragments, and then follow the beds of the Kowai series. These are first exposed at the mouth of the gorge, just above the site of the old sawmill. They consist of sands and sandy gravels containing shell-fragments and showing intraformational unconformities, but no clear evidence, given by sections, of an unconformity between the Kowai series and the lower Tertiaries. Almost everywhere in the case of gravels resting on sands or other finer detrital beds the upper surface of the latter has suffered some erosion, but in no case in this branch of the Grey does this, in my opinion, amount to sufficient to be considered a major unconformity. On the next bluff down-stream, and higher in the sequence, the beds exposed consist of greenish-grey sands (weathering light-brown) and sandy gravels, with sandy carbonaceous shales and impure lignite. These are capped unconformably by terrace-gravels belonging to the early history of the Grey River. This sequence is repeated on the next bluff, but the gravel beds of the Kowai series become more important, one very heavy band of gravel near the top of the cliff being divided into two parts by a layer of carbonaceous shale. In the bed of the river, at the base of this cliff, is a section which shows an unconformable junction between a greenish sand and an overlying bed of gravel. After a careful consideration of the circumstances of this case I have come to the conclusion that it must be considered only as an intraformational unconformity, due to the erosion of the bed of sand by marine currents in the interval between its deposition and that of the succeeding layer of gravel. These beds strike north-east, and dip south-east at an angle of 20°. As the sections are followed down-stream their character does not change except that the gravels become increasingly important, a feature that is well exemplified at the Horseshoe Cliff, on the face of which gravels greatly predominate, some layers being from 50 ft. to 70 ft. in thickness. Well-defined sandy layers also occur. The regular stratification of the beds towards the base of the cliff points to their having been deposited in shallow water in close proximity to a shore-line, and not on a land-surface; but at the higher levels the stratification becomes more indistinct and the pebbles become coarser and more subangular in shape, so it is almost certain that the closing beds of the series were laid down on a land-surface. The presence of lignite in the lower beds clearly indicates estuarine or deltaic conditions. It should be noted that on the high banks of the Grey River there is a still more recent series of gravels belonging to the history of the stream. They are similar in lithological features to the gravels of the Kowai series, but they are neither so well stratified nor so well cemented. They are undoubtedly river and not sea deposits. Where contacts can be seen they are easily differentiated, but elsewhere, especially on the lower slopes of the downs, it is difficult to separate them from the upper members of the lower set of beds, which were also laid down on a land-surface. Grey River, West Branch. The general stratigraphy of the beds in the basin of the western branch of the Grey River is similar to that in the eastern. The following is a general description of the strata exposed above the greywacke as disclosed on the sides of the gorge of the stream:— Sands and greensands. Limestone, full of bryozoan remains, but only a few feet thick in the gorge of the stream, thickening, however, to the east and to the west. There is a marked difference in the features of this limestone as compared with that in the eastern branch, and as they are in apparent continuity it might be assumed that the stone in the western branch represents a shallower-water facies. I am by no means certain that this is the true explanation, and the question of the identity as regards their stratigraphical position must be reserved for further investigation. Marls, greenish in colour, with rounded concretions and concretionary bands, passing up into greyish sands with fragmentary fossil shells. In the river these beds strike E. 25° S. and dip south at an angle of 30°, but they have suffered some deformation, and the strike changes to north-east on the ridge between the two branches of the Grey, and also as the beds are traced round to White Rock and the Okuku River. The upper surface of the sands was distinctly eroded before the next bed was laid down. This consists of a heavy band of cemented gravel. The following beds are then encountered, in ascending order:— Gravel bed just referred to. Sandy clays and gravels. Sandy clay and carbonaceous shale, repeatedly alternating. One bed of shale is from 12 in. to 18 in. thick. Sandy gravel, well cemented with iron oxide. Greenish-grey sands, sandy shales, and gravels, rapidly alternating, totalling over 200 ft. in thickness, the strike gradually becoming east-north-east, and the dip flattening out from 30° to 10°. Gravels, sandy and with occasional thin layers of sandy clay, lying flat or with slight dip to the south-east. These are at least 500 ft. thick, and are well exposed on the ridge between the western Grey and the stream near the White Rock Station. The section in this river thus shows that there is a distinct series in which gravels are the dominant beds lying unconformably on marine Tertiaries. It should be noted that in the western branch there are no gravel beds below the unconformity. Either they have never been deposited or they have been removed by erosion. There is a strong suggestion from the eastern branch that gravel beds are present among the higher members of the underlying marine series, so that their presence cannot be taken as decided evidence that beds containing gravels in this locality necessarily belong to the Kowai series. Okuku River and Mairaki Downs. Similar gravels occur on the banks of the Okuku, especially on the western side, where they form low hills fringing the base of Mount Thomas, and stretching westward towards the Garry River and Glentui. Towards the Ashley they are masked by more-recent gravels, but they reappear on the south bank of the river, forming the Mairaki Downs. The strata here consist of thick sandy gravels, sandy clays, and occasional layers of carbonaceous shale. Opposite the mouth of the Garry they strike north-east and dip north-west at an angle of 20°, forming the south-eastern wing of a syncline which is developed farther west, while farther east, towards Rangiora, the structure is anticlinal. The country directly between the Mairaki and Mount Grey Downs is probably a syncline, but the surface is completely masked by recent gravels and clays belonging to the Ashley and Okuku Rivers and to the lower course of the Grey and Makerikeri Rivers, the latter draining a considerable area on the south-western flank of the Mount Grey Downs. Kowai River, North Branch. An excellent idea of the structure and general features of the northern part of the downs area can be obtained by examination of the high banks of the North Kowai, and especially of a tributary which rises in Mount Brown itself and flows in a south-easterly direction across the strike of the beds, thus exposing all the members of the series present in this locality. The following is a general description of the beds encountered, starting with the Mount Brown beds and following up to the highest members of the series:— At the contact with the upper members of the Mount Brown series the latter consist of sands, and marine gravels with shells, striking north-east and dipping south-east at an angle of 10°. The Mount Brown beds are here capped unconformably with sandy gravels containing rounded and sub-angular greywacke pebbles, and belonging in all probability to the high-level terrace-gravels of the present Kowai River. Lower down sands, sandy clays, and sandy gravels dipping south-east at very low angles are exposed on the banks of the stream and in the deep gullies on the northern side. There is certainly a disagreement in dip between these beds and the underlying Mount Brown beds, suggesting an unconformity, but nowhere could I see an actual contact in order to determine this point precisely. The slight escarpment of the downs which faces Mount Brown at this point is determined by the presence of the gravel beds which occur at this horizon. It is noteworthy that there is an entire absence of the gravel beds with broken-shell layers which cover the Mount Brown beds in the vicinity of Weka Pass, a point which increases the probability that the beds forming the downs rest on the Mount Brown beds unconformably. Farther down-stream the beds lie almost flat, with an east-south-east strike and a dip to the north-north-east at very low angles (less than 5°). On a high bluff a series of well-stratified sands and sandy gravels is exposed. Near the base of the cliff, under a sandy bed cemented in its lower part with iron oxide, lies a narrow band of sandy carbonaceous shale, 6 in. to 8 in. thick, containing pieces of lignified wood, and passing down into sandy clay with interstratified irregular lenses of lignite. Under these lie sands and sandy gravels, and then bluish-green and brown sands. A little below this the strike swings round to north-north-east, with an easterly dip, and in a narrow gully on the south side of the stream an interesting section is exposed. Here both the bluish-green sands and the sandy gravels have been eroded, and on the eroded surface have been deposited sands and sandy gravels containing fragments of the lower beds. A similar occurrence is to be observed on the face of a cliff in the main stream, the lower beds dipping 10° and the upper lying flat across them. A thin layer of broken-shell fragments was observed high up on the face of the cliff in an inaccessible position. Higher in the series are rapidly alternating sands and fine sandy gravels, in layers down to 1 in. in thickness, and these are succeeded by sands, sandy-gravel beds, and bluish-grey and brown sands, the former with broken-shell layers. In the gravels are numerous fragments of limestone, which must have been derived from a surface of the Amuri limestone exposed to decided erosion. The fragments are generally less than 2 in. in length, but are sometimes longer, and are usually flattened like beach shingle. There is no doubt as to the interstratification of these beds in the series under consideration, as the same feature was observed in a deep gully to the north of the stream in its proper stratigraphical position. The presence of these fragments is positive proof of the presence of an unconformity between these beds and the Amuri limestone, and supports the stratigraphical evidence from the Grey River. In the bluish-green sands there are occasional shell-fragments. For some distance below this spot there are no clear sections, but sand is probably the major constituent of the beds. At the junction with the Kowai River, however, there are high cliffs on the northern side, where the strata are clearly visible for half a mile. The lowest beds exposed in this locality are sands with interstratified gravels, in which limestone-fragments form a most important constituent. The beds with the limestone-fragments are at least 50 ft. thick, and may be thicker. Higher up the limestone constituent gets less and less, and the pebbles are entirely of greywacke. No other included material, such as fragments of Mount Brown limestone, was noted at this spot, which might indicate the date of the break between the Amuri limestone beds and those under consideration. It is possible that these gravel beds are unconformable to the greenish marine sands, since for some distance no exposures are visible which enable their relations to be precisely determined, and there is evidence from other parts of the area that these upper gravels are unconformable to greenish sands—e.g., in the Grey River (see p. 272) and also in No. 2 Creek (see p. 276). These gravel beds are fairly well stratified, with occasional beds of sandy clay and thin carbonaceous shales, their total thickness being about 1,000 ft., and the whole thickness of the series from the junction of the Mount Brown beds upward being about 1,500 ft., though this may include two series—viz., the Motunau and the Kowai series. The course of the main stream above its junction with the tributary follows almost along the strike of the beds, so that the structure is not so well displayed. The beds exposed consist of marine sands, which are remarkably current-bedded, and loose and cemented sandy gravels with numerous fossils similar to the beds exposed in the Lower Waipara Gorge. The highest bed of this series exposed in the valley of the stream consists of greenish sandy clay, which weathers a light brown, and contains fossil shells. Its upper surface has been distinctly eroded, and on it rests a heavy layer of cemented gravel, and following this are sandy clays and gravel beds dipping south-east at angles of 10°. These beds pass upward into the gravel beds exposed on the cliffs of the river below the junction with the tributary. In the tributary mentioned above I could find no indication of an eroded surface analogous to that in the main stream, and so it may be an unconformity of local character similar to those recorded elsewhere, but it may indicate a decided unconformity between the Motunau and the Kowai series. It is owing to the typical development of these gravels and the beds associated with them in the Kowai River, not only in this locality but in the south branch as well, that I have called them the Kowai series. It is possible, however, that the lower part of this group of beds may be equivalent to the upper part of the Motunau series, and subsequent investigation may show the term to be unnecessary. In No. 2 Creek, a southern tributary of the North Kowai, there is a very important section. Just below the high bluff on the north side, about four miles above the junction, the stream has exposed the following beds:— Greenish sands, becoming more clayey in the upper portions and passing up into sandy shale. Lignite, very impure, 10 in. thick, striking east-north-east and dipping north-north-west at 5°. Argillaceous sands, decidedly clayey above the coal but becoming more sandy and greenish in colour higher up. The thickness exposed is about 6 ft., but it is eroded, and sandy gravels rest on it unconformably. An eroded surface appears just below this in the bed of the stream, with an angular mass of green sandy clay embedded in the gravel. In close proximity to the erosion surface there is another section showing the same features, but with only 3 ft. of bed 3 interposed between the coal and the gravels. Just over the dividing-ridge between this and the South Kowai River there are high cliffs, facing south, composed of similar beds, with gravels more strongly developed in the higher levels, and dipping south at angles about 5°. Thus an anticlinal axis runs east-north-east along the ridge in close proximity to the road which runs along the crest. Just at the point where the stream turns after leaving the steeper slopes of Mount Grey, and assumes a north-easterly course, coal and associated beds are exposed in its actual channel and in the bank of a small gully on the southern side. They consist of— Greenish sands, passing up into sandy clays. Clays succeeded by greenish sandy clays. Gravels, mixed with sand, cemented with iron oxide. Greenish sandy clays. These beds strike north-east, and dip north-west at an angle of 5°. When followed up-stream there is an alternation of sands and gravels, apparently conformable to the beds just enumerated, exposed in the slips on the river-banks; but the dip becomes steeper till, on the face of a high bluff below the bush, it reaches 20°. Here are alternating sandy clays and gravels, the former greenish-yellow in colour, which are capped unconformably by somewhat irregular sands and gravels, lying almost horizontally across the denuded edges of the lower set. The upper series evidently forms the distinct ridge which leads down-stream past the point where the undoubted unconformity described above was observed. Similar beds are observed in places on the banks of the stream higher up, but the covering of bush and soil is too complete to attempt a correlation with those lower down. Owing to this covering it is likewise impossible to say whether the junction between the greywackes of Mount Grey is a simple unconformity or a fault contact. Kowai River, South Branch. The high banks of this river rise in places to a height of 500 ft. above its bed, frequently with
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by Frederick B. Reitz, Ph.C.
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington Illustrations by Marian Parry
I report here the first evidence that domestic cats exhibit quantum tunneling.
Subatomic particles can make seemingly impossible, instantaneous "jumps" from one place to another. This has been known in theory for well over half a century. Numerous examples of it have been observed and meticulously documented. Known as "quantum tunneling," this strange phenomenon had previously been thought to occur only on very small scales.
In this paper I report instances of the spontaneous relocation of entire cats. Though cats are arguably quantal to the extent that they tend to exist as discrete entities, the appreciable magnitude of some of the cats in question constitutes a novel aspect of the tunneling phenomenon.
The physical literature contains many reports of electrons and similar particles spontaneously jumping or "tunneling" from one place to another via so-called "forbidden" routes. This phenomenon has enjoyed much attention since the advent of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). In all reports to date, the particles in question have ranged in size from extremely small to very, very small, with rare cases involving particles that are merely quite small.
House pets have also frequently been observed to exhibit unusual behavior. Dogs circle many times before sitting down. Cats forget to retract their tongues after bathing, and hamsters sleep in their food dishes.
Non-Newtonian House Pets
Pets are rarely attributed with exotic, non-Newtonian physical behavior. However, cats and dogs that are especially long-haired can exhibit a wavelike appearance. Furthermore, animals clearly interfere with each other, sometimes destructively (as with cats and dogs, or with cats and humans that are attempting to read a newspaper), sometimes constructively (as with rabbits and rabbits).
Erwin Schr?dinger alluded, in a famous thought experiment, to the general question of the quantum behavior of cats. However, I believe that my report presents the first documented instances of the spontaneous tunneling of cats, and also the first documented reports of related quasi-electromagnetic cat phenomena.
Cat Tunneling: Case 1
In my own residence, I and several other party guests personally observed the case of Chloe, a large black Himalayan. Though the extent of the cat's fur decreased the certainty with which one could specify the cat's position and momentum (c.f., the Himalyan Uncertainty Principle), and our garage door is only a few inches thick, the tunneling event was no less remarkable in light of her prodigious girth (she weighed 15 pounds, frequently intimidating our German Shepherd into sharing his dinner). The cat was initially observed sleeping in the driveway. When next observed several minutes later, the cat was nowhere to be seen. We opened the garage door, at which point Chloe left the garage, obviously having tunneled through the closed door. We marveled at this phenomenon, and, as we closed the side door to the garage, discussed plans for further study.
Cat Tunneling: Case 2
The next such instance brought to my attention was one Snuggles Jr. of Lansing, Michigan, who was found on June 10, 1995, at 10:31 AM resting comfortably amidst a fresh batch of clothing, inside an automatic clothes dryer. As the dryer door was closed, and the owners did not remember having let the cat in, the transition was judged to be spontaneous. Discussion with the owners, regarding house policies pertaining to where the cat was and was not allowed to go, established the forbidden nature of this transition. Given that the cat was not even allowed in the laundry room, the span of the forbidden transition of the 6 pound cat was at least than 7 linear feet-clearly this constitutes tunneling on an unprecedented scale.
Cat Tunneling: Case 3
Finally, there is the case of "Giggles," a largish calico of uncertain dimensions who was remarkable for his repeated and unsuccessful attempts to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle with the neighbor's tabby (who in turn might have been more cooperative had she not been spayed). Though arguably the tunneling that Giggles did to get under the fence between his yard and the neighbor's was of a conventional sort, his consistent failure to include any other similar cat in his proximity and same state of excitation is compellingly consistent with previous results found on smaller scales.
Given these data, I am led to the following conclusions:
- Cats do exhibit the sort of tunneling behavior previously attributed only to subatomic particles, car keys, and socks;
- Despite the finite probability of a cat tunneling spontaneously through a door, the probability of this event is low enough that leaving the cat closed in one's bedroom for a prolonged period of time is inadvisable; and
- One's cat should indeed be blamed for the majority of stools found in inappropriate locations.
Copyright © 1998 The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). All rights reserved.
_____________________This article is republished with permission from the March-April 1998 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
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BRCA1 mutations account for only 5% of breast and ovarian cancers, but loss-of-function mutations in the BRCA1 gene confer up to an 82% risk of breast cancer and up to a 54% risk of ovarian cancer. Because BRCA1 is involved in DNA repair, loss of a functioning BRCA1 gene may make a cell more vulnerable to chemotherapy agents that damage DNA, such as platinum-based compounds. In addition, BRCA1 has also been shown to be involved in the regulation of cell division, and loss of the gene has been proposed to protect a cell against spindle poisons, a group of chemotherapy agents, such as taxanes and vinca alkaloids, that disrupt cell division.
To determine whether the level of BRCA1 function in a patient could be used to predict response to chemotherapy for breast and ovarian cancers, D. Paul Harkin, B.Sc., Ph.D., and Richard D. Kennedy, M.D., Ph.D., of The Queen's University of Belfast in Northern Ireland, and colleagues reviewed published preclinical and clinical evidence. Preclinical studies included research in both animal models and cell lines. Clinical studies were all retrospective in nature, because no prospective trials have been designed to study the role of BRCA1 in chemotherapy response.
The researchers found that BRCA1 inactivation through mutation appears to confer sensitivity to DNA-damaging chemotherapeutic drugs commonly used to treat breast and ovarian cancers. However, preclinical evidence suggests that BRCA1 function is necessary for spindle poisons to work. The authors recommend that prospective studies be conducted to evaluate BRCA1 expression and chemotherapeutic res
Contact: Sarah L. Zielinski
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
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Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have found environmentally and economically sound uses for the byproducts of biofuel production.
Animal scientist William Dozier, formerly with the ARS Poultry Research Unit in Mississippi State, Miss., has been working with colleagues at the ARS Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Unit in Ames, Iowa, and Iowa State University (ISU) to find ways to supplement animal diets with glycerin. Glycerin, a biofuel byproduct, contains energy-providing nutrients for animals.
Dozier and ISU colleague Kristjan Bregendahl evaluated the use of glycerin supplements in poultry feed. Dozier primarily dealt with broilers, which are chickens raised specifically for meat production, and gave glycerin-supplemented poultry feed to broilers that were 7 to 45 days old.
Dozier evaluated the apparent metabolizable energy (AME) intake—a standard measure of energy—for the study group and for a control group that ate a standard diet. The youngest chicks, aged 7 to 10 days, showed a higher AME intake than the control group. However, the two groups showed no significant differences in the amount of feed they consumed, body weight, or the amount of energy lost in feces and urine (energy excretion).
The second group of broilers, aged 21 to 24 days old, that consumed glycerin feed supplements showed no difference in body weight, energy excretion, and AME. However, their feed intake and the amount of energy provided by the diet intake (gross energy) increased when glycerin supplementation increased. The oldest broilers, aged 42 to 45 days old, showed increases in feed consumption, gross energy, and AME.
Dozier notes that from a nutritional standpoint, this technology can serve as an alternative dietary energy source that could result in lower feed costs. Swine and poultry producers are very interested in supplementing livestock feed with glycerin, in part because the corn grain and soybeans that used to be fed to livestock are now being used for biofuel production. This way, the crops can be used for both biofuels and for livestock feed.
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SAVINGS ACTION 59: Lower the temperature on your water heater
In a typical household, the water heater thermostat is set to around 140 degrees Fahrenheit. But did you know that setting it to 120 is usually fine? Each 10-degree reduction saves 3 to 5 percent on your energy costs and 600 pounds of CO2 per year for an electric water heater, or 440 pounds for a gas heater. Reducing your water temperature to 120 also slows mineral buildup and corrosion in your water heater and pipes. This helps your water heater last longer and operate at its maximum efficiency. Here's another interesting tidbit from the folks at Power ScoreCard: "If every household turned its water heater thermostat down 20 degrees, we could prevent more than 45 million tons of annual CO2 emissions — the same amount emitted by the entire nations of Kuwait or Libya."
Savings: 3-5 percent on your monthly energy costs
Environmental Impact: 440-600 pounds of CO2 emissions reduced annually
TAKE THE CHALLENGE and LEARN MORE about SAVING ENERGY! Visit: www.SouthCoastEnergyChallenge.org
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“A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or “artificial glaciers,” to get through the dry spring months. (See a map of the region.)
Located on the western edge of the Tibetan plateau, the village of Skara in the Ladakh region of India is not a common tourist destination.
“It’s beautiful, but really remote and difficult to get to,” said Amy Higgins, a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who worked on the artificial glacier project.
“A lot of people, when I met them in Delhi and I said I was going to Ladakh, they looked at me like I was going to the moon,” said Higgins, who is also a National Geographic grantee.
People in Skara and surrounding villages survive by growing crops such as barley for their own consumption and for sale in neighboring towns. In the past, water for the crops came from meltwater originating in glaciers high in the Himalaya.”
Read more: National Geographic
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Following Oceana’s newly released report on the harmful impacts of illegal fishing, one of the questions that I as Oceana's Northeast representative was asked most often was, “Where is this happening?” The short answer: Illegal fishing happens everywhere, from the most distant waters near Antarctica to just off the U.S. coast.
This week brought great news for shark populations that are dwindling both in U.S. waters and worldwide. Today, the Delaware House of Representatives introduced a bill prohibiting the possession, trade, sale and distribution of shark fins within the state. If passed, House Bill 41 would make Delaware the first East Coast state to pass a ban on the shark fin trade, following in the footsteps of Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii and Illinois.
Current federal law prohibits shark finning in U.S. waters, requiring that sharks be brought into port with their fins still attached. However, this law does not prohibit the sale and trade of processed fins that are imported into the country from other regions that could have weak or even nonexistent shark protections in place.
This unsustainable catch is driven by the demand for shark fins, often used as an ingredient in shark fin soup, and kills millions of sharks every year. Delaware’s bill would close the loopholes that fuel the trade and demand for fins, and ensure that the state is not a gateway for shark products to enter into other U.S. state markets.
Not only was there great news coming out of the U.S., international shark lovers have reason to celebrate as well. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), voted this week to place stricter regulations on the trade of manta rays, three species of hammerheads, oceanic whitetip and porbeagle sharks, acknowledging that these species are in dire need of protection. When countries export these species, they are required to possess special permits that prove these species were harvested sustainably. This decision will greatly curb illegal overfishing and reduce the numbers of endangered sharks killed globally.
History was made today in Bangkok, when Parties to CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) voted to protect five species of sharks and two species of manta rays. The seven protected species are: oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus), porbeagle (Lamna nasus), scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini), great hammerhead (S. mokarran), smooth hammerhead (S. zygaena), oceanic manta ray (Manta birostris) and reef manta ray (M. alfredi).
All seven species are considered threatened by international trade – the sharks for their fins, and the manta rays for their gills, which are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. CITES protection is an important complement to fisheries management measures, which, for these species, have failed to safeguard their survival.
The vote was to list the animals for protection under Appendix II which does not entail a ban on the trade, but instead means that trade must be regulated. Exporting countries are required to issue export permits, and can only do so if they can ensure that they have been legally caught, and that their trade is not detrimental to the species’ survival.
All of the proposals received the two-thirds majority needed to be accepted – but the listing is not yet final. Decisions can be overturned with another vote during the final plenary session of the meeting, which wraps up on Thursday. This is what happened with porbeagle sharks in the 2010 CITES meeting in Qatar – an Appendix II listing approved by the Committee evaporated with another vote in plenary. As a result, at that meeting, none of the proposed shark species were granted protection. Now, three years later, we’re hopeful that the international community finally sees the importance of regulating the trade that puts these animals at risk.
Keep your fingers crossed!
Happy Friday, everyone.
It's been a rough few weeks for the oceans at CITES, but now it's time to pick up the pieces. If CITES taught us anything, it's that the work of the ocean conservation community is more important than ever.
This week in ocean news,
....Rick at Malaria, Bed bugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets discussed one of the more shady aspects of CITES: the secret ballots, which were invoked for votes on bluefin tuna, sharks, polar bears, and deep water corals.
…The Washington Post reported that Maryland is cracking down on watermen who catch oysters in protected sanctuaries or with banned equipment. Once a principal source of oysters, the Chesapeake now provides less than 5 percent of the annual U.S. harvest.
…For the first time, scientists were able to use videos to observe octupuses’ behavioral responses. The result? The octupuses had no consistent reaction to one film -- in other words, they had no “personality.” Curiously, other cephalopods display consistent personalities for most of their lives.
…The New York Times wondered if the 700,000 saltwater home aquariums in the United States and the associated trade in reef invertebrates are threatening real reef ecosystems.
This is the ninth in a series of dispatches from the CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar.
As Oceana marine scientist Elizabeth Griffin put it: “This meeting was a flop.”
CITES has been a complete failure for the oceans. The one success -- the listing of the porbeagle shark under Appendix II -- was overturned yesterday in the plenary session.
“It appears that money can buy you anything, just ask Japan,” said Dave Allison, senior campaign director. “Under the crushing weight of the vast sums of money gained by unmanaged trade and exploitation of endangered marine species by Japan, China, other major trading countries and the fishing industry, the very foundation of CITES is threatened with collapse.”
Maybe next time -- if these species are still around to be protected.
The failure of CITES means that Oceana’s work – and your support and activism – is more important than ever. You can start by supporting our campaign work to protect these creatures.
Here's Oceana's Gaia Angelini on the conclusion of CITES:
This is the eighth in a series of dispatches from the CITES conference in Doha, Qatar.
More difficult news out of Doha today.
While seven of the eight proposed shark species (including several species of hammerheads, oceanic whitetip and spiny dogfish) were not included in Appendix II, the one bright spot was for the porbeagle shark, which is threatened by widespread consumption in Europe.
The porbeagle’s Appendix II listing is a huge improvement because it requires the use of export permits to ensure that the species are caught by a legal and sustainably managed fishery.
And there is a slight chance that the other shark decisions could be reversed during the plenary session in the final two days.
Here are Oceana scientists Elizabeth Griffin and Rebecca Greenberg reflecting on the shark decisions:
This is the seventh in a series of posts from CITES. Check out the rest of the dispatches from Doha here.
Eight shark species have been proposed for listing to Appendix II of CITES, including the oceanic whitetip, scalloped hammerhead, dusky, sandbar, smooth hammerhead, great hammerhead, porbeagle and spiny dogfish.
Listing these species, which are threatened by shark finning, is necessary to ensure international trade does not drive these shark species to extinction.
Here's Oceana's Ann Schroeer from our Brussels office with an optimistic outlook on the upcoming shark proposals at CITES.
This is the latest in a series of posts from CITES. See the rest of the dispatches here.
Over the weekend, CITES failed to include 31 species of red and pink coral in Appendix II, trade protections that were promised during the last CITES Conference more than two and a half years ago.
These corals are harvested to meet the growing demand for jewelry and souvenirs. The unregulated and virtually unmanaged collection and trade of these species is driving them to extinction.
Many of the corals are long-lived, reaching more than 100 years of age, and grow slowly, usually less than one millimeter in thickness per year. These colonies are fragile and extremely vulnerable to exploitation and destruction, and their biological characteristics severely limit their ability to recover.
Oceana campaign director Dave Allison had this to say about the corals decision (first video), as well as the failure of CITES to protect marine species in general (second video.)
Happy Friday, ocean fans. It's almost spring, and a surfing alpaca exists in the world. Things are looking up.
Before we get to the week's best marine tidbits, an important announcement: Oceana board member Ted Danson will be answering questions live on CNN.com on April 1, so send your ocean queries in, stat!
Also, don't forget that today is the last day to take the Ocean IQ quiz for a chance to win prizes, including a trip with SEE Turtles.
This week in ocean news,
…Yes, CITES failed to deliver on bluefin tuna yesterday, but as Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Julie Packard pointed out, at least the conversation is changing. Bluefin is now in the same rhetorical realm as endangered land creatures such as tigers and elephants.
…Deep Sea News wrote a requiem for a robot -- the Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE) that was lost at sea last week during a research expedition to the Chilean Subduction Zone. On a recent dive, ABE had detected evidence of hydrothermal vents. At the time of its loss, ABE had just begun a second dive to home into a vent site and photograph it.
This is the fifth in a series of dispatches from CITES. You can read the other dispatches here.
Although there were repeated calls from delegates from the E.U., U.S. and Monaco to allow time for parties to meet and arrive at a compromise position, a Libya delegate forced a preemptory vote on the E.U. proposal, which resulted in a 43 to 72 vote, with 14 abstaining.
Campaign director Dave Allison called the defeat "a clear win by short-term economic interest over the long-term health of the ocean and the rebuilding of Atlantic bluefin tuna populations."
The decision could spell the beginning of the end for the tigers of the sea.
Here's Oceana's Maria Jose Cornax on the decision:
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Emacs Lisp uses two kinds of storage for user-created Lisp objects: normal storage and pure storage. Normal storage is where all the new data created during an Emacs session are kept (see Garbage Collection). Pure storage is used for certain data in the preloaded standard Lisp files—data that should never change during actual use of Emacs.
Pure storage is allocated only while temacs is loading the
standard preloaded Lisp libraries. In the file emacs, it is
marked as read-only (on operating systems that permit this), so that
the memory space can be shared by all the Emacs jobs running on the
machine at once. Pure storage is not expandable; a fixed amount is
allocated when Emacs is compiled, and if that is not sufficient for
the preloaded libraries, temacs allocates dynamic memory for
the part that didn't fit. The resulting image will work, but garbage
collection (see Garbage Collection) is disabled in this situation,
causing a memory leak. Such an overflow normally won't happen unless
you try to preload additional libraries or add features to the
standard ones. Emacs will display a warning about the overflow when
it starts. If this happens, you should increase the compilation
SYSTEM_PURESIZE_EXTRA in the file
src/puresize.h and rebuild Emacs.
This function makes a copy in pure storage of object, and returns it. It copies a string by simply making a new string with the same characters, but without text properties, in pure storage. It recursively copies the contents of vectors and cons cells. It does not make copies of other objects such as symbols, but just returns them unchanged. It signals an error if asked to copy markers.
This function is a no-op except while Emacs is being built and dumped; it is usually called only in preloaded Lisp files.
The value of this variable is the number of bytes of pure storage allocated so far. Typically, in a dumped Emacs, this number is very close to the total amount of pure storage available—if it were not, we would preallocate less.
This variable determines whether
defunshould make a copy of the function definition in pure storage. If it is non-
nil, then the function definition is copied into pure storage.
This flag is
twhile loading all of the basic functions for building Emacs initially (allowing those functions to be shareable and non-collectible). Dumping Emacs as an executable always writes
nilin this variable, regardless of the value it actually has before and after dumping.
You should not change this flag in a running Emacs.
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Biology 107 Lab Exam Review
Science B01 with Magor at University of Alberta
About this deck
Size: 132 flashcards
Sign up (free) to study this.
When is a plant cell plasmolyzed?
What is a hypertonic solution?
A hypertonic solution is a solution that has a higher concentration of solutes than found inside the cell
What are some of the functions of cell membranes?
Separation of cell contents from external environment
Organization of chemicals and reactions into specific organelles within the cell
Regulation of the transport of certain molecules into and out of the cell and its organelles
Beet cells red pigment, located in the cell's large central vacuole and surrounded by the tonoplast membrane
Molecule or part of a molecule that absorbs radiant energy (light)
Graph that shows the amount of light absorbed at a number of wavelengths
Four parts of a spectrophotometer
Device that isolates a photoelectric tube
Standard curve limitations
Standard curve is specific to the pigment and its buffer
Standard curve cannot be used for absorbances beyond the range of the standard curve
Cu = Cd/D
Deposits single bacterial cells from a liquid culture over the surface of an agar medium
Prevents bacteria in the environment from contaminating work, and prevents bacteria in work from contaminating the environment
Aspetic techniques that can be used
Sterilize surfaces and working surfaces
Washing hand before and after
Flaming inoculating loop and lip of culture tubes
Reduce time sterile medium, cultures, or bacteria are exposed to air
Work in area with low resident population of bacteria
What does the blank used with a spectrophotometer consist of?
How is a spectrophotometer zeroed?
Define each term in the "fluid mosaic model"
Fluid: membranes are able to move, things may pass through them (selective permeability)
Mosaic: membranes are composed of a variety of different things - phospholipid bilayer, enzymes, proteins that act as channels
Explain phospholipid bilayers
Fatty acid bilayers, where the hydrophobic ends of the fatty acids attract each other to the inside of the layer and the hydrophilic ends are on the outside of the membrane in the water, creating a double layer of fatty acids
How are bacterial species identified?
Cell and colony morphology, chemical composition of cell walls, biochemical activities, and nutritional requirements
What is the best way to isolate individual cells?
Streaking them onto an agar plate, so that each individual cell will produce a colony
Cell wall is composed of a thick layer of peptidoglycan surrounding the cell membrane
Differential stain to divide bacteria into Gram-positive and Gram-negatie
Steps of a gram stain
A basic dye (crystal violet) is used to stain the peptidoglycan in both cells, then iodine is used to increase affinity of the dye to peptidoglycan. Ethanol is then used to dissolve lipids in outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, allowing iodine dye complex to leave cells (peptidoglycan layer too thin to retain dye), while Gram-positive cells retain the dyed due to the thick layer of peptidoglycan - a counterstain is then applied that dies the Gram-negative cells pink
Commonly reocognized cell morphologies
Cocci: spherical shape
Bacilli: shaped like rods or cylinders (long and slender, or so short they resemble cocci)
Spirilla: resemble a corkscrew
What are three other ways to identify bacteria besides morphology?
Presence of flagella (motility)
Formation of endospores
How is motility in bacteria tested?
Bacteria are injected into a tube containing a dye that turns red when oxidized by growing bacteria- distribution of red dye indicates swimming ability
How is formation of endospores determined in bacteria?
Sample can withstand extreme conditions (high temperatures) and will grow at optimal conditions
What are the different enzymatic activities in bacteria that can be tested?
How can resolution be decreased (improved)?
Using an illumination source with a smaller wavelength
Increasing the numerical aperture of the objective lens, as well as using immersion oil with the 100x objective lens
How is the resolution value calculated?
Why do Gram-positive bacteria stain purple?
They contain a thick layer of peptidoglycan which retains the iodine-crystal violet complex CV-I, causing cells to hold the dye and thus retain the purple colour even after the ethanol wash
Why do Gram-negative bacteria stain pink?
Gram negative cells have only a thin layer of peptidoglycan, so the CV-I complex easily washes out, and thus the cells are able to be counterstained pink because they no longer contain any crystal violet dye
What is the effect of high temperatures on bacteria that do not form endospores?
High temperatures will kill cells that do not produce endospores as it can damage cell membranes and denature proteins, resulting in cells that are unable to function
Microtubules, microfilaments, and intermediate filaments which function in cell structure, cell motility (flagella and cilia - microtubules as part of their ultrastructure), and various biological processes
Mitochondria, chloroplasts, Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, nucleus, and vacuoles/vesicles
Function in cell motility (flagella and cilia) and one organism also uses cilia to propel food towards its oral groove
Used in amoeboid movement and organelle movement (intermediate filaments give nucleus its shape - nuclear lamina)
How do microfilaments act in amoeboid movement?
Phase contrast microscope
Phase contrast microscope
Cells and medium have different refractive index, and therefore light traveling through a material with different refractive indexes show a change in phase of light waves, which the microscope then translates to a change in light intensity (areas of higher refractive index appear darker)
Some cell structures contain autofluoresce, some require staining - by exposing cells to several stains at once, different structures will fluoresce different colours
How can contrast be improved?
Staining compounds (vital stain - living cells/tissue, or dead cells and tissues), using special types of microscopes to manipulate light, and by reducing the amount of light
What effect would cytochalasin (inhibits microtubules) and cholchicine (inhibits microfilaments) have on Pelomyxa?
Cytochalasin would cause amoeba to become sessile, as the microfilaments are responsible for the movement of amoebas - cholchicine would have no effect
What effect would cytochalasin (inhibits microtubules) and cholchicine (inhibits microfilaments) have on Euglena?
What effect would cytochalasin (inhibits microtubules) and cholchicine (inhibits microfilaments) have on motile prokaryotes?
What is phagocytosis, and how does it differ from receptor-mediated endocytosis?
Phagocytosis is the process that Paramecium use to take in food. It differs from receptor-mediated endocytosis in that receptor-mediated endocytosis is very specific and allows the cell to acquire bulk quantities of specific substances, whereas phagocytosis is more general and can take in different substances
Organelles (enzymes) that digest or break down waste materials and cellular debris, such as worn out organelles, food particles, and engulfed bacteria and viruses
Contains cell's genetic information, and is surrounded by the nuclear lamina (made up of intermediate filaments) to protect the DNA
Engulfs food via phagocytosis and uses lysosomes to break the food down
Organelles found in plant cells that are used in photosynthesis - they capture light and convert it to usable energy
Proteins that catalyze metabolic reactions without being consumed or destroyed by the molecule - lower a reaction's activation energy (substrate specific)
Molecule to be reacted, that fits into a uniquely shaped pocket of the enzyme called the active site and binds with the enzyme as it is converted into the end product
Allows plants to use starch it has stored after photosynthesis - takes amylose and breaks it down into smaller molecules by hydrolysis (glucose molecules, maltose, and shorter chains of amylose)
Polymeric macromolecule composed of glucose monomers that is too large to pass through a cell membrane
What are enzymes made up of?
Enzymes are proteins, which are made up of amino acids
What is an active site?
An active site is a site that uniquely fits the substrate specific to the enzyme, and will activate the enzyme once the substrate binds to the site
Energy transfer from light to chemical bonds through series of light reactions
What series of reactions occurs in photosynthesis?
Light energy from sun strikes pigments in thylakoid membrane of chloroplast, which is transformed into excited electrons (electrical energy), then into chemical energy in the form of bonds in ATP and NADPH molecules, and the ATP and NADH molecules are then used to power the fixation of carbon dioxide into sugar molecules (Calvin cycle, occurring in stroma)
Determines which wavelengths of light the chloroplasts maximally absorb (these wavelengths also produce the highest rates of photosynthetic activity)
Chloroplast suspension is mixed with indicator dye DCPIP - as DCPIP accepts electrons from the electron transport chain of Photosystem II it becomes reduced and therefore colourless, allowing absorptions to be measured to determine concentrations
What were the controls in the photosynthesis in spinach chloroplasts experiment?
Controls must show that DCPIP is stable and there is no other source of electrons to reduce DCPIP (colour does not change spontaneously) and that the colour of chloroplast suspension is stable and does not change colour spontaneously
What are the independent and dependent variables for the absorbance spectrum of photosynthesis in spinach chloroplasts?
The independent variable is the wavelength of light, and the dependent variable is the absorbance of the chloroplast suspension at varying wavelengths of light
What are the independent and dependent variables for the action spectrum of photosynthesis in spinach chloroplasts?
The independent variable is the colour of light, and the dependent variable is the absorbance of the solution
Why are spinach leaves green?
Spinach leaves are green because they maximally absorb blue and red wavelengths, and green wavelengths are absorbed the least and are therefore reflected back the most, resulting in the green colour
At what wavelength is the action spectrum measured at?
The wavelength that photosynthesis occurs at maximally
Where do light reactions take place in the chloroplast? Reactions of the Calvin cycle?
Light reactions take place in the stroma of the chloroplast, and reactions of the Calvin cycle take place in the stroma
Measuring oxygen levels, sugar produced, or carbon dioxide levels
How is ATP produced?
Through the catabolism of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats
Glycolysis in eukaryotes
Cytosolic reactions to convert glucose to pyruvate (one molecule of glucose results in the net production of 2 molecules of ATP via substrate level phosphorylation
After glycolysis, what occurs in the presence of oxygen?
Eukaryotes convert pyruvate into acetyl CoA, which is transported to Kreb's cycle in mitochondria (produces 2 more molecules of ATP) and then oxidative phosphorylation (the transfer of electrons from food to oxygen) produces the rest of the ATP molecules (carbon dioxide is also formed as a by-product)
After glycolysis, what occurs in the absence of oxygen?
Pyruvate is degraded via a series of cytostolic pathways - lactic acid fermentation and alcohol fermentation (produces ethanol and carbon dioxide, regenerates NAD+ - required for glycolytic pathway)
What sort of feedback system occurs in alcohol fermentation?
Fermentation of glucose produces ethanol, but high concentrations of ethanol are toxic to yeast
Physiological response curve
Why is fermentation necessary?
Why was the yeast flask swirled prior to adding yeast to each tube?
To re-suspend the yeast and therefore the ensure that similar concentrations of yeast were present in each tube (constant)
What would happen if the metabolism in yeast experiment were done without the 10 minute pre-incubation period?
The lag phase of the physiological response curve would be significantly longer as the pre-incubation period brings the tube to a temperature at which yeast metabolizes glucose most effectively, and therefore without the incubation period the yeast would not metabolize glucose as well
What process are the yeast in the Durham tube undergoing?
The yeast are undergoing fermentation - other eukaryotes undergo aerobic respiration, and only prokaryotes undergo anaerobic respiration
What metabolic processes occur in the cytoplasm?
Alcohol fermentation, ATP production, glycolysis, and NADH production
What metabolic processes occur in the mitochondria?
ATP production, Krebs cycle, electron transport chain, and NADH production
Bacterial genomic DNA
Consists of a double stranded DNA helix arranged in a circle that is anchored to the bacterial plasma membrane - 4000 genes that encode all the functions of the bacterial cell
Bacterial plasmid DNA
Floats freely in cytoplasm of bacterial cell
Circular and can assume supercoiled conformation in which circular double helix molecule twists on itself
Much smaller than genomic DNA (2- 25 genes)
Can sometimes conform extra properties to the cell that allow the cell to survive in conditions that it could not survive without the plasmid DNA (only when there is selective pressure)
Arranged in linear strands (chromosomes - 23 pairs) in nucleus of cell (30 000 - 35 000 genes - high molecular weight DNA)
Can be used to analyze small amount of plasmid DNA - DNA is not very pure and maxi prep must be used for further analysis as it is a larger quantity of very pure DNA - separates plasmid DNA from bacterial genomic DNA based on size and conformation
How can high molecular weight (HMW) DNA be extracted?
High affinity for glass - buffer solution must contain Tris and EDTA as it binds magnesium ions which are required for DNAse, preventing DNAse from functioning and degrading the DNA into nucleotides
What does centrifuging do?
Creates a centrifugal force that causes bacterial cells to collect in a pellet at the bottom of the tube - liquid above is referred to as the supernatant
What does vortexing do?
Vortexing disrupts the pellet of cells so that they may be re-suspended
Why is STE added to the DNA treatment?
Washes the medium away from the cells
What is Solution I in the DNA treatment?
A buffered, isotonic solution that is used to re-suspend bacterial cells
What is Solution II in the DNA treatment?
Contains sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) and sodium hydroxide (an alkali) - SDS denatures proteins and disrupts the plasma membrane, causing the cell to lyse and releasing cell components into the solution, and NaOH raises the pH of the lysate to denature the hydrogen bonds between the base pairs of DNA, separating the helix
What is Solution III in the DNA treatment?
Acidic potassium acetate solution that neutralizes the pH in the lysate so that some hydrogen bonds in the DNA will re-form in random base pairs, resulting in a tangled, insoluble mass of DNA - hydrogen bonds in the plasmid DNA reform between the original complementary base pairs (when solution is placed on ice potassium forms white, insoluble mass with SDS that precipitates out along with many of the proteins, cell wall, debris, and genomic DNA)
What does centrifuging do to the genomic DNA-potassium-SDS-protein-cell wall complex?
Causes the complex to pellet in the bottom of the tube and the plasmid to remain in the supernatant solution
What does the 95% ethanol wash do in the DNA treatment?
Removes water molecules from macromolecules by decreasing hydrogen bonding between water molecules and macromolecules (plasmid DNA and RNA come out of solution and precipitate, so that they may be centrifuged into a pellet)
What does the 70% ethanol wash do in the DNA treatment?
Removes the salts which were not removed with the 95% ethanol, and hydrates the pellets slightly so that it may dissolve in the aqueous solution
Why is the 30 minute incubation period necessary in the DNA extraction?
Why is sodium acetate used to precipitate HMW DNA?
The salt ions compete with macromolecules (DNA) for the water molecules
What are the 2 properties of DNA that allow you to separate genomic DNA from plasmid DNA
Size - big genomic DNA precipitates faster with centrifugation
Conformation (shape of molecule) - supercoiled plasmid DNA maintains its shape even when hydrogen bonds in backbone are broken
How can HMW DNA be extracted from solution?
Its affinity for glass and the fact that it forms very long "threads" of DNA
What would happen if the tube were vortexed after the addition of Solution II?
Genomic DNA would break and would not all be centrifuged out, therefore contaminating plasmid DNA
What is the difference between genomic DNA, plasmid DNA, and eukaryotic DNA?
Genomic DNA contains the majority of genes needed for the bacterial cell to function
Plasmid DNA is a small, circular structure of DNA in the cell cytoplasm that contains genes that can allow the bacteria to survive in conditions where it could otherwise not survive
Eukaryotic DNA is much larger and is contained within the nucleus, in 23 pairs of chromosomes, encoding all the genes necessary for the survival of the eukaryote
What is the purpose of the 95% ethanol and 70% ethanol wash?
95% ethanol dehydrates the cell
70% ethanol treatment removes the salts and rehydrates the plasmid DNA, allowing it to dissolve faster
Why must plasmid DNA be kept on ice following incubation?
DNAse will break down DNA at room temperature - T solution has EDTA to inactivate DNAse
What was the experiment performed by Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty?
Tested various cellular macromolecules for their ability to transform non-virulent Streptococcus pneumoniae into virulent bacteria - discovered DNA was the only macromolecule capable of transforming non-virulent bacteria into virulent bacteria
How did the experiment performed in Biol 107 differ from Avery et al?
Escherichia coli was used
E. coli was examined for transformation by a gene on the plasmid DNA instead of the genomic DNA
E. coli cells needed to be made competent to uptake DNA using a calcium chloride solution
Mice were not used (medium containing kanamycin was used instead)
Only DNA was focused on (as opposed to various parts of the cell)
How were kanamycin sensitive E. coli cells made proficient to take up DNA?
A calcium chloride solution was made, which created holes in the cellular membranes (competent cells)
How is a competent cell transformed?
If plasmid DNA entering competent cells is capable of replicating, the competent cells will be genetically altered or transformed (kanamycin resistant) - all descendants of transformed cells should be genetically altered
What is kanamycin?
Antibiotic belonging to the family of antibiotics characterized by their ability to inhibit protein synthesis in prokaryotic cells - they are transported into the cell by oxygen dependent active transport system and irreversibly inhibit protein synthesis by binding to a small subunit of ribosomes in bacterial cell, so cells are unable to synthesize proteins - cell death
What occurs in kanamycin resistant cells?
Phosphotransferase enzyme is encoded and expressed in the presence of kanamycin, which phosphorylates (adds a phosphorous group) to kanamycin and renders the antibiotic inactve
Use of a DNA template to synthesize RNA
Reading of mRNA to produce protein
Plate Count Method
Viable cell count (living cells only) in which original cell suspension is diluted into suspensions of decreasing cell concentration, which are spread onto the surface of an agar medium and allowed to incubate so that single cells may grow into a colony - following incubation colonies may be counted, and each is representative of a single cell originally deposited on the plate
Petroff-Hausser Counting Chamber
Total cell count (living and dead) using a specially designed microscope slide with a depressed surface and etched grid, where a thin layer of cell suspension of known volume is spread and the number of cells in the volume is directly counted with the aid of a microscope
Optical Density (OD)
Indirect method of total cell count, measuring turbidity (cloudiness of a solution due to the presence of particles such as cells), measured using a spectrophotometer, and developing a standard curve
Why is Solution T (Tris) buffer used in the Transformation of Bacterial Cells lab?
Maintains the pH at 8.0 and is the solvent for plasmid DNA
Solution B is the solution used to dissolve DNAse but does not contain DNAse
What occurs during the first incubation period of the Transfomation of Bacterial Cells lab?
What occurs during the heat shock incubation period in the Transformation of Bacterial Cells lab?
Helps the plasmid DNA enter the competent cells and induces the expression of survival genes necessary to repair damage to the plasma membrane
What does the third incubation period in the Transformation of Bacterial Cells lab do?
Allows time for kanamycin resistance gene to be expressed - must be transcribed into mRNA, then mRNA must translate it into a polypeptide chain (phosphotransferase)
The plate which does not contain plasmid DNA, and instead contains solution B, Tris buffer, and competent cells
The plate that contains plasmid DNA that has been broken down into nucleotides by DNAse, as well as solution B and competent cells
There would be colony growth on plate 5+K, as the DNAse cannot enter the competent cells and the plasmid DNA would not have been broken down - the kanamycin resistant gene would have been expressed in the competent cells
What would occur if the environment in which the E. coli was grown was anaerobic?
The kanamycin would not affect the growth of the cells, as kanamycin enters the cell in an oxygen dependent manner
About this deck
Size: 132 flashcards
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Alternative Instruction Program
The Alternative Instruction Program (AIP) provides an appropriate educational setting for students with diagnosed learning disabilities and/or attention disorders. While the standard-sized classroom works well for many students, the learning needs of some are better met in a small group environment providing more frequent interaction and closer supervision.
For admission into the AIP, the student must have a recent or updated diagnosis of a learning disability and/or attention disorder. Other data will also be taken into consideration as part of the admissions process such as standardized test scores, academic ability, observations, input from classroom teachers, work samples, and emotional or behavioral factors. Student progress in AIP is assessed regularly to ensure that enrollment in the program adequately meets the student’s educational needs.
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Archive for the ‘transcendental geometry’ tag
The modern mathematician finds the space of three dimensions, in which our visible universe is containled, entirely too contracted for his conceptions, and is obliged to imagine a space of “n” dimensions in order that his fancy may find room to disport itself. But it is a new idea, on the part of the novelist, to make the conceptions of transcendental geometry the basis for an amusing story.
The very short article goes on to compare “Flatland” with “Through the Looking Glass” and their use of geometry as speculative and imaginative.
In trying to find more about this term, it appears that sadly the intelligent design crowd has laid claim to it. The most I could find (in an admittedly short search) was this related Wikipedia article on “Complex Geometry“:
In mathematics, complex geometry is the study of complex manifolds and functions of many complex variables. Application of transcendental methods to algebraic geometry falls in this category, together with more geometric chapters of complex analysis.
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Aleutian lowArticle Free Pass
Aleutian low, large atmospheric low-pressure (cyclonic) centre that frequently exists over the Aleutian Islands region in winter and that shifts northward and almost disappears in summer. Although the Aleutian low is associated with smaller eastward-moving low- and high-pressure centres, the region’s average pressure is low. It is the source region of the maritime polar air masses that influence the climate of the western U.S. The low-pressure centres that persist in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere consist of the Aleutian low and the Icelandic low.
What made you want to look up "Aleutian low"? Please share what surprised you most...
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March 30, 2012
CDC Releases New Report on Autism Prevalence in U.S.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that estimates the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) as affecting 1 in 88 U.S. children overall, and 1 in 54 boys.
This is the third such report by the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM), which has used the same surveillance methods for more than a decade. Previous ADDM reports estimated the rate of ASDs at 1 in 110 children in the 2009 report that looked at data from 2006, and 1 in 150 children in the 2007 report, which covered data from 2002. The current prevalence estimate, which analyzed data from 2008, represents a 78 percent increase since 2002, and a 23 percent increase since 2006.
ASDs include diagnoses of autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). ASDs encompass a wide spectrum of conditions, all of which affect communication, social and behavioral skills. The causes of these developmental disorders are not completely understood, although studies show that both environment and genetics play an important and complex role. There is no known cure for ASDs, but studies have shown that behavioral interventions, particularly those begun early in a child’s life, can greatly improve learning and skills.
The latest CDC report, “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 14 Sites, United States, 2008,” provides autism prevalence estimates from different areas of the United States, including Maryland. The purpose of the report is to provide high-quality data on the extent and distribution of ASDs in the U.S. population, to promote better planning for health and educational services, and to inform the further development of research on the causes, progression, and treatments.
“We continue observing increases in prevalence since the inception of the project in 2000,” said Li-Ching Lee, PhD, a psychiatric epidemiologist with the Bloomberg School"s Departments of Epidemiology and Mental Health and the principal investigator for the prevalence project’s Maryland site. “In Maryland, we found 27 percent of children with ASDs were never diagnosed by professionals. So, we know there are more children out there and we may see the increase continue in coming years.”
The new report, which focuses on 8-year-olds because that is an age where most children with ASD have been identified, shows that the number of those affected varies widely among the 14 participating states, with Utah having the the highest overall rate (1 in 47) and Alabama the lowest (1 in 210). Across all sites, nearly five times as many boys as girls are affected. Additionally, growing numbers of minority children are being diagnosed, with a 91 percent increase among black non-Hispanic children and a 110 percent increase for Hispanic children. Researchers say better screening and diagnosis may contribute to those increases among minority children.
The overall rate in Maryland is 1 in 80 children; 1 in 49 boys and 1 in 256 girls. In Maryland, the prevalence has increased 85 percent from 2002 to 2008. The increase was 41 percent between 2004 and 2008, and 35 percent between 2006 and 2008.
The data were gathered through collaboration with the Maryland State Department of Education and participating schools in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford and Howard counties, as well as clinical sources such as Kennedy Krieger Institute, Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, and University of Maryland Medical System.
While the report focuses on the numbers, its authors acknowledge that the reasons for the increase are not completely understood and that more research is needed. They note that the increase is likely due in part to a broadened definition of ASDs, greater awareness among the public and professionals, and the way children receive services in their local communities. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to tease these factors apart to quantify how much each of these factors contributed to the increase,” Dr. Lee said.
But whatever the cause, “This report paints a picture of the magnitude of the condition across our country and helps us understand how communities identify children with autism. One thing the data tell us with certainty – there are more children and families that need help,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH.
Researchers also identified the median age of ASD diagnosis, documented in records. In Maryland, that age was 5 years and 6 months, compared with 4 years, 6 months nationally. Across all sites, children who have autistic disorder tend to be identified earlier, while those with Asperger Disorder tend to be diagnosed later. Given the importance of early intervention, ADDM researchers carefully track at what age children receive an ASD diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, most children still are not diagnosed until after they reach age 4. We’ve heard from too many parents that they were concerned long before their child was diagnosed. We are working hard to change that,” said Coleen Boyle, PhD, MSHyg, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
To see the full report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6103a1.htm?s_cid=ss6103a1_w
To the Community Report with state statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/documents/ADDM-2012-Community-Report.pdf
Media contact for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Natalie Wood-Wright at 410-614-6029 or email@example.com
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Researchers in Britain have developed a drug they say could revolutionize the effectiveness of radiation on cancer. Radiotherapy is used to destroy cancer cells by zapping their DNA, thus disrupting their ability to function and reproduce. But like other cells in the body, cancer cells have a sort of DNA repair kit that can minimize these effects. The new drug disables the DNA repair process and allows radiotherapy to target tumors with “deadly accuracy.”
From Newcastle University:
New drug could help target cancer cells with deadly accuracy
A new drug that could revolutionise the impact of radiotherapy on cancer and make treatment much more effective, has been developed by Cancer Research UK scientists at Newcastle University.
The drug, developed by the charity’s clinical unit at the University, has been designed to destroy the protection enjoyed by cancer cells.
Radiotherapy kills cancer cells by causing damage to DNA. But the DNA damage repair kit ? the body’s Sir Lancelot which is present in all cells ? rides to the rescue of the beleaguered cells and can get in the way of effective treatment.
The new drug will, in turn, disable the DNA repair process and allow radiotherapy to target tumours with deadly accuracy, according to research leader Professor Hilary Calvert, speaking at Cancer Research UK’s first annual conference in Kenilworth, Warwickshire.
Professor Calvert explains: ‘Our DNA is damaged all the time during life’s daily routine. One cell sustains about 30,000 incidents of DNA damage every day through the oxygen and chemicals circulating in the body. Therefore the DNA damage repair process is invaluable and keeps us from dissolving into a blob of jelly.’
But the downside of this is that the DNA repair kit also comes to the rescue of cancer cells when they are under attack. This has led scientists to search for a weapon to prevent the repair kit from working on tumours.
The most promising prospect in the armoury is a class of drugs known as PARP inhibitors which block the action of DNA repair enzymes called PARPs*. In pre-clinical studies researchers have found that these drugs are highly effective at sensitising cancer cells to radiotherapy.
Professor Calvert says that one of the problems with radiotherapy ? which is the most common way of treating cancer apart from surgery ? is that the dose needed to kill large tumours is often too toxic to be sustained by the body.
‘We have been trying to find something to make tumours more sensitive to radiotherapy. And we hope the PARP inhibitor will prove an effective radiosensitizer which would be a huge benefit to cancer patients.
‘Clinical trials of radiosensitizers have always posed a particularly difficult problem of design because we have to ensure that they are not increasing any side effects to normal tissue,’ he says. ‘Many of the side-effects of radiotherapy are very late and can occur many months or years after the original treatment.’
Professor Robert Souhami, Director of Clinical Research for Cancer Research UK, says: ‘The development and production of the PARP inhibitors mean we have a potentially very exciting new approach to cancer treatment.
‘But there is still much work to be done. We hope clinical trials will start soon but these would take several years to complete before any drug could be licensed for general use.’
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A view can become a page or a block. There is no difference in work between a page and a block. A page needs a path to display the page. A block is assigned to a region to display the page. There might be a few seconds different to set them up. After that, you can blocks in far more ways than usually shown in tutorials.
Blocks have their uses including constructing complex pages. The content of a page is usually the content of a node in the content region. A view replaces the node to display a list or some other small variation of content.
Next you are asked to make the view more complicated. You scratch your head. What you really need is a collection of views displaying different content. You could use panels and a bunch of other complex approaches. Think about the format again.
If you want a list of different views. You can make each one a block then place them one after the other down the page. Consider a shop.
A shop might list the top selling product in each category with a view sorted by category. The marketing manager then asks for the categories in a different order. The CEO wants some categories to list the top three. The product manager wants one category to list only one product but all the colours for the product.
You could make each category a separate view with each view in a block. Each view can have different criteria. You can give your CEO, sales manager, and marketing manager access to the block admin page and let them fight over the sequence of the blocks.
What method do you use to determine when to use multiple views?
Use the one view when you list data one set of data. Use multiple views when people want different data selection. For example, some product categories have colours but not all product categories. Some product categories have multiple packs but not all product categories.
If the one list has to be by category then colour or pack size and all the products use the same content type, you could use one view to sort by category then colour then pack size. There will be no overlap or conflict or missing data.
The same list becomes more complicated when each product category has a different content type and each content type has a different set of attributes. You might be able to product one list in one view but it will be sensitive to change and management will want change. Start with two views or more views stacked as blocks to form one list.
Another example is a book shop where novels have different descriptions and content types compared to other books. Cook books may have a special content type to allow listing by food type, country, major ingredients, and the reality television show paying for the cook book.
If the data is exactly the same for each view but the display is different, consider multiple displays on one view. The technique is described in another page. you make the first view a page to list the data and validate your data selection. You then add some displays to create the blocks. Each display might vary by as little as selecting a different content type.
Top ten lists are popular and soon take up too much space. People start talking about variations. Perhaps the top three items, including teasers, followed by the next seven without teasers.
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“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” — Jules Renard
“ideas to get your student’s pencils moving”
Writing is and isn’t an easy thing to do in the classroom. Especially nowadays when students don’t have long attention spans and are more and more “digital” and visual learners.
However, it is a vital skill that opens up a world of possibilities for any student. Written communication in whatever language, even with the advent of the internet, is still a necessity. Writing allows communication, controlled and deliberate – POWERFUL, communication. So we have to get our students writing more and better. How?
Below, find a rundown of what I consider the “standard” writing activities for any age group. Just change the topic/theme. Most are for any classroom, EFL / ESL or the regular classroom. My belief is that writing in English is writing in English. Whether it be a second language or first makes no difference because the “eating” is all the same.
I’ve divided the activities into different categories. These are just for the sake of having some kind of organization. I’ve also labeled them
WUP – for a warm up writing activity and something to do quickly.
CP – Controlled practice. Writing activities that help the beginning writer and offer support, repetition and guidance.
F – Free writing activities which activate student learning and allow them to practice what they already know and “test the waters” so to speak.
Where appropriate, I’ve linked to some resources that compliment the writing activity as described.
Listen — Write
There are many ways to “spice” up the standard dictation. The simplest is to have the students fold a blank piece of paper “hamburger” style (Up/down) 4 times. Unfold and they have a nice 8 line piece of paper. Speak 8 sentences , repeating each several times as the students write. Get the students to record their answers on the board and correct. Collect and keep in a portfolio!
There are many online sites where students can do the same but in a computer lab or at home. Or the teacher can even try in the classroom.
http://www.listen-and-write.com/audio – for older students
http://www.learner.org/interactives/spelling/ – for young learners
2. Story Rewriting
The teacher reads a story or the class listens to an audio story. After, students make a story board (just fold a blank page so you have 8 squares) and draw pictures. Then, they write the story based on those pictures. Very simple and powerful! – F
The students close their eyes and the teacher describes a scene. Play some nice background music. The students then write and describe the scene they imagined, sharing their scene afterwards with the class or a classmate.
4. Pop Song Rewrite
Play a familiar pop song. One with a “catchy” chorus. Afterwards, write out the chorus on the board with some of the words missing. Students can then rewrite the chorus and sing their own version. Higher level students can simply write their own version without help. Here’s a very simple example –
He’s got the whole world in his hands
He’s got ___________ and ___________
In his hands. (3x)
He’s got the whole world in his hands
Watch —– Write
Students watch a TV Commercial. Then, they write their own script based on that commercial but focused on a different product. Afterwards, they can perform. F
2. Short videos.
Just like a story but this time students watch. Then, they can rewrite / respond / reflect. Students can choose to reflect on one standard Reading Response question or as part of a daily journal. Ex. The best part was ….. / If I had made the video, I would have ……
Short videos are powerful and if well chosen can really get students writing in a reflective manner. CP / F
How to Videos
Students can watch a short “How to” video that describes a process. There are some excellent sites with User Generated Content. Expert Village and eHow are recommended. After the students watch the video several times, they can write out the steps using transitions which the teacher lists on the board. [First, first off, To begin, then, after that, next, most importantly, finally, last but not least, to finish ] CP / F
3. Newscasts / Weather reports
Watch the daily news or weather report. Students write in groups or individually, their own version of the news for that week/day. Then perform for the class like a real news report! F
4. Travel Videos
Watch a few travel videos (there are many nice, short travel “postcard” videos online). Groups of students select a place and write up a report or a poster outlining why others should visit their city/country. Alternately, give students a postcard and have them write to another student in the classroom as if they were in that city/country. For lower leveled students, provide them with a template and they just fill in the details. Ex.
I’m sitting in a ………… drinking a …………… I’ve been in ……. for ………. days now. The weather has been
……………. Yesterday I visited the ………….. and I saw …………….. Today, I’m going to ………………. I highly recommend ……………….. See you when I get home …………………
CP / F
Look —– Write
1. Pictures / Slideshows
Visuals are a powerful way to provide context and background for any writing. Make sure to use attractive, stimulating and if possible “real” photos to prompt student writing. Students can describe a scene or they can describe a series of pictures from a slideshow.
An excellent activity is to show a nice photo and get students to “guess” and write their guess in the form of the 5Ws. They answer all the 5w questions and then share their thoughts with the class.
Show a picture and get students to write a story or use it as background for a writing prompt. For example, Show a picture of a happy lottery winner. Ask students to write in their journal – If I won a million dollars I would ……
This is a much better way to “prompt” writing than simple script! – CP
Show students a selection of fairly similar pictures. The students describe in writing one of the pictures (faces work really well). They read and the other students listen and “guess” which picture is being described. Similar to this listening activity. CP
Provide students with a series of pictures which describe a story. I often use Action Pictures. Students write about each picture, numbering each piece of writing for each picture. The teacher can guide lower level students like this Mr. X’s Amazing Day example. After editing, the students cut up the pictures and make a storybook. Gluing in the pictures, coloring, decorating and adding their own story text. Afterwards read to the whole class or share among the class. CP / F
Provide students with a sequence of pictures which are scrambled. The students must order the pictures and then write out the process. Ex. Making scrambled eggs. F
Read —- Write
1. Reading Journal / Reading Response
The students read a story and then respond by making a reflective journal entry. Alternatively, the students can respond to a reading response question like, “Which character did you like best? Why?” F
Read a short story and then give students a copy of the story with some text missing. The students can fill it in with the correct version OR fill it in and make the story their own.
These are stories where words are replaced with icons/pictures. Students can read the story and then write out the whole story, replacing the pictures with the correct text. Here are some nice examples. – CP
3. Opinion / Essay
Select an article or OP Ed piece that students would find interesting or controversial. After reading and discussing, students can respond with a formal essay or piece of writing reflecting their opinion. Read them anonymously afterwards and get the class to guess who wrote it! F
4. Giving Advice
Students read a problem provided by the teacher (even better, get students to provide the problem by having them write down what they need advice on). This can often be an Ann Landers style request for advice from a newspaper. Students write their own response, giving advice. F
5. Running dictation
This is a lot of fun but quite noisy. Put students into groups of 3 or 4. For each group, post on the wall around the classroom, a piece of writing (maybe a selection of text you will be reading in your lesson). One student is appointed as the secretary. The other students must “run” to where their piece of writing is on the wall and read it. Then run back and dictate it to the secretary who records it. Continue until one group is finished (but check that they got it right!). CP
Think —- Write
1. Graphic Organizers
These you can make on your own by having students draw and fold blank sheets of paper or by giving them a pre-designed one. Students write out their thoughts on a topic using the organizer. An alphabet organizer is also an excellent activity in writing for lower level students. Graphic organizers and mind maps are an excellent way “first step” to a longer writing piece and are an important pre-writing activity. WUP
2. Prompts / Sentence Starters
Students are prompted to finish sentences that are half started. They can write X number of sentences using the sentence starter. Many starters can be found online. Prompts are also an excellent way to get students thinking and writing. Every day, students can “free write” a passage using the daily prompt (ex. What I did this morning etc… ) Creative writing of this sort really motivates students to write. There are many lists online you can use.
3. Thinking Games
Using a worksheet, students play the game while writing down their responses in grammatical sentences. What the Wordle / Not Like the Other and Top 5 are some games I’ve made and which help students begin to write. Each has a worksheet which students fill out. CP
4. Decoding / Translating
Translating a passage into English can be a good writing activity for higher level students.
Students love their cell phones and Transl8it.com is a handy way to get students interested in writing. Simply put in English text and Transl8it.com will output “text messaging”. Give this to students to decode into standard English and then check against the original. Lots of fun! See the games I’ve designed (Pop Song / Dialogues ) using this principle of decoding text messaging. CP
5. Forms / Applications
Students need to practice writing that will be of use to them directly in the wider world. Forms and filling in applications are a valuable way to do this. Fill in one together as a class and then get students to do this same for themselves individually. – CP
6. Journals / Reflection / Diaries
This type of free writing activity should be done on a regular basis if used in class. Use a timer and for X minutes, students can write upon a topic that is important to them, that day. Alternatively, students can write at the end of the day and record their thoughts about the lesson or their own learning. These are all excellent ways for the teacher to get to know their students. One caution – don’t correct student writing here! Comment positively on the student’s writing – the goal is to get them feeling good about writing and “into” it. – F
7. Tag Stories / Writing
Students love this creative exercise. Fold a blank piece of paper vertically (Hamburger style) 4 times. You’ll have 8 lines. On the first line, students all write the same sentence starter. Ex. A man walked into a bank and ……..
Next, students finish the sentence and then pass their paper to the student on their left/right. That student reads the sentence and continues the story on the next line. Continue until all 8 lines are completed. Read the stories as a class – many will be hilarious! I often do this with a “gossip” variation. I write some gossip “chunks” on the board like; “I heard that..” , “I was told…” “The word on the street is…” “Don’t pass it around but…”. Students choose one and write some juicy gossip about the student to their right. They then pass their paper to the left with everyone adding onto the gossip. Students really get into this! CP / F
8. Describe and guess
Students think of a person / a place or a thing. They write a description of them / it and they are read out and others students guess.
Jokes and riddles are also effective for this. Students write out a joke or riddle they know and then they are read and other students try to guess the punchline. – F
TEXT —– Write
1. Sentence Chains
The teacher writes a word on the board and then students shout out words that follow using the last letter(s). The more last letters they use, the more points they get. The teacher keeps writing as quick as possible as the students offer up more correct words. Ex. Smilengthosentencementality…..
Give students a blank piece of paper and in pairs with one student being the secretary, they play! This is a great game for simple spelling practice and also to get students noticing language and how words end/begin. They can also play for points. Compound words and phrases are acceptable! – WUP
2. Guided Writing
This is a mainstay of the writing teacher’s toolkit. Students are either given a “bank” of words or can write/guess on their own. They fill in the missing words of a text to complete the text. Take up together and let students read their variations. A nice adaptation to guided writing for lower level students is for them to personalize the writing by getting them to draw a picture for the writing passage to illustrate and fortify the meaning. Here’s a nice example. CP
Use a time line to describe any event. Brainstorm as a class. Then students use the key words written on the board, to write out the time line as a narrative. Really effective and you can teach history like this too! Biographies of individuals or even the students themselves are a powerful writing activity and timelines are a great way to get them started. – F
Students are given notes (the classic example is a shopping list but it might be a list of zoo animals / household items etc…) and then asked to write something using all the noted words. This usually focuses on sequence (transitions) or location (prepositions). F
5. Grammar Poems
Grammar poems are short poems about a topic that students complete using various grammar prompts. This form of guided writing is very effective and helps students notice various syntactical elements of the language.
Put the grammar poem on the board with blanks. Here are some examples but it could be on any topic (country, famous person, my home, this school, etc..). Fill out as a class with one student filling it in. Then, students copy the poem and complete with their own ideas. Change as needed to stress different grammatical elements. And of course, afterwards SHARE. Present some to the class and display on a bulletin board. Your students will be proud of them!
SPEAK — Write
1. Surveys / Reports
Students have a survey question or a questionnaire. They walk around the class recording information. After, instead of reporting to the class orally, they can write up the report about their findings.
This can also be used with FSW (Find Someone Who) games. Students use a picture bingo card to walk around the classroom and ask students yes/no questions. They write the answers with a check or X and the student’s name in the box with the picture. After, they write up a report about which student ……. / didn’t …… certain things. CP
2. Reported Speech
Do any speaking activity or set of conversation questions. Afterwards, students report back by writing using reported speech, “ Susan told me that she ………..” and “ Brad said that ………..” etc….. CP
3. Introducing each other
Students can interview another classmate using a series of questions / key words given by the teacher. After the interview of each other is over, students can write out a biography of their partner and others can read them in a class booklet. – F
4. In class letter writing
Writing for a purpose is so important and nothing makes this happen better than in class letter writing. Appoint a postman and have each student make a post office box (it could just be a small bag hanging from their desk). The students can write each other (best to assign certain students first) and then respond to their letter. Once it gets started, it just keeps going and going… – F
4. Email / messaging / chat / social networking
This is an excellent way to get students speaking by writing. Set up a social networking system or a messaging / emailing system for the students. They can communicate and chat there using an “English only” policy. Use videos / pictures like in class – to promote student discussion and communication. Projects online foster this kind of written communication and using an CMS (Content Management System) like moodle or atutor or ning can really help students write more. – F
5. Class / School English newspaper or magazine
Students can gain valuable skills by meeting and designing a school English newsletter. Give each student a role (photographer, gossip / news / sports / editor in chief / copy editor etc…) and see what they can do. You’ll be surprised! – F
WRITE —— Do
Students can write dialogues for many every day situations and then act them out for the class. The teacher can model the language on the board and then erase words so students can complete by themselves and in their own words. Here’s a neat example using a commercial as a dialogue. – CP
Students draw a picture and then write a description of the picture. They hand their description to another student who must read it and then draw the picture as they see it. Finally, both students compare pictures! – F
3. Tableaus / Drama
Students write texts of any sort. Then the texts are read and other students must make a tableau of the description or act out the text in some manner. For example – students can write about their weekend. After writing, the student reads their text and other students act it out or perform a tableau. F
4. Don’t speak / Write!
I once experimented with a class that wouldn’t speak much by putting a gag on myself and only writing out my instructions. It worked and this technique could be used in a writing class. Students can’t speak and are “gagged”. Give them post it notes by which to communicate with others. Instruct using the board. There are many creative ways to use this technique! – F
RECOMMENDED BOOKS 4 TEACHERS
I highly recommend the following two books for ideas and some general theory on how to teach writing. Purchase them for reference.
1. HOW TO TEACH WRITING – Jeremy Harmer
Very insightful and cleanly, simply written. The author explores through example and description, all the facets and theory behind that “looking glass” which we call teaching. I use this as a course text for my methodology class for in-service teachers.
2. Oxford Basics: Simple Writing Activites
- Jill and Charles Hadfield
This book (and series) is a gem! Jill Hadfield knows what working EFL / ESL teachers need and in this book there are 30 simple writing activities which teachers can use with a wide variety of levels and with only a chalkboard and a piece of chalk / paper.
See my Blog post and download the list of my TOP 10 WRITING WEBSITES FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
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Deep in a North Carolina marsh, a lone swamp sparrow sits on his perch in the middle of the water. He’s singing his usual song. But he’s also aggressively flapping one wing, trying to incite a nearby male into action. Onlookers are watching – just to see what happens.
However, this is no ordinary territorial scuffle. This is bird research. The sparrow on the perch is a robot, and the chief, hip wader-clad onlooker – who is also in control of the robot’s movements – is Steve Nowicki, Ph.D., a biology, psychology, and neurobiology professor at Duke University. He’s testing whether the wing flap will actually prompt a fight.
According to Nowicki, birdsong and signaling have a surprisingly close relationship with human speech.
“It’s an unexpected and remarkable model for human speech control, development and perception,” he said. “Birds also learn their songs in much the same way humans learn to speak, and that’s an unusual trait. They have to learn their language from their parents.”
His research, though, isn’t about merely studying how birds behave and communicate. He and his team watch signals and behaviors; they run simulations and analyze hormones; they record neurons and assemble protein sets. They’re deciphering how birds promote their survival and reproductive success. In short – they’re studying evolution, past and present.
Nowicki, who is also dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, was almost the bird researcher who wasn’t. As a student at Tufts University in Boston, he was a declared music major. Late in his collegiate career, he discovered a love of biology – particularly the brain and behavior – and raced to complete a major in the subject. He then pursued his graduate degree in neurobiology at Cornell University.
It was there he was first introduced to the siren song of birds. When it comes to communicating, birds have far less to say than humans. But they express themselves in equally complex ways, Nowicki said.
“Humans use complicated signal communication, and we use an array of sounds to create words that have rich meanings,” he said. “When you look at sparrow songs – the number of notes per second and the frequency – it’s just as complicated as human speech. They’re just not saying much.”
All the same, they’re getting their points across.
Songs, signals and responses
In addition to the aggressive response the swamp sparrow’s wing flap provokes, the absence or introduction of song or even a physical attribute can prompt birds to behave differently, Nowicki said.
Birds, like most animals, are territorial and will, in most cases, defend their turf. But how will neighboring birds respond if a battle ensues? Will they come to help or avoid the fight? Will they treat the male differently if he loses to the interloper? Researchers can test this reaction, Nowicki said, by removing a bird from its environment, playing a recording of another male’s song, and, then, reintroducing the bird to see how the others respond.
“It’s interesting to see what happens, because no one wants a floating male in the neighborhood,” he said. “Research has shown that with some birds, peer birds are more wary of the winner, but they might also try to encroach on a loser’s territory.”
And, just as with other species, birds can use their physical attributes to signal to and communicate with each other. For example, a trait, such as a bright red neck and throat commonly seen in the male house finch, can broadcast a bird’s prowess or superior qualities. The red-throated male finch does attract more females, Nowicki said, but it isn’t because of the color. The pigment comes from a carotenoid-rich diet that gives these males a stronger immune system, making them better mates.
Male song sparrows use their song repertoire in much the same way. The more songs they learn and exhibit, the more attractive they are to females. The reason, Nowicki said, is that birds with larger song selections appear to be smarter. They simply learn songs faster.
“Males who sing better have better developed brains, and in theory that makes them better mates,” he said. “We’re still working out why having a better brain for learning song is better for the female, but it’s clear females prefer these males as their mates.”
Impact on human activity
Understanding the role and importance of birdsong and signaling doesn’t shed much light on the evolution of human communication, but knowing what songs and signals mean to birds can directly affect human choices and behavior.
For example, researchers have evidence that stress directly affects a bird’s ability to develop song, which can ultimately impact pair bonding and mating. If scientists study the way birds living in both polluted and pristine environments sing, the data could play a role in accurately evaluating ecosystem health.
This knowledge also can impact wildlife preservation efforts. It isn’t enough to allocate a certain amount of space to a population based only on the number of animals surveyed. There are often other factors at work, Nowicki said. In the case of the small warbler ovenbird, it’s important to know that females won’t be setting in an area with fewer than 10 males. This type of information can significantly alter conservation efforts, he said.
Regardless of how the research of birdsong is used, Nowicki said, his work constantly reminds him of how intertwined birds and music are with our surroundings.
“I keep coming back to birdsong not simply because it’s a good model,” Nowicki said. “When I wake up in the morning and hear birds singing, it’s part of the wonderful aesthetic world we live in, and my job to learn more about it is a privilege.”
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CHOSEN PEOPLE.(Redirected from PECULIAR PEOPLE.)
Name for the Jewish people expressive of the idea of their having been chosen by God to fulfil the mission of proclaiming His truth among all the nations. This choice does not imply a superior claim, but a superior duty and responsibility on the part of the Jewish people, inasmuch as they have been pledged by the covenant which God concluded with Abraham, their ancestor, and again with the entire nation on Sinai, to testify, by precept and example, to the truth revealed to them, to lead a holy life as God's priest-people, and, if needs be, sacrifice their very lives for the sake of this truth. In this peculiar sense they are called God's own people; their religious genius, as manifested in their patriarchs, prophets, inspired poets, sages, and heroes, having rendered them the chosen people of religion to a far greater extent than the artistic and philosophical genius of the Greeks made that nation the chosen people of art and philosophy, or the juridical and political genius of the Romans made them the chosen people of law and politics.Consciousness of Selection.
Unlike any other nation, the Jewish people began their career conscious of their life-purpose and world-duty as the priests and teachers of a universal religious truth; and their whole history, with all its tragic sternness, was and to the end of time will be devoted to the carrying out of this purpose and the discharge of this duty. This view is expressed in all the Biblical and rabbinical passages referring to Israel as the chosen people, or to Abraham as their ancestor. "For I have singled him out [A. V., "have known him"] to the end that he may command his children and his house after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment" (Gen. xviii. 1, Hebr.; compare Neh. ix. 7, "Thou art the Lord, the God who didst choose Abram").Conditions of Choice.
That Israel's character as the chosen people is conditioned by obedience to God's commandments is stated in the very words of the Sinai covenant: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation" (Ex. xix. 5, 6). "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers" (Deut. vii. 7, 8). The great obligation imposed upon Israel as the chosen people is especially emphasized by the prophet Amos (iii. 2): "You only have I singled out [R. V., "known"] of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." Compare Deut. xiv. 2: "Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth," and ib. xxiv. 18, 19, R. V.God's Witnesses and Their Inheritance.
Particularly is the world-mission of the chosen people dwelt upon by Deutero-Isaiah, the seer of the Exile (Isa. xli.; xlii. 1-7; xliii. 10. "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen"; ib. verse 21, R. V., "The people which I formed for myself that they might set forth my praise"; compare xliv. 1, 2; xlix. 6, 7).
As God's chosen people, Israel is also called His "inheritance" (Deut. iv. 20; ix. 26, 29; xxxii. 9; Ps. xxxiii. 12: "The people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance"; I Kings viii. 53, Jer. x. 16; and elsewhere). As the children of the Patriarchs they are His chosen ones (Ps. cv. 6).—In Rabbinical Literature:
According to the Rabbis, Israel has not been chosen as the people of the Law on account of its racial superiority. "Israel is of all nations the most wilful or headstrong one [
In the Jewish liturgy, praise is frequently offered to God for having chosen Israel from among all thenations of the earth: in Ahabah Rabbah, in the benediction before the reading from the Law, and in the seven benedictions of the holy days and New Moon; concerning which see Geiger's "Jüd. Zeit." vii. 55; and Einhorn, in "Protocolle der Zweiten Rabbinerversammlung," p. 75, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1845.
"The character of Israel as the chosen people," writes Güdemann ("Das Judenthum," 1902, p. 44) "does not involve the inferiority of other nations. The universality of Israel's idea of God is sufficient proof against such an assumption. Every nation requires a certain self-consciousness for the carrying out of its mission. Israel's self-consciousness was tempered by the memory of its servitude in Egypt and the recognition of its being 'the servant of the Lord.' It was the noblesse oblige of the God-appointed worker for the entire human race."
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Ptosis Correction Surgery:
Ptosis Correction Surgery India offers information on Ptosis Correction Surgery in India, Ptosis Correction Surgery cost India, Ptosis Correction Surgery hospital in India, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad & Bangalore, Ptosis Correction Surgeon in India.
Ptosis is the medical term for drooping of the upper eyelid, a condition that may affect one or botheyes.
The ptosis may be mild - in which the lid partially covers the pupil; or severe - in which the lid completely covers the pupil.
When does Ptosis occur?
Ptosis can occur at any age. When present since birth it is called congenital ptosis. When present in the elderly it is called acquired ptosis.
What causes Ptosis?
While the cause of congenital ptosis is often unclear, the most common reason is improper development of the levator muscle. The levator muscle is the major muscle responsible for elevating the upper eyelid. In adults ptosis is generally due to weakening / dehiscence of the levator muscle. It may also occur following injury to the muscle as after lid injuries and eye surgeries. Rarely it may be due to myasthenia gravis ( a condition where there is progressive weakness of muscles).
Why should Ptosis be treated?
Children with significant ptosis may need to tilt their head back into a chin-up position, lift their eyelid with a finger, or raise their eyebrows in an effort to see from under their drooping eyelid. Children with congenital ptosis may also have amblyopia ("lazy eye"), strabismus or squint (eyes that are not properly aligned or straight), refractive errors, astigmatism, or blurred vision. In addition, drooping of the eyelid may result in an undesired facial appearance and difficult social life. In moderate ptosis there is a loss of the upper field of vision by the drooping upper lid.
How is Ptosis treated?
The eye condition Ptosis is trated by a specified sugery called ptosis surgery.
Ptosis is treated surgically, with the specific operation based on the severity of the ptosis and the strength of the levator muscle. If the ptosis is not severe, surgery is generally performed when the child is between 3 and 5 years of age (the "pre-school" years). However, when the ptosis interferes with the child's vision, surgery is performed at an earlier age to allow proper visual development. Ptosis repair is usually completed under general anesthesia in infants and young children and under local anesthesia in adults.
What to expect after surgery ?
Most patients will tolerate the procedure very well and have a rapid recovery. Cold packs may need to be applied to the operated eyelid for the first 48 hours following surgery. Antibiotic ointments applied to the incision are sometimes recommended. The elevation of the eyelid will often be immediately noticeable, though in some cases bruising and swelling will obscure this finding. Most patients will have sutures that need removing about a week following surgery. In children, absorbable sutures are often used.
The bruising and swelling associated with the surgery will usually resolve in two to three weeks. Some patients may need adjustment of the sutures to better align the lid height. This may or may not require additional anaesthesia or a trip to the operating room.
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Juvenile striped bass spawned in the Chesapeake Bay were at a record low at the end of the summer. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently completed its annual young of the year survey and found far fewer juvenile fish than a year ago.
Scientists believe the factors are more tied to unusually warm weather conditions in the Chesapeake than to the number of adult fish spawning in the bay.
The annual survey of fish spawned in the summer is called the young of the year index, and is used to gauge the health of stocks born in that year. The annual index, collected over more than 50 years, has had many highs and lows. This year’s index, the lowest recorded, was .89. Last year’s index of 11.9 was the fourth highest.
Nearly all striped bass found in Vineyard waters come from the Chesapeake. It can take from four to six years for a female striped bass to reach sexual maturity.
Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, called the low index troubling and said it may be tied to environmental factors, since the water temperature in Chesapeake Bay was especially high this summer. Mr. McKiernan said the number of adults spawning in the bay didn’t change that much from last year. He said the index shows how well those juvenile fish survived by the end of the summer, not how many fish were spawned.
“What it tells you is that there is high variability. You see a swinging pendulum. I am not a climatologist, but it would seem that the wild swings are tied to the environment,” Mr. McKiernan said. “Whether you look at the temperature of the water or the amount of rainfall, you’ve got dramatic swings . . . the Chesapeake Bay had one of the hottest years,” he added.
Mike Armstrong, a fisheries biologist and assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, underscored the significance of the striped bass fishery. “It is the recreational fishery in Massachusetts,” he said. “We live and die by the health of striped bass, so we are watching the stocks like hawks.”
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a regional government agency, has been monitoring the striped bass fishery closely since stocks collapsed 30 years ago. Recently, the commission decided to take steps to tighten controls on management of the fishery.
The abundance of striped bass is not determined by a single year class, Mr. Armstrong said, but by watching larger trends. “We are not pushing the panic button. But if we have three years in a row like this, then we push the panic button,” the fisheries biologist said.
Also, new trends were observed this summer. Mr. Armstrong said fishermen saw many more schoolie-sized striped bass in Massachusetts waters than would normally be expected.
He said scientists are wondering whether the large 2011 year class still swimming in the Chesapeake Bay had something to do with the change by pushing the larger juvenile fish out into the Atlantic.
Janet Messineo of Vineyard Haven, an avid fisherman and past president of the Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association, confirmed the trend from her experience fishing the derby this fall. “There were more small fish out there,” she said. “We should be concerned [about the low index] but I think we really need to make sure that the fish are in a healthy ecosystem,” she added. “Right from the get-go, we should be thinking of the bait, from microorgansims to bunker [menhaden, a valuable bait fish that has been characterized as overfished and in need of restoration]. We cannot go crazy over just one species. We have to look at the whole picture if we want a healthy fishery.”
She continued: “The good thing I saw [this year] was that there were bunker. I haven’t seen bunker in a lot of years. One of the problems with striped bass we’ve seen in the past is that they were skinny and emaciated. This year we saw healthier fish. My concern isn’t that there be a large number of fish out there. I think we should be concerned that they have food to eat.”
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Using the same pool of data, the researchers identified a significant drop in overall daily calorie consumption as people got older. The median energy intake among men age 81 and older was 1,733 calories a day, compared to 2,668 calories per day ingested by men in the age group 19 to 30. For women, median energy intake showed a 28 percent reduction from the youngest to the oldest age group, from 1,844 calories a day to 1,325 calories daily.
Based on the results, the scientists concluded that “new approaches to increasing the frequency and level of calcium supplement use to enhance calcium density may be necessary to reduce osteoporosis risks among older Americans.”
Jane E. Kerstetter, a professor of allied health sciences at UConn and a co-investigator on the study, says that calcium plays a fundamental role in promoting bone health and forestalling osteoporosis. In light of evidence that energy (food) intake declines with aging, calcium-dense foods and calcium supplements become vital factors in maintaining adequate calcium intake across the lifespan.
In November 2010, the Institute of Medicine issued new guidelines for daily calcium intake. The current guidelines recommend that men and women ages 19 to 50 consume 1,000 mg of calcium a day; however, after age 51 men are recommended to continue to consume 1,000 mg daily, while women are recommended to increase consumption to 1,200 mg daily.
Kerstetter adds that calcium intake from the diet should come first and foremost.
Typically, one serving of dairy (1 cup of milk, 6 ounces of yogurt, or 1.5 ounces of cheese) provides 300 milligrams of calcium. If a person consumes three servings of dairy daily they will ingest 900 milligrams of calcium, which is often supplemented by an additional 300 milligrams from a variety of other non-dairy foods if the person is on a well-rounded diet. A total of 1,200 milligrams of daily calcium is sufficient to meet recommended guidelines for most people, says Kerstetter.
Those who can’t tolerate dairy products should consider calcium-fortified foods, such as orange juice or over-the-counter nutrition supplements containing calcium, which are best absorbed during meals due to increased acid production in the stomach. Or, dietitians also suggest choosing low-fat or fat-free lactose-free milk and drinking smaller amounts of milk at a time as key strategies to obtain dairy nutrients.
However, individuals should consult a medical professional before starting a new calcium supplementation regimen.
The lead author for the study was Kelsey Mangano, a registered dietitian and UConn doctoral student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Anne M. Kenny, a geriatrician at the University of Connecticut Health Center who studies osteoporosis, served as a co-investigator. Karl Insogna, a professor of internal medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University and an endocrinologist specializing in bone diseases, also participated in the research.
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Race for survival
On the brink of extinction, Honu'ea struggle to the sea
October 23, 2008A full moon floods the wide swath of sand that conceals Orion's nest. Big Beach is lit up so bright we can see where the first ones emerged, the football-sized divot on a small mound of sand cordoned of with yellow caution tape.
This is the third and final full moon to hit the still-gravid mound.
Sheryl King, a biologist with the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, sits at the head of a circle consisting of a dozen or so of us. She explains what we are to do should more baby honu'ea—hawksbill turtles—dig their way out on one of our shifts: make sure they head in the right direction—toward the sea. Keep cats, mongooses, and crabs away. If one flips over in a footprint, push up sand beneath it so it can right itself, but don't ever touch a hatchling.
We determine who stakes out when, then hit the hay, or rather the sand.
Hawksbill nests typically gestate for around 60 days, King said, but she adjusts a nest's "due date" according to various factors, among them temperature and shade.
King spotted Orion, the mother, depositing this particular clutch around 64 days prior to the first hatchlings' emergence. She was watching for nesting hawksbills as part of the dawn patrol, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort to spot nesting females as part of the Honu'ea Recovery Project. She estimated the nest would begin to hatch on October 11. She was only 2 days off.
The project takes place with help from several entities, including FWS, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The aim is to get the honu'ea population up to more stable number.
Orion herself likely hatched very close to the spot where she dropped off her most recent batch.
"They tend to return to their natal beach," said HWF co-founder Hannah Bernard. "We don't really understand how they find their way."
Yet Orion doesn't stick around for very long after nesting. According to King, she spends most of her days off the coast of Oahu and comes to the vicinity of Big Beach every three to four years just to nest.
"I first tracked her, and named her, in 2001," King said. "We've tracked her with satellite transmitters so we have a good handle on her movements."
This is Orion's third or fourth nest this season. Two other nests were laid on island this year by an as yet unidentified female, which Bernard says is a good thing—one more nesting female adding to the species' extremely small gene pool.
This is one of only ten or so nesting areas archipelago-wide. There are three on Maui. Other sites include Kameahame Beach on the Big Island and a black sand beach at the mouth of Moloka'i's Halawa River. Ninety percent of honu'ea nesting occurs on the Ka'u Coast of the Big Island.
Nests contain an average of 140 eggs. But while a single hawksbill may lay nearly a thousand eggs in a given year, Hawaii's honu'ea aren't exactly thriving. King said that they have a one in 10,000 chance of making it to adulthood. Volunteers stake out the nest for 24 hours a day as the due date approaches to help ensure the hatchlings' instinctual seaward striving goes without predatory incident.
HWF volunteer coordinator Angie Hofmann compares the hatching of a sea turtle nest to childbirth. Everyone was antsy in the days leading up to the hatching. A handful of volunteers parked nest-side in beach chairs day and night, eyes locked on the mound for even the tiniest movement. One volunteer called it a "watched pot."
Only this one boils.
The first batch emerged at around 5am on Monday, October 13. Forty-eight hatchlings made their way to the water that morning, but Orion's nest was still far from empty.
Glimpsing these tiny hatchlings, bellies full of yolk, as they march toward the sea is an extraordinary sight on its own, but there is a particular sense of urgency for the little ones whose prolific mama chose to deposit them in the shade of a keawe tree at Big Beach.
Honu'ea are not the enormous green guys that bob up beside you when you're snorkeling at Black Rock or Molokini. Honu'ea are smaller—they grow to be up to 270 pounds, whereas the greens round out at 400. Honu'ea have a beak rather than a rounded snout—hence the Anglo name, hawksbill.
Most importantly, honu'ea are endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and most people you ask will say they're critically endangered; greens are not.
Though their plight is severe and stemming from the same source, green sea turtles are listed as threatened, which means that their numbers are much higher than those of the honu'ea.
Statewide, according to King and Bernard, there are fewer than 100 nesting female honu'ea. Fewer than ten of these will nest throughout the isles in any given year. Only five or six total dig their nests on Maui's coastline.
"That's critically low," Bernard said, adding that the entire Hawaii hawksbill population is extremely vulnerable. "The greater your numbers, the greater your resilience."
They cite anthropogenic—human—causes for the species' alarmingly low numbers: runoff, traffic, lights that disorient nesting turtles, introduced predators, habitat loss and more.
Hawksbills across the globe were once plundered for their shells, which were made into combs, jewelry and even guitar picks. In Japan, according to the 1999 Jay April documentary Red Turtle Rising, they were seen as a sign of longevity, and thus stuffed and hung on the walls in many homes. In Hawaii their shells were used to make dinnerware, jewelry and medicine, though a kapu (taboo) barred honu'ea meat from being consumed (they dine primarily on poisonous sponges, which makes their meat toxic). The tortoiseshell pattern that may or may not constitute your sunglass frames was inspired by the hawksbill. In 1973 real tortoiseshell was banned worldwide under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
|Researchers have tracked Orion's (the mama turtle) route and found she likes to hang out on Oahu, but comes to Maui to nest.|
It may be illegal to mess with them these days, but they're not exactly bouncing back.
That's why the 140 or so hatchlings here at Big Beach, barely larger than your big toe, need to make it the ocean.
So far the turnout has been outstanding. The first night saw 48 turtles scamper into the tide. The next night more than 100 came out. Tonight we'll see the stragglers to the shore, if there are any.
The next day King will excavate the nest carefully with her hands for any that didn't make it out, dead or alive. Live hatchlings will be placed in the water after dusk. Eggshells will be counted and unhatched eggs will be sent to a NOAA lab in Honolulu for DNA testing.
My one to 2am shift comes and goes without a peep. I've been instructed to shine a red flashlight on the nest every few minutes, but the mound is frozen.
I fall asleep after my shift with few expectations.
At some bleary hour a voice startles me awake.
"There's a turtle!" King says as she passes my tent. "A turtle just hatched!"
It's barely a quarter past five in the morning. Volunteers climb out of sleeping bags and tents and flood the area around the nest. One hatchling moves slowly toward the sea in the moonlight, almost a silhouette at this dark hour. Its tracks look like tire tread from a mountain bike. We inch along behind it, awestruck.
After 20 minutes the turtle is at the edge of the sea. Although its flippers have just had a killer workout, the hatchling takes to the waves effortlessly after the lapping water swallows it whole.
Any number of things could have thrown off the hatchling and its siblings. Had this been a beach up the road they may have gone toward bright lights. They may have gone toward South Kihei Road and gotten smashed, which has happened before with nesting mothers; once in 1993 and once in 1996, thanks to speeding motorists. A feral cat (of which there are many) could have gotten to them. King says that even ghost crabs prey on sea-bound hatchlings, gouging out their eyes in a horrific display King herself has witnessed in the northwest Hawaiian Isles.
Hofmann said her major concern is the long-term impact of development on nesting. While Big Beach is a state park and thus can't be built upon, two proposed developments—Wailea 670 and the expansion of Makena Resort—could increase the volume of beachgoers that may, inadvertently or otherwise, disturb the nests.
"If they both get their way there'd be another city down here," she said.
The proposed development sites may be pretty far mauka of where the turtles nest, but storm runoff has an obvious impact on their ability to successfully hatch and make it to the sea, as does lighting.
Hofmann said that, given how close honu'ea are to extinction, developers should reconsider how they determine appropriateness when choosing a building site.
"The turtles have chosen this as their nesting place," she said.
While there are several well-documented hawksbill nesting sites statewide, there is no bureaucratic mechanism that can designate them as a critical habitat.
Bernard said that the only defense for sites with impending developments so far has been a lighting ordinance that the county adopted in 2007, which she said was watered-down.
"It's not the bill that we hoped for," she said, "but it's a start."
Just after six in the morning the camp gets jostled awake once again. Three more babies have come out, a volunteer says. I hop to my feet. The last ones to emerge on their own are making it to sea in the new daylight, each on a separate trajectory, seemingly unaware of one another but probably very aware of us.
We scare away the looming ghost crabs. We clear the path of debris, as the turtles' tiny flippers hoist them along the final stretch of sand.
It takes one honu'ea a few tries to take to the water; the oncoming surf pushes it off course. The other two swim off almost instantly.
Nobody knows where they're headed. They return to near shore areas after about five to 10 years, but the time in between is known as the lost years. One theory is that they attach themselves to little clumps of seaweed, floating wherever the current takes them. Those ready to nest, of course, eventually make it back to the beach of their birth using some mysterious sense that we don't yet understand. The hope is they'll stick around long enough for us to find out. MTW
For more information on how you can help hawksbills visit wildhawaii.org. To find out more about the role of honu'ea in Hawaiian history and culture check out the award-winning 1999 documentary Red Turtle Rising, directed by Jay April. The film is available for free on the Web at filmmaui.com and through the World Turtle Trust.
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Capital and oldest city of the kingdom of Navarra, Spain. Next to Tudela, it possessed the most important Jewish community. The Jewry was situated in the Navarreria, the oldest quarter of the city. When Navarra came under the guardianship of Philip the Fair, and the Pamplonians refused to pay him homage, the Jewry was destroyed by the French troops, the houses were plundered, and many Jews were killed (1277). In 1280, upon the complaint of the Jews, the city was directed to restore to them the confiscated propertiesand to assign to them other ground for building purposes. In 1319 the city council, in conjunction with the bishop, to whom the Jews were tributary, had resolved, in compliance with the wish of King Charles I., to rebuild the Jewry; but this was not done until 1336.
The new Jewry was near the Puente de la Magdalena, and was surrounded with strong walls to guard it against invasion. In the Jewry was the Alcaceria, where the Jews carried on considerable traffic in silk goods, while in a separate street were stores in which they sold jewelry, shoes, etc. Some of the Jews were artisans, and were employed by the royal court; others practised medicine. The physician Samuel, in recognition of his services as surgeon to the English knight Thomas Trivet, was presented by King Charles in 1389 with several houses situated in the Jewry and which had formerly been in the possession of Bonafos and his son Sento, two jugglers. In 1433 the physician Maestre Jacob Aboazar, who had his house near the Great Synagogue, accompanied the queen on a journey abroad. Contemporary with him was the physician Juce (Joseph).
In 1375 the Jews of Pamplona numbered about 220 families, and paid a yearly tax of 2,592 pounds to the king alone. They had, as in Estella and Tudela, their independent magistracy, consisting of two presidents and twenty representatives. Gradually the taxes became so burdensome that they could no longer be borne. In 1407 King Charles III. issued an order that the movable property of the Jews should be sold at auction, and the most notable members placed under arrest, unless they paid the tax due to him. To escape these frequent vexations many of the Jews resolved to emigrate; and a part of the Jewry was thus left uninhabited. No sooner had Leonora ascended the throne as coregent (1469) than she issued an order to the city magistrate to require the Jews to repair the dilapidated houses.
The policy of Ferdinand and Isabella triumphed in the Cortes of Pamplona in 1496. Two years later the Jews were expelled from Navarra. Many emigrated; and those who were unable to leave the city embraced Christianity. Ḥayyim Galipapa was rabbi of Pamplona in the fourteenth century; and the scholar Samuel b. Moses Abbas was a resident of the city.
- Kayserling, Gesch. der Juden in Spanien, i. 34, 43. 73, 93, 105 et seq.;
- Rios, Hist. ii. 452, iii. 200;
- Jacobs, Sources, s.v. Pamplona.
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Twas on the thirty-first of May,
In eighteen sixty-two,
The rebels met our Union force,
To see what they could do.
McClellan was near Richmond then,
That nasty rebels den,
Where whites the gentlemen are crowned,
Where Negroes are not men.
They met and fought with iron will
Each eager to obtain
The mend that every solider loves—
The victor’s glorious name.
The cannon sent her iron hall,
The market, showers of lead,
Which filled the air with dying groans,
And strewed the field with dead
The Ninety-Second stood firm in front,
In Palmer’s bold brigade,
Until in “Dixie’s land” they had
Some scores of widows made.
But when they saw they were out-flanked,
They wheeled about and fled,
While many of our Northern braves
Were numbered with the dead
The double guide our soldiers took,
Soon left me far behind—
That aimble step I could not take,
Although so well inclined.
The rebels came with savage yells,
A Yankee they had found,
With curses bid me “face about,”
And march away to town.
They marched me down with many more,
Through mud and mire to town,
And there with bars and prisons walls,
Yours honor did surround.
They [?] tobacco with in those walls,
In times of peace and trace,
But now the bedbugs and the lice
Hold nightly dress parades.
They gave us rations twice each day,
But nothing for our beds,
With fleas and bedbugs without number
Gently crawling round our heads.
Our morning rations were of bread,
A slice of sinking meat,
Which hunger made us soon devour,
And ever lasted sweet.
At night we had a little soup,
Some water bolled with peas,
And then we took our prison beds,
To dream of lice and fleas.
We were confined three days and nights
Within those iron bars,
When, oh! the welcome news then came,
To get abound the cars.
They marched us through their nasty streets,
That all the crowd might see,
The “hiding Yankees” from the North,
That in than land run free.
The crowd was dense on either side,
Composed of whites and blacks,
While many shouted in the crowd,
To shoot them in their tracks.
We traveled all this days and night,
Oppressed by dust and heat;
We got some muddy water,
But nothing for to eat.
At length each man face crackers got,
All counted our with care,
And this they thought a liberal thing,
Considering who we were.
Again we traveled all day and night,
As we had the day before,
With nothing for our rations,
While our seats were getting sore.
Again our scanty breakfast came;
Five crackers as before,
And this thought a heavy draft
On old Jeff’s three years store.
This morning found us all within
The north Carolina state,
With Salisbury’s prison walls ahead,
Where we could read our face,
We found Carolina on the fence,
A leg on either side;
She says it’s Southern fashion
For ladies so to ride.
She sends her troops to help the North,
Then Northern Prisoners keep;
But vengeance sure is on her track,
And Vengeance never sleeps.
Our prison walls were large and high,
For Spinning cotton made,
When “old King Cotton” ruled as king,
And Negroes were in trade.
But when they found his glory gone,
And cotton would not sell,
They turned their fields into burying-grounds,
Their factories into hells.
They fired upon our stars and stripes,
They stole our arms and money,
And then they cried, “let us alone,”
In accents sweet as honey.
The rebels sung throughtout the South,
In Dixie’s land they’d stand,
And, if they ever lived to die,
They’d die in Dixie’s land.
We found them standing when we came,
When not too drunk or tipsy
“Right smost” they’d rather run and live,
Than die to live in Dixie.
The people here are ignorant,
And iced as tools by rouges,
They’ve herded with the blacks so long,
They’ve got the laugh and brogue.
School houses here you never find,
Such sights are seldom seen,
With truant boys and red-checked girls,
A romping on the green.
I’m proud to say I’m from the North,
Where no one lacks for knowledge,
For every mile or two you go,
You’ll find a school or college.
They keep their slave pens and often sell
Their very blood and bone,
For crosses with the negro slave,
There gently never own.
They keep their slaves in ignorance,
They’re never taught to read,
For knowledge and old slavery
Have never yet agreed.
They breed and sell the negro here
As Northern men would cattle,
The whiter they can get the skin,
The more come in the chattle.
They buy our huts, caps, coats and rings,
And trinkets we have wrought,
As keepsakes of those Yankee boys
They, in their battles caught.
The only way they have to live,
And save our preclous lives,
Is to manufacture rings from bones,
And trade for cakes and pies.
If they should get to Heaven’s gate,
And find all Union there,
They would serve at once to Hell,
And Join their kindred there.
And now we’ve sung about the South,
And of their doings there,
Now let us step within the bars,
And learn the prisoners face.
They give us rations twice each day,
Their coarsest negro’s fare,
And this they think is generous,
Considering who we were.
Our morning rations are of bread,
The loves are very small,
A little slice of bacon,
From which the maggots fall.
They take the liquor from this meat,
Stir in a little rice,
And this we have for supper,
Its flavor very nice.
Our rations here are always fresh,
Because they have no salt,
And if they hear a man complain,
He’s told it’s his even fault.
At night we sleep upon the floor,
We often lay in tiers,’
While body lice in whose battalions,
Charge upon our fronts and rears.
They turn us out a while each day,
Upon our prison health,
To pick the lice from off our clothes,
The maggots from our teeth.
They keep a bake house near our den,
To bake our daily bread,
You’d think some children had the dough,
To make some from cats heads.
The bakers lake our flour and rice,
To make sweet cake and pie,
The half-starved Yanks think they must eat,
So to bakers fly.
They give the prisoner scanty fare,
To rob them of their money;
They say our hungry boys must have,
Some cakes as sweet as honey.
Our generous keeper says to us,
Tells to us one and all,
I fear your dally rations
May sometimes be too small.
If any want more rations here,
To keep your souls alive,
Just step into my sutler’s shop,
And buy sweetmeats and ples.
If any lack the dime of scrip,
Or think his fare is hard,
Just take him to the guard-house,
Or “buck” him in the yard.
And now we’ve sung about our den,
And how we live in there;
Now let us sing about our dead,
In “Dixie’s land so fair.”
When any of the prisoners die,
No matter what their grades,
They get a negro with his cart
To take him to the shades.
They’d get a negro with his cart,
Drawn by a stubborn mule,
To show their height of chivalry
If southern power could rule.
The fifteenth of August Carolina called,
And to the prisoners said,
Just jump aboard my cattle cars,
With some of my “nice bread.”
I’m pledged to take you to your lines,
My pledges seldom fall,
You’ll find my seats are rather hard,
But easier than my rail.
With bounding hearts we heard her through,
Then through the gate did spring,
And when aboard her cattle cars,
We made the welkin ring.
In highest glee we started off,
No joys our tongues could tell;
But instead of going to our lines,
We went to “Island Belle.”
Belle Island is a sandy plain,
Without a tree or shade,
Or cooling spring to quench the thirst,
That heat and hunger made.
Our rations here are very small,
Some bread and stinking beef,
Which only sharpens appetite,
And gives but saint relief.
When beef is scarce we sometimes get
A soup of hugs and files;
And if perchance there should be bears,
They seldom show their eyes.
This nasty, stinking, scorch fare,
We often fail to get;
And then with rage we’d gnash our teeth,
Like madmen in a fit.
Here many of the prisoners lie
Upon the burning sand;
Two weak by far to walk around,
While many cannot stand.
Starvation stares us in the face,
His laws are open wide;
Unless our friends send quick relief,
We down his throat must glide.
Our numbers here grow less and less,
The strongest soon must fall,
For old Grim death is on our track,
And soon will on us call.
Some six or eight die every day,
This face none can deny;
While many with their dying breath,
For food and rations cry.
It’s hard to die in distant lands,
Without a kindred near,
To wipe the death sweat from our face,
Or drop one friendly tear.
A lady came into our camp,
To bring us small supplies;
They dragged her to the old guard-house,
For selling cakes and pies.
They “gagged” and “bucked” a prisoner here
Until he could not stand,
The blood flowed freely from his mouth
Upon the burning sand.
The only crime he did commit,
The only wrong he’d done—
His Northern pride it would not stoop
To [?] those southern guns.
We are ragged set of men,
This prison has no charms;
But “Uncle Sam” will own his boys,
And give them all a farm.
I long to see my friends again,
Of which I fondly dreampt;
But I’d rather see my country free,
And old Jeff. pulling hemp.
Old Jeff. you’d better pack your kit,
For Richmond soon must fall,
For little Mac is stepping back
To mount upon your wall.
Your only hope, “the Old Stone Wall,”
Must soon to ruin go;
He’s run around your land so long,
You thought all safe you know.
And now your health is failing fast,
And your blood is getting low;
You’d better call your boys all home,
Before you go below.
The Stars and Stripes again must float,
O’er Dixie’s sunny land:
And Southern rebels must soon obey,
Old Abram’s just demands.
Now here’s a toast for Uncle Abe,
May he live one thousand years;
And for his firmness in this war,
We’ll give three hearty cheers.
Now here’s another for Jeff.—
May the gallows claim its own:
And when he dangles from the rope,
We’ll give three doleful groans.
Farewell old Richmond’s prison wall,
Farewell old Salisbury too;
And now farewell to Island Belle—
Four weeks on you will do.
And now you’ve heard my story through,
That happy day has come,
When I can bid Secesh farewell,
And leave this Isle for—ANNAPOLIS.
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POMEROY — George Wright has always been somewhat of a conservationist at heart, so it was no surprise to see him transplanting king-sized hickory nuts into a tub of dark soil.
“King hickory nut trees are scarce here,” he says. “My goal is to help get them re-established in this part of the country.”
Asked where he got his “seed” hickory nuts, he said a couple of places, one being underneath a tree near Annie Chapman’s Morgan Rest Bed and Breakfast on Lincoln Hill in Pomeroy.
The whole process of starting King hickory nut tree starters began a number of months ago. George said it takes storage of the nuts in a cold place six to eight months in order for them to germinate. So they remained refrigerated until the weather began to warm a few weeks ago at which time he planted them in a tub and then waited and watched until little sprouts finally came up and growth began.
His goal has always been to plant enough so he could keep a few for himself and have enough left to give away to others interested in propagating the king-sized hickory nuts.
The plants have now grown into little trees four to six inches high and are ready to be planted in areas large enough to accommodate a tall tree which in a dozen or more years from now will yield hickory nuts.
George is ready to give them away to someone like him who wants to see the King Hickory Nut trees more plentiful in Meigs County.
Anyone interested in getting one of the dozen or so tree plants can leave their name and telephone number with his daughter, Susan Clark Dingess, at Clark’s Jewelry Store and George will get in touch with them. He has some specific instructions on how to handle the planting and care for the delicate plants so that they will survive.
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Elementary School • Holidays
Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days: Volume 1 http://0-ebooks.abc-clio.com.ilsweb.lvccld.org/main.aspx?l=E&t=title
Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days: Volume 2 http://0-ebooks.abc-clio.com.ilsweb.lvccld.org/reader.aspx?isbn=9780313014918
Holidays - Kids InfoBits http://0-galenet.galegroup.com.ilsweb.lvccld.org/servlet/KidsInfoBits?subTopic=Social%2BStudies&locID=lvccld_main&failover=0&topic=History%252C%2BGovernment%2B%2526%2BSocial%2BStudies&c=1&searchTerm=Holidays&ste=5&tbst=tsrch&tab=1&bConts=55
More of the Best Holiday Crafts http://ebooks.lvccld.org/ContentDetails-Subject7.htm?ID=EADCA235-983B-45A5-916E-06827FD39655
A collection of 65 holiday-based craft projects. In addition to Valentine’s Day, Earth Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and Christmas, a number of new holidays have been added, including Flag Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, President’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day. There are creative decorations, favors, cards, and gifts designed to enhance holiday celebrations throughout the year.
Hooray for Halloween! http://whyfiles.org/097halloween/index.html
This site examines "the science of Halloween: bats, brains and cemeteries" (THE WHY FILES). Learn about the biology of bats, the study of the human brain, and the archaeology of burials through this humorous, Halloween-themed article.
New Crafts for Thanksgiving http://ebooks.lvccld.org/ContentDetails-Subject7.htm?ID=F513FEF0-6D4C-4DE2-BF26-4E3A2E82016F
It features crafts such as gourd turkeys, pilgrim place cards, and a stick trivet.
Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary http://0-go.galegroup.com.ilsweb.lvccld.org/ps/i.do?id=GALE|9780780809826&v=2.1&u=lvccld_main&it=etoc&p=GVRL&sw=w
Describes 2,500 holidays, festivals, commemorations, holy days, feasts and fasts, and other observances from all parts of the world. Entries cover popular, ethnic, religious, and historic events of international, national, regional, and local significance.
World Holidays: A Rosen Guide for Children http://0-go.galegroup.com.ilsweb.lvccld.org/ps/i.do?id=GALE|5QVJ&v=2.1&u=lvccld_main&it=aboutBook&p=GVRL&sw=w
A guide to celebrations and holidays around the world, including religious, civic, and cultural practices.
| 861
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A transportation study by engineering researchers reveals that different speed limits for cars and large trucks on rural, interstate highways can compromise safety.
“We found that speed variation and vehicle interactions have a direct impact on highway safety,” said Steven Johnson, professor of industrial engineering with the Mack Blackwell Transportation Center. “Data from previous studies and simple logic say that a higher number of interactions among vehicles increases the chances that accidents will occur.”
Johnson reported this finding in Cost-Benefit Evaluation of Heavy Truck-Automobile Speed Differentials on Rural Interstate Highways, a study of speed limits and car-versus-large-truck speed differentials on rural, interstate highways. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, commercial trucking companies and private fleets, the study will help regulatory agencies and trucking-company decision-makers establish policies regarding speed limits and differentials for both heavy trucks and automobiles.
After examining existing literature on speed limits, Johnson and graduate student Naveen Pawar measured the speeds of heavy trucks and automobiles in five states. Speed-limit configurations ranged from a uniform 75 mph for cars and heavy trucks to 65 mph for automobiles and 55 mph for trucks. The researchers also analyzed speed, accident and maintenance data and interviewed truck drivers, safety and maintenance managers of commercial trucking companies and original equipment manufacturers of trucks, tires and engines.
There is a caveat to their findings: vehicle dynamics, such as braking and maneuvering, improve on slower-moving trucks.
“People argue that heavy trucks require longer braking distances for any given speed, and lower truck speeds help equalize the stopping distance,” Johnson said. “On the other hand, opponents of lower truck speed limits have suggested that the differential speeds increase speed variance and therefore have a negative impact on highway safety. Our research demonstrates that it is likely that both of these arguments are correct.”
See Johnson’s report at www.mackblackwell.org/web/research/final-reports.htm.
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Friday Flyby May Trigger 'Asteroid-Quake' on Space Rock
The close flyby of Earth by asteroid 2012 DA14 on Friday (Feb. 15) could trigger a quake on the space rock, scientists say.
"We are going to be looking closely for evidence of seismic activity on 2014 DA14 as it passes by," Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at MIT, said in a statement. "This is the first case of an object coming close enough to experience quakes and where we have enough notice to plan observations."
During the unprecedented close approach, 2012 DA14, which is about half the size of a football field, will cruise within 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers) of the planet. It poses no threat to Earth, but the flyby marks the first time scientists like Binzel have had the chance to observe such a big space rock this close-up.
Binzel believes many near-Earth asteroids get shaken up when they fly too closely to our planet's gravitational field, which could help explain why some space rocks seem to shed a worn-looking outer coating caused by "space weathering." [Asteroid 2012 DA14's Flyby: Complete Coverage]
"As asteroids move through space, they slowly turn dark red," Binzel said. "This phenomenon, called space weathering, is caused by long exposure to cosmic rays and solar radiation. For decades, however, we have known about a handful of small asteroids that looked [light and fresh]; they were not space-weathered."
Binzel and his colleagues calculated the orbits of those squeaky-clean asteroids and found out what they all had in common: close encounters with Earth in the past million years.
"Gravitational forces during the flybys can stretch, rattle and torque these asteroids, causing dark, space-weathered material on the surface to be overturned, revealing the fresh stuff underneath," Binzel said.
Compared to quakes on Earth, asteroid-quakes would look quite minor. Binzel said an astronaut floating next to an asteroid during a tremor might notice its surface sway by a few centimeters or spot "gentle avalanches" on the space rock's steepest crater slopes.
"These asteroids experience [seismic activity] in the milli- to micro-g range," he said. "That might not sound like much, but remember these are small bodies. Gravity is not very strong, so just a little shaking or stretching goes a long way."
Binzel and his colleagues will be looking for changes in the color, spin, shape and reflectivity of asteroid 2012 DA14 as it passes by.
SPACE.com is providing complete coverage of asteroid 2012 DA14's flyby. Visit SPACE.com on Friday for day-long coverage as the asteroid buzzes Earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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| 473
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You may already know something about the benefits of plasma treatment, such as higher treatment (dyne) levels, extended life of treatment over time, the lack of surface morphology degradation, and the elimination of pinholing and backside treatment.
Until recently, low-pressure vacuum plasmas have been used to treat two- and three-dimensional plastic objects and polymer films. The recent introduction of high-density atmospheric plasma for film, foil, paper, foam, nonwoven and woven substrate applications has had a significant impact on the surfaces of these materials at considerably lower capitalization costs.
High-density atmospheric plasma represents a new generation of surface-treatment technology. It allows plasmas to be sustained at atmospheric pressure in a way that permits the surface treatment of polymers and other substrates. It can be configured to work with a variety of feeding systems, including continuous web.
How does Plasma Compare to Corona?Corona treatment is an electrical process that uses ionized air to increase the surface tension of non-porous substrates. Normally, corona-treating systems operate at an electrical voltage of approximately 10 kV.
Like corona, plasma is the electrical ionization of a gas. The plasma (glow) discharge creates a smooth, undifferentiated cloud of ionized gas with no visible electrical filaments. However, unlike corona, plasma is created at much lower voltage levels and temperatures.
Plasma Effects on Substrate SurfacesCorona converts the substrate surface from a non-polar state to a polar state. Oxygen molecules from the corona discharge area are then free to bond to the ends of the molecules in the substrate being treated, resulting in an increase in surface tension.
The same description holds true for atmospheric plasma, with a few exceptions. The rate at which electron bombardment occurs within a high-density atmospheric plasma is up to 100 times greater. This increased electron activity forces greater ion bombardment to the substrate surface. This results in increased etching, chain scission and crosslinking on the substrate's surface, which influences stronger bonding attributes across the surface of the web. Specifically, mechanical interlocking is enhanced, bonding materials together by allowing the adhesive or sealant to take advantage of the microscopic roughness etched to the surface by atmospheric plasma, locking them together. In addition, covalent chemical bonding is promoted, using mutually reactive chemical groups newly resident at the substrate surface (delivered by atmospheric plasma treatment) and the adhesive to form the strongest, most durable bond.
Summarizing the treatment process, high-density atmospheric plasma employs chemical gases that produce controlled chemical reactions on the surface. Chemistry molecules that are introduced are propelled to the material surface. Low-molecular-weight material is cleaned from the surface and specific gas molecules covalently bond to the surface. This is how adhesion can be boosted between the adhesive and the material surface.
Atmospheric plasma technology also eliminates the possibility of backside treatment. The high-speed photos capture the optical differences between corona and atmospheric plasma treatment. The corona image shows the expected "filaments," while the plasma treatment generates a smooth treat pattern.
Benefits of Atmospheric Plasma for Adhesive AdhesionPlasma treatment offers three key benefits that adhesive manufacturers can use to their advantage.
1. Longer life treatments. Substrates that have been atmospheric plasma-treated hold their treatment levels longer than corona-treated surfaces. Longer treatment life allows product converters to take advantage of economies of scale during production, increase inventory life and provide enhanced manufacturing flexibility.
2. Higher treat levels allow for treatment of difficult-to-treat surfaces. Atmospheric plasma treatment is a viable alternative for substrates for which corona treating is ineffective. For example, difficult-to-treat fluoropolymer-based materials like Teflon® do not respond to the corona process but do respond to atmospheric plasma treatment.
3. Treatment of thicker substrates. While substrates that are thicker than 0.125" usually do not respond well to the corona process, they can be treated by atmospheric plasma. Films, metallized films, foils, foams, wovens and nonwovens are all candidates for atmospheric plasma surface treatment.
An atmospheric plasma treatment system called Plasma3™ that can operate at low temperature to provide the advantages plasma technology has over existing surface-treatment technologies has been developed by Enercon Industries. The surface energies of materials treated by this system have been shown to increase substantially, thereby significantly enhancing the wettability, printability and adhesive/ink/coating adhesion properties of these materials.
Web-Based Atmospheric Plasma Market ApplicationsWater- and solventborne, alcohol-based, and cold-seal adhesives are used for a variety of laminating applications. They are used by contract laminators and consumer products companies to bond multiple combinations of film, fiberglass, foam, fabric, paper, nonwovens, and rubber. The laminates are used to produce a range of products, including the following.
- Packaging applications - sealing tapes, weather-strip, labels
- Automotive applications - seals, gaskets, headliners, trim
- Textile applications - protective apparel, outerwear
- Medical applications - medical drapes and garments, bandages, electrodes, labeling, lidding, covers
- Electronic applications
- Bonding/assembly and thermal management tapes
The system also has the flexibility to be operated with variable chemistries and without the generation of ozone, pin-holing, and backside treatment.
For more information, contact Rory Wolf at email@example.com .
| 228
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Docs On Call: Blogs
Multiple Sclerosis in Children
Story Updated: Feb 1, 2013
A new study suggests obese girls may be at increased risk for multiple sclerosis.
Researchers in California identified 75 children, aged 2 to 18, who had been diagnosed with MS. Records of body mass index before symptoms appeared were also accessed.
The children with MS were then compared to more than 900-thousand children without the disease.
All were grouped by weight - normal, overweight, moderately obese or extremely obese.
Nearly 51-percent of the children with MS were overweight or obese, compared to 37-percent of the children who did not have MS.
The risk of developing MS was more than 1-and-half times higher for overweight girls compared to normal weight girls nearly 1-point-8 times higher in moderately obese girls- and nearly four times higher in extremely obese girls.
The same association was not found in boys.
Once considered rare in children, multiple sclerosis
has become more common, especially in teenage girls. Researchers say an increase in childhood obesity may be one cause.
I'm Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV with the news doctors are reading health news for healthier living.
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The unmanned Jules Verne ATV cargo ship breaks up in a spectacular display
during re-entry, as seen on Monday over the Pacific from an observation plane.
The European Space Agency's first cargo mission to the international space station ended in a spectacular fireworks show today, with the fiery re-entry of the unmanned Jules Verne ATV spaceship over the South Pacific.
"Jules Verne has now successfully completed its mission," ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain declared at the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Scotland.
The end came at around 9:30 a.m. ET, when controllers back at Europe's mission control in Toulouse, France, directed the 17-ton craft into its final plunge. Jules Verne, the first of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles, was launched from the ESA spaceport in French Guiana early March 9. It linked up with the space station almost a month later, delivering tons of food, water and equipment.
During its stay, Jules Verne periodically boosted the space station's orbit, and in fact helped the station dodge a passing piece of Russian space junk last month.
But all good things must come to an end: Unlike the Italian-built space cargo modules that are carried back and forth inside NASA's space shuttle, the Euroean-built ATVs are not designed for return or reuse. Instead, each spent craft has to be disposed of safely, by directing it remotely on a plunge through the atmosphere. The wide-open South Pacific is the favorite dumping ground for such space junk, as we saw back in 2001 when Russia's Mir space station fell to its doom.
Jules Verne's re-entry was witnessed by an international team of scientists flying aboard a NASA DC-8 observation plane. Studying the spacecraft's controlled fall could lead to fresh insights about the chemical and radiation effects of falling meteors - as well as better computer models for predicting how objects fragment as the blast through the atmosphere.
The Jules Verne ATV cargo craft glows during its atmospheric re-entry, in a view
captured Monday from a DC-8 observation plane flying over the Pacific. A lens
diffraction flare can be seen in rainbow colors at lower right.
Today's first pictures from the DC-8, posted to ESA's ATV blog, revealed a spray of fireworks similar to those seen during Mir's fall. More tragically, they also recalled what witnesses saw during the shuttle Columbia's breakup five years ago.
Although experts still have to track all the bits of debris, it looks as if Jules Verne's plunge through the atmosphere provided a great light show, but no big impact. There were far more damaging plunges elsewhere on the planet today.
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BEMIDJI -The Governor's Task Force Prevention of School Bullying met with Bemidji students, parents and educators Wednesday evening kicking off a series of sessions to help redefine the state's anti-bullying statute.
"The Governor has organized a task force of citizens from around the state to make recommendations to the Governor and to the Legislature in regards that might be put forth that would direct all the school districts in the state as to how they should address bullying," said Nancy Riestenberg, School Climate Specialist at the Department of Education.
Riestenberg joined members of the task force to speak with students from Bemidji High School and students from Schoolcraft to discuss their concerns about bullying and ways in which they think it could be prevented.
Students like Thomas Caddy and Tia Siddens, 9th graders at Bemidji High School, bullying is present at the school and it is seen both physically and verbally.
"Words hurt more than fists in a lot of situations because if the physical wound isn't there it could still leave a mark on the mind," Siddens said.
The students said the most common targets of bullying in school are people of different race, sexual orientation or people with a mental disability.
"People who don't have a lot of friends are targeted more because if you don't always have those friends there to help speak up," Schoolcraft student Katie Fgevje said. "With less friends you are more vulnerable in my eyes because you don't have that person to kind of help you get through it."
When asked what the students would recommend the task force do to help the bullying problem in schools, a lot of students said there needs to be an effort to teach students from a young age why bullying is wrong, but also to teach the staff how to resolve and prevent bully situations.
"We have some programs that address bullying and I am happy we have them but I don't think they are exactly effective because if the person is doing it they are not going to be listening to the reasons why they are not supposed to be doing it," Thomas Caddy said.
Riestenberg said this was the first of many student sessions she and the task force will conduct but she said she was impressed by how engaging the students were.
"They confirmed for me what I teach in my job as the school climate specialist at the Department of Education and gave insight to the task force about what students face and what they need," Riestenberg said.
Following the parent session, the task force went to the middle school to meet with parents and educators to see what their concerns and recommendations were.
The common concern among the parents was the issue of cyber bullying in addition to racial and sexual orientation bullying. The parents agreed that the school and the parents need to make sure students know their resources on who they can talk to when being bullied.
"We need to be held accountable for our own actions and we not only need to listen to our kids but we need to show them that we are trying to do something," Marty Cobenais, a parent in attendance said. "If we don't make an effort to do something our kids are not going to come talk to us when they have a problem."
Bemidji School Superintendent James Hess said the bullying issue is one that does need to be addressed not only at the school level but also the community level.
"I think about bullying and I think about the school's role in bullying and I don't think the school is the place to lay all of the blame," Hess said. "I know that if you walk into any classroom in the district you won't find any teachers teaching bullying. I think we need to be a part of the search for a solution to bullying but I don't think we are the stopping place, we are the starting place. We need to look at the greater community to find solutions that are going to be the lasting solutions."
The task force will be meeting with schools across the state and will pass along recommendations to the Legislature by August.
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A nocturnal bird of prey.
(AM2: dp. 1,009 (f.); l. 18710; 1 b. 356; dr. 104; s. 14 k.; cpl. 78; a. 2 3; cl. Lapwing)
The first Owl (AM2) was laid down 25 October 1917 by the Todd Shipbuilding Corp., Brooklyn, N.Y.; launched 4 March 1918; sponsored by Miss Ruth R. Dodd; and commissioned 11 July 1918, Lt. (j.g.) Charles B. Babson in command.
Following a New York to Charleston towing assignment, Owl reported to the 5th Naval District at Norfolk, 22 August 1918. Employed as a minesweeper for the remaining months of World War I, she then served as a light ship in the inner approach to Chesapeake Bay until 10 July 1919. From that time until 1936, she was primarily engaged in providing towing services along the eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean. Between June 1936 and January 1941, she operated with units of the Aircraft Division, Base Force, providing planeguard, seaplane tender, and target and mooring buoy planting services from New England to the Caribbean. Then, temporarily attached to Train, Patrol Force at Culebra, P.R., she steamed to Bermuda in May for towing and servicing duties with MinDiv 14. Redesignated AT137, 1 June 1942, she was based at Bermuda until June 1943. During that time, towing and escort duties frequently took her to the east coast, while numerous salvage and rescue missions, including aid to the submarine R1 and torpedoed Argentine tanker Victoria, kept her busy at Bermuda and in nearby convoy lanes.
Detached from Bermudan duty in June, Owl spent the last six months of 1943 with DesRon 30 operating out of Guantanamo Bay. She then steamed back to Norfolk for overhaul, and sailed for Europe. She arrived at Falmouth, U.K., 14 March 1944 to join the Allied forces gathering for the invasion of France. Redesignated ATO137 on 15 May 1944, she arrived off the Normandy coast two days after D-Day. As ground forces pushed inland, she towed port and road construction materials to the French coast, thus aiding the all important flow of men and equipment to the front.
Availability at Falmouth early in the new year, 1945, preceded her return to the United States, 27 February, and midAtlantic coast towing assignments. Transferred to the Pacific Fleet, she sailed from Newport, 5 May, with YNG11 in tow, and arrived at San Diego 23 June, to join ServRon 2. In August she continued on to Pearl Harbor for four months of target towing duty, returning to the west coast 2 January 1946. Owl then provided towing services for the 19th (Reserve) Fleet until beginning inactivation in April. She decommissioned in the 13th Naval District 26 July 1946 and on 27 June 1947 was sold for scrapping to the Pacific Metal and Salvage Co. at Port of Nordland, Wash.
Owl received 1 battle star for World War II service.
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The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 9, Issue 7
, Page 401, July 2009
doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(09)70162-8Cite or Link Using DOI
Swine-origin influenza A H1N1 update
As swine-origin influenza A H1N1 continues to spread through the world, with cases in Asia and Africa, WHO is now debating whether to declare a pandemic.
Since the start of May, the number of H1N1 cases has risen from fewer than 3000 to over 20 000. As of June 8, 25 288 people had been infected, of whom 139 have died.
A key concern was the spread of the virus to developing countries, which will struggle to contain the virus. Africa's first infection was in a young girl travelling back to Egypt fro ...
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Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
He joined the Parcham faction of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in 1965. Despite being regarded as an intelligent man, he was referred to as Najib-e Gaw (the Bull) by his opponents due to his physique. The PDPA staged a successful coup in 1978, but the Khalq faction of the PDPA gained supremacy, and after a brief stint as ambassador in Tehran, Najibullah was dismissed from government and went into exile in Europe.
He returned to Kabul after the Soviet invasion in 1979. In 1980, he was appointed the head of KHAD, the secret police. Under Najibullah's control, it is claimed that KHAD arrested, tortured and executed tens of thousands of Afghans. Najibullah replaced Babrak Karmal as Afghanistan's President in 1986.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, he withstood a coup headed by his defence minister in 1990 and relaxed his autocratic control to gain support. But by 1992 Najibullah agreed to step down in favor of a transitional government. Najibullah tried to flee Kabul, but his departure was blocked by Abdul Rashid Dostum. Najibullah sought sanctuary in the UN compound in Kabul. He remained there until September 1996 when the Taliban captured Kabul. The Taliban dragged Najibullah from the UN compound and hanged him from a traffic light post in the streets of the capital.
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details
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Tata teams up with Aussies for India’s first floating solar plant
The pilot project, which is due to start operations by the end of the year, is based on a Sunengy patented Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology which uses traditional concentrated photovoltaic technology - a lens and a small area of solar cells that tracks the sun throughout the day, like a sunflower
LSA inventor and Sunengy executive director and chief technology officer, Phil Connor, said that when located on and combined with hydroelectric dams, LSA provides the breakthroughs of reduced cost and "on demand" 24/7 availability that are necessary for solar power to become widely used.
Floating the LSA on water reduces the need for expensive supporting structures to protect it from high winds. The lenses submerge in bad weather and the water also cools the cells which increases their efficiency and life-span.
According to Connor, hydro power supplies 87 percent of the world's renewable energy and 16 percent of the world's power but is limited by its water resource. He said an LSA installation could match the power output of a typical hydro dam using less than 10 percent of its surface area and supply an additional six to eight hours of power per day. Modeling by Sunengy shows that a 240 MW LSA system could increase annual energy generation at the Portuguese hydro plant, Alqueva, by 230 percent.
"LSA effectively turns a dam into a very large battery, offering free solar storage and opportunity for improved water resource management," said Connor. "If India uses just one percent of its 30,000 square kilometers of captured water with our system, we can generate power equivalent to 15 large coal-fired power stations."
Construction of the pilot plant in India will commence in August 2011. Sunengy also plans to establish a larger LSA system in Australia's Hunter Valley by mid-2012 before going into full production.
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Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have developed a new type of miniature endoscope that produces three-dimensional, high-definition images, which may greatly expand the application of minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In the October 19 issue of Nature, the team from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH describes their prototype device and a demonstration of its use in a mouse model.
"This new ultraminiature endoscope is the first to allow three-dimensional imaging of areas inside the body," says Guillermo Tearney, MD, PhD, of the MGH Wellman Center, the report's senior author. "Its ability to go places that other imaging tools cannot reach opens new possibilities for medical diagnosis and eventually treatment."
Standard miniature endoscopic devices – which give physicians access to hard-to-reach internal organs and structures – utilize bundles of optical fibers to supply light to and transmit images from the areas of interest. Larger endoscopes that use image sensors to produce high-quality, two-dimensional images can be a centimeter or more in diameter. Existing miniature endoscopes using smaller fiber bundles may be more flexible but have difficulty producing high-quality images.
The new device developed at MGH-Wellman uses a technology called spectrally encoded endoscopy (SEE). Multicolored light from a single optical fiber – introduced through a probe about the size of a human hair – is broken into its component colors and projected onto tissue, with each color illuminating a different part of the tissue surface. The light reflected back is recorded, and the intensity of the various colors decoded by a spectrometer, which analyzes the wavelengths of light. Another device called an interferometer, which calculates structural information based on the interaction between two waves of light, provides the data required to create three-dimensional images.
To demonstrate the device's application in a live animal, the researchers used the system to image metastatic ovarian tumors on the abdominal wall of a mouse. The SEE probe was passed into the abdominal cavity through a fine-gauge needle. The resulting three-dimensional image showed several raised areas of tumor nodules, the presence of which was confirmed by histologic analysis of the tissue.
"The most important feature of this new endoscope is the ability to obtain three-dimensional images, something we don't believe is offered by any commercially available miniature endoscope system," says Dvir Yelin, PhD, first author of the Nature paper. "While the image resolution we achieved in this demonstration is similar to existing small-diameter endoscopes, with further optimization of the optics it is possible to obtain images with 10 times the number of pixels provided by other miniature endoscopes."
"This new technology will offer physicians and surgeons the capability to bring many more procedures into outpatient settings, reduce anesthesia requirements and minimize tissue damage," Tearney adds. "The device's size and flexibility should allow safer navigation through such delicate structures as the salivary ducts, the fallopian tubes and the pancreatic duct. Fetal and pediatric procedures may also benefit from this tool. Eventually, SEE could give rise to new procedures that permit diagnosis and microsurgery in previously inaccessible areas of the body."
Tearney is an associate professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He and his colleagues are working on adapting the SEE device for human studies in the near future. Additional co-authors of the Nature report are Imran Rizvi, Matthew White, MD, Jason Motz, PhD, Tayyaba Hasan, PhD, and Brett Bouma, PhD – all of the Wellman Center. The research was supported by grants from the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, the National Science Foundation and the Whitaker Foundation.
Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of nearly $500 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, transplantation biology and photomedicine. MGH and Brigham and Women's Hospital are founding members of Partners HealthCare System, a Boston-based integrated health care delivery system.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
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Humans are intimately connected with the physical environment, even though we have only been present for a fraction of the vast history of the Earth. We strive to understand how the Earth has evolved since its formation over 4 billion years ago and what types of processes have fostered these changes. Our knowledge of the Earth is critical, not only for piecing together its history, but also to aid in the understanding of issues relevant to our present-day lives, such as: availability of natural resources, pollution, climate change, and natural hazards.
During this course, we will perform a general survey of the physical Earth. We will examine the minerals and rocks of which the solid Earth is composed, the processes that generate Earth's landforms, natural hazards associated with geologic processes, geologic time, and surface processes (e.g., glaciers, streams, groundwater).
Final Exam (May 17: 10:30-12:30)
The final exam will be on materials presented during the final quarter of the course (lectures and materials in chapters 16, 15, 18, 19, 12). The exam will be comprehensive and will include material from the entire course. To get the most recent copies of the study guides click at left.
The field trip to Great Falls (MD) took place on Saturday April 22. About 100 students attended on a morning that set a record for rainfall at Dulles Airport (over 3 inches of rain). The field trip was teh only opportunity for extra credit in the course. To see some photos from previous trips, click here.
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Ears, Nose, and Throat Surgery
One of the most critical areas on the human body is the Ear, Nose and Throat area, commonly called ENT. Many times, obstructions or complications in this area can affect basic health system functions such as breathing, eating and sleeping.
Various surgeries for the ear, nose, and throat are available to improve health and functionality. Airway reconstruction is an option for patients with breathing difficulties such as constriction and noisy breathing, while vocal cord surgery addresses similar problems with sound and articulation.
In many cases, surgeons operate on delicate structures such as minute blood vessels, which requires a level of precision and expertise that our medical staff are skilled at providing. Common procedures in the ENT area can include:
Head and Neck
To find a surgeon at Trinity visit our Physician Finder.
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Rabbi Victor Caro
J.D. Levy Home
J.D. Levy Clothing Store
Rabbi Issac Moses
Some history of Quincy’s Jewish Community
Quincy’s first permanent Jewish resident was Abraham Jonas, an English-born Jew, who prior to his arrival in 1838 had lived in Cincinnati with other members of the Jonas family, had moved to Williamstown, KY where he was merchant and representative in the Kentucky state legislature, and where he had been the Grand Master of Kentucky Lodge of Masons in 1832. Why Jonas uprooted his family and came to the wilds of Illinois remains unclear. Beginning as a carriage, chair, window, and paint merchant, Jonas quickly plunged into local Masonic and political affairs. In 1840 he was elected the first Grand Master of the Illinois Masonic Lodge and in 1841 he was elected to his only term in the Illinois legislature as a member of the Whig Party. Jonas has characterized as quick in perception, a brilliant debater, and a formidable opponent. It was during this one term that he met Abraham Lincoln and their political friendship was solidified. Historians have said that Jonas was Lincoln’s closest Jewish friend, and it was Jonas who helped propel Lincoln’s candidacy for President.
Two of Jonas’s brothers, Samuel and Edward, followed him to Quincy at the end of 1840 or early 1841. These three English Jews quickly blended into the small town, with Samuel becoming one of the founders of the Quincy Public Library. Abraham studied law and was admitted to the bar. His activities on behalf of the Whig Party resulted in his appointment as Postmaster of Quincy in 1849.
At about the same time the first wave of German born Jews began to settle in Quincy. Several had been peddlers and decided to settle down in Quincy. Men like David Hermann who arrived in 1846 and Moses Jacobs in 1847 became successful merchants. When recalling those early years, Moses Jacobs noted that by 1849 there were enough Jews to conduct high holiday services on an annual basis, usually in someone’s home. By 1851 the little community had collected enough funds to allow Edward Jonas to purchase a parcel of land overlooking the Mississippi River for a cemetery. By 1852 it was reported that “the Israelites of Quincy had commenced a congregational organization, by electing a Schochet…” When Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise made a one day stop in Quincy on July 16, 1856, he noted that “there are about 40 souls of the Jewish persuasion hailing from Germany, Poland and England. They do a flourishing business.” He also wrote that they would have a nice little congregation if they could overcome their business jealousy.
By the end of that year, those jealousies had been set aside as 26 families founded K. K. B’nai Abraham, and one year later Reverend Israel Worenski became their spiritual leader as Chazzan and Schochet. The congregation met in the third floor of the Jonas building at the southeast corner of Fifth and Hampshire, across from the town square. This “traditional” congregation grew as more Jews settled in Quincy because of its economic prospects. By 1859 Moses Jacobs reported that there were thirty members, or about 100 residents of all ages. Regular Sabbath services were led by the Chazzan, and the congregation supported the services of a Schochet.
Until this point there is nothing to show that Jews faced any kind of discrimination, and the onset of the Civil War acted to further integrate Jews into the life of the community. Lincoln appointed Jonas to the position of Postmaster, Jewish men enlisted in the military, and several of Quincy’s Jewish women helped to found and to activate the Needle Pickets to assist families of Union soldiers. However, there were stirrings of secession within the Jewish community. When the congregation met in 1861 to elect a Chazzan and lecturer, and a Schochet, Mohel, and Shamus, eight members, mostly Bavarians, threatened to leave. Differences were set aside and Nathan Hainsfurther, a resident of Winchester, Illinois, who attended high holiday services in 1861, said, “None of the greater congregations of the country could offer any more to the devout mind than is the case here. The place of worship is a nice hall supplied with everything necessary to a synagogue, and was very well attended.”
One year later the members of B’nai Abraham had collected enough funds to begin the process of building their own house of worship. Such a place was found across from Jefferson Square. Edward Jonas solicited more funds through the newspaper The Occident in which he noted 45 paying members comprising two hundred persons, a Chazzan and teacher, and “a location in a beautiful city of 20,000 on the banks of the Mississippi which offers a peaceful and prosperous home.”
The rift in the congregation had not healed and on October 18, 1864, seventeen members held a meeting in their place of worship to elect officers and establish a new congregation. These “reformers” wanted to break from the old ways and establish a congregation that reflected the American way. This congregation called itself K.K. B’nai Sholom, and by 1866 it was renting an old Baptist Church as its home.
Meanwhile, just prior to the high holidays in 1866, B’nai Abraham dedicated its synagogue. Designed to hold 200 persons, the sanctuary was 18 feet high, with seats on both sides of a central aisle, one for men and the other for women. The building was lit with gas and handsomely carpeted. The dedication was service was attended by both Jews and Gentiles, but noticeably absent were members of B’nai Sholom.
Perhaps in an attempt to placate the secessionists, B’nai Abraham in 1868 introduced an organ and choir into its services. But B’nai Sholom was already planning its own synagogue on Ninth Street between Broadway and Spring. None other than Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise dedicated the cornerstone on July 18, 1869. Just prior to this, in May 1869, B’nai Abraham suffered a mortal blow, when fire damaged its wooden synagogue. When Temple B’nai Sholom was dedicated on September 8, 1870, it literally towered over B’nai Abraham. Costing $25,000, this red brick structure followed a neo-Byzantine style of architecture, dominated by six story high Moorish towers. At nine stories in height, this building was easily recognizable in the Quincy skyline. Some traditionalists had left B’nai Abraham to become charter members of B’nai Sholom.
Reasonable individuals began to conduct behind the scenes negotiations, but it took Rabbi Adolph Ollendorf of B’nai Abraham to effect a merger. He gradually introduced reforms in B’nai Abraham and his eloquent speeches probably spurred the members to bring about a merger of the two congregations. On July 29, 1872, the two congregations passed resolutions of merger. The following Friday evening the first joint Shabbat service was held at B’nai Sholom, with the final Shabbat day service at B’nai Abraham the next day. Herman Hirsch wrote that "Peace, harmony and good will now exists among the members of the united congregations…for in union lies strength….”
This moment was the apex of Jewish life in Quincy. Social and economic forces in the wider country were having an effect. Quincy’s river traffic gave way to the railroad, Quincy’s was no longer a frontier community, and Quincy’s younger generation of Jews sought to make their fortunes and find their spouses elsewhere. Orthodox Judaism as a mode of worship for Quincy’s Jews had been cast aside in favor of Reform. The size of the Jewish community inexorably declined, and Rabbi Elias Eppstein, Quincy’s rabbi in the 1890s thought that the community was on the verge of death. But Congregation B’nai Sholom has survived, now numbering approximately 65 members, and its building, although changed in appearance, remain the second oldest continuously used synagogue west of the Allegheny Mountains and the oldest in Illinois.
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'sheaves' by steven banken
at biesbosch national park in the netherlands, the act of cutting reed and willow shoots and bundling them just before winter is an annual event,
making it a natural area for supply material. instead of letting the brush just decay, dutch designer steven banken's reintroduces these sheaves into nature
as furniture pieces, whereby he has developed a simple stainless steel metal clamping bracket to hold bunches of the raw material together,
forming bench seating, that is modifiable in length depending on how the reeds are cut. this gives the dried plant new life, a minimal intervention
that brings the reeds back into the environment as outdoor seating in the summer.
simple metal brackets are used to hold the raw material together
one of today's biesbosch reed cutters (left) and shots of the excessive growth of the plant at the national park
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Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP)
The ESSP is a partnership for the integrated study of the Earth System, the ways that it is changing, and the implications for global and regional sustainability.
The urgency of the challenge is great: In the present era, global environmental changes are both accelerating and moving the earth system into a state with no analogue in previous history.
To learn more about the ESSP, clink on links to access Strategy Paper, brochure and a video presentation by the Chair of the ESSP Scientific Committee, Prof. Dr. Rik Leemans of Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
The Earth System is the unified set of physical, chemical, biological and social components, processes and interactions that together determine the state and dynamics of Planet Earth, including its biota and its human occupants.
Earth System Science is the study of the Earth System, with an emphasis on observing, understanding and predicting global environmental changes involving interactions between land, atmosphere, water, ice, biosphere, societies, technologies and economies.
ESSP Transitions into 'Future Earth' (31/12/2012)
On 31st December 2012, the ESSP will close and transition into 'Future Earth' as it develops over the next few years. During this period, the four global environmental Change research programmes (DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP, WCRP) will continue close collaboration with each other. 'Future Earth' is currently being planned as a ten-year international research initiative for global sustainability (www.icsu.org/future-earth) that will build on decades of scientific excellence of the four GEC research programmes and their scientific partnership.
Click here to read more.
Global Carbon Budget 2012
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production increased by 3 percent in 2011, with a total of 34.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere. These emissions were the highest in human history and 54 percent higher than in 1990 (the Kyoto Protocol reference year). In 2011, coal burning was responsible for 43 percent of the total emissions, 34 percent for oil, 18 percent for gas and 5 percent for cement.
For the complete 2012 carbon budget and trends, access the Global Carbon Project website.
GWSP International Conference - CALL for ABSTRACTS
The GWSP Conference on "Water in the Anthropocene: Challenges for Science and Governance" will convene in Bonn, Germany, 21 - 24 May 2014.
The focus of the conference is to address the global dimensions of water system changes due to anthropogenic as well as natural influences. The Conference will provide a platform to present global and regional perspectives on the responses of water management to global change in order to address issues such as variability in supply, increasing demands for water, environmental flows, and land use change. The Conference will help build links between science and policy and practice in the area of water resources management and governance, related institutional and technological innovations and identify ways that research can support policy and practice in the field of sustainable freshwater management.
Learn more about the Conference here.
Global Carbon Project (GCP) Employment Opportunity - Executive Director
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) is seeking to employ a highly motivated and independent person as Executive Director of the International Project Office (IPO) in Tsukuba, Japan, located at the Centre for Global Environmental Research at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES). The successful candidate will work with the GCP Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and other GCP offices to implement the science framework of the GCP. The GCP is seeking a person with excellent working knowledge of the policy-relevant objectives of the GCP and a keen interest in devising methods to integrate social and policy sciences into the understanding of the carbon-climate system as a coupled human/natural system. Read More.
Inclusive Wealth Report
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) announces the launch of the Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 (IWR 2012) at the Rio +20 Conference in Brazil. The report presents a framework that offers a long-term perspective on human well-being and sustainability, based on a comprehensive analysis of nations' productive base and their link to economic development. The IWR 2012 was developed on the notion that current economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) are insufficient, as they fail to reflect the state of natural resources or ecological conditions, and focus exclusively on the short-term, without indicating whether national policies are sustainable.
Future Earth: Global platform for sustainability research launched at Rio +20
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (14 June 2012) - An alliance of international partners from global science, research funding and UN bodies launched a new 10-year initiative on global environmental change research for sustainability at the Forum on Science and Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development. Future Earth - research for global sustainability, will provide a cutting-edge platform to coordinate scientific research which is designed and produced in partnership with governments, business and, more broadly, society. More details.
APN's 2012 Call for Proposals
The Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) announces the call for proposals for funding from April 2013. The proposals can be submitted under two separate programmes: regional global change research and scientific capacity development. More details.
State of the Planet Declaration
Planet Under Pressure 2012 was the largest gathering of global change scientists leading up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) with over 3,000 delegates at the conference venue and over 3,500 that attended virtually via live web streaming. The plenary sessions and the Daily Planet news show continue to draw audiences worldwide as they are available On Demand. An additional number of organisations, including 150 Science and Technology Centres worldwide streamed the plenary sessions at Planet Under Pressure-related events reaching an additional 12,000 viewers.
The first State of the Planet Declaration was issued at the conference.
Global Carbon Budget 2010
Global carbon dioxide emissions increased by a record 5.9 per cent in 2010 following the dampening effect of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), according to scientists working with the Global Carbon Project (GCP). The GCP annual analysis reports that the impact of the GFC on emissions has been short-lived owing to strong emissions growth in emerging economies and a return to emissions growth in developed economies.
Planet Under Pressure 2012 Debategraph
Debategraph and Planet Under Pressure Conference participants and organisers are collaborating to distill the main arguments and evidence, risks and policy options facing humanity into a dynamic knowledge map to help convey and inform the global deliberation at United Nations Rio +20 and beyond.
Join the debate! (http://debategraph.org/planet)
Integrated Global Change Research
The ESSP and partners - the German National Committee on Global Change Research (NKGCF), International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) is conducting a new study on 'Integrated Global Change Research: Co-designing knowledge across scientific fields, national borders and user groups'. An international workshop (funded by the German Research Foundation) convened in Berlin, 7 - 9 March 2012, designed to elucidate the dimensions of integration, to identify and analyse best practice examples, to exchange ideas about new concepts of integration, to discuss emerging challenges for science, and to begin discussions about balancing academic research and stakeholder involvement.
The Future of the World's Climate
The Future of the World's Climate (edited by Ann Henderson-Sellers and Kendal McGuffie) offers a state-of-the-art overview - based on the latest climate science modelling data and projections available - of our understanding of future climates. The book is dedicated to Stephen H Schneider, a world leader in climate interpretation and communication. The Future of the World's Climate summarizes our current understanding of climatic prediction and examines how that understanding depends on a keen grasp of integrated Earth system models and human interaction with climate. This book brings climate science up to date beyond the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. More details.
Social Scientists Call for More Research on Human Dimensions of Global Change
Scientists across all disciplines share great concern that our planet is in the process of crossing dangerous biophysical tipping points. The results of a new large-scale global survey among 1,276 scholars from the social sciences and the humanities demonstrates that the human dimensions of the problem are equally important but severely under-addressed.
The survey conducted by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP-UNU) Secretariat in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC), identifies the following as highest research priority areas:
1) Equity/equality and wealth/resource distribution;
2) Policy, political systems/governance, and political economy;
3) Economic systems, economic costs and incentives;
4) Globalization, social and cultural transitions.
Food Security and Global Environmental Change
Food security and global environmental change, a synthesis book edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Diana Liverman of GECAFS has just been published. The book provides a major, accessible synthesis of the current state of knowledge and thinking on the relationship between GEC and food security. Click here for further information.
GECAFS is featured in the latest UNESCO-SCOPE-UNEP Policy Brief - No. 12 entitled Global Environmental Change and Food Security. The brief reviews current knowledge, highlights trends and controversies, and is a useful reference for policy planners, decision makers and stakeholders in the community.
GWSP Digital Water Atlas
The Global Water System Project (GWSP) has launched its Digital Water Atlas. The purpose and intent of the Digital Water Atlas is to describe the basic elements of the Global Water System, the interlinkages of the elements and changes in the state of the Global Water System by creating a consistent set of annotated maps. The project will especially promote the collection, analysis and consideration of social science data on the global basis. Click here to access the GWSP Digital Water Atlas.
The ESSP office was carbon neutral in its office operations and travel in 2011. The ESSP supported the Gujarat wind project in India. More details.
The Global Carbon Project has published an ESSP commissioned report, "carbon reductions and offsets" with a number of recommendations for individuals and institutions who want to participate in this voluntary market. Click here to learn more and to download the report from the GCP website.
The ESSP is a joint initiative of four global environmental change programmes:
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WILDLIFE organisations have issued a reminder about the impact of recent hot waves on native birds.
With sweltering conditions, and temperatures in the 40s predicted again over the coming weeks, head of research at Bird Life Australia James O’Connor is encouraging people to fill their birdbaths and leave water out.
Mr O’Connor said over the past few weeks, thousands of native birds had felt the effects of the heat wave, both in the city and in the country.
“Hot weather always takes its toll, but if it only lasts for a day or two, birds can usually survive until the weather cools down again,” he said.
“However, when it’s hot for day after day, like the rest of us they start to feel the effects.”
He said, like everyone else, birds needed to drink lots of water and shelter from the heat during the hot weather.
“Unlike the rest of us, they can’t turn on a tap for some cold water, or switch on an air-conditioner to cool down,” he said.
“Just a few months ago, wetlands were brimming with water, but now many are just parched expanses of cracked mud.
“Birds need water to drink every day, and when the wetlands dry out, they need to find water somewhere else or they will die.”
Mr O’Connor suggested the best thing people could do to lend the birds a hand was to place a dish of water in the shade.
“So that the birds can have a drink or cool off in it,” he said.
“And make sure it’s not too deep so that birds won’t drown in it!
“Also, if you have a birdbath in your garden, make sure it’s topped up regularly and placed in the shade so the water doesn’t heat up too much.”
He added it was important to keep the water out of the reach of the neighbourhood cats.
“Heat-stressed birds are easy prey for them,” he said.
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A garden path needs to take you where you're going, but it can do so much more if properly designed.
A path should enhance the experience of your garden, says Darcy Daniels of Bloomtown Garden Design and Nursery. The route of the path, the materials used to make it, the plantings along its sides and its scale all combine to send a message about the experience you want to have in your garden.
A straight path, for example, allows people to move more quickly and might be fitting for the connection between the house and the everyday dining area. You'll also want to cover this area with smooth materials so you don't trip while balancing plates of food.
On the other hand, a path with sinuous curves and a somewhat uneven surface will cause people to move more slowly and appreciate the journey. If there's no room for curves, Daniels suggests using screens or a trellis to break up the space; you can "green" them with climbing plants.
Repeat plants or colors along the path to lure the eye forward and create continuity. For example, says Daniels, place a beautiful grass on one side of the path, then a bit farther down the path, an identical grass on the opposite side, and so on.
Placing a taller plant -- say a hydrangea -- at the inside of a curve will help obscure the view and provide a bit of discovery as you walk along.
Many designers recommend that paths be at least 3 feet wide, but Daniels doesn't abide by such rules. Instead, she recommends that you keep your path in scale with the garden and your plantings.
Now that your head is full of these general concepts, Daniels suggests that you stand back and look at the space:
• How will the trees develop over time?
• Consider the existing hardscape, buildings and plants that you are working with.
You also need to consider function:
• The path has to get you to such places as the back gate and the compost pile, for example, so it has to be practical for the purpose.
Now pull out all of your garden hoses and start defining your path:
• Outline the path's route and leave it in place for a few days.
• Walk the path as you use the garden -- take the trash out, go to your favorite sitting area, take the wheelbarrow for a spin.
• You might even want to put empty pots or other objects along the path where you intend to place plants.
Again, think about the experience:
• Is this section going to have lush plantings and a jungle-like effect?
• What does that mean for the path?
• Adjust the hoses until you're comfortable with the route and width of the path.
NEXT WEEK'S BLOG: We'll start the real work of building a path yourself. In the meantime, if you've got some design tips to share, please post a comment here.
-- Kay Balmer; email@example.com
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Some folks laugh at the notion of Uncle Sam reaching his hand literally into our backyards and regulating almost every drop of water. But, a bill in Congress would do just that. And if it passes, not just farmers and ranchers would be affected, but all landowners.
The Clean Water Restoration Act, or S. 787, gives the government the right to extend its reach to any body of water from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, even to streets and gutters. The legislation leaves no water unregulated and could even impact standing rainwater in a dry area.
Private property owners beware.
While it has "restoration" in its title, it does anything but. The Clean Water Restoration Act is not a restoration of the Clean Water Act at all. It is a means for activists to remove any bounds from the scope of Clean Water Act jurisdiction to extend the government's regulatory reach. But, what the activists won't tell you is that the Clean Water Act is working, and has been for the last 36 years.
Put simply, this legislation would replace the term "navigable waters" from the Clean Water Act with "all interstate and intrastate waters." Farm Bureau supports the protection of U.S. navigable waters, as well as rivers and streams that flow to navigable waters -- all of which are already protected under current law. But, if the Clean Water Act is applied to all waters, farmers and ranchers would be significantly impacted due the number of farming activities that would require permits.
Under this new law, areas that contain water only during a rain would be subject to full federal regulation. Further, not only would many areas not previously regulated require federal permits, those permits would be subject to challenge in federal court, delaying or halting these activities resulting in a huge impact on rural economies.
Farmers and ranchers do a good job taking care of the land. As I often say, they are America's first environmentalists. They use modern conservation practices to protect our nation's water supplies. Many times these efforts are put in place voluntarily because farmers are driven by a strong stewardship ethic.
However, the restoration bill largely disregards the positive conservation role farmers and ranchers are playing. It replaces good works with strict rules. Rather than restore the Clean Water Act, it just brings a new truckload of restrictions for the people who do most to protect our water.
The Clean Water Restoration Act is regulatory overkill. It is written to give the federal government control of structures such as drainage ditches, which are only wet after rainfall. Taking these changes one step further, it would likely give federal regulators the ability to control everyday farming activities in adjacent fields.
Hard-working farm families can't afford, nor do they deserve, Uncle Sam's hand reaching into their backyards, their fields or even their puddles of rainwater.
Bob Stallman is president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
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This archived Web page remains online for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. This page will not be altered or updated. Web pages that are archived on the Internet are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats of this page on the Contact Us page.
To help you get a clearer picture of British North America's territorial evolution, this section provides a series of maps that recount important moments in Canada's history. These maps cover the period from the French colonial era of the seventeenth century to the creation of Nunavut in 1999.
The map descriptions provided below have been reproduced from the original maps.
First successful French settlements in North America: Port Royal (1606), and Québec (1609). English settlements in Virginia begins (1606-07). French and English territorial claims overlap Acadia. Acadia is recognized as French possession by the Treaty of Breda (1667). A Royal Charter (1670) grants sole trading rights in Hudson Bay drainage basin to the Hudson's Bay Co.
By the Treaty of Paris (1763), eastern North America becomes British territory except St-Pierre and Miquelon Islands (France). British colonial governments for Quebec, Newfoundland (with Île d'Anticosti and Îles de la Madeleine), Nova Scotia (including present-day N.B. and P.E.I.). Hudson's Bay Co. still administers Rupert's Land. Louisiana is ceded to Spain by France.
Following the Constitutional Act, Quebec is divided into Upper and Lower Canada (1791). Spain cedes Louisiana back to France (1800). U.S.A. purchases Louisiana (1803).
The Province of Canada is formed by uniting Upper and Lower Canada (1840). The international boundary from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific is described by the Oregon Treaty (1846). The northern portion of the Oregon Territory is called New Caledonia, a name used by Simon Fraser in 1806. The Hudson's Bay Co. is granted Vancouver's Island to develop a colony (1849).
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Canada are united in a federal state, the Dominion of Canada, by the British North America Act (July 1, 1867). The province of Canada is divided into Ontario and Quebec. The United States of America proclaims the purchase of Alaska from Russia (June 20).
The North-West Territories (Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory) are acquired by Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company. From part of them Manitoba is created as the fifth province.
British Columbia joins the Dominion of Canada as the sixth province.
Prince Edward Island enters Confederation as the seventh province.
Boundaries are changed in the Districts of Mackenzie, Keewatin, Ungava, Franklin and Yukon (1897). The District of Yukon becomes a Territory separate from the North-West Territories (1898). Quebec boundaries are extended north.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are created as provinces to make a total of nine provinces in the Dominion of Canada (1905). The district of Keewatin is transferred back to the Northwest Territories. Due to changes in adjoining areas the boundaries of the Northwest Territories are redefined (1906).
At its own request, after a plebiscite, Newfoundland enters the Confederation as the tenth and most recent province of the Dominion of Canada.
Nunavut became Canada's third territory April 1, 1999. For the first time since the entry of Newfoundland into Confederation fifty years ago, the internal boundaries of Canada have changed.
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Darryl D’Monte continues his reportage of the Climate Action Network International meet on in Bangkok where, he says, two NGOs put forward blueprints that could be templates on which the new climate treaty is based
Two NGOs -- the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and a consortium led by Greenpeace -- have put forward blueprints that could be templates on which the new climate treaty, due to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December, is based.
WWF employs the concept of greenhouse development rights (GDRs), which have earlier also been propagated by the Stockholm Environment Institute and others. This August, it released a report titled ‘Sharing the effort under a global carbon budget’.
WWF says: “A strict global carbon budget between now and 2050 based on a fair distribution between rich and poor nations has the potential to prevent dangerous climate change and keep temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius.”
The report is based on research and shows different ways to cut global emissions by at least 80% globally, by 2050, and by 30% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. Both the EU and US have agreed to this 2050 target but differ drastically on the intermediate goals, which have a vital bearing on keeping global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees C, beyond which there will be catastrophic climate changes.
“In order to avoid the worst and most dramatic consequences of climate change, governments need to apply the strictest measures to stay within a tight and total long-term global carbon budget,” said Stephan Singer, director of global energy policy at WWF. “Ultimately, a global carbon budget is equal to a full global cap on emissions.”
According to the analysis, the total carbon budget -- the amount of tolerable global emissions over a period of time -- has to be set roughly at 1,600 Gt CO2 eq (gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) between 1990 and 2050.
As the world has already emitted a large part of this, the budget from today until 2050 is reduced to 970 Gt CO2 eq, excluding land use changes.
The report evaluates different pathways to reduce emissions, all in line with the budget. It describes three different methodologies which could be applied to distribute the burden and the benefits of a global carbon budget in a fair and equitable way.
- Greenhouse development rights (GDRs), where all countries need to reduce emissions below business-as-usual based on their per capita emissions, poverty thresholds, and GDP per capita.
- Contraction and convergence (C&C), where per capita allowances converge from a country’s current level to a level equal for all countries within a given period.
- Common but differentiated convergence (CDC), where developed countries’ per capita emissions converge to an equal level for all countries and others converge to the same level once their per capita emissions reach a global average.
The report says that by 2050, the GDR methodology requires developed nations as a group to reduce emissions by 157% (twice what they are contemplating). “Given that they cannot cut domestic emissions by more than 100%, they will need to finance emission reductions in other countries to reach their total.”
While the greenhouse development rights method allows an increase for most developing countries, at least for the initial period, the two other methods give less room for emissions increase. Under the C&C and CDC methodology, China, for example, would be required to reduce by at least 70% and India by 2-7% by 2050, compared to 1990.
The poorest countries will be allowed to continue to grow emissions until at least 2050 under the GDR methodology, but will be required to reduce them after 2025 under the two remaining allocation options.
The Greenpeace proposal, which has WWF and other partners, was released at an earlier UN climate meet in Bonn this year. It also talks of a global carbon budget. Industrial countries would have to phase out their fossil fuel energy consumption by 2050. The trajectory would be as follows: 23% between 2013 and 2017, 40% by 2020 (twice the EU commitment), and 95% by 2050.
Globally, deforestation emissions would need to be reduced by three-quarters by 2020, and fossil fuel consumption by developing countries would have to peak by 2020 and then decline.
The proposal envisages that industrial countries will provide at least $160 billion a year from 2013 to 2017, “with each country assuming national responsibility for an assessed portion of this amount as part of its binding national obligation for the same period”.
The main source of this funding, which could prove controversial, would be auctioning 10% of industrial countries’ emissions allocations. There would also be levies on aviation and shipping, since both add to global warming.
Greenpeace proposes a Copenhagen climate facility which would apportion $160 billion as follows:
- $56 billion for developing countries to adapt to climate change.
- $7 billion a year as insurance against such risks.
- $42 billion in reducing forest destruction and degradation.
- $56 billion on mitigation and technology diffusion.
Talks at Bangkok are deadlocked between the G77 and China that want to continue with the Kyoto Protocol, and the US which wants a new treaty. The EU is open to a continuation of the old treaty with a new track to include the US (which has not ratified Kyoto), as well as emerging developing countries. Where and how such proposals will dovetail with the document now being negotiated is by no means clear, and it will be nothing less than a catastrophe for the entire planet if Copenhagen ends in a stalemate.
Infochange News & Features, October 2009
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Two well-preserved sections of the Antonine Wall are located at Hillfoot Cemetery, about a mile from the Roman bath at Bearsden, located in in southwestern Scotland near Glasgow. The exposed sections, within easy walking distance of each other, are stone footings which lay at the base of the Wall. They provide vivid examples of the massive size and careful construction methods used in the Wall.
(Figs.1,2: Exposed footings of Antonine Wall in Hillfoot (Photos: Athena Review).]
These portions of the ancient wall were exposed in 1903 and 1922, during expansion of the cemetery. The Antonine Wall at this location was originally 4.3 meters wide, but portions found at Hillfoot were later widened to 5 meters. Each of the exposed basal sections has outside rows of large dressed curbstones and a drainage system.
This drainage culvert crosses a basal section of the Antonine Wall at Hillfoot Cemetery in Bearsden, near Glasgow, Scotland. The Wall was built and maintained between 142 and 165 AD.
[Fig.3: Drainage culvert in Antonine Wall at Hillfoot (Photo: Athena Review).]
[References: Keppie, Lawrence. Scotland's Roman Remains. Glasgow, 1986, 1990.]
return to index for Antonine Wall.
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Copyright © 1996-9 Athena Publications, Inc. (All Rights Reserved).
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Science in fiction affects our ability to understand science in real life. For instance, you might already be familiar with the idea that detective shows on TV, particularly forensics shows like CSI, might be influencing what juries expect to see in a courtroom.
This is called the "CSI effect" and it's hotly debated. Some prosecutors think it has a real impact on jury decisions—if they don't get the fancy, scientific evidence they've been conditioned to expect then they won't convict. Meanwhile, though, empirical evidence seems to show a more complicated pattern. Surveys of more than 2000 Michigan jurors found that, while people were heavily expecting to see some high-tech forensic evidence during trials, that expectation probably had more to do with the general proliferation of technology throughout society. More interestingly, that broad expectation didn't seem to definitively influence how jurors voted during a specific trial. In other words: The jury is still out. (*Puts on sunglasses*)
A FRONTLINE documentary that airs tomorrow centers around an interesting corollary on this issue: Whether or not shows like CSI influence juries to expect more technology, they do present a wildly inaccurate portrait of how accurate that technology is. The reality is, many of the tools and techniques used in detective work have never been scientifically verified. We don't know that they actually tell us what they purport to tell us. Other forensic technologies do work, but only if you use them right—and there's no across-the-board standard guaranteeing that happens.
Even ideas you think you can trust implicitly—like fingerprint evidence—turn out to have serious flaws that are seriously under-appreciated by cops, lawyers, judges, and juries.
Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, was at the center of international controversy in 2004 after the FBI and an independent analyst incorrectly matched his prints to a partial print found on a bag of detonators from the Madrid terrorist bombings.
Dror asked five fingerprint experts to examine what they were told were the erroneously matched prints of Mayfield. In fact, they were re-examining prints from their own past cases. Only one of the experts stuck by their previous judgments. Three reversed their previous decisions and one deemed them “inconclusive.”
Dror’s argument is that these competent and well-meaning experts were swayed by “cognitive bias”: what they knew (or thought they knew) about the case in front of them swayed their analysis. The Mayfield case and studies like Dror’s have changed how fingerprints are used in the criminal justice system. The FBI no longer testifies that fingerprints are 100 percent infallible.
The Real CSI episode of FRONTLINE airs tomorrow, April 17th. Check out the FRONTLINE website for more information.
Image: Fingerprint developed with black magnetic powder on a cool mint Listerine oral care strip, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jackofspades's photostream.
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Job Description: To Explore the Unknown
Curiosity about how life might have evolved on Mars could help reveal more about our own planet.
Planetary studies can spark the imagination. We want to go to Mars. Humans have dreamed of going to another planet and looking for life throughout the ages. We want to better understand the nature of the Solar System and we want to know if we're alone.
We're finding out as much as we can about our nearest habitable neighbor in order to lay the groundwork for the eventual colonization of Mars. There is nothing scientifically stopping us.
A passion for exploration
The discovery of hundreds of worlds around other stars has shown that planets orbit at least 5 to 10 percent of all stars. But how many of these planets are Earth-size, and possibly Earth-like?
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Part 2 - Those Who Are Unable to See the Fact of Creation The theory of evolution is a philosophy and a conception of the world that produces false hypotheses, assumptions and imaginary scenarios in order to explain the existence and origin of life in terms of mere coincidences. the roots of this philosophy go back as far as antiquity and ancient Greece. All atheist philosophies that deny creation, directly or indirectly embrace and defend the idea of evolution. the same condition today applies to all the ideologies and systems that are antagonistic to religion. The evolutionary notion has been cloaked in a scientific disguise for the last century and a half in order to justify itself. Though put forward as a supposedly scientific theory during the mid-19th century, the theory, despite all the best efforts of its advocates, has not so far been verified by any scientific finding or experiment. Indeed, the "very science" on which the theory depends so greatly has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate repeatedly that the theory has no merit in reality. Laboratory experiments and probabilistic calculations have definitely made it clear that the amino acids from which life arises cannot have been formed by chance. the cell, which supposedly emerged by chance under primitive and uncontrolled terrestrial conditions according to evolutionists, still cannot be synthesised even in the most sophisticated, high-tech laboratories of the 20th century. Not a single "transitional form", creatures which are supposed to show the gradual evolution of advanced organisms from more primitive ones as neo-Darwinist theory claims, has ever been found anywhere in the world despite the most diligent and prolonged search in the fossil record. In their attempts to gather evidence for evolution, evolutionists have unwittingly proven by their own efforts that evolution cannot have happened at all! The person who originally put forward the theory of evolution, essentially in the form that it is defended today, was an amateur English biologist by the name of Charles Robert Darwin. Darwin first published his ideas in a book entitled the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. Darwin claimed in his book that all living beings had a common ancestor and that they evolved from one another by means of natural selection. Those that best adapted to the habitat transferred their traits to subsequent generations, and by accumulating over great epochs, these advantageous qualities transformed individuals into totally different species from their ancestors. the human being was thus the most developed product of the mechanism of natural selection. in short, the origin of one species was another species. Darwin's fanciful ideas were seized upon and promoted by certain ideological and political circles and the theory became very popular. the main reason was that the level of knowledge of those days was not yet sufficient to reveal that Darwin's imaginary scenarios were false. When Darwin put forward his assumptions, the disciplines of genetics, microbiology, and biochemistry did not yet exist. If they had, Darwin might easily have recognised that his theory was totally unscientific and thus would not have attempted to advance such meaningless claims: the information determining species already exists in the genes and it is impossible for natural selection to produce new species by altering genes. While the echoes of Darwin's book reverberated, an Austrian botanist by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance in 1865. Although little known before the end of the century, Mendel's discovery gained great importance in the early 1900s with the birth of the science of genetics. Some time later, the structures of genes and chromosomes were discovered. the discovery, in the 1950s, of the DNA molecule, which incorporates genetic information, threw the theory of evolution into a great crisis, because the origin of the immense amount of information in DNA could not possibly be explained by coincidental happenings. Besides all these scientific developments, no transitional forms, which were supposed to show the gradual evolution of living organisms from primitive to advanced species, have ever been found despite years of search. These developments ought to have resulted in Darwin's theory being banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the theory to a scientific platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we realise that behind the theory lie ideological intentions rather than scientific concerns. Nevertheless, some circles that believed in the necessity of upholding a theory that had reached an impasse soon set up a new model. the name of this new model was neo-Darwinism. According to this theory, species evolved as a result of mutations, minor changes in their genes, and the fittest ones survived through the mechanism of natural selection. When, however, it was proved that the mechanisms proposed by neo-Darwinism were invalid and minor changes were not sufficient for the formation of living beings, evolutionists went on to look for new models. They came up with a new claim called "punctuated equilibrium" that rests on no rational or scientific grounds. This model held that living beings suddenly evolved into another species without any transitional forms. in other words, species with no evolutionary "ancestors" suddenly appeared. This was a way of describing creation, though evolutionists would be loath to admit this. They tried to cover it up with incomprehensible scenarios. for instance, they said that the first bird in history could all of a sudden inexplicably have popped out of a reptile egg. the same theory also held that carnivorous land-dwelling animals could have turned into giant whales, having undergone a sudden and comprehensive transformation. These claims, totally contradicting all the rules of genetics, biophysics, and biochemistry are as scientific as fairy-tales of frogs turning into princes! Nevertheless, being distressed by the crisis that the neo-Darwinist assertion was in, some evolutionist paleontologists embraced this theory, which has the distinction of being even more bizarre than neo-Darwinism itself. The sole purpose of this model was to provide an explanation for the gaps in the fossil record that the neo-Darwinist model could not explain. However, it is hardly rational to attempt to explain the gap in the fossil record of the evolution of birds with a claim that "a bird popped all of a sudden out of a reptile egg", because, by the evolutionists' own admission, the evolution of a species to another species requires a great and advantageous change in genetic information. However, no mutation whatsoever improves the genetic information or adds new information to it. Mutations only derange genetic information. Thus, the "gross mutations" imagined by the punctuated equilibrium model, would only cause "gross", that is "great", reductions and impairments in the genetic information. The theory of punctuated equilibrium was obviously merely a product of the imagination. Despite this evident truth, the advocates of evolution did not hesitate to honour this theory. the fact that the model of evolution proposed by Darwin could not be proved by the fossil record forced them to do so. Darwin claimed that species underwent a gradual change, which necessitated the existence of half-bird/half-reptile or half-fish/half-reptile freaks. However, not even one of these "transitional forms" was found despite the extensive studies of evolutionists and the hundreds of thousands of fossils that were unearthed. Evolutionists seized upon the model of punctuated equilibrium with the hope of concealing this great fossil fiasco. As we have stated before, it was very evident that this theory is a fantasy, so it very soon consumed itself. the model of punctuated equilibrium was never put forward as a consistent model, but rather used as an escape in cases that plainly did not fit the model of gradual evolution. Since evolutionists today realise that complex organs such as eyes, wings, lungs, brain and others explicitly refute the model of gradual evolution, in these particular points they are compelled to take shelter in the fantastic interpretations of the model of punctuated equilibrium. Is there any Fossil Record to Verify the Theory of Evolution? The theory of evolution argues that the evolution of a species into another species takes place gradually, step-by-step over millions of years. the logical inference drawn from such a claim is that monstrous living organisms called "transitional forms" should have lived during these periods of transformation. Since evolutionists allege that all living things evolved from each other step-by-step, the number and variety of these transitional forms should have been in the millions. If such creatures had really lived, then we should see their remains everywhere. in fact, if this thesis is correct, the number of intermediate transitional forms should be even greater than the number of animal species alive today and their fossilised remains should be abundant all over the world. Since Darwin, evolutionists have been searching for fossils and the result has been for them a crushing disappointment. Nowhere in the world – neither on land nor in the depths of the sea – has any intermediate transitional form between any two species ever been uncovered. Darwin himself was quite aware of the absence of such transitional forms. It was his greatest hope that they would be found in the future. Despite his hopefulness, he saw that the biggest stumbling block to his theory was the missing transitional forms. This is why, in his book the Origin of Species, he wrote: Darwin was right to be worried. the problem bothered other evolutionists as well. A famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this embarrassing fact: The gaps in the fossil record cannot be explained away by the wishful thinking that not enough fossils have yet been unearthed and that these missing fossils will one day be found. Another evolutionist paleontologist, T. Neville George, explains the reason: Life Emerged on Earth Suddenly and in Complex Forms When terrestrial strata and the fossil record are examined, it is seen that living organisms appeared simultaneously. the oldest stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found is that of the "Cambrian", which has an estimated age of 530-520 million years. Living creatures that are found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period emerged in the fossil record all of a sudden without any pre-existing ancestors. the vast mosaic of living organisms, made up of such great numbers of complex creatures, emerged so suddenly that this miraculous event is referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion" in scientific literature. Most of the organisms found in this stratum have highly advanced organs like eyes, or systems seen in organisms with a highly advanced organisation such as gills, circulatory systems, and so on. There is no sign in the fossil record to indicate that these organisms had any ancestors. Richard Monestarsky, the editor of Earth Sciences magazine, states about the sudden emergence of living species: Not being able to find answers to the question of how earth came to overflow with thousands of different animal species, evolutionists posit an imaginary period of 20 million years before the Cambrian Period to explain how life originated and "the unknown happened". This period is called the "evolutionary gap". No evidence for it has ever been found and the concept is still conveniently nebulous and undefined even today. In 1984, numerous complex invertebrates were unearthed in Chengjiang, set in the central Yunnan plateau in the high country of southwest China. Among them were trilobites, now extinct, but no less complex in structure than any modern invertebrate. The Swedish evolutionist paleontologist, Stefan Bengston, explains the situation as follows: The sudden appearance of these complex living beings with no predecessors is no less baffling (and embarrassing) for evolutionists today than it was for Darwin 135 years ago. in nearly a century and a half, they have advanced not one step beyond the point that stymied Darwin. As may be seen, the fossil record indicates that living things did not evolve from primitive to advanced forms, but instead emerged all of a sudden and in a perfect state. the absence of the transitional forms is not peculiar to the Cambrian period. Not a single transitional form verifying the alleged evolutionary "progression" of vertebrates – from fish to amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals – has ever been found. Every living species appears instantaneously and in its current form, perfect and complete, in the fossil record. In other words, living beings did not come into existence through evolution. They were created. Deceptions in Drawings The fossil record is the principal source for those who seek evidence for the theory of evolution. When inspected carefully and without prejudice, the fossil record refutes the theory of evolution rather than supporting it. Nevertheless, misleading interpretations of fossils by evolutionists and their prejudiced representation to the public have given many people the impression that the fossil record indeed supports the theory of evolution. The susceptibility of some findings in the fossil record to all kinds of interpretations is what best serves the evolutionists' purposes. the fossils unearthed are most of the time unsatisfactory for reliable identification. They usually consist of scattered, incomplete bone fragments. for this reason, it is very easy to distort the available data and to use it as desired. Not surprisingly, the reconstructions (drawings and models) made by evolutionists based on such fossil remains are prepared entirely speculatively in order to confirm evolutionary theses. Since people are readily affected by visual information, these imaginary reconstructed models are employed to convince them that the reconstructed creatures really existed in the past. Evolutionist researchers draw human-like imaginary creatures, usually setting out from a single tooth, or a mandible fragment or a humerus, and present them to the public in a sensational manner as if they were links in human evolution. These drawings have played a great role in the establishment of the image of "primitive men" in the minds of many people. These studies based on bone remains can only reveal very general characteristics of the creature concerned. the distinctive details are present in the soft tissues that quickly vanish with time. with the soft tissues speculatively interpreted, everything becomes possible within the boundaries of the imagination of the reconstruction's producer. Earnst A. Hooten from Harvard University explains the situation like this: Studies Made to Fabricate False Fossils Unable to find valid evidence in the fossil record for the theory of evolution, some evolutionists have ventured to manufacture their own. These efforts, which have even been included in encyclopaedias under the heading "evolution forgeries", are the most telling indication that the theory of evolution is an ideology and a philosophy that evolutionists are hard put to defend. Two of the most egregious and notorious of these forgeries are described below. Charles Dawson, a well-known doctor and amateur paleoanthropologist, came forth with a claim that he had found a jawbone and a cranial fragment in a pit in the area of Piltdown, England, in 1912. Although the skull was human-like, the jawbone was distinctly simian. These specimens were christened the "Piltdown Man". Alleged to be 500 thousand years old, they were displayed as absolute proofs of human evolution. for more than 40 years, many scientific articles were written on the "Piltdown Man", many interpretations and drawings were made and the fossil was presented as crucial evidence of human evolution. In 1949, scientists examined the fossil once more and concluded that the "fossil" was a deliberate forgery consisting of a human skull and the jawbone of an orang-utan. Using the fluorine dating method, investigators discovered that the skull was only a few thousand years old. the teeth in the jawbone, which belonged to an orang-utan, had been artificially worn down and the "primitive" tools that had conveniently accompanied the fossils were crude forgeries that had been sharpened with steel implements. in the detailed analysis completed by Oakley, Weiner and Clark, they revealed this forgery to the public in 1953. the skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the mandibular bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! the teeth were thereafter specially arranged in an array and added to the jaw and the joints were filed in order to make them resemble that of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them a dated appearance. (These stains disappeared when dipped in acid.) Le Gros Clark, who was a member of the team that disclosed the forgery, could not hide his astonishment: In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, declared that he had found a molar tooth fossil in western Nebraska near Snake Brook belonging to the Pliocene period. This tooth allegedly bore the common characteristics of both man and ape. Deep scientific arguments began in which some interpreted this tooth to be that of Pithecanthropus erectus while others claimed it was closer to that of modern human beings. This fossil, which aroused extensive debate, was popularly named "Nebraska Man". It was also immediately given a "scientific name": "Hesperopithecus Haroldcooki". Many authorities gave Osborn their support. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of Nebraska Man's head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska Man was even pictured with a whole family. In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realised that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. Did Men and Apes Come from a Common Ancestor? According to the claims of the theory of evolution, men and modern apes have common ancestors. These creatures evolved in time and some of them became the apes of today, while another group that followed another branch of evolution became the men of today. Evolutionists call the so-called first common ancestors of men and apes "Australopithecus" which means "South African ape". Australopithecus, nothing but an old ape species that has become extinct, has various types. Some of them are robust, while others are small and slight. Evolutionists classify the next stage of human evolution as "Homo", that is "man". According to the evolutionist claim, the living beings in the Homo series are more developed than Australopithecus, and not very much different from modern man. the modern man of our day, Homo sapiens, is said to have formed at the latest stage of the evolution of this species. The fact of the matter is that the beings called Australopithecus in this imaginary scenario fabricated by evolutionists really are apes that became extinct, and the beings in the Homo series are members of various human races that lived in the past and then disappeared. Evolutionists arranged various ape and human fossils in an order from the smallest to the biggest in order to form a "human evolution" scheme. Research, however, has demonstrated that these fossils by no means imply an evolutionary process and some of these alleged ancestors of man were real apes whereas some of them were real humans. Now, let us have a look at Australopithecus, which represents to evolutionists the first stage of the scheme of human evolution. Australopithecus: Extinct Apes Evolutionists claim that Australopithecus are the most primitive ancestors of modern men. These are an old species with a head and skull structure similar to that of modern apes, yet with a smaller cranial capacity. According to the claims of evolutionists, these creatures have a very important feature that authenticates them as the ancestors of men: bipedalism. The movements of apes and men are completely different. Human beings are the only living creatures that move freely about on two feet. Some other animals do have a limited ability to move in this way, but those that do have bent skeletons. According to evolutionists, these living beings called Australopithecus had the ability to walk in a bent rather than an upright posture like human beings. Even this limited bipedal stride was sufficient to encourage evolutionists to project onto these creatures that they were the ancestors of man. However, the first evidence refuting the allegations of evolutionists that Australopithecus were bipedal came from evolutionists themselves. Detailed studies made on Australopithecus fossils forced even evolutionists to admit that these looked "too" ape-like. Having conducted detailed anatomical research on Australopithecus fossils in the mid-1970s, Charles E. Oxnard likened the skeletal structure of Australopithecus to that of modern orang-utans: What really embarrassed evolutionists was the discovery that Australopithecus could not have walked on two feet and with a bent posture. It would have been physically very ineffective for Australopithecus, allegedly bipedal but with a bent stride, to move about in such a way because of the enormous energy demands it would have entailed. By means of computer simulations conducted in 1996, the English paleoanthropologist Robin Crompton also demonstrated that such a "compound" stride was impossible. Crompton reached the following conclusion: a living being can walk either upright or on all fours. A type of in-between stride cannot be sustained for long periods because of the extreme energy consumption. This means that Australopithecus could not have been both bipedal and have a bent walking posture. Probably the most important study demonstrating that Australopithecus could not have been bipedal came in 1994 from the research anatomist Fred Spoor and his team in the Department of Human Anatomy and Cellular Biology at the University of Liverpool, England. This group conducted studies on the bipedalism of fossilised living beings. Their research investigated the involuntary balance mechanism found in the cochlea of the ear, and the findings showed conclusively that Australopithecus could not have been bipedal. This precluded any claims that Australopithecus was human-like. The Homo Series: Real Human Beings The next step in the imaginary human evolution is "Homo", that is, the human series. These living beings are humans who are no different from modern men, yet who have some racial differences. Seeking to exaggerate these differences, evolutionists represent these people not as a "race" of modern man but as a different "species". However, as we will soon see, the people in the Homo series are nothing but ordinary human racial types. According to the fanciful scheme of evolutionists, the internal imaginary evolution of the Homo species is as follows: First Homo erectus, then Homo sapiens archaic and Neanderthal Man, later Cro-Magnon Man and finally modern man. Despite the claims of evolutionists to the contrary, all the "species" we have enumerated above are nothing but genuine human beings. Let us first examine Homo erectus, who evolutionists refer to as the most primitive human species. The most striking evidence showing that Homo erectus is not a "primitive" species is the fossil of "Turkana Boy", one of the oldest Homo erectus remains. It is estimated that the fossil was of a 12-year-old boy, who would have been 1.83 meters tall in his adolescence. the upright skeletal structure of the fossil is no different from that of modern man. Its tall and slender skeletal structure totally complies with that of the people living in tropical regions in our day. This fossil is one of the most important pieces of evidence that Homo erectus is simply another specimen of the modern human race. Evolutionist paleontologist Richard Leakey compares Homo erectus and modern man as follows: Leakey means to say that the difference between Homo erectus and us is no more than the difference between Negroes and Eskimos. the cranial features of Homo erectus resulted from their manner of feeding, and genetic emigration and from their not assimilating with other human races for a lengthy period. Another strong piece of evidence that Homo erectus is not a "primitive" species is that fossils of this species have been unearthed aged twenty-seven thousand years and even thirteen thousand years. According to an article published in Time – which is not a scientific periodical, but nevertheless had a sweeping effect on the world of science – Homo erectus fossils aged twenty-seven thousand years were found on the island of Java. in the Kow swamp in Australia, some thirteen thousand year-old fossils were found that bore Homo Sapiens-Homo Erectus characteristics. All these fossils demonstrate that Homo erectus continued living up to times very close to our day and were nothing but a human race that has since been buried in history. Archaic Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal Man Archaic Homo sapiens is the immediate forerunner of contemporary man in the imaginary evolutionary scheme. in fact, evolutionists do not have much to say about these men, as there are only minor differences between them and modern men. Some researchers even state that representatives of this race are still living today, and point to the Aborigines in Australia as an example. Like Homo sapiens, the Aborigines also have thick protruding eyebrows, an
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The Edupunks' Guide: How to Do Research Online
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to be a learner. College tuition has doubled in the past decade, while the options for learning online and independently keep expanding. Anya Kamenetz's new free ebook The Edupunks’ Guide is all about the many paths that learners are taking in this new world, and we're running excerpts from the book all week. We're also asking GOOD readers to doodle your learning journey and submit the result by Sunday, September 11.
There’s been a revolution in the way people spread knowledge. Sharing information openly over the Internet is way cheaper than purchasing it commercially in dead-tree format, and often the learning that happens this way is faster, more up-to-date, and more relevant to our immediate needs. A simple example is learning to make pizza. A few years ago, you may have had to take a class or at least buy a cookbook. Today you can put “how to make a pizza” into YouTube and within minutes, you’re watching a video that shows you how to fling the dough!
More and more people around the world are building on this knowledge revolution to explore new modes of learning and to transform what we mean by “education.”
For many, the first step in an online learning journey is a simple Google search.
- Start with Google, the most-used search engine on the web. Put your phrase in quotes to return pages with the exact words, like this: “African-American history”
- Search on Wikipedia to get an overview of the topic. Follow the links to an article’s sources at the bottom of the page.
- Google Scholar will give you scholarly journal articles and other verified sources of information.
- An online archive like The Internet Archive may offer original source material.
- YouTube is good for videos—a quick entry into a topic. Or just Google your phrase and the word “video.”
- For news stories, try Google News
- For links on news, trends, and up-to-the-minute happenings, you can search Twitter with a hashtag, like this: #americanidol.
- Try posting your question to a site like OpenStudy or WikiAnswers.
- Put in your search terms plus the word “forum” or “blog” to see what ideas other people have discussed on message boards or on blogs.
A successful online research session will leave you with 20 open tabs or windows at the top of your screen. Follow your curiosity, but keep track of the links you’re following in an email draft, Word document, or an application like Evernote or Diigo so you can consult them later.
Top Free Learning Resources Online
Europeana: A digital library with 4.6 million items from libraries, archives, museums and other institutions across Europe. Read Charles Darwin’s letters or listen to Pavarotti singing Verdi.
The Internet Archive: A vast nonprofit digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts—video, audio, texts, and live music.
Khan Academy: The Khan Academy has over 2000 videos covering basic math through calculus and trigonometry, physics, biology, chemistry, banking, finance, and statistics. The videos are short—5 to 15 minutes long—simple, and entertaining. They’re all made by Sal Khan, a 33-year-old former hedge fund analyst who started making them to help tutor his young cousins.
LearnFree: 750 free lessons on basic computer skills, reading and math.
Library.nu: Half a million free books. May not be exactly legal. Browse at your own risk.
MIT Open Courseware: The oldest open courseware site, with 1,900 courses on everything from history to physics. A favorite for science and math.
OpenCulture: A well-edited blog and site chronicling “the best” cultural and educational media on the web. They have lists of free online courses from top universities and free language lessons.
Open Learning Initiative: The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon has 13 free complete courses in topics ranging from physics to logic to French. The courses are highly interactive, using video, animations, and lots of embedded quizzes and assessments so you know how you’re doing. The site requires a signup and sometimes you may have to download some software.
Open Textbooks: A catalog of open textbooks that are free to read online.
Quia: On Quia, you can create your own games and quizzes to test yourself, or take thousands of quizzes—flashcards, matching games, word searches—that other students and teachers have created for the ultimate study guide.
Saylor Foundation: Saylor lists 241 original courses on the site, for which the material comes from around the web.
Scribd: Scribd is a place to find free books and presentations on almost any topic, uploaded and shared by the authors.
Slideshare: Slideshare is a collection of free PowerPoint presentations, sometimes with audio. It’s a good place to learn about up-to-date topics like design, technology, and music.
TED: TED (for Technology, Entertainment, Design) has an excellent collection of 300-plus short video lectures by scientists, authors, artists, political figures, and more. Browsing the site is sure to be enlightening and can give you clues about fields you might want to study, like behavioral economics or biophysics.
Textbook Revolution: A student-run site with links and reviews to textbooks and other educational resources. Many are available free as PDFs, viewable online as ebooks, or websites containing course materials. You can also use the site to find descriptions of books that aren’t free, and find where they may be cheaper.
Wikiversity: Wikiversity has a wide variety of multimedia course materials. Courses are run through the site, meaning students at universities create and publish course modules for other students’ use. Like Wikipedia, you can participate in the community by editing course material (a great way to test and expand your own knowledge) or by joining discussions in the “Colloquium” section.
YouTube and YouTube EDU: Don’t forget to search YouTube for lectures and presentations on any topic you find interesting. YouTube EDU contains content that’s been tagged “education,” which may include quirky things like Tina Fey’s 2011 book talk at Google.
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