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Overall Objective Canada’s immigration policy has oscillated between facilitating and restricting the influx of newcomers. The changes were related to the search for a balanced response by successive Canadian governments to this country’s economic needs, social pressures, political realities and international events. This unit guide outlines major change and continuity in Canada’s immigration policy over the 20th century with an overview of historical contexts and effects on immigrants.
Grade level Advanced 9–12 and beyond. This unit can be adapted to younger grades and different courses of study in various Canadian provinces and territories.
Content Areas History Geography Citizenship Social Studies Media Studies
Material Required Access to Internet connection, data projector, flip chart paper or whiteboard, and pencils.
Summary This unit guides students through the historical circumstances of Canada’s immigration policies over the 20th century and how immigration has been dealt with by the Canadian public and successive Canadian governments. Students will explore the evolution of Canada’s immigration policy from its ‘open door’ decades (how open was it really?) to the contemporary period with a view to factors that led to changes in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to the ‘open door’ era, the Immigration Acts of 1952 and 1978 will be considered as responses to Canada’s economic needs, social demands and political realities in a changing international environment.
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To describe the long-term trend of incidence and other epidemiological pictures of Kawasaki disease in Japan, by using the results of 12 nationwide epidemiological surveys on Kawasaki disease that have been conducted throughout Japan (ie, surveys that have encompassed the pediatric departments of hospitals with more than 100 beds) every 2 years since 1970.
At the end of December 1992, the total number of patients with this disease was 116 848 (males, 67 815; females, 49 033; male-female ratio, 1.38). The number of cases increased year by year, with three outbreaks in 1979, 1982, and 1986. There have been no cyclical changes since 1986. The incidence was higher in males and in those children who were 1 year of age or younger. The fatality rate decreased from 1% in 1974 to 0.04% in 1992.
The patterns of descriptive epidemiology, such as seasonality and cyclical changes in incidence, supported the theory of an infectious agent as the causal agent. However, the incidence data since 1986 provide less support for an infectious theory.(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1995;149:779-783)
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Road traffic management is such an expansive area so hopefully this page will help guide you to the relevant page on the BHI Workwear site.
Traffic management typically involves products such as road traffic cones, traffic barriers, barrier tape, trench covers and road traffic signs.
When essential work is being undertaken on the highways and byways it is essential that the agency responsible has the correct equipment dictated by legislation in their respective country to minimise the risk of injury to workers, drivers or pedestrians and inform them to take caution.
Like all risk assessment the philosophy behind traffic management is to cover the required due diligence and make sure the risks are minimised.
Road traffic management utilises retro-reflective technology to increase the visibility in poor light and night time conditions which is quite important for everyone concerned.
Over the last 30 years since the early 1980’s technology has been rapidly developed and deployed in the traffic field, in the middle of the 20th century traffic management usually consisted of orange traffic cones of varying height placed on the road side to guide the traffic away from workers or road areas about to undergo repairs or indeed from road traffic accidents/incidents.
These traffic cones were very rudimentary and unsophisticated in terms of their construction and retro-reflective technology employed this however didn’t stop students and drunken individuals “liberating” those road traffic cones and using them as hats or dorm room decorations.
The traffic cones did serve a purpose and reduced deaths and incidents greatly and even though they didn’t employ the high levels of reflective tech as today they were pretty hard to miss or ignore.
As mentioned there has been a rapid development in traffic management products through next generation thermoplastics and rubber configurations which means the road traffic cones can now be constructed to be virtually indestructible (under normal circumstances and working conditions) where before the traffic cones were made from plastics which had a tendency to decay and degrade leaving splits and essentially a reduction in performance which ultimately could place lives at risk.
Where trucks and cars would run over the cones causing the plastics to warp and indeed weaken today the road traffic cones deployed are designed to withstand higher levels of trauma.
Road traffic cones today are made from robust plastics and can take huge articulated lorries rolling over them and instantly spring back to their original shape.
Theses cones utilise the latest in retro reflective strips which conform to the D2, BS and EN standards which makes them very effective in warning motorists of their presence as well as impending caution.
Today companies like BHI Workwear even offer personalising of the road traffic cones so you can place company logo’s or messages on them.
If orders are significant we can look at different colour pantones (regulations allowing)
A large part of road traffic management is the road traffic barriers which serve both to inform motorists and pedestrians of the work underway/incident and to add a level of protection in the case of collisions.
BHI Workwear stock most of the road traffic barriers in use today from the pedestrian barriers used to control the flow of foot traffic to heavy duty water or sand filled barriers used for major works on roads and motorways.
If you know which road traffic barriers you need and you cannot find them on our site then please call
+44333 101 4030 we will try and source them for through our supplier network.
Road traffic barriers are the shifted in larger quantities and the reason we don’t have a price per traffic barriers or indeed all the road traffic management products (aside from a few) is price is always negotiable depending in numbers and repeat business.
We have a team of experts ready to take calls and advise on which products best suit your scenario.
We have delivered several lorry loads of traffic cones and barriers at a time to the Olympic Village in East London and have been thoroughly vented to be able to complete such deliveries.
If you need traffic barriers, traffic cones, road signs in deed any road traffic management systems delivered to a sensitive or secure site then please contact us we will comply with all requests for those areas.
Road traffic management also include road signs which most people typically assume is all done by the Government or large firms this is not the case BHI Workwear can supply all types of road signs which will meet the BS and EN specifications. We stock Conesign which the name suggests fits over road traffic cones and can be used as a useful add on when you only need minimal information to be disclosed.
If your outfit needs to divert traffic but does not need or have the automated/electronic traffic light system BHI Workwear stocks the Elite stop and go manual signs
For standalone road traffic signs we stock the Maverick traffic signs which are temporary in nature but have a presence which can be beneficial in dictating the message.
BHI Workwear also has the facilities to design and produce bespoke road traffic signs for your firm in various sizes. If you need metal road signs, plastic or even A5 sized internal signs such as “No Smoking” signs etc.
If you need further assistance with any road traffic management concerns please call
+44333 101 4030 and our team will help you.
Alternatively please email email@example.com and we will call you back.
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1. What is a document?
Black's Law Dictionary says the term document "applies to writings; to words printed, lithographed, or photographed; to maps or plans; to seals, plates, or even stones on which inscriptions are cut or engraved. In the plural, the deeds, agreements, title-papers, letters, receipts, and other written instruments used to prove a fact."
2. What is a document examiner?
A document examiner is a person who practices a discipline that seeks to determine the history of a document by technical and scientific processes.
There are several terms used to identify document examiners. Generally speaking,
they will be called either a questioned document examiner (QDE) or a forensic document examiner or simply a document examiner. The term forensic means the examiner can present their findings and opinions in terms that are acceptable in the courts. The lack of use of the term "forensic" in the examiner's title does not mean the examiner cannot present cases in court.
3. What is a forgery?
According to Black's Law Dictionary a forgery is "The false making or material altering of a document with the intent to defraud." In most cases, forgery involves
the writing of a person's signature without that person's consent, with the intent to
unlawfully acquire some benefit, e.g., an advantage in an agreement or contract, property or land ownership, money or other wealth, or to otherwise deny these items from the person whose signature was forged.
4. What is signature verification?
Signature verification is the process by which a document examiner determines
the authenticity of a questioned signature.
5. What is a handwriting expert?
The term "handwriting expert" can be used to identify either a document examiner
or a handwriting analyst.
6. What is handwriting analysis?
Handwriting analysis is the study of handwriting strokes used in the formation of
letters, the spaces between letters, between words, along with other handwriting features observed in written communications and attempts to form a personality trait assessment of the author. The practice of matching a person's handwriting to their personality and behavior has been going on for over 2000 years, first being written about by Aristotle in 330 B.C. Handwriting analysis has been recognized as a clinical psychological
evaluation technique. It is not considered a forensic science.
7 Do I need a document examiner?
If you have reason to believe that someone has written your name on a document that you did not write, and because of that act, you have or may suffer a loss of property, money, or be charge with a crime, you may well need a document examiner. The most obvious situations where a document examiner may be useful are in cases where there is a will that leaves property ownership or financial benefits to heirs and one or more heirs may believe the will has been changed or the deceased person's signature has been forged, depriving them of their inheritance. Thefts by forged checks are often cases that document examiners consider. Lease agreements and contract disputes are
also frequent sources of the need for a document examiner.
If you believe that you may or have suffered a loss by an altered document or by a document on which you believe the signature has been forged, contact Gary
W. Fyke, QDE, at 309-274-2308 or e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org
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Georeferencing is the process of scaling, rotating, translating and deskewing the image to match a particular size and position.
The term georeference will be familiar to GIS users, but general CAD users may have never seen the word before, even though the function is very useful for their work. The word was originally used to describe the process of referencing a map image to a geographic location.
A raster image is made up of pixels and has no particular size. Without georeferencing, the vectorised CAD/GIS drawing size is determined by the raster's pixel dimensions (the width and height of the raster in pixels). This is in turn determined by the image resolution (DPI). This image sizing will usually bear no relationship with the dimensions of the drawing that the raster represents.
Whereas a raster drawing has no particular scale, a vector drawing is normally drawn to a precise scale.
The georeference process simply involves selecting a pixel on the raster image and specifying what coordinate it represents for your vector drawing. When you have picked 3 pixels and specified their vector coordinates, WinTopo Pro can calculate the correct mapping for every pixel in the image, and when you load the DXF drawing into your CAD or GIS or CNC system it will automatically be located in the correct position and at the right size.
To get the Georeference option click the Vector menu and select Georeference (Scaling/Offset)...You will see this window:
First you should click the Add... button to specify the first Control Point. You will see this window:
You can type in the X and Y pixel location, but the most common usage is to click the Pick with mouse... button. When clicked, the Control point window will disappear and the cursor will change to a crosshair
Simply click on the pixel that you want as a Control Point. This should be a feature on the image for which you can identify a specific coordinate location.
When you click on the pixel it will be marked with a cross symbol and the Control Point window will reappear, showing the location of the pixel in the Raster X and Y boxes. Now you just need to type in your desired coordinate for this pixel into the Vector X and Y boxes. Then press the OK button and the Georeference window will be shown again, displaying the details of the Control Point.
You need to Add... at least 3 Control Points so that WinTopo Pro can calculate the correct mathematical image transformation. It is permissible to give just 2 control points, although this will not allow WinTopo to compensate for stretching or skewing of the image.
When you have added your control points, click the OK button to dismiss the Georeference window. As you move the cursor over the image you will see the georeferenced coordinates shown on the status bar at the bottom of the WinTopo Pro main window.
The Raster coordinate shows the location of the pixel which is under the cursor, and the Vector coordinate shows the georeferenced location that it would have in the vector output. You can use the Vector display to verify that that the control points are correct - by moving the mouse to other points on the drawing and quickly checking that they are shown as positioned roughly where you expected them to be. If you mis-entered a control point you will usually see large discrepancies in the Vector positions of other points on the image.
If you enter more than three control points then you can choose how WinTopo Pro uses them for calculating the georeference transformation. You will notice that the options Best 3 Points and Average of All Points have become available. But first let us explain the RMS Error...
On the Georeference window, each control point has an RMS Error value. RMS stands for Root Mean Square, which refers to a distance. The RMS Error value is the distance of the georeferenced control point from the vector coordinate which you specified for it. When there are 3 control points the RMS Error values are always zero, because WinTopo Pro can calculate an exact mathematical transformation. When there are more than 3 control points then some may show an RMS Error because the georeference calculation is not able to correct for localised deformation of the raster. The RMS Error values will show you which of your control points are likely to be most accurate. You want to have control points with the lowest RMS Error values.
When you have more than three control points, the RMS Error values will show you which points WinTopo Pro considers to be most accurate. However, you may know which points are actually most accurate and want those to be favoured over the others in the georeference calculations. Therefore you can use the Disable button to prevent a point from being used the calculations. First click the point in the list, so that its Point No. is highlighted, then click the Disable button. The point's On/Off value will be shown as Off rather than On. A disabled point can be easily re-enabled, because when the point is highlighted in the list the button will read Enable rather than Disable.
If you think that the Total RMS Error value is too high, you can experiment with disabling one point at a time to see if the Total RMS Error goes down dramatically for a certain point. This would indicate that the point is either particularly inaccurate, or that you may have entered its position incorrectly.
Up to 200 control points may be added, though in most cases 3 is sufficient.
After Georeferencing your drawing you may wish to save your control point data for later re-use. Click the File menu and select the Save Control Points File As... option. WinTopo Pro will offer a file name which is the same as the raster name, except with a .ctl extention at the end.
To re-use the same control points in WinTopo Pro, first load the raster file, and then select the Load Control Points File... option from the File menu, and pick the file which you previously saved.
Users of GIS systems will be familiar with the World File that can accompany a raster image. The World File contains the georeference calculation results to enable another system to reproduce the same coordinate transformation.
To save the World File click the File menu and select the Save World File As... option. WinTopo Pro will offer a file name which matches the raster name, but with the world file three-letter extension at the end. By convention, the world file extension is comprised of the first and last letters of the raster file name extension, and the letter w. For example, for a TIFF file image.tif the world file name would be image.tfw, but for a bitmap file image.bmp the world file name would be image.bpw instead.
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You are here: REHACARE Portal. Up-to-date. Archive. Autism.
Autism: Problems With Self-Awareness
People with autism aren´t as
egocentric as concidered; © SXC
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that the brains of individuals with autism are less active when engaged in self-reflective thought.
The study provides new evidence for the neural correlates of self-awareness and a new window into understanding social difficulties in autism spectrum conditions. In the new study, Michael Lombardo, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues from the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging to measure brain activity of 66 male volunteers, half of whom have a diagnosis of an autism spectrum condition.
Lombardo asked the volunteers to make judgments either about their own thoughts, opinions, preferences or physical characteristics or about someone else's, in this case the Queen. By scanning the volunteers' brains as they responded to these questions, the researchers were able to visualise differences in brain activity between those with and without autism.
They were particularly interested in part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), known to be active when people think about themselves. "This area is like a self-relevance detector, since it typically responds most to information that is self-relevant," Lombardo says.
Lombardo found this area of the brain was indeed more active when typical volunteers were asked questions about themselves compared to when they were thinking about the Queen. However, in autism this brain region responded equally, irrespective of whether they were thinking about themselves or the Queen.
"This new study shows that within the autistic brain, regions that typically prefer self-relevant information make no distinction between thinking about the self or another person. This is strong evidence that in the autistic brain, processing information about the self is atypical", says Lombardo.
Autism has long been considered a condition of extreme
egocentrism. The word 'autism' comes from the Greek word 'autos', meaning 'self'. However, recent research shows that individuals with autism are also impaired in thinking about themselves. Lombardo's study helps explain this paradox: "On the surface these two observations seem like opposites, but they may converge on a common neurobiological explanation that the autistic brain responds less to information that is self-relevant," he says.
REHACRE.de; Source: University of Cambridge
- More about the University of Cambridge at www.cam.ac.uk
( Source: REHACARE.de )
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Most Recent Trends
Visit the Worldwatch Institute Bookstore to download and purchase more of Worldwatch's award-winning research.
Carbon Capture and Storage Experiences Limited Growth in 2011
Funding for large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects remained relatively unchanged in 2011, with total funding from governments reaching $23.5 billion.1 (See Figure 1.) Overall, the number of active and planned large-scale CCS projects declined in 2011, although the total operating storage capacity increased.
In March 2012 the Global CCS Institute identified 75 large-scale fully integrated CCS projects in 17 countries at various stages of development—4 projects fewer than at the end of 2010.2 Only 8 of these plants are operational, the same number as in 2009 and 2010.3 (See Figure 2.) These 8 projects store a combined total of 23.18 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year (Mtpa), about as much as emitted annually by 4.5 million passenger vehicles in the United States.4 Operating storage capacity has more than doubled since late 2010.5
At the end of 2011, the United States remained the largest funder of large-scale CCS projects ($7.4 billion), having allocated $6.1 billion to projects and with an additional $1.3 billion set aside for future projects.6 The European Union has announced the next largest amount of funding ($5.6 billion), although Canada has actually allocated more money to date ($2.9 billion).7 In March 2011 the United Kingdom decided to no longer pursue a CCS Electricity Levy; instead, general taxes will be used to fund that nation’s CCS projects.8
For full access to the complete trend and its associated charts, log in to Vital Signs or:Subscribe to all vital signs trends
Annual subscribers to Vital Signs Online have full access to all our trends and charts.
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Since its inception, SIECUS has taken stands on major sexuality issues confronting society. SIECUS invites other organizations and individuals to join in affirming these statements and in working for their implementation.
Human Sexuality / Sexual Rights / Sexual Health / Sexuality Education / Culture and Society
Human sexuality encompasses the sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of individuals. Its various dimensions involve the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the sexual response system; identity, orientation, roles, and personality; and thoughts, feelings, and relationships. Sexuality is influenced by ethical, spiritual, cultural, and moral concerns. All persons are sexual, in the broadest sense of the word.
SEXUALITY THROUGHOUT THE LIFESPAN
Sexual feelings, desires, and activities are present throughout the life cycle. SIECUS believes that all people have the right to education about sexuality, sexual health care, and sexual expression appropriate to their age and stage of life. Age-appropriate education and information concerning sexual feelings, attitudes, and behavior should be available to all individuals, their families, healthcare providers, and other caregivers.
SEXUALITY OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
SIECUS believes that individuals with physical, cognitive, or emotional disabilities have a right to education about sexuality, sexual health care, and opportunities for socializing and sexual expression. Healthcare workers and other caregivers must receive comprehensive sexuality education, as well as training in understanding and supporting sexual development, behavior, and related healthcare for individuals with disabilities. The policies and procedures of social agencies and healthcare delivery systems should ensure that services and benefits are provided to all persons without discrimination because of disability.
Sexual rights are human rights, and they are based on the inherent freedom, dignity, and equality of all human beings. Sexual rights include the right to bodily integrity, sexual safety, sexual privacy, sexual pleasure, and sexual healthcare; the right to make free and informed sexual and reproductive choices; and the right to have access to sexual information based on sound scientific evidence.
SIECUS believes that individuals have the right to live in accordance with their sexual orientation whether they are bisexual, heterosexual, gay, or lesbian. The legal system should guarantee the civil rights and protection of all people, regardless of sexual orientation. Prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation is unethical and immoral.
GENDER EQUALITY AND EQUITY
SIECUS believes that gender equality and equity are fundamental human rights. Society must recognize how gender-based stereotyping, including prejudice toward transgender, transsexual, and intersex individuals, can result in harmful consequences, such as gender-based violence and sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. Gender-based stereotyping must be eliminated, and the use of gender-inclusive language promoted. The legal system should guarantee the civil rights and protection of all people, regardless of gender, gender identity, or gender expression.
ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
SIECUS believes that individuals have the right to choose to enter into romantic and sexual relationships as well as the right to choose not to do so. SIECUS believes that all romantic and sexual relationships should be consensual between partners who are developmentally, physically, and emotionally capable of giving this consent. Responsible romantic and sexual relationships should be based on shared personal values, and should be consensual, non-exploitive, honest, pleasurable, and if any type of intercourse occurs, protected against unintended pregnancy and STDs. Because many adolescents are or will be sexually active, they should receive support and assistance in developing the skills to evaluate their readiness for mature romantic and sexual relationships.
SIECUS believes that masturbation is a natural, common, and non-harmful means of experiencing sexual pleasure. Masturbation can be a way of becoming comfortable with one’s body and enjoying one’s sexuality, whether or not in a sexual relationship. Masturbation is a safe alternative to shared sexual behavior. SIECUS believes that no one should be made to feel guilty for choosing or not choosing to masturbate.
SIECUS believes coerced and exploitative sexual acts and behaviors such as rape, incest, sexual relations between adults and children, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment are always reprehensible. Information and education programs should teach means of preventing such acts, and communities should enforce laws to punish them. Communities should support treatment programs to help survivors and offenders as well as research to increase understanding of the causes and effects of sexual exploitation.
All people have a right to healthcare services that promote, maintain, and if needed, restore sexual and reproductive health. Healthcare providers should assess sexual and reproductive health needs and concerns as integral parts of each individual’s health and wellness care and make appropriate resources available.
ADOLESCENT SEXUAL HEALTH
SIECUS believes that becoming a sexually healthy adult is a key developmental task of adolescence. Professionals, including educators, healthcare providers, and social service providers, should promote adolescent sexual health by providing accurate information and education about sexuality, and by assuring access to sexual and reproductive health care. Society can enhance adolescent sexual health by providing access to comprehensive sexuality education and affordable, sensitive, and confidential reproductive healthcare services.
ACCESS TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES
SIECUS believes that all people, regardless of age or income, should have access to affordable, confidential sexual health services including, but not limited to, access to methods of contraception and disease prevention, testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and prenatal care.
SIECUS believes that every woman, regardless of age or income, should have the right to obtain an abortion under safe, legal, affordable, easily accessible, confidential, and dignified conditions. Every woman is entitled to have full knowledge of the options available to her, and to obtain complete and unbiased information and counseling.
SIECUS believes that abortion counseling and services should be provided by professionals specially trained in this field. SIECUS believes that it is unethical for any organization to use anti-abortion propaganda, misinformation, manipulation, or fear and shame tactics to dissuade women facing unintended pregnancy from exercising their right to choose.
SIECUS further believes thatviolence against abortion providers and harassment intended to impede women’s access to these providers are unconscionable attempts to undermine women’s reproductive rights and should be decisively prosecuted by the justice system.
SIECUS believes that the global HIV/AIDS pandemic needs to remain a top priority for governments, non-governmental organizations, philanthropic entities, corporations, academic institutions, medical professionals, scientists, the media, and societies around the world. Individuals need access to accurate information about HIV/AIDS, as well as evidence-based prevention programs and methods. HIV testing, treatment, and care must be widely accessible and affordable, and only provided with informed consent. All HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, and care and any related reporting requirements should be done in a manner that ensures the privacy and confidentiality of the individual. Governments and private entities must work together to ensure progress in reducing the spread of HIV and improving care and treatment options for those individuals already impacted by the pandemic.
HEALTHCARE PRACTITIONERS TRAINING
SIECUS believes that all healthcare practitioners should be well trained in the areas of sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. Professional training for all healthcare practitioners, including continuing education programs, should address medical, ethical, legal, and cultural aspects of sexuality. Healthcare practitioners are expected to provide care that is unbiased and meets the medical and psychological needs of each patient.
Sexuality education is a lifelong process that begins at birth. Parents/caregivers, family, peers, partners, schools, religious organizations, and the media influence the messages people receive about sexuality at all stages of life.
All people have the right to accurate information and age- and developmentally appropriate education about sexuality. Sexuality education should addresses the biological, sociocultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of sexuality within the cognitive learning domain (information), the affective learning domain (feelings, values, and attitudes), and the behavioral learning domain (communication, decision-making, and other skills).
SCHOOL-BASED SEXUALITY EDUCATION
SIECUS believes that comprehensive school-based sexuality education that is appropriate to students’ age, developmental level, and cultural background is an important part of the school curriculum at every grade. A comprehensive sexuality program will provide medically accurate information, recognize the diversity of values and beliefs represented in the community, and complement and augment the sexuality education children receive from their families, religious and community groups, and healthcare professionals.
SIECUS believes that classroom teachers and community educators who teach about sexuality should be well trained on the principles, content, and best practices for providing sexuality education. Teachers should also have access to updated and current sexuality information, curricula, and materials.
SIECUS furthers believes that all pre-kindergarten through twelfth-grade teachers should receive sufficient training in human sexuality in order to be able to address potential issues and questions about sexuality.
PARENTS AS SEXUALITY EDUCATORS
SIECUS believes that parents and caregivers are—and ought to be—their children’s primary sexuality educators. SIECUS recognizes that a number of factors, including lack of knowledge, skills, or comfort, may impede a parent’s or caregiver’s successful fulfillment of that role. SIECUS believes that communities, schools, faith-based institutions, the media, and professional sexuality educators should help parents by providing training, resources, understanding, and encouragement.
Sexuality is an intrinsic component of human identity. The variety of cultural beliefs, values, and customs related to sexuality has profound influence on both society and individuals. Cultural beliefs and norms are influenced and expressed through many institutions including families, communities, schools, faith-based organizations, and mass media. These institutions have an obligation to affirm sexuality in ways that support the sexual health and rights of all members of any society.
SEXUALITY AND RELIGION
SIECUS believes that religion can play a significant role in promoting an understanding of sexuality as an intrinsic part of all humans. Faith-based institutions are in a unique position to provide sexuality education. SIECUS further believes that religious and spiritual leaders and organizations have a responsibility to affirm and support the sexual rights of all members of their communities.
SEXUALITY AND THE MEDIA
SIECUS believes that the media has a responsibility to present the complexities of human sexuality at all stages of the life cycle in a manner that is medically accurate, sensitive to diversity, and free of exploitation, prejudice, gratuitous sexual violence, and dehumanizing sexual portrayals.
SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIALS
SIECUS believes that sexually explicit visual, printed, or on-line materials can be valuable educational or personal aids when sensitively used in a manner appropriate to the viewer’s age and developmental level. Such materials can help reduce ignorance and confusion and contribute to a positive concept of sexuality while supporting the sexual rights of all. However, the use of violence, exploitation, or degradation, or the portrayal of children in sexually explicit materials is reprehensible.
SIECUS believes that adults should have the right to access sexually explicit materials for personal use. Legislative and judicial efforts to prevent the production or distribution of sexually explicit materials endanger constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and press, and could be employed to restrict the appropriate professional use of such materials by sexuality educators, therapists, and researchers.
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Tag: Deposition Concerning the Battle at Lexington
The first battles of the American Revolution occurred at the towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775. Shown here is the deposition of Captain John Parker of the Lexington Militia, describing the initial events of the day.
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Editor: Jane Villa-Lobos
CONSERVATION COMMUNITY MOURNS DEATH OF FIELD BIOLOGISTS
On August 3, two of the world's top field biologists, Theodore A. Parker III and Alwyn Gentry, were tragically killed in an airplane crash in Ecuador. Both scientists were founders of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), and their deaths mark a major loss to the international conservation community. They were on a RAP reconnaissance trip, making an aerial survey of the coastal area of Ecuador when the small plane crashed into a mountain. Two others died in the crash, including Eduardo Aspiazu, president of the Guayaquil Chapter of the Nature Foundation. There were three survivors, including Mr. Parker's fiancee, Jacqueline Goerck.
Mr. Parker, a senior scientist for Conservation International, was widely regarded as the world's leading field ornithologist. He was known for his unique ability to identify nearly 4,000 bird species by their calls alone, and was an expert on all Neotropical biodiversity.
Dr. Gentry, senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was equally revered for his botanical knowledge of South America. His knowledge of woody tropical species was unsurpassed, and he had collected tens of thousands of herbarium specimens during his lifetime.
Parker and Gentry are considered irreplacable by the conservation community. "Ted and Al carried two-thirds of the unpublished knowledge of Neotropical biodiversity in their heads," said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International. "Both men were conservation pioneers," reflected Peter Seligmann, Conservation International's chief executive officer and chairman of the board. "Together, they were an unmatchable reservoir of knowledge. Their deaths are an enormous setback for the world's wild places."
The RAP, started four years ago to inventory the biodiversity of previously unmapped areas in the tropics, was the perfect platform for Parker and Gentry's talents. RAPs blend traditional field techniques with the latest technology to survey a region's system of plants and animals. The scientists involved then make recommendations to land-use officials on how to protect them. Much of the program's attention in recent years has centered on tropical "hotspots" that are being threatened by encroachment or destruction. The two men often worked together on such missions.
WORLD RED LIST OF THREATENED PLANTS
In early 1994 the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) will publish the first global list of threatened plants. This is a culmination of 15 years of data gathering and analysis, and attempts to incorporate all Red Data Books and Red Data Lists as well as other published and unpublished information on threatened plants. Information on approximately 70,000 taxa is maintained in BG-BASE, a PC-based RDBMS application. This 1000+ page book will comprise around 36,000 taxa (ca. 15% of known vascular plants) that are threatened at either the country or world level and will include the scientific name, Red Data Book category at the world level, inclusion on CITES Appendix, distribution by country and Red Data Book category within each country. Data sources for nomenclature, distribution, and conservation information will also be included. Due to space constraints, synonymy, life form, common names, and presence in cultivation will be excluded.
In the late stages of this project, WCMC is attempting to fill the obvious gaps and would appreciate hearing from anyone who would be willing to help supply new or update existing information. There are, of course, many errors, inconsistencies, and gaps - inevitable in a data set of this size - but WCMC is attempting to correct as many as possible before going to press. If anyone is willing to supply either geographically or taxonomically based information in a very short time frame, or if there are any questions about this project, please contact Kerry Walter by e-mail (Kerry.Walter@wcmc.co.uk) or call 44 22 327 7314. Please state the region(s)/taxonomic group(s) for which you would be willing to provide data, and how quickly you could review or supply information.
ALL TAXA BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY WORKSHOP
In April 1993, 57 specialists convened for a three day workshop at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to discuss the concept and mechanics of an All Taxa Biological Inventory (ATBI). Participants had backgrounds in managing biotic surveys or information, and represented more-or-less the full range of terrestrial and freshwater taxa. For logistic reasons, the marine environment was excluded from discussion, although several representatives were present to provide cross linkage to similar processes underway among marine scientists. Most participants came from the United States, but Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Norway, England, and Australia were also represented. The workshop was organized by Dan Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs with funding from NSF.
An ATBI would be made a single large site, 50,000-100,000 hectares, including diverse habitats and would involve a complete inventory of all taxa to the maximum extent possible. The site would be subject to long term preservation, but would include disturbed habitats. Collections will be made within a grid system via sampling strategies that allow maximum information retrieval in the future. Modern information management, including global interactive access via Internet, is crucial.
An ATBI must be a cooperative, synergistic effort, with all involved working closely together. Training of systematists, as well as land managers and others, will be built in. The inventory will include passing the species collected "through the filter of what we know" to add biological and phylogenetic information to the knowledge base. The overall lack of trained systematists and collection and research facilities for microbes and many invertebrates creates a need for a major infusion of effort into these fields. It is expected that people will emerge to meet the challenge.
A single ATBI would cost $50-$150 million. After two years of planning and gearing up, the inventory would take about five years. An ATBI site might include 100,000 to 150,000 species, yielding a unit cost of around $1,000 per species. After the inventory has been completed, it would continue to be used for monitoring, research, education and training. An ATBI would thus be an ongoing process. The products of an ATBI will include: complete inventory of a site, a step toward world taxonomic inventory, benchmarks and a "known universe" for research in ecological and environmental change; a platform for ecological studies; detailed knowledge of patterns in biodiversity of all taxa on a landscape scale; paper and electronic manuals of the biota that will be useful far beyond the local site; public exposure for the importance of systematics and conservation; and standards, protocols, and methodologies for sampling and monitoring.
During the conference, initial concern over the size and scale involved with establishing an ATBI disappeared as participants saw the power in the concept and the potential for international partnerships to develop needed resources. After the creation of the first ATBI site, it is expected that others will be started in countries all over the world. In order to be successful, an ATBI must be fully collaborative. The plan must be developed and managed by local constituents in cooperation with scientists and the various user communities.
This workshop focused on ascertaining the technical and scientific issues of feasibility to carry out an ATBI. Further workshops must focus on user needs and local involvement, including such areas as biodiversity prospecting, ecotourism, education, and science-based industries. An initial site must be identified, accompanied by a local and national commitment to support an ATBI. Funding must be solicited internationally. After the site and funds are located, the scientific and management team can coordinate detailed planning and action. For more information, see the article in Science vol. 260 (30 April 1993), or contact Scott Miller at Bishop Museum, Box 19,000-A, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817 or e-mail scottm@BISHOP.BISHOP.HAWAII.ORG.
PEOPLE AND PLANTS INITIATIVE
The People and Plants Initiative is a joint operation by WWF International, UNESCO and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to contribute to the sustainable and equitable use of plant resources. The initiative seeks to support ethnobotanists from developing countries who work with local communities to study and record the use of plant resources, resolve conflicts between the conservation and over-exploitation of plant resources, promote sustainable methods of harvesting non-cultivated plants, and ensure that local communities benefit from the conservation and use of plant resources. The People and Plants Initiative provides the local ethnobotanist and the people with whom they work with training workshops on field methods for inventorying plant resources and assessing methods for the sustainable harvesting of plants, advice on specific conservation projects, scientific literature, training manuals and technical information, and the opportunity to interact with ethnobotanists working in other regions.
A series of five handbooks on plant conservation is being prepared to provide technical guidance on methods in ethnobotany and sustainable use of plant resources. Current People and Plants Initiative activities include projects in Malaysia, the Caribbean, Madagascar, Bolivia, Mexico, Uganda, Brazil, Cameroon, and a few international projects.
The need for this initiative is urgent for numerous reasons: 1) the sustainable and equitable use of plant resources for the benefit of local people is essential for biodiversity conservation in rural communities; 2) over-harvesting of non- cultivated plants often results from habitat loss, human population increase and trade in plant products; 3) local resource users often have a profound knowledge of plants and their management. This knowledge, much of which is unrecorded, is being lost with the transformation of ecosystems and local cultures; 4) identifying conflicts between harvesting and conservation of plant resources is the first step towards achieving sustainable plant use; 5) ethnobotanists can work on practical conservation issues with local communities; and 6) more of these key professionals are needed in developing countries. For more information contact the Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, United Kingdom; WWF-International, Biodiversity Unit-Conservation Policy Division, Avenue du Mont Blanc, 1196 Gland, Switzerland; or UNESCO, Man and the Biosphere Programme, Division of Ecological Sciences, 7, Place de Fontenoy - 75352 Paris, CEDEX 07 Sp - France.
BIODIVERSITY MONITORING COURSE
The Second International Biodiversity Measuring and Monitoring Course will be directed by the Smithsonian Man and the Biosphere Program (SI/MAB) and is tentatively scheduled for May 2 - June 3, 1994 at the Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center, Front Royal, Virginia. This unique professional course will teach participants how to establish procedures for measuring and monitoring biodiversity, how to design sampling programs and analyze data in each field, how to develop the monitoring protocol, and how to implement the management strategies necessary for an area. Previously, 19 participants from 14 countries throughout the world interacted for five weeks with close to 60 outstanding instructors and speakers in the recently completed first course.
Course participants will work intensively with highly qualified researchers and instructors; learn methodology used by experts working in temperate and tropical ecosystems; learn about measuring biodiversity and develop a biodiversity monitoring program for a selected site; and qualify for future biodiversity and research programs in tropical rainforest Smithsonian research sites. Twenty participants will be accepted worldwide; the course will be in English, although most instructors are bilingual (English/Spanish). Instructors are well-known specialists from the Smithsonian Institution and other organizations.
Applications are being accepted from graduate students, senior undergraduates and professionals in the biological or environmental sciences. Total cost is $3200 (not including airfare). This covers food and lodging, local transportation, books and materials, and use of field and laboratory equipment. A limited number of fellowships will be available. Application deadline is December 12, 1993.
For further information and application forms, please write, call, or fax: Dr. Francisco Dallmeier, Director, Smithsonian/MAB, Biodiversity Program, Smithsonian Institution, 1100 Jefferson Drive, S.W., Suite 3123, Washington, DC 20560. Tel: (202) 357- 4693, Fax: (202) 786-2557.
The World Wildlife Fund International has published Ethics, Ethnobiological Research, and Biodiversity. This document, intended for policy makers in government, research institutes, botanical gardens, herbaria, universities, and industry outlines some of the dilemmas facing ethnobotanists, anthropologists, and phytochemists in developing new natural products from biological materials.
The bulk of the world's biological and cultural diversity occurs in developing countries rich in potential new natural products. However much of the technology and expertise required to develop new industrial products from biological materials is centered in the industrialized countries of the temperate zone. For researchers, industrial companies, corporations, and governments involved with recording indigenous knowledge and identifying potentially valuable biological resources, this raises ethical, legal, and political issues. Ethics, Ethnobiological Research, and Biodiversity discusses these issues and provides a recommended code of practice. The specific objectives of the paper are: 1)to present the background to the ethical and conservation issues that arise in the development of new natural products and to outline the need to create equitable partnerships and recognize the value of indigenous knowledge which will lead to the payment of fair compensation to source regions; 2)to facilitate international cooperation in the collection, conservation, use, and development of new natural products; 3)to ensure that any collecting for export and use outside of a country has the full approval of the competent authorities, and is carried out with the cooperation of the host country and representatives of the local communities involved; also to ensure that these collections comply with conservation and quarantine regulations in the countries of origin and destination; and 4)to outline the general principles that will facilitate development of national regulations by governments or agreements between organizations. For more information, contact WWF International, Avenue du Mont-Blanc, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland. Tel: 41 (22) 364 91 11, Fax: 41 (22) 364 53 58; or contact the WWF affiliate in your country.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx Zoo) seeks a talented environmental educator for full time position in its nationally prominent education department. Candidate must have graduate course work in environmental science, conservation biology, or science education with a strong background in ecology and over 4 years teaching in supervisory experience in environmental education. Knowledge of current conservation issues, creativity, strong public presentation and writing skills are required. Experience handling small live animals and ability to play a guitar are desirable. Competitive salary. Benefits include three weeks vacation, on-site parking, health and retirement plans. Send resume with salary requirements to: Annette Berkovits, Director of Education, The Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York 10460. Fax: (718) 733-4460.
October 25-28. The First International Workshop on the
Conservation of the Pampas Deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus)
will meet in Rocha, Uruguay. Due to the critical situation of
this species, the workshop aims to bring together experts to
exchange ideas and experiences in the conservation of endangered
species. For more information, contact Lic. Susana Gonzales,
Division Citogenetica U.A., Instituto de Investigaciones
Biologicas Clemente Estable, Av. Italia 3310, C.P. 11600,
Montevideo, Uruguay. Tel: 471616, Fax: 475548.
October 25-November 26. Plant Conservation Techniques Course, sponsored by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will review the options open to the plant conservationist by assessing the techniques available - from protected area management to botanic gardens, seed banking and cryopreservation. The course aims to enhance the student's awareness of the issues and methods used in plant conservation, enable the student to explore how issues and methods are related to each other, encourage students to think of their own, more specialized, studies and experiences in a broader context encompassing social, ecological and evolutionary factors, and to develop problem solving skills and applied practical skills of value in conservation. For more information, contact Education and Marketing Department, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, United Kingdom. Tel: 44 81 332 5623 or 332 5626, Fax: 44 81 332 5610.
Alcorn, J. 1993. Indigenous peoples and conservation.
Conservation Biology 7(2): 424-426.
Anon. 1993. 1993 is watershed year for biodiversity conservation in Indonesia. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 4, 7.
Anon. 1993. Ally in the rainforest works to protect one of El Salvador's last untouched refuges. The Canopy Spring: 6. (Fundacion Ecologica Salvadorean's efforts to save Bosque El Imposible)
Anon. 1993. Calakmul: beauty & biodiversity. Kambul 3(2): 3-4. (Yucatan, Mexico)
Anon. 1993. Exotic trade threatens rare Indonesia parrot. Focus 15(4): 5. (Red-and-blue lory)
Anon. 1993. Historic management agreement reached with Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. The Nature Conservancy of Maryland 17(2): 3. (Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, home to several endangered beetles)
Anon. 1993. Illegal fur trade threatens species in India and Nepal. Focus 15(3): 1, 6.
Anon. 1993. Interior Department action may halt trade of tiger bone and rhino horn. Focus 15(4): 1, 4.
Anon. 1992. New hope for endangered Mauritian tree. Species 19: 7. (Dombeya mauritiana)
Anon. 1993. New management plan may hold the key to the panda's future. Focus 15(3): 5.
Anon. 1993. Norway resumes whaling. Focus 15(4): 6.
Anon. 1993. Proposed Chilean national biodiveristy plan released. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 2.
Anon. 1993. WWF and Hoopa Valley tribe form conservation partnership. Focus 15(3): 1, 7. (Hoopa Valley Reservation in northern California, an area of high biological diversity)
Anon. 1993. WWF special report: protecting species of special concern. Focus 15(3): 4-5.
Barnes, J. 1993. Driving roads through land rights: the Colombian Plan Pacifico. The Ecologist 23(4): 135-140.
Behler, J. and Klemens, M. 1993. Turtle troubles. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 13. (250 species of the world's tortoises and freshwater turtles are in danger)
Behra, O. 1993. The export of reptiles and amphibians from Madagascar. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 115-116.
Bowker, M. 1993. In the shadow of the volcano. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 38-43. (Restoration, Mount St. Helens, Washington)
Brautigam, A. and Humphreys, T. 1992. The status of North Moluccan parrots: a summary of the findings of the IUCN field assessment. Species 19: 26-28.
Bronaugh, W. 1993. Farming the flying flowers. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 54-63. (Butterfly conservation, Costa Rica)
Chambers, F. (Ed.) 1993. Climate Change and Human Impact on the Landscape. Chapman & Hall, England. 303 pp.
Chepesiuk, R. 1993. The greening of America. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 54-59. (Audubon Co-operative Sanctuary Program)
Corry, S. 1993. The rainforest harvest: who reaps the benefit? The Ecologist 23(4): 148-153.
Cowan, P. 1993. Wildlife management and conservation. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 20(1): 1-12.
Crump, A. 1993. Dictionary of Environment and Development. People, Places, Ideas and Organizations. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 272 pp.
Daniel, J. 1993. A chance to do it right: the national parks of Alaska. Wilderness 56(201): 11-25, 30-33.
Dold, C. 1993. The great white whales. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 44-53. (toxic pollution and other threats)
East, R. 1992. Conservation status of antelopes in Asia and the Middle East, Part 1. Species 19: 23-25.
Ecological Society of America. 1993. Program and abstracts of the 78th Annual ESA meeting, "Ecological Global Sustainability". Bull. Ecological Soc. of America (Suppl.) 74(2): 1-520.
Ehrlich, P. 1993. Is the extinction crisis real? Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 66-67.
Ertter, B. 1993. What is snow-wreath doing in California? Fremontia 22(3): 4-7.
Giannecchini, J. 1993. Ecotourism: new partners, new relationships. Conservation Biology 7(2): 429-432.
Greenwood, J. 1993. The ecology and conservation management of geese. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8(9): 307-308.
Haugen, C., Durst, P. and Freed, E. 1993. Directory of Selected Tropical Forestry Journals and Newsletters. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington, DC. 127 pp.
Hunter, M. and Yonzon, P. 1993. Altitudinal distributions of birds, mammals, people, forests, and parks in Nepal. Conservation Biology 7(2): 420-423.
Johnson, A., Ford, W. and Hale, P. 1993. The effects of clearcutting on herbaceous understories are still not fully known. Conservation Biology 7(2): 433-435.
Keeler-Wolf, T. 1993. Conserving California's rare plant communities. Fremontia 22(3): 14-22.
Kennedy, M. 1992. Australasian marsupials and monotremes. An action plan for their conservation. Species 19: 38-40.
Kohl, J. 1993. No reserve is an island. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 74-75, 82. (La Selva, Costa Rica)
Kunin, W. and Gaston, K. 1993. The biology of rarity: patterns, causes, and consequences. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8(8): 298-301.
Lansky, M. 1993. Beyond the Beauty Strip: Saving What's Left of Our Forest. Tilbury House, Gardiner, Maine. 454 pp.
Lieberman, S. 1993. 1992 CITES amendments strengthen protection for wildlife and plants. End. Species Tech. Bull. 18(1): 7-9.
Losos, E. 1993. The future of the US endangered species act. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8(9): 332-336.
Lyra, P. 1993. The tragedy of the Amazon - and the promise of Paragominas. Focus 15(4): 3. (WWF's project to develop alternative methods for selectively logging trees in Paragominas state, Brazil)
Mace, G., Collar, N., Cooke, J., Gaston, K., Ginsberg, J., Williams, N., Maunder, M. and Milner-Gulland, E. 1992. The development of new criteria for listing species on the IUCN Red List. Species 19: 16-22.
McKibben, B. 1993. The Adirondacks. Nature Conservancy 74(2): 24-28.
McNeely, J. 1993. Biodiversity action plan for Vietnam. Biodiversity Conservation Strategy Update 5(1): 3.
McNeely, J. 1993. The real price of pollution. Zoogoer 22(3): 18-22.
Meadows, R. 1993. Farming on the fly. Zoogoer 22(3): 6-11.
Meadows, R. 1993. Watching out for gray whales. Zoogoer 22(3): 12-17.
Mulliken, T. and Nash, S. 1993. The recent trade in Philippine corals. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 97-105.
Nabhan, G. and Fleming, T. 1992. The conservation of mutualisms. Species 19: 32-34. (Succulents and their pollinators)
Nash, S. 1993. Concern about trade in red-and-blue lories. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 93-96.
Nobbe, G. 1993. No panhandlers, please. Wildlife Cons. 96(5): 12. (Reintroduction of black bears to Tennessee and Kentucky Cumberland Plateau)
Parker, T., Holst, B., Emmons, L. and Myer, J. 1993. A Biological Assessment of the Columbia River Forest Reserve, Toledo District, Belize. Conservation International, Washington, DC. 81 pp.
Polisar, J. 1993. River turtle protected. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 6. (Central American river turtle, Belize)
Reading, R., Myronuik, P., Backhouse, G. and Clark, T. 1992. Eastern barred bandicoot reintroductions in Victoria, Australia. Species 19: 29-31.
Reid, W., Laird, S., Meyer, C., Gamez. R., Sittenfeld, A., Janzen, D., Gollin, M. and Juma, C. 1993. Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Genetic Resources for Sustainable Development. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC. 341 pp.
Ricciuti, E. 1993. Rhinos at risk. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 22-31.
Richter, A., Humphrey, S., Cope, J. and Brack, V. 1993. Modified cave entrances: thermal effect on body mass and resulting decline of endangered Indiana bats Myotis sodalis. Conservation Biology 7(2): 407-415.
Sawkins, M. and McGough, H. 1993. The genus Trillium in trade. Traffic Bull. 13(3): 117-121.
Schneider, K. 1993. Loggers listen to what Michigan forests say. The New York Times (National) July 25: 20.
Schreiber, M., Powell, R., Parmerlee, J., Lathrop, A. and Smith, D. 1993. Natural history of a small population of Leiocephalus schreibersii (Sauria: Tropiduridae) from altered habitat in the Dominican Republic. Florida Scientist 56(2): 82-90.
Seidensticker, J. and McDougal, C. 1993. Tiger predatory behaviour, ecology and conservation. Sym. zool. Soc. Lond. 65: 105-125.
Shankland, A. 1993. Brazil's BR-364: a road to nowhere? The Ecologist 23(4): 141-147.
Sheeline, L. 1993. Pacific fruit bats in trade. Are CITES controls working? Traffic USA 12(1): 1-4.
Shevock, J. 1993. How rare is the Shasta snow-wreath? Fremontia 22(3): 7-10.
Simons, M. 1993. Mining is ravaging the Indian Ocean's coral reefs. The New York Times (International) August 8: 3.
Skinner, M. and Erterr, B. 1993. Whither rare plants in The Jepson Manual? Fremontia 22(3): 23-27.
Stewart, M., Austin, D. and Bourne, G. 1993. Habitat structure and the dispersion of gopher tortoises on a nature preserve. Florida Scientist 56(2): 70-81.
Stolzenburg, W. 1993. Magic mesas. Venezuela's tepuys. Nature Conservancy 43(4): 10-15.
Taylor, D. 1993. A new discovery in California. Fremontia 22(3): 3-4. (Shasta snow-wreath: a new genus in California)
Tennesen, M. 1993. The governor, the secretary, and the tiny bird. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 7. (California protects gnatcatcher)
Toro, T. 1993. A cold war legacy. Wildlife Conservation 96(4): 66-71. (Former East German military bases are now reserves for birds and other wildlife)
Tudge, C. 1993. A pachyderm paradox. Wildlife Conservation 96(5): 8-9. (Asian elephant numerous, but threatened by poaching)
Vaughan, R. and Mudd, N. 1993. Protecting Alabama wildlands. Wild Earth 3(2): 64-68.
Yoon, C. 1993. Rain forests seen as shaped by the human hand. The New York Times (Science Times) July 27: C1, C10.
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Theres this one question I was doing for practice that I just cannot do. Even though I know the answer is -0.94, I cant figure out how.
The question goes as followed.
In a computer game, the motion of a car is enhanced by showing headlights on a building, when the car approaches the building. The headlights form a parabola on the road. As the car approaches the building, the beam narrows. The equation of the parabola is y = x^2 - 4x +c, where c < 0 and dc/dt = 14. The x-axis represents the wall, let length be measured in meteres and time in seconds.
Determine the rate at which the width of the beam is narrowing when c = -14.
The answer at the back is -0.94. But I really cant figure out how to get this, and how to approach this question.
help would be appreciated.
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RUSTPROOF! Idaho Experts
Search for Stem-Rust-Resistant Wheat
Plant pathologist Mike Bonman, left, and molecular biologist Eric Jackson examine wheat plants from the National Small Grains Collection in a stem rust screening plot at Aberdeen, Idaho.
Somewhere, village farmers might still grow traditional wheats that could hold the remedy for stem rust. Killer races of that plant disease newly threaten wheat around the world.
The traditional, locally grown wheats may just happen to have genes that could fend off rusts now emerging in east Africa. That’s according to plant pathologist J. Michael Bonman, who leads the ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit at Aberdeen, Idaho.
Scientists refer to these local wheats as “landraces.” These plants are targets of the Idaho team’s fast-paced, high-intensity search for untapped sources of stem-rust resistance.
That’s the case even though local wheats have their share of drawbacks. “They tend to be too tall for what we need in modern agriculture,” says Bonman. And though they’re well adapted to certain regions, local wheats are generally unadapted to the soils and climates of America’s major wheat-growing ecosystems, he says.
But local wheats are, in general, easier to work with than wild wheats. Notes Bonman, “If you crossbreed, or hybridize, a local wheat with a commercial wheat, you’ll be closer to getting a market-ready wheat than if you started by crossing a wild wheat with that same commercial wheat.”
Bonman and others are confident that local wheats warrant careful attention as potential reservoirs of rust-resistance genes that could rescue other wheats from the threat of this formidable fungal disease. And thanks to years of work by generations of plant explorers, breeders, and others, seeds of 25,000 different kinds of local wheats are already at hand in Aberdeen. They’re among the nearly 60,000 wheat types stored there. The collection serves as America’s official genebank of wheat—and wheat relatives like emmer and spelt—from around the planet. Curator and agronomist Harold E. Bockelman manages this treasure trove of wheat seeds and plants.
Plant pathologist Blair Goates (left) and agronomist Harold Bockelman prepare seed samples from the National Small Grains Collection to be sent to east Africa for testing against new races of the stem rust pathogen.
The Collection: Is an Answer Hidden Within?
To learn more about the rust resistance of the genebank’s local wheats, Bonman and colleagues combed decades-old records of the disease-fighting prowess of nearly 8,500 specimens. Plant pathologist Don V. McVey, now retired from ARS’s Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota, created those records when he tested the plants, beginning in 1988.
Though McVey couldn’t have exposed the plants to the new races now damaging wheatfields of east Africa (see story, “World Wheat Supply Threatened” in this issue), his test results are nonetheless relevant and are an important starting point, says Bonman.
The new analyses of McVey’s findings revealed notable resistance in wheats from several places, including Chile, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. “We need to intensify our analyses of genebank landraces that originated from these areas,” says Bonman.
In related work, Bonman and coinvestigators used a computerized, math-based model to evaluate 10 telling traits of nearly 3,000 local wheats. Those traits included resistance to stem rust relatives, such as stripe rust and bunt, and the ability to fend off attack by a devastating insect foe, the Hessian fly.
The analysis pinpointed more than 200 wheats that had “anywhere from a 50-percent to a 70-percent probability of being resistant to stem rust,” says Bonman. He did the work with Bockelman and with ARS plant pathologist Yue Jin of the St. Paul lab; mathematician Ann Inez Gironella, Idaho State University-Pocatello; and Geographic Information Systems researcher Robert J. Hijmans at the International Rice Research Institute, Manila, Philippines. They documented their results in a recent issue of Crop Science.
Cages used to enhance rust-disease development for resistance testing at Aberdeen, Idaho. Testing is over, so the cage lids have been removed.
The new geographical data and data from the model help the scientists choose wheats to ship from Aberdeen to Africa. There, special research nurseries—in Kenya and, more recently, Ethiopia—operate in the heart of the rust epidemic.
But not all seeds will make the trip. “There isn’t enough space in the nurseries to test all our landraces at once,” says Bockelman.
For the tests, Aberdeen plant pathologist Blair J. Goates has solicited seeds from dozens of companies and university and government plant breeders throughout the United States. It’s one way to ensure that the best of their best, along with promising landraces from the Aberdeen genebank, are among those considered for a coveted planting space abroad. Goates is doing the work with members of U.S. committees organized to create superior wheats and barleys for future use.
Once the tough choices are made, Goates makes certain the selected seeds are free of insect pests and diseases before they are shipped.
The Kenyan nursery is now in its third year. The Ethiopian research plots were planted for the first time this spring. Both are managed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, or CIMMYT, and Ethiopian and Kenyan collaborators. Already the nursery studies are yielding timely, reliable results about rust resistance.
These findings should benefit not only wheat, but also several other kinds of grain-bearing plants growing in the nurseries—all likely to be vulnerable to the new stem rusts. Among them are barley and triticale, a wheat-and-rye hybrid. Like the wheats, some of these other grains are from the Aberdeen genebank.
ARS’s involvement in foreign nurseries situated where a plant disease is at its worst has already proven its worth in other preparedness projects. In the early 1990s, for instance, ARS agronomist Darrell M. Wesenberg, now retired from Aberdeen, helped orchestrate tests of genebank barleys in fields near Cochabamba, Bolivia. A fungus that causes barley stripe rust was out of control there.
The upstart rust eventually invaded the United States. But thanks to the Bolivia research and to parent plants conserved at Aberdeen, Wesenberg and Colorado coinvestigators were able to offer barley breeders and seed producers a new, stripe-rust-resistant barley called “Bancroft.”
Partial Resistance: Best Bet?
Now Aberdeen scientists are augmenting the overseas tests with additional experiments closer to home. Molecular biologist Eric W. Jackson is putting some promising traditional wheats through their paces to see how plants react to Idaho races of stem rust.
Jackson hopes to pinpoint resilient plants that can tolerate a low level of infection. Though infected and colonized by the rust microbe, the ideal plants “wouldn’t have any economic damage,” he says.
It’s a “live and let live” strategy that Jackson says may offer a longer lasting solution than absolute resistance.
“If you go with complete resistance,” he explains, “you’re putting selection pressure—survival of the fittest—on the rust fungus. You’re forcing it to evolve so that it can overcome the plants’ resistance. This pressure means you may end up with a more virulent strain of rust than you had in the first place.”
Partial resistance may be the work of several genes, not just one, he notes. That could further broaden and deepen this ecofriendly defense.
Seeds from the Aberdeen collection are commanding a starring role in Jackson’s tests, just as they are doing in the faraway fields of Africa. Rich and diverse, the collection offers new hope of protecting the world’s amber waves of grain.—By Marcia Wood, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics, and Genetic Improvement, an ARS national program (#301) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
J. Michael Bonman, Harold E. Bockelman, Blair J. Goates, and Eric W. Jackson are in the USDA-ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit, 1691 S., 2700 W., Aberdeen, ID 83210; phone (208) 397-4162, fax (208) 397-4165.
"RUSTPROOF! Idaho Experts Search for Stem-Rust-Resistant Wheat" was published in the November/December 2007 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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EU lowers greenhouse gas emissions
Under the 1997 UN pact for combating climate change, known as the Kyoto Protocol, the EU is committed to cutting its
emissions 8 % from 1990 levels by 2012. So far emissions are down 2.9 %.
"We do have quite a long way to go," EU spokeswoman Ewa Hedlund conceded.
But EU officials are hoping for a boost after an emissions trading arrangement begins in January, under which European companies that emit less carbon dioxide than allowed can sell unused allotments to those who overshoot the target. That profit motive is expected to drive efforts and technology to bring "substantial cuts" in carbon dioxide emissions, which make up 80 % of the EU's greenhouse gases.
"This should lead to an acceleration of progress toward the Kyoto target," Hedlund said.
The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it would be harmful to its economy. Though the EEA
didn't detail the precise cause and effect relationship, its survey did show a link between the economy and
emissions. Emissions that bumped up in 2000 and 2001 reversed course when economic growth across Europe fell
precipitously and the biggest economy, Germany's, was mired in a recession that began late in 2001.
The slowdown in manufacturing, particularly the British and Italian steel industry, contributed to the decline, according to the EEA.
"There's still a pretty close correlation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions," EEA spokesman Tony Carritt said. "The great challenge is to break that link by finding more efficient means of production."
The EEA said data was too preliminary to determine exactly how much of the 2002 decline was due to the slower
economy. Other factors cited include the warmer weather in many countries that year, which reduced the need to heat
homes, as well as the adoption of specific emissions-cutting measures, such as the continuing shift from coal to
clean-burning natural gas.
Earlier Europe's leading business lobby, UNICE, called on the EU to reconsider its position on Kyoto, arguing that European companies were being placed at a competitive disadvantage for little benefit.
Without US and Russian participation, global emissions would drop by no more than 1 % by 2012, UNICE president
Juergen Strube said.
"Unilateral implementation of the Kyoto Protocol leads to a dead end, both environmentally and economically," he said.
Russian ratification is required for the treaty to take effect, but Moscow has been dragging its feet despite EU pressure. In a speech, European Commission President Romano Prodi blamed "a lack of political will and the divisions between the industrialized countries" for Kyoto's shortcomings. He said all countries -- including developing countries exempted from Kyoto's targets -- had to cooperate to solve the problem of climate change.
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Henry presses to have his marriage annulled but still meet5s resistance from the church in England. Thomas Boleyn bribes Bishop Fisher's cook to poison the chief opponent of the marriage and other clerics who are dining with him. Thomas More does not take any of the deadly soup, but the toxic brew kills four bishops and incapacitates Fisher. Although he is tortured, the cook goes quietly to his death of being boiled alive rather than risk the consequence Boleyn's threats against his family. When she finds Katherine is still making Henry's shirts, Anne insists on her exile from the court, but Katherine refuses to give up her queen's jewels. Officially the Pope tries not to alienate Henry or the Emperor, but privately sanctions Anne's assassination. Written by
Did You Know?
The episode begins in 1532, but there is an aerial shot of St Peter's Basilica and Square in the first act. The Basilica was not completed until 1626 and the Square until 1667, 120 years after the death of Henry VIII. See more
Pope Paul III
[discussing Henry VIII's divorce
So, what about this girl, this putain, the king's whore? Why doesn't somebody just get rid of her?
"The Tudors Main Title Theme"
Written by Trevor Morris (nm0007129)
Performed by Trevor Morris (nm0007129) See more
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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By Building Transportation
THE BASIC RESPONSIBILITIES OF A STUDENT WHILE WAITING AT THE BUS STOP OR RIDING A NORWALK CITY SCHOOL BUS ARE TO:
OBEY THE BUS DRIVER RESPECTFULLY AT ALL TIMES.
Follow all Norwalk City School student conduct rules and state regulations.
Ride on their assigned buses, both to & from school, at designated bus stops. If there is an emergency and transportation needs to be changed, call 419-660-1822.
Be at the bus stop, waiting at the designated place of safety, and ready to board when the bus arrives.
Enter and exit the bus in an orderly single file line. If it is necessary to cross the road, students are to cross 10 feet in front of the bus after receiving a clear signal from the driver that it is safe to cross.
Carry on items that are required for their academic studies and can fit on their laps or under their seats.
STUDENTS RIDING THE BUS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO:
Use cell phones or play radios. (CD players, IPODs or MP3 players with headphones are permitted)
Put hands, arms, head, feet or legs, out of windows.
Throw any objects from the bus windows.
Stand, turn around in, or leave their seats, while the bus is in motion.
Eat, drink, chew gum, smoke, light matches or lighters on the bus.
Use abusive, derogatory, or profane language.
Strike, push, trip, or otherwise abuse another student while riding, or waiting at the bus stop.
Yell, whistle, stamp feet, clap hands or otherwise distract the bus driver.
Take more than 1/3 of the seat when bus is loaded to capacity.
Litter, spit on the bus, tamper with, or deface/destroy bus property or equipment.
Bring glass objects or items that have sharp points or edges.
Bring pets, animals, reptiles, or insects of any kind on the bus.
Talk at the railroad crossing.
In the interest of safety for all students riding school buses, a pupil will be reported for willful disobedience of the above regulations. A first offense of the above rules will result in a letter being sent to the parents. A second offense will result in the child being suspended for two (2) days from bus transportation, a third offense will result in a five (5) day suspension, and a fourth offense may result in the child being expelled from bus transportation. The length of the suspension may be adjusted depending on the seriousness of the offense up but not more than one hundred eighty (180) days.
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Fidel Castro led a politico-military revolution in Cuba and established the first Communist state in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba, with Castro still in charge, remains today one of the world’s few surviving Communist countries. Although his influence is waning, Castro continues to provide the greatest threat to peace and political stability in the Americas.
Castro, born on August 14, 1927, in Mayari in the Cuban province of Oriente, lived a childhood of privilege on his parents’ sugar-cane plantation and attended a Catholic high school in Havana. In 1945, Castro entered the University of Havana as a law student and became politically active with several groups opposing the Cuban regime and other governments across Latin America. Castro aided exiles preparing to overthrow Dominican Republic leader Rafael I. Trujillo until the Cuban government broke up the group in 1947. a year later, Castro participated in riots in Bogotá designed to disrupt the Ninth International Conference of American States.
Castro graduated with a law degree in 1950 believing in the power of politics. He joined the reform-minded Ortodoxo Party and sought a position in the Cuban Congress, but the overthrow of the government of Calos Prio Socarras by Fulgencio Batista terminated the planned elections. When he became aware of the corruption and excesses of the Batista regime, Castro began plans for military rather and political action.
On July 26, 1953, Castro led 160 fellow revolutionaries in an attack against the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba, capturing weapons and supplies and encouraging the civilian population to rally to his cause. All of his objectives failed. Government troops killed or captured most of his force. Castro received a fifteen-year prison sentence; Raul, his younger brother, a thirteen-year term.
A year later, Batista granted a countrywide amnesty, in response to political pressures, which released the Castro brothers. His revolutionary zeal undampened, Castro went to Mexico to reform his army in order to lead a rebellion he called “26th of July” in honor of the failed attack against Moncada. Castro, in command of an “army” of eighty-one revolutionaries, including his brother and Argentine doctor Che Guevara, landed on the southern coast of his home province of Oriente on December 2, 1956. Again, Castro faced disaster as Batista’s troops captured all but a dozen of the rebels within days of their landing.
Fidel, Raul, Che, and a few other survivors fled into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to continue guerrilla operations and conduct a propaganda campaign to win support for their cause from the peasants and the middle class. The 26th of July movement gained followers and momentum as much from the excesses and cruelty of Batista as from Castro’s activities. Adapting the guerrilla doctrine of Sun Tzu, Mao Zedong, and Vo Nguyen Giap, Castro gained power by merely existing and maintaining a presence as he recruited those unhappy with the current government.
During Castro’s two years in the mountains, his movement gained sufficient strength, primarily from those abandoning the current government, to force Batista to flee Cuba on January 1, 1959. Castro moved into Havana and became the self-appointed premier of Cuba. Although he would continue to wear his trademark battle fatigues as a symbol of his military past, Castro reverted back to a politician and dedicated most of his time to running his country.
Throughout the revolution, Castro promised to form an honest government, guarantee freedom of the press, and respect the rights of individuals and private property, as outlined in the 1940 Cuban Constitution. Instead, he executed more than a thousand of Batista’s followers and other adversaries and began to socialize the island’s economy. He confiscated American assets, worth more than $1 billion, and spoke against “Yankee imperialism.” On January 31, 1961, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Later that year, Castro, admitting that he had always been a Marxist, began accepting assistance, including military aid, from both the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Castro solidified his control of Cuba by his embarrassing defeat of the U.S.-supported, poorly prepared and led Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 that attempted to depose him. He suffered a setback the following year when the United States forced the Soviet Union to remove its missiles from the island, but Castro remained the leading Communist in the Western Hemisphere.
During the late 1960s, Castro attempted to export his political ideas. His first effort, in Bolivia, failed with Guevara’s death in 1967, but throughout the 1970s, Cuban soldiers, supplied and armed by the Soviets, supported Marxist uprising throughout Central and South America and Africa. Castro explained these ventures as necessary to support Marxism, but, more importantly, to keep the Cubans united and energetic against a clearly defined enemy.
Castro’s Cuba failed to flourish, however, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, economic aid stopped. The island’s economy has continued to diminish, and only Castro’s iron-handed rule has sustained his power. As one of the last surviving Communist regimes in the world, Cuba faces almost insurmountable odds.
Without the existence of his military force, Castro would never have been able to take over the Cuban government. However, regardless of its importance, the military aspect of Castro’s revolution takes a distant second place to his abilities to politicize and propagandize. While Castro successfully exported his military influence during the 1970-80s, his power today has dwindled to Cuba itself and that is fading with the island’s weakened economy.
Castro joins this list of influential commanders as much for the location of his triumph over Batista just ninety miles off the American coast, as for any long-lasting impact on the balance of power or the future of Marxism. It is likely that, more than most described in this list, his power and influence will decline with passage of time.
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PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
CONTACT: Jim Doyle
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 17, 1995
SHUTTLE EXPERIMENT STUDYING DROPLETS SUCCESSFUL
Improved production of future medicines and better recovery of crude oil could result from an instrument that studied the behavior of liquid drops in microgravity on a recent 16-day flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, according to NASA scientists.
The Drop Physics Module-2 (DPM-2), one of 16 experiments aboard the U.S. Microgravity Laboratory-2 that flew on the shuttle last month, uses sound waves to manipulate liquid drops for close study. It enables scientists to test basic theories of fluid physics that cannot be proved on Earth because of gravity.
"It gave us very good data, two weeks of data," said DPM-2 Project Scientist Arvid Croonquist of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Now we need to study that data to see what it implies and how it can be applied."
One of the efforts, he said, may contribute in time to the treatment of some hormonal ailments such as diabetes. One part of the experiment studied a pair of chemicals that could be used to make a protective membrane for living cells to be transplanted into a patient's body as part of hormone therapy. To simulate making the membrane, the scientists employed a substance made of polymers or long molecules, the same material used for soft contact lenses. The experiment's intent was to see the effects of reduced gravity on the bonding of polymers.
The second part of the study was to see if there is a force that can be used to place the mass of cells within the membrane. Using a water drop inside an oil drop, the astronaut operators showed that this force is very small. In microgravity fluid processes evolve much more slowly than they would on the ground, and the scientists can study videos of the experiment instead of the high-speed imaging required for ground-based studies, Croonquist said.
Another part of the experiment looked at how the surface of water drops interact with different chemicals, called surfactants. They are similar to chemicals used in detergents to help water remove grease or oils from surfaces. Using these experiments to confirm a model developed by DPM-2 scientists, he said, could lead to better ways to mix chemicals with steam to recover additional crude oil from previously pumped fields.
Other objectives of the experiment were the study of rotating drops splitting into smaller drops and to relate flows in the interior of a drop to the motion of its surface.
An acoustic chamber is at the center of the Drop Physics Module-2. Liquids are injected into the chamber and then manipulated with sound waves. An astronaut-scientist controls the experiment via a special computer while video and film cameras record the behavior of the liquid droplets.
Former payload specialist Dr. Eugene Trinh, who flew with the DPM-1 in 1992, monitored the data transmission using ground based instruments at the operations center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. Principal investigators of the experiment were Dr. Taylor Wang of Vanderbilt University and Dr. Robert Apfel of Yale University.
DPM-2 was built by Loral Electro-Optical Systems, Inc. The experimental work aboard the shuttle was done under contract to NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity Science and Applications.
"Much of the mission success should be attributed to the hard work of the JPL/Loral team in preparing for the mission," said DPM-2 Manager David Gallagher.
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“You have taught me something that will be with me for a lifetime.”
— West High School student
Living History is an engaging multi-day performance and workshop presented in high schools by professional teaching artists of the Denver Center Theatre Academy.
Our actors present four dramatic scenes to the entire student body, which later become a springboard for in-class, interactive exercises that both challenge and engage your students. For instance, a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird
might become the basis of a critical thinking game that transitions into a debate about the post-9/11 treatment of Arab Americans.
Rooted in respect for other’s beliefs, these activities encourage your students to discuss their personal connections and opinions of current and historical events, which help them discover that throughout time, people much like themselves have wrestled with dilemmas that offer no easy solutions.
Held each fall, Living History not only helps students make informed decisions, but also enhances studies in language arts, social studies, history and theatre. Contact us
at 303.446.4851 to make a reservation.
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Cancer treatment can bring about many temporary changes in appearance — from hair loss and weight gain to skin problems. In kids already coping with the physical and emotional effects of serious illness, the added burden of worrying about their looks can add an extra layer of anxiety.
But you can do many things to help your child feel more confident and comfortable with his or her appearance. In fact, simple things — like wearing a cool new hat or bandana during hair loss, or taking a shopping trip when old clothes no longer fit — can work wonders toward boosting your child's self-esteem and outlook.
It also helps to remember that side effects won't last forever. Soon after treatment ends, most side effects subside. But until then, it may take some creativity to help your child manage them.
Here are some tips about coping with the most common cosmetic side effects.
Hair thinning or hair loss is often one of the first real outward signs of being sick. It can happen all over the body or just on the head, depending on the type of chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
Although some kids take hair loss in stride, others find it very traumatic. In most cases, the hair will grow back. However, sometimes after treatment with a transplant and/or cranial radiation (radiation therapy to the head), hair doesn't grow back or small areas of hair loss remain. Also, hair that grows back may be a different texture and slightly different color.
In the meantime, kids might choose to wear a baseball cap, hat, bandanna, turban, or scarf. Some wear wigs, most of which are made from donated hair by organizations like Locks of Love, a nonprofit group that uses donor ponytails to create wigs for financially disadvantaged kids.
Before the hair even begins to fall out, however, some kids opt to shave it all off. This can make it less traumatic when hair does begin to fall out and also provides a much-needed and empowering sense of control over what's happening to their bodies.
Other kids (particularly younger kids who are less appearance-conscious) decide not to shave their heads or wear anything at all — a courageous and bold move that can also give them a feeling of empowerment. It's fine to go bald indoors, but when outside make sure your child's sensitive skin is protected by a hat or sunblock.
Chemotherapy drugs commonly cause rashes, redness, and other types of skin irritation — especially if a child has had radiation in the past. Radiation alone can cause similar symptoms (along with blisters, peeling, and swelling) in the area of treatment.
Wearing loose, soft cotton clothing may help with the discomfort. Your doctor also might recommend or prescribe creams or ointments to treat irritated skin. Good skin care is important, not only for looking good but to help prevent infections, which can be serious in kids with cancer.
Tips for kids with sensitive skin:
Choose a mild soap or shampoo. Avoid those with dyes, perfumes, or alcohol. Especially avoid acne soaps and washes, which can make problems worse by further drying out the skin.
Have your child take baths or showers in lukewarm instead of hot water.
Moisturize your child's skin right after bathing with a hypoallergenic moisturizer.
Discourage your child from picking at pimples or scratching itchy spots, which could cause an infection.
When outside, your child should wear a hat and sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30, since skin is especially sun-sensitive during cancer treatment.
To help cover up pimples, rashes, or other skin imperfections, the doctor probably can recommend special makeup or concealers that can improve the skin's appearance. Just make sure that your child never shares makeup with anyone else, as this can increase the chance of infection.
Many kids being treated for cancer experience weight gain or weight loss. It's common for those who take steroids to have an increased appetite and gain weight in unusual places, like the cheeks or the back of the neck. Other kids have decreased appetites due to the medicines they're taking or trouble keeping food down from side effects like nausea and vomiting.
If you're concerned, talk to your doctor about how to help your child maintain a healthy weight based on his or her medical needs. A nutritionist also can offer advice about how to stay at a healthy weight. Sometimes it helps to eat small, frequent meals and nutritious snacks.
If old clothes no longer fit, consider a quick shopping spree to lift your child's spirits. If new clothes aren't an option, perhaps you can borrow clothes from friends or relatives, visit a thrift or consignment store, or even get creative by reconstructing old clothes in fun and inventive ways.
And remind your child that weight changes are only temporary. Once treatment ends, most kids return to their previous weight.
Putting Things in Perspective
No doubt about it, dealing with the cosmetic effects of cancer treatment can be an added blow to a child who's already coping with serious illness. But it's important to remember that they're a consequence of a necessary treatment that's designed to ultimately help your child. So, while your child might feel bad now, something good is also happening — your child is getting what's needed to fight the cancer.
During this time, try to surround your child with friends and family members who are supportive and uplifting. If you find that feelings of self-consciousness about appearance are prompting your child to withdraw from social events or other enjoyable activities, find a counselor or psychologist who can help your child work through these difficult emotions.
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There's a new reason to worry about the security of your Social Security number. Turns out, they can be guessed with relative ease.
A group of researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University say they've discovered patterns in the issuance of numbers that make it relatively easy to deduce the personal information using publicly available information and some basic statistical analysis.
The research could have far-ranging implications for financial institutions and other firms that rely on Social Security numbers to ward off identity theft. It could also unleash a wave of criminal imitators who will try to duplicate the research.
Details of the research were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal and will be explained at the annual Black Hat computer hacker convention in Las Vegas later this month.
The report means companies and other agencies should once and for all stop using Social Security numbers as passwords or unique identifiers, said Professor Alessandro Acquisti, who authored the report.
"We keep living as if they are secure, a secret," he said. "They're not a secret."
The Social Security Administration says SSNs are issued using a complex process that is effectively random, making them impossible to guess in practical terms. But Acquisti and fellow researcher Ralph Gross used public lists of Social Security numbers to look for patterns. They found several. The two say they can guess the first 5 digits of the Social Security number of anyone born after 1988 within two guesses, knowing only birth date and location. The last four digits, while harder to guess, can be had within a few hundred guesses in many situations -- a trivial hurdle for criminals using automated tools.
"Someone filling out credit card applications using a Web site and a botnet could easily succeed (in getting someone's number)," he said.
'Public should not be alarmed'
Acquisti shared the report with the Social Security Administration's office before publication. He said he could not disclose what steps the agency is taking in response to the research.
The Social Security administration played down the discovery. In a statement to msnbc.com, Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter called any suggestion that Acquisti had cracked the code for predicting Social Security numbers "a dramatic exaggeration."
"The public should not be alarmed by this report because there is no foolproof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number," the statement read.
But privacy expert Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University who reviewed the report, called the discovery a "really big deal."
"If you have a password and you can readily figure it out, that's absurd," he said. "This paper points out just how ridiculous it is that we think there's a way to really keep Social Security numbers confidential. There effectively is no way you can keep them totally confidential. It's just not possible."
How it works
Acquisti said he's discovered simple patterns in the Social Security numbering system. It involves the elusive concept of randomness. To most people, a number is either random or it's not. But to mathematicians, randomness is a sliding scale. Developing perfectly random numbers -- the science of cryptography -- is nearly impossible. Often, software programs designed to create random numbers erroneously spit them out with a faintly distinguishable pattern. With a large enough sample, the numbers begin to form clusters. Even a small discovery of such a cluster can make an enormous difference to someone trying to crack a crypto code, making predictions of supposedly random numbers an order of magnitude easier.
That's what the Carnegie Mellon researchers found.
A completely random guess at a 9-digit SSN should be a one in one billion chance. But instead, their newly educated guesses have narrowed the odds down to roughly 1 in 1,000. Making matters worse, because of changes in the way the numbers have been issued since 1988, the numbers are getting easier and easier to guess as time passes. In one example, the researchers said, they can uncover a Delaware resident's 9-digit SSN within 10 guesses about 5 percent of the time.
The SSN is actually broken up into three parts - the first three digits are the "area number," the second two are "group number" and the last four are the "serial number." The Social Security Administration already offers considerable information about the first part of the number. The area number is based on the zip code used in the application for an SSN. High population states have many area numbers -- New York has 85, for instance – but many others, like Delaware, have only one.
The other two parts the number, however, are assigned in a way that the Social Security Administration believes it nearly impossible for someone to guess. But the Carnegie Mellon work shows they are not.
He took the largest publicly available list of SSNs -- the agency's master death file, which publishes numbers of the deceased to make them hard to use by imposters -- and sorted the list by state and date of birth. Immediately, it became clear that the second portion -- the group number -- was sequentially issued and also trivial to guess. For example, every SSN issued in Pennsylvania during 1996 contains the middle two numbers 76.
That made guessing the first 5 digits of someone's SSN easy in some cases. During a test, the group was able to predict the first five digits of Vermont residents born in 1995 with 90 percent accuracy.
That's important, because there are many ways to determine the last four digits of someone's Social Security number. Some data brokers sell truncated SSNs, with either the first five or the last four numbers visible to the purchaser. And many financial firms use those numbers as a PIN code for verification.
Also, endless customer service operators ask for the last four digits when consumers call for help. Any agent who knows where and when a caller was born could quickly amass a large set of complete Social Security numbers.
The report contains even more bad news.
The serial numbers -- the last four digits -- can often be guessed using formulas and patterns, he said. It turns out that the Social Security Administration doesn't utilize true randomization to create serial numbers. For example, a graph plotting the numbers issued to Oregon residents in 1996, shown below, shows bands that cluster around certain numbers. In fact, there are five discernable lines. A truly random issue would show dots scattered throughout the chart.
The pattern inside SSNs
With additional analysis, Acquisti said, the researchers were able to discern that the serial numbers are issued sequentially, in a way that ties them to the holder's birth date.
"The SSA believes that scheme is so complex that it's sufficiently random," he said. "We show it is way less random than apparently they believe." As a result, instead of a the four digits yielding a 1 in 10,000 chance in guessing SSNs, he said he can improve the odds to at least 1 in 1,000, and in some cases, far less than that.
The Social Security Administration seems to agree with Acquisti on this issue. In its statement to msnbc.com, the agency said that "for reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs. This system will be in place next year."
Birth dates easy to obtain
For now, an attacker who wanted to guess someone's SSN would still need a birthday and hometown, but these data points are readily available from a number of sources. Many people volunteer such information on social networking sites like Facebook. Voter registration lists and other public databases also include such information, and it is often available for a small charge (or free) from data brokers that operate on the Internet.
There are additional challenges in guessing SSNs for residents born before 1988, because many older Americans did not receive a Social Security number at birth -- so their hometown and their Social Security number application zip code might differ. But beginning that year -- in a move ironically intended to combat fraud -- the Social Security Administration began forcing many families to order SSNs at birth, thereby eliminating one more element of chance for a would be SSN-guesser. It's far easier to guess SSNs for anyone born in 1988 or later, Acquisti said.
The formula for issuing the numbers is, in fact, not designed to withstand attacks from cryptography experts or mathematicians. It was invented in 1936 as a simple numbering system for paper file cabinets.
"This was before there were computers," Acquisti said. "SSNs were never designed for the purpose we use them."
The group is not disclosing the precise formula, because doing so would be akin to publishing the list of all Social Security numbers. But Acquisti said one "provocative" strategy that government officials might take: Setting a date in the future -- perhaps in three to five years -- where all SSNs are made public, so companies and government agencies stop using SSNs for security purposes.
He called current efforts to protect Social Security numbers from public view "well intentioned, but misguided."
The researchers recommend that the Social Security Administration immediately implement a much more random formula for generation SSNs. But that won't help the millions of Americans whose SSNs are now easily guessable. For that, there is only one answer, the report says:
"Industry and policy-makers may need, instead, to finally reassess our perilous reliance on SSNs for authentication and on consumers' impossible duty to protect them," it said.
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Water in the Earth’s Mantle
One question that many have asked through the years is, “Where did all of the Flood waters go?” If, as the Bible indicates, the entire Earth once was covered completely with water (Genesis 7:17-24), what happened to all of the water? Skeptic Bill Butler posed this question in an article he wrote, titled “Creationism = Willful Ignorance” (2002). Allegedly, one who believes in the trustworthiness of the biblical Flood account is ignorant because, for one, he cannot logically explain where the Flood waters went.
Apologetics Press has previously answered Butler’s accusations (see Lyons, 2002), but in light of recent findings it seems appropriate to reconsider one of Butler’s criticisms. He wrote:
If the earth’s surface were covered by an additional 29,000+ feet of water, how do you get rid of it? Water is less dense than the rock of the earth’s surface. Thus it would not drain down below the surface. Even if you forced it down, where is it? No oil or gas well has ever hit a subterranean ocean 29,000+ feet thick.
As is often the case with Bible critics, time is not their friend. Repeatedly throughout history, time has helped exonerate Bible writers. Whether it is archaeologists finding remains of a particular biblical people, which critics once alleged never existed (e.g., the Hittites; cf. Butt, 2002), or scientists finally learning why the eighth day of a child’s life would have been the perfect day to perform circumcision (cf. Genesis 17:11; Holt and McIntosh, 1953, p. 126), again and again time has turned out to be a friend of the Bible and a foe to the ever changing theories of man (cf. Harrub and Thompson, 2002). Consider Butler’s comments. He confidently asserted that the Flood waters would be unable to “drain down below the surface.” He then asked, “even if you forced it [the Flood water—EL] down, where is it?” Apparently, in 2002, no one knew about great amounts of water below the crust layer of the Earth. With the passing of time, however, scientists have learned differently.
Livescience.com staff writer Ker Than reported that “[s]cientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean” (Than, 2007, emp. added). “The discovery,” Ker Than added, “marks the first time such a large body of water was found in the planet’s deep mantle” (2007, emp. added). Butler criticized the biblical Flood account because the Flood waters supposedly “would not drain below the surface” of the Earth, yet a large amount of water has been discovered “in the planet’s deep mantle.” What’s more, “researchers estimate that up to 0.1 percent of the rock sinking down into the Earth’s mantle in that part of the world [eastern Asia—EL] is water” (Than).
Once again, time has become the foe of Bible critics. Although no one can be certain what happened to all the water that once flooded the Earth, it is very possible that God sent some of it to reside “in the planet’s deep mantle.” Regardless, it is unreasonable to reject the Genesis Flood account because one assumes the floodwaters could not have relocated beneath the Earth’s crust. One wonders how Flood critics will react to news of a “vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia.”
Butler, Bill (2002), “Creationism = Willful Ignorance,” [On-line], URL: http://www.durangobill.com/Creationism.html.
Butt, Kyle (2002), “Hidden Hittites,” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1750.
Harrub, Brad and Bert Thompson (2002), “No Missing Links Here...,” Reason & Revelation, May, 1:20-R, [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2509.
Holt, L.E. and R. McIntosh (1953), Holt Pediatrics (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts), twelfth edition.
Lyons, Eric (2002), “Where Did All of the Flood Waters Go?” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1803.
Than, Ker (2007), “Huge ‘Ocean’ Discovered Inside Earth,” LiveScience.com, [On-line], URL: http://www.livescience.com/environment/070228_beijing_anomoly.html.
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Halide is a new open source language designed specifically for image processing and computational photography. It not only makes it easy to implement photo algorithms, it also makes them run fast by semi-automatic parallelization.
Algorithms that work with images are ideal for parallel implementation because they usually work with small isolated blocks of data that means the task can be parallelized without worry about interactions. The only problem is that even converting something that is ripe for parallelization from serial code to something that runs on today's confusing architecture of CPU cores and GPUs is difficult.
Halide is a new functional programming language from MIT, (with help from Stanford and Adobe) that allows you to specify image processing algorithms, mostly block convolution methods, more easily and without having to worry about how the algorithm is implemented. A second section of the program then provides a general description of how the algorithm should be parallelized. It not only describes how the algorithm should be split up among computational elements but how to organize the data to keep the processing pipelines running at maximum efficiency by avoiding restarts.
The easiest way to understand the general idea is to see a simple example (taken from the paper):
Func halide_blur(Func in) f Func tmp, blurred; Var x, y, xi, yi; // The algorithm tmp(x, y) = (in(x-1, y) + in(x, y) + in(x+1, y))/3; blurred(x, y) = (tmp(x, y-1) + tmp(x, y) + tmp(x, y+1))/3; // The schedule blurred.tile(x, y, xi, yi, 256, 32) .vectorize(xi, 8).parallel(y); tmp.chunk(x).vectorize(x, 8); return blurred; }
The first part of the program defines a simple 3x3 blur filter split into a blur horizontal followed by a blur vertical step. The last part of the program, the schedule specifies how the algorithm can be treated in a parallel implementation. The Schuyler is machine specific and has to be changed to get the best performance out of a particular processor pipeline.
Local Laplacian Filter 69 lines 158ms 2x faster
Compared to a simple non-parallel implementation in C++ the Halide version runs in 0,9ms where the C++ takes 9.94ms. An optimized C++ parallel version runs at the same speed but of course takes a lot longer to construct.
The Halide complier outputs code for x86, ARM and PTX using the LLVM compiler. In use it tends to perform as well or better than optimized code but using far fewer lines to implement. For example, a Laplacian filter takes 335ms and 262 lines of C++/OpenMP but Halide does the job in 158ms and 79 lines. Typically Halide programs are about on third the length of C++ and anything from 2x to 10x.
Not only is this a step forward for image processing it is also an interesting approach to parallelism that could be extended into other application areas. Specifying and algorithm and how the different variables can be treated in parallelization seems like a good compromise between pure manual and pure automatic methods.
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philosophy is for everyone
philosophers should know lots
Kant and the Enlightenment Promise
by D.R. Khashaba
The 12th February 2004 marks the bicentenary of the death of Immanuel Kant, who may justly be regarded as an incarnation of the Enlightenment. Were Kant to come back into our world today, how would he view what has become of the promise of that glorious movement?
In 1784 Kant gave an answer to the question, "What is Enlightenment?" In giving that answer Kant was in the first place concerned to distinguish between the practical need to obey the laws and institutions of society, necessary for maintaining peace and stability, on the one hand, and the freedom of thought, the right of the individual to question and criticize those very laws and institutions in public, absolutely necessary for human progress, on the other hand. Most of what Kant says in that context may now be of historical interest only (if we leave out of account those areas of the world where freedom of thought is still anathema). But at one point Kant draws a seminal distinction between an age of enlightenment and an enlightened age.
If we are asked, Do we now live in an enlightened age?, the answer is: No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, we still have a long way to go before men can be or can easily become capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance, without outside guidance. But we do have clear indications that the way is now being cleared for men to work freely in this direction, and that the obstacles to general enlightenment, to man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity, are gradually becoming fewer.
Perhaps, writing at a time when intellectual Europe was living in the euphoria of the ideals of freedom and rationalism, Kant was over-optimistic. Yet he was clear-sighted and perceptive enough to realize that, much as it was gratifying to see the good work accomplished by the great British, French, and German thinkers, and the liberalizing reforms introduced by Frederick the Great (to whom Kant's article paid deserved homage), the fulfilment of an enlightened age was a far-off goal.
During the twentieth century the hopes and dreams that were generated in the preceding two centuries were dissipated. Today, two hundred years after Kant departed our world, we cast a look on the condition of humankind, a humankind that, by the lights of eighteenth-century enlightenment and nineteenth-century progressivism, should by now have become united in peace, goodwill, and prosperity and what do we see? It is hardly necessary to give an account: intolerance, conflict, violence, poverty, and disease not only reign in the vast backward regions but are also evident in what might be termed the bright spots of the advanced world.
But bad as it is that we have failed to make good on the promise, it is a far worse calamity that we seem to have lost the beacon that signals the way. During the twentieth century mainstream philosophy lost its bearings. Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'.
On the other hand, religion, seemingly the only remaining shelter for meanings and values, continued to tether these meanings and values to irrational beliefs that enslave the mind and play a divisive role between peoples. Humanity was thus left to the mercy of the Scylla of amoral science and technology on the one hand and the Charybdis of dogmatic religion on the other hand. The option we were offered was: either science and no values or values bound up with what Kant called self-imposed immaturity.
The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson.
Kant's "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklarung?" was published in the Berlinische Monatschrift for December 1784. An English translation can be accessed at: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html
© D. R. Khashaba 2004
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Europe, it seems, may be more vulnerable to climate change than some people think.
According to a report issued Monday by the European Environment Agency, the World Health Organization and the European Commission, Europe has warmed more than the global average. The report also includes new projections that suggest European seas are set to rise more than previous estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
(The executive summary of the report is available as a PDF here.)
But perhaps more significant than the climate science is the prescription for action in the report.
European Union policy makers for the past decade have emphasized the need to implement a regulatory regime to put a global cap on emissions and to enable wealthy countries to finance ways of cutting carbon in the developing world. The report says working toward a new global climate deal remains important. But interestingly, it also says the priority should be advancing technological solutions, creating incentives for populations across the globe to preserve their forests, and making the most vulnerable populations more resilient to heat waves and flooding.
In particular, the report highlights the need to review how to manage irrigation and whether rivers will be able to help keep nuclear power plants cool in the future. It also urges Europe to do more to protect people from insect-borne diseases and flooding rivers.
“What is now needed is a massive scale-up in renewable energy technology development and transfer, investment in energy and resource efficiency, adaptation actions and efforts to reduce deforestation, increase the resilience of ecosystems and reduce effects on human health,” the report says.
Increasingly, there is a strong conviction among many energy experts that cap-and-trade systems will be insufficient to meet the task of delivering cleaner energy to a human population and to economies that are set to swell in coming decades. They say a big, direct push on technology using huge government subsidies may be necessary.
This question of how to foster new energy technologies quickly and efficiently also was highlighted in our Energy Challenge series.
Of course, it is possible that nations will agree to expand the global cap-and-trade systems foreseen under the Kyoto climate treaty. Negotiations are set to begin in earnest this December on a new accord, which United Officials want in place by 2012.
Then again, there’s no guarantee that cap-and-trade systems will work, or that the most polluting nations — China and the United States, at the moment — will adopt such systems.
Even if polluting countries do adopt them, many things stand in the way of their being effective. One hazard is that the price of carbon could suddenly plummet — as it did in the European system in 2006 because of a glut of credits on the markets — prompting a swift return to burning more fossil fuels.
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Conservation, timber and perceived values at Mt Field, Tasmania.
Kiernan, K (2002) Conservation, timber and perceived values at Mt Field, Tasmania. In: Australia's Ever-changing Forests V. Australia's Ever-changing Forests, V . Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU, Canberra, Australia, pp. 209-228. ISBN 086740 5309
|PDF - Full text restricted - Requires a PDF viewer|
Official URL: http://www.foresthistory.org.au/publications.html
Mt Field is a small mountain plateau the highest point of which, Mt Field
West (1434 mettes), overlooks a production forest in the Florentine Valley
that today isolates it from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
While biodiversity has become the driving force in contemporary namre
conservation, it was the scenic values of a landform, Russell Falls, now a
Tasmanian tourism icon, that first ttiggered conservation initiatives in this
part of Tasmania.
|Item Type:||Book Section|
|Additional Information:||Copyright © 2002 CRES - Proceedings of the fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History.|
|Deposited By:||Miss AM Young|
|Deposited On:||17 Dec 2010 16:59|
|Last Modified:||17 Dec 2010 16:59|
|ePrint Statistics:||View statistics for this ePrint|
Repository Staff Only: item control page
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Updated on Dec.28, 2011.
The Imperial Museum in Petrópolis is one of the most attractive cultural points of interest near Rio de Janeiro. Located in the town's historic center, the museum was once Emperor Pedro II's favorite residence.
The museum's appeal can be attributed to the palace itself, the furniture and art objects which belonged to the emperor's family, including the Imperial Crown and jewels, and the archives consisting of 250,000 original documents ranging from the 13th to the early 20th century.
Built between 1845-1862 to be a summer residence, the palace is considered the origin of the city named for the emperor and his father, Pedro I. Brazil's first emperor had been charmed by the region in 1822, not long before he proclaimed Brazil independent. In 1830, he bought the farm where the palace was built.
The palace was designed by German engineer and Brazilian Army Major Júlio Frederico Koeler and followed through by architects Joaquim Cândido Guilhobel and José Maria Jacinto Rebelo after his death. Some of the outstanding features of the neoclassical building are the vestibule floor in Carrara marble and black marble from Belgium, floors and door frames made of noble woods such as jacaranda and rosewood.
The gardens were designed by Jean Baptiste Binot, under the emperor's personal guidance, with native plants, some of them rare.
After Brazil became a republic in 1889, the palace was leased to Colégio Notre Dame de Sion (1892-1908) and to Colégio São Vicente de Paula (1909-1940). A former Colégio São Vicente de Paula student, Alcindo de Azevedo Sodré, dreamed of turning the palace into a museum and it was thanks to his work and influence that Presidente Getúlio Vargas created the museum by decree in 1940. The museum was opened on March 16, 1943.
The Imperial Museum is decorated with furniture which was used by the imperial family in Petropolis or in Rio de Janeiro. The mahogany table and chairs by F. Léger Jeanselme Père & Fils in the dining room and the jacaranda bed in Portuguese rococo used by Princess Leopoldina, one of the emperor's daughters, are examples of historic pieces on display.
The most valuable item in the museum, however, is Emperor Pedro II's crown, made to order for the young monarch - coronated at the age of 15 - by Rio de Janeiro artist Carlos Marin. The crown has been in the museum since 1943.
Other treasures from the Imperial family housed at the museum are Pedro II's scepter and jewels worn by his wife, Empress Leopoldina.
Sound & Light Show
Every week, the museum hosts a 45-minute sound and light show which reenacts moments of Emperor Pedro II's reign.
A soundtrack narrated (in Portuguese) by famous Brazilian actor Paulo Autran highlights moments such as a gala ball when sisters Princesses Isabel and Leopoldina met their future husbands. The museum is lighted as if for the gala and, on a water curtain, movie scenes depicting gala scenes are shown.
Hours: Thur-Sat at 8 p.m.
Tickets: R$20 (check daily dollar-real exchange rates). It is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance (at the museum's ticket office).
The Imperial Museum has the Bistro Imperatriz serving varied food and wine.
Tue-Sun 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Address & Contact Information:
Rua da Imperatriz 220
Petrópolis - RJ
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Freedom Rider Patten Brings Story to SCSU Community
ST. CLOUD – A member of the Civil Rights Movement’s groundbreaking Freedom Riders addressed St. Cloud State University today.
The legendary Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States. Their message? Challenge the status quo of racial segregation with nonviolent action.
The fight continues. On Wednesday afternoon, Ernest, or Rip Patten, one of these riders, brought his story and message to the SCSU community.
Patten explained how, while laws existed outlawing interstate segregation, authorities did little to enforce them. The Freedom Riders fought the system by riding public transportation through the South beginning on May 4th, 1961 from Washington, D.C.
At the time he joined, Patten was a music student and drum major in heavily segregated Nashville Tennessee. During his time as a rider, he saw police arrest other riders without reason and and watch as they’d endure attacks from white mobs without reason.
The fight paid off. Within the year, the Freedom Riders made great strides. Black passengers were allowed to sit wherever they wanted on mass transit, signs came down, segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were eliminated, and station lunch counters began serving all customers – regardless of skin color.
The story of the Freedom Riders has since been made into a film of the same name, and Patten devotes time to public speaking events to carry on the legacy.
At the heart of Patten’s talk is peaceful social change – he hopes the actions of the riders will continue to inspire people to use nonviolence to challenge injustice.
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who specialise in anaesthesiology are known as the Anaesthetist.
These are the doctors who specialise in administering the anaesthetic
agents. The nature of their job often involve looking after unconscious
patients and patients on various life supports and, because of this, the
Anaesthetist is often a very important member of the intensive care
team. The other area of great importance is in the area of pain management.
The Anaesthetists through their detailed knowledge in the action the
various drugs which can affect the nerves, an able to use this expert knowledge to control pain.
Cardiology is the area of medicine involved with the heart. Heart
disease is the commonest cause of death in Malaysia today. Patient with
heart disease usually complains of chest pain, shortness of breath,
swelling of ankles or legs or blackouts. Another common disease seen by
cardiologist is hypertension or high blood pressure. Disease of the
heart can now be treated by medicine, surgery or by putting a thin wire
in through a blood vessel in the groin or wrist and rectify the narrowing in
the artery that supply blood to the heart- angioplasty.
Cardiac electrophysiology is the science of elucidating, diagnosing, and treating the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive (intracardiac) catheter recording of spontaneous activity as well as of cardiac responses to programmed electrical stimulation (PES). A specialist in cardiac electrophysiology is known as a cardiac electrophysiologist, simply an electrophysiologist. Cardiac electrophysiology is considered a subspecialty of cardiology. Cardiac electrophysiologists are trained to perform interventional cardiac electrophysiology studies (EPS) as well as surgical device implantations.
The Surgeons who specialise in operating diseases of the heart, lungs
and the thoracic cage are known as Cardiothoracic Surgeon. This specialty
is dealing with a very wide range of problems affecting the lungs and
the heart and the tissues inside the thoracic cage. This is especially
so when the illness requires surgical intervention. The more prominent
illnesses that require the help of the Cardiothoracic Surgeon are Coronary
Artery bypass, repair of Vulvular Heart disease, Resection of lung especially
in Lung cancer etc. Sometimes surgical intervention is also needed in
order to find out the diagnosis of the disease process that affects
the organs in the chest.
Dentistry is the branch of science which deals with diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, disorders and conditions of the oral cavity, maxillofacial area and the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body. Dentistry is widely necessary for complete oral health. Those in the practice of dentistry are known as dentists. Prosthodontics is the dental specialty pertaining to the diagnosis, treatment planning, rehabilitation and maintenance of the oral function, comfort, appearance and health of patients with clinical conditions associated with missing ordrficient teath and/or oral and maillofacial tissues using biocompatible substitutes.A prosthodontist is a dentist who specializes in prosthodontics, the specialty of implant, esthetic and reconstructive dentistry. Prosthodontists restore oral function through prostneses and restorations (i.e., complete dentures, crowns, implant retained/ supported restorations). Cosmetic dentistry, implants and temporamandibular joint disorder all fall under the field of prosthhodontics.Orthodontics is a specialty of dentistry that is concerned with the study and treatment of malocclusions (improper bites), which may be a result of tooth irregularity, disproportionate jaw relationships, or both. The word comes from the Greek words ortho meaning straight and odons meaning tooth.
The doctors who specialise in skin diseases are known as Dermatologists.
The skin is the body's largest organ and many disease processes can
affect it. Diseases that are deep in the body may also affect the skin.
Dermatologist is generally very skilled in using topical medications
and sometimes either oral or parenteral medications are added to treat
certain more severe skin illnesses. Many skin diseases can often be
recognized by inspection alone, however in other occasions a more detailed
investigation like blood test, X ray or taking a small biopsy of the
skin is needed to make a proper diagnosis.
Ear, Nose & Throat Surgery
Ear, nose, and throat surgery is the surgical treatment of diseases, injuries, or deformations of the ears, nose, throat, head, and neck areas. The purpose of surgery to the ears, nose, throat, head, and neck is to treat an abnormality (defect or disease) in these anatomical areas. Ear surgery is usually performed to correct specific causes of hearing loss. Nose surgery can include different types of procedures necessary to treat sinus problems (sinus surgery). Throat surgery can include complicated procedures such as cancer of the larynx (laryngectomy), or more simple procedures such as surgical removal of the adenoids (adenoidectomy) or tonsils (tonsillectomy). Head and neck surgery may be necessary to remove a tumor or reconstruct an area after disfigurement from trauma or injury.
This discipline covers diseases of the digestive tract which comprises
the oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, the
liver, gallbladder, and the pancreas. Physicians who practice gastroenterology, ( which is therefore a sub-speciality
of internal medicine), are trained to investigate and treat patients
with these conditions.
Some of the symptoms that may show up include abdominal pain, vomiting,
abdominal swelling, jaundice, diarrhoea and bleeding. Certain gastroenterological diseases such as hepatitis (inflammation
of the liver ) require purely medical (i.e. non-operative ) treatment.
Other conditions eg. gastrointestinal bleeding may require combined
management by both physician and surgeon. Therefore in practice gastroenerologists
work closely with their surgical colleagues and will refer or accept
patients for consultation where appropriate.
Hepatology is the branch of medicine that incorporates study of liver, gallbladder, biliary tree and pancreas as well as management of their disorders. Although traditionally considered a sub-specialty of gastroenterology, rapid expansion has led in some countries to doctors specialising solely on this area, who are called hepatologists. Diseases and complications related to viral hepatitis and alcohol are the main reason for seeking specialist advice from a hepatologist. Up to 80% of liver cancers can be attributed to either hepatitis B or Hepatitis C virus. In terms of number of mortality, Hepatitis B is second to smoking among known agents causing cancer. And in countries where alcohol intake is on the rise, the number of people with cirrhosis liver and other related complications is increasing.
General & Interventional Radiology
Interventional Radiology is a subspecialty of radiology in which minimally invasive procedures are performed using image guidance. Some of these procedures are done for purely diagnostic purposes (e.g., angiogram), while others are done for treatment purposes (e.g., angioplasty). Pictures (images) are used to direct these procedures, which are usually done with needles or other tiny instruments like small tubes called catheters. The images provide road maps that allow the Interventional Radiologist to guide these instruments through the body to the areas of interest.
Common interventional imaging modalities include fluoroscopy, computed tomography (CT), ultrasound (US), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Doctors who specialise in general surgery are known as Surgeons.
The Surgeons are well known for their skills in performing surgical
operation. Many individual surgeons in addition to their general surgical
skill would also have developed an interest in a field of their personal
liking. Examples are like colorectal surgery, endocrine surgery, and
in the recent years endoscopic- surgery and minimally- invasive surgery.
Besides these, surgeons are also familiar and skilled in performing diagnostic
and sometimes therapeutic endoscopic examinations.
Doctors who specialise in Internal medicine are generally known
as Physicians. They are skilled in using medications to treat all kinds
of ailments. In the course of their training to become physicians they
would also have learned many practical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.
Hence, many Physicians are skilled in performing endoscopic examinations,
ultrasound imaging, and the interpretation of test results.
Oncology is the branch of medicine that studies tumors (cancer). A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist.
The oncologist organizes the care of cancer patients, which may involve various treatments of different disciplines such as physiotherapy, counselling, clinical genetics.
Oncology is concerned with:
• the diagnosis of cancer
• therapy (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other modalities)
• follow-up of cancer patients after successful treatment
• palliative care of patients with terminal malignancies
• ethical questions surrounding cancer care
• screening efforts:
- of populations, or
- of the relatives of patients (in types of cancer that are thought to have a hereditary basis, such as breast cancer)
Haematology is the branch of biology (physiology), pathology, clinical laboratory, internal medicine, and pediatrics that is concerned with the study of blood, the blood-forming organs, and blood diseases. Haematology includes the study of etiology, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and prevention of blood diseases.
Physicians specialized in haematology are known as haematologists. Their routine work mainly includes the care and treatment of patients with haematological diseases, although some may also work at the haematology laboratory viewing blood films and bone marrow slides under the microscope, interpreting various haematological test results. Haematologists may specialise further or have special interests, for example in:
• treating bleeding disorders such as hemophilia and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
• treating haematological malignancies such as lymphoma and leukaemia (onco haematology)
• treating haemoglobinopathies
• in the science of blood transfusion and the work of a blood bank
• in the bone marrow and stem cell transplantation
Neonatology is a subspecialty of paediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn infant. It is a hospital-based specialty, and is usually practiced in neonatal intensive care units. The principal patients of neonatologists are newborn infants who are ill or requiring special medical care due to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, congenital malformations (birth defects), sepsis, or birth asphyxias.
A nephrologist or kidney specialist treats patients with
all of types of kidney diseases. At the early stage of kidney disease,
a nephrologist uses his clinical skills and investigative tools to reach
a diagnosis and uses medications to reverse the disease process. When
the kidney disease is more advanced, he strives to preserve the kidney
function and manage the associated complications. If a patient's kidney
failure is very advanced and irreversible, he will prepare the patient
for dialysis and kidney transplantation. A nephrologist also manages
ill patients who develop kidney problems as a result of other systemic
diseases or surgery. One of the nephrologist's main areas of work is
dealing with kidney diseases and kidney failure that result from long-standing
diabetes mellitus and hypertension.
Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Doctor who specialises in looking after female reproductive life
is known as Obstetrician & Gynaecologist. These two areas of work
often are fused and trained as one. Obstetrics is basically the specialty
that involve looking after the process of pregnancy and delivery in
the female patient while gynaecology involves the management of problems
that arise from the female reproductive organs. The field is obviously
very wide and the doctor in this field can expertly treat many seemingly
unrelated problems like urinary incontinence in female. The other very
important area often investigated and treated is infertility. Menopause
and women with other sex hormone imbalances can also be helped by getting
the right advice and treatment from the Gynaecologist.
The doctor who is specialised in treating eye conditions is known
as Ophthalmologist. He is trained to examine the eye in detail and to
make accurate diagnosis. He will then advise on the optimal treatment
for the condition with medication, surgery or both. Detailed examination
of the eye sometimes can also reveal underlying systemic illness like
diabetes, high blood pressure etc.
Doctors who specialise in orthopaedics are known as Orthopaedic Surgeon.
The orthopaedic surgeons are skilled in treating diseases affecting
the bone, skeleto- muscular system and the joints. They are well known
for fixing fractured bones, they are also skilled in treating various
painful conditions due to degenerative changes or other pathological
processes that are affecting the bone, muscle or the joints.
Sports Injury Surgery
Sports injury surgery is a branch of orthopaedic surgery concerned with treating injuries involving the musculoskeletal that occur to athletes in major sporting events. In many cases, these types of injuries are due to overuse of a part of the body when participating in a certain activity. For example, runner’s knee is a painful condition generally associated with running, while tennis elbow is a form of repetitive stress injury at the elbow. Other types of injuries can be caused by a hard contact with something. This can often cause a broken bone or torn ligament or tendon.
Spine surgery is a branch of orthopaedic surgery to treat conditions of the spine.
Doctors who specialise in paediatrics are known as Paediatricians.
Paediatricians are skilled in treating illnesses that affect the children.
Special training is needed because many diseases that affect the children
can be very different from that of adults. Moreover, certain complications
may be very different, for instance the patients seen by the Paediatrician
may be affected by illnesses that are congenital or is hereditary. Another
example is that the young patients are still growing, hence the disease
process quite apart from causing problems to the particular system may
also disturb or delay the developmental process of the patient. Like
fields in medicine, the psychological and the social impacts for the
patient of any particular illness may also be very different from that
of adults. The Paediatrician who has his counterpart in the General
Physician is skilled in using medications in treating a very wide range
Surgeons who specialise in performing operations on newborns and
children are known as Paediatric Surgeon. After qualifying as a surgeon,
a paediatric surgeon has additional training to deal with many rare
and complicated conditions affecting young patients especially newborns.
These rare conditions are usually congenital problems affecting the
organs in the chest and abdomen especially those related to the intestine.
Not all surgical conditions in children need to be operated on and the
paediatric surgeon will be able to give the appropriate advice. He is
also able to perform diagnostic procedures such as endoscopy.
Pathology is the study and diagnosis of diseases through examination of organs, tissues, bodily fluids and whole bodies (Autopsy). The term also encompasses the related scientific study of disease processes called General pathology. General pathology, also called investigative pathology, experimental pathology or theoretical pathology, is a broad and complex scientific field which seeks to understand the mechanisms of injury to cells and tissues, as well as the body’s means of responding to and repairing injury. This study includes cellular adaptation to injury, necrosis, inflammation, wound healing and neoplasia which facilitate the knowledge to diagnose diseases in humans. Medical pathology is divided in two main branches, Anatomical pathology and Clinical pathology. Medical pathologists are physicians who diagnose and characterize diseases in living patients by examining biopsies or body fluid. Most cancer diagnoses are made or confirmed by pathologists. Pathologists may also conduct autopsies to investigate causes of death. Forensic pathology is a branch of Pathology concerned with determining the cause of death by examination of a cadaver. The autopsy is performed by the pathologist at the request of a coroner usually during the investigation of criminal law cases and civil law cases in some jurisdictions. Forensic pathologists are also frequently asked to confirm the identity of a cadaver.
The service provided can be divided into medical treatments, such as skin lumps & bumps, skin cancers and various other lesions of the skin including some congenital abnormalities, and cosmetic or aesthetic procedures. The cosmetic procedures offered include:
Botulinum toxin injections:
These are used for the treatment of fine lines & wrinkles. It can also be used to treat excess sweating under the arms (hyperhidrosis), muscle spasms eg blepharospasm and migraine.
The commonest filler used is Restylane (hyaluronic acid). This is used to fill furrows, dents & smaller defects.
The lasers we have are able to treat vascular lesions eg thread veins, spider veins, smaller leg veins and some vascular ‘stains’ of the skin. They are also able to treat pigmentation of the skin. The lasers are also used for hair removal.
Keloid scar treatment:
These are treated by a combination of methods including laser, injections and surgery where needed.
Eyelid surgery (Blepharoplasty):
Surgery of the upper eyelids is performed to remove excess skin or to create the ‘double eyelid’. Lower eyelid surgery is performed to remove the lower lid ‘eye-bags’. Both upper & lower eyelid surgery can be performed under local or general anaesthesia. They may also be performed together with other procedures.
Nose surgery (Rhinoplasty):
Surgery to change the shape of the nose is always performed under general anaesthetic. Surgery may involve making the nose smaller (reduction) or making it larger (augmentation). Enlarging the nose is mostly done to increase the height of the nose. The shape of the nose, particularly the tip, may also be refined with either of these operations.
Face & neck lift:
As we get older, the skin & soft tissues of the face & neck lose their elasticity. As a result, they begin to sag. This can be corrected by means of a face lift. The neck is often tightened as part of this operation.
If the ears are protruding from the side of the head they can be set back in a more satisfactory position. This operation is called a pinnaplasty or otoplasty.
Women who want larger breasts can have these enlarged by inserting a prosthesis either under the breast tissue or under the muscle of the chest.
Some women as they get older develop excess skin in the upper arms. These are often called ‘bat–wings’. These can be reduced by removing the excess skin and fat.
Unattractive scars can often be improved by revising them surgically.
A Prosthodontist is a Dental Surgeon who specialise in procedures such as union and bridgework, denture work, tooth implants, root canal
treatment and other cosmetic dentistry and restorative dentistry
like fillings and extractions.
Doctors who specialise in psychiatry are known as Psychiatrist.
A Psychiatrist is skilled in treating mental illnesses. The recent advances
in the field of psychiatry has equipped the Psychiatrist with a wide
range of medications that are able to restore the imbalance to the chemicals
in the brain when there is mental illness. A Psychiatrist is also trained
in treating patients who become mentally disturbed due to certain traumatic
life events by guiding and identifying the problems for the patient-
The doctors who specialise in radiology are known as Radiologists
and the technicians who help to take the X-ray pictures are the radiographers.
Radiologists are trained and skilled in interpreting the X-ray films
and other medical images. Their skills are crucial to secure the diagnosis
of a wide range of illnesses. This is possible because the Radiologist
is able to use his unique medical knowledge and combine that with
the findings on the radiological images taken. The field of radiology
like all the other fields in medicine continues to improve and expand.
Hence there are more and more sophisticated radiological methods which
not only are able to visualize body parts better, less invasive but also
offer the Radiologist important and detailed information on the structural
changes to the organ investigated. This hospital is blessed with the
latest CT Scanner and Magnetic Resonance machine that give superb radiological
pictures. Some radiologists are also very skilled in carrying out certain
invasive procedures and some of these are diagnostic while others may
Respiratory, pulmonology on chest medicine is a specialty that deals with diseases of the lungs and the respiratory tract. This specialty is considered a branch of internal medicine and is closely related to intensive care medicine and thoracic surgery. When dealing with patients requiring mechanical ventilation. Respiratory medicine is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of lung diseases as well as secondary prevention as in tuberculosis.
Urology is the surgical specialty that focuses on the urinary tracts of males and females, and on the reproductive system of males. Medical professionals specializing in the field of urology are called urologists and are trained to diagnose, treat, and manage patients with urological disorders. The organs covered by urology include the kidneys, ureters, urinary bladder, urethra, and the male reproductive organs (testes, epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate and penis). Urology combines management of medical (i.e., non-surgical) problems such as urinary infections, and surgical problems such as the corrections of congenital abnormalities and the surgical management of cancers.
Emergency Medicine and Traumatology
Accident & Emergency Department is a medical treatment facility, specialising in acute care of patients who present without prior appointment, either by their own means or by ambulance. Due to the unplanned nature of patient attendance, the department must provide initial treatment for a broad spectrum of illnesses and injuries, some of which may be life-threatening and require immediate attention.
The services that are provided in an emergency department can range from simple x-rays and the setting of broken bones to those of a full-scale trauma center. A patient's chance of survival is greatly improved if the patient receives definitive treatment (i.e. surgery or reperfusion) within one hour of an accident (such as a car accident) or onset of acute illness (such as a heart attack). This critical time frame is commonly known as the "golden hour".
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How Can Governments Better Engage Hispanic Populations?
Back in April, I asked the question: “How Can Social Media Help Governments Serve the Booming Hispanic Population?” I gave a few ideas then (see the bottom of that post).
Well just last Thursday (May 26th), the U.S. Census Bureau “released a 2010 Census brief on the nation’s Hispanic population”. It’s got some newly compiled data in it. Here are some of the highlights:
- “Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent, or four times the nation’s 9.7% growth rate“
- The Hispanic population growth of 15.2 million people “accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population increase (of 27.3 million)”
(For some thoughts on “How can local governments better engage the Hispanic population?”, scroll down to the end of this post.)
Where was the population growth?
“The Hispanic population grew in every region of the United States between 2000 and 2010, and most significantly in the South and Midwest.”
- “The South saw a 57% increase in its Hispanic population” (4 times the 14% total population growth in the South.
- In the Midwest, Hispanic population grew by 49%” (more than 12 times the 4% growth of the total pop. in the Midwest).
(click here for larger image)
Hispanic growth by State
“The Hispanic population experienced growth between 2000 and 2010 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” (emphasis added)
- “In 2010, 37.6 million, or 75%, of Hispanics lived in the 8 states with Hispanic populations of 1 million or more: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey and Colorado.”
- However, “Hispanics were 16% or more of the state population (matching or exceeding the national level) in eight other states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas.”
Hispanic growth by County
- “The Hispanic population increased to more than twice its size since 2000 in at least one of every four counties.”
- “Of the 3,143 counties in the United States, Hispanics at least doubled in population size in 912 of them.”
- “Hispanics were the majority of the population in 82 out of the nation’s 3,143 counties.”
Not where you might expect: “Among the 469 counties with at least 10,000 or more Hispanics in 2010, the top five fastest growing counties were Luzerne, Pa. (479 percent change); Henry, Ga. (339 percent change); Kendall, Ill. (338 percent change); Douglas, Ga. (321 percent change); and Shelby, Ala. (297 percent change).”
Here’s an interactive map of the percent of Hispanics per county for 2010 (*minus Alaska & Broomfield County, CO). Below is a static map of (what should be) the same thing.
(click here for larger image)
How can local governments better engage the Hispanic population?
So what’s the point? Well… many local governments are going to have to serve an ever-increasing population of people who don’t necessarily communicate the best in English. And although this Census data doesn’t discuss language specifically, at very-least, governments are going to have to adapt to helping people with a different culture than what they might be used to.
How can governments better engage these citizens? After all, they too live in the community, run businesses, and pay taxes.
- Learn their culture.
- Find out how they would like to interact with their government. Treat them like you would want to be treated. Some Hispanics would have a much better experience with government if things were in Spanish. And isn’t that key to strong customer service in government: Helping people to have a pleasant experience? In fact, you might even consider hiring customer service personnel who are multi-lingual.
- Use simple technologies to communicate with them (such as Twitter and Facebook). You might be surprised at how many Hispanics use the Internet and social media. Worried about a “digital divide”? According to a post from the Davenport Institute, they draw the conclusion that Gov 2.0 may actually help engage Hispanics.
- If you video your local government public meetings and put them online, consider making them available in subtitles. After all, this process could end up saving clerks time. Have an opinion on this? Let us know!
- For more ideas, see the bottom of this post on the topic of “How Can Social Media Help Governments Serve the Booming Hispanic Population?”
A similar version of this was originally posted at the company that I work for’s product blog (Disclosure: the product deals w/ transparency, gov’t, & technology)
Other Posts by Justin Mosebach
- Andrew Allison
- Andrew Krzmarzick
- Anthony Zacharzewski
- Candi Harrison
- Carl Haggerty
- Craig Thomler
- Dave Briggs
- David Eaves
- Elizabeth Ross-Harrison
- Emma Mulqueeny
- Greg Palmer
- Gwynne Kostin
- Ingrid Koehler
- Jackson Pollock
- Jared Elosta
- John Gray
- Justin Herman
- Kit Plummer
- Lauri Stevens
- Liz Azyan
- Marc Gunther
- Melissa Tullio
- Mike Kujawski
- Noel Hatch
- Oliver Bell
- Paige Craig
- Paul Canning
- Richard Fahey
- Sara Cope
- Stephen Morse
- Steve Radick
- Susan Gardner
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RAID 1 is mirroring and is generally the fastest and most reliable way to protect your online data. The most common concern with RAID 1 is that it requires 100% more disk than if you don't mirror your disks. To create a mirror of 20 GB of space, you need 40 GB of disk. The performance impact of RAID 1 is that writes will generally be negligibly slower (because you are constrained by the system's speed in writing to the slower disk), and reads will be negligibly faster, because the read can be performed against the faster disk.
There are, in fact, two variations of RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0. Without going into too much detail here (this is going to wind up being a long answer), RAID 0+1 involves creating a RAID 0 disk stripe first, and then mirroring that stripe's contents to an identical stripe. In RAID 1+0, the disks being allocated are mirrored in pairs first and then those pairs are striped. Looks and sounds similar but there are some serious technical differences. The bottom line is that 1+0 is better than 0+1.
RAID 5 is a form of parity RAID, where data is striped across all the disks in the RAID stripe (the collection of disks that make up RAID 5), plus one extra disk. This extra disk contains calculated values that are generated by applying Boolean arithmetic to all of the data on the other disks. (What I have just described is actually RAID 4. RAID 5 works the same way, except that it takes that parity data and stripes it across all of the disks in the RAID 5 stripe to improve performance.) Any lost disk in a RAID 5 stripe can be recovered through the use of the parity information.
RAID 5 writes slower than RAID 1 for several reasons, including all of the arithmetic that must be done every time a write is generated. What's more, in order to do the calculations, in some cases, data must be read from all the disks so that the calculations can be made. RAID 1 does not require any math or extra reading. The rule of thumb is that if your disks are going to do less than about 15-20% writing, then RAID 5 may be OK. Any more than that, and you should probably not do RAID 5.
When a disk is lost, and isn't that why you are looking at RAID in the first place, replacing a disk in RAID 1+0 requires copying all the data from the surviving copy of the failed disk onto the replacement disk. In RAID 5, all the data on all the disks must be read and the appropriate calculations made, before the data can be written to the replacement disk.
If you lose two disks at the same time in RAID 5, all the data is lost, and must be recovered from backup tapes. If you lose two disks in RAID 1+0, unless they happen to be both sides of the same mirror, the system will be able to recover your data without having to resort to backup tapes.
Please note that if your disks are in a hardware array, then the performance comparisons are likely invalid, since those arrays generally cache their data, hiding those performance issues.
Hope this helps...
Evan L. Marcus
This was first published in July 2002
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The ghost towns of Nevada: Stunning photographs capture the eerie remains of once-prosperous frontier communities
The West was always been viewed as a new frontier for adventurers and fortune seekers who dared to leave the confines of the established East Coast colonies.
Whether it was religious freedom or the prospect of striking it big with gold, there were many persuasive reasons for people to move toward the uncharted territories.
The prospect of winning big was even more alive in Nevada than it's neighboring states like Utah and California as Las Vegas was synonymous with quick fortunes.
Scroll down for video tour
Remnants of days gone by: A moving new collection of photos show abandoned towns in Nevada
Different era: The signage harkens back to another time
Irony: The looming gate is the only thing that stands in Metropolis (left) and the gate at the left is in even worse condition (right)
Back in the day: The rusted old car seems symbolically fitting for some of these deserted surroundings
Many of the westward explorers set up frontier towns that became their home bases, but now all that remains are a few decrepit structures.
A new collection of photos compiled by Buzzfeed give a glimpse into the hubs of activity that they used to be, but clearly are no longer.
One of the most marked examples comes from Metropolis, Nevada, where the name seems all but ironic as the daunting city gate stands alone in the non-existent skyline.
Black and white: The stark nature of the surroundings is highlighted by this photograph lacking color
Little church on the prairie: A number of people who moved out west did so for religious reasons
Decrepit: As people moved into cities, frontier towns became less valid options
Space: One thing that the rural towns had to offer was a great amount of land
Flashback: This outpost in Pioneer, Nevada is clearly no longer in use
On the railroad: Weeds have grown over the train tracks from lack of use
Fortress: Unlike many of the wooden structures in the Nevada frontiers, this one was made of long-lasting stone
Unexpected: This window provides a spot of light in an unexpected spot
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Q Fever: Diagnosis & Laboratory Guidance for Clinicians
On this page:
- Because the signs and symptoms of Q fever are not specific to this disease, it is difficult to make an accurate diagnosis without appropriate laboratory testing. Whenever possible, specimens for lab testing of acutely ill patients should be obtained prior to starting antimicrobial therapy.
- C. burnetii may be detected in infected tissues by using immunohistochemical staining and DNA detection methods, or by direct isolation of the agent via culture.
- A diagnosis of Q fever may also be confirmed with serologic testing to detect the presence of antibodies to C. burnetii antigens.
- The indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) is the most dependable and widely used serologic method. ELISA tests are also becoming more widely available.
- Testing of paired (acute and convalescent) serum specimens, taken 2-3 weeks apart, is preferred, because changes in antibody titers provide the best evidence of recent infection. In some cases, a single high serum antibody titer may be considered evidence of probable infection.
- Serologic tests evaluate antibodies to two distinct antigenic forms of C. burnetii called phase I and phase II.
- In acute cases of Q fever, the antibody level to phase II is usually higher than that to phase I, often by several orders of magnitude, and antibodies are generally detectable as early as the second week of illness.
- Phase I antibodies to C. burnetii appear after development of Phase II antibodies. Both Phase I and Phase II antibodies may remain elevated for long periods of time in the absence of chronic infection. In chronic Q fever, phase I antibody titers are much greater than phase II titers. Titers ≥ 1:800 are considered diagnostic in endocarditis patients for chronic Q fever.
- It has been recommended that acutely ill patients be followed by serology for two years after illness to determine if chronic disease develops.
- Both phase I and phase II antibodies have been known to persist for months or years after initial infection.
- Recent studies have shown that greater accuracy in the diagnosis of Q fever can be achieved by looking at specific levels of classes of antibodies other than IgG, namely IgA and IgM. Combined detection of IgM and IgA in addition to IgG improves the specificity of the assays and provides better accuracy in diagnosis.
- Early diagnosis of acute Coxiella burnetii infection is possible using PCR assays. Blood samples collected in EDTA anticoagulant blood tubes should be obtained prior to antibiotic therapy.
- Cultures (isolation) can be done, but many laboratories will not have the appropriate facilities (must be approved for biosafety and Select Agents).
- Chronic Q fever can be confirmed in heart valve tissue by culture, PCR assays, or immunohistochemistry. These assays are not widely available, so you may need to contact your state health department to arrange for testing.
- The American Society for Microbiology is currently working on development and dissemination of sentinel laboratory information. Sentinel procedures can now be accessed at http://www.asm.org/Policy/index.asp?bid=667. Protocols for sentinel laboratories (e.g. hospital labs, etc) are no longer posted on the CDC Website.
- Information for reference laboratories will continue to be available on the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) secure Website (for questions: e-mail email@example.com; toll free HelpDesk 1-866-LRN-LABS [1-866-576-5227].
- If exposure to C. burnetii is suspected, cannot be ruled out, and/or a bioterrorist event is suspected, follow facility policies, immediately notify the clinical laboratory and the state public health laboratory director.
- The state public health laboratory director will coordinate testing as necessary, including rapid testing or confirmation of lab test results.
- The state public health laboratory/state public health department will notify local FBI agents as appropriate.
- The FBI and state public health laboratory/state public health department will coordinate the transfer of isolates/specimens to an LRN laboratory that can perform rapid and confirmatory tests for C. burnetii.
- Preserve original specimens pursuant to a potential criminal investigation and possible transfer to an appropriate LRN laboratory.
- Start chain-of-custody documentation.
- Follow guidelines from healthcare facility clinical laboratory and state public health laboratory about chain-of-custody issues, packaging and shipping.
- Whenever possible, obtain patient specimen(s) prior to initiation of antimicrobial therapy.
- If Coxiella burnetii is identified in a specimen, all storage, transfer, and handling of the specimen will fall under the Select Agent regulations. The CDC Select Agent Home page
- Page last updated August 25, 2006
- Page last reviewed September 28, 2007
Get email updates
To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Rd
Atlanta, GA 30333
TTY: (888) 232-6348
- Contact CDC-INFO
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|Community Radio and Participation: The Case of Siyaya FM|
|Written by Maria Bjerke Dalene|
Community Radio and Participation: The Case of Siyaya FM.
By Maria Bjerke Dalene (2007)
Community radio and participation - the case of Siyaya FM illustrates that radio is a powerful tool when it comes to communication and empowerment for active listeners. However, it also shows that community members are not empowered to the same extent if they are not engaged. Participation is essential for development and empowerment as described by, among others, Chambers (1983). At the same time the thesis demonstrates that it is difficult to involve all parts of a community because of power structures and therefore the radio station might end up empowering people already in power. Siyaya FM has, however, a role to play in Cato Manor with its high unemployment rate by training people the tool of radio and also educating listeners and informing them of important issues that can improve their knowledge. In addition, the radio station can take part in building social cohesion among the different groups of community members. By strengthening community radio stations the national authorities have a potential to meet the goals of their development strategies, while at the same time fulfilling the constitutional promise of freedom of speech for all by creating access to the airwaves for everybody. However, funding shortages create obstacles for many South African community radio stations to fulfil their task as community developers.
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Error detection and correction
||This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2008)|
In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunication, error detection and correction or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communication channels. Many communication channels are subject to channel noise, and thus errors may be introduced during transmission from the source to a receiver. Error detection techniques allow detecting such errors, while error correction enables reconstruction of the original data.
The general definitions of the terms are as follows:
- Error detection is the detection of errors caused by noise or other impairments during transmission from the transmitter to the receiver.
- Error correction is the detection of errors and reconstruction of the original, error-free data.
The most famous early systematic use of error detection was by Jewish scribes in the precise copying of the Jewish bible, beginning before Christ. An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings evolved into the idea of a perfect text in 135 CE, and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid. The scribes used methods such as summing the number of words per line and per page (Numerical Masorah), and checking the middle paragraph, word and letter against the original. The page was thrown out if a single mistake was found, and three mistakes on a single page would result in the entire manuscript being destroyed (the equivalent of retransmission on a telecommunications channel). The effectiveness of their methods was verified by the accuracy of copying through the centuries demonstrated by discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947–1956, dating from c.150 BCE-75 CE.
The general idea for achieving error detection and correction is to add some redundancy (i.e., some extra data) to a message, which receivers can use to check consistency of the delivered message, and to recover data determined to be corrupted. Error-detection and correction schemes can be either systematic or non-systematic: In a systematic scheme, the transmitter sends the original data, and attaches a fixed number of check bits (or parity data), which are derived from the data bits by some deterministic algorithm. If only error detection is required, a receiver can simply apply the same algorithm to the received data bits and compare its output with the received check bits; if the values do not match, an error has occurred at some point during the transmission. In a system that uses a non-systematic code, the original message is transformed into an encoded message that has at least as many bits as the original message.
Good error control performance requires the scheme to be selected based on the characteristics of the communication channel. Common channel models include memory-less models where errors occur randomly and with a certain probability, and dynamic models where errors occur primarily in bursts. Consequently, error-detecting and correcting codes can be generally distinguished between random-error-detecting/correcting and burst-error-detecting/correcting. Some codes can also be suitable for a mixture of random errors and burst errors.
If the channel capacity cannot be determined, or is highly variable, an error-detection scheme may be combined with a system for retransmissions of erroneous data. This is known as automatic repeat request (ARQ), and is most notably used in the Internet. An alternate approach for error control is hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ), which is a combination of ARQ and error-correction coding.
Error correction may generally be realized in two different ways:
- Automatic repeat request (ARQ) (sometimes also referred to as backward error correction): This is an error control technique whereby an error detection scheme is combined with requests for retransmission of erroneous data. Every block of data received is checked using the error detection code used, and if the check fails, retransmission of the data is requested – this may be done repeatedly, until the data can be verified.
- Forward error correction (FEC): The sender encodes the data using an error-correcting code (ECC) prior to transmission. The additional information (redundancy) added by the code is used by the receiver to recover the original data. In general, the reconstructed data is what is deemed the "most likely" original data.
ARQ and FEC may be combined, such that minor errors are corrected without retransmission, and major errors are corrected via a request for retransmission: this is called hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ).
Error detection schemes
Error detection is most commonly realized using a suitable hash function (or checksum algorithm). A hash function adds a fixed-length tag to a message, which enables receivers to verify the delivered message by recomputing the tag and comparing it with the one provided.
There exists a vast variety of different hash function designs. However, some are of particularly widespread use because of either their simplicity or their suitability for detecting certain kinds of errors (e.g., the cyclic redundancy check's performance in detecting burst errors).
Random-error-correcting codes based on minimum distance coding can provide a suitable alternative to hash functions when a strict guarantee on the minimum number of errors to be detected is desired. Repetition codes, described below, are special cases of error-correcting codes: although rather inefficient, they find applications for both error correction and detection due to their simplicity.
Repetition codes
A repetition code is a coding scheme that repeats the bits across a channel to achieve error-free communication. Given a stream of data to be transmitted, the data is divided into blocks of bits. Each block is transmitted some predetermined number of times. For example, to send the bit pattern "1011", the four-bit block can be repeated three times, thus producing "1011 1011 1011". However, if this twelve-bit pattern was received as "1010 1011 1011" – where the first block is unlike the other two – it can be determined that an error has occurred.
Repetition codes are very inefficient, and can be susceptible to problems if the error occurs in exactly the same place for each group (e.g., "1010 1010 1010" in the previous example would be detected as correct). The advantage of repetition codes is that they are extremely simple, and are in fact used in some transmissions of numbers stations.
Parity bits
A parity bit is a bit that is added to a group of source bits to ensure that the number of set bits (i.e., bits with value 1) in the outcome is even or odd. It is a very simple scheme that can be used to detect single or any other odd number (i.e., three, five, etc.) of errors in the output. An even number of flipped bits will make the parity bit appear correct even though the data is erroneous.
A checksum of a message is a modular arithmetic sum of message code words of a fixed word length (e.g., byte values). The sum may be negated by means of a ones'-complement operation prior to transmission to detect errors resulting in all-zero messages.
Checksum schemes include parity bits, check digits, and longitudinal redundancy checks. Some checksum schemes, such as the Damm algorithm, the Luhn algorithm, and the Verhoeff algorithm, are specifically designed to detect errors commonly introduced by humans in writing down or remembering identification numbers.
Cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs)
A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is a single-burst-error-detecting cyclic code and non-secure hash function designed to detect accidental changes to digital data in computer networks. It is not suitable for detecting maliciously introduced errors. It is characterized by specification of a so-called generator polynomial, which is used as the divisor in a polynomial long division over a finite field, taking the input data as the dividend, and where the remainder becomes the result.
Cyclic codes have favorable properties in that they are well suited for detecting burst errors. CRCs are particularly easy to implement in hardware, and are therefore commonly used in digital networks and storage devices such as hard disk drives.
Even parity is a special case of a cyclic redundancy check, where the single-bit CRC is generated by the divisor x + 1.
Cryptographic hash functions
The output of a cryptographic hash function, also known as a message digest, can provide strong assurances about data integrity, whether changes of the data are accidental (e.g., due to transmission errors) or maliciously introduced. Any modification to the data will likely be detected through a mismatching hash value. Furthermore, given some hash value, it is infeasible to find some input data (other than the one given) that will yield the same hash value. If an attacker can change not only the message but also the hash value, then a keyed hash or message authentication code (MAC) can be used for additional security. Without knowing the key, it is infeasible for the attacker to calculate the correct keyed hash value for a modified message.
Error-correcting codes
Any error-correcting code can be used for error detection. A code with minimum Hamming distance, d, can detect up to d − 1 errors in a code word. Using minimum-distance-based error-correcting codes for error detection can be suitable if a strict limit on the minimum number of errors to be detected is desired.
Codes with minimum Hamming distance d = 2 are degenerate cases of error-correcting codes, and can be used to detect single errors. The parity bit is an example of a single-error-detecting code.
The Berger code is an early example of a unidirectional error(-correcting) code that can detect any number of errors on an asymmetric channel, provided that only transitions of cleared bits to set bits or set bits to cleared bits can occur. A constant-weight code is another kind of unidirectional error-detecting code.
Error correction
Automatic repeat request
Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) is an error control method for data transmission that makes use of error-detection codes, acknowledgment and/or negative acknowledgment messages, and timeouts to achieve reliable data transmission. An acknowledgment is a message sent by the receiver to indicate that it has correctly received a data frame.
Usually, when the transmitter does not receive the acknowledgment before the timeout occurs (i.e., within a reasonable amount of time after sending the data frame), it retransmits the frame until it is either correctly received or the error persists beyond a predetermined number of retransmissions.
ARQ is appropriate if the communication channel has varying or unknown capacity, such as is the case on the Internet. However, ARQ requires the availability of a back channel, results in possibly increased latency due to retransmissions, and requires the maintenance of buffers and timers for retransmissions, which in the case of network congestion can put a strain on the server and overall network capacity.
Error-correcting code
An error-correcting code (ECC) or forward error correction (FEC) code is a system of adding redundant data, or parity data, to a message, such that it can be recovered by a receiver even when a number of errors (up to the capability of the code being used) were introduced, either during the process of transmission, or on storage. Since the receiver does not have to ask the sender for retransmission of the data, a back-channel is not required in forward error correction, and it is therefore suitable for simplex communication such as broadcasting. Error-correcting codes are frequently used in lower-layer communication, as well as for reliable storage in media such as CDs, DVDs, hard disks, and RAM.
- Convolutional codes are processed on a bit-by-bit basis. They are particularly suitable for implementation in hardware, and the Viterbi decoder allows optimal decoding.
- Block codes are processed on a block-by-block basis. Early examples of block codes are repetition codes, Hamming codes and multidimensional parity-check codes. They were followed by a number of efficient codes, Reed–Solomon codes being the most notable due to their current widespread use. Turbo codes and low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) are relatively new constructions that can provide almost optimal efficiency.
Shannon's theorem is an important theorem in forward error correction, and describes the maximum information rate at which reliable communication is possible over a channel that has a certain error probability or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This strict upper limit is expressed in terms of the channel capacity. More specifically, the theorem says that there exist codes such that with increasing encoding length the probability of error on a discrete memoryless channel can be made arbitrarily small, provided that the code rate is smaller than the channel capacity. The code rate is defined as the fraction k/n of k source symbols and n encoded symbols.
The actual maximum code rate allowed depends on the error-correcting code used, and may be lower. This is because Shannon's proof was only of existential nature, and did not show how to construct codes which are both optimal and have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms.
Hybrid schemes
- Messages are always transmitted with FEC parity data (and error-detection redundancy). A receiver decodes a message using the parity information, and requests retransmission using ARQ only if the parity data was not sufficient for successful decoding (identified through a failed integrity check).
- Messages are transmitted without parity data (only with error-detection information). If a receiver detects an error, it requests FEC information from the transmitter using ARQ, and uses it to reconstruct the original message.
Applications that require low latency (such as telephone conversations) cannot use Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ); they must use Forward Error Correction (FEC). By the time an ARQ system discovers an error and re-transmits it, the re-sent data will arrive too late to be any good.
Applications where the transmitter immediately forgets the information as soon as it is sent (such as most television cameras) cannot use ARQ; they must use FEC because when an error occurs, the original data is no longer available. (This is also why FEC is used in data storage systems such as RAID and distributed data store).
Applications that use ARQ must have a return channel. Applications that have no return channel cannot use ARQ.
Applications that require extremely low error rates (such as digital money transfers) must use ARQ.
In a typical TCP/IP stack, error control is performed at multiple levels:
- Each Ethernet frame carries a CRC-32 checksum. Frames received with incorrect checksums are discarded by the receiver hardware.
- The IPv4 header contains a checksum protecting the contents of the header. Packets with mismatching checksums are dropped within the network or at the receiver.
- The checksum was omitted from the IPv6 header in order to minimize processing costs in network routing and because current link layer technology is assumed to provide sufficient error detection (see also RFC 3819).
- UDP has an optional checksum covering the payload and addressing information from the UDP and IP headers. Packets with incorrect checksums are discarded by the operating system network stack. The checksum is optional under IPv4, only, because the Data-Link layer checksum may already provide the desired level of error protection.
- TCP provides a checksum for protecting the payload and addressing information from the TCP and IP headers. Packets with incorrect checksums are discarded within the network stack, and eventually get retransmitted using ARQ, either explicitly (such as through triple-ack) or implicitly due to a timeout.
Deep-space telecommunications
Development of error-correction codes was tightly coupled with the history of deep-space missions due to the extreme dilution of signal power over interplanetary distances, and the limited power availability aboard space probes. Whereas early missions sent their data uncoded, starting from 1968 digital error correction was implemented in the form of (sub-optimally decoded) convolutional codes and Reed–Muller codes. The Reed–Muller code was well suited to the noise the spacecraft was subject to (approximately matching a bell curve), and was implemented at the Mariner spacecraft for missions between 1969 and 1977.
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, which started in 1977, were designed to deliver color imaging amongst scientific information of Jupiter and Saturn. This resulted in increased coding requirements, and thus the spacecraft were supported by (optimally Viterbi-decoded) convolutional codes that could be concatenated with an outer Golay (24,12,8) code. The Voyager 2 probe additionally supported an implementation of a Reed–Solomon code: the concatenated Reed–Solomon–Viterbi (RSV) code allowed for very powerful error correction, and enabled the spacecraft's extended journey to Uranus and Neptune.
The CCSDS currently recommends usage of error correction codes with performance similar to the Voyager 2 RSV code as a minimum. Concatenated codes are increasingly falling out of favor with space missions, and are replaced by more powerful codes such as Turbo codes or LDPC codes.
The different kinds of deep space and orbital missions that are conducted suggest that trying to find a "one size fits all" error correction system will be an ongoing problem for some time to come. For missions close to earth the nature of the channel noise is different from that of a spacecraft on an interplanetary mission experiences. Additionally, as a spacecraft increases its distance from earth, the problem of correcting for noise gets larger.
Satellite broadcasting (DVB)
The demand for satellite transponder bandwidth continues to grow, fueled by the desire to deliver television (including new channels and High Definition TV) and IP data. Transponder availability and bandwidth constraints have limited this growth, because transponder capacity is determined by the selected modulation scheme and Forward error correction (FEC) rate.
- QPSK coupled with traditional Reed Solomon and Viterbi codes have been used for nearly 20 years for the delivery of digital satellite TV.
- Higher order modulation schemes such as 8PSK, 16QAM and 32QAM have enabled the satellite industry to increase transponder efficiency by several orders of magnitude.
- This increase in the information rate in a transponder comes at the expense of an increase in the carrier power to meet the threshold requirement for existing antennas.
- Tests conducted using the latest chipsets demonstrate that the performance achieved by using Turbo Codes may be even lower than the 0.8 dB figure assumed in early designs.
Data storage
Error detection and correction codes are often used to improve the reliability of data storage media.
Some file formats, particularly archive formats, include a checksum (most often CRC32) to detect corruption and truncation and can employ redundancy and/or parity files to recover portions of corrupted data.
Modern hard drives use CRC codes to detect and Reed–Solomon codes to correct minor errors in sector reads, and to recover data from sectors that have "gone bad" and store that data in the spare sectors.
RAID systems use a variety of error correction techniques, to correct errors when a hard drive completely fails.
Systems such as ZFS and some RAID support data scrubbing and resilvering, which allows bad blocks to be detected and (hopefully) recovered before they are used. The recovered data may be re-written to exactly the same physical location, to spare blocks elsewhere on the same piece of hardware, or to replacement hardware.
Error-correcting memory
DRAM memory may provide increased protection against soft errors by relying on error correcting codes. Such error-correcting memory, known as ECC or EDAC-protected memory, is particularly desirable for high fault-tolerant applications, such as servers, as well as deep-space applications due to increased radiation.
Interleaving allows distributing the effect of a single cosmic ray potentially upsetting multiple physically neighboring bits across multiple words by associating neighboring bits to different words. As long as a single event upset (SEU) does not exceed the error threshold (e.g., a single error) in any particular word between accesses, it can be corrected (e.g., by a single-bit error correcting code), and the illusion of an error-free memory system may be maintained.
A few systems support memory scrubbing.
See also
- Forward error correction
- Link adaptation
- List of algorithms for error detection and correction
- List of checksum algorithms
- List of error-correcting codes
- Reliability (computer networking)
- Burst error-correcting code
- Allen Kent; James G. Williams, Rosalind Kent (1990). Encyclopedia of Microcomputers: Volume 6 - Electronic Dictionaries in Machine Translation to Evaluation of Software: Microsoft Word Version 4.0. CRC PressINC. p. 343. ISBN 978-0-8247-2705-5.
- Rambam, The Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzot, and Torah Scrolls, 1:2
- Menachem Cohen, The Idea of the Sanctity of the Biblical Text and the Science of Textual Criticism in HaMikrah V'anachnu, ed. Uriel Simon, HaMachon L'Yahadut U'Machshava Bat-Z'mananu and Dvir, Tel-Aviv, 1979.
- Fagan, Brian M., and Charlotte Beck, The Oxford Companion to Archeology, entry on the "Dead sea scrolls", Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Frank van Gerwen. "Numbers (and other mysterious) stations". Retrieved 12 March 2012.
- Gary Cutlack (25 August 2010). "Mysterious Russian ‘Numbers Station’ Changes Broadcast After 20 Years". Gizmodo. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
- A. J. McAuley, Reliable Broadband Communication Using a Burst Erasure Correcting Code, ACM SIGCOMM, 1990.
- K. Andrews et al., The Development of Turbo and LDPC Codes for Deep-Space Applications, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 95, No. 11, Nov. 2007.
- W. William Cary Huffman; Vera S. Pless (2003). Fundamentals of Error-Correcting Codes. ISBN 978-0-521-78280-7.
- My Hard Drive Died | Scott A. Moulton
- "Using StrongArm SA-1110 in the On-Board Computer of Nanosatellite". Tsinghua Space Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- Shu Lin, Daniel J. Costello, Jr. (1983). Error Control Coding: Fundamentals and Applications. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-283796-X.
- The on-line textbook: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, by David MacKay, contains chapters on elementary error-correcting codes; on the theoretical limits of error-correction; and on the latest state-of-the-art error-correcting codes, including low-density parity-check codes, turbo codes, and fountain codes.
- Compute parameters of linear codes – an on-line interface for generating and computing parameters (e.g. minimum distance, covering radius) of linear error-correcting codes.
- ECC Page
- P Vijay Kumar, Error Correcting Codes, Available on-line, Video lectures, Lecture notes. These are a set of introductory course notes and video lectures.
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Minors and Internet Interactivity: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights
The digital environment offers opportunities for accessing, creating, and sharing information. The rights of minors to retrieve, interact with, and create information posted on the Internet in schools and libraries are extensions of their First Amendment rights. (See also other interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights, including “Access to Digital Information, Services, and Networks,” “Free Access to Libraries for Minors,” and “Access for Children and Young Adults to Nonprint Materials.”)
Academic pursuits of minors can be strengthened with the use of interactive Web tools, allowing young people to create documents and share them online; upload pictures, videos, and graphic material; revise public documents; and add tags to online content to classify and organize information. Instances of inappropriate use of such academic tools should be addressed as individual behavior issues, not as justification for restricting or banning access to interactive technology. Schools and libraries should ensure that institutional environments offer opportunities for students to use interactive Web tools constructively in their academic pursuits, as the benefits of shared learning are well documented.
Personal interactions of minors can be enhanced by social tools available through the Internet. Social networking Web sites allow the creation of online communities that feature an open exchange of information in various forms, such as images, videos, blog posts, and discussions about common interests. Interactive Web tools help children and young adults learn about and organize social, civic, and extra-curricular activities. Many interactive sites invite users to establish online identities, share personal information, create Web content, and join social networks. Parents and guardians play a critical role in preparing their children for participation in online activity by communicating their personal family values and by monitoring their children’s use of the Internet. Parents and guardians are responsible for what their children—and only their children—access on the Internet in libraries.
The use of interactive Web tools poses two competing intellectual freedom issues—the protection of minors’ privacy and the right of free speech. Some have expressed concerns regarding what they perceive is an increased vulnerability of young people in the online environment when they use interactive sites to post personally identifiable information. In an effort to protect minors’ privacy, adults sometimes restrict access to interactive Web environments. Filters, for example, are sometimes used to restrict access by youth to interactive social networking tools, but at the same time deny minors’ rights to free expression on the Internet. Prohibiting children and young adults from using social networking sites does not teach safe behavior and leaves youth without the necessary knowledge and skills to protect their privacy or engage in responsible speech. Instead of restricting or denying access to the Internet, librarians and teachers should educate minors to participate responsibly, ethically, and safely.
The First Amendment applies to speech created by minors on interactive sites. Usage of these social networking sites in a school or library allows minors to access and create resources that fulfill their interests and needs for information, for social connection with peers, and for participation in a community of learners. Restricting expression and access to interactive Web sites because the sites provide tools for sharing information with others violates the tenets of the Library Bill of Rights. It is the responsibility of librarians and educators to monitor threats to the intellectual freedom of minors and to advocate for extending access to interactive applications on the Internet.
As defenders of intellectual freedom and the First Amendment, libraries and librarians have a responsibility to offer unrestricted access to Internet interactivity in accordance with local, state, and federal laws and to advocate for greater access where it is abridged. School and library professionals should work closely with young people to help them learn skills and attitudes that will prepare them to be responsible, effective, and productive communicators in a free society.
Adopted July 15, 2009, by the ALA Council.
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A cloak or mantle. A large rectangle of material, either linen or wool, worn in many different ways as an outer wrapping. Some men wore only the himation and no chiton.
Cloak worn in ancient Greece.
a garment consisting of a rectangular piece of cloth thrown over the left shoulder and wrapped about the body
In ancient Greece, a garment wrapped around the body, with a rectangular piece of cloth thrown over the shoulder. Worn by both men and women.
The gownlike basic costume of the Greek tragic actor.
a sari-like garment that you can see in Greek sculpture
A himation is a cloak or mantle.
a rectangular cloth draped over the left shoulder and about the body of men and women in ancient times
a rectangular cloth draped over the left shoulder and about the body and worn as a garment in ancient Greece
A garment worn by female Archaic statues.
a long mantle worn by Greeks.
(Gr., "outer garment"): long, loose outer garment, also the dark outer garment of monks and nuns.
A himation was a type of clothing in ancient Greece. It was usually worn over a chiton, but was made of heavier drape and played the role of a cloak.
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Ten years after removing nonnative rats, the ecosystem on Anacapa Island, including rare seabirds, is showing profound results of recovery.
Ashy storm-petrels are nesting on the island for the first time ever recorded, and Cassin’s auklets have expanded their territories in the absence of rats as predators. Significantly, the number of Scripps’s murrelets nests has quadrupled with a 50 percent increase of eggs hatched.
Rats are known to have negative impacts to island ecosystems. Rats are the most significant cause of bird extinctions on islands and are estimated to be responsible for half of bird and reptile extinctions worldwide.
Nonnative black rats, which were first reported on Anacapa Island in the early 1900s, threatened critical breeding habitat for these rare seabirds. They were eating approximately 70 percent of the eggs of the once common Scripps’s murrelet, a state-listed threatened species. They also preyed upon native deer mice, reptiles, insects, intertidal invertebrates and plants.
To restore balance to the island ecosystem, black rats were removed in 2001 and 2002 using an aerial application of rodenticide bait. Some of the world’s leading island experts and scientists from the United States, Canada and New Zealand assisted project partners from Channel Islands National Park, Island Conservation and the American Trader Trustee Council (comprised of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in the rigorous planning process for this project.
“Nowhere are the threats of extinction higher than on islands, and nowhere do we have greater opportunities to save species at risk,” Island Conservation North America regional director Gregg Howald said. “This successful project demonstrates the value of this critical conservation tool for other islands around the globe.”
“The Anacapa rat eradication is part of a larger effort to protect and restore biological diversity on the Channel Islands,” Channel Islands National Park Superintendent Russell Galipeau said. “On Anacapa, ongoing efforts to remove nonnative iceplant and restore native plant communities are important to this recovery.”
Jennifer Boyce, American Trader Trustee Council representative with NOAA, added: “On behalf of the American Trader Trustee Council, we are thrilled that the settlement funds have been instrumental in the recovery of seabirds on Anacapa Island.”
Scientists from the National Park Service, UC Santa Cruz, the California Institute of Environmental Studies, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans and Island Conservation will publish a report on the results of this noteworthy conservation effort later this year.
Heath Packard is the director of communications for Island Conservation.
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The Ice-Free Corridor Route
During the Late Wisconsinan Glaciation (about 25,000 – 10,000 years BP) two massive ice sheets, the Laurentide in the east and the Cordilleran in the west, covered most of Canada and the northern United States. Supporters of the ice-free corridor hypothesis propose that an area of land between the ice sheets on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains remained unglaciated and open for human occupation and migration during all or part of the Ice Age. According to this hypothesis, the ancestors of the Clovis hunters crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia, traversed unglaciated regions in Alaska and the Yukon, and then followed this ice-free corridor to settle in the lands to the south of the ice sheets by 11,500 years BP.
The ice-free corridor hypothesis was first proposed in the 1930s and for many years was widely accepted as the most likely means of entry for the first North Americans. The corridor was thought to have been open and accessible throughout most or all of the Late Wisconsinan Glaciation, allowing early settlers to make the journey even during the height of the Ice Age. More recent evidence, however, indicates that the ice-free corridor did not open until after the glacial ice began to recede, about 12,000 years BP, and so was too late to account for the arrival of the first peoples.
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What is the difference between a paper receipt and a paper ballot?
We speak of OVC creating a paper ballot, not a receipt, nor simply a "paper trail." That is, for OVC machines, the printout from a voting station is the primary and official record of votes cast by a voter. Electronic records may be used for generating preliminary results more rapidly, but the paper is the vote.
Some writers discuss producing a paper receipt, which a voter might carry home with them, as they do an ATM receipt. There are two significant problems with this approach. In the first place, if we suppose that a voting station might have been tampered with and/or simply contain a programming error, it is not great jump to imagine that it may print out a record that differs from what it records electronically. A receipt is a "feel good" approach that fails to correct the flaws of DREs.
But the second problem with receipts is even more fundamental. A voting receipt that can be carried away by a voter enables vote buying and vote coercion. An interested third party--even someone as seemingly innocuous as an overbearing family member--could demand to see a receipt for voting in a manner desired. With OVC systems, ballots must be placed into a sealed ballot-box to count as votes. If a voter leaves with an uncast ballot, even if she went through the motions of printing it at a vote station, that simply does not represent a vote that may be "proven" to a third party.
What some vendors refer to as a paper trail suffers from a weakness similar to the first problem paper receipts suffer. Under some such models, a DRE voting station might print out a summary of votes cast at the end of the day (or at some other interval). But such a printout is also just a "feel good" measure. If a machine software or hardware can be flawed out of malice or error, it can very well print a tally that fails to accurately reflect the votes cast on it. It is not paper that is crucial, but voter-verifiability.
Some voting systems I have heard about use a system where a paper ballot is displayed under glass, but not handled directly by a voter. It seems like those systems would prevent ballot-stuffing, since voters do not have direct access to ballot-boxes. Why doesn't OVC use that approach?
There are several narrowly technical problems with "ballot under glass" systems. For one thing, such a system will almost inevitably be more expensive than one like ours that can use commodity printers and paper stock. But voting is too important to be decided on cost, so that is an incidental issue. Along a similar line, a "ballot under glass" system has some extra mechanical problems with allowing rejection of incorrect ballots; some sort of mechanism for sending a spoiled ballot somewhere other than to the ballot-box is needed. Again, this adds cost and more points of physical failure.
A more significant issue for "ballot under glass" systems is their failure to provide the quality of accessibility to vision- or reading-impared voters that OVC's design does. Ordinary sighted voters who happen to need reading glasses are likely to find "ballot under glass" systems more difficult to check than are OVC printed ballots. Even if these machines add provisions for audio feedback on final ballots, users are dependent on the very same machine to provide such audio feedback. Potentially, a tampered-with machine could bias votes, but only for blind voters (still perhaps enough to change close elections). In contrast, OVC positively encourages third parties to develop software to assure the barcode encoding of votes matches the visibly printed votes--every voter is treated equally, and all can verify ballots.
From a more sophisticated cryptology perspective, "ballot under glass" systems are likely to compromise voter anonymity in subtle ways. One of the issues the world-class security researchers with OVC have considered is the possibility that sequential or time-stamp information on ballots could be correlated with the activity of individual voters. Even covert videotaping of the order in which voters enter a polling place might be used for such a compromise. Security experts are folks who get paid to think about even the most nefarious attacks on systems, and voting is important enough to merit such paranoia.
While "ballot under glass" does indeed do a pretty good job of preventing ballot-box stuffing with forged physical ballots, this approach is not the only--nor even the best--technique to accomplish this goal. We plan for OVC systems to incorporate cryptographic signatures and precinct-level customization of ballots that can convincingly prove a ballot is produced on authorized machines, at the voting place, rather than forged elsewhere. A simple customization of ballots is a variation of the page position of our ballot watermarks in a manner that a tamperer cannot produce in advance. Surprisingly much information can be subtly coded by moving two background images a few millimeters in various directions. Another option is to encode a cryptographic signature within the barcode on a ballot--in a manner that can be mathematically proven not to disclose anything about the individual voter who cast that vote, but simultaneously that cannot be forged without knowledge of a secret key. There is a lot you can do with fancy mathematics.
Professor Amit Sahai directs a Wiki (discussion site) where OVC developers analyze threat models.
Contact David Mertz <firstname.lastname@example.org> for suggestions on updating these documents, new questions/answers, and so on.
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Clara Mae Luper was born in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Ezell and Isabell Shepard on May 3, 1923. She attended all-black schools and was bussed several miles to Grayson High School where she graduated in a class of five. After graduating from the segregated Langston University, Luper became the first African American student to enroll in the history department at the University of Oklahoma, earning a master’s degree in 1951.
Luper was one of the early leaders in the civil rights movement in Oklahoma during the 1950s. She taught history in various Oklahoma City public schools for forty-one years and became the sponsor of the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council. In 1958, working with this group, she led the earliest “sit-ins” in Oklahoma and some of the first in United States. Through these protests she and other civil rights activists succeeded in integrating many public facilities in Oklahoma City and across the state by 1964.
In 1957, Luper escorted her Dunjee High School students to New York City to perform a play she had written, Brother President: The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, for a national freedom rally. Inspired by non-violent activism, she and her students returned determined to end segregation in Oklahoma. They staged a sit-in at the Katz Drugstore counter in August 1958. This sit-in led to numerous other demonstrations at lunch counters, cafeterias, churches, and amusement parks, as well as marches, voter registration drives, and boycotts. She was arrested twenty-six times for her civil rights activities. The Oklahoma City Council responded with an ordinance ending racial discrimination shortly before the national 1964 Civil Rights Act. Luper participated, as well, in the civil rights marches with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Washington, D.C. and in Selma, Alabama.
Luper also fought for the integration of Oklahoma City schools and organized the Oklahoma City Sanitation Strike in 1969. She was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1972, and founded the Freedom Center, Inc. In 1979, she published her memoir, Behold the Walls, and later developed the Black Voices Magazine, now called, America’s Voices. Luper also hosted a radio talk show in Oklahoma City between 1960 and 1980. Luper continued to lecture on behalf of racial justice until illness forced her retirement in 2008.
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In 1384, John Wycliffe made an important translation of the Bible into English
Latin words continued to be absorbed by such writers as John Wycliffe (also: Wyclif, Wiclif, et al.), an ardent reformer of the Church, who insisted that Holy Writ should be available in the vernacular, and produced his translation of the Bible.
Wycliffe and his associates are credited with more than a thousand Latin words not previously found in English. Since many of them occur in the so-called Wycliffe translation of the Bible and have been retained in subsequent translations, they have passed into common use.
Caxton helped to stabilize the language by standardizing spelling and using East Midland (London) dialect as the literary form which became the standard modern English of Britain.
Wycliffe's translation of the Bible has such words as "generation" and "persecution", which did not appear in the earlier Anglo-Saxon version. Anglo-Saxon compounds like "handbook" and "foreword" were dropped from the language in favor of the foreign "manual" and "preface" (many centuries later, they were reintroduced as neologisms, and objected to by purists unskilled in linguistic history).
Wycliffe is credited with making English a competitor with French and Latin; his sermons were written when London usage was coming together with the East Midlands dialect, to form a standard language accessible to everyone, and he included scientific references; such as, those referring to chemistry and optics.
Wycliffe was noted for criticizing the wealth and power of the Catholic Church and upheld the Bible as the sole guide for doctrine; his teachings were disseminated by itinerant preachers and are regarded as precursors of the Reformation.
William Tyndale, the man who first printed the New Testament in English
The Roman Catholic church in England had forbidden vernacular English Bibles in 1408, after handwritten copies of a translation by John Wycliffe (an earlier Oxford scholar) had circulated beyond the archbishop's control. Some of the manuscripts survived and continued to circulate, but they were officially off-limits. Translating the Bible into English without permission of the Catholic church was a serious crime, punishable by death.
William Tyndale was born into a well-connected family in Gloucestershire, England, around 1494. We don't know much about his early life, but we know that he received an excellent education, studying from a young age under Renaissance humanists at Oxford.
By the time he left Oxford, Tyndale had mastered Greek, Latin, and several other languages (contemporary accounts say he spoke eight). He also had become an ordained priest and a dedicated proponent of church reform; a "protestant", before that word existed. All he needed now was a vocation. He found one, thanks in part to Desiderius Erasmus.
William Tyndale was executed
Sources of the Word
Erasmus, one of Europe's leading intellectual lights, had caused a stir in 1516 by publishing a brand-new Latin translation of the New Testament--one that departed significantly from the Vulgate, the "common" Latin translation the Catholic church had used for a millennium. Knowing that many readers saw the Vulgate as the immutable Word of God, Erasmus decided to publish his source text (a New Testament in Greek, compiled from sources older than the Vulgate) in a column right next to his Latin translation.
It was a momentous decision. For the first time, European scholars trained in Greek gained easy access to biblical "originals." Now they could make their own translations straight from the original language of the New Testament. In 1522, Martin Luther did just that, translating from the Greek into German. In England, Tyndale decided to publish an English Bible--one so accessible that "a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture" than a priest.
One problem: the Catholic church in England had forbidden vernacular English Bibles in 1408, after handwritten copies of a translation by John Wyclif (an earlier Oxford scholar) had circulated beyond the archbishop's control. Some of the manuscripts survived and continued to circulate, but they were officially off-limits. Translating the Bible into English without permission was a serious crime, punishable by death.
The Word of God made into English
Undeterred, Tyndale tried to win approval for his project from the bishop of London. When that didn't work, he found financial backers in London's merchant community and moved to Hamburg, Germany. In 1526, he finally completed the first-ever printed New Testament in English.
It was a small volume, an actual "pocket book," designed to fit into the clothes and life of that ploughboy. That made it fairly easy to smuggle. Soon Bible runners were carrying contraband scriptures into England inside bales of cloth. For the first time, English readers encountered "the powers that be," "the salt of the earth," and the need to "fight the good fight"--all phrases that Tyndale turned. For the first time, they read, in clear, printed English, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen."
Infuriated, the bishop of London confiscated and destroyed as many copies of Tyndale's New Testament as he could. Meanwhile, English authorities called for Tyndale's arrest. He went into hiding, revised his New Testament, and (after learning Hebrew) began translating the Old Testament, too. Before long, copies of a small volume titled The First Book of Moses, called "Genesis" started showing up on English shelves.
Spreading the Word
Tyndale never finished his Old Testament. He was captured in Antwerp in 1535 and charged with heresy. The next year, he was executed by strangulation and burned at the stake. Yet others picked up his work, and Tyndale's version of the Word lived on. In fact, practically every English translation of the Bible that followed took its lead from Tyndale; including the 1611 King James Version. According to one study, 83 percent of that version's New Testament is unaltered Tyndale, even though a team of scholars had years to rework it.
The reason is simple. Tyndale's English translation was clear, concise, and remarkably powerful. Where the Vulgate had Fiat lux, et lux erat, Wyclif's old version slavishly read "Be made light, and made is light". Tyndale's translation of the same passage is still familiar to nearly every reader of English: "Then God said: 'Let there be light', and there was light." Subsequent English writers may have been more original, but none wrote words that reached more people than these.
In 1340-1400, Geoffrey Chaucer helped make English the dominant language of Britain
He is credited with combining the vocabularies of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, French, and Latin into an instrument of precise and poetic expression.
William Caxton, in 1476, was the first to use Gutenberg's invention in England
“Mehr als das Gold hat das Blei in der Welt verändert.
Und mehr als das Blei in der Flinte das im Setzkasten.”
More than gold, it's lead that changed the world,
and more than the lead in a gun, it was the lead in the typesetter’s (printer's) case.
Proceed to Part 22, Modern English Period.
INDEX or Table of Contents, English and its historical development.
References: sources of information.
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Learning To Learn
Introduction to the STRIPE approach
The main aim of the L2L programme in Years 7 and 8, and the Pathways options in Year 9, is to
explicitly focus on specific ‘life skills’ that will be needed when our students leave school. We have
adopted the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS) approach to L2L and we draw everything
together using the STRIPE acronym:
Self-management (of my own learning)
Reflecting (on my own learning)
Enquiring learning (finding things out for myself)
From September 2012, Year 7 tutors will focus on developing each student’s self-awareness of
their personal aspirations, their own values as a learner and an understanding of their independent
learning ‘habits’. For example, some students aspire to be rich and famous footballers and others
have less specific aspirations; some are motivated by a love of learning and others learn in order
to please their teachers or in order to get a particular job.
Learning habits include when, where and how students choose to complete their independent learning (outside lesson time) and we will discuss specific approaches to memorising information and study skills that match each learner’s personal preferences. We also help students to identify personal barriers to their learning, such as too much time spent on computer games or staying up too late at night. There will be a large emphasis on Teamwork (learning to work with others).
Learning to Learn in Year 8 will also be delivered by tutors and we will build-upon the self-awareness
developed during Year 7.
In Year 9, students opt for a Pathway of their own choice; in essence, time spent each week in an area of particular interest to them, in order to further broaden and deepen their personal (STRIPE) skills across the year. Year 9 Pathways running in the 2012-13 academic year will be Art (two Pathways), Drama, Music, Scientific Investigations and Sports Leadership.
All staff are regularly updated with the current focus areas in L2L sessions in order to reinforce
the STRIPE approach to developing in every one of our students an understanding that we are all
individuals when it comes to learning; we all have our relative strengths and areas for development.
Understanding where our own relative weaknesses lie, we are better prepared for whatever life
throws at us – whether this is examinations, University or the world of work.
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Most geology majors enjoy activities focused on the outdoors, which is, after all, the real laboratory of the geoscientist. However, their interests go beyond hiking and backpacking; they have an intense curiosity about how Earth evolved and how their environment is changing. They learn that this curiosity, raised by their observations of Earth, can be satisfied by applying knowledge gained in their science courses. They soon become aware that geology is an applied science, with exciting and rewarding career opportunities available in government, industry, and the teaching profession for geologists, geochemists, geobiologists, and geophysicists.
Ask a Geology Major
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When Brunel designed the Great Western Railway he wanted to make it the flattest, straightest line he could. Most of its 118 miles were either level or had gradients no steeper than 1 in 1000. Swindon is at the highest point, and the line than falls to Bath. This section includes Box tunnel, which is at a steeper gradient: 1 in 100.
Digging the tunnel through the solid Bath stone was a formidable task. Using only candles to see by, 1500 men (rising to 4000 as the tunnel neared completion) toiled day and night. Each week a ton of gunpowder and a ton of candles were used up. Work continued twenty-four hours a day.
Construction began in 1836, and the tunnel opened in 1841. In those five years, the lives of more than 100 navvies were lost. Working from both directions, the calculations Brunel made were so accurate that when the two ends of the tunnel were joined underground there was found to be less than 5 cm (2 in) error in their alignment.
It was, when completed, the longest railway tunnel in the world, at almost 2.9 kilometres (1¾ miles). And, more than 160 years later, it remains in daily use as the high speed train route from Bristol to London. When first built, some people feared that the air pressure inside the tunnel would be dangerous and chose to leave the train before the tunnel and rejoin it the other side, having journeyed round by road.
The dramatic western portal, near Box, is designed in the classical style, but the eastern portal, at Corsham, has a plain brick face. There is also a story that Brunel deliberately aligned the tunnel so that viewed from the Box end, the sun could be seen to rise through the tunnel on April 9 – Brunel's birthday.
In the novel 'Is', Isabel tells Robert about Box Tunnel. To read an extract, click here.
Back to Topics
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This Month in Physics History
July 24, 1954: Operation Moon Bounce
From James Trexler's Notebook
An entry in James Trexler's notebook regarding moon bounce communications
Proposals for using the moon as a radio wave reflector date back to 1928, and the U.S. Army’s Project Diana successfully detected radar waves bouncing off the moon in 1946. That experiment piqued the interest of Donald Menzel of the Harvard College Observatory, a former Navy Reserve commander. He thought the moon showed promise as a secure communications satellite.
Wireless transmission was commonplace by the post-World War II era, but long-distance high-frequency transmissions relied upon refractions of the radio waves by Earth’s ionosphere. Solar flares or geomagnetic storms seriously disrupted those transmissions, and were difficult to predict. The ability to bounce radio waves off a sitting target like the moon–or, later, an artificial satellite–would make it possible to maintain wireless communications even during solar flares or geomagnetic storms. There was also interest in using such a system to track radio signals from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, at a time when diplomatic relations with the US were becoming rather frosty. The Navy’s powerful radar receivers had already been picking up stray radio signals from Europe and Japan during World War II–a phenomenon referred to as “anomalous propagation.”
It was a Naval Research Laboratory engineer named James Trexler who put the two ideas together and suggested using the moon for both communications and radio intercept systems. Trexler studied electrical engineering at Southern Methodist University, where his father was a professor of political science. But he wasn’t especially academically inclined, much to his family’s disappointment. Still, he had a knack for hands-on experiments and was an accomplished amateur radio technician, skills that enabled him to support himself as an undergraduate, and also to land a job with NRL.
While still at SMU, Trexler had studied the impact of the ionized atmosphere on radio wave propagation, particularly how high-frequency radio waves reflected off the ionization trails left by meteors. Upon joining NRL’s new electronic countermeasures unit, he shifted focus to using high-frequency radio waves to probe the upper atmosphere.
According to a 1948 entry in his scientific notebook, Trexler was intrigued by the possibility that the moon had an ionosphere, which would mean certain radio frequencies could reflect off that ionosphere with much greater efficiency than from the actual surface of the moon. He devised a means of testing such a system using “a beamed antenna having a sharp East-West pattern and a broad North-South shape.” He added “The intensity of the signal would be noted continuously and an attempt would be made to correlate it with the position of the moon.” While such equipment would be expensive to construct, he thought it would be worth the cost.
At its Blue Plains field station in 1948, the NRL set up several German Würzburg antenna arrays salvaged from the war, and began carrying out regular observations of the moon by August 1949 as part of a classified military espionage program called Passive Moon Relay (PAMOR). Code-named “Joe,” the system proved sufficiently promising to warrant further funding for development.
A new antenna was constructed in Stump Neck, Maryland, shaped like a parabola with an elliptical opening 220 by 263 feet. The first test run occurred on October 21, 1951, when the 750-watt transmitter sent out a few short 198-megahertz pulses, and received an echo of much higher fidelity than expected. This pushed the program into high gear, since the intelligence potential for the technology was even greater than anticipated.
In fact, the fidelity of the return signal was so high, the NRL commissioned a spinoff project called Communication Moon Relay, a.k.a. “Operation Moon Bounce.” By 1954, Trexler was confident that “the fidelity of the moon circuit is much better than predicted, resulting in the possible use of many types of circuits such as high-speed teletype, facsimile, and voice.” He proposed using the moon as a passive reflector “to broadcast to half the world at any one time,” at very high frequencies. Such a system would also be ideal for two-way communications between ships, submarines or large aircraft.
By then, the original PAMOR project had stalled, since the antenna at Stump Neck proved too small to collect weaker Soviet radar signals. But it was still ideal for Operation Moon Bounce, which required only a simple antenna to receive signals. On July 24, 1954, Trexler spoke into a microphone in the Stump Neck Laboratory, and his words returned to him two and half seconds later, after a 500,000 mile journey. It was first time a human voice had been transmitted beyond the ionosphere and returned to Earth.
The following year, Navy scientists successfully completed the first transcontinental test of the system, bouncing a signal off the surface of the moon that was detected by a receiving station at the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego. On November 29th, at 11:51 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, NRL’s associate director of research, Robert Morris Page, sent a teletype message to Frank Kurie, the technical director of the Navy Electronics Laboratory. It urged him to “lift up your eyes and behold a new horizon.”
Ultimately, the transmissions were extended to Wahiawa, Hawaii, after tweaking the system to reduce signal loss. In 1956, the National Academy of Science’s Advisory Committee on Undersea Warfare recommended using moon-reflection path signaling for submarine ship-to-shore communications. And the system also proved useful to astronomers, since they could use it to study the moon when the body was in the wrong position for effective radio transmission.
The completed Communication Moon Relay System was inaugurated publicly in January 1960, and was used to beam images of the USS Hancock aircraft carrier from Honolulu to Washington, DC. Despite its success, the moon relay system was soon eclipsed by the Navy’s artificial satellite communication system, although the knowledge gleaned from the former made the new system possible.
More Physics History
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1. the shape or manner in which things come together and a connection is made;
[syn: articulation, join, joint, juncture, junction]
2. a set containing all and only the members of two or more given sets;
- Example: "let C be the union of the sets A and B"
[syn: union, sum, join]
1. become part of; become a member of a group or organization;
- Example: "He joined the Communist Party as a young man"
[syn: join, fall in, get together]
2. cause to become joined or linked;
- Example: "join these two parts so that they fit together"
[syn: join, bring together]
3. come into the company of;
- Example: "She joined him for a drink"
4. make contact or come together;
- Example: "The two roads join here"
[syn: join, conjoin]
5. be or become joined or united or linked;
- Example: "The two streets connect to become a highway"
- Example: "Our paths joined"
- Example: "The travelers linked up again at the airport"
[syn: connect, link, link up, join, unite]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Join \Join\ (join), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Joined (joind); p. pr. & vb. n. Joining.] [OE. joinen, joignen, F. joindre, fr. L. jungere to yoke, bind together, join; akin to jugum yoke. See Yoke, and cf. Conjugal, Junction, Junta.] [1913 Webster] 1. To bring together, literally or figuratively; to place in contact; to connect; to couple; to unite; to combine; to associate; to add; to append. [1913 Webster] Woe unto them that join house to house. --Is. v. 8. [1913 Webster] Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches joined. --Shak. [1913 Webster] Thy tuneful voice with numbers join. --Dryden. [1913 Webster] 2. To associate one's self to; to be or become connected with; to league one's self with; to unite with; as, to join a party; to join the church. [1913 Webster] We jointly now to join no other head. --Dryden. [1913 Webster] 3. To unite in marriage. [1913 Webster] He that joineth his virgin in matrimony. --Wyclif. [1913 Webster] What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. --Matt. xix. 6. [1913 Webster] 4. To enjoin upon; to command. [Obs. & R.] [1913 Webster] They join them penance, as they call it. --Tyndale. [1913 Webster] 5. To accept, or engage in, as a contest; as, to join encounter, battle, issue. --Milton. [1913 Webster] 6. To meet with and accompany; as, we joined them at the restaurant. [PJC] 7. To combine with (another person) in performing some activity; as, join me in welcoming our new president. [PJC] To join battle, To join issue. See under Battle, Issue. Syn: To add; annex; unite; connect; combine; consociate; couple; link; append. See Add. [1913 Webster]The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Join \Join\, v. i. To be contiguous, close, or in contact; to come together; to unite; to mingle; to form a union; as, the bones of the skull join; two rivers join. [1913 Webster] Whose house joined hard to the synagogue. --Acts xviii. 7. [1913 Webster] Should we again break thy commandments, and join in affinity with the people of these abominations? --Ezra ix. 14. [1913 Webster] Nature and fortune joined to make thee great. --Shak. [1913 Webster]The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Join \Join\, n. 1. (Geom.) The line joining two points; the point common to two intersecting lines. --Henrici. [1913 Webster] 2. The place or part where objects have been joined; a joint; a seam. [PJC] 3. (Computers) The combining of multiple tables to answer a query in a relational database system. [PJC]The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (17 December 2009):
inner join (common) or outer join (less common). 2. least upper bound. (1998-11-23)Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
385 Moby Thesaurus words for "join": abut, abut on, accompany, accord, accouple, accumulate, act in concert, act together, act with, add, adhere, adjoin, affiliate, affiliate with, affix, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggregate, aggroup, agree, align with, ally, amalgamate, amass, annex, append, appose, arrange a match, articulate, assemble, assimilate, associate, associate with, assort with, attach, band, band together, batch, be coextensive with, be consistent, be contiguous, be continuous, be enfranchised, be implicated in, be in cahoots, be in contact, be in league, bear a hand, bind, blend, bond, border, border on, bracket, bridge, bridge over, bring near, bring together, build, build up, bulk, bunch, bunch together, bunch up, burden, butt, cabal, call up, catenate, cement, cement a union, centralize, chain, chip in, chum, chum together, chum with, clap together, clinch, clique, clique with, club, club together, clump, cluster, coact, coadunate, coalesce, cohere, coincide, collaborate, collect, colligate, collocate, collude, combine, come into, come together, commandeer, communicate, compare, compile, complicate, compose, compound, comprise, concatenate, concert, concord, concrete, concur, confederate, conglobulate, conglomerate, conjoin, conjugate, connect, connect up, connect with, connive, conscript, consist of, consociate, consolidate, consort with, conspire, constitute, construct, continuate, continue, contribute, converge, cooperate, copulate, corral, correspond, couple, cover, creep in, cumulate, decorate, detach, detach for service, dig up, do business with, draft, draw together, dredge up, drive together, embody, embrace, encompass, encumber, enlist, enroll, enter, enter into, extend to, fabricate, fasten, federalize, federate, fellowship, flock to, flock together, flux, follow, form, form a series, fraternize, fuse, gang, gang up, gather, gather in, gather together, get heads together, get in, get into, get together, get together with, give away, glue, glue on, go along with, go in partners, go in partnership, go in with, go into, go partners, go with, group, grow together, hang around with, hang out with, hang together, happen together, harmonize, have suffrage, help decide, herd together, hitch, hitch on, hobnob with, hold together, hook up, hook up with, identify, impress, include, incorporate, induct, infix, integrate, interblend, intercommunicate, interfuse, join forces, join fortunes with, join hands with, join in, join in fellowship, join together, join up, join up with, join with, juxtapose, juxtaposit, keep company with, keep together, knit, knot, lay together, league, league together, league with, levy, lie by, line, line up with, link, link up, list, lump together, maintain continuity, make, make a match, make common cause, make one, make the scene, make up, march, marry, marshal, mass, match, meet, meld, melt into one, merge, merge in, mingle with, mix, mix with, mobilize, muster, muster in, neighbor, nuptial, one, organize, ornament, pair, pair off, pal, pal up with, pal with, partake, partake of, participate, participate in, partner, paste on, piece together, play ball, plus, postfix, prefix, press, pull an oar, pull together, put heads together, put together, put with, raise, rake up, rally, rally round, range with, reciprocate, recruit, reembody, relate, roll into one, round up, run in couples, run on, run with, saddle with, scrape together, shade into, side with, sign on, sign up, sit in, sit in on, slap on, sneak in, solder, solidify, sort with, span, splice, stand by, stand in with, stand together, stand up with, stick together, strike in with, string, string along with, string together, structure, subjoin, suffix, summon, superadd, superpose, swing in with, synchronize, syncretize, syndicate, synergize, synthesize, tack on, tag, tag on, take in, take out membership, take part in, take part with, take sides with, take up, take up membership, take up with, tape, team up, team up with, team with, thread, throw in together, throw in with, tie, tie in, tie in with, tie up, tie up with, touch, unify, unionize, unite, unite efforts, unite in, unite in marriage, unite with, verge, verge on, verge upon, vote, weave, wed, weld, whip in, work together, yoke
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Humane Society Applauds Ending of Toxin-Screening Animal Tests21 May 2012
UK - The Humane Society International/Europe has welcomed news that the UK’s Food Standards Agency has ended all animal testing to screen for shellfish toxins.
The move marks a step forward for science and for consumers, and will spare approximately 7,000 mice used in UK testing each year. The decision comes ahead of a European Union-wide 2014 deadline requiring all member countries to end the testing. However, HSI Europe says all EU countries must now follow Britain’s lead and end the use of mice for shellfish toxicity testing.
Last year, the EU revised its shellfish-testing regulations to accept the use of non-animal tests for most toxins, but gave member countries until December 2014 to comply. HSI believes prolonging the use of animal tests for toxin screening is unjustified and puts consumer health at risk.
“Humane Society International applauds the UK Food Standards Agency for being pro-active ahead of the 2014 deadline and replacing animal testing for shellfish with methods that are at the cutting-edge of safety testing,” said Troy Seidle, director of research and toxicology for HSI Europe.
“Mice used in these tests can die one of the most agonising deaths imaginable, many of them suffocating as the toxins starve their lungs of oxygen. These tests are unreliable as well as unethical, so there is now no excuse for other EU member countries to delay better protecting consumers by also switching to superior animal-free tests.”
The FSA traditionally used mice to test shellfish samples for paralytic and lipophilic toxins that are harmful to humans; however, the agency will now switch completely to more advanced and sensitive physicochemical test methods. As well as the ethical advantage of animal-free testing, the new methods for detecting toxins produce a more targeted analysis.
Testing seafood samples for potentially harmful toxins is essential to protect human health. However, the mouse test can cause animal suffering and has serious scientific limitations that have contributed to it being abandoned altogether in some countries such as Germany, says HSI. Austria, Finland, Poland, Portugal and Romania are amongst other countries that do not use the test.
Nearly 600,000 mice are used each year in the EU in laboratory tests to detect marine biotoxins. Countless more are used each year in North America and elsewhere in the world where precise statistics are not kept, says HSI.
Furthermore, the test used on mice has never undergone formal scientific validation. Experts from around the world, including the World Health Organisation, acknowledge that its lack of sensitivity means it cannot detect toxins at levels required by EU regulators to deem shellfish safe for human consumption, concludes HSI.
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TheFishSite News Desk
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Some plants we see are boring because we see them so much in garden, others take us by surprise and we ask ourselves if it’s real. Other plants remind us of other plants but their form or flower is not quite right to be that plant. Many plants that are related bear similar flowers or something in the leaves which say to us what they are. One plant that creates many of these feelings is Lobelia x ‘Queen Victoria’ (Queen Victoria Lobelia).
There is some confusion as to the parentage of ‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia which leads to more confusion with its true cold hardiness. From my gleanings of many sources the likely answer to who the parents are is it is a crossing of the northern red Lobelia cardinalis with the southern L. fulgens (Mexican Lobelia) which is found Mexico and south into central America. Both plants have firey red flowers and bloom late in the year. Fulgens most likely contributed the red coloration in the leaves at in the wild some plants have this tinge. Cardinalis contributes the especially brilliant scarlet red flower color and the general shape of the flowers.
Like many plants ‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia has been around for sometime and was popular from the time it became known to garden enthusiasts. The first mention I have found dates to 1943 in the New York Times and also in the Los Angles Times. Lillian Meyferth wrote in New York Times that it as ‘having deeper red flowers and dark, bronzy foliage’
Whether it be called ‘ x’, speciosa, fulgens or cardinalis on its sales tag ‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia is easily recognizable from other Lobelia. The red tinged foliage is one of the more distinct colors in the garden and care must be taken when placing this plant. One other thing I have learned is red and plum colors draws ones vision to it in the garden, meaning anything next to this plant will take second place. It is fortunate that this plant is in its glory late in the year when there are not many other plants to compete against it. In fact many tones of plants will complement it with their leave in autumns brilliant shades.
Growing ‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia is quite easy in the right place. This plant like full sun to light shade, and rich deep moisture retentive soil. In a sunny place the leaves will often droop during the day and perk up later in the evening, giving it a spot of water will make it a tougher plant. Since this is mostly a seed grown plant the color of the leaves will vary in the intensity of color and keep this in mind when buying it. Buy this plant where it is displayed in full sun and where the color is true to its form, in the shade the leaves become more olive toned.
As mentioned there is confusion with ‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia in parentage, it is also with hardiness of this plant. Know you know that one of its parents is from Mexico and southern areas which will lead it to be seen as less hardy. It is was in the past rated as having a much colder tolerance, but this has been changed with experience. It is now rated at zones 7 through 10 or tolerating -10c(14f). It is best to view this plant as a somewhat short-lived perennial with a lifespan of up to 10 years. When you have a vigorously growing plant it will produce new plants which can be divided off in the spring. These plats grow to about 90cm (2 1/2ft) tall and 30cm(1ft) wide.
‘Queen Victoria’ Lobelia is a very useful plant for in the garden, its colorful foliage and brilliant blooms make it a specimen in the garden. It often looks best planted in groups for impact. It works well in perennial beds, hot sun locations, waterside and poolside gardens, damp sites, containers. It is a good cut flower with its bright coloring which also attracts humming birds and butterflies.
This site always has good authoritative information : http://www.perennials.com/seeplant.html?item=1.328.
Other gardeners experiences with growing this plant: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/neweng/msg0512480917815.html
…..Looking to find you here again…..
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Teaching a parrot to step on and off something other a human hand – be it a hand-held perch, a basket, a pillow, etc. This enables an owner to transfer a recalcitrant parrot safely from one place to another without the risk of aggression or bloodshed.
All parrots should be stick-trained, as well as trained to step on and off the hand. Owners should not wait until they need to have a parrot perch-trained, such as when a pet parrot begins to mature and becomes excessively territorial around its cage. Parrots are most easily trained when they are still youngsters; they are more malleable and eager to please. This is not to say that adult pet parrots cannot be trained, but it will take a bit longer.
Disclaimer: BirdChannel.com’s Bird Behavior Index is intended for educational purposes only. It is not meant to replace the expertise and experience of a professional veterinarian. Do not use the information presented here to make decisions about your bird’s health if you suspect your pet is sick. If your pet is showing signs of illness or you notice changes in your bird’s behavior, take your pet to the nearest veterinarian or an emergency pet clinic as soon as possible.
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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.
OTTAWA, January 26, 2007- To celebrate Family Literacy Day, held annually on January 27, Library and Archives Canada released participation statistics for the 2006 TD Summer Reading Club, a program that aims to help increase children's literacy levels. The research showed a 10% increase in children's registration in the program-a record-breaking enrolment. Decima Research collected data for the National Report of 2006 Program Statistics, which were compiled from figures taken from 2,000 library branches in 11 out of the 13 provinces and territories.
According to a literature review prepared for Library and Archives Canada on the impact of summer reading clubs, reading books in the summer is associated not only with enhanced reading proficiency, but also with improved educational and societal success. A joint initiative between TD Bank Financial Group, Library and Archives Canada and the Toronto Public Library, the TD Summer Reading Club is an award-winning program that offers children and their families a fun way to enjoy reading during the summer months. With the participation of libraries across Canada, the program offers an innovative example of how to help raise literacy levels in Canada.
The program is free and offered each summer in participating Canadian public libraries to children ages 12 and under. The most common testimonial from parents and teachers about the program was that children significantly improved their reading habits. On average, each registered club member read eight books, bringing the total number of books read in the summer of 2006 to almost two million.
In addition to the increased registration, staff at participating libraries organized 5,000 more activities in 2006 than the previous summer for the nearly 400,000 children who took part. Girls comprised 55% of the participants while boys represented 45%, similar to 2005 proportions.
The goals of the TD Summer Reading Club are to encourage Canadian children to read for pleasure, to help maintain and improve their reading skills during the summer and to encourage them to be lifelong readers and library users. Theme-based reading kits, which include a poster, stickers and an activity booklet, are provided to participants as an incentive to read.Family Literacy Day is a celebration of the joy and importance of reading. For more information on the Report and on the TD Summer Reading Club, consult www.td-club-td.ca/
- 30 -
Pauline M. Portelance
Senior Media Relations Officer
Library and Archives Canada
For historical information visit: Archived What's New
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This is an abbreviated version of the complete article.*
An atherectomy is a procedure that mechanically removes plaque and other debris that can block arteries throughout the body.
Atherectomies can be used to widen arteries that have closed or become blocked following a balloon angioplasty or treatment with stents.
Atherectomy treats diseased coronary (heart) arteries, but is used less commonly in arteries outside the heart.
An atherectomy is a procedure used to remove plaque-cholesterol and fibrous tissue that blocks arteries. During an atherectomy, a physician clears a clogged artery by cutting, shaving, or vaporizing the plaque that is blocking a blood vessel. The device used to perform an atherectomy is attached to a thin tube called a catheter.
Today most atherectomy procedures are performed in the coronary (heart) arteries. Far less commonly, physicians perform atherectomy in peripheral arteries (those in other parts of the body such as the legs).
WHEN IS THE PROCEDURE INDICATED?
Atherectomy may be indicated in patients who have coronary artery disease or artery disease in other areas of the body. Factors a physician considers when deciding whether to perform atherectomy include:
The location or shape of plaque deposit;
The size or anatomy of the patient's arteries;
Whether the plaque is exceptionally hard, or calcified; and
Whether clots are present in the artery.
A few days before the procedure, the physician performs blood tests and the patient may be advised to stop taking aspirin or other drugs known to interfere with blood clotting. The physician also orders imaging tests prior to the procedure, such as:
Computerized tomography (CT) scan;
Arteriogram, also known as angiogram; or
Magnetic resonance angiogram (MRA).
Typically, people scheduled for atherectomy should not eat or drink anything for 8 to 12 hours before the test.
WHAT TO EXPECT
The patient is given a mild sedative and any necessary medications. The remains alert during the procedure.
The site where the catheters are inserted (usually above the femoral artery in the groin) is cleaned and shaved and is numbed with a local anesthetic. The physician then makes a tiny incision in the skin and inserts a guide wire and then a catheter sheath over the wire. Catheters may be withdrawn and inserted through the sheath during the procedure.
Based on an arteriogram, the physician chooses the appropriate device to perform the atherectomy. There are two main categories of atherectomy devices-those that shave or cut plaques, and those that pulverize plaques. Once the physician has selected the appropriate device, he or she advances it through the arteries to the plaque.
Atherectomy is usually followed by angioplasty and stenting to widen the artery. The procedure takes approximately 1 to 3 hours.
POST-PROCEDURE GUIDELINES AND CARE
The patient is asked to drink fluids and hospital staff monitors his or her vital signs during recovery. Atherectomy patients usually stay overnight in the hospital following the procedure. After 2 days, most patients can resume normal activities.
Complications that occur at the site of atherectomy depend on the arteries being treated and which device is used and include:
Hematoma (the collection of blood in tissues);
Distal embolization, or pieces of blood clot that break off at the atherectomy site and travel downstream to arteries beyond the atherectomy;
Hemoglobinuria (hemoglobin in the urine);
Dissection, or splitting open a blood vessel;
Abrupt vessel closure; and
Atherectomy does not address the cause of hardening of the arteries. Patients should address risk factors for atherosclerosis by making the following lifestyle changes:
Eating a healthy diet;
Losing weight; and
Medical Review Date: May 5, 2005
*If you would like to read this article in its entirety, please call our office and ask to meet with one of our specialists to receive a Prescription Pad form.
*If you already have a Prescription Pad form, please login and follow the instructions listed on the form. If you experience any issues during the registration process, please call member services at 1-800-603-1420 for assistance.
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Decolonization and its Impact: A Comparitive Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires
January 2008, ©2007, Wiley-Blackwell
This price is valid for United States. Change location to view local pricing and availability.
This is a Print-on-Demand title. It will be printed specifically to fill your order. Please allow an additional 2-3 days delivery time. The book is not returnable.
Other Available Formats: Hardcover
Decolonization and its Impact is a ground-breaking comparative study of decolonization from before the Second World War to the early 1960s.
- Compares key cases across the European colonial empires
- Focuses on the process and impact of decolonization at the level of the 'late colonial state' and of colonial societies
- Presents an original model of decolonization that seeks to reconcile imperial and nationalist perspectives
- Engages with important theoretical approaches
- Makes extensive reference to recent literature on the subject
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<urn:uuid:8b1d1a05-1fcb-4920-8df0-59ec47ce72dd>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0631199683,subjectCd-PO17.html?filter=TEXTBOOK
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|
en
| 0.847227
| 200
| 2.53125
| 3
|
Some of the real gems of the Law Library’s collection require special handling and cannot be shelved in the open stacks. For these materials, we have the Rare Book Collection. The Law Library’s collection of rare books consists of approximately 60,000 volumes of books and bound manuscripts.
The collection is a great place for researchers studying the history of the rule of law. From our collection of incunabula to pre-Soviet Russian sources, the holdings reflect the diversity of the development of law. The incunabula – printed books published before 1501 – in our custody consist of over three hundred volumes dealing with Roman, canon, and feudal law. These works were published in cities throughout Europe and England in Latin and vernacular languages. Our Russian Imperial Collection consists of legal volumes from the Winter Palace of Czar Nicholas II.
As might be expected of America’s Law Library, we have extensive holdings of early American law. The English and American Trials Collection covers trials from all periods since the 1500s. These collections contain much more than just transcripts of trials. Some of the more interesting material includes confessions and collected accounts of crimes and trials.
We also have approximately one hundred appeal cases to the Privy Council in England. These 18th century appeals originated in the colonies of Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Christopher.
Our collection of early American statutory law is the result of a concerted effort to acquire original editions of session laws, codes, and special laws from colonial, territorial, and state entities. The collection has been enhanced with the addition of laws and constitutions of American Indian tribes, Confederate States of America session laws, and early session laws of the United States.
In addition to these official sources of law, we have a collection of unofficial legal materials. These consist primarily of manuals for municipal officers, guides presenting the rights and duties of citizens, and abridgments of local laws for officials and laymen in the colonial period. In addition to these three categories, the collection also contains early biographies and legal periodicals.
While the Library of Congress considers books published or created prior to 1801 as “rare,” age is not the only consideration for assigning an item to the Rare Book Collection. This is also where we shelve items that require special attention or shelving considerations. For example, we have a collection of miniature laws books measuring ten centimeters or less in height.
Throughout legal history, law books were published in miniature for various reasons. In days of traveling judges or lawyers, small books fit nicely in saddlebags while a jurist rode his circuit. Miniatures were also produced as commemoratives to celebrate the adoption of significant laws. One example of this is our copy of the Russian 1861 Emancipation Manifesto. This proclamation freed 23 million people from serfdom during the reign of Alexander II. Constitutions are commonly produced as miniatures, either as commemoratives or as affordable copies for the people. One of the smallest books in our collection is the Constitución de la República de Cuba, published in 1986.
I don’t know if it is just the Germanophile in me or the outdoor theme, but two of my favorite items in the collection relate to German game laws. One is a reprint of 16th century German game laws. The other is not a book at all, but an 18th century certificate presented to an assistant game warden in Hanau. Both have terrific graphics; the latter is a great example of the variety of non-book materials we have in the collection.
Rare book service is available on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Access to rare materials is by appointment and we welcome your inquiries. For further information, contact Dr. Meredith Shedd-Driskel, Law Curator, at email@example.com.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2010/11/
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|
en
| 0.941343
| 810
| 2.75
| 3
|
(also known as congress)
Gather around, everybody, and I'll tell you all The Tale of the US Congress. You see, about 200 years ago, back when the Constitution was first being written, there was an argument between the Big States and the Little States.
The Big States wanted the number of lawmakers for each state to be based on population, so the states with the most people would have the most representatives. The Little States wanted the number of representatives for each state to be equal. The argument went on and on, and was so bad, even George Washington was afraid they would never get along.
But, the states finally worked it out. They created what is called a bicameral (two-branched) lawmaking body. It had the Senate for the Little States, and the House of Representatives for the Big States.
And that's how we got our congress.
Click on the side of the Capitol Building that houses the branch of congress you want to get a better look at.
I'll show you in ten easy steps! Just a simple click below!
How a bill becomes law
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<urn:uuid:64d8a548-6727-49b2-adf2-f937e252acb7>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://library.thinkquest.org/13506/legis/congress.html
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|
en
| 0.979729
| 231
| 3.53125
| 4
|
Taiwan’s Ghost Month is here again
George Shen, TAIPEI, Taiwan, The China PostToday, July 29, is the first day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar. In local folklore, it is the beginning of the Ghost Month, when the gates of the underworld are open and ghosts are free to roam among the living, in search of food to live on for the rest of the year.
July 29, 2003, 12:00 am TWN
To many people in Taiwan, except for funeral rites, no major personal events are to happen during the thirty days of Ghost Month. Weddings, inaugurations, moving house and other big occasions are shunned, for fear of bad luck. Potentially life-threatening activities, such as medical operations, long-distance travel and even swimming are also avoided at all costs, if possible.
Instead, to appease the wayward ghosts, offerings of food and incense are made to them in temples throughout the island. Gold and silver paper symbolizing money is burnt to allow the ghosts to live well. Families also make offerings of food to their ancestors at their places of interment. And for the lonely spirits who have no one to worship or feed them, people go to temples to pray that they return to the underworld contented, and not remain on earth to wreak havoc. These events take place throughout the thirty days.
Meanwhile, the central event of Ghost Month is the Chungyuan Pudu (mid-year) festival, also called Ghost Festival, on the fifteenth of the lunar month, or Aug. 12 this year. At Buddhist and Taoist temples, plenty of worshippers chant verses from scripture, light incense sticks and burn symbolic money to help the ghosts successfully make the journey to the living world.
This “bai bai” ritual is unique to Taiwan, as the tradition of observing Ghost Month originates from the mainland forebears of many residents who migrated to the island centuries ago during the Ching Dynasty. To put a stop to the violent feuds that often occurred between families of landowners and other settlers, it was agreed upon that a special festival would take place every year to honor the dead. Different families would take charge of organizing ceremonies each year.
The choice of the fifteenth day is due mainly to the melding of Taoist and Buddhist customs among the settlers. In Taoism, the fifteenth day is when the Earth God (Tu Di Gung) comes down to earth to judge good and bad people, while Buddhists make offerings on that day to save Buddha’s mother from the Sangha spirits. The combined significance of the Chungyuan festival makes it one of the three major spiritually linked festival events in Taiwan, along with Lunar New Year and the Ching Ming grave-sweeping festival.
Of the various mass observations of the Chungyuan festival around Taiwan, the most popular is the one held in the northern port city of Keelung. In addition to the rituals noted above, worshippers release a horde of water lanterns into the sea to guide the spirits of the dead. It is believed that the farther that the lanterns float, the safer the ghosts will be and the luckier worshippers will become in the coming year.
In 2003, Ghost Month will end on Aug. 27. On that day, the underworld spirits are to leave the living world. Before life returns to normal on the next day, the start of the eighth lunar month, temple monks symbolically “chase” the ghosts back to their world and close the gates of hell.
Despite the stigma attached to Ghost Month, it is not a particularly unlucky time of year, according to local astrologers. In fact, Taiwan’s version of Valentine’s Day falls on the seventh day of the lunar month, or Aug. 4. Plus, Chinese Father’s Day (Aug. 8) is simultaneously the eleventh day of this year’s Ghost Month.
Meanwhile, certain Buddhists view Ghost Month as a lucky time of year. Also, a minority of lovers has bucked the trend in recent years by getting married during the period.
However, given the longstanding significance that these thirty days have on many families in Taiwan, Ghost Month and the Chungyuan Pudu are likely to remain a major annual event on the island for quite a while.
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<urn:uuid:7787f771-4f9b-4733-a88b-b1da3e31a9c1>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/detail.asp?ID=39774&GRP=B
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|
en
| 0.944205
| 904
| 2.609375
| 3
|
Usability is regarded as the most pressing issues with web development nowadays. The usability from the website is tested against its simplicity which makes easier for targeted traffic to navigate the immediately, therefore making can download information easier.
Accessibility is truly a concept that will be intertwined employing the concept of usability. It refers to creating the location content acceptable for each person.
The disease has caught the attention of sectors of society. Why? Because 1 aside 5 people in the usa have any type of disability and figure means around $ 30 million Americans. The figure is always increasing, on the coming of age of the elderly. In earlier times decade alone, a dramatic increase of 25% was seen.
Why on the internet?
One might ask, “Why in considered the Internet a central concentrate this trouble of usability?” Cyberspace has transformed the lives person in earlier times decade. Individuals have succeeded to carry out actions that they weren’t capable of singing before, companies provided include the employees with disabilities. Traders who are impaired don’t have a opportunities than traders who are well and able. The world wide web provides them avenues for communication, information gathering, social interaction, getting in cultural activities and also it adds with occupations. However, statistics have established simple fact that potential of a Internet to choose from these certain opportunities still is not maximized being the those who disabilities are hindered by usability issues from using it of the fullest.
Ingestion of usability is not merely watched by institutions which are usually in connection with giving support to those with disabilities, many of the sectors of society are closely watching its progress. Institutions might be associated with governance, education, media, public services and not to mention another choice . sectors are observers amongst players.
Running one benefits improving accessibility of web sites doesn’t just benefit the noticing impairments and often will replace the whole web community. Businesses, services, information campaigners, everyone will manage to benefit.
Answer with developing websites by using a universal design approach. They can be a way for developing web page additionally accommodate the widest large choice of potential users. Some why people love this said scheme are: provision of inter-operability of applications; access for one’s disabled; localization and customization.
Tips for Improving Accessibility
Here i will discuss a few selected key recommendations on the internet Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 that wasthat’s including the Accessibility Initiative of W3C on how you can improve accessibility around the items in an internet.
1. Provide alternatives to audio-visual content
Some men and women will have the opportunity to use forms of content. They can might well be disabled or may lower version of Browsers. Movies, sounds, animations or contents inevitably will be translated into text alternatives providing information in direction of broadest variety of viewers.
2. Developers shouldn’t take advantage of color alone
Is to purchase impaired in color differentiation. Developers shouldn’t rely a large amount of close to the authority to access colors to relay information the websites. Charts who are color-coded should be modified along with background and foreground colors with all the websites ought to have enough contrast to permit those who have color differentiation impairment to simply navigate the web page.
3. Clarification with their use of natural language
Content developers usually margin the adjustments in natural language within his or her websites. They should be proven to identify the dominant language that is used at the site in an attempt to avoid confusion.
4. Effects of content changes might be time-sensitive
Issue particularly involves confirm visual or cognitive impairments and people who could not read texts that is normally moving quickly. Movement can be considered an over-all enhancer in the direction of look of the site, nevertheless may pose some problems women with cognitive impairments.
5. Accessibility of user interfaces is usually embedded
Objects that posses their own very own interfaces has to be made accessible, and alternative solutions need provided you can possible.
6. Provision of orientation and context information
The unbooked time of knowledge on how the objects are organized is actually essential to provide those who assistance with very best access information.
There are many other tips on how to improving a website’s over-all option of make sure it is more usable. Developers should give thought to multiple individuals who are most likely view their websites to produce them a priority within a designing process.
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<urn:uuid:8be862e0-6159-4d5c-89ae-9af7ac0eecd6>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.classmedia.info/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.940881
| 903
| 2.609375
| 3
|
Eczema and Chicken Pox Vaccine
As part of the Atopic Dermatitis Vaccinia Network, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) completed a study looking at the immune response to the Varicella (chicken pox) vaccine in children with atopic dermatitis (eczema) compared to non-atopic controls. There was no difference in immune response between the groups; which means the eczema patients handled the chicken pox vaccination well. Eczema can be flared by any stressor and sometimes children have mild flares after their immunizations; this is not specific to the chicken pox vaccine but to immunizations in general. This is not a reason to avoid the vaccines, but parents may need to do a little more skin care for a few days after the vaccine.
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<urn:uuid:3850392b-7133-44b4-9f7b-cec88aab254f>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.nationaleczema.org/research/eczema-and-chicken-pox-vaccine?page=3
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|
en
| 0.942592
| 171
| 2.9375
| 3
|
Slides : 21 Slides
Software: PowerPoint 2003, 2007, 2010
Page Size: 1024px X 768px
The country of Wales is a part of the United Kingdom and the island of the Great Britain. It shares its borders with England. It shares its coastline with the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The capital of Wales is Wales which is also the largest city of the country. The residents of the country are called the Welsh. The legislature of Wales is known as the UK Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. The government of the country is called the Devolved Government in a Constitutional Monarchy and has Queen Elizabeth II as its Monarch.
It covers an area of 20,779 square kilometers of land and a population of 3,063,500. The national currency of the country is Pound Sterling.
Welsh and English are the official languages of the country. Christianity is the most followed religion in the country followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.
The Wales PowerPoint maps which are offered by us are fully editable PowerPoint maps Wales. In these Wales PPT maps, you can add graphics, audios, videos etc. to make the presentation more attractive. Also, you can add animation to the PowerPoint map background Wales in order to provide a life-like look to the presentation. These geographical layouts help its user to locate a specific region of Wales.
Tag :Wales PowerPoint maps editable PowerPoint maps Wales Wales PPT maps PowerPoint map background Wales
File Format : PowerPoint
Compatibility :MS Office 2003,2007,2010.
How it Works ?
All slides are 100% editable with separate objects.
The layers in the slides can be turned on or off as per the users requirement.
The user can add text and graphics Assures quality
Instant and easy download
All powerpoint slides are editable with seperate objects,
Layers in slide can be turned on or off
Add your own text and graphics
Rescale the map without loss of quality
For any assistance chat with us 24 x 7
Add Product to Cart.
Create a free account by adding
your email address and name.
View your cart and edit if required.
Click 'Contunue shopping' for more maps, else
Select 'Secure Payment' to
Pay and Download.
Once the payment is successful, An automated Email will be sent with Purchase details
along with TRANSACTION ID
and a link to download Your Map/Maps.
You can access 'My Account'
using your login Details.
You can view all your purchases and download the purchased Map/Maps from account itself.
You can also,
Copy and paste your Transaction Id by Clicking here and download the map
Call for support at +1-813-995-4000 or mail us at email@example.com
|
<urn:uuid:80d0f657-e3be-4a2c-958d-18ae5ef0adf3>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.powerpointmapsonline.com/powerpointmaps.aspx/Map-of-Wales-272
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.867884
| 588
| 2.671875
| 3
|
WHAT WE DO :: FOOD RECALLS
The Food and Milk Program ensures that companies initiate and carry out food recalls to notify consumers and consignees
about food that may cause serious adverse consequences.
Contaminated, adulterated, or misbranded food products entering into the marketplace may have a potential adverse effect on the publicís health. During these events, the food industry has primary responsibility for: 1) notifying consumers and industry, 2) identifying and containing suspect product(s), and 3) adequately conducting recall activities to ensure removal of suspect food(s) from food facilities. Regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local levels have the authority and responsibility to monitor the proper execution of these activities and to assure the recall is effective. Food may need to be recalled if it has been:
- Biologically contaminated
- Chemically contaminated
- Physically contaminated (e.g.: wood, glass, metal found in product)
- Found to contain unlisted allergens
- Found to indicate evidence of tampering
Although most recalls are voluntary, Environmental Health may verify recall activities in food facilities under its jurisdiction by phone and/or field surveys. Embargo, impound, or other legal action may be necessary when a food facility refuses to undertake a recall, or when the regulatory agency determines that a violation exists.
Back to Environmental Health's Home Page
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<urn:uuid:65367204-8fa6-466a-a820-f6641358bae5>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/SSE/FoodMilk/foodmilk_recall.htm
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en
| 0.920501
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| 3
|
Let’s write a program that will clarify the usage of these functions.
#!/usr/bin/guile !# (use-modules (ncurses curses)) (define stdscr (initscr)) ; Start curses mode (raw!) ; Line buffering disabled (keypad! stdscr #t) ; We get F1, F2, etc (noecho!) ; Don't echo when we get a keypress (addstr stdscr "Type any character to see it in bold\n") (let ((ch (getch stdscr))) ; Read a key press, put it in 'ch' (addstr stdscr "The pressed key is ") (if (char? ch) ; If a non-function key is pressed (addch stdscr (bold ch)) ; print its name (addchstr stdscr (bold (keyname ch)))) ; Or, print the function ; key name (refresh stdscr) ; Print it on the real screen (getch stdscr) ; Wait for user input (endwin)) ; End curses mode
Hopefully this program is easy to follow even though I used functions
that aren’t explained yet. The procedure
getch is used to get
a character from the user. If it returns a character, the user
pressed a character key. If it returns a number, the use pressed a
function key. The
(bold ch) adds the bold attribute to the
addch prints the character on the screen.
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<urn:uuid:d0ad3daf-d2ee-414a-8487-cbf55415261b>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-ncurses/manual/html_node/An-example.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.663463
| 323
| 3
| 3
|
What is Xi3?
Xi3® is an exciting, new, patented computer architecture pioneered by Salt Lake City, Utah based Xi3 Corporation. The concept and goal of Xi3 Corporation was to re-imagine the traditional computer to a completely new, universal, energy efficient, cost-effective modular computer design. This new design works with existing industry components and software, allowing easy adoption into the all industries. The Xi3 computer architecture is a universal hardware platform, designed for any solution, from ARM- or X86- based, low-power embedded systems, to home and desktop computers, to affordable servers and supercomputers. Many other exciting Xi3 products are currently under development and will be released in the years to come.
What is the meaning of the name Xi3?
X = Variable- One of the great benefits of the Xi3 approach to computer architecture is its ability to easily configure a computer to meet any specific requirement. In this way, Xi3 technology breaks the mold by separating the traditional motherboard into three distinct boards. Xi3 variability begins with the fact that it replaces the traditional computer motherboard with three miniaturized and interconnected boards. This tri-board approach allows Xi3 and its partners to easily meet a vast array of computing needs by defining and creating miniaturized boards with varied I/O or processing capabilities, all within the same modular Xi3 computer architecture.
I = Information- The world is moving information faster than ever before. The fastest way to move information is through Information Technology. One of the biggest problems facing the Information Technology industry today is the variety and sources of information that need access to processing power. The Xi3 design allows IT engineers and developers the ability to focus their efforts on their specific requirements. The result is faster development times at a reduced cost.
3 = Cubed- Since the invention of the computer, traditional computer designs have been stuck in a 2-Dimensional world. Xi3's forward-thinking computer architecture uses the power of geometry to unlock a smaller, more compact design than traditional computer systems. After much research and development, the cube was determined to be the most effective design for a universal computing platform.
Using this patented approach, Xi3 provides the building blocks for the future of custom computer development and design, enabling people and companies to do more with technology for less.
There is a better way! Welcome to the Xi3 Revolution!
Xi3 NewsMarch 09, 2013:
GEEK: Geek @ SXSW: Xi3, Modular Computing & the PISTON Gaming System Liveblog
March 08, 2013:
NEWS RELEASE: With Demand Growing, Xi3 Corporation Opens Pre-Orders for its PISTON Console (PC)
March 04, 2013:
NEWS RELEASE: Xi3 Corporation to Showcase Modular Computers and Servers at HIMSS13
February 15, 2013:
The Guardian: The future of gaming: key contenders
February 06, 2013:
Develop: The other next generation of consoles
Xi3 EventsOctober 18, 2012:
CETPA 2012: Xi3 to Exhibit at Annual California Educational Technology Professionals Association Conference
October 17, 2012:
RETECH 2012: Xi3 to Exhibit at Leading Renewable Energy Conference
October 12, 2012:
D&H Headquarters: Xi3 Featured During Sales Floor Day
June 21, 2012:
EVENTS: Xi3 to Exhibit at the D&H Mid-Atlantic Summer Technology Show 2012
March 27, 2012:
Xi3 presenting at the Design West 2012 show March 27 - 29
Xi3 AccoladesQUOTE: In a revelation that will perhaps steal the entire (CES 2013) show -- via Gameranx
QUOTE: Xi3 products seem destined to change the way many people look at their systems -- via The Washington Times
QUOTE: The Xi3 Modular Computer has "some impressive stats for something so tiny" -- via the Los Angeles Times
QUOTE: "The Xi3 Modular Computer is one cool-looking desktop in a cube" -- via Engadget
QUOTE: "Hats off to Xi3 . . . for making a better Mac than Apple" via The Desk of DV Dude
|
<urn:uuid:7a9cbf0f-6ab0-4a83-89a8-4e2388f593e0>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.xi3.org/about_xi3.php
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|
en
| 0.911172
| 857
| 2.578125
| 3
|
|Dense, twiggy, dwarf, semi-evergreen shrub that is native to the mountaintops of Kyushu Island, Japan. R. kiusianum has also been known as R. indicum amoenum and R. obtusum f. japonicum. Hardy to 0 degrees F. Leaves are small, obovate, dark green, 1/4 to 3/4 inch long. Flowers are small, held in trusses of 2 to 3 per cluster, and borne from mid to late spring. Best adapted to full sun. Beautiful planted in containers, rock gardens and in drifts at the front of a shrub border.
Prune immediately after flowering so you won't cut off any of next year's flower buds. Best if not sheared. Plant as you would any of the other azaleas: high and in well-drained, acidic soil, rich with organic matter. Though azaleas have a potentially large list of possible pest and disease problems, they are usually trouble free if planted correctly in proper cultural conditions.
|
<urn:uuid:efeffa98-4abf-40c4-8696-2d4a3c6d386c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pda_e744.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950252
| 223
| 2.53125
| 3
|
The upper register of this stela shows what is most likely a statue of Sobek or Sobek-Re, a god associated with the Nile and its annual flood wearing a crown consisting of two plumes and a sun disk. The god surmounts a shrine under a tree, perhaps also an object of veneration. The crocodiles shown below are probably representations of the animals kept in the temple precinct, which were seen as manifestations of the bau, or powers, of the god. However, it is also possible that they represent successive regenerations of the god.
- Medium: Limestone
- Possible Place Made: Dahamsha, Egypt
- Dates: ca. 1295-1070 B.C.E.
- Dynasty: XIX Dynasty to XX Dynasty
- Period: New Kingdom
- Dimensions: 6 1/2 x 9 11/16 x 2 5/8 in. (16.5 x 24.6 x 6.7 cm) (show scale)
- Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
- Museum Location: This item is not on view
- Accession Number: 67.174
- Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
- Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY
- Caption: Crocodile Stela, ca. 1295-1070 B.C.E. Limestone, 6 1/2 x 9 11/16 x 2 5/8 in. (16.5 x 24.6 x 6.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 67.174. Creative Commons-BY
- Record Completeness: Best (88%)
|
<urn:uuid:e6d5b8b5-abad-467e-912b-3a00bf1e37ef>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3763/Crocodile_Stela
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.870359
| 339
| 3.0625
| 3
|
- To solve a rational equation:
Step 1 Exclude values that cause division
Step 2 Multiply both sides by the least
common dominator and simplify
Step 3 Solve the resulting equation
Step 4 Check each solution to make sure
it is not one of the excluded
values; that is, division by zero is not permitted.
Any value that is
excluded in this manner is called an extraneous root.
- Property of Powers
If P and Q are algebraic expressions in a variable x,
and n is any positive integer, then the solution set
of P = Q is a subset of the solution set of
P n = Q n. The equation P n
= Q nis called a derived equation of P = Q.
to Section 3
© 2011 Karl J. Smith. All rights reserved.
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PLEASE CALL 1-866-INVADER IF YOU SUSPECT YOU HAVE FOUND THIS SPECIES
USDA Symbol: CEDE5
ODA rating: A
Meadow knapweed risk assessment
Noxious weed listing process
Oregon meadow hawkweed distribution
Click on image to view larger photo.
If images are downloaded and used from the ODA web site please be sure to credit the photographer.
Meadow hawkweed has stems and leaves that exudes milky juice when broken. The stems are bristly and usually leafless, although occasionally a small leaf appears near the midpoint. Stems can reach three feet tall and bear up to 30 half inch flower heads near the top. Flowers are yellow and appears in May - July depending on elevation.
Plants of the hawkweed complex produce mats of rosettes preventing desirable plants from establishing or surviving. Hawkweeds dominate sites by out competing other species for water and nutrients and by releasing alleopathic compounds from their own decaying leaves. Plants grow well in moist grassy areas but do not tolerate shade well. Hawkweeds are becoming troublesome in native meadows, prairies, pastures and lawns. Wilderness areas in the Pacific Northwest are at risk of invasion. Meadow hawkweed tends to grow in places where there isn’t constant grazing such as meadows, roadsides, pastures, lawns, and fields.
Meadow hawkweed is a perennial weed that came to the United States from Europe.
Distribution in Oregon
Known to occur in Wallowa, Hood River and Clackamas counties but has potential to occur in other counties in Oregon.
Biological control agents are not used on "A" listed weeds in Oregon. This weed is being managed for eradication or containment.
Printable trifold brochure of meadow hawkweed (pdf)
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| 3.125
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Fearing that this drought could reduce lake levels lower than ever before, the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority, the wholesale supplier of water to Austin and other Central Texas cities, plans to meet next week to discuss reducing or ending its water sales to downriver farmers next year.
"These are unprecedented conditions," said the agency's general manager, Becky Motal, in a statement Wednesday. She added, "If the dry weather continues, we will reach levels that we have not reached before in previous droughts."
Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan, the two major reservoirs, are currently 40 percent full. The LCRA says new projections show that by Jan. 1, the amount of water in the lakes could drop close to the levels they were at during the worst drought in Texas history, in the 1950s.
Currently the lakes contain 812,000 acre-feet of water, but the LCRA fears the amount of water could drop as low as 640,000 acre-feet by Jan. 1. The lowest the lakes have ever been was 621,000 acre-feet, in September 1952.
By way of context, Austin used 164,000 acre-feet in 2009. (Austin recently moved to once-a-week watering restrictions aimed at cutting usage.)
Federal scientists announced last week that La Nia, an intermittent Pacific Ocean phenomenon that has been blamed for the current drought, is back and will strengthen. That means Texas' drought -- already the most intense single-year drought on record in the state -- is likely to continue for months. This summer's intense heat and high evaporation rates have compounded the problem.
Rice farmers a few hundred miles down the Colorado River in Matagorda, Wharton and Colorado counties rely on LCRA water to grow crops. Ronald Gertson, a representative for the farmers, said he had been aware this could happen. Nonetheless, he said, "it will be a shock to quite a number of [farmers], I think, when it finally sinks in that there might potentially not be any water available from the LCRA for rice production."
Gertson added: "[Farmers will] hopefully be able to get enough revenue from crop insurance claims to survive the year and hope for a better water year the following year. But I do fear a little bit that this will lead to some extra pressure on groundwater."
The LCRA is currently releasing water from the Highland Lakes for the farmers' second rice crop and will continue to do so until mid-October. Recently levels in the Highland Lakes have been falling at a rate of about 4,000 acre-feet per day. If that continued, the lakes would be drained in a little over six months. However, that rate of decline is largely due to the rice crops, so the lake levels should cease falling so quickly after mid-October.
The board will meet on Sept. 21, following a related committee meeting the previous day.
The board may also take up a new plan -- months or years in the making -- for managing the LCRA's water that would automatically cut farmers off in January if lake levels drop below certain levels.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/water-supply/central-texas-agency-plans-drought-worse-1950s/.
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Requirements For Nursing – Exactly What You Need
Prerequisites For Nursing
When it comes to the prerequisites for nursing they all lead towards the final nursing requirement, which is having your nursing license, which is done by applyling for licensure through your state. Now the road to attaining your nursing licenses can differ from other aspiring nurses, but when it all comes down to it, below are the prerequisites for nursing that you will most likely have to attain to gain nursing employment:
- A high school diploma or GED – Although some states allow one to take certain knowledge evaluations that can allow one to bypass this requirement, which are tests to make sure one is able to learn in a nursing degree course environment. Taking certain courses like chemistry, biology, anatomy & physiology in high school will better prepare one for college classes, which is why this prerequisite for nursing is most always required.
- Accredited Degree – An accredited nursing degree can be attained from a myraid of colleges accross the United states, which some of these accredited degrees can include; Associates of Science in Nursing (ASN), Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN), Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN), RN to BSN, accelerated nursing programs, Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) and more, which the level attained will all depend on what your career goals are. When it comes to prerequisites for nursing, an accredited degree will give one the most up to date knowledge, as accredited nursing programs are reviewed and granted accreditation by organizations designated by the US Department of Education, which only the best schools can attain accreditation, which in turn will show employers that one is both dedicated and highly qualified when one goes to apply for a nursing position. Now it should be known that not all states required an that you get your degree from an accredited nursing school in order to take the nursing competency evaluation, but one should always do their best to attain a degree from an accredited program, because when it comes to the prerequistes for nursing degrees for higher degrees, the major prerequisite for admission is that you got a degree from an accredited institution. When searching for accredited nursing programs, there are two main accrediting agencies that you should look for, those being the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) or the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC). When it comes to the minimum prerequisites for nursing employment, a minimum on an accociates degree is required.
- NCLEX – Passing National Council Licensure EXam (NCLEX) is the major prerequisite needed for nursing and your ticket to nursing employment. Each state provides the NCLEX to aspiring nurses, which the test consists of anywhere from 85 to 205 questions and is an adaptive test, taken on a computer, where the more one answers questions correctly, the harder they get as well as vice versa. One will either pass when they have attained enough points, or end if one doesn’t meet the certain minimum requirements. Each state has different rules, but one is generally aloud to take the NCLEX up to 6 times, which they can do 3 times in one year, which if they fail all three times then they must attain education from a nursing program that is approved by ones state board of nursing, which after the program is completed an passed the individual will be aloud to take the NLCEX up to 3 more times. Once one has completed the exam, they will receive their test results in the mail within a week to at most 4 weeks. As far as prerequisites for nursing degrees required for NCLEX test taking go, a minimum of an associates degree is demanded.
Now this is the most taken route, but is should be known that there are other avenues that one can take to that will suffice the requirements for nursing employment, which include doing a hospital diploma program which takes around 2 to 3 years to complete as well as doing your training through a vocational school.
Now these are the general prerequisites for becoming a nurse, which all needed to be attainined in order to work as a nurse. But being that different degrees offer different admission requirements, the prerequisites for nursing degrees range, which in order to make sure that you attain the right admission prerequisites for nursing school, you will want to either contact your school or visit the nursing program website through the school your are wishing to do your training through.
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|Republic of Angola|
|Anthem: Angola Avante! (Portuguese)
and largest city
|Recognised national languages|
|Ethnic groups (2000)|
|Government||Unitary presidential republic|
|-||President||José Eduardo dos Santos|
|-||Vice President||Manuel Vicente|
|-||from Portugal||11 November 1975|
|-||Total||1,246,700 km2 (23rd)
481,354 sq mi
|GDP (PPP)||2012 estimate|
|-||Total||$128.288 billion (64th)|
|-||Per capita||$6,346 (107th)|
|GDP (nominal)||2012 estimate|
|-||Total||$118.719 billion (61st)|
|-||Per capita||$5,873 (91st)|
|HDI (2013)|| 0.508
low · 148th
|Time zone||WAT (UTC+1)|
|-||Summer (DST)||not observed (UTC+1)|
|Drives on the||right|
|ISO 3166 code||AO|
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola, pronounced: [ʁɨˈpuβlikɐ] or [ʁɛˈpuβlikɐ ðj ɐ̃ˈɡɔlɐ, in Angola: ʁɛˈpublika de an'ɡɔla]; Kikongo, Kimbundu, Umbundu: Repubilika ya Ngola), is a country in Southern Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean and Luanda is its capital city. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Portuguese were present in some—mostly coastal—points of the territory of what is now Angola, from the 16th to the 19th century, interacting in diverse ways with the peoples that lived there. In the 19th century they slowly and hesitantly began to establish themselves in the interior. Angola as a Portuguese colony encompassing the present territory was not established before the end of the 19th century, and "effective occupation", as required by the Berlin Conference (1884) was achieved only by the 1920s. Independence was achieved in 1975, after a protracted liberation war. After independence, Angola was the scene of an intense civil war from 1975 to 2002. The country has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy has on average grown at a two-digit pace since the 1990s, especially since the end of the civil war. In spite of this, standards of living remain low for the majority of the population, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Angola are among the worst in the world. Angola is considered to be economically disparate, with the majority of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population.
The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola (Kingdom of Angola), appearing as early as Dias de Novais's 1571 charter. The toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola held by the kings of Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands, between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16th century.
Early migrations and political units
Khoisan hunter-gatherers are the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area. They were largely absorbed and/or replaced by Bantu peoples during the Bantu migrations, though small numbers remain in parts of southern Angola to the present day. The Bantu came from the north, probably from somewhere near the present-day Republic of Cameroon. When they reached what is now Angola, they encountered the Khoisan, Bushmen and other groups considerably less technologically advanced than themselves, whom they easily dominated with their superior knowledge of metal-working, ceramics and agriculture. The establishment of the Bantu took many centuries and gave rise to various groups who took on different ethnic characteristics.
During this period of time, the Bantu established a number of political units ("kingdoms", "empires") in most parts of what today is Angola. The best known of these is the Kingdom of the Kongo that had its centre in the northwest of contemporary Angola, but included important regions in the west of present day Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of Congo as well as in southern Gabon. It established trade routes with other trading cities and civilizations up and down the coast of southwestern and West Africa and even with the Great Zimbabwe Mutapa Empire, but engaged in little or no transoceanic trade.
Portuguese presence on the coast
The geographical areas now designated as Angola entered into contact with the Portuguese in the late 15th century, concretely in 1483, when Portugal established relations with the Kongo State, which stretched from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. In this context, they established a small trade post at the port of Mpinda, in Soyo. The Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587 which became a town in 1617, was another important early settlement they founded and ruled. The Portuguese would establish several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coastal strip of current-day Angola, which relied on slave trade, commerce in raw materials, and exchange of goods for survival. The African slave trade provided a large number of black slaves to Europeans and their African agents. For example, in what is now Angola, the Imbangala economy was heavily focused on the slave trade.
European traders would export manufactured goods to the coast of Africa where they would be exchanged for slaves. Within the Portuguese Empire, most black African slaves were traded to Portuguese merchants who bought them to sell as cheap labour for use on Brazilian agricultural plantations. This trade would last until the first half of the 19th century. According to John Iliffe, "Portuguese records of Angola from the 16th century show that a great famine occurred on average every seventy years; accompanied by epidemic disease, it might kill one-third or one-half of the population, destroying the demographic growth of a generation and forcing colonists back into the river valleys".
The Portuguese gradually took control of the coastal strip during the 16th century by a series of treaties and wars, forming the Portuguese colony of Angola. Taking advantage of the Portuguese Restoration War, the Dutch occupied Luanda from 1641 to 1648, where they allied with local peoples, consolidating their colonial rule against the remaining Portuguese resistance. In 1648, a fleet under the command of Salvador de Sá retook Luanda for Portugal and initiated a conquest of the lost territories, which restored Portugal to its former possessions by 1650. Treaties regulated relations with Kongo in 1649 and Njinga's Kingdom of Matamba and Ndongo in 1656. The conquest of Pungo Andongo in 1671 was the last major Portuguese expansion from Luanda outwards, as attempts to invade Kongo in 1670 and Matamba in 1681 failed. Portugal also expanded its territory behind the colony of Benguela to some extent, but until the 19th century the inroads from Luanda and Benguela were very limited, and Portugal had neither the intention nor the means to carry out a large scale territorial occupation and colonization.
Delimitation and occupation of Angola
The process resulted in few gains until the 1880s. Development of the hinterland began after the Berlin Conference in 1885 fixed the colony's borders, and British and Portuguese investment fostered mining, railways, and agriculture based on various forced labour systems. Full Portuguese administrative control of the hinterland did not occur until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1951, the colony was designated as an overseas province, called Overseas Province of Angola. Portugal had a presence in Angola for nearly five hundred years, and the population's initial reaction to calls for independence was scarce. More overtly political organisations first appeared in the 1950s and began to make organised demands for self-determination, especially in international forums such as the Non-Aligned Movement.
The Portuguese regime, meanwhile, refused to accede to the demands for independence, provoking an armed conflict that started in 1961 when black guerrillas attacked both white and black civilians in cross-border operations in northeastern Angola. The war came to be known as the Colonial War. In this struggle, the principal protagonists were the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), founded in 1956, the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), which appeared in 1961, and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), founded in 1966. After many years of conflict that lead to the weakening of all the insurgent parties, Angola gained its independence on 11 November 1975, after the 1974 coup d'état in Lisbon, Portugal, which overthrew the Portuguese regime headed by Marcelo Caetano.
Portugal's new revolutionary leaders began in 1974 a process of political change at home and accepted its former colonies' independence abroad. In Angola, a fight for the conquest of power broke out immediately between the three nationalist movements. The events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens, creating up to 300 000 destitute Portuguese refugees—the retornados. The new Portuguese government tried to mediate an understanding between the three competing movements, and succeeded in agreeing, on paper, to form a common government, but in the end none of them respected the commitments made, and the issue was resolved by military force.
Independence and civil war
After independence in November 1975, Angola faced a devastating civil war which lasted several decades and claimed millions of lives and produced many refugees. Following negotiations held in Portugal, itself under severe social and political turmoil and uncertainty due to the April 1974 revolution, Angola's three main guerrilla groups agreed to establish a transitional government in January 1975.
Within two months, however, the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA were fighting each other and the country was well on its way to being divided into zones controlled by rival armed political groups. The superpowers were quickly drawn into the conflict, which became a flash point for the Cold War. The United States, Zaire (today's DRC) and South Africa supported the FNLA and UNITA. The Soviet Union and Cuba supported the MPLA.
In the beginning of the Civil War, most of the half million Portuguese that lived in Angola and accounted for the majority of the skilled work in the public administration, agriculture, industries and trade fled the country leaving its once prosperous and growing economy to a state of bankruptcy.
During most of this period, 1975–1990, the MPLA organised and maintained a socialist regime.
Ceasefire with UNITA
On 22 March 2002, Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, was killed in combat with government troops. A cease-fire was reached by the two factions shortly afterwards. UNITA gave up its armed wing and assumed the role of major opposition party, although in the knowledge that in the present regime a legitimate democratic election is impossible. Although the political situation of the country began to stabilize, President Dos Santos has so far refused to institute regular democratic processes, UNITA head officials being given senior positions in top level companies. Among Angola's major problems are a serious humanitarian crisis (a result of the prolonged war), the abundance of minefields, the continuation of the political, and to a much lesser degree, military activities in favour of the independence of the northern exclave of Cabinda, carried out in the context of the protracted Cabinda Conflict by the Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, but most of all, the dilapidation of the country's rich mineral resources by the regime. While most of the internally displaced have now settled around the capital, in the so-called "Musseques", the general situation for Angolans remains desperate.
Angola's motto is Virtus Unita Fortior, a Latin phrase meaning "Virtue is stronger when united". The executive branch of the government is composed of the President, the Vice-Presidents and the Council of Ministers. For decades, political power has been concentrated in the Presidency.
Governors of the 18 provinces are appointed by the president. The Constitutional Law of 1992 establishes the broad outlines of government structure and delineates the rights and duties of citizens. The legal system is based on Portuguese and customary law but is weak and fragmented, and courts operate in only 12 of more than 140 municipalities. A Supreme Court serves as the appellate tribunal; a Constitutional Court with powers of judicial review has not been constituted until 2010, despite statutory authorization.
After the end of the Civil War the regime came under pressure from within as well as from the international environment, to become more democratic and less authoritarian. Its reaction was to operate a number of changes without substantially changing its character.
Parliamentary elections held on 5 September 2008, announced MPLA as the winning party with 81% of votes. The closest opposition party was UNITA with 10%. These elections were the first since 1992 and were described as only partly free but certainly not as fair. A White Book on the elections in 2008 lists all irregularities surrounding the Parliamentary elections of 2008.
Angola scored poorly on the 2008 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. It was ranked 44 from 48 sub-Saharan African countries, scoring particularly badly in the areas of Participation and Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development. The Ibrahim Index uses a number of different variables to compile its list which reflects the state of governance in Africa.
The new constitution, adopted in 2010, further sharpened the authoritarian character of the regime. In the future, there will be no presidential elections: the president and the vice-president of the political party which comes out strongest in the parliamentary elections become automatically president and vice-president of Angola. Through a variety of mechanisms, the state president controls all the other organs of the state, so that the principle of the division of power is not maintained. As a consequence, Angola has no longer a presidential system, in the sense of the systems existing e.g. in the USA or in France. In terms of the classifications used in constitutional law, its regime falls now in the same category as the "caesarist" monarchy of Napoléon Bonaparte in France, António de Oliveira Salazar's "corporatist" system established by the Portuguese constitution of 1933, the Brazilian military dictatorship based on the constitution of 1967/69, or several authoritarian regimes in contemporary Africa.
The Angolan Armed Forces (AAF) is headed by a Chief of Staff who reports to the Minister of Defense. There are three divisions—the Army (Exército), Navy (Marinha de Guerra, MGA), and National Air Force (Força Aérea Nacional, FAN). Total manpower is about 110,000. Its equipment includes Russian-manufactured fighters, bombers, and transport planes. There are also Brazilian-made EMB-312 Tucano for training role, Czech-made L-39 for training and bombing role, Czech Zlin for training role and a variety of western made aircraft such as C-212\Aviocar, Sud Aviation Alouette III, etc. A small number of AAF personnel are stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville).
The National Police departments are Public Order, Criminal Investigation, Traffic and Transport, Investigation and Inspection of Economic Activities, Taxation and Frontier Supervision, Riot Police and the Rapid Intervention Police. The National Police are in the process of standing up an air wing, which will provide helicopter support for operations. The National Police are developing their criminal investigation and forensic capabilities. The force has an estimated 6,000 patrol officers, 2,500 taxation and frontier supervision officers, 182 criminal investigators and 100 financial crimes detectives and around 90 economic activity inspectors.
The National Police have implemented a modernization and development plan to increase the capabilities and efficiency of the total force. In addition to administrative reorganization, modernization projects include procurement of new vehicles, aircraft and equipment, construction of new police stations and forensic laboratories, restructured training programs and the replacement of AKM rifles with 9 mm UZIs for officers in urban areas.
Administrative divisions
Exclave of Cabinda
With an area of approximately 7,283 square kilometres (2,812 sq mi), the Northern Angolan province of Cabinda is unique in being separated from the rest of the country by a strip, some 60 kilometres (37 mi) wide, of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) along the lower Congo river. Cabinda borders the Congo Republic to the north and north-northeast and the DRC to the east and south. The town of Cabinda is the chief population center.
According to a 1995 census, Cabinda had an estimated population of 600,000, approximately 400,000 of whom live in neighboring countries. Population estimates are, however, highly unreliable. Consisting largely of tropical forest, Cabinda produces hardwoods, coffee, cocoa, crude rubber and palm oil. The product for which it is best known, however, is its oil, which has given it the nickname, "the Kuwait of Africa". Cabinda's petroleum production from its considerable offshore reserves now accounts for more than half of Angola's output. Most of the oil along its coast was discovered under Portuguese rule by the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC) from 1968 onwards.
Ever since Portugal handed over sovereignty of its former overseas province of Angola to the local independence groups (MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA), the territory of Cabinda has been a focus of separatist guerrilla actions opposing the Government of Angola (which has employed its military forces, the FAA—Forças Armadas Angolanas) and Cabindan separatists. The Cabindan separatists, FLEC-FAC, announced a virtual Federal Republic of Cabinda under the Presidency of N'Zita Henriques Tiago. One of the characteristics of the Cabindan independence movement is its constant fragmentation, into smaller and smaller factions.
Transport in Angola consists of:
- Three separate railway systems totalling 2,761 km (1,715 mi)
- 76,626 km (47,613 mi) of highway of which 19,156 km (11,903 mi) is paved
- 1,295 navigable inland waterways
- Eight major sea ports
- 243 airports, of which 32 are paved.
Travel on highways outside of towns and cities in Angola (and in some cases within) is often not best advised for those without four-by-four vehicles. While a reasonable road infrastructure has existed within Angola, time and the war have taken their toll on the road surfaces, leaving many severely potholed, littered with broken asphalt. In many areas drivers have established alternate tracks to avoid the worst parts of the surface, although careful attention must be paid to the presence or absence of landmine warning markers by the side of the road. The Angolan government has contracted the restoration of many of the country's roads. The road between Lubango and Namibe, for example, was completed recently with funding from the European Union, and is comparable to many European main routes. Progress to complete the road infrastructure is likely to take some decades, but substantial efforts are already being made in the right directions.
At 481,321 square miles (1,246,620 km2), Angola is the world's twenty-third largest country (after Niger). It is comparable in size to Mali and is nearly twice the size of the US state of Texas, or five times the area of the United Kingdom. It lies mostly between latitudes 4° and 18°S, and longitudes 12° and 24°E.
Angola is bordered by Namibia to the south, Zambia to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north-east, and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west. The exclave of Cabinda also borders the Republic of the Congo to the north. Angola's capital, Luanda, lies on the Atlantic coast in the northwest of the country.
Angola's average temperature on the coast is 60 °F (16 °C) in the winter and 70 °F (21 °C) in the summer. It has two seasons; dry season (May to October) and hot rainy season (November to April).
Angola has a rich subsoil heritage, from diamonds, oil, gold, copper, as well as a rich wildlife (dramatically impoverished during the civil war), forest, and fossils. Since independence, oil and diamonds have been the most important economic resource. Smallholder and plantation agriculture have dramatically dropped because of the Angolan Civil War, but have begun to recover after 2002. The transformation industry that had come into existence in the late colonial period collapsed at independence, because of the exodus of most of the ethnic Portuguese population, but has begun to reemerge (with updated technologies), partly because of the influx of new Portuguese entrepreneurs. Similar developments can be verified in the service sector.
Overall, Angola's economy has undergone a period of transformation in recent years, moving from the disarray caused by a quarter century of civil war to being the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest in the world, with an average GDP growth of 20 percent between 2005 and 2007. In the period 2001–2010, Angola had the world's highest annual average GDP growth, at 11.1 percent. In 2004, China's Eximbank approved a $2 billion line of credit to Angola. The loan is being used to rebuild Angola's infrastructure, and has also limited the influence of the International Monetary Fund in the country. China is Angola's biggest trade partner and export destination as well as the fourth-largest importer. Bilateral trade reached $27.67 billion in 2011, up 11.5 percent year-on-year. China’s imports, mainly crude oil and diamonds, increased 9.1 percent to $24.89 billion while China’s exports, including mechanical and electrical products, machinery parts and construction materials, surged 38.8 percent.
The Economist reported in 2008 that diamonds and oil make up 60 percent of Angola's economy, almost all of the country's revenue and are its dominant exports. Growth is almost entirely driven by rising oil production which surpassed 1.4 million barrels per day (220,000 m3/d) in late 2005 and was expected to grow to 2 million barrels per day (320,000 m3/d) by 2007. Control of the oil industry is consolidated in Sonangol Group, a conglomerate which is owned by the Angolan government. In December 2006, Angola was admitted as a member of OPEC. The economy grew 18% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 17.6% in 2007. However, due to the global recession the economy contracted an estimated −0.3% in 2009. The security brought about by the 2002 peace settlement has led to the resettlement of 4 million displaced persons, thus resulting in large-scale increases in agriculture production.
Although the country's economy has developed very significantly since achieving political stability in 2002, mainly thanks to the fast-rising earnings of the oil sector, Angola faces huge social and economic problems. These are in part a result of the almost continual state of conflict from 1961 onwards, although the highest level of destruction and socio-economic damage took place after the 1975 independence, during the long years of civil war. However, high poverty rates and blatant social inequality are chiefly the outcome of a combination of a persistent political authoritarianism, of "neo-patrimonial" practices at all levels of the political, administrative, military, and economic apparatuses, and of a pervasive corruption. The main beneficiary of this situation is a social segment constituted since 1975, but mainly during the last decades, around the political, administrative, economic, and military power holders, which has accumulated (and continues accumulating) enormous wealth. "Secondary beneficiaries" are the middle strata which are about to become social classes. However, overall almost half the population has to be considered as poor, but in this respect there are dramatic differences between the countryside and the cities (where by now slightly more than 50% of the people live).
An inquiry carried out in 2008 by the Angolan Instituto Nacional de Estatística has it that in the rural areas roughly 58% must be classified as "poor", according to UN norms, but in the urban areas only 19%, while the overall rate is 37%. In the cities, a majority of families, well beyond those officially classified as poor, have to adopt a variety of survival strategies. At the same time, in urban areas social inequality is most evident, and assumes extreme forms in the capital, Luanda. In the Human Development Index Angola constantly ranks in the bottom group.
According to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank, oil production from Angola has increased so significantly that Angola now is China's biggest supplier of oil. Growing oil revenues have also created opportunities for corruption: according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, 32 billion US dollars disappeared from government accounts from 2007 to 2010.
Before independence in 1975, Angola was a breadbasket of southern Africa and a major exporter of bananas, coffee and sisal, but three decades of civil war (1975–2002) destroyed the fertile countryside, leaving it littered with landmines and driving millions into the cities. The country now depends on expensive food imports, mainly from South Africa and Portugal, while more than 90 percent of farming is done at family and subsistence level. Thousands of Angolan small-scale farmers are trapped in poverty.
The enormous differences between the regions pose a serious structural problem in the Angolan economy. This is best illustrated by the fact that about one third of the economic activities is concentrated in Luanda and the neighbouring Bengo province, while several areas of the interior are characterized by stagnation and even regression.
One of the economic consequences of the social and regional disparities is a sharp increase in Angolan private investments abroad. The small fringe of Angolan society where most of the accumulation takes place seeks to spread its assets, for reasons of security and profit. For the time being, the biggest share of these investments is concentrated in Portugal where the Angolan presence (including that of the family of the state president) in banks as well as in the domains of energy, telecommunications, and mass media has become notable, as has the acquisition of vineyards and orchards as well as of touristic enterprises.
Angola's population is estimated to be 18,056,072 (2012). It is composed of Ovimbundu (language Umbundu) 37%, Ambundu (language Kimbundu) 25%, Bakongo 13%, and 32% other ethnic groups (including the Chokwe, the Ovambo, the Mbunda, with the latter having been replaced by Ganguela, a generic term for peoples east of the Central Highlands, which has a slightly derogatory meaning when applied by the western ethnic groups, and the Xindonga) as well as about 2% mestiços (mixed European and African), 1.4% Chinese and 1% European The Ambundu and Ovimbundu nations combined form a majority of the population, at 62%. The population is forecast to grow to over 47 million people to 2060, nearly tripling the estimated 16 to 18 million in 2011. The last official census was taken in 1970, and showed the total population as being 5.6 million. The first post-independence census is to be held in 2014.
It is estimated that Angola was host to 12,100 refugees and 2,900 asylum seekers by the end of 2007. 11,400 of those refugees were originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) who arrived in the 1970s. As of 2008 there were an estimated 400,000 DRC migrant workers, at least 30,000 Portuguese, and about 259,000 Chinese living in Angola.
Since 2003, more than 400,000 Congolese migrants have been expelled from Angola. Prior to independence in 1975, Angola had a community of approximately 350,000 Portuguese; currently, there are about 120,000 who are registered with the consulates, and increasing due to the debt crisis in Portugal. The Chinese population stands at 258,920, mostly composed of temporary migrants.
The languages in Angola are those originally spoken by the different ethnic groups plus Portuguese due to the country being a former Portuguese colony. The indigenous languages with the largest usage are Umbundu, Kimbundu, and Kikongo, in that order. Portuguese is the official language of the country.
Mastery of the official language is probably more extended in Angola than it is elsewhere in Africa, and this certainly applies to its use in everyday life. Moreover, and above all, the proportion of native (or near native) speakers of the language of the former colonizer, turned official after independence, is no doubt considerably higher than in any other African country.
There are three intertwined historical reasons for this situation.
- In the Portuguese “bridgeheads” Luanda and Benguela, which existed on the coast of what today is Angola since the 15th and 16th century, respectively, Portuguese was spoken not only by the Portuguese and their mestiço descendents, but—especially in and around Luanda—by a significant number of Africans, although these always remained native speakers of their local African language.
- Since the Portuguese conquest of the present territory of Angola, and especially since its “effective occupation” in the mid-1920s, schooling in Portuguese was slowly developed by the colonial state as well as by Catholic and Protestant missions. The rhythm of this expansion was considerably accelerated during the late colonial period, 1961–1974, so that by the end of the colonial period children all over the territory (with relatively few exceptions) had at least some access to the Portuguese language.
- In the same late colonial period, the legal discrimination of the black population was abolished, and the state apparatus in fields like health, education, social work, and rural development was enlarged. This entailed a significant increase in jobs for Africans, under the condition that they spoke Portuguese.
As a consequence of all this, the African “lower middle class” which at that stage formed in Luanda and other cities began to often prevent their children from learning the local African language, in order to guarantee that they learned Portuguese as their native language. At the same time, the white and “mestiço” population, where some knowledge of African languages could previously often been found, neglected this aspect more and more, to the point of frequently ignoring it totally. After independence, these tendencies continued, and were even strengthened, under the rule of the MPLA which has its main social roots exactly in those social segments where the mastery of Portuguese as well as the proportion of native Portuguese speakers was highest. This became a political side issue, as FNLA as well as UNITA, given their regional constituencies, came out in favour of a greater attention to the African languages, and as the FNLA favoured French over Portuguese.
The dynamics of the language situation, as described above, were additionally fostered by the massive migrations triggered by the Civil War. Ovimbundu, the most populous ethnic group and the most affected by the war, appeared in great numbers in urban areas outside their areas, especially in Luanda and surroundings. At the same time, a majority of the Bakongo who had fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the early 1960s, or of their children and grandchildren, returned to Angola, but mostly did not settle in their original "habitat", but in the cities—and again above all in Luanda. As a consequence, more than half the population is now living in the cities which, from the linguistic point of view, have become highly heterogeneous. This means, of course, that Portuguese as the overall language of communication is by now of paramount importance, and that the role of the African languages is steadily decreasing among the urban population—a trend which is beginning to spread into rural areas as well.
The exact numbers of those fluent in Portuguese or who speak Portuguese as a first language are unknown, although a census is expected to be carried out in July–August 2013. Quite a number of voices demand the recognition of “Angolan Portuguese” as a specific variant, comparable to those spoken in Portugal or in Brazil. However, while there exists a certain number of idiomatic particularities in everyday Portuguese, as spoken by Angolans, it remains to be seen whether or not the Angolan government comes to the conclusion that these particularities constitute a configuration that justifies the claim to be a new language variant.
There are about 1000 mostly Christian religious communities in Angola. While reliable statistics are nonexistent, estimates have it that more than half of the population are Roman Catholics, while about a quarter adhere to the Protestant churches introduced during the colonial period: the Congregationalists mainly among the Ovimbundu of the Central Highlands and the coastal region to its West, the Methodists concentrating on the Kimbundu speaking strip from Luanda to Malanje, the Baptists almost exclusively among the Bakongo of the Northwest (now massively present in Luanda as well) and dispersed Adventists, Reformed and Lutherans. In Luanda and region there subsists a nucleus of the "syncretic" Tocoists and in the northwest a sprinkling of Kimbanguism can be found, spreading from the Congo/Zaire. Since independence, hundreds of Pentecostal and similar communities have sprung up in the cities, where by now about 50% of the population is living; several of these communities/churches are of Brazilian origin. The Muslims, practically all of them immigrants from West African and other countries and belonging to the Sunnite branch, represent only about 1%; because of their diversity, they do not form a community. In 2011, according to the Islamic Community of Angola (Comunidade Islâmica de Angola, COIA) there were more than 80 mosques serving about 500,000 Muslims in Angola, and the number was growing.
In a study assessing nations' levels of religious regulation and persecution with scores ranging from 0 to 10 where 0 represented low levels of regulation or persecution, Angola was scored 0.8 on Government Regulation of Religion, 4.0 on Social Regulation of Religion, 0 on Government Favoritism of Religion and 0 on Religious Persecution.
Foreign missionaries were very active prior to independence in 1975, although since the beginning of the anti-colonial fight in 1961 the Portuguese colonial authorities expelled a series of Protestant missionaries and closed mission stations based on the belief that the missionaries were inciting pro-independence sentiments. Missionaries have been able to return to the country since the early 1990s, although security conditions due to the civil war have prevented them until 2002 from restoring many of their former inland mission stations.
The Roman Catholic and some major Protestant denominations mostly keep to themselves in contrast to the "New Churches" which actively proselytize. The Roman Catholic as well as some major Protestant denominations provide help for the poor in the form of crop seeds, farm animals, medical care and education.
Largest cities
Largest cities or towns of Angola
Epidemics of cholera, malaria, rabies and African hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg hemorrhagic fever, are common diseases in several parts of the country. Many regions in this country have high incidence rates of tuberculosis and high HIV prevalence rates. Dengue, filariasis, leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are other diseases carried by insects that also occur in the region. Angola has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and one of the world's lowest life expectancies. A 2007 survey concluded that low and deficient niacin status was common in Angola. Demographic and Health Surveys is currently conducting several surveys in Angola on malaria, domestic violence and more.
Although by law education in Angola is compulsory and free for eight years, the government reports that a percentage of students are not attending due to a lack of school buildings and teachers. Students are often responsible for paying additional school-related expenses, including fees for books and supplies.
In 1999, the gross primary enrollment rate was 74 percent and in 1998, the most recent year for which data are available, the net primary enrollment rate was 61 percent. Gross and net enrollment ratios are based on the number of students formally registered in primary school and therefore do not necessarily reflect actual school attendance. There continue to be significant disparities in enrollment between rural and urban areas. In 1995, 71.2 percent of children ages 7 to 14 years were attending school. It is reported that higher percentages of boys attend school than girls. During the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), nearly half of all schools were reportedly looted and destroyed, leading to current problems with overcrowding.
The Ministry of Education hired 20,000 new teachers in 2005 and continued to implement teacher trainings. Teachers tend to be underpaid, inadequately trained, and overworked (sometimes teaching two or three shifts a day). Some teachers may reportedly demand payment or bribes directly from their students. Other factors, such as the presence of landmines, lack of resources and identity papers, and poor health prevent children from regularly attending school. Although budgetary allocations for education were increased in 2004, the education system in Angola continues to be extremely under-funded.
Literacy is quite low, with 67.4% of the population over the age of 15 able to read and write in Portuguese. 82.9% of males and 54.2% of women are literate as of 2001. Since independence from Portugal in 1975, a number of Angolan students continued to be admitted every year at high schools, polytechnical institutes, and universities in Portugal, Brazil and Cuba through bilateral agreements; in general, these students belong to the elites.
Portugal has been present in Angola for 400 years, occupied the territory in the 19th and early 20th century, and ruled over it for about 50 years. As a consequence, both countries share cultural aspects: language (Portuguese) and main religion (Roman Catholic Christianity). The substrate of Angolan culture is African, mostly Bantu, while Portuguese culture has been imported. The diverse ethnic communities – the Ovimbundu, Ambundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, Mbunda and other peoples – maintain to varying degrees their own cultural traits, traditions and languages, but in the cities, where slightly more than half of the population now lives, a mixed culture has been emerging since colonial times – in Luanda since its foundation in the 16th century. In this urban culture, the Portuguese heritage has become more and more dominant. An African influence is evident in music and dance, and is moulding the way in which Portuguese is spoken, but is almost disappearing from the vocabulary. This process is well reflected in contemporary Angolan literature, especially in the works of Pepetela and Ana Paula Ribeiro Tavares.
See also
- Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2009). World Population Prospects, Table A.1 (PDF). 2008 revision. United Nations. Archived from the original on 18 March 2009. Retrieved 12 March 2009.
- Population Forecast to 2060 by International Futures hosted by Google Public Data Explorer
- "Angola". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
- "Gini Index". World Bank. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
- (English) Life expectancy at birth www.cia.gov (2009)
- Heywood, Linda M. & Thornton, John K. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660, p. 82. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- "The Story of Africa". BBC. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- Boahen, Adu Boahen. Topics In West African History. p. 110. ISBN 0-582-64502-6.
- Kwaku Person-Lynn. "Afrikan Involvement In Atlantic Slave Trade". Archived from the original on 14 December 2007. Retrieved 25 November 2007.
- John Iliffe (2007) Africans: the history of a continent. Cambridge University Press. p.68. ISBN 0-521-68297-5
- Dismantling the Portuguese Empire, Time Magazine (Monday, 7 July 1975)
- The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire by Norrie MacQueen – Mozambique since Independence: Confronting Leviathan by Margaret Hall, Tom Young – Author of Review: Stuart A. Notholt African Affairs, Vol. 97, No. 387 (Apr., 1998), pp. 276–278, JSTOR
- "Americas Third World War: How 6 million People Were killed in CIA secret wars against third world countries". Informationclearinghouse.info. 16 November 1981. Archived from the original on 29 June 2010. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "CIA & Angolan Revolution 1975 Part 1". YouTube. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "The Economist: Flight from Angola". 16 August 1975.
- M.R. Bhagavan, Angola's Political Economy 1975–1985, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1986.
- "Introduction:Angola". Retrieved 1 June 2012.
- Lari (2004), Human Rights Watch (2005)
- See Didier Péclard (ed.), L'Angola dans la paix: Autoritarisme et reconversions, special issue of Politique africains (Paris), 110, 2008.
- Anton Bösl (26 February 2009). "Angola´s Parliamentary Elections in 2008, Publications, Namibia Office, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V". Kas.de. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "Angola – White Book on the 2009 elections, Publications, Namibia Office, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V". Kas.de. 16 September 2009. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "Mo Ibrahim Foundation". Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- In this manner, José Eduardo dos Santos is now finally in a legal situation. As he had obtained a relative, but not the absolute majority of votes in the 1992 presidential election, a second round—opposing him to Jonas Savimbi—was constitutionally necessary to make his election effective, but he preferred never to hold this second round.
- See Jorge Miranda, A Constituição de Angola de 2010, published in the academic journal O Direito (Lisbon), vol. 142, 2010 – 1 (June).
- "Virtual Angola Facts and Statistics". Archived from the original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2007.
- "Angola profile".
- CIA – The World Factbook – Country Comparison :: Area
- "The Increasing Importance of African Oil". Power and Interest Report. 20 March 2006.[dead link]
- The Economist. 30 August 2008 edition. U.S. Edition. Page 46. Article on Angola, "marches toward riches and democracy?".
- "Angola: Country Admitted As Opec Member". Angola Press Agency. 14 December 2006.
- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ao.html retrieved 24 October 2010
- Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rates Angola one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world.
- This process is well analyzed by authors like Christine Messiant, Tony Hodges and others. For an eloquent illustrating, see now the Angolan magazine Infra-Estruturas África 7/2010.
- See Angola Exame of 12/11/2010, online http://www.exameangola.com/pt/?det=16943&id=2000&mid=.
- See Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues, O Trabalho Dignifica o Homem: Estratégias de Sobrevivência em Luanda, Lisbon: Colibri: 2006.
- As an excellent illustration see Luanda: A vida na cidade dos extremos, in: Visão, 11 November 2010.
- The HDI 2010 lists Angola in the 146th position among 169 countries—one position below that of Haiti. See Human Development Index and its components.
- Alt, Robert. "Into Africa: China's Grab for Influence and Oil". Heritage.org. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "Angola: Explain Missing Government Funds". Human Rights Watch. 20 December 2011. Retrieved 22 December 2011.
- Louise Redvers, POVERTY-ANGOLA: Inter Press Service News Agency – NGOs Sceptical of Govt's Rural Development Plans retrieved 6 June 2009
- See Manuel Alves da Rocha, Desigualdades e assimetrias regionais em Angola: Os factores da competitividade territorial, Luanda: Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica da Universidade Católica de Angola, 2010.
- See "A força do kwanza", Visão (Lisbon), 993, 15 May 2012, pp. 50–54
- "Angola Demographics Profile 2013". Index Mundi. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
- José Redinha, Etnias e culturas de Angola, Luanda: Instituto de Investigalção Científica de Angola, 1975
- Alvin W. Urquhart, Patterns of Settlement and Subsistence in Southwestern Angola, National Academies Press, 1963, p 10
- See ethnic map and CIA – The World Factbook – Angola
- As no reliable census data exist at this stage (2011), all these numbers are rough estimates only, subject to adjustments and updates.
- Forecast provided by International Futures and hosted by Google's Public Data Explorer
- "ANGOLA – The National Archives"
- [U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. "World Refugee Survey 2008". Available Online at: http://www.refugees.org/countryreports.aspx?id=2117. pp.37]
- World Refugee Survey 2008 – Angola, UNHCR. NB: This figure is highly doubtful, as it makes no clear distinction between migrant workers, refugees, and immigrants.
- Angola, U.S. Department of State. NB: Estimations in 2011 put that number at 100,000, and add about 150,000 to 200,000 other Europeans and Latin Americans.
- "Angola: Cerca de 259.000 chineses vivem atualmente no país". Visão. 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2013-01-13
- "Calls for Angola to Investigate Abuse of Congolese Migrants". Inter Press Service. 21 May 2012
- See the carefully researched article by Gerald Bender & Stanley Yoder, Whites in Angola on the Eve of Independence. The Poitics of Numbers, in: Africa Today, 21 (4), 1974, pp. 23–27. Flight from Angola, The Economist , 16 August 1975 puts the number at 500,000, but this is an estimate lacking appropriate sources.
- Pidd, Helen; McDonald, Henry; Smith, Helena; Phillips, Tom; Rourke, Alison (21 December 2011). "Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis". The Guardian (London).
- "Chinese 'gangsters' repatriated from Angola", Telegraph
- CIA - The World Factbook
- An illustration is Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, ‘’Educação e sociedade nas áreas rurais de Angola: Resultados de um inquérito’’, vol. 2, ‘’Análise do universo agrícola’’ (survey report), Serviços de Planeamento e Integração Económica de Angola, Luanda, 1974
- "Angola: Population Census Dates Set". PARIS21. 19 April 2011. Retrieved 22 April 2013. "Angola has set dates for their population census: from 16 July to 18 August 2013"
- See Fátima Viegas, Panorama das Religiões em Angola Independente (1975–2008), Ministério da Cultura/Instituto Nacional para os Assuntos Religiosos, Luanda 2008
- Benedict Schubert: Der Krieg und die Kirchen: Angola 1961–1991. Exodus, Luzern/Switzerland, 1997; Lawrence W. Henderson, The Church in Angola: A river of many currents, Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1989
- O Pais, Surgimento do Islão em Angola, 2 September 2011, Pg 18
- Angola: Religious Freedom Profile at the Association of Religion Data Archives Brian J Grim and Roger Finke. "International Religion Indexes: Government Regulation, Government Favoritism, and Social Regulation of Religion". Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. 2 (2006) Article 1: www.religjournal.com.
- "U.S. Department of State". State.gov. 1 January 2004. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- Culture and customs of Angola. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 2007. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-313-33147-3. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- [dead link]
- "International Grants 2005" (PDF). Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- Seal AJ, Creeke PI, Dibari F, et al. (January 2007). "Low and deficient niacin status and pellagra are endemic in postwar Angola". Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 85 (1): 218–24. PMID 17209199.
- Angola Surveys,
- "Botswana". 2005 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor (2006). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.[dead link]
- CIA world factbook 2010
- "Angola – Statistics". UNICEF. Archived from the original on 13 June 2010. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
- Much of the material in this article comes from the CIA World Factbook 2000 and the 2003 U.S. Department of State website. The information given there is however, corrected and updated on the basis of the other sources indicated.
Further reading
- ANGOLA LIVRO BRANCO SOBRE AS ELEIÇÕES DE 2008. http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/8/2/year-2009/dokument_id-17396/index.html
- Le Billon, Philippe (2005). "Aid in the Midst of Plenty: Oil Wealth, Misery and Advocacy in Angola". Disasters 29(1): 1–25.
- Birmingham, David (2006) Empire in Africa: Angola and its Neighbors, Athens/Ohio: Ohio University Press
- Bösl, Anton (2008). Angola's Parliamentary Elections in 2008. A Country on its Way to One-Party-Democracy, KAS Auslandsinformationen 10/2008. http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.15186/
- Cilliers, Jackie and Christian Dietrich, Eds. (2000). Angola's War Economy: The Role of Oil and Diamonds. Pretoria, South Africa, Institute for Security Studies.
- Global Witness (1999). A Crude Awakening, The Role of Oil and Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plundering of State Assets. London, UK, Global Witness. http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/93/en/a_crude_awakening
- Heimer, Franz-Wilhelm, The Decolonization Conflict in Angola, Geneva: Institut d'Études Internationales et du Développement, 1979
- Hodges, Tony (2001). Angola from Afro-Stalinism to Petro-Diamond Capitalism. Oxford: James Currey.
- Hodges, Tony (2004). Angola: The Anatomy of an Oil State. Oxford, UK and Indianapolis, US, The Fridtjol Nansen Institute & The International African Institute in association with James Currey and Indiana University Press.
- Holness, Marga. Apartheid's War Against Angola http://www.scribd.com/doc/29244604/Apartheid-s-War-Against-Angola-Marga-Holness
- Human Rights Watch (2004). Some Transparency, No Accountability: The Use of Oil Revenues in Angola and Its Impact on Human Rights. New York, Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/angola0104/
- Human Rights Watch (2005). Coming Home, Return and Reintegration in Angola. New York, Human Rights Watch. http://hrw.org/reports/2005/angola0305/
- James, Walter (1992). A political history of the civil war in Angola, 1964–1990. New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers.
- Kapuściński, Ryszard. Another Day of Life, Penguin, 1975. ISBN 978-0-14-118678-8. A Polish journalist's account of Portuguese withdrawal from Angola and the beginning of the civil war.
- Kevlihan, R. (2003). "Sanctions and humanitarian concerns: Ireland and Angola, 2001-2". Irish Studies in International Affairs 14: 95–106.
- Lari, A. (2004). Returning home to a normal life? The plight of displaced Angolans. Pretoria, South Africa, Institute for Security Studies.
- Lari, A. and R. Kevlihan (2004). "International Human Rights Protection in Situations of Conflict and Post-Conflict, A Case Study of Angola". African Security Review 13(4): 29–41.
- Le Billon, Philippe (2001). "Angola's Political Economy of War: The Role of Oil and Diamonds". African Affairs (100): 55–80.
- MacQueen, Norrie An Ill Wind? Rethinking the Angolan Crisis and the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–1976, Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, 26/2, 2000, pp. 22–44
- Médecins Sans Frontières (2002). Angola: Sacrifice of a People. Luanda, Angola, MSF.
- Mwakikagile, Godfrey Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Third Edition, Pretoria, South Africa, 2006, on Angola in Chapter 11, "American Involvement in Angola and Southern Africa: Nyerere's Response", pp. 324–346, ISBN 978-0-9802534-1-2.
- Pinto Escoval (2004): "Staatszerfall im südlichen Afrika. Das Beispiel Angola". Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin
- Much of the material in these articles comes from the CIA World Factbook 2000 and the 2003 U.S. Department of State website.
- Le Billon, P. (March 2006). Fuelling War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-37970-0.
- Pearce, Justin (2004). "War, Peace and Diamonds in Angola: Popular perceptions of the diamond industry in the Lundas". African Security Review 13 (2), pp 51–64. http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR/13No2/AW.pdf
- Porto, João Gomes (2003). Cabinda: Notes on a soon to be forgotten war. Pretoria, South Africa, Institute for Security Studies.
- Tvedten, Inge (1997). Angola, Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction. Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press.
- Vines, Alex (1999). Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process. New York and London, UK, Human Rights Watch.
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Significance and Use
Vapor pressure is a fundamental thermodynamic property of a liquid. Vapor pressure and boiling temperature data are required for material safety data sheets (MSDS), the estimation of volatile organic compounds (VOC), and other needs related to product safety. Vapor pressures are important for prediction of the transport of a chemical in the environment; see Test Method E1194.
1.1 This test method describes procedures for determination of the vapor pressure of liquids by ebulliometry (boiling point measurements). It is applicable to pure liquids and azeotropes that have an atmospheric boiling point between 285 and 575 K and that can be condensed completely and returned to the ebulliometer boiler, that is, all materials must be condensable at total reflux. Liquid mixtures may be studied if they do not contain non-condensable components. Liquid mixtures that contain trace amounts of volatile but completely condensable components may also be studied, but they will produce vapor pressure data of greater uncertainty. Boiling point temperatures are measured at applied pressures of 1.0 to 100 kPa (7.5 to 760 torr).
1.2 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as standard. No other units of measurement are included in this standard.
1.3 There is no ISO equivalent to this standard.
1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use. For specific hazard statements, see Section 8.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
D1193 Specification for Reagent Water
D2879 Test Method for Vapor Pressure-Temperature Relationship and Initial Decomposition Temperature of Liquids by Isoteniscope
E1 Specification for ASTM Liquid-in-Glass Thermometers
E177 Practice for Use of the Terms Precision and Bias in ASTM Test Methods
E1142 Terminology Relating to Thermophysical Properties
E1194 Test Method for Vapor Pressure
E1970 Practice for Statistical Treatment of Thermoanalytical Data
Antoine equation; boiling temperature; decomposition temperature; ebulliometer; polymerization temperature; superheating; vapor pressure ;
ICS Number Code 17.100 (Measurement of force, weight and pressure)
ASTM International is a member of CrossRef.
Citing ASTM Standards
[Back to Top]
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It helps to learn more about the side effects from your treatment(s) before you begin, so you will know what to expect. When you know more, you can work with your health care team to manage your quality of life during and after treatment.
There are effective and readily available medications to address traditional side effects from cancer treatment (such as nausea, diarrhea, constipation and mouth sores.) Also, as newer 'targeted therapies' become available, they tend to leave people with fewer traditional side effects.
Keep in mind that everyone reacts differently to treatment and experiences side effects differently. There are coping mechanisms and strategies that can help.
Colorectal Treatment Side Effects
Side Effects vary according to treatments. The most commonly reported symptoms are the following:
Although radiation therapy is rarely used to treat Colorectal Cancer, if a patient receives this treatment, it may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or urinary discomfort.
Side effects depend on the specific drugs and the dose and include hair loss, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, and mouth sores.
Because Colorectal Cancer occurs in the digestive system, the cancer itself and treatments for the cancer tend to affect both what goes in and what comes out of the system. For this reason, if you have colon or rectal cancer, you will probably experience some changes in your appetite and bowel movements, and you will most likely need to change your diet to help manage symptoms or side effects.
Obstructions and/or perforations can be caused by the cancer itself or by scar tissue from surgery or radiation to areas around the colon and rectum. Perforation is also a very rare side effect of the targeted therapy bevacizumab.
Bowel perforations are medical emergencies that require immediate surgery. Bowel obstructions can also be emergencies, or – if the intestines are only partially blocked – they can be long-term conditions. In any event, if you experience severe abdominal pain, nausea, or vomiting that doesn’t go away during or after colorectal cancer treatment, call your doctor or go to the emergency room to get checked right away.
Symptoms of bowel obstruction and/or perforation may include abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, bloating, inability to pass gas, constipation or diarrhea and loss of appetite.
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Digestive Diseases News Summer 2010
Institute of Medicine Calls for National Hepatitis B and C Awareness Strategy
Reducing the enormous health burden of chronic infections of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) will require a substantial increase in public resources, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM report Hepatitis and Liver Cancer: A National Strategy for Prevention and Control of Hepatitis B and C was released January 11, 2010. The report calls for stepped-up efforts to increase awareness among health care providers, the general public, and at-risk populations of the risks and prevalence of HBV and HCV infections.
Four million Americans are living with chronic HBV and HCV infection. Because symptoms rarely appear until viral hepatitis has caused liver damage—10 years or more in the case of HCV— two out of three people with the virus do not know they are infected. Each year, about 15,000 deaths are caused by HBV- or HCV-associated liver cancer or end-stage liver disease, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hepatitis B or C infection is the cause of about half of liver transplantations in the United States, and researchers estimate that 150,000 people in the United States will die in the next decade from end-stage liver disease and liver cancer resulting from viral hepatitis infections.
The IOM was asked by the CDC in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable to “determine ways to reduce new HBV and HCV infections and the morbidity and mortality related to chronic viral hepatitis.”
The report cited three principal shortcomings:
- a lack of knowledge and awareness about chronic viral hepatitis on the part of health care and social service providers
- a lack of knowledge and awareness about chronic viral hepatitis among at-risk populations, members of the public, and policy makers
- insufficient understanding about the extent and seriousness of this public health problem; therefore inadequate public resources are being allocated to prevention, control, and surveillance programs
As a result of these shortcomings, the report’s authors observed the following:
- Inadequate disease surveillance systems underreport acute and chronic infections, so the full extent of the problem is unknown.
- At-risk people do not know they are at risk or how to prevent becoming infected.
- At-risk people may not have access to preventive services.
- Chronically infected people do not know they are infected.
- Many health care providers do not screen people for risk factors or do not know how to manage infected people.
- Infected people often have inadequate access to testing, social support, and medical management services.
The IOM report offered recommendations for improvement in four key areas:
- The CDC should conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the national HBV and HCV public health surveillance system.
- The CDC should develop specific, cooperative viral hepatitis agreements with all state and territorial health departments to support core surveillance for acute and chronic HBV and HCV infection.
- The CDC should support and conduct targeted active surveillance, including serologic testing, to monitor incidence and prevalence of HBV and HCV infections in populations not fully captured by core surveillance.
Knowledge and Awareness about Chronic Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C
- The CDC should work with key stakeholders—other federal agencies, state and local governments, professional organizations, health care organizations, and educational institutions—to develop HBV and HCV educational programs for health care and social service providers.
- The CDC should work with key stakeholders to develop, coordinate, and evaluate innovative and effective outreach and education programs to target at-risk populations and increase awareness in the general population about HBV and HCV.
- All infants weighing at least 2,000 grams and born to HBV surface antigen-positive women should receive single-antigen HBV vaccine and HBV immune globulin in the delivery room as soon as they are stable and washed. The recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices should remain in effect for all other infants.
- All states should mandate that the HBV vaccine series be completed or in progress as a requirement for school attendance.
- Additional federal and state resources should be devoted to increasing HBV vaccination of at-risk adults.
- States should be encouraged to expand immunization information systems to include adolescents and adults.
- Private and public insurance coverage for HBV vaccination should be expanded.
- The Federal Government should work to ensure an adequate, accessible, and sustainable HBV vaccine supply.
- Studies to develop a vaccine to prevent chronic HCV infection should continue.
Viral Hepatitis Services
- Federally funded health insurance programs—such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program—should incorporate guidelines for risk factor screening for HBV and HCV as a required core component of preventive care so that at-risk people receive serologic testing for HBV and HCV and chronically infected patients receive appropriate medical management.
- The CDC, in conjunction with other federal agencies and state agencies, should provide resources for the expansion of community-based programs that provide HBV screening, testing, and vaccination services that target foreign-born populations.
Hepatitis and Liver Cancer: A National Strategy for Prevention and Control of Hepatitis B and C is available through the National Academies Press at www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12793.
For more information about hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and other kinds of hepatitis, visit the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse at www.digestive.niddk.nih.gov.
NIH Publication No. 10–4552
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Our Global Hazards Atlas provides a map showing recent earthquakes and a "ShakeMap" that models estimated ground motion and shaking intensity following significant earthquakes. You can also use the Global Hazards Atlas to review significant historical earthquakes, tectonic plate boundaries, and more.
- Ground shaking and ground displacement
- Landslides and debris falls
- Fire from broken gas or power lines
- Flooding from ruptured dams or levees
- Tsunami (generated by undersea earthquakes)
- Have a disaster supply kit ready in case of evacuation, including a radio and batteries.
- Prepare a family communication plan.
- Know how to turn off water and gas supplies to your home.
Inspect your home for potential earthquake hazards; secure top-heavy furniture to the wall and place heaviest objects on bottom shelves.
What to Do During an Earthquake
- If you are inside, seek shelter under a sturdy desk or table and hold on. Stay away from windows and glass fixtures. Remain inside until the shaking stops.
- Do not use elevators.
- If you are outside, stay away from power lines and objects that can fall, such as streetlights, buildings, and trees.
- If you are in a vehicle, pull off the road but do not stop on or under bridges, overpasses, or tunnels.
For more Information
Can Earthquakes Be Predicted?
- Data for International Response
- Solutions Across Borders (DMRS)
- Information Support for Japan
- Protecting Papahānaumokuākea
- Statewide Hurricane Preparedness
- Preparing for Hazards in the Pacific
- Information Support for Haiti
- Reducing Flood Risk in Hawaii
- DisasterAWARE in Thailand (NDWC)
- Vietnam Decision Support System
- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
- Situational Awareness in the Philippines
- Modeling Volcanic Gases
- Risk Assessment in the Philippines
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Guinea pig cages need to be large enough to provide them with enough room to exercise and "play," ideally, a minimum of 7.5 square feet (30 inches by 36 inches) for one pig to 13 square feet (30 inches by 76 inches) for four4 pigs. Less than this, and it could lead to overcrowding and stress-related issues or obesity from lack of activity. Cages must also be escape-proof and not made of wood, since guinea pigs love to chew wood and could easily make an escape route for themselves. Plastic, wire, stainless steel or combinations of these materials are best. Wood is difficult to clean sufficiently. Glass cages do not provide adequate ventilation.
The flooring should be solid and easy to clean. Avoid wire mesh for flooring as standing on it for long periods can injure your guinea pig's feet. If using wire flooring, provide grass mats or other flat surfaces on which the guinea pig can rest. Whatever the construction material, your guinea pig's cage must have a latching door or lid, both to keep the guinea pig in, and to keep other pets out. The cage must provide adequate ventilation, and be tall and spacious enough to provide some ramps and activity areas. Finding a large enough enclosure is sometimes a challenge. However, if you let your creative juices run, and keep the above guidelines in mind, there are many choices. A good choice is a children's wading pool with a wire "wrap" around it. Cage walls should be at least 10 inches in height. Guinea pigs are subject to hyperthermia, so the cage should be located out of direct sunlight, and be kept at a temperature of 65-79ºF.
Many people take their guinea pigs outside for exercise in the warm weather. If your yard is safe, secure, and free from pesticides and chemical treatments (or you can section off an area that is), go ahead and give this a try. Monitoring is still important, as is ensuring the availability of access to shade.
A "hide" is especially important for your guinea pigs. Each pig should have their own. These can be made of heavy plastic, PVC pipe, or stainless steel - all easy to clean yet light-proof. Since this is a place to hide, glass is not a good choice. Food dishes should be heavy ceramic and not large enough for your pig to climb into. Guinea pigs are not very discriminating in their toilet habits and if the bowl is large enough, they may defecate or urinate in the bowl. The hanging type of water bottle with a spout is a good choice for a water supply. Guinea pigs tend to drink lots of water, so monitor their supply closely. A small "hopper" for hay is a handy way to keep it clean and up off the floor. For bedding avoid cedar and pine. The recycled paper beddings are an excellent and environmentally friendly choice. PVC pipe, ramps, and other explorable but sturdy pieces of "furniture" make good items to enrich your guinea pigs' activity area.
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Transferware ... Beautiful Pottery
inApril 7, 2008 - 7:16am
Quick Facts About Transferware:
Transfer printing as a decorative technique was developed in England in the mid-1750s, particularly in the Staffordshire region.
The transferware process began when a flat copper plate was engraved with a desired pattern in much the same way that plates used to make paper engravings were produced.
Most transferware patterns sought by collectors today are two-tone in color. Blue and white, red and white and brown and white are the most common colors.
Valuable English pieces made in the 1700s through the late 1800s are rarely offered for sale in antique shops now. Available more readily are pieces made during the 20th century. While they’re not as valuable, they are just as attractive visually.
To read the rest visit Antiques at About.com: http://antiques.about.com/cs/ceramicsporcelain/a/aa051404.htm
About.com Antiques: Guide Pamela Wiggins
Visit Ruby Lane tor beautiful examples of transferware pottery:
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NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory landed Curiosity, the latest Mars rover, on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6. Although the rover has yet to start the research central to its mission, after two months on the Red Planet it has already found some new evidence for the existence of water on Earth’s planetary cousin.
Finding Fluvial Conglomerates
According to Prof. Steve Squyres ’81, astronomy, the Mars rover Curiosity found evidence of ancient flowing water on the surface of Mars last month. What make Curiosity’s finding different from previous findings of water on Mars are the type of rock from which the rover obtained its evidence, as well as the implications of the finding.
Curiosity discovered a piece of fluvial conglomerate, a substance synthesized from a river. The bed of a rapidly flowing stream has pebbles and other stones rounded by the water and sand. When these materials solidify into a rock, they form a fluvial conglomerate. Scientists do not need to perform intensive analysis to identify this type of stone; the examination from Mars for instance, was done entirely with cameras.
“It’s a form of rock that’s so distinctive. You just need eyes to see this in the field,” Squyres said.
The most identifiable characteristic of a fluvial conglomerate is the range of grain sizes in the rock.
“If you see a bunch of different grain sizes all jumbled together, it means that there was a very high-energy process taking place,” Squyres said. “Only strong flowing water will produce a rock made of rounded pebbles.”
Significance of the Streams
Although Curiosity has found evidence of water on Mars, it is not the first evidence scientists have discovered on the Red Planet. Direct evidence of water on the surface of Mars was first found in 1972 by the Mariner 9 space orbiter, which took pictures of riverbeds and canyons. More recently, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers found evidence of water in Martian stones in 2004. Squyres explained that the discovery of the fluvial conglomerate by Curiosity was a new form of evidence for a process scientists already know occurred on Mars.
“It’s not a surprise, but it’s cool to see,” Squyres said. “This is a cool thing and we happened to come across it in the first month of the mission.” Squyres is the Chairman of the NASA advisory Council and Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers.
The primary focus of the Curiosity rover mission is to assess whether Mars has ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life. To accomplish this goal, Curiosity has an arsenal of advanced tools at its disposal.
Many instruments on the Curiosity rover set it apart from its predecessors. The new sampling system on Curiosity allows it to drill into rock and extract powdered samples. This system allows the rover to then place the extracted rock into the rover for chemical analysis. Two important instruments are used to conduct the analysis.
The first is SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars. SAM is a system of instruments that can detect organic molecules at extremely low concentrations. This aids scientists in determining whether or not the environment on Mars is, or was, suitable for microbial life. The second instrument is CheMin, short for Chemistry and Mineralogy. This instrument uses X-ray powder diffraction to determine, with high precision, the minerals present in rock samples. Data from CheMin is useful in the search for biosignatures — indicators that the environment was habitable in the past.
ChemCam, or the Chemical Camera instrument, is a tool that allows scientists to fire a laser at a rock from a few meters away. The energy from the laser turns atoms from the rock into plasma, which scientists can analyze and use to determine the rock’s constituent elements.
“This instrument is used as a survey. You can shoot a series of rocks with the laser to get a rough idea of the elements present,” Squyres said.
A complementary tool to ChemCam is APXS, or the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer. APXS is an instrument located at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm. This tool will be used to interpret the minerals that compose Martian rocks and help select materials for other instruments to sample.
“If you see something that stands out [from ChemCam], you can use [APXS] to get more specific information,” Squyres said.
The advanced technology aboard the Curiosity rover is currently in the checkout phase.
“It takes a long time to get good at this. Curiosity is a very complicated rover,” Squyres said.
Ground Zero: The Gale Crater
Gale, a crater on the surface of Mars, is the primary location of interest for the Curiosity mission. The crater contains a thick sequence of layered sedimentary rocks, which preserve detailed information about what conditions were like when they were laid down. According to Squyres, the sedimentary rock layers are particularly important to scientists.
“A geologist can look down into the Ithaca gorges and see the layered rocks,” he said. “From these rocks, we know that millions of years ago Ithaca was under a shallow sea. We can find fossils in Ithaca to prove this. We don’t expect to find fossils on Mars, but with basic training and tools we can read the rocks and the story they tell.”
Gale appeared to have a large amount of valuable information for scientists involved in the mission. Using spectrometers, scientists determined that the rocks in Gale contained clay minerals, which form in the presence of water. Because water is an essential component of life, Gale became the target location for the Curiosity expedition.
Although Curiosity has already landed within Gale, it is not yet at the stack of sedimentary rocks that scientists want to study.
“We need to drive kilometers before we get to the interesting stuff,” Squyres said. Because scientists are still in the engineering checkout phase of the mission, it may be some time before new discoveries are made.
“You don’t know when the discoveries will come. It will take years, maybe.” Squyres said. “Geology is like a forensic science and a geologist is like a detective looking for clues among the rocks.” he said.
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The Sinking Dollar (Wallerstein)
Very clear and interesting commentary by Immanuel Wallerstein; hat-tip to Bob F. Also check out the cover story from our Jan/Feb issue.
May 15, 2009, Commentary No. 257
When Premier Wen Jiabao of China said in March of 2009 that he was “a little bit worried” about the state of the U.S. dollar, he echoed the feelings of states, enterprises, and individuals across the world. He called upon the United States “to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets.”
Even five years ago, this would have seemed a very presumptuous request. Now it seems “understandable” even to Janet Yellen, the President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, although she considers China’s proposals concerning the world’s reserve currency “far from being a practical alternative.”
There are only two ways to store wealth: in actual physical structures and in some form of money (currency, bonds, gold). They both entail risks for the holder. Physical structures deteriorate unless used and using them involves costs. To utilize such structures to obtain income and therefore profits depends on the “market” – that is, on the availability of buyers willing to purchase what the physical structures can produce.
Physical structures are at least tangible. Money (which is denominated in nominal figures) is merely a potential claim on physical structures. The value of that claim depends on its exchange relation with physical structures. And this relation can and does vary constantly. If it varies a small amount, hardly anyone notices. But if it varies considerably and frequently, its holders either gain or lose a lot of wealth, often quite rapidly.
A reserve currency in economic terms is really nothing but the most reliable form of money, the one that varies least. It is therefore the safest place to store whatever wealth one has that is not in the form of physical structures. Since at least 1945, the world’s reserve currency has been the U.S. dollar. It still is the U.S. dollar.
The country that issues the reserve currency has one singular advantage over all other countries. It is the only country that can legally print the currency, whenever it thinks it is in its interest to do so.
Currencies all have exchange rates with other currencies. Since the United States ended its fixed rate of exchange with gold in 1973, the dollar has fluctuated against other currencies, up and down. When its currency went down against another currency, it made selling its exports easier because the buyer of the exports required less of its own currency. But it also made importing more expensive, since it required more dollars to pay for the imported item.
In the short run, a weakened currency may increase employment at home. But this is at best a short-run advantage. In the middle run, there are greater advantages to having a so-called strong currency. It means that the holder of such currency has a greater command on world wealth as measured in physical structures and products.
Over the middle run, reserve currencies are strong currencies and want to remain strong. The strength of a reserve currency derives not only from its command over world wealth but from the political power it offers in the world-system. This is why the world’s reserve currency tends to be the currency of the world’s hegemonic power, even if it is a declining hegemonic power. This is why the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
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Student resources are interactive activities collected from around the Web. They can be used to support related lesson plans or as standalone activities in the classroom. Browse our library of student resources by grade level or subject area below.
Read the first two paragraphs of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” and then look at the following images. How do they compare to London’s description?
Read the first section of Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” and then look at the following images. How do they compare to Crane’s description?
This launchpad is designed to help students unravel the connection between composition and content in the visual arts.
Students examine the relationship of poetic form and content, shaped by alliteration, consonance, repetition, and rhythm, in two poems about fatherhood: Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz."
You are an archaeologist uncovering artifacts found in Old Babylonia. What can you learn from them about trade there as well?
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By making small changes at home, you can greatly reduce your effect on global warming and help bring us to energy independence.
2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year can be saved simply by recycling half of the wast generated by each household.
Use Energy-Efficent Lightbulbs
The new compact flourescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, use 60% - 75% less energy than regular incandescent bulbs. By replacing just three frequently used incandescent bulbs with CFLs, you can save about 300 pounds of carbon and $60 per year. CFL bulbs last longer than incandescent bulbs, are available in a variety of colors, and some are specially designed to work with dimmers. LED lightbulbs save even more energy and are increasingly available for use around the home.
Reduce "Vampire Energy"
Turn off any devices like televisions, DVD players, stereos, and computers when they are not in use - it can save thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
Televisions, DVD players, sterios, computers, and many other devices use "vampire energy" - using electricity even when they are turned off. By unplugging electronics from the wall when you aren't using them you use even less carbon dioxide and save even more money. Consider plugging electronics into a power strip with a switch that you can turn off when you don't need them.
Check Your Tires Monthly
Properly inflated tires can improve your gas mileage by more than 3%. Check them every month.
Choose Energy Efficient Appliances
When making purchases of new appliances, look for the EPA's Energy Star label to help you find the most efficent models. If every household in the United States replaced their existing appliances with the most efficient models availible we'd eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
By buying minimally packaged goods and reusable products, you reduce the amount of garbage you throw away and the carbon dioxide it takes to transport the goods to your doorstep.
Buy From Your Local Farmer
Buying groceries from local farms will support local business and reduces the carbon dioxide used to transport and store food.
Time Your Showers
Taking shorter showers when possible will save water, but also saves the energy used to heat the water. If you are a homeowner, look into a tankless water heater or low-flow showerheads and toilets.
Weatherize Your Home
Properly weatherizing your home helps keep things cool in the summer and warm in the winter - and saves money in the process. Caulking and weather-stripping your house can save 1,700 pounds of carbon dioxide and $274 per year.
Energy Efficiency Check
Your utility service may offer free home energy inspections to help you find places in your home that are poorly insulated or inefficient. An inspection can lead to a savings of up to 30% off of your energy bill and 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Print This Page
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Crouzon syndrome is a genetic disorder. It results in abnormal joining of the bones in the skull and face.
Infants have sutures between the bones in the face and skull. As an infant’s brain grows, these sutures allow the skull to expand. These sutures fuse together once we are adults since our skulls and brains are done growing.
In Crouzon syndrome, the bones in the skull and face fuse too early. The skull is then forced to grow in the direction of the remaining open sutures. This causes an abnormally shaped head, face, and teeth.
Crouzon syndrome is caused by a defect in a specific gene. It is not clear what causes this gene to mutate. Some may be inherited from parents genes.
Factors that may increase your child's risk of Crouzon syndrome include having:
- Parents with the disorder
- Parents who do not have the disorder, but who carry the gene that causes the disorder.
- Fathers at an older age at the time of conception
The main signs and symptoms of Crouzon syndrome include:
- Flattened top and back of head
- Flattened forehead and temples
- Mid-face that is small and located further back in the face than normal
- Beaked-like nose
- Compression of nasal passages, often causing reduced airflow through the nose
- Large, protruding lower jaw
- Misalignment of teeth
- High-arched, narrow palate, or cleft palate
Other symptoms and complications that can result from Crouzon syndrome include:
- Problems with development of inner ear and hearing loss
- Meniere’s disease (dizziness, vertigo, or ringing in the ears)
- Problems with the eyes including vision problems, crossed eyes or involuntary eye movement
- Curvature of the spine
- Acanthosis nigricans (small, dark, velvety patches of skin)
- Hydrocephalus—build up of fluid in the skull
A doctor can usually diagnose Crouzon syndrome based on physical signs and symptoms.
The doctor may need images of the skull. These can be taken with:
Your doctor may also do genetic testing to confirm the diagnosis.
There is no cure yet for Crouzon syndrome. Currently, many of the symptoms can be treated with surgery.
Treatment may include:
There are a number of surgeries used to treat the symptoms of Crouzon syndrome. These include:
- Craniectomy—removal and replacement of portions of the skull. Done as early as possible after birth to prevent damage to the brain. It will also help to maintain a skull shape that is as normal as possible.
- Surgery to treat protrusion of one or both eyeballs—adjustments are made to the bones surrounding the eye sockets.
- Surgery to treat protruding lower jaw—to normalize the appearance of the jaw.
- Surgery to repair a cleft palate.
Orthodontic treatment can help correct the alignment of teeth. It may include braces.
Eye and Ear Treatment
Specialist should monitor infants and children with Crouzon syndrome. These specialists can check for eye and ear problems and treat as necessary.
Children with a mental deficiency or intellectual disability may need special education help.
There is no known way to prevent Crouzon syndrome. If you have Crouzon syndrome or have a family history of the disorder, you can talk to a genetic counselor when deciding to have children.
- Reviewer: Michael Woods, MD
- Review Date: 11/2012 -
- Update Date: 11/26/2012 -
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There are a variety of books about Python. Here's a guide to them:
IntroductoryBooks (gentle overviews of the language)
AdvancedBooks (for when you don't want gentle)
ReferenceBooks (much information in a small space)
- Specific applications:
- Books in languages other than English:
When you see a book you like, don't hesitate to add your recommendation!
External sources of information about (Python) books:
Computer-Books.us - A collection of Python books available for free download.
CodeIdol.com - A collection of Python books available for online reading.
Computer-Books.china - A collection of Python books
There is also a list of OutOfPrintBooks.
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This is a short demonstration of how the angle of illumination affects the look of an object, for assignment 1.1 in David Hobby’s Lighting 102 course. The duck was placed in the center of a round table, and it and the camera were fixed in position. The flash was swept around the perimeter of the table but kept pointing towards the center of the table at a constant height. I’ll have to redo this when I get some light stands and can modify the height of the flash as well.
Note to Ang: Yeah, I still have this duck kicking around, though it has become a cat toy in recent months.
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The history of Los Angeles as told through 232 objects.
Los Angeles was founded on September 4, 1781. Between now and the 232nd anniversary, we are gathering the stories behind iconic objects that help explain our city. Los Angeles is older than Chicago, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. In fact, when L.A.’s founders were gathering at El Pueblo, New York City was still occupied by the British army. We have a long story to tell, let’s take a look back and see where the city came from. Feel free to add to this exhibition. Email your ideas to firstname.lastname@example.org
The little velvet box holds tools as important to an architect as a scalpel is to a surgeon. This collection of 10 implements (including compasses, nibs and dividers) helped to create the Craftsman style and some of the most important and lasting designs to ever come from Southern California.
Charles and Henry Greene adapted the ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, took some cues from Japan, and invented the ultimate bungalow, and a new California lifestyle. The houses were works of art, but also included features like sleeping porches to take advantage of the mild weather, and broad eaves to deflect the harsh sunlight. In 1908 Charles told Western Architect magazine that “The Style of the house should be as far as possible determined by four conditions: First, Climate; Second, Environment; Third, Kinds of materials available; Fourth, (the)… life of the owner.”
The Greene brothers followed their doctor father to Pasadena in 1893 and created more than 150 structures, nearly half of which have been lost. Of the remaining homes, only the magnificent Gamble House is open to the public. The winter home of the family that owned the Procter & Gamble Company gave the brothers an enormous budget and creative control that allowed them to utilize fine materials like oak, mahogany, and leather. Stained glass artisans created custom windows, doors and light fixtures for each house. Today, when a single Greene and Greene light fixture appears on the auction block, it can cost more than an entire bungalow.
When the American Institute of Architects honored the duo in 1952, the award described them as “formulators of a new and native architecture.” That formula required the use of these tools, which were donated to the Gamble House in 1973 by Henry Greene's youngest son, William Sumner, and his wife Harriott.
Photo by Larry Underhill
DispL.A. Case #34: Ruben Salazar's Briefcase
DispL.A. Case #33: Sandy Koufax's Dodgers Baseball Cap
DispL.A. Case #32: Jelly Belly jellybeans
DispL.A. Case #31: Duck Baby From Forest Lawn
DispL.A. Case #30: A Guide To Architecture In Southern California (1965)
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Blue whales have perfect pitch
Sept. 9, 2010 -- Blue whales have the remarkable ability to synchronize the pitch of their songs so that they all hit the exact same note, according to a new study. Professor of Physics Roger Bland recorded thousands of whale songs off the coast of California and found that whales in the eastern North Pacific are tuning into a common frequency--behavior that may help these giant creatures find potential mates.
"A synchronized pitch is surprising since we would expect animals of different sizes to produce sounds at a different pitch, for example a small dog with a high-pitched bark or a large dog with a low bark," said Bland, an underwater acoustics expert.
Using underwater microphones installed off the coast of northern California's Half Moon Bay, Bland captured 4,378 blue whale songs and analyzed the whales' B calls, the long, sad moan that forms the second half of the song used by whales in the eastern North Pacific. Scientists believe that whale populations have their own signature tunes.
The analysis revealed that the whales all produce the B call at a frequency of 16.02 Hertz, exactly four octaves below middle C.
"We found that blue whales are capable of very fine control over the pitch of their call -- both in reproducing their call at the same pitch every time and in synchronizing their pitch with others," Bland said.
The study found a very slim margin of error from call to call. In musical terms, the half-tone change of pitch between the notes C and C Sharp is a 6 percent increase in pitch, whereas the variation observed between the blue whale's B calls was only a 0.5 percent change in pitch.
Bland believes that tuning in to a uniform pitch might help individual whales locate potential mates, particularly since the songs appear to only be sung by males.
"If whales are so super accurate in always calling at the exact same pitch, then it's possible that they could be able to detect tiny shifts in other whales' calls caused by the Doppler shift," said Bland, referring to the change in pitch that is heard when the source of sound is moving toward or away from an individual -- the same effect when we hear the whistle of a passing train.
"Given that blue whales can travel up to 5 meters per second, it's feasible that females could locate calling males by swimming toward or away from a male and listening for the changes in the male's pitch," Bland said."There's certainly something very deliberate and strategic about their songs."
The study was published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and can be found on Bland's website.
Bland co-authored the study with Newell Garfield, professor of geosciences and director of the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, and Michael D. Hoffman, a former student at SF State.
--Listen to an audio file of a blue whale song (MP3 format requires Quicktime or Real Player). This 2.5 minute recording includes a blue whale song, which consists of the A call, a series of pulses, followed by the B call, a long, low moan.
-- Elaine Bible
Share this story:
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Date: November 17 2012
IN LATE August 2009, a tiny, solitary bat fluttered about in the rainforest near Australia's infamous Christmas Island detention camp. We don't know precisely what happened to it. Perhaps it landed on a leaf at dawn after a night feeding on moths and mosquitoes and was torn to pieces by fire ants; perhaps it succumbed to a mounting toxic burden placed on its tiny body by insecticide spraying. Or maybe it was simply worn out with age and ceaseless activity, and died quietly in its tree-hollow. But there is one important thing we do know: it was the last Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi). With its passing, an entire species winked out of existence.
Two decades earlier, the island's population of pipistrelles had been healthy. A few scientists had watched the species' decline with concern until, after the million or more years that it had played a part in keeping the ecological balance of the island, they could see that without action its demise was imminent. They had done their best to warn the federal government about the looming catastrophe, but they might as well have been talking to a brick wall. The bureaucrats and politicians prevaricated for three years, until it was too late.
While Australians argued about the fate of the asylum seekers who shared the pipistrelles' home, nothing effective was done to help the bats. Indeed, except for those watching scientists, few seemed to give a thought to the passing of the species, nor what it might mean for Christmas Island or our country.
The pipistrelles' extinction was painful for me. In an attempt to avert it I met Peter Garrett, then the environment minister, and warned him of the impending loss. I had brought offers of assistance and expertise from the Australian Mammal Society to his attention. The society was confident the species could be saved - at a cost of perhaps only a few hundred thousand dollars. But Garrett was convinced by the orthodoxy that ecosystems rather than species should be the focus of the national conservation effort, and I got the message that nothing would be done. Saving the bat wasn't an impossible mission: it's just that the government and the people of Australia, one of the richest countries on earth, decided it wasn't worth doing.
What really shook me was that it was the first extinction of a mammal in Australia for 60 years, and the first in my lifetime. My original professional expertise lies in mammalogy and palaeontology, and before the pipistrelles' demise I believed the worst of Australia's extinction crisis was behind us - that somehow my generation was wiser and more caring, and would not tolerate any more losses of Australia's unique mammals. It's now clear that those 60 years were a lull in the storm, and that the pipistrelles' demise marked the beginning of a new extinction wave.
Australia's first extinction wave began almost as soon as the First Fleeters stepped ashore, and by the 1940s it had carried away 10 per cent of the continent's mammal species. In 1791, a convict wrote about the white-footed rabbit rat, saying that it was a pest in the colony's food stores. The soft-furred, grey-and-white kitten-sized creature was arguably the most beautiful of Australia's 70-odd native rodent species, yet it was destined to be one of the earliest victims of European settlement. Two hundred years ago it could be found in woodlands from near Brisbane to Adelaide, but the last record of it dates to the 1850s.
The thylacine and the toolache wallaby were the largest creatures to succumb in the first extinction wave. These extinctions were, however, atypical: indeed, one of the most astonishing aspects of the first extinction wave was that its victims included what had been the most abundant and seemingly secure mammals in Australia.
The causes of these extraordinary extinctions were varied. The cessation of Aboriginal burning doubtless had its effect, and until the 1930s bounties were paid by many state governments for the scalps of now-extinct creatures. But the depredations of foxes (which were spreading quickly by the early 20th century) and feral cats, and the wholesale destruction of native vegetation by livestock and rabbits, must have been important causes.
While the causes are disputed, the effect of the first extinction wave is clear: it gutted the biodiversity of the drier parts of the continent, and very few native mammals larger than a rat and smaller than a kangaroo can be found on Australia's inland plains today. It's the absence of such species - the so-called critical-weight-range mammals (they weigh between 500 grams and 5 kilograms), which were once among the most abundant of creatures - that has led me to characterise the national parks of Australia's southern inland as ''marsupial ghost towns''.
The gathering second extinction wave is now mopping up the few surviving medium-size mammals in Australia's south and inland. It's not difficult to predict which will be the next to become extinct, for, like the pipistrelles, their decline has been charted for years. There are 15 frogs, 16 reptiles, 44 birds, 35 mammals and 531 plants on Australia's endangered species list, and among those closest to the brink are three mammals: the central rock rat, the bridled nailtail wallaby and the numbat.
All hang by a thread, and next to nothing effective is being done to halt their slide into oblivion.
The second extinction wave is emptying vast swaths of the continent untouched by the first wave. Australia's Top End and Kimberley were, until recently, a paradise for medium-size mammals, among them a close relative of the white-footed rabbit rat. The past two decades have seen this fauna all but exterminated in the Top End, even in our most valued and best-resourced national parks.
Perhaps it is excusable that Australians are unaware of the extinctions occurring in distant places such as Arnhem Land and other regions of our far north. But astonishingly, we also seem blind to the perils facing species much closer to home - for example, the sand flathead of Port Phillip Bay. A fish familiar to every Melburnian who has ever dangled a line, its population has declined by 97 per cent over the past decade.
Why should the extinction of Australian organisms concern us? The answer, I think, is almost precisely the same as to the question of why human rights are important, even when they concern people we'll never meet. First and foremost, it is a matter of values. The demise of a bat may not weigh greatly in the balance of human wellbeing, but it speaks volumes about the human soul.
As with human rights, extinctions raise the question of where we draw the line. If we can stand by as a species of bat is snuffed out, then why not other species as well? Can we really expect poor Indian villagers to heed our pleas to conserve the tigers that menace their livestock if we do nothing to prevent the extinction of Australian species?
At the heart of this nation's efforts to save its endangered species is a register of subspecies, species and ecological communities that are threatened with extinction. By law, each entity included on the list should have a detailed recovery plan written for it, which when implemented should save it from extinction. These plans classify species on a sliding scale - from vulnerable to critically endangered or extinct. The federal legislation governing these plans states: ''Recovery plans are binding on the Australian government - once a recovery plan is in place, Australian government agencies must act in accordance with that plan.''
What a wonderful reassurance! It's a pity, then, that the system underpinning the promise is as rotten as Miss Havisham's wedding cake. By their fruit ye shall know them: since the legislation mandating action plans was enacted in 1992, only a single vertebrate species has become so abundant as to merit being taken off the threatened species register. But saltwater crocs are atypical of Australia's endangered species in that the threat they faced was simple: when the shooting for skins was stopped, the species recovered.
Why are we failing so abjectly in protecting our threatened species? The pitifully slow rate at which recovery plans are being drafted is one factor. In New South Wales, for example, in the past 20 years recovery plans have been completed for only about 10 per cent of all species listed as vulnerable to extinction.
Things get worse. In 2006 the federal government excused itself from the obligation to draft plans for species listed as vulnerable to extinction. As a result, if the environment minister decides for whatever reason not to draft a plan, then it simply isn't done. And even if a plan is completed, there's no guarantee that it will receive funding.
Why are action plans so often failing to help species recover? The glacially slow development of the plans, along with the lack of obligation to fund and report back on them, are clearly major impediments. But there are other problems. Some plans do not describe how species might be saved. Instead, they often state that more money is required for research before appropriate action is taken.
Such is the depth of public ignorance about Australia's extinction crisis that most people are unaware it is occurring, while those who do know of it commonly believe that our national parks and reserves are safe places for threatened species. In fact, the second extinction wave is in full swing and it's emptying our national parks and wildlife reserves as ruthlessly as other landscapes. This is disturbing: national parks exist explicitly to conserve biodiversity, and their failure to do so is a failure both of government policy and our collective will to protect our natural heritage.
The problem lies not with the parks' staff, who are often dedicated and skilled at their work. Nor does it lie solely with budgets, although more funding rather than more cuts would always be welcome. Instead, the difficulties are at least threefold. First and foremost, the problem stems from the delusion that the simple act of proclaiming a national park or nature reserve will result in the protection of biodiversity. Parks must be proclaimed and effectively managed if biodiversity is to be protected.
Second, the various government agencies responsible for biodiversity protection have allowed their scientific capacity to erode to the point where it's hard to be sure how many individuals of most endangered species survive; and third, the attempt to save endangered species involves risks that bureaucracies are increasingly unwilling to take.
The first duty of the bureaucrats these days seems to be to protect their minister from criticism: thus it often seems preferable to let a species die out quietly, seemingly a victim of natural change, than to institute a recovery program that carries a risk of failure.
Australian politics, and the bureaucracy that supports it, is failing in one of its most fundamental obligations: the conservation of our natural heritage. The times also suit cynical self-interest: cash-starved state governments, ever more desperate for income and political support, are rolling back even the inadequate present protections, and economic pressures are making it difficult for not-for-profit organisations that focus on nature protection to make ends meet.
What to do? As this saga of ignorance, folly and malice unfolds, it has become clear that those working outside government have a crucial role to play in conserving our biodiversity. Indeed, I believe that it is action by the private and not-for-profit sectors, working with government, that holds the key to protecting our endangered species in a competent and affordable manner. Australians need to take a look at ourselves.
This is an edited extract from Quarterly Essay 48, After the Future: Australia's New Extinction Crisis by Tim Flannery, published on Monday by Black Inc. $19.95, also available as an ebook.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
[ The Age | Text-only index]
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A History of Legislation
Many Washington State residents believe Washington's Lottery was approved by the Legislature with the intent that Lottery revenues be dedicated to schools or education programs solely. While this perception is understandable given the history of "Lottery Legislation" introduced in the 1970s and early 1980s, the reality is different.
Legislation creating Washington's Lottery was signed on July 16, 1982, by Governor John Spellman. When this bill (House Bill No. 1251, supporting the establishment of a lottery for Washington State) first came before the Legislature, it was a time of recession both in Washington State and, in fact, throughout much of the country. Because there was a great need for funding in many areas, the Legislature was reluctant to pass any bill that would dedicate Lottery funds solely to education. Therefore, Washington's Lottery was created to provide revenues for the State General Fund, which supports schools, human services programs, natural resources, and government programs.
The full bill can be found in Chapter 7 of Washington Laws, 1982 2nd Ex. Sess., listing [House Bill No. 1251] STATE LOTTERY, with the following timeline:
- Passed the House June 30, 1982
- Passed the Senate July 1, 1982
- Approved by the Governor July 16, 1982
- Filed in Office of Secretary of State July 16, 1982
In November 2000 voters approved Initiative Measure 728 redirecting Lottery revenue contributions from the State General Fund to the Student Achievement Fund and the Education Construction Fund. I-728 stipulates that after July 1, 2004, all Lottery revenue for education will be directed to the Education Construction Fund. The Education Construction dollars are used for the maintenance and repair of higher education institutions and to build, remodel, and renovate K-12 schools.
So why the confusion? Legislation introduced between 1973 and 1982 in either the state Senate or state House of Representatives proposed dedicating Lottery revenue to state institutions, transportation, the common schools, special levy relief, and city and county government.
A 1973 Lottery proposal introduced in the Washington State Legislature would have used the money to improve state institutions for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.
One 1974 measure allocated 40 percent of the revenue to the General Fund either for aid to education or state institutions. A 1974 bill approved by the Legislature, but vetoed by the Governor, required that Lottery revenue be used for special levy relief.
In 1975, the state Senate narrowly defeated one Lottery bill but approved another that proposed asking voters to decide on a Lottery. The measure died in the House of Representatives.
A 1978 Lottery bill, the proceeds from which would support city and county government, died in committee. An initiative filed in 1978 called for the creation of a state agency to operate a state lottery and casinos. The sponsor claimed half of the money would go to education. Signatures were never submitted to the Secretary of State's office.
A 1979 Lottery bill allocating 40 percent of the revenue to local governments died in the House. A 1981 bill, part of a "tax equity" package, would have given the state's share to the common schools.
In March 1982, a House committee approved a bill giving lottery money to the common schools. The bill expired in the Senate.
Legislation creating Washington's Lottery was approved by the House on June 30, 1982, during a special session called to deal with a projected $253 million budget deficit. The bill required that the State General Fund receive the state's share of the revenue.
Measures to dedicate the state's share of Lottery revenue to the common schools were introduced but not approved during several Legislative Sessions throughout the 1990s. On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, Washington voters approved I-728, also known and cited as the K-12 2000 Student Achievement Act, which redirected Lottery revenue contributions from the State General Fund to education funds beginning July 1, 2001.
On April 3, 2002, Governor Gary Locke signed legislation which allowed Washington's Lottery to join the multistate lottery Mega Millions effective June 2002. Profit from all Lottery games must benefit education up to the level of $102 million annually. Once the $102 million contribution level for education has been reached, any additional net revenues from Mega Millions will benefit the General Fund while other Lottery games continue to benefit education. From July 1, 2004 to July 1, 2009, all Lottery net revenues allocated for education were sent to the Education Construction Fund to help build, renovate and remodel schools throughout Washington State.
In 2009, the state experienced one of the most challenging and difficult legislative sessions forcing the Governor and the Legislature to make tough decisions to fill a $9 billion state budget gap. One of these decisions was to redirect Lottery dollars for education as well as economic development contributions to the General Fund to support a wide range of important state programs, including education. On July 1, 2009, Lottery funds were redirected from the Education Construction Fund to the General Fund for the 2009-11 biennium. Also in 2009 the Legislature approved the sale of the multi-state game Powerball to the lineup of Washington's Lottery products.
While the Education Construction Fund has been Lottery’s largest beneficiary, Lottery has been directed by the Legislature to make small, but important contributions to stadium funding and problem gambling prevention and treatment.
The 2010 Legislative session marked an exciting change at Washington’s Lottery with the passage of Senate Bill 6409. The new law, prime sponsored by Sen. Jim Kastama, directs Lottery dollars into a new education pathways account to help fund higher education programs. Beginning July 2010, more than $100 million annually in Lottery proceeds will be dedicated to the Opportunity Pathways Account helping to fund access grants, state work study awards, and two merit scholarship programs. Additionally, funds from the account may be used to support early learning programs.
Along with the Opportunity Pathways Account, Lottery proceeds will continue to contribute to stadium debt reduction for Safeco Field and Qwest Field and Exhibition Center as well as support problem gambling prevention and treatment. The Education Construction Fund will continue to be funded by other sources.
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Worms and Germs Blog
Rabies, rabies, and more rabies
It's not like we needed any evidence that rabies is still an active, deadly disease, but a recent ProMed-mail posting contains 16 different rabies notices. They include:
- An animal control worker who was bitten by a rabid, stray cat that was trapped by a person in Texas.
- Rabies exposure in an unvaccinated dog in Maryland, that resulted in euthanasia of the dog because the owners didn't want to undertake the required 6 month quarantine for exposed, unvaccinated dogs. The dog was exposed to rabies virus while killing a raccoon.
- Diagnosis of rabies in two trapped raccoons in New Jersey.
- Rabies exposure in an Arizona woman who was attacked by a rabid fox while in her yard.
- More marauding (presumably rabid) foxes attacking people and dogs in Maine and South Carolina.
- Rabid bats and skunks in Colorado.
- A rabid fox in Alabama.
- Rabid raccoons in Virginia.
- A rabid raccoon attacking a vaccinated dog.
- Rabies exposure in people bitten or scratched by rabid stray kittens in New Jersey, Nebraska and Georgia.
Common themes or take home messages:
- Rabies is here (in most areas, at least) and it's unfortunately not going away any time soon. We can reduce the number of affected animals and decrease the risk of exposure of people and domestic animals, however, with good prevention strategies.
- Vaccination of pets is a cheap and effective way of protecting them, and anyone they are in contact with.
- Keep pets away from wildlife.
- If you are bitten by a wild animal, you must consider it a potential rabies exposure unless the animal can be proven not to have rabies.
- If you see an animal that is acting strangely, stay away and call animal control.
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University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario, N1G2W1, Canada.
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|Thinking beyond colonialism: Britain and the Commonwealth experience|
|With the traumatic experience of the American decolonisation at the end of the 18th century, the bases on which British imperialism was built were deeply shaken. During the 19th century, as her colonial empire expanded, Britain had to rethink her imperial policy, and particularly the colonialist aspect of it. The interpretation of the American decolonisation as a failure of colonialism led to a new concept of imperialism based on informal links rather than formal domination. Devised for settlement colonies such as Canada or Australia, this policy was to be extended to non settlement colonies during the inter-wars years.
Such an imperial ambition, based on the rejection of colonialism as an end in itself, paved the way to the creation of the modern Commonwealth of Nations, and helped Britain to manage the decolonisation of its empire without questioning the principles upon which its identity relied. The British policy of decolonisation was conceived as an imperial policy designed to perpetuate the empire in the first place. The object of this paper is then to enquire into the nature of British imperialism, especially in its relation to colonialism, so as to deliver a general overview of the evolution of British imperialism from the mid-19th century to the 1960s and better understand the specificity of the post-colonial international organisation the Commonwealth of Nations has become.|
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Posted 14 May 2012 - 05:32 PM
I was working on page 115 and when I compared the solutions there was something I didn't understand in your resolution.
The variance formula is not describe containing mean divided by n but in every resolution from pate 117 mean is added to 2000 (in the first resolution) or multiplied by 1.1 (in the second resolution) and it is already divided by n. Is it correct? shouldn't we multiply mean by n before we can make it the common denominator?
I will try to explain better bellow:
variance formula displayed on page 113:
(Ex^2)/n - M^2
variance used in first exercise resolution on page 117:
(E((x+2000) - (M + 2000))^2) / n
and in the second exercise on the same page:
(E((x*1.1) - (M*1.1))^2) / n
How did you added n as denominator for M without multiplying it? I'm trying to understand it but can't find a way.
Thanks for the help.
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A new technique enables the conversion of an ordinary camera into a light-field camera capable of recording high-resolution, multiperspective images.
Buddhist monks will begin construction of the Chenrezig Mandala--an intricate three-dimensional image made of colored sand that's intended to bring compassion, acceptance and peace into the world--at Simmons Hall on March 3. They will work daily until its completion, probably on March 7.
The mandala will be constructed on a wooden platform a few feet above the ground, grain of sand by grain of sand according to instructions found in a thousand-year-old text. The completed mandala will be four feet in diameter. Tenzin Yignyen, a monk from the Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, N.Y., who has constructed several mandalas with His Holiness The Dalai Lama, will lead the project. He will be assisted by Tenzin L.S. Priyadarshi, the Buddhist chaplain at MIT, who organized the event with help from a team of Simmons Hall residents, including faculty and staff.
"Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning 'cosmograph,'a three-dimensional map of the universe. Its construction symbolizes construction of the universe as we would want it to be in a three-dimensional circular pattern where many things come together and everything finds its proper place," Priyadarshi said.
"There are different kinds of mandalas with different patterns. This one is the mandala of the Buddha of compassion; it is supposed to construct a world of compassion, acceptance and peace. With it, we are asking the question: What do we do with our diversity and how may we actualize the compassionate side of being human?" he said.
After completing the mandala, which represents the universe as well as the impermanence of this world, the monks will carry it to one of the bridges spanning the Charles River and pour the sand into the river so its message of peace and compassion can be carried along by the flowing water.
The monks invite the MIT community to view the mandala-making and to pray, chant and meditate with them. They will hold an opening ceremony on Thursday, March 4 at 7 p.m. for MIT community members only, who may view the construction at any time. Public viewing hours are Friday, March 5 from 2-6 p.m.; Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon and 2-7 p.m.; and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The Buddhist community at MIT has planned other events in conjunction with the mandala, including a panel session with Professor Emeritus Mel King at the Sidney-Pacific Residence Hall on Friday, March 5 at 7 p.m.; a children's mandala-making session (MIT only) on Saturday from 2-5 p.m.; and a screening of "The Lost Treasures of Tibet" on Sunday at 6 p.m. The monks will dismantle the mandala at 10 a.m. Monday.
All events will be held in Simmons Hall unless otherwise noted. For more information, go to http://web.mit.edu/metta/www/mandala.htm.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 3, 2004.
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Commentary - Whooping cough prevention: Ensure the health of your familyIf you have a new child or grandchild, or come in close contact with an infant of 12 months or younger, you should know that the number of cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is increasing sharply. And as grandparents, parents or as a caretaker, you should consider getting a booster vaccine.
By Kathleen Jaeger,
senior vice president, Pharmacy Care and Patient Advisory National
Association of Chain Drug Stores
If you have a new child or grandchild, or come in close contact with an infant of 12 months or younger, you should know that the number of cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is increasing sharply. And as grandparents, parents or as a caretaker, you should consider getting a booster vaccine.
Today, many community pharmacists administer the recommended whooping cough vaccine right in your neighborhood store.
Whooping cough is a common disease in the United States, with periodic epidemics every three to five years and frequent outbreaks.
Unfortunately, this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting a major whooping cough outbreak across two-thirds of the country. In fact, the CDC has declared whooping cough epidemic in Washington, and high rates in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Nine infant deaths have been reported this year alone, with the majority of deaths occurring among infants younger than 3 months of age. In addition to these tragic incidents, 17,000 more cases of whooping cough have been reported to CDC through mid-July of this year, with the second highest disease outbreak occurring among children 7 through 10 years old.
The good news is that the whooping cough vaccine exists to provide protection to infants and school aged children. Regrettably, however, until a child is fully vaccinated, which is defined generally as five doses of the vaccine, adults who come in close contact with the child could inadvertently pass on the virus.
CDC is recommending that grandparents, parents, caretakers and other adults who come into close contact with a young infant, get a dose of the whooping cough vaccine at least two weeks prior to contact. This dose will help enhance the protection of newborns, infants and school-aged children from the pertussis virus and prevent whooping cough.
Ask your community pharmacist about whooping cough and learn how you can enhance the protection of your grandchild and other children.
• Learn about the recommended vaccines designed to fight whooping cough.
• Discuss your vaccine history to see if you should have an adult booster dose — recommended by CDC every 10 years.
• Discuss the importance of getting a dose of the whooping cough vaccine if you are in close contact with newborns and infants.
• Understand that if you are pregnant, it is recommended that you receive whooping cough vaccine after completing week 20 of pregnancy, and influenza vaccine anytime during pregnancy.
• Discuss the recommended vaccine schedule for infants and school aged children.
While most infants and newborns receive the recommended vaccinations in their pediatrician’s office, ask your community pharmacy whether they offer adult and adolescent immunizations. Pharmacists are authorized to administer the recommended vaccinations against the whooping cough in 43 states, and stand ready as a community health care resource to help serve your family and your community.
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A body burns on a funeral pyre while an attendant prods the logs with a pole to keep it alight.
The smoke is thick around the public funeral ground. Eyes are stinging, and the air is heavy with the smells of burning wood, incense, and – somewhat disturbingly – an aroma described as being like barbecuing meat. Piles of wood smoulder and burn along the riverbanks, occasionally poked by men or boys with sticks in order to keep them alight. Here and there, jutting from the stacked lots, you can make out a human limb or head of one of the departed – their soul believed to be on its way to heaven. This is not a place for the squeamish.
Varanasi’s ghats are large stone steps constructed along the banks of India’s holy river, the Ganges. For centuries, people have been coming here to pray, meditate, bathe and, famously, cremate their dead. Despite the ancient and sacred character of the place, however, visitors to these steps should expect more of a jostling market atmosphere than a place for quiet contemplation. The larger of the burning ghats, Manikarnika (where these photographs were taken), is believed to host around 200 cremations in a single day.
Bodies smoulder and burn while onlookers chat among themselves.
The funeral ghats of Varanasi are well known – which some might say is fortunate, given that stumbling unexpectedly across a human body burning on top of a pile of logs would come as rather a shock to the unsuspecting! Most visitors are not only aware of what goes on here; many come especially to observe this ancient ritual – whether out of cultural curiosity or mere morbid fascination.
A Dom caste funeral worker stokes the pyre.
Manikarnika Ghat and Harishchandra Ghat are the two ghats used for funeral fires in Varanasi. Legend says that an ancient Hindu king Harishchandra once worked at the cremation ground (later named after him) after he had been sold into slavery. These days, the grounds are worked by members of the ‘untouchable’ Dom caste. It is said that the work is so despicable that Doms cry when their children are born and rejoice when one of their number dies – death representing a final liberation from their unpleasant duties.
The pyres are kept burning until only ashes remain – but only if the mourners can afford enough wood.
With impressive business acumen, the Doms have managed to make the best of their seemingly undesirable circumstances. In Varanasi they control the funeral business, and no one can be cremated without paying the Doms for their services. It is thought the Doms have become rich from their traditional responsibilities, with the current 'Dom Raja', or leader, being described as a multimillionaire.
A funeral procession on the way to the cremation ground.
The popularity of Varanasi’s cremation ghats stems from the Hindu belief that those whose remains are submerged in the holy Ganges river after death are guaranteed a good afterlife. Even Western celebrities such as George Harrison wanted their ashes scattered here.
It is also considered a particularly auspicious place to die, as those who are bathed in or even sprinkled with Ganges water at the time of their death will be released from the cycle of death and rebirth and will instead reside in paradise forever.
The bodies are wrapped in gold and silver cloth to begin with, then burned in simple white or orange shrouds.
The first step when cremating a loved one at the ghats (much as it is in the West) is to choose a funeral package. The price that relatives and friends can afford will determine the amount of wood used, and how much of it will be the desirable sandalwood, as well as the quantity and quality of other cremation necessities like ghee (clarified butter), straw and religious services.
A decent funeral generally costs anywhere from US $12 to US $71, but the costs can vary widely. Poor families may only be able to buy a sprinkle of sacred sandalwood powder, while the wealthy may pay for an entire pyre of the expensive wood.
How much mourners can afford to pay determines the quality and even location of the funeral pyre.
Those who can afford it wrap their deceased first in shrouds made of silver and gold. As Hindus traditionally see death as an occasion for celebration – because the deceased is hopefully headed for a better rebirth, or even heaven – the procession that accompanies the body as likely to seem as cheerful as it is solemn.
Crying at funerals is discouraged – partly because it is not simply (if at all) viewed as a sad occasion and partly because bodily fluids, like tears, are considered ‘pollutants’ at religious rites. For this reason, women have traditionally been barred from funeral grounds, the reasoning being that they are more likely to weep than men.
The Dom cast of 'untouchables' has a fiercely held monopoly on funerals at the ghats.
Before laying the body on the funeral pyre (now in a white shroud), the relatives plunge it quickly into the Ganges and then rub it with ghee – the latter for religious reasons, and possibly to help it burn better. Men are usually placed face up on the pyre while women are cremated face down.
The eldest son or male relative (the chief mourner) typically sets the wood alight, starting near the mouth, with a sacred flame taken from a nearby temple. It is then the attending Doms' job to see that the fire burns evenly by adding straw and ghee and prodding it with poles when necessary.
Wood is brought into Varanasi from a great distance, making complete funeral pyres too expensive for some.
A body burned in this way normally takes about three-and-half hours to reduce to ashes. If the mourners are lucky, the skull will explode in the heat. This, according to Hindu belief, releases the soul to heaven. If this does not happen, it is up to the chief mourner to crack it open himself when the fire has died down. Quite a responsibility.
After the cremation, any remaining bones (for some reason usually a hip bone for women and a chest bone for men) are thrown with the ashes into the river.
After the cremation, ashes, bones, and sometimes partially burned body parts are poured into the river.
Sometimes poorer people cannot afford enough wood to completely burn a body. In this case charred body parts are simply flung into the river with the ashes. Certain people, such as small children, pregnant women and holy men, are not cremated at all, but instead simply have their bodies weighted down with stones and are dropped into the Ganges. Not too pleasant for the many bathers around the ghats.
As a solution to the problem of human remains clogging up the Ganges, snapping turtles were bred and released into the river specifically to eat the corpses and bones. A good idea, maybe, but since bodies and body parts are still seen floating around the river today, perhaps not as effective as originally hoped.
The burning ghats are a 24-hour hive of activity.
Apart from dead bodies in the river, there are other environmental concerns about the burning ghats. For one, the funeral pyres require an enormous amount of wood for fuel. To effectively burn a body takes about 300 kilograms (660 lbs.) of wood, and multiplied by the tens of thousands of people who are cremated here every year, it’s small wonder Varanasi has no local forest left. Wood has to be carted in from over a thousand kilometers away.
The government tried to address this problem in the 1990s by building an electric crematorium near the Ganges. Religious customs are hard to change, however, and most people still prefer to send off their dead the old-fashioned way. Constant power outages at the crematorium don't help either.
A view of Manikarnika from the Ganges river.
The funeral pyres of Varanasi are without doubt one of the most amazing sights in India. Although to some of us they may seem macabre and grisly, to Hindus, death and all its aspects are seen as an important, and indeed joyful, part of life that should be embraced rather than hidden away.
Tourists are not discouraged from visiting the burning ghats, although for obvious reasons visitors should try to maintain an attitude of respect around the cremation site. Women are generally not allowed into the funereal area, although April Maciborka, the photographer who took most of these pictures, managed a quick 10-minute visit to take her shots. We thank her for the fascinating insight she's given us into an ancient ritual – which remains as strong as ever today.
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The genus that includes the magpies.
A vitiated appetite that craves what is unfit for food, as chalk, ashes, coal, etc.; chthonophagia.
The essential feature is the eating of one or more nonnutritive substances on a persistent basis for a period of at least 1 month. The typical substances ingested tend to vary with age. Infants and younger children typically eat paint, plaster, string, hair, or cloth. Older children may eat animal droppings, sand, insects, leaves, or pebbles.
Eating disorder in which there is a craving for material that is not food, such as clay, grass, wood, paper, soap, and plaster.
Craving for non-edible substances.
An uncommon craving during pregnancy to eat none-food items such as laundry starch, dirt and clay. It is sometimes caused by an iron deficiency.
Pica is an eating disorder in which children eat objects that are not food. This can include paint chips, soil, rocks, etc. Adults should be alert to their children's activities to detect behavior of this kind.
eating disorder; repeated eating of non-food things such as clay, dirt, paint.
Desire to eat non-food materials such as starch, clay, ashes, plaster, dirt, or other similar items.
The persistent eating of non-nutritive substances, eg .. chalk, clay, grit etc etc. Often occurs with Pervasive Developmental Disorders, and Mental Retardation.
Is an eating disorder typically defined as the persistent eating of non-nutritive substances for a period of at least one month occurring at an age in which this behavior is developmentally inappropriate. The definition is occasionally broadened to include mouthing of non-nutritive substances.
chronic eating of non-food materials.
eating earth or clay or chalk; occurs in some primitive tribes or sometimes in cases of nutritional deficiency
A behaviour characterized by deliberate ingestion of non-nutritive substances such as soil.
The urge to eat nonfood items
The eating and chewing of inedible substances.
An eating disorder consisting of the craving for and eating of non-nutritive foods or other substances, such as dirt or paint. Seen in a variety of medical conditions, pregnancy and emotional disturbances.
craving and eating of non-food substances, such as paint and clay.
Abnormal appetite for unusual and often inappropriate feed, e.g., dirt, hair, feces, etc.
A craving for specific and often unusual foods or food combinations during pregnancy. Some experts think that these cravings may indicates that the mother isn’t eating a healthy, balanced diet.
the craving of nonfood products, such as cornstarch or clay, during pregnancy. Tell your doctor if you have these cravings. Do not eat these or any other nonfood items.
the persistent eating of non-nutritive substances (such as paint, string, hair, animal droppings, insects, soil) for over a month. The behavior must be developmentally inappropriate and not part of a culturally sanctioned practice.
Pica is an appetite for non-nutritive substances (e.g., coal, soil, chalk, paper etc.) or an abnormal appetite for some things that may be considered foods, such as food ingredients (e.g., flour, raw potato, starch). In order for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month, at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate. The condition's name comes from the Latin word for the magpie, a bird which is reputed to eat almost anything.
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Baking bread satisfies in many ways. The meditative act of kneading, the nutty aroma of the baking loaf, and that first warm bite have won over bakers for millennia. With challah, the braided bread made for Shabbat and festive holidays, you can add another layer to this experience by performing the mitzvah of taking challah.
This mitzvah dates back to the time of the ancient Temple. In modern times, bakers--both professionals and amateurs--still separate challah when they make large batches of dough by removing a small piece before forming it into loaves. That piece is then burned and discarded. This is why, on packages of kosher challah and matzah, the manufacturer prints the line "challah is taken."
To try this at home, first determine if your recipe calls for a large enough amount of flour.
For batches of challah using more than 14 cups (3 lbs, 11 oz) for forming the dough and kneading, the baker "takes challah." This means pinching off a piece of dough the size of a large olive. This small piece, like the bread, is called challah, and in these large batches the baker should say a blessing immediately before burning the challah that has been taken. This amount of dough may be too unwieldy to knead together or allow to rise all in one bowl. You may divide the dough into different bowls or knead balls of dough separately. If made all at once, it is still considered one batch, and one bit of separated challah--along with the blessing--covers all of it.
For batches of dough using between 14 and 10 cups of flour, one should separate the challah without a blessing. Any recipe calling for less than 10 cups of flour does not require the separating step at all.
There is one more condition for separating challah: The main liquid ingredient in the recipe should be water.
Separating and blessing the challah is a simple process. Form the dough, knead it, and allow it to rise in a large bowl (or two smaller bowls if necessary). Before forming the dough into loaves, separate that olive-sized piece and roll it into a ball. If the dough is divided into multiple bowls, join the pieces for a moment by laying them side-by-side on the counter so they touch.
Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hafreesh challah min ha'eesah.*
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with commandments, and commanded us to separate challah.
Hold the piece of dough and say "harei zo challah" (this is challah).
Now you are ready to burn and discard the challah. The most common method is to wrap the dough in aluminum foil and then burn it in the bottom of the oven as it preheats or as the loaves bake. Some people burn the foil-wrapped piece of dough on the flame of a gas range. Others wrap the challah in a napkin or paper towel and discard it without burning.
Next, divide the dough into loaves, allow for a final rising, and bake. To get started, follow the recipe below. This calls for enough flour and the appropriate proportion of water to take challah and say the blessing.
*According to The Secret of Challah by Shira Wiener and Ayelet Yifrash, the phrase challah terumah (challah offering) is used in the Sephardic tradition.<<< Less
1/4 cupgry yeast (5 packets) 4 cupsluke warm water 1 cupsugar or 3/4 cup honey 5large eggs 2 Tablespoonssalt 1 cupolive oil 14-15 cups(about 4 lbs) all-purpose or bread flour, plus another cup for flouring the kneading surface sesame and/or poppy seeds
In a medium bowl, combine yeast and water and a sprinkling of the sugar or a few drops of honey. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and reserve 3 Tablespoons for the egg wash. Mix in 1 Tablespoon water to make the wash and store it in the refrigerator. Also prepare a clean counter space with a sprinkle of flour for kneading.
When the yeast mixture begins to bubble, add the mixture to the eggs not reserved for the wash, along with the rest of the sugar or honey, salt, and oil. Sprinkle in 2 cups of flour and work it in with a whisk. Continue to add flour, 1-2 cups at a time, and continue to mix. When the dough is too thick to mix with the whisk, turn it out onto the floured counter top and continue adding flour and kneading it in with your hands.
When dough is no longer sticky and forms a firm (but soft) ball, continue to knead for 10 minutes.
Clean the large bowl that you used to mix the dough, or prepare two medium bowls. The bowl space should be large enough that the dough fills it no more than halfway. Oil the sides of the bowl(s). Form the dough into one or two balls. Place the dough in the bowl(s), with the seam side of the ball facing down. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or wax paper and let it sit in a warm place for 1 1/2-2 hours, or until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Now you are ready to separate challah. If the dough is in two separate bowls, put the pieces of dough side-by-side on the counter so they touch. Pull off the olive-sized scrap of dough and say the blessing. Wrap the small piece of dough in aluminum foil and burn it in the oven or on the stovetop (if using a gas range). Be careful that it doesn't catch fire! Or wrap the dough in a napkin or paper towel, then discard it.
When this is finished, divide the remaining dough into 6 pieces. Each of these pieces will form one loaf. To shape the challah, try the braiding techniques in this recipe for the classic look. Many bakers use different shapes in honor of various holidays, such as a round challah for Rosh Hashanah, the new calendar year. The Rosh Hashanah challah can be formed by rolling the dough into one long strand and then coiling it into a spiral.
When the loaves are ready, place them on an oiled baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. Allow to rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size again.
While the dough completes its second rise, reheat the oven to 350F. Brush the tops of the loaves with the reserved egg wash and sprinkle with seeds, if desired.
Bake loaves for 35-40 minutes, or until a knock on the base of the loaf produces a hollow sound.
To store leftover challah, place cooled loaves in zip-top bags and keep in the refrigerator or freezer. To serve, bring up to room temperature, wrap in aluminum foil, and warm in a 350F oven for 10-15 minutes.
Rhea Yablon Kennedy holds a master's degree in creative nonfiction from Johns Hopkins University. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post's On Faith blog, Washingon Jewish Week, Examiner.com, and Edible Chesapeake magazine. Rhea has long been a cook by hobby and sometimes by profession. She currently teaches at Gallaudet University.
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Straddling three East African countries -- Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya -- Lake Victoria has for centuries been a vital resource for the millions of people living along its vast coastline.
The massive lake, which stretches some 70,000 square kilometers, is the world's second-biggest freshwater body and the biggest of its kind in Africa, as well as the chief reservoir of the Nile. Home to a stunning archipelago of more than 80 islands, Lake Victoria provides a livelihood for the fishermen navigating its waters and the businesses dotting its shores.
But for many that comes with a risk.
According to local officials, about 5,000 people are killed every year on the lake, victims of erratic weather conditions and a mix of poor communications and lack of resources.
The high death toll makes the lake "arguably the most dangerous stretch of water in the world in terms of fatalities per square kilometer," according to The National Lake Rescue Institute, a group launched in 2002 to improve safety on Lake Victoria and provide education and training in maritime safety.
See also: 'Hippie apes' battle for survival
"It's very dangerous," says Sam Kabonge, a fisherman from the Bugala island in Lake Victoria, a tropical patch of land boasting sandy shores and lush forests. "You sit on top of water not knowing the depth of the pitch you are sitting on so in any case of accident ... even if you do [know how to swim], you might be far away in the lake."
Kabonge says not all fishermen can afford life jackets. At the same time, their small and often dilapidated vessels can easily succumb to the wind-whipped waves formed in the lake by its volatile microclimate.
"There are times when you may leave the landing site when the lake is still," explains Kabonge. "As you are in the middle of it, it starts getting rough -- rain, winds, clouds, and you know what happens next because ... our boats, cannot resist the strength of the wave. Sometimes they break; others capsize."
See also: School boy's website helps tourists spot big beasts
Ugandan meteorologist Khalid Muwebe says the lake, which lies on the Equator, has a distinct effect on the region's weather.
"Because the lake is generally warm and has a lot of moisture, we find that it generates this very big, what we call, convective potential energy, which generates a lot of cloudness and this unique nature of weather characterized by heavy thunderstorms which sometimes can be dangerous," he explains.
Muwembe is part of a team testing a new mobile alert system aiming to improve the delivery of weather forecasts and help vulnerable fishing communities in Lake Victoria protect themselves from dangerous conditions.
Under the free pilot program, locals receive tailor-made text messages on their mobile phones, providing them with daily weather forecasts, warnings about potential hazards and advice on what action they should take.
See also: Wildlife puts Tanzania on the tourist map
Muwebe says the mobile alert weather system is helping fishermen to plan safer outings.
"For a long period of time, we didn't have a very good weather service to try and guide and promote safety of all those navigating over the lake," he says. "So because of that -- and also daily reports of accidents over the lake -- we thought it was very important that we have a weather system where we are giving the users of the small vessels over the lake at least some guidance on what kind of storms they expect to find over the lake."
"We provide this information on a daily basis as texts on their mobile phones and in a situation where we see that there is a very dangerous storm which is developing, we also give them an additional message, which we call an alert. We say that 'this is happening, please take action, or hold position,' or whatever it is that will at least promote safety," he adds.
For fishermen like Kabonge, who is among those involved in the pilot program, the localized weather information is a vital service that can help people in the community stay safe.
"We need it because ever since it came, at least the death tolls have reduced," says Kabonge, who calls for the program's expansion. "The lake is too wide -- if it [the program] could go across the whole lake, our brothers also may get use of it."
And for Kabonge that is what is most important -- to use new technology to help protect the lives of Lake Victoria's fishermen.
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With advances toward ultrastrong fibers, the concept of building an elevator 60,000 miles high to carry cargo into space is moving from the realm of science fiction to the fringes of reality.
This month, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a sponsor of a conference to ponder the concept. Yet, the keynote address was by a titan of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, speaking via satellite from his home in Sri Lanka. ''I'm happy that people are taking it more and more seriously,'' said Mr. Clarke, whose novel ''The Fountains of Paradise'' (1978) revolved around such a space elevator.
The discovery in 1991 of nanotubes, cylindrical molecules of carbon with many times the strength of steel, turned the idea from a fantastical impossibility to an intriguing possibility that could be realized in as little as a decade or two.
Proponents say the economic and technological advantages of a space elevator over rockets make it inevitable. They predict it will lower the cost of putting a satellite into space from $10,000 a pound to $100.
''As soon as we can build it, we should build it,'' said Dr. Bryan E. Laubscher, a scientist at Los Alamos who organized the conference. Just as the transcontinental railroad opened the West in the late 1800's, ''I feel the space elevator is going to be such a paradigm shift in space access,'' Dr. Laubscher said.
Easier economical access to space might also make practical other grandiose projects like solar power satellites that could collect sunlight and beam energy down to Earth.
The conference, a three-day session here, drew 60 people, a mix of scientists and engineers who are working on the concept, space enthusiasts who wanted to hear more and dilettantes from nearby Los Alamos laboratory attracted by curiosity.
''The first thought is, Is this really going to work?'' said Dr. Steven E. Patamia, a researcher at Los Alamos, who was enlisted into performing space elevator calculations a week before the conference. ''When you get into it, it begins to make sense. There are a good number of technical issues. They are probably all 'overcomeable.' ''
The original idea of a space elevator is more than a century old. In 1895, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, a Russian visionary who devised workable ideas for rocket propulsion and space travel decades before others, proposed a tower thousands of miles high attached to a ''celestial castle'' in orbit around Earth, with the centrifugal force of the orbiting castle holding up the tower. (Imagine swinging a rope with a rock tied to the end of it.)
But the idea was fundamentally impossible to build. Steel, then the strongest material known, was too heavy and not strong enough to support that weight.
Other scientists periodically revisited and reinvented Tsiolkovsky's idea, inspiring science fiction writers like Mr. Clarke.
Nanotubes spurred NASA to take a more serious look in 1999. A team of scientists envisioned huge cables of nanotubes and magnetically levitated cars traveling up and down. The structure would be so large that it would require grabbing an asteroid and dragging it into Earth orbit to act as the counterweight for holding up the elevator.
To avoid weather, especially lightning, the NASA scientists envisioned the base station as a tower at least 10 miles high.
''We came out of that workshop saying the space elevator is 50 years away,'' said David V. Smitherman of the Marshall Space Flight Center, who led the study.
Around that time, Dr. Bradley C. Edwards, who was then a scientist at Los Alamos, read an even more pessimistic assessment, that a space elevator would not be built for at least 300 years.
''But there was no information why it couldn't be built,'' Dr. Edwards said, and he took that as a challenge.
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As you set type using programs such as InDesign, people may tell you
to style fonts
. So if you use the Roman version of a font (such as Minion), you should never press the keyboard shortcut for italic. You should only choose the actual typeface (Minion Italic) from the font menu.
This rule emerged because some
do not have an italic or bold version. The styling shows on the screen, but it doesn't print. Techno or Zapf Dingbats are examples of fonts that shouldn't be styled electronically. When people see their printed samples, they're disappointed that there is no bold or italic appearance.
you from making errors like that. If you apply the shortcut for italic, InDesign applies the actual italic version. If there is no version, InDesign does not change the font. So there is no harm styling electronically using InDesign.
to avoid all caps, subscript, small caps, and other electronic styles on type. In most cases, there is nothing wrong with applying those styles, and InDesign allows you to apply those electronic styles to text.
In some cases you'll have better results with a small-caps version of a font than with the electronic style for small caps. However, a special small-caps font offers a subtle effect that few people will recognize. (
discussion on how to use electronic small caps, see
The Non-Designer's Type Book,
by Robin Williams, published by Peachpit Press
hate the electronic styling for Vertical and Horizontal Scale. They distort the type horribly. The Skew command is even
! However, I do accept that there might be times (grotesque Halloween cards?) where those distortions are acceptable.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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en
| 0.902528
| 355
| 2.59375
| 3
|
Researchers make a distinction between project, sector, and economywide analyses. Project level analysis considers a stand-alone investment assumed to have insignificant secondary impacts on markets. Methods used for this level include CBA, CEA, and life-cycle analysis. Sector level analysis examines sectoral policies in a partial-equilibrium context in which all other variables are assumed to be exogenous. Economy-wide analysis explores how policies affect all sectors and markets, using various macroeconomic and general equilibrium models. A trade-off exists between the level of detail in the assessment and complexity of the system considered. This section presents some of the key assumptions made in cost analysis.
A combination of different modelling approaches is required for an effective
assessment of climate change mitigation options. For example, detailed project
assessment has been combined with a more general analysis of sectoral impacts,
and macroeconomic carbon tax studies have been combined with the sectoral modelling
of larger technology investment programmes.
The baseline case, which by definition gives the emissions of GHGs in the absence
of the climate change interventions being considered, is critical to the assessment
of the costs of climate change mitigation. This is because the definition of
the baseline scenario determines the potential for future GHG emissions reduction,
as well as the costs of implementing these reduction policies. The baseline
scenario also has a number of important implicit assumptions about future economic
policies at the macroeconomic and sectoral levels, including sectoral structure,
resource intensity, prices, and thereby technology choice.
No regrets options are by definition actions to reduce GHG emissions that have negative net costs. Net costs are negative because these options generate direct or indirect benefits, such as those resulting from reductions in market failures, double dividends through revenue recycling and ancillary benefits, large enough to offset the costs of implementing the options. The no regrets issue reflects specific assumptions about the working and the efficiency of the economy, especially the existence and stability of a social welfare function, based on a social cost concept:
The existence of a no regrets potential implies that market and institutions do not behave perfectly, because of market imperfections such as lack of information, distorted price signals, lack of competition, and/or institutional failures related to inadequate regulation, inadequate delineation of property rights, distortion-inducing fiscal systems, and limited financial markets. Reduction of market imperfections suggests it is possible to identify and implement policies that can correct these market and institutional failures without incurring costs larger than the benefits gained.
The potential for a double dividend arising from climate mitigation policies was extensively studied during the 1990s. In addition to the primary aim of improving the environment (the first dividend), such policies, if conducted through revenue-raising instruments such as carbon taxes or auctioned emission permits, yield a second dividend, which can be set against the gross costs of these policies. All domestic GHG policies have an indirect economic cost from the interactions of the policy instruments with the fiscal system, but in the case of revenue-raising policies this cost is partly offset (or more than offset) if, for example, the revenue is used to reduce existing distortionary taxes. Whether these revenue-raising policies can reduce distortions in practice depends on whether revenues can be recycled to tax reduction.
Ancillary Benefits and Costs (Ancillary Impacts)
The definition of ancillary impacts is given above. As noted there, these can be positive as well as negative. It is important to recognize that gross and net mitigation costs cannot be established as a simple summation of positive and negative impacts, because the latter are interlinked in a very complex way. Climate change mitigation costs (gross and well as net costs) are only valid in relation to a comprehensive specific scenario and policy assumption structure.
The existence of no regrets potentials is a necessary, but not a sufficient,
condition for the potential implementation of these options. The actual implementation
also requires the development of a policy strategy that is complex as comprehensive
enough to address these market and institutional failures and barriers.
For a wide variety of options, the costs of mitigation depend on what regulatory
framework is adopted by national governments to reduce GHGs. In general, the
more flexibility the framework allows, the lower the costs of achieving a given
reduction. More flexibility and more trading partners can reduce costs. The
opposite is expected with inflexible rules and few trading partners. Flexibility
can be measured as the ability to reduce carbon emissions at the lowest cost,
either domestically or internationally.
Climate change mitigation policies implemented at a national level will, in most cases, have implications for short-term economic and social development, local environmental quality, and intra-generational equity. Mitigation cost assessments that follow this line can address these impacts on the basis of a decision-making framework that includes a number of side-impacts to the GHG emissions reduction policy objective. The goal of such an assessment is to inform decision makers about how different policy objectives can be met efficiently, given priorities of equity and other policy constraints (natural resources, environmental objectives). A number of international studies have applied such a broad decision-making framework to the assessment of development implications of CDM projects.
There are a number of key linkages between mitigation costing issues and broader development impacts of the policies, including macroeconomic impacts, employment creation, inflation, the marginal costs of public funds, capital availability, spillovers, and trade.
Other reports in this collection
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| 0.924142
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|
This dictionary provides full coverage of all the important terms and concepts used in medicine today. Written by distinguished practicing specialists and medical writers, it is intended primarily for workers in the paramedical fields: pharmacists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, social workers, hospital secretaries, administrators, technicians, and so on. It will also be invaluable for medical students and practicing doctors. Each entry contains a basic definition, followed- where appropriate- by a more detailed explanation or description. A feature of the dictionary is that the articles are written in clear and concise English without the use of unnecessary technical jargon. For this reason the book will also be of both interest and value to the general reader who needs a home medical dictionary.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.mobilesbuddy.com/tag/series-60-software/
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en
| 0.935722
| 143
| 3.09375
| 3
|
Ahimsa or non-violence is the most important virtue. That is the reason why Patanjali Maharshi has placed it first in Yama. Practice of Ahimsa must be in thought, word and deed. Practice of Ahimsa is not impotence or cowardice or weakness. It is the highest type of heroism. The practice demands immense patience, forbearance and endurance, infinite inner spiritual strength and gigantic will-power.
Ahimsa is a modification or expression of truth only. Satyam and Ahimsa always go together. He who is established in Ahimsa can move the whole world. In his presence, all hostilities vanish; lion and cow, cobra and mongoose, live together peacefully.
Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism lay great stress on Ahimsa. Lord Jesus also has emphasised much on Ahimsa in his Sermon on the Mount. He says: – If anyone beats you on one cheek, show him the other cheek also.
He who is firmly established in Ahimsa can hope to attain Self-realisation. He who practises Ahimsa develops cosmic love to a maximum degree. Practice of Ahimsa eventually leads to realisation of oneness or unity of Self. Such a man only can attain self-restraint. Retaliation – tooth for tooth, blow for blow – is the maxim, doctrine or principle of an Asura or a man of diabolic nature. This belongs to the beastly nature. To return good for evil is divine. Constant vigilance and alertness are needed in the practice of Ahimsa. If you are careless even a bit, you will be carried away by the force of previous wrong Samskaras and impulses and will become a victim of Himsa, despite your good intentions.
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| 0.937333
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|